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MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
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1924
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES
ABERYSTWYTH
Vol. VI
ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
VOL. VI
ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
BY
MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF WALES
VOL. VI
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES
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Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
CONTENTS
PAGE
1,MHKOC AND XPONOC: THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN
ANCIENT DRAMA. By Professor H. J. Ross 3 : 1
2. JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE. By Professor E. BENsty . 23
3. HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY (Part I). By
LiniAN WINSTANLEY, M.A. ; : : : : amet 57
4, CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION COMPARED WITH
BRADLEY’S DOCTRINE OF FEELING, By Vatmar
Burpwoop Evans, M.A. . , ; : ; 4 a OW
| MUSEUM
16 DEC 24
| NATURAL
tS TORY.
4
IES
MHKOC AND XPONOC: THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’
IN ANCIENT DRAMA
‘Epic poetry,’ says Aristotle,! ‘agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is
an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in
that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in
form. They differ again, in length ; for Tragedy endeavours, as far
as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but
slightly to exceed this limit ; whereas the Epic action has no limits
of time. This, then, is a second point of difference ; though at first
the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry.’
On this simple statement of fact, for it is nothing more,
and on a few references or allusions to it in later writers,? rests
the whole ‘law’ of the Unity of Time. Butcher * sums up
the true Aristotelian doctrine excellently.
‘No strict rule is here laid down. A certain historical fact is
recorded—a prevailing, but not an invariable usage. Even in the
developed Attic drama several exceptions to the practice are to be
found. ... The interval covered by a choral ode is one whose value
is just what the poet chooses to make it. While the time occupied
by the dialogue has a relation more or less exact to real time, the
choral lyrics suspend the outward action of the play. ... What
happens in the interval cannot be measured by any ordinary reckon-
ing; it is as much or little as the needs of the piece demand... .
The imagination travels easily over many hours; and in the Greek
1 Butcher’s translation, in Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art
(London, 1895). The text runs thus, with a corrupt reading which
fortunately does not affect the question of the “unity of time’: 7) wév oby
Emonmoliia tH toaywdia méyoe dvov pwétoov peta Adyou (so the MSS.: pwéxor
fev tod wétow Tyrwhitt, wéyor wey tod dia pétoov peydisov Bywater, péyet
tov dia Aoyou gupétoov Butcher) piunow eivar onovdaiwy ixohovOnoev’ tH OE
TO MéToov amhodvy eyew nal adnayyediay eivat, tab’tn Ovapégovow’ ett O& TO MHxEL
(length of the poem),—1 mév tt udhiota mEipdtat 0106 miay mEeoiodoy 7jAtov eivat
4 pinooy &EaddAdtrew, 1) dé Emomotia ddoiatos TH yodve (length of time occupied
by the events),—xai todto diapéoet, xaitot TO mplv bmoiws év tai¢ Teaywdiaic
TovtO Exoiovy xail év toic éneow.—Poetics, 1449b, 9-16.
2 As Dio Chrysostom Or. lii, p. 159, 20, Dindorf ; Scholiast on Aesch.,
' Agam. 505 (Vol. III, p. 506, of Dindorf’s Aeschylus, Oxford, 1851).
2 On. “Cit. pe 269.
A.S.—VOL. VI. 1
2 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
- drama the time that elapses during the songs of the Chorus is entirely
idealized.’ :
How true the statement about the effect of the choral odes
is one may see by a glance at Sophokles’ Antigone. At the
first entry of the Chorus they hail the rising sun in a fine ode
(v. 100 sqq.). In verses 333-83 they sing again. At verse 384
a guard enters, bringing Antigone with him. He mentions
(v. 415 sqq.) that her capture took place about noon. The
colloquy therefore between Antigone and Ismene with which
the play begins must be supposed to take place in the early
morning twilight; from that time to verse 384 some six or
seven hours have elapsed. But the dialogue up to this point,
from the beginning of the play, requires only half an hour or
so to deliver. The choral odes then represent the passage of
five and a half to six and a half hours. Nor is this an isolated
example. Leaving out of count the plays, to be considered
later, in which the action takes longer than a day, in the Hlectra
of Euripides the choral ode, 699-746, is supposed to cover the
time of the long series of events which some eighty lines (774—
855) are consumed in relating; Orestes and his companions
walk some distance, meet Aigisthos, talk with him, join in a
sacrifice, discuss with him the omens given by the entrails,
murder him, fight for a short time with his attendants, parley
with the latter, are recognised by one of them, receive their
greetings and homage, and send off the messenger (an old man)
who tells the story. In the Bacchae, an ode of less than fifty
lines (977-1024) covers the journey of Pentheus from Thebes
to Mount Kithairon, his adventures with the Bacchantes which
end in his death, and the return of one of his attendants with
the story.
It is clear therefore that the time actually taken by a choral
ode, like that which elapses between the lowering and raising
of the curtain in a modern play, is not necessarily the same
as the time which is supposed to elapse between one epeisodion,
or act, and the next.
‘Tl y eut,’ as Croiset well says,! “entre ces actes des espaces de
temps absolument arbitraires, que les stasima (the choric odes) rem-
plissaient sans les mesurer.... Le méme temps apparant n’a pas
la méme valeur pour les divers acteurs de la piéce, ce qui revient 4 dire
1 Histoire de la littérature grecque, III (second ed.), pp. 131-2.
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 3
qu’entre les deux episodes la notion méme du temps est comme sus-
pendu.’ -
It now remains to be asked how long this ideal time might
be, whether limited to hours or capable of extension to days,
months, or longer. It will appear from an examination of the
earliest surviving plays, and to some extent of the later ones
which have come down to us, that the latter alternative is the
true one.
Before, however, proceeding to a study of the texts I must
dispose of an a priors argument for the existence of the twenty-
four hour limit in Greek drama which has been long repeated
from one manual to another in the usual parrot-fashion of
textbooks. This is, that the chorus is the reason for the observ-
ance of the supposed pair of unities of Time and Place. Since,
it is argued, the whole action or nearly the whole takes place
in presence of an unchanging body of spectators, it would be
too great a strain on the audience’s imagination to ask them to
suppose that the same little party of people has been standing
there for days or months, or that they have travelled a hundred
miles in the last few minutes. Therefore, unless the chorus
leaves the stage and comes back again, as in the Humenides
of Aeschylus, the Aiax of Sophokles, the Alkestis of Euripides,
and the Hcclesiazusae of Aristophanes, no change of scene takes
place. So also, unless a plausible reason can be assigned for
bringing the same party of people together at a later date (as
in the Humenides, where the chorus consists of the avenging
spirits who pursue Orestes from place to place), the lapse of time
is no more than that for which one might suppose an interested
crowd, or a party of guards on duty or the like, to stay together,
namely, a day or less. I am of opinion, after long holding the
orthodox view, that this is no sufficient reason for the supposed
influence of the chorus on the duration of the action.
There are, it is true, a few plays, such as the Supplices of
Aeschylus and Euripides’ play of the same name, the Humenides
of Aeschylus, the Bacchae of Euripides, the Lysistrata and Thesmo-
phorizusae of Aristophanes, in which the chorus are to some
extent at least the centre of the whole action, and everything
depends upon their personality. Replace the daughters of
Danaos, in Aeschylus, with a number of other persons in distress,
and the whole motive of the action is gone ; remove the Erinyes,
4 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
and Orestes has no one to be afraid of ; let Euripides’ choruses
consist respectively of others than the bereaved women with the
aged king Adrastos, and the followers of Dionysos, and the
plots could indeed go forward, but under difficulties ; in Aristo-
phanes, the choruses consist of the women whose radical action
brings about the farcical change in the political situation. But
in most plays no such importance is attached to the number
or identity of the persons composing the chorus. They are
simply, except for their singing, the ‘ citizens, guards, priests,
soldiers, etc.’ who bring up the rear of so many modern lists
of dramatis personae. Nothing whatsoever depends upon their
being the same individuals from beginning to end. Thus, in
the Hippolytos of Euripides, they are simply a few stray enquirers
after the health of the unfortunate queen ; in the Medea, again,
a handful of sympathetic callers; in the Phoenissae, temple-
servants of Apollo on their way to their new place of employ-
ment, who happen to be at Thebes when it is attacked by the
Seven. In a poet who connects his chorus more closely with
his plot than Euripides, we still find no insistence on either
personality or number; the chorus of the Oedipus Rex of
Sophokles consists of old men—any old men—of Thebes ; their
business is to represent the distressed population in general.
If Sophokles had seen fit to make the play last weeks instead
of hours, we should have had to assume, not that the same
small band of elders waited outside the royal palace day and
night, but simply that there were always some or other of the
people near the king’s door, waiting anxiously to hear what
steps were to be taken for staying the plague. In those plays
in which the chorus does form a corporate body, there is some
reason given or implied for their continued appearance. ‘Thus
Lysistrata and her followers, in Aristophanes, have seized the
Akropolis, which they do not leave till the conclusion of the
play ; the chorus of the Agamemnon consists of the royal council,
which we may imagine meeting again and again as easily as,
in Pinafore, we can suppose the same ship’s crew to assemble
more than once on deck; and so on with other plays, such as
the Humenides, in which the chorus is something more than a
stage crowd and the action lasts more than the traditional
‘revolution of the sun.’
Nothing can show more clearly how vaguely the chorus is
conceived than the fact that its number never varies. That
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 5
it always consisted of twelve persons (fifteen in comedy) is
certain for the period with which we are dealing, 7.e. that of
developed tragedy.1 These twelve persons have to represent,
perhaps with the addition of some supernumeraries, the fifty
daughters of Danaos with their handmaidens 2; whereas in
the Euripidean Supplices they represent but five women, the
mothers of those of the Seven whose bodies lie unburied,* though
we may suppose if we like that a few attendants or sympathetic
Athenians are also present. Usually, then, the chorus is simply
an audience—the general public, or some section thereof. Their
presence indicates that somebody, not this or that individual,
hears, sees, and comments on the events.
The chorus, then, can exercise no such compelling force as
has been imagined upon the dramatic length of the action, the
yoovoc of the play. There was another and a much _ better
reason for the shortness of the time generally supposed to elapse
between the beginning and the end of the drama, and that was
the Greek fondness for concentrated effect. This is visible in
the whole of their art. A procession, in their most ambitious
sculptures, is regularly represented (as on the Parthenon frieze)
by a comparatively small number of typical figures in single
file, or perhaps two deep (Hellenistic, especially Pergamene
art, began to use more perspective and show the characters
several deep). A battle is indicated by a few single combats ;
a wood, by one or two trees ; water, by a wavy line and a fish
or two; a crowd, by two or three carefully drawn attendants
or soldiers. So in their drama, the eventful life of an Oedipus
or an Agamemnon is represented by one or two episodes told
at length, and brief narration of or allusion to such other events
as may be necessary to the comprehension of those shown.
This effect is best produced if the chosen incidents are shown
crowded into the space of a few hours, or—what comes to
much the same—if the time between them is simply neglected,
and its passage indicated in the briefest possible way. The
same technique for the same reason is often to be found in such
1 See, ¢.g., Reisch in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Chor, col. 2390.
2 Aesch., Suppl. 320, 1022; see Reisch, ibid., and Tucker, p. xvi of
his edition of the play. The statement of Pollux, IV, 109, that there
were originally 50 choreutae, is vague and unsupported, and very likely
a mere deduction from the number of the dithyrambic chorus.
3 Adrastos was not killed and Amphiaraos was swallowed up in the
earth.
6 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
modern plays as those of Ibsen. If it is thought desirable to
tell a long-continued story, like that of A Winter’s Tale, the
trilogy is always available, at least in Aeschylus. As Perdita
is a baby in one act, a marriageable girl in another, so Orestes,
a little boy in the Agamemnon, is a stalwart young man in the
Choephoroe. Within the play there is never so great a lapse of
time as would, by itself, account for a considerable difference
in any character ; thus we never find that the petulant youth
of the first act has become the experienced man of the last
scene. 1
Naturally, in Greek drama or in any other, we cannot expect
an author, in the heat of composition, always to remain con-
sistent with himself in the matter of time or anything else.
It has well been pointed out, first I think by the late Professor
Campbell in his edition of the Antigone, that the indications
of time in that play are self-contradictory. In the opening
chorus we are given to understand that the decisive battle and
rout of the Argive army, together with the death of King Eteokles,
took place the day before. Kreon, therefore, has been king for
a few hours only, and the neglected corpse of Polyneikes has
lain on the battlefield for something less than a day. Yet
the body is apparently in an advanced stage of decomposition,
verses 410-12; Teiresias talks as if the results of Kreon’s harsh-
ness towards the dead were already widely known, 1080 sqq. ;
and Kreon himself (993) speaks as if he had for some considerable
time ruled himself by the advice of the old seer, who replies,
‘ Therefore thou didst guide this state on even keel,’ all of which
would seem to imply that the defeat of the Seven is not hours,
but days or months old. Very similar is the confusion which
exists in Othello as to the length of the stay of the principal
characters in Cyprus. But these are trifles which do not affect
the action ; it makes not the smallest difference whether Cassio
attacks Roderigo the night of his arrival in Cyprus, or a week
1 This does not of course mean that no development of character
takes place at all. The Admetos of the closing scenes of Euripides’
Alkestus is a very different person from the despicable coward of the
opening episode ; this is psychologically just and effective, for the death
and resuscitation of his wife have revolutionised his whole being. So in
Shakespeare, Romeo, who in the first act is a sentimental young fop, in
the churchyard scene, a few days later, addresses Paris in the tone of
an experienced elder, ‘Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate
man.’
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 7
later; and Antigone’s defiance of Kreon is just as significant
if he has been an hour or a year on the throne.
I now proceed to analyse the surviving ancient plays, both
tragic and comic, with a view to ascertaining how long a time
the events recorded in them are supposed to take.
If we begin with Aeschylus, we find that, in full accordance
with Aristotle’s remarks, he observes the ‘unity of Time’ in
two only of the seven plays which have come down to us. The
action of the Supplices lasts but one day. At the beginning,
the Danaides and their father enter; after the long opening
chorus and a short dialogue, the King of Argos enters, hears their
story, and refers their request for succour to the Argive assembly.
Danaos and he depart to lay the case before the citizens, and
an ode (524-99) covers their absence. After Danaos’ re-entry
and a song of thanksgiving over the good news he has brought,
he declares that he can see the ship of the sons of Aigyptos
in the offing, but tries to cheer his daughters by assuring them
that the pursuers cannot land yet awhile, on an unknown coast
and towards sunset. He goes away, however, to warn the
Argives. After another ode, the Egyptian herald enters. Here
Campbell sees an interval of a night, but this is probably not
to be assumed ; the ship is at anchor off the coast, but the herald
and a few attendants have put off in a boat. He tries to force
the Danaids to follow him to the shore, but is prevented by the
re-entry of the King with his guards, who bids him begone and
conducts the women to their new quarters in the city.
If now we turn to the Persae, a play almost as primitive in
construction, we find a very different state of things. Atossa
enters and tells the Chorus (the Council of Elders, who in the
absence of Xerxes govern Persia, v. 3-6) of a symbolic dream
which has in the preceding night (179) announced to her the
ill-success of her son. A short dialogue follows, and then a
1 My chief guides here, for a knowledge of which I am largely in-
debted to Mr. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge of Balliol, are the following :
Lewis Campbell, review of Verrall’s Agamemnon in Class. Rev. IV (1890),
p. 303 sqq.; A. W. Verrall, Jon of Euripides (Camb. 1890), p. xlviii sqq. ;
Aemilius Polezyk, De unitatibus et loci et temporis in noua comoedia obser-
uatis, Vratislauiae, MCMIX; R. J. Kent, The Time Element in Greek
Drama, in Trans. Amer. Phil. Ass. XXXVII (1906), p. 39 sqg. The
dissertation of G. Felsch, Quibus artificiis adhibitis poetae tragici Graect
unitates ilas et temporis et loci obseruauerint (Breslauer philol. Abhand-
lungen, 1907), is in my opinion a worthless piece of dogmatism.
8 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
messenger enters with the news of Salamis. Now by the general
laws of veridical dreams, as understood in antiquity,! the queen’s
vision should precede the battle. Hence between it and the
entrance of the messenger several months elapse, 7.e. the whole
time of the long and disastrous retreat of Xerxes with the bulk
of his army from Attica to the mainland of Asia Minor. The
interesting point is that no choral ode intervenes, its place being
apparently taken by the dialogue, which is not in the usual
dialogue metre, iambic trimeters, but in trochees, and serves in
no way to advance the action, being merely a series of questions
and answers as to who the Athenians are and why they dare to
resist Xerxes. This is significant in view of some features of
later technique. After the report of the messenger follows the
extraordinarily impressive scene in which the ghost of Dareios
is summoned and appears from his tomb, foretelling more dis-
asters. This, with the preceding and following odes of the
chorus, may again be supposed to occupy some time, for im-
mediately after, Xerxes enters, having presumably made a
much slower journey than the messenger ; but this assumption
is not necessary. 7
The action of the Prometheus is one that hardly lends itself
to time-analysis ; the characters (with the exception of Io) are
all gods, and they speak in terms of aeons rather than days
(e.g. v. 94). But certainly the impression given is that the
action is not of short duration, for Hephaistos implies (v. 21 sqq.)
that Prometheus will remain a very long time on his rock in
the Caucasus, while the end of the play sees the disappearance
of the rock and Prometheus with it (see 1018, Prometheus is
forthwith to be buried underground ; contrast 22, where he is
to be long exposed to the sun; in 561-2, apparently,? he has
been there long enough to show signs of the effects of wind
and rain on him). The Septem occupies but one day; the
stasimon 720-91 represents the duration of the battle.
1 See for instance Artemidoros, Onirocritica, I, 2, p. 41, 25 Hercher ;
GvEelgog éotL uivnoig | mAdolg puoync mnodvoyypuwv onuartiny thy és&oouévmy
ayabay 7 xaxa@v “a significant dream is a multiform movement or forma-
tion of the mind which indicates future events, good or evil.’ At most
the dream might give warning of present events going on elsewhere, asin
one or two cases of the apparition in sleep of a man in deadly peril or
dying. Such beliefs were in full vogue in Aeschylus’ day.
2 vesacduevov, probably ‘ weather-beaten,’ but perhaps simply ‘ex-
posed to storms,’ 7.e. unsheltered.
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 9
Omitting the Agamemnon for the moment, we come to the
other two plays of the Trilogy. Of these, the Choephoroe is a
good example (we shall find others later) of those plays which
exceed the twenty-four hour limit by a little. It begins in the
morning ; Klytaimestra has had an evil dream, has consulted
dream-interpreters, and has sent the chorus (composed of her
handmaidens) to perform expiatory rites (v. 32 sqq.). Before
they enter, 7.e. quite early in the morning, for the queen can
hardly be supposed to have lost any time in taking precautions
in connection with an event which has frightened her badly,
Orestes and Pylades have visited the tomb of Agamemnon
(v. | sqq.). This in all probability would be about dawn, if not
before it, since they dare not risk being seen and recognised.
Now in 710, Klytaimestra tells Pylades and Orestes, who come
to the palace in disguise, that it is ‘the hour for guests that
have journeyed. all day to receive what their long travel calls
for’; 7.e. it is evening. In 985, after the slaying of Klytaim-
estra and Aigisthos, Orestes displays to the sun the robe in which
Agamemnon was entangled and slain. It is therefore natural
to suppose that a new day has begun, and that the stasimon
784-837, or perhaps 931-72, represents the passage of the
night. |
The Eumenides is, like the Persae, instructive in view of the
practice of later writers. The scene changes twice; the pro-
logue is spoken by the Pythia, standing outside the temple
at Delphi; the next scene is inside the temple; at 396 the
chorus leave for Athens in pursuit of Orestes, who is already
on his way thither; the very next line finds them and him
already arrived at the Areiopagos. The journey, then, some three
days long at the very least (for the Erinyes naturally go at
Orestes’ pace), is covered, not by the stasimon 299-396, but
simply by the departure of the chorus and its re-entry.
We may now see how futile are all those criticisms and
reconstructions of the Agamemnon resting on the supposed
Unity of Time, from the scholiast above quoted (note 2), who
says that “some’ blame the poet for bringing Agamemnon
and his followers back from Troy within one day, to Verrall,
who would have us believe that the great description of the
fire-signals is a tissue of lies on Klytaimestra’s part, and that
Agamemnon is already in harbour when the play opens. The
construction of this great work is as follows :
10 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
Prologue ; the Watchman sees the fire-signal he has been
set to look out for.
Enter chorus (the Council of Elders). After their opening
stasimon, enter to them Klytaimestra, who announces the fall
of Troy. Asked how she knows this, she explains that a chain
of beacons connects Troy with Argos and the message has just
been received. They sing another ode, which covers the passage
of sufficient tueme for Agamemnon to make his way across the Aegean,
despite the delay caused by a violent storm.
Re-enter Klytaimestra, who declares that a messenger is
in sight. ‘Then enter a herald from Agamemnon, who tells the
story of the return from Troy. After another ode from the
chorus,
Enter Agamemnon, Kassandra, and attendants. After some
parley with the chorus and Klytaimestra, exit Agamemnon to
the palace. Manet Kassandra.
The stasimon preceding this episode covers only the time
necessary for Agamemnon and his followers to march from the
harbour to the town, no very long journey.
After the next stasimon, which covers the time spent in the
palace in preparations for a sacrifice and feast, re-enter Klytai-
mestra, who endeavours to persuade Kassandra to follow her
within. Then follows the ‘ mad scene,’ in which Kassandra, left
alone with the chorus, vainly tries to tell them what she knows
by her prophetic power, that Agamemnon’s life is attempted.
_ Immediately after her exit (which is not followed by an ode, but
accompanied by a short passage in anapaests,a common method
of showing an exit or an entrance) follow Agamemnon’s death-
shrieks, the startled and futile deliberation of the chorus, and the
opening of the palace doors, showing the queen standing over the
huddled bodies of Agamemnon and Kassandra. From this point
to the end of the play there are no interruptions to the action.
It is usual for a Greek tragedian to give occasional indications
of the time at which events are supposed to take place ; as he
had none of the modern arrangements for changing the lighting
of the stage, it was necessary for him to do so. We have seen
examples of this in the Antigone, which marks dawn and noon,
and in the Choephoroe, which notes morning, night, and another
morning. The Agamemnon indicates darkness at verse 22 and
dawn at verse 265; but in addition it has, as Dr. L. R. Farnell
long ago pointed out to the author, indications of date. The
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 11
herald comes, as he himself says, dexdtm éyyer tH0° étovc,1
‘on this tenth light (7.e. day) of the year,’ which to an Athenian
audience, whose year began at midsummer, would mean about
July 1. But Troy fell, as Agamemnon says later (825), ‘about the
setting of the Pleiads,’ or the beginning of November. The
return voyage has therefore been, apart from the storm, most
leisurely, and not straight across from Troy, but along the coast,
as was usual with ancient methods of navigation, with many
such delays as that in Thrace which forms the subject of Euripides’
Hecuba.
Tf anyone finds this reading of the passages in question over-
ingenious, it makes no difference to the main argument ; analysis
of the other plays of the same author, backed up by the text of
Aristotle from which we started, makes it clear that the yodvoc
of the Agamemnon may be as much over twenty-four hours as
the reader or hearer may think it necessary to allow for the return
of the royal ship to Argos.
Sophokles is what the eighteenth century would call a more
regular writer than Aeschylus, and in him we find for the most
part that the length of the play is not over ‘ one revolution of the
sun.’ The only exception is the Trachiniae. In this play Deian-
eira sends her son Hyllos to look for his father Herakles (v. 92).
Even if we suppose that Kent (p. 44) is unjustified in assuming
‘at least some days for his search,’ we must at any rate recognise
that in the course of the play he joins his father at Kenaion,
about twenty miles from Trachis, the scene of the drama; that
Lichas not only arrives from Kenaion (he might be supposed to
have set out before the play starts), but goes back there again,
verse 632; that Hyllos reappears from Kenaion, 734, and finally
that Herakles (v. 971 sqq.) makes his entrance. All these jour-
_ neys are performed on foot over rough country, and the last is
retarded by the fact that Herakles is in agonising pain and has
to be carefully carried on a litter. Two days at the very least
must elapse, if not three.
Kuripides was a restless experimenter in technique. He
knew, none better, how to keep his action within the limits of a
day ; the tense effect of the Medea is largely due to the circum-
1 So the only available MS. for this part of the play, verse 504. Several
editors have followed Wunder in reading dexatod, a wanton conjecture,
intended to mean ‘at the dawn or beginning of the tenth year (since the
commencement of the Trojan War),’ a piece of very doubtful Greek.
A.S.—VOL. VI. B
12 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
stance that the heroine is desperately short of time, having but
one day to carry out her complicated scheme of revenge. On the
other hand, out of his surviving plays (eighteen in all, omitting
the fragmentary Hypsipyle and the doubtful Rhesus) five have a
yoovos of more than twenty-four hours.
In the Heracleidae the scene opens at Marathon, where the
children of Herakles (except Hyllos, who is at Trachis), together
with Alkmene and Iolaos, have sought refuge. Kopreus, the
Argive herald, tries to seize them, and on being sent packing by
the King of Athens, returns to Argos, whence presently Eurys-
theus sets out with an army, which is met and defeated at a point
some forty miles from Marathon. Meanwhile word has reached
Hyllos, who comes with reinforcements in time to aid in defeating
the Argives. These movements, not only of armies off stage but
of three of the actors, King Demophon and Iolaos, who take part
in the battle, and Makaria, daughter of Herakles, who is sacrificed
(part of the play has been lost here) somewhere away from
Marathon, to ensure the success of the Athenians, clearly demand
several days, the more so as the territory over which the various
marchings and counter-marchings take place was perfectly
familiar to the audience. The journey of Hyllos and his army
may have been covered by a scene, now lost, in which Alkmene
and the chorus lamented the heroic death of Makaria (between
verses 629 and 630 of the present text) ; that of lolaos, and also
the return of a messenger from the battle-field, by the stasimon
748-83. |
Somewhat similar is the case of the Supplices. Between
verses 364 and 381 Theseus has gone from Hleusis to Athens, held |
a meeting of the Assembly, gathered an army, and got to Eleusis
again. A short stasimon covers all these events. Between 597
and 634 he has marched on Thebes, met and defeated Kreon’s
force, gathered up the neglected bodies of the Seven, and come
back part of the way at least, besides having taken time to bury
the rest of the Argive dead. Here again the action of the play
moves over ground well known to the audience, many of whom
had campaigned over it themselves and knew very well how long
Theseus’ movements would take. Several days’ duration must
be postulated for this play.
The scene of the Andromache is laid in Epeiros, aad the plot
deals largely with Orestes’ murder of Neoptolemos and the
incidental elopement of the latter’s wife, Hermione, with the
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 13
intending assassin. The pair make their exit after verse 1008 ;
a stasimon follows (1009-46) ; then, after a few lines of dialogue
between Peleus and the chorus, a messenger enters with the news
of the murder of Neoptolemos. As this took place at Delphi,
several days’ journey from any place in Epeiros, and Orestes was
present at it, we must assume an interval of a week or ten days
for him to get there and the messenger, to say nothing of the
bearers of Neoptolemos’ body, who arrive before the next
stasimon, to get back.
The case of the Iphigeneia in Aulide is not quite so clear. At
the beginning of the play, Agamemnon sends a letter to Argos to
tell Klytaimestra not to bring Iphigeneia to Aulis; at verse 304,
Menelaos intercepts the letter ; and later on in the play Klvtai-
mestra and Iphigeneia arrive. But the part in which their
arrival is narrated is suspected on very serious grounds of gross
interpolation, and therefore it is not easy to say how Euripides
fills in the interval ; for interval there must be, since Argos is
several days’ journey from Aulis ; therefore since the beginning
of the play a considerable time has elapsed, for the women have
come in obedience to a previous letter which the second, had it
arrived, would presumably have been in time to countermand.
Finally, the Hercules Furens appears to occupy more than one
day. The scene is at Thebes. At verse 523 Herakles enters,
back from Hades. He mentions that he has rescued Theseus ;
and in verse 1163, Theseus enters, from Athens, leading an
armed force to help Herakles, if necessary, to fight the usurper
Lykos. The case, however, is not clear; Theseus may have
arrived at Athens some little time before Herakles reached
Thebes, and he does not definitely know when he enters that
Herakles is back, only that Lykos has made himself tyrant, see
verse 1166.
Of the tragedies of other writers, only fragments survive, and
I notice only one of those whose plot we can reconstruct whose
action is clearly longer than twenty-four hours. This is the
Hecioris Lutra of Ennius, imitated presumably from a lost Greek
original, though by what author we cannot now say. In verses
139-50 (the surviving fragments run from 137 to 161 in Ribbeck’s
collection) we have obvious references to the long battle which
occupies the central books of the Iliad ; but the last two frag-
ments, together with the title of the play, show clearly that we
are now dealing with Priam, coming to ransom the hero’s dead
14 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
body. Now between the battle which ended with the death of
Hektor and the ransoming some twelve days ! elapsed, as every
reader of Homer knows; and the battle itself was three days
long, or two if we begin at the eleventh book of the /had, as
Ennius may have done. Hence—for the play is intended for
cultured Romans primarily, and these would know their Homer—
the action lasts about a fortnight.
Passing now to comedy, I omit three of the plays of Aristo-
phanes on account of the fantastic nature of their setting. To
enquire how long Trygaios, in the Pax, stays in heaven discussing
matters with Hermes, or Dionysos in Hades, in the Ranae, or to
compute the length of time required by Peithetairos in the Aues
to consolidate his position in Cloud-Cuckoo-Town and make
his blockade of Olympos economically effective, is surely dare
operam ut cum ratione insanias. Keeping our feet on solid earth,
we may note that three plays, the Hquites, Thesmophoriazusae
and Heclesiazusae, seem to require but a day each, while a fourth,
the Vespae, begins before dawn and ends with the aftermath of a
dinner-party, presumably the same evening. ‘This leaves us with
four out of the surviving eleven. Of these, the Acharnenses
begins at the time when it was actually performed, namely the
festival of the Lenaia in the spring month Gamelion. ‘This agrees
not only with Dikaiopolis’ remark in verse 504,? but with the
qndication that winter is not very long over ; in verses 136 sqq.
‘Theoros apologises for his tardy arrival from Thrace by stating
that he was snow-bound there. Just before this passage Dikaio-
polis (v. 130) has handed Amphitheos eight drachme, four
days’ pay for a plenipotentiary (v. 66) and told him to go and -
negotiate a separate peace with Sparta for him, Dikaiopolis, only.
‘At verse 173 the meeting of the assembly breaks up, and two
lines later Amphitheos returns. To get to Sparta and back in
four days is extremely good going, even for a god ; but the point
to notice is that no stasimon has intervened, the chorus not
having yet come on. The stage has been left vacant except for
Dikaiopolis, who speaks one line of lamentation for the garlic
that has been thieved from him. ‘This is a device which we shall
have occasion to notice later ; for the present it may be com-
pared with the scene in the Persae, already noted, between Atossa _
1See Iliad XXIV, 413.
2 aitol ydo goer otri Anvaim Taydv. This is addressed nominally
to the chorus, actually to the audience.
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA | 15
and the Elders. ‘The play proceeds ; Dikaiopolis celebrates the
Rural Dionysia, is interrupted by the chorus, manages to per-
suade them and get rid of the fire-eater Lamachos, and then
comes the parabasis. During this,—the half-playful, half-serious
address to the audience,—about a month must elapse, for after
the scenes with the Megarian, the Boiotian, and the Farmer, we
learn (vv. 1076, 1086, 1211) that the Choes are being celebrated ;
they however did not take place till Anthesterion, the month
aiter Gamelion.
In the Nubes, we have several indications of time. The play
begins near the twentieth of some month (v. 17); on the 25th
(1131) Strepsiades comes to fetch his son from the Sokratic school
of immoral learning ; the debts which the hopeful graduate is to
help his father to avoid paying are due on the 29th (v. 1180).
But as Pheidippides has not only learned all that Sokrates can
teach him, but has acquired a scholarly pallor (v. 1171), the same
month can hardly be meant.
The Lysistrata largely explains its own yodvoc. In verse
881, Kinesias informs his militant wife that the baby has not
been bathed or fed for five days, which statement the child con-
firms to the best of his ability by bellowing ‘Mammy !’ at the
top of his voice. The politically-minded mother, Myrrhine, left
home at the beginning of the play ; there has intervened the long
wrangle between the chorus of women and that of old men which
forms the dymy or central scene of the comedy. Presently
(v. 980) a messenger from Sparta enters to parley with Lysistrata.
She sends him back home to fetch plenipotentiaries. He departs,
and after a further dialogue between the two choruses, the official
Spartan representatives arrive. Even if all concerned have made
as good time as Amphitheos in the Acharnenses, we must assume
another four days, making nine altogether for the length of the
play. | :
The Plutus opens at Delphi; the scene then shifts ? to Athens.
Plutos is sent to the Asklepieion, where he passes the night, the
1 This should be in Poseideon, the month before Gamelion; but
clearly Dik. is a little late in his (private) celebration.
2 Probably by the simple process of letting the actors walk along the
stage, for there is no pause. The long Greek stage,—I mean by this
simply the place, raised or not, where the actors stood,—may, at any
rate in Aristophanes (as in Shakespeare) represent several places at once.
So in the Ranae, at the very least both banks of the Styx are shown simul-
taneously.
16 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
interval being filled up by a dance, apparently,! of the chorus
after verse 321. Thus the play lasts some four days.
The passing of Old Comedy (the Plutus has already lost many
of the characteristics of that great genre) leads to the dropping
of the chorus. The process was not sudden; the chorus still
appears, as a band of dancers, probably,! in Menander, while
even Plautus has a sort of chorus at one point in the Bacchides
(v. 107). But such survivals were a very different thing from the
chorus of Old Comedy ; their business was merely to fill up gaps
in the action with their performances. A similar function was
fulfilled by the incidental music of the piece on occasion ; see
Plautus (see Pseud. 573, 573a ; non ero uobis morae ; tubicen uos
interibt hic delectauerit,—uos being the audience). In Tragedy
also, from the time of Agathon, indeed from that of Euripides, it
was being rapidly degraded to a station little better than that
which it had in Comedy.
It thus appears that drama, for a considerable time before
Aristotle wrote the Poetics, had been degenerating. Now when
an art of any kind is past its zenith, its first impulse usually is to
attach itself to rules clearly stated and easily learned. Of the
many formal manuals of rhetoric which have come down to us
from antiquity, those in Greek mostly come after Demosthenes
(for Aristotle’s Rhetoric is rather a philosophical discussion of
persuasive speech than a handbook for the use of learners), those
in Latin, after Cicero, whose own treatises again are chiefly
monuments of literary criticism, not handy little works on How
to become an Orator. First the great painter, then the school, is
the regular succession of events in pictorial art. The badness ~
of our own eighteenth-century blank verse, which prided itself
on being ‘ regular,’ and, taken line by line, is usually quite good,
is surpassed only by the horrors of Wordsworth’s unique blend of
ignorance of metre and want of ear. And in general, the failure
of inspiration shows itself most openly in this, that the artist
begins to do something, not because he wants to, but because he
thinks he ought.
Now the Greek comedians of the fourth century, though no
1 The MSS. here have simply XOPOY, ‘ (performance) of the chorus.’
The same direction appears several times in the papyri of Menander’s
comedies. Whether the chorus danced, or whether they sung something
which was not the composition of the dramatist, we have no means of
deciding ; the former seems more likely.
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 17
great poets, were efficient craftsmen, and knew well enough that
a work of art should have unity. Their predecessors had had a
visible sign of unity in their plays, the presence of a chorus, who
took part in all the action, thus outwardly signifying it to be one.
Indeed, this is the one and only bond of unity in some ‘ episodic ’
plays, such as the 7'roades of Euripides,—a series of most powerful
and thrilling incidents, with nothing whatever to connect them
except that more or less the same people see or hear of them and
throw in an occasional comment. But with the chorus reduced
to impotence, or gone altogether, some other sign of unity was
wanted ; for the law of Unity of Action, which Aristotle and
every other good critic does and must insist on, is no easy thing
to follow. Combining the craving for rules with the desire for a
sign of unity, the playwrights of that time fell into the habit of
confining their plays generally to one day. In this, they made a
rule out of an existing tendency. We have so far dealt with or
mentioned forty-five Greek plays, of which thirty, or just two-
thirds, have kept within the traditional twenty-four hours. We
have, from the fourth century on, twenty-eight dramas complete
enough for us to judge of the time their events are supposed to
occupy 1; of these, two only run into a second day.
The first of these is the Mostellaria of Plautus, which has not
always been seen in its true light. At the beginning we have a
dialogue between Tranio, the town-bred slave, and Grumio, his
rustic fellow ; ‘Tranio goes off to the Piraeus (the scene is, as
usual, laid in Athens) to buy fish for that evening’s dinner.
After two fairly long scenes, Philolaches, the spendthrift jeune
premer, and his mistress Philematium have the table laid and
fall to drinking ; to them, enter Callidamates, who has come from
a wine-party and is already drunk (v. 313). As they are one and
all thoroughgoing rakes, this need not be late in the day, but by
all we know of ancient habits, respectable or otherwise, it must
be afternoon. Over 300 lines further on (v. 649) it is mentioned
that noon is approaching. A little later, another of the char-
acters (Simo, v. 690 sqq.) comes on remarking that he has had a
very good lunch. At the end of the play Callidamates reappears,
having quite slept off his drunkenness, and acts as peacemaker
between old Theopropides and his scapegrace son and slave. It
is therefore evident that a night has intervened between 406, the
1 Three of Menander, nineteen of Plautus, and six of Terence. I omit
Seneca’s tragedies, which are not acting plays but mere closet-dramas.
18 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
exit, into the house, of the dinner-party, disturbed by the news
that Theopropides has returned from abroad, and verse 532, the
beginning of the scene in which the remark is made about noon.
This makes the central scene of the play, in which Theopropides
is frightened away from his own house by Tranio’s assurance
that it is haunted, far more effective, for it is getting near
evening (though still daylight, v. 444) when it occurs.
The other exception is the Heautontumorumenos of Terence,
in which no analysis is necessary ; at verse 248 Syrus says that
evening is coming on, while at verse 410 Chremes remarks that
dawn is breaking. The Capisur of Plautus might be adduced as
an exception, for in that Philocrates has to go from Aetolia to
Elis and back. But Plautus’ ignorance of Greek geography is
so abysmal 1 that no stress need be laid on this.
As might. be expected, these plays frequently contain refer-
ences to the passing of time ; more often than not they are
supposed to begin in the morning and end at night. But as not
one of them would take more than about two hours to act, unless
there were long breaks such as those which our scene-shifters
often are responsible for, and our evidence is that such breaks as
did occur were short, it must perforce happen that the uijxoc is
often much less than the yedvoc. The most striking examples
have been collected by Polezyk, and I tabulate them here.?
- Puautus. (1) Amphitruo. 860, exit Amphitruo to look for
Naucrates. Three scenes follow. 1009, re-enter Amph. Loe
searched vainly for Naucrates through the whole city.
