Celts, Gaels, and Britons: Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-williams (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 35) 9782503598642, 2503598641

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Simon Rodway. John Scottus Eriugena and Celtica eloquentia
Javier de Hoz. Taruotureśka tureita: A Celtiberian Collocation
Alexander Falileyev. More Celtic, More from Pannonia
Liam Breatnach. An Old Irish Text on Kingship and the Five Provinces of Ireland
Máire Herbert. British and Irish? Some Thoughts on the Life of Saint Ailbe
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh. Irish Influence on Old Norse Literature? Immram to Hvítramannaland
Jenny Rowland. Romanization and the British Bards
William Mahon. A Note on the Four Bare-Headed Women in ‘Echrys Ynys’
Bleddyn Owen Huws. Llythyr Gofyn gan Siôn Phylip
Peter Schrijver. The Development of Proto-Celtic *st in British Celtic
Stefan Schumacher. The Development of Proto-Celtic *au in British Celtic
Oliver Padel. The Corpus of Old Cornish
Thomas Charles-Edwards. Bardic Grammars on Syllables
Paul Russell. The Joy of Six: Spelling and Letter Forms among Fourteenth-Century Welsh Scribes
David Willis. The Development of Realis Conditional Clauses in Welsh
Richard Glyn Roberts. A Contribution to Subaltern Linguistics: Welsh Dim in Comparative(and Similar) Clauses
Erich Poppe. Traces of Translation in Buchedd Beuno?
Dafydd Johnston. Welsh hoyw: A Case Study in Language Contact

Citation preview

Celts, Gaels, and Britons

MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND CULTURES OF NORTHERN EUROPE General Editor Rory Naismith, University of Cambridge Editorial Board Elizabeth Boyle, Maynooth University Aisling Byrne, University of Reading Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz Carolyne Larrington, University of Oxford Erik Niblaeus, University of Cambridge Emily V. Thornbury, Yale University

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book. Volume 35

Celts, Gaels, and Britons Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams Edited by

Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2022/0095/74 ISBN: 978-2-503-59864-2 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59865-9 DOI: 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.127681 ISSN: 1784-2859 e-ISSN: 2294-8414 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

Contents List of Illustrations

vi

Abbreviations vii Rhagymadrodd xi Introduction xv John Scottus Eriugena and Celtica eloquentia

SIMON RODWAY (with a contribution by BARRY J. LEWIS)

Taruotureśka tureita: A Celtiberian Collocation JAVIER DE HOZ

More Celtic, More from Pannonia ALEXANDER FALILEYEV

An Old Irish Text on Kingship and the Five Provinces of Ireland LIAM BREATNACH

British and Irish? Some Thoughts on the Life of Saint Ailbe MÁIRE HERBERT

Irish Influence on Old Norse Literature? Immram to Hvítramannaland MÁIRE NÍ MHAONAIGH

Romanization and the British Bards JENNY ROWLAND

A Note on the Four Bare-Headed Women in ‘Echrys Ynys’ WILLIAM MAHON

Llythyr Gofyn gan Siôn Phylip BLEDDYN OWEN HUWS

1 23 35 49 71

91 113 131 139

Contents

vi

The Development of Proto-Celtic *st in British Celtic PETER SCHRIJVER

The Development of Proto-Celtic *au in British Celtic STEFAN SCHUMACHER

The Corpus of Old Cornish OLIVER PADEL

Bardic Grammars on Syllables THOMAS CHARLES-EDWARDS

The Joy of Six: Spelling and Letter Forms among Fourteenth-Century Welsh Scribes PAUL RUSSELL

The Development of Realis Conditional Clauses in Welsh DAVID WILLIS

A Contribution to Subaltern Linguistics: Welsh Dim in Comparative (and Similar) Clauses RICHARD GLYN ROBERTS

Traces of Translation in Buchedd Beuno? ERICH POPPE

Welsh hoyw: A Case Study in Language Contact DAFYDD JOHNSTON

169 187 211 239

257 289

311 325 343

List of Illustrations Figure 1. Celt-Iberian bronze tablet SO.06.02.

24

Figure 2. Forms of v, ỽ, and w used by thirteenthand fourteenth-century Welsh scribes.

259

Abbreviations AI

The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. by Seán Mac Airt (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1951; repr. 1977)

AU

The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131), ed. and trans. by Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983)

BBe

Buchedd Beuno: The Middle Welsh ‘Life’ of St  Beuno, ed., with a Short Grammar of Middle Welsh, by Patrick Sims-Williams (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2018)

BDHesp Banco de Datos sobre Lenguas y Epigrafías Paleohispánicas [accessed 1 March 2022] CGH

Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. by M. A. O’Brien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1962; repr. 1976)

CGSH

Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. by Pádraig Ó Riain (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1985)

CIH

Corpus Iuris Hibernici, ed. by D. A. Binchy (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978)

CIIC

Corpus inscriptionum insularum Celticarum, i, ed.  by R.  A.  S. Macalister (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1945)

CIL

Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, consilio et auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Berolinensis et Brandenburgensis editum (Berlin: Reimer/De Gruyter, 1863–)

DCC

Falileyev, Alexander, in collaboration with Ashwin E. Gohil and Naomi Ward, Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names: A Celtic Companion to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2010)

Abbreviations

viii

DCPH García-Bellido, M.  Paz, and Cruces Blázquez, Diccionario de Cecas y Pueblos Hispánicos (Madrid: Departamento de Historia Antigua y Arqueo­logía, Instituto de Historia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2001) eDIL

eDIL 2019: An Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language, based on the Contributions to a Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1913–1976) [accessed 1 March 2022]

Eluc

The Elucidarium and Other Tracts in Welsh from Llyvyr Agkyr Llandewivrevi A.D. 1346 ( Jesus College MS  119), ed.  by John Morris-Jones and John Rhŷs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1894)

GMW

Evans, D.  Simon, A  Grammar of Middle Welsh (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1964)

GP

Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, ed.  by Griffith John Williams and Evan J. Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1934)

GPC

Thomas, R.  J., Gareth  A. Bevan, and Patrick  J. Donovan, eds, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A  Dictionary of the Welsh Language (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1950–2002; 2nd edn, 2003–) [accessed 1 March 2022]

GOI

Thurneysen, Rudolf, A  Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946)

IRPLe

Diego Santos, Francisco, Inscripciones romanas de la provincia de León (León: Institución Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, 1986)

LEIA

Vendryes, Joseph, Édouard Bachellery, and Pierre-Yves Lambert, eds, Lexique étymo­logique de l’irlandais ancien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1959–)

LG

Lebar Gabála Érenn

LICS

Knapp, Robert C., Latin Inscriptions from Central Spain (Berkeley: University of California Publications, 1992)

LIV2

Rix, Helmut,  Martin Kümmel, Thomas Zehnder, Reiner Lipp, and Brigitte Schirmer, eds, Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben, 2nd edn (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001)

Abbreviations ix

LL

The Book of Leinster, ed. by R. I. Best, Osborn Bergin, Michael A. O’Brien, and Anne O’Sullivan, 6 vols (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1954–1983)

MLH

Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum Untermann, Jürgen, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, i:  Die Münzlegenden (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1975) —— , Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, ii:  Inschriften in ibe­ rischer Schrift aus Südfrankreich (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1980) —— , Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, iii: Die iberischen In­ schriften aus Spanien (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1990) Untermann, Jürgen, and Dagmar Wodtko, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, iv: Die tartessischen, keltiberischen und lusitani­ schen Inschriften (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998) Wodtko, Dagmar, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, v.1: Wörter­ buch der keltiberischen Inschriften (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000) Untermann, Jürgen, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, vi: Die Toponymie des antiken Hispanien, ed. by Michael Koch, Javier de Hoz, and Joaquín Gorrochategui (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2018)

RhG-13c Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, ed. by Graham Isaac, Simon  Rodway, Silva  Nurmio, Kit  Kapphahn, and Patrick  Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2013) RhG-14c Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425, ed.  by Diana Luft, Peter Wynn Thomas, and D.  Mark Smith (Cardiff: School of Welsh, 2013) [accessed 1 March 2022] RhG-15c Rhyddiaith y 15eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 1.0, ed. Richard Glyn Roberts, Sarah Rowles, and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth: Dep­ art­m ent of Welsh, Aberystwyth University,  2015)

Abbreviations

x

RIA Cat. O’Rahilly, Thomas F., Kathleen Mulchrone, Mary E. Byrne, James H. Delargy, Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Lilian Duncan, Winifred Wulff, Gerard Murphy, A. I. Pearson, and Tomás Ó Concheanainn, Cata­ logue of Irish Manu­scripts in the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1926–1970) RIB

The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, i: Inscriptions on Stone, ed. by Robin G. Collingwood and Richard Pearson Wright (Oxford: Claren­don, 1965)

RMW Evans, J. Gwenogvryn, ed., Report on Manu­scripts in the Welsh Language (London: HMSO, 1898–1910) VAil

Salmanticensis version of Ailbe’s Life

Rhagymadrodd

B

ydd enw honorand y gyfrol hon yn gyfarwydd i bawb sydd wedi astudio unrhyw agwedd ar iaith, llenyddiaeth neu ddiwylliant y pobloedd Celtaidd eu hiaith yn yr hen gyfnod neu yn yr Oesoedd Canol yn y degawdau diwethaf. Mae rhychwant y pynciau mae wedi eu taclo o fewn maes Astudiaethau Celtaidd ac y tu hwnt iddo yn frawychus o eang. Mae’n gallu trafod ieithyddiaeth, hanes, llenyddiaeth, hanes ysgolheictod, archeoleg a geneteg gyda’r un awdurdod ac yn yr un ffordd gytbwys a diymhongar, gan ddangos dyfnder ei wybodaeth ac ehangder ei ddarllen yn anuniongrychol trwy gyfrwng ei droednodiadau chwedlonol o helaeth. Datblygodd ei ddiddordeb mewn ieithoedd Celtaidd yn hwyr, ar ôl treulio dwy flynedd o astudio Saesneg yng Nghaergrawnt. Ar ôl un mlynedd ar bymtheg (1977–1993) o ddarlithio yn yr Adran Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (ASNC) yn y Brifysgol ac fel Cymrawd o Goleg Ioan Sant, cafodd ei benodi yn Athro Astudiaethau Celtaidd ym Mhrifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth, fel yr oedd bryd hynny, ym 1993, ac arhosodd yn Aberystwyth (sydd erbyn hyn yn Brifysgol annibynnol) nes ei ymddeoliad yn 2014. Ailwampiodd y radd BA mewn Astudiaethau Celtaidd yno yn llwyr, ac arwain nifer o brosiectau ymchwil llwyddiannus a dylanwadol, ar Lawysgrifau Hen Gymraeg, Enwau Lleoedd Celtaidd yr Hen Fyd, Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg a phynciau eraill. Daeth yn Gymrawd yr Academi Brydeinig yn 1996, cafodd ei ethol yn Aelod er anrhydedd o Academi Frenhinol Iwerddon yn 2020, ac mae’n Llywydd y Gyngres Geltaidd Ryngwladol er 2011. Yn 1981, sefydlodd y cyfnodolyn Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies (ers 1993 Cambrian Medi­ eval Celtic Studies), sydd ers y cychwyn yn anhepgor i bawb sy’n gweithio yn y maes. Deugain mlynedd yn ddiweddarach, mae’n dal yn olygydd arno: mae’n ymddangos yn brydlon ddwywaith y flwyddyn am bris sydd o fewn cyrraedd unigolion yn ogystal â llyfrgelloedd. Yn ystod gyrfa hynod gynhyrchiol nid yw wedi osgoi cynhennau ffyrnicaf y ddisgyblaeth, ac mae ei gyfraniadau bob tro wedi bod yn gwrtais ac yn bwyllog,

xii

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gyda fflachiadau o hiwmor sych. Nid yw’n orddweud honni bod rhai ohonynt wedi trawsnewid ein dealltwriaeth o’r ieithoedd Celtaidd a’u siaradwyr. Ef oedd yn gyfrifol am boblogeiddio’r term defnyddiol ‘Celtosgeptigiaeth’ mewn erthygl ddylanwadol yn 1998 (‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’) ond, yn nodweddiadol, mynnodd gydnabod mai’r nofelydd Robin Llywelyn a fathodd y gair, a’i fod, felly, yn air Cymraeg. Llwyddodd droedio ffordd ofalus rhwng y pegynau Celtomaniac a Cheltosgeptig, gan atgoffa’r gwahanol garfanau ei bod yn bosibl, ac, yn wir, yn gwbl angenrheidiol i bawb yn y byd Astudiaethau Celtaidd ailystyried yn drylwyr seiliau a therfynau ‘Celtigrwydd’, ac na fyddai hynny gyfystyr â gwadu dilysrwydd y maes. Trwy amlygu ffrwd o ‘Geltosgeptigiaeth’ Gymraeg a thrwy gyfeirio at broblemau enbyd gyda thermau ethnig eraill megis ‘Germanaidd’, problemateiddiodd y naratif a fynnai mai ymosodiad Seisnig ar hunaniaeth siaradwyr ieithoedd Celtaidd oedd Celtosgeptigiaeth. Yn rhy aml, defnyddir y gair ‘rhyngddisgyblaethol’ mewn ffordd sydd bron yn ddiystyr, ond mae’r Athro Sims-Williams, trwy edrych yn feirniadol ar ymdrechion i gyfuno geneteg, archaeoleg ac ieithyddiaeth er mwyn creu llun synthetig o’r Celtiaid cynhanesyddol, wedi cyfrannu’n werthfawr at ein dealltwriaeth o le’r gwahanol ddisgyblaethau yn y pwnc dadleuol hwn. Mae hefyd wedi rhybuddio’n amserol iawn fod cyfuno disgyblaethau’n anfeirniadol yn gallu arwain at honiadau mawr sy’n arwynebol ddeniadol, ond yn ddiwerth yn y tymor hir. Trwy gydol ei yrfa, mae wedi sefyll yn gadarn ac yn hollol gywir yn erbyn y tueddiad cynyddol i werthfawrogi ‘impact’ sydyn ar draul y broses hir a blinderus o fireinio methodoleg er mwyn cynhyrchu gwaith o sylwedd y bydd ei werth yn parhau am genhedlaethau. Enillodd ei bapur ‘Genetics, Linguistics and Prehistory’ a gyhoeddwyd yn Antiquity 72 (1998) y wobr am y papur gorau yn y cyfnodolyn hwnnw yn 1999. Mae’n ddigon cyfforddus yn trafod y cwestiynau mawr, felly, ac mae wedi ysbrydoli ac arwain prosiectau ymchwil cydweithredol mawr. Hoffem dynnu sylw at ei waith ystadegol arloesol ar enwau lleoedd Celtaidd yn yr hen fyd, ac yn enwedig at ei lafur diflino’n creu corpora chwiliadwy o destunau Cymraeg Canol. Ef gychwynnodd y prosiect Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg dan y Bwrdd Gwybodau Celtaidd ac wedyn dan yr Academi Brydeinig, ac y mae ei nawdd yn ddigon i ariannu cyfarfodydd blynyddol lle y gall ysgolheigion sy’n gweithio ar wahanol gyfnodau yn hanes yr iaith ddod ynghyd i drafod eu gwaith. Yn bwysicach, mae’r prosiect wedi esgor ar nifer o brosiectau eraill (gyda nawdd o wahanol ffynonellau) sydd wedi digideiddio cynnwys llawysgrifau rhyddiaith Cymraeg Canol. Erbyn hyn, mae testun holl lawysgrifau rhyddiaith y 13g. () a’r 14g.

Rhagymadrodd xiii

(http://www.rhyddiaithganoloesol.caerdydd.ac.uk/cy) ar gael am ddim mewn fformat chwiliadwy i ymchwilwyr eu defnyddio, ac mae cryn nifer o lawysgrifau’r 15g. hefyd ar gael (). Ychwanegir rhagor o hyd. Mae hyn wedi gweddnewid y ffordd y mae ymchwilwyr yn gallu casglu data ar gyfer eu gwaith ar iaith y cyfnod canol, ac mae wedi arwain at nifer o astudiaethau arloesol, gan gynnwys ‘Variation in Middle Welsh Conjugated Prepositions: Chrono­logy, Register and Dialect’ gan yr Athro Sims-Williams ei hunan yn 2013. Ond mae ei waith manwl ar arysgrifau neu losau unigol, neu ar darddiad gair, yr un mor bwysig, mewn gwirionedd. Nid yw ymddeol wedi’i arafu: os rhywbeth, mae wedi bod yn fwy cynhyrchiol yn y blynyddoedd diwethaf, gan ddychwelyd at bynciau y mae yn ymddiddori ynddynt ers degawdau. Mae newydd ennill Gwobr Francis Jones am Hanes Cymru am ei lyfr diwethaf The Book of Llandaf as a Historical Source (2019). Ceir rhestr lawn o’i gyhoeddiadau yma: . Mae’r gyfrol hon yn cynnwys cyfraniadau ar wahanol feysydd Astudiaethau Celtaidd ac mae’n ceisio adlewyrchu ystod eang diddordebau academaidd y gwrthrych. Mae’r gyfrol wedi’i rhannu’n dair rhan, gyda phrif adrannau ar Geltiaid, Gaeliaid a Brythoniaid yn eu tro. Mae’r adran gyntaf yn cynnwys tair pennod ar ieithoedd Celtaidd y Cyfandir ac ar ddefnydd o’r ansoddair Celtica yn hwyr yn yr hen gyfnod. Yn yr ail ceir tair pennod ar destunau Gwyddeleg, ac mae dwy ohonynt yn trafod eu lle ym myd Môr Iwerddon. Yr adran Frythoneg yw’r fwyaf, ac mae ynddi dair is-adran sy’n mynd â ni o lenyddiaeth Gymraeg trwy ieithyddiaeth hanesyddol Frythoneg a Hen Gernyweg i iaith ac ieithyddiaeth Gymraeg yr Oesoedd Canol. Dymuna’r golygyddion ddiolch i’r cyfranwyr am eu penodau a hefyd am eu hamynedd yn ystod y broses hir o baratoi’r gyfrol. Diolchwn i Rory Naismith, golygydd cyfres Brepols ‘Medi­eval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe’, am dderbyn y gyfrol i’r gyfres ac i ddau ddarllenydd dienw am eu sylwadau helpfawr. Yn olaf, rydym yn ddiolchgar i staff Brepols, ac yn enwedig i Rosie Bonté, am eu cyngor a’u cefnogaeth ymarferol. Simon Rodway ddechreuodd y prosiect o lunio Festschrift i Patrick, ac ef oedd yn gyfrifol am y gwaith cynnar o drefnu a pharatoi. Yn nes ymlaen, gwahoddwyd Jenny Rowland ac Erich Poppe i ymuno â’r tîm golygyddol ac roeddynt wrth eu bodd yn cael cyfrannu at y deyrnged hon i Patrick. Yn briodol, Simon biau’r paragraff olaf, ei ôl-nodyn personol ef sy’n amlygu agwedd bwysig arall ar gyfraniad Patrick i Astudiaethau Celtaidd. EP, JR, SR

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Ymgymerais â’r dasg o drefnu cyfrol i anrhydeddu Patrick Sims-Williams nid yn unig oherwydd bod ei waith fel ysgolhaig yn golygu ei fod yn llawn haeddu hynny, ond hefyd oherwydd fy mhrofiad personol o’i rôl fel addysgwr a mentor i ysgolheigion ifainc. Rwyf wedi elwa’n fawr ar ei gefnogaeth, fel darlithydd, fel goruwchwyliwr PhD ac fel cyd-weithiwr a rheolwr llinell. Cwrddais i ag ef am y tro cyntaf pan oeddwn yn ail flwyddyn fy ngradd BA, yn stryglan i ffeindio cydbwysedd rhwng fy ngwaith academaidd a’m diddordebau eraill, ac yn dechrau amau doethineb dewis dilyn gradd mor heriol. Ar ôl un sesiwn gyda’r Athro Sims-Williams, ffoniais fy rhieni a datgan fy mod, o’r diwedd, wedi darganfod y pwnc roeddwn am ei astudio. Chwarter canrif yn ddiweddarach, rwyf yn ddiolchgar iawn i Patrick am fy nghyflwyno i rychwant y byd Astudiaethau Celtaidd. SR

Introduction

T

he name of the honorand of this volume will be familiar to all who have studied in recent decades any aspect of the language, literature, or culture of the Celtic-speaking peoples in ancient times or in the Middle Ages. The range of subjects he has tackled within and beyond Celtic Studies is startlingly broad. He is able to discuss linguistics, history, literature, the history of scholarship, archaeo­logy, and genetics with the same authority and in the same balanced and unassuming way, showing the depth of his knowledge and the breadth of his reading indirectly through his legendarily vast footnotes. His interest in Celtic languages developed late, having spent two years studying English at Cambridge. After sixteen years (1977–1993) of lecturing in the University’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (ASNC) there and as a Fellow of St John’s College, he was appointed Professor of Celtic Studies at the then University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1993, and remained in Aberystwyth (now an independent University) until his retirement in 2014. He fully revamped the BA in Celtic Studies there, and led a number of successful and influential research projects, on Old Welsh manu­scripts, Celtic placenames in the ancient world, the development of the Welsh language, and other subjects. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, was elected honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2020, and has been President of the International Celtic Congress since 2011. In 1981, he founded the periodical Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies (since 1993 Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies), which from the very beginning has been indispensable to anyone working in the field. Forty years later he is still editor: it appears punctually twice a year at a price which individuals as well as libraries can afford. During a highly productive career he has not avoided the fiercest debates of the discipline, and his contributions have always been courteous and measured, with flashes of dry humour. It is not an exaggeration to claim that some of them have transformed our understanding of the Celtic languages and their speakers. He was responsible for popularizing the useful term ‘Celtosceptic’ in

xvi

Introduction

an influential article in 1998 (‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’) but, typically, he insisted on recognizing that the word was coined in Welsh by the novelist Robin Llywelyn, and that it is therefore originally a Welsh word. He managed to tread a cautious road between the Celtomaniacs and the Celtosceptics, reminding the various factions that it is possible, and indeed necessary, for everyone in the world of Celtic Studies to reconsider thoroughly the basis and limits of ‘Celticity’, and that to do so is not to deny the validity of the field. By highlighting a stream of Welsh ‘Celtoscepticism’ and by referring to serious problems with other ethnic terms such as ‘Germanic’, he problematized the narrative which claimed that Celtoscepticism was an English attack on the identity of speakers of Celtic languages. Too often the word ‘interdisciplinary’ is used in an almost meaningless way, but Professor Sims-Williams, by critically examining attempts to combine genetics, archaeo­logy, and linguistics to create a synthetic picture of the prehistoric Celts, has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of how different disciplines can contribute to this controversial topic. He has also given a very timely warning that uncritical combination of disciplines can lead to big claims that are superficially attractive, but worthless in the long run. Throughout his career, he has quite correctly stood firm against the growing tendency to value immediate ‘impact’ over the long and arduous process of refining methodo­logy in order to produce work of substance which will retain its value over generations. His paper ‘Genetics, Linguistics and Prehistory’ published in Antiquity 72 (1998) won the prize for best paper in that journal in 1999. He is comfortable discussing the big questions, then, and has inspired and led major collective research projects. We would like to draw attention to his pioneering statistical work on Celtic place-names in the ancient world, and in particular to his tireless labour in creating searchable corpora of Middle Welsh texts. It was he who began the ongoing Development of the Welsh Language project originally under the auspices of the Board of Celtic Studies and latterly of the British Academy, with sufficient funding to hold annual meetings in which scholars working on different periods in the history of the language can get together to discuss their work. More importantly, the project has led to a number of further projects (with funding from various sources) which have digitized the contents of Welsh manu­scripts. By now, the text of all the thirteenth- () and fourteenth-century prose manu­scripts () are available for free, online, in a searchable format for researchers to use, and a number of fifteenth-century manu­scripts are likewise

Introduction xvii

available (). More are still being added. This has transformed the way in which researchers can collect data for their work on the language of this period and has led to a number of pioneering studies, including ‘Variation in Middle Welsh Conjugated Prepositions: Chrono­logy, Register and Dialect’ by Professor Sims-Williams himself in 2013. But his detailed work on individual inscriptions or glosses, or on the etymo­logy of a word, is just as important, in fact. Retirement has not slowed him down: if anything, he has been more productive in recent years, returning to topics he has been interested in for decades. He has recently won the Francis Jones Prize for Welsh History for his latest book The Book of Llandaf as a Historical Source (2019). A full list of his publications can be found here: . The volume brings together contributions from different areas of Celtic Studies and attempts to reflect the wide range of the honorand’s scholarly interests. Its macro-structure is tripartite, with main sections on Celts, Gaels, and Britons respectively. The first one contains three chapters on Continental Celtic languages and on a late antique application of the adjective Celtica to one of them. The second has three chapters on Irish texts, two of which address the issue of their affiliations within the Irish Sea world. The largest, British section finally proceeds in three subsections from Welsh literature via British historical linguistics and Old Cornish to medi­eval Welsh language and linguistics. The editors wish to thank the contributors for their chapters and also for their patience during the prolonged gestation of the volume. We thank Rory Naismith, the editor of the Brepols series ‘Medi­e val Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe’, for accepting the volume into the series and two anonymous readers for their helpful comments. Finally, we are grateful to the staff of Brepols, and in particular to Rosie Bonté, for their advice and practical support. The project of a festschrift for Patrick was initiated by Simon Rodway, who saw it through its early stages of organization and preparation. At a later stage, Jenny Rowland and Erich Poppe were invited to join in the editorial process and were delighted to be involved in this tribute to Patrick. The introduction’s final para­g raph fittingly belongs to Simon, as his personal postscript which highlights another important aspect of Patrick’s contribution to Celtic Studies. EP, JR, SR

Introduction

xviii

I undertook the organizing of a volume honouring Patrick Sims-Williams not only because he richly deserves it as a scholar, but because of my personal experience of his role as an educator and mentor to young scholars. I have benefited greatly from his support, both as a lecturer, a PhD supervisor and as a colleague and ‘line manager’. I first met him when I was in my second year of my BA degree, struggling to find a balance between my academic work and my other interests, and beginning to doubt the wisdom of choosing to pursue such a challenging degree. After one session with Professor Sims-Williams, I telephoned my parents and declared that I had finally discovered the subject I wanted to study. A quarter of a century later, I am very grateful to Patrick for introducing me to the world of Celtic Studies. SR

Nid un wyt ti i daenu — gŵn o ddysg Yn ddi-wên o’th ddeutu; Dy anian ydyw rhannu Ymroddiad oes — da foes fu. Huw Meirion Edwards

John Scottus Eriugena and Celtica eloquentia Simon Rodway with a contribution by Barry J. Lewis

I

n 1999, Professor Erich Poppe of the University of Marburg presented his analysis of a fragmentary tenth- or eleventh-century text: (1.1) ammi (or: immi) Celti-ni ‘we are Celts’ (2.1) Hiberni ocus Britanni ‘the Irish and the British’ (3.1) inge fira Átha Cliath ‘except the men of Dublin’

I take these stripes to be the only remains of a tract in mixed Latin and Early Irish, as is frequent in learned genres originating from Ireland. Here three names appear in Latin, the rest is in Irish. Text (1) seems to state that some peoples describe themselves as Celts, including the people to whom the writer belongs, as is implied by the 1pl form of the copula. It is therefore tempting to take the names in (2) as being included under the scope of the term ‘Celti’ introduced in (1). The conjunction inge ‘except’ in (3), if my emendation is correct, would indicate that at least the Scandinavian Vikings of Dublin are excluded from the same group.

Simon Rodway ([email protected]) is a lecturer in the Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University. His research interests include Old and Middle Welsh language and literature, Celtic historical linguistics, and medi­eval and early modern literature of Wales and Ireland in a comparative context. Barry Lewis ([email protected]) is a professor in the School of Celtic Studies of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Ireland. His research interests are medi­e val Welsh literature, especially poetry, and the cult of saints and hagio­g raphy in medi­e val Wales and Ireland. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131192 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 1–22 BREPOLS

2 Simon Rodway

If this interpretation is correct it would cast serious doubts on the current orthodoxy that the medi­e val and early modern Welsh and Irish had no idea they were fellow Celts. This orthodoxy had been expressed in almost exactly these words the previous year by Professor Patrick Sims-Williams,1 the honorand both of this volume and of the publication in which Poppe was writing.2 Sims-Williams referred in his paper to the Welsh poem Armes Prydein,3 a metrical incitement to ethnic cleansing which invites the Irish, Cornish, Strathclyde Britons, and Bretons to aid the Welsh in the slaughter and expulsion of the English from Britain. On the face of it, this looks like a call for a Celtic alliance: the putative allies just mentioned all spoke languages which we now call Celtic.4 However, in fact, the poet ‘put the “men of Dublin”, who were Vikings, in pride of place’.5 That the poet distinguished these men of Dublin from the native Irish is strongly suggested by the use of the term gynhon Dulyn ‘foreigners of Dublin’ in l. 131. Gynt (< Latin gentem, cf. Old Irish gent ‘gentile’) is used of the English and the Normans as well as the Norsemen, but not usually of the Irish.6 Gynt is contrasted with gwydyl ‘Irish’ and pryden ‘Picts’ in the B-text of the early Welsh poem the Gododdin.7 Less straightforward is the Middle Welsh poem ‘Peiryan Vaban’, in which gwydyl gynt ‘Irish heathens’ are contrasted with freinc ‘Franks’ and gwydyl ‘Irish’.8 Gwydyl gynt here is probably a reference to 1 

Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 12. I shall discuss the nature of this publication and of Poppe’s contribution to it below. 3  Armes Prydein, ed. by Williams. 4  See, e.g., Ellis, ‘PanCelticism’, p. 5; Lewys Glyn Cothi, Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. by Johnston, p. 572; Jones, Ysbryd y Cwlwm, pp. 19, 73–74 n. 55; Webb, Militant Muse, pp. 103, 205; Kent, Literature of Cornwall, p. 33; Jobbins, Phenomenon of Welshness, p. 128. 5  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 11; cf. Armes Prydein, ed. by Williams, pp. xiii–xiv. 6  Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa, p. 755, s.v. gynt2; Canu Aneirin, ed. by Williams, p. 127; Armes Prydein, ed. by Williams, pp. 56–57; Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, ed. by Thomas and others, s.v. gynt2; Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, pp. 54, 85, 96. 7  Canu Aneirin, ed. by Williams, l. 492; cf. Gododdin, trans. by Jackson, p. 101 ‘the heathen and the Gaels and the Picts’, but contrast Koch, Gododdin of Aneirin, pp. xxxvi, lxii, 33, 161 ‘heathen tribes of both Scots and Picts’; cf. Koch, ‘Celts, Britons and Gaels’, p. 56 — Koch takes this to be evidence that (not necessarily pagan) Irish and Picts could be termed gynt; cf. Koch, Cunedda, Cynan, Cadwallon, Cynddylan, pp. 170, 218–19 on another possible example of gynt referring to the Irish. 8  ‘Peiryan Vaban’, ed. by Jarman, p. 104, ll. 2–4; Bollard, ‘Myrddin in Early Welsh Tradition’, p. 51. 2 

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‘mixed race’ Hiberno-Norsemen.9 While many of the Norse of Dublin counted Irish among their languages, their Scandinavian ancestors at the very least did not speak a Celtic language, and thus they seem to be the odd ones out in Armes Prydein.10 However, this interpretation may be anachronistic. The medi­e val Welsh apparently did not realize that their language was related to the Gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland.11 Neither, apparently, did the Irish recognize the relationship of these languages. Medi­eval Irish glossarians explained similarities between Irish and the Brittonic languages in terms of loans rather than common origin.12 Kim McCone has noted that in Armes Prydein though it presumably would have suited the author’s purpose rather well if any such idea had been current at the time, there is no claim (beyond their not being ‘Saxons’) of any special affinity between the Irish and the various British peoples.13 9 

Cf. the Gallwydel (Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, 1.10), a calque on Irish Gallgoídel ‘one of mixed race, i.e. Viking and Irish blood’ (Quin, ed., Dictionary of the Irish Language, s.v. 1 Gall; cf. ‘Peiryan Vaban’, ed. by Jarman, p. 107; Smyth, Warlords and Holy Men, pp. 156–57). 10  On the linguistic situation in the Norse settlements in Ireland, see Máire Ní Mhaonaigh’s contribution to this volume. Strathclyde, by this stage, also included Irish, English, and Norse speakers, as well as Brittonic speakers — see Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, p. 95; Brooks, Hanes Cymry, p. 46. Sims-Williams (Irish Influence, p. 160) notes the possibility that Garmawn garant in Armes Prydein (ed. by Williams, l. 145) are the kinsmen of a putative Germanus, patronym of the Germani — these would then be further Germanic-speaking allies of the Welsh. It is more likely to be a reference to Welsh or Irish ‘kinsmen’ of St Garmon, however (see, e.g., Huws, ‘“Buchedd Garmon”’, pp. 11–13). 11  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, pp. 12–14. 12  Russell, ‘Brittonic Words in Irish Glossaries’, p. 170; Charles-Edwards, ‘Language and Society among the Insular Celts’, pp. 710–11, 720–21; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 13; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 6. The surprising statement in a Middle Irish genealogical tract that the Fir Bolg, one of the legendary ancestor races of the Irish, spoke Welsh (Bretnais) (Genealogical Tracts, ed. by Ó Raithbheartaigh, p. 179) is hardly significant, in view of the fact that they also apparently spoke Greek and Latin, and that other ancestral figures are presented as speaking Hebrew, Belgic, and German, as well as Irish! 13  McCone, Celtic Question, p. 19. Cf. Bromwich, ‘Celtic Literatures’, p. 34; CharlesEdwards, ‘Language and Society among the Insular Celts’, p. 712. Note that, according to Bede’s origin legend for the Picts, they, like the Irish, came from Scythia, but this origin legend may not be older than the beginning of the eighth century (Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 238–41). Besides, we have no explicit contemporary recognition that the Picts and Britons were related — Bede famously keeps them apart. For medi­eval examples of politically motivated appeals to commonality of language or stock, see Bartlett, Making of Europe, p. 202; cf. Davies, ‘Peoples of Britain and Ireland’, p. 9. On mooted alliances of convenience between

4 Simon Rodway

But of course, in the world of Realpolitik, ‘difference of language and culture is no barrier to alliance, where common interests exist, and similarity of language and culture […] no guarantee of alliance’.14 Elsewhere in medi­eval Welsh literature, casual Hibernophobia seems to give the lie to assumptions of premodern Celtic solidarity.15 Furthermore, it is generally held that neither the the Celtic-speaking peoples against the English in the Middle Ages, and their lack of significance in terms of ‘Celticity’, see Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd and the Celtic Alliance’, p. 472; Smith, ‘Gwleidyddiaeth a Diwylliant Cenedl’, pp. 42–43, 56; Duffy, ‘Bruce Brothers and the Irish Sea World’, pp. 58, 77–78; McMahon, ‘PanCelticism’, p. 3; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, pp. 11–12; McCone, Celtic Question, pp. 20–21; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 24 n. 74. Another example would be the ‘Galeys, Escoteys, Yrreys’ (Welsh, Scots, and Irish) assembled by Yervard (Iorwerth ap Maredudd) to raid the March in the Anglo-Norman romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn, ed. by Hathaway and others, p. 19. 14  Wells, ‘Ethno­graphy of the Celts’, p. 274. 15  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 14. The issue of widespread antiIrish sentiment in Wales through the ages has been much discussed: the references at Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 15 n. 25 and Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 183 n. 301 could easily be multiplied. Note, for instance, that the triad of Irishman, Jew, and Englishman singled out for contempt by the fifteenth-century poet Lewys Glyn Cothi (Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. by Johnston, 30.35–36) reappears in an essay in the Welsh Nationalist in 1937, in which Catherine Huws frets that the Welsh nationalists responsible for the Penyberth arson will be tried in London by ‘Englishmen, Irishmen and Jews’ (quoted in Wyn Jones, Fascist Party in Wales?, p. 92 n. 44 — Wyn Jones notes that this is the only example of anti-Irish prejudice that he has found in Plaid Cymru literature; cf. Brooks, Hanes Cymry, pp. 215–17). Another derogatory reference in medi­eval Welsh poetry linking Jews and Irish can be found at Gwaith Hywel Swrdwal, ed. by Foster Evans, 23.39–40. Whatever its origins, this anti-Irish prejudice has certainly been reinforced down the centuries by more widespread currents of Hibernophobia — see, e.g., Bartlett, Making of Europe, pp. 22–23; Davies, ‘Peoples of Britain and Ireland’, pp. 12–13; Curtis, Nothing but the Same Old Story. Perhaps a more positive Welsh attitude to the Irish can be glimpsed in a poem from the Book of Taliesin: ‘teir kenedyl gwythlawn o iawn teithi: | Gwydyl a Brython a Romani | a wnahon dyhed a dyuysci’ (three ferocious peoples possessing true qualities: The Irishmen and the Britons and the Romani will make war and turbulence) (Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, 8.38–40; cf. a similar phrase from the Black Book of Carmarthen, Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, ed. by Jarman, 17.193–94). The inclusion here of Romani (on which see Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, pp. 289–90; Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, p. 159) precludes taking this as a statement of pan-Celtic solidarity. At any rate, earlier in the Book of Taliesin poem, the Irish are diefyl diferogyon (Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, 8.34) ‘wily devils’, in a passage which seems to reflect the prose tale Branwen, a classic example of medi­eval Welsh Hibernophobia. For a similarly negative attitude towards the Scots and Picts in the work of Iolo Goch, see Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. by Johnston, poem XVII; Iolo Goch: Poems, trans. by Johnston, poem 17. Note that anti-Welsh sentiment is not a notable feature of medi­eval Irish literature (Rodway, review of McLaughlin, Early Irish Satire, p. 96). When a twelfth- or thirteenth-century

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Welsh nor the Irish seem to have called themselves ‘Celts’ before the sixteenth century, and this term was apparently never used of them or their predecessors in the ancient period by outside observers.16 In fact, it is scarcely used at all in the Middle Ages, and when it is, it generally refers to Continental peoples of antiquity. A rare medi­e val Insular instance of the word Celticus occurs in the Panormia or Derivationes of the twelfth-century scholar Osbern Pinnock of Gloucester, a Latin word list, where it is glossed ‘nobilis, insignis, illustris, egregius, augustus, authenticus, egrex’ — Osbern clearly did not regard it as an ethnic term at all.17 The interpretation of these facts varies. Some scholars are remarkably sanguine about the whole matter. After all, the kinship of the Irish and Brittonic languages both to one another and to the ancient languages of the Continent sometimes called Celtic by classical authors,18 is an empirically proven fact.19 Bearing in mind the importance of language in the formation of ethnicity,20 Irish poet names the Bretnaig (surely ‘Welsh’ rather than ‘Britons’ here, as noted by Mac Cana, ‘Ireland and Wales’, p. 44; cf. Carney, ‘Literature in Irish’, p. 689) among the ‘ugly coarse shoals’ assailing Ireland (Ó Cuív, ‘Poem’, p. 167, § 50), he does so ‘in the context of the [Anglo-Norman] conquest and of where the newcomers came from, without distinguishing between them on the basis of their ethnic origins’ (Mac Cana, ‘Ireland and Wales’, p. 44). A chapter in the Latin Life of St Mochutu of Lismore, describing how Britons residing at the saint’s church of Rahan (Co. Offaly) attempted to murder the saint in order to seize control of the church, testifies to some forgotten succession dispute in which ethnicity at least played a role: it condemns Britons to be regarded as ridiculosi within the saint’s community (Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. by Plummer, i, p. 187). I am grateful to Barry J. Lewis for this reference. One of the many debts I owe Professor Sims-Williams is an appreciation of extremely long footnotes. 16  De Bernardo Stempel, ‘Minima celtica’, p. 601; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 26; Cunliffe, Celts, p. 5; Koch and others, Atlas for Celtic Studies, pp. 1, 9; McCone, Celtic Question, pp. 8, 23; Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, p. 178; Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, p. 53; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 15. 17  Osbern Pinnock, Osberno: Derivazioni, ed. by Busdraghi and others, i, p. 155. I owe this reference to the kindness of Joshua Byron Smith. 18  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 16; Blom, ‘lingua gallica’, pp. 9–19; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 17. 19  See the references cited at Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 17, to which can be added Isaac, ‘Designation of Old Irish’. 20  See, e.g., Bromwich, ‘Celtic Literatures’, pp. 27–28; Jones, Ysbryd y Cwlwm, pp. 83–84; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, pp. 17–18. Of course, other factors contribute to ethnicity (see, e.g., Pohl, ‘Telling the Difference’), and some modern Celticists perhaps place undue weight on language in their definitions of ancient Celts, partly because it is possible to classify languages scientifically and produce quite dependable maps of Celtic speakers in antiquity.

6 Simon Rodway

many have been happy to believe that the Irish and the Welsh had indeed once recognized that they were Celts but that various factors (the demise of Celtic identity on the Continent, the Romanization of the British ancestors of the Welsh, the development of the Scythian origin legend in Ireland, the mutual incomprehensibility of the Welsh and Irish languages by about the sixth century, etc.) had caused this fact to be forgotten on both sides of the Irish Sea, until its rediscovery by early modern scholars such as George Buchanan, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Edward Lhwyd.21 Thus Eoin MacNeill stated that There must have been a time when the Celts of Ireland, Britain and Gaul were fully aware that they were nearer akin to each other than to the Germans and Italians, but this knowledge perished altogether from the popular memory and the popular consciousness.22

More recently, McCone has concluded that ‘there is no obvious reason’ why the prehistoric Britons should not have called themselves *Keltoi.23 Against this is the fact that a number of writers, from Pytheas of Marseilles in the fourth century bc to John Milton in the seventeenth ad have explicitly distinguished between Britain and Celtica.24 Even this may not matter much, if we are pre21 

For the modern (re)discovery of the Celticity of Irish, Welsh, etc., see, for example, MacNeill, ‘Rediscovery of the Celts’; MacNeill, Phases of Irish History, pp.  5–6; Piggott, Celts, Saxons, and the Early Antiquaries, pp. 10–11; Williams, ‘History of Welsh Scholarship’, pp. 207–14; Morgan, ‘Boxhorn, Leibniz, and the Welsh’; Roberts, ‘Edward Lhuyd and Celtic Linguistics’; MacQueen, ‘Renaissance in Scotland’, pp. 44–47; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, pp. 14–16; Davies, Adfeilion Babel, pp. 31–92, 144–46, 147; Collis, Celts, pp. 34–52; Morse, How the Celts Came to Britain, pp. 21–33; Koch and others, Atlas for Celtic Studies, p. 7; McCone, Celtic Question, pp. 25–27; Archaeo­logia Britannica, ed. by Evans and Roberts, pp. 17–20; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 15. It seems to have been little remarked that Edmund Spenser in his View of the State of Ireland (1596 × 1598) followed Buchanan in linking the languages of Gaul, Britain, and Ireland (ed. by Hadfield and Maley, pp. 51–52; cf. Mallory, In Search of the Irish Dreamtime, p. 290 n. 54). It is to this, no doubt, that Geoffrey Keating refers in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn when he refutes the arguments of English writers that the Irish came from Britain as can be seen from the fact ‘go bhfuilid iomad focal ionann i nGaedhilg is i mBreatnais’ (that there are many words identical in Irish and in Welsh) (ed. by Dinneen, pp. 66–67). 22  MacNeill, Phases of Irish History, pp. 4–5; cf. Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, p. 3; Koch, ‘Celts, Britons and Gaels’, pp. 43–44. 23  McCone, Celtic Question, p. 9; cf. Koch, ‘Some Thoughts on Ethnic Identity’, p. 82 n. 23. 24  Cunliffe, Ancient Celts, p. 4; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 27; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 15. Another relevant author is Zosimus (sixth century ad), who states (vi.5.3) ‘The barbarians above the Rhine, assaulting everything at their pleasure, reduced both the inhabitants of Britain and some of the Celtic peoples to defecting from Roman rule’

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pared to accept that these writers were making a geo­graphical rather than an ethno­logical point.25 Many modern scholars are confident that recoverable linguistic and, less certainly, cultural links between Continental Celts, Britons, and Irish outweigh this apparent termino­logical problem. In the words of John Koch: ‘I know of no linguist who is very impressed by this point, the Greeks did not call themselves Greeks, nor the Hittites, Hittites, nor the Germans, Germans. In short, so what?’26 Others have made much of it, however. Indeed it is a central plank in a number of ‘Celtosceptic’ re-evaluations of the prehistory of Britain and Ireland.27 In its most constructive form, Celtoscepticism is a salutary reminder that the label ‘Celtic’ is beset by myriad problems, and should not be transferred uncritically from one academic discipline to another.28 This is, of course, true of other labels: as long ago as 1919, MacNeill stressed that the ‘Anglo-Saxon consciousness’ is in origin every bit as ‘academic’ as the ‘Celtic consciousness’, 29 and Malcolm Chapman, in his deconstruction of Celticity, stressed that he could just as easily have applied himself to deconstructing the English, French, Germans, or IndoEuropeans.30 In the light of the power relationship between modern speakers of Celtic languages and the English- or French-language states in which they live, however, it was inevitable that perceived attacks on Celtic identity would be provocative. In March 1998 The Daily Tele­graph reported that Celtosceptic (quoted in Woolf, ‘Britons’, p. 347). This was first noticed in this context by Collis, ‘Emperor in Rome’, p. 409; cf. Collis, ‘“How the Celts Saved Britain”’, p. 50. 25  Piggott, Celts, Saxons, and the Early Antiquaries, p. 10; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, pp. 26–27; Sims-Williams, ‘How Are You Finding It Here?’, p. 30; Sims-Williams, ‘Languages and Labels’; Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, p. 53 n. 14. 26  Koch, ‘Celts, Britons and Gaels’, p. 43; Koch, ‘Some Thoughts on Ethnic Identity’, p. 81. 27  For example Collis, ‘Origin and Spread of the Celts’, p. 21; Collis, Celts; Collis, ‘Rethinking the Celts’, p. 106; Collis, ‘Redefining the Celts’, pp. 35–36; James, ‘Celts, Politics and Motivation in Archaeo­logy’, p. 205; James, Atlantic Celts. On the term ‘Celtoscepticism’, see SimsWilliams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 2; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtic Civilization’, pp. 1–2; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 10. 28  See Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 33. 29  MacNeill, Phases of Irish History, p. 38. Cf. Keay, India, pp. 19–29 (on the ‘Aryans’); Sims-Williams, ‘How Are You Finding It Here?’, p. 30; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtic Civilization’, p. 2; McCone, Celtic Question, p. 37; Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, p. 178 n. 2; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 18; Wells, ‘Ancient Germans’, pp. 213–15; Friedrich and Harland, eds, Interrogating the ‘Germanic’ (on the ‘ancient Germans’); MacNeill, Phases of Irish History, pp. 307–08 (on the ‘Normans’). 30  Chapman, Celts, p. xv. Cf. similar comments by Simon James (Atlantic Celts, p. 142). For further discussion, see Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 25.

8 Simon Rodway

archaeo­logists had ‘angered self-proclaimed Celts from Scotland to Cornwall by their claims that Celtic culture, much trumpeted during the weeks before devolution referendums in Wales and Scotland, is historical “fantasy”’.31 That this was not merely journalistic hyperbole can be gleaned from the fact that James explicitly raises the red herring of devolution in his populist deconstruction of the Insular Celts.32 Sims-Williams’s contributions to the debate,33 which has otherwise been characterized by accusations of Stalinism, ethnic cleansing, and Creationism,34 have been refreshingly fair and unhysterical. The discovery of unambiguous evidence that the Britons and Irish did call themselves ‘Celts’ in the pre-modern period would, of course, settle this particular aspect of the debate. Unfortunately, Professor Poppe’s text, quoted at the beginning of this paper, belongs to a category well attested in the literatures of the Celtic languages, the forgery. It was included in a collection of spoof abstracts presented to Professor Sims-Williams on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday under the title Celtophilia.35 However, other evidence has been advanced for the existence of a Celtic identity among ancient or medi­e val speakers of Insular Celtic languages, and it is to that I wish to turn now. We might begin by noting schematic maps such as that of Ephorus in the fourth century bc in which the barbarian world is divided into four uniform parts: Scythians in the north-east, Persians or Indians in the south-east, Libyans or Ethiopians in the south-west, and Celts in the north-west, which, presumably, included Britain and Ireland.36 We can scarcely take these maps seriously as sources of ethno­graphical information, however. They are examples of generalization about foreigners, analogous to the use in India of Yavana ‘Greek’ to 31 

Quoted in Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, pp. 4–5. James, Atlantic Celts, p. 12; cf. the critical comments in Koch and others, Atlas for Celtic Studies, p. 7. 33  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’; Sims-Williams, ‘How Are You Finding It Here?’; Sims-Williams, ‘Post-Celtoscepticism’; Sims-Williams, ‘Languages and Labels’. 34  Megaw and Megaw, ‘Ancient Celts and Modern Ethnicity’, pp. 179, 180; Collis, ‘Redefining the Celts’, p. 41. 35  I am grateful to Erich Poppe for his permission to quote from his contribution. 36  Sims-Williams, ‘How Are You Finding It Here?’, p. 30; Sims-Williams, ‘Location of the Celts’, pp. 7–8; Sims-Williams, ‘Earliest Celtic Ethno­g raphy’, p. 12; Sims-Williams, ‘Alternative to “Celtic from the East” and “Celtic from the West”’, p. 15; Collis, Celts, pp. 105, 117; cf. Thomson, History of Ancient Geo­g raphy, p. 97; Chapman, Celts, p. 36; Freeman, ‘Earliest Greek Sources’, pp. 35–36; James, Atlantic Celts, p. 52; Cunliffe, Celts, p. 8; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 14; Keyser, ‘Greek Geo­graphy’, p. 45. 32 

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refer to ‘Macedonians, Bactrians, Kushans, Scythians and Arabs’,37 Germanic use of derivatives of Volcae to refer to foreign neighbours,38 Gildas’s application of Ambrones to the predatory Picts and Scots,39 medi­eval Welsh use of ‘Picts’ to refer to pirates of any ethnicity,40 medi­eval and modern Welsh derogatory usage of Gwyddel ‘Irishman’,41 or, for that matter, the twelfth-century Byzantine habit of calling western European crusaders from France, Germany, England, etc. ‘Celts’.42 Strabo (d. ad 19) tells us that Hipparchus assumed the ‘people who live two thousand five hundred stadia north of Celtica […] still to be Celts, though I think they are Britons’.43 There is no evidence to suggest that either Hipparchus or Strabo had first-hand knowledge of Britain, but Strabo was certainly well informed about north-western Europe, and thus modern scholars have tended to favour his explanation.44 John Koch drew attention to an interesting story by Parthenius of Apamea (fl. 72 bc) which claims that the Keltoi (apparently of the Iberian Peninsula) are descended from Keltos, son of Heracles and Keltinē, daughter of Bretannos.45 It seems likely, although this is not stated explicitly, that the latter was also the ancestor of the Britons. However, we do not know the provenance of this story, which may not be Celtic at all.46 At any rate, it stops short of calling the Britons ‘Celts’. That the Britons were similar in appearance, custom, religion, and language to the Celtic Gauls was known from the work of Julius Caesar and Tacitus.47 37 

Keay, India, p. 59. Schumacher, ‘Lexical and Structural Language-Contact Phenomena’, pp. 252–53, 262 n. 49. 39  Quoted in Higham, King Arthur, p. 161. 40  Gwaith Llywelyn Fardd I, ed. by Bramley and others, p. 473; Gruffydd, ‘Edmyg Dinbych’, p. 24; Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, p. 70. 41  See, for example, Rhŷs, Celtic Folklore, pp. 472–73; Brooks, Hanes Cymry, p. 191. 42  See Chapman, Celts, pp. 182–84; Megaw and Megaw, ‘Ancient Celts and Modern Ethnicity’, p. 177; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 24 n. 94; Sims-Williams, ‘Celtic Civilization’, p. 33; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 14 n. 19. 43  Strabo, Geo­graphy, ii.1.18, ed. and trans. Jones, pp. 282, 283; see Sims-Williams, ‘Location of the Celts’, p. 12 n. 34. 44  For example, Collis, Celts, p. 27; cf. Rodway, ‘Celtic’, pp. 15–16. 45  Koch, ‘Celts Calling Themselves Celts’, p. 77; cf. Rankin, Celts and the Classical World, p. 81; Oppenheimer, ‘Reanalysis’, p. 130; Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 16. 46  For Parthenius’s imaginative use of putatively ‘Celtic’ elements in his literature, see Lampinen, ‘Cruel and Unusual?’, pp. 13–15. 47  See references in Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 26; Rodway, 38 

10 Simon Rodway

Linguistic evidence to suggest that ancient Britons and Irish did consider themselves to be Celts has been adduced by Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel, namely a number of Insular ethnonyms containing the element ‑gal ‘power’, probably seen in the names Galli and Galatai vel sim, often used interchangeably with Keltoi, Celti vel sim by classical authors.48 However, the exact relationship between the terms Galli, Galatai, and Keltoi/Celti is uncertain — not all classical historians treat them as synonyms.49 It has been argued that all three words are etymo­logically connected,50 but this is far from certain.51 Although plausible Celtic etymo­logies for all three have been proposed, ethnic names are notoriously difficult to etymo­logize, and it is possible that they were all originally external labels applied rather indiscriminately by Greeks and Romans who had little interest in the niceties of ethnic distinctions between groups of barbarians, in which case similarities to Celtic roots such as gal‑ must be coincidental.52 Of course this does not mean that they were not adopted by some groups as labels of self-definition. At any rate, I do not think that we should necessarily conclude that ethnic groups in Britain and Ireland whose names contain (or appear to contain) the Celtic root gal‑ would have seen themselves as belonging to the same people as the Galli and Galatai of the Continent, let alone the Celti.53 Similarly, occasional references in medi­eval Irish literature to Gaill in prehistoric Ireland should not be taken as evidence for survival of a ‘Celtic’, p. 16. Zimmer, ‘Celtic Languages’, pp. 371–72 states that Caesar ‘remarked that the language of the Britons was very similar to that of Gaul’, but I cannot see that he mentions language in this context, unlike Tacitus (Agricola xi). 48  De Bernardo Stempel, ‘Minima celtica’, pp. 601–03; cf. de Bernardo Stempel, ‘Language and the Historio­graphy of the Celtic-Speaking Peoples’, p. 36; de Bernardo Stempel, ‘Linguistically Celtic Ethnonyms’, p. 111; Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, p. 179 n. 7. 49  See, for example, the references cited in Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 13 n. 17, to which can be added Freeman, ‘Earliest Greek Sources on the Celts’, p. 12; Koch, ‘Celts, Britons and Gaels’, p.  42; Bridgman, ‘Keltoi, Galatai, Galli’; Bridgman, ‘Names and Naming Conventions’; McCone, Celtic Question, pp. 1–9; Sims-Williams, ‘Celto-Etruscan Speculations’, p. 275. 50  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, p. 22; cf. McCone, ‘Greek Κελτος and Γαλατος, Latin Gallus “Gaul”’; Koch and others, Atlas for Celtic Studies, p. 23; Koch, ‘Celts Calling Themselves “Celts”’, p. 78. 51  See Sims-Williams, ‘Celto-Etruscan Speculations’, pp. 275–78. 52  Thus Greene, ‘Celtic Languages’, p. 14; Piggott, Celts, Saxons and the Early Antiquaries, pp. 4–5; Renfrew, Archaeo­logy and Language, p. 224; Chapman, Celts, pp. 30–35; Cunliffe, Ancient Celts, p. 2; Isaac, review of McCone, Celtic Question, p. 214. 53  On the issue of whether Celti was always used as an ethnic label on the Continent, see Wodtko, ‘Problem of Lusitanian’, p. 350; cf. Falileyev, Celtic Balkans, p. 47.

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putative concept of the Celtic ancestry of the Irish — rather they seem to have been triggered by medi­eval etymo­logical speculation.54 We might also note an intriguing passage from a probably ninth-century Latin poem, Waltharius (attributed to an unknown Gerald), in which Ekiurid, an opponent of the hero, a Saxonicis oris ‘from the Saxon shores’, possesses Celtica lingua.55 If these Saxon shores corresponded to the litus Saxonicum ‘Saxon shore’, then Ekiurid could have originated from what is now south-east England, or from the stretch of coastline spanning present-day Normandy and Brittany on the other side of the Channel which was apparently also known by that name.56 Dumville suggests that, if the Saxon shore in presentday England was intended, ‘his Celtica lingua would be Brittonic, whether Welsh or Cornish’, but no Brittonic speech would have been heard in that part Britain for hundreds of years at the time of the poem’s composition. If, on the other hand, the poet intended Ekiurid to be a native of what is now northern France, he might have spoken Breton.57 As it was universally accepted that the Bretons were descended from the Britons, this would be evidence that at least one early medi­e val Continental writer thought of the Britons as ‘Celtic’ in language. However, there are other more likely explanations for the phrase. If the author believed northern France to have been inhabited by Gauls in the fifth century, when the events of the poem take place, then Celtica lingua means the Celtic speech of Gaul,58 or, if he is using it in a geo­g raphical sense (‘the language of the people of Celtica, i.e. (?central) Gaul’), perhaps a GalloRomance dialect.59 In 2009, Bart Jaski drew attention to a hitherto unnoticed reference to Celtic speech in a ninth-century Continental source, namely in an attack by 54  See Rodway, ‘“Gaulish” Megaliths in Ireland?’; Rodway, ‘Two Notes on “Sanas Cormaic”’, pp. 183–87. 55  On the date of the poem, see Dumville, ‘Ekiurid’s Celtica lingua’, p. 87 n. 1; Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, pp. 50–51. 56  Rivet and Smith, Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 394; Dumville, ‘Ekiurid’s Celtica lingua’, p. 90. Note, however, that Jaski translates ‘from Saxon lands’, and questions whether the term litus Saxonicum would be known in the ninth century ( Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, p. 51 and n. 9). 57  Dumville, ‘Ekiurid’s Celtica lingua’, pp. 90–91. 58  Dumville, ‘Ekiurid’s Celtica lingua’, p. 91. 59  Blom, ‘lingua gallica’, pp. 18–19, 44 (with references to the work of Wilmotte and Weisgerber, both of whom also favoured Gallo-Romance). Cf. Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, pp. 52–53.

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Prudentius of Troyes on the Irish scholar Johannes Scotus Eriugena’s views on predestination.60 The relevant section reads: Te solum omnium acutissimum Galliae transmisit Hibernia, ut quae nullus absque te scire poterat, tuis eruditionibus obtineret: sed absit ut, Celtica eloquentia tot tantisque fluviorum exundationibus debriata tuas nubilationes admittat, quamvis Christianae humilitatis eminentia […] prohibeat.61

This was translated by Jaski as follows: Ireland has sent you, on your own the most sharp-witted of all, over to Gaul, so that everyone, what he could not know without you, would obtain through your erudition. But let it not happen that Celtic eloquence, intoxicated by the overflowing of so many and great streams (of wisdom), admits your obscurities, however much she has (already) obstructed the Christian eminence of humility.62

Jaski takes the term Celtica eloquentia to refer to the speech of Johannes, and he tentatively suggests that this reflects a sense of Celtic identity in medi­eval Ireland, deriving perhaps from an early version of the synthetic Irish origin legend which traced the Irish (Goídil) and the Celtic Galatians back to Noah’s grandson Gomer, via the Greeks.63 This was later supplanted by the more familiar doctrine that the Irish descended from the Scythians.64 At any rate, Jaski concludes that ‘Eriugena can add to his fame that he is the first historical Irishman we know of who was identified as the speaker of a Celtic language by a contemporary’.65 However, Prudentius’s text is far from straightforward. Having discussed this passage with Barry Lewis, I expressed some doubts about Jaski’s interpretation in a review.66 Barry Lewis has now undertaken a thorough examination of the whole passage. Below I cite it in its entirety along with his translation and notes. The punctuation of the Patro­logia latina text has been altered to reflect the interpretation offered here: 60 

For the background, see Ganz, ‘Debate on Predestination’. Prudentius of Troyes, De praedestinatione, ed. by Migne, col. 1194A. 62  Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, p. 50. A rather different translation by Professor Barry J. Lewis is offered below. 63  Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, pp. 50–54; cf. Jaski, ‘“We Are of the Greeks”’. 64  See, e.g., Carey, ‘Russia, Cradle of the Gael’. 65  Jaski, ‘Irish Origin Legend’, p. 54. 66  Rodway, review of Carey, Lebor Gabála Érenn, pp. 101–02; cf. Rodway, ‘Celtic’, p. 16. 61 

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Correctio O disputatorem subtilissimum, qui, cum hæc diceret, neque cum Aristotele calamum in mente tingebat, neque cum Dominici pectoris recubo de fonte veræ sapientiæ fluenta doctrinæ salutaris hauriebat! Nimirum etiam in te videmus impletum quod Apostolus loquitur: Perdam sapientiam sapientium, et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo (I Cor. I, 19). Nempe aut non vidisti interiore aspectu quod videndum erat, aut te non videre finxisti, perindeque ad eas calumnias prærupisti ut beatum Augustinum, quod nunquam cogitavit, dixisse confingeres, et tua legentibus ita illuderes ac si ea intelligere nequivissent. Te solum omnium acutissimum Galliæ transmisit Hibernia, ut quæ nullus absque te scire poterat, tuis eruditionibus obtineret: sed absit ut Celtica eloquentia, tot tantisque fluviorum exundationibus debriata, tuas nubilationes admittat, quamvis Christianæ humilitatis eminentia alterutro charitatis officio vicissim suppeditari minime prohibeat: imo, undecunque commodum duxerit, alternatim, quæ recta sunt, exhiberi percenseat. (The Correction O most subtle of disputants who, in saying this, neither dipped his pen into his mind like Aristotle, nor drank, like the one who reclined on the Lord’s breast [the apostle John], the waters of salvific doctrine from the fount of true wisdom! For sure, it is in you precisely that we see fulfilled that saying of the Apostle: ‘I shall lose the wisdom of the wise, and I shall censure the prudence of the prudent’ (i Cor. 1.19). For either you did not see with your inner eye what you should have seen, or you pretended that you did not see it, and as a result you burst forth with such calumnies as to affect that St Augustine said something which never entered his mind, and to attempt to bamboozle those who read your works as if they were unable to understand them. Yourself alone, the most sharp-witted of men, has Ireland sent over to Gaul, that Gaul might obtain67 through your teachings that which none but you was able to know; but God forbid that Celtic eloquence,68 made drunk by so many and such mighty outpourings of rivers, should accept your befogging fancies,69 albeit that the eminence of Christian humility by no means forbids assis67 

(‘BJL’ denotes comments on text and translation kindly supplied by Barry Lewis.) I understand Gallia to be the implied subject of obtineret. This means that Ireland has sent John Scotus over so that Gaul may learn from him. This is the natural interpretation from the context. But grammatically Hibernia could be the subject, in which case Ireland has sent John Scotus over so that she can learn from Gaul. The context makes this very unlikely, however. The other possibility is nullus, the subject of the previous verb scire poterat, though strictly speaking the negative nullus would not fit the positive clause tuis eruditionibus obtineret [BJL]. 68  Celtica eloquentia: the meaning is ‘the speech of Gaul’. John Scotus came over to teach the Gauls, but let them not become intoxicated into repeating his nonsense. The fluviorum exundationibus are John Scotus’s declarations [BJL]. 69  nubilationes: this is not recorded in any dictionary known to me. It comes from nubilare

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tance to be offered, in turn, in the mutual duty of charity;70 rather, from whomsoever it has received benefit, to him in return it should ensure that the truth is made clear.)71

According to Lewis’s reading of this passage, it is the Gauls, not John Scotus, who possess Celtica eloquentia. This, then, would be an example of the adjective Celtica being applied to the Latin- or Gallo-Romance-speaking inhabitants of central Gaul, a usage which survived as late as the work of Otto of Freising in the twelfth century.72 The language in question would not be one that modern linguists would call ‘Celtic’ at all, but rather a Romance dialect derived from Vulgar Latin. We must withdraw from John Scotus the honour of being ‘the first historical Irishman we know of who was identified as the speaker of a Celtic language by a contemporary’. On a larger scale, this means that the orthodoxy that the Insular Celtic-speakers were not, as far as we know, called Celts before the modern period must remain unchallenged. The implications of this remain the subject of debate. ‘to cloud over, obscure, make dark’. Scotus’s erroneous views are decried as clouding over the face of the truth [BJL]. 70  The clause ‘quamvis […] prohibeat’ is difficult because of its profusion of abstract nouns. I understand eminentia to be in the nominative case rather than the ablative, and thus to be the subject of prohibeat. At any rate, it is not in the accusative, as Jaski’s translation would require. The phrase alterutro charitas officio must mean ‘in the mutual duty of charity’; compare the very similar expression mutuo caritatis officio in a letter of Alcuin (‘Epistolae’, ed. by Dümmler, p. 216), likewise in a context of refuting false beliefs. The ultimate source is Matthew 22.39 (‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself ’), a duty interpreted here and in Alcuin’s letter as including the obligation to guide one’s neighbour away from erroneous religious views. The verb suppeditare in Classical Latin means ‘to be available, to abound, to satisfy, to fulfil someone’s needs’, but this does not yield sense here. In medi­eval Latin it can also mean ‘to support, back up, come to the aid of, furnish, provide’, and that is the meaning here. The passive infinitive displays the common Latin impersonal use of the passive: as the finite suppeditatur would mean ‘assistance is offered’, so the infinitive suppeditari may be rendered ‘assistance to be offered’ or ‘the offering of assistance’ [BJL]. 71  I understand the subject of duxerit and percenseat to be Christianae humilitatis eminentia again, though Celtica eloquentia is not impossible. The import is not affected: either way, the author is explaining the proper course of conduct for Celtica eloquentia (personified, naturally, in himself ) to pursue. The commodum is the benefit which Gaul received from John Scotus. In return for this the Gauls must show him the truth. Thus there is a sarcastic contrast: John Scotus has come to teach the Gauls with his excellent learning which is possessed by no one in Gaul, and yet it is the Christian duty of the Gauls to show him how he has erred. The tone is very patronizing [BJL]. 72  Blom, ‘lingua gallica’, pp. 9–10.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Alcuin, ‘Epistolae’, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae, iv: Epistolae Karolini Aevi (II), ed. by Ernst Dümmler (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895) Aneirin, Canu Aneirin, ed. by Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1938) —— , The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish Poem, ed.  by Kenneth Jackson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969) —— , The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text and Context from Dark-Age North Britain, ed. and trans. by John T. Koch (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997) Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain from the Book of Taliesin, ed.  by Ifor Williams, trans. by Rachel Bromwich (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1972) Fouke le Fitz Waryn, ed. by Ernest J. Hathaway, Peter T. Ricketts, C. A. Robson, and Alan D. Wilshere (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975) Genealogical Tracts, i, ed.  by Toirdhealbhach Ó Raithbheartaigh (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1932) Gwaith Hywel Swrdwal a’i Deulu, ed. by Dylan Foster Evans (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Institute for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2000) Gwaith Llywelyn Fardd  I ac Eraill o Feirdd y Ddeuddegfed Ganrif, ed.  by Kathleen A. Bramley, Nerys Ann Jones, Morfydd E. Owen, Catherine McKenna, Gruffydd Aled Williams, and J.  E. Caerwyn Williams, Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion, 2 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994) Iolo Goch, Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. by Dafydd Johnston (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1988) —— , Iolo Goch: Poems, ed. and trans. by Dafydd Johnston, Welsh Classics, 5 (Llandysul: Gomer, 1993) Keating, Geoffrey, The History of Ireland, ii, ed. by Patrick S. Dinneen, Irish Texts Society, 8 (London: Irish Texts Society, 1908) Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007) Lewys Glyn Cothi, Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. by Dafydd Johnston (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1995) Lhwyd, Edward, Archæo­logia Britannica: Texts and Translations, ed. by Dewi W. Evans and Brynley F. Roberts (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2009) Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, ed. by A. O. H. Jarman (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982) Osbern Pinnock, Osberno: Derivazioni, ed.  by Paola Busdraghi, Maria Chiabó, Andrea Dessi Fulgheri, Paolo Gatti, Rosanna Mazzacano, Luciana Roberti, Feruccio Bertini, and Vincenzo Ussani Jr., Biblioteca di ‘Medioevo Latino’ 16, 2 vols (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’altro medioevo, 1996) ‘Peiryan Vaban’, ed.  by A.  O.  H. Jarman, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 14 (1950–1952), 104–08

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‘A Poem Composed for Cathal Croibhdhearg Ó Conchubhair’, ed. by Brian Ó Cuív, Ériu, 34 (1983), 157–74 Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2013) Prudentius of Troyes, De praedestinatione contra J.  Scotum, ed.  by Jacques-Paul  Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 115 (Paris: Garnier, 1852), cols 1009–1376 Spenser, Edmund, A View to the State of Ireland, ed. by Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) Strabo, Geo­graphy, i: Books 1–2, ed. and trans. by Horace Leonard Jones, Loeb Classical Library, 49 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917) Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. by Charles Plummer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910)

Secondary Works Bartlett, Robert, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (London: Allen Lane, 1993) Blom, Alderik H., ‘lingua gallica, lingua celtica: Gaulish, Gallo-Latin, or Gallo-Romance?’, Keltische Forschungen, 4 (2009), 7–54 Bollard, John K., ‘Myrddin in Early Welsh Tradition’, in The Romance of Merlin, ed. by Peter Goodrich (New York: Garland, 1990), pp. 13–54 Bridgman, Timothy P., ‘Keltoi, Galatai, Galli: Were They All One People?’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 24/25 (2004/05), 155–62 —— , ‘Names and Naming Conventions concerning Celtic Peoples in Some Early Ancient Greek Authors’, in Law, Literature and Society, ed. by Joseph F. Eska, Celtic Studies Association of North America Yearbook, 7 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2008), pp. 113–27 Bromwich, Rachel, ‘The Celtic Literatures’, in Literature in Celtic Countries, ed. by John E. Caerwyn Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1971), pp. 27–57 Brooks, Simon, Hanes Cymry: Lleiafrifoedd Ethnig a’r Gwareiddiad Cymraeg (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021) Carey, John, ‘Russia, Cradle of the Gael’, in Parallels between Celtic and Slavic, ed. by Séamus Mac Mathúna and Maxim Fomin (Coleraine: Stationery Office, 2006), pp. 149–60 —— , ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: Textual History and Pseudohistory, Irish Texts Society, Subsidiary Series, 20 (London: Irish Texts Society, 2009) Carney, James, ‘Literature in Irish, 1169–1534’, in A New History of Ireland, ii: Medi­ eval Ireland, 1169–1534, ed. by Art Cosgrove, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 688–707 Chapman, Malcolm, The Celts: The Construction of a Myth (Basingstoke: St  Martin’s, 1992) Charles-Edwards, Thomas, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) —— , ‘Language and Society among the Insular Celts 400–1000’, in The Celtic World, ed. by Miranda J. Green (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 703–36 Collis, John, ‘The Origin and Spread of the Celts’, Studia Celtica, 30 (1996), 17–34

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—— , The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions (Stroud: Tempus, 2003) —— , ‘Rethinking the Celts: The Impact of Historio­graphy and Archaeo­logy’, in Celtes et gaulois dans l’histoire, l’historio­graphie et l’idéo­logie moderne, ed. by Sabine Rieckhoff, Collection ‘Bibracte’, 12 (Glux-en-Glenne: Centre archéo­logique européen, 2006), pp. 97–110 —— , ‘An Emperor in Rome and Other Famous Celts’, in Artefact: Festschrift für Sabine Rieckhoff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Susanne Grunwald, Julia Katharina Koch, Doreen Mölders, Ulrike Somer, and Sabine Wolfram (Bonn: Habelt, 2009), pp. 409–16 —— , ‘Redefining the Celts’, in Kelten am Rhein, ii: Sprachen und Literaturen, ed.  by Stefan Zimmer (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2009), pp. 33–43 —— , ‘“How the Celts Saved Britain”: Re-writing the End of Roman Britain’, in Inter­ pretierte Eisenzeiten: Fallstudien, Methoden, Theorie; Tagungsbeiträge der 8. Linzer Gespräche zur interpretativen Eisenzeitarchäo­logie, ed.  by Raimund Karl and Jutta Leskovar (Linz: Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, 2019), pp. 47–56 Cunliffe, Barry, The Ancient Celts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) —— , The Celts: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Cunliffe, Barry, and John  T. Koch, ‘Introduction’, in Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeo­logy, Genetics, Language and Literature, ed. by Barry Cunliffe and John T. Koch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010), pp. 1–8 Curtis, Liz, Nothing but the Same Old Story: The Roots of Anti-Irish Racism (London: Information on Ireland, 1984) Davies, Caryl, Adfeilion Babel: Agweddau ar Syniadaeth Ieithyddol y Ddeunawfed Ganrif (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000) Davies, Robert R., ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1100–1400: IV Language and Historical Mytho­logy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 7 (1997), 1–24 De Bernardo-Stempel, Patrizia, ‘Minima celtica zwischen Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte’, in Man and the Animal World: Studies in Archaeozoo­logy, Archaeo­logy, Anthropo­ logy and Palaeolinguistics in memoriam Sándor Bökönyi, ed. by Peter Anreiter, László Bartosiewicz, Erzsébet Jerem, and Wolfgang Meid (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 1998), pp. 601–10 —— , ‘Language and the Historio­graphy of Celtic-Speaking Peoples’, in Celtes et Gaulois dans l’histoire, l’historio­ graphie et l’idéo­ logie moderne, ed.  by Sabine Rieckhoff, Collection ‘Bibracte’, 12 (Glux-en-Glenne: Centre archéo­logique européen, 2006), pp. 33–56 —— , ‘Linguistically Celtic Ethnonyms: Towards a Classification’, in Celtic and Other Languages in Ancient Europe, ed. by Juan Luis García Alonso (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2008), pp. 101–18 Duffy, Seán, ‘The Bruce Brothers and the Irish Sea World, 1306–29’, Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 21 (Summer 1991), 55–86 Dumville, David, ‘Ekiurid’s Celtica lingua: An Ethno­logical Difficulty in Waltharius’, Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 6 (Winter 1983), 87–93

18 Simon Rodway

Ellis, Peter Berresford, ‘PanCelticism; Modern Myth or Historical Tradition?’, The Celtic History Review, 1.1 (1994–1995), 3–5 Falileyev, Alexander, The Celtic Balkans (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2013) Fraser, James E., From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795, The New Edinburgh History of Scotland, 1 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009) Freeman, Philip M., ‘The Earliest Greek Sources on the Celts’, Études celtiques, 32 (1996), 11–48 Friedrich, Matthias, and James M. Harland, eds, Interrogating the ‘Germanic’: A Category and its Use in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021) Ganz, David, ‘The Debate on Predestination’, in Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, ed.  by Margaret Gibson and Janet Nelson, British Archaeo­logical Reports, Inter­ national Series, 101 (Oxford: BAR, 1981), pp. 353–73 Greene, David, ‘The Celtic Languages’, in The Celts, ed.  by Joseph Raftery (Dublin: Mercier, 1964), pp. 9–21 Gruffydd, R. Geraint, ‘Edmyg Dinbych’: Cerdd Lys Gynnar o Ddyfed, Darlith Goffa J. E. Caerwyn a Gwen Williams, 2001 (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2002) Higham, Nicholas J., King Arthur: Myth-Making and History (London: Routledge, 2002) Huws, Howard, ‘“Buchedd Garmon”: Ffynhonnell “Buchedd Dewi”?’, Dwned, 17 (2011), 11–22 Isaac, Graham, review of McCone, Celtic Question, Journal of the Galway Archaeo­logical and Historical Society, 62 (2010), 213–15 —— , ‘The Designation of Old Irish as a “Celtic” Language’, in Researching the Languages of Ireland, ed. by Raymond Hickey, Studia Celtica Upsalensia, 8 (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2011), pp. 49–61 James, Simon, ‘Celts, Politics and Motivation in Archaeo­logy’, Antiquity, 72 (1998), 200–09 —— , The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999) Jankulak, Karen, and Jonathan M. Wooding, eds, Ireland and Wales in the Middle Ages (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007) Jaski, Bart, ‘“We Are of the Greeks in our Origin”: New Perspectives on the Irish Origin Legend’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 46 (Winter 2003), 1–53 —— , ‘The Irish Origin Legend: Seven Unexplored Sources’, in Lebor Gabála Érenn: Textual History and Pseudohistory, ed. by John Carey, Irish Texts Society, Subsidiary Series, 20 (London: Irish Texts Society, 2009), pp. 48–75 Jobbins, Siôn T., The Phenomenon of Welshness (Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2011) Jones, R. M., Ysbryd y Cwlwm: Delwedd y Genedl yn ein Llenyddiaeth (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998) Keay, John, India: A History, 2nd edn (London: Harper, 2010) Kent, Alan M., The Literature of Cornwall: Continuity, Identity, Difference, 1000–2000 (Bristol: Radcliffe, 2000)

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Keyser, Paul T., ‘Greek Geo­graphy of the Western Barbarians’, in The Barbarians of Ancient Europe: Realities and Interactions, ed.  by Larissa Bonfante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 37–70 Koch, John T., ‘Fled Bricrenn’s Significance within the Broader Celtic Context’, in Fled Bricrenn: Reassessments, ed. by Pádraig Ó Riain, Irish Texts Society, Supplementary Series, 10 (London: Irish Texts Society, 2000), pp. 15–39 —— , ‘Celts, Britons, and Gaels – Names, Peoples and Identities’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, n.s., 9 (2003), 41–56 —— , ‘Some Thoughts on Ethnic Identity, Cultural Pluralism, and the Future of Celtic Studies’, in Retrospect and Prospect in Celtic Studies: Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Celtic Studies, ed.  by Máire Herbert and Kevin Murray (Dublin: Four Courts, 2003), pp. 75–92 —— , ‘On Celts Calling Themselves “Celts” and Related Questions’, Studia Celtica, 43 (2009), 73–86 —— , Cunedda, Cynan, Cadwallon, Cynddylan: Four Welsh Poems and Britain, 383–655 (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013) Koch, John T., Raimund Karl, Antone Minard, and Simon Ó Faoláin, An Atlas for Celtic Studies (Oxford: Oxbow, 2007) Lampinen, Antti, ‘Cruel and Unusual? The Idea of “Celtic Justice” in the Greco-Roman Lighter Literature’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 11: 8–23 Lloyd-Jones, J., Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1931–1963) Mac Cana, Proinsias, ‘Ireland and Wales in the Middle Ages: An Overview’, in Ireland and Wales in the Middle Ages, ed. by Karen Jankulak and Jonathan M. Wooding (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007), pp. 17–45 McCone, Kim, ‘Greek Κελτός and Γαλάτης, Latin Gallus “Gaul”’, Die Sprache, 46.1 (2006), 94–111 —— , The Celtic Question: Modern Constructs and Ancient Realities, Myles Dillon Memo­ rial Lecture, April 2008 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2008) McLaughlin, Roisin, Early Irish Satire (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2008) McMahon, Brendan, ‘PanCelticism: Myth and Identity’, Celtic History Review, 1.2 (1995), 3–4 MacNeill, Eoin, ‘The Rediscovery of the Celts’, The Irish Review, 3 (1913), 522–32 —— , Phases of Irish History (Dublin: Gill, 1919) MacQueen, John, ‘The Renaissance in Scotland’, in The Celts and the Renaissance: Tradi­ tion and Innovation; Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Celtic Studies, ed. by Glanmor Williams and Robert Owen Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1990), pp. 41–56 Mallory, J. P., In Search of the Irish Dreamtime (London: Thames & Hudson, 2016) Megaw, John V. S., and M. Ruth Megaw, ‘Ancient Celts and Modern Ethnicity’, Antiquity, 70 (1996), 175–81

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Meid, Wolfgang, ‘Celtic Origins, the Western and Eastern Celts’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 154 (2008), 177–99 Morgan, Prys, ‘Boxhorn, Leibniz, and the Welsh’, Studia Celtica, 8/9 (1973–1974), 220–28 Morse, Michael A., How the Celts Came to Britain: Druids, Ancient Skulls and the Birth of Archaeo­logy (Stroud: Tempus, 2005) Oppenheimer, Stephen, ‘A Reanalysis of Multiple Prehistoric Immigrations to Britain and Ireland Aimed at Identifying the Celtic Contributions’, in Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeo­logy, Genetics, Language and Literature, ed.  by Barry Cunliffe and John T. Koch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010), pp. 121–50 Piggott, Stuart, Celts, Saxons, and the Early Antiquaries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni­ versity Press, 1967) Pohl, Walter, ‘Telling the Difference: Signs of Ethnic Identity’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl with Helmut Reimitz (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 17–69 Powell, T.  G.  E., The Celts, Ancient Peoples and Places (London: Thames & Hudson, 1958) Quin, Ernest G., ed., Dictionary of the Irish Language Based Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials, compact edn (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1983); rev. edn (2013) available online at [accessed 1 March 2022] Rankin, David, Celts and the Classical World (London: Croom Helm, 1987) Renfrew, Colin, Archaeo­ logy and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (London: Cape, 1987) Rhŷs, John, Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901) Rivet, A. L. F., and Colin Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (London: Batsford) Roberts, Brynley F., ‘Edward Lhuyd and Celtic Linguistics’, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Celtic Studies, ed. by D. Ellis Evans, John G. Griffiths, and E. M. Jope (Oxford: D. Ellis Evans, 1986), pp. 1–19 Rodway, Simon, ‘“Gaulish” Megaliths in Ireland? Gall in Sanas Cormaic’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 55 (Summer 2008), 41–50 —— , ‘Two Notes on “Sanas Cormaic”’, Studi Celtici, 7 (2008–2009), 177–89 —— , ‘Celtic – Definitions, Problems and Controversies’, in In Search of Celtic Tylis in Thrace (III C BC), ed. by Lyudmil F. Vagalinski (Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences National Archaeo­logical Institute and Museum, 2010), pp. 9–32 —— , review of Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. by Carey, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 60 (Winter 2010), 99–102 —— , review of McLaughlin, Early Irish Satire, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 62 (Winter 2011), 94–97 Russell, Paul, ‘Brittonic Words in Irish Glossaries’, in Hispano-Gallo-Brittonica, ed.  by Joseph F. Eska, R. Geraint Gruffydd, and Nicolas Jacobs (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995), pp. 166–82 Schumacher, Stefan, ‘Lexical and Structural Language-Contact Phenomena along the Germano-Celtic Transition Zone’, in Kelten am Rhein: Akten des dreizehnten Inter­

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nationalen Kelto­logiekongresses, ii: Sprachen und Literaturen, ed.  by Stefan Zimmer (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2009), pp. 247–66 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘Celtomania and Celtoscepticism’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 36 (Winter 1998), 1–35 —— , ‘How Are You Finding It Here?’, review of James, Atlantic Celts, London Review of Books, 28 October 1999, 30–31 —— , ‘Celto-Etruscan Speculations’, in A Greek Man in the Iberian Street: Papers in Linguistics in Honour of Javier de Hoz, ed. by Eugenio R. Luján and Juan Luis García Alonso, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 140 (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2011), pp. 275–84 —— , Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) —— , ‘Celtic Civilization: Continuity or Coincidence?’, Cambrian Medi­ eval Celtic Studies, 64 (Winter 2012), 1–45 —— , ‘Post-Celtoscepticism: A  Personal View’, in Saltair Daíochta, Sanasaíochta agus Seanchais: A  Festschrift for Gearóid Mac Eoin, ed.  by Dónall Ó Baoill, Donncha Ó hAodha, and Nollaig Ó Muraíle (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013), pp. 422–28 —— , ‘Languages and Labels’, The Times Literary Supplement, 9 October 2015, 19 —— , ‘The Location of the Celts According to Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Other Greek Writers’, Études celtiques, 62 (2016), 732 —— , ‘The Earliest Celtic Ethno­graphy’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 64 (2017), 421–42 —— , ‘An Alternative to “Celtic from the East” and “Celtic from the West”’, Cambridge Archaeo­logical Journal, 30.3 (2020), 511–29 Smith, J.  Beverley, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd and the Celtic Alliance, 1315–18’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 26 (1975–1976), 463–76 —— , ‘Gwleidyddiaeth a Diwylliant Cenedl 1282–1400’, in Y Meddwl Cymreig, ed.  by W. J. Rees (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995), pp. 36–60 Smyth, Alfred P., Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80–1000 (Edinburgh: Edward Arnold, 1984) Thomas, R. J., Gareth A. Bevan, and Patrick J. Donovan, eds, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1950–2002; 2nd edn, 2003–), available online [accessed 1 March 2022] Thomson, J.  Oliver, History of Ancient Geo­graphy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948) Webb, Harri, A  Militant Muse: Selected Literary Journalism 1948–1980, ed.  by Meic Stephens (Bridgend: Seren, 1998) Wells, C.  M., ‘The Ethno­graphy of the Celts and of the Algonkian-Iroquoian Tribes: A Comparison of Two Historical Traditions’, in Polis and Imperium: Studies in Honour of Edward Togo Salmon, ed. by J. A. S. Evans (Toronto: Hakkert, 1974), pp. 265–78 Wells, Peter S., ‘The Ancient Germans’, in The Barbarians of Ancient Europe: Realities and Inter­actions, ed. by Larissa Bonfante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 211–32

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Williams, G.  J., ‘The History of Welsh Scholarship’, Studia Celtica, 8–9 (1973–1974), 195–219 Wodtko, Dagmar S., ‘The Problem of Lusitanian’, in Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeo­logy, Genetics, Language and Literature, ed. by Barry Cunliffe and John T. Koch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010), pp. 335–67 Woolf, Alex, ‘The Britons: From Romans to Barbarians’, in ‘Regna’ and ‘gentes’: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medi­eval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, ed.  by Hans-Werner Goetz, Jörg Jarnut, and Walter Pohl (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 345–80 Wyn Jones, Richard, The Fascist Party in Wales? Plaid Cymru, Welsh Nationalism and the Accusation of Fascism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014) Zimmer, Stefan, ‘Celtic Languages’, in Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopaedia, ed. by John T. Koch (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), pp. 371–75

Taruotureśka tureita: A Celtiberian Collocation Javier de Hoz*

T

wo Celtiberian inscribed bronze tablets, which otherwise differ in most points, both use a phrase taruotureśka tureita. I believe this expression is an important contribution to our knowledge of Celtiberian institutional termino­logy. I shall briefly discuss both documents and then lay out my arguments in favour of interpreting this phrase as a permit related to regulating the droving and purchase of livestock. The oldest text reads: [1] SO.06.02 (K.23.2, T11, Celtibérico 273: SP.T.23):1 taruoture[ś]ka tureita/eśkeińiś: kortika/uśaḿa: ańtoś/śaikioś: baiśai/kaltaikikoś.2  

* Sadly Professor Javier de Hoz died in January 2019 and was not able to oversee the English translation of his Spanish original kindly provided by a colleague and revised by Dr Rosie Bonté. We wish to thank both of them for their work, and Professor David Stifter for his help with some of the references. 1  The references to Celtiberian inscriptions are basically to BDHesp (e.g. SO.06.02) and MLH (e.g. K.23.2), but for some cases Simón, Los soportes (e.g. T11) and Jordán, Celtibérico are also used. 2  I am unable to see the that Untermann (García Merino and Untermann, ‘Revisión de la lectura’, p. 135) read after baiśai, which is accepted by Prósper, ‘The Instrumental Case’, with contradictions, by Simón, Los soportes, p. 439. As for the reading eśkeińiś, it is true that the symbol looks very similar to the first of uśaḿa, but both this symbol and the rest of the ’s are incised with two strokes, while has three, as correctly noted by J. Untermann (MLH, p. 135). Javier de Hoz Bravo was Professor in the  Department of Greek Philo­log y and IndoEuropean Studies of the Universidad Complutense (Madrid). Among his areas of research were Paleohispanic languages, historical linguistics, and the ancient Celtic languages. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131193 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 23–34 BREPOLS

Javier de Hoz

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Figure 1. Celt-Iberian bronze tablet SO.06.02. Drawing by C. Jordán Cólera. The editors wish to thank Carmen García Merino for permission to reproduce her transcription.

The inscription is found on a flat tablet depicting a boar, with two hanging holes, uncovered at the Alto del Castro3 Osma/Uxama (Soria).4 The editio princeps appeared before the object had been properly cleaned, and accordingly the reading was unavoidably incomplete and flawed. The first reliable edition was finally published in 1999 by Carmen García Merino and Jürgen Untermann. The evident affinity with the tessera SP.2.22 executed in the Roman alphabet, already pointed out by Untermann, has led Jordán to ascertain the usage of the variant in the Iberian ‘dual’ script and in this way to attain the correct reading of the text which I present here. To what extent this tessera shows a systematically dual writing system is a more general issue concerning Celtiberian writing as a whole.5 3 

There is a plan of the find site by García Merino and Untermann, ‘Revisión de la lectura’, p. 140 and García Merino, ‘Uxama Argaela’, p. 179. Although there are archaeo­logical remains from the same site of early imperial age, it cannot be ascertained whether they are connected to the tessera or not. In any event, the survival of a tessera long after it was produced is only to be expected. 4  García Merino and Albertos Firmat, ‘Nueva inscripción en lengua celtibérica’ (see also García Merino, ‘Una tessera hospitales de Uxama’, and García Merino and Albertos Firmat, ‘Una nueva Tessera hospitalis’); de Hoz, ‘La epigrafía celtibérica’, pp. 72–74 and Untermann, ‘Die Keltiberer und das Keltiberische’, p. 122 (followed by Curchin, ‘Juridical Epi­g raphy’, p. 101) and ‘Comentarios sobre inscripciones celtibéricas “menores”’, pp. 366–67 (both prior to cleaning) are based on that text and on examination (I was able to examine the tessera in 1982 thanks to the generosity of its owner), and MLH K.23.2, as well as Meid, Kleinere kelt­ iberische Sprachdenkmäler, pp. 47–50. After cleaning the following works have been published: García Merino and Untermann, ‘Revisión de la lectura’; Jordán, ‘Acerca del ablativo’; ‘Una nota a la tésera “Turiel 2”’, ‘¿Sistema dual’; Simón, Los soportes. Prósper, ‘The Instrumental Case’ departs from the usual interpretation, arguing that it is a boundary agreement (sententia de terminis). 5  Jordán, ‘¿Sistema dual’; de Hoz, ‘La cuestión de la hipotética escritura dual’, expresses some doubts.

Taruotureśka tureita: A Celtiberian Collocation

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The tessera SP.2.22 (see below) reading DVREITA/TARVODVRE|SCA/ LIGORIQ in the Roman alphabet apparently refers to something called DVREITA, which at the same time belongs to the city or institution Tarvodurum and the group of the Ligorici. If Dureita were to be understood as a personal name this would imply an astounding coincidence between both tesserae, which leads me to believe it designates an object or institution (see below). It is equally surprising that a place-name *TARVODVRVM, which forms the base of TARVODVRESCA, occurs exclusively in the two tesserae containing the form DVREITA, and remains otherwise unmentioned by the sources and unparalleled (see below). This is suggestive of its being a common noun that, with DVREITA, forms part of a collocation belonging to institutional language. DVREITA and TARVODVRESCA used to be considered as PNN in the earliest studies. This is not surprising, given the high frequency of place-names in Celtiberian inscriptions. Subsequently new proposals regarding DVREITA, which is unparalleled as far as onomastics are concerned, have been put forward. Scholars unanimously regard TARVODVRESCA as an adjective derived from a place-name *Tarvodurom, in turn allegedly paralleled by Gaulish place-names. In fact, unlike Tarvodunum, the existence of this placename is not certain. At any rate, the expansion of -durum place-names may be late and calqued from the synonymous Latin place-names ending in -forum. I deem it additionally unlikely that an adjective derived from a place-name that is not known to literary and epi­g raphic sources and shows anomalous word-formation for Hispania, where we would expect *Tarvodurica, should occur by chance in two different tesserae and modifying the same noun. We have to take into account that there is no reason to believe that the Romanalphabet tessera originated anywhere close to the Celtiberian one, and that the different script is indicative of different writing dates. In my view, therefore, this is a formulaic phrase referring to some kind of institution. Starting from this hypothesis I shall tackle the interpretation of both tesserae, which must necessarily remain conjectural. Neither tessera contains a hint of the termino­logy characterizing hospitality, but their shape is that of a tessera hospitalis, and they probably designate some concession or legal disposition related to hospitality. The Roman-alphabet tessera reads: [2] SP.2.22 (T18, Celtibérico 373: AL.L.1): DVREITA/ TARVODVRE|SCA/LIGORIQ.

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This is a sheet of unknown provenance whose striking similarity to SO.6(K.23).2 guarantees its authenticity.6 It has the shape of an elongated trapezoid and is rounded on one side and notched on the other, which may have a significance to which I shall return shortly; it is additionally pierced so it can be suspended. The correct understanding of the layout of the text, with SCA consigned to the upper line for lack of space, was convincingly argued by Jordán. It is obvious that both tesserae begin with a similar phrase, and differences in word order are seemingly not significant. I shall use the Roman alphabet to refer to both variants. The Roman-alphabet tessera is the more transparent of the two. It contains the collocation D. T. followed by a single word LIGORIQ(VM), doubtless a family name in the gen. pl. Although a PN *Ligorios or *Ligoros remains unattested, there is a root lic/ig- with several suffixes,7 although it is not an easy task to account for the different vocalism unless we are dealing with a dissimilated outcome of *Ligiricos. The relation of the genitive with D. T. may be objective or subjective. In the first case, it tells us who has accorded the DVREITA, in the second who has been accorded it. Given our lack of extralinguistic evidence, it is impossible to decide one way or the other. The simple schema of the Roman-alphabet tessera may help us to understand the more complex one of the Celtiberian-script document. We have to look for at least two elements, one corresponding to D. T., the other one to LIGORIQ. In principle, nothing stands in the way of the possibility that three consecutive appositions, namely eśkeińiś kortika uśaḿa, modify tureita in the tessera in the Celtiberian script, whereas the masculine ańtoś marks the beginning of a new phrase. The first phrase consequently corresponds to D. T., explicitly included in it. The form uśama is identical to the place-name from which the coin legend A.72, uśamus (and cf. uś in A.62) is derived; it is usually identified with one of the places called Uxama of the classical sources, albeit the coins must correspond to Uxama Barca (MLH I ad loc., DCPH s.v.), and the tessera must refer to Uxama Argaela (A.62), where it was actually found. On the tessera, uśama may be the place-name or, since this place-name is used with an adjectival func6 

Turiel, ‘Tésera Turiel, bialfabética’; Villar and Untermann, ‘Las “Téseras” de Gadir y Tarvodurum’; Jordán, ‘Chronica Epi­g raphica Celtiberica I’, pp. 387–89, ‘Chronica Epi­g raphica Celtiberica III’, pp. 298–99; Almagro-Gorbea, Epigrafía prerromana, p. 370; Ballester, ‘Notas a epígrafes celtibéricas’; Balbín, Hospitalidad y patronato, no. 35c. 7  Vallejo, Antroponimia, p. 328.

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tion it may be translated as ‘Uxamese’. Under the traditional interpretation, the problem would be that we would be dealing with something peculiar to both Uxama and Tarvodurum, which does not seem plausible if Tarvodurum is a town; but, as we have seen, this is doubtful. The Celtiberian term kortika is frequently found on tesserae hospitales, and has received much scholarly attention.8 In my view, no plausible etymo­logy has been advanced, but its systematic occurrence on tesserae hospitales, sometimes flanked by kar, doubtlessly points to its being an institutional term.9 On the formal side, it is obvious that it is an adjective in -iko- built from a form *kortoś or korta. The second form is possibly attested in K.0.14, but is not well understood. The meaning of this adjective may belong to the semantic field of ‘tessera’ or to that of ‘public’. Its occurrence on the bronze of Uxama favours the second possibility. There is also no plausible etymo­logy for eśkeińiś, but it has interesting parallels.10 The bronze tablet from Torrijo (BDHesp TE.03.01) contains the sequence eśkenim tureś twice, which, although its meaning is lost on us, may mean something like ‘issued a document’ with a more specific sense. The form tureś also occurs on the bronze of Cortono (K.0.7) and, as we shall see, may be related to DVREITA. We may provisionally hypothesize a title of the sort ‘T. D., Uxamese public document’. The apparent second phrase ańtoś śaikioś baiśai kaltaikikoś looks at first glance like a sequence of PNN in the nom. sing. This is the case of antoś, which may be a PN related to antiroś on SP.2.6, and that of baiśai, if related to Baesus… Uxamensis (CIL II 2733 = LICS 226), especially if it is an abbreviation for *baiśaioś due to lack of space.11 The form śaikioś presents a more difficult case, 8 

Listed in Wodtko, Wörterbuch, s.v.; later de Bernardo-Stempel, ‘Celtibérico karvo gortika’; Simón, Los soportes, p. 351. 9  On the vocabulary of the tesserae hospitales see de Hoz, ‘Metales inscritos en el mundo griego’, pp. 453–55; Simón Los soportes, pp. 349–55. 10  Rubio Orecilla, ‘Aproximación lingüística’, pp. 151–52; Prósper, ‘Estudios sobre la fonética’, pp. 232–34, 299–301, 302–05, ‘The Instrumental Case’, p. 225. 11  Against this, see Untermann, ‘Comentarios sobre inscripciones celtibéricas “menores”’, p. 367, who considers it as a possibility in MLH IV. The Antus of Tortosa (CIL II 6070) does not necessarily have to be a variant of the trivially different Anthus (Solin, Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom, pp. 1075, 1078), although this is likely to be the case, however, nor does Antiros have to be related to Anteros — a -t- stem — but there is a base And- represented by some forms in the Iberian Peninsula, see Abascal, Los nombres personales and Vallejo, Antroponimia indígena, pp. 152–54.

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but it has been linked to some PNN of the well-attested stem sailc-,12 but nothing stands in the way of its interpretation as a PN. This is hardly the case with kaltaikikoś, an adjective in -iko- possibly derived from a PN Caldaecus (IRPLe 265); a resuffixed form in -ik-ik- looks implausible for a PN but acceptable for a FN which is in turn derived from a PN in -ik-. In that case two different options would open up, both of them reckoning with an FN agreeing in the nominative instead of the usual construction in the genitive. The FN would only accompany the last PN, while the other two would bear no indication of family connection which is anomalous; alternatively, under acceptance of final /o:/ being preserved in some writing traditions, kaltaikikoś would be a nom. pl. agreeing with the preceding string of PNN. The issue remains unclear. Under the traditional idea that this is some kind of covenant, if the first phrase alludes to one of the parties involved in the agreement, the PNN mentioned in the second would constitute the other party. But then, if both were included in the first phrase, the PNN would be a type of magistrates or witnesses. In that case, a singular or plural form antoś could be the name by which the magistrates in question are known. We would then have to ask ourselves whether baiśai is not a shortened form for a father’s name in the genitive, which would round out the onomastic formula expected for the magistrate’s name. Nonetheless, I do not think we are dealing with a covenant but, as Blanca María Prósper has seen,13 an institutional statement of some kind, although I cannot accept, in spite of her brilliant arguments, its interpretation as a sententia de terminis, which would be epi­graphically unparalleled and unlikely given the size of this piece and its not very plausible role as a public document. The similarity with the Roman-alphabet tessera leads me to look for the beneficiary or beneficiaries of the concession of D. T. in the second phrase, since the awarder of this concession must be Uxama, but, as we are going to see, an individual holder is out of the question. The family of the Caldaecici would be a plausible candidate, which leaves a number of words unexplained. The simplest assumption, which must unfortunately remain unprovable, is that we are dealing with several PNN corresponding to magistrates. The exact correspondence of antoś with the Gaulish term for ‘boundary’ already mentioned by Untermann remains problematic.14 As we shall see, the occurrence of this 12 

Vallejo, Antroponimia indígena, pp. 391–93. Prósper, ‘The Instrumental Case’. 14  Lejeune, Textes gallo-étrusques, E-2. 13 

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word in the kind of text I think we are dealing with would not be surprising, but I have to acknowledge I can find no reasonable interpretation for the second phrase. Above, I have assembled the available evidence regarding the collocation D. T., except for the analysis of the individual terms. The plausible choices are ‘tureita regarding the Uxamese *taruodurom’ and ‘tureita of *taruodurom with Uxama’. In both cases, eśkeińiś kortika would stand in apposition to tureita. Obviously, the first case does not presuppose a covenant, whereas the second mentions the two parties involved in one. Nonetheless, as observed above, it is unlikely that both documents contain a reference to an otherwise unknown city. We now go on to explore the possibility that *tarvodurom is a common noun. The etymo­logy of *tarvodurom is self-evident and has never been questioned to my knowledge. Were it a place-name, it would literally mean ‘bull market’, or, more probably, ‘livestock market’. Both tarvo- and -durom are well known in Gaulish, and have cognates in other Celtic and IE languages;15 but, since we are not dealing with a place-name, durom may not mean ‘market’, which is a secondary meaning, like that of Lat. forum, but may have preserved the original meaning ‘door’, and in accordance with this *tarvodurom would come to mean ‘passage for livestock’. It is well known that livestock was very important in many areas of the Celtiberian world.16 In fact, it has already been suggested that the large amount of Celtiberian tesserae hospitales is due to these agreements facilitating the herding of livestock.17 It would come as no surprise if there had existed documents other than tesserae that were intended to reflect an institutional practice related to livestock. We should not be mystified by the Gaulish appearance of TARVO­ DVRESCA. The term durom is equally attested in the Iberian Peninsula,18 though not so frequently as in Gaul; but the differences must be ascribed to the toponymic usage. As for tarvo-, the metathesis of /VWR/, which eventually became generalized in the Celtic languages, is apparently old and has a long history. Gaulish still shows many instances of a stem tauro-19 and the assumption that Celtiberian already had a variant form tarvo- is unproblematic. 15 

Delamarre, Dictionnaire, pp. 156–57; see Falileyev, Dictionary, p. 18 (with references). See, for example, Lorrio, Los Celtíberos, pp. 297–301; Gómez-Pantoja, ‘Pastio agrestis’, pp. 201–03; Alfaro, ‘Vías pecuarias y romanización’. 17  Discussion and references in Simón, Los soportes, pp. 374–75. 18  Ocelodurum and Octodurum: Untermann, Die Toponymie, s.v. 19  Delamarre Dictionnaire, pp. 291–92. 16 

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If TARVODVRESCA means ‘related to the livestock market’ or ‘related to the passing of livestock’, DVREITA must mean something like ‘regulation’ or ‘concession’. We have no certain etymo­logy but Prósper’s proposal has some interesting extra-etymo­logical support. In her view, this is a past part. *dū-reytā (< CC *dū-reχtā), related to the verb form tureś (< CC *dū-rēχ-s-t).20 Its meaning would respectively be ‘issued’ and ‘has issued’, which is hypothetical, but I find her assertion that ‘the segment tureita eskeinis is the exact nominalization of the predicate eskenim tures in the inscription of Torrijo del Campo’ very convincing.21 Even if DVREITA were originally a participle, its formalized usage and its being modified by an adjective indicate that it was an autonomous noun, doubtless an institutional term whose semantic evolution may have distanced it from the original sense corresponding to its etymo­logy. We cannot ascertain what it actually meant, but as I have said it must have belonged to the semantic field of ‘regulation’ and ‘concession’. To sum up, T. D. may have meant something in the line of ‘regulation concerning the droving/market of livestock’ or ‘concession concerning the passing/market of livestock’. Market regulations are known in the ancient world in cultures with a poliad political structure like that of Celtiberia. I have already pointed out the plausibility that there were passes allowing the bearer to traverse foreign territories with cattle. It is the formal aspects and the full text of the document that allow us to proceed further. The Roman-alphabet bronze, with its simple structure, offers only three possible translations: a concession awarded by the ligorici, a concession awarded to them, and regulation imposed by them. If a city should allow the ligorici to participate in their markets or drive cattle through their territory, we would expect their name to be mentioned in the document. The organization of a public market seems too complex for the capacities of a single family. On the least unlikely hypothesis, consequently, the ligorici authorize the bearer of the pass to go through their realms. This would be a specialized variant of the tessera hospitalis. The particular form of the bronze would find an explanation since it would be expected to match that of another similar bronze held by the ligorici. The analysis of the Roman-alphabet bronze falls short of clarifying the one in the Celtiberian script. Uxama may play the same role as the ligorici in the Roman-alphabet bronze, which would imply that someone, an individual or an 20 

Prósper, ‘The Instrumental Case’, p. 225. Prósper, ‘The Instrumental Case’, p. 225, cf. Prósper, ‘Time for Celtiberian Dialecto­logy’, p. 145. 21 

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institution, is awarded a concession by the city that allows the bearer to cross the territory. The form would be justified for the reasons stated above. This bronze being a more complex piece, issued by an important city, the appositions to D. T. are justified, as the second phrase would be if it contains the names of magistrates or beneficiaries. But it is still very obscure. However, if we ignore the Roman-alphabet bronze we could focus on other interpretations, like that of a market regulation, not unthinkable for a city like Uxama. In that case we would have to justify the absence of the regulation itself, as in the Roman-alphabet case. Even if this is highly speculative, I would like to put forward the possibility that the little bronze may have been bound through its holes to a larger document written on a perishable material. This may strike us as an excessively complex archiving system for the Celtiberian populations, but this was an advanced poliad society, many of whose habits are unknown to us. It is, however, highly implausible that a family like the Ligorici, whose bronze tablet equally shows a hole, should have possessed an administration requiring archives and rules for their own merchandising. To recap, at present we are far from reaching a full understanding of both texts but I find it plausible, if not certain, that T. D. was a lexical collocation proper to Celtiberian institutional language that meant something close to ‘authorization regarding the passing of livestock’.

