British Legend: The Song of Taliesin

Cerridwen is sometimes called a witch, or a Goddess, or the Welsh Muse of Poetry and Wisdom, depending upon who is telling the tale. In truth, she is all three.

She is interchangeably called Ceridwen, Kerdwin, Cyrddven, Kerridwyn, Cerridwyn or Kerridwen; or Dark Mother, Queen of the Underworld, Lady of Awen, Inspiration of the Bards; or Crooked Beloved, Fair Chorus, Bent Whiteness, Sacred Songstress, Crooked Woman.

But in our story, she is simply a mother wanting the best for her child. Like any mother ever, Cerridwen will respond with wrath and rage, when her child is deemed in danger. She will fight his corner for him. She will defend him to the hilt. She will work always in his best interests.

Remember that, as you hear the Song of Taliesin.

Cerridwen lived with her husband Tegid Foel, in Llanuwchllyn, close to Bala in mid Wales.

You can't see their home anymore. A later legend tells how Tegid Foel messed up and his caer was swallowed up by Bala Lake. That great mass of water is still called Llyn Tegid (Tegid's Lake) in Welsh. The locals say you can hear the bells in his towers ringing, when the night is placid, but the waters are rough.

Then there was her brother Morfrân, whose name means Sea Raven or Crow, though his nickname was better known. Afagddu - utter darkness - as it matched his aspect and his soul.

Cerridwen wished him to get on in life. She wanted Morfrân to join Arthur's warband or, at least, his retinue. But her son would never make it. The surliness of his spirit played out upon his visage. He sneered in stupidity. He snapped impatiently at anything he didn't care to understand. He cared for nobody and nothing. He was void of all redeeming features, and this was his ugliness.

His mother sought to open his mind to the wonders of the world, so her son might take his place within it and make a future for himself.

Cerridwen reached for her cauldron.

The cauldron of Cerridwen was crafted by Gofannon, the greatest smith to ever hammer metal upon an anvil in all Wales. It held the secrets of the universe, life and death, embedded into its very form. But for Morfrân, his mother needed more.

But all this work could not be done alone. Even Goddesses (or muses, witches and wise women) have to sleep, and while she was out and about collecting her plants and pieces, her boiling potion still needed to be stirred.

Blind Morda was set to stirring it, once every six hours.

Blind Morda was a local man, whose stream still runs through Powys becoming a river as it passes down through Shropshire's Morda Valley; and whose famous cave leads deep underground in the vicinity of the river, as it runs close to Llangollen and the Dee. It's said that any who step within five paces of the cave will be sucked inside and never seen again.

This is true, for it happened to lolo ap Hugh, the fiddler known to his friends as Ned Pugh.

His old friend's expression haunted beyond endurance; eyes staring with frightful insanity; clothes tattered; hair knotted, long and unruly; swaying like he could barely stand, but his fiddle arm playing on. Then as the shepherd watched in horror, Ned Pugh became mist and was lost again from view.

Nor was this quite the end.

As an old man, the shepherd - long since retired - was sitting on his pew in the church hearing the sermon. It was in the middle of a dark midwinter, when the gales and blizzards tortured the walls with howling. Hence people were startled, but not afraid, when the doors of the building blew open.

What did frighten them to distraction was the fiddle music carried in, which seemed to dance the whole length of the aisle and linger for a moment at the chancel. Then the sound disappeared like it had never been. The old shepherd recognized it. It was the tune he'd long since heard played, on that terrible night, when he glimpsed poor Ned Pugh.

It's said you can still hear the desperate fiddler raking his bow across the stings in that same, old song. All you need to do is go to the cave and press your ear against the stone. But who would dare do that?!

And there's a school of thought that says that Blind Morda, the stirrer of Cerridwen's Cauldron, was not actually a man.  At least not a human one. But who can say for sure?

But Blind Morda wasn't the only person serving in the making of Cerridwen's Brew. There was also the boy who lit the fire and fueled it, then kept it burning for a year.

