And Gwyddno
had an only son named Elphin, the most hapless of youths, and the
most needy. And it grieved his father sore, for he thought that he
was born in an evil hour. By the advice of his council, his father
had granted him the drawing of the weir that year, to see if good
luck would ever befall him, and to give him something wherewith to
begin the world. And this was on the twenty-ninth of April.
The next day, when Elphin went to look, there was nothing in the
weir but a leathern bag upon a pole of the weir. Then said the
weir-ward unto Elphin, "All thy ill-luck aforetime was nothing to
this; and now thou hast destroyed the virtues of the weir, which
always yielded the value of an hundred pounds every May eve; and
to-night there is nothing but this leathern skin within it." "How
now," said Elphin, "there may be therein the value of a hundred
pounds." Well! they took up the leathern bag, and he who opened it
saw the forehead of an infant, the fairest that ever was seen; and
he said, "Behold a radiant brow?" (In the Welsh language,
taliesin.) "Taliesin be he called," said Elphin. And he lifted the
bag in his arms, and, lamenting his bad luck, placed the boy
sorrowfully behind him. And he made his horse amble gently, that
before had been trotting, and he carried him as softly as if he
had been sitting in the easiest chair in the world.
Pages:
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390