Note 1 — Chapter V

In this chapter we have to make more use than usual of the Scottish, British, and Northumbrian writers. I do not undertake to go very deeply into any purely literary questions about them. I have simply used them for facts, and have dealt with their statements according to the usual rules of criticism. The Scottish and Northumbrian writers will be found in Mr. Skene’s edition of Fordun and in the Surtees Society’s edition of Simeon. This last contains, among other things, Turgot’s Life of Saint Margaret and the passages from Fordun which profess to be extracts from Turgot. The Surtees’ text and Mr. Skene’s text do not always agree, but their differences are not often of much importance for my purposes. It is certainly strange if some of these passages really come from a contemporary writer. For Welsh matters we are, to my mind, better off. Unhappily I do not know enough of the Welsh tongue really to make use of the originals, though I am not utterly at the mercy of the translator as to proper names and technical terms. In the Chronicles and Memorials are two volumes of most valuable matter which need a fresh editor. It is not my business to enter into any questions as to their authorship, how far it is due to Caradoc of Llancarfan or anybody else. In any case the Latin Annales Cambriæ, meagre as they are, form a thoroughly good and trustworthy record, but the Editor seems in many places to have been unable either to read his manuscript or to construe his Latin. Many of the readings too which are most valuable historically are thrust into notes. The Welsh Brut y Tywysogion, published in the same series by the same Editor, is a fuller version of the Annals, and also I believe essentially trustworthy. I have been obliged to quote this in the translation, though often with some doubts as to its accuracy. In the preface a good deal of matter by the late Mr. Aneurin Owen is reprinted without acknowledgement. There is also another Brut y Tywysogion, otherwise “The Gwentian Chronicles of Caradoc of Llancarvan,” translated by Mr. Owen and published by the Cambrian Archæological Association. Here we have the translating and editing of a really eminent Welsh scholar, but the book, as a historical authority, is very inferior to either the Latin Annals or the other Brut. A great deal of legendary matter, some of which must be of quite a late date, has been thrust in. I quote the more trustworthy Brut in the Chronicles and Memorials as the elder, and that published by the Cambrian Archæological Association as the later Brut.