Welsh Journals

Correspondence THE BASIS OF WELSH SCHOLARSHIP. 153, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge. April 7th. Dear Mr. Rhys, I have read with interest Mr. Timothy Lewis' article on the Basis of Welsh Scholarship. His attack on the value of Dr. Davies' Welsh-Latin dictionary provides a real and timely challenge, and like all interested in Celtic studies I shall await eagerly the promised critical analysis of Dr. T. Williams' lexicographical work on which it is based. It seems to me, however, that even granting the full validity of this attack, the implications that Mr. Lewis attaches to it are too far-reaching and are unfair to present-day scholarship. Dr. Davies' dictionary is only one of the sources used by such leading contemporary scholars as Dr. Ifor Williams and Professor Lloyd-Jones in their lexicographical notes its evidence is usually brought in rather as a last resort, and never as a conclusive authority. The general method used by these scholars in interpreting an obscure word is to assemble all its occurrences in the early and mediaeval poetry and prose, to compare it with its Irish cognates and from these to deduce the range of possible meanings which may be held by it. Mr. Lewis' introductory line of attack is, however, against the scholarship of pure philology." This subject is in the air at present owing to the recent N.U.S. protest against the compulsory study of philology in our universities; with which, as a compulsory examination subject. I am on the whole in sympathy. Two points should, however, be brought forward in fairness to our contemporary Welsh scholars, or an entirely wrong impression will be produced by Mr. Lewis' article: (I) The close scientific study of words as such is an essential preliminary to any advance in the study of our obscure early texts; and this is true of both Irish and Welsh studies. One need only refer to Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales (1860), to illustrate the pitfalls which beset a would-be translator of our early poetry who is not equipped with the modern training in linguistic study; which is itself a result of the painstaking and meticulous methods built up by the German philological pioneers. It is to their methods that we are indebted for the progress which has been made since Skene's time. (2) My chief point, however, is that these very philological scholars, both German and Welsh, have in fact done much synthetic work in a wider field as a direct result of their linguistic studies. They have not stopped with philology. Even Thurneysen in the midst of his life-long study of phonology and grammar, found time for his great work Die Irische Helden und Konigsage, which, in addition to being an invaluable work of reference, gives a masterly survey of the social background and development of the Ulster sagas. As a result of his long and close study of the Llywarch Hen poems, Dr. Ifor Williams has surely established the true significance of these as it was not before appreciated i.e., as the verse interludes in prose verse sagas similar to those cultivated in early Ireland; and in his monu- mental work on Aneirin he has cleared up many of the problems connected with the background and interpretation of the Gododdin-to mention only two of his main achievements No one could say that these results have been produced by the mere study of words divorced from their social milieu and in a vacuum." Yours sincerely, RACHEL BROMWICH. Books FREDERICK LOUIS, PRINCE OF WALES, 1707-1751 by AVERYL EDWARDS. (Staples) io/6d. The subject of Miss Edwards' study is Frederick, Prince of Wales, the son of George II and the father of George III, the one of whom Macaulay's schoolboy would probably remember that he died as a result of a blow from a cricket ball. To the political historian he is of interest for his open hostility to his father, and for his patronage of the Boys and Patriots who formed the parliamentary opposition