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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Historians have known the ‘Gododdin’ ever since Skene's edition and translation in the Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868)' and have realized the possibility that its claim to be the work of a sixth-century British poet may be in some form true. The text however was so obscure and in parts corrupt, and hence Skene's and other translations so plainly unreliable, that few have cared to deal boldly with it. Now comes Professor Williams' life-work, his edition of and introduction to the Book of Aneirin, in which he establishes as satisfactory a text as is ever likely to be made, and solves the great majority of the difficulties of interpretation. The importance of this book cannot be overestimated, and since the whole is written in Welsh a full description is necessary.
1 Canu Aneirin, by Ifor Williams. Cardiff, 1938. Pp. XCIII and 418. 15s.
2 As usual he is careful with emendations. P. I, 1. 18, kwl y uot a dan vrein, one might emend a dan vein, as brein has occurred in rhyme just before and mein gives better sense; cf. Canu Llywarch Hen p. 14 vv. 20, 27. On 1.773 he guesses aer ‘slaughter’ for hair; but hair is actually the Old Welsh form in the Glosses, gl. clades, see Lewis-Pedersen, Comparative Celtic Grammar, p. 120. P. 298-9, on the -anawr termination, contrast op. cit. p. 307 note I, which might have been mentioned. The meaning ‘so’ for hu seems to be laboured in some places where it will not bear it, perhaps in the belief (Canu Llywarch Hen p. 131) that it is cognate with English so; but so had initial sw-, which excludes this. P. lxxxiii, quoting A.S. Eoforwic as a 7th-cent. example of Welsh mutated -b- borrowed as -v-, he has misunderstood Ekwall; Eoforwic occurs in the Chronicle s.a. 644 and other 7th-cent. dates, but that is of course a very different thing from being the 7th-cent. form.
* See note at end.
3 He compares Collingwood, and Myres, , Roman Britain, pp. 322–3.Google Scholar
4 Ériu, 9, 82–4.Google Scholar