Here then are various known channels, by which portions
of Welsh and Armoric fiction crossed the Celtic border,
and gave rise to the more ornate, and widely-spread
romance of the Age of Chivalry. It is not improbable
that there may have existed many others. It appears
then that a large portion of the stocks of Mediaeval
Romance proceeded from Wales. We have next to
see in what condition they are still found in that
country.
That Wales possessed an ancient literature, containing
various lyric compositions, and certain triads, in
which are arranged historical facts or moral aphorisms,
has been shown by Sharon Turner, who has established
the high antiquity of many of these compositions.
The more strictly Romantic Literature of Wales has
been less fortunate, though not less deserving of
critical attention. Small portions only of it
have hitherto appeared in print, the remainder being
still hidden in the obscurity of ancient Manuscripts:
of these the chief is supposed to be the Red Book
of Hergest, now in the Library of Jesus College, Oxford,
and of the fourteenth century. This contains,
besides poems, the prose romances known as Mabinogion.
The Black Book of Caermarthen, preserved at Hengwrt,
and considered not to be of later date than the twelfth
century, is said to contain poems only. {1}
The Mabinogion, however, though thus early recorded
in the Welsh tongue, are in their existing form by
no means wholly Welsh. They are of two tolerably
distinct classes. Of these, the older contains
few allusions to Norman customs, manners, arts, arms,
and luxuries. The other, and less ancient, are
full of such allusions, and of ecclesiastical terms.
Both classes, no doubt, are equally of Welsh root,
but the former are not more overlaid or corrupted,
than might have been expected, from the communication
that so early took place between the Normans and the
Welsh; whereas the latter probably migrated from Wales,
and were brought back and re-translated after an absence
of centuries, with a load of Norman additions.
Kilhwch and Olwen, and the dream of Rhonabwy, may
be cited as examples of the older and purer class;
the Lady of the Fountain, Peredur, and Geraint ab
Erbin, of the later, or decorated.
Besides these, indeed, there are a few tales, as Amlyn
and Amic, Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, the Seven Wise Masters,
and the story of Charlemagne, so obviously of foreign
extraction, and of late introduction into Wales, not
presenting even a Welsh name, or allusion, and of
such very slender intrinsic merit, that although comprised
in the Llyvr Coch, they have not a shadow of claim
to form part of the Canon of Welsh Romance.
Therefore, although I have translated and examined
them, I have given them no place in these volumes.
