The Arthurian Legend
Both in Gaelic and British mythology, prominence is given to a cauldron which has wondrous talismanic virtues. It was one of the four chief treasures brought by the Tuatha Dé Danann to Ireland; Cuchulainn captured it from the god Mider, when he stormed his stronghold in the Isle of Man; and it reappears in the Fenian stories. Its especial property in these myths was that of miraculous food-providing—all the men in the world, we are told, could be fed from it—and in this quality we find it on British ground as the basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir. But certain other such vessels of Brythonic myth were endowed with different, and less material, virtues. A magic cauldron given by Brân son of Llŷr to Matholwch, the husband of his sister Branwen, would restore the dead to life; in her cauldron of Inspiration and Science, the goddess Kerridwen brewed a drink of prophecy; while from the cauldron of the giant Ogyrvan, the father of Gwenhwyvar, the three Muses had been born.
In what is perhaps the latest of all these varying legends, the qualities of the previous cauldrons have been brought together to form the trophy which Arthur, in the early Welsh poem called 'The Spoiling of Annwn,' (see p. 50) is represented as having captured from the Other World King.
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