The two works in which the subject has been treated with the greatest care since Mr. Turner's time, are ' The Literature of the Kymry; by Mr. Thomas Stephens, of Merthyr-Tydvil, published in 1849, and ' Teliealn, or the Bards and Druids of Britain,' by Mr. D. W. Nash, of the Royal Society of Literature, published in 1S58. 3Ir. Stephen is a Welshman of learning and of a critical habit of mind, and a candour not always met with among his countrymen. Mr. Nash is an Englishman who has studied Welsh literature with peculiar atten tion and success. The conclusions at which they arrive are almost the same. Of the seventy-seven poems ascribed to Talieshi, and printed in the Myvyrian Arehaiology; Mr. Stephens considers fifty-seven to be demonstrably spurious, and of the remaining twenty there are only twelve that he assigns with confidence to the time of Taliesin. Mr. Nash gives translations of more than fifty of these poems, many of which had never appeared before in any other language than Welsh ; and the mere perusal of them is sufficient to show that the notion of their belonging to the 6th century is absurd. Poems which had been represented by some Welsh writers as full of allusions to the rites of Druidism aro full of allusions to Roman Catholic theology, partly couched in medieval Latin. One instance will be sufficient to show the nature of the arguments. There is a poem, ascribed to Taliesin, prophetic of the fall of his country, in which occur the lines which are on the lips of every Welshman, and have been cited oftener than any other lines in the language :— Such a prophecy made in the 6th century, when the Saxons were contending with King Arthur, and the struggle between the races was still going:on in Cumberland and elsewhere, would indeed be remarkable, while in the 12th century it would be that not unusual phenomenon, a prophecy after the event. The language of the poem is so free from obscurity, that it is said, in the periodical entitled Taliesin,' for 1861, to be "intelligible this day to the children of Aberystwith." Many of the proper names which occur in the poem have a very peculiar character. They are in a Latinised form, " Troia " for Troy, " Ser mania " for Germany, " Sacsonia" for Saxony, "Sabrina" for the Severn, and, in the passage quoted, " Walla " for Wales. Can it be supposed that the Saxon term for Wales was in common use in the 6th century that it had been already Latinised and, lastly, that a Welsh bard of the court of King Arthur borrowed the Latinised form of the name of his country from his country's foes to introduce in his patriotic poem All these circumstances appear to indicate the com position of the lines by a mediaeval monk, and the supposition is strengthened by the mention of Troy as the land of the origin of the Britons, a prevalent belief after the time of Geoffrey of Momnouth, who flourished under Henry I.
While the authenticity of some of the most interesting supposed relics of Taliesin must therefore be given up, the critics who impugn them concur in believing that other portions are really genuine. The Rev. Dieu Evans in his Specimen.; Mr. Stephens, Mr. Nash, and others, are all of this opinion. Unfortunately, those of the seventy seven which they respect are of a very small degree of interest Taliesin, as he lane descended to us, is certainly no Ossian—taking as the proper representative of the Gaelic bard the °saw] of Macpherson —nor is he even equal to Aneurin, still less to Llywareh Hen.
Many of the fictitious poems ascribed to Taliesin occur in a strange legend of his life, which is itself a singular relic of literature. The traditions of the great bard, relied on by William. iu his ' Lives of Eminent Welshmen,' represent him as the son of a saint, a certain St. Henwg, and educated at the College of St. Cadog. Much of his time was spent at the court of Urien Itheged, a chieftain to whom many of his poems are addressed, but being once fishing at sea in a skin coracle he was seized by Irish pirates, who bore away with him towards Ireland. Escaping from them in his coracle, while they were engaged in
drunken revelry, he was tossed about at the mercy of the waves till the coracle stuck to the point of a pole in the weir of Gwyddno, prince of Cardigan at Aberdyvi. At the court of Gwyddno, who was himself a. poet, ho remained till the memorable event of the destruction of Gwydduo's country, in the beginning of the 6th century, by an inun dation of the sea, which converted what was dry land into the present Cardigan Bay. After this time Taliesin went to the court of King Arthur at Caerleon on Usk, and ou his death was interred at the spot near Aberystnith which still goes by the name of Bedd Taliesin (Taliesin's grave).
The chief incident in this life appears in an altered form in the legend or romance which is printed in Welsh in the Myvyrian Archaiology,' and in Welsh, with an English translation, in the fifth volume of the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine,' and in Lady Charlotte Guest's '31abinogion: According to this story, Gwion the Little, a boy who was employed by Keridwen, a witch of Meirion, or Merioneth shire, to watch a magic cauldron in which she was preparing a con coction that was to bestow knowledge and genius on her son, incurred the vengeance of his mistress by involuntarily drinking the three blessed drop which were to produce these wonderful effects. Of course he became endowed with sudden wisdom, and fled from the wrath of Keridweu, who at once pursued him. He fled in the form of a hare, she pursued in that of a hound ; when nearly overtaken, he turned to a fish, and she to an otter ; then he to a sparrow, and she to a hawk ; and he was finally swallowed in the form of a grain of wheat by Keridwen, in the form of a hen. After nine months she was delivered of him again, and he was so handsome that, unwilling directly to take his life, she tied bins up in a leathern bag and threw birn into the sea, from which he was rescued by Prince Elphiu, the son of Gwyddno, who, fishing for salmon at the weir of Aberdyvi, caught a child• instead. The prince looked disappointed in con sequence, and was addressed in consolation by the miraculous infant in a strain of poetry, the merits of which are anything but miraculous. This infant had such a splendid forehead that he received the name of Taliesin, which bears that meaning in Welsh. The narrative proceeds with a medley of incidents, interspersed with poems of little or no merit put into the mouth of Taliesin, and inextricably connected with the circumstances of the tale. The whole story appears to be of the same character with those which were told of Virgil in the middle ages,—a wildly fictitious narrative fastened on a distinguished name, from the wish to give it an air of authenticity in the eyes of ignorance. It may be taken therefore as a proof that, at the time of its invention, the name of Taliesin was current in popular tradition as that of the great poet of Wales; while the fact that the poems ascribed to him in it are as spurious as the adventures are impossible, is no stronger proof against the existence of the real works of a real Taliesin, than the stories about Virgil's feats of necromancy are proof of the spuriousness of the Georgics and the 1Eneid. Some of the incidents regarding the magic cauldron are traced by Mr. Nash to Irish and Icelandic fictiun, and some, as the pursuit of Keridwen, bear a striking resemblance to passages in the Arabian Nights.' The tale of Taliesin, and of course the poetry inserted in it, are traced with tolerable certainty to one Thomas ab Einion, a priest who flourished in the 12th century.