[Sidenote:  The Welsh hopes]

But even in bardic verse Llewelyn rises high out of the mere mob of chieftains who live by rapine, and boast as the Hirlas-horn passes from hand to hand through the hall that “they take and give no quarter.”  “Tender-hearted, wise, witty, ingenious,” he was “the great Caesar” who was to gather beneath his sway the broken fragments of the Celtic race.  Mysterious prophecies, the prophecies of Merlin the Wise which floated from lip to lip and were heard even along the Seine and the Rhine, came home again to nerve Wales to its last struggle with the stranger.  Medrawd and Arthur, men whispered, would appear once more on earth to fight over again the fatal battle of Camlan in which the hero-king perished.  The last conqueror of the Celtic race, Cadwallon, still lived to combat for his people.  The supposed verses of Taliesin expressed the undying hope of a restoration of the Cymry.  “In their hands shall be all the land from Britanny to Man:  ... a rumour shall arise that the Germans are moving out of Britain back again to their fatherland.”  Gathered up in the strange work of Geoffry of Monmouth, these predictions had long been making a deep impression not on Wales only but on its conquerors.  It was to meet the dreams of a yet living Arthur that the grave of the legendary hero-king at Glastonbury was found and visited by Henry the Second.  But neither trick nor conquest could shake the firm faith of the Celt in the ultimate victory of his race.  “Think you,” said Henry to a Welsh chieftain who joined his host, “that your people of rebels can withstand my army?” “My people,” replied the chieftain, “may be weakened by your might, and even in great part destroyed, but unless the wrath of God be on the side of its foe it will not perish utterly.  Nor deem I that other race or other tongue will answer for this corner of the world before the Judge of all at the last day save this people and tongue of Wales.”  So ran the popular rime, “Their Lord they will praise, their speech they shall keep, their land they shall lose—­except wild Wales.”

[Sidenote:  The Provisions of Oxford]

Faith and prophecy seemed justified by the growing strength of the British people.  The weakness and dissensions which characterized the reign of Henry the Third enabled Llewelyn ap Jorwerth to preserve a practical independence till the close of his life, when a fresh acknowledgement of the English supremacy was wrested from him by Archbishop Edmund.  But the triumphs of his arms were renewed by Llewelyn the son of Gruffydd, who followed him in 1246.  The raids of the new chieftain swept the border to the very gates of Chester, while his conquest of Glamorgan seemed to bind the whole people together in a power strong enough to meet any attack from the stranger.  So pressing was the danger that it called the king’s eldest son, Edward, to the field; but his first appearance in arms ended in a crushing defeat.  The defeat