Other, less striking agreements between the mythical divine names of the Insular and Continental Celts might be cited. These recorded should, however, prove sufficiently that Gaul, Gael, and Briton shared in a common heritage of mythological names and ideas, which they separately developed into three superficially different, but essentially similar cults.
Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_, a note to _Math, the Son of Mathonwy_.
_The Story of Lludd and Llevelys._ See chap. XXIV—“The Decline and Fall of the Gods”.
See a monograph by the Right Hon. Charles Bathurst: _Roman Antiquities in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire_.
chap. XXIV—“The Decline and Fall of the Gods”.
So translated by Lady Guest. Professor Rhys, however, renders it, “in whom God has put the instinct of the demons of Annwn”. _Arthurian Legend_, p. 341.
Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_. Note to “Kulhwch and Olwen”.
Black Book of Caermarthen, poem XXXIII. Vol. I, p. 293, of Skene’s _Four Ancient Books_.
I have taken the liberty of omitting a few lines whose connection with their context is not very apparent.
Gwyn was said to specially frequent the summits of hills.
This line is Professor Rhys’s. Skene translates it: “Whilst I am called Gwyn the son of Nudd”.
I have here preferred Rhys’s rendering: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 364.
Dormarth means “Death’s Door”. Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 156-158.
“Dormarth, red-nosed, ground-grazing— On him we perceived the speed Of thy wandering on Cloud Mount.”
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 383. Skene translates: “I am alive, they in their graves!”
Dyer: _Studies of the Gods in Greece_, p. 48.
Gwyn, son of Nudd, had a brother, Edeyrn, of whom so little has come down to us that he finds his most suitable place in a foot-note. Unmentioned in the earliest Welsh legends, he first appears as a knight of Arthur’s court in the _Red Book_ stories of “Kulhwch and Olwen”, the “Dream of Rhonabwy”, and “Geraint, the Son of Erbin”. He accompanied Arthur on his expedition to Rome, and is said also to have slain “three most atrocious giants” at Brentenol (Brent Knoll), near Glastonbury. His name occurs in a catalogue of Welsh saints, where he is described as a bard, and the chapel of Bodedyrn, near Holyhead, still stands to his honour. Modern readers will know him from Tennyson’s Idyll of “Geraint and Enid”, which follows very closely the Welsh romance of “Geraint, the Son of Erbin”.