(2) Asinaria. 380, exit Leonida to the forum, to tell Demae-
netus of the plot contrived between him and his fellow-slave
Libanus. 407, re-enter Leonida, having discharged his errand.
A scene between Libanus and the Merchant intervenes.
(3) Bacchides. 100, exit Pistoclerus to buy provisions.
Follows a short dialogue between Bacchis and her sister. 109,
re-enter Pistoclerus, having done his marketing, accompanied by
Lydus, who says he has been following him a long while (cam
dudum). ‘The editors mark a new act here, but this does not go
1 He obviously thinks Aetolia is a town, and elsewhere (Amphit. 404)
provides Thebes with a seaport. Clearly to him and to his audience,
Philocrates has journeyed simply from somewhere to somewhere else and
back. In a Greek play such a geographical allusion would be a very
different matter.
2 The surviving plays of Menander are too fragmentary for minute
analysis.
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 19
back to any ancient stage-tradition. ‘The stage is, however, left
vacant for a moment before Pistoclerus’ re-entry by the departure
of the two women into the house.
(4) Captiur. 950, Hegio sends for Tyndarus, who is in the
quarries outside the city. Two scenes follow. 998, enter
Tyndarus.
(5) Casina. 530, exit Lysidamus to the forum, where he has
to take part in a lawsuit. Follows a scene, mostly soliloquy, in
which Cleustrata and Alcesimus take part. 563, re-enter Lysid-
amus, who mentions that the case is now over, and has wasted
the day for him (566, contriui diem).
(6) Cistellaria. 773, exeunt Halisca, Lampadio, and Phan-
ostrata to the house of Alcesimarchus, carrying with them the
jewel-case (cistella, hence the name of the play) which contains
the proofs of Selenium being the daughter of Demipho. Stage
vacant. 774, enter Demipho, asking why every one is declaring
that his daughter has been found.
(7) Trinummus. 819, Megaronides goes out to write a letter,
find some needy rascal who will help him (815, ego sycophantam,
—trickster,—iam conduco de foro), dress the fellow up as a trav-
eller, and teach him his part. Follow the entry and soliloquy
of Charmides. 843, the Trickster enters, letter perfect in his
part, dressed as required, and bearing the forged letter.
TERENCE. (8) Andria. 467, the midwife enters Glycerium’s
house. 473, the child is born!; 481, re-enter the midwife,
giving directions for the care of her patient, and promising to
call again later. Old Simo’s comment, hui, tam cito ? (v. 474) is
certainly justified. The dialogue between him and Geta has
gone on meanwhile.
(9) Hunuchus. Between 499 and 549 the long and compli-
_ eated series of events narrated in 580-602 is supposed to take
place off stage. The interval is taken up mostly by the soliloquy
of Chremes (507-30) and that of Antipho (539-49).
(10) Hecyra. At verse 329, Pamphilus goes off to visit his
wite, who is said to be ill. He returns at verse 352, and the tale
of his experiences in the house occupies over fifty lines. Part of
1 This is indicated in the usual manner; the mother is heard to cry
to Iuno Lucina for aid. It is noteworthy, as illustrating the opposite of
this compression of events, that the midwife, who is sent for in a hurry,
takes 231 lines to come (vv. 228-459). Polezyk notes several cases of
similar retarding of the action in Terence.
20 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
the interval has been occupied by a soliloquy of the well-meaning
slave Parmeno (327-35).
(11) Phormio. 310, Phaedria and Geta go off to fetch Phor-
mio. Soliloquy of four linesfrom Demipho. 315, enter Phormio,
accompanied by Geta, who has had time to give him an outline
of what has so far taken place, besides the time spent in finding
him.
Of the above cases, (1), (2), and (4) need not detain us. They
depend on no peculiarity of ancient technique, but on the psy-
chology of audiences. In every case several incidents have
been shown on the stage ; theatre-goers, ancient or modern, do
not come provided with stop-watches to time exactly what is
going on, or maps of the locality of the action on which to plot
out the distance said to have been traversed by an absent actor.
A number of things have happened in full view of them ; they
are quite prepared to suppose that at the same time a number of
other things have taken place out of sight. . This applies with at
least equal strength to several other instances in Polezyk’s list
which I have omitted. The remaining incidents have all this
common quality, with the exception of (8); in the interval the
scene is either left empty, or occupied by one soliloquising char-
acter. The soliloquy, often in a lyric metre, is the direct de-
scendant of the choral ode or other interlude of Attic plays of
the fifth century, such as we have already considered. It shares
the characteristic of such an ode (or lyric solo, a thing not un-
common in Kuripides, e.g., fon 81-183), that while it may inform
the audience of what has happened, or throw light upon the char-
acter of one of the dramatis personae, it does not advance the
action in the least. Therefore that suspension of time, to which
Croiset (sup., p. 2) rightly calls attention in the case of the
chorus, again takes place, and the poet may (within his self-
imposed limits of 24-36 hours or so) assume the passage of as
much time as he likes.
To make this clearer, | add a few more instances, taken for
the sake of brevity solely from Terence, who is the better suited
for our purpose because of his careful and conscientious work-
manship. +
Andria 227, exit Dauos to find Pamphilus, who is in the :
1 For an appreciative estimate of his craftsmanship and dramatic
powers generally, see Prof. Gilbert Norwood, The Art of Terence (Basil
Blackwell, 1923).
THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA 21
forum (generally supposed to be some little distance from the
street which is the scene of the action) and tell him what has
happened. 228, enter Mysis, talking to herself. 234, enter
Pamphilus, in full possession of the facts which Dauos set out to
tell him. 425-31, the soliloquy of Byrria simply covers the exit
of Pamphilus. So a choral ode need not indicate any consider-
able passage of time. 459 sqq. has already been noted (No. 8 in
the above list). Here we have for the lines 461 sqq. a develop-
ment of the soliloquy proper ; Simo, unconscious that Dauos is
eavesdropping, comments to himself on the actions he sees going
on at Glycerium’s house. He does not notice Dauos or speak to
_him until verse 475. Dauos meanwhile is listening and com-
menting to himself. Thus we have, not a dialogue, but two
parallel soliloquies. 599, exit Simo, to talk over the situation
with his son. Despairing soliloquy of Dauos. 607, enter
Pamphilus, who has finished the interview with his father, got
away from him, and worked himself up into a furious rage.
956, Simo, who has had Dauos put in chains, gives orders for his
release. Soliloquy of Pamphilus, 957-62. 963, enter Dauos
free.
Heautontimorumenos. The long pause (lapse of a night)
between verses 409 and 410 has already been noted, p. 18.
Presumably some incidental music filled up the gap, as in the
much shorter pause in Plautus, Pseud. 573a (see p. 16). ‘At 170,
Chremes leaves the stage to remind his neighbour Phania that
he is to dine with him that night. The stage being thus left
empty, he returns at the next line, saying that he has visited
Phania’s house and found him already started. As Phania
takes no part whatever in the play, it would seem that for some
special reason (the availability of a popular musician ?) Terence
wanted a pause here for a flute-solo or the like, after the long and
not very lively scene with which the play begins. The soliloquy
of Clitipho, 213-29, is not required for any purpose in connection
with the action, but serves to throw light on Clitipho’s character
and situation. 502, exit Chremes to see some neighbours and
excuse himself from keeping an appointment with them. Mene-
demus soliloquises. 508, re-enter Chremes, having seen the
persons he set out to visit. 558, exit Chremes to his house.
Short soliloquy of Syrus. 560, re-enter Chremes, upbraiding
Clitipho, whom he has seen behaving in a suspicious manner while
indoors. 667, exit Chremes to examine the evidence for his
22 THE ‘UNITY OF TIME’ IN ANCIENT DRAMA
long-lost daughter having been found. Soliloquy of Syrus.
679, enter Clinia, who in the meantime has heard Chremes’ news.
The list could be lengthened greatly by analysing the remaining
four plays of this author ; but enough, I take it, has been said to
make my point clear. I now sum up the results attained.
(1) The drama of the fifth century B.c., from about the be-
ginning of Sophokles’ activities as a playwright, more often
than not confined the action of any one play within the space
of a day or a day and a half (twice in three times, if the surviving
works are an average sample). No limit, however, was recognised
in either theory or practice, although it seems to have been more
usual to let very long lapses of time take place between two
plays of a trilogy, which to some extent (at least in Aeschylean
technique) corresponded to the acts of an Hlizabethan play.
The presence of the chorus in no way interfered with the poet’s
liberty, as it normally represented simply the interested public,
not a particular group of individuals.
(2) With the weakening of the chorus, and the contempor-
aneous falling off of Greek dramatic powers, came the invention
and application of a new method of securing that sense of unity
produced by the presence, in the older drama, of an active
chorus. This was the invariable, or nearly invariable, confining
of the action to the limits mentioned by Aristotle.
: (3) With the departure of the chorus from Comedy went the
_loss of the time-honoured method of indicating passage of hours,
days, etc., namely the interposition of a choral ode. The loss
was made good either by leaving the stage vacant, and probably
introducing some incidental music, dancing, or the like, or else.
by leaving one actor (more rarely two) on the stage, and allowing
a soliloquy, or soliloquies, to take the place of the old stasimon.
H. J. ROSE. |
N.B.—It is perhaps not without significance that Indian
drama, which in its origin and development in many ways re-
sembles Greek, knows nothing of a ‘Unity of Time.’ See for
a full account, A. B. Keith, The Sanskrit Drama, Oxford, 1924.
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
As in the earlier notes on Howell, in Vols. III., IV., and V. of
Aberystwyth Studies, the text of the ‘ Familiar Letters ’ is quoted
from Joseph Jacobs’s edition, Vol. I., 1890; Vol. II., 1892; the
pages of which are numbered continuously. An apology must
be offered for the order of my own comments being consecutive
within each instalment only, and not invariably so then.
Introduction (1892), p. l., Let me add, however, that his hair
was dark brown, his height below the medium... .
Jacobs supports his statement on the colour of Howell’s hair by a
reference to page 72. It should be noticed, however, that in the letter in
question, Bk. I., Sect. 1, xxxi., which is addressed to Dr. Francis Mansell
and dated by Howell 25 Jun. 1621, the words are, ‘“‘I am sure my Hair
is not the same; for you may remember I went flaxen-hair’d out of
England, but you shall find me return’d with a very dark brown, which
J impute not only to the Heat and Air of those hot Countries I have eaten
my Bread in, but to the quality and difference of Food.”
To his description of Howell’s height as below the medium Jacobs
adds the footnote, ‘‘ This I conjecture from Howell’s energy, his acquies-
cence in Bacon’s dictum that Nature never put her jewels in garrets, and
the evident attempt of the French artist [see the portrait which appeared
originally in the French version of ‘Dodona’s Grove ’ (1641) and is repro-
duced in Jacobs’s edition of the Letters] to give an impression of height.”
But there is a more direct piece of evidence. At the end of a letter
to Captain Thomas Porter (Book I., Sect. 6, xxi., pp. 324, 325), Howell
writes :.
“To this Pll add the Duke of Ossuna’s Compliment :
Qursiere, aunque soy chico,
Ser, enserville, Gigante.
Tho’ of the tallest I am none you see,
Yet to serve you, I would a Giant be.”
That the Duke was short is mentioned in Bk. I., Sect. 3, xxxvii., p.
208, ... “the Duke of Ossuna’s death, a little man, but of great fame
and fortunes.”’
To His Majesty, p. [3],... who as the Law styles you the
Fountain of Honour and Grace, so you should be the Centre of
our Happiness.
_ The earliest example quoted by the N.E.D. of the expression ‘‘ Foun-
tain of honour,”’ applied to a sovereign, is from Lord Brougham (1844),
*““The Crown is the fountain of honour,” s. Fountain, 1 d.
23
24 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
The Vote, or a Poem-Royal, lines 19, 20, p. 6: |
No curious Landskip, or some Marble Piece
Dige’d up in Delphos, or elsewhere in Gireece.
Instead of the correct Delphi it was formerly the common practice in
English to use Delphos, as, for example, Sir Thomas Browne does in his
eleventh ‘ Miscellany Tract.’ Bishop Cooper in the Dictionary of proper
names at the end of his Latin Thesaurus (1573) includes both forms but
gives the fuller information under Delphos. William Wotton in his
‘Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning’ criticised Sir William
Temple for employing the incorrect form throughout his Essays. Charles
Boyle in his ‘ Dr. Bentley’s Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and
the Fables of Atsop, Examin’d,’ defended Temple on the plea that
‘* Delphos, for the Latin word Delphi, is us’d by all the finest Writers of
our Tongue, and best Judges of it.”” He instanced Waller, Dryden, Duke,
Creech and the Reverend and Learned Dr. [Thomas] Jackson. It was in
his reply to this that Bentley quoted from Richard Pace’s ‘ De fructu
qui ex doctrina percipitur ’ the now famous story of the priest who having
read Mumpsimus for thirty years declined to change his old Mumpsimus
for his corrector’s “‘new’’ Sumpsimus.
The Vote, or a Poem-Royal, lines 120, 121, p. 9:
So that poor Mortals are so many Balls
Toss’d some o’er Line, some under Fortune’s Walls.
The comparison is taken from tennis. See in the N.E.D. Line, sub-
stantive?, II. 7, f., where the present example is quoted as well as J.
Heywood, ‘ Prov.,’ *‘ Thou hast striken the ball, vnder thelyne.’’ See also
Pillar, substantive, 11, where the phrase from pillar to post is said to have
been once from post to pillar. ‘“*.. . originally a figure drawn from the
tennis-court, and used chiefly with toss; . . . The later order appears to
have been first used to rime with tost, tossed.”’
Compare Bk. II., xvii., p. 408, ... . “‘for when the weights that use
to hang to all great businesses are taken away, ’tis good then to put wings
upon them, and to take the ball before the bound.”’
The Vote, or a Poem-Royal, ll. 135, 136, p. 9:
Good may the Entrance, better the Middle be,
And the Conclusion best of all the Three.
It looks as though this couplet represented a Latin original :
Sit bonus introitus, melius medium, optima finis.
The Vote, or a Poem-Royal, p. 12:
So prayeth,
The worst of Poets,
to
The best of Princes,
yet
The most Loyal of
Ais
Votaries and Vassals,
JAMES HOWELL.
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 25
Compare Catullus xlix. 4-7, which Howell, presumably, had in his
mind ;
Gratias tibi maximas Catullus
Agit pessimus omnium poeta,
Tanto pessimus omnium poeta
Quanto tu optimus omnium patronus.
To the knowing Reader touching Familiar Letters, lines 39, 40,
p. 14:
They are those golden Links that do enchain
Whole Nations, tho’ discinded by the Main.
When choosing the word discinded had Howell at the back of his mind
Horace’s : ;
Nequiquam deus abscidit
Prudens Oceano dissociabili
Terras ?
Book I., Sect. 1, iii., p. 22, So with appreciation of as much
happiness to you at home, as I shall desire to accompany me
abroad, I rest ever—Your friend to serve you, damale
‘** Appreciation ’’ in Jacobs's text is either an error, or an arbitrary
correction of “‘apprecation.’’ The latter word is printed even in the
1737 edition and is, of course, right. The N.E.D. defines it as ‘‘ The
action of praying for or invoking a blessing on another ; a devout wish ”’
and quotes Bishop Hall and Howell’s present letter, besides a passage
from a later seventeenth-century writer.
Book I., Sect. 1, v., p. 25, I am newly landed at Amsterdam
. at the mouth of the Texel we were surpriz’d by a furious
Tempest, so that the Ship was like to split upon some of those
old stumps of trees wherewith that River is full; for in Ages
past, as the Skipper told me, there grew a fair Forest in that
Channel where the J'exel makes now her Bed.
Texel is primarily the island off the coast of North Holland, but “‘ the
Texel ’’ has often been used to denote the channel between this island
and Helder, which forms the entrance for shipping into the Zuider Zee.
See Notes and Queries, vol. cxlvi., p. 313, where I have quoted this passage
of Howell, and others from Pepys, Sir W. Temple, &c. The straits are
known as Marsdiep.
Pomme sect. 1, vi, p. 27:
To Dan. Caldwell, H'sq. ; from Amsterdam.
In identifying the above, Jacobs observes that his name is elsewhere
spelt Caldwall. This note would not have been needed, had Jacobs
carried out the principle which he announces on page xi. of his preface
(1892) :
“In one point it seemed worth while reverting to Howell’s original
spelling. The proper names, personal and geographical, had suffered
26 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
somewhat severely at the hands of successive reprinters. I have therefore
restored these, I believe in every case, to the form in which they appeared
in the first editions of the several parts.”
The name at the head of this letter when first printed (1645) was spelt
‘* Caldwall,’’ and there are countless other instances where Jacobs has
failed to give proper names in accordance with the spelling of the issue
in which they first appeared.
Book I., Sect. 1, viii, p. 32,...: so 1 may say of these
Lugdunensians, They have a gross Air, but thin subtle Wits, (some
of them) witness also Heinsius, Grotius, Arminius, and Baudius.
In his Preface, p. xi. (1892), when speaking of the 1737 edition of the
Letters, Jacobs writes, “‘ Il have corrected the few misprints.’’ He failed
to observe that “witness also Heinsius,’’ &c., ought to be ‘“‘ witness
else . . .”’ as in the early editions.
Book L., Sect. 1, ix., p. 33, This (I think) made Jack Chaundler
throw away his Littleton, like him that, when he could not catch
the Hare, said, A pox upon her, she is but dry tough Meat ; let
her go.
On ‘‘ Jack Chaundler ’’ Jacobs has a note, ‘‘ Referred to Worthington,
Diary, 364.”
Jack Chaundler is not mentioned by Worthington. A footnote of
James Crossley to a passage in a letter of Samuel Harthb to Dr. Worthing-
ton speaks of an English translation of van Helmont’s ‘ Opera’ made by
John Chandler and published under the title of ‘ Oriatrike, or Physick
Refined ’ (London, 1662, fol.).. The D.N.B. does not notice the translator.
What evidence is there to prove him to be Howell’s “‘ Jack Chaundler ”’ ?
Book I., Sect. 1, xvii., p. 45, . . . for being in some jovial
Company abroad, and coming late to our Lodging, we were
suddenly surprized by a Crew of Filous of Night-Rogues, who
drew upon us.
For ‘‘ Filous, rogues’’ Jacobs refers to the ‘ Nicholas Papers,’ 75.
This is a wrong reference. It should be i. 95. The word there is spelt
differently: ‘“‘. .. att Paris, where he hath ingratiated himselfe with
all the Filoughes and common rogues, as is commonly sayd.”” The editor
(Sir G. F. Warner) notes that jfilow is “a term in French argot explained
by Littré as a ‘voleur qui emploie l’adresse.’ ”’ |
Book I., Section 1, xxviii., p. 66, I met with Camillo, your
Consaorman, here lately ; and could he be sure of Entertainment,
he would return to serve you again, and I believe for less Salary.
Jacobs writes of Consaorman, ‘“‘It is passed over in the New Eng. -
Dict., and I can only suggest some confusion with consorte or partner.”
A more careful search would have shown that this form is recorded in
the N.E.D., and supported by the present passage in Howell.
See under Khansamah, — saman, an Urdt (Persian) word from
5
|
—
:
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 27
khan master and sé@mdan household goods. The meaning is a house-
steward. The Anglo-Indian corruption “‘ consumah ”’ is familiar to those
who know their Dickens. See ‘Sketches by Boz,’ ‘Tales,’ chap. vii.
‘The Steam Excursion’ (Capt. Helves loguitur), ‘‘ When I was in the
East Indies, Iywas once stopping a few thousand miles up the country,
on a visit at the house of a very particular friend of mine, Ram Chowdar
Doss Azuph Al Bowlar—a devilish pleasant fellow. As we were enjoying
our hockahs, one evening, in the cool verandah in front of his villa, we
were rather surprised by the sudden appearance of thirty-four of his
Kit-ma-gars ... accompanied by an equal number of Con-su-mars,
approaching the house with a threatening aspect, and beating a tom-tom.”’
Book I., 1, xxxi., p. 70, line 2 of the Latin verses :
. . . de paucis volo, siste gressum.
Such is the reading of the 1737 edition on which Jacobs based his re-
print. ‘De paucis volo”’ is nonsense and ‘te paucis volo’ of the first
edition should, of course, be restored. We may well suppose that Howell
knew the ‘ Andria,’ where, in line 29, we get “‘ paucis te volo.”’ Indeed
Terence is specially mentioned as one of the Latin poets with whom he
was familiar when a schoolboy. See Payne Fisher’s ‘ Encomium,’ 46 sqq.
Tum mite Terenti
Ingenium, & stricto servorum scommata socco,
Plautinosque sales potasti impubibus annis.
Supplement, p. 689 in Jacobs’s edition.
Book I., Sect. 1, xlii., p. 95, To conclude, in Italy there be
Virtutes magne, nec minora Vitia ; Great Virtues, and no less Vices.
Was the saying “ Virtutes magnae, nec minora vitia’”’ derived from
Livy xxi., 4, 9 (in his character of Hannibal), ‘“‘ Has tanti viri virtutes
ingentia vitia aequabant ”’ ?
Book I., Sect. 2, vii., p. 106, Law is a shrewd Pick-purse, and
the Lawyer, as I heard one say wittily not long since, is like a
Chrisimas-box, which 1s sure to get, whosoever loseth.
See the N.E.D. under Christmas-box, 2, ‘‘ The Butler’s Box, in which
_ gamesters put part of their winnings,”’ and under Butler, 3, where a butler’s
box is defined as “‘ a box into which players put a portion of their winnings
at Christmas-time as a ‘Christmas-box’ for the butler.’? This example
from Howell is given under the first heading.
Book I., Sect. 2, ix., p. 108, Surely I believe there may be some
treachery in’t, and that the Marquis of Anspach, the General, was
overcome by Pistols made of Indian Ingots, rather than of Steel.
Jacobs has this note: ‘‘ Marquis of Anspack or Ansbach, a marquisate
generally associated with that of Bayreuth. At this time both princi-
palities were held by Joachim of Brandenburg, who granted that of
Ansbach to his son Earnest [sic], the person here meant.”’
This account is elaborately wrong. The Markgraf of Ansbach from
A.S.—VOL. VI. C
28 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
1603 to 1625 was Joachim Ernst (1583-1625), a younger son (one of
twenty-three children) of Johann Georg, the 7th Kurftirst of Branden-
_ burg. Joachim Ernst succeeded to Ansbach in 1603 on the death of the
Markegraf Georg Friedrich, by virtue of the ‘ Geraische Vertrag’’ con-
cluded in 1598 by Johann Georg who died in that year. At the date of
this letter the Kurfiirst of Brandenburg was the tenth, Georg Wilhelm,
his great-nephew who succeeded in 1619. See the life of Joachim Ernst
in the ‘ Allgemeine deutsche Biographie,’ and the list of Hohenzollern
Electors and the diagram of the two Culmbach lines at the end of Book
IIT. in Carlyle’s ‘Friedrich.’ Jacobs did not realise the importance of
being earnest in these genealogical matters.
Book I., Sect. 2, xii., p. 112, There is one Count Mansfelt
that begins to get a great Name in Germany, and he, with the
D. of Brunswick, who is a Temporal Bishop of Halverstade, have
a considerable Army on foot for the Lady Elizabeth. . . .
Book L., Sect. 3, xxvili., p. 189, They speak much of the
strange carriage of that boisterous Bishop of Halverstadt (for so
they term him here), that having taken a place where there
were two Monasteries of Nuns and Friars, he caus’d divers
Feather-beds to be ripp’d, and all the feathers to be thrown in
a great Hall whither the Nuns and Friars were thrust naked with
their bodies oil’d and pitch’d, and to tumble among these
feathers; which makes them here presage him an ill death.
On the first of these passages Jacobs has the following note:
‘* Halverstade (Halberstadt), the Duke of Brunswick was Frederick
Ulrich, the last of his line.”’
No. The Bishop of Halberstadt, from 1616 to 1626, was not the
feeble Friedrich Ulrich who died, the last of his line, in 1636, but his younger
brother Christian, ‘‘ der tolle Halberstadter,”’ ‘‘ a high-flown, fiery young
fellow, of terrible fighting gifts; he flamed up considerably, with ‘the
Queen of Bohemia’s glove stuck in his Hat’: ‘Bright Lady, it shall
stick there, till I get you your own again, or die!’ ’”’ See Carlyle’s ‘ Fried-
rich,’ Book III., chap. xvi.
Book I., Sect. 3, xix., p. 171, Among others, I send you a
Latin Poem of one Marniercus, a Valencian, to which I add this
ensuing Hexastic ; which, in regard of the difficulty of the Verse,
consisting of all Ternaries (which is the hardest way of versifying),
and of the exactness of the translation, I believe will give you
content.
Jacobs does not identify this poet. The name is wrongly printed in —
all texts. It should be Marinerius. There is an account of him, Vin-
centius Mariner, in the ‘ Bibliotheca Hispana nova’ of Nicolas Antonio
of Seville, vol. II. (Madrid, 1788), pp. 326-328. Mariner appears to
have been among the most voluminous writers of Latin verse on record :
‘‘Praeter haec jam laudata, versibus quamplurima alia Latinis .. .
ee
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 29
mira facilitate ac vix credibili copia, de quacumque re opportunum ei
esset, effudit.”” He was a Valencian by birth and Prefect of the Royal
Library in the Escurial. According to his own computation, he was the
author of over 380,000 Greek and Latin verses. His enumeration in-
cludes, among other items, a poem on the Fable of Phaethon (4,000) ; more
than eight thousand Greek and Latin epigrams; a poem on the appro-
priate subject of ‘Furor Poeticus et insanus Phoebi afflatus’®; a para-
phrase of the Lord’s Prayer and another of the Salutation (6,000 lines).
He seems here to have rivalled F..W. Farrar, whom Swinburne reproached.
with ‘‘ elongating the Gospels.”’
As Howell sends his correspondent Mariner’s lines on Charles and the
Infanta, it should not be forgotten that another production of his was
“De Ludo Trojano, ut sic dicam, vulgo Juego de canvas, quo Philippus
Rex IV. Caroli Walliae Principis in Hispaniam adventum celebravit.” This
- last is described as consisting ‘‘ duodecim millium versuum heroicorum.’”
The great bulk of this output remained in manuscript. The attitude
of the “ Trade ”’ in Spain was that of its fellows in our own country. ‘Any
scurrile pamphlet,’’ wrote Burton, ‘‘is welcome to our mercenary Printers:
in English ; but in Latin they will not deale.” In fact, they ‘‘ said they
were not taking any to-day.”
Book I., Sect, 3, xxvi., p. 184, Since our Prince’s departure
hence the Lady Infanta studieth Hnglish apace, and one Mr.
Wadsworth and Father Boniface, two Englishmen, are appointed
her Teachers, and have Access to her every Day.
Jacobs’s note is ‘‘ Mr. Wadsworth, author of The English Spanish
Pilgrime, 1629, and often mentioned as a Jesuit in the memoirs of the
time. . . . Howell denounced his son later as a spy.”’
But James Wadsworth the elder died in 1623. It was his son James
who was the author of The English Spanish Pilgrime. See the D.N.B.
Book I., Sect. 3, xxviii., p. 189:
To the Right Honourable the Lord Clifford.
Jacobs’s comment on Lord Clifford is ‘‘ Henry Clifford, son of the Earl
of Cumberland, was not summoned as a Baron till 3 Car. I., so that the
title is premature.’ The date which Howell added to the letter is 26
Aug. 1623; but, although Henry Clifford was not summoned to parlia-
ment as Baron Clifford until Feb. 17, 1628, he had been styled by courtesy
Lord Clifford since 1605, in which year his father had succeeded as 4th
Harl of Cumberland. See Doyle’s ‘ Official Baronage of England.’ But
the ancient barony of Clifford was not vested in H. Clifford’s father
Francis, having passed to the latter’sniece Anne. So Henry’s summons as
Baron. Clifford in his father’s life-time unintentionally created a new peer-
age. See G. EH. C[okayne]’s ‘Complete Peerage,’ vol. iii (new ed.), p. 301.
Book I., Sect. 2, xv., p. 117, But the two last, Hgmond and
Horn, were nourish’d still with Hopes, until Philip II. had pre-
pared an Army under the conduct of the Duke of Alva, to compose
the difference by Arms.
30 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
Jacobs says of Horn, “ He was himself a Protestant.” He was a
Catholic.
Book I., Sect. 3, xxxii., p. 195, I thought it worth the labour
to send your Lordship a short Survey of the Monarchy of Spain.
Jacobs says of this short Survey, “ possibly derived from Wadsworth’s,
which appeared in 1630” [1629].
But Howell’s letter is dated from Madrid, 1 Feb., 1623.
Book I., Sect. 3, xxxv., p. 206, . . . therefore I pray let no
Couvrez-feu-Bell have power hereafter to rake up, and choke
with the Ashes of Oblivion, that clear Flame... .
On ‘“ Cowvrez-feu-Bell”’? Jacobs’s comment is, ‘‘ The old folk-etymology
for curfew.’’ This is misleading. It appears to mean that the form of
the word curfew was perverted because of the popular belief in an erroneous
derivation. The example of “ folk-etymology ’’ which Prof. Weekley
gives in his Dictionary is sparrowgrass. The spelling of cowvrefeu, coverfeu,
is termed by the N.E.D. an “‘ etymological restoration,” as we have the
Anglo-French coeverfu and the Old French cuevre-fu, covre-feu, &e.
Book IL., Sect. 4, xii., p. 225, . . . her [the Princess Henrietta
Maria’s] Dowry should be 40,000 Crowns. . .
This is the reading of the 1737 edition. The first (1645) has 800,000.
Book I., Sect. 4, xii., p. 226, To this end she shall be allow’d
twenty-eight Priests, or Ecclesiastics in her House, and a Bishop
in quality of Almoner, who shall have jurisdiction over all the
FESO...
Queen Henrietta Maria’s Almoner was Daniel de la Mothe, consecrated
Bishop of Mende, Feb. 19, 1625. He died on March 8, 1628.
Book I., Sect. 4, xv., p. 229, Grave Henry hath succeeded him ~
in all things, and is a gallant Gentleman, of a French Education
and Temper ; he charg’d him at his death to marry a young Lady,
the Count of Solme’s Daughter attending the Queen of bohemia,
whom he had long courted: which is thought will take speedy
effect.
It had taken effect more speedily than Howell, according to this letter,
supposed. Frederick Henry married in April 1625 Amelia, daughter of
Count Johann of Solms. His brother Maurice, whom he succeeded, died
on April 23, 1625. Howell’s letter is dated March 19, 1626. If this is
Old Style, he has anticipated Maurice’s death and his brother’s succession.
Tf it is New Style, he is presenting Lord Clifford with very stale news.
Book I., Sect. 4, xvi., p. 230, I sent you one of the 3¢ current,
but ’twas not answer’d ; I sent another of the 13 like a second
Arrow, to find out the first, but I know not what’s become of
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 31
either: I send this to find out the other two; and if this fail,
there shall go no more out of my Quiver.
Jacobs, in his note, compares ‘“‘ Lonefellow’s song ’’ [‘ The Arrow and
the Song ’] and misquotes the first line of it. The thought in Longfellow’s
poem is quite different from that of Howell’s letter.
Book I., Sect. 4, xvi., p. 230:
Ira furor brevis, brevis est mea littera, cogor,
Ira correptus, corripuisse stylum.
The unmetrical blunder of the 1737 edition is here reproduced. There
is no need to consult older editions to show that an est has been dropped
after the first brevis. The grave accent on /rd is due to a damaged cir-
_eumflex in 1737. The beginning of the distich ‘‘ Ira furor brevis est ’’
is borrowed from Horace, ‘Epistles,’ I., ii., 62.
Book I., Sect. 4, xxii., p. 238, I hope to see you at Dyvinnock
about Michaelmas, for I intend to wait upon my Father, and I
will take my Mother in the way, I mean Oxford.
Jacobs’s note is ‘* Dyvinnock in Brecon, a point in favour of H. being
a Brecknock man; but see Introduc., p. xxiii. [where he accepts Car-
marthenshire as Howell’s native county].”’
No argument about the district of Howell’s birth can be based on this
mention of Dyvinnock. The letter is addressed to Hugh Penry, the
husband of Howell’s sister Ann, and Jacobs himself has mentioned in his
note on Bk. I., Sect. 2, xvi., p. 129, that Hugh Penry was Vicar of
Dyfynog. If Howell was intending to visit his father (at Abernant- in
Carmarthenshire) what could be more natural than for him to make use
of the same journey to visit the Penrys ?
Book I., Sect. 4, xxvi., pp. 242, 243, Master Montague is pre-
paring to go to Paris as a Messenger of Honour, to prepossess
the King and Council there with the truth of things.
Jacobs does not offer to identify Master Montague. It would not be
rash to conjecture that the person meant is Walter Montagu (1603 ?—
1677), second son of Sir Henry Montagu, the first Earl of Manchester.
Walter Montagu had been sent on a secret mission to France in 1624 and
on a second diplomatic errand in 1625. Later in life he was Abbot of
St. Martin’s near Pontoise. See the notice in the D.N.B.
Book I., Sect. 5, viii., p. 254, The Town of Rochell hath been
fatal and unfortunate to Hngland, for this is the third time that
we have attempted to relieve her; but our Fleets and Forces
return'd without doing anything.
Jacobs’s note calls for correction. He writes ‘‘ third time. One only
knows of Wimbledon’s and this of Lindsey’s. Perhaps H.« is counting
the Expedition to the Isle of Rhé.”’
Viscount Wimbledon, at that time Sir Edward Cecil, was in command
of the Spanish Expedition of 1625, that failed in the attack on Cadiz.
32 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
Buckingham’s expedition in 1627 is surely to be reckoned as one of the
three, for what was the object of landing on the Isle of Rhé if it was not
to relieve Rochelle ?
Of the remaining two, one will be Lord Denbigh’s attempt. Jacobs
has already forgotten that in a note on I. 5, vi., he wrote of Denbigh,
‘* He returned from an unsuccessful attempt to relieve Rochelle, May 27,
1628.’ The third and last expedition was that commanded by the Earl
of Lindsey.
Book I., Sect. 5, xv., p. 266, I have sent you here inclos’d,
Warrants for four brace of Bucks and a Stag ; the last Sir Arthur
Manwaring procur’d of the King for you, towards the keeping
of your Act.
Jacobs writes, ‘‘ Where the stag came in I am unable to guess, nor is
any hint given in Wordsworth, University Life.”
It requires no conjurer to see that the bucks and stag, as well as “ the
great Wicker Hamper, with two Geoules of Sturgeon, six barrels of pickled
Oysters, three barrels of Bologna Olives, with some Spanish commodities ”’
are a provision against the entertainment to be given in connexion with
the Act.
Book I., Sect. 5, xv., p. 267, So, with my kind love to Dr.
Mansell, Mr. Watkins, Mr. Madocks, and Mr. Napier at AIll-
Souls, | rest—Your loving Brother, J. H.
Lond., 20 June 1628.
Mr. Watkins is stated by Jacobs to be “‘ Richard, of Ch. Ch. (Wood,
Athene, i11., 945).”’ There are serious objections to this confident asser-
‘tion. The passage in the Athene proves to refer to Mr. Rich. Watkins
‘sometime of Ch. Ch. who soon after May 1658 was succeeded in his vicarage
of Amersden, near Bicester in Oxfordshire, by Edward Bagshaw; and
an examination of Wood’s Fasti shows us the same Richard Watkins
being admitted B.A. in 1644 and M.A. in 1647. Now look at the date
of Howell’s letter !
Book I., Sect. 5, xx., p. 270, It is as true a Rule, that 7) dooia
tH emtotiunc aoxyy, Dubitation is the beginning of all Know-
ledge. :
See Aristotle, Metaphysics, B. 1, 995* 24, ’Avdyxn mode thy Cytovpévny
éEntotnuny énelbety Huds me@tov, mEol Hv anoonjoa. det nOMtOr.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxi., p. 270, . . . for you know ’tis a Rule
in Law, Idem est non esse & non apparere.
This is more usually quoted in the form De non apparentibus et non
existentibus eadem est Ratio. See Pease and Chitty’s edition of Herbert
Broom’s ‘ Selection of Legal Maxims’ (1911), p. 131.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxili., p. 274:
To the Ri. Hon. my Lady Scroop, Countess of Sunderland, at
Langar.
:
>
-
e
i
7
ee Se ee nr wt ee
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 33
Langar (in Nottinghamshire) has since become a familiar name to many.
Samuel Butler, the author of ‘ Erewhon,’ was born there, at the Rectory,
Dec. 4, 1835.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxiii., p. 274, My Lord Carleton deliver’d it
me, and told me he never remember’d that the King writ a more
gracious Letter.
On Lord Carleton Jacobs has a note: ‘‘ He was now ‘Lord,’ but
H. seems to apply this term to Baronets and Knights as well. Sir Dudley
Carleton was ultimately Clerk of Council (infra, 667), and is frequently
mentioned in the memoirs of the time [references are added].”’
In his note on IV., xii., p. 578, Jacobs confused Henry Pierrepoint
(1656-1708), the first Marquis of Dorchester, with Sir Dudley Carleton
- (1573-1632), Viscount Dorchester. In the present note he has confused
the elder Sir Dudley Carleton, created Baron Carleton of Inbercourt,
May 22, 1626, and Viscount Dorchester, July 21, 1628, who became Prin-
cipal Secretary of State on Dec. 18, 1628, with his nephew of the same
name. The younger Dudley Carleton was knighted on March 1, 1629,
and was made one of the Clerks of the Council in 1637.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxvii., p. 278, God send us an honourable
Peace : for, as the Spaniard says, Nunca v1 tan mala paz, que ne
fuesse mejor, que la mejor guerra.
The proverb seems to have been suggested by Cicero’s ‘‘ Causa orta
belli est: quid ego praetermisi aut monitorum aut querelarum, cum vel
iniquissimam pacem iustissimo bello anteferrem ? ”’
‘“Epist. ad Fam.’ vi., 6, 5.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxxv., p. 285, Now your Lordship shall
understand, that the said King [Gustavus Adolphus] is at Mentz,
and keeps a Court there like an Emperor, there being above
twelve Ambassadors with him.
Jacobs’s note on Mentz is ‘‘now Metz” [!]. Mentzis, of course, Mainz.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxvi., p. 328, I pray present my respects to
Mrs. Anne Mayne.
The widow—“ Mistress C.,’”’ to whom “at her House in Essex ’’ this
letter of condolence is directed, was evidently, as Jacobs notes, the wife
of Howell’s friend Daniel Caldwall. But he has not ventured on ‘“‘ Mrs.
4
Anne Mayne.” It may seem unduly bold to rush in where Jacobs has
feared to tread, but I think that the lady can be identified with a fair
probability.
The 1634 Visitation of Essex (Harleian Soc., vol. 13) informs us that
Daniell Caldwall of Horndon on the Hill married “to his 3 wiffe ’’ Allice
d. of [John] Mayne [of Hertfordshire] and had by her 3 daughters, Mary,
Elizabeth, and Anne. Turning to the Herts Visitation of the same date
(Harl. Soc., vol. 22) and examining the pedigree of Mayne of Bovington,
we find that Alice d. of James Mayne and Mary Andrew married Daniell
34 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
Caldwell of Horndon, co. Essex, and that among her sisters was Anne,
unmarried it would seem in 1634. ‘‘ Mrs. Anne Mayne ’’ may have been
this sister staying at the time with Caldwall’s widow. Another sister
was named Elizabeth, and the Khzabeth and Anne who were daughters of
Caldwall by this third wife were possibly christened after these two aunts.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxix., p. 331, Major Gots, one of the chief
Commanders, was kill’d.
