The Song of Taliesin [antikvár]

NTRODUCTION n 19911 had just finished working on a historical study of native British shamanism. In the process of the ten-year period of research undertaken to complete this work, I found myself increasingly drawn to a body of stories and poems, many of them fragmentary, based on two stands of the history and mythology of the Celts. One was the vast body of material dealing with the story of the hero Arthur; the other concerned a semimythical Bard named Taliesin. Arthur, of course, is better known to us today as "King" Arthur, a medieval monarch whose legendary exploits, along with those of the Knights of the Round Table, are familiar throughout the Western world. The real Arthur was a sixth-century warrior who led a resistance movement against invaders from the north (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) and insured himself a place in the mythical history of Britain by preserving the Celtic identity of the country for some forty years. During this time, the invaders became settlers, and the race still known as "Anglo-Saxons" came into being through intermarriage between the Northerners and the native Celts. The figure of Taliesin is much more shadowy. Almost nothing is known of him beyond what