British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions

WIRT SIKES, UNITED STATES CONSUL FOR WALES.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY T. H. THOMAS.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET. 1880.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
THE OLD WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.
TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, ALBERT EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, THIS ACCOUNT OF THE FAIRY MYTHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE OF HIS PRINCIPALITY IS BY PERMISSION DEDICATED.

In the ground it covers, while this volume deals especially with Wales, and still more especially with South Wales—where there appear to have been human dwellers long before North Wales was peopled—it also includes the border counties, notably Monmouthshire, which, though severed from Wales by Act of Parliament, is really very Welsh in all that relates to the past. In Monmouthshire is the decayed cathedral city of Caerleon, where, according to tradition, Arthur was crowned king in 508, and where he set up his most dazzling court, as told in the ‘Morte d’Arthur.’
In a certain sense Wales may be spoken of as the cradle of fairy legend. It is not now disputed that from the Welsh were borrowed many of the first subjects of composition in the literature of all the cultivated peoples of Europe.
The Arthur of British history and tradition stands to Welshmen in much the same light that Alfred the Great stands to Englishmen. Around this historic or semi-historic Arthur have gathered a throng of shining legends of fabulous sort, with which English readers are more or less familiar. An even grander figure is the Arthur who existed in Welsh mythology before the birth of the warrior-king. The mythic Arthur, it is presumed, began his shadowy life in pre-historic ages, and grew progressively in mythologic story, absorbing at a certain period the personality of the real Arthur, and becoming the type of romantic chivalry. A similar state of things is indicated with regard to the enchanter Merlin; there was a mythic Merlin before the real Merlin was born at Carmarthen.