and the one that was on the left to the right, and like two sea-swallows sported they around him.  And his courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs like four swallows in the air, now above his head and now below.  About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple, having an apple of gold at each corner; and every one of the apples was of the value of a hundred kine.  And there was precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes and upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe.  And the blade of reed-grass bent not beneath him, as he journeyed towards the gates of Arthur’s palace.”

So far we have the glittering imagination of the twelfth-century bard; you might think working in a medium not wholly Celtic, but Norman-influenced as well; imagining his Arthurian Culhwch in terms of the knights he had seen at the courts of the Lords Marchers,—­were it not that just such descriptions are the commonplaces of Irish Celticism, where they come from a time and people that had never seen Norman knights at all.  But now you begin to leave regions where Normans can be remembered or imagined at all: 

“Spake the youth, ’Is there a porter?’—­’There is; and unless thou holdest thy peace, small will be thy welcome.  I am the porter of Arthur’s hall on the first day of January in every year; and on every other day than this the post is filled by Huandaw, and Gogigwc, and Llaescenym, and Penpingion who goeth upon his head to save his feet, neither towards the heavens nor towards the earth, but like a rolling stone upon the floor of the court.’—­’Open thou the portal.’—­’I will not open it.’—­ ’Wherefore not?’—­’The knife is in the meat and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur’s court; and no man may enter but a craftsman bearing his craft, or the son of the king of a privileged country.  But there will be refreshment for thy dogs and for thy horse, and for thee there will be collops cooked and peppered, and luscious wine and mirthful song,—­and food for fifty men shall be set before thee in the guest chamber, where the stranger and the sons of other countries eat, who come not into the precincts of the palace of Arthur.  Said the youth, ’That will I not do.  If thou openest the portal, it is well.  If thou dost not open it, I will bring disgrace upon thy lord and an evil report upon thee.  And I will set up three shouts at this very gate, than which none were ever more deadly, from the top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the North, and to Esgair Oerfel in Ireland.’—­’Whatsoever clamor thou mayest make,’ said Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr, against the rules of Arthur’s court thou shalt not enter until I first go and consult with Arthur.’