of history. And I think you may like to follow the story of the
Arthur of literature, and see how, from very little, it has grown
so great that now it is known all the world over. I should like
you to remember, too, that the Arthur story is not the only one
which repeats itself again and again throughout our Literature.
There are others which have caught the fancy of great masters and
have been told by them in varying ways throughout the ages. But
of them all, the Arthur story is perhaps the best example.

Of the old Welsh poets it may, perhaps, be interesting to
remember two. These are Taliesin, or "Shining Forehead," and
Merlin.

Merlin is interesting because he is Arthur's great bard and
magician. Taliesin is interesting because in a book called The
Mabinogion, which is a translation of some of the oldest Welsh
stories, we have the tale of his wonderful birth and life.

Mabinogion really means tales for the young. Except the History
of Taliesin, all the stories in this book are translated from a
very old manuscript called the Red Book of Hergest.. This Red
Book belongs to the fourteenth century, but many of the stories
are far far older, having, it is thought, been told in some form
or other for hundreds of years before they were written down at
all. Unlike many old tales, too, they are written in prose, not
in poetry.

One of the stories in The Mabinogion, the story of King Ludd,
takes us back a long way. King Ludd was a king in Britain, and
in another book we learn that he was a brother of Cassevelaunis,