wisdom. She was a great magician and resolved to boil a large caldron full
of knowledge for her son, so that he might know all things and be able to
predict all that was to happen. Then she thought people would value him in
spite of his ugliness. But she knew that the caldron must burn a year and
a day without ceasing, until three blessed drops of the water of knowledge
were obtained from it; and those three drops would give all the wisdom she
wanted.

So she put a boy named Gwion to stir the caldron and a blind man named
Morda to feed the fire; and made them promise never to let it cease
boiling for a year and a day. She herself kept gathering magic herbs and
putting them into it. One day when the year was nearly over, it chanced
that three drops of the liquor flew out of the caldron and fell on the
finger of Gwion. They were fiery hot, and he put his finger to his mouth,
and the instant he tasted them he knew that they were the enchanted drops
for which so much trouble had been taken. By their magic he at once
foresaw all that was to come, and especially that Cardiwen the enchantress
would never forgive him.

Then Gwion fled. The caldron burst in two, and all the liquor flowed
forth, poisoning some horses which drank it. These horses belonged to a
king named Gwyddno. Cardiwen came in and saw all the toil of the whole
year lost. Seizing a stick of wood, she struck the blind man Morda
fiercely on the head, but he said, "I am innocent. It was not I who did
it." "True," said Cardiwen; "it was the boy Gwion who robbed me;" and she
rushed to pursue him. He saw her and fled, changing into a hare; but she
became a greyhound and followed him. Running to the water, he became a
fish; but she became another and chased him below the waves. He turned
himself into a bird, when she became a hawk and gave him no rest in the
sky. Just as she swooped on him, he espied a pile of winnowed wheat on the