Johann, Graf von Gotz (1599-1645) was a well-known general on the
Imperial side in the Thirty Years War. He was killed in the battle of
Jankau, March 6, 1645. If this is the man, the report of his death in
1635 was greatly exaggerated. The name in Ed. ? is Geuts.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxxii., p. 335, Upon Monday morn, as soon
as the Cinque-Ports are open, I have a particular prayer of thanks,
that I am repriev’d to the beginning of that week.
Compare Sir Thomas Browne, near the end of the °‘ Garden of Cyrus ’
(1658), ‘‘ But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and ’tis time to close
the five ports of knowledge.”
Book I., Sect. 6, xxxvi. (To Sir Ed. Savage, Knight, at Tower-
hill), p. 342, . . . nothing can be done in that business till your
Brother Pain comes to Town.
‘* Probably,’ says Jacobs, “‘the J. Payne of Nichols, Prog. Jas. L.,
i. 145, 650; brother = brother-in-law.”’
The reader of Jacobs’s identifications 1s probably by now inclined to
‘“damn them at a venture.’’ Open Nichols’s ‘ Progresses of K. James
I’ at the places indicated, and what do you get? Ati. 145, you learn
that the Funeral Sermon of Elizabeth, daughter of Ferdinando Stanley,
Earl of Derby, who died on Jan. 20, 1633, was published with her portrait
engraved by J. Payne. This John Payne’s life is in the D.N.B. He
‘“was idle and died in indigent circumstances.’’ Evidence, please, that
he was Sir Edward Savage’s brother-in-law !
At 11. 650, we find that in an account of K. James’s visit to Bristol
with his Queen in 1613 are some verses ‘‘ To the Author and his Booke,”’
signed by John Payne.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxxvii., p. 348, I hear that Cardinal Bar-
berino, one of the Pope’s Nephews, is setting forth the Works of
Fastidius, a British Bishop, cal’d De vita Christiana ... and
Holstenius hath the care of the Impression.
Jacobs’s note on the “‘ Works of Fastidius”’ is that “The De Vita
Christiana, previously included among St. Augustine’s works, was vindi-
cated for Fastidius by Holstenius, who published an edition in 1636,
three years before the date of this letter.”
I have not seen this edition, which according to Jacobs was published
in 1636, but the Benedictine edition of Augustine, vol. vi. (1685), Appendix
p. 183, J. A. Fabricius’s ‘ Bibliotheca Latina med. et inf. aetat.’ and
other authorities say the book appeared at Rome in 1663.
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 35
Book I., Sect. 6, xli., p. 348:
To Sir J. M., Knight.
‘“May possibly,’ says Jacobs, “be Sir T. Middleton, brother to Sir
Hugh, who went in deeply for alchemy.”
“It is always possible,’ as the old Frenchman at Naples said to
Dickens ; ‘‘ almost all the things in the world are always possible.”’ Still,
the date of this letter is 1 Feb. 1638, and Sir Thomas Middleton, Sir Hugh’s
brother, died at the age of 81, or thereabouts, on August 12, 1631.
Book I., Sect. 6, li., p. 360:
To Sir Alex. R., Knight.
Jacobs notes that according to the ‘‘ Table ”’ of the first edition this
is Sir Alexander Ratcliff. To this may be added that on Feb. 1, 1625-6,
at the Coronation of Charles I., Alexander Ratcliffe of Lancashire was
made a Knight of the Bath. See W. A. Shaw’s ‘ Knights of England.’
Book I., Sect. 6, li., p. 362, All Men know there is nothing
imports this Island more than Trade; it is that Wheel of In-
dustry which sets all others a-going ; it is that which preserves
the chiefest Castles and Walls of this Kingdom, I mean the Ships.
On * Walls of this Kingdom ”’ Jacobs remarks that this is ‘“‘ Perhaps
the earliest reference to England’s fleet of Themistocles’ saying about
Athens’ wooden walls.’? It is certainly not the earliest. See Owen’s
‘ Kpigrammata,’ ii., 40:
Vires Britannic. Ad Principem.
Anglorum porte sunt portus, mcenia classes,
Castra squor, valli corpora, corda duces.
Book I., Sect. 6, lv., p. 366, You know the difference the
Philosophers make ’twixt the two extreme colours, black and
white, that thé one is congregativum, the other disgregativum
visis: Black doth congregate, unite and fortify the Sight ; the
other disgregate, scatter and enfeeble it, when it fixeth upon any
object.
See Boéthius, ‘Topicorum Aristotelis Interpretatio,’ lib. vii., cap. 2,
in vol. lxiv. of Migne’s ‘ Patrologia Latina,’ column 990D., ‘‘ Et differentias
quidem contrarias de contrariis arbitramur praedicari, ut de albo et
nigro: nam illud quidem disgregativum, hoc autem congregativum
visus.”’
Book I., Sect. 6, Ivi., p. 367, . . . like a Glow-worm (the old
emblem of true Friendship) you have shin’d to me in the dark.
See the ‘Symbola et Emblemata’ of Joachim Camerarius, ii., 94,
hp Apud nos quidem, vermis est Erucae similis qui eadem parte qua cicen-
dela noctu fulgorem tam clarum emittit, ut etiam ad illum litterae legi
possint. .. . Quamquam vero & hoc symbolum autor illius ad honesti
amoris significationem accomodaverit, .. .”’
36 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
Book I., Sect. 6, lvii., p. 368, But as we find that it is not a.
clear Sky, but the Clouds that drop Fatness, as the holy Text
tells us, so adversity is far more fertile than prosperity.
See Psalm 65, 12 (Prayer-Book version), ‘“‘ Thou crownest the year
with thy goodness: and thy clouds drop fatness.’”? The A.V. has (65, 11)
‘‘, .. thy paths drop fatness.”’
Book I., Sect. 6, lviii., pp. 370, 371, I am no statue, but I must
resent the calamities of the time, and the desperate case of this
Nation, who seem to have fallen quite from the very faculty of
reason, and to be possess’d with a pure Lycanthropy, with a
wolvish kind of disposition to tear one another in this manner ;
insomuch, that if ever the old Saye was verify’d, Homo homini
lupus, it is certainly now.
See Plautus, ‘ Asinaria,’ 495:
Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit,
and John Owen’s Epigrams, lib. ii. 23:
Homo homini Lupus, Homo homint Deus.
Humano generi lupus et deus est homo: quare ?
Nam deus est homini Christus, Adamque lupus.
and lib. iv. 224:
Homo homini Deus.
Est homo qui locuples inopi nil donat amico ;
Qui rapit, hic lupus est; qui dabit, ille Deus.
‘*Homo homini deus ”’ is from the line of Caecilius Statius quoted by
Symmachus, Epist. ix. 114:
! Homo homini deus est, si suum officium sciat.
See A. Otto, ‘Die Sprichworter und Sprichwortlichen Redensarten
der Romer,’ under Lupus and Deus. The proverb is of Greek origin.
Book I., Sect. 6, lix., p. 371, I have no other news to write to
you hence, but that, Leuantanse los muladeres, y abaxanse los —
adarues : The World is turn’d topsey-turvey.
Muladeres should be muladares. Jacobs’s translation is ‘‘ The mule-
teers go up and the walls go down.’”’ He has confused mulatero, a mule-
driver, with muladar, a dunghill. |
The saying, in the form ‘‘ Abaxanse los adarves, y aleanse los mula-
dares,”’ is included by Howell among the Spanish proverbs at the end of
his ‘ Lexicon Tetraglotton’ (1660), with the English ‘‘ The battlements
come down, and dunghills climb up; Jacks rise up, and Gentlemen come
down.”’
Book IT., ii., pp. 376, 377, You know, |
Angee a Vitulus, Populos & Regna gubernant.
The Goose, the Bee, and the Calf (meaning Wax, Parchment,
and the Pen) rule the World; but, of the three, the Pen is the
most predominant.
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 37
See N. Reusner’s ‘ Aenigmatographia,’ Part i., p. 245 (ed. 1602), where
No. xxx. of the Aenigmata of Hadrianus Junius, entitled ‘Syngraphum,’
begins :
Anser, apis, vitulus, rerum potiuntur et orbis.
Book IL., iv., pp. 379, 380, "Tis a powerful Sex ; they were
too strong for the first, the Strongest and Wisest Man that was ;
they must needs be strong, when one Hair of a Woman can draw
more than a hundred pair of Oxen; yet for all their strength in
point of value, if you will believe the Ltahan, A Man of Straw is
worth a Woman of Gold.
Howell gives this among the Italian proverbs in his * Lexicon Tetra-
_glotton,’ “Un huomo di paglia val’ una donna d’oro.”’
Book II., xvi., p. 408, . . . for Expedition is the life of
Action, otherwise Time may show his bald occiput, and shake
his posteriors at them in derision.
See the poem of Posidippus in the ‘ Palatine Anthology,’ xvi. (‘ Appen-
dix Planudea’), 275, especially lines 7-10; and Ausonius’s epigram, 33
(12), lines 7 and 8:
Sed heus tu
Occipiti calvo es ?—Ne tenear fugiens.
Book I1., xvui., p. 410, This makes me think on that blunt
answer which Capt. Talbot return’d Henry VIII. from Calais,
who having receiv’d special command from the King to erect a
new Fort at the Water-gate, and to see the Town well fortify’d,
sent him word, that he could neither fortify nor fiftufy without
Money.
The same jest, whether by recollection or coincidence, is employed
in the first stanza of Hood’s ‘December and May ’
Said Nestor, to his pretty wife, quite sorrowful one day,
“Why, dearest, will you shed in pearls those lovely eyes away ?
You ought to be more fortified.”’ ‘‘ Ah, brute, be quiet, do,
I know I’m not so fortyfied, nor fiftyfied, as you!”
Book II., xxvii., p. 420, Yours to the Altar, J. H.
The phrase ‘“‘usque ad aram’”’ is derived from a saying of Pericles
given by Plutarch BEnOne, his ‘ Apophthegmata Regg. et Impp., 186c. ITeo¢
d€ yidoy tid paetrelag pevdods Sedmevoy, y MEOTY xal boxos, Epynoe MéxoL TOD
Bwmpod pisos eivat. Xylander’s rendering is ‘‘ Amicum se usque ad aram
esse respondit.”” Hrasmus has it in Bk. V. of his ‘ Apophthegmata,’
“Pericles . . . respondit se quidem amicum esse usque ad aram.”
Book II., xxvii., p. 420, 7. 7. drank your health yesternight,
and wish’d you could send him a handsome Venetian Courtesan
inclos’d in a Letter ; he would willingly be at the charge of the .
38 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
postage, which he thinks would not be much for such a light
commodity.
Horace Walpole writing from Arlington Street on June 5, 1747, to
Horace Mann at Florence, says: “I... may retire to a little new
farm that I have taken just out of Twickenham [afterwards the famous
Strawberry Hill]. The house is so small, that I can send it to you ina
letter to look at.”
Book II., xxxiii., p. 427, There’s a strange Maggot hath got
into their brains, which possesseth them with a kind of Vertigo ;
and it reigns in the Pulpit more than anywhere else, for some of
our Preachmen are grown dog-mad, there’s a worm got into their
Tongues, as well as their Heads.
An allusion to the absurd practice that long prevailed of cutting out
a vermiform structure from under a dog’s tongue because of the belief
that it was a worm. See Pliny, ‘Nat. Hist.,’ xxix., 5 (32), 100, “ Est
vermiculus in lingua canum qui vocatur a Graecis lytta, quo exempto
infantibus catulis nec rabidi fiunt nec fastidium sentiunt.”’
Book II., xlvi., p. 440, You know that Pair which were taken
up into Heaven, and placed among the brightest Stars for their
rare constancy and fidelity one to the other : you know also they
are put among the fixed Stars, not the errairices, to shew there must
be no inconstancy in love. Navigators steer their course by them,
and they are the best friends in working Seas, dark nights, and
distresses of weather ; whence may be inferr’d, that true friends
‘should shine clearest in adversity, in cloudy and doubtful times.
The Pair = Gemini, Castor and~ Pollux, the ‘‘ Grecians Twin” of
‘The Vote, or a Poem-Royal,’ 1. 184. With “‘ among the fixed Stars, not
the erratrices, to show there must be no inconstancy in love’’ compare,
per contra, Owen, * Epigrammata,’ I., Ixvii., 3-4:
Nulla fides Veneri; levis est interque planetas
Ponitur (haud inter sidera fixa) Venus.
Book II., xxxvi., p. 429, My most humble Service to Sir J. St.
eeu isibe Joli 7%
The letter is addressed ‘‘ Zo Sir L. D., in the Tower’? and dated
‘“‘ Fleet, 15 Feb. 1646.”’
Jacobs identifies Sir L. D. with Sir Lewis Dives and Sir J. St. with
Sir J. Strangways, ‘‘ who was in the Tower at this time... and was a
brother-in-law of Sir L. Dives . . . and was captured together with him
at the surrender of Sherborne Castle in 1645.”
So far, so good; but Sir H. V. he says is ‘‘ probably ’’ Sir Harry Vane.
This is exquisitely absurd. A prisoner in the Fleet writes to a Royalist
prisoner-of-war in the Tower and sends his most humble service to his
correspondent’s brother-in-law, a Royalist fellow-prisoner, and to Sir
Harry Vane, the Parliamentary leader in the House of Commons! We
may guess with some “ probability’ that Sir H. V. was the Royalist
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 39
soldier, Sir Henry Vaughan (1587 ?—1659 ?), who was at this date a prisoner
in the Tower, having been captured at the battle of Naseby (14 June,
1645). Sir Henry Vaughan was the 6th son of Walter Vaughan, of Golden
Grove, Carmarthenshire, and a brother of William Vaughan (1577-1641).
See Mr. D. Lleufer Thomas in the D.N.B.
Book II., xlvii., p. 440, [return you those two famous speeches
of the late Q. Elizabeth, with the addition of another from Baudius
at an Embassy here from Holland.
Dominicus Baudius’s * Oratio ad serenissimam Principem Elizabetham
Anghae Reginam’ is included among his * Orationes Quatuor,’ published
at Leyden in 1617. Another of the four was addressed to JamesI. They
are both in the 1650 collection of his Letters and Speeches,
Book ILI., liv., p. 453, In China they have a holy kind of liquor
made of such sort of flowers for ratifying and binding of bargains ;
and having drank thereof, they hold it no less than perjury to
break what they promise.
See Purchas’s ‘ Pilgrimage,’ Part I. (1617), chap. 19, § vii., p. 533,
““'They take their oathes (as here by kissing a booke) with thrice drinking
of a certayne liquor.”’
Book IT., liv., p. 456, In the Country of Provence towards the
Pyrenees, and in Languedoc, there are Wines concustable with
those of Spain.
This is Jacobs’s text, and the word concustible (spelt thus) appears in
his index. The neglect to consult earlier editions is apparent. The
word should be congustable. This obsolete and rare word is explained as
meaning “‘ having a like taste or flavour’”’ by the N.E.D. which quotes
Howell’s letter.
Book IL., lxi., p.483, . : . that glorious and gallant Cavalier
sir W. Raleigh (who lived long enough for his own honour, tho’ not
jor his Country, as it was said of a Roman Consul)... .
_ See Cicero’s Speech, ‘pro M. Marcello,’ 8, 25, ‘“‘Itaque illam tuam
praeclarissimam et sapientissimam vocem invitus audivi: ‘Satis diu vel
naturae vixi vel gloriae.’ Satis, si ita vis, fortasse naturae, addo etiam,
si placet, gloriae, at, quod maximum est, patriae certe parum.”’
Cicero was addressing Julius Cesar.
Book II., lxi., p. 484, Mr. Nath. Carpenter, a learned and
judicious Author, was not in the wrong when he gave this discreet
Character of him [Sir Walter Raleigh]: .. .
“The quotation in the text,’ says Jacobs, ‘“‘is probably from his
Geographie Delineated, 1625.”
ftis. See Book II., chap. xv., page 261 of the 1625 edition. Carpenter
was a Fellow of Exeter College, and this book of his contains one of the
earliest references to the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ :
40 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
‘* All this time as in a fit of phrensy I haue spoken I scarce know what
my selfe: I feare me too much, to, or of, my Country and Vniversity, and
too litle for the present purpose. Now as one suddainly awaked out of
sleep, no otherwise then in a dreame I remember the occasion: We haue
all a semel Insaniuimus, and as a learned man of this Vniversity seemes
to maintaine, no man hath euer had the happines to be exempted from
this imputation: And therefore I hope my Reader will pardon me this
once, if in such a generall concurse and conspiracy of mad men, I some-
times shew myself mad for company.” Ibid., p. 273.
Book II., lxiv., p. 490, Insomuch that you could not make
choice of a fitter ground for a Prisoner, as I am, to pass over,
than of that purple Isle, that Isle of Man you sent me ; which,
as the ingenious Author hath made it, is a far more dainty soil
than that Scarlet Island which lies near the Baltic Sea.
Jacobs does not attempt to explain “that Scarlet Island.’ Is not
Heligoland meant? It has steep red cliffs, and the ‘ Encyclopedia
Britannica’ quotes an old Frisian rhyme:
Gron is dat Land,
Rood is de Kant,
Witt is de Sand,
Dat is de Flagg vun’t hillige Land.
In attending Lord Leicester’s mission to the Court of Denmark in 1632
Howell, we may suppose, had sight of the island. Admiral Pennington’s
Log which Jacobs prints on pp. 678-9 (Supplement xxvii) has the entry
for Sept. 17-:
‘“ About 7 a clock in the morninge we had sight of Holbike Land
[Heligoland].”’
Book I1-, Ixxii., p. 499:
To Sir Tho. Luke, Knight.
SIR,
Had you traversed all the world over ... you could not —
have lighted upon a choicer piece of Woman-kind for your Wife ;
the Earth could not have afforded a Lady, that by her discretion
and sweetness could better quadrate with your dispositions. As
I heartily congratulate your happiness in this particular, so L
would desire you to know, that I did no ill offices towards the
advancement of the work, upon occasion of some discourse with
my Lord George of Rutland not long before at Hambledon.
Jacobs, referring to Notes and Queries, Third Series, vol. vu., p. 116,
rightly points out that ‘‘ Luke ”’ is a misprint of the first edition for Lake.
His note, however, that Sir Thomas’s wife was ‘“‘ Mary, daughter of Sir
W. Ruther, Lord Mayor of London (Wood, Fasti, i., 261), but H. could
not have been old enough at his marriage,’ together with his note on
Book I., Sect. 5, xxv., p. 276, also addressed to Sir Thomas Lake, ‘proves
conclusively that he has fallen into the extraordinary error of confounding
Sir Thomas Lake the younger, knighted on June 8, 1617 (W. A. Shaw,
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 41
‘The Knights of England,’ vol. i1., 163), with his father, King James’s
Secretary of State from 1616 to 1619. We may grant that these letters
swarm with chronological inexactitudes and that great part was concocted
subsequently to the alleged dates ; but what possible motive could Howell
have had for publishing what was professedly a letter of congratulation
on the wedding of a well-known man that took place when he himself was
a child ? Further, for claiming a share at these tender years in having
brought about the match ? and, as a crowning act of absurdity, for praising
the ‘‘ discretion and sweetness’ of a woman who had been notoriously
convicted of slander and forgery ?
The relationship of the younger Sir Thomas’s wife to the Manners
family obviously explains Howell’s claims to have furthered the match
in conversation with my Lord George of Rutland.
What seems to be a curious error about the elder Sir Thomas Lake has
‘gained some currency. J. S. Hawkins, in his edition (1787, p. xxiv) of
George Ruggle’s famous Latin comedy, [gnoramus, played before James
I. at Cambridge in 1615, gives a list of the characters, in which the part
of Trico is assigned to Mr. Lake of Clare Hall, and Lake is described as
‘« afterwards secretary of state.’’ This statement is repeated by Mullinger
in his History of the University of Cambridge, i1., 541. Sir Sidney Lee
in his D.N.B. notice of the father thinks this very doubtful, but adds,
‘‘the actor is more likely to have been Sir Thomas’s son.”’
What ground is there for either of these identifications? A Mr.
William Lake, who was a Fellow of Clare in 1619, is mentioned in Ruggle’s
Will (Hawkins, wt supra, p. xcvii), and Professor J. E. B. Mayor in his
note on p. 12 of the ‘ Life of Nicholas Ferrar by his Brother,’ ‘‘ Mr. Lake,
Mr. Ruggle, and other of the fellows,’’ writes ‘‘ William Lake, who acted
T'rico, when Ignoramus was represented before James I., March 8, 1614-5,”’
with a reference to Baker’s MS. X. 156, to which Hawkins also refers.
Is this William Lake the same as — Lakes whose answer (in English and
Latin rhyme) to Bishop Corbet’s poem on King James’ visit to Cambridge
is printed in Corbet’s Poems (1807) and in Cooper’s ‘ Annals of Cambridge,’
vol. ii1., pp. 79-82 ? This certainly seems a “‘ probable ’’ identification.
Book III., viii., p. 525, The Goths forbore to destroy the
Libraries of the Greeks and Italians, because Books should keep
them still soft, simple, or too cautious in warlike Affairs.
See Burton, ‘Anat. of Melancholy,’ 1, 2, 3, 15. ‘“‘ And Patritius
therefore in the institution of Princes, would not have them to be great
students. For (as Machiavel holds) Study weakens their bodies, dulls
the spirits, abates their strength and courage; and good Scholars are
never good Souldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, when his
Countrey-men came into Greece, and would have burned all their books,
he cried out against it, by all means they should not doe it, leave them
that plague, which in time will consume all their vigor, and martiall spirits.”
Burton cites in his margin, Gaspar Ens Thesaur. Polit. Apoteles. 31.
Graecis hanc pestem relinquite, quae dubium non est, quin brevi omnem ws
vigorem ereptura Martiosque spiritus exhaustura sit. Vtad arma tractanda
plané inhabiles futurt sint.
See ‘Tesoro Politico,’ La Parte seconda, Francof. 1611, p. 7, ‘An
42 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
litterarum studia militiam eneruent.’ Burton had shghtly compressed
and altered the latter part of his quotation.
Book III., xiii., p. 537, The freshest News here is, that those
Heart-burnings and Fires of Civil Commotions which you left
behind you in France, cover’d over with thin Ashes for the Time,
are broken out again.
Howell was very likely recollecting Horace, Odes II.,i., 1, 7, 8:
Motum ex Metello consule civicum
Tractas et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.
Book IIT., xxiii., p. 548, The Roman Law, which the Decemvira
made, is yet extant in the twelve Tables, Qua fruges incantassent,
penis danto: They who shall inchant the fruit of the Harth, let
them be punish’d [penis should be penas, and incantassent for
—int is due to a faulty text of Pliny].
See Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviu., 2 (4), 17, 18, * Quid ? non et legum
ipsarum in duodecim tabulis verba sunt: qui fruges incantassit, et alibi:
qui malum carmen incantassit ?”’
Book III., xxiii., p. 548, The Imperial ee is known by every
Civilian; Hi cum hosies nature sint, supplicio afficiantur : These,
meaning Witches, because they are enemies to Nature, let them
be punish ‘d.
Compare the ‘Corpus Juris Civilis,’ Cod. ix., 18, 9, “‘ Quicumque male-
ficiorum labe pollutum audierit deprehenderit occupaverit, ilico ad pub-
licum protrahat et iudiciorum oculis communis hostem salutis ostendat.”
Book IV., iv., p. 558:
To my Lord Marquis of Hartford.
To Jacobs’s formal identification of the above with Wiliam Seymour, ©
lith Earl and Ist Marquis, who became Duke of Somerset at the Restor-
ation, a touch of human interest might be added by reminding the reader
that it was this William Seymour who in 1610 married the unfortunate
Arabella Stuart.
Book IV., v., stanza 6, lines 3 and 4, p. 564:
And lose a hundred pound at Gleek,
Or be a Saint when we should sleep.
This is the reading of the 1737 edition which Jacobs followed. What
meaning he supposed the second line to have is not clear; perhaps, to
keep vigil. But the first edition of Book IV. (1655) has *‘ Or be at Sant,”
which is obviously right. The obsolete Cent with sixteenth and seven-
teenth century forms, saunt, saint, cente, and seventeenth century sent,
was the name of ‘‘an old game at cards, said to have been of Spanish
origin, and to have resembled piquet, with one hundred as the point that
won the game” (N.E.D.).
tS eae es SRT ae ey os”
ee ee ae acne
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE 43
Book IV., vii., p. 567, But what shall I say of Q. Artemisia,
| who had an Urnful of her Husband MWawsolus’s Ashes in her
' closet, whereof she would take down a dram every morning
' next her heart, saying that her Body was the fittest place to be
a Sepulchre to her dear Husband... ?
| See Valerius Maximus IV., vi., Ext. 1, ““. . . cum ipsa Mausoli vivum
- ac spirans sepulcrum fieri concupierit eorum testimonio, qui illam extincti
_ ossa potioni aspersa bibisse tradunt.”’
| Also Aulus Gellius, X., xvii., 3, ‘‘ Artemisia, luctu atque desiderio
_ mariti flagrans uxor, ossa cineremque eius mixta odoribus contusaque in
| faciem pulveris aquae indidit ebibitque.”
| Book IV., vii., p. 568, That incestuous custom they have in
_ China, that one should marry his own Sister, and in default of
one, the next akin, I utterly dislike.
See Purchas’s ‘ Pilgrimage,’ Part I., Bk. IV., chap. xix., § 7, p. 531
(1617), *‘ They [the Chinois] heed not degrees of affinitie or consanguinitie,
so this surname differ, and therefore marry in the Mothers kindred be it
almost neuer so neere.”’
Book IV., vii., p. 569, Therefore that Wiseacre deserves of
all other to wear a toting horn.
“TYoting’’ means protruding, projecting, sticking out. The present
passage is cited by the N.E.D.
Book IV., vii., p. 571, Witness the tale of Hans Boobikin, a
rich Boor’s Son.
The case of Hans Boobikin is that of the young gentleman in ‘ Tristram
Shandy,’ Book IV., chap. xxix., ad fin., and Selden’s ‘Table Talk,’ Ixxii.,
(‘The King’), sect. 2.
Book IV., Xxxix., p. 626, It [this World] is but a vale of
Troubles.
For the figurative use of “‘ vale of adversity, vale of misery,” &c.,
and for examples of ‘‘vale’’ denoting the world regarded as a place of
trouble, sorrow, misery, or weeping, see the N.E.D. under Vale (the first
substantive), 2. Coverdale’s rendering of Psalm 83, 6, ‘‘which goinge
thorow the vale of mysery, use it for a well,’’ may have helped to give
currency to the phrase.
Mrs. Gamp was much enamoured of this figurative use. H.g. chapt.
99 66
xix. of ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ ‘‘‘Ah! what a wale of grief!’ cried Mrs.
Gamp, possessing herself of the bottle and glass.”
Chapter xxv., “‘. . . the last Monday evening fortnight as ever dawned
upon this Piljian Projiss of a mortal wale.”
Chapter xl., ‘‘‘ Which shows,’ said Mrs. Gamp, casting up her eyes,
“what a little way you’ve travelled into this wale of life, my dear young
creetur !’”’
And (best of all) chapter xlix., ‘‘ ‘He was born into a wale,’ said Mrs.
A.S.—VOL. VI. ; D
44 JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE
Gamp, with philosophical coolness; ‘and he lived in a wale; and must
take the consequences of sech a sitiwation.’”’
Other examples occur in chapters xxix. and xlvi.
Supplement, Document XIV., p. 661:
To JupaGE RumMsEy.
In his first note on this letter of Howell which appeared at the beginning
of Rumsey’s ‘Organon Salutis,’ Jacobs says that the Judge “‘ was an old
College chum of H.’s.”’ Another reckless shot !
We are referred to p. xxvi. of the Introduction, but the Rumsey there
mentioned is Edward Rumsey of Jesus College. The Judge’s Christian
name was Walter. He was several years older than Howell and had
matriculated on Oct. 17, 1600, as a member of Gloucester Hall. He was
admitted at Gray’s Inn on May 16, 1603, and called to the Bar on June 3,
1608. He was certainly no “ College chum” of Howell’s. The letter is
very carelessly printed in Jacobs’s edition. Words are dropped in several
places and close to the end Compatriot has been turned into Companion.
Supplement XIV., p. 662, Touching Coffee, I concurre with
them in opinion, who hold it to be that black broth which was
us’d of old in Lacedemon, whereof the Poets sing ; Surely it must
needs be salutiferous, because so many sagacious, and the wittiest
sort of Nations use it so much; as they who have conversed
with Shasires and Turbants doe well know.
For the opinion that coffee was the Spartan black broth see Burton,
‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ 2, 5, 1, 5, in a passage that was first inserted
in the 4th edition (1632):
“The Turkes have a drinke called Coffa (for they vse no wine) so
named of a berry as blacke as soot, and as bitter, (like that blacke drinke
which was in vse amongst the Lacedemonians and perhaps the same)
which they sip still of, and sup as warme as they can suffer.”
On Shastres Jacobs has this note: ‘‘ Shastres, or holy wisdom of the |
Hindoos, the four Shastras or sacred books.”’
This is sheer nonsense. What Howell wrote is: ‘‘ Shashes and Tur-
bants.”’ See the quotations under sash in the ‘Stanford Dictionary of
Anglicised Words and Phrases,’ e.g. from Sandys’s ‘ Travels,’ ‘“ All of
them weare on their heads white Shashes and Turbants.”
Payne Fisher’s ‘ Encomium,’ lines 4—6, p. 688 :
Nempe novum Monidum Proles Montaccola fontem
Ostendit, sacrasq; aperit Tritonidis arces
Howelli Generosa Domus.
I have already noted (Aber. Studies, vol. v., p. 72) that ‘‘ Montaccola ”’
does not indicate the particular place in Wales where Howell was born,
as Jacobs thought, but has the general meaning of ‘‘ Welsh,” ‘‘ Monti-
colia’’ being used for Wales in ‘ Dodona’s Grove,’ p. 46. I have since
noticed a similar use of ‘‘ Monticola’’ in a poem by E. Holdsworth of
Magdalen College, Oxford, dated 1709. It is entitled ‘ Muscipula,’ and
JAMES HOWELL ONCE MORE } 45
describes how Taffi the Welshman invents a mouse-trap because of the
great destruction of cheese by mice. The piece begins:
Monticolam Britonem, qui primus vincula Muri
Finxit, et ingenioso occlusit carcere furem,
Lethalesque dolos, et inextricabile fatum,
Musa refer.
‘Selecta Poemata Anglorum Latina,’
edited by Edward Popham,
2nd ed. 1779, p. 164.
Howell’s Letters have hitherto fared badly at the hands of
their professed expounders. In the notes appended to Dent’s
three-volume edition Jacobs’s blunders have started a new life.
The compiler reproduces, for example, his misstatements about
the Markeraf of Ansbach (on I., 2, ix.), Mr. Vaughan of the
Golden Grove (I., 3, xix.), James Howard (I., 6, xxvii.), and
several others. These he has reinforced with errors of his own.
Grosteste is said (on II., v.)to have been Bishop of London. We
are told (on III., 1.) that Louis Senault’s L’ Usage des Passions
was translated by the Duke (!) of Monmouth.
He writes of Joseph Hall (on I., 2, iv.) that he “‘ became later
first Bishop of Norwich.”
_ Howell deserves something better than this.1 I only wish
that I had the time and knowledge (and a forthcoming publisher)
that I might do something for him myself. Meanwhile I hope
that a competent editor in the future may profit by these con-
tributions. I shall not grudge him the satisfaction of discovering
my own mistakes.
EDWARD BENSLY.
1'But Reviewers seem easily satisfied. In a short notice by the
Athenceum, July 16, 1892, we are told that Jacobs’s “labour and learn-
ing... are worthy of warm recognition,” that “he has been at pains
to give a correct text,” that “‘the annotations are excellent,” and that
“his work as an editor is, as a rule, marked by learning, good sense, and
carefulness.”’
The writer of a four-column review in the Academy, on October 15 of
the same year, pronounces the notes to be “ learned and self-restrained,”’
assures us that “a pretty rigorous examination has only revealed a very
few positive mistakes,’ and maintains that Jacobs’s edition of the
Epistolae Ho-Hlianae ‘‘ should by all means find a place . . . with such
monuments of erudition’? as the Cambridge Shakespeare, Masson’s
Milton, and Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell.
Ne
Ni
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
PART I
It has long been recognised that Shakespeare felt considerable
sympathy for the fate of Elizabeth’s unlucky favourite—the
Earl of Essex. Sir A. W. Ward in his history of English Dramatic
_Itterature calls attention to several facts which are very signi-
ficant in this connection. There is, for instance, the famous
reference in ‘ Henry V’ in the Chorus before Act V. to the expedi-
tion of Essex in the year 1599:
‘As, by a lower but a loving likelihood,
Were now the general of our gracious empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit,
To welcome him.’
There is no other political reference in Shakespeare so definite
and unmistakable as this and it has the additional interest of
being strictly contemporary.
Sir A. W. Ward finds also references to Essex in the play of
‘Henry VIII’ which he considers to have been composed (as is
generally agreed) in the reign of James I and probably among
Shakespeare’s latest plays; it was almost certainly written in
collaboration with Fletcher. The last words of Essex on the
scaffold, “when my life and bodie shall part, send thy blessed
angels, which may receive my soule and convey it to thy joys
in heaven,” are, with great fullness of detail, worked up in
Buckingham’s speech on his way to execution (Act II, Se. i.).
The whole character and fate of Buckingham are obviously
intended to mirror the character and fate of Essex and reveal
the strongest possible sympathy for the unhappy favourite.
The last words of Essex seem to have deeply impressed
Shakespeare and are also quoted, as Malone long since pointed
out, in the words of Horatio over the dying Hamlet (V, ii.) :
‘Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’
: 47
48 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
Most important, however, of all the Essex connections with
Shakespeare is that of the play of ‘ Richard II.’ One of the counts
in the fatal indictment against Essex was that he and his friends
had caused the acting of this play the night before the conspiracy.
The company who performed it are certainly identified with
Shakespeare’s company by the fact that their manager—Augus-
tine Phillips—was cited to appear and give evidence.
The play acted was ‘ Richard II.’ and there can be no reason-
able doubt that it was Shakespeare’s play of that name: the
deposition scene does not seem to have occurred in the older
versions and was probably added for this occasion. The con-
spirators were accused (in the course of the Essex trial itself)
of having desired to treat Queen Elizabeth in the same way as
Richard II had been treated: namely by deposing and after-
wards murdering her. The play of ‘ Richard Il’ was performed
some forty times in all in London during the period of the
conspiracy and trial and there is not the slightest doubt (from
statements made in the course of the trial itself), that these
performances were intended to excite sympathy with Essex.
John Nichols records that the queen showed the greatest
anger on the subject of this play and identified herself with the
king. ‘Her Majesty fell upon the reign of Richard II, saying,
‘‘T am Richard II, know ye not that ?”’’
And again: ‘ Her Majesty said: ‘“‘ He that will forget God
will also forget his benefactors; this tragedy was played 40
times in open streets and houses.” ’
Shakespeare’s company fell into disgrace on account of their
connection with the Essex conspiracy ; they were compelled to
travel in the provinces while their position as court favourites
was taken by the ‘Children of Paul’s.’ ‘ Hamlet,’ as Mr. Boas
and others have shown, was, in all probability, both composed
and acted during the period when Shakespeare’s company were
travelling and in disgrace and both the travelling and the disgrace
are definitely alluded to in the play itself (II, ii.) :
Ham. What players are these ?
Ros. Kven those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians
of the city. :
Ham. How chances it that they travel? their residence, both
in reputation and profit, was better both ways.
Ros. I think their inhibition comes by means of the late inno-
vation.
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 49
Ham. Do they hold the same estimation as they did when I
was in the city ? Are they so followed ?
Ros. No, indeed, they are not.
Ham. How comes it? Do they grow rusty ?
Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there
is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of
the question, and are most tyrannically clapped for it ; these are now
the fashion.
Now the ‘little eyases’ or “ young hawks’ to whom Rosen-
crantz refers are very generally supposed to have been the children
of Paul’s and the above is Shakespeare’s reference to the disgrace
of his company and their temporary supplanting by the children.
Under these circumstances and considering the fact that
‘Hamlet’ itself appears to have been written while Shakes-
peare’s company were in disgrace and travelling in the provinces,
we might very naturally expect to find some connection between
Eissex and the play of ‘Hamlet,’ and such a connection has, in
fact, been not infrequently suspected. Thus Mr. J. T. Foard
in 1889, and Professor Conrad (in Preussische Jahrbiicher) 1895,
both contended that Hamlet himself was drawn largely from
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Mr. Abbott, in his book on
Bacon and Essex, did not go so far as this; but he believed that
the instability of Hamlet’s character was largely suggested by
the instability of Essex in the last years of his life.
In a book of mine entitled Hamlet and the Scottish Succession
(1920) I examined the question in the light of a good deal of new
evidence and arrived at the conclusion that the play of ‘ Hamlet ’
did, indeed, grow out of the Essex conspiracy ; but that the
character of Hamlet was not to be taken as a portrait of any one
person; but contained large elements drawn from the person-
ality and story of James I and also from the personality and
story of Essex. |
Since publishing my book I have come across additional
material which corroborates the view originally expressed and
forms an important supplement; but at the same time sheds
an entirely new light, hitherto unsuspected by me or, I think,
by anyone else, on certain portions of the play.
I propose to give a summary (it can hardly be more) of the
new material and to show how it does almost inevitably suggest
a fresh and most interesting view of certain portions of the play
of * Hamlet.’
50 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
We may observe in the first place that the experience of Hamlet
does show in many respects a close parallel to the experience of
Essex.
The father of Essex—Sir Walter Devereux—whom Elizabeth
created Earl of Essex, was one of the most admired and honoured
men of his generation ; no man of his age held a higher reputa-
tion for honour, probity and patriotic service; in that most
difficult field for the Elizabethans—Ireland—he won the respect
of both Irish and English; he sacrificed his fortune most
generously in the effort to make peace in Ireland and proved
himself at once a statesman and a soldier.
Unfortunately for Walter, Earl of Essex, his beautiful and
gifted wife happened to excite the attention of the Earl of
Leicester. So far as public reputation was concerned, Leicester
was the exact antithesis of Essex; LHlizabeth herself appears
to have feared Leicester during the latter years of his life; he
was dangerously powerful and in many ways insolent; he was
extraordinarily licentious in his attitude to women and scandal
accused him of several murders by the meanest of all methods—
poisoning.
One thing is absolutely certain, that people who were in the
way of Leicester had a habit of disappearing from life at pre-
cisely the moment likely to be most convenient to him.
