“Bitter the day of birth, for death is its companion. Yet, though life be cold and cruel, we are not without a last consolation. For to die in one world is to be born into another. Let all men hear and remember!”

So saying, I turned to the warriors at the bier and commanded them. The horses were unhitched, the wagon was raised and its wheels removed. The warriors then lifted the bier shoulder high and began to walk slowly towards the cairn, passing between the double

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line of torches, moving slowly up the radiant way to the gravemound.

As the bier passed, I took my place behind it and began the Lament for a Fallen Champion, singing softly, slowly, allowing the words to fall like tears into the silence of the glen. Unlike other laments, this one is sung without the harp. It is sung by the chief bard and, although I had never sung ~t, I knew it well.

It is a strong song, full of bitterness and wrath at the way in which the champion’s life has been cut short and his people deprived of his valor and the shelter of his shield. I sang the lament, my voice rising full and free, filling the night with harsh and barren sorrow. There is no comfort in this song: it sings the coldness of the tomb, the obscenity of corruption, and the emptiness, waste, and futility of death. I sang the bitterness of loss and the aching loneliness of grief. I sang it all, driving my words hard and biting them between my teeth.

The people wept. And I wept too, as up and up the Aryant 01, and slowly, slowly we approached the burial cairn. The song moved to its end: a single rising note becoming a sharp, savage scream. This represents the rage of the life cruelly cut short.

My voice rose to the final note, growing, expanding, filling the night with its accusation. My lungs burned, my throat ached; I thought my heart would burst with the effort. The ragged scream burst and faltered in the air, dying at its height. A truncated echo resounded along the sides of Glyn Du and flew up into the starry void-a spear hurled into the eye-pit of night.

The warriors bearing the king’s body halted at the sound. Strength left their hands, and the bier pitched and swayed. For an instant I thought they would drop the body, but they staggered, steadied themselves, and slowly raised the bier once more. It was a dreadful, pitiful moment, speaking more forcefully than the words of my lament the anguish and heartbreak of our loss.

The bearers moved to the entrance of the cairn, where they paused while two men with torches went

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ahead of them into the tomb. The bier entered the gravemound next, and I followed. The interior was lined with stone niches, small chambers containing the bones of Prydain kings whose shields covered the openings.