Page:The Mabinogion.djvu/513

484 And there ought not to be about me

Any bard who may not know

That Elphin the son of Gwyddno

Is in the land of Artro,

Secured by thirteen locks,

For praising his instructor;

And then I Taliesin,

Chief of the bards of the west,

Shall loosen Elphin

Out of a golden fetter."

"If you be primary bards

To the master of sciences,

Declare ye mysteries

That relate to the inhabitants of the world;

There is a noxious creature,

From the rampart of Satanas,

Which has overcome all

Between the deep and the shallow;

Equally wide are his jaws

As the mountains of the Alps;

Him death will not subdue,

Nor hand or blades;

There is the load of nine hundred wagons

In the hair of his two paws;

There is in his head an eye

Green as the limpid sheet of icicle;

Three springs arise

In the nape of his neck;

Sea-roughs thereon

Swim through it;

There was the dissolution of the oxen

Of Deivrdonwy the water-gifted.

The names of the three springs

From the midst of the ocean;

One generated brine

Which is from the Corina,

To replenish the flood

Over seas disappearing;

The second, without injury

It will fall on us,

When there is rain abroad,

Through the whelming sky;

The third will appear

Through the mountain veins,

Like a flinty banquet.