body’; heb y Pwyll do. 4 ‘said P.’; heb ef do. 2 ‘said he’; heb ynteu do. 3 ‘said he’; heb hi do. 10 ‘said she’; heb wynt do. 27 ‘said they’; etc. Its use without an expressed subject is rare, and occurs chiefly where it repeats a statement containing the subject: Ac yna y dywat Beuno, mi a welaf, heb Ỻ.A. 126 ‘And then Beuno said, “I see,” said [he]’; A gofyn a oruc iẟaw, arglwyẟ, heb r.m. 179 ‘and he asked him, “lord,” said [he]’; heb ef … heb r.m. 96.
Mn. W. (N.W.) eb ni Ps. cxxxvii 4 (1588), eb ef b.cw. 8 ‘said he’, eb yr angel ib. ‘said the angel’, ebr ef do. 10, ebr ynteu do. 15, eb ef M.K. [11], hebr ef do. [20]; (S.W.) ebe Myrddin d.p.o. 4, eb un do. 97, ebe i.mss. 154 ff. The N.W. dial. form ebr, e.g. ebr fi b.cw. 10, etc. is now re-formed as ebra.
- Yn ol Siôn ni welais haul,
- Eb Seren Bowys araul.—T.A., a 14975/107.
‘Since [I have lost] Siôn I have not seen the sun, said the bright Star of Powys.’
ii. C. used hebaf and hebu, see ex.; P.M. imitating him (the two poems are addressed to father and son) wrote ny hebwn hebod m.a. i 394 ‘I would not speak without thee’.
- Ti hebof nyt hebu oeẟ teu;
- Mi hebot ny hebaf inneu.—C., r.p. 1440.
‘Thou without me—it was not thy [wont] to speak; I without thee—I will not speak either.’
The compound atebaf (< *ad-heb-af) ‘I answer’ is inflected regularly throughout: 3rd sg. pres. ind. etyb, v.n. ateb. The rarer compounds gwrthebaf ‘I reply’, gohebaf ‘I say' (now ‘I correspond’) seem also to be regular: gohebych B.F. r.p. 1154 (Mn. W. 3rd sg. pres. ind. goheba, v.n. gohebu).
iii. In O.W. only hepp m.c. (≡ heb § 18 i) occurs, before a consonant in each case. In Ml. W. heb yr and heb occur before vowels, and heb y before consonants. Assuming that the original form in W. was *hebr, this would become either *hebr̥ or heb before a consonant; the former would naturally become hebỿr, later hebỿ; this seems to be the sound meant by heb y, the y being written separately because sounded y as in the article. Before a vowel *hebr would remain, and is prob. represented by heb yr (the normal Ml. spelling would be hebyr ≡ hebɏr). In S.W. heb and hebỿ survived, becoming eb, ebe; in N.W. heb and hebr, becoming eb and ebr.
If the above is correct, the original *hebr must be from a deponent form with suffix *‑re added directly to the root; thus *sequ̯-re, √sequ̯- ‘say’; cf. gŵyr § 191 iii (1). In the face of the compound ateb = Ir. aithesc, both from Kelt. *ati-sequ̯‑, Strachan’s statement, Intr. 97, that heb ‘says’ is of adverbial origin seems perverse. A sufficient
