Session 3: Ystafell 3
Gramadegau Barddol a'r llawysgrifau / Bardic Grammars and the manuscripts

Chair: Bryn Jones

‘Herwydd llyfr Davydd Ddu Athraw’: goleuni newydd ar ramadegwr cynnar
‘Herwydd llyfr Davydd Ddu Athraw’: new light on a fourteenth-century Welsh grammarian

Gruffudd Antur
Prifysgol Bangor

Ar sail tystiolaeth Robert Vaughan o’r Hengwrt, wrth gopïo llawysgrif ganoloesol sydd bellach wedi’i cholli, cysylltir un fersiwn o’r gramadeg barddol â Dafydd Ddu Athro o Hiraddug, gŵr na wyddys odid ddim amdano ac y tyfodd peth chwedloniaeth yn ei gylch. Credai cyfoeswr Robert Vaughan, Dr John Davies o Fallwyd, mai Dafydd Ddu oedd yn gyfrifol am y cyfieithiad o Wasanaeth Mair (‘hyd y mae pawb yn tybieid’), ac yn llawysgrif Peniarth 20 rhoddir y clod i Ddafydd am ‘ddychmygu’ tri mesur newydd. Credid gynt fod Peniarth 20 yn perthyn i’r bymthegfed ganrif, ond mae’r gwaith a wnaed ar y llawysgrif yn ddiweddar gan Daniel Huws a Gifford a T. M. Charles-Edwards wedi dangos ei bod yn bur sicr fod y llawysgrif wedi’i llunio tua 1330 gan ddwy brif law a weithiai yn abaty Glyn-y-groes, yn fuan ar ôl i Ddafydd adolygu’r gramadeg. Yn ogystal â gramadeg Dafydd Ddu, fe gynnwys y llawysgrif bwysig hon gopi o’r Bibyl Ynghymraec a’r copi cynharaf o Frut y Tywysogion; ceir hefyd lawysgrif yn y Llyfrgell Brydeinig (Cotton Cleopatra B.v) gan yr union ddwy law sy’n cynnwys fersiynau pwysig o Brenhinedd y Saesson ac Ystorya Dared. Yng ngoleuni tystiolaeth newydd a chyffrous, a chan adeiladu ar waith R. Geraint Gruffydd, bydd y papur hwn yn taflu goleuni newydd ar Ddafydd Ddu, gan archwilio arwyddocâd y darganfyddiad hwn yng nghyd-destun ein dealltwriaeth o amgylchiadau llunio llawysgrifau Peniarth 20 a Cotton Cleopatra B.v a’r testunau pwysig a geir ynddynt.

At the end of his transcription of a no-longer extant manuscript of the Welsh Bardic Grammar, Robert Vaughan of Hengwrt asserts that the Grammar was the work of one Dafydd Ddu Athro of Hiraddug, a man shrouded in mystery and myth. Vaughan’s contemporary, Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, believed that it was Dafydd who translated the Office of the Virgin Mary into Welsh, and in NLW, Peniarth MS 20, Dafydd is credited with ‘imagining’ three new bardic metres. Peniarth 20 was formerly believed to be a fifteenth-century manuscript, but recent work done by Daniel Huws and Gifford and T. M. Charles-Edwards on the manuscript has shown that it is the work of two contemporary scribes working about 1330, no doubt at Valle Crucis abbey. Besides Dafydd Ddu’s Grammar, Peniarth 20 also contains a copy of Y Bibyl Ynghymraec and the earliest extant copy of Brut y Tywysogyon; a manuscript kept in the British Library (Cotton, Cleopatra B.v), by the same two scribes, contains highly important texts of Brenhinedd y Saesson and Ystorya Dared. In light of an exciting new discovery, this paper will build on R. Geraint Gruffydd’s ground-breaking work on Dafydd Ddu and examine the relationship between medieval Welsh texts and the manuscripts in which they are preserved.

