Welsh Journals

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the arguments put forward by Mr. Saunders Lewis, but I shall first give a short account of Sir Ifor Williams's case. His arguments and here there is a clear contrast between him and Mr. Saunders Lewis were mainly linguistic. He thought that the thirteenth century manuscripts still retained a few clues of spelling and phonology which pointed to an original manuscript written before 1100. He pointed to four examples in the White Book of t standing for th. This spelling is found in the early legal manuscript, Peniarth 28, written towards the end of the twelfth century but containing several OW. features. On the other hand, there are also three examples of t for [th] in another legal manuscript, containing a law book part of which is attributed to a thirteenth century lawyer.5 This spelling habit, therefore, lasted well into the thirteenth century, and so does not show that the original manuscript of the Four Branches was any older than the earliest surviving manuscript containing part of the Four Branches, which is believed to have been written about 1225. In this early manuscript, however, there are two words, both belonging to the Second Branch, which are spelt without the initial y which they always have in MW., stlys and stryw instead of ystlys and ystryw.6 Sir Ifor Williams shows that the poets regard such words as having an initial y, which counted as a full syllable, at the latest by 1106. Professor Jackson argues that this prosthetic y, while being produced as early as the ninth century did not count as a separate syllable until the accent shift took place in the eleventh century. Stlys and stryw reflect, therefore, OW. spellings. Another orthographical argument is that in the White Book copy of the Four Branches makwyf from Irish mace coem is still spelt with a final f and its plural makwyueit still shows the intervocalic [v], even though Cynddelw rhymes maccuy with words without a final [v]. This argument is not entirely convincing since the White Book copy of Gereint, a story showing undeniable French or Norman features, also spells makwyf with a final f and its plural with f or u standing for [v]. In this case Welsh orthography seems to have kept the f or u long after [v] had ceased to be pronounced. Though the rhymes of Cynddelw show that it was no longer pronounced in the middle of the twelfth century, the old spelling survived for more than a hundred years after that. This being so, the spellings makwyf and makwyueit do not show that the Four Branches were compiled any earlier 5 See the section on orthography in the introduction to Llyfr Iorwerth, ed. A. R. Wiliam (Cardiff, 1960), p.xiiff. 6 PKM. p. 306.