Welsh Journals

ARTICLES RELATING TO THE HISTORY OF WALES PUBLISHED MAINLY IN 1975 I. WELSH HISTORY BEFORE 1660 R. S. O. Tomlin ponders on the significance of a sub-Roman gravestone (from Aberhydfer, near Trecastle) which has Ogam scond across a primary Latin inscription, in Arch. Camb., CXXIV, 68-72. The first British 'historian', Gildas, is the subject of two studies: Michael Winterbottom demonstrates this author's familiarity with the form and content of continental literature, in Trans. Honourable Soc. of Cymmrodorion, 1974-75, pp. 277-287; Molly Miller, in a discussion of the publication dates for De Excidio, argues for 545 x 549 A.D., thus giving 502 x 506 A.D. for the battle of Badon, in Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXVI, 169-74. Examining the evidence for the Battle of Arthuret [573 A.D.], including that supplied by the tenth-century Annales Cambriae, M. Miller places it and the campaign of Catraeth in a comprehensible historical context, in Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Arch. Soc., N.S. LXXV, 96-118. In pursuit of the origins of Arthurian legend, Rachel Bromwich looks towards the Britons of Strathclyde between the seventh and ninth centuries and their contribution to this aspect of Welsh literary tradtion, in Studia Celtica, X/XI, 162-81. The historicity-or otherwise-of royal pedigrees has engaged Molly Miller in two very detailed essays: the form and transmission of the genealogies for the post-Roman princes of the North, in Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXVI, 225-280; the method and usefulness of 'date- guessing' as a technique for testing the official pedigrees drawn up in tenth-century Wales, in Studia Celtica, X/XI, 96-109. D. N. Dumville convincingly argues that the ascription of the ninth- century Historia Brittonum to Nennius cannot be placed earlier than a Welsh recension of the text in the mid-eleventh century, in ibid., pp. 78-95; he further demonstrates how an edited version of the Historia was made use of in Flanders in the first decades of the following century, in Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXVI, 103-22. In an important study, Professor Barrow argues that the pattern of feudal settlement in post-Conquest Cumbria can be explained by pre- existing 'Celtic' phenomena for which he notes exact parallels in petty kingdoms of pre-Norman Wales, in Journal of Med. History, I, 117-38. A survey of Domesday society in Shropshire, with special reference to areas immediately bordering on Wales, suggests to T. A. Gwynne no significant differences from the general social structure prevailing in the rest of England, Trans. Shropshire Arch. Soc., LIX, 91-103. R. Morgan provides further support for the identification of the Domesday 'Alretone' with Trewern in Corddwr and traces what is known of the later history of the manor to 1311, in Montgomeryshire Collections, LXIV, 121-32.