Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/314

200 nine in retiring—i. e. it was studded with points turned back so that they caught the flesh on being withdrawn.46 In like manner Cúchulainn's gaí bolga inflicted thirty wounds when pulled out, and reference is frequently made to pointed spears of similar character. Bedwyr is praised in Welsh poetry and is the Sir Bedevere of the Romances. In Geoffrey he reconnoitred the hill where the giant was supposed to live and comforted the nurse of the dead woman abducted by him, and he is also said to have been slain by the Romans.47

Nennius relates that Vortigem's attempts to build a city mysteriously failed until his wise men said that he must obtain a child without a father and sprinkle the foundation with his blood—an instance of the well-known Foundation Sacrifice. This victim Is at last found because a companion is heard taunting him, as they play at ball, that he is "a boy without a father." His mother alleged that he had no mortal sire, and the child exposed the wise men's ignorance, by telling what would be discovered beneath the foundation—a pool, two vases, with a tent, and In It two serpents. One of these expelled the other, and all this Is explained as symbolic of the world, Vortigern's kingdom, the Britons, and the Saxon invaders. Giving his name as Ambrose (Embrels gwledig, or "prince") and saying that a Roman consul was his father, the boy obtained the place as a site for a citadel of his own, Dinas Emrys.48 Ambrosius Aurelianus the gwledig was a real person who fought the Saxons in the fifth century,49 and to his history these myths have been attached. In Geoffrey this boy is Merlin or Ambrosius Merlin, whose mother said that often a beautiful youth appeared, kissed her, and vanished, although afterward he sometimes spoke with her Invisibly and finally as a man slept with her, leaving her with child. One of Vortigern's wise men explained him as an incubus (the Celtic dusius). Merlin told how two dragons were asleep In two hollow stones, and when dug up, they fought, the red dragon finally being worsted; and he now uttered many tedious prophecies.