Note 1 — Chapter X · Difficulties of the Folklorist

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 Gwyneđ, 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 representing Arthur marching up the side of Snowdon towards Bwlch y Saethau, where he falls and is buried under a cairn named from him Carneđ 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 Iđawc describes himself as Iđawc son of Mynio, and as nicknamed Iđawc Corđ Prydain—which means ‘Iđawc 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 Iđawc himself escaped to do penance for seven years on the Ỻech Las, ‘Grey Stone2,’ in Prydain or Pictland.