and of necessity occurs.

Aneurin, like a true poet of nature, abstains from all artful introduction or
invocation, and launches at once into his subject. His eye follows the
gorgeously and distinctively armed chiefs, as they move at the head of their
respective companies, and perform deeds of valour on the bloody field. He
delights to enhance by contrast their domestic and warlike habits, and
frequently recurs to the pang of sorrow, which the absence of the warriors
must have caused to their friends and relatives at home, and reflects with
much genuine feeling upon the disastrous consequences, that the loss of the
battle would entail upon these and their dear native land. And though he
sets forth his subject in the ornamental language of poetry, yet he is
careful not to transgress the bounds of truth. This is strikingly instanced
in the manner in which he names no less than four witnesses as vouchers for
the correctness of his description of Caradawg. Herein he produces one of
the "three agreements that ought to be in a song," viz. an agreement "between
truth and the marvellous." {0e}

He also gives "relish to his song," {0f} by adopting "a diversity of
structure in the metre;" for the lyric comes in occasionally to relieve the
solemnity of the heroic, whilst at the same time the latter is frequently
capable of being divided into a shorter verse, a plan which has been observed
in one of the MSS. used on the present occasion; e. g. the twelfth stanza is
thus arranged, -


Gwyr a aeth Gattraeth gan ddydd
Neus goreu } gywilydd
O gadeu }
Wy gwnaethant } gelorwydd