This third volume of Legend Land tells some more of the old stories
of those peoples, kindred in origin, the Welsh and the Cornish. They
are mostly the old tales that have survived--who shall say how many
generations?
If you look into them, with the eyes of imagination, you will see
behind them the simplest romances of a very simple people; a people
that explained some uncomprehended thing with some comprehensible
story, or who would invest the memories of their great men and women
with records of wonderful achievement often formerly attributed to some
yet earlier hero.
But that is a student’s occupation. Many weighty tomes have been
written upon the origins of folk-lore.
For us it is sufficient to be glad that the old legends have survived.
Let us enjoy them without speculation as to their beginnings,
remembering only that they had a beginning, most of them in an age so
long ago that history cannot place it.
These romances are perhaps the most “genuine antiques” that our country
can offer, and they come from the corners of our land where romance
still lingers and where, to the country folk, rocks and lakes, streams
and great hills, are matters of history--not geology.
And we, who travel to these distant parts of Britain, can better enjoy
their charms if we go there knowing something of the stories that have
clung about them for many centuries, and if we leave our critical
business method of mind behind us locked in our office desks.