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to convey the performability of the surviving manuscript versions. As emphasized in the Introduction, the
Mabinogion
were tales to be read aloud to a listening audience—the parchment was ‘interactive’ and vocality was of its essence. Indeed, many passages can only be truly captured by the speaking voice. The acoustic dimension was, therefore, a major consideration in this new translation: every effort has been made to transfer the rhythm, tempo, and alliteration of the original to the target language. The repetitive element in all eleven tales has been preserved, with due regard for the formulaic content, while the present tense, employed to describe dramatic events in the source-language text, has been retained where possible to convey the excitement of the narration. In ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’ the rhetorical passages have been divided into short lines in an attempt to transmit the rhythm of the oral performance visually to the printed page. Yet, inevitably, the demands of modern English usage have overriden choices in certain areas: for example, the connective ‘and’, an integral part of the tales’ micro-structure, has sometimes been omitted where it was felt to be too intrusive; and where speakers are not identified, their names have sometimes been added to the lines of direct speech, for clarification. Many of the proper names, especially in ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’, embody meanings that give an insight into the characters, and are often associated with onomastic explanations, although to what extent this was always apparent to a medieval audience is unclear.In an attempt to weigh up the loss to the English-speaking reader if personal names are in Welsh only, against the loss of authenticity if they are translated, I have chosen to retain the original Welsh name (in modern orthography), but to provide a translation, and often a further explanation, in the Explanatory Notes at the first occurrence of the name. At subsequent occurrences the reader is able to turn to the Index of Personal Names, which repeats the English translation and refers to the relevant notes. The long Court List of ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’, with its 260 proper names, proved a challenge worthy of the giant Ysbaddaden’s impossible tasks. I decided to give the reader a choice—the original Welsh names are retained in the main text, so that the reader can appreciate the rhythm and alliterative quality, while an alternative list is provided in the notes, where all names, as far as possible, have been translated into English.
    In the translation by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (1948), the tales are presented in the following order:
The Four Branches of the Mabinogi
(‘Pwyll prince of Dyfed’, ‘Branwen daughter of Llŷr’, ‘Manawydan son of Llŷr’, ‘Math son of Mathonwy’);
The Four Independent Native Tales
(‘The Dream of Macsen Wledig’, ‘Lludd and Llefelys’, ‘Culhwch and Olwen’, ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’);
The Three Romances
(‘The Lady of the Fountain’, ‘Peredur son of Efrawg’, ‘Gereint son of Erbin’). Because of the immense popularity of their translation, these artificial groupings have, to a large extent, influenced our reading of the tales. In the White and Red Book manuscripts the following groupings are common to both: (i) The Four Branches of the
Mabinogi
; (ii) ‘Peredur son of Efrog’, ‘The Dream of the Emperor Maxen’, ‘Lludd and Llefelys’; (iii) ‘Geraint son of Erbin’, ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’. There may well be no particular rationale behind this—perhaps certain groupings already existed in the scribe’s exemplars. However, it seemed appropriate, for the purpose of the current translation, to reflect the groupings of the extant manuscripts. I also decided to follow the order of the earliest manuscript, placing ‘Rhonabwy’s Dream’, which is not included in the White Book, at the end of the ‘collection’ due to its apparent literary context. The aim, therefore,