of the Mabinogion and kindred tales. Many are they who have boldly entered here only to succumb to the charm of this realm of phantasy and illusion. But let him keep closely to the laws of Howel as interpreted by our Cyvnerth, and peruse the Pedigrees, the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, the Vitae Sanctorum, the Excidium Britanniae of the pseudo-Gildas, and the Epistola of the true Gildas, in the light of the said laws, and below the Britannia of romance he will soon discern the no less interesting Britannia of history as it slowly emerges from the archaic conditions of the primitive inhabitants of Roman Wales into the life of the Middle Age. For be it remembered by the beginner that these laws are leges barbarorum, laws of the barbarians or natives of Wales as distinct from the civil law of imperial Rome and the canon law of the Church. The latter are from without, the former are from within. And it is largely because these laws of Howel have been so undeservedly neglected that the history of pre-Norman Wales is still so unsatisfactorily treated in our textbooks.
It should be noted that the term ' tribal system ' has been advisedly avoided in this work whilst dealing with the Welsh society of the Dark Age, seeing that there exists no satisfactory explanation of what precisely is meant by the word ' tribe '. Its Welsh equivalent llwyth, used, for instance, when speaking of the tribes of Israel, is nowhere found in the law books. We have cenedl, kindred ; teuln, household ; and gwlad, patria ; but nowhere llwyth, tribe, or any apparent equivalent of the same.
