The wood of Celyddon is the Caledonian Forest. So far as these excerpts go, they might seem to be the writing of the real Merlin. There is internal evidence however that this poem, the much disputed poem of the 'Apple-trees,' and others that follow it in the 'Black Book,' were written not earlier than the twelfth century. Stephens, usually an acute critic, imputes in his 'Literature of the Kymry' these poems to Gwalchmai and other bards of later date. But even so, these poets evidently founded their poems upon earlier ones, traditionally handed on as Merlin's. From such later sources as the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' or Skene's 'Four Ancient Books of Wales,' or the admirable Oxford texts edited by Professor Rhys and Mr. Gwenogfvyn Evans, one can rehabilitate at will the Merlin of the 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' much as Villemarqué has done after a fashion quite his own. Enough will so be certainly discovered to outline a primitive Merlin, an original sixth-century Merlin, under the impressive mediæval robes of the Latin-Welsh romantic chroniclers and poets. Enough too will be made clear to show a basis of myth and prehistoric legend behind the remotest recorded name, time, or place that can be counted historical. The same is true of Taliesin, who appears, by the poetical remains attributed to him,--some of them clearly mediæval, others just as clearly primitive,--even more interesting as a poet than Merlin. Just as there are several Merlins, however, there are two Taliesins: there is the fifth-century Taliesin, and there is the pseudo-Taliesin of the twelfth. Both are wonderful in their way, and one knows not which to admire most--him who wrote the 'Battle of Gwenystrad,' which is undoubtedly a primitive war song, or the mediæval poet who chose to take the disguise of Taliesin, and taking too, probably, some of the traditional fragments of his early poetry, worked them up afresh with curious mediæval art and mystic imagination. For comparison let us take an early and a late poem, commonly gathered, as in the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' under one head.