512 | 
POETRY. 
Agr. I. Vindication of the Genuineness of the Ancient British Poems of Ancurin, Taliesin, 
Llywarch-Hen, and Merdhin: with Specimens of the Poems. By Suaron Turner, 
£.A.S. 8v0. pp. 284. 
THE Myvyrian archaiology of Wales 
has thrown much light on the early an- 
tiquities of Great Britain. It contains 
close translations of many poems, as- 
cribed to bards of the sixth century, 
which have been preserved in manu- 
scripts, said to be of thetwelfth century; 
and which, with some deductions for 
interpolation, and some for moderni- 
zation, really appear to have been 
written by the persons whose names they 
bear: Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch, and 
Merdhin. They respect Arthur, Ge- 
raint, Urien, and other heroes, hitherto 
only known from the mythological 
chronicles of the romancers. 
Of Welsh population and civilization 
the probable history is difficult to evolve. 
Traces of a Cimmerian tribe may be 
found on the skirts of Anatolia, after- 
wards in Thrace, next among the Alps, 
in Denmark, and in Gaul, finally in 
Britain. But the continental Cimmeri- 
ans appear to have been a savage, pas- 
toral people, ignorant of the arts of life. 
The Cimmerians of Cornwall and Bri- 
tany, on the contrary, the Armorican 
or sea-shore Cimmerians, appear early to 
have attained a hich degree of civiliza- 
tion; and when discovered by Julius 
Cesar, were already subjected to the 
bardic discipline, accustomed to the use 
of Greek letters, and attached to vari- 
ous Pheenician divinities. It may be 
inferred, therefore, that they devived 
their civilization, not from their Cim- 
merian progenitors, but from Pheenician 
traders, who communicated to them the 
same alphabet which they had already 
conferred on the Greeks, and who 
founded ciyil and religious regulations 
analogous to their own. The insertion 
of these buds of refinement was of course 
gradual and successive; but tradition 
distinguished an eminent effort at colo- 
nization, a sensible intrusion of emi- 
grants, “ who had crossed the hazy sea,” 
Natives, says Taliesin, of Gafis, who, 
under Hu the mighty, came from the 
summer ccuntry, and instructed the 
Cimmerians in agriculture. After the 
_ arrival of Hu, the island is said to have . 
been named Britain, from a governor 
of his appomting. ‘These persons are 
probably the Corineus and Brutus, so 
celebrated by Jeffrey of Monmouth : 
for Gadarn-Hu, or Hu the mighty, 
differs little from Corineus. These set- 
tlers are stated to have fled from the 
destruction of their city by a foreign 
power; their domestication must have 
preceded the arrival of Julius Cesar 
by a century, to account for the pro- 
gress of their arts and institutions: 
it seems probable, therefore, that Car- 
thage is the Gafis of Taliesin, and 
that the refugees from Roman de- 
vastation came hither by sea, with what 
property they could remove, and found- 
ed our love for order and for commerce. 
This is further corroborated by the cir- 
cumstance, that they are stated previ+ 
ously to have attempted a settlement in 
_ Aquitain. 
It is peculiarly probable that the taste 
for pedigrees, so notoriously cultivated 
by the Jews and Arabs, should have 
been introduced by a Pheenician or 
Carthaginian colony; and it is remark- 
able, that the oldest of all the Welsh 
pedigrees, that which Tysilio gives of 
CassiLellan, precisely amounts to Hisy- 
chion: that is, Hu-ysgown, or the great 
Hu, whom Gwyn ab Nudd, a bard of 
the fifth century, appears to consider as 
the introducer of oxen, and who per- 
haps really introduced the ychain banogy 
the oxen with high prominences, or but- 
faloes, noticed in the triads. To his 
descendant Coel, the grandson of Carac- 
tacus, is ascribed the introduction of the 
water-mill: the captivity of his family 
probably occasioned him to learn in Italy 
both its use and methed of construction. 
To the intelligence contained in the 
triads Mr. Turner seems little attached ; 
he abandons them to shy suspicion. 
«<I do not propose,” he says, “ this work 
to be a vindication of all the poems that have 
been generally attributed to Aneurin, ‘Ta- 
liesin, Merdhin, or Llywarch-Hén, or pro- 
miscuously published as theirs. My object 
is to authenticate the genuineness of such of 
them as I think beyond all dispute; and 
they are the following: 
«© Of Aneurtn—The Godolin. 
«Of Luywarcu Hex—The Elegy on Ge- 
raint ab Erbin—Ditto on Urien Resed— 
Ditto on Cynddylan—Ditto on Cadwollon—= 
The Poem on his Old Age—Ditto to Maen- 
wyn—Ditto to the Cuckoo. 
«© Of Merpain—tThe Avallenan. 
«© Of Tatresin—The Poems to Urien, 
and on his Battles—his Dialogue with Merd- 
