urs--the
professional story-tellers, against whom the bards proper nursed a
deadly hatred because, presumably, their tales drew larger audiences and
won greater rewards than the _awdlau_ of the poets. There is little
doubt that this order existed in Wales at a very early period, being
quite a natural evolution of the older poet who sang in comparatively
free metres of the deeds of the great dead. It is these men who invented
the term _Mabinogi_, which is supposed to mean a "tale for young
people"; but whatever the word may mean, the fact that they were the
stock-in-trade of the professional story-teller will explain a good many
of their structural peculiarities.

Thus there existed two distinct classes of tales, though it is to be
supposed that the subject matter of both was more or less common; there
are, in the first place, the "four branches" and the tales of the second
class, and, secondly, tales like those of the third class. With the
exception of the Irish influence, which we have already referred to, and
some later additions from early continental romance in the third class,
we may take it that these three classes are of purely British origin.
The _pedair cainc_ are the old tales which were first committed to
writing at an early period before the influence of the Armoric Arthur
began to be felt, that is to say, about the beginning of the reign of
Rhys ab Tewdwr in 1073. The other tales, that is those we have put in
the third class, remained for a much longer time unwritten and were not
set in writing before the early Arthur of Armoric and British romance
had been evolved. This will account for the fact that Arthur is not
mentioned in the first class of tales, and that in the third class he is
simply a British Arthur. The third class is, therefore, in a sense later
than the first and second, but its materials are as old as the oldest of
the Mabinogion proper, and they show the influence of Irish mythology to
the same extent. In the first class Irish names like _Penardim_, which
have not been assimilated, show conclusively that the tale is a written
one, while the eloquence of the descriptions in _Kilhwch ac Olwen_ seem
to point to the fact that it was up to a late period a _spoken_ tale.
Other such tales there were once, but they have now been lost.

The romances of the fourth class do not claim much notice. They are
mostly imitations or translations of Norman French originals, and they
belong to the history of E