Produced by sp1nd and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Star of Mercia Historical Tales of Wales and the Marches _by_ Blanche Devereux _With an Introduction by_ Ernest Rhys Jonathan Cape Eleven Gower Street, London _First published 1922 All rights reserved_ _Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_ INTRODUCTION There are three reading-publics to which a tale-writer who attempts the uncertain business of writing about Wales may appeal. One is the homebred Welsh public that asks for a tale in the old tongue, _yr hen iaith_, and has never been quite satisfied, I believe, by any novel or short story about its life, or its real or romantic concerns, written in English. The second is the quasi-Celtic public, which may or may not know the _Mabinogion_ or Borrow's _Wild Wales_, and is glad of anything that gets the romance atmosphere. The third is the ordinary fiction-loving English public, which asks for a good story, rather likes a Welsh background as in Blackmore's _Maid of Sker_ (a much better book than _Lorna Doone_ to my mind), and does not trouble about the fidelity of the local colour in the reality of the setting. It is from the second and third of these audiences that Miss Devereux can look to gain her "creel-full of listeners," as the story of _The Yellow Hag_ has it. She has, to begin with, the genuine tale-teller's power of using a motive, a bit of legend, or a proverbial and stated episode, and giving it fresh life and something original out of her own fantasy. In her way of narrative, she does not adopt any rigorous ancientry. She has a sporting sense in dealing with an archaic character like _Mogneid_, and is satisfied to see him hammer at a door with the butt of his riding-whip. She will make _Gildas_ and _St. David_ or _Dewi Sant_, collogue as they never did in the old time before us; and devise a comedy and a drunkard's tragedy of her own for a wicked old sinner like King _Gwrthyrn_, just as she mixes chalk and charcoal freely in the Saxon cartoons that follow the Welsh. The important thing is, she makes her people live, and by the bold infusion of the same old human nature with prehistoric Welsh and old chronicler's English, she succeeds in creating a region of her own. It is not literally Cymric or Saxon; but it is instinct with the fears, loves, hopes and appetites that never decay, and realizes alike the drunkard's glut and the saint's mixed piety and shrewd sense.