INTRODUCTION

Gerald the Welshman—Giraldus Cambrensis—was born, probably in 1147, at Manorbier Castle in the county of Pembroke.  His father was a Norman noble, William de Barri, who took his name from the little island of Barry off the coast of Glamorgan.  His mother, Angharad, was the daughter of Gerald de Windsor [0a] by his wife, the famous Princess Nesta, the “Helen of Wales,” and the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr Mawr, the last independent Prince of South Wales.

Gerald was therefore born to romance and adventure.  He was reared in the traditions of the House of Dinevor.  He heard the brilliant and pitiful stories of Rhys ap Tewdwr, who, after having lost and won South Wales, died on the stricken field fighting against the Normans, an old man of over fourscore years; and of his gallant son, Prince Rhys, who, after wrenching his patrimony from the invaders, died of a broken heart a few months after his wife, the Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in a skirmish at Kidwelly.  No doubt he heard, though he makes but sparing allusion to them, of the loves and adventures of his grandmother, the Princess Nesta, the daughter and sister of a prince, the wife of an adventurer, the concubine of a king, and the paramour of every daring lover—a Welshwoman whose passions embroiled all Wales, and England too, in war, and the mother of heroes—Fitz-Geralds, Fitz-Stephens, and Fitz-Henries, and others—who, regardless of their mother’s eccentricity in the choice of their fathers, united like brothers in the most adventurous undertaking of that age, the Conquest of Ireland.