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relating
The history of the Deluge?
With a golden jewel set in gold  
235 I am enriched ,
And I am indulged in pleasure
By the oppressive toil of the goldsmith.
     
     

    With a little patience most of the lines that belong to the poem about the Battle of the Trees can be separated from the four or five other poems with which they are mixed. Here is a tentative restoration of the easier parts, with gaps left for the more difficult. The reasons that have led me to this solution will appear in due course as I discuss the meaning of the allusions contained in the poem. I use the balled metre as the most suitable English equivalent of the original.
    T HE B ATTLE OF THE T REES
    (lines 41–42)
     
From my seat at Fefynedd,
A city that is strong,
I matched the trees and green things
Hastening along.  
     
    (lines 43–46)
     
Wayfarers wondered,
Warriors were dismayed
At renewal of conflicts
Such as Gwydion made,  
    (lines 32–35)
     
Under the tongue-root
A fight most dread,
And another raging
Behind, in the head.  
    (lines 67–70
     
The alders in the front line
Began the affray,
Willow and rowan-tree
Were tardy in array.  
    (lines 104–107)
     
The holly, dark green,
Made a resolute stand;
He is armed with many spear-points,
Wounding the hand.  
    (lines 117–120)
     
With foot–beat of the swift oak
Heaven and earth rung;
‘Stout Guardian of the Door’
His name in every tongue.  
    (lines 82, 81, 98, 57)
     
Great was the gorse in battle,
And the ivy at his prime;
The hazel was arbiter
At this charmed time.  
    (lines 88, 89, 128, 95, 96)
     
Uncouth and savage was the [ fir? ]
Cruel the ash-tree –

Turns not aside a foot-breadth,
Straight at the heart runs he.  
    (lines 84–87)
     
The birch, though very noble,
Armed himself but late:
A sign not of cowardice
But of high estate.  
    (lines 114, 115, 108, 109)
     
The heath gave consolation
To the toil-spent folk,
The long-enduring poplars
In battle much broke.  
    (lines 123, 126)
     
Some of them were cast away
On the field of fight
Because of holes torn in them
By the enemy’s might.  
    (lines 127, 94, 92, 93)
     
Very wrathful was the [ vine? ]
Whose henchmen are the elms;
I exalt him mightily
To rulers of realms.  
    (lines 79, 80, 56, 90)
     
In shelter linger
Privet and woodbine
Inexperienced in warfare;
And the courtly pine.
    Little Gwion has made it clear that he does not offer this encounter as the original Câd Goddeu but as:
    A renewal of conflicts
    Such as Gwydion made.
     
     
    Commentators, confused by the pied verses, have for the most part been content to remark that in Celtic tradition the Druids were credited with the magical power of transforming trees into warriors and sending them into battle. But, as the Rev. Edward Davies, a brilliant but hopelessly erratic Welsh scholar of the early nineteenth century, first noted in his Celtic Researches (1809), the battle described by Gwion is not a frivolous battle, or a battle physically fought, but a battle fought intellectually in the heads and with the tongues of the learned. Davies also noted that in all Celtic languages trees means letters ;that the Druidic colleges were founded in woods or groves; that a great part of the Druidic mysteries was concerned with twigs of different sorts; and that the most ancient Irish alphabet, the Beth-Luis-Nion (‘Birch-Rowan-Ash’) takes its name from the first three of a series of trees whose initials form the sequence of its letters. Davies was on the right track and though he soon went astraybecause, not realizing that the poems were pied, he mistranslated them into what he thought was good sense, his observations help us to restore the text of the passage referring to the hastening green things and trees: 
    (lines 130 and 53)
     

Retreating from happiness,
They would fain be set
In forms of the chief letters
    Of the alphabet.
     
    The following lines seem to form an introduction to his account of the battle: 
    (lines 136–137)
     

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