It was this formidable person who fell in love with Lady
Essex and seduced her. The Earl of Essex was about to return
home from Ireland to exact, as every one believed, a reckoning
from Leicester, when he was suddenly taken ill and died of a
severe illness which the doctors suspected to be due to poisoning. —
He himself believed that he had been poisoned by the agents
of Leicester and said so very candidly to his attendants. The
death of a man so beloved, under such circumstances, excited
the greatest rage and indignation and was, almost invariably,
set down to Leicester’s account.
The death of the Earl of Essex was very generally supposed
to have been due to his own noble and unsuspicious nature :
thus, in an anonymous work entitled Remarks on the Reign of
Elizabeth (1712) we find a summary to the following effect :
‘He died of a Flux Sep: 224 a.p. 1576 not without suspicion of
poison and was buried at Carmarthen in South Wales. Which Sus-
picion was more augmented by the Earl of Leicester’s marrying his
widow. Thus it was this Noble Earl’s Virtue and Integrity which
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 51
opened the way to his Ruin; he was sincere himself and therefore
was not suspicious of receiving foul play from others; he thought
his own Honesty a sufficient Security against all the ill designs that
any man could harbour against him, and by this Means, neglecting
his Guard, he laid himself open to the Plots and Contrivances of
the Envious, when he was not Apprehensive that he had one Enemy
in the World; but too late he found he had many and one who was
the Cause of all his Misfortunes, lay in his Bosom, I mean his Wife,
whose beauty Leicester admired and married her while her former
husband was scarce cold in his grave.’
Here surely we have a very close parallel with © Hamlet,’
the murder of the nobly unsuspicious man by means of poison
and the hasty marriage of his widow to the murderer.
- More important for our purpose, because strictly contem-
porary, is the work entitled Lescester’s Commonwealth. It is
anonymous and it cannot be considered as a historical document
for it is mainly composed of scandals concerning Leicester, put
together without sifting and without examination ; nevertheless,
it is very valuable as giving the view of Leicester’s character
which was certainly entertained by a large majority of his con-
temporaries.
His character, as depicted in this work, is almost exactly
that of the Claudius of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’; the unknown
author describes Leicester as ‘ cruel, vindictive, expert, potent,
subtil, fine and Fox-like.’
He continues :
‘For first, his Lordship had a special Fortune, that when he
desired any Woman’s favour then what Person soever standeth in
his way hath the luck to die quickly for the finishing of his desire.’
The author describes how Lady Sheffield’s husband died
quickly and proceeds : |
‘The like good chance he had in the death of my Lord of Essex
and that at a time most fortunate for his purpose: for when he was
coming home from Ireland with intent to revenge himself upon my
Lord of Leicester for begetting his wife with child in his absence . . .
my Lord of Leicester, hearing thereof, wanted not a friend or two
to accompany the Deputy .. . so he died by way of an extreme
Flux, caused by an Italian receipt (as all his friends are well assured)
the maker whereof was a Surgeon (as is believed) that then was newly
come to my lord from Italy, a cunning man and sure in operation.
*. . . Neither must you marvel though all these died of outward
Diseases for this is the excellence of the Italian art who can make a
man die in what manner or show of sickness you will.
52 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
‘,... The case of the Earl of Essex moved me more than all
the rest; for that he was a noble gentleman, a great advancer of
true Religion, a Patron to many Preachers and Students.
‘... Wherefore in this matter, there is no doubt at all though
most extreme, vile and intolerable Indignity, that such a Man should
be so openly murthered without punishment.’
The writer accuses Leicester of being as a sensualist no less
dreadful and unrestrained :
‘His Concupiscence and his violence do jointly run together. . . .
Neither holdeth he any Rule in his Lusts, besides only the Motion
and Suggestion of his own Sensuality: Kindred or Affinity or any
other Bond of Consanguinity, Religion, Honour or Honesty taketh
no place in his outrageous appetite, what he best liketh that he taketh
as lawful for the time: So that Kinswoman, Allie; Friend, Wife or
Daughter . . . must yield to his desire. ... He is more libidinous
than ever, more given to procure love in others by Conjuring, Sorcery
and other such means. ... My lord’s nature is bold and violent
where it feareth no resistance (as all Cowardly Natures are by kind)
and where any Difficulty or Danger appeereth, there more ready to
attempt all by Art, Subtilty, Treason and Treachery. ... He is
crafty and subtle to deceive and ingenious to wickedness; and as
for Valour he hath as much as a Mouse, his Magnanimity is base
Sordity, his Liberality rapine, his friendship plain fraud .. . he
maketh as much account of a thousand oaths as hens do of cackling
. if he will swear on the Bible than is he certainly swearing false
. an observer said that in a very short space of time he observed.
him to be forsworn sixteen times.’
This is, of course, exactly the character ascribed to Claudius
both by the Ghost and by Hamlet. We have the treacherous
and cowardly nature which gets rid of noble foes by means of
poisoning ; we have the methods of poisoning compared by
Hamlet to Italian methods, for the parallel which he shows in
the play dealing with Gonzago’s death is an Italian one ; we have
the poison so subtle that it simulates natural causes—a snake-
bite ; we have the terrible licentiousness which extends itself
even to incest ; we have the false oaths and the incessant trickery.
We have the wife first seduced and married by the poisoner
immediately after her husband’s death.
Hamlet complains that his mother remarried within a month
of his father’s death (I, ii.) :
‘A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears :—why she, even she—
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 53
O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn’d longer.’
The Ghost describes Claudius as being both incestuous and
adulterous yet, like Leicester, endowed with wit and complains
that this man seduced his wife (I, v.):
‘Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,—
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce !—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.’
The Ghost describes the treacherous and subtle method by
which he was poisoned, a method which simulated a natural
death (I, v.):
‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused.’
Hamlet repeatedly expresses the same view of his uncle’s
character (II, ii.) :
‘bloody, bawdy villain !
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.’
And again (III, iv.):
‘A murderer and a villain ;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precédent lord ; a vice of kings ;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
_ That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket.’
The reputation of Leicester, as we have said, survived his
death a long time and the curious anonymous poem called
‘ Leycester’s Ghost,’ published in 1641, repeats the same accusa-
tions as in Leicester’s Commonwealth.
The poem speaks of his brilliant wit and eloquence, of how
he assumed the principal position in the state and ruled it like
a king, of the poisoners he employed and of his dissimulation.
‘My braine had wit, my tongue had eloquence
Fit to discourse and tell a courtly tale:
My presence portly, brave, magnificent,
My words imperious, stout, substantiall.
54 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
Lopus and Julio were my chiefe Physitians, ©
Men that were cunning in the art to kill,
Good Scholars, yet of passing ill condition,
Such as would rid men’s lives yet no blood spill.
I managed all the State, I did Command.
This is a maxime which to you I give,
Men must dissemble or they cannot live.’
Sir John Hayward! repeats the same testimony ; he said
of the Earl of Leicester who was despised by the older nobles as
being a parvenu and a new man:
‘ He was the true heir of his father’s hatred against the Nobility
and of his Subtilty to dissemble it. And afterwards for Lust and
Cruelty the monster of the Court. And as he was apt to hate, so he
was a true executioner of his hatred; yet rather by Cunning than
by onyen dealing, as wanting rather Courage than Wit.
It is suggested that he died . . . by Poison . . . in which
he was himself a rare Artist.
‘ He was too well seen in the principles of Nicolas Machiavel
the Florcntnre and the politics of Cesar Borgia.’
The supposed Italian origin of Leicester’s vices is noteworthy,
giving, as we have already said, an additional reason for the
Italian parallel in Hamlet’s play (II, ii):
‘ He poisons him i the garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago :
the story is extant, and writ in choice Italian ; and you shall see anon
how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s whe.
I turn now to the parallels between the Earl of Essex himself
and the character of Hamlet.
The second earl, Robert Devereux, the favourite of Elizabeth,
was himself a man of most versatile and attractive character ;
there must have been something particularly sympathetic about
him, for it is very seldom that history gives us cognisance of a
monarch’s favourite who was also beloved and ardently beloved
by a whole nation, and this was certainly the case with Robert
Devereux.
During the later years of Elizabeth’s life Essex rivalled and
even surpassed Raleigh in the Queen’s personal favour ; but,
whereas Raleigh was exceedingly unpopular with the nation as
a whole, Essex was very popular and indeed almost adored by
1 Observations on the Reign of Elizabeth, 1712.
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 55
every class of the people; he was loved by the soldiers, who
regarded him as the model of what a soldier ought to be and the
greatest captain of his age and who compared him to Cesar and
Alexander, and his death to the death of Alexander in youth ;
he was adored by the poets, for he was the generous patron
of men of letters and himself a poet; he was adored by the
dramatists, for he took the greatest interest in their work,
attended their rehearsals and found his favourite amusement in
the drama; he was also believed to have used the drama for
political purposes.
Hssex again was the leader of the Puritans ; he was deeply
interested in theology and philosophy and a lover of scholars.
Most important of all, perhaps, as explaining his almost
universal popularity, was the fact that he was the leader of the
anti-Spanish party, the party who did not desire a peace with
Philip IT; but who believed that the freedom of Europe could
not be secured except by the overthrow of Spain.
In addition to all this Essex had the charm of great per-
sonal beauty, of keen wit and of the most winning courtesy of
manner.
Essex claimed descent from Edward III; he bore among his
titles that of Hereford which had once before (in the person of
Henry IV) led to the Crown, and his popularity was such that
the Spanish and English State Papers repeatedly allude to the
possibility of his becoming heir to the crown. He was accused
at his trial of having desired to make himself King of England
by the help of Tyrone; the accusation does not appear to have
been true ; but he was found guilty and put to death mainly on
that part of the indictment.
What is absolutely certain is that, during the last years of
Elizabeth, he was the person most prominent in the eyes of the
nation, occupying a position not unlike that of heir to the crown
and, beyond comparison, the most beloved man of his day.
He was more even than this. He was the person, above all
others, whom the Elizabethans believed to represent most fully
the genius of their age, to be a sort of incarnation of Elizabethan
England: his high sense of honour, his passion for fame, his
courage and contempt for death, his generosity, his versatile
talents as soldier, statesman, scholar, wit, poet and patron of
the drama, even the growing melancholy of his later years, all
combined to make him seem to his own age their ‘ beau ideal’ ;
56 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
again and again they term him the ‘mirror of honour,’ the
“model of gentlemen.’ |
Not only are there numbers of the most impassioned pane-
gyrics which were written upon him during his lifetime; but,
even after his death, the most impassioned laments for him were
published, anonymously because the authors dared not append
their names ; but expressing the utmost sincerity of grief.
No event in the whole reign of Elizabeth excited more general
sorrow, compassion and dismay than the death of Essex on the
scaffold, and the piteous ballad of ‘ Essex’ Last Good Night’
was published in the streets while his body was hardly cold.
Nor would the majority of the people ever believe that he
was really guilty ; it was known that he had many enemies in
the palace, that incessant underhand intrigues had been con-
ducted against him by the Cecils and Raleigh, and he was believed
to have been entrapped and led to his doom by his own unsus-
piciousness and generosity.
Essex had always known himself unsuited for a courtier and
in his youth was only brought to Court and kept at Court by
the commands of Leicester and the Queen ; again and again he
desired to retire from Court and to dedicate himself to study ;
the real passion of his youth was for scholarship and, as an ardent
Protestant, he desired to study Protestant theology ; again and
again he requested permission to be allowed to travel abroad or
to be allowed to retire to his estate of Lampsie in South Wales. —
Anthony Bacon and he himself in his own letters, continually
speak of his desire to travel in order to study and also of his desire
for retirement. In his youth he hesitated between the profession
of a scholar and the profession of arms; the student’s life and
the soldier’s life attracted him almost equally, but for the
courtier’s life he had no taste. Numerous observers, both
English and foreign, speak of the unfitness of Essex for the —
Court: he disdained its frivolities, he despised its insincerities
and affectations, he was dangerously candid ; he was especially —
given to the ridicule and contempt of old Lord Burleigh whom
he despised as a dotard. At Court Essex was often melancholy,
restless and impatient and longing to escape. His melancholy
increased upon him till, during his last years, it combined with
the troubles in Ireland and the intrigues against him at Court,
to drive him almost to insanity. Hssex’s own letters, during his
later years, show the instability which had become the chief
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 57
fault of his character, the continual vacillations of his will, his
conviction that he was surrounded by enemies and his intense
and growing weariness of life; the continual comments of
observers show that this melancholy, interrupted by bursts of
intense and spasmodic energy, frequently suggested insanity.
In all this the resemblance to Hamlet is marked and close
and it extends even to minute details. The Essex liveries, for
instance, were black, and Essex and his followers continually
appeared at Court in ‘inky hue’; so attired Essex and his
foliowers must have stood out among the brilliant throng as
Hamlet stands out at the Court of Denmark.
But I proceed to quote some of the more interesting parallels.
Essex is described as follows in the poem of ‘ Polyhymnia,’
published in 1590:
‘Young Essex, that thrice honourable earl ;
Yclad in mighty arms of mourners’ hue,
And plume as black as is the raven’s wing.
His staves were such, or of such hue at least
As are those banner staves that mourners bear,
And all his company in funeral black.’
We may compare this with the black-clad figure of Hamlet
at the Court of Denmark (I, ii.) :
‘’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black.’
In the entertainment given to Elizabeth at Oxford in 1592
we find Latin poems in honour of the different members of her
retinue and one of the most enthusiastic is upon Essex: he is
praised particularly for his learning and scholarship and as the
admirer of learned men, himself more learned than they. With
scholarship he combines also the genius of a soldier :
* Proximus accubuit reliquis Essexius heros,
Nobilis et sapiens, superans juvenilibus annis
Qui doctos homines miratur, doctior ipse
In bello pugnax, vir strenuus.’
The Earl of Essex’s own entertainment presented to the Queen
in 1595 shows him hesitating as between the contemplative lite
58 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
represented. by the hermit, a warlike life represented by the
soldier and the statesman’s life.
‘England’s Address to Her Three Daughters ’ by Polemanteia
in 1595 is dedicated to the Harl of Essex and praises him in the
following terms :
‘ Sing of warres and of learned valour: of Mars’ conquering honor :
of the Court’s Loadstarre : of England’s Scipio . . . of Fame’s glorie :
of the Muses’ eldest sonne: of Art’s ornament: of Virtue’s miracle :
of Religion’s champion .. . of thrice honourable noble Essex .. .
he was sometime thy care (noble Cambridge), thou now art become
his.’ |
Essex himself describes his own temperament in a paper
addressed to Anthony Bacon in 1597 and speaks of his love of
books and of retirement :
‘First for my affection; in nature it was indifferent to books
and arms and was more inflamed with the love of knowledge than
with the love of fame; witness my contemplative retirement in
Wales, and my bookishness from my childhood: and now if time,
reason and experience have taught me to wish that unto myself which
is best for myself, what should I not wish rather than martial employ-
ment ...in which I have subjected myself ... to all kinds of
wants, discontentments of undisciplined and unruly multitudes.’
A very interesting contemporary poem is the one entitled :
‘Honours Fame in Triumph Riding’ or the Life and Death of
the Late Honourable Earl of Essex, 1604. :
This being written after Essex had died on the scaffold, cannot
have been inspired by any motives of flattery and is all the
more valuable as showing what his contemporaries really thought
of him:
‘Whilst breath gave strength unto his warlike arme
He did uphold the pomp of England’s state :
He strove to shield his native soyle from harme,
And did the pride of proudest foes abate.
Even from his youth, till years of riper strength,
In vertues schoole, a studious life he spent :
His Honor’s thoughts, desir’d and gained at length
Minerva’s food, the sweet of his content :
Apollo deckt his Muse in silver shrine,
And wrapt in gould his goulden thoughts divine ;
Honour’s wonder, wisedom’s mirror,
In his brave breast lived together.
eee Oe Oe eee ~
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 59
he deserv’d as much
As ever any noble Conqueror did,
His Conquering sword was with such mercie led :
In field, in court, in peace, in war he stood
Inviron’d round about with honor and desart.
It’s false to say hee would a King have bin:
From faith and honour he made no such digression ;
His heart was cleare from such so foule a sin,
He always stood for this approved Succession.
Dead Earle, amidst bright Angel’s wings,
Essex thy heavenly spirit sings.’
The author goes on to dwell upon the personal virtues and
| graces of the Earle :
| ‘He fetcht no rules from hel borne Machiavel,
His learning was divine Philosophy.
His person, as his virtues rare,
Might Purchase with the world compare.
His Wisedome, Learning and his Eloquence,
His well grac’t speech and flowing utterance,
His quicke conceit and Wisedome’s comprehence
| All these rare Gifts his honour did advance,
: And made him live the Mirrour of our time ;
Beyond whose worth, no worthier step could clime ;
God and Nature did consent
To make his Substance excellent.
He was not proud, but humble, courteous, meeke.
. Hor him who did a souldier love
His death a souldier’s griefe doth move;
His mother England having slaine her sonne
The world will say it was unkindly done.’
Among other elegiac poems upon Essex we may quote that
of C. Best which also praises his patronage of scholars and
soldiers :
‘Schollers and Soldiers both, were to him bound’:
and his simplicity :
* All his life’s morne he like a Romaine led.’
1 James I.
Von. Vi. E
60 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
There is also the epitaph of Robert Pricket :
‘There sleepes great Essex, dearling of mankinde,
Faire Honorslampe, foule Envies pray, Artes fame,
Nature’s pride, Vertues bulwarke, lure of minde,
Wisdome’s flower, Valour’s tower, Fortune’s shame.’
Now here again we certainly have important parallels with
the character of Hamlet. Hamlet also is unwilling to stay at
Court ; he is pre-eminently a scholar and he wishes to leave the
Court in order to study ; he is compelled to remain by Claudius
and the queen, but, though he bows to their wishes, he does so
with the greatest reluctance, and his chief friend and confidant
throughout the play is the scholar Horatio, who is placed at his
side as if to show that Hamlet is lee ee the friend and. patron
of learning.
Moreover, the study Hamlet desired was obviously that of
theology and philosophy, those most congenial to Essex, for
Wittenberg is especially mentioned as the place to which he
wished to go. The king says to him (I, i):
‘For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire :
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin and our son.’
We observe that it is Claudius, the murderer of Hamlet’s
father, who insists upon Hamlet’s remaining at Court, and it was
certainly Leicester, the murderer of Essex’s father, who summoned
Essex from his retirement and his studies to the Court of
Elizabeth.
Hamlet, again, is a soldier as well as a scholar; this aspect of
his character has been very little dwelt upon by commentators,
but it is implied throughout the play. Ophelia describes him
as being possessed of (III, i.):
‘The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,’
and it is especially and particularly as a soldier that Fortinbras
desires to honour Hamlet in his death (V, ii.) :
‘Let four captains |
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage ;
. and, for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.’
|
|
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 61
It is equally obvious that Hamlet is unfitted by nature to be
a courtier; in the scenes with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
ole ii.) and with Osric (V, il.) we are shown unmistakably that
‘Hamlet dislikes and despises the courtier and that his candour
‘cannot endure the courtier’s insincerity. Essex, when angry,
was famous for his stinging mockery and so is Hamlet (V, ii.) :
Ham. Put your bonnet to his right use; ’tis for the head.
Osric. I thank your lordship, it is very hot.
Ham. No, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is northerly.
Osric.. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
Ham. But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my com-
plexion. |
Osric. Exxceedingly, my lord, ’tis very sultry.
In the same way Hamlet shows his utter unfitness for the
courtier’s life by his contempt for Polonius at whom he incessantly
gibes.
At the same time Hamlet is regarded, just as Hssex was, as
the mirror of his age, the man who more than any other sums up
its brilliance and its versatility and who was more admired than
any other.
Ophelia describes him as just such a ‘ beau ideal’ (III, 1.):
‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown !
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers.’
Essex, again, was, as we ane seen, famous for his eloquence
and his poetry, and both gifts Shakespeare gives to Hamlet.
Essex incurred the queen’s displeasure by his devotion to the
drama ; he was certainly on most familiar terms with actors
and took interest in their work and, as one of the counts in the
| fatal indictment reveals, he was supposed to have made a political
| use of the drama; the play involved was Shakespeare’s play of
|‘ Richard IT’ ae the company Shakespeare’s company.
| Now Hamlet also takes a great interest in actors and their
work and makes a political use of the drama and, as has already
been pointed out, the company involved does present the most
| striking parallels to Shakespeare’s company.
| Similarly Hamlet engrosses the centre of the stage and always
seems to fill it as Essex, for the minds of his contemporaries,
| filled the stage of his generation.
|
62 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
More than any other Essex was regarded as the epitome of
his age and certainly Hamlet is the most representative and
-versatile of all Shakespeare’s characters: in his poetry, in his
learning, in his gifts as a soldier, in his eloquence, in his wit and
charm, in his courage, in his generosity, in his high sense of
honour, in his winning personality, in all these Hamlet and
Essex are alike, and they are the Elizabethan age in its quint-
essence.
It is, however, in the last phase of the life of Essex that the
parallels are most interesting and most close. Here again Essex
is truly representative of his age; the nation had no longer its
old decision ; it hesitated, it was in two minds about its destiny,
it was full of vacillations and doubts and the Jacobean melan-
choly was already pervading men’s minds. In the character of
Essex himself there was a curious duality; there is no doubt
that he was very generally recognised as the greatest soldier the
age possessed; he had acquitted himself brilliantly in France
when he assisted Henry of Navarre and still more brilliantly at
Cadiz. His panegyrists were continually extolling him as the
Cesar or the Alexander or the Henry V of his age. But Essex
also suffered from instability of character; he had, all his life,
suffered from fits of depression and melancholy ; in such fits of
depression he would give way to brooding, would develop a
passion for solitude, would be tempted to despair and he, the
successful man of action, would become as if mentally lamed
and incapable of decision. Whether Essex’s contemporaries
ascribed this peculiar mental instability to the early tragedy of
his father’s murder and to the impression that produced upon
his mind, I cannot say ; I have come across no evidence which
suggests that they did; but the instability itself they had cer-
tainly observed and especially they had observed the change ~
produced in him by the unlucky expedition to Ireland in 1599.
Before that date his contemporaries saw in him mainly the
brilliant and successful man of action and the witty scholar ;
after his return they saw in him mainly the man of maimed
faculty and lamed will whose melancholy almost approached
insanity and who had grown practically incapable of action.
Nothing is more certain than that Essex, so far as his contem-
poraries were concerned, went into Ireland with the reputation
of a Henry V and came out of it with the reputation of a Hamlet.
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 63
Essex’s own letters show very plainly this development.
Even in the times of his greatest prosperity, we find occasional
fits of profound melancholy. Thus as early as September, 1591, we
find him writing to Sir Robert Cecil: ‘I wish to be out of my
prison which I account my life.’
This is exactly the mood of Hamlet when he remarks (II, ii.) :
‘Denmark’s a prison.’ Rosencrantz answers: ‘Then is the
world one,’ and Hamlet replies: ‘A goodly one; in which
there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being
one o’ the worst.’
Rosencrantz still protests and Hamlet reasserts, ‘to me it is
a prison.’
In the same month of the same year we find Essex writing
in an exactly similar strain to the queen herself (Sept. 12th, 1591) :
‘T live still to curse my birthday and to long for my grave. .
I will not be weary to serve you to my last hour what wrong soever
you do to me, Your Majesty’s servant, miserable by his loss and afflicted
by your unkindness.’
Again in December, 1596, we find him complaining to Lady
Bacon of the incessant intrigues against him at Court which
often fill him with weariness of life :
‘I live in a place where I am hourly conspired against and prac-
tised upon. What they cannot make the world believe that they
persuade themselves unto; and what they cannot make probable to
the Queen that give they out to the world. They have almost all
the house to serve them as instruments.’
This again is like Hamlet who knows well that he has no
sincere friends at Court and against whom Polonius, Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern, Laertes and the rest continually con-
spire; Hamlet feels himself incessantly insecure, watched and
spied upon and is continually goaded into anger.
We see it in the scene with Ophelia when he suspects that
she is being used as a decoy (III, i.):
‘ Where’s your father ?
Oph. At home, my lord.
Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool nowhere but in’s own house.’
We see it in the scene of the death of Polonius (III, iv.) where
he obviously suspects a murderer behind the arras ; we see it in
the scornful sadness of his words (III, ii.) : ‘ They fool me to the
64 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
top of my bent,’ and his suspicions are only too well justified,
for every mean trick is, in reality, played upon him ; he is con-
‘tinually watched, his letters to Ophelia are intercepted, Ophelia
herself is used as a decoy, Laertes is goaded into quarrelling with
him. |
Essex was so exasperated by the continual intrigues against
him at Court that, even in 1596, we find him repeatedly asking
for permission to go away into retirement and study, which the
queen would not permit.
We find him still aching for the same retirement in 1597
when he writes to her :
‘I had rather retire my sick body and troubled mind into some
place of rest, than, living in your presence, to come now to be one
of those that look upon you afar off.’
The same restlessness and disgust, the same longing to escape
is shown in a letter to the Lord Keeper in 1598 :
‘Now I am become an hermit. ... The indissoluble duty which
I owe to her Majesty is only the duty of allegiance which I never
will, nor never can, failin. The duty of attendance is no indissoluble
duty.’ | 3
In the same year he writes to the Queen :
‘I receive nothing but discomforts and soul’s wounds. ... Let
me honestly and zealously end a wearisome life.’
This again is exactly the mood of Hamlet in his soliloquies
(I, ui.) when he says:
‘Would that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!’
Or again (ITI, i.):
‘To die: to sleep ;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.
For who would bear the ae and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin 2?’
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 65
Another letter which shows Essex precisely in the mood of
Hamlet is one written to the Queen in 1599:
‘From a mind delighting in sorrow; from spirits wasted with
travail, care and grief; from a heart torn in pieces with passion ;
from a man that hates himself and all things that keep him alive,
what service can your Majesty reap ?
‘... The rebel’s pride and successes must give me means to
ransom myself, my soul, I mean, out of this hateful prison, my body.’
Surely it would be impossible to have a greater resemblance
to the mood of Hamlet than in this letter, actually written from
Ireland.
The same mood persists to the end of his life; we find him
again writing to the Queen in May, 1600:
‘as.if [ were thrown in a corner like a dead carcase, I am gnawed
on and torn by the vilest and lowest creatures upon earth.
‘The prating tavern haunter speaks of me what he lists; already
they print me and make me speak to the world, and shortly they will
play me in what forms they please upon the stage.’
Here again we have a curious parallel with “ Hamlet’ where
Shakespeare shows the dead exposed to the insults of a vile
clown who is a tavern-haunter. The letter is also interesting
as showing that Essex himself realised that he might be and
probably would be represented wpon the stage; if his enemies
could represent him upon the stage to show him contumely and
scorn, could not Shakespeare represent him to defend him ?
A poem sent by Essex to the Queen in 1599 shows the same
tendency: it reveals his longing for retirement and oblivion
above all other things :
‘Happy he could. finish forth his fate
In some unhaunted desert most obscure,
_ From all society, from love and hate
Of worldly folk; then should he sleep secure.’
Hssex’s contemporaries were full of pity and apprehension
for him at this period of his life. Sir John Harrington doubted
his sanity ; he wrote:
‘ Ambition thwarted in its career doth speedily lead on to madness ;
herein I am strengthened by what I learn of my Lord of Essex, who
shytted from sorrow and repentance to rage and rebellion so suddenly
as well proveth him devoide of goode reason or ryghte minde. .. .
66 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
His speeches to the Queen become no man who hath “ mens sana in
corpore sano.” ... The man’s soul seemeth tossede to and fro
like the waves of a troubled sea.’
It is easy to see how this instability of character, this pro-
found, tragic melancholy, this suspicion of madness in one
formerly the most admired man of his whole generation, it is
easy to see how this might have suggested to Shakespeare many
of the ideas in his ‘ Hamlet.’
When Essex was dead what his contemporaries mourned in
him chiefly was the most distinguished soldier of his day and,
as we have seen, it is as soldier that Fortinbras mourns Hamlet
(Vion):
‘for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.’
Also, as has already been pointed out, the words of Horatio
over the dying Hamlet are taken from the dying speech of Essex.
All this from the very play which was written while Shakespeare
and his company were in disgrace because of their participation
in the Essex conspiracy !
L. WINSTANLEY.
BENEDETTO CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF
INTUITION COMPARED WITH MR. BRADLEY’S
DOCTRINE OF FEELING
BENEDETTO CROCE’s doctrine of Intuition is not merely a corol-
lary of his philosophical system but is essential in principle with
it. In order to discuss it, it is therefore necessary to give an
outline of the system in which intuition has its important and
peculiar function.
| Croce is fundamentally in accord with the tradition of idealism.
_ Reality, he says, is Mind (Lo Spirito) ; there can be no thing ‘in
| itself,’ nothing outside experience. The unity of the one Reality
which is Mind is not destitute of internal differences; and
philosophy, which regards Reality in the most concrete possible
way, takes account of these differences. Nevertheless, it seeks to
preserve the conception of their ultimate unity. In this philoso-
phy is unlike science, of which the classifications may be based
merely on fictions created for convenience’ sake—fictions which
if ultimately true would destroy the unity of Reality.
Philosophic and scientific methods are pre-eminently con-
trasted in the philosophy of Mind as compared with the science
of Mind, psychology. It is true that the latter has been described
as the “ science of individual mind ’ and the former as the science
of ‘universal mind.’ But this does not really explain the dif-
ference between them, for psychology does not treat of the
individual mind as merely individual but as typical of * mind’
in general ; and the philosophy of Mind is concerned with mind
not only as universal but in its particular manifestations. The
difference of results is due not to difference of object but of method.
Science is privileged to abstract from certain aspects of its sub-
ject-matter with a view to practical convenience in dealing with
it—of the degree of abstraction permissible science itself must
be the judge. But philosophy aims at presenting a system of
Reality which shall be acceptable however deeply reason may
probe ; it proceeds on one assumption and one only—that that
which satisfies the demands of reason is true and real. Conse-
67
68 CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION
quently its results cannot be justified by those of science but
only by internal agreement. Psychology, on the other hand,
may make particular assumptions, e.g., that there is an opposite
of Mind, viz., Body, which does not share its characteristics.
These assumptions stand outside the science and are leit un-
examined. Ultimate truth must therefore be said to belong to
the results of philosophy, rather than to those of science, if
differences are found between them, and differences there are,
even as to the fundamental characteristics of Mind.
The psychological division of Mind customary at least among
philosophical psychologists, is into three ultimate faculties—
Cognition, Conation, and Feeling. We need not ascribe to a
faculty any occult power—it is simply a convenient term for a
certain group of mental realities having in common a certain
aspect. Cognition is the theoretical or knowing form of mind,
and Conation is the practical desiring form of mind—both are
alike active. But ‘ Feeling’ is the passive form ; in it the mind
does not do but suffers—it is acted upon by other minds or by
the non-mental.
Croce’s philosophical analysis of Mind does not agree with
that of this psychology. He finds no use for the third form
of mind, ‘ feeling,’ which is on his view impossible, because all
Mind is essentially active ; it is an unfolding or development, a
‘history,’ and has only two forms, the theoretical and the prac-
tical, which are grades or ‘moments’ of the development. The
function of Feeling so far as it has any at all is performed by
these grades of Reality—its presentation as a third form of —
Mind is due to a confusion and obscurity in analysis ; and Feeling
is found useful as the region of dark beginnings. Whether or
not its utility justifies its appearance as a third form in psy-
chology, in philosophy Croce finds it has no place. A concrete
analysis of experience reveals that in nature experience is an
activity, either more theoretical than practical or more practical
than theoretical, but never possessing one of these attributes to
the utter exclusion of the other. These two grades of Reality
may conveniently be subdivided, Theory into esthetic and logic,
Practice into economic and ethic, the sciences of intuition, con-
ceptual knowledge, individual activity directed towards an end,
and individual activity directed towards a rational or universal
end. The content of Feeling finds its place among these, the
only categories of mind.
CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION 69
For what is the nature of this supposed third faculty ? In
it are comprised those conflicting incipient desires, emotions
and primary apprehensions from which will and knowledge
develop ; for we do not appear at the outset to possess either
fully formed ; and thus we may avoid the difficult problem as
to which precedes the other. But Feeling, Croce says, is the
substitute employed for the hitherto unrecognised grade of
theoretical life which he calls intuition—the object of the science
of zsthetic—which has proved so obscure and uncertain. Kant
foreshadowed this when he treated esthetic before logic; but
he shared the general mistake of supposing that the esthetic
feeling of which the object is fine art is something different in
kind from this primary esthetic. Croce identifies the two and
makes esthetic the first form of knowledge—the intuition of
reality which has not yet come to distinguish between reality
and unreality. It is not an abstraction but a complete mode
of life, having within it the three other modes, but these as merely
implicit. Such a mode has a ‘ distinct concept,’ which is con-
crete, 7.e., really embodied in the whole of life as one of its aspects
(therein different from the so-called concept of, say, a triangle,
for the universe cannot be said to have a triangular aspect). It
is also universal—this is merely the other side of its concrete-
ness ; it is not like the concept of * cat’ which though concrete
in a way that ‘triangle’ is not, is merely applicable within a
limited region of Reality. In short, the concept of one of the
grades or moments of reality is justified not merely by utility
but by logical thinking as a necessary form of mind.
Every distinct concept is a synthesis of opposites, e.g., beauty,
the concept of the intuitive mode, contains within it, and sub-
ordinated to it, its opposite, ugliness. But with other ‘ distinct ’
concepts they are not in opposition or exclusion, but are united
even in their distinction, for each is a different but in its way
an adequate conception of the real. Beauty and Goodness are
not negations of each other as are beauty and ugliness, good and
evil.
Thus Croce points out that the concept of Activity must
contain within it its opposite and exclusive concept, passivity,
v.€., the real has a negative moment. And as all four grades or
moments of reality are each inclusive of all the real, in part
explicit and in part obscurely, this negative moment of passivity
cannot be excluded from any one of them in so far as it is active
70 CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION
or real. Thus the negative moment of passivity must be present
in intuition, but merely as the reverse side of activity.
‘Feeling,’ however, is said to comprise not only the obscure
source of developed life or mind, but also, in its character of
passivity, those elements of pleasure and pain which are present
in every concrete experience and yet seem to fall neither under
the head of theory or of practice, to be neither knowing nor doing,
but the mere affection of individual mind by another individual
mind or some external body. Yet a little examination makes
it impossible to believe that in being pleased or pained mind
is really passive. Even if affected by another mind or body,
pleasure and pain appear to be not the mere enduring, but the
response of the mind to the external influence. The active side
is first brought distinctly to light by Croce. It is not theoretical
but practical, and it corresponds to the second grade of practical
activity, the moral, as intuition does to the second grade of
theoretical activity, conceptual knowledge. Pleasure and pain
come under the head of economic activity, and are in fact identi-
cal with it. This third form of Mind is the activity of the in-
dividual directed towards a given end which is not necessarily
rational. Nevertheless, economic activity is not immoral but a
non-moral, and every moral act is at least economic. It is a state
of innocence. Man cannot rest at its level, for it is also a state
of incomplete development. He therefore proceeds to the
ethical grade, where knowledge is complete and reason holds
sway. Pleasure is the positive and pain the negative pole of
the economic activity—the one is successful activity, the other.
thwarted, the passive element—and they are not mere accom-
paniments of this activity but actually identical with it.
Thus the content of Feeling is variously transferred to
esthetic and economic activity and the necessity for a third
form of mind disproved. For it should be shown that such
a form cannot be reduced to any other ; it should have at least
one peculiar feature ; but the analysis of Mind into practice and
theory leaves no residue for a third form.
Nevertheless, we can be in no hurry to reject a form of Reality
which has seemed necessary to so many thinkers, and it seems
profitable to examine more minutely the part played by Feeling
in the philosophy of F. H. Bradley, for his conception of it has
much in common with Croce’s general doctrine. To begin with,
he does not allow that Feeling, or as he sometimes describes it,
CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION 71
“immediate consciousness,’ is ever merely passive. It is both
passive and active, but these attributes are not distinguished
from each other as they are at a higher grade. Feeling is the
immediate unity at a level below relations (or logical conceptual
thinking) of active and passive, self and not-self, mind and body,
the individual and the universe. It is the base of all knowledge
and all activity. But it is not to be described as knowledge,
for knowledge implies the distinction between true and false,
or the ‘judgment’ of reality, whereas in feeling all is real.
Herein Bradley differs from Croce on a point of terminology,
for Croce also says of intuition that it apprehends reality without
knowing that it apprehends and is therefore really not appre-
hending. Yet he describes it as the first form of knowledge,
the “image forming’ activity which is the necessary prelude
of conceptual thinking, forming as it does the material of thought
out of what we may describe as sensations, the non-existent
beginning of things. Bradley also might call the first form
knowledge, as the necessary prelude to knowledge, were it not
that Feeling for him falls not only under the theoretical aspect,
but, while it contains incipient knowledge, it contains also in-
cipient will. As for Croce will or the practical is implicit even
in the lowest grade of Mind. Nevertheless, he maintains intui-
tion to be a purely theoretical form, not a *‘ mixed’ form, so
that he differs from Bradley. For the latter, the ideality in
Feeling develops into both knowledge and will, and Feeling not
only implicitly contains these grades, but, as for most psycholo-
gists, it is the sphere of pleasure and pain which we have seen
Croce declare to be a grade of practical activity. If Croce is
right, and this is the nature of pleasure, then Bradley’s inclusion
of it in Feeling would account for the supposed presence of will
in the first grade of Mind. But surely, it may be objected,
practical activity develops at an earlier stage than is implied
by Croce’s view, and it seems more natural to suppose with
Bradley, that the germ both of theory and of practice is present
in an undeveloped form of Mind for which feeling or Immediacy
is as good a description as any we can discover ?
Bradley, we may say provisionally, looks at Mind from the
standpoint of actual development and analyses it into three
stages—teeling, the middle-space of relations wherein will and
knowledge have their work, and the Absolute. Yet these stages
are not to be understood as successive in time, they are an ideal
72 CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION
development, but a development none the less. Mind, it seems
to the philosopher accounting for the world of knowledge and
will which is reality for us, should begin with a state in which
will and knowledge are equally present but undistinguished.
Such seems the nature of all reality. And _ pleasure-pain,
which is difficult to classify, seems to be present in the earliest
form of life we know, so we may place it there and even suppose
it peculiarly prominent there, and accompanying our more fully
developed life of knowing and doing only as immediate con-
sciousness. In Bradley’s words, feeling, though transformed,
is never transcended. Because we know and act we do not
cease to feel. Thus at the second stage, relational conscious-
ness, there is always a background of feeling in which the indi-
vidual remains one with the universal life—does not distinguish
a world of nature from a world of mind, himself from other indi-
viduals or the universe. Yet though we keep before us this
presence of immediate consciousness at the relational level, we
have not yet a scheme of the nature of Reality satisfactory to
Reason. ‘To obtain this, the material of which we have already
treated has to be regarded in its unity, in such a way that no
contradiction is present. This we call the Absolute Reality.
It necessarily is real because it only is completely rational.
