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TALIESIN;

OR,

THE BARDS AND DRUIDS OF BRITAIN.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE cloud of fable which has settled on the early history of Britain, is with difficulty to be penetrated. Her earliest monuments, rude and unsculptured, afford little assistance to the historian; and her most ancient written documents are composed in a language, sealed to the majority of inquirers. Unfortunately, also, many of those most competent, from a native acquaintance with the still existing dialect of the ancient language of Britain, to undertake the investigation, have suffered themselves to be led into relating as history, the most extravagant fables, and asserting the most unreasonable claims to antiquity.

The romance of Geoffrey of Monmouth, with its line of Trojan-British kings, and the fables of the Welsh Triads, with Hu Gadarn or the Mighty, "who first conducted the nation of the Cymry from Deffrobani, that is, the place where Constantinople now stands," to the Isle of Britain, and Dyfnwal Moelmud, a legislator who lived 400 years before the Christian era, have each in turn been represented as containing genuine historical materials for the history of Ancient Britain.

The opinions generally maintained by the Welsh writers and historians on the subject of the origin of the Cymry, may be summed up in the words of a learned and judicious writer

on Welsh literature, Mr. Stephens,1" that the modern Welsh, or Cymry, are the last remnant of the ' Kimmeroi' of Homer, and of the Kymri (Cimbri) of Germany, that great people whose arms struck terror into the Roman legions, and whose virtues Tacitus held up for the imitation of his countrymen. From the Cimbric-Chersonesus (Jutland) a portion of these landed on the shores of Northumberland, gave their name to the county of Cumberland, and in process of time, followed the seaside to their present resting-place, where they still call themselves Cymry, and give their country a similar name. Their history, clear, concise, and authentic, ascends to a high antiquity; their language was embodied in verse, long before the languages now spoken rose into notice; and their literature, cultivated and abundant, lays claim to being the most ancient in modern Europe."

Without attempting to discuss the merely conjectural part of this statement, the derivation of the modern Cymry or Welsh from the Cimbri or Kimmeroi, or inquiring whether these latter were a Teutonic or Celtic people, or how it happened that they were not known by the name of Cymry to the Roman writers on the affairs of Britain, we may pass to the interesting and important inquiry, the claims of the Welsh to the possession of a cultivated and abundant literature, the most ancient in modern Europe, and to a clear, concise, and authentic history of great antiquity: a history which should of course include the important transactions of the Cymric nation, their rise and fall in Britain-their wars and struggles, with their native, Roman, and Saxon enemies.

If, in order to reduce the difficulty of this inquiry, we abandon any attempt to tread the labyrinth of an antiquity prior to the establishment of the Roman power in this island, and confine ourselves to the more recent period of the two centuries which succeeded the final departure of the Romans

1 Literature of the Cymry; a Critical Essay on the Language and Literature of Wales during the twelfth and two succeeding centuries: to which was awarded the prize given by H. R. H. the Prince of Wales at the Abergavenny Eisteddfod in 1848.

from Britain, we find that even this era, though a period full of events of the greatest interest and importance, most deeply and intimately affecting the fortunes of the British nation, is involved in the greatest doubt and obscurity.

This period, from the commencement of the fifth to the close of the sixth century, presents, as it were, a debateable ground between history and romance. It comprises the almost unknown history of the struggles of the wealthy and civilized Roman and Romano-British inhabitants of the great cities and fortified towns of Britain, against the ceaseless inroads of the native tribes, relieved from the pressure of the Roman power, and alike allured by the wealth and attracted by the comparative weakness of the citizens; and the history, little more authentic, of the transactions which resulted in the establishment of the Saxon dominion.

It comprises the drama of Vortigern and Rowena; the story of the fatal advent of Hengist and Horsa in their three ships with their band of Saxon sea-rovers; of the treacherous massacre of Stonehenge; and of all the long series of obstinate combats between the Christian tribes of Britain and their Pagan invaders. Moreover, it includes the wonderful romance of the renowned Arthur, "begirt with British and Armoric knights," whose era, commencing with the reign of Aurelius Ambrosius, in the early days of the Saxon invasion, closes with the fatal battle of Camlan, and the destruction of the flower of British chivalry in A.D. 542.

How much of what passes for history in the relation of the important events which mark this era, deserves that title, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine; for the documentary evidence adduced in its support, affords but little aid in unravelling the tangled web of tradition and fable of which it is composed. "Our knowledge of the affairs of Britain, previous to the introduction of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons" (that is, the commencement of the seventh century), says Sir Francis Palgrave,1 "is derived from the most obscure and

1 Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, pp. 389-483.

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