I will implore the Sovereign, Supreme in the land of peace, To liberate Elphin from banishment, The man that gave me wine, ale, and mead, And the great princely steeds of gay appearance, And to me yet would give as usual: With the will of God, he would bestow from respect Innumerable festivities in the course of peace. Knight of Mead, relation of Elphin, distant be thy period of inaction.[18] A satire is also preserved of the same Taliesin, upon the wandering minstrels of his time. He imputes to them all kinds of vice:-- In the night they carouse, in the day they sleep; Idle, they get food without labour; They hate the churches, but seek the liquor houses; From every gluttony they refrain not; Excesses of eating and drinking is what they desire.[19] Another early British poet, Llywarch Hên, who flourished in both the sixth and seventh centuries, affords further proof that strong drink, ale or mead, was the one thing needful. In his elegy on Urien of Reged we find-- He was a shield to his country; His course was a wheel in battle. Better to me would be his life than his mead. And again-- This hearth; no shout of heroes now adheres to it: More usual on its floor Was the mead; and the inebriated warriors. And here we naturally pause to inquire whether it is fair to gauge the habits of the day from extracts such as these. May they not have been the heated effusions of the moment? May not these bards have cast the shadows of their own excited brains on all around? Alas! the pages of contemporary history, and the censures of the Church, too surely confirm the impressions of the poet. Thus, Gildas, the British monk, writing in the latter half of the sixth century (_Epist. De Excid. Britann._), laments (§ 21) that ‘not only the laity, but our Lord’s own flock, and its shepherds, who ought to have been an example to the people, slumbered away their time in drunkenness, as if they had been dipped in wine.’ Again (§ 83), ‘Little do ye put in execution that which the holy prophet Joel hath spoken in admonishment of slothful priests, saying, Awake ye who are drunk from your wine, and weep and bewail ye all, who have drunk wine even to drunkenness, because joy and delight are taken away from your mouths.’ And once more (§ 109), ‘These are the words, that with apparent effect should be made good and approved--deacons in like manner, that they should be not overgiven to much wine.... And now, trembling truly to make any longer stay on these matters, I can, for a conclusion, affirm one thing certainly, which is, that all these are changed into contrary actions, insomuch that clerks are shameless and deceitful in their speeches, given to drinking.’