of Gelli Lyfdy compiled two collections of the alphabets known to him p 307, Ỻ 144, but neither contains anything like the coelbren. No ms. is written in it, for the simple reason that it was easier to write ordinary characters than the coelbren caricature of them. The writing in p 54 pp. 359 ff., stated in the r. to be in "'bardic' characters, which are widely different from Roman characters", bears no resemblance to the coelbren, and is no more "widely different from Roman characters" than the coelbren itself is; it is the hand of an illiterate person; the letters are written separately, but all are clumsy copies of the script characters of the period, mostly formed with awkward curves, the antithesis of the coelbren angles. There is a somewhat similar scribble written upside down on the bottom margin of b.ch. = p 29, p. 19.—The wooden book consisted of squared inscribed sticks in a frame; it was called peithynen from its resemblance to a weaver's reed, and not the reverse, as Iolo asserted, for peithyn(en) comes regularly from Lat. acc. pectin-em 'comb, weaver's reed'. The absurdity of the supposition that such a device ever served any serious purpose of literature is manifest when one considers what a cartload of wooden books would be required to carry the contents of a small manuscript volume.
ii. The earliest Welsh alphabet given as such is that found in the r.g. col. 1117: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, y, w, ỻ. It contains q, which is not used in Welsh, and omits all the digraphs except ll; they could not be included in the traditional number, 24.
Sir J. Price's alphabet in y.l.h. (1546) is as follows: a, b, c, d, ď, e, ff, f, g, h, i, k, l, lh, m, n, o, p, r, rh, s, t, v = u, v, y, w.
W. Salesbury gives the following alphabet in his Playne and Familiar Introductiõ, 1567 (written in 1550): A, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, h, i, k, l, ll, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, th, v, u, w, y. He distinguishes between u and v, using the latter for Eng. v, Welsh f.
G.R., (1567), who uses ḍ, ḷ, ụ for dd, ll, w, gives the following alphabet: a, b, c, ch, d, ḍ, e, f, g, i, h, l, ḷ, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, th, u, ụ, y, omitting ng and ph (both of which he uses, the latter to the exclusion of ff), to make the number 24.
S.V., (1568), gives the following alphabet of 24 letters: a, b, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, i, k, l, ll, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v, w, y, ch, th, adding that h is the sign of a breathing, j 9/3.
J.D.R., (1592), used h to form all his digraphs, thus bh = f, dh = dd, gh = ng. His alphabet is as follows: a, b, bh, c, ch, d, dh, e, g, gh, ghh, h, i, lh, l, m, mh, n, nh, o, p, ph, rh, r, s, t, th, u, 
, y, ỿ. It contains a character for each simple sound in the language, including the two sounds of y; but it was too cumbrous to win general adoption.
