The Mabinogion · 190 of 192 · tr. Lady Charlotte Guest
Tale TALIESINk
A bard that will not silence me, Silence may he not obtain, Till he goes to be covered Under gravel and pebbles; Such as shall listen to me, May God listen to him.” Then sang he the piece called “The Spite of the Bards.” “Minstrels persevere in their false custom, Immoral ditties are their delight; Vain and tasteless praise they recite; Falsehood at all times do they utter; The innocent persons they ridicule; Married women they destroy, Innocent virgins of Mary they corrupt; As they pass their lives away in vanity, Poor innocent persons they ridicule; At night they get drunk, they sleep the day; In idleness without work they feed themselves; The Church they hate, and the tavern they frequent; With thieves and perjured fellows they associate; At courts they inquire after feasts; Every senseless word they bring forward; Every deadly sin they praise; Every vile course of life they lead; Through every village, town, and country they stroll; Concerning the gripe of death they think not; Neither lodging nor charity do they give; Indulging in victuals to excess.
Psalms or prayers they do not use, Tithes or offerings to God they do not pay, On holidays or Sundays they do not worship; Vigils or festivals they do not heed.
The birds do fly, the fish do swim, The bees collect honey, worms do crawl, Every thing travails to obtain its food, Except minstrels and lazy useless thieves.
I deride neither song nor minstrelsy, For they are given by God to lighten thought; But him who abuses them, For blaspheming Jesus and his service.” Taliesin having set his master free from prison, and having protected the innocence of his wife, and silenced the Bards, so that not one of them dared to say a word, now brought Elphin’s wife before them, and showed that she had not one finger wanting.
Right glad was Elphin, right glad was Taliesin.
Then he bade Elphin wager the king, that he had a horse both better and swifter than the king’s horses.
And this Elphin did, and the day, and the time, and the place were fixed, and the place was that which at this day is called Morva Rhiannedd: and thither the king went with all his people, and four-and-twenty of the swiftest horses he possessed.
And after a long process the course was marked, and the horses were placed for running.
Then came Taliesin with four-and-twenty twigs of holly, which he had burnt black, and he caused the youth who was to ride his master’s horse to place them in his belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king’s horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot.
All these things did the youth fulfil, giving a blow to every one of the king’s horses, and throwing down his cap on the spot where his horse stumbled.
And to this spot Taliesin brought his master after his horse had won the race.
And he caused Elphin to put workmen to dig a hole there; and when they had dug the ground deep enough, they found a large cauldron full of gold.
Themes
◆Divine Providencetheology
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 narrative attributes the success of the race and the discovery of gold to divine sanction and intervention through Taliesin.
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
Ritual use of consecrated material objects (burnt holly twigs) is employed to manipulate reality and reveal hidden treasure.
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.
Taliesin's song silences opposing bards and his spoken commands regarding the holly twigs magically alter the outcome of the race.