The seven went on towards Harlech, and, as they journeyed, they met men and women who gave them the latest news. Caswallawn, a son of Beli, the husband of Dôn, had destroyed the ministers left behind by Brân to take care of Britain. He had made himself invisible by the help of a magic veil, and thus had killed all of them except Pendaran Dyfed, foster-father of Pryderi, who had escaped into the woods, and Caradawc son of Brân, whose heart had broken from grief. Thus he had made himself king of the whole island in place of Manawyddan, its rightful heir now that Brân was dead. However, the destiny was upon the seven that they should go on with their leader’s head. They went to Harlech and feasted for seven years, the three birds of Rhiannon singing them songs compared with which all other songs seemed unmelodious. Then they spent fourscore years in the Isle of Gwales, eating and drinking, and listening to the pleasant conversation of Brân’s head. The “Entertaining of the Noble Head” this eighty years’ feast was called. Brân’s head, indeed, is almost more notable in British mythology than Brân before he was decapitated. Taliesin and the other bards invoke it repeatedly as _Urddawl Ben_ (the “Venerable Head”) and _Uther Ben_ (the “Wonderful Head”). But all pleasure came to an end when Heilyn, the son of Gwynn, opened the forbidden door, like Bluebeard’s wife, “to know if that was true which was said concerning it”. As soon as they looked towards Cornwall, the glamour that had kept them merry for eighty-seven years failed, and left them as grieved about the death of their lord as though it had happened that very day. They could not rest for sorrow, but went at once to London, and laid the now dumb and corrupting head in its grave on Tower Hill, with its face turned towards France, to watch that no foe came from foreign lands to Britain. There it reposed until, ages afterwards, Arthur, in his pride of heart, dug it up, “as he thought it beneath his dignity to hold the island otherwise than by valour”. Disaster, in the shape of “the godless hosts Of heathen swarming o’er the Northern sea”,[344] came of this disinterment; and therefore it is called, in a triad, one of the “Three Wicked Uncoverings of Britain”. ----- Footnote 336: Retold from Lady Guest’s translation of the Mabinogi of _Branwen, the Daughter of Llyr_. Footnote 337: Rhys—_Lectures on Welsh Philology_—compares Matholwch with Mâth, and the story, generally, with the Greek myth of Persephoné. Footnote 338: A bardic name for Britain. Footnote 339: This personage may have been the same as the Gaulish god Taranis. Mention, too, is made in an ancient Irish glossary of “Etirun, an idol of the Britons”. Footnote 340: This spot, called by a twelfth-century Welsh poet “The White Eminence of London, a place of splendid fame”, was probably the hill on which the Tower of London now stands. Footnote 341: