Excerpt from The Royal Tribes of Wales Nations when first possessed of the art of writing, had their events entered on the plain page of domestic history, independent of foreign wars, and distant occurrences. Their most eminent citizens were recorded as founders of their families, and their descendants respected as links of the same chain, however un worthy they may have been of their progenitors. The Patrician families of ancient Rome, had their origin from men famous in their generations. The twelve Tribes of Israel are arranged with great accuracy, and the Phoenicians, their neighbours, were probably not more remiss in this branch of history. They traded to the mines of the Cassiterides, and planted colonies in this island. They might have brought the tracing of pedigrees into Britain; and the Welsh are acknowledged to have assiduously continued the practice, thus supposed to have been primarily in troduced. It may be asked what certainty we have of the authen ticity of our early genealogies? The same as of every other species of history in other nations; the credit of ancient writers, professed genealogists; men appointed and patronized by the princes of the country, who were prohibited from following any other profes sion; whose records are still extant, and bear no stamp of fiction, which our poets even would not allow. What credit is to be given to the line of kings, said to have reigned in this island prior to Casar's invasion, or from' what source Tysilio drew his Brut, is not within the limits of this paper. Our most ancient existing manuscripts are the Triads, and the works of the bards of the sixth century, who celebrate in epic strains the deeds of our heroes, who fought and fell in the cause of their country. The Gododin of Aneurin at that period, is a noble poem, and a curious piece of British antiquity: its plaintive numbers in sad sounds, echo the sense of the soirowful retreat of the vanquished. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.