Long ago, by the shores of Lake Bala in the Kingdom of Powys, in the country that is now known as Wales, there lived a bald giant named Tegid Foel, and Ceridwen, his wife. Tegid Foel was lord of all the land within sight of the waters, and stretching for miles toward the sea. Ceridwen and her husband took tribute from the marginal estate of Gwyddno Garanhir, the Crane King, who ruled a low country that today is at the bottom of Cardigan Bay. At the time of this story, the Crane King’s lands were protected from the ocean’s waves only by a long wall with gates that had to be closed at every high tide.
Ceridwen was not just a noblewoman. She was a sorceress, and the keeper of the Cauldron of Inspiration. Her magic was outside of the three established magic arts of the time: Divination, enchantment, and transformation. The roots of her craft grew deeper than those of her contemporaries, crossing over into Annwn, the Other World.
Ceridwen and Tegid Foel had two children. The eldest child, Creirwy, was as beautiful as anyone could be, and second in cleverness only to her mother. Their son Morfran, however, was troubled from birth. Morfran had the heart of a poet, but his words could scarcely be heard through the croaking of his wounded voice. What’s more, he suffered under a curse that his songs would be forgotten almost as soon as they were heard.
Although Morfran was the heir to his father’s great estate, he never responded to his father’s invitations to accompany him to learn the tasks of management and command. Instead, Morfran kept to the shadows, emerging only when the sun was obscured in thick clouds. Unwashed, twisting his body away from the gaze of strangers, wearing always the same tattered black cloak, Morfran grew to resemble nothing so much as gigantic, gangly crow, and soon took on a new name: Afagddu, the Utter Darkness.
When Morfran reached the age when he should be recognized as a young noble, Ceridwen turned from anxiety into action. She desperately wanted her son to be accepted as an equal, but knew that she could not introduce him into society until she overcame his curse. So, Ceridwen contemplated her magical arts, and consulting an ancient book of verse, she divined a formula that could finally bring her boy out of the shadows. The oracle of the book assured her that, if she followed its instructions, her son would become a beautiful and brilliant leader in Camelot.
Ceridwen had her cauldron brought to a meadow at the shore of the lake, and filled it with herbs and berries, gathered at just the right time of year. To this she added waters from a sacred spring, and set a fire beneath the cauldron. The seething mass would transform into a potion of Awen, the gift of creative insight, but only if it boiled for a year and a day without ceasing. Just three drops of the elixir would be enough to transform Morfran into the wisest prophet of his time, and give him the ability to transform into the shape of anything he desired, so that he could cast off his gaunt form, and please the women at court with the appearance of a handsome youth. However, along with the magical formula came a warning: The cauldron will not cook the food of a coward.
Ceridwen could not attend to this brew herself. She had the duties of the noble lady of a manor to attend to, so she ordered an old man named Morda to tend the fire, and found a servant boy, Gwion Bach, to stir the cauldron day and night.
The constant smoke from underneath the cauldron was thick and caustic, and so, before the first month was complete, Morda kept his eyes closed, never once turning to look at what he was doing, feeling with his hands to find pieces of wood and place them on the fire.
Gwion, however, had nothing to do but to gaze into the potion as he stirred it, seeing the world reflected in its surface, but distorted into strange, curling shapes. To keep himself awake the boy began to tell himself stories about what was happening in that other world, composing little bits of verse to describe it, imagining that these scenes might be visions of the future, of the past, or of places in the present moment, but far away from the tedious tasks of cauldron keeping.
On morning of the last day of the potion’s brewing, Ceridwen led Morfran out of his shuttered room to the side of the cauldron, so that he would be ready to receive the elixir at the proper moment. Wincing at the bright light of the fire, however, Morfran quickly retreated under the dark shade of a nearby holly tree.
Gwion did not turn away from his work to greet the mother and her son, knowing that to do so would be regarded as a sign of impertinence toward those of more noble birth. Instead, he leaned closer over the cauldron to have one last look at the magical fluid within. He noticed that, in the pattern of bubbles and foam on the top of the potion, something new was happening. The liquid had taken on all the colors of the rainbows, and the steam rising seemed to stretch out to form wisps that looked as if they were reaching out into the world, seeking something to hold onto.
Without thinking about what he was doing, Gwion edged closer to the cauldron, ignoring the heat that began to curl the ends of the hairs on his arms and legs. He reached his hand out over the boiling liquid to grasp one of the tendrils of steam within his fingers, but as he did so, a bubble at the surface of the potion burst, and three tiny drops scalded the back of Gwion’s hand. Instinctively, Gwion brought his hand to his mouth to sooth the burn, and as he did so, he tasted the distilled wisdom of a year tending the brew. The gift of insight opened within his mind in an instant.
Gwion’s first prophetic vision was of the terrible wrath of Ceridwen upon the discovery of his theft of the potion’s power, inadvertent though it had been. Using the shapeshifting ability granted by the three drops of elixir, he transformed himself into a hare and ran as fast as he could to the west, toward the sea.
Without Gwion to stir it, the potion soon began to burn on the bottom of the cauldron. Within minutes, the cauldron cracked from the heat and the rest of the potion poured out through the gap, burning a channel through the turf as it raced down the hill into Lake Tegid. This foul, stinking brew was so toxic that when, the next day, King Gwyddno Garanhir stopped his horses 25 miles downstream, to drink out of the river that flowed from the lake, the animals fell to the ground, dead in an instant. The potion of insight had become a terrible poison.
When Ceridwen arrived an hour later to anoint her son and banish his curse forever, she could see right away that her plans had ended in disaster. She pulled Morfran from the shadows for an explanation, but he could do nothing but croak and point.
