Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- [mid-16 cent.]. (Creation)
Level of description
File
Extent and medium
120 ff. (the pages do not appear to have old foliation or pagination) ; 210 x 150 mm. Each quire was sewn onto a parchment strip about 20 mm wide, with another similar re-inforcing strip inside the fold. The four outer strips were then sewn into parchment covers (the upper one did not survive) comprising two fragmentary bifolia of a fifteenth-century noted missal (ordo misse) and a small fragment of a leaf of another service book dating from the fourteenth century, now preserved separately. The MS, which was badly damaged, was repaired and re-bound at NLW in 1975.
Context area
Name of creator
Name of creator
Name of creator
Archival history
The present MS was apparently in the Beddgelert, Dolbenmaen or Llanfihangel-y-Pennant area of Caernarvonshire by the end of the sixteenth- or the beginning of the seventeenth-centuries, see f. 44 which contains a number of scrawled notes including the following names: 'siamas ab lisa', 'James ap elis ap Mores ap Jhon ap M[re]d', 'by me James ap elis scriptu' apud Penant', 'Elin vz Res ap dd vy[ch] ... Res ap dd ap mred ... bedd kelert', and Rydderch ap dd'. The names 'siamas ab lisa' and 'James ap elis' probably refer to James [Eliza] Maurice, LLD, [J. E. Griffith, PACF, p. 218], a member of the Clenennau family of Penmorfa, Caernarvonshire. The MS may have passed from Clenennau to Mostyn via the Corsygedol library. Part of lot 1504 in the Mostyn sale at Christie’s, 24 Oct. 1974.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
An incomplete text of Brut y Brenhinedd (one of the Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae). The first quarter of the text is missing as well as a large portion at the end of the MS. After a few fragments of ff. 1-5, the present text begins: 'Ac gwedi hynny vn map a aned iddaw a sef oedd henw hwnnw lles vap koel ac gwedi marw i dad a chymryt o honaw yntav koron y deyrnas holl weithredoedd da i dad a chwnychodd ef ev gwnevthvr megis y doedid y mae ef oedd koel ... dechre llosgi [ny gorffowysswys eny los]ges y kastell A gwrtheyrn ynddaw' (ff. 6-119 verso) [i.e. it corresponds to Llanstephan MS 1, ff. 43 verso-66 verso, Henry Lewis (ed ), Brut Dingestow, pp. 61-118, section IV. l9-VIII. 2, or Brynley Francis Roberts, 'Astudiaeth Destunol o'r tri chyfieithiad Cymraeg cynharaf o Historia Regum Britanniae Sieffre o Fynwy', PhD, Wales (1969), pp. 78-123, (the Peniarth 44 version)]. The text belongs to the Llanstephan 1 version of Brut y Brenhinedd, cf. the introduction to Brynley F. Roberts, Brut y Brenhinedd, Llanstephan MS 1 Version ([Dublin], 1971).
The manuscript also contains a stray leaf from an early-seventeenth century MS containing verses from a Welsh free-metre love-song / religious poem (f. 120), and an incomplete horoscope, XVI/XVII c. (f. 32 verso). Folios 1-5, 31, and 63-119, are fragmentary to varying degrees. The text is written on every other opening of the MS, the intervening pages having been left blank, apart from the additions in later hands found on folios 32 verso and 44.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Access to the original manuscript by authorised permission only. Readers are directed to use surrogate copies.
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Welsh.
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
The description is also available, with some additional details, in NLW, Catalogue of Mostyn MSS Purchased in 1974 (1975), pp. 141-143, available at the Library.
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Available on microfilm at the Library.
Related units of description
Notes area
Note
Collation: 1(32) (wants 1, 2-6 are little more than stubs), 2(32) (wants 13 after f. 43, with loss of text), 3(28) (wants 22, 28, without loss of text), 4(32) (wants 32). Catchwords are not used.
Note
The hand is a mid-sixteenth century professional-looking Welsh hand. Large one-line initials (probably copied from a medieval exemplar) are found at the beginning of each paragraph or section of the text, touched in red. Green is also used between ff. 33 verso and 54 verso. The same hand is found in Llanstephan MS 188 B which is also a copy of part of Brut y Brenhinedd on leaves of similar size. The text in Llan. 188 is far from complete, containing 38 pages only, which corresponds to sections VIII 23 to X 1 in Brut Dingestow or B. F. Roberts' thesis. This is another copy of the Llan. 1 version of the Brut. It is possible therefore that Llan. 188 B and the present MS once formed part of the same MS: the leaves are the same size, the ink and the rubrication are alike, the handwriting is the same (although perhaps it appears rather more compactly in Llan. 188 B) and the texts do not overlap. On the other hand: Llan. 188 B, unlike our MS, is written on both sides of each folio; green is not used in Llan. 188 B on initial letters; the present MS is composed of paper bearing the watermark of a hand surmounted by a star, whereas the paper of Llan. 188 B bears no watermark. It appears, therefore, that we have two copies of the Llan. 1 version of Brut y Brenhinedd written by the same hand, probably a professional scribe. A note bound inside the cover of Llan. 188 B suggests that the hand belongs to the poet Simwnt Fychan, a proposition rightly rejected by Dr. B. F. Roberts. (thesis, p. clviii).
Note
Title based on contents.
Note
Preferred citation: NLW MS 21250B [RESTRICTED ACCESS].