A few words of preface may save footnotes to a story which deals
with the half-forgotten days when the power of a British prince had
yet to be reckoned with by the Wessex kings as they slowly and
steadily pushed their frontier westward.

The authority for the historical basis of the story is the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which gives A.D. 710 as the year of the
defeat of Gerent, king of the West Welsh, by Ina of Wessex and his
kinsman Nunna. This date is therefore approximately that of the
events of the tale.

With regard to the topography of the Wessex frontier involved,
although it practically explains itself in the course of the story,
it may be as well to remind a reader that West Wales was the last
British kingdom south of the Severn Sea, the name being, of course,
given by Wessex men to distinguish it from the Welsh principalities
in what we now call Wales, to their north. In the days of Ina it
comprised Cornwall and the present Devon and also the half of
Somerset westward of the north and south line of the river Parrett
and Quantock Hills. Practically this old British "Dyvnaint"
represented the ancient Roman province of Damnonia, shrinking as it
was under successive advances of the Saxons from the boundary which
it once had along the Mendips and Selwood Forest. Ina's victory
over Gerent set the Dyvnaint frontier yet westward, to the line of
the present county of Somerset, which represents the limit of his
conquest, the new addition to the territory of the clan of the
Sumorsaetas long being named as "Devon in Wessex" by the
chroniclers rather than as Somerset.