Nudd already discussed under his title Nodons, is less prominent than his son Gwyn, whose fight with Gwthur we have explained as a mythic explanation of ritual combats for the increase of fertility.  He also appears as a hunter and as a great warrior,[415] “the hope of armies,” and thus he may be a god of fertility who became a god of war and the chase.  But legend associated him with Annwfn, and regarded him, like the Tuatha Dea, as a king of fairyland.[416] In the legend of S. Collen, the saint tells two men, whom he overhears speaking of Gwyn and the fairies, that these are demons.  “Thou shalt receive a reproof from Gwyn,” said one of them, and soon after Collen was summoned to meet the king of Annwfn on Glastonbury Tor.  He climbed the hill with a flask of holy water, and saw on its top a splendid castle, with crowds of beautiful and youthful folk, while the air resounded with music.  He was brought to Gwyn, who politely offered him food, but “I will not eat of the leaves of the tree,” cried the saint; and when he was asked to admire the dresses of the crowd, all he would say was that the red signified burning, the blue coldness.  Then he threw the holy water over them, and nothing was left but the bare hillside.[417] Though Gwyn’s court on Glastonbury is a local Celtic Elysium, which was actually located there, the story marks the hostility of the Church to the cult of Gwyn, perhaps practised on hilltops, and this is further seen in the belief that he hunts souls of the wicked and is connected with Annwfn in its later sense of hell.  But a mediant view is found in Kulhwych, where it is said of him that he restrains the demons of hell lest they should destroy the people of this world.  In the Triads he is, like other gods, a great magician and astrologer.[418]

Another group, unknown to the Mabinogion, save that Taliesin is one of the bearers of Bran’s head, is found in the Book of Taliesin and in the late story of Taliesin.  These, like the Arthur cycle, often refer to personages of the Mabinogion; hence we gather that local groups of gods, originally distinct, were later mingled in story, the references in the poems reflecting this mingling.  Late as is the Hanes Taliesin or story of Taliesin, and expressed as much of it is in a Maerchen formula, it is based on old myths about Cerridwen and Taliesin of which its compiler made use, following an old tradition already stereotyped in one of the poems in the Maerchen formula of the Transformation Combat.[419] But the mythical fragments are also mingled with traditions regarding the sixth century poet Taliesin.  The older saga was perhaps developed in a district south of the Dyfi estuary.[420] In Lake Tegid dwell Tegid Voel, Cerridwen, and their children—­the fair maiden Creirwy, Morvran, and the ugly Avagddu.  To give Avagddu knowledge, his mother prepares a cauldron of inspiration from which three drops of inspiration