Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/130



tales are founded upon ancient ones, the work of Welshmen and Irishmen when Wales and Ireland were entirely independent of England. The Welsh tales come from a book now known as the Mabinogion. They were written down at the end of the Middle Ages, and translated from Welsh into English by Lady Guest in the nineteenth century. The original Welsh manuscript (called 'The Red Book of Hergest', because it was once at Hergest in Radnor) belongs to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the stories had been told over and over again, and probably written down many times, before they were copied into 'The Red Book'. They were being told in the years between the Norman conquest of England and Edward I's conquest of Wales. But the subjects of them were much earlier. Even those who told the tales would, perhaps, have been unable to say when a man as huge as Bran was ruling at Harlech, nor did they consider the matter any more than children to-day consider the tale of 'Jack the Giant-killer' in its relation to scientific fact. But in 'Kilhugh and Olwen' and 'The Dream of Rhonabwy' King Arthur appears. The men who told these two stories were probably thinking of a glorious heroic age, when Arthur was a supreme king, resisting the Roman and Saxon invader. They gave a strange reality to some of the wonders by connecting them with actual places in Wales, so that a man to-day could walk in the steps of Kilhugh and Rhonabwy. Even 'The Dream of Maxen', which is about a Roman emperor, comes to its height and to its end in Wales, and in places which are still to be seen. Very little was known to the mediaeval writers about the age of the Saxon invaders and the seventh-century King Arthur, except that it was one of greater men than any that were living; and therefore they described their heroes as if they were Welsh and Norman warriors in dress and manners, but of greater stature and prowess. They were certain that Arthur had once been king in Britain, and they were ready to come to blows with men who denied it. In one story, 'The Dream of Rhonabwy,' they put along with the King two young princes, Madoc and Iorwerth, who actually belonged to the twelfth century.

The name 'Mabinogion' means something like 'twice-told tales': it means precisely the old tales on which a young writer practised.