Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

357cauldron, and a blind man named Morda to keep the fire going,and she made incantations over it and put in magical herbs fromtime to time as Feryllt's book directed. But one day towards theend of the year three drops of the magic liquor flew out of thecauldron and lighted on the finger of Gwion. Like Finn macCumhal on a similar occasion, he put his finger in his mouth, andimmediately became gifted with supernatural insight. He sawthat he had got what was intended for Avagddu, and he saw alsothat Ceridwen would destroy him for it if she could. So he fledto his own land, and the cauldron, deprived of the sacred drops,now contained nothing but poison, the power of which burst thevessel, and the liquor ran into a stream hard by and poisoned thehorses of Gwyddno Garanhir which drank of the water. Whencethe stream is called the Poison of the Horses of Gwyddno fromthat time forth.Ceridwen now came on the scene and saw that her year'slabour was lost. In her rage she smote Morda with a billet [414]of firewood and struck out his eye, and she then pursued afterGwion Bach. He saw her and changed himself into a hare. Shebecame a greyhound. He leaped into a river and became a fish,and she chased him as an otter. He became a bird and she ahawk. Then he turned himself into a grain of wheat and droppedamong the other grains on a threshing-floor, and she became ablack hen and swallowed him. Nine months afterwards she borehim as an infant; and she would have killed him, but could noton account of his beauty, “so she wrapped him in a leathern bag,and cast him into the sea to the mercy of God.”The Luck of ElphinNow Gwyddno, of the poisoned horses, had a salmon weir onthe strand between Dyvi and Aberystwyth. And his son Elphin,a needy and luckless lad, one day fished out the leathern bagas it stuck on the weir. They opened it, and found the infant