six syllables. Aneurin was the Gildas of ecclesiastical history, and the
name of Gildas is merely a Saxon translation of Aneurin, which signifies
golden grove. Taliesin Ben Beirdd, or Taliesin Prince of Bards, was a
North Welshman, but was educated at Llanreithin, in Glamorgan, under
Catwg, celebrated for his aphorisms, who kept a school of philosophy
there. He was called Prince of Bards because he excelled all his
contemporaries in the poetic art. Many of his pieces are extant; amongst
them is an awdl or ode, containing an abridgment of the history of the
world, in which there is a stanza with regard to the destiny of the
ancient Britons as sublime as it is true:--

'Their Lord they shall praise,
Their language they shall keep,
Their land they shall lose
Except wild Wales.'

Llewarch Hen, or Llewarch the aged, was a prince of Cumberland. Driven
from his domain by the Saxons, he sought a refuge at the place which is
now called Shrewsbury, and subsequently on the shore of the lake of Bala,
a beautiful sheet of water in Merionethshire, overlooked on the south by
the great mountain Arran. There he died at the age of one hundred and
fifty years. His poems consist chiefly of elegies on his sons,
twenty-four in number, all of whom perished in battle, and on his
slaughtered friends. They are composed in triplets, and abound with
simplicity and pathos. Myrddin Wyllt, or Myrddin the Wild, was a Briton
of the Scottish border. Having killed the son of his sister, he was so
stung with remorse that he determined to renounce the society of men, and
accordingly retired to a forest in Scotland, called Celydon, where he was
frequently seized with howling madness. Owing to his sylvan life and his
attacks of lunacy, he was called Merddyn Wyllt, or the Wild. He composed
poetry in his lucid intervals. Six of his pieces have been preserved:
they are chiefly on historical subjects. The most remarkable of them is
an address to his pig, in which he tells the woes and disasters which are
to happen to Britain: it consists of twenty-five stanzas or sections. In
all of them a kind of alliteration is observable, and in each, with one
or two exceptions, the first line rhymes with all the rest. Each
commences with 'Oian a phorchellan'--listen, little porker! The
commencement of one of these stanzas might be used in these lowering days
by many a grey-headed yeoman to his best friend:--

'Oian a phorchellan: mawr erys