Welsh Journals

OTHER PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS In Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. CX (1961), Professor William Rees publishes his valuable study of 'Gower and the March of Wales', which formed the basis of a presidential address so appropriate to the Swansea meeting of 1960. In a broad review of the history of the lordship he concentrates particularly on the years of crisis in the late thirteenth century and early fourteenth century, when the position of the de Braose family as lords of Gower was subject to intense pressure from the king, rival claimants, and discontented tenants. Gower also figures in a careful study by D. J. Cathcart King and J. C. Perks of Penrice castle. Brecon's striking concentration of castles with round keeps is examined by D. F. Renn, who makes interesting suggestions about possible builders and concludes that the period in which most of the keeps were constructed lay between 1185 and 1245. Major Francis Jones, in an article on 'Trefgarn Owen', has patiently disentangled the history of three places called Trefgarn, only one of which was associated with Owain Glyn Dwr, and shows how confusion about them has arisen. A number of early Caernarvonshire crosses, not included in Dr. Nash-Williams's standard Early Christian Monuments, are discussed by Messrs. Ralegh Radford and Hemp. The authors place the crosses in Nash-Williams's second class, cross-decorated stones of the seventh to ninth centuries, and believe they form a single group belonging to an early phase of the period. In volume XIX, part II of the Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, for May 1961, Count Nicolai Tolstoy re-examines a problem of perennial fascination for archaeologists and historians interested in British history of the fifth and sixth centuries-the famous account of Arthur's battles in chapter 56 of Nennius's Historia Brittonum. Building on foundations laid by Professor Kenneth Jackson, to whom he acknowledges his debt, Count Tolstoy argues with ingenuity and learning a series of identifications for these much-discussed battlefields. One of the most interesting of his conclusions is that 'Monte Badonis' was, after all, Bath. The nature of the evidence makes it almost certain that there will always be room for divergence of opinion on these controversial issues, but the author's views merit most careful and serious attention. Not the least valuable con- tribution is his comprehensive bibliography of existing literature on the subject. In part III (November 1961) of the same journal, Mrs. Nora Chadwick, in opposition to Sir Frank Stenton's view, argues that the title Bretwalda was originally a British one adopted by the Anglo-Saxons and that it signified imperium, as did the British title, gwledig. The imperium, Mrs. Chadwick thinks, can be related to Vortigern which in title and function she regards as 'neither more nor less than the equivalent of the gwledig and the Bretwalda'. Dr. Geraint Gruffydd, Mr. H. W. P. Owen, and Professor Jackson provide an addendum to an earlier discussion