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The very first thing that strikes one, in reading the Mabinogion, is how evidently the mediaeval story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret; he is like a peasant building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition merely; -stones 'not of this building, but of an older architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical.
The story of Geraint and Enid, Tennyson derived from a very interesting collection of translations of ancient Welsh stories made by Lady Charlotte Guest, and by her called Mabinogion, although not all Welsh scholars would consider the name quite accurate. And now it is time to say something about the stories themselves.
and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. Vivien was first composed as Merlin and Nimue, and then Geraint and Enid was adapted from the Mabinogion, the Welsh collection of Marchen and legends, things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, or Brythonic, now amplifications made under the influence of mediaeval French romance.
Yet the original literature of mediæval chivalry is known only to a few scholars: Tennyson's Idylls outsell the Mabinogion and Malory.
In those same centuries the Welsh bards were writing the Natural Magic of the Mabinogion, one of the chief European repositories of Natural Magic; and filling a remarkable poetical literature with the same quality: and that before the rest of Europe had, for the most part, awakened to the spiritual impulses that lead to civilization.
"You've got to go down and settle that," she answered. "Will I tell Shoni to put the gig ready?" "Yes, yes. I better go. I will be back by Sunday." "James Harris will help you in every way, uncle, and will settle everything for you." "Oh! very well, very well. Tis a pity about the 'Mabinogion, too; but we'll go on with them next week, Valmai."
It is in the presence of facts such as these that one comes to believe that revolutions in general so destructive of the works of the past are favourable to the preservation of literary monuments, by compelling their concentration in great centres, where their existence, as well as their publicity, is assured. The general tone of the Mabinogion is rather romantic than epic.
His first literary venture was a novel, Tiger Lilies . Thereafter he wrote mainly on literature, his works including The Science of English Verse , The English Novel , and Shakespeare and his Forerunners ; also some poems which have been greatly admired, including "Corn," "The Marshes of Glynn," and "The Song of the Chattahoochee"; ed. of Froissart, and the Welsh Mabinogion for children.
They were not merely singers or poets, but also tale-tellers; and from the Mabinogion we gather that listening to songs and tales was one of the habitual, if not daily pastimes, of a court. It is needless to follow through the Middle Ages the history of the troubadour, the minstrel and the jongleur, who played so large part in the social life of those times.
Before commencing these labours, I was aware, generally, that there existed a connexion between the Welsh Mabinogion and the Romance of the Continent; but as I advanced, I became better acquainted with the closeness and extent of that connexion, its history, and the proofs by which it is supported.
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