'Glasgerion' was first printed in Percy's Reliques, III, 43, 1765, and was not thought by the editor to require much correction. Certainly the English ballad is one which it would be hard to mend. Scottish B is mainly of good derivation (a poor old woman in Aberdeenshire), and has some good stanzas, but Jamieson unfortunately undertook to improve a copy in which the story was complete, but "the diction much humbled," by combining with it a fragment of another version. 'The Bret Glascurion' is joined in Chaucer's House of Fame, iii, 111-118, with the harpers Orpheus, Orion (Arion), and Chiron. 'Bret' is Briton, and Y Bardd Glas Keraint, in English Keraint the Blue Bard (Blue Bard being an appellation of a chief bard, who wore an official robe of blue), is recorded to have been an eminent poet of distinguished birth, son of Owain, Prince of Glamorgan. There is at least no absurdity in the suggestion that the Glascurion of Chaucer and the Glasgerion of the ballad may represent the Welsh Glas Keraint.
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