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large speckled grey steed, with a hunting horn hanging from his neck, and dressed in hunting clothes of grey woollen.

And thereupon the man on horseback came to him, and spoke to him thus. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I know who you are, and I greet you not.’ ‘Indeed,’ said he, ‘and perhaps you are of such rank that you are not bound to.’^[1] ‘Verily,’ said he, ‘it is not the dignity of my rank that hinders me doing so.’ ‘Oh, sir,’ said he, ‘what else?’ ‘Between me and God,’^[2] said he, ‘your own impoliteness^[3] and your discourtesy.’ ‘What discourtesy, sir, have you seen in me?’ ‘I never saw greater discourtesy in man’, said he, ‘than to drive away the pack that had killed the stag, and to set your own pack upon it.^[4] That’, said he, ‘was discourtesy, and though I may not take vengeance upon you, between me and God,’ said he, ‘I will do you dishonour worth a

1. ↑ This appears to indicate that, according to Welsh custom, salutation was made, in the first instance, by inferior to superior, and responded to by the latter. We see many instances of this in the stories, and a salutation by superior to inferior is more than once referred to as a mark of courteous condescension.
2. ↑ A common Welsh medieval oath, never now used.
3. ↑ ‘annwybot’, lit. ‘ignorance’. Ignorance and impoliteness were regarded as one and the same thing in medieval Wales.
4. ↑ According to Welsh hunting etiquette, which was very strict, it was impermissible to loose dogs upon a quarry which dogs previously unleashed were in pursuit of. But it was equally a breach of etiquette for any one to unleash his dogs in the presence of the king’s dogs, which had first claim to a trial. The point of the episode is that Pwyll, as prince, was within his rights in resenting the unleashing of another’s dogs, had that other not been himself a prince, a fact of which Pwyll was ignorant.