w.m. 165); claerwyn m.a. i 92 ‘bright’, f. claerwen D.G. 48; mynýgl-wen do. 137 ‘white-throated’, drwyn-llem do. 395 ‘sharp- nosed’; gwallt-felyn g. 157 ‘yellow-haired’, f. gwallt-felen D.G. 107; dí-syml ‘artless’, f. dí-seml D.G. 53.
- Dywed, donn lẃys-gron, lás-greg,
- Chwedl da am ferch wiwdal deg.—G.Gr. p 77/194.
‘Tell me, finely-curved blue hoarse wave, good news of the fair sweet-faced maiden.’
Sometimes the first element is affected in co-ordinate compounds, as tlos-deg D.G. 518 ‘beautiful and fair’, sech-goeg I.G. 406 ‘dry and void’; and in rare cases both elements, as cron-fferf D.G. 38 ‘round and firm’.
(2) But old compounds, consisting of prefix + adj. and others which are not consciously felt to be compounds, retain their vowel unaffected: hy-dyn ‘tractable’, an-hydyn ‘intractable’, cyn-dyn ‘stubborn’, ed-lym ‘keen’, cymysg ‘mixed’, hy-fryd ‘pleasant’, dy-bryd ‘ugly’, cyffelyb ‘like’, amlwg, agwrdd, etc. iii (3),
v. The following are irregular:
(1) brith ‘speckled’ has f. braith, Ml. W. breith, a special case of a-affection, not originally irregular, see § 68.
(2) The change takes place in the penult in bychan ‘little’, f. bechan, see § 101 ii (2), and cwta ‘short’, f. sometimes cota; and sometimes in comparatives and superlatives; see § 147 iii.
vi. There is no distinctive form for the f. pl.
Comparison.
§ 147. i. The adjective in W. has four degrees of comparison, the positive, the equative, the comparative, and the superlative.
As the cpv. is followed by no, later na ‘than’, the equative is preceded by cyn and followed by â (unacc., a): cyn wynned â’r eira ‘as white as snow’; ‘of’ after the spv. is expressed by o: y byrraf o’r ddau lit. ‘the shortest of the two’.
ii. (1) The derived degrees are formed from the positive by the addition of ‑(h)ed, ‑ach, ‑(h)af respectively. The ‑h- of the equative and spv. disappeared after the accent § 48 ii, but hardened final ‑b, ‑d, or ‑g to tenues, even when these were followed by a sonant; in Late Mn. W. the hardening is extended to the cpv. Of course all mutable vowels are mutated, § 81. Thus the present-day comparison is as follows:—
