Gwydion and other Names of the Culture Hero.
Even Taliessin, the most extravagant in his pretensions of all Celtic bards, acknowledged one who took precedence over him, and that was Gweir, whom we have found called also Geir, and whom Taliessin is made to describe as the first to go into Caer Sidi, where he underwent captivity which resulted in his being a bard for ever afterwards. The name Geir has been provisionally claimed as one of Gwydion's, and he is now to be considered under another and a third name. A line occurs in a Taliessin poem[1] where Gwydion is called Gwydion Seon tewdor, where Seon tewdor is probably to be taken as standing in grammatical apposition to Gwydion. To dispose of tewdor, suffice it to say that in the Welsh orthography of the present day it would be written tewddor, meaning literally thick-door, but used poetically here in the sense of stout defence or strong protection: that is to say, the poet regarded Seon as a strong protection or one that gave it, and the word is applied in another of these poems[2] to the gwledig Cuneᵭa. But our interest centres in the vocable Seon; it occurs also in another poem,[3] where mention is made of the planets in the following verses:
|
'Seith seren yssyd. |
'Seven stars are there |
Here Seon is seen in the character of a philosopher or man of science, who knows the nature or substance, lite-
