The partition under Locrin, Camber, and Albanac, was only the first of many shifting divisions. Since Brutus came to Britain many kings and realms have come and gone. The boundaries of the Little Kingdom, either in time or space, are not easy to determine from the scanty evidence.
Some may find the character and adventures of its hero attractive in themselves. Such geographical knowledge as he shows (it is not his strong point) is of that country, while of regions outside it, north or west, he is plainly ignorant.Īn excuse for presenting a translation of this curious tale, out of its very insular Latin into the modern tongue of the United Kingdom, may be found in the glimpse that it affords of life in a dark period of the history of Britain, not to mention the light that it throws on the origin of some difficult place-names. For him the events that he records lay already in a distant past but he seems, nonetheless, to have lived himself in the lands of the Little Kingdom. Of the history of the Little Kingdom few fragments have survived but by chance an account of its origin has been preserved: a legend, perhaps, rather than an account for it is evidently a late compilation, full of marvels, derived not from sober annals, but from the popular lays to which its author frequently refers.
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