integral part of their history. However, I need not follow that topic further by trying to show how 'the proper study of mankind is man,' and how it is a mark of an uncultured people not to know or care to know about the history of the race. So the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus, evidently thought; for, when complaining how little was known as to the original peopling of Britain, he adds the suggestive words ut inter barbaros, as usual among barbarians.' Conversely, I take it for granted that no liberally educated man or woman of the present day requires to be instructed as to the value of the study of history in all its aspects, or to be told that folklore cannot be justly called trivial, seeing that it has to do with the history of the racein a wider sense, I may say with the history of the human mind and the record of its development.

As history has been mentioned, it may be here pointed out that one of the greatest of the folklorist's difficulties is that of drawing the line between story and history. Nor is that the worst of it; for the question as between fact and fiction, hard as it is in itself, is apt to be further complicated by questions of ethnology. This may be illustrated by reference to a group of legends which project a vanishing distinction between the two kindred races of Brythons and Goidels in Wales; and into the story of some of them Arthur is introduced playing a principal rôle. They seem to point to a time when the Goidels had as yet wholly lost neither their own language nor their own institutions in North Wales: for the legends belong chiefly to Gwyned, and cluster especially around Snowdon, where the characteristics of the Goidel as the earlier Celt may well have lingered latest, thanks to the comparatively inaccessible nature of the country. One of these legends has already been summarized as repre

senting Arthur marching up the side of Snowdon towards Bwlch y Saethau, where he falls and is buried under a cairn named from him Carned Arthur: see p. 473. We are not told who his enemies were; but with this question has usually been associated the late Triad, iii. 20, which alludes to Arthur meeting in Nanhwynain with Medrawd or Medrod (Modred) and Iđawc Corn Prydain, and to his being betrayed, for the benefit and security of the Saxons in the island. An earlier reference to the same story occurs in the Dream of Rhonabwy in the Red Book of Hergest1, in which Idawc describes himself as Idawc son of Mynio, and as nicknamed Idawc Cord Prydain-which means 'Idawc the Churn-staff of Prydain'-in reference presumably to his activity in creating dissension. He confesses to having falsified the friendly messages of Arthur to Medrod, and to succeeding thereby in bringing on the fatal battle of Camlan, from which Idawc himself escaped to do penance for seven years on the Lech Las, 'Grey Stone 2,' in Prydain or Pictland.

Another story brings Arthur and the giant Rhita into collision, the latter of whom has already been mentioned as having, according to local tradition, his grave on the top of Snowdon : see pp. 474-9. The story is a very wild one. Two kings who were brothers, Nyniaw or Nynio and Peibiaw or Peibio, quarrelled thus: one moonlight night, as they were together in the open air, Nynio said to Peibio, 'See, what a fine extensive field I possess.' 'Where is it?' asked Peibio. 'There it is,' said Nynio, 'the whole firmament.' 'See,' said Peibio, 'what

1 The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 147; Guest's Mabinogion, ii. 398.

This may have meant the 'Blue Slate or Flagstone'; but there is no telling so long as the place is not identified. It may have been in the Pictish district of Galloway, or else somewhere beyond the Forth. Query whether it was the same place as Lech Gelydon in Prydyn, mentioned in Boned y Saint: see the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 49.

innumerable herds of cattle and sheep I have grazing in thy field.' 'Where are they?' asked Nynio. 'There they are,' said Peibio, 'the whole host of stars that thou seest, each of golden brightness, with the moon shepherding them.' 'They shall not graze in my field,' said Nynio. But they shall,' said Peibio; and the two kings got so enraged with one another, that they began a war in which their warriors and subjects were nearly exterminated. Then comes Rhita Gawr, king of Wales, and attacks them on the dangerous ground of their being mad. He conquered them and shaved off their beards; but when the other kings of Prydain, twentyeight in number, heard of it, they collected all their armies together to avenge themselves on Rhita for the disgrace to which he had subjected the other two. But after a great struggle Rhita conquers again, and has the beards of the other kings shaved. Then the kings of neighbouring kingdoms in all directions combined to make war on Rhita to avenge the disgrace to their order; but they were also vanquished forthwith, and treated in the same ignominious fashion as the thirty kings of Prydain. With the beards he had a mantle made to cover him from head to foot, and that was a good deal, we are told, since he was as big as two ordinary men. Then Rhita turned his attention to the establishment of just and equitable laws as between king and king and one realm with another 2. But the sequel

The story of Kulhwch and Olwen has a different legend which represents Nynio and Peibio changed by the Almighty into two oxen called Ychen Bannabe: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 121, also my Arthurian Legend, p. 304, and the remarks which are to follow in this chapter with respect to those oxen.

