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LLYVYR DU CAERVYRDDIN. Facsimile of the BLACK BOOK OF

CARMARTHEN. Reproduced by the Autotype Mechanical Process. With a Palæographical Note. By J. GWENOGVRYN EVANS, Honorary M.A., Oxford. Oxford: issued to subscribers only by J. G. Evaus, 7, Clarendon Villas. 1888. THE subscribers to the Old-Welsh Text series cannot have failed to be pleased with the reproduction of the "Black Book of Carmarthen" which Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans has placed before them. The original, as our readers are probably aware, is the oldest known MS. in the Welsh language. It is said to have been among the possessions of the Priory of St. John the Evangelist and St. Teulyddog at Carmarthen, a house which was founded at some period anterior to the year 1148, and at the dissolution of the monasteries to have been handed over to Sir John Price, the Welsh antiquary,' who was among the commissioners for their suppression. Its subsequent history is uncertain, but some time before the year 1658 it fortunately found its way into the Hengwrt collection, and passed with the rest of this collection into the Peniarth library in the year 1859. It is a small volume consisting of fifty-four leaves of vellum, which measure some 6 by 5 inches in size, and contain from nine to twenty-one lines of writing on either side. The handwriting varies to some extent, as does also the orthography, in different parts of the MS., which is made up of more than one originally distinct "book", and, in the present Editor's opinion, is by no means in a complete condition. Its contents are almost entirely poetical, and comprise forty-three distinct compositions (besides a short fragment), for the most part without titles or authors' names. A few are on religious topics, but the majority are founded on Welsh mythical and historical sagas. Of these the "Afallenneu" and the "Hoianeu" are

1 To the same antiquary, or to his son, Sir Richard Price, appear to have belonged parts of the MSS. Cott. Vesp. A. xiv (probably from Brecon), Dom. A. i (probably from St. David's), Vesp. E. iv, and another MS. now in the Cottonian collection.

the best known. Some of the contents have been published in the Myfyrian Archaiology, and the whole in Skene's Four Ancient Books, but in neither case in a manner to meet the requirements of scholarship, and we are glad to see that a diplomatic edition of this important text is among Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans' undertakings. The beautiful facsimile before us, which for the present may go far to supply the want, so clear is the writing of the greater part of the MS., is executed by the autotype process, and reproduces not only the written matter of the MS., but the exact appearance of its ancient pages, with all the stains, creases, flaws, and other marks of time faithfully represented. The tint of the prints being very similar to that of a vellum page, the reader practically has the original before him in every detail except the colours of the illuminated initials, and a few words of the MS. which can only be read by placing the pages in more than one light. The pigment used in autotyping being carbonaceous, the reproduction is permanent, and can undergo no deterioration as long as the paper remains unchanged. We have carefully examined these autotypes from beginning to end, and find them all of equal excellence. Mr. W. R. Wynne, the owner of the MS., with his customary liberality, placed every facility for their execution at the Editor's disposal, even going so far as to allow the hook to be taken out of its binding, in order that better negatives might be secured.

Into the date and authorship of the poems in this "Book" we will not now enter. Even the date of the MS. is a matter of some uncertainty in the present state of Welsh palæographical science. Skene (1868) referred the whole of it to the reign of Henry II (Four Ancient Books, ii, p. 316). The present Editor, after carefully weighing the evidence both of its calligraphy and of its contents, is of opinion that the earlier part was written in the reign of Stephen, and the remainder in those of Henry II and his son Richard (p. xvi). Mr. Evans, we may note, throws doubt on the prevalent idea that the development of calligraphy in Wales lagged behind that of England. "As far as we have been able to compare the manuscripts of France and England with those of the Principality", he says on p. xiii, "we incline to the belief that Dimetian scribes proved more susceptible to the influence of French models than their English brethren."

A HISTORY OF ANCIENT TENURES OF LAND IN THE MARCHES OF NORTH WALES. By A. N. PALMER, F.C.S. Wrexham : Woodall, Minshall & Thomas. Price 5s.

THIS is one of a series of works on local archæology in which Mr. Palmer has set an excellent example, which we trust will be followed by other local historians throughout the Principality. The district around Wrexham-afterwards the lordship of Bromfield and Yale-was conquered by Offa, King of the Mercians, the contemporary and correspondent of Charlemagne, in the course of his long reign, which was the first orderly epoch in Anglo-Saxon history. It was regained by the Welsh in the troublous times of the Norman Conquest of England, and was held by them for two hundred years. Offa seems to have planted English colonies there, as in other districts which he conquered; with the result that to this day the names of the townships are English, but those of the fields Welsh.

