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In Breuddwyd Rhonabwy we read: “Behold, bards came and recited verses before Arthur, and no man understood those verses … save that they were in Arthur's praise.” These words fittingly describe a poem (No. xxx) in the thirteenth-century Book of Taliesin, entitled Preiddeu Annwn, which would seem to mean “The Spoils (i.e. plunder) of the Other World.” Sharon Turner, who was the first to offer a translation, frankly confessed that the Welsh scholars of his day did not profess to understand above one half of any of the Taliesin poems. He asserted—not without reason—that in the particular verses under discussion “all connection of thought seems to have been studiously avoided”; and in conclusion he exclaimed, “Could Lycophron or the Sybils, or any ancient oracle, be more elaborately incomprehensible?”

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