as well as bard or poet. It were a work of supererogation in me to bring forward a hundredth part of passages found in the different books of triads, to illustrate the verification of each quality in proprio ordine nominum. Such a process would tax your patience and indulgence far too much. Let sceptics study these matchless antiquarian germs of thought and purity of diction in the Adamitic vernacular. Suffice it, however, to adduce the following as examples of another order of triads, to open the eyes of the world as to the imputed gross ignorance, immoral practices, and barbarian practises of the ancient pre-Roman Cimmerians : 1. The three primary privileges of the bards of the Isle of Britain Maintenance wherever they go; that no naked weapon be borne in their presence; and that their testimony be preferred to that of all others. 2. The three ultimate objects of bardism: To reform morals and customs; to secure peace; and praise everything that is good and excellent. 3.-Three things forbidden to a bard: immorality; satire; and the bearing of arms. (Dwyn anfawl, dwyn anfoes, a dwyn arvau.) 4. The three modes of instruction used by the bards of the Isle of Britain: The instruction of voice, song, and usage, by means of convention (or congress). 5. The three delights of the bards of the Isle of Britain: The prosperity of science; the reformation of manners; and the triumph of peace over devastation and pillage. 6. The three splendid honors of the bards of the Isle of Britain The triumph of learning over ignorance; the triumph of reason over irrationality; and the triumph of peace over depredation and plunder. 7. The three attributes of the bards of the Isle of Britain: To make truth manifest, and to diffuse the knowledge of it; to perpetuate the praise of all that is right; and to prevail with peace over disorder and violence. 3. The three necessary but reluctant duties of the bards of the Isle of Britain: Secresy, for the sake of peace and the public good; invective lamentation demanded by justice; and the unsheathing of the sword against the lawless and the predatory. Again, the book of the Institutional Triads' confirms the seventy-first triad " as to the particular duties of the three orders" as follows: "The three orders of primitive bards: The Presiding Bard, or Primitive Bard Positive, according to the rights, voice, and usage of the bardic conventions, whose office it is to superintend and regulate; the Ovate, according to poetical genius, exertion and contingency, whose province it is to act from the impulse of poetical inspiration; and the Druid, according to reason, nature, and necessity of things, whose duty it is to instruct." Again, among the Constitutions and Ordinances of Bards and Minstrels," I find the order of bards classified with the appropriate duties and regulations of poets and musicians, according to their respective degrees, as Dyscy bl Yspas, Dyscybl Dyscyblaidd and Dyscybl Pencerddiad, who, as Probationary Pupil, a Disciplined Pupil, and a Master Pupil, appear to have been the three classes of graduates, immediately following the Pencerdd or Chief Bard, though the order is here inverted. As such they had the liberty to itinerate for the purpose of obtaining gratuities. The term Dyscybl, the root of disco and discipul-us is derived from dysg, learning, and cabol, polished, bright. Further on in Section 9, I discover another redistribution of the bardic order into "four graduated and four frivolous.” The four kinds of graduated bards and minstrels are:— I.-Poets or bards, who wore the band of their order, and who, when graduated, are intituled, 1.-A Primary Bard 2.-A Didactic or Teaching Bard 3.-A Herald Bard; II.-Harpers (Telinorion); III.-Performers of the Crwth, with many strings IV. Vocalists (Dadgeiniaid). IV.-The Fiddler, or player on the crwth with three strings.— Hence the bard Iorwerth accompanying the sounds of the melodious harp with those of the gut-breaking crwth or crowd of 'willow,' sings or Tra fu'r prif-feirdd, hardd weision cerddiawn Nid ef a berchid berchyll son debyg Grwth helyg terig tòr goluddion; In the days of the high primary bards, the fine ministers of song, No honour was allowed to what resembles the noise of pigs, The crwth, or crotta Britannica, is mentioned by Venantius Fortunatus, in A. D. 609. The cruth signifies anything bulging or protuberant.' Romanus lyrâ, plaudit tibi Barbarus harpa "These bardic regulations (modified from age to age to the requirements of national congresses) continued," says the Cambro Briton, "to have an influence on Cimbric poetry until the death Dafydd ap Grufydd, in the year 1283, when the institution of bardism was dissolved, after which the poetry of Cambria, by indulging in the flights and the romances of fiction, assumed a character more resembling that of other countries than it had previously known." Let us now cast a serious glance to Greece and Rome and ascertain whether the druid bards had a literary-a civilised reputation before the Volusenian legend as reconnoitringly forged on Cæsar's version by the expurgating mutilations of a Scaliger, who knew as much of the Asiatic history-the prehistoric Cimmerii of Ynys Prydain in omni vel ullâ re, as he did of the inhabitants of the solar system, or of the man in the moon. If he did, he either ignored the magnitude of the idea or misconceived its national bearings. Several writers, both Hellenic and Roman, bear unequivocal testimony to this point. Hyperborean ideas, though not systematised or defined, were not ignored and nullified by Hecatæus, Herodotus, Festus Avienus, Ennius, Diodorus, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Virgil, Pliny, Suetonius, and