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Works Cited Secondary Works Abascal, Juan Manuel, Los nombres personales en las inscripciones latinas de Hispania (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1994) Alfaro, Carmen, ‘Vías pecuarias y romanización en la Península Ibérica’, in Los rebaños de Gerión: pastores y trashumancia en Iberia antigua y medi­eval, ed. by Joaquín GómezPantoja (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2001), pp. 215–31 Almagro-Gorbea, Martín, Epigrafía prerromana (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2003) Balbín, Paloma, Hospitalidad y patronato en la Península Ibérica durante la Antigüedad (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2006) Ballester, Xaverio, ‘Notas a epígrafes celtibéricas de colecciones particulares’, Palaeo­ hispanica, 4 (2004), 265–82 de Bernardo-Stempel, Patrizia, ‘Celtibérico karvo gortika “favor amicitiae”, rita “ofrecida”, monima “recuerdo” y los formularios de las inscripciones celtibéricas’, Veleia, 17 (2000), 183–89 Curchin, Leonard A., ‘The Celtiberian Vocable “kar” in Two Inscriptions from Central Spain’, Zeitschrift für Papyro­logie und Epi­graphik, 103 (1994), 229–30 —— , ‘Juridical Epi­graphy and Provincial Administration in Central Spain’, in Roma y las provincias: realidad administrativa e ideo­logía imperial, ed. by Julían González (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1994), pp. 87–102 Delamarre, Xavier, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (Paris: Errance, 2003) Diego Santos, Francisco, Inscripciones romanas de la provincia de León (León: Institución Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, 1986) Falileyev, Alexander, Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2010) García-Bellido, M.  Paz, and Cruces Blázquez, Diccionario de cecas y pueblos hispánicos (Madrid: Departamento de Historia Antigua y Arqueo­logía, Instituto de Historia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2001) García Merino, Carmen, ‘Una tessera hospitales de Uxama (Soria)’, Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueo­logía: BSAA, 46 (1980), 206–19 —— , ‘Uxama Argaela’, in Celtíberos: tras la estela de Numancia, ed.  by Antonio Chaín Galán and José Ignacio de la Torre Echávarri (Soria: Diputación Provincial de Soria, 2005), pp. 177–82 García Merino, Carmen, and María Lourdes Albertos Firmat, ‘Nueva inscripción en lengua celtibérica, una tessera hospitalis zoomorfa hallada en Uxama (Soria)’, Emerita, 49 (1981), 179–89; 50 (1982), 365–66 —— , ‘Una nueva Tessera hospitalis con texto en lengua celtibérica hallada en Uxama (Soria)’, in Actas del III Coloquio sobre Lenguas y Culturas Paleohispánicas, ed. by Javier de Hoz (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1986), pp. 311–18 García Merino, Carmen, and Jürgen Untermann, ‘Revisión de la lectura de la tessera Uxamensis y valoración de las téseras en el contexto de la configuración del poblami-

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ento celtibérico en el siglo I a.C.’, Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueo­ logía: BSAA, 65 (1999), 133–52 Gómez-Pantoja, Joaquín, ‘Pastio agrestis. Pastoraalismo en Hispania romana’, in Los rebaños de Gerión: pastores y trashumancia en Iberia antigua y medi­eval, ed.  by Joaquín Gómez-Pantoja (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2001), pp. 177–213 de Hoz, Javier, ‘La epigrafía celtibérica’, in Reunión sobre epigrafía hispánica de época romano republicana (Zaragoza: Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza, 1986), pp. 43–102 —— , ‘Metales inscritos en el mundo griego y periférico y los bronces celtibéricos’, in Pueblos, lenguas y escrituras en la Hispania prerromana: actas del VII Coloquio sobre Lenguas y Culturas Paleohispánicas, ed.  by Francisco Beltrán and Francisco Villar (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1999), pp. 433–70 —— , ‘A Celtiberian Inscription from the Rainer Daehnhardt Collection and the Problem of the Celtiberian Genitive Plural’, in Continental Celtic Word Formation: The Onomastic Data, ed. by Juan Luis García Alonso (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2013), pp. 51–62 —— , ‘Ambiguities in Celtiberian Coin Legends’, in Miscellanea indogermanica: Festschrift für José Luis García Ramón, ed. by Ivo Hajnal, Daniel Kölligan, and Katharina Zipser (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2017), pp. 127–37 —— , ‘La cuestión de la hipotética escritura dual en celtibérico’, in Ratna: homenaje a la profesora Julia Mendoza, ed.  by Juan Antonio Álvarez Pedrosa, Alberto Bernabé, Eugenio Luján, and Fernando Presa González (Madrid: Guillermo Escolar, 2017), pp. 87–92 Jordán, Carlos, Introducción al celtibérico (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 1998) —— , ‘Chronica Epi­graphica Celtiberica  I, Novedades en epigrafía celtibérica’, Palaeo­ hispanica, 1 (2001), 369–91 —— , ‘Chronica Epi­graphica Celtiberica II’, Paleohispanica, 3 (2003), 285–93 —— , ‘Acerca del ablativo que aparece en las téseras de hospitalidad celtibéricas’, Paleohispanica, 3 (2003), 113–27 —— , ‘Una nota a la tésera “Turiel 2”’, Paleohispanica, 4 (2004), 163–67 —— , ‘Chronica epi­graphica Celtiberica III’, Paleohispanica, 4 (2004), 285–323 —— , Celtibérico (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2004) —— , ‘Sobre la interpretación de los mensajes contenidos en las téseras de hospitalidad celtibéricas’, Estudios de lenguas y epigrafía antiguas: ELEA, 6 (2004), 161–91 —— , ‘¿Sistema dual de escritura en celtibérico?’, Palaeohispanica, 5 (2005), 1013–30 Knapp, Robert C., Latin Inscriptions from Central Spain (Berkeley: University of Cali­ fornia Publications, 1992) Lambert, Pierre-Yves, ‘Notes de celtibère’, in Dán do Oide: Essays in Memory of Conn R. O´Cléirigh, ed. by Anders Ahlqvist and Věra Čapková (Dublin: Institiúid Teangeo­ laíochta Éireann, 1997), pp. 247–53 Lejeune, Michel, Recueil des inscriptions gauloises, ii.1: Textes gallo-étrusques: textes gallolatins sur pierre (Paris: CNRS, 1988) Lorrio, Alberto José, Los Celtíberos, Complutum Extra, 7 (Alicante: Universidad Com­ plutense de Madrid, 1997)

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Meid, Wolfgang, Kleinere keltiberische Sprachdenkmäler (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprach­ wissenschaft, 1996) Prósper, Blanca María, ‘Estudios sobre la fonética y la morfo­logía de la lengua celtibérica’, in Vascos, celtas e indoeuropeos: genes y lenguas, ed. by Blanca María Prósper and Francisco Villar (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2005), pp. 153–364 —— , ‘The Instrumental Case in the Thematic Noun Inflection of Continental Celtic’, Historische Sprachforschung, 124 (2011), 224–41 —— , ‘Time for Celtiberian Dialecto­logy: Celtiberian Syllabic Structure and the Inter­ pre­tation of the Bronze Tablet from Torrijo del Campo, Teruel (Spain)’, Keltische Forschungen, 6 (2013–2014), 115–56 Rubio Orecilla, Francisco Javier, ‘Aproximación lingüística al bronce de Torrijo (Teruel)’, Veleia, 16 (1999), 137–57 Simón, Ignacio, ‘Cartografía de la epigrafía paleohispánica I. Las téseras de hospitalidad’, Paleohispanica, 8 (2008), 127–42 —— , Los soportes de la epigrafía paleohispánica: inscripciones sobre piedra, bronce y cerámica (Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2013) Solin, Heikki, Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom: Ein Namenbuch (Berlin: Reimer, 1982) Turiel, Max, ‘Tésera Turiel, bialfabética’, Acta numismàtica, 26 (1996), 53–54 —— , ‘Tésera de Slania’, Acta numismàtica, 28 (1998), 75–78 Untermann, Jürgen, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, i: Die Münzlegenden (Wies­ baden: Reichert, 1975) —— , Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, ii: Inschriften in iberischer Schrift aus Süd­ frank­reich (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1980) —— , ‘Die Keltiberer und das Keltiberische’, in Problemi di lingua e di cultura nel campo indo­europeo, ed. by Enrico Campanile (Pisa: Giardini, 1983), pp. 109–27 —— , Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, iii: Die iberischen Inschriften aus Spanien (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1990) —— , Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, vi: Die Toponymie des antiken Hispanien, ed. by Michael Koch, Javier de Hoz, and Joaquín Gorrochategui (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2018) Untermann, Jürgen, and Dagmar Wodtko, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, iv: Die tartessischen, keltiberischen und lusitanischen Inschriften (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998) Vallejo, José María, Antroponimia indígena de la Lusitania romana (Vitoria: Universidad del País Vasco, 2005) Villar, Francisco, and Jürgen Untermann, ‘Las “Téseras” de Gadir y Tarvodurum’, in Pueblos, lenguas y escrituras en la Hispania prerromana: actas del VII Coloquio sobre Lenguas y Culturas Paleohispánicas, ed.  by Francisco Beltrán and Francisco Villar (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1999), pp. 719–32 Wodtko, Dagmar, Monumenta linguarum hispanicarum, v.1: Wörterbuch der keltiberischen Inschriften (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000)

Digital Resources Banco de Datos sobre Lenguas y Epigrafías Paleohispánicas [accessed 1 March 2022]

More Celtic, More from Pannonia Alexander Falileyev

T

he contribution of Professor Patrick Sims-Williams to the study of ancient Celtic place and personal names is impossible to overestimate. The author of several mono­graphs and a considerable number of individual articles dedicated to various aspects of ancient Celtic onomastics,1 he is certainly one of the greatest authorities in this discipline. His unprecedented enthusiasm, exceptional leadership qualities, and deep personal interest in Celtic roots in their different manifestations resulted in the Department of Welsh of Aberystwyth University (formerly University of Wales, Aberystwyth) becoming the internationally recognized world centre for Ancient Celtic Studies, and it kept its status until his retirement. April is the cruellest month… One of the outcomes of Professor Patrick Sims-Williams’s personal investigations and a number of research projects he supervised is that we have now a much clearer vision of the Celtic linguistic presence in Pannonia. His analysis of Gaulish place-names attested in this region is meticulous and due to the character of the data very cautious. Certainly, Sims-Williams was not the first academic to deal with the Celtic heritage of Pannonia; there has been much work on this subject for decades, and, generally, in the words of Eric Hamp, 1  See e.g. Sims-Williams Ancient Celtic Place-Names, ‘Common Celtic, Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic’, or ‘Celtic Personal Names’, and Raybould and Sims-Williams, A Corpus of Latin Inscriptions and the references cited there.

Alexander Falileyev ([email protected]) is a Member of the Institute of Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg. His research interests include IndoEuropean linguistics, ancient languages of Europe including Continental Celtic, and Old and Middle Welsh. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131194 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 35–47 BREPOLS

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who also has contributed to the analysis of this fascinating data, ‘the soil of Hungary never fails to bring us linguistic originality and fresh lessons’.2 This is also true of other parts of Pannonia, of course, and the honorand analysed the data in its entirety. The work is still not finished: new data and new interpretations of previously known records constantly add to the collection. In recent years a number of publications have come out which deal with aspects of linguistically Celtic toponymy in Roman and pre-Roman Pannonia. Works by Wolfgang Meid, Xavier Delamarre, and Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel are of particular importance, and I have also contributed to the study of this layer in the toponymic landscape of the province.3 Results of recent research were almost immediately taken on board by Patrick Sims-Williams, who used this new data and/or its analysis for his further research of various aspects of Ancient Celtic. It is hoped, therefore, that the discussion presented below will be not only my token of gratitude, but may be of use for his further studies as well as those of others in the field. The place-name to be discussed here has been known for a considerable time already. It is attested in a Latin inscription roughly dated to the third century ad which is, however, found not in Pannonia, but in Rome. It has been edited several times,4 and I give the text below following Speidel’s reading: Ulpius [I]an[u]arius, eq(ues) s(ingularis), [t(urma)] Prisci, kast(ris) priorib(us), qui vixit annis XXVIIII, mil(itavit) annis VIIII, nationne Pannoniae superiore, С(laudia) Savaria, vico Voleuci NIS ET Octavius Dignus, eq(ues) S s(ingulari)s c[a]s(tris) p(rioribus) HE et Aur(elia) Novana, coiux, KA. SII. C. HII, heredes b(ene) merenti posuerunt.

2 

For Celtic linguistic presence in Pannonia revealed by place-names see the fundamental work Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, which also summarizes the state and history of previous research up to the beginning of the twenty-first century; cf. also Falileyev, review of Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, and Meid, Keltische Personnennamen, p. 8. The quotation is from Hamp, ‘Brigetionem’, p. 59. 3  Falileyev, In Search of the Eastern Celts, pp. 49–61, with references to earlier studies; see also Falileyev, ‘“Celtic’ Commentaries”, pp. 2–5 and 10–12. On the character of the Celtic language in Pannonia see Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, pp. 196–97, and cf. also a useful discussion of ‘Eastern Celtic’ in Eska, ‘A Salvage Grammar of Galatian’. 4  CIL VI, 3300; Dobó, Inscriptiones extra fines Pannoniae Daciaeque repertae, pp. 37–38 (no. 107); Speidel, Die Denkmäler der Kaiserreiter, pp. 354–55 (no. 658).

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Latin funerary monuments associated with Pannonians are fairly frequently found in areas outside of the province, and it is not exceptional to find them in Italy or Rome.5 It should be stressed once again that the term ‘Pannonia(n)’ here and in other inscriptions is devoid of ethnic or linguistic associations and is purely territorial/administrative in its essence. Certainly, some of these texts are nevertheless extremely important for Pannonian linguistic studies. For example, in another inscription from Italy, the third-century text from Sulmo (Sulmona, L’Aquila), a certain Murranus of Pannonian birth not only admits that he is barbarian, but also complains about his poor Latin. Interestingly, he was married to a local woman, and his own name does not seem to be Pannonian.6 In our inscription it is not the name Ulpius Ianuarius which is of interest for this study, but the name of the vicus mentioned in the text. The inscription, as most epi­graphists who have dealt with it have admitted, is difficult. The editors of CIL suggested emendation to vicus Voleuci[o]nis, and this reading was accepted by Speidel. He, however, was not convinced by the reconstruction of the preceding words as c(ivis) Savar(iensi)s as was suggested in CIL and in later literature. Instead, following the proposal of Forni, he was of the opinion that this is a reference to the pseudo-tribe Claudia, therefore С(laudia) Savaria.7 The accepted interpretation of the inscription from Rome thus provides us with an otherwise unattested place-name vicus Voleuci[o] nis which must be located in Upper Pannonia, and to be more precise, in the region of Savaria. This brings us to the area around modern Szombathely, the capital of Vas county in western Hungary where the Little Alps meet the Little Hungarian plain, and across the national border into Austria.8 Savaria was founded by the Romans in the first half of the first century ad (Colonia Claudia Savariensum), and became the capital of Pannonia Superior. Before 5 

See the corpus presented in Dobó, Inscriptiones extra fines Pannoniae Daciaeque repertae and cf. Kovács ‘Territoria, pagi and vici in Pannonia’, pp. 136–37 on some inscriptions from Rome. 6  See Falileyev, ‘Pannono-Illyrica’, p. 302 with further references, and Kovács ‘Territoria, pagi and vici in Pannonia’. On the terms ‘Pannonian’, etc., in Roman-period sources see Kovács, ‘Natione Boius’ and Speidel, ‘Recruitment and Identity’. 7  Speidel, Die Denkmäler der Kaiserreiter, p. 355 with further references; contrast Dobó, Inscriptiones extra fines Pannoniae Daciaeque repertae, p. 37. Nowadays the reading is commonly accepted, cf. Kovács, ‘Territoria, pagi and vici in Pannonia’, p. 151 and Kovács, ‘Rural Epi­graphy’, pp. 305–06. 8  For the area see Kovács, ‘Rural Epi­graphy’, pp. 304–06 and Gabler, ‘Das römerzeitliche Siedlungssystem’; both articles contain useful maps.

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the annexation by Rome, and certainly afterwards the territory was inhabited by speakers of various tongues — indeed, in the words of Meid, ‘Pannonia must have been a polyglot region’.9 Apart from Pannonian, the enigmatic language of the epichoric population, Celtic speech is attested in the territory, and speakers of Greek, Germanic dialects, and Oriental tongues later appeared in the province following the speakers of Latin. Vicus Voleuci[o]nis cannot be localized with any degree of precision, and we can only be sure that it must be situated in the area of Savaria.10 This region has a considerable number of Roman-era settlements known only from archaeo­ logical evidence and not associated with ancient toponyms.11 Kovács notes that ‘there were no peregrine vici in the centuriated land, even though there is epi­ graphic evidence for at least one’, namely in light of the inscription discussed here. He tentatively suggests that Vicus Voleuci[o]nis may be located ‘beyond the cadastre system, on the territory’s western hilly fringes’, where no villae are known archaeo­logically.12 As for the toponym itself, historians and epi­graphists are convinced that it is based on a Celtic personal name. 13 Latin toponymic models with vicus have been thoroughly studied by Solopov, and indeed we have an enormous collection of place-names where the vicus is accompanied by a personal name in the genitive case (singular), as in the numerous Vicus Augusti scattered throughout Roman Africa, or in place-names attested only once such as Vicus Antoniae Saturninae, Vicus Matrini, and Vicus Quintionis. Solopov also observes the usage of appellative words in this model (e.g. Vicus Turris), but strongly argues that they occur rarely and somewhat exceptionally.14 Certainly, not only Latin personal (or Imperial) names are found in this type of placename, but local epichoric anthroponymy as well. This is attested particularly in the provinces of Rome, and Vicus Voleuci[o]nis in its Latinized guise cannot but remind us of Vicus Quintionis as far as the structure of the place-name is con9 

Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, p. 196. See also Falileyev, ‘The Silent Europe’, pp. 911–14 with further references, and particularly for the north-west of the area Falileyev, ‘“Celtic” Commentaries’, pp. 2–5. 10  Dobó, Inscriptiones extra fines Pannoniae Daciaeque repertae, provides references to the earlier scholarship discussing this place-name, p. 38. 11  See Gabler, ‘Das römerzeitliche Siedlungssystem’ for a comprehensive survey. 12  Kovács, ‘Rural Epi­graphy’, pp. 304–05. 13  Сf. e.g. Szabó, ‘Savaria und die ius Latii’, p. 142; Kovács, ‘Rural Epi­graphy’, p. 306. 14  Solopov, ‘Greek and Latin Geo­g raphical Nomenclature’, pp. 253–58. On vici in Pannonia in general see Kovács, ‘Territoria, pagi and vici in Pannonia’ and cf. also Mráv and Ottományi, ‘A Pag(us) Herc(ulius)’, pp. 82–102 for some of these attested in epi­graphy.

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cerned. Linguistically Celtic names inevitably came to be used in this example and others with Latin vicus,15 therefore such an approach to the analysis of Vicus Voleuci[o]nis is certainly and without doubt appropriate. Moreover, historically speaking this is perfectly admissible, too, as the area of Savaria is known for Celtic personal names in Latin inscriptions found in that region, cf. for example ‘Santo | Eliomari | f(ilius) an(norum) L et | Sunnurae | Suadulli | f(iliae) con(iugi) | et Saturni | no f(ilio) an(norum) L’ from Rábagyarmat in modern Hungary or ‘Quarto | Adnamati | f(ilio) an(norum) LXXX | et Catullae | Coi f(iliae) con(iugi) | an(norum) LX Uppu | liberta f(aciendum) c(uravit)’ from Jennersorf in Austria.16 Therefore, it is acceptable that a Celtic personal name could have been used to form a toponym in the region. Historical linguists, however, are rather hesitant about accepting the linguistic affiliation of Vicus Voleuci[o]nis, and not only due to the observation that ‘the local names in the Celtic settlement area are mostly Pannonian in origin’.17 This is evidenced in the traditional interpretation of another placename in Pannonia, Leuconum. This place-name is likewise attested in a sole source, Itinerarium Antonini 260, 8 Leucono, and its location is similarly uncertain.18 Anreiter, who suggests that o here must be long, interprets it as Pannonian and traces it to the PIE *leuk- ‘light’. He admits, however, that the form is unclear (‘im großen und ganzen unklar’),19 but this quotation could be applied easily and equally to the discussion of the majority of Pannonian placenames. It is certainly very likely that Leuconum continues PIE *leuk-, whatever its precise meaning in this language may be, and Anreiter tentatively discusses a number of possible interpretations. If so, according to one school of thought in comparative linguistics it cannot be Celtic and should be labelled straightfor15 

Cf. Falileyev, Gohil, and Ward, Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names (henceforward DCC), pp. 235–36, and a number of toponyms discussed by P. Sims-Williams, see index in Sims-Williams Ancient Celtic Place-Names, pp. 405–06. 16  Raybould and Sims-Williams, A Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, 246 and 229–30 (PAN 077 and PAN 037). Cf. Meid, Keltische Personennamen, pp. 108, 159–60, 206–07, and 299–300, for the individual names. See Gabler, ‘Das römerzeitliche Siedlungssystem’, p. 133, for a map of Latin inscriptions containing linguistically Celtic names in the area and cf. also Szabó ‘Savaria und die ius Latii’, pp. 136–37. 17  Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, p. 189; cf. Meid, Keltische Personennamen, p. 310. 18  Donji Andrijevci, Selce, Vrpolje, or Levanjska Varoš are suggested as possible locations; see DCC: 146 with biblio­graphy. 19  Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, pp. 76–77. For the PIE root see references in DCC: 22.

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wardly as Pannonian. The decisive factor for this linguistic affiliation is the fate of the PIE diphthong *eu, which would be expected to be reflected as -ou- in Celtic, but is retained in Pannonian.20 Moreover, this phonetic phenomenon has been used as a solid criterion for differentiation of Celtic and Pannonian in the province. Thus, as Meid wrote, ‘the name of Teutanus is interesting because it exhibits non-Celtic, rather Pannonian linguistic features: the Celtic equivalent would have been Toutonus or Toutatis, as attested several times’.21 Given this, the second part of Vicus Voleuci[o]nis does really look more Pannonian than Celtic, at least in view of all the limitations pertaining to the analysis of Restsprachen and Trümmersprachen. However, there are dissenting views on that matter, and the questions raised on several occasions by SimsWilliams concerning the fate of PIE *eu in Celtic22 have been decisive in arriving at a Celtic interpretation. It is now commonly maintained that attestations with eu instead of the expected ou may well be considered Celtic. Various explanations for that have been adduced recently. Thus Eska, noting McCone’s explanation of Transalpine Celtic instances, admits that it is ‘uncertain whether tokens of (eu) are phono­logically genuine’, while Repanšek takes it to represent a residual feature.23 Whatever the correct explanation of the phenomenon might be, it is impossible to disagree with Sims-Williams who formulated it as: In a Europe-wide study, limiting ourselves to ou would help to avoid ‘noise’ from other Indo-European dialects. On the other hand, there is no doubt that in Continental Celtic ou sometimes appears, for some reason, in the more archaic-looking spelling eu and sometimes as o (presumably = /o:/), and one would be sorry to lose such variants.24

Generally, PIE *leuk- ‘light’ is very well attested in various Indo-European languages, and in some of them the etymon shows retention of *eu. For exam20 

Meid, Keltische Personennamen, pp.  24 and 30; Repanšek, Keltska dediščina, p.  73, cf. Repanšek, ‘Quiemonis’, p. 333. Cf. also Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, pp. 215–16, on Leutuoanum. 21  Meid, ‘Celtic Origins’, p. 198. Cf. Meid, Keltische Personnennamen, pp. 59–62, and also Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, pp. 137–38, and Mráv and Ottományi, ‘A Pag(us) Herc(ulius)’, pp. 82–90, for some other examples. It is also important that this form exhibits the development of PIE *o > Pannonian a; see also Repanšek, Keltska dediščina, p. 92. 22  Sims-Williams, ‘Common Celtic, Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic’, p. 313; the paper was read in 1998. 23  Eska, ‘A Salvage Grammar of Galatian’, p. 55 n. 14; Repanšek, Keltska dediščina, pp. 54 and 204–07. 24  Sims-Williams ‘Celtic Personal Names’, p. 157. See also Repanšek, ‘Loucita’.

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ple, this happens in Greek (λευκός) or (most probably) in various languages of the western Balkans and eastern Adriatics (with further connections to the north and north-west) for which there is only onomastic evidence, which were previously undifferentiated and labelled erroneously as ‘Illyrian’.25 It is indeed more than likely that the diphthong stayed intact in Pannonian, which once was described also as Illyrian. Although the precise place of Pannonian within the Indo-European family of languages still remains disputable due to the nature of the data at our disposal,26 the consensus on PIE *eu > Pannonian eu is unanimous. Nevertheless, for the linguistic affiliations of Leuconum I have already suggested that its Celticity is not completely out of the question notwithstanding the fact that at face value the Pannonian linguistic affiliation of the toponym remains certainly valid.27 The place-name was considered rather tentatively as at least possibly Celtic by the honorand in his important 2006 mono­graph.28 In a similar mode, consequently, a number of geo­graphical names across Europe containing leuc have been analysed as at least potentially Celtic; compare discussions of Leucata Litus or the ethnic name Leuci in the territory of modern France, where a Pannonian linguistic contribution is by default not expected.29 It is a more difficult task to analyse similar-looking names in the areas with a more varied toponymic landscape, particularly in ancient eastern and central Europe.30 In regard to Leuconum attested in Pannonia, it therefore may be admitted that both its Pannonian and Celtic interpretations are equally possible. As in this area we do not find Greek toponyms at all, and there seems to be no necessity to refer to a non-identified IE language preserving PIE *eu, the choice indeed rests between the two possibilities. In a similar mode the linguistic affiliation of the qualifying part of another vicus in Pannonia, 25 

On the ‘Illyrian’ question see Falileyev, ‘The Silent Europe’, pp. 896–914. See various views expressed, for example in Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, pp. 10–21; Falileyev, review of Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, pp. 119–20 and 123–24; Meid, Keltische Personennamen, pp. 21–30; Falileyev, ‘Pannono-Illyrica’; Repanšek, Keltska dediščina, pp. 33–42; Prósper, ‘Language Change at the Crossroads’, pp. 34–36; Falileyev, ‘The Silent Europe’, pp. 911–14. 27  Falileyev, review of Die vorrömischen Namen Pannonien, p. 121. 28  Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names, p. 210. 29  DCC: 146 and 223; on Lucata cf. Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names, p. 240, and cf. Repanšek, ‘Loucita’ on Loucita. 30  For the extremely difficult place-name Leukaristos, probably located in modern-day Slovakia, see Falileyev, In Search of the Eastern Celts, pp. 115–17, where the history of scholarship is provided. 26 

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Vicus Teuto […], attested in this fragmentary form in the sole inscription from modern Budaörs near Budapest, remains likewise irresolvable: ‘Terr(a)e Matri pro s(alute)  | [[I[mpp(eratorum)] Phi[l]ipp[o]rum]]  | [[Augg(ustorum)]] pag(us) Herc(ulius?) | vicus Teuto(---) | et Bataion(is?) [et?] | Anarti[or(um) et?] | [------]’.31 In contrast to another place-name in Pannonia, Teutoburgium (modern Dalj, Croatia), where the form of the compounded rules out an analysis as Celtic,32 both Leuconum and Vicus Teuto […] may be either Celtic or Pannonian. Inevitably we deal here with the problem of ‘the long arm of coincidence’, to use Sims-Williams’s elegant coinage,33 and there seems no way to resolve this issue as speakers of both languages were indeed present at some point in the area. However, Voleuci[o]nis in Vicus Voleuci[o]nis, as it seems to me, allows for a stricter and much more precise linguistic affiliation. The personal name on which the toponym is based can hardly be Pannonian due to its form. It must be remembered that PIE *o is reflected as a in this language,34 which considerably narrows possibilities for interpretation. On the contrary, the analysis of the underlying anthroponym as Gaulish is totally unproblematic, as personal names in *uo- ‘under, below’ (Ir. fo-, OW guo-) from PIE *upo- with the expected loss of PIE *-p- are well attested, cf. e.g. Vo-conius, Vo-gene, etc., and Vo-dercilla attested in Pannonia.35 Therefore, the name is most likely to continue PIE *upo- & leuk-, the first part of which is treated as certainly Celtic and definitely not Pannonian, where PIE *p is known to remain intact, and the second at least allows for a Celtic interpretation. Although hybrid formations without doubt are known in Celtic onomastics, there is no necessity in view of what has been said above to consider it a vox hybrida.36 The very valuable obser31  See the edition and an excellent comprehensive discussion of the inscription in Mráv and Ottományi, ‘A Pag(us) Herc(ulius)’. 32  Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, pp. 137–38; Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names, p. 210. 33  Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names, p. 26. 34  Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, p. 14; Meid, Keltische Personennamen, pp. 28–29; Repanšek, Keltska dediščina, p. 33; Falileyev, ‘The Silent Europe’, pp. 912 and 914, cf. also Repanšek, ‘Quiemonis’, pp. 333 and 342. 35  See DCC: 35 with further references; for Vodercilla see Meid, Keltische Personennamen, pp. 181–82. For the model cf. also Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names, p. 287. The segmentation of Voleuci[o]nis into vol- & uc- offered in Szabó, ‘Savaria und die ius Latii’, p. 142 n. 25, who considers it Celtic, is untenable. 36  For Neuio-dunum (Drnovo) as opposed to the forms more commonly attested through-

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vation of Sims-Williams in conjunction with a slightly different line of study may be recalled here: While simple names such as Cassius, -a, listed by Holder, Evans and Delamarre, may sometimes be Celtic, or at least ‘cover’ Celtic names, it would be confusing to map them as definitely Celtic names. By contrast, one can be confident that compound names such as Cassivellaunus and Vercassivellaunus are Celtic and so these provide a secure sample for geo­graphical examination.37

Certainly, the form of the compounded personal name in the toponym Vicus Voleuci[o]nis makes its Celtic linguistic affiliation secure, unlike, for example, the form Leucaspis attested in the inscription from the ancient Arrabona (Győr) not very far away from the region of Savaria: ‘Scilus | Batonis f(ilius) | Breucus eq(ues) | ala(e) Pannoni | orum an(norum) XXX | stip(endiorum) X h(ic) s(itus) e(st) | Deculus dec(urio) | [e]t Iulius | Leucaspis | her(edes) posuerunt’ (CIL III, 4377). This name also containing leuc- is most likely to be Pannonian. As for the meaning of the Celtic name, there are various possibilities of interpretation. One may venture, for example, a comparison with its exact cognate in Greek ὑπόλευκος meaning ‘whitish’, also given that the underlying semantic motivation is widespread in Gaulish anthroponymy, cf. Uinda, Macio-uindi, Alco-vindos (cf. Lep. alKouinos), etc.,38 as well as in naming in other cultures across the world. If, however, we have a look at the medi­eval comparanda, the importance of which for the study of Continental Celtic onomastics has been stressed by Sims-Williams on several occasions,39 results are different. Thus, compounded forms with the continuation of Celtic *uo- as the first component are certainly popular in Welsh and other Insular Celtic languages,40 and it is commonly maintained that in Welsh golwg ‘eye(-sight), vision, aspect’, etc. (cf. Cornish golok), it is followed by *luk- from earlier *leuk-. In this example, consequently, we have the exact match for the Greek adjective ὑπόλευκος, which, however, offers new paths for semantic interpretation of the Gaulish out Europe, Novio-dunum (Neung-sur-Beuvrn, Nyon, etc., DCC: 172), more than once analysed along these lines, see most recently Repanšek, Keltska dediščina, pp. 204–07. 37  Sims-Williams, ‘Celtic Personal Names’, p. 155; cf. also the map of distribution of compounded Celtic personal names in Europe given as fig. 1 on p. 159. 38  For the Greek word see Dürbeck, ‘Die Entstehung des Bildetyps ὑπόλευκος’; for Gaulish forms cf. Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names, pp. 123–24 and DCC: 34–35. 39  Cf. e.g. Sims-Williams ‘Celtic Personal Names’, p. 151. 40  See most recently Russell, ‘Gwas, Guos-, Gos-’.

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name attested in Pannonia. Other possible parallels from medi­eval sources may also be adduced, although some of them are certainly disputable, as for example the much-discussed Welsh golau ‘light’ (Old Breton guolou, Old Cornish golou gl. Latin lux) which may contain a different second element that allows different semantic interpretations. Notwithstanding the doubts about its exact meaning, the linguistic Celticity of the personal name attested so far solely in the toponym Vicus Voleuci[o]nis in Pannonia is therefore more than likely. Some questions may be raised concerning the original form of the anthroponym. As we have seen, in the reading of the place-name in the inscription the o is inserted by all of its editors, and Szabó even prints it straightforwardly as Vicus Voleucionis without indication of the amendment.41 The obvious interpretation of the Gaulish name is it is the n-stem Voleuciō in Latin guise, that is Gaulish *Voleuciū. The -iō formations are certainly attested in Celtic, and also are found in Gaulish personal names, as in *Artiū attested in Latin inscriptions from Switzerland comprehensively discussed by Stüber in her fundamental analysis of Celtic n-stems.42 Unquestionably, the model was very well known in Latin,43 so the adaptation of the Gaulish masculine name into the traditional toponymic scheme vicus + personal name in the genitive case would not have caused any troubles. Therefore, the restoration of o in the inscription is most likely valid, and so we indeed find Gaulish *Voleuciū attested uniquely in Pannonia. It may be noted in parenthesis that in Celtiberian in addition to masc. n-stems in -u, -unos there was possibly a fem. type in -i, -inos; at least personal names like NSg. kari, raieni on the one hand, and GSg. like atinos, lukinos (all in K.1.3) on the other, could be interpreted in that way.44

At face value Voleuci[o]nis, particularly taking into consideration lukinos which is cognate with the second component of the Gaulish personal name, may be then taken for a feminine name. Latin examples like Vicus Antoniae Saturninae referred to above point to the fact that female names are also found in this 41 

Szabó, ‘Savaria und die ius Latii’, p. 142. Stüber, The Historical Morpho­logy of N-stems, p.  94. For some problems related to n-stem formations in Continental Celtic anthroponymy see Falileyev, ‘“Celtic” Commentaries’, pp. 6–7 and 14. 43  Discussed comprehensively in Gaide, Les substantifs masculins latins; cf. Weiss, Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin, p. 311. 44  Wodtko, An Outline of Celtiberian Grammar, p. 15. 42 

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toponymic form. However, the reconstruction of the feminine personal name *Voleucī here is totally unlikely. Such an approach still requires emendation of the text of the inscription, and it has been noted that ‘this category of feminine n-stems stands isolated not only within Celtic, but within Indo-European as well’.45 It is unknown in Gaulish, and therefore to reconstruct a female name here means to admit the presence of Celtiberians in Pannonia, and, moreover, those with quite rare name forms, which on balance is completely improbable. There is also a possibility to ignore the emendation of the inscription if the second part of the toponym was modelled on Latin cardō-, -inis (fem.) ‘hinge’ or homō, -inis (masc.) ‘man’.46 Then, the reading Voleucinis may be retained, and the name could be restored as Voleucō (viz. *Voleucū). This approach may be justified in theory, but could not be proved for obvious reasons with any certainty. Therefore, the traditional emendation of the inscription from Rome is most probably justified and thanks to this monument in the heart of the empire we have a reference to another Celtic place-name in the area of Savaria in Roman Pannonia. This find also enriches our corpus of Gaulish anthroponymy, to which Voleuciō in Latin guise, that is Gaulish *Voleuciū, should now be added.

45  Stüber, The Historical Morpho­logy of N-stems, p. 107 and see further Wodtko, An Outline of Celtiberian Grammar, p. 15. 46  See e.g. Weiss, Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin, p. 310.

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Works Cited Anreiter, Peter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2001) Dobó, Árpád, Inscriptiones extra fines Pannoniae Daciaeque repertae ad res earundem provinciarum pertinentes, 4th edn (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiado, 1975) Dürbeck, Helmut, ‘Die Entstehung des Bildetyps ὑπόλευκος und einzelne Gebrauchsweisen’, Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, 46 (1985), 29–45 Eska, Joseph F., ‘A Salvage Grammar of Galatian’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 60 (2013), 51–63 Falileyev, Alexander, review of Anreiter, Die vorrömischen Namen Pannoniens, Acta onomastica, 43 (2002), 119–24 —— , ‘Pannono-Illyrica’, in Sovremenniye metody sravnitelno-istoricheskikh issledovanij, ed. by V. Kazaryan (Moscow: University, 2013), pp. 298–306 —— , In Search of the Eastern Celts: Studies in Geo­graphical Names, their Distribution and Morpho­logy (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2014) —— , ‘“Celtic” Commentaries on Four Roman Military Diplomas’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 67 (2020), 1–22 —— , ‘The Silent Europe’, in Palaeoeuropean Languages and Epi­graphic Cultures: Chal­ lenges and New Perspectives, ed.  by Francisco Beltrán Lloris, Borja Díaz, María  J. Estarán Tolosa, and Carlos Jordán Cólera, Palaeohispanica, 20 (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2020), pp. 887–919 Falileyev, Alexander, in collaboration with Ashwin E. Gohil and Naomi Ward, Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names: A Celtic Companion to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2010) Gabler, Dénes, ‘Das römerzeitliche Siedlungssystem auf dem Territorium von Savaria’, in Der obere Donauraum 50 v. bis 50  n. Chr., ed.  by Ute Lohner-Urban and Peter Scherrer (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2015), pp. 131–51 Gaide, Françoise, Les substantifs masculins latins en -(i)ō, -(i)ōnis (Leuven: Peeters, 1988) Hamp, Eric P., ‘Brigetionem, Βεργιτίων’, Nyelvtudományi Közlemények, 91 (1990), 59–62 Kovács, Péter, ‘Territoria, pagi and vici in Pannonia’, in Studia epi­graphica in memoriam Gezae Alfoldy, ed.  by Werner Eck, Bence Fehér, and Péter Kovacs (Bonn: Habelt, 2013), pp. 131–64 —— , ‘Rural Epi­graphy and its Public in Pannonia’, in Öffentlichkeit – Monument – Text, ed. by Werner Eck, Peter Funke, Marcus Dohnicht, Klaus Hallof, Matthäus Heil, and Manfred G. Schmidt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 299–321 —— , ‘Natione Boius, or What Happened to the Boii?’, in Studia archaeo­logica Nicolae Szabó LXXV annos nato dedicate, ed. by László Borhy (Budapest: Harmattan, 2015), pp. 173–82 Meid, Wolfgang, Keltische Personennamen in Pannonien (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2005) —— , ‘Celtic Origins, the Western and the Eastern Celts’ [Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture], Proceedings of the British Academy, 154 (2007), 177–99 Mráv, Zsolt, and Katalin Ottományi, ‘A Pag(us) Herc(ulius) és vicusainak Terra Mater oltára Budaörsről’, Specimina Nova, 19 (2005), 71–118

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Prósper, Blanca María, ‘Language Change at the Crossroads: What Celtic, What Venetic, and What Else in the Personal Names of Emona?’, Voprosy Onomastiki, 16.4 (2019), 33–73 Raybould, Marilynne E., and Patrick Sims-Williams, A Corpus of Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire Containing Celtic Personal Names (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007) Repanšek, Luka, Keltska dediščina v toponimiji jugovzhodnega alpskega prostora (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2016) —— , ‘Quiemonis and the Epichoric Anthroponymy of Ig’, Arheološki vestnik, 67 (2016), 321–57 —— , ‘Loucita: Etymo­logical Notes on a Female Name from the Norico-Pannonian Onomastic Landscape’, Voprosy onomastiki, 17.3 (2020), 51–64 Russell, Paul, ‘Gwas, Guos-, Gos-: The Reflexes of Brittonic *wo’, in Mélanges en l’honneur de Pierre-Yves Lambert, ed.  by Guillaume Oudaer, Gaël Hily, and Hervé Le Bihan (Rennes: TIR, 2015), pp. 77–89 Sims-Williams, Patrick, Ancient Celtic Place-Names in Europe and Asia Minor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) —— , ‘Common Celtic, Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic’, in Gaulois et celtique continental, ed. by Pierre-Yves Lambert and Georges-Jean Pinault (Geneva: Droz, 2007), pp. 309–54 —— , ‘Celtic Personal Names’, in Personal Names in the Western Roman World, ed.  by Torsten Meißner (Berlin: Curach Bhán, 2012), pp. 151–66 Solopov, Alexey, ‘Greek and Latin Geo­graphical Nomenclature: Its External and Internal Struc­ture’ (unpublished Habilitations-dissertation (Russian), University of Moscow, 2009) Speidel, Michael Paul, Die Denkmäler der Kaiserreiter: Equites singulares Augusti (Co­logne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1994) —— , ‘Recruitment and Identity. Exploring the Meanings of Roman Soldiers’ Homes’, Revue internationale d’histoire militaire ancienne, 6 (2017), 35–50 Stüber, Karin, The Historical Morpho­logy of N-stems in Celtic (Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, 1998) Szabó, Edit, ‘Savaria und die ius Latii. Bemerkungen zur Städteentwicklung von Savaria à propos der Lesekorrektion einer Augustalis-Inschrift’, in Epi­graphica, iii: Politai et cives, ed. by György Németh and Péter Forisek, Hungarian Polis Studies, 13 (Debrecen: University of Debrecen, Department of Ancient History, 2006), pp. 135–63 Weiss, Michael, Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin (Ann Arbor: Beech Stave, 2009) Wodtko, Dagmar, An Outline of  Celtiberian  Grammar (Freiburg: Albert-Ludwigs-Uni­ versität Freiburg, 2003)

An Old Irish Text on Kingship and the Five Provinces of Ireland Liam Breatnach I In this contribution in honour of Patrick, I edit and translate a previously unpublished text on the kingship of the five Fifths or provinces of Ireland. It can be dated on linguistic grounds to the Old Irish period, and thus predates most, if not all, other sources containing legendary accounts of the division of Ireland into five. The edition takes up Part IV, and is preceded by a survey of early sources which give some account of the prehistoric division of Ireland into five.1 There are, of course, other legendary divisions in the medi­ eval historical scheme devised for prehistoric Ireland, such as the division into twenty-five parts by the twenty-five children of Úgaine Már, or the two halves of Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga,2 but they are beyond the scope of this paper. In Part II I examine the accounts in Suidigud Tellaig Themra and the various recensions of Lebar Gabála Érenn, and in Part III I discuss the evidence of other early sources, as well as briefly considering the question of the relationship between the legendary fivefold division and historical political divisions. 1 

Many of these were referred to in O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mytho­log y, pp. 176–81. 2  See, for example, the poem in Do Ḟlathiusaib Hérend, Úgaine úallach amra, LL 2722–75 and Lebor Gabála Érenn, 5, ed. and trans. by Macalister, pp. 466–71; this is mostly concerned with the former but also refers to the latter, along with other divisions. Liam Breatnach ([email protected]) is Senior Professor in the School of Celtic Studies of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. His research interests include Old Irish language, Middle Irish, and the historical development of Irish, Early Irish law texts, and poets, poetry, and metrics. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131195 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 49–70 BREPOLS

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II The poem Cóic hurrunda Érend ‘The Five Divisions of Ireland’, forms part of the Middle Irish text Suidigud Tellaig Themra ‘The Settling of the Manor of Tara’.3 It is put into the mouth of the long-lived Fintan mac Bóchra, and set in the time of Díarmait mac (Fergusa) Cerbaill (d. 565, AU). In the preceding prose, the nobles of Ireland are represented as coming with Fintan to Uisnech and dividing Ireland from there: Tángadar iarsein mathi hÉrenn amail roráidsem do t[h]idnocol Fintain co ­hUisneach […] Ocus rosuigid ina fíadnaisi lia cloichi cóic-druimneach i fír-mullach Uisnig. Ocus dobert drumain de fri cech cóiced in-nHérind […]  doroindi Fintan in laíd so iar córugud ind lia. (Then the nobles of Ireland came as we have related to accompany Fintan to Usnech […] And he set up in their presence a pillar-stone of five ridges on the summit of Usnech. And he assigned a ridge of it to every province in Ireland […] and Fintan made this lay after arranging the pillar-stone.)4

The poem consists of eight verses, and while there are irregularities in verses 1 and 4, the rest are in the metre immardbairdne.5 It gives only the boundaries of the urrunda ‘divisions’ mentioned in the first line; it does not name provinces, nor does it associate them with any particular persons. The final verse states that the provinces meet at Uisnech,6 and the boundaries are set out in verses 2–6 as follows: (1) Ó Drobaís […] co Boïnd. Ó Boïnd […] co Comar […] Thrí nUsci. Ón Chomar chétna-sin […] co Beolo na n-aṅgbaidChon dangairther Glass. Ón Belach Con Glais […] co Luimneach. Ó purt ind Luimnig-sin […] co Drobaís.

The five boundary points, then, are all coastal: the Drowes River (Drobaís), which for most of its course from Lough Melvin to the sea forms part of the boundary between the present-day counties of Leitrim and Donegal, the 3 

‘The Settling of the Manor of Tara’, ed. and trans. by Best, pp. 152–55, § 33. ‘The Settling of the Manor of Tara’, ed. and trans. by Best. pp. 152–53, § 32. 5  This rare metre has the structure 63 41 63 41; cf. Murphy, Early Irish Metrics, p. 62. 6  Cf.  ‘Roinde na n-ardchúiced | ind-Uisnech’ (The points of the great provinces  […] towards Usnech), ‘The Settling of the Manor of Tara’, ed. and trans. by Best, pp. 154–55. 4 

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Boyne, Waterford Harbour (Comar na Trí nUisce), Belach Con Glais, and the Shannon Estuary (Luimnech). Lebar Gabála Érenn (LG) has a different context for the division into five, connecting it with the invasion by the Fir Bolg.7 The account in the earliest surviving MS copy, in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, which is assigned to Recension a, differs significantly from the others, and contains two accounts of a fivefold division.8 The first account is found in verses 6–8 (LL 962–73) of the poem Dēne mo resnís a meic, where each division is associated with a particular personage of the Fir Bolg, as follows:9 (2) Sláine […] ō Níth […] cossin Commor […] na trī nUsce. Gand […] co Belach Con Glais. Sengand ō Belach in Chon […] co Lumnech. Genand […] ōtá Lumnech co hEss Rúaid. Rudraige […] ō ṡen co Trāig Baile.

This scheme differs from that in (1) in two of the boundary points, with Níth, the Castletown River in Co. Louth, which flows into the sea at Dundalk,10 and Tráig Baile, the strand at Dundalk, in place of the Boyne, and Ess Rúaid, near Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, in place of Drobaís, and also in that it makes no mention of the provinces meeting at Uisnech. Nevertheless, this poem is followed immediately in LL (ll. 1019–46) by a version of the poem in (1), with its different boundary points. Here again it is put into the mouth of Fintan: ‘Fintan cecinit do raind na cóiced’ (LL 1018, Fintan uttered concerning the division of the provinces). It begins ‘Cōic urranna Hērend’, and contains only seven verses, omitting that on the fourth pair of boundaries.11 In the other recensions of LG a more explicit connection is made with the Fir Bolg. In the section concerned with their conquest of Ireland, the copies 7 

I follow the division into Recensions a, b, c, and m set out in Scowcroft, ‘Leabhar Gabhála’, pp. 85–87. 8  For the other copies assigned to Recension a, see below. 9  For a list of other copies see Breatnach, ‘Varia III’, pp. 234–35, where the relevant verses are edited and translated. 10  See Breatnach, ‘Varia III’, pp. 232–35. 11  Lebor Gabála Érenn, 4, ed. and trans. by Macalister, pp. 60–63, and translated in Koch and Carey, The Celtic Heroic Age, pp. 243–44. As it stands it is metrically more irregular than the version in (1). While verses 2 and 4–6 are in immardbairdne, and verse 3 can be made to conform to it simply by deleting na in the fourth line, verses 1 and 7 deviate greatly from this structure.

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assigned to Recension b contain a prose account towards the beginning, and a prose and verse account towards the end. I cite from the copy in Dublin, RIA, MS D iv 3 (1224).12 The first account is: (3) Ro rannsat Hērinn. A trīan i nInuiur Slāine im Slāinge mac ṅDela meic Loith  his ē a chūiced ō Inber Cholptha co Commur Trī nUsce; mīli do doīnib a līn. Ro gabsat in trīan aile i nInuer Dubglasi im Gann  im Sengann; dā mīle a llīn-side. Gann ōn Chomur co Belach Con Glais, Sengann o Belach Con Glais co Luimnech, .i. for dā cōiced Muman. Genann  Rudraige co trīun int slūaig ro gabsat i ndInber Domnonn; is aire is-berar Fir Domnann dīb. Genonn for chōiciud Medbo  Oilellu; Rudraige danō for chōiced Conchobair. Dā mīle bēus a llīn-side (D iv 3, fol. 13rb5–16) (They divided Ireland. A  third of them in Inber Sláine under the leadership of Sláinge son of Deil son of Lóth, and his Fifth is from the Boyne Estuary to Waterford Harbour; his host numbered a thousand people. The second third landed at Inber Dubglaise under the leadership of Gann and Sengann; their host numbered two thousand people. Gann [took the area] from Waterford Harbour to Belach Con Glais, Sengann from Belach Con Glais to the Shannon Estuary, i.e. [they ruled] over the two Fifths of Munster. Genann and Rudraige with a third of the host landed at Inber Domnann; hence the Fir Domnann are named. Genann [ruled] over the Fifth of Medb and Ailill; Rudraige, moreover, [ruled] over the Fifth of Conchobar. Their host also numbered two thousand people.)13

The second passage is of particular interest as it is accompanied by the marginal note ‘Slicht Lebuir na Huidri’ (The version of Lebor na hUidre), opposite the first word of the prose.14 (4) Rannsat trā Fir Bolg Hērinn hi cōicc rannuib amail adubrammar. Cōiced nGaind is ed fors mbaī Cairpri Nīad Fer. Cōiced Sengainn is sed fors mbaī Echaid mac Luchto. Cōiged Slāingi is ed fors mbaī Degad mac Sin. Cōiged Genuind fors mbuī Oilill mac Māta. Cōiced Rudraige fors mboī Conchobar mac Nesa. Conid hī sin roind bīas go brāth for cōigedaib Hērenn amail do-rōnsat Fir Bolg. Conid dīa cuimniugud sin ro chan in senchaid ind sō. Cōicc cōicced Ērenn āne, ro gabsad rīg roāille, 12 

I supply punctuation and macrons over long vowels, and capitalize proper names. My translations of this and the passage in (4) differ from those in Lebor Gabála Érenn, 4, ed. and trans. by Macalister, pp. 14–15, 26–27, and 72–75. 14  This is one of a number of references in this MS to a copy in Lebor na hUidre, which is now lost; see Carey, ‘The LU Copy of Lebor Gabála’, p. 23. 13 

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bēra ūaim tre laīdib lat in cūaille mā comraiget Cōiced Medba mōrtuis gluinn, dāmba ferrda gach n-acmung,15 ōthā Luimnech, lēim cin baīs, co Duib  co Drobaīs. 16 int shluind, cōiged Conchobair claduinn, co hInber Colptha cen cath; cōiced Ulad imūallach. Ō trāig Inbir Colptha dē co Comar na Trī nUsque, sloinn let les lānmōr ann, cōiged nGailiōn na cathbarr. Ō Chomar in Usci \f/ūair, cōicced Echach Abratrūaid, cussin tulaig ōsin tuinn, oc Belach Con Glais crobluimm. Ō Belach Con Glais grānne, cōicced Con Ruī meic Dāire, trebar in tīr tuillmech trom, go Luimnech na leabarlong Imon licc i nnUsnech fhūar, i mmuig Mide na marcslūag, imma chend comnart, cēim cain, atā comracc gech cōigid. coic. c. 

(D iv 3, fol. 14va23–vb10)

(The Fir Bolg divided Ireland into five parts, as we have mentioned. The Fifth of Gann is the one over which Cairpre Nia Fer ruled. The Fifth of Sengann is the one over which Echaid mac Luchta ruled. The Fifth of Sláinge is the one over which Dedad mac Sin ruled. The Fifth of Genann is the one over which Ailill mac Máta ruled. The Fifth of Rudraige is the one over which Conchobar mac Nesa ruled. And that

15 

Only the top of the u is visible, due to loss of vellum; I supply the i found in all the other copies. 16  Only the top of suairc (the reading of most of the other copies) is visible, due to loss of vellum. I supply the first three words as found in all other copies, with only minor variations, e.g. ‘O Drobaiss soir’, Dublin, RIA, MS D v 1, 8rb2, ‘O Drobais sair’, Dublin, RIA, MS D iii 1, 6rb17.

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is the division which there will always be of the Fifths of Ireland, as the Fir Bolg made. And it is to commemorate that that the historian uttered the following: The five Fifths of splendid Ireland, which greatly beautiful kings ruled, you will take from me in verses, [knowledge of ] the pole around which they meet. The Fifth of Medb, whom exploits made great, whose every ability was like that of a man, from the Shannon Estuary, a leap without folly, to the [River] Dub17 and to the Drobaís. From the Drobaís eastwards, pleasant the mentioning, the Fifth of Conchobar of the ramparted land, to the Boyne Estuary, without conflict; the Fifth of the very proud Ulstermen. From the strand of the Boyne Estuary, then, to Waterford Harbour, you may declare fully great prosperity [to be] there, the Fifth of the helmeted Gailióin. From the Confluence of the cool Water (Waterford Harbour), the Fifth of Echu Abratrúad, to the hill above the wave at the Pass of bare-handed Cú Glas. From Belach Con Glais [with abundance] of grains, the Fifth of Cú Ruí son of Dáire, rich is the fruitful vast land, to the Shannon Estuary of the long ships. Around the stone in cool Uisnech, in the plain of Mide of the cavalry, around its strong summit, a fair course, is where all the Fifths meet.)

One of the other copies which are assigned to Recension b, contains the same two accounts, with only minor variations, viz. Dublin, RIA, MS D v 1 (537), at fols 7rb21–31 and 8ra42–rb11. The copy of the section on the Fir Bolg in Dublin, TCD, MS E 3. 5 (1433) is a complete one, but it contains only the first account, at pp. 70a40–47. The acephalous copy at the beginning of Dublin, RIA, MS 23 P 2 (535), the Book of Lecan, contains the second account only, at fol. 1ra12–33 (facsimile foliation), while the lacunose copy in Oxford, Bodleian, MS Rawlinson B512, fols 75Br–90vb, contains part of the section on the Fir Bolg, but has neither account of the fivefold division. The two copies assigned to Recension c which have the section on the Fir Bolg contain the same two accounts as in Recension b, with the addition, immediately before the second account, of the poem Dēne mo resnís a meic, with its different boundary points, viz. Dublin, RIA, MS 23 P 12 (536), the Book of Ballymote, at fol. 16rb13–24 (facsimile, p. 29), fols 17ra22–b10 (facsimile, p. 31) and 17rb11–34, and Dublin, RIA, MS 23 P 2 (535), the Book of Lecan, fols 277rb25–39, 278rb23–va21, and 278va22–vb2 (facsimile foliation).18 17  The Duff River, which along part of its course forms the boundary between the presentday counties of Sligo and Leitrim, and the estuary of which is a short distance south-west of that of the Drowes (Drobaís). 18  The third copy, H, is fragmentary; see Scowcroft, ‘Leabhar Gabhála’, pp. 87, 141.

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One of the other two copies assigned to Recension a has the three accounts as in Recension c, viz. Dublin, RIA, MS D iii 1 (671), with the first (prose) account at fol. 7va14–27, the poem Dēne mo resnís a meic at fols 8vb– end + 6ra1–30, and the prose and verse account at 6ra31–b30. The other, in Mullingar, MS 1,19 contains only the first prose account, at fol. 21r9–21v1. The only account of the fivefold division in Recension m is in the poem Dēne mo resnís a meic, found in the Book of Lecan, fol.  18 rb39– va29, and Dublin, RIA, MS D i 3 (539), fol. 1rb31–va17; as the copy in Oxford, Bodleian, MS Rawlinson B512 contain the first verse only, at fol. 93ra7–9, it is left with no account of the division. The account in the Ó Cléirigh recension of LG is somewhat abbreviated, with first a prose passage: (5) Conrangatar ieromh fri aroile inn Uisneach Midhe,  rannait Ere asuidhe hi ccuig rannaibh. Roinn Slainghe céttus o Inber Colptha co Commair Tri nUiscce; Gann dana on cComar co Bealach Conglais; Seanghann o Belach Conglais co Luimneach; Genann o Luimneach go Drobhaois; Rudraighe ó Dhrobaois co Boinn.20

On the facing-page translation the first sentence is rendered ‘They came together thereafter in Uisnech of Meath, and they divide Ireland there in five parts’; asuidhe, however, means ‘from there’, so that this text is in agreement with the others which have the five provinces meeting at Uisnech. This is followed by a poem which includes the same Fir Bolg personages with the same boundaries as in the prose. The prose version in (5) appears almost verbatim in Mac Firbhisigh’s Genealogies, viz. (6) go ránghadar re roile in Uisneach Mhidhe, agus rannuid Ére annsin i ccúig rannuibh: Roinn Shláinghe céudus o Inbhear Colptha go Cumar na tTrí nUisge. Gann on Chumor go Bealach Con-Ghlais. Seanghann o Bhealach Con-Ghlais go Luimneach.

19  See de Brún, ‘Lámhscríbhinní Gaeilge’, pp. 84–85, Scowcroft, ‘Leabhar Gabhála’, p. 85 n. 18, and Scowcroft, ‘Mediaeval Recensions’, p. 4. 20  Leabhar Gabhála, ed. and trans. by Macalister and MacNeill, p. 120, § 78.

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Geanann o Luimneach go Drobhaoís. Rudhraighe o Dhrobhaoís go Bóinn.21

There is, then, a good deal of variation between the accounts in Suidigud Tellaig Themra and the various recensions of Lebar Gabála Érenn. The passage in (1) has simply the boundary points. That in (2) associates each Fifth with a Fir Bolg personage, but in two of its boundary points it differs from the scheme found in all the other accounts. The passage in (3) associates each Fifth with the same Fir Bolg personage as in (2), and also defines first three Fifths by reference to boundary points (as in (1));22 the last two Fifths, however, are instead defined by reference to personages who belong to the later Maic Míled, or Milesians, according to the scheme of Lebar Gabála Érenn: Sláinge: ó Inber Cholptha co Commur Trí nUsce. Gann: ón Chomur co Belach Con Glais. Sengann: ó Belach Con Glais co Luimnech. Genonn: Cóiced Medba  Ailella. Rudraige: Cóiced Conchobair.23

This last scheme is further developed in the prose passage in (4), where the boundary points are omitted entirely, and the provinces are defined solely by reference to Fir Bolg personages, on the one hand, and Maic Míled personages, on the other, with the additional complication that the provinces associated here with Gann, Sengann, and Sláinge do not correspond to those in (2) and (3). Thus we have: Gann and Cairbre mac Rossa. Sengann and Eochaid mac Luchta. Sláinge and Dedad mac Sin. Genann and Ailill mac Mága. Rudraige and Conchobar mac Nesa.

The names of the Fir Bolg are omitted entirely in verses 2–6 of the poem in (4), and the boundaries, as in (1), are correlated with three provinces named after Milesian personages, viz.24 Cóiced Medba, Cóiced Echach Abratrúaid, Cóiced 21 

Leabhar Mór na nGenealach, ed. and trans. by Ó Muraíle, i, p. 206, § 44.1–2. Except for Dub ocus Drobaís instead of Drobaís. 23  With normalized MidIr ortho­graphy. 24  With normalized MidIr ortho­graphy. 22 

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Con Roí meic Dáire, one named after a people, Cóiced nGailión, and one named according to both patterns, viz. Cóiced Conchobair/cóiced Ulad. The only one of these names that the prose and verse accounts in (4) share is Conchobar. Finally, the verse in (1) and (4), and the prose in (5), have the five provinces meeting at Uisnech, but there is no mention of this in the verse in (2) or the prose in (3) and (4). It might be assumed that the fivefold division would be exclusively associated with the period of the Cóicedaig in the historical scheme of pre-Patrician Ireland, but, as we have seen, that is not the case in Cóic hurrunda Érend, where the temporal setting is very late indeed, and no names whatsoever are given to the Fifths, or Lebar Gabála Érenn, which sets it in the time of the Fir Bolg, but includes some correlations with Milesian personages, most of whom appear in the various lists of Cóicedaig discussed below.

III It is a different case for the few early accounts of a fivefold division of Ireland that I know of outside these two texts. One is in an entry in the Annals of Inisfallen: ‘Rannta Hēriu i cóic eter Conchobur  Corpri Nia Fer  Tigernach Tētbannach  Dedad macc Sin  Ailill macc Māgach’.25 Here the division into five provinces is exclusively associated with kings who, in the medi­eval Irish historical scheme, belonged to the period after the coming of the Sons of Míl, and no boundaries are given. In this scheme they are referred to as the Cóicedaig, and represent an interregnum of kings ruling provinces interrupting a series of monarchs ruling Ireland, although the details of the names of the Cóicedaig and of when this happened vary. Thus, for example, in the section on the kings of Ireland in the genealogies in Oxford, Bodleian, Rawlinson B502, they are placed at around the time of Christ, and after the kingship of Etarscél Már: Etarscēl Mār Moccu Ieir do Ērnaib .v. b. co torchair la Nuadait Necht [mac] Sētnai Sithbaicc do Laignib i cath Alinde. His ī seo trā aimser gene Crīst. Na cōicedaig iar sin .i. Conchobor mac Nessa, Cairpre Nia Fer mac Rossa, Tigernach Tētbuillech mac Luchta, Ailill mac Rossa Ruaid qui  mac Māta Muirisce dicebatur, Cū-ruī mac Dāire m. Dedad meic Sin. It é sin na cōicedaig.26 25  AI, p. 30, § 202. There is a similar entry in ‘The Annals of Tigernach’, ed. and trans. by Stokes, vol. 16, p. 405. 26  CGH, p. 120.

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(Etarscél Már Moccu Ieir of the Érainn [was king of Ireland] for five years, until he fell in the battle of Ailend by the hand of Núada Necht son of Sétna Sithbacc of the Leinstermen. This, then, is the time of the birth of Christ. The provincial kings after that, i.e. Conchobor son of Nesa, Cairpre Nia Fer son of Rus, Tigernach Tétbuillech son of Luchta, Ailill son of Rus Rúad, who was also called son of Máta Muirisce, Cú Ruí son of Dáire son of Dedad son of Sen; those are the provincial kings.)

On the other hand, while the same essential details are found in the related account in Do Ḟlathiusaib Hérend in the Book of Leinster, the latter offers a slightly later dating as an alternative: Eterscél Mōr mac hui Iair d’Ērnaib Muman .u. Co torchair la Nūadait Necht. Is hí sēo trā amser inro génair Crīst mac Dé bí do thessargain in chiniuda dōendai. Na cōicedaig īar sein .i. Conchobor mac Factna. Corpre Nia Fer, Tigernach Tētbannach. Cú Ruí mac Dāire. Ailill mac Mátach. Nūadu Necht de Laignib īar sein dá ráthe co torchair la Conaire i cath Clíach i nHuīb Dróna. Conaire Mór mac Eterscéoil .lxx. [nō xiiii] i rríge Hērend Co torchair i mBrudin Dā Derga. nō combad and sō na cōicedaig. (LL 2883–92)27 (Etarscél Mór Mac hui Iair of the Érainn of Munster [was king of Ireland] for five years, until he fell by the hand of Núada Necht. This, then, is the time when Christ son of the Living God was born in order to save the human race. The provincial kings after that, i.e. Conchobor son of Fachtna, Coirpre Nia Fer, Tigernach Tétbannach, Cú Ruí son of Dáire, Ailill son of Máta. Núada Necht of the Leinstermen [was king of Ireland] for six months, until he fell by the hand of Conaire in the battle of Clíu in Uí Dróna. Conaire Mór son of Etarscél [was] seventy — rather ‘fourteen’ — years in the kingship of Ireland, until he fell in Bruiden Dá Derga. Alternatively, it is here the provincial kings [should be].)

Yet another variant is found in the section on Senchas Síl Ébir in the genealogies in the Book of Leinster:28 Gabais Ēnna ríge corod marb Cú Ruí ut alii dicunt. Na cūicedaig īar tain. Eterscél Mór i Temraig. Conaire Mór i mMumain. Et do-rochair leis Nūadu Necht Lagnech. Ba rí danō Cairpre mac Conaire. Ba rí danō Dáre Dornmar. Et ba rí Corpre Cromchend a mac. Na cūicedaig īar sain .i. Forbrī mac Fini i mMumain  Lugaid

27  With macrons supplied over long vowels, and a suprascript correction in the MS in square brackets. 28  For the corresponding text in Oxford, Bodleian, Rawlinson B502, as well as variants from the other two copies, see CGH, pp. 189–90.

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Alladach. Sanb mac Ceit i Connachtaib, Ēllim mac Conrach i nUltaib. Eocho Ānchend i lLagnib. (LL 41104–11)29 (Énna took the kingship until Cú Ruí killed him, as some say. The provincial kings afterwards. Eterscél Mór in Tara, Conaire Mór in Munster, and Núadu Necht of Leinster fell by his hand. Cairpre son of Conaire then became king. Dáre Dornmar then became king, and Corpre Cromchend, his son, became king. The provincial kings after that, i.e. Forbrí son of Fine and Lugaid Alladach in Munster, Sanb son of Cet in Connacht, Éllim son of Conrí in Ulster, Eocho Ánchend in Leinster.)

In this account Cóicedaig are first placed between Énna Munchaín and Eterscél Mór, but the only version in which they are named at that point is in the Book of Lecan: ‘.i. Cu-raī mac Deagad  Tigernach Tendbandach for dā cōiced Muman  Ailill mac Māta de Mumain for Chondachtaib  Find Fili mac Rosa Ruaid for Laidnib  Conchobar mac Fachtna Ḟāthaig for Ulltaib’.30 This list differs from that in the preceding three citations in having Find Fili in place of Cairpre Nia Fer. The second mention of Cóicedaig places them sometime after Conaire; in this case they are identified in all four copies, but an entirely different set of names is used, and the provinces they are said to have ruled are specified.31 A dating no later than the Middle Irish period is provided for these four accounts by the manu­scripts in which they are found, and some, at least, may be earlier.32 Certainly earlier is the Old Irish glossing of Senchas Már,33 in which, in a difficult passage on the subject of distraint, are mentioned the division of Ireland into five, the names of two of the Cóicedaig, and the boundaries of one of the provinces, viz. in tan ranta hĒriu i .u. cuicuir Concubar mac Nesa a cōiced do Coirpri Nia Fer ō Comur Trī nUisce co Boinn. Do-bert dō cēt cach dīne aire .i. cēt ndam finnissi, cēt mbō finn […]. (CIH 885.35)

29  With abbreviations expanded, macrons supplied over long vowels, and slight differences in word-division and punctuation. 30  CGH, p. 189. 31  Two provinces of Munster are implied by the two named kings, and the other three are Connachta, Ulaid, and Laigin. For the kings see O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, pp. 154–6. 32  Note, for example, the passive preterite sg. rannta (= OIr ranntae) in the citation from the Annals of Inisfallen, rather than the more usual MidIr ro rannad. 33  For this text see Breatnach, A Companion to the ‘Corpus Iuris Hibernici’, pp. 338–46.

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(When Ireland was divided into five, Conchobar mac Nesa […] his Fifth to (or from) Coirpre Nia Fer, from Waterford Harbour to the Boyne . He gave him a hundred of every kind of cattle for it, i.e. a hundred white-backed (?) cows, a hundred white cows […].)34

Whereas all the other sources envisage a straightforward division into five, this source seems to have Conchobar and Coirpre engaging in a separate transaction. The nature of this transaction would be clarified if it could be determined exactly what cuicuir means.35 As the text does not otherwise indicate who made the payment to whom, the possibilities are Conchobar selling or leasing to, or buying or leasing from, Coirpre. For present purposes, however, what matters is the mention in an Old Irish source of two personages associated elsewhere with the Fifths, as well as two of the boundaries. It remains the case, however, that all of these varied accounts belong with an imaginative scheme of Irish prehistory, and their relationship to historical reality is an open question. As F. J. Byrne commented, It is one of the paradoxes of Irish history that although the division of the country into five Fifths was regarded as dating from immemorial antiquity, and although cóiced remained the universally accepted name for a province, at no time was it quite clear how many Fifths in fact existed.36

While he went on to say that ‘the original Fifths were in all probability Ulaid (Ulster), Laigin (Leinster), Mumu (Munster), Connachta, and Mide’, in the additional notes supplied to the second edition (2001, p. xv) he suggested that ‘Cóiced may be a technical term referring to a “portion” of a patrimony rather than to an arithmetical “fifth part”; thus the search for actual “Five Fifths” may be chimerical.’ Although he supplied no evidence for this, we can take it that he probably had in mind the following passage in the Additamenta to Tírechán’s Collectanea in the Book of Armagh: Veniens Patricius in finem Calrigi babtitzauit filium Cairthin  Caichanum,  postquam babtitzauit obtulerunt filius Cairthin  Caichán quintam partem Caichain Deo  Patricio, et liberauit rex Deo et Patricio. Hae sunt fines quintae partis .i. coicid Caicháin […]

34 

For the various kinds of cattle mentioned in this list see Kelly, Early Irish Farming, p. 32. The form is queried in CIH, but not because of any problem with legibility. 36  Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings, p. 46. 35 

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(Patrick came into the district of Calrige and baptized Mac Caerthinn and Caíchán, and after he baptized (them) Mac Caerthinn and Caíchán offered ‘Caíchán’s Fifth’ to God and Patrick, and the king made (it) free to God and Patrick. These are the boundaries of the Fifth, to wit ‘Caíchán’s Fifth’ […])37

Neither this example, nor the meaning ‘portion’ is registered in DIL s.v. cóiced. The extension of meaning can be explained by reference to the division of the gelḟine ‘three-generation kin group’ in the law texts into five categories (cousin(s), uncle(s), etc.), which remain fixed, rather than into individuals, who would vary in number.38 Commenting on this passage, Charles-Edwards noted that ordinals in Old Irish could mean both ‘xth’ and ‘one of x’, so that in this case cóiced is ‘likely to mean “one of five”, and the whole phrase can then be translated “the one belonging to Caíchán out of five holdings”’.39 Certainly, the texts surveyed in this paper are short on specifics and show remarkable variation in the persons associated with the Fifths. Attempts to relate the fivefold division to historical political divisions of the eighth century and later are haphazard. While the geo­graphical boundaries, when given, are relatively stable, they consist in most cases solely of coastal points, and the notion of the inland boundaries meeting at Uisnech (above, p. 50) only serves to underline the vagueness of this geo­graphical scheme. Nevertheless, this vagueness is of no consequence when reference is made to the five Fifths of Ireland as a whole. An apt Old Irish instance is the statement concerning the king titled tríath in the law text Míadṡlechtae: ‘Cóic cóiced Érenn, tremi-etha a mámu uili’ (The five Fifths of Ireland, he ensures that they all submit to him (lit. ‘he goes through all their submissions’)).40 Here the idea is of unifying the constituent elements of a whole, poetically expressed,41 and such an idea underlies the text with which the final part of this paper is concerned. 37 

Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, ii, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, p. 238, with minor changes in capitalization of proper names. 38  See the discussion in Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, pp. 319–24, and also Breatnach, ‘The Lord’s Share’, pp. 10–11. 39  Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, p. 321. The translation of the first occurrence as ‘the fifth part of Caíchán(’s estate)’ in The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh, ed. and trans. by Bieler, p. 173, § 8, is mistaken; the whole of Caíchán’s holding is meant. 40  Normalized from CIH 583.11, 676.30. For Míadṡlechtae see below, and for the passage in question here see Breatnach, ‘The King’, p. 123. 41  The equivalent of ‘two halves’, ‘four quarters’, etc.

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IV This previously unpublished text has a lot in common with the accounts of the provincial boundaries and of the Cóicedaig or legendary provincial kings, but recasts the historical and geo­graphical material in order to make, I will argue, a statement about kingship and particularly, the kingship of Ireland. I know of two copies: B: Dublin, RIA, MS B iv 2 (1080), fol. 150r16–20. This MS was written in the years 1627 and 1628 by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh;42 F: Dublin, UCD, MS A9, p. 44b27–36.43 Dillon, Mooney, and De Brún suggest a fifteenth-century date for the MS.44 It is a short text, and the very different sets of texts which surround it in the two manu­scripts give no clue as to any earlier context. Nevertheless, not only do we have the surviving complete copies, but two of its five sentences are cited elsewhere. The first sentence is cited in a passage added by a later hand to the genealogies in the Book of Leinster:45 Nit ruirig nāt cōicid Conchobair meic Nessa naisces ō Drobaīs co Bōin  ba sed ōn cōiced nGaind meic Delo meic Lōith do Feraib Bolg .i. Fer Bolg a senóir ro gabsat leo do thuīsigecht comairli  baī cāch uada.46 (Nit ruirig […] Bōin, and that was the Fifth of Gann son of Deil son of Lóth of the Fir Bolg, i.e. Fer Bolg was their senior, whom they took with them to be their chief counsellor, and all of them were descended from him.)

The identification of the Fifth of Conchobar with the Fifth of Gann offers yet another candidate for the latter’s province, which is elsewhere associated with the Fifth delineated by Waterford Harbour and Belach Con Glais, or with the province of Cairbre mac Rossa (above, pp. 52, 56).

42 

See RIA Cat., pp. 3021–29, where our text is described as ‘5 ll. of prose’. The manu­script was formerly in Killiney, and is now in University College Dublin. 44  Dillon, Mooney, and De Brún, Catalogue, p. 17; our text is described ibid., p. 21, as a ‘tract’. 45  Described as ‘a third hand’ in CGH p. 422, and as ‘a later hand’, in LL p. 1463. 46  CGH, ed. by O’Brien, p. 422. 43 

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The final sentence is cited in the law text on status, Míadṡlechtae,47 in the context of a discussion of the use of the term ollam for the highest grade not only of poet, but also of scriptural scholar, and of king.48 The passage relating to the king is: ‘Ollam ard imorro, nascid, nī nascar; caidi-side. Nī ansa. amail rīg Connacht, amail as-berar: Ni ollam nard coicid nAililla mic Mata mora’ (CIH 1567.12, A lofty superior, moreover, he binds, he is not bound himself. What kind of person is that? It is not difficult, such as the king of Connacht, as is said: Ní ollam […]). The only significant difference in the variant reading in CIH 586.40–587.2 is in the queried expansion: ‘Ollam ard immurgu, naisci, nī nascar; caidi-side? Nī ansa, amail rī Connacht, amail as-mberar: Ni hollamain (?) nard .u.eth nAilello mic Mata mora’. The common error nard, for nád, is remarkable, and was probably taken into the citation from the term being explained, ollam ard, which is contrasted with ollam gaīsi, CIH 1567.10, ‘a superior in (ecclesiastical) wisdom’, and ollam ēicsi, CIH 1567.13, ‘a superior in poetic learning’. The citation was noticed by Bergin,49 who read and translated it as ‘Ni ollam[ain] n-ard cūicedh nAilella m[a]ic Mata móra’ (the province of Ailill son of Máta does not magnify the high ollamh), and this translation is adopted by Binchy,50 with the qualification (footnote 5) that ‘owing to lack of the context the precise significance of this quotation is obscure’. On the other hand, Byrne emended nard to nad, citing ‘ní hollam nad cóiced nAilello maic Máta móra’, with the translation: ‘“he is no ollam who does not magnify the Fifth of Ailill mac Máta” (or “whom the Fifth […] does not magnify”)’.51 MS Texts B: Ní ruire nat coicced Concobair maic Nesa naisces o Drobhaís co Boind Ni flaithem nat coiced Coirpri Nía Fer fallnatar ó Bóinn co Combar Ni tigerna nát coiccedh Tigernaigh Tetbuilligh tomhuil o Comar co Belach Con Glais Ni rechtoid nat cóiccedh Con Roi maic Daire dila o Bealach 47 

For this text see Breatnach, A Companion to the ‘Corpus Iuris Hibernici’, pp. 264–65. Most of this passage is edited and translated by Binchy, ‘The Date and Provenance of Uraicecht Becc’, pp. 49–50. Apart from the citation in question here, the only significant difference in my translation is in taking the ollam gaíse to be a scriptural scholar, rather than a judge. 49  Bergin, ‘On the Syntax of the Verb’, p. 211. 50  Binchy, ‘The Date and Provenance of Uraicecht Becc’, p. 50, with n. 5. 51  Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings, pp. 175–76. As cóiced X is the object in the four other sentences in the full text (see below), the first of Byrne’s alternatives is the correct one. 48 

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Con Glais co Luimnech Ni hollam nad coiccedh nAilella maic Maghach mara o Luimnech co Drobhaoís. F: Nid ruire nad coice Concobair maic Nesa naisc .i. o Drobais co Boind Ni flaithim nad coiced Niadh Fear falbnabtar .i. o Boind co Comur Ni tigerna nad coiced Tigernaigh Tetbuillig tomailt .i. o Comur Tri nUisci co Belach Con Glais Ni rechtaigh52 nad coiced Con Ri maic Daire dila .i. o Belach Con Glais co Luimnec Ni hoictigerna nad coicedh Eathach maic Luchta liu .i. o Luimnech co hAth Cliath Medraighi Ni hollam nad coiced Oilella maic Mada mara .i. o Ath Cliath co Drobais rl-. The most important difference between these two copies is the addition of a sixth province in F, with the consequent alteration of the boundary points in the last sentence: ‘Nī hōictigerna nād cōicedh Eathach maic Luchta liu .i. ō Luimnech co hĀth Clīath Medraighi’ (He is no ‘young lord’ who does not…(?) the Fifth of Echaid son of Luchta, from the Shannon Estuary to Áth Clíath in Medraige).53 Not only is the resulting total of six ‘Fifths’ illogical, but also the term it uses for a ruler, ócthigerna, applies to a low-ranking lord, far below the level of the other five.54 Throughout the text, inferior readings are more numerous in the earlier MS, F, viz. Ní, B; Nid, F, § 1; Coirpri Nía Fer, B; Niadh Fear, F, § 2; fallnatar, B; falbnabtar, F, § 2; tomhuil, B; tomailt, F, § 3; Con Roi, B; Con Ri, F, § 4; nAilella, B; Oilella, F, § 5. Nevertheless, the reading of F is definitely superior in naisces, B; naisc, F, § 1, and probably so in two further cases, viz. Comar, B; Comur Tri nUisci, F, § 3, and Maghach, B; Mada, F, § 5. For the relative negative nád, F has nad in all five cases, whereas B has nat in sentences 1, 2, and 4, nát in 3, and nad in 5. For the preposition ó in the formula ó X co Y, B has o, and F has .i. o, in all five cases. As for the citation in the Book of Leinster genealogies (above, p. 62), the plural Nit ruirig is noteworthy, although the following verb naisces, with the relative form, as in the inferior reading in B, is singular.55

52 

The e is smudged. The name Medraige survives as the name of a peninsula in south Co. Galway, anglicized as the Maree Peninsula. I can make nothing of liu. 54  See Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, p. 26 n. 56. 55  Note also mora in both copies of Míadṡlechtae, as opposed to mara in both copies of the full text. 53 

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Restored text and translation 1. Ní ruiri nád Chóiced Conchobair maic Nesa naisc, ó Drobaís co Boïnd. 2. Ní flaithem nád Chóiced Coirpri Niäd Fer fallnathar, ó Boïnd co Combar. 3. Ní tigernae nád Chóiced Tigernaig Thétbuillig thomuil, ó Chombur Thrí nUisce co Belach Con Glais. 4. Ní rechtaid nád Chóiced Con Roï maic Dáiri díla, ó Belach Con Glais co Luimnech. 5. Ní hollam nád Chóiced nAilella maic Mátae mára, ó Luimniuch co Drobaís. 1. He is no overking who does not secure the Fifth of Conchobar son of Nes, from the Drowes to the Boyne. 2. He is no sovereign who does not rule over the Fifth of Coirpre Nia Fer, from the Boyne to Waterford Harbour. 3. He is no lord who does not consume [the revenues of ] the Fifth of Tigernach Tétbuillech, from Waterford Harbour to Belach Con Glais. 4. He is no lawgiver who does not discharge [the legal requirements of ] the Fifth of Cú Roi son of Dáire, from Belach Con Glais to the Shannon Estuary. 5. He is no supreme king who does not magnify the Fifth of Ailill son of Mátae, from the Shannon Estuary to the Drowes. The text begins with the north, and proceeds clockwise, the order in most of the accounts discussed above of the division of Ireland into five. The structure is marked by parallelism, with each sentence beginning with Ní ‘is not’, followed by a term for a ruler, followed by a negative relative clause, and ending with the boundary points of the province. In each of the relative clauses the object of the verb, consisting of the name of a province, is in tmesis, with the final element in the name alliterating with the verb. Apart from the tmesis of the relative negative particle and verb, a poetic feature which does not appear to have lasted into the MidIr period, the most significant linguistic feature pointing to a date of composition in the OIr period is the deponent verb fallnathar in § 2. The fact that it is cited in the Old Irish law text Míadṡlechtae provides indirect evidence

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for an early date — and there are no compelling reasons for seeing the relevant passage as a later addition.56 We thus have early evidence for the scheme of a division of Ireland into five idealized provinces connected with the Milesian Cóicedaig rather than Fir Bolg personages,57 and employing the set of boundary points most widely attested in the sources discussed in II and III above. In particular, it provides an early attestation of Belach Con Glais as a boundary point, and thus makes untenable the proposal that the name was only ever used of the place in present-day County Wicklow anglicized as Baltinglass, that there was no place of that name anywhere on the coast of Munster,58 and that the boundary point in Lebar Gabála Érenn is late, and ultimately arose from a misinterpretation of a claim in the genealogies, viz. ‘Is ī danō rann Dāl Chais i nDessmumain ōthā Belach Con-glaiss anair co Carn hūi Nēit’ (The share of Dál Cais in South Munster was from Belach Con Glais eastwards to Mizen Head).59 Regarding this Ó Murchadha60 said: Given the exorbitant claims already made, it should hardly evoke surprise that a site in Leinster, well-known in literary circles, should be designated as the eastern limit of Dál Cais territory in Desmumu, any more than that its western limit should be Carn Uí Néid (another literary-type name of the Mizen Head in west Cork)

which, of course, begs the question of what place is meant by the Belach Con-glaiss of this text. Ó Murchadha61 assumed that the bipartite division of Munster must have been between north and south, but the date of our text shows that twelfth-century political divisions are not of relevance for the location of the boundary points. Furthermore, the person who added the extra sentence in F to supply a clearly delineated sixth province of North Munster must have understood the division between the two Fifths at Belach Con Glais as being between east and west. As all the other boundary points are coastal, we 56 

See above, and note that the common error, nard for nád, may go back quite some time in the course of the MS transmission. 57  The names are as in the second and third lists of Cóicedaig in III above, and the other lists of Milesian provincial kings vary slightly from these. 58  Ó Murchadha, ‘Belach Conglais’. In this regard, note especially the description ‘cussin tulaig ōsin tuinn | oc Belach Con Glais’, in verse 5 of the poem in item (4) in II above. 59  CGH, p. 207. 60  Ó Murchadha, ‘Belach Conglais’, p. 438. 61  Ó Murchadha, ‘Belach Conglais’, pp. 440–41.

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can assume it was on the south coast of Ireland, and until it can be convincingly shown that Keating was wrong, we can do no better at present than to accept his statement that it was ‘láimh re Corcaigh’ (near to Cork).62 The text edited here, however, is not merely another account of a legendary division of Ireland into five. Each sentence links a particular attribute of kingship with the ruler of one province, but each of them will of course apply in general to all of these rulers. In no case is the choice of term for ruler determined by metrical requirements, and accordingly significance attaches to the fact that the text begins and ends with terms that have more specific connotations than the three in the middle. In Senchas Már the ruiri appears as the second highest rank of king, with an honour-price of 21 cumals, while the highest rank of king, with an honourprice of 28 cumals, is there called either rí ruirech ‘king of overkings’ or ollam ‘supreme king’. Elsewhere I argued that ollam refers to the king of Ireland.63 Certainly the MidIr commentary cited there assigns an honour-price of 21 cumals to the Rí Érenn co fresabra ‘king of Ireland with opposition’, and an honour-price of 28 cumals to the Rí Érenn cen ḟresabra ‘king of Ireland without opposition’. The highest rank of king in Bretha Nemed Toísech is also called ollam, but that text assigns him the lower honour-price of 21 cumals.64 The citation in the status text Míadṡlechtae appears in the context of a discussion of the meaning of the term ollam, and the comment ‘amail rīg Connacht’ in the sentence introducing the citation shows that the author took the final sentence of our text to refer literally to the king of Connacht. Here a single sentence has been abstracted from the text, but the interpretation I am proposing works only when the text is taken as a whole.65 As already mentioned, the five attributes of overkingship given in the text must each apply to all the provincial kings, and not just to the particular king with whom they are associated in the text. In other words, any provincial king will ‘secure’ his province, that is, take hostages, will rule his province, will consume the revenues of his province, will ‘discharge the legal requirements’ of his province, that is ensure that all judicial decisions are enforced, and will ‘magnify’ his province, that is, through his righteousness he will ensure peace, fer62 

Foras Feasa, ed. and trans. by Comyn, pp. 106–07; see further Candon, ‘Belach Conglais’. See Breatnach, ‘The King’, pp. 123–25. 64  See Breatnach, ‘The King’, p. 122. 65  In any case, ollam could hardly really have meant a provincial king only when that king was king of Connacht. 63 

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tility, and prosperity for his people. Nevertheless, the way in which our text assigns the attributes, and the order in which they are presented, beginning with the ruiri and ending with the ollam, imply that the ideal king who will combine all these attributes will be a king of Ireland with dominion over all five idealized provinces.

Works Cited Manu­scripts Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 P 2 (535), the Book of Lecan —— , MS 23 P 12 (536), the Book of Ballymote —— , MS D v 1 (537) —— , MS D i 3 (539) —— , MS D iii 1 (671) —— , MS B iv 2 (1080) —— , MS D iv 3 (1224) Dublin, Trinity College, MS H 2. 18 (1339), the Book of Leinster —— , MS E 3. 5 (1433) Dublin, University College Dublin (formerly Killiney, Franciscan Library), MS A9 Mullingar, Longford-Westmeath County Library, Gaelic MS 1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B502 —— , MS Rawlinson B512

Primary Sources The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. by Seán Mac Airt (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1951) ‘The Annals of Tigernach’, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes, Revue celtique, 16 (1895), 374–419; 17 (1896), 6–33, 119–263, 337–420; 18 (1897), 9–59, 150–97, 267–303 The Book of Leinster, ed.  by R.  I. Best, Osborn Bergin, Michael A. O’Brien, and Anne O’Sullivan, 6 vols (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1954–1983) Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. by M. A. O’Brien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1962) Corpus Iuris Hibernici, ed.  by D.  A. Binchy (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978) Foras Feasa ar Éirinn le Seathrún Céitinn: The History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating, i, ed. and trans. by David Comyn, Irish Texts Society, 4 (London: Irish Texts Society, 1902) Leabhar Gabhála: The Book of Conquests of Ireland; The Recension of Micheál Ó Cléirigh, pt 1, ed. and trans. by R. A. S. Macalister and John MacNeill (Dublin: Figgis, 1916)

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Leabhar Mór na nGenealach: The Great Book of Irish Genealogies, Compiled (1645–1666) by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, ed. and trans. by Nollaig Ó Muraíle, 5 vols (Dublin: De Búrca, 2003) Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, pt 4, ed. and trans. by R. A. S. Macalister, Irish Texts Society, 41 (London: Irish Texts Society, 1941) Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, pt 5, ed. and trans. by R. A. S. Macalister, Irish Texts Society, 44 (London: Irish Texts Society, 1956) The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh, ed. and trans. by Ludwig Bieler, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, 10 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1979) ‘The Settling of the Manor of Tara’, ed. and trans. by R. I. Best, Ériu, 4 (1910), 121–64 Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, ii, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)

Secondary Works Bergin, Osborn, ‘On the Syntax of the Verb in Old Irish’, Ériu, 12 (1938), 197–214 Binchy, D. A., ‘The Date and Provenance of Uraicecht Becc’, Ériu, 18 (1958), 44–54 Breatnach, Liam, A Companion to the ‘Corpus Iuris Hibernici’, Early Irish Law Series, 5 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005) —— , ‘The King in the Old Irish Law Text Senchas Már’, in Celtic Language, Law and Let­ ters: Proceedings of the Tenth Symposium of Societas Celto­logica Nordica, ed. by Folke Josephson, Meijerbergs Arkiv för Svensk Ordforskning, 38 (Göteborg: Meijerbergs institut vid Göteborgs universitet, 2010), pp. 107–28 —— , ‘The Lord’s Share in the Profits of Justice and a Passage in Cath Maige Tuired’, Celtica, 27 (2013), 1–17 —— , ‘Varia III. 1. On the Preposition for with the Negative Particle in Old Irish. 2. The River Níth’, Ériu, 67 (2017), 227–37 Byrne, F.  J., Irish Kings and High-Kings (London: Batsford, 1973; repr. with additions Dublin: Four Courts, 2001 and 2004) Candon, Anthony, ‘Belach Conglais and the Diocese of Cork, AD 1111’, Peritia, 5 (1986), 416–18 Carey, John, ‘The LU Copy of Lebor Gabála’, in Lebor Gabála Érenn: Textual History and Pseudohistory, ed. by John Carey, Irish Texts Society, Subsidiary Series, 20 (London: Irish Texts Society, 2009), pp. 21–32 Charles-Edwards, Thomas, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) de Brún, Pádraig, ‘Lámhscríbhinní Gaeilge sa Mhuileann gCearr’, Éigse, 19 (1983), 82–102 Dillon, Myles, Canice Mooney, and Pádraig De Brún, Catalogue of Irish Manu­scripts in the Franciscan Library, Killiney (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1969) Kelly, Fergus, A  Guide to Early Irish Law, Early Irish Law Series, 3 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988)

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—— , Early Irish Farming, Early Irish Law Series, 4 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Ad­ vanced Studies, 1997) Koch, John T., and Carey, John, The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales, 2nd edn (Malden: Celtic Studies Publications, 1995) Murphy, Gerard, Early Irish Metrics (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1961) Ó Murchadha, Diarmuid, ‘Belach Conglais: One or Two?’, Peritia, 16 (2002), 435–43 O’Rahilly, Thomas  F., Early Irish History and Mytho­logy (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946) O’Rahilly, Thomas  F., Kathleen Mulchrone, Mary  E. Byrne, James H. Delargy, Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Lilian Duncan, Winifred Wulff, Gerard Murphy, A. I. Pearson, and Tomás Ó Concheanainn, Catalogue of Irish Manu­scripts in the Royal Irish Academy, 8 vols (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1926–1970) Scowcroft, R. Mark, ‘Leabhar Gabhála, Part I: The Growth of the Text’, Ériu, 38 (1987), 81–142 —— , ‘Mediaeval Recensions of the Lebor Gabála’, in Lebor Gabála Érenn: Textual History and Pseudohistory, ed. by John Carey, ITS Subsidiary Series, 20 (London: Irish Texts Society, 2009), pp. 1–20

British and Irish? Some Thoughts on the Life of Saint Ailbe Máire Herbert*

N

early a century ago, C. H. Slover stated that there was ‘a community of ecclesiastical tradition’ between Britain and Ireland.1 This shared culture survives beyond the ending of formal ties between British and Irish churches in the sixth century.2 It is manifested in a variety of sources, but their evidence tends to be fragmentary and oblique. If we broaden the perspective beyond strictly historical texts to include hagio­graphy, further possibilities emerge. As hagio­graphy bears the imprint of the historical world in which it was produced, it offers potential testimony about interconnections between the Irish and British churches. However, we are faced with the fact that many hagio­graphical works, from both Britain and Ireland, have not been satisfactorily dated. It is necessary to elicit the context of composition before the evidence of a saint’s life can emerge. The present brief exploration of the transInsular aspect of the Hiberno-Latin Life of Ailbe, therefore, requires that we first review the content, date, and outlook of the text. Like most Hiberno-Latin lives, Ailbe’s vita survives only in manu­scripts of the later Middle Ages. It belongs to a group of lives common to three medi­eval collections, which Richard Sharpe identifies as deriving from a common exemplar. According to Sharpe, this exemplar is datable to the era between the mid 

* For Patrick, le meas mór agus le gach dea-ghuí. Slover, ‘Early Literary Channels’, p. 93. 2  Charles-Edwards, ‘Britons in Ireland’, pp. 16–17, 26. See also Dumville, ‘British Missionary Activity in Ireland’, ‘Some British Aspects of the Earliest Irish Christianity’. 1 

Máire Herbert ([email protected]) is Professor Emerita of Early and Medi­eval Irish, at Uni­ versity College, Cork. Her research focuses on the literary culture of early Christian Ireland. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131196 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 71–89 BREPOLS

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eighth and mid-ninth centuries. There seems to be consensus that the version of the lives preserved in the Codex Salmanticensis (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 7672–7674) best represents the text of the common exemplar. However, some scholars have expressed scepticism about Sharpe’s dating of the exemplar, and this, of course, has implications for the dating of the individual texts which it seems to have contained. Indeed, the dates assigned to the composition of the vita of Ailbe have ranged from the early eighth century to the twelfth. Such variation makes it timely to revisit this vita, especially since its full text tradition has recently been edited and translated by Pádraig Ó Riain. The present analysis accepts the position that the Codex Salmanticensis text best represents the work of the original hagio­grapher. Therefore, we will refer hereafter to the Salmanticensis version of Ailbe’s Life (abbreviated as VAil). The content of VAil may be divided into two sections. The first, slightly shorter, section (chapters 1–21) begins with an account of the circumstances of Ailbe’s birth, exposure, and rescue by a wolf, his early life in Munster, baptism by Palladius, and subsequent departure to Britain. Thereafter, it recounts his onward journey to Rome to study sacred scripture, his stay in the household of Bishop Hilary in Rome, and then with Pope Clement, with whom are many Irish peregrini. The pope declares himself unworthy to confer episcopacy on Ailbe because of the latter’s great favour with God. Consequently, Ailbe receives episcopal orders from angels in the papal presence. His episcopal feast is provided by heaven-sent food. Ailbe is then shown as preaching the gospel among pagans. Moving on, he comes to Dol in Brittany, where he assists its bishop, Samson, whose sacred vessels had shattered during Mass. Elsewhere, subsequently, he encounters a priest unable to utter the words of Mass. Ailbe perceives the reason, the presence of a woman pregnant with a future bishop. The child in the womb is identified as David of Cell Muine, whose father dedicates the child to Ailbe. Then, we are told, Ailbe proceeds to Ireland. The second section of the Life (chapters 22–55) details Ailbe’s ecclesiastical career in Ireland. Having landed in the north, he establishes one of his company in a church there. He meets Brigit in the Liffey plain, and he is visited by rulers for whom he performs miracles. Having made a circuit of Ireland, he comes to Cashel, the Munster royal seat, where Patrick entrusts all the Munstermen to Ailbe’s fatherly care, and he conveys to him the submission of the Munster king. Having demonstrated his saintly status to Patrick and Bishop Ibar, Ailbe assists the holy men, Enda of Aran and Sinchell, before being led by an angel to his ‘place of resurrection’ at Emly. From there he visits other locations and performs miracles for both clerics and laity. He sends to Rome for its latest liturgy. He is prevented by the Munster king from departing for an overseas hermitage,

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but he sends some of his company into exile. Finally, he boards a mysterious ship on the Clare coast, and is borne away. Ailbe returns next day to his community, carrying a fruited palm-branch, which remains with him constantly for three years, until removed by an angel. We infer that this signals Ailbe’s departure to heaven. Though his death is not narrated, the Life closes with a recital of his virtues and his reception by the celestial choir. Miracles are central to the saint’s life from the beginning. In the first section they show that divine favour accompanied Ailbe through his early life and religious formation. We see how wonder-working power marks his progress from chequered childhood to episcopal consecration. In the second section, the miracles convey help and positive advantage to both clerical and lay recipients in the southern half of Ireland. While implicitly underlining Ailbe’s divine favour, the miracle stories here point to the practical results of the saint’s interventions. The dead are raised, water is obtained from bare rock, wild animals do the saint’s bidding.3 Many of these miracles are said to be commemorated in public memory, in the presence of streams and rivers, in the ownership of places, and in the place-names themselves.4 According to this preliminary survey, therefore, the first section of the Life affirms Ailbe as divinely chosen in his progress from youth to episcopacy. In the second section his patronal role is conveyed through beneficial miracles for ecclesiastical and secular supplicants. The first section of Ailbe’s Life is marked by chrono­logical continuity, while the second is more episodic in structure. Moreover, despite the hagio­grapher’s opening designation of Ailbe as ‘sanctorum uirorum Munnensium preses siue pater beatissimus et Ybernie insule alter Patricius’ (head or most blessed father of Munster’s holy men, and second Patrick of the island of Ireland),5 in the second section he is primarily presented as a clerical leader in a Christian society rather than as an agent of conversion like Patrick. Ailbe’s hagio­g rapher remains anonymous, so we must rely on his text for indications of date. There are signs that he was familiar with the work of Irish hagio­graphical predecessors, notably with the seventh-century Patrician hagio­ graphy of Muirchú and Tírechán.6 This is the likely channel for VAil information that Palladius had preceded Patrick as evangelist in Ireland.7 The subse3 

On the typo­logy of miracles, see Stancliffe, ‘The Miracle Stories’, pp. 94–101. For instance, VAil, chs 22, 27, 41, 46. 5  VAil, ch. 1. 6  Patrician Texts, ed. and trans. by Bieler, pp. 62–167. 7  Patrician Texts, ed. and trans. by Bieler, pp. 72–73, 164–67. I accept that the narrative 4 

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quent course of Ailbe’s progress to Britain and onward to the Continent for clerical training, also suggests a Patrician model. A significant indication of Patrician influence is the reflection in VAil of the final statement of Tírechán, that Patrick ‘baptized the sons of Nie Froích in the land of Munster’.8 Ailbe’s hagio­g rapher declares that when his subject reached Cashel: ‘inuenit ibi Patricium et regem Engussum’ (he found Patrick and king Óengus there). This is the king whom VAil previously identified as ‘Engus filius Nafrith, rex Muman’.9 The text thereby seems to accept Tírechán’s assertion that Patrick had a special relationship with the Munster royal dynasty. However, VAil goes on to subvert Tírechán by stating that Patrick granted to Ailbe spiritual headship over all the people of Munster, and the submission of its king.10 Given the likely contact of VAil with the Patrician texts of the late seventh century, the latter date offers a provisional terminus a quo for the composition of Ailbe’s Life.11 What else may be deduced about the date of the Life? Ailbe’s Irish activities, detailed in the second section of VAil (chapters 22–55), have as their centrepiece the revelation of his ‘place of resurrection’, the site at Emly, where his church and future grave will be located.12 Yet the saint’s deeds radiate widely from the focal points of Emly and nearby Cashel, the secular capital. In effect, the political geo­graphy of the saint’s encounters seems to delineate the area of influence of the Eastern Éoganacht kings of Munster, as deducible from eighthcentury sources such as Frithfholad Muman.13 From his headquarters in Emly, in the royal heartland, Ailbe’s miracle-working extends to Éoganacht client kingdoms like Uí Fhidgente and Ossory. It also reaches a saint of the Múscraige, and a layman beside present-day Limerick. It is attested in north Clare and as far as the Aran islands.14 This world of Ailbe’s influence seems to belong to the of the conversion of the legendary king of Ulster, Conchobar mac Nessa, is an interpolation in VAil, ch. 3. See Plummer, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, i, ‘Introduction’, p. xxix, n. 4. 8  Patrician Texts, ed. and trans. by Bieler, pp. 162–62, ch. 51.4. 9  VAil, ch. 29, ch. 28. 10  VAil, ch. 29: ‘Tunc Patricius obtulit Albeo omnes uiros Munnensium, ut esset eorum pater, et regem Engussum in manum Albei’. 11  I follow the chrono­logy proposed for the Patrician works by Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 439–40. The form of Óengus’s patronymic is Nad-Fraích in the earliest manu­scripts of the genealogies. 12  VAil, ch. 34. 13  Dál Caladbuig, ed. by O’Keeffe, pp. 19–21. See Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 522–23, 534–58. 14  VAil, chs 36, 46–47, 38–39, 40, 53, 32. Episodes concerning Brigit in Leinster (VAil,

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era before the alienation of Ossory from Munster in the ninth century.15 The representation of the Munster king as grantor of Aran to the holy man, Énda, is paralleled in an eighth-century vernacular source.16 The hagio­grapher makes no mention of the Éoganacht of West Munster, an indication, perhaps, that this branch of the dynasty was regarded as a competitor for Munster overkingship, as was the case in the eighth century.17 As for further dating indications, the text of VAil reflects religious themes attested primarily in sources of the seventh and eighth centuries. The hagio­ grapher draws on the idea of natural goodness, the instinctual belief held by those not yet formally converted to Christianity.18 He also adverts to the deduction of knowledge of the Creator from contemplation of the created world, a theme highlighted, for instance, in the writings of Columbanus.19 In a specifically Irish context, the theme of religiously inspired sea-voyaging in VAil has affinities with Hiberno-Latin and vernacular writings from the eighth century onward.20 Emphasis on Rome as the locus of ecclesiastical training and liturgical guidance further reflects attitudes of Irish sources of the seventh and eighth centuries.21 On the social level, VAil illustrates concern with sworn brigandage. The use of the vernacular term dibherc to gloss the uotum pessimum mentioned in VAil parallels usage in other Hiberno-Latin texts of the pre-Viking era.22 The VAil text evidently takes for granted that its original Irish public would be familiar with the Old Irish vernacular termino­logy of ritualized outlawry.

chs 23–24), and episodes ‘in regionibus Connacht’ (Vail, chs 42–44) may be influenced by Patrician hagio­graphy, and thereby may express aspiration to influence beyond Munster. 15  AU 859.3. See Byrne, Irish Kings, p. 265. 16  See Byrne, ‘The Eóganacht Ninussa’, pp. 23–24. 17  Obits of kings of Iarmumu (West Munster) are recorded in AI in the years 700, 717, and 734. Máel Dúin, from the same kingdom, seems to have succeeded to the kingship of Munster shortly after the death of Cathal mac Fhinnguine in 742, and is styled rí Muman (king of Munster) in his death-notice in the same annals in the year 786. 18  VAil, chs 2 and 3. See Donahue, ‘Beowulf, Ireland and the Natural Good’; and ‘Beowulf and Christian Tradition’. See also Stancliffe, ‘The Miracle Stories’, pp. 104–05, and Watson, ‘A Law beyond Grace’. 19  Sancti Columbani opera, ed. and trans. by Walker, ‘Instructio 1’, pp. 62–67. 20  Herbert, ‘Literary Sea-Voyages’, focuses specifically on VAil, chs 49 and 54. 21  Cummian’s Letter, ed. and trans. by Walsh and Ó Cróinín, pp. 91–97; Sharpe, ‘Armagh and Rome’. 22  Sharpe, ‘Hiberno-Latin laicus’, pp. 80–92.