Bradley says of immediate experience that not necessarily but
possibly it existed prior to relational consciousness, in the life
of the race if not in that of the individual. The Absolute stands
in somewhat different relation (‘relation’ here is a metaphor ;
there cannot really be a relation—all relations falling within ©
the middle-space itself) to the ‘ intellectual middle-space,’ from
the one in which that stands to immediate consciousness, because
whereas they are at least possibly related in time, the Absolute
being the only Reality is real eternally and there is no meaning
in speaking of it as before or after feeling or relations. We may
omit the Absolute then from the scheme of development for it
corresponds to Croce’s conception of Reality or Mind, not to one
of its grades or moments. The grades in Bradley’s philosophy
form a logical scheme like Croce’s.
But we miss from his philosophy Croce’s emphasis on the
practical side of Mind. The will or practical activity, latent
like knowledge in Feeling, is not treated afterwards with the
fullness accorded to conceptual knowledge or judgment. But
it appears with or logically subsequent to, relational knowledge.
For in judgment the real is first distinguished from the unreal,
CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION 73
and thus is will first made possible. For will is the effort conse-
quent upon desire—the longing for the unreal contrasted with
the real leads to activity which shall bring about the realisation
of the object of desire. The world of knowledge precedes the
moral world. Croce like Bradley does not seek to give account
of the actual but of the logical development of Reality. Intui-
tion like Feeling is complete in itself. It has no need of a higher
form and the higher grade of knowledge depends upon it ; whereas
actually intuition never does exist without conceptual know-
ledge. But Croce’s interest in history and attention to the
practical side of mind indirectly has an important effect on the
doctrine of Intuition. We have seen that while there are many
points in common between his doctrine of intuition and Bradley’s
of Feeling, in one important respect, not of function but of con-
tent, they differ. Bradley’s Feeling contains pleasure and pain.
Perhaps this is due to its apparent primitive existence, and also
to its double aspect of activity and passivity. It is both a
suffering and a response. Croce, however, assigns pleasure
and pain not to a mode which is neither (or both) theoretical and
practical, but to the practical mode of activity, and intuition
is pleasant only so far as, being a distinct concept, it contains
implicitly other modes. This is then a point upon which choice
may be made between the two theories. And since there is no
necessity to hold that pleasure and pain do actually, as they
do logically, develop late, perhaps Croce’s theory may be avopted
as the more positive idealism.
We have hardly alluded to Croce’s doctrine of art as intuition
or expression. Art, he says, is not the most fully developed
form of mind, but its base on which it is built. Identifying art
with expression, we realise that language also is an intuition,
and because conceptual thinking depends upon language, and
practical activity on knowledge, intuition is the presupposition
of all activity. As we have seen, it is present through all Reality
and ali Reality is in it, but it is theoretically capable of standing
independently of all other grades of the real. The view of
esthetic as expression is an idealist view; if art is expression
there is according to Croce no ‘ physical’ beauty in the strict
sense ; there is no work of art, for the externalisation of the
expression is, Croce says, an indifferent matter. But in this
brief comparison of Croce’s doctrine with Bradley’s, there is
no need to enter deeply into this view of the nature of art, for
Bradley’s doctrine may also be reconciled with it. Feeling, in
74 CROCE’S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION
‘which there is no distinction between the real and the unreal,
is quite able to contain the so-called esthetic judgment, in which
there is not even an hypothesis to the effect that its object is
real, but a mere dropping of the distinction between real and
unreal into temporary abeyance. According to the doctrine
of ‘degrees of reality’ our so-called ‘real world’ is not the
only one; every esthetic world has a degree of reality and
does not differ in Mind from the world we dignify with this
title. Thus again Bradley’s doctrine seems to foreshadow
Croce’s for Croce makes Beauty a ‘ distinct concept,’ a mode of
Reality complete in one aspect ; and he insists that that expres-
sion which is the work of the highest artistic genius differs only
in degree from the crude expression of an ordinary man’s most
commonplace speech. But while Croce definitely assigns art
to the first grade of the real, it is doubtful whether Bradley
ever definitely limited art to the sphere of Feeling or Immediate
Consciousness. A shadow that goes before is not the substance
and doubtless Croce’s doctrine of art is substantially new. Never-
theless, there is nothing in it with which Bradley’s view of feeling
is in irreconcilable contradiction. |
It seems that on the whole choice must be made between
these systems chiefly as we find it reasonable to suppose that
first we have knowledge—and then will; or else more satis-
factory tc suppose that the orderly world developed from an
immediacy in which will and knowledge are both and equaily
implicit. Intuition, the image-forming activity, may seem
to some to require a rudimentary will just as much as a rudi-.
mentary knowledge. Ii knowledge that does not distinguish
true from false is knowledge, can will that does not distinguish
the desired from the undesired perhaps be will? Can it even
be prior to incipient knowledge ? This question cannot well be
answered except arbitrarily by Croce’s philosophy. Yet, while
he maintains that knowledge gives content to will and know-
ledge itself develops its own content, Croce does not fail to point
out that ultimately they imply each other—the will is the Will
of the thought and the thought isthe Thought of the will. Per-
haps in the end choice cannot be made by logical necessity but
rather by the weight of esthetic appeal ; in the end it is rather
the man that makes the philosopher than the philosopher the man.
VALMAI BURDWOOD EVANS.
Se
16 DEC 24
NATURAL
Cris STORY. |
CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES -
VoLuMeE I.
. The Anglo-Saxon Riddles, by G. A. Wood, M.A. An Analysis of the fatahi
characters of Grillparzer’s Dramas contrasted with those of Goetho’s
and Schiller’s, by Miss Amy Burgess, M.A. Norman Harthworks near
Aberystwyth, by F. S. Wright. A List of Research Punbeasion: ay
Members of the College Staff for the Session 1910-11.
VoLuME II.
The Anglo-Saxon Riddles (continued), by G. A. Wood, M.A. Some Ancient
Defensive Earthworks near Aberystwyth, by F. S. Wright. Whitman ».
Verhaeren, by P. M. Jones, B.A. ria
VortumeE IIT.
The Greek Agones, by Professor H. J. Rose. A few Notes on the Familiar
Letters of James Howell, by Professor E. Bensly. Fable Literature in
Welsh, by Professor T. Gwynn Jones. ‘Trajano Boccalini’s Influence upon
English Literature, by Richard Thomas, M.A.
VoLumE IV.
Pagan Revivalism under the Roman Empire, by Sir William M. Ramsay,
F.B.A. The Bronze Age in Wales, by Harold Peake, F.S.A. Dionysiaca,
by Professor H. J. Rose. The Clausule of Atschines, by R. A. Pope, M.A.
Further Notes on the Familiar Letters of James Howell, by Professor
Edward Bensly. Further Notes on “the Owl and the Nightingale,” by
Professor J. W. H. Atkins. The Arthurian Empire in the Elizabethan
Poets, by Miss L. Winstanley, M.A. A Note on a passage in “ Beowulf,”
by G. N, Garmonsway, B.A. Welsh Words from Pembrokeshire, by
Professor T. Stanley Roberts. An English Flexional ending in Welsh,
by Professor T. H. Parry-Williams. . . (i)
Again to express any vector p as a linear function of a, 6, y.
toca OIL WEG B
12 THE PRINCIPLES OF QUATERNIONS
Assume p = xa + yi + 2y. Operate by 8. fy, then
SPyp = way,
which determines 2, and similarly for y, z. Thus we find
pSaby = aSByp + BSyap + ySaBp . . . (G)
This is the linear relation connecting any four vectors.
Again to express p as a linear function of Vaf, VBy, Vya.
Assume p = «V6y + yVya =zVaf. Operate by S.a, then
Sap = «Safy, which determines x. Similarly for y, z. Thus we
find
pSaBy = SapVBy + ShpVya + SypVaB . . . (H)
§ 16. The equation :
p—a +97,
where f may be any number, evidently represents a straight line
in the direction /, passing through the extremity of the vector a
drawn from the origin. |
p=a+fb + gy
represents a plane through the extremity of a, parallel to the
directions 6 and y.
If a is the perpendicular from the origin on this plane, then
operating by 8 . a we obtain the equation of the plane in the form
Sap = a*, or Sap = constant.
Thus, to find the length of the perpendicular from the origin
on the plane Sap =a. Let the perpendicular be ha, then
- Sap = Sa(ha) = ha*, also = a, therefore h =a/a?, and the
perpendicular is (a/a*)a, whose length is — a/Ta.
If the straight lines
p=a+ffP, p=y + 90
meet then a + ff =y + g6 for special values of f, g, or
Gi Ie GO 0:
Therefore a — y, f, 6 must all be parallel to one plane, and
the condition that the two lines may meet is
S(a — y)péd = 0.
The equation of a sphere whose centre is the extremity of a
and radius r is evidently
(p = Oo) i,
or p? — 2Sap + a? +r? = 0.
Since p = 7x + jy + kz gives Sip = — a, etc., any Cartesian
THE PRINCIPLES OF QUATERNIONS 13
equation is transformed into a quaternion form by substituting
— Sip, — Sjp, — Skp for x, y, z respectively.
§ 17. Differentiation. Example——The differential of p? is
(p + dp)? — p? = 28pdp, neglecting (dp)?, or
U(p2) = 28pdp.
Or thus
(od — x72 — y” — 27) = — 2(adz + ydy + 2dz)
= 28(0a + jy + kz) (ade + jdy + kdz)
= 2Spdp.1
dp” __ 2Spdp __ (28pdp oe '
Again de ae ( dp dp = (a scalar) (dp), which
depends on the direction of dp. In fact there is no such thing
as a differential coefficient with respect to a vector. But we
may differentiate with respect to scalars by the usual rules of
the Calculus, if we take care to differentiate each factor in situ.
Thus, if a, 6, y are functions of a number z, then
£ (apy) = iby) + ocey + af
Again
3
d(a?) ie d(aaa) _ at OA aa ota ae da a — 2a + oa.
da dx aa dx
As an illustration consider a moving a
Tts vector is p =1« + jy + kz = dit), as a, y, 2 are functions
een — 9 or Ot) Hie + yy + kz.
This is the velocity. Again, the acceleration is
o'(t) =o1e +94 + kz.
$18. If we have forces f,, 2, 83, ete., acting at the extremities
of vectors starting from the origin qj, a, as, etc., then the resultant
force is Xf and the resultant couple is Y'Vaf ; “henee the conditions
of equilibrium are
2s == OD AVGio. == (0:
1 Here do, dx, ete., are infinitesimals. Hamilton generally used finite
differentials, indicated by the letter D. The analysts who have investi-
gated the foundations of the Differential Calculus would have profited
by his method, had they been aware of it. As an instance, I work out
the differential (finite) of y, where y = «2. Then
Dene
Dy = Limit n { é + = — a2) = 2eDe.
n> © ie }
14 THE PRINCIPLES OF QUATERNIONS ©
If a particle is moving, the effective force on a particle m at
x, y, 2 is mux +574 + kz) = mp, and the moment of this with
respect to the origin is mVpp. Hence for a rigid body in motion
we have the equations
2p = mo, ZVap = AXmVoo.
§ 19. The angle ¢ between two vectors a, f is obviously given
by the equation sind = TVaf/(TaTf); and if a, 6 are con-
secutive so that f =a + da this becomes
§ 20. The treatment of curves can only be summarised here.
The co-ordinates x, y, z of any point on the curve are regarded as
functions of s, the length of the arc measured from any fixed point
of the curve ; and derivatives with respect to s are indicated by
dashes as in Smith’s Solid Geometry. If p is the vector to any
point, p = + jy + kz = 9(s), then p’ = ¢'(s) = 12’ + jy’ + kz’,
and since ds? = dx* + dy? + dz* or a’? + y’* + 2/2 = 1, we see
that ¢’(s) is a unit vector in the direction of the tangent.
Differentiating (¢’s)? = — 1, Sé’(s)6"s = 0, so that ¢d’, d” are
at right angles. The difference of the unit vectors ¢’(s) and
¢'(s + ds) is ¢’(s)ds, and is in the direction of the principal
normal. The angle between these consecutive ba iS jae
($19) by d6 = TV(¢’s) (6’sds)/ + 1 = dsT¢'(s)6"(s) = dsTd"(s
- There the principal radius of curvature R is given &
Hence also
1
R2
and R¢”(s) is a unit vector in the direction of the principal normal.
§ 21. The product of the two rectangular unit vectors
¢ (s) (= tv say) and R¢"(s) = (v say) is a unit vector Rd’(s)¢"(s)
= 6 say, in the direction of the binormal.
The angle di between consecutive binormals is by § 19 and—
K (§ 15),
dn = TV . V4'(s)$'"(8) V$'(s)$""(s)ds [TV 4" (s)$"s)]2
= R’dsT¢’(s)S0"(s)¢'(s)¢’""(s) ;_ therefore the torsion
1/t or dy/ds = — R°8¢’(s)b"'(s)6'"(s)
as — {6's ye ak. a2 — Ye? 4 ee
THE PRINCIPLES OF QUATERNIONS 15
The following expressions for the derivatives of t, », 6 follow
easily ; they are equivalents of Frenet’s formulae.
hE VD Eas) Vi CLO me T
ds BR’ ds Cee i ay
§ 22. Surfaces. ‘The radius vector to any point on a surface
is p =ix + 97y + kz, where x, y, z are definite functions of two
Gaussian parameters p and gq.
Then dp =idx + jdy + kdz is a tangent vector; and
= = 3 k = p, Say is evidently a vector in the
direction of the tangent line to the curve g = const. Similarly,
for p, = Op/dqg. Then Vp,p.(=T say) is a vector in the direction
of the normal to the surface.
Again, with the notation of Salmon’s surfaces
ds* =dx? +dy? +dz? =(adp +a’'dq)? +(bdp +6'dq)? +(cdp +c’dq)?, or
ds? = Kdp? + 2Fdpdq + Gdq?.
But ds* = — dp* = —(p.dp + p.dq)?, and expanding this
Square and comparing with the previous expression, we obtain
Hi= — p,*, F = — Spipz, G = — p,?-
These results give expressions for the derivatives of H, F, G.
For instance
OH Ag Op 0p oF _ __ g/&p Ch) 020 Op
ap ~~ Sop ape tp ~~ Slap @peq* apt 20)
§ 23. Again t = Voip, = Vita + jb + kc) (ca’+ 7b’ + ke’), or
t=1be —b’c) +... +... =7A 4+9B4+kC
with the usual notation. We shall put A? + B? + C? = H?.
Then t/H is a unit vector along the normal, and its direction
cosines are A/H, B/H, C/H.
By algebra EG — F2 = H?.
Thus io a, and geet = — Ho
Op Op
§ 24. Expressions for the usual E’, F’, G’ come from
; 024 02y Oe
E ep + Bot C- 5» ete
0? 02 0?
Th KY’ —S= — elke f —— eu f = — me
us Stay F Sat G Sta
§ 25. Principal Curvatures. Tf o is the vector to any point on
the normal to the surface at the extremity of p, then
. O =p + jr.
16 THE PRINCIPLES OF QUATERNIONS |
This will meet a consecutive normal if
0 =dp + fdr + tdf
0 0
or 0 = pap oda i( Foil? = 4) + cdf.
Therefore the three oe co-factors of df, dp, dq are coplanar,
or Sx( @ se if =) ( Pe +fe aot
If the roots of this quadratic in f are f, and f, then the principal
radii are R, = /f,H and R, =/f.H; also noticing that
Sip) — Sen — le
we find |
1 lee ae Ou sou
RR, Hf, H* ap oq
§ 26. If a surface is transformed in any way the new co-
ordinates of any point are functions of the old ones, and therefore
also of p and q; and if the transformation is a deformation such
that ds in all directions remains unaltered at every point, then
EK, F, G and their derivatives with respect to » and q are also
unaltered. Thus the celebrated theorem of Gauss on deformation
measure of curvature =
of surfaces will be proved if we show that oe x can be expressed
Op :
in terms of HK, F, G, and their derivatives.
§ 27. Since Step, = 0, Stp, = 0, we have
Also by taking derivatives of the previous expressions for
EK, F, G we find
gip Op, = OR oop O%. 0K tp 0p 0G OF
Op op? "Op ep dpog “0g Op Cfo op etog.
Also we can easily verify the relation
1 07) = 07K 020 020 _(s Ci) ie
0g? ' Op?) dpag Op? dq? \” Apdg!
OT OT Ov OT
28, N es eV
§ Ow St ap 0 ==) Vj0108 V. 7p 04
CE OT OT OT
StS ee, Sy ae
Pi aq op g Op Sp oq
ge p 0? Gop. @ 20 02 p
— (by. S277 on See wg il)
“apag Cg oOpeg— Op og
THE PRINCIPLES OF QUATERNIONS 17
[We remark in passing that this is F’? — E’G’.]
Here we may replace t by Vp,p2 or by pip2, and apply the
formula (D) of §15 to each term. Thus (1) becomes
Rn O OF one?) eR _ 10h
Op cg ~ eq
2 pate guile Abe
JE ,0E OF 3% a%
sop "eg op — ep? 6g"
Ii these determinants are expanded the portion derived from
the last constituents of each is by the last formula of § 27 a
function of E, F, G and their derivatives ; and the other terms
in the expanded determinants are obviously such functions, so
that the theorem of Gauss is proved.
§ 29. If parameters p and g are chosen instead of p and q, then
Op Op
d Z
(3) the rhythm extends over several lines, as in din. IV.
400 ff. ;
(4) it fluctuates with the thought, as in An. IV. 309 fi. ;
and (5) a chosen word-order is the means to the end, G. IIT. 276 f.
(saxa per et scopulos . . . diffugiunt).
If we turn to the Greek rhetoricians we find in Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, on Literary Composition, the fullest discussion
of the effect of dactyls in epic verse. He quotes frequently
from Homer in discussing syllables and their qualities, and
poetic skill in the choice and combination of words; inc. XVIL.,
on rhythms or feet, he says that the dactyl is mavu oeuvoc
nal EC TO xaAhos Tho EouNvEetac aEtohoywtatoc, “al tO ye Howtxoy
pétoov ano tobtov xooueitar dco émi to moddv, and quotes Od.
IX. 39, a purely dactylic line narrating Odysseus’ voyage with
a favourable wind from Troy to Ismarus; in c. XVIII., on the
effect of various rhythms, he compares very unfavourably a
passage of Hegesias with Ilad XXII. 395-411, the account of
the maltreatment of Hector’s body by Achilles; in c. XX., on
appropriateness, he says that the good poet and orator should
be muiyuntixds tov Noayudtwy bméo wv dy tos Adyouc éxpEeon
and illustrates this by a detailed analysis of the famous Sisyphus-
passage in Od. XI. 593-8.
sid|[ sd’ ids,
Sis. dd ids.
595 dis ds ds
dics, ddidis
dd. dis'dis
did edidijidis
: foot ends with end of word that has not occupied whole foot.
that has occupied at least one foot.
| 99 99 29 99 99
> elision at end of foot.
In 593-6, describing the effort to push the stone uphill,
Dionysius notes that all the words except oxyoimtopmevoc,
Obecxe are disyllables or monosyllables; that long syllables
are numerous, and that the concurrence of vowels and juxta-
position of semi-vowels or mutes makes rhythms long and gaps
between words perceptible. In the second line of the two which
describe the swift descent of the stone, there are no monosyllables, |
only two disyllables, only seven long syllables, and none of them
periect (i.e. closed syllables containing a long vowel), no spondees
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 23
except at the end, while some of the dactyls are almost like
trochees ; nothing checks the rapid flow of the line.
As one line in five in Homer contains five dactyls, it seems
clear that the important points in line 598 are its open syllables,
short vowels, and above all the four trochaic caesuras.
abtic émetta médovde xvdivdeto Adac avaonec.
Elsewhere Dionysius remarks on the retarding effect of the
concurrence of similar vowels such as those in Jdav dyw WOeoxe,
and on the harsh sound of various consonant. combinations.
It may further be noted that //. XVII. 265, where the poet
‘wishes by the extension of syllables to represent the ceaseless
sound *.of the breakers, is a purely dactylic line
ntoves Bodmow Epevyoméevns addc é&&a,
and in Od. IX. 415-18, describing the ‘ greatness of anguish of
the Cyclops and his hands, slow search for the doors of the cavern,’
we have
sid di:7s id's,
s[ddidids,
s ddd CLS,
di ididi ‘si dés:
In Norden’s opinion, Dionysius’ statements may be regarded
as excerpts from Theophrastus and the literature depending
on him. It is difficult to gather much from the extant remains
of the earlier literature, though we know that the interest of
the Greeks in the study of sounds, words and meanings began
early. Writers on rhetoric frequently mention the heroic
thythm, but they do not as a rule appear to differentiate between
dactyls and spondees, for Cicero, in the Orator § 194, says that
EKphorus does not realise that the spondee, which he avoids, is
equivalent to the dactyl, which he approves, ‘syllabis enim
metiendos pedes, non intervallis existimat,’ and when, in § 191,
he refers to Aristotle’s statement that the ‘ heroicus numerus ’
is too lofty for prose, he speaks in the same sentence of ‘ ille
dactylicus numerus.’ This statement is made by Aristotle
in the Rhetoric IIT. 8. In the Poetics he says that the heroic
measure is the most steadfast and weighty of all. Different, I
think, from the general use of the term i#jodo¢ is its employ-
ment by Demetrius, [Teoi ’Eounveiac § 42, on odrOectg, where,
alter discussing the Paeonian as being mseyadoneenis (following
24 THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS
Aristotle), he says the heroic foot is lofty, unsuited for speech, sonor-
ous, lacking in rhythm; he quotes four consecutive spondees,
and says the abundance of long syllables ixconinte: tov hoyinod
uétoov. Demetrius also refers to the Sisyphus-passage (ib.
§ 72), quoting Jdav dvwm d0ecoxe as an example of the concurrence
of long vowels giving an effect of stateliness, and saying that
the line acquires length from it and represents the effort of
raising the stone. The last line of the passage is quoted by
Aristotle (Rhet. ITT. 11) as an instance of Homer’s use of meta-
phors ; by the epithet dyaidijc, he says, the poet ascribes activity
to the stone.
The scholia which reflect a theory similar to that found in
Dionysius are collected by G. Rauscher in a dissertation on the
Homeric scholia touching on metre. He gives, amongst others
which refer to the harshness of the consonants, etc. :
Il. I. 530. (xoatés an’ aOavdroww.) péyav Séhéhiéev “Ohvpnov. tH tahyet
THY ovshapay tO tayv tho xwiyoewcs OnAoi.
fl. IV. 125. Aiv&Ee Bids, vevor) 6€ péyiayev, GAto 6’ Giotdcs tod 6é GAto
ovvetuyOn 1) Ag&ic meds TO TayOS THC apéoewc.
fl. VIL. 199. ceioato Osivi Oodvm, éAédiEe O& pwaxodv “Odvumov. éhédiée’
Oia tHv Ovo vyowy tov’twrv tiv taystav xai dzmovov
xivnow “TA,
Kustathius, as quoted by Norden, on Od. XXI. 15:
tam 0 &€v Meoonyyn EvuBdaritny addiiouv
says that the peaceful movement of pure spondees corresponds
to the peace and calm with which the two friends met, and that
the fact that verses with five dactyls, e.g. [1. XVI. 776:
HEITO mEeyas mEeyadwoti, AEhaopmévos imnoovvaw?,
have a very jumpy character was known to the ancients and is
taught by metric.
Hermogenes, zeoi idem@y II. 409, according to Norden, says
that the appropriate pauses, feet and rhythms should always
be introduced when the poet wishes to express character or
emotional speech. He mentions that there are thirty-two
possible forms of the hexameter, and as an example of the influence
of pause on rhythm gives jodwy, adtovc dé Eldoia Tevye xvVvéoowW,
where there is a pause after jomwv and the following words are
to some extent anapaestic.
The strongest evidence of there having been in the third
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 25
century B.C. a theory that dactyls expressed tayo is its obvious
influence on the practice of Ennius. We see that it is only
held with many qualifications by Dionysius. What basis, even
thus qualified, it has in Greek practice seems doubtful.
The Sisyphus-passage is an exception. The Homeric metre
with its 60°% of predominantly dactylic lines is the natural pro-
duct of the language with its uncontracted vowels and its light
inflections. And we expect to find such a variation in the
rhythm with change of mood and subject as leads to the slight
but definite increase in the number of spondees in Hesiod, and
later in Aratus as compared with Apollonius Rhodius and Calli-
machus.
To prove that Homer’s variations in rhythm are for the
most part non-significant is perhaps impossible and at least a
formidable task. But I will cite a few examples of normal lines
where descriptive rhythm might well be used, and of dactylic
and spondaic rhythms that do not represent a corresponding
change in the sense.
Od. V. 319-326, a man weighed downin the water by heavy
clothing :
dediiida td, vdis
dud: ad, “diz d)|'s.
aides ds dusdis,
Gack cl @ cls
Sse Gd 7s cds:
Sadie dea des
ds) did |id's:
Seo dueds Tdiedis
d dd dis, otyjodpuevor O’éudyovto udynv maea vyvoi Bojot,
s sd ss. pdddhov dO’ ahdnhove yalunosow éepyéijow,
s|dd|dJ][s, dyea pév ido ry nai déSeto iegov rag,
d dd dé =°%5. téyoa & GheEdmevor pévopev mhéovdc meg édvtac’
Id. 1b. 74-5:
d sd’ dj{d]s év0a dvw viutacs d0o Tt iuata ovveyxés aiel
dddid|ds xeiweO” duod xapdtw te xal ddyeo. Ovpov “ovtec
Id. 16. 100-104, leaving the land of the Lotus-eaters,
Sipsded ods
d sdd]ss, czeoyoudvovs mndv émPawéuev duerdov
si:sds ds.
9 e > ” b) eo rn
Ss sds ds, of Saiw’ eicBawov xal ént xdAnior xabilor,
edd ds
26 THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS ©
The sad and dignified farewell of Hector to Andromache is
quite normal in rhythm. Many of the introductory lines and
transition-phrases, that recur so often in Homer, have a dactylic
rhythm, e.g.
Tiv O amametpomevos Meocepn xoevbaiohoc “Extwo.
If we turn to the later writers, the first three lines of Calli-
machus’ solemn invocation in his Hymn to Zeus have
dedi ds ids
ddiddids
dd ddids
In Apollonius Rhodius we find :
Argonautica IV. :
42 ssdsds. (@veémy dyijec) duetais dyoooot avaboedoxortes aotaic .
43 sddsdis, yupvoiow 68 nddecow dvd otewde Oger oiwovs
67 dsdsds._ doxacing d'6yOnow éxnéo0y notauoio.
In Theocritus, where I find that of rather over 300 lines
examined 63° are predominantly dactylic, the smooth flow
of the hexameter seems to be little affected by the subject.
Instances are not easy to give, for there is little action or strong
feeling to express, but we may note the purely dactylic lines:
I. 1. ‘Add te t6 pi0doiucepa xal a aitvs, ainzode, thva
introducing a scene of midday heat and rest, and
VII. 57. yadxvdvec ctopecetytt tA xbuata tdy te Odhaocay
while in the description of the love-frenzy of the Cyclops we have
XI. 11. GAa? 6pOaics paviac, Gyeito 6é advta mdoeoya.
The deliberate use of particular rhythms for descriptive
effect, and in especial that of dactyls to represent tdéyoc, is not
a practice of the Greek writers of the dactylic hexameter. But
in adopting it Latin writers believed themselves to be following
Homer.
Their language was a very different medium from the dialect
of Ionic Greek used by the Epic writers. The loss of final short
vowels in Latin, and the fact that accusative singular and genitive
plural forms mean either an elision or a long syllable, greatly
increase the proportion of long syllables. In the Aineid, count-
ing the first four feet only of each line, that is to say, omitting
the recurrent close — v v — yu, which gives the verse its definite
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 27
character, 64° of the syllables are long. I have obtained the
following results by analysis of a few prose passages.
Percentage of long syllables.
Cicero, In Catilinam I.cc.1-6 . 64% (69% inc. 4, 61% in c. 5)
ang iehilippic, ec. 1, 2: . . 64%
De Oratore I. cc. 1-5 . . 62.4%
ce. 25-28 . 60-69%
Caesar, B.G. I, cc. 14-17. n2 56207,
imy IXecc, 1-8. 04975. (G19 amuce 2679/4 im cud)
Tacitus, Annals I. cc. 1-6 OS a (O0l/ Gime C= i G00, mic.)
Zielinski’s statistics show that the most frequent form of
clausula in Cicero’s speeches is — v —:i—v (23:3% of total
number). Here 60% of the syllables are long, a proportion very
near the average, while in — v —!— uv — (11:1% of total)
and — v —:—v—v (10% of total), which come next in
frequency of occurrence, the percentage of long syllables is 67%
and 57% respectively.
I think the comparison is not without interest. Vergil’s
language has the same general character as that of the more
dignified prose. Just as in prose Cicero’s solemn warning to
Catiline and Pontius’ grim reply to the Roman envoys are con-
veyed in strongly spondaic passages, while in the account of
the terror of the entrapped Romans, runs of short syllables are
more frequent, Vergil’s more marked variations from his general
rhythm would seem to his hearers appropriate to the expression
of marked tones of feeling. Where a writer shows throughout
a preference for spondaic rhythms as Catullus does, or for dactyls,
such as we see in Ovid, it is not so easy for him to give a meaning
to his deviations from his usual rhythm. In _ post-Vergilian
prose-writers there is the possibility of Vergilian influence.
In dealing with Ennius our difficulty is that so many lines
are isolated, and therefore form an untrustworthy basis for
classification. Taking the continuous passages preserved we
find that the average proportion of dactyls and spondees is
nearly the same as in Vergil; but Ennius makes far less use
of the “equal” line and far more of the extreme types dddd
and ssss, the latter being very frequent. This is due partly
to carelessness or lack of skill, 7.e., the lines are non-significant,
partly to a straining after effects which Vergil obtains more
subtly. In 194 sqq., part of Appius Claudius’ solemn and
emphatic speech dissuading the Romans from accepting Pyrrhus’
A.S.—VOL. VII C
28 THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS
offers of peace, of eight lines four have ssss; the others give
relief.
When we consider the effect of his dactylic lines and try to
estimate how many of them are significant, we see that a large
part is played by other elements—alliteration, pauses, inter-
relation of ictus and word-accent, weight of consonants, and
vowel-tone.
We find movement clearly expressed in 35
et cita cum tremulis anus attulit artubus lumen
agitated haste, with clash of ictus and accent till the fourth
foot ; in 92, the bird’s flight and the uprush of the sun :
laeua uolauit auis. Simul aureus exoritur sol.
in 230, where there is coincidence of ictus and accent throughout,
with triple alliteration on p and light consonants, for the rhyth-
mical stroke of the oars
poste recumbite uestraque pectora pellite tonsis.
In 386 labitur uncta carina, uolat super impetus undas.
for the swiftly gliding ship, there are very light consonants, and
only one clash of ictus and accent; in 478
labitur uncta carina per aequora cana celocis
the initial movement is carried on to the end of the line with
alliteration and more unaccented a’s.
Movement and sound together are represented by dactyls
with alliteration in the horseman’s gallop,
439 it eques, et plausu cana concutit ungula terram.
tn 310 Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu
we have dactyls, very light consonants, the repetition of r,
and alliteration with ¢ four times. This is a favourite device,
the crudity of which was modified by Vergil ; so 140
at tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit,
with Vergil’s adaptation
A. IX. 508. At tuba terribilem sonitum procul aere canoro
increpuit
where we may note that sonitus and gemitus in this position in
the line occur several other times in the Mneid.
The trumpet-signal for war and similar sounds are regularly
represented by dactyls, as in 415, 519 sq., 530; but it is worth
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 29
noting that we have spondees with clamor, as in 442 and 531,
clamor ad caelum uoluendus per aethera vagit.
On the other hand, we have dactylic lines without any sug-
gestion of movement, etc., such as 52
Te sale nata precor, Venus, et genetrix patris nostri,
the beginning of an invocation ; and we may notice the line
nec mi aurum posco nec mi pretium dederitis
with clash of ictus and accent till the sixth foot, where the dactylic
second half merely repeats in a different form the statement
made m the spondaic first half.
An example of effective contrast is given by the two lines
164 sq.
qua Galli furtim noctu summa arcis adorti
moenia concubia uigilesque repente cruentant,
the stealthy approach and the sudden outburst of slaughter.
My general conclusion is that purely dactylic lines are more
frequent in Ennius than in Vergil, and are used for effects attained
more subtly by the later poet; and that where movement is
represented a coincidence of ictus and word-accent, particularly
in the second and third feet, suggests steady and rhythmical
movement.
Skutsch cites 173
quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen,
as an instance of the metrical skill sometimes displayed by
Ennius, and notes that Saturnian verse tended to produce a
marked use of alliteration.
Cicero’s fragments show much more restraint in the search
for rhythmical effects. While purely spondaic lines (ssssds)
are fairly numerous, purely dactylic ones are very rare. The
spondaic fourth foot, occurring in four lines out of five, and
frequently followed by diaresis, greatly retards the movement
of his lines. He tends to begin with a dactyl, often with a
dactylic word.
In De Cons. Suo. 65
uocibus Allobrogum patribus populoque patebat,
the dactyls may represent the sudden disclosure of the plot.
30 THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS
‘The line, however, does not seem rapid, I think because of the
clash of ictus and word-accent in Allobrogum and patribus.
In the Prognostica we have
uocibus instat et adsiduas iacit ore querelas,
a line representing adequately the bird’s repeated cries.
In lines containing four dactyls, chiefly of the type ddds,
which form 6% of the whole number, it is often possible to see
descriptive purpose, and sometimes this is fairly certain. So in
De Cons. Suo I. I:
Aspice: corripuit tremulis altaria flammis
In the version of the Iliad there is the contrast between the
long siege of Troy and its final capture
27 +tot nos ad Troiam belli exanclabimus annos,
quae decumo cadet, et poena satiabit Achiuos.
In the translation of Aratus, 120 sqq., we have flight and
terror. Other lines are
Aratea 474 sq.
Tum pedibus simul et supera ceruice iubata
cedit equos fugiens:
Prognostica, Fragment IV. 1:
Cana fulix itidem fugiens e gurgite ponti
but generally speaking Cicero does not appear to have aimed
at obtaining descriptive effect by variation of rhythm.
Catullus is still more remote from the Ennian tradition. He
is strongly spondaic, and 89-5% of his verses, excluding the
numerous ozovdeitdCovtec, have a spondaic fourth foot; 63:3%
begin with a dactyl. His rhythms are therefore more limited,
and the frequent diaeresis after the fourth foot restricts them —
further. LXIV. 58 may be meant to represent flight :
immemor at iuuenis fugiens pellit uada remis,
but descriptive dactyls in Catullus are very rare. Norden notes
his use with descriptive purpose of omovderdlortec.
With Lucretius, who is slightly more spondaic than Vergil
and has a greater preference for the type dsss, we find the
influence of Ennius again strong. There are clear instances of
descriptive dactyls, but also many where a purely dactylic
rhythm appears to be quite fortuitous, as in I. 362: |
corporis officiumst quoniam premere omnia deorsum.
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 31
Besides swift flight, eg. V. 1338
diffugiebat enim uarium genus omne ferarum,
we have such effects as the smooth flow of V. 273
qua uia secta semel liquido pede detulit undas,
the speedy coming of summer after spring in V. 740-742, the
representation of lightness in V. 500 sq.:
et leuiora aliis alia, et liquidissimus aether
atque leuissimus aerias super influit auras,
of freshness in I. 11:
et reserata uiget genitabilis aura Fauoni.
Norden notes Lucretius’ lines on the Sisyphus legend, I.
1000-1002,
sisss|d|s
s|dissid|s
d|ssdid]s
with the spondees and then the swift descent emphasised by
the initial dactylic word.
In any study of Latin hexameter verse Vergil must be the
most important and most interesting figure, and he has not only
shown greater skill than others in his handling of varied rhythms
but has to a greater extent employed them for descriptive effect.
This is particularly true of the Aineid, where he has followed
more artistically the example of Ennius. In the Eclogues
where the general movement is lighter accumulated dactyls
seem to have less significance. The Georgics are much nearer
in rhythm to the Aimed ; but there too, I think, dactyls serve
more often merely to vary and lighten the movement. There
are, however, a number of lines which are definitely descriptive,
such as IV. 373:
In mare purpureum uiolentior effluit amnis
or III. 201
ille uolat simul arua fuga simul aequora uerrens,
of the North wind. This use of dactyls with the repetition of
a word is noticeably frequent in the Georgics, as in the famous
line IIT. 284
sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus.
32 THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS
So in IV. 184:
Omnibus una quies operum, labor omnibus unus.
There is an accumulation of details in I. 444
namque urget ab alto
arboribusque satisque Notus pecorique sinister.
In IiI. 144:
saltibus in uacuis pascunt et plena secundum
flumina, muscus ubi et viridissima gramine ripa,
we have dactyls in a picture of untroubled calm.
Vergil’s technique in the Ainerd has been already so care-
fully investigated that little can be said which is not a repetition.
While the expression of movement, agitation, sudden noise,
lightness, tenderness, a Greek rhythm or an Ennian reminiscence
can be seen in a very large proportion, perhaps 80%, of his
purely dactylic lines and in many with predominantly dactylic
rhythm, there are some which have no such significance, ¢.g.,
Vil 19
quos hominum ex facie dea saeua potentibus herbis
induerat Circe in uoltus ac terga ferarum
and many where it is difficult to see anything but a vague general
tone, such as the cheerfulness of X. 141:
Maeonia generose domo, ubi pinguia culta
exercentque uiri Pactolusque inrigat auro.
or the hospitality of VIII. 175, 6
Haec ubi dicta, dapes iubet et sublata reponi
pocula gramineoque uiros locat ipse sedili.
The percentage of dactyls is highest in Book II., then come
III, IV. and X. ; itislowestin XII., which is noticeably sombre
in tone. Not a few, however, of the predominantly spondaic
lines express motion ; to take instances from this book
319. Eece uiro stridens alis adlapsa sagitta est.
430, 1. ille auidus pugnae suras incluserat auro
hine atque hinc oditque moras hastamque coruscat.
672, 3. Ecce autem flammas inter tabulata uolutus
ad caelum undabat vertex turrimque tenebat.
Tender emotion, pathos, compassion and entreaty are fre-
quently expressed by dactyls, e.g.
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 33
III. 489. O mihi sola mei super Astyanactis imago.
Wale 12. ille meum comitatus iter maria omnia mecum
atque omnis pelagique minas caelique ferebat.
X. 47, incolumem Ascanium liceat superesse nepotem.
XI. 593 sq. post ego nub ecaua miserandae corpus et arma
inspoliata feram tumulo patriaeque reponam.
Several times we find insubstantiality and unreality expressed,
as in the fading of the vision
II. 791. dicere deseruit, tenuisque recessit in auras.
VI. 284. quam sedem somnia uolgo
uana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent.
Compare VI. 702
par leuibus uentis uolucrique simillima somno.
Strikingly different from its use to describe sudden noises
and rapid movement is the employment of dactylic rhythm for
stillness and rest.
VI. 522. dulcis et alta quies placidaeque simillima morti.
So in III. 393, VIII. 27, X. 103. Contrast
X. 746. ferreus urget
somnus, in aeternum clauduntur lumina noctem.
