The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau: The 'Stanzas of the Graves', or 'Graves of the Warriors of the Island of Britain', attributed to Taliesin (Studies in Celtic History, 46) 9781843847069, 9781805431015, 184384706X

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Studies in Celtic History XLVI

THE MEDIEVAL WELSH ENGLYNION Y BEDDAU

STUDIES IN CELTIC HISTORY ISSN 0261-9865

General editors Dauvit Broun Máire Ní Mhaonaigh Huw Pryce Studies in Celtic History aims to provide a forum for new research into all aspects of the history of Celtic-speaking peoples throughout the whole of the medieval period. The term ‘history’ is understood broadly: any study, regardless of discipline, which advances our knowledge and understanding of the history of Celtic-speaking peoples will be considered. Studies of primary sources, and of new methods of exploiting such sources, are encouraged. Founded by Professor David Dumville, the series was relaunched under new editorship in 1997. Proposals or queries may be sent directly to the editors at the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration before being sent to expert readers. Professor Dauvit Broun, Department of History (Scottish), University of Glasgow, 9 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QH Professor Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, St John’s College, Cambridge CB2 1TP Professor Huw Pryce, School of History, Law and Social Sciences, Bangor University, Gwynedd LL57 2DG

For titles already published in this series see the end of this volume

THE MEDIEVAL WELSH ENGLYNION Y BEDDAU THE ‘STANZAS OF THE GRAVES’, OR ‘GRAVES OF THE WARRIORS OF THE ISLAND OF BRITAIN’, ATTRIBUTED TO TALIESIN

Edited and Translated from the Black Book of Carmarthen and Other Manuscripts, with an Archaeological, Historical, Linguistic, and Literary Commentary

PATRICK SIMS-WILLIAMS

D. S. BREWER

© Patrick Sims-Williams 2023 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Patrick Sims-Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2023 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978-1-84384-706-9 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-80543-101-5 (ePDF) D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record of this publication is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover image: megaliths near Dolbadarn castle, possibly the supposed grave of Cynon, who escaped from the battle of Catraeth © Marged Haycock Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

Note on References to Place-Names, Manuscripts, and Printed Sources

ix

List of Abbreviations

x

Part I: Study Introduction

3

1. Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’ Series I Series III ‘Series II’ ‘Series IV’

14 14 15 18 20

2. Dating Englynion y Beddau 26 The ‘heroic mood’ 26 Metrical criteria 27 Stylistic criteria 29 Linguistic criteria 30 (i) Morphology 30 (ii) Orthography 32 (iii) Palaeography 35 Content as a dating criterion 37 Conclusion48 3. The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts Stanzas linked by wording and/or subject matter Thematic links in the hypothetical ‘proto-series’ (i) Geography (ii) The Canu Llywarch Hen and Canu Heledd/Canu Cynddylan englyn cycles  (iii) Graves in rivers and under the sea The transmission of Englynion y Beddau  (i) Clynnog (ii) Aberconwy  (iii) Southern Cistercian monasteries (iv) Conclusion  v

49 50 55 56 57 57 58 58 69 72 79

Contents

4. The Rediscovery and Study of Englynion y Beddau

82

5. Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau

98

6. Metrics 110 Englynion milwr  111 Englynion penfyr 112 Four-line englynion 113 Awdl-gywydd114

Part II: Editions, Translations, and Commentary List of the Englynion

117

7. SERIES I (i) The manuscripts and stemma  (ii) Edition, translation, and commentary 

120 120 122

8. SERIES III (i) The manuscripts and stemma  (ii) Edition, translation, and commentary

273 273 279

Select Bibliography

339

Index

351

vi

ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps 1. The National Grid and pre-1974 Welsh Counties

xvii

2. Main Rivers and Medieval Regions Mentioned

xviii

3. Medieval Religious Houses Mentioned

xix

4. Clynnog Estates Confirmed by Edward IV

62

5. Series III

65

6. Series I

66

7. The ‘Clynnog’ Cluster in Series I

67

8. The ‘Llywelyn Fawr’/Aberconwy Cluster in Series I

73

9. The ‘Southern Cistercian’ Cluster in Series I

74

Table 1. Overlap between Englynion y Beddau and Various Listing Texts

40

Figures 1. The Proto-Series

54

2. Clynnog’s Donors according to Edward IV’s Charter

63

3. Series I Stemma

121

4. Series III Stemma

280

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The poems studied in this book, though best known as Englynion y Beddau, ‘The Stanzas of the Graves’, are also called Beddau Milwyr Ynys Prydain, ‘The Graves of the Warriors of the Island of Britain’, a title which underlines the work’s similarity to Trioedd Ynys Prydain, ‘The Triads of the Island of Britain’, the other fundamental key to the narrative literature of medieval Wales. The indispensable edition of the Triads by Rachel Bromwich, one of my teachers, was the inspiration for this volume. I hope my EYB will find its place alongside her TYP on many shelves. I am grateful to many people besides Rachel Bromwich for advice when I began this book. I started working on Series III of Englynion y Beddau in about 1975, for what turned into a dissertation for a Research Fellowship competition at St John’s College, Cambridge. At that time I received help from Peter Bartrum, David Dumville, D. Ellis Evans, R. Geraint Gruffydd, Marged Haycock, Daniel Huws, Bedwyr Lewis Jones, and Jenny Rowland. Once the competition was over, teaching commitments led me to lay the work aside for many years, although I published a short article about Series III in 1978 and a related lecture in Bonn, on ‘Clas Beuno and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi’, in 2001. Confined to base during the recent Covid19 pandemic, I resumed work, concentrating on Series I. The work speeded up when libraries started to permit researchers to photograph manuscripts for personal use. My wife Marged has helped me at every turn, most recently over Hugh Derfel Hughes’s letters in the John Rhys Papers. I am also indebted to Huw Pryce (one of the Series Editors), to Barry Lewis for the sight of a draft of his Bonedd y Saint, to Ann Parry Owen and Gruffudd Antur for help, including use of the proofs of Daniel Huws’s Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes (RWMS); also, for advice with specific problems, to David Austin, Andrew Davidson, Angharad Fychan and her father Cledwyn, Alan Lane, Mark Redknap, Graham C. G. Thomas, David Thorne, Oliver Padel, and David Stephenson. The Black Book of Carmarthen ascribes at least some of Englynion y Beddau to the legendary poet Taliesin. In thanking Marged Haycock, Isabel Jahnke, Jenny Rowland, Gwen Sims-Williams, Gwilym Sims-Williams, and Robert Sing – my intrepid companions on many gruelling field expeditions – I cannot honestly claim, with another Black Book poem in Taliesin’s voice: Mi a wum lle llas milguir Bridein / Or duyrein ir dehev (‘I have been where the warriors of Britain were slain / From the east to the south’). All the same, I hope you all had as good a time as I did when we searched for their supposed graves. Diolch o galon ichi i gyd!

viii

NOTE ON REFERENCES TO PLACE-NAMES, MANUSCRIPTS, AND PRINTED SOURCES In order to make this study accessible to readers unfamiliar with Welsh geography, most places, even well-known ones, are located by National Grid Reference and traditional county name (see Map 1, The National Grid and pre-1974 Welsh Counties). Gridlines are shown on most Ordnance Survey maps. My National Grid references are mostly taken from Davies, Rhestr o Enwau Lleoedd, and online sources such as Archwilio, Coflein, and RhELlH. (References to these online sources were accurate when this book was completed but future readers should note that they are being continually updated.) In grid references such as SH 4288, SH 426880, or SH 4267 8801 the letters refer to 100-km squares, the first group of numbers refers to the north–south axis, and the second group refers to the east–west axis. The following abbreviations are used for the historic counties: Ang.

Anglesey (Môn)

Bre.

Breconshire (Brycheiniog)

Crd.

Cardiganshire (Ceredigion)

Crm.

Carmarthenshire (Caerfyrddin)

Crn.

Caernarfonshire (Caernarfon)

Den.

Denbigh (Dinbych)

Fli.

Flintshire (Fflint)

Gla.

Glamorgan (Morgannwg)

Mer.

Merionethshire (Meirionydd)

Mon.

Monmouthshire (Mynwy/Gwent)

Mtg.

Montgomeryshire (Trefaldwyn)

Pem.

Pembrokeshire (Penfro)

Rad.

Radnorshire (Maesyfed)

Some reference is also made to medieval regions, as shown on Map 2, ‘Main Rivers and Medieval Regions Mentioned’. A mixture of Welsh and English forms of placenames is used, depending on context, and some obsolete or even incorrect spellings are used, especially when referring to nineteenth-century sources. When several spellings are current, the historically correct ones (e.g. Degannwy and Meirionydd) are usually preferred. On resources for Welsh place-names see PNCrm xi–xiv. Shelf-marks of manuscripts are often shortened to save space, for example, ‘Peniarth 111’ rather than ‘Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 111’. Full details of the manuscripts used in my edition may be found below, pp. 120–1 and 278–9; and see also the Index, under Manuscripts. Books and articles referred to more than once are cited by short-title in the footnotes and in full in the Bibliography. Bibliographical abbreviations are incorporated in the List of Abbreviations. ix

ABBREVIATIONS

AB

Analecta Bollandiana.

ABT

‘Achau Brenhinoedd a Thywysogion Cymru’ in EWGT.

AC

Archaeologia Cambrensis.

ACPN

Patrick Sims-Williams, Ancient Celtic Place-Names in Europe and Asia Minor (Oxford, 2006).

AL

Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, ed. Aneurin Owen, 2 vols (London, 1841).

AMR

Archif Melville Richards: Place-Names Database

AntJ

Antiquaries Journal.

AP

Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain from the Book of Taliesin, ed. Ifor Williams, English version by Rachel Bromwich (Dublin, 1972).

2

Archwilio

Archwilio: The Welsh Historic Environment Records online

ASE

Anglo-Saxon England.

Asser

Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. William Henry Stevenson, new impression (Oxford, 1959).

B.

Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies.

BB

Brut y Brenhinedd: Cotton Cleopatra Version, ed. John Jay Parry (Cambridge, MA, 1937).

BBC

The Black Book of Carmarthen, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Pwllheli, 1907).

BBCSG

Thomas Jones, ‘The Black Book of Carmarthen “Stanzas of the Graves”’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 53 (1968), 97–137.

BD

Brut Dingestow, ed. Henry Lewis (Cardiff, 1942).

BGG

‘Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd’, in EWGT.

BL

British Library, London.

BR

Breudwyt Ronabwy, ed. Melville Richards (Cardiff, 1948).

BWP

Ifor Williams, The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1980).

ByA

‘Bonedd yr Arwyr’, in EWGT.

ByS

‘Bonedd y Saint’, in EWGT.

Bywgraffiadur

Y Bywgraffiadur Cymreig: Dictionary of Welsh Biography.

CA

Canu Aneirin, ed. Ifor Williams (Cardiff, 1938).

CB

‘Cognatio Brychan’, in EWGT.

x

Abbreviations CBA

Council for British Archaeology.

CBT

Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion, general editor R. Geraint Gruffydd, 7 vols (Cardiff, 1991–96).

CC

Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar, ed. Marged Haycock (Llandybïe, 1994).

CF

John Rhys, Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx, 2 vols (Oxford, 1901).

CIB

Patrick Sims-Williams, The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: Phonology and Chronology, c. 400–1200 (Oxford, 2003).

CLlH

Canu Llywarch Hen, ed. Ifor Williams, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1953).

CMCS

Cambridge [from no. 26 Cambrian] Medieval Celtic Studies.

Coflein

Coflein: online database for the National Monuments Record of Wales

CR

Lewis Morris, Celtic Remains, ed. D. Silvan Evans (London, 1878).

CRedon

Association des Amis des Archives Historiques du diocèse de Rennes, Dol et Saint Malo (ed.), Cartulaire de l’abbaye Saint-Sauveur de Redon, 2 vols (Rennes, 1998–2004).

Crm. Antiq.

Carmarthenshire Antiquary.

DCCPN

Alexander Falileyev, with Ashwin E. Gohil and Naomi Ward, Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names (Aberystwyth, 2010).

DEPN

Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn (Oxford, 1960).

DGVB

Léon Fleuriot, Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux-breton (Paris, 1964), repr. with supplement, as Claude Evans and Léon Fleuriot, A Dictionary of Old Breton, 2 vols (Toronto, 1985).

DP

The Description of Penbrokshire by George Owen of Henllys, Lord of Kemes, ed. Henry Owen, 4 parts (London, 1892–1936).

DSB

‘De Situ Brecheniauc’ in EWGT.

EANC

R. J. Thomas, Enwau Afonydd a Nentydd Cymru (Cardiff, 1938).

EBSG

John K. Bollard and Anthony Griffiths, Englynion y Beddau: The Stanzas of the Graves (Llanrwst, 2015).

ÉC

Études celtiques.

eDIL

The Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

EGOW

Alexander Falileyev, Etymological Glossary of Old Welsh (Tübingen, 2000).

EHR

English Historical Review.

EL

Henry Lewis, Yr Elfen Ladin yn yr Iaith Gymraeg (Cardiff, 1943).

ELl

Ifor Williams, Enwau Lleoedd, 2nd new edn (Liverpool, 1969).

ELlSG

J. Lloyd-Jones, Enwau Lleoedd Sir Gaernarfon (Cardiff, 1928).

EP

Elwyn Evans, ‘Yr Enwau Personol mewn Saith o Destunau Detholedig’, M.A. thesis (University of Wales, Bangor, 1964).

ETG

Melville Richards, Enwau Tir a Gwlad (Caernarfon, 1998).

EVW

Margaret Enid Griffiths, Early Vaticination in Welsh with English Parallels (Cardiff, 1937).

xi

Abbreviations EWGP

Early Welsh Gnomic Poems, ed. Kenneth Jackson, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1961).

EWGT

Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts, ed. P. C. Bartrum (Cardiff, 1966).

EWSP

Jenny Rowland, Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the Englynion (Cambridge, 1990).

FHSJ

Flintshire Historical Society Journal.

FPN

Ellis Davies, Flintshire Place-Names (Cardiff, 1959).

G.

J. Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg, 2 vols, continuously paginated (Cardiff, 1931–63).

GaC

‘Hanes Gruffudd ap Cynan’, in EWGT.

GDG

Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym, ed. Thomas Parry, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1963).

GIG

Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. D. R. Johnston (Cardiff, 1988).

GLM

Gwaith Lewys Môn, ed. Eurys I. Rowlands (Cardiff, 1975).

GMW

D. Simon Evans, A Grammar of Middle Welsh, repr. with addenda et corrigenda (Dublin, 1970).

GOI

Rudolf Thurneysen, A Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin, 1946).

GOSP

Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish Poem (Edinburgh, 1969).

GP

Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid, ed. G. J. Williams and E. J. Jones (Cardiff, 1934).

GPC

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language.

GPN

D. Ellis Evans, Gaulish Personal Names (Oxford, 1967).

GTA

Gwaith Tudur Aled, ed. T. Gwynn Jones, 2 vols (Cardiff, 1926).

Guto’r Glyn. net

HB

Historia Brittonum, in Morris, Nennius: British History and The Welsh Annals.

HEALlE

Glenda Carr, Hen Enwau o Arfon, Llŷn ac Eifionydd (Caernarfon, 2011).

HEF

Glenda Carr, Hen Enwau o Feirionnydd (Caernarfon, 2020).

HEW

N. Denholm-Young, Handwriting in England and Wales (Cardiff, 1964).

HG

‘Welsh Genealogies from Harl. 3859’, in EWGT.

HGK

Historia Gruffud vab Kenan, ed. D. Simon Evans (Cardiff, 1977).

HL

‘Hen Lwythau Gwynedd a’r Mars’, in EWGT.

HPB

Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, A Historical Phonology of Breton (Dublin, 1967).

HRB

Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. Michael D. Reeve and trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge, 2009). [References such as 100 refer to this edition and those such as I.10 refer to Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1966).]

HW

John Edward Lloyd, A History of Wales, 3rd edn, 2 vols (London, 1939).

xii

Abbreviations Inv. Ang.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Anglesey (London, 1937).

Inv. Bre., Prehistoric and Roman Monuments

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Brecknock (Brycheiniog): The Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, Part I, Later Prehistoric Monuments and Unenclosed Settlements to 1000 A.D. (n.p., 1997); Part II, Hill-Forts and Roman Remains (London, 1986).

Inv. Crm.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: V. County of Carmarthen (London, 1917).

Inv. Crn.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Caernarvonshire, 3 vols (London, 1956–64).

Inv. Gla., Medieval Secular Monuments, II

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan, III, Medieval Secular Monuments, Part II, Non-Defensive (Cardiff, 1982).

Inv. Gla., PreNorman

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan, I, Pre-Norman: Part I, The Stone and Bronze Ages (Cardiff, 1976); Part II, The Iron Age and the Roman Occupation (Cardiff, 1976).

Inv. Mer.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: VI. County of Merioneth (London, 1921).

Inv. Mtg.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of the County of Montgomery (London, 1911).

Inv. Pem.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: VII. County of Pembroke (London, 1925).

Inv. Rad.

RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: III. County of Radnor (London, 1913).

IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet.

JBAA

Journal of the British Archaeological Association.

JC

‘Genealogies from Jesus College MS. 20’ in EWGT.

JCL

Journal of Celtic Linguistics.

JCS

Journal of Celtic Studies.

JEPNS

Journal of the English Place-Names Society.

JMHRS

Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society.

JWBS

Journal of the Welsh Bibliographical Society.

L&P

Henry Lewis and Holger Pedersen, A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar, 2nd edn, with Supplement (Göttingen, 1961).

LBS

S. Baring-Gould and John Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints, 4 vols (London, 1907–13).

LEIA

J. Vendryes et al., Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien (Dublin and Paris, 1959–).

LHEB

Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh, 1953).

Lhwyd Letters

Brynley F. Roberts, Richard Sharpe, Helen Watt, et al. (eds), ‘The Correspondence of Edward Lhwyd’, in Early Modern Letters Online, ed. Howard Hotson and Miranda Lewis

xiii

Abbreviations LL

The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv reproduced from the Gwysaney Manuscript, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans and John Rhys (repr. Aberystwyth, 1979).

LlC

Llên Cymru.

LlDC

Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, ed. A. O. H. Jarman (Cardiff, 1982).

LPBT

Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. Marged Haycock, 2nd edn (Aberystwyth, 2015).

M

The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (London, 1949).

MA1

The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, I, Poetry, ed. Owen Jones et al., 1st edn (London, 1801).

MA2

The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, ed. Owen Jones et al., 2nd edn (Denbigh, 1870).

MALDWYN

Y Mynegai i Farddoniaeth Gymraeg y Llawysgrifau (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru).

MC

Montgomeryshire Collections.

MG

‘Genealogies in Mostyn MS. 117’, in EWGT.

Mod.W.

Modern Welsh.

MP

‘Miscellaneous Pedigrees’, in EWGT.

MvM

W. J. Gruffydd, Math vab Mathonwy (Cardiff, 1928).

MW

Middle Welsh.

MWG

Ben Guy, Medieval Welsh Genealogy: An Introduction and Textual Study (Woodbridge, 2020).

MWM

Daniel Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff and Aberystwyth, 2000).

NCPNW

B. G. Charles, Non-Celtic Place-Names in Wales (London, 1938).

NLW

National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

NLWJ

National Library of Wales Journal.

OB

Old Breton.

OC

Old Cornish.

OE

Old English.

OIr

Old Irish.

OJA

Oxford Journal of Archaeology.

O.S.

Ordnance Survey.

OW

Old Welsh.

Par.

Parochialia, Being a Summary of Answers to ‘Parochial Queries in Order to a Geographical Dictionary, etc. of Wales’ Issued by Edward Lhwyd, ed. Rupert H. Morris, Supplement to AC, 3 vols (London, 1909–11).

PBA

Proceedings of the British Academy.

PBT

Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin, ed. Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth, 2013).

xiv

Abbreviations PK

‘Progenies Keredic’, in EWGT.

PKM

Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, ed. Ifor Williams, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1951).

PNC

Iwan Wmffre, Place-Names of Cardiganshire, 3 vols (Oxford, 2004).

PNCrm

Richard Morgan, Place-Names of Carmarthenshire (Cardiff, 2022).

PNDPH

Gwynedd O. Pierce, The Place-Names of Dinas Powys Hundred (Cardiff, 1968).

PNG

Richard Morgan, Place-Names of Glamorgan (Cardiff, 2018).

PNRB

A. L. F. Rivet and Colin Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (London, 1979).

PP1

P. C. Bartrum, ‘Pedigrees of the Welsh Tribal Patriarchs’, NLWJ, 13.2 (1963), 93–146.

PP2

P. C. Bartrum, ‘Pedigrees of the Welsh Tribal Patriarchs, Continued’, NLWJ, 15.2 (1967), 157–66.

PT

The Poems of Taliesin, ed. Ifor Williams, English Version by J. E. Caerwyn Williams (Dublin, 1968).

R

The Poetry from the Red Book of Hergest, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Llanbedrog, 1911).

RBB

The Text of the Bruts from the Red Book of Hergest, ed. John Rhys and J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Oxford, 1890).

RC

Revue celtique.

RCAHMW

The Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales.

Rec. Caern.

Registrum Vulgariter Nuncupatum ‘The Record of Caernarvon’, ed. Henry Ellis (London, 1838).

RES

Review of English Studies.

RhELlH

RCAHMW, Rhestr o Enwau Lleoedd Hanesyddol Cymru: List of Historic Place-Names

Rhyddiaith 1300–1425

Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425, ed. Diana Luft, Peter Wynn Thomas, and D. Mark Smith, 2013.

Rhyddiaith y 13g

Rhyddiaith Gymraeg o Lawysgrifau’r 13eg Ganrif: Fersiwn 2.0, ed. G. R. Isaac, Simon Rodway, Silva Nurmio, Kit Kapphahn, and Patrick Sims-Williams, 2013.

Rhyddiaith y 15g

Rhyddiaith y 15fed Ganrif: Fersiwn 3.0, ed. Katherine Himsworth, Kate Leach, Diana Luft, Silva Nurmio, Richard Glyn Roberts, Sara Elin Roberts, Sarah Rowles, Paul Russell, Raphael Sackmann, Patrick SimsWilliams, and Anthony Vitt, 2022.

RMWL

J. Gwenogvryn Evans, Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language, 2 vols (London, 1898–1910).

RWMS

Daniel Huws, A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes c. 800–c. 1800, 3 vols (Aberystwyth, 2022).

SBCHP

Peter Schrijver, Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology (Amsterdam, 1995).

xv

Abbreviations SC

Studia Celtica.

TAAS

Transactions of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society.

Tal.

John Morris-Jones, ‘Taliesin’, Y Cymmrodor, 28 (1918) [entire number].

TC

T. J. Morgan, Y Treigladau a’u Cystrawen (Cardiff, 1952).

TCHS

Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society.

TDHS

Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society.

THSC

Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion.

TPS

Transactions of the Philological Society.

TRS

Transactions of the Radnorshire Society.

TYP1

Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed. Rachel Bromwich, 1st edn (Cardiff, 1961).

TYP4

Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed. Rachel Bromwich, 4th edn (Cardiff, 2014).

VSB

Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et Genealogiae, ed. A. W. Wade-Evans (Cardiff, 1944).

WaB

T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013).

WATU

Melville Richards, Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units (Cardiff, 1969).

WCD

Peter C. Bartrum, A Welsh Classical Dictionary: People in History and Legend up to about A.D. 1000 (Aberystwyth, 1993).

WG

J. Morris Jones, A Welsh Grammar: Historical and Comparative (Oxford, 1913).

WHR

Welsh History Review.

WM

The White Book Mabinogion, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Pwllheli, 1907), repr. as Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch: Y Chwedlau a’r Rhamantau (Cardiff, 1973).

YB

Ysgrifau Beirniadol.

YMTh

Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin, ed. A. O. H. Jarman, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1967).

ZCP

Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie.

xvi

Map 1: The National Grid and pre-1974 Welsh Counties.

Throughout this book the names of the historic counties are abbreviated (as in WATU xii), e.g. Ang. for Anglesey, Crn. for Caernarfon (formerly Caernarvon), etc. See above, Note on References to Place-Names, Manuscripts, and Printed Sources, p. ix, for a list of the abbreviations and information about the National Grid. The background map is based, with permission, on CBA Wales/Cymru, Archaeology in Wales.

Map 2: Main Rivers and Medieval Regions Mentioned.

Map 3: Medieval Religious Houses Mentioned. Key: + bishop’s see; × clas church; † Cistercian or Premonstratensian monastery (only Talyllychau is Premonstratensian); • establishment of the Knights Hospitallers.

Part I

STUDY

INTRODUCTION

The anonymous Englynion y Beddau name and describe the burial places of early medieval heroes, providing a key to a narrative literature which is largely lost. In this they resemble Trioedd Ynys Prydain (‘The Triads of the Island of Britain’). While the Triads’ mnemonic function is accomplished by grouping information in threes, Englynion y Beddau are suitable for memorisation because they are metrical and use poetic formulae.1 Two series of Englynion y Beddau survive, Series I in the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth 1), c. 1250, and derivatives of it, and Series III in various derivatives of a lost copy, with partially modernised orthography, in a manuscript belonging to William Salesbury (c. 1510–c. 1580). The so-called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’ are not true ‘series’ (see below, p. 18). A reference such as I.10 or III.10 refers to the number of the stanza (usually in englyn metre) within the relevant series, and a reference such as I.10c refers to the line (here the third) within the stanza. On 32r of the Black Book a late medieval scribe added the title Englynnionn y Beddev. This is the first attestation of the now customary title, translated as ‘The Stanzas of the Graves’ by Thomas Jones in his 1967 edition. He also included the alternative title Beddau Milwyr Ynys Prydain, ‘The Graves of the Warriors of the Island of Britain’. Although not attested before the early seventeenth century,2 this title is quite apt. All stanzas, except one (I.70) which was added to the Black Book of Carmarthen by a second thirteenth-century scribe, refer to men rather than women; even Branwen, whose grave is described in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, is missing.3 With the exception of Beli ab Benlli Gawr – another addition (I.73) – the warriors seem to be humans rather than giants, although that distinction was fluid and could change over time.4 Typically the men are heroes praised for their ferocity in battle. They come from the whole of Britain, including Mercia and present-day Scotland. Warriors from the ‘Old North’5 include Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn (I.8–11), Owain ab Urien, and Rhydderch Hael (I.13–14), Einion ap Cunedda (I.72), Llofan Evidence that the englynion were orally transmitted is limited, owing to the lack of manuscripts, but some differences between the extant series suggest faulty memorisation. 2 BBCSG 118–19. Lhwyd, Archaeologia Britannica, pp. 255 and 261, gives this title (‘Bedhe Milụyr Ynys Pryden’), perhaps following John Jones’s ‘Englynion Beḍau milwyr Ynys Brydain’ in Peniarth MS 267, pp. 29–30, written 1635–41. See below, p. 84, and commentary on I.73. 3 On Branwen see below, p. 12. The omission of women is understandable in the militaristic context of works such as Englynion y Beddau and the Gododdin. The rarity of female saints in Bonedd y Saint is less easily explained, and may be due to patriarchal prejudice (cf. Lewis, Bonedd). If that is true of Bonedd y Saint, the same may apply to Englynion y Beddau. 4 Bendigeidfran, in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, is a case in point. In general see Grooms, Giants. 5 This term (in Welsh, Yr Hen Ogledd, a convenient but recent coinage) refers to the Brittonic-­ speaking kingdoms of southern Scotland and northern England. See Marged Haycock, ‘The Old North in Medieval Wales’, in What is North?, ed. Oisín Plumb et al. (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 53–70 (p. 54 n. 9). 1

3

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

(III.5–8), and Elidir Mwynfawr (III.15). From Wales come Cynddylan of Powys (I.15), Aergol of Dyfed, and Maelgwn Gwynedd’s son, wife, and bard (I.70–71), among many others. From Mercia comes Panna ap Pyd (III.9/I.10). He is an indisputably historical person, the seventh-century Penda, as are the fifth-century Vortigern (I.40) and the sixth-century Rhydderch. The englynion do not, however, provide new historically reliable information. The historical Rhydderch (Rodercus) died in his bed in Dumbarton, not at Aber-erch (I.13), a Welsh place-name which rhymes, rather suspiciously, with his name. This case illustrates how characters from other parts of Britain were relocalised in Wales.6 No one later than Penda (d. 655) is mentioned,7 for the world of Englynion y Beddau is a world of legend rather than history. Characters known from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi appear, often with additional information about them – Dylan (I.4/III.13), Pryderi (I.7), Gwrgi (I.28), Lleu (I.35/III.10), and Gwydion (III.3) – as do some more or less ‘Arthurian’ characters known from Culhwch and Olwen and elsewhere: Gwalchmai (I.8), Bedwyr (I.12), Oeth and Anoeth (I.30), Mabon (III.16), and Arthur himself, accompanied by March and Gwythur (I.44). There are also characters from the early ‘saga englynion’,8 such as Seithennin (I.6), Cynddylan, and Gwên ap Llywarch Hen (I.15–16), Llemenig (I.50), and Talan (I.52), plus a number of obscure characters otherwise known from passing allusions, such as Tydai Tad Awen (I.4/III.13), Rhufawn (I.42–43), Gwgawn Cleddyfrudd (I.44), Bradwen (I.62), and Siawn (I.67). They presumably appeared in narratives now lost. Elffin (I.42–43) clearly comes from the story of Taliesin.9 Meigen ap Rhun (I.17–19), Alun Dyfed ap Meigen (I.25), and Rhun ab Alun Dyfed (I.24/III.18) seems to have featured in a lost three-generation story that began in south Wales and ended in Penllyn in the north. Many other heroes are completely unknown. This confirms that many medieval stories have disappeared without trace and emphasises the value of Englynion y Beddau as a key to a lost literature.10 The warriors’ graves are typically outside, beneath the rain (I.1, 3, 45), hidden under scrub or grass (I.2, 26), on hills (I.11, 12, 20–23, 57, 69) or mountains (I.32– 33/III.1, I.67, III.17). A wolf howls over one in the wilderness (I.41). Some graves are beside – or even in – estuaries or rivers (I.7, 8, 10, 31, III.15), while others are on the seashore (I.4/III.13, I.7, 70, III.3, 7–8, 14) or under the sea (I.6, 17–19, 35/ III.10). Mabon’s grave ‘in the uplands of Nantlleu’ (III.16) is said to have unknown ‘peculiarities’ (cyneddfau), a remark which recalls mirabilia like those appended to the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, where a grave is said to mysteriously change size.11 Some ‘long graves’ have already been looted (I.29–30) and others might still Of course, some people from more or less distant kingdoms really did die far from their place of origin, for example the fifth- or early-sixth-century aliortvs elmetiaco and corbalengi … ordovs commemorated respectively at Llanaelhaearn, Crn. and Penbryn, Crd. (Edwards, Corpus, III, no. CN20, and II, no. CD28). The englynion on Vortigern and Arthur (I.40 and 44) may allude to the uncertainties that were created by multiple, incompatible localisations. 7 A possible exception is III.11–12 which, if emended, may refer to the twelfth-century Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd. This is probably an interpolation. 8 In this book ‘saga englynion’ and ‘englyn cycles’ refer to the corpus edited and translated in CLlH and EWSP. 9 On which see LPBT and Ford, Ystoria Taliesin. 10 For further discussion see the commentaries on individual stanzas, and the comparison between Series I (Parts 1 and 2), Series III, and other listing texts, below, pp. 40–3. 11 See commentary on I.17–19 and I.62. 6

4

Introduction

yield treasure (I.60). Graves may be ‘four-sided’ (I.13(?) and 63), and one of them has ‘four stones’ around its ‘edge’ or its ‘head’ (I.63). Some heroes lie ‘under stones’ (I.51, III.3), and one lies in a beddgor (I.72), perhaps a cairn of stones thrown together or a grave with a surrounding kerb – depending on the meaning of the element côr. In 1693 Edward Lhwyd captured another aspect of beddau: 12

Carnedheu are in some places of Glamorganshire call’d Bedheu, & in men’s memory, malefactors & self-murderers have been buryed in some of them on the tops of mountains.13

Few of the beddau in Englynion y Beddau are occupied by obvious malefactors, however; as traitors, Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern) and Llofan are the only obvious exceptions (I.40 and III.5–8), although some of the foreigners, such as Penda (see above), Llia the Irishman (I.26), Llwch Llawengin (I.31), Beidawg Rudd ab Emyr Llydaw (I.38), and Cynddilig mab Corcnud (I.41), may belong here. Some of the graves of Englynion y Beddau have been plausibly identified with prehistoric monuments. Between 1635 and 1641 John Jones of Gellilyfdy, Fli. connected the englyn on Beli ap Benlli Gawr (I.73) with a supposed grave marked by two limestone stones at each end. Presumably Beli was a giant like his father Benlli and the stones were widely spaced – compare the grave of Dilig Gawr on the seashore in Glamorgan, where the stones were thirty feet apart,14 or the grave of Arthur’s nephew Walwen, fourteen feet in length, on the shore in Rhos, Pem., as reported by William of Malmesbury in 1125; it is probably to be equated with the grave of Gwalchmai (I.8). Around 1852 John Jones, rector of Llanllyfni, Crn., attempted to identify a number of Englynion y Beddau sites. Just one of his proposals remains plausible, namely ‘Maen Dylan’ as the grave of Dylan (I.4). Then in 1929 Canon Ellis Davies suggested an attractive, if unprovable identification of Llemenig’s grave at Llanelwy (I.50) with the Neolithic chambered tomb overlooking the Elwy valley at Tyddyn Bleiddyn, Den. In 1936 Professor Thomas Jones, a native of Allt-wen, Gla. linked the ‘three graves at Cefn Celfi’ (I.65) with the Bronze Age standing stones in that parish. Later, in 1967, he suggested that a stone alignment at Brwyno Canol, Crd. – known as ‘Cerrig Hirion’ in the eighteenth century – might correspond to the grave of Brwyno Hir (I.48). In 2015 a tentative, but attractive equation by Bollard and Griffiths connected the grave of Eitivlch Hir in Pennant Twrch, Mtg. (I.34) with a barely extant Bronze Age cairn. Further possible identifications will be discussed in the present work. Most identifications are tentative, either because the poets are vague or because of the probability that many prehistoric monuments have been destroyed; already c. 1536, speaking of Anglesey (Tir Môn), John Leland observed: In tyme of mynde menne usid not in Termone to seperate theyr grounde, but now stille more and more they digge stony hillokkes yn theyre groundes, and with the stones of them rudely congestid they devide theyre groundes after Devonshire fascion. In Compare English references to hoards and ‘broken barrows’: Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, p. 170; Parsons et al., Vocabulary of English Place-Names (Á-Box), p. 89; David N. Parsons and Tania Styles, The Vocabulary of English Place-Names (Brace-Cæster) (Nottingham, 2000), p. 41. Treasure in graves is a common motif: Grinsell, Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, pp. 66–69 and 274; Hawker-Yates, ‘Barrows’, pp. 59–60 and 232–65. 13 Lhwyd Letters: Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 10 Oct. 1693. 14 See commentary on I.41. 12

5

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau digging of these [they] digge up yn many places yerthen pottes with the mouthes turned douneward, conteyning [cineres et ossa mortuorum].15

Englynion y Beddau testify to the interest megaliths, tumuli, and other manmade, or apparently man-made, monuments aroused in the historical period.16 While the original meaning of prehistoric monuments in the landscape is difficult to divine,17 medieval literature provides clues to their later meaning,18 Englynion y Beddau being a valuable example. No one would now claim that they can reveal the original purpose of the monuments described, passed down owing to a passive ‘ritual continuity’; when prehistoric landmarks were reused in periods – for assembly sites, secondary burials, and so on – it was ‘in a much more active manner, in order to promote or protect the interests of a social elite’,19 and much the same applies to their literary re-use. The graves of Englynion y Beddau may have held different meanings for different elites – secular or religious – at different periods.20 While some sites may have retained the same associations for centuries, in other cases the poems’ interpretations may have been transient, ad hoc, or even, for all we know, fanciful or controversial. An Old Irish anecdote in the Yellow Book of Lecan is relevant here. It tells how a king of Ulster took his chief poet (ardfhili) to see various pillar-stones (coirthi). The chief poet opines that Clann Dedaid raised them ‘to build the city of Cú Roí’, but some young clerics shame him with their superior knowledge that Conall Cernach had raised them over some warriors’ graves, ‘for it was the custom of the Ulaid … to raise pillar-stones to the number that they slew’.21

Leland, Itinerary in Wales, p. 90 (cineres et ossa mortuorum, ‘ashes and bones of the dead’, is supplied from Thomas Burton’s transcript). 16 On medieval and later interest in prehistoric monuments see, for example, Glyn Daniel, The Megaliths in History (London, 1972); Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric; Ehrmantraut, ‘Of Mice and Mounds’; Grinsell, Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain. 17 In Wales see, for example, George Nash, ‘Monumentality and the Landscape: The Possible Symbolic and Political Distribution of Long Chambered Tombs around the Black Mountains, Central Wales’, in Semiotics of Landscape: Archaeology of Mind, ed. George Nash (Oxford, 1997), pp. 17–30; Vicki Cummings, Andrew Jones, and Aaron Watson, ‘Divided Places: Phenomenology and Asymmetry in the Monuments of the Black Mountains, Southeast Wales’, CAJ, 12.1 (2002), 57–70; Vicki Cummings and Alasdair Whittle, Places of Special Virtue: Megaliths in the Neolithic Landscapes of Wales (Oxford, 2004). Cf. Andrew Fleming, ‘Phenomenology and the Megaliths of Wales: A Dreaming Too Far?’, OJA, 18.2 (1999), 119–25; Christopher Tilley, ‘A Reply to My Critics’, Interpreting Landscapes: Geologies, Topographies, Identities, Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology, 3 (Walnut Creek, CA, 2010), pp. 471–81. 18 Cf. Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, p. 144. 19 Richard Bradley, ‘Time Regained, the Creation of Continuity’, JBAA, 140 (1987), 1–17 (pp. 14– 15). 20 In her sceptical survey of interpretations of round barrows, Anwen Cooper noted that ‘it is argued that ancient structures were engaged with for three main purposes: as a means of creating local identities and senses of place; to legitimise land access; and in justifying the emergence of new social and political configurations’ (‘Other Types of Meaning: Relationships between Round Barrows and Landscapes from 1500 bc–ac 1086’, CAJ, 26.4 (2016), 665–96 (p. 666)). 21 ‘Why Mongán was Deprived of Noble Issue’, ed. and trans. Knott. This is only a story, of course, not solid evidence of translatio studii from the filid to the clergy. Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 111, and idem, ‘The Medieval World of Robin Flower’, in Bláithín: Flower, ed. Mícheál de Mórdha (Dingle, 1998), pp. 73–96 (pp. 84–85). Cf. below, p. 10, on Vansina, and commentary on I.42–43. 15

6

Introduction

Hardly any graves are near churches. Exceptionally Dylan’s grave is ‘in’ or ‘at’ Llanfeuno (St Beuno’s church, Clynnog, Crn.), ‘where the wave makes a noise’ (I.4/ III.13), but here the reference is probably not to the church but to the gigantic boulder called ‘Maen Dylan’, 1½ miles up the coast from the church; according to the Book of Taliesin, waves crashing ‘against the shore’ avenge Dylan’s death.22 The grave of Llemenig in Llan Elvy (I.50) may refer to a site within the ambit of Llanelwy (St Asaph, Fli.) rather than to Llanelwy itself (compare Canon Ellis Davies’s suggestion, cited above). Owain ab Urien’s grave is situated both at llan Morvael and llan Helet (I.13–14), probably not two unknown churches but rather a single church or ‘enclosure’ (llan), somewhere in Powys, supposedly belonging to Cyndrwyn’s son and daughter, Morfael and Heledd. Cynon’s grave is in Llan Padarn (I.8). Assuming Llan Padarn is not just an error for Llyn Padarn, Crn., it may refer to a long-lost church or cell near that lake. The only reference to burial near an eglwys (‘church’), as opposed to a llan, is Ceri Long Sword’s grave ‘in the region of Heneglwys, in the gravelly precipice … in Corbre’s graveyard’ (I.5). Heneglwys, Ang. was formerly dedicated to an Irish-named Corbre sant and has a large churchyard of the early curvilinear type, sited above a deeply cut stream-valley. Its name, Heneglwys ‘former church’, seems to indicate that the twelfth-century church was named from an older church at or near the same site.23 Possibly Ceri’s grave was some ancient mound that was incorporated within Corbre’s graveyard – a common motif in early Irish sources.24 The fact that graves in or near churches mostly lie outside the purview of Englynion y Beddau agrees with their concentration on early heroes, who were probably assumed to have lived before churchyard burials became the norm.25 Hence no stanzas refer to famous kings such as Cadfan (d. c. 625), whose memorial stone is extant at

See commentary on I.4. See commentary on I.5. The name henheglus is attested in 1254 in The Valuation of Norwich, ed. W. E. Lunt (Oxford, 1926), p. 193. 24 Susan Leigh Fry, Burial in Medieval Ireland 900–1500 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 40–41. 25 Cf. David Petts, ‘De Situ Brecheniauc and Englynion Y Beddau: Writing about Burial in Early Medieval Wales’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 14 (2007), 165–72 (p. 164); WaB 617. The shortage of excavations make generalisation difficult. Cf. Shiner, ‘Burial in Early Medieval Wales’. The poets make no mention of churches when describing the burial of the sixth-century Urien and his son Owain: CLlH III 20–27; PT X. Compare the transition in Ireland: Elizabeth O’Brien and Edel Bhreathnach, ‘Irish Boundary Ferta, their Physical Manifestation and Historical Context’, in Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law in Honour of Thomas Charles-Edwards, ed. Fiona Edmonds and Paul Russell (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 53–64; Elizabeth O’Brien, ‘From Burial among the Ancestors to Burial among the Saints: An Assessment of Some Burial Rites in Ireland in the Fifth to Eighth Centuries AD’, in Transforming Landscapes of Belief in the Early Medieval Insular World and Beyond, ed. Nancy Edwards et al., Converting the Isles, 2 (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 259–86. In England ‘a rapid and linear progression from pagan grave-field to Christian churchyard is in general recognised as inaccurate and simplistic’ (Sarah Semple and Howard Williams, ‘Landmarks of the Dead: Exploring Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Geographies’, in The Material Culture of the Built Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Liverpool, 2015), pp. 137–61 (p. 138)). The early-twelfth-century Book of Llandaf pictures the seventh-century king Morgan making a grant while standing on the tomb of his grandfather at Llandaf (LL 149). By contrast the tomb of the earlier Gurai, eponym of the cantref of Gwrinydd, is on a hill called mons Gurai (LL 176a; cf. WaB 265 and 295). Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, p. 607, suggests a tumulus at SS 884751 on Beacons Down, i.e. the Heol-y-mynydd Round Barrow in St Bride’s Major, Gla., illustrated with aerial photographs in Coflein (SS 88400 75130). Cf. Rory Naismith, Early Medieval Britain, c. 500–1000 (Cambridge, 2021), pp. 361–64 (with map). 22 23

7

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

the church at Llangadwaladr, Ang. (named from his grandson Cadwaladr),26 Rhodri Mawr (d. 878), or Hywel Dda (d. 950).27 The latest grave mentioned is that of Penda (d. 655) and he is a special case, being a pagan Mercian king who was presumed to have drowned when the river Winwæd overflowed its banks.28 No doubt some of the sixth-century northern heroes, such as Rhydderch Hael at Aber-erch, were similarly imagined to have been buried where they fell in Wales, far from their own kingdoms. While no precise literary model for Englynion y Beddau is known, various analogues have been noted. The best known are two late-tenth-century Irish poems in the Book of Leinster (c. 1160) and later manuscripts.29 One, ‘Lecht Cormaic meic Cuilennáin’, a composite poem attributed to Broccán Cráibdech of Clonmore, Co. Carlow, begins with eighteen quatrains listing the graves of Leinster heroes,30 and the other, ‘Fianna bátar i nEmain’, composed by the northern poet Cináed úa hArtacáin (d. 975) and enlarged in the mid-twelfth century by Find, bishop of Kildare, lists the deaths of various pagan heroes, frequently locating their graves.31 The prose tract Senchas na Relec, ‘The Lore of the Cemeteries’, in Lebor na hUidre (c. 1100) has been cited as another comparable text,32 and rather later, appended to a ballad in Duanaire Finn, there is a versified list of the standing stones of Ireland and those buried beneath them.33 While the Irish compositions appeal to a comparable topographical interest in the heroes of the past and where they died, they are not especially similar in detail to Englynion y Beddau. One obvious difference is that the Welsh authors, unlike some

Corpus III, ed. Edwards, no. AN26. In England elite burials inside churches are recorded from 616 onwards: Deborah Mauskopf, ‘Church Burial in Anglo-Saxon England: The Prerogative of Kings’, Fruhmittelalterliche Studien, 29 (1995), 96–119. 27 Ifor Williams’s interpretation is different: that the englynion were composed when leaders such as Hywel Dda were too nearly contemporary to be suitable for inclusion: ‘Hen Chwedlau’, p. 33; cf. CLlH xlvii. 28 See commentary on I.10. 29 These two parallels were pointed out by Ifor Williams, CLlH xlvii, and Thomas Jones, BBCSG 101–2. On their context see Edel Bhreathnach, ‘Kings, the Kingship of Leinster and the Regnal Poems’. 30 Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., I, 206–12; ‘On the Graves of Leinster Men’, ed. and trans. M. E. Dobbs, ZCP, 24 (1953), 139–53; Ó Corráin, Clavis, III, no. 1210. The eighteen stanzas are linguistically the oldest part according to Edel Bhreathnach, ‘Kings, the Kingship of Leinster and the Regnal Poems’, p. 300 n. 7. 31 Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., I, 128–34; ‘On the Deaths of Some Irish Heroes’, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes, RC, 23 (1902), 303–48 and 438, and 27 (1906), 202. Ó Corráin, Clavis, III, no. 1155, gives his obit as 1160, but he may be the nearly contemporary bishop of the same name: Edel Bhreathnach, ‘Two Contributors to the Book of Leinster: Bishop Finn of Kildare and Gilla na Náem Úa Duinn’, in Ogma: Essays in Celtic Studies in Honour of Próinséas Ní Chatháin, ed. Michael Richter and Jean-Michel Picard (Dublin, 2002), pp. 105–11. 32 Lebor na hUidre, ed. R. I. Best and Osborn Bergin (Dublin, 1929), pp. 127–29; this parallel is noted by Ford, Poetry of Llywarch Hen, p. 10. For a translation see George Petrie, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, Anterior to the Anglo-Norman Invasion (Dublin, 1845), pp. 99–101. Cf. Ó Corráin, Clavis, III, no. 1098. A comparable list of cemeteries appears in Aided Nath Í (ibid., no. 979). 33 Duanaire Finn: The Book of the Lays of Fionn, ed. and trans. Eoin Mac Neill and Gerard Murphy, Irish Texts Society, 7, 28, and 43 (London, 1908–53), II, 78–99 (no. XLII.46–112), and III, cxvi (suggesting a date c. 1175) and 98. 26

8

Introduction

of their Irish counterparts, show no interest in the warriors’ Christian faith or lack of it, with the possible exception of I.69, at the end of the first part of Series I, where the poet prays for trugaret ‘mercy’ on the final, unnamed warrior. The Welsh poets may have assumed that their early heroes, however they were buried, would have been Christian – a reasonable assumption in view of a Christian inscription of c. 500 beside the Roman road south-west of Penmachno, Crn., commemorating a certain Carausius who ‘lies here in this heap of stones’.35 Whereas Irish texts, such as the prologue to the Martyrology of Oengus, contrast ancient pagan burial sites with Christian ones,36 Englynion y Beddau’s focus is secular rather than specifically pagan. But they resemble the Irish lists mentioned above in omitting churchyard burials.37 It is not at all clear that these Irish and Welsh works can be usefully assigned to an old ‘Celtic’ genre.38 In fact, Englynion y Beddau have also been compared to the Norse Ynglingatal, which celebrates ancient grave sites, although here too there is a difference, in that the Welsh authors show little interest in the dead warriors as the ancestors of living dynasts.39 Another text which has been compared, or rather contrasted, with Englynion y Beddau is the Old English tract on the ‘The Saints Who Rest in England’ (pre–c. 1031). This tract is prosaic and formulaic, and its obvious affinities are more with the various ancient lists of the Apostles’ resting-places than with Englynion y Beddau.40 Of similar character, but closer to home, is Bonedd y 34

Rekdal, ‘The Medieval King: Christian King and Fearless Warrior’, pp. 165–69. For the Welsh, conversion lay in the remote past, early in the Christian era, hence the contrast with texts from Ireland, and even more those from Iceland, on which see Lisa Bennett, ‘Burial Practices as Sites of Cultural Memory in the Íslendingasögur’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 10 (2014), 27–52. The story in the Vita Cadoci, §26, about Cadog digging up the pagan giant Caw and baptising him (VSB 82–85) is a special case, being set in Pictland, and being paralleled in Irish and Northumbrian sources: Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 190 n. 58; Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, pp. 131 and 216. 35 Edwards, Corpus, III, no. CN38: ‘caravsivs hic iacit in hoc congeries lapidvm’. 36 Thomas Charles-Edwards, St Patrick and the Landscape of Early Christian Ireland, Kathleeen Hughes Memorial Lectures, 10 (Cambridge, 2012), p. 3. 37 Nobles’ churchyard graves are listed separately in three poems on Clonmacnoise: Ó Corráin, Clavis, III, nos 1254–56. Cf. Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (Maynooth, 1991), p. 156. Though the nobles’ ‘fame deserved a bed like the Brugh’ (the pre-Christian Brug na Bóinne, cf. Clavis, III, no. 1152), the nobles were interred in the monastic cemetery (Clavis, III, no. 1256, translated by W. M. Hennessy in George Petrie, Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language, I, ed. M. Stokes (Dublin, 1872), p. 5). 38 Pace Mac Cana, Learned Tales, p. 30. Enrico Campanile even discussed them as ‘Un genere letterario di età indoeuropea’ in his Studi di cultura celtica e indoeuropea (Pisa, 1981), pp. 53–74. 39 Joan Turville-Petre, ‘On Ynglingatal’, Medieval Scandinavia, 11 (1978–79), 48–67 (p. 51). Cf. Jan Erik Rekdal, ‘Ynglingatal and Fianna Bátar i nEmain: Two Parallel Poems in Two Parallel Cultures’, in Between Two Islands – and the Continent: Papers on Hiberno-Scandinavian-­ Continental Relations in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Rudolf Simek and Asya Ivanova (Vienna, 2013), pp. 221–50. 40 Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, pp. 74–80; cf. Martin McNamara, The Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin, 1975), p. 85; Aideen O’Leary, Trials and Translations: The Latin Origins of the Irish Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols (Aberdeen, 2013), I, 55, 61, 97, and 240. See, for example, the poem ‘Reilge muintiri Meic Dé’, ed. Kuno Meyer, ‘Die Gräber der Apostel’, ZCP, 12 (1918), 397; Ó Corráin, Clavis, I, no. 167. 34

9

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Saint, a geographically arranged list of the saints of Wales and, by implication, their graves.41 If a reader of Bonedd y Saint, to quote Charles-Edwards, also knew a text such as Englynion y Beddau, he could populate the Wales of his imagination with the graves of warriors as well as the graves of the saints; yet it is important that these two populations of the dead were kept apart.42

While the saints protected their churches and their claswyr, warriors in their burial mounds presumably defended their kindreds’ lands against alien intruders.43 No doubt, with the passage of time, their supposed kin was enlarged so as to include local saints and their followers. Lists are so ubiquitous in medieval literature that it may be pointless to search for models for Englynion y Beddau. If there was an external source, Irish poems like that by Broccán Cráibdech of Clonmore are the best possibility, since the Welsh, probably via their clas churches, seem to have been aware of the Leinster traditions preserved at Ferns and Clonmore.44 But literary interest in ancient graves, or putative graves, was probably as widespread in early medieval Europe as it is in modern Africa.45 The fact that the main surviving heroic poem in Old English, Beowulf, is set entirely on the Continent, may disguise this for English readers. While place-names like the Devonshire Bigulfesburh and Grendelespytt show that some of the Beowulf protagonists were localised in England at a sub-literary level, from the point of educated literati their graves were on the Continent; according to the eighth-century Liber Monstrorum (from Malmesbury?), the bones of Hyglac, who ruled the Getæ and was killed by the Franks, whom from his twelfth year no horse could carry, … are preserved on an island in the Rhine, where it flows forth into the ocean, and are shown to those who come from afar as a miracle.46 Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, p. 99. WaB 617. The possibility that both texts were transmitted via Clynnog is mentioned below, p. 68. 43 For this theme see T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Boundaries in Irish Law’, in Medieval Settlement: Continuity and Change, ed. Peter Sawyer (London, 1976), pp. 83–87. While conceding that ancestors buried on boundaries do not feature in Welsh law, he notes prominent literary examples of heroes buried to ward off external attacks (p. 86). Cf. Tatlock, Legendary History, pp. 372–73; Elizabeth O’Brien, ‘Early Medieval Sentinel Warrior Burials’, Peritia, 20 (2008), 323–30; Eleanor Parker, ‘Havelok and the Danes in England: History, Legend, and Romance’, RES, 87.280 (2016), 428–47 (p. 438); Hawker-Yates, ‘Barrows’, pp. 102–33. For an example of a sentinel burial see I.55 below, on Bedd Llywarch, Bre. Charles-Edwards’s Anglo-Saxon comparanda were criticised by Andrew Reynolds, who argued that the ‘nature of liminal burial in an English context appears rather more negative and concerned with the exclusion of social deviants to the limits of territories’: ‘Burials, Boundaries and Charters in Anglo-Saxon England: A Reassessment’, in Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. Sam Lucy and Andrew Reynolds (London, 2002), pp. 171–94 (p. 188). But for ‘the creation and substantiation of land ownership through burial within farmsteads in seventh-century Merovingian contexts’ see Shiner, ‘Burial in Early Medieval Wales’, p. 280. 44 Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, Chapters 9–10 and passim. 45 Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, WI, 1985), p. 46. He adds: ‘Such is the importance of landscape that among the peoples of the Luapula (Zambia) a number of traditions are only recited when passing the site mentioned in them, and I had to use such features as a major element in the spatial distribution of a sample for collecting traditions in Burundi’. Compare the Irish Mongán story cited above, p. 6 n. 21, and in the commentary on I.42–43. 46 Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf, 2nd impression (Oxford, 1958), pp. 46, 66, and 74; F. M. Stenton, Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Doris Mary Stenton (Oxford, 1970), 41 42

10

Introduction

In its lack of interest in local heroes and their graves, extant Old English literature is the exception rather than the rule. Jane Stevenson suggests that for the deracinated Anglo-Saxons and Franks, migration ‘meant leaving any aspect of their traditional lore which was connected with specific places behind them’.47 Of course, legends about giants’ graves and so on would have existed at a sub-literary level in early England, as in more recent times.48 In Wales the importance of legendary graves as landmarks is borne out by placenames compounded from bedd + personal name, such as Bedd Dilig Gawr and Bedd Gwrtheyrn,49 and by antiquarian anecdotes about them. A typical example is Bedd Gwennan in Llandwrog, Crn. (SH 45274 56346). Peter Bailey Williams referred to ‘Bedd Gwenen’ c. 1793–95 as ‘a Tomb (a Grave) near Ffrwdysgyfarnog’,50 and in 1853 John Jones of Llanllyfni, Crn. mentioned it as ‘an oblong barrow, reputed as the grave of Gwennan’.51 When Sir John Rhys called at Bedd Gwennan farmhouse in 1882, the tenant told him that it was named from a woman who had escaped the inundation of ‘Tregan Anthreg’, meaning the drowned city of Caer Aranrhod.52 Judging by what Leland reports in the early sixteenth century,53 such lore about places may have been very widely known. The grave of Gronw, whose death concludes the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, was still pointed out in the twentieth century, when the hay on it was deliberately left uncut.54 The medieval locus classicus for tumuli with heroic associations is the end of the Second Branch:

p. 285; Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 600–899 (London, 1996), pp. 271–312 and 507; Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, revised edn (Toronto, 1995), pp. 109–10 and 258–59; Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, p. 172. 47 ‘Literacy and Orality in Early Medieval Ireland’, in Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Doris Edel (Blackrock, 1995), pp. 11–22 (p. 15). See also Nicolas Jacobs, ‘The Old English Heroic Tradition in the Light of Welsh Evidence’, CMCS, 2 (Winter 1981), 9–20. 48 E.g. Arthur R. Randell, Sixty Years a Fenman, ed. Enid Porter (London, 1966), pp. 79–80. 49 Cf. Dewi Machreth Ellis, ‘Rhai Enwau Lleoedd’, B., 21 (1964–66), 30–40 (p. 36 n. 3); RhELlH s. bedd; and AMR s. bedd*. The earliest name of this type listed in AMR is Beddgelert, on which see below, p. 23, on ‘Series IV’. For Bedn Gourtigern and Bedd Dilig Gawr see commentaries on I.40 and 41. 50 Ifor Williams, ‘Dinlleana’, p. 30; Peter Bailey Williams, Tourist’s Guide through the County of Caernarvon, p. 153. The earliest attestation of Bedd Gwennan in AMR (s. Beddgwenan and Bedd Gwennan) is in 1604. It is s. Bedd-Gwenan in RhELlH. 51 ‘Cilmyn’, ‘The Grave of Gwallawg’, p. 74. 52 CF I 207–8. On Caer Aranrhod (SH 4254) see commentary on I.4. For Bedd Gwennan see also PKM 193. The name Gwennan was also associated with shipwrecks: RMWL II 955. 53 MWG 5. 54 Frank Ward, ‘Llech Ronw’, B., 7 (1933–35), 352–53; Geraint V. Jones, ‘Llech Gronw’, LlC, 17 (1992–93), 131–33; John K. Bollard, ‘Landscapes of The Mabinogi’, Landscapes, 10.2 (2009), 37–60. In 1974 when I visited the house Llech yr Onw, Maentwrog, Mer. (SH 71673 40299), I too heard that the hay used to be left uncut on Bedd Gronw, but no one seemed to remember Ward’s fallen standing stone marking it and the spot was lost under afforestation. Whether the pierced stone mentioned in the Mabinogi survives is questionable: Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 111–12; Archwilio s. Llech Ronw, Holed Stone; Jim Perrin, ‘Country Diary: Landmarks of the Mabinogion’, The Guardian, 12.5.2018. For the name see AMR s. Llech Ronwy*.

11

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Ac yn Aber Alau yn Talebolyon y doethant y’r tir. Ac yna eisted a wnaethant, a gorfowys. … A dodi ucheneit uawr, a thorri y chalon ar hynny. A gwneuthur bed petrual idi, a’u chladu yno yglan Alaw. And they came to land at Aber Alaw in Talebolion … And [Branwen] heaved a great sigh, and with that broke her heart. And a four-sided grave was made for her, and she was buried on the bank of the Alaw.55

Almost certainly this refers to the Bronze Age round barrow by the Alaw which Anglesey antiquaries were already connecting with ‘Branwen’ or ‘Bronwen’ before 1666.56 Clearly a storyteller, probably associated with the clas at Clynnog, Crn., depicted Branwen’s journey back from Ireland in such a way as to fit in a local Anglesey tradition,57 one that would have been of especial interest at Clynnog, to which the site of Bedd Branwen belonged.58 No element of genuine folk-memory was involved – excavation has shown that it was a collective burial site – but the notion that a single person was buried within was perhaps suggested by the appearance of the site: ‘before excavation the barrow appeared as a low, grass-grown mound with a large split boulder standing at the centre’.59 (Did the rounded split boulder suggest Branwen’s broken heart? A split in a stone would invite an explanation; compare the ‘Clough Lawrish’ in Co. Waterford, supposed to have split when it first spoke, and a ‘Split Rock’ in Co. Sligo, whose split is attributed to Fionn Mac Cumhaill’s rage.)60 ‘Four-sided’, as John Williams Ab Ithel rightly pointed out in 1852, does not agree with the rounded shape of the tumulus, but rather suggests, here and in some stanzas of Englynion y Beddau, ‘a cistvaen, formed by placing four flat stones together PKM 45; M 38. The upper reaches of the Alaw were formerly substantial. On the topography see Longley, ‘The Afon Alaw, the Sixth-Century Ty’n Rhosydd Stone and Bivatisus’. (He considers, then rejects, a connection between Bedd Branwen and the Ty’n Rhosydd Stone, no. AN46 in Corpus, III, ed. Edwards.) 56 Bedwyr Lewis Jones, ‘Bedd Branwen – The Literary Evidence’, TAAS, 1966, pp. 32–37; Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 111 and 122–23; Camden, Britannia, ed. Gibson, col. 677; Fenton, Tours, pp. 267–68; Luft, ‘Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion’, pp. 6–7. Note a letter from John Davies, Newborough to Lhwyd, 16 Dec. 1693: ‘wee have a tradition that the largest Cromlech in this country (yet soe large that it is inconceivable by what strength or art especially in those rude times it could be elevated and fixed on its tripos) is the monument of a Kings daughter viz Browen ferch Llu y Llediaeth’ (Lhwyd Letters). 57 Glyn Jones, ‘Y Wledd yn Harlech ac yng Ngwales ym Mabinogi Branwen’, B., 25 (1972–74), 380–86 (p. 386); A. O. H. Jarman, ‘Mabinogi Branwen: Crynodeb o Ddadansoddiad W. J. Gruffydd’, LlC, 4 (1956–57), 129–34 (pp. 132–33). 58 Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 122–23 (see below, p. 64, on Alaw’r Beirdd). 59 Frances Lynch, ‘Report on the Re-excavation of Two Bronze Age Cairns in Anglesey: Bedd Branwen and Treiorwerth’, AC, 120 (1971), 11–83 (p. 16). See also Archwilio s. Bedd Branwen Round Barrow, Llanddeusant (SH 36111 84979) and a good illustration in Bollard and Griffiths, Mabinogi, p. 57. 60 Charles Smith, The Antient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford (Dublin, 1746), p. 93; Elizabeth FitzPatrick, ‘Hunting Places in the Finn Cycle and their Association with Borderlands of Medieval Gaelic Territories’, in The Gaelic Finn Tradition II, ed. Sharon J. Arbuthnot and others (Dublin, 2022), pp. 39–54 (p. 45 and Fig. 4). There is also a vertically split stone in the Brwyno Canol stone row, discussed at I.48; was Brwyno connected with brwyn ‘grief’? Hearts do, of course, break elsewhere in literature, including in other parts of Branwen. Cf. Mac Cana, Branwen, pp. 98–101; Glyn E. Jones, ‘Astudiaeth ar Rai Agweddau ar Fabinogi Branwen’, M.A. dissertation (University of Wales, Cardiff, 1970), pp. 58–59 (Norse); Liam Mac Mathúna, ‘Lexical and Literary Aspects of “Heart” in Irish’, Ériu, 53 (2003), 1–18 (p. 17). 55

12

Introduction

in a square, with another as a lid on the top’.61 Such a cistfaen at Bedd Branwen was uncovered by a farmer, helping himself to building stones in 1813.62 Did the author of Branwen already know that it was there, or did he simply hazard a guess on the analogy of despoiled barrows elsewhere? Whatever the case, Branwen gives us an idea as to how the grave legends alluded to in Englynion y Beddau may have appeared in their full narrative contexts.

61 62

‘British Interments’, pp. 88–89. For bet pedryal/pedrival see I.13 and 63. R. C. Hoare, ‘Tomb of Bronwen’, Cambro-Briton, 2 (October 1820), 71–73. For some similar discoveries see GPC s.v. cistfaen; cf. Edward Lhwyd, Archaeologica Britannica: Texts and Translations, ed. Evans and Roberts, p. 225: ‘before Christianity, the Druids sacrificed and buried their Dead in a Circle of Stones, which had a Cromlech or Kist Vaen, or both, in the midst’. See also on Bedd Gwrtheyrn in my commentary on I.40.

13

1 SERIES I, SERIES III, AND THE SO-CALLED ‘SERIES II’ AND ‘SERIES IV’

Series I Series I is found in the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth 1). This was written c. 1250, and certainly after 1212,1 possibly at the Augustinian priory at Carmarthen. It has been known by its present name at least since the sixteenth century. Until recently it was believed that an early-fourteenth-century Gwynedd(?)2 scribe who added lines to the Afallennau prophecies at the foot of 24v referred to it as ‘y Llyfr du o Gaerfyrddin’ in an ‘exact copy’ of it, mentioned by Humphrey Humphreys (d. 1712), bishop of Bangor and Hereford,3 but Gruffudd Antur has shown that the bishop was probably misled by a seventeenth-century semi-facsimile on parchment made by Robert Vaughan (now Peniarth 107). The Black Book scribe was evidently a southerner, judging by his language, and many of the poems he included point to a connection with the south-west, perhaps with Carmarthen itself or with one of the nearby monasteries patronised by the family of the Lord Rhys (d. 1197), such as the Cistercian house at Hendy-gwyn (Whitland, Crm.) or the Premonstratensian house at Talyllychau (Talley, Crm.). While the Lord Rhys and his father-in-law Madog ap Maredudd (d. 1160) are prominent in the Black Book praise poems,4 none of his sons appear; this suggests that the mid-thirteenth-century Black Book scribe drew on a small collection of panegyrics from the previous century. Englynion y Beddau appear on fols 32r–35r. I.1–69 are written by the main scribe and end with what looks like a concluding englyn (I.69). Afterwards another thirteenth-century scribe inserted I.70–73 in the remaining space at the foot of 35r.5 He might perhaps have added more if there had been room. His addition is the clearest indication that the text grew by accretion. It seems the main scribe did not copy LlDC xxix–xxx and xxxiii; Jarman, ‘Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin: The Black Book of Carmarthen’, pp. 336 and 349. The Anglo-Norman character of Carmarthen priory from 1246 may favour a date before rather than after 1250; see Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 44–45 and 156–57; John Morgan Guy, ‘Cel Sentier Estreit a Joie Fait Entrer: The Anglo-Norman Verse Sermon of Simon of Carmarthen’, Crm. Antiq., 54 (2018), 22–32; Matthew Siôn Lampitt, ‘The “French of Wales”? Possibilities, Approaches, Implications’, French Studies, 76.3 (2022), 333– 49 (pp. 343–44). 2 In the additional lines (LlDC no. 16.15–16) pendeuic Eryri may refer to Llywelyn Fawr’s style between 1230 and his death in 1240. See DP IV 663; LlDC xxxi–xxxii and 95; CBT III 275. 3 MWM 67, and n. 3, and 72; RWMS I 333 and II 61. Cf. Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 135 n. 1, and 166. In a lecture in April 2023 Gruffudd Antur identified Peniarth 107 as Humphrey’s ‘exact copy’ and cast doubt on the tradition that the Black Book was at Carmarthen at the time of the Dissolution. 4 Nerys Ann Jones, ‘Ffynonellau Canu Beirdd y Tywysogion’, SC, 37 (2003), 81–125 (p. 98). 5 RWMS I 333; Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 147 and 166; Myriah Williams, review of EBSG, Speculum, 91.1 (2016), 180–81 (p. 181); eadem, ‘Minding the Gaps’, p. 369 n. 57. 1

14

Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’

I.1–69 at a single sitting. Within his part there are a number of changes of ink or pen, sometimes within stanzas, but once (33v, line 8) at the start of a new stanza (I.32). This stanza is one of a pair of linked stanzas, the second of which (I.33) corresponds to the first stanza of Series III. Does this indicate that he was moving to a new exemplar connected somehow to Series III? More likely, this semi-­ correspondence is a coincidence. An indication that I.1–69 were all copied from the same exemplar is the spelling of E ‘the’, Es ‘is’, and En ‘in’ with E– whenever they occur as the first word of an englyn, e.g. I.1 E Beteu ae gulich y glav and I.19 Es cul y bet ac ys hir (contrast I.70 Y beddeu. yn y morua by the second scribe). The main scribe normally spells these words with y–, throughout the Black Book,6 and it seems most likely that at I.1–69 (or at least I.1–65, where these Es occur) he was influenced by the display script of his exemplar. The exemplar of Series I perhaps employed e in other environments as well. A sign of an exemplar using e more widely is the Black Book scribe’s slip a chen at I.62c; he would normally write a chyn (with y = /ï/) or a chin.

Series III Series III is attested in a number of manuscripts which all seem to derive from a lost manuscript owned in the mid-sixteeenth century by William Salesbury, and mostly or entirely written by him.7 It has only 18 stanzas, some of them corrupt, including the last one, which is incomplete. Perhaps they derive from a loose leaf of a manuscript similar to the Black Book; strikingly just 18 stanzas (I.1–18) also fill fol. 32 of the Black Book. Even though the Black Book may have been used by William Salesbury,8 it is unlikely that Series III derives from a lost leaf of the Black Book itself, since four or five of the Series III englynion (III.1, 9, 10(?), 13, and 18) are variants of ones already contained in the Black Book’s Series I. The word anap ‘mishap’ in III.17 (derived from English hap) suggests a date for Series III rather later than the Black Book, perhaps no earlier than the fourteenth century. The exemplar for Series III, or an exemplar of that exemplar, was clearly hard to read, hence the hesitation between am ddinau, am dinon and am dineu (III.4, 5, and 6) and llonan and llovan (III.5 and 6). The scribe of the fourteenth-century addition to 24v of the Black Book also writes n and u ambiguously sometimes, but of course little weight can be placed on that since ambiguous minims were common in medieval manuscripts, and some later ones, including some of Salesbury’s time.9

An exception is poem 21 (on Geraint fab Erbin), where En is always at the start of an englyn (lines 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25), presumably again copied from an exemplar, perhaps the same one from which Englynion y Beddau (poem 18) was copied. For this E convention in later manuscripts see Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y in Medieval Welsh Orthography’, pp. 21–22 and 32–33, to which add BL Add. 19710, 23v–28v and NLW Peniarth 39, 10r, 15r, 18r, etc.; also Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, p. xxxiii. Compare the use of w in display script versus ỽ elsewhere, discussed by Paul Russell, ‘The Joy of Six: Spelling and Letter Forms among Fourteenth-­Century Welsh Scribes’, in Celts, Gaels, and Britons, ed. Rodway et al., pp. 257–88 (pp. 266–68 and 270). 7 See below, p. 273. MWG 186 suggests a date similar to Peniarth 177i (i.e. 1544–61) for Salesbury’s lost manuscript. 8 RWMS I 333 and II 166. 9 See below, p. 278, on Richard Longford. 6

15

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

The spelling of Series III is partially modernised, perhaps by Salesbury himself, but traces remain of a much earlier orthography. Features such as d rather than dd (III.11 Pan dyvu, 17 Merdin) are still common in manuscripts of c. 1500 like Peniarth 23. Leaving those aside, some of the following suggest a source of c. 1350 or earlier: III.2 goffri (Mod.W. gofri) and possibly III.3 geiffyl (Mod.W. geifl?) reflect an exemplar either using –ff- for /v/ or using -f- for both /f/ and /v/ (cf. caffael ~ cafael = /f/ in the White Book of Rhydderch and dwffvyr ~ dwfyr = /v/ in Peniarth 15),10 opening the way for falsely modernising -f- /v/ to ff. In III.14 the value of ff in discyffeddawt etc. is unclear. III.3 deveillion (if an error for dyveillion, the reading of MS W alone), III.6 ygyn (for e(n)gyn), III.13 Tedel (for Tydei) and enni/eny (for yn y ‘where’), III.15 Ylidir (for Elidir) and gwen efwr (if an error for gwynofwr), and III.17 ymrais (if an error for Emrais) may reflect an exemplar which used e for /ǝ/. (If III.15 gwen efwr were for gwyn efwr it would reflect an exemplar using e for /ï/, an even older convention.) By the middle of the fourteenth century very few scribes were still using e for /ǝ/, so this is probably a terminus ante quem for the text behind most of Series III.11 III.6 ygyn (for engyn) and III.17 lluagor (if for llu-angor) reflect an exemplar with g for /ŋ/. This convention is rare after the mid-fifteenth century.12 III.11 (MS W) oed ar wawki in ni (for Mod.W. oedd arfawg ei ynni) may reflect an exemplar like the Black Book using i for /ǝ/,13 and also perhaps w- for /v/ (but here note that only MS W has wawki – the other MSS have ar vawci inni, arvawc i inni, etc. with v). III.14a Kicleu (varr. Kic len, etc.) normally has -g- in manuscripts after the White Book of Rhydderch (c. 1350). The only exceptions in the prose corpora are kicleu once in the Red Book of Hergest and giclev once in Peniarth 23, both copies of much older texts, and Lloyd-Jones’s only poetic examples are from the Black Book and the early-fourteenth-century Hendregadredd Manuscript and Book of Taliesin.14

Rhyddiaith 1300–1450. On the spelling of /ï/ and /ǝ/ see Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y in Medieval Welsh Orthography’ (where the IPA symbol /i/ is used for /ï/). 12 Judging by manuscripts in Rhyddiaith y 15g. See also T. Arwyn Watkins, ‘Dulliau Orgraffyddol Cymraeg Canol o Ddynodi’r Treiglad Trwynol’, B., 23 (1968–70), 7–13. As Watkins notes (p. 13), Salesbury is an exception (vygwas etc.). Nevertheless, if Salesbury had seen *engyn or *llu­ angor in his exemplar, he would hardly have omitted the n. The exemplar probably had g and copyists failed to understand it. Compare Englynion Duad (ed. Rowland) no. III.12b where the obscure yngofag (ibid., p. 83, Peniarth 201 text) is y gofal in MS T and y govac in MS N. (On MSS T and N see below, pp. 274–5.) 13 The spelling inni is more common than ynni in the Black Book; see Jarman’s glossary, LlDC 170. For data see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 157–60. After the Black Book, i /ǝ/ disappears; see Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y in Medieval Welsh Orthography’, p. 31. 14 G. 151; CBT VII 24.124. On the rarity of -cl- see Baudiš, Grammar, p. 101, also EWGP 7 and 52 on gocled. Although it is said that mediae were frequently unvoiced before [l] (WG 183 and GMW 13), -cl- is unusual in writing, excepting Latin loanwords like ecluis and pericl. 10 11

16

Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’

For dating, the most significant of the above features is i for /ǝ/ in III.11 inni ‘vigour’ (Mod. W. ynni), as this use of i, seen in the Black Book of Carmarthen in south Wales and the Black Book of Chirk (Peniarth 29) in north Wales, disappears after the mid-thirteenth century. In the Middle Welsh prose corpora, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, almost the only hinni or hinny spellings of the demonstrative hynny (a near homonym of ynni so far as the relevant vowel is concerned) are 28 examples in the work of Scribes D, E, and F of Peniarth 29 (s. xiii med.), plus one example of hinny in Peniarth 30 (col. 284), written by Scribe A of Peniarth 29.15 These manuscripts reflect, at least in part, lawtexts written at Clynnog, Crn.16 This is relevant since the geography of most of the Series III englynion suggest a north-western provenance for the core of this series, most probably Clynnog.17 The implication seems to be that some stanzas of Series III (certainly III.11) were in writing by the mid-thirteenth-century and that others (notably III.17, towards the end, with its loanword anap ‘mishap’) were added later. No stanzas in Series III in its extant form suggest that it was ever transmitted outside Caernarfonshire until it reached William Salesbury, just over the border at Llanrwst (SH 7961) in Denbighshire.18 It could have come there directly from Clynnog, where at least one ancient manuscript, Llyfr Beuno Sant, survived long enough to be seen in 1594 by Thomas Wiliems.19 Wiliems lived at Trefriw, Crn. (SH 7863) and was thus a near neighbour as well as a contemporary of William Salesbury, and could have brought him a copy of Series III, supposing that he had made another, earlier visit to Clynnog and copied Series III then.20 It is equally possible, however, that the Clynnog text reached Salesbury via some other religious house in Caernarfonshire, such as the Cistercian abbey at Aberconwy (SH 7877), relocated to Maenan (SH 7866) by Edward I, or the Augustinian priory at Beddgelert (SH 5948). Various thirteenth- and fourteenth-century vernacular manuscripts from Aberconwy/Maenan seem to have survived the Dissolution,21 as did one medieval Latin manuscript from Beddgelert, BL Add. 34633 (s. xiii).22 Series III’s late stanza III.17, on Dinas Emrys, could have been added at either Aberconwy or Beddgelert, In addition Rhyddiaith 1300–1425 has one anomalous example of hinny in the lawbook Peniarth 33 (s. xv1), p. 146.7. There are no examples in the microfiche poetry concordances. On the Peniarth 29 scribes see Paul Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence in Thirteenth-Century North Wales: The Orthography of the Black Book of Chirk (Peniarth MS 29)’, NLWJ, 29.2 (1995), 129–76. 16 Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 6–7, and commentary on III.15 below (p. 318 n. 254); Charles-­ Edwards, ‘The Textual Tradition of Llyfr Iorwerth Revisited’, pp. 40–43. Lewis, Bonedd y Saint, finds further examples of i for /ǝ/ in Bonedd y Saint, which he associates with thirteenth-century Clynnog. 17 I first argued for Clynnog in ‘Clas Beuno’. See further below, p. 58. 18 A useful map of the various houses mentioned below is given by Bowen, Gruffudd Hiraethog a’i Oes, p. x. 19 GIG 323; Sims-Williams, ‘Uses of Writing’, pp. 22, 26, and references. 20 This may raise the question of the relationship between Salesbury’s lost copy of Series III and the one in BL Add. 31055 (my MS T), transcribed by Wiliems, mostly in 1591–96. See below p. 275. For arguments that MS T derived from Salesbury’s manuscript see Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, p. 81. 21 RWMS II 214–15 s. X83 and X92. 22 See Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1894–1899, Part I (London, 1901), p. 21, and N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, second edition (London, 1964), p. 9 (cf, 2015 revision at http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mlgb/book/407/?search_term=beddgelert&page_size=500). 15

17

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

for Dinas Emrys (SH 6049) was within Aberconwy’s Nanhwynan grange23 and lay in the parish of Beddgelert. Siôn Wyn ap Maredudd (d. 1559) of Gwydir, near Llanrwst, Crn. was given the stewardship of the Aberconwy estates in 1506, jointly with his father, and after the Dissolution they acquired some of them, in Nanhwynan and elsewhere, and probably used stones from Maenan to build Gwydir (SH 7961).24 Siôn Wyn’s son Gruffudd (d. c. 1606) married William Salesbury’s niece, Gwen, the daughter and heiress of Robert Salesbury of Berth-ddu, and moved to her estate at Berth-ddu, near Trefriw. Through that connection Aberconwy/Maenan and Gwydir manuscripts could easily have reached William Salesbury.25 In the same way they could also have reached Thomas Wiliems, an illegitimate kinsman and protégé of the Wynns of Gwydir, who was ‘probably schooled at Gwydir’.26 And manuscripts could also have reached Gwydir from Beddgelert. Dafydd Conwy (d. 1535), its last prior, was reputed to be a man of learning in the bardic circles in which he moved, and was well acquainted with Siôn Wyn ap Maredudd, while Siôn’s eldest son, Morus Wynn of Gwydir (d. 1580), bought Beddgelert priory lands from the Crown in 1573.27 For a hint that Series III – or at least stanza III.16 – was known at Beddgelert, see below on ‘Series IV’.

‘Series II’ In his 1967 edition of Englynion y Beddau Thomas Jones printed them in four ‘Series’. This arrangement reflects the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales of 1801, where Jones’s four Series occur in the order: III; I; II (stanzas 2–3 only, ascribed to Llywarch Hen); and IV.28 Jones expanded the Myvyrian ‘Series II’ to five englynion by combining three englynion from col. 1038, lines 37–38 and 41–44, of the late-fourteenth-century Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Jesus College MS 111) with two from col. 1048, lines 37–40. The five stanzas appeared in positions comparable those in Red Book in a now lost part of the closely related White Book of Rhydderch (c. 1350), which is known from indirect transcripts made by Thomas Wiliems in 1596 (BL Add. 31055) and John Jones of Gellilyfdy in 1607 (Peniarth Gresham, ‘The Aberconwy Charter’, p. 155 (map). Hays, History of the Abbey of Aberconway, pp. 174–75 and 179; Jones, ‘The Wynn Estate of Gwydir’, p. 144. 25 For Gruffudd’s marriage see ibid., pp. 147 and 164 n. 89. Some other material in Salesbury’s lost manuscript (judging by MS N) seems to have come from Aberconwy/Maenan, but this was via a lost copy of a lost Valle Crucis manuscript according to Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’. 26 Williams, Dyffryn Conwy a’r Dadeni, pp. 6 and 16; RWMS II 199. 27 See below, p. 24. On the Wyn(n) family see Bywgraffiadur s. Wynn (teulu), Gwydir, Sir Gaernarfon, and Jones, ‘The Wynn Estate of Gwydir’; Siddons, Welsh Genealogies 1500–1600, s. Gruffudd ap Cynan 15 (B2)/1 and 3. The latter pedigree shows the descendants of Gwen Salesbury and Gruffudd Wynn of Berth-ddu and Bodysgallen. The date of Gwen and Gruffudd’s marriage is not given, but was presumably about the 1550s as their eldest son married in 1579. Gruffudd’s will was proved in 1606. Salesbury’s manuscript may have been handed down in this family as it was in the possession of ‘Mrs Wynn’ at Bodysgallen in 1701. See below, p. 85. But some manuscripts formerly in the possession of Thomas Wiliems also reached Berth-ddu and Bodysgallen (RWMS II 200), so he is a possible intermediary, supposing that he borrowed Salesbury’s lost manuscript. 28 MA1 77–83; MA2 65–69. The latter edition will generally be referenced in this book. 23 24

18

Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’

111). Thomas Jones’s final two englynion (II.4–5), from col. 1048, are among the Canu Heledd englynion concerning Cynddylan and his family. They had been edited by Ifor Williams under the subtitle ‘Beddau Maes Maoddyn’, since that place-name occurs in both stanzas.30 Thomas Jones clearly excerpted them for his ‘Series II’ because they referred to graves and because II.5 has a variant in Series I (see my commentary on I.45, where II.4–5 are quoted, translated, and discussed). The first three stanzas of Jones’s Series II come from a collection of stanzas at col. 1038 of the Red Book which the compiler of the exemplar of the extant manuscripts must have thought relevant to the englynion concerning the deaths of Llywarch Hen’s sons, including Pyll, Pwyll, and Madawg, which they follow.31 In assembling his II.1–3 Thomas Jones omitted the second englyn (I.42) of the following four (here numbered as in Ifor Williams’s Canu Llywarch Hen): 29

I.41

I.42

I.43

I.44

Llyma bed diuei tringar

Here is the grave of a faultless, warlike one.

y veird y se[e]i y glot lle nyt elei

His poets would have spread his fame where

Byll pei pellach par[a]ei.

Pyll did not go if he had lived longer

Maen a Madaỽc a Medel,

Maen and Madawg and Medel,

dewrwyr diyssic vroder,

brave warriors, vigorous brothers,

Selyf, Heilin, Llaỽr, Lliwer.

Selyf, Heilyn, Llawr, Lliwer.

[B]ed Gỽell yn y Riỽ Velen.

The grave of Gwell (is) in Y Rhiw Felen.

Bed Sawyl yn Llangollen.

The grave of Sawyl (is) in Llangollen.

Gỽercheidỽ llam yr bỽch Lloryen.

Llorien guards ‘Roebuck’s Leap’.

Bed rud neus cud tywarch.

The red grave, a sod covers it.

Nys eiryd gỽeryt ammarch.

Soil does not bring dishonour to him.

Bed Llygedwy uab Llywarch.

32

The grave of Llyngedwy son of Llywarch.

These stanzas fit in well within the elegiac, narrative context of Canu Llywarch Hen, and it is not at all obvious that we should classify them as Englynion y Beddau These are the MSS assigned the letters T and P in the apparatus to the editions of the White Book/ Red Book englynion in CLlH and EWSP. The latter also uses NLW MS 4973 by John Davies of Mallwyd (c. 1620–34), which includes some independent readings from lost medieval sources. 30 CLlH XI.102–3; EWSP 443 and 493. 31 CLlH I.41 and 43–44. The long series of englynion about Pyll end with the line Dangossei Byll bỽyll udu (CLlH I.39c), ‘Pyll would teach them caution’, and pỽyll provides a punning link to the names Na Phwyll na Madaỽc in the next englyn (CLlH I.40). (For a different view see EWSP 411 and 532 where the reading Pwyll in NLW 4973 is preferred.) Pyll and Madawg then reappear in CLlH I.41–42. Thus most of the stanzas which Ifor Williams subtitles ‘Beddau’ (CLlH I.40–44) are in fact linked to the elegy on Pyll (they are detached in EWSP 411–12). Only the final two (CLlH I.43–44) seem unconnected to it. 32 Text from R 1038.37–44, with capitalisation and emendations as discussed in CLlH 92–94 and EWSP 412 and 532–33. On eiryd see GPC s.v. The most securely identifiable place-name is Llangollen, Den. See Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 45–47. 29

19

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

or group them with the ‘Beddau Maes Maoddyn’ stanzas as a ‘Series II’. Before Thomas Jones’s edition appeared, only two of his ‘Series II’ stanzas (II.2–3 = [B]ed Gỽell … and Bed rud …) had been grouped together with the other Series. While Roger Morris of Coedytalwrn, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, Den. (fl. 1582–97) seems to have been the first to append Series III to Series I,33 Moses Williams (1685–1742), on p. 20 of NLW Llanstephan 18 (c. 1728), was clearly the first to add II.2–3 to them; the Myvyrian Archaiology text of II.2–3 descends ultimately from Llanstephan 18.34 Moses Williams may well have been influenced by his mentor, Edward Lhwyd, who had already quoted II.2–3 as Llywarch’s verses on Sepulcra apud Denbighienses.35

‘Series IV’ Quite separately, at the end of Llanstephan 18 (at p. 121), Moses Williams included the following two englynion with captions, the first of which (without its caption) corresponds to Thomas Jones’s ‘Series IV’: Pïau’r bedd yn y caerau gyferbyn a bryn beddau? Beδ Gwryd ab Gwryd glau. Hwn a gladdwyd mywn lle a

Whose is the grave in the fortified places opposite the Hill of Graves? The grave of Gwryd son of Gwryd the swift. This man was buried in a place which was

elwid Maes y caerau yn ym-

called ‘The Field of the Fortifications’ close.

myl Dinas Emrys.

by Dinas Emrys

Claddwyd Cilhart gelfydd ymlyniad ymlaenau Efionydd

Cilhart, skilful hound, was buried in the uplands of Eifionydd.

Parod giniaw da36 i’w gynydd

A ready dinner for his huntsman

Parai’r dydd yr heliai hydd.

would he produce, the day he hunted a hart.

Hyn a ganwyd am gladdedigaeth Bytheiad LLywelyn

This was sung about the burial of the hound of Prince Llywelyn

See below, p. 86. Llanstephan 18 contains on pp. 4–23 Series I and Series III. They are on the odd-numbered pages, the even-numbered pages being left blank for a facing modernised version, only partially completed. On p. 20 Moses Williams added II.2–3, numbered 74 and 75 so as to follow on from Series I.1–73, and headed ‘Ex Lh H.’ (probably meaning ‘from Lh[ywarch] H[en], not ‘from Lh[yfr] H[ergest]’). This was an afterthought, for p. 20 was really the facing page for the beginning of Series III on p. 21. ‘Series IV’ appears separately at the end of the manuscript, on p. 121. Other collections in which II.2–3 or IV or both accompany the other Englynion y Beddau derive from Llanstephan 18: BL Add. 14867 (by William Morris) and its derivatives Peniarth 201, BL Add. 15002, NLW 13239 (cf. MA2 65–69), Llanstephan 193; and Cardiff 2.141. On these see below, p. 91. 35 Archaeologia Britannica, p. 259. 36 This adjective is unmetrical and is absent from the earliest copies; see below. 33 34

20

Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’ ab Iorwerth drwyndwn Dywysog.

ab Iorwerth Drwyndwn [d. 1240].

A’r lle a elwir hyd heddiw Bedd

And till today the place is called the Grave

Celert neu Killhart.37

of Celert or Killhart.

In William Morris’s ‘Y Prif-feirdd Cymreig’ (1758–63) in BL Add. 14867, Englynion y Beddau appear in the following order: • 93v–94r = Series III; • 192v–197v = Series I (‘allan o’r Llyfr Du o Gaerfyrddin’, numbered 1–73); • 198r = Series II.2–3 (‘Ex Llyfr Coch o Hergest’, numbered 74–75) + Series IV (‘From Another Ms’).38

William Morris’s texts of Series III, I, and II clearly draw on Llanstephan 18, and the same is true of his Series IV (‘Piau’r bedd yn y Caerau / Gyferbyn a Bryn Beddau / Bedd Gwryd ap Gwryd glau’) and its caption.39 The ‘Claddwyd Cilhart’ englyn is omitted. Thus ‘Series IV’, reduced to a single englyn plus caption, became an integral part of Englynion y Beddau as printed in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801, where the order III, I, II.2–3, and IV, ultimately reflects the order in William Morris’s manuscript.40 Thomas Jones printed ‘Series IV’ from the oldest known copy, on p. 359 (sic) of NLW MS 872D (Wrexham 1), which was written in 1590–92 by John Brooke of Mawddwy, Mer. There it is the second of a series of penillion, the first four of which are each accompanied by an explanatory prose note: penyll/

Piev bedd yn y kayrav/

hwn a gladdwyd mewn //

gyferbyn a bryn beddav

lle a elwir maes y kaerav //

gwryd ap gwryd glav

yn emyl Dinas Embrys //41

The four captioned englynion are (i) ‘Dywed i wyr Gwynedd galon galed’, spoken by the ghost of Goronwy ab Ednyfed Fychan after Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (d. 1282) was slain during a tryst with a girl at Aberedw in Elfael;42 RMWL II 453 includes only the first englyn and omits Beδ in line c, presumably regarding it as an addition. 38 William acknowledges (198r) that the text of Series I and II.2–3 was provided by his brother Lewis Morris: ‘Y 15 a 60 Englyñ, hyn a anfoned ym gan fy mrawd Llewelyn. minnau a Orphenais eu Copïo Hyddfref 11.1762.’ (198r). Lewis’s source was Llanstephan 18, by then in the collection of the Earl of Macclesfield (see below, p. 89). 39 For the marginal comment locating Dinas Emrys on Salisbury Plain (included in MA1 83 n. 2 = MA2 69 n. 2 and ascribed to Lewis Morris) see the commentary on III.17 below, p. 334. 40 MA1 77–83; MA2 65–69. 41 The i in elwir is altered from y. RMWL II 355, quotes the four penillion (inexactly). For other copies see MALDWYN (add NLW 1597 i p. 520 for (ii) alone). For some of (iv) alone, not in MALDWYN, see CBT II 218–20. 42 Cf. J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales (Cardiff, 1998), p. 562 n. 175, citing Rhidian Griffiths, 1282: Casgliad o Ddogfennau / A Collection of Documents (Aberystwyth, 37

21

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau (ii) ‘Piev bedd yn y kayrav’, on the grave of Gwryd ap Gwryd at Dinas Emrys, Bedd­ gelert; (iii) ‘Kladdwyd kilhart kelfydd ymlyniad’, on the burial of Llywelyn Fawr’s hound at bedd kelert ne kilhart; (iv) ‘Dywed ith arglwydd Rwyddwas’, spoken by a pilgrim denouncing the amours of Owain Cyfeiliog (d. 1197) and inspiring him to establish three charities: the monastery of Ystrad Marchell (1170); Pont Glettrwd;43 and an almshouse for the sick, later burnt because of the inmates’ fornications.

All four englynion reappear in the same order in BL Add. 14976, fol. 84 (old 90), copied for Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, c. 1617, evidently from NLW MS 872D, which he owned, or from a very similar collection (the same penillion recur), and also in NLW 1980B, fol. 106, by Evan Evans, except that this lacks (iii), perhaps because the next page is missing.44 In the caption to (ii), elwir changes tense to elwid in Add. 14976 and NLW 1980B – perhaps indicating that the name Maes y Caerau was already obsolete c. 1617 – and in NLW 1980B Maes is omitted before y Caerau. In Llanstephan 18 Moses Williams probably followed a source similar to Add. 14976. His text of ‘Claddwyd Cilhart’ and its caption, quoted above, agrees closely with Add. 14976 against NLW 872D, as in line 3 of the englyn, where Add. 14976, 84r (old 90r), has parod kinio [altered to ginio] da [written above a deleted o] yw gynydd).45 Considered in its wider manuscript context, the ‘Series IV’ englyn seems unlikely to be older than the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century. Although its three-line format looks early, it is suspiciously similar to stanza 16 of Series III, on Mabon’s grave in the uplands of Nantlle, Crn.: IV (NLW 872)

III.16 (MS N)

Piev bedd yn y kayrav

Y bedd ygorthir Nanllaû

gyferbyn a bryn beddav

Ni wyr neb i gyneddvaû

gwryd ap gwryd glav

Mabon vap Madron glaû

r

Note in particular (i) that Gwryd ap Gwryd and Mabon ap Madron both alliterate identical, or almost identical, names, both of which include the same epithet, clau; (ii) that their graves at Dinas Emrys (SH 6049) and Nantlle are only half a dozen miles apart – and note that the lands of Beddgelert Priory reached as far north as the headwaters of Dyffryn Nantlle at Drws-y-coed (SH 5453);46 and, furthermore, (iii) that, very unusually, there are only six syllables in the third line – the only examples of 7-7-6 in Englynion y Beddau. (In Llanstephan 18 Moses Williams rectifies this by inserting Beδ at the start of line c of Series IV, a reading that eventually passed into

45 46 43 44

1986), who gives a facsimile of NLW 872 and translation on p. 25. NLW 872 is the only citation in MALDWYN. It lists an englyn attributed to Ednyfed Fychan himself (‘Bydd ddilesg Ruffydd …’). This is printed by Anon., ‘Man Gofion’, Y Brython, 39 (1862), 107, along with a text of ‘Series IV’ similar to BL Add. 14976 – it lacks Bedd in line c and reads elwid in the caption. In Tre-wern, Mtg. according to AMR. Against this, note that there is blank space on 106v which could have been used. NLW 13139, p. 131, by Iolo Morganwg, is similar here. See Gresham, ‘A Lease from the Last Prior of Bethkylhert’, p. 272, with map.

22

Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’

the Myvyrian Archaiology; Thomas Jones suggested making the same emendation in III.15c as well.)47 The simplest explanation for the englynions’ similarity is that somebody took III.16, about the well-known Mabon, as a model for a quasi-englyn milwr on an otherwise unknown Gwryd ap Gwryd, a character whose patronymic, in unmedieval fashion, is identical with his own name. The most likely motive would be to provide an englyn bedd for a hero supposedly buried at Dinas Emrys, in the parish of Beddgelert. Gwryd is barely attested as a personal name,48 so it may well be that Gwryd ap Gwryd was invented as the eponym of place-names such as Nant Gwryd (< Nant y Gwryd) and Cae Gwryd (SH 65645 55991) in the north of Beddgelert parish, half a dozen miles north-east of Dinas Emrys.49 The fact that III.16 is followed by a stanza on Myrddin Embrais (III.17) may have led the author of the Gwryd ap Gwryd stanza to select III.16 as his model for a grave at Dinas Embrys. While the name Bryn Beddau does not survive at Dinas Emrys, it may allude to the legendary beddau there recorded by Lhwyd in 1693.50 In 1806 William Williams of Llandygái opined that ‘Bryn y Beddau must be that sloped or ridged hillock below Dinas Emrys, where it is said the magicians employed by Vortigern lie buried’.51 The possibility that the englyn on the grave of Gwryd ap Gwryd was created at a fairly late date in the Beddgelert/Dinas Emrys area is supported by its association in the manuscripts with the englyn on the grave of ‘Kilhart’. In medieval sources from c. 1200 to c. 1500, and commonly thereafter, the second element of Beddgelert (originally spelt Bethkelert etc.) is the obscure kelert, but in documents between 1529/30 and 1569 kelert is generally replaced by kylhert, Kylhart, Kilharte, kilhart, or similar.52 Judging by the new spelling, by 1529/30 a legend had been invented which explained Bethkelert from the name of a hound with the English name ‘Kill-hart’. It

BBCSG 136 n. 5. In Llanstephan 18 Beδ seems to be crammed in, and otherwise dd rather than δ is used on p. 121. 48 See citations, late and corrupt, in G. 722. On ‘Gwryd Gwent’ in Triad 56 see WCD 188 and TYP4 327, where it is noted that the name is really Kywryt, lenited after verch. But note Gorid ap Seisilth and Melyn Werion Gorið in Rec. Caern. 37. Perhaps Gorid/Gorið represents Gwryd < Gwr(h)ydr? On the other hand, Wele Coridyr (Rec. Caern. 75), which seems to represent Gwely Gwrydr, retains the -r (cf. Jenkins, ‘A Family of Medieval Welsh Lawyers’, p. 129). G. 709–10 and Williams, ‘gwryd, gwrhyd’, p. 236, suggest that the second element of Hafod Wryd in Penmachno, Crn. was the Old Welsh personal name Gurhytyr > Gwrhydr (cf. CF I 218) 49 See RhELlH s. gwryd. The earlier medieval name of Nant y Gwryd was Member, but it was renamed after Gwryt Kei (see Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, pp. 153 and 156, and map, p. 155). In Caernarfonshire the definite article is usually retained in names such as Nant (y) Gwryd. (This is unlike Denbighshire (cf. AMR s. *gwryd), where there was perhaps more consciousness that they were short for Nant Gwryd Cai or similar, where an article before Gwryd would be ungrammatical.) Even a Caernarfonshire form such as Nant y Gwryd was open to misinterpretation as ‘Gwryd’s stream’ since definite articles could occur with hypocoristic personal names (see Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘Iesu, Yr Iesu, a’r Beirdd’, Dwned, 24 (2018), 21–41). Most such names probably contain the element gwr(h)yd ‘fathom’ (see below, p. 79). 50 Quoted in the commentary on III.17 below. 51 ‘Survey of the Ancient and Present State of the County of Caernarvon by William Williams of Llandygái, Part VI’, ed. Emyr Gwynne Jones, TCHS, 39 (1978), 108–49 (p. 131). His text of Series IV includes Bedd in line c. 52 See AMR s. Beddgelert; vedd Kelart/Kilart is also implied by the cynghanedd in Gwaith Lewys Daron, ed. Lake, no. 22, and p. 121. Rhys observed that ‘Kelert or Gelert with its rt cannot be a genuine Welsh name’ (CF II 567). AMR’s earliest ref. is Rec. Caern. (see p. 337). A place-name referring to a dog’s grave is not inherently unlikely; cf. AMR s. Bedd y Ci (Du) and Bedd-yr-Ast. 47

23

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

seems unlikely that this etymology is much earlier than 1529/30.53 The first example of the new, artificial spelling is a lease issued at Bethkylhert in January 1529/30 by Dafydd Conwy, the final prior of the Augustinian house there. Dafydd lived ‘in the manner of a prosperous country squire’, leasing priory estates to men such as Morus Gethin, grandson of the poet Rhys Goch Eryri.54 The poet Lewis Daron composed a cywydd to Prior Dafydd, praising his learning and hospitality, and asking him to give a horse to Siôn Wyn of Gwydir (d. 1559), father of Morus Wynn of Gwydir (d. 1580) and the grandfather of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir (d. 1627), the source of some Beddgelert folklore.55 Conceivably Dafydd Conwy himself, or some poets in his circle, composed the Gwryd ap Gwryd and Cilhart englynion. The likelihood of this is strengthened by a Fabula de Bethkilhart in BL Add. 19713, written at Gwydir by Sir John Wynn c. 1592.56 This Fabula tells how Joan, on her marriage to Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Drwyndwn, brought the hound Kilhart with her from England. One hot August day Kilhart pursued a stag day and night until both beasts died in a valley, henceforth named Bethkilhart, after the grave provided by Llywelyn Fawr’s distraught queen, and a poet sang its epitaph: Kilhart a gladdwyd kelvydd: ymlyniad Ymlaene Evyonnydd Parawd giniaw i gynydd Parai r dydd ir heliai r hydd.57

LBS II 103 n. 5 states that ‘the earliest known allusion’ to the Gelert story is the hound portrayed in a (supposed) ‘cradle’ in the Warwick Roll by John Rous (c. 1483). This suggestion – which seems unlikely, since the cradle is a late feature of the Gelert legend – goes back to J. R. Planché, Regal Records (London, 1838), p. 165. See BL Add. 48976, 1ar and 8ar (online) for the relevant images on the Roll. 54 See Gresham, ‘A Lease from the Last Prior of Bethkylhert’. 55 Gwaith Lewys Daron, ed. Lake, no. 22; Catrin Stevens, ‘Cywydd i Ofyn March i Ddafydd Conwy, Prior of Beddgelert’, TCHS, 37 (1976), 43–57. For the folklore see Sir John Wynn: The History of the Gwydir Family and Memoirs, ed. J. Gwynfor Jones (Llandysul, 1960), pp. 36 and 137. On Dafydd Conwy see Records of the Court of Augmentations, ed. Lewis and Davies, p. 62, cited by Stevens, p. 45, and Inventory of the Early Chancery Proceedings, ed. Lewis, pp. 15 and 23, cited by Williams, Welsh Church, pp. 387 and 400 (cf. ibid., pp. 155 and 230 on Beddgelert’s decline). Dafydd may have been the ultimate source of a text in Peniarth 75 (c. 1550), p. 24, ‘a gad gan brior Bedd Kelert’ (cited RMWL I 498 and RWMS I 369). 56 Thomas, ‘Beddgelert: Y Chwedl Wreiddiol’; RWMS I 653. Cf. Michael Freeman, ‘Early Accounts of the Legend of Gelert the Greyhound and his Grave’, TCHS, 77 (2016–17), 40–59, updated at . The provenance of BL Add. 19713 is confirmed by the reference to ‘an old manuscript Book found in the house of Gwidir’ by Edward Jones in NLW MS 169C, quoted by Thomas, ‘Beddgelert: Y Chwedl Wreiddiol’, p. 9. (Edward Jones’s ‘1205’, which has been misunderstood as dating the Gwydir manuscript, must refer to Llywelyn Fawr’s marriage to Joan.) In another of Edward Jones’s manuscripts, NLW 168C, pp. 13–16, there is another copy of Fabula de Beth kelhart, ‘written in Latin early in the 18th cent., copied from an old MS. at Gwydir’ (Davies, National Library of Wales, Catalogue of Manuscripts, I, 136). Jones printed the englyn, without indication of source, in his Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (London, 1784), p. 40. In the second edition (London, 1794), p. 75, he combined it, contrary to the Fabula de Bethkilhart, with the international ‘faithful hound’ tale; see Killis Campbell, The Seven Sages of Rome (Boston, 1907), p. lxxx, and Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition (Cardiff, 1961), pp. 39–40, and cf. p. 99. 57 Thomas, ‘Beddgelert: Y Chwedl Wreiddiol’, p. 8. Except for the first line, the text is similar to that in the contemporary NLW 872 (‘kladdwyd kilhart kelfydd / ymlyniad’, p. 359). 53

24

Series I, Series III, and the So-Called ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’

Llywelyn Fawr was a notable Beddgelert benefactor,58 so it is not unlikely that the above englyn and ‘Series IV’ were both composed at Beddgelert and transmitted thence to Gwydir via the personal connection between Beddgelert and the Wynns of Gwydir, who had ‘a say in the affairs of the parish’.59 By 1757, according to Lewis Morris, ‘Beddcelert’ was ‘said to have taken its name from Celert, a dog of some great man buried there, and they shew his grave’.60

Acts, ed. Pryce, p. 347, no. 217. While Dafydd Conwy may have known that the ‘Valley of the Blessed Mary’ had been a religious site before the time of Llywelyn, he may not have been in a position to know, any more than ourselves, when the site was first named Beddgelert. He knew little of its history if he really made the ‘preposterous claim’ that ‘Arthur, late prince of Wales’ (d. 1502) was ‘the founder of the said priory’ (Inventory of the Early Chancery Proceedings, ed. Lewis, p. 15). But Gresham (Eifionydd, p. 66) provides evidence that ‘founder’ meant ‘patron’. (Similarly, Glastonbury’s fundatores covered many centuries: The Early History of Glastonbury: An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, ed. and trans. John Scott (Woodbridge, 1981), p. 86.) Note that the significantly named Rhys Nanmor composed an elegy on Prince Arthur: ‘Barddoniaeth Llawdden a Rhys Nanmor’, ed. Headley, no. 71 (on the connection between Nanmor and Beddgelert see Gresham, ‘Parish of Beddgelert’, p. 26). For the history of Beddgelert see H. L[ongueville] J[ones], ‘Arvona Mediaeva no. II, Beddgelert Priory’, AC, 1st ser. 2 (1847), 153–66; Johns, ‘The Celtic Monasteries of North Wales’, pp. 26–27, 40–42, and map; Gresham, ‘Parish of Beddgelert’, ‘A Lease from the Last Prior of Bethkylhert’, and Eifionydd, pp. 59–75; and Acts, ed. Pryce, passim. 59 To quote Gresham, ‘Parish of Beddgelert’, pp. 24–25. 60 CR 30–31. This is earlier than the references in 1771 and 1776 discussed by Michael Freeman. The spot may have been the immoveable maen fawr / ‘large stone’ mentioned by Anon, ‘Plwyf Bedd Gelert’, Y Brython, 30 (April 1861), 129–36 (p. 134), and Jenkins, Bedd Gelert, p. 69. 58

25

2 DATING ENGLYNION Y BEDDAU

Dating Englynion y Beddau is difficult, owing to the lack of precisely dated material with which to compare them and the probability that the series grew by accretion, like other medieval compilations such as the Triads, the genealogies, and Bonedd y Saint. That is clearly the case with some other poems in englyn metre, including Ymddiddan Arthur a’r Eryr1 and Enwev Meibon Llywarch Hen in the Black Book itself, where the stanza ‘Tri meib Llywarch (recte Kynwarch)’ is an interpolation inspired by Brut y Brenhinedd.2 A comparable Middle Irish example of accretion is provided by the above-mentioned poem on the deaths (and graves) of ancient heroes, ‘Fíanna bátar i nEmain’, by Cináed úa hArtacáin (d. 975). Two stanzas before the end, in the Book of Leinster copy, Find, a mid-twelfth-century bishop of Kildare, interpolated eleven stanzas of his own composition, bringing the poem up to date.3 In that case we know the names and dates of the two poets. In the case of Englynion y Beddau we are in the dark, but the parallel suggests that the date of one stanza or group of stanzas cannot automatically be applied to the rest. Citing features such as their language, style, metre, ‘heroic mood’, and textual corruption, Thomas Jones dated the composition of Englynion y Beddau to ‘a period considerably earlier than … the Black Book of Carmarthen …, probably as early as the ninth or tenth century’.4 Comparison with the Old Welsh englynion added to the Juvencus Manuscript in the early tenth century suggests that so early a date is quite possible. Yet it cannot be proved without making unwarranted assumptions about when the features in question became obsolete. The ‘heroic mood’ is an example.

The ‘heroic mood’ At one time, scholars used to assign pure expressions of the ‘heroic ideal’, such as we see in Englynion y Beddau, to an early date and a later date to more realistic or even cynical opinions about the value of fighting to the death and so on. Later they came round to the view that the contrast was less a matter of date than of genre: panegyric versus narrative.5 In fact the militaristic praise poetry of the twelfth- and See CC 299. LlDC no. 40.8–10 and n. See below, p. 28. 3 Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., I, xxii and 128–34; Ó Corráin, Clavis, III, 1556, no. 1155. See the recent discussion by Rekdal, ‘The Medieval King: Christian King and Fearless Warrior’, pp. 162–68. After §36 in the Book of Leinster copy come two marginal notes: ‘húc usque Cinaed cecinit. Find episcopus Cilli Dara hoc addidit’ and 11 stanzas follow before Cináed’s work resumes. The poem by Broccán Cráibdech is also linguistically composite (see above, p. 8 n. 29). 4 BBCSG 100; similarly Melville Richards, review of BBCSG, p. 160. 5 Contrast BBCSG 101 and A. O. H. Jarman, ‘The Heroic Ideal in Early Welsh Poetry’, in Beiträge zur lndogermanistik und Keltologie, ed. Wolfgang Meid (Innsbruck, 1967), pp. 193–211, with 1 2

26

Dating Englynion y Beddau

thirteenth-century court poets has a purer, more unquestioning heroic ethos than the undoubtedly earlier ‘saga englynion’ of Canu Llywarch Hen.6 Englynion y Beddau may even cultivate an archaic tone. The clearest example of archaising diction is the stanza on Myrddin Emrys (III.17). This stanza cannot be earlier than Geoffrey of Monmouth and is probably later than 1300, judging by the word anap (see above, p. 15); nevertheless, it describes Myrddin, rather inappropriately with the heroic epithets llew ‘lion’ and lluagor ‘army-anchor’.

Metrical criteria Thomas Jones argued that Cynddelw, towards the end of the twelfth century, imitated the pre-existing Englynion y Beddau, albeit using a more modern and elaborate four-line metre (englyn unodl union), in an elegy for a certain Pyll from Llansadwrn, Crm.: Bed Pyll puyll enwir, enwauc–yn trydar, But wasgar, beird wisgauc, Dan llen ddirgel oeruelauc, Yn Llan, ddiuradu gadw, Gadauc. The grave of Pyll, in mind overpowerful, renowned in battle, scattering largess, robing bards, is under a covering, secret [and] cold, in strongly guarded Llangadog.7

While this englyn does resemble Englynion y Beddau, it more closely echoes the saga englynion on Llywarch Hen’s son Pyll, which also collocate Pyll and pwyll.8 It does not prove that Cynddelw knew Englynion y Beddau, likely though that may be. The (mostly) three-line format of Englynion y Beddau certainly looks back to a period earlier than Cynddelw. Nevertheless, twelfth-century court poets like him could well have composed additions to Englynion y Beddau in the older three-line metres, if the genre was already established. While those metres seem never to be used for eulogistic poetry, either by the Gogynfeirdd or by the Cynfeirdd before

A. O. H. Jarman, ‘Yr Hengerdd’, LlC, 18 (1994–95), 16–25 (pp. 24–25). In general see Alban Gautier, ‘Cent ans après Chadwick: faire l’histoire des Âges héroïques des Bretagnes’, in Quel Moyen Âge? La recherche en question, ed. Hélène Bouget and Magali Coumert, Histoires des Bretagnes, 6 (Brest, 2019), pp. 157–73. 6 Note the realistic, sceptical tone in the following dialogue in Canu Llywarch Hen: Son: ‘I will suffer hardship before I will yield ground … There will be breaking of shields where I am. I will not say that I will not flee … and I intend that there will be a broken, shattered shield before I retreat … No old man was a weakling in youth’ (EWSP 468–69). In an Irish saga, compare: Father: ‘Do you have news of Dá Derga’s Hall? Does your lord live?’ Son: ‘Indeed he does not.’ Father: ‘Cowardly is the man who came out alive after leaving his lord dead with his enemies.’ Son: ‘My wounds are not white, old warrior.’ … He shows him his shield arm … (Togail Bruidne Da Derga, ed. Eleanor Knott (Dublin, 1936), pp. 45–46). On fighting to the death, see commentary on I.8–11, below, p. 142 n. 137. 7 BBCSG 100; CBT IV 11.5–8 (with notes and commentary); translation from BBCSG, but CBT prefers ‘dinistriol ei anian’ for puyll enwir and ‘[sydd yn ei] warchod yn ddiysgog’ for ddiuradu gadw. 8 CLlH I.39. See discussion of ‘Series II’ above, p. 19, and esp. n. 31.

27

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

them, they may well have lingered on for verse of a traditional or mnemonic kind, as Ifor Williams pointed out in the case of another genre, gnomic poetry: 9

That the bards kept on producing Eiry Mynydd englynion down to the fifteenth century, if not later, seems incontestable, if late forms in the rhyming syllable are a criterion.10

The archaic flavour of the three-line englyn may have helped to authenticate traditional wisdom, and this is also a likely motive for employing the metre for pseudo-archaic prophetic poetry.11 A very relevant example of the continued use of the old metres for mnemonics up to the date of the Black Book of Carmarthen is its above-mentioned englyn milwr on the three sons of Llywarch (recte Cynfarch). This may come from a series of triads in the old englyn metres, of which there are remnants elsewhere,12 yet it cannot be centuries older than the Black Book, for the personal names derive from the Welsh versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth.13 It is therefore unwise to date individual stanzas of Series I much earlier than the Black Book on metrical grounds alone. Once the metrical form of the Beddau genre had become established, the perpetuation of the old metres for new stanzas was probably inevitable. If the range of metres used in Englynion y Beddau is not proof of an early date, it is not inconsistent with Jones’s hypothesis that the genre originated ‘probably as early as the ninth or tenth century’. In Series I we have 31 englynion milwr, 35 englynion penfyr, 6 four-line englynion of early type, and, among the later thirteenth-century additions, a stanza in awdl-gywydd metre.14 In his ‘Series II’ there are 4 englynion milwr and a doubtful case, perhaps an englyn gwastad.15 In Series III there are 5 englynion milwr (1, 2, 14, 16, 18), 8 englynion penfyr (3, 4, 7–10, 15, and 17), 1 englyn gwastad (13),16 and 5 doubtful cases, of which 2 may have been cyrch (5–6) That is, as far as we know. The arguments advanced by Ford, Poetry of Llywarch Hen, pp. 46–48, are unconvincing. Poems like the englynion in praise of Cadwallon (EWSP 446–47) obviously count as ‘saga englynion’, not contemporary panegyrics. 10 BWP 133. Cf. Richard Glyn Roberts, ‘Y Traddodiad Paremiolegol yng Nghymru’r Oesau Canol III: Ailystyried “Englynion y Clywet”’, Dwned, 14 (2008), 47–59 (p. 59). See the gnomic poems edited in MA2 358–62, where rhymes like beudy/caru, gaeaf/ystoriaf, tre/eisieu, hirnos/llios, diddig/rhyfyg are common. On these late poems see Jackson, Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry, p. 146, also EWGP 71–72. 11 As observed by J. Loth, ‘Remarques sur les vieux poèmes historiques gallois au point de vue métrique et historique’, RC, 21 (1900), 28–58 (pp. 33–34). Cf. idem, Métrique galloise, II, xii, where he says that the ‘genre triplet (tribann) … nous apparaît démodé déjà au douzième siècle, ou au moins dans la seconde moitié de ce siècle’. 12 PKM 76; CLlH xxxviii-xxxix and n. 1, and I.37 and VIII.2–3 and 6, and note on p. 187; TYP4 liv n. 54, and 36. 13 LlDC no. 40.8–10; Rachel Bromwich, ‘CLlH. viii.3 (= BBC. 107, 10–12)’, B., 17 (1956–58), 180–81; TYP4 414; Roberts, ‘The Treatment of Personal Names’, pp. 283–84 and 289; Bartrum, ‘Arthuriana’, pp. 242 and 244. 14 See below, p. 114. On the types of englyn cf. GPC s.v. and below, pp. 110–14. In BBCSG 98 Thomas Jones includes 4, 7, 32, 46, 65, and 72 as ‘englynion gwastad or four-line englynion like those spoken by the magician Gwydion in Math’, but I prefer to differentiate 32 and 65, like the first and third of Gwydion’s (PKM 89–90), as englynion cyrch. See below, pp. 113–14. 15 Cf. CLlH I.41 and note on p. 92, also p. lxxxvi. 16 III.13 is so arranged in MS W. It is printed in BBCSG as penfyr, but it may be a 6.6.6.6. englyn gwastad rhyming aabb like its variant in Series I.4, and like I.7. This rhyme scheme is not impossible for a penfyr (cf. the occurence of a+a/a/a/a in englyn unodl union, which is an extended penfyr in a sense), but none of the englynion penfyr edited in Canu Llywarch Hen have as many 9

28

Dating Englynion y Beddau

and 2 may have been penfyr (11–12).17 The stanza classed as ‘Series IV’ is an englyn milwr. The englynion y beddau in all the manuscripts are thus fairly consistent in their choice of metres. A similar proportion of the types is found in the early ‘saga englynion’ edited in Canu Llywarch Hen,18 and milwr and penfyr are attested in a tenth-century hand in the Juvencus manuscript, gwastad in a late-eleventh-century hand in the Corpus De Trinitate,19 and cyrch in englynion in the Pedeir Keinc, which are linguistically pre-twelfth-century according to Ifor Williams.20 The late medieval Bardic Grammars regard these metres as old fashioned and obsolete (‘englynion o’r hen ganiad’ and ‘ofer fesurau’), and the twelfth-century and later court poets are not known to have used them (except the englyn cyrch) in their official elegies and panegyrics, preferring the more elaborate types of englyn.21

Stylistic criteria In addition to their ‘heroic mood’ and ‘metrical patterns’, Thomas Jones invoked the ‘style’ of Englynion y Beddau as a dating criterion.22 The elegiac refrain ‘Namyn Duw a mi heno’ (III.8) provides a good example of the problem of dating by ‘style’. It can be compared with ‘Na’m ercit mi nep leguenid henoid’ in the Juvencus englynion, which can be no later than the early tenth century,23 and with ‘Handit Euyrdyl aflawen henoeth’ in Canu Urien.24 The placing of heno(eth) ‘tonight’ at the end of a line may be a very archaic feature, as comparison with innocht, anocht, ‘tonight’ in early Irish poems suggests.25 But how long did this convention last? The twelfth- and thirteenth-century court poets down to 1213 still place heno (now rhyming in -o) at the end of lines, though not in elegiac contexts.26 Since the line ‘Namyn Duw a mi heno’ rhymes with difo, arro, tolo, Beuno, and gwypo, it is presumably later than the Juvencus and Canu Urien englynion with their henoid/henoeth. Yet heno rhyming with gro, divro, and tolo already appears in Claf Abercuawg (a poem with many parallels in diction with Englynion y Beddau), for which Rowland suggests a mid- to late-ninth-century date.27 Owing to the scarcity of securely dated examples, it is not possible to say at what date, between the Juvencus and the twelfth-century poets,

19 20 21 17 18

24 25 26 22 23

27



as 6+6 syllables in line a (cf. CLlH lxxxv–vi). However, III.15, which cannot be anything but a penfyr, has 12 syllables in line a. See below, p. 113. See commentary on these stanzas. CLlH lxxxvi. BWP 90, 101–2, and 182. Cf. above p. 28 n. 14; PKM xviii–xix and 291–300; also Loth, Métrique galloise, II, 230–37. GP lxxii, 113, and 233 s.v. eglyn. On the englyn cyrch see Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, pp. 323– 24. Stanzas I.32 and 65 and III.5–6 do not have the accentuation of the first couplet expected by the later poets. BBCSG 100. BWP 90. EWSP 389 suggests a late-eighth- to mid-ninth-century date of composition. CLlH III.30a (cf. p. lxxxviii); EWSP 423 and 561. BWP 94–95. CBT II 2.3 (dated 1160×1165) and 14.75 (c. 1156); V 23.117 (c. 1213). BWP 144 and 152 n. 84, describes henoeth as pre-Norman. It is doubtful whether hynoeth in CBT I 9.166 is a spelling of henoeth. EWSP 389, 449 §13, and 451 §27.

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

it became acceptable to rhyme heno(eth) in -o,28 nor when the elegiac refrain heno became obsolete. We must admit that the authors of Englynion y Beddau may have cultivated a degree of linguistic archaism, arising from the traditional and formulaic nature of the diction of their genre. This is certainly the case with Bishop Find’s above-mentioned twelfth-century addition to the tenth-century Irish poem on the deaths of the nobles of Ireland: Find included a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms, imitating the diction of the original poem.29

Linguistic criteria Thomas Jones’s remaining dating criterion was ‘language’, and here he provided no examples.30 Englynion y Beddau include a number of linguistic features which are generally considered to be ‘early’,31 but some are more telling than others. Below they are divided between (i) Morphology and (ii) Orthography, and are followed by notes on possible traces of early (iii) Palaeography. (i) Morphology (1) The leniting preverbal particle yt32 (t = [d]) occurs at I.4 yn yd vna ton tolo (modernised to yn y gwna in III.7 and eny gwna in III.13), at I.39 yn yd a Lliv yn Llychur (d = [d]), and at I.48 parth yd vei ny bitei fo (contrast I.7 yn y terev tonnev tir and I.54 yn y gvna Tavue toniar). These forms are not helpful, because leniting yt is commonly used by the thirteenth-century court poets; for example Bleddyn Fardd (after 1278) has Tec yd gauas (d = [d]).33 (2) The 3pl. pret. pass. in -eint, characteristic of ‘early poetry’,34 occurs at I.2 and I.3 ny llesseint. As llesseint occurs as late as Gwynfardd Brycheiniog (c. 1180), this only points to a pre-thirteenth-century date, and even that is doubtful as the stanzas in question may deliberately echo old heroic poetry.35

The history of other words in -th such as etwaeth > etwa (if not < etwan) – still etwaeth in Claf Abercuawg (§15) and in the court poets down to c. 1220 (CBT VI 14.8) – is not a reliable guide to the date of henoeth > heno; after all, peunoeth and trannoeth have persisted into Modern Welsh. Cynddelw varies between etwaeth and ettwa according to his rhyme-scheme: CBT III 11.55; IV 16.47 and 88. According to WG 113, 176, and 432, -th in such forms was voiced to [ð] (but as proof he only cites (WG 431) odynoed in rhyme in LPBT no. 4.41); final [ð] tended to be lost (LHEB 426–27). 29 Gerard Murphy, ‘On the Dates of Two Sources Used in Thurneysen’s Heldensage’, Ériu, 16 (1952), 145–56 (p. 154 and n. 3). 30 BBCSG 100. 31 For some of these see GMW xix–xx. 32 GMW 171–72; WG 286; PT 54; L&P 144–45. For yn yd see GMW 71; L&P 220; PT 98. CLlH 67–68 shows that yt gave trouble to the White and Red Book copyists. 33 CBT VII 47.13. 34 GMW 127; cf. WG 338. 35 CBT II 26.26. Cf. CLlH I.28 (as emended) and XI.57. On -eint in the 3pl. imperfect, which may be comparable, see Rodway, Dating, pp. 67–69. 28

30

Dating Englynion y Beddau

(3) ynoeth instead of yno, confirmed by rhyme, occurs in I.30 Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth a dyuu ynoeth. At first sight this looks significant, as the court poets (starting with Gwalchmai, c. 1157–60) always have yno, which is often confirmed by rhyme.37 But in the light of Old Breton ino, Fleuriot plausibly regards MW ynoeth as a separate word from yno rather than its source.38 If he is right, ynoeth is not so significant for dating. But at least it can be noted that ynoeth is very rare, much rarer than ynaeth beside yna.39 36

(4) 3 sg. pres. in -(h)it or -(h)yt40 (t = [d]) occurs at I.47 mekid (: magu) meibon Meigen. meirch mei. While characteristic of early poetry, forms like chwerdit/chwerthid continued to be used by twelfth- and thirteenth-century court poets like Cynddelw and Elidir Sais, and even Dafydd ap Gwilym has chwerddid, albeit echoing an older englyn, while his fourteenth-century contemporary Casnodyn has one example of trengid.41 Otherwise, the latest poetic example seems to be rettid in Iorwerth Fychan, whose date is uncertain (c. 1300?).42 In any case, I.47 may well be interpolated from another genre, as suggested by Thomas Jones.43 (5) Preverbal ry expressing custom or futurity44 occurs in I.64 lleas paup pan rydighir ‘everyone’s death (comes) when it is fated’. But this is a proverb, so Ifor Williams’s dictum applies: ‘An englyn may be chock-full of archaic forms, though composed at a late date, simply because it contains genuine early proverbs’.45 In any case, ry expressing futurity is still used by the court poets, for example, ‘teyrnllaỽ uy rỽyf ryddygỽch’, ‘you will take my lord’s princely hand’ (Prydydd y Moch, c. 1174–75).46 (6) A 3 sg. imperfect in -i is preserved in rhyming position in III.2: gwr oedd ef gwir i neb ni roddi. Elsewhere, in non-rhyming position, scribes may have replaced such forms with the usual -ei, as in I.59 ny rotei gwir y alon. While imperfects in -i are characteristic of early poems such as the Gododdin, ‘Pais Dinogad’, Preiddau

GMW 221. See odynoed in rhyme in LPBT no. 4.41, cited above, p. 30 n. 28. CBT I 9.49 and (if emended) 81 (Gwalchmai); I 33.76; II 26.63; V 23.130. Non-rhyming examples are I 14.71 and III 5.13 and 51. Further examples rhyming in -o are CLlH III.43 and XIII.68 (Marwnad Cynddylan). 38 DGVB I 225, and II 492, as against WG 432; cf. GPC. 39 On ynaeth and yna see Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y in Medieval Welsh Orthography’, pp. 30–32 and 35 n. 121. 40 GMW 118–19; WG 322–23; EWGP 8, 48, 60, and 73; L&P 279; CLlH 165, 176, 177, and 233; Rodway, Dating, pp. 85–116. 41 CBT IV 16.104 and I 17.11 (both echoing a proverb); GDG no. 76.23 and n.; R 1234.3. See Rodway, Dating, pp. 181–90 and 191. 42 CBT VII 29.23; Rodway, Dating, pp. 190–92 (where all the thirteenth-century prose examples, pp. 191–92, are in proverbs); idem, ‘The Syntax of Absolute Verbal Forms in Early Welsh Poetry: A Survey’, JCL, 22 (2021), 33–103 (see p. 38 for trengid and pp. 53–54 for many examples of mekid in anonymous poetry). 43 BBCSG 105. 44 GMW 168; L&P 257. 45 BWP 133. See commentary to I.64. 46 CBT V 1.83. 36 37

31

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Annwn, and Canu Heledd,47 they were occasionally employed by the court poets. Indeed, rhoddi is found as late as 1195 in an elegy by Elidir Sais – rhoddi seirch a meirch marchogaeth ‘he used to give armour and cavalry horses’ – and there are even two examples of rody in prose in Llanstephan MS 1 (s. xiii med.), pp. 33 and 61.48 Imperfects in -i seem to have been sufficiently common in the exemplar of Math as to mislead a later scribe into miscopying gueli ‘bed’ as guelei ‘could see’.49 (7) Occurrences of the Old Welsh relative (h)ai have been seen in I.1–3 and 17–18, but this is uncertain (see note to I.2). (8) The variation between hir vynyt and y mynyt in I.32–33 may reflect an Old Welsh exemplar in which the definite article had the old form hir. But this is uncertain (see commentary on I.32–33). (ii) Orthography (1) e for [ï] (= IPA [ɨ]) occurs in I.62 chen for expected chyn or chin, but as the spelling with e for [ï] was still common in the thirteenth century this is not particularly helpful (see note). At I.13, bid ‘world?’ (rather than bet ‘grave’) is probably a false modernisation of an exemplar which used e for [ï] as well as [e] (see note). This exemplar need not have been older than the thirteenth century. At III.15, gwen efwr is a possible further example of e for [ï].50 (2) OW e ambiguously represented [e] and [ei] (as well as [ï] and [ǝ]); hence it is unclear, for instance, whether the Harley Genealogies’ Post Priten means Post Prydein ‘pillar of Britain’ or Post Pryden ‘pillar of Pictland’.51 Pridein in I.39, Bet unpen o Pridein yn lleutir Guynnassed, where Priden ‘Pictland’, rhyming with unpen (an Old-Welsh-looking form of unben), would have been preferable, may reflect mechanical modernisation of an Old Welsh exemplar whose *Priten would have been ambiguous.52 But perhaps a scribe simply substituted Pridein ‘Britain’ for the less common name of Pictland. The clear error Idin for Eidin/Eidyn in I.9 and 11 suggests an Old Welsh exemplar reading *Edin in which the E represented [ei] but was misunderstood as E for [ǝ], for which i was a normal spelling for the Black References in CA 76; CLlH lxxxi and 196; PKM 303; PT 62; Ifor Williams, ‘Ymddiddan Arthur a’r Eryr’, B., 2 (1923–25), 269–86 (p. 277, §36, and notes on pp. 283 and 285). 48 CBT I 15.24 (Dr Davies’s transcript). See Rodway, Dating, pp. 65–66, 166, and 208–10. The later text of the Llanstephan Version of the Brut in Cardiff 1.363 (Hafod 2), leaves the first rody unchanged (23v20) but modernises the second to rodey (48v2). 49 PKM 72 and 261; J. Loth, ‘Le Mabinogi de Math vab Mathonwy d’après W. J. Gruffydd et la méthode en Celto-mythologie’, RC, 46 (1929), 272–300 (p. 283). 50 See above, p. 16. 51 Cf. TYP4 472 versus EWGT 227. On e = [ei] see Baudiš, Grammar, pp. 40–41 and 70; LHEB 587–88; Watkins, ‘Points of Similarity’, pp. 138–40. This ambiguity is a common source of error in the hengerdd; see e.g. CLlH lxxviii. The cases of ein for en noted by Morgan Watkin, Ystorya Bown de Hamtwn (Cardiff, 1958), p. ci, are too late and insignificant to be relevant to the text of Series I, and are no doubt regarded rightly as independent of the OW convention. This also applies to the examples of e for ei in idem, ‘The Black Book of Chirk and the Orthographia Gallica Anglicana’, NLWJ, 14 (1965–66), 351–60 (p. 358). 52 At I.72, Thomas Jones translates ym Prydein as ‘in the North’ and suggests a corruption of Tybiawn > Einyawn on the basis of this; but see my commentary. On unpen see below. 47

32

Dating Englynion y Beddau

Book scribe (as in words like inad ‘judge’ and inis ‘island’). In BL Cotton Vespasian A.xiv in the last third of the twelfth century there are still occasional examples of e rather than ei (for example Pes for Peis and Enniaun for Einiaun), albeit in copies of older material,53 and Helin (for Heilyn) appears in a 1202 Ystrad Marchell charter (beside the much more typical Eyniaun).54 Despite these stragglers, Idin for Eidin/ Eidyn probably reflects an exemplar of the early twelfth century (or before) for I.9 and 11. A good parallel is provided by poem 5 in the Black Book (the Body and Soul debate), where the scribe repeatedly inserts a vowel, presumably correcting an exemplar that used e for [ei]: 37 eneid; 79 aghiuieith; 82 kyueith; 113 im | guneit; 114 imadneirun.55 In copying aghiueith, kyueith, and imadneirun he must have reproduced his exemplar’s e before inserting the correction. By contrast, eneid and guneit look like the result of him having at first modernised gobuill . o.th *ened ‘consider your soul’ and kid *imgunet ‘though you consider me’, really with e for [ei], to gobuill . o.th *enid ‘consider your feasting [ynyd]’ and kid *imgunit ‘though you lament [ymgwynydd]’, on the false assumption that they contained e for [ï] or [ǝ], both of which he regularly updated to i.56 Probably Idin resulted similarly, as a false modernisation of *Edin for *Eidin. Perhaps the name *Edin was unfamiliar to the scribe. (3) Old Welsh manuscripts (including the Book of Llandaf) often used -gu- for medial [w].57 Jackson notes I.32 enguavc as an exceptional survival. I.59 hir gweun (sic MS) ‘Hirwaun’ and – elsewhere in the Black Book – kangulad for canwlad in Cynddelw’s deathbed poem and milguir (beside milvir), are weaker examples as they may have been felt to be compounds, often a special case in orthography.58 Owing to lack of texts, it is unclear when spellings like enguavc became obsolete. Comparable forms such as Gleuguissig (Glywysing) were still being copied at Monmouth in the last third of the twelfth century, and in Peniarth 29 (s. xiii med.) we still find Nyny a deuedun ~ Nyny a deguedun ‘we say’ (p. 86).59 It may be relevant that the retention of the g in I.32 preserved a sort of alliteration visible to the eye: bet Gvryen gvrhyd enguavc.

VSB 149; Lewis, Disgrifiad o Orgraff Hen Gymraeg, p. 685. Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, p. 52 and no. 36 (1322/3 inspeximus of 1202 charter). Most relevant names in this collection have diphthongal spellings. 55 References are to line numbers in LlDC (the vowel insertions are not indicated there). Four of these forms were cited and implausibly explained via Old French by Watkin, ‘Chronology of the Black Book of Carmarthen’, pp. 222–23. The Body and Soul poem has been dated pre-twelfth century (LlDC xlviii), but see CC 210–11 and Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, pp. 199–200. Disyllabic traed (line 32) is still found in Cynddelw c. 1179 (CBT III 21.164). 56 Other examples of i falsely written for e are pirfeith and Rydirch in poems 11.4 and 16.40, noted by Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, p. 160. 57 See Baudiš, Grammar, pp. 151–52, and further references in Sims-Williams, ‘A Turkish–­Celtic Problem in Chrétien de Troyes: The Name Cligés’, in Ildánach, Ildírech, ed. Carey et al., pp. 215–30. For errors arising from OW -gu- see CLlH lxxviii. 58 LHEB 387. LlDC no. 28.4 kangulad (cf. canwlad, CBT IV.18.85) and no. 34.61 milguir (cf. milvir, line 58) are cited by Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, p. 164, and PT 17. For further examples in compounds see Paul Russell, Welsh Law in Medieval Anglesey: British Library Harleian MS 1976 (Latin C) (Cambridge, 2011), p. xxvii. 59 VSB 24 and 54 (cf. Pryce, ‘Uses of the Vernacular’, p. 7 n. 13 on -gu- in an 1191 Ystrad Marchell charter); Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’, p. 141 (Peniarth 29). 53 54

33

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

(4) In early Old Welsh, d sometimes denoted not only [ð]60 but also [θ], as in the preposition gurd in the Juvencus englynion for later (g)wrth, which is also spelt gurt in Old Welsh.61 An early Old Welsh exemplar using ambiguous d could lie behind I.54 Bet gur gurth y var, where gurth may be an erroneous modernisation of *gurd (Mod.W. gwrdd ‘mighty’).62 Such use of d, while typical of early Old Welsh, does occur later, however: Meinir Lewis cites Cenard (beside Cenarth) and Iudnerd in the Book of Llandaf, and Talgard (Talgarth) and Guengard(us) (beside Guengarth) in BL Vespasian A.xiv.63 In any case, an exemplar with *gurd is not the only explanation possible. The adjective gwrdd is regularly spelled gurt in Black Book-style orthography (as at I.11), and such a form might be mistaken for the OW preposition gurt by a scribe used to copying from exemplars with Old Welsh features, among which rt [rθ] was a well-established one64 which continued to surface in late-­ thirteenth-century manuscripts (e.g. Black Book of Chirk: guert Hand A, kemmirt Hand F) and in record sources (e.g. Kyltalgart, Pennart).65 All things considered, then, it is unsafe to regard I.54 Bet gur gurth as the relic of an early Old Welsh exemplar with ambiguous d for [ð] and [θ]. It may even result from a contemporary mid-thirteenth-century orthographic ambiguity. For example, gwahardd appears as guahard, guahart, and guaharth in Peniarth MS 30 (s. xiii2).66 In another Black Book poem (‘Cyntefin Ceinaf Amser’), ffordd appears as both fort and forth.67 (5) In Old Welsh th hardly ever denotes [ð],68 so I.45 Bet Elchwith corresponding to Tom Elwithan in the Red Book of Hergest is unlikely to have an Old Welsh explanation. These two forms most likely go back to *Elwith(an) (or *Elguith(an) with -gu- for [w]), representing what would be Elwydd or Elwyddan in modern orthography, most probably under the influence of the th = [ð] spelling convention seen in contemporary record sources and in the Black Book of Chirk, also, rarely, in the Black Book of Carmarthen’s forth, quoted above.69 (6) At I.39 the spelling unpen ‘chieftain’, rather than unben, is atypical of the Black Book scribe and of Middle Welsh scribes in general, and recalls the Old Welsh use of Ibid., pp. 141–42. BWP 115; Watkins, ‘Points of Similarity’, p. 139; Cowley and Lloyd, ‘An Old Welsh Englyn’, p. 409; and references. 62 For a possibly similar case see the note on gur y in I.27b. 63 Lewis, Disgrifiad o Orgraff Hen Gymraeg, p. 717, citing LL 129 (cf. 127) and 216; VSB 26 and 130 (cf. VSB 319). See also Guy, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, pp. 71–75. While the spelling in LL 216 could go back to a ninth-century exemplar, the other passages are clearly twelfth-century compositions. 64 Data in Cowley and Lloyd, ‘An Old Welsh Englyn’, pp. 409–10. For RT in inscriptions see LHEB 570 and CIB 140–41 and 254. 65 Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’, pp. 137, 153, and 157. 66 Rhyddiaith y 13g. 67 LlDC no. 8.10 and 19. An ambiguous spelling is divlit in LlDC no. 30.42; cf. EWGP 44 and 72. 68 Lewis, Disgrifiad o Orgraff Hen Gymraeg, pp. 658 and 698; Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’, p. 141; Peter Schrijver, Studies in the History of Celtic Pronouns and Particles (Maynooth, 1997), p. 67. 69 See below, commentary on I.45. In addition to forth (and some unacceptable examples), oeth (LlDC no. 5.86, cf. CA 292) is cited by Watkin, ‘Chronology of the Black Book of Carmarthen’, p. 217); but this was originally written oth, anticipating oth in line 88. 60 61

34

Dating Englynion y Beddau

-p- for medial [b]. Possibly the scribe viewed unben etymologically, un ‘sole’ + pen ‘chief’, and avoided leniting the second element? Compare camprenn ‘crooked tree’ beside cambrenn in the Book of Llandaf.71 70

Of these six features only (2), Idin for *Edin for Eidin/Eidyn in I.9 and 11, points firmly towards an exemplar with Old Welsh spelling. This date applies only to these two stanzas, or even perhaps to only one of them, since the spelling of one stanza may have been carried over to the other. Old Welsh spelling is generally supposed to have come to an end in the middle of the twelfth century (after the Book of Llandaf), but in view of the shortage of manuscripts from between c. 1150 and c. 1250, we cannot rule out the possibility that some scribes might have written a form such as *Edin as late as the early thirteenth century. Absence of evidence for much earlier dates does not, of course, rule out the possibility of many stanzas being written down before c. 1100. (iii) Palaeography Some errors in Series I and III probably arose through copying early script. Some of these, such as variation between n and u (e.g. cund for cnud, I.41), are not helpful for dating purposes. By far the most significant palaeographical error in Series I is I.10 run mab pyd where Series III has the superior reading: III.9 Panna vap Pyt. A common exemplar earlier than the Black Book probably had panna ap (or paña ab)72 in Insular script, and the Black Book scribe (or a predecessor) misread pan as run and ignored the -a before ap or ab. This implies an exemplar in which p and ‘long’ r, and ‘square’ a and u, were difficult to distinguish, enabling a copyist to mistake pan- for the common Middle Welsh name Run. Comparable misreadings account for Lambert of Saint-Omer’s errors Guy and Catgabuil (for Gai and Catgabail) and pugnabat (for regnabat) when copying the Historia Brittonum c. 1120.73 ‘Square’ a, ‘which is not unlike a u with a hairline joining the top of the two mainstrokes’,74 occurs in the tenth-century Juvencus englynion and the late-eleventh-century Padarn englyn from Llanbadarn, but does not appear to be attested later.75 The Insular ‘long’ r resembling p continued into the twelfth century, however, occurring occasionally in the Book of Llandaf in the 1130s.76 Before rushing to the conclusion that I.10/ See Lewis, Disgrifiad o Orgraff Hen Gymraeg, pp. 655 and 695; LHEB 68; Baudiš, Grammar, pp. 99–102. 71 LL 134, quoted with other examples by Lewis, Disgrifiad o Orgraff Hen Gymraeg, p. 695. 72 The variants of fab without initial consonant (see GPC s.v. ap) were already current when the Black Book was written: I.19 Bet Meigen ab Run (mab Run in I.17–18) and I.68 bet Ebediv am Maelur. 73 Dumville, Histories and Pseudo-Histories, ch. XII, 119 and nn. 4 and 33–34. 74 M. B. Parkes, ‘The Manuscript of the Leiden Riddle’, ASE, 1 (1972), 207–17 (p. 216 – the first a of Uaat in his pl. 1 is an example). Cf. HEW 16 and pl. 5. At an earlier stage, open-topped Welsh a was also very similar to u, e.g. Ad libram mellis at line 19 of the main text of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.4.32 (s. ix in.), 23r (see plate in Ifor Williams, ‘Glosau Rhydychen: Mesurau a Phwysau’, B., 5 (1929–31), 226–48). 75 BWP 90 and 182, pls II (ancalaur, amfranc, anpatel) and IV (Amtrybann, teirbann). Here and in general I am indebted to discussions with David Dumville. A significant error, copying from a Llanbadarn text, is Guean for Guenn at VSB 252. 76 See plates accompanying LL 29 (Ricardi . 7 pag(ano), 37v, col. 35) and 44 (Tnoumur, 41v, col. 52), and discussion in Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 168, in connection with fercos .m. poch 70

35

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

III.9 must have been written down before the early twelfth century, Daniel Huws’s opinion must be noted, that Insular scribal habits may have lasted down to the early thirteenth century in clasau beyond the reach of Norman influence, such as Clynnog – the clas from which I argue that I.10/III.9 derives.77 In Series III the uncertainty over o and e which is seen in III.4a am ddinau = 5c am dinon = 6c am dineu (and in III.15 gwen efwr if an error for *gwynofwr) suggests that the exemplar of S (from which all the Series III manuscripts descend) was difficult to read, and was perhaps, but not necessarily, written in an abraded or poorly written Secretary hand.78 The uncertainty over h and b seen in III.5c rythych = 6c rych bych, and perhaps in III.11 benbych if that is a corruption of banhwch, may point to a post-thirteenth-century exemplar, in which h, with its second stroke curving backwards, resembled a b;79 h and b could also be similar at earlier periods, however, for example in the Book of Llandaf.80 In the same stanza (III.11) Agen beside Ager, assuming they are the same name, seems to point to misreading Insular r as n, a confusion seen in reverse in Mynuersem for Mynuensem in BL Cotton Vespasian A.xiv and Kynger for Cyngen in the fourteenth-century Jesus College genealogies and elsewhere.81 If Agen / Ager is in fact an error for the attested name Aser, g may be due to the similarity between s and the ‘“8”-shaped two-compartment g’ in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century scripts.82 A further possible misreading in III.11 is yvgri for gurgi. In evaluating the significance of this and other peculiarities in III.11–12 it must be borne in mind that III.11–12 may be an interpolation.83 (< Fergus mac Róich) in Culhwch and Olwen. Non-Insular ‘long-tailed’ r (with a descender to the first stroke) occurs much later, but would be hard to confuse with p. See Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, pp. xv, xviii, xxiii, etc. (e.g. recipientem and spirarauerint ibid., pls 1(i), line 4, and 7(i), col. b line 2), and, for examples from Wales, see Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, pls 1(i) and 2(i), and Robert B. Patterson, The Scriptorium of Margam Abbey and the Scribes of Early Angevin Glamorgan (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 81 and pls IIa, IVb, Va, VIa, VIIIb, IXa, XIId, etc. By contrast with it, the second stroke of Insular r came down to the line, making it easy to confuse it with p or indeed with n (on the latter see below). For the same reason n could be misread as p, e.g. Spaudunensium for Snaudunensium in Cotton Vespasian A.xiv (VSB 72 n. 1). 77 Below, pp. 58 and 64. See MWM 38; Daniel Huws, ‘The Welsh Book’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, II, 1100–1400, ed. Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 390–96 (p. 391); Charles-Edwards, ‘The Textual Tradition of Llyfr Iorwerth Revisited’, p. 43. 78 Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, passim, e.g. pl. 10(iii), dated 1454–86. But, trying to explain a fourteenth-century error, Ifor Williams refers to the similarity between o and e ‘in various manuscripts’ (PKM 253). For e miscopied as o see Sims-Williams, Liber Coronacionis Britanorum, II, Introduction & Commentary, p. 97, and wlodych for wledych in Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a Rhisiart ap Rhys, ed. Eurys I. Rowlands (Cardiff, 1976), p. 70, and conversely cf. Hemerus for Homerus in Buchedd Sant Martin, ed. Jones, p. 25. 79 As in brenhin in line 13 of HEW pl. 19a (Llyfr Ancr Llanddewibrefi, A.D. 1346). Cf. Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, p. xv and n. 2. 80 See commentary on III.11 on heb (LL 120, with plate). 81 Ben Guy, ‘The Vespasian Life of St Teilo and the Evolution of the Vitae Sanctorum Wallensium’, in Seintiau Cymru, ed. Parsons and Russell, pp. 1–30 (p. 7); idem, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, pp. 91–92. On confusion of Insular r and n see Tal. 134–38 and David N. Dumville, ‘Palaeographical Considerations in the Dating of Early Welsh Verse’, B., 27 (1976– 78), 246–51. 82 Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, p. xv and pl. 1(i); HEW pl. 17 (Book of Taliesin); RWMS III pls 34, 54, and 61. 83 See below, pp. 37 and 38, and commentary on III.11–12.

36

Dating Englynion y Beddau

At III.18 the error bedh hvn ap Alvn Dyve compared to I.24’s bet. RuN mab alun diwed suggests that a copyist miscopied majuscule R as h,84 presumably at an early period, like that of the Black Book, when u still stood for [u] as well as [ü], making hun (Mod.W. hwn) a meaningful and understandable error (cf. I.34 Pieu ir bet hun, and passim: I.15, 16, 34, 38, 46, and 48–49). Another probable misreading involving majuscule R in III.18 is vayn ryde where the I.24 variant has vaen ked. The Series III stanza may go back to a manuscript in which k and R were easily confused.85 Could this be the Black Book of Carmarthen itself? Although the latter’s k is usually clearly distinguished from majuscule R by a long ascender, at this particular point the ascender is entangled confusingly with the descender of a y on the line above.86 Since, however, Series III.9 has the superior reading Panna (see above), it is unlikely that I.24 is the source of III.18, unless III.18 is a late addition to Series III – perhaps even one drawn from a copy of the Black Book, although that is an unlikely source seeing that their texts are otherwise so different at I.24/III.18 (see below, p. 337). The above morphological, orthographical, and palaeographical evidence suggests that some of the englynion are older than the early thirteenth century – without ruling out that many could be older than the twelfth century, perhaps considerably so. Of course, the evidence only helps to date the individual englynion in which the early features happen to occur; it does not date any series as a whole, for they may have been assembled in several phases. It may be significant that some stanzas with early features such as I.9, I.10/III.9, and I.11, and III.11–12 seem either to belong to an early core (I.9, I.10/III.9, and I.11)87 or to be interpolated from some other genre which may have been transmitted separately (III.11–12). Some of the stanzas unique to Series III may have been written down as early as the Black Book, for example III.11 with its spelling inni ‘vigour’,88 whereas others, notably III.17, with its loanword anap ‘mishap’, may be later compositions.

Content as a dating criterion It has been argued that the obscurity of the characters named in Englynion y Beddau favours an early date.89 While a minority were prominent throughout the Middle Ages, the majority cannot be shown to have been known either to the Welsh poets of the twelfth century onwards, who fail to employ their names when comparing their patrons’ prowess with that of ancient heroes,90 or to the compilers of works like the Triads and genealogical tracts which preserved the memory of such heroes (see below). To deduce that many of the stories which underlie Englynion y Beddau were long forgotten is an argument from silence, however. Many now unknown stories may have been widely current, orally and/or in writing. The fact that late medieval On the retention of majuscule R in Wales see HEW 25 and 42. For an (unlikely) case of Run miscopied as hun see Tal. 206. 85 On R miscopied as K see CLlH lxxvii and 62 and PT 37. 86 33r; HEW pl. 16b. 87 See below, p. 53. 88 See above, p. 17. 89 Cf. Ifor Williams: ‘chwedlau sydd mor hen fel na ŵyr neb ddim oll am y mwyafrif o’r arwyr y cyfeirir at eu beddau’ (CLlH xlviii; cf. idem, ‘Hen Chwedlau’, p. 33). 90 On the bards’ use of the names of old heroes, which tended to become mere names after the period of the earliest Gogynfeirdd, see TYP4 lxi–lxv.

84

37

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

poets, in their poems to saints, refer to otherwise unrecorded stories about them91 would never be used to argue that the poems in question are very early, and similar caution should apply when dating Englynion y Beddau, mutatis mutandis. Knowledge of some Englynion y Beddau heroes may have been confined to particular localities, thus failing to attract the attention of poets and literati elsewhere. This is hard to assess. The allusive way in which many stanzas are framed may suggest that their authors assumed a general familiarity with the characters and events mentioned. Perhaps, however, the allusiveness is rhetorical; a poem can seem allusive and yet provide enough information as to be intelligible to those who may not know the full story.92 Others may be intended to elicit questions from an audience or to impress them with arcane knowledge. A few allusions – I.45, 47, and III.11–12, for example – seem to require much prior knowledge, but the stanzas in question, not being typical grave stanzas, may have been interpolated from other genres. With the exception of III.17, the clearly late englyn on Myrddin Emrys,93 there is no sign of influence from twelfth-century non-native romantic literature or even from Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose influence is increasingly felt in Welsh poetry from the late twelfth century onwards94 and in antiquarian works such as the triadic englynion in the Black Book of Carmarthen itself.95 This could point to composition before c. 1150, but it is difficult to be sure. Genre may be a factor. Geoffrey refers to the burial of numerous kings, from Brutus at Trinovantum (London) to Cadwaladr at Rome in 689, and to include them would change the character of Englynion y Beddau completely. As for the Three Romances of the Mabinogion, they are geographically very vague, so there was little scope for allusion to them. Perhaps the best explanation is that a version of Englynion y Beddau already existed before Geoffrey’s influence was widely felt, and that subsequent transmitters were reluctant to change its focus radically by including Galfridian material.96 Some other listing texts are broadly similar to Englynion y Beddau and, although they lack most of the people in Englynion y Beddau, there is some overlap, as Table 1 illustrates. This covers Series I, subdivided into Parts 1 (I.1–69) and 2 (I.70–73), and Series III. The Table includes references to Gwallawg ap Lleenawg, on the unlikely off-chance that he is the same as Gwallawg Hir in I.7.97 The table includes Culhwch and Olwen (CO) and Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi (PKM) which are narrative texts. Culhwch, however, also counts as a listing text since it includes lengthy lists in which E.g. Medieval Welsh Poems to Saints and Shrines, ed. Barry J. Lewis (Dublin, 2015), no. 22, and pp. 16 and 312–20. 92 This is not uncommon in bardic allusions to the traditional stories, and it is common in liturgical texts. A good example of sustained composition of this kind is the Old English Deor, ed. Kemp Malone, 4th edn (London, 1966): the poet authenticates his utterance by allusions to Germanic tradition so phrased as not to depend on previous knowledge of the tradition. 93 See above pp. 15, 17, and 27, and below, commentary on III.17. 94 See TYP4 lxv–lxix. On the poets’ knowledge of the Welsh versions of Geoffrey see Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘The Welsh Versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain”’, in Adapting Texts and Styles in a Celtic Context, ed. Axel Harlos and Neele Harlos (Münster, 2016), pp. 53–74 (pp. 54–55). 95 LlDC 40.8–10, referring to the three sons of Llywarch, recte Cynfarch (see above, p. 28 n. 13). Note also the reference to the horse of Gilberd mab kadgyffro, i.e. Gilbert de Clare, earl of Pembroke, in LlDC no. 6.11 (see TYP4 lxxxvi, xcii–xcvi, 46, 68, 105, 111, and 360–61). 96 On the poets’ possible resistance (or immunity) to Galfridian influence see Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 4, and MWG 244–45. 97 Against their identity see TYP4 372 and commentary on I.7. 91

38

Dating Englynion y Beddau

Caw (and his children), Gwalchmai, Clydno Eidyn and Urien Rheged (or rather their daughters), Bedwyr, Alun Dyfed’s son, Dyfel mab Erbin, Caer Oeth and Anoeth, Rhufawn, Gwythyr, Bradwen, Siawn, and Mabon occur; some of these, and Arthur of course, also appear in the body of the story.98 The earliest manuscript (the White Book of Rhydderch) is mid-fourteenth century, but it is generally agreed that much of Culhwch and Olwen is twelfth century.99 Fragments of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi (PKM) are first found in Peniarth MS 6 (s. xiii2), but they are probably older. While they contain a few lists, they are included in Table 1 not for that reason so much as for convenience, in order to demonstrate that the Fourth Branch (IV = Math) shares a significant number of names with Englynion y Beddau, all of them names of characters who died in the north-west. The relationship between Englynion y Beddau and Math is rather oblique: the deaths of Gwrgi, Lleu, and Gwydion are not recounted in Math; Dylan’s death, while mentioned, is not localised there; and Pryderi’s grave is at Maentwrog in Math, which may not be the same as the Aber Gwenoli of I.7, which could be somewhere in Arfon.100 Englynion y Beddau and Math seem to reflect a common body of north-western narrative rather than copying each other. Secular genealogical lists are represented in Table 1 by the Harley Genealogies (HG), the Jesus College genealogies (JC), Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd (BGG), and the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies (Ll ab Ior).101 The Harley Genealogies (MS c. 1100, but copied from a lost tenth-century text from St Davids) include Gwallawg, Clydno Eidyn (MS [C]linog), Rhydderch Hen (sic, not Hael), and Urien among its north British figures (HG 6–12), Einion ap Cunedda, Rhun ap Maelgwn, and Aergol among the Gwynedd and Dyfed ancestors (HG 1–2, etc.), and, in Powys, Brydw (HG 23), who may be the eponym of Ryd Britu (I.36). Lou hen map Guidgen (HG 16) may be Lleu Llawgyffes, but clearly the latter did not enter Englynion y Beddau in a dynastic context. The genealogies in Oxford, Jesus College MS 20 (Glamorgan, s. xiv/xv), partly draw on the same north Welsh source as the Harley Genealogies, and this accounts for their sharing Gwallawg (JC 36), Einion ap Cunedda (JC 7, 22, 39), and Rhun ap Maelgwn (JC 22) with it.102 Rhigenau of Brycheiniog (JC 8) and Aergol of Dyfed and his son Erbin (JC 12–13) seem to have come into the Jesus College genealogies by a different route.103 So did Urien and his son Owain (JC 3) and Gwrtheyrn (JC 14–16), but in their case it is obvious that the grave stanzas (I.13–14, 21, 40) are drawing on narrative sources more like Historia Brittonum and Canu Llywarch Hen than the genealogies.104 The same caveat applies to the appearance of See indices and notes in Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans. On the lists see Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 167–87 with further references. 99 See Rodway, Dating, pp. 168–74. 100 See commentary. 101 HG, JC, and BGG are cited by the numbering in EWGT. (JC 51, a king list derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth which includes Gwrtheyrn and Arthur, is ignored here.) Ll ab Ior is cited by the page in MWG 354–89. 102 See MWG 64 and 114, Tables 2.3 and 3.4 and discussion there. Interest in north British figures is easy to understand in the light of Ben Guy’s argument (‘Origins of the Compilation’) that the earliest versions of Historia Brittonum and the Harley Genealogies originated in the ninth century at Abergele, Den. (SH 9477), facing the ‘Old North’ across the Irish Sea. 103 MWG 157, Fig. 3.5. Erbin’s son Dyfel (I.27) is not in JC 12; he evidently featured in some lost narrative. 104 See my commentaries. 98

39

Kerwid

Cav

Dylan

(Llan) Bevno

Seithennin

Pryderi

Gwallauc Hir

Gwalchmei

(Kynon m.) Clytno Idin

[Panna] m. Pyd

Bedwir

Owein (m. Urien)

(llan) Morvael

Riderch Hael

(llan) Helet

Gwen m. Llyuarch Hen

I.1

I.1

I.4 cf. III.7, 13

I.4 cf. III.7, 13

I.6

I.7ab

I.7d

I.8a

I.8–11 cf. III.9

I.10 cf. III.9

I.12c

I.13–14

I.13b

I.13c

I.14

I.16

6

7

9?

HG

17

3

36 ?

JC

2

8

3

4?

BGG

355, 358, 363, 368, 385

357

359–60

357

359

369

361

356

361?

Ll ab Ior (MWG 354–89)

14

15

48 ?

40

30

59, 60

ByS 1–63

8

2, 43

3, 11, 40

21

4, [42 BBC]

5?

26

21

TYP [Early Version]

8, 65

65

2

11, 40

4

25 ?

26

21

TYP [WR Version]

Table 1 Overlap between Englynion y Beddau and Various Listing Texts

Persons

EyB

I–IV

IV

PKM I–IV

x

x

x

x

CO

34

28

22

42

32, 39

EyC

(Guyn m.) Urien

(Run m.) Alun Diwed

Dywel m. Erbin

Gurgi

Oeth ac Anoeth

Llev Llaugyfes

(ryd) Britu

(Beidauc Rut m.) Emer Lydau

Gurtheyrn Gurtheneu

Elffin

Ruvaun

March

Guythur

Gugaun Cletyfrut

I.21

I.24–25 (= III.18)

I.27

I.28a

I.30

I.35 cf. III.10

I.36

I.36–38

I.40

I.42–43

I.42–43

I.44a

I.44a

I.44b

23

16?

