from Aunwfn, and basing his verses on the mythic transformations and
rebirths of the gods, recounts in highly inflated language his own
numerous forms and rebirths.[427] His claims resemble those of the
_Shaman_ who has the entree of the spirit-world and can transform
himself at will. Taliesin's rebirth is connected with his acquiring of
inspiration. These incidents appear separately in the story of Fionn,
who acquired his inspiration by an accident, and was also said to have
been reborn as Mongan. They are myths common to various branches of the
Celtic people, and applied in different combinations to outstanding gods
or heroes.[428] The _Taliesin_ poems show that there may have been two
gods or two mythic aspects of one god, later combined together. He is
the son of the goddess and dwells in the divine land, but he is also a
culture-hero stealing from the divine land. Perhaps the myths reflect
the encroachment of the cult of a god on that of a goddess, his
worshippers regarding him as her son, her worshippers reflecting their
hostility to the new god in a myth of her enmity to him. Finally, the
legend of the rescue of Taliesin the poet from the waves became a myth
of the divine outcast child rescued by Elphin, and proving himself a
bard when normal infants are merely babbling.

The occasional and obscure references to the other members of this group
throw little light on their functions, save that Morvran, "sea-crow," is
described in _Kulhwych_ as so ugly and terrible that no one would strike
him at the battle of Camlan. He may have been a war-god, like the
scald-crow goddesses of Ireland, and he is also spoken of in the
_Triads_ as an "obstructor of slaughter" or "support of battle."[429]

Ingenuity and speculation have busied themselves with trying to prove
that the personages of the Arthurian cycle are the old gods of the
Brythons, and the incidents of the romances fragments of the old
mythology. While some of these personages--those already present in
genuinely old Welsh tales and poems or in Geoffrey's _History_--are
reminiscent of the old gods, the romantic presentment of them in the
cycle itself is so largely imaginative, that nothing certain can be
gained from it for the understanding of the old mythology, much less the
old religion. Incidents which are the common stock of real life as well
as of romance are interpreted mythologically, and it is never quite
obvious why the slaying of one hero by another should