In this second volume, as in the first, I have given Lady Charlotte
Guest's translation exactly as she wrote it. It would have been easy to
make it a more faithful reproduction of the Welsh by occasionally
changing a word, or by making a phrase more simple in diction. But the
reader would not have forgiven me for placing before him a translation
that was not Lady Charlotte Guest's. I have again ventured, however,
after a careful comparison of the translation with the original, to put
in the form of footnotes a more accurate or more literal rendering of
passages which Lady Charlotte Guest did not read aright, passages which
she has omitted, and passages the real meaning of which she seems to me
to have failed to grasp.
The first two tales in this volume make up, with "The Dream of Rhonabwy,"
the second volume of the original edition. "The Dream of Rhonabwy" was
placed in my first volume, with "The Lady of the Fountain" and
"Peredur"--the two tales that form the first volume of the original
edition. The oldest of the tales--the Mabinogion proper--will all be
included in the third volume.