[W] “Summer White.” He is the rival of Arawn, king of Annwn. He is slain by Pwyll of Dyfed in what appears to be an annual contest between Arawn and Hafgan, when Pwyll changes shapes with Arawn.
[I] See Cailleach Beara.
See Samhain and Calan Gaef.
[W] “The History of Taliesin.” A work compiled in the sixteenth century by Sion Llywelyn (1540–ca. 1615) from which Lady Charlotte Guest took material for her Mabinogion translation in 1849. Most recent works on the Mabinogion saga tend to leave out this material, specifically relating to the origins of Taliesin, as being of a too late origin.
The head was revered by all ancient Celtic societies. It was in the head and not the heart that they located the souls of men and women. In battle they collected the heads of enemies as trophies, a custom that seems to have died out around the turn of the millennium. Livy described how the victorious Boii in 216 b.c. took the head of an enemy chieftain and placed it in a temple. He described how “some Gallic [Celtic] horsemen came in sight, with heads hanging at their horses’ breasts or fixed on their lances and singing their customary song of triumph.” It is Diodorus Siculus, the Sicilian Greek historian, writing ca. 60–30 b.c., who gives us a full description.
They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants to carry off as boot, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up the fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting.
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