CHAPTER VI. OF THE WORSHIP OF HU GADARN, THE SOLAR GOD, AND THE DRUIDISM OF THE WELSH IN THE TWELFTH, THIRTEENTH, AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. THE subject of British Druidism would not be complete without some notice of the supposed worship of the Solar God, or deified Patriarch Noah, and of the existence of the Druidical institution in Wales in the fourteenth century of the Christian era. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, a learned divine and poet, Dr. John Kent, or Sion Kent, wrote the following lines: Two kinds of inspiration (Awen) truly There are in the world, and manifest their course : This one has been taken by the men of Hu, or, according to Mr. Stephens, The usurping bards of Wales. When we inquire into the meaning of this accusation brought by the priest of Kenchurch against the Welsh Bards in the fourteenth century, we find it to amount to this. In the Prose Triads, a compilation of various dates, there is a history of a personage called Hu Gadarn, or Hu the Mighty, who is represented as having been the divine leader of the Cymry in their migration from Taprobane, or the land of Asia, to Britain. The circumstances of his legend connect this Hu Gadarn with the deluge, and it is usual to consider him as a deified representation of the Patriarch Noah. According to Davies, he lived in the age of the Deluge; by the help of his oxen he drew the Addanc out of the lake and prevented the recurrence of that calamity; he first cultivated the vine, and taught agriculture. This history is taken from the Triads, but not from the poetry of the Welsh. There is not a single ballad, not one composition, historical, philosophical, or mythological, among all those attributed to Taliesin and Merlin, which turns upon the history of this Hu Gadarn, or the marvellous actions attributed to him.1 We cannot but conclude that the legend was entirely unknown to the age which delighted in the recital of the marvels ascribed to Taliesin. So excellent a subject for minstrelsy, mythic and religious, such as we have seen in the compositions above noticed, could not, if known, have been entirely neglected and passed over, without a single allusion by the bards who sang the history of Taliesin. In fact, Mr. Stephens has remarked, that the mention of Hu Gadarn first appears in the Welsh poetry after the death of Llywelyn ab Gruffyd, the last of the sovereign princes of Wales, who was slain in 1282. The only pieces of evidence adduced by Mr. Davies in favour of the notion that the Solar God Hu was worshipped by the Welsh in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are from the writings of Iolo Goch, bard of Owain Glyndower, and from Rhys Prydydd and Llywelyn Moel. Iolo Goch simply describes Hu Gadarn in metre, what he is represented to be in the prose composition. The following is Mr. Davies's version of the passage: 1 We have already shown the supposed occurrence of the name "Hu” in the Elegy on Aeddon, the Llath Voesen, and the Marwnad Uther Pendragon, to be a mistake. Hu Gadarn the sovereign, the ready protector, The emperor of the land and the seas, And the life of all that are in the world. After the deluge he held the strong-beamed plough; This did our Lord of stimulating genius, That he might show to the proud man and to the humbly wise, Nor is this sentiment false. We quite agree with Mr. Davies that these lines are intended as a picture of the character and deeds of the Patriarch Noah, as represented in the Triads under the name of Hu Gadarn; but no one could infer from them, standing alone, that Iolo Goch and his patron Owain Glyndower performed orgies in honour of the Solar God, or sang hymns about Pryd, before entering into their arrangements with Mortimer and Hotspur for the invasion of England. If so, they must have been the most inconsistent of idolaters, since, in "Iolo Goch's Address to Glyndower," with a description of the mansion and grounds of the latter, we find, among other objects of admiration, “" a quadrangular church well built, well whitewashed, and chapels well glazed." The next extract is from Rhys Brydydd, which Davies says furnishes "a glaring proof" of the worship of the Heathen God; and certainly, if we did not know that Rhys Brydydd lived in Glamorganshire in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and had a son, a monk in the monastery of Margam, we might be induced to see some token of an unknown heresy in these lines : Bychanav o'r bychenid Yw Hu Gadarn vel barn byd Da coeliwn a'n Dduw celi Ysgawn ei daith ac esgud Thus translated by Archdeacon Williams :— The smallest of the small Is Hu Gadarn, as the world judges, Let us well believe, and our mysterious God. An atom of glowing heat is his car, Light his course and active; Great on land and on the seas, The greatest that I manifestly can have, To which must be added two lines from Mr. Davies : : Let us beware of offering mean indignity to him, the great and bountiful. Unfortunately these poems are not comprised in the Myvyrian collection, but exist in manuscript only; we cannot therefore see by the context the real significance of the passage; but it is evident that the whole force of the passage lies in the two lines, Ai mwyav a nav i ni Da coeliwn a'n Dduw celi. The writers who have discovered these mysteries all translate "Duw celi," and "Christ celi," by mysterious or concealed God, the concealed Christ. According to Mr. Herbert, the Christ celi, is the Sun, Mithras, and Elphin himself, in the higher Bardism. Dr. Owen translated the two lines from the Pseudo-Taliesin, Ni bu oleuad Cyn Celi cread :— There has been no illumination Before the Mysterious One's creation; but the application of common sense undisturbed by mysteries, shows the real translation to be, There was no light Before the creation of the heavens ; and renders quite plain that "Duw Celi," and "Christ Celi," are respectively God of Heaven, and Christ of Heaven, and that the word "celi" is the Latin cæli, and not in any way connected with "celu," to conceal. The proofs of this statement are sufficiently abundant. In the Black Book of Caermarthen there is an "Awdyl,” commencing Arduireaue tri trined in celi. Yssi un a thri, uned un ynni. I will extol the three, the Trinity in heaven. It is one and three, one God to us. We have seen in the whole of the poems above translated, that the minstrels were plain, pious, and some of them very ignorant Christians, who believed in nothing worse than magic and witchcraft; and this example from the oldest Welsh MS. known, is sufficient to demonstrate that no hidden or mystical meaning lurks in the word "celi," which in these poems must be translated "heaven" in the ordinary sense of the word. The same false interpretation of this phrase, occurring repeatedly in the works of the bards of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has given rise to the greater part of these misconceptions, which vanish upon referring to the original poems, and considering the passages cited, in connection with the context. This will be rendered quite evident from two passages among many others in which the phrase in question occurs. What other meaning than "Christ, of" or "in heaven," can the phrase "Christ celi" have, or what mystery or heathenism can possibly lurk, in these lines of Llywarch Brydydd y Moch, addressed to Llywelyn ab Iorwerth in the thirteenth century? Crist creawdyr llywyawdr llu daear |