Charles Squire

“ In what is perhaps the latest of all these varying legends, the qualities of the previous cauldrons have been brought together to form the trophy which Arthur, in the early Welsh poem called 'The Spoiling of Annwn,' (see p. 50) is represented as having captured from the Other World King. 'Is it not the cauldron of the Chief of Annwn?' What is its fashion?' asks the bard Taliesin, and he goes on to describe it as rimmed with pearls, and gently warmed by the breath of nine maidens. ”

“ It is surrounded by a great water; it revolves more swiftly than the wind; and its garrison shoot so stoutly that no armour can repel their shafts, which explains why, of the men that accompanied Arthur, 'except seven, none returned from Caer Sidi.'
'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force'; this is the spiritualised meaning of the Celtic myth, and in this has lain the lasting inspiration of the story which attracted Milton so strongly that it was almost by chance that we did not have from him a King Arthur instead of Paradise Lost. ”

“ Its especial property in these myths was that of miraculous food-providing—all the men in the world, we are told, could be fed from it—and in this quality we find it on British ground as the basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir. But certain other such vessels of Brythonic myth were endowed with different, and less material, virtues. A magic cauldron given by Brân son of Llŷr to Matholwch, the husband of his sister Branwen, would restore the dead to life; in her cauldron of Inspiration and Science, the goddess Kerridwen brewed a drink of prophecy ”

“ Critical studies on the subject in handy form are as yet few. We may mention De Jubainville's Le Cyce Mythologique Irlandais et la Mythologie Celtique, Paris, 1884 (vol. ií, of the 'Cours') , translated by Mr. R. L. Best as The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology, Dublin, 1903; Professor J. Rhŷs's Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (The Hibbert Lectures for 1886) , London, 3rd edit., 1898, with their sequel, Studies in the Arthurian Legend, Oxford, 1891; and Mr. Alfred Nutt's The Voyage of Bran, son of Febal, 2 vols., London, 1895–97. ”

“ Traditional.—Fictitious dates assigned by the Irish compilers of pseudo-annals for all the mythical eras and events—Possibly authentic may be the placing of the heroic age of Ulster in the first century A.D. and the epoch of the Fenians in the second and third—British gods enrolled as early kings Geoffrey of Monmouth or made the founders of powerful or saintly families by Welsh genealogists—The historic Arthur may have lived in the fifth-sixth centuries. ”

“ The Arthurian Legend
But the Gaelic myths, vital as they are, have yet caused no echo of themselves in the literatures. of the outside world. This distinction has been left for the legendary tales of the Britons. The Norman minstrels found the stories which they heard from their Welsh confrères so much to their liking that they readily adopted them, and spread thein from camp to camp and from court to court, wherever their dominant race held sway. ”

“ To give in the space that can be spared any adequate list of books dealing with the wide subject of Celtic Mythology would be impossible. The reader interested in the matter can hardly do better than consult Nos. ”

“ The results of more recent, and current, research will be found in special publications, such as the volumes of the Irish Texts Society, and the numbers of the Revue Celtique, the Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, and the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society. ”