Welsh Journals

BYE-GONES FOR i899-i9qo, NEW SERIES. VOL. VI. NOTES, QUERIES, and REPLIES, on sub- ject8 interesting to Wales and the Borders, should be addressed to Editor, " Bye-Gones,"Caxton Press, Oswestry. Real names and addresses must be given in confidence, and 3fSS. must be written legibly, on one side of the paper only. JANUARY 4, 1899. NOTES. DY'GWYL TOMAS (ST. THOMAS'S DAY). —lb used to be the custom years a^o at my grandfather's, and at all the best houses in the neighbourhood, to make on St. Thomas's day what they called Cenad-y-meirw, and give them to the poor, who used to call on that day to beg them. It was a busy day, for a great number had to be made to give one or more to each of the poor. These cakes were made from wheaten flour, and in those days the poor had only barley to make their bread with. They would have no more white bread until St. Thomas's day came ajjain. They were a kind of batch cake. But perhaps some one elae can say something more about this old custom. Henllys. E.R. PHILIP HENRY.—I picked up recently a small quarto MS. book, 6£in. by 4^in., and l£in. thick, bound in leather, with the hinges of the clasps still remaining. It was advertised as a Devotional Book in " the Autograph of Matthew Henry"; and there is a pencil note to that effect on the fly-leaf. It is written in a beautiful hand, but so fine as to be a weariness to the eyes to try and read it. It is really a " Sermon Note Book," with an occasional Mem. of the place and date at which the sermon was delivered, Some of the entries are noted, Preston Kingswood, Lapw.,and the date 1654 occurs about the middle of the MS. It must, therefore, be the autograph, not of Matthew, but of his father, Philip Henry, the eminent Nonconformist divine. D.R.T. THE ANTIQUITY OF WELSH.—Mr Walter Skeat, writing in Notes and Queries (Oct. 1, 1898, p. 261), and referring to the fact that few people have any conception of the an- tiquityof the native element of English, says " the usual error is to confuse speech with writing, and to limit the chronology of the spoken word by YOh.VL Ndw Series [ Vol. 15th from the beginning.] a consideration of the actual accidental moment when it happened to be written down. Yet there are strange exceptions. Many people are willing to concede at once that Welsh is merely a modern form of ancient British, and, conse¬ quently, that the Celtic languages are far older than the date of the existence of Julius Cae3ar. According to Prof. Rhys, the oldest Welsh glos3es only go back to the ninth century ; let us say, to about A.B. 800. At this rate, it is at once obvi¬ ous that, for practical purposes, an old form of Welsh must have been spoken in Britain at least a thousand years before any of it was written down. And this is very much within the mark. When, again, we compare Welsh with Breton, Gaelic, and Irish, and note their divergences, it becomes clear that they must have taken a long time to diverge ; before which era the common Celtic language required a long time for its grammatical formation. We are thus carried back into remote prehistoric times ; and as a thousand years is quite an insufficient period to produce such developments as must hav6 existed in Caesar's time, we are very much within the mark when we say that some form of Celtic was being spoken somewhere in the time of King Solomon." Ed. FAIRY OR SPIRIT APPEARANCES.— An old friend, who is laden with recollections of former days, told me the following tale :—A good while ago a cottager lived in a small house in a place called Bwlch-y-ddar, a hamlet between Llangedwyn and Llanfyllin. His name was Robert Jones. He lived alone. His landlord was Col. Bonnor's grandfather, a gentleman who was loved by his tenants, and consulted by them in matters of importance. With this in¬ troduction what follows becomes intelligible. One night Robert Jones was aroused from refreshing sleep by a noise in his room. He had only a kitchen with a small tressel bed in a corner of his room. He sat up in his bed and saw a small man fiddiing like mad, seated on the post of the bed, and small men and women dancing all about th6 room in great glee. For awhile he looked on with wonder, and at last he said, with something like a Welsh oath, " Who are you ? " The little fiddler, with merriment in his twink¬ ling eyes, said, " We are spirits of the air' (Ysprydion yr awyr). " But what do you want