Is this what Prince Llywelyn thought?

“In grief I tell of my temper’s haste
– the tale of such tragic canine waste:
my dog I left to guard
my infant son, returned
to find his cradle overturned,
no sign of the child,
and Gelert with blood
coating his fur;
quickly I lunged
and bitterly plunged
my sword in his flesh –

and as he howled,
I heard a cry
from under the bedding – my darling boy,

and then saw the carcass of a wolf
the hound so faithful had slain –
too late I found I’d killed the dog who had saved my son
– this story is told to show what waste
can come of impetuous anger and haste.”

– did it happen? there’s a (recent) mound
in Wales with a version of this tale of Gelert, the hound
in a place called ‘Gelert’s grave’*,
which inspires the story of Gelert, the brave.

Whether fiction or fact, whatever it be,
it fills all the children with sympathy!

(not knowing what sort of hunting hound ‘Gelert’
might have been, the photo is of the second ‘Gelert’
that my family owned when I was growing up!)

*Bedd Gelert  (in Snowdonia) – translation ‘the grave of Gelert’
pronunciation: Bedd - ‘e’ as in ‘bear’, ‘dd’ - as the hard ‘th’ of ‘the’
Gel - hard ‘g’  as in ‘girl’, short ‘e’ as in ‘bell’

[IP: ‘take a character or plot from history and make it your own’ – many think this history, but unlikely. This is a second attempt at this story.]