one of “the Three Wicked Uncoverings” of the Isle of Britain, viz., the uncovering of “the head of Brân the Blessed from the White Mount” in London. The ‘mabinogi’ of _Branwen, daughter of Llŷr_, relates how the head of Brân had been buried, by his own command, in the White Mount, with its face towards France. While it remained undisturbed, this island would be secure from invasion,--hence the “wickedness” of Arthur’s “uncovering.” Another of the Triads speaks of Arthur as the husband of three wives, each called Guinivere,--“Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Gwryd Gwent, Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Gwythur, son of Greidawl, and Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Ogrvan the Giant.” This strange statement, as Rhys points out, appears to have its parallel in the Irish story of Echaid Airem, where we hear of three women all bearing the name of Etáin, and “the three Gwenhwyfars are the Welsh equivalents of the three Etáins, and the article in the Triads must be held to be of great antiquity.”[63] One of the last records in this group of Triads has affinities both with the four ‘Mabinogion,’ properly so-called, and with one of the old Welsh poems cited in this chapter; it also contains a curiously interesting reference to a character who, in mediæval romance, appears as the hero of the most poetical of all the legends included in the Arthurian cycle. This Triad refers, mainly, to certain swine legends, and is entitled _The Three Stout Swineherds of the Isle of Britain_; but it mentions, besides swine, “Palug’s cat,”--hence its connection with ‘Preiddeu Annwvn,’ the poem from _The Book of Taliesin_ already alluded to. The first of the “three swineherds” is Pryderi, the son of Pwyll, “Head of Annwn,” and his story is told in full in the ‘mabinogi’ of _Pwyll, prince of Dyved_. It is strange, however, to find that the second of these pre-eminent swineherds is Drystan, or Tristan, son of Tallwch,--the knightly Tristram of later romance. “The second” stout swineherd, so the record runs, “was Drystan, son of Tallwch, with the swine of March (Mark), son of Meirchion, while the swineherd went on a message to Essyllt (Iseult). Arthur and March and Kai and Bedwyr came, all four to him, but obtained from Drystan not even as much as a single porker, whether by force, or fraud, or theft.” These four examples are quite sufficient to show that in the Triads, no less than in the oldest Welsh tales and poems dealing with Arthur, we come upon traditions handed down from a very remote age, which were all but incomprehensible to the mediæval scribes who garnered them, and are therefore preserved in a bewilderingly confused and disconnected form. They are the _disjecta membra_ of a lost mythology, the legacy of pre-historic Celtic heathendom, which even the most learned and ingenious interpreters of primitive folk-lore and religion find it well-nigh impossible to restore into a coherent and intelligible whole.[64]