MABINOGION, tnab-T-n6'g1-6n, The, the name generally but incorrectly applied to all mediaeval Welsh stories. Of the general title which Lady Charlotte Guest's English version (1838-49) has made familiar, John Rhys gives an explanation. 'An idea prevails," says Principal Rhys, "that any Welsh tale of respectable antiquity may be called a mabinogi; but there is no warrant for extending the use of the term . . . For, speaking, the word mabinog is a technical term belonging to the hardic system, and it means a literary apprentice. In other words, a mabinog was a young man who had not yet acquired the art of making verse, but who received instruction from a qualified bard. The inference is that the 'Mabinogion' meant the collection of things which formed the mabinog's literary training his stock in trade, so to speak; for he was probably allowed to relate the tales forming the 'four branches of the Mabinogion' at a fixed price established by law or custom. If he as pired to a place in the hierarchy of letters, he must acquire the poetic art.° In Lady Charlotte Guest's later edition in one volume (1877), the most convenient edition for reference, 12 tales in all will be found. Of these, the most natively and characteristically Welsh in char acter are such tales as the vivid, thrice romantic 'Dream of Rhonabwy,' which owes little to outside sources. 'The Lady of the Fountain,' on
the other hand, shows in a very striking way the influence of the French chivalric romances that Sir Thomas Malory drew upon so freely in : is 'Morte d'Arthur.' In the admirably edited Oxford text of the Welsh originals by Rhys and Evans (1887-90), 'The Lady of the Fountain' appears under the title of 'Owain and ; and Lunet's name at once recalls Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King.' The old manuscript volume of the known as the 'Llyfr Coch o Hergest,) the 'Red Book of Hergest,' written in the dialect of South Wales, is in the famous library of Jesus Col lege, Oxford, the one college in the older English universities which has a time-honored connection with Welsh scholarship and Welsh literature. The tales, though in their present form not older than the 12th century, embody traditions that were afloat prior to that date. Consult John, I. B., 'The (Lon don 1901); and Uoyd, E.J., 'The Mabinogion as Literature' (in the Celtic Review, Edin burgh 1911).