 

Copïau darniog o 'Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid'
Fragmentary copies of the Bardic Grammars

Michaela Jacques
Prifysgol Harvard

Mae 'Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid' yn esbonio, yn fras, sut i ysgrifennu barddoniaeth ganoloesol Gymraeg: maent yn cynnwys disgrifiadau (gweddol Ladinaidd) o’r iaith Gymraeg farddonol, a rhestrau o'r amryw fesurau. Fe'u ffurfiwyd yn gyntaf — mae'n debyg — yn y drydedd ganrif ar ddeg (< c.1330), a chafodd testunau eu hailgopïo a'u hailolygu yn rheolaidd hyd y ddeunawfed ganrif. Mae’r gwahanol gopïau yn cynnwys nifer o amrywiadau pwysig, sy'n awgrymu bod copïwyr a golygyddion yn meddu ar farn tra gwahanol ynghylch natur y gwaith, ac yn gweithio i gyfeiriad gwahanol amcanion. 

Er bod llawer o'r fersiynau yn destunau cyflawn, erbyn canol y bymthegfed ganrif mae rhai adrannau yn dechrau teithio yn annibynnol ar y lleill. Cynigiaf yn y cyflwyniad hwn arolwg bras o’r fersiynau darniog hyn o’r Gramadegau, gan ganolbwyntio ar lawysgrifau papur o’r bymthegfed a'r unfed ganrif ar bymtheg. Mae'r rhain yn llai adnabyddus ar y cyfan na’r enghreifftiau cynharaf, ond cyflwynir ganddynt dystoliaeth bwysig ynghlylch sut y defnyddiwyd y testunau. Gan astudio'r fersyniau hyn a'r gwahaniaethau pwysicaf sydd rhyngddynt, cawn well syniad o bwrpas y Gramadegau yn yr oesoedd canol diweddar a’r cyfnod modern cynnar.

 

The texts known as ‘Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid’ (‘Grammars of the Chief Bards’) explain, essentially, how to compose poetry in Welsh, including a description of the bardic Welsh language, and a list of the twenty-four metres. Probably first compiled in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century (but certainly before c.1330), the grammars were regularly recopied and re-edited through to the nineteenth century. The later copies contain a number of important variations, a fact which suggests that the various editors of the text could conceive of it in completely different ways, and for completely different purposes.

Although many of these re-edits contain complete texts, by the mid-fifteenth century, some sections began to travel independently from the rest, and thus we get ‘fragmentary’ or partial copies of the grammars surviving in manuscripts from that period on. In this presentation, I will offer a rough survey of these ‘fragmentary’ copies. I will focus on the paper manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which are less well-known than the earliest examples, but which provide us with important evidence about how the texts were actually used. By examining these partial copies, and by considering how and why they were intentionally abbreviated, we can form a clearer idea of the changing purposes of the bardic grammars over the course of the late medieval and early modern periods.

Reading the (orthographic) signs: abbreviations in the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Black Book of Chirk

Myriah Williams
University of California, Berkeley

To date, very little attention has been paid to the use of Latinate abbreviations in Welsh vernacular manuscripts. While they are sometimes briefly mentioned, or are used as a means of explaining scribal error, these abbreviations are in need of closer examination in their own right. There is evidence, particularly in the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth MS 1) and the Black Book of Chirk (NLW Peniarth MS 29), that Welsh scribes of the mid-thirteenth century and earlier were using Latinate abbreviations in their texts – sometimes quite extensively. After this period Latinate abbreviations all but disappear from Welsh vernacular manuscripts, though the consequences of them may still be detected.

In this paper I propose to address questions regarding the use of Latinate abbreviations in the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Black Book of Chirk. Namely, to what extent were the scribes of these manuscripts copying abbreviations from their exemplars, and to what degree were they introducing abbreviations into their texts themselves? The answers to these questions will have implications for our understanding of both the scribes and of their sources. I hope to demonstrate how the study of abbreviations in these manuscripts may cast light on scribal practice and education current in mid-thirteenth century Wales, and that such study can provide valuable insight into manuscripts from an under-represented period.