Welsh Journals

community. Here we have the kind of detail on which the generalisations of textbooks can safely rest. It is necessary for 'A' level students to mould their work around both approaches to historical study, however esoteric they may find some of the evidence and the arguments deployed in these essays. After all, the volume grew out of lectures given at one of those invaluable Gregynog undergraduate colloquia, so they are only one stage of study ahead. And they contain some fascinating material. As a model for the student, Nia Watkin Powell's essay on the evidence of great sessions records for the study of crime and community in Denbighshire is ideal: a detailed discussion of the potential, the hazards and the limitations of the sources themselves, an account of some of the cases and, always, an attempt to place the immediate flare-up, which it often amounted to, in a wider context of economic and social conditioning. Brian Howells charts a similar course in his excellent essay on the lower orders, another model of how the historian can bring submerged groups to the surface and make their plight real. Again, William Griffith, jn writing of the place of schooling in sixteenth- century Welsh society, has taken a topic of considerable significance, much neglected in Welsh historiography, and produced a most illuminating account on the basis of difficult and disparate sources. These, indeed all the essays in this volume, are intrinsically interesting and will be valuable for students and Tudor specialists, not least in England. Yes, 1989 was a good year for 'Tudor Wales'. GARETH ELWYN JONES Aberystwyth YR HEN DESTAMENT CYMRAEG, 1551-1620. Gan Isaac Thomas. Llyfrgell Genedlaethol 1988. Tt 351. £ 12.00. Yr ymadroddion cyntaf a ddaw i feddwl y sawl a ddarlleno gyfrolau cwbl feistrolgar Dr. Isaac Thomas ar y Testament Newydd Cymraeg (1976) ac yn awr ar yr Hen Destament ydyw termau megis 'epig', 'arwrol' a 'goruwch gallu naturiol'. Gwlychu bysedd eu traed yn unig a wneath y rhai a fu'n ymhel â chyfieithiadau Cymraeg cynnar y Beibl hyd yn hyn, ond ymdrwythodd Dr. Thomas ei hun yn llwyr yn 'llyn y moddion'­dyna ‘r ddelwedd briodol, 'rwy'n bamu. Ni ellir lai na rhyfeddu'n syn at ei ysgolheictod, ei drylwyredd, a'i amynedd dihafal wrth archwilio, dadansoddi, a mantoli ymdrechion cyfieithwyr y Beibl Cymraeg. Cynysgaeddwyd ef ei hun a llawer o'r rhinweddau a nodweddodd wyr megis William Salesbury a William Morgan: gwybodaeth eang a manwl o ieithoedd a thestunau gwreiddiol yr Ysgrythurau; amgyffred rhyfeddol o deithi ac athrylith ei iaith ei hun; a dyfalbarhad gorchestol i ddal hyd yr eithaf. Deallwn oddi wrth yr hyn a ddywed yn ei Ragymadrodd i'w lyfr nad oedd yn ei fryd ar y cychwyn i gyhoeddi cyfrol o gwbl namyn gadael pentwr o'i nodiadau a'i bapurau yn y Llyfrgell Genedlaethol. Ond, diolch i'r drefn, cafwyd Perswad arno gan yr Athro Geraint Gruffydd a'r Dr. Brynley Roberts i gyhoeddi ffrwyth ei lafur bob yn bennod fel erthyglau yng Nghylchgrawn y Llyfrgell, a gwell