Almost as tranquil, though it expresses motion, is the line
describing the voyage of the Greek fleet
II. 255. a Tenedo tacitae per amica silentia lunae.
So, when with the favour of Heaven Atneas ascends the
Tiber, VIII. 86 sqq. 3
Thybris ea fluuium, quam longa est, nocte tumentem
leniit, et tacita refluens ita substitit unda.
labitur uncta uadis abies, mirantur et undae.
uarlisque teguntur
arboribus, uiridisque secant placido aequore siluas.
It is quite easy to see that these lines are very unlike
VIII. 596. quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campiem,
HE 195. astitit imber
; noctem hiememque ferens et inhorruit unda tenebris.
XII. 101 sq. his agitur furiis totoque ardentis ab ore
scintillae absistunt, oculis micat acribus ignis,
34 THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS
and to point out in the latter the influence of harsher consonants
and the clash of ictus and accent on the movement of the verse ;
more subtle are the differences between
dulcis et alta quies placidaeque simillima morti
and
IV. 574. soluite uela citi. deus aethere missus ab alto
or
I. 536. in uada caeca tulit penitusque procacibus Austris,
between
arboribus, uiridisque secant placido aequore silvas
and
XII. 748. insequitur, trepidique pedem pede feruidus urget,
and between :
leniit, et tacita refluens ita substitit unda
and
X. 346. aduenit, et rigida Dryopum ferit eminus hasta.
My consideration of Vergil’s use of dactylic rhythms, and of
the foundations on which was built the theory of their function
which is tersely expressed by saying that * dactyls show tdyog ,’
leads me to suggest that in Greek the theory is not based on the
practice of the writers, that as a matter of fact Dionysius con-
siders other elements more important than the mere presence of
dactyls, and that while Ennius deliberately uses dactyls to
express speed and allied ideas, he is imitated with much res-
traint by later writers, and in Vergil, whose normal rhythm
is near that of elevated prose, a preponderance of dactyls serves
sometimes to give variety, and in its more frequent descriptive
use tenderness and tranquillity are often attained as well as
swift movement, sudden sounds, brightness, anger and excite-
ment. No study of Vergil’s work can fail to increase our admira- —
tion alike for his inspiration and for his art ; and that is probably
the chief result of this examination.
A. WOODWARD.
THE DESCRIPTIVE USE OF DACTYLS 35
BOOKS AND ARTICLES TO WHICH REFERENCE IS MADE.
Dionysius oF HaLicaRNAssus: On Literary Composition. Ed. W-
Rhys Roberts (1910).
DroxiscH: Hin statistischer Versuch tiber die Formen des Latein-
ischen Hexameters. Berichte uber die Umhandlungen der
Kon. Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig.
Band 18 (1866), pp. 75-139.
——— Weitere Untersuchungen tiber die Formen des Hexameters des
Vergil, Horaz und Homer. Berichte, etc. Band 20 (1868),
pp. 16-55.
LEDERER, S.: Ist Vergil der Verfasser von ‘Culex’ und ‘ Ciris’ ?
Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Hexameters. Leipzig,
1890 (pp. 17 and Tables).
Maxa, R.: Lautmalerei und Rhythmus in Vergil’s Aineis. Wiener
; Studien, 1897 (pp. 78-116).
Norpen, E.: Aneid VI. (Leipzig, 1903).
Anhang VII. Die Malerischen Mittel des Vergilischen Hexa-
meters.
Anhang IX. Irregularly constructed verse-endings.
PostGATE, J. P.: Prosodia Latina, an Introduction to Classical Latin
Verse. Oxford, 1923.
RAvSCcHER, G.: De Scholiis Homericis ad rem metricam pertinentibus.
Dissertationes Philologicae Argentoratenses Selectae XI. 1886.
La Rocue#, J.: Zahlenverhaltnisse in Homerischen Vers. Wiener
Studien, 1898.
—— Untersuchungen tiber den Vers bei Hesiod und in den Homer-
ischen Hymnen. 1898.
—— Der Hexameter bei Apollonios, Aratos und Kallimachos. 1899.
—_— Der Hexameter bei Vergil. 1901.
SKkutscH, F.: Article on ‘ Ennius’ in Pauly-Wissowa.
WINBOLT, 8S. E.: Latin Hexameter Verse. Methuen, 1903.
Mat x
igs
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
PART II
BEFORE passing on to the relations of Essex with Ireland, I will
quote a few additional illustrations from modern writers and
from the State Papers which all help to reproduce for us the
kind of atmosphere in which Shakespeare wrote his ‘ Hamlet.’
Mr. W. B. Devereux in his Lives of the Earls of Essex gives
a great deal of interesting information concerning Elizabeth’s
favourite.
He dwells on the extraordinary fascination Essex possessed
for his contemporaries. “The character of the Earl of Essex,’
he says, “may be judged from his life and letters ; but he must
have possessed qualities of the most attractive and endearing
nature ... if it be true, as Lord Clarendon tells us, that love
for the memory of his father was one of the chief causes which,
forty years afterwards, made the last Earl of Essex the most
popular nobleman of his time.’ (This reference is, of course, to
the great Parliamentary general.)
Mr. W. B. Devereux also explains that Essex ‘ was esteemed
one of the best poets among the nobility of England, but very
few of his poems are extant.’
The author dwells on the close connection existing between
the family and Protestantism, the fact that they had always
been leaders in the reformed religion and, also, on the fact that
Hssex was greatly devoted to study in his youth and had a con-
tinual desire for a university life.
‘In 1558 Walter Devereux succeeded his grandfather as Viscount
Hereford. . . . The Devereux had been among the earliest of the great
families to embrace the reformed religion. Lord Hereford united
himself still more closely to the Protestants by his marriage with the
daughter of Sir Francis Knollys, who was one of the earliest of the
Puritans.’
And again :
‘ Essex pursued his studies at Cambridge with such diligence and
37
38 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
success that few youths of his rank and standing were so distinguished.
Soon after leaving Cambridge Essex retired to his house at
Lanfrey i in Pembrokeshire and he became so enamoured of the rural
life he led that he used to say afterwards that ‘“‘ he could well have
bent his mind to a retired course.”’ So obscure a life was not, indeed
could not be, his destiny ; but it was not until time and his mother’s
earnest and repeated remonstrances had overcome the “ stiff aversa-
tion’ he had to appear under the auspices of the Earl of Leicester
that he would be drawn to the Court. At length he entered that
fatal circle in 1584 . . . and no sooner did he appear there than his
‘“‘ goodly person,” and a kind of urbanity and innate courtesy, com-
bined with the recollection of his father’s misfortunes, won him the
hearts of the queen and people.’
We observe, once again, how like this is to the opening por-
tion of “ Hamlet,’ where Hamlet, feeling the court polluted by his
uncle’s presence, desires to retire to his studies and is prevented
by the direct appeal of his mother (I. ii):
Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet :
I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
Mr. Devereux shows how Essex, even after having entered
the ‘ fatal circle ’ of the Court, still retained a longing for study
and desired a connection with one or other of the universities :
‘In 1588 Essex, esteemed one of the best poets among the nobility
of England, was made Master of Arts at Oxford. ... Essex wished
to succeed to the Chancellorship of the University, but the Queen
forced them to elect Sir Christopher Hatton . . . instead of University
dignities Essex succeeded to the more dangerous honours of a royal
favourite, a situation which he was ill-calculated to fill, his open and
impetuous disposition, and his chivalrous desire for military distinction,
alike disqualifying him for the peaceful intrigues of the Court.’
Mr. W. B. Devereux describes the brilliant success of Essex
at Cadiz in 1596, but points out that it was the distinction ob-
tained in this way which made him unduly prominent and so
ultimately excited jealousy and caused his downfall.
‘ The Earl of Essex, after the Cadiz expedition, touched the pinnacle
of his fortunes. His favour with the Queen could not, indeed, be
greater than before, but his popular reputation was vastly increased ;
herein lay the danger of his position; hence his fall. ... Queen
Elizabeth could not bear that the man she had raised to the position
of her favourite should be also the idol of the army and of the people ;
still less that he should undisguisedly take pleasure in being so.’
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 39
Hssex’s danger was increased by the tact that he was, though
remotely, of royal blood and was very generally regarded, both
abroad and at home, as a possible candidate for the throne.
Mr. Devereux points out that Essex was descended from Thomas
Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the sixth son of Edward III.
The State Papers continually show an attitude of jealousy
towards Essex because of the possibility of his claiming the
crown. Thus on September 14, 1592, there is an entry on the
subject of the Spaniards :
‘Their chief hope lies in the death of her Majesty. The Spaniard
_ gives that as a reason of his lingering in attempting a new assault,
because time may call her away whose life makes the attempt three
| times more perilous and they confirm their opinion with the certain
_ hope of a debate between the two houses of Hereford} and Derby
who, they think, will seek the Crown, each one for himself, during
_ which contention the Spaniard thinks the entry into England would
be without danger.’
In the Venetian Papers we find a letter of November 6, 1599,
dealing with Hssex :
‘ He has caused great suspicion on the part of the Queen ; all the
_ more on account of the love the people bear him; for his qualities
_ have won for him in England exactly the same sort of esteem as the
_late Duke of Guise enjoyed in France. All these suspicions in the
_ Queen’s mind are fomented and fed by persons of great weight, his
foes. We wait to see the result of the decision to be taken about the
_ greatest personage in England, the man who has enjoyed more of the
Queen’s favour than anyone else.’
A modern French historian, J. M. Dargaud, writing the history
_of Elizabeth’s reign, speaks of Essex as being, beyond compari-
son, the most attractive man at her Court. Hesays that Essex’s
folly is almost inconceivable ; but, even in that folly, there is
something which pleases, a dignity which was never possessed by
either Leicester or Burleigh.
‘The soul of this valiant and noble young man exhales a perfume
which prevents us from stifling in the corrupted atmosphere of Eliza-
_beth’s Court. The Earl of Essex really becomes almost insensate,
but even his madness attracts us more than the good sense of so many
| flatterers and cowards. He is a strange courtier and the worst of
| diplomats, but his character, nevertheless, shows a rare magnani-
' mity.... Hssex was of tall stature. His bearing was free, his
1 Devereux.
40 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
. attire somewhat negligent. ... His generosity knew no limits.
Next to the glory of arms what he most loved was the eneouragement
of letters . . . he distributed his favours as if he were a prince of the
blood or a king. ... His costume, except in rare circumstances,
was suitable rather for the field of battle or for the chase rather than
for the Court. . . . He was very well educated and religious by
temperament. He succeeded Leicester as the leader of the Puritans ;
but, unlike Leicester, he was sincere.’ !
I turn now to a portion of Essex’s story which I think has also
influenced the play of ‘ Hamlet,’ and in a somewhat curious and
unexpected way—I mean his experiences in Ireland. The Cecils,
in the person first of old Lord Burleigh, and, secondly, in the person
of his son Robert Cecil, conducted incessant intrigues against
Essex at Court ; they succeeded in alienating the Queen’s favour
from him, in setting him at odds with Raleigh (who played a
part much like that of Laertes in the drama), but their master-
stroke was to involve him in the difficult expedition to Ireland
in 1599 from which it was almost impossible that he should
extricate himself with honour and which did, indeed, bring about
his final ruin and disgrace.
Essex was most reluctant to go to Ireland; it had played a
most sinister part in his father’s history and he knew only too
much about it ; he believed that the task of pacifying the country
was almost impossible, that he would not be really supported
from home but rather hindered, and that his enemies would seize
the opportunity of his absence to ruin him with the Queen.
A close examination of the State Papers and the Essex trial
does, indeed, reveal the fact that it was mainly the Irish question
which brought Essex to destruction.
The essential mischief of his position in Ireland appears to-
have been that he was much too far in advance of his own age.
His father, as we have seen, had been particularly generous in
his attitude to the Irish and much beloved by them. Essex
succeeded to this understanding and this sympathy; his
magnanimity and his generosity made him able to appreciate
their point of view in a way possible to hardly any other dis-
tinguished Englishman. His great aim was, as his father’s had
been before him, to cultivate sympathy between the Irish and
the English ; he had a deep affection for them and they for him.
Essex had a private meeting with the rebel leader—Tyrone—_
1 Histoire @ Elizabeth d’ Angleterre.
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 41
and the two came to a certain agreement which awakens amaze-
ment that anybody in the sixteenth century should ever have
conceived such terms for Ireland. It is tragic and terrible to
think that, if the terms of Essex had been granted, the destruc-
tion of Irish nationality might have been averted and three
centuries of oppression on the one side and rage and resentment
on the other might have been spared to the two countries and to
the world. The death of Irish nationality meant the ruin of
Essex and the ruin of Essex sealed the fate of Ireland. The
Irish State Papers and the Essex trial, between them, reveal one
of the most pitiful and mournful tragedies both for a nation and
for an individual that the world can ever have seen.
Essex had always found his favourite political study in Irish
history, and he began his career in Dublin by holding out promises
of restitution to the plundered natives. He proclaimed that
any of the men of Ireland whose estates had been taken through
oppression, or by any form of violence or illegality, shouid have
them restored.
His terms to Tyrone were of almost unheard-of generosity
for that day : they included complete liberty of conscience, an
indemnity to all the Confederates and the promise that the
judges and officials and half the army in the country should be
Irish. They included even the promise of a Roman Catholic
University. Hssex’s terms really did not fall far short of the
Dominion settlement of to-day. Had they been granted Irish
nationality would have been saved and the long and tragic feud
between the two countries would have come to an end. But
alas ! for Klizabethan England or, at least, for the Queen’s narrow-
minded advisers, the generous terms offered by Essex suggested
only one thing—and that was high treason. Infinitely less
generous than Essex, they could see in his promises to Tyrone only
seli-seeking ; he was aiming at making himself King of Ireland
with the aid of Tyrone, or, if not that, then he was aiming at
making himself King of England with the aid of the Irish army.
Klizabeth and her advisers repudiated the terms offered to Tyrone ;
the promises made by Essex were not acknowledged as valid and
not kept; they were, in connection with his solitary interview
with Tyrone, the principal counts against him; the trifling
commotion he made at the time of his so-called ‘ conspiracy
might have been easily pardoned him. It was the Irish ques-
tion which cost him his head.
42 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
Now I think it more than possible that some reference to
these affairs is included in the play of ‘ Hamlet.’ Even to-day
the Irish poets personify their country as a woman and call her
‘Kathleen Ni’ Houlihan’ or the ‘ Dark Roraleen’; the chief
of Ireland’s living poets, Mr. W. B. Yeats, has written a drama
on the subject of Kathleen Ni’ Houlihan.
In the sixteenth century such personification was far com-
moner than it is to-day. Almost every country was so per-
sonified and was regularly represented as a hero or heroine in
paintings, masques, pageants, etc. The Venetian painters
regularly represented their city as a beautiful woman in their
frescoes ; in political tracts she was termed ‘our lovely lady
of Venice.’ Almost all the pageants for the city of London (for
instance, those of Thomas Middleton) represent London as a
beautiful woman, termed either London or, more simply, genius
loci. Nichols in his Progresses of James I gives an account of the
pageants presented for the King on his accession in 1603, and
shows among them the ‘ wedding’ of England and Scotland,
England being in this case the bridegroom and Scotland the
bride ; there is also the wedding of James to England who is
represented, in that case, as the King’s bride and the wedding
of James to London who also is the King’s * bride.’
Elizabeth, it will be remembered, was particularly fond of
representing herself as married to England and said she considered
her ‘ coronation ring’ as her wedding ring; it was one of the
excuses she offered for taking no other husband.
Even in proclamations the same imagery is sometimes used ;
thus there is one of Elizabeth’s in 1586 which represents England
and the Low Countries as having been man and wife for centuries.
Now I certainly think that something of the same sort has
quite possibly happened in the play of ‘ Hamlet,’ and that
Shakespeare has employed * Ophelia’ as a kind of Kathleen
Ni Houlihan, or symbol of the Irish nationality, for his ‘ rose
of May’ has certainly all the symbols of Ireland as the Eliza-
bethans saw them.
The first thing which excites our suspicion in this respect is her
amazing name ; Ophelia was just as extraordinary, considered as
a woman’s name, as it would be to-day, but it was the Irish name
for King’s County, which usually appears in the State Papers in
the somewhat corrupted form of ‘ Offally.’ It was the direct
cause of Essex’s overthrow, for it was the loss of Ophelia, the fort
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 43
where his stores were laid up, which caused the breakdown of
his Irish campaign; it was also Ophelia which saw the end of
Irish nationality. It was Essex’s successor—Mountjoy—who
conducted the Irish campaign to a successful conclusion, and it
ended with the rebel leaders drowning themselves or being drowned
—the exact circumstances are not known—in the bogs of Ophelia,
and this happened just about the time ‘ Hamlet’ was written.
This really was the event which seemed to many people the end
of the national existence of Ireland and so for some three centuries
it proved to be.
Ophelia is found dead with fantastic garlands of flowers in
her hands (iV. vii).
_ “ Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples,’
and this was typical of the Irish as the seventeenth century saw
them ; they believed that the unhappy Irish people were reduced
to living on herbs and were repeatedly found dead, floating in
their bog-waters, with nothing else in their hands. Thus Osborne
in his Traditional Memoirs on the Reign of Hlizabeth says that the
wild Irish were daily found dead in bogs and woods with grass in
their mouths.
The State Papers show the same thing; there is a ‘ Report to
- Hlizabeth on the Cruelties Practised on the Irish’ in 1498 which
states that
‘The land is now so wretched and miserable as the poor souls that
| are left have nothing but roots, grass and nettles.’
Ireland is repeatedly said to be insane with its sufferings or
_ “distracted * with rebellion. - Thus the Irish State Papers in an
_entry for April 19, 1599, state that they give
‘an estimate of the state of Ireland, as it standeth at this present,
distracted and broken with these rebellions.’
There is an entry to similar effect on April 29, 1600.
‘ Her Majesty and your Lordships may clearly see how great and
_ almost desperate the indisposition of Ireland really is and consequently
_ how long and difficult the cure thereof is likely to prove.’
January, 1600, mentions the
‘ killing or drowning of the traitors in Offally or King’s County.’
Hssex, of course, was represented as the lover of this unhappy
county and as beloved by the Irish.
A:S.—VOL. VII D
44 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
On January 6, 1600, we read that the Irish rebels said of Essex :
‘ He is now in trouble for us, for that he would do no service upon
us ; which he never meant to do for he is ours and we are his. Others
also said he should be King of Ireland.’
Interesting in this connection are Barnabie Rich’s two pam-
phlets : A Short Survey of Ireland, 1609, and A New Description
of Lreland, 1610.
He had spent forty-seven years in the country and knew it
well. He says that the English and Irish have a natural tendency
to afiection for each other, and he considers that their difficulties
would be soon obviated and they would become one nation by
intermarriage, if it were not that this intermarriage is unfairly
prevented by interference on both sides. Thus the Pope, whom
Rich speaks of contemptuously as the ‘ father ’ of Ireland, forbids
the marriage of the Catholic Irish with the English aad is con-
tinually spying and interfering :
‘I have likewise so plucked the Vizard from the Pope himself
that he might so appear in his own likeness, that neither his fatherly
lookes, nor his counterfeit show of gravitie, nor that holie holie holi-
nesse, wherwith he hath so long disguised himself, shall be able to
deceive any man.’
But the English on their part play into the hands of the Pope
by making laws against intermarriage.
‘The English were likewise enjoyned neither to marry, foster nor
otherwise combine with the Irish.’
Rich has a great affection for the eit personally, but he pities
them for being so ruled by the Pope.
‘[ am censured for writing of a Book to be a malicious enemy to
Ireland, the poor Ireland that (God knoweth) is rather to be pitied
than spighted.’
And again :
‘Their minds are still poisoned with Popery and what is hee that
is not touched with a kind of compassion to see the poor and silly
people so seduced and carried away.’
He mentions the faults of the Irish character which arise from
this influence and puts deceit and equivocation as the chief among
them. The Irish are continually praying, but they think
nothing of equivocation ; and again |
‘The Pope avoweth it be a worke meritorious, for any of his
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 45
Disciples to lie, to flatter, to counterfeit, to dissemble, or to enter
into any action, be it never so base, be it never so abject, be it never
so servile, yet if they can by any of these means compass a plot .
they may do it by prescription, he giveth them Pardons, he giveth
them Dispensations.’
‘For him that is a knowne Papist I would never trust his word.’
Rich, like most Protestant Englishmen, also objected very
greatly to the nunneries of the Irish. Again and again Rich sar-
castically describes the main feature in Irish religion as being the
eating of fish, for they think it MIS COREEIE to fast upon fish three
times a week.
Now we certainly find curious parallels to all this in ‘ Hamlet.’
Ophelia and Hamlet have a natural affection and partiality for
| each other; but they are shut away and exacerbated into
antagonism by unwise interference on both sides ; it is certainly
Ophelia’s father who takes a main part in that interference and
who spies, intercepts letters and hides behind the arras exactly as
| the Jesuit emissaries were accustomed to do, and Hamlet also
accuses him of being a ‘fishmonger ’ (II. ii).
The main fault in Ophelia’s character is certainly her equivo-
| cation, and it is this which causes the rupture between herself and
Hamlet (III. i).
Hamlet comes upon her, apparently intent upon her prayers,
_for the words of Polonius distinctly imply this (III. i).
‘ Read on this book ;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loveliness. We are oft to blame in this,—
‘Tis too much proved—that with devotions visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.’
So does Hamlet’s greeting when he comes upon Ophelia:
‘ Nymph, in thy orisons
Be ali my sins remembered.’
and yet she answers the question ‘ Where’s your father ?
_with a deliberate lie: ‘ At home, my lord.’
As usually acted on the stage Hamlet’s sudden change from
affection to wrath is shown to be due to some sudden movement
of the arras which betrays the presence of a spy and makes him
suspect Polonius. The ‘ paintings ’ of which he accuses Ophelia
are usually set down as meaningless accusations, due either to
_his wrath or his madness, and having no real reference to anything
| in Ophelia herself. But ‘ painting ’ and the artifices of the toilet
|
= |
46 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
“were the most common symbols the whole of the Protestant
sixteenth century used in describing the Church of Rome and they
are introduced most appropriately here at the moment when
Ophelia is shown as colouring over her father’s plot with a show
of piety :
‘T have heard of your paintings too, well enough ; God has given
you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble,
and you lisp and nick-name God’s creatures, and make your wanton-
ness your ignorance.’
Equally appropriate would be, on such an interpretation, the
raging advice to enter a nunnery.
Barnabie Rich dwells a good deal on the unusual customs of
the Irish: one of these is their habit of sitting on the floor at
ceremonies :
‘The manner of their sitting in this great feasting is this : Stooles
nor tables they have none ; but a good bundle of Straw strewed about
the Floore, they set themselves downe one by another.’
He goes on to speak of the scandals to which such careless
customs give rise. This may help to explain a scene which has
always puzzled commentators: the play-scene in which Hamlet
chooses to seat himself on the floor by Ophelia and to behave in a
way which certainly shows immodesty (IIT. i1).
The stage directions represent Hamlet as lying down at
Ophelia’s feet and he speaks to her afterwards with gross sug-
gestiveness. There is really no rational explanation for this
scene on any ordinary lines; but, if Shakespeare alludes to Ire-
land, then it was simply a notorious Irish custom.
Barnabie Rich speaks of Irish religion as being only subser-
vience to the Pope, praying and the eating of fish and, when they ©
throw off this allegiance, they go, as it were, distracted and relapse
into complete paganism. He mentions among their pagan customs
the strewing around of herbs on May Eve and on Midsummer Eve,
and he also mentions the numerous holy wells of Ireland and
Dublin and the worshipping of such holy wells as a part of the ©
people’s religion.
Now Ophelia in her madness, does strew herbs around (IV. v):
‘There’s fennel for you and columbines; there’s rue for you;
Ay
and here’s some for me; we may call it herb grace o’ Sundays.’
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’
As for the worship of wells, part of such worship was by
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 47
hanging garlands on the branches of trees which grew over them,
and it is precisely in the hanging of such a garland that Ophelia
meets her death (IV. vii).
‘ There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke.’
Other parallels, not found in Rich, are obvious enough.
Thus the Irish were always famous for the number of their bards
and musicians, as bards, rhymers and professional musicians
invariably formed part of the establishment of the chiefs and
Norman-—Irish nobles.1
Their songs were naturally, in the sixteenth century, exceed-
ingly melancholy, and it was they who did more than any other
class to keep alive the spirit of Irish nationality. It was they
who sustained it to the very end.
Now Shakespeare represents Ophelia as singing snatches of
song all the time in her madness (IV. v) and singing even in her
death (IV. vii).
‘ Her clothes spread wide :
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes ;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element : but long it would not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulld the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.’
We see here that it is snatches of old tunes which Ophelia
_ sings and that she sings to the very last moment of her life, which
certainly would be a wonderful and strictly accurate symbol for
the dying nationality of Ireland. ;
The mention of water as a kind of ‘native element’ of
Ophelia’s is also remarkable, for this is exactly the description
of Ireland given by nearly every writer in the sixteenth century,
that almost half the country is bog and water, or woods which
_were almost equally wet.
* Prior to the seventeenth century the winter rains converted many
__ of the streams into raging torrents, overflowing their erstwhile banks
and forming extensive lakes, large bogs and morasses with great
_ patches of rushes and long grass. . . . The presence of water in the
|
y
1 Elizabethan Ireland, G. B. O’Connor.
48 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
large lakes, copious rivers and streams meandering . . . through ex-
tensive bogs, was an equally marked feature. ... Bogs and morasses
filled up a large part of the country. ... Half the total area was
wood, bog, barren mountain land or water.’ !
‘To the general use of herbs and the tops of nettles, was probably
due the belief that the Irish rebels lived on a kind of grass only.’
The State Papers themselves are equally emphatic as to the
water and the rain being the native elements of Ireland. Shake-
speare expressly gives us to understand that his heroine met her
death in boggy water, for he speaks of it as ‘muddy death’
(LV. vii), and it was the typical death of the Irish rebels as the
sixteenth century envisaged them, found floating in their bogs
or pools with the herbs which were their piteous support, clasped
fast in their hands. As I have already said, the Irish leaders
perished under Mountjoy, by drowning in the bogs of ‘ Ophelia.’
It is in the grave of the piteous drowned Ophelia that Hamlet
also finally commits himself to his fate (V.1i), and the death of
the Irish nationality and the fate of Essex were, indeed, insepar-
ably entwined.
Ireland was proverbially known all over Hurope as ‘the
Englishman’s grave.’ 3
When we put all these things together, it is difficult to resist
the conclusion that Shakespeare is putting something of the
Irish situation into the play of ‘ Hamlet.’ There is the significant
name of ‘ Ophelia,’ the loss of which was the cause of the down-
fall of Essex and the region where, almost as Shakespeare was
writing ‘ Hamlet,’ the drowning of the Irish leaders occurred.
There is the fact that the Irish poets still personify their
country as a woman and that, in Shakespeare’s time, such per-
sonification was so common as to be almost universal. There
is the fact that a country in the throes of civil war was almost
invariably described as being ‘ distracted’ or ‘ insane’ with its
sufferings, as France, for instance, is repeatedly described as
insane in Agrippa D’Aubigne’s epic poem of ‘ Les Tragiques.’
There is the further fact that the Irish State Papers themselves
repeatedly describe Ireland as ‘ distracted.’ We may add that
nearly all the qualities symbolic of the rebellion in Ireland are
accumulated together in the character of Ophelia.
I do not think that in the character of Hamlet himself Shake-
speare is depicting the Earl of Essex or any one individual; a
1 Hlizabethan Ireland, G. B. O’Connor.
HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 49
great part of the play, as I have shown in my book on Hamlet and
the Scottish Succession, is probably derived from a study of
James I and the affairs of Scotland, but the two subjects were,
at that date, inseparably connected together in the public mind.
Whatever Essex had or had not aimed at in his ‘so-called ’
conspiracy there can be little doubt that James of Scotland was
fully involved in it. Essex himself asserted that the aim of his
conspiracy was to avert the danger of a Spanish succession and
_ to ensure the Scottish succession, and the friends of Essex asserted.
CL ee a
that he had died a martyr to the cause of James. That the
King himself believed this is exceedingly probable, for his own
behaviour suggests it ; upon his accession one of the first things
he did was to set Hssex’s fellow-conspirator—the Earl of
Southampton—free from the Tower and give him a position of
honour near his own person ; he also returned the sequestrated
property of the Earl of Essex and restored the family in blood
and honour. At the time ‘Hamlet’ was written the memory
of Essex was indissolubly united with the hope of James of
Scotland as the heir to the Crown.
It is my belief that the play of ‘Hamlet’ is very largely
composed of just those problems and ideas which chiefly pre-
occupied the minds of Shakespeare and his audience at the date
at which the play was written. The story of the mother who
married with indecent haste the murderer of her husband would
fit equally well either James I or Essex, for such a fact was
a salient one in the youth of both. The figure of the lonely
_ scholar isolated in the midst of a Court which did not under-
stand him and which perpetually intrigued against him would
| fit either equally well ; so would the devotion to philosophy and
Protestant theology ; Essex was the leader of the Puritans in
England and James had a passion for theological discussion.
So far as melancholy was concerned that also was present both
_ in James and in Essex ; so also was the problem of the unstable
_ temperament ; James had been a conspicuous example of that
all his life and Essex was a still more conspicuous example of it
_ daring his later years.
There are, however, certain elements in the character which
are more appropriate to Essex than to James; the warlike
_ valour, the reputation of a soldier, the relation to the players
and the intense interest taken in their art, the scorn and con-
}
_ tempt for courtiers, and at the same time the winning charm
|
=|
|
1
50 HAMLET AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY
’ of the personality. No efforts of interpretation have ever yet
been able to interpret the character of Hamlet with consistency
as that of an individual for, as Mr. J. M. Robertson has conclu-
sively shown, different critics arrive at totally different inter-
‘pretations and each one makes his own portrait consistent only
by ignoring a number of the data included by the others.
I do not believe it possible to interpret the character of
Hamlet as an individual unity; the Elizabethans usually drew
the type and not the individual, either the national type or the
representative type, but not the individual as such.
Shakespeare may, quite probably, have intended Hamlet to
represent the Elizabethan era as it was in its last years. Essex
and Raleigh were the last two of its great representatives and
they destroyed each other over the succession question. I
have shown in my book how Robert Cecil played off Essex and
Raleigh against each other and led them to destroy each other
just as Hamlet and Laertes are played off against each other in
the tragedy.
The Elizabethan age, so glorious in its prime, was ending
when ° Hamlet’ was written, ending in disillusion, in division
of mind, and in profound melancholy ; it ended also with the
destruction of the Irish nationality, and it is this picture of pro-
found and tragic gloom which, I believe, Shakespeare has trans-
muted for us into the pages of ‘ Hamlet.’
LILIAN WINSTANLEY.
SAINTE-BEUVE AND THE ENGLISH
PRE-ROMANTICS
SaINTE-BEUVE often spoke with great admiration of English
poetry, and regretted that he had not time to explore further
that enchanting region of which he had only caught a glimpse.
In the last year of his life he wrote to a friend, M. Doinel :
“Tl ya la la plus riche, la plus douce, la plus saine et la plus neuve
littérature poétique: en deux ou trois ans on peut en étre maitre,
et alors on a pour toute la vie des trésors de poésie domestique, morale,
une poésie d’affection et d’imagination. La correspondance des poetes
| recueillie apres leur mort forme aussi une suite de lectures charmantes.
. . . Nos poetes francais sont trop vite lus ; ils sont trop légers, trop
mélés, trop corrompus le plus souvent, trop pauvres d’idées, méme
quand ils ont le talent de la strophe et du vers, pour attacher longtemps
et pour occuper un esprit sérieux ’ (Nowvelle Correspondance, p. 352,
1869. See also letters to Roussel, Armstrong and Arnold, Corresp. I,
p- 273 ; Corresp. II, p. 44, French Quarterly, September, 1921).
| Though not intimately acquainted with his works, Sainte-
_ Beuve had a veritable cult for Wordsworth, and second only to
him in his affection and esteem were the precursors of the Lake
_ poets, Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe. Cowper and Gray, original,
melancholy, self-revealing yet restrained, appealed to the psycho-
_logist and the classicist in Sainte-Beuve: Crabbe appealed by
his uncompromising realism.
| When he was writing for the Globe (1824-8) Sainte-Beuve
| doubtless was already acquainted with some of Gray’s poems,
_ at least in translation ; yet, until 1835, that is after his definite
_ separation from Hugo’s school, he does not mention Gray in
his critical works. After 1835, references, fairly numerous and
_all appreciative, give evidence that he had read not only the
_ Latin and English poems of Gray but also his correspondence,
_ to which he frequently refers and which he sometimes quotes
_ (Portraits Contemporains, vol. 2, p. 236; vol. 3, p. 273; vol. 4,
p. 59. Portraits Inttéraires, vol. 2, p. 225. Lundis, vol. 1,
p. 446; vol. 2, p. 318). Gray’s poetry interested Sainte-Beuve
51
\
52 SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS
because it revealed a personality, ‘melancholy, delicate and
original,’ and charmed by its classical restraint the critic who,
towards the end of his life, said of himself :
‘ Je suis resté, malgré tout, de l’école classique, de celle d’ Horace,
du chantre de la forét de Windsor, et méme, en n’y mettant plus du
tout de passion, je reste obstiné par ce coté de mon esprit et dans ce
for intérieur de mon sentiment’ (Nouvelle Corres., p. 235, 1867).
He seems, moreover, to have felt a close affinity between
himself and Gray, and at times, when he is writing of the English
poet, gives the impression that it is his own feelings that he is
analysing. One passage in Volupté (pub. 1834) is almost a
paraphrase of the stanza of the ‘ Elegy ’ beginning : ‘ Full many
a gem... Amaury says :
‘Sur cette bruyere de Couan . . . je m’arréterai devant quelque
pierre informe . . . et je prononcerai dessus ces mots: “ Aux grands
hommes inconnus!” Oh, oui... aux grands hommes qui n’ont
pas brillé, aux amants qui n’ont pas aimé, a cette élite infinie que ne
visiterent jamais l’occasion le bonheur et la gloire, aux fleurs des
bruyeres, aux perles du fond des mers, a ce que savent d’odeurs in-
connues les brises qui passent ’ (p. 151).
This passage had evidently made a powerful impression on
Sainte-Beuve, for he refers to it again in a later work and quotes
Chateaubriand’s translation (Chateaubriand et son groupe Lit-
téraire, vol. 1, pp. 140-1, 1849). He draws a parallel between
the emotions expressed in it, and those of Chateaubriand himself
at the time when he wrote the translation :
‘Quand Chateaubriand, pauvre et luttant a Londres contre le
malheur traduisait ou imitait cette élégie, il faisait sans doute un
retour sur lui, sur sa propre destinée encore si douteuse. . . .’
Sainte-Beuve, at the beginning of his literary career, probably
also found in the elegy the expression of his own discouragement.
Years later, looking back on the failure of his poetic ambitions,
he wrote with profound understanding of Gray’s dejection during
the five years of poetic stagnation which he spent at Cambridge :
‘Je le chercherais plutot dans la stérilité d’un talent poétique si
distingué, si rare, mais siavare. Oh, comme je le comprends mieux,
dans ce sens 1a, le silence obstiné et boudeur des poétes, arrivés & un
certain Age et taris, cette rancune encore aimante envers ce qu’on a
tant aimé et qui ne reviendra plus, cette douleur d’une Ame orpheline
de poésie et: quine veut’ pas se consoler” (Lundis, XJV, p. 430).
SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS | 53
In Sainte-Beuve’s poetical works there is only one poem
translated from Gray, “ Eton College.’ Four stanzas appeared
in 1836 in an article on Mme. Guizot, and the complete poem was
inserted in the edition of the Poésies Completes. Apart from this
we find no trace of any influence of Gray on Sainte-Beuve’s
poetical works.
Judging from his critical articles he knew and understood
Cowper’s poetry much more intimately than that of any other
English writer, even Wordsworth.
As early as 1825, in an article in the Globe (compte rendu
of Pichot’s Voyage en Angleterre, 15th December, 1825), he
speaks sympathetically of Cowper, comparing him with
Rousseau :
“Cowper .. . présente d’étonnants rapports avec notre Rousseau,
par sa vie malheureuse des l’enfance, par l’Age auquel son talent se
révela a lui, par la teinte mélancolique et religieuse de ce talent, enfin
par les égarements de son 4me soup¢conneuse et tendre.’
There are, however, no poems translated or imitated from
Cowper in either Joseph Delorme or the Consolations, a fact which
suggests that, during his period of allegiance to the Romantic
school, his interest in Cowper was overshadowed by a greater
admiration for Wordsworth and the other Lake poets. Between
1830 and 1834, that interest received a new stimulus; Sainte-
Beuve embarked on the study of Port Royal, which formed the
subject of his lectures at Lausanne during the session 1837-8.
In the Jansenists, of whom he has drawn such a wonderful
series of portraits, he recognized men of the same order of
mind as the sensitive and puritanical Cowper; he himself
makes the comparison and regrets that Port Royal had no
such Bee
‘Je me suis quelquefois étonné et j’ai.regretté qu’il n’y ait pas eu
a Port Royal ou dans cette postérité qui suivit, un poéte comme William
Cowper... . Cowper était, comme Pascal, frappé de terreur & lidée
de la vengeance de Dieu; il avait de ces tremblements qu’inspirait
M. de Saint-Cyran, et quits ‘si tendrement’ chantés’ (Lundis, X14,
p. 177, 1854; see also Nouveaux Lundis, 1, p. 63, 1862).
An article written in 1836 pontine a vigorous defence oi
Cowper, whom Villemain had dismissed as
‘un esprit singulier et maladif ... . sans puissance sur l’imagination
des autres hommes’ (Portraits. Contemporains, 1, p. 391).
54 SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS
Sainte-Beuve took up the cudgels, and warmly maintained
that Villemain showed bad taste in accepting the popular judg-
ment, which preferred Byron to ‘le tendre et profond Cowper,
le sublime Wordsworth.’ At this time several of his friends
shared his growing enthusiasm for the poetry of Cowper, among
them William Hughes, an Englishman who helped him with the
difficult passages, Lacaussade the poet, and Mme. Desbordes
Valmores daughter Ondine, who had translated some of the
Olney hymns (Portraits Cont., II, p. 138).
In the articles written between 1838 and 1854 Sainte-Beuve
often mentions Cowper. When he discusses a nature poet,
Fontanes, Leopardi, Delille, a comparison or contrast with Cowper
comes to his mind, and several times he expresses regret that
French literature has no such poet :
‘Il nous aurait fallu un Cowper pour fixer dans notre poésie toute
cette partie réelle et jolie, vraiment rurale. ... Brizeux y a taché
mais il tache trop. ... Le Cowper, jusquici nous a manqué’
(Lundis, VII, p. 77; see also Lundis, VU, 177; X, 242).
