"Puny bards, I am trying To secure the prize, if I can; By a gentle prophetic strain I am endeavouring to retrieve The loss I may have suffered; Complete the attempt, I hope, Since Elphin endures trouble In the fortress of Teganwy, On him may there not be laid Too many chains and fetters; The Chair of the fortress of Teganwy Will I again seek; Strengthened by my muse I am powerful; Mighty on my part is what I seek, For three hundred songs and more Are combined in the spell I sing. There ought not to stand where I am Neither stone, neither ring; And there ought not to be about me Any bard who may not know That Elphin the son of Gwyddno Is in the land of Artro, Secured by thirteen locks, For praising his instructor; And then I Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Shall loosen Elphin Out of a golden fetter." * * * * * "If you be primary bards To the master of sciences, Declare ye mysteries That relate to the inhabitants of the world; There is a noxious creature, From the rampart of Satanas, Which has overcome all Between the deep and the shallow; Equally wide are his jaws As the mountains of the Alps; Him death will not subdue, Nor hand or blades; There is the load of nine hundred waggons In the hair of his two paws; There is in his head an eye Green as the limpid sheet of icicle; Three springs arise In the nape of his neck; Sea-roughs thereon Swim through it; There was the dissolution of the oxen Of Deivrdonwy the water-gifted. The names of the three springs From the midst of the ocean; One generated brine Which is from the Corina, To replenish the flood Over seas disappearing; The second, without injury It will fall on us, When there is rain abroad. Through the whelming sky; The third will appear Through the mountain veins, Like a flinty banquet. The work of the King of kings. You are blundering bards, In too much solicitude; You cannot celebrate The kingdom of the Britons; And I am Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Who will loosen Elphin Out of the golden fetter." * * * * * "Be silent, then, ye unlucky rhyming bards, For you cannot judge between truth and falsehood. If you be primary bards formed by Heaven, Tell your king what his fate will be. It is I who am a diviner and a leading bard, And know every passage in the country of your king; I shall liberate Elphin from the belly of the stony tower; And will tell your king what will befall him. A most strange creature will come from the sea marsh of Rhianedd As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gwynedd; His hair, his teeth, and his eyes being as gold, And this will bring destruction upon Maelgwn Gwynedd." * * * * *