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Updated: June 13, 2025
Taliessin learning this, set forth from home to visit the palace and free his adoptive father, Elphin. In those days it was the custom of kings to sit in the hall and dine in royal state with lords and bards about them who should keep proclaiming the greatness and glory of the king and his knights.
On Hallowmass Eve, when the spiritual people are let loose on earth for a season, I will take my stand in the burial-ground of Corrie; and when my Elphin and his unchristened troop come past, with the sound of all their minstrelsy, I will leap on him and win him, or perish for ever.
I would neither seek mine own people, nor allow myself to be sought by Elphin Montgomery's. I enwrapped myself in a fine garment of defiance.
At length, in the urgency of his impatience, Morton could not forbear exclaiming, in a tone of hasty impatience, "Down, Elphin! down, sir!" "Ye ken our dog's name," said the old lady, struck with great and sudden surprise, "ye ken our dog's name, and it's no a common ane. And the creature kens you too," she continued, in a more agitated and shriller tone, "God guide us! it's my ain bairn!"
And Rhun returned to the king with the finger and the ring as a proof, to show that he had cut it off from her hand without her awaking from her sleep of intemperance. The king rejoiced greatly at these tidings, and he sent for his councillors, to whom he told the whole story from the beginning. And he caused Elphin to be brought out of prison, and he chided him because of his boast.
And Taliesin showed his mistress how that Elphin was in prison because of them; but he bade her be glad, for that he would go to Maelgan's court to free his master. So he took leave of his mistress, and came to the court of Maelgan, who was going to sit in his hall, and dine in his royal state, as it was the custom in those days for kings and princes to do at every chief feast.
Therefore I, Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Will loosen Elphin Out of a golden fetter." Then he sang to them a riddle: "Discover thou what is The strong creature from before the flood, Without flesh, without bone, Without vein, without blood, Without head, without feet; It will neither be older nor younger Than at the beginning.
The king was mightily wroth with Elphin for so stoutly withstanding him, respecting the goodness of his wife; wherefore he ordered him to his prison a second time, saying that he should not be loosed thence until he had proved the truth of his boast, as well concerning the wisdom of his bard as the virtues of his wife. In the meantime his wife and Taliesin remained joyful at Elphin's dwelling.
In a short space some of his fellows told the king all the boastings of Elphin; and the king ordered him to be thrown into a strong prison, until he might show the truth as to the virtues of his wife, and the wisdom of his bard. Now Rhun was the most graceless man in the world, and there was neither wife nor maiden with whom he held converse but was evil spoken of.
On the next day, the 1st of May, Elphin examined the weir basket and found nothing, yet as he went away, he saw the boat covered with the skin rest on the post of the weir.
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