In 1854, on the occasion of the reprint of Southey’s biography
and edition of Cowper, he published four articles, the first entitled
‘ De la poésie de la nature : de la poésie du foyer et de la famille,’
and the other three, ‘ William Cowper, ou de la poésie domestique ’
(Lundis, XI). A note to the last one informs the reader that.
this study is ‘ déja ancienne,’ and that the author could have
developed it to much greater lengths (p. 189). As they stand,
the articles give proof of an intimate first-hand acquaintance
with not only the poetical works of Cowper, but also his corre-
spondence and his biography. At the beginning of the second
article, Sainte-Beuve refers the reader for full details to Southey’s
edition (first published in 1836, reprinted in 1854) and to Grim-
shawe’s edition (1850). Both these volumes were among his
books at his death as well as a London edition (1853), Hayley’s
edition of Cowper’s Life and Letters (London, 1835) and the Task.
The two last-named contained marginal notes in Sainte-Beuve’s.
handwriting (Catalogue des lwres rares et curieux composant la
bibliothéque de Sainte-Beuve, Paris, Potier, 1870, Part I, No. 491
bis, Part II, Nos. 262, 263, 778). Of all his criticism of English
writers, these articles are the most interesting part, because here
he is speaking of a poet whom he knew well enough to be able
to form an entirely personal judgment. There is no other
English writer whose work he examines in such detail, or of whom
SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS 55
he has made so finished and sympathetic a portrait. After
giving in the first two articles a short account of the life of
Cowper, he proceeds to an analysis of the Task, an examination
of the most beautiful passages, a consideration of style and an
appreciation of the poet’s qualities, quoting many passages
translated from the correspondence, from the Task and from
the shorter poems. Some of these translations are from Hughes,
some by Lacaussade, one, an Olney hymn (already quoted in an
earlier article of Sainte-Beuve), by Ondine Desbordes Valmore ;
one is copied from a translation in the Bibliotheque Universelle
de Geneve. The name of the translator is generally indicated
in a footnote, but where it is not given Sainte-Beuve is presumably
himself the author. Most of these passages, which seem to be
his favourite ones, are taken from the Task and are examples
of that ‘modest and familiar’ poetry mingled with the poetry
of nature, which Sainte-Beuve was so desirous of introducing
into France. It is the scenes of simple domestic happiness
which delight him most. The poems, and still more the corre-
spondence, of which he wrote with the greatest admiration, and
which he was astonished to find still untranslated into French
(p. 139), revealed to him a personality very different from his
own and therefore doubly interesting, and provided him with
material for the delicate and sympathetic analysis he has made
of the mind of Cowper. As in the case of Gray, the restraint of
Cowper’s poetry was an added charm to the Sainte-Beuve of
- later life, who, while recognising the greater power of the turbulent
_ and forceful geniuses, himself preferred the polished and studious
writers.
| Certain aspects of Cowper’s poetry did not appeal to him:
_ while appreciating its tenderness, purity and spontaneity, the
moral and religious sentiment with which it is impregnated, he
| was sometimes repelled by an excess of austerity and a certain
_ declamation which mar even the most beautiful poems: ‘Il a
_ Pinconvénient de ressembler plus d’une fois 4 la prédication en
vers’ (p. 183). He judges Cowper’s taste to be ‘bold and
_ original rather than sure ’ and his choice of images to be at times
| a little over-subtle. He cannot enjoy the very English humour
of © Gilpin’ :
|
‘Il faut voir ces choses dans l’original avec ’humour qui y est
_ propre, et étre soi-méme du cri pour les sentir. ... Je n’ai voulu
_ que donner idée de ce cété si imprévu pour nous et si anglais du génie
|
56 SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS
- de Cowper. Reprenons-le par ses cotés sérieux, les seuls par ou nous
puissions l’atteindre ’ (p. 173).
These, however, are. slight criticisms and insignificant in
comparison with the enthusiastic praise which Sainte-Beuve
accorded to Cowper, whose qualities he summed up in the follow-
ing passage :
‘On saisit mieux dans les lettres les sources véritables de sa poésie,
un badinage encore affectueux, une familiarité que ne dédaigne rien
de ce qui intéresse . . . mais tout a coté, de l’élévation, ou plutot de
la profondeur. N’oublions pas non plus Vironie, la malice, une
raillerie fine et douce.’
He concludes the last article with a comparison between
Cowper and Pascal, Saint Pierre, and Rousseau, especially the
last named, who loved nature with an equal passion, but lacked
qualities which gave elevation to Cowper’s poetry :
‘Je pensais . . . a Punion de la famille et du foyer avec celle de
la nature. C’est cette union qui manque chez Rousseau, et par toutes
sortes de raisons qui font peine a ses admirateurs: ce peintre aux
larges et puissantes couleurs vit et habite dans un intérieur souillé’
(p. 195).
From time to time, in the articles published after 1854,
Sainte-Beuve draws a comparison between Cowper’s poetry and
admirable passages of description and sentiment in the authors
he studies: a passage from ‘Madame Bovary’ recalls the
‘ Promenade d’hiver a midi ’ from the Task, the poetry of Maurice
de Guérin renders as delicately as Cowper’s ‘les joies d’un
intérieur pur, la félicité domestique, ce ressouvenir del’Eden. . . .’
(Lundis, XIII, 351, 1857; XV, 24, 1862). In 1862, in an article
on ‘Jean Racine et Louis Racine,’ he regrets ‘le poete tendre, ©
plaintif, Vélégiaque chrétien, le Cowper janséniste qu’on aurait
souhaité a Port Royal expirant ’ (Nouveaux Lundis, III, p. 63).
The last reference occurs in an article on Madame Desbordes
Valmore, published in 1869, the year of Sainte-Beuve’s death.
His interest in Crabbe corresponded with his attempt to
introduce more realism into his own poetry, at the time when
he was writing the ° Pensées d’Aoat,’ which, as M. G. Roth has
already shown, bear the profound mark of Crabbe’s influence.
(See M. Roth’s article in the French Quarterly of March, 1921,
on ‘Sainte-Beuve, Crabbe, et le conte en vers.’) After the
publication of ‘ Jocelyn,’ convinced of his powerlessness to rival
SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS 57
Lamartine in his own sphere, he sought to bring the poetry of
nature and the home to earth again :
‘Or, il m’a semble qu'il était bon peutétre de replacer la poésie
domestique familiere et réelle, sur son terrain nu, de la transporter
méme sur des collines pierreuses et hors de tous les magnifiques
ombrages ’ (Poésies completes, p. 306).
He found a model in the verse narratives, the ‘ Parish
Register,’ the “ Borough,’ the ‘ Village,’ of which he wrote a eulogy
in the article on * Jocelyn ’ (Portraits Contemporains, I, 329, 1836)
appreciating Crabbe’s talent for describing sordid life and his
fearless representation of stark realities. He admired Crabbe for
the very reason for which Hazlitt blamed him, because he chose
the subject of the country only ‘ to dispel the illusion, the glory
-and the dream which had hovered over it in golden verse from
Theocritus to Cowper,’ and to Lamartine. It is true that for
a time, this new master overshadowed even Wordsworth ; it is
probably true, as M. Roth says, that Sainte-Beuve had actually
much more affinity with Crabbe than with the Lake poets, but
we are inclined to doubt that he ever considered him to be as
great a poet as either Wordsworth or Cowper, or that his admira-
tion was as enduring as it was in their case. However it may be,
there is only one reference to Crabbe in the critical articles after
1852 ; he continued to regard him as the master realist (Lunds,
V, 390, 1852; Corres., I, 170, 1850), but he was too intelligent
not to appreciate the higher poetic inspiration of Wordsworth
and Cowper.
Even at the end of his life, Sainte-Beuve did not read English
fluently (Corres., II, p. 358, 1869) ; it is therefore probable that
the dialect of Burns offered almost insuperable difficulties, and
we are not surprised to find very few references to these poems.
Such as there are do not give proof of more than a slight acquaint-
ance with the work of Burns. The only poem he mentions is
the ° Cottar’s Saturday Night’ (Portraits Littéraires, II, p. 353,
_ 1852), which he admires because it is not merely a picturesque
description ; ‘ Burns se montre en outre cordial, moral, chrétien
_ patriote’ (Portraits Littéraires, II, p. 353).
i The catalogue of Sainte-Beuve’s library, published at his
_ death, contains the names of the 1829 edition of Crabbe’s poetical
_works (Paris, Galignani), the 1835 edition of the Life and Letters
of Cowper (ed. Hayley, London, 1835), as well as editions of
_ Wordsworth (Galignani, 1828), Coleridge (Galignani, 1828) and
|
58 SAINTE-BEUVE AND ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTICS
‘ Southey (Galignani, 1829). As these were published when he
was still comparatively unknown in the literary world, we may
at least surmise that he bought them, and, if that is so, poor
as he was, he must have been very eager to possess them. This
fact alone has little significance, but allied with the evidence of
his criticism and correspondence, it throws light on the sincerity
of his interest in the Lake poets and their precursors. In 1824,
when he began writing for the Globe, English literature, and
especially recent and contemporary literature, was, it is true,
so much the fashion that no young man of any pretensions to
literary distinction could be entirely ignorant about it. Sainte-
Beuve probably read the articles of his colleagues, and, in the
case of many English writers, he may never have gone further
than this second-hand information ; but, in the case of Cowper
and Crabbe, there is no doubt that, mastering with the help of
his friends the difficulties which his incomplete knowledge oi
English presented, he attained to a remarkable knowledge and
understanding of their works. In later life the strenuous nature
of his task compelled him to neglect English poetry, but it was
with many a sorrowful backward glance that he turned away
from ‘the land of Chanaan.’ |
EK. M. PHILLIPS.
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF
UNEMPLOYMENT
1. INTRODUCTION.
There are many theories advanced as an explanation of
unemployment, each of which is an examination of one or more
of the causes of the problem. Thus the explanation of unemploy-
ment given as the result of the organisation of the normal
economic system. Some emphasise the state of post-war
industrial organisation as the source of trouble ; others the world
currency and credit situation; still more pronounced is the
agreement that the destruction of wealth in all the European
countries as the result of the war is a profound cause. Lastly,
there is the human or personal factor in the equation, in the
opinion of many transcending all other reasons, despite the
investigations carried out to prove that those willing to work
_ for wages and unable to find any suited to them, far outnumber
those work-shys who are content to exist precariously with the
help of the insurance funds or by poor relief.
2. CAUSES IN THE NoRMAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM.
Under the heading of those causes that are found in the
normal economic system, quite distinct from those disturbances
in the post-war economic system, are eight chief groups of
- maladjustments making for an increase in the rate of unemploy-
ment. The distribution of skilled workers among the various
industries in each country is purely arbitrary, and this leads to
an over-supply in some occupations together with a shortage in
_ others—a shortage that cannot be easily made up. For instance,
' the number of skilled moulders is inadequate. This makes the
_ output of light castings short of the post-war demand and hence
building materials cannot be increased quickly, as it takes time
_ to train skilled moulders. The same difficulties arise in the
_ building industry itself where we have a shortage of bricklayers
_ because of the pre-war drift from the building industry into
1 League of Nations Report on Unemployment, November, 1922. |
A.S.—VOL. VII. 59 E
60 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
others where conditions of work and demand were more stable.
There is also the lack of mobility of labour. A family is difficult
to move, so inadequate distribution of labour between different
localities is a constant cause of unemployment, despite the best
labour exchange arrangements for facilitating movement of
labour. Again, there is a definite slack season in most trades
and occupations each year—a seasonal variation in the demand
for labour which causes those people on the fringe of employment
to be thrown out of work, especially in those occupations like
the dockers which have a large element of casualisation and no
adequate staff list at the ports. Accidents will happen in ali
industries, and cannot be foreseen, hence unemployment causing
a breakdown of industrial activity due to this cause is always
occurring. Bad industrial organisation on the part of the
entrepreneurs accounts for unemployment in many staple
industries—a wrong calculation of the course of price movements,
an inadequate supply of raw material or a positive unscientific
organisation of the industry. The state of the cotton industry
at the beginning of 1924 is a good illustration of this point, when - |
the failure to agree on some form of a cotton control board placed |
the industry at the mercy of speculators in raw cotton. Under
this head again must be placed the frequent chaotic disputes
that arise in the mining industry, owing to the wasteful and
uneconomic methods of working without unification and without
large scale economies that would be possible in each area with
a single system of operating and control. Sudden changes in
industrial methods mean a falling-off in the demand for some ~
kinds of labour and an increase in those of other kinds. The
substitution of oil fuel for coal means that fewer stokers are
required on board ships; any new invention that displaces ~
labour in favour of more capital means an immediate shrinkage
in the demand for that type of labour, but eventually, of course,
may mean a greater demand for the product owing to its cheapen- —
ing and so the absorption of the displaced labour.
The reorganisation of the tinplate industry from private
partnership to that of joint stock control or amalgamation into
larger units means a disturbance which inevitably causes a change
in certain types of personnel in the industry, though in this
particular case owing to the exhausting physical labour involved —
and the absence in large measure of new methods of production
there was a relative shortage of skilled labour for a short time.
CPI.
“ * .
ae Sia EI aS RN sit nee
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 61
Speeding up, quicker machinery involving an acceleration in the
rate of production, causes the older men to be displaced by
younger men at an age when it is too late for them to be trained
effectively for some other occupation. Social disturbances even
in times of good trade are frequent. There may be a case of
some trades on short time when others are booming. A famine
in India will affect the Lancashire cotton industry ; a revolution
in South America will disturb the balance of certain export
trades, while an industrial dispute for a wage to meet the increased
cost of living in the transport industries affects numerous other
industries. Periodic crises of over-production were frequent
causes of disturbances before the war and occurred at regular
intervals of from seven to ten years.
3. CAUSES ARISING OUT OF THE POST-WAR ECONOMIC SYSTEM.
Among the causes arising from the post-war economic system
the first place must be given to the international political and
economic situation with its new territories, new countries, a
disturbed national temper and readjustments due to the changes
in the ownership of natural resources, lines of transport and the
loss of capital and wealth as a direct result of the war. European
countries have been impoverished ; their powers of production
have been seriously impaired ; their control over, and command
of, raw materials essential to industrial activity have been
changed for the worse; they are impoverished buyers looking
into the world shop windows with no cash to buy. Foreign
exchanges collapsed and there was no stability in the unit of
purchasing power; currencies were so depreciated that it was
very unsafe to keep money from day to day owing to the fall
in its value ; there was no sanctity in a business contract under
such conditions and trading becomes impossible when violent
oscillations in prices take place from day to day. The cost of
living in all countries moved up rapidly, in nearly all cases
without a corresponding increase in purchasing power and
_ consequently under-consumption. Changes in demand followed
as a direct result of changes in the incomes of the various classes
in society. The middle-class of Germany and Russia found it
_ impossible to live, while all the professional and fixed income-
earning people were reduced to the poverty line. All these
disturbances were accompanied by an increase in governmental
/interference with industry; in some countries this was not:
|
62 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
carried far enough or on a scientific basis, e.g. in Germany
the Government of the Reich was never able to control its
industrialists who successfully evaded taxation by their influence
in politics and their control of finance and currency depreciation.
In our own country it has been pointed out that government
control came to an end too suddenly with the resulting chaos
in the period following upon its sudden reimposition on credit
in April, 1920. In France there has been very little control of
any kind, inadequate taxation and an unbalanced budget. This
brought an attempt to remedy the situation by military action—
control of the Ruhr, with the inevitable corollary of alarms in
Europe, the collapse of the franc and industrial chaos in Germany,
accompanied by the postponement of the resumption of stable
demands in our European and oversea markets. The United
States alone seems to have escaped the great evils of the post-war
resumption to peace conditions, but even there the year 1921
witnessed a volume of unemployment running into millions.
The crisis was, however, safely passed by the careful policy of
the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board
control of credit and currency, joined of course to the unexampled
economic strength of the country. America alone emerged out
of the war stronger in all respects almost than when she entered,
especially when it is remembered that her credit was against
us—a good debt, as contrasted with our credit against the rest
_ of the world—a bad debt, the interest on which has not yet been
- collected or likely to be received.
That there have been radical changes in the post-war economic
system is clear to the most superficial observer. Price changes
had been on such a scale as to dislocate all methods of organisa-
tion, internal levels of prices being in several instances different
from the external levels. Credit has been unstable and has
oscillated according to change of government and any rumour
of a change of policy, while these two have set up or have been
accompanied by cyclical fluctuations which have witnessed a
misdirection of productive energy and changes in industrial
organisation such as the world has not seen since the time of
the industrial revolution.
In 1925 Great Britain cannot be said to lack factories, railway
facilities, ships or labour and management efficiency, yet we have
a large proportion of our productive capacity lying unused, and
we have over a million unemployed. The chief reason for this
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 63
state of affairs is the loss of markets on the Continent of Europe
and the consequent disorganisation of the international financial
and commercial organisation which links all world countries
together.
‘Germany and Great Britain have been the principal sufferers as
a result of the post-war maladjustment of world trade and finance.
This is simply because the commercial and financial organisation of
these countries was more highly integrated and more intricately
interwoven with the world at large. England’s international economic
system developed earlier than Germany’s, but they were very similar.
Each had before the war a huge urban population which could sustain
itself only through the import of foreign food-stuffs. Each had a
large adverse trade balance which was paid for with (1) the income
derived from interest on foreign investments, and (2) shipping, banking,
insurance and other miscellaneous earnings. In each case before the
war there was a net balance available for new investments abroad.’
A glance at the wholesale price index for the post-war years
suffices to show the extraordinary variation in the levels of prices
in all the countries of the world. The demonetisation of gold
and the issue of paper money inconvertible into gold cut off
most of the Huropean countries from the gold standard, and
hence the unit of measurement throughout the world. Gold
ceased to flow into Europe; there was no demand for it except
in depreciated paper currency, so it began to flow into the United
States because the purchasing power of an ounce of gold in
dollar currency was higher than the purchasing power in any
other depreciated paper currency in any other country. A
variation took place in the standards of value of all countries,
and instead of a stable monetary unit of reckoning we have
had, since the Armistice, several standards based on the purchasing
_ power of the units of reckoning in almost every country. These
could be related to one another by means of what is known as
the purchasing power parity—a rather unsafe method of equation
because of the disturbances set up, as a result of the war, in
the equation of exchange of goods between the different countries
of the world. It has always been possible to effect an exchange
of one country’s currency into that of another country since the
_ Armistice, but the purchasing power of each country has varied
so considerably in that period from year to year that the foreign
‘Moulton and McGuire, Germany’s Capacity to Pay, p. 241. McGraw-
‘Hill Book Co., New York, 1923.
64 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
' exchange rate has been far from stable and its fluctuations
extraordinarily wide. : : |
It has been impossible again for prices to be stable owing
to the variations in credit of the Kuropean countries. After the
expenditure of vast sums in the war and the selling of gold for
food-stufis and raw materials following upon the war, the credit
of most of the European countries was exhausted and they had
no means of replenishing it except by loans, which were impossible
to effect—Britain and America were the only two countries who
could lend. Consequently the reconditioning of industries, the
purchasing of raw materials, capital and expenditure on transport
and other costs necessary to restart production could not be
effected. Even in 1924 it became increasingly clear that nothing
could be got from Germany without an international loan to
restart her vital industries for export on a large scale before she
could begin. paying reparations. Germany must import raw
materials on a large scale before she can begin to put herself in
a condition to be able to export. Similarly in Russia. It will
be necessary to give Russia large credits before she will be able
to exchange goods on a large scale for British manufactures.
The rates of discount have varied considerably in different
countries. When currency depreciation sets in and inflation
takes place, the raising of the rate of discount has no influence
on borrowing ; in short, the rate can never be raised sufficiently
_ quickly or to such a level as to keep pace with currency deprecia-
tion. The amount of existing liabilities has therefore affected
the state of confidence of all European countries by making it
impossible for them to secure new credits to rehabilitate their
productive capacity. What is worse, when France secured any
balances she used them to lend to her satellite States in the form
of useless military expenditure—this has delayed considerably a
stabilisation of the credit position, especially in view of the fact
that she has paid no interest on her debt to us, while our efforts
to meet the service of our debt to the United States have placed
a very heavy strain on our financial position to which it ought
not to have been subjected so soon after the costs of the war.
The extent of the gigantic expansion in currency and credit
after the war as compared with pre-war days is seen in the
difference between London bankers’ clearance in 1920 (£39,018
million) as compared with 1913 (£16, 436 million), while the
weight of imports in ‘the former year was only 444 million tons
|
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 65
as compared with 544 million tons in 1913. The remedies for
this state of affairs were outlined by the Bankers’ Brussels
Conference of 1920 as first of all peace—and the cessation of the
innumerable small wars and threats of war still going on in
Europe aiter the Armistice. They advocated all governments
living within their means and the restriction of internal credit
to that end, economy of expenditure, and currency stabilisation,
together with some scheme for export credits to finance foreign
trade during the interregnum period. Inflation and inability
to balance budgets go together. They advocated, therefore,
drastic increases in taxation to remedy budget deficits and to
restrict all unnecessary expenditure. It was pointed out further
that there was a real scarcity of capital in industry because of
government borrowing. Costs of production had gone up as a
result of inflation and post-war changes in the hours of labour
and conditions of employment. But even the bankers admitted
finally that international loans were imperative to enable the
impoverished countries of Europe to pull themselves together
and once more to enter the circle of exchange.
4, CYCLICAL FLUCTUATIONS.
Another group of causes making for unemployment may be
summed up under what is known as cyclical fluctuations. In-
dustries and employment fluctuated even in pre-war years with
a periodicity that was more than sporadic, nay, that was even
regular. Some writers have drawn attention to the fact that
the variation in the volume and intensity of demand for labour,
in the expansion and contraction of certain industries, was fairly
regularly observed to fall within a period of from seven to ten
years. The heavy industries of iron and steel manufacture,
engineering and shipbuilding and the other constructional indus-
tries like building and railway development were noted to suffer
more severely than the other industries producing consumers’
goods. Since 1860 the intervals of the worst years seem to have
been fairly regularly distributed at from seven to ten years : thus
1867, 1877, 1884, 1894, 1901, 1908. The next year of heavy
depression should therefore have occurred about 1915, but was
obviously deferred because of the war. It has also been noted
that harvest variations have close connections with variations
in the volume of pig-iron and steel. Jevons’ famous sun-spot
theory will be remembered in this connection. From the middle
66 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
of the nineteenth century a bad world harvest would be followed
within two years by a fall in the volume of pig-iron produced.
As the world became more inter-related and transport and com-
munications became more efficient the interval was shortened,
until before the war a bad world harvest, or even the rumour
of one, would affect the production of the constructional industries
in the same year. Inventions again have a profound effect on
the volume of productivity. Some writers noted that in times
of depression when costs pressed heavily great efforts were made
to devise new methods of cheapening production which fructify
in the succeeding boom. Other well-established influences
making for cyclical fluctuations are the volume of unused savings
that accumulate in times of depression, for which there is no
remunerative investment. It is no accident that the proportion
of reserves to liabilities in banks moves up in times of depression
and falls in times of expansion. This sets up psychological
reactions in the business community, and a certain point is
reached when optimism prevails and the result is an accession
of confidence which reflects itself in briskness, an anticipation
of profits from further new investments and the boom is on its
way. The integration and aggregation of businesses that have
been marked in America and Germany before the war, and to
a lesser extent in Great Britain, have also had their influence
upon mass movements of industrial expansion and contraction.
The trust movement in all countries has not been able to escape
the periodic boom and slump, although its power of controlling
it, allied as it is with banking and finance, is probably greater
than that of the competitive joint stock form of management.
It must also be observed that the tariff changes brought about
by any country may seriously affect a large industry, as the
McKinley Tariff of 1891 practically closed down the South Wales
tinplate trade which at that time was largely dependent on the
United States market. This industry recovered by finding new
markets. But new markets are becoming increasingly difficult
to discover, so that in post-war days the loss of our Kuropean
market due simply to the impoverishment of its peoples as a
direct result of the war has had a permanent effect on the industrial
structure and fluctuations of British industry which up to this
time (1925) has not been able to find new markets to replace
the old.
The relation between business cycles and unemployment was
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 67
investigated by the National Bureau of Economic Research in
1922, U.S.A., and its conclusions are most important.
‘The general conclusion of the Committee is that as slumps are
in the main due to wastes, extravagances, speculation, inflation, over-
expansion and inefficiency in production, developed in the booms,
the strategic point of attack therefore is the reduction of these evils,
mainly through the provision of such current economic information
as will show the signs of danger and its more general understanding
and use by producers, distributors and banks, including more con-
structive and safer policies.’
‘ Although a variety of reasons have been assigned for the upward
and downward movement of business which seems to have occurred
at intervals in all industrial countries, the general opinion is that
influences which cause the business cycle are conditions within business
_ itself, and that the most productive results in controlling it are likely
to be obtained from a consideration of business rather than from
efforts to explore remote considerations.’ ?
The general results of the investigation show that the depres-
sion of 1921 caused in the United States a diminution of approxi-
mately one-sixth in the total volume of employment measured
in employee hours. The chief industries to suffer were those of
mining, transport and manufacturing of the heavy industry
type. It was pointed out that the reduction in the number of
hours caused by part-time working was confined to a few fields,
and this was of slight importance for industry as a whole. Migra-
tion from agriculture to industry was not large and the small
employers are stated to have given steadier employment than
the larger ones.
The remedies suggested by the inquiry are stabilisation of
individual enterprises, industries and banking. Various devices
are noted as leading to stabilisation during the period of the
depression. Among the chief are: manufacturing to stock,
increasing the variety of the products and selling on a smaller
margin of profit and working the Sales Department harder.
Next in importance are the scientific elimination of waste,
planning ahead and the standardisation of stock. A large
number of individual enterprises adopted the device of manu-
"See (edited by Wesley C. Mitchell) Business Cycles and Unemployment,
McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1923.
* For Summary, see International Labour Review, Vol. VIII, No. 3,
September, 1923, p. 401.
68 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
facturing to stock and increasing the variety of their product.
Some extended their manufacturing activities during the dull
time; others felt the slump less acutely because they stated
that they employed only skilled labour and by paying good
wages were able to command a better market for a better type
of product and so hold their own. ‘There were other illustra-
tions of methods of meeting the Se oe by ‘ cutting employ-
ment and reducing the pay roll,’ by ‘ hard work and effort,’ by
the ‘ curtailment of research in dull time,’ to a ‘ change selling
policy, retailer to wholesaler, increasing output and getting
cash.’
It is suggested that certain industries can be stabilised by
other methods. Thus, building and railways are dealt with.
Repairs and renewals at the lower costs prevailing in time of
depression should be set in operation. In this way the same
men could be used on several jobs. In building especially it
was pointed out that house-building should be encouraged by
assisting customers to finance building, and for carrying on
construction work during the winter by dovetailing occupa-
tions. In railway industries the good effect of putting in hand
large movements of replacement materials is pointed out, also
additions to emule rolling stock and pane way improve-
ments.
Public employment offices are ee as a ewe. step and
out-of-work benefits.
Most of the recommendations of the inquiry refer to the
betterment of information, of statistical and research services,
the control of credit expansion by the banks, the better control
by business men of the expansion of their own industries, the
control of private and public construction works, the setting-up —
of unemployment reserve | ne and the establishment of labour
exchanges. :
There is nothing new in any of these suggestions as they have
been made several times in the past in Great Britain. It seems
that finance was regarded as outside the scope of investigation
and there is only one chapter on this subject, while the control
of credit by the banks and financial devices for controlling credit
generally are not exhaustively dealt with. This would have
been a most valuable line of research and it is a pity it was not
undertaken. _ But it is probable that the machinery already set
up under the Federal Reserve Board for the expansion and
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 69
contraction of credit by the banks may be regarded as a sufficient
safeguard in this direction.
The individual business man’s needs are emphasised in the
inquiry, and particularly important is the necessity of correct
information about general business conditions throughout. the
country and a knowledge of the future trend of business condi-
tions. He must have the basic facts about his industry; he
must study industrial problems, and he ought to have not merely
facts about his own business but statistics to give him a proper
basis of judgment as to general policies. In this connection a
knowledge of the general credit situation and the attitude of
the banks to the extension of loans is essential. Certain com-
modity prices are keys to the situation and a list is given which
everyone ought to study: raw wool and woollen textiles ; raw
cotton and cotton textiles ; hides and leather ; iron and sige
the leading fabricated products, such as structural steel and
standard tools; zinc, lead, copper and the leading products of
each ; lastly, coal, the raw material of power.
‘ While abstaining from over-estimating the importance of stabilisa-
tion of industrial business and of industry generally by planning in
advance, the Committee nevertheless considers that the business man
can in most cases by foresight, keep his business fundamentally sound,
and that “ the cessation and postponement of construction by the
Government, railroads, ulate utilities and private owners, in boom
periods when prices are high,”’ would go far to prevent undue expansion.
It recommends the systematic accumulation of reserves in times of
prosperity for use in plant expansion and improvement during the
depression. An essential to such plans is that the constructional
programme, public or private, be drawn up long in advance of the
actual emergency, so that it can be put into, action without delay
when the time comes.’ } 7 |
This is exactly what was suggested long ago by Professor
Pigou in his Unemployment when he advocated the accumulation
ot a reserve by the State over a period of years to be set in
Operation in times of depression.?:
It is interesting to observe in view of British experience that
in the United States the use of unemployment reserve funds and
employment bureaux is not so favourably considered because of
VE LO;, Vol. Vi) No. 3, p- 403.
2 A bill was recently before the House of Commons embodying this
principle, ‘brought forward by the Labour Party, but was rejected (May,
1925). | , :
70 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
‘administrative difficulties, happily on the road to solution with
us, because it is considered that the provision of employment
services have no direct and immediate effect upon the business
eycle.
Of all these theories the most important one is the Monetary
Theory of the influence of prices and credit on unemployment.
An examination of the course of world wholesale prices and rates
of unemployment undertaken by the International Labour Office +
has established conclusively that a close correlation exists
between unemployment and the level of prices—both in the
period of crisis and in the period of recovery. Even a slight
rise in prices being followed by a reduction in unemployment and
a continued fall in the level of prices being followed by a rise
in the number of unemployed.
If the level of prices rises violently as the result of inflation
then ultimately this has led to a crisis of unemployment ; and
when prices are stabilised after this crisis unemployment is
bound to be increased, but is followed very quickly by a gradual
revival of employment. Then again, it has been observed that
when stabilisation of prices follows a long period of falling prices
the reduction in the volume of unemployment is very slow ;
but when stabilisation of prices takes place after a moderate
rise of prices, then the chances are that the rapid improvement
in the demand for labour which sets in when prices begin to rise
will be continued forward into the period of stabilisation.
A world stable level of prices is therefore the essential require-
ment of a low volume of unemployment. A managed currency
is possible so that the price level will be stable. The experience
of the United States in 1921 and 1922 has proved this conclusively.
By allowing her level of prices to rise following upon the slump
of 1921, and then stabilising at a certain point when her industries
were fully employed, she succeeded in turning a slump into a
slight boom, and thereafter kept her volume of employment at
a high level. We in Great Britain have pursued the opposite
policy of steady deflation, and we have paid the price for it in
a heavy and long period of unemployment.
The return to the gold standard does not mean stability of
prices, for gold itself fluctuates in terms of purchasing power.
The time, therefore, is coming when an international arrangement
between the United States and ourselves will keep world wholesale
1 Report on Unemployment, 1920-3. I.L.O., Geneva, 1924, p. 135.
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 71
prices steady despite the gold standard. The United States has
experienced violent oscillations of prices from 1918-24, although
it has been on the gold standard the whole time. A scientific
currency and credit policy affecting price movements, based on
the observation of index numbers of commodities is possible,
whereby the world level of prices could be kept reasonably
steady, thus avoiding those catastrophic changes in prices which
encourage wasteful speculation and periodic crises.
5. THe PERSONAL Factor.
There remains for consideration the personal or human factor
in the problem of unemployment. This may be said to be
an examination of the supply side of the problem just as the
foregoing analysis can be characterised as the demand side.
Maladjustments arising out of the demand for labour have their
origin deep down in the structure of the industrial system, in
industrial fluctuations, while the character of the individual and
the labour reserve constitute the problem of the unemployed. !
Though the number of the unemployed is small in normal
times relatively to the whole number at work, yet there is always
a percentage of unemployment in the best organised trades even
at the top of the boom ; there are also large numbers of chronically
unemployed workers, casual labourers, in some occupations ; and,
lastly, the device of short time means that for considerable
periods a large number of people suffer from unemployment
without being entered on the returns.
It has been estimated that between 25 and 50 per cent. of
dock labour is casual. Unemployment is chronic. This does
not mean the chronic idleness of a few, nor that the typical
applicant is unemployable ; nor does it mean that the reason
must be sought for in the increase of population, for it is found
in the rapidly growing industries as well as in the decaying ones,
while the increasing productivity of labour and its increasing
remuneration shows its importance in production. The explana-
tion is to be sought in the labour reserve that tends to accumulate
in modern industries, “men who within any given period are
liable to be called on some time but are not required continuously. ’?
The size of this reserve depends on the number of separate
1 ¥or this Section, see F. C. Mills’s, Ph.D., Contemporary Theories of
Unemployment and Unemployment Relief, 1917, U.S.A., from which the
present writer has drawn valuable material.
* Beveridge, Unemployment, p. 102. See also Chapter V, pp. 68. et seq.
72 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
employers, the irregularity of business and of industry, the
extent that chance plays in the ‘hiring of the workers. The
number of workers in each labour market tends to equal the
maximum number in a given time added to the number at the
gate, especially if the terms of the engagement be brief. If
the element of chance enters, then matters become complicated
and the number is swollen. When competition for employment
increases, the wage tends to subsistence level or below it, causing
some to withdraw. If great skill is required and if there are
strong barriers to admittance into the trade or industry this
reasoning is less applicable. In any occupation with a strong
element of casual labour the unskilled are liable to ‘ constant
and unlimited pressure downwards from every other grade of
industry.’ Sir Wm. Beveridge gives three elements in the total
reserve for any occupation : the people representing the fluctua-
tions in the total volume of work in industry as a whole ; those
due to friction in the labour market—out of work ; those attracted
and retained by the perpetual chance of work.1_ Every industry
has its own reserve, maintained without distress by a high wage
level, unemployment insurance or by elasticity of hours. Under-
employment and the reduction of earnings quickly demoralise
individuals and reduce them below the level of subsistence.
Moreover, these people move in and out of the casual occupations
where entrance is free, so that there is a close connection
between under-employment even in the better trades and casual
occupations.
The character of the individual suffers under this prolonged |
strain ; when he does get wages they are quickly, and sometimes
badly ecea: ; women and children are forced into industry to
help eke out the scanty wage; they may secure relief from the
Guardians, and when this happens there is a danger, of course,
of their dropping into the class of unemployables. The Minority
Report of the Poor Law Commission accept Beveridge’s view of
unemployment and also the conclusion that employment in odd
jobs predisposes to pauperism. Because the labour reserve is
the result of a variety of causes Beveridge believed that the
problem should be tackled as one of business organisation.?
This it was proposed to accomplish by the organisation of the
labour market through the establishment of labour exchanges,
decasualisation and the absorption of the surplus of casual
1 Beveridge, p. 81. 2 Tbid., p. 110.
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 73
labour, which, by being excluded from chance of work by the
enforcement of the policy of concentration involved in decasual-
isation would be taken off an over-crowded market and provided
for in other ways. ;
This view is endorsed by many other experts, also by the
Majority and Minority Reports of the Poor Law Commission of
1909 and by Professor Pigou. While it is clear that irregularity
of demand cannot be prevented given the industrial system as
it is to-day, it is agreed that the separate reserve of labour
employed by each employer could be dispensed with and a
common reservoir set up in its place. This could be accomplished
if the employers were to hire their labour for irregular jobs at
the labour exchange. Beveridge himself favoured compulsory
powers being obtained to secure this end:
“If the thing cannot be done voluntarily, it will have to be done
compulsorily. A new clause in the Factory Code, e.g. that no man
should be engaged for less than a week or a month unless he were
taken from a recognised labour exchange, would be a legitimate and
unobjectionable extension of the principle that the State may and
must proscribe conditions of employment which are disastrous to the
souls and bodies of its citizens.’ 1.
To effect this it has been urged that to decasualise dock
labour would not be a very difficult task provided employers
and employed would co-operate in this direction. No one should
be taken on at the port unless his name appears on the register
of the dock labour exchange and after consultation with the
trade union. In this way there could be built up a dock labour
staff, as it were. Ii this be done the time would become appreci-
ably nearer for the adoption of a guaranteed week for the men
on this labour staff and this might be covered in a variety of
ways: by the trade union guaranteeing some quota and the
employer and the State contributing their share to the trade
union according to some agreed plan. The plan existing at the
ports of engaging tippers through the collective contract system
of the trade unions, and the payment in bulk for the lot as a
whole through the union is a big step in the direction of total
decasualisation of this class of labour.
What about the surplus—those who cannot be absorbed ?
The principle adopted here is that one man well-fed is better
‘Sir Wm. Beveridge, Contemporary Review, April, 1908, p. 392, quoted
by F. C. Mills.
74 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
' than two on half rations. If inefficient, the person ought to
be trained by society on some such lines as those laid down in
the Minority Report and helped to find work after this training.
If a definite surplus be found, then emigration on a carefully
selected basis has been suggested as a partial remedy. Whatever
plan be adopted, the advantage of continuing in steady employ-
ment those workers left in the industry after a process of decasual-
isation is admitted ; while in industries where short time becomes
pronounced in periods of bad trade a minimum guaranteed
week should be the immediate goal whether secured with, or
without, joint insurance by the employers, the State, or on some
voluntary basis.
There are 600,000 children leaving the elementary schools
every year on attaining the age of fourteen. Before it will be
possible to tackle the problem of the labour reserve and unemploy-
ment on the human side it is absolutely necessary to raise the
school-leaving age to sixteen with maintenance and mothers’
pensions ; along with this there must be technical or continuation
school training for boys and girls from sixteen to eighteen. If
this were done, the vicious system of taking boys into blind alley
employments and keeping them until eighteen with the com-
parative certainty then of being replaced by another boy would
be prevented, while mothers’ pensions would mean the withdrawal
of mothers of young children from the labour market.
Ali men are not born free or equal. While it is perfectly
true that an improvement in the character of workers would
not eliminate or affect the industrial causes of unemployment
due to maladjustments in industrial fluctuation or changes in
structure, yet there is a good deal more in the argument that
an individual’s character is going to be determined to a great.
extent by his environment, his opportunities and his education.
Nurture will not put a brain in an individual and so enable him
to become a highly efficient servant of the community. We
must have nature and nurture. But, as always, nature is prolific
and generous in her gifts, which are sadly wasted by our economic
environment. The chances of the unskilled worker’s children
becoming skilled are slender ; even the skilled worker is going
to find it increasingly difficult to place his children in trades.
It has been found by patient investigation that not more than
50 per cent. of the skilled workers’ children can be absorbed in
their fathers’ occupations, so this makes the future of the unskilled
Fa CR a eR
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THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 75
workers’ children very black indeed. Apprenticeship has broken
down. It is no use blinking the fact that the only preserve of
the skilled engineer is now the tool shop; practically every
machine, even the most complicated, can be operated by what
is technically known as an unskilled person, at any rate by a
worker who has not served an apprenticeship. The employers
are well aware of this fact; the trade unionists who are fair
to themselves must realise it too and it would be far better for
the future of their members to acknowledge this fact squarely,
and instead of insisting on certain rates for classes of workmen,
to substitute and insist upon certain prices for working a particu-
lar class or type of machine. This policy, side by side with
a vigorous prosecution of trade unionism among the unskilled,
‘would lead to better results. There could be attached to it a
demand for the human needs of labour—a guaranteed week for
all workers irrespective of grades (in short, a differentiation of
minimum rates of wages for each group of workers) together
with the development of the collective contract idea for a definite
job.