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Moreover, the hagio­g rapher seamlessly accommodates a quatrain in Old Irish, framed as Ailbe’s reply to a query about acceptance of gifts, an issue itself current in texts of the late seventh and eighth centuries.23 Though the surviving Salmanticensis manu­script of VAil probably dates from the fourteenth century, it preserves earlier vernacular usage such as Fert nAilbe (Ailbe’s grave) with Old Irish nasalization indicating the neuter gender of the noun fert.24 Indeed, the use itself of fert in the sense of ‘grave’ finds its nearest parallels in the Patrician texts in the Book of Armagh, which acknowledge fert as pre-Christian burial termino­logy, but indicate that it remained in use in the early Christian era.25 The inflection of Irish words governed by Latin forms, such as in oriente Cliach, and the occasional introduction of vernacular prepositions, as in hi Kinn Sali, seem to reflect usage in the Annals of Ulster before the end of the eighth century.26 A similar inference may be drawn from the fact that the personal name forms Mogopoc and Gopbanus are used interchangeably, indicating that hypocoristic name formation had not fallen into disuse.27 An initial conservative dating terminus before the end of the eighth century rests, therefore, on an amalgamation of different kinds of evidence. It is difficult to envisage that a later archaizing redactor could have reproduced a text so consistently of its time on so many levels. The hagio­grapher’s modus operandi is evidently influenced by the purposes of his work, and by the composition of the public for which it was intended. Yet while seventh-century Irish counterparts prefaced their work with statements of intention, the VAil hagio­grapher offers no insight other than what may be elicited from his text. What can we discover? The Latin Life was evidently destined in the first place for fellow clerics, particularly those of Munster, to establish Ailbe’s role as their premier patron, and to counter claims on behalf of Patrick. We have seen, moreover, how Tírechán’s work associated Patrick with the baptism of Munster’s royal dynasty. Indeed, assertions of association between Patrick and Munster kingship existed elsewhere. An addition to the seventh-century law text Córus Bésgnai relates that Corc mac Luigdech, ances23 

For a note on the verse (VAil, ch. 50), see Ó Riain, Beatha Ailbhe, pp. 223–24. See also Patrician Texts, ed. and trans. by Bieler, pp. 186–87 (Liber Angeli 12); Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 55, 20–21. 24  DIL s.v. fert. Note the further example, ad Firt Squethe, in VAil, ch. 38. See also O’Brien, ‘Pagan and Christian Burial’, pp. 133–36; Herbert, ‘Hagio­graphy and Holy Bodies’, pp. 256–57. 25  Patrician Texts, ed. and trans. by Bieler, pp. 144–45 (Tírechán 26.20). 26  Dumville, ‘Latin and Irish’, pp. 323–33, 338–41. 27  See Russell, ‘Patterns of Hypocorism’, pp. 237–49.

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tor of Munster’s ruling dynasty, submitted to Patrick at Tara.28 Such ongoing assertions meant that the hagio­graphical promotion of Ailbe’s position had to communicate with Munster royalty as well as clergy, to counter the special status claimed for Patrick as their Christian evangelist. These considerations offer a context for the use in VAil of imagery from traditional story as well as from a religious repertoire. Thus, while Ailbe’s Life follows a hagio­graphical paradigm, at another level it fits the model of the life of a hero. Like the hero of Irish tradition, the circumstances of Ailbe’s birth are anomalous. As a child, his life is threatened. He spends time overseas, subdues dangerous beasts, returns to take up his destined role. He departs in the wake of an invitation to the Otherworld, and comes back bearing an Otherworld token, the removal of which seems to signal his death.29 We infer, therefore, that the hagio­grapher’s representation of Ailbe may be read as a narrative in traditional heroic mode, as well as a conventional composition of Christian literature.30 It is a reasonable assumption that there were learned professionals who could mediate the Latin hagio­graphical composition in the required manner in the Munster royal household. We will look briefly at the opening chapters to see how VAil communicates with its various constituencies. The Life recounts that Ailbe is conceived in an illicit relationship between two servants of the Artraige royal household. His father flees on hearing about the pregnancy. When the child is born, the king refuses to accept him in his household, and he orders the infant’s exposure. Left under a rock, the newborn Ailbe is taken and reared by a wolf, until discovered by Lochan, a man ‘perfect in natural goodness’. While the rearing of a child of destiny among wild animals is an international story motif, in an Irish context it is best known in relation to Cormac mac Airt, king of Tara, and ancestor figure of the Uí Néill.31 Why might this story be told of a Munster saint? In the eighth century, as the Uí Néill achieved dominance in the northern half, Munster political theory seems to have proposed the doctrine of two equal hegemonies of Éoganachta and Uí Néill, in a division of Ireland into Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga, the northern

28 

Córus Bésgnai, ed. and trans. by Breatnach, section 32, pp. 32–33, and notes, pp. 76–77. See Ó Cathasaigh, The Heroic Bio­g raphy, pp.  2–7; Herbert, ‘Literary Sea-Voyages’, pp. 184–85. 30  On heroic patterning in hagio­g raphy, see McCone, Pagan Past, pp.  179–202 (esp. pp. 191–92); Bray, ‘Heroic Tradition in the Lives’. 31  Ó Cathasaigh, The Heroic Bio­graphy, pp. 24–35, 51–57. 29 

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half of Ireland and the southern.32 There surely was propaganda value in presenting the Éoganacht of Leth Moga with a patron saint whose birth-narrative mirrored that of a royal paragon of Leth Cuinn. Having evoked Patrician hagio­g raphy in the account of Ailbe’s departure in the company of fleeing Britons from Ireland to Britain, the next sequence, Ailbe’s religious training on the Continent, again links the heroic with the hagio­g raphic. Arriving at a Roman camp, Ailbe performs miracles in a first major display of saintly power. Two episodes (VAil chapters 7, 8) depict the saint’s encounter with lions. This affinity with lions, hardly a usual attribute for Munster sanctity, nevertheless links Ailbe with other saintly figures, while also representing him in the role of beast-subduing hero.33 Thereafter Ailbe goes to study with Bishop Hilary, where he is set to work as a swineherd. This echoes Patrick’s experience during his Irish servitude, but also evokes the key role of the swineherd in the origin legend of Cashel, the royal seat of Munster.34 At this point we may enquire whether the hagio­grapher simply fabricated a life by drawing on paradigms from religious literature and vernacular narrative. There has been a perception that his subject, Ailbe, was a shadowy figure, perhaps even pre-Christian.35 We have no evidence from the putative era of his lifetime. However, seventh-century sources indicate that by then Ailbe’s ecclesiastical successors held a significant position in the contemporary Irish church. Cummian, in his letter on the Easter question dated about the year 632, recounts how he consulted his elders, ‘the successors of our first fathers’, among whom is Bishop Ailbe’s successor.36 A successor of Ailbe of Emly is among those named on the list of clerical guarantors of the Law of Adomnán in the year 697.37 The Irish annals record the obits of heads of the church of Emly from the year 661 onwards.38 The inclusion of Ailbe’s feast day in the earliest Irish martyro­logies suggests the existence of a cult before the beginning of 32 

See Byrne, Irish Kings, pp. 202–08. Loomis, White Magic, pp. 58–59. 34  Patrician Texts, ed. and trans. by Bieler, pp. 124–25 (Tírechán 1.2); Dillon, ‘The Story of the Finding of Cashel’. 35  Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints, p. 58. 36  Cummian’s Letter, ed. and trans. by Walsh and Ó Cróinín, pp. 90–91. See ll. 260–63. 37  Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The Guarantor List’, p. 186 discusses the issue of his identity. 38  The full list is set out in A New History of Ireland, ix, ed. by Moody, Martin, and Byrne, pp. 252–53. 33 

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the ninth century, as does the naming of Ailbe in invocations of saints in the Stowe Missal.39 What then of the saint’s portrayal in VAil? As the hagio­g rapher was neither bio­g rapher nor historian, he could freely borrow from legendary as well as Christian sources, according to the conventions of his genre. Yet there are aspects of the saint’s portrayal in VAil which do not fit readily within the usual patterns. We see an example in the VAil account of the saint’s descent. Genealogical identification of an Irish saintly figure is usually a central part of his record. The details of descent do not necessarily present historical data, but they situate the saint within the social structures of a community, and they validate his relationships with clerical and secular interests in that community. Ailbe’s Life is notably anomalous here. His father is said to abscond once he learns of the child’s conception, and his mother is mentioned no more after his birth. Ailbe is retrieved from his wolf-nurturer by Lochan filius Lugir, identifiable in the genealogies as belonging to the Araid, a people in the neighbourhood of Ailbe’s birthplace.40 Yet Lóchán merely hires fosterers, Britons in servitude locally, to raise the saintly infant. Thus, while the Life’s geo­graphical co-ordinates associate Ailbe with eastern Cliú, a region comprising present-day east Limerick and south-west Tipperary, his early guardians there turn out to be wolves and Britons. It is during his stay with the Britons that he is said to encounter Palladius, from whom he receives baptism.41 Britons also set in train the next phase of Ailbe’s career, as he travels with them back to their homeland. Ailbe proceeds onward to Rome for clerical training and, eventually, episcopal orders. Thereafter he preaches in pagan territory, before going on to Dol in Brittany, where he miraculously mends the broken Mass-vessels of Bishop Samson. After an intervening episode in an unspecified location, he arrives at a church in which the priest finds himself unable to speak. Ailbe divines the reason, the presence of a woman pregnant with a future bishop, identified as Dauid Cilli Muni. We are told that his father offered David to Ailbe as an oblate.

39 

Ailbe is commemorated on 12 September in the Martyro­logies of Tallaght and of Óengus. For the Stowe Missal invocations, see Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, ed. and trans. by Stokes and Strachan, ii, p. 284. 40  CGH, p. 327 (LL 326 i 42). See Schaffer, ‘Statements of Power’, which includes a revision of a genealogical inference in Herbert, ‘Literary Sea-Voyages’, p. 187. 41  On Palladius in Ireland, see Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 202–14.

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Thus far, at junctures where VAil follows a course that seems unique rather than conventional, we find Ailbe in association with Britons. Britons are significant in his youth, and encounters with British saintly figures, Samson and David, also mark his progress from the Continent back to Ireland. In the second section of the text, relating Ailbe’s pastoral role in the southern half of Ireland, the presence of Britons is less obvious. Nevertheless, certain religious figures whom Ailbe encounters turn out to have British links. For instance, Énda of Aran, for whom Ailbe procured his island site, is said to have hosted St Cybi there.42 The latter, in hypocoristic guise as Mochop, is claimed as a uterine brother of Sciath of Muscraige, for whom Ailbe performs miracles.43 Another saint to whom Ailbe assigns a site, Sinchell, is one of two saintly Sinchells whom a gloss identifies as ‘Britanni o Britania’.44 Of course, there are alternative records that identify these figures exclusively within an Irish context.45 It is difficult to know what weight to assign to specific items. The mutability of the evidence is indicated further by supplementary information in a tract on the mothers of saints. The tract itself seems to be a post-Viking compilation, but its content is of varying date.46 In relation to our subject, the text states that ‘Magna siur Dauida Cilli Mune’ (Magna, sister of David of Cell Muine) is mother of ‘Setna mac Essen do Artraighi Cliach’. Thus, the sister of St David is associated with the Artraige of Cliú, the people among whom VAil places Ailbe’s conception. Moreover, it links Setna, David’s nephew, with Kinsale, along with his two brothers, Mogobba and Moeltioc. Through Mogobba, alternatively named as Mogopoc and Gopbanus, the data is linked again with Ailbe, since the Kinsale cleric features in VAil as one of Ailbe’s brethren.47 This is not the only instance in which female kindred are key to saintly associations. While David’s sister links Ailbe with the British clerical sphere, yet another entry provides Ailbe with a relationship with significant Munster figures. Sant, his mother, is claimed as 42 

Vitae sanctorum Britanniae, ed. by Wade-Evans, pp. 238–39 (ch. 9). On the form of the name, see Vitae sanctorum Britanniae, pp. 240–41, ch. 13. For genealogical data, see Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. by Ó Riain (hereafter CGSH), 722.98. See also Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, p. 607. 44  Irish Litanies, ed. and trans. by Plummer, pp. 56–57. 45  For instance, CGSH 662.133; 282–83. 46  For text, see The Book of Leinster, vi, ed. by O’Sullivan, pp. 1692–97, ll. 51933–52155, and, with other manu­script readings, CGSH 722.1–106. On dating, see Herbert, ‘Hagio­ graphical Miscellany’, p. 116 n. 30. 47  CGSH 722.94, VAil, chs 1, 45. 43 

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mother also to Colmán son of Derane. This Colmán, named in VAil as a fellow Irish student with Ailbe in Rome, is not only identified in the tract as Ailbe’s uterine brother, but also as son of Óengus mac Nádfraích, king of Munster.48 Having noted signs both of a British substratum and of a Munster overlay in Ailbe’s record, therefore, we will return to the question of context. The VAil hagio­grapher’s Latin composition seems to have been directed primarily at an elite public. An eighth-century date has already been proposed for the composition. At what point within that century were there circumstances which might have prompted hagio­g raphical activity? Given that VAil seems to respond to Patrician claims in Munster, such a response is likely to come soon after such claims were first articulated, towards the end of the seventh century. Early eighth-century Munster saw the accession to power in Munster of an ambitious ruler, Cathal mac Fhinnguine, whose recorded actions suggest hostility to external claims within his kingdom.49 While we have no direct evidence of his attitude to Armagh, conversely, an indication of his support of Emly appears in a verse accompanying his death-notice in the Annals of Inisfallen. The poet asserts that Cathal’s burial in Emly is a source of fame for that church.50 Given its proximity to the royal site of Cashel, we may enquire why Ailbe’s church of Emly hitherto seems not to have been the premier church of Munster. The sources do not provide a ready answer, but we may make some tentative inferences. As Munster kingship circulated among the main Eoganacht branches, each probably favoured its own church.51 We may suggest tentatively that Emly was primarily a church associated with fortúatha (external peoples).52 This inference is not based solely on the British elements in Ailbe’s hagio­ graphical record, nor on the nomination of Ailbe’s successor as representative of the fortúatha in the late eighth-century text of the West Munster Synod.53 We may note that the earliest annal obit of an Emly churchman in the year 661, records the death of ‘Conann, descendant (nepos) of Dant’. This name

48 

CGSH 722.59, VAil, chs 1, 15. AU 721.6, 733.7, 735.3, 737.9, 738.9. The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt (hereafter AI), 721, 735. See Byrne, Irish Kings, pp. 205–11. 50  AI 742. 51  On Éoganacht connections claimed by the church of Cloyne, see Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 298, 522–23. 52  See Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 548–56. 53  See Byrne, Irish Kings, pp. 216–20. 49 

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suggests that he was of British origin.54 As well as adding to the indications of British connections in Ailbe’s world, this entry may also mark a turning-point. Conann’s successors in Emly all seem to have Irish names.55 We may suppose that change in the orientation of the community of Ailbe was in train by the latter part of the seventh century. Emly’s transition from British association to becoming more Munster-focused seems to have coincided with a new power in Munster kingship in the early decades of the eighth century. These factors may have prompted the compilation of VAil. It stands to reason that something of Emly’s earlier history remained in public memory. Indeed, the text of VAil appears delicately balanced between acknowledging British aspects of Ailbe’s legacy and configuring the Irish aspects. The VAil encounters with Samson and David are, perhaps, the most notable signs of British association. Certainly, they are hagio­graphical in design, setting Ailbe in favourable relationship with leading saints of the Britons. The chrono­logy implicit in the VAil narratives seems to be generally consistent with external dating indications, such as we have them. Samson’s career is dated by his recorded presence at the Council of Paris, between the years 556 and 573. The suggested date of his migration to Brittany is around the year 520.56 David’s death-notice in the Irish annals is in the year 589, while Ailbe’s death has been placed in the year 527, or alternatively in 534.57 While these co-ordinates are not all historically verifiable, it is notable that the VAil hagio­grapher appears to maintain similar relative dating. While Ailbe encounters Samson as an adult, David is encountered as an infant in the womb.58 VAil seems to be the only Irish hagio­ graphical source which mentions either St Samson or his church of Dol. Can we ascertain anything further? Various opinions have been expressed concerning the date of the earliest vita of Samson, but I incline to the view that it is a work of the seventh century or around the year 700.59 While its availability in 54 

This has also been proposed by Charles-Edwards, The Chronicle of Ireland, i, p. 152 and n. 3. See n. 41. 56  For discussion, see Wood, ‘Columbanus, the Britons, and the Merovingian Church’, pp. 103–06; Mews, ‘Apostolic Authority and Celtic Liturgies’, pp. 115–21. 57  While the obits of Ailbe occur both in AU and in annals of the Clonmacnoise group, the obit of David occurs only in a Clonmacnoise text. See Charles-Edwards, The Chronicle of Ireland, pp. 90–93, 116. 58  The ninth-century vita of Paul Aurelian represents Samson, David, and Gildas as coevals. See Evans, The Welsh Life of St David, ‘Introduction’, p. xvii; Cuissard, ‘Vie de Saint Paul de Léon’, p. 421. 59  See Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons. p. 239 n. 58; Sims-Williams, Religion and 55 

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Ireland was assumed by James Carney when he suggested that it influenced the author of the vernacular text, Táin Bó Fraích, this view is unsupported.60 The surviving manu­script record of Samson’s earliest life is largely Continental, and no evidence has since been adduced that it circulated in Ireland.61 Yet Samson’s vita does contain an Irish episode, relating that the saint, while still in south Wales, was visited by learned Irishmen returning from Rome. Having decided to accompany them to their homeland, Samson made a short stay in Ireland, during which he healed an abbot, who subsequently offered him his monastery.62 The site has been identified as present-day Balgriffin, in north Co. Dublin. While there is no historical verification of Samson’s association with an Irish site, we must acknowledge the persistence of the tradition which connects him with this one place.63 An Irish church dedicated to Samson might have offered a channel for dissemination of the Vita Sancti Samsonis in Ireland. Yet indications that the vita of Samson was available to the author of VAil are inconclusive. There are certain similarities between the works in a small number of episodes, the accounts of their respective episcopal ordinations, for instance, and of attempted poisoning of each saint by jealous clerics.64 Overall, however, it is difficult to be convinced that the author of VAil had access to a full text of Samson’s Life. The text of Ailbe’s Life suggests another explanation for its subject’s association with Dol. The specification in VAil (chapter 19) of Dol’s location ‘in extremis finibus Lethe’ (in the furthest parts of Brittany), and the statement that Ailbe and his company were staying there ‘in hospicio’ (in a guest-house), suggest a pilgrim’s perspective. We may speculate that Dol is Literature, p. 80; Sharpe, ‘Martyrs and Local Saints’, p. 85 n. 47; Sowerby, ‘The Lives of St Samson’; Olson, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–18. 60  Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History, pp. 123–25. See Táin Bó Fraích, ed. by Meid, p. 44 n. 372. 61  On manu­scripts, see Flobert, La vie ancienne, ‘Introduction’, pp. 43–53. On the version surviving in Wales, see Brett, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’, p. 99; Jankulak, ‘The Cult’, pp. 177–79. 62  La vie ancienne, ed. by Flobert, pp. 200–05, chs 37–40. 63  Though written testimony is available only from about the end of the twelfth century, physical remains may suggest an earlier foundation. See the entry on ‘Balgriffin’ on the Monasticon Hiberniae site, hosted by Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies. For other views, see Ó Riain, ‘Samson alias San(c)tán’; Jankulak, ‘The Cult’, pp. 177–80. It is noteworthy that the only instance of Samson as a personal name in the Irish annals occurs in AU in the year 736. 64  VAil, chs 13 and 16; La vie ancienne, ed. by Flobert, chs 16–18, 42–44.

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likely to have been on one of the routes between Rome and the Insular regions, and that it was known to the hagio­grapher in this capacity. VAil is less specific in its localization of its subject’s encounter with David. A short anecdote (chapter 20) intervening after the narrative set in Dol implicitly conveys progression in time and place, and the following ‘in illis quoque partibus’ (in those regions) apparently refers to Wales. It is there that Ailbe encounters a priest, struck dumb as he attempted to say Mass. The saint explains that the priest cannot offer Mass because of the presence of a bishop in the congregation, albeit that the bishop is still a child in the womb. As soon as the child’s mother had left the church, the celebrant was able to proceed. The child destined to be bishop is identified as David of Cell Muine.65 This narrative concern with the deference due to a bishop in the matter of offering Mass is highlighted independently by Adomnán in the Vita Columbae, around the close of the seventh century, when he recounts how a bishop’s concealed identity was revealed by the Iona abbot.66 In his commentary on the Columban text Reeves cited a decree of the second Council of Seville prohibiting priests from offering ‘the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ’ in the presence of the bishop. The relevance of Reeves’s observation becomes more apparent with the knowledge that the council, held in the year 619, was presided over by Isidore of Seville, whose works were known in Ireland by the end of the seventh century.67 Therefore, we may deduce tentatively that the VAil hagio­grapher, like his near-contemporary Adomnán, was aware of the Isidorian ruling, and projected an observance introduced in his own time back to the time of his subject. The VAil narrative about David seems to be an antecedent of its counterpart in Rhygyfarch’s Life of David, compiled at the close of the eleventh century.68 In the latter text David’s pregnant mother entered a church in which Gildas was preaching. Thereupon Gildas’s voice failed, he could no longer preach, and remained thus until David’s mother left the church. Gildas explains that his inability to preach was because of the greater power of the child in the womb, who would hold sovereignty over all the Britons. Gildas himself, therefore, 65 

On Cell Muine, the Irish rendering of Mynyw, see Ó Riain and others, eds, Historical Dictionary of Gaelic Placenames, fasc. 4, s.v. Ceall Mhuine (1). 66  Vita Columbae, ed. and trans. by Anderson and Anderson, i.44. See Reeves, The Life of St Columba, notes, pp. 85–87. 67  On Irish reception of Isidore, see Ó Corráin, Clavis litterarum Hibernensium, i, pp. 237–40, item 207. I suggest that the acta of the council were transmitted along with other Isidorian materials, but this cannot be verified. 68  Vita Sancti David, ed. and trans. by Sharpe and Davies, ch. 5.

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would depart, and leave all Britain to the woman’s son. David’s hagio­g rapher misses the point that the VAil narrative is about clerical precedence in the performance of the Eucharist. The later text interprets it rather in the context of preaching, and in terms of competition between two leading saints of Wales. In another instance of reinterpretation on Rhygyfarch’s part, Ailbe is identified simply as the baptizer of the infant David, whereas a more long-term connection is implied in the VAil statement that David’s father offered the child to Ailbe ‘in eternum’.69 In identifying the baptizing saint as ‘Muminensium episcopus’ (bishop of the Munstermen), David’s hagio­grapher seems to imply that his ultimate source must have been Irish-derived. Was there a British tradition of association between Ailbe and David? Is the saint who is commemorated at Llaneilw near St David’s identifiable as the subject of VAil? If this be so, Ailbe thereby belongs to a company of saints with dedications on both sides of the Irish Sea. Our existing sources suggest that Ailbe belongs to a generation preceding David, while other figures with dual affiliations are represented as David’s contemporaries.70 Clearly it is a matter of regret that there are so few sources to illuminate the era more fully. We are left with tantalizing glimpses of interconnections between the early Christian worlds of Britain and Ireland, and with the hope that more remains to be discovered. The text of VAil appears to mirror a transition already experienced in the broader Irish ecclesiastical world, from a church under British tutelage to a church that was Irish in governance and orientation. As is the case with testimony about the wider Irish church, we need to read between the lines of the sources. The VAil account of the saint’s lupine youth seems to serve as a narrative smokescreen, obscuring the anomalies of Irish birth and British upbringing. It thus encapsulates how the past was simultaneously concealed and revealed. While genealogical records came to provide Ailbe with an entirely Irish pedigree,71 his hagio­graphical record implies an identity in which British past and Irish present were being merged. VAil thereby stands as a microcosm of a formative era in early Irish Christianity.

69  70 

David. 71 

Vita Sancti David, ed. and trans. by Sharpe and Davies, ch. 7. Compare VAil, ch. 21. For example, Aidan of Ferns, Scuithín, and Mo Domnóc, who all feature in the vita of

CGH 119 a 23, LL 326 h 8; CGSH items 135, 189, 436, 456, 662.190–91, 722.59, 729.3; Félire Óengusso, ed. and trans. by Stokes, p. 206. The variance between versions of Ailbe’s pedigree requires its own investigation.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Adomnán’s Life of Columba, ed. and trans. by A.  O. Anderson and M.  O. Anderson, revised by M. O. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991) The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. by Seán Mac Airt (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1951; repr. 1977) The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes, Revue celtique, 16 (1895), 374–419; 17 (1896), 6–33, 116–263, 337–420; 18 (1897), 9–59, 150–97, 267–303; repr. in 2 vols (Felinfach: Llanerch, 1993) The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131), ed. and trans. by Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983) Beatha Ailbhe: The Life of Saint Ailbhe of Cashel and Emly, ed. and trans. by Pádraig Ó Riain, Irish Texts Society, 67 (London: Irish Texts Society, 2017) The Book of Leinster, vi, ed. by Anne O’Sullivan (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983) The Chronicle of Ireland, trans. by Thomas  M. Charles-Edwards, 2  vols (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006) Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. by M. A. O’Brien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1962; repr. 1976) Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum Hiberniae, ed.  by Pádraig Ó Riain (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1985) Córus Bésgnai: An Old Irish Law Tract on the Church and Society, ed. and trans. by Liam Breatnach (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2017) Cummian’s Letter ‘De controversia paschali’ and the ‘De ratione conputandi’, ed. and trans. by Maura Walsh and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medi­eval Studies, 1988) Dál Caladbuig, ed. by J. G. O’Keeffe, in Irish Texts, ed. by J. Fraser, P. Grosjean, and J. G. O’Keeffe, Fasciculus, 1 (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931), pp. 19–21 Félire Óengusso Céli Dé: The Martyro­logy of Oengus the Culdee, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1905; repr. 1984) Irish Litanies, ed. and trans. by Charles Plummer (London: The Henry Bradshaw Society, 1925; repr. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992) ‘The Laud Genealogies and Tribal Histories’, ed. by Kuno Meyer, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 8 (1912), 291–338 The Life of St Columba, ed. by William Reeves (Dublin: Irish Archaeo­logical and Celtic Society, 1857) The Martyro­logy of Tallaght, ed. and trans. R. I. Best and Hugh Jackson Lawlor (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1931) A New History of Ireland, ix: Maps, Genealogies, Lists: A Companion to Irish History, pt 2, ed. by T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002) The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh, ed. and trans. by Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1979)

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‘Rhygyfarch’s Life of St David’, ed. and trans. by Richard Sharpe and John Reuben Davies, in St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation, ed. by J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), pp. 107–55 Sancti Columbani opera, ed. and trans. by G. S. M. Walker (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1970) Táin Bó Fraích, ed. by Wolfgang Meid (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1974) Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, ed. by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901; repr. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975) La vie ancienne de Saint Samson de Dol, ed. and trans. by Pierre Flobert (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1997) Vie de Saint Pol de Léon en Bretagne, ed. by C. Cuissard, Revue celtique, 5 (1881–1882), 413–60 Vitae sanctorum Britanniae et genealogiae, ed. and trans. by A. W. Wade-Evans (Cardiff: University of Wales Press Board, 1944) Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. by Charles Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910) ‘Vita  S. Albei episcopi in Imlech’, in Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae ex Codice olim Salmanticensi nunc Bruxellensi, ed. by W. W. Heist (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), pp. 118–31 The Welsh Life of St David, ed. by D. Simon Evans (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1988)

Secondary Works Bisagni, Jacopo, and Immo Warntjes, ‘Latin and Old Irish in the Munich Computus: A Reassessment and Further Evidence’, Ériu, 57 (2007), 1–33 Bray, Dorothy, ‘Heroic Tradition in the Lives of the Early Irish Saints: A Study in HagioBio­graphical Patterning’, in Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies, ed. by Gordon W. MacLennan (Ottawa: The University of Ottawa, 1986), pp. 261–71 Brett, Caroline, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise? Vita prima sancti Samsonis, Vita Paterni, and Merovingian Hagio­graphy’, in St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed. by Lynette Olson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 83–101 Byrne, Francis John, ‘The Eóganacht Ninussa’, Éigse, 9 (1958), 18–29 —— , Irish Kings and High-Kings (London: Batsford, 1973; repr. Dublin: Four Courts, 2001) Carney, James, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1955; repr. 1979) Charles-Edwards, Thomas  M., ‘Britons in Ireland, c.  550–800’, in Ildánach, Ildírech, ed. by John Carey, John T. Koch, and Pierre-Yves Lambert (Andover: Celtic Studies Publications, 1999), pp. 15–26 —— , Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

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—— , Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Donahue, Charles, ‘Beowulf, Ireland and the Natural Good’, Traditio, 7 (1949–1951), 263–77 —— , ‘Beowulf and Christian Tradition: A Reconsideration from a Celtic Stance’, Tradi­ tio, 21 (1965), 55–116 Dumville, David N., ‘Latin and Irish in the Annals of Ulster, AD 431–1050’, in Ireland in Early Medi­eval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, ed.  by Dorothy Whitelock, Rosamund McKitterick, and David Dumville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 320–41 —— , ‘Some British Aspects of the Earliest Irish Christianity’, in Ireland and Europe: The Early Church, ed. by Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1984), pp. 16–24 —— , ‘British Missionary Activity in Ireland’, in Saint Patrick A.D. 493–1993, ed.  by David N. Dumville (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), pp. 133–45 Herbert, Máire, ‘Literary Sea-Voyages and Early Munster Hagio­ graphy’, in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Celtic Studies, ed.  by Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1999), pp. 182–89 —— , ‘The Hagio­graphical Miscellany in Franciscan Manu­script A 3’, in Léann Lámh­ scríbhinní Lobháin: The Louvain Manu­script Heritage, ed. by Pádraig A. Breatnach, Caoimhín Breatnach, and Meidhbhín Ní Urdail (Dublin: The National University of Ireland, 2007), pp. 112–26 —— , ‘Hagio­graphy and Holy Bodies: Observations on Corporeal Relics in Pre-Viking Ireland’, in L’Irlanda e gli Irlandesi nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di Studio, 57 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2010), pp. 248–60 Jankulak, Karen, ‘Present and yet Absent: The Cult of St Samson of Dol in Wales’, in Saint Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed. by Lynette Olson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 163–80 Mahon, William, ‘Glasraige, Tóecraige, and Araid: Evidence from Ogam’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 8 (1988), 11–30 McCone, Kim, Pagan Past and Christian Present (Maynooth: An Sagart, 1990) Mews, Constant J., ‘Apostolic Authority and Celtic Liturgies: From the Vita Samsonis to the Ratio de cursus’, in St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed. by Lynette Olson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 115–35 Ní Dhonnchadha, Máirín, ‘The Guarantor List of Cáin Adomnáin’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 178–215 O’Brien, Elizabeth, ‘Pagan and Christian Burial in Ireland during the First Millennium A.D.: Continuity and Change’, in The Early Church in Wales and the West, ed.  by Nancy Edwards and Alan Lane (Oxford: Oxbow, 1992), pp. 130–37 Ó Cathasaigh, Tomás, The Heroic Bio­graphy of Cormac mac Airt (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1977) —— , ‘The Sister’s Son in Early Irish Literature’, Peritia, 5 (1986), 128–60 Ó Corráin, Donnchadh, ed., Clavis Litterarum Hibernensium, Corpus Christianorum Claves, 3 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017)

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Olson, Lynette, ‘Introduction: “Getting Somewhere” with the First Life of St Samson of Dol’, in St  Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed. by Lynette Olson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 1–18 —— , ed., St  Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales (Wood­bridge: Boydell, 2017) Ó Riain, Pádraig, ‘Samson Alias San(c)tán’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 320–23 —— , A Dictionary of Irish Saints (Dublin: Four Courts, 2011) Ó Riain, Pádraig, Kevin Murray, and others, eds, Historical Dictionary of Gaelic Placenames (London: Irish Texts Society, 2003– in progress) Russell, Paul, ‘Patterns of Hypocorism in Early Irish Hagio­graphy’, in Saints and Scholars: Studies in Irish Hagio­graphy, ed. by John Carey, Máire Herbert, and Pádraig Ó Riain (Dublin: Four Courts, 2001), pp. 237–49 Sharpe, Richard, ‘Hiberno-Latin Laicus, Irish Láech and the Devil’s Men’, Ériu, 30 (1979), 75–92 —— , ‘Armagh and Rome in the Seventh Century’, in Ireland and Europe: The Early Church, ed. by Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), pp. 58–72 —— , Medi­eval Irish Saints’ Lives: An Introduction to ‘vitae sanctorum Hiberniae’ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991) —— , ‘Martyrs and Local Saints in Late Antique Britain’, in Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medi­eval West, ed. by Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 75–154 Schaffer, Bridgitte, ‘Statements of Power in the Language of Genealogy: St Ailbe’s Roots’, Quaestio Insularis, 5 (2004), 23–41 Sims-Williams, Patrick, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Slover, Clark Harris, ‘Early Literary Channels between Britain and Ireland’, University of Texas Studies in English, 6 (1926), 5–52; 7 (1927), 5–111 Sowerby, Richard, ‘The Lives of St Samson: Rewriting the Ambitions of an Early Medi­ eval Cult’, Francia, 38 (2011), 1–31 Stancliffe, Clare, ‘The Miracle Stories in Seventh-Century Irish Saints’ Lives’, in The Seventh Century: Change and Continuity, ed. by Jacques Fontaine and J. N. Hillgarth (Lon­don: The Warburg Institute, 1992), pp. 87–115 Watson, Daniel, ‘A Law beyond Grace in the Pro­logue to the Senchas Mór’, Dionysius, 36 (2018), 200–14 Wood, Ian N., ‘Columbanus, the Britons, and the Merovingian Church’, in St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed.  by Lynette Olson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 103–14

Digital Resources Early Christian Ecclesiastical Settlement in Ireland 5th to 12th Centuries [accessed 1 March 2022]

Irish Influence on Old Norse Literature? Immram to Hvítramannaland Máire Ní Mhaonaigh Introduction The theme of Irish influence on Old Norse literature has a long scholarly history and the extent and nature of that influence continues to be debated.1 Patrick Sims-Williams has contributed in important ways to that discussion. By way of example, his detailed analysis of the riddling ‘watchman device’ in medi­ eval Irish and Welsh literature draws on the comparative evidence of the thirteenth-century Icelandic narrative, Laxdæla saga. Notwithstanding the similarities between aspects of the device as employed in this particular Old Norse text and some Irish and Welsh literary examples, his close reading of the evidence leads him to conclude that literary influence is unlikely in this instance and that ‘Norse authors drew on a traditional storytelling device which had spread orally’.2 More generally, the robust scholarly framework within which he explores the relationship between the literary cultures of Ireland and Wales in the medi­eval period is one which can be profitably applied when literary connections between Ireland, Iceland, and Scandinavia are likewise being considered. His focus on the often similar social environments in which stories from various literary cultures took form leaves open the possibility of independent 1 

A recent contribution to the debate is a collaborative study by Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Ní Mhaonaigh, and Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, in which the nature of Norse-Gaelic contacts, as manifested in four specific texts of the thirteenth century, are examined. I draw on that collaborative work in what follows. The conceptual framework adopted in our study, as well as the methodo­logical considerations developed therein inform this contribution. I am very grateful to my co-authors on that volume for stimulating discussion. 2  Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature, p. 105. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh ([email protected]) is Professor of Celtic and Medi­eval Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131197 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 91–112 BREPOLS

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parallel developments, while coincidence and contact with third parties should also be explored.3 Moreover, as he rightly reminds us, literary influence involves something more specific and complex than a transfer of story motifs.4 Story motifs have been central in analyses of Norse–Celtic connections and it is on perceived parallel motifs in Irish and Icelandic medi­eval narratives in particular that arguments concerning ‘Norse–Celtic’ literary influence have often been based. The conclusions drawn from examination of such elements varies, previous assumptions often dividing scholars into Celtophile and Celtosceptic camps.5 Some sixty years ago when the International Congress of Celtic Studies adopted as its theme ‘The Impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on the Celticspeaking Peoples’, the Celtic drop in the Norse literary cocktail was judged to be substantial.6 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson deemed Celtic motifs to be present in considerable numbers in Icelandic legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur), for example, claiming that they had a positive effect on the literary merit of those sagas.7 In the intervening years, the pendulum has swung in the other direction and scholars such as Andersson and more recently Helgi Guðmundsson, for example, are highly sceptical about the existence of any appreciable Irish influence in Iceland.8 Nonetheless, echoes of earlier scholarly views continue to reverberate and the basic general premise that later Norse literature is influenced and shaped by Old Irish literature in particular continues to inform scholarly thinking to a significant degree.9 3 

Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature, p. 8, pp. 14–15 (for example). Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature, p. 16. 5  For a reasoned account of the debate, see O’Connor, ‘“Stepmother Sagas”’, pp. 1–2 and 15–17 in particular. Egeler has published a very useful overview of scholarship concerning Celtic influences in the field of History of Religion, see Egeler Celtic Influences in German Religion. 6  Ó Cuív, ed., The Impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on the Celtic-Speaking Peoples. In this context, I wish also to acknowledge the outstanding contribution of Patrick Sims-Williams to the work of the Celtic Congress over many years and in his ongoing role as President to the Permanent Bureau of the Congress. 7  Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ‘Celtic Elements in Icelandic Tradition’; a version of this previously published paper was read at the Congress in July 1959. See, for example, p. 16: ‘these Celtic motifs greatly increase the literary value of these later sagas, which is often a welcome relief, as many of them become short of any literary merit as time goes on’. 8  Andersson, The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins, especially pp. 56–61; Helgi Guðmundsson, Um haf innan, pp. 36–39. 9  See, for example, the review by Gísli Sigurðsson of Helgi Guðmundsson’s volume, Um haf innan. The former’s view of the role of the Irish in the formation of Icelandic sagas is also 4 

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The Historical Context: A North Atlantic Space The assumption that Irish and Norse literary cultures influenced one another is a priori reasonable, given the evidence for intense and sustained connections between Ireland and Scandinavian-speaking regions from the time of the first Viking attacks on Ireland at the end of the eighth century. The scholarly approach to assessing the effects of Viking influence has been considerably adapted and refined in the sixty years or so since the first Celtic Congress noted above. In particular, the existence of an intricate social, political, and cultural network, of which Vikings formed part, is taken into account, operating alongside and with other dynasties in various Insular regions and across the Irish Sea.10 The concept of an Irish Sea world and an ‘Insular Viking zone’, to adopt Etchingham’s term, has come to provide the structure within which assessment of Scandinavian activity in Britain and Ireland is framed.11 The history of the interconnected regions within this overarching maritime sphere, as well as that of the interlinked peoples within them, is viewed in broader terms, while the variety of particular local connections and strands continues to be acknowledged. The ever-changing nature of contacts and relationships over what was a lengthy period extending from the eighth and ninth centuries to the end of the Viking Age and after is also kept in view.12 For much of the tenth century, Amlaíb Cuarán (Áleifr Sigtryggsson), king of York at various times in the 940s and 950s, and king of Dublin until his retreat to Iona and death in 980, epitomized this nexus.13 At the turn of the twelfth century, King Magnús Barelegs (berfættr) of Norway embodied the links, seeking to extend his rule in the very different from that of Andersson: Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medi­eval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition. Recent publications attributing Irish origins to specific Norse literary motifs include Brady, ‘An Irish Sovereignty Motif in Laxdæla saga’ and Mills, ‘An Irish Motif in Guta saga’. 10  See, for example, the essays in Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Bolton, eds, Celtic-Norse Relationships in the Irish Sea. 11  Etchingham, ‘North Wales, Ireland and the Isles’. The approach is manifest in Griffiths, Vikings of the Irish Sea. In Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, the term ‘Norwegian Insular Viking zone’ is adopted to designate the part of the Insular world that was ‘the target of raiding, trading, settlement and political ambition of mainly Norwegian origin’ (p. 1 n. 1). 12  See, for example, Etchingham, ‘Viking-Age Gwynedd and Ireland’. 13  There is a brief account of his career in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Vikings World, pp. 174–75, with references to earlier scholarship.

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west, through a combination of military expeditions and marital diplomacy.14 The Kingdom of Man and the Isles had a pivotal place in the region looking northwards and westwards in turn.15 In the Treaty of Perth in 1266 conducted between King Magnús of Norway and King Alexander III of Scotland, it was ceded by Norway to Scotland, reflecting a changed political reality.16 Relations between Norway and Iceland were also altered around this time and in 1264 the Icelandic Commonwealth came to an end and the country became a Norwegian tributary.17 This change in the balance of power also had repercussions in the interconnected regions further south and west around the North and Irish Seas. Interaction and influence rightly stand at the heart of this scholarly approach, taking a view across a broader geo­g raphical area and mindful of chrono­logical depth. Contemporary connections are brought to the fore, rather than the study of individual regions in modern national terms. A variety of sources informs our understanding, even if the picture that emerges is not always entirely clear. The death of Cnut the Great in 1035, for example, is recorded in contemporary Irish chronicles, in which he is described as ‘rí Saxan ocus Danmarg’ (king of the English and of Denmark);18 his own eulogist Óttarr svarti extols him in a typical literary flourish, as ‘konung Dana, Íra ok Engla ok Eybúa’ (king of the Danes, of the Irish, and of the English and of the Island-dwellers [Orcadians]).19 In an Irish Sea world encompassing the various peoples of Ireland, England, Wales, the Isle of Man, alongside mainland Scotland and the Western and Northern Isles, ambition could be expressed in expansive terms, though the reality behind it can only be assessed within the context of the power politics of the time. Borders were fluid and allegiances flexible and claims, however aspirational, were made to be heard. 14 

For an account of his career, see Power, ‘Magnus Barelegs’ Expeditions to the West’. The central place of the kingdom is explored in detail by Beuermann, Masters of the Narrow Sea, and in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World. See also Egeler, Islands in the West, pp. 56–57. 16  See Helle, ‘The Norwegian Kingdom’, p. 387. 17  Helle, ‘The Norwegian Kingdom’, pp. 386–91. 18  ‘The Annals of Tigernach: Fourth Fragment’, ed. and trans. by Stokes, p. 372. In a repeated, later entry on his death, he is termed ‘rí Saxan’ (king of the Saxons): ‘The Annals of Tigernach: Fourth Fragment’, ed. and trans. by Stokes, p. 375; see also Chronicum Scotorum, ed. and trans. by Hennessy, pp. 270–71. 19  See Townend, ‘Contextualising the Knútsdrápur’, pp. 157–59; Townend has edited the poem in question in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, i, ed. by Whaley, pp. 786–89. 15 

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This focus on a broader political and social stage has simultaneously brought the multilingual nature of this interconnected world into view, as Cnut’s obituary in Irish alongside his Norse eulogy make clear.20 Monuments such as a tenth-century cross-slab from Iona bearing a runic inscription,21 or the well-known eleventh-century stone with both ogam and runic writing from Killaloe, Co. Clare,22 provide further testament to the linguistic variety in use.23 The tenth-century Norse king of Dublin Amlaíb Cuarán was the recipient of praise poetry in Irish.24 A century or so later, Edith, the wife of King Edward the Confessor, was said to have been proficient in Irish, as well as Danish and perhaps French and Latin by an admittedly biased observer, the bio­grapher of her husband.25 In such references, faint echoes may be heard of the complex linguistic manifestations of an interconnected world, evidenced more clearly in Norse loanwords,26 as well as in the toponymic record of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man (for example).27 Moreover, words continued to be borrowed and toponyms coined in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, further testament to ongoing engagement and exchange.28

20 

See also Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Caraid tairisi — Literary Links between Ireland and England’. Holman, Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions in the British Isles, pp. 212–14; Jennings, ‘Iona and the Vikings’, p. 46; Liestøl, ‘An Iona Rune Stone’. 22  Barnes, Hagland, and Page, The Runic Inscriptions of Viking Age Dublin, pp. 53–56. 23  On multilingualism in the region in general, see Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 26–36. 24  The Metrical Dindshenchas, ed. and trans. by Gwynn, pt 1, pp. 46–53 (he is named, p. 53, stanza 21). 25  The Life of King Edward, ed. and trans. by Barlow, pp.  22–23; for discussion, see O’Donnell, Townend, and Tyler, ‘European Literature and Eleventh-Century England’, pp. 621–24. 26  See, for example, Marstrander, Bidrag til det norske sprogs historie i Irland, and more recently Schulze-Thulin, ‘Notes on the Old and Middle Irish Loanwords in Old Norse’; Oftedal, ‘On the Frequency of Norse Loanwords in Scottish Gaelic’; Stewart, ‘Lexical Imposition’; McDonald, ‘Vikings in the Hebridean Economy’. 27  See, for example, Mac Giolla Easpaig, ‘L’influence scandinave sur la toponymie irlandaise’; Nicolaisen, Scottish Place-Names, pp. 84–120 (Scandinavian Names) and pp. 121–48 (Gaelic Names); Crawford and Taylor, ‘The Southern Frontier of Norse Settlement in North Scotland’; Gammeltoft, ‘Scandinavian-Gaelic Contacts’; Fellows-Jensen, ‘The Manx PlaceName Evidence’. 28  See further Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, which presents evidence primarily pertaining to the thirteenth century. 21 

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Literary Influence and Exchange Despite these considerable advances in our understanding of the nature of relationships between Insular peoples, including Vikings who settled in their midst, and of connections between Ireland, Britain, and the wider Scandinavian sphere, examination of literary narratives in this context still involves a degree of hunting for Celtic motifs in what are thirteenth-century (and later) Norse sagas and other texts. In a detailed comparative study of Irish and Icelandic literatures, they have been characterized as having ‘a shared treasure-trove of motifs’;29 what are deemed to be close similarities between them may be ‘reflections of processes of intercultural exchange’.30 Moreover, the supposed literary transfer is generally considered to have occurred in the early Viking Age. The Irish Sea was undoubtedly a conduit for texts as well as ideas and the cultural milieu was certainly conducive to literary interaction and exchange in various vernaculars, as well as Latin. But it continued to be so long after the initial arrival of Vikings around the turn of the ninth century, as a study of the post-Viking period makes clear.31 The precise nature of literary influence and exchange can only be satisfactorily addressed when each text is evaluated separately in its own contemporary context and when that analysis is undertaken without any prior assumptions about the nature of Norse–Celtic or indeed Icelandic–Irish literary relations in the first place.32 These relations were multidimensional and varied and in an extended geo­graphical area over a considerable time period, texts will provide insights into different kinds of contacts in particular regions at certain times, as well as indicating their lack in other places and periods. Potential textual reflexes of Norse–Irish contacts may seem relatively abundant at first glance, but interpretation and assessment of their actual significance involves detailed literary and historical research, as a result of which some such evidence can be shown to be more apparent than real. Similar story-motifs, for example, remain just that, unless a specific and plausible cultural context can be established, of which they might form an interconnected part. The impression sometimes given, however, is of almost free-floating motifs becoming embedded in Norse texts of a later date, the 29 

Egeler, Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home, p. 140. Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 15. 31  Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World. 32  Sims-Williams’s careful and cautious parallel analysis of Welsh–Irish literary relations leads him to conclude that Irish influence may not have dominated Welsh literature, but neither was it negligible, see Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature, p. 339. 30 

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process of literary transfer remaining opaque. Early Irish settlers in Iceland preserved their own stories for generations before they were eventually incorporated into Norse narratives, according to Gísli Sigurðsson, setting the influence of written texts to one side, as well as the possibility that oral and written tradition may well have worked in tandem.33 Since the focus has so often been on individual motifs, the totality and thus the essence of the textual evidence is not always considered, as narratives are divided into constituent parts (only some of which may have analogues in the other literary tradition, be it Gaelic or Norse). Removed from the narrative whole that gives it meaning, a motif becomes distorted and the evaluation of a given text in its complete context is precluded, since that text is reduced to divisible strands. As a result, the origins of specific components are foregrounded, with the issue of contemporary relevance, as well as the actual process of transmission sometimes being submerged.34 The meaning of the borrowed material in its new literary context is of primary importance. What were the chrono­logical, geo­graphical, and social considerations that led to specific literary interaction; what were the circumstances of composition of a given text?35

Hvítramannaland With these general remarks in mind, I turn now to a specific textual example to address what it may tell us about the nature of the literary legacy we might owe to Viking–Irish interaction. The example in question is that of Norse Hvítramannaland ‘The Land of the White Men’.36 In Norse scholarship, it is inextricably bound up with other depictions of the Otherworld, most notably Vínland ‘Wine Land’, but also the interlinked concepts of Glæsvellir ‘Shining Fields’ and Ódáinsakr ‘Field of Immortality’.37 I shall focus my observations on Hvítramannaland in particular here. 33 

Gísli Sigurðsson, Gaelic Influence in Iceland. Egeler draws attention to these methodo­logical difficulties, Celtic Influences, pp. 40–43 in particular, and sets out the parameters necessary for comparative work, pp. 128–29; see also Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, especially pp. 16–18. 35  These questions are rightly foregrounded by Egeler, Celtic Influences, p. 42, p. 129 (for example); see also his Islands in the West, pp. 14–17; for further discussion, see Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World. 36  This example is discussed briefly in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 27–28, on which analysis I build here. 37  See Egeler, Islands in the West, pp. 25–105. 34 

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The most detailed description of Hvítramannalnd is found in the Icelandic Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements) which survives in two major recensions, Sturlubók and Hauksbók, the earliest of which — Sturlubók — dates to the later thirteenth century, while Hauksbók was compiled a little later around 1310. A  third fragmentary version, Melabók, contemporary with Hauksbók, has also come down to us. An earlier thirteenth-century version, Styrmisbók, is known to have existed but no longer survives.38 The involvement of two twelfth-century scholars, one of whom was Ari Þorgilsson, author of Íslendingabók (The Book of Icelanders), in earlier versions of the work can be deduced from the copy of the work in Hauksbók.39 The versions in both Hauksbók and Sturlubók tell the story of Ari son of Már who, while sailing, was driven off course to a mythical land called Hvítramannaland, also known as Írland et mikla (Great Ireland), situated near Vínland and ‘sex dœgra sigling vestr frá Írlandi’ (six days’ sailing west of Ireland). Once there, Ari could not leave and he is said to have been baptized (‘Ari eigi á brutt at fara ok var þar skírðr’). The Irish dimension is highlighted further with reference to the source of the account; it was claimed to have been first told by Hrafn Hlymreksfari ‘er lengi hafði verit í Hlymreki á Írlandi’ (who had long dwelt at Limerick in Ireland). The report is accorded authority by its association with Þorgell Gellison, an uncle of Ari Þorgilsson. It was Þorgell who is said to have transmitted the observation of an eleventh-century earl of Orkney, Þorfinnr, pertaining to the high esteem in which Ari Másson had been held in his enforced new land.40 A territory which may be Hvítramannaland, it is suggested, is mentioned in passing in a thirteenth-century Norse saga concerning the discovery of North America (Vínland), Eiríks saga rauða (The Saga of Erik the Red). According to this account, two natives (skrælingar), captured in Markland (which may be the coast of Labrador) and baptized by Þorfinnr Karlsefni and their men, comment that in a land facing their own country (‘gagnvart sínu landi’), people wear white clothing and utter loud cries, carrying poles with cloth. ‘Ok ætla menn, at þat hafi verit Hvítramannaland’ (and men believe that was Hvítramannaland), 38  Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, pp. liv–cvi. There is a summary of the textual transmission of Landnámabók in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 267–68. 39  Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, p. 395 (Hauksbók 354); the other twelfth-century scholar involved was Kolskegger enn vitri (the wise). 40  Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, p. 162 (Sturlubók 122, Hauksbók 94).

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according to the text, the Hauksbók version of this saga adding ‘Írland it mikla’ (Great Ireland).41 Finally in another thirteenth-century saga, Eyrbygg ja saga (The Saga of the People of Eyri), a hostile land in the north-west of Iceland which is not specifically named in the narrative, has been taken as another reference to Hvítramannaland. 42 The land in question is depicted as a large territory in the ocean whose attacking people speak what is thought might be Irish (‘sem þeir mælti írsku’). However, its white-haired chieftain speaks Icelandic and allows Guðleifr Gunnlaugson and his men to escape and continue their journey to Dublin. The travellers assume that he is in fact Björn Breiðvikingakappi who had to flee Iceland some time previously and who was presumed lost at sea.43 The land to which Guðleifr and his companions are blown in Eyrbygg ja saga does not resemble greatly Hvítramannaland, as described in the other two texts, and nor is it deemed to be Hvítramannaland in the Old Norse source. The story of Ari Másson in Landnámabók and of the Markland captives in Eiríks saga rauði, by contrast, are specifically situated in Hvítramannaland, even if this identification is not deemed certain in the case of what the two skrælingar relate. What is significant is that the passage in Eiríks saga rauði seems to resonate and deliberately subvert the account of Ari Másson in Landnámabók. In Landnámabók, an Icelander is blown off course to a mysterious land near Vínland where he is held captive and baptized.44 It is another Icelander, Þorfinnr Karlsefni, who takes captive and does the baptizing, according to the passage in Eiríks saga rauði with which we are concerned. And this appears to happen in a mysterious land near Vínland of which Þorfinnr’s two captives relate.45 41 

Eyrbygg ja saga, Eiríks saga rauða, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthias Þordárson, pp. 234, 432. 42  Young, ‘Some Icelandic Traditions Showing Traces of Irish Influence’, p.  121; Mac Mathúna, ‘Hvítrmammaland Revisited’, p. 184. 43  Eyrbygg ja saga, Eiríks saga rauða, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthias Þordárson, pp. 176–80. The depiction of Björn Breiðvikingakappi has been recently discussed by Jonas Wellendorf, drawing on the literary concept of the Stranger-King: ‘The Stranger-King in Hvítramannaland’; I am grateful to Prof. Wellendorf for providing me with a pre-publication copy of this article. 44  Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, p. 162 (Sturlubók 122, Hauksbók 94). 45  Eyrbyggja saga, Eiríks saga rauða, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthias Þordárson, p. 233.

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The Depiction of Hvítramannaland and Irish Voyage Tales Thus, the two specific depictions of Hvítramannaland with which we are left are likely to be interconnected and hence do not provide independent evidence for the depiction of this ‘land of white men’. This has implications for what appears to be the communis opinio, namely that Norse Hvítramannaland is a direct borrowing from Irish and specifically from the description of the Otherworld in medi­eval Irish voyage tales, immrama, and related texts.46 Egeler in a number of recent publications evaluates what he suggests are correspondences between the Old Norse material and eighth-century vernacular Irish tales of this type, Echtrae Chonnlai (The Adventure of Connlae) and Immram Brain (The Voyage of Bran), as well as between it and the ninth-century Hiberno-Latin narrative, Navigatio sancti Brendani and the vernacular voyage tale of around the same date, Immram Maíle Dúin (The Voyage of Máel Dúin).47 The proposed parallels are varied in form. In the first place, the description of Hvítramannaland is resonant of the white colour of some of the men in the Irish tales, in terms of hair and clothing in particular. Thus, a monk on the island upon which the community of St Ailbe lived was marked out by hair the colour of snow (‘capillis niueo colore’), according to Navigatio sancti Brendani.48 Striking snowcoloured hair is also a feature of Paul the hermit whom Brendan and his men met on another island and which covers him from head to foot serving as clothing.49 Máel Dúin meets a strikingly similar white-haired anchorite on his journey ‘tuighthe o findfut giul a chuirp’ (clothed with the fair, long, bright [hair] of his body).50 Finally on an island of anchorites, Brendan encounters a choir of boys clothed entirely in white, though other choirs of young and old men wear blue and purple respectively.51 46 

See Mac Mathúna, ‘Hvítrmammaland Revisited’ and the earlier closely related article by him: ‘Hvítramannaland’; see also Mundal, ‘Hvítramannaland and Other Fictional Islands’. But in an important forthcoming contribution (of which I became aware only after this article had gone to press), Wellendorf has argued that Hvítramannaland is ‘by no means a wholesale borrowing from Irish voyage narratives’: ‘The Stranger-King in Hvítramannaland’. 47  Egeler, Islands in the West, pp. 71–73 and his Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home, pp. 251–56. The material was first presented by him in Egeler, ‘Hvítramannaland’. 48  Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. by Selmer, p. 29, ll. 27–28; Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 48. 49  Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. by Selmer, p. 72, ll. 34–35; Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 48. 50  The Voyage of Mael Dúin, ed. and trans. by Oskamp, pp. 168–69; Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 48. 51  Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. by Selmer, p. 50, ll. 21–23; Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 48.

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On this island of anchorites, one of Brendan’s men is compelled to remain, joining the community.52 Neither Connlae nor Bran in their voyage tales are free to return from the Otherworld, as Ari Másson is also bound to remain in Hvítramannaland.53 Nonetheless, Ari is honoured there and it is suggested that it is an honour for Brendan’s companion to join the island choirs as well.54 Connlae and Bran are also honoured visitors in Egeler’s view, though this is not expressly stated in either voyage tale.55 What is clear is the association of their journeys with Christianity and Egeler links Ari’s baptism in Hvítramannaland with what he considers to be islands of monastic salvation depicted in the Navigatio and the two vernacular Irish texts.56 The colour white forms part of many Christian tropes and in the absence of more specific parallels there is nothing to connect directly the ‘white men’ of Hvítramannaland with the white-haired or brightly clad men of the Irish narratives. In the same way, neither Ari’s enforced exile nor how he is treated resonates particularly strongly with the stories of Connlae, Bran, or Brendan in what are longer, complex, multilayered texts. Ari acquires the badge of Christendom through his baptism in Hvítramannaland, whereas many different aspects of Christianization are explored in the more extended literary voyages of Connlae, Brendan, and Bran.57 And while Ari may have been compelled to remain in Hvítramannaland, the question is not as clear-cut in the Irish language narratives. Connlae appears to embark on his journey willingly and it is the loneliness of those left behind which is highlighted in his adventure tale.58 Bran himself appears reluctant to return, though he is enticed to do so in 52 

Navigatio Sancti Brendani, ed. by Selmer, p. 52, ll. 49–58; Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 48. Immram Brain, ed. and trans. by Mac Mathúna; Echtrae Chonnlai, ed. and trans. by McCone. 54  Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. by Selmer, p. 52, ll. 54–55: in Brendan’s words, ‘Bona hora concepit te mater tua, quia meruisti habitare cum tali congregacione’ (Fortunate the hour that your mother conceived you, that you have deserved to live with such a community); Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 48. 55  Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 73. 56  Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 73. 57  For Immram Brain and Echtrae Chonnlai, see Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘From Story to History’, pp. 207–31. 58  The tale is crafted in response to a question concerning his brother’s epithet, óenfher ‘the lonely one’, in the earliest extant version of the narrative in Lebor na hUidre ‘The Book of the Dun Cow’: Lebor na hUidre, ed. by Best and Bergin, p. 302, l. 9992 (see also p. 304, ll. 10061–62). 53 

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response to the homesickness of one of his companions, Nechtan mac Olbrain. The latter turned to dust when he ventured onto land in Ireland, Bran himself deeming his folly to be great (‘ba mór baíss’).59 In terms of content, therefore, the parallels between depictions of Hvítramannaland in Old Norse material and Otherworld islands in Irish voyage tales are general in nature. Nor are the features confined specifically to Norse and Irish material, as Egeler himself in his comparison between the presentation of another Norse Otherworld, Vínland, and the Roman concept of the ‘Blessed Isles’ makes clear.60 Notwithstanding the similarities between how Vínland and Hvítramannaland are presented in Norse texts, however, for Egeler (and others before him) Hvítramannaland is a direct borrowing from Irish sources dating from the early Viking Age.

The Location and Nature of Hvítramannaland This view is clearly influenced by the fact that in Landnámabók and in the Hauksbók version of Eiríks saga rauði, Old Norse authors deliberately associate Hvítramannaland with Ireland, as included in Egeler’s list of correspondences between Hvítramannaland and Irish voyage tales.61 Moreover, its description is linked with a Viking, Hrafn, who is stated to have spent some time in Limerick, as noted above. Hvítramannaland itself is located in the ocean some considerable distance (six days’ sailing) to the west of Ireland and is termed ‘Great Ireland’, as we have seen. It is of note that the location of the Otherworld in Immram Brain and the Navigatio is also in an ocean to the west (‘isind oceon frinn aníar’, according to the vernacular narrative),62 but this location is far from exclusive to Irish texts.63 More striking, as Egeler notes, is the specific reference in Immram Brain to an Otherworld two or three times bigger than Ireland: Fil trí coícta inse cían isind oceon frinn aníar; is mó Érinn co fa dí, cach aí díïb nó fa thrí. 59 

Immram Brain, ed. and trans. by Mac Mathúna, p. 45 (§ 65). Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 107 (for example). 61  Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 73. 62  Immram Brain, ed. and trans. by Mac Mathúna, p. 37 (§ 25); Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. by Selmer, p. 8. 63  See Egeler, Islands in the West, passim. 60 

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(There are thrice fifty islands far away in the ocean to the west of us; each of them is twice or three times the size of Ireland.)64

To argue that this informed the alternative term for Hvítramannaland, Great Ireland (Írland it mikla), however, it must be assumed that this or a related stanza was read, understood, and used by an Icelandic author. Neither the linguistic context nor the precise geo­g raphical and chrono­ logical parameters are discussed in detail by scholars who link Hvítramannaland with the nexus of Irish voyage texts. Hrafn’s role has been taken as an explicit statement of how an Irish motif was adopted, notwithstanding its function as a literary device.65 The thirteenth-century Landnámabók, as well as its precedents, were at some considerable remove from the eighth- and ninth-century Irish texts in time and space. If, as is assumed, the material goes back to the settlement period of Iceland and so was an Irish borrowing of the early Viking Age, being incorporated later into Landnámabók,66 how and where was it preserved and more especially why? These broader issues need further consideration in interpreting Hvítramannaland as a ‘close Norse adaptation of an Irish imaginary island’, and Ari Másson as having reached an ‘Irish land of salvation’.67

An Irish Otherworld? Let us look therefore at the nature of that land of salvation, as depicted in the Irish texts. The ninth-century Navigatio sancti Brendani enjoyed enormous popularity, as indicated by the number of manu­scripts in which it survives and the number of vernaculars into which it was translated, including Old Norse.68 It contains echoes of the earlier vernacular texts, ‘The Adventure of Connlae’ and ‘The Voyage of Bran’, both of which form a diptych written for relatively recent converts to the Christian life.69 The depiction of the Otherworld in both 64 

Immram Brain, ed. and trans. by Mac Mathúna, pp. 37, 50 (§ 25); see Egeler, Islands in the West, pp. 71–72. 65  Egeler, Islands in the West, p.  73; see also his Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home, pp. 240–41. On the function of this literary device, see further below. 66  Egeler, Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home, p. 288. 67  Egeler, Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home, p. 251. 68  A fragment of the text is preserved in a fourteenth-century manu­script, Oslo, Riksarkivet, Fragmentary 68: Bieler, ‘Manu­scripts of Irish Interest in the Libraries of Scandinavia’, p. 255. 69  See Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘From Story to History’.

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is highly similar and reflects a combination of classical and Christian images. It is a paradisiacal land in which there is ‘caínchomrac cen debaid’ (harmony without strife) and ‘síd már’ (great peace)70 but reflecting also the influence of the ideal landscape — locus amoenus — of classical works.71 In their descriptive richness, these two sophisticated vernacular Irish narratives were ideal for various levels of interpretation, as has been noted most recently by Maier.72 The voyages of Connlae and Bran served as exegetical texts for converts engaged in various stages of a Christian life, as I have attempted to show elsewhere.73 The ultimate goal is salvation, the everlasting happiness which Connlae unambiguously and Bran eventually attains. These are narratives of assumption, as Maier has observed, drawing attention to the parallel stories of Enoch and Elijah who were taken away from their earthly life before time to experience Paradise.74 From the perspective of those left behind, including Connlae’s grieving father, there should be consolation in the thought of the ideal world both Bran and Connlae had attained. In the same way, the Norse account of Hvítramannaland in Landnámabók might sweeten the loss at sea of Ari Másson (and by extension others) by the implication that he had achieved a Christian afterlife, as Egeler has perceptively discussed.75 As a ‘coping strategy’ (as Egeler has termed it),76 this common narrative trope in its Norse form need not be dependent on the earlier Irish texts. Both Irish scholars and their Norse counterparts some centuries later were steeped in biblical and classical tradition and could draw on it independently for similar ends. Yet the authors of Landnámabók and one version of ‘The Saga of Erik the Red’ deliberately associated their depiction of Hvítramannaland with Ireland and it is to possible reasons for this I now turn. If the actual description of the Land of White Men need not be derivative of Irish texts, might its conscious association with Ireland reflect Norse–Irish contacts in a different way?

70 

The quotes are from Echtrae Chonnlai, ed. and trans. by McCone, p. 121 (§ 3). See Maier, ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’. These texts are sensitively discussed in Egeler, Islands in the West, pp. 27–61. 72  Maier, ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’. 73  Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘From Story to History’. 74  Maier, ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’, p. 126. 75  Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 73. 76  Egeler, Islands in the West, p. 73. 71 

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The primary source for the account allegedly is Hrafn Hlymreksfari ‘Limerick traveller’, whose name is explained with reference to the considerable amount of time he had dwelt there. As is well known, Limerick was a Viking settlement and the major Scandinavian centre in the territory of Brian Bórama whose death in the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 is related in a number of thirteenth-century Old Norse narratives.77 It has been argued that this Norse material is dependent on an Old Norse saga about the battle written on the Isle of Man around the year 1100 in a bilingual Norse-Gaelic milieu.78 Knowledge of Brian and his Limerick dominion in the Norse world of learning of the thirteenth century may have called Hrafn Hlymreksfari into being. However, this does not explain the association of Hvítramannaland with Ireland in the first place. Why is ‘Great Ireland’ deemed a suitable name for a wondrous island which functions as an otherworldly paradise in Old Norse literature and what does that tell us about contacts between Ireland and Iceland in the thirteenth century when the name was in use? Ireland is associated with wonders in a Norwegian text roughly contemporary with Landnámabók and Eiríks saga rauða, Konungs skuggsjá ‘The King’s Mirror’ written for King Hákon IV Hákonarson of Norway who died in 1263.79 It contains a section on the ‘Wonders of Ireland’ which forms an integral part of the text but is based on a variety of written sources in Latin and Irish compiled in Ireland before being incorporated into Konungs skuggsjá at Hákon’s court.80 Significant for our purposes is that this text was also transmitted to Iceland in this period, as its manu­script evidence suggests.81 Thematically it highlights a positive disposition towards Ireland as a land of wonders and strange marvels and it is this which may underline its asso77 

Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, pp. 437–60; Orkneyinga saga, ed. by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, pp. 24–27; Þorsteins saga Síðu-Hallssonar in Austfirðinga sǫgur, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, pp. 301–02. Texts and translations of the Old Norse material concerning Clontarf are provided in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 199–200, 202–17, 222. 78  Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 197–264. 79  Konungs skuggsjá, ed. by Holm-Olsen. For recent discussion of the text, see the essays in Speculum septentrianale, ed. by Johannsson and Kleivane. 80  This section of the text is analysed in detail in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 43–121. 81  For a facsimile of one of the key Icelandic manu­scripts and a discussion of the relationship of the various manu­scripts to one another, see The King’s Mirror AM 243a fol., ed. by Holm-Olsen.

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ciation with the ultimate land of wonders, Hvítramannaland, too. Moreover, in Konungs skuggsjá, the wonders of Ireland are augmented by a stereotype of Ireland as a land of saints and holiness. The Irish are deemed noteworthy for their natural virtue and their quick reception of Christianity.82 According an Irish pedigree to St Sunniva, a Norwegian saint, notwithstanding her nonGaelic name, forms part of the same ideo­logical milieu.83 The specific nature of this focus on Ireland in Konungs skuggsjá has a political dimension.84 There is evidence that Hákon IV’s ambitions extended to Ireland. According to Hákon’s saga (Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar) written within a decade of his death in 1263, a group of Irish kings extended an invitation to him to assume the role of king of Ireland and lead an effort to drive the English out of Ireland.85 This is story not history, of course, but it accords well with what we know of Hákon’s extensive power network, exemplified by a marriage alliance between his daughter, Cecilia, and Harald, king of Man and the Isles in 1248.86 Moreover, it is corroborated by Hákon’s obituary notice preserved in various Irish chronicles which claim that he died in Orkney while on his way to Ireland.87 The information on Ireland in Konungs skuggsjá is in a section with that on Greenland and Iceland, both territories subjugated by Hákon.88 Ireland was presented as being of special significance for Norway since, like Norway, Ireland’s pre-Christian past was famous for warriors, poets, and men wise in law. In spirituality, however, Ireland was deemed superior, and it could provide Norway with the saints it lacked, as was the case with St Sunniva. Ireland 82  In sum, Ireland is ‘náliga landa best þat er menn vita’ (nearly the best land of which men know): Konungs skuggsjá, ed. by Holm-Olsen, p. 21; Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, especially pp. 95, 376. 83  Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, p. 373. On St Sunniva, see Rekdal, ‘Parallels between the Norwegian Legend of St Sunniva and Irish Voyage Tales’, and Downham, ‘St Bega – Myth, Maiden or Bracelet?’, pp. 39–41. 84  This is discussed in detail in Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, especially pp. 43–121. 85  Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar, ed. by Sverrir Jakobsson, Þorleifur Hauksson, and Tor Ulset, pp. 243, 256. 86  Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 97–104. 87  ‘Ebdonn rí Lochlann do ég i nInnsib Orc ic techt a nÉrinn’ (Ebdonn [sic = Hákon] king of Norway died in the Orkney Isles while coming to Ireland): Annála Uladh, ed. and trans. by Mac Carthy, pp. 332–33: 1263.6 (cf. The Annals of Loch Cé, ed. and trans. by Hennessy, pp. 444–45: 1263; Annála Connacht, ed. and trans. by Freeman, pp. 140–01: 1263.5). 88  Konungs skuggsjá, ed. by Holm-Olsen, p. 21.

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was thus a ‘holy isle’ which could be conquered with consequent advantages to Norway — and Iceland as well.89 This specific political context relates to Konungs skuggsjá, of course, but the emphasis in this text which circulated widely in Norway and Iceland on Ireland’s superiority in terms of spirituality, provides a plausible literary context in which ‘Great Ireland’ could be naturally identified as a wondrous Christian paradise, Hvítramannaland. The term itself, Írland it mikla is significant in this regard. It may deliberately recall the name of an eastern land of wonders prevalent in thirteenth-century Old Norse literature, Svíþjóð in mikla, literally ‘Sweden the Great’, but used to refer to Scythia in what are often borrowings from writers such as Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville.90 It is precisely the same learned context to which the reference to Hvítramannaland in Landnámabók and Eiríks saga rauða belong. Landnámabók undoubtedly preserves earlier material dating back to the time of the settlement of Iceland, the landnám itself, and this includes Gaelic material, as evidenced by the forms of some of the Irish names in the text, the phono­logy of some of which suggest that they must have been transmitted in Icelandic oral tradition before being set down in writing.91 However, Landnámabók is first and foremost a product of its own thirteenth-century time and the hazy features in the relatively short account of Hvítramannaland as depicted therein and in the related Eiríks saga rauða do not provide clear evidence for earlier direct borrowing from one or more eighth- and ninth-century Irish voyage tales. Nonetheless, the depiction of Hvítramannaland is indicative of Norse– Irish contacts in the socio-political and literary sphere. What the concept of Hvítramannaland bears testament to is a contemporary idea of Ireland as akin to a Christian otherworld. Far from being grounded in the early Viking Age, this notion was current in thirteenth-century Norway and Iceland, as Konungs skuggsjá in particular attests.

89 

See Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, p. 376. I owe this suggestion to a question posed by my colleague, Prof. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, when I discussed some of this material at the Gersum project conference, St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, 6 September 2018. I am grateful to others who commented on that occasion, and to the audience of a paper I presented on Hvítramannaland in the Early Irish and Celtic Studies Research Seminar series, Maynooth University, 11 October 2018. On Svíþjóð in mikla, see the brief discussions by Jackson, ‘“Scythia er uær köllum miklu Suiþiod”’, and ‘“Some Call Europe and Some Call Eneá”’, p. 2. 91  See Etchingham and others, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, pp. 272–319. 90 

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Norse–Irish relations were long-lived and manifested themselves in a myriad of ways. To ascertain their literary effects, texts must be examined in their contemporary social, political, and cultural contexts and thematic strands must be analysed as part of a narrative whole, in line with the methodo­logy profitably advocated by Patrick Sims-Williams in his discussion of Welsh–Irish relations. Viewed in this light, our journey to Hvítramannaland reveals it as the ideo­logical construct it in fact represents, rather than a series of motifs. It provides important evidence for Irish influence on Norse literature, but not in the way generally perceived.

Works Cited Primary Sources Annála Connacht: The Annals of Connacht, ed. and trans. by A. Martin Freeman (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983) Annála Uladh: Annals of Ulster Otherwise Annála Senat, Annals of Senat; A Chronicle of Irish Affairs, ed. and trans. by Bartholomew Mac Carthy, ii (Dublin: HMSO, 1893) The Annals of Loch Cé: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs from A.D. 1014 to A.D. 1590, ed. by William M. Hennessy, i (London: Longman, 1871) ‘The Annals of Tigernach: Fourth Fragment’, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes, Revue celtique, 17 (1896), 372 (repr. in The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes, 2 vols (Felinfach: Llanerch Press, 1993), i) Austfirðinga sögur, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Íslenzk fornrit, 11 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950) Brennu-Njáls saga, ed.  by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 12 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954) Chronicum Scotorum: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs, from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1135 with a Supplement Containing the Events from 1141 to 1150, ed. and trans. by William M. Hennessy (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1866) ‘Echtrae Chonnlai’ and the Beginnings of Vernacular Writing in Ireland, ed. and trans. by Kim McCone, Maynooth Medi­eval Irish Texts, 1 (Maynooth: Department of Old and Middle Irish, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2000) Eyrbygg ja saga, Eiríks saga rauða, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthias Þordárson, Íslenzk fornrit, 4 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1935) Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar, ed. by Sverrir Jakobsson, Þorleifur Hauksson, and Tor Ulset, Íslenzk fornrit, 32 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2013) Immram Brain: Bran’s Journey to the Land of the Women, ed. and trans. by Séamas Mac Mathúna, Buchreihe der Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 2 (Tübingen: Max Nie­ meyer Verlag, 1985)

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Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed.  by Jakob Benediktsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 1 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968) The King’s Mirror AM 243a fol., ed. by Ludwig Holm-Olsen, Early Icelandic Manu­scripts in Facsimile, 17 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1987) Konungs skuggsjá, ed. by Ludvig Holm-Olsen, rev. edn (Oslo: Kjeldescriftfondet, 1983) Lebor na hUidre: Book of the Dun Cow, ed.  by R.  I. Best and Osborn Bergin (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1929) The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. by Frank Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992) The Metrical Dindshenchas: Text, Translation and Commentary, pt 1, ed.  and trans. by Edward Gwynn, Todd Lecture Series, 8 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1903) Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis from Early Latin Manu­scripts, ed.  by Carl Selmer, Uni­versity of Notre Dame Publications in Medi­eval Studies, 16 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959) Orkneyinga saga, ed.  by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 34 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1965) Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, i: From Mythical Times to c.  1035, ed.  by Diana Whaley, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) The Voyage of Mael Dúin: A Study in Early Irish Voyage Literature Followed by an Edition of ‘Immram Curaig Maele Dúin’ from the Yellow Book of Lecan, in Trinity College, Dublin, ed. and trans. by H. P. A. Oskamp (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1970)

Secondary Works Andersson, Theodore M., The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins: A Historical Survey, Yale Germanic Studies, 1 (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1964) Barnes, Michael P., Jan Ragnar Hagland, and R. I. Page, The Runic Inscriptions of Viking Age Dublin, National Museum of Ireland, Medi­eval Dublin Excavations 1962–1981, Series B, 5 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1997) Beuermann, Ian, Masters of the Narrow Sea: Forgotten Challenges to Norwegian Rule in Man and the Isles, 1079–1266, Acta humaniora (Oslo: Faculty of Humanities, Uni­ versity of Oslo, 2007) Bieler, Ludwig, ‘Manu­scripts of Irish Interest in the Libraries of Scandinavia: A General Survey’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 54: 214–14 (1965), 252–58 Brady, Lindy, ‘An Irish Sovereignty Motif in Laxdæla saga’, Scandinavian Studies, 88.1 (2016), 60–76 Crawford, Barbara, and Simon Taylor, ‘The Southern Frontier of Norse Settlement in North Scotland: Place-Names and History’, Northern Scotland, 23 (2003), 1–76 Downham, Clare, ‘St Bega – Myth, Maiden or Bracelet? An Insular Cult and its Origins’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 33.1 (2007), 33–42 Egeler, Matthias, Celtic Influences in German Religion: A Survey, Münchner Nordistische Studien, 15 (Munich: Utz, 2013)

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—— , Islands in the West: Classical Myth and the Medi­eval Norse and Irish Geo­graphical Imagination, Medieval Voyaging, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) —— , Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home: Gaelic Place-lore and the Construction of a Sense of Place in Medi­eval Iceland, Folklore Fellows’ Communications, 314 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2018) Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ‘Celtic Elements in Icelandic Tradition’, Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society, 25 (1957), 3–24 Etchingham, Colmán, ‘North Wales, Ireland and the Isles: The Insular Viking Zone’, Peritia, 15 (2001), 145–87 —— , ‘Viking-Age Gwynedd and Ireland: Political Relations’, in Ireland and Wales in the Middle Ages, ed.  by Karen Jankulak and Jonathan Wooding (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007), pp. 149–67 Etchingham, Colmán, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World: Studies in the Literature and History of Norway, Iceland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, Medi­eval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) Fellows-Jensen, Gillian, ‘The Manx Place-Name Evidence’, in A New History of the Isle of Man, iii: The Medi­eval Period 1000–1406, ed. by Seán Duffy and Harold Mytum (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), pp. 257–80 Gammeltoft, Peder, ‘Scandinavian-Gaelic Contacts: Can Place-Names and Place-Name Elements Be Used as a Source for Contact-Linguistic Research?’, Nowele, 44 (2004), 51–90 Gísli Sigurðsson, review of Helgi Guðmundsson, Um haf innan: alvíssmál, 9 (1999), 109–11 —— , Gaelic Influence in Iceland, Historical and Literary Contacts: A Survey of Research, 2nd edn (Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press, 2000) —— , The Medi­eval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method, Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, 2 (Cambridge, MA: The Millman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, Harvard University, 2004) Griffiths, David, Vikings of the Irish Sea: Conflict and Assimilation, AD 790–1050 (Stroud: The History Press, 2010) Helgi Guðmundsson, Um haf innan: vestrænir men og ízlensk menning á miðöldum (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 1997) Helle, Knut, ‘The Norwegian Kingdom: Succession Disputes and Consolidation’, in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, i: Prehistory to 1520, ed.  by Knut Helle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 369–91 Holman, Katherine, Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions in the British Isles: Their Historical Context (Trondheim: Tapir, 1996) Jackson, Tatjana N., ‘“Scythia er uær köllum miklu Suiþiod”: Memory, Fiction or Some­ thing Else?’, in Sagas and the Use of the Past: The 15th International Saga Conference, 5th – 11th August 2012, Aarhus University; Preprint of Abstracts, ed. by A. Matthias Valentin Nordwig and Lisbeth  H. Torving (Aarhus: Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, 2012), pp. 168–69

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—— , ‘“Some Call Europe and Some Call Eneá”: On the Origins of the Old Icelandic Learned Prehistory’, Miscellanea geo­graphica, 23.3 (2019), 1–4 Jennings, Andrew, ‘Iona and the Vikings: Survival and Continuity’, Northern Studies, 33 (1998), 37–54 Johannsson, Karl G., and Elise Kleivane, eds, Speculum septentrionale: Konungs skuggsjá and the European Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (Oslo: Novius, 2018) Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Timothy Bolton, eds, Celtic-Norse Relationships in the Irish Sea in the Middle Ages 800–1200, The Northern World, 65 (Leiden: Brill, 2014) Liestøl, Aslak, ‘An Iona Rune Stone and the World of Man and the Isles’, in The Viking Age in the Isle of Man: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Ninth Viking Congress, ed.  by Christine Fell, Peter Foote, James Graham-Campbell, and Robert Thomson (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1983), pp. 85–93 Mac Giolla Easpaig, Dónall, ‘L’influence scandinave sur la toponymie irlandaise’, in L’héritage maritime des Vikings en Europe de l’ouest, ed.  by Élisabeth Ridel (Caen: Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, 2002), pp. 441–81 Mac Mathúna, Séamas, ‘Hvítramannaland’, in Celts and Vikings: Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium of Societas Celto­logica Nordica, ed. by Folke Josephson, Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning, 20 (Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet, 1997), pp. 211–24 —— , ‘Hvítrmammaland Revisited’, in Islanders and Water Dwellers: Proceedings of the Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium Held at University College Dublin, 16–19 June 1996, ed. by Patricia Lysaght, Séamas Ó Catháin, and Daithí Ó hÓgáin (Dublin: DBA Publications, 1999), pp. 177–87 Maier, Bernhard, ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid: Celtic Myth and Christian Creed in Medi­eval Irish Concepts of the Afterlife’, in Writing Down the Myths, ed. by Joseph F. Nagy, Cursor mundi, 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 107–31 Marstrander, Carl J. S., Bidrag til det norske sprogs historie i Irland, Videnskapsselskapets skrifter 2, Hist.-filos. Klasse 1915, no.  5 (Oslo: I  Kommission hos Jacok Bybwad, 1915) McDonald, Roderick W., ‘Vikings in the Hebridean Economy: Methodology and Gaelic Language Evidence of Scandinavian Influence’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 62 (2015), 97–182 Mills, Kristen, ‘An Irish Motif in Guta saga’, Folklore, 126 (August 2015), 142–58 Mundal, Else, ‘Hvítramannaland and Other Fictional Islands in the Sea’, in Isolated Islands in Medi­eval Nature, Culture and Mind, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Torstein Jorgensen, Central European University Medi­evalia (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011), pp. 81–87 Nicolaisen, William F. H., Scottish Place-Names: Their Study and Significance (London: Batsford, 1976) Ní Mhaonaigh, Máire, ‘Caraid tairisi – Literary Links between Ireland and England in the Eleventh Century’, in Adapting Texts and Styles in a Celtic Context: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Processes of Literary Transfer in the Middle Ages; Studies in Honour of Erich Poppe, ed. by Axel Harlos and Neele Harlos, Studien und Texte zur Kelto­logie, 13 (Münster: Nodos Publikationen, 2016), pp. 205–88

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—— , ‘From Story to History: Narrating Conversion in Medi­eval Ireland’, in Converting the Isles, ii: Transforming Landscapes of Belief in the Early Medi­eval Insular World and Beyond, ed.  by Nancy Edwards, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Roy Flechner, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 207–31 O’Connor, Ralph, ‘“Stepmother Sagas”: An Irish Analogue for Hjálmpérs saga ok Ölvers’, Scandinavian Studies, 72.1 (2000), 1–48 Ó Cuív, Brian, ed., The Impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on the Celtic-Speaking Peoples: Introductory Papers Read at Plenary Sessions of the International Congress of Celtic Studies Held in Dublin, 6–10 July 1959 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1962) O’Donnell, Tom, Matthew Townend, and Elizabeth Tyler, ‘European Literature and Eleventh-Century England’, in The Cambridge History of Early Medi­eval English Lit­erature, ed.  by Clare  A. Lees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 607–63 Oftedal, Magne, ‘On the Frequency of Norse Loanwords in Scottish Gaelic’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, 9 (1961–1962), 116–27 Power, Rosemary, ‘Magnus Barelegs’ Expeditions to the West’, The Scottish Historical Review, 65.180 (1986), 107–32 Rekdal, Jan Erik, ‘Parallels between the Norwegian Legend of St  Sunniva and Irish Voyage Tales’, in Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age, ed. by Howard B. Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Raghnall Ó Floinn (Dublin: Four Courts, 1998), pp. 277–87 Schulze-Thulin, Britta, ‘Notes on the Old and Middle Irish Loanwords in Old Norse’, Nowele, 39 (2001), 53–84 Sims-Williams, Patrick, Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Stewart, Thomas W., ‘Lexical Imposition: Old Norse Vocabulary in Scottish Gaelic’, Dia­ chronica, 21.2 (2004), 393–420 Townend, Matthew, ‘Contextualising the Knútsdrápur: Skaldic Praise Poetry at the Court of Cnut’, Anglo-Saxon England, 39 (2001), 145–79 Wellendorf, Jonas, ‘The Stranger-King in Hvítramannaland’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 18 (forthcoming). Young, Jean, ‘Some Icelandic Traditions Showing Traces of Irish Influence’, Études celtiques, 3 (1937), 118–26

Digital Resources Egeler, Matthias, ‘Hvítramannaland’, in Germanische Altertumskunde Online, ed.  by Heinrich Beck and others

Romanization and the British Bards Jenny Rowland

I

must confess at the beginning that this contribution is more of an essay intended to provoke discussion rather than the carefully researched and copiously referenced paper the honorand might have produced on a similar topic.1 Nevertheless it builds on some of the work of Patrick Sims-Williams and I hope explores topics of interest to him. It is not intended as a full history of Welsh scholarship but to give an overview of one aspect of foundational scholarship in early Welsh literature, the argument that society and culture in Wales remained almost purely Celtic throughout the Roman period. It is worth examining why this was such a compelling historical interpretation and how this affected the early study of literature and the formation of the canon. The consensus on the historical background has changed radically, aided by reassessment of the idea of ‘Celticity’ and the degree to which Welsh culture at any period can be explained primarily by the Celtic past. However, the study of the bardic praise poet, often seen as a quintessential aspect of Celtic culture, still turns up assumptions which can be traced back to the foundational scholarship, particularly in surveys and in the choice of highlights of the literary canon.2 Roman influence on the bards was explicitly rejected in most early scholarship, and later reassessment rarely explicitly addresses the issue. In addition, it 1 

As proof of this the first page of my draft had no footnotes at all, so I would like to take this opportunity to thank Patrick and Marged for their support over the years, for the many interesting discussions, and the frequent and generous hospitality. 2  Rodway, ‘Ailystyried y Bardd Celtaidd’, pp. 11–23. Jenny Rowland ([email protected]) was a senior lecturer at UCD, Dublin in Welsh and Celtic Civilization. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131198 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 113–130 BREPOLS

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is important to recognize the connection to the nativist narrative in the treatment of the poetry of the ‘Old North’. The historical account of the Britons begins with the pre-Roman Iron Age when the island is first noticed in the written sources of the classical world. Popular and academic histories map Celtic tribes and note the ties on the eastern half of the island to the somewhat better-known Celts of Gaul. The campaigns of Caesar in 55 and 54 bc and the conquest in the first century are usually recounted. The Roman conquest is viewed from a colonial perspective, the wild and backward tribes with their round thatched huts receive from Rome the benefit of civilization.3 The comedic take on popular and poorly recalled history from 1930, 1066 and All That, hits the nail on the head: the Roman conquest was a ‘Good Thing’ because the Britons ‘were only natives at that time’.4 The Romans, like the administrators of the British Empire, came, and in 410 they left. The perceived similarities to the British Empire might have been expected to encourage sympathy for the inhabitants of Roman Britain in the face of raids and then conquest by the barbaric Anglo-Saxons. But this is negated if the admirable Romans had gone, and the feckless natives were all that remained, either reverting to backward Celtic ways or never having changed them. The Anglo-Saxon invaders, too, could be credited with replacing dubious Celtic stock with superior Aryan blood, a brutality necessary for the future greatness of England. Following literally the apocalyptic account of Gildas they were seen as ripe to be slaughtered, enslaved, or else to flee to the west and ‘become Welsh’ (1066 and All That), i.e. continue their unimproved Celtic ways.5 A more recent cartoon by James Whitworth sums up this narrative under the caption ‘Britain in 410 AD’ depicting a thatched round hut with the proud house plaque: Dun Roman.6 This paradigm of early British history was on the whole accepted in Wales, albeit with a different attitude. The early history of Wales is difficult to divorce from the mainstream of history of Roman Britain and the coming of the Saxons since the country itself comes into being as the result of conquest and resistance 3 

See Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen. Sellars and Yeatman, 1066 and All That, p. 3. 5  Cf. the popular history for children by Edward Freeman (1869): ‘Now you will perhaps say that our forefathers were cruel and wicked men […] But […] it has turned out much better in the end that our forefathers did thus kill or drive out nearly all the people whom they found in the land […] since otherwise I cannot think that we should ever have been so great and free a people as we have been for many ages’ (Freeman, Old English History for Children, p. 28). 6  [accessed 9 August 2017]. 4 

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in a contiguous landmass. It is also difficult to generalize about Roman and preRoman Wales from the better attested and wealthy lowlands of the eastern part of the island, and there was no reason not to defer to the interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon conquest by English historians. It had little immediate relevance to the history of Wales and its early literature except in the north where evidence for British survival was posited. What differed was that Wales remaining ‘Celtic’ was seen as highly desirable rather than a failure of ethnic cleansing.7 And if even in clearly romanized areas the Britons returned to Celtic ways after the Romans ‘left’ how much more Celtic would Wales have been? The Roman period seemed to require little consideration from Welsh scholars. The overwhelming authority of historian J. E. Lloyd’s seminal History of Wales (1911) ensured the acceptance through much of the twentieth century that the area of Wales was a military zone during the Roman period, with Rome having little or no effect on the culture of the native Britons.8 The Latin element in Welsh, some of it linked to Roman culture and institutions, was documented, but could be ascribed to spread in Brythonic from more romanized areas, or even brought by refugees escaping the Anglo-Saxons.9 Post-Roman evidence for Latinity was denigrated as primitive, superficial, and Christian in origin.10 The opinion of historians and archaeo­logists that the British Celts retained or reverted to Celtic purity was attractive to early Welsh scholars. Among Celtic scholars Ireland held a strong claim to greater importance not just because of the larger body of surviving native literature. Unconquered by Rome, Ireland was then seen as preserving intact ancient Celtic society and even providing a window on the Celtic Iron Age. Scholars of early Welsh were therefore invested in viewing Wales as marginal area: largely unaffected by Rome, and 7 

Haverfield, The Romanization of Roman Britain, noted in 1905: ‘Still more recently, the revival of Welsh national sentiment has inspired a hope, which has become a belief, that the Roman conquest was an episode, after which an unaltered Celticism resumed its interrupted supremacy’, p. 23. 8  See E. W. Williams, ‘J. E. Lloyd and his Intellectual Legacy’, and Pryce, J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History, chapter 7. 9  Jackson, Language and History, p. 106, argues that Latin loanwords primarily reached Wales only with refugees from the disasters in the east. 10  See Jackson’s interpretation, Language and History, pp. 116–21, and contrast the evidence given by Charles-Edwards that Latin was a spoken language in Wales in the fifth and sixth centuries, Wales and the Britons, pp.  93–115. See also Harvey, ‘Cambro-Romance’, pp. 179–202.

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later resisting the Saxons.11 In addition, romantic notions about the ‘Celt’ were widely accepted both in popular and academic writing. If culture is determined by ‘race’ it can survive or re-emerge regardless of outside influences and be reflected in literature.12 In Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry to an Irish audience Ifor Williams compares Celtic culture in Ireland and Wales to twins whose ‘congenital likeness’ remains intact despite being ‘brought up in two different environments for a while’.13 This assertion of innate similarity and dismissal of differing early history provides a vindication for his linking ancient evidence about the Continental Celts to medi­eval Welsh and Irish bardic poetry, and for the validity of comparisons between Welsh and Irish poets.14 From the start, the study of Celtic literature (and this is true in general of medi­e val vernacular literature) was justified by an appeal to antiquity and nativism. The ‘primitivism’ of Celtic literature was viewed as positive. The search for remnants of ancient myth in the Mabinogi from the time of Matthew Arnold’s critique of its deficiencies in that respect constrained criticism of the texts as literature well into the twentieth century. The concentration on bardic praise to the near exclusion of other roles is tied to the perceived continuity with the ancient Celtic bards through the Roman period and beyond. External influence in the form of Christianity could not be denied, but was fitted into a picture of adaptation by the bards to a new element which did not disturb 11 

A. H. Williams, An Introduction to the History of Wales, i (Cardiff, 1941), reprinted for the fourth time in 1969, sees Rome as an alien military imposition with little effect on ‘the natives’ whom he describes in terms recalling Caesar’s reports of the Celts of the far west: ‘the average Welshman of A.D. 400 […] was still in the pastoral stage of civilization, clad in the skins and subsisting on the flesh and milk of his flocks and herds, and still using, it may be added, implements made chiefly of flint and stone’, p. 49. In other words, better to be a primitive Celt than an assimilated Roman. A discussion of Latin loanwords ends with the same conclusion that Rome had almost no influence on any aspect of Welsh culture, p. 63. 12  Sims-Williams, ‘The Visionary Celt’, pp. 71–96. 13  Williams, Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry, p. 5. The British twin is described as ‘under the rod and discipline’ of the Roman Empire. He goes on to note, however, that Christianity affected both. Rodway, ‘Ailystyried’, pp. 22–25, charts the rise of Celtoscepticism including the theories of racially determined culture. See also his chapter in this publication on problems of the use of the term Celtic, ‘John Scottus Eriugena’. 14  In addition, a common stance in early Celtic scholarship was that any element attested earlier in Irish and not demonstrably common Celtic could be a borrowing from Irish to Welsh. Having the earliest bardic poetry was a consolation prize against a painful Celtic inferiority complex. See O’Rahilly, Ireland and Wales (1924), and Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, for a collection of articles which led the way to reassessment of Irish influence.

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the essential continuity of the bardic order. Such accommodation of the bardic order is rarely entertained for the Roman period, however, and the disappearance of the native learned class in heavily romanized areas of Britain either tacitly or openly assumed. However, if Wales was unromanized, Welsh bardism from the sixth century on would be not just a reversion to Celtic ways, but a descendant of bardic schools untouched or scarcely touched by Roman influence, as in Ireland. But should there have been undue romanization in Wales the poetic input from the Old North in the sixth century offers a bulwark against the charge of lack of Celtic purity. If Celtic culture did not innately reestablish itself after the end of Roman rule, or if it had been diluted in any way by an alien culture, the old and pure Celtic order could be found in the ‘Old North’, in the military zone around Hadrian’s Wall, and beyond it in territory, like Ireland, not occupied by Rome. In describing the long, illustrious history of the Welsh poets the Continental sources are usually cited before leaping to the post-Roman sources in Ireland and Wales. The description of the Continental bards as purveyors of praise to rulers matched the supposed earliest Welsh verse.15 If the bards were primarily or exclusively producers of bardic praise poetry the absence of a native ruling class to support poets immediately raises doubts about the continuity of the bardic order in Roman Britain.16 Jarman expressed his conviction that the bards endured the Roman period singing ‘at the court of British chieftains’, implying they survived in areas where Rome had had little or no impact.17 As we have seen, Ifor Williams suggests in Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry that the Roman occupation did not alter the essential and ancient Celtic nature of bardism. Much of his work, however, looks at the Old North and its influence on early Welsh literature, poets from Gododdin beyond Hadrian’s Wall, or Rheged in the military zone around it. Even if not explicitly perceived as reintroducing bardic praise poetry to a romanized Wales, it was generally accepted that the bardic works of the Old North had a profound impact which would negate any 15 

For a survey of sources and scholarship on bardic eulogy see Rodway, ‘Ailystyried y Bardd Celtaidd’, pp. 11–29. For the purposes here eulogy/praise also stands in for its obverse, satire, and subgenres such as the dadolwch. He also notes on p. 25: ‘Un agwedd ar y gymdeithas Geltaidd honedig sydd, hyd yn hyn, wedi osgoi ymosodiadau’r Celtosgeptigwyr yw’r bardd Celtaidd’ (One aspect of supposedly Celtic society which up to now has escaped the attacks of the Celtosceptics is the Celtic bard). 16  Cf. Ceri Lewis, ‘The Historical Background’, p. 24. 17  The Cynfeirdd, p. 2. Jackson, ‘The British Languages’, p. 120, expresses a similar view without suggesting a mechanism for the ‘remarkable’ survival.

