March i rynniaw Pymhed llwyn gwyn a wnaeth Iesu O wisg Adaf i ymtrau Llemais i lâm o lam eglwg THE SONG OF DARONWY. O God, protect the sanctuary The oppression across the sea. Than he, Daronwy? He is not my protection Around the lofty sanctuary. Is there a mystery which is greater Than the darting of the spear of Goronwy ?1 Wonderful its magic lore. The magic wand of Mathonwy, When it came into the wood, Caused an abundance of fruit (to appear) On the banks of Gwillionwy. Kynon obtained it At the time when he ruled.2 There are coming again, Over tide, over strand, The fifth, not inferior, A hero strong and mighty, Nourished in Britain. Women shall be eloquent (about him). 1 That is, supposing "gwawr gwyr ' to be an error for " 'gwaewawr." The present reading, "the light of the men of Goronwy," affords no sensible meaning; but that proposed is quite clear, and is found in the tale of "Math ab Mathonwy," where the assassination of Llew Llaw Gyffes is detailed. 2 The subject here breaks off to enter upon a prophecy of the expected prince of British descent, probably Owen Gwynedd or Llewellyn ap Iorwerth. To others in captivity (shall come) To rule over men. There shall come a race From the land of Rome, Their songs and chants, With their songs in tune. A dog to pull, A horse to run, A steer to gore, A hog to burrow. The fifth fair form he made was Jesus,1 Of the clothing of Adam originally, The foliage of trees, fair their appearance; An apt covering they were and have been. When the Cymry shall be unjustly driven out, Another land shall be obtained where they shall be loved. A boot is good lest hurt be taken. The funeral pile of Rhun is, by his desire, They see clearly who see its appearance. From a very little fire there is a great production of smoke. 1 This extraordinary collocation of lines must be the result of the same kind of errors in transcription which have so frequently occurred in these pieces. It is a striking instance of the mutilated condition in which they have come down to us. CHAPTER V. OF NEO-DRUIDISM AND THE DRUIDICAL PHILOSOPHY, THE difficulty of maintaining the proposition, that the Welsh Bards of the sixth century had preserved, and were in the practice of proclaiming and celebrating in the midst of a Christian community, the doctrines and traditions of an ancient and apparently extinct superstition, induced the learned author of Britannia after the Romans, to present a new theory to account for such a remarkable phenomenon. "The separation of the British province from the Empire," says Mr. Herbert, "was not merely the case of an effete civilization giving way to irrumpent bardism, such as its other provinces exhibit. But, it was attended by an abandonment of established Christianity, and the rise of a strange and awful apostatic heresy; of which the historical vestiges are rare, but the internal evidences numerous and strong. Symptoms of that change have tinged British history and literature from the separation downwards, to an indefinitely modern point of time. But it had its paroxysms; its times of greater ascendancy and power than others; times of greater publicity and more unreserved avowal. The long and great paroxysm of this mania was the period extending from the revolt against the Gwynethian King-Insular, Gwrtheyrn of the Untoward Mouth, down to the conflict (called) of the Field-of-Iniquity, or Cam-Lan. Its point of extreme exacerbation was from the establishment of that power (known by the name of Arthur) 1 Britannia after the Romans, part ii. p.1. which fell in the Cam-Lan, unto its downfall in that revolution. After which event, the aforesaid power or principle was removed out of sight by the two chief Bards of Britain, and kept alive, from thenceforward, indefinitely in the secrecy of a charmed and magical asylum." The period adopted by Mr. Herbert as that in which this substitution of Paganism for Christianity prevailed in Britain, comprises, if taken from the date of the arrival of the Saxons in A.D. 449, to the commonly received date of the battle of Camlan, A.D. 542, about one hundred years. According to Mr. Herbert's view, "the history of that period is a mere compound of romantic and mythologic imposture. Emrys Wledig, otherwise Ann ap Lleian, Uthyr Pendragon, and Arthur, by whom that poem was filled, were not real persons; but terms expressive of the long rule of fanaticism and of the three sub-periods in which it presented varying aspects; while a number of real men of inferior glory (Nathan Loed, Caradoc, Cawrdav, Maelgwn, &c.) were those that actually performed the brawlings and ruinations of that dismal time." The nature and history of this strange and awful apostatic heresy is further developed by Mr. Herbert in a later work upon this subject.1 "Paulinus and Agrippa, by the conquest of Mona, the slaughter of the Druids in that island, and the cutting down of the groves that were sacred to their cruel superstitions,' struck a fatal blow to their craft. The three centuries and upwards that intervened between Vespasian and Honorius consigned to silence the Druidical system in the Roman provinces of Gaul and Britain-the religion of Rome first, and then that of Christ, being established in them, and the Latin language extensively prevalent. But in the very height of their Roman civilization, when the vicious empire was tottering, a pagan apostasy crept into Gaul and Britain, which ended in establishing in the latter country that Neo-Druidism to which the fables of Ambrosius and Arthur relate. A sort of magical association had grown up in the eastern parts of the Roman dominions, founded upon the doctrines and mysteries of the Persian magi. These were the Mithriacs, followers of the ineffable orgies of Mithras. Very early in the Christian era this pagan sect began in a 1 Essay on the Neo-Druidic Heresy in Britannia. 1838. measure to play the part of heretics, and, under their name of Mithriacs, imitated and parodied the rites of Christianity. They worshipped the sun by his Persian title of Mithras, but pretended that it was Christ they worshipped, and that Christ was the spirit of the sun. "These doctrines were introduced into Britain, a rich and well-civilized island, in which Christianity had been some time established, and Roman manners still longer. We therefore meet with a frequent dissimulation of that heathenism to which the authors of the system were addicted—a disinclination to call the demons of polytheism by their ancient and known titles, or to give them the rank of gods, and a feeble attempt to conciliate their mysteries with the Christian. Manes, whose followers were a very similar class to the Neo-Druids, pursued the same course and honoured the name of Christ, but meant the sun by that name. No more can be understood by the Christ Gwledig of the bards. Their Trindawd is the triad of the Pythagorean cabalism, or theological arithmetic, and should be rendered Supreme Trias, and not Trinity, to express the mind of the primary bards. Some have carelessly, some affectedly, confounded together the Druidism of the times before the Romans with this modified revival of it in an heretical form. I have studied to keep them distinct by terming the professors of the latter Druidists and Neo-Druids. "The College of Druids was not re-established by name. The votaries of Belenus in Gaul referred to the Druids as to an extinct race, from whom some of them affected on uncertain grounds to be descendants. In Britain, that order which was lowest and least important, and which alone was either tolerable to the Romans or compatible with Christianity, viz. the order of Bards, was the only one that flourished. Everything was referred to Bardism; and all the functions of priest, prophet, and magician, all the learning of the country and the right of teaching it and inventing it, was claimed by that order of minstrels." The great deity of the Neo-Druidists was Beli: "The Beli who presided over Neo-Druidic Bardism is the god of bloodshed and slaughter, the deified sword of Scythia and the Arthur of Britain." Instead of attempting to enter upon any farther investigation of this marvellous history, which would lead us beyond the scope of this essay, we will content ourselves with inquiring into the evidence upon which it rests. This would seem to be a matter of some difficulty, since the Neo-Druids, "like their pagan predecessors, were bound to 31 |