ABSTRACT
When William Morris wrote this story he seems to have had in his mind the England ofArthur and Lancelot-a dim, half-known country with here and there a walled town or a knight's castle, and the ground still uncultivated, the woods masterless 'and abounding in antres vast' and goblin-haunted hollows. He offers a curiously romantic map of this fanciful territory as it might have been conceived by the monk dwelling in the House of the Black Canons at Abingdon 'who gathered this tale.' It is the picture of such a vision as could well be entertained by a man ofthe experience ofWilliam Morris, who might easily dream his favourite Cotswolds into 'the Great Mountains' of the story, and add thereto torrents and steadings, and eke it out from that other chamber ofremembrance where lay his early days in Essex and Epping Forest, and his knowledge of the broad lower Thames. The family likeness in his ideal landscapes excuses, if it does not justify, this theory of their origin.