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loss of Celtic purity. Ceri Lewis in his chapter on the historical background in A Guide to Welsh Literature, vol. i states that the poetry of the Old North preserved ‘indigenous Celtic traditions’ and that ‘the subsequent flowering of literature in Wales may well have been encouraged by an impetus from the north’.18 One exception to the rejection of Roman influence is found in the work of Saunders Lewis, a prominent non-nativist critic, who wrote from a dogmatic stance arguing Welsh literature was ‘classical’. He implies that Latin panegyric was the model for sixth-century Welsh bardic poetry in his 1968 essay, ‘The Tradition of Taliesin’, noting parallels with the Latin of Gildas.19 His premise that the poems of Taliesin to Urien established the basis of conservative bardic praise for centuries has been influential, whether accepted as fact or metaphor, but the notion of Latin panegyric being the model or even influencing Welsh poetry was scarcely entertained until later.20 David Greene in his debate on the dating of the earliest Welsh poetry — primarily with Kenneth Jackson — was probably trolling his opponents in arguing there was no Welsh literature before the ninth century except in Latin, thus giving clear primacy to Irish literature in both date and Celticity.21 This may have made Jackson even more unwilling to entertain Latin influence: when the earliest native literature known to us begins […] it is not in the least an imitation of Latin; it is quite simply a direct continuation of the bardic panegyric in praise of the nobility which was the classic concept of poetry among the Celts from the beginning and had survived four centuries of romanization.22

The focus on the praise poetry of the Old North clearly encouraged marginalization of other aspects of the bard’s learning and output — for instance, as in the rather lukewarm and secondary discussion of the so-called cerddi’r bwlch ‘poems of the gap’, the gap being not a lack of poetry but a dearth of praise poetry between the poetry of the Old North and the Poets of the Princes.

18 

Ceri Lewis, ‘The Historical Background’, p. 35. Saunders Lewis, ‘The Tradition of Taliesin’, pp. 293–98. 20  See Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, for a carefully argued discussion of Lewis’s points. 21  Jackson, ‘Linguistic Considerations’, pp. 2–3. For the scholarly debate on authenticity of the early poetry from the Irish point of view see Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, pp. 184–93. 22  Jackson, ‘The British Languages’, p. 120. 19 

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But were there bards in Roman Britain, especially in the east? If they survived there, one can also assume survival in Roman Wales. If so, since bards were a class who could travel with their skills or have their works spread by others, they almost certainly would have influenced poets in Wales and the Old North in the Roman and post-Roman period. The learned poets in Wales showed themselves well able to adapt in various periods, to the coming of Christianity and to various political and social changes up to the seventeenth century. It is difficult to see why the four centuries of Roman rule would be an exception. The approach to the question may also be very different if praise poetry is not considered their only or overriding function. Classical sources either present a single order of druids, or three closely related orders comprising bards and soothsayers in addition to druids. Suppression of the druids on the Continent and in Britain may have been overstated. Romano-Celtic and purely native cults probably had priests to perform rites and preserve the traditions of the gods.23 Apart from priestly functions, prognostication was also important in the ancient world, and a role continued later by the Welsh bards. There is no reason why even the romanized population would not continue to seek practitioners, as well as incomers from the empire seeking the power of local gods and seers. Healing rites of native deities could also have been a source of income and status. If like later members of the learned class in Ireland and Wales they were purveyors of entertainment, keepers of traditional history and lore, and of knowledge of the gods and their stories (the distant source of the Mabinogi) there is little reason to presume they would not have been welcomed by a local romanized elite. The Roman Empire was too vast and multi-ethnic to impose a single Roman elite culture. Romano-Britons as elsewhere must have had a localized Roman culture and as in other provinces this could incorporate local traditions and taste, particularly given Britain’s isolation from the rest of the empire.24 Priests, whether we call them druids or not, and bards could well have adapted and even flourished, in villas and urban townhouses, not just in the round huts of remote and untouched native villages.

23 

Mattingly, An Imperial Possession, pp. 480–82. There is no consensus on the extent of romanization in Britain except that it is likely it was not as deep as in provinces such as Gaul or Spain, and was highly dependent on social status. This would not preclude significant transferal to native culture by romanized members. For a study of romanization in Gaul see Woolf, Becoming Roman; for Britain, Millet, The Romanization of Britain. Charles-Edwards addresses evidence for romanization in Brythonic-speaking areas in the late Roman and post-Roman period in Wales and the Britons. 24 

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The position of British bards in Roman Britain may have been similar to that of the poets who patronized the nobility after the end of Welsh independence in 1282, calling into question the argument that the lack of a native ruling class would have led to their demise. If, as in later times, the bards were primarily from the elite, they would be expected to be Latin speaking, and like their patrons able to move between two cultures, perhaps using Latin or Brythonic according to the type of entertainment or the nature of the audience. Finally, panegyric was part of late Roman culture, not uniquely ‘Celtic’.25 The elite may have commissioned praise of an emperor, governor, or general as a measure of cultural loyalty, and possibly also more informal praise celebrating a marriage or a new wing to a villa. Bardic praise poetry to kings and warriors in Welsh may not represent an unaltered tradition; it could be an adaptation to the new political order after the fall of Rome which resulted in something superficially resembling unbroken continuity from the ancient Celtic past. Little is known about Roman culture in Roman Britain which cannot be deduced from material remains. The possible survival and roles of the Brythonic learned classes is of necessity the subject of speculation. There is, however, circumstantial evidence for bards in the immediate post-Roman period in addition to the famous notice in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum about presumably northern poets flourishing in British poetry at the time of Ida of Bernicia in the mid-sixth century. Hermann Moisl first noted a reference to the British bard with his crotta (crwth ‘harp’) in a late sixth-century poem by Venantius Fortunatus to Lupus, the Frankish duke of Champagne. Moisl argues that Fortunatus had encountered British bards on his travels and may have competed with them in Brittany. The context of promoting his own superior, civilized Roman panegyric compared to the inferior output of the generic Germanic poet with his harp and the British poet with his crotta suggests rather that he was disparaging rivals competing for advancement at Lupus’s court.26 If Lupus and other Franks were praised by British bards, the compositions almost certainly were in Latin, the lingua franca of Gaul. Fortunatus states that his rival could praise Lupus, but that he sang also of British matters — perhaps an early reference to the sort of tales that later formed ‘the matter of Britain’.27 British poets probably came 25 

Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, pp.  168–70. See also the essays in Whitby, The Propaganda of Power. 26  Moisl, ‘A Sixth-Century Reference’, pp. 269–73. 27  Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, p. 179.

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from the many British settlements on the Continent, attesting to the bardic order in late and post-Roman Britain, and suggesting adaptation over the Roman centuries. This suggests bards were not confined to unromanized areas beyond the Wall or in the far west.28 The possible references to bards in Gildas’s De excidio are better known and somewhat earlier. In the most telling of these, Gildas berates Maelgwn Gwynedd for giving up listening to the psalms of the ‘tuneful recruits of Christ’ for the ‘ravings’ of ‘hucksters’ who have an audience of bystanders. The juxtaposition, which implies the ravings were sung, suggests that he is referring to bards rather than courtly sycophants.29 This is supported by Gildas’s description of Britons fleeing overseas singing psalms instead of sea shanties, also contrasting psalms with secular song. It is likely we have bards such as those mentioned by Fortunatus singing to instrumental accompaniment (also attested for ancient Celtic bards and medi­e val Welsh and Irish poets). We may also suspect that like the bards known to Fortunatus they may have composed in Latin and been influenced by late Latin panegyric as much as ancient Celtic tradition.30 Gildas in disparaging churchmen adds that they neglect religious literature to attend to the foolish fables of secular men, an old chestnut of religious reforming zeal, but an interesting one perhaps hinting at professional entertainers.31 Is there any evidence, then, of influence on Welsh bards from the ‘Old East’? It is impossible to be certain. Like Latin vocabulary, bardic material from eastern Britain could have passed from region to region, both by indirect contact with eastern bards or directly. The process would be equivalent to ways in which poetry and stories may have passed to Wales from the Old North. Eastern bardic material could already have been transferred to Wales even if the bardic order had subsequently disappeared in the most romanized areas of Britain. However, the early post-Roman evidence in Gildas and on the 28  Ideally when discussing survival of the bardic order in Roman Britain one would like to know more about Brittany and Cornwall. For a survey of evidence for a bardic order which eulogized leaders see Rodway, ‘Ailystyried y Bardd Celtaidd’, pp. 15–18. Even if there is no sound evidence for the singing of praise, the complex story tradition suggests a learned class was present in both areas; see below. At any rate, the Roman and immediate post-Roman period may have supported bards in Brittany and Cornwall as the account of Fortunatus suggests even if they later died out. 29  Jarman, ‘Taliesin’, p. 53; see Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, p. 175, for a fuller discussion of the passage. 30  Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, pp. 174–83. 31  Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, p. 178.

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Continent suggests Wales and/or the Old North were not the only locations of bardic survival. So, too, do the many tales, including those known only by allusions, which like the stories of the Old North deal with other parts of Britain and are not relocalized in Wales. A key case study is the Caswallon material. Ifor Williams has gathered the evidence for lost tales about him in his article ‘Hen Chwedlau’.32 Caswallon is a minor, off-stage character in the Mabinogi, unscrupulously seizing the throne with the help of magic and assassination in the second branch and ruling the Island of Britain in ‘Lloegr’ (England) in the third. Bendigeidfran is called king of the island, but he is seen alive only in Gwynedd, Ireland, and his post-death feast in Harlech and Penfro. His head is buried in London to protect Britain from invasion, but there is no real sense of him as a ruler active in the wider island. Caswallon, in contrast, is clearly located in the east and centre, accepting homage of his rule from Pryderi in Kent. In the understanding of the medi­eval author of the Mabinogi, Caswallon, despite his family links to Bendigeidfran, appears to have the role of an English monarch whose alien rule of law runs in England. Caswallon, certainly in origin Cassivellaunus, the main opponent of Caesar, is not linked to the Roman invasion of Britain in the Mabinogi, although there may be a foreshadowing of it in the context of the burial of Bendigeidfran’s head to ward off invasion.33 The references to Caswallon in the Triads of the Island of Britain and by the poets suggest other stories about the historical Cassivellaunus were extant which are distinct from those of historical accounts. One triad states he allowed Caesar’s host to land on British soil in exchange for a horse, Meinlas.34 Among the poets and triads he is the lover of Fflur whom he pursued to Rome disguised as a shoemaker.35 The possession of Fflur may represent the struggle for British sovereignty as in Breuddwyd Maxen. He is also said to have taken an army to the Continent, an adventure also assigned to Arthur and Cynan, and as in the latter story his host remained on the Continent.36 32 

Williams, ‘Hen Chwedlau’, pp. 41–43. Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Bromwich, pp. 88–92. The triad refers to Saxon invasion rather than Roman. 34  Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Bromwich, no. 59. The horse is also named in no. 38. 35  Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Bromwich, no. 67. 36  Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Bromwich, no. 5. A plausible reconstruction of the story behind the various allusions can be found in Bartrum, A Welsh Classical Dictionary, p. 109, assuming all the allusions are to the same tale. 33 

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He is viewed as both hero and anti-hero, with both opposition to Rome and links to it. The tales about Caswallon are not relocated to Wales perhaps suggesting that at least some of the material may have been securely located in the east before coming to Wales. In comparison the story of Manawydan — which John Koch argues has its origin in a tale about Caesar’s invasion — has lost any overt link to the history of Rome in Britain except in so much as it is in the time of Caswallon.37 The primacy given to the role of the Old North in modern scholarship depends mainly on its bardic praise poetry, although numerous allusions to lost stories and people from the North are also cited to demonstrate its role in the medi­eval Welsh imagination.38 The evidence for narrative material from the south-west and Cornwall is in contrast acknowledged only rarely in the context of bardic influence, usually in the tracing of a specific reference. This is perhaps because the role of the poet as a teller of tales is rarely at the forefront in the definition of the bard, and because of the lack of an attested bardic praise tradition in Cornwall.39 Taking a broader definition of bardic activities, the oral story tradition as reflected in Arthurian romances of Cornwall (and Brittany) shows features of bardic-type learning as well as folk tradition. Even if transmitted to Wales in post-Roman times it suggests wider survival of the bardic order. The post-Roman British kingdoms in the midlands are another area which could well have had a long history of bards. There are unlocated figures in triads, stories, and poetic allusions, as well as genealogies of uncertain origin. The case of Caswallon suggests that material about the family of Beli Mawr, the ambivalent tales about Roman rule and post-Roman succession, the concept of the island of Britain, and the pseudo-history linked to world history found in the Historia Brittonum and elsewhere in Welsh learned tales in Latin and the vernacular could have a past extending into the Roman period even if it was developed much later in Wales.40

37 

Koch, ‘A Welsh Window’, pp. 17–52. See Haycock, ‘The Old North in Medi­eval Wales’; Thomas, ‘Remembering the “Old North”’. 39  Padel, however, believes that Cornwall could not and did not support a learned class due to early English conquest, ‘Cornwall and the Matter of Britain’, p. 263. Brett, ‘Breton Latin Literature as Evidence for Literature in the Vernacular’, also is sceptical of a Breton bardic tradition. As noted above this may not have been the case in the Roman and immediate post-Roman period. 40  Of course, there could also be recourse to written sources; see Guy, ‘Constantine, Helena, Maximus’ and below on the interaction of Welsh poets with non-native knowledge. 38 

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There may be many reasons for the survival of praise poetry said to be from the Old North, as well as an element of chance, but there is a possibility that a major factor was the distance and neutrality to the conflicts between kingdoms in Wales. Praise could be divisive as well as unifying, with only limited factions having an interest in preserving and handing down a specific eulogy.41 The poetry to the men of the Old North presented an ideal of heroes fighting for survival against the English invaders, and thus could be a widely acceptable element of a bard’s repertoire in all parts of Wales. (Eastern heroes would have been too early for surviving poetry, and it would have been harder for medi­eval Welshmen to view the by then very English heartland as part of their struggle.) This ideal remained potent in the twentieth century as well as highlighted by the treatment of the poem to Cynan Garwyn of Powys in the Book of Taliesin. It was edited by Ifor Williams as one of the twelve authentic poems of the historical Taliesin named in the Historia Brittonum. The poem could be as old as the other poems to Urien and Gwallog, but the argument for it being the work of Taliesin depends primarily on whether the presence in the Book of Taliesin implies an attribution to the historical bard. Ifor Williams speculated that Taliesin began his career in Powys, moving from there to serve in the Old North. In effect, then, one of the two poets of the Old North and the one usually thought the earliest would be Welsh, already accomplished in his craft.42 This bio­graphical argument was weak which in part explains why it did not disturb the accepted narrative that the earliest ‘Welsh’ bards flourished in the Old North. However, this does not explain why ‘Cynan Garwyn’ was not celebrated as a poem of Welsh provenance with a claim to be as early as the poems from the Old North. A clue as to why not lies in Jarman’s assessment of the poem. He accepted the attribution to the early career of Taliesin, because ‘it certainly lacks the maturity and the sense of responsibility found in Taliesin’s other poems’.43 He goes on to explain this is demonstrated by the praise of Cynan’s depredations of his fellow countrymen: ‘there is no hint of a sense of Welsh or Brythonic unity in face of a common enemy.’ ‘Cynan Garwyn’ did not fit into the idealized picture of the united struggle of the men of the Old North, Gododdin with its alliance of Cymry and Urien against the Angles, and 41 

Rowland, ‘Ailystyried y Canu Mawl Cynnar’, pp. 8–9. Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, p. 183, raises the possibility that southern poetry may have been Latinate and difficult making northern verse more appealing. 42  Canu Taliesin, ed. by Williams, p. xxxix. 43  Jarman, ‘Taliesin’, p. 56.

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was therefore ignored or scarcely mentioned in the treatment of the earliest Welsh poetry. ‘Cynan Garwyn’ has yet to be fully fitted into the standard account of the earliest Welsh praise poetry whether its putative date is accepted or rejected.44 The poetry of the Old North, despite questions of authenticity, is more substantial and in many cases less problematic than the handful of praise poems to Welsh patrons before c. 1100. It accords with the foundational picture of the Celtic bard singing to noble patrons, easing seamlessly into the substantial works of the Poets of the Princes. The revised view of Roman and post-Roman history has not totally modified the picture of the role of poetry from the Old North. Acceptance of Wales as part of the Roman world together with the persistent conviction that Welsh bardic eulogy is essentially Celtic almost require the Northern deus ex machina to maintain the literary status quo. It is still surprising, especially given the ongoing debate on authenticity, that unambiguous statements of the idea that northern verse restored the Welsh bardic art which had languished under Rome are relatively recent. It was raised in passing by Dumville who in 1995 speculated that the poetry of the Old North may have replaced more romanized traditions because of its purity, coming as it did from areas of continued native rule — if indeed the bardic tradition had survived at all to the east and south.45 The import of native bardism from the Old North forms part of Woolf ’s 2003 thesis that the romanized elite of Britain actively chose to embrace Brythonic identity and reject Roman as Anglo-Saxon power spread.46 Both writers argue from the standpoint of historians, and clearly demonstrate the extent to which the view of Roman and post-Roman Wales has changed although the old picture of the ‘Celtic’ nature of Welsh bardic poetry remains relatively static. It is not within the remit of this essay to examine the evolution of Welsh scholarship resulting from both historical revision and Celtoscepticism. The masterly work by Haycock on the poems of the legendary Taliesin is still relatively recent but demands a widespread reconsideration of these poems and the bardic order. The poems are wide-ranging, showing the aspirations of bardic learning, both native and learned, religious and secular, and genres which go 44 

Koch, Cunedda, Cynan, Cadwallon, Cynddylan, reappraises the poem along with other possibly early poems from Wales but is primarily interested in their historical background. 45  Dumville, ‘The Idea of Government’, p. 209. 46  Woolf, ‘The Britons’, pp. 373–76. The case of poetry forms only part of his thesis and deserves more attention that can be allowed for here.

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well beyond the production of praise poetry. Since she has also demonstrated that some of the poetry was composed and/or revised in the period of the Poets of the Princes (and probably by one of their number writing anonymously), the old narrative of the absolute predominance of eulogy in this period and others must be challenged.47 There has been welcome attention to less popular genres, such as prophecy, gnomic verse, and religious poems.48 Two studies explicitly question the orthodoxies of Celtic bardism.49 Comparative studies which look beyond Irish have produced insights.50 The chapter covering early poetry in the most recent survey of Welsh literature is instructive of the change: a wide range of genres is surveyed, with no reference to Continental or Irish bards.51 Many of the implications for how we read, edit, and interpret texts in the light of interaction between Latin and the vernacular have already been explored by Patrick Sims-Williams in his article on Gildas and the poets. Unfortunately, his preliminary lead for the most part has not been followed up. A more comprehensive comparison with Latin panegyric might not answer conclusively whether or not the bards were influenced by Latin verse, but it could challenge or confirm Celtic exceptionalism.52 His pioneer work on Latinate vocabulary also should be extended, with both comparative and chrono­logical studies. His examination of the figurative use of nouns such as llew ‘lion’ and draig ‘dragon’ offers a valuable model.53 Other vocabulary, such as words which would have been recognizably close to Latin in early Welsh, and terms from administration and the army might also be revealing.54 Do some poems or genres have greater 47 

Legendary Poems, ed. and trans. by Haycock. Major studies include Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. and trans. by Haycock; Jones, Darogan; Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, ed. by Jacobs; Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar, ed. by Haycock. 49  See Rodway, ‘Ailystyried’ who also gives an account of foundational scholarship on Celtic eulogy and Rowland, ‘Ailystyried y Canu Mawl Cynnar’ questioning the centrality of praise poetry. 50  Higley, Between Languages; Callander, Dissonant Neighbours. 51  Fulton, ‘Britons and Saxons’; compare also the discussion by Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, pp. 651–79. 52  Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, pp. 179–81. Sims-Williams also notes that non-European panegyric should also be compared. 53  Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, pp. 182–91. Although not solely linguistic, the encroachment of wine on the traditional luxury drink of mead in the Gododdin may point to the need to look for other areas where Roman cultural values may have been adopted. 54  See Day, ‘Weapons and Fighting in Y Gododdin’. 48 

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or lesser use of vocabulary of Latin origin? Is there a change over time? All but a few loanwords from English and French were seemingly consciously excluded by the poets on the whole until the fourteenth century. Is the copious use of Latin loanwords then due to their complete penetration into Brythonic or a deliberate exploitation of recognizably foreign elite vocabulary? One of the biggest implications of the recognition of a late Latin culture among the Britons is for literacy and learning. The theory of long oral transmission of early poetry arose in part to meet the challenge of authenticity in the face of the lack of early manu­scripts, but feats of memory have since been celebrated as a proud mark of the Celtic bard. Caesar’s comments that the druids learned vast amounts of poetry are favoured over his observations and those of other classical writers that they used letters for various purposes.55 The use of memorization for performance is obviously not rare even to this day and relevant to the bards at all periods. It is inherently likely that the learned classes in Roman Britain also adopted literacy, and even more likely that in order to maintain their status in the Latinate and Christian society of early Wales at least the most prominent bards would be literate.56 With rulers like Maelgwn having had a good secular education according to Gildas and with the bards competing with churchmen for learned status it is difficult to imagine poets could have retreated into purely native oral learning. Looking forwards in time we have the Taliesin figure who in effect promises the best of both worlds, unlike churchmen, and looking sideways, if Irish poets are to be compared, the superior filid are distinguished in part by their literacy.57 Bardic learning may not always have been deep, but the possibilities of open channels to the Latin literate world should be entertained at all periods. Early scholars had good (and sometimes less good) reasons to stress the deep Celtic inheritance of bardic praise poetry, and we are deeply indebted to their work and insights.58 Awareness of the change in historical interpretation of Roman and post-Roman Britain, however, should provide further impetus to the ongoing move away from interpreting early Medi­eval Welsh literature primarily in the light of conservative Celtic tradition. 55 

Roberts, ‘Achau Llafaredd’, pp. 33–56. Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, pp. 171–73. 57  Haycock, ‘Taliesin’s Questions’, p. 26; Sims-Williams, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, p. 172; Johnston, Literacy and Identity in Early Medi­eval Ireland, pp. 188–96. 58  See Rodway, ‘Ailystyried’, who argues that Celtoscepticism should not result in glib dismissal of previous theories about the Celtic bard, subject to fresh rigorous scrutiny, pp. 46–47. 56 

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Works Cited Primary Sources Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar, ed.  by Marged Haycock (Felindre: Cyhoeddiadau Barddas, 1994) Canu Taliesin, ed. by Ifor Williams (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1977) Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, ed. by Nicolas Jacobs, MHRA Library of Medi­ eval Welsh Literature (London: MHRA, 2012) Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. and trans. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2007) Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. and trans. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2013) Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Rachel Bromwich (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978)

Secondary Works Bartrum, Peter C., A Welsh Classical Dictionary: People in History and Legend up to about A. D. 2000 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1993) Brett, Caroline, ‘Breton Latin Literature as Evidence for Literature in the Vernacular, A. D. 800–1300’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 18 (1989), 1–25 Callander, David, Dissonant Neighbours: Narrative Progress in Early Welsh and English Poetry (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019) Charles-Edwards, Thomas, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Day, Jenny, ‘Weapons and Fighting in Y Gododdin’, Studia Celtica, 49 (2015), 121–47 Dumville, David, ‘The Idea of Government in Sub-Roman Britain’, in After Empire: Towards an Ethno­logy of Europe’s Barbarians, ed. by Giorgio Ausenda (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), pp. 177–216 Freeman, Edward Augustus, Old English History for Children (London: Methuen, 1869) Fulton, Helen, ‘Britons and Saxons: The Earliest Writing in Welsh’, in The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature, ed.  by Geraint Evans and Helen Fulton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 26–51 Greene, David, ‘Linguistic Considerations in the Dating of Early Welsh Verse’, Studia Celtica, 6 (1971), 1–11 Guy, Ben, ‘Constantine, Helena, Maximus: On the Appropriation of Roman History in Medi­eval Wales, c. 800–1250’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 44 (2018), 381–405 Harvey, Anthony, ‘Cambro-Romance? Celtic Britain’s Counterpart to Hiberno-Latin’, in Early Medi­eval Ireland and Europe: Chrono­logy, Contacts, Scholarship; A Festschrift for Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, ed. by Pádraic Moran and Immo Warntjes, Studia traditionis theo­logiae, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 179–202

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Haycock, Marged, ‘Taliesin’s Questions’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 33 (1997), 19–80 —— , ‘The Old North in Medi­eval Wales’, in What Is North? Imagining and Representing the North from Ancient Times to the Present Day, ed.  by Oisín Plumb, Alexandra Sanmark, and Donna Heddle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 53–70 Haverfield, Francis, The Romanization of Roman Britain, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1915) [f. p. 1905] Higley, Sarah, Between Languages: The Uncooperative Text in Early Welsh and Old English Nature Poetry (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993) Hingley, Richard, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeo­logy (London: Routledge, 2000) Jackson, Kenneth H., Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953) —— , ‘The British Languages and their Evolution’, in Literature and Western Civilization, ii: The Medi­eval World, ed. by David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby (London: Aldus, 1973), pp. 113–26 Jarman, A. O. H., ‘Taliesin’, in A Guide to Welsh Literature, i, ed. by A. O. H. Jarman and Gwilym Rees Hughes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), pp. 51–67 —— , The Cynfeirdd: Early Welsh Poets and Poetry (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1981) Johnston, Elva, Literacy and Identity in Early Medi­eval Ireland (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013) Jones, Aled Llion, Darogan: Prophecy, Lament and Absent Heroes in Medi­eval Welsh Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013) Koch, John, ‘A Welsh Window on the Iron Age: Manawydan, Mandubracios’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 14 (1987), 17–52 —— , Cunedda, Cynan, Cadwallon, Cynddylan: Four Welsh Poems and Britain, 383–655 (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013) Lewis, Ceri, ‘The Historical Background of Early Welsh Verse’, in A Guide to Welsh Literature, i, ed. by A. O. H. Jarman and Gwilym Rees Hughes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), pp. 11–50 Lewis, Saunders, ‘The Tradition of Taliesin’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1968), 293–98 Mattingly, David, An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC – AD 409 (London: Penguin, 2007) Millet, Martin, The Romanization of Britain: An Essay in Archaeo­logical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Moisl, Hermann, ‘A Sixth-Century Reference to the British bardd’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29 (1981), 269–73 O’Rahilly, Cecile, Ireland and Wales: Their Historical and Literary Relations (London: Longmans, 1924)

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Padel, Oliver J., ‘Cornwall and the Matter of Britain’, in Arthur in the Celtic Languages, ed. by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Erich Poppe (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019), pp. 263–80 Pryce, Huw, J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011) Roberts, Richard, ‘Achau Llafaredd’, Dwned, 15 (2009), 33–56 Rodway, Simon, ‘Ailystyried y Bardd Celtaidd: Defodau Urddo a Dulliau Cyfansoddi’, Dwned, 21 (2015), 11–47 Rowland, Jenny, Ailystyried y Canu Mawl Cynnar (Aberystwyth: Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru, 2016) Sellers, Walter C., and Robert J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That: A  Memorable History of England (London: Penguin, 1960) Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘Gildas and Vernacular Poetry’, in Gildas: New Approaches, ed. by Michael Lapidge and David Dumville (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984), pp. 169–92 —— , ‘The Visionary Celt: The Construction of an “Ethnic Preconception”’, Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 11 (1986), 71–96 —— , Irish Influence on Medi­eval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) —— , ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 63 (2016), 163–234 Thomas, Rebecca, ‘Remembering the “Old North” in Ninth- and Tenth-Century Wales’, Peritia, 29 (2018), 181–201 Williams, Emyr W., ‘J. E. Lloyd and the Intellectual Foundation of Welsh History’, Journal of the National Library of Wales, 36 (2014), 1–44 Williams, H., An Introduction to the History of Wales, i (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1969) Williams, Ifor, ‘Hen Chwedlau’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1946–1947), 28–58 —— , Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1970) [f. p. 1944] Woolf, Alex, ‘The Britons: From Romans to Barbarians’, in ‘Regna’ and ‘gentes’: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medi­eval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Trans­formation of the Roman World, ed.  by Hans-Werner Goetz, Jörg Jarnut, and Walter Pohl (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 345–80 Woolf, Greg, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Society in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Digital Resources Whitworth, James, ‘Britain in 410 AD’ [accessed 1 March 2022]

A Note on the Four Bare-Headed Women in ‘Echrys Ynys’ William Mahon

I

n the festschrift presented to Proinsias Mac Cana in 1999, R.  Geraint Gruffydd gave us a new edition and translation of ‘Echrys Ynys’ (Desolate Is the Island), a well-known poem from ‘The Book of Taliesin’.1 The poem had previously been edited and discussed by Ifor Williams, to whom Gruffydd credited the provision of a historical context: Sir Ifor established beyond reasonable doubt that the poem was an elegy for an Anglesey magnate named Aeddon  […] who had come to Môn (Anglesey) from Arfon and who had unfortunately brought with him four young women — whether daughters or concubines is not stated — who had an undue influence upon him and who remained influential after Aeddon and his wife Llywy had died; unhappily, that influence was not exerted in favour of the poet.2

The first six lines of ‘Echrys Ynys’ refer to the desolation and strife that had overtaken Anglesey after the violent death of Aeddon and the personal loss suffered by the poet who counted the deceased as his [b]rawt escor ‘true brother’. This is followed by an account of Aeddon’s arrival in Anglesey from Arfon, called [g]wlat Wytyon ‘Gwydion’s land’, accompanied by four unnamed females:3 1 

‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd. The Book of Taliesin is Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 2; the poem is found on pp. 68–69. 2  ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd, p. 40; ‘Two Poems’, ed. and trans. by Williams, pp. 172–80. 3  Gruffydd follows Brynley  F. Roberts in identifying [Caer] Seon with a location in William Mahon ([email protected]) is a lecturer (emeritus) in the Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth University. In retirement, his primary research interest is post-classical modern Irish literature, 1650–1850. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131199 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 131–137 BREPOLS

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Pan doeth Aedon Gwenwyn pyr doeth Kwydynt kyfoet,

o wlat Wytyon pedair pennoeth y bu clyt coet,

Seon tewdor meinoeth tymhor. gwynt ygohor. (ll. 7–9)

(When Aeddon came from Gwydion’s land to Seon’s stronghold | It is cruel that there came [also] four bare-headed women in the midnight hour. | Companions fell, woods were no refuge, [with] the wind contrary.)4

Following Ifor Williams, Gruffydd takes these four women to be historical; that they might have been either daughters or concubines.5 What is immediately striking in these lines, however, is a set of iconic details that suggest a mythic or otherworldly context: the four women are bare-headed (pennoeth) and appear at midnight (meinoeth tymhor) on the eve of a disastrous battle.6 The menacing aspect of their appearance is hardly captured by Gruffydd’s translation of gwenwyn (literally ‘poison’ or ‘venom’) as ‘cruel’, especially in light of the note in GPC (s.v. gwenwyn) regarding its figurative use indicating a ‘baneful element from without’.7 In any case, the text suggests that the ensuing tragedy in which companions were slain owes in part to the presence of the four women. It is worth noting furthermore that the rise of a contrary wind, gwynt ygohor, is a well-known trope for the action of malevolent powers.8 This mythic dimension Anglesey (Roberts, ‘Rhai o Gerddi Ymddiddan’, p. 322). For a clear and concise summary of the scholarship on this problem, see Legendary Poems, ed. and trans. by Haycock, pp. 345–46 (n. 91). Haycock’s conclusion that the identification of the poem’s Seon with Caer Seon (= Conwy Mountain) is to be preferred and is also endorsed by Charles-Edwards, for historical reasons, in Wales and the Britons, pp. 666–67, esp. n. 78. 4  Gruffydd’s translation is used throughout this paper unless otherwise noted. 5  ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd, p. 40; ‘Two Poems’, ed. and trans. by Williams, p. 179. In a publication postdating the editions of Williams and Gruffydd, Thomas Charles-Edwards opined that the four women were ‘more likely to be supernatural creatures resembling Valkyries than arrogant former slave girls, or else his daughters, who had an undue influence on Aeddon’ (Wales and the Britons, p. 667 n. 79). Charles-Edwards does not make a case for his preferred interpretation, but the reader will readily see that the mythic context outlined here is in general agreement with his view of the matter. 6  Ifor Williams took the bare heads of these women as an indication that they were captives who had become Aeddan’s concubines. His reasoning, however, is oddly circular: ‘If slave girls of yore were bareheaded, the pedeir pennoeth of line 8 would be very apt’; ‘Two Poems’, ed. and trans. by Williams, p. 179. 7  Williams translates gwenwyn adjectivally as ‘bitter’ (‘Two Poems’, ed. and trans. by Williams, p. 178). 8  The concept of a fairy wind or blight (síth-ghaoithe, gaoth sídhe, séideán sídhe) is commonplace in medi­eval and modern Irish tradition; see O’Kelleher, ‘A Hymn’, p. 236 (§ 7) and

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is reinforced in the next two lines in which the current desolation is contrasted with the legendary state of order which existed in the time of Gwydion and Amaethon (both children of Dôn) when Math and Eufydd — it is suggested — conjured the imaginary author of the poem, Taliesin himself.9 Math ac Euuyd Ymyw Gwytyon

hutynt geluyd ac Amaethon

ryd eluinor. atoed kyghor (ll. 10–11)

(Math and Eyfydd fashioned by magic an artist, a generous utterer. | During the life of Gwydion and Amaethon counsel used to prevail.)

Gruffydd was aware of the problem posed by these names in regard to the historical context of the poems: ‘[I]t is remarkable to find this awareness of figures assigned by tradition to the pagan past in what is a thoroughly Christian poem’.10 Indeed, the centrality of these four to the poem is remarkable for the same reason. Following a reference in the second half of the poem to Aeddon’s burial (l. 21, ‘The ruler is perished, the governor of a coast, earth covers him’), the four women reappear: Pedeir morwyn, Erdygnawt wir: O’e wironyn

wedi eu cwyn, ar vor, ar tir, na ddigonyn

duygnawt eu tra, hir eu trefra dim gofettra. (ll. 22–24)

(The four maidens, after their feasting, grievous was their oppression, | A cruel truth: on land, on sea, their deceit is long-lasting | that for his faithful henchman they will do nothing at all.)

Ó Duilearga, Leabhar Stiofáin, pp. 256–57, 353. It is also well known, of course, in Tudor England, for which see Shakespeare’s Macbeth, i.3.13. 9  This reference to Taliesin’s magical origin is obviously a variant of the tradition as given in ‘Kat Godau’ (Aberystwyth, NLW, Peniarth 2, pp. 25.21–26.6) according to which Math, Gwydion, and a large company of magicians and bardic masters had this role. 10  ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd, p. 41. In the nineteenth century there were local traditions in Arfon that connected Arianrhod, the sister of Gwydion and Amaethon, with three other sisters, Gwennan, Elan, and Maelan. While collecting folklore in Dinas Dinlle, John Rhŷs was told that these three, who had escaped from the submerged court of ‘Tregar Anrheg’ ~ ‘Tregan Anthrod’ (which he derives from ‘Tre’-Gaer-Arianrhod’), each bore the epithet ‘bi Dôn’ (Rhŷs, Celtic Folklore, pp. 208–11). He tentatively suggests a connection with Dôn and refers to a story from which he deduces that bi might mean ‘baby’ or ‘child’. Equating these four sisters with the women in ‘Echrys Ynys’, tempting though it may be, is overly speculative given the available evidence.

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Continuing with the mythic frame of reference suggested above — and given the funerary context of the preceding lines — one might take cwyn in line 22 to refer to a metaphorical ‘feasting of death’. It might also refer, however, to weeping or wailing (GPC, s.v. cwyn1, cognate with OIr. caíne ~ coíne ‘act of lamenting’ [eDIL, s.v. caíne]), an activity associated with female death-messengers in Welsh and Irish tradition.11 Unfortunately, lines 23 and 24 contain hapax legomena which prevent us from anything but tentative interpretations. The first of these is trefra in line 23. Ifor Williams translated this as ‘shame(?)’ but offered no explanation for his conjecture.12 Gruffydd suggests that the word is related, either as a cognate or a derivative, to Irish trebrad ‘plaiting, weaving’, and he takes it figuratively to mean ‘deceit’.13 This suggestion is attractive on semantic grounds, and if one were to accept the mythic interpretive scheme, it would fit in well with other European traditions concerning the death-goddesses or ‘Fates’ who decide the lifespan of mortals. The Greek Moirai, the Roman Parcae, the Norse Nornir, and even the Wyrd Sisters of Elizabethan England are such figures, typically female and usually triplicate. An Irish vestige of this tradition is found in the Old Irish lorica prayer beginning ‘Admuinir secht n-ingena trethan | dolbte snáthi macc n-aesmár’ (I invoke the seven daughters of the sea | who form the threads of the long-lived youths).14 Unfortunately, this appeal to an Old Irish word to explain trefra raises problems of its own, and a credible linguistic or historical explanation is still wanting.15 Gruffydd remains open to the possibility that it is connected to W. tref  ‘settlement’, and taking it as corrupt form of an abstract noun *trefdra ‘dominion’(?), ‘domination’(?) might provide adequate sense: ‘on land, on sea, their dominion is long-lasting’.16 The second hapax is gofettra in line 24, for which the GPC (s.v. gofetra) tentatively gives ‘feat; whit, bit’ from go+medr1. Taking medr with its primary 11 

See the description of ‘Gwrach y Rhibyn’ in Rhŷs, Celtic Folklore, p. 213; and for the Irish bean sídhe, Breathnach, Maigh Cuilinn, p. 121. For a comprehensive discussion of this figure, see Lysaght, The Banshee. 12  ‘Two Poems’, ed. and trans. by Williams, p. 178. 13  ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd, p. 47 n. 23. 14  Cétnad nAíse, ed. by Carey, p. 136. 15  Could Aeddon, whose name appears to be Irish (see n. 24 below), have been part Irish or had Irish poets in his court? The same issue arises in connection with the Irish elements in Culhwch ac Olwen. 16  An abstract *trefndra ‘government’(?) — here in relation to fate — is yet another possibility, but obviously more problematic in regard to the form in the manu­script.

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meaning of ‘skill’, ‘proficiency’, ‘ability’, we might read: ‘That for his faithful henchman they provide no proficiency’; that they leave Aeddon’s poet with no ability to frame his sorrow in verse. In this reading, the line acts as a bridge for what follows in line 25: ‘I am guilty were I not to praise him who might have done me good’. Williams’s and Gruffydd’s interpretations of the poem’s context present us with a disgruntled bard complaining about four female interlopers who have somehow cut him off after the death of his lord in battle. The mythic interpretation suggested above might allow us to see in ‘Echrys Ynys’ a very rare reference in early Welsh literature to female death-messengers comparable to the badhbh and bean sídhe in Irish tradition. The bean sídhe ‘woman of the fairy mound’ may appear either as an old woman or a young maiden, but she is always bareheaded and is usually encountered in a lonely place or in the depth of night. In the seventeenth century, Irish poets revived these traditions in elegiac dreamvision poems (aislingí) in an effort to reaffirm their cultural authority.17 At a more primitive level, her counterpart is found in Welsh oral traditions concerning Gwrach y Rhibyn, a death-messenger described by Jonathan Caredig Davies as ‘an ugly old hag with long flowing hair, glaring eyes and face as gloomy as death itself ’.18 Much of what has been claimed in this note might appear to take historicity lightly, and by way of a conclusion something might be added in regard to the poem’s historical context and its relevance for this mystery of the four bareheaded women. Gruffydd adduces evidence to show that the language of this ‘Dark Age’ poem does not preclude a ninth- or tenth-century date of composition. 19 But neither does it preclude the eleventh-century date as suggested by Ifor Williams.20 Gruffydd claims that an idiosyncratic form [B]retonia ‘Britain’ in line 20 of ‘Echrys Ynys’ may indicate a ‘relatively early’ date.21 His argument is based on the fact that Bede, writing in the ninth century, uses forms in Brett(Brettones, Brettonici) for ‘Britons’. (Bede actually uses these promiscuously alongside the more conventional set in Britt- : Brittani, Brittanici).22 That an 17 

Mahon, ‘Aisling Elegy’, pp. 267–69. Davies, Folk-Lore, p. 213. 19  ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd, p. 42. 20  ‘Two Poems’, ed. and trans. by Williams, p. 177. 21  ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, ed. and trans. by Gruffydd, p. 43. 22  Several examples of Brett- and Britt- forms may be seen at a glance in book i, chapter 1 of 18 

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eleventh-century bard may have been familiar with Bede’s variants is in no way an outrageous conjecture. The form Bretonia in ‘Echrys Ynys’ can be explained simply as a form the poet chose in order to fulfil a requirement of his rhupunt metre: in this case, using Bret- to supply an assonantal correspondence with the second syllable of perchen in the previous foot.23 With very little reason to consider this a ninth- or tenth-century poem, we can look elsewhere for a historical context. Thomas Charles-Edwards makes a convincing philo­logical case for equating the name Aeddon with Ir. Aedhán,24 and argues on historical grounds that the subject of the poem was Aeddan ap Blegywryd, a ruler of Anglesey and part of Arfon who was slain in battle against Llywelyn ap Seisyll in 1017.25 A notable detail in the Brut is that Aeddan’s four sons were slain along with him. It might be argued that the four bare-headed women of ‘Echrys Ynys’ were the widows of Aeddan’s sons, but it is doubtful for three reasons. Firstly, it relies on an assumption for which we have no evidence: that the four sons had wives. Secondly, if this were a genuine marwnad, composed at the time of Aeddan’s death, one would not expect the poet to launch an attack on bereaved widows. Finally, it is highly questionable whether the four hypothetical widows would have retained wealth and status sufficient enough to earn the resentment of a poet. It is preferable, then, to see the four bare-headed women in ‘Echrys Ynys’ as supernatural death-messengers whose appearance — figuratively — is blamed for the death of Aeddan’s sons, on account of which the poet was left without patrons. The poet’s use of mytho­logical elements in this elegy serves not only to magnify the catastrophe of these deaths, but also to reaffirm his own authority to speak on behalf of the bardic tradition and its synthetic history.26 his Historia ecclesiastica; Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, i.1. 23  Gruffydd (‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’, p. 43) cites eighth- and ninth-century forms in Brett- which seem to occur only in Bede and in a Cornish charter of c. 870. 24  Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, pp. 665–66. He suggests that -án of Aedhán was replaced by -on (a common ending heroic names) because Welsh had no long ā at the time and that a familiar native suffix could easily have been substituted. Charles-Edwards follows Ifor Williams — correctly, I believe — in arguing that the subject of ‘Echrys Ynys’ was Aeddan ap Blegywryd; Williams, ‘Two Poems’, p. 179. 25  Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, p. 666. 26  This feature is functionally equivalent to a conceit in formal Irish elegies of the seventeenth century wherein the tidings of a nobleman’s death are given to the poet by a bean sídhe (typically the ‘fairy queen’ of a locality) who takes the role of a keening woman. For a substantial discussion, see Mahon, ‘Aisling Elegy’.

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Works Cited Manu­script Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 2

Primary Sources Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed.  by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) ‘Cétnad nAíse: A Chant of Long Life’ [Admuiniur secht n-ingena trethan], ed. and trans. by John Carey, in King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings (Dublin: Four Courts, 1998), pp. 136–38 Facsimile and Text of the Book of Taliesin [from National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 2], ed. by J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Llanbedrog, 1915) ‘A Hymn of Invocation’ [Dia lem fri cech sníomh], ed. and trans. by Andrew O’Kelleher, Ériu, 4 (1910), 235–40 Stiofán Ó hEaloire [informant], Leabhar Stiofáin Uí Ealaoire, ed. and trans. by Séamus Ó Duilearga (Baile Átha Cliath: Comhairle Bhéaloideas Éireann, 1981) ‘Two Poems from the Book of Taliesin’ [ii. Echrys Ynys], ed. and trans. by Sir Ifor Williams, in The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry, ed.  by Rachel Bromwich (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1972), pp. 155–80 ‘A Welsh “Dark Age” Court Poem’ [Echrys Ynys], ed. and trans. by R. Geraint Gruffydd, in Il­dánach Ildírech: A Festschrift for Proinsias Mac Cana, ed. by John Carey, John T. Koch, and Pierre-Yves Lambert (Andover: Celtic Studies Publications, 1999), pp.  39–48

Secondary Works Breathnach, Pádraig, Maigh Cuilinn, a Táisg agus a Tuairisc (Indreabhán: Cló Chonamara, 1986) Charles-Edwards, Thomas, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Davies, Jonathan Ceredig, Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales (Aberystwyth: The Welsh Gazette, 1911) Haycock, Marged, Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007) Lysaght, Patricia, The Banshee: The Irish Supernatural Death-Messenger (Dublin: Glendale, 1987) Mahon, William J., ‘The Aisling Elegy and the Poet’s Appropriation of the Feminine’, Studia Celtica, 34 (2000), 249–70 Rhŷs, John, Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx, i (Oxford: Clarendon, 1891) Roberts, Brynley F., ‘Rhai o Gerddi Ymddiddan Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin’, in Astudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd: Studies in Old Welsh Poetry, ed. by Idris Ll. Foster, Rachel Bromwich, and R. Brinley Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978), pp. 318–25

Llythyr Gofyn gan Siôn Phylip Bleddyn Owen Huws

Y

r hyn a geir yn yr erthygl hon yw testun o lythyr gofyn a briodolir i’r bardd Siôn Phylip o Ardudwy (c.  1540–1620), ynghyd â thrafodaeth arno. Mae’n ddigon hysbys fod Siôn Phylip yn perthyn i deulu barddol nodedig.1 Yr oedd ei frawd Rhisiart (m. 1641) yn fardd toreithiog, ac yr oedd meibion Siôn, sef Gruffydd (m. 1666) a Phylip Siôn Phylip (m. 1676×78), hwythau hefyd yn feirdd. Ni chredir bod lle o gwbl i amau awduraeth y llythyr. Awgryma ei gynnwys a’i gyd-destun mai Siôn Phylip a’i lluniodd i ofyn i Forys Owain o Ystumcegid yn nhrefgordd Dolbenmaen yng nghwmwd Eifionydd am balffon, sef math o raw a chanddi goes o bren onnen. Rhan o ach teulu Ystumcegid ar sail Siddons, Welsh Genealogies A.D. 1500–1600. Owain ap Siôn ab Owain o Ystumcegid (m. cyn 1587) Siôn Wyn Owain Owain Wyn 1 

Marged = Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain o Gefntreflaeth Morys Owain

Gw. Thomas, ‘Siôn Phylip (c. 1540–1620)’, a Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy’, tt. 94–105.

Mae Dr Bleddyn Owen Huws ([email protected]) yn uwch-ddarlithydd yn yr Adran Gymraeg ac Astudiaethau Celtaidd ym Mhrifysgol Aberystwyth ac yn Gymrawd Cymdeithas Ddysgedig Cymru. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131200 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 139–168 BREPOLS

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Yr oedd teulu diwylliedig Ystumcegid yn noddwyr beirdd, ac yr oedd tad Morys Owain, Siôn Wyn Owain, ei hun yn gallu troi ei law at farddoni.2 Y mae ar glawr y cywydd marwnad a luniodd i’w fab, Owain Wyn, lle y cyfeiria at ei alar ingol ar ei ôl ac at chwithdod y profiad o’i gladdu cyn pryd.3 Trydydd mab Siôn Wyn Owain oedd Morys Owain, ac fe oroesodd Siôn Phylip ef, oblegid y mae ar glawr y farwnad a ganodd iddo. Ynddi crybwyllodd yr un math o rinweddau ag a folir yn y llythyr: Lle nid oedd iarll – un dydd ach – Neu ddug oedd foneddigach. Nid ei linwaed oleuni Ar gân fawr a ganaf fi, Ond ei lendid lawendon A’i syberwyd bryd a bron, A’i wybodaeth heb wadu, A’i garedigrwydd, llwydd llu […] […] Minnau, o rhoed im enw ’rhawg, Hir adwaenwn ŵr doniawg.4

Os craffwn ar gynnwys y llythyr ac ar y portread o Forys Owain, gwelwn ei fod yn cael ei gyfarch fel bonheddwr a chanddo ach glodforus a rhinweddau personol teilwng o’i dylwyth. Ymddiddorai hefyd mewn barddoniaeth gynganeddol ac mewn cadw a chasglu gwaith y prifeirdd. Crybwyllir ei hoffter o gadw cŵn a meirch a’i hoffter o hela anifeiliaid ac adar gwylltion yn ogystal ag o bysgota. Cyfeirir at ei ddawn fel meddyg ac at ei wybodaeth am lysiau rhinweddol a’i allu i wneud elïau a defnyddio olewau a gwlybyron i leddfu poen ac i iacháu. Awgrymir bod ganddo offer a gedwid yn drefnus yn ei gartref. Rhoddodd y bardd ei fryd ar gael ‘anwyldlws’ a welodd ymhlith yr offer, sef ffon bâl neu raw 2 

Am ach y teulu, gw. Griffith, Pedigrees of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire Families, t. 232, a Siddons, Welsh Genealogies A.D. 1500–1600, Gruffudd ap Cynan (A4)/1. Bu farw Siôn Wyn Owain rywdro rhwng 1605 a 1610, oherwydd cymerodd Morys Owain ei fab ei le mewn achos cyfreithiol ynglŷn â thir yn nhrefgordd Dolbenmaen yn 1610, gw. Gresham, Eifionydd: A Study in Landownership from the Medi­eval Period to the Present Day, t. 26. Yr oedd Morys Owain yn fyw yn Nhachwedd 1612, pan gafodd ei enwi yng nghytundeb priodas ei chwaer Elin, gw. LlGC, ‘A Schedule of Dolfrïog Deeds and Correspondence’, rhif 39, t. 129. 3  ‘Cowydd Marwnad i Owain Wynn o waith i Dad ei hun John Wynn Owen o Ystymkegid’, LlGC, Llsgr Brogyntyn I.5, tt. 1–2. 4  Jones, ‘Gwaith Siôn Phylip i Noddwyr Sir Gaernarfon’, cerdd LVIII.29–36, 41–42. Gw. hefyd Williams, ‘Noddwyr y Beirdd yn Sir Gaernarfon’, cyfrol 2, tt. 558–61.

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ac iddi goes lefn, a wnaed o bren onnen, a phen o ddur. Roedd arno eisiau’r balffon am dri rheswm: (1) er mwyn gweithredu fel trydydd troed iddo wrth gerdded; (2) er mwyn gwasgaru twmpathau o bridd y wadd ar ei weirgloddiau a’i dir gwndwn ac i roi ambell ergyd i dwrch daear a wnâi lanast ar ei dir; (3) er mwyn glanhau ffos a oedd wedi cau rhag bod dŵr yn cronni ac yn difetha’r cnwd ar ei dir pori. Mae’r manylion hyn yn y llythyr am amgylchiadau personol Siôn Phylip yn cyd-fynd i’r dim â’r hyn a wyddom amdano fel amaethwr ym Mochras ym mhlwyf Llanbedr yn Ardudwy.5 Cyfeiriodd y bardd ei hun at ei gartref fel hyn: Mae Mochres ym mynwes môr Mal Rhufain am ael rhiwfor, A thiroedd o’r fath orau A heldir mewn braentir brau.6

Hyd heddiw, gellir gweld sut y mae Ynys Mochras ar dir gwastad ger y môr, ac fel y mae llawer ohono’n dwyni tywod, peth ohono’n wlyptir corsiog — yn enwedig ar benllanw — a pheth ohono’n dir pori mwy ffrwythlon. Bu ymgais gan dirfeddianwyr a thenantiaid yn ystod yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg i sychu’r corstiroedd hynny a geid ar dir comin ar y glannau yng nghyffiniau Mochras a Morfa Dyffryn er mwyn ennill mwy o dir pori.7 Erbyn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg yr oedd fferm Mochras yn rhan o ystad Corsygedol, a phan werthwyd yr ystad yn 1908, disgrifiwyd y tir yng nghatalog yr arwerthiant yn y modd hwn: the well known Mochras Farm with its well cultivated arable and pasture land and excellent rough pasture grazing, and an excellent Warren.8

Yn yr ymryson a fu rhwng Siôn a’i frawd Rhisiart Phylip ynghylch nawdd gan deulu Nannau, Dolgellau, cyfeiria Rhisiart at amgylchiadau ei frawd gartref ym Mochras: 5 

Pan ymwelodd syrfëwr y Comisiwn Henebion â Mochras yn 1914, gwelodd fod adeiladwaith sylfaenol y tŷ yn perthyn i gyfnod Siôn Phylip, a bod y to dwyreiniol ynghyd â thair ffenestr yn debyg o fod yn nodweddion gwreiddiol, gw. An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire, vi: County of Merioneth, rhif 143, t. 53. 6  Dyfynnir yn Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy – A Survey and a Summary’, t. 158. 7  Gw. Thomas, ‘Patterns and Processes of Estate Expansion in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, t. 340. 8  Copi yn llyfrgell Comisiwn Henebion Cymru yn Aberystwyth o Particulars with Plans and Views of Cors-y-gedol Estate in the County of Merioneth (1908), rhif lot 62, t. 40.

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Yno i bydd lawer dydd da Heb gael onid bigeilia Troi y lloi at war y llaid Trwy y dyfwr troi y defaid Cywyddwr iw cae a ddring Acw i anos y cwning.9

Y cysylltiadau teuluol sy’n ddiddorol ac yn arwyddocaol yng nghyd-destun y llythyr, oherwydd yr oedd y gyfathrach â Morys Owain, y sawl a gyferchir ynddo, yn dwyn Siôn Phylip i gylch adnabyddiaeth Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain o Gefntreflaeth yn nhrefgordd Dolbenmaen yn Eifionydd, gŵr yr hawliodd Bedwyr Lewis Jones ei fod ymhlith y dyneiddwyr Cymreig.10 Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain oedd cyfieithydd Cymraeg y rhan o’r Rhetorica ad Herennium a geir yn llawysgrif LlGC Llanfair a Brynodol 2.11 Priod Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain oedd Marged chwaer Siôn Wyn Owain, tad Morys Owain. Erys copi o’u cytundeb priodas a luniwyd ar 22 Tachwedd 1562. 12 Yr oedd Morys Owain, felly, perchennog y balffon y gofynnid amdani, yn nai i Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain a’i wraig, ac yr oeddynt yn gymdogion.13 Yr oedd y diddordeb mewn rhethreg yn rhan gwbl gano­log o ddyneiddiaeth y Dadeni, a’r llyfrau rhethreg mwyaf eu defnydd a’u dylanwad yn y cyfnod oedd y Rhetorica ad Herennium, a briodolid ar gam i Cicero, a De inventione gan Cicero, ond bod ysgolheigion yn eu trin yn wahanol i ysgolheigion yr Oesau Canol, gan fod syniadau’r Groegiaid ynghylch rhethreg trwy gyfieithiadau a sylwebaethau ar Ars Rhetorica Aristoteles a gweithiau Hermogenes wedi dod i fod erbyn canol y bymthegfed ganrif. Efallai mai’r newid mwyaf oedd y pwyslais a geid gan rethregwyr ar gynhyrfu’r emosiynau yn sgil dylanwad Ars Rhetorica Aristoteles. Daeth rhethreg fel disgyblaeth yn hollbwysig wrth gyfansoddi ac wrth lefaru er mwyn creu effaith ar gynulleidfa.14 Darparai Rhetorica ad Herennium ymdriniaeth gyflawn ag egwyddorion y pwnc i ddarllenwyr y 9 

Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy, with Poems of Siôn Phylip in the Cardiff Free Library Collection’, t. 364, llau. 79–84. 10  Jones, ‘Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain, Cefn Treflaeth’, t. 64. 11  Gw.  Jones, ‘Siôn ap Howel ab Owain a’r Rhetorica ad Herennium yn Gymraeg’, tt. 208–18. 12  LlGC, ‘A Schedule of Dolfrïog Deeds and Correspondence’, rhif 179, t. 77. 13  Gw. Siddons, Welsh Genealogies A.D. 1500–1600, Rhirid Flaidd 8(C)/1, a Thabl 1 uchod. 14  Gw. Mack, A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380–1620, t. 4.

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bymthegfed a’r unfed ganrif ar bymtheg, ac er iddi ddod yn wybyddus erbyn dechrau’r unfed ganrif ar bymtheg nad Cicero oedd gwir awdur y gwaith, parheid i’w argraffu mewn casgliadau o weithiau Cicero ar rethreg. Nid syndod, felly, mai hwnnw oedd un o’r gweithiau rhethreg mwyaf poblogaidd a gyfieithiwyd i ieithoedd Ewrop yng nghyfnod y Dadeni. Ceir y darn o’r cyfieithiad Cymraeg gan Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain o ran gyntaf yr Ad Herennium mewn llawysgrif a oedd yn eiddo i Wiliam Bodwrda (1593–1660) o Aberdaron, sef LlGC Llanfair a Brynodol 2, folio 12–13r. Gan fod yn yr un llawysgrif hefyd gopi o ‘Araith Wgan o Gaer Einion ym Mhowys’ (folio 134r–138r), a ‘darn o ryw araith, heb ddech[rau] heb ddiwedd’ (folio 143r–144r), teg dweud fod gan ei pherchennog ddiddordeb mewn rhethreg draddodiadol Gymraeg yn ogystal â rhethreg glasurol Ladin. Yr oedd Wiliam Bodwrda, a fu’n ymorol am gopi o’r cyfieithiad o Ad Herennium, yn rhan o’r cylch o wŷr dysgedig a diwylliedig yn Llŷn ac Eifionydd a drafodai’r pethau hyn, ac yn ŵr a chanddo gyfathrach â’r beirdd. Nid amherthnasol yw fod Siôn Phylip wedi canu iddo, yn ogystal â Rhisiart Phylip, Gruffydd Phylip, a Huw Machno.15 Cafodd Wiliam Bodwrda addysg ramadeg yn Ysgol Friars ym Mangor, o bosibl, lle y byddai wedi dysgu Lladin a darllen gwaith Cicero, Aesop, Cato, ac Erasmus. Wedi hynny cafodd addysg brifysgol yn Rhydychen a Chaergrawnt. Ar gyfer ei radd gyntaf fel baglor, byddai wedi astudio’r trivium, sef y maes llafur sylfaenol yn y Celfyddydau a gynhwysai ramadeg, dilechdid a rhethreg. Dyma, felly, fan cyfarfod y ddau draddodiad, sef y traddodiad barddol brodorol a noddid gan rai o fân uchelwyr tiriog cymydau fel Eifionydd, a’r traddodiad dysgedig ehangach, sef dysg newydd dyneiddiaeth y Dadeni y deuai rhai o feibion yr uchelwyr i gysylltiad â hi trwy fynychu’r ysgolion gramadeg a’r prifysgolion. Rhydd llythyr gofyn Siôn Phylip a’i gysylltiadau gip inni ar ddiddordeb un bardd a’i noddwr mewn rhethreg yng nghyfnod diweddar y Dadeni yng Nghymru. Er bod tuedd i feddwl am y beirdd a’r ysgolheigion dyneiddiol fel dwy garfan wrthwynebus i’w gilydd, yr oedd mwy o gyfathrach rhyngddynt nag a dybir. Gwir yw fod sawl dyneiddiwr yn dra beirniadol o amharodrwydd y beirdd i rannu eu gwybodaeth am gyfrinion eu crefft. Does dim prinder enghreifft15  Gw. Ifans, ‘Wiliam Bodwrda (1593–1660)’, tt. 88–102. Er gwaethaf diddordeb Wiliam Bodwrda mewn rhethreg, mae’n syn mai un llythyr Cymraeg yn unig ganddo a oroesodd, sef yr un a anfonodd at y bardd Siôn Cain o Groesoswallt yn 1647. Yn Saesneg yr ysgrifennai at eraill o’i gydnabod, ac amryw ohonynt yn Gymry o waed coch cyfan, gw. Ifans, ‘Wiliam Bodwrda (1593–1660)’, tt. 96–97.

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iau o feirniadaeth ar feddylfryd ceidwadol y beirdd nes dyfod ohoni yn fath ar ystrydeb. Gellir cyfeirio at rybuddion William Salesbury a Siôn Dafydd Rhys rhag ymddygiad gwarchodol, hunanol y beirdd a oedd mor gyndyn o ddwyn cynnwys eu llawysgrifau i olau dydd.16 Gan Forris Kyffin y cafwyd peth o’r feirniadaeth fwyaf cignoeth mewn ymosodiad a ysgogodd Siôn Dafydd Rhys i achub cam y beirdd pan ysgrifennodd ei lythyr agored atynt yn 1597.17 Ceidwadaeth y beirdd a oedd yn dân ar groen y dyneiddwyr. Buasai pobl fel Edmwnd Prys a Siôn Dafydd Rhys wedi hoffi eu gweld yn cofleidio’r ddysg newydd a lledu eu gorwelion. Prawf o’u huchelgais hwy oedd eu dymuniad ar i’r beirdd ganu ar bynciau gwyddonol, er y gellid dadlau mai prawf o anymarferoldeb dyheadau’r dyneiddwyr i raddau helaeth oedd na allasai’r beirdd fyth feistroli’r ddysg wyddonol yn ddigon da i’w defnyddio yn eu cerddi heb fod wedi’i hastudio mewn prifysgol.18 Graddiodd Siôn Phylip yn ddisgybl pencerddaidd yn ail eisteddfod Caerwys yn 1567, a’i athro barddol, yn ôl tystiolaeth Lewys Dwnn, oedd Gruffudd Hiraethog. Yr oedd Edmwnd Prys yn ei farwnad iddo yn ei alw’n ddisgybl i Ruffudd Hiraethog ac i Wiliam Llŷn. Barn D. J. Bowen oedd i Wiliam Llŷn ddyfod yn athro iddo ar ôl i Ruffudd farw yn 1564.19 Nid amherthnasol yng nghyswllt y llythyr hwn yw fod Siôn Phylip wedi’i hyfforddi gan Ruffudd Hiraethog, a alwyd gan D. J. Bowen yn ‘seren fore dyneiddiaeth yng Nghymru’, ac yna wedi hynny gan ei ddisg ybl, Wiliam Llŷn, a etifeddodd lawer o lawysgrifau Gruffudd.20 Tybir mai Siôn Phylip oedd athro barddol Huw Machno, a hynny ar sail y sylwadau yn y farwnad a ganodd Huw Machno i Siôn. Cyfeirir yn benodol yn y farwnad at wybodaeth ‘Un a wyddiad iawn addysg | Ar dair iaith maith yn ein mysg’.21 Yr oedd ei ddysg yn cwmpasu cyfrinion cerdd dafod Gymraeg a 16 

Gw. sylwadau’r ddau ynghylch arfer y beirdd o guddio eu llyfrau yn y dirgel yn Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659, gol. gan Hughes, t. 10 (Oll Synnwyr Pen, 1547); t. 67 (Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve Linguae Institutiones et Rudimenta…, 1592). 17  Gw. Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659, gol. gan Hughes, tt. 91–92, lle ceir sylwadau Morris Kyffin yn ei ragymadrodd i Deffyniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr (1595). Ceir llythyr Siôn Dafydd Rhys, ‘Cyngor i Feirdd a Dyscedigion Cymru’, yn Rhyddiaith Gymraeg, Yr Ail Gyfrol, gol. gan Jones, tt. 155–60. 18  Gw. y sylwadau yn Ymryson Edmwnd Prys a Wiliam Cynwal, gol. gan Williams, tt. clxxxix–cxc; gw. hefyd Williams, ‘Y Canu Gwyddonol o’r Dadeni hyd Bantycelyn’, t. 139. 19  Gwaith Gruffudd Hiraethog, gol. gan Bowen, tt. xxxv–xli. 20  Bowen, Gruffudd Hiraethog a’i Oes, t. 61. 21  James, ‘Bywyd a Gwaith Huw Machno’, cerdd XXII.39–40.

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gramadeg yr iaith Ladin. Ymddiddorai Huw Machno yntau yn yr un pynciau, oherwydd pan fu farw yn 1637, fe’i galwyd gan Ruffydd Phylip yn ‘Ieithydd gwiw, gyfieithydd gwych, | Ladin a Chymraeg liwdeg’.22 Ystyrid Huw Machno yn fardd teulu Wyniaid Gwydir, a diau iddo yn sgil hynny dderbyn addysg a hyfforddiant mewn Lladin trwy eu nawdd hwy. Cofier bod gan y teulu gaplan a fyddai’n addysgu meibion y teulu a bechgyn eraill o’r cyffiniau.23 O ystyried eu diddordeb mewn ieithoedd, nid syndod yw gwybod fod Siôn Phylip a Huw Machno ill dau yn gydnabyddus â’r ysgolhaig a’r ieithydd John Davies o Fallwyd, ac iddynt ganu cywyddau moliant iddo. 24 Yr oedd Huw Machno hefyd yn adnabod Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain o Gefntreflaeth, oherwydd pan fu farw Siôn ap Hywel yn 1626/27 canodd Huw farwnad iddo.25 Ynddi cyfeiriodd ato fel ‘Da ieithydd’ a oedd wedi astudio’r saith gelfyddyd. Er na chrybwyllodd yn benodol ei gyfieithiad Cymraeg o ran o’r llyfr Lladin ar rethreg, Rhetorica ad Herennium, fe gyfeiriodd ato’n rhoi ‘y Gramer’, sef rhyw lyfr gramadeg Saesneg neu Ladin ond odid. Dyna osod Huw Machno yng nghanol cylch adnabyddiaeth Siôn Phylip a’i noddwr Morys Owain, a oedd, fel y gwyddom, yn nai i Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain a Marged ei wraig, a dyna awgrym hefyd eu bod yn rhannu’r un diddordebau. Hawdd dychmygu y cyfarfyddai’r ddau fardd, naill ai ar aelwyd Cefntreflaeth neu ar aelwyd Ystumcegid, i drafod barddoniaeth a rhethreg, a thrwy hynny gael eu dwyn yn rhan o’r milieu diwylliannol dyneiddiol a fodolai yn Eifionydd, cefndir diwylliannol a gynhwysai bobl a ymddiddorai mewn barddoniaeth Gymraeg ac mewn dysg. Er y gall ymddangos nad oedd y beirdd a’r dyneiddwyr yn cyd-dynnu nac yn cyd-weld â’i gilydd — ac efallai i ymryson Prys a Chynwal, lle’r oedd dyneiddiwr benben â bardd a lle’r oedd y ddysg frodorol draddodiadol benben â’r ddysg ddyneiddiol, hyrwyddo’r argraff honno i raddau helaeth iawn — pwysig yw sylweddoli nad oedd pob un o’r beirdd yn gwbl glustfyddar i erfyniadau’r dyneiddwyr ar iddynt fabwysiadu rhai o syniadau’r oes newydd. Gwerthfawrogid llafur y dyneiddwyr gan fwy nag un bardd. Pan gyhoeddwyd Gramadeg Siôn Dafydd Rhys yn 1592, er enghraifft, fe ganodd y bardd Meurig Dafydd gywydd 22 

James, ‘Bywyd a Gwaith Huw Machno’, cerdd LXI.72–73. Gw. Gruffydd, ‘William Morgan’, t. 161. 24  Ceir cywydd Siôn Phylip i John Davies, Mallwyd, yn LlGC, Llsgr 5269B, tt. 448–50, a chywydd Huw Machno yn James, ‘Bywyd a Gwaith Huw Machno’, cerdd IV. Ar y canu i John Davies, gw. Lloyd, ‘The Praises of Poets: John Davies and the Bards’, tt. 60–87. 25  James, ‘Bywyd a Gwaith Huw Machno’, cerdd XXVII; Blodeugerdd Barddas o’r Ail Ganrif ar Bymtheg, gol. gan Lloyd, cerdd 83. 23 

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i ganmol Syr Edward Stradling o Sain Dunwyd ym Morgannwg am ei gefnogaeth a’i nawdd i Siôn Dafydd Rhys. Canodd glodydd yr awdur a’i ramadeg yn ogystal, gan ddweud na ddylai’r un prydydd yn y dyfodol fentro’i siawns mewn eisteddfod heb ymgydnabod â chynnwys y llyfr hwnnw.26 Nid dibwys ychwaith mo’r ffaith i Huw Machno fod yn astudio ymdriniaeth Henri Perri â rhethreg yn Egluryn Phraethineb (1595), ac iddo lunio nodiadau yn seiliedig arni, nodiadau y gellir eu gweld yn llawysgrif Caerdydd 1.16.27 Buasai’r cysylltiad rhwng Huw Machno a Siôn Phylip fel un o gyn-ddisgyblion Gruffudd Hiraethog yn dra arwyddocaol, gan mai i Ruffudd Hiraethog ‘ac eraill o’i gelfyddyd’ y cyflwynodd Salesbury ei ‘Lyfr Rhetoreg’ yn 1552.28 Nid pob hedyn a heuwyd gan y dyneiddwyr a syrthiodd ar dir caregog. Syrthiodd ambell un ar dir da a dwyn peth ffrwyth, ac nid annichon fod y llythyr hwn gan Siôn Phylip yn cynrychioli rhywfaint o waddol y berthynas arbennig rhwng Gruffudd Hiraethog a William Salesbury ac eraill o wŷr y Dadeni.29 Confensiwn cyfarwydd iawn yng nghyfnod y Cywyddwyr oedd cyfansoddi cerdd i ofyn am rodd a cherdd i ddiolch amdani wedi ei chael, ond mae’n ymddangos mai cymharol brin yw’r llythyrau a luniwyd i ofyn am rodd.30 Mae llythyr gofyn Siôn Phylip yn un o dri sydd ar glawr. Cynhwyswyd y ddau fwyaf adnabyddus ohonynt gan D. Gwenallt Jones yn Yr Areithiau Pros, sef ‘Llythyr i ofyn Rhwyd Berced’, a briodolir i Siôn ap Wiliam Gruffydd i ofyn am rwyd bysgota (er bod copi llawysgrif Peniarth 245 yn ei briodoli i Ruffudd ab Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan (c. 1485–1553) o’r Llannerch ger Llanelwy, ac yn nodi Siôn ap Wiliam fel derbynnydd y llythyr), ac ‘Araith Gruffydd ap Ifan i Ruffydd ap Robin ap Rhys’ ar ffurf llythyr i ofyn am wasanaeth saer coed o Lan Sain Siôr ger Abergele.31 Cynhwysa’r ddwy araith hynny hefyd englynion, y gyntaf a enwyd yn cynnwys dau englyn i gloi, a’r olaf yn cynnwys tri englyn yng nghorff y llythyr a phennill i’w gloi. 26 

Gw. Gruffydd, ‘Y Bardd a’r Gramadegydd’, t. 13, llau. 72–76: ‘Gwae brydydd o’r dydd y daw | Dyrnod Eisteddfod arnaw | Oni ŵyr yn llwyr holl waith | Y llyfr hwn, llafur hoeniaith’. 27  Caerdydd, Llsgr 1.16 (RWM 38), tt. 266–71; gw. hefyd Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, gol. gan Williams a Jones, tt. lii–liii; James, ‘Bywyd a Gwaith Huw Machno’, t. viii. 28  Gw. Lewis, ‘Llythyr William Salesbury at Ruffudd Hiraethog’, tt. 113–18. 29  Ar gyfathrach Gruffudd Hiraethog â William Salesbury, gw. Gwaith Gruffudd Hiraethog, gol. gan Bowen, tt. cxii–cxxiii; ar ei berthynas â Salesbury, Syr Siôn Prys a Humphrey Llwyd, gw. Bowen, ‘Cywyddau Gruffudd Hiraethog i Dri o Awduron y Dadeni’, tt. 103–31. 30  Gw. Huws, Y Canu Gofyn a Diolch c. 1350-c. 1630. Ceir sylwadau ar ddylanwad posibl ffurf y llythyr ar y genre ar tt. 91–93. 31  Yr Areithiau Pros, gol. gan Jones, tt. 39–45.

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Barn D. Gwenallt Jones oedd fod yr areithiau pros yn gyfansoddiadau rhethregol mewn arddull addurniedig a bwriadol flodeuog a ddefnyddid i hyfforddi cywion beirdd: Gwersi cywion beirdd yn dechrau ymgydnabod â’r iaith, ymarferiadau rhethregol, a declamationes nofisiaid yn ysgolion y beirdd oedd yr Areithiau Pros.32

Hawdd gweld oddi wrth y casgliad o areithiau a olygwyd gan Gwenallt fod rhai o ohonynt yn ddarnau y gellid yn hawdd fod wedi eu cyfansoddi gan athrawon barddol er mwyn cynnig enghreifftiau o ryddiaith rethregol addurniedig — onid goraddurniedig mewn mannau — y gallai eu disgyblion eu hefelychu a’u dynwared wrth geisio sicrhau yr hyn a elwid yn ‘amlder Cymraeg’. Buasai llunio cyfansoddeiriau bwriadus yn ffordd dda o helaethu geirfa ac o amlhau trawiadau a chyfuniadau cynganeddol. Gellir edrych ar yr araith bros fel enghraifft o rethreg frodorol ac iddi un amcan penodol, sef darparu testun ysgrifenedig y gallai athro barddol ei ddefnyddio i hyfforddi ei ddisgyblion i feithrin huodledd ac ehangu geirfa. Ond gallai fod amcanion eraill yn ogystal erbyn cyfnod y Dadeni. Am yr areithiau pros yn gyffredinol, dyma a ddywedodd Bedwyr Lewis Jones: Eu hynodrwydd […] yw eu geiriogrwydd. Pentyrru geiriau, ac yn arbennig cyfansoddeiriau, a geir ynddynt, yn hael ac yn afradlon, heb fawr ddim disgyblaeth ymwybodol rhethreg Ladin.33

Fe welir bod llythyr gofyn Siôn Phylip yn dwyn nodweddion yr araith bros draddodiadol. Y nodweddion hynny yw: (1) dyblu geiriau, yn enwedig cyfystyron: ‘klodforach a chanmoledigach’ (ll. 5); ‘yn kyd atteb ne /n/ kyhydu’ (llau. 6–7). (2) llunio triawdau: ‘oi briwiau heiniau ai hanafau’ (ll. 20); ‘tra fo /r/ genau /n/ gweini gwawdyddiaeth tra gwelo golwg, tra llunier llythyren’ (llau. 49–50). (3) cyflythrennu: ‘boneddigeiddwalch Bryttanaidd o bendefigaidd brifiachau’ (llau. 2–3); ‘karwriaeth kowreinrwydd kerddwriaeth’ (ll. 9).

32  Yr Areithiau Pros, gol. gan Jones, t. xix. Am farn wahanol fwy diweddar, gw. Johnston, Llên yr Uchelwyr, tt. 429–30. 33  Jones, ‘Testunau Rhethreg Cymraeg y Dadeni’, t. 78.

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(4) llunio cymariaethau: ‘mor afraid i hysbyssu a halaenu /r/ halldfor’ (llau. 3–4); ‘fal i mae /n/ fawr y kymmynau i mae /r/ kaffaeliai yn gimint’ (llau. 47–48). (5) llunio cyfansoddeiriau: ‘fwyneiddwawd’ (ll. 11); ‘pereiddgerdd’ (ll. 12); ‘ddaeardwrch ewinogbalf hychdürsaidd’ (ll. 42). (6) rhoi’r ansoddair o flaen yr enw yn gyson: ‘gampys gyneddfau ai roddedig rinweddau’ (ll. 6); ‘haeddedig fendithion’ (ll. 21); ‘henddynig drachwant’ (ll. 28). I gloi’r llythyr, cynigia ddau englyn (a elwir yn ddau emyn ganddo), y naill yn englyn proest a’r llall yn englyn unodol union, gan efelychu’r ddwy araith ofyn arall sydd ar glawr am fod ynddynt hwythau englynion yn ogystal. Ni thybiai Bedwyr Lewis Jones fod yr areithiau pros yn enghraifft o ddylanwad rhethreg Ladin ar lenyddiaeth Cymru’r Oesoedd Canol.34 Ond tybed na all y copïau o’r areithiau neu’r llythyrau pros fod yn arwydd o’r diddordeb a oedd mewn rhethreg ymhlith rhai o’r beirdd erbyn diwedd yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg, dan ddylanwad ymdriniaethau Cymraeg â rhethreg gan William Salesbury a Henri Perri, ac mai adlewyrchiad o’r diddordeb hwnnw a welir yn llythyr gofyn Siôn Phylip? Yr oedd a wnelo rhethreg â mynegi’n gelfyddus drwy amrywio mynegiant. Mae’n ddiddorol fod Siôn yn cyfeirio at ei lythyr fel ‘llithrig lythyr llathreiddiaith’, sef llythyr huawdl a choeth ei ymadrodd. Dyna ei gysylltu â’r math o huodledd a gysylltid ag eloquentia, sef y grefft o gywrain ymadrodd y rhoid cymaint o fri arni yng nghyfnod y Dadeni. Yr unig elfen a geir yn y llythyr hwn nas ceir yn yr araith bros Gymraeg draddodiadol yw’r gyfeiriadaeth glasurol gan fod ynddo sôn am berthynas y ddau athronydd Groegaidd, Plato a Diogenes, ynghyd â chyfeiriad at y cymeriadau mytholegol Mars, Fwlcan, a Fenws, a’r cymeriad Beiblaidd, Tubal, sef y gof cyntaf yn ôl llyfr Genesis. Er bod y llythyr yn ymddangos fel ymarferiad mewn llunio darn o ryddiaith rethregol addurniedig yn nhraddodiad yr areithiau pros, dichon fod Siôn Phylip yn awyddus i ymorchestu er mwyn dangos dulliau rhethreg gynhenid Gymraeg, a chymhwyso ambell nodwedd ar lythyrau cyfnod y Dadeni at ryddiaith Gymraeg er mwyn boddhau diddordeb noddwyr diwylliedig a ymddiddorai hefyd mewn dysg ddyneiddiol. Gwnâi hynny drwy gyflwyno cais ymarferol am rodd.

34 

Jones, ‘Testunau Rhethreg Cymraeg y Dadeni’, t.  78: ‘[Nid] yw’r areithiau pros yn enghraifft ddilys o ddylanwad rhethreg Ladin ar lenyddiaeth Cymru yr Oesoedd Canol.’

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Soniai Henri Perri yn ei Egluryn Phraethineb am ‘ymadrodd phraeth, addurnawl’ ac am ‘amrywioli araith yn hyfygr’, sef harddu ac amrywio mynegiant yn wych.35 Dyna’r nod celfyddydol, ond roedd gwerth ymarferol i lyfr Henri Perri yn ogystal, oherwydd yn ei ragymadrodd anogai’r boneddigion, ac eraill, i ysgrifennu at ei gilydd yn y Gymraeg : ‘drwy i chwi (foneddion) scrifennu ynddi y naill at y llall’.36 Diben ei lyfr oedd rhoi cyfle iddynt ymgydnabod â rhethreg er mwyn caffael ‘gwir phraethineb’, sef huodledd rhugl.37 Yr oedd yn gŵyn gyson gan sawl un o awduron Cymraeg y Dadeni na fyddai’r Cymry’n chwanocach i fod yn llythrennog ac yn barotach i fuddsoddi yn addysg eu plant drwy ddysgu iddynt ddarllen. Roedd Rowland Fychan o Gaer-gai gyda’r taeraf ei anogaeth yn hyn o beth, a’r mwyaf di-flewyn-ar-dafod ei feirniadaeth hefyd ar gyndynrwydd rhai Cymry i ddysgu eu plant i ddarllen.38 Ochr yn ochr â hynny ceid anogaeth ar i’r Cymry ddefnyddio’r iaith ar lafar ac yn ysgrifenedig. Yn ei ragymadrodd i’w eiriadur, ‘Trysawr yr iaith Latin ar Gymraec’ (1604–1607), canmolai Thomas Wiliems o Drefriw rai o wŷr bonheddig y Gogledd a’r De am ymgeleddu’r iaith Gymraeg, ac am ‘dreuthu’n eglur ddiletiaith ag yn llawnllythyr, a dywedyd ag scrivenu iaith eu gwlad’.39 Gwelir nad pwyslais ar yr iaith fel cyfrwng mynegiant yn unig sydd ganddo ond ar y modd y defnyddid hi’n eglur a chroyw. Roedd eglurder a chroywder yn bethau i’w meithrin. Teg, felly, yw honni fod diddordeb ymhlith pobl ddysgedig a diwylliedig yn y ffordd yr ysgrifennid yr iaith, a bod awydd am weld tecáu’r iaith ysgrifenedig trwy ei chywreinio a’i haddurno’n rhethregol. Yr hyn a welwn yn llythyr gofyn Siôn Phylip yw enghraifft o fardd yn defnyddio’r llythyr fel cyfrwng i enghreifftio rhyddiaith Gymraeg rethregol. Mae’n ddiddorol fod y llythyr yn llawysgrif LlGC 13215E yn cael ei ragflaenu gan ddwy araith bros, sef ‘Breuddwyd Ivan ab Adda ab Davydd yr a elwyd Ivan brydydd hir’, a ‘Breuddwyd Ierwerth ab Adda ab Davydd yr hwnn a elwid Ierwerth deirkeill’, araith sy’n gorffen â phenillion

35  Dyfynnir o Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659, gol. gan Hughes, t. 85. Am argraffiad o’r gwreiddiol o gopi yn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, gw. Perri, Egluryn Phraethineb sef Dosbarth ar Retoreg, un o’r Saith Gelfyddyd. 36  Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659, gol. gan Hughes, t. 88. 37  Gw. Yr Areithiau Pros, gol. gan Jones, t. xx n. 1, lle yr honnir mai cyfieithiad o elocutio yw ffraethineb yn nheitl llyfr Henri Perri. 38  Gw. ei ragymadrodd i Yr Ymarfer o Dduwioldeb (1630) yn Rhagymadroddion 1547– 1659, gol. gan Hughes, t. 119. 39  Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659, gol. gan Hughes, t. 114.

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masweddus.40 Awgryma hynny fod y copïydd yn ystyried y tri thestun yn areithiau. Ceir awgrym fod gan Siôn Phylip ddiddordeb mewn adrodd areithiau yn y cywydd a ganodd Wiliam Cynwal a Huw Llŷn fel ateb i gywydd cellweirus a anfonwyd gan Wiliam Llŷn, Ieuan Tew, Siôn Phylip, a Hywel Ceiriog at y ddau i ofyn iddynt am gorn yfed a phinner (sef cas i ddal ysgrifbin). Dywedir bod Siôn yn chwannog i adrodd ‘breuddwyd Ierwerth’: Yn ein byw ni chawn yn bêr — Oes hap? — giniaw na swper Na ddoeto, dan sonio’n serth, Fardd diriaid, freuddwyd Ierwerth.41

Awgrym petrus Geraint Percy Jones oedd mai cyfeiriad at araith bros oedd ‘breuddwyd Ierwerth’.42 O wybod bellach fod araith a chanddi’r teitl hwnnw yn rhagflaenu’r copi o’r llythyr gofyn gan Siôn Phylip yn y llawysgrif, gellir cynnig mai at yr araith benodol honno y cyfeirid.43 Yr ysgolhaig a’r awdur amlycaf ei gyfraniad at ddatblygu rhethreg cyfnod y Dadeni oedd Erasmus o Rotterdam (?1469–1536). Iddo ef yn anad neb arall yr oedd awduron diwedd yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg yn fwyaf dyledus am osod y seiliau mor gadarn yn ei De duplici copia verborum et rerum (De copia), a fwriadwyd yn bennaf ar gyfer hyfforddi disgyblion ysgol.44 Yr oedd yn llawlyfr tra phoblogaidd a dylanwadol y cafwyd can argraffiad ac wyth a thrigain ohono rhwng blwyddyn ei gyhoeddi yn 1512 a 1580. Cyfunai yn hwnnw ei wybodaeth am y troadau ymadrodd a’r ffigurau a geid yn y llawlyfrau rhethreg traddodiadol â’i wybodaeth am nifer helaeth o weithiau awduron clasurol a thechnegau rhesymu i ddiffinio’r hyn a elwid yn gelfyddyd ymadrodd, eloquentia. Rhoes bwyslais o’r newydd ar hanfodion y grefft o ysgrifennu, sef cynnwys diarhebion, gwirebau, disgrifiadau byw, enghreifftiau, a chymariaethau er mwyn addurno a chyfoethogi mynegiant, yn ogystal ag annog amrywio geirfa a chystrawen er mwyn mynegi pethau mewn mwy nag un ffordd ac osgoi ailadrodd. Rhôi De copia gyfarwyddyd ar sut i gyfoethogi pob math ar ysgrifennu, gan feithrin ard40 

LlGC, Llsgr 13215E, tt. 85–87. Stephens ‘Gwaith Wiliam Llŷn’, cyfrol 2, cerdd 173.53–56. 42  Jones, ‘Wiliam Cynwal’, t. 181. 43  Ymdrinnir â’r araith honno yn Huws, ‘Breuddwyd Iorwerth Deircaill’, tt. 57–70. 44  Ar ei ddylanwad, gw. y bumed bennod yn Mack, A  History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380–1620, tt. 76–103. 41 

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dull goeth gyda’r bwriad o allu creu argraff a dylanwadu ar bobl trwy gyfrwng y gair ysgrifenedig. Bwriad amrywiaeth oedd ymhelaethu ar bwnc, ac anogai Erasmus ei ddisgyblion i chwilio am eiriau cyfystyr er mwyn amrywio’r dweud gan graffu ar y math o liw a blas a roid ar eiriau mewn gwahanol gyweiriau. Trwy efelychu gweithiau rhyddiaith awduron cydnabyddedig, gallai disgyblion ymarfer y ddawn a’i dysgu. Tra oedd yn tiwtora’r Sais, Robert Fisher, ym Mharis yn 1497/8 y cymhellwyd Erasmus i gyfansoddi llawlyfr yn benodol i gyfarwyddo disgyblion sut i lunio llythyr, ac yn 1520 ymddangosodd ei Brevissima…conficiendarum epistolarum formula, sef fersiwn cynnar o’r llyfr De conscribendis epistolis a ymddangosodd ddwy flynedd yn ddiweddarach. Roedd hwnnw’n llyfr llwyddiannus a thra dylanwadol y cafwyd deg argraffiad a phedwar ugain ohono erbyn 1692. Dyma’r llawlyfr a ddefnyddid yn yr ysgolion gramadeg i hyfforddi disgyblion y dosbarthiadau uchaf yng nghrefft cyfansoddi llythyr, ond yr oedd ei werth yn ehangach na hynny am ei fod yn ymdrin â meistroli ffurf ac arddull lenyddol. Yng ngeiriau un awdurdod ar ei waith: Erasmus in the prescriptions of the De conscribendis epistolis goes far beyond the skills required simply for a writer of letters. In addition to being the most comprehensive of Renaissance manuals of episto­lography, the work becomes a treatise on the mastery of literary form.45

Ceid llawlyfrau ar episto­lograffeg yn trafod crefft cyfansoddi llythyr yn yr Oesau Canol, wrth reswm, sef yr ars dictaminis, a oedd yn seiliedig ar arddull llythyrau’r llys yng nghyfnod diweddar yr Ymerodraeth Rufeinig, ac ar rethreg Cicero. Yr oedd ynddynt gyfarwyddiadau ffurfiol caeth ynghylch ffurf y llythyr, ac fe’u bwriedid yn wreiddiol fel modelau ar gyfer myfyrwyr y gyfraith i lunio dogfennau cyfreithiol a gweinyddol. Drwy gydol yr Oesau Canol yr oedd galw mawr am grefft cyfansoddi llythyrau, yn enwedig mewn cylchoedd gwleidyddol a diplomyddol. Cymhwyswyd pum rhan draddodiadol yr araith glasurol at y llythyr, fel y cafwyd y patrwm gosodedig hwn: salutatio, y cyfarchiad; captatio benevolentiae neu exordium, ceisio ennill ewyllys da’r sawl a gyferchid; narratio, corff y llythyr; petitio, y cais, a conclusio, sef y clo.46 Mae rhai wedi gweld De conscribendis epistolis Erasmus fel ymosodiad ar ddulliau’r Oesau Canol o lunio llythyr a ddefnyddid o hyd yn ysgolion gogledd Ewrop, ac ar rai llawlyfrau a ystyrid ganddo’n hen ffasiwn. Er bod amryw o 45  46 

Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, gol. gan Sowards, iii, t. xxv. Murphy ed., Three Medi­eval Rhetorical Arts, t. xvi.

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awduron dyneiddiol yr Eidal wedi llunio llawlyfrau ar grefft cyfansoddi llythyr at ddefnydd myfyrwyr a astudiai rethreg mewn ysgol a choleg erbyn diwedd y bymthegfed ganrif, pobl fel Francesco Negro, Giammario Filelfo, Giovanni Sulpizio a Niccolò Perotti, llawlyfrau a gynhwysai lythyrau enghreifftiol gan Cicero, Plini, a Horas, nid oedd Erasmus yn fodlon eu dilyn yn slafaidd. Yn ei farn ef, yr oedd rhai gwendidau yng ngweithiau ei ragflaenwyr. Yr oedd yn feirniadol o fân reolau pedantaidd Negro, er enghraifft, ac o ddull Filelfo o restru ffigurau rhethregol yn fecanyddol pan ellid yn hawdd eu hastudio drwy ddarllen gwaith Quintillian a Cicero. Yn hytrach na thrafod y grefft mewn ffordd amhersonol a fformiwläig, a glynu wrth y patrwm clasurol fel y gwnâi’r puryddion Ciceronaidd, aeth Erasmus ati i dorri ei gŵys ei hun. 47 Er cynnwys ohono lythyrau enghreifftiol gan awduron clasurol fel Cicero ac eraill, cynhwysodd hefyd enghreifftiau o’i eiddo ei hun. Yn hytrach na chlymu’r llythyrwr wrth batrymau gosodedig caeth, ffafriai Erasmus fabwysiadu arddull gymwys i gyd-fynd â deunydd a diben y llythyr. Yr oedd ei bwyslais ar sicrhau eglurder, symlrwydd a naturioldeb, ac yn hynny o beth yr oedd ei agwedd yn llawer mwy iwtilitaraidd. Diau fod a wnelo hynny â’i awydd i ddarparu i athrawon fethodoleg y gellid ei chyflwyno i ddisgyblion a myfyrwyr mewn ffordd ddeniadol.48 Darparodd gyfarwyddiadau ar nifer o wahanol fathau neu deipiau o lythyrau yn seiliedig ar eu swyddogaeth, boed yn llythyr sy’n annog, yn perswadio, yn erchi neu’n gofyn, neu’n cydymdeimlo; llythyr o gymeradwyaeth, o gyngor, o gerydd, o gyfarwyddyd neu o ddiolch, a chynhwysodd lythyrau i enghreifftio pob teip. O blith y mathau o lythyrau, yr un sydd fwyaf perthnasol i’r drafodaeth hon yw’r llythyr gofyn, petitoria. Gan fod natur ceisiadau’n gallu amrywio, a bod amrywiaeth mawr yn natur y bobl a’u cyflwynai ac a’u derbyniai, barn Erasmus oedd y dylai’r dull o’u cyflwyno amrywio hefyd.49 Roedd sicrhau ewyllys da’r sawl a gyferchid mewn llythyr gofyn yn hollbwysig. Os oedd y llythyr i barhau’n offeryn pwysig i hybu diwygiad deallusol a chrefyddol fel yr oedd yn nwylo Erasmus a’i gyfoedion, yr oedd yn rhaid iddo fod yn hyblyg o ran ei gynnwys a’i arddull, ac yn rhydd oddi wrth hualau caethiwus pum rhan draddodiadol 47 

Gw. Henderson, ‘Erasmus on the Art of Letter-Writing’, tt. 331–32; gw. hefyd sylwadau Fantazzi yn Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, gol. gan Sowards, iii, tt. 7–8. 48  Gw. sylwadau Fantazzi yn Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, gol. gan Sowards, iii, t. 8. 49  Am y cyfarwyddiadau ynghylch y llythyr gofyn neu gais a geir yn De conscribendis epistolis, gw. Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, gol. gan Sowards, iii, tt. 172–81.

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yr araith glasurol. Drwy ffafrio hyblygrwydd, yr hyn a wnâi Erasmus oedd cydnabod fod y cynnwys yn adlewyrchu amrywiaeth amgylchiadau awdur y llythyr a’i dderbynydd, ac yn cydweddu â’r cyd-destun. Diben y llythyr a ddylai benderfynu ei ffurf. Gan fod y llythyr fel ffurf yn cael ei ddefnyddio mewn ysgolion gramadeg yn Oes Elisabeth er mwyn ymarfer ysgrifennu Lladin, daeth De conscribendis epistolis Erasmus yn un o’r llawlyfrau mwyaf eu defnydd. O  dipyn i beth, daethpwyd i roi sylw i’r famiaith yn Lloegr, a chyhoeddwyd ymdriniaethau â rhethreg yn Saesneg. Yr enwocaf ohonynt oedd The Arte of Rhetorique gan Thomas Wilson yn 1553 a The Garden of Eloquence gan Henry Peacham yn 1577. Cafwyd hefyd yn yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg lawlyfrau poblogaidd yn Saesneg ar gyfansoddi llythyr, yn cynnwys The Enemie of Idleness (1582) gan William Fulwood, a rôi enghreifftiau o lythyrau y gellid eu defnyddio mewn bywyd bob dydd. Dyma’r cyfarwyddiadau a geir yn y llawlyfr hwnnw ynghylch llunio cais am rodd faterol, ‘how to request a temporal benefit’: As concerning the manner how to demand temporal things, as a book, a horse or such like, the latter must be divided into four parts. First we must get the good will of him to whom we write, by praising his liberality, and principally of the power and authority that he hath to grant the thing that he is demanded. Secondly, we must declare our demand or request to be honest and necessary, and without the which we cannot achieve to our determinate end and purpose. Thirdly, that the request is easy to be granted, considering his ability, and that in a more difficult thing his liberality is ordinarily expressed. Fourthly, to promise recompense, as thanks, service, etc.50

Fel y sylwodd Peter Mack, er nad yw’r cyfarwyddiadau cryno hyn yn gopi o gyfarwyddiadau manylach Erasmus ynghylch ffurf a chyfansoddiad y llythyr gofyn, maent yn cynnwys yr un math o nodweddion cyffredinol, sef y dylai’r cais am rodd fod o fewn gallu’r rhoddwr i’w rhoi, y dylai’r cais fod yn un cyfiawn, y dylid gwneud addewid i ad-dalu’r rhodd, ac y dylid moli haelioni’r rhoddwr.51 Tebyg oedd cyfarwyddiadau Angel Day, y rhethregwr o Sais yn Oes Elisabeth a gyhoeddodd y llawlyfr The English Secretary (1586). Dylai llythyr gofyn gynnwys moliant i’r sawl a gyferchir, a galw i gof y berthynas rhyngddo ac awdur y llythyr fel y rheswm pam y dylai’r cais gael ei dderbyn. Os oedd y cais yn onest a chyfreithlon, ac o fewn gallu’r cyfarchedig i ufuddhau iddo, yna dylai awdur 50  51 

Gw. Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric, tt. 80–81. Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric, tt. 80–81.

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y llythyr esbonio sut y gallai’r rhodd gael ei rhoi, cyn mynegi ei ddiolchgarwch am y ffafr a mynegi ei barodrwydd i dalu’r pwyth.52 Awgrymwyd mai llythyr o’r natur hwn oedd y llythyr a anfonodd Nathaniel Bacon at Edward Paston yn 1575 i ofyn am gerrig adeiladu.53 Llythyr moel tra uniongyrchol a phwrpasol yn cyflwyno cais am ffafr ymarferol oedd hwnnw heb ynddo ddim nodweddion addurniadol; llythyr busnes os mynnir.54 At ei gilydd, felly, gwelir sut y cynhwysai’r llawlyfrau ar gyfansoddi llythyr yng nghyfnod y Dadeni o gyfnod Erasmus ymlaen ganllawiau llawer mwy hyblyg ac ymarferol am nad ystyrid bod pum rhan draddodiadol yr araith glasurol yn addas at bob diben. Ceid pwyslais amlwg ar ddefnyddioldeb ac ymarferoldeb y cyfrwng yn hytrach nag ar ei ymlyniad wrth unrhyw batrwm rhagosodedig. Go brin y gallem gymharu llythyr Siôn Phylip â llythyr Nathaniel Bacon y cyfeiriwyd ato’n gynharach. Nid llythyr uniongyrchol mewn arddull blaen yw eiddo’r bardd o Gymro, ond llythyr mewn arddull fwriadol rethregol sy’n peri inni dybied mai dylanwad yr areithiau pros yn bennaf, sef rhyddiaith addurniedig, gelfyddydol, draddodiadol y beirdd, sydd ar lythyr Siôn Phylip. Ni ellir ychwaith weld ynddo ddylanwad amlwg cyfarwyddiadau Erasmus ynghylch ffurf y llythyr. Os oes ynddo un nodwedd sy’n wahanol i’r enghreifftiau cynharach o areithiau gofyn, fel y crybwyllwyd eisoes, yna’r nodwedd honno yw’r g yfeiriadaeth at chwedloniaeth Rufeinig. Dyna elfen nas ceir yn yr areithiau pros cynharaf. Teg inni gofio fod cyfeiriadau at chwedloniaeth glasurol i’w cael yng ngwaith Gruffudd Hiraethog, a bod ei wybodaeth o fytholeg glasurol yn ddyfnach na chyfeiriadaeth gonfensiynol.55 Hyd yn oed os na chlywodd Siôn Phylip ei athro’n adrodd hanes rhai o’r cymeriadau hyn, buasai wedi bod yn gyfarwydd â’u henwau petai ond yn herwydd ei adnabyddiaeth o waith Gruffudd Hiraethog a Wiliam Llŷn. Ond yr hyn sydd fwyaf tebygol, o ystyried gallu ieithyddol Siôn a’i wybodaeth dybiedig o Saesneg a Lladin, yw mai cynnyrch ffrwyth ei ddarllen yw’r cyfeiriadau hyn at y ddau athronydd Groegaidd ac at gymeriadau chwedlonol Rhufeinig.56 Buasai ganddo fynediad i lyfrgelloedd rhai o’i noddwyr. Yr hyn sy’n nodedig yng ngherddi Siôn Phylip a Gruffydd ei 52 

Mack, Elizebethan Rhetoric, t. 114. Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric, t. 115. 54  Smith, Baker, and Kenny, gol., The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, tt. 170–71. 55  Davies, Welsh Literature and the Classical Tradition, tt. 81–82. 56  Yn ôl tystiolaeth Edmwnd Prys yn ei farwnad i Siôn Phylip, yr oedd Siôn yn medru tair iaith, sef Cymraeg, Saesneg a Lladin: ‘Deallai fo, diwall fawl, | Deiriaith yn brif awdurawl’, gw. Blodeugerdd Barddas o’r Ail Ganrif ar Bymtheg, gol. gan Lloyd, cerdd 38.63–64. 53 

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fab yw’r lliaws o gyfeiriadau at chwedloniaeth glasurol a geir ynddynt. Canodd Siôn gywydd i dduw’r gwin, Bachus, cywydd i Giwpid a chywydd i’r ffenics chwedlonol. Ymhlith y cyfeiriadau at gymeriadau chwedloniaeth gwlad Groeg yng ngwaith ei fab Gruffydd y mae Aciles, Ector, Fwlcan, Hanibal, Hercules, Siason, a Troelus.57 Os craffwn am ychydig ar y cyfeiriad yn llythyr gofyn Siôn Phylip at y ddau of diarhebol, Fwlcan, sef duw tân a gofaniaeth y Rhufeiniaid, a Thubal-Cain, ‘cyweithydd pob cywreinwaith pres a haearn’ fel y cyfeirir ato yn Genesis 4. 22, fe welwn mai arfer y Cywyddwyr yn gyffredinol mewn cywyddau i ofyn am eitemau metel fel cleddyfau a bwcledi oedd cyfeirio at y naill neu’r llall o’r gofaint hyn.58 Ond nid cyfeiriad confensiynol yn unig mo’r cyfeiriad at Fwlcan gan Siôn Phylip, eithr ymhelaethir ynghylch yr union amgylchiadau pan greodd rwyd o fetel mor ysgafn fel ei bod bron yn anweledig er mwyn caethiwo ei wraig, Fenws, pan gyflawnodd hi odineb â Mars. Cyfeirir at y stori yng ngherdd Ofydd, ‘Metamorphoses’, ac yng ngherdd Homer, ‘Odysseia’, ac er na ellir byth fod yn sicr beth oedd ffynhonnell Siôn Phylip am yr hanes, ni fyddai’n afresymol tybio mai trwy ymgydnabod yn uniongyrchol â gwaith Ofydd a Homer y daeth i wybod am rwyd fetel Fwlcan. Oni ddarllenodd waith Ofydd yn Lladin, buasai cyfieithiad Arthur Golding o’r ‘Metamorphoses’, a gyhoeddwyd yn 1567, yn ddigon hygyrch i fardd o Gymro a fedrai ddarllen Saesneg yn nhraean olaf yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg a dau ddegawd cyntaf y ganrif ddilynol.59 Erbyn tua 1614, yr oedd cyfieithiad Saesneg hefyd ar gael o’r ‘Odysseia’ gan Homer.60 Y ffordd yr oedd y llythyr hwn yn cydweddu â syniadau’r Dadeni ynghylch defnyddio iaith addurniedig oedd drwy fod egwyddorion De copia i’w gweld ynddo, a bod creu cyfansoddeiriau yn un dull o ehangu geirfa’r Gymraeg, pwnc y byddai gan eiriadurwr fel Thomas Wiliems ddiddordeb ynddo. Dyna efallai 57  Gw. y mynegai o enwau personol yn nhraethawd Davies, ‘Astudiaeth Destunol o Farddoniaeth Gruffydd Phylip’, cyfrol 2, tt. 809–19. 58  Er enghraifft, mae Gruffydd Phylip mewn cywydd i ofyn cleddyf gan Siôn Siôns, Dôly-moch, yn cyfeirio at Fwlcan y gof fel lluniwr y cleddyf: ‘Llaw Fwlcan, oreulan rodd, | Yn gyweithas a’i gweithiodd’, gw. Davies, ‘Astudiaeth Destunol o Farddoniaeth Gruffydd Phylip’, cerdd 22.113–14. 59  Arthur Golding, The xv. Booke of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis, iv, fol. 45v. Cynhwysid yr olygfa lle’r oedd y cariadon wedi’u caethiwo gan y rhwyd bron bob amser mewn fersiynau darluniadol o’r ‘Metamorphoses’ yng nghyfnod y Dadeni, gw. Bull, The Mirror of the Gods, tt. 182–222. 60  Chapman, Homer’s Odysses, viii, tt. 117–18.

