But that is a student’s occupation. Many weighty tomes have been written upon the origins of folk-lore. For us it is sufficient to be glad that the old legends have survived. Let us enjoy them without speculation as to their beginnings, remembering only that they had a beginning, most of them in an age so long ago that history cannot place it. These romances are perhaps the most “genuine antiques” that our country can offer, and they come from the corners of our land where romance still lingers and where, to the country folk, rocks and lakes, streams and great hills, are matters of history--not geology. And we, who travel to these distant parts of Britain, can better enjoy their charms if we go there knowing something of the stories that have clung about them for many centuries, and if we leave our critical business method of mind behind us locked in our office desks. That is why these old tales are again retold by LYONESSE. [Illustration: A Prince with gallows for a mouse being addressed by a bishop.] A PRINCE WHO WOULD HANG A MOUSE On the very border line of “The Little England Beyond Wales,” as South Pembrokeshire is known, a land of many splendid old castles into which the sea bites deep at Milford Haven, stands Narberth Castle, famous for many things, among them that its owner once tried to hang a mouse. It is a queer old story of magic and sorcery, and as the tale goes, far, far back in history, Prince Manawyddan lived at Narberth Castle with his stepson Pryderi and Cigfa his wife. One day a great darkness fell upon the land, and when it had passed Pryderi and all the retainers had vanished. Narberth was left unpeopled save for the Prince and Cigfa. So these two fell to work to cultivate the land themselves. They worked hard and when harvest time came they were rewarded by the sight of many fields of waving corn. But, when they began to reap, Manawyddan and his daughter-in-law found to their consternation that the grain had been eaten from every ear of corn and that all they reaped was straw. The Prince suspected sorcery, and resolved to watch that night in an adjoining field which had not yet been robbed. Towards midnight he heard a weird rustling sound, and, gazing from his place of concealment, he saw a horde of field mice roaming over his crops, nibbling away at the ears of wheat. Manawyddan sprang forward and captured one of the marauders, and the others scampered away. For safety he placed the captured mouse in a glove and then returned to Narberth Castle determined to hang the thief. He erected a little gallows, and was fashioning a noose of string in order to carry out the execution on the castle slopes, when there came along a scholar who enquired what the Prince was doing.