Taliesin

Taliesin is mentioned in the Historia Brittonum (829/30) as one of five poets renowned in British poetry broadly in the mid‐sixth century. The Book of Taliesin contains a group of eight praise poems to Urien, ruler of Rheged, with an elegy for Urien's son, Owain, thought to have been composed by Taliesin. Less certain are other poems to sixth‐century rulers Cynan Garwyn of Powys in Wales and Gwallog, ruler of Elfed, near Leeds. Taliesin's alter ego is an inspired poet and sage, fashioned by wizards: he has supernatural gifts including shape‐shifting and prophecy, and he displays his knowledge in questions, riddles, lists, and boasts. He appears to have been a vehicle for the bardic order to assert itself, and for poets to combine traditional material as well as popular international learning in an entertaining way. Comparisons with the diction and lexicon of the court poet Prydydd y Moch (twelfth–thirteenth century) suggest that he may have been responsible for some of the Book of Taliesin poems. Later poems and a prose Tale of Taliesin, and a range of other sources from the medieval and renaissance periods, indicate continuing interest in the Taliesin story.