ffectual opposition to these invaders, they called to their assistance,
from the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Elbe, the Saxons or _men of
the knives_, a bold and adventurous, but treacherous and bloody people,
who at first fought stoutly for them, but soon turned against them, and
eventually all but extirpated them from Southern Britain:--

'A serpent that coils,
And with fury boils,
From Germany coming with arm'd wings spread,
Shall subdue and enthral
The broad Britain all
From the Lochlin ocean to Severn's bed;

And British men
Shall be captives then
To strangers from Saxonia's strand;
They shall praise their God, and hold
Their language, as of old,
But except wild Wales they shall lose their land.' {22}

_Taliesin_.

Yes; the Cymric or British race were dispossessed of Britain with the
exception of that part which they still emphatically call Cumrie, but
which by other people is called Wales. There they remained independent
for a long time, governed by their own princes; and there, though now
under the sway of England, they still preserve their venerable language,
the oldest in the world, with perhaps the exception of the Gaulic or
Irish, with which it is closely connected. Wales is not a Cymric but a
Saxon or Teutonic word, bestowed on the land of the Cymry by the seed of
Hengist. Like the Gaelic word Alban, it means a hilly or mountainous
region, and is connected with wall, wold, and wood. The Germans, from
very early times, have called the Cymry Welsh or Waldenses, and the
country where they happened to be, Welschland. They still apply to Italy
the name of Welschland, a name bestowed upon it by their ancestors,
because it was originally principally peopled by the Cymry, whom the
Germans called Welsh from the circumstance of their inhabiting some
mountainous or forest country in the far East, when they first came in
contact with them.

We now proceed to give some account of the literature of the Cymry. We
commence with their poetry, and from a very early period, quoting from a
Cymric Triad:--'These are the three artificers of poetry and record
amongst the nation of the Cymry: Gwyddon Ganhebon, who first in the world
invented vocal song; and Hu the Mighty, who first invented the means of
recording and preserving vocal song; and Tydan, the father of the muse,
who first gave ru