Page:The Mabinogion Volume I.pdf/19

feeling in regard to sex honour which Renan speaks of as the electrifying influence on the manners of the Middle Ages, which was the contribution of Welsh literature to the times, and which had so much to do in paving the way for the growth of the conception of the true chivalric character in all Western literature.

The scene of ‘Pwyll’ is cast in South Wales, mainly in the old principality of Dyfed—that is, modern Pembroke and western Carmarthen—and in the mythical abode of the dead, Annwn, which was originally conceived of as the home of the gods—a pleasant, rich country, full of everything a man might need. There is, however, a probability that the original terrestrial locale of the Four Branches was in North Wales; but, inasmuch as Welsh literature blossomed more richly in the south than in the north, the final form of Pwyll acquired a distinctively South Welsh atmosphere and setting.

Welsh philologists, as a whole, regard the text of Pwyll as the earliest of the Four Branches to be redacted; there are differences of view as to the exact period when the redaction took place, but it may be dated, we think, on a balance of opinion, as at the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century.