rs the weird
charm of nature. The wildest extravagance of the tale-teller is relieved
by some graceful play of pure fancy, some tender note of feeling, some
magical touch of beauty. As Kulwch's greyhounds bound from side to side of
their master's steed, they "sport round him like two sea-swallows." His
spear is "swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of
reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest." A
subtle, observant love of nature and natural beauty takes fresh colour
from the passionate human sentiment with which it is imbued. "I love the
birds" sings Gwalchmai "and their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the
wood"; he watches at night beside the fords "among the untrodden grass" to
hear the nightingale and watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism
takes the same picturesque form. The Welsh poet hates the flat and
sluggish land of the Saxon; as he dwells on his own he tells of "its
sea-coast and its mountains, its towns on the forest border, its fair
landscape, its dales, its waters, and its valleys, its white sea-mews,
its beauteous women." Here as everywhere the sentiment of nature passes
swiftly and subtly into the sentiment of a human tenderness: "I love its
fields clothed with tender trefoil" goes on the song; "I love the marches
of Merioneth where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm." In the
Celtic love of woman there is little of the Teutonic depth and
earnestness, but in its stead a childlike spirit of delicate enjoyment,
a faint distant flush of passion like the rose-light of dawn on a snowy
mountain peak, a playful delight in beauty. "White is my love as the
apple-blossom, as the ocean's spray; her face shines like the pearly dew
on Eryri; the glow of her cheeks is like the light of sunset." The buoyant
and elastic temper of the French trouveur was spiritualized in the Welsh
singers by a more refined poetic feeling. "Whoso beheld her was filled
with her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod." A touch
of pure fancy such as this removes its object out of the sphere of passion
into one of delight and reverence.

[Sidenote: The Bards]

It is strange to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a
world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy
and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier
bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode
after ode, in songs ext