The various treasures (tlws) include vessels or utensils for food and drink (hamper, cauldron, crock and dish, horn and knife), objects relating to weaponry (sword, whetstone) and to transport (halter, chariot), clothing (coat, mantle) and still other items (stone and ring, chessboard).
[2] The new items come from literary, rather than traditional, material; the Mantle comes from a version of the Caradoc story, while Eluned's stone and ring come from the prose tale Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain.
Items 1, 2 and 7, for instance, are also described in the Middle Welsh tale Culhwch ac Olwen (tentatively dated to c. 1100), in which Ysbaddaden the Giant gives King Arthur's cousin Culhwch a list of impossible tasks (anoetheu) which he has to complete in order to win the hand of Olwen, the giant's daughter.
The Dyrnwyn ("White-Hilt") is said to be a powerful sword belonging to Rhydderch Hael,[3] one of the Three Generous Men of Britain mentioned in the Welsh Triads.
Rhydderch was never reluctant to hand the weapon to anyone, hence his nickname Hael meaning "the Generous", but the recipients, as soon as they had learned of its peculiar properties, always rejected the sword.
The Horn of Brân Galed ("the Stingy" or "the Niggard") from the North is said to have possessed the magical property of ensuring that "whatever drink might be wished for was found in it".
[4] Marginal notes to the text in Peniarth MS 147 (c. 1566) elaborate on this brief entry by saying that Myrddin had approached the kings and lords of Britain to request their treasures.
[5] The discrepancy between Brân's nickname ("the Stingy") and the special property of the enchanted horn appears to be explained by the Welsh poet Guto'r Glyn, who lived in the mid-15th century and was therefore contemporary with the earliest attestations of the Tri Thlws ar Ddeg.
He relates that Brân Galed was a northern nobleman, whom Taliesin transformed into a man superior to the Tri Hael, i.e. the three most generous men in Britain according to one of the Welsh Triads.
Llawfrodedd Farchog (from marchog "the Horseman"), or Barfawc "the Bearded" in other manuscripts, is said to have owned a knife which would serve for a company of 24 men at the dinner table.
In this poem the owner of the cauldron is not an Irish lord but the king of Annwn, the Welsh Otherworld, suggesting that the version of the story in Culhwch is a later attempt to euhemerize an older tale.
[13] The extant manuscripts of Tri Thlws ar Ddeg also present such variant spellings as Dyrnog and Tyrnog, without the Irish-sounding ending, but on balance, these are best explained as Welsh approximations of a foreign name.
A very similar mantle also appears in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, in which it is used by Caswallawn to assassinate the seven stewards left behind by Brân the Blessed and usurp the throne.