almost irresistibly connects itself in one's mind with the elaborate
Druidic discipline which Caesar mentions.

But perhaps the best way to get a full sense of the storied
antiquity, forming as it were the background to those mediaeval
documents which in Mr. Nash's eyes pretty much begin and end with
themselves, is to take, almost at random, a passage from such a tale
as Kilhwch and Olwen, in the Mabinogion,--that charming collection,
for which we owe such a debt of gratitude to Lady Charlotte Guest (to
call her still by the name she bore when she made her happy entry
into the world of letters), and which she so unkindly suffers to
remain out of print. Almost every page of this tale points to
traditions and personages of the most remote antiquity, and is
instinct with the very breath of the primitive world. Search is made
for Mabon, the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old
from between his mother and the wall. The seekers go first to the
Ousel of Cilgwri; the Ousel had lived long enough to peck a smith's
anvil down to the size of a nut, but he had never heard of Mabon.
'But there is a race of animals who were formed before me, and I will
be your guide to them.' So the Ousel guides them to the Stag of
Redynvre. The Stag has seen an oak sapling, in the wood where he
lived, grow up to be an oak with a hundred branches, and then slowly
decay down to a withered stump, yet he had never heard of Mabon.
'But I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which
was formed before I was;' and he guides them to the Owl of Cwm
Cawlwyd. 'When first I came hither,' says the Owl, 'the wide valley
you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up.
And there grew a second wood; and this wood is the third. My wings,
are they not withered stumps?' Yet the Owl, in spite of his great
age, had never heard of Mabon; but he offered to be guide 'to where