'But I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which
was formed before I was;' and he guides them to the Owl of Cwm
Cawlwyd. 'When first I came hither,' says the Owl, 'the wide valley
you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up.
And there grew a second wood; and this wood is the third. My wings,
are they not withered stumps?' Yet the Owl, in spite of his great
age, had never heard of Mabon; but he offered to be guide 'to where
is the oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled
most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.' The Eagle was so old, that a rock,
from the top of which he pecked at the stars every evening, was now
not so much as a span high. He knew nothing of Mabon; but there was
a monster Salmon, into whom he once struck his claws in Llyn Llyw,
who might, perhaps, tell them something of him. And at last the
Salmon of Llyn Llyw told them of Mabon. 'With every tide I go along
the river upwards, until I come near to the walls of Gloucester, and
there have I found such wrong as I never found elsewhere.' And the
Salmon took Arthur's messengers on his shoulders up to the wall of
the prison in Gloucester, and they delivered Mabon.
Nothing could better give that sense of primitive and pre-mediaeval
antiquity which to the observer with any tact for these things is, I
think, clearly perceptible in these remains, at whatever time they
may have been written; or better serve to check too absolute an
acceptance of Mr.
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