Welsh Journals

BOOK REVIEWS A STUDY OF BRECONSHIRE PLACE-NAMES, Richard Morgan and R. F. Peter powell, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 1999 This volume is to be welcomed as the first modern book of place-name scholarship on Breconshire presented in a professional way. The authors, of course, have established a sound track record in this field. Richard Morgan has produced a volume in Welsh on Breconshire and Radnorshire place-names Enwau Lleoedd Buallt a Maesyfed (1993) as well as A Study of Radnorshire Place-Names (1998), both for the same publisher. R. F. Peter Powell has produced a detailed examination of The Place-Names ofDevynock Hundred (1993). Together they make a logical partnership to examine the place-names of Breconshire. The book itself is clear and well produced. It begins with an examination of the history of the Welsh language in Breconshire, from the eleventh century through to the nineteenth. This introduction is both comprehensive and scholarly, and may be a little daunting to the general reader for that reason (for example, in the use of terms like "expansion diffussion", "relocation diffusion" and "hierarchical diffussion" to explain the decline of the Welsh language) but is full of fascinating information nonetheless, and the points made are well illustrated with quotations. It would perhaps have been interesting to compare the situation at the end of the nineteenth century with that in the present day, to see to what extent Welsh may be making a revival, or has "clung on" in some communities; the discussion ends with the nineteenth century, but of course place-names, like languages, are constantly evolving. The heart of the book is given over to a list of place-names and their meanings. These are a model of clarity and scholarship. The information is presented alphabetically by name, with an Ordnance Survey grid reference, a selection of spellings through the years that the authors have unearthed from historical research, and a discussion of meanings and derivations. Mercifully, the authors have spared the reader an overdose of footnotes, leaving the entries to stand alone; the reader is given the basic information, but is also presented with enough historical examples to provide a flavour of the complexities of place-name research. Only very occasionally would you like more information, as for instance when they refute an unnamed source (in the entry for Llanfilo it is stated that "the church has been wrongly said to be dedicated to Milburga" — wrongly said by whom?). Place-names can be notoriously controversial to decipher, and sometimes the meaning is too obscure to understand. It is a tribute to the honesty of the authors that they are not afraid sometimes to say that they do not know, as in the case of the derivation of Llanwrtyd Wells. Instead they present a series of possibilities and r iscuss the merits of each and this, curiously enough, is very reassuring to the non-