8

HG

14–16, 18

16

12

3

JC

10

1

BGG

360

368, 376, 382, 387

368, 376, 382, 387

361

375

355, 359

Ll ab Ior (MWG 354–89)

62

19, 21–24, 58

14–16, 55

ByS 1–63

24, 40

14, 26

3

30, 38

3, 11, 33, 40

TYP [Early Version]

24, 40, 60

56

14, 26

3, 23, 61

37

20, 30, 38, 67

52

3, 33, 40

TYP [WR Version]

Table 1 Overlap between Englynion y Beddau and Various Listing Texts (continued)

Persons

EyB

IV

IV

PKM I–IV

x

x

x

x

x

x

CO 11

EyC

Arthur

Kynon

[?Cer]uid

Llemenic

Rigenev

Breint

Deheveint

Bradwen

Siaun syberv

(Ebediv m.) Maelur

Run [m. Maelgwn]

([G]arrwen f.) Hennin Henben

Airgwl

Cyhoret

Einyavn m. Cunedda

I.44c

I.45

I.49

I.50

I.55

I.56

I.58

I.62

I.67

I.68

I.70d

I.70e-71a

I.71b

I.71c

I.72

1, 3, 32

2

1

HG

7, 22, 39

12–13

22

8

JC

4 ??

BGG

356, 361, 377–79, 382

375

361, 369

357

363 ?, 388 ?

389

361 ??

357

357, 375

Ll ab Ior (MWG 354–89)

9–11, 57

10, 11

ByS 1–63

39

3, 17

44

1, 12, 20, 26

TYP [Early Version]

39

57

3, 17

44

65

12, 20, 26, 37, 56

TYP [WR Version]

Table 1 Overlap between Englynion y Beddau and Various Listing Texts (continued)

Persons

EyB

PKM I–IV

x

x

x

CO

EyC

Gwydion m. Don

Garanawc

Llovan

Dylan

(Llan) Veuno

Panna m. Pyt

Llew Llawgyffes

Agen m. Ywgri

Hed

Dylan

(Llan) Veuno

(Disgyrrin) Disgyffeddawt

Ylidir Mwynvawr

Mabon m. Madron

(Run m.) Alun Dyve[d]

III.3a

III.3c

III.5–8

III.7 cf. 13, I.4

III.7 cf. 13, I.4

III.9 cf. I.10

III.10 cf. I.35

III.11

III.12

III.13 cf. 7, I.4

III.13 cf. 7, I.4

III.14

III.15

III.16

III.18 = I.24–25

16?

HG

JC

12

BGG

359

361

388–89 ?

388–89 ?

361

369

361

389 ?

360

Ll ab Ior (MWG 354–89)

30

30

ByS 1–63

44

10, 32

30, 38

33

TYP [Early Version]

52

44

10

20, 30, 38, 67

33

28, 67

TYP [WR Version]

Table 1 Overlap between Englynion y Beddau and Various Listing Texts (continued)

Persons

EyB

IV

IV

IV

IV

PKM I–IV

x

x

CO

36

42

42

EyC

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Llywarch Hen and Gwrtheyrn in the Jesus College genealogies (JC 17–18, which derive from the Rhodri Mawr genealogies fabricated in Gwynedd in the twelfth century).105 Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd (BGG), found in Peniarth MS 45 (Breconshire?, s. xiv1),106 deals only with the men of north Britain, as its name implies. In it Urien, Clydno Eidyn, and Llywarch Hen appear again (unlike their sons Owain, Cynon, and Gwên in Englynion y Beddau), as does Rhydderch Hael. The names of Elffin ap Gwyddno and Elidir Mwynfawr are both in BGG but not in HG or JC; but the genealogies are unlikely to be particularly relevant to the relevant grave stanzas, I.42–43 and III.15, which clearly relate to narrative sources attested elsewhere. It is uncertain whether Cerwyd ap Pabo Post Prydain (BGG 4) is commemorated in I.1 and I.49. Gwallawg, Einion, and his father Cunedda are notably absent from Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd. In short, for the most part the three sets of secular genealogies discussed so far are only tangentially relevant to Englynion y Beddau, showing a common interest in a few early heroes and dynasts. From the point of view of the structure of Englynion y Beddau, the most significant overlap is between the genealogies and Part 2 of Series I, where important dynasts appear in I.70–72, possibly suggesting a change of emphasis in those added stanzas. The Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies (Ll ab Ior in Table 1) are a much more ambitious and comprehensive compilation, probably made at the Cistercian abbey of Aberconwy between 1216 and c. 1223, in the interests of Llywelyn Fawr of Gwynedd, as argued by Ben Guy (see below, p. 68). Inevitably many of the people of HG, JC, and BGG recur, but old literary sources were evidently exploited as well as genealogies. The sections Plant Kyndrwyn (3), Plant Llywarch Hen (6), Plant Don o Arfon (10.1), and Plant Math mab Mathonwy (10.2), draw on the extant saga englynion and on narratives contained, or reflected, in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. This accounts for the inclusion of Morfael, Heledd, and Cynon in I.13, 14, and 45 (Plant Kyndrwyn), Gwên and his father (Plant Llywarch Hen), Gwydion (Plant Don o Arfon), and Dylan and Lleu Llawgyffes (Plant Math mab Mathonwy). The section Plant Yaen (3) evidently refers to characters in lost Arfon legends, including Iaen’s son Siawn, whose grave at Bangor is commemorated in I.67.107 Probably all the above sections of the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies reflect literature circulating in Gwynedd which was independently available to its compilers and to the authors of Englynion y Beddau. The name of Penda of Mercia’s father is given as Pyd, as in I.10 and III.9 (and Marwnad Cynddylan), but the relationship is oblique, for the context differs: the Genealogies’ Pyd is the maternal grandfather of Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon of Gwynedd, possibly due to the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth (see commentary on I.10). The Deheveint of I.58 may correspond to one or other of the ancestors of this name (or a similar one) in the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies, but that is quite uncertain (see commentary). MWG 157, Fig. 3.5. Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Historical Need’. MWG 427; RWMS II 214 s. X87. 107 Arthur also appears in this section, since Iaen’s daughter was one of his mistresses. On the kinship between Arthur and Iaen’s family, here and in Culhwch, see WCD 376. The only other reference to Arthur in the ‘Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies’ is in the periodisation by oes Arthur versus oes veibion Rodri Mawr etc. (MWG 375). In another section (Ll ab Ior 9.3.2), Gwythur, who is mentioned with Arthur in I.44 and in Culhwch and the Triads, is assigned a northern ancestry back to Dyfnwal Hen (see WCD 296 and 358); as no Arthurian connection is mentioned, there is unlikely to be any close connection between this reference to him and I.44. 105 106

44

Dating Englynion y Beddau

At the very end of the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies, pedigrees of the descendants of two roughly eleventh-century Denbighshire dynasts are given: Hedd and Braint Hir. Asser ap Gwrgi ap Hed may correspond to the Agen/Ager ap Ywgri and Hed of the corrupt III.11–12, which seem to be interpolated narrative englynion, referring to some twelfth-century battle. Assuming that the genealogy of Braint Hir is fictitious, it may be that he and his great-grandfather Garanawg Glewddigar are the Breint of I.56 and Garanawc of III.3. The twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century saints’ genealogies in Bonedd y Saint are semi-secular, since they link the saints, rightly or wrongly, to important dynasties. St Beuno (ByS 30) is the only saint of Bonedd y Saint who is mentioned in Englynion y Beddau, within the place-name Llan Bevno (I.4/III.7 and 13). The other relevant names are various saints’ secular relatives. The following discussion of Bonedd y Saint is limited to what Bartrum refers to as Part 1 (ByS 1–63). It is first found in Peniarth 16 (s. xiii2) and the above mentioned Peniarth 45 (these are also the earliest manuscripts of the Triads).108 Barry Lewis has argued that their archetype was a lost Cistercian text at Valle Crucis which derived from a late-twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century original compiled further west at one of the old clas churches in Gwynedd, probably the one at Clynnog, or at least drawing on material from there.109 The saints’ secular relatives that recur in Englynion y Beddau have predominantly northern connections. Einion ap Cunedda (cf. I.72) is the ancestor of six north Welsh saints (ByS 9–11 and 57), two of them (ByS 10–11) through Rhun ap Maelgwn (cf. I.70). Several of the northern heroes discussed above reappear in Bonedd y Saint. Owain ab Urien is the father of Cyndeyrn (Kentigern) of St Asaph (ByS 14) and Urien is father of St Cadell (ByS 16) and the ancestor of St Gwrwst of Llanrwst and St Nidan of Llanidan (ByS 15 and 55), while Clydno Eidyn is St Gwrwst’s maternal grandfather (ByS 15). All four are northern Welsh saints.110 The mother of another northern saint, St Elaeth Frenin (ByS 48), is the daughter of Gwallawg (the one at I.7?). Insofar as there is any pattern here, it is that both Bonedd y Saint and Englynion y Beddau Series I, particularly Part 2 of the latter (I.70–72) and some of the earlier stanzas of its Part 1, have a northern bias. Just as Gwrtheyrn (I.40) appears in JC 18 as a prestigious ancestor of Rhodri Mawr, so in ByS 62 he appears as the ancestor of the Gwynedd saint Dona. Caw (I.1), possibly the well-attested ancestor of Gildas and other saints, appears in ByS 59–60.111 A rarer and therefore more interesting correspondence between Englynion y Beddau and Bonedd y Saint is the appearance of Seithennin (I.6), king of Maes Gwyddno (beneath Cardigan Bay), as the father of several saints who escaped the deluge and settled in Gwynedd (ByS 40). The name of one of them, Sen(n)euyr, looks like a misunderstanding of sinhuir/synhuir ‘sense’ in the grave stanza itself.112 Emyr Lydaw (I.36–38), an omnipurpose Breton ancestor, recurs in Bonedd y Saint as the grandfather of various saints in Gwynedd, Ceredigion, and Powys (ByS 19, 21–24, 58).113 Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship’, pp. 146 n. 21 and 151. 109 Ibid., pp. 139 n. 2, 151, and 153–54; Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 84–85; and apud MWG 42. See now Bonedd y Saint, ed. Lewis. 110 On St Cadell see WCD 73 and Bonedd y Saint, ed. Lewis. 111 For other descendants of Caw see EWGT 176 s.n. and WCD 112–14. 112 See commentary on I.20–23. 113 Cf. Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, pp. 302 and 332–34. 108

45

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Trioedd Ynys Prydain is a sort of index, in mnemonic threes, to the same sort of legendary past as is reflected in Englynion y Beddau. The complete ‘Early Version’ is first found in the same two manuscripts as the earliest version of Bonedd y Saint – Peniarth MSS 16 (s. xiii2) and 45 (s. xiv1) – but some of the Triads of the Horses (Triads 38–46) are attested slightly earlier in the Black Book of Carmarthen (s. xiii med.).114 As they stand the Triads cannot be earlier than the twelfth century since they refer to Gilbert fab Cadgyffro, apparently Gilbert de Clare (d. 1114), along with his horse,115 and Alan Fergant, duke of Brittany, 1084–1112.116 The first datable allusions to the Triads are in 1156 and 1160, referring respectively to Triads 31 and 29.117 A date c. 1150 for the Early Version would be hard to disprove, but one must allow that some of its triads may be earlier and others later. Rachel Bromwich argued for a southern Welsh origin for the Early Version, with a Powys influence on the expanded ‘WR’ version in the White Book (c. 1350) and the Red Book (c. 1400).118 The ‘WR’ version is evidently later than the Early Version, and, unlike it, shows the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth.119 It is shown in a separate column in Table 1.120 The Triads and Englynion y Beddau do not seem to be directly connected.121 Rather they both reflect some of the same traditions. To take the Early Version first, some of the northern heroes mentioned above recur: Caw (I.1), not in his own right but as the father of Hueil (Triad 21); Gwallawg (I.7); Urien, Owain, and Rhydderch Hael (I.13–14 and 21); Llywarch Hen (I.16); and Elidir Mwynfawr (III.15). A northern character absent from the above-mentioned genealogies is Dysgyfydawd (cf. III.14), who appears in Triads 10 and 32 as the father of the Three Chieftains of Deira and Bernicia who performed the Three Fortunate Slaughters, and another is Llofan Llaw Ddifo (III.5–8) who slew Urien Rheged, one of the Three Unfortunate Slaughters (Triad 33). Lleu Llawgyffes (I.35/III.10) recurs in Triads 30 and 38, clearly as the character in the Fourth Branch. Pryderi (I.7) also appears in the Four Branches, but Triad 26 has a presumably southern story, absent from the Four Branches, about him guarding Pendaran Dyfed’s swine in the south, at Glyn Cuch, Pem./Crm. Important dynastic ancestors such as Einion ap Cunedda and Aergol Dyfed are absent from the Triads, with the exception of Rhun ap Maelgwn (I.70) who appears among the Three Fortunate Princes (gwyndeyrn) and Three Fettered Men (Triads 3 and 17), LlDC no. 6. See discussion of the Triads of the Horses in TYP4 lxxx–lxxxvii and the critique in LPBT 387–89. On similarities between the Triads and Bonedd y Saint see Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 95–99. 115 LlDC no. 6.11; TYP4 nos 24 and 39. See above n. 95, and commentary to I.71 below. In TYP4 361 Gilbert’s son, also called Gilbert, is considered as a further possibility. 116 TYP4 no. 30. See commentary to I.36–38 below. In TYP1 cxxi Rachel Bromwich was inclined to regard these references as interpolations, largely because she accepted Ifor Williams’s c. 1060 date for the Four Branches, which refer to some of the Triads. She later pulled back slightly, noting that a redating of the Four Branches to c. 1120 would allow the inclusion of Alan Fergant and Gilbert de Clare to be original (TYP4 xcviii n. 167). Even the c. 1120 terminus may be too early; see Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 189–91. 117 ‘Owain Cyfeiliog’ and Cynddelw: CBT II no. 14.37 and 123–38 (and pp. 222–23) and III no. 9.20; TYP4 xcvii, 63, and 71. 118 TYP4 xcvi–xcviii. Her argument for south Wales does not depend on the bias towards St Davids in Triad 1, which she regarded as an interpolation: TYP4 xci. 119 See Rebecca Shercliff, ‘Arthur in Trioedd Ynys Prydain’, in Arthur in the Celtic Languages, ed. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Erich Poppe (Cardiff, 2019), pp. 173–86. 120 The numbers refer to the ordering in TYP4, not to the ordering in the White and Red Books. 121 Although TYP4 lv describes them as ‘extremely relevant’ to each other. 114

46

Dating Englynion y Beddau

while his father Maelgwn appears in Triad 1 and in the story of Elidir Mwynfawr in Triad 44. In Triad 3 Rhun ap Maelgwn is linked with Rhufawn (I.42–43) as well as with Owain ab Urien. More or less Arthurian heroes are: Gwalchmai (I.8) in Triad 4 and the Black Book version of Triad 42; Bedwyr (I.12), interpolated as a fourth Diademed Battle-leader in Triad 21; March (I.44); and, of course, Arthur himself (coupled in I.44 with March). Three other characters shared by Englynion y Beddau and the Early Version are Cyhored (I.71) in Triad 39, Maelwr (I.68), eponym of Allt Faelwr (Pendinas, Aberystwyth) in Triad 44, and Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd (I.44), another Ceredigion hero, in Triads 24 and 40. The ‘WR’ version, as well as adding further Triads on some of the above characters (see Table 1), introduces ones who also occur in Englynion y Beddau. Llemenig (I.50) and Heledd (I.14) are now grouped with Llywarch Hen (I.16) as the Three Licensed Guests of Arthur’s Court and Three Homeless (or Dissatisfied) Ones (Triad 65). Mabon ap Madron (III.16) and Oeth and Anoeth (I.30) appear in Triad 52 (the Three Exalted Prisoners) as Mabon ap Modron and as the proprietors(?) of Arthur’s prison, Kaer Oeth ac Anoeth. Gwythur (I.44) is the father of Gwenhwyfar ferch Gwythyr, one of Arthur’s Three Chief Queens (Triad 56), and Garrwen ferch Hennin Hen (I.70) is one of his Three Concubines (Triad 57). Gwydion ap Dôn (III.3) is added to Triad 28, the Three Great Enchantments, and figures alongside Lleu (I.35/III.10) in a new Triad 67, the Three Golden Shoemakers (as in Math). Gwrtheyrn (I.40) is mentioned in a revised version of the Three Disclosures (Triad 37).122 No clear pattern emerges from this comparison between Englynion y Beddau and the first two recensions of the Triads. They seem to reflect independent knowledge of about twenty-eight traditional characters. Considering that some are very well attested figures, the overlap is unremarkable. The only plausible point of contact is stanza I.44, which differs in character from the other englynion. It contrasts the existence of graves for March, Gwythur, and Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd with the lack of a grave for Arthur. It may be significant that all four of these characters appear in the Triads (although Gwythur is missing from the Early Version of Triad 56).123 The final listing-text in Table 1 is Englynion y Clywaid, a collection of proverbs randomly ascribed to traditional personages, chosen merely because their names rhyme with the proverb. It is first found in two south-eastern manuscripts (s. xiv/ xv) – Oxford, Jesus College, 20, in the same hand as the Jesus College Genealogies, and Llanstephan 27 (the Red Book of Talgarth) – and its contents reflect southern and mid-Welsh interests, similar to those in Culhwch and Olwen.124 The names shared with Englynion y Beddau are: Urien; Rhydderch (trydyd hael ‘one of the Three Generous Ones’); Hyled (sic) merch Kyndrwyn (cf. I.14); Caw (as father of Hueil, as in the Triads, and as father of Bangar);125 Llywarch henwr; Dysgyfdawt father of Ysgafnell (cf. Disgyrin Disgyfdawd in III.14); and St Beuno (cf. I.4/III.7 and 13). As Table 1 shows, all these are well known from other sources such as the genealogies, Triads, and Culhwch,126 and no particular connection with Englynion y Beddau is apparent.

Triad 37 is only missing from the White Book because of a lacuna (TYP4 xxi). Gwrtheyrn also appears in Triad 51, but this triad may not be much older than the Red Book itself (TYP4 141). 123 In the ‘WR’ Triad 56 the name is vthyr owing to lenition of Gv- after uerch. Cf. TYP4 395–96 and 515. 124 See CC no. 31 (references in Table 1 are to Haycock’s numbering). 125 For Bangar ap Caw see EWGT 85 (ByA §3 = MWG 357) and WCD 113. 126 CC 316. 122

47

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Conclusion Taking all the above considerations into account, I would place the composition of the surviving englynion y beddau in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries, without excluding the possibility that some may be older and a few later. These are cautious dates,127 and are not meant to rule out the possibility that nearly all the stanzas may have been composed at about the same period, say c. 1150.

127

On current caution about early dating see Barry J. Lewis, review of Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, in CMCS, 83 (Summer 2022), 89–92.

48

3 THE GROWTH, RELATIONSHIP, AND TRANSMISSION OF THE TEXTS

It might be supposed that the extant series of Englynion y Beddau are the result of combining shorter, exclusively regional series comparable to the Irish poem on the graves of the Leinstermen.1 Good evidence to the contrary is provided by the stanzas which group more than one grave place within the indivisible unit of the englyn (I.4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 26, 36, 39(?), 44, 46, 50, 71; III.3(?), 7, 9, 13).2 While some of the paired places are very close together (I.4/III.13, I.46, III.7) or at least in the same part of Wales (I.7, I.12(?), I.36, III.3(?)), others of them are widely separated, notably I.10/III.9 (graves in England and Wales), I.26 (Ardudwy and Brycheiniog), and I.71 (Dinorben and Dyfed), and quite likely I.8, I.13, and I.50 as well.3 Evidently their authors were not composing englynion for series organised on a regional basis. A work not limited to a narrow geographical area can nevertheless show a regional bias, owing to the limitations of its author’s knowledge or interests. An example is the Old English tract on ‘The Saints who Rest in England’, which reached its current form c. 1031. Despite its title, the first half is biased towards Northumbria and Mercia, while the second half, which was evidently added later, ignores Northumbria and is biased towards Wessex.4 Another good example is the eleventh-century(?) Irish tract on the ‘Wonders of Ireland’.5 In its fullest form, in the Book of Ballymote, it has 34 entries, of which less than a third refer to Munster and Leinster,6 indicating a northern or central Irish place of origin for the tract.7 The eleventh-century Latin version lacks items 15–20, 25, 27–28, 30 and 33, nearly all of which refer to places in Meath. This indicates that the vernacular ‘Wonders of Ireland’ was originally a regionally biased northern compilation, subsequently conflated with a strongly regional Meath collection of marvels. It is interesting from our point of view to note that the latter (Meath) collection is not dispersed through the expanded text; on the contrary, its entries tend to survive in clumps, between item 15 and the end of the On this see above, p. 24. Note also Series II.2 (= CLlH I.43); cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance’, pp. 46–47. 3 I leave aside I.39 and I.44. TYP4 liv n. 54 compares the ‘grouping of names from independent narratives and different traditional strata’ in the Triads. 4 Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, pp. 62–68. 5 Edited and translated by James Hawthorn Todd, The Irish Version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius (Dublin, 1848), pp. 192–219. 6 As noted by Gwynn, Writings of Bishop Patrick, p. 127, this is surprising, in that the Ballymote version is ‘according to the Book of Glendalough’. We can compare the preservation of Series I, with its northern bias, in the southern Black Book of Carmarthen. 7 Perhaps put together at Clonmacnoise soon after 1054. See Carey, ‘The Finding of Arthur’s Grave’, pp. 9–10; Elizabeth Boyle, ‘On the Wonders of Ireland: Translation and Adaptation’, in Authorities and Adaptations: The Reworking and Transmission of Textual Sources in Medieval Ireland, ed. Elizabeth Boyle and Deborah Hayden (Dublin, 2014), pp. 233–61 (pp. 247–48). 1 2

49

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

‘Wonders’. A similar tendency, and various regional biases (to be discussed later), can also be detected in other compilations, such as Bonedd y Saint9 and Englynion y Beddau. Compilers of medieval lists, working without file cards and word processors, would squeeze in additions at the beginning and end of texts, and in spaces between the lines and in the margins. This procedure can sometimes be detected in fair copies, as when unalphabetised items occur within an alphabetical sequence.10 Englynion were short enough to be inserted marginally and then creep into the body of a text in subsequent copies.11 In what follows, hypothetical forerunners of the extant Series I and III are investigated under the headings: ‘Stanzas linked by wording and/or subject matter’ and ‘Thematic links in the hypothetical “proto-series”’. These sections then form the starting point for a wider discussion of ‘The transmission of Englynion y Beddau’. 8

Stanzas linked by wording and/or subject matter The extant englynion may have come from a variety of sources, possibly in small groups of stanzas. The existence of such groups may still be detected when consecutive englynion are linked by chains of verbal repetition or by subject matter:12 I.1–3 are an introductory sequence linked by incremental repetition13 and alliterating names reminiscent of the Gododdin. No locations are mentioned. (I.69 seems to be a comparable closing englyn to Part 1 of Series I, striking a rare religious note.) I.4–5 alone have the formula yg godir – but this may be due to secondary contamination of I.4 by I.5 as the formula is absent from III.13, a variant of I.4. I.8–11 all refer to the grave of Cynon – but I.11 looks like an accretion, as it asks who is in Cynon’s grave, which has already been stated in I.8 and 10. I.12–16 are linked in various ways. I.12 and 14–15 share the elegiac gwedy formula. I.13 and 14 refer to the grave of Owain ab Urien. I.16, on the grave of Gwên ap Llywarch Hen, seems to fit in here since the early saga englynion are evoked by the names of Owain ab Urien and Morfael (I.13), Heledd (I.14), and Cynddylan (I.15); note also the repetition of hun ‘this’ in I.15c and 16c. I.17–19 all refer to the grave of Meigen ap Rhun. I.20–23 all refer to the three graves in Pant Gwinn Gvinionauc.

Gwynn, Writings of Bishop Patrick, pp. 126–28. Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship’, p. 142 n. 6, and his forthcoming edition of Bonedd y Saint. 10 For a late-thirteenth-century example see Sims-Williams, ‘Shrewsbury School MS 7’. 11 Cf. R. Geraint Gruffydd, ‘The Englynion in Llyfr Aneirin (Canu Aneirin, lines 535–37, 1209– 11)’, in A Celtic Florilegium, ed. Kathryn A. Klar et al. (Lawrence, MA, 1996), pp. 32–39. Compare the insertion of St Peris in Bonedd y Saint: Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship at Valle Crucis Abbey’, p. 142. 12 For detailed discussion see the commentaries on the relevant stanzas. 13 On ‘incremental repetition’ see EWSP 351 and 358 n. 112. 8 9

50

The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts I.24–25 refer to the graves of Alun Dyfed ap Meigen and his son Rhun, and share the same rhyme. Meigen may be the Meigen ap Rhun of I.17–19; if so, I.20–23 may have been inserted between I.17–19 and I.24–25. I.26–27 may be linked by the rhyme between Gewel and Dywel. I.28–30 all refer to graves at Gwanas, Mer. They seem to have been brought together on that account, for I.29–30 do not follow on smoothly from I.28. I.31–33 are linked in that 32–33 share a rhyme and probably both refer to graves on Hirfynydd, while Llwch Llawengyn (31) has a llaw epithet which may have put the poet in mind of Llwyddawg (33), owing to the proverbial expression llwyddawg llaw ddifo. I.36–38 all refer to the grave of Beidawg Rudd. I.39–40 may be connected if, as Melville Richards hinted, the place-name Guynnassed in I.39 put a compiler in mind of Gwrtheyrn (I.40), who was believed to be buried in the ‘region of Gwynnys’ (near Clynnog). I.42–43 refer to Elffin and Rhufawn and are evidently part of the Taliesin legend. I.46–47 both refer to Eiddef and Eidal. I.47 alludes to the sons of Meigen, possibly the Meigen of I.17–19 and 24–25 above. I.51 and 54 both refer to Llachar (I.52 and 53 may have therefore been interpolated between them). I.56 and 58 are linked by the rhyme -eint; I.57 may have been interpolated. I.60–61 refer to nearby rivers in Ceredigion. I.70–71 (in Part 2, added by the later hand) both refer to Hennin. I.72–73 (in the same addition) probably both allude to the family of Cunedda. III.5–8 concern Llofan, and 5–6 share the gwedy formula. III.11–12 may refer to the death of Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd in the twelfth century. III.13–14 concern Tydai Tad Awen and Disgyrin who may both be bards – the only ones mentioned in Englynion y Beddau.

Other stanzas in Series I and III may also belong to the above groups, even though this is not now obvious. (Geographical connections are discussed below.) The present order of stanzas could have arisen in a variety of ways, for example through interpolating marginal englynion into the text when copying or through gathering additional stanzas from written or oral sources. There is evidence for disintegration as well as accretion. Thus Series I and Series III seem each to have selected one of what seems to have been a pair of stanzas on Lleu Llawgyffes (I.35 + III.10); see below. Again, Series I (I.45) has the only second of the two stanzas on Maes Maodyn that are known from the Red Book of Hergest and elsewhere (Thomas Jones’s Series II.4–5); Series I may omit the first of them because it concerned 51

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

the grave of a woman rather than a warrior – women’s graves only appear in the added stanza I.70.14 I.45 and II.5 share the peculiar spelling Elchwith/Elwithan for Elwydd(an), which points to a lost written source behind the Black Book and the Red Book (and the manuscripts related to it). In Series III, the fact that III.1 (= I.33) and III.18 (= I.24) are single englynion from the above sequences I.31–34 and I.24–25 need not be the result of disintegration; it may be due to their position at the beginning and end of Series III, where relevant material may have been lost, assuming that Series III is a copy of a page from a more extensive volume.15 That explanation cannot apply, however, to III.9 (= I.10), Series III’s only stanza from the Cynon sequence, I.8–11; most of that sequence has been either omitted by Series III or added by Series I – or a mixture of both processes has occurred. The relationship between Series I and III is too complex to be explained by the notion that compiler(s) of one series were simply selecting stanzas from the other.16 For example, if a compiler of Series III had a complete text of Series I,17 he would surely have included more of it, such as the stanza on Braint’s grave beside the Llyfni (I.56), which would fit in with the Series III stanza on another grave by that river (III.2). Moreover, if the compiler(s) of Series III were simply amalgamating their own stanzas with ones selected from Series I, one would expect the Series I group to appear as a block in Series III, which they do not. This last argument applies mutatis mutandis to the notion that the compiler(s) of Series I drew on an early text of Series III. Probably, then, the compilers of the two series drew on common materials for their five similar stanzas, which appear in differing orders in the two: (i) I.4 = III.13 (Tydai and Dylan) (ii) I.10 = III.9 (Panna and Cynon) (iii) I.24 = III.18 (Rhun ab Alun Dyfed) (iv) I.33 = III.1 (Ffyrnfael) (v) I.35 ~ III.10 (Lleu Llawgyffes)

The variation in wording between the Series I and III versions of these five englynion could be due to scribal and/or oral transmission,18 with the exception of (v), where the two versions differ greatly. Probably I.35 and III.10 are not variants on a single stanza but a pair of linked stanzas, with incremental repetition, which got split up, like the Maes Maodyn stanzas mentioned above. The splitting could be due to eyeskip from one similar first line to the other, or simply to two prosaic compilers deciding that only one englyn was required to locate the grave of Lleu Llawgyffes.

Series II.4–5 = CLlH XI.102–3; see above, p. 3, and the commentary on I.45. See above, p. 15. 16 It is, however, possible that some compilers would have been aware of the existence of other series and would have intended their own series to complement rather than duplicate them. We can sometimes detect medieval compilers avoiding duplicating material which may have been reserved for some other codex; thus the Book of Taliesin excludes englynion and the Red Book of Hergest excludes cywyddau. Cf. MWM 79, 82–83, 86–88, and 246. 17 Not the Black Book itself, which has the inferior reading Run at I.10 for III.9’s superior Panna. 18 For comparable variation in the Gododdin texts and Gereint fab Erbin englynion see Sims-­ Williams, ‘Uses of Writing’, p. 29. 14 15

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The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts

That I.35 + III.10 originally stood together as a pair is indicated by their stylistic and metrical similarity to III.7–8 on Llofan Llaw Ddifo (see below). Hypothetically, the common materials from which (i) – (v) were drawn could have ranged from a series of englynion y beddau down to a number of isolated ‘floating’ stanzas. The latter is unlikely, for two reasons. Firstly, there is not much evidence for single grave-stanzas being transmitted in isolation.19 Secondly, four of the five stanzas listed above seem to be interrelated in metre, style, or content (see below). The exception is (iii), which may therefore be originally unconnected with the other four. It is not inconceivable that III.18 was added at the end of Series III, even perhaps from a manuscript related to the Black Book itself.20 The preceding late-looking III.17, which postdates Geoffrey of Monmouth and the borrowing of English hap, certainly looks like an addition. I have suggested elsewhere that if we argue from the four stanzas’ similarities with each other and with other englynion y beddau with regard to metre, style, and content (ignoring minor or commonplace stylistic similarities, and leaving out geography to avoid a circular argument), we can recover a core ‘proto-series’: I.4/III.13 (Tydei, Dylan), I.7 (Pryderi, Gwallawg), I.8 (Gwalchmai, Cynon), I.9 (Cynon), I.10/III.9 (Panna, Cynon), I.11 (Cynon), I.12 (Osfran, Bedwyr), I.13 (Owain, Rhydderch), I.14 (Owain), I.15 (Cynddylan), I.16 (Gwên ap Llywarch Hen), I.31 (Llwch), I.32 (Gwrien, Llwyddawg), I.33/III.1 (Ffyrnfael), I.35 + III.10 (Lleu), I.56 (Braint), III.2 (Gwanwyn), III.5 (Llofan), III.6 (Llofan), III.7 (Llofan, Dylan), III.8 (Llofan), III.14 (Disgyrin).21

The relationships within the ‘proto-series’ are shown in Figure 1. To start with the pair on Lleu, the metrically impossible line I.35c gur guir y neb ny rotes looks as if it was influenced by the corresponding line III.10c, gwr oedd ef, gwahoddai ormes, where the oedd is metrical, at a time when the two englynion stood together. Furthermore, the whole of line a remains the same in both I.35 and III.10 (Bed Llev Llaugyfes (y) dan achles mor) while lines b and c change. This type of incremental repetition is uncommon in the early englyn poetry, though not unknown,22 and the only example where a single rhyme runs through both stanzas (as in I.35/III.10) is the pair of englynion y beddau on Llofan Llaw Ddifo (III.7–8), which have exactly the same rhyme scheme as the Lleu stanzas. This suggests that the two Lleu stanzas and the four Llofan stanzas belong to the same school of poetry and are perhaps by the same poet. It may be significant that Lleu and Llofan both have llaw-epithets. The stanza on Gwanwyn (III.2) seems to have been influenced by that on Lleu (I.35), or vice versa, since III.2c gwr gwir i neb ni roddi has the same unmetrical oedd after gwr as in I.35c. In turn y rug Lle[wn]i a’e lledneint / bet gur …

Examples are the one concluding the Black Book poem (LlDC no. 39) on Seithennin (but this may well be an integral part of it) and the ones attached to the Llywarch Hen poems. See commentary on I.6 and I.16 and Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 46– 47, and above, p. 19. 20 See above p. 37 for the very hypothetical suggestion that III.18a ryde may ultimately go back to a misreading of ked in the Black Book. 21 Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 120. 22 Cf. Stauell Gyndylan ys tywyll heno, repeated in CLlH XI.18–20, 25–26, and 32. On the avoidance of rhymes running through a series of englynion see EWSP 331. 19

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Figure 1: The Proto-Series.

in the stanza on Braint (I.56) seems to have been modelled on, or to have influenced, rhwng Lliwon a Llyfni, / gwr … in the stanza on Gwanwyn (III.2).23 The stanza on Tydai Tad Awen and Dylan (I.4/III.13) must be associated with that on Llofan and Dylan (III.7), since the same refrain about Dylan occurs in both. The stanza on Disgyrin (ap?) Disgyfdawd (III.14) probably forms a pair with the preceding stanza on Tydai (III.13); as noted above, both may be bards. The first-­person, elegiac note in III.14 (‘I have heard the wave (running) heavy over the sand around The stanza on Braint is sandwiched between two stanzas (I.55 and 57) which share with it the opening formula Piev y bet …?, but as this formula is very common it is not enough to establish a connection between the three stanzas I.55–57.

23

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The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts

the grave …’) is unusual in Englynion y Beddau and may be another link with the Dylan stanza (III.7), where the poet says that ‘only God and I tonight’ know Dylan’s grave on the shore. Another stanza which seems to pair with that on Tydai and Dylan (I.4/III.13) is the one on Pryderi and Gwallawg (I.7), which stands nearby in Series I. The two are similar in diction and especially in metre;24 they seem to come from the same mould. As already mentioned, I.31–34 form a group in Series I. I.31–33 (and I.33’s doublet III.1), like the stanzas on Llofan (III.5–8), describe characters with names in Ll- and opprobrious llaw epithets: Llwch Llawengyn, Llwyddawg (whose name recalls the proverb llwyddawg llaw ddifo), and Llofan Llaw Ddifo. The transference of the epithet Llawengyn to Llofan in III.6 also suggests that the Llofan and Llwch stanzas originally stood together. Lleu Llawgyffes (I.35/III.10) may also belong to this group of characters with names in Ll- and llaw epithets. The stanza on Llwch, ‘head of the Saeson of Erbin’s land’ (I.31), forms a clear pair with that on the Mercian king Panna, that is, Penda (I.10/III.9). Nowhere else are Englishmen mentioned in Englynion y Beddau and the diction is similar (ar certenhin avon ~ in ergrid avon). Moreover, in both Series I and Series III, the Panna/ Cynon englyn stands near some englynion which have already been mentioned. The appearance of Cynon in the Panna stanza brings I.8–9, and perhaps I.11,25 with their further mentions of Cynon, into the same group. The pair of stanzas on Llofan Llaw Estrawn and Llofan Llaw Engyn (III.5–6), as Ifor Williams pointed out,26 are linked with the stanzas on Owain at llan Helet and Cynddylan (I.14–15) by their very similar diction. They all refer to characters in the early saga englynion, as do I.13, on Owain ab Urien at llan Morvael, and I.16, on Gwên ap Llywarch Hen. Finally, the gwedy formula in I.12 (Osfran and Bedwyr) seems to link it with III.5–6 and I.14–15. Series I and III probably originated in the disintegration in oral or written transmission of the above proto-series of stanzas and in the accretion of other, originally unrelated, stanzas around that core. It is noticeable that all the above ‘proto-series’ stanzas in Series I, except for I.56 on Braint, fall within the first half of Series I (I.1–35). This suggests that the above ‘proto-series’ underlies this half of Series I and was added to at various stages, and that the Braint stanza may be a later imitation of the Gwanwyn stanza (III.2) rather than a true part of the core. The additions to the core come in the form of intrusive blocks (1–3, 17–19, 20–23, 24–25, 26–27, 28–30) and apparently isolated stanzas (5, 6). Series III may also have been added to – III.17–18 are likely additions – but, since Series III is fairly short, it is more likely than Series I to be close to a unity, even though stylistic links cannot always be detected between its stanzas.

Thematic links in the hypothetical ‘proto-series’ In content, the related stanzas shown in Figure 1 display three tendencies: (i) a geographical bias towards north-west Wales, especially Arfon; (ii) an interest in characters in the early saga-englyn cycles known as Canu Llywarch Hen and Canu On their metre see below, p. 114. See above, p. 50, on the possibility that I.11 is an addition. 26 CLlH xlviii; cf. commentary on III.5, especially pp. 295–7 nn. 140 and 164. 24 25

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Heledd/Canu Cynddylan – these are particularly associated with Brycheiniog and Powys;27 and (iii) an interest in graves in rivers or the sea. It will be seen that many of the ‘proto-series’ graves which do not fit into the geographical pattern of (i) fall under the headings (ii) or (iii); I mark these with a * below. (i) Geography The following graves are probably in Arfon: III.2 Gwanwyn, between Llifon and Llyfni. I.4/III.7 and 13 Dylan at Llanfeuno and Tydai at Bryn Arien (both at or near Clynnog). III.5–8 Llofan, on the shore of the Menai. I.7 Gwallawg, at Carrog, near Morfa Dinlle (unless it is the Carrog on the shores of Eifionydd, also in the north-west). I.8–11 Cynon at Rheon ford, which was in or near Arfon according to Gwilym Ddu o Arfon. I.35/III.10 Lleu, associated with Arfon in the Four Branches – although the coast of Arllechwedd is another possible location for his grave. I.56 Braint, between the Llyfni and its tributaries.

Other parts of north-west Wales are probable in the following cases: I.7 Pryderi, at Aber Gwenoli, either at Maentwrog, Mer. (following his attack on Arfon in the Four Branches) or, according to a variant tradition, in Arfon itself. I.12 Osfran’s son, at Camlan, probably understood to be Camlan, Mer. I.12 Bedwyr, on Tryfan (Crn., probably). I.13 Rhydderch, at Aber-erch (in Llŷn, Crn.).

The following graves are probably in eastern Wales: I.32–33/III.1 Llwyddog, Gwrien and Ffyrnfael, on (Hir) Fynydd, possibly the Long Mountain, Mtg. *I.13–14 Owain ab Urien at Morfael’s and Heledd’s llan (in Powys?). *I.15 Cynddylan – no place is mentioned, but presumably in Powys. *I.16 Gwên ap Llywarch Hen – no place is mentioned, but Brycheiniog is likely.

The following are probably elsewhere: *I.8 Gwalchmai in Peryddon, possibly in Pembrokeshire.

27

See Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’ and ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’. Llywarch Hen is associated with Brycheiniog in Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 134.

56

The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts *I.10/III.9 Panna, ‘in the horror of a river’, i.e. the river Winwæd in England. *I.31 Llwch Llawengyn, ‘on/in a meandering river’: unidentified, but since Llwch is ‘head of the Saxons of Erbin’s lordship’, his grave may be in Dumnonia or, more likely, Pembrokeshire. *III.14 Disgyrin – on an unlocated shore.

(ii) The Canu Llywarch Hen and Canu Heledd/Canu Cynddylan englyn cycles The following stanzas belong here: III.5–8 Llofan, on the shore of Menai. *I.10/III.9 Panna, ‘in the tumult of a river’, i.e. the river Winwæd in England (Panna is associated with Cynddylan in Marwnad Cynddylan).28 *I.13–14 Owain ab Urien at Morfael’s and Heledd’s llan. *I.15 Cynddylan, presumably in Powys. *I.16 Gwên ap Llywarch Hen, most likely in Brycheiniog.

(iii) Graves in rivers and under the sea This category is unsurprising in view of the many allusions to submerged kingdoms in the Brittonic-speaking world, and the fact that the ‘bursting-forth (of lake or river)’ was a recognised type of tale in tenth-century Ireland.29 The theme was evidently one of widespread fascination. The following graves in the ‘proto-series’ come into this group:30 I.35/III.10 Lleu, ‘under cover of the sea, where his kinsman [i.e. Dylan son of Wave] was’. I.4/III.7 and 13 Dylan, ‘where the wave makes a noise’, in Clynnog. *III.14 Disgyrin: ‘I have heard the wave running heavy over the sand about the grave …’.

Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 41–43. North, Sunken Cities; eDIL s.v. tomaidm; Mac Cana, Learned Tales, pp. 48, 58, 81, and 107. For Irish inundation stories see Gregory Toner, ‘Landscape and Cosmology in the Dindshenchas’, in Celtic Cosmology: Perspectives from Ireland and Scotland, ed. Jacqueline Borsje et al. (Toronto, 2014), pp. 268–83. Jones, Wells, p. 53, notes that ‘of the twenty marvels mentioned by Nennius, thirteen were associated with water’. Rising sea-levels were a real problem (Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change, pp. 141 and 425), as were flooding rivers (Hywel M. Griffiths and Eurig Salisbury, ‘“The Tears I Shed were Noah’s Flood”: Medieval Genre, Floods and the Fluvial Landscape in the Poetry of Guto’r Glyn’, Journal of Historical Geography, 40 (2013), 94– 103). To this we may add the obsession with the underwater world in the Book of Taliesin poems: LPBT passim; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 50–52. In Englynion y Beddau it is sometimes ambiguous whether a grave is ‘in’ or just ‘on, beside’ a river. In traditional societies rivers are typically used for orientation; this is seen in the early part of the Old English ‘Saints Who Rest in England’ (Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, p. 62) and the earlier Anglo-Saxon charters (F. M. Stenton, review of Henry H. Howorth, The Golden Days of the Early English Church (London, 1917), in EHR, 33 (1918), 255–29 (p. 259)). Cf. Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, p. 99 n. 108. 30 As may III.4 ‘Flowing is a valley …’. 28 29

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau *I.10/III.9 Panna (Penda) ‘in the tumult of a river’, i.e. the Winwæd, which, according to Bede, overflowed during Penda’s final battle. *I.31 Llwch ‘on/in a meandering river’. I.7 Gwallawg, ‘where the waves buffet the land’. *I.8 Gwalchmai ‘in Peryddon’ (a river-name); compare William of Malmesbury’s account of the discovery of Walwen’s grave on the seashore in Rhos. III.5–8 Llofan ‘on the shore of Menai’.

The three strands of interest are sufficiently interwoven as to show that they are not found together because of secondary conflation. Thus Lleu appears in (i) and (iii), Llofan in (i), (ii), and (iii), and Panna in (ii) and (iii) and Cynon (i) appear in the same stanza (I.10/III.9). The natural inferences are that the proto-series isolated above originated in Arfon – hence the bias towards north-west Wales, especially Arfon – and that the author(s) had a particular interest (ii) in the heroes of the early englynion about Llywarch and Cynddylan and (iii) in heroes who met their ends in rivers and seas, a theme of perennial interest in coastal regions such as Arfon.31 The inundated kingdoms are particularly prominent in Bonedd y Saint, a text probably compiled at Clynnog in the twelfth or thirteenth century, according to Barry Lewis.32

The transmission of Englynion y Beddau (i) Clynnog As argued elsewhere, the regional bias of the stanzas of the ‘proto-series’ points to Arfon as its place of origin for these englynion y beddau, and in particular the clas church of St Beuno at Clynnog.33 The concentration of graves near Clynnog is very striking: Gwanwyn between Llifon and Llyfni; Braint near the Llyfni; Gwallawg at Carrog (either near Morfa Dinlle or in Eifionydd); Tydei at Bryn Arien (Bryn Beddau, near Clynnog); Llofan on the Menai; Cynon at Reon rid (in or near Arfon); and Dylan at Llanfeuno (Clynnog) itself – the name Llanfeuno, significantly, is repeated. The range of north-western places in which Clynnog had a direct interest is indicated above all by its confirmation charter from Edward IV (1461–83).34 This lists properties which had been granted to the church of Clynnog before the time of (legal?) memory (1283?) and had been held for 800 years, until being wrongly North, Sunken Cities; Patrick D. Nunn, ‘In Anticipation of Extirpation: How Ancient Peoples Rationalized and Responded to Postglacial Sea Level Rise’, Environmental Humanities, 12.1 (2020), 113–31; and the papers referenced by Simon K. Haslett and David Willis, ‘Reply to the Discussion of “The ‘Lost’ Islands of Cardigan Bay, Wales, UK: Insights into the Post-­Glacial Evolution of Some Celtic Coasts of Northwest Europe” by Catherine Delano-Smith, Phil Bradford, and William Shannon’, Atlantic Geoscience, 58 (2022), 303–5. 32 EWGT 60–61 (ByS §§40 and 42); Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship at Valle Crucis Abbey’, pp. 140–41, and apud MWG 42; Bonedd y Saint, ed. Lewis (forthcoming). 33 Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 121–22. See further, idem, ‘Edward IV’s Confirmation Charter’, and Buchedd Beuno, pp. viii and 2–7. 34 Printed in Rec. Caern. 257–58, from BL Harley 696, 163v–164r (the charter is not in the main hand of c. 1480–85), with variants from Harley 4776, 127v–128r (s. xvi2). 31

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The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts

appropriated ‘recently’.35 It seems that this list was based on charters of ‘Celtic’ character entered in the church’s lost ‘Book of St Beuno’ (a Gospel Book or Liber Vitae?),36 supposedly written by Beuno’s disciple St Twrog in the time of the early-­ seventh-century king Cadfan.37 While the lost charters’ authenticity cannot be confirmed, some at least are surely older than the mid-twelfth century when ‘Celtic’ charter formulae ceased to be used in Wales.38 The grantors include many persons in the main royal line of Gwynedd, as indicated in Figure 2, which includes the intrusive Trahaearn ap Caradog as well as the main Gwynedd pedigree.39 The list is quite credible. A grant by Hywel Dda ap Cadell of Dyfed (no. 42) is surprising but not incredible, for he ruled Gwynedd from 942 till his death.40 The Cadell of nos 13, 17, 19, 21, and 39 may be his father, Cadell ap Rhodri Mawr (d. 909 × 910).41 The raised figures in the pedigree refer to the numbered grants, and question marks indicate uncertain identifications. Uncertainties arise when Edward IV’s charter gives names without patronymic. For example, while Merfyn princeps in no. 4 is probably Merfyn Frych (d. 844), whose kingdom probably included Llŷn and Arfon, one cannot rule out his grandson Merfyn ap Rhodri (d. 904), about whom little is known.42 Similarly Idwal Iwrch, father of Rhodri Molwynog (d. 754), Idwal Foel (d. 942), and Idwal ap Meurig (d. 996) are all possibilities for the Idwal of nos 8, 14, and 16. And is the Cadwaladr of no. 34 the same as the King Cadwaladr (d. 664) of no. 2, or could he be Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1172), who is known to Gresham, ‘Township of Neigwl’, p. 37, notes that many of the estates ‘are listed by name in the Extent of 1352, where they are recorded as being held under the tenure of Saint Beuno’, but ‘when the Valor Ecclesiasticus was drawn up in 1535 Clynnog owned no land at all, not even in its own parish’. Cf. Carr, Medieval Anglesey, pp. 274–75. The Valor refers to three capellae under Clynnog: (1) Llanwnda and Llanfaglan; (2) the ecclesia (sg.) of Llangelynnin; (3) Llangeinwen and Llangaffo (Valor Ecclesiasticus, IV, 420–21). These were presumably served by the three capellani specified in Taxatio Ecclesiastica 1291, p. 291. (1) is in the area of grants 11, 12b, and 15; (2) is 17 (Henryd); and (3) may jointly correspond to 14 (Clynnog Fechan). 36 For details see Sims-Williams, ‘Edward IV’s Confirmation Charter’; idem, ‘Uses of Writing’, pp. 22 and 26; idem, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 2–3, 18, and 71–72; and idem, Book of Llandaf, pp. 12–13, 87 n. 9, and 106–7. 37 The synchronism with Cadfan cannot be trusted, but indicates that the codex appeared to be very old. Compare the ‘Book of St Mulling’, preserved, like a relic, at St Mullins, Co. Carlow; while its colophon claims that it was written by St Mo Ling himself (d. c. 697), it is generally dated later; cf. Ó Corráin, Clavis, I, 48. The mis-information about a ‘Book of Twrog’, in LBS IV 280–81, derives from Iolo Morganwg, as does some other information on Twrog; ibid., pp. 279–82. The earliest forms of a supposed St Twrog’s Chapel in Tidenham are Tryak, etc.: A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of Gloucestershire, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1964–65): III, 265, and IV, 26. 38 See Huw Pryce, ‘The Church of Trefeglwys and the End of the “Celtic” Charter Tradition in Twelfth-Century Wales’, CMCS, 25 (Summer 1993), 15–54. 39 For details including obits see indices to EWGT and HW, and tables in HW II 765–67. Strictly speaking, the ‘main royal line’ of Gwynedd comprised two dynasties, artificially(?) linked around the generation of Merfyn Frych. See Sims-Williams, ‘Historical Need’, p. 23; MWG 234 and 245. 40 HW I 337–38; Gresham, Eifionydd, p. 201. 41 The patronymic is included in nos 17 and 39. Lloyd, HW I 326, argued that Cadell ap Rhodri Mawr ruled in south Wales, like his descendants, but there is no evidence that his brother Anarawd excluded him from Gwynedd entirely. On the sources see David N. Dumville, ‘The “Six” Sons of Rhodri Mawr: A Problem in Asser’s Life of King Alfred’, CMCS, 4 (Winter 1982), 5–18. 42 See HW I 237–38, 326, and 332. 35

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have granted the church of Nefyn in Llŷn to Haughmond Abbey?43 In the case of the Neigwl grant (no. 9), I have followed Gresham in identifying its Rodri with Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd (d. 1195), who ruled western Gwynedd, although this does not appear to be wholly certain; and the identity of the Rodri of nos 22 and 41 is also doubtful. Jonab (no. 32) I take to be a miscopying of Iouab, referring to Idwal Foel’s son Ieuaf (called Iouab in his obit in the C-text of Annales Cambriae). Even names with a patronymic can be uncertain: is the Iago ab Idwal of nos 9, 29, and 32 the grandson of Anarawd (d. 916) or the grandson of Meurig (d. 1039)? And is the Gruffudd ap Cynan of no. 30 the famous Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137), who held court at Clynnog in 1075 and was a known Clynnog benefactor, or is he his great-grandson, Gruffudd ap Cynan ab Owain (d. 1200), who ruled Gwynedd from 1195 to 1200 and was a benefactor of Aberconwy, Cymer, and Haughmond?44 I have assumed that the famous Gruffudd ap Llywelyn (d. 1063) is the grantor of nos 27, 33, 35, 40, and 43, but perhaps Gruffudd ap Llywelyn Fawr ab Iorwerth (d. 1244), who held Llŷn for a while, cannot be ruled out for some of them.45 On the whole, however, royal grants to Clynnog rather than to the newer Cistercian houses seem unlikely to have occurred after c. 1200. The estates, shown where possible on Map 4, are as follows, along with the names of any grantors not included in the pedigree:46 1 Clynnog Fawr, given by Gwithenit (recte Gwitheint, Gwyddaint?), cousin of King Cadwallon (d. 634);47 2 Graeanog, in Clynnog;48 3 Porthaml, in Llanidan, Ang., given by a king Tegwared; 4 Carnguwch, in Pistyll/Llannor; 5a Bodeilian in Llŷn and 5b Bodfel (Cafflogion), both in Llannor, given by one Cadwgan ap Cynfelyn – perhaps an error for Cadwgon ap Genellin Farchog (ap Meirion Goch o Lŷn), who held land in the relevant commote (Afloegion/Cafflogion), and whose sister Angharad married Cynan ab Owain Gwynedd (see Figure 2);49 6 Deneio, in Cafflogion; 7 A third of Maes-

Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 197. Cf. David Stephenson, ‘Events at Nefyn, c. 1200: The Plundering of King John’s Irish Hounds and Hawks’, CMCS, 75 (Summer 2018), 39–43 (p. 40). 44 See Buchedd Beuno, ed. Sims-Williams, pp. 3–4, HW II 601–2 and 613 n. 5, and Acts, ed. Pryce, nos 206–7. 45 See HW II 692–93. He was a benefactor of Ystrad Marchell: Acts, ed. Pryce, nos 282–83. 46 The map in Johns, ‘Celtic Monasteries of North Wales’, has been useful. Place names (all are in Crn. unless otherwise noted) are given in modern spelling as in WATU and AMR. The latter often cites Edward’s charter, either with reference to Rec. Caern. or to ‘AC 1848.253–55’. In addition to Rec. Caern. 257, I have consulted variants in the copies listed in the commentary on III.15 below (p. 320 n. 268). 47 On him see Buchedd Beuno, ed. Sims-Williams, pp. 18, 71–72, and 149. 48 Cf. R. S. Kelly, ‘The Excavation of a Medieval Farmstead at Cefn Graeanog, Clynnog, Gwynedd’, B., 29 (1980–82), 859–908. 49 Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies 300–1400, IV, 713 (Meirion Goch 1); EWGT 115, 118, and 157 (HL §§4d and 9e); MWG 384 and 387; WATU 135 and 286. His grandfather Meirion was associated with Clynnog in 1075 (see no. 7 below). Cadwgon ap Genellin gave his name to a gwely in the vills of Cilan and Bryncelyn (in Llanengan), wely Cað ap Genythlī, and his brothers gave their names to other gwelyau in Cafflogion. See Rec. Caern. 27 and 30, where the mispellings of Genellin (Kenythlin, Keuenythlyn, etc.) provide a parallel for Genellin > Gennelin > Cenuelin = Kynvelyn. For land tenure in Cafflogion see T. Jones Pierce, ‘A Lleyn Lay Subsidy Account’, B., 5 (1929–31), 54–71, and idem, Medieval Welsh Society, pp. 49 and 60. 43

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The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts dref (unidentified),50 given by Griffri ap Tunglan, who is unidentified, unless perhaps Tunglan is the Tangno of c. 1000, named in the genealogies as the grandfather of Asser, Gwgon, and Meirion Goch of Llŷn, the three sons of Merwydd who took sanctuary in Clynnog in 1075;51 8 Pen-rhos (Llangynwyl), in Llannor, given by Idwal; 9 A third of Neigwl;52 10 Derwin Fawr,53 in Upper Clynnog, given by one Greang (same donor as no. 26?); 11 Bodellog, in Llanwnda; 12a Llanllyfni and 12b Cored Aber Saint (weir at the mouth of the river Saint), given by Gwithenit ap Tridok (probably same donor as 1); 13 Kilcourt (unidentified: ?Cilcoed in Clynnog);54 14 Clynnog Fechan (Llangeinwen, Ang.);55 15 Cored Gwyrfai (weir of the river Gwyrfai), ‘from the wood to the sea’, given by Tridok (for whom see no. 12); 16 Aber-braint (Dwyran Feuno, in Llangeinwen, Ang.);56 17 Bron (formerly Bryn) Hyddgen, in Henryd, Llangelynnin; 18 Bodysgallen in Creuddyn; 19a Botwnnog and 19b Llandinwael, in Botwnnog; 20a Prysgol, in Llanrug, and 20b Nant Soch in Llŷn;57 21 Eithinog, in Llanllyfni; 22 Llannor (MS y llanor) in Llŷn (apparently duplicating no. 34); 23 Bodeilias in Llŷn (in Pistyll); 24 Bodacho-wyn, in Nefyn; 25 Dôl Bebi(n), in Llanllyfni;58 26 Dolgoedog (unidentified),59 given by one Grevaij/Grevay ab Owain (same donor as no. 10?); 27 Aberllyfni, in Clynnog; 28 Maesog, in Clynnog, given by one Eliud ap Madog;60 29 AMR s. Maesdref only lists Edward’s charter (Marstref/Maystreff). Without explanation, Eben Fardd, Cyff Beuno, p. 61, places it in Llŷn. According to Inv. Mer. 145n., Maestref was an alternative name for Maestron (Maestran) in Llanycil, Mer. (which was dedicated to Beuno). According to Gresham, ‘Cymer Abbey Charter’, p. 156, after Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd and Maredudd ap Cynan had made grants at Neigwl (see no. 9) to Clynnog and Cymer, ‘only the maerdref was left from the original settlement’. Could this be the Marstref/Maystreff supposedly granted by Griffri ap Tunglan? 51 EWGT 117–18 and 156–57 (notes on HL §§4d, 9c and 9d); MWG 387; Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies 300–1400, II, 428 (Gollwyn 1). On their sanctuary, see Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, p. 3. 52 According to Gresham, ‘Township of Neigwl’, pp. 13–14, and ‘Cymer Abbey Charter’, p. 156, Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd (d. 1195) granted this third to Clynnog and his nephew, Maredudd ap Cynan (d. 1212), gave another third of the same vill to Cymer abbey in 1200 × 1201; cf. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change, p. 197; and Keith Williams-Jones, ‘Llywelyn’s Charter to Cymer Abbey in 1209’, p. 47 and n. 19. I have followed Gresham and Davies in identifying the Rodri of no. 9 with Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd, but could he be Rhodri ap Merfyn (d. 878) who is said to have granted Nant Soch (no. 20b) to Clynnog? 53 See Gresham, Eifionydd, pp. 306–7; ELlSG 24; HW II 715. Greang looks like gwreang ‘page, etc.’ used as a personal name. Cf. Williams, ‘Gwreang’. 54 Thus Eben Fardd, Cyff Beuno, p. 61. 55 For Clynnog’s holdings in south-west Anglesey see Carr, Medieval Anglesey, pp. 173 (map) and 274–75. The portion of Clynnog Fechan in the church of Clynnog Fawr is mentioned in 1386 in Calendar of Patent Rolls, Richard II 1385–89 (London, 1900), p. 116, and in 1436 the churches of Llangaffo and Clynnog Fechan are said to belong to the same ‘portion’ (Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry VI, 1429–1436 (London, 1907), p. 595). 56 WATU 2 and 62. 57 Nant Soch in Llŷn was part of the territory which Maredudd ap Cynan (d. 1212) granted to Cymer abbey in 1200 × 1201 (see the articles by Gresham cited above, n. 52). Eben Fardd, Cyff Beuno. p. 61, favoured Pistyll in Llŷn for 20a, presumably following Rowlands, ‘Antiquitates Parochiales III’, p. 394. 58 HEALlE 142–43. 59 In Llŷn according to AMR, but was this sometimes a default localisation in AMR? While rightly placing Moweddus (no. 38) in Clynnog, AMR places Mowedd – the same place – in Llŷn. 60 Unidentified, but note that the name Eliud/Eiludd is a pan-Brittonic name, in part at least biblical, mainly attested at an early date: Davies, ‘Old Testament Personal Names Among the Britons’, pp. 183–86. 50

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Map 4: Clynnog Estates Confirmed by Edward IV. (These estates are simply numbered, e.g. 1 = Clynnog; see list on p. 60. Further Clynnog estates and dependencies mentioned in other sources, e.g. Llangaffo, are named.)

Llechedern in Llŷn (presumably Edern in Nefyn); 30 Bodrydd, in Aberdaron; 31 Trefwyn (Tre-wyn), in Twrcelyn, Ang.;61 32 Brinririt (Bryn (yr) Eryr, in Clynnog ??);62 33 Y Faenol, in Pentir;63 34 Llanvawr in Llŷn, i.e. Llannor (apparently duplicating no. 22);64

For citations (not including Edward IV’s charter) see AMR s.n. Trefwyn. The position of Tre-wyn near Bodafon is shown on the map in Carr, Medieval Anglesey, p. 313. 62 SH 3947. AMR chooses a Bryn Eryr in Aberdaron, SH 2924, but also lists Bryn Rhirid, without location. Emendation of Brinririt (Brynerit in Vaughan’s transcript) to *Brin erir is certainly speculative. 63 According to AMR. The name survives in Vaynol Hall, Bangor, SH 538695; but maenol was a common territorial unit. 64 WATU 135 and ELlSG 60. 61

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The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts Cadwallon d. 634 | Cadwaladr2 34? d. 664 | Idwal [Iwrch] 8? 14? 16? | Rhodri [Molwynog]11 22? 41? d. 754 | |----------------- ----------------------------| Hywel d. 825 Cynan d. 816 | Esyllt = Gwriad | Merfyn [Frych]4? d. 844 | Rhodri [Mawr]6 20 22? 38 41? d. 878 | |----------------------------------|------------------------- -------------------| Anarawd18 24 25 d. 916 Merfyn4? d. 904 Cadell13 17 19 21 39 d. 909 × 910 | | Idwal [Foel]8? 14? 16? d. 942 Hywel [Dda]42 d. 949 × 950 | | |--------- --------------------------|-------------------| Iago29? 32? Ieuaf37 d. 988? Meurig d. 986 Owain d. 988 | | | Hywel d. 985 Idwal8? 14? 16? d. 996 Maredudd d. 999 | | | Caradog Cynan23 d. 1005 Iago29? 32? d. 1039 Angharad = Llywelyn | | | Trahaearn31 d. 1081 Cynan Gruffudd27 33 35 40 43 d. 1063 | Gruffudd30? d. 1137 Meirion | | |--------------------------------- -----------| Owain Gwynedd d. 1170 Cadwaladr34? d. 1172 Genellin5? | | |----------------- ----------------|----------------------------------| |------- ----| Iorwerth Rhodri9 22? 41? d. 1195 Cynan d. 1173 = Angharad Cadwgan | |------------------------------| Llywelyn Fawr d. 1240 Maredudd d. 1212 Gruffudd30? d. 1200 | Gruffudd d. 1244

Figure 2: Clynnog’s Donors According to Edward IV’s Charter.

35 Tre’r-dryw (SH 4667), in Llanidan, Ang.;65 36 Hirdref in Llŷn, in Tudweiliog, given by one Loulion ap Llouvron;66 37 Bodegroes (SH 355352), in Llannor; 38 Moweddus, in Clynnog;67 39 Penhyddgan, in Buan; 40 Treflech, in Llannor, Dinllaen; 41 Penrhos (Penrhosllugwy) in Twrcelyn, Ang.; 42 Two parts of Llecheiddior, in Dolbenmaen;68 43 Rhos Gwynnys-isaf, in Pistyll.69 On this identification of Trefriw see Sims-Williams, ‘Edward IV’s Confirmation Charter’, pp. 235–36 and 240–41. 66 These names appear to garble Old Welsh forms in Lou- (cf. LL, passim) rather than Middle Welsh Lleu-. 67 Somewhere on the Afon Weddus/Wefus (now the Desach); see commentary on III.15. 68 See Gresham, Eifionydd, pp. 200–2. 69 See Commentary on I.40. 65

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The general credibility of Edward IV’s charter is confirmed by thirteenth- and fourteenth-­century record sources which refer to tenants of St Beuno in Llŷn (Llannor, Pistyll, Llandinwael, Botwnnog, Bodeilias, Bodfel, Penmaen Beuno, Bodegroes, Treflech, and Mellteyrn),70 Arfon (Bryncynan in Clynnog),71 and Anglesey – notably Alaw’r Beirdd (Trefalaw), Ang., the site of Bedd Branwen.72 Clynnog’s property-interests in Caernarfonshire fit in well with the regional bias towards Arfon of the ‘proto-series’. But as late as 1550 Clynnog had some distant dependencies, not only Tre’r-dryw and Trefalaw in Anglesey, but also Gwesbyr (Trefeuno) and Holywell (Treffynnon) in Flintshire, ‘where the said Be[u]no is called chief Lord’.73 Judging by Buchedd Beuno and the pattern of dedications to St Beuno and his alleged disciples, these connections between Clynnog and eastern Wales were ancient and stretched southwards down the Anglo-Welsh border as far as Llanveynoe (Herefordshire) in Ewias.74 The inclusion of the graves on (Hir) Fynydd (I.32–33/III.1), assuming this is the Long Mountain, Mtg., and of characters from the Canu Llywarch Hen and Canu Heledd/Canu Cynddylan cycles from Brycheiniog and Powys, is explicable in view of Clynnog’s historic connection with those eastern areas, as confirmed by the dedications of churches and wells and by the narrative of Buchedd Beuno.75 A similar geographical coverage can be seen in the parts of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi which derive, I have argued, from Clynnog,76 and in the core of Bonedd y Saint, which Barry Lewis similarly connects with Clynnog.77 The geography of many further stanzas in Series III that are not identified above as part of the ‘proto-series’ also point towards Arfon and Clynnog in particular: Gwydion on Morfa Dinlle; Elidir on the banks of Meweddus (the river Wefus/Weddus near Clynnog); and Mabon at Nantlle, Crn. (III.2, 15, 16). Even if these stanzas were later additions to the nucleus of the proto-series, they would at least suggest that that nucleus was transmitted at Clynnog;78 and if they are original parts of the nucleus, they support Clynnog origin even more. The regional bias of the Series III towards the Clynnog area is very striking, especially if III.17–18 are ignored as possible later additions. (See Map 5.) By contrast, Series I covers much more of Wales (see Map 6). I have argued above that a ‘proto-series’ connected with Clynnog underlies the first half of Series I (I.1–35), interspersed by various intrusive blocks – 1–3 (introductory), 17–19 and 24–25 (Meigen ap Rhun and family), 20–23 (Pant Gwinn Waters, ‘Account of the Sheriff’, pp. 145–46; Jones Pierce, ‘Lleyn Ministers’ Accounts’, pp. 262 and 269; Rec. Caern. 30, 34, and 38. 71 Rec. Caern. 26–27. Cf. WATU 21 and 45 (SH 4453). It was fantastically connected with Gruffudd ap Cynan by Ambrose, Hynafiaethau, p. 32. 72 Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 122–23. Cf. Jones Pierce, Medieval Welsh Society, pp. 273 and 285–87 (the reference to Rhosbeirio is a mistake, cf. LBS IV 90). 73 Colin A. Gresham, ‘A Further Episode in the History of Clynnog Fawr’, THSC, 1966, 299–315 (pp. 314–15); Sims-Williams, ‘Edward IV’s Confirmation Charter’, pp. 236 and 241; idem, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 122 and 124; idem, Buchedd Beuno, p. 63. 74 See Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, p. ix (map) and passim. 75 See ibid., pp. ix (map), 37–38, and passim; idem, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 51–52. 76 Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’. Cf. WaB 654–55 and Charles-Edwards, ‘The Textual Tradition of Llyfr Iorwerth Revisited’, pp. 40–43. 77 Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 85 and 93; idem, Bonedd y Saint (forthcoming). 78 As does the corruption Arfon (for afon) at III.9. 70

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Map 5: Series III.

Gvinionauc, Crd.), 26–27 (Ardudwy/Epynt/Caeo), 28–30 (Gwanas, Mer.) – and by two apparently isolated stanzas: 5 (Heneglwys, Ang.) and 6 (Seithennin, Cardigan Bay). On the grounds of geography, it may be that 5–6, 28–30, and 40 also belong in the ‘Clynnog’ cluster. Note that Gwrgi at Gwanas (I.28) is probably the Gwrgi Gwastra who appears in the Four Branches in connection with Pryderi, whose grave is noted in I.7 as well as in the Four Branches. An early date (pre-1150?) for the ‘Clynnog’ cluster, or some of it, is suggested by the spelling Idin (I.9, 11) and the misreading Run for Panna in I.10, as discussed earlier. For the ‘Clynnog’ cluster of Series I see Map 7. This includes the following Series I stanzas, discussed above: 4–16 (but see below on 11) and 28–35, also tentatively 40 (Gwrtheyrn), although the location of Gwrtheyrn’s grave in Llŷn is far from certain and stanza 40 is at some distance from the main two groups 4–16 and 28–35.79 Stanza 56 (Braint by the Llyfni) is separated much farther from them and is omitted from Map 7, even though the Llyfni was close to Clynnog (on I.56 see below).80 It was argued above that Series III represents a version of Clynnog’s englynion y beddau that remained in Gwynedd and eventually came into the hands of local sixteenth-century scholars such as William Salesbury and Thomas Wiliems, perhaps via Aberconwy/Maenan or Beddgelert. But the Clynnog material must also 79 80

Clynnog had estates in the relevant part of Llŷn (see commentary on I.40). For Clynnog’s possible interest in the hero Braint it may be relevant that it had estates in Anglesey at Aber-braint and at Tre’r-dryw in Llanidan, which is also on the river Braint. See above, p. 61, on nos 16 and 35 in Edward IV’s charter.

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Map 6: Series I. Italics (as in 7a) indicate that there is more than one plausible location.

Map 7: The ‘Clynnog’ Cluster in Series I. Italics (as in 7a) indicate that there is more than one plausible location. † marks the position of the Clynnog clas.

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

have circulated beyond Gwynedd, since some of it had reached the south and had entered the Black Book of Carmarthen by c. 1250, already combined with many grave-stanzas relating to parts of Wales beyond Gwynedd. The most likely means of dissemination is the Cistercian monasteries, founded under royal patronage from the twelfth century onwards, for these recruited personnel from the clergy of the old clasau and their sons and absorbed much of their lands and wealth.81 Barry Lewis has argued persuasively that early texts written in the old clas churches survived if they ‘were valued and copied in one of the new Cistercian abbeys’, instancing Bonedd y Saint, probably composed at Clynnog and disseminated via Valle Crucis from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards.82 Note also that the short tracts Plant Kyndrwyn, Plant Don o Arfon, and Plant Math mab Mathonwy, which reflect literary lore likely to have been preserved at churches connected with Beuno (Berriew in Powys and Clynnog in Arfon), were incorporated in the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies, so named because they reflect Llywelyn Fawr’s interests. Ben Guy argues that these genealogies were compiled at the Cistercian abbey of Aberconwy between 1216 and c. 1223, probably by Llywelyn’s poet, lawyer, and leading minister Einion ap Gwalchmai or an associate,83 and were eventually disseminated through Wales. That the Aberconwy monks were writing Welsh in Llywelyn’s reign is displayed by the Latin–Welsh macaronic verse (no later than 1230) of the ‘Levelinus’ inscription In general on the clasau and Cistercian houses see R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, pp. 174–79 and 194–201, with map on p. 198; Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 47–48; Huw Pryce, ‘Patrons and Patronage among the Cistercians in Wales’, AC, 154 (2005), 81–95; John Reuben Davies, ‘Aspects of Church Reform in Wales, c. 1093–c. 1223’, Anglo-­ Norman Studies, 30 (2008), 85–99 (pp. 96–97). Barry J. Lewis argues that their mutual antagonism has been exaggerated: review of David Stephenson’s Medieval Wales, c. 1050–1332: Centuries of Ambiguity (Cardiff, 2019), and Medieval Powys, in Celtica, 32 (2020), 282–88 (p. 287). Charters show that Cistercian scribes were comfortable using Welsh: Pryce, ‘Uses of the Vernacular’. 82 Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship at Valle Crucis Abbey’, pp. 153–54 (cf. MWG 42–43 and 200). For the identification of Clynnog as plausibly the clas in question see Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 85 and 93, and Bonedd y Saint, ed. Lewis (forthcoming). On clasau as a probable source of manuscripts and literature see MWM 50 and 183–84 and EWSP 364 n. 140. It might be surmised that the Augustinian canons of Beddgelert disseminated Englynion y Beddau to their counterparts in Carmarthen. This hypothesis does not take account of other evidence for a Cistercian input into Series I (see below). Moreover, the White Canons were rare in Wales and do not seem to have operated a network like the Cistercians. In general, see David M. Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement in Medieval England and Wales, BAR British Series, 80, 2 vols (Oxford, 1980); Karen Stöber and David Austin, ‘Culdees to Canons: The Augustinian Houses of North Wales’, in Monastic Wales: New Approaches, ed. Burton and Stöber, pp. 39–54. But some networking in thirteenth-century Beddgelert may be implied by the inclusion in BL Add. 34633 (see above, p. 17) of the Vita Mildburgae, composed at the Cluniac Priory of Wenlock, Shropshire (see Paul Antony Hayward, ‘The Miracula Inventionis Beate Mylburge Virginis Attributed to “the Lord Ato, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia”’, EHR, 114 (1999), 543–73). 83 MWG 221–23 and 231. On Einion ap Gwalchmai see David Stephenson, The Governance of Gwynedd (Cardiff, 1984), pp. 14, 98, 109–10, 131–32, 202, and 210; idem, review of MWG, AC, 170 (2021), 288–29; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, pp. xix–xx; CBT I 427–31. Bartrum, ‘Hen Lwythau’, p. 204, suggested ‘a member or retainer of Gwalchmai’s family’. For the three Plant texts see EWGT 85 and 90 (ByA §§1 and 25–26) and MWG 357 and 360–61, §§2 and 10.1–2. On their dependence on ‘written englyn poetry’ see MWG 224–25, and on a probable connection between the Cyndrwynyn and the Beuno church at Berriew (SJ 1800) see Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, p. 51; cf. MWG 65; Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 85, 89–90, and 93; idem, Bonedd y Saint, commentary on §36. 81

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from Pentrefoelas, Den. (SH 8751).84 Indeed, Owain Wyn Jones argues that the Chronicle O Oes Gwrtheyrn was composed at Aberconwy in Welsh, a ‘bold step’, as early as c. 1212.85 (ii) Aberconwy Did the Cistercians of Aberconwy also help to disseminate Englynion y Beddau? Aberconwy was originally founded in 1186 at Rhedynog-felen, Llanwnda, Crn. (SH 45838 57412) by Cistercian monks from Strata Florida, but had relocated to Aberconwy by 1192.86 As Rhedynog-felen is only five miles north-east of Clynnog, literary material from Clynnog could easily have come there and thence reached Aberconwy. Gruffudd ap Cynan ab Owain Gwynedd, apparently Clynnog’s latest known donor87 – following the example of his uncle, Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd (d. 1195) – is also the first known benefactor of Rhedynog-felen/Aberconwy88 – a good example of the transference of royal patronage from the old clasau to the new Cistercian order. In 1200 he died at Aberconwy, having taken the habit and retired there, no doubt owing to his defeat on 6 January 1199 by his cousin Llywelyn Fawr, whose double victory that day – in Bro Alun (Ystrad Alun/Mold) against the French and on the coast of Arfon, evidently against Gruffudd – was celebrated by Llywelyn’s court poet, Prydydd y Moch. In 1216 Gruffudd’s son Hywel was in turn buried at Aberconwy, as Llywelyn Fawr himself would be in 1240.89 In these circumstances a text of Englynion y Beddau could easily have reached Aberconwy. There is a definite clue that the ‘proto-series’ of Englynion y Beddau may have been expanded at Aberconwy. In the second half of Series I there is much more use of the formula Piev y bet? ‘Whose is the grave?’ than in the first half.90 It occurs eleven times in the second half, at I.46, 48, 49, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63, 68, 69, and 73, versus only seven times – I.11, 16, 17, 18, 24, 33, and 34 – in the first part. Moreover, in the first part, Piev y bet? may have been merely added in transmission to I.16 (the stanza on Gwên ap Llywarch Hen), for it is absent in the version in Red Book of Hergest and related manuscripts, and the same may apply to I.24 and I.33, since the formula is absent from the versions in Series III (III.18 and III.1 respectively). A likely context for the formula is provided by I.42–43 and 46–47. In I.42–43 the speaker – clearly the legendary Taliesin – says that Elffin (Taliesin’s patron) tested his ‘poetic Williams, ‘Levelinus Inscription’; Robert J. Silvester, Mynydd Hiraethog: The Denbigh Moors (Aberystwyth, 2011), pp. 45–46. The monks complained about lost books in 1215 and 1245, but we know nothing of their nature: Hays, History of the Abbey of Aberconway, pp. 141–42. 85 Jones, ‘O Oes Gwrtheyrn’, pp. 184–85 and 194. Cf. MWG 222. 86 See Gresham, ‘The Aberconwy Charter; Further Consideration’, pp. 312–15 (with map). 87 Unless the famous Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137) is meant at Rec. Caern. 257. 88 See respectively Rec. Caern. 257 and HW II 601. On the shift of patronage from the clasau to the Cistercians, at Clynnog and elsewhere, see Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change, p. 197. 89 CBT V 23.79–82; Rhian M. Andrews, ‘The Nomenclature of Kingship in Welsh Court Poetry 1100–1300, Part II: The Rulers’, SC, 45 (2011), 53–82 (pp. 63 and 66); David Stephenson, ‘The Rulers of Gwynedd and Powys’, in Monastic Wales: New Approaches, ed. Burton and Stöber, pp. 89–102 (pp. 91–92, 98, and 102 n. 45). 90 I doubt the suggestion that Piev y bet? ‘may be in some way related to the legal triad which lists the “three reproaches of a corpse”, which are “to ask who killed it, who owns this bier, whose is this grave”’ (BBCSG 102). The disrespect in the triad refers to a freshly dug grave, as the adjective newyd in some copies confirms (e.g. The Legal Triads of Medieval Wales, ed. Sara Elin Roberts (Cardiff, 2011), no. X71). Such ignorance would be crass in any rural community. 84

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knowledge’ (barddrin) above the grave of Rhufawn (at Cornwy in Anglesey),91 and in I.46–47 the speaker (no doubt Taliesin still) asks ‘Whose is this grave? Ask me; I know it’ and answers with the names of Eiddef and Eidal, the sons of Meigen (exiles in Caernarfonshire apparently). From this point on, the Piev y bet? formula becomes frequent. At I.57 the speaker again claims superior knowledge, Taliesin-style:92 Whose is the grave on the slope of the hill? Many ask it who do not know: the grave of Coel son of Cynfelyn.

The legendary Taliesin, who had been everywhere – like the Old English Widsith and the Irish antediluvian Fintan mac Bóchrai – may also be the speaker of the Black Book listing poem who boasts I was where the warriors of Britain were killed from the east to the north. I am alive. They are in the grave. I was where the warriors of Britain were killed from the east to the south. I am alive. They are in death.93

A likely context for some of the Piev y bet? stanzas is the ‘Taliesin saga’ which was promoted, as Marged Haycock has argued, by Prydydd y Moch c. 1217 when Llywelyn Fawr held court at Degannwy, Crn.94 Across the Conwy from Degannwy stood Llywelyn Fawr’s court at Conwy and his most favoured monastery, Aberconwy abbey. Quite likely Taliesin-related material, including a Taliesinic adaptation of Englynion y Beddau by Prydydd y Moch or a fellow poet, was written down at Aberconwy c. 1217, alongside the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies of 1216–c. 1223. Appropriately, some question-and-answer grave stanzas, leaving aside the unlocated ones (I.49, 57, 63(?), 68, 69), belong in Llywelyn’s greater Gwynedd (I.11, 24, 42–43, 46–47, 56, and 73). There are many exceptions – I.16 (Brycheiniog?), 17–18 (Cardigan Bay?), 33 (Long Mountain, Mtg.?), 34 (Pennant Twrch, Mtg.), 48 (Brwyno, Crd.?), 55 (Brycheiniog??), and 61 (Rhyddnant, Crd.) – but such a distribution is not an objection. In the first place, the legendary Taliesin was supposed to display wide knowledge and poets like Prydydd y Moch knew a suitably wide range of traditions beyond their native regions. In the second place, Llywelyn Fawr’s influence c. 1217 went beyond greater Gwynedd, deep into Deheubarth, Powys, and the marches.95 In the third place, once the Pieu? formula had come into use, See detailed discussion in commentary to I.42–43. Cornwy did not belong to Maenan/Aberconwy until 1284, but a detail in the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth genealogies suggests that Aberconwy was interested in Cornwy earlier in the century (cf. MWG 221). 92 On this aspect of Taliesin see Marged Haycock, ‘Taliesin’s Questions’, CMCS, 33 (Summer 1997), 19–79; Sara Elin Roberts, ‘Addysg Broffesiynol yng Nghymru yn yr Oesoedd Canol: Y Beirdd a’r Cyfreithwyr’, LlC, 26 (2003), 1–17 (p. 13). 93 LlDC no. 34.58–63. Translation from EBSG 120. Cf. Williams, Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry, pp. 26–27; Roberts, ‘Rhai Cerddi Ymddiddan’, p. 313; EWSP 243–44, 296, 299, 462–63, and 507; Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 15. 94 See LPBT, esp. pp. 14 (§§6–7), 27, and 31–36; Jones, ‘O Oes Gwrtheyrn’, pp. 186–87. 95 Rees, Atlas, p. 35 and pl. 39. 91

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it was available to subsequent composers of grave-stanzas, so we cannot assume a single origin for all the englynion that use it – its use in the late-looking ‘Series IV’ is noteworthy.96 I.11, which asks about Cynon’s grave, does not fit in well after I.8–10, where the location of his grave has already been given. Perhaps I.11 really belongs with the question-and-answer englynion later in Series I and was moved earlier to join the other Cynon stanzas on the grounds of their common subject matter. The questions in I.17–18 concern (as does I.19) the grave of Meigen ap Rhun, apparently submerged under Cardigan Bay. This Meigen is likely to be the father of the Alun Dyfed ap Meigen of I.25 and grandfather of the Rhun ab Alun Dyfed about whom I.24 asks ‘Piev y bet?’ Thus I.17–19 and 24–25, though now separated by the stanzas on Pant Gwinn Gvinionauc (I.20–23), would originally have formed a sequence referring to the travels of three generations, from their submerged kingdom off Dyfed, to Ystrad Alun, Fli., and finally to Penllyn, Mer. This sequence may belong to the Taliesinic question-and-answer group. This is suggested by the presence of the Pieu? formula in I.17–18 and 24 and by the fact that Meigen seems to be the father of Eiddef and Eidal, the subject of the Pieu? question in I.46–47. If so, I.17–19, 24–25, 42–43, and 46–47 form a block of englynion that has got broken up by interpolations. All the sites in this block were within Llywelyn Fawr’s sphere of influence, which included Ceredigion (I.17–19),97 Penllyn west of the Meloch (I.24–25), annexed in 1202,98 as well, of course, as Anglesey (I.42–43) and the Eidda/Bryn Eidal area of Caernarfonshire (I.46–47).99 Along with this group we may include most or all of the batch of four stanzas that were added to the Black Book of Carmarthen by its second scribe (I.70–73). These all refer to graves in greater Gwynedd, except for the second and third graves of I.71, which are vaguely ‘in Dyfed’ and at an uncertainly identified Rhyd Gynan. The other graves in I.70–73 are: on the Morfa (Rhianedd) near Llandudno; at Dinorben, twelve See above, p. 20. Admittedly, the stanzas on Meigen (I.17–19), assuming that he is the eponym of the submerged kingdom of Mays Maichghen, could have got into Series I later, as part of the southern Cistercian group identified below; Mays Maichghen is referred to in Exeter Cathedral MS 3514, probably written at Hendy-gwyn (Whitland) in the 1180s and reflecting the interests of the Lord Rhys’s family (see commentary on I.17–19). Against this hypothesis note that (i) the submerged kingdoms were also of interest in Gwynedd, and appear in Bonedd y Saint, §§40 and 42 (EWGT 60–61), which Lewis connects with Clynnog (see above, p. 45); (ii) material from Hendy-gwyn could easily have come to Gwynedd in Llywelyn Fawr’s day, for instance through its abbot Cadwgan, who became bishop of Bangor in 1215, after cultivating Llywelyn Fawr when he visited Cardigan (Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 48, 122–23, and 153–54; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 19); (iii) I.17–19 seem to belong with I.24–25, whose geography lies within Llywelyn’s greater Gwynedd from 1202. Of course, it is quite likely that literary material had passed between the clasau of Llanbadarn and Clynnog at an earlier stage; cf. Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 286 n. 94. There is no reason why the two clasau could not be on good terms – notwithstanding the ‘tradition’, reported by Richard Farrington (1769), that the ‘zealots’ of Llanbadarn-fawr attempted to steal St Beuno’s coffin from Clynnog! See NLW MS 1118C, pp. 171–72 – a variant of the folktale discussed in Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 85–86. 98 Stephenson, Medieval Powys, pp. xv (map), 2, 112, 210, 218, 231 n. 77, and 290–91. 99 Eidda and possibly Penmachno seem to have belonged to the Knights Hospitallers of Ysbyty Ifan, Den. (SH 8448), whom Llywelyn favoured. See Rees, History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, pp. 64, 66–67, 70 (map), and 92; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 256. On this order see Helen J. Nicholson, ‘The Military Orders in Wales and the Welsh March in the Middle Ages’, in The Military Orders, V: Politics and Power, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Farnham, 2012), pp. 189–207. 96 97

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miles to the east; ‘in Britain’ (probably somewhere in Gwynedd, to judge by what other sources say about Cunedda’s sons); and on Maes Mawr, about fourteen miles east of Dinorben. As well as the question-and-answer elements in I.72–73, the references to Morfa Rhianedd (I.70) and to Hennin Hen (I.70 and 71), who is Maelgwn’s chief bard in the Taliesin saga, suggest that these stanzas relate to that saga. The reference to Cunedda’s son Einion in I.72 would suit composition at Llywelyn Fawr’s court. It may be significant that the rare verb aelewy in I.70 is otherwise known only from Prydydd y Moch.100 For the graves which may belong to the ‘Llywelyn Fawr’/Aberconwy cluster see Map 8. This comprises 11(?), 17–19, 24–25, 42–43, 46–47, 56, and 70–73. In I.24 the Piev y bet? formula may have been added, since it is missing in III.18. Other englynion which may have been modified at the ‘Llywelyn Fawr’ stage by adding Piev y bet? are I.16 (the Red Book of Hergest and related manuscripts lack the formula) and I.33–34 (III.1 lacks the formula). (iii) Southern Cistercian monasteries Leaving aside the ‘Clynnog’ cluster of Map 7 (4–16 (minus 11?), 28–35, and 40(?)) and the ‘Llywelyn Fawr’/Aberconwy group of Map 8 (11(?), 17–19, 24–25, 42–43, 46–47, 56, and 70–73), we are left with the following stanzas in Series I: 1–3 (introductory), 20–23, 26–27, 36–39, 41, 44–45, 48–55, and 57–68, plus 69 which appears to be a concluding stanza. Many of these include no topographical clues (1–3, 41, 44, 49, 52, 53, 57, 63(?), 68, and 69) or only mention unidentified toponyms (59 and 66). Of the others, 64 and 67 (Crn.) are northern, 45 and 58 may be northern (Mtg.? and Ang.?), and 50 has at least one northern name (Den.). The rest, however, are further south: 20–23 (Crd.), 26 (Mer./Bre.), 27 (Crm.), 36–38 (Rad./Mtg.), 39 (Gla.), 45 (Rad.?), 48 (Crd.?), 51 (Gla. or Crm.?), 54 (Gla. or Crm.), 55 (Bre.?), 60–61 (Crd.), 62 (Gla.), 63 (Bre.?), 65 (Gla. or Crd.), and 68 (Crd.?). The simplest explanation is that northern material, including the ‘Clynnog’ and ‘Llywelyn Fawr’/ Aberconwy groups of englynion, came south in the early thirteenth century and was combined with pre-existing or newly created stanzas about southern graves. The Cistercian networks provide an obvious route.101 Cymer, Mer., for example, which was patronised by Llywelyn Fawr and his cousins, was closely connected with Cwmhir, Rad.,102 and Aberconwy was in direct contact with Strata Florida, Cer., its mother house. Strata Florida’s main patrons were the Lord Rhys (d. 1197) and his family, so it is easy to see how poetry from Aberconwy could reach Strata Florida and then get into the Black Book of Carmarthen (c. 1250), either directly or via Strata Florida’s mother house at Hendy-gwyn (Whitland, Crm.), which was also patronised by the Lord Rhys. It may be significant that the Black Book scribe had access to copies of

CBT V 158. See commentaries on I.70–73. Compare Marged Haycock’s suggestion that Taliesinic poems may have come south to Cwm-hir, Rad., after 1231 (LPBT 36) and Daniel Huws’s argument that the late-thirteenth-century Strata Florida scribe of the Hendregadredd Manuscript used ‘recent sources from Gwynedd’ and combined them with ‘the work of south Wales poets’ (MWM 215). Legal material, too, is generally supposed to have come south from Gwynedd: T. M. Charles-Edwards, The Welsh Laws (Cardiff, 1989), p. 38. 102 See J. Beverley Smith, ‘Cymer Abbey and the Welsh Princes’, JMHRS, 13.2 (1999), 101–18; Smith and Butler, ‘The Cistercian Order: Cymer Abbey’, and preceding note. 100 101

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Map 8: The ‘Llywelyn Fawr’/Aberconwy Cluster in Series I. † marks the position of the Cistercian monastery at Aberconwy.

Map 9: The ‘Southern Cistercian’ Cluster in Series I. Italics (as in 45) indicate that there is more than one plausible location. Selected Cistercian and Premonstratensian monasteries are named (only Talyllychau was Premonstratensian).

The Growth, Relationship, and Transmission of the Texts

panegyrics connected with the Lord Rhys;103 presumably they were preserved at his family’s monasteries, and the same could be true of Englynion y Beddau. Strata Florida had connections throughout mid- and south Wales both through its daughter houses at Llantarnam, Mon. and Llanllŷr, Cer., and through Hendy-gwyn and its daughter houses at Ystrad Marchell, Mtg. and Cwm-hir, Rad. It could have collected local grave-stanzas, or even have created them, to add to the northern corpus. A vague geographical proximity proves little, of course. For example, not much can be made of the fact that Ebediw am Maelwr’s grave (I.68) may have been at Pendinas, Crd., near Strata Florida’s estate at the former mouth of the Ystwyth,104 for Pendinas was and remains ‘the pre-eminent hillfort on the Cardigan Bay coast, outshining any other coastal hillfort from north Pembrokeshire to the Lleyn Peninsula’.105 Some stanzas, however, refer to more obscure places with a close connection to Strata Florida. I.26 is the grave of Epynt in the valley of the Gefel, Bre., beside Strata Florida’s Tirabad grange, and I.60–61 concern the graves of Taflogau and Rhun beside two adjacent rivers on Strata Florida’s remote Cwmystwyth grange, Taflogau and Rhyddnant, Crd. The Gefel (I.26) and Taflogau (I.60) are distinguished by remarkably deep ravines, and the two stanzas have in common their audacious creation of eponyms, the first from the oronym Epynt and the second from the hydronym Taflogau. There may be a facetious intention behind this.106 I.26 also records the grave of Llia the Irishman in distant Ardudwy. At first sight this coupling seems inexplicable, until one recalls that Llia may have been a local Brycheiniog hero, supposedly commemorated by the extant megalith, Maen Llia, fifteen miles south of the Gefel and Tirabad. The Gefel stanza is linked by rhyme (Gewel : Dywel) with I.27, which records the grave of Dyfel ab Erbin in Caeo, a dozen miles west of Tirabad. Dyfel is a hero who appears again in the Black Book in Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin, in connection with a battle near Talyllychau (Talley, Crm.), the site of a Premonstratensian abbey founded by the Lord Rhys. This abbey and its estates c. 1193–1202 were of great interest to the Cistercians, who made strenuous efforts, described by Gerald of Wales, to entice Talyllychau’s abbot and canons away to Hendy-gwyn, under the guise of a merger, and to appropriate their granges – including Rhuddlan Deifi, which Hendy-gwyn succeeded in retaining.107 If the grave of Llachar (I.51 and 54) is correctly localised at the confluence of the Duar and Teifi in Llanybydder, Crm., it may be no coincidence that Llanybydder was adjacent to Rhuddlan Deifi.108 It may be no coincidence either that I.20–23 concern graves at Pant Gwyn Gwynionog, on the bounds of Talyllychau’s Maerdref grange, five miles west of Rhuddlan Deifi. These stanzas seem to be relatively late additions since the name of the character Môr

See above, p. 14. Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 57, no. 141a, and map, p. 91; David H. Williams, ‘The Cistercians in West Wales: 2. Ceredigion’, AC, 159 (2010), 241–86 (p. 259). On Strata Florida in general see Austin, Strata Florida. 105 Driver, Hillforts of Cardigan Bay, p. 127. 106 On the difficulty of assessing tone see below, p. 94. 107 On Talyllychau’s dispute with Hendy-gwyn see Edward Owen, ‘A Contribution to the History of the Praemonstratensian Abbey of Talley’, AC, 5th ser. 10 (1893), 29–47, 120–28, and 226–37 (pp. 120–28 and 226–27); Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 73–74 and 121–22. 108 Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 67, no. 209, and maps, pp. 91 and 96. Note that Llanllŷr held lands in Llanybydder parish, ibid., p. 46. 103 104

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Mawrhydig (I.22) seems to be the result of a (deliberate?) misunderstanding I.6c. Are these englynion facetious and factitious? If the ‘three graves at Cefn Celfi’ (I.65) were on the river Cynon at Cellan, Crd., they would have been of obvious interest to the monks of Talyllychau. The latters’ northernmost grange at Llan-crwys, which the Lord Rhys probably transferred to them from the clas at Llandeilo, was sandwiched between the river Twrch to its east and, on its northern boundary with Cellan, the megaliths Hirfaen Gwyddog, ‘Gwyddog’s menhir’, and Maen prenfol Gwallwen, ‘The stone of the coffer of Gwallwen’ (Cellan’s patron saint).109 Those megaliths and Cellan, the parish beyond them on the way to Llanddewibrefi, may have been of general interest in Dyfed. A poem by Gwynfardd Brycheiniog, composed under the auspices of Llanddewibrefi and the Lord Rhys, placed Llanddewibrefi and Llan-crwys – styled ‘Llanddewi’r Crwys’ – under St Dewi’s special protection, a protection which stretched ‘as far as Twrch, where the land is bounded by a stone’ (hyd ar Tỽrch, teruyn tir a charrec).110 It was noted above that I.20–23 appear facetious. Other stanzas of a seemingly facetious character are I.36–38, on Beidawg Rudd’s grave at Machawy, that is, the stream now called ‘Bach Howey’, which rises near Rhosgoch, Rad. (SO 1947). Beidawg’s name seems to be extracted from the name of a plant, and the appearance of two Breton names in I.36 and I.38 (Emyr Llydaw and the peculiar Omni) is perhaps connected with the fact that Machawy was the site of battles between the Welsh and enemies from across the border in 1056 and 1198, and is the subject of prophecies in the Black Book itself. Omni’s grave is placed at Ryd Britu, arguably near St Harmon, Rad. (SN 9872), and a third grave in this set is Lluosgar’s in Ceri (I.36b), a commote in the south of Montgomeryshire. The topography of I.36–38 is consonant with origin at Hendy-gwyn’s daughter house at Cwm-hir, Rad. (SO 0571). Cwm-hir itself and its Dolhelfa grange (SO 927738) were on either side of the old clas church at St Harmon, another grange was at Gwern-y-go in Ceri (SO 222919),111 and its Cleirwy (Clyro) granges at Gabalfa (SO 236460) and nearby Carnaf were only two or three miles from the Machawy.112 Ceri, St Harmon, and Machawy are widely separated, and it is difficult to see any common denominator other than Cwm-hir that could have brought them together in I.36–38. If this is allowed, it seems plausible to suppose that the mysterious Elchwith, a few stanzas later, at I.45 (Elwithan in ‘Series II’), is the eponym of a lost Llech Elwithan in Cefn-llys, Rad. (SO 0961), which

See map in Richards, ‘Carmarthenshire Possessions of Talyllychau’, p. 116, and commentary below on I.65. 110 CBT II 26.147; James, ‘Geography of the Cult of St David’, pp. 66 (map) and 67. On the poem see Gwynfardd Brycheiniog: Canu i Ddewi, ed. Ann Parry Owen (20.11.20), in Seintiau and eadem, ‘“Canu” Beirdd y Tywysogion i’r Saint’, in Seintiau Cymru, ed. Parsons and Russell, pp. 269–86 (pp. 282–86, with map). It is surely Llan-crwys which is called Llanndewi y Crwys in line 103, just as in Rhys Fychan’s confirmation (1244×1271) of the grants to Talyllychau by the Lord Rhys and his family: Royal Charters, ed. Daniel-Tyssen, p. 61 (Landewi Crus); cf. Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 90, pp. 228 and 230; AMR s. Llanddewi’r Crwys; PNCrm 109–10. Note also the reference to ‘Dewi o Lan-y-Crwys’ in Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 40.44. On Dewi’s cult in this area cf. Austin, Strata Florida, p. 15 (map). 111 Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 40, nos 29–30 and 34, and maps, pp. 91 and 97; on Dolhelfa in Gwerthrynion see Charles, ‘Early Charter of the Abbey of Cwmhir’, p. 72. On St Harmon (Llanarmon) see HW I 245 and 254. 112 Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 41, nos 39–40, and maps, pp. 91 and 97. 109

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Roger Mortimer granted as Llechelwiham to Cwm-hir in 1199/1200.113 Furthermore, the grave of Brwyno Hir (I.48), if correctly identified by Thomas Jones with the stone alignment above Brwyno, Crd. (SN 7156 9666), lay within a distant area of pasturage – west of Glasbwll (SN 7397), between the rivers Llyfnant to the north and the Einion to the south – that was granted to Cwm-hir in 1201 by Gwenwynwyn ab Owain Cyfeiliog but was then disputed with Ystrad Marchell at least until 1227, when a gathering of over fifty persons met at Radnor to agree a compromise in the presence of the abbots of Hendy-gwyn, Caerleon, Strata Florida, and the subpriors of Abbey Dore and Caerleon.114 It is tempting to see an allusion to this dispute in the description of Brwyno Hir, ‘whose entitlement was strong in his land; where he would be there would be no retreat’. Did Brwyno symbolise a Cistercian claim to the land? If a Cistercian land dispute lies behind I.48 on Brwyno Hir, perhaps another one lies behind I.34 on Pennant Twrch, Mtg., an area of potential conflict between Ystrad Marchell and the Knights Hospitallers of Llanwddyn, an order supported by Llywelyn Fawr.115 It was suggested above, however, that I.34 may go back to original ‘proto-series’ connected with Clynnog. Five stanzas in Series I may emanate from the Cistercian (originally Savigniac) abbey at Neath, Gla. The grave of Gyrthmwl ‘where the Lliw flows into the Llychwr’ (I.39) cannot have been far from Neath’s lands ‘between the two rivers of Lliw and Llychwr’.116 The grave of Bradwen (I.62) may be associated with Maen Bradwen, above Neath Abbey. Similarly, the grave of Madawg (I.63) may be associated with Charles, ‘Early Charter of the Abbey of Cwmhir’, pp. 69 and 72. The exact spot is unidentified; cf. Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 40–41: ‘a noted sheepcot at Llanwyddelan in Cefn-llys (location lost)’; Banks, ‘Notes to the Account of Cwmhir Abbey’, p. 214. 114 Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, pp. 120–21 and no. 34, with Map III. In 1226 Gruffudd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd granted the same land to Ystrad Marchell (no. 68); the conflict between the two houses was adjudicated in 1227 (no. 70). Cf. Acts, ed. Pryce, nos 282, 547, and 563; Banks, ‘Notes to the Account of Cwmhir Abbey’, pp. 206–11; Richard Morgan, ‘The Territorial Divisions of Medieval Montgomeryshire [II]’, MC, 70 (1982), 11–39 (pp. 22–24 and Map 4); Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. 100. The 1227 adjudication gave Cwm-hir ‘the part that is in Ceredigion’ and Ystrad Marchell ‘the part that is in Cyfeiliog’. This is not very clear as one would suppose that all the pasture lay within thirteenth-century Cyfeiliog as defined by Thomas (Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, p. 121 and n. 1, with Map III). If so, the Brwyno area was presumably gained by Ystrad Marchell, whose Mynachty/Pennant Cynlling grange (SN 789955) lay a little to the east (see Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 60, no. 164, and maps, pp. 91 and 94; Historical Atlas of Montgomeryshire, ed. Jenkins, p. 44; and Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, p. 114 and map III). The seemingly clear Ceredigion v. Cyfeiliog adjudication may involve some obfuscation. David Stephenson (pers. comm. 8.9.2021) notes ‘the fragility of the boundaries between Ceredigion and Cyfeiliog, a fragility accentuated by the Lord Rhys’s claims to Cyfeiliog itself. Related to this is the question of what exactly was behind Gruffudd ap Llywelyn’s 1226 grant to Strata Marcella of, inter alia, the lands between the Corf and the Einion. Was Gruffudd duped by the monks of Strata Marcella, or was he in collusion with them to ensure that the territory between Einion and Llyfnant was not withdrawn from Cyfeiliog?’ 115 See commentary on I.34, and above, p. 71 n. 99, on Llywelyn and the Hospitallers of Ysbyty Ifan. The latter’s holdings at Eidda could have brought them into conflict with the Cistercians of Aberconwy, to whom Llywelyn granted nearby lands around Foelas on the other side of the Conwy (see Gresham, ‘The Aberconwy Charter; Further Consideration’, pp. 313 (map) and 323–26; Pryce, Acts, p. 556). But there is no reason to speculate on a connection between this and I.46–47 on Eiddef (Eidda). 116 See commentary on I.39. Cf. Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 55, no. 127, and maps, pp. 91 and 100. 113

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another megalith, Maen Madoc in Ystradfellte, Bre., sixteen miles up the Neath valley from the abbey; and the three graves at Cefn Celfi (I.65), if correctly located by Thomas Jones, were three miles north of the abbey. If the grave of Rhigenau’s son (I.55) is correctly identified as Bedd Llywarch, Ystradfellte, three miles east of Maen Madoc, the two stanzas, I.55 and I.63, group naturally together. Ystradfellte was not a monastic possession, but it lay on the main (Roman) route from Neath to Brecon and must have been familiar to travellers, including those from Neath abbey, when, on the most optimistic view, ‘the biggest agglomeration of its lands stretch[ed] unbroken from the abbey in the south of the Neath valley to the border of the lordship of Brecon in the north’.117 The above may comprise what could be called a ‘southern Cistercian’ cluster: I.20–23, 26–27, 36–38, 39, 45(?), 48(?), 51+54(?), 55(?), 60–61, 62–63, 65(?), and 68(?). For this cluster see Map 9. On the above hypothesis, between c. 1200 and c. 1250 (when the Black Book of Carmarthen was written), englynion created or collected by Cistercian houses in the south – especially Strata Florida, Cwm-hir, and Neath – were added to a text of Englynion y Beddau transmitted from a Cistercian monastery in the north, most probably Strata Florida’s daughter house at Aberconwy. There can be no doubt that Welsh would have been used at Strata Florida and Cwm-hir, daughter houses of Hendy-­ gwyn (Whitland), whose monks use of Welsh was condemned in 1228.118 Neath was less Welsh. Its sole surviving book – the Breviate Domesday in the National Archives, E164/1 (s. xiii2) – is in Latin, and the additions to it, by many hands, of c. 1300–6, while showing an inevitable interest in Welsh matters, are only in Latin and French.119 In the early thirteenth century, however, Neath was still receiving grants from Welsh uchelwyr120 and seems to have had at least some Welsh monks; Clement, its prior (c. 1201), and probably then its abbot until 1218, was the son of Gwrgan (Urban), archdeacon of Llandaf, and the brother of Master Maurice (d. 1242), Gwrgan’s successor as archdeacon, the ‘last of the ancient Welsh clerical families of Llandaff to reach high office in the diocese’ (to quote Crouch) – Maurice failed to become bishop owing to Henry I’s opposition.121 Neath abbey seems to have co-existed uneasily with the native population at least until 1224.122 Rhianydd Biebrach, ‘“The Fairest Abbay of Al Wales”: Neath Abbey and its Estates’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 3 (2014), 97–118 (p. 100). 118 Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 18–19; Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, p. 47. 119 Huws, ‘The Neath Abbey Breviate of Domesday’. Interest in Welsh matters was also apparent in the lost ‘Register of Neath’ (ibid., p. 51). See further J. Beverley Smith, ‘Historical Writing in Medieval Wales: The Composition of Brenhinedd y Saesson’, SC, 42 (2008), 55–86 (pp. 78–81). 120 For Morgan ap Caradog’s grants c. 1205 see Acts, ed. Pryce, nos 140–41, pp. 273–74. For earlier grants from Rhys ab Iestyn in the 1130s see ibid., nos 119–20, p. 257. For undated uchelwyr grants of lands previously held of Morgan ap Caradog (d. 1208), see Clark, Cartae, II, 317; Daniel, ‘Patronage’, p. 82. 121 Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 48–50; Gerald of Wales, Instruction for a Ruler (De Principis Instructione), ed. Robert Bartlett (Oxford, 2018), pp. 702–3; Crouch, Llandaff Episcopal Acta, pp. xvi, xix–xx, xix n. 37, and no. 49 (cf. Clark, Cartae, II, 226–27); James Conway Davies, Episcopal Acts and Cognate Documents Relating to Welsh Dioceses 1066–1272, II (Cardiff, 1948), pp. 526–28 (cf. no. L.311, p. 699). Cowley’s reference to ‘the Welshman and scholar, Master Maurice of Llangeinor’ equates him with the ‘Magister Mauricius de Egluskei[n]wir’ of Clark, Cartae, II, 246, that is, Llangeinor/Llangeinwyr (WATU 126; SS 9187), in a thoroughly Welsh area (cf. Crouch, p. 71, and Griffiths, ‘Native Society’, pp. 186, 191–92, and 205). 122 Hopkins, ‘Cistercians and the Urban Community at Neath’, pp. 125–27 and 129. 117

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A Cistercian interest in heroes’ graves is understandable. Like the claswyr before them,123 the Cistercians were closely tied to the land, and must have been aware of local traditions, landmarks, and intriguing place-names. That is clear from their charters. For example, the bounds of Strata Florida’s Nannerth grange record ‘the chieftain’s leap’ (Llam hi Vnben) as the name of a crag above Nant y Sarn (near SN 947716).124 The bounds of Cymer abbey’s lands in Ardudwy between the Cain and the Mawddach include Bethyresgyb ‘the grave of the bishops’, near the fifth-century Porius stone (area of SH 733314), and Bethycoydhur ‘the grave of the forester’.125 Cwm-hir’s bounds include a fons Arthur ‘Arthur’s well’ and Kair Hocgren, probably a fort belonging Arthur’s father-in-law, the giant (G)ogfran.126 Three mountain passes across which the gigantic Cai Hir could stretch his arms are called Gwryt Kei, ‘Cai’s fathom/span’, in the charters of Abbey Dore (Herefordshire), Ystrad Marchell, and Aberconwy.127 Other relevant features in Aberconwy’s bounds include: (vi/v) Morua Dinlleu ‘marsh of Lleu’s fort’; (xii/xi) Esgynvaen Gwgann ‘The mounting-block of [the giant] Gwgann/Gwgawn’; (xiv/xiii) Kerric e drudeon ‘The heroes’ stones’; (xv/xiv) Scubor dyn emreis ‘the barn of Ambrosius’ fort’, sedem Peris ‘St Peris’s resting-place’, and Llegat er ych ‘The eye of the ox’ (the ox lost it when pulling the monstrous Afanc out of the lake).128 Cistercian houses, including Strata Florida c. 1202, are known to have cultivated an interest in marvels.129 To what extent grave stanzas were actually composed in the Cistercian houses, as opposed to being collected there, is impossible to say. (iv) Conclusion The core of the first half of Series I (up to I.35) and most of Series III (excluding III.11–12 and 17–18) concentrate on heroes and graves that would have been of interest to the community of St Beuno’s church at Clynnog, Crn., where the englynion The claswyr probably appreciated and fostered the ‘cult landscapes’ around them, just as the Gaelic learned families of Ireland did; cf. Elizabeth FizPatrick, ‘Ollamh, biatach, comharba: Lifeways of Gaelic Learned Families in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland’, in Proceedings: XIVth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Maynooth 2011, ed. Liam Breatnach et al. (Dublin, 2015), pp. 165–89 (pp. 180–81). 124 DP IV 457–58; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 28, pp. 172–73 and 175 (giving the grid reference). 125 Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 229, pp. 379 and 381; Gresham, ‘The Cymer Abbey Charter’, pp. 144–45, with map; Edwards, Corpus, III, 416 and 418; AMR s. Bedd Porus, Beddycoediwr, Bedd y Coedwr, and cf. Bedd yr Esgyrn (sic). Cf. commentary on I.51. Esgyb is plural, leaving aside the unlikely possibility that it is a fossilised genitive singular. 126 Charles, ‘Early Charter of the Abbey of Cwmhir’, pp. 68, 71–72, and 74 n. 20; cf. WCD 512; TYP4 363–64; Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 171.28n.; Grooms, Giants, pp. 208–10. 127 Richards, ‘Arthurian Onomastics’, pp. 262–63; Richard Morgan, ‘Paths and Perambulations: Dore Abbey, “Meurig’s Way” and Place-Names in Gwenddwr and Crucadarn’, Brycheiniog, 47 (2016), 137–51 (p. 141); Angharad Fychan, ‘Gwrhyd Cai’, Enwau Cymru, 19 (2021), 21– 22; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 218 (section xv) and p. 350, and no. 563. See Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 152 (section xiv); idem, ‘The Aberconwy Charter: Further Consideration’, p. 334; Williams, ‘gwryd, gwrhyd’; PT 60 and 93; G. 709–10; TYP4 311; PNG xxxix and 38. See commentary on I.12, p. 157. 128 Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 218, sections vi ff., discussed by Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, sections v ff. Cf. CF I 132. On sedem Peris (Gorffwysfa Peris) see also Gresham, ‘The Aberconwy Charter: Further Consideration’, p. 336, and my commentary on I.8–11, p. 146. 129 Elizabeth Freeman, Narratives of a New Order: Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1159– 1220 (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 191–92. 123

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may have been committed to writing by the early twelfth century and quite possibly before. Given the evidence for Welsh emulation of Irish scholarship from the ninth century onwards,130 it is possible, if unprovable, that the initial collection of Englynion y Beddau was inspired by tenth-century Irish poems like those of Broccán Cráibdech and Cináed úa hArtacáin.131 Like those two poems, the original core of Series I was expanded by interpolations (within the I.1–35 section) and additions (from I.36 onwards), probably after the text had passed from the Clynnog clas to the Cistercians of Rhedynog-felen and Aberconwy, Crn. about the end of the twelfth century. At Aberconwy the poem was recast c. 1217 as part of the repertoire of the legendary, boastful Taliesin – ‘Whose is this grave? Ask me; I know it’ – and its geographical range was expanded, reflecting the widening horizons of Llywelyn Fawr’s greater Gwynedd (see (ii) above). By the early thirteenth century, Aberconwy had transmitted Series I to a Cistercian monastery in the south, most likely its mother house at Strata Florida, Crd. The Cistercians of Strata Florida, Cwm-hir, and Neath then added – and perhaps composed – further englynion that reflected their own southern interests. Thanks to the Cistercians, when Series I reached the Augustinian(?) scribe of the Black Book of Carmarthen by c. 1250, it had a much more ‘national’ range than when it started out in Arfon. The ‘national’ range of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi offers an attractive parallel.132 Unlike the Four Branches, however, Cistercian involvement with Englynion y Beddau may have ceased after the c. 1200–1250 period. The Black Book133 is the only known medieval manuscript of Series I, and Series III may never have left Caernarfonshire until it reached William Salesbury in Llanrwst, Den., perhaps from Aberconwy/Maenan or via the former Augustinian house at Beddgelert.134 According to a widely applied paradigm, ‘cultural memory’ is typically controlled and transmitted in mnemonic verse by specialist carriers, such as bards, who recite and disseminate it in communal gatherings; then, when its original meaning becomes obscure, exegetes take over the task of interpreting the ancient verses.135 Only with difficulty can this paradigm be applied to Englynion y Beddau. As the Old Irish anecdote about the pillar-stones suggests,136 there were always competing sources of authority in the medieval Celtic countries. No bard, lawyer, or cleric had the undisputed authority to decide whether Pryderi’s grave was in Arfon or Ardudwy, for example – there is evidence of disagreement on that point.137 And when multiple Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 29 and passim. See above, pp. 8 and 26. 132 Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 116: ‘the topographical indications in the Four Branches suggest that the stories originated mainly in Dyfed and in Gwynedd and were joined together secondarily (in Dyfed according to the general consensus, but that is not relevant here)’. While agreeing that the secondary joining occurred in the south, I avoided that question in ‘Clas Beuno’ because Professor Brynley F. Roberts was presenting a paper on the topic at the same Bonn conference (later published as ‘Where Were the Four Branches of the Mabinogi Written?’, CSANA Yearbook, 1 (2001), 61–75). In the Bonn conference he advocated ‘Bangor or Clynnog’ for all four branches, but in the published version he narrowed this to Clynnog (p. 71). 133 On the supposed early-fourteenth-century ‘exact copy’ see above, p. 14. 134 See above, p. 17. 135 Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 39–50. 136 Above, p. 6. 137 See commentary on I.7 and Sims-Williams, ‘A Variant Version of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’. 130 131

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recensions of texts survive – Trioedd Ynys Prydain, for instance – we find so many inconsistencies that it is hard to credit that they reflect a unified system of ‘bardic instruction’;138 already they seem to be in the hands of exegetes, splitting hairs and reconciling contradictions by means of new contradictions. A striking example in Englynion y Beddau is the character Mor Maurhidic (I.22) who seems to owe his existence to a misunderstanding of the words mor mauridic in an earlier englyn (I.6). While the earliest core of Englynion y Beddau may reflect a serious attempt to catalogue some of the topographical traditions known to the clergy of Llanfeuno, Clynnog, in the later sections facetious, even burlesque elements seem to creep in.139

138 139

Cf. TYP4 lviii. See above, pp. 75–6, and below, p. 96.

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4 THE REDISCOVERY AND STUDY OF ENGLYNION Y BEDDAU

Although there were presumably a number of pre-Reformation copies of Englynion y Beddau in addition to the Black Book of Carmarthen,1 none survives, and there are no certain allusions to the text, even in the Triads.2 It may be significant that Gruffudd Hiraethog (d. 1564), despite his keen interest in old stories and traditions about places, never seems to draw on Englynion y Beddau.3 The first extant post-medieval manuscripts are Thomas Wiliems’s possibly direct copy, in BL Add. 31055 (c. 1591–96), of William Salesbury’s now lost manuscript of Series III4 and Jaspar Gryffyth’s modernised copy of Series I in Llanstephan 120, made sometime between c. 1597 and 1607 as part of his transcription of the Black Book. Neither of these scholars had any evident interest in the contents, to judge merely by the scarcity of marginalia, except that Thomas Wiliems notes the name dylan beside III.8c and correctly identifies ‘Ân ap lhian’ in III.17a as ‘Merdhin Embrys’. The same is true of the texts of Series III and Series I in Peniarth 111, transcribed c. 1607 by John Jones of Gellilyfdy from a lost manuscript by Roger Morris of Coedytalwrn, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, Den. (fl. 1582–97). Lack of annotation does not prove lack of interest, however, for John Jones ‘corrects’ Mabon vap Madron (III.15c) to Mabon vap Mydron in order to agree with Mabon am Mydron in the Black Book of Carmarthen poem Pa gur yv y porthaur? And some years later he would quote I.73 in connection with the alleged grave of Beli ap Benlli Gawr (see commentary). All these scribes were connected with the Denbighshire–Flintshire region, where the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance flourished,5 and no doubt their priority was to preserve texts rather than to comment on them. Another copyist in the same area, apparently involved in transmitting Englynion y Beddau, was Salesbury’s contemporary Richard Longford (or Langford), but his role remains unclear.6

A desideratum is a study of Black Book derivatives comparable to Huws, ‘Canu Aneirin’. On Cynddelw’s supposed allusion see above, p. 27. 3 He has some material relevant to I.5, I.24, and III.17 (see commentaries), but there is no close connection. 4 According to a comment at the start of our MS N (NLW 21001Bii), Salesbury’s manuscript seemed to date from the reign of Elizabeth (1558–1603). This refers to the volume as a whole, and there is room to doubt whether the page containing Series III was in Salesbury’s own hand. See below, p. 277. The manuscript probably belonged to the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign, when Salesbury was active. 5 G. J. Williams, ‘Traddodiad Llenyddol Dyffryn Clwyd a’r Cyffiniau’, TDHS, 1 (1952), 20–32; Enid Roberts, ‘The Renaissance in the Vale of Clwyd’, Flintshire Historical Society Publications, 15 (1954–55), 52–63; G. A. Williams, Dyffryn Conwy a’r Dadeni. 6 See below, p. 277. 1 2

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The Rediscovery and Study of Englynion y Beddau

In Peniarth 98ii (not before 1617), Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, copying Series I from the Black Book on pp. 18–257 and Series III from John Jones’s Peniarth 111 text on pp. 48–50, displays a different kind of interest from John Jones. Unlike Jones, who was an exact, careful copyist, Dr Davies silently emends, improves the metre, and underlines problematic words for further consideration or for inclusion in his Dictionary.8 Comparison of his texts of Series I and Series III with those in the Black Book and Peniarth 111 respectively bears out Gwenogvryn Evans’s comment on Peniarth 98ii in general: a comparison of certain portions with the original shows that Dr. Davies was generally accurate, but in the difficult and obscure passages he both blunders and amends (without notification).9

Although Dr Davies’s texts of Series I and III look very different from their exemplars, there is no evidence that he consulted any versions other than the Black Book and Peniarth 111 respectively. His ‘improved’ text of Series III has had an undeserved authority, being preferred by all modern editors.10 Nevertheless, some of his conjectures and metrically inspired emendations deserve consideration, especially where he was drawing on his wide knowledge of other texts, as when he emended Tedel Tydawen in III.13 to Tydai tad awen.11 Until modern times, Peniarth 98ii had no influence. After Dr Davies died in 1644, Robert Vaughan acquired it for his library at Hengwrt,12 and there it became as inaccessible to most scholars as the Black Book itself (Peniarth 1), Peniarth 111, Vaughan’s meticulous transcript of the Black Book in Peniarth 107, and his long-lost volume Kynveirdh Kymraeg. Consequently most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholars had to be content with inferior copies of Series I, mostly deriving from Roger Morris’s lost manuscript. Judging by the derivatives, Morris’s manuscript contained errors such as ag Urien ag Uriad for a Gurien a Guriad at I.3c and yn diffeith cund a ud for a ud yn diffeith cund at I.41a. One of these derivatives was the Basiliobardicon of William Maurice of Cefn-y-braich, Den. (d. 1680); this included Series I and III, both copied from Peniarth 111, a volume which passed through Maurice’s hands in 1660.13 Before the Basiliobardicon was lost to fire in the nineteenth The Black Book was already feint in places; note Dr Davies’s ei retgyr (‘his pigsty’!) for y rug and mawr ich ca for mauridic in I.6 (correctly copied by Robert Vaughan in Peniarth 107). Davies has a ud yn diffeith Cund at I.41a, without the transposition seen in Peniarth 111 and elsewhere. It is probably coincidental that Peniarth 98ii and Peniarth 111 both insert yn at I.4d, as it was an obvious ‘improvement’, possibly influenced by III.7c. Davies certainly knew and annotated Peniarth 111 (Huws, ‘John Davies and his Manuscripts’, p. 119) and he clearly based his text of Series III in Peniarth 98ii on it, but it was not his source for Series I. 8 I find no clear examples of Dr Davies citing Series I or Series III in his 1632 Dictionarium. Cyngrwn ‘rotundus’ there may not come from Series I.16 (see commentary below, p. 162 n. 251). On Davies’s way of editing poetry, see Jones and Owen, ‘John Davies and the Poets of the Princes’, and Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, pp. 1, 4, and 12. 9 RMWL I 611. Cf. Jones and Owen, ‘John Davies and the Poets of the Princes’, p. 180. 10 CLlH XII.6–10; BBCSG; EBSG. For errors in the BBCSG transcription, see below, p. 273 n. 3. 11 Other examples of his editorial changes are discussed in the commentaries to III.1–4, 7–9, 11, 14–15, and 17. 12 Huws, ‘John Davies and his Manuscripts’, p. 94. 13 See RMWL I 664 and RWMS I 382 on Maurice’s note on Peniarth 111, fol. v. On the Basiliobardicon see RMWL II 868. In Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Carte 125, fol. 339, Thomas Carte 7

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

century, Series I and III would be copied from it by Moses Williams in c. 1728 (in Llanstephan 18) and again in c. 1760 by the cataloguer of Maurice’s library, Evan Evans (in NLW 2040).14 Edward Lhwyd’s antiquarian interests were bound to lead him to Englynion y Beddau; his longstanding obsessions from the early 1690s included the inscribed stone at ‘Bedd Porius’ at Trawsfynydd, Mer. and the so-called ‘Bedd Emlyn’ stone on the summit of ‘Bryn y Beddau’ in Clocaenog, Den. (SJ 0525 5324).15 In 1696, on an all too brief visit to Robert Vaughan’s library at Hengwrt, he noticed ‘Bedhe Milụyr Ynys Pryden’ in the Black Book of Carmarthen itself and in Vaughan’s own Kynveirdh Kymraeg in the same library, listing the poem as Carmen de Nobiliorum prisci temporis Britanniae militum sepulchris in the summary Catalogus that he eventually printed in the first and only volume of his Archaeologia Britannica (1707). Lhwyd supposed that Series I referred to sixth-century warriors (‘Carmen de Sepulchris Nobilium seculi sexti’) and mistakenly attributed it to ‘Kyngogio (sic) Elaeth’, owing to the Black Book rubric before the poem that follows Englynion y Beddau: Kygogion . elaeth aecant.16 In the same Catalogus he mentions the presence of John Jones’s ‘Hanes Bedh Beli mab Benlhi Gaụr’ in Peniarth MS 267 (then at Hengwrt),17 and quotes some miscellaneous grave stanzas from the

listed Englynion e Beteu among the ‘Hen Gerddi’ in the Basiliobardicon (pers. comm. Graham Thomas). 14 See below. On Maurice and his books see RWMS II 116. Moses Williams acknowledges the Basiliobardicon as his source in Llanstephan 18 (see below). NLW 2040 was copied from the Basiliobardicon itself, not from Llanstephan 18, for it lacks the latter’s mistakes such as I.16b wnei, 43c Rywaun, 60a in, 65c dyuael (wnai, Ruwaun/Rvwavn, in y, duyael/dvyael, in the Black Book and Peniarth 111) and III.3c Gwaranawc (Garanawc in Peniarth 111). It also preserves John Jones’s annotations at I.4d and 44b, as in Peniarth 111, lost in Llanstephan 18. 15 In Camden, Britannia, ed. Gibson, col. 686, Lhwyd says ‘the place where this stone lyes is call’d Bryn y Bedheu’. On it see Edwards, Corpus, III, no. D1; EBSG 132 (photograph of Bryn Beddau); Sims-Williams, ‘John Rhys and the Insular Inscriptions’, pp. 60–62; and Lhwyd Letters: John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 10 June 1693; John Pryce to unknown recipient, 17 June 1693; John Lloyd to Lhwyd, ?late June and 1 July 1693; David Lloyd to Lhwyd, 14 July 1693; John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 3 Aug. 1693; Maurice Jones to [Lhwyd], 21 Aug. 1693; Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 10 Oct. 1693; John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 5 Nov. 1694; and Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 16 July 1695. On ‘Bedd Porius’ see below, p. 221. 16 Archaeologia Britannica, pp. 225–26, 255, 258, and 261 (the attribution to Elaeth is already disputed in CR 159). The contents list of Kynveirdh Kymreig includes Englynion y Beddau twice (Archaeologia Britannica, p. 258, items 12 and 47) – perhaps Series I and III? At pp. 254–55 Lhwyd notes that there were also copies in manuscripts in the libraries of Bishop Humphreys of Hereford (translated from Bangor in 1701) and Thomas Wilkins of Llanblethian, Glamorgan. 17 Archaeologia Britannica, p. 262. It is not clear that he already knew Series III (‘Ann ab y Lheian V. Myrdhyn’ (p. 254) need not refer to III.17 as it is copied from Dr Davies; see commentary). For the date of the Catalogus see Lhwyd Letters, Lhwyd to Tancred Robinson, 14 Sept. 1796: ‘I … have this time taken a Catalogue of all the ancient MSS. it [Hengwrt Study in Meirionydhshire] contains. There are, The Works of Taliesyn, Aneuryn gwawdydh, Myrdhyn a Morvryn, and Kygodio [sic] Elaeth, who lived in the 5th and 6th Centuries (but the small MS. containing them all seems to have been copied about 500 years agoe) as also of several others valuable in their kind’.

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The Rediscovery and Study of Englynion y Beddau

Red Book of Hergest (Series II.2–5),18 suggesting, with due hesitation, that their Maodhyn might be Y Mwythig (Shrewsbury). Fortunately, he was permitted to copy the Red Book, unlike the manuscripts at Hengwrt.19 In a letter of 1698, Lhwyd quotes one of the englynion from the Red Book on ‘the Death of [Llywarch Hen’s] Sons in battle, telling us where they lye buryed’ (Series II.2) and regrets that such poems ‘well deserve Publishing with a Latin Comment: but my hands are already fully employ’d’.20 By 1703, with the first volume of Archaeologia Britannica largely off his hands though not printed, Lhwyd started to organise his material on names from the early saga englynion and from texts such as Culhwch and Olwen, having enlisted the help of the polymath William Baxter from 1702 onwards.21 Some of Lhwyd’s literary materials were jotted down by him and his assistant William Jones in notebooks such as Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B. 464. This includes Jones’s rough copy of Series III (our MS W) from Salesbury’s lost manuscript. This was seen at Bodysgallen, Creuddyn, Crn., in the possession of the widow of Robert Wynn, the ‘curious and accomplish’d Gentleman’ to whose help and untimely death Lhwyd refers in the 1695 Britannia.22 Lhwyd clearly intended to get cleaner transcriptions of some items listed in the notebook.23 The transcript of Salesbury’s manuscript commissioned by Lhwyd, which includes Series III (our MS N), is NLW 21001Bii, made in 1701.24 Elsewhere in the Rawlinson notebook, Lhwyd’s assistant William Jones copied the first englyn of Series I from ‘the book of Mr Ball, which was transcribed out of the Black Book of Carmarthen’: ENGLYNION Y Beddau allan o Lyfr Mr Ball yr rhwn a Scrifenwyd allan o’r Llyfr dy o Gaervyrddyn. Archaeologia Britannica, pp. 259 and 258–61 (pagination sic). These ‘Series II’ stanzas would be incorporated into Englynion y Beddau by Lhwyd’s protégé Moses Williams; see above, p. 20. 19 Williams, ‘Edward Lhuyd a Thraddodiad Ysgolheigaidd Sir Ddinbych’, p. 49; Roberts, Edward Lhwyd, pp. 153, 158, and 162–63; MWM 297; RWMS I 742. 20 Lhwyd Letters: Llwyd to John Lloyd, 28 Feb. 1698; for reply see John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 18 Mar. 1698. Llwyd’s source, a ‘large Folio in Glamorganshire’, was clearly ‘Llyfr Coch yr Hergest which wee copyd in Glamorganshire’ (Lhwyd to ?Humphrey Foulkes, 20 July 1701); it was in the possession of Thomas Wilkins of Llan-fair (d. 1699). Cf. Lhwyd to [Richard Mostyn], 25 July 1698: ‘The old Poets such as Lhywarch hên, Myrdhyn ab Morvryn, & Taliesin, are much more worth our acquaintance than is commonly represented: and indeed none but Scholars and Critics (thô the Vulgar pretend to’m) can make any tolerable use of them: and I am now very well satisfy’d thay may do it to Good purpose’. 21 On Baxter see Arthur Percival, ‘William Baxter (1649–1723)’, THSC, 1957, 58–66. See Lhwyd Letters passim for their correspondence from 1702 onwards. 22 Britannia, ed. Gibson, col. 670. On the family see MWM 314. For many years Lhwyd had been in touch with the Wynns and the botanist Edward Morgan, their gardener at Bodysgallen (Roberts, Edward Lhwyd, pp. 29–33 and 38). See Lhwyd Letters: Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 8 June 1685 (asks Lloyd to try and persuade Morgan to leave Lhwyd his library of books); John Wynne to Lhwyd, 7 Aug. 1686; John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 9 Aug. 1686; ‘Mredydh Owen’ (= Edward Lhwyd) to Robert Plot, 20 May 1690; and John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 28 May 1693. 23 See below, p. 274. 24 For the date at 180r see Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, p. 75. 18

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Beteü ae gulich yr glau guir ni ortywnassint vy dignau Kerwid a Chivrid a Chav. Q. alibi.25

Unlike the modernised versions of Jaspar Gryffyth and Dr Davies, this text remains close to the spelling of the Black Book, like John Jones’s copy in Peniarth 111 and its lost exemplar by Roger Morris.26 Mr Ball must be the Mr William Ball who is thanked in the Preface to Lhwyd’s Archaeologia and is mentioned elsewhere in the Rawlinson notebook as vicar of Northop (Llaneurgain), Fli. (SJ 2468); he succeeded David Lloyd (d. 1692) as vicar and left a legacy to the parish in 1720.27 His book seems to have disappeared without trace, and there is nothing to show that Lhwyd ever saw more that the stanza copied by William Jones. In addition, Lhwyd himself copied Series I and Series III (our MS B) in Llanstephan 145, fol. 68, from the lost manuscript in which Roger Morris had appended a copy of Salesbury’s Series III to a copy of Series I from the Black Book of Carmarthen.28 Thus Lhwyd possessed three copies of Series III: one by his assistant William Jones (MS W), one by an unknown amanuensis (MS N), and one in his own hand (MS B, which also included Series I). By early 1708 he was evidently in touch with Baxter on the subject of Englynion y Beddau, for the latter wrote from Tottenham High Cross on 14 May 1708, referring to I.57: I return you my hearty thanks for your Eglynion i Bedhe, thô for want of a competent knowledge in Topography I cannot make that use of them that you may. The mention of the grave of Coel mab Kynvelin in Lhethr i brin (where ever that is) makes me suspect some of it of being favulous: thô the Common people in Essex shows us King Coel’s

Rawlinson B. 464, 185r; Par. I 151 and II 11. Gruffudd Antur Edwards kindly identified William Jones’s hand here and elsewhere. ‘Q. alibi’ onwards is in Lhwyd’s hand. In NLW 2020ii, 91v, c. 1760, Evan Evans copied the englyn from the transcript of the Rawlinson notebook in NLW 1506, Book III, 67r (where yr glau had become yn glau – Evans omitted the meaningless yn), and Evans’s copy was in turn copied by William Morris in BL Add. 14867, 149r. Evans also omitted the article before glaw in NLW 2022, c. 1765, when copying Series I from BL Add. 14907 by Lewis Morris; he may have decided that his copy from Mr Ball was of higher authority than Lewis Morris’s copy of Llanstephan 120. 26 Unlike Peniarth 111 it omits the article before Beteu – the Black Book’s marginal E (Y in Peniarth 111) is easily overlooked. Note that William Jones does not say that Mr Ball wrote the book himself. The h of Chav is unlike Jones’s own hand and was perhaps imitated from the script of Mr Ball’s book; it resembles the early-seventeenth-century h in RWMS III pl. 587. 27 Par. I 54, 85, and 86–87. On Ball and his legacy to Northop parish in 1720 see Thomas Edwards, ‘The History of Northop, Flintshire’, Cambrian Quarterly Magazine and Celtic Repertory, 4 (1832), 190–204 (p. 200); T. W. Pritchard, ‘Northop Grammar School’, FHSJ, 29 (1980), 3–17 (p. 10); and, on David Lloyd, see Bywgraffiadur, s.n. Gruffudd Antur Edwards kindly referred me to the Archaeologia and to a mention of Ball in RWMS I 469 s. Peniarth Estate PB 6. 28 Llanstephan 145, fol. 68, starts at I.62 (misnumbered ‘63’), and there is a lacuna at I.72c–73a. Possibly the pages containing the start of Series I were not preserved because the text appeared to be an inferior one; fol. 68 may have been preserved for the sake of Series III alone. Various readings in Series I and III in Llanstephan 145, fol. 68, and the index on fol. 69, show that Roger Morris’s lost manuscript was its source. See below, pp. 275–6. 25

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The Rediscovery and Study of Englynion y Beddau Kitchin in the Roman Camp at Lexdon 2 miles on this side Colechester, which is a deep hole at the end of that encampment.29

This suggests that Baxter, like Lhwyd, thought of Englynion y Beddau as a poem about Britain as a whole, not just Wales. Whether Llwyd sent Baxter a text of Englynion y Beddau is unclear. He certainly sent him an alphabetical index to Series I and III, now bound as fol. 69 of Llanstephan 145, and Baxter may simply be referring to the relevant index entry: Koel ab Kinvelyn Bd at λέτer ı Bryn – 57.30

It may be relevant that Lhwyd himself claimed descent from Coel Godebog, for the latter was sometimes misidentified with Coel of Colchester.31 Nothing came of the collaboration, and on 25 January 1709 Baxter seems to decline further work on the early poetry, correctly citing his own lack of expertise: I must now beg your pardon for my so long silence, having been sometime from home. I likewise thank you for your ingenious British Ode. I am glad you have accesse to Sir W. Williams Library of MSS. As to Taliessin I have no maner of knowledge of his writings, and am afraid I am not capable to pick much out of them, unlesse you shall publish a Glossary of ancient British words. I could wish you would preserve the most antient monuments of our Bards by an edition of them, with some few Annotations, which cannot but be acceptable to the curious.32

Five months later Lhwyd’s untimely death, aged 49, on 30 June 1709, brought his work on Englynion y Beddau to an abrupt end, and his manuscripts were scattered. It may have been Lhwyd’s protégé Moses Williams (1685–1742) who preserved Lhwyd’s text of Series I and III (MS B) and his index to them and bound them in Llanstephan 145, fols 68–69, for he owned that volume and had collaborated with Lhwyd on the creation of the index.33 Since Williams was in close contact with

Lhwyd Letters: William Baxter to Lhwyd, 14 May 1708. On Lhwyd’s plans for onomastic research see Edward Lhwyd, Archaeologica Britannica: Texts and Translations, ed. Evans and Roberts, pp. 20–25, 56, and 143. 30 Llanstephan 145, fol. 69 is not included in Lhwyd Letters. It is not clear that Lhwyd’s text of Series I (now acephalous) and Series III, bound in as fol. 68, was ever sent to Baxter. Although fol. 68 has one crease, it was not folded small enough to have been enclosed with the index sent to Baxter, bound as fol. 69. On the index see below, pp. 98–109. 31 Edward Lhwyd, Archaeologica Britannica: Texts and Translations, ed. Evans and Roberts, pp. 198–99, and Pryce, Writing Welsh History, p. 176. Cf. WCD 136. 32 Lhwyd Letters: William Baxter to Lhwyd, 25 Jan. 1709. Sir William Williams (of Llanforda, Shropshire) had died in 1700. He owned the manuscript collection of William Maurice (d. 1680) of Cefn-y-braich, Llansilin, Den. (see RWMS II 96 and 116). In 1696 Lhwyd had written ‘Sir William Williams hath several Welsh MSS. (tho’ I think no Dictionary) that would be of use to me; but his son tels me he’s resolved never to lend any. They are chiefly modern Copies out of Hengwrt Study in Meirionydhshire, which I am promised free access to’ (Lhwyd Letters: Lhwyd to Tancred Robinson, 14 Sept. 1696). In fact Lhwyd’s access to Hengwrt did not last beyond 1696 and he had only ‘a Transient view (for a few hours)’ of the Hengwrt and Llanforda collections (Archaeologia Britannica, p. 225). 33 On Moses Williams’s connection with Llanstephan 145 see RWMS I 89 and below, p. 98. 29

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Baxter and went through his papers after his death in 1723,34 he would have been well placed to retrieve any material sent by Lhwyd. On the odd-numbered pages of Llanstephan 18 (c. 1728), pp. 4–23, Moses Williams copied texts of Series I and Series III (the latter numbered 1–17)35 and started to transcribe them in modernised orthography on the facing, even-numbered pages, there numbering Series I from 1 to 73. He later added what we call Series II.2–3 (numbered 74 and 75) on p. 20 and Series IV on p. 121.36 He noted overlaps between the series, for example that III.1 corresponded to I.33, and made some useful conjectures about the identity of a few place-names, such as Pant gwyn in I.20 and Hir vynyt in I.32. The rubric before Series III at p. 21, ‘O’r Llyfr du o Gaerfyddin hyd yma; ac o hyn allan o law William Salsburi medd Roesser Moris’, is the same rubric as in Peniarth 111. On p. 23, at the end of Series III, he noted his source: Ex Basiliobardicon à pag. 19 a. ad pag. 25. Per me M. Williams.

Given the extent of the cited pagination, the Basiliobardicon – a folio manuscript – was clearly Moses Williams’s source for Series I as well as for Series III. His texts of both Series include the same corruptions as John Jones’s copies in Peniarth 111,37 so there can be no doubt that the Basiliobardicon was in turn copied from Peniarth 111. Thus a line of transmission for Series I and III ran from Roger Morris’s lost manuscript to Peniarth 111 (John Jones) to the lost Basiliobardicon (William Maurice) to Llanstephan 18 (Moses Williams). After copying Series I in Llanstephan 18 but before adding his modernised version, Moses Williams went over the text, correcting it from some frequently superior copy (‘X’).38 For example, he corrected 3c ag Urien ag Uriad to a Guriad a G- and 41a yn diffaith(?) Cund a ud to a ud yn diffeith Cund. ‘X’ was not the Black Book itself, however, but an imperfect transcript, by Williams himself or someone else. William Maurice’s lost Archiobardicon, which is known to have included a copy of the Black Book,39 is a possibility. Moses Williams probably had at least one copy of Series I long before he penned Llanstephan 18, because c. 1710–20 he had set an amanuensis to transcribe most of John Davies, Bywyd a Gwaith Moses Williams (1685–1742) (Cardiff, 1937), pp. 18–19, 97, 99–101, 109, and 121. 35 III.11–12 being treated as a single stanza, no. 11. 36 On ‘Series II’ and ‘Series IV’ see above, pp. 18–25. 37 Typical Series III readings in Llanstephan 18 which clearly derive from Peniarth 111 (via the Basiliobardicon) are III.1c Phyrnal; 3c ei geiffil nieinon; 6d Pennhardd and y gyn; 14a drathyw­ awt; 16c Mydron. NLW 2040, another derivative of the Basiliobardicon, is similar, except that Evan Evans substitutes the regular name-forms Ffyrnvael and Modron. 38 The source of these corrections is neither Llanstephan 120 nor Peniarth 107. Some of the corrections may be due to him taking a second look at the Basiliobardicon, for example, the correction of cut to tut at I.2a, eglwys to egluis at I.5a, and yr to ir at I.18a; Peniarth 111 and NLW 2040 also have the t- (like the Black Book), Peniarth 111 has eglwys with i over the y, while NLW 2040 has egluis, and 2040 also has ir at I.18, as against yr in the Black Book and Peniarth 111. At I.8a Williams deleted Peryton and substituted pyton with a bar through the tail of the p, the abbreviation used in the Black Book; as this reading was retained in Peniarth 111, it was conceivably kept in the Basiliobardicon as well. But Williams changes yg at I.12a, Owein at I.13a, kymynad at I.52b, gowin at 57b, and the second y at I.73b (readings on which the Black Book, Peniarth 111, and NLW 2040 agree) to y, Owen, kyminad, gofin, and i. 39 Huws, ‘Canu Aneirin: The Other Manuscripts’, p. 47. 34

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the Black Book, omitting Series I and Kygogion Elaeth,40 which presumably he did not need. Possibly he had already obtained a copy of these under the influence of Edward Lhwyd, who had (mistakenly) identified ‘Cyngogio Elaeth’ as the author of both poems, as Williams notes at Llanstephan 18, p. 5. It may be significant that one of Williams’s mistaken ‘corrections’ – Owen for Owein at I.13a – agrees with Williams’s entry Owen ab Yrien in the Lhwyd/Williams index in Llanstephan 145. Unfortunately, Moses Williams never completed or published his work on Englynion y Beddau, but his manuscript was to inspire later editors to combine the four series.41 Lewis Morris (with his brother William) and Evan Evans (Ieuan Fardd, 1731–88) were the most industrious students of Englynion y Beddau after Moses Williams. Williams’s manuscripts, including Llanstephan 18, formed part of the collection of the earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle,42 a collection which also included Jaspar Gryffyth’s modernised transcript of the Black Book (Llanstephan 120). Lewis Morris saw the latter – presumably in 1749 or earlier, while access to Shirburn was still possible – and mentioned it in a letter to Evan Evans on 7 December 1758, in connection with the Black Book poem ‘Seithenhin saw de allan’ (LlDC no. 39): among my Lord of Macclesfield’s Mss I find a Copy of Beddau milwyr ynys Prydain wrote by Taliessin and Copied from Llyfr du o Gaerfyrddin, in which the 9th verse of this poem is inserted thus, Bedd Seithenyn Synhwyr fann rhwng Caer Cenedir a Glann Mor Mawrhydic a Chynran.43

This spelling of I.6 shows that Llanstephan 120 was the copy in question. BL Add. 14907, fols 115–21, is the copy of its Series I made by Lewis Morris’s amanuensis; it was annotated by Lewis himself with the subtitle ‘milwyr ynys Prydain’ and other comments and emendations, some made on the basis of the Llanstephan 18 text, about which he complained that ‘the writer hath not been able to explain the old orthography’ (121r).44 Evan Evans, c. 1765, copied Add. 14907 into NLW 2022, his source being revealed by the repetition of errors such as Einon for Kinon at I.8c. In turn, NLW 2022 (Panton 55) would be the source for two copies bearing the date 1794 – Cwrtmawr 12, by David Ellis (d. 1795), and Bangor 14675 by Peter Bailey Williams – and for two early-nineteenth-century miscellanies, NLW 672 and NLW 669.45 David Ellis’s copy is ‘Allan o Gronfa dafydd Thomas, alias Dafydd Ddu o’r Llanstephan 54, pp. 83–134. This text is in modernised orthography. See RMWL II 547 and RWMS I 72. 41 See above, p. 20. 42 RWMS I 59. Egerton Phillimore (‘Notes on Place-Names in English Maelor’, p. 480) mentions ‘a transcript [of Series III] in the Earl of Macclesfield’s collection at Shirburn Castle, made by Richard Morris from the Basiliobardicon of William Morris of Cefn y Braich, once preserved at Wynnstay’. Presumably Richard Morris a slip for Moses Williams. The former (d. 1779) indexed several of the latter’s manuscripts (RWMS II 114). 43 Letter bound at the end of NLW 2022 (Panton 55). RWMS I 615 notes that the earl of Macclesfield’s manuscripts ‘were not accessible after 1749’. A further remark on the earl by Lewis Morris is at RMWL II 1100. 44 The amanuensis (for whom see RWMS II 217–18 s. X146) probably glanced at Llanstephan 18 as well; for example, he has Sanant at I.70c, where Jaspar Gryffyth had Sanawc in Llanstephan 120. 45 Their derivation from 2022 is revealed inter alia by the omission of the article before glaw in I.1a. NLW 669 is ‘Ysgriflyfr y diweddar Sion Wyn o Eifion [John Thomas] Sydd yn awr yn 40

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Iri’ (p. 466), and Peter Bailey Williams’s copy is ‘o law Mr E. Evans gan D. Thomas’ (p. 106).46 According to NLW 669, D. Thomas (Dafydd Ddu Eryri, 1759–1822) had copied the englynion ‘o law Mr E. Evans’ in 1793, ‘a cheny o’r eiddo D. Thomas yn y flwyddyn 1806’ (p. 110). Evans was thus the progenitor of many of the late copies of Series I in modernised spelling. Evans had already transcribed Thomas Wiliems’s copy of Series III (our MS T) in NLW 1983i, c. 1758: ‘Allan o lyfr Mr Tho. Wiliams Physygwr lythyren am lythyren hyt y medrais’ (p. 36). Thus he had copies of both Series I and Series III. He was never satisfied, however, to copy only one branch of a manuscript tradition, and in c. 1760, in NLW 2020ii, he made a copy of the MS W text of Series III in Lhwyd’s Parochialia notebook – not directly from MS W unfortunately, but from a transcript of the Parochialia in NLW 1506, made for the Shropshire antiquary William Mytton (d. 1746).47 Evans aimed – in theory rather than practice – to preserve the exact spelling of earlier copies. He would have deduced from the quotation in Lewis Morris’s 1758 letter that Llanstephan 120 was in modernised orthography. This may explain why, when copying Series I and III from the Basiliobardicon in NLW 2040, in c. 1760, he made a point of entitling Series I as follows (p. 138): ENGLYNION Y BETAU. Allan o’r Llyfr Du o Gaer Fyrddin ac yn ei orgraff ef.

In reality, the Basiliobardicon text – judging by Peniarth 111 (its immediate source) and Llanstephan 18 (its other derivative) – was at some distance from the Black Book orthography, as Evans probably guessed. This may explain why, in NLW 2040, he sometimes archaises his exemplar, using i instead of y, as in I.25a in i drewred, 27a Divel, 40b i mae, and 45c Kinon ino i. (The Black Book, Peniarth 111, and Llanstephan 18 have y in all these places.) Particular problems were presented by I.70–73, the second scribe’s addition to the Black Book. Evans probably could not credit that some readings really occurred in the Black Book – I.70d y mae … afwy, 70f y mae, 72b vedgor, 72c Cunedda, 72d ddiua – and substituted i mae … avwy, 70f i mae, 72b vetgor, 72c Cuneta, and 72d diwa, readings which have no support either in Peniarth 111 or Llanstephan 18.48 Evans’s text of Series I and III, including its errors such as Cuneta and Seithen at I.6a, would be transcribed by Peter Bailey Williams in Cwrtmawr 454 (c. 1791–93), ‘Allan o ysgrifen Mr Evan Evans, Prydydd Hir’ (p. 478). eiddof fi Eben Fardd o Glynnog Fawr’ and is said on p. 110 to be an 1806 copy of a manuscript copied in 1793 by Dafydd Thomas from a manuscript of Evan Evans. 46 Peter Bailey Williams knew Cwrtmawr 12 (see RWMS I 24), but Bangor 14675 is not copied from it; e.g. at I.1a it has au gwlych where Cwrtmawr 12 has y gwlych. On Dafydd Ddu’s use of the Panton manuscripts see RWMS II 172. 47 Evans’s use of NLW 1506 (printed in Par. I 154–55) rather than MS W (ibid. II 11) is shown by shared errors such as III.1c hadl, 3a Gwedion, 9a Pana, 10b amnes, 11a dyvic, and 11c llaes. He did not use the copy of NLW 1506 in NLW 6617, which has errors such as Elian for Llian at III.17a. 48 This is not to say that there were not some archaisations in the Basiliobardicon. The reading bet at I.72c and I.73c in Llanstephan 18 suggests as much, as does the definite article in the Basiliobardicon title, Englynion e Beteu, as quoted by Thomas Carte (see above n. 11). Note also Llanstephan 18’s III.2c oet and 10c gwahoddei, the latter reading also in NLW 2040.

