This third volume completes the series of Mabinogion and tales translated by Lady Charlotte Guest.

As in the two preceding volumes, I have compared Lady Guest’s transcript with the original text in the Red Book of Hergest, and with Dr Gwenogvryn Evans’ scrupulously accurate diplomatic edition. I have, as before, revised the translation as carefully as I could. I have not altered Lady Guest’s version in the slightest degree; but I have again put in the form of foot-notes what seems to me to be a better or a more literal translation. The mistranslations are fairly few in number; but some of them are quite important, such as the references to pagan baptism or to the Irish Channel. At the end of my revision I may say that I have been struck by the comparative accuracy of the transcript of the Red Book which Lady Guest used, and by the accurate thoroughness with which she translated every one of the tales.

This volume contains the oldest of the Mabinogion—the four branches of the Mabinogion proper—and the kindred tale of Lludd and Llevelys. In all these we are in a perfectly pagan atmosphere, neither the introduction of Christianity nor the growth of chivalry having affected them to any extent.

The Story of Taliesin is the only one in the series that is not found in the Red Book of Hergest. It is taken from very much later manuscripts, and its Welsh is much more modern. Its subject, however, is akin to that of the Mabinogion proper; if, indeed, the contest between Elphin and the bards is an echo of the contest between decaying Paganism and growing Christianity.

OWEN EDWARDS.

Llanuwchllyn,
13th September 1902.