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CYLCHGRAWN LLYFRGELL GENEDLAETHOL CYMRU THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES JOURNAL VOLUME XI. Summer, i960. NUMBER 3. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE ANNALES CAMBRIÆ AND THE LIBER LANDAVENSIS ON THE BASIS OF THEIR OLD FRENCH GRAPHICAL PHENOMENA It is a matter of common knowledge to all who have been preoccupied with the editing of ancient texts that the date of a MS. can only be approximately determined by the character of its script and that very experienced palaeographers will often render of a given document widely divergent assessments. Among the Anglo-Norman MSS. a good example is afforded by the Chanson de Roland preserved in Digby MS. 23 at the Bodleian Library. Most scholars agree that the writing exhibits characteristics which mark it as the product of the twelfth century, but there is much diversity of opinion as to the span of years in that century to which it should be assigned. Leon Gautier in his first edition of the poem attributed the script to 1 1 50-11 60. x Macray and Stengel placed it between the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth.2 The editors of the New Palaeographical Society's plates assigned the writing to the second quarter of the twelfth.3 Like Gaston Paris, Joseph B6dier preferred the neighbourhood of 1170;4 and Charles Samaran has adjudged the folios to the years 1 1 30-11 50. 5 The Voyage de Saint Brendan in Cotton Vesp. B. X (1), 1 Leon Gautier, La Chanson de Roland, Tours, 1872, I, p. xlii. 2 G. D. Macray, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibl. Bodleianee Oxford, 1883, p. 19; Edmund Stengel, Das altfranzdsische Rolandslied, genauer Abdruck der Handschrift Digby 23, Heilbronn, 1878, p. vi. a The New Palaeographical Society, London, 1914, Series II, Part II. 4 Gaston Paris, La Literature Francaise au Moyen Age, 4e ed., Paris, 1909, p. 274; Joseph Bedier, La Chanson de Roland commence Paris, 1927, I, 11. 5 Ch. Samaran, Reproduction phototypique du Manuscript Digby 23, Paris, MCMXXXII, p. 38.