My Favourite Stories of Wales — Jan Morris

From the My Favourite series - favourite stories on different themes by different authors, each volume edited by a celebrity in the field. Story-telling is among the oldest and most persistent of all Welsh activities. The honoured bards of ancient Wales were professional tellers of tales, and the very same stories that are told to Welsh children today were told to their remote forefathers long ago. For this book Jan Morris has chosen favourites that reflect the gamut of Welsh narrative style, from classical legend to modern short story, all linked by the thread of dark and subtle humour which is, as she believes, characteristic of the Welsh imagination. Here are enigmatic and salted tales from the Mabinogion; a pungent encounter in a medieval tavern; and the reverberant images of the folk tales - the strange sweet music of the Tylwith Teg and the cry of King Arthur's wakened soldiers: "Has Wales need of us'" Here too are the travellers and romantics of the last century and the celebrated short-story writers of our own day with their wry, allusive narratives of modern Wales. In a splendid selection Jan Morris pays tribute to the subtlety, the humour, the unshakeable individuality, of a nation whose people have always, for better or worse, has a story to tell.