joe steve swick iii

You are going to love what I just found listed on EBAY:

Skene, William F. THE FOUR ANCIENT BOOKS OF WALES CONTAINING THE LYMRIC
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO THE BARDS OF THE SIXTH CENTURY: VOLUME ONE & VOLUME TWO.
Edmonston and Douglas Edinburgh, Scotland 1868. First Edition 8vo in green
boards, gold text on spine. VG-. Ex-libris sticker on Front pastedown. Wear
to the extremities, heavier to the tips and foot of spine. Frontis is loose
but laid in Volume I. Both volumes are tight bright and clean text
unmarked. Tight binding. Minor rubbing to covers. This excellent set is
extremely rare. YOU CANNOT FIND BOTH VOLUMES ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE NET!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...1407 776&rd=1

"This is William Skene's anthology of dark-age Welsh Bardic poetry. Often
cited, but difficult to obtain, this book contains every remaining piece of
Bardic poetry known. The poems are translated from four manuscripts: the
Black Book of Caermarthen, the Red Book of Hergest (which is also the source
of the Mabinogion), the Book of Taliessin and the Book of Aneurin, all of
which date from the twelfth to the fif****th centuries C.E. The poems
themselves date from much earlier, probably from the sixth century by
internal evidence." -John Bruno Hare, March 17th, 2004.

"This corpus is one of the treasures of world literature. It is also the
only true source material for the study of Bardic lore, which reputedly
preserved the esoteric (and long-lost) beliefs of the Druids. Largely


poetry rises above the gory combat and toadying to achieve an artistic
height that would not be reached for many centuries. Some of the later
works, which use Christian themes as a jumping-off point, have an almost
haiku-like quality. The poems are infused throughout with mystic clarity,
strange flashes of wisdom, and insight into humanity and nature." -John
Bruno Hare, March 17th, 2004.

lisa spangenberg

First, all of thes manuscripts are available in decent modern editions,
most of the texts are available in translations that much much better
than these, and there are high quality facsimiles of all of the
manuscripts, two of which are available to anyone on the web.

This is a truly appallingly awful edition. I really wish people would
stop using it. There are thousands of transcription errors, the
translations are truly awful. Plus, the entire book is already on the
web, and there are at least two publishers who have republished Skeat
recently in cheap paperback.

Lisa

--
Lisa L. Spangenberg | Digital medievalist
Celtic Studies Resources | http://www.digitalmedievalist.com
My opinions are my own. | Who else would want them?

joe steve swick iii

___JSW___
"This corpus is one of the treasures of world literature. It is also the
only true source material for the study of Bardic lore, which reputedly
preserved the esoteric (and long-lost) beliefs of the Druids.

___Lisa Spangenberg___
First, all of thes manuscripts are available in decent modern editions, most
of the texts are available in translations that much much better than these,
and there are high quality facsimiles of all of the manuscripts, two of
which are available to anyone on the web.
-----

Of course, if you prefer your books "on the web," then these collectible
copies are not for you.

___Lisa Spangenberg___
This is a truly appallingly awful edition.
----

However, the copies I have listed are also FIRST editions (dated 1868), and
are seldom seen in a set. They are, therefore, highly collectible.

___Lisa Spangenberg___
I really wish people would stop using it. There are thousands of
transcription errors, the translations are truly awful. Plus, the entire
book is already on the web, and there are at least two publishers who have
republished Skeat recently in cheap paperback.
-----

Again, these are *collectible* items, worth hundreds of dollars. Cheap
paperbacks and webcopies are not. :-)

Cheers,
Joe Swick

chris ridgway

I found and bought a copy of both volumes (first edition), from
http://www.abebooks.com They seemed to have a few copies for sale in various
conditions (all expensive). The advantage of having both volumes is
that one has the original Middle Welsh also, and therefore you can check
Skene's translation and interpretation.

A reprint is available from Kessinger Publishing through Amazon.com

Cheers Chris.