viii
PREFACE.
It is, then, under these altered conditions, and in the absence of all means of comparison on their part, that I ask my new readers to believe that I have striven to preserve in Saxon English the primitive simplicity of the Welsh original.
To these remarks it only remains for me to add, that the text of the Mabinogion exists in the Llyfr Coch o Hergest (or Red Book of Hergest) preserved in the Library of Jesus College, Oxford, and that for the accurate copy which I used, I was indebted to the learned labours of the Rev. John Jones (Tegid), Fellow of that College, and to the courtesy of the late Mr. Justice Bosanquet, for whom the transcript in question was originally made.
Langham house, London,
18th January, 1877.
