Welsh Journals

III. The bulk of the data for estimating the nature and strength of the national sentiment in Wales in the fifteenth century is furnished by the vaticinatory or prophetic literature of the period. Prophecy, in the ancient and mediaeval world, was always a powerful instrument in politics, and nowhere did it flourish more than in Wales. The origin of Welsh vaticinations is certainly obscure, but it should be possible to link them up with the great body of mediaeval prophecies, religious, dynastic and national, which seem to have had their origin in the Sibylline books circulated in the first two centuries of the Christian era by the hellenized Jews of Alexandra. Certainly from the eleventh century, if not earlier, pro- phetic utterances exercised a great influence in Wales. But, for our purpose, it is not necessary to go beyond Geoffrey, for the Merlin prophecies of the seventh book of the Historia Regum are the bases for the later vaticina- tions. Of their importance in fashioning Welsh nation- alism there can be no doubt. Merlin had prophesied the ultimate triumph of the Red Dragon-and his prophecies were at once the expression of the longings of the race and the stimulus to action. To them the English chroniclers attribute the restlessness of the Welsh, their fiery warlike spirit and their frequent insurrections: "Extollunt Troiae sanguinem, De quo ducunt originem Hoc consuevit fallere Et ad bella impingere Merlini vaticinium Et frequens sortilegium IOn mediaeval prophecy see Dollinger, Der Weissagitngsglaube und das Prophetenthum in der christlichen Zeit. (Historisches Taschenbuch, 1871) and the same author's Prophecies and the Prophetic Spirit in the Christian Era (London, 1873). In addition to examples quoted in