Welsh Journals

THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BLACK BOOK OF CARMARTHEN ON THE BASIS OF ITS OLD FRENCH PHENOMENA IT is reported in a memorandum left behind by Sir John Prys, the antiquary of Breconshire, and probably the author of the first printed Welsh book Yn y Llyvyr hwnn that the Black Book once belonged to the Black Canons who established a cell at Carmarthen in 1148. At the dissolution of the religious houses in Wales and the dispersal of their libraries, it was given, along with other valuable manuscripts, to Sir John, a royal commissioner, by the treasurer of the church of St. Davids. Called the Black Book of Carmarthen, its disparate, bound volume has been assumed to have been penned at the priory of that town. At the Dissolution the Black Canons doubtless owned it, but we have no proof whatsoever except that it probably bore then the name it has enjoyed ever since. One or two of its parts might have emanated from another house. At any rate, since its birth it has travelled about a great deal, especially in N. Wales-at Hengwrt and Peniarth, and maybe, at other places. But at long last it has found a permanent home at the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth. Along the years many attempts have been made at determining the age of the manuscript, and some of them have been very circumstantial. The first perhaps was by the illustrious Edward Lluyd who, in his Archceologia Britannica published in 1707, divided it into two 'books', one at the beginning, written in a large and somewhat old script, and the remainder in a later handwriting. To W. F. Skene, the author of the Four Ancient Books of Wales, it appeared in 1868 as one entity and to have been written down 'in the reign of Henry the Second 1154-1189'. In 1888 J. Gwenogvryn Evans published a Facsimile of the work and in 1906 a diplomatic edition with a full Introduction. Like Edward Lluyd, Dr. Evans divided the Black Book into two parts and adduced evidence to show that it had been made up of several portions. He summed up his impressions as to age in his Palceographical Note by saying that the bold hand of 'the earlier part of the manuscript belongs to the reign of Stephen and the rest to the reigns of Henry II and Richard'. Sir John Morris-Jones ascribed Part I to the end of the XIIth century but says nothing about the remainder. Joseph Loth wrote: le Livre Noir, dont le manuscrit est de la fin du XIIe ou du commencement du XIII^ siecle. Such also was the view of Maunde Thompson, keeper of the manuscripts at the British Museum. (cf. Facsimile, p. XVI).