Welsh Journals

both the Old and New Testaments into Welsh, Bishop Davies 'proceeded to work on a fresh translation of some of the books of the New Testament'.59 Gwysaney MS. 27, which includes a bond showing the autograph of William Salesbury, and a draft petition, as well as Bishop Davies's translation has been published in its entirety by the Venerable D. R. Thomas, M.A., F.S.A.60 Gwysaney MS. 23, bearing the old title 'Welsh Pedigrees' and dating from the middle of the sixteenth century, contains copies of Welsh poems by the four- teenth-century bard lolo Goch copied by 'Sir' Thomas ap William of Trevriw, followed by a copy of 'The Book of "Sir" Thomas ap Ieuan ap David, otherwise Deikws'. Mr. E. D. Jones has already described the contents of this work, and has discussed the relationship between this copy and the copies contained in N.L.W. Peniarth MS. 127 and N.L.W. Brogyntyn MS. 15. 61 Gwysaney MS. 28, which also bears the old title 'Welsh Pedigree', is a composite sixteenth-century manuscript containing an augmented text of the treatise on Heraldry known in Welsh as 'Llyfr Disgrifiad Arfau', the Statute of Gruffydd ap Cynan on the bardic code ('Ystatws Gruff' ap Kynan'), the twenty-four measures of poetry with speci- mens, and notes on the 'cerdd dant' and 'cerdd grwth'. The three remaining Welsh manuscripts, all of which are to be assigned to the sixteenth century, contain copies of 'cywyddau', 'awdlau' and a few 'englynion' composed by Welsh bards of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Gwysaney MS. 38, which belongs to the later part of the century, consists of thirty- nine 'cywyddau' and 'awdlau' addressed mainly to members of the Vaughan families of Hergest and Tretower.62 Dafydd ap Gwilym, Dafydd Nanmor, and Lewis Glyn Cothi are three of the bards represented in this volume. At the end of the volume is a note (dated 1597) in English concerning the definition of a hide of land followed by an 'Epitaph of the Life and Death of the Right Honorable Henery Earl of Darbie, Lord Standlie and Strange of Knockinge. On two loose sheets of paper preserved inside the front cover of this manuscript are an English translation of one of the odes made 'for Mr. Davis Cook by Angharad Llwyd as a small tribute for the use of his MSS', and a list of poets represented in the volume compiled in 1895 by Edward Anwyl, then Professor of Welsh in the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Gwysaney MS. 25 is a thick small quarto volume of about six hundred pages, the covers of which originally formed part of an illum- inated Latin manuscript. That the volume once belonged to the Trevor family of Mold and earlier to John Trevor of Hope is indicated by the genealogical note on the Trevor family on page 598, and by a Welsh inscription on page 603 beginning 'Y llyvyr yma oedd yn eiddo sion trevor or robe Poets whose 'cywyddau' and 'awdlau' are here copied range from Dafydd ap Gwilym and Iolo Goch in the fourteenth century to Tudur Aled and Sion Tudur in the sixteenth century. The third Welsh poetry manuscript is Gwysaney MS. 24, which was rebound in a red morocco half-leather binding towards the end of the nineteenth century. Un- fortunately, many of its thirty-one leaves are hopelessly out of place, and the volume should be taken loose and rebound correctly. The manuscript contains a copy of poetry by Taliesin beginning 'Goruchaf ddw(sic) golochir ym holiva',63