ON THE ANTIQUITY

OF CERTAIN

WELSH MANUSCRIPTS.

On this interesting subject, without drawing at present on my own resources, I shall content myself with briefly and distinctly giving the substance of a paper written by P. H. Hersart de la Villemarqué, the well-known and celebrated Breton scholar. It is entitled "Notices of the Principal Manuscripts of the Ancient Britons, with Facsimiles," and was read to the Institute of France, November, 1855, and printed last year. The author thus commences his work :

"After the researches into the origin of our national language, it is not without interest to collect the memorials of dialects, which are supposed to be the best representatives of our ancient indigenous speech, the Celtic or Gallic.

"To make known such of these monuments as are still to be found in England, and which are the legitimate inheritance of some of our countrymen, as was remarked by M. Ampère, to range them according to their dates, to show where the manuscripts are to be found, to give some facsimiles, and on proper occasion to criticize the labours of editors, were the objects proposed to myself.

"If I am not mistaken, the documents examined by me form not only the base of Celto-British philology in its three branches-the Breton, the Cumric, and the Cornish, but are also necessary for the study of the whole Celtic group of dialects, and furnish indisputable elements for comparing them with the other Indo-European languages, and especially with the French.

"I range them under two heads.

First, those which refer either to the time of the emigration and the establishment of the insular Britons in Armorican Gaul, or to the succeeding ages, from the sixth to the twelfth century, a period during which trustworthy writers and witnesses of facts represent the colony and the mother-country as

forming one people and speaking but one language, which was called in Latin 'Lingua Britannica.'

"Second, those which refer to medieval times-the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, when the communications between the continental and insular Britons became more and more rare, and was at last completely interrupted, so that the once one language split itself into three dialects: one which preserved the generic name, and is still spoken in our departments of Finisterre and the Côtes du Nord; another, which, under the name of Cumraeg, is still spoken in the Principality of Wales; and the third, which, up to the close of the eighteenth century, was spoken in Cornwall, but now exists only in written documents.

"To the first head belong

"1. Two written specimens preserved in the University Library, Cambridge, in a copy of the Poems of Juvencus.

"2. A manuscript of the Bodleian Library, numbered xxxi., and named 'Codex Distinctus,' containing a portion of the Grammar of Eutychius and of Ovid's Art of Love, each with British glosses.

"3. The Lichfield manuscripts in the Cathedral Library, known as the 'Book of St. Chad,' which contains the acts of donations to the church of Llandaff, partly drawn up in the Old British tongue.

"4. A vocabulary, Latin-Breton, in the Bodleian Library, No. 572. "Under the second head we have, among other important documents,— "1. A manuscript in the British Museum Cottonian Library, containing a Vocabularium Cambricum, or Vocabula Cambrica.

"2. The Black Book of Chirk, in the library of Sir Robert Vaughan, of Rhug, Bart., which contains a copy of the Welsh Laws of Howel the Good, a British prince of the tenth century.

"3. The Black Book of Caermarthen,' in the same library. A collection of poems by British bards who flourished in the sixth, and up to the close of the twelfth, century.

"4. A collection of chronicles, historical or fabulous, belonging to the Cottonian Library, and named the Book of Bruts.

"5. The Red Book of Jesus College, Oxford,' in which are found a series of the same chronicles; a collection of poems by Welsh bards during the middle ages and in older times; and of popular tales of chivalry, of romances, a grammar, &c.

"6. The manuscript in the same library called the 'Book of Landevi Brevi,' of which the most important document is a translation of Elucidarius, a religious work ascribed to St. Anselm.

"7. Different mysteries in the Cornish language, in the Bodleian.