But Gwion Bach was in the room and he started at the sound. Some versions tell of how instinct or greed pushed him forward, knocking Blind Morda out of the way, mouth wide and ready for when the three drops fell.

Others say he was knelt beside the cauldron at the time, hand out-stretched to feed another branch into the flames. That he froze in that position when the moment hit. It was accident or luck (or coincidence and curse), but when the scalding drops fell, they landed on his fingers.

Gwion Bach put his fingers in his mouth. He sucked the pain from his hand. He imbibed the precious awen from them.

And with a shrieking cacophony, the cauldron split in two. Its poisonous contents drowning the room and seeping into a nearby stream. It could never be used again.

Gwion Bach knew everything. All the accumulated knowledge of time and space was flooding through his consciousness and his blood. One thing he knew most of all. It was time to run.

He didn't get a great head start on Cerridwen, but he got one. He sensed the moment that she returned and saw the carnage of her cauldron. He felt her wrath as a tidal wave and he ran as fast as his legs could take him.

Morfrân was thwarted, doomed to the darkness. His mother was coming, darting from her chamber, rushing as a Fury in Gwion's wake.

And the young boy changed.

He became a hare, leaping on across the heathland, into the forest, down the slope. But Cerridwen was after him. Shape-shifted into a greyhound, gaining ground.

Gwion Bach's thumping legs propelled him on through the undergrowth. Heart pounding in panic, as the greyhound howled in hot pursuit.

He saw the glistening silver ribbon of the river straight ahead, and Gwion Bach transformed.

He was a salmon now! Turning back from fighting the current, flicking powerful fins to let it take him swiftly on away from here and danger.

But Cerridwen had seen and she was right on top of him. No longer a greyhound, but an otter! Snarling teeth and terrible claws ripping into the waters, so close, too close, Gwion bucking in the waters, dodging grasps and avoiding snaps of the Goddess's ensnaring jaws.

Little Gwion leapt up and out, a salmon's jump from the churning tide, and up, up, further still. Gwion Bach became something other.

Gwion Bach was a bird! What bird he was, he didn't know, but he was flying high above, leaving the shining twist of water far behind.

He was free! Out of the otter's grasp, away from Cerridwen. His wings flapped in a frenzy, found the currents of the air and soared. His heart breaking with exertion; eyes seeking her in fright. His homeland lost to distance and height. His parents and their pig farm gone from view. He flew.

She was there! As a hawk swooping down upon her prey, she got a hit!  In agony and terror, Gwion recoiled from the wind, falling desperately, dropping like a stone, the green earth approaching so fast. He couldn't see her! His wings rushing in useless abandon, injured, trying to find purchase on the breeze.

She was coming! He couldn't breathe! Too little in his lungs to waste on screaming, though his mind was swamped in an endless wail.

But Gwion Bach had wisdom now, and as he rolled from her clutches, still plummeting, he recognized that and remembered how to think. He saw his strategy down below and with failing strength he took it.

Gwion Bach surrendered his shape and formed another for survival.

He was in a barn now. On the floor, in the dust, just one more grain of corn amongst so many.

Piles of them there, gathered in the harvest, heaped into mounds, random pieces scattered on the ground. Gwion Bach knew when Cerridwen came in. He sensed the hawk alight. He kept so very still. She could see him. He was in full sight. But hidden there in plain view.

He heard her cluck. Cerridwen shifted into a hen and began to feed. One corn after another passing into her gullet, yet her stomach was never full. The Goddess ate and ate on. One grain after another consumed by her appetite and her rage.

Until she reached him and there was nothing he could do. Gwion Bach was caught in the hen's sharp beak and he was swallowed into her stomach.

And Gwion Bach changed.

Cerridwen knew that she would give birth to Gwion Bach. She felt it the instant that a random grain of corn turned into an embryo and burrowed into her womb.

The Dark Mother spoke as her belly swelled with pregnancy. She told him things in the full knowledge that he was sentient. Trapped inside for nine whole months, with his mind and memory intact. Gwion Bach saw that he was helpless, that there was nothing he could change into which wouldn't kill him too.

