portions only of it have hitherto appeared in print, the remainder
being still hidden in the obscurity of ancient Manuscripts: of these
the chief is supposed to be the Red Book of Hergest, now in the
Library of Jesus College, Oxford, and of the fourteenth century.
This contains, besides poems, the prose romances known as Mabinogion.
The Black Book of Caermarthen, preserved at Hengwrt, and considered
not to be of later date than the twelfth century, is said to contain
poems only. {1}

The Mabinogion, however, though thus early recorded in the Welsh
tongue, are in their existing form by no means wholly Welsh. They
are of two tolerably distinct classes. Of these, the older contains
few allusions to Norman customs, manners, arts, arms, and luxuries.
The other, and less ancient, are full of such allusions, and of
ecclesiastical terms. Both classes, no doubt, are equally of Welsh
root, but the former are not more overlaid or corrupted, than might
have been expected, from the communication that so early took place
between the Normans and the Welsh; whereas the latter probably
migrated from Wales, and were brought back and re-translated after an
absence of centuries, with a load of Norman additions. Kilhwch and
Olwen, and the dream of Rhonabwy, may be cited as examples of the
older and purer class; the Lady of the Fountain, Peredur, and Geraint
ab Erbin, of the later, or decorated.

Besides these, indeed, there are a few tales, as Amlyn and Amic, Sir
Bevis of Hamtoun, the Seven Wise Masters, and the story of
Charlemagne, so obviously of foreign extraction, and of late
introduction into Wales, not presenting even a Welsh name, or
allusion, and of such very slender intrinsic merit, that although
comprised in the Llyvr Coch, they have not a shadow of claim to form