CELTIC FOLKLORE
J. RHŶS
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
MDCCCCI
Oxford
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Our modern idioms, with all their straining after theabstract, are but primitive man’s mental tools adapted to therequirements of civilized life, and they often retain traces of theform and shape which the neolithic worker’s chipping andpolishing gave them. [vii]
PREFACE
Towards the close of the seventies I began to collectWelsh folklore. I did so partly because others had set the exampleelsewhere, and partly in order to see whether Wales could boast of anystory-tellers of the kind that delight the readers of Campbell’sPopular Tales of the West Highlands. I soon found what I was notwholly unprepared for, that as a rule I could not get a single story ofany length from the mouths of any of my fellow countrymen, but aconsiderable number of bits of stories. In some instances these were soscrappy that it took me years to discover how to fit the