Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language, Vol. 2: Part I., Jesus College, Oxford; Free Library, Cardiff; Havod; Wrexham; Llanwrin; Merthyr; Aberdar (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language, Vol. 2: Part I., Jesus College, Oxford; Free Library, Cardiff; Havod; Wrexham; Llanwrin; Merthyr; Aberdar

The present report deals with documents in the Welsh language 'in the libraries of Jesus College, Oxford, and of the town of Cardiff, as well'as nearly the whole of the quondam Havod collee tion, and a few stray manuscripts at Llanwrin Rectorv Merthyr Tydvil, and Aberde'ir. The collection at Jesus College is the result of gifts from some of its alumni, of whom the Rev. Thomas Wilkins, of Llanblethian, in the county of Glamorgan, is the Worthiest in this respect. To him belongs the credit of having rescued from the vicissitudes of private libraries the Red Book ofherg'est, the largest vellum manuscript and one of the best known inthe Welsh language. This Red Book, though ia complete, forms in itself a' fairly good mediaeval Welsh library. Theology and the laws excluded, it may be said to contain a representative collection of the best literature current in Wales at the' close of the fourteenth, and the opening of the fifteenth centuries. And though work done for this Commission has made it clear that most of its prose contents are to be found in earlier documents, still, if we exclude the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Book of Aneirin, and the Book of Taliessin, it remains practically our oldest and most reliable source for a very large part of the works of the poets of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The purely historical value of these metrical productions is too readily overlooked. Indeed it seems necessary to reiterate again and again, with emphasis, the im possibility of writing'the social history of the Welsh peoples without an attentive and exhaustive study of mead-song and elegy, the trumpet call to.battle and the paean of victory and' peace. When all that remains of the poetry, producedfin Wales between the rise and the fall of the monasteries, has been properly edited, the historian will find a wealth of unsuspected material often stamped With the hall-mark of the eye-witness and fresh as the morning'dew. The Welsh portion of the manuscripts brought together at Philipps mss.

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