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Englynion y Beddau chimed in with Lewis Morris’s antiquarian interests. In his opinion, Taliesin’s Beddau Milwyr Ynys Prydain, or Tombs of the Warriors of Britain, is a noble piece of antiquity, and strikes a great light on the history of those times, when compared with the Triades, the Brut, and the succeeding writers.49

Although Lewis Morris made an Index to Englynion y Beddau (BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46) and told Evan Evans in 1759 that he was busy inserting names from ‘Beddau Milwyr’ into his Celtic Remains, he never completed the task, only citing them occasionally.50 For example, he omitted the reference to Pryderi’s grave (I.7), although in 1764, in his ‘Collections in Relation to the British History’, he duly cited ‘Beddau milwyr’ when commenting on the grave of Pryderi in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi.51 Another copy of Series I from Llanstephan 18 seems to have been in circulation (‘L’), distinguished by errors such as genoli for gwenoli at I.7a and bytau for bu tau at I.51b. The extant earliest derivative of it is in William Morris’s ‘Y Prif-feirdd Cymreig’ (BL Add. 14867), in which he notes that the englynion were sent to him by his brother Lewis and were copied by himself in 1762 (198r). A text (‘Z’) similar to, and probably derived from, Add. 14867, was distinguished by further corruptions such as I.4b bron, 21a kein hen, and a complete muddling of I.24–25. This corrupt version would eventually be printed in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801. In manuscript it is represented by: ‘Barddoniaeth y Cynfeirdd’, c. 1768 (BL Add. 15002) by Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), a collection modelled on Add. 14867;52 ‘Y Cynveirdd Cymryig’ (NLW 13239), by William Owen Pughe in 1784 (source of the Archaiology text); Llanstephan 193, written in 1796 by Owain Myfyr’s nephew and amanuensis, Hugh Maurice, as part of an edition with some topographical notes;53 Cardiff 2.141, by Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies, who attempted to rewrite the text ‘in the orthography of the Seventh Century’ (Cenoli, biδai, bron, Cain hen …); and NLW 13100, c. 1800, by Iolo Morganwg.54 On p. 428 Iolo broke off his copying after the garbled text of I.24–25 (p. 429 is blank), perhaps realising the text’s worthlessness. An earlier text of Series I with similar corruptions (I.4b bron, etc) is Peniarth 201, by Richard Thomas (1777), who refers to William Morris at various points.55 Thomas, however, has Gwenoli correctly at I.7a and does not

CR xliv. Additional Letters of the Morrises of Anglesey (1735–1786), Part II, ed. Hugh Owen, Y Cymmrodor, 49 (London, 1949), no. 216, p. 430. Cf. CR 37, 159, 166, 215, 335, 390, and 407. He does not, for example, mention I.10 in his notes on Rheon in CR 369 and 380. 51 BL, Add. 14924, 32v; see Luft, ‘Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion’, p. 5. 52 See RWMS I 636–37. 53 The place-names on fol. 159 (pp. 214–15) are not relevant to Englynion y Beddau, despite the heading and RMWL II 778 (cf. ibid., pp. 453 and 1156, where the lists of caerau are printed from Llanstephan 18 and BL Add. 14867; only the latter’s final entry is relevant – to I.73). An earlier list in Peniarth 267 is printed in RMWL I 1078. On Maurice and Llanstephan 193 see RWMS I 100–1 and II 111. 54 For NLW 13100 see National Library of Wales, Handlist of Manuscripts, IV (Aberystwyth, 1971), p. 383, and RWMS I 269. 55 On Peniarth 201 see Huws, ‘Canu Aneirin: The Other Manuscripts’, p. 51. 49 50

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muddle I.24–25, perhaps having collated a superior text.56 All these derivatives of ‘Z’, except Iolo’s, included Series III as well as Series I. William Morris’s above-mentioned ‘Y Prif-feirdd Cymreig’ (BL Add. 14867) also included a text of Series III, based, with due acknowledgement, upon Evan Evans’s copy (NLW 1983i) of MS T. He covered the page with unlabelled variants from the Llanstephan 18 copy of the Basiliobardicon – presumably via the lost transcript (‘L’) provided by Lewis Morris57 – and from Evan Evans’s transcript (NLW 2020ii) of a derivative of MS W. Visually this ambitious attempt at a variorum edition of Series III was a mess. A simplified version, with fewer variants, must have been created for the lost MS ‘Z’ posited above, and this gave rise to the versions of Series III in the Myvyrian Archaiology and all the manuscripts listed in the previous paragraph, except for Iolo Morganwg’s.58 In 1799 Iolo reported to Owain Myfyr and William Owen Pughe that he had copied ‘Beddau Milwyr Ynys Prydain’ at Hafod (Thomas Johnes’s library).59 Whether he found the exemplar of NLW 13100 there is uncertain. Iolo seems to have taken little interest in the Beddau. Quite likely the enthusiasm for Englynion y Beddau expressed by Lewis Morris and his admirers was enough to lead him to adopt a contrary opinion about these mostly northern texts! Lewis Morris’s enthusiasm probably inspired the next generation of littérateurs to copy and popularise Englynion y Beddau. For example, in a letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1788 (p. 821) William Owen Pughe (1759–1835), using the pseudonym ‘Owain o Feirion’, printed and translated a random selection of stanzas (I.15, 73, 51, 69, 25, 57, 63, 14, 65, and 9), adding a few notes on their supposed historical context.60 Many years later he would even hazard a guess as to the location of the grave of ‘Llia the Gwydhelian … in the covert of Ardudwy’ (I.26).61 He also compiled a list of the place- and personal names in Englynion y Beddau for the Scottish antiquary George Chalmers (1742–1825).62 Another enthusiast was Edward Jones ‘Bardd y Brenin’ (1752–1824), who obtained a copy of MS W of Series III from the Bodleian63 and printed and translated ‘Memorials of the Tombs of the Warriors’, Such as Lewis Morris’s copy of Series I in BL Add. 14907 or that of William Morris in BL Add. 14867. 57 Derivation from Llanstephan 18 is shown by the colophon and by errors such as III.3a Donn and 3c Gwaranawg. 58 Of these Peniarth 201 goes its own way in moving variants up into the main text, Llanstephan 193 is more concerned with the topography, and Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies has no variants. 59 The Correspondence of Iolo Morganwg, ed. Geraint H. Jenkins et al., 3 vols (Cardiff, 2007), II, 178 and 182. Cf. RMWL II viii–ix. NLW 13100 cannot have been copied from the Lhwyd manuscripts at Hafod, mentioned ibid., p. ix. 60 The text is superior to Pughe’s 1784 one in NLW 13239, having bu taw ‘became silent’ at I.51b. It could be based on some transcript of Llanstephan 18, perhaps one made by or for Lewis Morris, i.e. ‘L’. Pughe’s amytal at I.63b shows that he did not use a modernised text descending from Peniarth 98ii or Llanstephan 120, which have am ei dal. 61 See commentary. 62 NLW MS 146, pp. 109–12. See Davies, National Library of Wales Catalogue of Manuscripts, I, 125. 63 See NLW 170, p. 55: ‘extracted from a curious MS. of Lloyd the Antiquarian, now in the possession of the Revd John Price Librarian to the Bodleyan Library at Oxford’. On Price, Librarian 1768–1813, see Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, pp. 76–77. Ellis, Edward Jones, Bardd y Brenin, p. 100, notes that he had helped Jones with another Bodleian manuscript (this was Carte 107). 56

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a selection of nineteen stanzas from Series I and III, in his Bardic Museum (1802), surmising that they were ‘part of those Oral Traditions which anciently were recited by the Bards, at the public Gorseddau, Tribunals, or provincial Congresses’.64 Where possible, he recycled the 1788 ‘Owain o Feirion’ texts and translations,65 only otherwise attempting his own translations. His manuscripts show him working them up: Hark Hear, yon wave of heavy murmur, About Dashing on the grave of Dysgyrnin, son of Dysgyveddod; Sorrowful the bosom, from the violence weight of sin.66

The englynion were now Romantic, and in 1826, for a lecture to the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Society about the excavation of the Deverel Barrow in Dorset, the Revd John Eden turned some of the Bardic Museum stanzas into English verse in the style of Thomas Gray, commenting: We may figure to ourselves the wild form of a Cambrian Bard standing upon a rock, and as he utters the verses, stretching forth his arm in the direction of the several Barrows which contain the ashes of the heroes whose memory he is celebrating.67

Copying and piecemeal publication became redundant, following the printing of the variorum edition of Englynion y Beddau in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801, but not wholly so, for the Myvyrian texts were unreliable and the Archaiology may not have been easily affordable until the one-volume edition appeared in 1870.68 Meanwhile the Myvyrian Beddau were reprinted in instalments from August 1845 onwards in Yr Haul, by ‘Darllenydd’, who hoped that they would interest any readers who came across a relevant cromlech or cistfaen.69 The printing of Englynion y Beddau in 1801 had already stimulated wider speculation, by William Williams of Llandygái, Crn., and many others, about the meaning of the englynion and the location of the graves.70 In 1784, in Cwrtmawr MS 12 (p. 484), David Ellis (d. 1795) had noted the need for a translation. A reader of Ellis’s manuscript, Peter Bailey Williams (1763–1836), rector of Llanrug and Llanberis, Crn., eventually supplied such a translation

Bardic Museum, pp. 9–12 and 18. His draft texts and translations appear in NLW MSS 170 and 322. His source for Ser I.8, 13, 44, which were not in Pughe’s 1788 letter, is unclear. I.8b dynawton is an unparalleled reading. 65 He reproduces I.63b amytal, which must have been the Gentleman’s Magazine’s misprint for am y tal in view of Pughe’s translation ‘on the corners’. Cf. Ellis, Edward Jones, Bardd y Brenin, p. 102. 66 NLW 322, p. 61. Cf. his versions of III.14 at NLW 170, p. 60, and Bardic Museum, p. 12. 67 ‘An Account of the Opening of the Deverel Barrow (which contained the Urns recently presented to the Bristol Institution by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart.)’ (26 October 1826, partly printed in The Cambrian, 18 Nov. 1826). Cf. Michael Raymond Neve, ‘Natural Philosophy, Medicine and the Culture of Science in Provincial England: The Cases of Bristol, 1790–1850’, Ph.D. (University College London, 1984), p. 360. 68 MA1 77–83; MA2 65–69. 69 ‘Darllenydd’, ‘Beddau’r Milwyr’, Yr Haul, 10.122 (August 1845), 251–53. Can ‘Darllenydd’ be identified as Iago Emlyn (James James, 1800–79)? Compare his letter on ‘The Cromlech’ in Baner ac Amserau Cymru, 15 July 1868. 70 See commentary on III.2. Note also the commentary on I.65 for Samuel Rush Meyrick’s interest. 64

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

in the North Wales Gazette, 12 February 1818.71 This English translation proved unexpectedly influential when interest in the archaeological aspect of Englynion y Beddau revived among other literary minded clerics, notably Carnhuanawc and Ab Ithel, in the 1840s and 1850s.72 John Jones, rector of Llanllyfni, Crn. (d. 1863),73 writing as ‘J.J.’ and ‘Cilmyn’ in Archaeologia Cambrensis between 1847 and 1853, used it extensively when proposing localisations for the graves in Caernarfonshire. Though his proposals were mostly fanciful, they had one good side effect. By about 1853 a controversy arose between him and Thomas Stephens (1821–75) about the grave of Gwallawg (I.7), sometimes identified as the Caledonian Galgacus of Mons Graupius fame. The southerner, finding himself at a disadvantage in local knowledge, though not common sense, solicited the help of Eben Fardd (Ebenezer Thomas) of Clynnog, with regard to the Ford of Rheon (I.10/III.9),74 and this prompted Eben to make a number of proposals of his own, one of which – the identification of the river Me­weddus (III.15) with the Afon Wefus near Clynnog – is still accepted. Similarly, around 1866–74, Hugh Derfel Hughes (Ifor Williams’s grandfather) and the Revd Elias Owen went on what the latter calls their ‘rambles’ in Snowdonia, searching for Englynion y Beddau sites. These searches mostly failed, partly because their texts were inaccurate.75 By this time interest in the topic had even spread to the Continent.76 The text of Series I was put onto a better footing by the publication of Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales in Edinburgh in 1868 (with a translation by D. Silvan Evans), but Skene’s notes were exiguous and chiefly reflected the influence of Carnhuanawc.77 The meticulous text of the Black Book of Carmarthen printed by Judging by the proper names, he used a source similar to ‘Z’ and MA for both series (note Cum Gwaithfuddig at III.4 and Elinner at I.53). This source was distinct from Williams’s own texts in Cwrtmawr 454 and Bangor 14675, although Ceinon for Kinon at I.8 suggests influence from the latter’s Einion or from Einion in Cwrtmawr 12 (both derived from Einon in NLW 2022). On Williams see Griffith T. Roberts, ‘Peter Bailey Williams’, TCHS, 9 (1948), 66–81. 72 Price (Carnhuanawc), Hanes Cymru (1842), pp. 29–39; Ab Ithel, ‘British Interments’ (1852); The Literary Remains of the Rev. Thomas Price, Carnhuanawc (Llandovery, 1854–55), I, 148– 50. 73 He also consulted Edward Jones’s Bardic Museum; see commentary on I.4 below. On John Jones see T. Llechid Jones, ‘John Jones, Llanllyfni’, Yr Haul, XII, no. 131 (Jan. 1910), 8–13; Bedwyr Lewis Jones, ‘Yr Offeiriaid Llengar’, in Gwŷr Llên y Bedwaredd Ganrif ar Bymtheg, ed. Dyfnallt Morgan (Llandybïe, 1968), pp. 42–53 (p. 50); and Bywgraffiadur s. Jones, John (1786?–1863). On his manuscripts (the ‘Llanllyfni MSS’) see AC, 1st ser., 3 (1848), 253 and 256, and 3rd ser., 9 (1863), 261 and 280–86; and Ambrose, Hynafiaethau, p. 47 (Ambrose repeats Jones’s beddau identifications on pp. 9–10 and 13). John Jones often appears in Eben Fardd’s diary between 1831 and 1839, where his antiquarian interests are mentioned: Detholion o Ddyddiadur Eben Fardd, ed. Millward, pp. 6, 7, 12, 34–35, 75, 88, 93, 99, 102, 108, 120, 108, and 195 n. 20. Their relations appear cordial, except for 1838, when Jones denounced Clynnog as ‘notoriously the most drunken spot in this country’ (p. 88). 74 Eben Vardd (sic), ‘The Clynnog Vawr Thermopylae’, p. 237. For the correspondence (January 1852) between Stephens and Eben Fardd see Correspondence, ed. Coward, pp. 38 and 42–45; Eben’s signed sketch map of Clynnog parish is tucked in at p. 438 of the first edition of Stephens’s Literature of the Kymry (1849), kept as NLW Minor Deposit 151. 75 Hughes, Hynafiaethau Llandegai a Llanllechid; Owen, ‘Graves of the Warriors’, p. 257. For details see commentaries on I.5 and 68 and III.3. 76 H. de la Villemarqué, ‘Les pierres et les textes celtiques’, Revue archéologique, nouvelle série, 17 (1868), 147–65 (pp. 152–57). 77 W. F. Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1868), I, 309–18; II, 28–35 and 341–44. 71

94

The Rediscovery and Study of Englynion y Beddau

Gwenogvryn Evans in 1904–7 improved on Skene’s, while again providing little in the way of notes.78 John Rhys advanced the study of Series I in many ways in The Origin of the Welsh Englyn and Kindred Metres (1905), which ranged more widely than the title suggested.79 Between 1888 and 1936 Egerton Phillimore published numerous valuable notes on individual stanzas,80 and in 1935 Ifor Williams edited a few stanzas from Series I and III, and the whole of ‘Series II’, in his Canu Llywarch Hen, adding some valuable notes, for example the conjecture that pen hardd (III.5–6) is an error for Pennardd in Arfon.81 Thomas Jones’s 1967 Rhys Memorial Lecture, ‘The Black Book of Carmarthen “Stanzas of the Graves”’, was the most important twentieth-century work on all aspects of Englynion y Beddau, influentially suggesting a date ‘probably as early as the ninth or tenth century’.82 Subsequently, Jarman’s Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin (1982) provided a near-definitive text of Series I, with an exhaustive glossary that drew on half a century of linguistic scholarship by Lloyd-Jones, Ifor Williams, and others.83 Gwyn Thomas published a modernised text of Series I in 1970, followed in 2015 by one of all four series.84 In that same year, 2015, John K. Bollard published a valuable edition of them in modernised orthography, with translation and notes, accompanied by photographs by Anthony Griffiths.85 A defect in these editions was their reliance, following Ifor Williams’s example,86 on Dr Davies’s ‘improved’ text of Series III in Peniarth 98ii, rather than its exemplar, MS P (Peniarth 111 by John Jones, Gellilyfy), and the four other primary manuscripts.87 There has been little comment on Englynion y Beddau as literature.88 Critics have generally been impressed by the ‘elegiac’ mood of the three introductory englynion.89 These ‘draw us into a meditation on mortality’, as Bollard notes in the most BBC 63–69 and 128–31. Printing on Gwenogvryn’s private press started in 1904; hence the ‘1907’ edition was already available to Rhys when he published Englyn. In any case, Gwenogvryn has already published a facsimile in 1888. 79 Rhys, Englyn, pp. 107–15, 127–35, 183–85, and passim. His metrical theories have not been accepted; see Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, p. 318; BBCSG 97. 80 See commentaries on I.10 (= III.9), 18, 25, 26, 34, 39, 45, 47, 50, 54, 58, 60, 70, 71, and 73. On Phillimore see Ben Guy, ‘Egerton Phillimore (1856–1937) and the Study of Welsh Historical Texts’, THSC, n.s. 21 (2015), 36–50. Many of his notes appeared in DP, but also in unexpected places. 81 CLlH I.40 and 42–44, XI.102–3, and XII, and pp. xlvi–l, 91–94, 240–41, and 243–44. 82 BBCSG 100, quoted in LlDC lix and elsewhere, including the review of BBCSG by Richards, p. 160. In 1978, in a discussion of III.17, I suggested a much later date: Sims-Williams, ‘anfab2’. Cf. idem, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 117. 83 LlDC lix (references to various notes by Thomas Jones), 36–44 (no. 18), 100–4, and 119–76. 84 Thomas, Yr Aelwyd Hon, pp. 103–15, and Hen Englynion, pp. 88–100. 85 EBSG. 86 CLlH xlvi–xlvii, 49–50, and 243. 87 In Sims-Williams, ‘anfab2’, p. 91 n. 1, I noted that MSS T, P, B, and W were the only textually valuable manuscripts of Series III. MS N has now to be added in the light of Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, pp. 74–75. 88 This should not be attributed to the philological bias of the scholars concerned. The poet T. Gwynn Jones was equally skimpy in his Llenyddiaeth y Cymry, p. 7. The fact is that before the advent of Practical Criticism in the 1920s critics and philologists were equally baffled as to how to treat literature as literature. 89 See references in BBCSG 97–98, Richards, review of BBCSG, p. 160, and MWM 70; also Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, IX, ed. John P. Frayne and Madeleine Marchaterre (New York, 78

95

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

extended literary discussion.90 The ‘elegiac’ style of these and many other stanzas recalls the ‘saga englynion’ edited by Ifor Williams in Canu Llywarch Hen. There are also close similarities with the concise, stark diction of the Gododdin, which similarly tends to assign a single stanza to a single hero and to focus on his name.91 For the most part Englynion y Beddau, like the Gododdin and the elegies of the Gogynfeirdd, express an uncompromising ‘heroic ideal’ without any of the reservations and doubts voiced in the Canu Llywarch Hen englynion.92 Gwyn Thomas however, detected elements of playfulness (lolian) in some stanzas, as in the rhyming of Rhydderch with Aber-erch (I.13) and the barefaced invention, or so he supposed, of the latinate name Omni (I.36).93 Assessing the tone of medieval onomastic lore is difficult,94 but it would not be surprising if Gwyn Thomas were right, for elements of burlesque were certainly admitted in works like the Triads and the lists in Culhwch and Olwen,95 just as gargoyles and grotesques were permitted in medieval churches. Even the ancient Litanies of the Saints, despite their serious intent, indulged in wordplay – invoking ‘Aldegundis, Radegundis, Monegundis’, ‘Theodota, Theodola’, ‘Dorothea, Domitella’, and so on.96 Lists were an important and much appreciated element in medieval literature, which made no rigid distinction between the poetic and the mnemonic.97 Although the opening stanzas (I.1–3) and the closing stanza (I.69) of the main scribe’s text of Series I provide an elegiac framework, with a rare hint of Christian sentiment in I.69, the englynion sandwiched between them follow no obvious sequence. The artistic focus is on the individual englyn, sometimes finely wrought; Ifor Williams admired their authors’ artistry and ‘skilful reticence’ (tawedogrwydd medrus).98 The lack of any progression or overarching structure may be due to Englynion y Beddau’s long, piecemeal creation and interpolation, but the result was presumably acceptable, however it arose, since it is paralleled elsewhere, for example in the saga englynion. Style without structure, to put it negatively, was one of the norms of ‘Celtic’ aesthetics as admired – and deplored – by Matthew Arnold, who indeed praised I.44 as an example of the epigrammatic ‘Celtic style’.99 2004), pp. 391–92 (‘Mr. Rhys’ Welsh Ballads’ [1898]), and H. I. Bell, The Development of Welsh Poetry (Oxford, 1936), p. 33. 90 EBSG 117. Cf. Nerys Ann Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 9. 91 See commentary on I.1–3 for Patrick Ford’s comparison with the Gododdin. 92 Jarman, ‘Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin: The Black Book of Carmarthen’, pp. 351–52. See above, pp. 26–7. 93 Gwyn Thomas, Yr Aelwyd Hon, p. 105; idem, Y Traddodiad Barddol (Cardiff, 1976), pp. 97–98. On the possibility of facetious stanzas see above, p. 75. 94 Cf. reviews of Matthias Egeler, Atlantic Outlooks on Being at Home: Gaelic Place-Lore and the Construction of a Sense of Place in Medieval Iceland (Helsinki, 2018), by Erich Poppe, in CMCS, 78 (Winter 2019), 124–26 (p. 125), and Helen Imhoff, in ZCP, 68 (2021), 322–38 (pp. 333–37). 95 TYP4 xciv–xcv; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 134–87. 96 Maurice Coens, ‘Anciennes litanies des saints’, AB, 54 (1936), 5–37 (p. 14); 55 (1937), 49–69; 59 (1941) 272–98 (p. 290); 62 (1944), 126–68 (p. 129). 97 See Geoffrey Shepherd, ‘The Nature of Alliterative Poetry in Late Medieval England’, PBA, 56 (1970), 57–76; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 186–87. 98 Williams, ‘Hen Chwedlau’, p. 33. 99 ‘On the Study of Celtic Literature’, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, III, Lectures and Essays in Criticism, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor, MI, 1962), pp. 345 and 366. According to Rachel Bromwich, Matthew Arnold and Celtic Literature: A Retrospect, 1865–1965 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 11–14, stanza I.44 was ‘not by contrast [with the Llywarch Hen englynion] a

96

The Rediscovery and Study of Englynion y Beddau

Fragmentary, enigmatic, disjointed verses, though puzzling to the Victorians, appeal more to modern sensibilities.100 In addition, Welsh readers are likely to be struck by the englynion’s message of defiance, rooted in the locatable specifics of the Welsh landscape, as much as by the elegiacs of the opening stanzas, which evoke the vague, generalised landscape that appealed to generations reared on Macpherson’s Ossian. To quote Richard Glyn Roberts, Mae yna ryw rin yn perthyn i’r canu englynol cynnar, ac mae i lawer o’r darnau hyn uniongyrchedd, ynghyd â chynildeb, sy’n nes at ein haestheteg gyfoes. Hynny, mae’n debyg, ynghyd â’r ymdeimlad o golled ac argyfwng yn yr englynion saga (sydd fel pe bai’n adleisio sefyllfa’r Cymry yn y presennol), sy’n egluro pam y bu iddynt gydio yn nychymyg cymaint o lenorion diweddar.101 The early englyn poetry has a certain mystery, and many of these fragments have a directness, together with economy, that is closer to our contemporary aesthetic. That, together with the sense of loss and crisis in the saga englynion (which seems to echo the situation of the Welsh in the present), probably explains why they have captured the imagination of so many recent writers.

And, to quote Dafydd Johnston, Mae angen clywed y penillion, yn y meddwl o leiaf, er mwyn iawn werthfawrogi effaith gynyddol rymus y gyfres ar ei hyd. Rhan fawr o swyn yr englynion hyn i ni yw eu natur enigmatig sy’n gadael cymaint o raff i’r dychymyg, yn rhannol am fod y rhan fwyaf o’r cefndir chwedlonol ar goll bellach.102 It is necessary to hear the verses, at least in the mind, to appreciate fully the increasingly powerful effect of the whole series. For us a large part of the fascination of these englynion is their enigmatic nature which leaves so much room for the imagination, partly because most of the narrative background is now lost.

In the present edition the stanzas are separated by detailed commentaries on archaeological, historical, linguistic, and literary matters. Obviously this, and the literal nature of the translations, detracts from appreciation of the poems as literature. Readers wishing to read the poems straight through may turn to A. O. H. Jarman’s Welsh-language edition of the Black Book of Carmarthen (LlDC, poem 18), or one of the two Modern Welsh adaptations by Gwyn Thomas (1970, 2015), or the English-­ language editions by Thomas Jones (BBCSG) and John Bollard (EBSG).

particularly impressive example’ for Arnold to have chosen (pp. 12 and 14). Arnold’s accusation of incoherence was often repeated in criticism of the englyn poetry; see, for example, D. Myr­ddin Lloyd, ‘Barddoniaeth Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr’, Y Llenor, 11 (1932), 172–87 (pp. 172–74). 100 Sarah Lynn Higley, Between Languages: The Uncooperative Text in Early Welsh and Old English Nature Poetry (University Park, PA, 1993). 101 Review of EBSG in Gwales . On the last point, cf. Haycock, ‘Hanes Heledd Hyd Yma’, Myrddin ap Dafydd, Yn Ôl i’r Dref Wen, and Grahame Davies, review of EBSG and Thomas, Hen Englynion, in Barddas, 327 (2015), 54–55. 102 Review of Thomas, Hen Englynion, and EBSG in Barn, 630/631 (2015), 85–86 (p. 86).

97

5 EDWARD LHWYD’S INDEX TO ENGLYNION Y BEDDAU

One page of Lhwyd’s copy of Series I and Series III from the lost manuscript of Roger Morris survives as Llanstephan 145, fol. 68. This runs from I.62 (misnumbered ‘63’) to I.72/73 (treated as one stanza, owing to a lacuna, and numbered 73) and is followed by the complete text of Series III (our MS B), numbered from 74 to 91 (but what should be numbered ‘83’ is numbered ‘82’ so that the sequence is … 82, 82, 84 …). Later bound next to it (probably by Moses Williams) as Llanstephan 145, fol. 69, is the index to both series which Lhwyd sent to William Baxter, probably in early 1708.1 The index was started by Lhwyd (up to H-) and was completed by Williams, his assistant. The latter’s contribution, in a neat cursive hand, is printed in italics below.2 Lhwyd’s own orthography3 is employed in the index, with Greek letters used as follows: χ = ch; δ = dd; λ/Λ = ll/Ll; ρ/Ρ = rh/Rh; τ = th. An undotted i may sometimes be iota representing ‘dark y’, and sometimes be the result of forgetting to write a dot; whichever the case, it is transcribed as ı below. There is one example of ʒ for g (s.n. Λuχ) and one ε for e (s.n. Koel). Alongside the following transcription I give, to the right, the standard numbering of stanzas in Series I (plus the relevant Black Book text) and in Series III. Strikethrough indicates crossings out in the manuscript. On the use of bold and underlining see below. COL. 1 Aber Dyar – 55

I.54 aber … Dyar

Abereiχ – 14

I.13 Abererch

Aber Guenoli – 8

I.7 aber Gwenoli

Agen ab Yugri Bd at Aber Bangori 84 Aλt ı Trıvan 13

III.11 I.12 alld Tryvan

Alyn Dıved ab meigen Bd at Trevred. 26. Amgant – 18

I.25 Alun Dywed … drewred I.17 amgant

An ab ı Λıan Bd at Meuaes Vınyδ Λuagor 90.

III.17

See above, p. 86. I am grateful to Gruffudd Antur Edwards for advice on the hands. 3 Watkins, Ieithyddiaeth, pp. 82–83. 1 2

98

Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau Aran ab Dıvnwyn Bd at Hír uayn.

I.59 Aron mab Diwinvin in Hirgweun

Aren – 4

I.4a Aren

Arthyr – 45

I.44 Arthur

Auen ab Tede Bd at Bryn Aren .4. Augul Bd at Dıved .72.

I.4a Tedei tad awen … Brin Aren I.71 Airgwl yn Dyuet

Beıdog ? rýδ ab 4

Emyr Λıdau Bd at Amgant ρıu luv=

I.36–38 Beidauc Rut yn amgant Riv Lyvnav

un. – 37.38.39.

… ab Emer Llydau.

Bduır at Aλt ı Trıvan – 13.

I.12 Bedwir in alld Tryvan

Beili ab Benλı gaur 72.

I.73 Beli ab Benlli Gawr

Braduen – 63.

I.62 Bradwen

Braint B betw. Λıvni d

& the Brook running into it. – 57.

I.56 Breint y rug Llewin (sic) ae lledneint

Bruyn o Vrıχeıniog.24.

I.23 Bruin o Bricheinauc

Bryn Aren. – 4.

I.4a Brin Aren

C. Vide K. Deheveint Bd at Mathavarn on ye River Keveint. 59.

I.58 Deheveint ar Cleveint5 … Mathauarn

Dinorber – 72

I.71 Dinorben

Disgryn Dısgıfeδod.87.

III.14

Dıfryn Gevel.27.

I.26 inyffrin Gewel

Dılan Bd. at Λan Beyno. 5. 80.6.6

I.4d & III.7, 13 Dilan Llan Bevno

Dıuel ab Erbyn B

d

at Guastedyn K?aie.7 – 28.

I.27 Dywel mab Erbin ig gwestedin Caeav

A deleted, half-formed ρ. Or Deveint. 6 6 over an illegible number or letter. 7 Second letter later deleted. 4 5

99

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Ebediu Bd at Klıdur. – 69.

I.68 in y clidur … Ebediv

Eıdal a Foreiner.48.

I.47 Eitew ac Eidal diessic alltudion

Eıdeu a Foreiner.48.

I.47 Eitew ac Eidal diessic alltudion

Elınuy B at d

Guenbre. – 51. Elifner8 ab Nér.54.

I.50 yg Guernin bre bet Eilinvy I.53 Elissner ab Ner

Epynt Buried at Dıfryn Gevel.27. Ergryd fl. q. 11.

I.26 Epynt inyffrin Gewel I.10 ergrid avon

Ettiulχ hír ab Arthan Bd at Pennant Turχ. – 35.

I.34 Eitivlch Hir … Pennant Turch mab Arthan

Fırnvael ab Hiulyδ Bd at Gorvınyδ. 74.

III.1

COL. 2 Gırτmyl Bd at Geλı Yrıavel.9 40.

I.39 ig Kelli Uriauael bet Gyrthmul

Gualχmaı Bd at peryton.10 9.

I.8 Gwalchmei ym Peryton

Guanas. 29.

I.28–30 Guanas

Guàλog hír. 8.11

I.7 Guallauc Hir

Guén Q. an Guén ab Λıuarχ hén. 3

I.3 Gwen

Guestedyn in Kaeo, or perhaps Kaie. – 28.

I.27 gwestedin Caeav

Gugan gleδıvur.–45.

I.44 Gugaun Cledyfrut

Gurgı guyχyd. – 29.

I.28 Gurgi gvychit

Gurien Q. wh. the s[tear]e12 with Yrien B[tear]13 Hírvınyδ. 2. [tear]

I.2 Guryen

f may be long s. The Y is written over another letter. 10 p with line through stem, as in the Black Book and many derivatives of it, such as Peniarth 111. 11 Inserted in smaller letters. 12 i.e. same? 13 Probably Bd at (cross-referencing I.32). 8 9

100

Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau Gurτeyrn gurτ[tear] Bd at Istıvaχe .41.14

I.40 yn Ystyuacheu … bet Gurtheyrn Gurtheneu

Gryδuχ Guyδuχ. 50.

I.49 guythuch

Gu???????.15 Guanuy gurgofri. – 75.

III.2

Guydion ab Don. – 76.16

III.3

Hennyn henben B

d

I.71 Hennin Henben yn aelwyt Dinorben

at Dinerben. 172 Hirvınyδ. 33. [altered from 32]

I.32 Hir Vynyt

Ilidr muynvaur B at d

Glan meuedus. 88. [altered from 87]

III.15

Add one to all the numbers hence forward above17 Kaer Kenedr. – 6.

I.6 Kaer Kenedir

Kamlan – 12.

I.12 Camlan

Karrauk. 7.

I.7 Karrauc

Karuen verχ Henuyn Bd I.70 yn y Morua … Earrwen verch Hennin

at Morva. 70. Káy [al. Káu] Q.wh the Father of Gildas. – 1.

I.1 a Chav

Keλi [al. Geλı Uriavael I.39 Kelli Uriauael

– 39.

I.36 Keri

Kerı. – 36. Keri gleδevhír Bd at Kor-

I.5 Keri cledif hir … ymynwent Corbre

bre Churchyard. – 5. Keruyd. – 1.

I.1 Kerwid

Keven Kelvi – 65.

I.65 Kewin Kelvi I.15 Kintilan

Kındılan – 15 Kındılıg ab Korknud B

d

at Kundaud – 41 Kınıskin Q. – 11.

I.41 a ud … cund … Kindilic mab Corknud I.11 kyniscin

Kınon Bd at Λan18 Badarn. – 8 16 17 18 14 15

I.8 in Llan Padarn bet Kinon

A long s is used. Deleted name beginning Gu-. Williams inserted items 75–76 in the blank line between G- and H- names. Added by Williams between the columns. Λ written over another letter.

101

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Kınon buried at Maes Mevedog. – 45.

I.45 Maes Meuetauc … Kynon

Kınon garu B at Ked

ven Kelvi – 65. Kınon ab Klydno. 9. 11.

I.65 Kewin Kelvi … Kinon garv y duyael I.9,11 Kynon/Kinon mab Clytno Idin

Kınodi ab Pyd Bd at the Fd of the River ReIII.9

on – 81. vide ρýn & Panna. Kınran – 6.

I.6 kinran

Kınvael, Bd at Keven Kelvi. 65.

I.65 Kewin Kelvi … Kinvael

Kınveli Bd at Keven19 Kelvi. 65.

I.65 Kewin Kelvi … Kinveli

Kıurıd – 1,

I.1 a Chivrid

Koel ab Kınvelyn Bd at λέτer ı Bryn – 57.

I.57 in llethir y brin … Coel mab Kinvelin

COL. 3 Λan Badarn – 8

I.8 Llan Padarn

Λan Beyno – 3

I.4d Llan Bevno

Λan Morvael – 13

I.13 Llan Morvael

Λaur bd on the top of GuaI.28 Llaur … yg guarthaw Guanas

nas – 28 Λaχar ab ρun b at Klyn d

I.51 Llachar mab Run yg Clun Kein

Kein. – 51 Λedin b. at Morva . 70.

I.70 yn y Morua … Lledin

Λemenıg [an forte legendum Λeuenig? Brıχuel enim Brochmael20 Λıuarχ Lomarchus &c] bd at Λan Eluy

I.50 Llemenic in Llan Elvy

Λeu Λaugıfes21 35. 81.

I.35, III.10 Llev Llaugyfes

Λéu Uındodyδ b at on the d

top of Guanas. 28

I.28 Guidodit lev … yg guarthaw Guanas

Λía Uyδel bd at Argel Ardyduy. – 26

I.26 Llia Gvitel in argel Arduduy

Λiu Fl. A Scotish Prince bd at the confluence v altered from l? c altered from χ? 21 Long s is used. 19 20

102

Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau of Λıu & Λıχur. 39

I.39 unpen o Pridein … yn yd a Lliv yn Llychur

Λıvni Fl. at nescio an legendum Λeven . 56.

I.56 Llewin (sic, for Llewni)

Λovan λau Estron. 77

III.5

Λovan λauygyn – 78

III.6

Λovan λau δyno – 80.

III.7–8

Λuχ λau eʒhin bd on the River Kerδenhin. I.31 Llvch Llaueghin ar Certenhin avon

– 32 Λuyd λedneis b at Ked

meis22 – 65

I.66 Llvid lledneis ig Kemeis

Λuyδog23 ab Λıuelyδ bd at Hírvınyδ.

I.32 yn Hir Vynyt … Llvytauc uab Lliwelit

Λyosgar. Q? – 36.

I.36 Lluoscar

Λyui Bd at Morva. 71

I.70 yn y Morua … Llywy

Mabon ab Madron bd at Nant λay. – 87.

III.16

Madog Bd at Pant Guiniog – 20.

I.20 ym Pant Gwinn Gvinionauc … Madauc

Madog myr Eglug Bd at Kyuluk. – 21. Madog Varχog Dıual. –63.

I.21 Madauc mur egluc yn kywluc kinhen I.63 Madauc marchauc dywal

Meigen ab ρún bd at amgant in an Island.17.18. I.17–19 yn yr amgant / inis … Meigen mab Run

19. Meilir b at Pant Guiniod

nog. – 20.

I.20 ym Pant Gwinn Gvinionauc … Meilir

Meilir maluynog ab ı . Bruyn o Vrıχeiniog. – 23.

I.23 Meilir maluinauc … mab y Bruin o Bricheinauc

Mór bd at Pant Guinionog.

22 23

– 20.

I.20 ym Pant Gwinn Gvinionauc Mor

Mór ab Peredyr – 22.

I.22 Mor … mab Peredur Penwetic

Morien – 2.

I.2 Morien

Morıal – 2.

I.2 Morial

Long s is used, twice. δ altered from d.

103

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Omni [Nescio an legendum Ovni] bd at ρyd VriI.36 yn Ryd Britu bet Omni

tu. – 36. COL. 4 Ossuran bd at Kamlam. –13

I.12 Ossvran yg Camlan

Owen ab Yrien b in a d

Pedryal at Λan MorI.13 Owein ab Urien im pedryal … Llan Morvael

vael. – 14 Panna vab Pyd bd at Gorthir

III.9

Arvon. Pant Guin Guinionog . –20

I.20 Pant Gwinn Gvinionauc

Pennant turχ – 34

I.34 Pennant Turch

Peredyr Penveδig –22

I.22 Peredur Penwetic

Prederi bd at Aber GueI.7 En aber Guenoli … Pryderi

noli – 7.

I.10, III.9 Reon

Ρeon Fl. 10. 81. Ρıderχ hael Pr. of Cumbria bd at Aber eiχ.13

I.13 in Abererch Riderch Hael

Ρıδırχ ab ….. – 77

III.5

Ρıogan – 61

I.61 Riogan

Ρıvaun ρuyvenyδ. – 43

I.42 Ruwaun ruyvenit ran

Ρuw ab ρıgene, bd at I.55 in y Ridev … Ruyw … mab Rigenev

Ρide – 55.

I.71 Ryt Gynan

Ρyd Gınon. Q. – 71.

I.36 Ryd Britu

Ρyd Vriτu – 36 Ρyn ab Alyn Dıved b

d

at Ρyd vaen Ked 24 above.

I.24 Rid Vaen Ked … Run mab Alun Diwed

Ρyd ı garu vaen ρıde. 90.

III.18

Ρun bd at Morva – 70

I.70 Yn y Morua … Run

Ρyn b on ρıdnant. 62.

I.61 Ryddnant … Run

Ρyn ab Pýd.– 10

I.10 Run mab Pyd

Sanant bd at Morva. 70.

I.70 yn y Morua … Sanant

d

Seiτènyn24 Bd betw. Kaer

24

τ altered from t.

104

Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau Kenedır & ye Sea. 6 Síaun Sıberu – 67

I.6 Seithennin … y rug Kaer Kenedir a glann mor I.67 Siaun syberv

Sılıδ25 δiual Bd at EdriI.50 Silit dywal in Edrywuy

ui – 51 Talan Talyrτ – 34

I.52 Talan talyrth

Tarv Trın – 69

I.69 tarv trin

Tauloge ’ab Λyd Bd at Trevryd, &c. – 60

I.60 Tawlogev mab Llut in y trewrud I.4a Tedei

Tede – 4 Tedel Tıdauen B on the d

top of Bryn Arien. – 86.

III.13

Yrien Bd at Λan Heled. – 14

I.14 in Llan Helet bet Owein

Yrien Bd at Λan morvael – 13 Yrıad. – 3.

I.13 Owein ab Urien … Llan Morvael I.3 Guriad

At least two systems of numbering can be detected behind the index. The Series I numbers in the part mostly written by Lhwyd, from Aber Dyar 55 in col. 1 to Hennyn henben 72 early in col. 2, are mostly one higher than the modern numbering (marked in bold without underlining in the corresponding Black Book citations), with the exceptions of Gurien 2, Guén 3, Aren 4, Auen ab Tede 4, and Bryn Aren 4. Lhwyd originally numbered Dılan Bd. at Λan Beyno (I.4) as ‘5’. The obvious explanation for the ‘5’ is that he originally counted I.4ab and I.4d as two separate items – 4 Tede at Bryn Aren and 5 Dılan – resulting in the subsequent englynion being numbered +1; for example, Aber Guenoli and Guàλog hír (I.7) are numbered 8 rather than 7. The line about Dylan (4d) is separated from those about Tedei (4abc) in the copies of Series I that derive from Roger Morris’s lost copy of the Black Book text (Peniarth 111, Llanstephan 18, NLW 2040). Presumably Lhwyd’s exemplar was similar and this led him to number Dılan as ‘5’. This explains the misnumbering in cols 1–2 prior to Hennyn henben (I.71) early in col. 2. Here Moses Williams took over and started to hesitate. He numbered Hennyn henben as 72, but beside this he wrote 1 and then crossed that out – perhaps an aborted change of 72 to 71. The next name, Hirvınyδ (I.32), he numbered 32, which he then altered to 33. He seems to have numbered the next item, Ilidr muynvaur (III.15) as 87, but he changed it to 88. From this point on, from Kaer Kenedr 6 to Yrıad 3, most of Williams’s numbers for Series I agree with the modern numbering, with only a few still one step ahead (13–14 for 12–13, 32 for 31, 43 for 42, 51 for 50, 62 for 61, and 71 for 70), perhaps taken from lost draft notes by Lhwyd. Exceptionally Λan Beyno (I.4d = III.7c), Λuyd λedneis (I.66), and Beili ab Benλı gaur (I.73), are one step behind at 3, 65, and 72 respectively (marked with 25

δ altered from d.

105

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

bold and underlining); these are perhaps hypercorrections when Williams realised that many of his numbers were a digit ahead of Lhwyd’s. Inexplicably Talan Talyrτ (I.52) is numbered 34. The change in numbering in col. 2 was noted by Williams, who inserted the following marginal comment beside Kaer Kenedr 6 (= I.6): Add one to all the numbers hence forward above

He was clearly vacillating as to whether it was the numbering from Kaer Kenedr onwards that was correct or the numbering prior to it. Lhwyd and Williams may have had two copies of Englynion y Beddau, differently numbered from I.4d onwards. The one with incorrect numbering from I.4d onwards probably corresponded to Lhwyd’s now acephalous copy in Llanstephan 145, fol. 68. This page starts at I.62, misnumbered 63, and the misnumbering continues to I.71, misnumbered 72. Then I.72–73 are conflated into a single stanza, numbered 73, owing to the accidental omission of the lines about Einyawn ab Cunedda and Prydein (I.72cd) and Maes Mawr (I.73a). The fortuitous result is that Series I finishes correctly at no. 73. Significantly the omitted personal name Einyawn ab Cunedda does not appear in the index, confirming that its source was similar or identical to Lhwyd’s fol. 68 text. (Prydein and Maes Mawr are not indexed either, which is less significant since fewer place-names are indexed.) Lhwyd’s use of a text like that on fol. 68 is confirmed by the following six entries from A–H in the alphabet; they have the same numbering at fol. 68 and in the index: Beli ab Benlli (I.73) is 73 at fol. 68 and the index. Bradwen (I.62) is 63 at fol. 68 and the index. Ebediv (I.68) is 69 at fol. 68 and the index. Hennin henben, Dinorben, and Airgwl (I.71) are 72 at fol. 68 and the index.

By contrast, indexing names after H in the alphabet, Williams mostly used a text unlike the one at fol. 68, one that mostly agreed with the modern numbering: Kinon, Kinvael, and Kinveli (I.65) are 66 at fol. 68 but 65 in the index. Llvid lledneis (I.66) is 67 at fol. 68 but 65 in the index. Madauc marchauc (I.63) is 64 at fol. 68 but 63 in the index. ryt Gynan (I.71) is 72 at fol. 68 (unlike Hennin etc. above) but 71 in the index. Sanant, Run, Carrwen (s. K- in the index), and Lledin (I.70) are 71 at fol. 68 but 70 in the index. – However, Llywy (I.70), unlike Sanant etc., is 71 both at fol. 68 and in the index. Siaun (I.67) is 68 at fol. 68 but 67 in the index. Tarw trin (I.69) is 70 at fol. 68 but 69 in the index.

Lhwyd’s numbering of Series III in Llanstephan 145, fol. 68, continues from his numbering of Series I, so that III.1 is no. 74 and III.18 is no. 91. He and (in a few entries) Williams followed this numbering in col. 1 and the start of col. 2 of the index, as shown below, where the Series III items are extracted separately for convenience. From the latter part of col. 2 onwards, by contrast, Williams abandoned this numbering (with the exception of the final entry in col. 4 – Tedel 86 – and his numbers are mostly one less than those in the fol. 68 text (marked in bold), or two less in the case of Mabon ab Madron. 106

Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau COL. 1 Agen ab Yugri Bd at Aber Bangori 84

III.11 = 84

An ab ı Λıan Bd at Meuaes Vınyδ Luagor 90.

III.17 = 90

Disgryn Dısgıfeδod.87.

III.14 = 87

Dılan Bd. at Λan Beyno. 5. 80.6.26

[I.4d &] III.7, 13 = 80, 86

Fırnvael ab Hiulyδ Bd at Gorvınyδ. 74.

III.1 = 74

COL. 2 Guanuy gurgofri. – 75.

III.2 = 75

Guydion ab Don. – 76.

III.3 = 76

Ilidr muynvaur Bd at III.15 = 88

Glan meuedus. 88. [altered from 87] Add one to all the numbers hence forward

above Kınodi ab Pyd Bd at the Fd of the River ReIII.9 = 82

on – 81. vide ρýn & Panna. COL. 3 Λeu Λaugıfes 35. 81.

[I.35,] III.10 = 82

Λovan λau Estron. 77

III.5 = 78

Λovan λauygyn – 78

III.6 = 79

Λovan λau δyno – 80.

III.[7–]8 = [80–]81

Mabon ab Madron bd at III.16 = 89

Nant λay. – 87. COL. 4 Panna vab Pyd bd at Gorthir

[III.9 = 82]

Arvon. [unnumbered] Ρeon Fl. 10. 81.

[I.10,] III.9 = 82

Ρıδırχ ab – 77

III.5 = 78

6 over an illegible number or letter. Perhaps ‘80, 86’ was intended.

26

107

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau III.18 = 91

Ρyd ı garu vaen ρıde. 90. Tedel Tıdauen Bd on the top of Bryn Arien.

III.13 = 86

– 86.

It seems, then, that when Lhwyd and Williams compiled the index they used texts of Englynion y Beddau which had different numbering systems, one set when working on A–H and another set when working on the rest of the alphabet. These were probably nearly identical working drafts (or even a single copy, renumbered as work progressed),27 not derivatives from different manuscript traditions, for the index throughout tends to agree, barring slips, with John Jones’s text of Series I and III in Peniarth 111, copied from Roger Morris’s lost manuscript, and with Moses Williams’s text in Llanstephan 18 and Evan Evans’s text in NLW 2040, which both derived from Peniarth 111 via William Maurice’s lost Basiliobardicon.28 Thus we see Karuen in the index and Carrwen at fol. 68, as in Peniarth 111, whereas the Black Book has Earrwen (I.70, an error for Garrwen), and Moses Williams in Llanstephan 18 and Evan Evans in NLW 2040 both have Caruen (although Williams later changed this to Earwen, no doubt after comparing another manuscript). Other significant readings in the index are as follows: Abereiχ 14 (Black Book I.13 Abererch) is Abereich in Peniarth 111 and NLW 2040, and Aberech in Llanstephan 18 (Williams inserted the second r later).29 Aber eiχ (sic) recurs in col. 4 s.n. Ρıderχ hael Pr. of Cumbria bd at Aber eiχ.13, where Williams has a different numbering. Evidently Lhwyd and Williams were using differently numbered copies of an identical text. Ettiulχ 35 (Black Book I.34 Eitivlch) is Ettivlch in Peniarth 111 and Etivlch in NLW 2040.30 But Moses Williams has Eitivlch in Llanstephan 18, presumably influenced by another copy – his many corrections in Llanstephan 18 show that he had access to more than one exemplar. Kundaud in Kındılıg ab Korknud Bd at Kundaud 41 reflects an erroneous transposition of I.41a a ud yn diffeith cund (sic for cnud) in the Black Book to yn diffeith Cvnd a vd, as in Peniarth 111, Llanstephan 18 (there subsequently corrected by Williams), and NLW 2040. Mabon ab Madron 87 must reflect Roger Morris’s lost copy of Series III, not John Jones’s copy of it in Peniarth 111, where Jones changed Madron to Mydron under the influence of another poem in the Black Book (Pa gur?). Peniarth 111 is followed in this by Peniarth 98ii and Llanstephan 18, while Evans in NLW 2040 restores the classic form Modron. It was noted above that in MS B Lhwyd numbered what should be numbered ‘83’ in his system (III.10) as ‘82’ so that his sequence is 82 (= III.9), 82 (= III.10), 84 (= III.11). Significantly, in cols 2 and 3 of the index Williams has 81 for both types of 82. This suggests mechanical renumbering. 28 Cf. above, pp. 88–90. 29 The Black Book is difficult to read at this point, and Jaspar Gryffyth’s Abereith (Llanstephan 120) and Dr Davies’s Abereirch (Peniarth 98ii) are independent misreadings. 30 Eit- in the Black Book here is very easily misread Ett-, as by Jaspar Gryffyth in Llanstephan 120 and Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii. 27

108

Edward Lhwyd’s Index to Englynion y Beddau Yrıad 3 reflects a misreading of Black Book I.3 Gwen a Gurien a Guriad already seen in Peniarth 111’s Gwen ac Vrien ag Vriad, followed by Gwen ac Urien ag Uriad in Llanstephan 18 (corrected by Williams to a. Gurien a G- in the margin) and NLW 2040. Lhwyd’s query under Gurien (I.2) suggests that he supposed that the names Gurien and Yrien (i.e. Urien) might be equatable.

Lhwyd’s adoption of an idiosyncratic orthography makes further textual comparisons difficult. In addition to the Greek letters, he and Williams use dialectal -e for -ei in Tede (also s.n. Auen ab Tede) and -e for -eu in Istıvaχe (s.n. Gurτeyrn), Ρide31 (s.n. Ρuw), and Tauloge, substitute -og for -auc passim, and repeatedly write y instead of u, as in Arthyr, Beyno (s.nn. Dılan and Λan Beyno), Gırτmyl Bd at Geλı Yrıavel (= I.39 ig Kelli Uriauael bet Gyrthmul), Λyosgar, Nant λay (s.n. Mabon), Peredyr, Ρyn (beside Ρun), Trevryd (s.n. Tauloge), Yrien, and Yrıad.32 Owen for Owein is presumably Williams’s anglicisation. Curiously, in Llanstephan 18 Williams wrote Owein (as in Peniarth 111 and NLW 2020) but corrected it to Owen, conceivably under the influence of the index or a lost text of I.14, perhaps Lhwyd’s now acephalous text in Llanstephan 145. In addition to its idiosyncratic orthography, there are a large number of unique readings in the index, many of them probably no more than careless slips, such as Augul (cf. Angul for Airgwl at Llanstephan 145, fol. 68), Beili (correctly Beli at fol. 68), Dinorber (correctly Dinorben s.n. Hennyn), Gugan for Gugaun, Keveint for Cleveint (or Deveint) s.n. Deheveint,33 Kınodi ab Pyd (a confusion of Panna ap Pyt and Cynon in III.9), Kamlam (s.n. Ossuran), and Prederi. Others may be based on independent information or intelligent guesswork; for example, the insertion of the article in An ab ı Λıan (III.17), as in Dr Davies’s Dictionary,34 Emyr (rather than Emer) s.n. Beıdog,35 Λıvni s.n. Braint, and Fırnvael 74 (III.1), probably emended under the influence of I.33 (fyrnvael in Peniarth 111, fyrnuael in Llanstephan 18, Ffyrnvael in NLW 2040). Lhwyd and Williams do not seem to have used Lhwyd’s other copies of Series III (MSS W and N) for the index.36 For example, Agen ab Yugri and Ilidr37 in the index agree with MS B (Llanstephan 145), and Ρıδırχ ab – 77 must reflect the unique reading rythyrch (for rythych) at III.5 in MS B; Lhwyd or Williams evidently mistook rythyrch for a personal name similar to Rhydderch and wondered who the father might be.

Cf. Ρyd ı garu vaen ρıde. 90 where ryde etc. already occurs in the manuscripts of III.18. Cf. Watkins, Ieithyddiaeth, p. 83. 33 At I.58 Moses Williams has cleveint in Llanstephan 18 but gives deveint as an alternative, following John Jones in Peniarth 111. Evans in NLW 2020 has Cleveint. In the Black Book d and cl cannot be distinguished. 34 ‘Ann ap y lleian yw Merddin’, followed by Lhwyd, who gives ‘Ann ab y Lheian. V. Myrdhyn’ in Archaeologia Britannica, p. 254. 35 The Black Book had Emer at I.38. Moses Williams also wrote Emyr in Llanstephan 18, but changed it to Emer, and Dr Davies also has Emyr in his transcription of the Black Book in Peniarth 98ii. Davies, Lhwyd, and Williams were probably aware of Emyr Llydaw from other sources; cf. TYP4 348. 36 A doubtful exception is Λovan λau δyno. Cf. MS W’s ddino at III.8. 37 The -dr in Kaer Kenedr for Black Book Kaer Kenedir is comparable with the latter; Williams has Kaer Kenedir correctly s.n. Seiτènyn. 31 32

109

6 METRICS

John Rhys and Thomas Jones suggested many emendations in order to regularise syllable counts.1 Some of their emendations may be excessive, since variation may have been tolerated, as in the saga englynion analysed by Jenny Rowland,2 which have many stylistic similarities to Englynion y Beddau. That said, it is clear that the scribes sometimes disregarded metrics and tinkered with the texts in order to clarify their prose sense (e.g. I.35c and III.2c). Nearly all the englynion in Englynion y Beddau are milwr or penfyr, the two three-line types already found in the Juvencus manuscript in the early tenth century.3 These were not used by the court poets of the twelfth century onwards – or, rather, not in the official poetry attributed to them by name.4 There are also some examples of four-line englynion, either the englyn gwastad (first attested in manuscript at Llan­ badarn in the late eleventh century)5 or the englyn cyrch, which chiefly occurred in popular verse in the later Middle Ages.6 Four-line englynion of the more elaborate types used in the court poetry of the twelfth century onwards are absent, and the syllable counting and ornamentation is less strict than in that corpus. Without ruling out a much earlier date, it seems reasonable to suppose that some parts of Englynion y Beddau were composed at least as early as the first half of the twelfth century. Once their format was established, however, one can imagine later poets adding further englynion in the same metres, as has been suggested in the case of the englynion referring to Norman kings in prophetic englynion such as the Cyfoesi.7 Metrics are therefore an unreliable dating guide. III.17, an englyn penfyr, is unlikely to be earlier than the fourteenth century (see commentary), but it does not stand out metrically.

Rhys, Englyn, and BBCSG, passim. Rhys’s metrical theory has won no support; cf. Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, p. 318; BBCSG 97. 2 EWSP. 3 Cf. Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, p. 317. 4 For which see Nerys Ann Jones, ‘Y Gogynfeirdd a’r Englyn’, in Beirdd a Thywysogion, ed. Owen and Roberts, pp. 288–301. 5 BWP 182. 6 Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, pp. 317–18 and 323–34. 7 See EWSP 292–93 and 318 (‘the later extender of the [prophetic] material was able to do a good imitation of a form obsolete in his day’). It is often suggested that the core of the Cyfoesi goes back to the time of Hywel Dda (see WaB 337–39) but this is unproven. 1

110

Metrics

Englynion milwr Rowland shows that 7-7-8 and 8-7-7 were probably acceptable in englynion milwr as well as the canonical 7-7-7.8 In the Beddau there is one example (37) of 7-7-8, and although its 8 in line c could be reduced to 7 by deleting the optional adjective plural ending -ion, that is probably not mandatory. The 8-7-7 lines all have Pieu yr (33, 73) or Pieu y (16, 17, 18, 24, 57, 68, 69) in line a. While elision to Pieu’r is possible in all these cases, it is difficult to be sure as Pieu y(r) and Pieu’r are both options guaranteed by metre in twelfth- and thirteenth-century poems in the Hendregadredd manuscript and were presumably equally acceptable.9 [In 5610 and 63 the canonical 7-7-7 would be reduced to a less likely 6-7-7 if Pieu y were elided.]11 The two 8-7-8 stanzas (11, 61) both have Pieu y in line a. If this is elided, they join the acceptable 7-7-8 group, and the emendations which have been suggested for 11c and 61c (deleting bet and deleting oet or ew) then seem less necessary. The above [unbracketed] 12 englynion milwr, taken together with the 12 canonical 7-7-7 ones (2, 3, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 40, 44, 56, 63, III.1), comprise 24 of the 36 englynion milwr (66 per cent). Of the remaining 12, 2 have lacunae (49 and III.18) and must be left aside.12 This leaves 10 others, 7 of them in Series I and 3 in Series III: 1 is 7-9-7, but can be 7-7-7 if gvir in 1b is regarded as a prosaic, clarifying interpolation (cf. 2b and 3b) and if the affixed pronoun vy is ignored.13 19, 29, and 64 are 7-6-7. In 29b dioes is probably for trisyllabic diuöes or diodes and adding bet is one plausible restoration in 64b. 19b is more problematic; gorllurv or lluossit are ad hoc possibilities. 38 is 7-7-10, but can be emended to 7-7-8 by omitting the prosaic yv hun ‘is this’ in line c, or to 7-7-7 if omitting the repetition of Rut as well. 45 is 6-7-9 but can be emended to 7-7-7 on the basis of the superior ‘Series II’ text, II.5. 55 is 8-9-10, but again the prosaic hunnv ‘that’ can be omitted in line b, as can gur a in line c (influenced by I.56c?), making 8-7-8, or 7-7-8 if Piev y in line a is elided. III.2 is 6-6-9, but Bedd Gwa[ea]nwyn or Bedd [y] Gwanwyn in line a and [y] rhwng in b (cf. I.56b) are likely emendations, while the prosaic oedd ef can be omitted in line c (cf. I.35c ‘gur oet hvnnv guir y neb ny rodes’), resulting in 7-7-7.

EWSP 315. Note how in line c of I.1–3 the conjunction a is included or omitted in order to attain 7 syllables. 9 CBT VI 18.48 (even with elision the line is long, see p. 253) and CBT II 16 passim. In thirteenth-­ century prose cf. Peniarth 6iii p. 6: pieu y dyffrynt tec hỽnn. 10 Unless Breint is disyllabic. 11 Similarly, in 34a and 48a eliding Pieu ir bet/Piev y bet would produce a 9-syllables, as opposed to the canonical 10 syllables of a penfyr. Conceivably ir could be a relic of the OW spelling of the article. In 72 pieu yr must be elided. It is difficult to know when pieu yr before a consonant is a Middle Welsh spelling (cf. WG 193, GMW 24) and when it is an Old Welsh throwback. 12 But note that I.24, the doublet of III.18 is 8–7–7, or 7–7–7 if its Pieu y is elided. 13 On affixed pronouns see Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘Notes on the Affixed Pronouns in Welsh’, SC, 10/11 (1975–76), 318–25; Rhian M. Andrews, ‘Y Rhagenwau Ôl yng Ngherddi’r Gogynfeirdd’, B., 36 (1989), 13–29; EWSP 314–16. See also Jones, ‘[g]ortywynassint’. There are definite cases of unmetrical pronouns being inserted in the Black Book texts of the Gogynfeirdd, e.g. CBT III 7, variants 3 and 14. 8

111

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau III.14 is 7-9-8, but the 9 can be reduced to an acceptable14 8 if the attested syncopated form of Disgyffeddawt is restored. III.16 is 7-7-6. Although Thomas Jones suggests adding Bedd in line c, the 6-syllable line may be used for dramatic effect here (cf. Series IV).

Englynion penfyr Rowland found that in the saga englynion about 33 per cent of the englynion penfyr were 10-6-7 and about 22 per cent 9-6-7.15 These types are fewer in Englynion y Beddau. Out of the 44 englynion penfyr, there are 8 (18 per cent) of the 10-6-7 type (20, 22, 25, 28,16 51, 52, 54, III.17) and 5 (11 per cent) of the 9-6-7 type (10,17 41, 48,18 58, III.4). Rowland regards 9, 10, and even 11 syllables as possible in line a, 5 or 6 in line b, and 7 or 8 in line c, with the proviso that line b should be shorter than line c.19 On that basis, the following 17 seem acceptable: 9 is 10-6-8 (it would have 10-6-7 if bet were omitted in line c (cf. 11c)). 13, 21, 31, 42, 71, and III.7 are 11-6-7 (but Bet should probably be omitted in 13a). 23 and 6220 are 11-5-7. 26, 30, 47, and 53 are 11-6-8. 34 is 10-6-8 or 9-6-8 if eliding Pieu ir. III.3 is 10-5-8. III.9 is 10-5-7, but the variant I.10 has 6 syllables in line b. III.10 is 9-6-8, but 10-6-7 if reading y dan with I.35 and suppressing the pronoun ef.

A serious problem is presented by line a of 66, which is 8-6-8 or 8-6-7 if emending ino. Perhaps tir should be moved from line a to line b, resulting in an englyn milwr. Although Rowland does not mention 12 syllables in line a as an acceptable variation,21 it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the 6 + 6 pattern in some of the following is intentional: 5a Bet Keri cletif hir | ygodir Henegluis (12-7-8, but 12-6-8 if yn is for ’ny) 27a Bet Dywel mab Erbin | ig gwestedin. Caeav (12-8-7, but 12-6-7 with Thomas Jones’s emendations) 39a Bet unpen o Pryden (MS Pridein) | yn lleutir Guynnassed (12-7-8, but 12-6-7 if yn yd is for ’nyd) Cf. EWSP 315. EWSP 315. 16 Ignoring in line c. 17 10–6–7 if Run is emended to Panna. 18 Not eliding piev y bet. 19 EWSP 315. 20 Assuming bv ir is 1 syllable. 21 Neither does CLlH lxxxv–lxxxvi. 14 15

112

Metrics III.8a Bedd Llovan llaw Ddivo | yn arei o Venai (12-6-7) III.13a Bedd Tedel Tydawen | i gwarthaf bryn Arien (12-6-7) III.15a Bedd ylidir mwynfawr | ynglan mawr mewedvs (12-6-7)

In 5a, if cletif were changed to clet, 11 syllables would result. In III.8a, a better reading is probably yn arro Venai (making 11 syllables) as in III.7a. III.13’s doublet, I.4, is an englyn gwastad (6-6-6-6), and III.13 could plausibly be emended to agree with it (by omitting the prosaic yn in the last line: bedd Dylan yn llan Vevno). This leaves 27, 39, and III.15 as clear examples of englynion penfyr with 6 + 6 in line a, and typically penfyr internal rhymes. If these three are accepted, 5a Keri cletif hir | ygodir Henegluis can also be accepted, without emendation. Possibly 12 syllables were permitted in Englynion y Beddau in order to accommodate long names? The following may have an over-long line b (although Rowland does note eight examples in her corpus of 7 syllables in line b):22 5 and 39 are 12-7-8. In 5b yn y ‘in its’ can be contracted to ’ny, and similarly yn yd ‘where’ to ’nyd in 39b. See above. 27 is 12-8-7, but Thomas Jones emends 27b to 6 syllables. 36 is 10-7-8. Rhys omits bet in line b, reducing it to 6 syllables. 50 is 10-8-8. Bet in line b could be omitted here too, although there would still be 7 syllables. 59 is 10-7-7. There is no obvious emendation here. 60 is 11-7-6, with b longer than c. In line b Rhys contracts in y ‘in his’ to ’ny, which is plausible, and more speculatively adds ew ‘he’ before caffei in line c, making 11-6-7. 67 (as emended) is 10-8–7. In line b rug can replace y rug, since they alternate in the Black Book, but 10–7–7 would still be irregular (see 59 above).

The following have an over-long line c: 35 is 10-6-10, but the prosaic oet hvnnv in line c can be omitted (cf. III.2c), making 106-7. 43 is 11-6-9, but Bet in line c can be omitted as a mechanical repetition of 42c, making 11-6-8.

Four-line englynion Four-line englynion are rare in Englynion y Beddau, though not so rare as in the ‘saga englynion’.23 4 (cf. III.13 above) has 6-6-6-6, with the lines rhyming in couplets. The same rhyme scheme occurs in 7, but there the pattern is 6-6-7-7, unless yn y ‘where’ is contracted to ’ny in c and bet in d is omitted, making 6-6-6-6. 32 and 65

EWSP 315. See EWSP 318 and n. 43, and 330.

22 23

113

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

are 7-7-7-7, with the rhyme-scheme of an englyn cyrch/englyn triban.24 46 is 9-7-7-7, but Pieu y in line a can be contracted to Pieu’r, and a further syllable is lost following Rhys’s emendation. 72 appears to be 7-9-7-7, but is probably an englyn gwastad,25 as pieu yr and yssy in line b can easily be contracted to pieu’r and sy.26 III.5 and III.6 are 7-7-9-7 as they stand, but their line c could be emended to 7 and be supposed to have proest (-on : -an) with line d. III.11 seems to have four lines as usually printed, but it is possible that its first 3 lines form a penfyr (10-6-7) and that the fourth should be combined with the incomplete III.12 to form another penfyr (10-5-7?), as suggested in the commentary to III.12–13. III.13 is possibly to be emended to form a 6–6–6–6 englyn, like its doublet I.4. See above.

Awdl-gywydd I.70, one of the later additions to Series I, has six lines in awdl-gywydd metre.27 This metre is employed by a court poet in the Mynydd Garn poem (c. 1081?),28 but is subsequently avoided in court, as opposed to ‘popular’,29 poetry until the fifteenth century. It can be regarded as an extension of the pattern seen in the lines c and d of an englyn cyrch.30 The poet obviously uses it as he needs the extra lines to list the five graves on Morfa Rhianedd.

Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, pp. 323–24 and GPC s.v. englyn. See GPC s.v. and EWSP 330 n. 57. 26 For sy see G. 62 s.v. yssy, e.g. CBT II 28.52 (MS yssy) and VI 31.56. 27 On which see Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, pp. 311–12 and 327–28; PT 112; Dafydd Johnston, Llên yr Uchelwyr (Cardiff, 2005), p. 87. 28 CBT I 107; Nerys Ann Jones, ‘The Mynydd Carn “Prophecy”: A Reassessment’, CMCS, 38 (Winter 1999), 73–92 (pp. 73–74). 29 Difficult to define, but an early example (to judge by features such as ‘Irish’ rhyme), is the anonymous LlDC no. 2, on which see ibid., pp. lxvi–lxvii. 30 Peredur Lynch, ‘Yr Awdl a’i Mesurau’, in Beirdd a Thywysogion, ed. Owen and Roberts, pp. 258–87 (pp. 270–71). Cf. Loth, Métrique galloise, II, 145–47. 24 25

114

Part II

EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND COMMENTARY

LIST OF THE ENGLYNION

I.1–3

Three introductory stanzas

I.4

Tydai Tad Awen and Dylan, near Clynnog, Crn.

I.5

Ceri Cleddyf Hir at Heneglwys, Ang.

I.6

The grave of Seithennin, in Cardigan Bay?

I.7

Pryderi at Aber Gwenoli, ?Mer. or Crn., and Gwallawg in/on the Carrog, Crn.(?)

I.8–11

Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn in Caernarfonshire (?), Gwalchmai in Peryddon, Pem. (?), and ‘Run’ (recte Panna/Penda) ap Pyd at Winwæd in England

I.12

Osfran’s son at Camlan, Mer. (?), and Bedwyr on Tryfan, Crn.

I.13–16

Rhydderch Hael in Aber-erch, Crn., and various heroes from the early englyn cycles (in Powys and Brycheiniog?)

I.17–19

Meigen ap Rhun beneath the sea (in Cardigan Bay?)

I.20–23

Môr, Meilyr, and Madog in Pant Gwyn Gwynionog, Crn.

I.24–25

Rhun ab Alun Dyfed in Penllyn, Mer. (?), and his father Alun Dyfed ap Meigen in Trefalun, Fli. (?)

I.26

Llia Wyddel in Ardudwy, Mer., and Epynt in the Gefel valley, Bre.

I.27

Dyfel ab Erbin in Caeo, Crm.

I.28–30

Gwrgi and Llawr in Gwanas, Brithdir, Mer.

I.31

Llwch on a meandering river

I.32–33

Gwrien, Llwyddawg son of Lliwelydd, and Ffyrnfael ab Hywlydd on (Hir)fynydd (Long Mountain, Mtg?)

I.34

Eitivlch (Eiddunwlch?) the Tall, son of Arthan, at Pennant Twrch, Mtg.

I.35

Lleu Llawgyffes under the sea, ?off Arfon, Crn.

I.36–38

Beidawg Rudd ab Emyr Llydaw by the Machawy, Rad., Lluosgar in Ceri, Mtg., and Omni at Rhyd Brydw (Rad.?)

I.39

Gyrthmwl, where the Lliw flows into the Llychwr, Gla.

I.40

Gwrtheyrn in Ystyfachau (Crn.?)

I.41

Cynddilig son of Corcnud

I.42–43

Rhufawn in Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy, Ang.

I.44

March, Gwythur, Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd, and Arthur

I.45

Elwydd(an) at Maes Meueddawg/Maes Maod(d)yn, ?Mtg. or ?Rad.

I.46–47

Eiddef and Eidal, in Caernarfonshire (?)

I.48

Brwyno Hir ?above Brwyno-canol, Crd.

117

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau I.49

The grave of [?Cer]wyd

I.50

Syl(l)ydd in Edrywy (Crn.?), Llemenig in Llanelwy (Den.), and Eilinwy on Gwernin hill

I.51

Llachar ap Rhun in Clun Cain, ?by the river Tawe, Gla., or Teifi, Crm.

I.52

Talan (son of Llywarch Hen?)

I.53

Elisner (Elifer?) ap Nêr (or ‘son of a lord’)

I.54

Llachar (ap Rhun?) by the river Tawe, Gla. (or the Teifi, Crm./ Crd.?)

I.55

Rhigenau’s son (Llywarch?), at the fords, ?Bre.

I.56

Braint, between the Llyfni, Crn., and its tributaries

I.57

Coel ap Cynfelyn

I.58

Deheuwaint at Mathafarn, ?Ang.

I.59

Aron ap Dyfnwyn/Dyfnfyn at Hirwaun

I.60–61

Taflogau son of Lludd, and Rhun, near Hafod, Cer.

I.62

Bradwen, ?at Maen Bradwen, Gla.

I.63

Madog ?at Maen Madoc, Ystradfellte, Bre.

I.64

Elwydd (?) in Eifionydd, Crn.

I.65

Cynon, Cynfael, and Cynfeli at Cefn Celfi, Gla., or Cefn Celfi, Crd.

I.66

Llwyd Llednais in Cemais, ?Pem.

I.67

Siawn the Proud on Hirerw Mountain, Bangor, Crn.

I.68

Ebediw am Maelwr, ?near Pendinas, Aberystwyth, Crd., or in the Cletwr, ?Crd.

I.69

A closing stanza?

(additions in second hand) I.70

Sanant, Rhun, Garwen ferch Hennin, Lledin, and Llywy on Morfa Rhianedd, Crn.

I.71

Hennin Henben at Dinorben (Den.), Airgwl in Dyfed, Cyhored at Rhyd Gynan (?Gla.)

I.72

Einion ap Cunedda, ??Den.

I.73

Beli ap Benlli Gawr on Maes Mawr (Den./Fli.)

III.1

Ffyrnfael ab Hywlydd on the mountain (Long Mountain, Mtg.?)

III.2

Gwanwyn (Granwyn?) between the Llifon and Llyfni, Crn.

III.3

Gwydion ap Dôn on Morfa Dinlle, Crn., and Garannawg, ?on Yr Eifl, Crn.

III.4

Credig

III.5

Llofan Llaw Estrawn, at ?*Pennardd, Crn.

III.6

Llofan Llaw ?Engyn at ?*Pennardd, Crn.

III.7

Llofan Llaw Ddifo by the Menai, Crn. and Dylan at Clynnog, Crn.

118

List of the Englynion III.8

Llofan Llaw Ddifo by the Menai, Crn.

III.9

Panna ap Pyd in Arfon (recte at Winwæd, England) and Cynon (ap Clydno Eidyn) in Caernarfonshire (?)

III.10

Lleu Llawgyffes beneath the sea

III.11

Agen (Aser?) at Aber Bangori (in Arfon, Crn?)

III.12

Ager (Aser?) again?

III.13

Tydai Tad Awen and Dylan, near Clynnog, Crn.

III.14

Disgyrin (ap?) Disgyfdawd on the seashore

III.15

Elidir Mwynfawr on the Meweddus (Afon Wefus, Crn.)

III.16

Mabon son of Madron in Nantlle, Crn.

III.17

Myrddin Emrys, ?at Dinas Emrys, Crn.

III.18

Rhun ab Alun Dyfed, ?in Penllyn, Mer.

119

7 SERIES I

(i) The manuscripts and stemma Since all other manuscripts of Series I derive from the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth 1, 32r–35r), their variant readings are ignored in the edition below, although occasional reference is made in the commentary to significant variants or marginal comments. The englynion, set out as prose in the Black Book, are printed as verse, and word division and capitalisation are introduced. The exact layout on the manuscript page can be seen on the National Library of Wales’s website. In roughly chronological order, the manuscripts of Series I which have been consulted are as follows:1 NLW Peniarth 1, 32r–35r, Anon. (two scribes), s. xiii med. NLW Llanstephan 120, 78r–80r, by Jaspar Gryffyth, c. 1597–1607. NLW Peniarth 111, pp. 56–68, by John Jones, Gellilyfdy, c. 1607. NLW Peniarth 98ii, pp. 18–25, by Dr John Davies, Mallwyd, not before 1617. NLW Peniarth 107, 21v–25r, by Robert Vaughan, s. xvii med. NLW Llanstephan 145, 68r, by Edward Lhwyd, c. 1700. NLW Llanstephan 18, pp. 4–19, by Moses Williams, c. 1728? NLW 2040A (Panton 74ii), pp. 138–51, by Evan Evans, c. 1760. BL Add. 14867, 192v–197v, by William Morris, 1762. BL Add. 14907, fols 115–21, by Lewis Morris’s amanuensis ‘X146’, not later than 1749. NLW 2022C (Panton 55), pp. 1–15, by Evan Evans, c. 1765. BL Add. 15002, pp. 76–82, by Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), c. 1768. NLW Peniarth 201, pp. 47–52, by Richard Thomas, 1777. NLW 13239C, pp. 163–74, by William Owen Pughe, 1784. NLW Cwrtmawr 454, pp. 470–77, by Peter Bailey Williams, c. 1791–93.2 Bangor University, General Collection, 14675, pp. 106–17, by Peter Bailey Williams, 1794. NLW Cwrtmawr 12, pp. 466–84, by David Ellis, 1794. Cardiff, Central Library, 2.141, Part i, pp. 156–66, by Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies, not before 1792. For further details about the manuscripts see RMWL and RWMS. RWMS III pl. 994.

1 2

120

Series I

Figure 3: Series I Stemma.(brackets indicate non-extant copies).

NLW Llanstephan 193, 152r–158r (pp. 200–12), by Hugh Maurice, 1796. NLW 13100B, pp. 425–28, by Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams), c. 1800. NLW 170C, pp. 56 and 58, by Edward Jones, c. 1800. (I.8, 13, and 44 only.) NLW 322E, pp. 60–61, by Edward Jones, c. 1800. (I.8 and 44 only.) NLW 669D, pp. 107–10.3 ‘Ysgriflyfr y diweddar Sion Wyn o Eifion [John Thomas 1786–1859] Sydd yn awr yn eiddof fi Eben Fardd o Glynnog Fawr’, said (on p. 110) to be an 1806 copy of a manuscript copied in 1793 by D. Thomas (Dafydd Ddu Eryri) from a manuscript of Evan Evans. NLW 672D, pp. 252–56, Anon., c. 1814 × 1845.

For details of the shared errors leading to the Figure 3 stemma, see above, pp. 82–94.

Not in RWMS.

3

121

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

(ii) Edition, translation, and commentary I.1–3 Three introductory stanzas I.1

I.1

E betev ae gulich y glav.

The graves which the rain wets:

gvir ny ortywnassint vy dignav.

men who had not been accustomed to being provoked,

Kerwid. a Chivrid a Chav.

Cerwyd and Cywryd and Caw.

4

I.2

I.2

E betev ae tut gvitwal.

The graves which scrub covers:

5

ny llesseint heb ymtial.6

they were not killed without vengeance,

Guryen. Morien. a Morial.

7

I.3

Gwrien, Morien, and Morial. I.3

E betev ae gvlich kauad.

The graves which a shower wets:

gvyr. ny llesseint in lledrad.

men who were not killed by stealth,

Gwen. a Gurien. a Guriad.

Gwên (or Gwyn)8 and Gwrien and Gwriad.

These stanzas are notably free from specific topographical indications and seem intended to set the tone for what follows: the graves are in the open air and belong to famous warriors of the heroic age. The names of ‘Gwen a Gurien a Guriad’ (3c) may

The affixed pronoun can be omitted (as often) for metrical reasons, resulting in 8 syllables, which is probably acceptable (cf. EWSP 315). The line may be reduced to 7 syllables if gvir is also omitted and explained as a clarifying insertion, perhaps inspired by 3b below. As an alternative to omitting gvir, Jones, ‘[g]ortywnassint’, omits or- and reads dywnassint (= tywnassint, with t = /ð/) in his edition. The two verbs are synonymous: GPC s.vv. dyfnaf and gorddyfnaf; G. 412 and 561. G. 561 notes that the repeated gordyfnassei in the ‘Aelwyd Rheged’ stanzas in R 1041 (CLlH III.49–59; EWSP 426–28) is sometimes ametrical but hesitates to emend there (cf. CLlH 143, note on III.49b). 5 Superscript e. G. 3b takes ae in I.1a, 2a, and 3a as a’e (a + 3pl. object pronoun), but notes that Tal. 180 (cf. WG 285, 287 and PT 113) takes ae as the old form of relative a, OW (h)ai. On the ambiguity see GMW 63, Haycock and Sims-Williams, ‘Welsh vch “fox?”’, pp. 21–22, and Sims-­Williams, ‘Sandhi h after Third-Person Pronouns’, pp. 64 and 68–69, also Anwyl, review of WG, p. 207. Cf. ae tut in 17b and Einion ap Gwalchmai’s Gweryd rut a’e tut wedy tewi ‘red earth covers her after she is silent’ (CBT I 26.23), which must contain an object pronoun. This is a significant parallel, as tuddio (unlike cuddio) is a rare verb, although possibly to be restored for alliteration in PT X.3: Reget ud ae cud tromlas ‘Lord of Rheged whom the heavy green [sward] covers’ (see n.). 6 Wrongly taking llesseint to be trisyllabic, Rhys, Englyn, pp. 127–28, changes ymtial to dial for (incorrect) metrical reasons. For ymddial see CBT III 21.68. 7 Note that the conjunction is omitted before Morien in order to achieve a 7-syllable line. 8 Although Gwên is an attested name, Gwen is possibly ‘an older spelling of “Gwyn”’ (Jarman, Aneirin, p. 100). 4

122

Series I

deliberately recall ‘a Gwryen a Gwynn a Gwryat’ in the Gododdin,9 where Morien and Morial also appear.10 Gwrien may occur again in I.32. From the perspective of modern literary history, the Gododdin and Englynion y Beddau belong to different genres. In reality, however, there are similarities. As Patrick Ford put it, The tradition [the early Welsh poets inherited] emphasized eulogy, elegy, and the lore of persons and places. This poem [the Gododdin], not unlike the … ‘stanzas of the graves’ … tells us the names of heroes, recounts their heroic virtues, and either directly or by implication, tells us where they fell.11

The names of Caw, Cerwyd, and Cywryd in I.1 also conjure up the Old North and specifically Pictland: Caw of Pictland (Prydyn) is the only famous Caw,12 Cerwyd was one of the sons of Pabo Post Prydyn,13 and, according to Gwilym Ddu o Arfon (c. 1317), a Cywryd was the bard of Dunawd ap Pabo Post Prydyn.14 I am assuming either that w in Kerwid stands for /w/ (not /v/),15 as is not uncommon in the Black Book, or that /rv/ < /rw/ has occurred in this name. Cerwyd may appear again in I.49. I.4 Tydai Tad Awen and Dylan, near Clynnog, Crn. I.4

I.4

Bet Tedei tad awen.

The grave of Tydai Father of Inspiration (is)

yg godir Brin Aren.

in the region of Bryn Arien.

yn yd vna ton tolo.

Where the wave makes a noise (is)

Bet Dilan Llan Bevno.

The grave of Dylan (in) Llanfeuno (i.e. Clynnog).

The variant III.13 may be superior in retaining the northern form Arien16 and gwarthaf ‘summit’ in place of godir ‘region’; gwarthaf may have been lost in Series I under the CA line 348 (awdl XXX (A.30)); TYP4 390 (where the alliterating Gwryat vab Gỽryan yn y Gogled of Triad 68 is compared). 10 CA lines 382, 389, 465, 629 (Moryen) and 662 (Moryal). On the latter see note in CA and DP IV 537, also PT 136. As noted by Bollard and Griffiths, EBSG 61, the deaths of Morien and Morial (and Morgenau and Mordaf) are also lamented in the dialogue between Myrddin and his sister (R 583; ‘Y Cyfoesi a’r Afallennau yn Peniarth 3’, ed. Williams, p. 120). They add to its Old North atmosphere. 11 Patrick K. Ford, review of GOSP, in Speculum, 45.1 (1970), 140–43 (p. 141). Cf. Helen Fulton, ‘Cultural Heroism in the Old North of Britain: The Evidence of Aneirin’s Gododdin’, in The Epic in History, ed. Lola Sharon Davidson et al. (Sydney, 1994), pp.18–39 (p. 26). 12 TYP4 306–8. 13 EWGT 73 (BGG §4 = MWG 428); cf. TYP4 472. See on I.49 below 14 R 1228.11 = Gwaith Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Tudur, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr ac Iorwerth Beli, ed. Costigan et al., no. 7.43 and n. (and p. 73 for the date); WCD 187 and 208; Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, p. 21; and below on I.58. For other persons called Cywryd see TYP4 327. 15 Thus G. 137. EP 254 links it with carw ‘stag’; cf. I.49 below. For w = /w/ see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, p. 132. 16 Similar southernisms in Series I are 49b aral (arial), 62 aten (addien), etc. Cf. EWGP I.6a aren and note (p. 44); GMW 6. 9

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

influence of ygodir in the following stanza (I.5a), the only other place in Englynion y Beddau where godir ocurs. Tydai’s epithet tad awen ‘father of inspiration’ recalls that of Talhaearn in the famous passage on the Cynfeirdd in the Historia Brittonum: ‘Tunc Talhaern Tat Aguen in poemate claruit et Neirin, et Taliessin, et Bluchbard, et Cian qui vocatur Gueinth Guaut, simul uno tempore in poemate Brittannico claruerunt’.17 This parallel suggests that Tydai was a semi-legendary bard about whom there was some story, as with other Cynfeirdd.18 The same impression is given by Iolo Goch (c. 1390), who groups Tydai Dad Awen with Culfardd and Taliesin, and he is acknowledged as a prototype by sixteenth-century poets such as Rhys Nanmor (d. c. 1513), Huw ap Dafydd (c. 1525), Lewys Morgannwg (c. 1527), and Wiliam Llŷn, who in 1564 places his name between those of Aristotle and Taliesin: Tydai’n ail, Tad Awen oedd ‘Tydai secondly, Father of Inspiration was he’.19 His name seems to belong to a class in which the epithet involves a real or apparent etymological pun on the main element of the name itself, such as Hennin Henben in I.71 or Llofan Llaw Ddifo in III.7 etc. Perhaps the idea that Tydai was tad awen arose from an attempt to explain Bryn Ar(i)en as containing the adjective aren ‘eloquent’. The etymology of Tydai is obscure. Perhaps compare names such as Tygái ‘from Ty- and Cai’?20 Nothing more can be said about Tydai, despite the romancing of Iolo Morganwg and his contemporaries about ‘Tydain Tad Awen’.21 Their form Tydain may come from Dr Davies’s Dictionary (see below) or may have arisen from their misunderstanding of Wiliam Llŷn’s Tydai’n (< Tydai + yn), which was printed as Tydain in 1773,22 or of Rhys Nanmor’s Tydain (< Tydai + ’n ‘our’) in an englyn to Tudur Aled, HB §62. ‘Tataguen’ in Mommsen’s edition, but see BWP, frontispiece. Cf. Alexander Falileyev, ‘Father of Muse and Son of Inspiration’, SC, 32 (1998), 277–78. 18 See references under Cynfeirdd in TYP4 542; Rachel Bromwich, ‘Y Cynfeirdd a’r Traddodiad Cymraeg’, B., 22 (1966–68), 30–37; Thomas, ‘Chwedlau Tegau Eurfron a Thristfardd, Bardd Urien Rheged’; WCD 615–16. 19 GIG XXII.35 (for Culfardd see ibid., p. 264); GTA no. CLXIII (Rhys Nanmor, but on the text see below); Gwaith Huw ap Dafydd ap Llywelyn ap Madog, ed. A. Cynfael Lake (Aberystwyth, 1995), no. 15.27; Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ed. A. Cynfael Lake, 2 vols (Aberystwyth, 2004), nos 37.35 and 94.21–22; ‘Gwaith Wiliam Llŷn’, ed. Roy Stephens (PhD, University of Wales, 1983), p. 440, no. 129.51; Gwaith Gruffudd Hiraethog, ed. D. J. Bowen (Cardiff, 1990), p. 467, no. III.51; idem, ‘Disgyblion Gruffudd Hiraethog’, SC, 10/11 (1975–76), 241–55 (p. 251). 20 Lewis, ‘Honorific Prefixes To- and Mo-’; ETG 147. On -ai in personal names see EANC 22 and on its accentuation see GLM 377. Perhaps compare -dai with Taius in Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques, pp. 176 and 233. 21 See Tecwyn Ellis, ‘Bardd y Brenin: Iolo Morganwg a Derwyddiaeth’, NLWJ, 14.2 (1966), 424– 36 (pp. 428–33); Bromwich, ‘“Third Series” Part II’, nos 57, 92 and 93, and note on p. 151; HW I 169; P. C. Bartrum, ‘Some Studies in Early Welsh History’, THSC, 1948, 279–302 (p. 299); WCD 625. There are some wild speculations on this grave-stanza in Edward Davies, The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids (London, 1809), pp. 115, 193–94, 526, and 590, also idem, Celtic Researches on the Origin, Traditions and Language of the Ancient Britons (London, 1804), pp. 159–60, 168, and 554. 22 Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru, ed. Rhys Jones (Shrewsbury, 1773), p. 295 (pace Evans’s note, BBC 128). Note Edward Jones’s addition to his copy in NLW 170, p. 59, of MS W of Series III: Bedd Tedel Tydawen, with -el underlined and ein Tad Awen written above. Some of his additions to this stanza are influenced by a text like that in the Myvyrian Archaiology; but the later has Tedei and Tedel only (MA2 65–66). In his Bardic Museum, p. 10, Jones prints Tydain Tâd Awen and translates ‘Tudain, Father of the Muse’. Iolo has Tedein in his copy of Series I in NLW 13100, whereas BL Add. 14867 and its four other descendants (see stemma in Figure 3) all have Tedei. Lewis Morris, in his index to Englynion y Beddau in BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46, has ‘Tydain 17

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copied as Tydain by Iolo Morganwg in BL Add. 15003, 149v.23 The misunderstanding was earlier than 1773, however. Edmwnd Prys in c. 1581 links Tudur Aled and Tydain, and Prys, in turn, is compared to Tydain gall Tad Awen by Wiliam Llŷn’s bardic pupil Siôn Phylip, while Siôn’s brother, Richard Phylip, calls Siôn Mowddwy (fl. c. 1575–1613) Tydain iaith Brydain.24 The description of Tudur Aled (d. c. 1525), in an elegy by Huw ap Dafydd ap Llywelyn ap Madog, as Tydai’n bwys, Tad Awen bur (‘an authority like Tydai, father of the pure muse’)25 is quoted by Dr Davies s.n. Tudain in his Dictionarium Duplex of 1632 as Tydain bwys tad awen bûr; this probably helped to establish the Tydain form of the name. Edward Jones, in the margin of his copy of MS W of Series III, noted: ‘Bryn Euryn, | in Creuddyn, | Caernarvonshire; | which was the | palace of Maelgwyn | about th year .560’ (sic).26 This identification with Bryneuryn (SH 8379) gained some currency, if one may believe John Jones, Llanllyfni (1853), who says that ‘Bryn Eurun, or as it is generally called Bryn Arien, has been for some time the object of deep research’ and claims that one will probably discover the grave of ‘Tydain Tad Awen … on the skirts (godre) of this hill’.27 A probable source for this identification is Edward Jones’s Bardic Museum (1802), where a further identification is proposed, namely, Aran Benllyn, Llanuwchllyn (SH 8624): Bryn Aren, I believe, is at the base of Aran Benllyn, near Bala, in Meirionydd: there is also Arrennig Vawr, which is not far from the other, whose height is 740 yards above Llyn Tegid. The palace of Maelgwn Gwynedd, in Creuddyn, Caernarvonshire, was also called Bryn Euryn, about the year 560.28

In the margin of William Morris’s copy of I.4 in BL Add. 14907, Lewis Morris had already suggested that ‘Bryn Aren’ was ‘ar ochr moel hafod fynydd yn llaeth nant’,

23



24



25



26

27



28



fardd .4. q. wh. Tydian’, while Pughe, in his index in NLW 146, pp. 109–12, has ‘Tydain Tad Awen’, with a, l, and y above the letters which I italicise. GTA no. CLXIII has Tydain, crair, Tad Awen Cred, / Tydi ’r ail, Tudur Aled in the last two lines of the englyn, followed by Mary Gwendoline Headley, ‘Barddoniaeth Llawdden a Rhys Nanmor’, unpublished M.A. dissertation (University of Wales, Bangor, 1938), p. 256, no. 72 (but her copy of lines 1–2 is superior: Tudur, hawc natur cnotied at wraidd pawb, / Trioedd, Beibl a Dwned). The reading of Peniarth 77, p. 319, is in fact Tydain crair tad awen cred, / Tydair ail Tvdyr Aled, which presumably means ‘Tydai Tad Awen, our holy relic, / You (tydi), Tudur Aled, (are) the second (one)’, accepting the editors’ silent emendation of Tydair (also in BL Add. 15003) to Tydi ’r in line 4 – cf. NLW 872D (Wrexham 1), p. 186, which has ty di vw r krair and ty di vw r ail in lines 3 and 4. There is an unnoticed text in NLW 5262 (Robert Vaughan), 178r: ‘Tudur hawc natur cnotied at wraidd pawb./ trioedd, peibl (sic) a dwned./ Tydain crair tad awen cred./ Tydair ail Tur Aled./ R. Nanmor’. Ymryson Edmwnd Prys a Wiliam Cynwal, ed. Williams, no. 1.10; William Ll. Davies, ‘Phylipiaid Ardudwy – A Survey and a Summary’, Y Cymmrodor, 42 (1931), 155–268 (pp. 164 and 188). See Lake’s edition, cited in n. 19 above (also GTA II 728). NLW MS 170, p. 59. Between the first and second lines stand or Ll deleted. For the date given to Maelgwn see Humphrey Lhwyd, The Breuiary of Britayne, trans. Thomas Twyne (London, 1573), 63r. ‘Cilmyn’, ‘Grave of Gwallawg’, pp. 211–12. (On ‘Cilmyn’ see above, p. 94 n. 73). In 1852 Ab Ithel, ‘British Interments’, p. 83, had stated ‘Bryn Aryen is in Caernarvonshire’ (see above, p. 94 n. 72), but perhaps thinking of the Four Branches rather than Bryn Eurun in Creuddyn. Bardic Museum, p. 10, n. (Jones already has Bryn Euryn in NLW 170, p. 59.) For these names see Davies, Rhestr, pp. 11–12 and 17; ELl 18; and TYP4 284.

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that is, Aran Fawddwy (SH 8521), near Foel Hafod-fynydd, Llanymawddwy, Mer. (SH 87663 22307).29 These suggestions are unconvincing, since there is no reason to think these names ever contained ar(i)en, which is probably the word for ‘hoar-frost, dew’. Instead, Ifor Williams convincingly equated Bryn Arien with the lost place-name Brynn Aryen mentioned in the Four Branches:30 Yna y doethant wy parth a Dinas Dinllef. Ac yna meithryn Llew Llaw Gyffes …. Ac yn ieuengtit y dyd trannoeth, kyuodi a wnaethant, a chymryt yr aruordir y uynyd parth a Brynn Aryen. Ac yn y penn uchaf y Geuyn Clutno (var. Clūtno), ymgueiraw ar ueirch a wnaethant, a dyuot parth a Chaer Aranrot. Ac yna amgenu eu pryt a wnaethant, a chyrchu y porth yn rith deu was ieueinc, eithyr y uot yn prudach pryt Gwydyon noc un y guas. ‘E porthawr,’ heb ef, ‘dos ymywn, a dywet uot yma beird o Uorgannwc.’31 Then they came towards Dinas Dinlleu. And then Lleu Llaw Gyffes was reared …. And on the morrow in the young of the day they arose and took the seashore, up towards Bryn Arien; and at the top of Cefyn Clun Tyno they made ready on horseback and came towards Caer Aranrhod. And then they changed their semblance and made towards the gate in the guise of two young men, save that Gwydion’s mien was more staid than the lad’s. ‘Porter,’ said he, ‘go in and say there are bards here from Morgannwg.’32

Since Dinas Dinlle and the point on the shore nearest the islet of Caer Aranrhod are little more than a mile apart it is possible, as Ifor Williams suggests, that the author makes Gwydion and Lleu take a deliberately circuitous route which would confirm to a lookout at Caer Aranrhod that they were bards from Morgannwg.33 On the other hand, as the author makes them approach on horseback he may have in mind the hypothetical geography of the region before the inundation of Caer Aranrhod, just as he does in the story of Brân crossing the Irish Sea.34 This geography may have involved a single land route from the south, for the author seems to imagine Dinas Dinlle as being on the coast (aruordir) as now. Possibly the late tradition that St Beuno used to cross on foot from Clynnog to Llanddwyn in Anglesey (SH 3862)35 is a reflection of such a tradition. The route would pass by the rocks called Gored Morris does not mention this in CR 18–19, where he connects Aran/Aren with aren ‘kidney’. Cf. Hervé Le Bihan, ‘À propos de l’oronyme Arrée, Are’, ÉC, 46 (2020), 81–86. 30 PKM 278–79. Unless the manuscript spelling Brynn Aryen is hypercorrect for *Brynn Aren (‘kidney-shaped hill’?) or a derivative of the root *ar- discussed by Le Bihan, it supports the III.13 reading against I.4’s Brin Aren. 31 PKM 81. For the variant see Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111, 188r col. 761.21. 32 M 66. 33 PKM 278 and 280. 34 Ibid. 39; M 33; Mac Cana, Branwen, pp. 109–11; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 192–96. 35 CF I 219; Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, p. 88 (where ‘Clynnog Fechan’ is a slip). Cf. Eben Fardd, Cyff Beuno, p. 58: ‘dywedir fod “Gored Beuno” [SH 4150], yn y chwechfed ganrif, yn dir sych ar drai; y mae traddodiad, yr hwn nid yw yn annhebyg i fod yn wir, y gellid myned o Glynnog Fawr yn Arfon i Glynnog Fechan ym Mon [SH 4364], gynt, ar dir sych amser trai: mae suddiad hysbys cyfran helaeth o’r cyffin dan ddwr yn cadarnhau y traddodiad, fel y gellir gweled, yn yr oes hon, fod y môr yn ysu y gilfach tir rhwng pentref Clynnog a Llanaelhaiarn’. For Clynnog Fechan = Llangeinwen (SH 4365) see WATU 45. Poets refer to Beuno’s causeway: Henken, Traditions of the Welsh Saints, pp. 85–86; Anon., ‘Moliant i Feuno’, ed. Eurig Salisbury, on the Seintiau project website . 29

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Beuno (SH 4150) and by Caer Aranrhod.36 In fact, in his unpublished edition of Math (c. 1834), William Owen Pughe says: There is a tradition that the churches of L[l]and[d]wyn, Caer Arianrod, and Clynog [corrected to Clynoc] were served by the same minister, and that so late as about a century past, persons could pass at low water from L[l]and[d]wyn by Caer Arianrod to Clynog [corrected to Clynoc].37

Whichever explanation of Gwydion’s route is correct (and perhaps both are), it seems that he and Lleu went further south than Caer Aranrhod initially. Ifor Williams plausibly connects the Red Book’s ‘Ceuyn cluntno’ (‘ridge of the meadow of the valley’) with Coetyno/Coed-tyno (SH 433501) (‘wood of the valley’) on the high ground a little ENE of Clynnog.38 Brynn Aryen must lie somewhere on the coast in a southerly direction. W. J. Gruffydd suggested Bryn Aerau (SH 4352);39 but this is unsatisfactory, for it is about half-a-mile inland and is hardly to be equated with Brynn Aryen, unless the latter is to be emended, which the rhyme in the grave-stanza makes impossible.40 Ifor Williams preferred the hill or promontory on the coast by Trwyn Maen Dylan (SH 4252) called ‘Bryn Beddau’, pointing out that it would be the first striking feature one would come upon on the way down the coast from Dinas Dinlle.41 The name, which does not appear on maps, is already recorded as a field-name by Eben Fardd in 1848,42 and the late Professor Geraint Gruffydd kindly informed me in 1975 that the name ‘Cae Bryn Beddau’ was still in use then.43 In view of the coupling of the grave of Tedei at Bryn Arien with that of Dylan ‘(yn) Llan Beuno’, meaning Clynnog or possibly Maen Dylan itself, the identification is very Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, pp. 115 and 125. A similar tradition is found in connection with the legend of the inundation of Llys Helig on the north coast of Caernarfonshire, where a ‘pavement’ built by St Seiriol is reported between Penmaen-mawr (SH 7176) and Ynys Seiriol (Priestholm Island, SH 6582), ‘whereuppon hee might walke drye from his church att Priestholme to his chappell at Penmen Mawre, the vale beynge very lowe ground and wette, which pavement may att this day [early seventeenth century] be discerned …when the sea is cleare, yf a man liste to goe in a bote to see ytt’ (quoted by North, Sunken Cities, pp. 47–48). 37 NLW MS 13242C, bundle labelled ‘Math Prepared for the Press’, p. 9. (My square brackets expand Pughe’s dotted letters.) See also his letter of 1827, quoted by T. Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, Part III (London, 1828), pp. 175–76. 38 PKM 280. This is Coed-tyno on the 1841 O.S. one-inch map. AMR s. Coed Tyno Bach records Coed ytynoe in 1685. Cf. Parsons, ‘Irlond Roll’, pp. 153–54. For tnou > tno > tyno see ELl 41–42 (Coetyno < Coed-y-tyno or Coed-dyno); LHEB 338 and 379; L&P 46 and 94. Cf. a Coed y Tyno in Mer., in AMR. The alternative suggestion ‘Cefn Clydno’ is less likely, since the early form always has y < o and the spelling Cludno is post-medieval (e.g. Bartrum, ‘Tri Thlws ar Ddeg’, p. 444). See, however, p. 143 n. 143 below. 39 MvM 25, perhaps following Ambrose, Hynafiaethau (1872), pp. 9 and 31 (quoting Glasynys), or Anwyl, ‘The Four Branches’ (1901), p. 130. There is another Bryn(-)Aerau near Llanbrynmair, Mtg., and one in Llanwennog, Crd.; see AMR. 40 See PKM 279, who also argues that ‘yn yd vna ton tolo’ does not suit Bryn Aerau; but on this line see below on III.7. 41 PKM 279. 42 Ebenezer Thomas (Eben Fardd), ‘Clynnog Parish’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1849), 121–26 (p. 122); also in Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald, 23 Sept. 1848. 43 ‘Cefais air â Mr. Jones, Llyngele, sy’n ffermio’r tir dan sylw (er nad ef yw ei berchennog), ac y mae’n cadarnhau mai enw’r cae uchaf ar y trwyn o hyd yw Cae Bryn Beddau. Y cae nesaf at hwn i gyfeiriad Clynnog yw Cae Maen Dylan’ (letter 18.7.1975). 36

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probable. It is not unlikely that the graves from which Bryn Beddau took its name were supposed to be Dylan’s and Tydai’s. Although Dylan is often alluded to, his saga does not survive. The fullest account of him is in the Four Branches, which refer in passing to his birth, his naming, his premature strength, the explanation of his name Eil Ton, ‘Son of Wave’, his ‘peculiarity’ that ‘no wave ever broke beneath him’, and his death at the hands of his uncle Gofannon, for which a lost triad of the Three Unhappy Blows is cited.44 These details are typical points in a heroic biography. Dylan’s death is described in the poem in the Book of Taliesin headed ‘Marwnat dylan eil ton’.45 This opens with an invocation to God, followed by a corrupt passage that possibly alludes to the ‘strength of tongs’ (gredyf gefel), referring to Gofannon, a legendary smith.46 Gofannon is presumably the ‘groom’ (gwastrawt) of the next line. The poem continues: The groom watches intently – he wrought harm, a deed of violence, the striking of Dylan on the deadly shore, violence in the current. The wave of Ireland, and the wave of Man,47 and the wave of the North, and the fourth, the wave of Britain of the splendid hosts.

The four waves here are reminiscent of the ‘three waves of Ireland’ which react to crucial events in Irish sagas by a sort of pathetic fallacy;48 they may be a Welsh counterpart in view of the other similarities between Welsh and Irish superstitions about waves.49 In Marwnat Dylan the waves may be fighting over possession of the corpse,50 or avenging it, as in another poem in the Book of Taliesin: ‘Why is it noisy – the tumult of the waves against the shore? Avenging Dylan it reaches towards us’.51 Thus the reference to the wave in the grave-stanza is particularly appropriate, though 46 47 48

PKM 77–78; M 63–64. For allusions to Dylan in poetry see G. s.vv. Dylan and dylan. LPBT no. 22 (quoted here). A drastically emended text is translated in MvM 219–20. On Gofannon see PKM 272; EANC 144; G. 545 (cf. YMTh 66); and below. MvM 219 emends to aruon, ‘Arfon’. See Rudolf Thurneysen, Die irische Helden- und Königsage bis zum siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Halle (Saale), 1921), pp. 333, 368, and 372; Tom Peete Cross, Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature, Indiana University Publications, Folklore Series no. 7 (Bloomington, IN, 1952), A 913.1* (cf. D 911.1*; A 920.1.4*; A 936*; F 931.4*); Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach, ed. Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Irish Texts Society, 56 (London, 1993), lines 597–604. 49 Whitley Stokes, ‘Mythological Notes’, RC, 2 (1873–75), 197–203 (p. 201); J. Loth, ‘L’année celtique d’après les textes irlandais, gallois, bretons et le Calendrier de Coligny’, RC, 25 (1904), 113–62 (pp. 152–54); J. Vendryes, ‘L’expression du “rire” en celtique’, ÉC, 3 (1938), 38–45 (pp. 43–45); Morfydd E. Owen, ‘Y Trioedd Arbennig’, B., 24 (1970–72), 434–50 (pp. 449–50, cf. Gwaith Llywelyn Brydydd Hoddnant, ed. Parry Owen, p. 70); Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage (London, 1961), p. 194; Georges Dumézil, Gods of Ancient Northmen (Berkeley, CA, 1973), pp. 134–40; LPBT 464. 50 Compare the sixteenth-century story in Jones, ‘Family Tales from Dyfed’, p. 78 and n. 82. 51 LPBT no. 6.19–22, cited BBCSG 107. A further allusion, by Einion ap Gwalchmai, may be CBT I 26.10 (see n.). Cf. ‘The Colloquy of the Two Sages, Immacallam in Dá Thuarad’, ed. and trans. W. Stokes, RC, 26 (1905), 4–64 (p. 9): ‘One day the lad fared forth till he was on the brink of the sea, – for the poets deemed that on the brink of the water it was always a place of revelation of science. He heard a sound in the wave, to wit, a chant of wailing and sadness, and it seemed strange to him. So the lad cast a spell upon the wave, that it might reveal to him what the matter was. And thereafter it was declared to him that the wave was bewailing his father Adnae, after his death…’. Cf. ‘… the drowning of the warrior from Loch Dá Chonn / is what the wave striking the shore laments’ (Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics (Oxford, 1956), p. 149). See also Rachel 44 45

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it is of course possible that the author intended it as no more than a descriptive phrase to indicate the seaside location of Dylan’s grave.52 Llan Bevno is Clynnog (Llanfeuno Fawr) in Arfon (SH 4149). It has usually been assumed that ‘yn Llan Veuno’ (III.13, but without preposition in I.4) means that the grave of Dylan was at or in Clynnog church.53 However, ‘where the wave makes a noise’ does not suit the church, which is at its ancient site and some distance from the shore.54 Llan Veuno may be used as a less specific point of reference, or in a wider sense of llan,55 that would include the sea-line of the present parish. Marwnat Dylan’s reference to the ‘shore’ and to ‘violence in the stream’ supports a location on the shore, as opposed to identifying Dylan’s grave with one of the two surviving chambered tombs in Clynnog, which are both at 80–90 ft above O.D.56 There is thus a possibility that the gigantic boulder, of apparently natural (glacial?) origin, 1½ miles up the coast from the church (SH 4252) and still known as Maen Dylan, marks the site of Dylan’s grave.57 It is not possible to trace the name back very far. The name is first found, to my knowledge, in the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, which was surveyed between 1816 and 1840: Point Maen-ddulan. John Jones, Llanllyfni, writing of ‘sepulchral pillars’ in 1852 refers to ‘that of Dylan, on the sea-shore, near the mouth of the Llynfi, still maintaining its upright position, after the lapse of ages, notwithstanding the encroachment of the sea which washes its base on each successive tide’,58 and in the same year Eben Fardd, in his sketch map of the parish, labelled it ‘Bedd Dylan’, with the following caption: ‘A large Stone called “Maen Dylan” situated in the Sea a little to the N.W. of the Church, is supposed to indicate the burying place of that Chief’ (NLW Minor Deposit 151). In his tale Y Fôr-Forwyn (1862) Glasynys (Owen Wynne Jones, 1828–70) mentions Maen Dylan: Yn awr tröer am funud at hanes Deio. Un oedd yntau a fedrodd dynnu sylw un o’r Môr-forynion, ac aeth ef i fyw i’w gwlad atynt, a galwyd ef yno yn Dylan; ac yno yr arosodd, heb ddyfod byth yn nes i dir ei dadau na’r maen a elwir ar ei enw, sef yw hwnw Maen Dylan, ac yn Llanfeuno y mae’r maen hyd heddyw i’w weled.

Bromwich, review of Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin, ed. D. A. Binchy (Dublin, 1963), in SC, 1 (1966), 152–55 (p. 154). 52 Cf. I.7 and I.54. 53 PKM 279; BBCSG 107. 54 In PKM 279 this is pointed out, but as an argument for disassociating line c in I.4/III.13 from the reference to Llanfeuno (but see below, on III.7). 55 Cf. PNDPH 344. Possibly Llan Bevno should be treated as two words, not as a place-name Llanfeuno; see Johnston, review of Gwaith Llywelyn Fardd I ac Eraill o Feirdd y Ddeuddegfed Ganrif, ed. Bramley et al., p. 155. 56 Inv. Crn. II 55–56, nos 861–62 (discussed below, p. 322 and nn. 288–9, in connection with Llofan in III.5) – despite Longley, ‘The Afon Alaw, the Sixth-Century Ty’n Rhosydd Stone and Bivatisus’, p. 407, who says that ‘The grave of Dylan at Llanfeuno, where the wave roars’ is ‘a clear reference to the Neolithic chambered tomb on the shoreline at Clynnog’. 57 Maen Dylan is identified as Dylan’s grave by Ambrose, Hynafiaethau, p. 9. For a photograph see Bollard and Griffiths, Mabinogi, p. 93. 58 ‘Cilmyn’, ‘The Grave of Gwallawg’, p. 74. Although the location is typically vague, there can be little doubt that Maen Dylan is meant. It is possible that Peter Bailey Williams also made the identification, since in his 1818 translation of III.13 he has ‘near the church of Beuno’, not ‘at’ or ‘in’.

129

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Now let us turn for a moment to the story of Deio. He too was one who had been able to attract the attention of one of the Mermaids, and he went to live with them to their country, and was called there Dylan: and there he remained, never coming nearer the land of his fathers than the stone called by his name, that is Maen Dylan, and in Llanfeuno [Clynnog] the stone remains to be seen to this day.59

Glasynys, as a schoolmaster near Clynnog, had local knowledge, but his aim was not the scientific collection of folklore, so this story hardly testifies to more than the currency of the name Maen Dylan. It may be influenced by the Four Branches. Certainly Rhys, writing of a visit to Arfon in 1882, states that ‘the only trace of Dylan I could find was in the name of a small promontory, called variously by the Glynllifon men Pwynt Maen Tylen … and Pwynt Maen Dulan. It is also known, as I was given to understand, as Pwynt y Wig’.60 There are traces of characters associated with Dylan in the Four Branches in other place-names in the area, and as these can be traced back much earlier than Maen Dylan they suggest that it too may be equally ancient: (1) Dylan’s mother Aranrhod61 is the eponym of the offshore reef, Caer Arianrhod (SH 4254), a site marked by cartographers since the sixteenth century.62 Lewis Morris, who was employed by the Admiralty as a coastal surveyor, referred to it as ‘Caer Aranrhod the foul ground in the Sea near Caernarvon bar said to be a sunk fort’.63 One of Lhwyd’s Parochial Queries of 1696 had been about inundations, and in particular whether ‘Kaer Anrhod’ and other places were artificial or natural.64 The incumbent of Llanwnda replied that Caer Anrhad was a Town for certain. Anrhad was Son of Dôn, who lived here. This Dôn was an usurper Seisyllt ap Don … [Mutilated].65

This reflects a tradition different from the medieval one. Lewys Môn refers to Caer Arianrhod in his elegy for Elin Bwlclai who was buried in Clynnog church c. 1500,66 and already in the Four Branches Caer Aranrot plays a part.67 In 1821 Peter Bailey Williams stated that

Glasynys, ‘Y For-Forwyn’, Cymru Fu, second edition (Wrexham, [1872]), pp. 434–44 (p. 439); trans. MvM 216–17. 60 CF 210. 61 On Aranrhod see TYP4 284–85; Hughes, Math, pp. lxvii–lxxiii; Sims-Williams, ‘A Variant Version of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’; and references. 62 North, Sunken Cities, pp. 214–15; AMR s.n. Caer Ariamhod (sic). 63 Luft, ‘Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion’, p. 6, citing BL Add. 14924 (c. 1757–64), 29v. 64 Par. I xii–xiii, no. 23. 65 Ibid. III 51, from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1820a, fol. 139. 66 GLM no. II.75. 67 Although, as North says (Sunken Cities, p. 223), ‘the requirements of the story would be met by a site on the shore similar to that occupied by Dinas Dinlle’, his scepticism over the island location given by Humphrey Llwyd and other cartographers is hardly warranted. There is no other obvious site for Caer Aranrhod within the parameters implied by the narrative. According to MvM 188 ‘dybrys am ylys efnys afon’ (LPBT no.10.34) refers to Caer Aranrhod (emending to y llys). 59

130

Series I there is a tradition, that an Ancient British Town, situated near this place [Clynnog], called Caer Arianrhod, was swallowed up by the Sea, the ruins of which, it is said, are still visible, during neap tides, and in fine weather.68

Probably the place-name has been handed down since the Middle Ages. It was picked up orally by Rhys in 1882 as Tregar Anrheg, Tregaer Anrheg, Tregar Anthreg, Tregan Anrheg, Tregan Anthreg, and Tregan Anthrod (< Tref Gaer Aranrhod); and he was told a story about the legendary town’s inundation.69 (2) Gwydion, who is associated with the birth of Dylan, is commemorated by the name Bryn Gwdion, 1½m. from Maen Dylan, and his association with the area goes back to the early medieval period, as shown in the commentary on III.3 below. (3) Gofannon, Dylan’s uncle and slayer, was commemorated in the former name Llyn Gofannon in the same commote of Arfon.70 This name occurs in the account of the Sheriff of Caernarfon for 1303–4, which refers to fisheries at ‘lacus de Lyndoythoch in commoto de Iscorvey’ (that is, Llyn Dwythwch near Llanberis, SH 5758)71 and ‘lacus de Lyngouannon in commoto de Uchorvey’.72 D. Machreth Ellis has suggested that Llyn Gofannon may have been the name of Llyn Isaf or Llyn Uchaf, the two lakes formerly divided by Baladeulyn (SH 5153),73 since the ancient names of these are lost, and since this area (Nantlleu) is important in the Four Branches, where the ‘two lakes (deu lenn)’ are mentioned.74 In an early poem Taliesin is said to have spent a year in Kaer Ofanhon (‘Gofannon’s fortress’).75 This may also have been a real place, like ‘caer lev a gwidion’ (probably Dinas Dinlle)76 and ‘carchar Arianrhod’77 (probably Caer Aranrhod) which also figure in Taliesin’s itineraries. There is a Cae’r Gofaint (SH 4452) near Bryn Gwdion, a little more than a mile from Maen Dylan. Lloyd-Jones has suggested that this may be connected with Gofannon; but this is uncertain since there are many Welsh place-names containing gof, pl. gofaint.78 In view of these other names in the area, it is plausible that the name ‘Maen Dylan’ may be equally old and may be the site referred to in the grave-stanza.

Tourist’s Guide through the County of Caernarvon, p. 157. CF 207–9 and 218–19. See above, p. 11; also MvM 189, PKM 273, and Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 343. Eben Fardd had mapped it as Tre caer Arianrhod (NLW Minor Deposit 151). 70 Attention to this name was independently drawn by G. 545 (published 1950) and by D. Machreth Ellis, ‘Llyn Gofannon’, B., 21 (1964–66), 147–49. 71 ‘piscaria voc. lyndoythok’ in the villa of Dolbadern also appears in Rec. Caern. 18. 72 Waters, ‘Account of the Sheriff’, p. 152. For Is and Uwch Gwyrfai see WATU 237 (map). 73 This name appears in Waters, ‘Account of the Sheriff’, p. 145 (Baladeulyn). 74 ‘Llyn Gofannon’, pp. 148–49; PKM 89; HEALlE 17. 75 LPBT no. 1.83. 76 See below, on III.3. 77 Ifor Williams, Chwedl Taliesin, p. 13; LPBT 325. 78 ELlSG 9, n. Cf. ibid. 46; Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 131; Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd ford’, p. 229; PNDPH 304–51; LPBT p. 480 n. 20; AMR s. *gofaint. 68 69

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

I.5 Ceri Cleddyf Hir at Heneglwys, Ang. I.5 Bet Keri cletif79 hir. ygodir Henegluis.

I.5 The grave of Ceri Long Sword (is) in the region of Heneglwys,

yn y80 diffuis graeande. tarv torment. ymynwent Corbre.

in the (or its) gravelly precipice81 – bull of the army – in Corbre’s graveyard.

The personal name Ceri is rare after the Old Welsh period, but was presumably once common, to judge by place- and river-names.82 The church of Heneglwys (SH 4224 7613) is located on a rise with a steep drop down to a stream on the other side of the present road, presumably the diffwys graeandde of line b. Its early medieval origins are confirmed by its former ‘large curvilinear churchyard’ and its inscribed and uninscribed stones of local sandstone dominated by ‘quartz grains with minor dark lithic content’ (cf. graean ‘gravel, coarse sand, grit’).83 Gruffudd Hiraethog (c. 1550) refers to Heneglwys as Eglwys Gorbre sant. Presumably he was one of the many Irish saints named Cairbre (Coirpre), of which the only one with a Welsh connection is Cairpre ailithir (‘the Pilgrim’) of Cell Chairpre (Kilcarbry in Clonmore parish, barony of Bantry, Co. Wexford), whom the eleventh-century(?) Irish tract on the Mothers of Irish Saints makes a son of Brychan Brycheiniog.84 Even if there were any truth in this saint’s Welsh connection, connecting him with Heneglwys would be only a guess, for other Irish ecclesiastics of the same common name may well have passed through Wales. A possible case in point is the scholar Coirb(b)re, cited in the The line can be reduced to 11 syllables if cletif is changed to clet as at LlDC no. 16.29, but 12 syllables is probably acceptable; see on metrics, above, p. 113. 80 Probably scanning as a monosyllable ’ny, as often (cf. PKM 171; EWSP 314 n. 37; and I.7 below). Rhys, Englyn, p. 128, suggested that graeande could be disyllabic graende (but G. 585 and GPC give no examples of this reduction; graendde ‘dire’ is distinct). On the spelling graeande see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 148 and 150. 81 Something stronger than ‘hillside’ (BBCSG) seems required; cf. LEIA s.v. abéis. 82 DP I 259 n. 5 and IV 602–4 and 695–96; G. 136; EANC 132–33; ACPN 205 n. 103. EP 253 suggests that Ceri is from car- love’. The problematic Cair Ceri/Corinium is further discussed by Richard Coates, ‘Rethinking Romano-British *Corinium’, AntJ, 93 (2013), 81–91, and Andrew Charles Breeze, ‘Cirencester’s Ancient Name: Corinium or Carinium?’, Roczniki Humanistyczne, 76.11 (2019), 7–16. 83 Edwards, Corpus, III, 149. 84 Peniarth MS 176, p. 272, quoted in 1899 in RMWL I 978, in the review of Molly Miller, The Saints of Gwynedd (Woodbridge, 1979) by Bedwyr Lewis Jones and Tomos Roberts, in TAAS, 1980, 131–37 (pp. 135–36), and in WCD 145 (‘Eglwys Gorbre sant yMonn ydiw Heneglwys yNghymwd Malldra[eth]’); LBS II 180–81. For Cairpre see EWGT 32; Pádraig Ó Riain, Corpus Genealogiarum Sanctorum Hiberniae (Dublin, 1985), pp. 179, 314, and 332; idem, A Dictionary of Irish Saints (Dublin, 2011), p. 144. The tract on the Mothers of Irish Saints was in existence by the early twelfth century (Barry J. Lewis, ‘Ar Drywydd Magna, “Chwaer Dewi Sant”, ac Eglwys Ddiflanedig yn Nyffryn Teifi’, SC, 52 (2018), 33–52 (p. 49)) and can probably be dated to the late tenth or the eleventh century (Máire Herbert, review of The Book of Leinster, VI, in Éigse, 22 (1987), 166–68 (p. 168), and eadem, ‘The Hagiographical Miscellany in Franciscan Manuscript A 3’, in Léann Lámhscríbhinní Lobháin: The Louvain Manuscript Heritage, ed. Pádraig A. Breatnach et al. (Dublin, 2007), pp. 112–26 (p. 116 n. 30)). Brychan’s Irish ancestor Eurbre in EWGT 17 and 42 (CB §10 and JC §1) may be a corruption of Corbre: MWG 106, 273, and 339. 79

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Series I

Milan and St Gall glosses on the psalms. He came from Inis Maddóc, a monastery west of Clonard, Co. Meath, named after a founder with a British name, Madog ‘the Pilgrim’, and has been supposed to have travelled through Gwynedd on his way to St Gall in the mid-ninth century.85 Gruffudd Hiraethog is the only authority to connect the name Corbre with Heneglwys; elsewhere its patron saints are called ‘Y Saint Llwydion’ (‘The holy saints’) and are identified in 1352 as Faustinus and Bacellinus (recte Marcellinus?).86 Before Gwenogvryn Evans brought the Gruffudd Hiraethog passage to light in 1899, an inferior proposal, made by Hugh Derfel Hughes in 1866 – and again in 1874 by Elias Owen – was to associate mynwent Corbre in Englynion y Beddau with a farm called Corbri in Llanllechlid, Crn., a parish with numerous prehistoric antiquities.87 Owen conceded that ‘There is no tradition of a churchyard having been on the Corbri grounds, nor of a church.’88 Hugh Derfel, however, maintained that the farm was once the site of a church, on the basis of a folk etymology from bre ‘hill’ and côr ‘church’, an element he also claimed to detect in Cororion in Llandygái (which in fact comes from MW Creuwryon, as noted by his grandson, Sir Ifor Williams).89 Hugh Derfel identified ‘Yr Hen Eglwys’ with the former foundations of a supposed church in the neighbouring parish of Llandygái, east of ‘Bryn yr Hen Eglwys’ (i.e. Bryn Eglwys, SH 60860 66227) and near Ffyn[n]on Bach (SH 60599 66698). A Mr D. Owen, he says, had removed its foundations, 16 × 8 yards in dimension, to make walls, but an old woman remembered children ‘playing prayers’ in it ninety years previously.90 As this supposed ‘Hen Eglwys’ in Llandygái is nearly two miles south-west of Corbri in Llanllechid, any connection between the two seems fanciful. Martin McNamara, The Psalms in the Early Irish Church (Sheffield, 2000), pp. 97–98; Sims-­ Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 32–33, with references. 86 Wade-Evans, ‘Parochiale Wallicanum’, p. 91, referring to RMWL I 912 col i and n. 4; WCD 145. Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 54, argue that Heneglwys means ‘former church’, referring to that of Corbre. It could presumably have been called hen even before the building of the one dated twelfth-century in Inv. Ang. 21, and late-twelfth-century in Hulbert-Powell, ‘Carved Corbels, Brackets, and Label Stops’, p. 26. On hen ‘former’ see Roberts, ‘Welsh Ecclesiastical Place-Names’, p. 43 (cf. doubts in HEF 174); John Reuben Davies, The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales (Woodbridge, 2003), p. 85 n. 61. (Theoretically hen egluis could refer to ‘an old church’ rather than Heneglwys, but this seems unlikely, especially in the light of Gruffudd Hiraethog.) See also above, p. 7. 87 Hughes, Hynafiaethau, p. 68; O[wen], ‘Graves of the Warriors’ (referring to Hughes and his book on pp. 256–57). The stanza was available not only in the Myvyrian Archaiology (MA2 66), but also in Owen Pughe’s Dictionary s.v. graeandde and Price’s Hanes Cymru, p. 37. Against them all, Hughes and Elias Owen share the spelling diphwys (recommended in Davies’s Dictionary s.v. diffwys); Hughes refers to Owen in connection with the englyn (Hynafiaethau, p. 51). Hughes’s comment on torment = ‘tournement’ (!) suggests influence from Price. Someone added ‘Ai Tarw Turnament?’ in the margin of Iolo Morganwg’s copy (NLW 13100, p. 426). RhELlH cites Corbri as a field-name at SH 63380 68640, SH 61784 68758, and SH 61714 69148 (the last ‘alias Bryn Owain’) and as ‘unclassified’ at SH 61955 68863 (the Corbri marked on O.S. maps). These are all in Llanllechid. The antiquities of Llanllechid were discussed by E[lias] Owen, ‘Arvona Antiqua: Ancient Dwellings, or Cyttiau, near Llanllechid’, AC, 3rd ser. 12 (1866), 215– 28 (referring to ‘Ffridd Corbre’ on pp. 225 and 228). See further Inv. Crn. I 138–52; also Coflein s. Llanllechid (including ‘Hut Circles West of Corbri’, SH 616687). 88 O[wen], ‘Graves of the Warriors’, p. 255. 89 Hughes, Hynafiaethau, pp. 68–69 and 71; cf. PKM 260; HEALlE 126–27. Cor ‘choir’ was already seen in these names by Williams, Observations on the Snowdon Mountains, p. 75. 90 Hughes, Hynafiaethau, pp. 51 and 72. Ffynnon Bach is under Ffynnon-bâch in RhELlH. Hughes later told John Rhys that near some cytiau Gwyddelod was a place formerly called yr Hen Allor 85

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Unfortunately, later writers misunderstood Hugh Derfel Hughes and equated his ‘Hen Eglwys’ with Capel Llechid in Llanllechid itself. Thus in 1911 Baring-Gould and Fisher stated: Capel Llechid, called also Yr Hên Eglwys, on Plâs Ucha, in the parish, no longer exists. Legend says that the stones brought to it in the day-time were mysteriously carried away in the night to the spot whereon Llanllechid Church now stands, a distance of about a mile.91

and in 1924 Hughes and North wrote: Taking the old road to Aber, which deviates from the main road close to Llanllechid at Caer Llwyn Grydd, we come, after walking about three quarters of a mile, to the site of an old chapel called Yr Hen Eglwys, or Capel Llechid[.] It is situated a few yards to the right of the road, just before we reach a little stream that flows past a farm on our right, called Cae Ffynnon [i.e. RhELlH’s ‘Cae’r-ffynon’, SH 62828 70332, south-east of Bronydd-Isaf, about 2 km north of Llanllechid church]. There is nothing to be seen but the foundations of one wall, by the east side of an old spring, which is known as Ffynnon Llechid[.] Seventy years ago the foundations of the chapel were visible, but the stones have since been taken away to repair walls. In 1780 it appears to have been fairly complete … It is said to have been 16 ft. long by 8 ft. broad internally and to have had a north door.92

To add to the confusion, Hughes and North also apply the term Yr Hen Eglwys to the pre-1844 church at Llanllechid itself. After noting that the ‘old church’ of Llanllechid was replaced by the new one in 1844–45, they say that The old church … was in the older part of the churchyard, due east of the present building. The site was called Corbre.93 It is described in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of 183394 as ‘a long low ancient edifice, consisting of a nave and chancel, with a small chapel or oratory on the south side’. … [Its] width shows it to have been, in its final form, a late building of the fifteenth or early sixteenth century.

under which Ceri Gleδyfhyr ‘is supposed to rest’ (y tybir yr huna): NLW, John Rhys Papers, A1/1/12, letter 25 March 1881. He does not make it clear where this ‘old altar’ was. 91 LBS III 367 (my italics). They cite J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd), Llên Gwerin Sir Gaernarfon (Caernarfon, 1909), p. 169, but he does not mention ‘Yr Hên Eglwys’. The story about Capel Llechid comes from Hughes, Hynafiaethau, p. 64, but not the name Yr Hên Eglwys. 92 H. Harold Hughes and Herbert L. North, The Old Churches of Snowdonia, 1st edn (Bangor, 1924), pp. 147–48. 93 Citing Hugh J. Williams, Hanes Eglwys Llanllechid (Bangor, 1910), who silently follows Hugh Derfel Hughes, but assumes that the rhandir of ‘Corbre’, north-east of Llanllechid church, embraced its site so that ‘Corbre’ could be an alternative name for Llanllechid church (pp. 1–2); hence Williams refers to the old church next to the nineteenth-century one both as ‘Yr Hen Eglwys’ and as ‘Eglwys y Corbre’ (p. 5). While it is indeed possible that the name Corbri once referred to a district that included the site of Llanllechid church, there is no evidence that any church there was called ‘the old church’ before the nineteenth century. A site called ‘Yr Hen Eglwys’ in another part of Llanllechid parish is too distant from Corbri to be relevant: E[lias] Owen, ‘Sites of Ancient Traditional Churches’, AC, 4th ser. 13 (1882), 219–22 (pp. 221–22). 94 The 1850 edition is similar.

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Series I

Clearly this ‘old church’ was only ‘old’ by comparison with that of 1844–45. Calling the site Corbre was mere speculation! If the above writers were right, we would have to suppose that Gruffudd Hir­ aethog or his source mistakenly associated the Anglesey Heneglwys with the name Corbre, perhaps having read Englynion y Beddau and having jumped to the conclusion that its hen egluis was the Anglesey Heneglwys. On balance, however, there is no need to reject Gruffudd Hiraethog’s testimony or to favour the Llanllechid theory. We need not suppose that the eponym of Corbri in Llanllechid was a saint. It is likely enough, though, that it is named either from an Irishman called Coirpre/ Coirbre, ‘perhaps the sixth most popular name in early Irish society’,95 or else, as Lloyd-Jones suggested, from one of the related tribal names – these include Corbbraige, Cenél Cairpri, Cland Chairpri, Dál Cairpri, and Síl Cairpri.96 The fact that the name Corbri is attached to several fields and farms in Llanllechid97 may suggest a prominent individual or population group in the background. H. S. Chapman records two further examples of the personal name in Gwynedd place-names: a mid-­fifteenth-century Atcoyd Corbre somewhere in Arllechwedd Isaf, and a Llety Corbri in 1494, located by Melville Richards in Aber-erch.98 Chapman also notes the Caernarfonshire population-nickname Corbris yn [sic] Ngheraint, recorded by Myrddin Fardd in 1907, and suggests that these Corbris could be people from around Abergeraint (SH 5038) in Cricieth (not far from Aber-erch); an alternative is Cilgeraint in Llandygái.99 Secular Irish settlers at various periods may lie behind all these names. I.6 The grave of Seithennin, in Cardigan Bay? I.6

I.6

Bet Seithennin sinhuir vann

The grave of Seithennin the high minded (is)

y rug Kaer Kenedir a glann.

between Caer Genedr and the shore of

mor mauridic a kinran.

the sea, a magnificent leader.

This stanza (at 32r) recurs with slight variation at the end of the poem about Seithennin further on in the Black Book (at 54r):

Donnchadh Ó Corráin and Fidelma Maguire, Gaelic Personal Names (Dublin, 1981), p. 43. Cf. O’Brien, ‘Old Irish Personal Names’, pp. 223 and 232. The name is distinctly Goidelic, from corb ‘chariot’: Sabine Ziegler, Die Sprache der altirischen Ogam-Inschriften (Göttingen, 1994), pp. 109 and 155–56. 96 ELlSG 122. Cf. O’Brien, Corpus, pp. 450–51. 97 See n. 87 above. H. S. Chapman, ‘The Old Irish Personal Name Cairbre in Gwynedd Place Names’, TCHS, 42 (1981), 141–43, notes that the two Llanllechid farms called Corbri in 1789 had become three by the twentieth century (p. 141). 98 AMR s. Llety Corbri, citing the forms Llatty govri in 1494 and letuy corbrv in 1561. 99 J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd), Gwerin-Eiriau Sir Gaernarfon (repr. Llangefni, 1979), p. 68: ‘… Geifr Bedd Gelert, Cochiaid Cilgeraint, Corbris yn Ngheraint …’. Cf. AMR s. *Geraint. RhELlH lists Cilgeraint in Llandygái at SH 60791 65868 and SH 61517 66403. Strictly, one would want *Ceraint to explain the spelling Ngheraint. In connection with Rhys’s collection of derogatory terms for non-indigenous families (CF I 68), Hugh Derfel Hughes told him of the Cochiaid Cilgeraint, jeered at for their red hair (NLW, John Rhys Papers, A1/1/12, letter 2 April 1881). 95

135

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Bet Seithenhin synhuir vann Rug kaer kenedir a glan. mor maurhidic a kinran.100

It is debated whether this englyn was moved, as a sort of coda, to the end of the Seithennin poem by the scribe of the Black Book (or a predecessor),101 or whether it was intended from the first to close the Seithennin poem.102 That the englyn is considerably older than the Black Book is shown by the probability that stanzas I.20 and I.22 below are founded on a misinterpretation of its third line (mor maur­(h)idic a kinran) as containing the personal name Môr.103 In the Seithennin poem mor cannot be a proper noun: either it is the adverb môr qualifying maur(h)idic – ‘how magnificent a lord’ (as in Bromwich’s translation)104 or it is the common noun môr ‘sea’ dependent on glan(n) at the end of line b (hence ‘the shore / of the sea’), and is followed by a new phrase, ‘a majestic leader’ (as in Thomas Jones’s translation).105 While enjambement106 comparable to glan(n) / mor is otherwise absent, or at least very rare, in Englynion y Beddau, an example of such sophistication is found in the first englyn of the Seithennin poem:

LlDC no. 39; ed. and trans. by Bromwich, ‘Cantre’r Gwaelod and Ker-Is’, pp. 217–20, and by Bollard and Griffiths, EBSG 65. 101 Compare the case of the ‘Series II’ englynion (see above, p. 19). We do not know in what order the scribe wrote the present quires VI and VIII which contain Series I and the Seithennin poem respectively. Cf. BBC xxxix and xl n. 53. Evans believed that a second scribe took over for quires V–VIII (ibid. p. 120), and as quires IV–VI form a unit (for the text runs on from quire to quire) this would tend to imply that V–VI was written earlier than VIII, the exclusive work of the ‘second’ hand; Denholm-Young, however, rejected the two-scribe theory (HEW, facing pl. 16), as did E. D. Jones (apud Jarman, LlDC, p. xvii) and Daniel Huws, RWMS I 332. Myriah Williams, ‘Minding the Gaps’, p. 367 n. 52, thinks that the stanza was moved from Englynion y Beddau to the Seithennin poem. 102 Cf. CLlH xlvii where Ifor Williams suggests that an englyn bedd may have formed a traditional conclusion to a ‘death-tale’. There is no conclusive evidence for this. Death tales and englynion y beddau may have drawn on similar local traditions about graves, as has been suggested in the case of Branwen (above, p. 12), but there is no instance of an englyn bedd forming part of a prose-verse saga or being paraphrased in prose in a prose redaction of such a saga. It may be significant that the wording of the reference to Pryderi’s grave in PKM 73 is completely different from that in Englynion y Beddau (see BBCSG 107 and cf. commentary on I.7 and I.24 below). 103 See below, on I.20 and 22. Henry Lewis’s translation, which would reconcile the passages, is too forced: ‘The grave of Seithennin of feeble sense / (is) Between the fort of Kenedir and the shore,/ (with that of) Môr the Grand and Kynran’ (apud North, Sunken Cities, p. 151). G. 615 also favours gwann ‘feeble’ (cf. Bromwich’s objection, ‘Cantre’r Gwaelod and Ker-Is’, p. 220; she prefers ‘presumptuous’). On mawrhydig see Ifor Williams, Chwedlau Odo (Wrexham, 1926), p. 44. 104 ‘Cantre’r Gwaelod and Ker-Is’, p. 218. For non-writing of lenition cf. LlDC no. 1.11 maur a teith, etc. 105 [J.] Lloyd-Jones allows both possibilities in his review of T. Gwynn Jones, Welsh Folklore and Folk-Custom, in Y Traethodydd, 85.18 (1930), 177–79 (p. 179). 106 ‘Indicative of poetic sophistication’ according to EWSP 328; similarly, Stefan Schumacher, review of Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, in JCL, 22 (2020), 163–75 (p. 169). See also I.66 and III.12 (as emended). Comparable sophistication appears elsewhere: Jean Frappier, ‘La brisure du couplet dans Erec et Enide’, Romania, 86 (1985), 1–21; J. A. W. Bennett, Middle English Literature (Oxford, 1986), p. 148. 100

136

Series I Seithenhin saw de [ymaës]. ac edrychuir de varanres mor. maës guitnev ry toës.

107

Seithennin stand forth and look at the fury of the sea; it has covered Maes Gwyddneu.

If mor in I.6c is ‘sea’, as this parallel suggests, it probably means either that the author of the grave stanza knew the opening of the Seithennin poem and was influenced by it or that the final stanza about Seithennin’s grave is an integral part of the Seithennin poem and was borrowed from it into Englynion y Beddau. The latter is likely, since the final englyn thus echoes the unusual enjambement of the first one. No Caer Genedr (< caer + personal name) is known. Perhaps it was the name of one of the imaginary cities of Seithennin’s lost kingdom of Maes Gwyddno, beneath Cardigan Bay, similar to Caer Wyddno.108 Conceivably, however, it was on dry land and Seithennin was buried between it and the seashore. The most likely eponym is Kenidir Gell (‘the Brown’), grandson of Ceredig, the founder of Ceredigion.109 I.7 Pryderi at Aber Gwenoli, ?Mer. or Crn., and Gwallawg in/on the Carrog, Crn.(?) I.7

I.7

En Aber Gwenoli.

At Aber Gwenoli

y mae bet Pryderi.

is the grave of Pryderi.

yn y

Where the waves strike the land

110

terev tonnev tir.

yg Karrauc. bet Gwallauc Hir.

in the Carrog (is) the grave of Gwallawg the tall.

Pryderi’s death in single combat against Gwydion is recorded in the Four Branches: Ac o nerth grym ac angerd, a hut a lledrith, Guydyon a oruu, a Phryderi a las, ac yn y Maen Tyuyawc, uch y Uelen Ryd y cladwyt, ac yno y may y ued. MS allan. For the metre, emendation, and diacritics see Jenny Rowland, ‘allan, ymaes’, B., 37 (1990), 118–19. Cf. Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, pp. 366–67. Note that e maes is common in northern manuscripts in Rhyddiaith y 13g. 108 On Seithennin’s submerged kingdom see EWGT 60 (ByS §40). On the location of Maes Gwyddno see below, commentary on I.20 and III.3. For the personal name Kenedir see G. 129 and WCD 180. Cynidr is best known as the name of the saint of Glasbury on Wye (cf. Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, pp. 20 and 167, and John Reuben Davies, ‘The Cult of Saints in the Early Welsh March: Aspects of Cultural Transmission in a Time of Political Conflict’, in The English Isles: Cultural Transmission and Political Conflict in Britain and Ireland, 1100–1500, ed. Seán Duffy and Susan Foran (Dublin, 2013), pp. 37–55 (pp. 40–41), spelt Keneder, Kenider, Kenyder, Cheneder, and Chenedir in VSB 68, 80, 140, 314, and 317. R. F. Peter Powell, ‘[Llyn Llan-gors:] The Place-Names’, Brycheiniog, 22 (1987), 39–41 (p. 41), tries to connect this inland saint with Kaer Kenedir and suggests that mor might mean ‘mere’ rather than ‘sea’. This is unacceptable; cf. Gruffydd Aled Williams, review of Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. 114. 109 For him see EWGT 20 (PK §4); WCD 180; MWG 108 n. 62, 138 and 294. There is no strong reason to equate him with the Glasbury saint. 110 Rhys, Englyn, p. 128, loses a syllable here by emending tonnev to tonn, but it would be simpler to scan yn y ‘where’ (WG 431) as ’ny (Thomas Jones, review of BR, p. 148; cf. I.5 above). In line d bet could be omitted, making a 6–6–6–6 englyn gwastad. 107

137

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau And by dint of strength and valour and by magic and enchantment Gwydion conquered, and Pryderi was slain. And at Maen Tyriawg [?], above Y Felenrhyd, was he buried, and his grave is there.111

Since it was ‘above Y Felenrhyd’, Maen Tyuyawc is presumably Maentwrog, Mer. (SH 6640), though the odd spelling (also found in a mid-sixteenth-century or earlier prose note on the graves of Rhun ab Alun Dyfed and Pryderi),112 is a problem, best explained by Lloyd-Jones, Ifor Williams, and Henry Lewis as a miscopying of *Maen Tyur(y)awc.113 On the basis of a comparison with the Four Branches, R. J. Thomas, followed by others, identified the Gwenoli of Aber Gwenoli (‘the confluence of the Gwenoli’) as the name of a stream which rises near Llyn Tecwyn and runs into Afon-y-Felenrhyd (the river Prysor).114 This identification is inevitably uncertain as the name Gwenoli is not otherwise attested. If Gwenoli derives from gwennol ‘swallow’, as suggested by R. J. Thomas, one might expect a rapidly falling stream – though not necessarily.115 R. J. Thomas’s search for a site near Maentwrog in Ardudwy may be misplaced. According to a variant version of Math fab Mathonwy, discussed in connection with I.28 below, ‘Pryderi was killed in Arfon’ – presumably not having retreated so far southwards as he does in the familiar version. Aber Gwenoli may, then, be at some unidentified spot in Arfon, possibly near Gwallawg’s grave yg Karrauc, if the Carrog in Arfon is meant in line d (see below). In Math, after Pryderi’s initial defeat and retreat towards Dyfed, his army and that of the men of Gwynedd travel to Y Felenrhyd near Maentwrog under a truce, despite which the infantry (pedyt) ‘could not be restrained from shooting at each other’. W. J. Gruffydd and Colin Gresham both maintained that this detail was intended to explain a place-name. Gresham’s choice was Gauell y Pedestrˉ, ‘the infantry landholding’, which was somewhere in the parish of Llanfihangel-y-traethau.116 This is in the right PKM 73; M 60. On Y Felenrhyd see Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, p. 213; photograph in Bollard and Griffiths, Mabinogi, p. 89. 112 Mentioned in PKM 265 and PP1 134 and discussed below in the commentary to I.24/III.18. The forms are tyuyawc Peniarth 283, tyfyawc BL Add. 14949, Tyngawc NLW 436. 113 ELlSG 64; PKM xli and 265; Lewis, ‘Honorific Prefixes to- and mo-’, pp. 138–39. The form Tyuriawc occurs in ByS §18 (EWGT 57), referring to the patron saint of Llandyfrïog in Ceredigion (< Ty- + Brioc: LBS I 294; DP IV 711; Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, pp. 208 and 261). It seems phonetically dubious for Tyfrïog to have given Twrog, and Ifor Williams prefers to derive the latter from *Ty-wr-(i)awc, i.e. ty/dy + Gwrog (cf. Bodwrog and Llanfwrog, Ang., Llandwrog, Crn.). On Twrog’s connection with Beuno and Clynnog, see Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 123; WCD 624. 114 EANC 146; BBCSG 107 and 119 n. 1; WCD 546 (‘near Ivy Bridge’); EBSG 20 and 66. Ivy Bridge (SH 654394) is a Grade II listed building, spanning the Afon Prysor c. 1.5km SW of Maentwrog, on the boundary between Maentwrog and Talsarnau (British Listed Buildings website). 115 In English river-names, swallow may mean ‘whirling, rushing’, from the same stem as the birdname but not identical with it (Ekwall, English River-Names, pp. 384-85), so they are not a guide to the meaning of the Welsh names, for which see Abergwennol, Bre., Nant Gwennol, Crm., etc., in AMR s. *gwennol*. On the etymology of gwennol see David Stifter, ‘The Invisible Third: The Basque and Celtic Words for “Swallow”’, Ériu, 60 (2010), 145–57. 116 PKM 72; Colin A. Gresham, ‘Archbishop Baldwin’s Journey through Merioneth in 1188’, JMHRS, 10 (1985–86), 186–204 (pp. 188–89), citing the 1419–20 Extent of Merioneth (Rec. Caern. 282: Gauell y Pedestr̄ /Gauella y Pedest); see also, in 1580/1, Gavell … y Pedester in Records of the Court of Augmentations, ed. Lewis and Davies, p. 435; Parry, Cerdded y Caeau, 111

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area, close to Y Felenrhyd and Maentwrog. Gruffydd’s choice was Rhyd y pedestr ‘the ford of the infantry’, near distant Dinas Dinlle in Llandwrog.117 He explained this with the suggestion that the pedyt episode originally referred to Pryderi’s initial defeat, which is placed in the Llanwnda/Llandwrog area.118 Gruffydd was unaware that ‘Pryderi was killed in Arfon’ in the variant version of Math. In the light of that, one may hypothesise that originally Pryderi was supposed to have been slain and buried near Rhyd y pedestr in Llandwrog and that the story was extended by adding further episodes culminating in his death near Gafael y Pedestr̄ and burial at Maen­ twrog, a different parish also dedicated to St Twrog.119 The name Gwallawg was not uncommon,120 but the only other reference to a Gwallawg Hir occurs in the line Pan aeth Gwallawc hir y dir mab Don (‘When Gwallawg the Tall went to the land of the son of Dôn’) in Peniarth 147 (c. 1570), p. 216.121 While this may be an error for Maelgwn Hir or Caswallon Hir, it nevertheless pp. 41, 45, 50, and 178. The parish of Llanfihangel-y-traethau included Penrhyndeudraeth (see Merioneth Lay Subsidy Roll, ed. Williams-Jones, pp. cxxxviii and 61 n. 1, and map in History of Merioneth, II, ed. Smith and Smith, p. 723) so the gafael could have been much closer to Maentwrog than Llanfihangel-y-traethau itself. 117 MvM 338; Gruffydd, Rhiannon, p. 7 (his spelling Rhyd y Ped(d)estri may be a late distortion of the anglicised spelling pedestre). The earliest source cited in MvM and in AMR s. *pedest* is Panton MS 18 (NLW 1987B), c. 1769, in RMWL II 827. There Evan Evans has ‘Rhyd y Pedestr and Rhyd yr Equestr, i.e. the ford of the foot and the ford of the horses’ (34r), quoting the Revd Richard Farrington of Llanwnda (see Williams, ‘Dinlleana’, p. 31; cf. Griffiths, ‘Roman Coins from Dinas Dinlle’; RWMS II 39). There is an earlier reference in 1693: ‘To prove the Roman’s passage to Anglesee there are near Caernarvon, places called Rhyd y Pedestr and Rhyd yr Equestr. E: Th: An Cwmmhwynas [not in RhELlH] near Bethgeledr sit quasi Cwm cynwys? E: Th: They say an armie was lead that way’ (Lhwyd Letters: John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 25 June 1693). ‘E: Th.’ is Eubule Thelwall (1622–94), mentioned by John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 10 June 1693, as ‘Mr Eubule Thelwall the Councellor (an old deaf man indeed, but a great scholar & the most ingenious of his age that you shall meet with)’ (Lhwyd Letters). Lhwyd replied: ‘I have seen the places calld y Pedestrau & Equestrau. But this later [sic] (if they shewd me the true place so denominated) can not be the place where the Roman Horse swam over’ (Lhwyd Letters: Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 6 July 1693). Rhyd yr Equestr, ‘ford of the cavalry’, is un-Welsh and looks like an antiquarian invention (equestr is not in Davies’s Dictionarium Duplex; s.v. peddyd he has ‘Marchogion a pheddyd’ for Equites & pedites). While ‘Rhyd y pedestre’ was still so called ‘by the peasantry’ in 1809, ‘Rhyd equestre, which was extant in the time of Rowlands, author of Mona Antiqua, is now lost among the country people’ according to Samuel Lysons, ‘Some Account of Roman Antiquities Discovered at Caerhun, in Caernarvonshire, and in Other Parts of that County’, Archaeologia, 16 (1809), 127–34 (p. 132), followed by Carlisle, Topographical Dictionary, s.n. Llan Dwrog. (I have not found the passage in Rowlands’s published works.) The exact location of Rhyd y pedestr is unclear, but it was near Dinas Dinlle in the direction of Segontium. According to Hall, Description of Caernarvonshire, p. 175, the two fords were ‘at the passage of the Gwrfai, there called the Voryd river’. Elsewhere Hall calls the Gwyrfai ‘the Gwrfai, or Voryd River’ (p. 202). Similarly, Ambrose, Hynafiaethau, p. 13, has ‘Rhydyr-­Equestri’ and ‘Rhyd-y-Pedestri’ crossing ‘afon y Foryd’. J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd), Enwau Lleoedd Sir Gaernarfon, p. 230, situates ‘Rhyd-y-Pedestri’ in Llandwrog parish and does not mention ‘Rhyd-yr-Equestr’. 118 Since it was halfway between Maenor Bennardd and Maenor Coed Alun. See MvM 339; Math, ed. Hughes, p. cxxviii (map) and line 121 and n. 119 Sims-Williams, ‘A Variant Version of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’. 120 TYP4 372; R. Geraint Gruffydd, ‘In Search of Elmet’, SC, 28 (1994), 63–79 (p. 74); AMR s. Gwallog. 121 T. Gwynn Jones, ‘Cerdd Dant’, B., 1 (1921–23), 139–56 (p. 153); Gwaith Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Tudur, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr ac Iorwerth Beli, ed. Costigan et al.,

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suggests a connection between Gwallawg Hir and Arfon, the land of Gwydion ap Dôn.122 This helps to localise Carrog ‘where the waves strike the land (tir)’, since tir refers to the seashore, not a mere river-bank. Carrog is a common river- and placename (< carrog ‘torrent, stream’),123 so yg Karrauc may mean ‘in the [river] Carrog’ (cf. ym Peryton in I.8) or ‘at Carrog’ (or ‘in an [unspecified] torrent’). The stanza is very similar in diction and in metre to the one on Tydai and Dylan (I.4), which concerns places on the Arfon coast (see above), and this, coupled with the connection between Gwallawg Hir and tir mab Dôn, makes an identification with the Arfon river Carrog attractive.124 On modern maps, however, the name Carrog is misapplied to the river called Gwyleyt/Gwyleit in the Middle Ages.125 In fact the medieval Carroc, as shown by the bounds of Rhedynog-felen in the Aberconwy charter, was a little north of the Gwyleyt and ran west from near Llanwnda until it merged with the Gwyleyt at Aberkarroc iuxta Morua Dinlleu (‘Aber Carrog near Morfa Dinlle’).126 At present this confluence is about a half a mile from where the united streams – always, so far as we know, called Carrog – enter Foryd Bay. Unlike other Carrogs in Wales, which are inland,127 this Carrog would have been within earshot of the sea striking the land, as in the englyn. There is an alternative possibility. The Afon Wen in Eifionydd was formerly called Karroc/Carroc, ‘torrent’, an appropriate name for it. We know this from the Aberconwy charter, in which it features in the bounds of Aberconwy’s granges at Ffriwlwyd (by the sea, specialising in fishing) and Cwm (near Clynnog).128 On Afon Wen’s west side as it rushes into the sea in Llannor parish is Tomen Pendorlan (SH 4413 3706), a seemingly natural feature, 2.4 m. high, which could well have been p. 150; Sally Harper, Music in Welsh Culture Before 1650 (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 96–97 (also pp. 42–43 and 105). Cf. below, p. 288 n. 92. 122 See commentary on III.3 and esp. n. 92. 123 ELlSG 97–98; HEF 62–63; GPC s.v. carrog; ACPN 60 n. 18, 200, and 226–27. 124 Noted in EBSG 20 and 67. 125 We can therefore rule out the location on the modern Carrog proposed by J. Jones (Llanllyfni), ‘The Cromlech’, AC, 1st ser. 4 (1849), 82–93 (p. 85): ‘the grave of Gwallawg (Galgacus) the Tall, on the banks of the brook Carrog, may be traced at this day to a circular barrow near Brynrhedyn’ (SH 460572). Writing as ‘Cilmyn’ in ‘The Grave of Gwallawg’, p. 73, Jones added: ‘Within the distance of a hundred yards on the right, where the road from Llandwrog Church to Caernarvon crosses the Carrog, may be seen a circular barrow, frequently ploughed up, but always retaining its distinctive form and character, and here was found a British urn, in all probability that of Galgacus’. This may have been at SH 4690 5726 according to Inv. Crn. II 198, no. 1235. 126 Acts, ed. Pryce, pp. 348 and 353. On the topography see EANC 148; Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, pp. 133 and 138; Hays, History of the Abbey of Aberconway, p. 89; W. Gilbert Williams, Moel Tryfan i’r Traeth: Erthyglau ar Hanes Plwyfi Llanwnda a Llandwrog (Penygroes, 1983), pp. 16–17; Carr, ‘Enwau Pentrefi, Prif Anheddau a Chaeau Pum Plwyf yn Arfon’, p. 647; HEALlE 219. Williams notes that the building of the sea defences on Morfa Dinlle has disturbed the original hydronymy. 127 For example, the Carrog near Llanddeiniol, Crd., preferred to the Carrog, Crn. by T[homas] Stephens, ‘The Poems of Taliesin No. VII: To Gwallawg’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1853), 43–62 (p. 48), and rejected by John Jones, Llanllyfni. See letters by ‘Cilmyn’ with Stephens’s replies, ibid., pp. 73–76 and 141–50. 128 Pryce, Acts, no. 218, pp. 348 and 352–53; Hays, History of the Abbey of Aberconway, pp. 13–14, 107, and 114–15; Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, pp. 133–34 and 136–37; idem, ‘Aberconwy Charter: Further Considerations’, pp. 313 (map) and 338–41; idem, Eifionydd, pp. 241 and 338–39 (map). Ffriwlwyd is Ffridd-lwyd on maps. On Cwm cf. III.4 below.

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claimed as Gwallawg’s burial mound.129 The waves would be audible from here.130 (Could Gwallawg Hir be the unnamed ‘tall warrior’ (gur hir) in Eifionydd commemorated in I.64?) If this is the correct site, note that just as Gwallawg’s name rhymes with Carrog, so Rhydderch’s name rhymes with the river Erch at Aber-erch nearby (I.13 below). I.8–11 Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn in Caernarfonshire (?), Gwalchmai in Peryddon, Pem. (?), and ‘Run’ (recte Panna/Penda) ap Pyd at Winwæd in England I.8

I.8

Bet Gwalchmei ym Peryton.

The grave of Gwalchmai (is) in Peryddon

ir diliv. y dyneton.

as a reproach to men;

in Llan Padarn bet Kinon.

at Llanbadarn (is) the grave of Cynon.

I.9 Bet gur gwaud urtin in uchel tytin. in isel gwelitin. bet131 Kynon mab Clytno Idin. I.10 Bet Run mab Pyd in ergrid avon. in oervel ig gverid. bet Kinon in Reon rid. I.11

I.9 The grave of a man honoured by praise in a lofty dwelling (is now) in a lowly resting place: the grave of Cynon son of Clydno [E]idyn. I.10 The grave of Rhun ap Pyd (is) in the horror of a river, in the cold, in the soil. The grave of Cynon (is) in Rheon Ford. I.11

Piev y bet y dan y brin.

Whose is the grave beneath the hill?

bet gur gurt yg kyniscin.

The grave of a man violent in the attack:

bet132 Kinon mab Clytno Idin.

the grave of Cynon son of Clydno [E]idyn.

These four englynion may be treated together on the assumption that they all refer to the Cynon whose patronymic is given in 9c and 11c: Kynon mab Clytno Idin – here Idin is a mistake for Eidin (i.e. Eidyn ‘Edinburgh’ in standard orthography.133 The It is described as a ‘natural gravel mound’ in Archwilio s. Natural Feature, Tomen Pendorlan, Pwllheli. Pendorlan means ‘end of the (under-cut) river bank/dyke’. 130 Witness the name of the nearby caravan park ‘Sŵn-y-Mor’! 131 If bet were omitted (cf. I.11c) the line would have 7 syllables, but 8 is acceptable. 132 Thomas Jones omits bet (cf. I.9c) for metrical reasons. Piev y in line a may scan as Pieu’r, in which case 7-7-8, without omitting bet, is probably acceptable; see above, p. 111, on metrics. 133 Idin may be a misunderstanding of OW *Edin (= Eidyn); see above, pp. 32–5. The name rhymes both as Eidin and as Eidyn in poetry and sometimes has [ð] (see G. 453). Here the rhyme is in -yn and d in the Black Book normally means [d] (although the rhyme with tyddyn and gwelyddyn 129

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obvious implication is that the author or compiler of this group of stanzas thought all four Cynons were the same person, as is likely enough;134 compare the case of the four stanzas about Llofan which precede a version of I.10 in III.5–8. Cynon is the most frequently mentioned warrior in the Gododdin. He is called mab Klytno in Canu Aneirin line 416 (awdl XXXVII/A57) and is associated with Aeron (probably Ayrshire) both in line 809 (awdl LXVI.B/B39, miscopied as auon ‘river’ in LXVI.A/A65, line 801) and probably also in line 1182 (awdl XCVII/ B23), although the manuscript has aruon (i.e. Arfon) in line 1182, as if he were ‘the avenger of Arfon’ rather than ‘the avenger of Aeron’.135 Line 241 (awdl XXI/A21) says that ‘the two battle-hounds of Aeron and Cynon’ were the three who escaped from the battle of Catraeth (plus the poet himself), while lines 195–96 (awdl XVIII/ A18) seem to name the three as ‘Cynri, Cynon, and Cynrain from Aeron’, although elsewhere (line 1406, Gwarchan Cynfelyn) the survivors are named as ‘Cynon, and Cadraith, and Cadlew from Cadnant’ plus the poet. According to Rachel Bromwich, the transmitted text of the Gododdin shows signs of later narrative elaboration where Cynon is concerned. She argued that the idea that he escaped from Catraeth was due to misunderstanding awdlau XVIII/A18 and LXVI.A–B/A65/B39 which seem to say that no better man than Cynon ever came from (i.e. sprang from) the Britons.136 In her view, an escape would be unlikely to be part of the original panegyric, since ‘leaving a battle after your chief has fallen … means lifelong infamy and shame’ (Tacitus, Germania, 14).137 Furthermore, considering that Cynon was from Aeron (Ayrshire or possibly the river Aire in Yorkshire), she maintained that he is unlikely to be the son of a Clydno from Edinburgh; hence the epithet Eidyn may have been transferred from a certain Clinog eitin in the genealogies.138 Whether or not any of these speculations are correct, it seems likely enough that a saga developed around possibly favours [ð]). The final consonant rhymes as -nn here (i.e. with words with etymological -nn), as elsewhere (cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, p. 215). The statement by Bromwich, ‘Cynon fab Clydno’, p. 159 n. 15, ‘ategir y ffurf Idin yn lle Eidyn gan yr odl’ is mistaken; i regularly denotes y [ï] in the Black Book. 134 Differently WCD 184. Thomas Jones translates I.9a as ‘The grave of a man extolled in song is on a lofty homestead’, which conflicts with the references to a ford and y dan y brin in the other stanzas; I prefer to translate it in a way which brings out the underlying elegiac topos. 135 Emendation in GOSP 6, 19 n. 1, and 106, followed by Bromwich, ‘Cynon fab Clydno’, pp. 155 and 157, who also mentions the river Aire in Yorkshire (cf. Ekwall, English River-Names, p. 3). 136 Bromwich, ‘Cynon fab Clydno’, pp. 163–64, following Proinsias Mac Cana in seeing the syntax of these lines as late – but see Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, p. 187, and Stefan Schumacher, ‘An Edition and Analysis of Book of Aneirin B.39 (including Preliminary Chapters on the Grammar and Poetics of Early Welsh Poetry)’, ZCP, 64 (2017), 299–420 (pp. 405–6). 137 Bromwich, ‘Cynon fab Clydno’, p. 163 n. 19. WCD 184 is sympathetic, as is Jarman, Aneirin, pp. xxxii–xxxiii, and idem, ‘The Arthurian Allusions in the Book of Aneirin’, SC, 24/25 (1989–90), 15–25 (p. 23). It is doubtful that Tacitus’ code applied in all circumstances; cf. TYP4 64–65; Rosemary Woolf, ‘The Ideal of Men Dying with their Lord in the Germania and in The Battle of Maldon’, Anglo-Saxon England, 5 (1976), 63–81; Roberta Frank, ‘The Ideal of Men Dying with their Lord in The Battle of Maldon: Anachronism or Nouvelle Vague’, in People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer, ed. Ian Wood and Niels Lund (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 95–106; Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, p. 168. See further above, p. 26. 138 Bromwich, ‘Cynon fab Clydno’, pp. 157 and 159. But according to EWGT 10 n. 7 and WCD 132, [C]linog in HG §7 is a scribal error for Clitgno and refers to our Clydno Eidyn. Cf. Guy, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, p. 84 n. 132.

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Cynon and his escape from Catraeth, and that Englynion y Beddau reflects such a saga, as Bromwich argued.139 Although Cynon originally belonged in Aeron (in all probability), an association with Arfon in Wales in the minds of those who transmitted the Gododdin is indicated by the misreading aruon noted above, and perhaps by auon which is closer to aruon than it is to aeron.140 In this connection it is surely significant that a thirteenth-century story in Breiniau Arfon, recorded, possibly at Clynnog, at the same period as the Book of Aneirin, names Cynon’s father, Clydno Eidyn, among the north British leaders who supposedly came on a punitive expedition to Arfon to avenge Elidir Mwynfawr.141 There seems to be a further reference to Clydno Edin and his role in this expedition in a poem added to the Black Book (40v) in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.142 In Breiniau Arfon the leader of the men of Gwynedd is Rhun, son of Maelgwn Gwynedd (d. 547) – does this help to explain Series I’s error Run (I.10a) for Panna (Penda III.9a) and Series III’s error Arfon (III.9a) for avon (‘river’ I.10a)? – and one of the northern leaders is Rhydderch Hael, whose grave at Abererch in Gwynedd is noted in stanza I.13. Ann Parry Owen has pointed out that the fourteenth-century poets particularly associate Clydno with Clynnog in Arfon: both Gruffudd ap Maredudd and Rhisierdyn refer to him (and to Cynon as well, in the case of Rhisierdyn) in their elegies for Hywel y Fwyall (d. c. 1381), who was buried in Clynnog church; and otherwise their only other reference to him is in an elegy by Gruffudd ap Maredudd for Tudur Fychan ap Goronwy, who was buried in Bangor in 1367.143 Possibly, then, Cynon, after surviving the battle of Catraeth, was imagined to have come down to Arfon on his father’s expedition. There is a reference to Cynon by the Arfon poet Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch of Dinlle (fl. 1352).144 Some indications that Reon rid, ‘the ford of Rheon’,145 the site of Cynon’s grave (I.10c/III.9c), was in or near Arfon, support this hypothesis. This ford is mentioned in the Black Book Afallennau: Bromwich, ‘Cynon fab Clydno’, pp. 151 and 161–62, contrasting the view of Ifor Williams, who did however refer to the cyfarwyddiaid (CA lviii). 140 Note how avon in I.10 becomes Arfon in III.9. 141 See commentary on III.15 below. 142 Williams and Russell, ‘Invisible Ink’, pp. 85, 87, and 93. 143 Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, III, no. 2.3 and n.; Gwaith Sefnyn, Rhisierdyn, Gruffudd Fychan ap Gruffudd ab Ednyfed a Llywarch Bentwrch, ed. Jones and Rheinallt, no. 6, lines 3, 92–93, and 106; Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 3.4 (and p. 14). In this light, it is tempting to associate Clydno with the place-name Ceuyn clu(n)tno, near Clynnog in Math, but the spelling with u and the n-suspension in the Red Book rule it out (see PKM 280). A possible objection to the explanation in PKM, however, is the rarity of clun in modern northern Welsh place-names (see on I.51 below). Perhaps the original reading in Math was Clitno and this was miscopied as Clutno and then rationalised as Clu(n)tno? 144 Gwaith Gronw Gyriog, Iorwerth ab y Cyriog, Mab Clochyddyn, Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch ac Ithel Ddu, ed. Ifans et al., no. 8.38. On Gruffudd ap Tudur ap Gronw see ibid., p. 117, Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, I, s. Cilmin 5, and Jenkins, ‘Family of Medieval Welsh Lawyers’, pp. 124 and 127. On the story in question see WCD 184. 145 Probably Rhyd Reon in actual speech, as observed in BBCSG 111 (cf. ‘Rheon Rhyd or Rhyd Rheon’ in Lewis Morris’s index to Englynion y Beddau in BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46). It is interesting that the inversion also occurs in Gwilym Ddu o Arfon (quoted below). The following place-names in poetry are of doubtful relevance since no ford is mentioned: (1) Luch Reon in the Book of Taliesin, questionably equated with Loch Ryan, Wigtownshire (LPBT no. 8.35, cf. 9.6 and nn., also Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 130); (2) an unidentified (northern?) Kaer 139

143

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau ofer vit… yny del kadwaladir oe kinadyl. Rid Reon.146 it will be in vain … until Cadwaladr comes from (or to) his meeting [at (or to?)] Rheon Ford …

The basic idea behind such prophecies seems to be that Cadwaladr would come to north Wales (Gwynedd) while a certain Cynan would come to the south, after which both deliverers would combine forces.147 If so, Rid Reon may be somewhere in Gwynedd, in Cadwaladr’s area. This is narrowed down to the Arfon area by Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, in a poem lamenting the imprisonment of Sir Gruffudd Llwyd in Rhuddlan Castle in 1316–18. Gwilym Ddu implies that Rheon Ford was somewhere in his native Arfon or its borders: Neut gỽaged trossed traws gedernyt Mon, neut gỽeigyon Aruon is Reon ryt. Neut gỽann Gỽyned vann ven yd ergyt cur. neut gỽael am vodur eglur oglyt.148

Reon in the Oianau (LlDC no. 17.171), not obviously identical either with an equally obscure Kaer Rian in Daronwy (PBT no. 1.49, see n.) or with Pen(ryn) Rioned (-yd) yn y gogled in Trioedd Ynys Prydain and Enwau Ynys Prydain (TYP4 4); (3) a plana Reontis in John of Cornwall’s Propheta Merlini, lines 80 and 148, discussed by Curley, ‘A New Edition of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’, p. 224 (see below, p. 154); (4) a Rhiw Rheon in a cywydd attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, possibly on the stream which rises at Blaenrheon (SO 9827) and runs into the Usk at Aberheon, west of Brecon (see notes in GDG 66.3 = Dafydd ap Gwilym.net no. 64.3; also R. F. Peter Powell, ‘The Place-Names of Devynock Hundred I: Pen–Pont’, Brycheiniog, 21 (1984–85), 73–89 (pp. 82 and 85–87). This could be based on a personal name, like many Welsh river-names. (5) Another occurrence of (4), which has not been noticed in this connection, in Coronog Faban, a prophecy in Y Cwta Cyfarwydd (Peniarth 50, s. xv med.) which speaks of fighting the English around the caer of tir teon (i.e. Powys or part of it) and at riỽ reon (quoted in EVW 145); the poet is obviously influenced by his rhyme scheme, but it is clear from the context that some place in Wales is meant. On some of the above names see Sims-Williams, ‘Middle Welsh Reon’. 146 LlDC no. 16.84–85; cf. ‘Y Cyfoesi a’r Afallennau yn Peniarth 3’, ed. Williams, p. 123, lines 78–79. Cf. LlDC no. 16.77 ‘iny del kadwaladir oe kinadil. kadwaon’ (i.e. ‘to his meeting of warriors’ – but gat auon in Peniarth 3, ed. Williams, p. 125, line 125). 147 See LlDC nos 16.76–77 and 84–85 and 17.122 and 152–53; R 581.32–35 and 37–38; and further references and discussion in PBT 10–11. Cadwaladr was probably the ruler of Gwynedd (TYP4 299), while Cynan has been doubtfully identified with the leader of the settlement of Brittany (TYP4 321; AP2 44, 46, and 69; Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, p. 307). EVW 114–15 suggested that the Cynon grave stanza refers to Cynan; but, as T. Gwynn Jones pointed out (EVW 115 n. 49), the internal rhyme with reon is against this. 148 R 1228.22–26; Gwaith Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Tudur, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr ac Iorwerth Beli, ed. Costigan et al., no. 7.57–60. Also edited by Dafydd Johnston, Blodeugerdd Barddas o’r Bedwaredd Ganrif ar Ddeg (Llandybïe, 1989), no. 3; J. Vendryes, ‘Un poème de Gwilym Ddu o Arfon’, RC, 47 (1930), 406–26 (p. 410, lines 57–60). On p. 425 Vendryes suggests a possible connection with the phrase ‘(g)waeỽ rud yn ryt’ earlier in the poem (line 34); this is unlikely. Cf. Morgan Thomas Davies, ‘The Rhetoric of Gwilym Ddu’s Awdlau to Sir Gruffydd Llwyd’, SC, 40 (2006), 155–72 (p. 160).

