Welsh Journals

ARTICLES RELATING TO WELSH HISTORY PUBLISHED MAINLY IN 1976 I. WELSH HISTORY BEFORE 1660 In order to provide a secure foundation for the further study of British dynasties in the pre-Viking period, D. P. Kirby analyses the better authen- ticated elements in their genealogies, in Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXVII, 81-114. From an investigation of a short stretch of Wat's Dyke at Mynydd Isa, W. J. Varley confirms Sir Cyril Fox's view that this earthwork represents the line of the frontier in the time of Aethelbald (716-57), in Flintshire Hist. Soc. Publications, XXVII, 129-37. D. P. Kirby re-interprets the evidence for the activities of that successful dynastic opportunist, Hywel Dda, and undermines the validity of the pro- Saxon outlook often attributed to him, ante, VIII, 1-13. L. A. S. Butler provides a full plan of the sequence of buildings within the south and west ranges of Valle Crucis Abbey and identifies three main periods of medieval occupation, in Arch. Camb., CXXV, 80-126. H. J. Thomas comments on the results of archaeological investigation at Barry (corn-drying kiln), Caerwigau (moated homestead) and West Aberthaw (medieval chapel), in Morgannwg, XX, 74-76. J. and P. Webster report on another season of excavations at Cardiff castle, ibid., pp. 73-74; while excavations at the castle sites of Aberystwyth, Llanstephan and Hen Domen are noted by L. E. Webster and J. Cherry, in Medieval Archaeology, XX, 186-87. J. E. C. Williams discusses the competitive festival for bards and mu- sicians at Cardigan in 1176 and its place in Welsh tradition, and he suggests a parallel in the 'puys' of northern France, in Taliesin, XXXII, 30-35 (in Welsh). From a study of the Welsh lawbooks, Dafydd Jenkins seeks to unravel the mysteries of their terminology: the term arglwydd suggests to him a connection with the increasing importance of franchisal jurisdiction in thirteenth-century Gwynedd, in Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXVI, 451- 62; he further argues that the term canghellor was not derived from the Latin cancellarius and that it does not refer to the later chancellor of the Welsh princes, ibid., pp. 115-18. From a previously unnoticed pressmark on the earliest text of the Welsh laws, Peniarth MS. 28, Daniel Huws offers a new opinion as to its date and places it at St. Augustine's, Canterbury, in the fourteenth century, in National Library of Wales Journal, XIX, 340-44. A hitherto mysterious figure mentioned in the Welsh annals in the 1280s as John Penardd, 'leader of the men of Gwynedd', is identified by A. J. Taylor as Sir John de Bevillard, an important royal official, in English Hist. Review, XCI, 79-97.