Welsh Journals

to the case presented here it seems safest to take Gildas to be both a unity and authentic. On the date of Gildas, Dr. O'Sullivan is highly original. He does not begin with the date of the battle of Mons Badonicus, as has been customary, but much more sensibly with the reference to the five princes in the later section of Gildas. This involves him in the problems of Patrician chron- ology and like all the participants in this particular game he has his own solutions. I will say only that his seem plausible enough and are at any rate clearly argued. They lead him to a much earlier date than is usually suggested. In the famous section on the meaning of the quadre- gisimus quartus annus and the date of Mons Badonicus, his discussion is illuminated by his chronology of the five princes. I am sure he has got his method right here. The basis for the tangled chronology of the battle of Mt. Badon is the revival of British fortunes under Ambrosius Aurelianus and Dr. O'Sullivan comes down for a date for the battle in the last quarter of the fifth century. He then argues very convincingly that Gildas was a young man at the time of writing, which was between c.515 and c.530 with the earlier date the more probable. He guides us through the tangled historiography of his subject. He has missed Chadwick's Origins of the English Nation, the source of the important point about Elle of Sussex, the English high kingship, and Mt. Badon, lifted by a number of the other scholars whom he quotes, but is otherwise remarkably comprehensive. He criticises-in the right sense of the word- very freely but in no way offensively. I was positively glad to be corrected when my turn came. I think this is a first class contribution to Gildasian studies unlikely to be bettered for a long time to come. ERIC JOHN Manchester. ASTUDIAETHAU AR YR HENGERDD: Studies in old Welsh poetry. Edited by Rachel Bromwich and R. Brinley Jones. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1978. Pp. xii, 390. £ 12.95 This volume consists of a number of essays presented to Sir Idris Foster on his retirement in 1978 from the chair of Celtic at Jesus College, Oxford. Some of the essays are by old pupils of Sir Idris's and others by scholars who attended seminars led by him at Jesus College over a number of years. The only paper which falls into neither group is 'New Light on the Origins of the Kingdom of Gwynedd' by Richard White, but the editors quite rightly included it as necessary background material. The introduction, which is attributed to Dr. Bromwich alone, will be very useful to non-Welsh speakers as she has given a very detailed summary of the articles, many of which are in Welsh. A third of the book deals with various aspects of the Gododdin of Aneirin-five chapters out of fifteen. The remaining essays cover a great deal of the oldest poetry surviving in medieval manuscript, with the notable exception of the Taliesin poems, which are only mentioned in passing. The poems attributed to Llywarch Hen are discussed by N. J. A. Williams in 'Canu Llywarch Hen and the Finn Cycle' and by Gwyn