In flying from their Scythian foes, the Cimmerians took their course by the sea-coasts to Sinope, and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and as, after this flight, the old Cimmerian league was broken up, and the tribes dispersed, this gives us the evident date for such migrations as Hu Gadarn is supposed to head; and the coincidence between Welch traditions (if genuinely ancient) and classical authority becomes very remarkable. For the additional corroboration of the hypothesis thus suggested, which is afforded by the identity between the Cimmerians of Asia and the Cimbri of Gaul, see Strabo (1. vii. p. 424, the Oxford edition, 1807). It is curious to note in Herodotus (1. iv. c. 11) that the same domestic feuds which destroyed the Cymrian empire in Britain destroyed the Cimmerians in their original home. While the Scythians invaded them, they quarrelled amongst themselves whether to fight or fly, and settled the dispute by fighting each other, and flying from the enemy. 10.--Page 212, stanza lxxvii. _Our Titan sires from Defrobanni's plain._ "Our Titan sires,"--according to certain mythologists, the Celts, or Cimmerians, were the Titans. 11.--Page 214, stanza xciii. _Strides in the circles of unthinking men._ Imitated from Schiller. 12.--Page 215, stanza c. _And frank Gawaine, Whom mirth for ever, like a fairy child, Lock'd from the cares of life._ Some liberty, in the course of this poem, will be taken with the legendary character, less perhaps of the Gawaine of the Fabliaux, than of the Gwalchmai (Hawk of Battle) of the Welch bards. In both, indeed, this hero is represented as sage, courteous, and eloquent; but he is a livelier character in the Fabliaux than in the tales of his native land. The characters of many of the Cymrian heroes, indeed, vary according to the caprice of the poets. Thus Kai, in the Triads, one of the Three Diademed chiefs of battle and a powerful magician, is, in the French romances, Messire Queux, the chief of the cooks; and in the Mabinogion,[A] he is at one time but an unlucky knight of more valour than discretion, and at another time attains the dignity assigned to him in the Triads, and exults in supernatural attributes. And poor Gawaine himself, the mirror of chivalry, in most of the Fabliaux is, as Southey observes, "shamefully calumniated" in the MORT D'ARTHUR as the "false Gawaine." The Caradoc of this poem is not intended to be identified with the hero Caradoc Vreichvras. The name was sufficiently common in Britain (it is the right reading for Caractacus) to allow to the use of the poet as many Caradocs as he pleases. 13.--Page 216, stanza ciii. _Frank youth, high thoughts, crown'd Nature's kings in both._ Lancelot was, indeed, the son of a king, but a dethroned and a tributary one. The popular history of his infancy will be told in a subsequent book. 14.--Page 216, stanza cvii.