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pam yr oedd ganddo ef gymaint o ddiddordeb yn yr areithiau pros, oherwydd copïwyd amryw ohonynt ganddo, er enghraifft yn llawysgrif LlGC 3029B [Mostyn 110] ac yn llawysgrif BL Add 31055, lle y gwelir rhai o’r ‘annerch lythyrau’ a gopïodd rhwng 1591 a 1596. Nac anghofier ychwaith fod gan William Salesbury, yntau, o’i flaen ddiddordeb yn yr areithiau pros, oherwydd cyfeiriodd at araith ofyn Gruffudd ab Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan yn ei ‘Lyfr Rhetoreg’.61 Diau fod Siôn Phylip yn fardd dysgedig. Copïodd â’i law ei hun ymdriniaeth â’r ‘pedwar messur arrhugain’ rywdro rhwng 1618 a blwyddyn ei farw yn 1620.62 Erys ar glawr y cywydd a ganodd pan oedd mewn gwth o oedran i ddiolch am lyfr meddyginiaethau yn rhodd, lle y dywed ei fod yn ei ddarllen o’i gwr ac yn ei astudio’n ddyfal ‘nos a dydd’.63 Yn ei farwnad i’w dad, cyfeiriodd Gruffydd Phylip at ei lyfrau ac fel y byddai darllen y rheini yn peri iddo dristáu am ei fod yn teimlo mor amddifad ‘Heb f ’athraw’ a ‘heb ddysgeidiaeth’.64 Rhaid cofio hefyd am yr arweiniad a rôi rhai o’r noddwyr i’r beirdd ym maes dysg, yn enwedig noddwyr o glerigwyr, sef personiaid dysgedig a oedd yn raddedigion prifysgol, yn eu plith Gruffudd Williams, person Llanaber, a feddai ar radd Meistr.65 Pwy a ŵyr pa hyfforddiant mewn Lladin a gâi bardd fel Siôn Phylip ganddo ef a’i debyg, na pha faint o drafod a fyddai ar ddysg ac ar lyfrau yn eu mysg? Yr oedd yr awch am addysg yn cynyddu ymhlith y boneddigion gwledig yn gyffredinol, ynghyd â’u hawydd i batrymu eu diddordebau diwylliannol ar ffasiynau’r Dadeni. Cofier i William Fychan yr ail o Gorsygedol sefydlu ysgol yn Harlech tua 1590 ‘i gynnau — gwir ddysg’ ac ‘iawn addysg’, ac nad oedd hynny ond ymestyniad o’r math o addysg a gyfrennid cyn hynny yn nhai’r uchelwyr gan diwtoriaid preifat.66 Mae’n dra phosibl mai gwir ddiddordeb y llythyr hwn gan Siôn Phylip yw ei fod yn ddarn o ryddiaith a luniwyd gan aelod o’r to olaf o benceirddiaid er mwyn 61 

Gw. sylwadau Mathias, ‘William Salesbury – Ei Ryddiaith’, tt. 61–62. Gw. LlGC, Llsgr Peniarth 89, tt. 136–47. Ceir copi yn Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy – A Survey and a Summary’, atodiad vi, tt. 262–67. 63  Gw. Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy, with Poems of Siôn Phylip in the Cardiff Free Library Collection’, t. 167, llau. 103–12. 64  Davies, ‘Astudiaeth Destunol o Farddoniaeth Gruffydd Phylip’, cerdd 96.37–42, 61, 64. 65  Jones, ‘Government and Society 1536–1603’, tt. 684–85. Canodd Siôn Phylip gywydd moliant iddo fel un o raddedigion Rhydychen, gw. Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy, with Poems of Siôn Phylip in the Cardiff Free Library Collection’, t. 277. 66  Gw. Jones, ‘Government and Society 1536–1603’, tt. 686–87. 62 

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dangos ei feistrolaeth ar ryddiaith rethregol frodorol Gymraeg gyda’r bwriad o ddiddanu noddwyr a ymddiddorai mewn dysg a diwylliant. Ceir ynddo enghraifft o orchestu geiriol, a rhan o’r orchest oedd llunio geiriau newydd, megis y berfenw ‘moddystru’ a’r enw haniaethol ‘domrheiddrwydd’. Prawf y llythyr a’i gyd-destun nad oedd pob un o’r beirdd yn gyndyn o rannu peth o’u dysg nac o ymgyfathrachu â noddwyr a fuasai mewn cysylltiad â dysgedigion, a bod rhai achlysuron i’w cael pan oedd y ddysg frodorol yn cydgyffwrdd â’r ddysg ddyneiddiol. Dichon fod yma enghraifft sy’n cadarnhau’r sylw canlynol gan yr hanesydd William P. Griffith: Ac er y cwynai dyneiddwyr Cymru fod y beirdd proffesiynol yn amharod i gyfansoddi ar themâu newydd ac i gyhoeddi eu cynnyrch a’u gwybodaeth eiriadurol er budd cynulleidfa ehangach, nid oedd hyn yn golygu eu bod yn amharod i gyfathrebu a rhannu eu gwybodaeth. Yr hyn sy’n nodedig yw bywiogrwydd y traddodiad o gasglu a chyfnewid llawysgrifau a’r trafodaethau ysgolheigaidd a gynhelid ymhlith y beirdd, y bonedd a’r clerigwyr hyd ddechrau’r ail ganrif ar bymtheg o leiaf.67

67 

Griffith, ‘Dysg Ddyneiddiol, Addysg a’r Iaith Gymraeg 1536–1660’, t. 307.

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Llythyr i ofyn palffon At y rhagorawl foneddigaidd Frytwn Morys Owain. Wllysgaraf garedickaf anherchion attoch y boneddigeiddwalch Bryttanaidd o bendefigaidd brifiachau y rhai ynt mor afraid i hys = byssu a halaenu /r/ halldfor ne enyn goleuganwyll y kanaid ganol = ddydd fys68 Mihefin hefyd klodforach a chanmoledigach i wr bonh = = eddig fod i gampys gyneddfau ai roddedig rinweddau yn kyd atteb ne /n/ kyhydu i gerenyddryw genedigawl fal i kyflownwyd ynod gryfdwr gwroliaeth galonawg lendid kyweithasrwydd kymdeithas kynes garedigrwydd karwriaeth kowreinrwydd kerddwriaeth an = = ianol yn awenyddiaeth y farddoniaeth fryttanaidd kyfochread gynghaneddol fysyrol fwyneiddwawd kaskledigaeth a chadwed = = igaeth pereiddgerdd y prifeirdd kynyddiaeth kyflymgwn hirion a x69 huaid troweddedig marchwriaeth mowreiddfeirch, helaethe = wydd haelioni hylwyaraidd helwriaeth pysg ednod a bwystfi =  = lod moddystru, a meddiginiaeth kydnabyddiaeth pob meddyglys mawrwrthiawg gwraidd pelydr, dail blodau a hadau; or rhain ir wyd yn kyfansoddi dygyn ardymeru dy blastrau tynedig meddaledig dy eliau treiedig tyfedig; dy olewau tyneraidd es = = mwythedig dy ddyfroedd dystlịẹḍẹdig aroglber golchedig i iachau dy gyd Gristnogion oi briwiau heiniau ai hanafau gan ynill haeddedig fendithion heblaw anifeiri o orchestol ymddiffyn = = aidd a manylaidd gampau a rhagorawl rinweddau trefnys domrheiddrwydd dy anedd dy fal na fyddyliai /r/ galon am ddim nas gwelai /r/ olwg pob anwyldlws angenrheidiol wedi i gyfleu bob un yn i gymwys gyfle i hûn yn gyffelib i ystafell Plato yr honn oedd wedi i gossod mor drefnys na fedrai Diogenes weled lle i boeri ond yn wyneb gwr y ty ymlith y kyfryw rai i ys = = biais ag o henddynig drachwant i blyssiais un balffon gwyreidd = = waith o fanlin onenwydd kyn unioned ar dakl, kyn yskafned ar bluen kyn wydned ar gewyn, kyn llyfned ar kybolfaen; a ffalben o awchddur llifiedig o gelfyddiaeth gofaniaeth fal pe Vwlkan

fys sydd yn y gwreiddiol yn hytrach na fis. Llythyren wedi’i chroesi allan gan y copïydd.

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ai gweithiai a Thubal70 ai llifai, yr hwn Vwlkan a fwriadodd fasg = = rwyd o fanylddur i ddal Mars yn kydorwedd ai wraig Venus diwies y kariad ken fanyled nas gwelynt er i bod gwedi i chlasbyssu am danynt fal nad ellynt fynd o ddyno yr echlyssur i chwenychais y balffon uchod yw /n/ drydydddroed imi trymgorff tripiedig go = grwm gogwyddedig yn gogwyddo tua /r/ lle i daeth sef tia /r/ ddau = ar yr hwn a fu ar bedwar a ddaeth ar ddau y sydd ar dri a eiff ar bedwar sef or palfau ir traed or traed ir ffon or ffon ir elawr yr ail yw i dyny tyfodbridd tyrredig o gloddiad y wadd anrhaith = = edig ar hyd fygweirgloddiau am gwndynoedd ag i roi ymbell ga = = rnbylgais ar ddaeardwrch ewinogbalf hychdürsaidd,71 gan fedd = = wl i damwain ryw amser fod kimint i anlwk ag i taflwn ef i wynebdir dauaren i ddial fy hênllid arno. Hefyd gwsnaethed = = ig yw i ollwng rhigolddwr rhwystredig ystopiedig yr hwn a saf = = ai ychydig o amser a gronai yn sybwll boddedig i ddifa fy mhorfa ag i afiachau fyngwairbawr knwdfylyssig felly fal i mae /n/ fawr y kymmynau i mae /r/ kaffaeliai yn gimint, ar diolch ar dafawd ar gwreiddin or galon, tra fo /r/ genau /n/ gweini gwa = wdyddiaeth tra gwelo golwg, tra llunier llythyren, a rhag ym amhoffi fy ngyssefin gysondeb wrth arfer llithrig lythyr llath = = reiddiaith hwdiwch y ddau emyn hynn.

55

ffon a gâf a ffwy un ged ffon a rowch o hoff iawn rad ffon hên gleirch ffynon y glod ffon yn bâl ffeindia /n/ y byd.

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Da yw /r/ ffon linon ken laned a bagl Pedr bigail krefydd kred da /r/ rhoi rodd dy air a red da Morys yw d’ymwared. John Phylip ai kant.

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Newidiwyd Thybal yn Thubal gan y copïydd. Newidiwyd hychdÿrsaidd yn hychdürsaidd gan y copïydd.

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Ffynhonnell LlGC, Llsgr 13215E, tt. 87–88. Amrywiadau LlGC, Llsgr Cwrt-mawr 206B, fol. 127v (darn yn unig). 5. clodforusach. 8. gwrolaeth. 9–10. anianol awenyddiaeth. 10. cyfochriad. Noder bod y ddalen lle digwydd y llythyr wedi’i rhifo o chwith, sef 88–87, am iddi gael ei gosod tu ôl ymlaen wrth i’r llawysgrif gael ei rhwymo. Un o lawysgrifau Edward Lhuyd (1659–1709) oedd y llawysgrif gyfansawdd hon, ac mae ynddi ddeunydd cymysg yn Gymraeg, Saesneg, a Lladin a gopïwyd tua 1698–1699.72 Y mae’r deunydd rhwng tudalennau 50–95 yn llaw’r copïydd William Jones o Lanfwrog (fl. 1670/1–1702), un o amanuenses Edward Lhuyd. Diogelwyd darn anghyflawn o’r llythyr hefyd yn LlGC, Llsgr Cwrt-mawr 206B, fol. 127v, sef ‘Llyfr Cadwaladr Dafydd o Lanymawddwy’ (1730).73 Y pennawd i’r copi hwnnw yw ‘Llythr i ofyn palffon, att y rhagorawl foneddigaidd frytwn Morrus Owen’, ac nis priodolir i neb. Yr hyn sy’n cyfateb i ddeg llinell gyntaf y copi cyflawn yn LlGC, Llsgr 13215E yn unig a geir ynddo, gydag ychydig o fân amrywiadau. Mae’n ymddangos mai LlGC, Llsgr 13215E oedd ffynhonnell y copi hwn.

Fersiwn golygedig wedi’i atalnodi At y rhagorol foneddigaidd Frytwn, Morys Owain. Ewyllysgaraf, garedicaf anerchion atoch, y boneddigeiddwalch Brytanaidd o bendefigaidd brifiachau, y rhai ŷnt mor afraid eu hysbysu â halenu’r halltfor neu ennyn goleugannwyll y cannaid ganolddydd fis Mehefin. Hefyd, clodforach a chanmoledicach i ŵr bonheddig fod ei gampus gyneddfau a’i roddedig rinweddau yn cydateb neu’n cyhydu i[’w] gerenyddryw genedigol, fel y cyflawnwyd ynod gryfdwr gwroliaeth, galonnog lendid, cyweithasrwydd cymdeithas, cynnes garedigrwydd, carwriaeth cywreinrwydd cerddwriaeth anianol yn awenyddiaeth y farddoniaeth Frytanaidd; cyfochriad gynganeddol fesurol fwyneiddwawd, casgledigaeth a chadwedigaeth pereiddgerdd y prifeirdd; cynyddiaeth cyflymgwn hirion a huaid trywyddedig ; marchwriaeth mawreiddfeirch, helaethrwydd haelioni, hylwyraidd helwriaeth pysg, ednod a bwystfilod; moddystru â meddyginiaeth kydnabyddiaeth pob meddyglys mawrwyrthiog: gwraidd, pelydr, dail, blodau a hadau. O’r rhain yr wyd yn cyfansoddi, dygn ardymheru dy blastrau tynedig meddaledig, dy elïau treiedig tyfedig, dy olewau tyneraidd esmwythedig, 72  Gw. Handlist of Manu­scripts in the National Library of Wales, iv, tt. 506–08; Huws, A Repertory of Welsh Manu­scripts and Scribes c. 800–c. 1800, I, tt. 275–76. 73  Diolchaf i Mr Graham C. G. Thomas am y cyfeiriad.

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dy ddyfroedd distylliedig, aroglber, golchedig, i iacháu dy gyd-Gristnogion o’u briwiau a’u heiniau a’u hanafau, gan ennill haeddedig fendithion. Heblaw annifeiri o orchestol amddiffynnaidd a manylaidd gampau a rhagorol rinweddau trefnus, domrheiddrwydd dy anhedd-dy fel na feddyliai’r galon am ddim nas gwelai’r golwg bob anwyldlws angenrheidiol wedi ei gyfleu, pob un yn ei gymwys gyfle ei hun yn gyffelyb i ystafell Plato, yr hon oedd wedi ei gosod mor drefnus na fedrai Diogenes weled lle i boeri ond yn wyneb gŵr y tŷ. Ymhlith y cyfryw rai yr ysbïais ac o henddynig drachwant y blysiais un balffon gwyreiddwaith o fanlin onenwydd, cyn unioned â’r dacl, cyn ysgafned â’r bluen, cyn wydned â’r gewyn, cyn llyfned â’r cabolfaen, a phalben o awchddur llifiedig o gelfyddiaeth gofaniaeth fel pe Fwlcan a’i gweithiai a Thubal a’i llifai. Yr hwn Fwlcan a fwriadodd fasgrwyd o fanylddur i ddal Mars yn cydorwedd â’i wraig Fenws, duwies y cariad, cyn fanyled nas gwelent, er ei bod wedi ei chlasbysu amdanynt fel na allent fynd oddi yno. Yr achlysur y chwenychais y balffon uchod yw’n drydydd-droed i’m trymgorff tripiedig, gogrwm, gogwyddedig, yn gogwyddo tua’r lle y daeth, sef tua’r ddaear, yr hwn a fu ar bedwar a ddaeth ar ddau, y sydd ar dri a aiff ar bedwar, sef o’r palfau i’r traed, o’r traed i’r ffon, o’r ffon i’r elor. Yr ail yw i dynnu tywodbridd tyredig o gloddiad y wadd anrheithiedig ar hyd fy ngweirgloddiau a’m gwndynnoedd, ac i roi ambell garnbylgais ar ddaeardwrch ewinogbalf, hychdursaidd, gan feddwl y damwain ryw amser fod cymaint ei anlwc ag y taflwn ef i wynebdir daearen i ddial fy henllid arno. Hefyd, gwasanaethedig yw i ollwng rhigolddwr rhwystredig, ystopiedig, yr hwn a safai ychydig o amser a gronnai yn sybwll boddedig i ddifa fy mhorfa ac i afiacháu fy ngwairbawr cnwdfelysig. Felly, fel y mae’n fawr y cymynnau y mae’r caffaeliau yn gymaint, a’r diolch ar dafod, a’r gwreiddyn o’r galon tra bo’r genau’n gweini gwawdyddiaeth, tra gwelo golwg, tra llunier llythyren, a rhag ymamhoffi fy nghysefin gysondeb wrth arfer llithrig lythyr llathreiddiaith, hwdiwch y ddau emyn hyn: Ffon a gaf, a phwy un ged? Ffon a rowch o hoff iawn rad; Ffon hen gleirch, ffynnon y glod, Ffon yn bâl ffeindia’n y byd. Da yw’r ffon linon cyn laned – â bagl              Pedr, bugail crefydd cred.       Da ’rhoi rodd, dy air a red,       Da, Morys, yw d’ymwared. Siôn Phylip a’i cânt

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Nodiadau a geirfa 1. Frytwn: Cymro. 7. kyhydu: yn gyfartal â. 8. kyweithasrwydd: ‘cyweithas + rwydd’; hynawsedd, cyfathrach gyfeillgar. 11. fysyrol: yr ansoddair ‘mesurol’; mydryddol. 12. kynyddiaeth: gwaith y cynydd, sef gofalwr cŵn hela. 13. huaid: lluosog ‘huad’, sef ci hela, bytheiad. troweddedig: ‘trywydd + edig’, ar y trywydd. Ceir y ffurf ‘trywedd’ fel amrywiad ar ‘trywydd’, gw. GPC. 13–14. helaethewydd: cymerir mai gwall copïo ydyw am ‘helaethrwydd’. 14. hylwyaraidd: cymerir mai camgymeriad ydyw am ‘hy + llwyr + aidd’, sef ‘hylwyraidd’; llawn, cyfan. 15. moddystru: bernir mai ymgais sydd yma i greu berfenw o’r ansoddair ‘moddus’, sef gwneud yn foddhaol neu’n ddymunol. meddyglys: llysieuyn i wella clwyfau. 16. mawrwrthiawg: ‘mawrwyrthiog’, mawr ei rinwedd; rhyfeddol ei allu. pelydr: tebyg mai lluosog ‘paladr’, sef coes planhigyn neu flodyn, sydd yma. Noder hefyd y benthyciad S.C. pelleter, peletre, llysiau’r pared, murlys, murlwyn, neu’n gyffredinol am blanhigion eraill, gw. GPC pelydr3. 17. kyfansoddi: llunio, cynhyrchu. dygyn: dygn, dyfal, diwyd. ardymeru: trin, paratoi. blastrau tynedig: lluosog ‘plastr’ + yr ansoddair ‘tynedig’; powltis i dynnu drwg o friw neu ddolur. 18. eliau treiedig: naill ai ansoddair berfol ar sail treiaf1, sef ‘lleddfu poen’, a olygai elïau sy’n lleddfu poen, neu ansoddair berfol ar sail treiaf2, sef ‘rhoi prawf ar’, a olygai elïau wedi eu profi, gw. GPC. tyfedig: ansoddair berfol ar sail ‘tyfu’, sy’n golygu gwella, iacháu, gw. GPC tyfu (c). 19. dystliededig: mae’r nodau o dan y gair yn y llawysgrif yn awgrymu nad oedd y copïydd yn sicr o’r darlleniad. Awgrymir mai ‘distylliedig’ a oedd yn y gwreiddiol, sy’n cyd-fynd â’r sôn am ddyfroedd. Ei ystyr yw hylifau wedi eu distyllu. 20. heiniau: lluosog ‘haint’. 21. anifeiri: ‘an + nifeiri’, aneirif, dirifedi. 23. domrheiddrwydd: ‘tom’ + ‘rhaidd’ + terfyniad haniaethol ‘-rwydd’, sef pentwr neu domen o roddion. 24. anwyldlws: ‘trysor’ neu ‘anrheg’. Geill fod yn arwyddocaol mai dyma’r gair a ddefnyddir yn y copi o Statud Gruffudd ap Cynan yn llaw Wiliam Llŷn yn Llsgr BL Add 19711 am y rhodd a geisid mewn cywydd gofyn: ‘Hevyd na bo prydydd a wnel kerdd i erchi march neu vilgi neu gyvryw anwyldlws nodedic heb gennad y perchennog’, gw. Davies, ‘The Roll of the Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1523’, t. 98. gyfleu: gosod, lleoli.

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25. gyfle: y rhagddodiad ‘cyf- + lle’, lle cymwys, cyfaddas. Plato: yr athronydd Groegaidd o Athen (c. 428–348 cc). 26. Diogenes: Diogenes o Sinop (Diogenes y Sinig), yr athronydd Groegaidd (c. 404–323 cc), a oedd yn aml yn anghydweld â Phlato. Mae sôn amdano’n ymweld â chartref Plato yng ngwaith Diogenes Laertius ar hanes bywyd athronwyr enwog, gw. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, gol. gan Miller, t. 272. 28. henddynig: ‘henddyn’ + terfyniad bachigol ‘-ig’; henẃraidd, tebyg i hen ŵr. balffon: ‘pâl + ffon’, rhaw; cymh. ‘helffon’ GPC, a ‘rhawffon’ GPC. Canodd Watcyn Clywedog englynion ‘I ofvn helffon a gwaiwffon a ffadel’, gw. Llsgr LlGC Peniarth 144, t. 75. 28–29. gwyreiddwaith: ‘cwyraidd + gwaith’; cwyraidd yn ffigurol, sef medrus, cywrain, celfydd; palffon gelfydd ei gwaith. 29. dakl: ‘tacl’, saeth. 30. kybolfaen: maen i lyfnu neu gaboli, pwmis. ffalben: ‘pâl + pen’, pen rhaw. 31. Vwlkan: duw tân y Rhufeiniaid. Mae chwedl amdano’n cael ei dwyllo gan ei wraig Fenws pan gydorweddodd hi â Mars. Gwnaeth Fwlcan rwyd o fetel ac ynddi gadwyni pres a’i rhwymo ar y gwely er mwyn caethiwo Mars a Fenws. Yr oedd y rhwyd mor frau fel ei bod bron yn anweledig. 32. a Thubal: Tubal-Cain, y gof cyntaf yn ôl llyfr Genesis 4. 22. llifai: 3ydd pers. un. amherffaith ‘llifo’, hogi neu ffeilio. 32–33. fasgrwyd: ‘masgl’ sef llygad rhwyd, ‘+ rhwyd’, gw. GPC, t. 2371; rhwyd rwyllog, Saes. ‘mesh’. 33. Mars: duw rhyfel y Rhufeiniaid. Venus: duwies serch y Rhufeiniaid. 34. chlasbyssu: cau â chlasb neu fwcl. 36. tripiedig: yn tueddu i faglu a syrthio. 41. gwndynoedd: lluosog ‘gwndwn’, tir heb ei droi, gweirdir. 41–42. garnbylgais: ‘carnbwl + cais’, cais lletchwith neu ergyd drosgl. 42. hychdürsaidd: ‘hych/hwch + turs + -aidd’, â thrwyn fel hwch neu fochyn. 46. sybwll: merddwr, dŵr sefyll. 48. kymmynau: lluosog ‘cymyn’, gw. GPC cymyn2, cwympiadau; ?colledion. kaffaeliai: ‘caffaeliau’, lluosog ‘caffael’; enillion, caffaeliau. 49. gwreiddin: ‘gwreiddyn’ yn drosiadol, sef craidd neu hanfod rhyw dda. 52. emyn: cân o fawl neu ddiolch. 53. ged: ‘ced’, rhodd, cymwynas. 55. gleirch: ‘cleiriach’, henwr musgrell; cymh. henddynig yn ll. 28. 57. ffon linon: ffon o bren onnen. 58. Pedr: Sant Ioan Pedr, arweinydd cyntaf yr Eglwys Gristnogol gynnar. 60. ymwared: cymorth.

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English Synopsis Siôn Phylip (d. 1620) was one of the last chief poets in the period leading up to the decline of the professional bardic order in mid-seventeenth-century Wales. This article discusses the only complete extant manu­script copy of Siôn’s letter to Morys Owain of Ystumcegid in Eifionydd, requesting a ditching spade, which was composed as an exercise in rhetorical prose writing. Morys Owain’s neighbour, with whom he also had family connections, was the humanist Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain, the author of the surviving fragment of the Welsh translation of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (at one time attributed to Cicero). The context of Siôn’s letter and his connections with its recipient, Morys Owain, suggests that Siôn was interested in the new humanist learning at a time when the native Welsh professional poets were often criticized by humanist scholars for being too narrow-minded and unwilling to embrace the new learning. It is argued that the letter’s existence is proof that not all poets ignored the humanists’ pleading on them to engage with modern learning, and that Siôn Phylip was eager to provide an example of traditional Welsh rhetorical prose in the style of the familiar areithiau pros. This letter probably reflects the interest some poets had in rhetoric following William Salesbury’s ‘Llyfr Rhetoreg’ (1552) and his accompanying address to Gruffudd Hiraethog (d. 1564), who was at one time Siôn Phylip’s bardic teacher.

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Llyfryddiaeth Ffynonellau llawysgrifol ac archifol Aberystwyth, Comisiwn Henebion Cymru, Particulars with Plans and Views of Cors-ygedol Estate in the County of Merioneth (1908) Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, ‘A Schedule of Dolfrïog Deeds and Corres­ pondence’ —— , Llsgr 3029B [Mostyn 110] —— , Llsgr 5269B —— , Llsgr 13215E —— , Llsgr Brogyntyn I.5 —— , Llsgr Cwrt-mawr 206B —— , Llsgr Llanfair a Brynodol 2 —— , Llsgr Peniarth 89 —— , Llsgr Peniarth 144 Caerdydd, Llyfrgell y Ddinas, Llsgr 1.16 Llundain, Y Llyfrgell Brydeinig, Llsgr BL Add 31055 —— , Llsgr BL Add 19711

Ffynonellau cynradd Yr Areithiau Pros, gol. gan D. Gwenallt Jones (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1934) Blodeugerdd Barddas o’r Ail Ganrif ar Bymtheg, gol. gan Nesta Lloyd (Abertawe: Cyhoed­ diadau Barddas, 1993) Chapman, George, Homer’s Odysses: Translated According to ye Greeke (London: Imprinted by Richard Field for Nathaniell Butter, [?1614]) Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, gol. gan James Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, iii: De conscribendis epistolis, formulae/De civilitate, gol. gan J. K. Sowards, Collected Works of Erasmus, 25 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) Golding, Arthur, The xv. Booke of P.  Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis (London: Imprinted by William Seres, 1567) Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, gol. gan Griffith  J. Williams ac Evan  J. Jones (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1934) Gwaith Gruffudd Hiraethog, gol. gan D.  J. Bowen (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1990) The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, i: 1556–1577, gol. gan A. Hassell Smith, Gillian Baker, and R. W. Kenney (Norwich: Norfolk Record Society, 1978/79) Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659, gol. gan Garfield H. Hughes (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1951)

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Rhyddiaith Gymraeg, Yr Ail Gyfrol: Detholion o Lawysgrifau a Llyfrau Printiedig 1547– 1618, gol. gan Thomas Jones (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1956) Three Medi­eval Rhetorical Arts, gol. gan James J. Murphy (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medi­eval and Renaissance Studies, 2001) Ymryson Edmwnd Prys a Wiliam Cynwal, gol. gan Gruffydd Aled Williams (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1986)

Ffynonellau eilaidd Bowen, D. J., Gruffudd Hiraethog a’i Oes (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1958) —— , ‘Cywyddau Gruffudd Hiraethog i Dri o Awduron y Dadeni’, The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1974/75), 103–31 Bull, Malcolm, The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mytho­logy in Renaissance Art (London: Allen Lane, 2005) Davies, Ceri, Welsh Literature and the Classical Tradition (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996) Davies, J. H., ‘The Roll of the Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1523’, Transactions of the Liverpool Welsh National Society (1904–1905), 87–102 Davies, John Meirion, ‘Astudiaeth Destunol o Farddoniaeth Gruffydd Phylip gyda Rhag­ ymadrodd, Nodiadau a Geirfa’, 2 gyfrol (Traethawd Ph.D. Prifysgol Bangor, 2008) Davies, William, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy, with Poems of Siôn Phylip in the Cardiff Free Library Collection’ (Traethawd M. A. Prifysgol Cymru [Aberystwyth], 1912) —— , ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy’, Y Beirniad, 3 (1913), 94–105 —— , ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy – A Survey and a Summary’, Y Cymmrodor, 42 (1931), 155–268 Evans, J.  Gwenogvryn, gol., Report on Manu­scripts in the Welsh Language (London: HMSO, 1898–1910) Gresham, Colin A., Eifionydd: A Study in Landownership from the Medi­eval Period to the Present Day (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973) Griffith, J. E., Pedigrees of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire Families (Horncastle: Printed for the author, 1914) Griffith, W. P., ‘Dysg Ddyneiddiol, Addysg a’r Iaith Gymraeg 1536–1660’, yn Y Gymraeg yn ei Disgleirdeb: Yr Iaith Gymraeg cyn y Chwyldro Diwydiannol, gol. gan Geraint H. Jenkins (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1997), tt. 287–314 Gruffydd, R. Geraint, ‘William Morgan’, yn Y Traddodiad Rhyddiaith, gol. gan Geraint Bowen (Llandysul: Gwasg Gomer, 1970), tt. 149–74 —— , ‘Y Bardd a’r Gramadegydd’, Y Casglwr, 19 (Mawrth 1983), 13 Handlist of Manu­scripts in the National Library of Wales, iv (Aberystwyth: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, 1971) Henderson, J.  R., ‘Erasmus on the Art of Letter-Writing’, yn Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, gol. gan James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1983), tt. 331–55

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Huws, Bleddyn Owen, Y Canu Gofyn a Diolch c. 1350-c. 1630 (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prif­ ysgol Cymru, 1998) —— , ‘Breuddwyd Iorwerth Deircaill’, Dwned, 25 (2019), 57–70 Huws, Daniel, A  Repertory of Welsh Manu­scripts and Scribes c.  800-c.  1800, tair cyfrol (Aberystwyth: The National Library of Wales and University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2022) Ifans, Dafydd, ‘Wiliam Bodwrda (1593–1660)’, Cylchgrawn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, 19 (1975–1976), 88–102 An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire, vi: County of Merioneth (London: HMSO, 1921) James, Daniel Lynn, ‘Bywyd a Gwaith Huw Machno’ (Traethawd M. A. Prifysgol Cymru [Abertawe], 1960) Johnston, Dafydd, Llên yr Uchelwyr: Hanes Beirniadol Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg 1300–1525 (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 2005) Jones, Bedwyr Lewis, ‘Siôn ap Hywel ab Owain, Cefn Treflaeth’, Cylchgrawn Cymdeithas Hanes Sir Gaernarfon, 21 (1960), 63–69 —— , ‘Siôn ap Howel ab Owain a’r Rhetorica ad Herennium yn Gymraeg’, Llên Cymru, 6 (1961), 208–18 —— , ‘Testunau Rhethreg Cymraeg y Dadeni’ (Traethawd M. A. Prifysgol Cymru [Ban­ gor], 1961) Jones, G. P., ‘Wiliam Cynwal’, Llên Cymru, 11 (1971), 176–84 Jones, J. Gwynfor, ‘Government and Society 1536–1603’, yn History of Meirioneth, ii: The Middle Ages, gol. gan J. Beverley Smith and Llinos Beverley Smith (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), tt. 649–701 Jones, Morgan, ‘Gwaith Siôn Phylip i Noddwyr Sir Gaernarfon’ (Traethawd Ph.D. Prifysgol Cymru [Bangor], 2000) Lewis, Henry, ‘Llythyr William Salesbury at Ruffudd Hiraethog’, Bwletin y Bwrdd Gwybodau Celtaidd, 2 (1924), 113–18 Lloyd, Nesta, ‘The Praises of Poets: John Davies and the Bards’, yn Dr  John Davies of Mallwyd: Welsh Renaissance Scholar, gol. gan Ceri Davies (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), tt. 60–87 Mack, Peter, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 2002) —— , A  History of Renaissance Rhetoric, 1380–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Mathias, W. Alun, ‘William Salesbury – Ei Ryddiaith’, yn Y Traddodiad Rhyddiaith, gol. gan Geraint Bowen (Llandysul: Gwasg Gomer, 1970), tt. 54–78 Perri, Henri, Egluryn Phraethineb sef Dosbarth ar Retoreg, un o’r Saith Gelfyddyd (Llundain, 1595; adarg., Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1930) Siddons, Michael Powell, Welsh Genealogies, A.D. 1500–1600 (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2017) Stephens, Roy, ‘Gwaith Wiliam Llŷn’ (Traethawd Ph.D. Prifysgol Cymru [Aberystwyth], dwy gyfrol, 1983)

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Thomas, Colin, ‘Patterns and Processes of Estate Expansion in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Cylchgrawn Hanes a Chofnodion Sir Feirionnydd, 6 (1972), 333–42 Williams, Gruffydd Aled, ‘Y Canu Gwyddonol o’r Dadeni hyd Bantycelyn’, Y Traethodydd (Gorffennaf 2017), 133–49 Williams, Iwan Llwyd, ‘Noddwyr y Beirdd yn Sir Gaernarfon’ (Traethawd M. A. Prifysgol Cymru [Aberystwyth], dwy gyfrol, 1986)

Ffynonellau digidol Thomas, Gwyn, ‘Siôn Phylip (c.  1540–1620)’, yn ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Bio­ graphy’ ar-lein

The Development of ProtoCeltic *st in British Celtic Peter Schrijver 1. Introduction The complexity of recovering the development of the Proto-Celtic consonant cluster *st in British Celtic and Irish can be reduced to two issues: its development is strongly context-sensitive, and pinpointing the relevant contexts on the basis of the available etymo­logical material turns out to be difficult. This contribution attempts to improve the situation by providing a fuller account than I was capable of giving in a previous study.1 It does so by distinguishing two parameters: 1. whether *st was followed by a vowel (Section 2) or by *r (Section 3), and 2. whether *st was preceded by a vowel (2.1, 3.1) or by a consonant (2.2, 3.2). A summary of the results is found in Section 4, which also stresses that each individual change forms part of an interconnected system of changes. Word-initial *st- has been amply treated in the previously mentioned publication and will be discussed only briefly in Section 5. The main preoccupation of that section is the possible consequences of the findings of Section 4 to the identification of the phoneme that is hiding behind the Ogam Irish letter sraif.

2. Proto-Celtic *-st- before a Vowel (*-stV-) 2.1. Proto-Celtic *-st- between Vowels (*-VstV-) In this particular context, there can be little doubt about the regular development of *st to Proto-British *ss > Welsh s.2 The reflex of *-st- between vowels merges with the reflex of *-ts- > *-ss- (e.g. Proto-Indo-European *wet-s-V- ‘year1  2 

Schrijver, Studies, pp. 406–30. Schrijver, Studies, pp. 407–10, 414.

Peter Schrijver ([email protected]) is professor of Celtic Languages and Culture at Utrecht University. He is a historical linguist specializing in the early history and prehistory of European languages. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131201 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 169–186 BREPOLS

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ling’ > Proto-Celtic *wetsi- > *wessi- > Middle Welsh gwys, Old Cornish guis, Breton gwes ‘sow’, Old Irish feiss ‘sow’, Sanskrit vatsá- ‘calf ’). This fact indicates that the route by which *st became *ss passed via *ts (see 2.3 on the similar merger of intervocalic *ks and *sk as *ks > Proto-Celtic *xs). The following examples illustrate the development. (1) The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *sth2- ‘to stand (up)’ can be found in a number of the archaic compounds: (1a) PIE *upo-sth2o-, originally ‘he who stands under someone’ > Proto-Celtic *uφosto-> Proto-British *wosso- > Middle Welsh and Middle Cornish gwas ‘servant’, Modern Breton gwaz ‘servant; husband’. The Old Irish cognate is foss (masc. o-stem) ‘servant’. Gaulish *wassos underlies Medi­eval Latin vassus ‘servant’.3 (1b) PIE *pro-sth2-o- ‘standing ahead’ > Proto-Celtic *φrosto- ‘promontory, headland’ > Proto-British *rosso- > Middle Welsh ros ‘moor, plain’, Middle Cornish ros ‘heathland, moor, promontory’, Modern Breton roz ‘hillock, slope’. The Old Irish cognate is ross (masc. o-stem) ‘wooded height’. (1c) PIE *h3ewi-sth2-o- (the compound may be younger but its members are PIE), literally ‘sheep-standing’, i.e. ‘place where sheep stand’ > Proto-Celtic *owisto- ‘sheepfold’ (compare the same form underlying Old High German ewist ‘sheepfold’). In British, an agent noun was derived from this base by means of the Latin suffix -ārius, hence Proto-British *owissārjo- > Middle Welsh heusawr, Old Breton ousor ‘shepherd’. (1d) The finite verb from which (1a) was derived is attested in Celtic as well: if as old as PIE, its present tense stem would have been *upo-sist(e)h2-, which yielded Proto-Celtic *uφo-sista- > *wo-sissaand ultimately Old Irish fo-sissedar. The Celtic verbal noun that was derived from this present stem survives in Welsh as well as in Irish: *wo-sissa-mu- > Middle Welsh gwaesaf ‘guarantee, pledge’, Old Irish fóesam ‘protection, safeguard’.4 3  The development of *wo- to *wa- is shared by British and Gaulish. Originally it probably occurred only in lenited position (i.e. after a word ending in a vowel), whence a was later generalized (Schrijver, Studies, pp. 116–30). 4  See Schumacher, The Historical Morpho­logy, pp. 128–29 on the formation.

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(2) PIE *h1es-ti ‘is’ > Proto-Celtic *esti > *essi > Middle Welsh ys, Old Irish is ‘is’. (3) The s-preterite of Celtic languages is based on the third person singular in *t of the PIE s-aorist, i.e. *-s-t, which in Celtic became petrified as a suffix *-st-. This formation, with *-st- yielding *-ss-, became the productive preterite formation of verbs of which the stem ended in a vowel. In order to form the personal forms other than the third person singular, present tense endings were added to *-ss- (e.g. 1sg *-Vss-ū, 3pl *-Vss-onti). These s-preterite forms survive in the Middle Welsh preterite suffixes -as-, -wys-, -es-, -is-, as well as in more fully paradigmatic forms in Old Irish (e.g. 3sg absolute -ais, -is).5 (4) Proto-Celtic had suffixes *-sto-, *-stā-, *-stu-, *-sti-.6 When added to stems that end in a vowel, *-st- in those suffixes develops into Proto-­British and Irish *-ss-, e.g. Proto-Celtic *gnā-stā > *gnāssā > Middle Welsh gnaws ‘nature’, Breton neuz ‘form, appearance’, Old Irish gnás ‘custom’ (root PIE *ǵneh3- ‘get to know’).7 (5) Much more frequent than a suffix *-stV- was a suffix *-tV-, which is of PIE origin. The cluster *-st- arose when *-tV- was added to verbal roots that ended in *s. In three examples, the result of this *-st- is *-ss-:8 (5a) PIE *h2wes- ‘to stay, spend the night’: Proto-Celtic *wos-to- > *wosso- > Middle Welsh gwas ‘abode; rest’, Old Irish foss (masc. o) ‘state of rest’, also in the compound Middle Welsh aros ‘waiting’ < *ari-wos-to-.9 (5b) PIE *kweh2s- ‘to cough’: Proto-Celtic *kwas-tV- > *kwassV- > Middle Welsh pas ‘whooping cough’, Old Irish cosachtach ‘coughing’. (5c) PIE *mels- ‘to suck, taste’: Proto-Celtic *mlas-to- > *mlasso- > Middle Welsh and Middle Cornish blas, Breton blaz ‘taste’, Old Irish mlas (masc. o) ‘taste’.

5 

On the s-preterite, see Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 66–68, with references. Pedersen, Vergleichende Grammatik, i, pp. 19–22, also on the same suffixes in Germanic. 7  Schrijver, Studies, p. 406. 8  Schrijver, Studies, pp. 408, 410. 9  Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 703–04. 6 

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The forms under (5) represent no more than possible evidence for the regular development of *-VstV-: in view of the existence of the suffixes *-stV- (4), we cannot exclude the possibility that some or all of the forms in (5) reflect *-sstV- rather than *-V-stV- (so 5a *wos-sto-, 5b *kwas-stV-, 5c *mlas-sto-). In order to make headway in this matter, let us turn to a number of very similar forms, in which the outcome is st rather than ss in British Celtic. 2.2. Proto-Celtic *-st- between Consonant and Vowel (*-CstV-) While the outcome *VstV does not preserve *t, the outcome of *CstV does. First of all, a number of forms exist that are very similar to those listed under (5): they are derived from verbal roots ending in PIE *s, and they contain a suffix *-tV- or *-stV-. In contrast to gwas, pas, and blas, these forms preserve st in British Celtic:10 (6a) PIE *h2wes- ‘to stay, spend the night’ (so the same root as in 5a): ProtoCeltic *wes-(s)tā > *westā > Middle Welsh gwest ‘night’s stay, feast’, Middle Cornish gwest ‘lodging, entertainment’, Old Breton guest hemisiou ‘feast clothes’ (hemisiou ‘shirts’), Old Irish fess, feiss ‘spending the night, feast, coition’.11 (6b) PIE *ǵeus- ‘to choose’ (as in Old Norse kjósa ‘to choose’) or *ǵheus- ‘to gush forward’ (as in Old Norse g jósa ‘id’.): Proto-Celtic *gus-(s)tu- > *gustu- > Middle Welsh gwst ‘strength’, as well as personal names such as Un-wst, Old Breton Uur-gust, etc.; the Old Irish cognate is guss (masc. u) ‘force, vigour’, which also occurs in personal names, such as Fergus, Forgus, Óengus. (6c) PIE *ḱleu- or *ḱleus-: Proto-Celtic *kleu(s)-(s)tā > *kloustā > Middle Welsh clust ‘ear’, which may or may not be the same formation as Old Irish clúas ‘act of hearing’. The Neogrammarian position that sound change is regular and regularity is defined by phonetic context has stood the test of time well and should therefore inform how we deal with what seems to be a double treatment of Proto-

10 

Schrijver, Studies, pp. 410–13. Breton ban-vez, Old Irish banais ‘marriage feast, banquet’ probably has a different etymo­logy: *bano-wedh-ti- lit. ‘wife-leading’, with the same root as in Welsh dy-weddïo ‘to marry’ (Schrijver, Studies, p. 411). 11 

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Celtic *st in British.12 Hence the only feasible way of accounting for the difference between s and st in the cognate pair (5a) gwas < *wos-(s)to- and (6a) gwest < *wes-(s)tā is by making a significant difference in the phonetic contexts of *st in either form responsible for the developments. Significant means that the contextual difference can hardly be sought in the different quality of the surrounding vowels, since that would lead to a phonetically incomprehensible sound change. All that remains is to posit that one British Celtic outcome reflects *VstV while the other reflects *VsstV, in other words, the different outcomes depend on whether *st was preceded by a vowel or *s. In view of the evidence in favour of *VstV > British Celtic *ss > Welsh s (Section 2.1), gwas most likely reflects *wos-to-, while gwest reflects *wes-stā. The latter hypothesis can be corroborated by considering the following etymon. (7) The PIE root *wedh- ‘to lead (together)’13 underlies the Proto-Celtic derivative *φari-wed-(s)tā, which became Proto-British *ariwestā > Middle Welsh arwest ‘cord, string, band, music’. Its Middle Irish cognate is aires ‘carrying strap’.14 In this particular case, the choice between the reconstructions *-wed-tā and *-wed-stā is in favour of the latter: there is no reliable evidence whatsoever that clusters of two dental plosives, in this case *-dt-, could yield British Celtic st.15 It follows from this that arwest shows the regular outcome of *-d-stV- is British st, which in turn supports the hypothesis that British st in the etyma discussed under (6) reflect *-s-stV-, i.e. a preceding consonant is responsible for the preservation of *st in British Celtic. Other British Celtic forms for which a sequence of consonant + *st can be reconstructed do not preserve *st as a whole but just the *t, a development that is shared by British and Irish. To this category belong British Celtic reflexes of the Insular Celtic t-preterite, which is based on the PIE third person singular of the s-aorist in *-s-t joined to roots ending in a velar plosive or a resonant. (8) The third person singular of the s-aorist of verbal roots ending in a velar have a word-final sequence *-k-s-t and *-g-s-t. This became Proto-Celtic *-xst, which formed the basis of a full paradigm by the addition of pre-

12 

Durie and Ross, The Comparative Method Reviewed. Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 656–60. 14  Greene, ‘Varia’. 15  Schrijver, Studies, pp. 405, 415. 13 

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sent tense endings.16 In British Celtic as well as in Irish, medial *s was lost, so that *-xt- ensued, which ended up as British Celtic *jθ. Middle Welsh examples comprise *ari-ud-reg-s-t > aruireith ‘extolled’; *mak-s-t > maeth ‘fed, raised’; *tu-ambi-org-s-t > damorth ‘has slain’; *wrag-s-t > gwnaeth ‘made, did’.17 Although PIE *ps regularly became *xs in Proto-Celtic (e.g. *(o)upselo- > *ouxselo- > Middle Welsh uchel, Old Irish úasal ‘high’), it probably did not do so in the heavier consonant cluster in *tep-stu- ‘heat’, for if it did, *tepstu- should have become *texstu- > *textu > Middle Welsh *teith, Old Irish *techt rather than attested tes and tess, respectively. Apparently, *tep-stu- > *teφ-stu- became *testuso early that it joined the development of intervocalic *-st-.18 (9) The only Welsh example of an old t-preterite of a root ending in a resonant is Proto-Celtic *bīr-s-t > *birt(-) in Proto-British *kom-birt(-) > Middle Welsh kymyrth, later kymerth ‘took’.19 (10) The Middle Welsh t-preterites can-t ‘sang’ and gwan-t ‘killed’ are British innovations.20 However, the fact that they could arise by analogy at all presupposes the existence of the pattern that certain roots ending in a nasal did form an inherited t-preterite. Old Irish preserves a few of them, e.g. do-ét < *-ent or *-int < *-em-s-t or *-īm-s-t, of the present doeim ‘protects, covers’.21 Matters are made slightly complex by the existence of a different treatment of nasal + *st in *kom-statlo- > *kom ̸ ꞩtatlo- > Middle Welsh kystadyl, kystal ‘of the same rank, as good’ instead of the *komꞩtatlo- that one might expect on the basis of (10). The probable explanation is that in Old Welsh kystadyl must still have been a transparent compound of the equative prefix ky( f )- ‘equally’ and the Old Welsh and Old Breton noun *staðl ‘status, position, steadfastness’, which is attested in the Aneirin cycle (stadal vleidiat),22 in the presumably 16 

Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 61–66. Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, pp. 181–82. 18  Schrijver, Studies, p. 428. 19  Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 181. 20  Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 66; ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 182. Old Irish preserves the more archaic reduplicated preterites of these verbs. 21  Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, p. 291. 22  Canu Aneirin, ed. by Williams, p. 262 (lxiii.E, l. 767). 17 

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ancient core of the Taliesin poems (ystadyl),23 and in the Old Breton glosses to Amalarius (stadl-).24 Because it is a transparent formation, kystadyl probably reflects the outcome of a recent (or restored) rather than Proto-Celtic consonant cluster *-mst-. 2.3. Parallel Development of *sk It is instructive to note that the development of *st is closely parallel to that of *sk in British:25  

*st

*sk

/V_V

*st > *ts > ss see 2.1

*sk > *ks > *xs (> x)

MW beich ‘load’ < *baskjo(Lat. fascis ‘faggot’) merges with result in MW achel, echel ‘axle’ < *aksilā (Engl. axle, Lat. āla ‘wing’)

/s_V

*sst > st

see 2.2 (6)

*ssk > sk

MW gwisc- ‘to dress’ < *wīs-sk- (Lat. vestis ‘dress’)

/T[dental]_V

*tst > st

see 2.2 (7)

*tsk > sk

Bret. naskañ ‘to bind’ < ṅad-sk- (OIr. nascid ‘binds’, naidm ‘bond’)

/R_V

*st > *t (> θ /r, l_)

see 2.2 (9, 10)

*sk > *k > x

MW arch- ‘to ask’ < *φarsk(OIr. arc-, Lat. poscō ‘demand’, Sanskrit pr̥ccháti ‘asks’)

The only context in which the developments of *st and *sk differ is after a velar plosive:  

*st 

/K_V *Kst > *xst > see 2.2 (8) *xt (> θ)

*sk  *Ksk > sk MW mysc- ‘to mix’ < *mig-sk(not  xsk > *xk) (OIr. mescaid, Lat. misceō, Gr. meígnumi ‘mix’)

One reason why *Ksk did not become *xsk > *xk is that *xk is phonotactically impossible in ancient and medi­e val Celtic languages. Another reason is that the development of *Ksk may be compared to that of *Tst (both have two iden23 

The Poems of Taliesin, ed. by Williams, p. 2 (ii, l. 7), p. 15 (xii, l. 49). Fleuriot, ‘Nouvelles gloses’, pp. 444–46. 25  Hamp, ‘Varia’, p. 274; Schrijver, Studies, pp. 375, 415. 24 

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tical plosives separated by *s, which interfere with one another by dissimilatory loss of the former plosive) rather than *Kst. In general, therefore, the changes that *sk underwent are parallel to those affecting *st. This state of affairs supports the correctness of the reconstructions provided in Sections 2.1 and 2.2.

3. Proto-Celtic Word-Internal *-str- in British 3.1. Proto-Celtic *-str- between Vowels (*-VstrV-) There is very little credible evidence for the development of *-VstrV- in Celtic. Following Holmer,26 I consider the following example to be most persuasive: (11) For reasons of formal and semantic similarity, Old Irish cathir (feminine k-stem) ‘stone enclosure, fortress’ is evidently cognate with Middle Welsh caer (feminine) ‘enclosed stronghold, fortress’, Middle Breton caer ‘town’ but it is impossible to find a regular sound change that is capable of connecting Old Irish -th- with Welsh -e-.27 Holmer proposed a plausible connection of all these forms with Latin castrum ‘army camp’ and suggested a reconstruction *kastro-, with a special development in Celtic of *-st- to *-θ- before *r.28 The *θ was retained as -th- in Irish (as *θ from lenited *t was) but became *-j- > -e- in British (as all fricatives did). This is a sound change with one secure example and no plausible counterexamples (see below). The common Celtic form can be reconstructed as *kastr-ik- > Irish and British *kaθrik-. Other forms are ambiguous. (12) Holmer suggested that Irish possesses another example: the original genitive plurals *nōstrom > náthar ‘ours’ and *(u)swestrom > sethar ‘yours’, which may be compared to Latin noster ‘our’, voster, vester ‘your’ *-VθrV- that is based on a single plausible etymo­logy. (13) I  am aware of a single counterexample to the development *-VstrV- > *-VθrV-: the third person singular of the Old Irish s-preterite deponent, e.g. -corastar ‘put’ < *kor-e-s-tro.31 This example is less secure than cathir/ caer, however, because analogy may well have been responsible for the outcome -astar < *-estro-. All other forms in the paradigm are based on a suffix *-VssV- to which the regular preterite endings were added. *-VssVitself is based on four originally different morphemes. The initial *-V- is the final vowel of the verbal stem (Proto-Celtic *e, a, i, ī, ē depending on the verbal type). *-ss- contains the PIE morpheme *s of the s-aorist followed by the PIE third person singular secondary active ending *t (see 2.1. (3) above), which together yielded *-st- > British and Irish *-ss-. This became the morpheme of the s-preterite, to which the regular verbal endings were added in all persons except the third person singular. The final *-V- is the initial vowel of the PIE thematic personal endings. So the Old Irish 1sg deponent s-preterite ending -siur consists of the following chain of Proto-Celtic morphemes: stem-final *-e- + *st + 1sg deponent *-ūr. If the original third singular deponent s-preterite ending *-Vstro had become *-Vθro, as cathir suggests, it is easy to see that *-Vθro succumbed to paradigmatic pressure and introduced the *-ss- that is characteristic of all other forms in the s-preterite paradigm. This analogical change could have occurred at two different points in time. Firstly, at a very early stage, when intervocalic *-st- was still that in Celtic, *-Vθro was replaced by *-Vstro by the introduction of *st from all other forms of the paradigm.

29 

Holmer, ‘Some Old Irish Forms’; Schrijver, Studies, p. 454. Katz, Topics, pp. 198–99. He has nothing to say about cathir and caer, however. 31  Thus recently Griffith, ‘The Old Irish Deponent’, p. 178. 30 

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Secondly and alternatively, at a later stage when intervocalic *-st- had become *-ts- or already *-ss-, the paradigmatically anomalous 3sg *-Vθro was replaced by *-Vts-θro or *-Vss-θro, which by regular sound change yielded *-Vsstro, *sθ being a phonotatically inadmissible sequence, as it was at a later date, when as a result of Irish syncope *s and lenited *θ clashed and became st, as in Old Irish céssath genitive césto ‘suffering’.32 So the 3sg in -astar is unreliable as a regular reflex of Proto-Celtic *-VstrV-, and we are left with the single instance of cathir/caer. However, some additional support for the development of *-VstrV- > *-VssrV- to *VθrV derives from the close similarity to the development of *-VsrV- to *-VðrV-, as in PIE and Proto-Celtic *tisres ‘three (fem.)’ > *tiðres > Old Irish téuir, *tisrās ‘three (fem., accusative)’ > *tiðrās > Middle Welsh teir; PIE *wōsr- ‘spring, dawn’ > Proto-Celtic*wāsr-i- > *wāðri- > Old Irish fáir, Middle Welsh gwawr ‘dawn’.33 3.2. Proto-Celtic *-str- between Consonant and Vowel (*-CstrV-) The corpus of forms that illuminates the development of *-CstrV- is fortunately slightly larger. (14) Welsh rhwystr (masc.) ‘hindrance, impediment’, Breton rouestl34 (masc.) ‘chaos, confusion’ form the basis of a derived verb, Welsh rhwystraf ‘to hinder, restrain, thwart, disturb, be confused, confuse’, Breton rouestlañ ‘to confuse, mix up’. The verb has a counterpart in Old Irish ríastraid ‘distorts, contorts’. All are based on a Proto-Celtic noun *reiC-stro-, which is probably connected to the verbal root *reig- ‘to bind’ in Old Irish -rig.35 (15) Welsh rhestr (fem.) ‘rank, line, row’ hitherto lacks an etymo­logy. It could be reconstructed as *rek-stro- and connected to the verbal root *rek- ‘to order, determine, correct’ in e.g. Old Irish ad-eirrig ‘to correct’, Middle Welsh attrec ‘return, remorse’ (with *ati- ‘back’).36 32 

Thurneysen, Grammar, p. 88. Schrijver, Studies, pp. 445–52, 454–56. 34  Breton reustl, with the same meaning, has unexplained vocalism. 35  Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 65, 546; Pedersen, Vergleichende Grammatik, ii, p. 22. The doubts expressed by LEIA R-28 about the semantic connection of the Irish and British forms can be allayed by pointing to the similarity between ‘hinder, thwart’ (Welsh) and ‘distort’ (Irish). 36  Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 536–38. 33 

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(16) Welsh llestr (masc.), Middle Cornish lester, Breton lestr (masc.) ‘vessel’ is cognate with Old Irish lestar (neuter o-stem). There is no reason to suppose that Irish was borrowed from Welsh.37 This item lacks an etymo­logy. One could consider the possibility that it reflects *leg-stroand contains the root *leg- ‘to dissolve, drip’ in Old Irish legaid ‘to melt, dissolve’, Middle Welsh lleith ‘moist’ eCe (Stefan Schumacher apud Stifter, ‘Zur Bedeutung’, p. 170 n. 17). 40  I am indebted to Mícheál Ó Flaithearta for providing me with this example. 41  Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, pp. 189–93. 38 

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In items (14) to (17), a suffix *-stro-, *-strā- was added to verbal roots in order to form what originally was a nomen instrumenti in PIE *-tro-. The *-s- which precedes it may be compared to the *s at the beginning of other suffixes that are primarily attached to verbal roots, such as *-s-mā (Breton dremm ‘look’ < Proto-Celtic *drik-smā), *-s-man42 (Old Irish céimm, Welsh cam ‘step’ < *kangsman). Latin has a similar suffix *-stro- in e.g. monstrum ‘evil omen’ (monēre ‘to warn’), capistrum ‘halter’ (capere ‘to catch hold of ’).43 A different suffix but of the same phono­logical shape is found in the following item. (18) The plural Middle Welsh elystr (fem.), Middle Breton elestr ‘flag-iris’ is cognate with Old Irish ailestar (masc. o) ‘flag-iris’, all of which seem to reflect *alistro-.44 The item hitherto lacks a persuasive etymo­logy.45 I suggest that it is cognate with the group Latin līlium ‘lily’, Greek leírion ‘id.’, Hittite alēl, alil ‘flower’, which reflect a word of non-Indo-European origin, *leil-, a-l(e)il-.46 For the semantic connection, compare French lis ‘lily’ which was borrowed into Dutch with the meaning ‘flag-iris’. If this is correct, the reconstruction of the Celtic forms should be *alil-strorather than *ali-stro-, hence with a consonant preceding *-stro-. In this non-Indo-European plant name, the suffix *-stro- should be separated from the deverbal suffix *-stro- that was discussed earlier. It may rather be compared to the suffix *-sto-, *-stro- in Latin plant names of non-IndoEuropean origin such as genist(r)a ‘broom’, ligustrum ‘privet’.47 (19) Counterevidence to the development of *-CstrV- to *-str- may be provided by Middle Welsh eithyr ‘outside, except’, Old Irish echtar ‘outside, except’ < Proto-Celtic *ekstrV-, which can be compared with Latin extrā ‘outside’, exterus ‘outside (adjective)’ < *eks-tero-/ā- and with the Old Irish preposition a h- ‘(away) from’ < *eks, Latin ex. However, in Celtic as well as in other Indo-European languages, *ek exists beside *eks, e.g. in

42 

Stüber, Historical Morpho­logy, pp. 52–53. Leumann, Lateinische Grammatik, p. 313. 44  On Welsh elestr see n. 10. 45  Stifter, ‘Zur Bedeutung’, pp. 170–72, hesitatingly presents a root etymo­logy that connects the item to *(φ)al- ‘marshland’ and/or ‘to meander’ + a ‘Mediterranean’ (i.e. non-IndoEuropean) plant name suffix *Vst(r). 46  See Schrijver, ‘Animal’, for this type of substratum word. 47  Stifter, ‘Zur Bedeutung’, p. 172. 43 

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Welsh egwan ‘weak’ < *ek-wano-,48 Greek ektós < *ek-tos beside ekhthós < *ekstos, both meaning ‘outside’. So it is impossible to exclude the possibility that eithyr, echtar reflect *ektrV- rather than *ekstrV- and are therefore irrelevant to the question how *str developed in Celtic.

4. Summary of Results British Celtic and Irish share almost all developments of Proto-Celtic *st. On the basis of the results reached in Sections 2 and 3, it is possible to reconstruct a stage common to both languages as follows: *st

/_V

/_r

/V_

*ts > *ss

*θ

/s, T_

*st (with loss of preceding s, T)

no evidence

/K, R_

*st > *t

*st (with loss of preceding K, R)

After this common stage was reached and Irish had split off from British, Irish changed remaining *st to *ss, but only in the position /_V (Section 2.2, examples under (6) and (7)). So *st > ss in e.g. feiss, guss, aires versus retained st in ríastraid, lestar. The curious fact remains, however, that in word-initial position *str- did become sr-, although occasional spellings with str- continue, e.g. sreth ‘strewing’ < *stritā, verbal noun of ser- < Proto-Celtic *ster(a)-.49

5. Consequences for Developments in Word-Initial Position and for the Value of the Ogam Letter Sraif It is common in the Insular Celtic languages that phono­logical changes that affected sounds in the middle of the word also affected those sounds when they stood at the beginning of the word, if the original end of the preceding word provided the required phono­logical environment for the changes. This is how the initial mutations arose. I have argued that the double treatments of word-initial *stV- (> British st- or s-) originally arose as a normal pair of unlenited (st-) vs. lenited (s-) consonant (see Section 2 for the corresponding word-­

48  49 

Schumacher, Keltische Primärverben, p. 65. Thurneysen, Grammar, pp. 132–33.

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internal developments) but that early phonemicization broke up the pair and led to the generalization of st- or s-.50 Examples for generalized unlenited st- (< *-C st-) and lenited s- (< *-V st-) are as follows (B = Breton, M = Middle, W = Welsh): ‘unlenited’ st- < *-C st-

‘lenited’ s- < *-V st-

MB staffn ‘palate’ B ster ‘stars’ MW ystawd, B steud ‘swath’

MW safyn ‘mouth’ W ser ‘stars’

W ystanc ‘stake’

W saf- B sav- ‘to rise’ B sank- ‘to prick’

< *stamnā < *ster< *stātā < *stam< *stank-

Since Pedersen51 it has been suggested that the Ogam letter sraif originally denoted the intermediate stage between original *st after vowel and its ultimate result in both British and Irish, word-initial s- and word-internal -ss- (both phonemically being /s/). [ts]52 and [θ] are frequent suggestions for this intermediate stage. Sraif would have been the Primitive Irish equivalent of ‘barred D’ in Gaulish Đirona = Sirona, a theonym associated with Apollo which may be connected etymo­logically with Breton ster, Welsh ser ‘stars’ and reconstructed as *stīr-onā.53 This account requires adjustment in the face of what has been argued earlier in this paper. As is well known, the names of the Ogam letters start with the sound expressed by those letters, as in beithe for b, luis for l, etc. The sound system expressed by the original twenty signs of the alphabet was the Primitive Irish sound system of approximately the second to fifth centuries ad rather than the Old Irish sound system of the seventh. McManus discovered that what seems like a redundant pair of letters, gort and (n)gétal, represents the Primitive Irish phonemes /g/ and /gw/, respectively,54 and that the reconstructed form of gétal < *gwɛ̄dlan ‘slaying’ bears this out (it contains the Proto-Celtic verbal stem *gwan- and a suffix *-tlo-). The phoneme *gw became g in the course of the Primitive Irish period. The pair sail and sraif appears to be similarly redundant but would no longer be if we reconstruct the original sound value of straif to be the intermediate stage between Proto-Celtic *st and Irish s(s). That inter­ 50 

Schrijver, Studies, pp. 415–30. Pedersen, Vergleichende Grammatik, i, p. 78. 52  This is my own preference, expressed at the beginning of Section 2.1. 53  Sims-Williams, ‘Some Problems’, pp. 154–55 = Sims-Williams, Studies, pp. 98–99. 54  McManus, ‘Ogam’, pp. 20–25 and ‘Irish Letter-Names’, pp. 157–59. 51 

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mediate stage cannot represent the original sound value of straif, however, if the reconstructions of Sections 2 and 3 above are correct: Proto-Celtic *st on its way to British and Irish s(s) is only found between vowels, not in front of r as in the letter name straif. In front of r, *st either remained unchanged (after a consonant) or it became *θ (after a vowel; see Section 3.1), but it did not become Insular Celtic *ss. So following the reconstructive method that was successfully applied to gétal, the original sound value of sraif must have been /st/ or /θ/. /st/ is unlikely, however: sraif would be the only letter among the twenty basic letters of the alphabet that represented a biphonemic sequence. Even the forfeda, letters that were added later to the alphabet, originally had a monophonemic value.55 That leaves /θ/, which indeed was a phoneme in Insular Celtic and therefore possibly still in Primitive Irish, albeit an extremely rare one: it only occurred between vowel and *r, where it resulted from Proto-Celtic *st (see 3.1 on Irish cathir, Welsh caer). This identification of the original sound value of sraif as /θ/ < *st depends on the etymo­logy of the word sraif, which means ‘sulphur’. Sims-Williams tentatively suggested that sraif goes back to Old Irish *sroif and was borrowed from British Latin and ultimately reflects Latin sulphur,56 but this requires a number of ad hoc assumptions (metathesis of *solf- to *slof-, assimilation of *slof(u)r to *srof(u)r, and irregular palatalization). As Sims-Williams himself remarked, however, this etymo­logy leads to no other original sound value of sraif than s, which is redundant. So he suggested that the meaning ‘sulphur’ of sraif only arose when the Latin loanword merged with a native (near-)homonym with a different meaning. This is rather convoluted but still the best account up to this point. Meanwhile, I suggested that sraif is a word of non-Indo-European origin that can be connected to Greek (a)steropḗ, (a)strapḗ ‘lightning’,57 so with initial *str-. For the semantics, compare Old Irish sraiftine ‘lightning’, from sraif ‘sulphur’ + tene ‘fire’. If this is correct, the word would belong to the same substratum layer as ailestar (with ‘prefix’ a- and un-Indo-European vowel change; see example 18 above).

55 

Sims-Williams, ‘The Additional Letters’ = Sims-Williams, Studies, pp. 121–67. The whole complex of ideas that connected sraif with Latin z and identified the sound value of z as st in Hiberno-Latin and Irish manu­scripts is of later medi­eval scholastic origin (Sims-Williams, ‘Some Problems’, pp. 154–55 = Studies, pp. 98–99). 56  Sims-Williams, ‘Some Problems’, pp. 157–58 = Sims-Williams, Studies, pp. 101–02. 57  Schrijver, ‘Animal’, p. 310.

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With due hesitation, Sims-Williams argued that the second letter of the additional Ogam letters called forfeda had an original value /θ/.58 This is based on two considerations. The original value of the first forfid was definitely /x/, i.e. lenited k. If the creators of the forfeda felt the need to create a separate letter for lenited k, they may well have felt similarly about the creation of a separate letter for lenited t. Secondly, on one relatively late Ogam stone, CIIC 7, which perhaps dates to c. 700, the second forfid clearly has consonantal value because it stands between vowels. Macalister (in CIIC) and Sims-Williams read AVI AθECETAIMIN, a reading later confirmed by Gippert apud Ziegler.59 The etymo­logical interpretation is obscure, but see Sims-Williams for an attempt to connect AθEC to Old Irish aithech ‘rent-payer, churl’.60 One wonders why a new letter for /θ/ needed to be created if in the form of sraif there was already a letter available that denoted /θ/. This could be construed as a counterargument against sraif denoting /θ/. The case is not compelling, however. First of all, the interpretation of the second forfid as /θ/ is far from certain. Moreover, it is quite conceivable that in the centuries between the creation of the original twenty-letter Ogam alphabet (sometime between the second and fifth centuries ad) and the first attestation of the second forfid with a value /θ/ (c. 700, perhaps), the phoneme /θ/ < *st/_r, which was written with sraif, had merged with s in word-initial position, as in the word sraif itself and in etyma such as Old Irish srath, Welsh ystrad ‘valley’ < *strato-,61 so that for a seventh-century Ogamist sraif was no longer available for denoting /θ/.

58  Sims-Williams, ‘The Additional Letters’, pp.  49–51  = Sims-Williams, Studies, pp. 141–43. 59  Ziegler, Die Sprache, p. 253. 60  Sims-Williams, ‘The Additional Letters’, p. 50 = Sims-Williams, Studies, p. 142. 61  Schrijver, Studies, p. 453.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Canu Aneirin, ed. by Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1938) Corpus inscriptionum insularum Celticarum, i, ed. by R. A. S. Macalister (Dublin: Station­ ery Office, 1945) The Poems of Taliesin, ed.  by Ifor Williams (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968)

Secondary Works Durie, Mark, and Malcolm Ross, The Comparative Method Reviewed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Fleuriot, Léon, ‘Nouvelles gloses vieilles-bretonnes à Amalarius’, Études celtiques, 11 (1964–1967), 415–64 Greene, David, ‘Varia I’, Ériu, 19 (1962), 111–13 Griffith, Aaron, ‘The Old Irish Deponent Suffixless Preterite’, Keltische Forschungen, 4 (2009), 169–87 Hamp, Eric, ‘Varia’, Ériu, 25 (1974), 253–84 Holmer, Nils, ‘Some Old Irish Forms 3. nathar, sethar, etc.’, Ériu, 17 (1955), 109–11 Katz, Joshua, Topics in Indo-European Personal Pronouns (Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 1998) Leumann, Manu, Lateinische Grammatik, i: Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre (Munich: Beck, 1977) McManus, Damian, ‘Ogam: Archaizing, Ortho­graphy and the Authenticity of the Manu­ script Key to the Alphabet’, Ériu, 37 (1986), 1–31 —— , ‘Irish Letter-Names and their Kennings’, Ériu, 39 (1988), 127–68 Pedersen, Holger, Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen, i (Göttingen: Van­ den­hoeck & Ruprecht, 1909) —— , Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen, ii (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913) Pokorny, Julius, Indogermanisches etymo­logisches Wörterbuch (Bern: Francke, 1949–1959) Rix, Helmut, Martin Kümmel, Thomas Zehnder, Reiner Lipp, and Brigitte Schirmer, eds, Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben, 2nd edn (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001) Schrijver, Peter, Studies in British Celtic Historical Phono­logy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995) —— , ‘Animal, Vegetable and Mineral: Some Western European Substratum Words’, in Sound Law and Analogy: Papers in Honor of Robert S.  P. Beekes, ed.  by Alexander Lubotsky (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 293–316 Schumacher, Stefan, The Historical Morpho­logy of the Welsh Verbal Noun (Maynooth: The Department of Old Irish, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2000) —— , Die keltischen Primärverben (Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprach­wissen­ schaft, 2004)

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—— , ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, in Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From Medi­eval British to Modern Breton, ed.  by Elmar  Ternes (Bremen: Hempen, 2011), pp. 85–235 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘The Additional Letters of the Ogam Alphabet’, Cambridge Medi­ eval Celtic Studies, 23 (1992), 29–75 —— , ‘Some Problems in Deciphering the Early Irish Ogam Alphabet’, Transactions of the Philo­logical Society, 91 (1993), 133–80 —— , Studies on Celtic Languages before the Year 1000 (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007) Stifter, David, ‘Zur Bedeutung und Etymo­logie von altirisch sirem’, Die Sprache, 45 (2005), 160–89 Stüber, Karin, The Historical Morpho­logy of the n-Stems in Celtic (Maynooth: The Department of Old Irish, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 1998) Thurneysen, Rudolf, A  Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1943) Vendryes, Joseph,  Édouard Bachellery, and Pierre-Yves Lambert, eds, Lexique étymo­ logique de l’irlandais ancien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1959–) Ziegler, Sabine, Die Sprache der altirischen Ogam-Inschriften (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994)

The Development of ProtoCeltic *au in British Celtic Stefan Schumacher* 1. Introduction: The Problem One of the numerous unsolved problems that haunt the historical phono­logy of the British Celtic languages is the question of what became of the Proto-Celtic diphthong *au. This is hardly surprising, since in Proto-Celtic the diphthong *au was rather marginal: unlike *ou, which goes back to both PIE *eu̯ and *ou̯ , *au can only reflect * h2 eu̯ , *eh2 u, or — in very rare cases — PIE *au̯ .1 Currently, there are two competing and mutually exclusive explanations of what happened to *au (on which see the following sections). This paper will introduce a new piece of evidence, which has the potential to clarify the question definitively. Finally, the development of *au in the wider field of British Celtic historical phono­logy will be sketched.   * Throughout this paper, references to Old and Middle Irish literature follow the practice established by eDIL. References to Old and Middle Welsh texts follow the practice established by GPC 3873–97, with the modifications added in Schumacher, Die keltischen Primär­verben, pp. 156–58. References to Middle Cornish texts follow the practice established by Schumacher, Die keltischen Primärverben, pp. 159–60. The asterisk (*) is used for reconstructions that are supposed to have existed at an earlier stage of the language not attested in writing; the dagger (†) is used for items that are postulated to demonstrate an argument but which are not supposed to have ever existed. 1  In the following, PIE diphthongs are rendered as *ei̯ , *oi̯ , *ai̯ , *eu̯ , *ou̯ , *au̯ , whereas ProtoCeltic diphthongs are rendered as *ei, *oi, *ai, *ou, *au. This is somewhat arbitrary, since I do not intend to imply a phonetic difference between a PIE diphthong and a Proto-Celtic diphthong. The only difference is that in PIE diphthongs were closely linked to root structure and came into existence automatically, whereas in Proto-Celtic the underlying roots of lexemes were gradually lost sight of. At any rate, both PIE and Proto-Celtic diphthongs are best defined as tautosyllabic sequences of a vowel (*e, *o, *a) plus an approximant (*i̯ , *u̯ ). As will be shown below (Section 8), there are further phono­logical contexts that give rise to Proto-Celtic *au, but such contexts are extremely rare.

Stefan Schumacher ([email protected]) is Associate Professor at the University of Vienna. His research area is historical linguistics, with a focus on Celtic, Albanian, Germanic, and the ancient languages of Italy, including the non-Indo-European languages Etruscan and Raetic. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131202 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 187–209 BREPOLS

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2. The Traditional Explanation and its Background The traditional explanation is that in British, as in Irish,2 Proto-Celtic *au merged with the other u-diphthongs: according to this proposal both *ou (< PIE *eu̯ and *ou̯ ) and *au turned into *ō > *ū > OW/MW /ʉ/. This was postulated by Zupitza3 and subsequently popularized by Jackson.4 However, the only basis for this assumption was the Welsh river name Alun, which Zupitza and Jackson traced back to a Proto-British preform *Alaunā or *Alaunos; both *Alaunā and *Alaunos are attested more than once in Roman Britain as hydronyms or hydronym-based place-names. Let us examine the evidence for *Alaunā/*Alaunos: the name *Alaunā,5 attested with several rivers or settlements in various spellings in classical sources, has been identified with (1) the Roman town on the site of present-day Alcester, Warwickshire; (2) the Roman fort at Watercrook, Westmorland; (3) the Roman fort at Maryport, Cumberland; (4) the river Aln, Northumberland; (5) the Roman fort at Low Learchild, Northumberland; (6) the Roman fort at Ardoch, Perthshire; finally, there are two places by this name, one in south-west Britain and one somewhere near Manchester, which could not be located with any certainty.6 As for *Alaunos, this seems to be an alternative preform of the name of the aforementioned river Aln, Northumberland.7 Ptolemy mentions another river *Alaunos, which again cannot be located with any certainty; it could be the river Axe which flows into the sea at Seaton, Devon, or the common mouth of the Dorset Stour and the Hampshire Avon at Christchurch, Hampshire.8 2 

Cf. GOI 40. Zupitza, ‘Diphthong au’, p. 594. 4  Jackson, Language and History, pp. 305–06. 5  I use an asterisk here for the simple reason that the name is only attested in Latin and Greek sources, none of which denotes the quantity of the final syllable with any certainty; nonetheless, there can be no doubt that in Proto-British the vowel of the final syllable was /ā/, *Alaunā being an ā‑stem. By contrast, Ptolemy’s Ἀλαυνος can be taken to faithfully reflect Proto-British *Alaunos, since a Celtic name in *‑os with a comparatively simple phono­logy did not require any Hellenicization. Note that, although some of the sources are Greek (most notably Ptolemy), I have tacitly replaced Greek letters by Latin letters, albeit without any Latinization of inflectional endings; in view of the simple phono­logy of these names, this does not cause any confusion. Finally, I have not replaced the pre-1974 county names used by Rivet and Smith with the names of the present administrative units. 6  Rivet and Smith, Place-Names, pp. 243–46. 7  Rivet and Smith, Place-Names, p. 247. 8  Rivet and Smith, Place-Names, pp. 246–47. 3 

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The frequent occurrence of these names in Roman Britain had prompted Zupitza to assume that the name Alun, found with minor rivers of Wales, 9 directly continued either *Alaunā or *Alaunos. Clearly, Jackson followed him in this. We have to keep in mind, though, that none of the classical attestations of *Alaunā or *Alaunos refers to a river or settlement in Wales. There is thus no compelling evidence that Alun goes back to *Alaunā or *Alaunos.

3. Loth, Lambert, Schrijver: An Alternative Explanation Zupitza and Jackson had paid a high price for identifying the name Alun with *Alaunā/*Alaunos: they had to assume that the well-attested OW personal names in ‑guallaun (= MW ‑wallawn) as well as their OBret counterparts in ‑uuallon (> Middle Breton ‑uallen) did not directly continue similar-sounding British Celtic names amply attested from classical literary sources, such as Cassiuellaunus, Uercassiuellaunus,10 and from Roman inscriptions, such as Catuuellauni* (ethnonym, attested in the genitive plural Catuuellaunorum),11 Catuallauna (feminine singular of the same ethnonym),12 and Uallaunius (cognomen of a female (!) by the name of Tadia).13 Surprisingly, Zupitza did not really give a reason for why OW /au/ in the OW personal names in ‑guallaun could not correspond to the /au/ of the (superficially Latinized) Proto-British names in ‑uellaunus. Instead, his reasoning was that, since OW /au/ in anteconsonantal position usually continued an early Proto-British *ā, it also had to reflect an *ā in this case; hence, he suggested that the underlying form was *Ve(a)llānos [sic], a form which he claimed had come into being by ‘suffix substitution’ (Suffixvertauschung, literally ‘suffix exchange’), as if this were a wellknown process. Significantly, he made this suggestion in the very last sentence of his article; and the fact that he did not offer any parallels or further explanations raises the suspicion that he did not actually know how to explain what

9 

For the locations of the better known among the Welsh rivers by the name of Alun, see Rivet and Smith, Place-Names, p. 243. The earliest medi­eval reference to such a river is recorded in the Book of Llandaf (LL 182–83, cf. Coe, ‘Place-Names of the Book of Llandaf ’, p. 621). 10  Cf. Evans, Gaulish Personal Names, pp. 272–77. 11  CIL VII, 863 = RIB 1962, found near Hadrian’s Wall. 12  ‘Additamenta’, ed. by Hübner, p. 212, inscription 718a = RIB 1065, found in South Shields/Arbeia. 13  CIL VII, 126 = RIB 369, found in Caerleon.

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had happened.14 Nonetheless, Jackson took Zupitza’s hypothesis at face value without adding any corroboration. He did, however, condemn Loth’s alternative hypothesis,15 whereby Proto-Celtic *au had been monophthongized to *ɔ̄ at an early stage of Proto-British but was diphthongized to /au/ again much later in early Old Welsh, as being ad hoc and ‘without other foundation’.16 Loth’s hypothesis was taken up by Lambert. 17 Differently from Loth, whose hypothesis was a mere aside, Lambert presented an extensive dossier of names:18 he not only enumerated OW name compounds in ‑guallaun (also mentioning OW Guallonir, where the same lexeme is the first part of the compound), but also OBret name compounds in ‑uuallon, ‑guallon (including the uncompounded forms Uuallon and Uuallonic), 19 and OCorn Iarnwallon;20 moreover, he referred to the aforementioned inscriptional form Uallaunius and the names in ‑uellaunus from classical literary sources. As for Alun, he suggested that this might rather continue *Aloun‑ and not *Alaun‑;21 that is, 14 

For comments on Zupitza’s terse attempt at an explanation, see also Lambert’s comments, ‘Fate of British *au’, p. 20. According to Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 23, Zupitza ‘suggested that Old Welsh names in ‑guallaun, MW ‑wallawn (OB ‑uallon) have had the suffix Lat. ‑ānus substituted for original British *‑aunos’. However, even if Isaac’s explication may represent what Zupitza thought, the supposed development is still not backed by any parallels. Zupitza’s scepticism towards the equation *‑u̯ ellaunos = ‑guallaun probably arose from his own training : traditionally, Indo-Europeanists are taught not to yield to the Sirene des Gleichklangs ‘Siren of Similar Sound’; that is, they learn at an early stage of their training that words that sound similar and have similar meanings in different languages (such as Old High German habēn and Latin habēre, both meaning ‘to have’) often have different etymo­logical backgrounds, while etymo­logically related words may be completely dissimilar (such as Latin duo and Armenian erkow /erku/, both meaning ‘two’). Also they are aware that striking similarities between words from different stages of one language are often not the outcome of a regular development but result from learned borrowing; thus, French intégral is a learned loan based on Latin integer, while the historically regular successor form of integer is the decidedly less similar entier. 15  Loth, ‘Remarques à l’Historia Britonum’, p. 11. 16  Jackson, Language and History, p. 306. 17  Lambert, ‘Fate of British *au’. 18  Lambert, ‘Fate of British *au’, pp. 207–08. 19  Unfortunately, Lambert failed to mention the Middle Breton name Riuallen (cf. Buhez sante Barba, ed. by Widmer, p. 73, l. 2492, and numerous further instances in this work), the unstressed ‑en of which shows the expected non-Vannetais MBret outcome of OB /‑œn/ in final syllables (cf. Jackson, Historical Phonology of Breton, pp. 127, 133–35). 20  Jackson, Language and History, p. 361. 21  Lambert, ‘Fate of British *au’, p. 209.

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he made the point that Zupitza and Jackson’s derivation Alun < *Alaun was not compelling. So far, this would seem to be a mere difference of opinions: whoever accepts the derivation of OW ‑guallaun, OBret ‑uuallon, ‑guallon, and OCorn ‑wallon from a Proto-British *‑u̯ allauno‑22 cannot accept the derivation of Alun from a Proto-British *Alaun‑ and vice versa. However, the real value of Lambert’s paper lay in the fact that he introduced new evidence;23 that is, he postulated that both Irish and British had preserved reflexes of the preposition *au ‘from’.24 In doing so, he not only traced OIr ó/úa ‘from’ and Welsh o ‘from’ back to *au but also identified equations of derivatives of *au (for the full etymo­logies see further below): – OIr úad ‘from him/it’, the 3sgm./n. inflected form of ó/úa = OW hanaud /hanauð/ ‘from him’,25 the OW 3sgm. inflected form of o; moreover, he equated hanaud with MBret anezaff ‘from him’. – OIr úabar/óbar (o, m) ‘pride, arrogance, vanity’  = MW ofer ‘worthless, vain, useless’  = Modern Breton euver ‘lazy, stale, insipid’  = MCorn vfer ‘vain’.26 – OIr úathad/óthad ‘rare, small in number; a small number’ = MW odit ‘rare, exceptional’; also (as a masculine noun) ‘a rare thing’. Together with the dossier of the names in OW ‑guallaun, etc., these equations clearly supported Loth’s hypothesis that Proto-Celtic *au had at some stage of Proto-British merged with the reflex of Proto-Celtic *ā. Consequently, Peter Schrijver included this hypothesis in his overview of the development of the Proto-Celtic long vowels and diphthongs.27 Schrijver here and subsequently also provided etymo­logies or further explanations for the above derivatives of *au:

22 

For the *‑a‑ in the first syllable of this form see n. 42. Lambert, ‘Fate of British *au’, pp. 211–12. 24  According to the latest account of the underlying PIE particle (Dunkel, Lexikon der indo­ germanischen Partikeln, pp. 96–105), this is best reconstructed as *au. 25  For han‑ see n. 75. 26  This adjective is only attested once in Middle Cornish (BM 3001), but its derivative vfereth ‘vanity’ occurs three times in Resurrexio Domini (vfereth RD 950, 1262; euereth RD 936). 27  Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, pp. 194–95. 23 

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– As for úad  = hanaud /hanauð/ (MW ohanaw, ohonaw), he traced these back to a Proto-Celtic adverb *au‑dom ‘thence’, with an adverbial suffix *‑dom that is also found in *an‑dom, the preform of OIr and, the dative 3sgm./n. inflected form of i ‘in’.28 Furthermore, he suggested that the exact etymo­logical counterpart of OW hanaud in Breton was the adverb anez ‘otherwise’ and that the paradigmatic Middle Breton form anezaff was a secondary enlargement of this.29 He also mentioned the MCorn 3sgm. anotho ‘from him’ and described this as another etymo­logical counterpart of hanaud, this time enlarged with the MCorn productive 3sgm. suffix ‑o.30 Finally, he also gave an account of how OBret inflected prepositional forms like dudo em, dudom ‘to him’ could be reconstructed,31 which is necessary for a full understanding of the OBret and the OW forms. – As for úabar/óbar and its British cognates, he reconstructed a Proto-Celtic *au‑beros, tentatively connecting this with the Celtic root *ber‑ ‘carry’.32 – As for úathad/óthad  = MW odit, he reconstructed *au‑tītos but did not further comment on this.33 The fact that he reconstructed this with *‑ī‑ suggests that he connected this with the verb tinaid ‘melts’ and was aware that the underlying root had to be reconstructed with a final laryngeal.34 Lambert and Schrijver’s account was also accepted by Patrick Sims-Williams.35 28 

Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phonology, p. 195; Schrijver, History of Celtic Pronouns, pp. 35–36 (compare also Greek ἔνδον). For an attempt at a further analysis of *‑dom, see Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, p. 159. 29  Caroline aan de Wiel apud Schrijver, History of Celtic Pronouns, pp. 35–36. anez is first attested in early Modern Breton with de Rostrenen, Dictionnaire françois – celtique, p. 844 s.v. Sans cela, à moins de cela, autrement; p. 844 s.v. Sans cela il n’y avoit rien fait; p. 869 s.v. Sinon, autrement, à faute de quoi. 30  Schrijver, History of Celtic Pronouns, p. 36 n. 2. However, the word-internal /o/ is difficult to explain (Schrijver, pers. comm.). Therefore, I will not base any conclusion on anotho in the further discussion. 31  Cf. Schrijver, History of Celtic Pronouns, p. 35. For a more precise description of the implications see Schrijver, ‘Old British’, p. 51. 32  Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, p. 195. 33  Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phonology, p. 195. 34  As far as I can see, this was first made explicit in Schumacher, Die keltischen Primärverben, p. 641, where tinaid is connected with the root *tei̯ h₁‑ (this is based on LIV², pp. 617–18). Previously, the Celtic verb had traditionally been connected with the root *dhg u̯ hei̯ ‑ (LIV², pp. 150–52), which is excluded by sound laws. 35  Sims-Williams, Celtic Inscriptions, pp. 23, 55, 197–98 n. 1211.

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4. Isaac: The Traditional Explanation Revived The hypothesis of Loth, Lambert, and Schrijver, the core postulate of which is that Proto-Celtic *au and *ā merged as *ɔ̄ in British, was subsequently challenged by Isaac.36 The central point of Isaac’s article was that the derivation of Alun < *Alaunā was correct after all.37 However, he introduced no new evidence in the main body of his article; it was only in an appendix that he tentatively connected the Welsh verb adduno (MW adunaw) ‘to pledge, vow’ with addo (MW adaw) ‘to promise’ but admitted that ‘this case must be pleaded for’.38 In the main part of the article Isaac questioned Lambert and Schrijver’s equations úad = hanaud = anezaff, and ‑uellaunus = OW ‑guallaun = OBret ‑­uuallon = OCorn ‑wallon, misrepresenting their reasonings. In trying to explain away the first equation he disregarded the fact that Schrijver had explained anezaff as an enlargement of anez, although he was well aware of Schrijver’s book and elsewhere in the article referred to it.39 He also ignored Schrijver’s explanation of OBret dudo em, dudom and merely attacked Lambert’s short account of these forms,40 which is admittedly inconclusive. Moreover, he failed to mention what Sims-Williams had written about the fate of Proto-Celtic *au in British. As for the names in OW -guallaun = OBret -uuallon = OCorn -wallon, he made the following statement:41 For the names in ‑wallawn < *‑wellaunos, e.g. Caswallawn < Cassiuellaunus (Caesar, De bello Gallico), non-regular restructuring must be assumed for the first syllable *‑we‑ > ‑wa‑ anyway, since that cannot be regular, in which case it is unsatisfactory to rely on the second syllable to support or motivate the proposal for a ‘regular’ sound 36 

Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’. According to Isaac (‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 23), Lambert proposed ‘that W Alun regularly reflects Brit[tonic] *Alounā, and that the extant ancient instances of this name as Alauna themselves represent a distortion of actual *Alounā’. Now it is true that Lambert’s wording on the page Isaac refers to is confusing in places; still, to do justice to Lambert one should also quote the following sentence found on the same page of his paper: ‘The numerous forms and functions of this name make it difficult to believe in a single lexical unit. In the inscriptions, Alauna/ Alaunus and Alounus may represent two different names: then, OW. Alun could be said to come from Alouno‑’ (Lambert, ‘Fate of British *au’, p. 209). 38  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, pp. 37–38. 39  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, pp. 40, 41. 40  Lambert, ‘Fate of British *au’, p. 212. 41  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 24. 37 

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change  […] The names Cassiuellaunus > Caswallawn, *Catuuellaunos (cf.  ethnonym Catuuellauni) > OW Catguollaun, MW Cadwallawn, and Dumnouellaunus > OW Dumnguallaun, most particularly the first, cannot be divorced from Latin, i.e. literary, lines of transmission, and are therefore problematic as examples to support a ‘regular’ sound change, Brit[tonic] *au > *ǭ > (tonic) W aw  […] OW Riguallaun and Iudguollaun, and some Old Breton reflexes, have no support from Latin sources, but the establishment of the form of the element, existing in Neo-Brittonic only as an element of personal names, should not be assumed to be possible independent of interference from the famous instances from Latin sources.

This statement has at least two weak points: to begin with, Isaac failed to mention throughout his article that Loth had also adduced as evidence the above-mentioned British ethnic name Catuallauna and the Latinized British name Uallaunius, the latter of which also appears in Lambert’s list of names, as pointed out above. And yet it is exactly the inscriptional testimony of names with /u̯ a/ (instead of /u̯ e/) that invalidates Isaac’s first argument — whatever phonetic process caused the forms with /u̯ a/, such forms did clearly exist in antiquity and were recorded in inscriptions that show no signs of learned interference.42 Second, if all British names were just learned names based on Latin Cassiuellaunus, why should the OBret and OCorn names have wordfinal /‑œn/ when both languages had a diphthong /au/, which does not derive from Proto-British *ɔ̄ ?43 And how would one explain OW Guallonir if not from Proto-British *u̯ allɔ̄norīh < *u̯ allaunorīxs? After all, not all instances of /au/ in Welsh derive from *ɔ̄; and an /au/ not based on *ɔ̄ always comes out as a diphthong even in OW pretonic position, e.g. MW llaw‑fryded ‘sadness’ vs. llof‑len ‘glove’;44 in other words, if an OW /au/ does not derive from *ɔ̄, it is not 42 

The variety of vocalisms in the first syllable of this name/name element is difficult to explain (there is also ‑guollaun with /u̯ o/ in Old Welsh, e.g. Catguollaun in the Old Welsh genealogies, cf. La légende arthurienne, ed. by Faral, p. 48). At any rate, the evidence of Uallaunius and Catuallauna in Roman inscriptions proves that the form *u̯ allauno‑ is ancient, and the names with /u̯ a/in Old Welsh, Old Breton, and Old Cornish are best understood as historically regular successor forms of this *u̯ allauno‑. 43  For the sources of /au/ in Old Breton see Jackson (Historical Phonology of Breton, pp. 251–52). Zupitza’s ‘Suffixvertauschung’ would actually explain both the West British (i.e. OW) and the South-West British (i.e. OBret and OCorn) names. However, if we were dealing with ‘Suffixvertauschung’, on the one hand all names in OW ‑guallaun = OBret ‑uuallon = OCorn ‑wallon would be historically regular, but on the other hand the South-West British names could not be ascribed to ‘interference from the famous instances from Latin sources’. 44  llawfryded (lit. ‘small-mindedness’) is composed of llaw ‘small’ (< *lagu‑) + bryt ‘mind’ + abstract suffix ‑ed, whereas lloflen derives from llaw ‘hand’ (< *lāmā‑) + llen ‘covering’ ( Jackson, Language and History, p. 287 n. 2).

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subject to so-called ‘vowel mutation’ /au/ > /o/.45 And if the /au/ of names in OW ‑guallaun were merely a learned creation, it would be hard to understand that it is treated exactly like an /au/ derived from *ɔ̄.46 Finally, Isaac tried to explain the evidence of úabar/óbar = ofer = euver = vfer, and úathad/óthad = odit as being based not on *au‑beros and *au‑tītos but on *au̯ o‑beros and *au̯ o‑tītos.47 No real justification is given for this assumption, since, differently from what Isaac seems to suggest,48 there are no place-names or other formations in Continental Celtic that show an element *au̯ o‑ (as opposed to *au‑) as the first part of a compound.49 Moreover, although it is (for lack of clear examples) difficult to tell how quadrisyllabic Proto-British words with an onset *au̯ oC‑ would evolve after apocope and syncope, it is easy to falsify Isaac’s claim that ‘[o]ne can alternatively posit *awo‑bero‑, *awo‑tīto‑, with no effect on the Old Irish reflexes’:50 the preforms *au̯ obero‑ and *au̯ otīto‑, having gone through all sound changes that define Old Irish, would come out as early Old Irish †áubar and †áuthad, whose diphthongs would subsequently be monophthongized within the Old Irish period to yield óbar and 45 

Morris-Jones, Welsh Grammar, pp. 116, 118. The importance of OW Guallonir as a witness for *au > * ɔ̄ (i.e. for the Loth-Lambert-Schrijver hypothesis) had already been stressed by Sims-Williams (Celtic Inscriptions, pp. 197–98 n. 1211). 47  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 33. 48  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 43 n. 30. 49  This is based on a thorough scan of all relevant files on the Ptolemy cd (Isaac, PlaceNames). Note that the name of the river Avus (now Ave in north Portugal), even if it should be Celtic and if it could be shown conclusively that it is a derivative of *au‑, would not prove the existence of a prefix variant *au̯ o‑ but only the existence of a thematic derivative of *au‑ (cf. Latin superus ‘upper’ as a thematic derivative of super ‘above’, see Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, pp. 837–38). There are a small number of compound names in Gaulish with ambio‑ and ario‑ as their first part (cf. Lambert, ‘Préverbes gaulois suffixés’, pp. 115–17) but these cannot be shown to simply be enlarged forms of names with ambi‑ and are‑; instead, it is more likely that ambio‑ and ario‑ are the stems of adjectives based on the prepositions *ambi and *are. Meid also seems to imply this in his account of Ambiorix (Meid, ‘Keltische Personennamen in Pannonien’, p. 78). Interestingly, there are no doublets: that is, there is no †Ambirix beside the well-known name Ambiorix. As for the name Cantiori (from post-Roman north Wales, mentioned by Lambert, ‘Préverbes gaulois suffixés’, pp. 118–19), the element cantio‑ may rather be based on *kantom ‘one hundred’ than on *kanti‑, the prefixal counterpart of the MW preposition gan (cf. Sims-Williams, Celtic Inscriptions, pp. 31, 34 n. 67; Uhlich, ‘Altirisch arae’, p. 146 n. 31). Finally, ando‑ need not be related to ande‑ at all (cf. Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, pp. 45–46, 153). 50  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 33. 46 

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óthad.51 However, what we actually find in Old Irish is úabar (e.g. uabar Wb 13b14) alternating with óbar (e.g. obar Wb 27a9), and úathad (e.g. húathad Wb 4d4) alternating with óthad (e.g. hothad Sg 198a22), and such doublets indicate that the underlying vowel is the Primitive Irish monophthong *ō.52 Apart from that, the adjectival nominative plural uaiti ‘a few’ in Ml 90c1253 and the derivative úaibrech ‘proud, vain, arrogant’ (also occurring as a noun ‘arrogance’, e.g. Ml 75c2 inna huaibrecha gl. profanitates gentium) show syncope of the syllable between the two dentals of úathad and between the /β/ and the /r/ of úabar, which again rules out the preforms †au̯ obero‑ and †au̯ otīto‑.54 And if the evidence of Irish does not allow for the reconstructions †au̯ obero‑ and †au̯ otīto‑, there is no longer any justification for postulating the preforms †au̯ obero‑ and †au̯ otīto‑ for British alone: after all, úathad and úabar as well as their British Celtic counterparts are successor forms of ancient compounds involving a non-productive prefix *au‑, which cannot be shown to have been enlarged to *au̯ o‑ anywhere else in Celtic. Finally, Isaac tries to falsify Lambert’s derivation of the Welsh preposition o < *au by making predictions about how the preform *au would develop in British and comes to the conclusion that ‘Lambert’s proposal that *au > *ǭ […] fails to give the correct outcome for the preposition OB/OW o, MB/MC a, MW o “from”’.55 In fact, Isaac’s predictions are inconclusive, because he does not take into consideration a major complication of Insular Celtic prepositions and preverbs. That is, any preposition of Insular Celtic had at least two allomorphs:56 – a proclitic form, which is the normal form of the preposition preceding a noun governed by it, e.g. OIr do, OW di, OBret da ‘to, for’ (< Proto-Celtic *dū); OIr a ‘out of ’ (< Proto-Celtic *exs); MW rac ‘before’ (< Proto-Celtic *φrāko‑57 < PIE *prōko‑). 51 

Cf. GOI 44. Cf. GOI 39–40. 53  Cf. GOI 224–25; Greene, ‘úathad, óthad’, p. 178. 54  Cf. GOI 67–69. 55  Isaac, ‘Reflexes of *au’, p. 32. 56  See also Schumacher, ‘Mittelkymrisch tra’, pp. 364–67. NB: in the following I suppose that the stress patterns of Old Irish faithfully reflect Proto-Insular Celtic stress patterns and that British Celtic stress patterns are the result of a secondary deviation from this (cf. Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, pp. 16–22). 57  The final syllable of this is difficult to reconstruct. Possibly, the preposition reflects a 52 

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– a tonic composition form, which is the form a preposition assumes when univerbated with a pronominal affix (< enclitic pronoun), e.g. OIr dúnn ‘to/for us’, MBret diff ‘to/for me’, MW inn ‘to/for us’; OIr essi ‘out of her’; MW rocdi ‘before her’ (YBH 12.773).58 If a preposition occurs as an adverbial first part of a nominal compound, it also assumes the tonic composition form, e.g. OIr esamain ‘fearless’ < Proto-Insular Celtic *exs‑oṽnih. – third, in Old Irish, there was also a pretonic composition form, which was restricted to the so-called deuterotonic form of finite verbal forms. This form showed pretonic weakening similar to the proclitic form, but its final consonants underwent sound changes that typically occur in wordinternal contexts, e.g. OIr as·indet ‘declares, tells’ < Proto-Insular Celtic *exs-et‑ʹande‑u̯ ēðet. Since it is likely that deuterotonic verbal forms were characteristic of Proto-Insular Celtic stress patterns, we may assume that such forms also existed in the prehistory of British Celtic. In British Celtic, the differences between the pretonic and the tonic composition form were eventually blurred because of the general shift of stress to the penultimate syllable. After this stress shift, synchronically tonic composition forms became rare, because in most inflected preposition forms an intervening vowel was inserted between the preposition and the pronominal affix of the first and second persons.59 Thus, tonic composition forms were retained only in a few vowel-final prepositions that never adopted an intervening vowel. An example of such an inherited tonic composition form is the abovementioned MBret form diff (< *dū‑mu). The fact that prepositions had up to three allomorphs from Proto-Insular Celtic onward eventually caused the original distribution to be lost sight of. For instance the OIr 3sgm./n. form of the preposition a < *exs is usually as(s) with the vocalism of the proclitic form and the pretonic composition form, and expected es(s) is rare;60 likewise, the verbal noun of as·indet is always aisndís and not †eisndís, as we might expect.61 Proto-Celtic neuter nom./acc. *φrākom, cf. OIr íar ‘after’ < *epi‑ro‑m (cf. Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, pp. 249, 643). 58  Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 145; Schumacher, ‘Mittelkymrisch tra’, pp. 364–65. 59  A typical example of a preposition using an intervening vowel to form the inflected forms of the first and second persons is yn, e.g. ynof ‘in me’, ynot ‘in you (2sg)’, etc. 60  Cf. GOI 274. 61  Cf. GOI 508.