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Series I The vigorous excellence of Anglesey is become in vain, the (people of) Arfon are desolate below (or on this side of?)149 Rheon Ford; lofty Gwynedd, where affliction strikes, is enfeebled – it is cast down on account of the prince of plain faith.

Sir Gruffudd held land in Anglesey (at Tregarnedd), Ceredigion (at Llanrhystyd), and, most relevantly, in Arfon Is Gwyrfai (at Dinorwig).150 In 1764 Evan Evans wrote the following note on Gwilym’s poem: Rheon, the name of a river in Caernarvonshire, often mentioned by the Bards; but it must have altered it’s [sic] name since, for I do not recollect any such river that bears that name at present.151

Lewis Morris also failed to identify Rheon Rhyd,152 so it is indeed probable that the name was lost by the eighteenth century. Despite Evan Evans’s assumption or assertion that Rheon is a river-name, and despite the evidence for a river Rheon in Breconshire,153 it could be a personal name (i.e. ‘Rheon’s ford’), as Melville Richards

Richards, ‘Significance of Is and Uwch’, argues that in the context of commote and cantref names is cannot be correlated with either the right or left bank of a river or with a point of the compass, but means ‘on this side of’ (like Latin cis-), relative to the cantref’s caput – Caernarfon or Dolbadarn in the case of Arfon Is Gwyrfai (p. 12). The Gwyrfai divided the cantref of Arfon between the commote of Uwch Gwyrfai to its south and, to its north, Is Gwyrfai; cf. WATU 237. Seen in this light, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon’s ‘Arfon is Reon ryt’ may be a poetic circumlocution for ‘Arfon Is Gwyrfai’, the commote where Gruffudd Llwyd, whom Gwilym styles ‘king of Dinorweg’, had his seat. 150 Roberts, Aspects of Welsh History, pp. 183–84. These places are all mentioned by Gwilym Ddu: see G. 592. 151 Evan Evans, Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards (London, 1764), p. 50, note m. Thomas Stephens (The Literature of the Kymry (Llandovery, 1849), second edition, ed. D. Silvan Evans (London, 1876), pp. 260 and 448 n. 2) follows him. The addition (p. 448 n. 2), ‘it is in the parish of Clynnog’, reflects Eben Fardd’s unconvincing etymology of Rhyd-y-beirion on the Afon Wefus (at ‘Pont Rhyd-y-Beirion’, SH 43872 49711). See Correspondence, ed. Coward, p. 44, for Eben’s 1852 letter to Stephens. Eben’s map (NLW Minor Deposit 151) marks it as ‘Rhŷd Aber Rheon’. In Cyff Beuno, pp. 32 and 66–68, Eben gives ‘Afon Rhyd Beirion’ as the name ‘yn nhafodiaith bresennol yr ardal’, and tries to derive Beirion from ‘Aber Rheon’. He earlier gave this etymology in Eben Vardd, ‘The Clynnog Vawr Thermopylae’, pp. 238–39: Aber-Rheon > Ber-rheon > Berion > Beirion. His comparanda Aber Rhiw > Berriw and Aber Erch > Berch are not close enough. A better etymology, ‘ford of the kites’, is given in ELlSG 73: ‘Rhyd y Beirion … (beirion efallai = berion, enw ar adar yn y Gogynfeirdd … lluos. bera, bery)’; GPC s.v. bery. The name is not in Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, but see AMR s. *beirion for this Rhyd y beirion and another in Llŷn, already explained by J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd), Enwau Lleoedd Sir Gaernarfon, p. 93, as ‘ford of the kites’. The latter rejected Eben’s explanation of Rheon on p. 216, but Eben’s notion that Rheon was a tributary of the Desach was already entrenched, and remains so; see discussion of Pwll Began below, p. 321, and Anon, ‘Afonydd Cymru: Afonydd Sir Gaernarfon’, Yr Haul, 14.167 (Nov. 1870), 343–45 (p. 343); Parri Huws, Sul, Gŵyl a Gwaith, p. 13. The latter has Afon Beirion and Afon Rheon as distinct tributaries of the Desach. Aber Rheon is now used as a modern street name in Tai’n Lôn, Clynnog, LL54 5DE. 152 CR 369 and 380. 153 See above n. 145. RhELlH s. reon, citing Welsh Tithe Maps, , lists a field-name Cae nesar reon in Rhyddallt bach, just south of Caernarfon (SH 48777 61022). Although this might be supposed to refer to the adjacent Afon Rhosdican by an older name, it is probably a miscopying of the common field-name Cae nesa’r 149

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suggested, presumably on the grounds the early syntax of ford-names compounded from river-names was normally rhyd + ar + river-name.155 Perhaps, however, the construction rhyd + personal name was appropriate for fords on rivers which were named after persons (see below on I.71 Ryt Gynan). Moreover, poets may not have felt bound to use the rhyd + ar construction.156 A problem, unless the Cynon at Reon rid (I.10) was a different person from the Cynon in Llan Padarn (I.8) – which is not impossible – is the lack of any appropriate Llanbadarn near Arfon. Neither the famous Llanbadarn Fawr near Aberystwyth nor any other place called Llanbadarn or dedicated to St Padarn is anywhere near Gwynedd.157 There is a Llyn Padarn in Arfon, however, and its Padarn (< Paternus) is possibly the saint,158 despite Thomas Pennant’s informant who told him that ‘Dolbadern’ there was named from Padarn Beisrudd, the legendary north British ancestor-figure.159 The adjacent lake is Llyn Peris and St Peris is the eponym of Llanberis nearby (originally sited at SH 6058, rather than SH 5760),160 so by 154

lôn; see Carr, ‘Enwau Pentrefi, Prif Anheddau a Chaeau Pum Plwyf yn Arfon’, p. 190, and Appendix to Sims-Williams, ‘Middle Welsh Reon’. 154 Melville Richards, ‘gre, greon, greor, grewys mewn enwau lleoedd’, B., 18 (1958–60), 177–80 (p. 179). For the syntax with personal names see Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, pp. 231–34. For a rare Welsh personal name Reon see: Wele de Werion Reon in Llanfihangel Bachellaeth, Crn. in Rec. Caern. 29–30; PP2 159; and John Stuart Corbett, ‘Caerphilly: Minister’s Account, 1428–9’, AC, 6th ser. 19 (1919), 19–34 (pp. 25, 27, and 32). Réon also occurs as the name of a druid in Bethu Phátraic: The Tripartite Life of Patrick, ed. Kathleen Mulchrone (Dublin, 1939), p. 81. A name rego/ni (possibly dative of *Rego or genitive of *Regon(i)us), a possible source for Rheon, and for the Irish Réon if it came from Brittonic, is seen on a second-century altar from Lugo in Galicia: rego/ni m. s. (Felipe Arias Vilas and others, Inscriptions romaines de la province de Lugo (Paris, 1979), pp. 35–36, 115, and 122); Sims-Williams, ‘Middle Welsh Reon’. Even if Rego is a divine name, that is not necessarily true of Rheon (although it would fit with Rheon as a river-name; cf. ELl 46 on Aeron, etc.), since divine names could also be the names of ordinary people (e.g. Mabon, discussed in the commentary on III.16). 155 Thomas, ‘wy’, p. 127; Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, p. 225. 156 Marged Haycock draws my attention to Ryt Tawy in the Cyfoesi (R 577.20). 157 WATU 102–3; Davies, Rhestr, p. 57; Rees, Atlas, pl. 26; EANC 212. TYP1 324 drew attention to Llyn Padarn in this connection (passage omitted in TYP4 326). There is no Llanbadarn near the Breconshire Rheon. 158 ELlSG 92; Melville Richards, ‘The Names of Welsh Lakes’, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, ed. D. P. Blok (The Hague, 1966), pp. 409–12 (p. 410). 159 Pennant, Tour, II, 165. Others had it both ways: that the two Padarns belonged to the same family! See William Williams of Llanberis, Hynafiaethau a Thraddodiadau Plwyf Llanberis (1892), p. 31. 160 Llanperis (attested in 1283) was originally at Nant Peris (cf. AMR s. Llanberis; Inv. Crn. II 164; ETG 137). Another topographical trace of Peris is ‘sedem peris’ in the Aberconwy Charter, probably Gorffwysfa at the head of the pass of Llanberis: Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, pp. 153 and 156, and ‘Further Consideration’, p. 336; Acts, ed. Pryce. pp. 350 and 355; DP III 275. On St Peris see Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship’, pp. 144– 46; Lhwyd Letters: Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 6 July 1693. Lewis notes that once saints’ cults were established, ordinary individuals in Wales were not named after them (p. 144; presumably, then, Padarn Beisrudd lived before St Padarn became famous). This is an argument for supposing that Llyn Padarn was named from a saint. Note that St Padarn appears in a generally north Welsh context in Bonedd y Saint §21 (EWGT 57; his Breton ancestry given there elaborates that in the Vita Paterni, VSB 252, and includes Emyr Llydaw, for whom see I.38 below). The claim in LL 3 that St Paternus was buried on Enlli is isolated.

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analogy one might expect that there was a Llanbadarn to go with Llyn Padarn – compare the case of ‘Llyn Badarn’ which is recorded as the old name of the lake at Pencarreg, Crm. (SN 5345), the church of which is said to have been dedicated to St Padarn.161 A small point in favour of regarding a St Padarn as the eponym of Llyn Padarn is that the earlier spelling of Dolbadarn (SH 5859), between the two lakes, is Dolpadern;162 the vernacular change of -ern to -arn seems to have been resisted when naming the saint.163 Modern writers refer vaguely to a Padarn church near Dolbadarn castle beside Llyn Padarn. According to Baring-Gould and Fisher (1913), ‘About two centuries ago the remains of a Capel Padarn were visible … at Llwyn Padarn in Dol Badarn, on the lake-side’; J. E. Lloyd (1937), also without reference, mentioned ‘the Capel Padarn of Llanberis, from which come Llyn Padarn, Dolbadarn, and Nant Padarn’; and, according to Peter Crew (1975), Robert Vaughan, of Hengwrt, apparently noted c. 1640 the remains of ‘the small monastery’ near the castle, though the original source of this comment has not yet been traced.164

The earliest reference in print that I can find is a brief mention in 1816 by Gutyn Peris (Griffith Williams, 1769–1838) to Capel Padarn having existed on a meadow

EANC 212 (but the Llinpeder cited from Leland (Itinerary in Wales, ed. Smith, p. 117) was closer to Lampeter according to DP IV 445); Fenton, Tours, p. 345 (Llyn badarn cited from Lhwyd). 162 Waters, ‘Account of the Sheriff’, p. 144; Rec. Caern. 17–22. 163 See BWP 182. (With few exceptions, all the texts in EWGT in which MW spellings can be expected spell the name of the secular Padarn Beisrudd with -arn; for -ern in it see EWGT s. GaC §1, ByA §9 (var. = MWG 359, cf. 361 n. 17), and MG §1; cf. Thornton, ‘Neglected Genealogy’, p. 11: Padern). In the saint’s name, maintenance of -ern would have been helped by influence from the written Latin form Paternus and by the identification of St Padarn with Continental saints of that name (on which see P. Grosjean, ‘S. Paterne d’Avranches et S. Paterne de Vannes dans les martyrologes’, AB, 67 (1949), 384–400; idem, review of Silas M. Harris, ‘A Llanbadarn Fawr Calendar’, ibid., 72 (1954), 461–62; Caroline Brett, ‘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. Lynette Olson (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 83–102; Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, pp. 218, 298–99, 302, and 332–33; Karen Jankulak, ‘Models of Cross-Channel Migration in Latin Lives of British and Breton Saints’, CMCS, 84 (Winter 2022), 13–39 (pp. 28–31)). The change -ern to -arn in this name is placed after the Old Welsh period in BWP 182, in which case it would be presumably due to assimilation (cf. EL 3). Alternatively, the -ern to -arn can be regarded as a Vulgar Latin sound change (LHEB 280–81), in which case OW Patern is presumably due to Latin influence on scribes. Perhaps the two forms were concurrent from the earliest period and originated in differing pronunciations of Paternus. For the Breton St Paternus cf. J. Loth, ‘Les noms de saints bretons’, RC, 30 (1909), 155: ‘Patern (saint) … prononcez Pedern ou Padern’. The -ern spelling is the norm in Cornish documents; see Nicholas Orme, English Church Dedications with a Survey of Cornwall and Devon (Exeter, 1996), pp. 100, 108, 117, and 124. 164 LBS IV 50 (adding ‘One of the modern churches of Llanberis [1884] is dedicated to S. Padarn’); Lloyd, Story of Ceredigion, p. 8; Crew, ‘Dolbadarn’, p. 69. No Capel Padarn is mentioned in Inv. Crn. II. There seems to be no evidence that the now demolished Capel Nant Padarn, Llanberis (SH 5778 6028), built in 1868 (Coflein s. Nant Padarn Welsh Independent Chapel), was on an ancient site. 161

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at Dolbadarn thirty to thirty-five years previously.165 Then Peter Bailey Williams, in his account of Llanberis in his Tourist’s Guide through the County of Caernarvon (1821), has more to say: St Peris, together with Padarn, (Paterninus) another Welsh Saint of congenial habits and disposition, it is probable, withdrew from the world to this secluded spot, as a place well adapted, according to the custom and mistaken ideas of those dark ages, for religious retirement and devotion: Peris fixed upon the upper Vale, which is still called Nant Peris; and Padern chose the lower, distinguished in Leland’s time by the name of Nant Padarn; as the properest situation for the erection of their respective cells.–Eglwys Padarn, (the ruins of which many persons now living recollect to have seen) was situated on a meadow, near the lower Lake, called Llyn Padarn, on the left of the road in going from the Inn to the old Castle.166

This is somehow related to the following passage in the Visitors’ Book from the New Inn, Llanberis (dated 1818 on the cover), which survives among Peter Bailey Williams’s manuscripts: This Parish takes its name from a Welsh or British Saint (Peris;) contemporary with Padarn (Paterninus) from whom; the Castle & a meadow as well as a small Oratory or Chapel (now in ruins.) built formerly standing upon it also took derived their respective names. […] The lower Lake […] was in Leland’s time (1550) called Llyn Padarn; from a Saint of that name (Padarn or Paterninus) who as was before mentioned had a Chapel or Cell near the side of it, (as was before mention’d) & to whom many Churches in South Wales are dedicated [.]167

Padarn’s supposed cell may be a ‘peculiar “megalithic” structure’ on a wooded hillock, on the west side of Dolbadarn Castle, on the left side of the path from the Royal Victoria Hotel to the Castle. Its most prominent feature is ‘two large orthostatic slabs set parallel approx. 3m apart, apparently forming two sides of a square structure which has low pillars of varying size at each corner’ (SH 5846 5974), compared by Peter Crew to the rectangular structures on Irish monastic sites described by Françoise Henry.168 This wooded, elevated site hardly suits Peter Bailey Williams’s ‘Eglwys Padarn …on a meadow’ or Gutyn Peris’s gweirdir gwastad, but the element llwyn ‘grove’ in the name Llwyn Padarn, given by Gutyn Peris and Baring-Gould and Fisher, fits it better. Perhaps Padarn was supposed to have his main church on the meadow by the lake and a private cell on the wooded hill above it? In 1892 William Griffith Williams, Ffrwyth Awen (Trefriw, 1816), p. 79 (note on ‘O’i lwyn eirioes nid oes darn’): ‘Llwyn Padarn, yn Nôl Badarn, islaw’r ffordd fawr, y cwrr nesaf i Ddôl y Tŷ du, lle bu gynt Gapel Padarn. Mae’r lle wedi ei arloesi yn weirdir gwastad er’s 30 neu 35 mlynedd’. 166 Tourist’s Guide through the County of Caernarvon, pp. 123–24. Leland, Itinerary in Wales, ed. Smith, p. 82, referred to ‘Linne Dolbaterne’. 167 NLW MS 9177B, pp. 1–2 (italicising additions above the lines). The remarks about the ‘mistaken ideas of those times’ (p. 2) are clearly related to those in Williams’s Tourist’s Guide. Was he the author? Michael Freeman describes the New Inn visitors’ book as follows: ‘This is in the form of a commonplace book. Much of it was written by and for tourists 1818–1819’ (). 168 Crew, ‘Dolbadarn’; F. Henry, ‘Early Monasteries, Beehive Huts, and Dry-Stone Houses in the Neighbourhood of Caherciveen and Waterville (Co. Kerry)’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 58, Section C (1957), 45–166. 165

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Williams of Llanberis, elaborating on Gutyn Peris’s account of Capel Padarn, refers to the saint having a second establishment, apparently nearby, on a hillock called Bryn Eglwys.169 This could be the hillock with the ‘peculiar “megalithic” structure’. Assuming there was a medieval Llanbadarn near Llyn Padarn, Rhyd Reon may refer to the isthmus (bala)170 between the two lakes, beside the hill with the ‘peculiar “megalithic” structure’ – presumably the Bryn y Bala noted by Lhwyd ‘near the outlet of the River Seiont, out of Lhyn Peris’.171 Etymologically, rhyd means ‘passage’ (cf. Latin porta, portus), especially one over water, in a wider sense than ‘ford’, so Rhyd Reon could be the isthmus where people could cross north–south between the two lakes, or carry boats east–west across from one lake to the other.172 This strategic location would suit the Afallennau reference well enough, and would fit Gwilym Ddu’s Aruon is Reon ryt very well, since most of Arfon is ‘below’ (southwest of) Llanberis.173 ‘Contiguous with the NE corner pillar’ of the ‘peculiar “megalithic” structure’, Crew records ‘a larger 2m. high squarish “standing stone”’.174 This could mark Cynon’s supposed grave. Alternatively, the grave could correspond to the whole of the ‘peculiar “megalithic” structure’, which has been tentatively labelled an ‘Early Medieval Chambered Tomb’.175 It would be a suitable size for a hero’s grave; compare the alleged grave of Dilig in Glamorgan, between two stones placed thirty feet apart.176 Such a grave would indeed be in isel gweletin ‘in a lowly place of rest’ (I.9b), by comparison with the peaks round about, and dan y brin ‘under the hill’ (I.11a) could imply that Cynon was supposed to have been buried underneath Bryn y Bala.

Williams, Hynafiaethau a Thraddodiadau Plwyf Llanberis, p. 32: ‘Tybir fod crefydd-dy arall ar fryncyn o’r enw Bryn Eglwys, fel lle tybiedig y bu y Sant hwn yn galw yn nghyd yr helwyr a’r gwylwyr i gyffesu, a derbyn maddeuantau am eu drwg fuchedd. Erys Bryn Gwyddfan, a saif Bryn Eglwys gerllaw, er cadw mewn côf gysegredigrwydd y llanerch’. Bryn-gwyddfan is at SH 57421 60547 (RhELlH), but the name Bryn Eglwys does not seem to survive. 170 The neck of land between Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn was formerly called Baladeulyn (Baladeuclyn 1284: Hywel Wyn Owen, ‘Archif Melville Richards: A Place-Name Resource Database for Wales’, Nomina, 29 (2006), 81–96 (pp. 94–95); HEALlE 17–18), and Dolbadarn may be described in PBT 5.1–2 as a caer ‘between two lakes’ (see n.). Cf. Hugh Jones to Lhwyd, 30 Dec. 1694, from Rhuthun: ‘The word Bala is given to several places in Wales, as pen y Bala in LhanDanog parish Meirionethshire, Bala’r Dheulyn \in Lhan Lhyvny/ & Lhyn y Bala in Lhan-Berys Caernarvonshire’ (Lhwyd Letters; cf. Par. III 108). 171 Apud Camden, Britannia, ed. Gibson, col. 662. Cf. Roberts, Edward Lhwyd, p. 137. For other references to Bryn y Bala see AMR. 172 Cf. J. Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bern and Munich, 1959), p. 817; LEIA R–34. On ancient Celtic ritu- names, see references in ACPN 103–4 and DCCPN 29. The carrying of ships may be indicated by some names of the type *Longo-ritum and Nauportus; cf. DCCPN 23; Jacques Lacroix, ‘Le thème gaulois longo- dans les noms de lieux’, Nouvelle revue d’onomastique, 45/46 (2005–6), 113–30; Luka Repanšek, Keltska dediščina v toponimiji jugovzhodnega alpskega prostora (Ljubljana, 2016), pp. 192 and 197–99. 173 WATU 237 (map). But for a different interpretation of is see above, p. 145 n. 149. On the strategic siting of Llywelyn Fawr’s early-thirteenth-century castle at Dolbadarn see Jones, Princely Ambition, pp. 30–40. It may be the kaer between ‘two lakes’ (deulwch) mentioned in PBT no. 5.1–2. 174 Crew, ‘Dolbadarn’, p. 68. 175 Archwilio, s. Megalithic Structure, W of Dolbadarn Castle. 176 Par. III 28–29. See I.41 below. 169

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An interesting hint of possible local interest in Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn is the tradition in Bonedd y Saint §15 which makes his sister the mother of St Grwst;177 Llanrwst, Den. (SH 7961) is only about 14 miles east of Llyn Padarn. Dinas Dinorwig (SH 5465), 5 miles north-west of Llyn Padarn, was a seat of Gwilym Ddu’s patron, whom he addresses in another poem as ri dinorwec, using the august title rhi ‘rex’.178 The hillfort of Dinorwig, with its striking situation, may well have been the subject of legends, especially if it really takes its name from the ancient tribe of Ordovices.179 A ford in the area is thus a promising, though unproven, site for Cynon’s grave.

Gwalchmai Gwalchmai in I.8 is presumably Arthur’s famous nephew, whose name corresponds roughly to the Germanic-looking forms Walwen, Gualgua(i)nus, Gauvain, Gawain, etc. in William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and later Arthurian sources. It is often assumed that the latter names were substituted for the Welsh Gwalchmei,180 but the reverse could be true, especially if our englyn is later than c. 1125, as ‘Gorwst m. Gweith hengaer m. Elfin m. Vryen, ac Euronwy verch Klydno Eidyn y vam’, EWGT 57. Cf. TYP4 327; ECD 132. For St Grwst and Llanrwst see G. 577–78. 178 R 1225.42; Gwaith Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Tudur, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr ac Iorwerth Beli, ed. Costigan et al., no. 6.11 and n. 179 References in Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘Degrees of Celticity in Ptolemy’s Names: Examples from Wales’, in Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Place-Names of Europe, ed. David N. Parsons and Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth, 2000), pp. 1–15 (p. 8), also HW I 119 and Ifor Williams’s note apud Willoughby Gardner, ‘Dinorwig Hill-Fort, Llanddeiniolen, Caernarvonshire’, AC, 99 (1947), 231–48 (p. 247). Against the objection that the medieval spellings of Dinorwig have e in the final syllable (see G. 359b and W. J. Gruffydd, Hen Atgofion (Llandysul, 1936), pp. 76–77), note that -wyk and -wik already appear in 1352, not so long after Dynorwek in 1306/7. See AMR s.n. Dinorwig. Note his intriguing form Dinorthveg in 1618, and Dinas Dinorddeg, cited by Phillimore, ‘Additional Notes’, p. 41, from a Dingestow MS of c. 1600. The artificial(?) spelling Dinas Dinorddwig was given wide currency by Thomas Pennant (Tour, II, 167), followed by W. Bingley, A Tour Round North Wales Performed during the Summer of 1798, I (London, 1800), p. 312. 180 TYP4 367–71; WCD 303–5; Glenys Witchard Goetinck, ‘Gwalchmai, Gauvain a Gawain’, LlC, 8 (1964–65), 234–35; Peter Kitson, ‘Gawain/Gwalchmai and his Peers: Romance Heroes (and a Heroine) in England, the Celtic Lands, and the Continent’, Nomina, 23 (2000), 149–66; idem, ‘Gawain - Gwalchmai’, North-Western European Language Evolution, 40 (2002), 61–83. See, however, Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes, pp. 147–48; Charles, PlaceNames of Pembrokeshire, II, 667; Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandrensis’, p. 113; idem, ‘Nogmaals “Walewein van Melle” en de Vlaams-Keltische contacten’, Queeste, 2 (1995), 97–112 (with 2009 Postscriptum at http://fleursdumal.nl/mag/wp-content/uploads/Walewein_van_Melle.pdf [accessed 27.1.2023]). Cf. the elements Wal- and -uuen cited by von Feilitzen, Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, pp. 409–10 and 428? Names of the shape (G)ualguanus are widely attested on the Continent at too early a date for them to be due to Arthurian romances (pace P. Gallais): Tatlock, Legendary History, pp. 225–26; Pierre Gallais, ‘Bleheri, la cour de Poitiers et la diffusion des récits arthuriens sur le continent’, in Société française de littérature comparé, Actes du VIIe Congrès National, Poitiers 1965 (Paris, 1967), pp. 47–79 (repr. in Journal of the International Arthurian Society, 2 (2014), 84–113); Gerritsen, ‘Walewein van Melle’. In Wales,Walwyn and Gwalchmai both occur as surnames: Morris, ‘Welsh Surnames in the Border Counties of Wales’, pp. 150–51; Morgan and Morgan, Welsh Surnames, pp. 105–6. The following discussion builds on Sims-Williams, ‘The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems’, pp. 50 and 67–68, and idem, ‘Did Itinerant Breton Conteurs Transmit the Matière de Bretagne?’, p. 104. I 177

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is not impossible. About 1125, William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum refers to the supposed discovery of Walwen’s grave during William the Conqueror’s reign (1066–87): At this time was found in the province of Wales called Ros [Rhos] the tomb of Walwen, who was the not degenerate nephew of Arthur by his sister. He reigned in that part of Britain which is still called Walweitha [Galloway]. A warrior most renowned for his valour, he was expelled from his kingdom by the brother and nephew of Hengist [i.e. Ohta and Ebusa], of whom I spoke in the first book [i.e. I.7 and 44], but not until he had compensated for his exile by much damage wrought upon them, worthily sharing in the praise of his uncle, in that they deferred for many years the ruin of their falling country. But the tomb of Arthur is nowhere beheld, whence ancient ditties fable that he is yet to come. The tomb of the other, however, as I have said, was found in the time of King William upon the sea shore, fourteen feet in length; and here some say he was wounded by his foes and cast out in a shipwreck, but according to others he was killed by his fellow-citizens at a public banquet. Knowledge of the truth therefore remains doubtful, although neither story would be inconsistent with the defence of his fame.181

Since the remark about Arthur’s grave being nowhere to be seen agrees with our stanza I.44, it may be that I.8’s description of Gwalchmai’s grave in Peryddon ‘as a reproach to men’ should similarly be connected with William’s report that Walwen ‘was killed by his fellow-citizens at a public banquet’, presumably an act of treachery.182 The Rhos in question must be the Rhos in Pembrokeshire – as elsewhere in the Gesta Regum (V.401), with reference to the Flemish settlement there – rather than the northern Welsh cantref of the same name.183 This is especially likely since Walwyn’s Castle – attested in Latin as Castum Walwani from 1272, and in Welsh as leave aside as implausible Jean-Charles Berthet, ‘L’origine gauloise du nom de Gauvain’, ÉC, 48 (2022), 35–54. 181 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, III.287, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 520, and II, 261; Chambers, Arthur of Britain, pp. 17–18 and 249–50 (I quote Chambers’s translation). That the Gesta Regum was known in Wales is shown by BL Royal MS 13.D.ii (s. xii ex. or later) from Margam (Tahkokallio, ‘Early Manuscript Dissemination’, p. 173). 182 A. W. Wade-Evans, ‘Sepulchrum Walwen’, AC, 97 (1942), 122–24, says that Walwyn’s Castle was known locally as ‘Walas Castle or Cas Wala’ and identifies it with the name wala sbadl in a sixteenth-century list of places in Rhos (RMWL I 917), taking sbadl (cf. English spattle, Dutch spatel < spatula) to refer to the shape of Walwen’s tomb and the spur where Walwyn’s Castle stands (he overlooks that the tomb was by the sea, unlike Walwyn’s Castle). He also draws attention to the Welsh expression gwala wen (MW gwaly : Br. gwalch) ‘more than enough’ (cf. J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘Cymr. llawn ei wala; Gw. lán a dhóthain (dhóithin)’, B., 25 (1972–74), 393–96, and for (g)wala in names see AMR s. *wala). This suggests to him that ‘sepulchrum Walwen might have meant the tomb “of the blessed feast”, or it may be “of him of the blessed feast”’, which he connects with William’s ‘public banquet’. If there is anything in these speculations, it may be that a folk-etymology of *Bedd Wal(a)wen, *Bedd (G)walchwen, or similar, may have given rise to the banquet story. 183 For the two see WATU 188 and 318–19. It is just a coincidence that a grave of Wailgun is connected with Ros in Annales Cambriae: The B text from London, National Archives, MS E164/1, pp. 2–26, transcribed by Henry W. Gough-Cooper, first edition (September 2015) , sub b575.1: ‘mortalitas magna fuit ín brítannia mailguin · guíneth · obiit· vnde dicitur hir hun wailgun [‘The i has become fused to the l that follows it, so the two letters look like -ll-’, Gough-Cooper] en llís Ros · tunc fuít lallwelen’ [read wallwelen by Morris, Nennius, p. 85, who translates ‘A great death [i.e. plague] in which Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd died. Thus they say “The long sleep of Maelgwn in the court of Rhos”. Then was the yellow plague’, p. 45]. See below on I.70.

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Kastell Gwalchmei from the early fifteenth century – lies in Rhos on the Sandyhaven Pill (SM 8720 1120).184 This medieval castle, or the Iron Age promontory fort beneath it, have often been identified as the site of the grave mentioned by William.185 That is implausible since William places Walwen’s grave ‘upon the sea shore’ (super oram maris). Peryddon, which is attested elsewhere in Wales as a river-name,186 could be the lost Welsh name for the Sandyhaven Pill, which runs down to the sea from Walwyn’s Castle/Castell Gwalchmai, or a name for the whole Severn estuary/Bristol Channel.187 The statement that Gwalchmai’s grave is ‘in Peryddon’ could mean that the grave was actually in the flood plain, like Penda’s ‘in’ the river Winwæd in I.10a/III.9a; this would agree neatly with William’s reference to the sea shore and possible shipwreck. The tenth-century Armes Prydein, which seems intended to incite the followers of St David against the English,188 prophesies English tax-collectors from Cirencester (Caer Geri) coming (by land? or, more safely, by sea?) to Aber Perydon, presumably somewhere in south Wales, and being defeated by an alliance of seafaring nations.189 Forms in Charles, Place-Names of Pembrokeshire, II, 570 and 666–67. Cf. PNC II 482–83. For further references to Castell Wallwayn, Castrum Gawin, etc. see DP II 340 n. 8, and 346, and III 174. 185 See indexes to AC, s.n. Walwyn’s Castle. Photographs in Toby Driver, Pembrokeshire: Historic Landscapes from the Air (Aberystwyth, 2007), pp. 28 and 200, and in Archwilio s. Walwyns Castle. 186 Nant Beryddon is a tributary of the Dee near Llandderfel, Mer., and according to late medieval authors Peryddon was an alternative name for the river Dee (Dyfrdwy), or part of it (were some of them influenced by a desire to move the celebrated Peryddon of Armes Prydein to the north?). See J. Fisher, ‘The Wonders of Wales: “De Mirabilibus Cambriae in Partibus”’, AC, 6th ser. 15 (1915), 377–84 (p. 381 and n. 3); Dafydd Huw Evans, ‘An Incident on the Dee during the Glyn Dŵr Rebellion?’, TDHS, 1988, 5–40 (pp. 10 nn. 31–32, 19 and n. 62, and 37); J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘kyfedwynt y gynrein kywyn don CT ii. 20’, B., 21 (1964–66), 226–32 (pp. 229–30); AP2 xxxviii; GLM 444–45; CR 148 and 355–56; Lhwyd Letters: Humphrey Foulkes to Lhwyd, 8 Oct. 1698: ‘the river Peryddon Dyfrdwy so called as I have been told by a British Poet’. According to Elis Gruffydd (c. 1550), the river Dee was originally called avon beryddon until dwr peryddon was renamed dwuyr duw following the seventh-century battle at Bangor Is-coed (NLW 5276D, fol. 382). A marginal hand concurred – ‘Avon dwfr duw a elwid gynt peryddon’ (382v) – but an italic hand beneath it objected: ‘Nid gwir. Dyfr. Deu y gelwid hi yn amser Ptolomæus. AnnoD.140.’ In his lost transcript of NLW 5276D, John Jones, Gellilyfdy added – according to Evan Evans’s copy in NLW 2005B, 54v–55r, discussed below in connection with III.15 – that the river had another name, Aerfen, making a total of three names (cf. RMWL II 844). Lewis Morris, s.n. Peryddon in his index to Englynion y Beddau in BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46, queried ‘wh. the River dee’. This idea had already been rejected by John Davies, who thought Peryddon might be a personal name (Dictionarium Duplex, s.n.). For his part, Edward Jones surmised that Peryddon was the Bristol Avon ‘or some other in the neighbourhood’ (NLW 170, p. 56, and 322, p. 61). Equally speculative is Toby D. Griffen, ‘Aber Perydon: River of Death’, PHCC, 15 (1995), 32–41. 187 Also known as Aber Henuelen (PKM 215–16) and Habrinum mare/Mor Hafren (LHEB 518). This alternative is supported by John of Cornwall on Periron; see n. 189 below. Aber Perydon and Aber Henuelen could be synonymous. 188 WaB 532–33. 189 AP2 lines 18 and 71. Possibly, as suggested, ibid. pp. xxxiv–xl, Perydon is the same as the unlocated river Periron mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Merlin and translated as Perydon in some of the Brutiau. It is further suggested that Geoffrey’s Periron is identical with a Periron in the bounds of Lann Guoronoi in the Book of Llandaf (LL 241, charter 240: bet aber periron) and that Periron is a miscopying (apparently both in the Book of Llandaf and in Geoffrey!) of *Periuon (= Peryfon) < peryf ‘lord’ + -on, of which Peryddon could indeed be an oral variant (despite 184

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This allusion can be reconciled with William and Englynion y Beddau by supposing that this southern Peryddon was in Pembrokeshire, and that the tax-collectors were imagined to be on their way to collect taxes from Dyfed.190 We do not know the precise personal name used when the grave was ‘discovered’ in the Conqueror’s reign – whether Walwen, Gwalchmei, or something else – but by 1125 the name Walwen was evidently in use. This form – and the name of Walwyn’s Castle – probably reflects the influence of the many Flemings whom Henry I moved to Rhos from elsewhere in Britain c. 1107–11,191 for it is close to the Flemish name Walewein, which is already attested in Flanders in 1118 as Vualauuaynus192 and was later popular in Pembrokeshire as Walwayn.193 William of Malmesbury’s account of Walwen’s rule in Walweitha, his expulsion by Ohta and Ebusa, and his death in Rhos, looks like an early venture in Arthurian romance, a decade before Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Walwen, it seems to be implied, is the eponym of Walweitha;194 thence he is expelled by Ohta and Ebusa (characters drawn from the Historia Brittonum, §38, where Hengest settles them around Hadrian’s Wall to fight the Irish); and finally, after heroic exploits, Walwen is treacherously slain and buried on the shores of Rhos, in the same cantref as Walwyn’s Castle. There is a curious similarity here to the Flemings who, following the Norman Conquest, settled in various parts of Britain – perhaps especially in

Hamp, ‘Peryddon’). This is very complicated. It is easier to suppose that Periron is a genuine variant of Peryddon, not a double miscopying, and that its second [r] is due to assimilation. Peryddon may be derived from perydd ‘lord’, which means the same as, and is perhaps identical with, peryf (cf. Pierre-Yves Lambert, ‘The Place-Names of Lugdunensis [Λουγδουνησíα] (Ptolemy II 8)’, in New Approaches to Celtic Place-Names in Ptolemy’s Geography, ed. de Hoz et al., pp. 215–51 (p. 233); GPC s.v.). According to Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, p. 697, ‘the stream referred to in the LL bounds is likely to be a small one, and, therefore, perhaps unlikely to receive mention in a poem such as “Armes Prydain”’. It appears to be near Rockfield (SO 482149) west of the Monnow and north-west of Monmouth, so it could have been known to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Bollard and Griffiths, EBSG 21 and 70, suggest ‘Nant Gern, which joins the Monnow by St Cenedlon’s Church in Rockfield’. On Periron see further Curley, ‘A New Edition of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’, p. 244. He notes that the fact that John locates the castle of Dindaiol (Tintagel?) on the banks of the Periron supports a suggestion that Periron might be the Bristol Channel. That would fit in with the location of Peryddon near the Sandyhaven Pill suggested above. Cf. Padel, ‘Evidence for Oral Tales’, p. 149; Michael A. Faletra, ‘Merlin in Cornwall: The Source and Contexts of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 111.3 (2012), 304–38 (pp. 315, 317–20, and 334–35). 190 In ‘The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems’, p. 50, I suggested that the imagined tax-collectors were ‘on their way to St David’s itself’. John Lloyd, the then owner of Walwyn’s Castle, wrote to me (11.2.1992) objecting that Sandyhaven is not on the direct route to St Davids from Cirencester and suggesting that they were destined for St Ishmaels. His objection is reasonable – unless they were coming from Cirencester by sea, via the Bristol Channel. 191 The authorities differ slightly over the exact date. See I. W. Rowlands, ‘The Making of the March: Aspects of the Norman Settlement in Dyfed’, in Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-­Norman Studies, III (1980), ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, 1980), pp. 142–57 (pp. 147–48). 192 Gerritsen, ‘Walewein van Melle’. 193 Charles, Place-Names of Pembrokeshire, II, 667. 194 For Galweithia, Galweia, Galloway, etc. as forms of Gall Gháidhil ‘foreign Gaels’ see W. J. Watson, The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926), p. 174.

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the north – before being compelled by Henry I to move to Rhos. Did the story of Walwen reported by William come into being in a Flemish–Welsh milieu? It is another curious coincidence that the ‘Bleheris’ who told a tale of Gauvain (i.e. Walwen/Gwalchmai) to a count of Poitiers, according to the Second Continuation of Perceval, may be Bleddri ap Cadifor (c. 1069–c. 1133), the latimarius (interpreter), and possibly fabulator (storyteller), who held land near Carmarthen and endowed the Augustinian priory of St John in Carmarthen – a possible provenance for the Black Book of Carmarthen, which contains our englyn about Gwalchmai.196 It is not clear why Gwalchmai should be coupled with Cynon. Was it simply for the sake of the rhyme with Peryddon?197 Instead, the poet may have been thinking of a three-way rhyme between Cynon, Peryddon, and Rheon. The two locations are both found, Latinised, as Perironem/Perironis (glossed ‘illius fluuii’), meaning the Bristol Channel, and Reontis/Reonti in John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini in the 1150s.198 According to Gerald of Wales’s anecdote, John was not considered for the bishopric of St Davids in 1176 because he could speak Welsh.199 He could certainly read prophecies in Welsh. Perhaps he and the author of Englynion y Beddau knew a prophecy in which Peryddon and Rheon were mentioned together. 195

Run Mab Pyd In I.10 ‘Run’ is clearly a mistake for Panna (Penda of Mercia), as in the variant III.9; Panna fab Pyd is the Welsh name for the Mercian king Penda son of Pybba (d. 655), and Run mab pyd (which is metrically slightly inferior) probably arose through misreading Insular script.200 Welsh sources, unless influenced by sources such as Bede (Penda) or Geoffrey of Monmouth (Peanda), have a in the first syllable, apparently owing to a West Midlands sound-change (second fronting), rather than to assimilation.201 The Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae have Pantha, in which the th seems to be a rare OW spelling of [d], which would more normally be spelt t, and the Annals of Ulster and Annals of Tigernach have the form Panta, presumably following British sources.202 Panta gave the later Welsh Panna, as in the Flintshire place-name Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandrensis’, p. 108, cites Simeon of Durham on the move from Northumbria to Rhos, plus some other sources which, on inspection, are less definite (e.g. Henry of Huntingdon on Flemings in Carlisle in 1092). 196 Sims-Williams, ‘Did Itinerant Breton Conteurs Transmit the Matière de Bretagne?’, pp. 99–105; Terrence James, ‘Bleddri ap Cadifor ap Collwyn, Lord of Blaencuch and Cil-sant: Fabulator of Arthurian Romance?’, Crm. Antiq., 33 (1997), 27–42; John Carey, Ireland and the Grail (Aberystwyth, 2007), pp. 275–96. 197 It is probably a coincidence that Gwalchmai and Cynon are both Arthur’s courtiers in Owein, ed. R. L. Thomson (Dublin, 1968). 198 ‘A New Edition of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’, ed. Curley, lines 80, 91, 141, and 247. See above pp. 143 n. 145, and 152 n. 189. 199 ‘The Book of Invectives of Giraldus Cambrensis’, ed. W. S. Davies, Y Cymmrodor, 30 (1920) [whole volume], pp. 70 and 189; Eleanor Rathbone, ‘John of Cornwall: A Brief Biography’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 17 (1950), 46–60 (p. 49). 200 Above, p. 35. 201 Peter R. Kitson, ‘How Anglo-Saxon Personal Names Work’, Nomina, 25 (2002), 91–131 (p. 124). Cf. Jones, ‘Penda’s Footprint?’, pp. 42–43 and 55–56. 202 Hughes, Celtic Britain in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 69 n. 14, and 92–95; The Annals of Ulster, I, ed. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin, 1983), pp. 130 (Bellum Pante) and 142 (Mors filii Pante); The Annals of Tigernach, ed. Whitley Stokes, I (Felinfach, 1993), pp. 141, 145 195

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Llannerch Banna in Maelor Saesneg (SJ 4139), recorded from 1270 (Lannerpanna) onwards, of which the English equivalent is Penley (Pendelee c. 1250, Pendeley 1292);203 Dafydd Benfras may allude to this place c. 1258 in a poem mentioning Maelawr Saesnec and tir Panna in a list of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s journeys.204 In the Welsh genealogies Penda is Panna ap Pyt,205 and this patronymic is also found in Marwnad Cynddylan, where ‘Pan fynnwys mab pyd, mor fu parawd!’ (‘when the son of Pyd wished, how ready was [Cynddylan]!’) probably refers to Penda.206 Penda’s father’s real name was Pypba or Pybba (whence Pybba, Pibba, Pubba in the Historia Brittonum).207 While the [d] of Pyd could perhaps by explained as the result of dissimilation or scribal error,208 this will not account for the loss of the termination of Pybba by comparison with Penda. Pyd looks like a deliberate distortion of Penda’s father’s name to make it resemble the common noun pyd, ‘danger, ambush’ < Latin puteus.209 One can compare the opprobrious nicknames given to other English leaders in Welsh sources.210 Penda was a dominant figure in English history between the early 630s and 655. According to Stenton ‘Many stories must have been told about his dealings with other kings, but none of them have survived.’211 It is also surprising, and surely accidental, (MS planta!), 154 (Cath Pante), and 163 (Mors filii Panntea). For the Irish references to Penda see The Chronicle of Ireland, trans. T. M. Charles-Edwards, 2 vols (Liverpool, 2006), I, 137, 146, 149, 160, and 171. 203 AMR; FPN 125–26; Owen and Gruffydd, Place-Names of Flintshire, pp. 109–10; NCPNW 214. Owen and Gruffydd regard Llannerch Banna as ‘a conscious early translation’ of Penley < Penda + OE lēah. On the name see the important note by Phillimore, who refers to the grave-stanza and much else, ‘Notes on Place-Names in English Maelor’, pp. 479–80 (cf. DP IV 583 n. 3). Phillimore is rightly cautious about identifying the eponym with the famous Penda. 204 CBT VI 35.67–68 (R 1382.21–23). 205 EWGT 91 (ByA §28a, cf. MWG 369 and 392). As it stands, this entry must be later than Geoffrey of Monmouth (see WCD 526), although see below for Rachel Bromwich’s opinion. 206 CLlH XIII.28; EWSP 176–77 and 184; Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 41– 43; Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 215. This poem seems early, but the rhymes in lines 42–52 may be problematic (Sims-Williams, ‘Dating’, p. 195 n. 191). It has been suggested that pyd is the common noun, or alternatively that mab Pyd refers to an otherwise unknown son of Peada (Penda’s son), perhaps the Run map Pyd of I.10 (Ifor Williams, ‘Marwnad Cynddylan’, B., 6 (1931–33), 134–41 (p. 139); Melville Richards, ‘The “Lichfield” Gospels (Book of “Saint Chad”)’, NLWJ, 18 (1973–74), 135–46 (p. 142); cf. MWG 514 s.n. Pyd (Peada). On Peada see Wendy Davies, ‘Middle Anglia and the Middle Angles’, Midland History, 2 (1973), 18–20, and on forms of the name see Jones, ‘Penda’s Footprint?’, pp. 44–47 and 56–57. The difference in the vowels of Peada and Pyd is only one problem (EWSP 184). 207 Dumville, Histories and Pseudo-Histories, ch. XII, 120 and n. 1. For forms see Jones, ‘Penda’s Footprint?’, pp. 37–41, 53–54, and 57. 208 Phillimore, ‘Notes on Place-Names in English Maelor’, p. 480, thought Pyd was the result of scribal error, but in this he was influenced by the mistaken opinion that Wybba was the correct Anglo-Saxon form. 209 For the etymology see GPC and J. Vendryes, ‘Gallois pyd’, ÉC, 4 (1948), 327–29 (but his etymology on p. 329 n. 1 for Pyd from a *Putius related to Latin putus ‘jeune garçon’ and his mention of Bede’s Putta can be ignored). 210 See Jackson, ‘On the Northern British Section’, pp. 32 and 38–39; TYP4 295–96 and 338–39. A further example is Delffled ‘Dirty Trick’ for Æthelflæd: Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘The Quotatives Old Irish ol / olsé and Middle Welsh heb / hebyr’, Celtica, 31 (2019), 90–123 (pp. 108–9). 211 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 39. Cf. C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, 1939), pp. 32–33; Kenneth Harrison, The Framework of Anglo-Saxon History to A.D. 900 (Cambridge, 1976), p. 132 n. 10.

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that he does not figure more in the extant Welsh literature relating to this period. There are three episodes in particular when he impinged on Welsh affairs.212 The first is his alliance with Cadwallon of Gwynedd against the Northumbrians c. 633, which ended with Cadwallon’s death at the hands of Oswald.213 This alliance must surely have figured in the lost Welsh saga of Cadwallon, of which only remnants survive.214 Rachel Bromwich speculated that Geoffrey of Monmouth’s statement that Cadwallon married a sister of Penda after making an alliance with him was based on antecedent Welsh tradition, since Geoffrey reflects other peculiarly Welsh traditions about Cadwallon.215 The statement in the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies that the sister of Panna ap Pyt was the mother of Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon relates to this.216 The second episode in which Penda would have appeared in Welsh tradition was the battle of Maserfelth (Oswestry) in 641/2 where he slew Oswald, for according to Welsh sources some of the men of Powys, including Cynddylan, fought on Penda’s side.217 The third relevant episode is his campaign against Oswiu of Bernicia, Oswald’s brother, culminating in Penda’s defeat at the battle of Winwæd in 655, for according to the Historia Brittonum, §§64–65, he was accompanied by British kings, of whom only one escaped, Cadafael of Gwynedd (apparently Cadwallon’s successor).218 Thomas Jones translates ‘in ergrid avon’ (I.10a) as ‘in the rippling of a river’ or ‘in the river Ergryd’ (not an attested river-name). According to GPC, however, the meaning of ergryd is ‘horror, dread, terror, fear, fright; a trembling’.219 Whether ergrid here refers to the motion of the river or the fearfulness of it, it agrees remarkably with Bede’s account of Penda’s last battle: Et quia prope fluuium Uinued pugnatum est, qui tunc prae inundantia pluuiarum late alueum suum, immo omnes ripas suas transierat, contigit ut multo plures aqua fugientes quam bellantes perderet ensis. The battle was fought near the river Winwæd which, owing to heavy rains, had overflowed its channels and its banks to such an extent that many more were drowned in flight than were destroyed by the sword in battle.220 Lindy Brady, Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 2019), pp. 23–52. 213 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 80–81. 214 See TYP4 lxxx, xcvii, and 299–302; Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 66–70. 215 HRB XII.14, §202; TYP4 301; but cf. MWG 204. See also I.56 below on Braint in Geoffrey and the Welsh Cadwallon poem. 216 ByA §28a, discussed above. 217 TYP4 xcvii; Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 41–43. 218 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 83–84; TYP4 295–96; Jackson, ‘On the Northern British Section’, pp. 35–39; GOSP 72 n. 1, and Hughes, Celtic Britain in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 92– 94. On this episode see Dunshea, ‘The Road to Winwæd?’ 219 Cf. G. s.v. and CLlH 64. 220 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, III.24, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 290–91. Some manuscripts of Bede are ambiguously punctuated and can been understood to mean that Bede did not link Penda’s death to the battle of Winwæd (but see J. O. Prestwich, ‘King Æthelhere and the Battle of Winwæd’, EHR, 83 (1968), 89–95; Bède Le Vénérable: Histoire ecclésiastique du peuple anglais, I, trans. Olivier Szerwiniack et al. (Paris, 1999), p. 137 n. 3). A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the West Riding 212

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Series I

I.12 Osfran’s son at Camlan, Mer. (?), and Bedwyr on Tryfan, Crn. I.12

I.12

Bet mab Ossvran yg Camlan.

The grave of Osfran’s son (is) at Camlan,

gvydi llauer kywlavan.

after many a slaughter;

bet Bedwir in alld Tryvan.

the grave of Bedwyr (is) on the slope of Tryfan.

The collocation of Camlan and Bedwyr suggests an Arthurian connection.221 While Bedwyr’s death is not recorded in native Welsh literature, there may have been a story about it to judge by Llywelyn ap y Moel’s allusion, c. 1425, to Cai breaking his heart after Bedwyr’s death – although this could be a half-reminiscence of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story about Kay’s retrieving Bedevere’s body after his death in Burgundy.222 In Geoffrey, Bedevere is buried not on ‘the slope of Tryfan’ but in Bayeux (Baiocae) in Normandy.223 Alld Tryvan, ‘the slope of Tryfan’, may refer to the Tryfan (SH 59518 58198) which overlooks Llyn Peris in Llanberis, Crn., not far from the Llyn Padarn discussed above in connection with I.8,224 or, alternatively, the better known Tryfan in Capel Curig, Crn. (SH 6659), five miles east of Llyn Padarn.225 Both these Tryfans are in the vicinity of Penygwryd (SH 6555) and Nant y Gwryd, which take their names from the medieval place-name Gwryt Kei ‘Cai’s fathom/span’, which probably referred to a pass across which the gigantic Cai could stretch his arms.226 Thus the inseparable companions Bedwyr and Cai are found in the same area.

of Yorkshire, VII, English Place-Name Society, 36 (Cambridge, 1962), p. 35 n. 1, argued that Winwæd is unidentified – although not ruling out the old identification with the river Went, revived most recently by Andrew Breeze, British Battles 493–937: Mount Badon to Brunanburh (London, 2021), pp. 103–11 – and distinguished it from the region of Loidis (Leeds) where Penda was decapitated. A similar distinction was made by Peter Hunter Blair, ‘The Moore Memoranda on Northumbrian History’, in The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, ed. Fox and Dickins, pp. 245–57 (p. 253), and Barrie Cox, ‘The Place-Names of the Earliest English Records’, JEPNS, 8 (1975–76), 12–66 (p. 46). See also Dunshea, ‘Road to Winwæd?’, pp. 7 and 13. 221 See TYP4 167–70 and 286–87, also Sims-Williams, ‘The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems’, pp. 50– 51. Line b may be taken with line a or with line c. 222 Gwaith Dafydd Bach ap Madog Wladaidd ‘Sypyn Cyfeiliog’ a Llywelyn ab y Moel, ed. R. Iestyn Daniel (Aberystwyth, 1998), no. 14.15–16 (cf. Cywyddau Iolo Goch ac Eraill, ed. Henry Lewis and others, second edition (Cardiff, 1937), p. 160, no. LIV.15–16); TYP4 287; Geoffrey of Monmouth, HRB X.9, §171. Geoffrey mentions the great grief at Bedverus’ death, but more in connection with Hirelglas (§172) than with Caius. The Brutiau are similar. 223 HRB X.13, §176. The Brutiau do not name the city, and the Dingestow version misplaces it in Peitaw i.e. Poitou (BD 182). 224 ELlSG 78 mentions this Tryfan ‘uwch Llyn Peris’. It is shown by RhELlH and on large scale maps. 225 Illustrated in EBSG 23. On the name see BWP 188, who rules out Moel Tryfan, Llandwrog (illustrated in EBSG 73) as an old name (cf. W. Gilbert Williams, ‘Y Tryfan’, TCHS, 2 (1940), 58–68; HEALlE 238–39). For John Jones’s speculations about Bedwyr’s grave on Moel Tryfan see on III.16 below. (There is a less conspicuous Mynydd Tryfan near Llansannan, Den., SH 9766.) 226 See above, p. 79.

157

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Elsewhere in the Black Book, in the poem Pa gur, Bedwyr is said to have fought ‘Rough Grey’ (i.e. [Gwrgi] Garwlwyd) on the ‘shores of Tryfrwyd’ (ar traethev trywruid), in other words at the same place as Arthur’s battle ‘on the shore of a river called Tribruit’ (Historia Brittonum, §56).227 Did the name Tryfrwyd suggest associating Bedwyr with the rather similar name Tryfan? The name Camlan recalls Arthur’s final battle, often mentioned in Welsh sources, starting with Annales Cambriae, s.a. 537.228 While Geoffrey of Monmouth puts it in Cornwall, modern scholars have often favoured Camboglanna on Hadrian’s Wall, while nineteenth-century folklore situated Arthur’s defeat at Bwlch y Saethau (SH 613543) near the summit of Snowdon.229 In our englyn the collocation with Tryfan suggests that it is here identified, rightly or wrongly, with one of the two locations called Camlan in Wales: Camlan in Mallwyd, Mer. (SH 8511), or the river Camlan in Llanelltud, Mer. (SH 7024).230 ‘Osfran’s son’ has not been identified, but, significantly, a twelfth-century poet, Llywelyn Fardd I, praising St Cadfan, the warlike Abbot Morfran (fl. 1147), and their church at Tywyn, Mer. (about eighteen miles from Camlan in Mallwyd and seventeen from Camlan in Llanelltud), alludes favourably to an otherwise unknown hero of this unusual name: Osuran gynan aeswan oswyt ‘eager Osfran beating the enemy’s shield’. The name Osfran recalls that of Morfran son of Tegid, who is often mentioned as one who escaped at the battle of Camlan, and who is associated with Llyn Tegid in Llanuwchllyn (Bala Lake, only a dozen miles from the two Camlans), beside which stands the Roman fort Caer Gai (SH 87527 31496), associated, by the late Middle Ages, with Cai and his father Cynyr, and said to be where Arthur was raised.231 LlDC no. 31.48–49. Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems’, pp. 40–43; Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, pp. 43–44. It is curious that an alliteration similar to Tryfrwyd and Tryfan occurs in LlDC no. 1.4: Oed yscuid otruruyd otryuan (‘there was a shield stained [and] pierced (or resounding)’ according to Jarman’s glossary, p. 143, and YMTh 36 and 60). There is a space after o in both cases, as if it were o ‘from’. Could speculation on this line have led to Bedwyr’s association with Tryfan? 228 G. 101; TYP4 167–70 and 445; WCD 97–99. 229 Camboglanna, to quote J. E. Lloyd, ‘gives us a Camlan in a quite suitable position, though the possibility cannot be excluded that the real site of the battle was another “curving bank”, in a different quarter of Britain’ (‘Death of Arthur’, p. 158). For the folklore see CF II 473 and WCD 98–99. On the ryd goch ar gamlan in Peniarth 53, ed. Roberts and Lewis, p. 10, see DP IV 664; AMR s. Camnant, Mtg. 230 Lewis Morris suggested ‘near dinas mawddwy’ in the margin of William Morris’s copy of I.12 in BL Add. 14907, and ‘by Landyfi’ for Tryfan. RhELlH does list a dwelling Tryfan at SH 74716 01191, near the Dyfi at Machynlleth, Mtg., however, the owners, Gill and Mike McKever, kindly informed me in 2021 that they named it Tryfan in 2009 after the Tryfan in Snowdonia and because of the shape of its roof. 231 For Osfran and Morfran ap Tegid see respectively CBT II 1.55 and TYP4 169 and 452–53. For Caer Gai and Cynyr see CF II 565–66 and 693; Thomas Roberts, ‘Y Traddodiad am y Brenin Arthur yng Nghaergai’, B., 11 (1941–44), 12–14; Rachel Bromwich, ‘Pedwar Marchog ar Hugain Llys Arthur’, p. 117; R. B. White, ‘Caer Gai and the Giants of Penllyn’, JMHRS, 10 (1985–86), 31–35; WCD 93; HEF 56–58; Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, ‘Blending and Rebottling Old Wines: The Birth and Burial of Arthur in Middle Welsh’, in Adapting Texts and Styles in a Celtic Context: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Processes of Literary Transfer in the Middle Ages, ed. Axel Harlos and Neele Harlos (Münster, 2016), pp. 155–75 (p. 157). See also Lhwyd Letters: John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 3 Aug. 1693; Maurice Jones to Lhwyd, 21 Aug. 1693 and 5 Feb. 1694. For a mention of ‘kai hir vab kynyr’ in Peniarth 35, 42r, see RWMS I 351. For Caer Gai’s archaeology see Edwards, Corpus, III, 407. Gruffudd ap Maredudd has a vague reference to osbrann 227

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Series I

While it is not easy to be sure quite what is going on in this stanza, it does seem that places in Caernarfonshire and Merioneth are being grouped by a sort of free association of names: for example, the name Osfran perhaps suggested Morfran ap Tegid, Camlan, Caer Gai, and Cai; and Cai suggested Bedwyr and Tryfan, near gwryt Kei. The above-mentioned area between Tywyn and Llyn Tegid, including the two Camlans, lay roughly within the territory granted to Cymer Abbey on its foundation in 1198–99, while gwryt Kei and Snowdon (but neither Tryfan) were among the lands granted to Aberconwy in the same period.232 These correspondences are not precise enough, however, for a Cistercian context for the composition or transmission of I.12 to be proposed. I.13–16 Rhydderch Hael in Aber-erch, Crn., and various heroes from the early englyn cycles (in Powys and Brycheiniog?) I.13

I.13

Bet Owein ab Urien im pedryal bid.

233

dan gverid llan Morvael. in Abererch Riderch Hael. I.14 Gwydi gurum a choch a chein.

Owain ab Urien in a four-sided grave(?) (is) under the soil of Morfael’s llan. In Aber-erch (is) Rhydderch the Generous. I.14 After blue and red and fine (things)

in a difficult line (R 1316.36). This could be an old spelling of Osfran but is taken differently in Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 4.85n. The element Os- (in Osfran combined with Welsh brân ‘raven’) is from Old English; EP 443 compares Osbrit and Osmail, in Annales Cambriae, s.a. 717, and HG §32 (ed. Phillimore, pp. 160 and 183). Cf. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 1: ‘Osfran, Osbran = efallai Osborn, o os-beorn “dwyfol anedig” neu “ryfelwr Duw”’. 232 Pryce, Acts, nos 229 and 218 [xv] respectively, and maps in Williams-Jones, ‘Llywelyn’s Charter to Cymer Abbey in 1209’, p. 53, and Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 91 and 93–94. See also Smith and Butler, ‘The Cistercian Order: Cymer Abbey’, pp. 305–8, and pp. 301–10 on Tywyn’s possible connection with Cymer’s benefactor Maredudd ap Cynan (d. 1209). 233 Pedryal is synonymous with pedryael, which should be restored so as to rhyme (cf. GPC s.vv. petryal and pedryfal; PKM 217; G. 85 s.v. byt; ELl 57). One expects bet ‘grave’ (cf. I.63 Piev y bet pedrival and Branwen’s bed petrual (PKM 45)), and ‘grave’ is the translation in BBCSG 121. While bid ‘world’ might be regarded as the lectio difficilior, it may owe its presence to the rhyme with guerid in the next line, a rhyme that is not strictly necessary (cf. I.25). There may be influence from the phrase pedryuael byt ‘four-square world’ (Cyfoesi, R 578.15; see also the problematic bid beddrael in LlDC no. 5.154 = CC no. 21.154 and n.). Once bid was understood as ‘world’, Bet … may have been supplied for the sense. The exemplar may have had bed ‘grave’ and this may have been misunderstood as ‘world’ by a scribe used to copying manuscripts in which e was used for y [ï] and d for [d]. This e for [ï] occurs already in Old Welsh and was still common in thirteenth-century manuscripts; see Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y’. For examples of e [ï] in englynion note llem, welas, llem, CLlH I.lb, 14a and VI.2a (and p. lxxvii); lenn, glenn, PKM 89; and notes. For d [d] cf. CLlH III.28–29 byd ‘world’ (and p. lxxviii).

159

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau A. goruytaur maur minrein.

and great taut-necked horses,

in llan Helet bet. Owein.

in Heledd’s llan234 (is) the grave of Owain.

I.15

I.15

Gwydi gweli a gwaedlan.

After wound and field of blood

a gviscav seirch a meirch cann.

and wearing armour, and white horses,

Neud ew hun bet Kintilan.

this is the grave of Cynddylan.

I.16

I.16

Piev y bet da y cystlun

Whose is the grave, whose kinship was good,

a wnai ar Loegir. lv kigrun.

who used to make a full hosting against the English?

bet Gwen ab Llyuarch Hen hun.

This (is) the grave of Gwên ap Llywarch Hen

Stanzas 14–15 may be linked to I.12 above by the elegiac gwedy formula, which is not found elsewhere in this Series (cf. III.5–6). Apart from Rhydderch, the names in I.12–16 all recall characters in the early englyn cycles preserved in the Red Book of Hergest (c. 1400) and later manuscripts, and formerly in the White Book of Rhydderch (c. 1350): Gwên ap Llywarch Hen in the Llywarch Hen cycle (CLlH I); Owain ab Urien in the Urien cycle (CLlH III); and Cynddylan in the Cynddylan/ Heledd cycle (CLlH XI) – and llan Helet (14c) also recalls this last cycle,235 as do the elegiac gwedy formulae.236 While Rhydderch is not mentioned in those poems, his inclusion in I.13 may be justified by his appearance among Urien’s allies in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, §63, which may also refer to Urien’s sons (who would include Owain).237 Aber-erch (SH 397365) is in Llŷn, near Pwllheli, ‘the only known place of that name’.238 No doubt the fact that it rhymes with Rhydderch helped to fix it as the site of his grave! Compare the grave of Gwallawg at Carrawg in I.7 (possibly the Carrog near Aber-erch) and Cynfeli at Cefn Celfi in I.65. Various antiquities near Abererch which may have been identified with Rhydderch’s grave are noted by Thomas

See Williams, Introduction to Welsh Poetry, p. 57: ‘In my translations above I deliberately rendered llan helet as Heledd’s ground, not St. Heledd’s Church as might be expected, for there is no known Saint Heledd and the word llan is used for many enclosures besides that of a church.’ In favour of treating Llan Helet as two words, not as a place-name, see Johnston, review of Gwaith Llywelyn Fardd I ac Eraill o Feirdd y Ddeuddegfed Ganrif, ed. Bramley et al., p. 155 (cited above in connection with I.4). On llan see Oliver Padel, ‘Brittonic lann in Place-Names’, in Names, Texts and Landscapes in the Middle Ages: A Memorial Volume for Duncan Probert, ed. Steven Bassett and Alison J. Spedding (Donington, 2022), pp. 123–50. 235 I cite CLlH for convenience, but of course that volume contains poetry from various cycles; see EWSP. 236 As noted by Haycock, ‘Hanes Heledd Hyd Yma’, p. 30. 237 It is not clear whether the text means Urien’s sons or Theodoric’s; see Sims-Williams, ‘Death of Urien’, p. 33. 238 DP III 212 n. 2 (not quite true; there is a minor Aber-erch (SH 463921) in Llaneilan, Ang., first attested in 1648: AMR); on the form of the name see ELlSG 50.

234

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Series I

Jones and by Bollard and Griffiths. A further possible site, closer to Aber-erch, is suggested by the field-name Cae Carn (‘cairn field’) to the south-west of Aber-erch church, near which a trace of a possible Bronze Age Burnt Mound was found at SH 3942 3639.240 We know that the historical Rhydderch (Rodercus) died peacefully in his own bed in Dumbarton,241 but it would seem from the stanza that a Welsh tradition was created in which he died in Llŷn. The obvious context would be the expedition in Breiniau Arfon discussed above in connection with Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn (I.8–11), for Breiniau Arfon lists Ryderch Hael uab Tudawal Tudclyd among the leaders of the Men of the North who attacked Arfon, and does not record that he escaped back to the north.242 Perhaps a poet who ‘knew’ that Rhydderch died somewhere in Gwynedd picked Aber-erch for the sake of the rhyme. Conceivably Owain ab Urien was supposed to have come to Wales either on that same expedition or on another – rather as Llywarch Hen, Urien’s cousin, was also supposed to have come south to Wales.243 The elegy for Owain in the Book of Taliesin gives no indication where he was supposed to have died,244 and neither the Llan Morvael nor the Llan Helet of I.13–14 has been satisfactorily identified. Indeed the lines have been described as ‘confused’.245 They become explicable, however, once it is remembered that according to the genealogists the children of Cyndrwyn of Powys included a son Morfael and a daughter Heledd and that, according to Gutun Owain, Cyndrwyn was the son of Owain ab Urien.246 Thus the llannau of Morfael and 239

BBCSG 114; EBSG 24 and 75. See the note on ‘Four Crosses Cromlech (Abererch Parish)’, by Ellis Davies, ‘Some Lleyn Antiquities’, AC, 7th ser. 78 (1923), 306–10 (pp. 307–8, with photograph), and Glyn E. Daniel, ‘The Four Crosses Burial Chamber, Caernarvonshire’, AC, 92 (1937), 165–67 (with photographs of the modern reconstruction). The burial chamber is 2 miles north of Aber-erch at SH 39905 38491 (see Coflein). The Morfa Aber-erch standing stone (SH 4126 3576) is about a mile from the church. On it see Arfordir Coastal Heritage: Final Report (2012) in Archwilio, s. Standing Stone, Morfa Abererch. 240 Archwilio, s. Burnt mound, possible, SE of Prior (PRN 34080). 241 Adomnán’s Life of Columba, ed. and trans. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson, second edition (Oxford, 1991), I.15. 242 See below, commentary on III.15. 243 See Sims-Williams, ‘Death of Urien’, and ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’. By the sixteenth century Urien himself was supposed to have reached Wales, founding Castell Dinbot in Llananno, Rad. (Thomas, ‘Chwedlau Tegau Eurfron a Thristfardd, Bardd Urien Rheged’, p. 8). 244 PT X, on which see Marged Haycock, ‘Marwnad Owain ab Urien’, YB, 31 (2012), 33–48. While this would usually be regarded as belonging to a different genre, note that Taliesin was supposed to have sung on the occasion of the Breiniau Arfon expedition. Bollard and Griffiths comment on I.14 ‘that Taliesin’s elegy also notes a variety of colours (explicitly of his arms) followed by his fondness for horses’ (EBSG 76). 245 TYP4 470. Llanhiledd/Llaniddel/Llanhilleth, Mon. on the Ebbw (SO 2100) is suggested in LBS III 254–55 (cf. TYP4 397), and it is true that el- sometimes becomes il- in Welsh though not, so far as I know, before a following /e/ (CIB 234). Moreover, the second element may rather be -hyledd (see CLlH 227 and G. H. Doble, Lives of the Welsh Saints (Cardiff, 1971), p. 140). A connection with Heledd is doubted by Richards, ETG 186. The earliest citation in AMR, however, is Llanhe-bethe in Valor Ecclesiasticus IV.360, which favours Heledd (ignoring the mistaken b). See further Haycock, ‘Hanes Heledd Hyd Yma’, p. 53 n. 8. LBS III 504 notes a Llan Morfael, presumably invented by Iolo Morganwg. Inexplicably, Llan Heledd is located in Flintshire in the margin of the copy of Series I in Cwrtmawr 12. 246 EWGT 85, ByA §1 (with MS C [Peniarth 131] for Gutun Owain, whose Kyndrwyn may be an error for Kyndeyrn, EWGT 148, cf. MWG 407). See WCD 172–73 and, for Morfael, 483 and 488–89. 239

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Heledd may be one and the same place, real or imagined, in Powys, and Cyndrwyn’s children, Morfael and Heledd, may be named as Owain’s supposed grandchildren, tending his grave. Cynddylan was the most prominent son of Cyndrwyn, according to the poetry.247 The place of his burial is mentioned neither in the ‘saga englynion’ nor in his elegy, Marwnad Cynddylan. In fact, line 30 of the Marwnad seems merely to ask ‘what strange parish, what place did he come to?’ (py amgen plwyf py du daerawd).248 Our stanza 15 seems to claim to know the answer – but without actually giving it, in the tantalising style of the ‘legendary Taliesin’.249 I.16, on Gwên ap Llywarch Hen’s grave is very similar, identifying a grave as Gwên’s without saying where it was. In his elegy on Gwên in the Canu Llywarch Hen englyn cycle, Llywarch says that Gwên was slain ‘last night’ beside ryt uorlas (‘the very green ford’) wrth lawen ‘by the Llawen’ (probably near Brecon).250 No place of burial is mentioned, however. A version of our stanza is incorporated, rather awkwardly, into Llywarch’s elegy: Prennyal dywal gal ysgỽn; goruc ar loegyr llu kyndrỽyn; bed gỽen uab llywarch hen yỽ hỽnn.251 A fierce one in spear fight, of stubborn hatred, he made the hosting of ‡Cyndrwyn‡ against the English. This is the grave of Gwên ap Llywarch Hen.

Kyndrỽyn, which does not rhyme, is an obvious mistake for *cincrun (= cynghrwn) or similar, as in the Black Book (kigrun); cyngrwn is in fact the reading in NLW 4973.252 The error may have arisen because a scribe saw that Cyndrwyn was the unnamed common denominator behind I.13–15 and mistakenly introduced him in I.16. If so, I.16 probably travelled with I.13–15.

CLlH XI and XIII; EWSP passim; WCD 169–71. Cf. EWSP 176–77 and 185–86, and emending daearawd (probably influenced by daear ‘earth’) to daerawd (with /-d/), pret. or possible future of daeredaf. Cf. CBT V 12.13 Betraỽd a’n daeraỽd ‘The grave will come to us’; Rodway, Dating, p. 226 n. 725. 249 Cf. LPBT 10–11 and 14 and discussion of I.42–43 below. 250 Discussion in Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 42–44 (on the Llawennant near Swansea mentioned there see Seyler, ‘The Early Charters of Swansea and Gower, Part III’, p. 172 n. 1; Pierce, Place-Names in Glamorgan, p. 113; and Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 59). Uorlas is probably lenited from the adjective guorlas, and does not imply ‘Morlas ford’. (Myrddin ap Dafydd, Yn Ôl i’r Dref Wen, pp. 82–84, misunderstands me as suggesting that uorlas/vorlas is a mis-spelling of gorlas.) Llywarch Hen is associated with Brycheiniog in Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 134. 251 R 1038.1–2. Other MS readings in CLlH I.23 and EWSP 407 (cf. discussion, translation, and notes, ibid., 366, 470, and 521–22). Dr John Davies, in NLW 4973, does not have the misleading kyndrwyn, either because he had a superior exemplar or because he compared his own copy of I.16 in Peniarth 98ii (cyngrwn). He lists cyngrwn ‘rotundus’ in his Dictionarium. E. Rolant, Llywarch Hen a’i Feibion (Aberystwyth, 1984), pp. 182–89, is more in favour than most scholars of the englyn having passed from Canu Llywarch Hen to Englynion y Beddau. 252 See discussion in CLlH 77 and EWSP 522 and Jenny Rowland, ‘An Early Old Welsh Orthographic Feature’, B., 29 (1980–82), 513–20 (pp. 518–19). 247 248

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Series I

I.17–19 Meigen ap Rhun beneath the sea (in Cardigan Bay?) I.17

I.17

Piev y bet in yr amgant.

Whose is the grave in the region

ae tut mor a goror nant.

which sea and stream-edge cover?

Bet Meigen mab Run rviw cant.

The grave of Meigen ap Rhun, lord of a hundred.

I.18

I.18

Piev y bet in yr inis

Whose is the grave in the island

ae tut mor a goror gwris.

which sea and a violent shore cover?

bet Meigen mab Run rvif llis.

The grave of Meigen ap Rhun, lord of a court

I.19

I.19

Es cul y bet ac ys hir.

Narrow is the grave and long

in llurv llyaus Amhir.253

in pursuit of (or in the wake of) Amhir’s host:

Bet Meigen ab Run ruyw gwir.

The grave of Meigen ap Rhun, lord of right.

Amhir may be Arthur’s son, called Amr in the mirabilia section of Historia Brittonum §73 and Amhar in Gereint,254 or someone of the same unusual name. The author of the mirabilia associates Amr’s grave with a spring in Ergyng called Licat Amr ‘The eye of the [river] Amr’, now Gamber Head (SO 494296) by the road from Hereford to Monmouth,255 and notes that its length would change mysteriously each time anybody – including himself! – tried to measure it. This is curious in view of the stress on the dimensions of Meigen’s grave in I.19a, but it is impossible to make the englyn refer to Amhir’s grave without assuming severe corruption. Perhaps the mirabilia were simply in the back of the poet’s mind?256 Amhir’s role in the stanza is quite obscure; it is not even clear whether he is supposed to be pursuing Meigen or vice versa. BBCSG 120 n. 2 notes that line b is a syllable short and suggests the synonymous gorllurv as an emendation. Another possibility is the plural lluossit (cf. I.32–33). 254 See note in Ystorya Gereint, ed. Thomson, p. 64. 255 The Gamber is called Amyr/Amhyr in the Book of Llandaf. See Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, pp. 297– 98 and 374–75, who distinguishes Amyr from Humir/Amir further south in Gwent, and questions the alternative identification of Licat Amr with Lagademar in Domesday Book, usually supposed to be Garway (SO 455224); cf. Coplestone-Crow, Herefordshire Place-Names, pp. 103–4. The etymology of the river-name Amyr is obscure; see references in LHEB 509–11. DEPN 9 postulates a personal name *Ambr behind names like Amesbury (OE Ambresbyrig). This is uncertain (cf. Parsons and Styles, ‘Birds in Amber’, pp. 22–25, and Parsons et al., Vocabulary of English Place-Names (Á-Box), p. 14), but such an *Ambr might give Welsh Amr. A Welsh *Amyr could correspond to Gaulish Ambiorix (GPN 48), assuming that Ambio- did not suffer i-affection (cf. SBCHP 273, and I.38 below). In this case the h of Amhir would be inorganic and its i would represent y /ï/, as often in the Black Book. A rhyme between /ïr/ and /i:r/ is possible (EWSP 333) – in which case gwir in line c could be ‘men’, not ‘right’. 256 Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 44, 49, and 67 n. 87. Thomas Jones notes that line b is a syllable short and suggests the synonymous gorllurv as an emendation. Another possibility is the plural lluossit (cf. I.32–33). 253

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Meigen ap Rhun may well be the father of Alun Dyfed ap Meigen in I.25, since the name Meigen is unusual.257 (Curiously in I.24/III.18 Alun Dyfed’s son is also called Rhun, but as that was a common name in many families it is not so strong a point in favour of identifying the two Meigens.) Phillimore suggested that the sea-­ island in I.18 might be Caldy Island (Ynys Bŷr), which is near Pen Alun (Penally), Pem.258 It more likely, however, that the poet is referring to an island submerged beneath the sea in the lost kingdom of Mays Maichghen (Maes Meigen?), listed in the Latin triad of the regna que mare deleuit which Thomas Jones discovered in Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3514.259 This triad follows a tract on the descendants of six sons of the Lord Rhys (d. 1197), extending down to near the 1280s, the date of writing, probably at Hendy-gwyn (Whitland). It precedes a note on a seventh son, Hywel Sais (buried at Talyllychau in 1204), whose son Cynan died without issue in 1240 (perhaps the reason for his omission from the list of six?), and is followed by a list of the Lord Rhys’s daughters.260 While the tract details the lands held by the Lord Rhys’s sons, starting with Ceredigion, the triad deals with the adjacent lands, lost beneath the sea. The second of them is the kingdom of Helig, between Ceredigion and the island of Enlli (Bardsey) and as far as Menevia (St Davids). And that land was very good, fertile and level, and it used to be called Mays Maichghen, which was from ostium (Aber[ystwyth]?) to Tehehin (Llŷn?) and up as far as Aberdyfi.

Thomas Jones plausibly suggests that Mays Maichghen represents Maes Meigen ‘Meigen’s plain’, with Meigen as its eponym corresponding to Gwyddno in the case of Maes Gwyddno, another submerged kingdom (see on I.20–23 below).261 Presumably, then Meigen ap Rhun’s grave was somewhere in Cardigan Bay. The first of the submerged kingdoms in the Latin triad is the island (cf. inis in I.18a) of Teithi Hen, king of Kaerrihoc, between St Davids and Ireland. Thomas Jones identifies Kaerrihoc with a Caer Rywc mentioned in the obscure poem Daronwy in

DP III 183 n. 3. Ibid. On the connection between Caldy and Penally see Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, pp. 158–60. 259 Jones, ‘Triawd Lladin ar y Gorlifiadau’; BBCSG 103; translated in TYP4 lxxiv-lxxv and in WCD 362, 552, and 608. 260 The tract (incipit ‘Resus filius Griffini, filii Resi Magni, habuit sex filios’) is printed by Thomas Jones, ‘“Cronica de Wallia” and Other Documents from Exeter Cathedral Library MS. 3514’, B., 12 (1946–48), 27–44 (pp. 41–42), and is briefly mentioned by Thornton, ‘Neglected Genealogy’, pp. 9–10. On the manuscript see Julia Crick, ‘The Power and the Glory: Conquest and Cosmology in Edwardian Wales (Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3514)’, in Textual Cultures: Cultural Texts, ed. Orietta Da Rold and Elaine Treharne, Essays and Studies, 63 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 21–42; RWMS I 591. See the discussion by P. C. Bartrum, ‘Plant yr Arglwydd Rhys’, NLWJ, 14 (1965–66), 97–104, and compare the genealogies in HW II 768; Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, p. 225; Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, IV, s. Rhys ap Tewdwr 3–6; and Roger Turvey, The Lord Rhys: Prince of Deheubarth (Llandysul, 1997), pp. 79–80 (see pp. 88–89 for a map of their lands). 261 Jones, ‘Triawd Lladin ar y Gorlifiadau’, p. 82, suggests that Meigen is a compound of OW Meic (later Maig) and OW -gen (later -ien, which would tend to become -en in the south). Cf. EP 423; TYP4 447. 257 258

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the Book of Taliesin, in conjunction with a certain Rhun.262 Whether this Rhun is the father of Meigen ap Rhun, or Rhun son of Alun Dyfed ap Meigen (cf. I.24 below), or an unrelated Rhun such as Rhun ap Maelgwn, is unclear.263 I.20–23 Môr, Meilyr, and Madog in Pant Gwyn Gwinionog, Crn. I.20 Tri. bet tri bodauc in arterchauc brin. ym Pant Gwinn. Gvinionauc. Mor. a Meilir. a Madauc.

I.20 Three graves of three stalwarts on a conspicuous hill in Pant Gwyn Gwynionog: Môr and Meilyr and Madog.

I.21 Bet Madauc mur egluc. yg kywluc kinhen. vir. Vrien gorev[c].264 mab y Guyn. o Winllyuc.

I.21 The grave of Madog, famed wall in the battle host, grandson of eager Urien, son to Gwyn of Gwynllŵg.

I.22 Bet Mor maurhidic diessic unben. post kinhen kinteic. mab Peredur Penwetic.

I.22 The grave of Môr the Magnificent, vigorous chief, strong pillar of battle, son of Peredur of Penweddig.

I.23 Bet Meilir maluinauc saluvodauc sinhvir. fiscad fuir fodiauc, mab y Bruin o Bricheinauc.

I.23 The grave of Meilyr the Mad,265 of ever-bad sense, successful in battle attack, son to Brwyn of Brycheiniog.

Moses Williams, a native of Cellan, Crd., correctly noted c. 1728, in his copy of Series I, ‘Pant gwyn in Cardiganshire, & I think lis in | in [sic] Gwinionydd hundred.

Jones, ‘Triawd Lladin ar y Gorlifiadau’, p. 81; PBT no. 1.48–49. Insula Teithi appears in LL 69 and 133; Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, p. 17. On his legend cf. William Sayers, ‘Teithi Hen, Gúaire mac Áedáin, Grettir Ásmundarson: The King’s Debility, the Shore, the Blade’, SC, 41 (2007), 163–71. 263 PBT 28 and 40. 264 i.e. gorhëwg. MS gorev, translated ‘supreme’ in TYP4 508, will not rhyme. 265 Cf. GPC s.vv. malwynog and molwynog, EWGP 67, and DGVB I 251, s.v. maloinoc, gl. menceps. In addition to Rhodri Molwynog (EWGT 227), note Hedd Molwynog (G. 771). Even in the case of modern generals, ‘mad dog’ is not necessarily an opprobrious epithet. 262

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q. melius’ (Llanstephan 18, p. 8).266 Gwynionydd is presumed to be formed from a personal name Gwynion + the territorial suffix -ydd,267 and Gvinionauc no doubt means the same, using, causa metri, the alternative territorial suffix -awg/-wg, as seen in Winllyuc in I.21 and Bricheinauc in I.23.268 Alternatively, Gvinionauc may be a poetic adjective based on the same personal name Gwynion (cf. Meuryg-awg and Elffin-awc),269 presumably also referring to Gwynionydd. While Pant-gwyn is not an uncommon name, the only obvious candidate in the old southern Cardiganshire commote of Gwynionydd is Pant-gwyn, Llandysul (SN 416429) on the river Cerdin in the heart of the commote, near the medieval Castell Gwynionydd (SN 423420), north of Llandysul.270 This Pant-gwyn is overlooked by the Iron Age Pen-coed-y-foel hillfort (SN 4247 4277), half a mile to the west, which ‘crowns the summit of an isolated hill’ and ‘is supremely well sited on a locally prominent and domed summit commanding the confluence of two small rivers bordering the Teifi’.271 Pant-gwyn here is the most likely site for the three supposed graves. DP IV 483 and BBCSG 111 seem unaware of his identification. For Gwynionydd see WATU 252 and 280, Rees, South Wales (NW and SW sheets), and Phillimore, DP IV 432–33, who shows that the Cerdin originally bisected Gwynionydd and that the cantref of Is Cerdin was earlier Gwynionydd Is Cerdin. Melville Richards agrees (see WATU 280, ETG 44, and ‘Gwynionydd Is Cerdin in 1651’, Ceredigion, 4 (1960–63), 388–99 (p. 388)), but does not agree with Phillimore’s equation of Is Cerdin with Is Coed (which reaches the sea at Cardigan); that equation was also rejected by William Rees in his review of DP IV in THSC, 1936, 182–85 (p. 185). If Phillimore were correct, a possibility to consider would be Pant-gwyn, four miles east of Cardigan, where a (hardly impressive) hill-top tumulus is marked by the Ordnance Survey at SN 248454. Bollard and Griffiths, EBSG 27 and 78, consider this site, and also the impossibly distant Foel Drygarn (SN 1533) in Pembrokeshire, where ‘Maesgwyn Meillionog (the white clover-field) under Trígarn, is … the burial-place of the three kings, Mon, Maelen and Madog’ according to S. Baring-Gould, R. Burnard, and Irvine K. Anderson, ‘Exploration of Moel Trigarn’, AC, 5th ser. 17 (1900), 189–211 (p. 210). Baring-Gould et al. must be citing some unidentified, garbled text based on Englynion y Beddau. Although they acknowledge John Rhys for information, his help surely related only to their references to Skene’s text of the Black Book Beddau, and to the Triads (MA2 392, 397, and 408) for Madog son of Brwyn (see below). The same applies to the acknowledgment to Rhys in Inv. Pem. 415–16. 267 Melville Richards, ‘Early Welsh Territorial Suffixes’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 95 (1965), 205–12 (p. 210), and ETG 15 (citing no evidence for the personal name, but cf. Castellum Guinnion in HB §56); Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, p. 328. 268 DP IV 483; PNC I 234 (‘with rhyming licence’); cf. G. 742, whose doubts inspired by line 32 of Moliant Cadwallon seem unjustified, since the MA2’s Gwinionawc there (p. 133 n. 2) is not an emendation accepted by more recent editors. For -awg as a territorial suffix in the earlier forms of Gwynllŵg < Gwynlliw, see G. 742 and AMR s. Gwynllŵg. Fenton, Tours, p. 9, actually gives the form as Gwenninog (updated to -ydd in the editor’s note). 269 Cf. EWSP 537; LPBT 356. 270 On Castell Gwynionydd and Pencoed-y-foel see Richards, ‘Significance of Is and Uwch’, p. 14; Evans, ‘Cribyn Clottas’, pp. 24–25; D. J. Cathcart King, ‘The Castles of Cardiganshire’, Ceredigion, 3 (1956–59), 50–69 (p. 61), and ‘Castles and the Administrative Divisions of Wales: A Study of Names’, WHR, 10 (1980–81), 93–96 (p. 96); Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, pp. 353–54. 271 Coflein. Cf. Driver, Hillforts of Cardigan Bay, pp. 16 (map), 49, and 69. Pant-gwyn is a common name of course. There are 24 examples in Cardiganshire in RhELlH, but the only other example within the boundaries of Gwynionydd as shown in WATU 280 is an insignificant Pant-gwyn in Llandyfrïog (SN 328432), with Pant-gwyn-Ddulas (SN 328433) beside it. (Note also that ByS §18 (EWGT 57) implies that Llandyfrïog was in Is Coed, not Gwynionydd.) It is commonly stated (see Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 68, and PNC I 251) that the Talyllychau charter mentioned below refers to Pen-coed-y-foel as Caer Hyfaidd (Kayhuuyd/Kayrhuuid), but see the map by David 266

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Possibly these englynion were transmitted via the Lord Rhys’s abbey at Talyllychau (Talley, SN 6332), which had a grange at Faerdre, beside Castell Gwynionydd, in Gwynionydd Uwch Cerdin.272 (Compare I.27 below.) The grange’s bounds run up the river Cerdin, right beside Pant-gwyn.273 The importance of the area is brought out by Gerald Morgan: Crowning a steep hill north of the Teifi is the hill fort of Pencoed-y-foel (SN245428). On the southern edge of the hill, overlooking a bend in the river Teifi is Castell Gwynionydd, a medieval earthwork. Immediately to the west is a standing stone. Close to the eastern side of the hill fort is Faerdre-fawr. These features link together the Bronze Age (standing stone, though these are never dateable with certainty), the Iron Age (hill fort), the medieval earthwork (Castell Gwynionydd) and the maerdre or farmland owned by the local lord and worked by his tenants; finally of course the name of the earthwork suggests that this was the centre of the commote of Gwynionydd.274

The three graves’ common denominator is that their occupants all come from elsewhere, and presumably this was a key element in their story: Madog ap Gwyn was from Gwynllywg (Gwynllŵg/Wentloog, Mon.), Môr ap Peredur was from Penweddig (the most northerly cantref in Ceredigion), and Meilyr ap Brwyn was from Brycheiniog. In each case the fathers’ names alliterate with their territories – Gwyn with Gwynllywg, Peredur with Penweddig, and Brwyn with Brycheiniog – a coincidence that suggests that they were fictional rather than historical. Austin and Jemma Bezant in Cardiganshire County History, II, ed. Jenkins et al., p. 18, and Bezant, Medieval Welsh Settlement and Territory, p. 75, who favours ‘the enclosure at Bryngolau identified by a sub-circular crop mark at SN 44564401’. The eponym of Caer Hyfaidd need not have been an important person as generally assumed, such as ‘one of the reguli of Dyfed’ (Evans, ‘Cribyn Clottas’, pp. 24–25). For various people called Hyfaidd/Hefaidd see WCD 360 and 371–72. The court of Hyfaidd Hen in the First Branch of the Mabinogi is only a bare possibility for Caer Hyfaidd. (On Heueyd Hen see PKM 129–30, suggesting that Heueyd is a different name from Hyfaidd, but cf. Hemeid in Asser §§79–80 = Himeyd in Annales Cambriae, s.a. 892.) If correct, the implication would be that Hyfaidd was located beyond the Teifi, beyond the northern border of Dyfed. However, Hyfaidd’s daughter Rhiannon speaks as if his court were in the ‘seven cantrefs’ (those of Dyfed presumably, although that is disputed by A. W. Wade-Evans, ‘Notes on Names in the Mabinogi’, AC, 89 (1934), 176–79 (pp. 177–78)); cf. PKM 133. According to DP I 199 (cf. references at II 329, HW I 261 and PKM 93) post-Roman Dyfed never included any of Ceredigion. Note, however, that Rhuddlan Deifi, Crd., just north of the Teifi, is a court of Pryderi in PKM 69 and 257, and see below, p. 256 n. 870, on Arberth. 272 See Rees, South Wales, SW Sheet. Melville Richards suggested that the original administrative centre of Uwch Cerdin had been five miles east, at Rhuddlan Deifi (SN 4942), a royal court of Dyfed in the Four Branches but a Talyllychau/Hendy-gwyn possession in the historical period. See Richards, ‘Significance of Is and Uwch’, p. 14; HW I 260, II 597, and map; PKM 69 and 257. On Talyllychau’s dispute with Hendy-gwyn over Rhuddlan Deifi see above, p. 75. 273 Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 68. See maps by David Austin and Jemma Bezant in Cardiganshire County History, II, ed. Jenkins et al., p. 18, and Bezant, Medieval Welsh Settlement and Territory, p. 74. For translations of the relevant passage see ibid., also Daniel-Tyssen, Royal Charters, pp. 65–66, and Richard, ‘Castles, Boroughs and Religious Houses’, pp. 353–54. 274 Gerald Morgan, Ceredigion: A Wealth of History, second impression (Llandysul, 2006), p. 45 (and map of hill forts, p. 42). For the Bronze Age standing stone (SN 4233 4203), Iron Age Pencoed-y-foel (SN 425 428), and the maerdref see Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, pp. 208 (no. 25), 249, and 353–54, and on the maerdref and castle see Cardiganshire County History, II, ed. Jenkins et al., pp. 17–19, 46, and 70. The standing stone is not on the Pant-gwyn side. See further Archwilio s. St Winifred’s Capel; Capel Faerdre (PRN 12693). For a legendary battle of Coedybhoel in 1250 see Meyrick, History and Antiquities, pp. 144–45.

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Gwyn and Brwyn cannot be certainly identified elsewhere, but R. J. Thomas and Stephen J. Williams made the attractive suggestion that Brwyn is the eponym of Bronllys, formerly Brwynllys (taken rightly or wrongly as ‘Brwyn’s court’), near Talgarth, Brycheiniog.275 The Norman castle at Bronllys (SO 1493 3463) is thought to occupy the site of a pre-Norman llys, and Stephen J. Williams wondered whether that llys was named after the Brwyn of the englyn.276 One would expect *Llys Brwyn for ‘Brwyn’s court’, however, so it seems better to understand the examples of Brwynllys/Bronllys in Breconshire and Radnorshire as ‘court made of rushes (brwyn)’ or, more likely, ‘court where rushes grow’ (as noted by Leland).277 The name of an eponymous hero ‘Brwyn of Brycheiniog’ may have been extracted from the name Brwynllys. This would be easy to do since a personal name Brwyn (meaning ‘sorrow’?) certainly existed.278 The Book of Taliesin alludes to the horse of a certain Brwyn Bron Bradawc ‘Brwyn Wily-Breast’.279 Since their names rhyme and are thus interchangeable, conceivably this Brwyn Bron Bradawc is a mistake for Bruin (o) Bricheinauc (or vice versa). Gwynllŵg takes its name from Gwynllyw son of Glywys, the eponym of Glwywysing, so it may be significant that the kings of Glywysing were believed to descend from Ennyny, the sister of Urien Rheged, and that Urien himself was supposed to have ruled in Ystrad Tywi.280 Perhaps those southern connections inspired the claim that Madog ap Gwyn was Urien’s grandson. As noted by Rhys, the patronymic of Meilyr ap Brwyn recalls that Madog ap Brwyn, the first of the ‘Three Golden Corpses of the Island of Britain’ in the Triads (were they buried with gold or in gold armour?).281 The reference to his sinhvir in line a looks like a reminiscence of sinhuir applied to Seithennin in I.6a. Madog ap Brwyn in the Triad could be a slip for Meilyr ap Brwyn. The third Golden Corpse, Rhufawn Pefyr ap Gwyddno, is presumably the Rhufawn whose grave appears in I.42–43.

EANC 218; Williams, ‘Some Breconshire Place-Names’, p. 160. On the name Bronllys/Brwynllys see also AMR. Morgan, Study of Radnorshire Place-Names, pp. 33–34, attempted to distinguish the name of the Radnorshire Bronllys < Brwynllys ‘hall constructed of rushes’ from that of the Breconshire Bronllys which he suggested might be ‘court of a man called Braint’. The spellings such as Brendlos on which this suggestion depends were explained in DP III 201 n. 2 (cf. 319 n. 2) as containing Archaic OW long e (whence later wy). Morgan and Powell, Study of Breconshire Place-Names, p. 46, revert to ‘court of Brwyn’ (cf. Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 49). 276 Williams, ‘Some Breconshire Place-Names’, p. 160. See Coflein s. Bronllys Castle. 277 Leland, Itinerary in Wales, p. 109. 278 G. 79; EANC 218; TYP4 294; Sims-Williams, ‘Emergence’, p. 51; CIB 162 (in connection with an inscription in Brycheiniog possibly reading [b]rvgni: Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 166). Cf. Irish Brón (Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 13). 279 LPBT no. 15.42. In Triad 43 this Brwyn is a son of Cunedda; see WCD 206. 280 References in WCD 634. See also MWG 127–28 on Pasgen ab Urien and Ystrad Tywi. I assume that Urien in I.21, as a rare name, probably refers to Urien Rheged (cf. TYP4 508). 281 TYP no. 61. See also on I.42–43 below. For Rhys, see n. 266 above. TYP4 428 suggests that Madog ap Brwyn may be a corruption of Madog ap Rhun in Triad 60. Although this is feasible (*mab run > *mab bruin), it would be odd for so common a name as Rhun to be misunderstood. Meilir in I.23 cannot be emended to Madauc without weakening the alliteration with maluinauc, but perhaps Madaỽc in Triad 61 could be emended to Meilyr and be supposed to be a mistake influenced by Madaỽc in Triad 60. The name Madog recurs at I.63 below, referring to a marchauc, possibly in Brycheiniog. 275

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Peredur of Penweddig seems to be identical with the ‘tribal patriarch’ Peredur Peiswyrdd ‘green cloak’ (or Peiswyn ‘white cloak’), ‘lord of Ceredigion’, whose court was supposed to be in Aberceiro (SN 6286) near Llanfihangel Genau’r-glyn (Llandre, Crd.), possibly the original caput of Penweddig.282 Borth in the same parish was originally Porth (G)wyddno and Aberceiro is just over two miles east of Sarn Cynfelyn, the spit of land that leads (according to Lewis Morris) to Maes Gwyddno, so it is not surprising that the genealogists make Gwyddno the ancestor of Peredur Peiswyrdd/Peiswyn.283 This may be of significance in connection with the name of Môr Mawrhydig ap Peredur Penweddig. Môr was a common personal name,284 but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mor Maurhidic (‘Môr the Magnificent’) is a character who came into being through a misunderstanding the line mor maur­(h)idic a kinran, either in I.6c or/and in the Seithennin poem, as containing the personal name Môr rather than môr ‘sea’ (with enjambement) or the adverb môr.285 In the same way, in Bonedd y Saint §40, Seneuyr as a son of Seithennin, king of Maes Gwyddno, looks like a misunderstanding sinhuir/synhuir ‘sense’ in I.6a and the Seithennin poem.286 Evidently people were poring over old poems and trying to interpret them, much like us today. Presumably ‘Môr Mawrhydig’ got connected with Peredur Penweddig because of the latter’s geographical and genealogical connection with Maes Gwyddno,287 and then became an independent character, suitable for linking with two other foreigners, Madog from Gwynllŵg and Meilyr from Brycheiniog, in a story set at DP IV 603; EANC 221–22; TYP4 477; ETG 41 (cf. WATU 312); WCD 539; PP1 §§3–9 and nn. Bartrum dates Peredur c. 1000 on the basis of PP, but these pedigrees are unreliable. ‘Castell Penweddig’ was the old name of Castell Gwallter in Llanfihangel Genau’r-glyn: Lloyd, Story of Ceredigion, pp. 13–14. 283 PP1 §§8–9 and nn. Cf. CF II 417; CBT VI 11.15n.; ETG 41; WCD 347–48; Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, pp. 345–46. Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 332 n. 71, regards Lewis Morris’s form Gwyddno with suspicion. For map see Bromwich, ‘Cantre’r Gwaelod and Ker-Is’, p. 226. 284 Lewis, ‘Honorific Prefixes to- and mo-’, pp. 140–41, who translates I.22a as ‘Môr the noble, an unflinching lord’ and sees it as a hypocoristic form of names such as Morien and Morfael. In some of these the first element may correspond to mawr ‘great’ (with regular pretonic shortening) and in others to môr ‘sea’ (see CIB 64–65). EP 8 and 430 takes Môr as ‘sea’. For early examples see EWGT 205 and LL 413. Cf. Max Förster, ‘Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-­Evangeliars’, in A Grammatical Miscellany Offered to Otto Jespersen (Copenhagen, 1930), pp. 77–99 (p. 88, no. XXII: Mór). 285 See commentary on I.6 above. Compare the origin of some of the so-called sons of Llywarch Hen; cf. CLlH xxx and 93–94; EWGT 86 and 149. 286 EWGT 60; WCD 586. Cf. Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship’, p. 141 n. 5: ‘Senefyr is not certainly identified’ (cf. LBS IV 195; ETG 197). Only by coincidence, presumably, does this resemble the ancient Celtic name Senovir (Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques, p. 166). 287 An important inference which may be drawn from this argument is that ‘Maes Gwyddno’ was already placed in Cardigan Bay at the date of the Black Book, a point which has been in doubt (cf. Bromwich, ‘Cantre’r Gwaelod and Ker-Is’, pp. 222–23, and WCD 348). Later sources locate it variously off Cardiganshire and off Caernarfonshire (cf. TYP4 391–92 and Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship’, p. 141; and compare the similar confusion over the location of the submerged kingdom of Helig: North, Sunken Cities, p. 147; PP1 129). Did this confusion arise from confounding the Seithennin grave-stanza’s unknown Caer Genedr with Cyngreawdr (Great Orme, Crn.), which is where Bonedd y Saint, §40 (EWGT 60 and 143), places one of the ‘meibyon Seithennin vrenhin o Vaes Gwydno a oresgynnwys mor eu tir’? 282

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Pant-gwyn in Gwynionydd. The process of reinterpretation must have continued in Arthurian romance if, as seems possible, Perceval (Peredur) became a healer and acquired his Moorish son Morien as a result of misunderstanding Mor as ‘Moor’ and Penwedic as penmedic (pen-feddyg) ‘chief physician’.288 I.24–25 Rhun ab Alun Dyfed in Penllyn, Mer. (?), and his father Alun Dyfed ap Meigen in Trefalun, Fli. (?) I.24

I.24

Piev. y bet in Rid Vaen Ked.

Whose is the grave at Rhyd Faen-ced

ae pen gan yr anvaered.

with its head downhill?

bet. Run mab Alun Diwed.

The grave of Rhun son of Alun Dyfed.

I.25 Bet Alun Dywed yn y drewred drav. ny kiliei o caled. mab Meigen. mad pan aned.

I.25 The grave of Alun Dyfed in his homestead yonder, who would not flee from battle, son of Meigen, fortunate when he was born.

These two englynion are linked by subject and by rhyme. III.18, the last, incomplete englyn in Series III, is a corrupt and incomplete version of I.24; perhaps it broke off at the foot of a leaf and was originally followed by a version of I.25. Alun’s father Meigen may be the same person as Meigen ap Rhun in I.17–19, for the latter was connected with Mays Maichghen and Dyfed, as we have seen. If so, the name Rhun would seem to run in the family. Alun Dyfed is a shadowy figure. The grave-stanza suggests that he was a famous warrior, and this is confirmed by Gruffudd ap Maredudd’s praise of Tudur Fychan ap Goronwy (d. 1367) as taryf kun rỽyf alun yn ryuelu ‘scatterer of a wolf-pack, fighting with Alun’s pride’289 and elyn gryt alun gryfder ‘enemy in battle, of the same strength as Alun’.290 No reliance can be placed on the late genealogical references to him.291 These make ‘Alyn vrenin Dyfed’ the father of Gwynfardd Dyfed and Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed292 or equate or confound him with Aleth frenhin Dyfed, the ancestor of various families in Powys.293 He has been supposed to be the eponym of Penalun (Penally) in Pembrokeshire, and, according to Gutun Owain (c. 1475), Kaer Alvn is the Welsh

Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes, pp. 344–45. Penwetic is modernised to pen-feddic by Jaspar Gryffyth c. 1600 in his copy of Series I in Llanstephan 120, 78v. 289 R 1203.38 = Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 2.36. G. 20 treats alun as a placename. However, Tudur ap Goronwy, who is addressed, did not hold lands in Ystrad Alun, nor in any other region which contains the name Alun. See Lewis’s note and Roberts, Aspects of Welsh History, pp. 189–98. 290 R 1211.11 = Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 3.224. 291 For these and other material on Alun and his sons see PP1 134. 292 PP1 §§62 (2) and 71 (3) and notes. See also PP2 §62 (4), which makes Gwynfardd Alun’s grandson. 293 PP1 134. 288

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name of Haverfordwest, Pem. Gruffudd ap Maredudd’s allusions when praising Tudur Fychan show that Alun was famous in the north as well, as do Iolo Goch’s allusions to Rhun (ab Alun?) and Alun in a poem praising Tudur’s sons.295 Our stanza does not locate Alun’s trefred (‘homestead, territory’), but Cynddelw in the mid-twelfth century296 and Dafydd Benfras in the mid-thirteenth297 both seem to use the expression trefred Alun/Alun drefret to mean Ystrad Alun (Moldsdale, Fli.), or specific defended sites in Ystrad Alun such as Mold castle (Castell Gwydd­ grug) or the castle known as The Rof(f)t (SJ 3572 5623), at Hoseley in a detached portion of the significantly named Trefalun (anglice Allington, SJ 3856).298 While Ystrad Alun and Trefalun are really named from the river Alun, not from a person,299 Alun Dyfed may have been imagined to have been their eponym. Good parallels are the heroes Epynt in I.26 (an eponym from a mountain-name) and Taflogau in I.60 (an eponym from a river-name).300 The siting of the latter’s grave is in y trewr[e]d trav, ‘in his homestead/territory yonder’, presumably indicating somewhere near the river Taflogau.301 In the same way, yn y drewred drav in the Alun Dyfed stanza may allude to a site near the river Alun, most probably at the alun drefred of the poets. Suitably heroic sites on the Alun are the site of Mold Castle (SJ 2353 6431), called Yr Wyddgrug (‘the prominent mound’),302 or, better, since it is in Trefalun, The Rof(f)t. The latter was formerly a ‘motte about 3.8 meters high with a summit 20 meters in diameter standing on what was a commanding position’303 on a steep-sided sand and gravel spur (now destroyed by quarrying), which 294

has been adapted and reworked with minimum effort to provide successively an Iron Age promontory fort, an eighth-century Mercian defensive post and mustering place, a Domesday (1086) motte and bailey castle, and a twelfth-century commotal centre of the Welsh princes of Powys (Fadog).304 PP1 134; WCD 12. Cf. CR 14, quoting Thomas Wiliems. GIG no. V.9–10. 296 CBT III 16.222 and IV 2.21. On trefred see PT 17 and Williams, ‘Welsh Raiding in the Twelfth-Century Shropshire/Cheshire March’, pp. 113–15. 297 R 1382.31 = CBT VI 35.77. 298 Williams, ‘Welsh Raiding in the Twelfth-Century Shropshire/Cheshire March’, pp. 93–95, 97, and 113–14, with maps; cf. WATU 324, map 104. DP IV 504 favours Trefalun. On the relationship between Trefalun and Allington see Gwynedd O. Pierce, ‘Enwau-Lleoedd Anghyfiaith yng Nghymru’, B., 18 (1958–60), 252–65 (pp. 256 and 260), and Alfred Neobard Palmer, ‘A History of the Old Parish of Gresford, in the Counties of Denbigh and Flint, Chapter VI’, AC, 6th ser. 5 (1905), 97–126 and 177–99 (pp. 97–98) – also pp. 182 and 186 on The Rofft < Grofft y Castell/ Castle Croft, ‘the most commanding spot in the whole commote’. 299 ELl 46–47; FPN 4 and 181; Owen and Gruffydd, Place-Names of Flintshire, pp. 11–12 and 204; LHEB 306 and 309. There is probably an early reference to this river in Marwnad Cynddylan, CLlH XIII.65. On the problematic date of the latter see Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘Cadelling ffraw and the Date of Marwnad Cynddylan’, JCL, 24 (2023), 167–76. 300 BBCSG 109–10. Some rivers certainly were named from people (EANC passim), so the process was not completely irrational. 301 See discussion of I.60 below. 302 Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 183. 303 Coflein s.n. Roft Motte. On this see Pratt, ‘Fourteenth Century Marford and Hoseley’, and references in Williams, ‘Welsh Raiding in the Twelfth-Century Shropshire/Cheshire March’, p. 93 nn. 41–42. 304 Pratt, ‘Fourteenth Century Marford and Hoseley’, p. 25 (with maps, pp. 26 and 33). Cf. Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. 228 n. 63. 294 295

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Pennant describes it: At the extremity of the lofty slope that impends over the plains, and affords an almost boundless view to the north and north-east, is a peninsulated field, called the Rofts, that formed, in old times, a strong British post. It is defended by three strong dikes and fosses, cut across the narrow isthmus that connects it to the higher parts of the parish. On two sides it is inaccessible by reason of the steepness of the declivity; and on the fourth, which fronts Cheshire, and is of easier ascent, had been protected by two or three other ditches, now almost levelled by the plough. In one corner of this post is a vast exploratory mount.305

Even though no burial mound lay beneath this motte (so far as we know), the existence of one may have been supposed owing to the analogy of other mottes that were built over pre-existing barrows or were visually indistinguishable from them.306 Alun Dyfed’s burial so far from Dyfed is understandable if his father Meigen is the Meigen of I.17–19 who lost his lands beneath Cardigan Bay. Alun could have been forced to seek his fortune elsewhere, like Seithennin’s saintly sons fleeing north when Maes Gwyddno was inundated.307 (See also below on the ‘sons of Meigen’ in I.46–47.) Some of Alun Dyfed’s sons, including the Rhun of I.24, were certainly known outside Dyfed.308 Gruffudd ap Maredudd refers to llit mab alun (‘the battle-rage of Alun’s son’) in his elegy on Syr Hywel y Fwyall of Eifionydd c. 1380,309 and, in his elegies for Tudur Fychan (d. 1367) and his son Goronwy Fychan (d. 1382), he refers to a Dyfr as a standard of valour, probably meaning the Dyfr ab Alun Dyfed who is numbered among Arthur’s followers in Gereint and Breudwyt Ronabwy.310 Rhisierdyn also invokes Dyfr when praising Goronwy Fychan, as does Gruffudd Fychan when praising Goronwy Fychan’s uncle, Hywel ap Goronwy ap Tudur Hen (d. 1366).311 Evidently Dyfr was a hero well known in Anglesey, and also further south: in the early fifteenth century Ieuan ap Rhydderch, from Ceredigion, alludes obscurely to a tale about him (‘chwedl tafod Dyfr’).312 Rhun ab Alun Dyfed (I.24) makes an appearance in the pedigree of Rhun ap Dinawal, the ancestor of a family in Cyfeiliog, Mtg., as given by Ieuan Brechfa Tour, I, 321–22. Cf. Jim Leary, Elaine Jamieson, and Phil Stastney, ‘Normal for Normans? Exploring the Large Round Mounds of England’, Current Archaeology, 337 (April 2018), 18–24 (esp. p. 23 on the Montem Mound, Slough, and Taplow Anglo-Saxon burial mound, both in Berkshire). 307 EWGT 60 (ByS §40). See above, pp. 45, and 169 n. 287. 308 An un-named and unlocalised son of Alun Dyfed is twice mentioned in Culhwch, where it is also stated: ‘Ny helir Twrch Trwyth vyth heb caffel mab Alun Dyuet. Ellygywr da yw’ (‘Twrch Trwyth will never be hunted without the son of Alun Dyfed be obtained. A good unleasher is he’): Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 185 and 724–25; M 100 and 120. Cf. PKM 94. Does this imply that only one son was famous at the time of composition? 309 R 1327.28 = Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, III, ed. Parry Owen, no. 2.14. 310 Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, nos 3.114 and 197, and 7.86; Ystorya Gereint, ed. Thomson, line 606; BR 19; M 247 and 151. 311 R 1289.42 and 1293.11 = Gwaith Sefnyn, Rhisierdyn, Gruffudd Fychan ap Gruffudd ab Ednyfed a Llywarch Bentwrch, ed. Jones and Rheinallt, nos 4.46 and 10.47. For a family tree see Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, p. 11. 312 Gwaith Ieuan ap Rhydderch, ed. R. Iestyn Daniel (Aberystwyth, 2003), no. 8.1 and n.; G. 414 s. Dyfyr2. 305 306

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(c. 1500) and Gruffudd Hiraethog (before 1550). This turns Rhun ap Dinawal, who must have been born about 1170, into the great-grandson of Rhun ab Alun Dyfed.313 Evidently the pedigree is legendary. Its main interest is in showing that Rhun ab Alun Dyfed, like his father, was associated with areas further north than Dyfed. This is borne out by a mid-sixteenth-century or earlier prose note on the graves of Rhun and Pryderi, which places Rhun’s grave in Penllyn, a cantref in Powys (but under Gwynedd from 1202), a little further north than Cyfeiliog.314 The oldest copy, in Peniarth 177, p. 129, by Gruffudd Hiraethog and collaborators (mid-sixteenth century), is mostly illegible, but it is identical in length and content to the following version by Robert Vaughan in Peniarth 283, fol. ir: Run ap Alun dyfed yr hwn a gladdwyd yn ymyl | y rhyd galed yn y gwynfynydd ymhenllyn ac | yno y llas ef pan giliodd o giltalgarth | Maen tyuyawc vwchben y velen rhyd lle llas | ac y claddwyd Pryderi Rhun ab Alun Dyfed, who was buried close by the hard ford in the White Mountain in Penllyn, and there he was slain when he fled from Ciltalgarth. Maen Tyuyawc (Maentwrog) above the Felenrhyd (is) where Pryderi was slain and buried.

In BL Add. 14949, 7r, Lewis Morris gives the same two notes in a list of graves and monastic founders ‘out of a MS of Dr. Tho. Williams now (1760) in Gwedir. belonging to the Duke of Ancaster’ (meaning NLW 16962, 277v).315 Peter Ellis copied the Rhun note only in BL Add. 28033, 149r (top margin), adding, in different ink under the reference to Penllyn: ‘rhwng llanfôr ar Rhiwlas’ (‘between Llanfor [SH 9336] and Rhiwlas [SH 9236]’). Possibly the story of Rhun’s flight is taken from some prose account of his life, just as the note on Pryderi is drawn from the Four Branches (‘a Phryderi a las, ac yn y Maen Tyuyawc, uch y Uelen Ryd y cladwyt, ac yno y may y ued’),316 rather than from his grave-stanza (I.7). The link between Rhun and Pryderi is that both came from Dyfed and both were slain in the north while retreating southwards. Rhun may have been retreating from Ciltalgarth to Cyfeiliog, if his connection with Cyfeiliog is of any antiquity. The prose note sets the story of Rhun’s death near Llanfor, near Bala, Mer., an area rich in traditions about medieval characters to quite a late date.317 Ciltalgarth lies on the Tryweryn (SH 889402), about three and a half miles north-west of Llanfor and three miles upstream from Rhiwlas. The name ‘y gwynfynydd’ survives on maps in PP2 §34(2). On the pedigree see note in PP1 134. See map in Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. xv, and WATU 174 and 310. Attention is drawn to this note in PP1 134 and WCD 561–62 (the latter quoting Simwnt Fychan’s transcript of Gruffudd Hiraethog). My quotations are from the manuscripts. On Vaughan as the scribe of Peniarth 283 and user of Peniarth 177 see RWMS I 410 and 444. 315 They also occur in NLW 436, 106v, followed by ‘medd | yr un Tho Williams | o drefriw 1612’. Cf. J. H. Davies, National Library of Wales Catalogue of Manuscripts, I, 332. The Pryderi/ Maentwrog note is given first; this may be connected with the fact that the manuscript belonged to William Siôn of Maentwrog, 1756–64 (ibid. pp. 325–26), although the misspelling Tyngawc is against that. 316 PKM 73; M 60. Ifor Williams (PKM 265) notes that the spelling Tyuyawc suggests derivation from PKM. 317 See BWP 146 and references and Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 34–35 and 50–51. 313 314

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the name ‘Nurse Gwyn-fynydd’ (SH 93105 37664), and ‘y rhyd galed’ in the name ‘Pen-rhyd-galed’ (SH 92803 37740).318 Perhaps the ‘rhyd galed’ itself lay over the Nant Hafhesp to the north-east of this spot on its way south to Llanfor; several fords are noted on the old O.S. six-inch map. ‘Rid Vaen ked’ could mean ‘ford of the Toll-Stone’. It is not an attested ford-name, but Rhyd Faen and Rhyd y Maen/Main are quite common names, maen signifying either a stone track or a marker stone.319 If the prose note is correct, Rhyd Galed, which is one of the commonest ford-names,320 may have supplanted the earlier name by the time the note was written, or the two names may have been alternatives. It is curious that the two names rhyme. While this may be coincidental, it is possible that the prose note has emended ‘Vaen Ked’ to ‘Galed’. It is hardly likely that ‘Vaen Ked’ is itself a corruption of ‘Galed’ in view of the greater age of the manuscript of Series I, the fact that it is the lectio difficilior, supported by vaen in III.18, and the fact that caled appears as a rhyme-word in the following stanza (on Alun Dyfed), which shares a continuous rhyme-scheme with I.24. However, circumstantial details such as ‘pan giliodd o giltalgarth’ are in favour of thinking that more than just a misinterpretation of ‘Rid Vaen Ked’ in I.24 lies behind the prose note. I.26 Llia Wyddel in Ardudwy, Mer., and Epynt in the Gefel valley, Bre. I.26

I.26

Bet Llia Gvitel in argel Arduduy. dan y gvellt ae gvevel. bet Epint inyffrin[t]

322

Gewel.

The grave of Llia the Irishman (is) in the refuge of Ardudwy under the grass which hides it.321 The grave of Epynt (is) in the valley of the Gefel.

These graves are far apart, in the cantref of Ardudwy and in Brycheiniog, and are linked only by the rhyme between Gwyddel and Gefel. I have suggested elsewhere that Llia is not the rare female name Llia,323 which would be followed by Wyddeles of course, but Irish lia ‘stone, standing- or memorial-stone’, applied to some stone in Ardudwy by Irish settlers, with *Maen Llia or similar then misunderstood by the See six-inch map at RhELlH s.n.; this is just south of Ty’n llwyn/Tynllwyn on the one-inch map. Cf. GPC s. nyrs; HEF 220. Kyltalgarth is first mentioned in Rec. Caern. 266 (AMR s. Ciltalgarth). 319 Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, p. 216, quotes no examples with more than a simple adjective qualifying maen, except perhaps Rhyd y Gafaelfaen (cf. carreg afael in GPC), but note Rhyd-yrhogfaen in AMR. 320 Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, p. 211. 321 gvevel is a hapax, taken thus by Thomas Jones and Jarman (LlDC glossary, p. 146). Cf. G. 645 and GPC s.v. gwefel, which both think a noun also possible (i.e. ‘under its grass and its cover’). G. compares another hapax, gofel, which may mean ‘hiding place’ (cf. LPBT no. 15.8 and n.). EWGP 59 compares a further hapax, geuvel, for which gwyw ‘withered’ + -fel as in poethfel is suggested, hence ‘brushwood’ (Jackson, Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry, p. 67); see, however, Nicolas Jacobs, ‘Geufel: An Unidentified Plant in the Red Book Gorwynion’, CMCS, 62 (Winter 2011), 81–87. 322 Restoring the -t of dyffryn(t) for the rhyme. 323 Only one example each in Bartrum’s Welsh Genealogies and the Dyffryn Clwyd Court Rolls according to Cane, ‘Personal Names of Women’, pp. 18 and 42. 318

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Welsh as containing a personal name, perhaps that of an Irish warrior.324 There is no way of knowing what stone is meant.325 Irish lia may also explain the name of the massive (3.6 metres high) Bronze Age standing stone Maen Llia (‘Llia’s Stone’?) in Ystradfellte, Bre. (SN 9242 1918), an area of early Irish settlement, judging by the distribution of inscriptions with ogam and/or Irish names.326 In fact, one of Edward Lhwyd’s assistants, writing to him from Co. Mayo in 1699 about ‘various strange lines’ (amryw linyeu rhyfeddol) at Ballinrobe – obviously ogam – compared them to ones near Pontsticill and Ystradfellte.327 A century ago Macalister detected ogam on Maen Llia itself.328 Knowledge of Maen Llia may explain why our poet couples Llia in Ardudwy with Epynt in the Gefel valley, fifteen miles to the north of Maen Llia. Was it imagined that Llia the Irishman set out from Maen Llia and ended his days in Ardudwy? Epynt, as Thomas Jones saw, is an eponym derived from the name of the Breconshire mountain-range Epynt (etymologically ‘horse-path’ < eb- + hynt).329 The Gefel by which he is buried must be the stream of that name which flows into the Dulas at the western edge of the Epynt through an unexpectedly dramatic, deep, wooded ravine (SN 8942).330 Was Epynt a giant, thrown over a cliff like the giant Irish Influence, p. 299 n. 80, and pp. 291–300 for Irish settlement in Ardudwy. Note also a Cae’r Wyddeles, cited by Parry, Cerdded y Caeau, p. 130, and AMR. The l of lia would develop to Welsh ll if borrowed before about the tenth century: LHEB 476 and 698. 325 Despite ‘Idrison’ [i.e. William Owen Pughe], ‘Ardudwy’, Cambrian Quarterly Magazine and Celtic Repertory, 2, no. 5 (1830), 9–18 (pp. 10–11). Some of the many standing stones in Ardudwy are illustrated in Huw Dylan Owen and David Glyn Lewis, Meini Meirionydd (Talybont, 2007), pp. 54–100. 326 For Maen Llia see Coflein and Archwilio s.n.; Inv. Bre., Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, I, 170; Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 547 (and p. 72 for map of Irish names in inscriptions); and especially Leighton, Western Brecon Beacons, pp. 62–63, 86, 88–91, 115–16, 166, 168 (map), and 169 (with photographs at pp. 88 and 170). Maen Llia is two miles up the Roman road from Maen Madoc, discussed below under I.63. Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 146, imply that Maen Llia takes its name from the river Llia, but I suspect (without being able to prove it) that the reverse is true, that the river is named from the supposed eponym of the stone. Welsh streamnames are often based on personal names, e.g. Nant-Madog in Crai, Breconshire (below, p. 247 n. 813). 327 Lhwyd Letters: William Jones to Lhwyd, 6 Dec. 1699. Cf. Roberts, Edward Lhwyd, pp. 166–67, 187, and 269 n. 65. In 1693 Lhwyd had already noticed unexplained ‘stroakes’ on the edges of Welsh ‘tombstones’ (Sims-Williams, ‘John Rhys and the Insular Inscriptions’, p. 60). Extant ogams from Pontsticill and Ystradfellte are Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, nos B11 (‘Llan­ ddeti (Ystrad)’, SO 073132), seen by Lhwyd’s team in 1698 and rediscovered in 1957, and B51 (‘Pen-y-mynydd’), otherwise first noted in 1777. 328 R. A. S. Macalister, ‘Notes on Some of the Early Welsh Inscriptions’, AC, 77 (1922), 198–219 (p. 203); idem, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum, I (Dublin, 1945), no. 343. Later scholars have been sceptical, but after viewing the stone in strong sunlight I would not rule out traces of some ogam letters. If correct, Macalister’s ‘]V(a)SS(o) G[’ would presumably be Latin vassus ‘servant, disciple’ or its Welsh equivalent gwas, plus a second name, as in the sixth-­ century VASSO PAVLINI at Llantrisant, Ang. (Corpus, III, ed. Edwards, no. AN46). According to J. Rhys, ‘The Goidels in Wales’, AC, 5th ser., 12 (1895), 18–39 (p. 25), such names translate or imitate Irish máel + genitive names (e.g. Máel-Pátraic), for which see O’Brien, ‘Old Irish Personal Names’, pp. 229 and 235–36. 329 BBCSG 109 and 111; ETG 26 and 74. 330 DP IV 495 (cf. p. 598 on the river-name); G. 524; BBCSG 109. Gefel (< OW gebel) or, by hypercorrection, gefail, means ‘tongs’ in river-names according to EANC 100. For a stream, Yr Efel, Mtg., see G. G. Evans, ‘Stream Names of the Severn Basin in Montgomeryshire’, MC, 74 324

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whom Corineus slays in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History?331 Close by the Gefel is a seventeenth-century house called Llwyn y Fynwent (‘grove of the cemetery’, SN 8996 4299); it presumably takes its name from the plantation of that name beside it.332 While this mynwent might be Epynt’s supposed place of burial, it is probably the cemetery of a former ecclesiastical site.333 The local opinion is that there was a church at Llwyn y Fynwent whose stones were used to build the house and that, after bones were found when ploughing the cemetery, the llwyn was left uncultivated.334 In 1836 Rice Rees listed ‘Llanddewi at Llwyn y Fynwent’ as a church of St David,335 and this has been repeated by many (1986), 49–69 (p. 54), and for the Gefail in Carmarthenshire written Gefel (as in Cefen gefel, SN 78654 37937, in RhELlH) see Gruffydd Evans, ‘The Story of the Ancient Churches of Llan­ dovery’, THSC, 1911–12, 42–250 (pp. 46 n. 2 and 71 n. 2). For a Blaengefel and Caergefel see Meyrick, History and Antiquities, p. 144. 331 HRB I.16 §21. 332 See Coflein, s. Llwynyfynwent House. 333 Cf., in 1809, Theophilus Jones, History of the County of Brecknock, II, 269: ‘Llwyn y fynwent, or church yard grove, was evidently contiguous to an old church, though no remains of it now appear, this I apprehend to have been the fabric wherein the tenants of the abbey of Strata Florida attended divine service, notwithstanding that it is at present within the parish of Llangamarch’. Carlisle, Topographical Dictionary (1811), s.n. Llan Gammarch, says ‘According to Tradition, there was formerly a Chapel of Ease in this Parish at a place, called Llwyn y Fynwent’. 334 Information in 2019 from my wife’s uncle, John Rhys Williams, aged 94, formerly of Bryn Hynog, near Llanwrtyd. In 1922 Professor T[homas] Powel, ‘Some North Breconshire PlaceNames’, recorded ‘a tradition that relics of burial, including the body of a child have been found on this spot’. According to ‘G[winionydd]’ [i.e. Benjamin Williams 1821–91], ‘Hanes Tirabad’, Yr Haul, 21.252 (1877), 463–66, ‘Nid yw yn hollol hysbys pa le y safai yr hen Eglwys gynt [i.e. eglwys Tirabad/Llandulas]. Tybia rhai mai ar fan a elwir yn awr Llwyn y Fynwent, ym mhlwyf Llangammarch, ydoedd’ (p. 464). In 1882 ‘Gwinionydd’ [Benjamin Williams], ‘Ieithyddiaeth Gymreig mewn Priodenwau’, Yr Haul, 26.306 (1882), 266–68 (p. 268 and n.), says more definitely that there was a church at Llwyn y Fynwent, where there were still seven yews, notes that a dedication to St David is suggested [i.e. he is not certain about it] by the nearby name ‘Cefn Llan­ ddewi’ [cf. AMR, identified with Cefngorwydd (SN 9045) at WATU 38, cf. Morgan and Powell, Study of Breconshire Place-Names, p. 60], and deduces that there was a cross on raised ground near the house and stream called Nant y Groes [cf. the 1623 citation in AMR s. Nant y Groes] between Llwyn y Fynwent and Cefnioli [alias Cefnyoly, Cefn-Iolo, SN 88700 40806, cf. ‘Keven yeoly’ in Jones, History of the County of Brecknock, II, 217 – ‘ridge of worship’ or ‘praise’ according to ‘Gwinionydd’ and Powel, but see DP IV 561]. The O.S.’s ‘Cross Inn Cottage’ (SN 89635 41958) presumably corresponds to this Nant y Groes. (In 2020 John Rhys Williams, Llanwrtyd, informed me that ‘Cross Inn Cottage’ was the site of a drovers’ inn. See map in Elaine Smith, ‘The Drovers’, in Llangammarch Wells Past and Present: A History and Guide (Llangamarch, 2000), pp. 3–4; she identifies ‘the ruins of Cross Inn Cottage’ as probably the site where drovers stopped at ‘Cross Inn two miles beyond [Spite Inn] at Penlanwen’.) ‘Gwinionydd’ states that Tirabad church was built in 1715 and was at first called Eglwys Newydd yn Nhirabad, then Eglwys Glandulas (after Glandulas farm) and then finally Llandulas (‘Olysgrif’, Yr Haul, 26.304 (1882), 176–77). According to Jones, History of the County of Brecknock, II, 217, ‘The situation of the old church is not known … the present church … was built in 1716’. In the seventeenth century Tirabad was also known as ‘Monkland’ (Morgan and Powell, Study of Breconshire Place-Names, p. 141). 335 Rice Rees, An Essay on the Early Welsh Saints (London, 1836), p. 326. He is evidently followed by Wade-Evans, ‘Parochiale Wallicanum’, p. 40, who lists ‘Llanddewi Llwyn y Vynwent, David’, also quoting ‘At a place called Llwyn-y-Vynwent tradition reports that a chapel of ease anciently stood, but no traces of it can now be discovered’ from Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Wales (1833), s. Trevllys – note that no dedication is noted there, as is also the case in

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writers since. While Rees may have had local knowledge about the David dedication, it is odd that it seems to have been unknown to such local writers as Theophilus Jones, Benjamin Williams, and Thomas Powel; possibly it was merely an inference from the place-name Cefn Llanddewi nearby and from other Dewi dedications in the area.336 Llwyn-y-fynwent is just north-east of Tirabad (SN 8741), ‘The abbot’s land’, which takes its name from the grange belonging to Strata Florida (founded in 1164).337 Was it through that Cistercian house that our englyn gained literary fame? A ninth- or tenth-century cross-carved stone, whose provenance is recorded as Pen-lan-wen (SN 892 419), was perhaps more precisely from ‘Cross Inn Cottage’ (SN 89635 41958), above the Gefel valley, 0.41 km from Pen-lan-wen.338 It suggests strongly that there was a pre-Cistercian church near Llwyn y Fynwent and the Gefel, one either skirted round by the Cistercians339 or even taken over as part of their grange. I.27 Dyfel ab Erbin in Caeo, Crm. I.27

I.27

Bet Dywel mab Erbin ig gwestedin. Caeav. ny bitei gur y breinhin.340 divei ny ochelei trin.

The grave of Dyfel ab Erbin (is) in the plain of Caeo; he would not be vassal to a king; faultless, he would not shirk battle.

Carlisle, quoted above. Wade-Evans is followed by LBS II 317, and James, ‘Geography of the Cult of St David’, pp. 46 and 79, and apparently by Rees, South Wales, SE sheet (‘Llanddewi’). 336 For Jones, Williams, and Powel see preceding notes. For Cefn Llanddewi/Cefn Gorwydd see Morgan and Powell, Study of Breconshire Place-Names, p. 60 (but Cynddelw’s gorwyt epynt is unlikely to be relevant here: CBT III 71). Morgan and Powell list Llanddewi Llwynyfynwent (p. 94), but have no citations for the Llanddewi element; neither has AMR s. Llwyn y Fynwent. 337 Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 58 (no. 149, Llanddulas alias Tiryrabad), 91, and 96–97. Jones, History of the County of Brecknock, II, 216–17, implies that Tirabad was granted to Strata Florida in 1164 (this is rejected in DP IV 386). That may be the case, but it is not mentioned in charters until 1202, assuming that Keuenoly in Pryce, Acts, no. 55 (cf. no. 82), means Cefn Ioli (see n. 334 above and AMR s. Cefn Iolo (sic!)) and refers to the Tirabad grange (pace DP IV 501). 338 Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 184 (B15). They suggest that the stone was from Tirabad (cf. also ibid., p. 226), but see Cymru Evan Jones, ed. Herbert Hughes (Llandysul, 2009), caption to plate facing p. 161, and the remarks of ‘Gwinionydd’ on ‘Nant y Groes’, quoted above n. 334. Evan Jones was already in possession of the stone in 1911 as it is called the ‘Tynypant-Beulah’ stone by John W. Rodger, ‘The Stone Cross Slabs of South Wales and Monmouthshire’, Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society, 44 (1911), 24–64 (pp. 30–31). 339 The Cistercian abbeys were not supposed to appropriate parishes, but some did, including Strata Florida. See Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 34–35, 59, and 144; Janet Burton, ‘A Tale of Two (or More) Abbeys: The Welsh Cistercian Abbeys of Valle Crucis and Strata Florida and their Appropriated Churches’, SC, 55 (2021), 29–51. 340 In order to lose two syllables Thomas Jones (‘ny bitei gur y breinhin’, B., 22 (1966–68), 350) suggests emending either to ny bei gurth (= wrth) breinhin ‘who would not submit to a king’ or to ni bei gur breinhin ‘who would not be a king’s man’. Wrth is commonly gwrth in CBT. An OW spelling gurd (see above, p. 34) could perhaps be misinterpreted as OW gur di = gur y, ‘vassal to’. Jones does not treat it as a relative clause in BBCSG. Omission of Bet in line a would reduce the line length, but 12 syllables are probably acceptable; see on metrics, above, p. 112.

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The commote of Caeo is centred on Caeo (formerly Cynwyl Gaeo), Crm. (SN 6739),341 which is only a dozen miles west of Tirabad, so there is geographical continuity from I.26. Moreover the name Dywel takes up the rhyme in -(f)el in I.26. Dywel, usually modernised as Dywel,342 should presumably be modernised to Dyfel in view of the normal orthography of the Black Book and especially the spelling Dyuel in Culhwch and Olwen.343 The most famous Erbin is Erbin ap Custennin, father of Geraint ab Erbin, who is associated with Devon and Cornwall, and indeed a Dyuel mab Erbin is listed alongside Gereint mab Erbin in Culhwch and Olwen as if they were brothers.344 The father of the englyn’s Dyfel, however, is more likely to be another Erbin, namely Erbin, son of the Aergol Lawhir of Dyfed whose grave in Dyfed seems to be recorded in I.71. This Erbin is probably the one mentioned in the Book of Taliesin as the ancestor of a line that ruled in Tenby, Dyfed.345 Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin, the first poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen, alludes to Dyfel ab Erbin’s death: llat dyuel oe diuet kyulauan ab erbin ae uerin a wnaethant They killed Dywel in his last battle, the son of Erbin, and his folk.346

The Ymddiddan seems to refer to an attack on Dyfed led by Maelgwn Gwynedd, so, putting it together with I.27, it is reasonable to deduce that Dyfel’s final battle was supposed to have taken place in ‘the plain of Caeo’.347 In the Ymddiddan other casualties on the Dyfed side include Kyndur (line 14), who may be the Cyndwr (or Cyndeyrn) Fendigaid who appears in the same genealogies as Erbin ab Aergol,348 as does Elgan (lines 10–18), the genealogists’ Elgan Wefl-hwch (‘pig-lip’).349 He DP II 386 n. 25; WATU 25 and 250; A History of Carmarthenshire, ed. Lloyd, I, 7. ‘Caeo, as the short form of Cynwyl Gaeo, seems to originate in the 18th cent’ (PNCrm 16). 342 EP 48, comparing Hywel ‘conspicuous’ (WG 268). For Dyfel see CIB 37 n. 94, 91 n. 464, and 147. 343 Cf. EANC 140; G. 432 (on Hirddywel see CBT VII 280); YMTh 63. Of course, /v/ and /w/ could alternate. The streams Dyweli and Dyfal mentioned in EANC are too far to the west of Caeo to be relevant here. On the inconsistent use of medial w in the Black Book see Russell, ‘Scribal In(consistency)’, pp. 151–57. 344 Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, line 219 and n.; G. 482. On Geraint see Sims-­ Williams, ‘The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems’, pp. 46–49 and 66–67, and TYP4 356–60. On the name Erbin cf. CIB 186 n. 1133. A Poll Erbin near Llanfihangel near Roggiett (ST 4587), Mon., occurs in LL 234; see Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, p. 705. See also below on I.31b suyt Erbin. 345 BWP 160–61. See also WCD 254 and 618–19. 346 LlDC no. 1.19–20; translated by Bollard, ‘Myrddin in Early Welsh Tradition’, p. 18. 347 See YMTh 17–44; WCD 220. Maelgwn died in 547 according to Annales Cambriae, but the Ymddiddan may well be anachronistic. 348 EWGT 45–46 and 106 (JC §§12–13 and ABT §18a–b = MWG 341, 375, and 406–7). See YMTh 4 and 35; WCD 173 and 618–19. 349 EWGT 106 (ABT §18ab = MWG 375, 406–7, and 485). See YMTh 4 and 19–32; WCD 239–40. Elgan is a rare name. In Middle Welsh hwch meant ‘pig’, not ‘sow’. WCD 239 notes that in Peniarth MS 131 p. 305 Ieuan Brechfa (c. 1500) substitutes gwefys fflwch (explained as ‘gwefys dec’) which Bartrum takes as ‘beautiful’ (< English flush), whereas it is taken as flwch < blwch ‘hairless’ by Egerton Phillimore, ‘The Publication of Welsh Historical Records’, Y Cymmrodor, 11 (1892 for 1890–1), 133–75 (p. 135). Since Brechfa is near Llansawel, Ieuan Brechfa may 341

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is presumably the eponym of Trallwng Elgan in the marshy area east of Llansawel (SN 6236), granted (or confirmed) to Talyllychau (Talley) abbey c. 1258–71, and earlier recorded as a place where Rhys ap Gruffudd encamped in 1213.350 He may also be the eponym of an unlocated Caer Elgan in Llansawel (perhaps the alleged ‘ancient encampment’ at Pen Dinas/Pen-y-Dinas, Llansawel, SN 62814 35760?), the eponym of which Siôn Dafydd Rhys turned into a giant Elgan, one of four brothers from Llansawel.351 Llansawel is in the commote of Caeo. Presumably the site of Dyfel’s defeat by Maelgwn Gwynedd and his supposed grave was in its vicinity. The Gwynedd connection provides a link with the following stanza on Gwrgi (I.28). If our englyn was transmitted through ecclesiastical channels, possible intermediaries are the Premonstratensian house at Talyllychau (SN 6332), whose granges included Trallwng Elgan, or, at an earlier period, the religious centres in the Annell valley whose existence is implied by the sixth-century inscribed stone at Cynwyl Gaeo church (SN 6749 3990), by the fifth- and sixth-century ones from Pant-y-­ Polion, near Maes Llanwrthwl (area of SN 655 369) and within the Talyllychau grange of Cilmaren,352 and by a seventh- to ninth-century cross-carved stone in St Sawyl’s Church (SN 6203 3623) in Llansawel.353 Talyllychau was probably founded by the Lord Rhys between 1184 and 1189 and its endowments included Trallwng Elgan, Cynwyl Gaeo, and Cilmaren.354 If not a native establishment in origin, by 1215 it had ‘gone native’, leading by the end of the century to such allegations of drunkenness and keeping of mistresses (meretrices) that the order was advised to replace the canons with speakers of English (lingua Anglicana).355 Talyllychau would be in a good position to collect, or even to have had patriotic reasons for enhancing Elgan’s epithet, supposing that he was the first to do so. There is a further reference to Elgan gwefusfflwch ap Arthanad on p. 308 of Peniarth 131 (here gwefus is supplied by the hand which restored the page according to Dr Bartrum’s transcript, deposited in the Bartrum Papers in NLW). 350 HW II 640–41; Brut y Tywysogyon: Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff, 1952), pp. 87 and 196; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. *90; DP IV 423–24, 640, and 702 and Phillimore’s contribution in BBC 161; WCD 240. Trallwng means ‘pool’, hence the identification, which I follow, with ‘the low-lying marshy ground between the rivers Cothi and Rannell’ (Richards, ‘Carmarthenshire Possessions of Talyllychau’, pp. 111 and 113–14; PNCrm 170). It is listed as ‘Traileneygan/Trathleneygan’ in Taxatio Ecclesiastica 1291, p. 277. 351 Grooms, Giants, pp. 306–7, but for the correct reading see YMTh 18–19; WCD 239. For Pen Dinas see Inv. Crm. 190–91 and Coflein (with photographs). 352 Richards, ‘Carmarthenshire Possessions of Talyllychau’, pp. 114–15 (with map). 353 Edwards, Corpus, II, 206–13 and 263–64. 354 Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, p. 35; Pryce, Acts, pp. 171, 228–29, 234, and 235. According to J. E. Lloyd, ‘The Age of the Native Princes’, in A History of Carmarthenshire, ed. Lloyd, I, 113–200 (pp. 154–55), ‘Owing to the loss of the earlier charters, it is not possible to distinguish the gifts of Rhys from those of his descendants, but we can safely attribute to the former the bestowal of the site of the abbey, with the adjacent lands at Cefn Blaidd, Crug y Bar, and Trallwng Elgan. As the canons were not mere monks, but ordained for the discharge of clerical duties, their church became parochial, and the parish of Talley was formed, at the expense of Llandilo [Llandeilo] and Cynwyl Gaeo’. For a translation of Edward II’s 1324 inspeximus see Richard, ‘Castles, Boroughs and Religious Houses’, pp. 352–54. 355 It has been supposed that there was previously ‘a house of Welsh canons here’, and that ‘there were soon Welshmen’ in the Premonstratensian abbey; Gerald noted that the abbot in 1215 was ‘purely Welsh’. See David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses of England and Wales, second edition (London, 1971), p. 191; HW II 603–4; Barrow, St Davids Episcopal Acta, p. 10. On the later-thirteenth-century English criticisms see H. M. Colvin, The

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compose, this englyn. A possible source would be the once important clas church at Llandeilo Fawr, which Talyllychau had absorbed by 1222, but which may still have had an active scriptorium at that time.356 For Talyllychau see also on I.20–23 above. I.28–30 Gwrgi and Llawr in Gwanas, Brithdir, Mer. I.28 Bet Gurgi gvychit a Guindodit lev. a bet Llaur lluouit. yg guarthaw Guanas yssit.358

I.28 The grave of Gwrgi the brave, and a hero of (or against?)357 the men of Gwynedd and the grave of Llawr, army-oppressor: at the top of Gwanas there are .

I.29

I.29

E beteu hir yg Guanas

The long graves in Gwanas,

ny chauas ae dioes.359

he who dispoiled them did not discover

White Canons in England (Oxford, 1951), pp. 198, 202, 237–38, and 259, citing NLW MS Brogyntyn II.7, 31v, and J. Beverley Smith, ‘The “Cronica de Wallia” and the Dynasty of Dinefwr: A Textual and Historical Study’, B., 20 (1962–64), 261–82 (pp. 278–79). 356 Barrow, St Davids Episcopal Acta, pp. 108–9; MWG 125, 128, and 156–57. 357 See below. 358 The scribe inserts guyr above the line, with insertion marks indicating that it belongs after guanas. I take it as gwŷr ‘men, warriors’, as 8 syllables in line c is acceptable. Cf. Gwyn Thomas in Yr Aelwyd Hon, p. 110, who has ‘Ar gopa Gwanas arwyr sydd’ as a new sentence, presumably referring to the warriors of the previous two lines. Rhys, Englyn, pp. 129–30, takes it as Gŵyr and translates ‘The long graves on Gwanas in Gower’. (Gower had been championed by C. H. Glascodine, ‘Cefn Bryn’, The Cambrian, 11 Sept. 1896.) There is no Gwanas in Gower, however, and Gower is disyllabic Gvhir in LlDC no. 22.10. BBCSG 111 and 122–23 identifies Guanas with Gwanas near Dolgellau and (like Bollard and Griffiths, EBSG 31 and 128, and Thomas, Hen Englynion, p. 92) translates ‘Gwanas Gwŷr’, as if for ‘Gwanas of the Men/Warriors’, noting that guyr should possibly be deleted. Similarly, Jarman has Guanas Guyr in his glossary (LlDC 175), while also including guyr as the plural of gur (p. 148), with G. 698. G. 62 suggests that guyr may be a gloss (‘Gower’?), but that if it is an integral part of the line and a monosyllable (i.e. gwŷr?), the line length could be reduced by taking yssit (ysydd) as ’sydd. Gwanas means ‘resting-place’ (inter alia), according to PKM 201, but see also GPC s.v. for a possible meaning of ‘spur of land’. HEF 156 favours ‘ysbyty neu loches’. By 1338 the Knights Hospitallers had an estate at Gwanas (commemorated in the name Dôl Ysbyty, SH 77143 16613), attached to their preceptory of Halston, Shropshire, established by 1221 (Rees, History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, pp. 66–68, 70, and 128); before their day, presumably Gwanas could have been a ‘resting-place’ for north–south travellers, perhaps even as far back as the Roman marching camp at SH 7711 1645. 359 Since proest or rhyme is required, and since six-syllable lines are rare in englynion milwr (EWSP 315), dioes must be emended to diuöes ‘despoiled’ (from difo) or diodes ‘threw down’ (from diodi) with G. 363 s.v diöes, followed by Thomas Jones and Jarman (LlDC 101 and glossary p. 136). Cf. J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘difod, diw, dyddiw’, p. 218. Except for the metrical problem, it would make good sense to understand dioes as ‘belongs to’ as suggested by Rhys, Englyn, p. 130, where he translates ‘he whose it was’ and quotes Pan yỽ rud egroes / Neu wreic ae dioes from the Book of Taliesin (cf. GPC s.v. and LPBT no. 4.147–48: ‘why rose-hips are red – it is a woman who has them’) and notes that a synonym for egroes is mieri Mair, who could be the gwreic in question. Although normally called morwyn, Mary is counted ‘ymplith y gwragedd’

180

Series I pvy vynt vy360 pvy eu neges. I.30

who they may be (nor) what (was) their errand. I.30

Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth a dyuu ynoeth y eu gur y eu guas. ae ceisso vy

362

clated Guanas.

The warband of Oeth and Anoeth came there, every last one of them;361 let him who seeks them dig Gwanas.

Assuming all these stanzas belong together, the general context seems to be that the graves in Gwanas have been opened in vain by people seeking after treasure (as in I.60) or knowledge about the occupants,363 but that the speaker – the Taliesin persona (cf. I.42–43) or a comparable cyfarwydd – claims to know the true story. It is odd, though, as Thomas Jones noticed, that part of the answer is given in I.28 before the question is raised in I.29, suggesting that I.28 may be originally independent of I.29–30.364 ‘Gwrgi the brave’ seems himself to be ‘the hero of the men of Gwynedd’, but possibly three people are mentioned in I.28, with Gwrgi and ‘the Venedotian’ being separate people. Gwrgi and Llawr could be members of Oeth and Anoeth’s expeditionary force – that would explain the reference to their neges in I.29c – or alternatively Gwrgi and Llawr could be the gur and guas of I.30b. There is evidence, however, that I.28 and I.29–30 refer to independent stories whose only common denominator is Gwanas. To take I.28 first, this must refer to a variant version of Math fab Mathonwy, summarised in BL Add. 14866, an anthology compiled in 1586–87 by David Johns, vicar of Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, Den. in order to enlighten a classically educated friend about native Welsh lore.365 At 115v, Johns provides scholia to a cywydd by Lewys Môn (c. 1500), a poet well informed about the traditions of Arfon concerning characters such Aranrhod, Dôn, and Gwydion.366 The cywydd refers to Ar(i)anrhod (Gwassanaeth Meir, ed. Brynley F. Roberts (Cardiff, 1961), p. 6.3, etc.). Cf. Williams, ‘difod, diw, dyddiw’, p. 219. 360 Sic MS and Thomas Jones. Jarman prints it as vyntvy which he glosses as the reduplicated pronoun (p. 168). While this seems possible (for pwy in pure nominal sentences see GMW 74–75), vynt could be the 3pl. consuetudinal past or pres. subjunctive of bot (i.e. bwynt, lenited, GMW 137). These constructions are illustrated by MW dywedut pwy vo a phwy y enw, cited by Williams, ‘difod, diw, dyddiw’, p. 227. 361 Lit. ‘to their man/vassal, to their lad/servant’. EBSG 81 suggests that stanza 30 implies the destruction of an entire warband and that line b may mean something like ‘to a man’ i.e. ‘to every last man’. In Old Welsh hay gur hay guas and hac dy gur hac dy guas, lit. ‘both (to) his man etc. and (to) his lad etc.’, translating et suis hominibus, both mean ‘and (to) all his people’ (‘Privilegium’, ed. Russell, p. 50, cf. LL 119–20), so the sense may be that the warband of Oeth and Anoeth attacked every last man of ‘them’, i.e. the men in the long graves. *Ac y gur ac y guas, lit. ‘and to their man and to their lad’, would be a possible emendation. 362 Rhys, Englyn, p. 130, omits the affixed pronoun, causa metri, but 8 syllables are acceptable. 363 Either is plausible. Ehrmantraut, ‘Of Mice and Mounds’, pp. 100–2, notes that a tumulus on Mynydd Carn in Vita Griffini conceals either ‘treasure’ (thesaurus) or, in the Welsh (mis)translation, a ‘hero’ (rysswr). 364 But I do not think the stanzas are necessarily as inconsistent as is claimed in BBCSG 104. For Taliesin and Englynion y Beddau see ibid., 104–5 and above, p. 69. 365 RWMS I 604 and II 69–70. 366 See above, pp. 130 and 181 on GLM no. II.

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as Math’s bedfellow, contrary to the familiar version of Math in the White and Red Books.367 Johns’s scholia are as follows: [Ma]th ap [Mat]honwy [hen] frenin [gynt] ar Wynedd. [Aria]nrhod i [gari]adferch. [gilf]aethwy ap [dôn] ai siomodd am [dani,] pan las [pryd]eri brenin [Dyfe]d.yn arfon. a [gwr]gi ai wyr [yng]wanas. Storiae kym[reig] ydynt.368 Math ap Mathonwy the old, formerly king of Gwynedd. Arianrhod his mistress. Gilfaethwy son of Dôn cheated him about her, when Pryderi king of Dyfed was slain in Arfon, and Gwrgi and his men in Gwanas. These are Welsh stories.

Although the name Gwrgi is not uncommon,369 the Gwrgi slain at Gwanas is clearly the Gwrgi of I.28. In the familiar version of Math, Pryderi is slain not in Arfon but near Maentwrog above Y Felenrhyd in Ardudwy (see discussion of I.7 above), while the death of Gwrgi – there called Gwrgi Gwastra – is not mentioned at all. Gwrgi Gwastra appears and disappears with no explanation, which implies that he was already a well-known character who required no introduction. Gwrgi Gwastra is one of the twenty-four (otherwise unnamed) hostages whom Pryderi gives in order to secure a truce before his fatal single combat near Maentwrog against Gwydion. After Pryderi’s death, while his grieving troops set out southwards to Dyfed, Gwydion and the victorious men of Gwynedd return north, where they free Gwrgi Gwastra and the other hostages, allowing them to follow their countrymen southwards.370 Given the geography of Wales, it is likely enough that they would pass by Gwanas on the way, but that is not mentioned in the extant Four Branches, nor any assault on them; in fact nothing more is said about Gwrgi and his companions. Evidently there was a story about how Gwrgi Gwastra and his men (gwyr) were killed and buried in Gwanas – ambushed perhaps on their return journey. The guyr of I.28c may well be Gwrgi’s men. In line a, the ‘hero of the Venedotians’ may be some unnamed Gwynedd warrior who fought against Gwrgi. Or could Gwrgi himself be described as a ‘Venedotian hero’ because of his exploits in Gwynedd? Or was there a version of his story in which he defected to the other side, as Fergus does in the Ulster Cycle? Llawr is unidentified and may have fought on either side (or neither). It is not surprising that the story of Math should be told in one way in Arfon, whence the familiar version probably emanated,371 and with a different emphasis in Meirionydd. We know that the early-fourteenth-century gentry around Gwanas rejected as ‘false’ another narrative from Arfon (see below), so it is no surprise that they should also dissent about where Pryderi was killed and wish to preserve additional material about Gwrgi’s death at Gwanas. David Johns, as a native of the GLM no. XCVII, quoted by MvM 193, TYP4 285, and Hughes, Math, pp. xlvi–xlvii. Restoring within square brackets from a transcript in Cardiff, Central Library, MS 2.40, p. 133, letters cut off by the binder of BL Add. 14866. For use of the passage by Lewis Morris and William Owen Pughe and further discussion see Sims-Williams, ‘A Variant Version of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’. 369 For Gwrgi (‘man-hound’) see G. 709. 370 PKM 72–73; M 59–60. 371 Sims-Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’. 367 368

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Tywyn region of Meirionydd, was in a good position to have heard the traditions of Gwanas, some fifteen miles away. He was steeped in Meirionydd traditions and the poetry sung to his family over several generations.372 The reference to Oeth and Anoeth in I.30 reminds us of Triad 52, where Arthur is said to have spent three nights imprisoned in Caer Oeth ac Anoeth, and of Culhwch and Olwen where Arthur’s porter boasts that he has been in exotic places including ‘Caer Oeth ac Anoeth and Caer Nefenhyr Nine Teeth’.373 Similarly, the Taliesin persona boasts ‘I have been in Kaer Nefenhir’.374 Although ‘Taliesin’ does not mention Caer Oeth ac Anoeth, it is clearly the exotic sort of location that he would know about, and this is borne out by the names Oeth and Anoeth, which, on the surface at least, seem to be synonyms meaning ‘Wonder and Wonder’. I would speculate, however, that Oeth originally meant ‘eight’ (OW oith, MW oeth/wyth).375 In the account of the settlement of the British Isles in the Historia Brittonum, §§13–14, the Irish come from Spain as far as a ‘glass tower’ (turris vitrea), and they are followed by Damhochtor, that is, dám (h)ochtair ‘a band of eight’, an allusion to the Irish Lebor Gabála Érenn.376 It is generally agreed that the turris vitrea corresponds to the Kaer Wydyr ‘Fortress of Glass’ visited by ‘Taliesin’ and Arthur in Preiddeu Annwn.377 By analogy, there may have been a Caer Oeth ‘Fortress of Eight’, later misunderstood and elaborated into Caer Oeth ac Anoeth. If Oeth and Anoeth were seaborne like Damhochtor, perhaps their fleet, or one that opposed it, was the ‘Fleet of Llawr [“Solitary One”] son of Eiryf [“Number”]’ in the Triad of ‘The Three Roving Fleets of the Island of Britain’.378 Llawr is a common name, however, so Llawr mab Eiryf cannot be equated with the Llawr of I.28 with any confidence.379 The alleged graves in Gwanas cannot be identified, but yg guarthaw implies an elevated location. One possibility is the high ground east of Gwanas-fawr, but there are no notable antiquities or traditions there.380 A more promising possibility is the summit to the north, between Gwanas-fawr and Brithdir, marked as Y Foel on the O.S. six-inch map. On it is a ‘turf-covered mound, approx. 3.5m diameter’ which is ‘possibly a robbed out Bronze Age burial cairn’ (SH 77562 17803) and an adjacent prehistoric enclosure (SH 77553 17805).381 The englynion’s despoiled graves could be here. This area has legendary associations, since Caerynwch Hall (SH 7643 1767, See Sims-Williams, ‘A Variant Version of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’. TYP4 no. 52 and p. 148; Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 125–26, and nn.; M 99. 374 LPBT no. 5.41 and pp. 170 and 194–95. 375 EGOW s.v.; GMW 4; Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y’, p. 5 n. 18; Guy, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, p. 87. 376 Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 69–70. In his Vita, St Tatheus crosses from Ireland to Gwent with (or in) a band of eight (VSB 272 and 286). 377 Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 69; LPBT no. 18.30–32. 378 TYP4 no. 15. Cf. Llawr eil Erw in Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, line 217. 379 For Llawr (‘lone warrior, champion’) see references in CLlH 92 and WCD 405–6 (on the etymology see Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, p. 209). The patronymic of Llawr mab Eiryf plays on the meaning of the name (TYP4 410). Cf. EBSG 80. 380 Coflein s. Gwanas lists a Roman marching camp at SH 7711 1645 and an Iron Age/Roman-­ period circular enclosure 300m to its east (SH 77509 16300), but neither is high up. The same applies to Coflein’s nearby cup-marked stone (SH 7704 1625), illustrated in EBSG 81. 381 Coflein, s. Brithdir and Llanfachreth, Y Foel, Cairn, and Y Foel, Enclosure I (with photographs). 372 373

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now restyled ‘Plas Hen’, but called Caerunwch in 1709 and 1780) probably preserves the ancient name of Y Foel or some earthwork nearby, for Robert Prys Morris (d. 1890) refers to Y Foel as ‘Moel Caer Ynwch, neu Moel Esgidion’, mentioning a tyddyn called ‘Ty’n y Gaer’ in the vicinity.382 Already in 1183 another Kairunhoh/ Kair runhoh (‘Unhwch’s fort’) is recorded some twenty miles to the north east, in the bounds of Llechwedd-figyn (SH 918449) in Llanfor, probably at Llangwm, Den. (SH 925451) on the Merioneth/Denbighshire boundary.383 This suggests that Unhwch was a legendary personage in Merionydd whose name was attached to caerau. Ifor Williams etymologises his name as the numeral un + hwch, ‘lone boar’, a heroic name implying a boar fighting on its own and therefore all the fiercer – like a ‘rogue elephant’, he says.384 In the Welsh Laws, starting with Peniarth 30 (s. xiii med.), Maeldaf Hynaf, the son of Unhwch Unarchen, is the man who ensured that Maelgwn (d. 547) and Gwynedd gained precedence in Wales, and in most manuscripts, including Peniarth 30, Maeldaf ab Unhwch is said to be lord of Pennardd (near Clynnog) in Arfon.385 This opinion was disputed in the lost, early-fourteenth-century Llanforda manuscript, whose Merioneth scribe, Dafydd Ysgrifennydd, rejected the Arfon men’s false tradition (kam kyvarwydyt) and claimed that the Maeldaf ab Unhwch Unarchen in question was not the lord of Pennardd, who lived later, but rather the grandson of Espwys ab Espwch, ‘who came from Spain together with Uthr [Bendragon] and Emrys [Wledig] … and first occupied Moel Escydyavn’ (this puts Maeldaf in the time of Arthur) – and moreover that Dafydd Ysgrifennydd’s own patron, Llywelyn ap Tudur, was a descendant of their line.386 Since Unhwch’s epithet unarchen means ‘one shoe’ and Moel Esgidion would seem to contain the word esgid ‘shoe’,387 some onomastic story surely lies behind this. In addition, Siôn Dafydd Rhys c. 1597 recorded that a giant called Yscydion or Iscydion lived in Moel Yscydion, subject to Idris Gawr of Cadair Idris. According to Grooms, ‘no antiquity on [Y Foel] associates any tradition with his name, though the natural Robert Prys Morris, Cantref Meirionydd: Ei Chwedlau, ei Hynafiaethau, a’i Hanes (Dolgellau, 1890), p. 69; Inv. Mer. 9–10. For the 1709 spelling see Lhwyd Letters: Maurice Jones to Lhwyd, 24 Jan. 1709. HEF 58–59 makes too much of the 1592 form Tyddyn Cay yr ynnwch in AMR s. *ynwch*. Aneurin Owen referred in 1841 to ‘Caerynwch … Moel Esgidion is the hill at the back of it’ (AL II 51 n. f). The 1780 form is noted in CLlH 112. CR 424 (cf. 434) has Caer Ynhwch, and the y is the norm throughout the nineteenth century. Caerunwch was the seat of the Vaughan family: History of Merioneth, II, ed. Smith and Smith, pp. 618, 630 and 656. 383 Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, no. 5 and p. 113; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 483. Cf. Inv. Den. 128; Archwilio, s. Clwyd Powys, Llangwm, Castell Placename. 384 CLlH 112 (cf. PT 119). 385 The passage is edited and translated by Owen, ‘Royal Propaganda’, pp. 251–52, who on pp. 234– 35 suggests a date after 1216; so, similarly, R. Geraint Gruffydd, ‘Why Cors Fochno?’, THSC, new ser. 2 (1996), 5–19 (p. 14), and Guy, ‘Rheinwg’, p. 104. Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘A Variant Version of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’. 386 Jenkins, ‘Llawysgrif Goll Llanforda’, pp. 103–4; Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, I, charts [10] and [28]; idem, ‘Maelda Hynaf and Ednywain ap Bradwen’; PP1 §25(1) and 132; Gruffydd Aled Williams, ‘The Literary Tradition to c. 1560’, in History of Merioneth, II, ed. Smith and Smith, pp. 507–628 (pp. 521–22). Moel esgityaỽn is also specified in Peniarth 32 (c. 1404), p. 184, translated in WCD 348. 387 Escydyavn is hardly the plural (normally esgidiau), and in any case -ion would be expected in MW, although the occasional hypercorrect spelling cannot be ruled out; cf. LHEB 299 n. 1, on manachlawc. 382

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slope of the hill with its tower-like shape and dominating view over the surrounding landscape suggests otherwise’.388 There are no certain allusions to Maelgwn, Maeldaf Unhwch, Caerunwch, and Moel Esgidion in I.28–30. Yet, did the allusion in I.27 to Maelgwn Gwynedd’s wars put the compiler in mind of Maelgwn’s contemporary Maeldaf Unhwch of Caerunwch near Gwanas and lead him to include I.28–30 next? I.31 Llwch on a meandering river I.31

I.31

Bet Llvch Llaueghin ar certenhin awon

389

pen Saeson suyt Erbin ny bitei drimis heb drin.

