ferent
stanzas and lines would do much towards solving its problem. It seems
probable, too, that the original nucleus of the poem was handed down
orally, and recited or sung by the bards and minstrels at the courts of
different noblemen. It thus became the common stock-in-trade of the
Welsh rhapsodist, and in time the bards, using it as a kind of
framework, added to it here and there pieces of their own composition
formed on the original model, especially when the heroes named happened
to be the traditional forefathers of their patrons, and occasionally
introduced the names of new heroes and new places as it suited their
purpose; and all this seems to have been done in early times. Older
fragments dealing too with the legendary heroes of the Welsh were
afterwards incorporated with the poem, and some of these fragments
undoubtedly preserve the orthographical and grammatical forms of the 9th
century. So that, on the whole, it seems as fruitless to look for a
definite record of historical events in this poem as it would be to do
so in the Homeric poems, but like them, though it cannot any longer be
regarded as a correct and definite account of a particular battle or
war, it still stands to this day the epic of the warriors of its own
nation. It matters not whether these heroes fought at far Cattraeth or
on some other forgotten field of disaster; this song still reflects, as
a true national epic, the sad defeats and the brave but desperate
rallies of the early Welsh. Like the music of the Welsh, its dominant
note is that of sadness, expressing the exultation of battle and the
very joy of life in minor notes. To a great extent Welsh poets are to
this day true and faithful disciples of this early master.

Taliessin.

Many of the poems attributed to Taliessin are undoubtedly late. Indeed,
both Taliessin and Myrddin,[2] the one as the mythological chief of all
Welsh bards and the other as a great magician, seem pre-eminently suited
to attract a great deal of later Welsh poetry under their aegis; but the
older poems attributed to them are worthy of any literature. Sometimes,
as in the verses attributed to Llywarch Hen beginning _Stafell
Cynddylan_, an early specimen of poetic grief over departed glory, we
find that gentle elegiac note which is so common in early English
poetry. In the Taliessinic poems, the _Battle of Argoed Llwyvain_ and
others, we have that boldness of portraiture which is found in the
_Gododin_, whilst