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Aspects of the Palaeography and History of the Robert ap Huw Manuscript STEPHEN P. REES and SALLY HARPER 1 Lewis Morris's acquisition of the Robert ap Huw manuscript The exact peregrinations of Robert ap Huw's famous book of harp music between his death in 1665, and the late 1720s, when it came into the possession of the Anglesey antiquarian, Lewis Morris, will probably never be known. All of Robert's books went to his fourth son, Henry Hughes (b.c. 1635), although the simultaneous bequest of Robert's best harp to his godson suggests that Henry himself would have had little use for his father's manuscript(s) of harp music.1 No record of Henry's death exists, but his autograph survives in an anthology of miscellanous poetry which may well have formed part of Robert's library,2 and later, this same book apparently passed to the last Anglesey poet in the wandering clera tradition, John Prichard Prys of Llangadwaldr (d.1724).3 Robert's other books may have gone with it, for Lewis Morris apparently acquired the harp manu- script later that decade while working for Sir Owen Meyrick of Bodorgan, just a stone's throw from Llangadwaladr.4 Two records of Morris's ownership of the book during this period survive: an annotation to another of his manuscripts, copied c.1727, which refers to 'hen lyfr a fuase gan Robert pugh y telynior Mae y llyfr hwnw genifi. Lewis Morris' ('the old book made by Robert Pugh the harper this book is mine. Lewis Morris'),5 and a letter of June 1729 from the grammarian and publisher Siôn Rhydderch (1673-1735), evidently in response to an earlier letter from Morris asking about 'yr hen Geingciau Cymreig yr hen Gerddoriaeth' ('the old Welsh ceinciau the old Welsh music').6 Lewis Morris (1701-65) was the most talented of the four Morris brothers of Llanfihangel Tre'r-beirdd, Anglesey, all of whom shared an interest in folklore and literature, and exerted considerable in- fluence on the promotion and revival of eighteenth-century Welsh