The grave of Llwch knave’s-hand (is) on a meandering river (or on Cerddennin river), head of the Saxons of Erbin’s land; he would not be three months without battle.

Llwch is otherwise unknown. While the name Llwch occurs elsewhere in Welsh literature, and is presumably Brittonic,390 this Llwch is a leader of the Saeson (‘Saxons, English’) and thus appears to be a traitor, as his epithet ‘knave’s hand’ tends to confirm.391 Significantly for this hypothesis, the only other bearer of the epithet is Llofan Llaw Engyn (MSS ygyn, y gyn) in III.6, better known as Llofan Llaw Ddifo, the treacherous slayer of Urien Rheged. ‘Erbin’s land’ is potentially ambiguous, as the Erbin in question could be Erbin ap Custennin, who is associated with Devon and Cornwall, or Erbin ab Aergol Lawhir of Dyfed, who is probably the Erbin already mentioned in I.27.392 The latter identification is more likely, as the only other reference to swydd Erbin, by Dafydd Benfras in the 1220s, clearly relates to Llywelyn ab Iorwerth’s assaults on the lands of William Marshall, earl of Pembroke.393

Grooms, Giants, pp. 239 and 298–301. MS anon or possibly anon. The n (or u?) is deleted by underdotting. The superscript letter seems to be w but is usually read as v, as in the alteration in I.35a. Possibly the scribe first tried to change n to ỽ (= v) and then wrote v to be clearer. 390 Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 162 and n. 170. A less likely modernisation here and in LlDC no. 31.26 is Lluch, which is not an attested name. 391 Engyn < *iang-yn was originally ‘youth’, but developed the meaning ‘knave’, with the same semantic development as English knave; see Williams, ‘Gwreang’, pp. 17–18, and GPC s.v. where the example from Dafydd ap Gwilym means ‘lad’, but that from Lewys Morgannwg, referring to Death, means ‘rogue’ or similar (Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, I, ed. A. Cynfael Lake (Aberystwyth, 2004), no. 39.39). The internal rhyme with certenhin casts doubt on whether engyn ‘knave’ is the second element of the epithet, as in III.6 (after emendation) where it rhymes with -yn, rather than some word *e(n)gin or *y(n)gin; but there may be an example of occasional proest here: cf. Loth, Métrique galloise, II, 307–9; Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, p. 255; EWSP 335. On i and y rhyming before nasals see EWSP 333, and for -n (as in trīn) rhyming with -nn, as presumably in engyn, see EWSP 336. 392 See above. 393 CBT VI 25.18 and pp. 402 and 411 (where it is noted that swydd tends to refer to areas on the English border); HW II 658–60. 388 389

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Cerddennin ‘meandering’ is not an attested river-name, so it is probably best to treat it as an adjective applying to afon.394 If so, the stanza alludes to a river without naming it – ‘on (the banks of) a meandering river’395 – just as I.10/III.9 locates Penda’s grave with the phrase in ergrid avon ‘in the horror of a river’ without actually naming the river Winwæd. It may be significant that Llwch and Penda were both enemies on the English side. I.32–33 Gwrien, Llwyddawg son of Lliwelydd, and Ffyrnfael ab Hywlydd on (Hir) fynydd (Long Mountain, Mtg.?) I.32

I.32

E beteu yn Hir Vynyt.

The graves on Hirfynydd,

yn llvyr y guyr lluossit.

crowds know them well:

bet Gvryen gvrhyd enguavc.

the grave of Gwrien, famous for valour,

a Llvytauc uab Lliwelit.

and Llwyddawg son of Lliwelydd.

I.33

I.33

Pieu yr bet yn y mynyt

Whose is the grave in the mountain,

a lyviasei luossit.

who had led armies?

bet Fyrnuael Hael ab Hyvlyt.

The grave of Ffyrnfael the Generous son of Hywlydd.

These two stanzas seem to go together, sharing the same rhyme (including the word llosydd)396 and possibly the same location (see below). Gwrien is unidentifiable, unless the same as the northern(?) hero Gwrien of I.2–3. The spelling Llvytauc is ambiguous, as it could be either llwyddog ‘prosperous’ (two syllables) or lluyddog ‘having an army’ (three syllables), but the former is supported by the metre.397 Llwyddawg ap Lliwelydd was probably a northern figure originally, since Lliwelydd is presumably an eponym extracted from Caer Liwelydd (OW Cair Ligualid), the Welsh name of Carlisle, from Luguvalium.398 In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Carlisle (Kaerleil) is named after Leil, son of Brutus Viride Scutum.399 In the Cf. BBCSG 124 n. 1. EANC 203 takes it as a river-name, and on pp. 204 and 213–14 compares the poetic inversion in ar Cleveint awon and in Hirgweun le (I.58–59 below) and in y ar Dardennin auon in the Cyfoesi (R 582.5). Bollard and Griffiths, EBSG 82, suggest that Certenhin may be a corruption of the Cyfoesi river-name (which is the Tryweunydd, Crn., according to EANC 213). 395 Cf. GPC ar1, sense (g): ‘on the bank of, on, over (river, &c.)’. 396 For the sentiment cf. CLlH III.8b Penn Uryen llary llywyei llu ‘The head of generous Urien, he used to lead an army’. 397 See GPC s.vv. Thomas Jones’s ‘Llwydawg’ (similarly EP 91 < llwyd ‘grey’) is unlikely, as the Black Book t usually corresponds to dd. 398 Tal. 58–59; Kenneth Jackson, ‘On Some Romano-British Place-Names’, Journal of Roman Studies, 38 (1948), 54–58 (p. 57); LHEB 442; PNRB 402; G. 96; LPBT 496. Lliwelydd has a stereotyped i for y. Conceivably it could be from a personal name *Luguvalios. 399 HRB II.9 §28. 394

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Brutiau these names are replaced by Caer Lleon and Lleon,400 but the name is given correctly in the twelfth-century genealogy of Gruffudd ap Cynan: Lliwelyt m. Brutus ysgwyt ir.401 Llwyddawg is a rare name, and the corresponding adjective llwyddawg ‘prosperous’ is also quite unusual.402 The only certain occurrence of the adjective in a medieval manuscript seems to occur in an apparently cynical line in the gnomic poem Gossymdeith Llefoet Wyneb Clawr: chwannaỽc vyd llen llwydawc llaỽ diuo.403 students will be greedy; the hand of destruction (will be) prosperous.

A possible reminiscence of this gnome may occur in the A-text of the Gododdin, mynawc lluydawc llaw chwerw ‘a noble, prosperous [or army-leading], cruel hand’ (according to Ifor Williams a corruption of the B-text’s du leidat lu hero ‘black slayer of a brigand host’).404 If llwydawc llaw diuo was a well-known proverbial phrase, it may explain why I.32 about Llwyddawg follows I.31, the englyn on Llwch Llawengyn, whose epithet in turn recalls that of Llofan Llaw Engyn (III.6), better known as Llofan Llaw Ddifo (III.7–8): the alternative epithet to llaw engyn in I.31 may have reminded the poet or compiler first of the proverb llwydawc llaw diuo and then of the character Llvytauc uab Lliwelit.405 Ffyrnfael is not an uncommon name and, as it is not found elsewhere with the patronymic Hywlydd, he cannot be identified. Hael may have been his regular epithet, or it may be an ad hoc adjective, for the sake of cynghanedd. Ffyrnfael/Ffernfael

BD 216; Roberts, ‘Treatment of Personal Names’, p. 282; WCD 400. HGK ccxvi, 2, and 45; EWGT 36 and 95–96 (ABT §1a, MS D (Llanstephan 28) by Gutun Owain, on which see MWG 162–63, 171, and 318–19). The extant Latin text lacks the passage, owing to a copying error (Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, pp. 14, 52, and 128). 402 GPC s.v. llwyddog. The citation from NLW 7008E, p. 19, [g]wallawg ap llawenawg llwyddawg, is from a genealogical compilation by John Griffith of Caecyriog, Rhiwabon, Den. (d. 1698), on which see MWG 199 and passim. It is a corruption of Gwallawg ap Lleenawg, called Wllawc lvyddawc c. 1510 in Peniarth 127, where there is a confusion with Elen Luyddawg, ‘Elen of the Hosts’ (A. Wade-Evans, ‘Bonedd y Saint, G’, RC, 50 (1933), 368–78 (p. 373); EWGT 62 (ByS §48)). The latter is Helen llwydavc in Cardiff, MS 1.363 (s. xiv1), 75r. The only other possible Llwyddawg/Lluyddawg I have come across is Llỽydaỽc Gouynnyat (‘the hewer’ or ‘the importunate’), one of the boars in Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 1137, 1140, 1151, and 1162 (WM 502–3). This is modernised as Llwydawg in M 133–34, however, and is equated with a place-name Carn Pen Rhiw Llwydog in DP IV 408 (cf. Hunter, ‘Dead Pigs’, p. 30). In their notes Bromwich and Evans do not distinguish between the three possible modernisations of the Red Book spelling. 403 R 1055.28. Line 20 in the two editions by Nicolas Jacobs: ‘“Gossymdeith Llefoet Wynebclawr”: Canu Gwirebol o Lyfr Coch Hergest’, LlC, 27 (2004), 1–29 (pp. 10, 14, and 19), and Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, pp. 22 and 62 (with emendations and a quite different interpretation). With chwannaỽc vyd llen compare ibid., pp. 9 and 44, on bit uab llen yn chỽannaỽc (R 1030.13–14; EWGP 33 no. VII.7b), translated as ‘the student is greedy’ by Jackson, Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry, p. 69. For llên ‘scholars’ see GPC s.v. Without emendation the line is rather long, but cf. EWSP 277. With llwydawc llaw diuo compare yr anwir fydd yn llwyddog ‘the wicked will be prosperous’ (cited in GPC s.v. llwyddog). 404 CA lines 925 and 936, with note on p. 292. 405 On the grouping of stanzas see further above, pp. 51 and 55, and below, p. 281 and 296, on III.1 and 5. 400 401

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is a particularly southern name,406 notable kings of the name being Ffernfael ab Ithel of Glywysing, Ffernfael ap Tewdwr of Buellt, and Ffernfael ap Meurig of Gwent, also Farinmail, a British king slain at Dyrham near Bath in 577 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.407 A hero Ffernfael was known in north Wales, however, for Gruffudd ap Maredudd, in a poem to Tudur ap Goronwy (d. c. 1367), alludes to tevlu ffyrnvael, llaỽrud hael diwael ‘the warband of Ffyrnfael, fine, generous warrior’.408 By contrast, Hywlydd (‘most kind’) is an uncommon name,409 so he should probably be identified with Hywlydd Hir, whose valour is mentioned c. 1173–75 in a poem to Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd by Gwilym Rhyfel, who was probably from Powys.410 Gwilym ascribes to Dafydd the gwrhyd (‘tallness’ or ‘valour’) not only of Benlli Gawr (of Foel Fenlli, a hillfort in the north of Powys), but also the gwrhyd of Hywlydd Hir (‘the tall’), and immediately after the latter reference he calls Dafydd Dygen ut ‘chieftain of Dygen’.411 Dygen is an old name for an area further south in Powys around the Breiddin hillfort (SJ 2914).412 This is of great help in seeking to identify the mountain (mynyt) where Ffyrnfael Hael ab Hywlydd was buried. The Series III variant version of I.33 has Y bedd yn y gorvynydd ‘The grave in the uplands’ (III.1) instead of Pieu yr bet yn y mynyt, possibly having added gor- to achieve a seventh syllable in place of the Pieu’r formula, which is not used at all in Series III.413 Or possibly gorvynydd originated in a misreading of hir vynyt, the location in I.32 (the letters h and g, both finishing with descenders, were not dissimilar in late medieval and later hands, and might be confused, especially if the ascender of h were abraded).414 Be this as it may, since I.32 and 33 seem to form a pair, it is reasonable to presume that the topographical reference to ‘hir vynyt’ in the I.32 is taken up again with the reference to ‘y mynyt’ or ‘y gorfynydd’ in I.33/III.1. Quite possibly hir vynyt in I.32 and y mynyt in I.33 both go back to exemplars reading *(h)ir minid in Old Welsh orthography; compare the Book of Llandaf, where Villa hirpant

I owe this point to a conversation with Peter Bartrum. Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, pp. 138–39, and idem, Britain and Early Christian Europe, essay II, 33–34 and addendum. Contrary to the etymology suggested there, EP 330 has ffyrn- as in ffyrnig ‘furious’ + mael ‘prince’. Ffyrnig is from Latin fornic- (EL 39); an alternative would be ffwrn ‘oven, furnace, cauldron, hearth’ < Latin furnus (EL 39). 408 R 1203.24–5; Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 2.23–24. Tudur’s family held extensive properties in Anglesey, Arllechwedd, Carmarthenshire, and Ceredigion (Roberts, Aspects of Welsh History, pp. 182–84, 189–90, and 245), but the founder of the line, Ednyfed Fychan (d. 1246), had come from a cenedl of Rhos and Rhufoniog on the other side of the Conwy (ibid., pp. 181–82 and 244, and Bywgraffiadur s.n.; cf. MWG 309). There is no trace, however, of a Ffyrnfael in Ednyfed’s pedigrees (EWGT 103 and 116; Bartrum, ‘Hen Lwythau’, p. 211, table XII). 409 Hylwydd (‘most successful’) is distinct, e.g. Englynion y Clyweit, §50, CC 325. 410 On Gwilym Rhyfel see J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘Barddoniaeth Gwilym Rhyfel’, YB, 10 (1977), 106–23, and CBT II 497. 411 CBT II 28.25 and 37–39. Johnston, review of Gwaith Llywelyn Fardd I, ed. Kathleen Ann Bramley et al., CBT II 157, favours ‘tallness’. On Benlli and Foel Fenlli see on I.73 below. 412 EANC 103; DP IV 667; CBT I 13 n. 18; EWSP 614. 413 Pieu is also absent from the White Book/Red Book version of I.16; see EWSP 366. 414 See e.g. rhag in HEW pl. 27 (a late-sixteenth-century Secretary hand). Cf. fifteenth-century h and g in Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, pls 10(i), 11(ii), 14(i), etc. Unfortunately we do not know the date of the exemplar of S, except that it was probably fourteenth century or later in view of the loanword anap ‘mishap’ in III.17; see above, p. 15. 406 407

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is ambiguously ‘the township of the valley’ (as in the Latin text, uillam uallis), with the Old Welsh definite article, or ‘Long Valley township’.415 The problem is now which ‘hir vynyt’ is meant. Thomas Jones says, ‘this placename is found near Onllwyn in the Neath area, in the parish of Cerrigydrudion in Denbighshire, and in Montgomeryshire’416 – and there are others. Moses Williams, however, identified it with the impressive Montgomeryshire ‘Long Mountain’ (east of Welshpool) in his copy of Series I: ‘Long Mountain .i. Cefn digoll’ (Llanstephan 18, p. 11), and there is much to be said for this identification, which was followed by Lewis Morris in his index to Englynion y Beddau in BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46: ‘Long Mountain. in Salop. or Cefndigoll’. Firstly, Long Mountain is by far the best known ‘long mountain’, being frequently mentioned in literature, as Cefn Digoll (‘unbroken ridge’), Mynydd Digoll, Digoll Fynydd (or Bre), or Hirfryn,417 possibly also being called Hir Fynydd (‘long mountain’) by the local sixteenth-century poet Siôn Ceri, and earlier by Madog Dwygraig.418 Secondly, it faces Dygen (Breiddin), named alongside Hywlydd Hir by Gwilym Rhyfel (see above). Thirdly, it is in Montgomeryshire, like Pennant Twrch in the following I.34. Fourthly, its position on the border (just on the English side of Offa’s Dyke) makes it a suitable location for heroic exploits, both in the Middle Ages419 and in the Dark Ages, for the Cadwallon englynion and Triad 69 refer to Cadwallon’s camp ‘on the summit of Digoll Mountain’ (yg gwarthaf digoll uynyd) and to his ‘battle of Digoll’ there against Edwin, when the Severn was polluted by the number of horses passing through it.420 The supposed grave of Ffyrnfael could be the barrow within the hillfort of Caer Digoll (Beacon Ring), opened in the eighteenth century (SJ 2647 0582).421 Gwrien LL Charter 168; Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, p. 171 and n. 99. An example in saga englynion of a preserved Old Welsh article (llam yr bỽch) is discussed in CLlH 93 and EWSP 532. 416 BBCSG 111 (I omit the comma printed after Cerrigydrudion). Similarly EBSG 82. 417 For Digoll see DP IV 666–68; BR 47; EWGP 58; TYP4 192–93; G. 347 s.v. Digoll; Morgan, Study of Montgomeryshire Place-Names, pp. 127–28; Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. 290; and references in Gwaith Siôn Ceri, ed. Lake, p. 187. For Hirvryn(n)/Hirfryn see DP IV 667–68; CBT II 14.114 and III 17.23; Gruffydd Aled Williams, ‘Dau Gyfeiriad yn Hirlas Owain’, B., 26 (1974–76), 34–36; idem, review of Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. 114. 418 Gwaith Siôn Ceri, ed. Lake, no. 20.34 and n.; Gwaith Madog Dwygraig, ed. Edwards, no. 9.37 and n. According to Morgan, Study of Montgomeryshire Place-Names, p. 128, the ‘geographical context’ favours the Long Mynd, Shropshire for Siôn Ceri’s Hir Fynydd. This is not certain; the other places mentioned are between the Long Mountain and the Long Mynd, so either is possible. Long Mynd was Longameneda in the twelfth century (DEPN s. Longmynd). 419 Gruffydd Aled Williams, ‘Welsh Raiding in the Twelfth-Century Shropshire/Cheshire March’, with map, p. 98. Cf. Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, p. 48 n. 120. On the course of the Dyke see Noble, Offa’s Dyke Reviewed, map 18; Keith Ray and Ian Bapty, Offa’s Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2016), pp. 40–41, 126, 130–33, 145, 149–50, 158, 176, 277–78, and 294. 420 EWSP 127–28, 446, and 495; TYP4 192–94; WCD 82. On Triad 69 see Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, p. 76. 421 Inv. Mtg. 61; Richard Hankinson, Beacon Ring Hillfort: Archaeological Investigation, unpublished Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust Report 1547 (2018); Coflein, s. Beacon Ring, Caer Digoll, Barrow. (The hillfort is now obscured by trees; cf. William J. Britnell, ‘“The Sky above the Trees”: The Beacon Ring Memorial Plantation, Montgomeryshire’, MC, 107 (2019), 237– 42.) For literary references to Caer Digoll see previous note. A smaller camp at Black Bank, Cletterwood, on the summit of a ‘spur of the Long Mountain’ (SJ 264076) is described at Inv. Mtg. 27. 415

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and Llwyddawg were perhaps associated with the nearby pair of round barrows at Trelystan (SJ 2774 0700), and their story was perhaps cultivated at the early medieval Christian community whose cemetery lies on the eastern side the larger barrow.422 These barrows were close beside the ridgeway that runs along the Long Mountain. The presence of this route may explain the phrase ‘crowds know them well’ (I.32b). No identifications can be certain, however, as many barrows follow the course of this ridgeway.423 There is another pair of possible barrows at Church House, Trelystan (SJ 2605 0491 and 2613 0492).424 I.34 Eitivlch (Eiddunwlch?) the Tall, son of Arthan, at Pennant Twrch, Mtg. I.34 Pieu ir bet hun bet Eitivlch Hir. ig gurthtir Pennant Turch. mab Arthan gywlauan gyuulch.

I.34 Whose is this grave? The grave of Eiddunwlch(?) the Tall in the upland of Pennant Twrch, son of Arthan, perfect in battle.

The name Eitivlch is puzzling. Lloyd-Jones modernises it as Eiddifwlch without explanation, while Thomas Jones has Eiddïwlch.425 Wlch occurs as a personal name in Branwen, and is compared by Ifor Williams with cyfwlch ‘perfect’.426 The latter occurs as a personal name in an Old Welsh manumission from Llandeilo, which refers to [Cim]ulch and Arthan filius Cimulch.427 If one allows for confusion of minims, and possibly a lost n-suspension as well, our name could be *Eitu(n)ulch (i.e. *Eiddunwlch), a compound of Eiddun- ‘desirable, eager’ and wlch ‘perfect’.428 The adjective cyuulch (cyf-wlch) in line c echoes the second element in the hero’s name, and presumably refers to him rather than his father Arthan. The latter is a common name, so Arthan cannot be identified.429 Inv. Mtg. 169; William Britnell, ‘The Excavation of Two Round Barrows at Trelystan, Powys’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 48 (1982), 133–201 (Barrow I, pl. 14, is also illustrated in The Historical Atlas of Montgomeryshire, ed. Jenkins, p. 25); Christopher J. Arnold, The Archaeology of Montgomeryshire (Welshpool, 1990), pp. 37–40. Late sources claim that Elystan Glodrydd was buried at Trelystan after a ‘civil brawl’ at Cefn Digoll: C. A. Ralegh Radford and W. J. Hemp, ‘The Cross-Slab at Llanrhaiadr-ym-Mochnant’, AC, 106 (1957), 109–16 (pp. 113– 14). 423 Alex Gibson, ‘Earlier Prehistoric Funerary and Ritual Sites in the Upper Severn Valley’, MC, 90 (2002), 1–40 (pp. 24–25). On the ridgeway (formerly thought to be a Roman road) see Noble, Offa’s Dyke Reviewed, pp. 82–83 and map 18, and Morgan, Study of Montgomeryshire PlaceNames, p. 128. 424 Coflein, s. Trelystan Church House, Barrow I–II. 425 G. 454; BBCSG 125. Bwlch is a word, but eiddi- lacks parallels. EP 311 suggests a compound of Eiddef (cf. I.46–47 below) and -wlch or bwlch. Eiddef has the wrong vowel, however. 426 PKM 39 and 191. Cf. CIB 165 and 195, on Llechylched. 427 LL xlvi (‘Chad’ 5). 428 For eiddun in names see CIB 35 n. 75. 429 Loth’s attempt to connect the ‘Chad’ 5 Arthan with our stanza (J. Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, second edition (Paris, 1913), p. 280 n. 5, cited in G. 43) seems fantastical. Is one to suppose that Cimulch named his son Arthan in memory of the legendary father of Eitivlch? 422

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The place-name Pennant and the river-name Twrch are both frequent in Wales, but they only seem to coincide at Pennant Twrch, Garthbeibio, on the Twrch in Montgomeryshire (SH 9615).430 The now disappointing Bronze Age cairn at SH 9665 1541, in a once prominent position when seen from the south, is presumably the supposed site of the grave.431 It is only about twenty miles to the west of the Long Mountain. This proximity may explain why I.34 follows I.32–33. In addition, the epithet of I.33’s Hywlydd – Hir according to Gwilym Rhyfel – perhaps put the poet or compiler in mind of another hero with the same epithet. Pennant Twrch lay between two components of Ystrad Marchell’s Talerddig grange. To its south-west was Dôl-y-maen in Garthbeibio (SH 942137), together with an unidentified Moel Mynach.432 To its east was Coetllin in Llangadfan (around ‘Llyn Coethlyn’, SJ 01219 14114), granted to Ystrad Marchell by Gwenwynwyn of Powys at some date between 1197 and 1216.433 It is unclear how far Coetllin extended westwards towards Pennant Twrch since the western boundary marks in Gwenwynwyn’s charter are unidentified, but other evidence suggests that it included Mynydd y Gadfa (SH 98793 14663), two miles from Pennant Twrch.434 The monks of Ystrad Marchell may therefore have taken an interest in Pennant Twrch, even if they did not own it. In fact, it may have lain within, or at least on the edge of, the territory of their neighbours, the Knights Hospitallers of Llanwddyn (SJ 0219).435 Granting pasturage in Mochnant and Llanwddyn to Ystrad Marchell in 1205, Gwenwynwyn seems to have anticipated conflict, specifying that ‘no other religious in that province shall have pastures, lands or possessions there, except for the Hospitallers who already have lands there’.436

DP IV 657, where mention is also made of a ‘Pennant or Penneint’, ‘on or near’ the Carmarthenshire Twrch (cf. DP II 387 and IV 395; Jones, ‘“Tir Telych”’, p. 95). This is probably irrelevant, as the medieval form was Penneynt; on this and its position in relation to the Twrch see AMR s.n. Pennaint; Rees, South Wales, NW and SW sheets; Richards, ‘Carmarthenshire Possessions of Talyllychau’, pp. 111 and 116–17; John Langton, ‘Land and People in Late Sixteenth-Century Glyn Cothi and Pennant Forests’, WHR, 28 (2016), 55–86 (pp. 55 n. 1 and 60 n. 31, with map on p. 61); Ben Guy, ‘Brut Ieuan Brechfa: A Welsh Poet Writes the Early Middle Ages’, in The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March, ed. Guy et al., pp. 375–419 (p. 382 and n. 31). Other rivers called Twrch are noted in EANC 90. 431 As noted in EBSG 82. See Coflein and Archwilio s. Pennant Twrch Cairn (with photograph). 432 Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 60 (no. 159), 91, and 95. 433 Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 549. Not mapped by Williams, who thought its location lost (p. 60), but included by E. R. Morris in his maps in ‘Monasteries, Religious Houses and their Properties’, MC, 70 (1982), 134–36, and in The Historical Atlas of Montgomeryshire, ed. Jenkins, p. 44. 434 Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, pp. 123–24, 185, no. 49, and Map III; Davies, ‘Property’, pp. 38–39 and 52. 435 The Hospitallers’ territory seems to reach Pennant Twrch in E. R. Morris’s maps and in Davies’s Map 4, ‘Property’, p. 39. No explanation is given. On the Hospitallers of Llanwddyn see Rees, History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, pp. 66, 70, 92, and 128, and R. J. Silvester, ‘The Llanwddyn Hospitium’, MC, 85 (1997), 63–76, with further references. 436 Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 569; Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, no. 41 and pp. 122–23. 430

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

I.35 Lleu Llawgyffes under the sea, ?off Arfon, Crn. I.35

I.35

Bet Llev437 Llaugyfes y dan achles mor yn y bu y gywnes. gur oet hvnnv

440

guir y neb ny rotes.

The grave of Lleu Llawgyffes under cover438 of the sea, where his kinsman439 was, that was a man who did not give away right(s) to anyone.

This stanza is either a variant of III.10 or, more likely, the other half of a pair with it.441 Lleu is identical in name with the pan-Celtic god, Gaulish Lugus, Irish Lugh.442 In early Welsh stories alluded to in the poetry he is euhemerised into a magician,443 and in the Four Branches, where his life (but not his death) is recounted at length, he is euhemerised still further, and suffers most of the disadvantages of a mortal hero. There he is generally given the epithet llawgyffes, ‘of the skilful hand’.444 Probably the hero is meant here, to judge by the heroic tone.445 Whereas the divinity Lugus was once widely worshipped, to judge by inscriptions and place-names,446 the hero Lleu moves in a very confined area. His enfances in the Four Branches are set in the region of Dinlle, Caer Aranrhod, and Caer Dathyl.447 The story then moves a little outside Arfon with his marriage to Blodeu(w)edd when he settles at Mur Castell, the Roman site of Tomen y Mur (SH 7038) in Ardudwy, the cantref to the south-east of Arfon.448 MS llenn. The nn is deleted by underdotting and v is written above. Cf. I.31a. MvM 55 n. 7 emends achles to aches but although aches ‘tide’ and môr ‘sea’ naturally occur together, this is insufficient reason for emending, especially in view of the reading of Series III. Achles is a lectio difficilior. 439 Thus MvM 55 and GPC s.v. cyfnes. Presumably following G. 211 mistakenly, Thomas Jones translates ‘disgrace’. Rhys, Englyn, p. 131, takes line c to refer to Gwydion, presumably identifying him as the cywnes of line b, but see EBSG 83. 440 Omit oet hvnnv for the sake of the metre, with Rhys, Englyn, pp. 130–31, and BBCSG 124 n. 2. The latter compares III.2c, where he omits oedd ef in gwr oedd ef gwir i neb ni roddi (BBCSG 134 n. 1). For the sentiment cf. I.59: ni rotei gwir y alon and MvM 55–56 and EBSG 83. 441 See discussion of III.10 below. 442 LHEB 441; J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘Lleudir’, B., 21 (1964–66), 224–46 (p. 224); Antonio Tovar, ‘The God Lugus in Spain’, B., 29 (1980–82), 591–99; Gaël Hily, Le dieu celtique Lugus (Rennes, 2012); Hutton, ‘Medieval Welsh Literature and Pre-Christian Deities’, pp. 68–75; Sims-­Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 7 and 162–64; cf. idem, ‘The Location of the Celts according to Hecataeus, Herodotus, and other Greek Writers’, ÉC, 42 (2016), 7–32 (pp. 11–12) – but I now think the Fonte Velha inscription irrelevant, following Eugenio R. Luján, ‘El sudoeste de la Península Ibérica’, Palaeohispanica, 20 (2020), 561–89 (p. 565 n. 17); cf. my review of Palaeohispanic Languages and Epigraphies, ed. Alejandro G. Sinner and Javier Velaza (Oxford, 2019), in JCL, 22 (2021), 155–94 (p. 160 n. 1). 443 See references below, on III.3. 444 PKM 275; GPC s.v. cyffes2. 445 The word gŵr does not prove this, as it is often used in poetry to refer to God in relative clauses. 446 For lugu- in place-names see ACPN 86. Whether it refers to the god is controversial; see ibid., p. 86 n. 41, also Jürgen Zeidler, review of Bernhard Maier, Die Religion der Kelten, in ZCP, 55 (2006), 208–30 (pp. 220–21). 447 On these places see below, on III.3. 448 PKM 285. 437 438

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His wife’s intrigue with Gronw of Penllyn, the cantref next to the west, leads to Lleu’s flight back to Nantlle(u) in Arfon.449 The story is thus a fine illustration of the geographical contraction of Welsh traditional lore, in this case to Arfon and its environs. The two place-names in north-west Wales containing the name Lleu are both in Arfon: Dinlleu and Nantlleu.450 Perhaps they were originally named from the god, not from the euhemerised hero.451 The transparent etymology of these names may have kept alive (or even revived) Lleu as a character in the stories of this area. Unfortunately, the Four Branches do not include Lleu’s death-tale, ending conventionally with him becoming lord of Gwynedd. There appears to be a reference to his death in Kadeir Kerrituen, in which Ceridwen refers to a number of characters, such as Afagddu ‘my son’, Gwydion, Dôn, and an otherwise unknown Minawg or Mynawg ap Lleu: Mynawc hoedyl Minawc ap Lleu. a weleis-i yma gynheu; diwed yn llechued Lleu; bu gwrd y hwrd yg kadeu.452

The third line is metrically unsatisfactory, since it is a syllable short and Lleu should not appear twice in rhyme,453 but taken as it stands it can be translated: Noble (mynawc) was the life of Mynawg ap Lleu, whom I saw here not long ago. Lleu’s end (was) on the (or a) mountain-side; bold was his thrust in battles.

W. J. Gruffydd emended llechuedd to [ar]llechued, the name of the cantref to the north-east of Arfon, Arllechwedd.454 Another possible emendation to gain a syllable, with the same meaning, would be y llechued, for the later poets often refer to Arllechwedd as ‘Y Llechwedd’.455 If Arllechwedd is meant and this reference is combined with the ‘dan achles mor’ of the grave-stanzas, Lleu’s grave would be somewhere off the coast between Bangor and Conway – interestingly there was supposed to be a submerged kingdom there.456 It seems more likely, however, in view of the rest of Lleu’s story that his grave was somewhere off the coast of Arfon. This is supported by the reference to ‘yn y bu y gywnes’, ‘where his kinsman (or next of kin) was’. The cyfnes here can hardly be other than Dylan Eil Ton, Lleu’s brother, who ‘took on

On Nantlle see below, commentary on III.16. MvM 340 n. 83, adds the names Lleuar Fawr and Lleuar Bach nearby (SH 4551 and 4451); but see PKM 283–84, also ELlSG 61 and HEALlE 193–94. 451 Cf. other places called Dinlleu elsewhere (see on III.3 below). But the second element of Dinlleu may be lleu ‘light’ rather than Lleu. It is difficult to share the suspicion of the forms Dinlleu and Nantlleu noted by Morgan and Owen, Dictionary, pp. 124 and 339, and HEALlE 141 and 206–7. (They revive the old etymology din + lle given by J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd), Enwau Lleoedd Sir Gaernarfon, p. 228.) On Nantlleu see p. 325 n. 300, on III.16 below. 452 LPBT no. 10.5–8 (MS readings). For the personal name Mynawc and a similar pun see CA lines 949–50 and note. GOSP 146 objects that the name is unknown, but see Cornish and Breton parallels in GPC s.v. mynog. 453 Hence LPBT 321 emends. 454 MvM 58; TYP4 413; cf. G. 41 (with a query). 455 GLM 373. Cf. PKM 260. On llechwedd in place-names see ELlSG 82. 456 See references on p. 127 n. 36, above, and pp. 206 n.542, and 297 n. 157 below. 449 450

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

the nature of the sea’ and disappeared into it; he was particularly associated with the coast of Arfon, near Clynnog and Dinas Dinlle.457 I.36–38 Beidawg Rudd ab Emyr Llydaw by the Machawy, Rad., Lluosgar in Ceri, Mtg., and Omni at Rhyd Brydw (Rad.?) I.36 Bet Beidauc Rut yn amgant Riv Lyvnav. bet458 Lluoscar yg Keri, ac yn Ryd Britu bet Omni.

I.36 The grave of Beidawg the Red in the region of Rhiw Lyfnaw. The grave of Lluosgar in Ceri, and at Rhyd Brydw the grave of Omni.

I.37

I.37

Pell y vysci ac argut.

Far away and hidden (is) his turmoil;

gueryd Machave ae cut.

the soil of Machawy covers them,

hirguynion459 bysset Beidauc Rut.

the long white fingers of Beidawg the Red.

I.38

I.38

Pell y vysci ac anau

Far away (is) his turmoil and wealth,

gueryd Machave arnau.

the soil of Machawy upon him:

Beidauc Rut yv hun460 ab Emer Llydau.

(this is) Beidawg (the Red) son of Emyr Llydaw (or son of an emperor of Brittany).

Rhiw Lyfnaw (or Lywnaw?) was presumably a slope somewhere along the Radnorshire river formerly called Machawy (cf. OW Drifrinn [sic] Machagui), but now ‘Bach Howey’, running south-west from Rhosgoch Common (SO 1948) past Pains­ castle to join the Wye near Erwood at SO 105428.461 It was the site of an English defeat in 1056, gweith Machawy, and a Welsh defeat in 1198, named in the Black PKM 77; M 63. See above on I.4. Aranrhod (EBSG 84) is a less likely candidate for the cywnes. Rhys, Englyn, p. 131, omits bet to reduce the syllable count. Cf. I.50b. 459 BBCSG 124 n. 3 omits the plural ending -ion to make seven syllables. (Plural adjectives were optional; see Nurmio, Grammatical Number, pp. 180–213.) Long fingers and white skin distinguished the nobility; cf. ‘A bysedd hwyrwedd, hirion, – a’i gwynnedd / Mal y bydd bunedd boneddigion’ (Gwaith Gronw Gyriog, Iorwerth ab y Cyriog, Mab Clochyddyn, Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch ac Ithel Ddu, ed. Ifans et al., no. 8.31–32). Cf. ‘bysedd hirveinion’ in Areithiau Pros, ed. Jones, p. 21. 460 For the sake of the metre, Rhys, Englyn, p. 131, omits Rut yv hun, while BBCSG 124 n. 4 omits yv hun, which is probably sufficient. 461 LL 255 and 411. See DP IV 648 and 662, Rees, South Wales, NE and SE sheets, and Coe, ‘Place-Names’, p. 216, who refers to the etymologies in Thomas, ‘wy’, p. 36, and Richards, ‘Some Welsh Place-Names Containing Elements which are Found in Continental Celtic’, p. 391. Thomas notes an Aber Bachawy(r) in Llanddeiniolen, Crn. (not in ELlSG, but see ‘Aber-bachawyr’ in Y Drysorfa, Llyfr IX, 100 (Ebrill 1839), 116). Llyfnaw would presumably be from Llyfn- (EANC 161) + -aw (EANC 215). There is no rhyme. Is Lyvnav an error for Lyvnavc, 457 458

194

Series I

Book of Carmarthen itself as Diffrin Machavuy.462 The Black Book also prophesies gueith Machavvi and cad Machavvy, which could be either of the above battles (if the prophecy is ex post facto) or neither of them.463 Such references suggest that the Machawy was an obvious site for heroic exploits – a natural route between England into Wales followed the rivers Arrow and Machawy – and the legend of Beidawg the Red may reflect that situation. His name is odd. Otherwise beid(i)og is the name for various plants of the genus Artemisia, differentiated by colours (goch, las, lwyd, rudd), beid(i)og rudd being variously defined as ‘wild pansy, Viola tricolor’, ‘lesser spearwort, Ranunculus flammula’, ‘amphibious bistort, Persicaria amphibia’, ‘trinity or harts-ease’, and ‘amphibious persicaria or knot-grass, peachwort, red-shanks (Polygonum amphibium)’.464 One wonders whether the existence of an eponymous Beidauc Rut was merely deduced from a tumulus or similar on the Machawy, one named from the beidog rudd growing upon it.465 Beidawg’s father is given the vague designation emer Llydau. This seems to have meant ‘emperor of Brittany’ to start with before becoming the patronymic of characters such as Alan Fergant, duke of Brittany (1084–1112), and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Hoelus son of Budicius (varr. Buducius, Budocius) rex Armoricanorum Britonum, who becomes Hywel ab Emyr Llydaw in Middle Welsh sources.466 Could there be some connection between Beidauc’s name and Buducius/Budocius (which also occurs as Biducus in Geoffrey’s Vita Merlini)?467 The fact that Beidawg has a Breton patronymic helps to explain the very peculiar name of Omni (I.36c). This is a well-attested Old Breton name in the Redon Cartulary, apparently a shortening or oblique case of Latin Omnis, perhaps a nickname derived from the liturgy, like Autem, Oremus, and Saludem; compare the popular Breton surname Omnès, as in the name of the Middle Breton poet Ivonet Omnes.468 rhyming with Beidauc (cf. a Cefn-llyfnog in Llansanffraid-ym-Mechain, Mtg. (SJ 19408 18376, see Coflein)), or even for Lvynavc (llwynog ‘fox’)? 462 DP IV 648 and 662–63; Afallennau in LlDC no. 16.4 (cf. ibid., pp. xxx–xxxi). 463 Hoianau in LlDC no. 17.138 and 175. For translations of both poems see Bollard, ‘Myrddin in Early Welsh Tradition’, pp. 22 and 28–29. 464 GPC. The Peniarth 204iii citation is now dated s. xv2. 465 Cf. Afon/Nant Beidog in Llangwyryfon, Ceredigion (PNC III 1226), also a farm called Cefnbeidog in Glyn Brochan, Llanidloes, Powys, postcode SY18 6PN. PNC notes that Beidauc is a personal name in our stanza, and compares a township Beydiok in Denbighshire in 1334 (Survey of the Honour of Denbigh 1334, ed. Vinogradoff and Morgan, p. 195 [also Bedoyok p. 203]), also the mountain Y Feidiog (SH 7732) in Trawsfynydd, Mer. (see HEF 122–24). EP 83 takes the name to be Beiddiog ‘bold’, but the spelling with d is against this. Cf. Russell, ‘Scribal In(consistency)’, pp. 148–50. 466 J. Lloyd-Jones, ‘emyr, ymer, ymher’, B., 11 (1941–44), 34–36; G. 474; Roberts, ‘The Treatment’, p. 284; WCD 249–50; TYP4 277 and 348; Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 75–76 and 86; Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, pp. 334–35. Cf. GPC s.v. emyr, emer, ymer; eDIL s.v. imper, impir. EP 320 connects Emyr with Gaulish Ambiorix (GPN 48–49; see on I.19 above). That is problematic. To explain the i-affection we would have to regard Ambio- not as a prefix but as a substantive (GPN 134), if following the doctrine of LHEB 581 (cf. SBCHP 268–76). See also Bromwich, ‘Pedwar Marchog ar Hugain’, pp. 129–30. 467 These variants are listed by Reeve and Wright, p. 287. 468 See CRedon I 57 (note by B. Tanguy), and II 104 (index by Tanguy). Tanguy’s headword is Omnis, but the name often occurs without the -s; see 52v, 63v, 66v, 67v, 80r, 80v, 83r, 94r, 100r, 100v, 112r, 112v, and 123r. Compare the responses ‘Omni tempore benedic Deum’ and ‘Ab omni

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Presumably there was some story about the exploits in Wales of the two Bretons, Beidawg Rudd and Omni, and their death there. Thomas Jones suggested that ‘Pell y vysci …’ marks these englynion as ‘not formal grave stanzas’ whose ‘source may well be a series of elegiac englynion in some lost story’.469 Omni’s grave is located at Ryd Britu (Rhyd Brydw), a ford name with the common structure rhyd + personal name.470 Brydw is a rare name in Welsh. Almost the only instance seems to be Brydw son (later great-grandson!) of Vortigern, commemorated on the Pillar of Eliseg: Britu, moreover, (was) the son of Guorthigirn, whom Germanus blessed and whom Severa bore to him, the daughter of Maximus the king who slew the king of the Romans.471

This story seems to be connected with the mid-Welsh kingdom of Gwerthrynion (Gwrtheyrnion) and with St Germanus’ church at St Harmon in northern Radnorshire (SN 9872).472 Supposing Brydw’s ford was somewhere near St Harmon, Omni’s grave lay about twenty miles north-west of that of Beidawg Rudd in the south of the county. The third grave in these stanzas is that of Lluosgar in Ceri (I.36b). Lluosgar (‘having a large retinue’ or ‘loved by many’) is otherwise unknown, but Ceri is presumably the well-known Montgomeryshire commote and lordship (anglice Kerry) just north of Radnorshire, close to Gwerthrynion.473 If so, all three graves in these stanzas were in mid-Wales, and in an area of interest to the Cistercians of Cwm-hir.474 I.39 Gyrthmwl, where the Lliw flows into the Llychwr, Gla. I.39

I.39

Bet unpen o Pridein

475

yn lleutir Guynnassed. The grave of a chieftain from Pictland in the

malo/tentatione/cogitatione mala (etc.), libera nos, Domine’ (Migne, Patrologia Latina, 78, col. 835, and 111, col. 523). For Ivonet Omnes see HPB 3 n. 1. Possible examples of such names in Wales are Accipe (LL 203, differently explained in Sims-Williams, ‘Emergence’, p. 55) and Nobis/Nouis, counted as Latin by Cane, ‘Personal Names of Men’, p. 182 (cf. Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, p. 169 n. 93). 469 BBCSG 104. 470 BBCSG has ‘Ford of Bridw’, but EBSG 83 rightly prefers Brydw, following AMR. This is supported by spellings such as Brydw and Bredoe in EWGT 173; Guy, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, pp. 87–88. For the syntax see Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, pp. 231–34. 471 EWGT 3; WCD 67 and 74. On the name see CIB 87 n. 436, and 194, where Old Breton Britou is noted as possibly cognate. For another Brydw (son of Braint Hir) see MWG 389. 472 Williams, ‘Hen Chwedlau’, p. 52; Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 36–38, with map; Ben Guy, ‘The Earliest Welsh Genealogies: Textual Layering and the Phenomenon of “Pedigree Growth”’, Early Medieval Europe, 26.4 (2018), 462–85 (pp. 470–72). 473 G. 136; WATU 41 and 315; David Stephenson, ‘The Lordship of Ceri in the Thirteenth Century’, MC, 95 (2007), 23–31. On the name see EANC 132–33. As pointed out by E. Rowley Morris, ‘History of the Parish of Kerry’, MC, 23 (1889), 81–120 (p. 86), there are too many tumuli in the parish for Lluosgar’s grave to be identified. Cf. DP IV 696. 474 See above, p. 76. 475 To be emended to Priden/Pryden to rhyme with unpen: BBCSG 124 n. 5; TYP4 383. See above, p. 32. On Pryden cf. note to I.72 below.

196

Series I yn yd476 a Lliv yn Llychur.

open land of Gwynnasedd

ig Kelli Uriauael bet Gyrthmul.

where the Lliw flows into the Llychwr: in Celli Friafael (is) the grave of Gyrthmwl.

While Lliw is a common river-name,477 the only river Llychwr (Loughor) seems to be the one in Gower which flows past the Roman fort of Leucarum (SS 5697),478 where it is joined by a river Lliw.479 Presumably the ‘grove of Briafael’ was somewhere near this confluence and was named from someone with the not uncommon name Briafael < *Brigomaglos.480 Gyrthmwl, a chieftain from Priden (north Britain or Pictland),481 must surely be the only known hero of this name, Gyrthmwl Wledig (‘the Ruler’).482 He is attached to Arthur’s court in Breuddwyd Rhonabwy and in Triad 1 he is subservient to Arthur ‘in the North’ as ‘Chief of Elders’, alongside Arthur himself as ‘Chief of Princes’ and St Kentigern as ‘Chief of Bishops’.483 Triad 63 names him enigmatically as one of the three ‘Bull-Spectres of the Island of Britain’ and Triad 44 refers the horse that carried his three sons ‘up the hill of Maelwr in Ceredigion to avenge their father’ (see I.68 below). The last reference, obscure though it is, suggests that Gyrthmwl was supposed to have died in Wales, as the siting of his grave also implies. It is not clear whether ‘the open land of Gwynnasedd’ was an area in the north that included Pryden or was an area around Celli Friafael. The name Gwynnasedd, perhaps a compound gwynn- + asedd, ‘fair chariot’ or ‘fair repose’?, may occur in Gwarchan Cynfelyn in the Book of Aneirin, either as a proper name (a male personal name?) or a common noun,484 and a similar-looking personal name occurs in Bonedd y Saint §13, where Gwennasseth (var. Gwennassedd), daughter of Yn yd (on which see above, p. 30) is possibly to be contracted to ’nyd; cf. GMW 72 on ’ny < yn y. EANC 121; CLlH 95; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 193; Alexander Falileyev, ‘Some Cornish Place-Names with *lyw’, SC, 51 (2017), 119–27; and below on I.52. 478 On the relationship between the two names see Ifor Williams, in A History of Carmarthenshire, ed. Lloyd, I, 102 n.; Sims-Williams, ‘Death of Urien’, p. 39 n. 47; Rodway, Dating, p. 134; and PNG 134. It is Luchur, Lychur in LL 140–41. Cf. DP III 309 n. 1. 479 The river Llan which joins the Llychwr at the same place was originally the ‘Lesser Lliw’. Cf. Seyler, ‘The Early Charters of Swansea and Gower, Part III’, pp. 160–61 and 175, and map facing p. 157. 480 CIB 127; G. 128; TYP4 383; EBSG 84; LBS I 291 n. 2; DP III 188 n. 3; IV 688 and 710–11; HEF 113–14; Guy, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, p. 71. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 10, translates ‘tywysog o fri’. The Briafael in the Margam charters mentioned at DP IV 711 is too far east to be relevant; see Griffiths, ‘Native Society’, pp. 193–94. 481 Cf. Kenneth Jackson, ‘Two Early Scottish Names’, Scottish Historical Review, 33 (1954), 14–18 (pp. 16–18); TYP4 251 and 306; AP2 21–22; Eric P. Hamp, ‘Notes to Armes Prydein’, B., 30 (1982–83), 289–91 (pp. 289–90); Haycock, ‘Early Welsh Poets Look North’, pp. 10 and 32 n. 47. 482 G. 756, where the other Gyrthmwl cited (the one in Canu Heledd) is probably a scribal error, since the rhyme should be -yl. See EWSP 600–1 and Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, p. 48. G. 756 and TYP4 383 cite the equation with the eponym of Llanwrthwl suggested in CLlH 226 (cf. Inv. Crm. 36), but that is unlikely as the older forms of Llanwrthwl lack the -r-. See AMR s. *wrthwl; Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 287. 483 BR 20 and 62; TYP4 1. 484 CA line 1361 and n., on which see John T. Koch, ‘Llawr en asseđ (CA 932) “The Laureate Hero in the War-Chariot”: Some Recollections of the Iron Age in the Gododdin’, ÉC, 24 (1987), 253–78, and Jarman, Aneirin, pp. 72–73 and 155. The only example of assed on its own (CA line 932, cited GPC s.v. asedd) is doubtful as it does not rhyme. 476

477

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Rhain of Rheinwg (mid- and south-west Wales?), is the mother of Asa [St Asaph] mab Sawyl Benn[isel] mab Pabo Post Prydein.485 This is interesting, for her fatherin-law’s epithet is Post Priten ‘pillar of Pryden’ in the earliest source to name him, BL Harley 3859 (c. 1100).486 This suggests that ‘the open land of Gwynnasedd’ could refer to Pictland or that general region.487 Phillimore, however, took it to refer to the district around the Llychwr, and later suggested that Kelli Uriauael might be in ‘N. Cardiganshire’, presumably on account of the reference to Gyrthmwl in connection with the ‘hill of Maelawr’ in Triad 44.488 This implies a distinction between Gyrthmwl in Ceredigion and the chieftain from Pryden, buried in Gower, in lines a–b. While this is not impossible, it seems odd that the ‘chieftain’ should be unnamed; note also that it is Gyrthmwl’s sons, not Gyrthmwl himself, who is connected with the attack on the ‘hill of Maelawr’. It is simpler to suppose that all three lines refer to Gyrthmwl and his grave at the confluence of the Lliw and the Llychwr. Since Gyrthmwl was supposed to be attached to Arthur’s court, it is interesting to note that a partially legible lost Life of St Cennydd, summarised by John of Tynemouth in the early fourteenth century, situated Arthur’s court in Gower, apparently at or near Llychwr/Leucarium. The infant saint is born ‘about a mile from King Arthur’s palace’ (quasi vno miliario a palatio regis Arthuri), evidently at Caer Gynydd in Waunarlwydd (SS 60719 95132), is cast into a tributary stream which must be the Lesser Lliw (now called the Llan, a mile north of Caer Gynydd), drifts westwards into the main river Lothur (i.e. Llychwr), and eventually lands at Henisweryn (the Worm’s Head, SS 3887),489 near Llangynydd/Llangennith (SS 4291).490 Presumably this legend took shape at the clas at Llangynydd. The legend of Gyrthmwl could also have been preserved there. Towards the end of the eleventh century monastic life was promoted at Llangynydd by St Caradog (d. 1124), who was consecrated as a monk there by Bishop Herewald (d. 1104).491 After Caradog moved on, Henry, earl of Warwick (d. 1119), whom Henry I installed in Gower, as well as establishing castles at Swansea and Llychwr, adopted Llangynydd as the most important church in Gower, and placed it, with Pennard EWGT 56; WCD 30 and 313; DP III 285–86. On Rheinwg see Guy, ‘Rheinwg’, and I.71 below. In compounds Gwynn- is the original form (< *Windo-), but it tends to be replaced by Gwenn- in female names or when the second element is feminine: CIB 40 n. 111. The second element could be aseth/asaeth f. ‘lath’. 486 HG §19 in EWGT 12. Cf. TYP4 472 and 496. 487 For lleutir see J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘Lleudir’, B., 21 (1964–66), 224–26. Haycock, ‘Early Welsh Poets Look North’, p. 17, notes that names in Gwyn/Gwen- and Lleu- are typically northern, citing lleudir Goglet (CBT II 6.3) and our lleutir Guynassed at p. 38 n. 97. 488 DP III 286 and IV 710. 489 Cf. Pierce, Place-Names in Glamorgan, p. 220. In the Latin the second element is understood as gwerin ‘turba’. For the Lesser Lliw see above, n. 479. The Worm’s Head may be a mistake for Burry Holms (SS 39885 92601) according to Jonathan M. Wooding, ‘Island Monasticism in Wales: Towards an Historical Archaeology’, SC, 54 (2020), 1–28 (pp. 15–16 and 20). 490 Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. Carl Horstman, 2 vols (Oxford, 1901), II, 105. Cf. DP I 233–34 n. 2; LBS II 107 and 110; WCD 121 (on Iolo Morganwg’s Cennit see Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, pp. 61–65). For the name see PNG 123. On John’s Life of Cennydd (Kynedus) see Francesco Marzella, ‘The Lives of the Welsh Saints in John of Tynemouth’s “Sanctilogium”’, Hagiographica, 27 (2020), 291–324 (pp. 304, 306, 312, and 322). 491 LL 279; HW II 591–93; Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 6–7 and 52; Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 344–46 and 572–73; Francesco Marzella, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Life of St Caradog’, in Seintiau Cymru, ed. Parsons and Russell, pp. 299–316 (p. 303). 485

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in southern Gower (SS 5688), under the auspices of his family abbey at Évreux in Normandy.492 Before c. 1138 Earl Henry’s son, Roger of Warwick, endowed Neath abbey with lands in Pennard while Earl Henry’s steward, Henry de Vilers (who possessed the castle at Llychwr), bestowed the land ‘between the two rivers of Lliw and Llychwr, and between two streams flowing into the Llychwr, …with the chapel of St Michael [at Cwrtycarnau, Llandeilo Tal-y-bont, SN 5700]’.493 In this way, the monks of Neath would have become aware of Gower and its legends. They would have been in a good position to disseminate I.39 (compare the arguments advanced below in connection with I.62, 65, and 71). I.40 Gwrtheyrn in Ystyfachau (Crn.?) I.40

I.40

E bet yn Ystyuacheu

The grave in Ystyfachau

y mae paup yn y amheu.

which everyone doubts (is)

bet Gurtheyrn Gurtheneu.

the grave of Gwrthëyrn the Thin.

Ystyuacheu is unlocated.494 Assuming omission of a consonant, one could perhaps compare ystudfachau, tudfachau, ‘stilts’, or, assuming omission of an n-suspension, *ystumfachau ‘twisting nooks’ or tynfachau ‘grappling irons’ or ‘cramped nooks’;495 in the former case compare OE stipere ‘prop, post’ as in Stipershill, a precipitous ridge near Tamworth, Warwickshire.496 Did one need a prop to climb such a ridge or did it stick up like a pillar? Without drastic emendation, a cognate of, or loan from, Middle Irish stomacha (vessels of some kind, presumably from Latin stomachus < Greek stomachos) also seems possible; compare Welsh bol ‘bag, belly’ (and Irish bolg) in place-names, where it means ‘cavity’ or ‘swelling’.497 Ystyuacheu could mean ‘Potholes’ or ‘Pot-bellies’. The statement that ‘everyone doubts’ Gwrtheyrn’s grave agrees with, and may reflect, the statement in the Historia Brittonum §§47–48 about the uncertain HW II 432; Crouch, ‘Oddities’, pp. 134–35 and 141. St Davids Episcopal Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 43; Crouch, ‘Oddities’, p. 135; Glamorgan County History, III, ed. Pugh, pp. 97–98 and 209; Rees, South Wales, SW Sheet; Coflein, s. Cwrt-yCarnau, farmhouse; Archwilio s. Swansea, Gorseinon, Cwrt-y-Carnau grange, and St Michaels Chapel at Cwrt-y-Carnau. The grange was also called Loghor (PNG 61). 494 The proposal for Stanage, Rad., quoted in EBSG 85, is unacceptable. 495 GPC lists tynfach without translation; Owen Pughe gives ‘harpago’ without citation in his Dictionary. In place-names bach can mean ‘hook’ as well as ‘nook’ (see Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, p. 623, on bachlatron, LL 78), so tynfach could mean ‘cramped nook’ or similar. Ystum- is common in place-names; see AMR s. ystum*. 496 Smith, English Place-Name Elements, II, 153. 497 ELl 63–64; PKM 178–79; Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 14. Cf. Richard Coates, ‘Welsh pant “hollow” < Latin pantex “belly”’, CMCS, 79 (Summer 2020), 61–64. According to eDIL, stomacha is only attested once, in Saltair na Rann, line 4364: stomacha is tuslestar ‘stomacha and incense-vessel’. Suitable ‘bellies’ might include the ‘rounded hill, rising five hundred feet’ of Craig Gwrtheyrn (see Archwilio and Coflein s.n.) and the ‘tumulus, popularly called Bedd Gwrtheyrn’ at Nant Gwrtheyrn (to quote LBS III 74–75). Or, as Ystyuacheu is plural, the series of hills in the Craig Gwrtheyrn area or the little hummocks shown in the Nant Gwrtheyrn photograph in EBSG 35. 492 493

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nature of Vortigern’s end:498 after saying that Vortigern, driven from Gwerthrynion (Gwrtheyrnion) by St Germanus, proceeded to arx Guortigirni by the river Teifi in Dyfed – presumably Craig Gwrtheyrn hillfort (SN 4332 4027) near Llanfihangel-­ararth, Crm.499 – and was there destroyed by fire, its author adds: This is the end of Vortigern, as I found it in the book of the Blessed Germanus; but others have different versions. When he was hated for his sin … he wandered from place to place until at last his heart broke, and he died without honour. Others say that the earth opened and swallowed him up on the night when his fortress was burnt about him, for no trace was ever found of those who were burned with him in the fortress.500

Unfortunately, the author does not say where the alternative versions placed Vortigern’s death. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, has Vortigern being burnt at the fortress of Ganarew (Genoriu < genau rhiw ‘hill pass’, SO 529163), on a hill by the river Wye in Ergyng called Doartius (Little Doward – MSS Cloartius, but Doare etc. in Wace).501 It is debated whether Geoffrey’s Genoriu is due to local Monmouth folklore502 or to the placing of another Cair Guorthegirn in the region of Gueneri in the Vatican recension of the Historia Brittonum.503 Gueneri is a misreading of something like *Guenesi, that is, the region of Guunessi in north Wales where Vortigern builds another Cair Guorthigirn at an earlier stage (Historia Brittonum §42). This is to be connected with Gwynnys, a thirteenth-century township in Pistyll in the Llŷn peninsula, close by Nant Gwrtheyrn (SH 351449), which is also recorded in the thirteenth century.504 While Vortigern does not of course die at this Cair Guortigirn in the Historia, it is easy to imagine that a variant version located his death there (Armes Prydein, line 27 calls him Gwrtheyrn of Gwynedd). Indeed there was once a bedd Gwrtheyrn there. The tumulus in question is located by the Royal Commission

Although TYP4 388 takes it to mean ‘looks askance’. HW I 261 n. 190; DP II 329 and IV 489, citing Robert Vaughan in RMWL II 848, who says that it contained a conspicuous stone called Carreg Gwrtheyrn; Willoughby Gardner, ‘Craig Gwrtheyrn Hill Fort, Llanfihangel ar Arth, Carmarthenshire’, AC, 87 (1932), 144–50. Erasmus Saunders, writing to Lhwyd, speaks of two ‘circles of stones’ in Carmarthenshire, the second in ‘Llanviangel Yorwarth parish which is on the top of a riseing hillock, with an heap of stones in the middle[;] whither they be the Druyds Temples or what they are I will not presume to determine, the latter is call’d by the name of Cerryg Gwetheirn which they say is the same with Vortigern’ (Lhwyd Letters: Erasmus Saunders to Lhwyd, 27 Nov. 1693; on Yorwarth see PNCrm 100). See Woolf, ‘Fire from Heaven’, p. 142; Guy, ‘Rheinwg’, p. 111. 500 Morris’s translation (my italics). 501 HRB VIII.2, §119; Coplestone-Crow, Herefordshire Place-Names, pp. 102–3. 502 HW II 526; cf. Tatlock, Legendary History, pp. 72–73. In folklore a famous name may become attached to various places. We do not know that Vortigern ever set foot in Wales! William of Malmesbury perhaps calls Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, Wirtgeornesburg (Gesta Regum Anglorum, III.287, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 42–43, and II, 29–30) and a fort at Old Carlisle was claimed for Vortigern in some manuscripts of the Historia Brittonum (WCD 342). 503 WCD 342; cf. Historia Brittonum, ‘Vatican’ Recension, ed. Dumville, §24, p. 95. 504 WATU 86 and 286; J. Glyn Davies, review of Transactions of the Archaeological Section of the Literary Society of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (1901), in The University College of Wales Magazine, 23, no. 8 (June 1901), 296–99 (p. 297); Richards, ‘Nennius’s “Regio Guunnessi”’; HEALlE 181–83. (Merely on the basis of its name, Gwynnis is assigned to the Knights Templar in correspondence in AC, 1st ser. 1 (1846), 292 n. 1, also to the White Friars, AC, 3rd ser. 11 (1865), 88.) 498 499

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‘on the hill now called Castell Gwrtheyrn’, at SH 3495 4518.505 According to the anonymous author of the History of Allchester, ‘wrote in the year 1622’: Gourtigern being put to his last refuge, planted himself beyond the Mountain of the Rivel, towards that tract of ground called Llein, having the Mountain at his back for a bullwark of defence, there being no more passage over it than one, which to this day is called Bulch Gourthigern, that is Gourtigerns passage, and that so narrow that three cannot come up a front.506 … And besides his passage still retaining his name there, a place [is] there called Bedn Gourtigern [sic] his grave, which was a hillock raised and stones heaped up after the manner of burying the Princes and Kings in those times; the Inhabitants of Llanoyhayarn [Llanaelhaearn] where his grave was, for better proof of the truth thereof, assembled themselves together, digged down that heap of earth, and removed the great heap of stones, and in a stone chest found the body of a very tall man, for his shinn bone was of an ell long, as a grave Minister Mr. Hugh Roberts, who is a landed man in that parish, a certain man of his word, and a careful preserver and searcher of Antiquities, informed me upon his knowledge, these being found out there since his Majesties most happy coming to the Crown of England [1603], and most of the searchers yet alive to verifie it.507

According to Edward IV’s confirmation charter, Clynnog had properties in this part of Llŷn – at Carnguwch from Merfyn Frych (d. 844), Bodeilias from Cynan ap Hywel (d. 1005), and Ros Wenessaf from Gruffudd ap Llywelyn (d. 1063).508 A later spelling of the last is Ros(s)e Venassaph(e) which seems to be contraction of Rhos Gwynnysisaf (‘the moor of lower Gwynnys’), referring to summer pastures on the slopes of Moel Gwynnys.509 Melville Richards noted the ‘interesting co-incidence’ that our I.39, referring to Gwynnasedd, is followed by I.40, which may imply knowledge of Gwrtheyrn’s grave in the ‘region of Gwynnys’.510 Perhaps the name Guynnassed put a Clynnog compiler in mind of Gwynnys-isaf or vice versa? The name Gyrthmwl in I.39 could also have sparked a connection with the rather similar name Gwrtheyrn or vice versa.

Inv. Crn. III 96 (also p. 91); Archwilio s. Barrow, Bedd Gwrtheyrn. Accounts of it in late writers derive from Bishop Kennett (see below, n. 507) via Pennant, Tour, II, 214 (see also Fenton, Tours, p. 230, and Hall, Description of Caernarvonshire, p. 260). Cf. Richards, ‘Nennius’s “Regio Guunnessi”’, pp. 24–25. J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd), Enwau Lleoedd Sir Gaernarfon, p. 129, quotes a story about Gwrtheyrn throwing himself into the sea from ‘Careg-y-Llam’. 506 Bwlch, ‘pass’, is very common in place-names (cf. CR 54). ‘Bwlch Gwrtheyrn’ has been Bwlch yr Eifl (SH 36078 45256) since 1536/7 (AMR). The description suggests that ‘Bwlch Gwrtheyrn’ may have been understood in the same sense as ‘gwrhyd Cai’ and similar names: ‘Safai yn y bwlch, a lledodd ei freichiau nes cyffwrdd y ddau glogwyn oboptu â’i fysedd!’ (Williams, ‘gwryd, gwrhyd’, p. 236; cf. above, p. 79). 507 White Kennett, Parochial Antiquities (Oxford, 1695), pp. 698–99. See also ‘“A Survey of the Ancient and Present State of the County of Caernarvon” by William Williams of Llandygái, V’, ed. Jones, p. 157. 508 Rec. Caern. 257. See above, p. 201. The Sheriff of Caernarfon’s account for 1303–4 notes St Beuno’s bondmen at Pistyll (Waters, ‘Account of the Sheriff’, p. 145), as do the Llŷn Ministers’ Accounts (ed. Jones Pierce, ‘Lleyn Ministers’ Accounts, 1350–51’, p. 262), while the Extent of Caernarfonshire of 1352 notes tenants of St Beuno at the vill of Llannor, with its hamlets including Pistyll and Bodeilas (Rec. Caern. 34). 509 Richards, ‘Nennius’s “Regio Guunnessi”’, pp. 25–27, with map. 510 Ibid., p. 27 n. 1. 505

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

I.41 Cynddilig son of Corcnud I.41 Kian a ud yn diffeith cund511 drav otuch pen bet alltud. bet Kindilic mab Corknud.

I.41 A whelp512 howls in the wilderness of a wolfpack over there above the grave of an alien (or exile): the grave of Cynddilig son of Corcnud.

Although Cynddilig is called an alltud, the name Kindilic, as it stands, is Welsh, perhaps a compound of *kuno- ‘hound’ plus *dilig (cognate with Irish dúilech ‘voracious’? or cf. Welsh dil ‘honeycomb’?), an element which recurs in compound names in all the Brittonic lands (OW Gurdilic, OB Gurdilec, OC Ourdylyc, Wurðylic) and in the uncompounded Welsh name Dilig, given as the name of a son of Llywarch Hen by the genealogists, and by Siôn Dafydd Rhys and Edward Lhwyd as the name of a giant, Dilig Gawr, whose grave ‘near the seaside’ in Glamorgan between Llansawel (SS 7494) and Baglan (SS 7592) measured thirty feet or more from one stone to the other.513 Rhys’s speculation that Kindilic is the Irish name Cú-duilig, gen. Con-duilig (‘hard/stern hound’?)514 is rather far-fetched, although Kindilic could of course have been substituted for it, as a vaguely similar Welsh name. Rhys is on better ground in equating the name Corknud with Corconutan, the name of a seventh-century(?) saint in the Book of Leinster and elsewhere.515 The sources locate this saint at Daire Eidnech (Derrynavlan, Co. Tipperary) but link him with the wider confraternity of St Cóemgen (Kevin) of Glendalough; his full name seems to be Mo Chellóc Corco Nuta(i)n, with Corco Nuta(i)n denoting Mo Chellóc’s ‘tribe’.516 It is curious that Corco Nutan is listed alongside ‘thrice fifty Read cnud. Note that the exemplar presumably had d for /d/ like the Black Book itself. Kian is taken as a proper name by DP II 440 n. 2, by Rhys, ‘Epigraphic Notes’, pp. 90 and 310, and by Gwyn Thomas in Yr Aelwyd Hon, p. 105, who suggests that the reference to a wolf-pack plays on his name. Cf. G. 139; WCD 127–28; Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, p. 265. 513 CIB 45–46 n. 143; CA 273; EWGT 86 (ByA §5 = MWG 358); Grooms, Giants, pp. 167 and 314– 15; Par. III 28–29; AMR s. *Dilig*. It was convincingly localised at SS 743932 (by reference to a Cae Pen Dilig) by Cledwyn Fychan, ‘Chwilio am Fedd Gŵr Alltud’, Y Faner Newydd, 69 (2014), 58–59; he tentatively identifies this Dilig with Cynddilig. I am indebted to Dr Angharad Fychan for a copy of his article. Fychan notes a Ffynnon Dilig on Mynydd Druman, north of Baglan. See Jones, Holy Wells, pp. 7 and 187, and for male and female saints Dilic and their wells see Nicholas Roscarrock’s Lives of the Saints: Cornwall and Devon, ed. Nicholas Orme (Exeter, 1992), pp. 46, 78–79, 128, and 140–41; idem, The Saints of Cornwall (Oxford, 2000), pp. 15, 21, 23, 36–37, and 106–7. Some of the spellings of Cynddilig cited above and below (and in G. 246 and AMR s. *Cynddilig) suggest *dylig, not *dilig. 514 Rhys, ‘Goidels in Wales’, p. 36; idem, ‘Epigraphic Notes’. On the name see references in CIB 45–47; cf. eDIL s.v. doilig. 515 Rhys, ‘Epigraphic Notes’, p. 90. See Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., VI, 1554, 1647 (Martyrology of Tallaght, Dec. 23), also 1699, lines 52190 and 52217. Cf. Ó Riain, Corpus Genealogiarum Sanctorum Hiberniae, p. 30, and Plummer, Irish Litanies, pp. 56–57, 60–61, and 114–15. A hypothetical *Corcnat, with the feminine hypocoristic -nat, will not suit, as its a (= schwa) would not match the Welsh u (= /ü(:)/, which is a better approximation for the stressed u of Nutan. 516 Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., VI, 1647. See Ó Muraíle, ‘Doire na bhFlann’, pp. 115–19; Byrne, ‘Derrynavlan’, pp. 121–24; idem, ‘Dercu: The Feminine of mocu’, Éigse, 28 (1994–95), 42–70 (p. 51 and n. 39); Ailbhe Séamus Mac Shamhráin, Church and Polity in Pre-Norman 511

512

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coracles of Roman pilgrims (di ailithrib Roman) who landed in Ireland’,517 for Irish ailithir ‘exile, pilgrim’ is etymologically close to Welsh alltud,518 the term applied to Kindilic mab Corknud. There are some traces of contact between Glendalough and Wales, where St Cóemgen of Glendalough was culted as St Cwyfen,519 so possibly Cynddilig’s patronym Corknud was based on some memory of Corconutan/Corcunutan (in which name t = /d/). The absence of the -o- or -u- in the Welsh is not a problem, as the vowel is often absent in the Irish manuscripts as well.520 Alternatively, Corknud could be a mistake for *Corkunud, which could easily be misread as *Corknnud whence Corknud.521 The omission of the -an is also understandable, especially if it was mistaken as the Irish diminutive ending -án corresponding to the Welsh diminutive -an.522 Cynddilig’s peculiar patronym Corcnud would soon become obscure in Wales and invite explanation, an obvious etymology being cor cnud ‘dwarf of a wolf-pack’ (hence the wolf-pack in our englyn?). In this connection, Dafydd ap Gwilym’s triad of warrior-magicians may be significant. The first and third are Menw and Math, lord of Arfon, well-known from Culhwch and Olwen and Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi respectively, but the second is Eiddilig Gor, Wyddel call ‘Eiddilig the Dwarf, the wise Irishman’.523 He is not included in the prose Triads of the Three Enchanters and Three Great Enchantments of the Island of Britain (TYP nos 27–28), but they do include Gwythelyn Gorr (‘Gwyddelyn (Little Irishman) the Dwarf’, no. 28), who is presumably the same character as Dafydd’s Eiddilig Gor, Wyddel call and as an Eiddili[c] cor, listed among the Three Enchanter Knights in the fifteenth-century Twenty-Four Knights of Arthur’s Court – an Edelic Corr is also listed among the

Ireland: The Case of Glendalough (Maynooth, 1996), pp. 178–80; Ó Riain, Dictionary of Irish Saints, p. 225. Mac Shamhráin (p. 178) compares a population group ‘Uí Nutáin’; these are Uí Notáin, var. Uí Rotāin, in O’Brien, Corpus, p. 105 (the length mark is misplaced in Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., VI, 1496, line 45507). 517 Book of Leinster, ed. Best et al., VI, 1699, lines 52216–17; Plummer, Irish Litanies, pp. 60–61 and 115; Byrne, ‘Derrynavlan’, p. 122. 518 CIB 185 n. 1128. 519 Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 20, 259 n. 149, and 287–88. 520 Ó Riain, Corpus, p. 30 (Corcnadain); Félire Óengusso, ed. Stokes, p. 232 n. 11 (corcnatan, corcnutan, although the metre requires four syllables – and Leabhar Breac supplies la to provide a syllable); Byrne, ‘Derrynavlan’, p. 123 (Corcnadain in the Book of Ballymote). Ó Muraíle, ‘Doire na bhFlann’, p. 116 n. 32, quotes further examples. Corconutan scans with four syllables in The Martyrology of Gorman, ed. Whitley Stokes (London, 1895), p. 210. Byrne’s reference to Corconutan as a possible ‘fossilised pre-syncope form’ (p. 121) cannot be correct; Corcu-nutain in Félire Óengusso is rightly so printed by Stokes since it must be accented as two words, not as a compound. Corcodemus, the vaguely Greek-looking name (cf. Nicodemus) of the Gallo-­Roman saint mentioned by Byrne (following a hare started by Kuno Meyer, Learning in Ireland in the Fifth-Century and the Transmission of Letters (Dublin, 1913), p. 24), is hardly related – one might as well compare Corcodemus with the Corconti of Bohemia or the ancient river Corcoras in Slovenia. 521 For 8 syllables in line c of an englyn penfyr see EWSP 315. For n/u confusion note cund in line a. Irish Corcu and Corco frequently alternate (eDIL s. corca). 522 Stokes (Félire Óengusso, pp. 232 and 411) has short a in his text but marks it long in his index. The short a is metrically necessary (cf. ibid., p. xl, §6; Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Metrics (Dublin, 1961), p. 64). 523 GDG no. 84.40; DafyddapGwilym.net no. 135.40.

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Three Stubborn Ones in Triad 72.524 Lloyd-Jones noted that the name of Eidilic Kor (from eiddil ‘feeble, weak; puny one, weakling’) in Dafydd ap Gwilym is very similar to that of Cynddilig ap Cor Cnud (which is how he modernises our text, as if ‘C. son of Dwarf of a Wolf-pack’).525 One could be a corruption of the other. If Kindilic is the correct reading in our englyn, there are too many possibilities for any certain identification since the name was a common one: for example, Kyndilic of Aeron in the Gododdin; Kindilic (allegedly a son of Llywarch Hen) in a stray stanza found twice in the Black Book (see below); Kyndelic/Kyndylic, the guide in Culhwch and Olwen; Kyndylyc vap Nevton in the Llanstephan Brut (corresponding to Kinlith Mapneton in Geoffrey, HRB IX.12 §156.343); and a saint Cenddilig mentioned by Dafydd Nanmor,526 also condilici (gen.) on an inscription on the Isle of Man.527 I.41 seems to belong to the category of stanzas which Thomas Jones distinguished from ‘formal grave stanzas’.528 Typically they were interpolated from other genres, notably ‘saga poems’, on account of their including some reference to a hero’s grave. I.41 has the elegiac tone of the ‘saga englynion’, and Cynddilig, as an alltud, is typical of their anti-heroes. His Irish patronymic Corcnud may have been chosen to characterise him as an alien. He may well be the same person as the outcast or sickly Kindilic of a stray stanza embedded in the Llywarch Hen poetry:529 Nid vid iscolheic. nid vid eleic unben. nyth eluir in dit reid. och gindilic. na buost gureic. You are not a cleric; you are not a ?grey-haired lord, you are not called on the day of need. Alas, Cynddilig, that you were not a woman.

Etymological speculation about his patronymic as cor + cnud may have transformed him into Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Eiddilig Gor, Wyddel call. Whether he was originally a magician, we cannot tell. TYP4 59–61, 202, 266, 268, 339, and 395; Bromwich, ‘Pedwar Marchog ar Hugain Llys Arthur’, pp. 122, 125, and 129. In Triad 28 in Peniarth 47 (iv) (s. xv med.), Gwythelyn Gorr is replaced by muchuach gorr or similar (p. 21, a reading unmentioned in TYP4 61)). The seven minims are all ambiguous, as are both examples of ch (th?). Was this an attempt to give the ‘Little Irishman’ an Irish name? For -ch as characterising ‘Irish’ names see Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 183–84. 525 G. 246 (cf. 164). TYP4 339 is sceptical. Edelig (Etelic) in EWGT 185 is a distinct name; see WCD 222 and 227. GDG 509 notes that eiddil suits a dwarf. 526 References in G. 246. For the Brut see NLW Llanstephan MS 1, p. 161, whence Kyndelic uab Nỽython in RBB 200. On St Cynddilig, culted at Llanrhystud on 1 November – probably coincidentally, Corconutan’s feast was on 3 November – see LBS II 230 and Ó Riain, ‘Saints of Cardiganshire’, p. 389. 527 CIB 45, 82, 89, 129, 150, 187, and 231, no. 1068/b. 528 BBCSG 104. 529 LlDC nos 30.55–57 (quoted) and 40.32–24 = CLlH VII.9 and VIII.11, edited, translated, and discussed in EWSP 56, 233, 414, 455, 473, 502, and 634; see also Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘Laíded, gressacht “formalized incitement”’, Ériu, 43 (1992), 69–92 (pp. 89–90); Richard Sharpe, ‘Claf Abercuawg and the Voice of Llywarch Hen’, SC, 43 (2009), 95–121 (p. 109); and Jenny Rowland, A Selection of Early Welsh Saga Poems (London, 2014), p. 69. I quote the translation in EWSP 502. Although LlDC no. 40 is entitled ‘Enwev Meibon Llywarch Hen’ it is known to be a miscellany. On the ‘insecure’ position of the alltud see Jenkins, The Law of Hywel Dda, p. 311. 524

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I.42–43 Rhufawn in Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy, Ang. I.42 Neum duc .i. Elffin. y prowi vy bartrin. gessevin vch kinran. bet Ruvaun ruyvenit ran.

I.42 Elffin took me to test my poetic learning for the first time above a leader – the grave of Rhufawn, prince of a warband.530

I.43 Neum duc .i. Elffin y browi vy martrin. vch kinran gessevin. Bet Ruwaun ry ievanc daerin.531

I.43 Elffin took me to test my poetic learning above a leader for the first time – the grave of Rhufawn, laid in earth too young.

Thomas Jones, following Ifor Williams, suggested that these stanzas, with their incremental repetition, ‘once formed part of a longer series’, put into the mouth of the legendary Taliesin, whose patron was Elffin.532 The mention of Elffin had already led Lewis Morris, aware that ‘Taliesin was brought up by Elphin’, to comment: ‘By Stanza’s 42 & 43. it should seem Taliessin was author of them’ – a comment which probably gave rise to the Myvyrian Archaiology’s ascription of the whole of Englynion y Beddau to Taliesin.533 Evidently the young poet stood on Rhufawn’s grave and divined the identity of its occupant. The locus classicus for this motif is the Life of St Martin, where the saint, unable to get information from older clerics about the name of a supposed martyr, stands on his grave and discovers his true identity by divine inspiration.534 This could be a direct source for the postulated Taliesin story; although no vernacular reference to St Martin earlier than one by Llywelyn Fawr’s poet, Einion ap Gwalchmai is extant, his miracles are already mentioned in the Historia Brittonum.535 The Martin motif had already been transferred to other saints, as in the following Irish anecdote:

Taking rhan as in LlDC no. 1.30, but gran is also possible if rhwyfenydd can be used adjectivally, as in BBCSG 127: ‘of princely mien’. 531 This line is rather long, especially if the last word is trisyllabic deyerin, daeerin (cf. GPC). Bet could be omitted. G. 309 seems to suggest omission of Ruwaun. 532 BBCSG 104–5. Cf. CLlH xlviii–xlix; Williams, Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry, pp. 25–27; Marged Haycock, ‘Taliesin’s Questions’, CMCS, 33 (Summer 1997), 19–79 (p. 31); LPBT 8, 14, and 141. On Elffin and Taliesin see LPBT 11, 14, 15, 18–20, 33, 35, 107, 112, 123, 129, 140–42, 273, 276, 285, 286, 294, 299, 311, 313, 328, 348, 349–53, 355–56, 389, 417, 434, and 519; WCD 237–38. 533 BL 14907, 121r. Cf. CR 400; MA1 xxiii = MA2 viii. 534 Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Martini, ed. and trans. Philip Burton (Oxford, 2017), §11: ‘super sepulcrum ipsum adstans oravit ad dominum, ut quis esset vel cuius meriti esset sepultus ostenderet’. Cf. Buchedd Sant Martin, ed. Jones, §11: ‘Ac a sevis ar y bedd Ac a weddiodd ar dduw ar ddangos iddo pwy oedd gwedy gladdu yno’. The passage is discussed in another context by Simon Rodway, ‘Awen yr Ymadawedig: Dau Gyfeiriad ym Marddoniaeth Wiliam Llŷn’, Dwned, 25 (2019), 79–89 (pp. 87–88). 535 Historia Brittonum, ed. Morris, §§26 and 29; CBT I 27.95; Jenny Day, ‘Agweddau ar Gwlt Martin o Tours mewn Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg hyd c. 1525’, LlC, 40 (2017), 3–39. On the probable connection between Llywelyn Fawr and the Taliesin story see above, p. 69. 530

205

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau One day Colum Cille went around the churchyard of Arann, when he saw the ancient grave and the stone not moved, and he asked: ‘Who was buried under the flagstone?’ said he. ‘We know not’, said they, ‘and we have never heard’. Then God, through the grace of knowledge and prophecy, revealed it to him. …536

While Martin and Colum Cille know more than the locals about who is in the graves, the agonistic element is less pronounced than in the Taliesin legend, where the young, would-be chief poet Taliesin is always pitted against his seniors and rails against ignorant clerics. A better parallel for that aspect is provided by an Old Irish anecdote in the Yellow Book of Lecan about a king of Ulster taking his chief poet to see various ancient stones and raths. Failing to know who raised them, the chief poet is shamed by the superior knowledge of – in turn – clerics, young warriors, and boys led, in disguise, by Mongán (a shape-shifter, like Taliesin). The clerics reveal how and when Conall Cernach raised the stones over the graves of certain warriors.537 This is another close analogue to I.42–43, except that no one stands on the graves, unlike St Martin and Taliesin. Rhufawn’s grave was by the sea according to Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd’s Gorhoffedd (c. 1140–60): Tonn wenn orewyn a orỽlych bet, Gwytua Ruuaỽn Bebyr, ben teyrnet.538 A white foaming wave wets a grave, the burial mound [or eminence] of Rhufawn Bybr (‘the Eager’), chief of kings.

Some peculiarity in Rhufawn’s burial – gold buried in his grave? – may be alluded to in the Triads which name Ruaỽn Peuyr ap Gỽydno as one of the ‘Three Gold Corpses of the Island of Britain’.539 Since Rhufawn is usually mentioned as the son of Dewrarth Wledig (or Dorath, Deorthach, or Drothach), Rachel Bromwich regarded ap Gỽydno as a mistake.540 Even if so, it is an interesting error in that Gwyddno usually appears as the father of Elffin.541 Did the story about Elffin ap Gwyddno, Taliesin, and Rhufawn’s grave suggest the idea that Gwyddno was also Rhufawn’s father? Or was Gwyddno, who was especially associated with submerged kingdoms

‘Colum Cille in Arann’, ed. and trans. Kuno Meyer, Gaelic Journal, 4 (1892), 162. Cf. J. Vendryes, ‘Une anecdote sur saint Colomba’, RC, 33 (1912), 354–56; Betha Colaim Chille: Life of Columcille, Compiled by Maghnas Ó Domhnaill in 1532, ed. and trans. A. O’Kelleher and G. Schoepperle (repr. Dublin, 1994), pp. 158–59, §155; James F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (New York, 1929), p. 435. 537 ‘Why Mongán was Deprived of Noble Issue’, ed. and trans. Knott (discussed above, p. 6). Ifor Williams compares I.42–43 with Acallam na Senórach, where Cáilte answers St Patrick’s enquiry about ‘whose grave is this on the hill upon which we stand’ (cía in fertsa ar in tulaig ar atám) (CLlH xliv, citing Silva Gadelica, ed. and trans. Standish Hayes O’Grady, 2 vols (London, 1892), I, 117, and II, 127–28). 538 CBT II 6.1–2. The epithet pyb(y)r (‘eager’ etc.) also appears as pef(y)r ‘shining’. See GPC. 539 TYP4 no. 61. On this triad see on I.23 above. Compare a sixteenth-century story about a goldtorqued corpse washed up by a wave: Jones, ‘Family Tales from Dyfed’, pp. 72 and 78. 540 TYP4 329 and 489–90. 541 TYP4 391; LPBT 140–42. 536

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off Gwynedd and Ceredigion, regarded as a suitable father for one whose burial mound was washed by a ‘white foaming wave’? Bartrum noted two pointers to the site of Rhufawn’s grave. First, Araith Iolo Goch names Gwynedd as Rhufawn’s kingdom.543 Secondly, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, in his elegy on the early-fourteenth-century poet Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr, speaks of his fame spreading from the estuary of the Wye in the south east to ‘Cawrnwy of great booty by the grave of Rhufawn’ (hyt Gaỽrnỽy uud rỽy ar ued Ruaỽn), evidently referring to the district that gives its name to Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy in the northwest corner of Anglesey.544 The obvious site in this parish is Pen Bryn-yr-Eglwys (SH 29306 92432), overlooking the sea south-west of Carmel Head. Despite its name, the square platform at its summit is probably not a church but the foundations of a Roman watchtower, with associated Roman pottery.545 This once imposing monument may have been regarded as Rhufawn’s gwyddfa. (Is it a coincidence that Rhufawn derives from Romanus? Did *Gwyddfa Rhufawn originally mean ‘Promontory/burial-mound of the Roman’?) All the stone was taken away at some stage, possibly to build or extend the present church at Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy.546 Perhaps gold was uncovered then. Or perhaps Rhufawn’s gold was supposed to be on the shore beneath, a likely site for wrecks. The place-name Ogo’r Arian (‘Cave of the Silver (or Money)’), below Pen Bryn-yr-Eglwys, is suggestive (SH 28762 92487). It was a source of gold according to folklore collected by Leonard Thomas of Llanfwrog (five miles to the south): 542

In many lands History and Legend are strangely interwoven, nor is Anglesey an exception. By the hearth fires in the long winter evenings, when pipes of ’Bacco Amlwch are aglow, and the strong gales sweep ever from the west, the old stories of the past are retold. Then it is recounted how the wealth of Glynllifon was acquired in the ‘Ogo’r arian,’ and when the reiving shepherd over-laden with gold slipped into the murky pool, his leg turned black. It is even said that hence comes the name Glynllifon, from ‘Clun’ a

TYP4 391–92 and WCD 346–48; and see on I.6 and I.23 above. Yr Areithiau Pros, ed. Jones, p. 12; WCD 561. Note the suggestion in TYP4 8 that the Three Gwyndeyrn, of which Rhufawn is one in TYP no. 3, were particularly associated with Gwynedd. 544 R 1230.12 (Gwaith Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Tudur, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr ac Iorwerth Beli, ed. Costigan et al., no. 8.30 and n.); for Cernyw (Cornwall) and Cawrnwy in a similar extent-topos compare the Anglesey poet Sefnyn in R 1259.16–17 (Gwaith Sefnyn, Rhisierdyn, Gruffudd Fychan ap Gruffudd ab Ednyfed a Llywarch Bentwrch, ed. Jones and Rheinallt, no. 3.18 and n.). In ByA §4 (EWGT 86, MWG 221, 338, and 358) Nwy son of Egri of Talebolion is the eponym of Karn(n)wy/Kowrnwy. On Cawrnwy/Cornwy (already equated in CR 83) see Thomas, ‘wy’, p. 118, LHEB 379, and SBCHP 298. Thomas explains Cawrnwy > Cornwy as a kind of dissimilation, whereas the former is viewed as hypercorrect by Eric P. Hamp, ‘Early Welsh Names, Suffixes, and Phonology’, Onoma, 14 (1969), 7–13 (p. 11). 545 Hopewell, ‘Roman Anglesey: Recent Discoveries’. Cf. ‘Report of the One Hundred and Thirty-­First Annual Meeting in Anglesey’, 1984’, AC, 134 (1985), 261–70 (p. 265); Archwilio s. Watchtower, Pen Bryn yr Eglwys; heneb.co.uk, Field Evaluation of Scheduling Proposals (G2246), Summary Report April 2012–March 2013 . It has been suggested that there was also a Roman watchtower on Dinas Dinlle (Griffiths, ‘Roman Coins from Dinas Dinlle’), a theory not mentioned in Inv. Crn. II 189–90, and a Roman pharos at Caergybi was already posited by Pennant, Tour, II, 288. 546 Reported as ‘local tradition’, confirmed by excavation, by Hopewell, ‘Roman Anglesey: Recent Discoveries’, p. 320. This church is eleventh- or twelfth-century onwards (Inv. Ang. 74). 542 543

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau thigh, and ‘llifo,’ to colour, – a story which bears a curious analogy to the custom of the Greeks in inventing facts to account for their place-names.547

In 1694 Edward Lhwyd heard from Robert Humphreys about a nearby sea cave ‘under a place called Cadar yn Nghornwy’ in Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy, presumably meaning Cader Mynachdy, at Trwyn y Gader (Carmel Head, SH 29763 93176).548 Enough to ransom three kingdoms would remain hidden in it, Humphreys reported, until such time as ‘the Englishman with the crooked jaw’ should come to possess it.549 Cader Mynachdy, with Mynachdy farm, are named from the monks of Aberconwy, to whom Edward I granted the manor of ‘Cornwy Llys’ in 1284, in compensation for moving their monastery from Aberconwy to Maenan.550 If there were religious at Cornwy Llys prior to 1284, they could have been instrumental in spreading the fame of Rhufawn’s grave; early-thirteenth-century Aberconwy interest in Cornwy is suggested by a detail in the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth genealogies.551 However that may be, Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd’s allusion shows that it was already well known in the mid-twelfth century. I.44 March, Gwythur, Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd, and Arthur I.44

I.44

Bet y March. bet y Guythur.

(There is) a grave for March, a grave for Gwythur,

bet y Gugaun Cletyfrut.

a grave for Gwgawn Red-sword;

Anoeth bid bet y Arthur.

the hardest thing in the world (to find), a grave for Arthur.

The focus here is on Arthur’s grave, or rather the lack of it, and the other three heroes are named in order to contrast with him – and to supply rhymes. The pattern of three names plus Arthur as a fourth resembles some of the Triads.552 It may be rele Leonard Thomas, ‘An Essay on Anglesey’, Yr Haul, 12.131 (Jan. 1910), 14–17 (p. 15). No other Ogo’r Arian is listed in RhELlH. For other versions of the legend of Cilmyn Troed Ddu see Pennant, Tour, II, 222, and Fenton, Tours, p. 323. 548 The name Carmel Head (supposed to be from Cardinals Head) is recent (C. L. Hulbert-Powell, ‘Allusions to the Isle of Anglesey in the Itinerarium of William Worcester’, TAAS, 1949, 25–37 (p. 35), and Jones and Roberts, Enwau Lleoedd Môn, p. 136); it has nothing to do with Carmelites, pace Hulbert-Powell, ‘Carved Corbels, Brackets, and Label Stops’, p. 43. 549 Lhwyd Letters: Robert Humphreys to Lhwyd, 22 Aug. 1694: ‘I must \not/ forget in these parts the famous cave called Ogof-Mam-Gymru where is kept by the Devil tri rhanswm Brenhiniaeth & it shall lay there, hyd oni ddêl y Sais a’r èn gam. who is to possess it. This Cave opens to the sea under a place called Cadar yn Nghornwy in the parish of Llanvair yn nghornwy. There is a story that three Musitians should enter into it and some dayes after they were heard to play upon their instruments under the hearth of Llw[[ ]]rd which is from the mouth of the Cave seaven long miles.’ Cf. Roberts, Edward Lhwyd, p. 132. On Humphreys of Trefdraeth, Ang., see ibid., passim, and Roberts, ‘Edward Lhwyd’s Protégés’, pp. 24–26. 550 Hays, History of the Abbey of Aberconway, pp. 73–75, 108–10, 114, 163–67, 169, 171, and 191–92; Carr, Medieval Anglesey, pp. 271–72; Calendar of Charter Rolls, II, A.D. 1257–1300 (London, 1906), p. 279 (‘Kanruwylis’ = Cornwyl(l)ys, cf. AMR s.n.). 551 Cf. MWG 221. 552 TYP no. 2 etc. 547

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vant that all three heroes have some connection with Arthur. March (King Mark) is contemporaneous with King Arthur in Beroul’s late-twelfth-century French Tristan and, in Welsh, Arthur is March’s cousin in the Dream of Rhonabwy and tries to steal one of March’s pigs in Triad 26, while in Triad 73 Drystan – there called ‘March’s son’ (eil March), rather than his nephew – is a member of Arthur’s court.553 Gwythur (< *Victor) is mentioned with – and rhymes with – Arthur in the Book of Taliesin, and Gwythyr (sic) figures alongside Arthur in Culhwch and is his father-in-law in Triad 56.554 Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd is a messenger to Arthur and Owain ab Urien in the Dream of Rhonabwy, and his horse is mentioned after that of Owain in the Black Book of Carmarthen and in Triad 40. He also appears in Triads 24 and 60, in the latter in connection with the Battle of Chester (c. 613), which agrees with his grouping in Rhonabwy with Selyf ap Cynan Garwyn of Powys, who died in that battle.555 Progenies Keredic in BL Cotton Vespasian A.xiv (Monmouth, late twelfth century) connects Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd with Ceredigion, and Dafydd ap Gwilym may well mean Ceredigion, or part of it, when he refers to ‘Gwlad Wgon … Gleddyfrudd’ and to Castell Gwgawn – one castle so named was north-east of Aberystwyth (and another was near Aberaeron).556 The third line recalls William of Malmesbury’s statement in 1125, in his account of Walwen’s grave, ‘But the tomb of Arthur is nowhere beheld, whence ancient ditties fable that he is yet to come.’557 Both I.44 and I.8, on Gwalchmai, could even be direct echoes of William’s text. Equally well, however, I.44 may reflect some of the ‘ancient ditties’ (antiquitas naeniarum) referred to by William and later by Gerald of Wales.558 Presumably unlike those songs, however, the englyn is ambiguous as to the significance of the absence of a grave; it may simply be undiscovered, like those of BR 9.23; TYP4 50–54 and 203. LPBT nos 15.31 and 24.11 and nn.; Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 176, 369, 942–52, 988–1004, and 1205–29, and p. 68; TYP4 161 and 395–96; WCD 358; EBSG 88. Gwythyr (< *Victorix?) may be distinct from Gwythur; see Lloyd-Jones, ‘Nefenhyr’, p. 36; cf. CBT IV 4.196n.; CIB 121 n. 667, and 178 n. 1079. Earlier Lloyd-Jones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 3, had derived Gwythyr and Gwythur respectively from Victor and Victorem. For Gwythur, Gwyther as a surname see Morris, ‘Welsh Surnames in the Border Counties of Wales’, p. 112, and Morgan and Morgan, Welsh Surnames, p. 119. 555 BR 18.23 and n. (M 150); LlDC no. 6.3; TYP4 384; PP1 103–4 §§11(2) and 13 and nn.; WCD 325. 556 EWGT 20 (cf. ibid., 49 (JC §48)); WCD 325; GDG nos 46.67–68 and 83.31 (and p. xvii); R. Geraint Gruffydd, ‘Love by Toponymy: Dafydd ap Gwilym and Place-Names’, Nomina, 19 (1996), 29–42 (pp. 30, 35–36, and 40–42, with map). The fact that Gwgawn had two castles in Ceredigion suggests that he may have been a legendary personage (cf. the duplication of places called Cadair Elwa, I.64 below), and the legendary existence of a giant Gwgawn is suggested by the name esgynvaen gwgann, ‘Gwgawn’s mounting-block’, in the Aberconwy charter: Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 145; Acts, ed. Pryce, pp. 349 and 354. There is no good reason to follow TYP4 xcvi and 384 and identify Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd, who was the son of Llawch or Llawr, with Gwgawn ap Meurig of Ceredigion, who was drowned c. 872 (MWG 108 n. 65 and 295 n. 97). The name Gwgawn was common, as noted in G. 675–76 (to his list add esgynvaen gwga[u]n above – unless the MS reading gwgann is indeed correct). 557 Quoted in the commentary on I.8 above. Cf. Constance Bullock-Davies, ‘Exspectare Arturum: Arthur and the Messianic Hope’, B., 29 (1980–82), 432–40; Sims-Williams, ‘Did Itinerant Breton Conteurs Transmit the Matière de Bretagne?’, pp. 82–83; Virginie Greene, ‘Qui croit au retour d’Arthur?’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 45.180 (2002), 321–40; Christopher Michael Berard, ‘King Arthur and the Canons of Laon’, Arthuriana, 26.3 (2016), 91–119; Sims-Williams, ‘Britons, Thracians, King Alfred, and Sir Orfeo’, pp. 3–5. 558 Passages printed by Chambers, Arthur of Britain, pp. 250 and 269–74. Cf. Carey, ‘The Finding of Arthur’s Grave’, pp. 2–4. 553 554

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Moses and St Patrick. If its author had heard that Henry de Soilli (1189–93), abbot of Glastonbury, had ‘discovered’ Arthur’s body (after discreetly surrounding the dig with curtains!),560 he was evidently unconvinced. Despite the implication that the graves of the other three heroes were known, unlike that of Arthur himself, no clue to their locations now remains other than the connection between Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd and Ceredigion. 559

I.45 Elwydd(an) at Maes Meueddawg/Maes Maod(d)yn, ?Mtg. or ?Rad. I.45

I.45

Bet Elchwith ys gulich glav.

The grave of Elchwith, rain wets it.

Maes Meuetauc y danav.

Maes Meueddawg (is) beneath it.

Dyliei Kynon yno y kiniav.

Cynon was entitled there to his feast.

Line a is too short and line c is too long. As noted by Rhys and Thomas Jones,561 line a can be emended either by reading ys gulich y glav (cf. I.1a) or by reading El(ch)withan, following the second of the following pair of englynion found in Canu Heledd in the Red Book of Hergest (CLlH XI.102–3 = Series II.4–5), where the reading y gỽynaỽ in line c is definitely superior to our yno y kiniav: II.4

II.4

Maes Maodyn neus cud reỽ.

Maes Maod(d)yn, frost covers it.

o diua da y odeỽ;

After562 the destruction of one whose conduct was good,

ar ued Eirinued eiry tew ~

on Eirinfedd’s grave (there is) thick snow.

II.5 Tom Elwithan neus gỽlych glaỽ.

II.5 The mound of Elwithan, rain wets it.

Despite Thomas Jones, ‘The Early Evolution of the Legend of Arthur’, Nottingham Mediaeval Studies, 8 (1964), 3–21 (pp. 17–18, rightly rejecting the emendation in CLlH 127), BBCSG 108–9, and Elissa R. Henken, ‘Pam Glyndŵr?’, Y Traethodydd, 155.655 (Hydref 2000), 210–27 (p. 217). See Sims-Williams, ‘The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems’, pp. 49–50, with references for Moses (Deuteronomy 34:6) and St Patrick; EBSG 88 and 114–15; Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, pp. 12–13. Geoffrey of Monmouth is also ambivalent; see Lloyd, ‘Death of Arthur’. 560 Chambers, Arthur of Britain, pp. 113–15. The ‘discovery’ was noted, for instance, in the Margam Annals (c. 1232), as well as by Gerald of Wales: Antonia Gransden, ‘The Growth of the Glastonbury Traditions and Legends in the Twelfth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27 (1976), 337–58 (p. 351). 561 Rhys, Englyn, p. 131; BBCSG 126 nn. 1–2, and 132. Cf. CLlH 240 and G. 471. The definite article is more the exception than the rule in gwlych (y) glaw and similar phrases (CLlH III.50–58; PKM 293–94). The -an may have been lost through a scribal error; -n was perhaps lost by haplography before a following neus, as in Series II, with the orphaned -a being subsequently abandoned as meaningless, Elwydd being the more normal form of the name (cf. I.64). I quote the Red Book englynion from R 1048.37–40, adding capitalisation and using a semicolon for punctus elevatus. For variants see EWSP 443. 562 ‘After’ (GPC o1 sense 1i or 3a) with EBSG 52. Cf. CA line 689 etc., and III.11 below. ‘Because’ (sense 14a) would be illogical (cf. EWSP 493 and 610). 559

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Series I Maes Maodyn ydanaỽ;

Maes Maod(d)yn (is) beneath it.

Dylyei Gynon y gỽynaỽ ~

Cynon was entitled to lament him (or to be lamented).563

Although it cannot be excluded that these two stanzas are interpolations in Canu Heledd, they fit well there; common though the name is, Cynon could well be Cynon ap Cyndrwyn, Heledd’s brother, named in Canu Heledd and Plant Kyndrwyn.564 The second stanza may have been taken over into Englynion y Beddau, with bet substituted for tom, a word not otherwise found in Englynion y Beddau. A possible reason why the first stanza was not also taken over is that Eirinfedd (‘berry possessing’) is probably a female name;565 Englynion y Beddau do not include the graves of women – not even Bedd Branwen566 – except in a stanza added to Series I by a second hand (I.70). As seen by Ifor Williams, Elchwith/Elwithan must be the well-attested personal name Elwydd, or a diminutive of it with -an, as in the place-name Bodelwyddan, of which there are several instances.567 The shared spelling with -th- suggests that the variant versions of the englyn derive ultimately from a common written exemplar. Williams suggested that the th was a mistaken modernisation due to familiarity with Old Welsh exemplars like the Juvencus manuscript in which d was used for later th.568 It is perhaps simpler to suppose familiarity with the spelling conventions of record sources in which th was frequently used where Modern Welsh uses dd, for example Bodilwithan and Caderelweth, or with the occasional use of th seen in the Book of Llandaf (cyhoith) and Black Book of Chirk (kerth Hand A, retherc hael and y thaethant Hand H).569 Maes ‘field, plain’ is common in Welsh place-names, but neither Maes Meuetauc nor Maes Maodyn survive. The former perhaps contains a personal name *Meueddog from meuedd ‘riches’.570 Maodyn, if d denotes /d/ (alliterating with ydanaỽ?), could

CLlH 240 understands the latter: ‘Teilyngei Cynon ei gwynaw’, similarly EWSP 493. CLlH XI.32; MWG 357. For him see EWSP 166, 433, 485, 604, 610–11, and 614. EWSP 610 regards the stanzas as ‘probably stray beddau stanzas’; similarly EBSG 88–89 and 125. 565 In his discussion of names of this type (‘Anawfedd’), Ifor Williams notes only our Erinued as possibly male (p. 137), but for a woman of the name see LBS III 225 n. 1. 566 See above, p. 12. 567 CLlH 240; cf. AMR s.n. For Elwydd see ELl 52, Williams, ‘Glasinfryn’, p. 108, and Sims-­ Williams, ‘Emergence’, pp. 52–56. For the variation between chw and w cf. damwain ~ damchwain, erchwys ~ erwys, etc. (WG 29; L&P 157; BWP 96; PKM 94; PT 69). The use after ch of w rather than v/u is unique here in Series I. 568 CLlH 240. This use of d is rare. See above, p. 34. 569 See GPC s.v. cyhoedd; AMR s.nn. Bodelwyddan and Cadair Elwa (on which see I.64 below); ELlSG 109 and ELl 52. DP IV 600 notes a Llechellwiham in Cefn-llys parish, Rad. (SO 0961) < ?*Llech Elwyddan. The earliest form of the latter is Llechelwihan, and Legwythan and Leghwython are also attested: Charles, ‘Early Charter of the Abbey of Cwmhir’, p. 72. For examples of th from record sources and the Black Book of Chirk see Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’, pp. 138, 155, and 157. RMWL II 748 notes th for dd in BL Harley 948 (Laws, s. xiv med.). A surprisingly late example is vyth (= Mod.W. fydd) in Englynion Duad, II.4c (ed. Rowland, p. 71, variant from MS T by Thomas Wiliems) – perhaps just anticipating the next word, nithio. 570 PT 51. 563 564

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

be a compound of ma- ‘plain’ < *magos (as in Machynlleth),571 and Maes may have been added to reinforce the meaning (a Breedon Hill tautology). The second element may be odyn ‘kiln’, a common element in Welsh place-names such as Maes yr odyn.572 Ifor Williams, however, compared the name of a giant, or sometimes saint, called Wddyn, and sometimes, probably by hypercorrection, Gwddyn/Gwyddyn; he was connected with Llanwddyn, Mtg. (SJ 0219), now lost under Llyn Efyrnwy, and with related place-names such as Gwely Wddyn ‘Wddyn’s bed’ (a ‘smooth mound’ around SH 9941 2061) and Sarn Wddyn ‘Wddyn’s road’ (going towards Pennant Melangell).573 While the correspondence between the w of Wddyn and the o of Maodyn looks inexact, the earliest spellings of Llanwddyn are Llanwothin 1205, Lanothyn 1338, Llann Oddyn 1500, and Llanothyn 1547,574 and Maodyn could reflect a similar orthography, if not a misreading of ỽ as o.575 It may be significant that Pennant Twrch, which is adjacent to Llanwddyn, has already been named in I.34. The site of the grave cannot be identified since Maes meuetauc/Maodyn is unknown, but somewhere in the area of Canu Heledd seems plausible. Partly on the basis of its place-names, I have suggested elsewhere that Canu Heledd emanates ‘from Cyndrwynyn territory in southern Powys, perhaps from St Beuno’s church at Berriew’.576 One of these place-names is Trafal, which probably refers to the triangle of land between the rivers Efyrnwy and Banwy, which have their confluence at Mathrafal (SJ 1310),577 eight miles south-east of Llanwddyn. This geography gives some support to Ifor Williams’s attempt to connect Maes Maodyn with Wddyn of Llanwddyn, and his further hint that Cynon may be the eponym of various places in Llanwddyn, including a stream Cynon and a farm Cynon Uchaf (SJ 0119): in 1874, according to the vicar of Llanwddyn, ‘within a mile of this village, on the land of Cynonucha, is a large tumulus, measuring in circumference about eighty yards, and apparently undisturbed’.578 But as Cynon is a common name and the reading and For Ma- see Richards, ‘Some Welsh Place-Names Containing Elements which are Found in Continental Celtic’, pp. 389–98. 572 Many examples in AMR. 573 CLlH lxv and 240. See Evans, ‘History of the Parish of Llanwddyn’, pp. 94–95; LBS III 224–25; Grooms, Giants, pp. 230–32; G. C. Evans, ‘Stream Names of Montgomeryshire’, MC, 75 (1987), 29–49 (p. 31); and WCD 309 and 450. For alternation between giant and saint note the nearby case of Gwely-y-gawres (SJ 0247 2623), ‘also known as “Gwely Melangell”’ (Grooms, Giants, p. 63). Gwely Wddyn, ‘a natural shelf of rock’, is very similar in appearance to Melangell’s bed according to Inv. Mtg. 136. 574 AMR s.n.; Morgan, Study of Montgomeryshire Place-Names, p. 121; Davies, ‘Property’, p. 52. Morgan is sceptical of Ifor Williams’s proposal, favours Gw(y)ddyn as the radical form (ETG 200), and compares Welsh gwyddun ‘fierce warrior?’ (G. 735 and GPC), which may be a ghost word, however – the only example is understood in CBT III 24.126 as gwyddwn ‘I know’ (cf. R 1431.12: gỽydỽn). 575 If Gwddyn is the correct form of the name, it could be gwddyn, an attested variant of gwydn ‘tough’ (GPC), a suitable name for a giant. But it seems unlikely that /g/ would be lost after Ma(despite DP IV 688 on /b/; cf. Richards, ‘Some Welsh Place-Names Containing Elements which are Found in Continental Celtic’, pp. 394–95, on /m/). Gwddyn would be metrically monosyllabic, allowing maës to have its early disyllabic form in both Red Book englynion. A disyllable would not scan in the Black Book version. 576 Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, p. 52. See also Lewis, ‘Approaching the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints’, pp. 89–90. 577 Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, pp. 46 (map) and 49. 578 Evans, ‘History of the Parish of Llanwddyn’, p. 68, cited in CLlH 241. A tumulus in Cynon-uchaf is shown on the map in D. W. L. Rowlands, ‘David Jones’s Reminiscences about Old Llanwddyn 571

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etymology of Maodyn is uncertain, this is only a possibility. For the same reason, little can be made of the coincidence that a Cynon is named in I.65, just after an Elwydd in I.64. An alternative location is suggested by the name Elchwith/Elwithan, with its peculiar th. He could be the eponym of a lost Llech Elwithan in Cefn-llys, Rad. (SO 0961), granted by Roger Mortimer to Cwm-hir abbey in 1199/1200.579 This name may reflect some legend, like the references to fons Arthur and Kair Hocgren in the same charter.580 I.46–47 Eiddef and Eidal, in Caernarfonshire (?) I.46

I.46

Piev. y bet. hun. Bet hun a hun. gowin ymi. mi ae gun.

Whose is this grave? The grave of so-and-so. Ask me; I know it.

Bet ew. bet Eitew oet hun.582

It (is) a grave; this was Eiddef’s grave,

a bet Eidal tal yscvn.

and the grave of Eidal Stubborn Brow.583

581

I.47 Eitew ac Eidal diessic alltudion. kanavon cylchuy drei. mekid meibon Meigen. meirch mei.

I.47 Eiddef and Eidal, vigorous exiles, whelps584 with shattered shields; Meigen’s sons rear the horses of the plain.

and the Construction of Lake Vyrnwy’, MC, 91 (2003), 109–36 (p. 132). For the name Cynon see also G. G. Evans, ‘Stream Names of the Severn Basin in Montgomeryshire’, MC, 73 (1985), 69–95 (p. 95); idem, ‘Place-Names and Field-Names of Pennant Melangell’, ibid., 82 (1994), 9–22 (p. 12). 579 Charles, ‘Early Charter of the Abbey of Cwmhir’, pp. 69 and 72. The exact spot is unidentified; cf. Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 40–41: ‘a noted sheepcot at Llanwyddelan in Cefnllys (location lost)’; Banks, ‘Notes to the Account of Cwmhir Abbey’, p. 214. For variant spellings, see above, p. 211 n. 569. 580 See above, p. 79. 581 Cf. Evans, BBC 129. The line has eight syllables, assuming Piev y is two syllables (i.e. Pieu’r) as often elsewhere (BBCSG 126 n. 5). For the idiom hwn a hwn see GPC s.v. hwn; Williams, Introduction to Welsh Poetry, p. 56. Without a preceding definite article bet hun cannot mean ‘this grave’ (pace EBSG 38). Thomas Jones says that the line is too long and omits Bet hun a, possibly assuming dittography (BBCSG 126 n. 3); this emendation leaves the line too short if Piev y is two syllables. Rhys, Englyn, p. 132, suggests Pieu’r bet hun a’r bet hun with the expected seven syllables, i.e. something like Piev. y bet. hun. ar bet hun (‘Whose is this grave and this grave?’) in the MS orthography. 582 This line is unsatisfactory as hun has already appeared in rhyme; something like ot uch bet Eitew oethun ‘I was (oeddwn) above the grave of Eiddef’ would fit; cf. I.42–43. Thomas Jones’s translation (‘the grave of Eiddew this was’) ignores bet ew. Evans, BBC 129, emends, taking Bet ew as Neud ef or Ys ef, followed by Jarman (LlDC 102) who compares I.15c Neud ew hun bet Kintilan ‘this is the grave of Cynddylan’ – not an exact parallel as oet is lacking there before hun. Bet ew cannot mean ‘His grave’, pace EBSG 38 and Gwyn Thomas, Hen Englynion, p. 94: ‘[Ei] fedd ef, bedd Eiddew, oedd hwn’. The line resembles I.55b bet ruyw yv hunnv mab Rigenev. 583 Taken as tal ‘brow’ by Jarman in his glossary. Another possibility is tal ‘payment, etc.’, so ‘of stubborn retribution’. It is unclear why Thomas Jones translates ‘host’. 584 On the figurative use of canawon see Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 218.

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The first englyn is probably corrupt. In line c Bet ew ‘It (is) a grave’ is weak, and could perhaps be taken as ‘A grave of yew (yw)’, with wordplay on the name Eitew if this is eiddew ‘ivy’.585 W is not normally used for /w/ in the Black Book, however. Similarly, Eitew should normally represent Eiddef, and this is an attested name (spelt Eidef) in the Book of Llandaf and in the Gododdin (line 1050), where the -f /v/ is confirmed by rhyme.586 Curiously, the Gododdin hero is also connected with horses; before he was placed in the grave, he ‘used to overtake swift horses in battle’ (ragorei veirch racvuan / en trin). There is no warrior Eidal in the Gododdin, although it does have a rather similar word, sometimes a name, Eidol (lines 676, 821, and 900).587 If Eiddef and Eidal were Gododdin warriors, that would explain why their graves, presumably in Wales, are those of alltudion. But a better possibility is suggested by the name Meigen, assuming meibon Meigen in the enigmatic line I.47c refers to Eitew ac Eidal. Meigen may be the lord of Mays Maichghen, lost beneath Cardigan Bay, whose son Alun Dyfed emigrated northwards, thus being an alltud (see on I.17–19 and I.24–25 above). Thomas Jones suggests that I.47, which does not refer to a grave, is an addition, interpolated because it referred to the people in I.46.588 This is plausible; the present tense in I.47 suggests that Meigen’s sons are still alive. There would seem to have been a whole saga about Meigen and his three sons. The name Eiddef survives in Caernarfonshire, with regular sound-changes, as Eidda, the name of a river (SH 8148) and associated places west of Ysbyty Ifan, while the name Eidal occurs three miles to the west, on the other side of the river Machno, in the name Bryn Eidal (SH 77599 48426) in Penmachno, with Moel Bryn Eidal nearby.589 These adjacent places are only some ten miles north-west of Penrhyd-galed (SH 92803 37740), where Rhun ab Alun Dyfed ap Meigen was buried (see on I.24 above), so possibly the names Eiddef and Eidal were drawn from these place-names and exploited for a cycle of stories about the activities of Meigen’s descendants in this area of north Wales. I.48 Brwyno Hir ?above Brwyno-canol, Crd. I.48 Piev y bet hun. bet Bruyno Hir

I.48 Whose is this grave? The grave of Brwyno the Tall,

Cf. Rhys, Englyn, p. 132, who, however, preferred to emend to Bet eitew neut ew oet hun ‘Eiddef’s grave – this was it’. Cf. DP II 332. 586 G. 454; CA 315. 587 See CA 211, 241, and 273. Although they cannot be equated, EP 32 and 310 compares Eidal and Eidol (also Eidoel, for which see Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch and Olwen, pp. 92 and 133, and WCD 227). 588 BBCSG 105. 589 DP II 332; R. J. Thomas, ‘Eiddef ac Eidal’, B., 7 (1933–35), 272–73. Following I. C. Peate (‘Eiddef ac Eidal’, B., 14 (1950–52), 296), BBCSG 116 and EBSG 89 mention a Pant Eidal, Mer., near the Dyfi estuary (SH 6597) and a Moel Eiddew in Cemais, Mtg. (SH 8605), but these are a long way apart, and moreover Eiddew ‘ivy’ and Eiddef are distinct. For Eiddew in Mtg. and elsewhere see G. G. Evans, ‘Stream Names of the Severn Basin in Montgomeryshire’, MC, 74 (1986), 49–69 (pp. 55–56) and HEF 206–7. For Eidal in place-names see AMR s. *Eidal and GDG 479, note on no. 44.11 (but cf. DafyddapGwilym.net, no. 156.9). It already occurs in penn brynn eital in LL 146. Presumably the existence of such a personal name explains why the translators of Geoffrey rendered his Eldadus as Eidal (cf. Roberts, ‘Treatment of Personal Names’, p. 279). 585

214

Series I hydir y wir in y bro.

whose entitlement590 was strong in his (or the?) land.

parth yd vei ny bitei fo.

Where he would be there would be no retreat.

Thomas Jones noted that Brwyno occurs in various Welsh place-names, but that it is tempting to suppose that Brwyno was the supposed eponym of Brwyno on the Afon Brwyno east of Glandyfi, Crd., where a Bronze Age east–west stone alignment was discovered in 1935, near the crest of a ridge overlooking Afon Brwyno and the ruin of Brwyno-canol (SN 7156 9666).591 These stones are already mapped as ‘Cerrig Hirion’ at a field boundary in 1788.592 Currently the tallest of the stones, incorporated into a wall, stands 6 feet 6 inches feet high, but another, now semi-recumbent, may once have been taller. To the west, beyond the alignment, lies an enormous, immoveable boulder. It, or one or more of the stones in the alignment, may mark Brwyno’s supposed grave. Westwards there is a magnificent view, across the Dyfi estuary, to the Irish Sea, and nearby is the impassable ravine beneath Craig Caerhedyn. Was Brwyno Hir a giant? One may compare Epynt and Taflogau in I.26 and I.60, whose graves were both near ravines. Both were associated with Cistercian lands, and the same is true of

gwir ‘right, etc.’ as in I.19, 35, 59, and III.2, not gwŷr ‘men’ as in Jaspar Gryffyth’s modernisation: ‘hydir ei wŷr yn eu bro’ (NLW Llanstephan 120, 79r). 591 BBCSG 114 (the other Brwyno in Ceredigion, Cwm Brwyno, was favoured by Lewis Morris in his index to Englynion y Beddau in BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46). See C. D. F[orde], ‘Menhir at Brwyno, Glandyfi, Cardiganshire’, B., 7 (1933–35), 420; Anon., ‘Menhir at Brwyno, Glandyfi, Cardiganshire’, AntJ, 15.3 (1935), 345; Nikki Cook, Prehistoric Funerary and Ritual Sites Project, Ceredigion 2004–2006, Cambria Archaeology Report, 2006/32 (Llandeilo, 2006), p. 51; Coflein, s. Brwyno-Canol Stone Row; Archwilio s. Ysgubor-y-coed, Bryn Du. For photographs see The Megalithic Portal < https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=44576> (accessed 7.8.2021). Since the smaller stones were photographed for EBSG 89 the trees have been felled and the small, vertically split stone has been damaged. On siting Bronze Age monuments below the crest of a ridge, so as to be conspicuous from one side only, see Frances Lynch, ‘Ring-Cairns and Related Monuments in Wales’, Scottish Archaeological Forum, 4 (1972), 61–80 (p. 66). For the name Brwyno see EANC 218–19 and AMR; cf. Brwyn above, I.23. For an unnoticed example in Ceredigion see Yr Haul, 13.150 (June 1869), 7: ‘Brwyno oedd enw porfa defaid, yn agos i fynachlog Ystrad Fflur’. In some nineteenth-century periodical literature Brwyneu hen (a variant of Bwrrwinen Hen), father of St Cwyfen in ByS §50 (EWGT 62), becomes Brwyno. 592 See map no. 24, Brwyno Uchaf & Brwyno Haf 1788, in T[homas] Lewis, Maps of the Gogerthan Estate in the Several Counties of Cardigan and Montgomery: The Property of Mrs. Margt. Pryse, Vol. II, NLW, Gogerddan Collection, 37; PNC III 1174 and 1185. The name Brwyno sometimes acquires an inorganic -g; as in Coed Kay alias Brwynog 1680 (PNC III 1174; AMR s.n. Brwyno, Ysgubor-y-Coed). (Here Coed Kay is no doubt the common place-name Coed Cae, not an allusion to the Arthurian hero Cai/Sir Kay.) For further examples of the inorganic -g see EANC 218–19 and PNC II 577 and 580, and III 1230, on Aberbrwyno (SN 836654), Cefnbrwyno (SN 820656), and Brwyno(g). In view of this phenomenon, one might wonder whether the name of our Brwyno may survive in a name such as Pwll Brwynog, Aberedw, Rad., on the old track between Rhiwlen and Newchurch, where there is a Bronze Age round barrow (SO 1560 5074), ‘c. 6.5m diameter × 0.5m high, sited in a col, close to Pwll Brwynog … with views to west’ (Archwilio, s. Aberedw, Pwll Brwynog Barrow), two miles south of the clas church at Glascwm (HW I 254–55). The first and only reference to it in AMR is Pwll-brwynog 1833. Most likely, however, this simply means ‘rushy pool’, and ‘rushy’ is probably the meaning of brwynog in similar names, for which see AMR s. *brwynog* and EANC 218. 590

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the Brwyno-canol area, which was disputed between Cwm-hir and Ystrad Marchell in the first quarter of the thirteenth century.593 I.49 The grave of [?Cer]wyd I.49 Piev y bet hun nid [or uid]

I.49 594

Whose is this grave? [The grave of …] nyd/uyd.

aral guythuch urth ervid.

(With) the fury of a boar against a spear,

trath lathei charthei vrthid.

while he slew you, he would laugh at you.595

There is a lacuna in line a, which should presumably read Piev y bet hun [bet X] nid or Piev y bet hun [bet X]uid (scanning Piev y as Pieu’r, as usual, and assuming a seven-syllable line). A similar lacuna occurs in I.56a, but is there corrected in the manuscript. Judging by vrthid ‘at you’ in line c, a word which is consistently written with -yt in the thirteenth century,596 the lost name should end in what is written -yd in Modern Welsh. Ervid looks like a problem, since Ifor Williams modernises this as erfid and notes that it rhymes elsewhere in -id.597 GPC, however, offers erfyd as an alternative to erfid (‘blow, etc.’), though without citations, while Lloyd-Jones plausibly suggests that ervid is for *erwyd ‘spear’, singular of MW erwydet (i.e. erwydedd).598 Disyllabic Welsh personal names ending in -nyd, -fyd, or -wyd are rare.599 In fact the only one that I can find is Cerwyd (from, or related to, MW kerwyt ‘stag’?),600 a name which has already appeared in I.1c (Kerwid), probably with reference there to Cerwyd ap Pabo Post Prydyn, a now obscure character who was presumably of some importance when he was included in Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd at some date between the twelfth and the early fourteenth century.601 The present stanza may again refer See above, p. 77, where it is suggested that Brwyno Hir’s ‘entitlement’ may symbolise that of the Cistercians. 594 Evans notes uid as a possible reading: BBC 130. Jones, Llenyddiaeth y Cymry, p. 7, suggested ‘Pieu y bedd hwn yn ryd Aral’. This requires an emendation such as hun [i]n [r]id and no ‘ford of Aral’ is known (aral is a southern form of arial). 595 Cf. LlDC no. 31.37–38: Arthur ced huar[t]hei./ e guaed gouerei ‘Arthur, though he laughed, he caused her blood to flow’. 596 Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘Variation in Middle Welsh Conjugated Prepositions: Chronology, Register and Dialect’, TPS, 111.1 (2013), 1–50 (p. 46). 597 CLlH 72. But for i and y rhyming see EWSP 333. 598 G. 487, accepted in CBT II 31.33n. 599 w here being the semi-vowel, hence Cynŵyd (G. 263) is ineligible. I have searched electronically for personal names in WCD and in hengerdd, CBT, and the fourteenth-century Cywyddwyr. 600 In addition to G. and GPC s.v. cerwyd see EWGP 56, Rowland, ‘“Englynion Duad”’, p. 83, and Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, ed. Jacobs, pp. 13 (V.8), 15 (VI.13), 54, and 90. As noted at I.1 above, EP 254 links Kerwid there with carw ‘stag’. 601 EWGT 73 (BGG §4 = MWG 428); TYP4 256 (her twelfth-century date at p. cvi may be too early, but it is at least as old as Anrec Uryen, cf. Tal. 196). The spelling contrast in BGG’s ‘Dunaỽt a Cherwyd’ suggests Mod.W. -dd (cf. G. 137), but Bartrum has Mod.W. -d in his index (EWGT 177 and WCD 127), probably in view of Kerwyt m. Krydon in HGK and spellings of that name in later MSS (see GaC §2, ABT §1a and n. 7, and MP §1 (and cf. n. 1) in EWGT 36, 95–96 (cf. MWG 361 and 392), and 121; also Kyrwyt, filii Crydoni in Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, §3). The fact that the name of this Kerwyt was sometimes given as [K]ywryt (TYP4 no. 78 and p. 327; WCD 187) is also in favour of /-d/. On Kerwyt and its possible equivalence with Cowryd see Jones, 593

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Series I

to him; perhaps Pabo’s family were supposed to have ended their days in Wales, as is suggested by claims in Bonedd y Saint that St Tysilio of Meifod, St Deinioel of Bangor, and St Asaph were all Pabo’s grandchildren.602 These are saints of the north and east, which may be a clue to the location of Cerwyd’s grave – note that Llanelwy (St Asaph) occurs in the next stanza (I.50). An alternative possibility is Cerwyd/Cyrwyd ap Cryd(d)on, the great-grandfather of Beli Mawr in the patrilineage of Rhodri Mawr given in the twelfth-century Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan.603 Peter Bartrum argued persuasively that the pedigree of Beli Mawr within this patrilineage was taken from a lost pseudo-history of Britain, independent of Geoffrey of Monmouth. That Cerwyd ap Cryd(d)on was more than a name in a long list of names and had an independent existence in some lost story is suggested by the appearance of Gwen verch [K]ywryt (MS Rywryt, var. Cywryd) mab Krydon in the Triad of the ‘Three Fair Ladies (Gwenriein) of the Island of Britain’.604 I.50 Syl(l)ydd in Edrywy (Crn.?), Llemenig in Llanelwy (Den.), and Eilinwy on Gwernin hill I.50 Bet Silit dywal in Edrywuy le. Bet605 Llemenic in Llan Elvy. yg Guernin bre bet Eilinvy.

I.50 The grave of Syl(l)ydd the relentless (is) in Edrywy. The grave of Llemenig (is) in Llanelwy. on Gwernin hill (is) the grave of Eilinwy.

The name Silit seems to be unique, so it is uncertain whether either i represents standard MW i or y. If they both represent y, it is perhaps Mod.W. syllydd ‘gazer’, bearing in mind that medial l occasionally occurs instead of ll in Old Welsh spelling.606 Silit could be a gifted character like Drem mab Dremidyd (‘Sight son of Seer’) in Culhwch and Olwen.607 An eleventh-century Gurhi filius Silli doctoris de Lanniltut is found at ‘Rhos and Rhufoniog Pedigrees’, p. 303, criticising Rhys, Englyn, pp. 14 and 24. EP 41 and 129–30 associates Cywryd with cywryd ‘anger, valour’, as in the name Blegywryd (with blaidd ‘wolf’ as the first element). Cf. CIB 110 n. 603. 602 See TYP4 280, 335–36, 472, and 496; WCD 522. 603 Kyrwyt, filii Crydoni in Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, §3; Kerwyt, m. Krydon in HGK 2.5–6 (EWGT 36 and 134). Cf. Kywyd (varr. Kewyt, Kerwyd, Kewyd, Kerwyt) ap Krydon in ABT §1a (EWGT 95–96 – Kerwyt in MS E, the best text, cf. MWG 361 and 392) and Kerwyd ap Kyrdon in MP §1 (EWGT 121 and 158). On Rhodri Mawr’s patrilineage see Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, p. 118 and references. 604 Peter C. Bartrum, ‘Was there a British “Book of Conquests”?’, B., 23 (1968–70), 1–6; EWGT 134; TYP4 no. 78 and p. 327; WCD 187; MWG 235–36. Despite the formal disparity between Cerwyd and Cywryd (easily attributed to metathesis and orthographical ambiguity), the rarity of their patronymic Krydon makes their identity certain. Krydon is modernised as Crydon by Bartrum and Bromwich, but Cryddon (from crydd ‘shoemaker’ + theonymic -on) seems more likely. On the possible mythological connections of shoemaking see TYP4 186 and Hutton, ‘Medieval Welsh Literature and Pre-Christian Deities’, pp. 70–71. 605 Following the example of Rhys’s emendation of I.36b, bet could be deleted. 606 LHEB 471 n. 1; Meinir Lewis, ‘Disgrifiad o Orgraff Hen Gymraeg gan ei Chymharu ag Orgraff Hen Wyddeleg’, University of Wales MA dissertation (Aberystwyth, 1961), pp. 18 and 664 (e.g. OW calaur). 607 Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 261–63 and n.

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Pen-bre (Pembrey, Crm.) in the Book of Llandaf, and this could be the same name, allowing for the occasional loss of a final dental as in OW tridi = ModW trydydd.608 The location of Edrywy609 is uncertain, as there are numerous places bearing this name: Edrywy ard ‘the hill of Edrywy’ in Claf Abercuawg, presumably somewhere near Dolcuog (SH 7601), near Machynlleth, Mtg. (note that Edrywy is prefixed, as in our Edrywuy le lit. ‘Edrywy place’ (cf. I.59a), and compare Guernin bre in line c);610 an unidentified Edrywuy in the prophetic Bedwenni;611 an unidentified Dolau Edrywy in Cad Goddau;612 a river Drywy, Drowy, Drywi, or Drewi between New Quay and Aberaeron, Crd. (SN 4260);613 Traeth Edrywy in Trefdraeth, Pem. (SN 0539), with nearby Carreg y Drowy/Carreg Edrwy (SN 044418) and Ogof Drowy;614 a stream called Nant Drewi (SH 73483 44623) in Ffestiniog, Mer., which branches off the Teigl – presumably at the confluence whose name Richards normalises as Aberedrywi on the basis of sixteenth-century attestations such as Aberydrywy and Aberdrowy – and which is crossed by the Roman road (Sarn Helen) at SH 7370 4447;615 and, finally, another Traeth Edrywy, mentioned by Gwalchmai c. 1177 as the site of a victory by Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd, probably his victory ‘beside the sea’ in Llŷn in 1175 commemorated by Prydydd y Moch. Gwalchmai’s Traeth Edrywy is plausibly associated by Rhian Andrews with Cerrig Drewi, the name of some rocks, visible at low tide, near Traeth Penllech, north of Llangwnnadl, Crn. (SH 2034).616 As Andrews notes, this may well be the presumably western Ydrywy mentioned LL 279. For loss of -dd see LHEB 426–47. < Edryw- or Edryf- + -wy, according to DP II 440–41 and G. 442. According to Thomas, ‘wy’, pp. 27–28 (following DP), -wy may denote a river- or ethnic name. Edryf is a variant of edrydd ‘lineage’, cognate with Irish aithre ‘paternal relatives’ (see T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Edryd, Edryf, Edfryd, Edrydd’, B., 23 (1968–70), 117–20, and GPC ach5), so presumably in an ethnic name, if that is what Edrwy is, it would refer to a patrilineage or homeland. But some of the examples rather suggest a maritime connection. 610 CLlH VI.16; Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 40–41. For the inversion see G. s.v. bre. 611 LlDC no. 15.16 (and n.): Ar peleidir kychuin [recte Peleidir ar kychuin] am edrywuy (‘spears attacking around Edryfwy’, Bollard, ‘Myrddin’, p. 22). Cf. EVW 86. 612 LPBT no. 5.230 (and extensive n.); cf. PBT 26. 613 Glanmor Davies, ‘Edrywuy’, B., 7 (1933–35), 279. See J. E. Lloyd, ‘Welsh Place-Names: A Study of Some Common Name–Elements’, Y Cymmrodor, 11 (1890), 15–60 (note by E. Phillimore on p. 37); AMR s. Aberedrywi. Examples of Ffynnon Drewi and possibly Nant Drewi in Ffestiniog (ibid., s. *drewi*) may contain drewi ‘stink’, but this etymology is rejected for the Ceredigion Drywy by PNC III 1243. 614 DP II 439 n. 2 and 441; CLlH 166; Charles, Place-Names of Pembrokeshire, I, 149 and 161–62; EBSG 90 with photo. 615 See AMR s.nn. Aberydrywi and Nant Drewi. For the Roman road see David Hopewell, Roman Roads in North-West Wales (Revision 4), 2 vols (Bangor, 2007), I, 58, and II, Map 14, §17683; ibid., new edition (Bangor, 2013), p. 40. 616 CBT I 11.71; V 5.42; Rhian M. Andrews, ‘Golwg ar Yrfa Gwalchmai’, LlC, 27 (2004), 30–47 (p. 42 and n. 76), citing Elfed Gruffydd, Ar Hyd Ben ’Rallt: Enwau Glannau Môr – Penrhyn Llŷn, second edition (Llanrwst, 1999), p. 28: ‘Daw Cerrig Drewi i’r golwg ar drai mawr ac ynddynt mae dau dwll cimwch’; this is vague – the rocks are not marked on his map (p. 46) or on the O.S. 6-inch maps – but he seems to mean somewhere at the western end of Traeth Penllech near Porth Golman (SH 1934), possibly near where a stream called Abermaenog ran down to the sea from Moel-y-Berth. Andrews, followed by LPBT 235–36, suggested that Edrywy may have been the old name of the Afon Fawr (just to the east); this was formerly Nant Gwynhoedl, according to ETG 180–81 and Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 263. 608 609

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by Sefnyn, who, in an extent-topos in a poem in praise of Goronwy Fychan (d. 1382), refers to rejoicing ‘or Drefwen hyt Ydrywy’, that is, from Y Dref-wen (in or near ancient Powys) to Ydrywy.617 Given the reference to the northern Llanelwy (St Asaph) in line b, this northern Edrywy/Ydrywy seems the most likely site for Syl(l)ydd’s grave. Perhaps the offshore cerrig were supposed to mark his grave (compare Maen Dylan, discussed at I.4 above)? If Silit was a ‘gazer’, Llŷn would be a good place from which to keep watch over the Irish Sea. His legend was perhaps fostered at Llangwnnadl church, which has a seventh- to ninth-century cross-carved stone and may take its name from the Gwynhoedl (vendesetli) commemorated on a fifth- or sixth-century inscribed stone in the neighbouring parish of Llannor (SH 344390).618 St Gwynhoedl was supposed to be one of Seithennin’s sons, who escaped the inundation of Maes Gwyddno, beneath Cardigan Bay.619 The grave of Llemenig (‘leaper’) is unambiguously near Llanelwy (St Asaph, Den., SJ 0374), the only place of this name, named from the river Elwy.620 Ellis Davies speculated that his supposed grave is the Neolithic chambered tomb at Tyddyn Bleiddyn, Ysgubor Newydd, Cefnmeiriadog, in a field overlooking the Elwy valley (SJ 0072 7246).621 Bedd-y-Cawr (‘the giant’s grave’), a nearby Iron Age promontory hillfort (SJ 0135 7205), is another possibility, although it is claimed for Meiriadog Gawr.622 Llemenig is a shadowy figure, but is apparently connected to the Powys region, not far from Llanelwy.623 His father’s name is usually given as Mawan or similar, a characteristic name in the early royal line of Powys.624 He is praised as a great warrior in englynion attached to Canu Heledd, but is grouped with two characters from the Powysian englyn cycles, Llywarch Hen and Heledd (or ‘Elen’) ferch Cyndrwyn, in a triad of three homeless importunates who imposed on the hospitality of Arthur and St Beuno; presumably they fell on hard times.625 Ysgwydurith, ‘the steed of Llemenig’ (gorwyd llemenic), is listed in ‘Canu y Meirch’ in the Book of Taliesin and in one version of Triad 43.626 While this may be due to a misunderstanding of the phrase gorwyd llemenic ‘a leaping steed’ as ‘the steed of Llemenig’, a point in favour of ‘the steed of Llemenig’ is that Triad 46C also refers to the horse of Elinwy, who is presumably the Eilinvy of our I.50c, R 1259.9 = Gwaith Sefnyn, Rhisierdyn, Gruffudd Fychan ap Gruffudd ab Ednyfed a Llywarch Bentwrch, ed. Jones and Rheinallt, no. 3.9 (and n.); CLlH 215. On another extent-topos in this poem see above on I.42–43. 618 Edwards, Corpus, III, nos CN26 and CN 30. 619 EWGT 60 (ByS §40). See commentary on I.6. 620 ETG 133–34; Thomas, ‘wy’, pp. 30–31. 621 Coflein and Archwilio s. Tyddyn Bleiddyn Burial Chamber (with photographs); Inv. Den. 22–23; Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Denbighshire, pp. 64–67. Davies notes that this is in the parish of Cefn, formerly part of Llanelwy parish. 622 Coflein s. Bedd-y-cawr defended enclosure and Archwilio s. Bedd y cawr hillfort (both with photographs); Inv. Den. 23. Cf. Grooms, Giants, pp. 19–20 and 199–200. Iolo Morganwg’s fictions about Meiriadog must be ignored (cf. J. Fisher, ‘Some Place-Names in the Locality of St. Asaph’, AC, 6th ser. 14 (1914), 221–46 (p. 235)). 623 See TYP4 411–12; EWSP 168–69 and 612; WCD 406–7. 624 Sims-Williams, ‘Historical Need’, p. 37 n. 128, and Buchedd Beuno, p. 49. 625 TYP4 nos 65, 76, and 77; CLlH XI.113; EWSP 64, 168–69, 445, 494, and 612; Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, p. 57. 626 LPBT no. 15.47–48 and pp. 388 and 400; TYP4 lxxxii, 113–14, and 411. 617

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

despite the slight difference in the initial vowel/diphthong – Old Welsh e could stand for ei, and there is sporadic evidence for /l/ having a raising effect on a preceding initial /e/.627 In Triad 7 Elinwy mab Cadegyr is one of the Three Bull-Chieftains of the Island of Britain, ‘three sons of bards’ (tri meib beirdd).628 Cadegyr (rather than the expected MW Cateyrn) is a corrupt throwback to OW Cat(t)egirn (< *Catu-­ tigernos), a distinctively Powysian name.629 The only other record of Elinwy is the name of his horse, Gwegar (< Gwae-gar ‘full of affliction’?) in a triad in Peniarth 252 (s. xvii).630 Guernin bre (i.e. Gwernin fre, ‘alder-wooded hill’ or ‘swamp hill’) does not seem to survive as a name.631 Conceivably it is a description, not a proper name. I.51 Llachar ap Rhun in Clun Cain, ?by the river Tawe, Gla., or Teifi, Crm. I.51 Bet milur mirein gnaud kelein oe lav. kin bu. tav. y dan mein. Llachar mab Run yg Clun Kein.

I.51 The grave of a handsome warrior at whose hand a corpse was usual before he was silent beneath stones: Llachar son of Rhun in Clun Cain.

Llemenig, who appeared in the preceding stanza (I.50b), is called fflam daffar llachar Llemenig ‘flame-preparing, ardent Llemenig’ in the englynion attached to Canu Heledd.632 Knowledge of that phrase perhaps prompted a compiler to include a stanza on Llachar, which means ‘flashing, fiery’.633 Llachar ap Rhun is not known otherwise, unless he is the same Llachar as the one commemorated in I.54 below – which is plausible since the name is unusual.634 If yg Clun Kein means ‘in or at [a place called] Clun Cain’, it cannot be identified635

See respectively LHEB 587–89 and CIB 234. A good parallel is Elifri ~ Eilifri (G. 469; WCD 243). People called Elinui occur in the eleventh-century clerical and lay lists in LL 270 and 273–74. Conceivably E- is for Ei- there. Note also Eilinwy m. Egri in MWG 358. EP 80 and 312 compares Eilinvy with a name Eilig, possibly from eil ‘second’. 628 TYP4 no. 7. While meib beird could simply mean ‘bards’ (ibid., p. 14), this is less likely since one of them is Auaon mab Talyessin (but cf. EWSP 355–56). In Triad 10 tri meib beird has a different sense: ‘The three of them were three sons and/who were bards’ (Rowlands, review of TYP1, p. 232). 629 See EWGT 176 and WCD 243; Cattegir (sic) in HG §27 (EWGT 12) is strikingly similar. 630 TYP4 xxxi and no. 46C. 631 For comments on the formation in -in but no examples in place-names (apart from MW Guernin for Ferns in Ireland), see CA 256, ELlSG 25–26, G. 669–70, GPC s.v., Ifor Williams, ‘Gregynog’, Y Llenor, 9 (1930), 225–33 (p. 232), idem, ‘Hengerdd’, B., 7 (1933–35), 23–32 (p. 31), and idem, ‘Glasinfryn’, pp. 106–7. 632 EWSP 445, 494, and 612; CLlH XI.113. 633 Cognate with Irish Lassa(i)r, which is usually a female name, however: Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 252. 634 There is very doubtful further example in LPBT 5.203 (see n.). 635 G. 150. 627

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and the most that could be said – relying on modern data636 – is that it was probably in the south, since the element clun, though pan-Celtic (cf. Continental Celtic Cl(o)un-, Irish cluain), is now rare in the toponymy of north Wales.637 This could be a point in favour of identifying the grave of Llachar ap Rhun with that of Llachar of I.54 below, which was beside the river Tawe (or possibly the Teifi). If, however, we do not take clun as a toponym and understand yg clun Kein as ‘in the meadow of the river Cain’ (or ‘in a meadow in a place or district named from a river Cain’) there are more possibilities since the hydronym Cain is widespread;638 compare Nant (y) Cain, Llangoed, Ang.; Abercain (Aberkin), Llanystumdwy, Crn.; Cain, Cilcain, Fli.;639 Afon Cain, Trawsfynydd, Mer.; Afon Cain, Llanfechain, Mtg.; also a Nant Cein, Mon. in the Book of Llandaf.640 Given the number of Cain hydronyms, there is no real chance of locating the clun in question and one must resist the temptation to pick a location such as Dôl Gain on Afon Cain, Trawsfynydd (SH 72782 30757), despite the interesting nearby names Llech Idris, Bedd Porius, and Dôl Mynach, the last presumably alluding to Cymer Abbey’s grange.641 It is Risky, since fashions can change. A northern Clun-t(y)no, seems to occur in Math (PKM 81 and 280), as discussed under I.4 above. This combines the ‘southern’ clun and the ‘northern’ tyno, which in fact occurred in the south in the Old Welsh period (see AMR s. *tyno* and Parsons, ‘Irlond Roll’, p. 153). AMR lists a very few possible clun names in the north: Clinteg in Niwbwrch, Ang.; Gilfach y Clun/Llin/Llyn in Llandygái, Crn.; Clun-y-Gors in Waunfawr, [Crn.] (citing ‘SH 4961’); Clun y Coed (Klyncoed 1654) in Cynwyd Fawr, Mer. 637 ACPN 63; RhELlH and AMR s. *clun*; Welsh Tithe Maps. In RhELlH the element clun (with that spelling, but clyn is broadly similar) is confined to the southern two-thirds of Wales, that is Bre. and southwards + Mtg. (dôl being preferred in the north), and the shires which have cain as well as clun are Mtg., Bre., Gla., Pem., and especially Crm. The only place where the two elements – with these spellings – occur at all close is in the parish of Aber-nant, Crm., where a Clun Hebog (SN 36712 26140) is 2.35 km west of a Cwm-cain (SN 34420 25628), which has an associated Allt Cwm-cain (SN 34249 25563). Looking for clyn brings in irrelevant names (e.g. Clynnog), but a few of RhELlH’s northern examples of clyn may represent clun, e.g. Rhos y clyn, Llanystumdwy, Crn. However, a ‘Courtie [= coedcae, FPN 38–39] with clyn mialy’ in Cilcain, Fli. (SJ 17581 66042) is really Celyn-Maly (FPN 33). RhELlH lists a ‘Clyn gain’ at SS 92755 99575 in Blaen Rhondda, Gla., referring to the Tithe data , but the O.S. has Clyn-gwyn (and note the modern Clyn­ gwyn Road). Clun is normally m. (see AMR s.v.). 638 DP III 243; Ekwall, English River-Names, p. 69. See AMR s. *cain*. Cf. Turner, ‘Some Somerset Place-Names’, p. 115. 639 For a different opinion see Hywel Wyn Owen, Place-Names of Dee and Alun (n.p., n.d.), p. 22; cf. DP IV 585 n. 6. 640 LL 207 (cf. Coe, ‘Place-Names’, p. 631, and pp. 557–58 on Mauchein). Lan Cein (Kentchurch, Herefordshire), LL 275, seems to contain the saint’s name (Coe, ‘Place-Names’, pp. 398 and 914; LBS II 52–55; cf. Brett et al., Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, p. 265), although in such cases one cannot be sure that the saint has not been created out of an adjective (cf. Jones, Holy Wells, p. 4, on Fynnongain, Pem.). For Cein/Cain as a personal name see DP III 209 n. 1 and 294 n. 3, and IV 585 n. 6 (where the place- and stream-names are derived from it, which is questionable in many cases). 641 For these see Inv. Mer. 178 and 182, and Edwards, Corpus, III, 418 (cf. Pennant, Tour, II, 110–11; Fenton, Tours, p. 43). On Bedd Porius and Llech Idris see Lhwyd Letters: John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 10 June 1693; John Pryce to unknown recipient, 17 June 1693; Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 6 July 1693; David Lloyd to Lhwyd, 14 July 1693; Maurice Jones to Lhwyd, 21 Aug. 1693; Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 10 Oct. 1693; Maurice Jones to Lhwyd, 24 Nov. 1693; Hugh Jones to Lhwyd, 30 Dec. 1694. The Dolgeyn granted to Cymer Abbey seems not to be Dôl Gain on the west bank, but may be Dôl Mynach on the east bank (SH 73480 31255); cf. Williams-Jones, ‘Llywelyn’s Charter to Cymer 636

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possible, of course, that yg clun kein simply means ‘in a fair meadow’ or ‘in the meadow of a person called Cain’.642 I.52 Talan (son of Llywarch Hen?) I.52

I.52

Bet Talan. talyrth yg kinhen

643

teir cad.

kymynad pen pop nyrth. hyget agoret y pirth.

The grave of Talan, a hard front644 in the contention of three armies, slayer of the head of every force,645 generous, open (to all were) his gates.646

This stanza and the next one intervene between the two on Llachar (I.51 and I.54) and are distinguished by their lack of topographical reference, a possible indication that they have been interpolated from other genres. Talan (also attested in Old Cornish and Old Breton) is probably either a borrowing of Irish Talán or Tálán (ogam talagni) or a Brittonic formation from Celtic *Talo- plus the Brittonic hypercoristic -an which was borrowed from Irish -án < *-agnas < *-ognos.647 It is likely648 that the Talan praised here is the Talan, apparently one of Llywarch Hen’s sons,649 in an englyn found both in the Enwev Meibon Llywarch Hen section of the Black Book of Carmarthen and among the englynion in the Red Book of Hergest and related manuscripts which (mostly) concern Llywarch and his sons. The speaker seems to be Llywarch himself, who was given to reproaches and upbraiding (cyfedliw): Enwev Meibon Llywarch Hen (LlDC no. 40) Pell otima aber llyv.

Red Book of Hergest (R 1039.1–2) Pell odyman aber llyỽ;

Abbey in 1209’, p. 73, and Gresham, ‘The Cymer Abbey Charter’, pp. 145 and 154, who marks Dôlgain on the east bank on his map and sees Cain as the name of district. ‘D. R. T.’, ‘Notes on Early Powys’, AC, 4th ser. 10 (1879), 287–301 (p. 292), arbitrarily claimed our Clun Kein ‘valley of the Cain’ for Powys, presumably thinking of the Cain in Montgomeryshire. Equally arbitrarily, John Rhys, ‘Enwau Lleoedd’, Cymru, 11 (1896), 149–53 (p. 151), identified it with Cilcain, Fli. 642 Mod.W. uses mewn rather than yn for ‘in a’, but this rule did not apply in MW: WG 416. The personal name is from MW Kein, not the disyllabic biblical Cain (cf. CBT I 249 and 549). 643 For the rhyme, Thomas Jones (‘yg kinhen teir cad’ and BBCSG 128 n. 1) emends yg kinhen ‘in contention (cynnen)’ to yn ygyrth, ‘in the horror/?clash’ (i.e. GPC’s engyrth, yngyrth). But he notes that a rhyme is not essential, comparing I.39. 644 Or Talyrth may be taken as an epithet, with CLlH 243. 645 nyrth is apparently singular; cf. CLlH 243; GPC s.v. nerth. 646 Probably referring to a generous ‘open house’; cf. the reckless Maelwr, quoted in connection with I.68 below. Another possibility is ‘extensive (were) his reinforcements’. 647 CIB 124 n. 690 and 161 n. 957. Less likely is a connection with the name Talan(i)us in GPN 260 and Meid, Keltische Personennamen in Pannonien, p. 290. 648 WCD 592–93. Cf. DP III 250. 649 So listed by Gutun Owain: MWG 395.

222

Series I pellach ynduy kyuetliw.

pellach andỽy kyfedliỽ;

talan teleiste deigir imi hetiv.

650

talan teleisty deigyr hediỽ.651

Far from here is Aber Lliw, farther is reproach. Talan, you deserved tears today.652

Lliw was such a common river-name (e.g. I.39 above) that Aber Lliw cannot be identified.653 Even if it could, it would not help to localise Talan’s story as it is said to be far away. The most we can say is that the story of Llywarch and his sons seems to have centred on Brycheiniog, and later on Powys,654 so that Talan’s grave was perhaps in the same area. Among various Welsh place-names containing the name Talan655 is a field-name Cae Talan at Ty’n-y-celyn in the parish of Corwen, Mer. (SJ 03959 44220), about three miles to the west of Corwen (on the Dee) and Gwyddelwern, and just north of the Roman road from Druid to Pen-y-bont and Rûg.656 This is interesting, for in one poem Llywarch travels along the Dee towards Llanfor (SH 9336), and graves at and near Llangollen (also on the Dee, SJ 2142) are mentioned in another one.657 It would be fitting if Talan’s grave were at or near this Cae Talan. But it is not a unique Talan place-name.658 I.53 Elisner (Elifer?) ap Nêr (or ‘son of a lord’) I.53

I.53

Bet Elissner ab Ner. inywinder. daear diarchar dibryder. pen llv wu

659

tra wu y amser.

The grave of Elisner (or Elifer?) son of Nêr (or a lord) in the depth of the earth; unconquerable, unafraid, he was the head of a host while his time was.

LlDC no. 40.35–37 (imi lit. ‘to me’ is to be omitted, cf. EWSP 533); cf. CLlH VIII.12; EWSP 414. Cf. CLlH I.45; EWSP 412. The spelling of Lliw and especially the form of hanfod suggest that the two versions go back to a written archetype. 652 Cf. EWSP 472–73 and 533; MWG 225 and 230. 653 See references in Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, p. 39 n. 56. On the supposed Irish cognate lí see idem, Irish Influence, pp. 193–94, and for doubts about the supposed northern Lliw in CBT I 9.155 see Haycock, ‘Early Welsh Poets Look North’, pp. 10 and 32 n. 46. 654 Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’. 655 See RhELlH and Tithe Maps of Wales s. talan. Talan Geifr there seems to be a slip for Talar Geifr. 656 See Coflein s.n. Druid, Roman road – Druid to Pen-y-Bont and Rug. 657 CLlH V.8 and I.43; EWSP 412, 415, 472, and 474; Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 46–47 and 50–51. 658 AMR cites a ‘br. Talan’ in 1676 in Llanfihangel Nant Brân, Bre. This is not in EANC. Is it a mistake for the Nant Talar in that parish (SN 91826 40099)? Nanstallon, Cornwall may contain the name Talan: O. J. Padel, A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), p. 127. 659 Rhys, Englyn, p. 133, and BBCSG 128 n. 2 omit wu ‘was’, causa metri, but 8 syllables are acceptable. On metrics see above, p. 112. 650 651

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As noted above, this stanza and the preceding one on Talan separate the two stanzas naming Llachar (I.51 and I.54) and both lack any topographical reference, a possible indication that they have been interpolated. A name Elisner (or Elysner) is otherwise unknown and has too many syllables.660 Thomas Jones, following one of Lloyd-Jones’s two suggestions, reduces it to Elsner (cf. Elisabeth > Elsbeth). Lloyd-Jones’s other suggestion was to omit Bet, presumably on the assumption that it was added to conform to the usual Englynion y Beddau diction.661 The names El(i)ssner and Ner remain problematic, however. Except with reference to God, nêr ‘lord’ is not attested as a name in Welsh (unlike Irish) – Eidoel mab Ner in Culhwch seems to be a mistake for Eidoel mab Aer, and Idon ap Ner in Triad 69 is an error for Idon ab Ynys662 – and there are no masculine names in Elis- or Elys- other than Elystan (< OE Æthelstan) and Elise, also written Eliseg and Elised by hypercorrection, and, later, Elisau, again by hypercorrection, or Elis.663 I have suggested elsewhere that the popularity of the name Elise among Welsh kings from the eighth century onwards was due to the appearance in the genealogy preserved in Historia Brittonum, §18, of Elise (MSS Flise) son of Javan (MSS Juvan) as the progenitor of the Greeks through his son Dardanus, from whom Brutus, eponym of the Britons, descended.664 Javan, according to Genesis 10:1–4 (and Historia Brittonum, §17), was the son of Japheth son of Noë (Noë/Nowy was another popular royal name in early Wales),665 and Noë (Noah) was the descendant in the ninth generation of Adam ‘son of the Living God’ (Historia Brittonum, §17, cf. Genesis 5). With this in mind, we might speculate that the Black Book scribe or a predecessor has repeated ner by mistake, and that the correct reading should be *Elisse ab Ner ‘Elise son (i.e. descendant) of the Lord’, referring to Elise, ancestor of the Britons. If so, the englyn may be an interpolation, since Elise presumably died far away from Britain, unlike everyone else in Englynion y Beddau. If this explanation is too fanciful, emendation must be considered. Elissner could be copied from *Elifuer, misreading f as ‘long’ s (as often, geminated in the Black Book) and u as n (under the influence of the following ner). Since fu can denote /v/ in Middle Welsh,666 *Elifuer is a possible spelling of the name variously written Eliffer, Elifer, Elyuer, Goliver and Goliffer, in which the variably spelt consonant was /v/ according to both Ifor Williams’s etymology from elyf/

EP 318 suggests that Elissner ab Ner is an example of a son’s name repeating an element from the father’s, but has no parallels for Elissner. 661 BBCSG 129; G. 470. The modern surname El(i)sner (of German origin?) is of course irrelevant, and it is hard to see how the biblical warrior Abner son of Ner could be involved. 662 Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch and Olwen, pp. 92 and 133; TYP4 404. For Irish Ner see eDIL. 663 WCD 243–44 and 247, G. 470–71, Morgan and Morgan, Welsh Surnames, pp. 95–96, and Dumville, ‘Late-Seventh- or Eighth-Century Evidence’, pp. 43–44. On Eliseg and Elised(d) as hypercorrections of Elise see Sims-Williams, ‘Emergence’, p. 51, and CIB 132. 664 Sims-Williams, ‘Emergence’, p. 51 n. 1; cf. MWG 236 n. 17. Elise is in fact the genitive of Elisa (Genesis 10:4), but this may not have been obvious in the genealogical list. And there may have been influence from the biblical name Eliseus (Elisha), which may occur once as a Latin equivalent of Elise (Dumville, ‘Late-Seventh- or Eighth-Century Evidence’, pp. 42–43). 665 Noë/Nowy (Noah); Sims-Williams, Book of Llandaf, p. 209. Cf. Davies, ‘Old Testament Personal Names among the Britons’. 666 GMW 8; TYP4 415. Note the following examples in Rhyddiaith y 13g: efuo (efo); pryfurey (prifrai); kefuryuedy (cyfrifedi); kyfuewyn (cyfewin). See also on III.2 Goffri below. 660

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alaf ‘host’ and Lloyd-Jones’s more plausible one from French Oliver.667 If Elif(f)er is the intended name, there are various possible contenders, of whom the most famous one by far is Elif(f)er Gosgorddfawr, whose epithet ‘of the great warband’ agrees well with ‘head of a host’ in line c. He and his ‘seven sons’ are mentioned in Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin, the first poem in the Black Book, one of many references to the battle of Arfderydd near Carlisle (c. 573), where his sons fought; Elif(f)er himself, however, is not listed among those taking part, probably having already died or retired.668 The supposed place of burial of this Elif(f)er, presumably in the north, may well have been unknown to the author of the englyn, who simply refers to dyfnder daear, the ‘depths of the earth’. If this Elif(f)er is the subject of the englyn, ab ner must be taken as ‘son of a lord’, since the sources give his father’s name as Arthwys or Gwrwst. It is tempting, however, to suppose that in fact the stanza refers to Roland’s companion Oliver.669 Oliver’s father’s name was Reiner, and it is easy to see how ab Reiner (quasi Rei [‘King’] Ner) could be corrupted to ab Ner.670

Ifor Williams, review of B. G. Charles, Old Norse Relations with Wales (Cardiff, 1934), in AC, 89 (1934), 347–50 (p. 349). He does not comment on the frequency of forms with Eli- rather than Ely-, nor the problematical -er. For Elyuer see EWGT 46 (JC §16) and WCD 242, and for Goliffer see CC 324 and 334. Williams takes the ff of Eliffer in LlDC no. 1.29 as an example of /v/ and gives parallels. Jarman, YMTh 66, notes that G. 469 shows that ff /f/ is favoured by the cynghanedd in R 1247.6 (Gwaith Casnodyn, ed. Daniel, no. 1.60). But this ff could be a later development, for G. compares Oliffer (as at CBT VII 13.21?) beside Oliuer (a name sometimes found as a variant of Elif(f)er – see MWG 355 n. 30, TYP4 116, 126, and 345–46, WCD 242–43, and especially Rejhon, cited below). Indeed, Lloyd-Jones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 2, derived Elifer/Oliver from French Oliv(i)er, and this does seem a possible source: the name Oliverius (with short /e/), popularly connected (rightly or wrongly) with Latin Olivarius, was already current on the Continent before 1000 (see Carlos Alvar, ‘Oliver: The Rise and Decline of a Hero’, Summa, 4 (2014), 120–50). Perhaps the form Eliffer was influenced by OE Ælfhere, written Elfer in Domes­day Book: von Feilitzen, Pre-Conquest Personal Names, p. 175. 668 On the various traditions see TYP4 15–16, 115, 126, 195, 198, 217–22, 256, 345–46, and 480–81; WCD 21–23 and 242–43. Elif(f)er may not be the original form of his name; so far as manuscript attestation goes, the oldest form is Eleuther cascord maur; see EWGT 11 and 187 (HG §12). 669 Early Welsh knowledge of the Roland/Oliver story is suggested by CLlH I.10–11. Oliver’s story was well known to Cynddelw when composing his elegy for Owain Gwynedd (d. 1170) and to Prydydd y Moch and Dafydd Benfras when praising Llywelyn Fawr in 1213 and 1258 (CBT IV 4; V 23; VI 35), according to the audacious argument of Annalee C. Rejhon, ‘The Reception of the French Charlemagne Epic in Medieval Wales: The Case of Cân Rolant and Pererindod Chiarylmaen’, in Charlemagne in the Norse and Celtic Worlds, ed. Helen Fulton and Sif Rikhardsdottir (Cambridge, 2022), pp. 172–93 (pp. 182–91). 670 For Iarll Rein(y)er see Ystorya De Carolo Magno o Lyfr Coch Hergest, second edition, ed. Stephen J. Williams (Cardiff, 1968), pp. 15, 51, and 82. Oliver’s status as tywyssawc lluoed (p. 15) matches ‘pen llv’. He dies, fixed by stakes in the ground (yn y dayar, p. 164) and it is not said that he was buried at Bleye (with Roland, p. 165) or anywhere else, which suits the vagueness of ‘inywinder. daear’, and Emending ner to reiner would take the syllable count to 12, which is not impossible; see above, p. 112. 667

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I.54 Llachar (ap Rhun?) by the river Tawe, Gla. (or the Teifi, Crm./Crd.?) I.54 Bet gur gurth671 y var. Llachar llyv niver. in aber duwir dyar. yn y gvna Tavue toniar.

