veliest love poems that all Welsh literature can boast. His death
was lamented by Periv ab Kedwoi in a much less conventional and more
moving tone than the official bards generally troubled to use for such
elegies. A century or so later, and we find Llywarch ab Llywelyn
(known as "Prydydd y Moch," the Poet of the Pigs) writing a still
finer and more ample lament on the last native prince of Wales,
Llywelyn ab Gruffydd, "Llywelyn ewi Llyw Olaf," as he is still fondly
called. These two laments may be taken as typical of a wide section of
Welsh poetry, dealing with the deaths of heroes and princes, and
ranging in date from the fifth or sixth century to the nineteenth.
Llywelyn the Last died in 1282, and thereafter began what has been
well termed "The Great Oppression" (y Gorthrwm Mawr), by which Norman
and Saxon combined to crush the language and expropriate the people of
the country, with the result of calling up at last Owen Glendower's
hot spirit to fight for the national cause.

But it is remarkable that in this disastrous period arose some of the
finest interpreters of her genius that the country was ever to find.
Within its term were, without a doubt, carried to an approximate
perfection those more native romances that we term 'Mabinogion,'--the
most exquisite and exquisitely turned tales, in point of art, that the
Celtic races have produced. The late Lady Charlotte Guest's edition of
the 'Mabinogion' serves very well to convey, in a translation of
extreme felicity, to non-Celtic readers the art and spirit of these
tales. But it must be kept in mind that all she gives are not strictly
'Mabinogion'; several of them are more properly to be called romances,
as showing strong traces of Norman and French influence. The
'Mabinogi' originally was a tale to be recited by a _mabinog_,
_i. e._, a 'prentice to the bardic craft who had not yet obtained his
full degree, and with it the right of composing and reciting poetry.
The idea which some critics have, that the 'Mabinogion' were boys'
tales, or still worse, nursery tales, is quite wrong. Let us remember
that such tales were the delight of most of the princely halls and
winter hearths of mediaeval Wales, where they were recited after the
great banquets and on feast nights to the most critical audience that
could be afforded. 'The Dream of Rhonabwy,' 'Kilhwch and Olwen,' and
'Math, Son of Mathonwy,' may be mentioned as among the tales in Lady
Guest's volume which are most nat