Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/413

Rh and it is indispensable to know what is their oldest and most authentic form, and what changes the statements contained in them have undergone. This knowledge is conveyed to us with a precision and accuracy beyond all praise in Mr. Phillimore's articles.

The publication of Old-Welsh texts which is being continued by Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans and Prof Rhys concerns at present the student of language rather than the student of fable. It is, however, upon their text of the Red Book version of the Mabinogion that M. Loth has based his French version. Experts are generally agreed that this translation represents the Welsh original more fully and more closely than does the English one by Lady Guest. It is, moreover, provided with a translation of the Triads arranged according to the sources, of the Annals and Genealogies printed by Mr. Phillimore in the Cymmrodor, and of various other documents which throw light upon the mediæval Welsh tales. M. Loth is well read in Welsh literature, and his commentary derived from this source is at once fuller and more precise than that of Lady Guest's edition. When to these merits the advantages of cheapness and accessibility are added, it may easily be understood that M. Loth's translation has rapidly become the vulgate to which all scholars refer as they do to Mr. Evans and Prof Rhys' edition of the original. It has, however, defects to which attention should be called. The commentary is sadly to seek in all that concerns the study of comparative literary history; here M. Loth has practically ignored all recent research and contented himself with reproducing Lady Guest's notes. But my chief complaint is with the version itself M. Loth has striven to reproduce the Welsh text as closely as possible. This is well, but a translation should be something more than a crib, it should aim at conveying the tone and spirit as well as the letter of the original. My Welsh friends tell me that the Mabinogion are, in their native dress, a work of rare and exquisite literary beauty. This beauty, which has passed entire