Book-learning scarcely tells me Of severe afflictions after death-bed; And such as have heard my bardic books They shall obtain the region of heaven,… - Taliesin

About Taliesin

Taliesin (or Taliessin; c. 534 – c. 599) is the earliest poet in any Brittonic language whose work has survived. Although he probably composed in Cumbric, since the songs most surely attributed to him are praise poems to Urien Rheged, a warrior monarch of the Old North, these poems survive in Middle Welsh in the so-called Book of Taliesin, written down around the 13th century, along with about forty more of more dubious attribution. His name means "Radiant Brow" (tal iesin in Welsh). The book was translated by Robert Williams and published in The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1858) by W. F. Skene. These translations are notoriously unreliable, but few better have since appeared, due to the obscurity and compression of the verse.