Possedonius, cum multis aliis, or Cæsar when rightly interpreted, without certain references to their poetic effusions, their doctrines of philosophy, or their metaphysical or astronomical attainments, and so forth, as well as to the civilised condition of the Britannic entertainers of Asiatic and European visitors, in the days of Ezekiel, the prophet of Israel. Lucan, who flourished between 38 and 65 A.D., alludes to the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, as chanted by the bards. Vos quoque, qui fortes animas belloque peremptas Laudibus in longum Vates diffunditis ævum Plurima securi fudistis carmina Bardi. Ammianus Marcellinus, in accord with preceding centuries, draws our attention to another important fact, that the Bardi cum dulcibus lyræ modulis cantârunt. The bards sang of the exploits of valiant heroes and nobles of the land "in sweet tunes adapted to the melting notes of the melodious harp." 108 THE OVYDDION OR VATES. "How charming is divine philosophy "Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, "Where no crude surfeit reigns." THE second order must now engage our attention. The term ofydd or ovydd is derived from ov or of, atoms, and ydd, what is clear and transparent,' and is thus explained in Owen's Dictionary, as "persons initiated into first principles or elements, a scientific personage, a natural philosopher, a teacher of science, the name for a member of the scientific class in the bardic system; in short an Ovate." This form or root was the convertible element of Vates-Ovyd=Ovidius. Ennius, one of the earliest writers of pure or readable latinity, who flourished about 515 A. U. C., i. e., between 239 and and 169 B. C., confirms this interpretation as identical with an early Latian or Roman poet. He could have no difficulty as to its primeval Umbrian or Sabine definition, since he undertook to write, in his 'Annales,' the earliest history of Latium and its bordering territories, abounding in different tongues and saturnian druidical metres. "Scriptere alii rem "Versibu' quos olim fauni vatesque canebant “Quum neque musarum scopulos quisquam superarat, 66 Nec dicti studiosus erat." The Umbri, to make a slight digression into primeval Italy, preceded, it is computed by about 300 years, the victorious incursions of the Etrusci into their own territories. The Umbri and Sabini coalesced with the inhabitants of Latium about a century and a half, more or less, after the foundation of the city of Rome, and combinedly laid the basis of the future Latin from this forced amalgamation of tongues foreign to each other. The absence of the C in Umbri is a doctrine so well known to scholars that it requires no other comment than the citation of the following examples, which must for the present satisfy both doubt and curiosity-Aia for Taia, iv for xwv, Elia for Velia, ocles for cocles, aulon for caulon, and so forth. Among this branch of the Cimmerian race would, therefore, be found, besides the learned ovyddion, another inferior class of minstrels, equivalent probably to the" frivolous pipers or fiddlers" of the other branch, and termed Ffawyn-au-Bawyn-au-Fawn-i =Faun-i, 'dirty strolling fellows,' or minstrels who went about singing for similar gratuities, in contradistinction to the honorable position and acquirements of either Gaulic or Britannic bardi and vates. Hear what Scaliger and Lord Macaulay, the Arcades Ambo of ancient lore, intimate about fawns, bards, and vates of Umbria :— "Scaliger, in a note on Varro (de linqua Latina), suggests, with great ingenuity, [I quote Lord Macaulay,] that the Fawns, who were represented by the superstition of later ages as a race of monsters, half gods and half brutes, may really have been a class of men who exercised, in Latium, at a very remote period, the same function which belonged to the magians in Persia and to the bards in Gaul." Scaliger and Lord Macaulay, if we take the above as truth-suspecting samples of their historic wisdom, knew as much about druidic-bardic distinctions of the Cimmerian race as the Chinese know of the value to be placed on the wreckless expurgation of the one, or on the validity of the history of the other. Further on, however, he is compelled to admit that Cato the Censor, who also lived in the days of the second Punic war, mentions this lost literature (of the prehistoric vates) in his lost work on the antiquities of his country. Many years before his time there were ballads in praise of illustrious men, and these ballads it was the fashion for the guests at banquets to sing in turn while the piper played. "Would," exclaims Cicero, "that we had the old ballads of which Cato speaks." Again, he mournfully asks "Quid? nostri veteres ubi sunt ? “Quos olim fauni vatesque canebant." I contend that those lost verses of which Cicero and others speak, formed part of Umbric and early Latin literature, and would have been understood by their cognate Cimmerians of Ynys Prydain for divers reasons to be hereafter explained. But, in the mean time, I find it incumbent on me to select a few expressions from this Cimmerian district, so as to test the validity of my bare assertions in regard to doctrines about to be broached, as well as to confound the impotency of a mere flippant denial of a scholastic sceptic-compact in his own little nutshell, plucked from the tree of ages and lying dormant at his feet. I purport adopting a similar analysing process with Hebrew and other cognate dialects, which cannot be so patent to the world at large, in connection with my base of ovatian operations. But, at present, in addition to the hundreds of terms which will be found scattered on my page, I ask my opponent, whoever he |