Welsh Journals

Both of these works benefit from the author's knowledge of Orthodox Christianity and understanding of Welsh poetry old and new. At the core of his Celtic Christianity is a theologian's close analysis of poems from the Book of Taliesin and the Black Book of Carmarthen. His Pennant is illuminated by quotations from Taliesin, Waldo Williams and R.S. Thomas, as well as from poems directly inspired by the Melangell story. Here the contemporary poets Glenda Beagan and Ruth Bidgood are joined, rather unexpectedly perhaps, by the 19th century Robert Southey. Most interesting of all in this context is an englyn, probably by Pennant's vicar from 1788-1812, Ezekiel Hamer, which movingly illustrates what Allchin calls the 'hidden stream' of devotion whose source was the Celtic church in Wales but still flowing in the late 18th century. For an 18th century specialist it is a startling and provocative insight. Allchin has already placed us in his debt by this work on Ann Griffiths and his Praise above All. These two clearly written and readable booklets increase that debt. J.R.G. Huw Pryce, Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales, Oxford Historical Monographs (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993) xiv + 292pp. £ 35.00. ISBN 0 19 820362 4 In this book Huw Pryce examines the medieval Welsh church from a legal perspective the treatment of key aspects of ecclesiastical life under the native secular law during (broadly) the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. His study operates on two levels: the influence of the church on the development of the law and its administration and the extent to which the law was protective of the church, its authority, rights and possessions. The author's main sources are the thirteenth-century texts containing what was known as the law of Hywel (cyfraith Hywel). His analysis ranges from the relationship between versions of these texts to an explanation of change,