Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/131

 Reviews. 1 1 1

for fresh advance all along the line. For two things are now made evident : firstly, the excellence of the text in Skene's Four Ancient Books ; secondly, the lamentable imperfection of the interpretation, I have tested poem after poem in Skene by Dr. Evans' reproduction, and I think I am safe in saying that to all intents and purposes the text is first-rate. The scholar capable of working with Skene's text will derive little advantage from Dr. Evans' edition. In the few cases where the reading differs decidedly, e.g. Skene No. iii., p. 5, 1. 6, where the new editor reads " cas amtima'd " instead of " nifan tineid " the new reading is professedly conjectural. Skene and his fellow labourers have had somewhat harsh measure dealt out to them, (not by Dr. Evans, let me say), and it is satisfactory to find that in this most important respect their work was good.

In the forty-two pages of his Introduction Dr. Evans gives a certain amount of translation, enough to make one see, what indeed was apparent to anyone with critical sense, how defective was the knowledge of early Welsh fifty years ago. One felt instinctively that mediaeval Welsh poetry could not be the obscure balderdash represented by the renderings of the Four Ancient Books. Take, for example, Skene's xviii. (vol. i., p. 293), a dialogue between Gwydneu Garanhir and Gwyn the Son of Nud. This is the first stanza according to Skene :

"A bull of conflict was he, active in dispersing an arranged army, The ruler of hosts, indisposed to anger. Blameless and pure his conduct in protecting life."

This is Dr. Evans' rendering (p. x) :

"(Gwydneu loq.) Bull of Battle! Leader of the host! You, who are slow of anger and of a blameless life — for me is there sanctuary ? "

This remarkable poem, one of the most interesting from a mythological point of view, is made intelligible for the first time. In the same way, Skene's No. xvi. (vol. i, 288), a dialogue between Taliessin and Ugnach, wears an infinitely more sensible aspect in Dr. Evans' rendering (p. xvi). Particularly note- worthy here is a correction of the Black Book text where Taliessin is made to say that he comes from Caer Seon from fighting with Jews. Dr. Evans emends a twelfth-century