The myth survived

You may find this book irritating. A complex exposition of 2,000 years of history, it is intended for the general reader, whoever he is (a general reader would surely not attempt it), so its source material is not identified but tidied away into long footnotes, presumably on the principle of pas devant la bonne. Thus the 12th-century historian William of Newburgh is introduced in the main text only as ‘a crusty old scholar’, and the family of Geoffrey of Monmouth as ‘the Monmouths’. All right, so Simon Young thinks he knows his readership.

Yet he has this for an epigraph, ‘Ac nyt oed uawr yna y weilgi : y ueis yd aeth ef’, a sentence he attributes, cryptically, to ‘Branwen’. Epigraphs are important; they are what you encounter first, and you look to them for some clue as to what will follow. But here there is no translation, no explanation given of where it is from, and certainly no gloss on its prominent position. No general reader is ever going to sort that out, and no contemporary Welsh speaker either, apart from, at most, a dozen research scholars.

To understand it you not only have to know that it is from the 12th-century collection of stories, The Mabinogion, you also need a knowledge of early medieval Welsh spelling. I am advised that it describes an invasion of Ireland, led by a king so big he actually walked it, Lady Charlotte Guest’s approximate translation being, ‘And it was not far across the sea, and he came to shoal water.’ Presumably it is used here to show the homogeneity of a lost Celtic world, which is the theme of the book. So why doesn’t Young say so? I can only assume it is a knowing wink at possible academic critics, a ‘You and I realise I know my stuff really, it’s just that I have to jazz it up a bit for the others.’