Welsh Journals

appalling mid-nineteenth-century edition of the Irish laws; Thumeysen's self-immersion in the law for the sake of the philology, late in a lifetime of scholarship; Binchy's braving of the philology for the sake of the law). The very repetitiveness inevitable in a collection of this sort does, however, serve to define the important issues for the historian and the ground which has been permanently won. Two recurrent themes may be taken as examples. Irish law and Welsh law are parts of the same juristic tradition, but the latter is the more dynamic because of the greater political and judicial authority of the Welsh kings. (Hywel Dda does not seem to have been quite deposed as in some sense the father of Welsh law: see pp. 27 and 94.) The important legal, social and economic unit was the derbfine (Welsh gwely), extending to a man's first and second cousins (all called 'brothers'), and even this narrower kindred early gave way before the separate family: private property vested in individuals was not foreign to the Celts, though the jurists insisted that bequests, particularly to the church, required to be ratified by the derbfine. (On this last point one misses any reference to the controversies of Anglo-Saxon scholars on the distinction between 'folkland' and 'bookland', and to judge by this book the possibilities of comparison between Celtic and English law have not been much exploited.) ALAN HARDING Edinburgh HISTORICAL WRITING IN ENGLAND, c. 550 TO c. 1307. By Antonia Gransden. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1974. Pp. xxiv, 610; plates 12. £ 15.00. This survey provides a guide to the literary and chronicle sources for English history up to the death of Edward I. The author intends to complete the project with a second volume ending at the Reformation. Historical writing is broadly defined to include literary history, hagio- graphy, secular biography (for example, the life of William Marshal), the discursive memoirs of Walter Map and Gerald of Wales, and even the Bayeux Tapestry. Record sources, such as monastic cartularies or the Dialogue of the Exchequer, are excluded. Works on the border-line between 'historical' and 'record' sources, like Matthew Paris's Liber Additamentorum, are however discussed. The survey aims to cover every English historical work, even if only in passing reference. For historians of Wales the early portions on Gildas, Nennius and Bede will obviously be more relevant than the latter parts, although reference is made to some later Welsh sources (for example, the Margam annals). The book proceeds chronologically and within periods by subject matter under such headings as 'Narrative history' or 'Local history'. No attempt is made to generalize about the nature of medieval historical writing, still less to speculate. Starting with Gildas and ending with the London Chronicle, Dr. Gransden proceeds at an even pace from work to work, summarizing the contents of each, highlighting the main features by quotation, providing in footnotes on the page precise details of secondary literature.