hero. This principle we have not overlooked in
the discrimination and arrangements of proper names, though owing to
evident omissions and interpolations, an irregularity in this respect
occasionally and of necessity occurs.

Aneurin, like a true poet of nature, abstains from all artful
introduction or invocation, and launches at once into his subject. His
eye follows the gorgeously and distinctively armed chiefs, as they move
at the head of their respective companies, and perform deeds of valour on
the bloody field. He delights to enhance by contrast their domestic and
warlike habits, and frequently recurs to the pang of sorrow, which the
absence of the warriors must have caused to their friends and relatives
at home, and reflects with much genuine feeling upon the disastrous
consequences, that the loss of the battle would entail upon these and
their dear native land. And though he sets forth his subject in the
ornamental language of poetry, yet he is careful not to transgress the
bounds of truth. This is strikingly instanced in the manner in which he
names no less than four witnesses as vouchers for the correctness of his
description of Caradawg. Herein he produces one of the "three agreements
that ought to be in a song," viz. an agreement "between truth and the
marvellous." {0e}

He also gives "relish to his song," {0f} by adopting "a diversity of
structure in the metre;" for the lyric comes in occasionally to relieve
the solemnity of the heroic, whilst at the same time the latter is
frequently capable of being divided into a shorter verse, a plan which
has been observed in one of the MSS. used on the present occasion; e. g.
the twelfth stanza is thus arranged,--

Gwyr a aeth Gattraeth gan ddydd
Neus goreu } gywilydd
O gadeu }
Wy gwnaethant } gelorwydd
Yn geugant }
A llafn aur llawn anawdd ym bedydd
Goreu yw hyn cyn cystlwn carennydd
Ennaint creu } oe henydd
Ac angeu }
Rhag byddin } pan fu ddydd
Wawdodyn }
Neus goreu dan bwylliad neirthiad gwychydd.

But though Aneurin survived the battle of Cattraeth to celebrate the
memory of his less fortunate countrymen in this noble composition, he
also ultimately met with a violent death. The Triads relate that he was
killed by the blow of an axe, inflicted upon his head by Eiddin son of
Einigan, which event was in consequence branded as one of "the three
ac