Taliesin ('Shining Forehead') was in the highest repute in the middle
of the twelfth century, and he was then and afterward, unless we
except Merlin, the bardic hero of the greatest number of romantic
legends. He is said to have been the son of Henwg the bard, or St
Henwg, of Caerleon-upon-Usk, and to have been educated in the school
of Cattwg, at Llanvithin, in Glamorgan, where the historian Gildas was
his fellow-pupil. Seized when a youth by Irish pirates, he is said,
probably by rational interpretation of a later fable of his history,
to have escaped by using a wooden buckler for a boat. Thus he came
into the fishing weir of Elphin, one of the sons of Urien. Urien made
him Elphin's instructor, and gave him an estate of land. But, once
introduced into the Court of that great warrior-chief, Taliesin became
his foremost bard, followed him in his wars, and sang his victories.
He celebrates triumphs over Ida, the Anglian King of Bernicia (_d._
559) at Argoed about the year 547, at Gwenn-Estrad between that year
and 559, at Menao about the year 559. After the death of Urien,
Taliesin was the bard of his son Owain, by whose hand Ida fell. After
the death of all Urien's sons Taliesin retired to mourn the downfall
of his race in Wales, dying, it is said, at Bangor Teivi, in
Cardiganshire. He was buried under a cairn near Aberystwyth.

_Herve the Blind_

There is nothing improbable in the statement that Taliesin dwelt in
Brittany in the sixth century. Many other British bards found a refuge
on the shores of Britain the Less. Among these was Kyvarnion, a
Christian, who married a Breton Druidess and who had a son, Herve.
Herve was blind from birth, and was led from place to place by a wolf
which he had converted (!) and pressed into the service of Mother
Church.

One day, when a lad, Herve had been left in charge of his uncle's
farm, when a ploughman passed him in full flight, crying out that a
savage wolf had appeared and had killed the ass with which he had been
ploughing. The man entreated Herve to fly, as the wolf was hard upon
his heels; but the blind youth, undaunted, ordered the terrified
labourer to seize the animal and harness it to the plough with the
harness of the dead ass. From that time the wolf dwelt among the sheep
and goats on the farm, and subsisted upon hay and grass.

_Nomenoe_

Swarms of Irish from Ossory and Wexford began to arrive about the
close of the fifth century, settling along the west a