Welsh Journals

General readers of this book will probably find the final chapter, entitled 'In historical perspective', to be the most approachable. In it the author relates the early history of St. David's Cathedral and uses this as a backcloth to his concluding remarks concerning the Office of the patron saint. Having laid out all the groundwork most carefully, he is, in the end, unable to establish a date for the creation of the Office. He does, however, identify two different periods when its composition might have taken place, and constructs convincing cases for c.1224, when the Sarum Rite was first introduced at St. David's, and c.1285, during the episcopate of Thomas Bek. A small number of relevant references to music and liturgy were surprisingly omitted. The mention of Bishop Bek singing mass on the eve of St. David's Day, to be found in Brut y Tywysogyon (Red Book of Hergest version) and the interesting description of the ancient customs associated with the celebration of St. David's feast, given by Browne Willis in his Survey of the Cathedral Church of St. David (1715), are surely important enough to have been included. Perhaps some use could have been made of the Sarum Missal from Llanbadarn Fawr (NLW), and a fuller explanation of the document relating to the founding of St. Mary's College in Dugdale's Monasticon would have helped to paint a picture of musical life in medieval St. David's. Throughout the book the detail of the text and the informative footnotes are a rich source of reference in this relatively new area of research. Professor Edwards's admirable study will eventually become essential reading for any researcher in the field of Welsh music. D. R. A. EVANS Bangor MEDIEVAL FRONTIER SOCIETIES. Edited by Robert Bartlett and Angus Mackay. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. Pp. xiii, 388. £ 40.00. It is difficult not to be disappointed by this book. The editors in their brief preface are defensive; they may be apologetic. 'The essay by Professor Burns refers to and seeks a partial vindication of the Turner thesis, but most contributors were happy to pursue empirical issues and allow the frontier element in their analysis to speak for itself. This has resulted in a certain diversity in the frontiers analysed.' For 'most one should read 'all'— all twelve essayists; Professor Robert Bums makes the thirteenth. None of the dozen essays, which were read at a conference held at Edinburgh in 1987, is lacking in interest; none of them examines other than superficially what a 'frontier' is or might be. For a non-frontier historian this is perplexing. So, alas, is the piece by Professor Bums. It is entitled "The significance of the Frontier in the Middle Ages'; it is about the significance of the Turner thesis in historiography. Moreover, because it does not explain what the Turner thesis is, this ignorant reader remained ignorant about that thesis as well as about the significance of medieval frontiers. We are, therefore, offered frontiers of all sorts. linguistic, cultural, ideological, religious, national, political, significant and