by furnishing it with Celtic characters.  But into this framework many native elements were set, and we may therefore scrutinise the story for Celtic mythical elements utilised by its redactor, who probably did not strip its Celtic personages of their earlier divine attributes.  In the two Mabinogi these personages are Llyr, his sons Bran and Manawyddan, his daughter Branwen, their half-brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, sons of Llyr’s wife Penardim, daughter of Beli, by a previous marriage with Eurosswyd.

Llyr is the equivalent of the Irish Ler, the sea-god, but two other Llyrs, probably duplicates of himself, are known to Welsh story—­Llyr Marini, and the Llyr, father of Cordelia, of the chroniclers.[340] He is constantly confused with Lludd Llawereint, e.g. both are described as one of three notable prisoners of Britain, and both are called fathers of Cordelia or Creiddylad.[341] Perhaps the two were once identical, for Manannan is sometimes called son of Alloid (= Lludd), in Irish texts, as well as son of Ler.[342] But the confusion may be accidental, nor is it certain that Nodons or Lludd was a sea-god.  Llyr’s prison was that of Eurosswyd,[343] whose wife he may have abducted and hence suffered imprisonment.  In the Black Book of Caermarthen Bran is called son of Y Werydd or “Ocean,” according to M. Loth’s interpretation of the name, which would thus point to Llyr’s position as a sea-god.  But this is contested by Professor Rh[^y]s who makes Ywerit wife of Llyr, the name being in his view a form of the Welsh word for Ireland.  In Geoffrey and the chroniclers Llyr becomes a king of Britain whose history and that of his daughters was immortalised by Shakespeare.  Geoffrey also refers to Llyr’s burial in a vault built in honour of Janus.[344] On this Professor Rh[^y]s builds a theory that Llyr was a form of the Celtic Dis with two faces and ruler of a world of darkness.[345] But there is no evidence that the Celtic Dispater was lord of a gloomy underworld, and it is best to regard Llyr as a sea-divinity.

Manawyddan is not god-like in these tales in the sense in which the majestic Manannan of Irish story is, though elsewhere we learn that “deep was his counsel."[346] Though not a magician, he baffles one of the great wizards of Welsh story, and he is also a master craftsman, who instructs Pryderi in the arts of shoe-making, shield-making, and saddlery.  In this he is akin to Manannan, the teacher of Diarmaid.  Incidents of his career are reflected in the Triads, and his union with Rhiannon may point to an old myth in which they were from the first a divine pair, parents of Pryderi.  This would give point to his deliverance of Pryderi and Rhiannon from the hostile magician.[347] Rhiannon resembles the Irish Elysium goddesses, and Manawyddan, like Manannan, is lord of Elysium in a Taliesin poem.[348] He is a craftsman and follows agriculture, perhaps a reminiscence of the old belief that fertility and culture come from the god’s land.  Manawyddan, like other divinities, was drawn into the Arthurian cycle, and is one of those who capture the famous boar, the Twrch Trwyth.[349]