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The case of MW rac ‘before’ is similar. This preposition usually has a‑vocalism, which reflects the early shortening of the vowel *ā in the proclitic form. By contrast, there are inflected forms with o‑vocalism such as the aforementioned rocdi (which ultimately reflects the tonic composition form *rāk‑, secondarily unstressed due to the shifting of the British Celtic stress to the penultimate), but such forms belong to non-mainstream dialects and are rare even within Middle Welsh; for instance, no forms with roc‑ are attested in thirteenth-century prose texts.62 On the other hand, the preposition occurs as roc in an englyn by the thirteenth-century poet known as Y Prydydd Bychan, first recorded in the Hendregadredd manuscript by hand α (H 236.23, GBF 79, poem 9.4); and in modern dialects we find rog in south-eastern Morgannwg and rhog in Pembrokeshire.63 At the same time, there are no nominal compounds with MW roc‑ (= Modern Welsh rhog‑) at all, although we should expect a reflex of the Proto-Insular Celtic tonic composition form in a nominal compound; and in Breton and Cornish, all forms invariably have a‑vocalism.64 However, from the examples just cited one cannot conclude that it was always the vocalism of the proclitic form that marginalized or completely replaced the vocalism of the tonic composition form, because there are other prepositions where the vocalism of the tonic composition form spread at the expense of the vocalism of the proclitic form: – The OIr preposition ó ‘from’ is very often found with a length mark, although we should expect a short vowel in a proclitic preposition. Sometimes we even find the diphthong úa (e.g. Sg 3b4). Clearly, the diphthongized forms spread from the tonic composition form, e.g. húaimm ‘from me’. – Diphthongized forms seem to be fully generalized in OIr íar ‘after’,65 possibly to avoid homophony with ar.66

62 

Sims-Williams, ‘Conjugated Prepositions’, p. 45. Cf. GPC 2999 s.v. rhag, Section Amr. 64  Cf. Hemon, Historical Morpho­logy, pp. 99–100; Lewis, Handbuch, pp. 64, 121. 65  The spelling 〈er〉 of the inscriptional form er cul ‘on behalf of ’ (Thes. ii. 289.18, cf. Classical Old Irish íar cúl) cannot be shown to prove pretonic shortening of the preposition. After all, the inscription as a whole lacks length marks and predates diphthongization, as is shown by the spelling of the personal name Ceran (> Classical Old Irish Cíarán), which also occurs in this inscription. 66  Cf. GOI 516. 63 

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Sometimes, the original distribution is even turned upside down: the preposition ‘through’ (which can be reconstructed as Proto-Celtic *trei, whatever may be its further etymo­logy)67 appears in Old Irish as tre/tri and in Breton and Cornish as dre, all three of which show proclitic weakening, as we would expect. However, in Middle Welsh it appears as trwy, a form derived from the tonic composition form, which is directly reflected in the third-person forms, e.g. 3sgm. trwy‑daw. Conversely, in the MW nominal compound trydwll ‘pierced, full of holes’ (cf. twll ‘hole’), where we would also expect a reflex of the tonic composition form, we find the reflex of the proclitic form.68 The fact that this compound has an exact counterpart in OIr tretholl makes it likely that the original distribution of prepositional allomorphs began to go haywire already in Proto-Insular Celtic. To put it briefly, these examples clearly show that the phono­logical outcome in Old Irish or Old/Middle Welsh of a known preform of a preposition is wellnigh impossible to establish. Therefore, Isaac’s predictions are not cogent. To sum up, Isaac’s arguments are inconclusive: first, he cannot disprove the equations úad = han‑aud = an‑ez‑aff, and he cannot make it credible that the personal names in OW ‑guallaun = OBret ‑uuallon = OCorn ‑wallon should be based on learned borrowing from Latinized ‑uellaunus. Second, we must regard as failed his attempts to derive úabar/óbar = ofer = euver = vfer from †au̯ obero‑ and úathad/óthad = odit from †au̯ otīto‑; instead, Schrijver’s reconstructions *aubero‑ and *autīto‑ remain fully valid. Third, he cannot prove his postulate that OMW o and MBret/MCorn a cannot possibly go back to *au. Fourth, since it can be shown that none of the rivers or settlements called *Alaunā/*Alaunos in antiquity were situated in Wales, and since OW / ʉ / has at least two clear sources (early Proto-British *ou and *oi),69 we are not forced to reconstruct the name Alun (found with several rivers in Wales) as *Alaunā/*Alaunos.

67 

For attempts at a reconstruction, cf. McCone, ‘An tSean-Ghaeilge’, p. 190, Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, pp. 246–47, and Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, p. 800. 68  Cf. Schumacher, ‘Mittelkymrisch tra’, p. 366. Schrijver (British Celtic Historical Phono­ logy, pp. 246–47, 250), analyses the case of trwy vs. try‑ rather differently (partially following Jackson, Language and History, p. 659), but disregards the likelihood that the proclitic form of a preposition is the prosodically weakest form. 69  Cf. Jackson, Language and History, pp. 305–07, 311.

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5. A New Equation Although Isaac’s arguments have thus been shown to be not compelling, nonspecialist readers will at this stage have become utterly confused and will come to the conclusion that, after all, the whole matter still remains unresolved. There is, however, a decisive form that has gone almost unnoticed so far. It was Patrick Sims-Williams who demonstrated that this form stands out and thus is highly important: his comprehensive compilation of MW inflected forms of prepositions from thirteenth-century prose texts as well as from thirteenth-century manu­scripts of poetry revealed that the 2sg inflected form of the preposition o ‘from’ is unique:70 while other prepositions have 2sg forms in /‑ad/ (amdanat, arnat, attat), /‑od/ (ragot, hebot, y ryghot ~ y rot, drossot, trwot, ynot, yrot, uchot), and /‑ɨd/ (genhyt, ỽrthyt), the 2sg inflected form of o alone has /‑aud/: the attested forms and spellings are o.honaud [sic], ohanaut, ohanaỽt, ohonaut, ohonaỽt.71 This remarkable fact is beyond doubt: first, thirteenth-century prose manu­scripts consistently use spellings indicating /‑aud/;72 second, in the Black Book of Carmarthen the form o.honaud rhymes with traethaud, and ohonaut te with reddaud; third, the forms honawd, ohanaỽd, and (o)honaỽd are regularly found (often in rhyming position) in court poetry composed between 1137 and c. 1240 and recorded in the early fourteenth-century Hendregadredd manu­script.73 Sims-Williams also points out that the forms /ohanaud/ and /ohonaud/ did not continue to be used in fourteenth-century prose texts: the usual forms in manu­scripts from c. 1300 onward are ohonot and ohonat, and there are only three instances of diphthong spellings, which occur 70  The other unique form of the 2sg is that of y ‘to, for’, where we find it /id/ and yt /ɨd/ (forms like itti, ytti are due to sandhi phenomena, cf. Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 117; itt and ytt are secondarily derived from itti and ytti). 71  Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Conjugated Prepositions’, pp. 5–6, 45. The only monophthongal form from thirteenth-century manu­scripts is ohonad from Peniarth 6iii, but since this manu­ script is now dated to the end of the thirteenth century, it does not make doubtful the diphthongal forms from earlier decades of the thirteenth century (cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Conjugated Prepositions’, p. 5). 72  Admittedly, there is some evidence in thirteenth-century manu­scripts for the monophthongization of /au/ in final syllables (cf. an example of hypercorrect kyllyau for /kiljo/ in Peniarth 30, see Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 110) but the consistent occurrence of spellings indicating /‑aud/ in the 2sg inflected form of o makes it clear that this form did have a diphthong. By contrast, uchot ‘above’ (lit. ‘above you (2sg)’, attested some 190 times in thirteenth-century prose) always appears in spellings clearly indicating /‑od/. 73  Sims-Williams, ‘Conjugated Prepositions’, p. 5.

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in manu­scripts containing copies of earlier exemplars.74 Therefore, diphthong spellings in fourteenth-century manu­scripts of poetry are unlikely to have been introduced by copyists. The only way to make sense of the /‑aud/ of o.honaud, ohanaut, ohanaỽt, ohonaut, ohonaỽt is to describe it as an archaism. That is, the /‑aud/ part of ohanaut, etc. is best explained as forming a full equation with OIr úait ‘from you’:75 both /‑aud/ and úait go back to a Proto-Insular Celtic *au‑tī, i.e. to the combination of the preposition *au plus a pronominal affix of the 2sg.76 Since no other preposition has a 2sg form in /‑aud/ (see above), ohanaut, etc. cannot 74 

Sims-Williams, ‘Conjugated Prepositions’, p. 5. This presupposes the analysis of the MW inflected stem ohan‑/ohon‑ as a compound consisting of o + ‑han‑ or ‑hon‑ + what is historically the tonic composition form of *au. The double appearance of the preposition in this is not problematical, because we know from the OW 3sgm. hanaud and from MW instances like 2sg honaỽd H 211.12 (= GDB 136, poem 10.64) and 3sg honau (RhG-13c, Peniarth 29, p. 46) that initial o‑ is a secondary addition. As for han‑/ hon‑, this is not used as a preposition in British Celtic but occurs as a preverb in MW han‑fot ‘to be from, come from’ and handenu (Modern Welsh hamddenu) ‘to spend time over (something)’. There is indirect proof that han‑ originally was a preposition: it has an Irish cognate an‑ ‘from’, which has survived in the univerbated place adverbs an‑all ‘from beyond’, an‑úas ‘from above’, an‑ís ‘from below’ etc. (cf. GOI 305). In these adverbs, the an‑ part is always proclitic, and we can assume that it has lost an initial *s‑; both traits are typical of Insular Celtic prepositions (cf. GOI 111, McCone, Relative Chronology, p. 98). Etymologically, MW ‑han‑ and OIr an‑ can be traced back to Proto-Celtic *sani, a cognate of Latin sine ‘without’ and Megarian Greek ἄνις ‘without’ (cf. Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, pp. 711–12). I agree with Dunkel that the Insular Celtic adjective *sani‑ ‘separate’ (> OIr sain, OW han) was probably derived from *sani secondarily (possibly by conversion, cf. Schumacher, ‘Mittelkymrisch tra’, pp. 367–70). The origin of the /o/ in ‑hon‑ is unclear (o‑grade?). Furthermore, the structures of the inflected stems of MBret a ‘from’ (first and second persons ahan‑, third persons anez‑) and of MCorn a ‘from’ (first and second persons ahan‑, third persons anoth‑/aneth‑) can also be reconciled with the assumption that the inflected stem in Proto-British was *han‑ plus the tonic composition form of *au (Schrijver, History of Celtic Pronouns, pp. 35–36). Finally, it is worth noting that this reconstruction of the Proto-British inflected stem means that it is quite unique in the morphology of Insular Celtic inflected prepositions: while inflected stems of prepositions may be downright suppletive (e.g. *ande‑ vs. *en in the case of OIr i ‘in’, cf. McCone, ‘An tSean-Ghaeilge’, p. 191) or enlarged by a segmentable suffixal element (e.g. amdan‑ vs. am in the case of MW am ‘about’), the inflected stem of *au is the only one that is enlarged by a segmentable prefixal element (early OW *hanau‑ vs. *o). 76  McCone (‘An tSean-Ghaeilge’, p. 190) reconstructs the 2sg pronominal affixes of prepositions as *tī < *t(u̯ )oi and *tu, which follows Thurneysen (GOI 281); in the case of úait one will reconstruct *au‑tī, since the final dental of úait is palatalized. This would also work for MW /‑aud/, but not for /‑ad/ and /‑od/ found with other prepositions. We have to reckon with the 75 

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be due to any analogy. Quite the contrary, it is the post-1300 forms ohonot and ohonat that must be described as analogical. All of this has been known for a few years,77 but the meaning of this equation for the historical development of the diphthong *au in British has not been recognized yet. In short, if we accept that the Welsh preposition o and its Irish counterpart ó/úa go back to Proto-Celtic *au, and if we accept that the (hitherto unexplained) /‑aud/ part of MW 2sg /ohanaud/, /ohonaud/, /honaud/ forms an equation with OIr úait, we must conclude that Proto-Celtic *au in British Celtic merged with *ā as *ɔ̄ (see further Section 7). Unfortunately, there is no secure further evidence for this equation in Breton and Cornish. In Middle Breton, the 2sg of the inflected forms of a ‘from’ is ahanot (early Modern Breton ahanout)78 but this does not tell us much in view of the fact that most inflected prepositions have a 2sg in /‑od/ (later /‑ud/) in Breton. In Middle Cornish, the form is ahanes and ahanas. Of these, ahanes could form an equation with MW ohanaut, etc. (with ‑es < OCorn */‑œd/< *‑ɔ̄d < early Proto-British *‑au‑tī), but the coexistence of the spellings 〈ahanes〉 and 〈ahanas〉 may actually point to the fact that the vocalism of the final syllable had already become an indistinct Schwa.79 There is yet one other inflected form of o that can be equated directly with an Old Irish counterpart, namely the 2pl ohanawch/ohonawch: the /‑aux/ part of this is the equivalent of the Old Irish 2pl úaib.80 This is not quite so conspicuous as the 2sg form, since all prepositions that show an intervening vowel /‑a‑/ between the preposition and the pronominal affix have a 2pl in /‑aux/ (e.g. ataỽch ‘to you (2pl)’), but in view of what we know by now about the 2sg and the 3sgm., ohanawch/ohonawch forms a part of the cumulative evidence.

possibility that originally datival and originally accusatival pronominal affixes were treated as allomorphs and that the original distribution became blurred. Nonetheless, the combination *au‑tī can be reconstructed for Proto-Insular Celtic. 77  Cf. Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 146; Sims-Williams, ‘Conjugated Prepositions’, p. 5. 78  Hemon, Historical Morpho­logy, p. 102. 79  〈ahanes〉 is found in OM 406 and BM 3416, whereas 〈ahanas〉 occurs in MC 14.2, OM 1484, PC 2263, PC 2415, RD 960, RD 1059, RD 1085, RD 1408, RD 2565. 80  Cf. Schumacher, ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, p. 146.

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6. Brief Summary Summing up, we can now state with certainty that in the course of the development of Proto-British, *au and *ā merged as *ɔ̄ (considerations about the details of the development see Section 7). As is well known, in early Old Welsh stressed *ɔ̄ was diphthongized to /au/,81 and unstressed *ɔ̄ merged with *o; by contrast, in Old Breton and Old Cornish *ɔ̄ was fronted to /œ/ in almost all positions.82 The following lexemes and equations constitute full proof for this development: – thirteenth-century MW /ohanaud/ and /ohonaud/ (older /honaud/) ‘from you’ = OIr úait ‘from you’ < Proto-Insular Celtic *au‑tī (Section 5). – OW hanaud /hanauð/ (MW ohanaw, ohonaw) ‘from him’ = early Modern Breton anez ‘otherwise’ (→ MBret anezaff ‘from him’) = OIr úad ‘from him/it’ < Proto-Insular Celtic *au‑dom (Sections 3, 4). – OIr úabar/óbar ‘pride, arrogance, vanity’ = MW ofer ‘worthless, vain, useless’  = Modern Breton euver ‘lazy, stale, insipid’  = MCorn vfer ‘vain’ < Proto-Insular Celtic *au‑bero/ā‑ (Sections 3, 4). – OIr úathad/óthad ‘rare, small in number; a small number’ = MW odit ‘rare, exceptional; a rare thing’ < Proto-Insular Celtic *au‑tīto/ā‑ (Sections 3, 4). – The compound names in OW ‑guallaun = OBret ‑uuallon = OCorn ‑wallon, the OW name Guallonir and the uncompounded names OBret Uuallon and Uuallonic. The Proto-British preform *u̯ allauno‑ of all these names is clearly reflected in the names Uallaunius and Catuallauna, attested in inscriptions from Roman Britain (Sections 3, 4). Finally, the name Alun, found with minor rivers of Wales, does not provide counterevidence (for details see the end of Section 4).

81 

The fact that this means a circular development *au > *ɔ̄ > au cannot be used as a counterargument. After all, we find a development /ai/ > /ɛː/ > /eː/ > /eɪ/ in English words like day in the relatively short period c. 1400–1900 (Lass, ‘Phono­logy and Morpho­logy’, pp. 69, 91–96). 82  Cf. Jackson, Language and History, pp. 287–90; for further details see Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, pp. 192–215.

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7. The Development of the Diphthong *au in the Context of British Celtic Historical Phono­logy Up to now, it has only been stated that Proto-British *au and *ā eventually merged as *ɔ̄. This implies that there are two alternative explanations: (1) *au was monophthongized to *ɔ̄ comparatively early; later on, *ā became *ɔ̄ and thus merged with the already established *ɔ̄ < *au. (2) *au was monophthongized to *ā and thus merged with inherited *ā at an early stage; subsequently, the development *ā > *ɔ̄ took place. I see no possibility of deciding between these two alternatives. From a structural point of view, a monophthongization *au > *ɔ̄ would be exactly parallel to the monophthongization *ai > ɛ̄.83 Nevertheless, in a given language the diphthongs au and ai need not develop in a parallel manner, despite their phonetic similarity, and however much the aesthetics of parallel structural development may appeal to scholars studying historical phono­logy, such abstract considerations are meaningless for the sound changes produced by generations of native speakers. There is an interesting difference, though, between the monophthongization *ai > ɛ̄ and that of *au: while we can find early Proto-British *au written as such in Roman inscriptions (e.g. the aforementioned Uallaunius and Catuallauna), there is no trace of early Proto-British *ai in Roman inscriptions;84 this may suggest that *ai was monophthongized earlier than *au. Still, the inscriptional evidence for *au almost exclusively consists of personal and tribal names containing the element *u̯ allauno‑/*u̯ ellauno‑; it is easy to imagine that the 〈au〉-spelling of this popular name element was fixed soon after the Roman occupation and was retained even after monophthongization. One must also keep in mind that the monophthongization of early ProtoBritish *au had no parallel in British Latin. Like other marginal varieties of Latin (the forerunners of southern Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, Old Occitan, Vegliote, Romanian, and Portuguese), 85 British Latin was not prone to monophthongize its diphthong au; quite the contrary, au was retained as such, and when Proto-British borrowed British Latin words with au, this caused the rise of a new *au in Proto-British; 86 or, more precisely, the very 83 

Cf. Jackson, Language and History, pp. 324–30. Cf. Jackson, Language and History, pp. 324–25. 85  Weiss, Historical Grammar of Latin, p. 550. 86  Cf.  Jackson, Language and History, pp.  321–23; Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, pp. 270–72. 84 

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small number of words with post-monophthongization *au (which had arisen through early syncope, e.g. in *kauroh < *kau̯ aros)87 was augmented by loanwords from Latin.

8. The Prehistory of the Preposition *au and its Development in Proto-British So far, it has been taken for granted that the preform of Welsh o ‘from’ and Old Irish ó/úa ‘from’ was Proto-Insular Celtic *au. There is no doubt about this, but it deserves to be mentioned that this has two possible sources: *au either goes back to PIE *au (as in Latin au‑ferre ‘to take away’) or to *apo (as in Greek ἀπο‑τιϑέναι ‘to put away’), which also had an allomorph *apu.88 Proto-Insular Celtic *au may even be a conflation of both PIE *au and PIE *apo/*apu. Nothing has been said yet about Breton and Cornish a ‘from’, but it can be shown that they also belong here etymo­logically. The development of *au up to the individual forms of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish goes as follows. To begin with, in an early phase of British Celtic, *au ‘from’ was monophthongized either to *ɔ̄ or to *ā. It then developed in different ways: – In the tonic composition form, the preposition retained its quality and vowel length; in other words, if *au was monophthongized to *ɔ̄, the tonic composition form was *han‑ɔ̄‑;89 if *au was monophthongized to *ā, the tonic composition form was *han‑ā‑. Since early Proto-British *ā and *au eventually merged as *ɔ̄ (whatever were the intermediary stages; see Section 7), it is clear that the tonic composition form is reflected in the MW 2sg inflected forms /ohanaud/ and /ohonaud/ (older /honaud/), in the 3sgm. inflected forms OW hanaud /hanauð/ (MW ohanaw, ohonaw), MBret anezaff (← anez), and MCorn anotho,90 and in the MW 2pl inflected forms /ohanaux/ and /ohonaux/. The other forms of the paradigms of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish are the products of various morpho­ logical changes.

87 

Cf. Schrijver, British Celtic Historical Phono­logy, pp. 16–22, 101. Dunkel, Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln, pp. 71, 72, 99. 89  For *han‑, see n. 75. 90  But note that the middle vowel of anotho is difficult to explain (see n. 30). 88 

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– The preposition itself was proclitic, which is why it underwent weakening. Phonetically, it is no problem to assume that either of the two possible preforms (*ɔ̄ and *ā) could be weakened to *a. This *a is continued in Breton a ‘from’, in Cornish a ‘from’, and in the rare preposition OW a ‘by’,91 MW a ‘of ’.92 – In West British (the forerunner of Welsh), *a was later superseded by a new *ɔ̄, which had been extracted from the tonic composition form *han‑ɔ̄‑.93 This *ɔ̄ was subsequently subjected to the usual pretonic shortening, which produced OW/MW o ‘from’.

91 

Falileyev, Etymo­logical Glossary of Old Welsh, p. 1. Cf. GMW 17, 37. The same element a‑ also occurs as the adverbial first part of the MW nominal compound ado ‘sheltered spot’ (cf. Legendary Poems, ed. and trans. by Haycock, p. 297, l. 55; pp. 306–07) and as a preverb in the MW verb agori ‘to open’ (Modern Welsh agor, cf. Schumacher, Historical Morphology of the Welsh Verbal Noun, p. 147; Hamp, ‘British aL‑’, p. 113). This a‑ is the reflex of the proclitic form and not the reflex of the tonic composition form, but this is just another case of the confusion of prepositional allomorphs (cf. Section 4). 93  This presupposes that the morpheme boundary between *han‑ and *‑ɔ̄‑ was still perceived. 92 

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Works Cited Primary Sources ‘Additamenta ad corporis vol. VII’, ed. by Emil Hübner, Ephemeris epi­graphica, 4 (1881), 194–212 Buhez sante Barba: ‘Vie de sainte Barbe’ de 1608, ed. by Paul Widmer (Rennes: Tir, 2013) CIL VII = Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, vii: Inscriptiones Britanniae latinae, ed. by Emil Hübner (Berlin: Reimer, 1873) La légende arthurienne – études et documents. Première partie: Les plus anciens textes, iii: Documents, ed. by Édmond Faral (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1969) Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. and trans. by Marged Haycock, 2nd, rev. edn (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2015) RIB = The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, i: Inscriptions on Stone, ed. by Robin G. Colling­ wood and Richard Pearson Wright (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965)

Secondary Works Dunkel, George E., Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln und Pronominalstämme, ii: Lexikon (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014) Evans, D. Ellis, Gaulish Personal Names (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967) Evans, D. Simon, A Grammar of Middle Welsh (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1964) Falileyev, Alexander, Etymo­logical Glossary of Old Welsh, Buchreihe der Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 18 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000) Greene, David, ‘Varia II: 2. Ir. úathad, óthad: W. odid’, Ériu 22 (1971), 178–80 Hamp, Eric P., ‘Varia VI. British aL “at (temporal)”’, Études celtiques, 18 (1981), 113 Hemon, Roparz, A Historical Morpho­logy and Syntax of Breton (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1984) Isaac, Graham, ‘The Reflexes of the British Diphthong *au’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 11 (2007), 23–47 Jackson, Kenneth, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chrono­logical Survey of the Brittonic Languages First to Twelfth Century a.d. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953) —— , A Historical Phono­logy of Breton (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967) Lambert, Pierre-Yves, ‘Welsh Caswallawn: The Fate of British *au’, in Britain 400–600: Language and History, ed. by Alfred Bammesberger and Alfred Wollmann (Heidel­ berg: Winter, 1990), pp. 203–15 —— , ‘Préverbes gaulois suffixés en -io-: -ambio, -ario, -cantio’, Études celtiques, 31 (1995), 115–21

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Lass, Roger, ‘Phono­logy and Morpho­logy’, in The Cambridge History of the English Language, iii: 1476–1776, ed.  by Roger Lass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 56–186 Lewis, Henry, Handbuch des Mittelkornischen: Deutsche Bearbeitung von Stefan Zimmer (Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 1990) Loth, Joseph, ‘Remarques à l’Historia Britonum dite de Nennius’, Revue celtique, 51 (1934), 1–31 McCone, Kim, ‘An tSean-Ghaeilge agus a Réamhstair’, in Stair na Gaeilge in Ómós do P[h]ádraig Ó Fiannachta, ed. by Kim McCone, Damian McManus, Cathal Ó Háinle, Nicholas Williams, and Liam Breatnach (Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, 1994), pp. 61–219 —— , Towards a Relative Chrono­logy of Ancient and Medi­eval Celtic Sound Change, May­ nooth Studies in Celtic Linguistics, 1 (Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, 1996) Meid, Wolfgang, Keltische Personennamen in Pannonien, Archaeolingua series minor, 20 (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2005) Morris-Jones, John, A Welsh Grammar: Historical and Comparative (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913) Rivet, Albert Lionel Frederick, and Colin Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) LIV ² = Rix, Helmut, and Martin Kümmel, and others, Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (Wies­baden: Harrassowitz, 2001) Schrijver, Peter, Studies in British Celtic Historical Phono­logy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995) —— , Studies in the History of Celtic Pronouns and Particles, Maynooth Studies in Celtic Linguistics, 2 (Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, 1997) —— , ‘Old British’, in Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From Medi­eval British to Modern Breton, ed. by Elmar Ternes (Bremen: Ute Hempen, 2011), pp. 1–84 Schumacher, Stefan, The Historical Morpho­logy of the Welsh Verbal Noun, Maynooth Studies in Celtic Linguistics, 4 (Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, 2000) —— , Die keltischen Primärverben: Ein vergleichendes, etymo­ logisches und morpho­ logisches Lexikon; Unter Mitarbeit von Britta Schulze-Thulin und Caroline aan de Wiel (Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 2004) —— , ‘Mittel- und Frühneukymrisch’, in Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From Medi­eval British to Modern Breton, ed.  by Elmar Ternes (Bremen: Ute Hempen, 2011), pp. 85–235 —— , ‘Mittelkymrisch tra, tros, traws, traw, altirisch trá und Verwandtes’, in Iranistische und indogermanistische Beiträge in memoriam Jochem Schindler, ed.  by Velizar Sadovski and David Stifter (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2012), pp. 361–75 Sims-Williams, Patrick, The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: Phono­logy and Chrono­logy, c. 400–1200 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) —— , ‘Variation in Middle Welsh Conjugated Prepositions: Chrono­logy, Register and Dialect’, Transactions of the Philo­logical Society, 110 (2012), 1–50

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Thurneysen, Rudolf, A  Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946) Uhlich, Jürgen, ‘Altirisch arae “Wagenlenker”, aithesc “Antwort”, keltische Präverbien auf *-i und die frühe Apokope von *-i’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 57 (2010), 141–60 Weiss, Michael, Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin, 2nd  edn (Ann Arbor: Beech Stave, 2020) Zupitza, Ernst, ‘Noch einmal der Diphthong au’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 3 (1901), 591–94

Digital Resources Coe, Jonathan Baron, ‘The Place-Names of the Book of Llandaf ’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2001) [ac­ cessed 14 August 2017] de Rostrenen, Grégoire, Dictionnaire françois – celtique ou françois – breton (Rennes: Julien Vatar, 1732) [accessed 3 August 2017] Isaac, Graham, Place-Names in Ptolemy’s Geo­graphy: An Electronic Data Base with Etymo­ logical Analysis of the Celtic Name-Elements (CD-ROM) (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2004) RhG-13c = Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif Fersiwn 2.0, ed. by Graham Isaac, Simon Rodway, Silva Nurmio, Kit Kapphahn, and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2013) [accessed 24 July 2014]

The Corpus of Old Cornish Oliver Padel

T

here has been no general survey of the corpus of Old Cornish since that provided by Jackson in 1953,1 but both the corpus and our assessment of it have altered considerably since that time, partly through contributions made by our present honorand and others, and notably through advances in studying Old Welsh and Old Breton glosses in their textual contexts. Therefore this is an appropriate occasion on which to offer an overview of the remains, together with a brief discussion of method in distinguishing Cornish from Welsh and Breton at this early period. Logically the discussion should come first, followed by the resulting list. However, several of the individual texts raise and illustrate the problems in a useful way, so they make a fitting prelude to the discussion. Since Jackson’s time the manu­script context has come to play almost as great a role as the forms of individual words in considering the provenance of texts and therefore their assignment to one language or another. In addition the ability not only of scribes but also of manu­scripts and texts, including glossed ones, to travel within and outside the Brittonic world has become more fully appreciated. This means that texts displaying features of more than one language are more easily explained, although their individual complexities will still present problems. The texts are here listed in what is thought to be their approximate chrono­logical order, following dates assigned to them usually on palaeo­g raphical or other external grounds. In some cases their assignation to Cornish rather than Breton or Welsh is not certain, merely probable; and in 1 

Jackson, Language and History, pp. 59–62.

Oliver Padel ([email protected]) was formerly Reader in Celtic and Cornish in the Depart­ ment of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge. He has published books and articles on Cornish place-names, language, and history. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131203 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 211–237 BREPOLS

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the case of the first two I have gone beyond the caution of their most recent editors (including our honorand) in claiming them here (albeit tentatively) for Cornish, for reasons given below.

Two Texts from about 900 1. A single gloss, ud rocashaas ‘it [sc. the mind] has despised’, glossing Latin ­despicit ‘it despises’, referring to the contempt of the pious mind for worldly things. This gloss appears in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS lat. 3363, an early manu­script of Boethius’s ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ written in the Loire valley in the earlier ninth century, which had been brought to Britain by around the year 900.2 The manu­script contains numerous Latin glosses written mostly in Insular script of about that date, but a few in Caroline script, including the single Brittonic gloss. These glosses in one or perhaps two Caroline hands were written by a scribe (or scribes) apparently working alongside the Insular one, therefore of the same date;3 so they provide some of the earliest evidence for the use of Caroline script in Britain. The Brittonic gloss was therefore written seemingly at a centre in western Britain where both the established Insular script and also, surprisingly, the Continental script were in use at the same time. Other early examples of Caroline script from England include some written in Cornwall,4 perhaps because of its close links with Brittany; but even these examples date only from the middle of the tenth century, somewhat later than the likely date of these glosses in the Boethius manu­script. Patrick Sims-Williams who has published this gloss considers that on internal (linguistic) grounds it is likely to be Breton, or by extension Cornish, rather than Welsh: the preverbal particle ud is known in Breton (four other examples) but not in Welsh; the form of the preverbal perfective particle ro- is Breton rather than Welsh (where it was spelt ri-);5 and the preterite third singular ending -as is much better attested in Breton than in Welsh (though it may also have occurred there). For Old Cornish we are hampered by the fact that this is one of only three finite verbal forms in the whole corpus. The other two are a present-tense form in the Tobit glosses (no. 3 below), and an imperative 2  Sims-Williams, ‘New Brittonic Gloss on Boethius’; more generally, Godden, ‘Alfred, Asser and Boethius’. 3  Sims-Williams, ‘New Brittonic Gloss on Boethius’, p. 78 and n. 8. 4  Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 141–42, especially p. 142 n. 8. 5  Falileyev, Etymo­logical Glossary, p. 137.

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form in the Leiden Leechbook (no. 2), if that is considered Cornish; plus two other very doubtful ones in that text (see below). There are also two past participles, prinid ‘purchased’ and (twice) geriit ‘spoken, reputed’, in the twelfthcentury Vocabulary (no. 10, below).6 So the lack of other examples of these verbal particles in Old Cornish is of no significance for choosing between Breton and Cornish, since there exist no other Cornish verbal forms which could have shown them. Externally, since the context of the gloss is Insular, not Continental, the gloss is either Cornish or written by a Breton working in England. Therefore Sims-Williams’s cautious assignation of this gloss to Cornish as the ‘most attractive solution’ is based on a combination of its internal, non-Welsh, linguistic forms and its external, non-Continental, context; but he also kept open the possibility that it was written by a Breton scribe working in England, especially if there were two Caroline scribes rather than just one.7 He concluded, ‘If the gloss is Cornish, it may be the earliest known piece of writing in that language’, but the next item is another possible contender, depending upon both its allocation and the precise dates of both items. 2. The Leiden Leechbook (Leiden, University Library, MS Voss. Lat. F 96 A, dated about 900) is a single bifolium containing Latin recipes or remedies; on one of the pages is a bilingual text incorporating about seventy Brittonic words, mostly names of plants. Long thought to be Old Breton (and, if so, eighth-century because of its Insular script, and thus the earliest such text), it has now been reassigned to Britain (Wales or Cornwall), because of its varieties of Insular hands, and redated to around 900 (approximately 850–930).8 This reassignment incidentally has the effect of removing from the corpus of Old Breton the only text which had previously been dated to the eighth century; so texts in Old Breton are known only from the ninth century onwards, not from the eighth as had sometimes been stated on the basis of this text alone. David Dumville has also suggested that the mixture of Insular minuscule scripts in these pages, if all written at the same place, would be simplest to explain by supposing that it was written in Cornwall; Helen McKee has favoured a Welsh origin for the scripts, while acknowledging that too few pre-Conquest manu­ 6 

Graves, ‘Old Cornish Vocabulary’, no. 192, caid prinid ‘a purchased slave’ translating Latin empti[ci]us, Ælfric’s geboht þeowa; and nos 404 and 406, geriitda translating famosus ‘wellreputed’ and drocgeriit translating infamis ‘ill-reputed’. 7  Sims-Williams, ‘New Brittonic Gloss’, pp. 86 and 78 n. 8. 8  Dumville, ‘Writers, Scribes’, pp. 55–56; and McKee, ‘Script’ and ‘Punctuation’; this text is therefore rightly omitted from Bauer, ‘Altbretonische Glossen’.

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scripts from Cornwall survive for that origin to be excluded.9 However, a few words in the text are diagnostically non-Welsh in form: hoiarn- ‘iron’ (Welsh haearn); abran- ‘eyebrow’ (Welsh amrant);10 uintl(um) if equivalent to Middle Breton guentl ‘gout, childbirth pangs’, which would be *gwythl in Welsh;11 and possibly guodrot if equivalent to later Welsh godrwyth ‘marsh trefoil (?)’;12 and there are no counter-forms which are Welsh rather than Cornish or Breton. Linguistically this text should therefore be either Cornish or Breton, but Breton is effectively excluded at this date by the script. In addition the text contains three words which may be interpreted as Brittonic calques upon English plant names: ælilub and elilub, literally ‘salve-wort’ (OE smeoruwyrt), hæntledan ‘greater plantain’, literally ‘way-broad’ (OE wegbrāde, Modern English waybread), and hoiarnlub ‘iron-wort’ (though that name is not attested before the sixteenth century in English).13 The editors and also Pierre-Yves Lambert have wondered whether this possible English influence is suggestive of a Cornish origin for the text.14 This text also frequently (and almost uniquely?) uses ligatured æ in places where e would normally be written in Brittonic; this feature will be considered below. Overall, therefore, a Cornish origin is the simplest way to harmonize the linguistic indications with the palaeo­g raphical ones, though not decisively so. If this text is Cornish, it adds a third finite verbal form, possibly one or even two more, to the corpus of two such forms otherwise known in Old Cornish: the 2nd singular imperative cæs ‘seek!’ repeated seven times in one of the remedies (equivalent to Modern Welsh cais ‘seek!’);15 also possibly boet, if that is a 3rd singular imperative or subjunctive ‘let it be’ or ‘let there be’, equivalent to 9 

Dumville, ‘Writers, Scribes’, p. 56; and McKee, ‘Script’, p. 93. Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, pp. 59–60 (hoiarn-) and 64 (abran-). 11  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, p. 57; Jackson, Language and History, p. 498; compare Lambert, review of Leiden, p. 218. 12  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, pp. 48–49; Lambert, review of Leiden, p. 217; on guodrot (= godrwyth?) see further below, in the concluding discussion. 13  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, pp. 53, 58, and 59; but, as they point out, hæntledan ‘way-broad’ could have arisen independently, since the plant grows on tracks, and the formation occurs in all three Brittonic languages: Welsh henllydan, Old Cornish enlidan (for hent-; Graves, ‘Old Cornish Vocabulary’, no. 651), and Breton hedledan (Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, pp. 205–06). 14  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, pp. 85–86; Lambert, review of Leiden, p. 219. 15  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, pp. 64–65 (§ 13b); Fleuriot, ‘Notes philo­logiques’, pp. 267–68. 10 

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Modern Welsh boed, as suggested by Fleuriot (though there are other possible explanations for this word);16 and, least likely, anroæ if that is another imperative form ‘cover with a poultice’, though it is more likely to be a noun.17

Tenth-Century Texts Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 572, is a composite manu­script which contains (probably not coincidentally) the separate items 3 and 4 in this present list. Its first part (folios 1–50), which has aptly been called a ‘tenth-century Brittonic miscellany’, consists itself of four separate pieces (containing six different texts), while its second comprises an unrelated manu­script written in France in the ninth century.18 The first of the four pieces in the ‘Brittonic miscellany’ (Part I) consists of a single sheet containing part of a Mass for St German of Lannaled in Cornwall (St Germans);19 the third piece was written by a scribe calling himself by the Brittonic name Bledian.20 The two pieces in Part I that concern us here are Lindsay’s no. ii (fols 2–25), containing a treatise on the Mass and the apocryphal Book of Tobit (no. 3, below); and his no. iv (fols 41–50), containing the Latin conversation-lesson known as De raris fabulis ‘Concerning Uncommon Tales’ (no. 4, below). The former of these is written in a hand described as ‘now a late Celtic minuscule, attributable (if taken by itself ) to the later ninth or earlier tenth century, now a hybrid InsularCaroline which is presumably to be placed in the mid-tenth century’.21 The latter piece is written in a hand which ‘has long been recognized as an instance of Insular Caroline hybrid script’; it does not look Welsh, and has also been dated to the tenth century.22 It is not known where or when these four sepa16 

Fleuriot, ‘Notes philo­logiques’, p. 267; alternatively Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 88, equivalent to Welsh bwyd ‘food’, or from Latin bēta ‘beet’; and so Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, p. 55. 17  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, p. 66 and references. 18  Part I (folios 1–50) comprises nos i–iv of the description given by Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, pp. 26–32, and sections A–C and nos 1–6 of that given by Madan and others, Summary Catalogue, ii.1, pp. 170–74 (manu­script no. 2026); Part II is not described by Lindsay (see his p. 26 n. 1) and contains section D (nos 7–11) of the Summary Catalogue. The name ‘Brittonic miscellany’ for this first part as a whole is used by Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 97 n. 74. 19  Jenner, ‘Lannaled Mass of St Germanus’. 20  Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, p. 26; Gwara, Education in Wales and Cornwall, p. 12. 21  Dumville, Liturgy, p. 116. 22  Curran, ‘Changing the Tradition’, pp. 79–81, and Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, p. 26.

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rate pieces came together, but it may be that the whole miscellany originated at St Germans. Seemingly the whole collection was at Canterbury by the late eleventh century.23 3. The three glosses written in Insular minuscule in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, the second text contained in the second piece in the ‘Brittonic miscellany’ (MS Bodley 572, Part I, fols 14–25, at fols 14v, 23v, and 25r), have long been considered Old Cornish, partly for internal linguistic reasons, partly because of their Insular Minuscule script, and partly because of their indirect association with St Germans.24 The verbal prefix do- in in one of the glosses, dowomisurami ‘I will measure’, is Cornish or Breton (Old Welsh di-); and the spelling of [w] in this word with the Anglo-Saxon letter wynn is more characteristic of Old Cornish than of Old Breton; indeed the same verbal form occurs in Old Breton as doguomisuram, with [w] spelt there typically as -gu-.25 Dumville has rightly pointed out that linguistically these three glosses could all be Old Breton instead, and that wynn was sometimes used in Old Breton too, but the Insular script of these glosses would be surprising for Breton at this date.26 Thus these glosses are ascribed to Cornish by a combination of internal evidence (do-, and the letter wynn) and codico­logical evidence (association with the first piece in the miscellany, which is from Cornwall on the evidence of its contents). The other two glosses here, cennen ‘little skin’ glossing membra[na] and gemmou ‘jewels’ glossing saphero et exsmaragdo ‘sapphire and emerald’, lack diagnostic features between the Brittonic languages.27 4. Some of the glosses in the text De raris fabulis ‘Concerning Uncommon Tales’, the fourth piece in the ‘Brittonic miscellany’ (MS Bodley 572, Part I), are Cornish rather than Welsh.28 As noted above, this piece is written in 23 

Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 97 n. 74; Gwara, Education in Wales and Cornwall, pp. 11–13. 24  Loth, Vocabulaire vieux-breton, pp. 68–69, 113, and 129; Jackson, Language and History, p. 59; Jenner, ‘Lannaled Mass of St Germanus’; Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 116–17; Gwara, Education in Wales and Cornwall, pp. 11–13. 25  Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 147; on the use of wynn see further below. 26  Dumville, Liturgy, p. 117 n. 151. 27  Compare Old Breton cennenn also glossing membrana (Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 102), Middle Cornish ken ‘skin’; and Modern Welsh gem ‘gem’. 28  Full text in Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by Stevenson, and in De raris fabulis, ed. by Gwara; see also Jackson, Language and History, pp. 54–56; Gwara, Education in Wales and Cornwall.

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a hybrid Insular Caroline script of the tenth century, probably in Cornwall. The attribution of these glosses, which appear in a colloquy for the use of beginners in Latin, was uncertain for many years, because some of them have distinctively Welsh forms (for example, celleell ‘knife’), while others show Cornish or Breton forms (for example, cultel ‘knife’).29 Several forms show an epenthetic vowel in a consonant-cluster at the end of a word, which is Welsh or Cornish but not Breton; and the vowel is often -e-, which is characteristically (though not diagnostically) Cornish rather than Welsh.30 The most likely explanation is that this text originated in Wales, with some vernacular glosses; it was then copied in Cornwall, where either more glosses in Cornish were added, or some (but not all) of the Welsh forms were converted to Cornish (not a major change), or both of those. Of the 112 glosses in Brittonic, about twenty have features which could assign them (some inconclusively) to Old Cornish rather than Old Welsh, while about thirty-two have distinctively Welsh features; so at least half of the glosses (about sixty) could be either. The text also contains a few glosses in Old English (including tin glossing stagnum, seemingly the only metal so glossed), and it was originally suggested that the hand which wrote those also wrote two putatively Brittonic glosses (lo glossing podi ‘churchsite’, and gili glossing secalium ‘rye’).31 Such bilingual glossing by a single hand would be highly suggestive in a probably Cornish context, but more recently it has been suggested that the first of these actually reads lo- for Latin loci ‘(holy) place’, and that the second reads gilb and may be Old English, or at any rate is not obviously Brittonic.32 One of the Brittonic forms is written using AngloSaxon letters, laiðwer ‘thin milk (?)’ (Welsh llaith ‘milk’) glossing lacticula.33 5. A list of forty-eight saints’ names, in Vatican Library, MS Reg. lat. 191, on fols ii verso and ii recto, was originally published as Old Breton; but it has been reassigned to Cornish on grounds of its contents, since it lists the patron saints of Cornish parishes, several of them unique to Cornwall (others known also in 29  Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by Stevenson, p. 4; De raris fabulis, ed. by Gwara, § 8.32 and 31. 30  Jackson, Language and History, pp. 337–38. 31  Craster, ‘Glosses of the Codex Oxoniensis Posterior’; Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by Stevenson, p. ix; De raris fabulis, ed. by Gwara, § § 5.4 (tin), 6.1 (lo), and 6.4 (gili). 32  Falileyev and Russell, ‘Dry-Point Glosses’, pp. 96–97; Falileyev, Etymo­logical Glossary, pp. 61 and 105. 33  Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by Stevenson, p. 3; De raris fabulis, ed. by Gwara, § 6.14 (p. 7); Falileyev, Etymo­logical Glossary, p. 100.

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Wales or Brittany) and given in a geo­graphical order which does not occur elsewhere.34 The List was added to a Continental manu­script written in Caroline script in the ninth century, but is itself written in Insular script of the tenth century, perhaps earlier in that century (though not necessarily so). That fact need not exclude Brittany as its place of writing, however, since Insular script and practices were reintroduced there from England later in the tenth century, when the List could have been written.35 In the thirteenth century the manu­ script was dismembered and used to form flyleaves in the binding of another manu­script at Rheims. The List therefore has a Continental context, but later parochial history makes it clearly Cornish, at least in origin. Linguistically the List has some forms which could be either Cornish or Breton, but not Welsh (Gerent, Rumon, Latoc, Geuedenoc). If the List was written in Brittany (as seems likelier than Cornwall, albeit in the reintroduced Insular script), and dealing as it does with Cornish saints and showing acquaintance with the geo­graphy of their dedications, it is a balanced question whether it should be considered Cornish or Breton; but it is included here because of the detailed knowledge of south-Cornish geo­graphy shown within it. 6. The Bodmin Manumissions are entries recording the liberation of slaves at St Petrock’s monastery at Padstow and Bodmin, in central Cornwall.36 The entries were made in a ninth-century gospel-book imported from Brittany, now British Library, Additional MS 9381. Two-thirds (thirty-three) of the fifty or so legible entries (others have been erased) date from the middle or later tenth century, with ten more from around 1000 or the early eleventh century and five from later in that century.37 Overall the entries contain rather more than 120 Cornish personal names, plus other names including Old English and biblical ones. Most of the texts of the manumission entries are in Latin, but a few are in Old English, including some tenth-century ones. The use of Latin for such entries is unusual in England at that period, and may be due to the dual cultural background of St Petrock’s community, with the dominant use of Latin arising perhaps from the Cornish side. However, at least one of the Latin entries

34 

Olson and Padel, ‘Tenth-Century List’, pp. 34–35 and 63–65. Dumville, ‘English Element’, p. 12, including n. 51, where he corrects the comparison with a Welsh manu­script, made by Olson and Padel, ‘Tenth-Century List’, p. 37. 36  Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’; Pelteret, Slavery; Padel, Slavery in Saxon Cornwall. 37  Dates from Pelteret, Slavery, pp. xiv–xv. 35 

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comes from a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon cultural background, so the differences in usage did not arise from a simple division, rather from a blend of practices.38 7. Place-names in various Anglo-Saxon charters covering lands in Cornwall, mainly of the second half of the tenth century, provide a number of Cornishlanguage names. This class of information was surprisingly neglected by Jackson in 1953, who gave only occasional references to it, usually through earlier citations by Max Förster. Six charters from the tenth century contain detailed boundary-clauses containing a considerable amount of Old Cornish, all the more valuable for being preserved through Anglo-Saxon transmission and therefore rich in phono­logical information;39 likewise a further four charters from the eleventh century.40 Most of the tenth-century charters survive only in copies of the eleventh century (later in one case), but one charter, Sawyer no. 684, is an original of ad 960.41 Among other features these texts show that Cornish had a voiceless initial r-sound, corresponding to that of Welsh rh- (also found in Modern Breton, though not usually systemic there), spelt hr- in these AngloSaxon documents;42 the existence of this sound in Cornish would otherwise have been unsuspected, except for a single form in Domesday Book (below).

Eleventh-Century Texts 8. British Library MS Harleian 3376, which has been linked with manu­scripts written at Worcester around the year 1000, contains part of an Anglo-Saxon glossary.43 Within it there are two glosses in a Brittonic language;44 they appear to be Old 38 

Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’, no. 22, a Latin text recording a manumission performed by Æþælflæd the wife of Ealdorman Æþælwerd in 1011 × 1027. 39  Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos 450, 684, 755, 770, 810, and 832; Hooke, Pre-Conquest Charter-Bounds, pp. 22–52; Padel, ‘Boundary of Tywarnhayle’. 40  Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos 951, 1005, 1019, and 1027 (which recites the same boundary as no.  832, so contains little new information); Hooke, Pre-Conquest CharterBounds, pp. 55–69. 41  Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 684 (original of ad 960); nos 755, 810, and 832 (eleventh-century copies of tenth-century charters); and 450 (fourteenth-century copy via a thirteenth-century intermediary). 42  Jackson, Language and History, pp. 477–78 (mentioning this Cornish evidence); Jackson, Historical Phono­logy of Breton, pp. 811–12. 43  Harley Glossary, ed. by Oliphant; Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 149 and n. 49; Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, pp. 69 and 98–99. 44  Schlutter, ‘Weitere keltische Spuren’, where the MS number was misprinted as ‘Harl.

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Cornish, since they both contain the adjectival ending in the form -oc (Old Welsh -auc): guohioc ‘waspish’ glossing corupeta (properly cornupeta ‘horn-seeking, prone to attack’) and toroc ‘weevil’ glossing dolua.45 In theory these words could be Old Breton instead, but because of their context they have generally been considered as Cornish.46 Further personal names in some of the Bodmin Manumissions and placenames in four further Anglo-Saxon charters date from the eleventh century, but are not counted here as separate items: see nos 6 and 7, above. These eleventh-century boundary-clauses are located mainly in east Cornwall, and contain noticeably more Old English among the minor boundary-points than the tenth-century boundary-clauses, which are mainly located in west Cornwall. The contrast indicates that the eastern half of the county was becoming bilingual at this later period.47 9. The 340 names of manors in the Cornish section of Domesday Book (1086) were similarly neglected by Jackson; they are mostly Cornish-language except for a number of English names especially near the eastern boundary of the county.48 They require careful handling because of problems in their identification, and some of the forms are corrupt so can be used only in the context of later forms for the same names.49 Cumulatively, however, they provide extensive information about Old Cornish in the late eleventh century. One or two names show hints of coming from written sources: Hroscarec (with Hr-) and Tremaruustel (with Trem- for Trev-).50 By contrast this source contains hardly 2276’, followed (among others) by Jackson, Language and History, p. 67, and Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, pp. 7, 196, and 317. MS Harley 2276 is a fifteenth-century collection of sermons in Middle English. 45  Harley Glossary, ed. by Oliphant, pp. 105 and 143 (nos C1847, D772); some other words in this glossary tentatively suggested as Celtic by Schlutter (glasin, bil- and mæl-) are not so treated by Oliphant, pp. 23, 29, and 188 (nos B28, B180, F456). 46  With guohioc compare Old Breton guohi ‘wasps’, Old Cornish guhien ‘wasp’, Welsh gwchi ‘drones (= bees)’, Modern Breton moui ‘horse-flies’ (Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 196); for toroc ‘piercing creature’ see Ifor Williams, ‘torogen, Trogog’ and Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 317. 47  Compare Padel, ‘Where Was Middle Cornish Spoken?’. 48  Map in Padel, ‘Place-Names and the Saxon Conquest’, p. 224, and Padel, ‘Where Was Middle Cornish Spoken?’, p. 2. 49  Domesday Book: Cornwall, ed. by Thorn and Thorn. For the Exeter text, which generally has a better spelling of place-names when it differs from that of Greater Domesday, see [accessed 1 March 2022]. 50  Compare no. 7 (above) and Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements, p. 197 (hryd, etc., ‘ford’, in Anglo-Saxon charters) and pp. 227–28 (Trem-).

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any Cornish-language personal names. Most Cornish landowners in 1066 had Anglo-Saxon personal names, because of a combination of incoming landlords and changes in Cornish naming practices from the tenth century onwards.

Twelfth-Century Texts 10. The Old Cornish Vocabulary constitutes much the most extensive source for the language before the fifteenth century; it is found in British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A.xiv, Part I, fols 7r–10r; this manu­script otherwise contains mostly material about Welsh saints, and was written in south-east Wales, probably at Monmouth priory, and is usually dated around the year 1200, though a date in the last third of the twelfth century has recently been preferred.51 It is based upon the Latin and Old English glossary of the eleventhcentury abbot Ælfric, with its Old English glosses translated into Cornish.52 Its 961 entries unsurprisingly include several words not attested elsewhere in the language (at any date), plus important earlier forms of other words. They also include several Welsh words, readily explained given the Welsh provenance of the manu­script; Barry Lewis has shown evidence suggesting that the text was probably obtained in Wales from St Kew in Cornwall.53 The original was probably composed in the second half of the twelfth century, so our copy, if written in the last third of the twelfth century, was made soon after its original composition.54 As noted by Jackson in 1953, both the state of the language and the spellings used for it are later than those of the texts discussed above.55 However, the Vocabulary still often uses Anglo-Saxon letters (thorn, eth, and wynn) for writing Cornish words. Unsurprisingly, too, given both its date and its cultural context, the translations include quite a number of loanwords into Cornish from Old English, and a certain number from Anglo-Norman or early Middle English: the integration of these into the language is shown by their use with Cornish-language suffixes or prefixes, such as creftor translating artifex 51 

Lewis, ‘Possible Provenance for the Old Cornish Vocabulary’, pp. 3–7 (Monmouth); Guy, ‘Life of St Dyfrig’, p. 6 n. 17 (date), citing the opinion of Dr Teresa Webber. 52  Graves, ‘Old Cornish Vocabulary’; Padel, ‘Nature and Date’. 53  Blom, ‘Welsh Glosses in the Vocabularium Cornicum’ and ‘Multilingualism in the Vocabularium Cornicum’; Lewis, ‘Possible Provenance for the Old Cornish Vocabulary’. 54  See above, n. 51; and Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, pp. 175, 194, and 196. 55  Jackson, Language and History, pp.  60 and 61; compare Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, pp. 192–96.

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‘craftsman’ and dicreft translating iners ‘unskilled’, with the Cornish-language agent-suffix -or and privative prefix di- added to creft ‘skill, craft’, borrowed from Old English cræft.56 11. John of Cornwall’s ‘Prophecy of Merlin with Commentary’ dates probably from the 1150s, so it is of about the same date as the Vocabulary.57 The unique copy is found in Vatican Library, MS Ottobonianus 1474, fols 1r–4r, and the text is internally dedicated to a Bishop Robert of Exeter, either Robert Warelwast (bishop in 1138–1155) or Robert  II (bishop in 1155–1160).58 The content of the Prophecy itself is close to that given to Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain (completed about 1137), though John included additional information and prophecies not found there; some of these additional prophecies correspond to ones known in early Welsh poetry.59 In his Commentary John included detailed references to Cornwall, including several interesting place-names, and four Brittonic phrases, of which one is definitely Cornish: pe[m]p bliden warnugens ha hanter ‘five years above a score and half ’, glossing the numeral xxxv. ‘thirty-five (years)’, the length of King Henry I’s reign.60 Two of the other three phrases also have diagnostic features: in guent dehil ‘the wind’s winnowing’ or ‘a wind of winnowing’, equated with Latin venti excussio ‘wind’s threshing’, guent is Breton or Cornish, because of its -e-, rather than Welsh, though without showing the assibilation of -nt seen in ugens (above), perhaps because of the following d- of dehil;61 and in michtie[r]n lu[i]d ma[l] i gas[s]ec (MS michtien luchd ma igasuet) ‘a king, grey like his mare’, translating Latin canus adoptatus ‘a grey-haired longed-for (one)’, michtie[r]n 56 

Graves, ‘Old Cornish Vocabulary’, nos 230 (creftor), 244 (dicreft), and 229 (creft); further examples in Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, p. 186. 57  ‘New Edition’, ed. by Curley, pp. 222–23. 58  ‘New Edition’, ed. by Curley, pp. 218 and 222. 59  Some details in Curley, ‘Gerallt Gymro a Siôn o Gernyw’, pp. 30–31; compare Padel, ‘Evidence for Oral Tales’, pp. 147–50. Michael Faletra, ‘Merlin in Cornwall’, argues for a Cornish prophecy-poem as John’s source; but the similarities with Geoffrey’s Prophecies, the details shared with Welsh prophetic poetry, and the differences in both substance and tone between John’s text and his commentary all speak against that theory; Faletra’s dating of the Cornish phrases (pp. 316, 327, 335), derived from Jackson’s date for the assibilation, is too early by 50–100 years. 60  Fleuriot, ‘Fragments du texte brittonique’, pp. 45–46; ‘New Edition’, ed. by Curley, pp. 237 and 241. The assibilation in ugens is distinctively Cornish, while e in pe[m]p ‘five’, warn‘upon the’, and hanter ‘half ’ could all be Cornish or Breton, but not Welsh. 61  Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, p. 194.

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‘king’ is Cornish rather than Welsh or Breton.62 The fourth phrase, awel garu ‘a harsh breeze’ (Latin auram asperam) has no feature distinctive within the three Brittonic languages.63 By the later twelfth century we are of course reaching the period when features distinguishing the three Brittonic languages begin to become more numerous, both in phono­logy (particularly the assibilation of dental plosives in Cornish) and in other areas such as vocabulary. There are also further place-name forms from the twelfth century. These come from a variety of sources, mostly in the last few decades of the century, and cannot easily be discussed here, since they lack coherence as a corpus and their problems are mostly ones of the general kinds raised by place-name material of the later medi­eval period; however, they deserve to be mentioned here, since they can provide useful information, for instance about phono­logy.64 This completes the list of sources which can certainly or reasonably be ascribed to Cornish. Owing to the close similarity of Old Cornish to Old Breton, and sometimes to Old Welsh, various glosses have at one time or another been ascribed to Cornish, sometimes tentatively, but are now considered more likely to be Breton or Welsh. The most important group is the sixteen glosses to a Latin commentary by Smaragdus on Donatus’s Grammar, in a tenth-century manu­script (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 13029, early tenth century). They were assigned to Old Cornish by Jackson, following an article by Joseph Loth in 1907, but in 1960 Fleuriot argued that they were Breton, on the grounds of their Caroline script and particularly the close similarity of its hand to that of another manu­script which is unquestionably Breton.65 His conclusion was thus based on external rather than linguistic factors, although he did also use arguments based on spelling (the use of gu for [w] instead of the letter wynn, and the use of -td- for [ð]), but those details are not necessarily decisive (see below); he also showed that certain features which Loth had regarded as distinctively Cornish also occur in Breton, notably the spelling of certain diphthongs with a single vowel. Fleuriot’s conclusion about these glosses has been accepted as decisive since 1960. The case of the 62 

Fleuriot, ‘Fragments du texte brittonique’, pp. 48–50; ‘New Edition’, ed. by Curley, pp. 230–31, 239, and 248. 63  Fleuriot, ‘Fragments du texte brittonique’, p. 53; ‘New Edition’, ed. by Curley, pp. 239 and 249. 64  Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, p. 194. 65  Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 477: Fleuriot, ‘Les gloses à Smaragde’; and see below and n. 73.

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Smaragdus glosses well illustrates the difficulty in distinguishing between Old Cornish and Old Breton on linguistic criteria alone. The two languages were so close at this period that external as well as linguistic criteria need to be used to assign words or texts to one or the other. Three other individual glosses have also been uncertainly ascribed to Cornish, but two at least of them are unlikely to be so. First, one of three Brittonic glosses in the Vatican MS Reg. lat. 49 (a tenth-century text about the Evangelists), guorcher glossing summitas ‘the top, lid [of hell]’ was initially ascribed to Cornish on the grounds that its form does not correspond to its later Welsh form, gwerchyr ‘lid’, and that the word was not known in Breton;66 the latter reason would be poor grounds even if it were true, but in fact the word is known as Middle Breton gourcher, Modern Breton goulc’her ‘lid’.67 This word is likely to be Breton because its manu­script context is wholly Continental. Second, muhid ‘jet’ glossing ebeno ‘ebony’ (Modern Welsh muchudd), in a Leiden manu­script (University Library, MS Voss. lat. Quarto 2) containing a fragment of Boethius’s Latin translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge ‘Introduction’ (to Aristotle’s ‘Categories’), is considered likely to be Welsh rather than Breton, because the manu­script in which it occurs is written in Insular not Caroline script; 68 but Lindsay, who first published it, raised without comment the possibility that it could alternatively be Cornish, although the word itself is (unsurprisingly) not otherwise attested in Cornish.69 Third, Lindsay also wondered whether a supposed gloss ermón in Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS C.219 (4), part of the same manu­script as the Leiden page containing muhid, might be Old Welsh or Old Cornish;70 but elsewhere he seems to have read this word as heronima (which would be a Graeco-Latin gloss).71 Whatever the reading, 66 

Loth, ‘Une glose brittonique du Xe siècle’ (with illustration). Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 198, and p. 6 no. 30 for the manu­script; Loth, ‘Une glose brittonique inédite’, and Bauer, ‘Altbretonische Glossen’, p. 183, include the other two glosses in this text, not distinctive between Cornish and Breton. 68  Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 261, making it Welsh, but citing the word wrongly as muhit; followed by Falileyev, Etymo­logical Glossary, p. 115. The MS certainly reads muhid: see the plate in Friedel, ‘Lorica de Leyde’, between pp. 64 and 65 (publishing another, unglossed, text from this page), and (slightly less clear) that in Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, p. 60 and plate XIII. Lindsay himself correctly printed muhid in 1897 and 1912 (see next note). 69  Lindsay, ‘A Welsh (Cornish?) Gloss in a Leyden MS’, and again in Early Welsh Script, pp. 23 and 60. 70  Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, p. 23. 71  Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, p. 59, gloss to line 27 of the text (hanc partem, plate XII); 67 

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it seems unlikely that this gloss is Brittonic at all. The glossing in this manu­ script (the Leiden fragment and the longer one of Bern) is said to have a strong similarity to that in the Vatican manu­script of Boethius containing the single Cornish gloss ud rocashaas (no. 1, above).72 If this similarity were pressed, it might push muhid in the Leiden fragment towards being perhaps Cornish rather than Welsh; but that would necessarily be extremely tentative. Finally, the manu­script Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 477, contains many Old Breton glosses, and some Old Welsh ones, written around 900.73 It also contains a short marginal phrase in Old English, on ðone weor and þ’ wæs hi ‘against the man, and that was he (?)’, which in turn is glossed in Brittonic (in a different hand), guor ‘man’ glossing Old English weor, and e ‘he’ glossing Old English hi (for he), showing a Brittonic scribe who understood Old English at work on the Continent.74 Because of the mixture of languages, Le Duc has suggested that these two words (guor ‘man’ and e ‘he’) were written by a Cornishman, though he recognized that Welsh or Breton was also possible; Dumville has pointed out that its Caroline script makes a Breton scribe more likely.75 * * * Three points are striking in this list overall. First, there is so little material, compared with the hundreds of glosses in Old Breton and the substantial number in Old Welsh, as well as the Welsh texts of continuous prose and verse, notably (but not only) the Computus Fragment and the Juvencus Englynion.76 This much smaller corpus is no surprise, considering how much smaller physically Cornwall is than either Wales or Brittany, and that it was in the process of being incorporated into Anglo-Saxon England during the period of these texts, the tenth and eleventh centuries. Although at this period Cornwall was still part of the Brittonic world, starting from the ninth and tenth centuries it was but the actual reading of the gloss appears to be (et) heriō; anyway not Fleuriot’s doubtful epinom(ina) (?), Dictionnaire, p. 164b, s.v. *ermon. Lindsay’s own transcription here of the similar glosses to lines 25 and 27 seems to be confused. 72  Godden, ‘Alfred, Asser and Boethius’, pp. 333–34 and n. 26. 73  Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 6, no. 24; also pp. 8–11 and 27–31; Bauer, ‘Altbretonischen Glossen’, pp. 9–65. 74  Le Duc, ‘Une glose en anglo-saxon’, with photo­graph. 75  Dumville, ‘Writers, Scribes’, p. 58, also suggesting that the gloss was intended to show how the Old English was pronounced. 76  Usefully collected together in Bauer, ‘Altbretonische Glossen’, and Falileyev, Le Vieuxgallois; see also Falileyev, Etymo­logical Glossary, pp. xiv–xvii.

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also becoming part of the Anglo-Saxon world, linguistically, culturally, economically, and administratively. For this reason and because of its smaller scale, it is simplistic at all periods to compare it directly with Wales and Brittany. The size and nature of the corpus also mean that there are great gaps in our knowledge of Old Cornish, for example in having only three finite verbs, as noted earlier. Furthermore, only three of the eleven items listed above actually consist of glossed texts, of the kind familiar in Old Breton, Old Welsh, and indeed Old Irish: nos 1 (Boethius), 3 (Tobit), and 4 (De raris fabulis); and the first two of those items contain only four glosses in total, while the third is a special case, since it is in part a bilingual text specifically intended for learning Latin. Two of the other items are not glosses but glossaries, no. 8, the Harley Glossary (supplying only two words), and no. 10, the Vocabulary; and the Cornish-language content of the other texts consists solely in names, with the exception of the Leiden Leechbook and John of Cornwall, where the Cornish phrases form part of his Latin commentary. (There are of course comparable texts from Wales and Brittany containing Brittonic names but no other words.) So the corpus is not only much smaller than those of Old Welsh and Old Breton, but more limited in scope and linguistic content, with no sentences (so no syntax), and with proper names forming a significant proportion of the whole. The broad range of topics covered by the Vocabulary partially compensates for this limitation, making it the one Old Cornish text which is regularly cited in discussions of Old Welsh or Old Breton, though even this advantage is offset by its comparatively late date, and by its being restricted almost entirely to nouns and adjectives. Second, the tenth century is much better represented than the eleventh. The reason may be the deepening Anglo-Saxon cultural and administrative influence in Cornwall during the latter century. This influence may have made the production of Cornish-language texts less likely at the high level of scholarship which many of these pieces represent, although those which do survive, notably the Vocabulary of the later twelfth century, show that the possibility still existed even at that later date. But as far as is known, Cornwall then waited two centuries before the wider spread of literacy in late medi­eval England once again produced an environment in which written texts became natural, this time of a different (and international) kind, religious dramas for a popular audience, and seemingly at only a single cultural centre.77

77 

Discussed, for example, in Padel, ‘Glasney College’ and references.

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Third, the great majority of these texts comes from cultural contexts which are Anglo-Saxon or include Anglo-Saxon material as well as Cornish. That is obviously true of the charters and the Manumissions (nos 6 and 7 above), but also of others, sometimes less obviously: no. 1 is one of the most important manu­s cripts for the study of Boethius in Anglo-Saxon England, and may be connected in some way with the work of translating that text into Old English;78 no. 3, the Tobit glosses, shows the use of the Anglo-Saxon letter wynn; no. 4, De raris fabulis, contains a few Old English glosses as well as Welsh and Cornish ones; and no. 8, Harley, is a glossary of Old English and Latin containing also the two Brittonic, probably Cornish, words. The postConquest texts also emerge from the Anglo-Norman world, obviously so in the case of nos 9, Domesday Book, and 10, the Vocabulary, which translates an Old English glossary; while no. 11, John of Cornwall, is dedicated to the Anglo-Norman Bishop Robert of Exeter, and is closely related to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History; like that work it emerges from both the Brittonic and the Anglo-Norman worlds.79 So the only items which do not have a partly English cultural context are nos 2, the Leiden Leechbook, and 5, the Vatican List of Saints — though see below for detailed points of spelling in both of those, too. * * * As for the principles and methods for distinguishing Old Cornish within the Brittonic languages, linguistic features can sometimes be clearest, when they are present at all. Certain sound-changes began to differentiate Old Welsh from Old Cornish-and-Breton from about the eighth century, making it sometimes possible to distinguish Welsh from the other two languages if the relevant sounds happen to be represented within the words of a given text;80 but many words remained identical, some even down to modern times. The most obvious of these sound-changes are as follows: the Old Welsh development of au in monosyllables and final syllables, corresponding to Cornish and Breton [ö]; the Welsh development of internal -lt-, -nt- to -ll-, -nn-, contrasting with their retention in Cornish and Breton (for instance, hanter ‘half ’, Welsh hanner); the Welsh retention of the high vowels i and u, where Cornish and Breton tended to have e and o (in addition to e and o of other origins); the reduction of unstressed vowels in Welsh to [ə], often spelt i, contrasting with the retention 78 

Godden, ‘Alfred, Asser, and Boethius’. Padel, ‘Evidence for Oral Tales’, pp. 147–50. 80  Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, pp. 18–23; Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, p. 190. 79 

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of those vowels in Cornish and Breton (as in the verbal prefixes do- and ro-, Old Welsh di-, ri-); the development of -ntr- and -ntl- to -thr-, -thl- in Welsh, but their retention in Cornish and Breton (for instance, Welsh ewythr ‘uncle’, Cornish ounter, Breton eontr);81 and the use in Cornish of e to spell an epenthetic vowel arising in word-final consonant groups, whereas Old Welsh tended to use other vowels to denote [ə], particularly i.82 The figures suggested above for the relative numbers of Welsh and Cornish words within the hybrid text De raris fabulis (no. 4) are based upon these kinds of sound-changes, which also provide the evidence for the allocation of certain other texts to Cornish (or theoretically to Breton) rather than Welsh (nos 1, Boethius; 2, Leiden; 3, Tobit; 5, Vatican List; 8, Harley Glossary; 10, Vocabulary; and 11, John of Cornwall). Conversely, these sound-changes can also provide evidence for allocating some texts, not discussed here, to Welsh rather than Cornish or Breton. On the other hand, distinguishing between Cornish and Breton on purely linguistic grounds is not usually possible until the twelfth century, when assibilation begins to appear in Cornish, although the earlier Welsh and Cornish epenthesis (from the ninth century) in word-final consonant-clusters sometimes provides a visible distinction between Cornish and Breton, as in no. 4 above, De raris fabulis. Sadly one feature which might be expected to distinguish Cornish from Breton (and from Welsh), its early reduction of diphthongs to simple vowels, is of less use than might be hoped. The reason is that in both Old Welsh and Old Breton some diphthongs, although still pronounced so, were occasionally written as single vowels. Thus Old Welsh per and couer ( Juvencus; Modern Welsh pair ‘dominion’ and cywair ‘complete, perfect’) both have e for the diphthong ei;83 and Old Breton shows occasional instances of the various oi diphthongs spelt with simple o or u.84 Rare though such spellings are in both Welsh and Breton, their existence means that a Cornish spelling such as Morhaitho (with a second element corresponding to that of Welsh Kanhaethoe, Old Breton Iarnhaithoui, but also Iarnhaethou) is not necessarily distinctive, because such spellings can occasionally appear in Welsh and Breton too.85 In practice 81 

Jackson, Language and History, p. 498; and compare uintl(um) under Leiden, no. 2 (above). 82  Jackson, Language and History, p. 55 foot, and pp. 337–38; Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, p. 190; this epenthesis did not occur in Breton. 83  Blodeugerdd, ed. by Haycock, pp. 9 and 16; Falileyev, Le Vieux-gallois, pp. 111, 117, and 119. 84  Jackson, Historical Phono­logy of Breton, pp. 184 and 207. 85  Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’, no. 24 (Morhaitho); Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts,

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it is undoubtedly significant that this particular name is always spelt with -o in the Bodmin Manumissions, never with -oi or -oe; but a single such spelling alone would not be diagnostic. Similarly Gerent in the Vatican List, from Latin Gerontius, contains the Old Cornish (and Breton) i-affection of o to e, not to ei as in Welsh (Middle Welsh Gereint),86 so it is typically Cornish or Breton, not Welsh; but on its own it would be less clearly diagnostic because of comparable spellings in Old Breton and (standing for ei) in Old Welsh, as seen. If guodrot in the Leiden Leechbook (no. 2, above) is the same word as Welsh godrwyth ‘marsh trefoil (?)’, both the lack of a diphthong in the second syllable, and the spelling of that syllable with o where Welsh has the high vowel w, might be considered typical of Cornish rather than Welsh; but again not decisively so. If linguistic features such as those listed above are present, they can sometimes be decisive, although the possibility has also come to be recognized of scribes converting words between Welsh on the one hand and Cornu-Breton on the other: that appears to have happened to a small extent in the surviving copy of the Vocabulary, made in south Wales;87 it may have occurred in De raris fabulis as well; and some Old Welsh forms surviving in the manu­scripts of Breton glosses raise the question of how much more interchange may have taken place, sometimes unsuspected, between those two areas.88 But in recent decades the context and script of texts have received greater prominence as criteria for allocating Brittonic texts, partly because of advances in textual, codico­logical, and palaeo­graphical understanding of them. Context is obviously decisive when a text actually deals with Cornish places or people, as in nos 5 (Saints’ List), 6 (Bodmin Manumissions), 7 (Anglo-Saxon charters), 9 (Domesday Book), and, in part, 11 ( John of Cornwall); but it also applies, though less decisively, to nos 3 and 4 (Tobit glosses and De raris fabulis), both found in a collection associated with Cornwall.89 Script has also been decisive, for example in assigning

ed. by Bartrum, p. 46 (Kanhaethoe); Loth, Chrestomathie, p. 135 (Iarnhaithoui, Iarnhaethou); compare the remarks of Fleuriot, ‘Les gloses à Smaragde’, p. 187, and Grammaire, pp. 30–32. 86  Jackson, Language and History, pp. 581 and 592–93. 87  Blom, ‘Welsh Glosses’, pp. 35–36, and ‘Multilingualism’, pp. 64–65; Padel, ‘Nature and Date’, p. 191. 88  Notably in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 10290, and Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 477; Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, pp. 8–9; Dumville, ‘Writers, Scribes’, p. 57. 89  Jenner, ‘Lannaled Mass of St Germanus’; Dumville, quoted in Gwara, Education in Wales and Cornwall, pp. 11–12.

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the Smaragdus glosses to Breton rather than Cornish;90 the open question at present seems to be the extent to which Insular hands of the later ninth and the tenth centuries, of types characteristically associated with Wales, could alternatively be considered Cornish. This question arises particularly in relation to nos 1 (Boethius), 2 (Leiden), and 4 (De raris fabulis). The most difficult question is to what extent spelling can be used as a basis for assigning a text to one or another language, and particularly how far the use of the Anglo-Saxon letters thorn, eth, and wynn is diagnostic of Cornish rather than Welsh or Breton. Fleuriot, in particular, has emphasized this criterion for distinguishing between Cornish and Breton.91 This is justifiable in general terms, and Fleuriot’s judgements have rightly been accepted (except in the case of the Leiden Leechbook); but in principle this criterion could be unsafe, in both directions, if used rigidly. One Old Breton word is widely recognized as having p written in error for Anglo-Saxon þ (thorn), arlup for arluþ (Modern Welsh arlludd ‘obstacle, hindrance’), showing that such letters may have existed in Old Breton contexts (though it may also be significant that the letter was miscopied);92 and one Breton manu­script (Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 476) shows the use of wynn in an Old Breton personal name;93 and the phrase of Old English (itself glossed in Brittonic) written into a manu­script containing Old Breton and Old Welsh glosses is also significant in this context.94 In Old Welsh, on the other hand, instances of these Anglo-Saxon letters seem to be very rare. The only clear example seems to be papep bí ‘what thing is it?’ glossing quid? in the Cambridge Juvencus manu­script, where -pep is miscopied from an original containing -peþ ‘thing’, with thorn;95 a second possible example occurs in laiðwer glossing lacticula, ‘thin milk (?)’ (Welsh llaeth ‘milk’), but that word occurs in De raris fabulis, so it could be Cornish rather than Welsh.96 90 

Fleuriot, ‘Les gloses à Smaragde’. Fleuriot, ‘Les gloses à Smaragde’, p. 186, Grammaire, p. 21, and Dictionnaire, p. 18. 92  Fleuriot, Dictionnaire, p. 73, and references. 93  Dumville, Liturgy, p. 117 n. 151, and ‘English Element’, p. 12, citing the text printed by Lambert, ‘Commentaires celtiques’, pt 2, p. 205. 94  Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 477; Le Duc, ‘Une glose en anglo-saxonne glosé en brittonique’. 95  McKee, Juvencus: Text and Commentary, pp. 244 and 543–44; McKee cites one or two other possible Welsh instances that have been suggested. 96  Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by Stevenson, p. 3; De raris fabulis, ed. by Gwara, § 6.14 91 

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So far so good: Fleuriot’s principle concerning the use of Anglo-Saxon letters seems to hold, though with slight qualifications, for Old Welsh and Old Breton. But if applied in the other direction it is slightly less secure, at least in theory: there is in principle no reason why an earlier Old Cornish text should not have been written entirely in the distinctive inherited Neo-Brittonic ortho­ graphy, without the use of Anglo-Saxon letters. Several Old Cornish texts do show this system, at least partially, whereby internal consonants have their lenited values, such that written p, t, c mean the sounds [b], [d], [g], while written b, m, d, and g mean [v], [ð], and [γ] (later zero).97 Nos 1 (Boethius), 2 (Leiden), 3 (Tobit), 4 (De raris fabulis), and 5 (Vatican List) all use the system, though the Tobit glosses and De raris fabulis both have single examples of words using Anglo-Saxon letters as well (dowomisurami, laiðwer). The Vatican List of Saints and the Leiden Leechbook are both written entirely in this distinctive system. The Vatican List contains two examples of internal -gu- meaning [w]: Pierguin (St Piran), presumably meaning ‘Pierwin’, and Megunn (St Mewan), presumably for ‘Mewin’;98 and Leiden contains the form abranguænn, Modern Welsh amranwen ‘feverfew’ (the plant-name, literally ‘eyelid-white’), again with -gufor [w]. However, even these two texts may contain hints, albeit very uncertain, of Anglo-Saxon influence. In the Vatican List the error in Geuethenoc (for Guethenoc, saint’s name; Old Breton Guethenoc, Old Welsh Gueithenauc) could perhaps have been induced by the frequency of words in Old English beginning ge-; but it could alternatively, or additionally, have arisen by simple anticipation of the -e- immediately following. In the Leiden text, the frequent use of the di­graph æ for the monophthong vowel e (sometimes used interchangeably with it: ælilub beside elilub ‘ointmentwort’),99 and occasionally for i, seems to be almost unique within the early Brittonic world. Pierre-Yves Lambert has suggested that certain other possible Anglo-Saxon influences detectable in the Leiden Leechbook (spellings, and possible calques of Old English words) can be included among the arguments for its Cornish origin.100 This particular usage in Leiden (æ alternating with e) is (p. 7); and Falileyev, Etymo­logical Dictionary, p. 100; Jackson, Language and History, p. 55, ‘characteristically Cornish in ortho­graphy’. 97  Jackson, Language and History, pp. 67–75; Russell, Reading Ovid in Medi­eval Wales, pp. 153–56. 98  Olson and Padel, ‘Tenth-Century List’, pp. 52–53 and 59–60. 99  Leiden, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, p. 64. 100  Lambert, review of Leiden, p. 219.

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completely normal in writing Latin, of course, but parallels for it do not seem to occur in vernacular Old Welsh or Old Breton. The only other places where this usage appears in any of the Brittonic languages seem to be some of the Bodmin Manumissions and Anglo-Saxon charters. Both of these texts, like Leiden, include cases where the di­graph was used alongside spellings of the same words with e. In the Manumissions, the personal name Glowmæð contains it (with uncertain second element, but compare the names Medhuil and Meðwuistel, Medguistyl, all spelt with e);101 also the name Ylcærþon (again uncertain, but also spelt Ylcerthon);102 and probably the name Wenwærþlon (again with uncertain second element).103 The entries containing these three forms with æ are from the second half of the tenth century (nos 3 and 49) and around 1000 (no. 22). In the charters: hræt ‘ford’ (elsewhere usually hryd, hryt) and Trefnæwð (beside Trefneweð and Trefnewið in the same charter), both in a charter of 969 copied in the second half of the eleventh century;104 Træfhryt beside Trefhryt in an original charter of 1049;105 and hæscen ‘sedge’ (heschen in the Vocabulary; Old Welsh hescenn, Old Breton hiscent, hischinn) and Trefdæwig (beside Trefdewig), both in a charter dated 1059 and written at about that date.106 These spellings all appear in charters copied or written in the middle or second half of the eleventh century, so they are 150–200 years removed in date from the Leiden Leechbook. However, the Manumission entries fall halfway between those two dates. So it would not seem impossible that this spelling may have been a recognized usage for writing Old Cornish words and names in Anglo-Saxon Cornwall, though at present the evidence for it is slight. At any rate it is striking that this usage occurs, seemingly in these three places and nowhere else in the Brittonic world. Part of the problem in comparing spellings between the early Brittonic languages is that one is not always comparing like with like. The document most often cited for Old Cornish usage is the Vocabulary; but it is uncertain how 101 

Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’, nos 3 (Glowmæð), 11 (Medhuil), 36, and 47 (Medguistyl, Meðwuistel). 102  Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’, nos 22 and 36. 103  Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’, no. 49. 104  Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements, p. 197 (hryt, etc.); Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 770. 105  Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1019. 106  Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements, pp. 130–31 (heschen); Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1027.

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typical it can be considered to be, both because it is so late in date (second half of the twelfth century) and also because it is by its nature culturally AngloSaxon and Anglo-Norman in its background, at least in part (as well as being transmitted through a Welsh centre). So its high incidence of Anglo-Saxon letters may not be typical of Old Cornish as a whole. Nevertheless similar usages are also seen in nos 3 (Tobit), although it consists of only three glosses, 4 (De raris fabulis, the single word laiðwer), and 6 (Bodmin Manumissions), and naturally in no. 7 (Charters). Some other texts, nos 1 (Boethius) and 8 (Harley Glossary) consist of too few words for their lack of such usage to carry any weight, though both of those too come from Anglo-Saxon contexts (above). Nos 9 (Domesday Book) and 11 ( John of Cornwall) both emerge from the Anglo-Norman world, so their lack of Anglo-Saxon spellings is unsurprising. Thus it remains uncertain whether Old Cornish was ever written altogether without such Anglo-Saxon influence, although that should theoretically have been possible, and nos 2 (Leiden) and 3 (Vatican List) may be examples of such texts, depending upon the weight given to the uncertain features mentioned above (Geue- for Gue-, and the use of the di­graph æ). Overall, therefore, Fleuriot’s judgement that the presence or absence of Anglo-Saxon features can serve as a test to decide whether a text is Cornish or Breton seems to remain valid, although slight reservations, in both directions, mean that it would seem unsafe to apply it rigidly, especially if that were to disallow the possibility of a text being Cornish. For lack of evidence it remains an open question whether Cornish texts were written in the distinctive NeoBrittonic spelling system in its pure form, without traces of Anglo-Saxon influence, although the Leiden Leechbook and the Vatican List may be examples of such texts. Overall, the inconclusive nature of this aspect of the investigation serves to emphasize the pervasive nature of Anglo-Saxon cultural influence in Cornwall in the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially compared with Wales at the same period.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar, ed.  by Marged Haycock (Felindre: Barddas, 1994) De raris fabulis, ‘On Uncommon Tales’: A  Glossed Latin Colloquy-Text from a TenthCentury Cornish Manu­script, ed. by Scott Gwara (Cambridge: Department of AngloSaxon, Norse, and Celtic, 2005) Domesday Book, x: Cornwall, ed. by Caroline Thorn and Frank Thorn (Chichester: Phil­ li­more, 1979) Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by William H. Stevenson, Anecdota Oxoniensia, Mediaeval and Modern Series, 15 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1929) Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts, ed. by Peter C. Bartrum (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1966) The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary, ed. by Robert T. Oliphant (The Hague: Mouton, 1966) ‘A New Edition of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’, ed. by Michael J. Curley, Specu­ lum, 57 (1982), 217–49

Secondary Works Bauer, Bernhard, ‘Studien zu den Altbretonischen Glossen’ (unpublished M.Phil. dissertation, Universität Wien, 2008) [accessed 1 March 2022] Blom, Alderik, ‘The Welsh Glosses in the Vocabularium Cornicum’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 57 (Summer 2009), 23–40 —— , ‘Multilingualism and the Vocabularium Cornicum’, in Multilingualism in Medi­eval Britain (c. 1066–1520): Sources and Analysis, ed. by Judith A. Jefferson and Ad Putter (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 59–71 Craster, H.  H.  E., ‘The Glosses of the Codex Oxoniensis Posterior’, Revue celtique, 40 (1923), 135–36 Curley, Michael J., ‘Gerallt Gymro a Siôn o Gernyw fel cyfieithwyr Proffwydoliaethau Myrddin’, Llên Cymru, 15 (1984–1986), 23–33 Curran, Colleen McCarthy, ‘Changing the Tradition: The Morpho­logy of Nascent Insular Caroline Minuscule in Tenth-Century Britain’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, King’s College London, 2017) Dumville, David N., Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992) —— , English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, A.D. 950–1030 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993)

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—— , ‘The English Element in Tenth-Century Breton Book-Production’, in his Britons and Anglo-Saxons in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), chapter XIV —— , ‘Writers, Scribes and Readers in Brittany, A.D. 800–1100: The Evidence of Manu­ scripts’, in Medi­eval Celtic Literature and Society, ed. by Helen Fulton (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 49–64 Faletra, Michael A., ‘Merlin in Cornwall: The Source and Contexts of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’, Journal of English and Germanic Philo­logy, 111 (2012), 304–38 Falileyev, Alexander, Etymo­logical Glossary of Old Welsh (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000) —— , Le Vieux-gallois (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag, 2008) Falileyev, Alexander, and Morfydd E. Owen, The Leiden Leechbook: A Study of the Earliest Neo-Brittonic Medical Compilation (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität, 2005) Falileyev, Alexander, and Paul Russell, ‘The Dry-Point Glosses in Oxoniensis Posterior’, in Yr Hen Iaith: Studies in Early Welsh, ed. by Paul Russell (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003), pp. 95–101 Fleuriot, Léon, ‘Les gloses à Smaragde sont-elles corniques ou bretonnes?’, Études celtiques, 9 (1960–1961), 183–89 —— , Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux breton (Paris: Klincksieck, 1964) (repr. as vol. i of Claude Evans and Léon Fleuriot, A Dictionary of Old Breton: Dictionnaire du vieux breton; Historical and Comparative, 2 vols (Toronto: Prepcorp, 1985)) —— , Le Vieux breton: éléments d’une grammaire (Paris: Klincksieck, 1964) —— , ‘Les fragments du texte brittonique de la “Prophetia Merlini”’, Études celtiques, 14 (1974–1975), 43–56 —— , ‘Notes philo­logiques’, Études celtiques, 19 (1982), 266–70 Förster, Max, ‘Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-Evangeliars’, in A Grammatical Miscellany Offered to Otto Jespersen, ed. by Niels Bøgholm, Aage Brusendorff, and Carl A. Bodelsen (Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1930), pp. 77–99 Friedel, V. H., ‘La Lorica de Leyde’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 2 (1899), 64–72 Godden, Malcolm, ‘Alfred, Asser, and Boethius’, in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed.  by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), i, pp. 326–48 Graves, Eugene van Tassel, ‘The Old Cornish Vocabulary’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1962) Guy, Ben, ‘The Life of St Dyfrig and the Lost Charters of Moccas (Mochros), Herefordshire’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 75 (Summer 2018), 1–37 Gwara, Scott, Education in Wales and Cornwall in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries: Understanding ‘De raris fabulis’ (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 2005) Hooke, Della, Pre-Conquest Charter-Bounds of Devon and Cornwall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994) Jackson, Kenneth, Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni­ versity Press, 1953)

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—— , A Historical Phono­logy of Breton (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967) Jenner, Henry, ‘The Lannaled Mass of St Germanus in Bodl. MS 572’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 23 (1929–1932), 477–92 Lambert, Pierre-Yves, ‘Les commentaires celtiques à Bède le Vénérable’, Études celtiques, 20 (1983), 119–43; 21 (1984), 185–206 —— , review of Leiden Leechbook, ed. by Falileyev and Owen, Études celtiques, 36 (2008), 215–19 Le Duc, Gwenaël, ‘Une glose en anglo-saxon glosé en brittonique’, Études celtiques, 16 (1979), 261–62 Lewis, Barry, ‘A Possible Provenance for the Old Cornish Vocabulary’, Cambrian Medi­ eval Celtic Studies, 73 (Summer 2017), 1–14 Lindsay, Wallace M., ‘A Welsh (Cornish?) Gloss in a Leyden MS’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 1 (1897), 361 —— , Early Welsh Script (Oxford: Parker, 1912) Loth, Joseph, Vocabulaire vieux-breton (Paris: Champion, 1884) —— , Chrestomathie bretonne (Paris: Bouillon, 1890) —— , ‘Une glose brittonique du Xe siècle’, Revue celtique, 36 (1915–1916), 411–12 and plate —— , ‘Une glose brittonne inédite du IXe–Xe siècle; une autre origine douteuse’, Revue celtique, 50 (1933), 357–62 Madan, Falconer, H. H. E. Craster, Richard W. Hunt, Noël Denholm-Young, and P. D. Record, A  Summary Catalogue of Western Manu­scripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 7 vols in 8 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1895–1953) McKee, Helen, ‘The Script of the Leiden Leechbook’ and ‘Punctuation’, in The Leiden Leechbook: A Study of the Earliest Neo-Brittonic Medical Compilation, ed. by Alexander Falileyev and Morfydd E. Owen (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität, 2005), pp. 88–94 and 95–102 Padel, Oliver, Cornish Place-Name Elements, English Place-Name Society, 56–57 (Not­ ting­ham: English Place-Name Society, 1985) —— , ‘Evidence for Oral Tales in Medi­eval Cornwall’, Studia Celtica, 40 (2006), 127–53 —— , ‘Place-Names and the Saxon Conquest of Devon and Cornwall’, in Britons in AngloSaxon England, ed. by Nick Higham (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), pp. 215–30 —— , Slavery in Saxon Cornwall: The Bodmin Manumissions (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 2009) —— , ‘The Boundary of Tywarnhayle (Perranzabuloe) in A.D. 960’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (2014), 69–92 —— , ‘The Nature and Date of the Old Cornish Vocabulary’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­ logie, 61 (2014), 173–99 —— , ‘Glasney College, Penryn, Cornwall’, in Europe: A  Literary History 1348–1418, ed. by David Wallace, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), i, pp. 455–64 —— , ‘Where Was Middle Cornish Spoken?’, Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 74 (Winter 2017), 1–31

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Pelteret, David A. E., Slavery in Early Mediaeval England: From the Reign of Alfred until the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995) Russell, Paul, Reading Ovid in Medi­eval Wales (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2017) Schlutter, Otto B., ‘Weitere keltische Spuren in altenglischen Glossaren’, Anglia, 33 (1910), 137–42 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘A New Brittonic Gloss on Boethius: ud rocashaas’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 50 (Winter, 2005), 77–86 (repr. in Patrick Sims-Williams, Studies on Celtic Languages before the Year 1000 (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007), pp. 231–40) Stokes, Peter A., English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut, c. 990 – c. 1035 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2014) Stokes, Whitley, ‘The Manumissions in the Bodmin Gospels’, Revue celtique, 1  (1872), 332‒45 Williams, Ifor, ‘torogen, Trogog’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 11 (1941–1944), 140

Digital Resources Sawyer, Peter H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Biblio­graphy (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968); updated version at [accessed 1 March 2022]

Bardic Grammars on Syllables Thomas Charles-Edwards

T

his paper is a continuation of an earlier one devoted to the first section of the grammars attributed to Einion Offeiriad and Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug, on llythyr, litterae.1 Although the grammar attributed to Dafydd Ddu is preserved in the earlier manu­script, Aberystwyth, NLW Peniarth MS 20, written about 1330, it was a revision of a slightly earlier grammar by Einion Offeiriad, written about ten years earlier but preserved in manu­scripts the earliest of which is the Red Book of Hergest, written between 1382 and 1408.2 Whereas Einion Offeiriad appears to have been working in Ceredigion, Dafydd Ddu belonged to north-east Wales. This difference is reflected in the manu­scripts: Peniarth MS 20 was written at Valle Crucis, just to the north of Llangollen and within the commote of Iâl; the relevant part of the Red Book of Hergest was written by Hywel Fychan, a professional scribe originally from Buellt, for a patron, Hopgyn ap Tomos, the site of whose house, Ynysforgan, is close to Swansea.3 From ‘letters’, llythyr (singular llythyren), these grammars moved on to syllables, then words, classified by parts of speech, and finally syntax (ymadrawd), before arriving at metrics. Like their model, the fourth-century Latin grammar 1 

Charles-Edwards, ‘The Welsh Bardic Grammars on litterae’. The edition in Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, ed. by Williams and Jones is abbreviated GP. I am grateful to Paul Russell for reading a draft of the present paper and suggesting improvements. It is offered as a token of gratitude to Patrick for his leadership and example in carrying forward the study of the history of Welsh, as well as many other branches of Celtic Studies. 2  Gruffydd, ‘Wales’s Second Grammarian’. 3  Huws, ‘Llyfr Coch Hergest’; Prys Morgan, ‘Glamorgan and the Red Book’. Thomas Charles-Edwards ([email protected]) was Jesus Professor of Celtic in the University of Oxford from 1997 to 2011. His research is mainly on the history of early medi­eval Ireland and Wales. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131204 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 239–256 BREPOLS

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of Donatus, the Welsh grammars, a millennium later, worked in the interface between spoken and written forms of the language. The three properties of llythyr, litterae — nomen, figura, and potestas — looked in different directions: the names of letters had their home in elementary pedagogy with pupils learning the tools of literacy and reciting the abecedarium (> W. egwyddor), their abc; the figura, the shape of a letter on the page or writing tablet, concerned the written language; and the potestas ‘power’ referred to the sound or sounds of the letter in speech.4 With the succeeding section on syllables the opening section on letters formed the two parts of an equivalent to phono­logy in a modern grammar. The present paper, however, is very different in its approach from the earlier paper on llythyr. The early fourteenth-century Welsh grammarians on ‘letters’ were closely dependent on the standard Latin grammar of Late Antiquity, Donatus’s Ars maior. That made it possible to pay special attention to where they diverged from Donatus and to advance explanations for those divergences. By that method it was possible to give reasons for believing that Einion and Dafydd were the heirs of a textual tradition lying behind their grammars, a tradition that stretched back at least into the thirteenth century. However, it is important not to confuse two issues: one, as we have seen, is how far one can reconstruct the prehistory of the text; the other is how old by the fourteenth century were the rules of Welsh metrics. 5 Many of the latter were already ancient by 1200 as we can see by analysing earlier Welsh poetry and comparing the metrical structure of early Irish verse. This paper has to adopt a different approach for the simple reason that the second section of the Welsh grammars, on syllables, is far more innovative. Welsh grammarians had little choice: both they and Donatus were always keeping one eye on metre, but the fundamentals of metrical form stemmed, in Latin, from the contrast of long and short syllables, while, in Welsh, rhyme was crucial. A full analysis of the phono­logical basis of Welsh metre would have included alliteration, but neither Einion nor Dafydd Ddu paid any sustained attention in their grammars to this aspect of the poetic craft, even though, as poets, they certainly did; Thomas Parry suggested that this omission was because Einion was dependent on a text about a 4 

See the passages quoted in GP 162. Lewis, ‘Einion Offeiriad and the Bardic Grammar’, pp. 77–78, makes an argument that trwm ac ysgafn dates from before the shift of stress from the final to the penultimate syllable. Whether or not this is true — and Jenny Rowlands, ‘Some Aspects of proest in Early Welsh Poetry’, offers examples from early poems when it is not observed — it is irrelevant to the textual history of the bardic grammars. 5 

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century earlier, but this is hardly a sufficient explanation, since alliteration in Welsh poetry was far older than 1200.6 A more likely reason is that Donatus did not provide a template for an analysis of alliteration, since alliteration was not a normal adornment of Latin verse; rhyme, on the other hand, was familiar from Latin hymns. A further reason why this paper has to take a different approach is that there is some indication that Einion, and following him, Dafydd Ddu, may have owed something, probably indirectly, to Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (sixth century in origin, familiar in Insular circles from the Carolingian period).7 The Welsh grammars open their section on syllables with a discussion of how many ‘letters’ could be included in a single syllable; so does Priscian. We shall see later that their treatment of syllable quantity may also have been indebted to Priscian, who was, in addition, more interested than was Donatus in poetic diction. Although Einion and, following him, Dafydd Ddu on syllables could not depend on Donatus to the extent that they could when discussing litterae, they did not entirely cut loose. They could find a stimulus from Donatus’s discussion of ‘common quantity’, when the length of the syllable was not determined by the length of its vowel (diphthongs in Latin verse were always long ) but depended on the following consonant or consonants. Here Donatus’s ‘common quantity’ provided a template for the distinction between heavy and light syllables, as in glann versus glan. Also, even though vowels had ceased to be distinguished by quantity in Welsh in the sixth century, Einion and Dafydd still repeated the doctrine about long and short syllables because, apart from anything else, diphthongs were longer than simple vowels, even though, as we shall see, one of their most remarkable divergences from Donatus was over the length of diphthongs (as well as syllables). Yet another reason why Donatus remained relevant, even though Latin metrics were utterly different from Welsh metrics, is that the analysis of syllables made free use of concepts from the section on llythyr and that section was heavily dependent on Donatus.8 The outline shape of the section on syllables in the two grammars, with references to numbered sentences in the texts given below, is as follows: 6 

Cynghanedd alongside cymeriad is mentioned at GP 13.16 = 32.5; Parry, ‘A Welsh Metrical Treatise’, p. 187; Gwaith Einion Offeiriad a Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug, ed. by Gruffydd ac Ifans. 7  Law, The Insular Latin Grammarians, p. 21. 8  This paper should be read alongside Jacques, ‘Syllable and Diphthong Classification’.

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Einion

Dafydd Ddu

A. Syllables

A. Syllables

1. Trwm ac ysgafn: ‘heavy and light’, 4–6

1. Lleddf a thalgrwn, 4–12

2. Lleddf a thalgrwn: ‘sloping’ and ‘end-round’, 7–18

2. Trwm ac ysgafn, 13–15

B. Diphthongs, 19–34

B. Long and short syllables, 16–20

1. Lleddf a thalgrwn Talgrwn + wib: Vu/vʉ, 19–22 Lleddf: Vɨ (for Vi see D26), 23 2. Exceptions, 24–27, 29–30, 34, interwoven with combinations 3. Combinations, e.g. dipton dalgronleddf, 28, 31–33 C. Long and short syllables: sillaf hir ~ sillaf fer, 35–40

C. Diphthongs, 21–40 1. Lleddf a thalgrwn Talgrwn + wib Lleddf 2. Exceptions 3. Combinations

The first point to emerge from the broad plan of Einion and Dafydd Ddu’s sections on syllables is that, though they follow Donatus in devoting the section to syllables, in fact both of them use as much space on diphthongs as on syllables. Secondly, Dafydd Ddu shifted the final part of Einion’s discussion — on long and short syllables — so that it came immediately after the main discussion of syllables (§ A in both grammars) and before his classification of diphthongs. The rationale for this change is obvious — to bring material on syllables to the front, where it belongs in a section ostensibly devoted to syllables. But it has a disadvantage, also apparent from the outline plan: Einion’s § A, on syllables, ends with the pair, lleddf a thalgrwn, ‘sloping’ and ‘end-round’; and the same pair opens § B, on diphthongs. In Einion’s grammar the two are linked by the opening sentence of his discussion of diphthongs (19 in the text below): ‘Sillaf dipton a uyd o gysswllt dwy uogal ygyt yn vn sillaf, val y mae llaw, llew’, and the pair of llaw and llew reappear in 21, now illustrating the dipton dalgron. The pair of texts below are largely as in the splendid edition in Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, with a few differences: one is that 6 in the Red Book text of Einion’s grammar is not changed to w, not least because the scribe also used w and his choices may be significant (see Paul Russell’s paper in this volume);

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another, writing ygyt as one word, following the manu­script, is less important, but put together these changes produce a text that involves less editorial interference with the manu­script. Where a scribe has corrected an error, however, the corrected text is given without any notice of the error, except that the marginal addition at D8 is given, as in GP, in square brackets. Words cited as examples are italicized as in GP, but also letters represented in the MS by suspension marks. The sentences are numbered to facilitate references, which will take the form E21 for Einion’s sentence 21, D21 for Dafydd Ddu’s. The much shorter section from Donatus’s grammar is prefixed to show the contrast. Images of both MSS are available online (at: and ). Donatus, Ars grammatica, i.3, De syllaba, ed. by Holtz, Donat et la tradition de l’en­ seignement grammatical, pp. 605–07; ed. by Keil, Grammatici Latini, iv, 368–69. Syllaba est comprehensio litterarum uel unius uocalis enuntiatio temporum capax. Syllabarum aliae sunt breues, aliae longae, aliae communes. Breues sunt, quae et correptam uocalem habent et non desinunt in duas consonantes aut in unam duplicem aut in aliquid, quod sit pro duabus consonantibus. Longae aut natura sunt aut positione fiunt. Natura, cum aut uocalis producitur, ut a o, aut duae uocales iunguntur et diphthongon faciunt, ut ae oe au eu ei. Positione, cum correpta uocalis in duas desinit consonantes, ut arma arcus, aut in unam duplicem, ut axis, aut in alteram consonantem et alteram uocalem loco consonantis positam, ut At Iuno, At Venus, aut in i litteram solam loco consonantis positam, quam non nulli geminant, ut aio te, Aeacida, Romanos uincere posse. Sunt etiam syllabae, quae communes dicuntur, cum aut correptam uocalem duae consonantes secuntur, quarum prior aut muta quaepiam est aut f semiuocalis et sequens liquida; aut cum correpta uocalis in unam desinit consonantem sequente h, quae plerisque adspirationis uidetur nota; aut cum correptam uocalem duae consonantes secuntur, quarum prior s littera est; aut cum partem orationis terminat breuis syllaba, quae in unam desinit consonantem; aut cum pars orationis desinit in longam, quae dipthongos appellatur, sequente statim uocali; aut cum producta uocalis est uocali altera consequente; aut cum pronomen c litteram terminatum uocalis statim subsequitur; aut cum correptam uocalem suscipit z consonans Graeca duplex. Longa syllaba duo tempora habet, breuis unum. Syllaba apud metricos semipes nominatur.

