Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/435

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

redduntur cum cena regis.' The latter again, under the heading De daunbwyt, includes the following section, 'Si denarii redduntur Xcem VIIIto denarii pro unoquoque dono ; et unus denarius ministris, id est, yr daeredwyr ae kynnwllo,' which means ' to the daered-men who shall collect it'.[1]


dawnbwyd [dawn, gift, bwyd, food] food-gifts of taeogs. According to the present text, two food-gifts were due to the king from the taeogs every year, one in winter and the other in summer. The dawnbwyd is to be distinguished from the gwestva, which last was due from free men.


Deheubarth [dehau, right, south ; parth, part], the south part of Wales, South Wales. It is the dexteralis pars, the right side looking east, as opposed to the sinistralis pars, the left side, that is, the north. Cunedda, who was one of the leaders of the Men of the North, Gwyr y Gogledd, who invaded the North Welsh coast from Cumberland and Southern Scotland about the beginning of the fifth century, and drove out the Scotti, is said in the Historia Brittonum to have come de parte sinistrali, that is, from the north.[2] The term Deheubarth at no time stood for the whole of modern South Wales as signifying a definite patria under one king, like Gwynedd, Buallt, or Morgannwg. Deheubarth was used as a general term for that group of South Welsh patrias whose inhabitants might be described as Deheubarthwyr or Britonnes dexterales or simply Dextrales,[3] in contradistinction to those of Gwynedd and Powys. The Deheubarth was never a gwlad, but only a district which comprised many gwlads. It is true that both in this present text and also in the Latin Peniarth MS. 28, this general term Deheubarth is used as though for a definite patria, but (as shown under gwlad) the reason is probably this, that at the time when these recensions of the laws of Howel were written the majority of the South Welsh patrias had already fallen into Anglo-Norman hands, which may have induced the writer to use the vague or general term Deheubarth in lieu of more specific ones.[4] It appears

  1. Anc. Laws II. 758, 785, 821. Cf. also I. 534.
  2. Mommsen's Chronica Minora III. 205. Mr. Anscombe regards Cunedag in this passage as standing for Cuneda g[uletic]. Sir John Rhys, however, informs me that Cuneda certainly did not originally end in a.
  3. Preface to Peniarth MS. 28. Anc. Laws II. 749 ; Annales Cambriae in Y Cymmrodor IX. 160, 162.
  4. As for example in MS. D, viz. Peniarth MS. 32 of about A. D. 1380, where reference is made to Rieinwc ( = Dyved), Morgannwg, and Seisyllwc ( = Ceredigion plus Ystrad Tywi). Anc. Laws II. 50 ; cf. also 584.