is the oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled
most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.' The Eagle was so old, that a rock,
from the top of which he pecked at the stars every evening, was now
not so much as a span high. He knew nothing of Mabon; but there was
a monster Salmon, into whom he once struck his claws in Llyn Llyw,
who might, perhaps, tell them something of him. And at last the
Salmon of Llyn Llyw told them of Mabon. 'With every tide I go along
the river upwards, until I come near to the walls of Gloucester, and
there have I found such wrong as I never found elsewhere.' And the
Salmon took Arthur's messengers on his shoulders up to the wall of
the prison in Gloucester, and they delivered Mabon.

Nothing could better give that sense of primitive and pre-mediaeval
antiquity which to the observer with any tact for these things is, I
think, clearly perceptible in these remains, at whatever time they
may have been written; or better serve to check too absolute an
acceptance of Mr. Nash's doctrine,--in some respects very salutary,--
'that the common assumption of such remains of the date of the sixth
century, has been made upon very unsatisfactory grounds.' It is
true, it has; it is true, too, that, as he goes on to say, 'writers
who claim for productions actually existing only in manuscripts of
the twelfth, an origin in the sixth century, are called upon to
demonstrate the links of evidence, either internal or external, which
bridge over this great intervening period of at least five hundred
years.' Then Mr. Nash continues: 'This external evidence is
altogether wanting.' Not altogether, as we have seen; that assertion
is a little too strong. But I am content to let it pass, because it
is true, that without internal evidence in this matter the external
evidence would be of no moment. But when Mr. Nash continues further:
'And the internal evidence even of the so-called historic poems