, was drawn into the Arthurian cycle, and is one of
those who capture the famous boar, the _Twrch Trwyth_.[349]

Bran, or Bendigeit Vran ("Bran the Blessed"), probably an old pagan
title which appropriately enough denotes one who figured later in
Christian hagiology, is so huge that no house or ship can hold him.
Hence he wades over to Ireland, and as he draws near is thought to be a
mountain. This may be an archaic method of expressing his divinity--a
gigantic non-natural man like some of the Tuatha Dea and Ossianic
heroes. But Bran also appears as the _Urdawl Ben_, or "Noble Head,"
which makes time pass to its bearers like a dream, and when buried
protects the land from invasion. Both as a giant squatting on a rock and
as a head, Bran is equated by Professor Rh[^y]s with Cernunnos, the
squatting god, represented also as a head, and also with the Welsh Urien
whose attribute was a raven, the supposed meaning of Bran's name.[350]
He further equates him with Uthr Ben, "Wonderful Head," the superior
bard, harper and piper of a _Taliesin_ poem.[351] Urien, Bran, and Uthr
are three forms of a god worshipped by bards, and a "dark" divinity,
whose wading over to Ireland signifies crossing to Hades, of which he,
like Yama, who first crossed the rapid waters to the land of death, is
the ruler.[352] But Bran is not a "dark" god in the sense implied here.
Cernunnos is god of a happy underworld, and there is nothing dark or
evil in him or in Bran and his congeners. Professor Rh[^y]s's "dark"
divinities are sometimes, in his view, "light" gods, but they cannot be
both. The Celtic lords of the dead had no "dark" character, and as gods
of fertility they were, so to speak, in league with the sun-god, the
slayer of Bran, according to Professor Rh[^y]s's ingenious theory. And
although to distracted Irish secretaries Ireland may be Hades, its
introduction into this _Mabinogi_ merely points to the interpretation of
a mythico-historic connection between Wales and Ireland. Thus if Bran is
Cernunnos, this is because he is a lord of the underworld of fertility,
the counterpart of which is the distant Elysium, to which Bran seems
rather to belong. Thus, in presence of his head, time passes as a dream
in feasting and joy. This is a true Elysian note, and the tabued door of
the story is also suggestive of the tabus of Elysium, which when broken
rob men of happiness.[353] As to the power of the head in protecting the
land, this points to actual cus