n traditions referring to Roman times.

The most important of these tales are undoubtedly those contained in the
first class, and the story of _Kilhwch_ and _Olwen_. The form in which
they are found in the _Red Book of Hergest_ is, as we have already said,
comparatively speaking, modern. But it is apparent to any one reading
these tales that the writers or compilers, as Matthew Arnold has
suggested, are "pillaging an antiquity, the secret of which they do not
fully possess." The foundations of the tales are the old Celtic
traditions of the gods and the older heroes, and they clearly show
Goidelic influence both in the persons they introduce and in their
incidents. The tales would at first exist only in oral tradition, and
after the advent of Christianity the characters they contain lost their
title of divinity and became simply heroes--warriors and magicians. In
time the monks began to write these ancient traditions, embellishing
them and suppressing no doubt what they considered to be most
objectionable. These then are the tales which we now possess--the
traditional doings of the old heroes as set in order by Christian
writers.

The changes which these later copyists wrought in the substance of the
tales fall into two main divisions. In the first place, they attempted
to find some connexion between tales or cycles of tales which originally
had no connexion whatever, and were therefore forced to invent new
incidents or to introduce other incidents from the outside in order to
establish this connexion; and secondly, as in the case of the _Gododin_,
the tales were twisted and altered to support references to and
explanations of names known to the writer. So we find in the tale of
_Math vab Mathonwy_ the incident of the pigs is expanded to explain some
place-names which the writer knew. It is this also that gives a local
interest to the tales; for instance, _Dyvet_, the land of _Pwyll_, has
come to be regarded as the home of _Hud a Lledrith_, of magic and
enchantment. Some places in North Wales, especially in the vicinity of
Carnarvon, seem to be well known to the writers, and, therefore, to have
associated with them to all time the glamour of the Mabinogion.

Besides the scholastic efforts of the monks, which in course of time so
greatly changed these old legends, there was another class of men who
had no little influence on the form and matter of Welsh, and
consequently of European, romance. These were the Welsh jongle