urn, which they placed at Trinovantum, with wonderful art, on the top of the tower above mentioned.” He was succeeded by Gurgiunt Brabtruc,[540] who, as he was returning by way of the Orkneys from a raid on the Danes, met the ships of Partholon and his people as they came from Spain to settle in Ireland.[541] Llyr and his children, large as they bulk in mythical history, were hardly less illustrious as saints. The family of Llyr Llediath is always described by the early Welsh hagiologists as the first of the “Three chief Holy Families of the Isle of Britain”. The glory of Llyr himself, however, is but a reflected one; for it was his son Brân “the Blesséd” who actually introduced Christianity into Britain. Legend tells us that he was taken captive to Rome with his son Caradawc (who was identified for the purpose with the historical Caratacus), and the rest of his family, and remained there seven years, during which time he became converted to the Gospel, and spread it enthusiastically on his return. Neither his son Caradawc nor his half-brother Manawyddan exactly followed in his footsteps, but their descendants did. Caradawc’s sons were all saintly, while his daughter Eigen, who married a chief called Sarrlog, lord of Caer Sarrlog (Old Sarum), was the first female saint in Britain. Manawyddan’s side of the family was less adaptable. His son and his grandson were both pagans, but his great-grandson obtained Christian fame as St. Dyfan, who was sent as a bishop to Wales by Pope Eleutherius, and was martyred at Merthyr Dyvan. After this, the saintly line of Llyr increases and flourishes. Singularly inappropriate persons are found in it—Mabon, the Gallo-British Apollo, as well as Geraint and others of King Arthur’s court.[542] It is so quaint a conceit that Christianity should have been, like all other things, the gift of the Celtic Hades, that it seems almost a pity to cast doubt on it. The witness of the classical historians sums up, however, dead in its disfavour. Tacitus carefully enumerates the family of Caratacus, and describes how he and his wife, daughter, and brother were separately interviewed by the Emperor Claudius, but makes no mention at all of the chieftain’s supposed father Brân. Moreover, Dio Cassius gives the name of Caratacus’s father as Cunobelinus—Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”—who, he adds, had died before the Romans first invaded Britain. The evidence is wholly against Brân as a Christian pioneer. He remains the grim old god of war and death, “blesséd” only to his pagan votaries, and especially to the bards, who probably first called him _Bendigeid Vran_, and whose stubborn adherence must have been the cause of the not less stubborn efforts of their enemies, the Christian clerics, to bring him over to their own side by canonization.[543]