on him), we find out where the stolen Mabon was, and learn how he was rescued. So many ages had elapsed since Mabon had disappeared that there seemed little hope of ever finding news of him. Nevertheless Gwrhyr, who spoke the languages of all creatures, went to enquire of that ancient bird, the Ousel of Cilgwri. But the Ousel, though in her time she had pecked a smith’s anvil down to the size of a nut, was yet too young to have heard of Mabon. She sent Gwrhyr to a creature formed before her, the Stag of Redynvre. But though the Stag had lived to see an oak-sapling slowly grow to be a tree with a thousand branches, and as slowly decay again till it was a withered stump, he had never heard of Mabon. Therefore he sent him on to a creature still older than himself—the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. The wood she lived in had been thrice rooted up, and had thrice re-sown itself, and yet, in all that immense time, she had never heard of Mabon. There was but one who might have, she told Gwrhyr, and he was the Eagle of Gwern Abwy. Here, at last, they struck Mabon’s trail. “The Eagle said: ‘I have been here for a great space of time, and when I first came hither there was a rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the stars every evening; and now it is not so much as a span high. From that day to this I have been here, and I have never heard of the man for whom you inquire, except once when I went in search of food as far as Llyn Llyw. And when I came there, I struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would serve me as food for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I was scarcely able to escape from him. After that I went with my whole kindred to attack him, and to try to destroy him, but he sent messengers, and made peace with me; and came and besought me to take fifty fish spears out of his back. Unless he know something of him whom you seek, I cannot tell who may. However, I will guide you to the place where he is.’” It happened that the Salmon did know. With every tide he went up the Severn as far as the walls of Gloucester, and there, he said, he had found such wrong as he had never found anywhere else. So he took Kai and Gwrhyr upon his shoulders and carried them to the wall of the prison where a captive was heard lamenting. This was Mabon son of Modron, who was suffering such imprisonment as not even Lludd of the Silver Hand or Greid, the son of Eri,[449] the other two of the “Three Paramount Prisoners of Britain”, had endured before him. But it came to an end now; for Kai sent to Arthur, and he and his warriors stormed Gloucester, and brought Mabon away.