Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/443

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a passage which runs thus : ' Rheit hagen yr gwarcheitwat cayl aminiogeu tir a gwyr gorfotref. i. aminyogeu y tir yn y gylch, y gadw y tir ganthaw.' (The conservator however must have land borderers and men of a gorvodtrev, that is, borderers from the land around him, to keep for him his land.) A still later definition[1] reads : ' Sef yw gorvotref, randyred a gvnvller o drevi vchelwyr agyfvarvo ev tervynev a thervyn y dref y bo y datlev yndy. Ac o ray hynny y kayr amynyogav tyr.' (A gorvodtrev means the rhandirs which shall be brought together from the breyr-trevs whose boundaries touch the boundary of the trev wherein the disputes may be. And it is from those that land borderers are procured.) Dr. Seebohm accepts this statement as representing the true meaning of the word.[2]


gwaddol, marriage portion. ' Gwaddol = gwo-dawl (Irish fo-dail; Latin divisio) is a portion or dowry as a division of something.'[3] The word is very rare in the law books, and only occurs once in our present text. It is not easy to say what exactly was meant by gwaddol, but it appears as though it comprised at least the agweddi and the argyvreu. In MS. X, however, it appears to be identified with the argyvreu alone (p. 305 supra). According to our present text, a man who failed to rebut a charge of rape on a woman walking alone, was to pay the woman her gwaddol, which in the corresponding passage in Latin is given as ius suum and ius suum plenarie, id est, y diweirdep in Peniarth MS. 28 and Vespasian E XI respectively.[4] From the last it seems as though the gwaddol was paid as a mark of the woman's diweirdeb or chastity. See dilysdod.


gwarthal, something to boot. The passages in the text seem to mean that there is no 'boot ' where one has had his choice of shares, or, in other words, supposing that your share was assigned you without your having a free choice, you might then, and then only, ask for something to boot (see p. 203, note I supra).


gwelygordd, the stock of a family, some of whom might be living in another gwlad, retaining their rights in the original bit of land from which they sprang. The term is not used in our present text, but only in an addition found in U (p. 316 supra).


gwirawt yr ebestyl, liquor of the apostles. ' Liquor distributed on feast days of the apostles,' so says Aneurin Owen.[5]


gwestai, guest ; in Latin Peniarth MS. 28 hospes. In addition

  1. Anc. Laws II. 283, from Peniarth MS. 175 of the late fifteenth century.
  2. Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, 35.
  3. The Welsh People, 211, note 3.
  4. Anc. Laws II. 794, 850.
  5. Ibid. II. 1118.