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Peniarth MS 20 copy of Dafydd Ddu, § 2, pp. 306–07. GP 39.33. Kanys o’r llythyr y byd y sillafeu, wrth hynny reit yw gwybot beth yw y sillaf, a pha ffuryf y gwahaner y sillafeu. 2Sillaf yw kynnulleitua llyaws o lythyr y gyt, kyt boet sillaf neu eir weithyeu o vn llythyren. 3Rei o’r sillafeu a vydant o vn llythyrenn, val y mae a; rei o dwy, val y mae af; rei o deir, val y mae eur; rei o bedeir, val y mae kerd; rei o bymp, val y mae gwers; rei o chwech, val y mae gwnawn; rei o chwech ac arwyd vcheneit, val y mae gwnaeth; ac ny byd mwy no hynny byth mywn vn sillaf o lythyr. 1

Rei hefyt o’r sillafeu a vydant talgrynnyon, ereill a vydant ledyfyon. 5Sillaf dalgronn a vyd pan vo vn vogal e hunan yn y sillaf, beth bynnac a vo o’r kytseinannyeit yn ol nac ymlaen y vogal, val y mae glan, glas, glut. 6Sillaf ledyf a vyd o deir ford. 7Vn yw honn a dywetpwyt vchot, nyt amgen, kadarnledyf. 8Yr eil ford y byd sillaf ledyf pan vo dwy vogal y gyt yn y sillaf, a grym dwy vogal vdunt, [val y . . . glw . . glo. . . ein . . . 9Kanys ony byd grymm dwy vogal vdunt, sillaf dalgronn vyd, val y mae gwir, gwar, kanys w a gyll grym bogal yn y kyfryw le hwnnw, a grym konsonans a vyd ydi, nyt amgen pan ysgriuenner hi ymlaen bogal arall, val y mae gwann, gwenn. 10A’r kyffryw sillaf honno a elwir penngamledyf, kanys penngammu a wna o vogal ar vogal arall. 11 Y dryded ford y byd sillaf ledyf pan vo y neu w yn ol llythyrenn dawd, ac ymlaen y llythyrenn dawd bogal, y val y mae eiry, w val y mae berw. 12A’r kyfryw sillaf honno a elwir tawdledyf, o achaws y llythyr tawd a vyd yn y sillaf. 13Rei heuyt o’r sillafeu a vydant trymyon, ereill a vydant ysgafnyon. 14 Sillaf dromm a vyd pan vo dwy gonsonans gyfryw yn y sillaf, beth bynnac a vo 4

Red Book version of Einion’s text § 2, Oxford, Jesus Coll. MS 111, fol. 279r, cols 1117–18. GP 1.24–3.21. Kanys o’r llythyr y gỽneir y sillafeu, ỽrth hynny, reit yw gỽybot beth yw sillaf, a pha furyf y gỽahaner y sillafeu. 2Sillaf yỽ kynnulleitua lliaỽs o lythyr ygyt, kyt boet sillaf neu eir o vn llythyren weitheu. 3Rei o’r sillaueu a uydant o vn lythyren, ual y mae a; a rei o dỽy, ual y mae af; rei o deir, ual y mae eur; rei o bedeir, ual y mae kerd; rei o bump, ual y mae g6naf; rei o chwech, ual y mae g6na6n; rei o seith, ual y mae g6naeth; ac ny byd mỽy o lythyr yn vn sillaf byth no hynny. 1

Rei o’r sillafeu a uydant drymyon, ereill a uydant ysgaỽnnyon. 5Sillaf ysgaỽn a uyd pan uo un o’r kytseinanyeit ehunan yn y diwed, ual y mae gwen, llen. 6Sillaf drom a uyd pan uo dỽy o’r kytseinanyeit vnryỽ yn y diwed, ual y mae g6enn, llenn. 7Rei heuyt o’r sillafeu a uydant ledyfyon, ereill a uydant dalgrynyon. 8Sillaf dalgron a uyd pan uo vn vogal ehunan yndi, beth bynnac a uo o gytseinanyeit yn ol nac ymlaen y uogal, ual y mae glan, glut. 9Sillaf ledyf a uyd o deir fford. 10Vn yỽ pan uo dwy uogal ygyt yn y sillaf, ac un yn goleduu att y llall, ual y mae glwys. 11A chyfryỽ sillaf a honno a elwir penngamledyf, kanys penngamu a wna un o’r bogalyeit tu a’r llall. 4

Eissoes, hagen, reit yỽ edrych pa ffuryf y bo y dỽy uogal yn y sillaf, ae ygyt, ae ar wahan. 13Os ygyt y bydant, ual y mae gwyr, sillaf dalgron uyd. 14Os ar wahan y bydant, ac ychydic o leduat yn eu dywedwydyat, ual y mae g6yr, sillaf ledyf uyd. 15Yr eil fford, sillaf ledyf a elwir kadarnledyf, ual y mae toryf, taryf, kerd, mygyr, mydr. 16A’r mod hỽnnw a elwir kadarnledyf, lledyf o 12

Bardic Grammars on Syllables o’r bogalyeit yndi, val y mae gwenn, llenn. 15 Sillaf ysgafyn a vyd pan vo vn gonsonans gyfryw yn y sillaf, beth bynnac a vo o’r bogalyeit hefyt yn y sillaf, val y mae gwen, llen. 16Rei heuyt o’r sillafeu a vydant hiryon, ereill a vydant vyrryon. 17Deu amser a vyd y sillaf hir, ac vn y sillaf verr, kanys hwy o amser y bydir yn dywedut sillaf hir noc vn verr. 18Hir vyd pob sillaf ledyf, beth bynnac vo, na thrwmm nac ysgauyn. 19Berr vyd pob sillaf dalgronn, beth bynnac vo, na thrwmm nac ysgafyn. 20Rei heuyt o’r sillafeu a vydant hwy no’r lleill, herwyd meint a messur o lythyr ac amseroed a vo yn y sillaf. 21Sillaf diptonn a vyd pan vo dwy vogal yn y sillaf a grym dwy vogal vdunt, val y mae glew. 22Deu ryw dipton ysyd, dipton dalgronn a diptonn ledyf. 23Pymp diptonn dalgronn ysyd, nyt amgen, aw, ew, iw, yw, uw; aw, val y mae llaw; ew, val y mae llew; iw, val y mae lliw; yw, val y mae llyw; uw, val y mae duw. 24Ac eu heuyt ysyd diptonn dalgronn, val y mae kleu, a honno yw y diptonn ny cheffir proest yn y herbynn; ac am hynny y gelwir hi diptonn wib, am na cheiff a’y hattepo ar broest. 25Pedeir diptonn ledyf ysyd, nyt amgen, ae, oe, wy, ei: ae, val y mae kae; oe, val y mae doe; wy, val y mae rwy; ei, val y mae trei. 26Oi, val y mae roi, troi, ac oy, val y mae roy, troy, ysyd dwy wibledyf, kany chaffant a’y hatteppo ar ledyfbroest. 27Nyt diptonn ey, kanys damwein yw y chaffael heb h yrwng e ac y, val y mae gwehyrd. 28Sillafeu ereill a vydant o gysswllt bogalyeit y gyt, ac ny bydant diptonnyeit, nyt amgen pan vo y neu i ymlaen diptonn ledyf neu vn dalgronn. 29Yn vn sillaf oll y bernir y gyt, val y mae dioer, dyawl, a’r kyfryw sillaf honno a elwir diptonn losgyrnyawc, o achaws y llosgwrn a vyd ymlaen y dipton. 30Pan vo sillaf yn teruynu yn teir bogal y gyt, a’y dechreu yn lledyf a’y diwed yn dalgronn, honno a elwir diptonn

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achaỽs y llythyr taỽd yn y sillafeu, kadarn o achaỽs bot dỽy o’r kytseinanyeit ygyt yndunt. 17Y dryded fford y byd sillaf ledyf: pan vo y neu w yn ol llythyren daỽd, ac yn y blaen uogal, y, ual y mae eiry, w, ual y mae berw, yna yr edewir y neu w o’r sillaf pan sillafer kerd. 18A chyfryw sillafeu a’r rei hynny a elwir taỽdledyf, o achaws y llythyr tawd a uyd yn y sillafeu. 19Sillaf dipton a uyd o gysswllt dwy uogal ygyt yn vn sillaf, val y mae llaw, llew. 20Deu ryỽ dipton yssyd, nyt amgen, dipton dalgron a dipton ledyf. 21 Pump dipton dalgron yssyd, nyt amgen, aw, ew, iw, yw, vw; aw ual y mae llaw, ew ual y mae llew, iw ual y mae lliw, yw ual y mae llyw, vw ual y mae du6. 22Eu hefyt yssyd dipton dalgron, ual y mae kleu, a honno yỽ y dipton ny cheffir proest yn y erbyn; ac am hynny y gelwir hi dipton wip, am na cheiff a’e hattepo ar broest. 23Pedeir dipton ledyf yssyd, nyt amgen, ae, oe, ei, wy; ae ual y mae kae, oe ual y mae doe, ei ual y mae trei, wy ual y mae mwy. 24Reit yỽ edrych, hagen, am y dỽy ledyf dipton racko, ae, oe, pa furyf y gỽahaner wynt, a pha ffuryf y kyssyllter wynt yn vn sillaf. 25Ac ỽrth hynny, edrycher pan vont myỽn geir lliaws sillafaỽc, sef yỽ hynny, bot llawer o sillafeu yndaỽ; yna reit yw eu gỽahanu yn amravaelyon sillafeu, a phob un ohonunt yn sillaf dalgron, ual y mae Kymraec. 26A phan uont mywn geir unsillafaỽc, yna dir yỽ eu gwasgu ygyt yn un sillaf o dipton ledyf, ual y mae gwaet, Groec. 27Ey, nyt dipton dim ohonei, kanys damwein yw y chaffel heb h yrydunt. 28Sillaf a teruyno myỽn teir o’r bogalyeit ygyt, neu y bo yndi deir bogal ygyt, a’r diwed yn teruynu myỽn dipton dalgron, a’r dechreu yn dipton ledyf, honno a elwir dipton dalgronledyf, val y mae gloew, hoew, a’r kyfryw sillafeu. 29Sillafeu ereill a uydant o gysswllt bogalyeit ygyt, ac ny bydant diptonyeit, nyt amgen, pan uo i neu y ymlaen bogal

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dalgronnledyf, val y mae gloyw, hoyw. 31Pan vo sillaf yn teruynu yn ll, val y mae kall, koll, neu ynteu yn teruynu yn dwy gonsonans y gyt, val y mae morc, tant, twlc, honno a elwir sillaf vydar, ony byd y theruynu yn dwy lythyrenn dawd, val y mae bard, kerd, neu yn llythyrenn vvt yn gyntaf a llythyrenn dawd yn ol, val y mae hagr, kanys kadarnledyf yw y rei hynny, val y dywetpwyt vchot. 32Pan vo sillaf yn teruynu yn gadarnledyf, a’y dechreu yn benngamledyf, honno a elwir diptonn benngamledyf, val y mae beird, brwydr, deigr, Lloegr, a’r kyfryw sillafeu. 33Pan vo sillaf yn teruynu yn dawdledyf, a’y dechreu yn bengamledyf, honno a elwir diptonn dawdledyf, val y mae beirw, geilw, keidw, a’r kyfryw sillafeu. 34Pan vo sillaf yn teruynu yn teir konsonans y gyt, ac yn cymysgu bydar a chadarnledyf y gyt yndi, val y mae puntr, kwlltr, honno a elwir sillaf vydarledyf. 35Pan vo sillaf a’y dechreu yn bengamledyf, a’y diwed yn vydar, honno a elwir diptonn vydar, val y mae breint, meint, boent. 36Pan vo sillaf a’y dechreu yn benngamledyf, a’y diwed yn vydarledyf, honno a elwir diptonn vydarledyf, val y mae pwyntl. 37Pan vo sillaf yn teruynu yn pedeir konsonans y gyt, ac y ryngthunt, a thywyll datkanyat arnei, honno a elwir sillaf dalgronngadyr, val y mae baldrys, kolprys, a’r kyfryw sillafeu. Reit yw edrych am y dwy ledyf vchot, nyt amgen ae ac oe, pa bryt y bont vnsillaf, a pha bryt y gwahaner wynt yn deu sillaf. 39Ac wrth hynny edrycher pan vont mywn geir llyaws sillafawc, yna dir yw eu gwahanu yn dwy sillaf amrauael, a phob vn onadunt yn sillaf dalgronn, val y mae Kymraec. 40A phan vont mywn geir vnsillafawc, yna reit yw eu gwasgu y gyt yn vn sillaf, a honno yn benngammledyf, val y mae gwaec, Groec. 38

Thomas Charles-Edwards

arall, ual y mae yor, iwrch a’r kyfryỽ sillaf a honno a elwir dipton dieithyr. 30Pan vo geir a dwy uogal yn y berued, ac yn hir y uogal gyntaf herwyd akan, sef yỽ hynny, herwyd dywedwydyat y geir, ual y mae Gỽenlliant, hynny a elwir bogal ymblaen bogal yn y mydr. 31Pan vo sillaf a’e diwed yn gadarnledyf, a’e dechreu yn benngamledyf, ual y mae brỽydr, beird, honno a elỽir dipton gadarnledyf. 32Pan uo sillaf a’e diwed yn dawdledyf, a’e dechreu yn bengamledyf, ual y mae keidw, honno a elwir dipton daỽdledyf. 33Pan vo sillaf a’e diwed yn dawdledyf, a’e dechreu yn vydar, val y mae kwlldr, honno a elwir bydarledyf. 34Pan vo i neu y ymblaen dipton, na thalgron uo na lledyf, yn vn sillaf y bernir ygyt, a honno a elwir dipton losgyrnyaỽc, ual y mae dioer, diawl, a’r kyfryỽ sillafeu. 35Rei o’r sillafeu a uydant hiryon, ereill a uydant vyrryon. 36 Deu amser a vyd y sillaf hir, ac un y sillaf verr, kany hwy o amser y bydir yn dywedut sillaf hir noc yn dywedut un verr. 37Pan uo n yn ol r, val y mae barn, neu s yn ol r, ual y mae kors, neu lythyren uut yn ol r, ual y mae kỽrt, honno a elwir tromledyf. 38Pob sillaf ledyf hir uyd, a deu amser a uyd idi. 39 Pob sillaf dalgron berr vyd, ac un amser a uyd idi, na dipton dalgron vo nac arall, kyt boet hwy dipton dalgron no sillaf arall dalgron. 40Ac uelly, rei o’r sillafeu lledyfyon a uydant hỽy noc ereill, herwyd messur o lythyr [ac] amseroed a vo yndunt.

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Because the pair of terms, lleddf a thalgrwn, occur both in the opening part on syllables and in the later part on diphthongs, they form the backbone of the text in both grammars, but most obviously so, as we have seen, in Einion’s. It is therefore essential to form as accurate an idea as possible of the meaning and possible development of these two terms. The principal key is the literal sense of lleddf a thalgrwn, which would have been apparent to any fourteenthcentury reader of the text. Lleddf is appropriately rendered ‘sloping’: the first type of sillaf ledyf is explained in E10: there are two vowels and one slopes down to the other, goleduu att y llall. As a description of a ‘falling diphthong’ this is apt enough, except that it might also include the other member of the pair, talgrwn, since a dipton dalgron such as those in llaw and llew is also a falling diphthong. The implication is clear: one must start with the other term of the pair, talgrwn, ‘end-round’, and its use in diphthongs, llaw, llew, lliw, llyw (E21). What is apparent in all these examples is that the second member of the diphthong is rounded and the first unrounded. There is thus movement from unrounded to rounded and that, one might reasonably conclude, must be the rationale behind the term talgrwn. It would follow from this that the use of talgrwn in the passage on syllables earlier in the text for such examples as glan and glut (E8, D5) is secondary and, as yet, unexplained. Confirmation of the primary significance of diphthongs for this termino­logy is provided by D26, which notes of roi and troi, also spelt as he notes roy and troy, that there is no other diphthong which may answer them in lledyfbroest, and similarly for a dipton dalgron in E22 and D24. The presupposition here is the metrical rule that, in the particular form of half-rhyme known as proest that involves word-final diphthongs and in which the second vowel is the same but not the first, doe may answer kae, but troi cannot (/ɨ/~/i/). There is thus proest between one dipton dalgron and another, and one dipton ledyf and another, apart from the two forms of the dipton wib, ‘wandering diphthong’, /Vʉ/ and /Vi/, which stray from the two paths ending in /u/, talgrwn, or /ɨ/, lleddf. It is worth noting here, first, that, although Dafydd Ddu explicitly noted that w might have the grym (potestas), not of a vowel, but of a consonant (D9), neither he nor Einion treats w and y when occurring as the second element in a falling diphthong as consonantal, as did Morris-Jones in his Welsh Grammar.9 9 

Morris-Jones, Welsh Grammar, § 28. The same line is taken by Lewis, ‘Einion Offeiriad and the Welsh Grammar’, p. 79, and Jenny Rowlands, ‘Some Aspects of proest in Early Welsh Poetry’, p. 234, ‘Proest, a system of assonance based on identity of consonants with variation of vowels’. They thus automatically misrepresent the ideas of Einion and Dafydd Ddu.

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Thus Dafydd Ddu regards the w of gwir and gwar as consonantal, but the w of glew, llaw and llew as vocalic (D21, 23). Modern linguistic descriptions of Welsh diphthongs vary: Fynes-Clinton and Sommerfelt took the same line as Dafydd Ddu, whereas the Welsh Dialect Survey agrees with Morris-Jones.10 The analysis of lleddf and talgrwn diphthongs adopted by the bardic grammars is vital for the explanation of the term talgrwn. The theory just given, by which the use of the word in diphthongs, such as aw in llaw (E21, D23), is prior to its use for syllables, such as glan and glut (E8, D5), is not, however, the explanation given in the handbooks. They begin from its use for syllables, as in glan, in other words for syllables ending in -VC and they combine this with an interpretation of the talgrwn syllables by which the w in llaw is understood as consonantal.11 This would be fine if the grammars had taken the line that w in such a context had the grym (potestas) of a consonant, but, as we have seen, Dafydd Ddu did not take this line. He has the w in gwir and gwar as consonantal but the w in glew as vocalic (D9, 21). Einion does not make his analysis as clear (he does not have the examples of gwir and gwar), but his understanding of w as a vowel in -Vw is clear from his treatment of gloew and hoew (E28): ‘Sillaf a teruyno myỽn teir o’r bogalyeit ygyt, neu y bo yndi deir bogal ygyt, a’r diwed yn teruynu myỽn dipton dalgron, a’r dechreu yn dipton ledyf, honno a elwir dipton dalgronledyf, val y mae gloew, hoew, a’r kyfryw sillafeu’ (A syllable that ends in three vowels together, or contains three vowels, and the end finishes as an end-round diphthong and it begins as a sloping diphthong, that is called an end-round-sloping diphthong, as for example gloew, hoew, and suchlike diphthongs).’Here w is the last of the three vowels, o, e, and w, with oe forming a sloping diphthong and ew an end-round diphthong; w is thus just as much a vowel as o and e. It would not be fair to claim that the interpretation given in the handbooks has no basis in the texts of the grammars. Part of the difficulty in interpreting the grammarians’ teaching derives from the senses of crwn (as in talgrwn). Without doubt it started as meaning ‘round’, but it later acquired the sense of ‘short’ or ‘small’, as in plant crynion ‘small children’, just as its Irish cognate, cruind, began by meaning ‘round’ but later acquired such senses as ‘niggardly’.12 Although the 10 

Fynes-Clinton, The Welsh Vocabulary of the Bangor District, pp. xiv–xvii; Sommerfelt, Studies in Cyfeiliog Welsh, pp. 12–16; Thomas, ed., The Welsh Dialect Survey, nos 183–229. 11  Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, §§ 418–19; Lewis, ‘Einion Offeiriad and the Bardic Grammar’, p. 79. 12  In addition to GPC, under crwn, see, for Old Welsh crunn, Falileyev, Etymo­l ogical

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examples of the derivative meaning in GPC are later than our texts, it must go back to the early fourteenth century to account for the statement by Einion, ‘Pob sillaf dalgron berr vyd, ac un amser a uyd idi, na dipton dalgron vyd nac arall, kyt boet hwy dipton dalgron no sillaf arall dalgron’ (every sillaf dalgron is short, and has one tempus, whether it is a dipton dalgron or another kind, although (a syllable containing) a dipton dalgron is longer than another sillaf dalgron). The doctrine that ‘Deu amser a uyd y sillaf hir, ac un y sillaf verr’ (E36, D17) is taken from Donatus, who does indeed state that a short vowel has one tempus but a long vowel two; but for Donatus all diphthongs had two tempora and any syllable containing a diphthong was therefore long. The implication of the Welsh revision of Donatus’s views on long and short syllables is that llawn is longer than glan, but, even so, aw, like a, contains only a single tempus. No one trained in Latin grammar as presented by Donatus could have regarded this as at all plausible, and the Welsh doctrine therefore requires special explanation. This may be the other place in which Einion was indebted to Priscian, since the latter allows some syllables to have one and a half or two and a half tempora, so that, for example, sōl has two for the long vowel and a half for the closing consonant. Yet the explanation would be much easier if crwn already had the sense of ‘short’ alongside ‘round’. Another supporting reason may have been that in unstressed syllables aw had already developed to o in ordinary speech. Yet, since it was still a diphthong in verse, as shown by rhyme, this can hardly have been sufficient on its own. A related issue in the texts of the grammars is the definition of a sillaf dalgron in E8 and D5 as a syllable containing a single vowel as opposed to a diphthong, whatever consonants precede or follow the vowel: ‘Sillaf dalgron a uyd pan uo vn vogal ehunan yndi, beth bynnac a uo o gytseinanyeit yn ol nac ymlaen y uogal’ (It is an end-round syllable when it contains just one vowel, whatever consonants precede or follow the vowel). One can see this doctrine in operation in the treatment of Kymraec (E25, D39). The latter is still a threesyllable word, although Groeg is treated as a monosyllable.13 Each of the three syllables Kymräec is said to be a sillaf dalgron, so that ra, Kym-, and -ec are all ‘end-round (or “short”) syllables’. This understanding of a sillaf dalgron needs to be set against another type of syllable mentioned later in Dafydd Ddu’s grammar (and a topic on which Dafydd Ddu expanded Einion’s account), the sillaf ­ lossary of Old Welsh, s.v., and for Old Breton cron(n) Fleuriot, Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux G breton, p. 123. 13  Cf. Morris-Jones, Welsh Grammar, § 33.i.

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vydar (D31), as in kall and tant. This statement picks up an earlier one in the section on litterae, according to which ll has the grym, potestas, of two letters (E on litterae 13, also in D), and on Einion’s statement in his account of litterae that when two ‘mute’ consonants ‘are at the end of a syllable, as is the case in brutt, or one of them and a liquid letter before, as in tant, korc, such a syllable as that is called a deaf syllable or a mute syllable’ (E on litterae 12). So, if we put these two statements together and use a capital T for any unvoiced mute (unvoiced stops together with ll and h), a capital G for any voiced mute, as in the final letters of tad and Groeg, and a capital R for any liquid (in the Welsh grammars continuants together with d), the sillaf vydar is of the form -VTT (brutt or kall) or else -VRT (tant). It should be noted here that the earlier paper on litterae argued that two major innovations had been made in the text of the Grammar even before Einion: first, d was moved from the mutes, where Donatus has it, to the continuants (semiuocales); and, secondly, the distinction between continuants as a whole and its subclass, liquids, was abolished so that all the continuants, not just, l, r, m, and n, were now llythyr tawd, ‘liquids’. In the earlier paper discussing the grammars on ‘letters’, it was noted that one apparently absurd error, namely attributing d to the liquids, the llythyr tawd, could be explained only if it was regarded as referring to /ð/, and particularly /ð /in word-final position. This is helpful when trying to explain the kind of sillaf ledyf called kadarnledyf of which the examples given by Einion (E15) were toryf, taryf, kerd, mygyr, and mydr. Provided d for /ð/ is treated as a llythyren dawd, the first three examples have the form -VRR. Mygyr, on the other hand, is an example of -VGR. If the d of mydr is regarded as a liquid, even though it stands for /d/ rather than /ð/, it will be another example of -VRR and will be detached from its twin, mygyr. This was indeed precisely the line taken in the preceding section on llythyr (E on litterae 9). Yet it is difficult to suppose that this was anything but the rigid application of what was taken to be the rule, especially as, as late as Meilyr Brydydd, mygr and mydr could have answered each other in the generic or ‘Irish’ rhymes that he still employed internally, though not at the end of lines.14 The pairing of myg(y)r and myd(y)r may therefore be a relic of the earliest reconstructible stage in the textual history of the Welsh grammars. The paper discussing their treatment of ‘letters’ distinguished the following stages of the text:15 14  15 

Gwaith Meilyr Brydydd a’i Ddisgynyddion, ed. by Williams and Lynch, p. 68. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Welsh Bardic Grammars on litterae’, pp. 159–60.

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(1) before d was treated as if it were a continuant (that change being possible only because final -d then stood for /ð/); (2) after d was moved from the ‘mutes’, namely stops, to the continuants (Donatus’s semiuocales), but before the semiuocales were conflated with a subcategory of the semiuocales, the liquids, llythyr tawd, litterae liquidae; (3) after the conflation, d being now a liquid, llythyren dawd; (4) final /ð/ was now represented by -t rather than by -d, the text by this stage being in south Wales; as a consequence it was possible to treat et, represented by &, as the nomen of the letter t because of its grym or potestas as /ð/, especially in final position; this was the stage at which Einion’s grammar was written; (5) Dafydd Ddu revised Einion’s grammar in north-east Wales, where -d stood for /ð/ and thus he replaced & by the abbreviation for -que; this he used as a figura for /ð/, as in the Peniarth 20 version of Brut y Tywysogion. If the pairing of myd(y)r with myg(y)r comes from a time when d for /d/ was still a mute, it derives from the first stage above. It is noticeable that Dafydd Ddu reformulated a related sentence, D31, on the distinction between what he called a sillaf vydar and a sillaf gadarnledyf: he says of two examples of the latter, bard and kerd, that they have a vowel followed by two liquids, thus abiding by the new doctrine that made d a liquid, but in both cases the d in question was /ð/ not /d/, whereas it was /d/ in mydyr. There may also be evidence for a stage before the second change, by which semiuocales were conflated with liquidae, so that all the continuants and not just the liquid consonants were termed llythyr tawd. E15–18 deal with two kinds of syllable, sillaf gadarnledyf and sillaf dawdledyf, in both of which llythyr tawd, liquids, were involved. E15 is the sentence that cited mygyr and mydr as two examples, but it also cited toryf, taryf and kerd. We are then told, in E16 that the name kadarnledyf contains lledyf ‘because of the llythyr tawd in the syllables’, and kadarn, ‘strong’, ‘because there are two consonants together in them’. The first thing that is apparent is that all the examples contain r as their llythyren dawd; and r was a littera liquida from the start. The second is the explanation of a ‘strong’ syllable as one that has two consonants together, and what is intended though not stated is that the two consonants are together after rather than before the vowel. That has implications for the sillaf dalgron, of which the two examples were glan and glut. The glan in question will have been glan (Modern Welsh glân) ‘clean, pure’ rather than glann ‘bank, shore’,

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for the latter would have come under the definition of the sillaf gadarnledyf. If we can infer that the sillaf dalgron and the sillaf gadarnledyf were distinct and not overlapping categories, glan being an example of the first and glann of the second (as well as of a sillaf drom ‘heavy syllable’), we have some help with the problem of why a sillaf dalgron could be regarded as short, since by the doctrine of tempora, the amseroed of E40, glann would indeed be longer than glan. It is thus necessary to understand the ‘beth bynnac a uo o gytseinanyeit yn ol’ of E8 as solely referring to the kinds of consonants following the vowel and not their number, which had to be either zero or one. If the original home of the term talgrwn was in the description of diphthongs rather than syllables, the same seems to be true of lledyf. According to E9–18 and D7–12 there were three kinds of sillaf ledyf: the first, called a sillaf bengamledyf, contained a dipton ledyf (ae, oe, etc.); the second, called a sillaf gadarnledyf, exemplified by toryf, taryf, kerd, and the pair mygyr and mydr, was lledyf ‘because of the llythyr tawd in the syllables, kadarn because they ended in two consonants’; the third, called tawdledyf was so called ‘because of the llythyr tawd that are in the syllables’. The explanation given is the same for the second and third types, but the examples of the third type, eiry and berw, show that what was actually distinctive was not so much the llythyr tawd themselves as the combination of them with non-syllabic y and w. It is probably also important, first, that all these examples, apart from kerd, contain consonant clusters that gave rise to epenthetic vowels. If Einion had wished to give an example of a cluster containing d that developed an epenthetic vowel, he could have cited the word lledyf itself (parallel with dedyf and gredyf) rather than kerd. But that would have been an exception to the second thing that is true of all these examples, namely that the consonant clusters all contain r, and r always had been a llythyren dawd, a littera liquida. It is, perhaps, symptomatic of the layered nature of the text that he gave as his example kerd rather than lledyf, especially since the propensity of /ð/ to develop an epenthetic vowel before /v/ must have been a reason for moving the letter d into the category of llythyr tawd, given the explanation of the term in the section on litterae, ‘this is the reason why they are so called liquids, because they “liquefy” in a poem’, meaning that the epenthetic vowels attached to them in pronunciation are extinguished in verse. The shift of d into the category of llythyr tawd has as its essential background the circumstance that, among Middle Welsh voiced stops, the only one to have its lenited companion spelt as it itself was spelt was /d/. In the terms used by the grammars the llythyren d had two ‘powers’, unlenited /d/ and lenited /ð/. But the classification as mutes, liquids, etc. was of letters not ‘powers’. Therefore if /ð/ was involved in the development of epenthetic vowels and epenthetic

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vowels and their ‘liquefaction’ in verse were sufficient to make the associated consonants liquids, d had to be classified as a liquid. Although all the examples given in E15 and 17 were of clusters containing r, this was not, by the time of Einion, a necessary feature of such syllables. This emerges later in his text, at E32, when we meet a syllable and diphthong called tawdledyf, that begins with a diphthong of the type called pengamledyf and ends with one called tawdledyf. The example given is keidw with ei as a dipton pengamledyf and -Vdw as tawdledyf; Dafydd Ddu added beirw and geilw with old liquids, r and l, but keidw can only be placed in one category with them if d for /d/ is accepted as a llythyren dawd. One of the principal concerns shared by Einion and Dafydd Ddu was with final consonants and consonant clusters. The classification appears to be based on the following three principles: (1) -VRT and -VTT, namely syllables ending in clusters with a final voiceless consonant, are counted as bydar; examples are tant and brutt with final voiceless stops; Dafydd Ddu adds kall, also voiceless but not a stop; (2) other syllables of the form -VRC or -VCR are termed lledyf (and sit alongside those sillafeu lledyf that are lledyf because they contain a dipton ledyf); examples are tor(y)f and myg(y)r; (3) syllables with a final pair of consonants are kadarn; it is accepted that (2) and (3) overlap, so that a sillaf gadarnledyf is one of the three forms of a sillaf ledyf. All of these as a group are contrasted with the sillaf dalgron as long syllables versus short. The sequence given above, from (1) to (3), is not likely to have been in the historical order. Since the contrast between lledyf and talgrwn forms the backbone of this text, the classification of syllables may well have been parallel, talgrwn covering syllables of the form (CC)V(C), a single vowel preceded by one or more consonants, or none, and followed by, at most, a single following consonant (within the same syllable), as in the case of the three syllables of Kymräec or glut, and lledyf covering all syllables with more than one following consonant, as well as syllables containing a dipton ledyf. One thing that the text does not make clear is where it would place such words as llawn and mawr, containing a dipton dalgron and with a single final consonant, still less where it would place llawdr. It is not a comprehensive treatment of Middle Welsh syllables, but teaching along these lines would have been an effective instrument to make aspirant poets aware of some of the complexities of syllabic structure

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relevant to rhyme. Analysis of the bardic grammars on syllables does not lead to a sequence of textual change comparable to the one that emerges from the section on ‘letters’: one can sense rather than demonstrate textual layering, and sense also the distinct layering of doctrine, such as the strong likelihood that the lledyf a thalgrwn division began with diphthongs and only later extended to syllables, when crwn acquired the derivative sense of ‘short’. The initial foundation of the grammarians’ classification of syllables seems to have been the distinction between short syllables, with a single vowel and at most one following consonant and long syllables with more than one following consonant. Such a distinction could well have emerged from a consideration of Donatus’s ‘common quantity’, but talgrwn could never have been used as the term for a short syllable until crwn had acquired the secondary meanings ‘short, small’, and that can hardly go back much before the date of the extant texts. Among the long syllables, however, one type was given separate status, the sillaf vydar, namely when the second and final consonant was unvoiced, treating -ll as a geminate unvoiced lateral. To all this one must add the presumption (never stated) that, just as a syllable containing a dipton ledyf was itself a sillaf ledyf, so also a syllable containing a dipton dalgron was itself a sillaf dalgron, so that llaw, llew, lliw, and llyw were all ‘end-round syllables’. This may have been extended to examples such as llawn. One of the first aspects of these texts noted above was that, though they were said to be about syllables, they devoted as much attention to diphthongs. If the termino­logy of the treatment of diphthongs is likely to be appreciably older than that employed in the treatment of syllables, the latter being little older than the floruit of Einion, there is a tension between the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the previous section, on litterae, and the conclusions of the analysis of the present section, on syllables. The former showed a section that had textual depth, the latter a section that, as a treatment of syllables, cannot be older than the date at which crwn developed the derivative meaning ‘short’. Yet, if the Welsh grammarians were following the sequence of Donatus’s Ars maior the next section after that on litterae had to be on syllables. So, if the nature of the section on llythyr obliges us to push back the origins of the text into the thirteenth century, the section on syllables shows that it is unlikely, in its present state, to be much older.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 20. Digital images are available on http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4754463 [accessed 25 August 2022] Oxford, Balliol College, MS 353 (Sir John Prise’s Common-Place Book, c. 1539–1549), fols 106r–123v. Digital images of the Balliol College MS are available on [accessed 1 March 2022] Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111 (Red Book of Hergest). Digital images are available on https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/9bf187bf-f862-4453-bc4f-851f6d3948af/ [accessed 25 August 2022]

Primary Sources Donati ars maior, ed. by Louis Holtz, Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: étude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe–IXe siècles) et édition critique (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1981), pp. 605–07; an older edition is Heinrich Keil, Grammatici Latini, iv (Leipzig: Teubner, 1864), p. 367, De syllaba, pp. 368–69 Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid [The Grammars of the Chief Poets], ed.  by Griffith John Williams and Evan  J. Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1934); Bangor MS 1 (saec. xv med.), ed. by John T. Jones, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 2 (1923–1925), 184–200; gaps in this MS are supplied from Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 169 Gwaith Einion Offeiriad a Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug, ed.  by R.  Geraint Gruffydd and Rhiannon Ifans, Cyfres Beirdd yr Uchelwyr, 9 (Aberystwyth: Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd, 1997) Gwaith Meilyr Brydydd a’i Ddisgynyddion, ed. by J. E. Caerwyn Williams and Peredur I. Lynch, Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion, 1 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994)

Secondary Works Charles-Edwards, Thomas M., ‘The Welsh Bardic Grammars on litterae’, in ‘Grammatica’, ‘Gramadach’ and ‘Gramadeg’: Vernacular Grammar and Grammarians in Medi­eval Ireland and Wales, ed. by Deborah Hayden and Paul Russell (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2016), pp. 149–60 Falileyev, Alexander, Etymo­logical Glossary of Old Welsh, Buchreihe der Zeitschrift für celtische Philo­logie, 18 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000) Fleuriot, Léon, Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux breton (Paris: Klincksieck, 1964) Fynes-Clinton, Osbert H., The Welsh Vocabulary of the Bangor District (London: Milford, 1913)

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Gruffydd, R.  Geraint, ‘Wales’s Second Grammarian: Dafydd Ddu of Hiraddug’, Pro­ ceedings of the British Academy, 90 (1995), 1–28 Huws, Daniel, ‘Llyfr Coch Hergest’, in Cyfoeth y Testun: Ysgrifau ar Lenyddiaeth Gymraeg yr Oesoedd Canol, ed. by Iestyn Daniel, Marged Haycock, Dafydd Johnston, and Jenny Rowland (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 1–30 Jacques, Michaela, ‘Syllable and Diphthong Classification in the Medi­eval Welsh Bardic Grammars’, Language and History, 63 (2020), 73–90 Law, Vivien, The Insular Latin Grammarians, Studies in Celtic History, 3 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1982) Lewis, Ceri, ‘Einion Offeiriad and the Bardic Grammar’, in A Guide to Welsh Literature, ii, ed. by Alfred O. H. Jarman and Gwilym R. Hughes (Swansea: Christopher Davies, 1979), pp. 58–87 Morgan, Prys, ‘Glamorgan and the Red Book’, Morgannwg, 22 (1987), 42–60 Morris-Jones, John, A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative: Phono­logy and Acci­ dence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913) —— , Cerdd Dafod, sef Celfyddyd Barddoniaeth Gymraeg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925), with separate index: Geraint Bowen, Mynegai i Cerdd Dafod, sef Celfyddyd Barddoniaeth Gymraeg John Morris-Jones (Aberystwyth: Gwasg Aberystwyth, 1947) Parry, Thomas, ‘A Welsh Metrical Treatise Attributed to Einion Offeiriad’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 47 (1961), 177–95 Rowland, Jenny, ‘Some Aspects of proest in Early Welsh Poetry’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 30 (1983), 234–38 Thomas, Alan, ed., The Welsh Dialect Survey (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000)

The Joy of Six: Spelling and Letter Forms among Fourteenth-Century Welsh Scribes Paul Russell

T

he development of medi­eval Welsh ortho­graphy from the Old Welsh period onward can be characterized as a gradual process of solving the problem of having too few signs to represent too many different phonemic values; at various points this was counterbalanced by the invention of new signs (either by the repurposing of variant forms of existing letters or by inventing new ones) and a redistribution of those values.1 In the termino­logy of the late Latin grammarians (and followed by the medi­eval Welsh grammarians) this can be phrased in terms of figurae acquiring more and more potestates so that ultimately new figurae are created to spread the phono­logical load.2 All of this was intended to cope with the developments in medi­eval Welsh phono­ logy from the eighth and ninth centuries onwards.3 To make matters more complicated, not all of these changes were evenly implemented throughout Wales; 1 

For a general overview, see Russell, Introduction, pp. 207–29 and Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, pp. 419–25. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the workshop on ‘Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg’ (funded by the British Academy) in Cambridge in April 2016, and I am grateful for the feedback provided by the participants. Since its inception and development by our honorand, ‘Datblygiad’ has provided an extremely fruitful and productive forum for developing ideas on the historical development of the Welsh language. Thomas Charles-Edwards kindly read and commented on a draft and saved me from numerous errors. Descriptions and discussion of all the manuscripts referred to here can now be found in Daniel Huws, A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes c. 800–c. 1800 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2022). 2  The grammarians were also interested in the names of the letters (nomina) but that is not our concern here. On this termino­logy, see Thomas Charles-Edwards, ‘The Welsh Bardic Grammars’. 3  On the early phases of this, see Sims-Williams, ‘The Emergence of Old Welsh, Cornish and Breton Ortho­graphy’. Paul Russell ([email protected]) is Professor of Celtic in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in the University of Cambridge. His research interests include learned texts in Celtic languages (especially early Irish glossaries), Celtic philo­logy and linguistics, early Welsh ortho­graphy, Middle Welsh translation texts, grammatical texts, and medi­eval Welsh law. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131205 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 257–288 BREPOLS

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for example, it appears that twelfth- and early thirteenth-century north Wales was in some respects slower to acquire y than the south perhaps because in the first instance it entered Welsh in the south and only gradually percolated north.4 On the other hand, k seems to have been introduced from Anglo-Norman French.5 The present discussion concerns itself with one small part of the system, that relating to the spelling of /v/, /w/, /u/, /ʉ/ and the associated diphthongs /au/, /uɨ/, and /eʉ/. In Old Welsh, both /u/ and /ʉ/ were spelt with u, /v/ by b and m, and also by u, and /w/ by gu (an analogical spelling arising from the fact that gu was used originally in initial position for both /gw/- and its lenited variant /w/- from where it spread to elsewhere in the word).6 Some of the important changes between Old and Middle Welsh were the increasing tendency to spell lenited voiced stops /v/ and /ð/ (/γ/ had disappeared in the Old Welsh period) differently from the unlenited forms, and the challenges raised by needing to spell medial and final unvoiced stops which had arisen from new consonantclusters created by syncope and also occurred in loanwords. For our purposes here, the spelling of /v/ is relevant. Welsh (and the other Brittonic languages) had inherited from Latin not only the letter form u but also its capital form V, each of which developed the corresponding upper- and lower-case forms, thus V : v and U : u. As we shall see, v retained a tendency to be preferred in initial position, but gradually both v and u came to be used both initially, medially, and u at least finally. A further development of this was the rise of two forms of v, one with an out-curling left stroke, originally used in initial position, and a second form with an in-curling first stroke, ỽ, used medially and occasionally finally (see Figure 2 (a) and (b), opposite). A different way to create new letter forms (figurae) was to use double-letters (often overlapping), thus uu and ỽỽ (giving rise ultimately to forms conventionally printed as w). Finally, other letters came to be used as well; thus f gradually came to be used for /v/ especially in final position.7 The narrative of ortho­graphical change in Middle Welsh has to do with what potestates were assigned to which figurae as they emerged, and at what point originally positional variants of a single figura came to be used 4 

Kitson, ‘Old English Literacy’. Rodway, ‘Cymraeg vs. Kymraeg’. 6  On the spellings of /v/, see Russell, ‘Rowynniauc, Rhufoniog’. 7  On what may have been an abortive experiment in the Black Book of Carmarthen to use w for final -/v/, see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 139 and 142–45. The use of w for /v/ was not restricted to the south but also occurred in northern manu­scripts, such as BL, Additional 14931 and BL, Cotton Caligula A iii; for the latter, see Russell, ‘Ortho­graphy as a Key to Codico­logy’, pp. 79–82. 5 

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as separate figurae with distinct sets of potestates. What follows presents a developed and nuanced version of this narrative for a particular part of the phono­logical range beginning in the mid-thirteenth century but focusing on fourteenth-century manu­scripts. What happened after c. 1400 is another story, though no less interesting.

The Thirteenth Century It is well known that no vernacular manu­scripts survive from before c.  1250 and that almost all the surviving manu­scripts from this century are from the north with the exception of the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth 1).8 But two features of the mid-century Figure 2. Forms of v, ỽ, and w used by thirteenthand fourteenth-century Welsh scribes. manu­scripts are important for our purposes. First, the two forms of the letter v are in complementary distribution: v (with the outcurling first stroke) in initial position and ỽ in internal position; this is generally true of the northern manu­scripts and with some extra refinement true too of the Black Book of Carmarthen.9 Secondly, this is when we see the rise of different forms of w: the form of w used by any scribe usually follows the choice of the form for v, thus either overlapping vv or ỽỽ (see Figure 2 (c) and (d), above). 8  For the ortho­g raphy of the Black Book of Carmarthen, see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’; on the ortho­graphy of northern manu­scripts, see Russell, ‘Ortho­graphy as a Key to Codico­logy’ and Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’. 9  Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 154–57.

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But, since initial w (where a form derived from vv would be expected) is relatively infrequent except as the lenited reflex of gw-, it is hardly surprising that forms of w deriving from the internal use of overlapping ỽỽ tend to be much more common.10 The relative unfamiliarity with w in mid-thirteenth-century north Wales can be illustrated by the complete inability of scribe B of the Black Book of Chirk (NLW Peniarth 29), in his single brief appearance in the manu­ script, to copy a ỽỽ form of w.11 Such ws are complex forms and would have been challenging to inexperienced scribes unfamiliar with the required pen movements; the scribe of the Black Book of Carmarthen in fact seems to have experimented with a ‘three-point’ w perhaps to save space or reduce the complexity of the form (see Figure 2 (e) on the previous page).12 However, by the 1270s and 1280s we see a different pattern taking over whereby v and ỽ are no longer in complementary distribution, but rather scribes were choosing one or the other and using them in all environments. This is most clearly demonstrated by the usage of the two scribes of the Book of Aneirin (Cardiff 2.81) with scribe A using v (with the vv form of w) and scribe B using ỽ (with the ỽỽ form of w) throughout.13

The Fourteenth Century Matters, however, were more complicated in the fourteenth century for several reasons. We have more manu­scripts to deal with (and several with numerous contributing scribes) and they come from a wider geo­graphical range, though 10 

On spellings for /gu/- and /gw/-, see below, pp. 265 and 271–72. Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’, pp.  132, and 145–46 (see NLW Peniarth 29, p. 19.11–16). The ỽỽ form of w is also what lies behind the ‘113’ form of w which emerges later in the fourteenth century; see Gifford Charles-Edwards, ‘The Scribes of the Red Book of Hergest’, pp. 148–49 for images (see p. 268 for discussion of an earlier instance of such a form). 12  Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 139–45 (and p. 142 for image), 151–54; there is no evidence that he was trying to create a distinct letter. 13  For example, compare the shape of the vs and ws on p. 23.1–5 (scribe A) with p. 23.6–9 (scribe B). A different pattern of distribution is that seen in BL Cotton Titus D. ii where the scribe used ỽ for /u/ for about the first fourteen folios or so and then dropped it in favour of u; this looks more like a case of a scribe being influenced by the ortho­graphy of the exemplar and then gradually reverting to his own preference or perhaps vice versa a scribe being told how to spell his text but then reverting to the spelling of the exemplar. On Titus D. ii, see CharlesEdwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, p. 423. For another case of a scribe changing his ortho­graphical practice part way through copying, see Russell, ‘What Did Medi­ eval Welsh Scribes Do?’. 11 

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they are mainly southern. The rest of this discussion addresses two main questions. First, how do the numerous scribes, whose work is preserved in these fourteenth-century manu­scripts, deal with the issues presented by the spellings of their exemplars, and in particular how to they regularize the spelling of /w/, /v/, /u/, /ʉ/ (and the associated diphthongs)? Secondly, as a corollary to this, a practical question: in order to represent clearly the ortho­graphical decisions of these scribes, what should editors of texts preserved in these manu­scripts print? For it will emerge that many of these scribes treated ỽ as a distinct letter (figura) with its own set of values (potestates). But it has been traditional even to this day, especially in editions in prose editions, to print w where the scribes wrote ỽ, even when the scribe also used w with a different set of values.14 The consequence of this has been that Middle Welsh prose texts in particular look very w-heavy when in reality there is a much more even distribution of values across the available letters. One aim therefore of this discussion is to establish a methodo­logy for deciding when a scribe thinks that ỽ is a distinct figura or simply a formal variant used in certain environments. By way of example, we may contrast the use of the two forms of r used by medi­eval Welsh scribes: beside the usual form, there is a ‘2’-form of r which is common throughout this period but it never has a set of values distinct from r; it is simply the positional variant after rounded letters. Similarly, the scribe of the Black Book of Carmarthen often uses small r or n in a row of minims where r or n might be misread, but at no point are these to be thought of as distinct figurae with a distinct set of potestates from r or n.15 Analyses of most of the ortho­graphies of the fourteenth-century scribes are presented in Appendix 1;16 they concentrate on the range of values /v/, /w/, /u/, /ʉ/ along with /au/, /uɨ/, and /eʉ/, and in addition initial /gw/- and /gu/14 

Editors of verse tended in the past to take the same view of ỽ, but more recently, for example, in ‘Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion’, editors have printed ỽ even where it is really simply a positional variant of v; even so, at least its presence is acknowledged. The editors of the more recent ‘Beirdd yr Uchelwyr’ series follow the standard editorial practice for fourteenth-century and later verse which is to print it in modern ortho­graphy, thus avoiding the issue altogether. But the traditional approach is still widespread; cf., for example, Marged Haycock’s claim in her edition of some of the poems from the Book of Taliesin (The Legendary Poems, p. 40) to have presented them ‘in the original ortho­graphy’ when in fact ỽ is printed as w throughout, despite the fact that the Book of Taliesin scribe also uses w for /w/ and the lenited form of /gu/- and / gw/- (see below, pp. 265 and 271–72). 15  Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 145–46; cf. also the use of an innovative ‘threepoint’ w by the same scribe, above, pp. 259–60. 16  See pp. 273–83, and pp. 261–62 and 273 for an explanation of how the information is presented.

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(and their lenited variants). The reason for including the last feature is that these spellings seem to be important for understanding the gradual shift in the late fourteenth century from ỽ to w. A further point is also worth noting here: for practical reasons — which seem to have little to do with general principles of ortho­graphical choice — in environments where u might be expected, v or ỽ is very common before minims, thus vu and ỽu, vn and ỽn (rather than uu and un); ỽ is also very common ‘initially’ after preverbal particles, thus aỽu, etc.17 Thus the use of v, or sometimes ỽ, before n looks like a practical choice to avoid minim confusion. As such, it tells us little about whether the scribe thought ỽ was a separate letter. Although such forms will be noted, they will not form a significant part of the following discussion.

The Hendregadredd Manu­script The scribes of NLW 6680B (Llawysgrif Hendregadredd) present us with a useful framework for thinking about scribal activity in the first half of the fourteenth century not least because it is the one of the few manu­scripts from this period whose ortho­graphy has been discussed in detail, and is unique for this period in containing the work of so many scribes spread over a significant period;18 scribal work in this manu­script extends from the ‘founding’ scribe α who was working around 1300, through the nineteen scribes of the second stratum (working in the middle of the first half of the fourteenth century), to the twenty third-stratum scribes working in the middle of the century. The main scribe α, who seems to have been the architect of the main structure of the book subsequently followed by the scribes of the second stratum, does not appear to have seen ỽ as a separate letter from v; in what he appears to regard as his standard ortho­g raphy, for the most part the forms are positionally in complementary distribution though phono­logically ỽ is mainly used for /u/ and /w/.19 On the other hand, in the first two quires ỽ is also used for 17 

For further discussion, see Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­ script’, p. 434. 18  For discussion of the manu­script, see Huws, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts, pp. 193–226; for a discussion of its ortho­graphy, see Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­ script’ where aspects of the following discussion were touched upon. Another manu­script which has received ortho­graphical discussion is NLW Peniarth 20; see Gifford and Thomas CharlesEdwards, ‘The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogion’, and also below (pp. 266–67 and 276). 19  Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, pp. 434–36; on the notion of a standard ortho­graphy, see pp. 423–34.

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/v/ and this may be a feature of his exemplar for that section. The fact that α was restricting the use of ỽ to /u/ and /w/ probably suggests that overall his ortho­g raphy was moving towards establishing ỽ as a separate letter, but was not there yet.20 When we turn to the second stratum we find several different patterns of usage.21 For most (but not all) of them, A[B]CDEFHJ[K]LMNOPQ[R]S, ỽ was in widespread use and mainly the only form of v in use.22 However, it has been noted previously that this group of scribes can be divided into two groups on the basis of ortho­graphy, and one of the distinguishing features is the use of ỽ with different phono­logical values: scribes A[B]HJ[K] used ỽ for /u/, in /au/, and occasionally for /ʉ/, but not for /v/; by contrast scribes DELMNOPQ[R] S used ỽ for /v/-, and occasionally for -/v/- (but less often for /u/, /w/ and in /au/ where w was more frequent).23 Not all scribes fitted into one of the two groups on this criterion: for example, C (who made numerous short contributions throughout) tended to make much more use of w especially for /u/, and u for /ʉ/ (and in diphthong /eʉ/), but ỽ was used haphazardly for all.24 For the scribes of the third stratum v and ỽ were distinct letters, but characteristically of a group of scribes who very much seemed to go their own individual ways, these letters were distinguished in different ways:25 for example, scribe e used v for /v/- and -/v/-, but ỽ for /u/, /w/, and /ʉ/; scribe g used v for /v/- and -/v/-, but ỽ for /u/ (and for him w was also common for /u/ and regular for /w/ and in /au/); but scribe i used v for /v/- and -/v/-, but also -u- and -f-, and ỽ was never used for /v/ but alternated inconsistently with w for /w/, e.g. gwedy/gỽedy, gwaỽr/gỽaỽr, etc.26 20 

Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, p. 440. Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, pp. 442–44. 22  Scribes of the second stratum are denoted by upper-case letters, A, etc., and those of the third stratum by lower-case letters, a, etc. Square brackets indicate that a scribe only copied a relatively small amount of text; scribe I did not use ỽ, and in the work of scribe G v and ỽ are not consistently distinguished. 23  Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, p. 443; and on these two groups of scribes, pp. 445–46. 24  Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, p. 444. C’s apparently haphazard performance may in fact be related to the fact that his contributions were numerous but short; he may have been dealing with several different exemplars and perhaps influenced by them. 25  Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’, pp. 446–49. 26  Unless otherwise indicated, in what follows the form w can be assumed to be overlapping ỽỽ. 21 

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The Hendregadredd manu­script, then, presents us with a range of scribal usage over the first half of the fourteenth century starting with α for whom ỽ was not yet a distinct letter and ending up with the third stratum scribes for whom it was. Overall, we see ỽ gradually emerging as a distinct letter but some scribes were using it for /u/ and /w/, others for /ʉ/ or for /v/, and despite the origin of ỽ as a formal variant of v, it emerges that ỽ is beginning to alternate with w (and perhaps with w gradually taking over), and v with u.

The Turn of the Thirteenth Century Some of the earliest group of manu­scripts labelled ‘Saec. xiii/xiv’ by Huws may predate α’s creation of the framework of the Hendregadredd manu­script but they at least give us a clear sense of the ortho­graphical patterns in the decades either side of 1300.27 For the scribes of the first two sections of NLW Peniarth 16 [1 and 2 of the manu­scripts listed in Appendix 1 below, (p. 273)], w is regularly used for /u/, /w/, /au/, and /uɨ/, while ỽ occurs for initial /v/ but also for /w/ and /au/; u is used for /ʉ/ and internal /v/.28 The main difference is that in part i v is also used, but does not occur in part ii. For the latter ỽ is the only form of v in use, and even in the former v and ỽ are not used distinctively enough for them to be considered as separate letters. The scribes of NLW Peniarth 8 (parts i and ii) [3] do not use ỽ at all with w for both /u/ and /w/ (and the diphthongs) and v for initial and internal /v/. This ortho­graphical pattern is also shared by NLW Peniarth 7 (part i) [4] (the same scribe also copied NLW Peniarth 21) and Peniarth 7 (part ii). NLW Peniarth 3 (part ii) [5] is also very similar although it uses u for internal and final /ʉ/, while the other manu­scripts tend to use v throughout for /ʉ/. Now we know that Peniarth 7 (part i) is a northern manu­script, and this group of manu­scripts, which share a very similar range of ortho­graphical features, may also be from there.29 The ortho­graphical preferences of α can be compared with those of a nearcontemporary scribe working at Drenewydd Dinefwr, some forty miles to the south. Gwilym Wasta,30 the scribe of three law manu­scripts [6], shows a very 27 

Huws, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts, p. 58. Analyses of the ortho­graphy of each manu­script are presented in Appendix 1 (pp. 273–83). 29  On these manu­scripts, see Huws, ‘Y Pedair Llawysgrif Ganoloesol’, pp. 2–5; Liber coronacionis Britanorum, ed. by Patrick Sims-Williams, ii, pp. 2–4, 79–82. 30  On this scribe, see Russell, ‘Canyt oes aruer’, and the earlier work cited there. 28 

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similar pattern with ỽ for /u/ (also in the diphthongs /au/ and /uɨ/) though he uses w for /w/ more frequently; that said, this varies somewhat across the three manu­scripts: there is relatively little w in NLW Peniarth 36 B but more in Cambridge, Trinity College O. 7. 1.31 While for scribe α of Hendregadredd ỽ was not yet a separate letter but in some contexts could alternate with w, Gwilym Wasta may just be on the other side of the line; his increased use of w suggests that he may have thought that ỽ was a separate letter but perhaps only just. He also produces what turns out to be an alternation characteristic of many fourteenth-century scribes in the singular and plural versions of the suffix -ỽr but plural -wyr, e.g. haỽlỽr : haỽlwyr, which fits with his use of ỽ and w elsewhere. The significance of this is that, along with the spellings of initial /gw/- and /gu/- (and their lenited variants), this is one of the environments where during the fourteenth century w-spellings seem gradually to encroach on ỽ-spellings. Thus earlier in the century we find spellings like gỽnaeth : lenited ỽnaeth, gỽlat : ỽlat but gỽr : gwyr beside gwenith : wenith, but later w encroaches on the domain of ỽ, thus gỽnaeth : lenited wnaeth, gỽlat : wlat but gỽr : gwyr, and then gwnaeth : lenited wnaeth, gwlat : wlat, gwr : gwyr. Another factor in the spread of w at the expense of ỽ is a reluctance on the part of many scribes to use ỽ at the beginning of a word (perhaps an echo of its historical origins as the internal form of v) and, if forced into that position in a lenited word, ỽ is replaced by w. We may also note the converse tendency for v to occur only in initial position for /v/ and rather less often for /ʉ/. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C 821 [7] is almost certainly southern; it is a Latin version of Welsh law which contains significant amounts of Welsh, and is a version of (perhaps a copy of ) the Latin text which was translated into Welsh as the Blegywryd redaction of Welsh law.32 This manu­script and also the Bordorgan manu­script [8] of Welsh law have an ortho­g raphy which is very similar to that of α and of Gwilym Wasta in terms of the use of ỽ, and to the extent that w is encroaching on the domain of ỽ (especially in initial position) it is closer to Gwilym; if so, the scribe was probably thinking of ỽ as a distinct letter.

31  This may tell us something about the order in which these manu­scripts were copied; see Russell, ‘Canyt oes arfer’. 32  Huws, ‘The Manu­scripts’, pp. 196–203.

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The Early Fourteenth Century The Book of Taliesin scribe (NLW Peniarth 2 and other manu­scripts by the same scribe: NLW 3036; BL Harleian 4353; BL Cotton Cleopatra A XIV; NLW Peniarth 6, part iv) also retains a preference for initial v and internal ỽ, and when the latter ends up in initial position it is replaced by w.33 As so often, practice is revealed by error: at BT 40.1 kỽydynt ỽy wyr ‘men fell’, it has been suggested that ỽy is a redundant wy (affixed pronoun) but it may simply be a spelling mistake: the scribe simply copied the exemplar without replacing ỽ with w and wrote the first two letters before realizing the error.34 Conversely there are a few examples of internal v for -/v/- but they only occur in two contexts: the first is at the morpheme boundary in a compound verb, e.g. atvyd. The second is more interesting and more unexpected as no one seems to have considered the significance of spelling choices made in the first word of poems or texts, though it is clear that the scribes made use of a form of display script which is more complex than just using a capital; thus in Dvw (Book of Taliesin 28.22) the use of v for /ʉ/ is unexpected in the normal size text where we regularly find duỽ (e.g. 3.18, 4.7, 4.14, etc.).35 Up to this point, the first half of the fourteenth century seems to present a broadly consistent pattern of the gradual separation of v and ỽ with just the beginning of the rise of w into some of the range occupied by ỽ. However, there are different patterns to be found elsewhere. NLW Peniarth 20 [13], copied at Valle Crucis is very different from what we have seen so far. Part of that may be because we can focus on the section of the chronicle which we know was added in the early fourteenth century (copied by scribe B), while with most manu­scripts it is not easy to separate out what might have been the influence of the exemplar.36 But even so, it is strikingly different in that, just as in the late thirteenth century, v and ỽ are in complementary distribution and should be treated as variants of v and printed as such. It is also worth noting that the way the scribe held his pen means that, while the outward curl of the v is clear, the inward curl is barely visible. This manu­script is northern and raises the ques33 

Similar are NLW Peniarth 31 [10], NLW Peniarth 35, 37, and 45 [11], and NLW Peniarth 9 [12]. 34  See Prophecies, ed. by Haycock, poem 3.61 (p. 68) and note (p. 81). 35  See below, 267, 268, and 270, for other examples. Bvm (23.9) might be another example though the v could be explained as avoidance of minim confusion before the m. 36  On the distinction of hands and the ortho­g raphy of this manu­script, see Gifford and Thomas Charles-Edwards, ‘The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogion’.

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tion of whether the rise of ỽ as a distinct letter form is a southern feature while further north the tendency was to continue the style of the thirteenth century. Other manu­scripts are different again: Cardiff 1.363 (Havod 2) [14], has ỽ for /u/ but also for /ʉ/ and /v/, similar in some ways to some of the scribes of the third stratum of the Hendregadredd manu­script except that it also uses w for /w/ and in /gw/-; in NLW Peniarth 14, pp. 101–90 [15] there is no ỽ at all but w is used for /u/, /w/, and /gw/-, while v and u are used for /v/ and /ʉ/.

The Mid-Fourteenth Century When we move to the scribes of the mid-fourteenth century, we may usefully begin with the group of scribes associated with the White Book of Rhydderch (NLW Peniarth 4 and 5) [19] who show an interesting range of patterns. Scribe A does not use ỽ at all, only v and w; v therefore unsurprisingly has a wide range of values /u/, /w/, and /v/ but mainly it is used in initial position, while u is used internally. Scribe B (scribe also of Llyfr yr Ancr (Oxford, Jesus College 119), etc.) is much more like the scribes we have already encountered except that w is not used; thus ỽ represents /u/, /w/ (and the associated diphthongs) but is also found in gỽ- (lenited to ỽ-). Scribe C is very similar to the Book of Taliesin scribe. Scribe D, however, the scribe of so many of our central prose texts, the Four Branches, etc., presents a very different picture. There is no outcurling v and so for this scribe ỽ is the only form of v in his repertoire; it should therefore be treated formally as v (and printed as such). There is very little w; two usages call for comment: the first word of the First Branch is Pwyll, which has not attracted any attention perhaps because it seems so obvious, but elsewhere it is spelt pỽyll; in this instance it is in display script with w rather than ỽ.37 Secondly, the scribe seems to have taken over from his exemplar cases of w for /v/, wỽrd (l. 312) and wỽyta (l. 342);38 this illustrates a difficulty with the editorial conversion of ỽ into w, that in such editions the effect is to produce the odd-looking and misleading forms, wwrd and wwyta.39 Other scribes are much more like what we saw in the early fourteenth century. Cardiff 1.362 (Havod 1) [16] has ỽ for /u/ (and associated diphthongs) but w is frequent for /w/ with both gỽ- and gw- but only w- for the lenited variant. An interesting feature of this scribe’s work is the use of v both for /v/ ini37 

For the significance of display-scripts, see also pp. 266, 268, and 270. On w for /v/, see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 151–57. 39  Math, ed. by Hughes, xcv (and n. 97). 38 

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tially and internally; as in many manu­scripts vn is ubiquitous but in this manu­ script so is vrenhin (rather than urenhin), perhaps an extension of the use of v to avoid minim confusion. Also similar to earlier manu­scripts is BL Titus D. ix [20], though there are differences: only gỽ- is used for /gw/-, though w- appears in the lenited variant (but we may note that Gwas (14v3) does occur in display script). In initial position v is used regularly for /ʉ/ in vn and vgeint but also for /u/ in vyth ‘eight’. The two hands of BL Harleian 958 [21] are very similar and again follow much the same pattern, as does the main scribe of the Boston manu­script (NLW 24029) [22]. The inserted gathering (fols 94–99) is quite similar but uses ỽ for final -/ʉ/, e.g. mynnỽ, wadỽ, etc. Broadly, then, for these scribes ỽ is a distinct letter with a predictable set of values. However, not all the mid-century scribes fit this pattern. Gruffudd Ddu, the scribe of NLW Peniarth 10 [18], presents a strikingly different pattern in which w (in an early version of the ‘113’-w used by later scribes (see Figure 2 (f ) on p. 259) is used for /u/ and /w/ (and the diphthongs) but ỽ (and very occasionally v) is used for /v/- and /ʉ/; in this case v is used so rarely (and may be a feature of his exemplar) that in effect ỽ is the form of v in general use.40 A similar pattern is found in the second part of BL Cotton Cleopatra B V [17]: ỽ is primarily used for /ʉ/ but not always (u also occurs); all cases of v are for initial /v/-. It has been argued that this manu­script is northern and it may be that Peniarth 10 with its similar spelling system is also northern.41

The Second Half of the Fourteenth Century The small group of manu­scripts dated to the second half of the fourteenth century (NLW 3035 (and BL Add. 19709) [23], and NLW 20143 [24]) all broadly show the same pattern as we have already seen with ỽ for /u/ (and associated diphthongs) and it continues in manu­scripts dated to the latter part of the century. Among such scribes the main point of variation relates to the extent to which w figures in their system. The variation is nicely captured in the two scribes of Oxford, Jesus College 20 [25]; the main scribe uses ỽ for /u/, /au/, and /uɨ/ and w for /w/ and in both /gw/- and /gu/- (lenited as w-). The scribe of fols 16r–21v, however, retains ỽ for the lenited form of /guɨ/, thus ỽypech, ỽydỽn (for what would be wypech and wydỽn in the main hand). BL Add. 14921 [27], Shrewsbury School 11 [29], and NLW Peniarth 33 [31] use 40  41 

Rightly printed as v in Cân Rolant, ed. by Rejhon. Huws, ‘The Manu­scripts’, pp. 204–10.

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both ỽ and w in the same way, but there are scribes in this period who have no w in their spelling: of the four scribes of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B 467 [28], the first three have no w, e.g. gỽlyb, gỽenith, ỽaet, but the fourth scribe (fols 73–92) does use w, e.g. wy, wrthaỽ, wreid, wedy, a wneler; likewise, NLW Peniarth 38 [30] has no w but uses ỽ for /u/ and /w/. In all such cases, one factor in deciding whether ỽ is a separate letter depends on the incidence of v; generally v occurs initially for /v/- but not internally. If so, it is arguable that, in scribes who use w for lenited versions of gỽ-, there is no initial ỽ and so in terms of form initial v and internal ỽ are variants of the same letter (rather like thirteenth-century scribes). However, the values associated with these two forms are so different that they should be regarded as distinct letters. Moreover, by this stage it is clear that scribes seem to think that v and u are variants of each other and that there is a connection between ỽ and w, even though their values are mainly distinct. We may end this survey by turning to the three main scribes of the Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Jesus College 111) and other manu­scripts [32].42 They generally follow the patterns discussed above; that is certainly true of scribe B (Hywel Fychan) and scribe C (the scribe also of Llyfr Teg (NLW Peniarth 32)). In the work of scribe A, however, w is relatively rare and then only for /w/. For all these scribes it is clear that ỽ is a distinct letter. Although it is easy to get the impression that by c. 1400 the spelling of Welsh texts had settled into this pattern, there are still outliers. One manu­ script in particular is problematic. NLW Peniarth 15 [26] is copied by two scribes: while the second scribe (fols 64–73) uses ỽ and w very much like the majority of other fourteenth-century scribes, the first (fols 1–61) by contrast has no ỽ in his repertoire and so w is used for /u/ and /w/ (and associated diphthongs) and v for /ʉ/ and /v/ in all environments; as such, it is quite likely that this scribe is northern.43

42  43 

Huws, ‘Llyfr Coch Hergest’. See the note on the manu­script in Appendix 1, p. 281.

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Some Conclusions First, it should be said that this is very much a preliminary survey which needs to be validated by detailed work on the individual scribes. The period from Old Welsh into early Middle Welsh saw a significant number of changes and developments in the spelling of this part of the phonemic inventory. Some of them, such as the separation of v and u, and subsequently the subdivision of v into outcurling v and incurling ỽ, involve modification of existing letters; others, like the forms of w, are the outcome of the doubling of existing letter forms. There are some residual consequences of these historical developments, such as the preference for using v in initial position and the predominance of a w made up from incurling ỽs (since initial w was relatively rare). But gradually during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries these historical links were broken and the fourteenth-century scribes seem to be working with different pairings: initial v- was aligned with internal -u-, and ỽ associated with w and sharing some values. That the latter association had some validity is suggested by the list of letters and scribal usage in the Red Book of Hergest version of Einion Offeiriad’s grammar;44 while the list of letters is inherited, and contains both outcurling v and also w (the Llanstephan 3 and Peniarth 20 versions have u and w), Hywel Fychan is happy to use ỽ throughout the text but retain w in the list. An unexpected outcome of this discussion is the importance of looking at the display forms of words and how those spellings are related to the usual forms. In that respect, the fourteenth-century relationships set out above seem to be validated by the corresponding display forms: thus, lowercase ỽ corresponds to display w, lowercase u to display v. Further work is needed on this but it certainly appears that in some of these letters, at least, there is a correlation between display letters in, for example, the first word of a text or a poem and the larger (sometimes capital) letters used at the beginning of a sentence.45 The clearest finding, however, is that for most (but not all) fourteenth-century scribes ỽ was a distinct letter with its own set of values. A final step in the creation of another new ­grapheme was the reformation of double-ỽ form into the various so-called ‘113’ forms of w (see Figure 2 (f ) on p. 259);46 during the 44 

Gramadegau Penceirddiaid, ed. by Williams and Jones, pp. 1, 19, and 39; cf. also CharlesEdwards, ‘The Welsh Bardic Grammars’. 45  For examples, see pp. 266, 267, and 268 in this volume. Space does not allow this issue to be pursued further here and it will have to await a separate study. 46  Gifford Charles-Edwards, ‘The Scribes of the Red Book of Hergest’.

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fourteenth century it was possible to see the development of a link between ỽ and w but the effect of the rise of the ‘113’ w was to break that link as it was no longer obvious that a w was a double form of another letter. We may now turn to practical issues. We have discussed certain practical matters such as the use of v for /ʉ/ before n and u to prevent minim confusion which often seems to cut across more principled spelling choices. Another issue which has not really been discussed (but only touched on in passing) is the potential influence of the ortho­graphy of the exemplar. However, the spelling systems set out in Appendix 1 deliberately concentrate on what appears to be the standard spelling of that scribe; there are always odd and unexpected deviations from it and some might be due to error and others to reflections of the ortho­g raphy of the exemplar. But what emerges very strikingly from this discussion is that one can identify a set of general patterns and developments. Individual scribes may all be doing something slightly different but those differences are mainly within a broader comprehensible framework; for example, they are using ỽ but are using more or less w alongside it. What is important to note, however, is that, insofar as it is possible to locate manu­scripts, the rise of ỽ as a distinct letter is a southern feature; northern scribes tend to use more v and u thus perpetuating the patterns of the thirteenth century, though the use of forms of w seems to spreading. So when is ỽ a separate letter and when should it be printed as such? We may begin with the converse: when the scribe uses ỽ as the only form of v (as in scribe D of the White Book), or v (initial) and ỽ (internal) are positionally in complementary distribution (as in many thirteenth-century manu­scripts), then ỽ should be printed as v; for such scribes the relationship between ỽ and v is on a par with r and its ‘2’-shaped variant.47 But when ỽ has a set of values which is distinct from v, typically /u/ and /w/, and in /au/ and /uɨ/, and is probably in part at least distinct from w, then it has to be printed as a separate letter. An example of the effect of this is presented in Appendix 2 (pp. 283–84) where the opening lines of Pwyll from the White and Red Books are printed according to these principles. One interesting finding of this discussion has been that during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the range of ỽ is gradually encroached upon by w; this seems to have begun with /gw/- and /gu/- (and their lenited versions) and perhaps also in the singular and plural versions of the agent-suffix -/ur/ : -/wɨr/ where w seems to have been used first in the plural but spread to the singular. But just because one can identify a process of encroachment by 47 

See above, p. 261.

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w so that there is some overlap in usage, that is no reason to print w for ỽ; for most of the fourteenth-century scribes w is a distinct letter. Moreover, while in the past the mechanical problems of printing ỽ may have caused difficulty, with advances in typo­graphy it is perfectly possible nowadays to print the letter form as it is. Of course, there is another way altogether to avoid the issue and that is to do what editors of fourteenth-century and later Welsh verse do, namely, modernize the ortho­graphy of medi­eval Welsh prose to modern standards. Nothing stands in the way of doing that, but it is difficult not to think that much would be lost in doing so. In fields where multiple editions of medi­eval texts are commonplace, different editions can be aimed at different audiences, but for most medi­e val Welsh texts it is unlikely that there will ever be more than one scholarly edition of any text in circulation at any time, and so it has to be as comprehensive as possible and serve the philo­logist as well as the literary scholar, historian, and student. If nothing else, the ortho­graphy of the manu­ script should be represented as accurately as possible. This discussion closes at the end of the fourteenth century and what happened after that is a different undertaking.48 One manu­script which has already been transcribed on the Rhyddiaith y 15eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0 database suggests that these later manu­scripts may present some different issues. Oxford, Jesus College 23, is copied by one scribe; in the early pages there are very few indications that ỽ was part of his repertoire but it appears from the database that ỽ is heavily used from about p. 34 onwards. However, this is slightly misleading in that there are two similar, but different forms in use: one is straightforwardly a form of ỽ, but the other, also transcribed as ỽ, appears to be a reduced form of the ‘113’ w, perhaps best described as a ‘13’ w.49 As such, it might be better transcribed as w, though the ‘113’ w is also being used. In other words, letter forms were continuing to evolve, and any studies of ortho­graphy have to take that into account.

48  This work has benefited greatly from being able to use the following databases: Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425, and Rhyddiaith y 15eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, the first and last of these led by our honorand. The last is still under construction, and work on the fifteenth century will need to await its completion. 49  For examples (printed here as w), see p. 36, l. 7 (drwc), l. 8 (llawer gweith, ykawr), ll. 12–13 (gyfy/awnder), l. 15 (mwy). In developmental terms, this form might be compared with the ‘three-point’ w (developed from the ‘four-point’ w deriving from two overlapping vs) with which the Black Book of Carmarthen scribe experimented (Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 139 and 142–45). For discussion, see above, pp. 259–60.

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Appendix 1 The ortho­g raphical analyses of each manu­script follow. They are presented in the order in which they are listed in Huws, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts, pp. 58–60, in his sections headed ‘Saec. xiii/xiv’, ‘Saec. xiv1’, ‘Saec. xiv med.’, ‘Saec. xiv2’, and ‘Saec. xiv/xv’ (where a brief note of the contents is also provided), and these headings are used below to distinguish the chrono­logical sections. Generally the spellings listed reflect what seems to be the standard spelling of that scribe; where more than one spelling is listed, they are listed in order of frequency, though both are common in the manu­script. Note that the ortho­graphy of the many scribes of NLW 6680B (Llawysgrif Hendregadredd) has been described and discussed in detail elsewhere (Charles-Edwards and Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script’); the details are not repeated here.

‘Saec. xiii/xiv’ 1. NLW Peniarth 16, part i (scribe A, fols 5–9) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ w

w /gw/-, /gu/- aw aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ v ỽ -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy ỽy eu u -/v/

f

2. NLW Peniarth 16, part ii (scribe B, fols 9–11) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ w

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ ỽ -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited w-) wy ỽy eu fu -/v/

f

3. NLW Peniarth 8, i and ii /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- aw /uɨ/ v- u /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy ev eu v -/v/ f

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4. NLW Peniarth 7 (a) Scribe A, fol. 5–15; also NLW Peniarth 21 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- aw au /uɨ/ v /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy eu ev v -/v/ f

(b) Scribe B, fols 16–end /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- aw /uɨ/ v /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy ev v -/v/ f

5. NLW Peniarth 3, part ii (pp. 17–25) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- gw- (lenited w-) wy aw /uɨ/ v- u /eʉ/ -ev eu v f -/v/- u -/v/ f

‘Saec. xiv1’ 6. NLW Peniarth 36B; Cambridge, Trinity College, O. 7. 1; NLW Peniarth 36A (Gwilym Wasta): /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u, but v- /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-)

ỽy

eu u -/v/ f

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7. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C 821 (Welsh sections) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ w /gw/-, /gu/- w ỽ aỽ /uɨ/

u v /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gỽ- gw- (lenited w-) uỽ wyeu u f -/v/ f

8. Bodorgan MS /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ v- -u- /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gỽ- gv- (lenited w-) ỽy eu f u -/v/ f

9. NLW Peniarth 2 (Book of Taliesin); NLW 3036; BL Harleian 4353; BL Cotton Cleopatra A XIV; NLW Peniarth 6, part iv /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited w- more frequent than ỽ-) ỽy eu u, f -/v/ f

Note: Cf. one example of internal ỽ for /v/ in mỽngỽras (9.1); note that it is at the beginning of second element of compound. 10. NLW Peniarth 31 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ v- u- -/v/-

gw- gỽ- gv- gu- (lenited w-; -ỽr : -wyr)

ỽy

eu f u -/v/ f

11. NLW Peniarth 35, 37, 45 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ u- -/v/-

gỽ- gv- (lenited w-) ỽy vy (cf. Vythuet)

eu u f -/v/ f

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12. NLW Peniarth 9 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u v- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited w-; but cf. ỽraỽl) ỽy eu u f -/v/ f

13. NLW Peniarth 20 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w (but cf. also hỽnnw) w /gw/-, /gu/- gw wy au /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ eu, -eỽ v -/v/- ỽ

-/v/ f

Note: On this manu­script, see Gifford and Thomas Charles-Edwards, ‘The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogion’.

‘Saec. xiv med.’ 14. Cardiff 1.363 (Havod 2) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- gwỽy aỽ aw av /uɨ/ ỽ (ỽdỽnt) v /eʉ/ eỽ ew ev ỽ -/v/- v

-/v/

f

15. NLW Peniarth 14, pp. 101–90 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- aw /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ u- v- -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy eu, ev v, u -/v/

f

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16. Cardiff 1.362 (Havod 1) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u, vn- /eʉ/ u- ỽ- v- (vr-) -/v/-

gỽ-, gw- (lenited w-) ỽy eu ev v f -/v/ f

17. BL Cotton Cleopatra B V, part ii /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- aw /uɨ/ u, ỽ /eʉ/ v, u, ỽ -/v/-

gw wy eu, eỽ u -/v/ f

Note: Cf. Huws, ‘The Manu­scripts’, pp. 204–10. 18. NLW Peniarth 10 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- gw- (lenited w-) wy aw /uɨ/ ỽ v /eʉ/ eu ỽ- v- (vr-) -/v/- u -/v/ f

19. NLW Peniarth 4 and 5 (White Book of Rhydderch) (a) scribe A /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

u, v- v, w /gw/-, /gu/- au, -av /uɨ/ u, v- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gu, gw vy eu u -/v/ f

Note: all forms of v are outcurling (and w follows suit).

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(b) scribe B (also the scribe of Llyfr yr Ancr (Jesus College 119), Peniarth 18, 46, and 47i (Huws, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts, pp. 59, 239)) (i) White Book /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/

gỽ (lenited ỽ-) ỽy v /eʉ/ ev, eu v (but also u and ỽ) -/v/- u -/v/ u

Note: w is very rare; but perhaps a case where v and ỽ are separate letters but w has not yet been introduced. (ii) Jesus College 119 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/

gỽ (lenited w-) ỽy v, u /eʉ/ ev, eu v (but also u and ỽ) -/v/- u, v -/v/ u

Note: w is less rare than in the White Book, but mainly restricted to lenited /gw/- (but there is less use of w in Breudwyt Pawl than in other parts of the MS). The verse on fol. 92v is a later hand and has a completely different ortho­ graphy with w (‘113’ form) everywhere. (c) scribe C /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ, w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/

u /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gỽ (but lenited w-), gw ỽy eu u -/v/ f

(d) scribe D (Mabinogi scribe) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/

u /eʉ/ u -/v/-

gu ỽy eu u -/v/ f

Note: See the sample printed in Appendix 2 (pp. 283–84).

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(e) scribe E /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ u -/v/-

gw, gỽ (lenited regularly as w) ỽy eu u -/v/ f

20. BL Cotton Titus D. ix /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ w

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u v- /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited ỽ- and w-; gw- only in display script) ỽy eu u f -/v/ f

21. BL Harleian 958 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u vn- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gw- gỽ- (lenited w-)

ỽy

eu u f ff -/v/ f

Note: there are two hands in this manu­script but no ortho­g raphical differences between them. 22. NLW 24029 (Boston MS) (a) main scribe /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ w

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u vn- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gỽ- gw- (lenited w-) ỽy

eu u -/v/ f

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(b) scribe of inserted gathering (fols 94–99) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ ỽ /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) ỽy eu u -/v/ f

‘Saec. xiv2’ 23. NLW 3035 (Mostyn 116) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u vn- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited w-) ỽy

eu u -/v/ f

24. NLW 20143A, scribes A and B /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ, u

w /gw/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gỽ (sometimes lenited w) ỽy

eu u -/v/ f

Note: ỽ is used primarily for /u/ and w for /w/. All cases of v are initial and represent /v/, and so v looks as if it is in alternation with u.

‘Saec. xiv/xv’ 25. Oxford, Jesus College 20 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u v- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) ỽy eu u -/v/ f

Note: The second scribe on fols 16r–21v differs in having lenited ỽ- (for w-), e.g. ỽypech, ỽydỽn.

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26. NLW Peniarth 15 (a) fols 1–63 /u/ w /w/ w /gw/-, /gu/- /au/ aw /uɨ/ /ʉ/ v /eʉ/ /v/- v -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy ev u v -/v/ v

Note: all forms of v are outcurling. (b) fols 64–73 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u u- /eʉ/ v -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-)

ỽy wy

eu u f -/v/ f

27. BL Additional 14912 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ aw /uɨ/ u v- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited w-) ỽy eu u f -/v/ f

28. Oxford, Bodl. Lib., Rawlinson B 467 (a) First three scribes (fols 1–16, 17–38, 39–72) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/

u /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited ỽ-) ỽy eu u f -/v/ f

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(b) Fourth scribe (fols 73–92) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

w w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gw- (lenited w-) wy eu u f -/v/ f

29. Shrewsbury School MS 11 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ uv -/v/-

gỽ- gw- (lenited w-) ỽy

eu u f -/v/ f

30. Peniarth 38 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/

u v- /eʉ/ vu -/v/-

gỽ- (lenited ỽ-) ỽy eu u f -/v/ f

31. Peniarth 33 /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u v- /eʉ/ v- -/v/-

gw- gỽ- gu- (lenited w-)

ỽy

eu u f ỽ -/v/ f

32. Oxford, Jesus College 111 (Red Book of Hergest) (restricted to scribes A, B, and C) (a) scribe A /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ ỽ, occasionally w aỽ /uɨ/

u /eʉ/ v -/v/-

/gw/-, /gu/- gỽ ỽy eu u -/v/ f

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(b) scribe B (Hywel Fychan) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ u, v -/v/-

gw ỽy, wy eu u -/v/ f

Note: see the sample printed in Appendix 2, below. (c) scribe C (scribe of Peniarth 32) /u/ /w/ /au/ /ʉ/ /v/-

ỽ

w /gw/-, /gu/- aỽ /uɨ/ u /eʉ/ u, v -/v/-

gỽ, gw ỽy

eu u, f -/v/ f

Appendix 2 By way of illustration of the points made above about editing Middle Welsh texts (pp. 271–72), printed here is Ifor Williams’s text of the opening lines of Pwyll followed by the versions from the White Book and Red Books conforming to the principles presented above about when the letter ỽ should be printed as such or when it should be printed as v. The White Book text is in hand D which only uses ỽ, and not v. As the only form of v in use, in a White Book text from the sections copied by hand D then ỽ should be printed as v. However, the Red Book text was copied by Hywel Fychan for whom ỽ was a distinct letter with values distinct from both v and w; it is thus printed as ỽ. In both versions the effect is to present a distinctly less ‘w-heavy’ looking Middle Welsh text, but one which is more consistent with the spelling systems of the scribes.

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Ifor Williams, Pedeir Keinc, p. 1 Pwyll,50 Pendeuic Dyuet, a oed yn arglwyd ar seith cantref Dyuet. A threigylgweith yd oed yn Arberth, prif lys idaw, a dyuot yn y uryt ac yn y uedwl uynet y hela. Sef kyueir o’y gyuoeth a uynnei y hela, Glynn Cuch. Ac ef a gychwynnwys y nos honno o Arberth, ac a doeth hyt ym Penn Llwyn Diarwya, ac yno y bu y nos honno. A thrannoeth yn ieuengtit y dyd kyuodi a oruc, a dyuot y Lynn Cuch i ellwng e gwn dan y coet. White Book transcription (Peniarth 5, fol. 1r (hand D)) Pwyll, Pendeuic Dyuet, a oed yn arglvyd ar seith cantref Dyuet. A threigylgweith51 yd oed yn Arberth, prif lys idav, a dyuot yn y uryt ac yn y uedvl uynet y hela. Sef kyueir o’y gyuoeth a uynnei y hela, Glynn Cuch. Ac ef a gychvynnvys y nos honno o Arberth, ac a doeth hyt ym Penn Llvyn Diarvya, ac yno y bu y nos honno. A thrannoeth yn ieuengtit y dyd kyuodi a oruc, a dyuot y Lynn Cuch i ellvng e gvn dan y coet. Red Book transcription (fol. 175rb (col. 710)) Pwyll, Penndeuic Dyuet, a oed yn arglỽyd ar seith cantref Dyuet. A threigylgweith yd oed yn Arberth, prif lys idaỽ, a dyuot yn y uryt ac yn y vedỽl uynet y hela. Sef kyfeir o’e gyuoeth a vynnei y hela, Glynn Cuch. Ac ef a gychwynnwys y nos honno o Arberth, ac a doeth hyt ym Penn Llwyn Diarwya, ac yno y bu y nos honno. A thrannoeth yn ieuenctit y dyd kyuodi a oruc, a dyuot y Lynn Cuch i ellỽng e gỽn dan y coet.

50 

On the spelling of Pwyll with w, see above, p. 267, and generally p. 270. This word is split over two lines and the second part seems to be written in an erasure. It seems to read …gweith (but is probably not in hand D) but it may not have been the original reading. 51 

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, 3035 (Mostyn 116) —— , 3036 —— , 20143A —— , 24029 (Boston MS) —— , Peniarth 2 (Book of Taliesin) —— , Peniarth 3, part ii —— , Peniarth 4 and 5 (White Book of Rhydderch) —— , Peniarth 6, part iv —— , Peniarth 7 —— , Peniarth 8, ii and ii —— , Peniarth 9 —— , Peniarth 10 —— , Peniarth 14 —— , Peniarth 15 —— , Peniarth 16, part i —— , Peniarth 16, part ii —— , Peniarth 18 —— , Peniarth 20 —— , Peniarth 21 —— , Peniarth 31 —— , Peniarth 32 —— , Peniarth 33 —— , Peniarth 35 —— , Peniarth 36A —— , Peniarth 36B —— , Peniarth 37 —— , Peniarth 38 —— , Peniarth 45 —— , Peniarth 46 —— , Peniarth 47i Bodorgan, Plas Bodorgan, MS Cambridge, Trinity College, O. 7. 1 Cardiff, Central Library, 1.362 (Havod 1) —— , 1.363 (Havod 2) London, British Library, Additional 14912 —— , Cotton Cleopatra A XIV —— , Cotton Cleopatra B V, part ii —— , Cotton Titus D. ix —— , Harleian 958

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—— , Harleian 4353 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B 467 —— , Rawlinson C 821 Oxford, Jesus College, 20 —— , 23 —— , 111 (Red Book of Hergest) —— , MS 119 (Llyfr yr Ancr) Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury School, 11

Primary Sources Cân Rolant: The Medi­eval Welsh Version of the Song of Roland, ed. and trans. by Annalee C. Rejhon, University of California Publications, Modern Philo­logy, 113 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, ed. by Griffith J. Williams and Evan J. Jones (Cardiff: Uni­ versity of Wales Press, 1934) Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. and trans. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies Publications, 2007; 2nd edn. 2015) Liber coronacionis Britanorum, ed.  by Patrick Sims-Williams, 2  vols (Aberystwyth: Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies Publications, 2017) Math uab Mathonwy, ed. by Ian Hughes (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2013) Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, ed. by Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1930) Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. and trans. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies Publications, 2013)

Secondary Works Charles-Edwards, Gifford, ‘The Scribes of the Red Book of Hergest’, National Library of Wales Journal, 21 (1979–1980), 246–56 Charles-Edwards, Gifford, and Thomas Charles-Edwards, ‘The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogion in Peniarth MS 20’, in Ysgrifau a Cherddi cyflwynedig i: Essays and Poems Presented to Daniel Huws, ed. by Tecwyn Jones and Edmund B. Fryde (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1994), pp. 193–305 Charles-Edwards, Thomas, ‘The Welsh Bardic Grammars on litterae’, in ‘Grammatica’, ‘Gramadach’, ‘Gramadeg’: Vernacular Grammar and Grammarians in Medi­eval Ire­ land and Wales, ed. by Deborah Hayden and Paul Russell, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 125 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2016), pp. 148–60 Charles-Edwards, Thomas, and Paul Russell, ‘The Hendregadredd Manu­script and the Ortho­graphy and Phono­logy of Welsh in the Early Fourteenth Century’, National Library of Wales Journal, 28 (1993–1994), 419–62

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Huws, Daniel, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2000) —— , ‘Y Pedair Llawysgrif Ganoloesol’, in Canhwyll y Marchogyon: Cyd-destunoli ‘Pere­ dur’, ed.  by Sioned Davies and Peter Wynn Thomas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 1–9 —— , ‘Llyfr Coch Hergest’, in Cyfoeth y Testun: Ysgrifau ar Lenyddiaeth Gymraeg yr Oesoedd Canol, ed. by Iestyn Daniel, Marged Haycock, Dafydd Johnston, and Jenny Rowland (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 1–30 —— , ‘The Manu­scripts’, in Tair Colofn Cyfraith: The Three Columns of Law in Medi­eval Wales, ed. by Thomas M. Charles-Edwards and Paul Russell, The Welsh Legal History Society, 5 (Bangor: The Welsh Legal History Society, 2007), pp. 196–212 —— , A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes c. 800–c. 1800 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2022). Kitson, Peter, ‘Old English Literacy and the Provenance of Welsh y’, in Yr Hen Iaith: Studies in Early Welsh, ed. by Paul Russell (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003), pp. 59–65 Rodway, Simon, ‘Cymraeg vs. Kymraeg: Dylanwad Ffrangeg ar Orgraff Cymraeg Canol?’, Studia Celtica, 43 (2009), 123–33 Russell, Paul, ‘Ortho­graphy as a Key to Codico­logy: Innovation in the Work of a Thirteenth-Century Welsh Scribe’, Cambridge Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 25 (Summer 1993), 77–85 —— , An Introduction to the Celtic Languages (London: Longman, 1995) —— , ‘Scribal (In)competence in Thirteenth-Century North Wales: The Ortho­graphy of the Black Book of Chirk (Peniarth MS  20)’, National Library of Wales Journal, 29 (1995–1996), 129–76 —— , ‘What Did Medi­eval Welsh Scribes Do? The Scribe of the Dingestow Court Manu­ script (Aberystwyth, NLW, 5266B)’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 37 (Summer 1999), 79–96 —— , ‘Rowynniauc, Rhufoniog: The Ortho­graphy and Phono­logy of /μ/ in Early Welsh’, in Yr Hen Iaith, ed. by Paul Russell (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003), pp. 25–47 —— , ‘Scribal (In)consistency in Thirteenth-Century South Wales: The Ortho­graphy of the Black Book of Carmarthen’, Studia Celtica, 43 (2009), 135–74 —— , ‘Canyt oes aruer: Gwilym Wasta and the Laws of Court in Welsh Law’, North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 1 (2017), 155–70 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘The Emergence of Old Welsh, Cornish and Breton Ortho­graphy, 600–800: The Evidence of Archaic Old Welsh’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 38 (1991), 20–86

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Digital Resources Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425, ed. by Diana Luft, Peter Wynn Thomas, and D. Mark Smith (Cardiff: School of Welsh, 2013) [accessed 30 July 2021] Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, ed.  by Graham Isaac, Simon Rodway, Silva Nurmio, Kit Kapphahn, and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aber­yst­wyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University,  2013) Rhyddiaith y 15eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, ed.  by Katherine Himsworth, Silva Nurmio, Richard Glyn Roberts, Sara Elin Roberts, Sarah Rowles, Paul Russell, and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2019)

The Development of Realis Conditional Clauses in Welsh David Willis Introduction The form and development of realis conditional clauses in Middle and Early Modern Welsh has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature to date, with discussion essentially limited to standard grammars, dictionaries, and other reference works. Marking of these clauses, however, has undergone major change in the history of the language, with the normal Middle Welsh complementizer o ‘if ’ being entirely replaced by os, a form that arises from strengthening of o either with a suffixed object pronoun or a copula. This is a renewal cycle, a familiar type of change in which an element is reinforced, with the reinforced variant ultimately supplanting the original form of expression. The transition from o to os as the usual marker of realis conditionals is clearly located within the late Middle Welsh and Early Modern Welsh periods, a time when there is potentially ample textual evidence to enable us to trace its course; yet, it remains poorly understood. This article represents a preliminary attempt to sketch out the main developments and highlight relevant issues in gaining an understanding of how and why this change happened. I use a selection of Middle Welsh texts, focusing primarily but not exclusively on law manu­scripts, which contain many such clauses and may be a better reflection of spoken usage than other text types, and set out some plausible pathways of development. This exercise shows that the path was far from a direct linear one leading to the present-day Welsh system and may have involved the emergence of previously David Willis ([email protected]) is Jesus Professor of Celtic at the University of Oxford. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131206 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 289–310 BREPOLS

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unidentified dialect variation. A number of possible causes for the change can be adduced, with plausible bridging contexts involving both the suffixed object pronoun as/-s and the copula ys/-s. It may ultimately be attributed to the reorganization of the copula that began in much earlier Middle Welsh, although the role of a number of different factors must be acknowledged. In investigating these developments, we can add to the growing list of morphosyntactic changes that we can identify during the Middle Welsh period, for instance, change in verbal morpho­logy,1 sandhi h-,2 prepositional morpho­logy,3 and marking of negation.4

The Possible Forms of Realis Conditional Clauses The basic Middle Welsh system is outlined by D. Simon Evans in his Grammar of Middle Welsh.5 Middle Welsh, like present-day Welsh, makes a fundamental distinction between realis and irrealis conditionals. Irrealis conditionals (‘if it were’, ‘if it had been’) use a separate marker pei, whose development is distinct from that of realis conditionals discussed here. For realis conditionals (‘if it is’, ‘if it was’) lacking contrastive focus, Evans identifies two possible forms of the introductory marker in Middle Welsh, namely o(t) and or. The basic option is o(t), which is normally followed by an indicative verb in verb-initial (VSO) word order, as expected for a realis as opposed to irrealis condition:6 (1) O ffoy di racdaw, efo a ’th ordiwed […] if flee.prs.2sg you before.3msg he prt 2sg.acc catch.up.prs.3sg ‘If you flee from him, he will catch you up […]’ (Owein, ll. 161–62)

1 

Rodway, Dating Medi­eval Welsh Literature. Sims-Williams, ‘The Spread of “Sandhi h-” in Thirteenth-Century Welsh’. 3  Sims-Williams, ‘Variation in Middle Welsh Conjugated Prepositions’. 4  Willis, ‘Negation in Middle Welsh’. 5  GMW, pp. 240–41. 6  Examples are glossed according to the Leipzig Glossing Rules, except that impers is used for impersonal forms of verbs, impf for the imperfect, pluperf for the pluperfect, pred for the predicate marker yn, and prt for preverbal particles. Distinctions not relevant to the current discussion, such as the simple, conjunctive, and reduplicated forms of pronouns, are not glossed. 2 

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The verb undergoes aspirate mutation where it can, hence initial /k/ becomes /x/ in chyueruyd ‘will meet’ in the following example: (2) […] o chyueruyd caledi a thi yn yr ansawd honno, if meet.prs.3sg hardship with you in the state that ny byd hawd it y oruot. neg be.fut.3sg easy to.you 3msg.gen overcome.inf ‘[…] if you encounter difficulty in that state, it will not be easy for you to overcome it.’ (Ystorya Gereint Uab Erbin, ll. 1124–26)

Before verbs beginning with a vowel, o(t) takes the form ot, with final epenthetic -t /d/: (3) Meuyl y mi […] ot yfaf i diawt yny yuo ynteu. shame to me if drink.prs.1sg I drink until drink.prs.sbjv.3sg he ‘Shame on me […] if I drink a drink before he should drink.’ (Ystorya Gereint Uab Erbin, ll. 1294–95) (4) ot oed ovyn ar walchmei if be.impf.3sg fear on Gwalchmai ‘if Gwalchmai was afraid’ (Y Seint Greal, p. 427, ll. 12–13)

This pattern, aspirate mutation of voiceless stops and addition of /d/ before a vowel, is shared with other clause-initial particles in Middle Welsh, notably the main-clause negative marker ny(t), the subordinate-clause negative marker na(t), and the affirmative particle neu(t). In these other cases, the mutation and the epenthetic /d/ added before a vowel have been interpreted by linguists as the reflex of a reconstructed main-clause connective reconstructed as *eti.7 This could be the source of the patterns after o(t): notwithstanding the fact that o(t) introduces a subordinate clause, this clause typically precedes the main clause to which it is adjoined, making it a plausible point of attachment for *eti. However, another possibility is that the mutation and epenthetic /d/ are reflexes of a former enclitic object pronoun,8 a fossilized relic of which may be found in the Middle Welsh expression ot gwnn ‘if I know [it?]’.9 Analogical extension from other particles cannot be ruled out either: Henry Lewis, for 7 

Schrijver, ‘The Celtic Adverbs for “against” and “with” and the Early Apocope of -i’. Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen, p. 374. 9  ‘Llyma Vabinogi Iessu Grist’, ed. by Williams, p. 228, l. 1; Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, ed. by Williams, p. 8, l. 16. 8 

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instance, considered the aspirate mutation after preverbal particles to have developed from a former existential ‘be’ encliticized to the negative particle, and to have spread analogically to other particles.10 The second marker is or, illustrated in (5). Both Evans and Morgan agree in taking the -r to be a remnant of the perfective particle ry (with loss of mutation),11 although, even in canonical Middle Welsh texts, it can be difficult to identify a clearly perfective aspectual meaning in clauses marked with or as opposed to o(t). (5) ac or keif y drydet y hanuon a wneir itaw and if get.prs.3sg the third 3fsg.gen send.inf prt do.prs.impers to.3msg pob blwydyn gwedy hynny. every year after that ‘and if he gets [it] for the third [year], it will be sent to him every year after that.’ (Ystorya Gereint Uab Erbin, ll. 244–46)

Another form, os, illustrated in (6), falls outside the unmarked system: it is associated with focus realis conditional clauses, corresponding to main clauses where a fronted element is under contrastive focus (the ‘mixed sentence’). (6) os tydi a oruyd arnaw ef if+cop.3sg you prt overcome.prs.3sg on.3msg him ‘if it is you that is victorious over him’ (Y Seint Greal, p. 329, l. 5)

As in the mixed sentence, the fronted element is followed by what is in form essentially a relative clause.12 Any type of constituent (subject, object, predicate, adverb, non-finite verb phrase) may be fronted. The form os may also, however, introduce an ordinary conditional clause, with -s being the third-person (singular or plural) accusative infixed pronoun:

10 

Lewis, The Sentence in Welsh. The phono­logical processes that gave rise to the aspirate mutation and their ordering are a hotly disputed topic. For other recent work on fricativization (spirantization) in early Brythonic, particularly the phono­logy of its emergence; see also Isaac, ‘The Chrono­logy of the Development of the Brittonic Stops and the Spirant Mutation’; Koch, ‘Neo-Brittonic Voiceless Spirants from Old Celtic Geminates’; Schrijver, ‘Spirantization and Nasalization in British’; Sims-Williams, ‘The Problem of Spirantization and Nasalization in Brittonic Celtic’; and Thomas, ‘The Brythonic Consonant Shift and the Development of Consonant Mutation’. 11  GMW, p. 241; Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen, p. 374. 12  See Willis, Syntactic Change in Welsh, pp. 1–7 for further details.

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(7) Os canyhatta, canyhatted yn ryd heb ueicheu […] if+3.acc permit.prs.3sg permit.imp.3sg pred free without sureties ‘If she permits it, let her permit [it] freely without sureties […]’ (Ystorya Gereint Uab Erbin, ll. 613–14)

This pronoun occurs in its weak (enclitic) form -s after the negative particles ny and na (including also ony ‘if not, unless’ and kany ‘since not’), the perfective particle ry, and the affirmative particle neu, as well as after conditional o. Its strong form as occurs after kan ‘since’, gwedy ‘after’, kyt ‘although’, and pei ‘(irrealis) if ’.13 Since ry and neu became obsolescent as independent particles during Middle Welsh, the main context for the weak form outside of conditional clauses was after negative particles. This rather limited distribution may have played a role in motivating change, as we shall see below.

Later Developments There are three developments in late Middle Welsh that deserve our attention. First, the form or spreads as a general conditional marker. While its perfective interpretation was never particularly strongly felt, there are late Middle Welsh texts where its frequency is extremely high, or where it is the only marker of realis conditionals, such that we must conclude that it is a general marker of this type of clause. This is the case, for instance, in Y Seint Greal (Peniarth 11): (8) or mynny di vynet ymywn if want.prs.2sg you go.inf in ‘if you want to go in’ (Y Seint Greal, p. 326, ll. 16–17)

There is, however, much variability between texts, and a number of different rules may be operative. Morgan suggests that or is used particularly with certain verbs, notably bot ‘be’.14 There may be some phono­logical conditioning to its use, at least in some texts. Secondly, os begins to be found in clauses that, either semantically or syntactically, do not suggest focus. Focus clauses are generally considered to lack agreement between the verb and a fronted subject, while non-focus main clauses (‘abnormal sentences’) are generally considered to maintain this agreement.15 13 

GMW, pp. 55–56. Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen, p. 374. 15  Richards, Cystrawen y Frawddeg Gymraeg, pp. 99–109. 14 

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While this is perhaps an oversimplification,16 any os-clauses with agreement are nevertheless syntactically anomalous and we may suspect lack of focus. Such cases are in fact found fairly regularly in Middle Welsh: (9) os tidi a gynhelly y llamysten yn eidi hi if+cop.prs.3sg you prt maintain.prs.2sg the sparrowhawk pred poss.3fsg her ‘if you claim the sparrowhawk as hers’ (Ystorya Gereint Uab Erbin, l. 281) (10)

Os wynteu a ymladant yn wrawl, wynt a if+cop.prs.3sg they prt fight.prs.3pl pred valiant they prt oruydant ar eu gelynion […] overcome.prs.3pl on their enemies ‘If they fight valiantly, they will overcome their enemies […]’ (Ystorya de Carolo Magno, p. 19, ll. 27–28)

Semantically, the fronted subject does not seem to bear contrastive focus in the examples above. This lack of obvious contrastive focus is also true for many other late Middle Welsh examples even where agreement evidence is absent (in cases where the subject is a third-person singular pronoun or is a lexical noun phrase). A very early, but perhaps atypical, example is provided in (11), where the fronted element is the expletive pronoun ef ‘he, it’, acting in anticipatory function for the obligatorily postposed complement clause e mae ef ath dyholyes ‘that it was him that excluded you’. This non-referential pronoun is clearly not capable of bearing contrastive focus. (11) Os ef a dywedy ty e mae ef ath dyholyes ty if it prt say.prs.2sg you prt is he rel+2sg.acc exclude.pst.3sg you oth wlat ac o tref de tat […] from+2sg.gen land and from homestead 2sg.gen father ‘If you say that it was him that excluded you from your country and from your patrimony […]’ (Brut y Brenhinedd, Llanstephan 1, p. 48, ll. 10–11)

Example (12) is perhaps more typical. In context, there simply is no plausible set of people who might be alternative candidates for ‘agreeing on this’, so contrastive focus seems entirely superfluous. In both cases, we conclude that os is introducing an ordinary verb-second clause (‘abnormal sentence’) of a kind normally found in Middle Welsh main clauses.

