Welsh Journals

driven to the conclusion that X was indeed his, the hand of his imma- turity, and if so, to judge by appearances, a hand earlier even than that in AB MS Cwrtmawr 200, a manuscript which Lewis Morris began in 1724 when he was aged 23. Some of the rather stiff letter-forms on these two pages do not appear in the 1724 writing. One small point in favour of positive identification of X is the unusual form of the numeral '4', one which appears in Lewis Morris's mature hand. 6-8: All in the mature hand of Lewis Morris. 6 is dated 1738. The texts of 7 and 8 occur in AB MS 836D, a manuscript written about 1720 by Dafydd William of Bodeulwyn, Anglesey. Lewis Morris's source, 'an old manuscript', was probably also the exemplar of Dafydd William. 9: The crucial note on p. 22, 'Yma canlyn y Pedwar Kwlwm Cydgerdd ar Hugain, wedi ei prikio allan o Lyfr Wiliam Penllyn' ('Here follow the 24 clymau cytgerdd which have been written out from the book of Wiliam Penllyn'), is by hand X, that of Lewis Morris when young, as is now suggested. 'This is in Mr. Meyricks Manuscript' is added in Lewis Morris's mature hand. (See Plate 1, p. 54, below.) 10: With its key to the tablature, p. 35 is a critical page. The triangular- headed notation immediately to the right of the vertical dividing line corresponds to Robert ap Huw's heading 'prikiad arall' ('another [form of] pricking [writing-out]'). The modern notation in the darker ink to the right of Robert ap Huw's notation I take to be that to which Lewis Morris refers in his vertical inscription: 'These modern notes are only my guesses'; this even though at first sight the ink of the inscription appears paler (notes generally receive a thicker application of ink than hurried writing). For a few of Robert ap Huw's notations Lewis Morris offered no guess and left a blank; for others he appears to have made a tentative guess, in pencil, namely, plethiad y pedwarbys, hrafiad dwbl, tafliad y bys, krych y fawd and ysgwyd y bys, and probably (obscured by later ink) for kefn ewin. The quavers and semi-quavers in pencil notation share the same old-fashioned forms with whip-like tails as those in dark ink. These forms, not met with in Lewis Morris's later manuscripts, require a moment's attention: they can be exemplified, associated with seventeenth-century English viol tablature, in the article 'Notation' in The New Grove Dictionary, and were still in use by Handel.5 Their use by the young Lewis Morris is not unlikely. Lewis Morris himself appears to have inked over his annotation for krafiad dwbl. A later and clumsier hand, using paler ink, then overwrote in ink the other remain- ing pencil annotations (including that for kefn ewin). Lewis Morris's inscription would hardly make sense if he had merely been responsible for inking over a few pencilled annotations by someone else. 11: Henry Lewis refers to 'a few references to previous pages' on p. 56 of the manuscript. Did he mean p. 107? The addition on p. 56 is of the restored title y ddigan y droell, partly lost by damage at the edge of the