The Birth of Taliesin - a Celtic Tale from North Wales

Taliesin was an adviser to Kings, and a poet of great renown in the area which was later called Gwynedd, in North Wales (map here). His birth was mystical in the extreme. His mother was Ceridwen, a queen among witches. Taliesin was not sired by her husband, the giant Tegid Voel, nor by anyone else. Strange, yes, but nine months before his birth his mother had swallowed whole a youth called Gwion. How did that come about?

Well, Ceridwen had three children, one of whom was a badly disfigured son. Ceridwen brewed a potion to cure the disfigurement, and whilst brewing asked a lad called Gwion to tend the cauldron - it would take a year and a day for the brew to gather its strength. The frothing bubbling brew splashed onto Gwion and he acquired all the magical powers of the brew (and at the same time the brew became magically impotent and poisonous). Gwion's new magical powers enabled him to foretell that Ceridwen would be angry beyond all measure, and so he ran away.

Ceridwen chased Gwion, who morphed into a hare. Ceridwen morphed into a greyhound. They morphed and remorphed through pigeon and red kite, otter and vole, to grain of wheat and black hen. Finally, as the hen she caught Gwion in a grain store and swallowed him whole!

So, nine months later, she bore a son. Knowing that her newborn son was Gwion, she prepared to kill him. His beauty though, completely captivated her - she could not kill him, nor could she raise him as her own. So, she wrapped him in wool and put him in a leather saddlebag, which she threw into the sea.

The wild winds and tides of the ragged Welsh coast washed the saddlebag into a river near the town known today as Barmouth. This river was known far and wide for its rich salmon migrations, and a salmon trap had been built by the landowner to harvest the salmon. It was when the tide receded on May Day that the landowner's son (named Elphin, who was an unfortunate lad with no luck) came to collect the salmon that he discovered the saddlebag in the salmon trap. When he opened the leather bag, he saw the baby's head and cried 'Taliesin', which means 'radiant brow'.

So that is how Taliesin was born and named. On the ride back to Elphin's home, the magical baby Taliesin told Elphin the story of his mystical birth, of Ceridwen and of Gwion. Elphin's bad fortune changed from that day on, as the wise and perceptive child Taliesin was raised as his son.