Welsh Journals

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AN OLD WELSH VERSE The Editor has asked me for a note on a scrap of Old Welsh poetry written on the top margin of fol. I la in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 199, written by Ieuan ap Sulien. Perhaps it would be convenient to begin with Bradshaw's remarks- on this MS.: At the beginning are some introductory verses, and all through the volume there are invocations at the top of the pages, mostly where a fresh book begins. Some- times they are addressed to God, once to St. David, and once to St. Paternus, to aid and encourage the scribe in continuing his work. These mostly have JO. (the scribe's name) prefixed. But in one case is a Welsh quatrain (without the JO.) docked by the binder of part of its last line, but much resembling some lines in the Gododin, though not identical. Except the two poems in the Juvencus MS., it is the only scrap of verse written down before the twelfth century, as yet discovered, and so is most precious especially as we can date it almost to a certainty, seeing it must have been written some time between 1080 and 1090. It is in this scrap that the letter y first appears in Welsh, a letter which forms such a prominent feature in all later Welsh writing. The verse referred to is written across the top margin in one long line but the end of each line of the quatrain is marked by a point, and the beginning of each has a coloured initial. The letters are beautifully formed, and all the words can be read without diffi- culty, except the last three which have suffered severely at the hands of the binder. From a study of the MS. itself, and a photograph provided for me by the courtesy of the Librarian of Corpus Christi, per the Editor, I have managed to restore the missing portions of the letters in the last line with tolerable certainty. Enough is left of most of them to make identification certain, once the scribe's characteristic strokes and curves have been carefully studied. But an exception must be made of the first restored' letter, the din daul. What I see is the lower part of a straight d (not a round 6 as elsewhere in the verse), the fellow of the d in lines 4, 11, 12, 16, of Lindsay's Early Welsh Script, Plate XVII, a facsimile of a page from the Psalter written by Ieuan ap Sulien's brother, Rhygyfarch. On the same page there are sixteen round 6's this proves the indiscriminate use of the two types at this period, though 6 was more favoured. My reading of the four lines is as follows Amdinnit trynit trylenn. Amtrybann teirbann treisguenn. Amcen creiriou gurth cyrrguenn. Amdifuys daul bad patern. There are seven syllables in each line, the rhyme being -enn in I, 2, 3, and -ern in 4. That -ern is a possible rhyme with -enn at this period is proved by Irish rhymes of a similar type in the Book ofTaliesin, in a poem (Arymes Prydein) dated circa A.D. 900,2 where -yrn rhymes with -ynn, -yng and in the Black Book of Carmarthen, in a poem dated 1096-1106,3 where teeirn (=teyrn) rhymes with unbin (=unbynn). If -yrn, -ynn were I Collected Papers of Henry Bradshaw, 1889, p. 465. See also Haddan and Stubbs Councils, i, 667, and Archasohgia Cambrensis, 1874, p. 340, where the quatrain is printed; also J. G. Evans, Book of L Ian Ddv, p. xxv, footnote. 2 Evans, Book of Taliesin, 13, 15-6, hyn-mechteyrn; 26, glywyssyng-mechteyrn-ebryn; 17, 3, gwrtbeyrn-genbyn. 3 Evans, Black Book of Carmarthen, 73, 12, cf. Canu 452 line 93.