Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird is a native Welsh speaker and scholar. He runs the excellent Celtic Source website where he shares scholarly research and personal insights into the Celtic myths through videos and free and paid online courses. Taliesin Origins originated from an online course. 

As would be expected this book provides a superb introduction to the myth of Taliesin well grounded in the social and political history of Wales. It not only introduces material that might already be known to students of the bardic tradition such as Ystoria Taliesin (‘The Tale of Taliesin’) and the poetry from Llyfr Taliesin (The Book of Taliesin) but sets it in a context with and expounds on its themes through other bardic works that are less familiar. The author’s translations of these, as well as the Taliesin content, are valuable resources in themselves. 

Morus-Baird, who is not only a scholar, but a musician, presents the material in a way that is not only academically accurate but lively and vivid and enthused with experiential insights based on his practices as a living bard.

One of my favourite parts was where he traces the travels of the historical Taliesin north from Cynan’s court at Pengwern (Shrewsbury) to Urien’s court in Rheged*. Here we find an evocation of the revelry in the hall and the lord with ‘long, flowing white hair and beard’ ‘his body’ ‘covered with many battle scars’.

There is a good deal of speculation founded on research and personal insights. Morus-Baird presents a strong argument for the story of Gwion stealing awen from Ceridwen’s cauldron then being eaten by her and reborn as Taliesin originating from interactions between the visionary tradition of the witches and the Welsh bards. This tale is shown to play out in the prehistoric ritual landscapes around the Dyfi and Conwy estuaries where it is set. It is argued that the alternative telling of the creation of Taliesin by Gwydion from vegetation as ‘a weapon of bardic destruction’ along with the trees in Kat Godeu (‘The Battle of the Trees’) originates from a different bardic lineage.

This book also contains much philosophical depth. The concept of awen is explored from its Proto-Celtic origin in *awek ‘inspiration or insight’ through its complex of meanings in Irish and in Welsh which include awel ‘breath.

The imagination is beautifully likened to the Mare Goddess Rhiannon as ‘an insubstantial beast, a grey mare of little but breath. We may ride her to ends of the Earth, but she vanishes the minute we look at her too closely.’ Awen as is seen to ‘live’ in Annwfn and is drawn upon by the bards.

Morus-Baird states that the popular understanding of Annwfn as the otherworld isn’t the ‘most accurate’ and translates it as ‘inner world’ or ‘inner depth’, describing it as ‘a world-within-the-world, a depth that is everywhere’. Drawing on the First Branch of The Mabinogion along with the poetry of Cynddelw and Taliesin (who speaks of his seat in Caer Siddi ‘the fairy-mound Fortress’) he categorieses Annwfn as a timeless, pristine place of high ideals and dismisses the Christianised hellish view in Culhwch ac Olwen.

At the end of the section on Annfwn he summarises his argument: 

‘The main difference between Annwfn and our realm appears to be a temporal one. Whereas our plane of existence is characterised by ageing and death, ‘sickness and old age’ do not affect those in Caer Siddi. It appears to be the place of eternal renewal, where pristine life continues without the effects of time and its changes. By contrast, to partake of the mortal realm is to be swept up in the turbulent currents of transformation, to be spun in the cycles of birth and death and to know the suffering of experience.’**

Annwfn is described not as a land of dead, in the sense of a final destination for souls, but it is one where spirits such as those of Taliesin and Myrddin can reside. These ‘bardic masters’ can be channelled in live performances.

Taliesin Origins is an engaging read on an intellectual and spiritual level. I have been studying the bardic tradition for over ten years and it gave me additional food for thought and led me to question a number of assumptions. I would recommend it as the go-to source for anyone interested in the Taliesin myth whether from an academic or religious perspective or both. 

*There’s a mention of Taliesin crossing the Ribble at Preston near to my home. It hadn’t crossed my mind he would have passed so close on his travels.
**This isn’t an argument I wholly agree with. Although there are lots of examples of Annwfn being a timeless, pristine place we also have descriptions of terrible battles there which include violence and death. The prime example being in Preiddeu Annwfn from which only seven men return. Gwyn ap Nudd speaks of this conflict – ‘At Caer Fanddwy I saw a host / Shields shattered, spears broken, / Violence inflicted by the honoured and fair’. If this is to be conflated with the raid set in Ireland the Head of Annwfn himself is killed. One might claim these are so terrible because they are interruptions to the pristine state and I believe this is partly the case. Yet the presence of Annwfian monsters in Kad Godeu along with the gormes ‘oppression’caused by a dragon in Lludd a Llefelys that blights Britain and its people are suggestive of a darker side to Annwfn. It’s my personal belief that like the ‘otherworlds’ of most Indo-European cultures it has both pristine and beautiful and monstrous and terrifiying aspects (for example the Hindu and Buddhist ‘heavens’ and ‘hells’, the Norse Valhalla and Hel, the Greek Elysian Fields and Tartarus). In my personal experience of travelling Annwfn in spirit the transformative processes, including life and death, mirror our own.