Destiny, magic and chance, human strengths and weaknesses - these stories are amongst the most compelling and beautiful in European literature.

Composed in a golden age of Celtic story-telling in the eleventh century or earlier, they bring together the grotesque and the warmly human, the entertaining and the richly significant. Culhwch is here, perilously wooing the Giant's Daughter; Owain is here, winning the Lady of the Fountain by knightly feats of arms; and - a portent and a miracle both - King Arthur is here for the first time as a prime mover in a significant prose narrative ('Culhwch and Olwen'), and thereafter as King and Emperor of what is still the world's most famous royal court.