I, "I know no more than
yourself." "What do they call you?" he demanded. "Call me what you
please, here in your own country," I replied, "but at home I am called
_the Sleeping Bard_."

At that word I beheld a crooked old man, with a double head like to a
rough-barked thorn tree, raising himself erect, and looking upon me worse
than the black devil himself; and lo! without saying a word, he hurled a
large human skull at my head--many thanks to a tombstone which shielded
me. "Pray be quiet, sir," said I. "I am but a stranger, who was never
here before, and you may be sure I will never return, if I can once reach
home again." "I will give you cause to remember having been here," said
he; and attacked me with a thigh-bone, like a very devil, whilst I
avoided his blows as well as I could. "By heavens," said I, "this is a
most inhospitable country to strangers. Is there a justice of the peace
here?" "Peace!" said he, "what peace do you deserve, who will not let
people rest in their graves?" "Pray, sir," said I, "may I be allowed to
know your name, because I am not aware of ever having disturbed any one
in this country." "Sirrah," said he, "know that not you are the Sleeping
Bard, but that I am that person; and I have been allowed to rest here for
nine hundred years, by every one but yourself." And he attacked me
again.

"Forbear, my brother," said Merddyn, who was near at hand, "be not too
hot; rather be thankful to him for keeping an honorable remembrance of
your name upon earth." "Great honor forsooth," said he, "I shall receive
from such a blockhead as this. Sirrah! can you sing in the
four-and-twenty measures? Can you carry the pedigree of Gog and Magog,
and the genealogy of Brutus ap Sylfius, up to a millenium previous to the
fall of Troy? Can you narrate when, and what will be the end of the
combats betwixt the lion and the eagle, and betwixt the dragon and the
red deer?" "Hey, hey! let me ask him a question," said another, who was
seated beside a large cauldron which was boiling, and going, bubble,
bubble, over a fire. "Come nearer," said he, "what is the meaning of
this?"

"I till the judgment day
Upon the earth shall stray;
None knows for certainty
Whether fish or flesh I be."

"I will request the favor of your name, sir," said I, "that I may answer
you in a suitable manner." "I," said he, "am Taliesin, {49} the prince
of the Bards of the West, and that is a piece of my compositio