“saw I of Arthur’s Brave men hewing with steel, (Men of the) emperor, director of toil. At Llongborth there fell of Gereint’s Brave men from the borders of Devon, And, ere they were slain, they slew.” Where “Llongborth,” or “Ship’s port,” was, we do not know, but the whole poem appears to refer to an actual battle in which Gereint’s deeds had left a profound impression upon his bardic eulogist. The association, in this poem, of Arthur with Gereint brings us, for the first time, into the company of one of the knights who, in later romance, belong to the goodly fellowship of the Round Table. In the second _Black Book_ poem we are introduced to two others who figure prominently in the romances,--Kei, or “Kay the seneschal,” and Bedwyr, or Bedivere, “the latest-left of all” King Arthur’s knights. This poem is cast in the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the keeper of a castle who is called Glewlwyd of the Mighty Grasp, and who appears in the Welsh prose stories as one of Arthur’s chief “porters.” Arthur seeks entrance to the castle, and Glewlwyd, apparently, will not open the gates without satisfying himself as to the number and the credentials of his followers. Arthur, thereupon, proceeds to name them and to recount their achievements. They are a weird company, bearing strange names reaching back to the remotest regions of primitive Welsh myth. Among them are Mabon, the son of Modron, “Uther Pendragon’s man”; Manawyddan, the son of Llŷr, “profound in counsel,” who “brought home a pierced buckler from Tryvrwyd”[55]; Mabon, son of Mellt, “who stained the grass with gore”; Llwch Llawynawc, Angwas the Winged, Arthur’s son Llacheu, and others.[56] But the two doughtiest among the champions Arthur has around him are Bedwyr and Kei. Bedwyr, like Manawyddan, fought at Tryvrwyd, and “by the hundred they fell” before him there; “nine hundred to watch, six hundred to attack,” continues the bard, was the measure of Bedwyr’s prowess. Still mightier was “the worthy Kei.” “Vain were it to boast” against him in battle; “he slew as would an hundred,--unless it were God’s doing, Kei’s death would be unachieved.” Kei, we are further told, “slew nine witches”; he went “to Mona to destroy lions,” and he fought against a mysterious monster called “Palug’s Cat.” Capable as he was of all this, it is not surprising to hear that Kei’s drinking powers were equal to those of four men. Of the deeds of Arthur himself the poem tells us nothing.