solely the year with its twelve months; Percival and the Miller
signifying solely steel and the grindstone; Stonehenge and the
Gododin put to purely calendarial purposes; the Nibelungen, the
Mahabharata, and the Iliad, finally following the fate of the
Gododin; all this appears to me, I will confess, a little prematurely
grasped, a little unsubstantial. But that any one who knows the set
of modern mythological science towards astronomical and solar myths,
a set which has already justified itself in many respects so
victoriously, and which is so irresistible that one can hardly now
look up at the sun without having the sensations of a moth;--that any
one who knows this, should find in the Welsh remains no traces of
mythology, is quite astounding. Why, the heroes and heroines of the
old Cymric world are all in the sky as well as in Welsh story; Arthur
is the Great Bear, his harp is the constellation Lyra; Cassiopeia's
chair is Llys Don, Don's Court; the daughter of Don was Arianrod, and
the Northern Crown is Caer Arianrod; Gwydion was Don's son, and the
Milky Way is Caer Gwydion. With Gwydion is Math, the son of
Mathonwy, the 'man of illusion and phantasy;' and the moment one goes
below the surface,--almost before one goes below the surface,--all is
illusion and phantasy, double-meaning, and far-reaching mythological
import, in the world which all these personages inhabit. What are
the three hundred ravens of Owen, and the nine sorceresses of
Peredur, and the dogs of Annwn the Welsh Hades, and the birds of
Rhiannon, whose song was so sweet that warriors remained spell-bound
for eighty years together listening to them? What is the Avanc, the
water-monster, of whom every lake-side in Wales, and her proverbial
speech, and her music, to this day preserve the tradition? What is
Gwyn the son of Nudd, king of fairie, the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg,
or family of beauty, who till the day of doom fights on every first
day of May,--the great feast of the sun among the Celtic peoples,--