ABSTRACT
Professors Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, in the introduction to their translation of the Mabinogion, agree saying, “the likeliest date for the Four Branches would appear to be early in the second half of the eleventh century.” The Four Branches, contain old law obsolete by the time of the earliest Welsh lawbook. Does this mean that the Four Branches were themselves old by the time of the earliest Welsh lawbook?Mr. Saunders Lewis has published a series of four articles each on one of the Four Branches. His is the most recent voice, and since, whether right or wrong, his case is always incisively, and sometimes ingeniously, argued, it deserves careful consideration. Mr. Saunders Lewis suggests that the two events, the penance of Henry II and the Council of Oxford, would have been well known to a Welshman such as the author of the Four Branches, and also that the author was a monk of Strata Florida.