2 For the story in Welsh see the Iolo MSS., pp. 193-4, where a footnote tells the reader that it was copied from the book of Iaco ab Dewi.' From his father's manuscript, Taliesin Williams printed an abstract in English in his notes to his poem entitled the Doom of Colyn Dolphyn (London, 1837), pp. 119-20, from which it will be found translated into German in the notes to San-Marte's Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ, pp. 403-3.

to the shaving is related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, x. 3, where Arthur is made to tell how the giant, after destroying the other kings and using their beards in the way mentioned, asked him for his beard to fix above the other beards, as he stood above them in rank, or else to come and fight a duel with him. Arthur, as might be expected, chose the latter course, with the result that he slew Rhita, there called Ritho, at a place said to be in Aravio Monte, by which the Welsh translator understood the chief mountain of Eryri1 or Snowdon. So it is but natural that his grave should also be there, as already mentioned. I may here add that it is the name Snowdon itself, probably, that underlies the Senaudon or Sinadoun of such Arthurian romances as the English version of Libeaus Desconus, though the place meant has been variously supposed to be situated elsewhere than in the Snowdon district: witness Sinodun Hill in Berkshire 2.

The story of Rhita is told also by Malory, who calls that giant Ryons and Ryence; and there the incident seems to end with Ryons being led to Arthur's court by knights who had overcome him. Ryons' challenge, as given by Malory, runs thus:

'This meane whyle came a messager from kynge Ryons of Northwalys. And kynge he was of all Ireland and of many Iles. And this was his message gretynge wel kynge Arthur in this manere wyse sayenge . that kynge Ryons had discomfyte and ouercome xj kynges . and eueryche of hem did hym homage. and that was this.

1 Oxford Bruts, p. 213: compare p. 146, together with Geoffrey's Latin, vii. 3, X. 3.

' See Kölbing's Altenglische Bibliothek, the fifth volume of which consists of Libeaus Desconus, edited by Max Kaluza (Leipsic, 1890), lines 163, 591, and Introduction, p. cxxxxiv. For calling my attention to this, I have to thank my friend, Mr. Henry Bradley.

'Malory's Morte Darthur, i. 27: see also i. 17-8, 28; ii. 6, 8-9.

they gaf hym their berdys clene flayne of . as moche as ther was. wherfor the messager came for kyng Arthurs berd. For kyng Ryons had purfyled a mantel with kynges berdes. and there lacked one place of the mantel. wherfor he sente for his berd or els he wold entre in to his landes. and brenne and slee. & neuer leue tyl he haue the hede and the berd.'

Rhita is not said, it is true, to have been a Gwydel, 'Goidel'; but he is represented ruling over Ireland, and his name, which is not Welsh, recalls at first sight those of such men as Boya the Pict or Scot figuring in the life of St. David, and such as Lia Gvitel, ' ILia the Goidel,' mentioned in the Stanzas of the Graves in the Black Book of Carmarthen as buried in the seclusion of Ardudwy1. Malory's Ryons is derived from the French Romances, where, as for example in the Merlin, according to the Huth MS., it occurs as Rion-s in the nominative, and Rion in régime. The latter, owing to the old French habit of eliding & or th, derives regularly enough from such a form as the accusative Rithon-em2, which is the one

1 See Evans' Autotype Facsimile, fo. 33a: could the spot so called (in the Welsh text argel Ardudwy) be somewhere in the neighbourhood of ILyn Irdyn (p. 148), a district said to be rich in the remains of a prehistoric antiquity? J. Evans, author of the North Wales volume of the Beauties of England and Wales, says, after hurriedly enumerating such antiquities, p. 909 : 'Perhaps in no part of Britain is there still remaining such an assemblage of relicks belonging to druidical rites and customs as are found in this place, and the adjacent parts.'

As to Rion, see Gaston Paris and Ulrich's Merlin (Paris, 1886), i. 202, 239-46. Other instances will readily occur to the reader, such as the Domesday Roelend or Roelent for Rothelan, in Modern Welsh Rhudlan; but for more instances of this elision by French and Anglo-Norman scribes of vowel-flanked & and th, see Notes and Queries for Oct. 28, 1899, pp. 351-2, and Nov. 18, p. 415; also Vising's Étude sur le Dialecte anglo-normand du xije Siècle (Upsala, 1882), p. 88; and F. Hildebrand's article on Domesday, in the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 1884, p. 360. According to Suchier in Gröber's Grundriss der rom. Philologie, i. 581, this process of elision became complete in the twelfth century: see also Schwan's Grammatik des Altfranzösischen (Leipsic, 1888), p. 65. For most of these references, I have to thank my friend and neighbour, Mr. Stevenson of Exeter College.