Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/274

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258
III. THE CULTURE HERO.

have taken no mean part in it: he boasts to the following effect:[1]

"I am not a man not to sing:
I have sung since I was little;
I sang in the battle of Goᵭeu of the foliage,
In front of Britain's gwledig.
I pierced in their midst the chargers
Of the fleets of . . . .
I pierced the beast of the great gem,
Which had a hundred heads,
And a formidable batallion
Under the root of its tongue.
Another batallion there is
In the back of its head.
A gaping black toad
There is with a hundred claws.
A crested snake of many colours—
A hundred souls by reason of sin
Are tormented in its flesh.
I have been in the fort of Nevenhyr
Where hurried grass and trees;
There men of arts made music,
There men of battle made haste.
A resurrection for the Brythons
Was made by Gwydion:
They had called on Neivon,
On Christ from . . . .
To the end He might rescue them,
The Supreme who had made them.
To them the Lord responded
Both in words and in the elements:
'Fashion kingly trees
Into hosts under his lead,
And frustrate Peblic
Of the ignoble fight hand to hand.' "

The reference to a person called Peblic is obscure to me; but besides the expedient of converting a forest, with

  1. Skene, ij. 138, and i. 277-8.