Essay Week 11: The Welsh Fairy Book

This week I read the Welsh Tales with illustrations by Thomas unit.  I had read some of the other stories in high school so I thought it would be interesting to read something I haven't before.  I really liked this unit.  The stories were easy to read and understand.  The only difficult part was trying to figure out how to pronounce some of the names of people or places.  I guess I didn't realize how difficult Welsh is and assumed that it would all be translated to English or that the names would be changed.  The pronunciation guide was very helpful.  I think if it had audio so you could hear how to pronounce things would be even better.
I read Why the Red Dragon is the Emblem of Wales .  I was hoping for it to be really exciting and maybe some dragon slaying since I thought about doing a storybook on dragons, but this was actually about two serpents that represent dragons.  It was still a good story regardless, I just had my hopes up.  I think my favorite story was Owen Goes a-Wooing .  It was cute and I really like the idea of time displacement.  It's interesting to think that what seemed to be only a few hours under water for Owen was actually a month for his girlfriend Siwsi who was on land.  I'm really glad I read this section rather than reading Beowulf or the English Aesop stories again.  I remember learning about King Arthur in high school but I don't recall any of these stories so it was nice to read something different but also kind of familiar.

                                                 Image source: mythfolklore.blogspot.com
                                                                 The cover of the book.