8 - Series III

Summary

(i) The manuscripts and stemma

S All extant manuscripts seem to derive from William Salesbury’s lost manuscript ‘S’. The primary witnesses to this (W, N, T, P, and B) are transcribed in full in the edition below, with their exact lineation and indentation. B’s numbering of the englynion is included, as are the relevant entries in the index by Edward Lhwyd and Moses Williams, now bound as fol. 69 of NLW Llanstephan 145, after the B text on fol. 68. Williams’s entries are in italics. Occasional reference is made in the commentary to significant variants or marginal comments in secondary witnesses, including the well-known Peniarth 98ii by Dr John Davies, Mallwyd, the manuscript printed by Thomas Jones (his ‘Peniarth 98B’). The englynion are divided and numbered as in Thomas Jones’s edition, including the problematic stanzas 11 and 12, even though it will be suggested in the commentary that III.11d may really be line a of III.12.

For a stemma, see Figure 4 below, p. 280, and for further discussion of the secondary witnesses see above, pp. 82–93.

In the absence of S the primary witnesses to Series III are as follows:

W = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B. 464 (s. xvii ex.), fol. 188, a notebook of Edward Lhwyd, containing various literary items around which he crammed summaries of answers to his 1696 Parochial Queries. One of the literary items, in the hand of Lhwyd’s assistant William Jones (d. 1702), is ‘Englynion y Beddau | E Cod. MS. [..] Chart. Dom ….. | Salesbury de Lhan Rwst | penes Vid. Wynn de Bod | Ysgallen. Carnarv.’. On 189v Jones again refers to ‘Lib. … Salisbury de Plàs Issaf. | prop. LhanRwst pen. Vid. Wynn. de Bôdyskallen’ as a source for ‘Achae Seint Ynys Brydain’. That the ‘Salisbury’ in question was William Salesbury is confirmed by some cross-references to these genealogies that Roger Morris inserted into NLW 3032B (Mostyn 113, 1580×1600), pp. 132–38, labelled ‘W.S.’ and (on p. 136) ‘o lyfr W.S.’. Similarly, William Bodwrda (d. 1660) referred to the book as ‘W. Sal.’ in NLW Llanstephan 187. Lhwyd clearly intended to obtain fuller transcripts of some items noted in his notebook – thus at 34r he has ‘Mem. to order a Transcript’ in connection with a list of saints from Llyfr Watkin Owen. N below is the transcript of S made for Lhwyd.