Even the well-known story of Myrddin’s, or Merlin’s final imprisonment in a tomb of airy enchantment—“a tour withouten walles, or withoute eny closure”—reads marvellously like a myth of the sun “with all his fires and travelling glories round him”.[400] Encircled, shielded, and made splendid by his atmosphere of living light, the Lord of Heaven moves slowly towards the west, to disappear at last into the sea (as one local version of the myth puts it), or on to a far-off island (as another says), or into a dark forest (the choice of a third).[401] When the myth became finally fixed, it was Bardsey Island, off the extreme westernmost point of Caernarvonshire, that was selected as his last abode. Into it he went with nine attendant bards, taking with him the “Thirteen Treasures of Britain”, thenceforth lost to men. Bardsey Island no doubt derives its name from this story; and what is probably an allusion to it is found in a first-century Greek writer called Plutarch, who describes a grammarian called Demetrius as having visited Britain, and brought home an account of his travels. He mentioned several uninhabited and sacred islands off our coasts which he said were named after gods and heroes, but there was one especially in which Cronos was imprisoned with his attendant deities, and Briareus keeping watch over him as he slept; “for sleep was the bond forged for him”.[402] Doubtless this disinherited deity, whom the Greek, after his fashion, called “Cronos”, was the British heaven- and sun-god, after he had descended into the prison of the west. Among other new-comers is Kai, who, as Sir Kay the Seneschal, fills so large a part in the later romances. Purged of his worst offences, and reduced to a surly butler to Arthur, he is but a shadow of the earlier Kai who murdered Arthur’s son Llacheu[403], and can only be acquitted, through the obscurity of the poem that relates the incident, of having also carried off, or having tried to carry off, Arthur’s wife, Gwynhwyvar.[404] He is thought to have been a personification of fire,[405] upon the strength of a description given of him in the mythical romance of “Kulhwch and Olwen”. “Very subtle”, it says, “was Kai. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity—so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire.”