earlier. The first part relates how the witch Ceridwen con-
centrated her learning in three drops of a brew which she pre-
pared for her son. At the crucial moment of fulfillment they
fell onto the hand of a serving lad, Gwion Bach, who sucked
his scalded finger and acquired the knowledge and bardic
power intended for the son. In the ensuing pursuit Gwion
and Ceridwen undergo several metamorphoses until the lad
is swallowed as a seed of corn by Ceridwen in the guise of
a hen to be reborn nine months later. He is taken up by Elf-
fin, named Taliesin, and soon reveals his precocity as poet
and sage. The rest of the tale recounts his feats of learning
at the court of the sixth-century king Maelgwn Gwynedd.
Poems of the Story of Taliesin are spoken by Taliesin,
but those in the Book of Taliesin, though lacking this specific
context, nevertheless refer to similar circumstances and are
to be dated to the tenth century. One such poem alludes to
Taliesin’s creation by the wizards Math and Gwydion, char-
acters found in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi; another
relates his transforming of trees into warriors in the Battle
of Goddau. The poem titled The Spoils of Annwn refers to
the poet’s return as one of the survivors of Arthur’s disastrous
attack on the otherworld, an episode underlying the Second
Branch, which names Taliesin and a survivor. This early stra-
tum of Taliesin’s legend links him not with historical charac-
ters of the sixth century but with purely mythological figures
and episodes. In later bardic tradition, Taliesin becomes the
archetypal inspired poet.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, 2d ed. (Cardiff, 1978),
edited by Rachel Bromwich, gives a concise discussion of the
sources and offers scholarly opinion, while Ifor Williams’s
Chwedl Taliesin (Cardiff, 1957) analyzes the development of
the Taliesin legend. Patrick K. Ford edits the text of the leg-
end, Ystoria Taliesin (Cardiff, 1992) and in his introduction
he discusses its themes; he translates the story in his The Ma-
binogi and Medieval Welsh Tales (Berkeley, 1977). See also
Juliette Wood, “The Elphin Section of Hanes Taliesin,”
Etudes Celtiques 18 (1981): 229–244, and “The Folklore
Background of the Gwion Bach Section of Hanes Taliesin,”
Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 29 (1982): 621–634.
Marged Haycock has published a number of important arti-
cles on the nonhistorical Taliesin material in the Book of Ta-
liesin, including “Preideu Annwn and the Figure of Talie-
sin,” Studia Celtica, 18/19 (1983–1984): 52–78, “Cadair
Ceridwen,” in Iestyn Daniel and others, eds., Cyfoeth y Tes-
tun (Cardiff, 2003), 148–175, “The Significance of the Cad
Goddeu Tree List in the Book of Taliesin,” in M. J. Ball et
al., editors, Celtic Linguistics (Amsterdam, 1990): 297–331,
“Taliesin’s Questions,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 33
(1997): 19–80.
BRYNLEY F. ROBERTS (1987 AND 2005)TALISMANS SEE AMULETS AND TALISMANS
TALMUD. In form, the Talmud is an extended, multi-
volume elaboration of selected tractates of the Mishnah, but
it must be emphasized that the contents of the Talmud go
far beyond its ostensible base. No subject of interest to the
ancient rabbis failed to find its way into this immense body
of teaching, and for that reason no question arising in later
centuries was deemed outside the range that Talmudic teach-
ing might legitimately claim to resolve. A document that
seemed merely to elucidate an older text eventually became
the all-embracing constitution of medieval Jewish life.
The Mishnah supplied the overall format for the Tal-
mud. Like the former, the Talmud is divided into tractates,
which in turn are divided into chapters and then into para-
graphs. Each phrase of the Mishnah is discussed, analyzed,
and applied for as long as the editors of the Talmud have ma-
terials to supply; when such materials are exhausted (some-
times after very long and quite wide-ranging digressions), the
discussion simply moves on to the next phrase or paragraph.
The digressions can be such that one loses track of the Mish-
naic passage under discussion for pages at a time, but the Tal-
mud always picks up again from its base text when the next
section begins.
ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT. Very soon after it began to
circulate, the Mishnah of Yehudah ha-NasiD (compiled c.
200 CE) assumed a central place in rabbinic study. As time
went on, the structure and content of the Mishnah—the
meaning and the sequence of its paragraphs—determined
the manner in which the growing accumulation of rabbinic
lore was organized. Non-Mishnaic legal materials (the so-
called outside traditions; Aram., baraitot) were studied pri-
marily in connection with their Mishnaic parallels, and an
entire supplementary collection (Tosefta) that followed the
Mishnah’s own sequence of orders, tractates, and chapters
was compiled. Similarly, post-Mishnaic rabbinic teachings—
of law, morality, theology, and so forth—were remembered
and discussed primarily as the consecutive study of Mishnaic
tractates called them to mind, so that most such teachings
eventually came to be linked with one or another specific
passage (or, occasionally, several) in the earlier collection.
In this way, great compilations of rabbinic teaching,
each in the form of a loose exposition of the Mishnah, came
into being. Evidence suggests that various centers of rabbinic
study developed their own such collections, though in the
end only one overall collection was redacted for the Palestin-
ian centers and one for Babylonia. For several generations,
the collections remained fluid. Materials were added, revised,
or shifted. Free association led to the production of extended
discourses or sets of sayings that at times had little to do with
the Mishnaic passages serving as points of departure. Early
materials tended to be brief explanations of the Mishnah or
citations of parallel texts, but later rabbis increasingly com-
mented as well on remarks of their predecessors or other
non-Mishnaic materials. Numerous scholars have seen in the
developing tradition two sorts of material: brief, apodictic
statements of law and much longer dialectical explanationsTALMUD 8969