I.54 The grave of a man of strong anger, Llachar, leader of a host, at the confluence/estuary of loud672 water where the Tawe makes a surge.

Llachar is likely to be the Llachar ap Rhun of I.51 above. Tavue (i.e. Tafwy, later Tawe) is presumably the river Tawe (Tafwy, also spelt Tawue and Tawuy in the Black Book) which rises in Breconshire and reaches the sea at Abertawe (SS 6592, Swansea, Gla.), ‘the estuary of the Tawe’.673 Depending on the meaning of aber here, Llachar’s grave may be placed either at some stream’s confluence with the Tawe or at the Tawe’s estuary at Abertawe itself. Since the Tawe has many tributaries, ‘the confluence of loud water’ would be excessively vague, so ‘the estuary of loud water, where the Tawe makes a surge’, referring to Abertawe itself, seems more likely. The reference to the noise of water recalls the graves of Dylan and Llofan, yn yd vna ton tolo ‘where the wave makes a noise’ (I.4, III.7, and III.13), and both of those were on the sea-shore. If the Clun Kein, ‘fair meadow?’, of I.51 refers to our Llachar’s grave, it may be somewhere near Swansea. A Clun (Clyne) occurs west of Swansea (SS 607799 etc.), attested from 1306 onwards, and there is a field-name Cae Cain in Llwyn Mawr, Sgeti, Swansea.674 Neither is close enough to the mouth of the Tawe to be relevant, except to show that both name-elements occur in the region. Phillimore suggested that aber duwir might be identified with an unidentified aber dwuyr in the prophetic poem Gwasgardgerd Verdin, and hazarded a guess that the name Trewyddfa in Morriston, on the west bank of the Tawe (SS 66184 97255

Emend, with G. 712 and BBCSG 128 n. 3, to gurt (i.e. gwrdd ei fâr ‘strong his anger’) since gurth (i.e. wrth ‘against’) makes no sense. For the same error see CLlH III.45a and n. See above, p. 34. 672 Dyar may be a river-name (see below and DP IV 470). The noun(s) and adjective(s) dyar meant either ‘lament, sad, lamentable, etc.’ (like the Irish cognate dogar) or else ‘clamour, loud, clamorous’ and sometimes it is not easy to know which, especially when the pathetic fallacy may be involved. Cf. Ifor Williams, ‘Hyar, dyar’, B., 1 (1921–23), 118–20; J. Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Compounds of *gar’, Celtica, 3 (1956), 198–210 (pp. 198 and 202); LEIA s.v. dogar, dogair; and LPBT 201 and 379. 673 See Thomas, ‘wy’, pp. 39–41, and Max Förster, Der Flussname Themse und seine Sippe (Munich, 1941), pp. 604–18. For the spelling Tawue/Tawuy see LlDC 176. Thomas also mentions (p. 41) the Carmarthenshire Nant Tawe or Dawe which flows south from Llan-crwys (SN 60607 44247), along the boundary of Pencarreg and Llansawel parishes and joins Afon Marlais near Bryn-Dafydd-Isaf (SN 60429 39509). It is not known whether this Tawe or Dawe derives from Tafwy. It seems too minor a stream to have aber duwir dyar and toniar. A dialogue in LlDC no. 34.24–27 refers to a nearby Tawue and a distant Tawue by the seashore, where a battle of Tawuy a Net (i.e. Tawe and Nedd/Neath) will take place, i.e. somewhere near Swansea and Neath (cf. EWSP 246, 461, and 506). Thomas suggests that the ‘nearby’ Tawue is the Carmarthenshire Nant Tawe, and is followed by Roberts, ‘Rhai o Gerddi Ymddiddan Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin’, p. 317. But given the wide geography of the rest of the poem, the speaker may be further afield, perhaps referring to a possibly imaginary Tafwy in north Britain; cf. CLlH V.5–8 and p. 95 and Haycock, ‘Early Welsh Poets Look North’, pp. 12 and 35 n. 66. 674 PNG 44; Tithe Maps of Wales. 671

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and area) might preserve a memory of Llachar’s tomb (gwyddfa).675 Unfortunately, however, there is no confluence or estuary there and we cannot assume that aber duwir is a proper name. More promisingly, Thomas Jones noted the possibility that dyar could be a river-­ name (‘at the confluence of the water of the Dyar’). Of the two attested examples of Dyar, Jones’s suggestion, the river Dyar at Aberdyar (now Aberduar, with associated Glan Duar, in Llanybydder, Crm. (SN 52518 44338),676 is not near the Tawe, and neither is Nant Dyar (SO 23372 12505) and associated names near Gilwern, Bre.677 Llanybydder’s Afon Duar, however, does have a confluence with the Teifi, which at least raises the possibility that Tavue in I.54 is a mistake for Teiwi (the spelling of Teifi found elsewhere in the Black Book) or a similar form.678 If Aberdyar was the site of his grave, Llachar’s name was perhaps associated with the now almost destroyed and de-scheduled medieval ringwork called Castell Dol-Wlff in Llanwenog, Crd. (SN 5202 4453) which overlooks the mouth of the Duar. It is a subrectangular mound, some 30m north-east to south-west by 24m, set on the tip of a south-facing spur, resting on steep natural scarps above the Teifi river-plain to the east and ditched to the west; thought to represent a medieval castle mound, the earthworks have been largely destroyed by building activities.679

Clun Cain, the ‘fair meadow’ of I.51, was perhaps below Dol-Wlff – its eponymous dôl ‘water meadow’. The dramatic Iron Age hillfort at Pen-y-Gaer (SN 5239 4342) in Llanybydder, Crm., is a more striking-looking site, but is a little farther from the confluence.680

E. G. B. P[hillimore], ‘A Fragment from Hengwrt MS. No. 202’, Y Cymmrodor, 7 (1886), 89– 154 (pp. 120 and n. 2 and 153, line 80 (= R 585.16)). In his translation, Bollard, ‘Myrddin in Early Welsh Tradition’, p. 50, capitalises ‘Aber Dwfr’, but it is it is not clear that this ‘confluence/ estuary of water’ is a proper name, any more than the aber auon in the preceding englyn, which Phillimore takes to mean ‘the mouth of a [certain] river’ (p. 120). 676 BBCSG 128 n. 4, followed (with photograph) in EBSG 40 and 91. For early forms with dyar see AMR s. *duar* and *dyar*; PNCrm 57. The grid reference is for Pont Aber-Duar. (This river does not join the Nant Tawe mentioned in the previous note.) 677 AMR, which also has a Parc Dyar, Pem., but that seems to mean ‘deer park’; see Charles, PlaceNames of Pembrokeshire, I, 170. AMR also refers to Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 153, where Ifor Williams’s note on llech, edear is: ‘Either llech Edcar (= Edgar), or llech y ddar, “the rock of the oak”, or llech y dyar, “the rock of noise, or tumult”. Cf. Cerrig Lafar’. 678 LlDC nos 16.78 and 17.159. For other forms see EANC 168–69. Thomas, ‘wy’, pp. 39–40, quotes spellings of the river Tawe/Tafwy with -i in the Old Welsh of the Book of Llandaf (Tyui, Taui, Aper Tyui) which make the name very similar to Teifi, apart from the consistent lack of a diphthong, and he suggests that -i was an alternative suffix to -wy. Coe, however, says that all these -i forms refer to the river Tywi (‘The Place-Names’, pp. 803 and 850), with exception of taui at LL 42.21, which does refer to the Tawe but is a correction of tyui by a later scribe (see LL p. 346) who saw that tyui had been written by mistake under the influence of tyui (= Tywi) earlier in the same bounds at LL 42.19. This at least shows how similar river-names could be confused. 679 Coflein s. Dol-wlff. On its alternative names see Excursion Report in AC, 86 (1931), 408, also Emrys G. Bowen, ‘Castle Sant Esau’, Transactions of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society and Field Club, 24 (1924), 67–68; D. J. C. King, ‘The Castles of Cardiganshire’, Ceredigion, 3 (1959), 50–69 (p. 64). Even if the castle is late, Llachar’s legend could have been associated with a previous earthwork on the same site. 680 See Coflein s.n. 675

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

I.55 Rhigenau’s son (Llywarch?), at the fords, ?Bre. I.55

I.55

Piev y bet in y ridev.

Whose is the grave at the (or his?)681 fords?

bet ruyw yv hunnv mab Rigenev.

That/it682 is the grave of a leader, Rhigenau’s son,

gur a digonei da ar y arwev.

a man who used to do good with his weapons.

Rhigenau’s son is not named, apparently, as in the case of Osfran’s son in I.12. Thomas Jones emends to Bet Ruyw yw [sic], mab Rigenev and translates ‘’Tis the grave of Rhwyf, son of Rhygenau’, which is problematic, firstly because name and patronym are not otherwise broken up like that in the poem (and was hunnv inserted to emphasise that ruyw is not a name?) and secondly because Rhwyf is not otherwise attested as a personal name.683 The only known Welsh Rhigenau, leaving aside a cleric Riceneu in the Book of Llandaf, is Rhigenau the son of Rhain Dremrudd (‘Rhain Red-eyed’) son of Brychan, the eponym and legendary founder of Brycheiniog. Rhain Dremrudd supposedly reigned after Brychan, was the subject of legends in his own right, as in the Life of St Cadog, §25, and was sometimes regarded as the eponym of Rheinwg, an ill-defined region which probably embraced Brycheiniog and (parts of?) Dyfed.684 No legends about Rhigenau survive, but according to the genealogies he was of importance as an ancestor of the later kings of Brycheiniog and Dyfed, through his only recorded son Llywarch.685 Llywarch ap Rhigenau may be the ruyw of the englyn.

‘His’ would imply that there were fords named after him. Rhys, Englyn, p. 133, and Jones, BBCSG 128 n. 5, delete hunnv to lose two syllables, hence Jones’s translation, where he clearly takes yv as ‘is’ (and even prints yw by mistake in the text, although yv is the regular spelling in the MS). Rhys takes yv as a mistake for the pronoun ev/ew (Mod.W. ef), and translates ‘a king’s grave that, Rigeneu’s son’. In line c Rhys deletes gur a and Jones suggests deleting y ‘his’ as well. If so, translate: ‘He used to do good with weapons’. 683 Although compare Gaulish Remos, as in Remi (gen.) filia, which is probably related not to Latin Remus (with short vowel) but to Remi (with long vowel), the tribe around Rheims. See GPN 373–74 and DCCPN 28–29 and 186. While the name Rhigenau is rare, ninth-century clerics called Riceneu appear in the Book of Llandaf and the Redon Cartulary: LL 171; CRedon II 111; Fleuriot, Le vieux breton, p. 65; Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 179 n. 45. The second element is ceneu ‘whelp’ (HPB 298), and the OB spelling Ri- shows that the first element is rhi ‘king’ (Loth, Chrestomathie, pp. 116 and 159; Lloyd-Jones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 11; Melville Richards, ‘Gwŷr, Gwragedd a Gwehelyth’, THSC, 1965, pp. 27–45 (p. 30)), rather than the rhy- < *ro- ‘great’ (as in Rhydderch etc.) implied by Jones’s modernisation Rhygenau; the latter would not be spelt Ri- (as opposed to Ro- or Re- etc.) in Old Breton (LHEB 658–61 and 668; HPB 145 and 148). 684 WCD 551 and 554, also Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 47–48. On Rheinwg see Guy, ‘Rheinwg’, and I.71 below. 685 EWGT 45 (JC §8), Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, I, charts [20] and [27], and Dumville, ‘Late-Seventh- or Eighth-Century Evidence’, pp. 50–51 (cf. WCD 509 and Sims-­ Williams, Book of Llandaf, pp. 136 and 138–39). 681 682

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One might expect Llywarch to be buried at an ecclesiastical site – Llandyfaelog claimed his grandfather Rhain686 – yet, if we suppose that legends gathered around Llywarch ap Rhigenau, a possible site for his grave is the only Bedd Llywarch in Wales, that on high moorland in Ystradfellte, Bre. (SN 9626 1603), with its associated Llyn Llywarch, Nant Llywarch, and Waun Llywarch.687 These are three miles east of the Maen Madoc discussed under I.63 below. Bedd Llywarch consists of two upright stones of uncertain date over 3 m. apart. A writer in 1882 attributed Bedd Llywarch to ‘one of the Welsh princes’,688 whereas the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales reported in 1997 that the stones are reputed to mark the grave of a farmer whose life had been spent wrangling with a neighbour over the limits of their respective lands. He was buried here, on the spot where he asserted the boundary to be, so that he could watch over it in death as in life.689

There are many small streams nearby, hence perhaps the ridev ‘fords’ of line a.690 The intriguing name Cors y Beddau occurs a mile to the west (SN 9510 1615).691 I.56 Braint, between the Llyfni, Crn., and its tributaries I.56

I.56

Piev y bet 692 Breint.

Whose is this grave? The grave of Braint

y rug Llewin ae lledneint.

between the Llewin and its tributaries

bet gur guae. y isscrnt.

693

the grave of a man (who was) woe to his enemies.

Assuming that Piev y is disyllabic, as often elsewhere (cf. Mod.W. piau’r), line a is a syllable short unless, as is very probable, Breint is a disyllable, as noted by Rhys (cf. OW bryeint, MW breeint, ‘privilege’).694 Thomas Jones rightly emended llewin EWGT 16 and 19 (DSB §13 and CB §16), i.e. Llanddyfaelog Fach (SO 0332) or Llandyfaelog Tre’r-graig (SO 1229), both in Bre. (Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, pp. 52 (map) and 57 (cf. WCD 551)). 687 AMR s. Bedd Llywarch and *Llywarch*; RhELlH s. Bedd Llywarch and Llywarch. R. F. Peter-­ Powell, ‘The Place-Names of Devynock Hundred III: Cantref & Glyn’, Brycheiniog, 23 (1989), 85–108 (p. 88), associates these names with Llywarch Hen, but there is no strong evidence. 688 David Bevan Turberville, ‘The Curious Stone and Antiquities at Ystradfellte, Breconshire’, The Red Dragon, 2 (September 1882), 169–74 (p. 174). 689 Inv. Bre., Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, I, 161. This could be a distant reflection of the obdurate Llywarch Hen, as could Turberville’s ‘prince’. On ‘sentinel burials’ see above, p. 10 n. 43. 690 Thomas Jones capitalises ridev; there are several Rhydau in Wales (EBSG 92). 691 Archwilio. 692 Inserted above line. 693 MS isscarant, with first and second a changed to e and ei in view of the rhyme. BBCSG 128 n. 8 notes that isscarant is ‘an authentic variant pl. of isscar (= esgar “foe”)’. See GPC s.v. esgar, ysgar. 694 Rhys, Englyn, p. 133. (I.56a could then be added to the list of disyllabic Piev y in BBCSG 126 n. 5.) On the Old Welsh forms see Russell, ‘Priuilegium’, p. 56, and for MW breeint see ‘A 686

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to Llewni ‘Llyfni’ – probably three minims were misread. There are various Welsh rivers named Llyfni or, by a recent metathesis in the south, Llynfi.695 Since, however, I.56 appears to have been modelled on III.2, or vice versa, the same Llyfni is probably meant in both stanzas, namely the one in Arfon, for III.2 couples the Llyfni with the Lliwon and the only Llyfni or Llynfi with a Llifon or Lliwon nearby is the Arfon one. This Llyfni flows from Llyn Nantlle through Llanllyfni to the sea at Pontllyfni, and the Llifon is a little to its north.696 Llyfni’s tributaries join it from the south. The most prominent antiquity on this south side which might be associated with Braint is the Iron Age hillfort of Caer Engan (‘anvil fort’, referring to the flat-topped hill, or ‘Einion’s fort’), which is situated between the Llyfni and several of its tributaries (SH 4767 5259).697 But, of course, Braint’s supposed grave might be a humbler cairn.698 The name Breint is not unique. Leaving aside a very uncertain example in the Gododdin, it occurs in the Book of Llandaf699 and there was a landholding (gwely) called Wele Breynt in Denbighshire, in the area of Wicwer (Wigfair) Is Dulas (see below) – and compare Old Breton Brient.700 The only known hero of the name, however, is Braint Hir. While not otherwise connected with Arfon, Braint Hir is at least associated with Gwynedd, in two distinct sources. Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, ed. Haycock, line 2. On the phonology see SBCHP 68–72 and references. 695 EANC 159–60; DP III 320 n. 4 and IV 537; Williams, ‘Some Breconshire Place-Names’, p. 157. EANC notes: (i) the Llynfi which runs from Glasbury to Llan-gors, Bre. (SO 13414 30667); (ii) the Llyfni in Arfon; (iii) a Llyfni in Llanbedr Dyffryn Clwyd, Den., now called Afon Rhyd Wrial (SJ 14038 58696); (iv) the Llynfi/Llwyni which flows past Maesteg, Gla. (SS 8590). Of these, (iii) is too tiny to have ‘tributaries’, and the same applies at the Cwm-Llynfe (SN 69654 33484) in Llansadwrn, Crm., noted in EANC 161. (i) is substantial, but it is not clear what its ‘tributaries’ in the plural would be. 696 EBSG 41 has a photograph of the Llyfni entering the sea at Pontllyfni. Llanllifni was granted to Clynnog by ‘Gwithenit’ according to Edward IV’s confirmation charter, Rec. Caern. 257. The name of the Llyfni is first recorded in 1303–4 according to EANC 160 (see also GDG no. 99.18). Llyfnwy on some O.S. maps and in Inv. Crn. II passim is a spurious ‘learned’ form (EANC 161; ELl 43). It is used side by side with Llyfni in Detholion o Ddyddiadur Eben Fardd, ed. Millward, p. 28. On Llifon see III.2 below. 697 Inv. Crn. II 210; Coflein s.n. Caerengan; Caer Engan, with photographs and map showing the streams. On the name see ELlSG 35 and 59 and G. 459; cf. TYP4 341, citing Eric Hamp, who distinguished the personal name from the ‘anvil’ word, but suggested that they were sometimes confused. 698 Cf. EBSG 92: ‘there are several cairns suitably located among the hills between the Llyfni and its tributaries, the Afon Crychddwr and the Afon Ddu’. 699 G. 74; CA line 275 (regarded as the common noun in the n.); LL 388, where examples of Brein are also quoted – note in particular the Brein filius Guoreu in charter 218 (p. 221) at the same mid-tenth-century period as the Gorui filius Breint in charter 244 (see Davies, The Llandaff Charters, pp. 66, 72, and 151). Brein looks like a variant form which must have arisen when the name was still disyllabic (cf. bryein in Braint Teilo, characterised by Rodway, Dating, p. 11, as possibly an ‘un-productive variant’; cf. Russell, ‘Priuilegium’, p. 56). Riu Brein in LL (p. 417) may equally well contain the plural of brân. 700 CRedon II 69; Cartulaire de Saint-Guénolé de Landévenec, ed. Stéphane Lebecq (Rennes, 2015), p. 42; HPB 713. Perhaps the personal name derives in part not from the common noun, but from the river-name Braint (e.g. in Anglesey), which Ifor Williams derives from Brigantia in ELl 46 and apud Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 140 (cf. p. 147); compare the personal name Alun (ELl 47). On Braint see also CR 42–43.

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First, the Brutiau use the name Breint Hir, adding the patronymic ap Nefydd or similar in later versions (from c. 1300 onwards), to render the name of Geoffrey’s Brianus, nephew of Cadwallo,701 perhaps because Braint Hir was already known as a nephew or close relative of Cadwallon of Gwynedd (d. 634).702 Secondly, by the early thirteenth century one of the Fifteen Tribes of Gwynedd, in Is Dulas, Rhos (Den.), claimed descent from Braint Hir ap Nefydd ap Geraint ap Garannawg Glewddigar. This tribal pedigree seems to fuse originally unconnected material, so that Braint Hir’s real date is unclear – but at least his local fame is suggested by the name of the thirteenth-century Wele Breynt in the area.703 A late version of Bonedd y Saint (§72) gives the above Geraint ap Garannawg as the grandfather of Gwydr Drwm, father of St Egryn of Llanegryn, Mer. (SH 6005), and names the saint’s mother as Efeilian daughter of Cadfan (one of the Three Chaste Ones of the Island of Britain). As Bartrum pointed out, this makes Braint Hir a contemporary of Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd (d. 634).704 If not merely based on the Brut, this may be independent evidence of a Braint Hir in Gwynedd. In Series III the name Garannawg is linked with that of Gwydion ap Dôn on Morfa Dinlle, in Arfon (III.3). If he is the above Garannawg, Braint’s great-­grandfather, this may be another hint that Braint was also associated with Arfon (see further discussion under III.3).

HRB XII.2–7, §§191–96. He is ‘Breint hir vab Nevyt y nei’ in NLW Peniarth 21, 37v, ‘Breint hir vab Novyd y nei’ in BL Cotton Cleopatra B.v i, 101r (similarly NLW 7006D, p. 189, and Oxford, Jesus College 141, 45v), and ‘Braint ap Nefyn y nai’ in Brut Tysilio in MA2 472. The patronymic is absent in the earlier versions in NLW Llanstephan 1, pp. 191–98, Peniarth 44, p. 74, and BD 193–200. Cf. the text of the Hen Lwythau (‘o lyfr Hụmphre ap Hoel o Ruthyn’) in NLW Cwrtmawr 530 (Llanwrin 1), p. 105 (c. 1582): ‘Braint hir kefnder kadụaladr vendigeid…’. If Geoffrey’s Brianus had a Welsh prototype, it was perhaps Brân (note the wounded thigh and the voyaging). The source suggested by Tatlock, Legendary History, p. 170 (Robert of Gloucester’s son Brianus) is speculative, but may have gone into the mix. 702 On Cadwallon see TYP4 299–302. It is uncertain whether the reference to breint in the poem on Cadwallon’s battles is to Braint Hir rather than to the common noun, as proposed in G. 74: ‘llaỽ dillỽng ellỽng oed vreint’ (R 1043.20), ‘Braint was (or had) a liberating and freeing hand’. Cf. EWSP 446, 495, and 614; EBSG 92. The englyn concerns an encampment on the river Caint (in Anglesey). 703 EWGT 119 (HL §11 = MWG 389, 411, 413, and 419); cf. PP1 104 and 129 (for the latter genealogy back to Cunedda see also Par. I 11–12 and II 4, s. Uwch Aled). See Bartrum, ‘Hen Lwythau’, p. 228, and Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, I, chart [28] and s. Braint Hir 1. For Is Dulas see WATU 261 and 319. For wele Breynt and Garanog see Jones, ‘Rhos and Rhufeiniog Pedigrees’, pp. 291 and 302, citing for the former Survey of the Honour of Denbigh 1334, ed. Vinogradoff and Morgan, pp. 211 and 214 (note also gavella Runon ap Breynt et gavella Myler ap Breynt p. 189, and gavelle Canon ap Breynt p. 190). It is said to have existed in ‘the time of the princes, before the [Edwardian] conquest’ (ibid., pp. xv and 210). Jones (‘Rhos and Rhufoniog Pedigrees’, p. 291) and Bartrum (‘Hen Lwythau’, p. 228) suggest that Braint Hir lived in the early tenth century and Jones surmises that Wele Breynt was called ‘after some descendent and namesake’. On legendary material in these pedigrees see III.11 below, and on the difficulty of dating gwely eponyms see MWG 210. 704 EWGT 65 (ByS §72) and 145; TYP4 no. 66; and family tree in Bartrum, ‘Hen Lwythau’, p. 228; WCD 50, 225, and 350. 701

231

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

I.57 Coel ap Cynfelyn I.57

I.57

Piev y bet in llethir. y brin.

Whose is the grave on the slope of the hill?

llauer nys guir ae gowin.

Many ask it who do not know:

Bet y Coel mab Kinvelin.

a grave for Coel son of Cynfelyn.

Possibly this stanza has been interpolated between I.56 and I.58, which share a rhyme in -eint. It may be that the reference to Deheuwaint in I.58 put a compiler in mind of Coel Godebawg, the grandson of a Deheuwaint, and led him to include Coel ap Cynfelyn – even though they were not the same Coel.705 The names Coel and Cynfelyn are redolent of legend,706 though no Coel ap Cynfelyn is known. Either his story has not come down or the names have been chosen for their poetic aura (compare I.1–3 above). William Baxter’s identification with Coel of Colchester is difficult to sustain: in the Brutiau Coel of Colchester (which there becomes Caerloyw, Gloucester) is a usurper of unspecified family who rules several generations after Cynfelyn (Geoffrey’s Kimbelinus), who was king of Britain in the time of Christ.707 Perhaps Coel mab Kinvelin is a confused recollection of Cynfelyn’s great-grandson, Coel ap Meuryg ap Gweirydd ap Cynfelyn (Geoffrey’s Coillus son of Marius son of Aruiragus son of Kimbelinus).708 This Coel/Coillus was the father of Lucius (Lles), Britain’s first Christian king, and died in AD 116 according to Gutun Owain.709 By the mid-fourteenth century Coillus was imagined to have given Joseph of Arimathea and his companions a hide of land at Glastonbury;710 otherwise he has no topographical connections. This is one of the stanzas in which a person is named but the grave site is only vaguely referred to, perhaps because the imagined speaker claims to possess more knowledge than his audience (compare Rhufawn’s grave in I.42–43). I.58 Deheuwaint at Mathafarn, ?Ang. I.58 Bet Deheveint ar Cleveint awon. yg gurthtir Mathauarn. ystifful kedwir cadarn.

I.58 The grave of Deheuwaint (is) on the river Clywaint in the uplands of Mathafarn, pillar of strong warriors.

Even Gutun Owain confused Coel Godebawg and a much earlier Coel (Coel of Caerloyw); see Peter C. Bartrum, ‘Y Pedwar Brenin ar Hugain a Farnwyd yn Gadarnaf (The Twenty Four Kings Judged to be the Mightiest)’, ÉC, 12 (1968–71), 157–94 (p. 191); WCD 135. 706 See G. and WCD s.nn. 707 HRB IV.11–12 §§64–65 and V.6 §78. For Baxter, see above, p. 87. 708 HRB IV.18 §71. 709 BB 87 n. 3. 710 The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury’s Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie, ed. and trans. James P. Carley and David Townsend (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 52–53. 705

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The forms Deheuweint and Deheuwynt both occur. The first element is clearly de­(c)heu ‘right, auspicious’,711 and the second element is presumably MW meint < *mantī ‘size, stature’ (: OIr méit), as in Continental Celtic names such as Cara­ m­antius and Venimantius, with w < *m as in names such as Blodeuwedd.712 Early evidence for -eint becoming -ynt in meint (when unstressed?) includes: OW meint ~ pamint in the Juvencus Manuscript; MW tremyn(t) ‘excessive’, already in the Black Book of Carmarthen (tremint);713 and kymynt ~ kymeint/gemeynt/gemeint ‘as much’ in mid-thirteenth-century manuscripts.714 This development easily explains Deheuwynt, without needing to connect it with deheuwynt ‘south wind’. The personal name is sporadically recorded over a long period: a tenth-century Deheueint in the Book of Llandaf; a mid-twelfth-century Deheuwynt in the genealogies; a Deheỽein in the warband of Owain Cyfeiliog c. 1156; a Deheweint in an Ystrad Marchell charter of 1229, and an Einion son of Dehewent/Deheuweint in two more of 1202 and 1206×15; various men called De(c)hewint in the Merioneth Lay Subsidy Roll of 1292–93; and Deheuynt/Dehewynd in the 1334 Survey of the Honour of Denbigh.715 Two others suit Englynion y Beddau rather better. One is Deheuwynt/Deheuwaint (also Dehevvraint), the grandfather of Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern) in the Welsh Life of St Beuno and in the pedigree of Ednyfed Fychan (d. 1246).716 The other is the grandfather of Coel Godebawg in: the Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan (Dehewynt/ Deyeweint); NLW 3036B [Mostyn 117] (Deheweint); Exeter, Cathedral Library 3514 (Deheweint); Oxford, Jesus College 20 (Eweint); the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies (Deheuvreint/Deheuweint/Deheỽwynt); and ‘Bonedd Henrri Saithved’ EP 295. ETG 91 suggests Deheufyr as the original form of the name Diheufyr (EWGT 183). GOI 186; Marilynne E. Raybould and Patrick Sims-Williams, Introduction and Supplement to the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire Containing Celtic Personal Names (Aberystwyth, 2009), pp. 21 and 203. Meid, Keltische Personennamen in Pannonien, p. 148, notes that -mantio- has replaced *mantī in Venimantius. For -wedd < *medd cf. Williams, ‘Anawfedd’. 713 EGOW 111 and 114; LlDC no. 5.90; Helen McKee, The Cambridge Juvencus Manuscript Glossed in Latin, Old Welsh, and Old Irish: Text and Commentary (Aberystwyth, 2000), pp. 528 and 543 (noting objections to taking mint as Breton). The variation cannot be attributed to final i-affection, as in eleirch ~ elyrch ‘swans’ (LHEB 581), as the y variants do not seem to occur before nt (e.g. MW ugeint does not alternate with **ugynt); cf. SBCHP 258. (In the 3pl. imperfect and impersonal preterite, -ynt ~ -eint seems to be an analogical development; cf. WG 324–25 and 338; GMW 122 and 127.) That seems to rule out the suggestion by Morgan and Morgan, Welsh Surnames, p. 85, that the second part of Deheuweint and Deheuwynt is the abstract noun suffix -eint (for which see Stefan Zimmer, Studies in Welsh Word-Formation (Dublin, 2000), pp. 295–301), and also any likelihood that -weint ~ -wynt can be explained on the same lines as Emreis ~ Emrys, where the affected vowel is /o/ not /a/ (see on III.17, below p. 331 n. 340). If the e of tremint is due to internal i-affection (Henry Lewis, Hen Gerddi Crefyddol (Cardiff, 1931), p. 136), its -mint stage will have been reached very early, when the accent still fell on the second syllable, but perhaps it is due to some analogy, e.g. with tremynu or tremyg. Apart from tramyr there are no words in tramy-. A rare closing of /a/ in tra- is seen in OW trycyguidaul (GPC s.v. tragwyddol, tragywyddol), unless this has try-2. 714 Peniarth 44 and Peniarth 30 in Rhyddiaith y 13g. In 1160 Cynddelw has kymeint rhyming with seint in LlDC no. 38.40 (CBT III 7.40; cf. 3.72 and IV 17.92), and -eint forms are common in later poetry, often in rhyme, and in prose from s. xiii2 onwards (see also CA line 671 (not rhyming) and p. 55 (rubric)). For later forms see G. 232–33 and GPC s.v. cymaint. 715 LL 245; Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, s. Llywelyn Eurdorchog 1; CBT II 14.41 and n.; Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, nos 72, 36, and 51; Merioneth Lay Subsidy Roll, ed. Williams-Jones, pp. 24, 25, 50, and 69; AMR s. *Deheuwynt*. Cf. DP IV 685. 716 EWGT 30 (Buchedd Beuno §24) and 103 (ABT §9b = MWG 388, 392, and 411). 711

712

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(Dehauaint). However, in the earlier version of the Coel genealogy, in BL Harley 3859 and the closely related Life of St Cadog, Teuhant/Teuhuant is the grandfather of Guotepauc, father of Coyl Hen/Coilhen;718 probably Teuhant/Teuhuant is a misspelling of *Deheueint or similar, perhaps influenced by another name in Harley 3859, that is, Teuhant < ?Tasciovantis.719 In addition to the above, eiluuit Dvnaud deheweint, rhyming in -eint, occurs in the corrupt prophecy ‘Dydd dyfydd’.720 This is curiously reminiscent of the reference to St Deinioel of Bangor as Deinoel mab Dunaud deinwin (‘white teeth’, rhyming in -yn) in a part of Oianau Myrddin composed soon after 1211.721 Possibly Deheuwynt lost its -t (cf. Deheỽein above) and became confused with deinwyn ‘white teeth’. According to Bonedd y Saint, St Deinioel was the son of Dunawd ap Pabo Post Prydain, another descendant of Coel Godebawg (his great-grandson according to Harley 3859).722 If eiluuit is a corrupt form of eilewydd ‘song, poem’, the ‘Dydd dyfydd’ prophecy may be referring to Cywryd, the legendary bard of Dunawd ap Pabo Post Prydain, or even be put a prophecy into his mouth. Cywryd’s grave may be mentioned in stanza I.1. Conceivably Bet Deheveint is an elliptical reference to the grave of Cywryd’s patron, Dvnaud deheweint/deinwyn, St Deinioel’s father. If the ‘Dydd dyfydd’ prophecy was composed in 1212, in the aftermath of King John’s seizure of the bishop of Bangor in 1211,723 that would explain the allusion to Deinioel’s family. No Welsh river-name corresponding to Cleveint is known.724 Possibly it is formed from the stem seen in the river-name Clyw-edog plus the suffix seen in the ancient name El-antia or Elanti(s) (the river Elz in Germany, cf. Welsh el- ‘go’ and OIr elit ‘doe’).725 Alternatively, reading cleveint as deveint would be palaeographically 717

Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, §3.2; EWGT 36 (GaC §2) and 38 (MG §1); Thornton, ‘A Neglected Genealogy of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’, p. 11; EWGT 44 (JC §5) and 96 (ABT §1c = MWG 363 and 392); P. C. Bartrum, ‘Bonedd Henrri Saithved’, NLWJ, 14 (1965–66), 330–34 (p. 331; probably by Ieuan Brechfa, MWG 46); Gwaith Rhys Goch Eryri, ed. Dylan Foster Evans (Aberystwyth, 2007), no. 4.36. 718 EWGT 10 (HG §10) and 25 (VC §46b). 719 EWGT 11 (HG §16) and 127; Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘Indo-European *gwh in Celtic, 1894– 1994’, in Hispano-Gallo-Brittonica, ed. Eska et al., pp. 196–218 (pp. 203–5 and 207); WCD 190 and 598; Ben Guy, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Welsh Sources’, in A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Georgia Henley and Joshua Byron Smith (Leiden and Boston, 2020), pp. 31–66 (pp. 55–56). 720 Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, line 9 and pp. 21–22. Cf. DP IV 685. 721 LlCD no. 17.69 and pp. xxix–xxx. 722 EWGT 56 (ByS §12); WCD 191 and 208. Cf. EWGT 11 and 12 (HG §§11 and 19); MWG 90; Will Parker, ‘The Coeling: Narrative and Identity in North Britain and Wales AD 580–950’, Northern History, 59.1 (2022), 2–27 (pp. 11–13). 723 David Stephenson, ‘The Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan: Notes on Dating and Possible Authorship’, CMCS, 82 (Winter 2021), 41–51 (pp. 45 and 49). The struggle in 1211–12 between John and Llywelyn Fawr is definitely mentioned in Oianau Myrddin in the Black Book of Carmarthen, whose orthography is similar to that of ‘Dydd dyfydd’. See Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, pp. 10 n. 49, and 32. 724 G. 145; DP IV 685. 725 On Clywedog see EANC 12, where it is suggested that the stem is claw- rather than clyw- ‘hear’ (cf. AMR s.n.). On Romano-British Clavinio see PNRB 309. Clavenna in Italy is very doubtfully Celtic (DCCPN 101). For Elantia/Elanti(s) see ACPN 184 and n. 71 and DCCPN 120. The suffix -ontia as in the river-name Alis-ontia (ACPN 323, cf. 183 and 184 n. 71 on Alis-) would also give -eint. 717

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simple. Dewaint ‘midnight, darkness’ makes some sense as a river-name, and the existence of a Welsh *dew cognate with Irish dé ‘smoke, haze, mist’ has been suggested.727 A river-name in *-antiā or *-antī would match Braint < *Brigantiā or *Brigantī,728 which is close by, supposing that Mathafarn is the one in Anglesey. Mathauarn cannot be identified with certainty, however, since there are three places called Mathafarn/Bathafarn (‘field of the inn or market’): (1) in Denbighshire (Bathafarn in Llanbedr Dyffryn Clwyd, SJ 1457); (2) in Montgomeryshire (Mathafarn in Llanwrin, SH 8004); and (3) in Anglesey ([Llanfair] Mathafarn Eithaf, SH 5083, and the adjacent Mathafarn Wion).729 726

(1) Two small streams – respectively where Wernog and Plas-y-Nant are marked on O.S. maps – run down from the high ground east of Bathafarn Hall in Llanbedr Dyffryn Clwyd. Supposing that either of these streams is large enough to qualify as an afon, Deheuwaint’s supposed grave could be the Bronze Age round barrow on the summit of Moel Gyw (SJ 1714 5754).730 This is some way from the streams, however, and Melville Richards has no examples of a spelling Mathafarn rather than Bathafarn.731 (2) The river at the Montgomeryshire Mathafarn is the Ceirig, formerly Caerig. This name is already attested c. 1420,732 so it is unlikely to be the Cleveint. It has one nameless tributary near Mathafarn, along Cwm Weirglodd-fach (‘little meadow valley’), leading to higher ground. Though conceivably the Cleveint awon, this stream seems too small to be an afon and there are no suitable antiquities near it. Note also that the name Mathafarn is attested rather late in the Middle Ages and may have replaced an earlier Marthaerun.733

‘The sense alone can often distinguish between cl and d’ (BBC 125). Cf. LlDC 96–97 nn. 32 and 62; Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, p. 29. In Peniarth 107 Vaughan started to copy de and then wrote cleveint. Note Ddewaint in Peniarth 98ii with Clewaint in the margin, and cleveint in Llanstephan 18 with deveint q. in the margin. The problem recurs in other thirteenth-century manuscripts; cf. Llanstephan 1 p. 133 cleỽaỽt kaladỽ pagan ≠ NLW 5266 p. 189 deuaỽt gan y paganyeit cladu (Rhyddiaith y 13g). It was a longstanding problem: Simon Rodway and Myriah Williams, ‘Bullo .i. bronnced?: Another Look at Two Obscure Words for Horse Tack in De Raris Fabulis’, CMCS, 83 (Summer 2022), 49–63 (pp. 52–53). 727 CLlH 168; LEIA s.v. 1 dé (noting problems). 728 ELl 46; SBCHP 70; Peter Schrijver, ‘Early Celtic Diphthongization and the Celtic–Latin Interface’, in New Approaches to Celtic Place-Names in Ptolemy’s Geography, ed. de Hoz et al., pp. 55–67 (p. 59). 729 DP III 244; EANC 163; ELl 39. DP IV 684–85 favours Anglesey, while Morgan, Study of Montgomeryshire Place-Names, p. 132, favours the one in Llanwrin. 730 Coflein and Archwilio s. Moel Giw (both with aerial photographs). 731 Although AMR quotes examples of variation between M- and B- in the case of the Anglesey Mathafarn Eitha/Wion, all the forms for the Denbighshire Bathafarn (1352 onwards) have B-. See, however, the following to Edward Lhwyd: ‘Enquire what Maeth signifies in the beginning of Names, for I think that & Bath to be a common Præfixt, as Bathavarn-park near Ruthin, tho commonly call’d Maethavarn …’ (Lhwyd Letters: John Lloyd to Lhwyd, [undated] Sept. 1693; cf. Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 10 Oct. 1693: ‘I am not satisfyed what Math in proper names signifies’). 732 Gwaith Gruffudd Llwyd a’r Llygliwiaid Eraill, ed. Rhiannon Ifans (Aberystwyth, 2000), no. 17.43 and n. (see p. 296 on the date); EANC 182. 733 EWGT 131; AMR s. Mathafarn, Mtg. 726

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(3) The Anglesey Mathafarn is more promising. It was an important place, frequently mentioned in record sources, especially for its port.734 Its name, ‘field of the market’, presumably reflects its importance in trade, which is already attested archaeologically in the Viking period.735 Its river, which flows down to the sea at (Y) Benllech, is called Afon y Marchogion (‘river of the knights’) on O.S. maps.736 This is a modern-­looking name737 which could have replaced Cleveint.738 On the north side of the river, near ‘Bryn-Mathafarn’ on the O.S. map, there are two promising Neolithic sites on the limestone plateau: Pant-y-Saer Burial Chamber (SH 50971 82401), a megalithic tomb chamber (raided by treasure-seekers in 1874) beneath a capstone supported by three upright stones,739 and Bwlch Burial Chamber (SH 5075 8240), another megalithic tomb chamber with a large capstone.740 Either of the two could be Deheuwaint’s supposed grave ‘in the uplands of Mathafarn’. Less likely, because further from the river, on its south side, is Coed-y-Glyn Burial Chamber (SH 51413 81728), on a south-east facing slope at the edge of a limestone terrace. It too was ‘cleared out’ by treasure-seekers, in 1856.741 Carr, Medieval Anglesey, pp. 24, 25, 35, 77, 105, 108, 109, 115–16, 122, 125, 153, 157 (map), 160, 170, 172, 183–84, 321, and 324. 735 Nancy Edwards, ‘A Possible Viking Grave from Benllech, Anglesey’, TAAS, 1985, 19–24; Mark Redknap, ‘Viking-Age Settlement in Wales: Some Recent Advances’, THSC, 12 (2006), 5–35 (pp. 16–35). 736 No earlier source is listed in AMR. Y Marchogion is listed as an Anglesey river in Ystorfa Weinidogaethol, 4, rhif 35 (Ionawr 1841), 29. 737 Although note that in Triad 44 one of the Three Horse-Burdens (marchlwyth) carried sevenand-a-half people from Penllech in the North to Penllech Elidir in Anglesey (TYP4 115–21). Cf. III.15 below. 738 The mill on it (SH 51524 82266) is called Melin-marchog on the 1888 O.S. map. According to Coflein s. Melin y Marchog this name replaced Melin Castellbwlchgwyn ‘when the Bulkeley family acquired the mill some time before 1585’. (It was Melyn y penllegh or similar in the Middle Ages; see AMR s. Benllech.) Perhaps Afon y Marchogion is of similar date to Melin y Marchog. According to Gwilym T. Jones, The Rivers of Anglesey (Bangor, 1989), p. 83, ‘The stream is also locally referred to as Afon Farchog’. 739 Photograph in EBSG 42. See Inv. Ang. 69–71; Lynch, Prehistoric Anglesey, pp. 79–83; Coflein, s. Llanfair-Mathafarn-eithaf. On the treasure-seekers see W. Lindsay Scott, ‘The Chambered Tomb of Pant-y-Saer, Anglesey’, AC, 88 (1933), 185-228 (pp. 187 and 202–3). 740 Coflein, s. Llanfair-Mathafarn-eithaf, Bwlch Burial Chamber, with photographs. According to Coflein (and Archwilio s. Goose House, Possible), the ‘Benllech Megalithic Goosehouse’ at SH 51910 82667 is unlikely to be ancient (pace Frances Lynch, ‘The Excavation of Benllech Burial Chamber, Anglesey’, AC, 115 (1966), 11–26, and Prehistoric Anglesey, p. 91). Probably following Melville Richards (‘Benllech (Anglesey)’, AC, 116 (1967), 203–4), Jones and Roberts, Enwau Lleoedd Môn, pp. 33 and 121, seem to suggest that this ‘Goosehouse’ cromlech gave rise to the farm name Tyddyn y Benllech, now Tyddyn Iolyn (cf. O.S. map and AMR s.n. Tyddyn y Benllech), and then to Y Benllech itself. This was earlier noted by Bedwyr Lewis Jones, Yn Ei Elfen (Capel Garmon, 1992), p. 17, who was less specific about which cromlech was meant. Richards’s idea that there was a word **penllech ‘capstone’, not in GPC (which has only penfaen ‘capstone’ in 1851), is unlikely, despite Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 367. Cf., rather, two examples of Penlee Point in Cornwall, correctly analysed by O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 146 and 179. Pandy’r Benllech and Tyddyn y Benllech/Tyddyn Iolyn in Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf are mentioned in 1719: Ian Barnes, ‘Burchinshaw’s Anglesey Lands, 1718’, TAAS, 1971–72, 98–110 (pp. 99 and 107). 741 Inv. Ang. 48 (under Llanddyfnan parish); Lynch, Prehistoric Anglesey, pp. 90–91; Coflein, s. Llanfair-Mathafarn-eithaf, Glyn or Coed-y-Glyn (with photographs). On the treasure-seekers see E. Neil Baynes, ‘The Megalithic Remains of Anglesey’, THSC, 1910–11, pp. 3–91 (pp. 44–47, with photograph). Also south of Afon y Marchogion, note C. N. Johns, ‘Long Cist Graves at 734

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If Deheuwaint is Dvnaud deheweint/deinwyn, father of St Deinioel of Bangor, the Anglesey Mathafarn is in the correct diocese. I.59 Aron ap Dyfnwyn/Dyfnfyn at Hirwaun I.59 Bet Aron mab Diwinvin. in Hirgweun le. ny dodei lew ar ladron. ny rotei gwir y alon.

I.59 The grave of Aron son of Dyfnwyn/ Dyfnfyn (is) at the place Hirwaun. He would not (trouble to) cry (for help) against thieves; he would not give quarter to enemies.

Aron is a rare name, except with reference to the biblical Aaron and the British martyr Aaron.742 Gruffudd ap Maredudd in his elegy for Goronwy Fychan ap Tudur (d. 1382) attributes to his patron the strength of Aron and Urien, perhaps alluding to our hero, but more likely referring to Arawn and Urien, the sons of Cynfarch.743 It seems unlikely that Arawn would be spelt Aron so early as the Black Book, however, unless perhaps to create an eye-rhyme with lines b and c.744 The spelling Diwinvin is ambiguous. Thomas Jones modernises it as Dyfnwyn (i.e. dwfn ‘deep’ + gwyn ‘white’), but Lloyd-Jones came to prefer Dyfnfyn (i.e. dwfn + *byn ‘cut’).745 He lists the latter as an adjective only in the Cyfoesi prophecy: Gỽledychaỽt wedy idwal yn llỽrỽ dyuynuyn diarchar ysgỽydwyn hoỽel uab kadwal.746 Ty’n Y Felin Quarry (Llanddyfnan) near Benllech’, TAAS, 1956, 11–18; Coflein s. Llanfair-­ Mathafarn-eithaf, Long Cist Burials (SH 51290 81920). Though cited in EBSG 94, this probably early medieval cemetery is less likely to be relevant than a prominent megalithic monument. See Archwilio, s. Cemetery, Site of, Ty’n y Felin Quarry. 742 G. 42 suggested that Aron appears in CBT VI 18.84 but, as noted ibid. p. 270, G. 561 prefers to take MS aron as â rhôn ‘with spear’. A servant called Aron appears in Kedymdeithas Amlyn ac Amic, ed. Patricia Williams (Cardiff, 1982), p. 12. 743 R 1323.15; Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 7.87–88. In his note (p. 161) Lewis takes Aron as a late form of the name Arawn (for which see Araun in LL 75 and 172, Arawn in PKM 2) and equates him with Urien’s brother Arawn son of Cynfarch in the Brutiau, corresponding to Anguselus in Geoffrey (see TYP4 279–80 and Roberts, ‘Treatment of Personal Names’, pp. 283–84). This is attractive, as Gruffudd elsewhere couples Araỽn and Uryen (R 1219.15; Gwaith I, no. 8.9). Gutun Owain has the spelling Aron ap Kenvarch in 1455 (see Bromwich, ‘Pedwar Marchog ar Hugain Llys Arthur’, p. 124 – the lack of variant implies Aron in Llanstephan 28; cf. TYP4 267) and has it again at MWG 400. For Aron in use as a personal name in the fifteenth century see E. D. Jones, ‘Three Fifteenth Century Peniarth Poems’, JMHRS, 10 (1986), 157–68. 744 See Sims-Williams, ‘Emergence’, pp. 63–71 and 77. Arawn ap Cynfarch appears as Arav son of Llywarch (recte Kynwarch) in LlDC no. 40.10 (see n. and p. xv) and always has a diphthong in the thirteenth-century manuscripts of the Brut, whereas NLW 5266 (Brut Dingestow) has Aron for the martyr Aaron (p. 245 = BD 157), as do some later Brutiau. Aron for Arawn ap Cynfarch first appears in Cardiff 1.362 (Hafod 1) 79v, 80r, and 83r (s. xiv med.). 745 BBCSG 129 (similarly EBSG 42); G. 42 s. Aron, 400 (foot of col. a), and 412 s. Dyf(y)nuyn. For *byn see GPC s.v. difyn etc. and LEIA B–34. 746 G. 400; R 578.28–30.

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

GPC does not include such an adjective, however, and Bollard takes dyuynuyn as a personal name here, translating: After Idwal, will rule, in the manner of invincible Dyfnfyn, the white-shielded Hywel ap Cadwal.747

If this is correct, it may be the only known allusion to the Dyfnfyn of our stanza. Note that the contrast with the spelling of ysgỽydwyn supports the modernisation Dyfnfyn rather than Dyfnwyn. Hirgweun le is usually identified with Hirwaun (SN 9505) near Aberdâr (Aberdare, Gla.), where there are two Bronze Age cairns on Hirwaun Common: Craig-y-bwlch (SN 9419 0354) and Tarren-y-bwlch (SN 9481 0337).748 The name Hirwaun is common in Wales, however, and several places with the name have, or had, striking monuments.749 Thus (i) Rhoshirwaun (SH 1929) in Aberdaron, Crn., is overlooked by the Bronze Age and later hillfort of Castell Odo (SH 1870 2846).750 (ii) South-east of Margam, Gla., along the Coal brook, is a group of gwaun names – Coed Hirwaun (SS 82123 84415), Hirwaun farm (SS 81917 85174), and Waun-galed (SS 81441 84961). Coedhirwaun Rectangular Enclosure here (SS 8217 8514), detected from the air in 2013, seems to be the vestige of an Iron Age hillfort or Roman fort, while there are cropmarks of a square barrow cemetery at Bryn-y-Garn (SS 8120 8470).751 (iii) Hirwaun Common in Coity, Gla., has a prehistoric subcircular enclosure at Heol-yLlan (SS 9346 8332).752 Hence the stanza’s Hirgweun cannot be identified. Since the next two stanzas refer to Cardiganshire, one might be tempted to consider Pont-hirwaun (SN 2645) in Llandygwydd, Crd., just to the west of which are the Allt Pencraig round barrows Bollard, ‘Myrddin in Early Welsh Tradition’, p. 35. For yn llwrw + personal name cf. LlDC no. 35.12, in llvrv kyheic, understood as ‘in the manner of Cyheig’ by Jenny Rowland, ‘Trystan and Esyllt’, in Arthur in the Celtic Languages, ed. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Erich Poppe (Cardiff, 2019), pp. 51–63 (p. 57). 748 BBC 130 (where Evans compares I.50 Edrywuy le, also I.31 Certenhin awon and I.58 Cleveint awon); EBSG 95. For the name see PNG 105. For the cairns see Coflein, and also, in the vicinity, for Cefn Rhigos barrow (SN 9199 0706) and the three Cefn Rhigos cairns (SN 9195 0694 etc.). Cf. Aileen Fox and Leslie Murray Threipland, ‘The Excavation of Two Cairn Cemeteries near Hirwaun, Glamorgan’, AC, 97 (1942–43), 77–92 (p. 91, nos 1–4 and Fig. 9); Leighton, Western Brecon Beacons, pp. 90–91. 749 Ones that do not are Waun Hirwaun (SO 0445) in Gwenddwr, Bre., where there is only a possible Bronze Age ring cairn at Blaen-Gwenddwr (SO 04136 45268) according to Coflein and Archwilio s. Blaen Gwenddwr, stone spread, and a Hirwaun which ran along the Gwendraeth Fawr river in Carmarthenshire, to judge by the names Hirwaun-isaf (SN 52235 12010, in Pontyberem) and (in Llannon) Hiwaun Forge, Hirwaun-olau, and Blaen-hirwaun (SN 54899 13194), for which see RhELlH s. Hirwaun, Crm. Near the latter Hirwaun note in Archwilio only a doubtful prehistoric earthwork at SN 5170 1258 in Pontyberem (s. Bryn Gwendraeth), and various Bronze Age standing stones in Pontyberem apparently deduced solely from field-names (s. Cae Carreg Wen, Cae Maen, Cae Main, Cae Carig, Garn Wen, Graig, etc.). 750 Inv. Crn. III 6–8; Coflein and Archwilio s.n. 751 Coflein s.nn. For references to pasture at Hyrwenwrgan/Hyrwen Worgan see Anon., ‘Contribution towards a Cartulary of Margam’, AC, 3rd ser. 14 (1868), 182–96 (pp. 192 and 195–96); Birch, History of Margam Abbey, p. 391. Margam abbey (founded 1147) held most land around here: Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 91. 752 Coflein s. Heol-y-Llan. ‘Hirwaun Commons’ on Coyty Manor are mentioned in 1631: G. T. C., ‘Coyty Castle and Lordship’, AC, 4th ser. 29 (1877), 1–22 (p. 16). 747

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(SN 2493 4547 and SN 2487 4537), now ploughed out, but formerly overlooking the Afon Hirwaun valley. Unfortunately, however, it seems that the original form of this Hirwaun was Hirwern.753 Rather similarly the name of Hirfryn commote, Crm. was corrupted to Hirwayne, Hervyne, or Horvyne in late-fifteenth-century royal documents.754 I.60–61 Taflogau son of Lludd, and Rhun, near Hafod, Cer. I.60

I.60

Bet Tawlogev. mab Llut. in y trewrud755 The grave of Taflogau son of Lludd (is) in his trav. homestead(?) over there, mal y mae in y756 kystut. ae clathei caffei but. I.61

as he is in his affliction.757 He who would dig it would get treasure. I.61

Piev y bet ar lan Ryddnant.

Whose is the grave on the bank of the Rhydnant?

Run. y. env radev keucant.

Rhun (is) his name,758 of undoubted talents.

Ri oet ew.759 Riogan ae gvant.

A king was he; Rhiogan killed him.

For the barrows see Coflein and Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, p. 177. According to Melville Richards (‘Is Coed Uwch Hirwern in 1651’, Ceredigion, 4 (1960–63), 374–99 (p. 374), ETG 44, and WATU 96 s.n. Is Hirwern), the original name of Afon Hirwaun was (despite DP IV 433) Hirwern (see also HW II 618 and n. 31; D. Hywel Roberts, ‘Noddi Beirdd yng Ngheredigion – Rhai Agweddau’, Ceredigion, 7 (1972–75), 14–39 (p. 17); Pryce, Acts, p. 184; PNC I 78–79 and III 1255 and 1321–23). 754 British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond, 4 vols (Gloucester, 1979–83), IV, 100 (variant not noted in AMR or PNCrm 88 s. Hirfryn). 755 Jarman does not emend in his glossary to LlDC, but trefrudd is not in GPC. The translation ‘homestead’ in BBCSG 129 assumes emendation to trewr[e]d as in I.25a (EBSG 129), where ‘in his homestead’ is a cue for a topographical allusion. MS u may be inspired by the u of the rhyme scheme (and note also -rut in I.62b and the rhyme in AP2 line 94). Gwyn Thomas, in Yr Aelwyd Hon, p. 113, and Hen Englynion, p. 95, has y dref rudd (‘the red township’), but MS -d, normally = /d/, is against this (Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, p. 148, suggests trewrud may be an exception). Heledd’s Y dref wenn … Ar wyneb y gwellt y gwaet ‘The white township … on the surface of its grass its blood’ (CLlH XI.52) provides a parallel. 756 Rhys, Englyn, p. 134, scans in y as ’ny, comparing LL 120. He also adds ew ‘he’ before caffei in line c, followed by BBCSG 128; BBC 130 suggests neus as an alternative to ew. 757 Probably influenced by Loth’s old derivation of cystudd from Latin custodia (cf. CA 108), G. 269 suggests ‘imprisonment’ (of the tomb?). Cf. CA line 339: kysdud daear. 758 For this idiom see Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugant’, p. 23, on line 10, aer y env. 759 For metrical reasons BBC 130 omits ew and Rhys, Englyn, p. 134 omits oet. BBCSG 130 n. 1 omits oet (though comparing III.10c where he omits ef). Piev y in line a may scan as Pieu’r, in which case 7–7–8, without emending line c, is probably acceptable; see above, p. 111, on metrics. 753

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This Lludd cannot be identified.760 Ifor Williams compared Tawlogev with tavloyw, a possible personal name in the Gododdin,761 but that is difficult to sustain unless a scribal error is assumed. It is better to follow Thomas Jones, who compares Epynt in I.26, an eponym created from a place-name, and sees Tawlogev similarly as an eponymous hero created from the river-name Taflogau which is found solely in Ysbyty Ystwyth parish in Ceredigion.762 It there survives in the names of the Nant Gau – this stream joins the Ystwyth at Dologau (i.e. Dôl Logau or < *Daflogau) (SN 77078 73277) on the Hafod estate – and of the mine at Logau-las (SN 74137 72100), whose adjective glas presumably distinguishes this [Taf]logau from the other [Taf]logau. Both formed part of Strata Florida’s Cwmystwyth grange, and are documented in charters as the Duy Tafhlogeu or Dwe Tafflogev, ‘the two Taflogau’.763 In the Lord Rhys’s 1184 charter for Strata Florida, the bounds of the land granted ran southwards from the Ystwyth along the length of Taualogeu/Tawlogeu to its source, and thence straight across westwards – a short distance – to the Marchnant, thus excluding the parts of the later Cwmystwyth grange that lay north of the Ystywth and west of the Taflogau (including Logau-las);764 these parts seemed to have been obtained later,

Cf. WCD 416–18; Hutton, ‘Medieval Welsh Literature and Pre-Christian Deities’, pp. 63–68. If kystut means ‘prison’ (see above footnote), note the imprisonment of Lludd Llaw Ereint in Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, line 916; M 126. 761 CA line 1008 and p. 309, suggesting tafl ‘throw’ + hoyw or taf (as in the river-name Taf) + gloyw. John Thomas Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin (Cardiff, 1997), pp. 120–21 and 231, has ‘throwing a spear’, i.e. tafl + gwoyw ‘spear’, while R. D. Fulk, ‘Two Words in Y Gododdin’, B., 28 (1978–80), 400–2 (p. 402) has ‘sling’. If it is a name, the most likely second element is gloyw (cf. Fleuriot, Le vieux breton, pp. 171–72), but, whichever element it is, it cannot be equated with -logev unless the latter is corrupt (for -gloev?). If it were corrupt, the corruption might be due to knowledge of the name Taflogeu. 762 BBCSG 109–10, followed in EBSG 95, with photograph of the Logau Las (and of Nant Gau, p. 43). For the early forms in Strata Florida charters, and later sources, see BBCSG 110 n. 1, Acts, ed. Pryce, nos 28, 35, 55, 63, and 82, and PNC II 869–70. By mistake most of them are under Ceri, Mtg. (rather than Crd.) in AMR s.n. Taflogau. On the Strata Florida grange see Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 57, 91, no. 136, and 96; Bezant, ‘Medieval Grants to Strata Florida Abbey’, p. 81. 763 Acts, ed. Pryce, pp. 199 and 218, explained by Phillimore, ‘“Homo Planus”’, p. 243, and DP IV 457 and 499 n. 1. Note also the names Hafod-y-gau-uchaf (SN 75074 71968) and Hafod-y-­gauisaf (SN 74930 72220). Although Tafolog (from tafol ‘dockleaf’ + -og) is a known river-name (see AMR s. *tafolog, ELlSG 33, and Morgan, Study of Montgomeryshire Place-Names, p. 161 [where SH 8909 is meant]), Taflogeu is hardly its plural, despite the spellings Taualogeu and Tauologeu (Acts, ed. Pryce, pp. 173 and 181), where the vowels may be epenthetic or hypercorrect; las in Logau-las implies a feminine singular, and dwy in Duy Tafhlogeu should not be followed by a plural in normal Middle Welsh syntax (cf. Nurmio, Grammatical Number, pp. 216–28). River-­names in -eu/-au include Geleu ‘weapon’ (from *gel- ‘carve’) and Ogeu (from og ‘harrow’?), and note also Cleddeu ~ Cleddyf ‘sword’, cf. neddau ~ neddyf ‘adze’ (ELl 57, EANC 81 and 100, WG 109 and 217). The stream-name Onneu, Bre. (AMR s. Blaen Onnau and Pen (y) Cwm Onnau) could be from onn ‘ash(-spears). Thus Taflogeu could be a derivative of *taflog, perhaps meaning ‘projectile’ or ‘sling’ (cf. taflen, tafler, ffon-dafl), although taflog is only attested in senses such as ‘gesticulating’. Rivers were often named from weapons and implements (ELl 55). No doubt Nant Gau < Taflogau was misunderstood as ‘sunken stream’ (< cau ‘hollow, sunken’), a well-attested river-name, e.g. G. G. Evans, ‘Stream Names of the Severn Basin in Montgomery­shire’, MC, 74 (1986), 49–69 (p. 60, comparing Ceunant). 764 Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 28; Bezant, ‘Medieval Grants to Strata Florida Abbey’, p. 80 (map). See Phillimore, ‘“Homo Planus”’, p. 243, also DP IV 457 and 499 n. 1. 760

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from Rhys Ieuanc ap Gruffudd in 1202.765 The 1184 boundary, running between the source of the Taflogau and the Marchnant, separated the new estates to the north from Strata Florida’s older estates to its south.766 The most conspicuous monument near which the boundary passed over that short distance is a Bronze Age cairn at 570 m (SN 77856 70412), marked on maps as the Trawsallt cairn.767 From it much of north Wales is visible on a good day. This cairn could be Taflogau’s supposed grave. According to the englyn, excavation there would produce treasure (compare I.29–30). It is curious that the most outrageously daring creations of heroes out of placenames – Epynt on the Gefel in I.26 and Taflogau in I.60 – both adjoin Strata Florida granges. Moreover, both the Gefel and the Taflogau run through deep ravines. Did they get into the text of Englynion y Beddau via Strata Florida? The grave of Brwyno Hir (I. 48) was in similar terrain, if correctly identified with Brwyno-canol, on pasture disputed between Cwm-hir and Ystrad Marchell. I.61 also concerns Ceredigion, probably, with another possible Strata Florida connection. Thomas Jones plausibly identified Ryddnant with the Rhyddnant which flows from Llyn Rhyddnant to join the Merin and form the Mynach at SN 769776, only three miles north of Dologau.768 The name Rhyddnant is now pronounced with y (schwa), as if ‘free(flowing?) stream’, but Lewis Morris and some O.S. maps have Rhuddnant (as if ‘red stream’) and at first sight this vowel gains some support from a spelling in 1291, when Rudenant was listed as a Strata Florida grange;769 the modern realisation of older u as schwa in penultimate syllables is widely paralleled, for instance at Rhuddlan in the south of the county, which was definitely a rhudd name originally.770 Other medieval spellings complicate the picture, however.771 At some time between 1198 and 1227 Maelgwn Fychan ap Maelgwn ap Rhys granted (or confirmed) to Strata Florida estates including ‘Heruyt Lywarch [‘Llywarch’s erwydd

Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 55, with comments by Bezant, ‘Medieval Grants to Strata Florida Abbey’, p. 81. The 1202 grant included Taflogau and, north of the Ystwyth, Pwllpeiran (SN 774 745), and Bodcoll (SN 753 762) 766 See maps in Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 91, 96 (showing Trawsallt), and 108. Professor David Austin kindly pointed out to me that Williams’s boundary was probably influenced by the position of ‘Careg Bwlch-mynachlog’ on the O.S. map at SN 777709 (see RhELlH s.n.), described by him as ‘a stone-wall’ (p. 57), and that most of the ‘careg’ names in the area on the first edition of the O.S. map refer to natural stone outcrops. 767 See Coflein, s. Ysbyty Ystwyth, Blaen Marchnant, Shelter [‘Post Medieval’]: ‘A drystone shelter constructed on top of a Bronze Age cairn, NPRN 303666, on Blaen Marchnant’ (with photographs). Cf. Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, pp. 182 and 205; O.S. Explorer Map 213 (1998). For photographs see s. Trawsallt. ‘Car[r]eg Bwlch-mynachlog’ is just below this, on the north side. 768 BBCSG 110; cf. EANC 210. Photograph in EBSG 44. Meyrick, History and Antiquities, p. 32, says ‘The next increase of the Mynach is from a river called Rhuddnant, taking its rise in Llyn rhyddnant’ (sic). In the north, a similar confusion is seen in the spellings of Rhuddallt/Rhyddallt: HEALlE 229–30; cf. ELlSG 100; AMR s. *rhuddallt* and *rhyddallt*. 769 CR 377; Taxatio Ecclesiastica 1291, p. 276 (sic leg.), cited by PNC III 1293. See also Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, pp. 119 and 273. 770 PNC I 272. See Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, pp. 318 and 322, on Rhuddlan, and 220– 27, on the realisation of u as schwa in central Cardiganshire and adjacent areas (e.g. rhuddo in north-west Crd. and Llanwrtyd, Bre.). 771 See ibid., p. 273, where the name is left without explanation. 765

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“wattling”’?] inter Ritnant et Meryn’.772 It seems certain that the Black Book’s Ryddnant is the same as this Ritnant, for river-names of this shape are rare: Melville Richards lists only a Rhuthnant (for Rhuddnant) in Rhiwabon, Den.,773 and Ritnant/ Rytnant somewhere in Breconshire in the Llandaf diocesan boundary.774 The editors of the Book of Llandaf seem to take the latter as ‘Rhyd-nant’ (i.e. ‘ford-stream’), but Coe rightly objected that rhyd ‘ford’ ‘is not at all usual as a qualifying element, so perhaps rhwd “rust, dirt”’ should be considered instead’.775 This rhwd, rhyd- could also be present in the Ceredigion charter’s Ritnant and even, in fact, in Rudenant in 1291 since Rude- could be an etymological spelling of rhyd- < rhwd ‘rust’ rather than rhudd ‘red’. Since ‘rusty’ water is also ‘red’ water, the names Rhydnant and Rhuddnant could have existed side by side. The boulders in the Rhyddnant, and in the Mynych near Llaneithyr, just below the confluence of the Rhyddnant and Merin, are noticeably stained a rusty red, so Ryddnant in the Black Book and Ritnant in the charter may both represent what would be Rhydnant ‘rust stream’ in modern spelling (with y/i = schwa, and /d/). This name could have become Rhuddnant ‘red stream’ (> dialectal Rhyddnant) by folk-etymology rather than by an irregular sound-change.776 The reverse development, from Rhuddnant ‘red stream’ to Rhudnant (> Rhydnant), is possible so far as ddn > dn is concerned,777 but it is most unlikely that Rhuddnant or Rhudnant could be spelt with y rather than u as early as the Black Book.778 Rhydnant ‘rust-stream’ is thus the most likely explanation of Ryddnant in the Black Book and Ritnant in the 1198 × 1227 charter. Despite its similarity to the modern Rhyddnant, the Black Book’s dd is unlikely to be an early example of Late MW/Mod.W. dd.779 Nor is it likely that Ritnant represents Rhyddnant, for the charter does not use t for the dental fricative (with the very doubtful exception of Heruyt).780

Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 63 and p. 200. See also DP IV 501, who points out that the name Mynach reflects the Strata Florida connection (cf. EANC 185). 773 AMR s. Rhuddnant. But the citation is incorrect, viz. Exchequer Proceedings (Equity) Concerning Wales, Henry VIII–Elizabeth, ed. Emyr Gwynne Jones (Cardiff, 1939), p. 173. 774 AMR s. Rhydnant, citing LL 42 and 134. 775 LL 363 and 368 (but cf. p. 417, Rit Nant, as if ‘ford of the stream’ (?)); Coe, ‘Place-Names’, p. 742, suggesting that Ritnant/Rytnant may be the stream which flows into the Rhiangoll at SO 183288. Coe mentions a similar etymology for Ritec (p. 738), citing EANC 84–85. For rhwd see ACPN 30. Rhyd- with schwa is the regular form in the penult in central Cardiganshire: Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 249, citing rhydu in Llanafon, six miles from our river. 776 PNC III 1293, notes Rhydnant > Rhyddnant as highly irregular, but compares Y Rhyddnant in Crai (SN 8924), citing ‘Hanes Plwyf Crai’, Brycheiniog, 9 (1963), 109–31 (p. 114). 777 For ddn > dn see Williams, ‘Some Breconshire Place-Names’, Brycheiniog, p. 156, and Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 7. See further Paul Russell, ‘Welsh anadl/anaddl, gwadn/ gwaddn’, B., 31 (1984), 104–12; Peter Wynn Thomas, ‘(t): Un o Newidynnau Tafodieithol y Frythoneg’, in Hispano-Gallo-Brittonica, ed. Eska et al., pp. 219–43. 778 Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 273. 779 BBC 130; WG 22 and 432 n. a; Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, pp. 148–50 and 166. On the use of dd see references in Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y’, p. 1. The few examples of ‘modern’ dd in I.70 and I.72 are later additions (see below, on I.69). Morgan Watkin, ‘The French Linguistic Influence in Mediaeval Wales’, THSC, 1918–19, pp. 146–222 (pp. 169 and 190) is non-committal on the value of the dd of Ryddnant, whereas it is taken as /d/ by Henry Lewis, ‘Darn o’r Ffestival (Liber Festialis)’, THSC, 1923–24, Supplement (1925), p. 9. 780 PNC III 1293, casts doubt on Heruyt = herwydd by comparing it with Ponterwyd which has /d/; but for a different etymology for the latter see CIB 38. 772

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Quite possibly I.61, the englyn on Ryddnant, was transmitted via Strata Florida together with I.60 on Tawlogev. It may be, however, that I.61 originated at a pre-­ Cistercian church by the Rhyddnant. On the Mynach, a mile west of the confluence of the Merin and Rhyddnant, the farm-name Llaneithyr (SN 761772), and associated names, including Cae Ffynnon Saint (‘Field of the saints’ well’, SN 7608 7715) and, to the south west, Mynwent Fach (‘Little graveyard’, SN 7510 7655), have suggested ‘a possible Early Christian focus’.781 The very rare name Eithyr probably refers to the ‘satrap’ Eithir map Arthat in the late-eleventh-century Life of St Padarn, who grants his lands between the Paith and the Rheidol to St Padarn (that is, to nearby Llanbadarn Fawr, Crd., SN 6080), and ends his life in an aura of sanctity.782 The traditions of the Llaneithyr area – perhaps including our englyn – could thus have been preserved at Llanbadarn.783 A possible Bronze Age standing stone at Llaneithyr (SN 7610 7715)784 could even indicate Rhun’s supposed grave. (Admittedly, Llaneithyr is on the Mynach rather than the Rhyddnant, but it is not unlikely that that the name Mynach (referring to the monks of Strata Florida) has superseded Rhyddnant here; the farm opposite, where the Hirnant runs into the Mynach is sometimes called Aber-Rhuddnant rather than Aberhirnant.)785 Another possible focus for Rhun’s story is Tynmaes (Ty’n-y-maes, SN 768777), beside the confluence of the Merin and the Rhyddnant, where a reported ‘old church’ has probably disappeared under afforestation.786 The name Rhun is too common for the englyn’s king to be identified. His slayer may be the Riogan ‘son of the king of Ireland’ who appears in a list of Arthur’s counsellors in Breudwt Ronabwy (compare ‘Riogoned uab brenin Iwerdon’ in a list in Gereint).787 While formally Riogan could be a Welsh name, it is otherwise only attested in Old Breton, where Riocan is a hypocoristic form of Rioc, which is also a name attested in Old Breton.788 Possibly the name Riocan sounded vaguely exotic in

RCAHMW, The Archaeology of the Welsh Uplands, ed. David Browne and Stephen Hughes (Aberystwyth, 2003), pp. 70–71; Archwilio, s.nn. Blaen Rheidol and Pontarfynach. 782 DP IV 447; VSB 266–69; LBS IV 43 n. 1; PNC III 1053–54; Jack Arnell, ‘Saint Padarn in North Ceredigion: Re-Reading Vita Sancti Paterni, the “Life of Saint Padarn”’, Ceredigion, 18.1 (2017), 5–38 (pp. 22–25). On the Vita’s date and authorship see Ben Guy, ‘The Vespasian Life of St Teilo and the Evolution of the Vitae Sanctorum Wallensium’, in Seintiau Cymru, ed. Parsons and Russell, pp. 1–30 (p. 20), also idem, ‘Rheinwg’, p. 101. Eithyr may come either from Hector (CIB 121 n. 667) or from *Actorix, as implied by PNC III 1054 (for the phonology see LHEB 582–83 and 610, and CIB 178 for *acto-). Possibly this is the Eithir who appears in Enwev Meibon Llywarch Hen in the Black Book: Goreu trywir in ev gulad / y amdiffin ev treuad, / Eithir, ac Erthir, ac Argad ‘The three best men in their country / for defending their homes / (were) Eithyr and Erthyr and Argad’ (CLlH VIII.2; LlDC no. 40.5–9; EWSP 413 and 473); note the similarity between Argad (cf. TYP4 280) and Arthat. It is agreed that the three names are unconnected with Llywarch Hen and derive from some series of triads in verse (CLlH 187; TYP4 36; EWSP 536; WCD 424). The occurrence of a Heruyt Lywarch near the Rhyddnant (see above) is no doubt coincidental. 783 On areas connected with Llanbadarn cf. Austin, Strata Florida, p. 15 (map). 784 Archwilio, s. Llaneithyr. 785 PNC III 895. 786 PNC III 1053. Cf. Archwilio, s. Tynymaes, Blaenrheidol, Crd. 787 BR 19.13–14; Ystorya Gereint, ed. Thomson, lines 601–2. 788 CIB 69. Contrast EP 173 where Riogan is derived from rhi + gogan or *rigo- + *can. 781

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Wales (cf. I.36–38) and the -ocan suffix was reminiscent of the compound -oc-án, suffix of Irish names such as Finnocán.789 I.62 Bradwen, ?at Maen Bradwen, Gla. I.62

I.62

Oet ef kyfnissen

790

guawrut

791

y holi galanas,

grut aten.

A chen bv ir792 but bet Bradwen.

He was resolute in demanding wergild, (with) red spear(s), (with) handsome cheek; and before this gain was (achieved), Bradwen was in the grave.

Thomas Jones suggested that this stanza got into Englynion y Beddau from some narrative genre,793 which is plausible, especially since bedd seems to be used with its quasi-verbal (originally locative) syntax and since no place is specified. A location may be implied, however, as in the case of Alun Dyfed in I.25:794 there was an Ynis bratguen (‘Bradwen’s meadow’) near Llandaf in Glamorgan (around ST 122833 or ST 127824);795 a Llys (or Caer) Bradwen in Llangelynnin, Mer. (SH 65010 13855) – a possible medieval platform house supposedly named after Bradwen ap Mael, an early-twelfth-century descendant of the Maeldaf ab Unhwch discussed above

This suffix was, in fact, originally borrowed from Brittonic, as the *óc segment shows: GOI 173; Fleuriot, Le vieux breton, p. 402; Paul Russell, Celtic Word-Formation: The Velar Suffixes (Dublin, 1990), pp. 111 n. 283 and 152–54. 790 Cyfnys(i)en/cyfnis(i)en is a hapax, and the meaning is inferred from efnys ‘hostile’ and gwrthnysig ‘stubborn’ (see PKM 163, G. 212, 445, and 718, and LEIA s.v. amnas) and the syntax of the preposition which follows (cf. sense 9c in GPC s.v. i2). 791 An error for guaiurut (= gwaew rhudd ‘red spear’) or, to make six syllables (which is not really necessary), guaeawrut (= gwaeawr rhudd ‘red spears’): Thomas Jones, ‘guaurud, guawrut’, B., 22 (1966–68), 351. Cf. G. 604; CA 341; G. R. Isaac, ‘Readings in the History and Transmission of the Gododdin’, CMCS, 37 (Summer 1999), 55–78 (p. 75 n. 67). 792 MS bv|ir (with line-break and feint hyphen). Cf. BBCSG 130 n. 3. Jones’s suggestion that bvir could be 3sg. pres. subj. (cf. G. 67 and EBSG 44) rather than 2sg. is dubious (see GMW 128–29 and 137 and CC 91 and 265), and his statement that cyn in cyn bu would mean ‘before’, though possible (cf. I.51 kin bu. tav. y dan mein), makes less good sense than ‘although’, as in his own translation ‘though it was for gain’ and, with a query, in the glossary to LlDC s.v. kin1 (cf. kin2). Cyn ‘although’ is followed by the subjunctive, however (see G. 119 and GMW 235), so perhaps ir is best taken as the Old Welsh spelling of the article (scanning as bu’r): ‘before the gain happened (lit. “was”)’. For bedd ‘in the grave, interred’ see G. 53–54, GPC, and LPBT 461. The spelling of cen with e is not typical of the manuscript (see LlDC 133 s. kin), and recalls Old Welsh (LHEB 283 n. 2; Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y’, pp. 4, 22 n. 74, and 24 n. 81); but cen/ken is still found in the Black Book of Chirk (see G. 253; Russell, ‘Scribal (In)competence’, p. 139) and other thirteenth-century manuscripts (see Rhyddiaith y 13g). For cyn bu see LPBT 187 and 461. Graves are often said to be ir ‘fresh’ (CA 288 and CBT IV 147), but that will not work here without rearranging the words. 793 BBCSG 105–6. 794 For the following see AMR s. *Bradwen*. The Bradwen element in Penrhos Bradwen first appears in 1522 (AMR). AMR also lists a Gavella Bradwen ap Keneuerth in Survey of the Honour of Denbigh 1334, ed. Vinogradoff and Morgan, p. 189. 795 LL 32, 43, and 258; Coe, ‘Place-Names’, pp. 379–80. 789

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in connection with I.30 – and a Penrhos Bradwen in Caergybi, Ang. (SH 26603 81140).797 This Penrhos Bradwen is the most promising of these three Bradwen place-names for us, since there is a probably Bronze Age standing stone on the coast there (SH 2682 8183).798 It is less than a mile north-west of the Neolithic burial chambers at Trefignath (SH 25858 80546)799 and only a little further from the Bronze Age(?) Tŷ Mawr (or Bonc Deg) standing stone (SH 25394 80951).800 A better possibility, however, is suggested by Maen Bradwen or Bredwan, the alternative name of Carreg Bica (‘pointed stone’), a conspicuous Bronze Age standing stone, 4.3 m high, at 253 m. above O.D. on Mynydd Drumau, Dyffryn Clydach, Gla. (SS 72490 99469).801 The meaningless Bredwan, so written by Morgan in 1899,802 is presumably a metathesis of Bradwen, the form given in 1925 by Phillips (a person with deep local knowledge) and by Grimes in 1931–32.803 This massive stone would have been visible in the valley below to the monks of Neath Abbey, a mile to the south-east, and they would have been in a position to disseminate its story. A point in favour of this location is the reference to the arguably nearby Cefn Celfi in I.65, three stanzas after this one – and see also on I.71c. 796

Davies et al., Ystyron Enwau, pp. 60–61. See Jenkins, ‘Llawysgrif Goll Llanforda’, p. 103; Bartrum, ‘Maelda Hynaf and Edywain ap Bradwen’, p. 237; G. R. J. Jones, ‘The Distribution of Bond Settlements in North-West Wales’, WHR, 2 (1964), 19–36 (pp. 24–25 and 30); Colin Gresham, W. J. Hemp, and F. H. Thompson, ‘Hen Ddinbych’, AC, 108 (1959), 72–80 (pp. 77– 79); Coflein, s.n. Llys Bradwen (with photographs); cf. Pennant, Tour, II, 99–100. According to the calculation in PP1 132, this Bradwen would have been born c. 1100. (DP IV 491 gives the medieval name of Llys Bradwen as Llys Grugunan, but see CBT III 357.) 797 In his index to Englynion y Beddau in BL Add. 14941, fols 27–46, Lewis Morris suggested either ‘penrhos Bradwen ym Mon’ or ‘Llys Bradwen. ym Meirion’. 798 Archwilio s. Standing Stone, Penrhos (PRN: 7169). See Richard Cooke and Robert Evans, Penrhos Leisure Village, Holyhead, Anglesey: Archaeological Assessment (Bangor, [2010]), p. 26, Figs. 03 (site 23), 16, and 21 (site 7169), and pl. 25. 799 Lynch, Prehistoric Anglesey, pp. 66–68 and 330–34; Coflein and Archwilio s. Trefignath Burial Chamber (both with photographs). The relevant field at Trefignaeth was ‘Cae’r Llechau’ (Lucy Williams, ‘The Development of Holyhead’, TAAS, 1950, 51–70 (p. 54)). 800 Coflein and Archwilio, s. Ty-Mawr Standing Stone; Inv. Ang. 23. 801 Coflein, s. Carreg Bica; Maen Bredwan; Hoat Stone, Neath; Archwilio s. Carreg Bica; Maen Bredwan. The stone is first described, but not named, by an American tourist: Anon., ‘William Drayton’s Tours in South Wales in 1782 and 1783 (Part II)’, Swansea History Journal: Minerva, 22 (2014–15), 29–44. The (singular!) stone has sometimes been mistakenly associated with the (plural!) meynhirion (‘tall stones’) in the bounds of the lordship of Gower appended to a c. 1300 copy of King John’s 1203 grant to William de Braose (Clark, Cartae, II, 288, on which see Glamorgan County History, III, ed. Pugh, pp. 208, 226, and 615 n. 22, and Huws, ‘The Neath Abbey Breviate of Domesday’, pp. 48–49). The meynhirion in fact lay a little further north; see Seyler, ‘Early Charters of Swansea and Gower, Part II’, p. 306 and map. 802 W. Ll. Morgan, An Antiquarian Survey of East Gower, Glamorganshire (London, 1899), p. 65, followed by J. G. Rutter, Prehistoric Gower: The Early Archaeology of West Glamorgan (Swansea, 1949), p. 47 no. 10, although Rutter also cites Phillips who has Bradwen. 803 D. Rhys Phillips, The History of the Vale of Neath (Swansea, 1925), p. 18; W. J. Grimes, ‘The Rude Stone Monuments of South Wales’, Neath Antiquarian Society Transactions, 2nd series, 2 (1931–32), 90–93 (p. 91); cf. Inv. Gla., Pre-Norman, I, 123 (with pl. 10). Iolo Morganwg refers to ‘Maen hir y Drymmau’, no. 58 in his list of Glamorgan ‘Hen Gromlechau’ etc. in NLW 13161A (Llanover C.74), p. 229, presumably the same as ‘y Drummau’, no. 20 in his list of ‘Druidical altars in Glamorgan’ in NLW 13159A (Llanover C.72), p. 38. 796

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In De Mirabilibus Britanniae (c. 1180), Ralph de Diceto lists A stone whose size is not big on the top of a mountain; if someone takes it and carries it two miles or however far he wishes, on the next day he will be bound to find it in the same place on the top of the mountain.

The Middle Welsh translation adds that it is ‘in the land of Gower’.804 ‘Not big’ hardly suits Maen Bradwen, but could the Welsh translator have been thinking of it? Maen Bradwen lay on the boundary of the lordship of Gower and, according to modern folklore, it travels the two miles to the river Neath for a drink every Easter Sunday morning!805 Such an equation can only be a guess, as travelling stones are a stock feature of mirabilia (already in Historia Brittonum, §73); almost the same story about a stone travelling to and from water is told of Maen Llia, Bre. (SN 9242 1918), the stone mentioned above in connection with I.26.806 The Bradwen of I.62 may be the famous Bradwen of the Gododdin, who is there said to have died in England, fighting alongside 300 chieftains, including Gwyddien and Morien, presumably at Catraeth (CA lines 481 and 485). Questionable rhymes in the relevant awdlau suggest that they are interpolated, as do apparent references to Bradwen tackling a wolf bare-handed and, like his companion Gwenabwy, acting yr bod bun ‘for the pleasure of a maiden’ (lines 468 and 482).807 The impression that Bradwen figured in stories known throughout Wales is reinforced by Cynddelw’s allusion, in a Powys elegy in the 1160s, to Gwyddien grieving for Bradwen (the two of them appear together in Canu Aneirin lines 462 and 468) and by the listing of Bradwen, in the southern Culhwch and Olwen, as the son (or brother) of a Moren (ab Iaen), the name coupled with Bradwen’s in Canu Aneirin line 465, and again c. 1330 by Casnodyn in an elegy to a patron buried at Margam, Gla.,808 some nine miles south-east of Maen Bradwen. Our stanza may derive from some englyn-saga about Bradwen. I.63 Madog ?at Maen Madoc, Ystradfellte, Bre. I.63

I.63

Piev y bet pedrival.

Whose is the four-sided grave

ae pedwar mein am y tal.

with its four stones around its edge (or head)?

bet Madauc marchauc dywal.

The grave of Madog, a determined rider.

Ivanov, ‘Ralph de Diceto’, p. 64. Grinsell, Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, p. 59. 806 For Maen Llia’s trip see Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 547, citing Grinsell, Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, p. 59. This an international motif: ibid., pp. 56–60 and 270. 807 Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, pp. 214 and 216 and references, also Jarman, Aneirin: Y Gododdin, pp. 30–31 and 107–9. On the whole the Gododdin rhymes favour gwenn as the second element of Bratwen (CIB 135 n. 793), rather than gwên as suggested by Lloyd-Jones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 10. Cf. LL 388 Bratguenn. I.62b aten may have -nn; cf. GPC (first edition) s.v. addien; GPN 205; Evans, ‘A Comparison’, pp. 418 and 419 n. 3. 808 CBT III 24.12–14 and n.; Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, pp. 72 and 76; WCD 376 and 489; R 1242.1–2 = Gwaith Casnodyn, ed. Daniel, no. 2.105–6 and n. Admittedly, Casnodyn was learned in the traditions of Gwynedd, as he says himself, ibid., no. 11.91–92 (and pp. 153 and 161) = R 1344.24–25. On Iaen see I.67 below. 804 805

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This is another stanza with no location specified (unless the answer to the question is given as Eifionydd in I.64). Madog cannot be securely identified since the name was very common.809 Possibilities include: the Madog ap Gwyn ab Urien of I.20–21; the Madog (recte Meilyr?) ap Brwyn of Triad 61 (‘The Three Golden Corpses of the Island of Britain’);810 Madog ap Llywarch Hen;811 and Arthur’s brother, Madog ab Uthr, whose burial, though not its location, is mentioned in his elegy in the Book of Taliesin.812 If the grave of Bradwen (I.62) and Cefn Celfi (I.65) are rightly located near Neath, they may provide a pointer to the location of Madog’s grave. Proceeding sixteen miles north-east from Neath, either on the Roman road (Sarn Helen) towards Brecon or along the river Nedd (Neath), one comes to Maen Madoc (SN 91828 15770), in Ystradfellte, Bre., the name of which is attested from 1556.813 Standing 2.8 m. high, in a prominent position if seen when travelling up the Roman road from the south, it must have been well known in the Middle Ages, as is confirmed by its use for a sixth-century inscription dervaci filivs ivsti ic iacit.814 We cannot tell whether this was a reuse of a pre-existing standing stone that was already associated with Madog, or whether his name was attached to it later. Since the nearby Roman

WCD 435–36. TYP4 no. 61; see above, on I.21. 811 He is mentioned in a list of sons in which the locations of the graves of some others of them are specified: CLlH I.40 and 42; EWSP 411–12 and 472. 812 LPBT no. 20 and pp. 409 n. 32 and 459. Cf. A. O. H. Jarman, ‘“Erof Greulawn”’, LlC, 7 (1962– 63), 106–11 (pp. 106–7); PT xxii; Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 99. 813 Coflein, s. Maen Madoc Inscribed Stone and Roman Road (with photographs); Archwilio, s. Maen Madog Stone (also with photographs); Leighton, Western Brecon Beacons, pp. 77, 88–89, 115, and 166; Celts, Gaels, and Britons, ed. Rodway et al., cover illustration; AMR s. Maen Madog, citing Tredegar MSS 112/14, 35, and 37. For the contents of these see NLW, Tredegar Estate Finding Aid, pp. 1106–8 (on Box 112). The stone is mentioned and illustrated by EBSG 45 and 96. (While the authors are non–committal about any connection with I.63, its proximity to the possible sites of I.62 and I.65 is in favour.) Possibly the name of Maen Madog should be connected with RhELlH’s Castell-Madoc in Senni (SN 92455 222314) and Nant-Madog in Crai (SN 912300 25515), but the common nature of the name Madog makes this uncertain. 814 Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 251–53. For its position see Aileen Fox, ‘The Siting of Some Inscribed Stones of the Dark Ages in Glamorgan and Breconshire’, AC, 94 (1939), 30–41 (pp. 31– 32). She compares the Roman custom of roadside burial (p. 37). See further W. Ll. Morgan, ‘Report on the Excavations at Coelbren’, AC, 6th ser. 7 (1907), 129–74 (pp. 131 (map) and 134); Inv. Bre., Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, I, 162, 163, and 285; II, 158 and 161. It may be worth noting here that the burial of a daughter of Brychan Brycheiniog ‘under a stone’ near Ystradfellte is recorded in De Situ Brecheniauc, §12(4): ‘Hunyd filia Brachan, que iacet sub petra Meltheu’ (EWGT 15; DP III 299 n. 3; WCD 65; MWG 425). The reason why no remains of any inhumation have been found at the site of Maen Madog may be because it has fallen and been re-erected several times, probably not exactly at the same place. In addition to the re-­ erections recorded by Cyril Fox (‘The Re-Erection of Maen Madoc, Ystradfellte, Breconshire’, AC, 95 (1940), 210–16), note one in 1882, reported by ‘Morien’, ‘Interesting Antiquarian Proceedings at Ystradfellte: Restoring the Memorial Stone over the Remains of a Son of Caesar’, Weekly Mail, 1 July 1882, p. 5. For some doubts about Fox’s conclusions, in the light of an unpublished geophysical survey indicating ‘three sides of a rectangular enclosure’, see Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 253. I understand from Dr Alan Lane (21.4.2022) that the survey reached no conclusive result. 809 810

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road was ‘carefully paved with river pebbles and boulders’,815 there is no problem in imagining why Madog’s grave should be described as accompanied by ‘four stones’. A very late witness to a Breconshire Madog is Jonathan Williams (d. 1829), who refers to the supposed grave of ‘the three great giants of Brycheiniog, Owen, Milfyd, and Madog’ near Nant-y-beddau, Rad. (SN 8566), just on the Radnorshire side of the border.816 Conceivably he is identical with the Madog of I.63 and/or the Madog of Maen Madoc. Eighteenth-century Devonshire antiquarians compared the name of Maen Madoc with folklore first recorded in Barnstable in 1751, about a stone at Mattocks Down in East Down, north Devon, which was supposed to mark the site where a lord called Madoc was either buried or victorious.817 If there is anything in this, Madog would seem to be a pan-Brittonic legendary hero.818 I.64 Elwydd (?) in Eifionydd, Crn. I.64

I.64

En Eiwonit Elvit tir.

In Eifionydd, land of Elwydd,

y mae gur hyduf hir.

is (the grave of?)819 a full-grown, tall warrior.

lleas paup pan rydighir.

Everyone’s death (comes) when it is fated.820

Elvit is best taken not as elfydd ‘land, world’, with Lloyd-Jones, but as the personal name Elwydd, with Thomas Jones, who compares ‘Cadair Elwydd, the old form of the place-name Cadair Elwa in Eifionydd’.821 The latter (SH 44695 41739), beside Afon Wen in Llanystumdwy, Crn. is attested as Cadere(i)lweth in 1352 in the Record of Caernarfon.822 The name Cadair Elwa recurs twenty miles to the north in Pentir Fox, ‘Re-Erection’, p. 210. Jonathan Williams, The History of Radnorshire (Tenby, 1859), p. 237. This posthumous book, which is often unreliable (cf. Inv. Rad. passim), quotes an inscription on a lost stone at the site. If it ever existed, it cannot be of any antiquity, for Grooms, Giants, pp. 58–60 and 197, quotes Williams’s original manuscript (1832) as stating that ‘There are three stones set upright but without an inscription’. Cf. T. Thornley Jones, ‘The Giants’ Graves’, TRS, 21 (1951), 49– 52; Cledwyn Fychan, ‘Llywelyn ab y Moel a’r Canolbarth’, LlC, 15.3/4 (1987–88), 289–307 (p. 299). 817 Richard Polwhele, Historical Views of Devonshire, I (Exeter, 1793), p. 65. 818 On some of these heroes see O. J. Padel, ‘Oral and Literary Culture in Medieval Cornwall’, in Medieval Celtic Literature and Society, ed. Helen Fulton (Dublin, 2005), pp. 95–116; idem, ‘Evidence for Oral Tales’. 819 Adding bet after y mae would give 7 syllables, but see below. 820 A proverb: CA 359; EWSP 27; Diarhebion Llyfr Coch Hergest, ed. Richard Glyn Roberts (Aberystwyth, 2013), pp. 23, 80, and 115. 821 G. 467 (by contrast, Lloyd-Jones’s other citation, LPBT no. 4.39, eluyd tired, makes good sense: ‘lands of the world’); BBCSG 131 n. 1. The name Elwydd has already appeared in I.45, with the peculiar spelling Elchwith. For Elwydd > Elwa cf. Eiddef > Eidda, discussed above in connection with I.46–47. 822 Rec. Caern. 40 and 42. Cf. ELlSG 109 (with review by Gruffydd, p. 248); ELl 52; Williams, ‘Glasinfryn’, p. 108; ETG 94; HEALlE 55–56; AMR s.nn. Cadairelwa and Cadair Elwa (with wrong grid reference, SH 5468, which seems to merge the two places called Cadair Elwa). It is marked on the O.S. 2½-inch map, sheet SH44, as Cadair-Elwa. Various spellings are quoted by 815 816

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in Arfon, where there is a probably Bronze Age standing stone (SH 5419 6827).823 Since Cadair ‘chair’ is found with the names of giants and the like,824 it may be suggested that Elwydd was the name of a giant or legendary hero who held sway in Eifionydd and Arfon. It is odd that no grave and no hero’s name are mentioned. Possibly Elwydd himself is the subject? The description gwr hydwf ,‘a well-grown man/warrior’, would suit a hero or giant, which Elwydd may have been: Prydydd y Moch describes Llywelyn ab Iorwerth c. 1213 as gỽr hydỽf, comparing him to the giant Gogyrfan, while Hengest and his companions are guyr mavr hydvf in Brut Dingestow.825 Or perhaps the englyn has been taken out of its original context, which may have specified the name of its ‘tall’ hero and the place of his burial. If so, a possibility is Gwallawg Hir, who was buried yg Karrauc, possibly the Afon Wen in Eifionydd – although the Carrog in Arfon is equally likely (see above on I.7). Line b is a syllable short, so it is also possible that a name has dropped out – something like *bet Gu[allauc gu]r hyduf hir, assuming eyeskip, would fit. Another such emendation would be gur [gur]hyd[ri hyd]uf hir ‘a warrior of valour, full-grown, tall’.826 There is a definite example of eyeskip at I.67c below: brauc for bra[da]uc. I.65 Cynon, Cynfael, and Cynfeli at Cefn Celfi, Gla., or Cefn Celfi, Crd. I.65

I.65

E tri bet yg Kewin Kelvi.

The three graves at Cefn Celfi,

awen ae divaud imi.

inspiration told them to me:

bet Kinon garv y duyael.

the grave of Cynon, whose eyebrows were rough,

bet Kinvael. bet Kinveli.

the grave of Cynfael, the grave of Cynfeli.

The inspired speaker is presumably ‘Taliesin’ or a Taliesin-like figure (see on I.42– 43 above). The three warriors are otherwise unknown,827 unless perhaps Cynon is the Cynon who lamented the Elwydd of I.45. That could explain why this stanza follows I.64, where the name Elwydd also appears,828 but remains quite uncertain since Cynon is so common a name. The ancient-looking but in fact unattested name

Gresham, Eifionydd, pp. 248–56 and 258. No remains are noted in Archwilio, where it is listed as ‘Medieval Township’. 823 Inv. Crn. II 246; Coflein and Archwilio s. Cadair Elwa. Illustrated in EBSG 97. On O.S. map OL 17. 824 Grooms, Giants, p. 35; ELl 25; Gwynedd O. Pierce, Tomos Roberts, and Hywel Wyn Owen, Ar Draws Gwlad (Llanrwst, 1997), p. 82; GPC s.v. 825 CBT V 23.76; BD 91. 826 Cf. Prydydd y Moch’s gỽr hydỽf gỽrhydri Ogyruan, CBT V 23.76. 827 Cf. G. and WCD s.nn. 828 EBSG 89 and 97.

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Kinveli looks as if it may have been chosen, or even created, to rhyme with Kewin Kelvi (compare Gwallauc at Karrauc in I.7 and Riderch at Aber-erch in I.13). There are two examples of the name Cefn Celfi, both of them possible.830 829

Cefn Celfi, Gla. Thomas Jones connected Cefn Celfi with the minor gentry house of this name (SN 74392 03009), in the south of the civil parish of Cilybebyll (ecclesiastical parish of Allt-wen), Gla., about three miles north of Neath Abbey, near Rhos on the right side of the road up to Pontardawe. Its name appears in Rhos Cefn Celfi (in various spellings) in documents between 1493 and 1610 and as Cefn Celfi (in various spellings) from 1608 onwards.831 Celfi was both singular and collective in Middle Welsh, and generally referrred to various kinds of posts or pillars, such as house-posts and bed-posts, as did Irish colbha.832 So Cefn Celfi is ‘ridge of the post or pillar’ or ‘ridge of the posts or pillars’. Thomas Jones interpreted it as ‘ridge of pillars’ in the light of the supposedly Bronze Age stones below Cefn Celfi farm (SN 7417 0307 and SN 7419 0310):833 The remains of two standing stones are still to be seen there; and in the early thirties of this [twentieth] century old people in the nearby village of Rhos testified to me that the stones were once three in number.834

It is a problem that the stones, unlike Cefn Celfi house, are not on a ridge, but rather in an inconspicuous marshy hollow, without any tumuli, behind Rhos recreation ground and Ebenezer chapel, 300 metres west of the farm. One therefore suspects that Cefn Celfi may be named from some other pillar or pillars, now lost, higher up, on the ridge above the house. The folklore collected by Thomas Jones in the early 1930s, when he was in his early twenties, has some suspicious aspects, and the tradition that there were originally three stones is particularly suspicious. While the ‘three graves’ of the englyn may imply three tumuli, the idea of one stone per grave looks like an antiquarian assumption, inspired by churchyard norms. The Geological Survey mapped only two stones in 1878, on either side of the field boundary between Cae’r Efail and Y Waun The *Cynfelif < *Cinbelim in EBSG 97 is hypothetical. Celmi in Llanbeblig (recte Llanegryn, Mer.?), suggested in the margin of I.65 of Cwrtmawr 12, is incompatible with the Black Book spelling 831 AMR s. Cefn Celfi and Rhos Cefncelfi. RhELlH mistakenly lists it as ‘Cefn-celf’. On its history see Lodwick, Cefn Celfi, who adds a spelling Keven Kelly from 1513 (p. 18); is there a connection with the Kelly Kayre discussed by Pierce, Place-Names in Glamorgan, pp. 81–82? 832 For which see eDIL and LEIA s.v. colba. The Historical Dictionary of Gaelic Placenames, Fascicule 6, ed. Pádraig Ó Riain et al. (London, 2016), pp. 28–29, translates colbha as ‘ridge’. By contrast, Welsh does not seem to apply celfi to landscape features; if it did, Cefn Celfi could mean ‘back of the ridge(s)’ or similar (compare names such as Cefn Garth in AMR). On celfi see GPC s.v., Stephen J. Williams, ‘corf, Y Goryf’, B., 12 (1946–48), 15–16, and Pierce, Place–Names in Glamorgan, pp. 37–38. 833 See Inv. Gla., Pre-Norman, I, 121–22; Coflein and Archwilio, s. Cefn Celfi; and the photographs in EBSG 47 and Lodwick, Cefn Celfi, pp. 12, 32, and back cover. It has been suggested that the two stones may be fragments of a single stone: Edith Evans, Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Sites in Southeast Wales (Swansea, 2003), p. 25. 834 BBCSG 113. 829 830

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Fach, and a Daniel Lewis of Allt-wen, born in 1852, alleged that there were two when he played beside them c. 1856–57.835 Thomas Jones’s source for the existence of three stones was David Urbanus Jenkins of Allt-wen, from 1897 to 1947 the minister of Ebenezer Independent Chapel, Rhos, which was built on Cefn Celfi farmland.836 Jenkins had heard from a local man, Abraham Harries, who died in 1910, aged about 75, that there were two stones in Cae’r Efail, and from another local, Evan Francis, who died in 1924, aged 57, that he had heard that there were formerly two stones in that field. Adding two to the Geological Survey’s one in Y Waun Fach, this made a total of three stones in the opinion of Thomas Jones, presumably following the minister.837 It is not really clear, however, that Harries had claimed that there were originally three stones – as opposed, say, to misremembering the field that one was in – and if he did say there were three he may have been counting a stone on the boundary between Cae’r Efail and Ebenezer Chapel cemetery, mentioned by Thomas Jones.838 The fact that this stone was unlike a maen hir (according to Thomas Jones) might not have mattered to Harries.839 As for Evan Francis’s testimony, it was second hand and his memory could not have stretched back as far as that of Daniel Lewis, who remembered only two stones c. 1856–57. It seems that much depends on the Revd David Urbanus Jenkins and his informant Abraham Harries. Thomas Jones stresses that the minister knew nothing about the englyn in the Black Book. Nevertheless, knowledge of it could have entered local tradition many years beforehand. It had been printed and translated in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1788 and reprinted by Edward Jones in his Bardic Museum in 1802.840 This could have spurred a local interest in locating its ‘three graves’. Thomas Jones says that Abraham Harries and his father had undermined the southern, leaning stone in Cae’r Efail by digging under it some sixty years previous to 1936 (i.e. c. 1875), and also that ‘according to one tradition’ a pot of gold had once been found under one of the stones – a common folklore motif.841 Jones also reports that the meagre height of the stones – even the northern, Waun Fach one was little more than three feet high – was because two feet or more of them had been blown off with gunpowder in order to celebrate the Primrose Colliery striking a seam of coal in about 1884, an action allegedly deplored at the time, ‘because there were old traditions attached to the stones’ – another folklore motif.842 Jones, ‘Y Tri Bedd yng Nghefn Celfi’, p. 240. The 1878 map is reproduced by Lodwick, Cefn Celfi, p. 10. 836 On Jenkins and Ebenezer Chapel see John Henry Davies, History of Pontardawe and District from Earliest to Modern Times (Llandybïe, 1967), pp. 128–30. 837 Jones, ‘Y Tri Bedd yng Nghefn Celfi’, p. 240. Cf. Lodwick, Cefn Celfi, p. 10. 838 Cf. Jones, ‘Y Tri Bedd yng Nghefn Celfi’, p. 240 n. 2: ‘Dylid dweud bod heddiw ryw garreg ynghanol y clawdd sydd rhwng Cae’r Efail a mynwent capel y pentref: ond nid ymddengys hon yn debyg i faen hir’. Jones may mean the stone in Cae’r Efail at the southern end of the cemetery boundary (and others may be lost in the undergrowth). There are further stones on the west and northern boundaries of Cae’r Efail. 839 For all we know, Harries may merely have remembered that two stones in Cae’r Efail played a part in some childhood game. 840 See above, p. 93. 841 Jones, ‘Y Tri Bedd yng Nghefn Celfi’, pp. 239–40. For parallels, see Grinsell, Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, pp. 69, 154–55, 173, 192, 209, and 273. 842 Jones, ‘Y Tri Bedd yng Nghefn Celfi’, p. 239 (for parallels see Grinsell, Folklore, pp. 64–65 and 273, and commentary on I.73 and III.17 below). Lodwick, Cefn Celfi, p. 26, gives 1885 as the precise date. (He mistakenly represents the vandalism as having affected ‘all three stones’.) 835

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Cefn Celfi is just north of Neath’s granges at Rhydding and Blaenhonddan and probably belonged to the abbey until the 1130s, as part of its estate of Cilybebyll (SN 744047), a mile further up the Clydach.843 If it is the correct location for I.65, the story of the three warriors could perhaps have been created or elaborated at Neath (see above on I.62–63), and transmitted via the Cistercian network. Cefn Celfi, Crd. The only other example of celfi in Melville Richards’s place-name archive is a fieldname, Cae cefncelfi, in Cellan, Crd. (SN 60967 48981).844 It lies on the north bank of the river Cynon, looking across it to the house called Brooklands, which adjoins an undated caer, commemorated in the field-names Caegae rissa (sic, SN 60704 48904) and Caegaer ucha (SN 60761 48988) in the 1843 tithe schedule (nos 339 and 341).845 In favour of this as the site of I.65 are the facts that, unlike Cefn Celfi, Gla., it lay squarely within Pura Wallia, like most of the sites in Englynion y Beddau, that Cellan is a parish famed since the 1690s for its many standing stones and other antiquities,846 and that the river-name Cynon agrees with Kinon in the englyn. Against it is the fact that the name is first attested in the 1843 tithe map, by which time the meaning of celfi had developed to include various sorts of farm implements, furniture, and general lumber, as well ‘pillar(s)’ or ‘post(s)’.847 Since field behind X (as in cae cefn sgubor ‘field behind the barn’, etc.) is a common type of Welsh field-name,848 a Cae cefncelfi could be merely a ‘Field behind the lumber’ or similar and not refer to a ‘ridge of the pillar(s)’ at all. These doubts are dispelled when the site is examined. Whereas the surrounding country is low-lying, there is a pronounced ridge along the north-west side of Cae cefncelfi, rising to a mound (now topped by a pylon) with an expectedly steep precipice down to the Cynon at Brooklands. No pillar or pillars survive on the ridge, but rather a rough wall which includes some very large stones. With the eye of faith at least, Bronze Age cup markings can be detected on the largest of them.849 If the ridge once had standing stones, it is easy to see how the three names could become attached to them: Cynon, the starting-point, would be an Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 53 (nos 112–112a), 91, and 100; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 120; Hopkins, ‘Cistercians and the Urban Community at Neath’, p. 127; Daniel, ‘Patronage’, p. 73. 844 AMR s. *celfi* and RhELlH s. ‘Caecefn celfi’; 1843 Cellan tithe map, Penpompren Farm, field no. 456 (Tithe Maps of Wales); David Thorne, ‘Enwau Lleoedd Lleol: Cae Cefncelfi’, Clonc: Papur Bro Ardal Plwyfi Cellan (etc.), 321 (Mawrth 2014), 20. 845 For this caer see Coflein s.n. Caegaerucha Enclosure, Cellan (SN 60700 48960), ‘a sub-­ rectangular or oval embanked enclosure, about 24m by 17.5m between the crests of the banks’. For the view that Glanffrwd, Maes Gwilym, and Brooklands were successive names for the same place; see PNC II 482. 846 See Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Wales, s. Cellan; C. S. Briggs, ‘Historical Notes on the Study of Megalithic and Bronze Age Sites and Finds from Ceredigion’, Ceredigion, 9.3 (1982), 264–80 (pp. 265 and 267–68); David Austin, ‘Reconstructing the Upland Landscapes of Medieval Wales’, AC, 165 (2016), 1–19 (pp. 9–16); Cardiganshire County History, II, ed. Jenkins et al., pp. 11–17. 847 Celffi ‘stumps’ is also a possibility. See GPC s.vv. celfi and celffi. 848 Glenda Carr, ‘Casglu Tystiolaeth o Enwau Lleoedd’, TCHS, 69 (2008), 10–25 (p. 10). An example in Cellan is Cae cefnysgubor (RhELlH s.n.). 849 My wife and I accessed the wall via the tithe map’s field 420 (Caependerry), by kind permission of the owner of the adjacent farmhouse, Maes y deri. The stones deserve professional examination. 843

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eponym derived from the name of the river; Cynfeli would rhyme with celfi; and bedd Cynfael would complete the cynghanedd groes with bedd Cynfeli. Samuel Rush Meyrick, in his account of Cellan, refers to another site connected with Cynon, apparently further up the Cynon valley, towards Carmarthenshire:850 This parish [Cellan] abounds in British antiquities. On a circular raised tumulus, which is moated, is an immense stone, eleven yards in diameter, called Llêch Cynon, undoubtedly the burial place of a person of that name, who likewise gave it to the river just by, called Frwd Cynon. Who this Cynon was it is impossible now to tell […]. Those ancient sepulchral verses called ‘The Memorials of the Tombs of the Warriors,’ record the burial places of three of this name, but do not refer to this.851

This is valuable in showing that Cynon figured in Cellan folklore. Obviously Cynon could not have been buried at two different places beside the Cynon, but folklore is rarely consistent, and one can also imagine that at one stage llech Cynon may have played a different role in his story – did Cynon camp on it perhaps? The idea that it was ‘undoubtedly’ his burial place may be due to Meyrick, who supposed that placing a ‘huge stone’ over a corpse, since it proved ‘very inconvenient’, was the most primitive form of burial.852 Cellan’s early history is obscure. Its unusual name (‘Little cell’) suggests antiquity, as does the dedication of a well near the church to St Callwen, a daughter of Brychan also culted at St Callwen’s, Glyntawe, Bre. (SN 8416), over twenty miles to the south.853 There the name Callwen (‘Wise-and-fair’) seems to be a rationalisation of an older Gwallwen (an attested female name), and the same rationalisation may have happened at Cellan.854 Near the road southwards from Llanfair Clydogau, Crd. to Llan-crwys, Crm., and ‘not far from’ Hirfaen Gwyddog on the Cellan/Llan-crwys boundary (see below), Lhwyd recorded, and Meyrick excavated, Maen (y) prenvol ‘the stone of the coffer’, and Meyrick gives Maen P[r]envol gwallt gwyn as a variant name. Here gwallt gwyn (‘white hair’) must be a corruption of Gwallwyn/Gwallwen, surely commemorating St Gwallwen, patron of the neighbouring parish of Cellan. The name is Prenfol Gwallwen in the seventeenth-century bounds of the Llan-crwys The search terms Llech Cynon and Llech-Cynon in Archwilio s. Llanfair Clydogau lead to a cluster of three post-medieval sites in the upper Cynon valley (cf. PNC II 476–77: SN 627482), presumably named from their proximity to the site described by Meyrick, and also to a destroyed Bronze Age standing stone at SN 62571 48634 (south of Pistyll-Einon), marked as ‘pillar-stone’ on older O.S. maps (cf. Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, p. 210, no. 74) and merely queried as ‘Llech Cynon(?)’ by Archwilio. (The suggestion in Cardiganshire County History, I, 119 and 433, that Llech Cynon and Maen y Prenfol/Carreg y Bwci are identical is impossible, because Meyrick distinguishes them.) 851 History and Antiquities, p. 213 (here ‘The Memorials of the Tombs of the Warriors’ alludes to Edward Jones, Bardic Museum, pp. 11–12, where I.65, I.9, and I.8 are quoted). Meyrick’s reference to the stone, rather than the ‘tumulus’, as ‘eleven yards in diameter’ may be a slip. Meyrick is followed by Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Wales, s. Cellan. 852 History and Antiquities, pp. 214–15. 853 Par. III 67 and 86; LBS II 67; WCD 65 and 96; AMR s. *Callwen. It has been suggested that the Callwen connection is due to the false etymology Cellan < Callwen noted in Par. See Ó Riain, ‘Saints of Cardiganshire’, pp. 388 and 391; CPN II 473–74. 854 Morgan and Powell, Study of Breconshire Place-Names, p. 51; PNC II 474. For the female name Gwallwen see WCD 307. It is presumably similar in meaning to Bradwen ‘fair guile’. Welsh gwall is normally masculine, but its Irish cognate, fell ‘deceit’, is m.f. and a similar variation in Welsh would explain Gwallwyn ~ Gwallwen. 850

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grange and Prenuol Gwallwyn in the 1324 inspeximus of Rhys Fychan’s confirmation in 1244×1271 of the grants to Talyllychau (Talley, Crm.) by the Lord Rhys and his family.855 As is clear from Meyrick’s description, the Maen y prenvol site was identical with the circular earthwork by the Roman road near the headwaters of the Cynon, called ‘Bedd y Milwr, “the Soldier’s Grave”’ by the Royal Commission and ‘Carreg-y-bwci’ in more recent literature, both names alluding to the sixteen-foot boulder beside it, first described by Meyrick (SN 64583 47920).856 Perhaps the Cynon legend was cultivated at the ‘little cell’ in Cellan or by whatever secular patron succeeded to the ancient caer at Brooklands. Another possibility, however, is suggested by the fact that the eastern part of Llan-crwys, just to the south of Cellan, belonged to the clas of Llandeilo in the ninth century, and passed into the possession of the Premonstratensian abbey at Talyllychau. A constant landmark in descriptions of its northern boundary, from that in the Llandeilo Gospels, through the 1324 Talyllychau inspeximus, to the seventeenth-century bounds of the Llan-crwys grange, is Hirfaen Gwyddog (SN 62450 46450), a massive monolith on the boundary between Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire which must take its name from the Gwyddog who gave his name to Trefwyddog (treb guidauc), an estate granted to Llandeilo in the ninth century.857 The point preceding hirmain guidauc in the anti-clockwise bounds in the Llandeilo Gospels has a (possibly acephalous) name […] cibracma (i.e. cyfrangfa ‘battlefield, place of encounter’), plausibly identified by Glanville Jones with the earthwork where stands the Royal Commission’s ‘Bedd y Milwr’, alias Carreg-y-bwci, alias Prenfol Gwallwen.858 This suggests at least the possibility that stories about Cynon and his activities around Cellan may have been known and recounted in the old clas church of Llandeilo and/or the abbey at

Lhwyd apud Camden, Britannia, ed. Gibson, col. 647; Par. III 67 and 86; Meyrick, History and Antiquities, pp. 218–19; D. Long Price, ‘Talley Abbey in Carmarthenshire: Extracts and Notes’, AC, 4th ser. 10 (1879), 163–87 (p. 169 n. 1); Jones, ‘Boundaries of the Lordship of Talley, 1668’, p. 524; PNC II 474 and 482; Royal Charters, ed. Daniel–Tyssen, p. 61; Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 90, pp. 228 and 230. 856 Inv. Crm. 208 (‘a sepulchral mound … 90 feet in circumference’); Cardiganshire County History, I, ed. Davies and Kirby, pp. 113, 119, 208, 210, and 307–8; Jeffrey L. Davies, ‘Careg-y-Bwci: A Roman Watch-Tower?’, AC, 135 (1986), 147–53; Coflein, s.n. Carreg-y-bwci, with aerial photographs. 857 LL xlv (treb guidauc and hirmain guidauc in ‘Chad 3’ and ‘Chad 4’); Acts, ed. Pryce, pp. 228 and 230; Jones, ‘Boundaries of the Lordship of Talley, 1668’, p. 524 (cf. DP IV 405). See Inv. Crm. 208; Coflein s. ‘Carreg Hirfaen; hirvaen Gwyddog’; Heather James and David Thorne, ‘“Mensura Med Diminih”: Boundary Place-Names of a Ninth Century Estate at Llandybïe, Carmarthenshire’, Crm. Antiq., 56 (2020), 13–34 (p. 26). Gwyddog is not an adjective meaning ‘conspicuous’ (pace Lhwyd apud Camden, Britannia, ed. Gibson, col. 647) but a personal name according to Richards, ‘Carmarthenshire Possessions of Talyllychau’, p. 117, and PNC II 484 (Guidhuc at LL 245 may also be a personal name, pace Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, pp. 706 and 929). Richards rejects the idea that treb guidauc comprised the whole of Caeo commote, and PNC II 484 equates it with Llan-crwys. Cf. Rees, South Wales, NW and SW sheets. 858 Glanville R. J. Jones, ‘Post-Roman Wales’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, I.ii, A.D. 43–1042, ed. H. P. R. Finberg (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 279–382 (pp. 313–15, with map); idem, ‘“Tir Telych”’, pp. 85 (map) and 93. The identification is clear from the distances from Pant teg given in Inv. Crm. 207–8 (cf. map in RhELlH s. Pant-têg, Llan-crwys). Cf. map in Richards, ‘Carmarthenshire Possessions of Talyllychau’, p. 116. Cyfrangfa could perhaps be ‘meeting-place’; meetings often occurred on boundaries (see literature cited by Sims-Williams, ‘Y Copi Cynharaf o’r Cydfodau’).

855

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Talyllychau, which successively owned the neighbouring Llan-crwys grange. Either could have created or preserved the englyn about the ‘three graves at Cefn Celfi’.859 I.66 Llwyd Llednais in Cemais, ?Pem. I.66 Bet Llvid lledneis. ig Kemeis tir. kin boed hir tuw y eis. dygirchei tarv trin ino862 treis.

I.66 The grave of Llwyd the Gentle (is) in the land of Cemais. Before860 the growth of his ribs861 was long, the bull of battle used to bring violence there.

Although this stanza is always treated as an englyn penfyr, there are only 8 syllables in line a. Perhaps tir should begin line b, with enjambement,863 making a standard 7–7–7 englyn milwr (assuming that ino is emended, as is generally agreed). The sense seems to be that even before his chest was full-grown, Llwyd, the ‘bull of battle’, used to attack Cemais.864 (Was twf suggested by hyduf in I.64?) But if eis means ‘spears’ here, the meaning may be that Llwyd used to encounter violence, even though he carried massive spears made of wood that had grown long before it was cut. Since Cemais is a widely attested name,865 the grave-site can only be located via the unusual name of the hero, if he is identical with Llwyd (‘Grey’), son of Cil Coed, who is connected with Dyfed both in the Four Branches and in Culhwch (where he is called Lluydeu mab Kelcoet).866 It must be admitted that Llwyd is more of an

See further above, Introduction, p. 76. BBCSG 131, Jarman, LlDC 133, s. kin1, and (with a question mark) G. 119, take kin as cyn1 ‘although’ (cf. G. 67 s. kyt boet and EWGT2 IV.11), but cyn2 ‘before’ (with EBSG 47, ‘Before his breast was full grown’) makes sense. For the subjunctive see GMW 237, kyn elych (see on I.62c above). 861 Also ‘chest’ (WG 219). The number of words that would rhyme with Kemeis was limited. Cemeis (the one in Anglesey) is also rhymed with lledneis and treis in CLlH XIII.10 and in CBT II 28.43 and VI 5.41. No etymology has been proposed for the -nais of llednais (and aflednais, anllednais); cf. Dafydd Johnston, ‘Iaith Oleulawn’: Geirfa Dafydd ap Gwilym (Cardiff, 2020), p. 116. Perhaps Latin nescius via *necsius? Cf. English nice, ultimately from nescius. 862 BBCSG 130 n. 4 emends ino to o following Rhys, Englyn, p. 134 (cf. I.45c where yno must be omitted). Rhys also suggests emending ino to in. Another possibility is ’no. Rhys (apud Wade-Evans, ‘Is “Porth Kerdin” in Moylgrove?’, p. 45) translates the englyn as follows: ‘Llwyd the Courtly’s grave in Cemais land;/ Though long the growth of his shaft,/ Trouble was to assail there the bull of battle’. For eis ‘shaft(s), spear(s)’ see GPC s.v. asen2. 863 On enjambement see above on I.6. 864 Cf. GPC s.v. dygyrchaf ‘bring, fetch’. BBCSG 130 n. 4 and 131 emends ino ‘thither’ to o (for o drais see GPC s. trais) and translates ‘the bull of battle attacked him violently’; there is no word for ‘him’ in the text, but Jones may be taking the whole of line b as the object, i.e. Llwyd would attack even a large man. Either way, ‘bull of battle’, an old formula of praise (in the Gododdin and elsewhere, including I.69c below), surely refers to Llwyd, not to his slayer. 865 WATU 40 and 257; G. 128; ELl 7–8; HEF 67–68. 866 PKM 64 and 247; Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 287 and 1055, and notes; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 149, 183, and 237, with references. 859 860

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enchanter than a warrior in the Four Branches; nevertheless, his warband is mentioned, and the two roles were compatible, as the stories of Math and Gwydion show. If, as urged by Rhys, Llwyd ap Cil Coed is the Llwyd of the englyn, its Cemais must be the Dyfed cantref of that name in north Pembrokeshire.867 His name has been held to connect Llwyd ap Cilcoed with Blaencilgoed in Yr Eglwys Lwyd/Ludchurch, Crm. (SN 14969 10387), in the north of the Dyfed cantref of Penfro, not far from Arberth – usually identified with Narberth (SN 1014) – where Manawydan plans to hang Llwyd in the Four Branches.868 If so, the implication of the grave-stanza would seem to be that Llwyd was wont to attack Cemais from his base near Narberth and eventually died in Cemais. The connection between Llwyd and Yr Eglwys Lwyd is strained, however; if not merely a rendering of the English name Ludchurch (as Charles suggests), it may simply mean ‘The holy church’. A better localisation for Llwyd should be the reference in Culhwch to ‘the house of Llwydeu mab Kel Coet in Porth Kerdin in Dyfed’, except that we do not know where on the coast this was. One very uncertain site, favoured by Rhys among others, is Moylgrove (Trewyddel, SN 1144), in Cemais, Pem.,869 six miles south-west of a rival candidate for the Four Branches’s Arberth, namely Banc-yWarren (SN 20338 47514), just west of Nant Arberth in Ceredigion.870 Moylgrove has a suitable Bronze Age round barrow (SN 12033 44843),871 and other notable barrows in the area are the Bronze Age round barrows of Crugiau Cemais (around SN 125415), noted as ‘four little lumps of earth, and yet to be seen 40 miles off’ by George Owen c. 1600.872 The description of Kemeis as tir suggests a large region (cf. I.64 Eiwonit … tir), so the Pembrokeshire cantref would suit well – but so, equally, would the cantref of Cemais in Anglesey.

Englyn, p. 134. See maps in WATU 257 and 306. DP II 306 n. 2; PKM 61 and 247; Charles, Place-Names of Pembrokeshire, II, 509–10 (and 530–32 on Narberth). See WATU 309. Cilgoed fach (SN 20905 36646) in Llanfihangel Penbedw (in Cemais) looks like another possibility, but its name seems originally to have been Cilgadfach (Charles, Place-Names of Pembrokeshire, I, 382). 869 Wade-Evans, ‘Is “Porth Kerdin” in Moylgrove?’. Cf. Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, line 1055 and n.; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 183. The Bronze Age Maen Llwyd at Puncheston (SN 0062 2979), discussed and illustrated in EBSG 10 and 98 (and Archwilio, s. Puncheston, Parc Maen Llwyd), may be simply a ‘grey stone’, as there noted. 870 See references in Ehrmantraut, ‘Of Mice and Mounds’, p. 108. This is about five miles northwest of the tale’s Glyn Cuch. Against the objection that Banc-y-Warren is in Ceredigion, note that Rhuddlan Deifi (SN 4942), also in Ceredigion, is a royal court of Dyfed in the Four Branches (see above, p. 166 n. 271). For what it is worth, note, just north of Banc-y-Warren, an Iron Age promontory fort (see Archwilio and Coflein) at Crug Llwyn-llwyd (SN 20210 48390), with Banc Cil-maen-llwyd nearby (SN 20245 48282). 871 Inv. Pem. 357; Archwilio s. Nevern, Penrallt yr Esgob cairn; Coflein, s. Round Barrow, Penrallt-­ yr-Esgob (both with photographs). 872 Frances Murphy and Ken Murphy, ‘Survey and Excavation of Multi-Period Sites at Crugiau Cemmaes, Nevern, Pembrokeshire, 2009–13’, AC, 164 (2015), 37–56 (pp. 37–38 and 54); Rhiannon Comeau, ‘Bayvil in Cemais: An Early Medieval Assembly Site in South-West Wales?’, Medieval Archaeology, 58 (2014), 270–84; eadem, Land, People and Power in Early Medieval Wales: The Cantref of Cemais in Comparative Perspective (Oxford, 2020). 867 868

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I.67 Siawn the Proud on Hirerw Mountain, Bangor, Crn. I.67 Bet Siaun svberv in Hirerv. minit. y rug873 y gverid ae derv. chuerthinauc bra[da]uc876 bridchuerv.

I.67 The grave of Siawn the Proud (is) on Hirerw Mountain, with its874 earth and its oaks [or oaken (coffin)],875 mocking, guileful, bitter-minded.

Siawn is an unusual name,877 so there is a good chance that this is Arthur’s kinsman, Siawn mab Iaen, one of several sons of Iaen listed in Culhwch and Olwen and the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies (Bonedd yr Arwyr). Another, in Culhwch only, is Bratwen mab Iaen, who is likely to be the Bradwen of I.62 above.878 In Culhwch the sons of Iaen are said to be ‘men of Kaer Tathal’ and this fixes them in Arfon.879 The only Hirerw anywhere near Arfon is the district of Hirael, formerly Hirerw, in north Bangor; the Iron Age(?) hillfort at its west side, known as Camp Hill (SH 58080 72865), could well be the Hirerw Fynydd of our englyn.880

To lose a syllable, Rhys, Englyn, p. 135 suggests omitting one or other y in line b. (Y) rhwng ‘between’ presumably has the meaning ‘amid’ here (cf. GPC s.v. rhwng) or ‘including both (… and …)’, ‘what with … (… and …)’ (cf. Irish eter). The y before rhwng is omitted in LlDC no. 39.26, Rug kaer kenedir a glan, whereas it is included in I.6 above, y rug Kaer Kenedir a glann, which suggests that it was optional. 874 Even though lenition is not shown, a possessive pronoun ‘his’ or ‘its’ makes better sense than the definite article. Rhys would omit y and translate ‘between the Forth and its oaks’, but G. 672 is no doubt right to take gverid as the common noun. 875 For derw ‘oak coffin’ rhyming with Hirerw see Iolo Goch, Gruffudd ap Maredudd, and Lewys Môn, cited below, n. 880. 876 MS brauc. The emendation is generally agreed: Rhys, Englyn, p. 135; G. 71. But the line is still rather short, i.e. not longer than line b. See on metrics, above, p. 112. 877 A ninth-century cleric Siaun in LL 200 is the only instance in Cane, ‘Personal Names of Men’, p. 182. EP 468–69 treats Seon (e.g. LlDC no. 36.13) as the same, which is dubious. Cf. LPBT 63–64. 878 Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 203–4; EWGT 85 (ByA §2 = MWG 201 n. 223 and 357); WCD 376. For the equation see EBSG 96 and 98 (but note that Siaun should be modernised as Sion with a short /o/, not as Siôn). 879 On Caer Dathyl, Dathal, etc., see below on III.3, p. 291 n. 119. WCD 376 mentions Garthiaen in Edeirnion (HEF 132–33), but (despite EANC 119) this may well include iaen ‘piece of ice, ice-sheet’, not the personal name Iaen (‘Ice-born’? or ‘Gleaming like Ice’?, cf. CA 287), and it is certainly not enough as to favour a location for Iaen outside Arfon. For various similar placenames see AMR s. *iaen* and EANC 119. 880 For Camp Hill see Inv. Crn. II 16; Coflein (with photographs). For doubts about its date and nature see Archwilio s. Pier Camp Hillfort, Bangor. On Hirerw > Hirael see ELl 8–10, Melville Richards and Bedwyr Lewis Jones, ‘O Gwmpas Bangor’, TCHS, 52/53 (1991–92), 7–29 (p. 16), and Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, pp. 118–19. For medieval examples of the older form (all rhyming with derw), see GIG 202; Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, p. 89; GLM 442. 873

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I.68 Ebediw am Maelwr, ?near Pendinas, Aberystwyth, Crd., or in the Cletwr, ?Crd. I.68

I.68

Piev y bet in y clidur.

Whose is the grave in the/his shelter (or the Cletwr)?

tra wu ny bv eitilur.

While he lived, he was not a weakling.

bet Ebediv am Maelur.

The grave of Ebediw son of Maelwr.

The name Ebediv is otherwise unattested. It looks like, and has perhaps been scribally confused with, the legal term ebediw ‘heriot’, which probably referred originally to the horse and arms that were surrendered to a warrior’s lord at death.881 The name may have the stem *epo- ‘horse’ seen in Continental Celtic names such as Epatorix, Epatus, Epetinus, Epetina, and Epotius and Old Breton Epetic/Ebedic.882 Another possibility is a cognate of the stem seen in Old Breton Hebetan/Hebedan, Iarnhebet, and Roianthebet/Roenhebet;883 a scribe might drop the h- after bet ‘grave’, for which *beth is a conceivable variant spelling in Black Book of Carmarthen orthography.884 The suffix may have been -yw, listed by Ellis Evans as alternating with -oe/-wy,885 or -ui (-wy), common in personal names,886 corrupted to -iu by minim confusion and/or the influence of ebediw. If Ebediw is unknown, the name of his father, Maelwr (< *Maglo-wiros ‘prince-warrior’), is a rare one – partly perhaps because of its unfortunate similarity to maelwr ‘profiteer, merchant’ (< mael < English vail).887 The only notable Maelwr is the eponym of Pendinas, the great Iron Age hillfort at Aberystwyth (SN 58420 80211), which is variously called Dinas Maelỽr,888 Allt/Riw Faelwr,889 and Castelh Maylor.890 According to the triad of The Three Horse Burdens, The third Horse Burden was borne by Erch, the horse of the sons of Gwerthmwl (Gyrthmwl) Wledig, who carried Gweir and Gleis and Archanad up Allt Faelwr in Ifor Williams, ‘ebediw’, B., 13 (1948–50), 198, derived it from *ad-bat- (cf. bad ‘death’), while Donald Howells, ‘The Four Exclusive Possessions of a Man’, SC, 8/9 (1973–74), 48–67 (p. 50), preferred eb- ‘horse’, comparing cymynediw ‘chief-rent’. EP 32 suggests that the personal name could refer to a child given to a lord to be his warrior. 882 GPN 90 and 198; CRedon II 79. 883 CRedon II 88, 91, and 114; Loth, Chrestomathie, p. 136 (suggesting the roots heb- ‘say’ or ‘follow’). Cane, ‘Personal Names of Men’, p. 265, groups Ebetic (sic) with these. 884 GMW 7; Russell, ‘Scribal (In)consistency’, p. 148. 885 Evans, ‘A Comparison’, p. 426. 886 Thomas, ‘wy’, p. 118. 887 See GPC s.v. Maelwr in a positive sense such as ‘leader’ may occur in Dafydd y Coed: Gwaith Dafydd y Coed a Beirdd Eraill, ed. Daniel, no. 1.28 and n. (R 1305.22). But as this poem is to a Ceredigion patron, it may refer to the legendary Maelwr discussed below. Note that it rhymes in -wr. 888 R 1362.26 (by Y Mab Cryg), emended unnecessarily to Maelawr in Gwaith Dafydd y Coed a Beirdd Eraill, ed. Daniel, pp. 159 and 175. 889 TYP4 no. 44 and p. 123. It is ỽaellwr in the oldest MS (Peniarth 16iv, s. xiii2), but Vaelawr or similar in some later MSS. Cf. DP III 199 n. 2. No doubt the well-known district name Maelawr, Maelor was an influence (WATU 148). 890 Grooms, Giants, p. 308. For Pendinas see Coflein s.n., Archwilio s. Pen Dinas, and Driver, Hillforts of Cardigan Bay, pp. 127–32. 881

258

Series I Ceredigion to avenge their father. A peculiarity of Maelwr was that he would not shut his gate to any horse burden, and there they slew him.891

On Gyrthmwl see I.39 above. Siôn Dafydd Rhys tells a different story about Maelwr’s death, in which he is a giant with three giant sons, Cornippin Gawr, Grygyn Gawr, and Bwba Gawr, who all play a role.892 It seems possible that Ebediw was yet another son of this Maelwr and was associated with Pendinas. They need not have been regarded as giants as opposed to heroes when the englyn was composed. Ebediw’s grave is not localised, unless y clidur is a place-name, Y Clydwr, or means ‘his clydwr’ (with lenition, as often, not shown), perhaps alluding to some place compounded with Ebediw’s name – compare the phrase yn y drewred ‘in his homestead/territory’, already discussed in connection with I.25 and 60. Clydwr ‘shelter’ occurs, for instance, in the name of a house, the birthplace of Hugh Owen in 1639, called Bron y Clydwr (also Bron Clydwr) in Llangelynnin (formerly in Llanegryn), Mer. (SH 57107 04323), ‘hill in a sheltered place’.893 Given the constant orthographical problem of confusing dental consonants and confusing e for /e/ and e for schwa (the latter also written i and y in the Black Book), it is not impossible that clidur is a misspelling of Cletwr (< *Caletwr ‘hard water’). Syncopation in such a form is attested already in 1271,894 and Cletỽr occurs in Peniarth 18 (s. xiv med.), 29v25, where the scribe originally wrote Clytỽr, a form close to our clidur; the e is a correction, written above the y.895 There are various Welsh rivers called Clet(t)wr of which the one nearest to Pendinas is in Llangynfelyn (SN 6492), north of Aberystwyth.896 It is a possibility. William Williams, in his Observations on the Snowdon Mountains (1802), quotes the stanza as reading Y Glydar, referring to Y Glyder Fawr or Y Glyder Fach, orally Y Glydar, probably from cludair (MW cludeir) ‘woodpile, heap’.897 Cludeir will not rhyme, however, which rules it out. Williams seems to have been anticipated by the Revd Peter Bailey Williams, a noted mountaineer who ‘led the first recorded rock climb in Britain’ in 1798.898 In about 1791–93, copying Series I from NLW 2040, TYP4 115–16 (translation modified). The last sentence is from Peniarth 27ii (s. xv2). For discussion see Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 195. In WCD 359 Bartrum reasonably supposes that Gyrthmwl had earlier been slain by Maelwr. For Gyrthmwl’s grave see I.39 above. I take llydd­ asant to mean ‘they slew’ (not ‘they were slain’, with Bartrum); presumably his ‘peculiarity’ led to Maelwr’s downfall. On open gates cf. I.52 above. 892 Grooms, Giants, pp. 145–46, 157, 180, 197, and 308–11. Cf. DP IV 491, TYP4 123, and WCD 359. 893 Inv. Mer. 128; AMR; GPC; Davies et al., Ystyron Enwau, p. 50. 894 Kleturmaur, Bre., in BL Harley Charter 43 A 71, quoted by Owen, Catalogue of the Manuscripts Relating to Wales in the British Museum, III, 533. See ibid., pp. 535–56 for the same Breconshire river spelt Kaletur-maur in Charter 48 C 27 (c. 1240). 895 PNC III 1238, citing Brut y Tywysogyon: Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Thomas Jones, second edition (Cardiff, 1973), p. 130 n. 9. 896 For rivers called Cletwr see AMR and EANC 55. 897 Observations on the Snowdon Mountains, p. 91 (cf. Fenton, Tours, p. 318), followed by E[lias] O[wen], ‘Graves of the Warriors’, p. 256, and William Williams of Llanberis, Hynafiaethau a Thraddodiadau Plwyf Llanberis (1892), p. 26. For the etymology see Ifor Williams, ‘Hynafiaethau II’, Y Gwyliwr, 19 Mar. 1907, followed by ELlSG 77, Timothy Lewis, A Glossary of Medieval Welsh Law (Manchester, 1913), p. 73, GPC, and Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 102. 898 RWMS II 196. 891

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where Evan Evans’s reading was clydur, Peter Bailey Williams at first wrote clydwr, with u above the w, but then added Glydir in the margin (Cwrtmawr 454). In another transcript of Series I (NLW 2022), Evan Evans had capitalised Clydwr. David Ellis (d. 1795), copying this in 1794 from a lost 1793 copy by his friend Dafydd Ddu Eryri, has Clydar, with ‘Clydar ar y tu Gogleddol i Lanberis’ noted in the margin (Cwrtmawr 12), and a similar identification reappears in a later (1806?) derivative of Dafydd Ddu’s lost text: NLW 669 (‘Ysgriflyfr y diweddar Sion Wyn o Eifion’) originally read Clyder, although the e was changed back to w, presumably to preserve the rhyme.899 The wish to equate y clidur with Y Glyder was almost irresistible in Eryri! I.69 A closing stanza? I.69

I.69

Piev y bet in yr allt.900 trav.

Whose is the grave on the slope over there?

gelin y lauer y lav.

His hand (was) a foe to many.

tarv trin trugaret itav.

Bull of battle: mercy to him!

This stanza come at the end of a stint of writing, I.70–73 being added later by another thirteenth-century scribe.901 As Bollard and Griffiths note, This stanza is the only one for which no name and no other context are given. Might this have been seen as a fitting, open-ended final stanza for the poet/compiler/scribe of these pages?902

Ifor Williams, for his part, quoted the englyn as a summation of the precarious way in which some names and traditions survived and others perished.903 I.70 Sanant, Rhun, Garwen ferch Hennin, Lledin, and Llywy on Morfa Rhianedd, Crn. I.70

I.70

Y beddeu. yn y Morua ys bychan ay haelewy: y mae Sanant syberw vun. y mae Run ryuel afwy. y mae [G]arrwen

904

verch Hennin

y mae Lledin a Llywy.

The graves on the Morfa, few lament them: there is Sanant, proud woman; there is Rhun, lively in battle; there is Garwen, daughter of Hennin; there are Lledin and Llywy.

On these derivatives of NLW 2022 see above, p. 89. The others noted there, Bangor 14675 and NLW 672, have clydwr and Clydur respectively. 900 MS iny rallt. 901 See above, p. 14. 902 EBSG 98. With tarw trin compare I.66 above. 903 ELl 11. 904 MS earrwen. 899

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With a change of metre to awdl-gywydd, women’s graves are included here for the first and only time (see on I.45 above); the other englynion do not even mention Branwen’s grave, for instance, although it is described and localised in the Four Branches.905 As noted by Phillimore, in view of the women’s names the morfa in question can only be ‘Morfa Rhianedd (“Ladies’ or Queens’ Sea-marsh”), which stretches between the Little Orme, Llandudno, and the Conway sands’.906 The subjunctive mood of aelewy (from aele, a rare verb, known otherwise only from Prydydd y Moch)907 perhaps suggests that few are in a position to lament over the graves because ‘few’ (litotes for ‘no one’, apart from the speaker?) know who are buried in them. If so, the knowledgeable speaker may be Taliesin, as in I.42–43. This is made probable by the fact that Morua Hriannedd, according to the sixteenth-century Ystoria Taliesin, is where Taliesin arranged for his patron Elffin to win a horse-race against Maelgwn Gwynedd, whose court was at Degannwy (SH 7779), beside the Conwy sands.908 It is already connected with Maelgwn in Gwalchmai’s Gorhoffedd (c. 1157–60): Dygoglat gỽenyc ỽynn Gygreaỽdyr vynyt, Morua Rianet Maelgỽn [r]ebyt.909 White waves break against Great Orme mountain, King Maelgwn’s Morfa Rhianedd (or the sea-strand of King Maelgwn’s maidens/queens?).

Sanant and Rhun are not uncommon names, but here they must be Maelgwn’s wife (the one he murdered according to Gildas?) and son, as argued by Thomas Jones.910 Garrwen (‘white leg’) daughter of Hennin Hen appears in the Triad of Arthur’s concubines, and may be the Wyrwein of the Middle English ‘Harley Lyrics’, evidently a paragon of beauty.911 Notwithstanding her anachronistic association with Arthur in the Triads, Garrwen is surely a daughter of Maelgwn’s chief bard, Taliesin’s adversary, called Henin (or Heinin) Vardd in Ystoria Taliesin. 912 His name probably recurs Cf. BBCSG 115. On Bedd Branwen see above, p. 12. DP IV 635 (cf. earlier J. Fisher, ‘Some Place-Names in the Locality of St. Asaph’, AC, 6th ser. 14 (1914), 221–46 (p. 245, quoting Phillimore)). On the meaning of rhiain in medieval Welsh see TYP4 161–62. A lesser extent than Phillimore’s is implied in BBCSG 111–12 and 115: ‘between Great and Little Orme’s Head, near Llandudno’. For the name see AMR s. Morfa Rhianedd/ Rhiannedd; and Lhwyd Letters, Hugh Jones to Lhwyd, 30 Dec. 1694. Silently emending the text, J. Jones (Myrddin Fardd) transferred the beddau to Morfa Bychan (Enwau Lleoedd Sir Gaernarfon, caption to a plate of ‘Y Gist Gerig’)! 907 See CBT V 158 and, on the ending, Rodway, Dating, pp. 81–83, 166, and 169–70, and Russell, ‘Priuilegium’, pp. 51–52. 908 Ystoria Taliesin, ed. Ford, pp. 70 and 82; The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, trans. Ford, pp. 167 and 177. For a possible earlier reference to the horse-race see LPBT 356 and 389. For Degannwy see Inv. Crn. I 152–55 and pl. 59; Coflein, s. Deganwy Castle (with photographs); Archwilio, s. Degannwy Township; Jones, Princely Ambition, pp. 19 n. 63 and 81–85; photograph in EBSG 99. 909 CBT I 9.153–54. 910 Thomas Jones, ‘Sanauc Syberw Vun’, B., 22 (1968–70), 352; BBCSG 115; EWGT 9 (HG §1), 15 (DSB §12(9)), 43 (JC §3(10)), etc.; WCD 563–64 and 579; LPBT 285. 911 TYP4 164 (no. 57) and 355–56. 912 TYP4 397; Ystoria Taliesin, ed. Ford, pp. 71 and 76; The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, trans. Ford, pp. 167 and 171; LPBT 18 n. 51 and 142. Compare the Latin, or possibly Celtic, name Sentinus (Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques, pp. 166 and 232). 905 906

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in I.71 below. Nearby Bryn Dineirth (now Bryn Dinarth, Den., SH 83215 79633) is probably the receptaculum ursi mentioned by Gildas as the seat of Maelgwn’s cousin, Cuneglasus.913 Lledin is probably an eponym extracted from (Creigiau) Rhiw Ledyn ([R]iwledin in the Record of Caernarvon), a place on the Little Orme noted for a cave intermittently occupied since the Bronze Age, most recently by Recusants (SH 81211 82458).914 She is presumably a woman here < Latina, though Latinus is also a possible source, and an alternative etymology is llad ‘liquor’ + -in (compare Lladon verch Liant ‘Liquid daughter of Flood’ in the Book of Taliesin).915 There do not seem to be any clear-cut examples of Llywy (‘fair one’) as a female as opposed to a male name,916 but there is no reason why one may not have existed. Given that the male name Rhun occurs in line d, however, it is possible that Llywy is also man. Whether male or female, the personal name here could have been extracted from a toponym such as some stream called Llywy ‘fair’.917 One can only guess what monuments may have inspired the poet. There is a Bronze Age cairn on Great Orme’s Head (SH 7561 8357) and a standing stone, also a Neolithic burial chamber (Llety’r filiast, SH 77213 82950).918 But perhaps the graves were on the shore (like Dylan’s in I.4) and have now disappeared under the sea.919 Maelgwn’s own grave is not mentioned, for that was supposed to be in the church of Llan-rhos/Eglwys Rhos, near his castle of Degannwy.920 Kenneth Jackson, ‘Varia: II. Gildas and the Names of the British Princes’, CMCS, 3 (Summer 1982), 30–40 (p. 34). Gruffudd ap Cynan made a bequest to the church at Dineirth: Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, §34; HGK 32 and 106; G. 359. 914 DP IV 635; EANC 209, citing Kiwledin in Rec. Caern. 110 (for further forms see AMR s. *ledin* and *ledyn*); BBCSG 115 (for photos see EBSG 49 and 113); Neil Patterson, Michael Isakov, Thomas Booth, et al., ‘Large-Scale Migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age’, Nature, 601 (2022), 588–94, Supplementary Information, s.n. Ogof Rhiwledyn; and (on the Recusants) Emyr Gwynne Jones, ‘Robert Pugh of Penrhyn Creuddyn’, TCHS, 7 (1946), 10– 19 (pp. 14, 15, and 17), and Geraint Gruffydd, ‘Gwasg Ddirgel yr Ogof yn Rhiwledyn’, JWBS, 9 (1958–65), 1–23. In connection with a stream-name Lledin (Mtg.), EANC 209 mentions lledyn ‘flat-fishes’, plural of lleden, and a rhyme between -yn and -in in our stanza is not impossible (cf. EWSP 333). AMR s.n. Lledin cites a lledyn in Flintshire in 1567 in AC, 1877, Supplement, O[riginal] D[ocuments], p. cxxvi (line 8), a document assigned to Geufron, Rhiwabon, Den. in AMR s.n. Geufron. On the stream-name see also G. C. Evans, ‘Stream Names of Montgomeryshire’, MC, 75 (1987), 29–49 (p. 32). 915 EP 81, 97, and 402; LPBT 137–38. 916 cf. CIB 193 and GPC s.v. llywy, where male examples are noted (cf. OB Louui). CA 258 and 286 sees a possible female example in CBT I 9.41 (but cf. ibid., p. 305). See also BWP 178 and 180 for another uncertain example. 917 For such a stream (in Mtg.) see Thomas, ‘wy’, pp. 35–36; cf. CA 258. 918 See Coflein s.n. Llandudno for ‘Cairn on Great Orme’s Head’, ‘Standing Stone, Great Orme Area’ (its exact location is ‘unknown’, but it is illustrated), and ‘Llandudno Burial Chamber’. The last (pictured in EBSG 99 and 119) is perhaps too far inland. See also Inv. Crn. I 116–17. Cf. Fenton, Tours, p. 197: ‘See higher up a tumulus or two’. 919 In general see S. Jones, Coastal Erosion Survey: Great Orme to Penrhyn Bay (G 1386), Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, Report 253 (1997), in Archwilio, s. Submerged Forest, North Shore, Llandudno. 920 BD 187; cf. HW I 131; TYP4 430; WCD 442; LPBT 285. See also Annales Cambriae, cited in connection with I.8 above, p. 151 n. 183. Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 36, stress the antiquity of the name-form Eglwys-rhos. Cf. Roberts, ‘Welsh Ecclesiastical Place-Names’, p. 42. 913

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Haycock has made a strong case for thinking that the Book of Taliesin poems referring to Taliesin and Elffin at Maelgwn’s court at Degannwy were developed by Prydydd y Moch for his patron Llywelyn Fawr, after the latter recaptured Degannwy from the Normans in 1213.921 Possibly the present stanza (and I.71) originated in similar circumstances. Note the comment above on the verb aelewy. I.71 Hennin Henben at Dinorben (Den.), Airgwl in Dyfed, Cyhored at Rhyd Gynan (?Gla.) I.71 Bed Hennin Henben yn aelwyt Dinorben. bed Airgwl yn Dyuet yn Ryt Gynan Gyhoret.

I.71 The grave of Hennin Henben (is) on the hearth of Dinorben. The grave of Aergwl (is) in Dyfed. In Rhyd Gynan (is) Cyhored.

The multiperiod hillfort at Dinorben (SH 96818 75734), in Llangele, is in the same cantref (Rhos) as Morfa Rhianedd,922 so there is some continuity from I.70. Moreover Hennin Henben is likely to be Maelgwn’s bard, the Hennin of I.70. An arth Orben ‘bear of [Din]orben?’ of Maelgwn’s line may be invoked by Gwalchmai, c. 1160, alongside Rhun and Maelgwn.923 Alternatively, Gwalchmai may be referring poetically to Dinorben as Garth Orben (‘Orben’s Hill’), perhaps supposing Dinorben to be named from an eponymous Orben (< *Orddben ‘Hammer-head’?).924 Either way, Gwalchmai links Dinorben with the Gwynedd dynasty. It is a slight problem that the Triads call Garrwen’s father Henin Hen (Triad 57), and give the name Henben ‘old head’ to a different warrior, Henben, the son of Gleissiar Gogledd and Haearnwedd (Triad 22).925 Perhaps Henben in our stanza is a corruption of Hen, influenced by Dinorben? Even if Dinorben has etymological -nn (as is probable), this might rhyme internally with Hen (with etymological -n),926 and emendation of Henben to Hen would reduce the number of syllables to a more LPBT 31–36, 50, 141–42, 273, 276, 284–85, 308, 313, 328, 345–46, 348, 353, and 370–71; PBT 17. 922 ETG 25; WATU 319. On its significance see R. J. Silvester (2015) in Archwilio, s. Dinorben. The hillfort has been destroyed by quarrying; see Coflein s. Dinorben, Destroyed Hill-fort and s. Excavations, Dinorben Hill-fort. It is called a llys by Cynddelw, CBT III 3.150. The word aelwyd ‘hearth’ suggests that Dinorben was the focus of group affection; cf. aelwyd Reged (CBT III 5.70); aelwyd Powys (Gwaith Siôn Ceri, ed. Lake, no. 25.32). There are a number of sites which may have been identified as Hennin’s grave, e.g. Archwilio’s ‘Dinorben Farm Mound’ (SH 9691 7465). Cf. BBCSG 114. 923 CBT I 8.56; Gruffydd, ‘From Gododdin to Gwynedd’, p. 7 (Cunedda as arth Orben); LPBT 490. 924 See the comments by Ifor Williams and J. E. Caerwyn Williams apud Willoughby Gardner and H. N. Savory, Dinorben: A Hill-Fort Occupied in Early Iron Age and Roman Times (Cardiff, 1964), pp. 9–10. The etymology of Dinorben is unknown according to ETG 77. Ifor Williams noted ‘headland fortress’ as a possibility < din + ôr + penn. 925 See TYP4 397; WCD 363; LPBT 509. 926 Cynddelw rhymes Dinorbenn with a series of words that mostly have -nn (CBT III 3.135–54), but one of them is Kyngen (with etymological -n). Cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Dating the Poems of Aneirin and Taliesin’, p. 212 and n. 288. 921

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

normal ten (although eleven is not unknown).927 More likely, however, Henben is just an older or alternative epithet of Hennin Hen. Aergul and Aergwl are attested forms of OW Aircol < Agricola, perhaps influenced by Ercwl ‘Hercules’; Aergwl with w /u/ is probably meant by the scribe’s spelling (cf. cwl at I.72d).928 The best-known person of this name, the fifth- or sixth-century Aergol Lawhir of Dyfed, is obviously meant here.929 (His grandson, Dyfel ab Erbin, may be the subject of I.27 above.) The line is curiously reticent about the exact location of the grave, unless line c is taken with line b and translated something like ‘at the ford of Cyhored (son of) Cynan’, which seems syntactically over complicated. According to the Book of Llandaf, Aergol held court at Liscastell, ‘the capital of the whole region of Dyfed’ – an unidentified place.930 A possible location is suggested by Phillimore’s idea that *Castell Aercol appears in a corrupt (metathesised) form in the Welsh lawbooks as Castell Arcoel/Arcoyl, an important place somewhere near Dinefwr, Crm. (SN 6121).931 (Note that the first syllable of the form Aergoel in NLW Wynnstay 36 (s. xv1), 9ra, and BL Add. 22356 (s. xv med.), 5v, is slightly closer to Aergol than those hitherto cited.)932 According to Melville Richards the lawbooks’ castell was probably near ‘Sarn Agol and Cwm Agol between Dryslwyn and Grongaer, some three and a half miles in a direct line [west] from Dinefwr’.933 Perhaps the Iron Age hillfort at Grongaer itself (SN 5734 2160) was originally *Castell Aercol/Liscastell? As noted by Rhys, Gyhoret in line c must be the attested name Cyhoret (OW Cohorget)934 and, in view of the reference to Ryt Gynan, probably refers to Ky(h)oret eil Kynan (‘Cyhored son/descendant of Cynan’) whose horse is the second of the Three Steeds of the Island of Britain in Triad 39.935 (The triad, presumably making some topical point, names the third horse as that of Gilbert son of Cadgyffro, apparently one of the twelfth-century De Clares of Ceredigion and Pembroke.)936 The lenition in Gyhoret is problematic. Rhys’s first explanation was that Cyhoret was lenited after Cynan ‘as a sort of surname’ in apposition, and that the Triads EWSP 315. For OW Aircol see references in LL 386 and references in EWGT 168, where ABT §18a (= MWG 375) is an example of Airgul. For Aergỽl see CBT IV 9.139 (possibly a reference to Hercules, but see MWG 33 n. 152) and VI 33.16. Cf. G. 13 and 483. 929 For Aergol see PT 22–23, WCD 4–5, and MWG 93. 930 LL 125; cf. Coe, ‘The Place-Names’, pp. 482–83. Although ‘local tradition’ is quoted as favouring Lydstep in Manorbier (DP III 234; HW I 262 n. 195; LBS IV 236; BWP 160; WCD 5), this goes back to an article in AC in 1867 (cited in DP) which merely speculates about the name of a house in Lydstep called ‘The Palace’, with an irrelevant citation of [G. P. W. Scott’s] Tales and Traditions of Tenby (Tenby, 1858), p. 105. 931 DP II 421 and IV 407–8. See references in The Latin Texts of the Welsh Laws, ed. Hywel David Emanuel (Cardiff, 1967), pp. 41 and 266; Rhyddiaith 1300–1425 s. argoel, arcoel, argoyl. A survey of the manor of Dinefwr in 1531–32 mentions Gwertheglothe Argoyle ‘Argoel hayfield’: J. E. Lloyd, ‘Carmarthenshire Notes’, B., 7 (1933–35), 39–42 (p. 41). PT 23 suggests that Aercol in PT I.13 might be emended to Argoel. 932 Rhyddiaith y 15g. 933 Melville Richards, The Laws of Hywel Dda (Liverpool, 1954), p. 122, cited by Jenkins, The Law of Hywel Dda, pp. 221–22. For Grongaer in Llangathen, see Coflein and Archwilio, s. Grongaer, both with aerial photographs. 934 Rhys, ‘Goidels in Wales’, p. 33, and Englyn, p. 135; G. 227. Cf. Orgeto- in GPN 239. 935 TYP4 103 (variant a), 105–6, and 319; LPBT 388. 936 TYP4 360–61. 927 928

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misunderstood this peculiar construction and made Cynan into Cyhoret’s father.937 Subsequently he came to the simpler view, in turn adopted by Thomas Jones, that Gyhoret is a scribal error for Cyhoret (by dittography after Gynan or by mistaken lenition following the feminine rhyd?): ‘the grave of Cyhoret is at Rhyd Gynan’.938 If this interpretation is correct, Rhyd Gynan (‘Cynan’s ford’) may well have been supposed to take its name from Cyhored’s father, whoever he was. The fact that the first of the Three Steeds is that of Cynan Garwyn – presumably the famous king of Powys of that name (c. 600) – may imply that Cyhored eil Kynan is the son or descendant of that Cynan. As Bollard and Griffiths suggest, ‘It may have been the naming of Airgwl, known from Taliesin’s poem to Cynan Garwyn, that made the poet think of Rhyd Gynan (Cynan’s ford), Cyhored’s burial place’.939 Another possible trigger is the Dyfed genealogy which gives Aergol a brother called Cynan Cylched.940 Where was Rhyd Gynan? A miracle story in the Vita Cadoci in BL Cotton Vespasian A.xiv (Monmouth, s. xii3/3), by Lifris of Llancarfan (c. 1100), may help us to locate it. It tells how Cinan, cognomento Carguinn of Reinmuc – that is Reinuc, Rheinwg, which in this Vita seems to mean (parts of?) Dyfed and/or Brycheiniog941 – intended to invade Morgannwg and set up camp on the bank of the river Nedd (Neath),

‘Goidels in Wales’, p. 33. Englyn, p. 135; BBCSG 132 n. 2. 939 EBSG 100. (For the poem mentioning Aercol see PT I.13.) They rightly reject Phillimore’s suggestion (DP III 348–49) that the ford in question may have preceded the bridge at Canaston Bridge (SN 06467 15161), near Narberth, Pem., Cananyston ‘Cynan’s town’ being the old name of Canaston. His suggestion is impossible if the eponym of Cananyston was the William Canan who held land in Narberth lordship in 1357, as B. G. Charles has hinted: NCPNW 100; PlaceNames of Pembrokeshire II, 545 (but see ibid., p. 713, for another Canaston, in Rhoscrowther, too far away to be explained via the same William Canan). 940 EWGT 106 and 153–54 (ABT §18b = MWG 375–76); Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300– 1400, I, charts [20] and [53]; WCD 166 and 617. (Although Bartrum gives the epithet as Cylched ‘coverlet’, MWG 376 has Kylchef varr. Kyleef/Kilkelff.) Aergol and Cynan Cylched are sons of Tryffin. (On Aergol’s family see commentary on I.27 and I.31 above.) Curiously, Cynan Cylched’s son has the unusual name Llywri (< llyw + rhi?). In Lifris’s Vita Cadoci, §21 (VSB 66–69), in order to build a church near a certain urbs by the river Nedd (Neath), St Cadog employs Llywri (Liuguri/Lyuguri), an Irish master-builder – recall that Tryffin was of alleged Irish descent (Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 181) and for the motif of the saer from Ireland see WCD 573–74. Jealous co-workers decapitate Llywri, tie his corpse to an enormous stone, and throw it into ‘a certain deep pool’ (Pwll Cynan, discussed below). Cadog prays and Llywri emerges from the pool, carrying both his head and a henceforth miracle-working stone, which is erected to mark his grave beside a grove, the whole oppidum being duly given the name Landlyugri. This Llanllywri is unidentified. A site worth considering, however, is Pencaerau, a mile south of Neath (SS 7484 9548), arguably an Iron Age hillfort (Inv. Gla., Pre-Norman, II, 24–25, and Archwilio, s. Pencaerau Bank), with the nearby Bronze Age(?) Carreg Hir, 2.8m high, at SS 74453 95340 (Coflein and Archwilio s. Carreg Hir). Neath’s Cwrt Sart grange (SS 740956) was in this vicinity (Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, p. 53), carved out of a large Briton Ferry estate which stretched as far north as Melyncrythan (SS 7496); see Hopkins, ‘Cistercians and the Urban Community at Neath’, p. 127. The giant Dilig’s grave (SS 743932) was not far away (see above on I.41). 941 See Vita Cadoci §41, where Maredudd rex Reinuc attacks Morgannwg (VSB 112); he may well be Maredudd, rex Demetorum (d. 796); cf. Guy, ‘Rheinwg’, p. 110. On Rheinwg see also Peter C. Bartrum, ‘Rhieinwg and Rheinwg’, B., 24 (1970–72), 23–27; WCD 167 and 554. 937 938

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which was then in flood and impassable (§44).942 At the entreaty of the king of Morgannwg, Cadog’s clergy carry the saint’s relics to the river bank in order to beg Cynan to turn back. One of them climbs a tree which miraculously bends across the river like a bridge, allowing the cleric to cross and address Cynan, and the miracle persuades Cynan to grant protection to the whole country and retreat. Perhaps this crossing-place was the site of ‘Cynan’s ford’; Cynan’s son Cyhored may have been supposed to been buried there, a casualty of the invasion not mentioned in the Vita. The Vita does not say where Cynan wanted to cross the river. An obvious possibility is Bridge Street in Neath itself (SS 7597), between the Cadog church at Cadoxton-juxta-Neath (Llangatwg, in Blaenhonddan) and the Roman fort (Nidum). Cadog’s cult in the area is indicated by the Vita (§§20–21 and 24), which mentions his church at the urbs beside the Nedd and Llancarfan’s rights to half the fish in the river. Cross-carved stones of the seventh to tenth centuries confirm the presence of an early religious community.943 Another possibility in the Neath area is that ‘Cynan’s ford’ was near Pwll Cynan ‘Cynan’s pool’, the medieval name for (part of?) Crymlyn Bog – the wetlands between Swansea and Neath which are fed by the Nedd in the area of SS 6993. In that case, Cynan would presumably be invading Morgannwg from Dyfed rather than from Brycheiniog. Pwll Cynan was an obvious and formidable boundary, and duly appears as Pulcanan in the bounds of the lordship of Gower appended to Neath Abbey’s copy (c. 1300) of King John’s 1203 grant to William de Braose.944 It was of direct interest to the religious of Neath. Richard de Granville’s endowment of Neath Abbey (c. 1130) included all the waste land between the waters of Neath, Tawe, Clydach (‘Cloeda’), and Pwll Cynan (‘Poncanam (!)’) – also rights to half the fish in the river Neath,945 which suggests that the Cistercians were being granted the former fishing rights of St Cadog’s community (see above). Possibly a legend about Cyhored and Pwll Cynan was preserved and transmitted at Neath – compare I.61–62 above, on other beddau in the Neath area.

