Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/439

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between the river Conway and the river Dee, which Gwynedd afterwards claimed. This apparent anxiety would certainly indicate that he was a Powysian, who, although anxious to preserve the integrity of Powys itself, yet fully recognizes Howel's work for ' Kymry benbaladyr' in inviting six men from every cymwd in Cymru to the Ty Gwyn to assist in reforming Welsh law and custom.


dilysdod, certainty, assurance, acquittance. In our present text it is a term for a portion of the compensation to be made to a woman by her ravisher. In the early Latin texts we have dylesruyt, the modern dilysrwydd, and ius suum and ius suum plenarie, after which last Brit. Mus. Vespasian E XI in one passage adds, id est, y diweirdep, that is, her chastity.[1] It appears as though it were a payment which guaranteed to the woman the retention of her status as a virgin or chaste woman in the sight of the law. See gwaddol.


Dinevwr, near Llandeilo fawr, in the valley of the Tywi in Carmarthenshire, where, its ruins still crown the summit of a hill overshadowing the town, a distance of twelve miles from Carmarthen. ' The form Dynevor (with the accent on the first syllable) is of course a mere English barbarism ; and the application of the name ' Dynevor Castle ' to the residence now so called is a modernism, that mansion having been till recently called Newton in English, and Drenewydd (still in common use in the neighbourhood) in Welsh.'[2] In all the earlier South Welsh law books Dinevwr appears as a leading royal court in the Deheubarth. In the Book of Blegywryd, Dinevwr is an eistedua arbennyc, a principal seat or throne, under the King of Deheubarth, as Aberffraw under the King of Gwynedd.[3] It is also mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in the last quarter of the twelfth century as formerly one of three principal courts in Wales, the others being Aberffraw and Shrewsbury.[4] He tells us elsewhere that the principal court of South Wales was at Caerlleon at first, before it was removed to Dinevwr,[5] but in both places he speaks as though Dinevwr was no longer a principalis curia. As he says the same, however, of Aberffraw, he is obviously thinking of that one Wales of his imagination united under Rhodri Mawr, which that king (such was the notion)

  1. Anc. Laws II. 794, 847, 850.
  2. Egerton Phillimore in Y Cymmrodor IX. 45.
  3. Anc. Laws I. 346.
  4. Gerald's Itinerary through Wales I. ch. 10 ' Fuerant enim antiquitus tres principals in Wallia curiae,' &c.
  5. Gerald's Description of Wales I. ch. 4.