Welsh Journals

OTHER PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS In the quality of its format, illustrations and scholarship, Archaeologia Cambrensis continues to be a model to all other Welsh historical publica- tions. The most recent number, volume CVIII (1959), contains the presi- dential address of the late Dr. T. Alwyn Lloyd on town-planning in ancient Welsh towns. The tenth part of the study by the late F. H. Crossley and Mr. M. H. Ridgway on screens, lofts and stalls in Wales takes Monmouth- shire as its province. It is as comprehensive, minute and abundantly illustrated as its predecessors, and provides ecclesiologists with a wealth of information. Messrs. Gresham, Hemp and Thompson pool their resources to try to solve the puzzles of the earthwork known as Hen Ddinbych, and conclude that it was a defensive medieval cattle-enclosure. The church and shrine at Pennant Melangell are subjected to the intensive scholarly scrutiny of Messrs. Hemp and Ralegh Radford, and Mr. W. E. Griffiths comments on a pre-Roman pottery vessel from the Roman fort discovered at Pen Llystyn in 1957-58. In the National Library of Wales Journal, XI, part 3 (1960), Professor Morgan Watkin expounds in some detail his views on the dating of manuscripts containing the text of Annales Cambriae and Liber Landavensis, the latter having recently been the centre of acute scholarly controversy since the publication of Professor Brooke's article in Mrs. Chadwick's volume of studies in the history of the early British Church. Professor Watkin's theme is one with which he has long been associated-the influence of Old French on medieval Welsh texts. On the basis of his analysis he argues that the text of Annales Cambriae contained in Harleian MS. 3859 cannot be older than the end of the twelfth century, and that the supposedly oldest Hand A of Liber Landavensis, usually dated about 1150, in fact belongs to the early thirteenth century. These views will merit attention from palaeographers, philologists and historians alike, yet it may be wondered whether he has not again, as so often in the past, exaggerated the nature and extent of Old French influence. In the same number, Mr. Colin Matheson presents further studies of Welsh gamebooks, this time of Stackpole in Pembrokeshire and Dunraven and Tythegston in Glamorgan. The Gothic novel in Wales is traced by Mr. James Henderson, and a check-list of novels connected with Wales between 1790 and 1820 provided. The letters of John Meredith Jones (1794-1855) gave Mr. Alan Conway the material for a lively short article on this 'educated rolling stone of the tempestuous early days of South America', and Mr. L. J. Williams has found among the Tredegar manu- scripts evidence for the working of an iron furnace at Caerphilly and forges at Machen and Rudry between 1690 and 1701. Part XX of the Handlist of Manuscripts at the Library is published as a supplement to the Journal.