Black is thy horse, and black thy cap, Black thy head, and black thyself, Black-headed man, art thou Yscolan? And Yscolan answers:— I am Yscolan the Scholar, Light is my Scottish knowledge. My grief is incurable for making the ruler take offence[27] at thee. For having burnt a church,[28] destroyed the cattle of a school, And caused a book to be drowned, I feel my penance to be heavy. Creator of all creations, And greatest of all supporters, Forgive me my fault. A full year I have been At Bangor on the pole of a weir. Consider thou my sufferings from sea-worms. If I had known as well as I now do How clearly the wind blows upon the sprigs of the waving wood, I should not have done what I did. Had he known of certain proofs of druidic excellence he would have refrained. Though the tradition of St. Columba having destroyed some pagan books may have actually been current among the Welsh bards, it is very unlikely that he ever met Myrddin. As Dr. Skene suggests, the black Yscolan may well have been one of the black Canons of Caermarthen connected with some book-episode in the Tower. For we know from Adamnan that the dress of Columba was white, and the above sketch hardly fits in with his history. It is interesting to note that in the book called Taliessin, there is “The Death-song of Corroi, son of Dayry,” curiously enough the only specimen of a Welsh Ossianic poem which has come down to us. It tells the story of Curigh of Munster; and Cuchulinn, the famous hero of Ulster:— Tales will be known to me from sky to earth Of the contention of Corroi and Cocholyn, Numerous their tumults about their borders. This poem is fully noticed by Dr. Skene in his edition of the _Book of the Dean of Lismore_, p. 141. Taking the Welsh poems as a whole, the difficulty has always been to differentiate between the historical and the mythological. They are usually so obscure in themselves, especially the so-called mythological ones, that some think there lurks in them a system of mystical and semi-pagan philosophy handed down from the Druids, and which our age cannot fathom. Others think that they are nothing but the wild and extravagant vapourings of bards of the twelfth and subsequent centuries. Referring to this, Dr. Skene wrote in his edition of the poems, and translations of the poems, in _The Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. i. pp. 15, 16:—