"In ranking among the monuments of the second age of the language of the Ancient Britons, works which belong to the first by the date of their composition, such as a large number of poems contained in the Book of Caer

marthen,' and in the Red Book of Hergest,' the 'Vocabula Brittanica,' the 'Laws of Howel the Good,' &c., I have departed from the practice hitherto adopted on the subject; but I am justified in so doing by the rules of sound criticism. These works have not reached us as they were written by the authors, but they exhibit an orthography totally different from that used in primitive times. The new and corrupted orthography was introduced into the Principality of Wales somewhere about the twelfth century. They bear something like a similar relation to their originals which our modern editions of ancient French classics bear to the copies first put into circulation by their authors. The difference, however, is much greater; for the process pursued with our classics have only disguised certain roots, while the new system of Welsh orthography, with its numberless suppressions, changes, and reduplication of letters, has utterly disfigured the words. When the texts shall have been reestablished in their original form, whether scientifically after the models still remaining, or, which would be still better, after the primitive manuscripts, which we may still hope to recover, their proper rank in the first age may safely be restored to them.

I.

"While waiting for this restoration, let us examine those remains which, by the mode of writing, their orthography and style are known to be anterior to the twelfth century; and let us commence with poetry, as the most skilful critics recommend the remains in verse as the most important objects of study, seeing versification is better calculated than prose to preserve the pronunciation, the orthography, and construction."

M. Villemarqué then proceeds to give an account of the three stanzas which Edward Llwyd found written in a page of a manuscript copy of the religious poem of Juvencus, and which Llwyd himself thus describes, Arch. Britt. p. 221 :

"The British words which follow belong to the dialect of the Britons of the northern parts of the island, now the kingdom of Scotland. I found them on the leaf of an old Latin manuscript, copied on vellum by an Irish hand, about a thousand years ago; and from the handwriting, and a few more words in the same dialect, I am convinced that the book was brought from the Alban, now Scotland, and can make a fair conjecture about the time when it was copied. I know not whether it is the dialect of the Britons of Strathclyde, or of the Gwithel Picti, for so the ancient Cumri named the northern race, who, by their daring courage and the strength of their country, saved themselves from the arms of Rome."

He then observes, that in Wales there were compositions

'not very dissimilar in style) of the Northern Britons, of Lomarch the aged, and of Merdin the Caledonian.

So it is likely that it is Albaneg, or the language of the Picti, the ancient inhabitants of the Alban, respecting which language the learned historians of Scotland say that there remains not a single written word; and owing to this complete ignorance respecting their language, some have rather doubted whether they were of British descent or from the shores of the Baltic, or from the country of the High Elmen,' now called Germans. If the dialect in which these verses are written was spoken by the Picti, they were undoubtedly Britons. But, however that may be, as the words are but few, and constitute the oldest and strangest written British I ever saw, I thought it right (although as yet I do not understand them) to print them for the gratification of those who are learned in the ancient Cumraeg. And, as there are no Irish types either at Oxford or anywhere else, I print them in the ancient Cumric characters, which only slightly differ from the Irish.”

M. Villemarqué visited Cambridge on purpose to examine the original document, and has given a facsimile of the manuscript, which slightly differs from Llwyd's edition, but is in one point certainly erroneous, as he has introduced the letter Z, equally unknown both to the Irish and British writers of ancient times. I have already given my own opinion in Gomer, Part II., and have to confess my mistake in trusting too much to the version and text of Edward Davies. In a second edition of Gomer, now preparing for the press, I shall again re-examine the question by the new light thrown upon it by the comments of M. Villemarqué, who found another fragment, written by the same hand and in the same dialect, in the same manuscript. This he pronounces very important, but has not yet made it public. He thus concludes his observations:

“Before leaving Juvencus, I ought to indicate its provenance. The name 'Price,' written in large characters on the first leaf, informs us that it belonged to the family of a celebrated Welsh antiquary. We know that Sir John Price, one of King Henry the Eighth's council in the Court of the Marches, was one of the commissioners appointed by that prince to visit the monasteries at the time of their dissolution. He collected a great number of manuscripts concerning the antiquities of his own country, and made use of some of them in his Defence of the History of the Britons against Polydore