Lludd, however, is not entirely dependent upon Geoffrey of Monmouth for his reputation as a king of Britain. One of the old Welsh romances,[533] translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in her Mabinogion, relates the rebuilding of London by Lludd in almost the same words as Geoffrey. The story which these pseudo-historical details introduce is, however, an obviously mythological one. It tells us how, in the days of Lludd, Britain was oppressed by three plagues. The first was the arrival of a strange race of sorcerers called the “Coranians”,[534] who had three qualities which made them unpopular; they paid their way in “fairy money”, which, though apparently real, returned afterwards—like the shields, horses, and hounds made by Gwydion son of Dôn, to deceive Pryderi—into the fungus out of which it had been charmed by magic; they could hear everything that was said over the whole of Britain, in however low a tone, provided only that the wind met it; and they could not be injured by any weapon. The second was “a shriek that came on every May eve, over every hearth in the Island of Britain, and went through people’s hearts and so scared them that the men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and the maidens their senses, and all the animals and trees and the earth and the waters were left barren”. The third was a disappearance of the food hoarded in the king’s palace, which was so complete that a year’s provisions vanished in a single night, and so mysterious that no one could ever find out its cause. By the advice of his nobles, Lludd went to France to obtain the help of its king, his brother Llevelys, who was “a man great of counsel and wisdom”. In order to be able to consult with his brother without being overheard by the Coranians, Llevelys caused a long tube of brass to be made, through which they talked to one another. The sorcerer tribe, however, got to know of it, and, though they could not hear what was being said inside the speaking-tube, they sent a demon into it, who whispered insulting messages up and down it, as though from one brother to the other. But Lludd and Llevelys knew one another too well to be deceived by this, and they drove the demon out of the tube by flooding it with wine. Then Llevelys told Lludd to take certain insects, which he would give him, and pound them in water. When the water was sufficiently permeated with their essence, he was to call both his own people and the Coranians together, as though for a conference, and, in the midst of the meeting, to cast it over all of them alike. The water, though harmless to his own people, would nevertheless prove a deadly poison to the Coranians.