The Mabinogion · 187 of 191 · tr. Lady Charlotte Guest
Tale TALIESIN-i
The names of the three springs From the midst of the ocean; One generated brine Which is from the Corina, To replenish the flood Over seas disappearing; The second, without injury It will fall on us, When there is rain abroad, Through the whelming sky; The third will appear Through the mountain veins, Like a flinty banquet, The work of the King of kings, You are blundering bards, In too much solicitude; You cannot celebrate The kingdom of the Britons; And I am Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Who will loosen Elphin Out of the golden fetter.” * * * * * “Be silent, then, ye unlucky rhyming bards, For you cannot judge between truth and falsehood.
If you be primary bards formed by heaven, Tell your king what his fate will be.
It is I who am a diviner and a leading bard, And know every passage in the country of your king; I shall liberate Elphin from the belly of the stony tower; And will tell your king what will befall him.
A most strange creature will come from the sea marsh of Rhianedd As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gwynedd; His hair, his teeth, and his eyes being as gold, And this will bring destruction upon Maelgwn Gwynedd.” * * * * * “Discover thou what is The strong creature from before the flood, Without flesh, without bone, Without vein, without blood, Without head, without feet, It will neither be older nor younger Than at the beginning; For fear of a denial, There are no rude wants With creatures.
Great God!
how the sea whitens When first it comes!
Great are its gusts When it comes from the south; Great are its evaporations When it strikes on coasts.
It is in the field, it is in the wood, Without hand, and without foot, Without signs of old age, Though it be co-æval With the five ages or periods And older still, Though they be numberless years.
It is also so wide As the surface of the earth; And it was not born, Nor was it seen.
It will cause consternation Wherever God willeth.
On sea, and on land, It neither sees, nor is seen.
Its course is devious, And will not come when desired; On land and on sea, It is indispensable.
It is without an equal, It is four-sided; It is not confined, It is incomparable; It comes from four quarters; It will not be advised, It will not be without advice.
It commences its journey Above the marble rock, It is sonorous, it is dumb, It is mild, It is strong, it is bold, When it glances over the land, It is silent, it is vocal, It is clamorous, It is the most noisy On the face of the earth.
It is good, it is bad, It is extremely injurious.
It is concealed, Because sight cannot perceive it.
It is noxious, it is beneficial; It is yonder, it is here; It will discompose, But will not repair the injury; It will not suffer for its doings, Seeing it is blameless.
It is wet, it is dry, It frequently comes, Proceeding from the heat of the sun, And the coldness of the moon.
The moon is less beneficial, Inasmuch as her heat is less.
One Being has prepared it, Out of all creatures, By a tremendous blast, To wreak vengeance On Maelgwn Gwynedd.” And while he was thus singing his verse near the door, there arose a mighty storm of wind, so that the king and all his nobles thought that the castle would fall on their heads.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
Natural phenomena like the wind and springs are personified with agency, will, and the capacity to wreak vengeance or replenish floods.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
References are made to primordial times such as 'before the flood' and 'at the beginning' within the riddle.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text states that the creature's course is determined by divine will ('Wherever God willeth') and prepared by 'One Being' for specific ends. [quarantine-w1: divine_providence x celtic — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The riddle-like description of the wind suggests esoteric knowledge reserved for those who can interpret the paradoxical verses. [quarantine-w2: hidden_sayings x celtic — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.
The deity is depicted as an active agent who prepares creatures to wreak vengeance and wills the course of events. [quarantine-batch-1: living_god x celtic — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The description of the wind employs contradictory attributes such as being both wet and dry, good and bad, to convey its complex nature. [quarantine-w3: paradox_as_teaching x celtic — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The passage explicitly links Taliesin's singing to the immediate physical manifestation of a mighty storm, demonstrating the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word.