collected, as to any innate superiority of the folk-imagination. The
folk-tale in England is in the last stages of exhaustion. The Celtic
folk-tales have been collected while the practice of story-telling
is still in full vigour, though there are every signs that its term
of life is already numbered. The more the reason why they should be
collected and put on record while there is yet time. On the whole,
the industry of the collectors of Celtic folk-lore is to be
commended, as may be seen from the survey of it I have prefixed to
the Notes and References at the end of the volume. Among these, I
would call attention to the study of the legend of Beth Gellert, the
origin of which, I believe, I have settled.

While I have endeavoured to render the language of the tales simple
and free from bookish artifice, I have not felt at liberty to retell
the tales in the English way. I have not scrupled to retain a Celtic
turn of speech, and here and there a Celtic word, which I have
_not_ explained within brackets--a practice to be abhorred of
all good men. A few words unknown to the reader only add
effectiveness and local colour to a narrative, as Mr. Kipling well
knows.

One characteristic of the Celtic folk-lore I have endeavoured to
represent in my selection, because it is nearly unique at the
present day in Europe. Nowhere else is there so large and consistent
a body of oral tradition about the national and mythical heroes as
amongst the Gaels. Only the _byline_, or hero-songs of Russia,
equal in extent the amount of knowledge about the heroes of the past
that still exists among the Gaelic-speaking peasantry of Scotland
and Ireland. And the Irish tales and ballads have this peculiarity,
that some of them have been extant, and can be traced, for well nigh