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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.