Again, nor have been, since the world began.
Forth from his hand a fiery brand hath burst,
Sprouting with leaves throughout its utmost length.
Another marvel-wise his judgment was-

A cheek that was with ugly warp deformed
Assumed a nature tender, soft and warm,
Pillar of Powys! he becomes to us,

In prison, for the time a screen of strength,
His people's shelter, an intrepid lord,

From their youth up sustaining them in wealth,
A paragon of penance in the land.

VIII.

The Man of Penance hath the highest faith
In God, who rules and regulates the world.
Let all believe He multiplies His gifts,
With plenteous outpour on the innocent.
Save to the faithless, I believe that good
Nor fails, nor falls away, nor is destroyed.
On Him who made me, and will end my life,
Creator, Ruler, Captain of the Faith,
My Lord, who doth endow my flow of song
With fair forthcomings of the teeming spring,
Upholder and Indweller in the Present,
Who made me out of the four elements,
In Heaven's Creator, in the Light Supreme,
Who made me, Minstrel heretofore, to be
The Bard that now I am, I do believe.

IX.

A Bard am I, in Britain's Monarch's Court,
The Chair of Song who owns among the Bards.
Grey are the noble steeds the Chief bestows
On me, their hue the salmon's of the stream,
Their bulk, I reckon, is proportionate
To hero's stature, for the generous king
To me hath prisoners made of oat-fed steeds,
Long-stepping, even-paced and powerful.
In Meifod tokens are of gallantry
To valiant Britons, in the mighty feast,
In mead, and in the multitude of men,
Her contributions to our men of lore,
Her relics twain, in action consonant,
That raises them until they are enriched.
Her oldest man was born upon her land;
May she be free between her rivers twain !

Her foster-son, the Chief of glorious gifts,
Him will I praise, the Bards shall praise him all.
The Archdeacon, whom she venerates, I love,
Caradoc, freely lavish of his gifts,

That nourish homeless wanderers with his wealth,
Of the Powysians pastor provident.

Thus are we set, without contentiousness,
Around the lamps, the dainties, and the horns,
In one abode, carousing at one cost,
All brothers in one father's unity.

With all compassionate and gentle youths,
And with the angels, the Creator's host,
Hosts upon Hosts, in countless multitude,
By pleasing God, by being cleared of guilt,
And by the favour of my Lord, may I
Dwell in the land, whose denizens at last
Delivered from their exile, find their home.

As in the commencement of this poem, Tyssiliaw is compared to a serpent, and, again, Oswald is compared, in the fourth stanza of this poem, to the serpent, I think that I cannot do better than attempt to give some account of the honour and worship paid to this animal in connection with the Tree of Life and the Sun. "This animal", Taautos tells us, "was esteemed by the ancients to be the most inspirited of all reptiles, and of a fiery nature; inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit, without either hands or feet. It is, moreover, long lived, and has the quality not only of putting off its old age and assuming a second youth, but of receiving at the same time an augmentation of its size and strength. And when it has fulfilled the appointed measure of its existence, it consumes itself, as Taautos has laid down in the sacred books, upon which account this animal is introduced in the sacred rites and ceremonies." The Sun-god, as the giver of life, was

1 Sanchoniathan, ii, 12. Sanchoniathan was one of the oldest Phoenician historians. He wrote on the ancient monuments of his native country which were dedicated to Thaut. He says that the first inhabitants of Phoenicia raised their hands up to heaven towards the sun, that they looked upon him as the sole King of Heaven,

represented under the type of the serpent. This animal readily forms a circle, and a circle was the emblem of eternity. The serpent was also celebrated for its wisdom (Gen. iii, 1; Matt. x, 16). Athens, the abode of Athenê or Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, being peculiarly snake-guarded. "Athenê, also", as Professor Ruskin observes, "often in later works carries a serpent for a shield sign. It has been said with considerable truth that, "in the mythology of the primitive world, the serpent is universally the symbol of the sun, and the generative power of the solar beams is always typified by pendent Uræi. The Uræus is the basilisk or cobra di capello. The Basilisk-Arau of Kam is styled in an ancient papyrus, 'Soul of the body of Ra', the sun."

