Lloyd Alexander's land of Prydain is a place of excitement, adventure, good and evil, and challenge. Taran, the main character, begins the story like many young people begin their own—wanting to have amazing adventures and show everyone how great he can be if he just had the chance. Taran learns, however, that adventure isn't all the fairy tales make it out to be.

Even though Taran learns some very real things during his quests, the setting of the stories is imaginary. Lloyd Alexander, the author, included elements of Welsh mythology in the Chronicles of Prydain. About The Book of Three, he writes, "This chronicle of the Land of Prydain is not a retelling or retranslation of Welsh mythology. Prydain is not Wales—not entirely, at least. The inspiration for it comes from that magnificent land and its legends; but, essentially, Prydain is a country existing only in the imagination" [1].

Foundation Stones of Prydain shows you how much mythology worked its way into Alexander's Prydain. Using the Welsh Myth Index, look up characters such as Taran Assistant Pig-Keeper and Eilonwy of the red-gold hair and find out their background in myth.

In the index and other pages, numbers appearing in brackets [] refer to the items on the Sources page in case you would like to learn more about Welsh mythology. Much of the mythological information comes from The Mabinogion [source 7], a collection of Welsh stories that were once told by the bards.