In the year 1838 Lady Charlotte Guest published a translation of these Mabinogion, accompanied by the text of their Welsh originals and a mass of useful and scholarly notes. Her work bore this gracious dedication:—
TO IVOR AND MERTHYR.
My dear Children,—Infants as you yet are, I feel that I cannot dedicate more fitly than to you these venerable relics of ancient lore, and I do so in the hope of inciting you to cultivate the Literature of "Gwyllt Walia," in whose beautiful language you are being initiated, and amongst whose free mountains you were born.
May you become early imbued with the chivalric and exalted sense of honor, and the fervent patriotism for which its sons have ever been celebrated.
May you learn to emulate the noble qualities of Ivor Hael, and the firm attachment to your native country which distinguished that Ivor Bach, after whom the elder of you was named.
I am your affectionate mother,
C. E. GUEST.
Dowlais, Aug. 29, 1838.
Several considerations made me strongly desire to re-edit, upon the same plan with The Boy's Froissart and The Boy's King Arthur, the curious old products of Welsh fancy thus rendered available to scholars. The intrinsic charm of the stories themselves in the first place would easily have secured them a position in this series. Though not so rich as the Arabian Nights, they are more vigorous, and their fascination is of a more manful quality. Moreover, they are in comparison open-air tales, and do not move in that close, and, if one could think such a thing, gas-poisoned, temperature which often renders the atmosphere of the Eastern tales extremely unwholesome.
But in the second place the Mabinogion all centre, in one way or another, about the court of King Arthur, and present us with views of the domestic life going on in King Arthur's palace, as well as of the wild adventures of his warriors, which were conceived at a very much earlier and ruder period than that of Sir Thomas Malory's book; so that this collection of the earliest Arthurian legends seemed to make a peculiarly happy companion-book to The Boy's King Arthur, which was last published in this series. Indeed, it is probable that in these Mabinogion here following we have the original germs of that great growth of Arthurian romances which overspread Europe after Geoffrey of Monmouth published his History of the Britons, and of which I gave some account in the Introduction to The Boy's King Arthur. Readers of that Introduction will remember the statement there given, in which Geoffrey of Monmouth himself declares that his main material consisted of a Welsh book given him by a certain person since supposed to be Walter Map (or Mapes). Although several of the following Mabinogion have probably received additions from foreign sources in the course of time—an original Welsh story, for example, would be carried by some traveller into other parts of Europe, would there be retold with additions and variations, would find its way back in the new form to Wales, and thus re-appear after a while in Welsh collections; yet others are in a nearly pure state. In order to bring these two classes into striking contrast, and to show how much a foreign admixture of this kind might smooth down the grotesque ruggedness of its Welsh original, I have changed the order of the Mabinogion as given in Lady Guest's arrangement, and have placed the story of Kilhwch and Olwen, which is almost hideous in many of its huge fancies and distortions and is pure Welsh, immediately next to the story of The Lady of the Fountain, whose daintiness, luxury, black savages, and the like, seem here and there to indicate foreign touches. The general tone and essential spirit, however, of the whole, are distinctly Welsh, and old Welsh. I think it curious indeed to note how curious those old romances, or Mabinogion, seem to us in spite of the long intimacy and nearness between Welsh and English. They impress most readers with a greater sense of foreignness, of a wholly different cultus, than even Chinese or other antipodal tales; and over and above this there is a glamour and sleep-walking mystery which often incline a man to rub his eyes in the midst of a Mabinogi, and to think of previous states of existence.
It is another feature of this same difference between Welsh and English modes of thought which forms a third, and to me the most weighty, reason for bringing these Mabinogion before my young countrymen at this particular time. I can illustrate this difference most vividly by asking you to consider the following group of Welsh conceits and notions which I have assembled from various sources, upon the single thread of their likeness in extravagance, in wildness beyond all tolerance of reason, in lawlessness. Of course they are not to be taken as ordinary representative specimens; and I shall presently counterbalance them with some very beautiful, moderate, and wise examples of Welsh art. But they unquestionably show a tendency so characteristic as to be easily traceable.