Sorry, can't give any details of the celtic figures, welsh I think, which the authors put forward, as I'm writing this at work, rebel that I am, & don't have the book with me. You'll have to buy it - which you should as the authors are really nice people. I met them at the Tolkien Society's Oxonmoot this year, where I got the chance to visit Tolkien's grave. I knelt & placed my hand on the earth of the grave & it was a moment that I'll remember forever, but I digress.
There is, though, a strong resemblence, though not exact, to figures like Myrddin Wellt & Lailoken, the wild prophets inspired to verse & mad capering dances.
Ok, I was wrong in putting it as strongly as I did that Bk 1 is out of place with the rest of the work. I should just have said it
it has, as you said, a stranger feel, less hard & 'real'. Tolkien himself, I think, said the same in one of his letters.
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