Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/23

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

edition of the 'Gwentian Code' ceases using this codex at the very same point where he metes out like treatment to Y ; and he states of Z at the beginning of the Laws of the Gwlad that it ' is carelessly transcribed and has many chasms ', for which reason he leaves it. He inserts variant readings, however, from Z in vol. II of his work. Z is the codex which with S (the Brit. Mus. Additional MS. 22356 of the late fifteenth century) provides Owen with an interesting but extremely untrustworthy addition to the preface of his ' Dimetian Code '.[1]

U and X

U = Peniarth MS. 37. Vellum ; 5⅜ x 4⅛ inches ; 156 pages (pp. 153-6 being in court hand) ; late thirteenth century, in the same hand apparently as Peniarth MS. 35 (MS. G) with very numerous sectional initials and titles in rubrics, and also rubricated letters ; 18 lines to the page ; partly gall-stained but complete ; in old binding newly covered with pigskin. The text of pp. 131-52 is no part of the Book of Cyvnerth, but is taken from the Book of Gwynedd, being found in A and its important transcript E. Dr. Evans, however, finds that it is in such close agreement with the corresponding part in G that both must be from the same archetype or the one is a copy of the other, both MSS. belonging to the same school of writing and being possibly the work of the same scribe. It will be found reproduced with translation in Y Cymmrodor, vol. XVII. The Book of Cyvnerth, properly so called, covers the first 120 pages, and was adopted by Aneurin Owen as the basis of his

  1. Anc. Laws I. 340-2.