The value of the evidence of place-names in local history has been shown in a recent number of this Magazine. The old Welsh tenure of land was the tribal or family holding, which prevailed among all pastoral peoples throughout the world of whom any records can be obtained. It was no doubt an earlier stage of the system of land tenure by village communities, which can also be traced in countries as far apart as India and the Fiji Islands, and among the North American Indians. Private property in the soil began with arable land, and the process may be observed even in modern times, when some man of independent thought plants his potatoes in a corner of the common, and then surrounds his patch with a fence, which gives place to a hedge that soon grows high enough to support an intimation that "trespassers in this enclosure will be prosecuted".

Under the Welsh tribal system a district-it must be borne in mind, principally waste land-was held by a tribe under its petty king or chief, with his officers, the maer and canghellor. The holdings were of two kinds, the tir gwelyog or family-land, and the tir caeth or bond-land. The former was held by the uchelwyr or free tribesmen, alone entitled to the name of "Cymry”, who were divided into groups derived from single gwelyau, each family hold

ing being subdivided among the members for three generations from the head of the house. It is interesting to note that in these subdivisions the younger son took the original tyddyn or homestead with its croft, in accordance with the custom of all pastoral nations that the elder sons should migrate with a certain allotment of cattle as soon as they are able to lead a pastoral life. This custom has survived in the " Borough-English" of the English Law and the Jüngstenrecht (the right of the youngest) of the Germanic nations. The tyddynau of the uchelwyr were grouped in maenolydd, and from each maenol was due the gwestfa or foodrent (of which honey was an important element), taking the place of the earlier personal entertainment of the chief, and afterwards commuted into the punt dungc, the pound of silver, which survives as the fealty- or tunk-rent. There were also due to the chief the amobr or fee payable on marriage of the uchelwr's daughter (said, but without reason, to have originated from the right of mercheta mulierum, which prevailed, at any rate in Scotland, until the time of Malcolm the Third); the ebediw or heriot, payable on the death of an uchelwr; and certain public services, which appear likewise in the trinoda necessitas of the tenants of Anglo-Saxon boc-land, the land granted by deed out of the folcland. The tir caeth was held by the tacogion, called in the Latin translations of the Welsh laws "villani", among whom were the eillion (advena) and alltudion (exules). The number of the eillion gives rise to the suggestion that they were not merely immigrants, but included remnants of the original Celtic invaders, or of their predecessors. But among all taeogion, as there was no pure Welsh blood, there were no family rights. All adult males shared equally, as in the custom of gavelkind, which obtains in Kent and elsewhere, but the youngest son took his father's tyddyn. The taeog could not bear arms, was bound to grind at the chief's mill, was debarred from free sale and from certain more liberal occupations, was liable in his maenolydd or trefi (carefully separated from the maenolydd of the uchelwyr, there being eight free and four bond maenolydd in the commot) to the summer and winter dawnau bwyd, or contributions of food to the chief's table, and to the cylch, or support of the chief's household in his yearly progress. Below the tacogion were a class answering to the bordarii of Domes

day, cottagers without oxen, and generally without land, and the caethion or slaves; the villeins in gross.

The old under-kingdoms were divided into cantrefi, or groups of 100 townships, corresponding to the hundreds of the Saxon shires, each cantref containing normally two cymmydau (commots). The commot was the unit of local government, and (in North Wales) consisted of twelve maenolydd of four trefi each and two supernumerary trefi. Each tref had four tyddynau, to each of which four erwau (acres) was the usual allotment.

The Welsh laws declare that that every free Welshman was entitled to four (formerly five) erwau of land freed from the common rights over them; he had also rights over the common turf and woods, and the right of common tillage-cyfar. The erw was the measure of the day's joint ploughing with eight oxen, four abreast, which ended at noon. The erwau, which were separated from each other by balks of turf two furrows wide, were allotted in proportion to the several contributions in oxen or material; and when the practice of common tillage died out these scattered strips, like the "yard-lands" in the English open fields, remained in the permanent possession of the holders. These strips (the German hub, the Irish and Scotch rig) appear in all systems of co-aration, tribal or village. Like also was the Saxon æcer, the selio or strip in the open field, the origin of the English acre, which a statute of Edward I fixed at forty perches in length and four in breadth. In the Teutonic communities we find—(1) the mark of the township; (2) the common mark (the waste); and (3) the arable mark (the cultivated area), which was periodically distributed and divided into the three great fields for the three-course rotation of crops.

"Arva per annos mutant et superest ager", says Tacitus in the well-known passage of his Germania-they change their ploughlands yearly, but there is enough of the grass-land over. So in Wales the same land was not at first ploughed every year, but went back into grass land, the enclosures (which were round the whole, and not the strips) being pulled down after the harvest for common pasture. The tyddyn-the English town, the Irish tatewas permanently enclosed. The common pasture, the traces of which lasted longer, was of much more importance than the common arable land, for the Welsh were a pastoral people, and, like other inhabitants of mountainous countries, had their hafodau or

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