Taliesin

Taliesin is the earliest named Welsh poet, a bard of the sixth century said to have sung at the courts of Urien of Rheged and his son Owain in the north of Britain. The poems collected under his name come down in the Book of Taliesin, a manuscript of the early fourteenth century; a handful of them may preserve genuinely early praise-poetry, while many others are later prophecy, mythological riddle and boast in the persona of a legendary Taliesin.

The ascription of every poem here is traditional, not established. They are given in the English translation by the Rev. Robert Williams, printed with the Welsh text in William F. Skene's The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868), under Skene's titles and numbers.