Enraged, Ceridwen turned to Morda, who remained on the ground next to the broken cauldron, feeding wood to the now useless flames, and slapped him so hard that his eyes popped wide open. “It’s the boy,” Morda whimpered, covering his face to protect it from the bright light and his mistress’s anger. “He’s the one who deserves to be punished.”
“You’re right,” Ceridwen said, “and when I catch him, I will eat him alive,” Using her mystical vision, she turned to the west, and spied Gwion the hare racing across a meadow miles away. In a blink, the sorceress transformed herself into a greyhound and raced after him.
Minutes later, hearing the tight breath of the hound behind him, Gwion jumped into the headwaters of the River Dwyryd. He became a salmon, following the current as it flowed out of the hills into a fertile valley.
It wasn’t long before Gwion heard the felt the scrape of the otter’s clams upon his scaly tail. Leaping out of the water, he thought, “I shall be a thrush, the interpreter of omens,” and leaped into the sky, beating at the air as his fins stretched into wings, leaving his pursuer far below.
Ceridwen didn’t take long to realize where her prey had gone. She changed skins to become a falcon faster than thought, rising up into the sky, then plummeted down to crush Gwion in her talons.
Feeling the coolness of her shadow overhead, Gwion caught a glimpse of a farmyard below, and disappeared in mid-air. Of course, he hadn’t really disappeared into nothing, but had merely changed shape again, into a tiny single grain of wheat. Gwion floated down slowly as the falcon raced past, but the raptor’s sharp eyes hadn’t missed the trick.
Ceridwen broke out of her dive with her wings outstretched, not as a bird of prey, but as a black hen. She pecked her way confidently across the ground, and did not change back into human form until she had swallowed every grain there was to be found, Gwion Bach trapped deep inside her belly.
The sorceress put the hunt out of her mind for a season, disturbed at the failure of her potion, but satisfied for the moment with her vengeance. As she rested by her fire at midwinter, however, she felt the stirring of a baby in her womb. Thinking back, she recalled that her husband had been away from home on a long journey when the disaster with the cauldron had taken place.
With the same mystical sight she had used to find Gwion Bach as a hare in a distant meadow, she now found him, alive and kicking, a seed taken root within her own body. At that moment, she resolved to slaughter the baby the moment it was born.
Ceridwen’s resolve faltered however, after she gave birth and held the baby in her arms for the first time. He shone like the sun as he looked up at her, holding her gaze as if he already knew what she had in mind, yet smiling confidently, certain that he was safe.
This baby was everything Ceridwen had wanted Morfran to be. The potion of Awen had, as promised, succeeded in providing her with a son imbued with insight. That this son would be none other than Gwion Bach reborn was a merely a ripple in the magic that she had not anticipated.
Ceridwen could not abandon her resolve, yet neither could she kill the beautiful child with her own hands. so, taking the middle path, she decided to abandon Gwion Bach to his fate. She placed him inside a leather bag, and cast the bag into the sea.
For nine days and nights, the baby in the bag floated on the salty waters, until Halloween arrived.
It was known in those times that Halloween was a day when fortunes might be reversed, when those who had bad luck might find a path into a more prosperous future. In particular, the people along the coastline believed that those who fished for salmon on Halloween would gather the best catch of the year.
So it was that Gwyddno Garanhir, still brooding from the poisoning of his finest horses, sent his son, Prince Elphin to tend the fish weirs along his coastline on the last day of October. Elphin was well-meaning, but every project that he touched turned to disaster, and his father worried what would become of the kingdom after his death. “Perhaps you will at least bring the people an ample meal, if you cannot serve them in court,” Garanhir told his son, and dismissed him.
All day and all night, Elphin wandered between the weirs, but found not even one fish. Only with the light of breaking dawn did he discover one catch: A leather bag snagged on one of his father’s traps.
Elphin opened the bag, hoping to find money or an object of worth that he could sell at market, but instead found a baby with a face that shone like a cloud barely concealing the sun. Although it was clearly newborn, the baby spoke with a clear voice. “Prince Elphin, your worries may now cease. Do not be dissatisfied with your catch, for despair brings no advantage, and no one can see the true source of success.”
When Elphin arrived back at the castle, he hid the baby in his cloak, unsure of what others might think to see him with an infant in his arms. Thus, walking into the court, he earned the curiosity of all his father’s advisors.
“What have you brought me?” asked Gwyddno Garanhir.
“I caught no fish,” the prince admitted, “but something better.”
His father groaned. “Show me what you have,” he demanded.
So, Elphin unwrapped his cloak and showed the baby. The court erupted into laughter, and Garanhir hid his face in his hands.
“The depth of your ill fortune was never seen until now,” the king groaned. “Every year, we have had three days feasting from weirs at Halloween, but now we shall go hungry, thanks to your distraction with this baby, wherever it may have come from.”
Ignoring the uproar, Elphin lowered the baby to the floor, and it stood upon its thick legs, and walked forward across the cold stone to the feet of the king, silencing the entire court. Without a stitch of clothing on, the child stared into the eyes of the king, and declared in a voice that could be heard by all, “Though I am small, you shall find strength in me. On the foaming beach of the ocean, in the day of trouble, I shall be of more service to you than three thousand salmon, and I shall profit you more than any trap.”
Then, from the baby’s forehead came a light so intense that it filled all the room that made it feel as if they were on a hilltop at noon on a summer day, and not in late autumn within the shadow of castle walls.
“Let him be named Taliesin,” said Garanhir, lifting the baby into his arms, “after the brilliance of his shining brow.”
From that day forward, Taliesin served as the top advisor to Gwyddno Garanhir, and to Elphin. He grew to become the greatest bard that England had ever seen, and ever would see, advising all the great leaders of his day, including even King Arthur in his court at Camelot.