VSB 114. WCD 167 assumes that this refers to Cynan Garwyn of Powys. In the Middle Ages Brycheiniog and Powys were distinct (see Sims-Williams, ‘Provenance of the Llywarch Hen Poems’, p. 29; Guy, ‘Rheinwg’, p. 110), but Lifris may have been confused or have assumed that Cynan Garwyn had already annexed Rheinwg. 943 Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 273–77, nos G8–9, and 579. Another possibly relevant crossing of the Nedd is the old ford at Briton Ferry (SS 7394), on which see WaB 20 and n. 100. By 1208 Neath abbey had acquired a large estate there: Hopkins, ‘Cistercians and the Urban Community at Neath’, pp. 126–28. 944 Clark, Cartae, II, 288. On this above on I.62, p. 245 n. 801. For other early spellings see AMR, also Polkcanan in 1306, cited by Seyler, ‘Early Charters of Swansea and Gower, Part II’, p. 307. For the location of Pwll Cynan (not in RhELlH) see ibid., p. 106 and map, and Rees, Map, SW sheet, near the sea. A description of Pwll Kynnan/Kynnon appears in Lhwyd Letters: Isaac Hamon to Lhwyd, 26 Apr. 1698. Although EANC 62 notes that Pwll Cynan was said to be named after a son of Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 1093), this late fantasy must be ignored (cf. CF II 404 n. 2; PNG 185). 945 Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 72 and 75–76; Lawrence Butler, ‘The Foundation Charter of Neath Abbey’, AC, 148 (1999), 214–16. Although ‘Poncanam’ may look like *Pont Canan (succeeding Ryt Gynan ford?), the context makes it unlikely that a bridge is meant. On the fishing rights see Hopkins, ‘Cistercians and the Urban Community at Neath’, pp. 126 (map) and 131. On Neath granges see Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 53–56, and Inv. Gla., Medieval Secular Monuments, II, 251–65. 942

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As Cynan was a common personal name, one might expect there to have been various fords in Wales called ‘Cynan’s ford’,946 or streams called Cynan from which such a ford might be named. In fact, however, R. J. Thomas in his Enwau Afonydd a Nentydd Cymru records no Rhyd Gynan and only one stream called Cynan (see below), and only one more stream was noticed by a reviewer, who mentioned a ‘Nant Cynan (Cynan Brook)’ running into Pwll Cynan in Cilfái (Kilvey), unfortunately without giving its exact location.947 It is a possible site for our ryt Gynan. R. J. Thomas’s only Cynan is a less likely location for ryt Gynan, though not an impossible one. His Nant Cynan is the Glamorgan stream east of Neath which was called Cynan up to 1668, but also Cynon since 1578.948 This Nant Cynan (now Cynon) rises east of Pen-y-ddisgwylfa (SS 8293) at a place called Blaen Cynan in the Margam charters but called Blaen Cynon by Rice Merrick (SS 83865 93366).949 It then runs north-west through Cwm yr Argoed/Cwm Cynon to reach the Afan Fawr at SS 818 950 opposite Craig-y-Gyfylchi (SS 80781 95177), less than six miles north of Margam abbey.950 Nant Cynan marked the northern boundary of Margam’s Penhydd grange, a large mountain sheep-run between the rivers Afan and Ffrwd-wyllt, which the Cistercians also exploited for coal.951 According to the Margam charters, the Cynan met the Afan at Rhyd Gyfylchi, which was presumably a ford that crossed either the Afan or the Cynan opposite Craig-y-Gyfylchi (‘the rock of the

None are listed by Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, and there is no such ford in AMR and RhELlH s. Canan, Conan, or Cynan. For the syntax of rhyd without ar before a river-name see above, p. 146, on I.10 Reon rid. 947 E. J. Rees, reviewing EANC, in Heddiw 4/iii (Nov. 1938), 98–100 (p. 100); this 1938 citation is the only occurrence of Nant Cynan in AMR, and I have not found it mentioned elsewhere. 948 See references in EANC 62 and AMR s. *Cynan, also Rees, South Wales, SE sheet: Blaenkinan in Tir Iarll. AMR also cites a couple of spellings of the Cynon in Hirwaun, near Aberdare, as Canan in 1253 (Clark, Cartae, II, 607 – also II, 615 in 1256) and as Kynan in Par. III 130 (from Rice Merrick); here -an is the older form (PNG 63). The name Cynon (< *Kunonos, cognate with Irish Conann) is distinct from Cynan (O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, p. 494 n. 4; cf. CIB 160). On alternation between -on and -an, especially in Gwgan/Gwgon, see: LloydJones, ‘Enwau Cymraeg’, p. 6; Pierce and Roberts, Ar Draws Gwlad 2, p. 53; the note on poem 99.27–28 in DafyddapGwilym.net; and especially Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, pp. 85– 86. For Cynan ~ Cynon see e.g. EWGT 180 and 182 s.nn. ‘Cynan (or Cynon)’ and ‘Cynon (or Cynan)’. 949 RhELlH s. Blaen Kynon, from Par. III 119, copied from Rice Merrick, like the rest of Par. III 116–47 (see Emery, ‘Map’, p. 46; RWMS I 386, s. Peniarth 120). 950 EANC 62. Thomas hinted that it might have the same eponym as Bryn Cynan (SS 86377 87799) in Llangynwyd, Gla. and the Pwll Cynan discussed above, which are respectively four miles east-north-east and eight miles north-west of Margam. As Cynan was a common personal name, that is very uncertain; note also that the earliest form of the former name (in 1700) is BrynCynnon (see AMR s. Bryn Cynan). 951 Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands, pp. 49, no. 82, 91, and 100; Thomas Gray, ‘Notes on the Granges of Margam Abbey [Part I]’, JBAA, new ser. 9 (1903), 161–81 (pp. 171–76); idem, ‘The Hermitage of Theodoric, and the Site of Pendar’, AC, 6th ser. 3 (1903), 121–53 (with map, p. 122); Inv. Gla., Medieval Secular Monuments, II, 289 (on bounds). The last (probably following Gray, ‘Notes’, p. 171) suggests that the grange came into being through a grant to Margam in the period 1210–18, citing Clark, Cartae, VI, 2314, but the date must be put back to the midtwelfth century; see documents in Clark, Cartae, III, 2273, and Crouch, Llandaff Episcopal Acta, no. 25), although disputes with local families continued into the thirteenth century; see Griffiths, ‘Native Society’, pp. 187–90, 196, 198, and 203–5, with map, p. 189. 946

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stronghold’). Possibly Rhyd Gyfylchi crossed the Afan and our Ryt Gynan was an alternative name for it, or perhaps Ryt Gynan crossed the Cynan itself, near where the A4107 now crosses it (or further upstream). Craig-y-Gyfylchi seems to have had heroic connections; Rice Merrick records: 952

At a place call’d bwlch y Gevylchy standeth two stones distant [lacuna] foot between which it is said yt one of Arthur’s knights was buried.953

It may be significant that the Nant Cynan – and therefore a hypothetical Ryt Gynan – seems to coincide with the boundary of a Cistercian grange (compare above on I.26, 60–61, and 65). Margam’s twelfth-century grange seems to have been preceded by an earlier religious centre, to judge by a ninth- or tenth-century crosscarved stone at Penhydd-fawr, later the site of a Cistercian chapel at approx. SS 8063 9312.954 Possibly the englyn, or the tradition that gave rise to it, was preserved at that early church and was then transmitted through a Cistercian network. Or possibly the englyn, which has no early features, was composed in the Cistercian period, not long before the writing of the Black Book itself. That is hardly likely to have occurred at Margam itself, however, which was Anglo-Norman in its personnel and sympathies up to and beyond the period of the Black Book.955 – Curiously, though, the abbot of Margam from c. 1156 to 1193 (or later) was called Conan.956 On the whole, the Penhydd-fawr area is a less likely location for ryt Gynan than the Neath area, since the latter is specifically connected with Cynan Garwyn by Lifris c. 1100. I.72 Einion ap Cunedda, ??Den. I.72

I.72

Gogyuarch pob diara

Every sad957 person asks

pieu yr vedgor yssy yma.958

‘whose is the tomb that is here?’

bed Einyavn ab Cunedda

(It is) the grave of Einion ap Cunedda,

cwl ym Prydein y ddiua.

whose slaughter was a shame in Britain.

Birch, History of Margam Abbey, pp. 20, 25, 209, and 260; AMR s. Gyfylchi, Y; e.g. Clark, Cartae, III, 1154; VI, 2273, 2302, and 2317; Crouch, Llandaff Episcopal Acta, p. 22. On cyfylchi see GPC s.v. and Ifor Williams, ‘or, eryr, dygyfor, Eryri’, B., 4 (1927–29), 137–41 (p. 140). 953 Par. III 121, on Llanfihangel-ynys-Afan (Michaelston-super-Avan). For Rice Merrick’s authorship, see above, n. 940. Coflein, s. Craig-y-Gylfylchi, house platform, notes a medieval house site at SS 8122 9544. 954 Redknap and Lewis, Corpus, I, 448–49 and 577. 955 See Cowley and Lloyd, ‘An Old Welsh Englyn’, pp. 411–14. The value of this study is not affected by the fact that the englyn discussed is a fake (cf. Daniel Huws, ‘The Old-Welsh Englyn of the Margam-Abbey Charter: A Lhuydian Joke’, JCS, 4 (2004), 213–18). 956 But Cowley and Lloyd (p. 411) suggest that he was a Breton, not a Welsh Cynan. 957 The only other example of diara, lit. ‘unjoyful’, occurs in Cynddelw, who also rhymes it with diua (CBT IV 16.100 and 104). 958 This may scan as 7 syllables, pieu’r vedgor sy yma (Rhys, Englyn, p. 135; BBCSG 132 n. 3). See above, p. 114, on metrics. 952

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This is likely to be another stanza in which a knowledgeable speaker is contrasted with ignorant onlookers. The speaker is probably Taliesin again (cf. I.42–43), although the formula does occur elsewhere in the Black Book in an apparently nonTaliesinic context: ‘When people ask, “who killed Cath Palug?”’ (Pan gogiueirch tud. / Puy guant cath paluc …).959 In I.72 the people are presumably sad at the sight of the unknown warrior’s grave and/or at their ignorance as to his identity. I.72d echoes the Gododdin line kwl y uot a dan vein (MS vrein), ‘it is a shame that he is under stones (i.e. a cairn)’, which would be an appropriate allusion since Einion and his brothers were supposed to have come from Manaw Gododdin (around Stirling).960 As it stands, the last line presumably means that Einion’s death was, in modern parlance, a ‘national disaster’, for it would be bathetic simply to lament that someone’s death took place in Britain. A different interpretation, however, is implied by Thomas Jones’s translation, ‘whose slaughter in the North was an outrage’,961 and his suggestion that Einyawn is a mistake for Tybiawn, the only son of Cunedda who remained behind in Manaw Gododdin in the North and died there, according to the Harley Genealogies.962 While not impossible, these emendations are unnecessary. Einion ap Cunedda was an important person, the ancestor of the kings (and saints) of Gwynedd and, in particular, Rhos,963 the area covered in I.70–71, so his supposed grave, presumably somewhere in north Wales, would be of more interest than that of Tybion in Scotland. Einion’s grave is described as a bedgor, a hapax in which the element côr perhaps implies a surrounding defence or kerb of some sort or else a heap of stones thrown together (compare OIr cor ‘casting’).964 The site of Einion’s grave is not specified. According to Ellis Davies in 1929, a tumulus, said to have been formerly surrounded by stones and containing a cistfain, in Dôl Einion meadow (SJ 1297 5462), north of Plas Einion in Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, Den., was known locally by the name ‘Bedd y Cawr’ (The Giant’s Grave) or ‘Bedd Einion Gawr’, the story being that a giant of the name of Einion, who formerly lived at the Plas, was buried in or under the mound.965

LlDC no. 31.85–86. The following lacuna probably included the answer. CA line 18; GOSP 69–75 and 115. 961 This translation does not necessarily imply that he would emend Prydein to Prydyn/Pryden ‘Pictland, north Britain’ for, as set out in his review of BR, p. 150, Thomas Jones maintained that Pryden/Prydyn/Prydein was a single term, originally referring to north Britain, with different realisations of i-affection, as in cyllell ~ cylleill < cultelli, Emrys ~ Emreis < Ambrosius, etc. This theory is not fully worked out. On Emrys etc. see references cited at III.17 below. 962 BBCSG 133 and n. 1 (also Gruffydd, ‘From Gododdin to Gwynedd’, p. 10; WCD 625). See EWGT 13 (HG §32): ‘Typipaun (sic) primogenitus qui mortuus in regione que uocatur Manau Guodotin et non uenit huc cum patre suo et cum fratribus suis’. 963 WCD 232; WaB 328–29 and 616. On his association with Powys in MWG 379 cf. EWGT 150. 964 Cf. GPC côr1 and côr3; also ELl 75–77, EANC 129, and Jones, ‘Why Bangor?’. For cor used of ‘piled stones’ see eDIL 1 cor 14. 965 Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Denbighshire, p. 211. Grooms, Giants, p. 20, says that it is a natural mound 18 ft in diameter, citing the Royal Commission; his source is unclear (not Inv. Den.). See Archwilio, Plas Einion Mound, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, where ‘Bronze Age Round Barrow’ is allowed as a possibility. Dôl Einion is Ddol Enion Fawr in RhELlH. 959 960

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Whether this could be Einion ap Cunedda’s legendary grave is uncertain, since Einion was a common name. Note, however, that it is only seven miles south-west of the site of the next stanza, which is also connected with the family of Cunedda. I.73 Beli ap Benlli Gawr on Maes Mawr (Den./Fli.) I.73

I.73

Pieu yr bed yn y Maes Mawr.

Whose is the grave on Maes Mawr,

balch y law ar y lafnawr;966

whose hand(grasp) (was) firm on his blades?

bed Beli ab Benlli Gawr.

The grave of Beli son of Benlli the Giant.

This is the earliest mention of this Beli. His father Benlli had already appeared as a pagan king in the account of St Germanus’ miracles in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum (§§32–34). There the saint calls down fire from heaven to destroy the fortress of Benli, clearly the vast Iron Age hillfort on Foel Fenlli (SJ 1632 6008), near St Germanus’ church at Llanarmon-yn-Iâl, Den. (SJ 1956).967 In the tenth-century Vatican Recension of the Historia Brittonum (§21), the name Belinus is substituted, a name which elsewhere in the text (§9, Belinus … Minocanni filius) corresponds to Beli in vernacular Welsh texts.968 Conceivably this confusion gave rise to Beli ap Benlli. In Peniarth MS 267, pp. 29–30, written by John Jones of Gellilyfdy while in the Fleet prison (1635–41), appears the following note on ‘Maesmaụr: Main meirion’ (‘Maesmawr: Meirion’s stones’): Mae mañ ar y mynyḍ ṛụng Jal ag Ystrad alun uục ̣ benn Ṛyd y gyfarṭfa a elwir y Maes maụr ḷe bu yr vrụỵdyr ṛụng Meirion ap [space], a Beli ap Benḷi gaụr ḷe ḷas Beli ap Benḷi, ag y gossodes Meirion ḍau faen yn eu sefyḷ un ym ṃob penn ir beḍ : y ṛain a vuant yno hyd o feụn y deugain mlyneḍ yma, y doeṭ dyn anraslon un Edwart ap Sion ap Ḷewelyn o Jal pioeḍ y dryḷ tir a gaeessid or mynyḍ, yn yr hụn yr oeḍ y beḍ ar main uc ̣od ynḍo, ag y codes y main ag y dodes tros bibeḷ odyn galc ̣, ag o dra gwres y taan y torrassant o blegid eu bod yn gerig calc ̣y ṛai ni dic ̣on oḍef mor gụres ar pụys ar unwaiṭ a gwedi eu torri, ef ai briwoḍ ag ai ḷosgoḍ yn yr odyn yn galc ̣ y ṛai a vuessynt yno lawer cantoeḍ, o vlynyḍoeḍ, a diweḍ drụg a ḍoeṭ iḍo yr hụnn a ḍiadurnoḍ veḍ y milụr marụ. ir hụnn y canassai y barḍ ar Englynion Beḍau milwyr Ynys Brydain. yr Englyn hụn. Piev y beḍ yn y Maes maụr balc ̣ ei laụ ar ei lafnaụr beḍ Beli ap Benḷi gaụr.969

Punctus elevatus in the manuscript. See Woolf, ‘Fire from Heaven’; Sims-Williams, ‘Powys and Early Welsh Poetry’, p. 35; Guy, ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography’, pp. 76–77. See Coflein s. Foel Fenlli and Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Denbighshire, pp. 182–86. For folklore about Benlli and poetic references to him see DP IV 529–31, Grooms, Giants, pp. 131–38, Henken, Traditions of the Welsh Saints, pp. 274–76, and Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry, p. 82. 968 Historia Brittonum, ‘Vatican’ Recension, ed. Dumville; Nikolai Tolstoy, ‘Cadell and the Cad­ elling of Powys’, SC, 46 (2012), 59–83 (p. 64); cf. CIB 182 n. 1105. There is a speculative attempt to equate Beli ap Benlli with Irish Balor in MvM 173–86. 969 My copy (cf. RMWL I 1078, partly quoted in BBCSG 113 n. 1). 966 967

270

Series I There is a place on the mountain between Iâl and Ystrad Alun970 above Rhyd y Gyfarthfa, which is called Y Maes Mawr, where the battle took place between Meirion son of [space] and Beli son of Benlli the Giant, wherein Beli son of Benlli was slain; and Meirion placed two stones one at each end of the grave, which were there up to within these forty years. There came an uncouth individual, one Edward ap Siôn ap Llywelyn of Iâl, who owned the piece of land which had been enclosed from the mountain, in which the grave and the above stones were, and pulled up the stones and placed them over the pipe of a limekiln, and in consequence of the intense heat they broke because they were lime stones, which cannot stand the heat and weight at the same time, and after they broke, he smashed and roasted them into lime in the kiln – stones which had been there for hundreds of years; and a bad end befell him who defaced the grave of the dead warrior, to whom the poet had sung this englyn in Englynion Beddau Milwyr Ynys Brydain …971

Jones goes on to say that the Maes Mawr was close to Maes Garmon, site of St Germanus’ victory (p. 31). He evidently did not know Meirion’s patronymic, but left a space in the hope of finding out. Apart from the fact that I.73 follows I.72 on Einion ap Cunedda, there is no reason to identify Meirion with Meirion ap Tybion ap Cunedda, the eponym of Meirionydd, despite Gwenogvryn Evans, who inserted Tybiawn without any indication that this was not in John Jones’s manuscript or anywhere else.972 John Jones’s above text of the englyn corresponds, orthography apart, with that in his much earlier (c. 1607) copy of Series I in Peniarth 111, p. 68, so it may be that he was the first to bring the anecdote and englyn together. The anecdote is presumably due to him personally, since his home in Ysgeifiog parish (Fli., SJ 1571) was only six miles north of Rhyd y Gyfarthfa (which was at Loggerheads Bridge, SJ 1962, in Llanferres, Den.).973 The name main Meirion does not survive. According to Ellis Davies, Maes Mawr ‘would seem to have been in Mold parish somewhere in the hills to the east of the Loggerheads’.974 If so, the limestone quarry at Cefn Mawr (SJ 2063), on the boundary between Llanferres in Iâl, Den. and Yr Wyddgrug (Mold) in Ystrad Alun, Fli., would be a suitable location.975 Just south of Cefn Mawr, Carreg Carn March Arthur (SJ 20241 62662) marks the boundary between the two parishes.976 By contrast, Owen and Gruffydd, identify Maes Mawr with a farm ‘between Cilcain

For Iâl and Ystrad Alun see WATU 284 and 324. Translation modified from BBCSG 112–13 and Grooms, Giants, p. 133. 972 RMWL I 1078. This misled subsequent scholars, e.g. MvM 178 and WCD 37. None of the later copyists could supply the patronymic. See, for example, Llanstephan MS 18, p. 75; BL Add. 14867, 219r; Peniarth 201, p. 52; BL Add. 15002, p. 83; NLW 13239, p. 176; NLW 111, Part i, p. 40; NLW 1601, p. 92; Anon., ‘Cov am Swrn o Hen Geurydd a Meini’, Y Greal, 5 (June 1806), 239–40; Price, Hanes Cymru, p. 35. 973 Located by Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire, p. 252. (It was previously thought to be near Plymog, SJ 18534 59697: DP IV 529–30.) On Rhyd y Gyfarthfa see EWSP 234, TYP4 450, and Richards, ‘Welsh rhyd “ford”’, p. 224. 974 Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire, p. 252; also FPN 117–18. Davies rightly rejects the attempt in DP IV 529 to connect the stones in the story with a brook called Nant y Meini. Jones, Bardic Museum, p. 10, says ‘Maes-mawr, in Denbighshire, is now the domain of Mr. Lloyd; and near which is a great mound of earth …’. 975 See Coflein s. Cefn Mawr Quarry, Cadole, with aerial photograph. 976 Coflein s. Carreg Carn March Arthur, Loggerheads. See C. J. Williams, ‘The Lead Mines of the Alyn Valley’, FHSJ, 29 (1980), 51–87 (p. 61). 970 971

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

and the Frith Mountain’, marked as Maes-mawr by the Ordnance Survey (SJ 17497 64432).977 The farm is too low down to be John Jones’s ‘place on the mountain’, but it was conceivably once the caput of a wider territory. Stanza I.73 exhausts the remaining spare space on the page. Possibly the second scribe had further material for which there was no room; unlike I.69, I.73 does not look like a closing stanza.

977

Owen and Gruffydd, Place-Names of Flintshire, p. 117. This place in Cilcain parish is one of various guesses in AMR s. Maes Mawr, Fli. It was rejected by Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire, p. 252. ‘About 200 yards to the east’ is Llysfynydd which has a probable a limestone outcrop mound with the ‘appearance of a barrow’; see Archwilio s. Llys Fynydd Mound (SJ 1783 6445); Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire, pp. 91–92.

272

8 SERIES III

(i) The manuscripts and stemma S All extant manuscripts seem to derive from William Salesbury’s lost manuscript ‘S’.1 The primary witnesses to this (W, N, T, P, and B) are transcribed in full in the edition below, with their exact lineation and indentation. B’s numbering of the englynion is included, as are the relevant entries in the index by Edward Lhwyd and Moses Williams, now bound as fol. 69 of NLW Llanstephan 145, after the B text on fol. 68.2 Williams’s entries are in italics. Occasional reference is made in the commentary to significant variants or marginal comments in secondary witnesses, including the well-known Peniarth 98ii by Dr John Davies, Mallwyd, the manuscript printed by Thomas Jones (his ‘Peniarth 98B’).3 The englynion are divided and numbered as in Thomas Jones’s edition, including the problematic stanzas 11 and 12, even though it will be suggested in the commentary that III.11d may really be line a of III.12. For a stemma, see Figure 4 below, p. 280, and for further discussion of the secondary witnesses see above, pp. 82–93. In the absence of S the primary witnesses to Series III are as follows: W = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B. 464 (s. xvii ex.), fol. 188, a notebook of Edward Lhwyd, containing various literary items around which he crammed summaries of answers to his 1696 Parochial Queries. One of the literary items, in the hand of Lhwyd’s assistant William Jones (d. 1702),4 is ‘Englynion y Beddau | E Cod. MS. [..]5 Chart. Dom …..6 | Salesbury de Lhan Rwst | penes Vid. Wynn de Bod | Ysgallen. Carnarv.’. On 189v Jones again refers to ‘Lib. …7 Salisbury de Plàs Issaf. | prop. LhanRwst pen. Vid. Wynn. de Bôdyskallen’ as a source for ‘Achae Seint Ynys Brydain’. That the ‘Salisbury’ in question was William Salesbury is confirmed See above, p. 15. On this Index see above, pp. 87 and 98–109. 3 There are a number of errors in his transcription, at least as printed in BBCSG 134–36 (the correct reading follows the colon): 1c am: ap; 2a Bedd: Bedd y; 3a Dinl[l]eu: dinlen (sic); 4a ddiau: sic, but ddinau written above in different ink; 6d pen hardd: penhardd; 10b armes: achles armes; 11a gyfu: dyfu; befyl: benyl, with f written above in different ink; 14a Cicleu: Cic len (sic); drom: droni underlined, with m written above the ni; 16c vag: vab; 18b Dyv[ed]: dyve. (These are the chief ones.) In Peniarth 98ii the stanzas are numbered as in BBCSG (12 is a late addition) except that 14–17 are misnumbered 15–18 following the page break, and 18 is unnumbered. 4 I am grateful to Gruffudd Antur Edwards for confirming the hand. On him see RWMS II 84; Roberts, ‘Edward Lhwyd’s Protégés’ and Edward Lhwyd, passim. 5 Two letters deleted here. 6 ‘William’ was added later over the dotted line. This addition was made before W was copied c. 1740 in NLW 1506, followed by NLW 6617. Cf. Par. I 154. 7 In this instance the name was not filled in in NLW 1506, Book III, 73r, nor in NLW 6617, Book II, 73r. Cf. Par. I 155 and II 12 n. 1. 1 2

273

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

by some cross-references to these genealogies that Roger Morris inserted into NLW 3032B (Mostyn 113, 1580×1600), pp. 132–38, labelled ‘W.S.’ and (on p. 136) ‘o lyfr W.S.’.8 Similarly, William Bodwrda (d. 1660) referred to the book as ‘W. Sal.’ in NLW Llanstephan 187.9 Lhwyd clearly intended to obtain fuller transcripts of some items noted in his notebook – thus at 34r he has ‘Mem. to order a Transcript’ in connection with a list of saints from Llyfr Watkin Owen. N below is the transcript of S made for Lhwyd. W presumably belongs to the late 1690s, when Lhwyd was busily engaged in seeking out literary antiquities in the north-east and elsewhere.10 N = NLW 21001Bii, 195v–197r, Anon., 1701. Lhwyd wrote ‘ADSKRIV O LYVYR ym. | medhiant Mrs Wyn o Vod Ysgalhan A.D. 1701’ at the start of the manuscript (180r). Under this another hand added: ‘yr hwn a sgrvennase (hyd yr wi yn i vedhŵl) Wilm Salsbri | o Lan Rwst. ynghylch amser y vrenhines Elsbeth’ (180r).11 The colophon is: ‘Tervyn Lhyvyr Mr Sals|bri o Lan Rwst.’ (309v). A marginal note in Lhwyd’s hand12 at 180r agrees that it was in William Salesbury’s hand, citing a Mr Langford’s Englynion y Beddau: ‘Lhaw Wm Sals|bury yn | dhiammæ | Kanys . | velhy a dûæd | Mr Langford | yn i Eng|lynion y Bedhæ. Vid. p. 32’. The cross reference here is to 195v (formerly p. 32), where, in a note to his copyist’s Series III heading Englynion y Beddeu*, Lhwyd adds: ‘Kais y Relyụ o | *Englynyon | y bedhæ o laụ | Mr Langford, | guedi i no|di val hyn | WB .’. From these passages we deduce that a ‘Mr Langford’ had made a copy of Series III from S, identifying William Salesbury as its scribe, and had also copied ‘the rest of Englynion y Beddau’ – presumably (but not certainly) Series I – and that his manuscript bore the mark ‘WB’. What I transcribe as ‘WB’ resembles a monogram in which the final stroke of a W is the first stroke of a B. At first sight this looks as if it might refer to William Baxter, with whom Lhwyd corresponded on the subject of Englynion y Beddau.13 It makes more sense, however, to take it as a copy of vi. B. (i.e. vide B.), a marginal mark used by Dr John Davies, Mallwyd in Peniarth 102i, 5r, to indicate that he had made a second copy of a Peniarth 102i poem (Bidiau II) in his ‘Liber B’ (NLW MS 4973B), where Bidiau II occurs on an inserted leaf (fol. 171a).14 While the extant ‘Liber B’ includes neither Series I nor Series III of Englynion y Beddau, it is possible that Davies inserted, or intended to insert, a copy of them from some now lost manuscript by ‘Mr Langford’ who had copied them – or Series III at any rate – from William Salesbury’s manuscript. Another possibility is that the ‘Relyụ o Englynyon y bedhæ’ in question were the ‘Series II’ stanzas embedded in the Llywarch Hen cycle, for that cycle is included in ‘Liber B’ (twice) and we know that Salesbury’s friend, Richard Longford or Langford, played a role in transmitting the Llywarch Hen poems from a lost part of the White Book of

EWGT 148; RWMS I 186. MWG 196. 10 Cf. G. J. Williams, ‘Edward Lhuyd a Thraddodiad Ysgolheigaidd Sir Ddinbych’, pp. 47–51; idem, ‘Edward Lhuyd’, LlC, 6 (1960–61), 122–37 (pp. 132–35); Emery, ‘Map’. Several literary items in the Rawlinson notebook are of Denbighshire provenance. 11 i.e. 1558–1603. 12 Identified for me by Daniel Huws and Gruffudd Antur Edwards. 13 See above, p. 85. 14 Rowland, ‘“Englynion Duad”’, p. 60; Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, p. 80. On ‘Liber B’ see Huws, ‘John Davies and his Manuscripts’, p. 107, and Jones and Owen, ‘John Davies and the Poets of the Princes’, pp. 177–80. 8 9

274

Series III

Rhydderch. Lhwyd would seem to be the last person known to have seen the lost ‘Mr Langford’ manuscript on which Dr Davies left his mark. Further on ‘Langford’ see below, on MS B. 15

T = BL Add. 31055, fol. 137, by Thomas Wiliems, 1591–96 and later. It is entitled ‘Ynglynion y Bedhâu’. Although Wiliems gives no information about his source, it was probably S, in view of the many other texts shared by MSS T and N16 and the fact that Wiliems had easy access to Salesbury’s books.17 P = NLW Peniarth 111, pp. 68–71, by John Jones, Gellilyfdy, c. 1607. Following a sequence of Black Book poems (pp. 30–68) which concludes with Series I (pp. 56–68), John Jones introduces Series III as follows (p. 68): Or llyfr du o Gaerfyrddin hyd yma : ag o hynn allan o law Wiliam Salysburi (medd Roesier morys ~ ~

From this we deduce that John Jones’s copy of Series III (and quite likely Series I as well) derived from a lost manuscript (‘R’) by Roger Morris of Coedytalwrn, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, Den. (fl. 1582–97); P was no doubt transcribed directly from R, for Morris was one of John Jones’s favourite sources for texts.18 Further on in Peniarth 111 (pp. 188–230), John Jones copied a second sequence of Black Book poems, under the heading llyma amrafaelion bethav a gopiwyd allan or llyfr dv o Gaer vyrddin ~ ~ medde Roesier Morys

and concluded with the words: hyd yma (om tyb i) yr ysgrifennodd Roesier morys, allan or llyfr dv o Gaervyrddin. See ‘Liber B’ (NLW MS 4973B) fols 127 and 181v–182r (see EWSP 397–401 and 412; CLlH xiii and I.40–44; MWM 247–49 and 258–59). 16 See Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, pp. 74–75 and 80–81. In Bidiau II (EWGP no. VIII) and Englynion Duad (ed. Rowland), N has retained superior readings (e.g. Bidiau II 1b ae car (ei car T), Duad II.4b a rhynawt dros vesur (a rhynawt o vesûr T) but T is sometimes better, e.g. II.4c bo pur (pop | pur N) and III.8c a haint (eb haint N). In general, both in Bidiau II and Englynion Duad, MS N probably keeps to the spelling of S (e.g. dd, ll where T favours dh, lh). T avoids epenthetic vowels (e.g. Bidiau II 7a neidr, etc.). They are inconsistent in doubling n. N prefers K to C, ai to ei, i and ni to y and ny, and sometimes -b to -p (but at Bidiau II 3b both N and T have vap, as passim in Series III). After S was copied in T, it seems that a few alternative readings from better manuscripts were noted on it by an informed reader (someone like Dr Davies) and were carefully copied in N: see Bidiau II 2a Ala(?) > ha ha, 2c ae > ar ae, and Duad II.5a a vo govec > a vo y govec. 17 For example, see RWMS I 205 and Mathias, ‘Gweithiau William Salesbury’, p. 142, on Roger Morris’s note in NLW 4581B (RWMS III pl. 377). 18 Cf. Nesta Jones, ‘Copi Ychwanegol o Ddechrau Ystorya Bown de Hamtwn’, B. 23 (1968–70), 17–26 (p. 18 and n. 10): ‘Fe gopïodd John Jones fwy, ond odid, o law Roger Morys nag o law unrhyw unigolyn arall [Ceir cyfeiriadau at gopïo o law Roger Morys mewn o leiaf ddwsin o wahanol lsgrau. sydd yn llaw John Jones – ceir amryw o gyfeiriadau yn yr un llsgr. yn aml], a phan welir fod yr un testun yn llaw y ddau ŵr, naturiol yw tybio fod John Jones wedi copïo o law Morys’. 15

275

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Jones continued with Credo Taliessin (incipit ‘Crist Jessu celi i ti i coelia’), Kynghorion Taliessin (incipit ‘Na fid escud dy law…’),19 and other items. Now NLW Cwrtmawr 530 (Llanwrin 1), by Roger Morris c. 1582, contains about a third of the Black Book poems, in exactly the same odd order as in Jones’s second sequence, followed immediately by Credo Taliessin, by another pseudo-Taliesin text (incipit ‘Ni ụyr ni ụyḷ’),20 and by Kynghorion Taliessin.21 Clearly John Jones copied this second sequence of Black Book poems, along with Credo Taliessin and Kynghorion Taliessin, from Cwrtmawr 530.22 In fact, next to the relevant items in Cwrtmawr 530 he left his customary three-dot symbol, to show that he had made a copy.23 This parallel makes it virtually certain that he had also copied the Black Book poems earlier in MS P, including Series I, from Roger Morris’s lost manuscript (‘R’), along with Series III. Probably Morris had copied Series III in R directly from S, since he is known to have used ‘Llyfr W.S.’ (see on MS W above). Moreover, the formula ‘o laụ W. Salisburi’ was one he used when copying directly from Salesbury.24 Whether Series I in R was copied directly from the Black Book25 is less clear, but seems plausible, since the Black Book was briefly in the hands of Morris’s associate Simwnt Fychan in the 1580s.26 B = NLW Llanstephan 145, fol. 68, by Edward Lhwyd, c. 1700. This is an acephalous and, towards the end, lacunose copy of Series I.62–73 (misnumbered 63–73), followed by Series III. Lhwyd’s rubric between the two series is: FINIS.

O’r ḷyfyr du o Gaerfyrddin hyd yma, ac o ḥyn aḷā o Law W. Salisburi.27 Langford. Cynghorion Taliessin in Peniarth 98ii, p. 65, where it follows Credo Taliesin, was obviously copied from Peniarth 111, like its text of Series III. This Kynghorion Taliessin is different from the Geirie Gwir Taliesin/Kynghorav Taliessyn in NLW 6434D (incipit ‘na chais esmwythdra …’) and Peniarth 155 (incipit ‘Nac ymddiried …’), discussed by Mathias, ‘Gweithiau William Salesbury’, p. 131. 20 Mathias, ‘Gweithiau William Salesbury’, pp. 131–32, referring to it as ‘Ni wyr ni ddysg’, cites (among various other sources) Peniarth 155 (1562×1585), which derives from a 1561–62 compilation by Gruffudd Hiraethog, and NLW 6434D, copied in 1577 from a lost section of William Salesbury’s Diarebion Camberäec (1567), later followed by Dr Davies for the Traethawd o athronddysg Gymraeg in the proverbs section towards the end of his Dictionarium. Mathias overlooked NLW Cwrtmawr 530, perhaps because it had a different incipit. The discrepancy in incipit is perhaps explained by a stray leaf by Gruffudd Hiraethog and Simwnt Fychan bound in Peniarth 137, pp. 129–30 (on which see RWMS I 395). Here Gruffudd Hiraethog’s incipit is ‘ni wyr ni ddysc’ (sic). His insertion above the line may have been overlooked by, or unknown to, Salesbury and the scribe of Peniarth 155, among others. A fifteenth-century version begins: ‘Ni wyl oni vynn ni wyr oni ddysc’: Peniarth MS. 67, ed. E. Stanton Roberts (Cardiff, 1918), p. 33. 21 For the contents of Cwrtmawr 530 (Llanwrin 1) see RMWL II 367–70. 22 The doubt implied by his ‘(om tyb i)’ may be due to uncertainty as to where the Black Book poetry in Cwrtmawr 530 ended or as to whether it was a direct transcript of the Black Book, rather than to his not having seen Roger Morris’s manuscript as supposed in RMWL I 668n. 23 For this symbol see RWMS II 276. 24 See RWMS I 186 and RMWL I xvi n. and 48, on NLW 3032B (Mostyn 113), and RWMS I 205 and Mathias, ‘Gweithiau William Salesbury’, p. 142, on NLW 4581B. 25 See the tentative stemma in CBT III 84 and 107. 26 Cf. RWMS I 50 and 333 and II 115 and 158. 27 The i is altered from y. 19

276

Series III

The name Langford is enclosed in a box. The wording suggests that Lhwyd copied Series I, the rubric, and Series III, directly or indirectly, from R, and this is confirmed by various minor agreements between P and B against the other manuscripts of Series III: 1b liwiassai; 1c Phyrñal; 3b Dinlen; 3c ei; 3c nienon; 7a divo; 9c Rheon; 18b Rhvn.28 In B Lhwyd evidently imitates the orthography of his exemplar with its under-dotted ḷ, ḍ, etc. in the text of Series III, but not Series I. (Lhwyd uses a further orthography, with lamda, delta, etc., in his index to Englynion y Beddau on fol. 69.) The orthography with underdotting, from Gruffydd Robert’s Grammar (Milan, 1567), was a feature of Morris’s later transcripts, adopted in 1582 and used by him when transcribing the Black Book poems in Cwrtmawr 530 (Llanwrin 1), which bears the date A.D. 1582.29 Perhaps R was written just when he was changing over. This would explain why B has underdotting in Series III but not Series I. The significance of the reference to ‘Langford’, like that in Lhwyd’s note in MS N, is unclear. Unless ‘Langford’ was some unknown Welsh scribe, he is most likely to be Richard Longford (c. 1505–1586×1591) of Trefalun (Allington), Den., a contemporary and close associate of William Salesbury, often known as Rhisiart Langford. Many of his manuscripts ‘became scattered early in the seventeenth century’.30 Perhaps one of Longford’s lost manuscripts contained Englynion y Beddau and was known to Lhwyd. Alternatively, Lhwyd may have copied the name Langford in the rubric in B from the rubric in R, where it may have indicated Roger Morris’s knowledge that Longford had a copy of S. It is plausible that Langford should have copied S, for Salesbury’s Llythyr Annerch in his Y Diarebion Camberäec (1567) reveals a connection between the two men.31 We know from a note made in 1596 by Thomas Wiliems (in MS T) that in 1583 (which is about the probable date of R) Roger Morris had transcribed other englynion from a copy made in 1574 by ‘Mr Langford’.32 Yet another explanation is that Lhwyd misattributed R to Langford. While it seems clear that S was a manuscript in the possession of William Salesbury, it is less clear that Salesbury was himself the copyist of its Series III, despite the opinions attributed to Roger Morris and (possibly) to ‘Mr Langford’. Judging by disagreements in the derived copies, it was difficult to distinguish letters in S that involved minims (e.g. III.1c Ffyrmail, Fyrnnal, phyrnual, etc.).33 Minims are not usually a problem when reading Salesbury’s hand.34 Moreover, at III.8c Duw is not spelt Deo, the spelling favoured by Salesbury in his lost copies of Bidiau II and Englynion Duad in S, as reflected in MSS N and T.35 Possibly, then, the leaf of S that contained Series III was by another hand. If Roger Morris said that Series III was ‘o law Wiliam Salysburi’, could he have been jumping to the conclusion that Salesbury I quote P’s readings. In Series I, P and B are both close to the Black Book, but a shared innovation is Carrwen at I.70d. 29 RWMS II 115 (cf. I 50); RMWL II 369. G. J. Williams speculated that Richard Longford may have influenced Roger Morris’s adoption of Gruffydd Robert’s orthography (GP cix). 30 On him see RWMS II 104–5 and Huws, ‘Yr Hen Risiart Langfford’. His grandson (fl. 1639, d. 1643) was also called ‘Risiart Langfford’ (ibid., p. 319). 31 Printed by Mathias, ‘Gweithiau William Salesbury’, pp. 127–28. 32 RMWL II 1064; CLlH xiv; Huws, ‘Yr Hen Risiart Langfford’, pp. 302, 312–13, and 319 n. 3. 33 Similarly at Bidiau II 11a (gynifiad EWGP) T has gyniyniat and N has gymyniat. Cf. T. J. Morgan, ‘bit gynifiat gwyd’, B., 24 (1970–74), 483; Jacobs, Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, p. 44. 34 Judging by his hand in Peniarth 99, pp. 535–618 and in RWMS III pls 220–25. 35 Rowland, ‘“Englynion Duad”’, p. 61; Guy, ‘A Lost Medieval Manuscript from North Wales’, p. 81. Longford also used Deo: Huws, ‘Yr Hen Risiart Langfford’, p. 305. 28

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

wrote the whole of ‘Llyfr W.S.’, when Series III was perhaps on a stray leaf by another hand? We know from a comment at 306r in N that the volume included at least one ‘loose paper’. Against this hypothesis, it may be noted that Salesbury was not completely consistent in spelling Deo; at Englynion Duad I.3c Duw/Dduw and vn duw/undûw occur in MSS T and N. Reading the minims in his exemplars had clearly presented Salesbury with problems and resulted in misreadings such as ancwynedh T (ankwynedd N) for ancwyn medd or len TN for lew in Bidiau II 8c and 13a, and gynoeth TN for gyuoeth or vndredhi T (vndreddi N) for vudreddi in Englynion Duad I.4c and II.3c (circumflexes, added in T and N above the offending ns to turn them into us, clearly derive from S). Given his difficulty, Salesbury may have been tempted to copy some obscure minims as ambiguously as they were in his exemplars (hence, for example Kic len for kicleu in Series III.14a), deferring their interpretation until later.36 This obfuscation would not be as bizarre as it may sound, for Salesbury’s conservative contemporaries, including Richard Longford, were still writing an old fashioned anglicana script with highly ambiguous minims.37 Although Series III and Englynion Duad both appeared in S, they were not grouped together there, if we may judge by MSS T and N. Neverthless, some connection between the two sets of englynion may have been perceived, for Thomas Wiliems, in his list of British authors in Peniarth 228, has ynglynion duat ner Bedha ‘Duad’s Englynion or The Beddau’, as if the mysterious Duad were their common author.38 In rough chronological order, the other manuscripts of Series III which have been consulted are as follows:39 NLW Peniarth 98ii, pp. 48–50, by Dr John Davies, Mallwyd, not before 1617. NLW Llanstephan 18, pp. 21–23, by Moses Williams, c. 1728. NLW 1506C, Book III (sic), 72r and 73r, Anon., c. 1740. NLW 6617B, Book II, 72r and 73r, Anon., s. xviii2. NLW 1983Bi (Panton 14i), 34v–36r, by Evan Evans, c. 1758. NLW 2020iiB (Panton 52ii), fols 90–91, by Evan Evans, c. 1760. NLW 2040A (Panton 74ii), pp. 151–55, by Evan Evans, c. 1760. BL Add. 14867, 93v–94r, by William Morris, 1758–63. BL Add. 15002, pp. 75–76, by Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), c. 1768. NLW Peniarth 201, pp. 46–47, by Richard Thomas, 1777. NLW 13239C, pp. 159–62, by William Owen Pughe, 1784. But imitation of Salesbury’s exemplar’s normal letter forms should not be inferred from the odd way in which Cythrel (‘Devil’) is written at Duad I.8c in N (T leaves a blank space). Some superstition seems to be at work here. Similarly, a cipher is used in place of Grist and Morwyn in the copy of an englyn (GDG 417 no. xiii) at 182v of N. 37 Huws, ‘Yr Hen Risiart Langfford’, p. 304. See his hand in Peniarth 56, pp. 61–128, and especially his note at the foot of p. 55 of Peniarth 59; also RWMS III pl. 206. See also Gruffudd Hiraethog’s formal hand, illustrated in Bowen, Gruffudd Hiraethog a’i Oes, plate facing p. 7, and RWMS III pls 189, 197–201, and 203. 38 Rowland, ‘“Englynion Duad”’, p. 62. 39 For further details about the manuscripts see RMWL and RWMS. 36

278

Series III Cardiff, Central Library, 2.141, Part i, pp. 153–56, by Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies, not before 1792. NLW Cwrtmawr 454, pp. 477–78, by Peter Bailey Williams, c. 1791–93. NLW Llanstephan 193, fols 150–51 (pp. 196–97), by Hugh Maurice, 1796. NLW 170C, pp. 53, 57, 59, and 55, by Edward Jones, c. 1800. NLW 322E, p. 60, by Edward Jones, c. 1800. (III.14 and 17 only.)

For details of the shared errors leading to the stemma in Figure 4, see above, pp. 82–94 and 273–8.

(ii) Edition, translation, and commentary Comments made below upon the probable readings of the lost manuscripts S and R are based on the stemma in Figure 4. Indentation is shown as in the manuscripts. The numbering of stanzas in MS B is included, as are the relevant entries in Edward Lhwyd’s index (in which entries in the hand of Moses Williams are placed in italics). III.1 Ffyrnfael ab Hywlydd on the mountain (Long Mountain, Mtg.?) W

Y bedd yn y gorvynydd a lyviassau* luossydd bedd Ffyrmail+ haelx vab Hywlydd.

*lyv altered from liw. +r over erasure. xe exaggerated to resemble d.40 N

Y bedd yn y gorûynydd A lywyiassai lûosydd Bedd Fyrnnal* hael vap hywlydd.

*If the reading is Fyrmal the m has an extra minim. T

y Bedh yn y gorvynydh, a lywiassai luyosydh,* Bedh ffyrnnal Hael vap Hywlydh.

*dots over u and first y. P

Y bedd yn y gorfynydd a liwiassai lvossydd bedd Phyrñal hael vap Hywlydd

B

Y beḍ yn y Gorfynyḍ

74

A liụassai luossyḍ Beḍ phyrnual hael vap Hyụlyḍ

Index. 40

col. 1 Fırnvael ab Hiulyδ Bd at Gorvınyδ. 74

Hence the independent misreadings in NLW 1506 (with hael in the margin) and NLW 170.

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Figure 4: Series III Stemma (brackets indicate non-extant copies).

The manuscripts seem to hesitate between the correct verb llywio and the verb lliwio. The -au in W could be William Jones’s slip.41 In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies alters P’s lvossydd to liosydd, which is the plural of lliaws given in his Dictionarium; however 41

Watkins, Ieithyddiaeth, pp. 82–83, shows that for Lhwyd u and y (originally [ü] and [ï]) had fallen together. Perhaps Jones’s -au for -ai is an extension of this sort of confusion. His letters are in non-standard spelling. His origin seems uncertain: Roberts, ‘Edward Lhwyd’s Protégés’, p. 47 n. 87. A wish to distinguish u from n rather than a phonetic confusion between u and i in Jones’s mind can probably be seen in the way he sometimes puts a dot over a u: 4a ddinau; 11a Dyvu; 18b Hun ap Alûn (this dot is quite distinct from the circumflex in Alûn etc.). Careless placing of both has led to independent misreadings of both in NLW 1506 and 170: 4a dhinau 1506, ddinic 170; 11a Dyvic 1506, 170; 18b Hun ap Alîm 1506, Hun ap Alim 170.

280

Series III

the medieval form is usually lluos(s)yd.42 For the diction compare: Penn Uryen llary llywyei llu (‘the head of generous Urien – he used to rule a host’).43 Dr Davies correctly changes P’s Phyrñal (probably a misreading, *phyrnnal for *phyrnual in R) to Ffyrnfael, no doubt following the variant in Series I.33: Pieu yr bet yn y mynyt a lyviasei luossit. bet fyrnuael hael ab hyvlyt.

Similarly, Fırnvael in Lhwyd’s index is probably an improvement based on Series I. It is doubtful that W’s lyviassau preserves -v- for [w] as in the Black Book, as it may be a misreading of S. The same possibility makes one hesitate to regard W’s Ffyrmail as a relic of Fernmail, the Old Welsh form of the name,44 since it may be a misreading of *Ffyrnual in S, which could be a reduction of Ffyrnuael.45 This appears to be an example of a grave located only by a vague feature of the landscape. In the light of the variant I.33 the reference cannot be to Gorfynydd, the cantref in Morgannwg, whose name is a late rationalisation or popular etymology (not recorded before c. 1400) of the earlier Gwrinydd.46 Ffyrnfael’s grave is thus ‘in the mountain’ (I.33) or ‘in the highland/uplands/ridge, etc.’ (III.1). At first sight a stanza like this looks as if it might have been addressed to a very local audience who would know where ‘the mountain’ was without the need of a name. Such a theory loses force, however, when one considers other seemingly vague references, like that to Penda’s grave in ‘the river’s tumult’ (I.10), which cannot have been composed near the river concerned, which was in England; such allusions must have been intended to remind the audience of topographical traditions which they already knew. By contrast, other vague references, like those to ‘the graves which the rain wets’ (I.1), were probably intended to create a mood, not to allude to well-known sites. Nevertheless, in the case of I.33/III.1 there is possibly a solution to the vague topography, as noted in the discussion of I.32–33 above. In Series I the variant of the Ffyrnfael stanza (I.33) follows two stanzas (I.31–32) which appear to form an original group with certain stanzas in Series III. I.31 concerns the grave of Llvch Llaueghin, ‘head of the Saxons’, on (the banks of) a river, and seems to form a pair with III.9 below (= I.10), which concerns Penda, the only other Saxon in Englynion y Beddau, whose grave is placed ‘in a river’s tumult’. I.31 also forms a clear pair with III.6 below in which Llofan Llaw Ddifo’s usual epithet is replaced by Llaw [en]gyn.47 This suggests that it once stood together with III.6, and inspired the varying of Llofan Llaw Ddifo’s epithet in III.6 and the neighbouring stanza III.5 (Llaw estrawn). I.32 also seems to belong in this group, since its rhyme and diction resemble I.33 and the name of its hero Llvytauc recalls the gnomic phrase llwydawc llaw diuo (see discussion of I.32 above). In fact, it is quite possible that a version of I.32 preceded III.1 in an earlier, more complete copy of Series III. Be that as it may, the likelihood is that WG 97, 99, 110, 203, and 311 proposes a different etymology for sg. and pl. without considering the possibility of contamination by the synonymous llu (: OIr slúag). 43 CLlH III.8b (cf. 9b, 16b). 44 G. 516. See also Asser 66 (§80) and 317. Cf. CLlH lxxix and 235–36. 45 Cf. CLlH XI.97a Garanmal. 46 Melville Richards, ‘Gwrinydd, Gorfynydd and Llyswyrny’, B., 18 (1958–60), 383–86 (cf. Meinir Lewis, ‘Disgrifiad’, p. 674). 47 Cf. CLlH 244. See above, pp. 54–5. 42

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the hir vynyt of I.32 is the same as y mynyt in I.33 and y gorfynydd in III.1, and refers to the Long Mountain, Mtg., near Welshpool (see the discussion of I.32–33 above). Translation The grave in the mountain (of him) who had led armies – The grave of Ffyrnfael the Generous, son of Hywlydd.

III.2 Gwanwyn (Granwyn?) between the Llifon and Llyfni, Crn. W

Bedd Gwanwyn Gwrgoffri rhwng Lliwon a Llyfni Gwr oedd ef gwir i neb ni roddi

N

Bedd Gwanwyn gwr goffri* Rwng Lliwan a Llyffyni Gwr oedd ef gwir i nêb ni roddi

*gwr goffri may count as one word; the gap is slight. T

Bedh Gwanwyn Gwrgoffri rhwng lliwan a lhyfni Gwr oedh ef gwir y nep ny rodhi.

P

Bedd Gwanwyn gwrgoffri rrwng Lliwon a Llyfni gwr oedd ef gwir i neb ni roddi

B

Beḍ Gụanuyn gụrgophri

75

Rhụng LLivon a llyfni Gur oeḍ ef guir i neb ni roḍi.

Index

col. 2 Guanuy gurgofri. – 75.

Lliwan in N and lliwan in T may be independently influenced by Lliwan, the old form of Llifon, Ang., or may be due to a general confusion between -on and -an (see on Cynon/Cynan at I.71 above);48 conversely, W and R may have emended Lliwan to Lliwon. All three lines may have been metrically faulty in S. Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii gets an extra syllable in line a by emending P to ‘Bedd y Gwanwyn …’, probably on the analogy of Bet y March … (I.44), Bet y Coel … (I.57), etc.49 Considering the 48 49

On Lliwan see EANC 73 and AMR s.n. Llifon. On the reading of Peniarth 98ii see above, p. 273 n. 3.

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early date implied for this englyn by the imperfect form roddi,50 Thomas Jones’s restoration of the trisyllabic Gwaeanwyn (the older form of gwanwyn ‘Spring’) is preferable, if the name is indeed ‘Spring’.51 Gwa(ea)nwyn ‘Spring’ is unattested as a personal name, however, and is hard to accept as one, although it appears in the name of an ox, Melyn Gwaianhwyn ‘Yellow of Spring’, in Triad 45 and Culhwch and Olwen.52 *Gwanwyn ‘Pale-white’ is also unattested.53 Whatever the name, Dr Davies’s emendation is the simplest way of achieving 7 syllables in line a. In line b Dr Davies’s emendation ‘y rhwng’ is obviously plausible, making 7 syllables; compare I.56b ‘y rug Llew[ni] ae lledneint’, and I.67b. In line c Thomas Jones plausibly suppresses oedd ef, a typical unmetrical addition to make the prose sense clearer. Compare I.35c ‘gur guir y neb ny rodes’;54 and III.10 below ‘gwr oedd gwahoddai ormes’. S’s meaningless ‘Gwrgoffri’ is an instance of confusion between the symbols for [f] and [v], and is rightly emended by Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii to ‘gwr gofri’.55 Possibly Gwanwyn is an error for another name. Granwyn, ‘White-Cheek’, or ‘White-Beard’,56 is the easiest emendation. The only character of this name is Granwen mab Llyr, who is numbered among Arthur’s followers in Breuddwyd Rhonabwy.57 In view of the connection between the children of Llŷr and Gwynedd,58 there is something to be said for emending to Granwyn and taking this to refer to the son of Llŷr. This leaves line a 1 syllable short, if the stanza is an orthodox englyn milwr. While the stem garanwyn- is attested in the plural,59 restoration of *garanwyn will not gain another syllable as epenthetic vowels were not recognised

Above, p. 31. Cf. CLlH II.6a where the same emendation is made, for metrical reasons. The trisyllabic form survived into the fourteenth century: BL Cotton Cleopatra B.v i, 83r6. 52 TYP4 124; Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, line 593 and n. 53 GPC s.v. gwanwyn1 only cites the Triad and Culhwch, neither of which are valid citations (cf. Bromwich and Evans). Perhaps it is a personal name in Bodwanwyn, in Llaniestyn, Ang. (AMR; ETG 98)? At least, an eponym Gwanwyn could be extracted from such as a place-name. 54 For the emendation see BBCSG 124 n. 2; and for similar emendations, passim. See on metrics, above p. 110. 55 Cf. above, p. 16 and discussion of I.53 Elissner. Goffri gained some currency as a dictionary word, including in Dr Davies’s own Dictionarium. See GPC s.v. gofri; also Kenneth Jackson, ‘gofri’, B., 9 (1937–39), 319–20. 56 PT 36; AP2 40–41; BWP 168; G. and GPC s.v. 57 BR 19; M 151. The f. -wen is explained by the fact that gran is m.f. 58 In particular in PKM. For Branwen ferch Lŷr see above, p. 12 and references. Lloyd-Jones suggested that Cwmbrân (SH 4748) might take its name from Brân ap Llŷr (ELlSG 9), but this cannot be pressed since brân is such a common element in place-names (see DP III 160 n. 3, and IV 377 n. 1, and 422–25; EANC 181; Mac Cana, Branwen, 134–39; D. Machreth Ellis, ‘Cilgwri’, B., 21 (1964–66), 30–37 (p. 37); Glyn E. Jones, ‘Brân Galed : Brân fab Ymellyrn’, B., 25 (1972–74), 105–12; Brinley Rees, ‘Taleithiau’r Mabinogi’, YB, 10 (1977), 91–93; Sims-­ Williams, ‘Clas Beuno’, p. 114; and PNDPH 268). Of course, other characters in PKM but not of the Llŷr family are localised very near the Llyfni and Llifon (see commentary on III.3 and 7). It is noteworthy that Lewys Môn alludes to Llŷr in conjunction with Caer Arianrhod, Dôn, and Gwydion in an elegy for a lady buried in Clynnog c. 1500 which contains many references to the district (Glynllifon, Llandwrog, Lliwon, etc.): GLM no. II. 59 PT II.20, ‘garanwynyon’; LlDC no. 16.79 ‘(g)aranwinion’; PBT no. 6.21 and p. 113 n. 11 (‘aranwynyon’). 50 51

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metrically. Dr Davies’s ‘Bedd y …’ would be the easiest solution if seven syllables are insisted upon. In the margin of his 1796 copy Hugh Maurice added: ‘Llivon. Llyfni in Arvon.’ (Llanstephan 193, p. 196). This is surely right. Although there are various rivers named Llyfni or, in the south, Llynfi,61 the only one with a Llifon/-an or Lliwon/-an nearby is the one in Arfon.62 The Llifon (earlier Lliwon) and the Llyfni converge until they run into the sea about half a mile apart, to the north of Clynnog. Two surviving antiquities could have been regarded as the grave in question. The first is Craig y Dinas, an Iron Age hillfort in a bend of the Llyfni (SH 4482 5198), which contains a large mound which is possibly a barrow.63 There, in 1838, Eben Fardd and a companion ‘drank a bottle of porter in honor of the departed [Roman] Heroes’.64 The other site, favoured by Richard Fenton (following William Williams of Llandygái),65 is the Maen Llwyd (SH 44491 54149), a conspicuous Bronze Age standing stone to the east of the present Clynnog-Llanwnda road.66 In his translation of Englynion y Beddau in the North Wales Gazette, 12 Feb. 1818, Peter Bailey Williams clearly fixes on the latter in his note: 60

Under a large stone on Plas Newydd farm, between the Llifon and Llyfni, were discovered, about thirty years ago, pieces of a broken sword, spear, &c. and other warlike weapons.67

In 1847 John Jones, Llanllyfni, who knew Peter Bailey Williams’s translation, refers, too, to the grave of ‘Gwaewyr Gurgoffri, whose monumental Stele still maintains its upright position between the Llifon and Llyffni rivers’,68 and again in 1852 states that a class of graves of a superior order, and distinguished by the stele or maen hir, may be traced on the Ordnance map of this district … Among them is the sepulchral pillar of Gwaewyn Gungoffri, still standing near one of the western entrances into Glynllifan Park.69

GMW 13; LHEB 337; and references. Cf. PT 36: ‘the emendation … to granwynyon … would yield a normal nine syllable line’. 61 See above on I.56. 62 Leueny is first recorded in 1303–4 according to EANC 160. Cf. above, p. 230 n. 696. Lliwon was the late medieval form: HEALlE 169. See GLM 551 and 556 s.nn. Glynlliwon and Lliwon, where the w is often proved by cynghanedd. Cf. Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 120. On llif- and lliw- see EANC 73 and 121 and I.39 above. 63 Inv. Crn. II 208–10, no. 1281 and pl. 4; Coflein s. Craig-y-Dinas Camp, and Archwilio s. Craig y Dinas Hillfort, Pontllyfni (both with photographs). 64 Detholion o Ddyddiadur Eben Fardd, ed. Millward, pp. 79–80; cf. ibid., pp. 28 and 106. 65 Fenton, Tours, p. 324, ‘from Williams’s MS’. See ‘“A Survey of the Ancient and Present State of the County of Caernarvon” by William Williams of Llandygái, V’, ed. Jones, p. 149. 66 Inv. Crn. II 198, no. 1237 and pl. 1 (the ‘funerary urn’ discovered in 1875 is described as probably Early Bronze Age); Coflein and Archwilio s. Maen Llwyd Standing Stone; illustrated in EBSG 55. 67 On Peter Bailey Williams’s translation see above, p. 93. 68 J. J[ones], ‘Segontiaci’, p. 103. Similarly idem, ‘The Cromlech’, p. 85. 69 ‘Cilmyn’, ‘The Grave of Gwallawg’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1853), 73–74 (p. 74). Cf. above, p. 140 n. 125. 60

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Twenty years later W. Wynn Williams wrote that the Maen Llwyd was ‘traditionally said to mark the grave of “Gwydion ab Don”’, but that the opinion of the Hon. Frederick Wynn was that Guaynuyn Gurgoffri, a Catraeth hero, was buried there, and indeed the situation answers exactly to the description given of his grave in the Englynion y Beddau: ‘Bed Guaynuyn Gurgoffri rhung lluvan a llyfni’.

The two gentlemen had had a trench dug at the foot of the maen hir and discovered a funerary urn 3ft away. Before excavation the stone stood 9ft above ground.70 It is quite possible that the better-known Gwydion had supplanted the original occupant of the grave in ‘tradition’ and the antiquaries were right to associate the stone with the grave-stanza.71 Translation The grave of (or a grave [for]?) Gwanwyn (?Granwyn), worthy man, between the Llifon and the Llyfni; a man who would not give (away) right(s) to anyone.

III.3 Gwydion ap Dôn on Morfa Dinlle, Crn., and Garannawg, ?on Yr Eifl, Crn. W

Bedd Gwydion* ap Don yn Morva Dinllen+ dan vain Dyveillion Garanawc y Geîffyl Memon.x

*y added after wd had been written with one stroke of the pen. +en underdotted, and u written above the e. xthree dots under the -m-, and in written above. N

Bedd Gwydion ap Don Ym morva dinllen dan vain deveillion Garanawc y geiffyl memon

T

Bedh Gwydion ap don: ym morva dinllen dan vain deveilhion Garanawc y geiffyl meinon.

P

Bedd Gwydion ap Don ym morfa Dinlen dan vain deveillion Garanawc ei geiffyl nieinon

W. Wynn Williams, ‘The Maen Hir in Glynllifon Park’, AC, 4th ser. 6 (1875), 381–82. He adds that ‘this is the only instance in these parts, within my experience, of the finding of an interment marked outwardly by a Maen hir for a headstone’. Neither he nor the Royal Commission (above, n. 66) seem aware of the earlier disturbance of the site recorded by Peter Bailey Williams. 71 The Maen Llwyd is about half a mile from Bryn Gwydion (see commentary on next stanza). 70

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau B

Beḍ Guydion ap Don

76

Ym morfa Diulen* dan vain Deveilion Garanaục ei geiphyl niemon.

* -u- underdotted and n written above. Index

col. 2 Guydion ab Don. – 76

As in the previous two stanzas, T departs from what was presumably the arrangement of the stanza in S. In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies rearranges it as an englyn penfyr is now arranged: line a = Bedd …dinlen (sic); line b = y dan …deveillon; line c = Garanawg …meinon. In line b he emends dan to y dan, making 6 syllables, and this (or a dan) is plausible but not essential.72 Line c is too long with P and B’s nieinon or niemon, which presumably originated with R misreading ni for m, and the readings of W, N, and T, and Dr Davies’s meinon73 are preferable metrically. W disagrees with the other manuscripts over the first vowel of deveillion; possibly W’s y is an attempt to modernise e, taken, rightly or wrongly, as an example of e for [ǝ] = y.74 The word must qualify main, which evidently refers to a cairn, standing stones, or the like; compare the allusion to the grave of Llachar ap Rhun, tav y dan mein ‘silent beneath stones’, in I.51. D(e/y)feill(i)on does not seem to occur as a place-name. Perhaps defeillion is the plural of *dyfall, a compound of mall, ‘evil, rotten’,75 and means something like ‘sinister stones’. A connection with tafell ‘slice’ occurred to Hugh Derfel Hughes, who printed dan fain dafeillion and translated ‘o dan dafallau o feini’, taking fain dafeillion as ‘ceryg wedi eu hollti, (slabs) o ba rai y gwneid y gist faen’.76 An easier emendation would be *dan vain cefeillion, ‘under the stones of (his) companions (cyfeillion)’, alluding to some story about the placing of a cairn77 over the corpse of Gwydion or Garannawg – in the absence of punctuation it is uncertain which of the two is meant. Another possibility is *dan vain a meillion ‘under stones and clover’, for meillyon occurs elsewhere in an elegiac context.78 In that case, meinon, nieinon, For 5 syllables in line b, see above on metrics, p. 112. This is one of the few cases where Peniarth 98ii agrees with other manuscripts against P. (Note also III.4a ddinau, discussed in the commentary to III.4 below, and III.1c Ffyrnfael and III.14b disgyrnin, where Dr Davies was probably influenced by the traditional forms of the names or, in III.14b, by the verb disgyrnu.) This is insufficient to outweigh the evidence in favour of supposing that Peniarth 98ii is a copy of P (cf. above, p. 83), and is probably coincidence; Dr Davies could easily have misread P’s ni as m, or he may have emended, in reaction to the un-Welsh niei-, perhaps influenced by the pl. adj. meinion. 74 Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii has deveillon (first 6 letters underlined) which has no MS support and is not in his Dictionarium; he was probably influenced by meinon in the next line. 75 For mall ‘evil’ see GPC s.v. mall1; for dy- see WG 266–67. (The discussion by Ifor Williams, ‘mall’, B., 3 (1926–28), 56, concerns a poem in which mall is an uncertain reading; cf. Selections from the Dafydd ap Gwilym Apocrypha, ed. Fulton, no. 17.4.) A word dyfall in CA line 1323 is derived from mall in G. 411, but is emended in CA 359 and in Jacobs, Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, no. X.2 and p. 98 s.v. diwall ‘contented’. Possibly adfeilliog ‘sorrowful, bitter?’ is related (see CA 172–73 and GPC s.v.). 76 Hynafiaethau, p. 33. Cf. Ambrose, Hynafiaethau, p. 9: ‘dan fair [sic] dafeillion’. 77 Compare Urien: CLlH III.20, 22, and 27. 78 See CLlH XI.48b and EWSP 592–93. This seems to have occurred to William Williams, whose text is ‘Dan vain dy feillion Gwaranawg y geiffyl meinon’; he translates ‘Of sweet trefoil in 72 73

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etc. might be connected with a hypothetical *meinon < French mignon, for which the only evidence is the assimilated form neinon in sawr neinon, a dialect word for the plant ‘mignonette, Reseda odorata’.79 That would be difficult to harmonise with the rest of line c, however. An attractive emendation is gefeillion ‘twins’, which could refer to Gwydion’s twin nephews Dylan and Lleu (mentioned in I.9, I.35, III.7, and III.10). Did they erect a cairn over their uncle’s grave? In line b the reading of S seems to have been Dinllen, a clear error for Dinlleu, probably assisted by the similarity of the letters u and n (often very hard to distinguish, for instance in T) and by the fact that the rhyme of the englyn is in -n. W’s carelessly placed u may indicate that S’s n or u was ambiguous, or it may be a suggested emendation. The single l in P (followed by Dr Davies)80 and B probably results from R forgetting to underdot his l.81 There was more than one place called Dinlleu,82 but the only one with a morfa ‘sea-plain’ is (Dinas) Dinlle, the prominent coastal hillfort in Arfon (SH 4356),83 where the ‘sea-plain’ to the north of the fort is still called Morfa Dinlle. This name is attested as Morua Dinlleu in the bounds of Rhedynog-felen in the 1332 inspeximus of the Aberconwy charter (allegedly of 1199, but probably drawn up c. 1283).84 In the light of what is known of Gwydion there can be no doubt that this is the site of his supposed grave, though it seems impossible to identify it with any remaining antiquity on the Morfa (see below). Gwydion plays a prominent role in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, in conjunction with his uncle Math, brother and sister Gilfaethwy and Aranrhod, and nephews Dylan and Lleu, and like them he is associated with places in Arfon.85 Both in the Four Branches and in the early poetry he is represented as a magician, two poems coupling him with Lleu as such.86 Unfortunately no source, apart from this stanza, mentions his death or grave. In the Four Branches his activities are entirely in or near Arfon, with the exception of the story of his circuitous journey Dinlle Marsh; and that Is good to make poor slender horses fat’ (‘Survey of the Ancient and Present State of the County of Caernarvon by William Williams of Llandygái, V’, ed. Jones, pp. 149–51 (cf. Fenton, Tours, p. 324, ‘from Williams’s MS’)). Similarly, Edward Jones, Bardic Museum, p. 10, translates dan faen dyfeillion / Garanawc y Gerifyl meinnon as ‘… under stones / Enveloped with trefoils: lateral pillars / Support his fine-formed limbs!’. 79 Ceinwen H. Thomas, Tafodiaith Nantgarw, 2 vols (Cardiff, 1993), II, 598 and 705; GPC s.v. sawr. For the phonetics cf. Eignon ~ Einion (ELlSG 59; AMR s. *Einion*; GPC s.v. eingion). 80 Above, p. 273 n. 3. 81 Cf. above, p. 277. 82 ‘Dinlle[u] Vreconn’ in CLlH XI.81 (?) (cf. Phillimore, ‘Additional Notes’, p. 44, and EWSP 603); Dinhunlle (SJ 3142) in Den. (Dynnlle, etc. 1315); (Dinas) Dinlle in Crn. (Dinthle 1352 – note also Dynlleu 1303–4, Waters, ‘Account of the Sheriff’, p. 145). See Richards, ‘Some Welsh Place-Names Containing Elements which are Found in Continental Celtic’, pp. 373–74 and 384–85; PKM 278; also AMR s. *dinlleu* and *dinlle*. See I.35 above on the etymology. 83 Inv. Crn. II 189–90, no. 1211 and pl. 3. New excavations are now in progress (2022). 84 References at I.7 above; cf. PKM 278 and G. 359 (these last use an inferior copy). In the margin of his copy of the stanza Hugh Maurice (1796) notes: ‘Morva Dinlle | Meinon’ (Llanstephan 193, 150r). It is not clear whether the latter name meant anything to him. For a photograph of Morfa Dinlle see EBSG 55. 85 For Aranrhod, Dylan, and Lleu see commentaries on I.4 and 35; Hughes, Math, pp. xli–lxxxv. 86 There is no evidence that he is a euhemerised god, however, despite O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, p. 526. For references to Gwydion see G. 387 (s. Dôn) and 729; MvM 56–57 and 197–207; TYP4 392–94; Hughes, Math, pp. lvi–lxvii.

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to and from Dyfed, and significantly it is he who brings up Lleu at Dinas Dinllef,87 so his connection with Dinlleu is at least as old as the Four Branches. An older reference (controversially dated by Ifor Williams to perhaps as early as the second half of the ninth century)88 may be contained in a dialogue in the Black Book in which Taliesin says: Ban deuaw o caer seon o imlat ac itewon. it aw caer lev a gwidion.89 I come from Caer Seon, from fighting with Jews. I go to the fortress of Lleu and Gwydion.

The first caer may be the hillfort Caer Seion on Conway Mountain in Arllechwedd (SH 7577)90 and the second is probably Dinas Dinlle. Apart from the late tradition which calls the Milky Way ‘Caer Wydion’,91 tradition outside the Four Branches seems to confine Gwydion to north-western Gwynedd – in so far as one can tell, for references to ‘gwlad Wydion’, ‘tir mab Dôn’, etc. tend to be geographically vague.92 89 90

PKM 81; M 66. Chwedl Taliesin (Cardiff, 1957), p. 24. For various views see Falileyev, ‘Why Jews?’. LlDC no. 36.13–15. See BWP 179 and n. 9; LPBT 345–46; Falileyev, ‘Why Jews?’, p. 110; WaB 666–67 (differently Roberts, ‘Rhai o Gerddi Ymddiddan Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin’, pp. 319–22). It has been suggested that the reference to Jews derives from a confusion between Seon and Zion (Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 272; BBC xvi–xviii; MvM 56); but the Christian prophetic role for Taliesin implied by the assertion in Wace’s Brut (1155) that Taliesin prophesied the birth of Christ would fit in with such a contest (LPBT 13, 14, 173 and 238–39). 91 This was evidently the source of the late euhemerisation of Gwydion as an ‘astronomer’. For references see above, p. 287 n. 86, and CR 140 and 231; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 77; and Falileyev, ‘Why Jews?’, p. 115. 92 For example, the line ‘Pan doeth Aedon o wlat Wytyon Seon tewdor’ in ‘Echrys Ynys’ (BWP 173), which can be construed either as ‘when Aeddon came from Gwydion’s land, the fortress of Seon’ (so BWP 177) or ‘… from Gwydion’s land to the fortress of Seon’ (accusative of destination), so that it is unclear whether gwlad Wydion includes Caer Seon or not. Similar problem arises with Iorwerth Beli’s lines ‘Pan aeth Maelgwn hir o dir mab Dôn – duedd / I wledd gwalch gorsedd hyd Gaer Seion’ (Gwaith Gruffudd ap Dafydd ap Tudur, Gwilym Ddu o Arfon, Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr ac Iorwerth Beli, ed. Costigan et al., no. 15.29–30). One early manuscript has dir (accusative of destination?) and a variant version (see on I.7 above) is Pan aeth Gwallawc (sic) hir y dir mab Don. A rather similar line commences a pseudo-Taliesin poem, printed from Edward Jones’s manuscript, NLW 37 (c. 1787), by Roberts, ‘Rhai o Gerddi Ymddiddan Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin’, p. 321 n. 5: ‘Pan aeth Caswallawn hir o dir mab donn’ (see MALDWYN for earlier manuscripts, to which add NLW 5262 (Robert Vaughan), which has i dir mab don). NLW 37 has i dir in the Iorwerth Beli poem. The two poems tended to influence each other. In BL Add. 14867 William Morris has i dir in the Iorwerth Beli poem, following NLW 37, and at first wrote o dir in the Taliesin poem, before changing i to o. According to Lewis Morris, who quotes the pseudo-Taliesin text as ‘i dir mab Don’, Arfon is meant (CR 140). Marginal notes in NLW 37 and BL Add. 14867 refer to the cywydd to the Owl (see below) and place Caer Seion near Conwy (although NLW 37 adds: ‘Qu. gerllaw Caernarvon’). Rhys, who thought Caer Seion was Segontium, took Iorwerth Beli’s poem to concern a crossing of the Menai, so that tir mab Dôn meant Anglesey (Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, pp. 271–72), but Ifor Williams preferred the Conwy (PKM 193; cf. CR 393–94). On ‘gwlad Gwydion’ cf. Gwaith Gronw Gyriog, Iorwerth ab y Cyriog, Mab Clochyddyn, Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch ac Ithel Ddu, ed. Ifans et al., p. 135; William Mahon, ‘A Note on the Four Bare-Headed Women in “Echrys Ynys”’, in Celts, Gaels, and Britons, ed. Rodway et al., pp. 131–37 (p. 131). 87 88

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There are two references to stories about him set only slightly outside Arfon: a poem in the Book of Taliesin refers to him fighting a battle in Nant Ffrancon, which is either the place of this name in Arllechwedd (in Llandygái, Crn., SH 6461) or the less well-known one in Llŷn (in Buan, Crn., SH 2936, near Carn Fadrun),93 and the pseudo-Dafydd ap Gwilym cywydd to the owl places Gwydion’s enchanting of Blodeuwedd on the banks of the Conwy, probably near its source, Llyn Conwy, Penmachno (SH 7746), which is also in Arllechwedd.94 Gwydion is linked with Arfon in some other sources. Some manuscripts of Bonedd y Saint from the late fifteenth century onwards extend the genealogy of ‘Padric m. Aluryt m. Goronwy o Waredawc yn Arvon’ with ‘m. Gwdion m. Don’.95 As Gwaredog or Gwredog (SH 5059) is only about five miles ENE of Dinas Dinlle this seems significant.96 The heading of the section of the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies (Bonedd yr Arwyr) in which Gwydion appears is also significant: ‘Plant Don o Arvon’.97 Gwydion is clearly commemorated in the farm-name ‘Bryn Gwdion’ (SH 4453), 2 miles south of Dinas Dinlle, unless, of course, he himself was originally invented from the name of that hill.98 Peter Bailey Williams refers to this farmname in a note to his 1818 translation of Englynion y Beddau,99 and John Jones, Llanllyfni, thought it might be the site referred to in the englyn.100 That is improbable, however, for although morfa seems to have been applied to inland as well as coastal locations from an early date, it always refers to ‘wet, marshy land, moor, fen, etc.’101 which does not suit Bryn Gwdion; moreover there is no evidence that the area so far south was ever called Morfa Dinlleu. The same objection may be made to the nineteenth-century tradition reported by W. Wynn Williams (mentioned above in connection with the grave of Gwanwyn in III.2) that the Maen Llwyd marked the grave of Gwydion.102 Although the farm-name Bryn Gwdion ELlSG 70; LPBT no. 10.28 and n. MvM 258; Hughes, Math, p. lxxxix. For Arllechwedd see WATU 238. For a suggestion that a farm-name Caer Loda (SH 4354), south of Dinas Dinlle derives from blodau, referring to Blodeuwedd, see PKM 292 (cf. CF I 207 and HEALlE 89–91). 95 EWGT 58 and 63 (ByS §§28 and 55). ‘Lou hen map Guidgen’ in the Harley Genealogies (ibid., p. 11) may refer to Lleu and Gwydion, though Gwyddien is a distinct name. This genealogy (HG §16) has not been localised. 96 See Wade-Evans, ‘Beuno Sant’, p. 334; Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 66–70; CR 216 (cf. 228); G. 621; CA 320. 97 EWGT 90; MWG 360. Lewys Môn’s reference to ‘tir Dôn’ (GLM no. II.76) in a predominantly Arfon context (cf. above n. 58) seems to reflect a similar attitude to Dôn. Note also the reply to Lhwyd’s Parochial Queries (1696) which associated Caer ‘Anrhad’ (in Arfon) with a son of Dôn (quoted at I.4 above). 98 This is the spoken form. See MvM 56 n. 10, and PKM 260, also Andrew Breeze, ‘The Bret Glascurion and Chaucer’s House of Fame’, RES, 45 (1994), 63–69. Cf. Gwdion in MS N. The 1838 O.S. one-inch map gives ‘Bryn Gwydion’, Eben Fardd has ‘Brynygwydion’ in 1837 (Detholion o Ddyddiadur Eben Fardd, ed. Millward, p. 49) and ‘Bryn y Gwydion’ on his Clynnog map (NLW Minor Deposit 151), and Hugh Derfel Hughes reported to John Rhys that Gwydion ab Dôn was said to have dwelt there, ‘[B]ryn Gwdion lle dywedir i Wydion ab Dôn fod yn trigiannu’ (NLW, John Rhys Papers, A1/1/12, letter 25 March 1881). AMR cites Bryngwdion in 1668. For two examples of ‘Bryn Gwdyn’, which are probably unconnected with the name Gwydion, see ELlSG 123. 99 ‘There is a farm called Brynn Gwdion not far from Clynnog’. See above, pp. 93–4. 100 ‘Cilmyn’, ‘The Grave of Gwallawg’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1853), 74. 101 See PNDPH 344. 102 See above, p. 285. 93 94

289

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

and this late tradition do not fix the site of the grave mentioned in III.3, they do testify to a continuity of interest in Gwydion in the area. Line c is the most problematic. Thomas Jones, and before him Peter Bailey Williams, did not venture a translation. Lloyd-Jones was surely right, however, to recognise Garanawc as a personal name, for many other englynion penfyr in Series III include a second hero in the third line.103 The only notable Garannawg (or Carannawg), apart from the saint Carannawg, who cannot be meant in this context, is Garannawg Glewddigar ap Cynwas.104 His epithet ‘bold and fierce’105 suggests that he was a traditional hero. The references to Garannawg by the poets occur in Marwnad Teulu Owain Gwynedd, where Cynddelw praises a certain Goronwy,106 and in a poem by Gruffudd ap Maredudd for Goronwy Fychan ap Tudur of Penmynydd in Anglesey (d. 1382).107 (Only in the latter is the epithet glew|digar included). These allusions suggest that Garannawg Glewddigar was a Gwynedd hero. The genealogies confirm this on the whole. Some versions of the pedigree of Gwyddno Garanhir, the legendary ruler of the submerged kingdom of ‘Maes Gwyddno’, which was variously localised off the coasts of Cardiganshire and Caernarfonshire,108 make Gwyddno the son of Garannawg Glewddigar, or of his son Geraint.109 Earlier and probably more archaic pedigrees make Garannawg the great-grandfather of Braint Hir ap Nefydd (ap Geraint ap Garannawg Glewddigar ap Cynwas ap Rhychwyn Farfawg of Bodrychwyn in Rhos), founder of one of the Fifteen Tribes of Gwynedd.110 As discussed earlier in connection with I.56, it is quite likely this Braint Hir is the Braint whose grave ‘between the Llyfni and its tributaries’ is recorded in I.56, a stanza similar in diction to III.2 above. This suggests that Garannawg Glewddigar, Braint’s great-grandfather according to the genealogies, may be connected with Arfon, like III.2, as does the coupling of Garannawg’s grave with that of Gwydion on Morfa Dinlle. This encourages one to look for the grave of Garannawg in or around Arfon. Judging by the readings of W, N, and T the reading of S was y geiffyl, but R (followed by P, B, and Dr Davies) altered the y to ei, the late ‘learned’ form of the pronoun y, influenced by Latin eius.111 As the y comes before a g- it can equally well represent the preposition ‘in’ followed by the nasal mutation, written according to the ‘internal system’ as elsewhere in Series III.112 Geiffyl is meaningless. Since there are other

G. 111. WCD 104 and 269. 105 EWGT 226 gives ‘brave and forsaken’, but cf. G. and GPC s.v. digar. Owing to the ambiguity of d it is not always clear if glewddigar or glew digar ‘angry warrior’ is meant. For glew ðigar note the line aergleðyf glew ðigar quoted G. 111 and 345. 106 CBT IV 5.92. 107 Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd, I, ed. Lewis, no. 5.49 and 122 (R 1324.16–17 [= 1212.23] and 1325.29). On Goronwy Fychan see Roberts, Aspects of Welsh History, pp. 198–201. 108 See above, on I.23, p. 169 n. 287. 109 PP1 §9 (with note on p. 128). 110 EWGT 119 (cf. 65); PP1 §12; and MWG 389. The genealogy of Braint Hir is traced back to Cunedda in Par. I 11–12. 111 WG 7. 112 The orthography of the nasal mutation alternates between two systems: 3 y Geiffyl, 9 yngorthir, 13 ī gwarthaf, 15a ynglan, 15c y gawr, 16 y gorthir. However, it is uncertain how far in the transmission of Series III this confusion goes back, in view of Salesbury’s own inconsistency in 103 104

290

Series III

examples of confusion over the symbols for [f] and [v],113 such as goffri for gofri in III.2 above, Lloyd-Jones’s suggestion, geif(y)l, dual of gaf(y)l, ‘fork, groin, lap, nook’ is plausible.114 In topography, gafl (pl. gaflau) is used in two ways:115 (1) It may apply to a watercourse, as in OW ythr auil Ogmor .i. bifurgatione illius fluuii ‘between the fork of the river Ogmore’ and OB morgablou ‘estuaries’ (: OIr muirgobuil ‘sea-inlet’, MW morawl < *morafl ‘sea-inlet, estuary’). In this case, assuming that mein(i)on, plural of main, follows, Garannawg’s grave is ‘in two narrow forks, in two slender inlets’, presumably on the seashore – perhaps on or near Morfa Dinlle. (2) The dual geifl may apply to the forks between two mountain peaks, in which case mein(i)on would presumably mean ‘narrow’ or ‘pointed, sharp’. It is generally agreed that this old dual survives only in Yr Eifl (SH 3645), the name of a threepeaked mountain between Arfon and Llŷn, named from its ‘two forks’.116 This seems a promising site for Garannawg’s grave, since it is only 8 miles down the coast from Dinas Dinlle and closer still to the site of Braint’s grave by the river Llyfni in III.2. It is a natural heroic setting: the scene of legends concerning Vortigern117 and the site of Tre’r Ceiri (or Tre’r Ceuri), ‘the town of the giants’, a truly gigantic Iron Age hillfort, incorporating a Bronze Age burial cairn (SH 373446),118 one of the candidates to be Caer Dathyl, the ‘fixed abode’ of Math in the Four Branches.119 Two objections to understanding *ygeifyl meinon as ‘in (the) pointed forks’ are that an adjective following a dual should be lenited120 and that Yr Eifl otherwise always has the definite article. A way round both objections is to take the following word to be a dependent proper name: ‘(the grave of) Garannawg in Yr Eifl of M.’.121 No proper name is now attached to Yr Eifl, but this may not always have been so; compare the case of Bwlch Gwrtheyrn in Yr Eifl, now called Y Bwlch, where the heroic proper name was dropped after the seventeenth century.122 *Garanawc yGeifyl Meinon ‘Garanawg in Meinon’s Forks’ is a possibility, since Meinon is an attested personal name.123 this matter – cf. T. Arwyn Watkins, ‘Dulliau Orgraffyddol Cymraeg Canol o Ddynodi’r Treiglad Trwynol’, B., 23 (1968–70), 7–13 (p. 13). 113 See above, p. 16. 114 G. 518. Note that Yr Eifl is spelled [y]r Eiffyl in the early-sixteenth-century ‘Disgyniad Pendefigaeth’, ed. Bartrum, p. 258 (quoted below in the commentary on III.15); cf. CR 157. 115 See references in Sims-Williams, ‘Welsh Yr Eifl’. 116 First proposed in 1806, ‘there being three peaks and the hollows between them are the Eifles or the openings’ (‘Survey of the Ancient and Present State of the County of Caernarvon by William Williams of Llandygái, V’, ed. Jones, p. 156). ‘The Rival(s)’ is an English rationalisation. See Sims-Williams, ‘Welsh Yr Eifl’. 117 See above on I.40. 118 See Inv. Crn. II 101–3, no. 1056, and pls 2 and 4; Coflein and Archwilio s. Tre[’]r Ceiri (with photographs). On the form of the name see CF II 280 n. 1; WG 106; PKM 251. 119 See references and discussion in Dafydd Glyn Jones, Y Bedwaredd Gainc (n.p., 1988), pp. 15– 19, and Hughes, Math, pp. 29–30. 120 WG 195; ELlSG 74; ELl 29. 121 Cf. GMW 25, §28 (d). 122 See above on I.40. 123 A monk Gorgonius (Goronwy) filius Meinon attests an original Ystrad Marchell charter in 1190/1 (Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. Thomas, p. 52 and no. 14). It is presumably a

291

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

No legendary Meinon is known, however. A conceivable emendation is *Garanawc yGeifyl Meirion ‘Garanawg in Meirion’s Forks’. Strictly speaking Meirion < Marianus should rhyme in -awn rather than -on, but the poets were already rhyming it in -on before 1240.124 The name Meirion occurs elsewhere as the name of a giant slayer, in connection with main Meirion, the stones that marked the grave of Beli ap Benlli Gawr (see above on I.73). Another possibility is Meirion Goch of Llŷn, a ‘tribal patriarch’, who was perhaps a character in stories, like other ‘tribal patriarchs’.125 This Meirion Goch is singled out by the author of the Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan as one of the traitors who betrayed Gruffudd in 1075 at the battle of Bron yr Erw (SH 43374 48439), though he had previously given their men sanctuary in Clynnog nearby, and as the man who later betrayed him to the Earl of Chester.126 His name might thus have become associated with the area of Yr Eifl. If Meinon (or *Meirion) is correct, line c has a regular 7 syllables, since Geifyl scans as one syllable.127 Translation The grave of Gwydion ap Dôn (is) on Morfa Dinlle Under twins’(?) stones Garannog (is) on Meinon’s (or Meirion’s) Eifl (or in two sharp forks or two slender inlets) (?).

III.4 Credig W

Neut am ddinau* cwm anwaith vuddic wr Klot Iôr waith unddic arwynawl+ gedawl gredic.

*dot over u 2 dots under last 2 minims of 1st w. +

N

Neût amddinaû kwm am waith vûddic Wr klot ior waith vûddic* Arwynawl gedawl gredic

*This line is indented (the only one in N to be indented).

coincidence that Meinon appears as a corruption of Memnon in some copies of Ystorya Dared, e.g. BL Cotton Cleopatra B.v iii, 235r, and NLW 7006D, p. 23. 124 CBT VI 19.31 (MS miryon); cf. Gwaith y Nant, ed. Huw Meirion Edwards (Aberystwyth, 2013), no. 7.18 (MSS mirion); Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, II, ed. A. Cynfael Lake (Aberystwyth, 2004), no. 81.61. The spelling Meiryon, Meirion appears in prose from the mid-fourteenth century (see Rhyddiaith 1300–1425 s.n. and WG 95). Cf. diwod in LlDC no. 12.73, quoted by Anwyl, review of WG, p. 205. Cf. EWGP 72 and references. 125 For the available material on him see EWGT 156–57 and PP1 136. The family were also associated with Eifionydd: MWG 310 n. 147. 126 Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, §§10, 12, 14, and 19 = HGK 7, 8, 10, and 16–17 (with note on p. 79). For the battle of Bron yr Erw see HW II 380 n. 75 and 383. 127 Note the colloquial ‘Yr Eil’ (LHEB 419–20).

292

Series III T

Neût am dhinaû cwm am waith vûdhic wr clot iôr waith vudhic Arwynawl gedawl gredic

P

Nevt amddiav cwm am waith vvddic wr clot ior waith vuddic, arwynawl gedawl gredic

B

Neut amḍinau cum am ụaith Vuḍic

77

Wr clot ior ụaith Vuḍic Aruynaul gedaul gredic.

Index

–

Ifor Williams, printing III.4–8 from Peniarth 98ii in his Canu Llywarch Hen (CLlH XII.6–10), remarked that Dr Davies’s text was poor and that definite emendation was impossible.128 Here the space between am and ddinau in W is very slight (so too in 5c and 6c below), so in view of the readings of R (as copied in P and B) and N it is possible that S read amddinau. P’s amddiav must be a mistake, perhaps influenced by diau, ‘days’ or diau ‘doubtless’. In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies at first copied P as am ddiau (underlining ddi – usually an indication of his doubts about the correct reading) but later added ddinau above the second word in different ink. This addition could have been made from another copy; but it may have been an emendation inspired by am dineu rhych bych dros odreon in III.6c, or by the only other known parallel, one known to him, namely a line by Cynddelw in the Hendregadredd Manuscript: Oet amdineu creu cleu clywitor, ‘Flowing was blood, swiftly people hear about it’.129 The meaning of line a seems therefore to be ‘Flowing is a valley about a battle-victorious one’. This is unlikely to be correct, however, since waith vuddic is also the rhyme word in line b.130 Since this seems to be an englyn penfyr there is no need for line a to rhyme with b and c, so most likely anwaith131 vuddic/am waith vuddic is an anticipation of line b and has replaced the original ending of line a, which may have included a reference to a grave, which is otherwise strangely missing. If any trace of a topographical reference survives in line a, it may be the word cwm ‘valley’. There are also several places called plain Cwm,132 and one which would fit in with the location of the preceding and following stanzas is the township of Cwm (SH 435456) CLlH 243. CBT IV 2.20 (there is a slight space between am and dineu (34v), and a definite one in Dr Davies’s copy in BL Add. 14869, 42v). In GPC s.v. amddinau and in the glossary to CBT IV, amdineu is taken as an adjective related to dinau, ‘to pour, flow; cause to flow’. G. 22 and 361 also argues that amdineu should be taken as a compound, but lists it as a transitive verbal noun. On the etymology of dineu see PKM 296–97 and DGVB I 264. 130 A problem noted by G. 652. 131 W’s anwaith, ‘wickedness, misdeed’, does not seem to lead to good sense. 132 WATU 51–52; AMR s.n.; O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 63–4. 128 129

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

in Clynnog, which was a grange of Aberconwy Abbey.133 Equally well, however, the line may originally have referred to a Cwm X. Line b is also problematic. The first word, wr, seems to be lenited following the adjective at the end of line a; Dr Davies restores gwr in his copy of P in Peniarth 98ii. This would imply taking his gwr clod as ‘man of fame’, which is difficult as clot and ior naturally go together, as in Taliesin’s clot ior agor gwlat ‘famous lord, anchor of the land’.134 The last two words of line b probably stand for MW gweithvudic, ‘victorious in battle’, a common bardic epithet. The lenition of the g is odd, and may be due to dittography from line a. Gweithfuddig frequently rhymes with gwledig, which suggests that this may have been the original reading in line a, e.g. ‘Neut amdineu cwm am ued gwledic’, etc. Thomas Jones suggests emending line c to Arwynawl kedawl Kredig ‘terrible, bountiful was Credig’. The lenition of the name is not unparalleled, however (cf. Goreu gwr Garanmael),135 and arwynawl and cedawl (words collocated elsewhere)136 perhaps form a compound adjective. Credig is presumably a syncopated form of Ceredig or *Caredig,137 unless an error, as Lloyd-Jones suggests, for Cedig.138 It is quite uncertain who is meant since there are references to more than one Ceredig and more than one Cedig.139 Translation Flowing is a valley about a battle-victorious man (?) famous lord, victorious in battle, terrible, generous (was) Credig.

III.5 Llofan Llaw Estrawn, at ?*Pennardd, Crn. W

Gwedy Seirch a meirch crychrawn a gwawr a gwewyr uniawn

Hays, History of the Abbey of Aberconway, pp. 14, 108, 166, and 189; Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, pp. 134–37; Pryce, Acts, no. 218, pp. 348 and 353. On the suggestion that archaeological remains of the Cwm grange survive (Inv. Crn. II 53) cf. review of Inv. Crn. by Glyn Roberts, WHR, Special Number: The Welsh Laws (1963), 75–79 (p. 79). There is a hill fort (Pen-y-gaer, SH 4245) and an earthwork (Clawdd Seri) in Cwm (Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 158). Could ddinau be interpreted as dinau, pl. of din, ‘fort, stronghold, etc’? 134 PT III.14. 135 CLlH XI.92 (here gwr is unlenited, following a superlative). 136 R 579.38 (Cyfoesi); CBT V 11.28 and 13.9. 137 On the possibility of a Welsh personal name Caredig see LHEB 613–14 (cf. David N. Parsons, ‘British Caratīcos, Old English Cerdic’, CMCS, 33 (Summer 1997), 1–8), and for examples see AMR s. *Caredig* and *Garedig*. AMR gives spellings such as Credik from 1324 onwards. 138 G. 121. 139 G. 121 and 135; WCD 115 and 122–25. There is also the unknown Ceredig, eponym of the Brynn Keredic mentioned by Prydydd y Moch (CBT V 1.25 and 10.93), which may be Bryn Caredig near Rhuthun in Denbighshire (Caredig may be a reconstruction from the attested syncopated Credik (1324)). The personal name Ceredig is rare in place-names according to DP IV 441, which cites also Onnenkeredic in a Whitland charter and Nant Garedig, Crm. But see AMR s. *Ceredig*, *Caredig*, and *Garedig*. 133

294

Series III am dinon rythych dros odreon pen hardd llonan llaw estrawn. N

Gwedy Seirch a meirch* crychrawn A gwawr a gwewyr vniawn Amdinon rythych dros odreon Pen hardd llonan llaw estrawn

*Letter or short word deleted between meirch and crychrawn. T

Gwedy seirch a meirch crychrawn a gwawr a gwewyr vniawn Amdinon rythych dros odreon pen hardh Lhonan lhaw estron.

P

Gwedy* seirch a meirch crychrawn a gwawr a gwewyr vniawn amdinon rythych dros odreon pen hardd llovan+ llaw estrawn

*But gwedy is the catchword on the previous page. +v altered from n. B

Guedy seirch a meirch cochraụn

78

A gụaụr a gụeụyr uniaụn Amdinon Rythyrch dros Odreon Pen harḍ Ḷonan* ḷaụ Estraụn.

*-n- underdotted and u written above. Index

col. 3 Λovan λau Estron. 77 col. 4 Ρıδırχ ab ….. – 77

III.6 is a variant of this stanza, and has some better readings. Llofan appears in III.6– 8, with his name correctly spelt; here the misreading llonan for llouan seems to have been present in S. In B rythych is misspelt and mistaken for a personal name in the index. The poet draws on a common elegiac topos which opens with ‘gwedy …’.140 In line b restoration of the earlier form gwaewawr, as in 6b, gives internal rhyme.141 Probably gwawr, ‘dawn’, should be emended to gawr, as in 6b, as Thomas Jones suggests. The error would be helped by the following gw- and by the common Cf. I.14–15; CLlH XI.71–72; CC no. 18.15–16. For gwedy gawr (III.6b) cf. CA line 71 (elwch); LlDC no. 21.9 (gaur). 141 BBCSG 13 n. 4, following CLlH 244 and G. 603. Cf. GMW 28–29; G. 603. 140

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

association between spears and dawn in Welsh poetry.142 III.5c and its variant III.6c present a serious problem. They are too long, are absent from the otherwise similar III.7–8, and do not maintain the end rhyme.143 Perhaps the line was originally set down in the margin as a gloss on the rare word amdineu in III.4 above and was subsequently taken to be part of the poem?144 In III.6c the reading is am dineu rych bych dros odreon or similar, evidently the same line with scribal confusion of eu/on, c/t and b/h.145 Rhych is a furrow and godreon are the skirts of a hill (or a garment, etc.). Do we have one of those apparently irrelevant lines of natural description common in the englyn poetry, such as gorwlychyd kafod ka[i]n rrych ‘a shower wets a fair furrow’?146 III.6c could be translated ‘flowing (is) a little furrow over the skirts of the hill’, or since bych ‘little’ is not attested uncompounded,147 ‘flowing (is) an ox’s furrow …’, regarding the b- as a miscopying of a mistaken repetition of the -h of ych, ‘ox’; compare rythych in III.5c which could be a miscopying of *rych ych. Alternatively ‘ych dros odreon’ could be a separate nature-tag ‘the ox (goes) over the skirts of the hill’, and the first half of the line could be taken as a corruption of another one, such as *aradir en rych ‘the plough (is) in the furrow’ (compare ereidir in rich, ich iguet ‘ploughs in the furrow, ox in the yoke’ in the Black Book).148 The only way of integrating the line into the englyn would be to suppose that it is an englyn cyrch149 with proest between odreon and llovan in line d, and to reduce line c to 8 or 7 syllables, for example (am) dineu rych dros odreon ‘a furrow flows over (his) skirts’, referring to the sorry state of Llofan, now his finery is no more. In this stanza, llonan llaw estrawn is named, in the next llovan llaw ygyn, and in both of 7 and 8 llovan llaw ddivo. The only one of these Llofans who is known elsewhere is the third. His epithet varies in medieval texts between llaw ddifo, as here, which may mean ‘of the destructive hand’, and llaw ddifro, ‘of the alien hand’ or ‘of the outlaw’s hand’.150 Llofan Llaw Ddifo/Ddifro is named in the Triad of the Cf. PT X.6 and n.; CLlH I.46 and n.; cf. LPBT no. 14.55 and n. and Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, p. 129. CLlH 244 also emends gwawr. 143 Even if a rhyme in -awn/-on were allowed in III.5 (cf. above on III.3), -on cannot rhyme with -yn in III.6. But see below for the possibility of proest between -on and -an. 144 See above, pp. 50 and 293. Cf. the use of lines from early poems to gloss Amra Coluimb Chille (see Jacopo Bisagni, Amra Coluimb Chille: A Critical Edition (Dublin 2019), p. 15). The confusion between b and h suggests that the line had been part of the poem long before Salesbury’s time. See above, p. 36 and n. 79. 145 Cf. above, p. 36. 146 ‘Trystan ac Esyllt’, ed. Ifor Williams, B., 5 (1929–31), 115–29 (pp. 119 and 124, §21b); cf. CLlH I.6a, 9a, 20a, 21a, and VI.19bc; EWGP I.2a, 21c, 22b, etc. 147 GPC s.v.; ELl 46; L&P, Supplement, p. 8; Ifor Williams, ‘Rhai Enwau Lleoedd yn Ninbych’, JWBS, 5.5 (1941), 249–61 (pp. 258–60). 148 LlDC no. 8.3. Cf. aradyr yn rych, ych yg gweith in Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, ed. Jacobs, no. V.9b. 149 Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, pp. 328–29. 150 See J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘Llofan Llaw Ddifro’, B., 21 (1964–66), 29–30, who suggests that ‘Llaw Ddifro’ is the original epithet and corresponds to the Irish idiom (not an epithet however) lám deoraid ‘outlaw’s hand’ or lám ladrainn ‘robber’s hand’, which signify ‘death’ or ‘destruction’ according to Vernam Hull, ‘Lám déoraid’, ZCP, 18 (1929–30), 70–71, and ‘A Further Note on lám déoraid’, ibid., p. 286. See further Patrick K. Ford, ‘Lám Deoraid Again’, ZCP, 33 (1974), 87–92, who interprets lám deoraid as referring to the status of an outlaw (thus eDIL s. lám II f), and Williams, ‘difod, diw, pyddiw’, p. 218. The name Llofan contains the element llaw, so the llaw epithets are especially appropriate. 142

296

Series III

Three Unfortunate Slaughters as the slayer of Urien, the sixth-century North British ruler.151 Although the Historia Brittonum does not mention Llofan when telling how Urien ‘was assassinated on the instigation of Morgant (Morcante destinante), from jealousy’, while he was besieging the English in Metgaud (Lindisfarne) with his confederates, including Morgant, this is not necessarily inconsistent with Englynion y Beddau ‘since Llouan could have been the agent employed by Morcant to perform the deed’.152 The early sequence of elegiac englynion on Urien agrees with the triad in reference to enmity between Llofan and Urien153 and with the Historia in localising the event, assuming the englynions’ Aber Lleu is the same as the river Low opposite Lindisfarne.154 As III.7 and 8 below place Llofan Llaw Ddifo’s grave on the shore of the Menai, presumably the famous straits between Anglesey and Caernarfonshire rather than one of the three insignificant streams in Wales called Menai,155 their author must have known a version of the story relocalised in Wales, or a version which ended with Llofan escaping south to Wales.156 The corruption or emendation of Llovan to Llavan in III.5d in late manuscripts, beginning with Moses Williams’s llawan (with v written above the w) in Llanstephan 18, p. 21, was perhaps suggested by the name of Traeth Lafan, the sands near Menai (east of Bangor) which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century antiquarians associated with the legend of Llys Helig.157 There are two possible explanations of the three different epithets given to Llofan here. The first is that we have a triple group of Llofans, like the three Gwenhwyfars of Triad 56, the three Gwyns in Culhwch,158 or the three Elens of the Island of Britain.159 Such a triple group might be explained with reference to the mythological preference for triple divinities, or the folktale motif of the three virtually indistinguishable brothers, or simply the tendency for single characters to multiply in a fluid narrative tradition (compare the multiplicity of Yvains in late medieval romance). The other possible explanation is that the stanzas all refer to the same Llofan, and that his epithet is only varied in accordance with the common practice of iteration with variation, often seen in chains of englynion. The latter is the more likely since iteration is clearly present in III.5 and 6. It is also supported by the reasons already advanced for thinking that these Llofan stanzas originally stood together with those on Llwch Llaw Engyn and Llwyddog (Llaw Ddifo) in a series based on the variation of epithets in llaw.160 The epithet Llaw Estrawn in III.5 looks very much like a variation on the more usual and synonymous Llaw Ddifro, which does not appear in the text of III.7–8 as they stand. The importance of a chieftain’s head in Welsh stories is familiar from the stories of Urien and Bendigeidfran, and such a head might perhaps be called hardd, ‘fair’, TYP4 no. 33. The Peniarth 50 version substitutes Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn for Llofan: see ibid., p. 327. That could explain why Cynon came south to Wales. 152 TYP4 416; HB §63; Sims-Williams, ‘Death of Urien’, p. 43. 153 CLlH III.46. 154 Ibid. III.30–31. See ibid., p. 129, and references in Sims-Williams, ‘Death of Urien’, pp. 38–42. 155 EANC 29–30; ELl 56. 156 On relocalisation see above, p. 4. 157 See North, Sunken Cities, pp. 21, 25, 44, 52, 86–87, and 182; CR 257–58; ELl 55–56; AMR s.n. 158 See TYP4 161–63 and 351; Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, pp. xxxviii, 70, and lines 181–82. 159 Bartrum, ‘Arthuriana’, pp. 243 and 245. 160 Above, on I.32. 151

297

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

in certain circumstances;161 but this explanation will not fit Llofan at all well, whose epithets show that he was regarded as a very different sort of personage. It is much more likely, as Ifor Williams suggested,162 that Pen hardd represents the place-name Pennardd. Misreading nh as nn is easy, and Penhardd is a conceivable spelling of the place-name, paralleled by Penharth in Glamorgan in 1266.163 It may be observed that the gap between the n and the h is very slight in W and T at 5d and 6d (though large in N). If we read *Pennardd (or *ym Pennardd making a permissible 8 syllables) and omit the preceding line, III.5 and 6 are an exact counterpart to I.14: Guydi gurum a choch a chein. A. goruytaur maur minrein. in llan Helet bet. Owein.164

For the omission of a preposition, compare ‘Bet Dilan Llan Bevno’ (I.4). There are a number of places called Pennardd or Penn(i)arth (a distinct name, liable to be confused with Pennardd),165 but none are near Menai, where III.7–8 place Llofan’s grave.166 Ifor Williams suggested Pennarth (SH 4350) to the north of Clynnog, which was originally a Pennardd167 and has a suitable megalithic chambered tomb, half a mile from the sea (SH 4299 5107); but this seems too far down the coast from Menai and is 90 ft above sea-level, and a Bronze Age cairn, with stone cist, at SH 4267 5107, though slightly closer to the sea is still c. 70 ft above sea level.168 There was formerly, however, a Pennardd on the east side of the Menai according to Aneurin Owen (1841), who misidentified the Pennardd in Arfon mentioned in the Welsh Laws (now generally accepted to be the Pennarth near Clynnog) as ‘the promontory opposite the town of Caernarvon’ and ‘the ground on the west side of the river

Cf. ‘Ysbydawt Urdaul Benn’ in PKM 46–47. CLlH 244. In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies reads Penhardd at 6d, underlining the nh, and Pughe, in his index to Englynion y Beddau in NLW 146, pp. 109–12, has Godreon Penarz (his z = dd). 163 Oliver Padel, ‘The Relations of Penarth (Glamorgan), especially in Cornwall’, in Ar Drywydd Enwau Lleoedd, ed. Bevan, pp. 116–31 (pp. 118 and 123–25). In late Middle Welsh an unetymological /h/ sometimes appears after /n/, as in genhedlaỽc (R 1231.21), kenhetloed (Peniarth 23 (s. xv/xvi) 105r), and genhedylaỽc (Wynnstay 36 (s. xv1) 125ra). See Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘The Spread of “Sandhi h-” in Thirteenth-Century Welsh’, TPS, 108.1 (2010), 41–52 (pp. 49–50), and idem, ‘Sandhi h after Third-Person Pronouns’, Appendix. 164 In CLlH xlviii it is suggested that the stanzas on Llofan formed an original unity with I.14– 16, two of which also open with the Gwedy… formula. Thomas Jones suggests removing I.14 and 15, from his category of formal grave stanzas because their opening Gwedy… is unusual (BBCSG 103); but the criterion is of doubtful validity (see above, p. 160). Stanza I.12 opens correctly with ‘Bet …’, but contains ‘gvydi llauer kywlavan’ as its line b. Moreover, the whole group I.12–16 is bound together by inter-relationships in diction and subject-matter which prohibit one from excising I.14 and 15. See further above, p. 50. 165 In addition to Padel’s study, see DP II 419 and IV 435 and 566–68; ELl 22–23; PKM 293; Ifor Williams, ‘Gogerdd, Gogarth, Gogerddan’, B., 3 (1926–27), 128–31 (p. 129); idem, ‘cyfartal’, B., 10 (1939–41), 36–37 (p. 36); PNDPH 159–60 and 346; Wmffre, Language and Place-Names, p. 323; GPC s.vv. ardd and garth. Cf. Turner, ‘Some Somerset Place-Names’, pp. 115–16. 166 There is a Ben(n)arth near Conwy (SH 7876) (ELISG 112) and there are several Penardd/­ Penarths in Llanystumdwy, Llŷn. 167 CLlH 244. See ELl 23, PKM 260–61 and 290, for references. See also Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 72–73 and 150; GLM 403. 168 These two sites are discussed below in connection with Elidir’s grave in III.15. 161 162

298

Series III

Seiont, opposite the town of Caernarvon’.169 The Ordnance Survey gives no name to the high hill at this point (SH 4762), but Pennardd would be suitable semantically. It is hard to divine any reason apart from fact which could have led antiquarians to assign this name to the promontory;170 it is unlikely to have been deduced from Englynion y Beddau, for all the extant manuscripts have ‘pen hardd’. As it agrees so well with the reference to the Menai it may be accepted as probably authentic. There are no surviving antiquities on the promontory which might be Llofan’s supposed grave. A chambered tomb at Rhos, Llanfaglan (SH 472618), described in the eighteenth century,171 was probably too far inland to be relevant. Moreover, III.7–8 imply that Llofan’s grave was on the shore of the Menai. At such a location it may well have disappeared altogether, like Walwen’s grave in Rhos, Pem., ‘upon the sea shore, fourteen feet in length’ (see I.8). Nothing, for example, except for ‘a deep linear hollow … about 10m long’, is left of a ‘barrow’ containing a Bronze Age urn, found in 1853 ‘about twenty yards from the Menai shore’ at Waterloo Port, Caernarfon (SH 487641).172 This was found when digging for gravel (cf. below, on arro in III.7). Translation After armour and curly-tailed173 horses and the shout of battle and straight (?rigid) spears, a furrow flows over the skirts (of his garment) (?). (In) Pennardd (lies) Llofan of the Alien’s hand.

III.6 Llofan Llaw ?Engyn at ?*Pennardd, Crn. W

Gwedy Seirch a meirch melyn a gawr a gwaewawr gwrthryn am dineu rych bych dros* odreon+ pen hardd llovan llaw Ygyn.

*s over another letter (?r). +a letter after d deleted?

AL II 51 n. and I 105 n., followed by T[homas] Stephens, ‘The Poems of Taliesin No. VII: To Gwallawg’, AC, new ser. 4 (1853), 43–62 (p. 55 n. 1); Stephens’s authority is questioned by John Jones alias ‘Cilmyn’ in his reply, ibid., p. 148. 170 Unlike Owen’s identification of Aber Mewydus, mentioned, suspiciously perhaps, in the same set of footnotes (see commentary on III.15 below). The only reason for an antiquarian identification that I can think of is that somebody might mistakenly deduce from the reference to ‘Maynawr Bennard a Maynawr Coet Alun’ in PKM 72 that Pennardd was near Coed Alun. Coed Alun is on the promontory opposite Caernarfon. It is marked Coed Helen on the O.S. maps, but Coed Alun is ‘the name still in use among the common people’ (Rhys apud Jenkins, Bedd Gelert, p. xiii; similarly Ifor Williams, PKM 262; WATU 46; HEALlE 123–24 and 210; cf. CR 14). Davies, Dictionarium, gives promontorium s. Pennarth/ Pennardd. 171 Richard S. Kelly, ‘The Probable Sites of Some Disappeared Chambered Tombs in Caernarvonshire in the Light of Antiquarian References’, AC, 123 (1974), 175–79 (p. 177). Cf. Archwilio s. Burial Chamber (Possible), Rhos, Llanfaglan. 172 Anon., ‘Discovery of a Sepulchral Urn’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1853), 155; William Owen Stanley, ‘Ancient Interments and Sepulchral Urns Found in Anglesey and North Wales’, AC, 3rd ser. 14 (1868), 217–93 (p. 249); Inv. Crn. II xlvi and xlviii; Archwilio, s. Tumulus and Urn Burial, Waterloo Port, Caernarfon. 173 Wrongly ‘red-tailed’ in B. 169

299

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau N

Gwedy Seirch a meirch melyn A gawr a gwaywawr gwrthryn Amdineû ryc’h bych dros odreon Pen hardd llovan llaw y gyn

T

Gwedy seirch a meirch melyn A gawr* a gwaewawr gwrthryn am dineu rych bych dros odreon pen hardh Lhovan lhaw ygyn.

*a possibly over another letter. P

Gwedy seirch a meirch melyn a gawr a gwaywawr gwrthryn am dinev rych bych dros odreon Penhardd llovan llaw y gyn

B

Guedy seirch a meirch melyn

79

A gaụr a gụayụaụr gụrthrin Am diueu rych bych dros odreon Pen harḍ ḷouan ḷau ygyn

Index

col. 3 Λovan λauygyn – 78

Llofan’s epithet in line d here is probably a false modernisation of egyn (engyn), used here in a pejorative sense like English knave; compare Llaueghin in I.31.174 Translation After armour and light-bay horses and the shout of battle and opposing spears, a furrow flows over the skirts (of his garment) (?). (In) Pennardd (lies) Llofan of the Knave’s hand.

III.7 Llofan Llaw Ddifo by the Menai, Crn. and Dylan at Clynnog, Crn. W

Beddf Llovan llaw Ddivo An arro Venai yna gwna Tontolo Bedd Dylan yn Lhan Veuno.

N

Bedd llovan llaw ddivo Yn arro venai yn y gwna ton tolo

174

See above, p. 185 n. 391.

300

Series III Bedd Dylan yn llan* Veûno *llan inserted above line. T

Bedh lhovan . lhaw ðivo yn arro Venai* yn y gwna toñ tolo Bedh Dylan yn lhann Veûno.+

*a altered to e in different ink? +dylan. in left margin in different ink. P

Bedd Llovan llaw divo yn arro Venai yn y gwna toń tolo bedd Dylan yn llan Veuno

B

Beḍ Ḷ’ouan* ḷaụ diuo

80

Yn arro+ Venai yn y guna ton tolo Beḍ Dylan yn Ḷan Veuno.

*sic +arro underlined; An l. arχ o in right margin. Index

col. 1 Dılan Bd. at Λan Beyno. 5. 80.6.175 col. 3 Λovan λau δyno – 80.

W’s Beddf is an obvious error, probably influenced by beddfa, ‘grave, etc.’, a word first recorded in the seventeenth century according to GPC. Presumably W’s An arro (with a very slight gap) and yna are also mistakes. The exemplar of T may not have shown the lenition of ddivo (like P and B), hence the stroke through the tail of the d, a form not found elsewhere in this poem.176 In B Lhwyd’s suggested emendation to arch (‘coffin’) o is unacceptable. Arro is better interpreted, with Ifor Williams, as an otherwise unrecorded compound of gro ‘gravel, shingle’.177 Thomas Jones translates this as ‘shingle’, Ifor Williams as ‘shore’, and GPC as ‘bank (of river, &c)’. The more general sense ‘shore’ seems preferable. Compare the name of the beach at Clynnog: ‘Y ro wen’.178 Here the shore of the Menai straits is meant, probably the part on the east bank which Aneurin Owen calls Pennardd (see III.5 above). The stanza forms a regular englyn penfyr, and Dr Davies correctly rearranges it in Peniarth 98ii according to modern practice: line a = Bedd …Venai; line b = yn y … tolo; line c = bedd … feuno. From the point of view of sense Dr Davies’s line b could be taken with his line a, following Ifor Williams’s and Thomas Jones’s

6 over an illegible number or letter. Thomas Wiliems does use ð elsewhere. See RMWL I 1049. On his use of the bar to indicate lenition of d in medieval manuscripts see Dafydd Jenkins, ‘The Black Book of Chirk: A Note’, NLWJ, 15 (1967–68), 104–7 (p. 106). 177 CLlH 244. In his index to Englynion y Beddau in NLW 146, pp. 109–12, Pughe already has Gro Menai. 178 CLlH 172. GPC s.vv. arro and gro. 175 176

301

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

punctuation, rather than with line c. But since his lines b and c about Dylan recur elsewhere (I.4 = III.13), with Tydai’s grave instead of Llofan’s in line a, it is clear that line b properly refers to Dylan’s grave, ‘where the wave makes a noise’. I.4 omits the preposition yn in the last line, perhaps correctly. 179

Translation The grave of Llofan of the destructive hand (is) on the shore of Menai. Where the wave makes a noise (is) the grave of Dylan in Llanfeuno (i.e. Clynnog).

III.8 Llofan Llaw Ddifo by the Menai, Crn. W

Bedd Llovan llaw ddino Ynarai o Venai odidog* ai gwypo+ Namyn Duw a mi heno

*2nd d over a deleted g. +odidog ai gwyppo (?) is repeated on the next line and deleted. N

Bedd llonan llaw dmo* Yn arei o Venai odidawc ai gwypo Namyn Dûw a mi heno.

*Marks above, implying diûo, dinô or diûô? T

Bedh lhovan lhaw diûo vn arei o Venei odidawc ai gwypo namyn duw a mi heno.

P

Bedd Llovan llaw Ddivo yn arei o Venai odidawc ai gwypo namyn Duw a mi heno

B

Beḍ Ḷouan ḷau ḍiuo

81

Yn arei* o Venai odidauc ai gụypo Namyn duụ a mi heno.

*arei underlined; An rectius arχ o in right margin. Index

–

This is another englyn penfyr and a doublet of the preceding stanza. Minims in line a gave problems. S may have had ddino or dino in line a, hence T’s û in place of his usual v. In line a arei o or arai o is a clear error for arro, with anticipation of Venei CLlH XII.9; BBCSG 134.

179

302

Series III

or Venai. The -ei of Venei in T may be due to archaisation. In line b -og in W must be a modernisation of -awc, frequently seen in Lhwyd’s Index. In NLW 170, p. 57, Edward Jones has gwyno for gwypo, misreading the open p in W; ‘rare is the person who mourns him’ would make good sense, but emendation is not required. In the right-hand margin of William Morris’s copy (BL Add. 14867, 93v), beside III.8, is a note ‘Gwel. Bet milwr - | NB’. This should perhaps have stood beside III.7, which has a parallel in Series I.4. 180

Translation The grave of Llofan of the destructive hand (is) on the shore of Menai – rare (is the person) who knows it save God and me tonight.

III.9 Panna ap Pyd in Arfon (recte at Winwæd, England) and Cynon (ap Clydno Eidyn) in Caernarfonshire (?) W

Bedd Panna vap Pyt yn gorthir Arvon Dan* i oer weryt Bedd Kynon yn Reon Ryt.

*D altered from d. N

Bedd Panna vap Pyt Yngorthir * Arvon+ dan i oer weryt Bedd Kynon yn Reon rytx

*letter deleted after the g. +Circumflex over the v. xThe three lines of this englyn are bracketed together. T

Bedh panna vap yt yngorthir Arvon dan y oer weryt Bedh Cynon yn Reon ryt.

P

Bedd Panna vap Pyt yngorthir Arvon dan i-oer weryt bet Cynon yn Rheon rhyt

B

Beḍ Panna vap Pyt

82

Yngorthir Aruon dan i oer ueryt Bet Cynon yn Rheon rhyt.

Index

col. 2 Kınodi ab Pyd Bd at the Fd of the River Reon – 81. vide ρýn & Panna. col. 4 Panna vab Pyd bd at Gorthir Arvon.

180

See above, p. 301.

303

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Panna here is a superior reading to Run in the variant, I.10 (as discussed there). T’s vap yt is a clear case of haplography (influenced by yt ‘corn’?). It must be regarded as doubtful whether bet in line c in P and B (from R) is really a survival of a medieval spelling of bedd, as in I.10c, although it could be. R may simply have been influenced by the spelling of Series I in general. This is another englyn penfyr, and is duly rearranged by Dr Davies, as in the case of III.3, 7, and 8 above. The capital D in W may be meant to indicate a similar arrangement. Line b is a syllable short, but this could be easily rectified by reading y dan for dan (cf. III.2b, 3b, and 10a). Line b, dan i oer weryt, appears rather differently in I.10, however: Bet run mab pyd in ergrid avon. in oervel ig gverid. bet kinon in reon rid.

It is possible that dan i oer weryt ‘under its181 cold soil’ is an oral variant of in oervel ig gverid (‘in the cold in the soil’). However, it would also be easy to miscopy the latter as *in oerverid by haplography, leaving a later copyist with the task of filling out the line as best he could. Such a mistake would be easily made in periods when poems were written continuously like prose and a defective line would not stand out. Penda’s grave yngorthir Arvon ‘in the uplands of Arfon’ is unlikely. It seems fanciful to imagine a version of the story that brought Penda to an Arfon grave – for instance, Cadafael rescuing Penda’s body from the battlefield at Winwæd and bringing it back to Gwynedd.182 A scribal corruption of avon to Arvon would have been assisted by the Arfon context of the preceding stanzas of Series III, as would the probable location of Reon Ryt in Arfon (see on I.10 above). Series III’s yngorthir is probably a modification of the less common word ergryd made in order to make sense of Arvon, despite the loss of the optional internal rhyme.183 The analogy of III.16, ‘Y Bedd y gorthir Nanllaû’, may have been a factor. Translation The grave of Panna son of Pyd in the uplands of Arfon [recte ‘… in a river’s horror’] under its (or his) cold soil. The grave of Cynon (is) in Rheon Ford.

III.10 Lleu Llawgyffes beneath the sea W

Bedd Llew llaw gyffes dan achles Môr kyn dyvot i armes* gwr oedd ef gwahoddai Ormes

*Blotting of r makes it look like arnes or ames.

Referring to bedd (m.), or ‘his’ referring to Panna; afon and Arfon are both f. (cf. Guto’r Glyn. net, no. 60.4: Môn a dwy Arfon). Y dan would give 6 syllables. 182 Cf. the story of Urien postulated by Ifor Williams, CLlH 124; I Samuel 31:11–13; etc. 183 This type of internal rhyme is very common in Englynion y Beddau. See Jones, ‘yg kinhen teir cad’. 181

304

Series III N

Bedd Llew llaw gyffes* Dan achles mor kyn dyûot i armes Gwr oedd ef gwahoddai ormes

*Marks are added between Llew llaw gyffes as if to join them together.184 T

Bedh lhew lhaw gyffes dan Achles mor cynn dyfot y Armes gwr oedh ef gwahodhai ormes.

P

Bedd Llew .llawgyffes dan achles môr cyń dyfot i armes gwr oedd ef gwahoddai ormes.

B

Beḍ Ḷeụ ḷaụ gyphes

82*

Dan achles mor cyn dyuot i armes Gur oeḍ ef guahodai+ ormes.

* Apparently a slip for 83 +A deleted letter follows. Index

col. 3 Λeu Λaugıfes185 35. 81.

This stanza may be compared with I.35, also an englyn penfyr, with the same rhyme scheme and exactly the same line a (except for y dan instead of dan): Bet Llev Llaugyfes y dan achles mor yn y bu y gywnes. gur oet hvnnv guir y neb ny rotes.

In III.10c the pronoun ef could be suppressed, just like oet hvnnv in I.35 (compare III.2 and I.61c). It is possible to regard the two stanzas as oral variants or as a pair from a series which have become separated. The second possibility is preferable, in particular because the resulting rhyme-scheme and unusual pattern of incremental repetition are found in the two stanzas on Llofan Llaw Ddifo above (III.7–8). In 10c one expects a relative clause, as in I.35, despite the fact that gwahoddai is unlenited in the manuscripts. Should we punctuate Gwr oedd; gwahoddai ormes (‘He was a man; he invited oppression’)? The association of armes and gormes was an ancient one;186 but here no doubt metrical considerations are paramount. The heroic characterisation of Lleu differs from that in the Fourth Branch.187

Such marks are used later in MS N (at 182v) to change Un nos to Unnos in the englyn mentioned above, p. 278 n. 36. 185 Long s is used. 186 AP2 xlv–xlix and references; Sims-Williams, Britain in Early Christian Europe, essay III, 105–6, 114–16, 119, 128–30, and Addenda. 187 Although cf. EBSG 83. 184

305

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

Translation The grave of Lleu Llawgyffes under cover of the sea. Before his calamity came he was a man (who) welcomed oppression!

III.11 Agen (Aser?) at Aber Bangori (in Arfon, Crn?) W

Pan Dyvu* benbych ai benul ar avon oed ar wawki in ni y+ llaes Agen Yvgri o lias Ager yn Aber Bangori

*D altered from d. On the u (which has a dot over it) see above, p. 280, n. 41. +with a cross through the descender. N

Pan dyvû benbych ai benyl ar afon oed ar vawci inni llas Agen ap yvgri O lias Ager yn Aber Bangori

T

pan dyvû benbych ai benyl ar avon oed arvawc i inni lhas Agen ap yvgri o lias Ager yn Aber Bangori.*

*These three lines are bracketed with III.12, as if they should belong together (see below). P

Pan dyvv benbych ai benyl ar afon oed arvavc* i inni llas Agen ap yvgri o lias Ager yn Aber Bangori

*two dots under 2nd v; w written above. B

Pan dyvu Benbych ai Benyl

84

Ar afon oed arvauc i inni Ḷas Agen ap yugri O lías Ager yn Aber Bangori

Index

col. 1 Agen ab Yugri Bd at Aber Bangori 84

It is evident that this stanza was once written in a much earlier orthography and was imperfectly understood. It seems best (with Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii) to take afon as the end of line a and inni or in ni as the end of line b. The first line, as is usual in englynion penfyr, would thus not bear the end rhyme. The stanza, with its four lines, is not an englyn penfyr, however, nor is it a regular englyn unodl union. Lines a and b could be modernised as follows:188 On the MS spellings see above, p. 36.

188

306

Series III Pan ddyfu B. a’i B. ar afon Oedd arfog ei (or eu) ynni (or hynni). When B. and his/her/its B. came on a river / armed was his/her/their strength…

This is not the formal opening of a grave-stanza, and can be paralleled in I.30a, Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth a dyuu ynoeth, which has a similar narrative flavour. ‘On a river’ is curiously vague. Some of the late manuscripts have ‘ar Arfon’ instead,189 which makes much better sense, and suits the Arfon associations of many of the previous stanzas. It has no authority, originating in Evan Evans’s copy (NLW 2020ii, 91r) of the copy of W in NLW 1506, Book III, p. 72. Nevertheless, it is possible that aruon was the original reading and was corrupted to auon, just as auon in the Penda stanza (III.9 above) was corrupted conversely to aruon. In fact, if we read *ar Arfon, or simply *Arfon (without ar, as accusative of destination), we recover an improved alliteration with arfog as the missing metrical link between the gair cyrch and line b.190 The two crucial words abbreviated B. and B. above are meaningless and have to be emended. In his copy of P in Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies has added an f above the n of benyl, a word he had previously underlined as doubtful; but his suggestion has no apparent authority and makes no sense (it is not in his Dictionary).191 An emendation which would make sense of both words and is palaeographically plausible is to read banhwch ‘boar’ and banw ‘young boar’, two words coupled in the Book of Taliesin: bum banw (MS bann), bum banhwch ‘I’ve been a piglet, I’ve been a boar’.192 There are examples elsewhere in Series III of confusion between a and e and between h and b (for the latter it is interesting to note Dr Davies’s miscopying: benhych in Peniarth 98ii).193 An y is an easy misreading of v or ỽ = [u].194 For the suggested misreading of -w as -ul or -yl one can compare the confusion of i and l in I.4 tedei tad awen = III.13 Tedel Tydawen; thus banw could be misread banul or banyl, or banu/banv could be

And Pughe, in his index to Englynion y Beddau in NLW 146, pp. 109–12, places the grave of Penbyç at Penyl Arvon. 190 On metrics see EWSP 322. On the omission of the preposition see Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘On the Accusative of Destination’, Ériu, 41 (1990), 27–36. 191 Similarly, Evan Evans hesitates between beuyl and benyl in NLW 2020ii, owing to the difficulty of reading his exemplar, NLW 1506. 192 LPBT no. 15.61. In later Welsh banhwch comes to mean ‘sow’ by confusion with banw ‘female’. Cf. Eric P. Hamp, ‘Celtic banu̯ o’ and ‘Welsh banw, benyw, banwy’, B., 27 (1976–78), 214–15; SBCHP 291, 293, 295, 298, 302, and 326; and T. L. Markey and Daphne Nash Briggs, ‘Porcine Husbandry (Domestic) and Hunting (Wild): Totem and Taboo’, in Revisiting Dispersions: Celtic and Germanic ca. 400 BC–ca. 400 AD, ed. T. L. Markey and Luka Repanšek (Washington, 2020), pp. 81–120 (pp. 96–97). 193 hych is a variant, or more likely the numerative, of hwch; see GPC; Dafydd Jenkins, ‘llydyn; hych’, B., 25 (1972–74), 117–18; Nurmio, Grammatical Number, pp. 217 and 224–25. For a/e and h/b see above p. 36. Cf. the confusion between hengaer and bangaer, bengaer in MSS of Bonedd y Saint §15 (EWGT 57). Already in LL h and b could be similar, e.g. heb in col. 1.11 of Braint Teilo, LL 120 (facsimile in Russell, ‘Priuilegium’, p. 43). 194 See e.g. HEW pl. 19a (Llyfr yr Ancr). 189

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

misread banil (> banyl). The animal terms, ‘a boar and its195 young boar’, may be metaphors for warriors.196 If this tentative emendation is correct, a story like that of the boar hunts in Culhwch and Olwen might lie behind it, and Banhwch and Banw could be proper names; compare the boars called Banw and Benwig (‘Pig’ and ‘Piglet’) in Culhwch: Ac odyna yd aeth [Twrch Trwyth] hyt yn Dyffrynn Amanw, ac yno y llas Banw a Bennwic. And [Twrch Trwyth] then went to Dyfrynn Amanw, and there Banw and Benwig were slain.197

The adjective arfawg ‘armed’ is no objection to this suggestion, since it developed a meaning ‘strong, resolute’, which is as suitable for beasts as for men.198 In theory of course, real people could bear porcine names or nicknames – compare Gaulish Banuus and Irish Banbán199 – so B. and B. may be heroes. Another possibility is that ‘boar’ and ‘young boar’ are ciphers for real people, like baedd and parchell in late medieval Welsh prophecies.200 The manuscripts disagree in what follows. W’s (y) llaes makes no apparent sense, and is probably for llas ‘was slain’, as in the other manuscripts. Agen ap yvgri then follows, probably two unattested personal names (the ap is absent in W, but it does capitalise both names), for neither agen/gagen ‘split, crack, etc.’ nor angen ‘need, battle’ makes much sense, and yvgri is even more obscure. In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies wrote Ru above the first two letters of ywgri in a different ink. This does not yield any apparent meaning. Lloyd-Jones suggested emending to the well-known name Gwrgi,201 and this is the most attractive emendation, since a g could resemble a y,202 and *gvgri would be an easy error for *gvrgi. Agen is perhaps an error for Ager, as

But lenition is expected after ai ‘and his’; is it a mistake for a ‘and’ or the result of taking banhwch as feminine? 196 See PT 69–70 on Unhwch (see on I.28–30 above) and hwch (but here cf. Haycock and Sims-­ Williams, ‘Welsh vch “fox?”’). 197 Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, lines 1148–49; M 133. Cf. DP IV 416, 656–57, and 706; Hunter, ‘Dead Pigs’; Will Parker, ‘“The Topographical Pig” – A Cambro-Gaelic Insular Ecotype?’, CMCS, 84 (Winter 2022), 51–82. 198 See GPC s.v. arfog. 199 GPN 149; Liam Breatnach, ‘The Ecclesiastical Element in the Old-Irish Legal Tract Cáin Fhuithirbe’, Peritia, 5 (1986), 36–52 (pp. 46–47). For a mythical Banbán (a man transformed into a pig) see The Metrical Dindshenchas, III, ed. Edward Gwynn (Dublin, 1913), p. 388. 200 Compare the ‘boar’ (baedd) – probably Edward III (1327–77) – that begets a ‘piglet’ (parchell) in Y Broffwydoliaeth Fer in Peniarth 54 (c. 1480). See Helen Fulton, Welsh Prophecy and English Politics in the Late Middle Ages (Aberystwyth, 2008), pp. 24 and 33–35, and, for another fifteenth-century manuscript, Sims-Williams, ‘Y Copi Cynharaf o’r Cydfodau’, p. 73). Other late couplings of these two animals occur in Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 12.19, and R. Wallis Evans, ‘Proffwydoliaeth y Fflowrddelis’, B., 21 (1964–66), 327–33 (pp. 329 and 331). Cf. Peniarth 53, ed. Roberts and Lewis, p. 52. Animal ciphers are older than this; cf. Doris Edel, ‘Geoffrey’s So-Called Animal Symbolism and Insular-Celtic Tradition’, SC, 18/19 (1983–84), 96–109. 201 G. 15 and 709. Peter Bailey Williams had already translated Gwrgi in the North Wales Gazette, 12 Feb. 1818. 202 E.g. RWMS III pls 193, 218, 220 (Salesbury), and 249 (all s. xvi). 195

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in the last line, since n and r can be confused;203 but neither are attested names. Since s and closed g are similar in some manuscripts (such as the Book of Taliesin),204 Aser is a possible emendation, that is, Asser, which was quite a common name in Wales.205 In fact, an Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd, ancestor of a family in Uwch Aled, Rhufoniog, Den., is commonly mentioned in the genealogical tracts – including, as it happens, a section of our MS N.206 If the genealogy is historical, Aser ap Gwrgi would have lived in the twelfth century.207 Of course, family genealogies were often contaminated by legendary names.208 In this case, however, Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd is clearly a historical personage, found in the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies which Ben Guy dates between 1216 and c. 1233,209 close to the time of Idnerth ap Rhahawd ap Aser, the latest person in the relevant pedigree (born c. 1200, according to Bartrum’s estimate).210 The lands of the descendants of Idnerth and Rhahawd, in the area around Llansannan (SH 9365), are itemised in the 1334 Survey of the Honour of Denbigh.211 The stanza may refer to the death of Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd during some twelfth-century battle. If so, Benbych and Benyl may be nicknames or ciphers for other participants. There is no continuity from Pan … inni to llas Agen ap yvgri. A possible connective is [yn y], [’ny], ‘where’, which could easily have been lost by haplography after inni (= ynni ‘strength’), which is also a possible spelling for yn y in this text (compare enni/eny ‘where’ in III.13c). Possibly W’s y is a relic of some such wording. The first three lines could be a penfyr (10-6-7): *Pan ddyfu Banhwch a Banw ar Arfon oedd arfawg ei ynni, [’ny] llas Aser ap Gwrgi. When Banhwch and Banw came against Arfon, resolute was his strength, [where] Aser ap Gwrgi was slain.

See above, p. 36. See above, p. 36. 205 Asser lxx–lxxi; AP2 xxvii. 206 MS N 202r: Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd. (On the genealogies in NLW 21001B see MWG 164, 181–82, 186, and 196.) Cf. ‘Arseth ap Gwrgi ap Hedd’ in Par. I 9 and 10. 207 EWGT 118 (HL §10 = MWG 388–89 and 413); PP1 112 and 133 (§32); MWG 22 and 388; Jones, ‘Rhos and Rhufoniog Pedigrees’, pp. 292–93 and 302–3; Bartrum, ‘Hen Lwythau’, pp. 220, 212, and 227. Bartrum puts Hedd’s birth c. 1070 (EWGT 157), while a floruit c. 1124 is suggested by Dafydd Jenkins, ‘Yr Ynad Coch’, B., 22 (1966–68), 345–46 (p. 346). The name, from biblical Heth, was fashionable in the eleventh century (see Corpus, II, ed. Edwards, no. P91). As(s)er was also biblical: Davies, ‘Old Testament Personal Names among the Britons’. 208 Thus the next genealogy in HL (HL §11 = MWG 389) is that of Braint Hir, on whom see I.56. For example, the ‘Tribal Patriarch’ Mael Maelienydd would seem, according to the genealogies, to belong to the late tenth century (PP1 114 and 135–36), but the poem on 40v of the Black Book suggests rather that he was a much earlier legendary character; see Williams and Russell, ‘Invisible Ink’, pp. 88–89 and 91. 209 MWG 216. (Bartrum’s HL is part of the Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies; cf. MWG 159.) 210 Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400, III, s. Hedd 1 (generation 6). 211 Survey of the Honour of Denbigh 1334, ed. Vinogradoff and Morgan, pp. xxix–xxx, 156–57, and 162–63, with map facing p. 1. Pryslygod and Petrual, not shown on the map, were in Llanfair Talhaearn; for them and Uwch Aled in general see WATU 179, 183, and 319. See further T. P. Ellis, Welsh Tribal Law and Custom in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (Oxford, 1926), I, 130–37. 203 204

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

If llias is the variant form of lleas, ‘death’ used by Salesbury and others,212 the last line of III.11, o lias Ager yn Aber Bangori, can be translated, with Thomas Jones, ‘following the death of Ager at Aber Bangori’.213 This translation makes it difficult to emend to Aser in both lines; ‘Aser ap Gwrgi was slain / following the death of Aser at Aber Bangori’ would make no sense. Perhaps o ‘following’ should be omitted: ‘Aser ap Gwrgi was slain; / the death of Aser (was) at Aber Bangori’. But, more likely, the last line should be taken as the first line of a separate englyn, as the bracket in MS T seems to imply (see below on III.12). No river Bangori or any river-name like it ending in -i is known.214 Bangori means ‘to form a wattle, plash a hedge’,215 and a stream might perhaps be named from such an activity. If the last line really belongs with III.12, however, it does not need to rhyme in -i and aber bangori could be a corruption of some other name, such as Aber Cegin216 or Aber Ogwen, glossed ‘Bangor’ (SH 5872) to indicate the location of the Cegin or Ogwen, and then drawn into the -i rhyme scheme of III.11. Translation When ?a boar? with its ?young boar? came upon a river (or ? upon Arfon), resolute was its (or their) strength (?where?) Agen (Aser?) son of Yvgri (Gwrgi?) was slain. After the death of Ager (Aser?) at Aber Bangori …

III.12 Ager (Aser?) again? W

[no stanza 12]

N

Kar kanhwyliaith hed hedar lûoedd y laith.

T

Car canhwyliaith Hed Hed ar lûoed y laith.

P

Car canhwyliaith hed hedar lvoedd y laith

For lleas see CA 248; and G. 11 s.v. aele. Cf. I.64c. For llias see GPC s.v. lleas. BBCSG 137. Cf. R 577.27: ‘O leas Gỽendoleu’. Cf. o diua, discussed in connection with I.64c above. 214 EANC 129. In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies added a mark between Bangor and i in different ink. Hugh Maurice (1796) queries ‘Aber Bangor. Q-’ in the margin of Llanstephan 193, 151r, and Peter Bailey Williams translates ‘Aber- | branhonddu’ in desperation in the North Wales Gazette. His translation will have been influenced by Aber Brangoni in the Myvyrian and related texts. Brangoni results from Evan Evans’s miscopying of MS T in NLW 1983i. 215 GPC s.v.; Jones, ‘Why Bangor?’, p. 62. 216 Aber Cegin is mentioned as Aber Gegyne by Leland, Itinerary in Wales, p. 85, and as Abergegyn by Elis Gruffydd in NLW 5276D, 381v, discussed under III.15 below. On the origin of Cegin note the disagreement between EANC 201 and ELlSG 96. See further Sims-Williams, ‘“Dark” and “Clear” y’, p. 8 n. 36. 212 213

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Series III B

Car canhuyliaith

85

Hed hedar luoed y laith.

Index

–

This ‘stanza’ is too short to make a whole englyn and evidently puzzled the copyists. It is missing in W; did William Jones see that it was written in a different hand in S, or did he simply lose his place while turning his own page from 188r to 188v (III.11 is at the foot of W 188r and III.13 at the head of W 188v)? MS N, unusually, puts a blank line between III.11 and III.12, as if supposing a line to be missing; MS T brackets III.11 and III.12, as if they should belong together, which is plausible (see above); and MS P indents Car … as if it were not a first line. In Llanstephan 18, which derives indirectly from P, Moses Williams treats III.11–12 as a single stanza, numbered ‘11’. There seems to be a rhyme in -aith, as recognised in MS B’s layout. If the last line of III.11, which is apparently superfluous there, is really the first line of III.12, we may have a sort of englyn penfyr, except that line b is at least a syllable short:217 O lias Ager yn Aber Bangori Car canhwyliaith Hed Hed ar luoed y laith.

Meanings and emendations can be suggested for individual words of III.12, but no continuous sense emerges. Thomas Jones has wisely only translated car, ‘kinsman’ – and even this could be the verb ‘loves’. Lloyd-Jones noted that kanhwyliaith should probably be emended.218 An obvious possibility is car cannwyll iaith ‘kinsman, candle of the people/community’, since cannwyll is often used as a term of praise, for example, kanuill kangulad (cannwyll canwlad) ‘candle of a hundred lands’, canwyll marchogion ‘candle of knights’, gwenn gannwyll llyssoed a lluossyd ‘fair candle of courts and hosts’, kannỽyll teyrned ‘candle of rulers’.219 Even better would be canhwynawl ‘thoroughbred, noble’,220 which keeps the h and single l and the advantage of increasing the syllable count: kar kannhwy[naw]l iaith ‘noble kinsman of (his) people’. The last line may be restored as Hed ar luoed y laith ‘His death (brought) peace to hosts’ (meaning a respite for enemy armies, or referring to a cessation in heroic conflicts in general). The repetition of hed may be dittography; by the reverse error some late manuscripts omit one hed.221 It is tempting, however, to suppose that Hed refers to the ‘tribal patriarch’ Hedd, grandfather of the Aser ap Gwrgi mentioned

‘Line b lengths range from 5 to 7 syllables’ (EWSP 315). G. 106, comparing hwylweith, a rare compound, translated ‘gwaith difyr’ by Barry J. Lewis, Gwaith Madog Benfras ac Eraill o Feirdd y Bedwaredd Ganrif ar Bymtheg (Aberystwyth, 2007), no. 8.49. 219 LlDC no. 28.4 (CBT IV 18.85), CBT VI 31.17, VII 30.46 and 36.45. 220 GPC s.v. canhwynol; AP2 63–64. 221 This omission originated in ‘Z’ the exemplar of MA and related MSS in the stemma in Figure 4. Evan Evans emended hedar to hyt ar in NLW 2040, followed by Peter Bailey Williams in Cwrtmawr 454. 217 218

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

above in connection with III.11. Perhaps there is a play on words, emphasised by enjambement:222 *O lias A[s]er yn Aber Bangor [?Cegin/?Ogwen, ?Cynllaith] car canhwy[naw]l iaith Hedd, hedd ar luoedd ei laith. After the death of A[s]er at Aber Bangor [or Aber ?Cegin/?Ogwen/?Cynllaith], / noble kinsman of the people / of Hedd, his death (brought) peace to armies.

Alliteration and rhyme between A[s]er and Aber provides sufficient ornament in line a, and any link between the gair cyrch and line b (for example alliteration between *Cegin or *Cynllaith and car) is optional rather than essential.223 Another possible ornament would be rhyme between the gair cyrch and line b.224 The possible names in Aber + -aith225 are Aber-gwaith ‘estuary/confluence of battle?’, the site of a legendary battle,226 (Nant yr) Aber Fraith on the boundary of the Lordship of Rhuthun, Den.,227 Aber-Saith in Penbryn, Crd.,228 and Aber Cynllaith, Den. (SJ 2023), where the Cynllaith runs into the Tanat near Llangedwyn. Only the last is a place of any importance. It is close to the English border229 – a suitable site for heroic exploits – and would alliterate with the c- in line b. But is not easy to see how it could have been replaced by Aber Bangori. Translation … Noble kinsman of the people of Hedd, his death (brought) peace to armies. (?)

III.13 Tydai Tad Awen and Dylan, near Clynnog, Crn. W

Bedd Tedel Tydawen yngwarthaf Bryn Arien enni gwna Tontolo* Bedd Dylan yn Lhan Veuno.

*Toi written above Ton. N

Bedd Tedel Tydawen ī gwarchaf bryn Arien eny gwna ton ton* tolo

On enjambement see above on I.6. On metrics see EWSP 322–24. 224 EWSP 321–22. 225 Listed by AMR s. *aber*aith. 226 LlDC no. 17.178; Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 173.40. 227 J. Fisher, ‘The Lordship of Ruthin: Its Survey, with Some Extracts from the Records’, AC, 6th ser. 14 (1914), 421–40 (p. 434); Davies, Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Denbighshire, p. 99. 228 The Afon Saith reaches the sea at Traethsaith/Tresaith (SN 2751) See PNC I xxxvii–xxxviii and 147, and III 1293. 229 See WATU 322 (map). 222 223

312

Series III Bedd Dylan yn llan Veûno *

Deleted by underdotting. T

Bedh Tedel Tydawen i gwarthaf brynn Arien eny gwna ton tolo. Bedh Dylan yn lhann Veûno.

P

Bedd Tedel Tydawen i gwarthaf bryn Arien eny gwna ton tolo bedd Dylan yn llan Vevno

B

Beḍ Tedel Tydaụen ī guarthaf Bryn*

86

Arien eny guna ton tolo Bed Dylan yn Ḷan Veuno.

*B altered from b. Index

col. 1 Dılan Bd. at Λan Beyno. 5. 80.6.230 col. 4 Tedel Tıdauen Bd on the top of Bryn Arien. – 86.

Possibly ī is a reading which goes back to S. This stanza is a variant of I.4. In N, T, P, and B the stanza is arranged like other englynion penfyr in this series. Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii also treats it as a penfyr, rearranging P so that his line a is: Bedd Tydai Tad awen / yngwarthaf bryn arien. However, the arrangement in W may bring out the original structure of the englyn better, as a 4-line englyn with 6-syllable lines, like I.4, where the absence of the preposition in Bedd Dylan yn Lhan Veuno gives 6 syllables. Dr Davies’s correct emendation in Peniarth 98ii of P’s Tedel Tydawen to Tydai tad awen was no doubt inspired by knowledge of Tedei tad awen in I.4 (which he had copied earlier on p. 18 of Peniarth 98ii: Tedai) and other references to this character (see commentary on I.4 for Iolo Goch and Wiliam Llŷn). The y of Tydawen could be due to influence, at some earlier stage, from that of Tydei. The only other significant difference between the two series is yngwarthaf in III.13 where I.4 has yg godir. Translation The grave of Tedel (recte Tydei) Father of Inspiration (is) on the top of Bryn Arien. Where the wave makes a noise (is) the grave of Dylan in Llanfeuno (Clynnog).

III.14 Disgyrin (ap?) Disgyfdawd on the seashore W

Kicleu Don drom drathowant*

6 over an illegible number or letter.

230

313

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau am vedd Discyrinn discyffeddawt aches+ trwmx anghures pechawt. *two dots under n; w written above. +a over another letter. xrwm underlined, and trwyn written above, all five letters of which are underdotted. N

Kic len don drom drathywant Am vedd Disgyrinn disgyfeddant Aches trwm* anghures pechawt

*Macron or tilde above last two minims. T

Cic len don drom drathywant Am vedh disgyrinn disgyffedhant Aches trwm anghwres pechawt

P

Cic len Don drom drathywawt am fedd Disgyrinn disgyffeddawt aches trwm anghvres pechawt

B

Cic len Don drom drathyụaụt

87

Am feḍ Disgyrinn disgypheḍaụt Aches trum anghures pechaụt

Index

col. 1 Disgryn Dısgıfeδod.87.

The most difficult word here is anghures or anghwres. Lloyd-Jones,231 followed by the first edition of GPC, suggested anwres ‘cold, misery’ (< an- + gwres), but in the second edition this is regarded as uncertain. A better possibility is anghyfres ‘disorderly’, which occurs in Prydydd y Moch as agkyfres, rhyming with aches.232 This gives two pure nominal sentences of a style characteristic of early englynion: ‘Heavy is the tide; disorderly is sin’. An 8-syllable line with anghyfres is as acceptable as a 7-syllable one with anwres. The manuscript readings illustrate the ambiguity of minims in S, as does William Jones’s query trwyn in line c of W, assuming this reflects a suspicion that truin was the correct reading. Kicleu in W is obviously correct, though not even Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii saw how to emend Cic len.233 In view of such a problem with minims, it is possible that Disgyrnin is the correct form of the name, even though none of the base manuscripts have it. Dr Davies has Disgyrnin in Peniarth 98ii (underlining rn), though copying from P, and Edward Jones added a suprascript n when copying from W in NLW 170, p. 59. Perhaps they knew of Disgyrnin from elsewhere. They may, however, have been influenced by the common verb disgyrnu ‘to gnash, G. 33. CBT V 5.2. 233 See above, p. 273 n. 3. 231 232

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Series III

snarl’. There was also the less common verb disgyrryaw ‘to shout, scream’234 and this is an equally possible base for Disgyrinn and requires no emendation. A further possibility is disgyr ‘common, lowly’. The name belongs to a common class with the termination -in.235 Triads 10 and 32 name Disgyfdawt or Disgyfedaỽt as the father of the ‘Three Chieftains of Deira and Bernicia’, three sons who performed the ‘Three Fortunate Slaughters’. Disgyr(n)in is not one of the three sons, but this could be because there was no room for him in the confines of a triad. In a copy of III.14b Evan Evans inserted vab (NLW 2020ii, 91r)236 and Edward Jones, who had evidently compared the Triads, translated ‘Dysgyrnin, son of Dysgyveddod’.237 The emendation may be correct – m. for mab could have been lost after a series of minims – but the insertion of m[ab], vab, ap, etc is metrically difficult. If, however, we restore the trisyllabic form Disgyfdawt, which is supported by Englynion y Clyweit,238 line b would be kept down to 8 syllables, which is acceptable in an englyn milwr.239 A point in favour of understanding the text to mean ‘Disgyrin son of Disgyfdawd’, even if the word mab is elided, is the comment in Triad 10: ‘tri meib beird oedynt ell tri’. Although this could mean that they were all bards’ sons, it is more likely to mean that they were three sons (of one father) who were all bards, which is how the White Book redactor understood it.240 If so, Disgyrin may be a fourth bard, whose grave stanza appropriately follows that of the bard Tydai Tad Awen. There is no means of telling where the grave was except that it was on the shore, like others in Series III. In view of other Welsh localisations of northern figures, such as Llofan on the Menai (III.7–8) and Rhydderch at Aber-erch (I.13), there is no reason to think that it was in Deira or Bernicia. It is possible that the ‘I’ who speaks is a character in some saga, like the speaker in the Black Book poem ‘Mi a fûm lle llas milwyr Prydain’,241 but this is not necessarily so, for the ‘personal’ note, as in the case of ‘odidog ai gwypo / namyn Duw a mi heno’ (III.8), may merely indicate the elegiac persona of the traditional poet of gnomic and similar verse. A passage very similar in tone occurs in ‘Claf Abercuawg’:

GPC s.v. disgyriaf. The Old French etymology offered by Morgan Watkin, ‘Testun Kulhwch a’i Gefndir Ffrengig Eto’, B., 14 (1950–52), 14–24 (p. 21), can be disregarded. 235 EANC 198. 236 Evans’s source was the copy of W in NLW 1506, where vab does not occur. Copying Evans in BL Add. 14867, 94r, William Morris included vab as a variant; he was not followed by those who copied his text. 237 Bardic Museum, p. 12, with a note ‘Dysgyrnin was a Deirian, or a Bernician, who flourished about A.D. 540’. Jones had not inserted vab in his copy of W in NLW 170, p. 59, but included it in his draft translation on p. 60, and in NLW 322, pp. 60–61. Ab Ithel, ‘British Interments’, p. 84, likewise interpreted disgyffedawt as a patronymic. 238 ‘Englynion y Clyweit’, ed. Ifor Williams, B., 3 (1926–27), 4–21 (pp. 12 and 18, §36b); CC no. 31.36b. 239 CLlH lxxxv–lxxxvi; EWSP 315. 240 See Rowlands, review of TYP1, p. 232; TYP4 19. CR 151 makes ‘Dysgyfedawg’ a poet, following the triad. 241 LlDC no. 34.43–63. See the discussion of authorship above, p. 70. 234

315

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau Kigleu don drom y tholo Vann y rwng gra[ea]n a gro. Krei vym bryt rac lletvryt heno.242

Translation I have heard (the) wave (running) heavy over the sand about the grave of Disgyrin [son of?] Disgyfdawd. Heavy is the tide; disorderly(?) is sin.

III.15 Elidir Mwynfawr on the Meweddus (Afon Wefus, Crn.) W

Bedd* Ylidir Mwynvawr ynglan Mawrinewedûs+ fawtx brydus briodawr Gwen efwr gwr gwrdd y gawr.

*1st d over y. in altered from m by addition of a dot; suprascript e above a deleted letter (?e or ?c); a 2nd d after the d deleted. xdot under t. +

N

Bedd Ylidir mwynvawr ynglan Mawr mewedûs fawt brydûs briodawr Gwen efwr gwr gwrdd y gawr.

T

Bedh ylidyr mwynvawr ynglan mawr mewedûs* fawt brydûs briodawr Gwen efwr gwr gwrdh y gawr.