For the moment he was safe. Cerridwen couldn't hurt him without hurting herself. She told him softly - hands pressed against her abdomen in a mother's holding - that she was going to slaughter him the second that she gave birth.

He heard her. He was Gwion, growing inside but not fast enough. He'd be too vulnerable, when he emerged. Tiny, defenseless, unable to lift his head up on his own, and whatever he turned into would be a newborn baby too.

Cerridwen whispered, "I will kill you."

Twice-born Gwion re-entered the world in the usual way, through a mass of blood in the violence of birth, bruised and gasping for a breath that ended in a wail.

It was April 29th 534 CE. Two days before Nos Galan Mai, which others call May Eve or Beltane. His mother held him.

His second birth mother Cerridwen grasped him in her arms, like she thought he might wriggle away, as she cut the umbilical cord. With fledgling newborn eyes unused to sight, he surveyed his erstwhile murderess, and the Dark Goddess looked at him.

He read it in her eyes before she spoke. You are beautiful, her gaze blazed back at him, and his aspect transformed into hope.

"I can't kill you." Cerridwen murmured, "But neither shall I keep you. I give you back to the world to sink or swim as you may." 

Twice-born Gwion's Dark Mother Cerridwen stitched him inside the hide, basket and all. He smelled the oil slick upon the skin. It was waterproof, which was the best he could observe of that, but dark and claustrophobic too.

He felt her lift him once again, and knew that she carried him towards the bay.  Whether she chanted words of blessing then - or asked the sea God Dylan Eil Ton to see him safe - the helpless infant could not tell.

Her words were drowned out by the waves and a castaway newborn's desperate mew.

There is this peculiarity about Bai Ceredigion (or Cardigan Bay in English). The currents pass in one huge circle, rushing in from the Irish Sea and sloshing around half the coastline of West Wales, as if it was nothing but one huge bowl.

Or cauldron. Twice-born Gwion couldn't dismiss that thought either. Bai Ceredigion as one big cauldron, stirred and carrying its basket held passenger on its unseen tidal conveyor belt. Out to where such things will always end up - close to Ynys Enlli, which is how the old Druids maneuvered their coracles there, but closer still to the Llyn Penrhyn.

And there, trapped though he didn't know it as yet, upon the nets of a fisherman's weir, Twice-Born Gwion came to a stop.

The Weir of Gwyddno reached out into the ocean. It captured more than fish on that May Day. Though its owner did not yet know it.

Old man Gwyddno was up with the dawn, walking down to the shore to check his nets with his adult son Elffin. Being Calan Mai, it would be a day of festivities, markets, dancing, drinking, feasting and generally enjoying themselves. Hence their urgency in hurrying to secure the catch. It would need to be prepared - some cooked for themselves, the rest sold to others - ready for the day.

There was indeed fish speared aplenty on the weir's sharp sticks, or frantically trying to free themselves from the nets. But there was also a basket covered in a stitched up, waterproof skin, and that wasn't usual.

The newborn infant Taliesin, three days at sea in a basket hide, began to sing. His verses made up in his head, chanted as soon as they were conceived; the tune unfolding as he went, his meter perfect, his beats in time. A bard born of Cerridwen and cast on the wave, composing as soon as he could speak.

Gwyddno and Elffin were the first to hear the Song of Taliesin. That weir found babe crooned it all the way home, then repeated it for Ellyw, Elffin's wife. There was no question after that, but the couple would raise him as their own.

And the Song of Taliesin was the tale that I've already told, only better.

It was the story of Cerridwen and her cauldron; the fire and Gwion Bach; three drops of awen and wisdom; transformations covering earth, water and sky; then nine months in the dark mother's womb and three days in the ocean.

The greatest bard that ever lived was Taliesin Ben Beirdd, a true born son of Cerridwen, sent precisely where he needed to be. The muse's ancient song goes on, through the harp that never could be destroyed; truths noted and understood by those whose bardic brow shines.