In the Kamic funeral ritual the mystic celestial serpent is thus apostrophised: "Say, thou who hast gone, O Serpent of millions of years. Millions of years are following to him. The road is of fire, they whirl in fire behind him." The Uræus is the idiograph of the word "immortal", whence the phrase, "the living years of the Uræus", as applied to the immortality of the king. "When the Egyptians wish to express extended period (aiôn) they depict a serpent whose tail is concealed by the rest of his body, which they call Ouraios or Uræus. The serpent is exceedingly long-lived, and not only retains its youth by putting off old age, but also it is wont to receive a greater increase of strength. The serpent, again, forms a circle, and was so represented with its tail in its mouth by the Phoenicians, and thus appears on numerous Gnostic gems; and a circle was the symbol of eternity and of God. The circle-formed serpent often appears in connection with symbolic representations of Chronos, the Time-god. These coiled circles, sun traversed, represent the Kamic serpent Bata "on the high

and honoured him by the name of Baal Samim, which in their language signifies King of Heaven, and raised columns to the elements, and worshipped them.

1 The Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt. By W. R. Cooper, Esq., F.R.S. London: Hardwicke, 192, Piccadilly.

hill of heaven"; the kampe or caterpillar, i. e., the creature that turns and winds; the Gnostic serpent Chnuphis, tail in mouth; and the serpent-of-eternal-years, which is represented as encircling the god Hapimou, the Nile personified. (Cooper, Serpent Myths, 22). The same symbol appears again in a well-known and very remarkable Hindu representation of the three worlds, two of them elephant-supported, while the three gigantic elephants that bear the lower or terrestrial world stand on the back of a vast kosmic tortoise, which in turn rests upon the all-surrounding serpent of eternity, tail in mouth, as usual. The connection between the sun and the time-serpent is also very clearly illustrated in Figs. 56 and 92 in Mr. Cooper's able and interesting essay. The first shows the head of the Supreme Deity encompassed by the serpent of good, by the side of which sails the boat of the sun; and in the second, the sacred beetle of Kheper-Ra in the solar disk is surrounded by the Serpent Ranno with seven involutions, with his tail in his mouth, whilst the solar boat is immediately below it. "Khepra in his boat is the sun himself, and he is sometimes represented with the scarabæus on his head.

SERPENT MOUNDS AND CAIRNS.

From a very interesting work recently published, entitled From the Hebrides to the Himalayas, by Miss Constance F. Gordon Cumming, we learn that on Loch Nell Moss, between Loch Etive and the Atlantic, and not far from Dunstaffnage Castle, near Oban, is a large cairn, built of rounded water-worn stones, and surrounded by stunted trees. This has been recently excavated, and in the heart of the tumulus were found two megalithic chambers containing human remains and urns. Also, divers white quartz stones, such as various pagan nations were wont to bury with their dead, apparently as emblems of purity and indestructibility. These white stones

1 Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt. By W. R. Cooper, F.R.S.L. London: Hardwicke, 192, Piccadilly.

were arranged in pairs, on a ledge of rock projecting above the urns, a single stone being placed at each end of the double row; another single white pebble was found inside one of the urns.

A considerable number of similar pebbles of white quartz have recently been discovered in various old British tombs on the Isle of Cambrae, as also within the Sacred Circle on the Isle of Man, a circle, by the way, which from time immemorial has been held in such reverence that to this day the Parliament of the island is there convened. These pebbles were also found in most of the old tombs recently excavated in the neighbourhood of Dundee; in fact, so frequent was their presence, that it was common for the workmen employed in excavating to exclaim, "Here are the two stones; now we will get the bones." Rock crystal is sometimes found in lieu of the white quartz.

Dr. W. F. Cumming says that he found several graves thus strewed with white pebbles near the temple of Deir, the capital of Nubia, above the second cataract of the Nile. In several tumuli also at Dundee, Inverary, Letcombe Castle, in Berks, and Maiden Castle, near Weymouth, there have been found conical stones of white quartz, each in connection with human remains, and precisely similar to those found in the excavations of Nineveh, which are now to be seen in the British Museum, the only difference being that the latter are covered with inscriptions and representations of serpents and of the sun and moon.1

"About three miles on the other side of Oban is Glen Feochan. Here lies a huge serpent-shaped mound, the very existence of which, strange to say, was utterly unknown to the scientific world till discovered by Mr. Phené, and by him revealed to the Antiquarian Society in the summer of 1871. Being in Oban soon afterwards,

1 These conical stones have the same signification as the Obelisk or Column. They relate to the Life-giving powers of Nature, and are indicative of the eternal life of the souls of the departed, whose bodies lie interred in the graves where these stones are found.