Popular Romances of The West of England in Two Series. First Series: Giants, Fairies, Tregagle, Mermaids, Lost Cities, Rocks, Fire Worship & Demons
Second Series: Saints, Holy Wells, Arthur, Sorcery, etc.
A facsimile reprint of a classic study by John Rhys, who was Professor of Celtic in the University of Oxford. Originally delivered as the Rhind lectures in Archaeology, the work was serialized in the Scottish Review, and subsequently printed in book form by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. John Rhys is perhaps best remembered for his work on the folk-lore of Wales and the Isle of Man, but his study of the early ethnology of the British Isles is still a useful and interesting book despite .......
Joseph Leycester Lyne was born in 1837, and lived for seventy one years, a stormy and enthusiastic life. His story is concerned with the religious extremes in the nineteenth century, the figure of Father Ignatius O.S.B. combining evangelistic fervour with the monastic aspirations which had been reborn around the time of Newman and Pusey. His attempts to set up and develop his monasteries were well intended, but upset by a totally unreal attitude to the necessary management of financial affairs, .......
The Gododdin is an heroic epic poem from the British "Dark Ages", written in Old Welsh in Southern Scotland about a battle fought in Northern England, possibly at Catterick in Yorkshire. Unlike most heroic poems, it celebrates a defeat, not a victory, and takes the form of a series of elegies for the fallen. The emotional impact of the poem is heightened by the fact that Aneirin, the poet, was at the battle and knew the dead personally. This translation seeks to transmit something of this immed.......
As a descriptive introduction, J. Romilly Allen's work on the high crosses of Ireland has stood the test of time. His style is clear and concise, and his drawings enable to reader to form some impression of what the stone carvings looked like when they were new, something that cannot be conveyed by photographs of time-worn or vandalized monuments. The subject matter of this book was originally two of the Rhind Lectures in Archaeology for 1885, delivered by J. Romilly Allen. The complete series .......
This is a facsimile reprint of an archæological classic on the crannogs or lake dwellings of Ireland, first published in 1886. It is generously illustrated by drawings of many of the archæological finds, and artists impressions of what the crannogs may have looked like to contemporary eyes.
The strong point of the 19th century investigators is that they were primarily morphologists who described and drew accurately what they found, and it is this which makes the value of these published.......
The Last Abbot of Glastonbury was first published in 1895 and it was subsequently reprinted in 1908 along with a number of essays mostly dealing with aspects of life in the thirteenth century, by Francis Aidan Gasquet who was the then Abbot President of the English Benedictines. This Llanerch paperback is a facsimile taken from the 1908 edition; it deals with the destruction of the great Benedictine abbeys of Glastonbury, Reading and Colchester, and gives a brief sketch of the tragic deaths of t.......
In AD 600, the heroic Men of the North known as the Gododdin suffered an agonizing defeat at the Battle of Catraeth, lamented so movingly in Canu Aneirin. Then in 638, their capital of Edinburgh fell to the Northumbrians, and they faded from history. Until now, hidden within the great Welsh poem Armes Prydein ate lines from an older poem - a poem set in the council of war for the Battle of Winwaed in 655, in which descendants of the Gododdin living in Gwynedd lead a combined force of Britons, Ir.......
Did Joseph of Arimathea come to Glastonbury in the first century A.D., and establish the first Christian community in Britain? Did he receive a gift of twelve hides of land on which to establish his monastic community? What form did that early community take? Did the monks of Glastonbury really unearth the bodies of King Arthur and his queen? Ray Gibbs deals with these questions in a competent and sympathetic way. He comes up with some surprising answers.
The author has first-hand knowledge of .......
This volume only gives a superficial view of the subject and is merely to give a general idea of the nature of the materials that are available for writing a more complete treatise. The author's chief objective has been to collect together a considerable amount of information, otherwise difficult to obtain, and endeavoured to arrive at as reliable conclusions as possible, by examining the greatest number of specimens of each class of remains. Any conclusions drawn are not scientific and can be .......
The Arthurian Quest, and the Quest for the Holy Grail, is really about an ancient initiatic rite that came to be romantacized during the Middle Ages. Like the Quest of the Golden Fleece, or the Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, it is characterized by a variety of deeper meanings behind the literal one. The profound interpretation of the quest tales is of the human soul in search of spirituality, and ultimately, its union with God.
The Oldest Irish Tradition of the title is the Ulster Cycle of ancient tales centred on the warrior hero Cu Chullain and culminating in the epic Tain B6 Cualnge ("The Cattle-Raid ofCooley'). While the oldest surviving manuscript containing the Ulster Cycle was set down around the year 1100, Professor Jackson shows how its text preserves an oral tradition flourishing in Ireland at least six hundred years before that date and offering a vivid reflection of the Celtic Irish 'Heroic Age' of the thi.......
This unique work is of great value to anyone interested in both herbal medicine and the folk traditions of Wales. Although the material dates back to the twelfth century, it is still recognized as a useful and relevant text by present day practitioners as well as those with a more historical perspective.
The original physicians of Myddfai date from the twelfth century and their remedies have come down to us in two books, originating from the descendants of Rhiwallon the physician, a short one.......
James Murray's book includes the complete text of the fif teeth century "Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune," with lenghthy illustrations from the prophetic literature of that and the following century. It also includes an introduction containing a summary of "all that history, legend, and tradition tell us of Thomas and his alleged sayings." The subject had previously been taken up by Sir Walter Scott in the Minstrelsey of the Scottish Borders, and Murray's book owes much to the int.......
Jessie L. Weston's English translation of the Romance of Morien from the original Dutch is no. IV of the series Arthurian Romances Unrepresented in Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." It was first published by David Nutt in 1901, and is here reprinted as a facsimile of that edition.