*2nd e possibly altered to y. P

Bedd ylidir mwynfawr // ynglan mawr mewedvs fawt brydvs briodawr Gwen efwr gwr gwrdd y gawr

B

Beḍ Ylidr muynfaụr*

88

Ynglan maur meụedus faut brydus briodaur Gụen efụr gụr gụrḍ y gaụr

*Then ynglan, deleted. Index

col. 2 Ilidr muynvaur Bd at Glan meuedus. 88. [altered from 87]

Ylidir etc. are forms of the name Elidir, to which Evan Evans emends it,243 independently of Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii, who makes the same correction. The epithet CLlH VI.27: ‘I have heard a heavy-pounding wave, / loud between the beach and shingle. / My heart is raw because of depression tonight’ (EWSP 499). 243 NLW 2040, p. 154. On the Y- see above, p. 16. 242

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priodawr is quite a common one, and probably conveys no more than ‘ruler’ or ‘lord’ here, despite the view of Lewis Morris that it was a technical term ‘among the Pictish Britons’, quoting ‘Elidir Mwynfawr, priodawr o’r Gogledd. (MS)’, clearly following the early-sixteenth-century Disgyniad Pendefigaeth Cymru.244 Thirteenth-century Welsh tradition agrees in making Elidir Mwynfawr ap Gwrwst priodawr one of the ‘Men of the North’,245 and his epithet mwynfawr ‘the wealthy’ is characteristic of northern figures.246 Nothing specific is known of him in a northern context, however, unless Geoffrey’s association of Elidurus Pius with Alclud (Dumbarton) preserves a Welsh tradition.247 Elidir’s connection is rather with Gwynedd. Triad 44 describes his journey thither, with his wife Eurgein, daughter of Maelgwn Gwynedd, and his followers, all on one sea-going horse from Penllech in the North to Penllech in Anglesey, a journey which later antiquarians explain with the information that Elidir had been invited to succeed his father-in-law in preference to Rhun ap Maelgwn.248 His death and its consequences, which led to Rhun granting the ‘privileges of the men of Arfon’, are recounted in a tract added to Llyfr Iorwerth, the ‘Venedotian’ laws, in two closely related mid-thirteenth-century copies, Peniarth 29, fol. 29 = pp. 41–42 (MS A, the ‘Black Book of Chirk’) and BL Add. 14931, pp. 32–33 (MS E):249 Elidir Mwynfawr, a man of the North, was slain here [i.e. in Gwynedd], and after his death the Men of the North came here to avenge him … And they came to Arfon, and because Elidir was slain at Aber Meuhedus [A; Aber Mewedus E) in Arfon they burned Arfon as a further revenge …

In connection with the sequel, an attack by the men of Gwynedd across the river Guerit or Gweryt,250 the tract appeals to the authority of Iorwerth ap Madog over the role of Maeldaf Hynaf, lord of Penard (Pennarth near Clynnog).251 This appeal shows that variant versions of the story were current in thirteenth-century legal circles. This is interesting from the point of view of the grave-stanza because Iorwerth ap Madog is known to have belonged to a family of lawyers and poets in Uwch Gwyrfai, Arfon, holding land in the villa of Dinlle,252 and would thus have been in a good position to know local traditions. The tract’s quotation of a lost poem, ascribed to Taliesin, on CR 363, s.v. Priodawr. Cf. CR 378–79 and ‘Disgyniad Pendefigaeth’, ed. Bartrum, p. 257. Priodawr was not an exclusively northern title; see PT xlvi–xlvii and GPC s.v. priodor. 245 TYP4 345; EWGT 73 and 89; MWG 359 and 428; WCD 241. 246 TYP4 454. 247 HRB III.17, §50; WCD 241–42. 248 TYP4 115–21 and 492. On Penllech see I.58 above. 249 For MS A see Timothy Lewis, ‘Copy of the Black Book of Chirk, Peniarth MS. 29, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth’, ZCP, 20 (1936), 30–96 (pp. 75–76), and for MS E see Owen, ‘Royal Propaganda’, pp. 252–54 (with translation). MS A is translated in TYP4 491–92, which I quote. See also the commentary on I.8–11 and 13 above. The episode, and Elid mvinvavr, seem to be mentioned in a poem on 40v of the Black Book: Williams and Russell, ‘Invisible Ink’, pp. 85, 88, 90–91, and 92–93. 250 The Forth, or possibly the Lune, Lancashire. See Jenny Rowland, ‘Gwerydd’, SC, 16/17 (1981– 82), 234–47; cf. G. 673 and AP2 66–67. 251 On the phrase druy audurdaud e keuarhuidyt see Rowlands, review of TYP1, p. 247. On Pennarth see III.5 above. 252 See Jenkins, ‘Family of Medieval Welsh Lawyers’; EWGT 117; Charles-Edwards, ‘The Textual Tradition of Llyfr Iorwerth Revisited’, pp. 25–26 and 40–43. Gruffudd ap Tudur (fl. 1352) was a further poet in this family (see reference at I.8–11 above, p. 143). 244

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the part played by the men of Arfon in the affair suggests that the Elidir story may already have been current in literary form. Against Aled Rhys Williams’s view that the tract’s appeal to the authority of Iorwerth was inspired more by his reputation than by the facts of the matter,253 stand the considerations that the lost exemplar of the two manuscripts cannot have been written much later than Iorwerth’s time (fl. c. 1220–40), and that it evidently emanated from someone familiar with Arfon traditions and literature. It may indeed have been written at Clynnog.254 The above-mentioned early-sixteenth-century Disgyniad Pendefigaeth Cymru adds nothing relevant to our englyn apart from describing Elidir Mwynfawr as ‘priodawr or gogyledd’ (sic),255 which recalls priodawr in line b. It could be an echo of our englyn (Disgyniad Pendefigaeth used a variety of sources), but is more likely due to transferring the epithet of Elidir’s father Gwrwst priodawr to Elidir himself. The recurrence of priodawr in the englyn may be due to the need for a rhyme with mwynfawr. The -d- in mewedus etc. in the law tract and in the presumed medieval exemplar of III.15 is ambiguous. In the margin of the E text of the laws a later hand writes aber meveddvs and further on (correctly) penardd beside penard. In Peniarth 98ii Dr Davies copies P’s mewedvs as meweddus, but as he underlines the w (his usual way of indicating doubt), this may not show that he recognised the name. Disgyniad Pendefigaeth Cymru has Aber Mevydd,256 and an elaborated, confused version in Elis Gruffydd’s chronicle (c. 1550) tells how Elidir (‘or Ethelfreidus’!) sails, with a fleet of saeson y gogledd, from Liverpool (Lyrpwl) to Aber meuyth in Arfon, where Rhun ap Maelgwn defeats and kills Elidir and most of his men; later, in revenge, the Northumbrians under Ethelfreidus (Æthelfrith) return to Aber meuyth and burn the land from Yr Eifl up to abergegyn, the mouth of the river Cegin near Bangor (NLW 5276D, 378v–379r and 381v).257 The spelling Mevydd/meuyth is dubious; the loss of the -us is probably the result of mistaking a medieval form as a Latinisation. Mewedus and Meweddus are thus

Aled Rhys Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth (Cardiff, 1960), pp. xxxv–xxxvi, opposed by Charles-­ Edwards, ‘The Textual Tradition of Llyfr Iorwerth Revisited’, pp. 42–43. 254 See Sims-Williams, Buchedd Beuno, pp. 5–7, where it is argued that the odd treatment of the name Beuno in Peniarth 29 suggests that the exemplar of the tract was written at Clynnog, where Beuno may have been selected for rubrication. Cf. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Textual Tradition of Llyfr Iorwerth Revisited’, pp. 40–41. For a parallel see Tahkokallio, ‘Early Manuscript Dissemination’, p. 166. 255 ‘Disgyniad Pendefigaeth’, ed. Bartrum, p. 257. 256 Ibid., p. 258, quoting the variants Nefydd, Nevydd, Nevydh, pp. 257 and 260. 257 Note that Elis Gruffydd’s version would support locating Aber meuyth on the coast (see below on Aberdesach). On abergegyn see EANC 201–2 and commentary on III.11 above. (‘Disgyniad Pendefigaeth’, ed. Bartrum, p. 258, has ‘Arvon or Eiffyl hyt yn Erhergin (varr. Ergergin, Hergin, Hergyn’, perhaps a corruption of Abergegin, despite CR 157.) In his lost transcript of Elis Gruffydd, John Jones of Gellilyfdy had the spelling Aber Mefydd according to the copy by Evan Evans in NLW 2005, 49r–55r, especially 50r and 52r (cf. RMWL II 844 and commentary on I.8 above). See fol. 55 for John Jones’s own strictures on the ‘history’, which led him to quote (on 56v–58r) the passage in the Laws, evidently from MS A, with the spelling ‘Aber Meuhedus’, according to Evans’s copy. John Jones’s form is quoted by Edward Jones in NLW 111 (ii), p. 60, as ‘Aber Menhedus’. For other references to ‘Aber Mefydd’, etc. see TYP4 117, and CR 5: ‘abernefydd, or mefydd, or newydd, or nevydd, where Elidir Mwynfawr was killed by Rhun. (MS.)’ (cf. CR 163: Abernevydd) 253

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both possible, as is Meueddus ‘wealthy, rich’,258 and further possibilities, although MS E does not make much use of e for y [ǝ], are Mywed(d)us, Mewyd(d)us, etc. In fact, Mewydus, ‘sluggish’259 would be a suitable name for a river. In his Ancient Laws (1841) Aneurin Owen translated Aber Meuhedus as ‘Aber Mewydus’ and added a note: The efflux of the Mewydus, a rivulet, now called ‘Cadnant’ or ‘battle-brook’, which flows by the town of Caernarvon into the Menai: the place where Elidyr fell has preserved the name of ‘Elidyr bank’. A principal residence of Maelgwn was Caer Seiont or Segontium, near Caernarvon.260

This statement is suspicious and may be based on an unreliable antiquarian source, for the association of Maelgwn and Segontium has no historical basis. The name Cadnant is genuine, being attested in a document of 1357,261 but Owen’s translation of it looks like a folk etymology which may have led to the Elidir story being localised beside it. Cadnant is a fairly common river-name, and, as Ifor Williams noted, it is unlikely that all the Cadnants were named from battles rather than the stem cad- ‘powerful’ seen in cadarn.262 Since the brook was ‘now called “Cadnant”’ in 1841 and was already known by that name in 1357, we would need strong grounds for supposing that it was originally called Mewydus, ‘sluggish’. In a further note Owen said that ‘the ground on the west side of the river Seiont, opposite the town of Caernarvon’ was called Penardd. That may be correct, but it is certain that it should not be identified with the Penard (now Pennarth near Clynnog) mentioned in the passage in the Laws, despite Owen.263 His misidentification of the two may have led him or a predecessor to assume that the nearby Cadnant must once have been called Mewydus. If there was indeed an ‘Elidyr bank’, it may have taken its name from some other Elidir, for the name was a popular one and appears in various place-names.264 For many antiquarians the proximity of an ‘Elidyr bank’ and a Cadnant would be enough to clinch the identification of the ‘Mewydus’ where Elidir Mwynfawr met his end. We know that antiquarians were interested in the succession GPC s.v. A personal name Meuedus occurs in Merioneth Lay Subsidy Roll 1292–3, ed. Williams-­ Jones, p. 51. Cane, ‘Personal Names of Women’, pp. 32 and 35, transcribes this as Mefeddus, which she interprets as a metathesised form of the name which she normalises (following Bartrum) as Meddefus (ibid., pp. 14, 22, 42, 44, 47, 92–93, and 124). Possibly, however, Meue­ ddus is the original form. Meueddus = Mefeddus occurs in the Hendregadredd Manuscript: MWM 225; Gwaith Llywelyn Brydydd Hoddnant, ed. Parry Owen, p. 150. 259 GPC s.v. 260 AL I 105 n. i. This is quoted by T[homas] Stephens, ‘The Poems of Taliesin No. VII: To Gwallawg’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1853), 43–62 (p. 55), but the names seem to have been unknown to ‘Cilmyn’ (John Jones, rector of Llanllyfni), even though he lived not far from Caernarfon; see his letter, ibid., p. 148. 261 Cadenant 1357 and Cadnant 1770 are cited in AMR s.n. Cadnant, Crn. Cf. ELlSG 97. 262 Cf. CA 373; ELl 53; EANC 110; EWGP 43 and 72. 263 AL I 105 n. l. See above, on III.5. 264 Cf. AMR; G. 469; TYP4 121 and 345 (her comments confuse Elidir and Lledr; cf. Kenneth Jackson, review of TYP1 in WHR, Special Number: The Welsh Laws (1963), 85, and Rowlands, review of TYP1, p. 234; also ELlSG 98). On the question of the correct form of Mynydd Elidir see also Rhys’s note in Tours in Wales by Thomas Pennant, ed. John Rhys, II (Caernarfon, 1883), p. 318 n. 1: ‘Llider is not to be heard, but only Y Lidir, which may be for some such a name as Elidir, meaning Elidir’s Mountain’. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Nefenhyr’, p. 36, seems to regard Elidyr as the etymologically correct form; cf. G. s.n. 258

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

of Maelgwn, Elidir, and Rhun ap Maelgwn;265 Owen may have been misled by one of them, perhaps his own father, William Owen Pughe.266 We owe a much better identification to Eben Fardd, who identified the Menwedus (as he spells it) of the Laws with the Mowedd, confirmed to Clynnog church by Edward IV.267 The form Mowedd derives ultimately from various transcripts of Edward’s charter.268 The spelling in the earliest (sixteenth-century) copy, printed in the ‘Record of Caernarvon’, is Moweddus.269 Latinate endings for Welsh placenames are not used elsewhere in the document (and anyway accusative -um would be required), so Mowedd is probably a misinterpretation of Moweddus. As dd represents [ð] in the charter, it fails to support the modernisation of Meuhedus/Mewedus in the Laws to Mewydus ‘sluggish’ with [d]. The charter’s o could be a miscopying of e by the sixteenth-century scribe, or alternatively a spelling of schwa (y), possibly rounded to [o] before [w]. In any case, it is surely the same name as the law tract’s Meuhedus/Mewedus, though in the charter it seems to denote an estate, granted by Rhodri Mawr, rather than a river: ‘Rodri filius Mervyn. dedit Moweddus’. Eben identified his Menwed(d)us with a stream, then called Yr Afon Wefus, which runs down from the south-west into the river Desach near Tai’n-lôn, less than two miles east of Clynnog church.270 His derivation of Wefus from Moweddus or similar has been generally and rightly accepted.271 As he observed, the sounds represented by dd and f commonly alternate.272 The m- would tend to disappear when compounded with Afon,273 and if an initial vowel remained, this could easily disappear as well, as often in the first syllable of trisyllabic names.274 TYP4 117–18; CR 378–79; Bartrum, ‘Disgyniad Pendefigaeth’. Owen was helped extensively by his gullible father: Sara Elin Roberts, The Growth of Law in Medieval Wales, c.1100–c.1500 (Woodbridge, 2022), p. 27. 267 Cyff Beuno, pp. 62 and 65–67. On the charter, see above, p. 58. 268 Eben’s source was H. L[ongueville] J[ones], ‘Arvona Mediaeva I’, AC, 1st ser. 3 (1848), 247–57 (p. 255), who prints it from a transcript from Vaughan in ‘a MS. communicated by the Rev. John Jones, Rector of Llanllyfni, 1848, entitled, “Queries for Carnarvonshire”’. (It is hard to know how much of these ‘Queries’ were John Jones’s own work, for some of the material occurs already in BL Add. 14883, fols 178–79, in the hand of William Morris’s nephew, Llywelyn Owen (RWMS I 608); on Jones’s manuscripts see above, p. 94 n. 73.) In NLW 2008, by Evan Evans, entitled ‘Historical Collections by Mr. Robert Vaughan the Antiquarian’ (fly-leaf), ‘Mowedd’ also occurs (p. 130) – as it also does in William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley et al., 6 vols in 8 (London, 1846), V, 631. Vaughan’s transcript was printed in A Description of Wales by Sr John Prise Knight (Oxford, 1663), pp. 7–8 (Mowedd). For another reference to it, see P[eter] B[ailey] Williams, ‘An Historical Account of the Monasteries and Abbeys in Wales’, Transactions of the Cymmrodorion, 2 (1828), 203–62 (p. 236). The copy of Vaughan’s transcript in Rowlands, ‘Antiquitates Parochiales III’, p. 394, reads Moneddus, however. 269 Rec. Caern. 257. On the charter see Sims-Williams, ‘Edward IV’s Confirmation Charter’. The etymology of Moweddus is unclear; the comparison with Cae’r Weddus cited by HEALlE 95 is problematical, although the alternation in it between Weddus and Wefus is relevant. See Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 131, for Ifor Williams’s suggestion that the name ‘erwedus’ may contain the adjective gweddus. Cf. GPC s.v. arweddus. 270 Cyff Beuno, pp. 66–67: ‘yn nhafodiaith bresennol yr ardal, “Afon Rhyd Beirion;” ond dywed y brodorion fod arni enw arall, sef “Yr Afon Wefus”’. 271 HW I 168 n. 28; PKM 280; TYP4 345; WCD 241. 272 Cf. WG 177; GMW 10; CA 95; PKM 285 and 293; EANC 213; AP2 xl (pace Hamp, ‘Peryddon’). The existence of the word gwefus ‘lip, edge’ would help (also gweüs, GMW §10). 273 PKM 292; cf. TC 111–12 on lenition after afon. 274 PNDPH 51. In our region note Efelauc > (Y) Felog: Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, pp. 135–36. 265 266

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If Eben is correct, Elidir’s supposed grave would be somewhere on the Afon Wefus near its confluence (aber) with the Desach (SH 4450), where he was slain. It is noticeable that this is on the old strategic route to the south, and that the Afon Wefus runs down from Bron yr Erw, the scene of more than one battle.275 Admittedly, the adjective mawr – Thomas Jones translates ‘great Meweddus’ – hardly suits the Afon Wefus here, which is not a broad river but a narrow one, descending through an impressive ravine, but it could be old orthography for vawr, agreeing with glan (f.) – the m- of the following mewedus might persuade a scribe to retain the m. Alternatively, the adjective could be an addition to obtain a (non-essential) internal rhyme in -awr; as it stands, the line is unusually long. A possible location for Elidir’s supposed grave is the seventh- to ninth-century cross-inscribed stone at Capel Uchaf, Clynnog (SH 4304 4987), less than half a mile west of Pont Rhyd y Beirion (SH 43672 49711) where the road from Clynnog crosses the Afon Wefus.276 It is hardly on its ‘bank’, however. A better possibility would be one of the many large boulders by the footpath on the wide right-hand bank of Afon Wefus as one climbs down from Pont Rhyd y Beirion to the stream’s confluence with the Desach at Tai’n Lôn – perhaps the ‘rock in the [Afon Wefus],277 now called “Pwll yr hen Fegan”’, recorded on Eben Fardd’s map of Clynnog parish278 and located more precisely in nineteenth-century folklore at the waterfall below Brynhafod farm.279 According to the folklore, ‘Pwll Began’ was named after a maid from the farm who fell to her death one night. (Did Began replace Elidir? Was Began originally *yr hen began ‘the old pagan’,280 referring to Elidir?) It could be significant that Maesog mill stood by the confluence of Eben’s Wefus with the Desach, for Maesog, like Moweddus, was one of Clynnog’s ancient estates.281 A complication, however, which has never been appreciated, is that the whole Desach, or at least the stretch of it nearest the sea, was known earlier as the Afon Wefus

PKM 280. See on III.3 above. W. Gwyn Thomas, ‘An Early Christian Monument in Caernarvonshire’, AC, 141 (1992), 183; Edwards, Corpus, III, 266–67, no. CN15; Coflein, s. Incised Stone, Capel Uchaf; Archwilio s. Cross-Inscribed Stone, Capel Uchaf. The stone is on the north side of the road, opposite Twt(h)ill farmhouse. 277 Here Eben calls the Afon Wefus ‘the Aber Rheon Stream’ in a mistaken attempt to associate it with Cynon rather than Elidir (see above, p. 145 n. 151, on I.10). 278 NLW Minor Deposit 151. See the caption to the map. On the map itself Eben marks it as Dygen Ddyfnant, attempting, impossibly, to equate it with Dygen/Dygyn Dyfnant, a place named by Prydydd y Moch (see CBT V 23.154n.). 279 ‘Cenin’ (R. H. Jones), ‘Pwll Began’, Y Genedl Gymreig, 4.11.1891, p. 7, and ‘Man Gofion am y Beirdd, 48’, Cyvaill yr Aelwyd, 12.11 (Nov. 1891), 337, where the stream is called ‘Rhyd Rheon’, following Eben Fardd. In Sul, Gŵyl a Gwaith (1981), Catrin Parri Huws (of Capel Uchaf) has the folktale as told by her grandmother, who had pointed out the site (pp. 12–13). Her account of the river-names is confused and obviously influenced ultimately by Eben Fardd’s writings, which were revered in the area (ibid., pp. 18 and 72). Thus she has ‘Afon Rheon’ and ‘Afon Beirion’ merging and forming Afon Desach (pp. 12–13), while, for her, ‘Afon Menweddus’ (sic, the same spelling as in Eben Fardd, Cyff Beuno, p. 62, and Ambrose, Hynafiaethau, p. 35) – which also had its ‘Pwll Began’ and associated story, she says – was distinct, running from Llwyn y Ne through Clynnog (pp. 13 and 52), perhaps the result of taking Eben’s ‘Menweddus … hen enw ar ran o Glynnog’ (p. 62) as referring to Clynnog village rather than parish. 280 For pegan see Rhyddiaith 1300–1425, Rhyddiaith y 15g, and citations in GPC s.v. pagan. 281 See above, p. 61, no. 28. Felin-Faesog is at SH 44000 50178 (RhELlH). 275 276

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

or Weddus. In 1657 the Caernarfon Quarter Sessions considered a complaint about the collapse of a wooden bridge that carried the highway from Pwllheli to Caernarfon over the Ryver Gweuis,283 and in 1776–77 stone bridges were commissioned to carry the same turnpike road across the rivers Weddys and Llifon.284 That the Weddys was the modern Desach is proved by a reference in the 1776–77 documentation to ‘Lord Newborough’s Ground called Cae’r Bont’, for Cae’r Bont in the Tithe maps (SH 42849 51541) is a field near Pont Aberdesach belonging to the Newborough estate, and another field nearby is Ddol Wefus (SH 42897 51445).285 Possibly the current river-name Desach is a back-formation from the place-name Aberdesach (1805 etc., beside Aberdindesach), in turn a contraction of an older Aberdaydesach (1626), Aberdidesach (1754–81), Aberdudesach (1782), or similar.286 Eben Fardd has ‘River Aberdindesach or Aberdesach’ on his map. Thus Aber Meuhedus/Mewedus in Arfon, where Elidir was slain according to the Laws, is likely to be Aberdesach (SH 4251), and his supposed grave is likely to be somewhere nearby on the bank of the Afon Desach/Weddus/Wefus. Admittedly, as aber means ‘confluence’ as well as ‘estuary’, the confluence of Afon Wefus and Aber Desach near Tai’n Lôn, discussed above, would be a possible death site,287 but Aberdesach on the coast is more likely, since Elidir’s expedition came by sea, according to the Triads. Two possible monuments near Aberdesach, both likely to have been highly visible in the Middle Ages (respectively 90 and 70 ft above sealevel), are a megalithic chambered tomb with a large capstone (over 6 × 7 ft) at SH 4299 5107,288 and a Bronze Age cairn containing a cist with a capstone of 5 ft × 2 ft 6 in. at SH 4267 5107.289 These tombs are both at Pennarth, which may be significant, seeing that Maeldaf Hynaf, lord of Pennarth (Pennardd), figures in the story of Elidir in the law tract (see above). Lloyd-Jones, Thomas Jones,290 and GPC take gwen efwr as *gwyn(n)ofwr ‘provoker’. This is plausible, for there is other evidence (besides amdinon for amdineu 282

The relevant references are cited in Cof y Cwmwd (Canolfan Hanes Uwchgwyrfai , accessed 22.7.2022), s.nn. Afon Rhyd-y-beirion, Afon Weddus, and Pont Weddus, but, unfortunately, in the context of a suggestion that Afon Weddus ran from Llwyn y Ne through Clynnog itself in the direction of Tŷ Coch (SH 4140); this clearly depends on unlikely statements by Catrin Parri Huws (see n. 279 above). 283 Caernarfon, Archives, XQS/1657/182. 284 Dolgellau, Gwynedd Archives, XPlansB/169. 285 RhELlH s.nn. 286 See Ifor Williams, ‘Afon Desach’, B., 17 (1956–58), 94–95. Cf. AMR s. *desach*. One explanation is ‘a fort (din) belonging to the (Irish) Déisi’ (J. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Gwyrfai’, B., 2 (1923–25), 111–12; ELlSG 97; EANC 13). In that case, Aberdesach may originally have mean ‘the estuary at the place Dind Désach or similar’, rather than ‘the estuary of the river Desach’. If the first element of Daydesach in Aberdaydesach etc. is the numeral ‘two’, the reference may be to the Desach’s two branches above Tai’n Lôn. 287 And the ‘Cefngraianog stone’, further east on the Desach (SH 4549), illustrated in EBSG 107, could even be the site of Elidir’s grave, assuming that both branches of the river were formerly called Meweddus. 288 Inv. Crn. II 56; Coflein, s. Penarth Burial Chamber; Archwilio s. Burial Chamber, Penarth. 289 Inv. Crn. II 55 no. 857; Archwilio s. Cairn with Urn Burial, North-West of Penarth, Aberdesach. 290 G. 659; BBCSG 136 n. 4. 282

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at III.5c) that S could confuse o and e.291 Note, however, that the white plant efwr ‘cow-parsnip’ is associated with the bank of a river in a poem in the Black Book: Handid haus im achuisson O’e adav ar lan awon, Y gid a llv ewur llwydon.292

This association, which is botanically sound, tends to support interpreting gwen efwr in line c as a nature-gnome or nature-descriptive ‘tag’, gwyn efwr ‘cow-parsnip (is) white’ or ‘white the cow-parsnip’.293 Compare the similar use of nominal sentences in the last line of the preceding stanza.294 Either way, the e of the manuscripts’ Gwen must be old orthography for y, whether [ǝ] or [ï]. Translation The grave of Elidir the Wealthy (is) on the bank of the great(?) Meweddus; a ruler (of) fair (or violent) fortune; a provoker (or white (is) the cow parsnip); a man mighty in battle.

III.16 Mabon son of Madron in Nantlle, Crn. W

Y Bedd y gorthir Nanllaû* ni wyr neb i gyneddvau Mabon vab Madron glau.

*an crudely formed, resembling cm, em, im; û altered from n. N

Y bedd ygorthir Nanllaû Ni wyr neb i gyneddvaû Mabon vap Madron glaû

T

Y Bedh yngorthir nanllaû ny wyr nep y gynnedhfeû Mabon vap madron glaû.*

*a altered to e in different ink.

In Bidiau II 14a, odein in T and N is a misreading of the rare word edein (eddëin). Cf. EWGP 11 and 64; Jacobs, Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry, pp. 10 and 46. See above, p. 36. 292 CLlH VIII.4; LlDC no. 40.11–13; EWSP 473: ‘Complaints are easier for me / because of his being left by the bank of the river / with a host of withered cow-parsley’. Cf. Peter Schrijver, ‘The Meaning of Celtic *eburos’, in Mélanges en l’honneur de Pierre-Yves Lambert, ed. Guillaume Oudaer et al. (Rennes, 2015), pp. 65–76 (pp. 65 and 70–71). 293 Compare Glas cunlleit, cev ewur (EWGP I.15b); cf. LPBT no. 4.139 ‘[gogwn] pan yw keu efwr’ – plants of this type are hollow stemmed and used for making whistles; cf. R 1273.17–18 corn-efwr (although cf. Edwards, Gwaith Madog Dwygraig, p. 122); Chwec evwr; chwerthinat tonn (CLlH VI.28b = EWGP VI.10b); melyn eithyn, crin euỽr (EWGP II.9b). 294 Above, p. 314. It is interesting to note that chwec evwr (CLlH VI.28b) occurs in the englyn following the one quoted above in connection with III.14. 291

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau P

Y bedd y gorthir Nanllav ni wyr neb i gyneddfav Mabon vap Mydron* glav

*y altered from a. B

Y bed yngorthir* Nanḷau

89

Ni uyr neb i gyneḍfau+ Mabon vap Madron glau.

*o deleted between h and i. +y over c or beginnings of an a. Index

col. 3 Mabon ab Madron bd at Nant λay. – 87.

To make 7 syllables in line c Bedd could be supplied before Mabon, as suggested by Thomas Jones, comparing Series IV; but perhaps the 6-syllable lines are effectively dramatic as they stand in both cases.295 The four manuscripts of Series III are in basic agreement in this stanza. The variants of the proper names given in the Myvyrian Archaiology text derive from late misreadings and emendations. Cwm Llau in line a is first found in NLW 2020ii, 91v, where it is Ieuan Fardd’s rationalisation of Ncm lhaû296 in the copy of W in NLW 1506, Book III, 73r. Mydron in line c originates with the alteration of a to y by P, which was followed by the derivatives of P, including Dr Davies in Peniarth 98ii. The only other occurrence of this Mydron outside derivatives of P is, as far as I know, ‘Mabon am Mydron’ in the poem Pa gur in the Black Book of Carmarthen.297 This is probably the source of P’s emendation, for a transcript of it, with the reading mydron, appears earlier in the same manuscript (Peniarth 111, p. 54), just before Series I on p. 56. The variant Modron first appears in another text of Series III by Evan Evans in NLW 2040, p. 155, which is ultimately derived from P. It is probably an emendation of Mydron made in the light of the regular form of the name, which is Modron. Mabon and his mother Modron are the well-attested characters in Culhwch and Olwen and elsewhere, generally supposed to be euhemerised Celtic divinities, Maponos and *Mātrŏna.298 The form Madron here looks like a corruption of Modron (< Mātrŏna) under the influence of the name Madrun (< VL Mătrōna), the name of a Welsh saint.299 Influence from the adjective madron ‘dizzy’ is also possible.

On Series IV see above, p. 22. MA2 65. If the second letter of Ncm in NLW 1506 is i it is crudely formed and undotted. Cf. the misreading of W in NLW 170, p. 55: Nemllaû. 297 LlDC no. 31.13. The reduction of pretonic [o] to [ǝ] is irregular. See LHEB 664–65, who notes however, Welsh Brychan: Irish Broccán (p. 665 n. 1). Possibly Mydron was a false modernisation of OW *Modron, in which the o was taken to represent MW y. 298 TYP4 424–28 and 449–51; BWP 3–4; Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition (Cardiff, 1961), pp. 128–29. For scepticism see Hutton, ‘Medieval Welsh Literature and Pre-Christian Deities’, pp. 58–63. 299 On Madrun see Wade-Evans, ‘Beuno Sant’, pp. 324–26; TYP4 449; Hutton, ‘Medieval Welsh Literature and Pre-Christian Deities’, p. 60; WCD 436–37. The suggestion by Gruffydd, Rhiannon, p. 98, that St Madrun derives from the goddess Matrona, cannot be proved. 295 296

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Nanllaû is Nantlleu in Arfon (SH 5053), colloquially Nanlle/Nanlla, which plays a prominent part in the Four Branches in the story of Lleu, who is clearly its eponym there.300 No Welsh literary source associates Mabon with this area, and there are no known dedications to Maponos here or in any other part of Wales. A Rhiwabon (SH 4841) in Llanystymdwy, Crn., about seven miles south of Nantlleu, is presumably from *Rhiwfabon,301 and it is possible that Moel Faban in Llanllechid (SH 6368), on the other side of Eryri, also contains the name Mabon,302 perhaps assimilated to maban, baban, ‘baby’. As Mabon occurred as an ordinary Brittonic personal name, however,303 the original eponyms of Rhiwabon and Moel Faban need not be Mabon ap Modron. Yet they may have got associated with him subsequently, which might lead to the localisation of stories about Mabon in Gwynedd. There is a prominent Carn Fadryn/Fadrun304 in Llŷn (SH 2735), which may have influenced the corruption to Mabon vab Madron in the englyn. A rare hint of a possible association between Modron and Arfon comes from the Arfon poet Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch of Dinlle (fl. 1352), who alludes obscurely to gwlad Gwydion (Arfon?) and Modron (MS medron), in two adjacent lines.305 In the French romance Le Bel Inconnu and its Middle English version Libeaus Desconus, an enchanter Mabon (ME Maboun) appears as the oppressor of the ‘cité de Sinaudon’, which is clearly somewhere in Snowdonia.306 Roger Loomis identified it with Segontium, the Roman site near Caernarfon (Caer Saint, SH 4862), but there is no solid evidence for this,307 and Leland, listing ‘Castelles in Cair Arvonshire’, refers to what is clearly the hillfort (SH 7604 7784) on Conway mountain308 as ‘Sinnodune a mile from Conwey. The fundation of a greate thing yet remayne there’.309 While it is possible that the association of Mabon and Snowdonia is part of the development of the Mabon story outside Wales,310 it may have been taken over from a Welsh tradition about Mabon which is also reflected in the grave-stanza. The appearance

PKM 291; ELlSG 61. Derivation from Lleu (or lleu) is implausibly questioned by Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 339. See note on I.35 above. 301 ELlSG 85; AMR s. Rhiwabon (this is certainly the etymology of Rhiwabon, Den. (Owen and Morgan, Dictionary, p. 427)). 302 ELlSG 85. Caer-faban (SH 8165) in Maenan, Crn. is kae r vabon in 1681, and Brynmaban in Caeo, Crm. is often -mabon. (AMR s. *faban* and *maban*). 303 TYP4 424–28; WCD 431; Léon Fleuriot, ‘Toponymie nautique des côtes bretonnes’, ÉC, 10 (1962–63), 279–91 (p. 287); Sims-Williams, ‘Shrewsbury School MS 7’, p. 58; AMR s. *mabon. 304 For forms, starting with Karnmadrun in 1191, see AMR s.nn. Carn Fadrun and Madrun. Cf. ELlSG 53, with review by Gruffydd, p. 245. Hugh Maurice (1796) wrote ‘Llyniau Nanlle. Arvon.’ and ‘Carn Madryn …’ in the margin of his copy of Series III in Llanstephan 193, 151r. 305 Gwaith Gronw Gyriog, Iorwerth ab y Cyriog, Mab Clochyddyn, Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch ac Ithel Ddu, ed. Ifans et al., no. 8.59–60. On Gruffudd ap Tudur see above, p. 143, on I.8–11, and on gwlad Gwydion = Arfon see above, p. 288 n. 92. 306 On the name ‘Snowdon’ see HW I 233 n. 26. Cf. Vita Sancti Cadoci §23, where Guinedotorum is glossed ‘.i. S[n]audunensium’ (VSB 72). 307 Wales and the Arthurian Legend, pp. 11–14; TYP4 427. 308 Coflein s. Castell Caer Seion; Archwilio s. Caer Seion Hillfort, Conwy Mountain. On the name Caer Seion see above on III.3. 309 Leland, Itinerary in Wales, p. 84. 310 This is the opinion of Loomis, Wales and the Arthurian Legend, pp. 13–14, but the evidence is not conclusive. 300

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The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

of ‘Rey mabun’ among the titles of lost French lays in a thirteenth-century list from Chester311 shows that more material about Mabon circulated than now survives. There are a number of early remains, including a small Iron Age fort, in the Nantlle area which may have been associated with Mabon.312 In 1849 John Jones (‘Cilmyn’), rector of Llanllyfni, stated that the remains ‘of Mabon, on the uplands of Nanlley, were discovered in an urn, imbedded in a carnedd, near a Druidical circle’, and in 1853 he referred to the grave of Bedwin the Brave, on the sloping side of Moel Tryfan, and that of Mabon the son of Madron, further on, on the uplands of Mantlef [sic], both of which were accidently discovered a few years ago imbedded in a carnedd.

The same year, he expanded this report: On the uplands of Nantllef several Druidical remains were to be seen a few years ago, which, together with the grave of Mabon, have disappeared under an accumulation of refuse from the slate quarries, and an interesting circle of upright stones sacrilegiously appropriated towards the erection of fences, and for other agricultural purposes. Between these uplands and Caernarvon Bay may be seen the slopes of Tryfan … .313

This is geographically vague, and the forms of the proper names are based on those in Peter Bailey Williams’s translation of Englynion y Beddau, to which he refers. It must be regarded as very doubtful whether the carneddi referred to were traditionally known as the graves of Mabon and Bedwyr. In early Welsh story, cynneddf (line b) is frequently used to refer to the magical or supernatural attribute or peculiarity of an object, place, or person.314 The peculiarities of graves and tumuli are a common feature of the mirabilia genre. The author of the englyn probably has in mind such things as the graves which change size or remove lethargy in the mirabilia section of the Historia Brittonum, §§73–74, the gorsedd at Arberth in the Four Branches,315 and the Irish graves which cause onlookers to laugh aloud.316 By ‘ni wyr neb i gyneddfav’ he presumably means either that no one knows all the properties Mabon’s grave may have, or that the grave may be presumed to have special properties, even though no one in fact knows what they are. Perhaps the reason for this remark is that already in Welsh tradition Mabon was regarded as a magician, as in foreign romance.

Sims-Williams, ‘Shrewsbury School MS 7’, pp. 58–59. Inv. Crn. II 190 and 192–96, no. 1212 (= Coflein’s ‘Small Hillfort North East of Gelli Ffrydiau near Nantlle’ in Llanllyfni, SH 5259 5356) and nos 1216–27. 313 ‘The Cromlech’ (1849), p. 85, and his replies to Thomas Stephens on ‘The Grave of Gwallawg’, AC, 2nd ser. 4 (1853), 73 and 142. On John Jones and Peter Bailey Williams see above, p. 94. The latter’s translations of III.16 and I.12 run: ‘The grave of Mabon, the son of Madron, is on the uplands of Nanlley’ and ‘The grave of Bedwir the brave is on the sloping side of Gallt Tryfan’. Jones first quotes Williams in ‘Segontiaci’ (1847), p. 103. On Moel Tryfan see above on I.12. 314 See references in G. and GPC s.v. and PKM 121, 178, and 254; Rowlands, ‘Y Tri Thlws ar Ddeg’, p. 63. 315 Cf. PKM 9, 101 and 120–21; Sims-Williams, Irish Influence, pp. 59–63. See also Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium, II.3, and Ivanov, ‘Ralph de Diceto’, pp. 68–69. 316 Writings of Bishop Patrick, ed. Gwynn, pp. 60–62 and 130. 311

312

326

Series III

Translation The grave in the upland of Nantlleu whose attributes no one knows (is the grave of) Mabon son of Modron the swift.

III.17 Myrddin Emrys, ?at Dinas Emrys, Crn. W

Bedd An ap Llian ymnewais Vynydd lluagor llew ymrais Prif ddewin Merdin Embrais*

*Unusually line c is not indented. N

Bedd An ap lLian ymnewais Vynydd llûagor llew ymrais Prif ddewin MERDIN Embrais

T

Bedd Ân ap Lhian ymnewais* vynydh lhûagor lhew Emreis prif dhewin merdhin Emreis.

*In left margin (in same ink) opposite line a: Merdhin | Embrys. P

Bedd An ap Llian ymnewais vynydd llvagor llew Ymrais prif ddewin Merddin Embrais

B

Beḍ An ap Ḷian ymneụais*

90

Vyṇyd ḷụagor ḷeụ Ymrais Prif ḍeụin Merdin Embrais

*letter deleted between m and n. Index

col. 1 An ab ı Λıan Bd at Meuaes Vınyδ Λuagor 90.

This is another englyn penfyr, with vynydd ending line a (see below). As T’s note observes, ‘Ân ap Lhian’ etc. is Myrddin Emrys (Merlinus Ambrosius).317 The same equation is made by Pughe in his manuscript index to Englynion y Beddau (NLW 146, p. 109). The last line should therefore be translated ‘chief magician, Myrddin Emrys’, in apposition to ‘An ap Llian’, rather than ‘chief magician of Myrddin Emrys’ with Thomas Jones. Llian, which was the reading of S, it seems, must be for

317

The e in Merdin was a standard spelling: WG 16; LHEB 665; Bowen, Gruffudd Hiraethog a’i Oes, p. 75.

327

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

lleian ‘nun’, as several later copyists realised: Dr Davies copied P in Peniarth 98ii as ‘Bedd Ann ap lleian’ (his underlining), and Evan Evans emended a derivative of P to ‘An ap y Lleian’.319 From the copyists’ division of the words, it is clear that they understood the name as ‘An(n) son of a (or the) nun’. In his list ‘Authorum Britannicorum Nomina’ at the end of his Dictionary, Dr Davies gives ‘Ann ap y lleian yw Merddin’, and he is followed by Lhwyd, who gives ‘Ann ab y Lheian. V. Myrdhyn’ in his Catalogus in Archaeologia Britannica.320 (This explains why Lhwyd and Williams did not give Merdin Embrais a separate entry in their index.) The interpretation of an as a name was attacked by Evan Evans, and by Lewis Morris in his unpublished Celtic Remains (1757): 318

The poets call him [Myrddin Emrys] Anap y Lleian; that is, the mischance of the nun; which Dr Davies, in his Catalogue, mistook for a proper name, and wrote it An ap y Lleian, and so has Mr E. Llwyd, as if his name had been An the son of the Nun; but Lewis Glyn Cothi explains this: Tad y mab nid adnabu (Anap ei fam) neb pwy fu.321

The quotation from Lewys Glyn Cothi does not in fact refer to Myrddin,322 but nevertheless ‘his mother’s mishap (anap)’ clearly points to the correct interpretation of An ap. This interpretation was widely disseminated, for the Celtic Remains circulated in manuscript.323 Edward Jones, who cited it passim in footnotes to The Bardic Museum, has a note on ‘An ap Llian’ in III.17: ‘Supposed to be a mistake for Anhap y Lleian, or the misfortune of the Nun; as Merddin is said to have been the son of a Nun, by an unknown father’.324 Pughe, s.v. ‘Anhap…Mischance; misfortune, unhappiness’ in his Dictionary, lists: Anhap ei fam, a bastard. Hence Myrddin Emrys is called Anhap y Lleian, the mischance of the nun. Tad y mab ni adnabu (Anhap ei vam) neb pwy vu.

For eia > ia see AMR s. *leia*, and note especially llyan in all the forms of Llwyn Lleiaf discussed below. 319 NLW 2040, p. 155. Copied by Peter Bailey Williams in Cwrtmawr 454, p. 478, as ‘Ann ap y Lleian’. On this topic see Sims-Williams, ‘anfab2’, which is summarised and revised here; also A. O. H. Jarman, ‘Emrys Wledig; Amlawdd Wledig; Uthr Bendragon’, LlC, 2 (1952–53), 125–28 (pp. 126–27). 320 Archaeologia Britannica, p. 254. 321 CR 323–24 (BL Add. 14911, 43r). Lewis Morris seems to have been copying Evan Evans: see ‘Biography and Literary Correspondence of the Late Rev. Evan Evans’, Cambrian Quarterly Magazine and Celtic Repertory, 1829, 133–45, 373–82, and 393–404 (p. 382). Myrddin is called anab by Edmwnd Prys: Ymryson Edmwnd Prys a Wiliam Cynwal, ed. Williams, no. 26.59 and n. 322 Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 5.25–26. 323 CR, Preface, pp. 3 and 5; G. J. Williams, Iolo Morganwg (Cardiff, 1956), pp. 208–10 and 402. 324 Bardic Museum, p. 12. 318

328

Series III The father of the child (the mischance of his mother) nobody knew who he was. Ll. G. Cothi.325

The misunderstanding ‘An ap y Lleian’ is much older than Dr Davies. The Brutiau, following Geoffrey of Monmouth, make Myrddin Emrys’s mother a nun (mynaches) in Carmarthen,326 and an addition peculiar to the version first found in BL Cotton Cleopatra B.v i (s. xiv1), 63v, states: Ac an ab y lleian y gelwit y mab kyn no hynny. Ac o hynny allan y dodet arnaw merdyn. o achos y gaffael yngkaer vyrdyn.327 And the boy was called an ab y lleian [cf. an ap y lleian, NLW 7006D (Black Book of Basingwerk), p. 133a34] up to then; but from then onwards he was called Myrddin because he was found in Caerfyrddin.

There is definitely a deliberate gap between an and ab, and the same is true of an ap in the closely related mid-fifteenth-century Black Book of Basingwerk text (the part by Gutun Owain) and An ap in Oxford, Jesus College, 141, 96r (also by Gutun).328 This division was also adopted by Lewys Glyn Cothi in the same period, even though he was familiar with the expression anap ei fam (see above). Thus he calls Myrddin ‘aan ap y lleian’ in an autograph poem (Peniarth 109, p. 53),329 and calls him simply An elsewhere,330 as does Tudur Aled, who groups An with the Welsh prophet Adda Fras and, most surprisingly, with Odin.331 Lewys Môn, too, refers to ‘An … mab y Lleian’ and ‘hen Fab Lleian … An’, while Gruffudd Hiraethog refers to ‘an ap y lleian’, ‘an vab y lleian’ and ‘an ab y lleian’ in Peniarth 176.332 The n of Gruffudd’s See similarly Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi (Oxford, 1837), p. 149 n. 25. In his index to Englynion y Beddau in NLW 146, pp. 109–12, Pughe has ‘Anap y Lleian (Myrzin Emrais’ (sic). 326 HRB VI.17–19, §§106–8. The Brutiau rarely call her lleian, with the exception of Liber Coronacionis Britanorum, ed. Sims-Williams, p. 79 (60r, the source of MA2 522). Myrddin is fab lleian in a cywydd of c. 1461 quoted by E. I. Rowlands, ‘Myrddin ar Bawl’, LlC, 5 (1958–59), 87–88 (p. 88). 327 Rhyddiaith 1300–1425; cf. BB 124 (61v in the ink foliation). 328 Rhyddiaith y 15g. In Brut Tysilio this became Annvab y llaian (MA2 457; cf. Oxford, Jesus College, MS 28ii, p. 111). See also MA2 523 (An vap y lleian). In Cleopatra B.v i, 63v, a corrector has squeezed a feint, narrow v in the gap between an and ab, so that the reading appears to be anvab. There may be a connection between this correction and Brut Tysilio. 329 He writes the a double, the first a being the cue for the rubricator. See Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi I, ed. E. D. Jones (Cardiff and Aberystwyth, 1953), no. 31.25, and n. (cf. ‘An ap y lleian’ in Peniarth 64, p. 259, and ‘An ab y lleian’ in Llanstephan 122, p. 132). Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi (Oxford, 1837), p. 149, has Anhap y Lleian, and Johnston, Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, no. 20.25, has An ap y lleian. 330 Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, nos 86.17 and 138.23, and p. 659 s.n. 331 Gruffudd Antur, ‘“Rhyw farwol law”: Ailddarganfod Llawysgrifau Tudur Aled’, Dwned, 27 (2021), 71–82 (p. 73, correcting GTA no. LXX.50). It is hard to see how Odin could be known in Wales c. 1500, unless through some oral link with Scandinavia (cf. Stephen Mitchell, ‘Odin, Magic and a Swedish Trial from 1484’, Scandinavian Studies, 81.3 (2009), 263–86). 332 GLM nos XCI.47–48 and LXV.47–48; and Gruffudd Hiraethog in Peniarth 176, pp. 33 and 39 (p. 39 is quoted below). There appears to be another trace of An ap y lleian in late texts of Bonedd y Saint §42: where the text accepted by Bartrum names ‘Ananan lleian’ as the sister (chwaer) of the sons of Helig, the text by Gruffudd Hiraethog in Peniarth 177, p. 266 (1544–65) has ‘Anan ap y lleian nai uabchwaer’, and the same corruption occurs in Cardiff, Central Library 4.265, 28r, by Simwnt Fychan (second half of the sixteenth century), which contains additions very close to 325

329

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

first an here is written over a second a, which, like Lewys Glyn Cothi’s aan, could indicate aan with a pronunciation Ân, as in MS T of III.17. The phrase anap y lleian ‘the nun’s mishap’ seems thus to have originated as a euphemistic description of Myrddin. It cannot have arisen much before about the fourteenth century, when hap (< English hap) and anhap, anap, are first attested.333 It perhaps originated in poetry, where ‘anap y lleian’ lends itself to cynghanedd, rather than in the prose of the early-fourteenth-century Cotton Cleopatra Brut. By that date ‘anap y lleian’ was already misinterpreted as ‘An son of the Nun’, as is shown by the word divisions in manuscripts, by the introduction of mab or fab in place of the ambiguous ap, and sometimes by the context. There is no evidence, however, that this ‘An’ ever came to be regarded as a distinct character from Myrddin Emrys. III.17 is ambiguous. The division between An and ap in the manuscripts and the capitalisation are in favour of ‘An son of a Nun’ in S, but the original behind S may well have had anap lleian ‘a nun’s mishap’ as the first of a series of epithets for Myrddin. It is unlikely that Lleian is a proper name,334 in view of the many references elsewhere to ‘y lleian’, though some of the copyists of Series III may have thought that ‘Llian’ was a name. The reading in line c seems to have been Embrais in S, which must be a ‘learned’ form of Emrais < Ambrosius influenced by the Latin spelling, conceivably due to Salesbury himself, who favoured etymological spellings in Welsh such as Cymbro for Cymro.335 (T presumably eliminated the b in his text, but retained it in his marginal comment.) The collocation ‘Myrddin Emrais’ is almost certainly later than Geoffrey of Monmouth who was very probably the first to identify the prophet Myrddin with Emrys Wledig, an independent character derived from (or conflated with) Ambrosius Aurelianus, the fifth-century figure mentioned by Gildas, who, according to the tale in the Historia Brittonum, §§40–42, surpassed Vortigern’s magicians in divining the presence of the dragons in the pool at Dinas Emrys in Snowdon.336 ‘Prif ddewin’ is an apt description of the post-Geoffrey Myrddin. In Geoffrey ‘Aurelius Ambrosius’ appears as a separate person from Merlinus, who assists him by transporting Stonehenge from Ireland to mons Ambrii near Salisbury.337 It is probably this association between Myrddin/Merlinus and Emrys/Aurelius Ambrosius which lies behind T’s ‘lhew emrais’ (‘lion of Ambrosius’) as an epithet for Myrddin. This is probably an

the text given by Gruffudd Hiraethog. I quote text and variants from EWGT 61 (see pp. 53–54 on the manuscripts). The corruption looks like a misreading that has been influenced by scribal knowledge of the male character ‘An ap y lleian’. Cf. P. C. Bartrum, ‘Late Additions to “Bonedd y Saint”’, THSC, 1959, 76–98 (pp. 86 and 93). 333 See G. s.v. and compounds of hap in GPC and G.; T. H. Parry-Williams, The English Element in Welsh (London, 1923), p. 74. 334 Lleian (var. Llian) in Plant Brychan §3[i] is an error for Lluan (EWGT 82, 84, and 199). 335 See LHEB 511 on Embreis in HB §42. No forms in Embr- occur in the thirteenth- to fifteenth-century prose corpora or in G. Embrys in Triad 87 in Peniarth 252 (TYP4 228) is by the mid-seventeenth-century Scribe X133 (RWMS I 433 and II 217). Embrys occurs in the earliest copy of Series IV (c. 1590, above, p. 21), in CR 307, and in an addition in Gwyneddon 3, ed. Ifor Williams (Cardiff, 1931), p. 355. 336 See TYP4 347–48. Welsh writers, beginning with Giraldus, sometimes distinguish Geoffrey’s wonder-child Merlinus from the traditional Myrddin (Wyllt, Silvester, Calidonius, ap Morfryn) by calling him Myrddin Emrys. See TYP4 228 and 460–61; G. 474–75. 337 HRB VIII.9–12, §§128–30.

330

Series III

emendation by T, in view of the llew ymrais of all the other manuscripts; but it is a plausible one orthographically.338 The name of the grave-place in line a is corrupt, for ymnewais is an impossible orthography for the nasal mutation. None of the manuscripts offer any helpful suggestions. William Morris gives ‘yn newys’ as a variant (BL Add. 14867, 94r); but this is merely a straightening out of the mutation and an alteration of the rhyming ending, no doubt inspired by Emrys. Edward Jones has yn Euas / Fynydd ‘in the mountain of Euas’, which does not rhyme,339 and Peter Bailey Williams translates the whole stanza: ‘The grave of An ap y Lleian, or Merddin, the Bard of Ambrosius, is on the mountain of Lluangor yng Hemais’. ‘Fynedd’ is the gair cyrch at the end of line a of a penfyr, as Dr Davies recognised in re-arranging the stanza in Peniarth 98ii. The syntax is thus parallel to lines such as ‘Bet Siaun syberv in Hirerv – minit’ (I.67a). Any emendation of newais etc. which has two or three syllables and rhymes in -ais (-eis) or -ys – Emreis and Emrys being alternative forms340 – is possible, for instance ‘yg Kemais vynydd’.341 A tradition mentioned by Ranulf Higden (d. 1364) and Gruffudd Hiraethog says that Merlinus Silvestris or Myrddin fab Morfryn was buried in Bardsey (Ynys Enlli) – possibly an inference from Bard- in the island’s English name – and late medieval writers, beginning with Hywel Rheinallt (fl. c. 1471–94) locate the glass house, in which Myrddin was finally incarcerated, in Ynys Enlli.342 Occasionally Myrddin Emrys seems to be meant343 – but it is difficult to relate ‘ymnewais fynydd’ to Mynydd Enlli (SH 1221). Another tradition, recorded by Gruffudd Hiraethog in the mid-sixteenth century (Peniarth 176, p. 39), localises ‘An vab y lleian’ at Maen/Mein y Bardd (‘The Bard’s Stone(s)’) in Llysan, Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr, Den. (now ‘Llŷs-Anne’!, SJ 02344 46122), between Cadair Dinmael (SH 9846) and Betws Gwerful Goch (SJ 0346): maen y bardd ysydd ar y ffor[dd] | rrwng kadair dinmael ar betws | vwch lawr kayav o vewn tref | lys an vab y lleian ac yn y | main hynny yrrain sydd yn vedrod | gron vechan i kad an ab y lleian | amvrddyn y lleian ysydd is law | hynny lle gellwir [sic] y llyssdir.344

For confusion of e and y see above, p. 16. The only other emendations which occur to me are llew eureis/efreis ‘powerful lion’ (see CBT IV 4.66 and p. 390 for collocating eureis with Emreis ‘Gwynedd’), llew treis (CBT III 26.118), or llew yn nhrais ‘a lion in battle’. 339 Bardic Museum, p. 12. 340 Emreis and Emrys are explained by Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages (Abingdon, 2014), pp. 43–45, as nominative ~ vocative, citing MW Pyr and Scottish Hamish as further vocative reflexes. (Cf. earlier comments in LHEB 581 and 584; John T. Koch, ‘The Loss of Final Syllables and the Loss of Declension in Brittonic’, B., 30 (1982–83), 201–33 (p. 210 n. 1); SBCHP 23 and 258.) In general cf. David Stifter, ‘Vocative for nominative’, in Vocative! Addressing between System and Performance, ed. Barbara Sonnenhauser and Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna (Berlin, 2013), pp. 43–85, and idem, ‘Two Continental Celtic Studies: The Vocative of Gaulish, and Essimnus’, in Continental Celtic Word Formation: The Onomastic Data, ed. Juan Luis García Alonso (Salamanca, 2013), pp. 99–122 (pp. 99–103). 341 Cf. Mynydd y Cemais, Mtg. (SN 8606). Cemais is a common name (see on I.66). 342 Bartrum, ‘Tri Thlws ar Ddeg’, p. 459; Rowlands, ‘Y Tri Thlws ar Ddeg’, p. 52; idem, review of TYP1, p. 246; TYP4 462. 343 TYP4 462; and note ‘ynys’ in Lewis Glyn Cothi’s poem about ‘An ap y Lleian’ (Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, ed. Johnston, no. 20.26). 344 < > = words inserted above the line. 338

331

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau The Bard’s Stone is on the road between Cadair Dinmael and Betws, above the fields within the tref of Llys An vab y lleian, and in those stones – which are in the form of a little round grave – An ab y lleian was begotten, and the nun’s ruin is below that, at the edge of a place which is called the llys-land.345

No doubt Gruffudd Hiraethog wrote this from local knowledge, for the site is not far south of Mynydd Hiraethog.346 The division of the words, the use of vab, and the fact that this story is based on an evident folk-etymology of Llysan (= llys + -an) as Llys-An, shows that An (f)ab y lleian is meant, not anap y lleian.347 More than a century later John Lloyd, an antiquary and schoolmaster at Rhuthun, evidently unaware of the tradition reported by Gruffudd Hiraethog, visited the site and sent a report to Edward Lhwyd in 1693: Meini’r Beirdh in Cader-Ddimael, [sic] or maen y Bardd as \an/other calld them lie thus [Diagram] or the stones nearer to one another & both 4 about 9 yds distant from the other. The man that took of them 4 away \was my Guide/. A man came by & deterr’d them from medling with any [–other] more of them alledging, mae rhiw Athrawon a gladded yna, neu i rhiw bwrpas felly y gosoded y rhain.348

It is not clear whether ‘i kad an ab y lleian’ means that Myrddin was begotten at this place, or found there. If the latter, it could refer to his finding by Vortigern’s emissaries (cf. ‘y gaffael yngkaer vyrdyn’ in the Cleopatra Brut), an event which the Historia Brittonum places in Glywysing, and the Historia Regum Britanniae and the Brutiau place in Carmarthen, or to a modern ‘discovery’ of his grave. Gruffudd’s reference to ‘bedrod gron vechan’ is in favour of the latter; and as we have seen, it was alleged locally in 1693 ‘mai rhiw Athrawon a gladded yna’ (‘that some learned doctors were buried there’). It looks very much as if the whole story of Myrddin Emrys had been relocalised at Llysan. Perhaps the An legend was fostered by the uchelwyr of Llysan, who descended from Owain Hen and Llywelyn Offeiriad, the sons of Gruffudd ab Owain (fl. 1285), who did homage to Edward I in 1301.349 Within the tref of Llysan is a farm called Llwyn Lleia’, spelt Llwyn Lleiaf (SJ 02430 46333) since the nineteenth century, but originally Llwyn Lleian, ‘Nun’s grove or bush’ (Llwynllyan 1625–6, Peniarth 176, p. 39. For the text see also Edwards, ‘Llwyn Lleiaf’, p. 72; Inv. Den. 125–26; Inv. Mer. 121. WCD 495 suggests that mvrddyn ‘ruin’ involves a pun on Myrddin. 346 Cf. Bowen, Gruffudd Hiraethog a’i Oes, p. 3: ‘Y mae’r nodiadau ar chwedlau a hen olion a geir yma a thraw yn y gwahanol gasgliadau hyn [o achau, etc.] yn amlygu gwedd bellach ar ddidd­ ordebau eang Gruffudd’. 347 Compare the folk-etymology which puts Llŷs-Anne on the O.S. map; Llysan (1519) is the earliest form. See Richards, ‘Llwyn Lleiaf’, p. 272; AMR s.n.; ELl 78; BWP 169. 348 ‘… that some learned doctors were buried there, or for some such purpose these had been set there’. Lhwyd Letters: John Lloyd to Lhwyd, 19 (etc.) December 1693. For the sketch of four stones see Bryn Roberts, ‘Llythyrau John Lloyd at Edward Lhuyd’, NLWJ, 17.2 (1971), 183–206 (p. 188). 349 On them, see J. Y. W. Lloyd, ‘History of the Lordship of Maelor Gymraeg or Bromfield, the Lordship of Ial or Yale, and Chirkland in the Principality of Powys Fadog’, AC, 4th ser. 35 (1878), 161–78 (pp. 174–75); Bartrum, Welsh Genealogies AD 300–1400; idem, Welsh Genealogies AD 1400–1500, 18 vols (Aberystwyth, 1983), s.n. Bleddyn ap Cynfyn 20–22; and Siddons, Welsh Genealogies A.D. 1500–1600, s.n. Bleddyn ap Cynfyn 20(C). 345

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Series III

1636–7, Llwyn lleian 1836) – probably the ‘mvrddyn y lleian’ to which Gruffudd Hiraethog refers.350 Whether the name Llwyn Lleian was formed as a consequence of the identification of An ab y lleian with the pseudo-eponym of Llysan, or was pre-existent and contributed to it, is impossible to decide. Possibly Lewys Môn’s allusions (before 1503) to ‘Llwyn hen Fab Lleian’ and ‘Llys An’ refer to Llysan and Llwyn Lleian.351 It is possible, then, that our grave-stanza refers to Llysan. A major difficulty, however, is that mynydd does not suit their position (bryn is what occurs in local place-names) and that no name resembling newais etc. survives there. An easier emendation would be to ‘yn Emrais fynydd’, referring to mountainous Gwynedd in general,352 or specifically to the mountain overlooking Dinas Emrys (SH 6049) in Beddgelert, Crn., the site most anciently and continuously associated with Myrddin Emrys.353 This emendation would explain the curious, though not unparalleled (cf. I.7, 13, 65), coincidence that the location of the grave happens to rhyme with the name of the hero. As it stands, the same rhyme word seems to appear in lines b and c; such repetition is a metrical fault (gwestodl), but not if the word is repeated three or more times, typically with personal names.354 This is an argument for reading Emrais in line a as well. If these emendations are correct Emrais would be used in three different ways in one sentence: (a) as part of a place-name, Emrais fynydd, (b) as the personal name Emrais (Aurelius Ambrosius/Emrys Wledig, Myrddin’s patron), and (c) as the epithet of Myrddin Emrais (Merlinus Ambrosius). Such wordplay was recommended by rhetoricians.355 Although the grave of Myrddin seems not to be recorded at Dinas Emrys, a number of graves are associated with it, starting with the grave of Gwryd ap Gwryd in ‘Series IV’.356 Then in 1693 Lhwyd hears of the grave of ‘Sr. Owain y Mhaxen’ between Dinas Emrys and Llyn Dinas, and, on the banks of Llyn Dinas,

AMR s. Llwyn Lleiaf; Edwards, ‘Llwyn Lleiaf’, p. 72; Richards, ‘Llwyn Lleiaf’. The evidence is not sufficient to support the suggestion that Gruffudd Hiraethog himself deduced a story from the place-names by confounding the phrase anfab y lleian with Bedd Ann ap lleian in Series III (ibid., p. 273). Llwyn, coll. ‘grove, copse’, may have its singular sense here ‘bush, plant’ (cf. PNDPH 344), in view of the medieval superstitions associating the incubus with bushes and trees (cf. Sims-Williams, ‘Britons, Thracians, King Alfred, and Sir Orfeo’, pp. 27–28). 351 GLM no. LXV.47–48, and p. 478 on the date. 352 For Emrais referring to Gwynedd see G. 475 and Haycock, ‘Prophetic Poem Attributed to Meugan’, pp. 14 and 27. 353 In addition to the Historia Brittonum, see Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera, ed. Brewer et al., IV, 167 ‘… loco qui curia Merlini Ambrosii dicitur …’ and VI, 133 ‘Dynas Emereis, id est, promontorium Ambrosii, ubi Merlinus prophetizat, sedente super ripam Vortigerno’; Gresham, ‘Aberconwy Charter’, p. 152, and Acts, ed. Pryce, p. 354: scubordynemreis ‘barn of Din Emrys’. In 1693 Edward Lhwyd wrote to John Lloyd: ‘I desire you would send me a Catalogue in your next, of all the Ancient Towns, Castles, & Forts, that you can reckon in Meirionydh-shire, & Denbigh-shire; with what account you can give, of the Names of such as may be interpreted. Such as Ex. gr. Dinas Emrys, Civitas Ambrosij; Castell Dinas Brân, Castrum Corvinum, an potius Brenni? &c.’ (Lhwyd Letters: Lhwyd to John Lloyd, 16 May 1693). On the factual basis of the legend of the pool see H. N. Savory, ‘Excavations at Dinas Emrys, Beddgelert (Caern.), 1954–56’, AC, 109 (1960), 13–77. Cf. CF II 469–70. 354 Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, p. 306. 355 Lee A. Sonnino, A Handbook to Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric (London, 1968), pp. 124–25, 158, and 260. 356 Above, p. 20. 350

333

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau 3 bedd a elwir: Bedde’r tri llang & 3 gŵr, & 3 milwr, (sef Milwyr Arthur) a bedde’r gwŷr hirion: a 2 fedd a elwir Bedd … y crythor du ai wâs.357 Three graves which are called The Graves of the Three Youths, or the Three Men, or the Three Warriors (i.e. Arthur’s Warriors) and The Graves of the Tall Men; and two graves which are called the Grave … of the Black Crowder and his servant.

Pennant records a place close by Dinas Emrys ‘styled Cell y Dewiniaid, or The Cell of the DIVINERS, allusive to the magicians of Vortigern’s court’,358 and D. E. Jenkins adds that they were buried in a nearby field ‘and at one time a stone marked the place of each grave’.359 It is, of course, impossible to show that these traditions are not fairly recent. Another interesting name in Beddgelert is noted by Pennant. He suggests (incorrectly) that Beddgelert may have been a Gilbertine community as ‘I discovered a piece of ground near the church, called Dôl y Lleian, or The Meadow of the Nun’.360 Possibly lleian here is a trace of a relocalisation of the An ap y lleian story, parallel to that in Llysan. A problem with the above emendation of line a is that ‘Mynydd Emrys’ does not seem to survive as a name near Dinas Emrys; but this may be accidental, or it may be a merely ad hoc descriptive name in the grave stanza, referring to Dinas Emrys or Eryri in general. Alternatively, *Emrais fynydd could refer to Amesbury (OE Ambresbyrig) on Salisbury Plain, a major British mausoleum in Geoffrey of Monmouth, as well as the site of the Treachery of the Long Knives. Lewis Morris refers to ‘Maes mawr, ym Mynydd Emrys, lle gwnaeth Hengist dwyll y Cyllell hirion’ and states that ‘Ambresbury’, Ambrosii Vicus, in England was a second Dinas Emrys.361 Although Aurelius Ambrosius, like Merlin, has a lot to do with Amesbury in the Historia, Geoffrey does not connect its name with Ambrosius; instead he calls it Mons Ambrii (HRB VIII.9, §127.205–6 and VIII.12, §130.283), inventing an abbot Ambrius as its eponym. In the Welsh versions of HRB VIII, Mons Ambrii becomes Mynyd Ambri/ Ambry, Mynyd Ambyr, or Mynachloc Ambri.362 Giraldus Cambrensis, however, calls Letter printed by Robert Williams, ‘Legends of Wales’, Cambrian Journal, 1859, 208–16 (p. 209). Cf. Anon, ‘Plwyf Bedd Gelert’, Y Brython, 36 (Medi 1861), 329–36 (p. 331); Jenkins, Bedd Gelert, pp. 230–32; CF II 564; DP IV 607. 358 Pennant, Tour, II, 184. Fenton, Tours, p. 221, is sceptical about Pennant’s Cell y Dewiniaid. 359 Jenkins, Bedd Gelert, pp. 228–29. 360 Pennant, Tour, II, 185 (Ynys Dôl-lleian in RhELlH (SH 59070 47495); ELlSG 117 gives ‘Ynys Dol Lleian’). H. L[ongueville] Jones, ‘Beddgelert Priory’, AC, 1st ser, 2 (1847), 153–66 (p. 156), says ‘there seems to be no documentary nor traditionary ground for that learned antiquary’s supposition. Some female saint may have lived here before the Regulars took possession of the house, and hence the name may have sprung; otherwise there is nothing to guide us even to a conjecture as to the origin of that appellation’. On the history of Beddgelert see Gresham, Eifionydd, pp. 59–75. According to D. E. Jenkins, Porthmadog, ‘“the meadow” is not called Dôl y Lleian, but Dôl y Llan, or The Meadow of the Sacred Enclosure. Pennant probably got led astray by the peculiar sound which Merionethshire people give to the “a” in speaking. They pronounce Llan as if it were written Llean’ (Jenkins, Bedd Gelert, p. 105). 361 CR 134 and 293 (BL Add. 14910, 179r, and 14911, 42r). A marginal comment on Bryn y Beddau at Dinas Emrys in Series IV in William Morris’s copy (BL Add. 14867, 198r) is ‘Bryn y Beddau according to this, is the Old Brit. names for Stone Henge on Salisbury Plain’. This note is copied in Llanstephan 193, p. 213, NLW 13239, p. 175, and MA1 83 = MA2 69. 362 Llanstephan 1, pp. 135 and 138 (a detached part of Peniarth 44); BD 125 and 128; Rhyddiaith 1300–1425 s. Ambri and Amb(y)r; Liber Coronacionis Britanorum, ed. Sims-Williams, pp. 88– 89; BB 143 and 146. 357

334

Series III

Amesbury Ambrosii curia (compare his curia Merlini Ambrosii for Dinas Emrys),363 and this is a fairly obvious folk-etymology which could have occurred independently to others.364 So *Emrais fynydd could refer to Mons Ambrii, Amesbury. In fact an early trace of an equation between Ambrius and Emreys may be seen in the thirteenth-century Peniarth Version of Brut y Brenhinedd. In Geoffrey the Treachery of the Long Knives takes place in pago Ambrii (HRB VI.15 §103.457). Whereas the Llanstephan Version (represented here by Cardiff 1.363 (Hafod 2) 105r) correctly rendered this as em mynachloc ambyr, the Peniarth Version has em maes emreys (as if taking Ambrii as *Ambrosii); the scribe of the mid-thirteenth-century manuscript then deleted emreys by underdotting the last five letters and wrote kymry instead.365 His second thoughts about maes kymry were presumably inspired by his knowledge of another translation of the Brut, such as the Dingestow Version, which has ym Maes Kymry (NLW 5266 (s. xiii2), p. 150),366 or the Cleopatra Version which has ‘yn y maes maur yng kymre’ (BL Cotton Cleopatra B.v i (s. xiv1), 58v).367 The Liber Coronacionis Britanorum combines the Dingestow and Llanstephan versions –‘yn y lle a elwir Maes y Kymry yn ogos (sic) i vanachloc Ambyr’.368 These translations must be due to a corrupt Latin text, as found in two closely related twelfth-century manuscripts of Geoffrey: Cambridge, University Library, Ii.1.14 (1706), 62r (of questionable Welsh provenance), and Yale, University Library, 590, 54r (from the Cistercian house of Roche, Yorkshire).369 The Cambridge manuscript has in pago cambrij, with the c deleted by dot underneath, perhaps (although one cannot be sure) by the original scribe, who writes cenobium ambrij correctly on 63v, and the Yale one has in pago kambri, uncorrected. Em maes emreys in the Peniarth Version, before it was contaminated by this mistake, suggests that Ambrii was sometimes rendered Opera, ed. Brewer et al., VIII, 170, and VI, 133; cf. Tatlock, Legendary History, pp. 39–40. A modern example being John Morris, The Age of Arthur (London, 1973), p. 100 (rejected by Parsons and Styles, ‘Birds in Amber’, pp. 24–25). Ambrosii Vicus for Amesbury is quite common in Early Modern works. 365 Llanstephan MS 1, p. 124 (a detached part of Peniarth MS 44). 366 BD 99. Other manuscripts of the Dingestow Version are similar: Peniarth 45 p. 137; Peniarth 46 p. 191; Cardiff 1.362, 50r; NLW 3036 p. 132. (Peniarth 22 has a lacuna.) The Red Book of Hergest Version, which derives from the Dingestow Version, is similar, e.g. Oxford, Jesus College 111, 28r (col. 110); BL Add. 19709, 53v; NLW 3035, 79r. For a stemma see Sims-Williams, Liber Coronacionis Britanorum, II, Introduction & Commentary, p. 12. 367 BB 118; cf. NLW 7006D, 129b16 (kymry); Oxford, Jesus College 141, 94v19 (yngkymry); and Brut Tysilio in MA2 457. 368 Liber Coronacionis Britanorum, ed. Sims-Williams, p. 78 (58v); cf. MA2 521, from BL Add. 14903 (1613), p. 282 (owned by Lewis Morris). Other copies of Liber Coronacionis Britanorum agree: MS Q = Llanstephan 195, p. 134a; MS Z = Peniarth 260, 70r; MS E = NLW 2044, 161v. 369 These are nos 48 and 128 in Julia C. Crick, The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, III, A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1989). On their similarities (not mentioning in pago (C)ambrii) see her comments, ibid., IV, Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 169, 205, and 229. The Cambridge text was printed by Acton Griscom, The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (London, 1929), p. 377, and the Yale one is available digitally on the Yale University Library website. Reeve (Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. and trans. Reeve and Wright, p. xliii) lists the Yale MS as possibly deriving from the Cambridge one. Does the Welsh provenance for the Cambridge manuscript, first suggested by M. R. James, depend on no more than the evidence for its use by Lhwyd (RWMS II 98)? He famously visited the University Library and tampered with MS Ff.4.42. Gruffudd Antur Edwards kindly tells me that the hand on the flyleaves of Ii.1.14 looks like Lhwyd’s. 363 364

335

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

as Emreys; in that case, Emreis fynydd for Mons Ambrii could be quite old. Owing to translations such as the Cleopatra Version’s ‘in the Maes Mawr in Kymre/Kymry’, some Welsh readers may even have supposed that Mons Ambrii/Emreis fynydd was in Wales rather than Amesbury. Translation The grave of a nun’s mishap (or of An son of a nun) on Mount ?Emrys, army-anchor,370 lion of Emrys, chief magician (or seer), Myrddin Emrys.

III.18 Rhun ab Alun Dyfed, ?in Penllyn, Mer. W

uchlaw rrhyd, garwvayn ryde* y may bedd Hun+ ap Alûn Dyve. –

*grave accent over r. Note that both lines are indented by comparison with the preceding englynion. +H altered from h; dot over u.371 N

Uchlaw rrhyd y garwvayn ryde* y may bedd hûn+ ap Alûn Dyve

*Rough breathing (‘) over the r. +The h is underlined. T

vwchlaw ryd y garw vaen ryde y mae bedh hvn ap Alvn Dyve.

P

Vchlaw rryd y garw vayn ryde, y mae bedd Rhvn* ap Alvn Dyve./

*Rh underdotted; H written above. B

Vchlaụ rhyd y garụ vayn rhyde

91

Y mae bed Rhun ap Alun Dyve.

Index

col. 4 Ρyd ı garu vaen ρıde. 90.

This stanza is a very corrupt version of I.24, an englyn milwr:

TYP4 104 takes lluagor (cf. LlDC no. 6.14) as ‘host-splitter’ (not in GPC), but it is better to follow G. 15 and take it as llu angor ‘army anchor’, as clearly in CBT V 28.23: Ef oed lew, llew llu agkor; cf. CBT I 1.38 (LlDC no. 22.38) lluoet agor and CBT III 12.56 toryf angor. In the North Wales Gazette, 12 Feb. 1818, Peter Bailey Williams, who takes it as a proper name, translates ‘on the mountain of Lluangor yng Hemais’. 371 On the poorly written Hun (dot over u) and Alûn see above, p. 280 n. 41. 370

336

Series III Piev.y bet in rid vaen ked. ae pen gan yr anvaered. bet. Run mab alun diwed. Whose is the grave at Rhyd Faen-ced / with its head downhill? / The grave of Rhun son of Alun Dyfed.

The tentative emendation Rhun in P and B was probably suggested in R, where Series III followed a text of Series I. It is difficult to see how the stanza could have reached its present corrupt state unless an earlier copy was damaged in some way; quite likely it was at the foot of a page and was originally followed by a stanza corresponding to I.25 (on Alun Dyfed). It is curious that both here and in III.1, where the Series I variants open with the Pieu? formula in I.24 and I.33, Pieu? does not appear; this may indicate a scribal preference on one side or the other.372 The reading of Series III is hard to explain. The definite article in N, T, P, and B in line a may be an interpretation of what appears as a comma in W (or vice versa). If N, T, P, and B are correct we may translate, with Thomas Jones, ‘Above the ford of the rough stone’. Yet this leaves ryde unaccounted for, and can hardly represent an authentic reading; is it the anglicised spelling of rhyd,373 perhaps part of a marginal gloss? Or does ryd correspond to ked in I.24 (R and K are similar and e ~ y is common),374 with -e added to manufacture a rhyme with Dyve? If the line was originally *Vchlaw ryd y garwvaen ked (‘Above the ford of the rough toll stone’), that comprises 7 syllables and would be a reasonable reworking of Piev.y bet in rid vaen ked, adding in garw as a stock adjective to make up a syllable. (The adjective garw goes with ryt in the Gododdin – garw ryt rac rynn ‘rough (is) the ford before the fighter’ – and Siôn ap Hywel has a compound garwfaen ‘rough stone’.)375 But garw could be a relic of gan yr in the middle of I.24b. In line c, y mae (absent in I.24c) is no doubt an unmetrical (as well as ungrammatical?) addition, perhaps a consequence of omitting Piev in line a. It is ungrammatical if hun is the demonstrative hun/hwn, which should be accompanied by the definite article. Translation Above the ford of the rough stone …[lacuna] is the grave of [R]hun son of Alun Dyfe[d].

For the reading of III.1 and I.33, see above, p. 281. e.g. Rudevudyr 1340 for Rhyd Fudr; Ride Taloc 1391 for Rhyd Talog; Rede Griffith 1447/8 for Rhyd Gruffydd; Rede y Bethe 1448 for Rhyd y Beddau; etc. (AMR s. Rhyd*). In the Welsh legal text in NLW 24029A, 94r–96v (not before 1401: RWMS I 325), a superfluous -e often appears (e.g. troede for troed). Dr Sara Elin Roberts drew my attention to this. Is it English influence? Compare also the otiose suspension discussed by Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, p. xxix. 374 See above, p. 16. The -y- may have been altered from -e- by false modernisation, or under the influence of rryd earlier in the line. 375 CA line 154; Gwaith Siôn ap Hywel, ed. Lake, no. 22.7; G. and GPC s. garwfaen. Note also Dôl Rhyd Arw (1590) in Llanfachreth, Mer. (AMR).

372 373

337

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350

INDEX

Ab Ithel, John Williams 94, 125 Abbey Dore 77, 79 Aber Alaw 12 Aber Bangori 306, 310–12 Aber Cegin 310, 312 Aber Cynllaith 312 Aber Gwenoli 39, 56, 137–41 Aber Henuelen 152 Aber Lleu 297 Aber Lliw 223 Aber Mefydd/Meuyth 318 Aber Meweddus 317, 322 Aber Mewydus 299, 319 Aber Nevydd 318 Aber Ogwen 310, 312 Aber-braint 61, 65 Aber-erch 4, 8, 56, 96, 143, 159–62, 250, 315 Abercegin 318 Aberceiro 169 Aberconwy 17–18, 44, 60, 65, 68–74, 77–80, 140, 146, 159, 208–9, 287, 294, 320 Aberdaydesach, Aberdesach, Aberdindesach 318, 322 Aberduar 227 Aberedw 21 Abergele 39 Abergeraint 135 Aberheon 144 Aberkarroc 140 Aberllyfni 61 Abertawe 226 Abner son of Ner 224 Acallam na Senórach 206 Accipe 196 Adda Fras 329 Adomnán 161 ae 122 aelewy 261 Ælfhere 225 aelwyd 263 Aergol/Aergwl 4, 39, 42, 46, 178, 263–4 Aeron 142–3 Æthelfrith 318 Afagddu 193 Afallennau 143–4, 149, 195 Afan Fawr 267 Afanc 79

Afloegion 60 Afon Farchog 236 Afon Wen 140 Afon y Marchogion 236 Agen/Ager ab Ywgri 43, 45, 306, 308–10 Agol, Sarn/Cwm 264 Aided Nath Í 8 ailithir 203 alaf 224–5 Alan Fergant 46, 195 Alaw’r Beirdd 62, 64 Aleth frenhin Dyfed 170 Aliortus 4 Alisontia 234 Allt Faelwr 47, 258 Allt-wen 5, 250–1 alltud 202–4, 214 Alun Dyfed 4, 39, 41, 43, 51, 71, 163–5, 170–4, 214, 244 Alun, Afon 230 Ambiorix 163 Ambrosius Aurelianus 330 amddinau 293 Amesbury 163, 334–5 Amhar, Amhir, Amr 163 Amra Coluimb Chille 296 An(n) ap (y) Ll(e)ian 82, 84, 109, 326–36 Ananan lleian 329 anap, anhap, anab 15, 17, 27, 37, 53, 188, 328, 330 Anarawd ap Rhodri 59 Ancaster, duke of 173 anfab 328 anghyfres 314 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 188 Anguselus 237 Annales Cambriae 151, 154, 158, 167, 178 Annals of Tigernach 154 Annals of Ulster 154 Anrec Uryen 216 anwres 314 ap/ab 35 Apostles’ Resting-Places 9 Araith Iolo Goch 207 Aran Benllyn 125 Aran Fawddwy 126 Arawn 237

351

Index Arberth 256, 326 Archanad 258 Archiobardicon 88 Ardudwy 65, 75, 80, 92, 174–7 Arfderydd 225 Arfon 55–6, 58, 64, 80, 142–3, 309, and passim Arfon Is Gwyrfai 145 Argad 243 Ar(i)anrhod 130, 181–2, 287 Aristotle 124 Arllechwedd 56, 193 armes 305 Armes Prydein 152, 200 Arnold, Matthew 96 Aron 237–9 Arrée 126 arro 299–300 Arthan 190–1 Arthur 4, 39, 42, 44, 47, 151, 157–9, 163, 183, 197–8, 208–10, 219, 243, 261, 268, 271 as(a)eth 198 Asa(ph), St 198, 217 asedd 197 Aser ap Gwrgi ap Hedd 4, 45, 51, 309, 311 Aser ap Merwydd 61 As(s)er 306, 309–10 Auaon mab Talyessin 220 Aurelius Ambrosius 330, 333–4 Bacellinus 133 Bach Howey 76, 194 Baglan 202 bala 149 Baladeulyn 149 Ball, William 85–6 Ballinrobe 175 Balor 270 Banbán 308 Banc-y-Warren 256 Bangar 47 Bangor 44, 143, 234, 257, 310 Bangor Is-coed 152 Bangori 306, 310 banhwch 307–8 Banuus 308 banw 307–8 Banw and Benwig 308 Bardic Grammars 29 Basiliobardicon 83–4, 88, 92, 108 Bathafarn 235 Baxter, William 85–8, 98, 232, 274 Bayeux 157 Beacon Ring 189 Beacons Down 7

Bedd Branwen 12–13, 64, 136, 211, 261 Bedd Dilig Gawr 11 Bedd Dylan 129 Bedd Einion Gawr 269 Bedd Emlyn 84 Bedd Gronw 11 Bedd Gwennan 11 Bedd Gwrtheyrn 11, 199–201 Bedd Llywarch 10, 78, 229 Bedd Porius 79, 84, 221 Bedd y Cawr 219, 269 Bedd y Ci (Du) 23 Bedd y Coedwr 79 Bedd y Milwr 254 Bedd yr Ast 23 Bedd yr Esgyb 79 Bedd yr Esgyrn 79 Beddgelert 11, 17–18, 23–5, 68, 80, 333–4 Bede 154 Bedevere 157 bedgor 269 Bedwenni 218 Bedwyr 4, 39–40, 47, 53, 55, 157–9, 326 Beidawg Rudd 5, 41, 51, 76, 194–6 Beidog, Beydiok 195 Beirion, Afon 321 Beli ab Benlli Gawr 3, 5, 82, 84, 270–2, 292 Beli Mawr 217 Belinus Minocanni filius 270 Benbych 306 Bendigeidfran 3, 297, see also Brân benhych 307 Benllech Burial Chamber 236 Benlli Gawr 5, 188, 270–2 Beowulf 10 berion 145 Bernicia 315 Beroul 209 Berriew 68, 212 Berth-ddu 18 Beuno, St 7, 40, 43, 45, 47, 58–9, 64, 71, 79, 126, 138, 212, 219, 233, 318 Bidiau II 274–5, 277–8 Black Bank, Cletterwood 189 Black Book of Carmarthen (Peniarth 1) 3, 14–16, 21, 26, 28, 34, 37, 46, 68, 71–76, 80, 82–4, 86, 89–90, 94–5, 120, 135–6, 143, 209, 222, 226, 233, 237, 242, 269, 275–6, 288, 309, 315, 317, 323–4, and passim Black Book of Chirk (Peniarth 29) 17, 33–4, 211, 317–18 Blaencilgoed 256 Blaen Cynan/Cynon 267

352

Index Blaen-Gwenddwr 238 Blaenhonddan 252 Blaen Marchnant 241 Blaenrheon 144 Bleddri ap Cadifor 154 Bleddyn Fardd 30 Bleheris 154 Blodeu(w)edd 192, 289 Bodacho-wyn 61 Bodegroes 63–4 Bodeilian 60 Bodeilias 61, 64, 201 Bodellog 61 Bodfel 60, 64 Bodrydd 62 Bodwrda, William 274 Body and Soul 33 Bodysgallen 18, 61, 85, 273–4 bol(g) 199 Bonc Deg standing stone 245 Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd 39, 44, 216 Bonedd Henrri Saithved 233–4 Bonedd y Saint 3, 9–10, 17, 26, 45, 50, 58, 64, 68, 71, 150, 169, 197, 215, 217, 231, 234, 289, 307, 329–30 Book of Aneirin 143, 197 Book of Ballymote 49, 203 Book of Glendalough 49 Book of Leinster 8, 26, 202 Book of Llandaf 7, 33–6, 152–3, 163, 165, 188–9, 211, 214, 217–18, 221, 227, 230, 233, 242, 264, 307 Book of St Beuno 59 Book of St Mulling 59 Book of Taliesin (Peniarth 2) 16, 52, 57, 128, 143, 161, 165, 168, 178, 180, 219, 247, 262–3, 289, 309 Borth 169 Botwnnog 61, 64 Bradwen 4, 39, 42, 77, 244–7, 253, 257 Braint 42, 53–6, 58, 65, 229–31 Braint Hir 45, 290–1, 309 Brân 126, 231, see also Bendigeidfran brân 283 Brangoni 310 Branwen 3, 283 Brecon 78, 144, 162 Breiddin 188–9 Breiniau Arfon 143, 161 Brendlos 168 Breuddwyd Rhonabwy 172, 197, 209, 243, 283 Breviate of Domesday 245 Briafael 197 Brianus 231

Brigantia 230 Brinririt 62 Briton Ferry 265–6 Broccán 324 Broccán Cráibdech 8, 10, 26, 49, 80 Broffwydoliaeth Fer, Y 308 Bron Hyddgen 61 Bron y Clydwr 259 Bron yr Erw 292, 321 Bronllys 168 Brooke, John 21 Brug na Bóinne 9 Brutiau 204, 231–2, 237, 249, 329–9, 332, 335 Brwyn, Brwyneu 215 Brwyn Bron Bradawc 168 Brwyn Brycheiniog 165–70 Brwynllys 168 Brwyno, Brwynog 12, 77, 215 Brwyno Canol 5, 12, 70, 214–16 Brwyno Hir 5, 214–16, 241 Brychan 132, 228, 247, 253, 324 Brycheiniog 56–7, 64, 70, 75, 162, 165, 174, 228 Brydw 39, 41, 196 bryeint 229 Bryn Aerau 127 Bryn Ar(i)en 56, 58, 124–5 Bryn Beddau, Cae 127–8 Bryn Cynan 267 Bryn Dinarth/Dineirth 262 Bryn Eglwys 149 Bryn Eidal 71, 214 Bryn Eryr 62 Bryn Gwendraeth 238 Bryn Gwyddfan 149 Bryn Gw(y)dion 131, 285, 289 Bryn Hyddgen 61 Bryn Rhirid 62 Bryn y Bala 149 Bryn y Beddau 84, 334 Bryn yr Eryr 62 Bryn-y-Garn 238 Bryncelyn 60 Bryncynan 64 Bryneuryn 125 Brynmaban 325 Brynn Keredic 294 Buchedd Sant Martin 36 Budicius, Budocius 195 buir 244 Burry Holms 198 Bwba Gawr 259 Bwlch Burial Chamber 236 Bwlch Gwrtheyrn 201, 291

353

Index Bwlch y Saethau 158 Bwrrwinen Hen 215 Cad Goddau 218 Cadafael 304 cadair 249 Cadair Dinmael 331–2 Cadair Elwa 209, 248 Cadair Elwydd 248 Cadair Idris 184 Cadell ap Rhodri Mawr 59 Cadell, St 45 Cader Mynachdy 208 Cadfan, king 7 Cadfan, St 59, 158 Cadnant 319 Cadog, St 9, 228, 234, 265–6, 325 Cadoxton-juxta-Neath 266 Cadwaladr 8, 44, 59, 144, 156 Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd ap Cynan 59 Cadwallon 28, 60, 156, 189, 231 Cadwgan ap Cynfelyn 60 Cadwgan, bishop 71 Cadwgon ap Genellin Farchog 60 Cae cefncelfi 252 Cae Ffynnon Saint 243 Cae nesar reon 145 Cae Talan 223 Cae’r Llechau 245 Caegaerucha Enclosure 252 Caeo 65, 75, 177–9, 254 Caer Alun 170 Caer Ar(i)anrhod 11, 126–7, 130, 192, 283 Caer Bradwen 244 Caer Dathyl 192, 257, 291 Caer Digoll 189 Caer Elgan 179 Caer Engan 230 Caer-faban 325 Caer Gai 158–9 Caer Genedr 135–7, 169 Caer Geri 152 Caer Gynydd 198 Caer Hyfaidd 166–7 Caer Liwelydd 186 Caer Lleon 187 Caer Loda 289 Caer Nefenhyr 183 Caer Oeth ac Anoeth 39, 183 Caer Rywc 164 Caer Se(i)on 288, 325 Caer Seiont 319 Caer Wyddno 137 Caer Wydion 288 Caergybi 207, 245

Caerleon 77 Caernarfon 145, 319, 325 Caerunwch 183–5 Cafflogion 60 Cai 79, 157, 215 Cáilte 206 Cain 221–2 Caint 231 Cair Ceri/Corinium 132 Cair Guortigirn 200 Cairbre (Coirpre), St 132–3 Caldy Island 164 Callwen, St 253 Camboglanna 158 Camlan 56, 157–9 Camp Hill, Bangor 257 camprenn 35 Canaston 265 canawon 213 Canu Cynddylan 56–7, 64 Canu Heledd 19, 32, 56–7, 64, 210–12, 219–20 Canu Llywarch Hen 27–8, 39, 55, 57, 64, 96 Canu Urien 29 Canu y Meirch 219 Capel Llechid 134 Capel Nant Padarn 147 Caradog, St 198 Carausius 9 Cardigan Bay 45, 65, 70–1, 135, 137, 164, 172, 214, see also Maes Gwyddno Careg Bwlch-mynachlog 241 Carmarthen 14, 154, 329, 332 Carmel Head 207 Carn Fadryn/Fadrun 325 Carn Pen Rhiw Llwydog 187 Carnaf 76 Carnguwch 60, 201 Carnhuanawc see Price Carreg Bica 245 Carreg Carn March Arthur 271 Carreg Gwrtheyrn 200 Carreg y Bwci 253–4 Carrog 56, 58, 137–41, 160, 249–50 Casnodyn 31, 246 Castell Arcoel/Arcoyl 264 Castell Dinbot 161 Castell Dol-Wlff 227 Castell Gwallter 169 Castell Gwrtheyrn 201 Castell Gwynionydd 166–7 Castell Odo 238 Castell Penweddig 169 Castell-Madoc 247 Castellum Guinnion 166

354

Index Caswallon Hir 139, 288 Cateyrn, Cat(t)egirn, Cattegir 220 Cath Palug 269 Catraeth 142–3, 246, 285 cau 240 Caw 9, 39–40, 45–7, 122–3 Cawrnwy 207 Cedig 294 Cefn Celfi 5, 76, 78, 245, 247, 249–55 Cefn Digoll 189–90 Cefn Graeanog 60 Cefn Ioli 176–7 Cefn Llanddewi 176–7 Cefn Mawr quarry 271 Cefn Rhigos 238 Cefn-llyfnog 195 Cefn-llys 76, 211, 213 Cefngorwydd 176 Cefngraianog stone 322 Cefyn Clun Tyno 126–7 Cegin, Afon 310, 318 Ceirig 235 Celert see Killhart celfi 250, 252–3 Cell y Dewiniaid 334 Cellan 76, 165, 252–4 Celli Friafael 197–8 Celmi 250 Cemais 255–6, 331 cen (cyn) 32, 244 Cennydd, St 198 cerddennin 186 Cerdin 166–7 Ceredig 137, 294 Ceredigion 71, 77, 137, 145, 164, 167, 169, 172, 198, 240–3, 209–10 Ceri (Kerry) 76, 196 Ceri Cleddyf Hir 7, 132–5 Ceridwen 193 Cerrig Drewi 218 Cerwyd 40, 42, 44, 122–3 Cerwyd ap Pabo Post Prydyn 216–17 Cerwyd/Cyrwyd ap Cryd(d)on 216–17 Ceuyn clu(n)tno 143 Chalmers, George 92 Chester, Battle of 209 chwerddid 31 cibracma 254 Cilan 60 Cilcoed 61 Cilgadfach 256 Cilgeraint 135 Cilhart see Killhart Cilmaren 179 Cilmyn see Jones, John, Llanllyfni

Cilmyn Troed Ddu 208 Ciltalgarth 173–4 Cilybebyll 250, 252 Cimulch 190 Cináed úa hArtacáin 8, 26, 80 Cirencester 152–3 Claf Abercuawg 29–30, 218, 315–16 Clann Dedaid 6 Clavinio 234 Clawdd Seri 294 Cleddeu 240 Cleirwy (Clyro) 76 Clement, prior 78 Cletwr 258–9 Cleveint 109 Clinog eitin 39, 142 Clocaenog 84 Clonard 133 Clonmacnoise 9, 49 Clonmore 8, 10 Clough Lawrish 12 cludair 259 clun 143, 221 Clun Cain 220–2, 226 Clun-t(y)no 221 Clydno (Eidyn) 39, 44–5, 127, 142–3 clydwr 259 Clyne 226 Clynnog 7, 17, 36, 45, 51, 56–69, 71, 77, 79, 94, 123–31, 138, 143, 145, 194, 201, 283, 292, 300–3, 312–13, 318, 320–1 Clynnog Fechan 59, 61, 126 Clynnog, Capel Uchaf Stone 321 Clywaint 232–7 Coed Alun/Helen 299 Coed Hirwaun 238 Coedhirwaun Rectangular Enclosure 238 Coed-tyno 127 Coed-y-Glyn Burial Chamber 236 Coel ap Cynfelyn 70, 232 Coel ap Meuryg 232 Coel Godebog 87, 232 Coel of Caerloyw 232 Coel of Colchester 87, 232 Cóemgen, St 203 Coethlyn 191 Cohorget 264 Coity 238 colbha 250 Colchester 87 Colum Cille 206 Conall Cernach 6, 206 Conan, abbot 268 Condilici 204 Conway mountain 325

355

Index Conwy 70 Conwy, Dafydd 25 Corbalengi 4 Corbre, Corbri 7, 132–5 Corcnud 5, 202–4 Corcodemus 203 Corconutan 202–3 Cored Aber Saint 61 Cored Gwyrfai 61 Corineus 176 Cornippin Gawr 259 Cornwy 70, 208 Coronog Faban 144 Cororion 133 Corpus De Trinitate 29 Cors y Beddau 229 Cowryd 216 Craig Caerhedyn 215 Craig Gwrtheyrn 199–200 Craig y Dinas 284 Craig-y-bwlch 238 Craig-y-Gyfylchi 267–8 Credig 292–4 Credo Taliesin 276 Creuwryon 133 Croker, Crofton 127 Cross Inn Cottage 176–7 Crugiau Cemais 256 crydd 217 Cú Roí 6 Cú-duilig 202 Culfardd 124 Culhwch and Olwen 4, 36, 38–9, 44, 47, 85, 96, 172, 178, 183, 187, 203–4, 209, 217, 224, 240, 246, 255–7, 283, 308, 324 Cunedda 44, 72, 231, 268–70, 290 Cwm 140, 293–4 Cwm Brwyno 215 Cwm Cynon 267 Cwm yr Argoed 267 Cwm-hir 72, 75–8, 80, 196, 213, 216, 241 Cwmbrân 283 Cwmystwyth 75, 240 Cwrt Sart 265 Cwrtycarnau 199 Cwta Cyfarwydd 144 Cwyfen, St 203, 215 Cyfeiliog 77, 173 cyfnes 192–3 Cyfoesi 110, 123, 146, 186, 237–8, 294 Cyhored 42, 47, 263–6 Cymer 60–1, 72, 79, 159, 221 Cynan 144 Cynan ab Owain Gwynedd 60 Cynan ap Hywel 201

Cynan ap Hywel Sais 164 Cynan Cylched 265 Cynan Garwyn 265–6, 268 Cynddelw 33, 27, 31, 82, 171, 225, 233, 246, 263, 268, 290, 293 Cynddilig 5, 202–4 Cynddylan 4, 19, 50, 53, 55–8, 159–62 Cyndeyrn (Kentigern) 45, 161, 178 Cyndrwyn 7, 47, 161–2, 219 Cyndrwynyn 68, 212 Cyndwr 178 cyneddfau 4, 326 Cynfael 249–55 Cynfeli 249–55 Cynfelyn 232 Cynghorion Taliesin 276 Cyngreawdr 169 cyngrwn 83, 162 Cynidr 137 Cynon (ap Cyndrwyn?) 210–13 Cynon 50, 52–3, 55–6, 58, 71, 249–55, 267 Cynon ap Clydno Eidyn 3, 7, 40, 42, 141–50, 161, 297, 303–4, 321 Cynon/Cynan 282 Cynon-uchaf 212 Cynwyl Gaeo 178–9 Cynyr 158 cystudd 239 Cywryd 122–3, 234 daearawd 162 Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd 188 Dafydd ap Gwilym 31, 144, 185, 203–4, 209, 289 Dafydd Benfras 155, 171, 185, 225 Dafydd Conwy 18, 24 Dafydd Ddu Eryri 89–90, 121, 260 Dafydd Nanmor 204 Dafydd y Coed 258 Dafydd Ysgrifennydd 184 Damhochtor 183 Darllenydd (pseudonym) 93 Daronwy 144, 164 David, St see Dewi Davies, Edward ‘Celtic’ 91, 120, 124 Davies, John, Mallwyd 22, 83, 86, 95, 109, 120, 125, 152, 273–5, 278, 280–4, 286, 293–4, 298, 304, 306–8, 310, 312, 314, 316, 318, 327, 331 dd 90, 242 Dee 152, 223 Degannwy 70, 261, 263 Deheubarth 70 Deheuwaint, Deheuwynt 42, 44, 232–7 Deinioel, St 217, 234

356

Index deinwyn 234 Deira 315 Déisi 322 Delffled 155 Deneio 60 Deo 277–8 Deor 38 Derrynavlan 202 Derwin Fawr 61 Desach 63, 145, 320–2 Deveint 109 Deverel Barrow 93 Dewaint 234–7 Dewi, St 76, 152, 176–7 Dewrarth Wledig 206 diara 268 diffwys 132 Digoll 189 Dilig 5, 149, 202, 265 Dinas Dinlleu/Dinlle(f) 126–7, 194, 207, 288–9, 291 Dinas Dinorwig 150 Dinas Emrys 17–18, 20–3, 326–36 Dindaiol 153 Dinefwr 264 dineu 293 Dinhunlle 287 Dinlle(u) 143, 192–4, 287, 317, 325 Dinlle[u] Vreconn 287 Dinorben 71–2, 263 Dinorwig, Dinorddwig 145, 150 dioes 180 Disgyfdawd 313–16 Disgyniad Pendefigaeth Cymru 291, 317–18 Disgyr(n)in 43, 47, 51, 53–4, 57, 313–16 disgyrryaw 315 Dôl Bebi(n) 61 Dôl Einion 269 Dôl Gain 221–2 Dôl Mynach 221 Dôl y Lleian 334 Dôl-y-maen 191 Dolbadarn 145–8 Dolbenmaen 63 Dolcuog 218 Dolgoedog 61 Dolhelfa 76 Dologau 240–1 Dôn 140, 181, 193, 283 Dôn, tir (mab) 288–9 Dona, St 45 Drayton, William 245 Dref-wen, Y 219 Drem mab Dremidyd 217 Drywy, Drowy, Drywi, Drewi 218

Duanaire Finn 8 Duar 75, 227 Dumbarton 4, 161, 317 Dumnonia 57 Dunawd ap Pabo 123, 234 Dwyran Feuno 61 Dyar 227 Dydd dyfydd 234 Dyfel ab Erbin 39, 41, 75, 177–9, 264 Dyfnwal Hen 44 Dyfnwyn/Dyfnfyn 237–9 Dyfr ab Alun Dyfed 172 Dygen 188–9 Dygen Dyfnant 321 Dylan 4–5, 7, 39–40, 43, 52–57, 123–31, 140, 193, 226, 262, 287, 300–3, 312–13 Dysgyfdawt 46–7 dyuynuyn 238 Dywel 51 ebediw 258 Ebediw 42, 75, 258–9 Eben Fardd (Ebenezer Thomas) 94, 121, 127, 129, 145, 284, 320–2 Ebusa 151, 153 Echrys Ynys 288 Eden, John 93 Edern 62 Edinburgh 141 Ednyfed Fychan 22, 188, 233 edrydd, edryf 218 Edrywy 217–20 Edward ap Siôn ap Llywelyn 270–1 Edward I 17, 208, 332 Edward IV 58–64, 201, 230, 320 Edwin 189 Efeilian 231 Efel, Yr 175 efwr 322–3 Eglwys Lwyd, Yr 256 Eglwys Padarn 148 Eglwys Rhos 262 egroes 180 Egryn, St 231 Eidal 51, 70–1, 213–14 Eidda 71, 77, 214, 248 Eiddef 51, 70–1, 77, 190, 213–14, 248 Eiddilig Gor 203–4 Eiddunwlch see Eitivlch Eidelic Corr 203–4 Eidoel mab Ner/Aer 224 Eidol, Eidoel 214 Eidyn 141 Eifionydd 140–1, 247–9 Eifl, Yr 285–92

357

Index Eignon, Einion 287 Eilifri, Elifri 220 Eilinwy 217–20 eiluuit 234 Einion ap Cunedda 3, 39, 42, 44–6, 68, 72, 268–70 Einion ap Gwalchmai 128, 205 Eirinfedd 210–13 Eiry Mynydd 28 Eithinog 61 Eithir map Arthat 243 Eithyr 243 Eitivlch 5, 190–1 Elaeth 84, 89 Elaeth Frenin, St 45 Elantia, Elantis 234 Elchwith 34, 52, 76, 210–13 Eldadus 214 Elen Luyddawg 187 Eleuther cascord maur 225 Elfer 225 Elffin 4, 41, 44, 51, 69, 205–6, 261, 263 Elffinawc 166 Elgan 178–9 Elidir Mwynfawr 4, 43–4, 46–7, 64, 143, 298, 316–23 Elidir Sais 31–2 Elidurus Pius 317 Elidyr bank 319 Elif(f)er 223–5 Elinwy mab Cadegyr 220 Elis(au) 224 Elise(g), Elised 224 Eliseus 224 Elissner 223–5, 283 Eliud ap Madog 61 Eliud/Eiludd 61 Ellis, David 89, 93, 120, 260 Ellis, Peter 173 Elwithan 34, 52, 76, 210–13 Elwydd(an) 52, 210–13, 248–9 elyf 224–5 Elystan 190, 224 Embrais 23, 330 Emreis, Emrys 233, 269, 331 Emrys Wledig 184, 330 Emyr Llydaw 5, 41, 45, 76, 109, 146, 194–6 Englynion Duad 16, 211, 213, 275, 277–8 Englynion y Clywaid 47, 315 engyn 185 Enlli 146, 164, 331 Ennyny 168 Enwau Ynys Prydain 144 Enwev Meibon Llywarch Hen 26, 28, 38, 222 Epynt 65, 75, 171, 174–7, 215, 240–1

Erbin 39, 55, 57 Erbin ab Aergol 178, 185 Erbin ap Custennin 178, 185 Ercwl 264 erfid, erfyd 216 ergrid, ergryd 156, 186 Erwedus 320 erwydedd 216 Esgidion 184 Esgynvaen Gwgann 79, 209 Espwys ab Espwch 184 etwaeth 30 Eurbre 132 Eurgein 317 Evans, D. Silvan 94 Evans, Evan 22, 84, 86, 89–2, 120–1, 139, 145, 152, 260, 278, 307, 310–11, 315–16, 318, 320, 324, 328 Ewias 64 Fabula de Bethkilhart 24 Faerdre-fawr 167 Farinmail 188 Farrington, Richard 71, 139 Faustinus 133 Felenrhyd, Y 138–9, 173 Fenton, Richard 284 fercos .m. poch 35 Ferns 10, 220 Ffernfael see Ffyrnfael fflwch, flwch 178–9 Ffriwlwyd, Ffridd-lwyd 140 Ffrwd-wyllt 267 Ffynnon Dilig 202 Ffyrnfael 52–3, 56, 186–90, 279–82 Find, bishop 8, 26, 30 Finnocán 244 Fintan mac Bócrai 70 Fionn mac Cumhaill 12 Flise 224 Foel Drygarn 166 Foel Fenlli 188, 270 Foelas 77 fons Arthur 79, 213 Forth 317 Foulkes, Humphrey 85 Four Branches see Mabinogi Four Crosses Burial Chamber 161 Gabalfa 76 gafl 291 Galgacus 94, 140 Ganarew 200 Garanmal 281 Garannawg 43, 45, 231, 285–92

358

Index Garwen 42, 47, 260–3 Gauella y Pedest 138 Gauvain, Gawain 150–1, 154 Gefel 75, 174–7, 241 geif(f)yl 290–1 Geirie Gwir Taliesin 276 Geleu 240 Gelert see Killhart Gentleman’s Magazine 92–3, 251 Geoffrey of Monmouth 28, 38–9, 46, 53, 152–8, 176, 186, 195, 200, 204, 231–2, 237, 308, 317, 329–30, 332, 334–5 Geraint ab Erbin 52, 178 Gerald of Wales 75, 154, 209, 333–5 Gereint 163, 172 Germanus, St 196, 200, 270–1 geufel 174 Gewel 51 Gilbert ap Cadgyffro/de Clare 38, 46, 264 Gildas 45, 261–2, 330 Gilfaethwy 182, 287 Glasbury 137 Glastonbury 210, 232 Glasynys 129–30 Glendalough 202–3 gloyw 240 Glyder, Y 259 Glyn Cuch 46 Glynllifon 207, 283–4 Glywys(ing) 168 Gododdin 31, 50, 52, 96, 123, 142, 187, 204, 214, 230, 240, 246, 269, 337 Gofannon 128, 131 gofel 174 Goffri 224 gofri, goffri 283 Gog(y)rfan 79, 249 Goliffer, Goliver 224 Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru 124 Gored Beuno 126–7 Gorffwysfa Peris 79 Gorfynydd 281 Gorid 23 gormes 305 Goronwy ab Ednyfed Fychan 21 Goronwy Fychan ap Tudur 172, 219, 237, 290 Gossymdeith Llefoet Wyneb Clawr 187 Gower 180, 198–9, 245–6, 266 graeande 132 Graeanog 60 Granwen mab Llyr 283 Granwyn 282–5 Greang 61 Great Orme 169

Great Orme’s Head cairn 262 Grevaij/Grevay ab Owain 61 Griffith, John, Caecyriog 187 Griffri ap Tunglan 61 Grongaer 264 Gronw 11, 193 Gruffudd ab Owain 332 Gruffudd ap Cynan 60, 64, 69, 187, 217, 233, 262, 292 Gruffudd ap Cynan ab Owain 60, 69 Gruffudd ap Llywelyn 60, 77, 201 Gruffudd ap Llywelyn Fawr ab Iorwerth 60 Gruffudd ap Maredudd 143, 158–9, 170–2, 188, 237, 290 Gruffudd ap Siôn Wyn 18 Gruffudd ap Tudur Goch 143, 325 Gruffudd Hiraethog 82, 132–3, 135, 173, 276, 278, 329–33 Gruffudd Llwyd, Sir 144–5 Gruffydd, Elis 152, 318 Grwst, St 150 Gryffyth, Jaspar 82, 86, 89, 120, 170, 215 Grygyn Gawr 259 Gueneri 200 Guerit, Gweryt 317 Guernin 220 gur hay guas 181 Gurai 7 Gurdilic 202 Gurhytyr 23 gurth 226 Guto’r Glyn 57 Gutun Owain 161, 170, 187, 222, 232, 237, 329 Gutyn Peris 148 Guunessi 200 Guynnassed see Gwynnasedd Gwaeanwyn 283 Gwalchmai (hero) 4, 5, 39–40, 47, 53, 56, 58, 141, 150–4, 209 Gwalchmai (poet) 31, 68, 218, 261, 263 Gwallawg 44–6, 53, 55–6, 58, 94, 160 Gwallawg ap Lleenawg 38–9, 187 Gwallawg Hir 38, 40, 137–41, 249–50, 288 Gwallwen 76, 253 Gwanas 51, 65, 180–5 Gwanwyn 53–6, 58, 282–5 Gwarchan Cynfelyn 142, 197 Gwaredog 289 Gwasgardgerd Verdin 226 Gwddyn/Gwyddyn 212 gwefel 174 Gwegar 220 Gwely Melangell 212 Gwely Wddyn 212

359

Index Gwely-y-gawres 212 Gwên 122 Gwên ap Llywarch Hen 4, 40, 50, 53, 55–7, 69, 159–62 Gwenhwyfar 47 Gwennasseth 197 gwennol 138 Gwenwynwyn 77, 191 Gwern-y-go 76 Gwernin 217–20 Gwerthrynion 196, 200 Gwesbyr 62, 64 gwestodl 333 Gwgan/Gwgon, Gwgann/Gwgawn 79, 267 Gwgawn ap Merwydd 61 Gwgawn ap Meurig 209 Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd 4, 41, 47, 208–10 Gwilym Ddu o Arfon 56, 123, 143–4, 149–50, 207 Gwilym Rhyfel 188–9, 191 Gwithenit (Gwitheint) 60–1, 230 gwreang 61 Gwrgan, archdeacon 78 Gwrgi 4, 39, 41, 65, 179–85, 308 Gwrgi Garwlwyd 158 Gwrgi Gwastra 65 gwrhyd Cai 201, see also Gwryt Kei Gwriad 122–3 Gwrien 53, 56, 122–3, 186–90 Gwrinydd 7, 281 Gwrog 138 gwrth 177 Gwrtheyrn 39, 41, 44–5, 47, 51, 65, 199–201, 233, see also Vortigern Gwrwst priodawr 318 Gwrwst, St 45 Gwryd ap Gwryd 20, 22–3, 333 Gwryd Gwent 23 Gwrydr 23 Gwryt Kei 79, 157, 159, see also gwrhyd Cai Gwyddien 246 Gwyddno 169, 206–7 Gwyddno Garanhir 290 Gwyddog 254 gwyddun 212 Gwydion 4, 28, 39, 43, 47, 64, 126–7, 131, 137–41, 181, 192–3, 231, 256, 283, 285–92 Gwydion, gwlad 325 Gwydir 18, 24, 173 Gwydr Drwm 231 Gwyleyt 140 Gwyn 122–3 Gwyn ab Urien 41

Gwyn of Gwynllŵg 165–70 Gwynfardd Brycheiniog 30, 76 Gwynfardd Dyfed 170 Gwynfynydd 173–4 Gwynhoedl, St 219 Gwynionog, Gwynionydd 165–70 Gwynllŵg 165–70 Gwynllyw 168 Gwynnasedd 51, 197–8, 201 Gwynnys 51, 200 Gwythelyn Gorr 204 Gwythur, Gwythyr 4, 39, 41, 44, 47, 208–10 Gyrthmwl 77, 196–9, 201, 258–9 Habrinum mare 152 Hafod 239–40 Hafod-y-gau 240 hai, ai 32, 122 Halston 180 Hamon, Isaac 266 Harley Genealogies 39 Harley Lyrics 261 Haughmond Abbey 60 Haverfordwest 171 Hedd, Heth 43, 45, 309, 311 Heinin 261 Heledd 7, 40, 47, 50, 56, 57, 159–62, 219 Helig 164, 169, 329 hen 133 Hen Ogledd 3 Henben 263–4 Hendregadredd Manuscript (NLW 6680B) 16, 72, 293, 319 Hendy-gwyn 14, 71–2, 75–8, 164, 167 Heneglwys 7, 65, 132–5 Hengest 151, 249 Hengwrt library 83–5, 87 Henisweryn 198 Hennin 51, 260–4 Hennin Hen 47, 72 Hennin Henben 42 henoeth 30 Henry, earl of Warwick 198–9 Henry de Soilli 210 Henry de Vilers 199 Henry of Huntingdon 154 Henry I 78, 198 Henryd 59, 61 Heol-y-Llan 238 Herewald, Bishop 198 Heruyt Lywarch 241–2 hir = yr 32 Hir vynyt 88 Hirael 257 Hirdref 63

360

Index Hirelglas 157 Hirerw 257 Hirfaen Gwyddog 76, 253–4 Hirfryn 189, 239 Hirfynydd 51, 56, 64, 186–90 Hirnant 243 hirpant 188–9 Hirwaun 237–9 Hirwaun Common 238 Hirwern 239 Historia Brittonum 4, 35, 39, 57, 124, 153, 154–6, 158, 160, 183, 199–200, 205, 224, 246, 270, 297, 326, 330, 332–3 History of Allchester 201 Hoat Stone 245 Hoianau see Oianau Holywell 62, 64 Hueil 46–7 Hughes, Hugh Derfel 94, 133–4, 289 Humphreys, Humphrey 14, 84 Humphreys, Robert 208 Hunyd filia Brachan 247 Huw ap Dafydd 124–5 hwch 178 Hyfaidd 167 Hyglac 10 Hylwydd 188 Hyrwenwrgan 238 Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd 206, 208 Hywel ap Goronwy ap Tudur Hen 172 Hywel ap Gruffudd ap Cynan 69 Hywel Dda 8, 59 Hywel Rheinallt 331 Hywel Sais 164 Hywel y Fwyall 143, 172 Hywlydd 188, 191, 279–82 Iaen 44, 246, 257 Iago ab Idwal 60 Iago Emlyn 93 Iâl 270–1 Idin 32–3, 65, see also Eidyn Idon ap Ner/ab Ynys 224 Idris Gawr 184 Idwal ap Meurig 59 Idwal Foel 59 Idwal Iwrch 59 Ieuaf ab Idwal Foel 60 Ieuan ap Rhydderch 172 Ieuan Brechfa 172–3, 178–9, 234 Ieuan Fardd see Evans, Evan Immacallam in Dá Thuarad 128 Inis Maddóc 133 Iolo Goch 124, 171 Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams) 22, 91–2, 121, 124–5, 133, 161, 198, 219, 245

Iorwerth ap Madog 317–18 Iorwerth Beli 288 Iorwerth Fychan 31 is 145 Is Cerdin 166 Is Coed 166 Is Dulas 231 Ivy Bridge 138 James, James 93 Jesus College genealogies 39, 44 John, King 234, 245, 266 John of Cornwall 144, 154 John of Tynemouth 198 Johnes, Thomas 92 Johns, David 181–3 Jones, Edward 24, 92–4, 121, 124–5, 152, 251, 288, 314, 318, 328, 331 Jones, Hugh 221, 261 Jones, John, Gellilyfdy 5, 18, 82–3, 86, 88, 95, 120, 152, 270–2, 275–6, 318 Jones, John, Llanllyfni 5, 11, 94, 125, 129, 140, 284, 289, 319–20, 326 Jones, Maurice 84, 158, 184, 221 Jones, Owen 91–2, 120, 278 Jones, T. Gwynn 95 Jones, William 85–6, 273, 280, 311, 314 Joseph of Arimathea 232 Juvencus englynion 34 Juvencus Manuscript (Cambridge Ff.4.4) 211, 229, 233, 335 Kadeir Kerrituen 193 Kaer Kenedir 109 Kaer Reon 143–4 Kaer Rian 144 Kaer Tathal 257 Kaer Wydyr 183 Kaerleil 186 Kaerrihoc 164 Kair Hocgren 79, 213 Kairunhoh 184 Kastell Gwalchmei 152 Kay 157 Kelly Kayre 250 Kenidir Gell 137 Kennett, White 201 Kentigern, St 197 Kerric e drudeon 79 Kevin, St 202–3 Kian 202 Kilcourt 61 Killhart 20–24 Knights Hospitallers 71, 77 kymint 233

361

Index Kynveirdh Kymraeg 83–4 lám deoraid/ladrainn 296 Lambert of Saint-Omer 35 Langford see Longford Lassa(i)r 220 Le Bel Inconnu 325 Leabhar Breac 203 Lebor Gabála Érenn 183 Lebor na hUidre 8 Leil 186 Leland, John 5, 11, 147–8, 310, 325 Leucarum 197–8 Levelinus inscription 68 Lewys Daron 23–4 Lewys Glyn Cothi 15, 56, 76, 162, 308, 328–31 Lewys Môn 130, 181, 283, 289, 329, 333 Lewys Morgannwg 124, 185 Lhwyd, Edward 3, 5, 12–13, 20, 84–7, 92, 98–109, 120, 130, 139, 158, 175, 184, 200, 202, 208, 221, 235, 253, 261, 266, 273–6, 280–1, 289, 303, 328, 332–4 Libeaus Desconus 325 Liber Coronacionis Britanorum 329, 334–5 Liber Monstrorum 10 Licat Amr 163 Lifris of Llancarfan 265, 268 Lindisfarne 297 Liscastell 264 Litanies of the Saints 96 Little Doward 200 Little Orme cave 262 Liverpool 318 Llachar 51, 75 Llachar ap Rhun 220–2, 224, 226–7, 286 Lladon verch Liant 262 Llam hi Vnben 79 llan 160 llan Heledd/Morfael 7, 55, 159–62 Llan Padarn 7 Llan-crwys 76, 253–4 Llan-rhos 262 Llan, river 197–8 Llanaelhaearn 4, 201 Llanarmon-yn-Iâl 270 Llanbadarn 35, 71, 146–7, 243 Llanberis 146–8, 157 Llancarfan 266 Llandaf 78 Llanddewi 176–7 Llanddewi’r Crwys 76 Llanddewibrefi 76 Llanddwyn 126–7 Llandeilo 76, 180, 254

Llandeilo Gospels 254 Llandinwael 61, 64 Llandudno Burial Chamber 262 Llandwrog 11, 139, 283 Llandyfaelog 229 Llandyfrïog 138 Llandygái 133 Llanegryn 231 Llaneithyr 242 Llanelwy 5, 7, 45, 217–20 Llanfaglan 62 Llanfaglan, Rhos Burial Chamber 299 Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy 205–8 Llanfeuno 40, 43, 45, 56, 58, see also Clynnog Llanfor 173–4, 223 Llanforda library 87 Llanforda manuscript 184 Llanfwrog 207 Llangadwaladr 8 Llangaffo 61–2 Llangamarch 176 Llangatwg 266 Llangeinor/Llangeinwyr 78 Llangeinwen 61, 126 Llangele 263 Llangollen 19, 223 Llangwnnadl 219 Llangynfelyn 259 Llangynydd 198 Llanhiledd 161 Llanidan 45 Llanllechlid 133–4 Llanllyfni 61 Llanllyfni manuscripts 94 Llanllŷr 75 Llannerch Banna 155 Llannor 61–2, 64, 140, 219 Llanrhystyd 145, 204 Llanrwst 17, 45, 80 Llansawel 178–9, 202 Llantarnam 75 Llanveynoe 64 Llanwddyn 77, 191, 212 Llanwenog 227 Llanwnda 62 Llanwyddelan 77 Llanybydder 75, 227 Llanycil 61 Llawen(nant) 162 llawgyffes 192–3 Llawr 180–5 Llawr ab Eiryf 183 Llawr eil Erw 183 Llech Cynon 253

362

Index Llech Elwithan 76 Llech Elwyddan 211 Llech Idris 221 Llech yr Onw 11 Llechedern 62 Llecheiddior 63 Llechelwiham 77 llechwedd 193 Llechwedd-figyn 184 lleden, lledyn 262 Lledin 260–3 llednais 255 Llegat er ych 79 Llemenig 4–5, 7, 42, 47, 217–20 llên 187 Lleon 187 llesseint 30 Llety’r filiast 262 Lleu 4, 39, 41, 43, 46–7, 51–3, 55–7, 126–7, 192–4, 287–8, 304–6 Lleuar Bach 193 Lleuar Fawr 193 lleutir 198 Llia 5, 75, 92, 174–7 llias 310 Llifon, Lliwon 56, 58, 230, 282–5 Llinpeder 147 lliosydd 280–1 Lliw 77, 197–9, 223 Lliwan 282, 284 Lliwelydd 186–7 Llofan 3, 5, 43, 46, 51, 53, 55–8, 226, 315 Llofan Llaw Ddifo/Ddifro 185, 187, 281, 296–7, 300–3 Llofan Llaw Engyn 185, 187, 281 Llofan Llaw Estrawn 281, 294–9 Lloyd, David 84, 86, 221 Lloyd, John 84–5, 139, 158, 221, 235, 332–3 lluagor, lluangor 27, 336 Lludd 239–40 Lluosgar 76, 194–6 Lluydeu mab Kelcoet 255–6 Llwch 53 Llwch Llaw Engyn 5, 51, 55, 57–8, 185–6, 281, 297 llwrw 238 Llwyd ap Cilcoed 255–6 Llwyd Llednais 255–6 Llwyd, Edward see Lhwyd Llwyd, Humphrey 130 Llwydawc Gouynnyat 187 llwydawc llaw diuo 187, 281 Llwyddawg 51, 53, 55–6, 281, 297 Llwyddawg ap Lliwelydd 186–90 Llwyn Lleia(f), Llwyn Lleian 328, 332–3

Llwyn Padarn 148 Llwyn y Fynwent 176–7 Llwyn y Ne 321–2 Llychwr 77, 197–9 Llyfni 56, 58, 65, 229–31, 282–5, 290–1 Llyfr Beuno Sant 17 Llyfr Coch Hergest see Red Book of Hergest Llyfr Iorwerth 317 Llyfr Watkin Owen 274 Llyn Badarn, Pencarreg 147 Llyn Gofannon 131 Llyn Llywarch 229 Llyn Nantlle 230 Llyn Padarn 7, 146, 157 Llyn Peris 146 Llyn Tegid 158 Llynfi 230, 284 Llŷr 283 Llys Bradwen 244 Llys Fynydd Mound 272 Llys Helig 127, 297 Llysan, Llys-Anne 331–3 Llywarch ap Rhigenau 228–9 Llywarch Hen 19, 44, 46–7, 56, 58, 85, 160, 169, 202, 204, 219, 222–3, 274 Llywelyn ab Iorwerth see Llywelyn Fawr Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Genealogies 39, 44–5, 68, 70, 309 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd 21 Llywelyn ap y Moel 157 Llywelyn Fardd I 158 Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn ab Iorwerth) 20–2, 24–5, 68–9, 70–2, 77, 80, 185, 205, 225, 233, 249, 263 Llywelyn Offeiriad 332 Llywri 265 Llywy 260–3 Loch Ryan 143 Logau-las 240 Loggerheads Bridge 271 Long Mountain 56, 64, 70, 186–90, 191, 279–82 Long Mynd 189 Longford, Richard 15, 82, 274–5, 277–8 longo- 149 Lou hen map Guidgen 39, 289 Loulion ap Llouvron 63 Low, river 297 Luch Reon 143 Lucius (Lles) 232 Ludchurch 256 Lugh, Lugus 192 Luguvalium 186 Lune 317

363

Index Lydstep 264 Lysons, Samuel 139 Mabinogi 3–4, 11, 38–9, 46–7, 56, 64–5, 80, 91, 125–8, 130–1, 138–9, 143, 167, 173, 181, 192, 203, 255–6, 287–8, 305, 325–6 Mabon 4, 22, 39, 43, 47, 64, 82, 146, 323–7 Mabun, Rey 326 Macclesfield, earls of 21, 89 Machawy 76, 194–6 Madawg see Madog Madog 77, 133, 165–70, 246–8 Madog ab Uthr 247 Madog ap Brwyn 168, 247 Madog ap Gwyn ab Urien 247 Madog ap Llywarch Hen 19, 247 Madog ap Maredudd 14 Madog ap Rhun 168 Madog Dwygraig 189 Madron 82, 323–7 madron 324 Madrun 324 Mael Maelienydd 309 Maeldaf ab Unhwch 244 Maeldaf Hynaf 184–5, 317, 322 Maelgwn Fychan ap Maelgwn ap Rhys 241 Maelgwn Gwynedd 4, 47, 72, 125, 143, 151, 178–9, 184–5, 261–3, 317, 319–20 Maelgwn Hir 139, 288 maelwr 258 Maelwr, Maelawr 42, 47, 197–8, 258–9 Maen Bradwen/Bredwan 77, 245–6 Maen Dylan 5, 7, 127–9 Maen Llia 75, 175, 246 Maen Llwyd, Glynllifon 284, 289 Maen Llwyd, Puncheston 256 Maen Madoc 78, 175, 246–8 Maen prenfol Gwallwen/Maen y prenvol 76, 253–4 Maenan 17–18, 65, 70, 80, 208 maenol 62 Maenor Bennardd 139, 299 Maenor Coed Alun 139, 299 Maentwrog 39, 56, 138–9, 173, 182 Maerdref 75 Maes Garmon 271 Maes Gwyddno 45, 137, 164, 169, 172, 219, 290, see also Cardigan Bay Maes Maod(d)yn 19, 51–2 Maes Mawr 72, 270–2 Maes Meueddawg/Maes Maod(d)yn 210–13 Maes y Kymry 335–6 Maesdref 60–1 Maesog 61, 321 Maestron (Maestran) 61

Main Meirion 270–1, 292 malwynog 165 Manaw Gododdin 269 MANUSCRIPTS Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales Brogyntyn II.7: 180 Cwrtmawr 12: 89–90, 93–4, 120, 161, 250, 260 Cwrtmawr 454: 90, 94, 260, 279, 311, 328 Cwrtmawr 530: 231, 276–7 John Rhys Papers A1/1/12: 134, 289 Llanstephan 1: 32, 204, 231, 235, 334–5 Llanstephan 18: 20–2, 84, 88–9, 90–2, 105, 108–9, 120, 235, 271, 278, 297 Llanstephan 27: 47 Llanstephan 28: 187 Llanstephan 54: 89 Llanstephan 120: 82, 86, 88–9, 92, 108, 120, 170, 215 Llanstephan 122: 329 Llanstephan 145: 86, 89, 98–109, 120, 273, 276 Llanstephan 187: 274 Llanstephan 193: 20, 91, 121, 279, 284, 287, 310, 325, 334 Minor Deposit 151: 94, 129, 131, 145, 289 NLW 37B: 288 NLW 111B: 271, 318 NLW 146C: 92, 125, 298, 307, 326, 329 NLW 168C: 24 NLW 169C: 24 NLW 170C: 92–3, 121, 124, 279–80, 303, 314–1, 324 NLW 322E: 93, 121, 279–80, 315 NLW 436B: 138, 173 NLW 669D: 89–90, 121, 260 NLW 672D: 21–2, 89, 121, 260 NLW 872D: 125 NLW 1118C: 71 NLW 1506C: 86, 90, 273, 278–9, 307, 315, 324 NLW 1601D: 271 NLW 1980B: 22 NLW 1983Bi: 92, 278, 310 NLW 1987B: 139 NLW 2005B: 152, 318 NLW 2008B: 320 NLW 2020iiB: 86, 90, 92, 278, 307, 315, 324 NLW 2022C: 86, 89, 94, 120, 260 NLW 2040A: 84, 88, 105, 108, 120, 259, 278, 311, 316, 324, 328 NLW 3032B: 276

364

Index NLW 3036B: 233 NLW 4973B: 162, 274–5 NLW 5262A: 125, 288 NLW 5266B: 235, 237, 335 NLW 5276D: 152, 318 NLW 6434D: 276 NLW 6617B: 90, 273, 278 NLW 6680B see Hendregadredd Manuscript NLW 7006D: 231, 292, 329, 335 NLW 7008E:187 NLW 9177B: 148 NLW 13100B: 91–2, 121, 124 NLW 13139A: 22 NLW 13159A: 245 NLW 13161A: 245 NLW 13239C: 20, 91–2, 120, 127, 271, 278, 334 NLW 16962A: 173 NLW 21001Bii: 82, 85, 274 NLW 24029A: 337 Peniarth 1 see Black Book of Carmarthen Peniarth 2 see Book of Taliesin Peniarth 3: 144 Peniarth 4–5 see White Book of Rhydderch Peniarth 6: 39 Peniarth 15: 16 Peniarth 16: 45–6, 258 Peniarth 18: 259 Peniarth 21: 231 Peniarth 23: 16 Peniarth 27ii: 259 Peniarth 29 see Black Book of Chirk Peniarth 30: 17, 34, 184, 233 Peniarth 32: 184 Peniarth 33: 17 Peniarth 35: 158 Peniarth 39: 15 Peniarth 44: 231, 233, 334–5 Peniarth 45: 44–6 Peniarth 47iv: 204 Peniarth 50: 144, 297 Peniarth 53: 158, 308 Peniarth 54: 308 Peniarth 56: 278 Peniarth 59: 278 Peniarth 64: 329 Peniarth 67: 276 Peniarth 75: 24 Peniarth 77: 125 Peniarth 102i: 274 Peniarth 107: 14, 83, 88, 120, 235 Peniarth 109: 329

Peniarth 111: 18–19, 82–4, 86, 88, 90, 95, 105, 108–9, 120, 271, 275–6, 324 Peniarth 120: 267 Peniarth 127: 187 Peniarth 131: 161, 178–9 Peniarth 137: 276 Peniarth 147: 139 Peniarth 155: 276 Peniarth 176: 132, 329, 332–1 Peniarth 177: 15, 173, 329 Peniarth 201: 16, 20, 91, 271, 278 Peniarth 204iii: 195 Peniarth 228: 278 Peniarth 252: 220 Peniarth 267: 3, 84, 91, 270–1 Peniarth 283: 138, 173 Peniarth 98ii: 83, 92, 95, 108, 120, 235, 273, 276, 278, 280, 282, 286, 293, 298, 306–8, 310, 313–14, 316, 318, 327, 331 Peniarth 201: 120 Peniarth Estate PB 6: 86 Tredegar 112: 247 Wynnstay 36: 264 Bangor University Bangor 14675: 89–90, 94, 120, 260 Gwyneddon 3: 330 British Library Add. 14866: 181–2 Add. 14867: 20–1, 86, 91–2, 120, 124, 181, 271, 278, 288, 293, 303, 315, 331, 334 Add. 14883: 320 Add. 14907: 86, 89, 92, 120, 125, 158 Add. 14911: 328 Add. 14924: 91, 130 Add. 14931: 317–18 Add. 14941: 91, 124, 152, 189, 215, 245 Add. 14949: 138, 173 Add. 14976 : 22 Add. 15002: 20, 91, 120, 271, 278 Add. 15003: 125 Add. 19710: 15 Add. 19713: 24 Add. 22356: 264 Add. 28033: 173 Add. 31055: 17, 82, 275 Add. 34633: 17, 68 Add. 48976: 24 Cotton Cleopatra B.v i: 231, 329–30, 332, 335–6 Cotton Cleopatra B.v iii: 292 Cotton Vespasian A.xiv: 33–4, 36, 209, 265 Harley 433: 239

365

Index Manuscripts, British Library (continued) Harley 696: 58 Harley 3859: 234 Harley 4776: 58 Harley Charter 43 A 71: 259 Harley Charter 48 C 27: 259 Caernarfon, Archives, XQS/1657/182: 322 Cambridge, University Library Ff.4.42 see Juvencus Manuscript Ii.1.14 (1706) 335 Cardiff, Central Library 1.362: 237 1.363: 32, 187, 335 2.40: 182 2.141: 20, 91, 120, 279 4.265: 329 Dolgellau, Gwynedd Archives, XPlansB/169: 322 Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3514: 71, 164, 233 London, The National Archives, E164/1: 78 Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 1820a: 130 Auct. F.4.32: 35 Carte 107: 92 Carte 125: 83 Rawlinson B. 464: 85–6, 273 Oxford, Jesus College 141: 231, 329, 335 20: 47, 233 28ii 329 111: 126, see also Red Book of Hergest Yale, University Library, 590: 335 Maodhyn 85 Maponos 324–5 March 4, 41, 47, 208–10 Marchnant 240–1 Maredudd ap Cynan 61, 159 Maredudd rex Reinuc 265 Margam 197, 210, 238, 267–8 Mark, King 209 Marshall, William 185 Martin, St 205–6 Martyrology of Gorman 203 Martyrology of Óengus 9, 203 Martyrology of Tallaght 202 Marwnad Cynddylan 31, 44, 57, 155, 162, 171 Maserfelth 156 Math 181, 203, 256, 287, 291 Mathafarn 232–7 Mathrafal 212 Matrona 324 Mattocks Down 248 Maurice, Hugh 91, 121, 284, 287, 310, 325

Maurice, Master 78 Maurice, William 83–4, 87–9 Mawan 219 mawrhydig 136 Maynawr Bennard a Maynawr Coet Alun 299, see also Maenor Mays Maichghen 71, 164, 170, 214 Mefeddus 319 meib beirdd 315, 220 Meigen 51, 70, 213–14 Meigen ap Rhun 4, 50, 64, 71, 163–5, 170, 172 Meilyr ap Brwyn 165–70, 247 Meinon 291–2 meint 233 Meiriadog Gawr 219 Meirion 270–1, 292 Meirion ap Tybion 271 Meirion Goch 60–1, 292 mekid 30–1 Mellteyrn 62, 64 Meltheu 247 Melyn Gwaianhwyn 283 Member (Nant y Gwryd) 23 Memnon 292 Menai 56–8, 297–303, 315 Menw 203 Menwedus 320 Mercia 3–4, 8 Merdhin Embrys 82 Merdin 326 Merfyn ap Rhodri 59 Merfyn Frych 59, 201 Merin 241–2 Merrick, Rice 267–8 Metgaud 297 Meuedus 319 Meugan 234 Meurygawg 166 Meweddus 64, 94, 316–23 Mewydus 319 Meyrick, Samuel Rush 93, 167, 241, 253–4 mieri Mair 180 Milfyd 248 Mo Chellóc 202 Mochnant 191 Moel Eiddew 214 Moel Esgidion 184 Moel Faban 325 Moel Gyw 235 Moel Mynach 191 Moel Tryfan 157 Mold 171, see also Ystrad Alun Moliant Cadwallon 166 Mongán 206 Monkland 176

366

Index Monmouth 209 Mons Ambri(i) 330, 334–6 Mor Hafren 152 Môr Mawrhydig 75–6, 81, 136, 165–70 morawl 291 Moren ab Iaen 246 Morfa Dinlle(u) 56, 58, 64, 79, 140, 231, 285–92 Morfa Rhianedd 71–2, 114, 260–3 Morfael 7, 40, 50, 56–7 Morfran 158–9 morgablou 291 Morgan ap Caradog 78 Morgan, Edward 85 Morgant 297 Morial 122 Morien 122, 170, 246 Morlas 162 Morris, Lewis 21, 25, 86, 89–92, 120, 124–5, 130, 145, 152, 158, 169, 173, 182, 189, 205, 215, 241, 245, 288, 317, 328, 334 Morris, Richard 89 Morris, Roger 20, 82–3, 86, 88, 105, 108, 274–7 Morris, William 20–1, 86, 89, 91–2, 120, 125, 158, 278, 288, 303, 315, 320, 331, 334 Mortimer, Roger 77, 213 Morus Gethin 24 Morus Wynn 18 Moses 210 Mostyn, Richard 85 Mothers of Irish Saints 132 Mowedd(us) 61, 63, 320 Moylgrove 256 Muchuach gorr 204 Mur Castell 192 Mydron 82, 88, 324 Mynach 241–2 Mynachdy 208 Mynachty 77 Mynawg ap Lleu 193 Mynwent Fach 243 Mynydd Ambri 334 Mynydd Carn 181 Mynydd Digoll 189 Mynydd Druman 202 Mynydd Drumau 245 Mynydd Elidir 319 Mynydd Garn 114 Mynydd Tryfan 157 Mynydd y Gadfa 191 Myrddin Emrys 23, 27, 38, 326–36 Myvyrian Archaiology 91–3, 205 Nanhwynan 18

Nannerth 79 Nanstallon 223 Nant Cynan 266–8 Nant Ffrancon 289 Nant Gau 240 Nant Gwrtheyrn 199–200 Nant Gwynhoedl 218 Nant Llywarch 229 Nant Soch 61 Nant Tawe/Dawe 226 Nant y Groes 176 Nant y Gwryd 157 Nant-Madog 175, 247 Nantlle(u) 4, 22–3, 64, 131, 193, 323–7 Narberth 256 Nauportus 149 Neath 77–8, 80, 199, 226, 245, 247, 250, 252, 265–6, 268 Neath Breviate of Domesday 245 Nedd 226, 265–6 neddau 240 Nefydd 231 Nefyn 60, 62 Neigwl 61 neinon 287 Ner 223–5 Nidan, St 45 Nidum 266 Nobis/Nouis 196 Noë/Nowy 224 Nurse Gwyn-fynydd 174 Nwy ab Egri 207 nyrth 222 O Oes Gwrtheyrn 69 Odin 329 odynoed 30–1 Oeth and Anoeth 4, 39, 41, 47, 181, 183, 307 Offa’s Dyke 189 Ogeu 240 Ogfran 79 Ogo’r Arian 207 Ogof-Mam-Gymru 208 Ohta 151, 153 Oianau 144, 195, 234 oith, oeth/wyth 183 Oliffer 225 Olivarius, Oliver(ius) 225 Omnès 195 Omni 76, 96, 194–6 Onneu 240 Ordovices 150 Osbrann 158–9 Osfran 53, 55–6, 157–9, 228 Ossian 97

367

Index Oswald 156 Oswestry 156 Oswiu 156 Owain ab Urien 3, 7, 39–40, 45–7, 50, 53, 55–7, 159, 209 Owain Cyfeiliog 22, 233 Owain Gwynedd 225 Owain Hen ap Gruffudd ab Owain 332 Owain Myfyr see Jones, Owen Owain y Mhaxen 333 Owein 154 Owen, Aneurin 298–9, 319–20 Owen, Elias 94, 133 Owen, George 256 Owen, Hugh 259 Owen, Llywelyn 320 Pa gur yv y porthaur? 82, 158, 324 Pabo Post Prydyn 123, 216–17 Padarn Beisrudd 146 Padarn englyn 35 Padarn, St 146–8, 243 Padric mab Aluryt, St 289 Pais Dinogad 31 pamint 233 Panna ap Pyd 4, 35, 37, 40, 43, 52–3, 55, 57–8, 65, 141, 143, 154–6, 303–4 Pant Eidal 214 Pant Gwyn Gwynionog 50, 64–5, 71, 75, 88 Pant-gwyn 165–70 Pant-y-Polion 179 Pant-y-Saer Burial Chamber 236 Pantha 154 Parc Dyar 227 Parri Huws, Catrin 321–2 Pasgen ab Urien 168 Paterne, St 147 Patrick, St 146, 206, 210 Peada 155 Peanda 154 pedrya(e)l, pedryfal 159 pedyt 138 pegan 321 Pen Bryn-yr-Eglwys 207 Pen Dinas/Pen-y-Dinas, Llansawel 179 Pen-coed-y-foel 166–7 Pen-lan-wen 177 Pen-rhos 61 Pen-rhyd-galed 174, 214 Pen-y-ddisgwylfa 267 Pen-y-Gaer, Crm. 227 Pen-y-gaer, Crn. 294 Pen(ryn) Rioned 144 Penally, Pen Alun 164, 170 Penardd, nr Caernarfon 319

Penarth Burial Chamber 322 Penarth Cairn 322 Penbryn, Crd. 4 Pencaerau 265 Penda 4–5, 8, 44, 141, 152, 281, 304, 307 Pendaran Dyfed 46 Pendinas 47, 75, 258–9 Penhardd, Penharth 298 Penhydd 267–8 Penhyddgan 63 Penlee 236 Penley 155 penllech 236 Penllech 317 Penllyn 4, 71, 173, 193, 336–7 Penmachno 9, 71 Penmaen Beuno 62, 64 Penmaen-mawr 127 penmedic 170 Pennant Cynlling 77 Pennant Twrch 5, 70, 77, 189–91, 212 Pennant, Thomas 146, 150, 172, 207–8, 334 Pennard, Gower 198–9 Pennardd 184, 294–9 Pennarth, Clynnog 298, 317, 322 Penneint 191 Penrhos Bradwen 244–5 Penrhosllugwy 63 Pentir standing stone 248–9 Pentrefoelas 69 Penweddig 165–70 Penygwryd 157 Perceval 154, 170 Peredur Peiswyrdd/Peiswyn 169 Peredur Penweddig 165–70 Periron 152 Peris, St 50, 79, 146, 148 perydd 153 Peryddon 56, 58, 141, 150–4 peryf 153 Phylip, Richard 125 Phylip, Siôn 125 Pictland 9 Pillar of Eliseg 196 Pistyll 61–2, 64, 200 Plant Don o Arfon 44, 68, 289 Plant Kyndrwyn 44, 68, 211 Plant Llywarch Hen 44 Plant Math 44, 68 Plant Yaen 44 Plas Einion Mound 269 Plot, Robert 85 Poll Erbin 178 Polwhele, Richard 248 Pont Glettrwd 22

368

Index Pont Rhyd y Beirion 321 Ponterwyd 242 Pontsticill 175 Pontyberem 238 Porius see Bedd Porius Porth Kerdin 256 Porthaml 60 Post Priten 198 Powys 56–7, 64, 68, 70, and passim Preiddau Annwn 31–2, 183 Prenfol Gwallwen 253–4 Price, John 92 Price, Thomas (Carnhuanawc) 94 priodawr 317–18 Prise, John 320 Proffwydoliaeth y Fflowrddelis 308 Progenies Keredic 209 Pryce, John 84, 221 Pryden 32, 196–9, 269 Pryderi 4, 39–40, 46, 53, 55–6, 65, 80, 91, 136–41, 167, 173, 182 Prydydd y Moch 69, 70, 72, 225, 249, 261, 263, 294, 314, 321 Prydyn 269 Prys, Edmwnd 125, 328 Prysgol 61 Ptolemy 152 Pughe, William Owen 91–2, 120, 125, 127, 182, 278, 298, 307, 320, 326–7, 329 Puncheston 256 Pwll Began 145, 321 Pwll Cynan 265–7 Pwyll ap Llywarch Hen 19 Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed 170 Pybba 155 Pyd 44, 155 Pyll ap Llywarch Hen 19, 27 Radnor 77 Ralph de Diceto 246 Ranulf Higden 331 Record of Caernarfon 58–64, 248, 320 Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Jesus College, 111) 16, 18–19, 21, 34, 46, 51–2, 69, 72, 85, 160, 210, 222 Red Book of Talgarth see Llanstephan 27 Register of Neath 78 Rego(ni) 146 Rein(y)er 225 Remos 228 Reonti(s) 144, 154 Rhain Dremrudd 228–9 Rhain of Rheinwg 198 Rhedynog-felen 69, 80, 287 Rheinwg 198, 228, 265

Rheon 56, 58, 91, 94, 141, 143–9, 303–4, 321 rhiain 261 Rhiannon 167 Rhigenau 39, 42, 78, 228–9 Rhiogan 239–43 Rhisierdyn 143, 172 Rhiw Lyfnaw 194 Rhiw Rheon 144 Rhiwabon 325 Rhiwlas 173 Rhiwledyn, Ogof 262 Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd 60–1, 69, 218 Rhodri ap Merfyn 61 Rhodri Mawr 8, 44–5, 217, 320 Rhos 5, 58, 151, 153–4 Rhos Gwynnys-isaf 63 Rhosbeirio 64 Rhosdican 145 Rhoshirwaun 238 rhudd 241 Rhuddlan Deifi 75, 167, 256 Rhufawn 4, 39, 41, 47, 51, 70, 168, 205–8, 232 Rhun ab Alun Dyfed 4, 43, 51–2, 71, 138, 170–4, 214, 336–7 Rhun ap Dinawal 172–3 Rhun ap Maelgwn 39, 42, 45–6, 143, 260–3, 317–18, 320 Rhun ap Pyd see Panna ap Pyd Rhun, king 75, 239, 243 Rhuthnant 242 rhyd 149, 242, 267 Rhyd Aral 216 Rhyd Brydw 194–6 Rhyd Faen-ced 170–4, 337 Rhyd galed 174 Rhyd Gyfylchi 267–8 Rhyd Gynan 71, 263–8 Rhyd Rheon 321 Rhyd y Gyfarthfa 270–1 Rhyd y Pedestr 139 Rhyd yr Equestr 139 Rhyd-y-Beirion, Rhyd Beirion 145, 321 Rhydau 229 Rhyddallt bach 145 Rhydderch Hael 3–4, 8, 40, 44, 46–7, 53, 56, 96, 143, 159–62, 250, 315 Rhydderch Hen 39 Rhydding 252 Rhyddnant 70, 75, 239–43 Rhys ab Iestyn 78 Rhys ap Gruffudd 179 Rhys ap Tewdwr 266 Rhys Fychan 76, 254 Rhys Goch Eryri 24 Rhys Ieuanc ap Gruffudd 241

369

Index Rhys Nanmor 25, 124 Rhys, Siôn Dafydd 179, 184, 202, 259 Rhys, The Lord 14, 71–5, 76, 164, 179, 240, 254 Richard de Granville 266 Rioc(an) 243 Riogoned 243 Ritnant 242 ritu- 149 Robert, Gruffydd 277 Roberts, Hugh 201 Robinson, Tancred 84, 87 Rockfield 153 roddi, rody, rodey 31–2, 283 Rofft, The 171 Roger of Warwick 199 Roland 225 Ros Wenessaf 201 Rous, John 24 Rowlands, Henry 139, 320 Rudenant 241–2 ry 31 Ryd Britu 39, 41, 76 ryde 337 Ryt Gynan 146 Ryt Tawy 146 Ryt uorlas 162 Rytnant 242 Saint Llwydion, Y 133 Saints Who Rest in England, The 9, 49 Salesbury, Robert 18 Salesbury, William 3, 15–17, 65, 80, 82, 85, 273–8, 290, 330 Saltair na Rann 199 Sanant 260–3 Sandyhaven Pill 152 Sarn Cynfelyn 169 Saunders, Erasmus 200 Sawyl, St 179 Scubor dyn emreis 79, 333 sedem Peris 79 Sefnyn 207, 219 Segontium 319, 325 Seiont 299 Seiriol, St 127 Seithennin 4, 40, 45, 53, 65, 89, 135–7, 169, 172, 219 Selyf ap Cynan Garwyn 209 Sen(n)euyr 45 Senchas na Relec 8 Senefyr 169 Senovir 169 Sentinus 261 Siawn 4, 39, 42, 44, 257

Silli 217 Simeon of Durham 154 Simwnt Fychan 173, 276, 329 Sinaudon 325 sinhuir/synhuir 168–9 Siôn ap Hywel 337 Siôn Ceri 189 Siôn Wyn ap Maredudd 18, 24 Siôn Wyn o Eifion 89, 121, 260 Siôn, William 173 Skene, W. F. 94 Split Rock, Co. Sligo 12 St Asaph see Llanelwy St Bride’s Major 7 St Callwens 253 St Davids 153 St Davids 164 St Davids 46 St Harmon 196 St Harmon 76 St Ishmaels 153 Stanage 199 Stephens, Thomas 94, 145 stomacha 199 Stonehenge 330, 334 Strata Florida 69, 72, 75, 77–80, 176–7, 240–3 Strata Marcella see Ystrad Marchell Swansea 198, 226, 266 Swydd Erbin 178, 185–6 Syl(l)ydd 217–20 Tacitus 142 Taflogau 75, 171, 215, 239–43 Tafolog 240 Tafwy 226 Tai’n-lôn 145, 320–2 Taius 124 Talan 4, 222, 224 Talan(i)us 222 Talerddig 191 Talhaearn Tad Awen 124 Taliesin 4, 51, 69–72, 80, 124, 131, 162, 181, 183, 205–6, 249, 261, 263, 269, 288, 294, 317–18 Talyllychau (Talley) 14, 75–6, 164, 166–7, 179–80, 254–5 Talyrth 222 Tangno 61 Tarren-y-bwlch 238 tavloyw 240 Tawe 220–2, 226 Tedel 312–13 Tegid 158 Tegwared 60

370

Index Teifi 75, 220–2 Teithi Hen 164–5 Tenby 178 Teon 144 Teuhant 234 Thelwall, Eubule 139 Thomas, Dafydd see Dafydd Ddu Eryri Thomas, Ebenezer see Eben Fardd Thomas, John see Siôn Wyn o Eifion Thomas, Leonard 207–8 Thomas, Richard 91, 120, 278 Three Reproaches of a Corpse 69 Three Romances 38 Three Waves 128 Tidenham 59 Tintagel 153 Tirabad 75, 176–7 Togail Bruidne Da Derga 27 tom 211 tomaidm 57 Tomen Pendorlan 140 Tomen y Mur 192 torment 133 Traeth Lafan 297 Trafal 212 Trahaearn ap Caradog 59 Trahaearn Brydydd Mawr 207 Trallwng Elgan 179 Trawsallt cairn 241 Trawsfynydd 84, 221 Tre-wern, Mtg. 22 Tre’r Ceiri 291 Tre’r-dryw 63–65 Tref-wyn 62 Trefalaw 62, 64 Trefalun, Allington 171 Trefeuno 62, 64 Treffynnon 62, 64 Trefignath 245 Treflech 63–4 trefred 171, 239, 259 Trefriw (Tre’r-dryw?) 63 Trefriw 17 trefrudd 239 Trefwyddog 254 Tregarnedd 145 Trelystan 190 tremint 233 Trewyddel 256 Trewyddfa 226 Triads 3, 45–7, 81, 96, 128, 144, 168, 183, 189, 197, 203–4, 206, 209, 217, 219–20, 231, 236, 247, 258–9, 261, 263–5, 283, 296–7, 315, 317 Tridok 61

Trioedd Ynys Prydain see Triads triple groups 297 Trwyn Maen Dylan 127 trycyguidaul 233 Tryfan 157–9, 326 Tryffin 265 Tryfrwyd 158 tuddio 122 Tudur Aled 124–5, 329 Tudur ap Goronwy 188 Tudur Fychan ap Goronwy 143, 170–2 Twenty-Four Knights of Arthur’s Court 203 Twrch 191 Twrog 138 Twrog, St 59 Tŷ Mawr standing stone 245 Ty’n Rhosydd Stone 12 Ty’n y Felin long cist burials 236–7 Tybiawn, Tybion 32, 269, 271 Tydai Tad Awen 4, 51–6, 58, 83, 123–31, 140, 312–13, 315 Tydain 124–5 Tyddyn Bleiddyn 5, 219 Tysilio, St 217 Tywyn 158, 183 Ulster 6 Unhwch Unarchen 184 unpen 34 Urban, archdeacon 78 Urien 7, 39, 44–7, 160, 165–70, 184–5, 237, 297, 304, uwch 145 Uwch Cerdin 167 Uwch Gwyrfai 317 Valle Crucis 18, 45, 68 Valor Ecclesiasticus 59 Vaughan, Robert 14, 83, 120, 125, 173, 200, 288, 320 Vaynol Hall 62 Vendesetli 219 Villemarqué 94 Vita Mildburgae 68 Vortigern 4–5, 196, 199–201, 233, 291, 330, 333–4, see also Gwrtheyrn wala sbadl 151 Walewein 150, 153 Walweitha 151, 153 Walwen, Walwyn 5, 58, 150–2, 209, 299 Walwyn’s Castle 151, 153 Warwick Roll 24 Waterloo Port barrow 299 Waun Llywarch 229

371

Index Waun-galed 238 Wddyn 212 Weddus/Wefus, Afon 63–4, 94, 316–23, Wenlock 68 White Book of Rhydderch (NLW Peniarth 4–5) 16, 18, 39, 46, 160, 274–5 Whitland see Hendy-gwyn Widsith 70 Wiliam Llŷn 124–5 Wiliems, Thomas 17–18, 65, 82, 90, 173, 275, 277–8 Wilkins, Thomas 84–5 William de Braose 245, 266 William of Malmesbury 5, 58, 151, 153, 200, 209 Williams, Edward see Iolo Morganwg Williams, Moses 20, 22, 84, 87–9, 98–109, 120, 165, 189, 273, 278, 297, 311, 328 Williams, Peter Bailey 89–90, 93, 120, 129–30, 148, 259–60, 284, 289–90, 308, 310–11, 320, 326, 328, 331, 336 Williams, William, Llanberis 146, 148–9 Williams, William, Llandygái 23, 93, 259, 284, 286 Williams, William, Llanforda 87 Winwæd 8, 57–8, 141, 152, 156–7, 303–4 Wirtgeornesburg 200 Wlch 190 Wonders of Ireland 49 Worm’s Head 198

Wynn, John, Sir 24 Wynn, Robert 85 Wynne, John 85 Wyrwein 261 Y Faenol 62 Y Foel, Brithdir 183 Ydrywy 218–19 Yeats, W. B. 95 Yellow Book of Lecan 6, 206 Ymddiddan Arthur a’r Eryr 26 Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin 75, 178, 225 Ynglingatal 9 Ynis bratguen 244 ynoeth 31 Ynys Teithi Hen 164–5 Ysbyty Ifan 71, 77 Ysbyty Ystwyth 240 Ysgafnell 47 Ysgwydurith 219 Ystoria Taliesin 261 Ystorya Dared 292 Ystrad Alun 69, 71, 170–1, 270–1 Ystrad Fflur see Strata Florida Ystrad Marchell 22, 33, 75, 77, 79, 191, 216, 233, 241, 291 Ystradfellte 78, 175, 229, 246–8 Ystwyth 240 Ystyfachau 199–201 yt 30

372

STUDIES IN CELTIC HISTORY

Already published Details of earlier titles are available from the publisher XX · CHRIST IN CELTIC CHRISTIANITY: BRITAIN AND IRELAND FROM THE FIFTH TO THE TENTH CENTURY

Michael W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown

XXI · THE BOOK OF LLANDAF AND THE NORMAN CHURCH IN WALES

John Reuben Davies

XXII · ROYAL INAUGURATION IN GAELIC IRELAND c.1100–1600: A CULTURAL LANDSCAPE STUDY

Elizabeth FitzPatrick

XXIII · CÉLI DÉ IN IRELAND: MONASTIC WRITING AND IDENTITY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Westley Follett

XXIV · ST DAVID OF WALES: CULT, CHURCH AND NATION

J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (ed.)

XXV · SAINTS’ CULTS IN THE CELTIC WORLD

Steve Boardman, John Reuben Davies and Eila Williamson (ed.) XXVI · GILDAS’S DE EXCIDIO BRITONUM AND THE EARLY BRITISH CHURCH

Karen George

XXVII · THE PRESENT AND THE PAST IN MEDIEVAL IRISH CHRONICLES

Nicholas Evans

XXVIII · THE CULT OF SAINTS AND THE VIRGIN MARY IN MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND

Steve Boardman and Eila Williamson (ed.)

XXIX · THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE IRISH CHURCH IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Marie Therese Flanagan

XXX · HEROIC SAGA AND CLASSICAL EPIC IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND

Brent Miles

XXXI · TOME: STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL CELTIC HISTORY AND LAW IN HONOUR OF THOMAS CHARLES-EDWARDS

Fiona Edmonds and Paul Russell (ed.)

XXXII · NEW PERSPECTIVES ON MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND, 1093–1286

Matthew Hammond (ed.)

XXXIII · LITERACY AND IDENTITY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL IRELAND

Elva Johnston

XXXIV · CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING IN MEDIEVAL IRISH NARRATIVE

Ralph O’Connor (ed.)

XXXV · MEDIEVAL POWYS: KINGDOM, PRINCIPALITY AND LORDSHIPS, 1132–1293

David Stephenson

XXXVI · PERCEPTIONS OF FEMININITY IN EARLY IRISH SOCIETY

Helen Oxenham

XXXVII · ST SAMSON OF DOL AND THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF BRITTANY, CORNWALL AND WALES

Lynette Olson (ed.)

XXXVIII · THE BOOK OF LLANDAF AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE

Patrick Sims-Williams

XXXIX · PERSONAL NAMES AND NAMING PRACTICES IN MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND

Matthew Hammond (ed.)

XL · GAELIC INFLUENCE IN THE NORTHUMBRIAN KINGDOM: THE GOLDEN AGE AND THE VIKING AGE

Fiona Edmonds

XLI · READING AND SHAPING MEDIEVAL CARTULARIES: MULTI-SCRIBE MANUSCRIPTS AND THEIR PATTERNS OF GROWTH. A STUDY OF THE EARLIEST CARTULARIES OF GLASGOW CATHEDRAL AND LINDORES ABBEY

Joanna Tucker

XLII · MEDIEVAL WELSH GENEALOGY

Ben Guy

XLIII · THE LEGACY OF GILDAS: CONSTRUCTIONS OF AUTHORITY IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL WEST

Stephen T. Joyce

XLIV · HISTORY AND IDENTITY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL WALES

Rebecca Thomas

XLV · THE GROWTH OF LAW IN MEDIEVAL WALES, c.1100–c.1500

Sara Elin Roberts