Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/92

 Bran turned to the boy and said, 'He will go to thee gladly,' and so he did. Evnissyen said to himself, 'They do not dream of the slaughter I will now commit,' and he took up Gwern by the feet and threw him head-first into the fire. Bronwen tried to leap after her child, but Bran prevented her. The house was all in tumult. The two hosts armed themselves, and each man saw an enemy. Said Morthwyt Tyllion: 'The gadflies of Morthwyt Tyllion's cow!' Only Bran was calm amid the fury of the battle, supporting Bronwen between his shield and his shoulder.

At first the Irish were worsted because they had no help from the leathern bags on the brackets; but they kindled a fire in Llassar's cauldron and cast into it all their dead. Out of this the dead leapt up alive. These men who were restored fought as well as ever, but they could not speak. When Evnissyen saw the Irish triumphing with this advantage, but the men of the Island of the Mighty lying dead and remaining dead, he said in his heart, 'Alas! woe is me, that I should have been the cause of bringing the men of the Island of the Mighty into so great a strait. Evil betide me if I do not deliver them.' And he cast himself among the dead bodies of the Irish, and two unshod Irishmen came to him, and taking him to be one of the Irish flung him into the cauldron. And he stretched himself out in the cauldron, so that he rent the cauldron into four pieces and burst his own heart also. Nevertheless the men of the Island of the Mighty could not gain the victory. Besides Bran and Bronwen, only Manawythan and Talicsin the bard and five others escaped. Bran himself was wounded in the foot with a poisoned dart.

When they had gone aboard, Bran called these men round him and said: