Page:The Mabinogion.djvu/70

Rh so high an authority, I shall venture to give the following translation—

Who is the Porter?

Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr.

Who is it that asks?

Arthur and the blessed Kai.

If thou shouldst bring with thee

The best wine in the world,

Into my house thou shalt not come,

Unless it be by force, &c."

—Page 3.

use of green rushes in apartments was by no means peculiar to the Court of Caerleon upon Usk. Our ancestors had a great predilection for them, and they seem to have constituted an essential article, not only of comfort but of luxury. The custom of strewing the floor with rushes is well known to have existed in England during the Middle Ages, and that it also prevailed in the Principality we have evidence from allusions which occur in the works of native writers. Of this, one example will suffice, from a tale written apparently in the 14th Century; and as the passage contains several curious traits of ancient manners, I shall give it at some length.

In this tale Davydd ap Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, wishing to send an embassy to Rhys, Prince of South Wales, and having fixed upon Gwgan the Bard as a proper person for that mission, despatches a messenger called y Pawn Bach (the Little Peacock) in search of him. This person, after a long and tedious journey, arrives towards the close of evening at a house in a wooded valley, where he hears the tuning of a harp. From the style of playing, and the modulation, he supposes that the performer can be no other than Gwgan himself. In order to ascertain if his surmise is correct, he addresses him in a rambling high-flown style of language. The Bard answers him in the same strain, and asks him what he requires. To which Y Paun Bach thus replies:—"I want lodging for to-night ..... And that not better than I know how to ask for. ..... A lightsome hall, floored with tile, and swept, in which there has been neither flood nor rain-drop for the last hundred years, dressed with fresh green rushes, laid so evenly that one rush be not higher than the other the height of a gnat's eye, so that my foot should not slip either backward or forward the space of a mote in the sunshine