16 

Plein and Poppe, ‘Patterns of Verbal Agreement in Historia Gruffud Vab Kenan’.

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(12) os gwalchmei a gyttuuna a mi am hynny if Gwalchmai prt agree.prs.3sg with me on this ‘if Gwalchmai agrees with me on this’ (Y Seint Greal, p. 301, ll. 8–9)

This pattern is a regular occurrence, particularly in later Middle Welsh, but it attracted prescriptive disapprobation in the modern period. Williams, for instance, comments (disapprovingly) on its presence in the Bible translations and provides relevant examples.17 Loss of contrastive emphasis is an inflationary process commonly seen elsewhere in semantic and concomitant syntactic change,18 and one might expect this to lead to the emergence of unmarked os + SVO (or verb-second) orders. However, the fact that we end up with os + VSO shows this ultimately to have been an innovation that led nowhere. Finally, os starts to be found with verb-initial clauses. Verb-initial clauses have never been associated with contrastive focus, so this marks a complete break with the historical association of os-clauses with focus. While the first two developments discussed so far are ultimately dead ends in the history of the language, this third one leads to the present-day Welsh system, where o(t) (along with or) has been entirely lost. In modern literary Welsh, there is no distinction between focus and non-focus realis conditional clauses: both are introduced by os. Use of os with a verb-initial pattern is found as early as the late thirteenth century in the following example from the Peniarth 14 version of Gwyrthyeu e Wynvydedic Veir: (13) Os ydywch chuitheu en dywedut auch treissyaỽ ohonaf ỽi if be.prs.2pl you prog say.inf 2pl.gen rob.inf of.1sg me dodwn ar ỽraỽt y goruchel ỽrenhin. put.imp.1pl on judgement the almighty king ‘If you say that I have robbed you, let us put [the matter] to the judgement of the almighty king.’ (Gwyrthyeu e Wynvydedic Veir, Peniarth 14, p. 18, ll. 16–18)

This is an isolated example (but see also (17) below), and, as we shall see, this use of os is not regularly attested until the fifteenth century. Extension of os to all realis conditionals, irrespective of focus, is part of a wider, longer-term process whereby all remnants of the copula ys ‘is’ are either replaced or reinterpreted so as to make sense within an overall system lacking that form. So, kanys ‘since it is’ + focus clause, which originally contrasted with 17 

Williams, A Welsh Grammar, p. 159. Dahl, ‘Inflationary Effects in Language and Elsewhere’; Detges and Waltereit, ‘Grammaticalization vs. Reanalysis’. 18 

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plain kan ‘since’ + VSO clause, comes to replace it.19 The focus construction introduced by ys ef ‘it is’ undergoes multiple reanalyses, leading ultimately to the creation of an adverb sef ‘namely’, in which the copula no longer plays any role.20 From this perspective, the generalization of os is entirely to be expected. However, such remnants can survive long periods if there are no opportunities to eliminate them. The question thus arises as to what kinds of opportunities there were to catalyse the generalization of os. This change is a focus cycle: a form associated with focus loses that focus.21 We should therefore not be surprised to find renewal. Despite the loss of the distinction between focus and non-focus conditional clauses, Welsh maintains syntactic expression of contrastive focus elsewhere. Renewal, in the form of the creation of a new focus conditional marker, is therefore to be expected, and indeed is found in present-day spoken Welsh, where the Middle Welsh distinction is recreated via the introduction of the embedded focus particle mai (dialectally also southern taw or north-western na) into focus conditionals, creating a distinction between os (non-focus) and os mai (focus).

The Current Study For the current study, all realis conditional clauses were examined in the texts listed in the table opposite. Law manu­scripts were chosen as the primary data source since they can be guaranteed to contain many ‘if ’-clauses. While law manu­ scripts reflect a complex history of redaction, it was assumed that scribes would, in many cases, be relatively willing to alter the form of the introductory conditional particle to fit their local dialect and might very well do so unconsciously; it is clear that the form of the conditional marker does indeed vary frequently even among closely related versions within the same manu­script tradition. Datings for the manu­scripts follow those of Daniel Huws.22 Attribution of dialect affiliation is often a difficult task for medi­eval Welsh texts, and the possibility that a given manu­script version may reflect both the language of the scribe and that of any text from which it was copied must always be taken into consideration. Attributions here are based primarily on the systematic work of 19 

GMW, pp. 234–35. Evans, ‘Cystrawennau “Sef ” mewn Cymraeg Canol’; Meelen, Why Jesus and Job Spoke Bad Welsh, pp. 203–11. 21  On the idea of cycles of change more generally, see van Gelderen, The Linguistic Cycle. 22  Huws, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts. 20 

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Peter Wynn Thomas, and discussion below is limited to those texts not dealt with in his work, or which raise issues in need of particular attention.23 Manu­script

Text

Text type

Date

Dialect affiliation

Peniarth 30

Llyfr Colan

law code

c. 1250

northern

Cotton Titus D.ii

Llyfr Iorwerth

law code

1250–1300

northern

NLW 5266B

Brut Dingestow

chronicle

1250–1300

mixed

Peniarth 36A

Llyfr Blegywryd

law code

1300–1350

southern

Llyfr Iorwerth

law code

1300–1350

mixed

Llyfr Cynog

law code

1300–1350

mixed

Peniarth 20

Brut y Tywysogion

chronicle

c. 1330

northern

Cotton Titus D.ix

Llyfr Blegywryd

law code

c. 1350

southern

Jesus 57

Llyfr Blegywryd

law code

c. 1400

southern

Peniarth 11

Y Seint Greal

romance

c. 1400

southern

Llanstephan 116

Llyfr Blegywryd

law code

c. 1450

southern

Peniarth 35

Y Seint Greal represents a Welsh translation of the French romances La queste del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus. The translation most likely emerged from the literary and cultural milieu of Glamorgan at the end of the fourteenth century. It is preserved above all in Peniarth 11, whose scribe is known to have been Hywel Fychan ap Hywel Goch of Builth.24 Hywel has been characterized as a ‘low-noise, form-orientated scribe’,25 a faithful copyist whose manu­scripts exhibit marked dialect differences among themselves. Peniarth 11 is most likely to have been produced at Neath or Margam Abbey, given the known history of it and other manu­scripts written by Hywel Fychan,26 and is thus categorized as southern on external grounds. Jesus 57, also in the hand of Hywel Fychan, is similarly likely to have been produced in the same area and, like Peniarth 36A, Cotton Titus D.ix, and Llanstephan 116, reflects the southern Blegywryd 23 

Thomas, ‘In Search of Middle Welsh Dialects’, ‘Middle Welsh Dialects’. For further discussion of the dialectal basis of the law texts, see Willis, ‘Lexical Diffusion in Middle Welsh’. 24  Charles-Edwards, ‘Hywel Vychan’. 25  Thomas, ‘Middle Welsh Dialects’, p. 43. 26  Fulton, ‘The Geo­g raphy of Welsh Literary Production in Late Medi­e val Glamorgan’, pp. 334–35; Lloyd-Morgan, ‘A Study of Y Seint Greal in Relation to La Queste Del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus’.

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redaction. References to St Gwenog and St Gwnnen in Llanstephan 116 suggest that it was written in or around Llanwenog and Llanwnnen in southern Ceredigion.27 Texts labelled ‘mixed’ pose particular problems. NLW 5266B, while composed in Gwynedd and thus essentially northern, has been recognized as containing a number of difficult ortho­g raphic features that mean that it cannot straightforwardly be treated alongside other northern manu­scripts of this period,28 and is categorized as ‘mixed’ to reflect this. Peniarth 35 preserves a mixture of law from both the ‘southern’ Cynog and ‘northern’ Iorwerth redactions, while references to the seven bishop houses of Dyfed suggest a south-western connection.29 The parts that derive from the Iorwerth redaction of the laws and those that derive from Llyfr Cynog were examined separately, although only one fairly minor difference relevant to the current discussion in fact emerged.

Extension of or Consider first the extension of or at the expense of o. Four texts, namely the three earliest texts, Peniarth 30, Cotton Titus D.ii, NLW 5266B (Brut Dingestow), plus the Peniarth 20 version of Brut y Tywysogion, consistently show the canonical Middle Welsh system; that is, ot or od before a vowel, o elsewhere. Wherever mutation patterns can be ascertained with confidence, they are those of canonical Middle Welsh. The form or is found only once, in Brut Dingestow, before a pluperfect verb, neatly in line with the standard etymo­logy of or, as witnessed by the association elsewhere in Middle Welsh between the perfective particle ry and the pluperfect:30 (14) A chofau ydaỽ or doethoet tywyssogyon ereill y and remind.inf to.3msg if come.pluperf.3sg princes other to ryuelu ac ef ry oruot ohonaỽ. make.war.inf with him prf overcome.inf from.3msg ‘And reminded him that, if other princes had come to make war on him, he had been victorious.’ (Brut Dingestow, NLW 5266B, p. 40)

27  Evans, Report on Manu­scripts in the Welsh Language, ii, p. 567; James, ‘Llyfr Cyfraith o Ddyffryn Teifi’, pp. 383–404. 28  Russell, ‘What Did Medi­eval Welsh Scribes Do?’. 29  Wiliam, ‘Restoration of the Book of Cynog’. 30  GMW, p. 167.

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This leaves seven texts, all of which show extension of or at the expense of o to a greater or lesser degree. The most extreme cases are two of the manu­scripts of the Blegywryd law redaction, Peniarth 36A and Cotton Titus D.ix. These show almost complete replacement of o by or before consonant-initial verbs, and also partial replacement of ot by or before a vowel. In neither case is there any obvious conditioning by the initial consonant of the following verb, presumably because the frequency of or is so high that it is overwhelmingly the commonest option in every possible phono­logical environment: effectively, the extension of or has run to completion in these texts. The remaining texts show intermediate levels of extension of or, and, except in one case ( Jesus 57, p. 72, l. 3), they never extend or to a position before a vowel. In Jesus 57 and Y Seint Greal (Peniarth 11), or is the majority form. In Llanstephan 116 and in the Llyfr Cynog sections of Peniarth 35, it forms a significant minority of cases, while, in the Llyfr Iorwerth sections of Peniarth 35, it represents a small minority, around a dozen or so instances. In all except the Llyfr Iorwerth sections of Peniarth 35, where numbers are too small to be confident of any pattern, Morgan’s suggestion31 that or is particularly common with bot ‘be’ is borne out by close examination of the texts. To be more precise, there is an association with /b/-initial forms of bot (i.e. byd ‘will be’ and bu ‘(preterite) was’). There may be a historical basis to this association, since these are also forms associated semantically with use of the perfective particle ry even in earlier Middle Welsh. If so, this represents one of the contexts from which or spread, and it is thus not surprising that we continue to find high frequencies of it here. A second phono­logical effect can also be discerned: in Jesus 57, where the verb begins with a voiceless stop, that is, a consonant that would normally show the effect of aspirate mutation after o, the only marker found is or, and the mutation is thereby successfully avoided. While Jesus 57 represents the extreme case, a similar but only partial effect is found in Llanstephan 116 and in the Llyfr Cynog sections of Peniarth 35. Mutation avoidance may be a factor more generally in the development of conditional clauses. Morgan provides examples that demonstrate the possibility of lack of aspirate mutation after o at least as early as 1400.32 To demonstrate this possibility for a given manu­script or text, we need to be confident that absence of mutation after o co-exists with otherwise consistent representation of aspirate mutation in other contexts where it is 31  32 

Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen, p. 374. Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen, p. 374.

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expected, for instance after the sentential negation marker ny(t) or the numeral tri ‘three’. Such conditions are found in Llanstephan 116 and Peniarth 35 (both the Iorwerth and the Cynog segments). These texts always mark aspirate mutation of voiceless stops after ny(t) and tri, but nevertheless sometimes fail to show it after o: (15) […] o trigyant ymchoelent ar y keithiwet ual kynt. if stay.prs.3pl return.imp.3pl on 3pl.gen servitude as before ‘[…] if they stay, let them return to their servitude as before.’ (Llyfr Iorwerth, Peniarth 35, fol. 47v, ll. 10–11) (16) […] o cỽyn dyn rac arall […] if complain.prs.3sg person before other ‘[…] if a person brings a complaint about another person […]’ (Llanstephan 116, p. 64, l. 6)

Peniarth 35 is considerably earlier than previous examples that have been identified, allowing us to push back absence of mutation at least to the first half of the fourteenth century. Evidence from the other manu­scripts is inconclusive: Peniarth 30 and Cotton Titus D.ii both also contain apparent examples of this phenomenon, but do not indicate aspirate mutation uniformly after ny(t) and tri elsewhere, so absence of mutation may well be purely ortho­graphic. Broadly speaking, then, there seems to be an association between using or in place of o, and failing to use an aspirate mutation after o, suggesting that mutation avoidance may have been one reason for the spread of or. One final phono­logical factor can be observed: in Jesus 57, a verb beginning with /g/ also clearly favours or rather than o. More such factors may emerge with further study. Not surprisingly, extension of or is a feature of later rather than earlier Middle Welsh texts. There is also some evidence that may tentatively lead us to conclude that it is associated with southern rather than northern material and that this innovation therefore arose in the south. All texts which use or extensively are southern in their dialect attribution. Peniarth 20 Brut y Tywysogion, which lacks extension of or, represents a north-eastern manu­script from Valle Crucis,33 produced at a time when extension of or is already manifested in southern material, leading us towards this conclusion. However, the relative paucity of manu­scripts with strong northern connections in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries makes it difficult to be confident on this point. 33 

Huws, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts, pp. 47, 53, 76.

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Extension of or is an ultimately unsuccessful innovation, in the sense that, even though it is partially successful, it is obliterated by subsequent innovations, notably the extension of os. However, once or spreads, the possibility exists that some varieties had three forms of the conditional marker, o, od, and or, conditioned at least partially phono­logically. This may have created conditions that favoured the creation of further synonymous alternants, namely os.

Extension of os Evidence for Extension of os in the Texts The texts also permit a window, albeit of a rather a different kind, onto how and why os came to be reinterpreted as a general marker of realis conditional clauses, regardless of focus. Clear examples of direct use of os before a verb, in cases where the -s cannot be interpreted either as an object pronoun or as a copula, are found only rarely in the texts examined. One example comes from Llyfr Blegywryd in Peniarth 36A: (17) Os discyfreitha y deilat oll y march pan if free.prs.3sg the tenant completely the horse when dalher ar yr yt […] catch.prs.sbjv.impers on the wheat ‘If the tenant lets the horse completely loose when it is caught on the wheat […]’ (Peniarth 36A, Llyfr Blegywryd, p. 85, ll. 13–15)

This example is surprisingly early (cf. (13) above). At the equivalent point in the law codes, Cotton Titus D.ix (fol. 72r) has or plus an impersonal rather than a third-person singular verb (or disgyfrethir), but this does not help to suggest a reason for os in Peniarth 36A: either os had generalized in the language of the scribe or a miscopying of as had occurred at some point in the transmission process. A second example comes from a more expected time period, namely the mid-fifteenth century, from Llanstephan 116: (18) Os gỽata yr amdiffỽr hyny gỽaded val y dỽedassam if deny.prs.3sg the defendant this deny.imp.3sg as prt say.pst.1pl ni ychod. we above ‘If the defendant denies this, let them deny [it] as we said above.’ (Llanstephan 116, p. 75)

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We will see below that gwada ‘denies’, being optionally transitive, offers ample opportunity for confusion as to the nature of a preceding os, so it is not surprising to find relatively early examples of its extension here. Possible Contexts for Reanalysis Despite these isolated examples, in general, the language of the texts seems to represent the stage that gave rise to the generalization of os rather than the period of its diffusion. It therefore invites us to ask what conditions motivated reanalysis of os as a general marker of realis conditionals and to seek ‘bridging contexts’, sentence types which might permit either a conservative or an innovative structural analysis.34 Morgan notes that it is difficult to decide which of the two constructions with os, namely o + copula -s and o + pronoun -s is the source of the modern general conditional marker os,35 essentially, which of them provided the bridging context of reanalysis. In fact, there seem to be multiple contexts in which reanalysis could have taken place, and it may well be that all of them contributed to the change. The texts show that a large proportion of cases were open to reanalysis of various different kinds. Copular ys/-s and object pronouns as/-s were both lost from Welsh, the former rather more readily than the latter, and we may also view the reanalysis of os as a single item as a response to their ongoing obsolescence at this period. All of the following contexts give rise to the potential for reanalysis: (i) pronominal as/-s with optionally transitive verbs; (ii) doubling of pronominal as/-s with an object pronoun; (iii) ys/-s as a copula in ellipsis contexts; (iv) ys/-s as a copula with predicative adjectives and nominals. We shall now examine each of these in turn. Contexts Involving Pronominal as/-s The first case to consider is that of optionally transitive verbs. The verbs ameu ‘doubt’, dichawn ‘is able’, gallu ‘be able’, gwadu ‘deny’, mynnu ‘want’, and tyngu ‘swear’ are all frequently found in the texts as the sole element in a clause preceded by os, where -s represents a third-person accusative infixed pronoun ‘it’: 34  35 

Evans and Wilkins, ‘In the Mind’s Ear’. Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen, p. 374.

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(19) Wynt a dylyant pridaỽ eu tir gan gannyat y they prt may.prs.3pl lease.inf their land with permission the rei hynny os mynnant. ones those if+3.acc want.prs.3pl ‘They have the right to lease their land with the permission of those, if they want it.’ (Llyfr Iorwerth, Peniarth 35, fol. 47r) (20) […] ac os gỽatta, gỽadet ar y petỽeryd ar and if+3.acc deny.prs.3sg deny.imp.3sg on the fourth on hugeint o ’e gyfnesseiueit. twenty of his kin ‘[…] and if he denies it, let him deny [it] as one of twenty-four of his kin.’ (Llyfr Blegywryd, Cotton Titus D.ix, fol. 75r)

Such examples provide a bridging context allowing for the possible reinterpretation of the clause as os ‘if ’ plus an intransitive verb ‘if they want’ in (19), or ‘if they deny’ in (20). Clearly, not all of these verbs would have been of the same frequency in speech as they are in the law codes, but dichawn, gallu, and mynnu would certainly have been frequent enough to have made this issue a reality. In addition, in speech, gwybot ‘know’ (e.g. os gwdost ‘if you know it’) might be expected to have raised the same issue very frequently. This would leave cases such as the following as early instances of extension of the change, sometimes termed ‘switch contexts’:36 (21) Ac os dychaỽn hi y dala herỽyd lo[s]gỽrn […] and if can.prs.3sg she 3msg.gen hold.inf by tail ‘And if she can hold it by the tail […]’ (Llanstephan 116, p. 21, ll. 20–21)

Here, os dichawn ‘if she/he can [do] it’ is commonly found on its own elsewhere. If os is interpreted as the form of o used before dichawn or before /d/, then it will be used in cases such as (21), where the complement of dychaỽn is y dala herỽyd lo[s]gỽrn ‘hold it by its tail’ and, historically speaking, -s is unmotivated. The optional transitivity of these verbs, and the subtle syntactic and semantic differences between their transitive and intransitive uses, is demonstrated by the following pair of examples:

36 

Heine, ‘On the Role of Context in Grammaticalization’.

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(22) Os gwadu a wna, ual hyn y gỽata […] if+cop.3sg deny.inf prt do.prs.3sg like this prt deny.prs.3sg ‘If it is denying it that he does [if he denies it], he denies it like this […]’ (Llyfr Iorwerth, Peniarth 35, fol. 20r, ll. 3–4) (23) Os e wadu a uen ual hen e guedyr […] if+cop.3sg 3msg.gen deny.inf prt want.prs.3sg like this prt deny.prs.impers ‘If it is to deny it that he wants [if he wants to deny it], one denies [it is denied] like this […]’ (Cotton Titus D.ii, fol. 20r, l. 25)

These express essentially the same idea, yet, syntactically, gwadu ‘deny’ is used intransitively in the conditional clause in (22), but transitively in (23). This brings us to the second case to consider, also involving the infixed third-person accusative pronoun as/-s. Like other infixed pronouns, -s allows (but does not require) doubling with an affixed pronoun, ef in (24), and efo in (25), in the same clause: (24) Nys ymlityaf i ef bellach […] neg+3.acc pursue.prs.1sg I him further ‘I shall not pursue him further […]’ (Culhwch ac Olwen, l. 1170) (25) […] ac nys gwyl neb efo. and neg+3.acc see.prs.3sg no.one him ‘[…] and no one will see him.’ (Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, l. 1297)

In such cases, the full pronominal object may be taken as the sole expression of the direct object, opening up the way for the function of -s to be lost. This is effectively a cycle of renewal: -s is reinforced by the presence of an additional full object pronoun, but the more often doubling occurs, the less identifiable the function of -s becomes. In the following example, -s appears to double a lexical noun-phrase object, rather than a pronoun, and so nys already seems to be functioning as a phono­ logical variant of ny: (26) […] nys dygei ynteu y eneit ef. neg+3.acc take.impf.3sg he 3msg.gen soul 3msg ‘[…] he would not have taken his soul.’ (Owein, Jesus 111, l. 440)

Sentences like this suggest that -s was no longer understood as a pronoun; nys could have been reinterpreted as a variant form of the negative marker before ultimately becoming obsolete.

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Naturally enough, doubling is a possibility in os-clauses too: (27) os gwelwn ni efo if+3.acc see.prs.1p we him ‘if we see him’ (Y Seint Greal, p. 282, l. 13) (28) […] os arhoy ditheu efo, a thi yn varchawc, if+3.acc wait.prs.2sg you him and you pred knight ef a ’th edeu yn bedestyr. he prt 2sg.acc leave.prs.3sg pred pedestrian ‘[…] if you wait for him when you are on horseback, he will leave you on foot.’ (Owein, ll. 162–63)

These two examples provide the relevant bridging context. In both cases, the pronoun efo ‘him’ was open to being treated as the sole object without doubling, leaving os to be interpreted simply as a variant form of o. Given that, in many varieties, the forms o and or already existed side by side, conditioned perhaps phono­logically by the initial consonant of the following verb form, it would be natural to treat os in the same way. Contexts Involving Copular ys/-s We have seen ways in which o + infixed pronoun as/-s could have been reanalysed as a simple form. We now turn to cases where interpretation of os as ‘if ’ plus copula could have led to the same result. We consider two specific contexts, ellipsis and adjectival predicates. Where the conditional introduces a focus clause, the main part of the clause may be elided, leaving only the fronted focused element. In that case, the conditional marker remains os, consisting of o ‘if ’ plus the copula -s. This is illustrated in (29), where os buw ‘if alive’, with ellipsis, is contrasted with or llas ‘if he has been killed’, without ellipsis. A further example from the texts examined for the current study is given in (30). (29) ‘[…] namyn ti a gwyr dy ty a eill dial Owein except you and men 2sg.gen house prt can.prs.3sg avenge.inf Owain or llas, neu y rydhau ot ydiw yg karchar, if kill.pst.impers or 3msg.gen free.inf if be.prs.3sg in prison ac os buw [sic], y dwyn gyt a thi.’ and if+cop.3sg alive 3msg.gen bring.inf together with you ‘[…] except that you and the men of your household may avenge Owain if he has been killed, or free him if he is in prison, and if [he is] alive, bring him with you.’ (Owein, ll. 464–66)

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(30) Oet pytheỽnos o ’r dyd hỽnnỽ os kyn hanher dyd time fortnight from the day that if+cop.3sg before mid day uyd. Os gỽedy hanner dyd, pytheỽnos o trannoeth. be.fut.3sg if+cop.3sg after mid day fortnight from next.day ‘The time limit is a fortnight from that day if it is before midday. If after midday, a fortnight from the next day.’ (Llyfr Iorwerth, Peniarth 35, fol. 34v, l. 25–fol. 35r, l. 2)

Example (30) features a sequence of two clefts, with the verb in the second of them being elided. Parallelism with the first cleft shows it to be uyd ‘will be’. Cases such as these provide a further bridging context: it may not be obvious to speakers that the structure involves an elided cleft with contrastive focus, and an alternative structure, in which os is a general conditional marker, can be entertained. Effectively, there is the potential for a reanalysis of the structure, from ‘if it is alive [that he is]’ to ‘if alive’ in (29), and from ‘if it is after midday that it is’ to ‘if after midday’ in (30); os initially becomes a default form for ‘if ’, before spreading to verb-initial contexts. The second case to consider involves adjectival or nominal predicates, where -s is the reduced form, used only in this context, of the copula ys. (31) […] os gwell ganthaw gadet ganthaw y da […] if+cop.prs.3sg better with.3msg leave.imp.3sg with.3msg the property ‘[…] if he prefers, let the property be left with him […]’ ( Jesus 57, p. 102, l. 31) (32) Ac velly os anafus, neu ry hen, neu ry ieuangk […] and so if+cop.prs.3sg injured or too old or too young ‘And so if he is injured, or too old, or too young […]’ ( Jesus 57, p. 59, ll. 37–38)

These are not clefts, so, unlike in the case just discussed, there is no elision and no reconstruction of the full form of the sentence: the clause is complete as it is. However, they might nevertheless have been susceptible to reanalysis if they were misinterpreted as being elliptical verbless structures. Effectively, (31) and (32) could provide a bridging context if they could be reinterpreted from ‘if he prefers’ to ‘if preferable’ and from ‘if he is injured’ to ‘if injured’ respectively. Since ys was already obsolescent by the fifteenth century, appearing in a reduced range of more and more formulaic contexts, there was no longer good reason to connect it to the suffixed form -s, and this fact would create even more favourable conditions for reanalysis.

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Comparing the Bridging Contexts These may seem like exceptional cases. However, in the texts examined, some of these ‘exceptional’ cases are in fact very frequent, suggesting plenty of opportunity for confusion about the structure of os-clauses. This leaves us with four possible bridging contexts, and therefore, in a sense, an embarrassment of riches. It is perhaps not necessary, however, to choose between them, since all lead in the same direction and all may have played a role in promoting change. Contexts (i) and (iv) arise most frequently of all, and thus presented the greatest potential for reanalysis. Obsolescence of the copula ys/-s ran ahead of obsolescence of the infixed accusative pronoun as/-s. This would favour an account built on reanalyses involving the copula: any relic uses of copula -s would need to undergo reanalysis in order to survive once the copula itself had ceased to be productive, and late Middle Welsh was nearing this point. On the other hand, if early use of os turns out to show phono­logical conditioning, it is likely that that conditioning arose because of an association with particular following verbs, notably gallu/gallael ‘be able’, gwybot ‘know’, and mynnu ‘want’. This would favour an account based on optionally transitive verbs.

Conclusion This article has attempted a very preliminary investigation of how os came to generalize as the realis conditional marker in present-day Welsh. We have seen that the late medi­e val period is crucial, and witnesses a number of developments. The two developments most robustly attested in late Middle Welsh texts, namely the extension of or and loss of focus in os-clefts, are effectively dead ends and are overlain by the later extension of os. Nevertheless, further examination of the extension of or may be useful in developing our understanding of the emergence of dialect variation in Welsh if future work corroborates the sense that this is an innovation characteristic of southern dialects in the late Middle Welsh period. We have further examined Middle Welsh materials for evidence of plausible ‘bridging contexts’, which may have provided the conditions for reanalysis of os as a general realis conditional marker and thus for its extension to verb-initial clauses. While this extension is only in its incipient stages in the texts examined, with scattered examples of os + VSO, we have identified a number of quite frequently attested potential contexts for the reanalysis. Ongoing obsolescence of both copula -s and accusative third-person pronoun -s may have acted as catalyst for change, the former in particular allowing us to integrate generalization of os as the last of a series of other changes associated with the copula and related items (kanys ‘since’, sef ‘namely’) in Middle Welsh.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, 5266B —— , Llanstephan 1 —— , Llanstephan 116 —— , Peniarth 11 —— , Peniarth 14 —— , Peniarth 20 —— , Peniarth 30 —— , Peniarth 35 —— , Peniarth 36A London, British Library, Cotton Titus D.ii —— , Cotton Titus D.ix Oxford, Jesus College, 57

Primary Sources Culhwch ac Olwen: An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale, ed. by Rachel Brom­ wich and D. Simon Evans (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992) Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, ed. by Glenys W. Goetinck (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1976) ‘Llyma Vabinogi Iessu Grist’, ed. by Mary Williams, Revue celtique, 33 (1912), 184–248 ‘Owein’, or ‘Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn’, ed. by Robert L. Thomson (Dublin: Dublin Insti­ tute for Advanced Studies, 1968) Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, ed. by Ifor Williams (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1930) Ystorya Gereint Uab Erbin, ed.  by Robert  L. Thomson (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Ad­vanced Studies, 1997) Y Seint Greal, Being the Adventures of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, in the Quest of the Holy Grail, and on Other Occasions, Originally Written about the Year 1200, from the Copy Preserved among the Hengwrt Mss. in the Peniarth Library, ed. by Robert Williams (London: Thomas Richards, 1876)

Secondary Works Charles-Edwards, Gifford, ‘Hywel Vychan: Red Book and White Book’, National Library of Wales Journal, 21 (1980), 427–28 Dahl, Östen, ‘Inflationary Effects in Language and Elsewhere’, in Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, ed. by Joan Bybee and Paul Hopper (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2001), pp. 471–80

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Detges, Ulrich, and Richard Waltereit, ‘Grammaticalization vs. Reanalysis: A Semantic– Pragmatic Account of Functional Change in Grammar’, Zeitschrift für Sprach­wissen­ schaft, 21 (2002), 151–95 Evans, Emrys, ‘Cystrawennau “Sef ” mewn Cymraeg Canol’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 18 (1958), 38–54 Evans, J. Gwenogvryn, Report on Manu­scripts in the Welsh Language, ii (London: HMSO, 1902) Evans, Nicholas, and David Wilkins, ‘In the Mind’s Ear: The Semantic Extensions of Perception Verbs in Australian Languages’, Language, 76 (2000), 546–92 Fulton, Helen, ‘The Geo­graphy of Welsh Literary Production in Late Medi­eval Glamor­ gan’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 41 (2015), 325–40 Gelderen, Elly van, The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty (Ox­ford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Heine, Bernd, ‘On the Role of Context in Grammaticalization’, in New Reflections on Gram­ maticalization, ed.  by Ilse Wischer and Gabriele Diewald (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002), pp. 83–102 Huws, Daniel, Medi­eval Welsh Manu­scripts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000) Isaac, Graham R., ‘The Chrono­logy of the Development of the Brittonic Stops and the Spirant Mutation’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 8 (2004), 49–85 James, Christine, ‘Llyfr Cyfraith o Ddyffryn Teifi: Disgrifiad o BL. Add. 22,356’, National Library of Wales Journal, 27 (1992), 383–404 Koch, John T., ‘Neo-Brittonic Voiceless Spirants from Old Celtic Geminates’, Ériu, 40 (1989), 119–28 Lewis, Henry, The Sentence in Welsh (London: Humphrey Milford Amen House, 1942) Lloyd-Morgan, Ceridwen, ‘A Study of Y Seint Greal in Relation to La Queste del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford, 1978) Meelen, Marieke, Why Jesus and Job Spoke Bad Welsh: The Origin and Distribution of V2 Orders in Middle Welsh (Utrecht: LOT, 2016) Morgan, Thomas J., Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1952) Plein, Kerstin, and Erich Poppe, ‘Patterns of Verbal Agreement in Historia Gruffud vab Kenan: Norm and Variation’, Études celtiques, 40 (2014), 145–63 Richards, Melville, Cystrawen y Frawddeg Gymraeg (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1938) Rodway, Simon, Dating Medi­eval Welsh Literature: Evidence from the Verbal System (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2013) Russell, Paul, ‘What Did Medi­eval Welsh Scribes Do? The Scribe of the Dingestow Court Manu­script’, Cambrian Medi­eval Celtic Studies, 37 (1999), 78–96 Schrijver, Peter, ‘The Celtic Adverbs for “against” and “with” and the Early Apocope of -i’, Ériu, 45 (1994), 151–89 —— , ‘Spirantization and Nasalization in British’, Studia Celtica, 33 (1999), 1–19 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘The Problem of Spirantization and Nasalization in Brittonic Celtic’, in Evidence and Counter-evidence: Essays in Honour of Frederik Kortlandt, i: Balto-Slavic and Indo-European Linguistics, ed. by Alexander Lubotsky, Jos Schaeken, and Jeroen Wiedenhof (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 509–26

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—— , ‘The Spread of “Sandhi h-” in Thirteenth-Century Welsh’, Transactions of the Philo­ logical Society, 108 (2010), 41–52 —— , ‘Variation in Middle Welsh Conjugated Prepositions: Chrono­logy, Register and Dialect’, Transactions of the Philo­logical Society, 111 (2013), 1–50 Thomas, Peter Wynn, ‘The Brythonic Consonant Shift and the Development of Consonant Mutation’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 37 (1990), 1–42 —— , ‘In Search of Middle Welsh Dialects’, in Celtic Languages and Celtic Peoples: Proceedings of the Second North American Congress of Celtic Studies, ed.  by Cyril  J. Byrne, Margaret Harry, and Pádraig Ó Siadhail (Halifax, Nova Scotia: D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies, Saint Mary’s University, 1992), pp. 287–303 —— , ‘Middle Welsh Dialects: Problems and Perspectives’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 40 (1993), 17–50 Wiliam, Aled R., ‘Restoration of the Book of Cynog’, National Library of Wales Journal, 25 (1988), 245–56 Williams, Stephen J., A Welsh Grammar (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1980) Willis, David, Syntactic Change in Welsh: A  Study of the Loss of Verb-Second (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) —— , ‘Lexical Diffusion in Middle Welsh: The Distribution of /j/ in the Law Texts’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 9 (2005), 105–33 —— , ‘Negation in Middle Welsh’, Studia Celtica, 40 (2006), 63–88

Digital Resources Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425: Welsh Prose 1300–1425, ed. by Peter Wynn Thomas, D. Mark Smith, and Diana Luft (Cardiff: Cardiff University, 2007–2013) [accessed 1 March 2022] Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0. ed. by G. R. Isaac, Simon Rodway, Silva Nurmio, Kit Kapphahn, and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2013)

A Contribution to Subaltern Linguistics: Welsh Dim in Comparative (and Similar) Clauses Richard Glyn Roberts

T

he attention to detail that characterizes much of Celtic Studies largely serves to mask the discipline’s basic epistemo­logical shortcomings. ‘Ceux qui s’appliquent trop aux petites choses’, affirms La Rochefoucauld’s forty-first maxim, ‘deviennent ordinairement incapables des grandes’. Against this backdrop the singularity of Patrick Sims-Williams’s scholarly production is unmissable. His approach combines a positivist attachment to the archive with a demystifying archaeo­logy of ideas, whereby exhaustive corpus-based studies are punctuated with shorter papers worrying away at the core presuppositions and categories that define Celtic Studies as a discipline caught between history and ethno­graphy. It is an approach that might encourage the elaboration of a Welsh linguistics from below. * * * Focusing on the emergence of postverbal negation in Welsh in a cross-linguistic context (the Welsh Jespersen’s Cycle) and the passage of the vocable dim from noun to indefinite pronoun to negative marker, recent accounts of the development of dim allude only briefly, in passing, if at all, to instances of dim in Richard Glyn Roberts ([email protected]) is a native of Abererch. His research interests include Middle Welsh philo­logy, Middle Welsh proverb collections, the socio­logy of contemporary Welsh, and the history of the scholarship of Welsh and the other Celtic languages. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131207 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 311–323 BREPOLS

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comparative contexts.1 In fairness, this is not a topic developed at length in the standard grammars of Welsh, largely confined as they are to the grammar of standard Welsh and the production and legitimization of a standardized norm. Yet, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru does plainly note the possibility of dim occurring ‘weithiau mewn brawddeg gadarnhaol (yn enwedig un o ansawdd gymharol)’ (sometimes in a positive sentence (especially of a comparative quality)),2 even if it does not provide a generous selection of examples to illustrate the point, and the association of negation with the comparative can be observed in other languages.3 The presence of negatives and negative polarity items in comparative constructions is, for example, well documented in the case of Breton as well as French, which is often used for comparison in studies of Welsh negation.4 John Lloyd-Jones identified the essential point in his Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg:

dim […] mewn brawddeg gadarnhaol. Sylwer ar ansawdd gymharol yr holl frawddegau y ceir dim ei hunan ynddynt.5

(dim […] in an affirmative sentence. Note the comparative nature of all the sentences where dim occurs by itself.)

He gives examples of dim with comparative adjectives: 1. haws na dim (easier than anything) 2. oedd gassach gan duw no dim (was more hated by God than anything) 3. yn voe no dim (more than anything) With superlatives: 4. yr hynn mwyaf a garei o dim bydawl (the thing he loved most of all worldly things) 1  Borsley and Jones, Welsh Negation; Poppe, ‘Negation in Welsh’; Willis, ‘Negation in Middle Welsh’; Willis, ‘Motivating the Emergence of New Markers’; Willis, ‘Negation in the History of Brythonic Celtic’. 2  GPC, p. 1018. 3  Bacskai-Atkari, The Syntax of Comparative Constructions, pp. 213–18; Jespersen, Negation, p. 37. 4  Willis, ‘Negation in the History of Brythonic Celtic’, pp. 275–76; Gros, Trésor, p. 135, p. 152; Muller, La négation, pp. 423–43. 5  Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa, p. 356.

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5. nor dim cochaf (than the reddest thing) 6. ar dim blaenllymaf (as the sharpest thing) 7. ar dim gwynhaf (as the whitest thing) 8. ar dim hawssaf (as the easiest thing) 9. goreu dim (the best thing) 10. dikyaf dim (the most sorrowful thing) And with the composite preposition ymlaen ‘in front of, before’, where comparison is implied: 11. ymlaen dim (before anything) Further quarrying in Middle Welsh texts provides the following additional examples with superlatives: 12. c ynta dim6 (foremost thing) 13. Gwaethaf dim7 (worst thing) 14. a glassach yỽ y vric nor dim glassaf8 (and its branches are greener than the greenest thing) And with an equative: 15. kumeint a dim/kymeynt a dym9 (as much as a thing) In his account of the development of negation in Middle Welsh, Willis cites examples 5, 6, 7, and 8 above more fully, showing that nominal dim is here (as in the case of 14) preceded by an equative adjective before being qualified by a superlative: 16. cochach oedynt no’r dim cochaf (they were redder than the reddest thing) 17. a chyn vlaenllymet yw a’r dim blaenllymaf (and it is as sharp as the sharpest thing) 6 

Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. by Johnston, 2.5. Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. by Johnston, 23.7. 8  Oxford, Jesus College, MS 20. Cited from Evans, Report, ii.1, p. 32. 9  Aberystwyth, NLW, Peniarth 29 and BL, Add 14931 respectively. Both cited from the searchable transcriptions of RhG-13c. 7 

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18. hyny oedynt kyn wynhet a’r dim gwynhaf (until they were as white as the whitest thing) 19. kynn hawsset oed […] ar dim hawssaf (was as easy […] as the easiest thing) Referring to these examples as evidence of the residual nominal use of dim, Willis does not relate them to the two instances of pronominal (‘argument’) dim occurring with a comparative that he cites further along in the same article, along with examples of dim in interrogative and irrealis contexts: 20. yr hon a garei ynteu y wuy no dim daearavl (whom he loved more than anything on earth) 21. a’e hoffi yn vwy no dim (and liked it more than anything) Examples 16, 17, 18, and 19 above are judged to be formulaic on account of their syntactic similarity. Examples 20 and 21 demonstrate that Middle Welsh dim conforms to the typical pattern of distribution of weak negative polarity items in other languages and are thus found to be consistent with the general drift towards ‘the inherently negative dim of present-day Welsh’.10 Accordingly, the cumulative evidence for the use of dim in comparative contexts is overlooked and the phenomenon itself is dismissed as largely obsolescent by the Middle Welsh period.11 At the other end of the historical development of dim, Fynes-Clinton, in 1913, supplies an example that suggests otherwise: 22. ma: nu n dëyd bo:d tøwyd [sic] ṛhe:u ǝn jaχaχ na dim tøwyδ araḷ (they say that frosty weather is healthier than any (than is not any) other weather)12 * * * Subsequent scholarship has failed to appreciate Lloyd-Jones’s insight and has not made the link between Middle Welsh nominal or pronominal dim in comparative contexts and adjectival dim directly preceding a substantive in similar

10 

Willis, ‘Negation in Middle Welsh’, pp. 67–70. In the short account of the development of negative polarity items in Middle Welsh in Borsley, Tallerman, and Willis, The Syntax of Welsh, pp. 310–11, dim is said to ‘occur in negative, interrogative and conditional/subjunctive contexts only’. 12  Fynes-Clinton, The Welsh Vocabulary of the Bangor District, p. 88. 11 

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contexts in Modern Welsh. Borsley and Jones give two examples without further commentary: 23. Ma’ Sioned yn well na dim (un) dyn (Sioned is better than any man.) 24. Ma’ Sioned cystal â dim (un) dyn (Sioned is as good as any man.)13 The inclusion of un in parentheses in these examples is not explained as a variant but appears to be an attempt by the authors to render an unfamiliar construction less grinding. The construction is rare — which explains its omission from standard grammars and dictionaries — but it is by no means unattested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century sources. It belongs to a group of constructions that hark back to the Middle Welsh examples noted above. The following list is intended to supplement the sparse examples of dim in comparative contexts hitherto documented and illustrate the continued evolution of a feature somewhat hurriedly deemed obsolescent:

Comparative + Dim + Noun 25. Yr ydym yn cofio enghraifft a esyd allan y tuedd y cyfeiriwn ato, yn yr hen frawd, yn well na dim darluniad o’r eiddom ni.14

(We recall an example that shows the penchant we refer to, in the old fellow, better than any portrayal of ours.)

26. eto fe gafodd yno rywbeth annhraethol werthfawrocach na dim arian a allasai gael, — hamdden a chalon i fyfyrio ar wirioneddau mawrion yr efengyl.15

(yet, he found there something more valuable than any money that he could have obtained, — leisure and courage to contemplate the great truths of the gospel.)

27. Er nad oedd gan fy nhad ddim o bethau’r byd hwn i’w gadael ar ei ol yn gynnysgaeth i mi at y dyfodol, fe brofais i ar lawer adeg wedi hyn y buasai ei nodded o fwy gwerth na dim meddiannau a allasai fod wedi 13 

Borsley and Jones, Welsh Negation, p. 121. Thomas, Cofiant, p. 116. 15  Thomas, Cofiant, p. 925. 14 

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eu gadael i mi.16

(Although my father had none of the things of this world to hand down to me as an inheritance for the future, I  felt many a time afterwards that his support would have been more valuable than any possessions that he might have bequeathed to me.)

28. Hwyrach mai am fy mod yn adnabod y rhan hon yn well na dim rhan arall yr wyf yn teimlo fel hyn, ond wedyn yr wyf wedi crwydro’r Lôn Goed ar ei hyd droeon, ac ni welais i unlle ohoni hi a allai gymharu â’r rhan hon.17 (Maybe  I feel like this because I know this part better than any other part, yet I have walked the length of the Lôn Goed many a time, and I have not seen any place along it that can compare to this part.) 29. Mae ganddi deisen ar blat sy’n well na dim teisen a gefais erioed.18 (She has a fruit tart that is better than any tart I ever had.) 30. Ma Jo’n amlach i holide na dim titsiar, ydi, ma hi’n holide rownd rîl ar Jo.19 ( Jo is on holiday more often than any teacher, yes, Jo is on holiday year-round.) 31. Mae mynd am dro yn well na dim ffisig.20 (Going for a walk is better than any medicine.) 32. Mae o’n well na dim dynas am wneud bwyd.21 (He’s a better cook than any woman.) 33. Mae hi’n well na dim cyllall bocad fu gin i rioed.22

16 

Lloyd, Hunangofiant, p. 7. Williams, Pigau’r Sêr, p. 147. 18  Roberts, Y Lôn Wen, p. 21. My thanks to Dr Brian Ó Curnáin for providing this reference. 19  Jones, Ifas, p. 88. 20  From the spoken language of Llŷn and Eifionydd. 21  From the spoken language of Llŷn and Eifionydd. 22  From the spoken language of Llŷn and Eifionydd. 17 

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(It’s better than any pocket knife I ever had.)

34. Ynglŷn â llymru, yr oedd gan ’Mam stori dda yn dangos y perygl o gamystumio’r llais. Yr oedd teiliwr a hanoedd o deulu Seisnig, a’i acen yn dal yn lletchwith, yn arfer mynd i’r ffermydd i weithio am bythefnos neu ychwaneg ar ei dro. Ymysg bwydydd y ffermdai, yr un oedd gasaf gan y teiliwr oedd llymru. Pan ddaeth i gychwyn ei bythefnos o deiliwra mewn ffermdy neilltuol, gofynnodd y wraig, ‘’Fyddwch chi’n leicio llymru?’ ‘Wel’, eb ef, mewn tôn amheus, ‘gwell gin fi llymru na dim’, gan feddwl y buasai llymru, er ei saled, yn well na bod heb ddim bwyd. Ond, yn anffodus, ar y gair “dim”, yn lle troi ei lais i fyny trodd ef i lawr, a deallodd y wraig ei fod yn hoffach o lymru na dim bwyd yn y byd. Erbyn terfyn ei bythefnos cawsai ddigon o lymru am y gweddill o’i oes, a llymru yn fwy o gosb arno nag o gynhaliaeth.23 (On the subject of flummery, my mother used to tell a good story showing the dangers of incorrect inflection. There was a tailor from an Anglophone family, whose accent was still awkward, who used to go to work to the farms for a fortnight or more at a time. Of the usual fare in the farm houses, the food the tailor hated the most was flummery. When he arrived to begin a fortnight of tailoring in a certain farm house, the wife asked, ‘Do you like flummery?’ ‘Well’, he said, in a suspicious tone, ‘flummery is better than nothing’, thinking that flummery, foul as it was, would be better than not having any food. But, unfortunately, rather than raising his voice on the word ‘dim’, he lowered his voice, and the wife understood that he enjoyed flummery better than any food in the world. By the end of his fortnight he had eaten enough flummery to last a lifetime, and the flummery for him was more penance than sustenance.) This last example is quoted at length to illustrate the polysemy of dim in the second half of the nineteenth century.

23 

Williams, Atgofion, pp. 175–76.

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Mor + Adjective + Dim + Noun 35. pregethwyr a allai draddodi pregethau meithion, mor fanwl eu dosraniadau â dim traethawd M.A., ac mor ddigymrodedd yn eu deallusrwydd miniog â dim a gyhoeddodd Gwasg y Brifysgol erioed.24 (preachers who could deliver long sermons, as detailed in their analysis as any MA thesis, and as uncompromising in their acute intellectualism as anything that the University Press ever published.) 36. mi ddoth mor ufudd â dim oen Canterberi.25 (he came as docile as any Canterbury lamb.) 37. o stryd fawr mor larts â dim pyicoc.26 (from the high street as perky as any peacock.) 38. mor bowld a bras â dim Siwsi o Sô Hô.27 (as cheeky and coarse as any Suzy from Soho.)

Equative + Dim + Noun 39. c ystal â dim uwd a siwgr a gawsom erioed.28 (as good as any porridge and sugar we ever had.) 40. g weithio cymaint â dim tair gwraig yn y plwyf.29 (working as much as any three women in the parish.)

24 

Jones, ‘Rhesymeg y Piwritaniaid’, p. 19. Jones, Ifas, p. 39. 26  Jones, Ifas, p. 44. 27  Jones, Ifas, p. 131. 28  Cronicl y Cymdeithasau Crefyddol, p. 358. 29  Y Punch Cymraeg, p. 5. 25 

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41. yn edrych cystal a chan gryfed a dim heidiau a welwyd erioed ym mis Mehefin.30 (looking as good and as strong as any swarms ever seen in June.) 42. c ystal â dim latest news i dy fam.31 (as good as any latest news for your mother.)

Fel + Dim + Noun 43. Ddaru Jo ddim ond dangos i droed i’r sdic starter nad oedd y Sowsyci yn grwnian fel dim cath frech.32 ( Jo only showed his foot to the stick starter and the Suzuki was purring like a tabby cat.) 44. mae o’n gwenu fel dim cribin delyn munud gwêl o Sais.33 (he smiles like a heel-rake the moment he sees an Englishman.) 45. Karrier Short Wheel Base a chaead fel dim drws popdy dros trwmbal.34 (A Short Wheel Base Karrier with a cover like an oven door over the back.) 46. roedd hi’n dawal fel dim dy’ Sul.35 (it was quiet like a Sunday.) 47. Roedd hi fel dim Cofentri yn sdryd fawr Rhyd Hir.36 (It was like Coventry in Rhyd Hir high street.)

30 

Y Gwyliedydd, p. 32. Cymru, p. 29. 32  Jones, Ifas, p. 26. 33  Jones, Ifas, p. 32. 34  Jones, Ifas, p. 41. 35  Jones, Ifas, p. 59. 36  Jones, Ifas, p. 71. 31 

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48. mae o fel dim Hin dŵ ynni hi.37 (he’s like a Hindu in it.) 49. y gola glas yn fflachio a’i do fo fel dim lyitws.38 (the blue light flashing and its roof like a lighthouse.) 50. roedd o i fyny fel dim milgi.39 (he was up like a greyhound.) 51. roedd i dwy fraich hi wedi cau fel dim clo clap am fy ngwddw i.40 (both her arms were locked like a padlock around my neck.) 52. sportcot fel dim cipar amdano fo.41 (wearing a sportscoat like a gamekeeper.) 53. codi a gostwngi lyfr hyms fel dim Malcom Syrjiant.42 (raising and lowering his hymn-book like Malcom Sargent.) 54. roedd hi fel dim Naples — roedd hi fel dim mynydd tanllyd.43 (it was like Naples — it was like a volcano.) 55. ac yn gweiddi fel dim Red Indian.44 (and shouting like a Red Indian) 56. a Musus […] gyferbyn â fi fel dim Duchess of Dofar.45 (and the Missus […] opposite me like a Duchess of Dover.)

37 

Jones, Ifas, p. 78. Jones, Ifas, p. 83. 39  Jones, Ifas, p. 89. 40  Jones, Ifas, p. 104. 41  Jones, Ifas, p. 106. 42  Jones, Ifas, p. 107. 43  Jones, Ifas, p. 110. 44  Jones, Ifas, p. 113. 45  Jones, Ifas, p. 129. 38 

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In this last construction dim is semantically akin to an indefinite article, in the same way as un at times comes close to being an indefinite article in Middle Welsh.46 Both words occur in comparative as well as negative contexts.47 The construction is, to my knowledge, unattested in manu­script sources and is very rare in print. Examples 42–54 are all taken from the same source, moreover from the work of an author well known for his linguistic playfulness and innovation.48 They might be attributed to the author’s inventiveness were it not for the construction’s continued currency in the spoken language: 57. Ma honna ar telifision yn medru cneifio fel dim dyn.49 (That one on television can shear like any man.) * * * This scholium to the Welsh Jespersen cycle in no way diminishes the striding advances made in recent contributions on Welsh negation. Fuller consideration of the presence of negation in comparatives is consistent with the crosslinguistic perspectives instigated by Poppe and furthered by Willis and others. However, it might serve to point out the limits to the knowledge produced by contemporary linguistic research into Welsh. The examples presented above are taken, for the most part, from the full-bodied Welsh prose of the last two centuries, with further attestations from the spontaneous speech of L1 speakers. The denial, in contemporary research, of the linguistic specificity of traditional L1 speakers, the ideo­logical conflation of L1 and L2 speech, and the geo­ graphic and social distance between residual Welsh-language civilization and centres of learning/power, combine to theorize the indigenous speaker group into inexistence, whilst the recording of rare, sporadically attested, linguistic features calls for a measure of reacquaintance with what remains.50

46 

GMW, pp. 88–89. Morris-Jones, Syntax, p. 59; Morris-Jones, Welsh Grammar, p. 252. 48  Note however that, whilst Wil Sam played with the lexis, his syntax was sterling. See Morys, ‘Iaith W. S. Jones’. 49  From the spoken language of Llŷn and Eifionydd. 50  On the ‘production of inexistence’ see de Sousa Santos, Epistemo­logies of the South. 47 

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 29 London, British Library, Add 14931 Oxford, Jesus College, MS 20

Primary Sources Cronicl y Cymdeithasau Crefyddol, Hydref 1857 Cymru, 48, Ionawr 1915 Y Gwyliedydd, Ebrill 1824 Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. by D. R. Johnson (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1988) Jones, R. Tudur, ‘Rhesymeg y Piwritaniaid’, Efrydiau Athronyddol, 13 (1950), 19–37 Jones, W. S., Ifas eto fyth! (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 1987) Lloyd, Hugh, Hunangofiant Rybelwr (Caernarfon: Swyddfa’r Dinesydd, 1926) Y Punch Cymraeg, Mehefin 25, 1864 Roberts, Kate, Y Lôn Wen (Dinbych: Gwasg Gee, 1960) Thomas, Owen, Cofiant y Parchedig John Jones, Talsarn (Wrexham: Hughes and Son, 1874) Williams, J. G., Pigau’r Sêr (Dinbych: Gwasg Gee, 1969) Williams, J. Lloyd, Atgofion Tri Chwarter Canrif, i (Dinbych: Y Clwb Llyfrau Cymreig, 1941)

Secondary Works Bacskai-Atkari, Julia, The Syntax of Comparative Constructions (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2014) Borsley, Roberts D., and Bob Morris Jones, Welsh Negation and Grammatical Theory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005) Borsley, Robert D., Maggie Tallerman, and David Willis, The Syntax of Welsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) de Sousa Santos, Boaventura, Epistemo­logies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (London: Routledge, 2016) Evans, D.  Simon, A  Grammar of Middle Welsh (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1964) Evans, J. Gwenogvryn, Report on Manu­scripts in the Welsh Language (London: HMSO, 1898–1910) Fynes-Clinton, O.  H., The Welsh Vocabulary of the Bangor District (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913) Gros, Jules, Le Trésor du breton parlé: troisième partie (Lannion: Giraudon, 1974)

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Jespersen, Otto, Negation in English and Other Languages (Copenhagen: Høst, 1917) Lloyd-Jones, John, Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1931–1963) Morris-Jones, John, A Welsh Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913) —— , Welsh Syntax: An Unfinished Draft (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1931) Morys, Twm, ‘Iaith W. S. Jones’, in Wil Sam: y dyn theatr, ed. by Anwen Jones and Myrddin ap Dafydd (Llanrwst: Carreg Gwalch, 2010), pp. 30–39 Muller, Claude, La négation en français (Geneva: Droz, 1991) Poppe, Erich, ‘Negation in Welsh and “Jespersen’s Cycle”’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 4 (1995), 99–107 Willis, David, ‘Negation in Middle Welsh’, Studia Celtica, 40 (2006), 63–88 —— , ‘Motivating the Emergence of New Markers of Sentential Negation: The Case of Welsh ddim’, Diachronica, 27 (2010), 110–56 —— , ‘Negation in the History of the Brythonic Celtic Languages’, in The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, i: Case Studies, ed.  by David Willis, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 239–98

Digital Resources Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, ed. by Graham Isaac, Simon Rodway, Silva Nurmio, Kit Kapphahn, and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2013)

Traces of Translation in Buchedd Beuno? Erich Poppe Background For a contribution to a festschrift in honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno would appear to be an appropriate topic, since the honorand has discussed this text’s context and topo­graphy in publications since 1996, and in lectures since 1974. His edition of Buchedd Beuno published in 2018 results from a text prepared for use over many years in his Middle Welsh classes in Cambridge and Aberystwyth.1 From the linguist’s perspective, one of this text’s methodo­ logical interests and challenges is its status as a translation without an extant source — as Sims-Williams stated: ‘Buchedd Beuno is an abridged translation of the lost Vita Sancti Beunoi, augmented with an episode (§§ 12–13) based on Robert of Shrewsbury’, that is, on his Vita of St Gwenfrewy (St Wenefred), composed around 1140.2 Since traces of translation (olion cyfieithu) in Middle Welsh texts and possible tell-tale syntactic markers, have received considerable scholarly attention,3 an analysis of Buchedd Beuno could therefore be a rewarding exercise. As my survey will show, the evidence proves to be disappointingly 1 

Buchedd Beuno, ed.  by Sims-Williams (henceforth BBe); see also Sims-Williams, ‘Edward IV’s Confirmation Charter’, and for a reference to his lectures, Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 111. 2  Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 123–24. 3  For a critical survey, see Luft, ‘Tracking ôl cyfieithu’; for a productive positive notion of a ‘style of translation’, see Paul Russell, ‘“Go and Look in the Latin Books”’, pp. 231–32. Erich Poppe ([email protected]) was professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Marburg in Germany. Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131208 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 325–342 BREPOLS

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slim, but is all the same instructive for assessments of the text’s register and of the range of translational strategies and options available to translators of Middle Welsh religious, hagio­graphical, and devotional texts.4 Buchedd Beuno is transmitted in four medi­eval manu­scripts (and eight later ones): Oxford, Jesus College, MS 119 (The Book of the Anchorite of Llanddewi Brefi, 1346), Aberystwyth, NLW, Peniarth 15 (saec. xiv/xv), Aberystwyth, NLW, Llanstephan 27 (The Red Book of Talgarth, saec. xiv/xv), Aberystwyth, NLW, Llanstephan 4 (saec. xiv/xxv). Diplomatic versions of these four texts are available in Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425. In addition, the version in the Book of the Anchorite was published diplomatically by John Morris-Jones and John Rhŷs in 1894, by A. W. Wade-Evans in 1944, and in a carefully edited format by Patrick Sims-Williams in 2018.5 In the following, I will base my discussion on the text in the Book of the Anchorite, but refer to variants in other manu­scripts when instructive. Scholarly assessments of the language of texts in the Book of the Anchorite vary, and possible traces of translation were an important consideration. John Morris-Jones wrote in his introduction to the diplomatic edition of the manu­ script in 1894 somewhat dismissingly: ‘The greatest value of the text to the grammarian lies in the light it throws upon the effect upon literary Welsh of translation from Latin’.6 He singles out two distinctive features: agreement 4 

This chapter connects Patrick Sims-Williams’s interests in Buchedd Beuno with work arising from a research project located from October 2015 to September 2018 in the Department of Comparative Linguistics and Celtic Studies of the University of Marburg, and funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung. It focused on the texts transmitted in the Book of the Anchorite, including Buchedd Beuno, as loci of linguistic contact between a source language and a target language and on the development of stylistic registers. Some results of the project have been presented by myself and my colleague Elena Parina at workshops organized by Patrick Sims-Williams on the history of the Welsh language, and from these our work has greatly benefited. See further Elena Parina and Erich Poppe, Translating Devotion in Medi­eval Wales: Studies in the Texts and Language of ‘Llyfr Ancr Llanddewibrefi’ (forthcoming). 5  See Elucidarium, ed. by Morris-Jones and Rhŷs, pp. 117–27 (henceforth Eluc), reproduced in BBe, pp. 223–34, Vitae sanctorum Britanniae, ed. by Wade-Evans, pp. 16–22, and BBe, pp. 142–53. All quotations are taken from BBe and identified by para­graph and sentence number. 6  Eluc, p. xxvi. John Rhŷs in his introductory note (Eluc, p. iii) similarly noted that the

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between the verb and its plural subject in sentences in which the nominal subject follows its verb, and the use of demonstratives or similar phrases as ‘relative pronouns’ respectively: The use of the third person plural in such cases [when the nominal subject follows the verb] was early introduced into written Welsh, several instances of it occurring in the Mabinogion. […] There can be very little doubt that this is due to the rule of Latin Grammar ‘that the verb must agree with its subject in number and person’. Our scribe, writing unconsciously his own speech, uses the third person singular, in such cases […] when consciously translating he writes the plural.7

I give an example for the scribe ‘writing unconsciously’ and using the default form in (1.1) and for his ‘consciously translating’ with non-canonical agreement in (1.2): (1.1) Enỽeu ystoryaeu y llyuyr hỽnn yỽsg yrei hynnpl8 (These are the names of the tracts of this book)9 (1.2) ac anvarỽaỽl hyntpl yr engylyonnpl10 (and the angels are immortal)

Morris-Jones then turns to the use of demonstratives or similar phrases as ‘relative pronouns’: ‘texts, being translations, cannot be regarded as the best models for Welsh prose, but they are important in the lexico­g raphical sense’, and he acknowledged the cultural significance of the collection for the modern historian. See similarly Jones, ‘The Book of the Anchorite’, p. 69. Interestingly, he argues that ‘[e]ven where, as in the case of texts like Kyssegyrlan Uuched, Py delw ydyly dyn credv y Duw and Am Gadw Dyw Sul, the precise Latin original has not yet been traced, the fact of translation can hardly be doubted upon a consideration of the language employed: it shows ample traces of translation’. For recent assessments of the background to Ymborth yr Enaid, the only surviving part of Kyssegyrlan Uuched, see Ymborth yr Enaid, ed. by Daniel, pp. xlii–l, and Daniel, A Medi­eval Welsh Mystical Treatise; the Latin sources of the Welsh Sunday Letter (Am Gadw Dyw Sul) and of Breuddwyd Pawl respectively are discussed by Parina, ‘Средневаллийский текст’ and Parina, ‘A Welsh Version of Visio Pauli’. 7  Eluc, p. xxvi. For more recent discussions of patterns of agreement, see Evans, ‘Concord’ and Plein, Verbalkongruenz. 8  Eluc, p. 1.1, and p. 243: ‘yw is here the form natural to the scribe, and it is only when trans­ lating or making a conscious effort to write “grammatically” that he uses ynt in such a context’. 9  Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine; translations from Buchedd Beuno are informed by Wade-Evans, ‘Beuno Sant’, pp. 315–22. 10  Eluc, pp. 7.31–8.1, and p. 246: ‘The plural is evidently the effect of literal translation from Latin’.

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The relative pronoun a in the sentence Gwyr a aeth has been considered by all Welsh grammarians to be a meaningless particle. This relative can only be used immediately after its antecedent; or, when this is impracticable, after a word such as yr hwn, y rhai, y gwr, &c. placed in apposition with the antecedent. The grammarians, supposing a to be a particle, took yr hwn, y rhai for the relative pronoun. Thus angeli qui is here translated yr egylyon yr rei [ysyd, lit. ‘the angels, the ones who are’, instead of yr egylyon ysyd].11

In his Welsh Syntax, Morris-Jones explicitly added the translators to the perpetuators of this analysis: ‘the translators, like the grammarians, regarded yr hwn, etc., as relatives, and considered the true relatives to be meaningless particles’.12 These two features, agreement between a verb and a plural subject in VS sentences and the use of overt markers in the construction of relative clauses,13 are regularly listed in surveys of so-called traces of translation, as is also agreement of a plural subject antecedent and the verb in the relative clause.14 These they will therefore form the focus of my discussion. Other scholars considered the style of texts in the Book of the Anchorite to be more successful; Saunders Lewis quotes a passage from the Welsh Elucidarium in the Book of the Anchorite as evidence that Welsh translators of learned works of the twelfth century frequently were masters of prose,15 and this positive assessment was echoed by Idris Foster.16 Even Morris-Jones credited the translator of Hystoria Gwlat Ieuan Vendigeit with a ‘wonderful paraphrase’ of a specific Latin collocation.17 11 

Eluc, p. xxvi. Morris-Jones, Welsh Syntax, p. 103. 13  I consider ‘overt (pronominal/nominal) marker’ to be a descriptively neutral term, alternatively perhaps ‘(pro)nominal antecedent’, following the description in GMW, p. 68: ‘Certain pronouns and pronominals preceded by the article are commonly employed as antecedents’; see also Morris-Jones, Welsh Syntax, p. 98. 14  Compare, for example, Ffordd y Brawd Odrig, ed. by Williams, p. xxvii; GMW, pp. 179, 69 (§ 74 N.1), 61; Evans, ‘Concord’, p. 56. Recent work by Nurmio (Grammatical Number) and Plein (Verbalkongruenz) has identified further features that appear to be characteristic of a specific register employed by translators, for example specific patterns of verbal agreement, adjectives with the suffix -edic, plural forms of adjectives, and the placement of attributive adjectives before the noun. 15  Lewis, Braslun, p. 48: ‘Cawsant gyfieithwyr Cymraeg sy’n aml yn feistri rhyddiaith’. 16  Foster, ‘The Book of the Anchorite’, p. 217: ‘at their highest level the prose translations in the Book of the Anchorite take the place among the glories of that tradition [i.e. of Welsh Prose]’. 17  Eluc, p. 291. 12 

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Agreement Patterns There are only three instances of a nominal plural subject following the verb in Buchedd Beuno, the first pattern in which Morris-Jones thought that traces of translation might be detected when verb and subject agree in number. In all three sentences in Buchedd Beuno, however, the verb appears in the expected ‘native’ singular default form.18 (2.1) Ac yno y gwnaeth Beuno eglwys hyt yr amser y doeth nyeint Kynan o hely ar Veuno y erchi bwyt iδaw. (BBe 10.3)19 (And there Beuno made a church until the time the grandsons of Cynan came from hunting upon Beuno to ask food from him.) (2.2) a hynny a oruc y gweisson. (BBe 10.5) (and that the servants did.) (2.3) Sef a oruc bugelyd Beuno, arganvot y corff. (BBe 19.1) (This (is what) Beuno’s shepherds did, they saw the body.)

In the Welsh translation of the Transitus Mariae in the Book of the Anchorite, the pattern with a nominal plural subject following a verb is more frequent, with altogether thirteen instances, due to the activities of the apostles described in this text. Twelve of these show the ‘native’ default form of the verb; in the one sentence with a plural form of the verb, subject and verb are separated by a prepositional phrase and the verb is negated. In the Welsh version of the Life of St David, Buchedd Dewi, in the same manu­script there are fourteen examples of a nominal plural subject following the verb, as well as seven instances of strings of two or more coordinated singular subjects, as in (3), and all of these show the ‘native’ default form of the verb.20 18 

For the purpose of this discussion I ignore the problems of the agreement patterns of the collective nouns plant ‘children’ and etived ‘progeny’, which are both used with the default form in BBe 1.5 and 10.13. The third person singular imperative is used in a command to a group of three people: ‘“Arhoet tri”, heb ef, “yma ohonawch yn y dinas hwnn”’ (BBe 5.2, ‘Three of you’, he said, ‘stay here in this monastery’). 19  Compare Paul Russell’s discussion in this volume of the use of the letter forms u, v, 6, and w in different manu­scripts and his observation that w is still rare in Llyfr yr Ancr. In the manu­script, sentence (2.1) is therefore realized as: ‘Ac yno y gỽnaeth beuno eglỽys hyt yr amser y doeth nyeint kynan o hely ar veuno y erchi bỽyt idaỽ’ (LlA, fol. 105v). 20  I wish to thank Elena Parina and Raphael Sackmann for providing me with the data from

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Further possibly relevant examples of plural subjects following the verb in Buchedd Beuno require a brief discussion: (3) Ac yna y kychwynnawd Beuno a’e δisgyblonn y gyt a’r wreic a’r mab. (BBe 19.1) (And then Beuno and/with his disciples set out, together with the woman and the boy.)

Given that in this context a can either be the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ or the preposition ‘with’, two interpretations of the phrase a’e δisgyblonn are semantically meaningful: it can be read as either coordinated, ‘Beuno and his disciples’, or as comitative, ‘Beuno with his disciples’. The grammatical analyses differ. Under the first reading, number resolution of the two nouns obtains Nsg plus Npl and results in a plural subject (> Spl), which would here be used with the expected default form of the verb, as in (2); under the second reading a singular subject agrees with a preceding singular verb.21 The preposition y gyt a introduces a pure comitative phrase and effects coordination of elements of unequal rank. There are four further instances in Buchedd Beuno of the pattern with a coordinated subject, all with the default form of the verb.22 As mentioned above, another feature relating to agreement that is considered to be a tell-tale trace of translation is agreement between a plural subject antecedent of a relative clause and a plural verb in the relative clause. There is one clear example of this construction in Buchedd Beuno, (4.1), and this shows the expected default form of the verb:23 the Transitus and the Life of St David. 21  Theoretical issues arising from such semantically and syntactically ambiguous collocations as well as the status of comitative (y) gyt a(c) are discussed by Plein, Verbalkongruenz, pp. 36–48. For an unambiguous example of number resolution, in which three coordinated singular nouns result in a plural subject, as indicated by the plural form of the verb in the so-called ‘abnormal order’, compare ‘Beuno a’e that a’e mam a arganvuant hynny’ (BBe 12.15, Beuno and her father and her mother perceived that). 22  BBe 12.1, 12.11, 13.4, 23.1. Following Llanstephan 4 and Llanstephan 27, Sims-Williams places hi after Beuno in the last example, for Llyfr yr Ancr’s ‘ae gỽnaeth duỽ hi a beuno’. 23  The three relative clauses with plural subject antecedent in Buchedd Dewi show the expected default form of the verb, and there is one example of o’r a with a plural verb as in (4.3) below. The picture in the Welsh Transitus Mariae is more varied and requires further analysis. Here, three relative clauses with a morpho­logically marked plural antecedent, as well as one relative clause with the pronominal antecedent ar ‘those’, show the default form of the verb and three others the plural form. This supports Plein’s findings that agreement with a plural subject antecedent is a grammatical option, even though she endorses Simon Evans’s association of agreement with translated texts and Latin influence.

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(4.1) Ac yna yd erchis Beuno y weisson kyrchu ych ieuancg y’r mynyd a’e lad y arlwyaw bwyt y’r gwyr a oed yn y erchi iδaw. (BBe 10.4) (And then Beuno asked his servant to go for a young ox to the hill and kill it to provide food for the men who were asking him for it.)

In other examples of plural subject antecedents, special conditions obtain. In (4.2), the antecedent is a coordinated phrase consisting of two singular nouns, and the plural form of the verb unambiguously shows that both nouns need to be taken as antecedents: (4.2) a dywedut wrth y that a’e mam a oeδynt uch y phenn yn y chwynaw. (BBe 13.1) (and he said to her father and her mother, who were above her head lamenting her.)

In (4.3), the antecedent of the relative clause is the demonstrative ar (> ’r), as part of a partitive phrase with the plural pronoun llawer, whose number status is marked by the plural of the main clause verb. (4.3) A llawer o’r a welsant hynny a gredassant y Grist. (BBe 13.7) (And many of those who saw that believed in Christ.)

In the corpus analysed by Plein, plural agreement of verbs in relative clauses with demonstrative ar as antecedent, and especially in the collocation o’r a, is less frequent than in relative clauses with other plural antecedents.24 In the two final examples, the antecedent of the relative clauses is the plural pronoun (y) rei; their constructions and semantics, however, are different. In (4.4) the demonstrative is part of the principal clause and the relative clause is a restrictive (or defining) one, whereas in (4.5) the demonstrative stands in apposition to the antecedent proper (naw rad nef) and the relative clause is a non-restrictive one and introduces a new idea — on such relative clauses with overt markers see further below. (4.4) Ac un o’r rei a gredawd yna vu Gatvan vrenhin Gwyned. (BBe 13.8) (And Catfan, the king of Gwynedd, was one of those who then believed.) (4.5) yn unolyaeth naw rad nef, y rei ny phechassant. (BBe 23.1) (in the unity of the nine grades of heaven, who did not sin.)

24 

Plein, Verbalkongruenz, pp. 220–23.

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The default form of the verb in (4.4) meets normative expectations. Plein found that in her corpus of relative clauses with plural subject antecedents, clauses with overt markers as in (4.5) occur more frequently in translated texts and also exhibit plural agreement more frequently. She furthermore tentatively suggests that negative relative clauses in Middle Welsh do not necessarily follow special rules by showing agreement between antecedent and verb.25 Plural agreement in (4.5) may therefore qualify as a trace of translation — or as an element of the register of the language of translation. The number of examples in Buchedd Beuno relevant for an assessment of agreement patterns is small, but the trend is conclusive: the three clauses with a nominal plural subject following the verb show the expected ‘native’ default form of the verb. Their number increases if the four clauses with arguably a coordinated subject and the verb in the singular are added to their number. The two straightforward relative clauses with a plural subject antecedent, (4.1) and (4.4), also show the ‘native’ default form.

Relative Clauses with Overt Nominal and Pronominal Markers Morris-Jones believed that the use in the construction of relative clauses of overt nominal or pronominal markers in apposition to the antecedent may well be a trace of translation, but he pointed out as well that such markers ‘are also employed even when the antecedent is expressed, if the relative clause is coordinate, that is, introduces a new idea instead of merely qualifying a noun in the principal clause’.26 In the following I will avoid Morris-Jones’s term ‘coordinate’ and employ the dichotomy ‘restrictive’ versus ‘non-restrictive’ used in contemporary linguistics. There are five clauses in Buchedd Beuno with such overt markers which, I think, will qualify as good examples of non-restrictive relative clauses, since the relative clauses provide additional information about the referent of the antecedent, but are not required to unambiguously identify it:

25 

Plein, Verbalkongruenz, pp. 212–13. Morris-Jones, Welsh Syntax, p. 98; see also GMW, pp. 68–70, and Richards, Cystrawen, pp. 72–75, 82–84, specifically §§ 95, 102. I will not consider here adverbial relative clauses with a nominal antecedent denoting time, place, cause, or manner, see GMW, pp. 66–67, and Morris-Jones, Welsh Syntax, pp. 100–01. 26 

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(5.1) ‘Trigyet ynteu dy gorff di yn y δayar. Dy eneit titheu biδinoed nef a’r engylyon a’e harwed y teyrnnas nef, yr hynn a heiδeist ti yma drwy di weithredoed.’ (BBe 22.6–7)27 (‘Let your body rest then in the earth. Your soul however, the hosts of heaven and the angels will lead it to the kingdom of heaven, what you won here through your works.’)28 (5.2) yn vnolyaeth naw rad nef, y rei ny phechassant. (BBe 23.1) (in the unity of the nine grades of heaven, who did not sin.)

In the following three examples, the nominal marker y gwr, lit. ‘the man’, is employed, with reference to an antecedent denoting a human being or God. (5.3) ‘Ni a awn ygyt a’r wreic honn a’r mab y ymwelet a’r brenhin, y gwr a roδes ymi y treftat ef’. (BBe 14.13) (‘We will go, together with this woman and the boy, to see the king, the one who gave me his patrimony.’) (5.4) ‘Arglwyd, creawdyr nef a dayar, y gwr nyt oed dim anwybot iδaw, kyvot ti y corff hwwn yn yach’. (BBe 19.3) (‘Lord, creator of heaven and earth, the one who has no ignorance, raise this body healthy.’) (5.5) ‘Yma’, heb hi, ‘y mynnaf i trigyaw ger dy law di ynn gwassanaethu duw, y gwr a’m kyvodes i yn vyw o varw.’ (BBe 19.6)29 (‘Here’, she said, ‘I want to stay with you serving God, the one who raised me alive from death.’)

There is, however, at least one instance of a relative clause without an overt marker in Buchedd Beuno for which a non-restrictive reading appears semantically appropriate — no restriction of the reference of ‘her father and her mother’ is necessary in order to select the correct pair of parents, the relative clause rather provides additional information: 27  The use of the 3.sg. default form (h)arwed indicates a cleft construction; pragmatically the cleft here marks sentence focus in a thetic, all-new statement about what will happen to the soul; for a detailed discussion of theticity in Middle Welsh, see Plein, Verbalkongruenz, pp. 71–78, 117–80. 28  Compare Morris-Jones, Welsh Syntax, p. 98: ‘yr hyn of abstractions’; yr hynn here refers to the action of ‘leading the soul to the kingdom of heaven’. 29  For some further discussion of this sentence, see Sims-Williams’s note, BBe, p. 164.

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(5.6) Yna y kymerth Beuno penn y vorwyn ac y dodes wrth y corff, a thannu y vantell e hun ar hyt y corff, a dywedut wrth y that a’e mam, a oeδynt uch y phenn yn y chwynaw. (BBe 13.1) (Then Beuno took the virgin’s head and put it to the body, and he spread his own mantle over her body and said to her father and her mother, who were above her head lamenting her.)

There is therefore no clear correlation here between the form of the relative clause, without or with an overt marker, and its restrictive or non-restrictive semantics, but further research is necessary. According to Morris-Jones and Richards, overt markers are typically also used when the relative clause is separated from its antecedent (see also (5.4) above): (5.7) Ac yno y gwnaeth Beuno lawer o wyrtheu drwy nerth Duw, y rei ny allei δyn o’r byt hwnn eu rifaw. (BBe 16.3)30 (And there Beuno worked many miracles through the power of God, which no person of this world could enumerate.)

In one further instance, y peth, lit. ‘the thing’, serves as an overt nominal marker within a left-dislocated phrase, which is then taken up in the following clause by an anaphoric pronoun; such clause-initial dislocated phrases can be formed with either explicit or implied antecedents, as bound or free relative clauses.31 (5.8) ‘Y peth a roδes ych teit chwi y Đuw yn ryd, a vynnwch chwitheu roδi mal [ac] ardreth a cheithiwet arnnaw?’ (BBe 10.11) (‘What your father gave to God free, do you want to put tax and tribute and bondage on it?’)

Free relative clauses, with an implied antecedent, are not avoided in Buchedd Beuno, but they are not attested at the beginning of a clause, for example: (5.9) ‘a mi a wnaf a vynnych.’ (BBe 12.10)32 (‘and I will do what you wish.’)

30 

For possibly another example, see BBe 10.12, ‘Ys roδho Duw ymi, ac ys gwnel yrof y gwr yr wyf vi yn gwassannaethu iδaw, na meδo ych etived chwi byth evo’ (May God grant me and may he, the one whom I am serving, do for me that your offspring will never own it) — if y gwr here stands in apposition to the pronominal subject of gwnel. 31  Compare GMW, pp. 73–74. 32  See also BBe 21.3.

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A subtype of prepositional relative clauses with overt markers employs a preposition which governs the pronouns yr hwn, etc., as in (5.10), the only instance of this construction in Buchedd Beuno. (5.10) a roδi yna y Veuno y plas, yn yr hwnn y mae Aelwyt Veuno. (BBe 20.12)33 (and then he gave Beuno the estate in which is Beuno’s Hearth (or he gave Beuno Y Plas, in which is Beuno’s Hearth).)

The exact semantics of the relative clause remains opaque, since the reference of Aelwyt Veuno is uncertain (both Llanstephan 4 and Llanstephan 27 have egl6ys Veuno) and it therefore cannot be decided if the relative clause defines the estate as the one in which Beuno’s Hearth is found (restrictive), or if it adds additional information about a place called Y Plas (non-restrictive). Be that as it may — with regard to the construction, Morris-Jones suggests that ‘the translators […] regarded yr hwn, etc., as relatives, and considered the true relatives to be meaningless particles; hence […] they often make the definite pronoun the object of the preposition which should govern the relative’;34 similarly Evans considers this to be a construction characteristic of ‘translated works’.35 Sims-Williams says about Morris-Jones’s rejection of these ‘un-idiomatic constructions’ that he may have been too vehement, not making enough allowance for the requirements of different registers. These forms were already used in the Old Welsh glosses, where precision in translating Latin was needed […]. Their spread in works written between the Mabinogion and Ellis Wynne was partly due to the register required in these works.36

33 

See also Sims-Williams’s note, BBe, p. 165. GPC gives as its earliest attestation of the loanword plas (according to GPC a loan from Old French, possibly through Middle English) in the meaning ‘palace, mansion’ another instance from Eluc, p. 28.21–22, ‘Ponyt ym plas y nef y gwnnaeth duw ynteu’ (Is it not in the mansion of heaven where God made him [i.e. the devil]), where plas corresponds to Latin in palatio. 34  Morris-Jones, Welsh Syntax, p. 103, see also p. 104, where Morris-Jones suggests that yn y lle y ‘in the place in which/where’ (itself in his view an artificial expansion by medi­e val scribes of lle y) was the model for yn yr hwn, etc. Here he also notes that in ‘the more idiomatic prose writings, such as the Mabinogion and the Bardd Cwsc [by Ellis Wynne, 1703], yr hwn, yr hon, etc. are of rare occurrence’, and continues: ‘The frequent use of these pronouns [in relative constructions] is due to translation, or to the influence of translated literature’. 35  GMW, p. 66; on [preposition + relative particle], see Isaac, ‘The Structure and Typo­logy’. 36  Sims-Williams, ‘John Morris-Jones’, p. 152, with reference to Lambert, ‘La traduction’, p. 139, for the Old Welsh example.

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At this point, a brief detour on experiments with learned relative constructions in Old Norse, for the sake of a clarification of syntactic relations, may be instructive. Prepositional relative clauses in Old Norse are typically formed with an uninflected relative particle er and a stranded preposition, in (5.10) á ‘on’,37 and are thus superficially similar to Middle Welsh prepositional relative clauses with a particle and a preposition with an anaphoric suffixed pronoun, as in (5.13). (5.10) ek skal fá þér annat [skip] þat er þú meger vel fara á til Íslands.38 (I will get you another [ship] on which you will be well able to travel to Iceland.)

As Heusler points out, the uninflected relative particle remains insensitive to the case governed by the verb in the relative clause, and this may cause problems conveying the sense. The so-called learned style therefore comes up with other strategies, among them the use of a prepositional phrase followed by the relative particle, as in (5.11), instead of a construction with particle and stranded preposition, as in (5.12):39 (5.11) ein kurteis kona, til þeirar er Heinrekr konungr venr sínar ferþer. (a noble woman to whom king Henry is accustomed to ride.) (5.12) *…ein kurteis kona, sú er Heinrekr konungr venr sínar ferþer til.

Old Norse prepositional relatives as in (5.11) and Middle Welsh ones as in (5.9) thus share the same motivation and arguably the same model, namely Latin pied-piped prepositional relatives in which a preposition is followed by a relative pronoun. The standard Middle Welsh prepositional relative clause with particle and pre­ position with an anaphoric pronoun is, of course, also attested in Buchedd Beuno: (5.13) Bwyt a diawt a roδei y’r neb a welei newyn a sychet arnaw. (BBe 21.6) (Food and drink he gave to him on whom he saw hunger and thirst.) 37 

See, for example, Heusler, Altisländisches Elementarbuch, p. 162; for the form of the relative particle and the use of the demonstrative as antecedent, here þat, see Heusler, Altisländi­ sches Elementarbuch, pp. 158–59. For some instructive parallels from Old Swedish religious prose, see Höder, Sprachausbau, pp. 199–220, 299–300. Höder, Sprachausbau, p. 299, argues that ‘the innovative patterns as well as the grammaticalisation of the pronominal relativisers in Swedish are the result of grammatical transfer’ from Latin. 38  Heusler, Altisländisches Elementarbuch, p. 162. 39  See Heusler, Altisländisches Elementarbuch, p. 163, for discussion and examples (5.11) and (5.12), and compare, with further Germanic parallels, Poppe, ‘Celtic Influence’, pp. 201–07.

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The evidence of the syntax of relative clauses for traces of translation and a better understanding of the semantics of relative clauses remains inconclusive due to the small number of relevant examples and the contradictory results. Overt pronominal antecedents are used in non-restrictive clauses, but such relative clauses are also formed with the simple relative particle. There is just one example of a prepositional relative clause in which the preposition governs the demonstrative. As Sims-Williams suggests, these constructions may reflect an effect of register, rather than constitute tell-tale traces of translation, in the sense of direct (and un-idiomatic) interference of the source text.

A Reflex of a Latin Ablative Absolute? There is one example in Buchedd Beuno of an absolute construction which I suspect could have been triggered by a Latin phrase:40 (6.1) A’r brenhin a’e hargannvu hi yn ffo, a’e hymlit a oruc. Ac a hi yn caffel drws yr eglwys y gorδiwes a oruc ynteu. (BBe 12.12–13) (And the king saw her fleeing and pursued her. And with her reaching the door of the church, her overtook her.)

I am aware of one close parallel in the Welsh Transitus Mariae, Marwolaeth Mair, where this construction was used to resolve a Latin ablative absolute; the version in Peniarth 5 with Ac a (6.2.1) is closer in structure to Buchedd Beuno than the one in the Book of the Anchorite (6.2.2):41 (6.2.1) [direct speech] Ac a’r Argluyd Duv yn dyvedut hynny, gogwydav ar y guely a dioluch y’r Argluyd anuon y hyspryt. (Peniarth 5, fol. 39r) (And with the Lord saying that, she reclined on her bed and thanked the Lord [and] emitted her spirit.) (6.2.2) [direct speech] A’r arglỽyd yn dyỽedut hynny. gogỽydaỽ ar y gỽely a oruc. a diolỽch yr arglỽyd. Ac anuon y hyspryt. (LlA, fol. 72v) (6.2.3) [direct speech] Et haec dicente Domino, accumbens Maria super lectum suum, et gratias agens Domino, emisit spiritum.42 40 

There is, unfortunately, nothing corresponding in the parallel para­g raphs of Robert’s Vita of St Gwenfrewi which Patrick Sims-Williams has identified as an indirect source for Buchedd Beuno’s §§ 12–13. 41  Texts reproduced from RhG-14c. 42  Haibach-Reinisch, Ein neuer ‘Transitus Mariae’, p. 75.

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Further examples with ac a from the Welsh Bible are given by Melville Richards in his chapter on ymadroddion annibynnol ‘independent phrases’ — only in one of them however, (6.3.3), the text of the Vulgate has an ablative absolute in the corresponding passage (6.3.4):43 (6.3.1) ac a hi yn dyfod i drothwy y tŷ, bu farw y bachgen. (i Kings 14.17) (and when she came to the threshold of the door, the child died.) (6.3.2) cumque illa ingrederetur limen domus, puer mortuus est. (6.3.3) ac a hwy eto heb gredu gan lawenydd, ac yn rhyfeddu, efe a ddywedodd wrthynt […] (Luke 24.41) (And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them […]) (6.3.4) Adhuc autem illis non credentibus, et mirantibus prae gaudio, dixit […]

At the moment, I am aware of one Middle Welsh example in a text which is not a translation from Latin, but from French, namely in the first part of Ystoryaeu Seint Greal — further search might yield more instances: (6.4.1) Ac, a Lawnslot yn medylyaw yno yn hir, [ef ] a glywei lef yn yr awyr yn dywedut […]44 (And with Lawnslot reflecting there for a long time, he could hear a voice in the air saying […])

The [ac a X yn VN] phrase here corresponds to a subordinate temporal clause in the French text. This indicates its idiomatic reality in Welsh and helps to understand its functional range, in that it can be used for a Latin ablative absolute or for a French subordinate temporal clause. (6.4.2) Quant Lancelot ot grant piece resgardé devant les prones por savoir se il verroit riens de la chose que il plus desirroit, si ot une voiz qui li dist […]45 (When Lancelot had looked for a long time before the rood screen to find out if he would see anything of that which he most desired, he heard a voice which said to him […]) 43 

Richards, Cystrawen, pp. 26–28, the majority of his examples employ the conjunction a ‘and’ on its own. The only superficially similar example given in GMW, p. 231, is a cleft construction. 44  Ystoryaeu Seint Greal, ed. by Jones, p. 39.1336–37. 45  La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. by Pauphilet, p. 61.14–16.

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These [ac a X yn VN] constructions would seem to constitute a subtype of socalled ‘epitaxis’, a term popularized in Welsh linguistics by Mac Cana, namely of ‘nominal phrases formally coordinate but functionally subordinate and normally embodying an anaphoric reference’.46 Here the functionally subordinate absolute phrase precedes the superordinate statement, resulting in an ‘inverted epitaxis’. The frequency and textual distribution of this inverted pattern may repay further study.

Buchedd Beuno — A Translation? Thomas Jones stated about some texts in the Book of the Anchorite whose source has not been identified, that ‘the fact of translation can hardly be doubted upon a consideration of the language employed: it shows ample traces of translation’.47 However, my necessarily preliminary exploration of possible traces of translation in Buchedd Beuno suggests this is not the case for this text. There is, of course, the methodo­logical complication of the small number of contexts in which the relevant syntactic features appear and the resulting small number of relevant examples. The pattern of agreement in sentences with a plural subject following the verb conforms with normative expectations and shows the ‘native’ default form, as do the two straightforward relative clauses with a plural subject antecedent. The evidence of the form of relative clauses for traces of translation remains inconclusive due to the somewhat contradictory results. Overt pronominal and nominal markers are used, significantly in semantically non-restrictive relative clauses, but such relative clauses are also formed with the simple relative particle. There is just one example of a prepositional relative clause in which the preposition governs the demonstrative. To the list of usual suspects of traces of translation I added an instance of ‘inverted epitaxis’ as possibly a resolution of a Latin ablative absolute, on the basis of parallel examples in Marwolaeth Mair and in the Welsh Bible. A next stage of the evaluation of the language and style of Buchedd Beuno should construct a fuller linguistic profile of the text (including ‘native’ constructions such as the use of nachaf, llyma, and sef, of the gwneuthur-periphrasis and narrative verbal nouns) and compare it with that of other narrative hagio­ 46  Mac Cana, ‘Syntax and Style’, pp. 163–64; in modern linguistics the term ‘absolute construction’ is preferred. 47  Jones, ‘The Book of the Anchorite’, p. 69; for the texts he mentions see above, n. 6.

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graphical and devotional texts in the Book of the Anchorite, such as Buchedd Dewi and Marwolaeth Mair, in order to gain a better understanding of ‘the requirements of different registers’ to which Patrick Sims-Williams has insightfully drawn our attention.48

48 

I wish to thank Elena Parina, Kerstin Plein, Claudia Zimmermann, and Raphael Sackmann for their advice and help; all mistakes and shortcomings that remain are my own responsibility.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Llanstephan 4 —— , Llanstephan 27 —— , Peniarth 5 —— , Peniarth 15 Oxford, Jesus College, MS 119 (LlA)

Primary Sources Buchedd Beuno: The Middle Welsh ‘Life’ of St Beuno, ed., with a Short Grammar of Middle Welsh, by Patrick Sims-Williams (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2018) The ‘Elucidarium’ and Other Tracts in Welsh from Llyvyr Agkyr Llandewivrevi A.D. 1346 ( Jesus College MS. 119), ed. by John Morris-Jones and John Rhŷs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) Ffordd y Brawd Odrig o Lawysgrif Llanstephan 2, ed. by Stephen J. Williams (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1929) La Queste del Saint Graal: roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. by Albert Pauphilet (Paris: Champion, 1923) Vitae sanctorum Britanniae et genealogiae, ed. by. A. W. Wade-Evans (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1944) Ymborth yr Enaid, ed. by R. Iestyn Daniel (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1995) Ystoryaeu Seint Greal: Rhan I. Y Keis, ed. by Thomas Jones (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1992)

Secondary Works Daniel, R. Iestyn, A Medi­eval Welsh Mystical Treatise (Aberystwyth: Canolfan Uwchef­ rydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru, 1997) Evans, D. Simon, ‘Concord in Middle Welsh’, Studia Celtica, 6 (1971), 42–56 Foster, Idris, ‘The Book of the Anchorite’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 36 (1950), 197–226 Haibach-Reinisch, Monika, Ein neuer ‘Transitus Mariae’ des Pseudo-Melito: Textkritische Aus­gabe und Darlegung der Bedeutung dieser ursprünglichen Fassung für Apokry­phen­ forschung und lateinische und deutsche Dichtung des Mittelalters (Rome: Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1962) Heusler, Andreas, Altisländisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg: Winter, 1967) Höder, Steffen, Sprachausbau im Sprachkontakt: Syntaktischer Wandel im Altschwedischen (Heidelberg: Winter, 2010) Isaac, Graham, ‘The Structure and Typo­logy of Prepositional Relative Clauses in Early Welsh’, in Yr Hen Iaith: Studies in Early Welsh, ed.  by Paul Russell (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003), pp. 75–93

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Jones, Thomas, ‘The Book of the Anchorite of Llanddewi Brefi’, Transactions and Archaeo­ logical Record, Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, 12 (1937), 63–82 Lambert, Pierre-Yves, ‘La traduction du pronom relatif latin dans les gloses vieil-irlandais’, Études celtiques, 18 (1981), 121–39 Lewis, Saunders, Braslun o Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifsygol Cymru, 1932; repr. 1986) Luft, Diana, ‘Tracking ôl cyfieithu: Medi­eval Welsh Translation in Criticism and Scholar­ ship’, Translation Studies, 9.2 (2016), 168–82 Mac Cana, Proinsias, ‘Syntax and Style in Middle Welsh Prose: Notes on Periphrasis and Epitaxis’, Celtica, 23 (1999), 157–68 Morris-Jones, John, Welsh Syntax: An Unfinished Draft (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1931) Nurmio, Silva, Grammatical Number in Welsh: Diachrony and Typo­logy, Publications of the Philo­logical Society, 51 (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2019) Parina, Elena, ‘Средневаллийский текст «Епистолии о неделе» и его инсулярный контекст’ [The Middle Welsh Sunday Epistle Text and its Insular Context], IndoEuropean Linguistics and Classical Philo­logy, 21 (2017) (= Proceedings of the 21st Conference in Memory of Professor Joseph M. Tronsky), 653–60 —— , ‘A Welsh Version of Visio Pauli: Its Latin Source and the Translator’s Contribution’, Apocrypha, 28 (2017), 155–86 Plein, Kerstin, Verbalkongruenz im Mittelkymrischen (Hagen: curach bhán, 2018) Poppe, Erich, ‘Celtic Influence on English Relative Clauses’, in The Celtic Englishes, iv: The Interface between English and the Celtic Languages, ed. by Hildegard L. C. Tristram (Potsdam: Potsdam University Press, 2006), pp. 191–211 Richards, Melville, Cystrawen y Frawddeg Gymraeg (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1938) Russell, Paul, ‘“Go and Look in the Latin Books”: Latin and the Vernacular in Medi­eval Wales’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 206 (2017), 213–46 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘Edward  IV’s Confirmation Charter for Clynnog Fawr’, in Recognitions: Essays Presented to Edmund Fryde, ed. by Colin Richmond and Isobel Harvey (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1996), pp. 229–41 —— , ‘Clas Beuno and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi’, in 150 Jahre ‘Mabinogion’: Deutsch-walisische Kulturbeziehungen, ed.  by Bernhard Maier and Stefan Zimmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001), pp. 111–27 —— , ‘John Morris-Jones and his Welsh Grammar’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, n.s., 22 (2016), 134–53 Wade-Evans, A. W., ‘Beuno Sant’, Archaeo­logia Cambrensis: The Journal of the Cambrian Archaeo­logical Association, 85 (1930), 315–41

Digital Resources Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425, ed. by Diana Luft, Peter Wynn Thomas, and D. Mark Smith [accessed 23 December 2019]

Welsh hoyw: A Case Study in Language Contact Dafydd Johnston

I

first began to study the poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym under the tutorship of Patrick Sims-Williams in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Cambridge University in 1976, and more recently my work on the language of that poetry has been informed and stimulated by the series of workshops on the development of the Welsh language organized by Patrick since 2008.1 I am therefore very glad of the opportunity to contribute a paper to this volume on one of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s most common, and also perhaps most commonly misunderstood, words. Dafydd ap Gwilym was one of the first generation of Welsh poets to compose in the new cywydd metre in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. His love poetry proved extremely popular, and the large corpus of his surviving poems offers considerable scope for study of linguistic developments in Welsh during this period.2 The high frequency of the adjective hoyw in the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym and other fourteenth-century poets contrasts strikingly 1  I presented a paper on hoyw to the meeting at the University of Utrecht in 2014, and later the same year in ‘Fforwm Beirdd yr Uchelwyr’ at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. I am grateful to those present on both occasions for useful feedback. I have discussed hoyw in the context of a broader treatment of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s lexicon in ‘Iaith Oleulawn’: Geirfa Dafydd ap Gwilym, pp. 177–78, drawing on the findings presented here. 2  The most recent critical edition, ‘Dafydd ap Gwilym.net’ [henceforth DG.net], identifies 147 poems as genuine. The same text is also available in a print edition, Cerddi Dafydd ap Gwilym, ed. by Johnston and others.

Dafydd Johnston ([email protected]) is former Director of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth Celts, Gaels, and Britons. Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams, ed. by Simon Rodway, Jenny Rowland, and Erich Poppe, TCNE 35 PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.131209 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 343–362 BREPOLS

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with the paucity of examples in earlier literature. This paper will propose influence from the French or English gai/gay as an explanation for the sudden popularity of hoyw, and will explore its semantic range by setting out the variety of contexts in which it was employed. First the etymo­logy and early usages of the word must be considered.

Etymo­logy The standard historical dictionary of Welsh, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru,3 offers no etymo­logy for hoyw, and the word does not feature either in etymo­logical dictionaries of Indo-European. However, the phono­logical and semantic correspondences are sufficient to identify hoyw as an exact cognate of Latin saevus ‘harsh, savage, ferocious’, both deriving from Primitive Indo-European *seh2iuo- ‘savage’.4 This etymo­logy is helpful in explaining the semantic development of hoyw from the earliest examples through to modern usage.

Early History The earliest example of hoyw is probably the personal name greit uab hoewgi in the A text of the Gododdin.5 The compound hoew (with common ortho­ graphical variance of e for y) + ci ‘dog’ corresponds to the B text’s bleidgi which has as its first element bleid (ModW blaidd) ‘wolf ’, so ‘wolf-dog’.6 The relationship between the two texts of the Gododdin is a complex issue, and although in general the B text shows more archaic features it is difficult in this instance to establish which of the two readings is most likely to be original.7 This is 3 

GPC s.v. hoyw. I am grateful to Professors Stefan Schumacher and Peter Schrijver for pointing out to me the correspondence with Latin saevus in the discussion after my paper at Utrecht in 2014. The PIE form is given by de Vaan, Etymo­logical Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, s.v. saevus. That dictionary does not give hoyw as a cognate, but it does note Welsh hoed ‘sorrow’ < *saitu- (cf. Old Irish sáeth), as did Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymo­logisches Wörterbuch, p. 877 under the root sāi- ‘Schmerz, Krankheit, versehren’. Graham Isaac tentatively offers an alternative etymo­logy in The Verb in the Book of Aneirin, p. 365. 5  Canu Aneirin, ed. by Williams, l. 266. The manu­script reading hoewgir is a clear case of faulty word-division. 6  Canu Aneirin, ed. by Williams, l. 275. 7  Jarman’s conflated text in modern Welsh ortho­graphy follows the A text in reading Graid fab Hoywgi here, Aneirin: Y Gododdin, ed. and trans. by Jarman, p. 19. 4 

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important for dating, since whichever version is original could potentially be as early as the late sixth or seventh century, whilst the variant is not necessarily much earlier than the date of the thirteenth-century manu­script in which the poem is preserved. As regards the semantics of hoyw, however, the key point is that hoewgi corresponds here to bleidgi, suggesting a meaning similar to saevus ‘wild, fierce’. Whatever the actual date of the passage in question, this I think is the closest we can get to the archaic meaning of hoyw. Staying with animals, there is one instance of hoyw with reference to a horse in ‘Trioedd y Meirch’ (The Triads of the Horses), and again we find that it occurs in a variant reading of uncertain status, but one which may nevertheless be the earliest manu­script attestation of the word. The Black Book of Carmarthen, a manu­script dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, has an incomplete version of ‘Trioedd y Meirch’, of which the last is entitled ‘Tri hoev etistir inis pridein’ (Three Spirited Steeds of the Island of Britain).8 All other manu­script copies of this triad give it the title ‘Tri Rodedicuarch Enys Prydein’ (Three Bestowed Horses of the Island of Britain).9 The title in the Black Book may have been influenced by that of another triad which immediately precedes it in that text, ‘Tri gohoev etystir inis pridein’ (Three Sprightly Steeds of the Island of Britain).10 However, there is a significant difference between hoyw and gohoyw, since the force of the adjective is reduced in the latter by the attenuating prefix go-. Even if hoev in the Black Book was a mistake, the scribe must have felt that it was an appropriate adjective to describe an admirable horse, perhaps because the original connotations of wildness and fierceness had become sufficiently weakened to convey spirited energy. And hoyw is used of horses in fourteenth-century poetry.11 On the other hand, the use of gohoyw, which clearly was part of the textual tradition of these triads, implies that the original force of hoyw still needed to be reduced in order to convey the nature of a horse which was spirited and yet manageable.12 8 

Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, ed. by Jarman, p. 12. Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Bromwich, p. 103, triad 38. 10  Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, ed. by Jarman, p. 12; Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. and trans. by Bromwich, p. 111, triad 42. 11  It is used of horses sent as love-messengers and also of the women to whom they are sent in poems by Hywel ab Einion Lygliw and Casnodyn: Gwaith Gruffudd Llwyd a’r Llygliwiaid Eraill, ed. by Ifans, 1.29 and 1.1, 45; Gwaith Casnodyn, ed. by Daniel, 5.8, 11. GPC notes an instance of a horse as late as 1595, ‘[m]arch ifanc, hoew, nwyfus’ (Huw Lewys, Perl mewn Adfyd, 45). 12  Another triad in the same series has gohoyw in the name of one of the horses, Gwelwgann 9 

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The prefix go- did not necessarily have attenuating force in the earliest period. This point was made by Ifor Williams in his discussion of an instance of gohoyw in one of the praise poems to Urien Rheged attributed to the sixthcentury bard Taliesin, and preserved in the early fourteenth-century Book of Taliesin, where it is used to describe the shout of warriors in battle: ‘gwaed gohoyw gofaran gochlywyd’.13 Williams translates gwaed gohoyw as ‘a joyous cry’, but this seems to be predicated on the meaning which he gives for hoyw in modern Welsh, ‘sprightly, lovely’, which hardly leaves any room for attenuation.14 Taking ‘raging, fierce’ as a starting point, the sense needs little if any modification in this context, although if hoyw was commonly used of animals, particularly wild ones, then the prefix go- might have been felt necessary to make it a suitable epithet for humans. Given that go- does not seem to attenuate the sense of the following two words in any way (gofaran ‘fierce’