Welsh Journals

A MANUSCRIPT OF WELSH POETRY IN EDWARD II'S LIBRARY EDWARD II was born in Caernarfon in 1284 and created Prince of Wales in 1301. It has been said that his role as prince was one of the few he filled with success: he took special interest in Wales, and in return kept the loyalty of Welshmen to the end of his life.2 A curious aspect of Edward II's links with Wales is a manuscript discussed some years ago by Ian Jack. 'In Edward II's library deposited in the Treasury there was a small book "de Ydiomate Anglicis ignorato" whose incipit was in Welsh.' Jack believes the book was probably 'a literary text', one of the 'chance spoils of war'. The manuscript began Edmygaw douit duyrmydd diuas. Jack consulted Melville Richards on this line, and was told it had received attention from no modern Welsh philologist. Professor Jack tells the present writer that, over twenty-five years later, the situation to his knowledge is still the same. So a note on the line is surely in order. Professor Jack describes the incipit Edmygaw douit duyrmydd diuas as 'cryptic'. Yet it is not particularly so, if one has the right dictionaries at hand. In addition, though seeming little to go on, it tells us more about this lost manuscript than might be thought. The first word, Edmygaw, is a first person singular present indicative verb, 'I admire, honour, praise'. This archaic verb is characteristic of the vocabulary of the Welsh court poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.4 The second word, douit 'the Lord, God', is also somewhat archaic. The fourth word, diuas, is an adjective, 'profound, truly worthy, truly wise'. The only difficult word is the third one, duyrmydd. It may perhaps be emended and taken as the third person singular consuetudinal present and future of the verb dyorfod 'conquer, subdue, triumph, win the day'. This is attested as digorbit in the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW, MS Peniarth 1); in modern Welsh orthography it would be dyorfydd.7 There can be no doubt about the termination, which rhymes with douit (Modern Welsh dofydd). Yet the m of the Treasury manuscript is difficult to account for. It may be a misreading for w, which in early Middle Welsh could represent [v].8 The whole line could thus be translated, 'I praise the Lord who triumphs, the truly wise one.' This would be very much in the style of the bardic religious poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.9 It would suggest Edward's book was an anthology of religious verse by official court poets, which also perhaps contained secular verse. If so, it would have resembled the Hendregadredd Manuscript (NLW, MS 6680), an anthology of secular and religious bardic poetry of the period 1100-1350, compiled in three stages between 1282 and 1350, its earliest part at the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida, fourteen miles south-east of Aberystwyth.10