Welsh Journals

£ 0e$$rj>c#an ©ocumenfo* By A. W. WADE-EVANS. NOTWITHSTANDING either their supreme value, or even their brevity, it is for the first time that the attempt is now made to print these two tracts with that approximation to accuracy which modern science demands. Indeed, so supreme is their value that this fact would be a marvel and a mystery in the story of historical research, were it not that primarily they are only of Welsh interest, so that (needless to say) no marvel or mystery whatsoever is involved. The De situ Brecheniauc manuscript is supposed to have been written in the early part of the thirteenth century by a scribe ignorant of Welsh, and from a MS. as old at least as the eleventh century.1 The Cognacio Brychan manu- script was written by a seventeenth century hand, appar- ently from a document of the thirteenth century, as Mr. Phillimore judges from the archaic spelling of Welsh words. This seventeenth century scribe had also before him the actual copy of the De Situ which we are using, and from it he adds not only the marginal and interlineal notes which appear in our printed Cognacio, but also two pages of transcription not here reproduced. It is clear, therefore, that the two tracts are independent of one another, although 1 See Y Cymmrodor, vol. vii, pp. 105-6, by Mr. Egerton Phillimore also, the Archiv. f celtische Lexikographie, ii, 516, etc., by Mr. Alfred Anscombe.