A grievous descent was made on his native place, The price of mead in the hall, and the feast of wine; His blades were scattered about between two armies; Illustrious was the Knight in front of Gododin, Eithinyn the renowned, an ardent spirit the bull of conflict. A grievous descent was made in front of the extended riches, The army dispersed with trailing shields— A shivered shield before the herd of the roaring Beli, A dwarf from the bloody field hastened to the fence; On our part there came a hoary-headed man to take counsel On a prancing steed bearing a message from the golden-torqued leader. Twrch proposed a compact in front of the destructive course, Worthy was the shout of refusal. We cried, Let Heaven be our protection; Let his compact be that he should be prostrated by the spear in battle. The warriors of the far-famed Alclud Would not contend without prostrating his host to the ground. Like Ossian, Aneurin appears to have been a warrior-bard. Where he speaks of himself he says:— I am not headstrong and petulant. I will not avenge myself on him who drives me. I will not laugh in derision. Under foot for a while, My knee is stretched, My hands are bound In the earthen house, With an iron chain Around my two knees. Yet of the mead from the horn, And of the men of Catraeth, I, Aneurin, will compose, As Taliessin knows, An elaborate song Or a strain to Gododin Before the dawn of the brightest day. Taliessin, on the other hand, was no warrior, simply a bard. Several of his pieces possess more real poetry than any part of the “Gododin.” As Stephens has remarked, they show more skill in composition, finer ideas, bolder images, and more intense passion than any poet of the same age. There are seventy-seven pieces attributed to him, twelve of which, this critic thinks, may be genuine, and as old as the sixth century; among these the “Battle of Gwenystrad,” the “Battle of Argoed Llwyvain,” the “Battle of Dyffryn Gwarant,” and some of the Gorchanau. In after life Taliessin became the bard of Urien Rheged, to whom and to his son Owain his chief poems are addressed. These contain some passages of exquisite beauty. Llywarch Hên does not rival the other two as a prince of song, yet his poems are not lacking in poetic excellence. They are undoubtedly old, and valuable from his descriptions of manners, and the incidental allusions he makes that are strikingly illustrative of the age, and all the more interesting because we have so few other authorities to enlighten us as to its manners. His forte lay not so much in heroic poetry as in elegies and pathetic lamentations. Of the poems attributed to him in the Red Book of Hergest the following is a specimen:—