Welsh Fairy Tales

By

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS

1921



A PREFACE-LETTER TO MY GRANDFATHER

DEAR CAPTAIN JOHN GRIFFIS:

Although I never saw you, since you died in 1804, I am glad you were
one of those Welshmen who opposed the policy of King George III and
that you, after coming to America in 1783, were among the first sea
captains to carry the American flag around the world. That you knew
many of the Free Quakers and other patriots of the Revolution and that
they buried you among them, near Benjamin Franklin, is a matter of
pride to your descendants. That you were born in Wales and spoke
Welsh, as did also those three great prophets of spiritual liberty,
Roger Williams, William Penn, and Thomas Jefferson, is still further
ground for pride in one's ancestry. Now, in the perspective of history
we see that our Washington and his compeers and Wilkes, Barre, Burke
and the friends of America in Parliament were fighting the same battle
of Freedom. Though our debt to Wales for many things is great, we
count not least those inheritances from the world of imagination, for
which the Cymric Land was famous, even before the days of either
Anglo-Saxon or Norman.