The Birth of Taliesin
A nobleman Tegid Foel had a wife named Ceridwen and two children Creirwy, the most beautiful girl in the world, and Afagddu, the ugliest boy. They lived on an island in the middle of Lake Tegid. To compensate for Afagddu’s ugliness, Cerridwen decided to make him highly intelligent so she boiled up a cauldron of inspiration and knowledge, which had to be kept on the simmer for a year and a day.
Season by season, she added to the brew magical herbs gathered in their correct planetary hours. While she gathered the herbs she put little Gwion to stir the cauldron. Towards the end of the year three burning drops flew out and fell on little Gwion’s finger. He thrust it into his mouth and at once understood the nature and meaning of all things past, present and future, and thus understood Cerridwen was going to kill him as soon as he had finished his work.
He fled away, she pursued him like a black screaming hag. By the use of the powers that he had drawn from the cauldron he changed himself into a hare, she changed herself into a greyhound. He plunged into a river and became a fish, she changed herself into an otter. He flew up into the air like a bird, she changed herself into a hawk. He became a grain of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, she changed herself into a black hen, scratched the wheat over with her feet, found him and swallowed him.
When she returned to her own shape she found herself pregnant of Gwion and nine months later bore him as a child. She could not find it in her heart to kill him as he was very beautiful, so tied him in a leather bag and threw him into the sea. He was carried into the weir of Gwyddno Garanhir near Aberystwyth in Cardigan bay, and rescued from it by Prince Elphin, the son of Gwyddno and nephew of King Maelgwyn of Gwynedd. He named the baby Taliesin… (Radiant Brow)