Latin Vespasian E XI[1] and in the Book of Blegywryd[2] in connexion with the same passage as in the present text. Consequently it must have been a work current as early at least as the middle or first half of the thirteenth century. The first seventy-six folios of Peniarth MS. 35 (called G) of the last quarter of the thirteenth century profess to contain the Book of Cynog, or at least part of it, for they close with the words ' Ac yuelly y teruyna Llyuyr Kynawc ' (And so ends the Book of Cynog).[3] According to Dr. Gwenogfryn Evans, Aneurin Owen made no use of the greater part of this text.[4]
mab aillt [lit. a shaven fellow], a villein. Not in present text. See p. 307 above (X 217 a 16-20), 313 (U 36 b). See taeog.
maenor. This word should be carefully distinguished from the English manor, to which it is often assimilated ; maenor appears to come from maen, a stone. ' Originally it probably meant a particular spot in its district, which was distinguished by stone buildings or some sort of stone walls.'[5] ' Maenor occurs in one of the documents in the Book of St. Chad . . . written in the Mercian hand of the time of King Offa. . . . Even our English historians will hardly be prepared to sustain the hypothesis that the Welsh borrowed a Norman-French word prior to A. D. 800.'[6] Two kinds of maenor are distinguished in the present text, the maenor of the free trevs and the maenor of the taeogtrevs. In the Book of Blegywryd (as the so-called 'Dimetian Code' may perhaps more correctly be called), the two kinds of maenor are referred to thus : ' Seithtref a vyd ym maenawr vro ; teir tref ardec a vyd ym maenawr vrthtir.' (Seven trevs are to be in a maenor vro ; thirteen trevs are to be in a maenor wrthdir.)[7] If the maenor vro and the maenor wrthdir are the same as the bond and free maenor respectively, then it would seem as though the maenor of the lowlands were occupied by taeogs and that of the uplands by free men. On the basis of the present text, the following tables may be drawn up :—
3 rhandirs = 1 taeogtrev
4 rhandirs = 1 free trev
13 free trevs = 1 free maenor
7 taeogtrevs = 1 maenor of taeogtrevs.
The maenor of thirteen trevs is not referred to in MS. U, and the form maenawl appears in lieu of maenawr; which shows the influence of North Welsh books on this particular text.
