Court of Maelgwn Gwynedd
Sometime later, during a Christmas feast, a crowd of lords, knights, and squires praised King Maelgwn Gwynedd. Amongst this, Elphin interjected that he had a wife who is even more chaste than the King’s and that he also had a bard who is more proficient than all of the king’s bards combined. When the king heard of this boast from his companions, he was very angry and imprisoned Elphin.
To test Elphin’s claims, Maelgwn sent his son Rhun (who had a reputation of never being turned down by a woman) to Elphin’s house to despoil his wife’s virtue. Taliesin intervened just in time with a clever scheme that involved his mistress exchanging places with a scullery maid. Rhun sat down to have dinner with the disguised maid, and when she fell asleep he cut off a finger of hers that wore Elphin’s signet ring. When the king saw this, he tried to boast to Elphin that his wife was not so virtuous after all. Elphin then calmly inspected the finger and told the king that there was no way that this finger actually belonged to his wife. The size was wrong, the nails were not manicured enough, and there was evidence of kneading rye dough which was not an activity that his wife took part in. This angered the king even more, and Elphin was once again imprisoned.
To prove Elphin’s boast about his bard, Taliesin showed up at Maelgwn’s court. Somehow, Taliesin supernaturally enchanted the king’s bards so that they could only pucker their lips and make nonsensical sounds. When the king summoned Taliesin to see why this was done, Taliesin replied to the king in a series of stanzas. Taliesin’s wisdom amazed and intimidated the king, so he decided to release Elphin.
Once freed, Taliesin provoked Elphin to wager that he also had a faster horse than the king. This resulted in a race to prove that boast. Under Taliesin’s instruction, Elphin whipped each of the king’s 24 horses on the rump with a burnt holly stick. A cap was thrown down exactly where Elphin’s horse finished, and gold was later discovered to be buried under the same spot. In this way, Taliesin repaid his master for taking him in and raising him.
The tale of Taliesin ends with him telling prophecies to the Maelgwn about the origin of the human race and what will now happen to the world.
Read more about this topic: Taliesin, Legendary Account of His Life
Famous quotes containing the word court:
“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)