The Coming of the King [antikvár]

The Feasting of King Ceneu It was on the eve of the Kalan Mai that king Ceneu of the Red Neck was accustomed to hold a great feasting, attended by the noblest of the Men of the North and others of their blood and fosterage from the furthest limits of the Island of Prydein and its Three Adjacent Islands who had wintered at the royal courthouse. Great was his hospitality - as great, it is said, as that of king Rhydderch the Generous in former times. No one, so the poets tell, would leave king Ceneu's court at the great city of Caer Lliwelydd, be he king, cleric or bard, without bearing away costly gifts, and seldom did his breath fail to stink of good ale. Loud was the laughter, merry the games, and gallant the boasting as king Ceneu and his comrades drew the choicest morsels of pork from the seething cauldron in the centre of his hall. All was in due order, and the quarrelling over precedence no more than was fitting when so many were assembled of the ancient lineage of the Thirteen Tribes of the North. It was the year that king Edwin of Bryneich was baptized into the faith of Crist, and no one performed that baptizing but Rhun, son of Urien, the uncle of king Ceneu. The monks of Llwyfenydd were proud that the sea-bandits looked to the land of Rheged for a prince of Prydein to baptize their heathen king, and held that Rhun and the faith of Crist had brought the men of Bryneich into submission to king Ceneu, Rhun's nephew. But king Ceneu of the Red Neck held scant store by the faith of lessu Grist, and vowed that, baptism or no baptism, he would before the summer was out drive king Edwin and the whole tribe of the Eingl back into the ocean whence they came. King Ceneu held to the ways of his forefathers: all that year he wore an adder coiled about his neck. It was larger than snakes of its kind, beautifully marked with a yellow brighter than gorse-flowers in the month of Awst and etched in black darker than the Waters of Annwfn. At times it was seen to raise its clever, narrow head and flicker its tongue into the ear of the king. Then king Ceneu mab Í' I Í