I had a dream last night about the Welsh cauldron goddess, Cerridwen, and her two sons. It reminded me of this poem I wrote several years ago about the son who became Taliesin, the greatest of the Welsh bards.
Gwion Tells
Cerridwen had a daughter
A beauty from the start
But her son was so ugly
It almost broke her heart
(He wasn’t a bad or evil guy, just so horrible in appearance that only Cerridwen could bear to look at him. After I’d worked there for awhile, I got used to him. It was Cerridwen I was afraid of.)
Cerridwen gathered flowers
She gathered dark and light
She spoke her words of power
To make a brew of might
(Gwion Bach – Official Assistant to Herself, aka cauldron boy. Ok – I was the stirrer. All day. Every day. For a year and a day. Terrified every minute)
Cerridwen filled her cauldron
With water, earth, and sun
She brewed a wisdom potion
To redeem her monstrous son
(The idea was that this potion would give her son all knowledge, all wisdom – enlightenment. I don’t know why someone with her power didn’t just make him better looking, but this was what she came up with.)
Cerridwen’s cauldron simmered
I stirred if faithfully
But the wisdom meant for her son
Was all consumed by me
(Accidentally, of course. I’d been stirring for the year and the day when the nasty stuff spurted up and burned my thumb, I stuck my thumb in my mouth, and well, then I knew everything – seasons, elements, dualities and their resolution, life, death, this world and the next. And I knew that Cerridwen knew.)
Cerridwen knew my habit
I knew I would be found
I changed into a rabbit
She chased me as a hound
(It was great. I thought, “I wish I was a rabbit,” and well, then I was!)
Cerridwen was an otter
When I became a fish
I rose up as a swallow
A hawk was then her wish
(If I hadn’t been so scared I would have stayed a fish. The water was cool and like dense supportive air, only it was, you know – wet. But so beautiful)
Cerridwen was close on me
A fearsome bird of prey
I changed into a grain of wheat
And fell into the hay
(I really think I could have outrun her if I’d been more familiar with my powers. Each one was more astonishing, more amazing than the last. Except for the grain of wheat idea. Its consciousness was so, well plantlike, that it just didn’t occur to me – as a grain of wheat – to be afraid anymore.)
Cerridwen was a chicken
A-scratching in the hay
She swallowed up my wheat grain.
It was the first of May.
(And so there I sat for nine long months. Actually, I kept transforming. From wheat grain to tadpole to a fish again, floating in Cerridwen's ocean. And then a bird, a mammal, and then I was born again – a baby boy!)
Cerridwen meant to kill me
When first she saw my face
But when she looked upon me
She saw my radiant grace
(She just couldn’t do it. She really wasn’t the type to destroy life needlessly. It was just that she had been so angry and disappointed when I had received the dose of blessed enlightenment that was meant to redeem her poor afflicted son. But now I was her son too.)
Cerridwen took a crane skin
And sewed me in it tight
She placed me in the river
At the kiss of morning light
(Well, most people know what happened after that. I floated, just as I was until next May Day Eve and then I got caught in poor Elfin’s weir. When he opened the crane skin coracle and saw me glowing in there he said, “Would you look at the radiant brow on this kid!” Which in Welsh is Taliesin – radiant brow that is – and that was my name ever after. I saved Elfin and his family and became the greatest bard who ever lived. But . . .)
Cerridwen was my mother
I owe her my tongue’s skill
She refined me with her cauldron
She turned me in her mill
Cerridwen was my mother
She gave me second birth
And through her matrix I became
A bard of highest worth
Cerridwen was my mother
Though I feared her at the start
She still resides within me
In my changeless inmost heart.
(The image at the top of the post can be found here.)
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