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his royal uncle at Dyganwy (near Llandudno), the capital of Gwynedd, the child Taliesin went there to rescue him and by a display of wisdom, in which he confounded all the twenty-four court-bards of Maelgwyn – the eighth-century British historian Nennius mentions Maelgwyn’s sycophantic bards – and their leader the chief bard Heinin, secured the prince’s release. First he put a magic spell on the bards so that they could only play blerwm blerwm with their fingers on their lips like children, and then he recited a long riddling poem, the Hanes Taliesin, which they were unable to understand, and which will be found in Chapter V. Since the Peniardd version of the romance is not complete, it is just possible that the solution of the riddle was eventually given, as in the similar romances of Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Tit Tot, Oedipus, and Samson. But the other incidental poems suggest that Taliesin continued to ridicule the ignorance and stupidity of Heinin and the other bards to the end and never revealed his secret.
    The climax of the story in Lady Charlotte’s version comes withanother riddle, proposed by the child Taliesin, beginning: 
    Discover what it is:
The strong creature from before the Flood
Without flesh, without bone ,
Without vein, without blood ,
Without head, without feet…
In field, in forest…
Without hand, without foot.
It is also as wide
As the surface of the earth ,
And it was not born ,
Nor was it seen …
     
     
    The solution, namely ‘The Wind’, is given practically with a violent storm of wind which frightens the King into fetching Elphin from the dungeon, whereupon Taliesin unchains him with an incantation. Probably in an earlier version the wind was released from the mantle of his comrade Afagddu or Morvran, as it was by Morvran’s Irish counterpart Marvan in the early mediaeval Proceedings of the Grand Bardic Academy ,with which The Romance of Taliesin has much in common. ‘A part of it blew into the bosom of every bard present, so that they all rose to their feet.’ A condensed form of this riddle appears in the Flores of Bede, an author commended in one of the Book of Taliesin poems:
    Dic mihi quae est illa res quae caelum, totamque terram replevit, silvas et sirculos confringit … omnia- que fundamenta concutit, sed nec oculis videri aut [sic] manibus tangi potest.
    [Answer] Ventus.
     
    There can be no mistake here. But since the Hanes Taliesin is not preceded by any formal Dychymig Dychy mig (‘riddle me this riddle’) or Dechymic pwy yw (‘Discover what it is’) 1 commentators excuse themselves from reading it as a riddle at all. Some consider it to be solemn-sounding nonsense, an early anticipation of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, intended to raise a laugh; others consider that it has some sort of mystical sense connected with the Druidical doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but do not claim to be able to elucidate this.
    Here I must apologize for my temerity in writing on a subject which is not really my own. I am not a Welshman, except an honorary one through eating the leek on St. David’s Day while serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and, though I have lived in Wales for some years, off and on,have no command even of modern Welsh; and I am not a mediaeval historian. But my profession is poetry, and I agree with the Welsh minstrels that the poet’s first enrichment is a knowledge and understanding of myths. One day while I was puzzling out the meaning of the ancient Welsh myth of Câd Goddeu (‘The Battle of the Trees’), fought between Arawn King of Annwm (‘The Bottomless Place’), and the two sons of Dôn, Gwydion and Amathaon, I had much the same experience as Gwion of Llanfair. A drop or two of the brew of Inspiration flew out of the cauldron and I suddenly felt confident that if I turned again to Gwion’s riddle, which I had not read since I was a schoolboy, I could make sense of it.
    This Battle of the Trees was ‘occasioned by a Lapwing, a White