Product Description: This work establishes the chronology and provenance of the early mediaeval tales known today as the "Four Branches of the Mabinogi". Although they have been justly described as 'fundamentally the stories of the old Brittonic gods from whom the leading Welsh dynasties claimed descent', which makes their principal subject-matter archaic and in principle timeless, Tolstoy shows that often seemingly incongruous and contradictory passages reflect details of historical events in Britain and Ireland during the first two decades of the eleventh century...read more