for the effect of their art useless to them, to the great satisfaction of the poets, who could sing as well as ever when once they got on land. No other part of the Menai would suit the story so well as that near Carnarvon. Further, a dialogue[1] is given in the Black Book between Taliessin and the lord of the Dinas or stronghold, the remains of which give its name to a railway-station between Carnarvon and Dinas Dinỻe, or the Fortress of Llew and Gwydion. Taliessin is asked the whence and whither of his journey; to which he is made to reply, as it stands in this manuscript of the twelfth century, that he was coming from Caer Seon from fighting with Jews, and that he was going to Llew and Gwydion's Town. The reference to the Jews is probably the result of somebody's mistaking Caer Seon for Sion or Jerusalem: the poem in its original form had probably no reference to the Jews, and Caer Seon doubtless meant Segontium. Se, Seon or Seion, point back to stems Seg- and Segon-, and there is little room for doubt that the name Segontium[2]
- ↑ Skene, ij. 57.
- ↑ Besides the Welsh name Caer Seon, and the other which we know only in its Latin form of Segontium, this last was naturalized in Welsh, probably at an early date, as Segeint, whence Cair Segeint in the British Museum MS. Harl. 3859, fol. 195a; it is also mentioned by Nennius. Segeint is regularly formed from Segontium, and is also regularly reduced in later Welsh into Seint and Sein, which occurs as the name of the river washing the base of Edward's Castle at Carnarvon, its mouth being termed Aber Sein, and the town Kaer Aber Sein, in Maxen's Dream (R. B. Mab. pp. 87-8). In fact, this vocable in one of its forms is indispensable to the explanation of the name Carnarvon itself, which is in Welsh Caer yn Arfon, meaning literally, 'a castle in Arvon,' not even the castle in Arvon; but the key is not far to seek: the full name occurs in the Mabinogi of Branwen (R. B. Mab. p. 34) as Kaer Seint yn Arvon, or 'the Castle of Seint in Arvon.' Seint in