Personal defects of the worker or mental deficiencies are
responsible for work-shys, criminals and vagrants. It is absurd
to believe (as many people do who ought to know better) that
this is the main problem. All the facts point the other way.
| This class of work-shys and vagrants and criminals are the
| “wastage of the wage-earning class,’ a reflex influence of periods
_ of idleness being responsible for personal deficiencies very
frequently. We must not forget the illuminating fact that 50 per
cent. of crime directly and 70 per cent. indirectly is due to drink,
and that the people who drink most are the ones who cannot
afford it, or the people who have so much to spend as not to
_ know what to do with it. The total consumption of absolute
alcohol in 1922 was 53,500,000 gallons, of which 77-4 per cent.
_ was consumed as beer, 18-1 per cent. as spirits, and 4-5 per cent.
as wine, cider and perry. A drink bill of £354,000,000 in 1922
takes a lot of explanation when we remember that that year
was the worst year of the post-war depression and the standard
of life of our people deplorably low. Public-houses flourish
_ where poverty is greatest. As you go up in the scale of standard
of comfort, of settled incomes, and wages, public-houses become
TSee E. Llewellyn Lewis, The Children of the Unskilled (P. S. King &
Son, Ltd., 1923).
A.S.—VOL. VII F
76 THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
fewer and fewer among places of residence. This is not a
coincidence ; it is a social fact of tremendous significance. Men
of discontinuous employment drink most ; they are demoralised.
They drink to forget the torture of their lives and the hopelessness.
We condemn them for spending money on drink. And the
paradox can be made that if we gave them more money to
spend and a steady income they would drink not more, but less.
When high wages oscillate with periods of idleness the descent
is rapid; personal weaknesses tend to be accentuated, so that
it can be safely stated that under-employment is the most prolific
cause of unemployables, and this is due to the system under
which men work. The graduation into this class is completed
by blind-alley employment, joined with lack of industrial training
bringing about demoralisation. ‘There are also those who fall
out by the wayside, owing to sickness, accident or old age. Any
personal weaknesses then become still worse, so that unemploy-
ment and individual failings perpetuate each other, and we have
a vicious circle of unemployment being the cause of poverty and
poverty partly the cause of unemployment. How can the circle
be broken ? Not by a simple panacea, but by a long and careful
scientific preparation. Either we are responsible for the social
order as we find it or we are not, and ‘it is the stars in their
courses ’ that make us go wrong. If we are responsible, and I
believe we are, then we can solve the problem, but it will be a
long road to travel.
Remedies for unemployment due to personal failings can be
briefly summarised here.t The Minority Report of 1909 empha-
sised the closing of the gap—damming the stream of recruitment
from the schools by industrial training or by increasing our
machinery to find employment. As a result of this suggestion
we have After-Care Committees, Juvenile Advisory Employment
Committees, etc. The State should regularise in short the supply
of labour and, as far as possible, the demand for it. Compulsory
powers of registration at the exchanges and making them the
sole market for the buying and selling of labour should be carried
through as soon as possible. The next step would be decasualisa-
tion, so as to force the incompetent casuals out of industry.
It would be possible then to give training or disciplinary treatment
to the remainder. It would lead to the marking off of the
1 See Mills’ Contemporary Theories of Unemployment and Unemployment
Relief, 1917, Sec. 8.
=
THE GENERAL THEORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT 77
unemployables and the work-shys. There are detailed plans as
to the methods to be adopted to secure these results. It is
unnecessary to go into them here. One pressing problem still
to be carried out is the final break-up of the Poor Law and the
abolition of the Boards of Guardians on the lines of the Minority
Report or on the lines of the Maclean Report. The remarkable
post-war revelations of Poplar show the deplorable state of some
of our boroughs which are penalised for doing their duty to the
poor, vilified with all contempt for grappling with a problem
which should be tackled in a national and not in a local spirit.
This problem of the relief of the unemployed is a separate problem.
We are only concerned here with the causes of unemployment,
not the relief of the people who are thrust out of the system of
industry. It is not enough to tinker with these: the cause is
deep. We must take into our consideration the fact of personal
failings, but the trade responsibility for these is greater than is
imagined. The prevention of casual labour from arising is the
key to the problem. Certain kinds of work under eighteen
should be prohibited altogether. A vigorous education policy
and the closing of blind-alley occupations go together. The
Trade Board System has proved itself a most formidable weapon
_for dealing with the unorganised industries as well as with
sweating. It is along these lines and on the prosecution of a
_ better public health system, and a better social environment, that
_we must look to the solution of the problem of the individual
failures. The problem of the reserve of labour is therefore an
industrial and a social one; the remedies are both economic
and political. One approach alone will be insufficient.
J. MORGAN REES.
i 'Cd. 8917, 1918. The present Government intend to deal with
| Valuation and Rating in the present session, 1925.
|
|
|
A.S.—VOL. VII Wes
iS
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’
TALE ’
I.
GEORGE PEELE’S drama, The Old Wives’ Tale, first published in
1595 and acted by the Queen’s Majesty’s Players probably about
1590,? is interesting for many reasons. It is an early example of
the © play within the play,’ and its cleverly conceived induction
shows an interest in that rustic realism that had invaded the
drama, more especially in the Universities, since the days of
Gammer Gurton’s Needle. ‘The play itself belongs to the folk-lore
group. This union of a realistic background with unreal roman-
tic elements together with a certain obscurity of plot have led
to varied opinions from the critics. Collier,? Dyce and Symonds #4
have treated it with severity, especially the last, who rather
unfairly brings it into comparison with Milton’s Comus. Bullen ®
is more sympathetic. He calls it a ‘charming little play’ and
especially commends the lyrical passages. Ward’s criticism ® is
ambiguous. He remarks on the ‘homely humour of its exor-
_ dium, contrasting as it does with the labyrinthine but manifestly
_ undesigned intricacy of its main scenes,’ but later speaks of ‘ the
fresh and sparkling induction’ which with the ‘flow of high
spirits’ atones for the ‘admixture of romance dissolved in
nonsense.’ Clearly the critics have been uncertain of the value
|
of the Old Wives’ Tale as literature, yet the play gives delight.
Might it be that Peele did not intend it as a straightforward
representation of a folk story, but as a burlesque upon a certain
type of drama, and that its faults are therefore not faults but
his means of attaining his purpose ?
‘ Edited frequently : Bullen, Works of Peele, vol. 1; Gayley, Repre-
sentative Hnglish Comedies, 1; Greg, Malone Society Reprints, etc.
2See Greg, op. cit. introd.; and Fleay, Biog. Chron. II.
3 Annals of the Stage, III, p. 197. See Gayley, op. cit. p. 346.
* Predecessors of Shakespeare, p. 566.
>The Works of George Peele, 1888. Vol. I, p. xxxvii ff.
° English Dramatic Literature, ed. 1898, pp. 372, 373.
79
80 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’
Such was the point of view suggested by the late Professor
Gummere.! The Old Wives’ Tale, he tells us, is a new thing in
comedy, depending on the contrast between the romantic plot
and the realistic diction, between the induction and the pretences
of the plot. Gummere indeed has but gently hinted at such a
quality in the play, ‘a comedy of comedies, a saucy challenge of
romance, where art turns, however timidly, upon itself,’ and has
seen itrather as a pervading quality than a purpose wrought into
structure and dialogue with thorough conviction. Later critics,
however, have unanimously followed him and emphasised the
point that Peele was making a deliberate satire on the romantic
plays which were popular at that time. Thus Professor Schelling?
characterises the play as a humorous, not satirical, treatment
of ‘the elements current in the extravagant heroical romance,’
adding that ‘it is likely that many a solemn contemporary of
roguish George mistook his delicate irony for the grim heroics
of fantastic romance.’ Professor Baker ° notes as its chief merit
‘its clever satire on such romantic plays as Common Conditions,’
and calls it ‘ in respect of its satire, a fit predecessor of the Knight
of the Burning Pestle’ and ‘the first English play of dramatic
criticism.’ Professor Tucker Brooke 4 is equally decisive on the
point. He lists the play among ‘ Travesties of Heroic Plays,’
and states that
‘the attitude of progressive and educated opinion toward the old
_ play of chivalrous romance during the last ten years of the sixteenth
century is expressed in the exquisite satire of the type in Peele’s
Old Wives’ Tale, while in Beaumont’s later Knight of the Burning Pestle
. the ridicule is yet sharper.’
Of the presence of a certain sense of humour in Peele’s drama
there can be no doubt. It is almost certain that in the last
analysis this quality is due to the ‘ joining of realism and romance,’
or, to put it in another way, to the fact that the story is not taken
quite seriously. But to go further than this and state that Peele
consciously put together incongruous elements, for the purpose
of burlesquing, however ‘ subtly ’ or ‘ delicately,’ the contempor-
aneous plays of romance, is surely doubtful and in mie of some
scrutiny.
1JIn Gayley, Representative Hnglish Comedies, I, is Jodi, | OA We
2 The Elizabethan Drama, p. 201.
3 Cambridge History of English Lxterature, vol. V, pp. 145-6.
4 The Tudor Drama. See pp. 242, 254, 278-9.
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 81
Ii. Tue PoruLtaR DRAMA oF ‘ HERoIC ROMANCE ’
The Old Wives’ Tale is a concrete representation of a tale
told by the cottage hearth to while the night away. Partly on
account of its folkloristic character, partly for other reasons, as
we shall see later, it has been brought into relation with those
romantic plays that were based on ‘the old medieval tales of
heroic exploit and interminable adventure.’! Both Professor
Schelling and Dr. Murch ? have shown how popular were these
stories in Elizabethan England, a popularity that was partly a
decadent heritage from the Middle Ages, but was also in large
measure a revival heralded much earlier by the printing of the
Morte d Arthur and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historrza. Neither
was such literature popular only amongst the less educated, as
Dr. Murch supposes, for Spenser did not disdain to use this
material to glorify the Queen and praise the godly life. The
Arcadia,* too, surely bears the marks of the romance as much
as of the pastoral. Names of plays presented at Court, too,
point to the popularity of this same material.
While these plays vary a good deal in their working out, they
seem to agree in representing the valorous doings of wandering
knights, always with the ultimate aim of winning a fair lady’s
hand. Some of the plays that might be included in this class
need not be considered in this connection. Appius and Virginia,*
for instance, agrees in style with the rest of the plays, and its
subject is “ medieval’ and sufficiently improbable, but it is too
domestic in character to be brought into comparison with the
Old Wives’ Tale. Fair Hm® belongs rather to the class of plays
which combine an historical with a pastoral plot. Mucedorus °
has some of the characteristics of the type, adventures against
a bear in a forest, and later against a cannibalistic wild man of
the woods from whom the hero saves the princess,’ but funda-
mentally it approaches more closely the later romantic type oi
1Schelling, The Elizabethan Drama, Chap. V, p. 193 ff.
*The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. Murch (1908).
Siocesveg. = Bk. I, xvii, xix; Il, ix, xiv, xxi, xxii; III, xv, xvi,
XVili—accounts of tournaments and of fights against animals and giants
and disguised knights. Several chapters, too, speak of love very much
in the style of the matiére de Rome romances.
4 Ed. J. 8. Farmer, Five Anonymous Plays, 4th Series.
° Printed by R. Simpson, The School of Shakespeare, p. 337 ff.
6 Dodsley, Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, vol. VIL; Students’ Facsimile edition.
“This seems like a late variation of the giant of the romance.
82 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’
| princes who disguise themselves as shepherds and win the prin-
cess by deeds of valour. Inthe Dumb Knight,’ a play written later
than Peele’s, the only truly romantic incidents are the winning of
the Queen by tournament and the vow placed on the Knight not
to speak ; the rest of the play is made up of intrigue with a sug-
gestion of Machiavellian motifs. The heroic drama proper in-
cludes before 1600 Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes,2 Common
Conditions,? Greene’s Orlando Furioso,t and Charlemagne or the
Distracted Emperor® Certain common elements found in the
earliest of these plays are to be seen in a group of moralities, the
three plays of the marriage of Wit and Science.® The second of
the group is perhaps the clearest example. In order to win
Science for his bride, Wit must slay the monster Tediousness,
which ‘lurketh in the wood hereby,’ ‘ devouring those that sue
to her.’ In the first encounter Wit is ‘ left dead ’ by the monster,
but at the second attempt (in the third play with the help of
Wisdom’s sword) he slays the giant. The situation in Sor
Clyomon and Sir Clamydes” is but an elaborated form of this.
Clamydes, Prince of Suavia, in order to win Juliana the Princess
of Denmark, must kill the dragon in the Forest of Strange Marvels.
The matter is complicated by the entry of Sir Clyomon, Juliana’s
brother, who steps in and forces the enmity of Clamydes by taking
away his knighthood. They arrange to fight at Alexander’s
camp. Meanwhile Clamydes slays the dragon, but his spoil is
taken from him through the magic of the false knight Sansfoy,
-and himself is cast into prison. Clyomon is shipwrecked and
cured by Meronis, daughter of the Queen of the Strange Marshes.
He falls in love with her, but has to leave in order to find Clamydes.
Meronis is carried away by the King of Norway, but escapes and
1 Dodsley, Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, vol. X. Date is 1607.
? Bullen, Works of Peele, Il, p. 87 ff.
2J.8. Farmer, Five Anonymous Plays, 4th Series (C. E. Dram. Soc.).
Tucker Brooke, Yale Hlizabethan Club Reprints, I.
* id. McKerrow, Malone Society Reprints, vol. 4 (1907)
° Bullen, Old English Plays, III, p. 161 ff.
® (a) John Redford, The Play of Wyt and Science, ed. J. M. Manly,
Specomens of the Pre-Shakespercan Drama, I, p. 421 ff, (6) The Marriage
of Wit and Science, ed. J. 8S. Farmer, Five Anonymous Plays, 4th Series,
p. 47 ff. (c) Contract of Marriage between Wit and Wisdom, ed. J. S.
Farmer, op. cit. p. 207 ££.
’ This play was for a time attributed to Peele. Professor Kittredge
has shown (Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 111) that it is Boao
ably by. Preston.
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 83
disguises herself as a shepherd. Clyomon kills the King of
Norway, takes Meronis as his squire, and goes to defend her
mother’s right to the Isle, her father having died of grief. Clamydes
is the champion of the wicked uncle, the queen’s brother. Alex-
ander settles matters without the necessity of a duel. Clyomon
and Clamydes go together to the court of Denmark, Meronis still
accompanying the former. There the false Sansfoy is unmasked,
Meronis casts off her disguise and the couples are married. To
this medley of romantic motifs are added certain extraneous
scenes. A coarsely realistic shepherd scene, little more than a
monologue, is introduced. Subtle Shift, who becomes servant
to Clyomon, then to Clamydes, is a descendant of those comic
characters in the late moralities that frequently take on dis-
guises combined with the tricky servants of the classical comedies.
_ Sansfoy, while he is the enchanter of romance in the situation,
_ and has a parallel in T'ristan, is far more the braggart warrior in
his behaviour. While these two characters are necessary to the
: plot of the play, they are outside the romantic atmosphere and
_ form the comic relief.
| The ingredients in Common Conditions are somewhat similar,
| although one is reminded more strongly of the Arcadian type of
story. Sedmond and Clarisia are found lost in a wood ; they are
attacked by tinkers ; Sedmond escapes and his sister is saved by
' the ingenuity of her servant Conditions. LLamphedon, son of the
_ Duke of Phrygia, appears ; he is in love with Clarisia, meets her
/ and marries her. Sabia is in love with Momides, who spurns her ;
_her father, a doctor, discovers the state of her feelings. Mean-
while, Lamphedon and Clarisia, through the wiles of Conditions,
have been put on board a pirate ship, and then cast adriit.
_Clarisia finds hospitality at the house of Leostines, and adopts
the name of Metrea. Momides falls in love with her, but she
refuses him. In seeking Clarisia, Lamphedon fights and over-
comes the giant Cardolus, and sets free all his captives. In the
fragment which is printed, this is the only thoroughly ‘ heroic ’
element in the play, but the style relegates it to this class of
| drama. The servant Conditions and the pirate scene add comic
effect of a Plautine character ; the opening tinkers’ scene gives
a realistic touch. :
Greene used more definite romance material than this in the
Orlando Furioso in combination with a love element and accom-
‘paniments in the form of a jealous man’s intrigue and the lover’s
s4 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE ”
- madness, which are no part of the romance, or only ina thoroughly
decadent form. Professor Gayley suggests that this play is also
a burlesque of the ‘heroic romance.’ ! Without entering into
that question, one may say at once that Greene’s play is neither
typical of the ‘ heroic romances ’ nor to be classed with the Old
Wives’ Tale.
It is otherwise with one of the latest and most notorious of the
type, Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London,’ the
occasion of Beaumont and Fletcher’s scourging of the whole class
in the Knight of the Burning Pestle. ‘This play is based on one of
the ‘ Eustace ’ stories. It depicts a father going on a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, leaving four sons and a daughter in England. The
sons decide to go to war, the daughter disguises herself and follows
them. A shipwreck scatters the sons to different parts of the
world, they meet but do not know each other, and consequently
many strange situations ensue. Finally all meet and are
recipients of great honours. The play is chock-full of the wildest
adventures in barbarous lands; the most impossible incidents
happen, and the structure is unbelievably crude for the time and
the author. For that very reason, however, it gives us a true
insight into the kind of plays which should be called ‘ heroic
romances.’ A glance at the titles of other plays acted, most of
them now lost, reveals that they were probably of the same
character. The hero, or heroes, travels in far and marvellous
_lands—the further and the stranger the better. He fights strong
opponents ; in the normal and early form, he overcomes a giant
or a magician or a monstrous animal, generally in order to win a
fair lady for his wife or to release her from captivity. The
women as well as the men may be found wandering, disguised
or otherwise, in forests and over seas or acting as squires to the
hero. The plot—if one may call plot anything so formless as these
romance plays—is mainly made up of these adventures of the
hero, and of the heroine if she be of the wandering type. Thestyle
1 Gayley’s Representative English Comedies, I, p. 410.
2 The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood (London, 1874), Vol. II,
p. 159 ff. Printed 1615, but probably acted in 1594. See Fleay, I, 282 ;
Cambridge History of English Literature, V1, p. 101.
3 One notes among early Court plays: Herpetulus the Blew Knight ;
The Red Knight; The Solitary Knight ; The Knight of the Burning Rock
and Huon of Bordeaux. Later one finds the popular plays—The Four
Sons of Aymon; Tristram de Lyons ; Godfrey of Boulogne ; Sir Placidas.
See Schelling and Murch, op. cit.
2 ARP a A ne
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 85
is high-flown and self-conscious, especially in the scenes of love,
whether monologues or dialogues. Comic scenes are included,
sometimes as essential parts of the main plot, either in the form
of conventional types of comic character or as realistic pictures
of low life. These scenes, however, are by no means peculiar to
the ‘ heroic ’ drama. |
Til. Tur Matreriat or ‘THE Otp Wives’ TALE’
The Old Wives’ Tale may be classified with the romantic
plays in respect of its plot, for it is made up of numerous foik-
lore motifs. The central story may be described as a combina-
tion of the Grateful Dead and the Childe Roland themes. The
action begins with the latter, the story of the maiden carried
away by the wicked enchanter and rescued, in the fairy-tale by
her youngest brother, in the drama by the ‘ wandering knight ’
who loves her. In both story and play the maiden’s two
brothers have sought her and have been enchanted or forced to
work and imprisoned. In both, too, a certain method has to be
observed to overcome the giant, though the means are by no
means similar in the two. The Grateful Dead theme in the play
is, aS Professor Gerould has shown,? of the group in which the
simple motif of the knight rewarded for seeing about a man’s
_ burial is united to the Poison Maiden and the Lady and the
' Monster stories. The former is preserved only in the detail at
_ the end, where the Ghost claims as the promised half of all that
the Knight wins, half of his bride.? The latter is seen in the
element of ‘the hero’s success in winning an enchanted princess
either by accomplishing difficult feats or answering riddles.’
The very definite suggestion of the ‘life-index,’ by which the
_enchanter could only be killed under certain conditions, although
_ acommon accompaniment of giant and enchanter tales in general,
belongs to this type, as is shown, for example, in the story of
_ Jack the Giant Killer. In the play, the invisibility of the Ghost
1 A type version is to be found in J oseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales,
fp. 122.
. 2G. H. Gerould, The Crarjul Dead, Folk Lore Society Publications,
_ LX (1907), especially chaps. ITI, IV, VI. In Chap. I, Prof. Gerould
_ reviews previous work on the subject.
+ | See also Gummere, op. cit. p. 345 ff. and footnotes to the play.
_ ? This form is seen in the English romance Sir Amadace, which does
not, however, belong to the form in which Peele knew the story.
| +*Jacobs, op. cit. p. 102.
86 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’
while killing the enchanter is paralleled in the folk story. Pro-
fessor Gerould remarks that ‘ the adventures of Delia, Eumenides
and Jack are all that really concern us ’ ! in the play in relation
to the Grateful Dead. It is very likely, however, that Peele
knew the story in a form in which it was united to the Childe
Roland theme. Two considerations make this likely. In the
first place, Erestus belongs to the Childe Roland tale, but in the
play he is more closely connected with the Grateful Dead ; also,
the two stories have been organically united at just the point
where they would become united of themselves,? namely in the
enchanted maiden who has to be rescued by brother or by ghost
grateful to the knight who will marry her.?
It is otherwise with the rest of the folk-lore in this truly
marvellous conglomerate. The turning of EKrestus into a bear
in the night and an old man in the day, is not foreign to folk-lore,
although it is commoner to find the wolf than the bear, and a
wicked wite or stepmother oftenest does the conjuring.4 En-
chanted men and women frequently helped the hero to quell the
magician or whatever caused the spell,’ and the union of the
stories possibly took place here at this point, while his wife’s
madness is very probably due to some old popular catch concern-
ing one ‘ that’s neither wife, widow nor maid.’ It is to be noted,
- too, that her appearance to break the light, and the disenchant-
ing of herself and Erestus are brought about by the winding of
a horn, another common element in stories of disenchantment,
and often found in the Medieval romances.* They are cleverly
united to the main theme, but one feels that it is the kind of
union that has been produced by a literary workman rather than
the kind that has grown from the story itself. |
As for the part of Huanebango and Corebus and the two
daughters who find their husbands by means of the wishing-well,
their connection with the main story is of the frailest. Huanebango
is going to kill the magician and is consequently punished with
1 Op. cit, p. 72. :
2This is Professor Gerould’s own very reasonable oateion of the
folk union of two or more stories. See op. cit. p. 173.
3 A further common, factor in the two stories is the ‘ life-index,’ but
this would not have united them, as it is not an organic part of either
theme. oe
4 See Kittredge, Arthur and Gorlagon (Harvard Notes and Studies).
>See Kittredge, Gawain the Green Knight, 200 ff. ete.
6 H.g., the incident of the Joie de la Cort in Chrétien’s Hrec.
a 2 ee Sagi ae oo,
|
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 87
deafness and a cross wife, while the father of Zantippa and Celanta
is advised by Erestus how his daughters may be married off. The
method of seeking their husbands at the well is the folk-tale of the
Three Heads of the Well,! from which is also taken the detail
of Huanebango’s refusal and Corebus’s giving of the cake to
Erestus.2. The episode is given a folkloristic character ° so that
it does not clash with the atmosphere of the rest of the play,
although it forms a contrast to it. It can, however, be omitted
without impairing in any way the unity of the main plot. It
is useful in that it adds to the impression of the magician’s
power, and also brings Erestus into greater prominence. But
undoubtedly Peele added it himself.
IV. COMPARISON WITH THE HEROIC PLAYS
Now, how far may a play composed thus of such materials
be regarded as a satire upon the heroic drama based upon
romance ? OQOne’s first impression certainly is to deny it that
character. One expects exaggeration in burlesque, and The
| Old Wives’ Tale is more reasonable, tamer in every way, than
the heroic romances. Except technically it seems indeed. to
| have little enough in common with them. The material of
‘disguised women, seeking their lords or lovers, of adventure
_ by flood and field’ of which Professor Baker says “ Peele was
_ already making fun’ is not to be found in it.’ There are to be
sure, an enchanter and a princess who is freed from. his spells
_by the knight-errant Eumenides. But we have seen that this
_ material belongs equally to popular tales. In the setting in which
it is found here it belongs more nearly to the people, for the
hero has no heroic adventures on his way, nor a battle-royal
with the enchanter when he arrives. One of his adventures,
his encounter with the unburied Jack and his reward from the
_ Ghost, is indeed the subject of a Middle English romance ; this,
_ however, is a case where romance is very close to folklore, and
Siw Amadace has a background of tournament and knightly
enterprise which effectually removes it from Madge’s story. The
iiaeobs, Op. Cit. 232!
*Gummere, op. cit. p. 362 n., suggests that this comes from The Red
| Bttin, but the other is more likely here.
3 As, e.g., the Fee fo fum formula of Huanebango, and the tories
consequences of breaking the pitcher. For the significance of Huane-
bango’ S part, see below.
4 Cambridge History of English LPereore. N; p. 155.
88 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’
action of the play is not even situated in any strange land, neither
Palestine nor Phrygia nor an Isle of Strange Marshes. Erestus
is the ‘White Bear of England’s Wood’; Jack’s Ghost is
quarrelled over by a very English crowd of yokels, and one is
quite surprised at the end when even Humenides says that
he will take away Delia ‘to Thessaly.’. Compared with Sir
Clamydes or Common Conditions, Peele’s drama is unified and
remarkably devoid of absurdities.
This homeliness of the surroundings and the realism of the
style have been taken, however, as a proof of the dramatist’s
conscious effort to ‘ turn romance back upon itself ’ and, further,
to burlesque the romance plays.! I believe, however, that a
study of Peele’s style in this play reveals an entirely different
fact. Peele has given us, not the high-flowing tale of romantic
adventure but the familiar nursery tale, and he has used some-
thing of the style as well as the material of the old wife. Bullen,
in his edition of The Old Wives’ Tale, noticed this trait in the
case of some of the lyrics, the Harvesters’ songs, the words of
the heads in the well, and Sacrapant’s grace at the table, ° Spred,
table, spred.’ The best example of this style, however, is found
in the White Bear scenes, the first of which (ll. 128 ff.) is an
excellent example of the more poetic type of nursery tale. Hven
the blank verse, habitually used by the brothers and Humenides, —
is contrived to give something of the desired effect, as may be
seen in the repetition (of lines 119 ff.)—
‘To seeke our sister, to seeke faire Delya forth,
Yet cannot we so much as heare of hir.’
Even the realistic parts, the grave scene especially, are no excep-
tion to this. The quarrelsome conversation concerning the oft-
mentioned ‘Jack’ is in a manner that is by no means absent —
from folk-tales, though in Peele’s hands, and, possibly, under
1 This realism is not to be confused with that found in another class
of plays, the descendants of the ballads such as the Robin Hood plays
(ed. Manly, Specimens, I, p. 279 ff.) or George-a-Greene (ed. Students’
Facs. Ed. vol. 46. Attributed to Greene, but probably not his), for
these are fundamentally realistic. It is not likely that a king ever really
had to put down his staff in Wakefield, or that rebels were overcome
by the ruse and the strong right arm of one of the king’s loyal subjects—
but it could have happened, and the treatment is affected by that.
Passim one notes Peele’s interest in such material as shown by the
Robin Hood scenes in Hdward I. :
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 89
the influence of the realistic comedies, the quarrel is considerably
more elaborate than, for example, in Jack the Grant Killer.
One or two minor elements perhaps are worthy of discussion.
One need not delay over the somewhat crude method of intro-
ducing uO as—
‘ (Opti these chalkie cliffs of Albion
We are arrived now with tedious toile’ (119 ff.)
or Erestus—
‘Here sit now and to thy selfe relate
The hard mishap of thy most wretched state ’ (1. 162 ff.)
except to note that the drama is yet young in its technique.
| Many examples of this crudity are found throughout Elizabethan
| drama, and in Peele’s own works too,! although his method as
a rule is to reveal identity by means of a second person.? It
is a manner frequently found in the romance plays, but it was
by no means characteristic only of them. The final willingness
of Eumenides to divide Delia has been cited as a travesty of
‘the hackneyed theme of magnanimity in love,’ as found in the
| Merry Devil, Campaspe, Frier Bacon, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona and elsewhere.2 One might reply here again that the
situation is in nowise parallel, but that it is more effective to
point out that the dividing of ‘what he gets’ is an essential
part of the bargain. between the Ghost and Eumenides in this
‘form of the story. And, again, the form of Kumenides’ acquies-
cence has the ingenuous, somewhat inevitable note of the nursery
tale ‘ Well, ere I will falsifie my worde unto my friend, take her
‘all; heere. Jack, I’ll give her thee.’ (1. 847.)
_ The case of Huanebango and Corebus is somewhat different.
There is undoubted ridicule here, cast directly at the poet Harvey
i and his pedantic learning and versification. Huanebango is
represented primarily as the braggart soldier while Corebus is
the traditional foolish companion of such a man.*. The con-
_ ventional boasting of Huanebango is given a particular romantic
| 1 Hg., The Arraignment of Paris, NIT, 1. 108 ff. ; Hdward I, i. 1 fi.
| 2 Asin The Old Wives’ Tale, 1. 182, where the Old Man reveals Venelyas.
'| Tucker Brooke, op. cit. p. 278f. Further examples of devoted
friendship are found in Fair Em and in Greene’s novel, T'ullie’s Love.
: * Thersytes, in the play of that name, is one of the earliest examples in
| English drama. The hero there is not a satire of the romance heroes as
| (Dr. Murch (op. cit.) suggests, but simply the miles gloriosus.
90 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’
flavour, however. He does not threaten to kill all and sundry,
but specifically the conjurer who has enchanted Delia, and he
exaggerates what he must do very much in the vein of the six-
teenth-century romances. To win Delia he must seek his fortune
‘among brasen gates, inchanted towers, fire and brimstone,
thunder and lightning,’ must tame monsters, achieve labours,
absolve riddles, loose enchantments, murder magic and kill
conjuring. It is more likely, however, that the fun consisted
in the fact that Huanebango boasted all this than in the substance
of the boasting, that he is in fact.a parallel to Sansfoy in Str
Clyomon and Sir Clamydes. In any case, he is a comic addition
to the play, and if he is intended to be a satire on the romance
it by no means follows that the play as a whole has any such
purpose. . Ble | ee
There remains the question of the ‘induction.’ For the main
story is presented within a real framework of an old wife’s tale.
Three jovial young men are found wandering at night in a wood
by Clunch the smith and are taken to his cottage. After a short
vivid scene it is decided that the old wife, Madge, shall tell ‘a
merry winter’s tale,’ the kind of tale as one of the young men
says ‘ when I was a little one you might have drawne mee a mile
after you with such a discourse.’ While Madge is reciting in a
~ confused, truly ‘ old wife’s ’ manner the actors appear to represent
her story. Madge and her auditors remain as spectators of the
action, occasionally passing remarks upon the characters or the
incidents. |
If it be allowed that Peele was aiming at a consistent ‘ fairy-
tale style ’ in presenting the main episodes, the induction is easily
explained as his method of emphasising that purpose. This
is surely a more reasonable view than Gummere’s, who sees the
device as ‘an appeal to a sense of humour awakened by the
interplay of theme and treatment,’ an aid to burlesque in fact
and so a forerunner of the Induction to The Knight of the Burning
Pestle.1 It is unnecessary to regard the scene in the wood as
separate from the cottage scene ; Madge must have an audience,
and it was typical of Elizabethan method to represent a scene
from the very beginning. The induction thus falls into the same
class as that employed by Greene in James IV ? and Alphonsus
1 For the use of inductions, see Schwab, Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel.
He does not note the Old Wives’ Tale.
2 Fleay holds this opinion. See the Biographical Chronicle, I, 266.
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 91
or in the old Taming of the Shrew. It acts as a prologue giving
the main outlines of the story, and afterwards as a chorus com-
menting on the action and explaining it. One may cavil at the
technical fault of requiring an explanation, but it was common
enough in Elizabethan plays long after Peele’s time, while Peele
himself employs it to a far greater extent in David and Bethsabe.
Were the play a burlesque, one might expect some criticism
from the two listeners, but in point of fact, they make but two
remarks of that kind, and those two are sympathetic to the
main idea of the tale. When Jack has been buried, Fantastic
remarks (l. 495) ‘ But hark you, gammer, me thinkes this Jack
bore a great sway in the parish,’ a remark repeated by Frolic
at the close; and as a comment on Huanebango, Fantastic says
‘Me thinkes the Conjurer should put the foole into a jugling
boxe ’—both remarks that any child listening to the story would
heartily endorse. The induction is in perfect harmony with the
spirit of the play, and far more successful in that respect than
the Oberon prologue to. James IV as well as more charming
in itself. And nothing could be more suitable than the end,
where Madge seems to have been asleep, and wakes up to make
_asummary of the end of the tale. The plotting,’ confused and
sometimes jumbled, serves the same purpose, probably more on
_ account of the nature of the material than from any deliberation
on Peele’s own part. The whole is as if the playwright should
say, ‘ This is a plain country story. Listen to it and then take
your bread and cheese and go your way.’ Or one may prefer
to find the key-note in the words which have already been quoted
in which the young men ask for a story.
li this be satire, it is fine and delicate indeed—too well con-
cealed, indeed, until recent critics came to unveil it. But not
thus subtly did the Elizabethans generally prepare their shafts.
There is no mistaking the intention of Shakespeare when he
is poking fun at rustic plays in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
No one could fail to realise that Ben Jonson, cleverest and most
reticent of the Elizabethans, was burlesquing the love-making
| of the romances in Hvery Man Out of his Humour.? The most
famous example of all, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, exag-
_ gerates without stint the incoherence and absurdity of the heroic
plays, and makes its intention doubly sure by an induction
es
1Gummere notes this, op. cit. p. 344.
2 Puntalvo’s love-making to his wife, IT, i.
> = z ee
92 THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’
and comments so realistic that their contrast with the roman-
ticism of the main plot is almost crude. The fact is that exquisite
irony, or a gentle ‘turning back of art upon itself,’ are not
characteristic of this age of men of action. Directness was
required in art, ‘the play’s the thing,’ and moreover the story
in the play. In Peele’s own time it was the more necessary to
burlesque with exaggeration if at all inasmuch as his audience
was far more likely to appreciate romance than otherwise. And
University man though he was, one must credit him with knowing
his own generations and being truly of it.
Me CONCLUSION
Of course there would have been nothing improbable if Peele
had written a satire of the heroic romances. Nashe speaks
contemptuously of the long prose romances in his Anatomie of
Absurdities (1589)! and Sir Philip Sidney criticises the form-
lessness of English plays in his Defense of Poesie. We have
already seen how a decade later Jonson and Beaumont and
Fletcher were scourging the type. Peele, too, was a University
man, and might be expected to have a conscious sense of his
art, influenced by the laws of Greek and Roman drama. But
he came too early for this influence to have full sway. When
Peele was writing plays, the various threads of the drama, mystery
and miracle plays, classical and Renaissance material both
comic and tragic, native and heroic chronicle and homespun
realism, were being sorted and straightened out. Peele, who
seems to have turned to drama more because it was the fashion
than because it was his natural medium, hesitated between the
different types. The smallest computation of his plays includes
a miracle play (David and Bethsabe) ; a chronicle history (Edward
I), a pastoral based on a classical myth (The Araygnement of
Paris), a masque (The Hunting of Cupid), and a heroic play
somewhat in the Tamburlaine manner (The Baittell of Alcazar).
In his treatment of these types, Peele displays a certain amount
of regard for the limitations and the possibilities of his art, but
in no case does he mark any striking development. David and
Bethsabe is distinguished from its predecessors by its poetic
quality rather than by any advance in technique; the use of
the chorus to bridge scenes and the long scene of Absalom’s
1 There is a suggestion of contempt, too, in his mention of the Green
Knight in his Lenten Stuffe. Works, ed. McKerrow, vol. III, p. 220.
|
|
|
THE INTENTION OF PEELE’S ‘OLD WIVES’ TALE’ 93
death are sufficient proof of this. Hdward I is a badly plotted
chronicle play. It succeeds fairly well in characterisation as
does also David and Bethsabe. But Peele’s delight was in depict-
ing scenes of fancy with a perfectly adequate command of suitable
language. For subjects for such compositions it was usual to
go to Classical mythology. Peele in the Old Wives’ Tale sought
his matter in the myths of the English country-side, and is a
forerunner of the creator of Titania and Oberon.! The difference
is in the fact that Peele, surely, aimed at harmony between the
play and its framework. The nearest parallel to his mood is
in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, where the uncouth Mopsa tells
of the marriage and disappearance of the fairy knight. Mopsa,
_ too, uses the narrative manner of the country-side, ‘ she tumbled
into her matter’ and was cut off at the end because her tale
_ threatened to become too long. But on the whole Sidney’s story
is closer to the romances than Peele’s.?
The Old Wives’ Tale, then, is just what it purports to be,
a straightforward representation of a folk-tale. Story, detail
and scenery combine to give it a quaint charm and the admixture
of romance and realism which is the true characteristic of the
_folk-tale. The framework adds to its beauty of setting, and
at the same time clearly defines its character and intention.
In common with his fellow playwrights from the Universities
Peele chose a realistic miliew instead of the trappings of romantic
_heroes—but he took his country-side seriously and clothed it
in beauty.
| GWENAN JONES.
|
1 Peele’s forte seems to have been the writing of masques, a significant
fact if this view of The Old Wives’ Tale as a work of fancy is correct.
ely Nashe meant something like this when he described Peele as
the ‘chief supporter of plesance now living.’ (Preface to Greene’s
| Menaphon.)
2 Book 2, Chap. 14. It begins: ‘In time past (sayd she) there was
: | a king the mightiest man in all his country, that had es ne wife the fairest
ce that ever did eate pappe. Now this king .
NATURAL
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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES
ABERYSTWYTH
Vol. VIII
ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
VOL. VIII
ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
BY
MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF WALES
VOL. VIII
| PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES
PRESS BOARD ON BEHALF OF THE COLLEGE
| 1926
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Vg ra
“ee TU | men )
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Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
CONTENTS
PAGE:
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN :
DEIANEIRA. By Professor H. J. Ross 3 ‘ 4 1
TWO FRAGMENTS OF SAMIAN POTTERY, IN THE
MUSEUM OF THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES,
ABERYSTWYTH. By P. K. BartLtiure Reynoups, M.A. . 11
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE FAMILIAR LETTERS
OF JAMES HOWELL. By Epwarp Bensty, M.A. : We
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC. By Professor
T. GWYNN JONES . : f 2 : ; ; ; or
THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER. By J. J.
JONES, M.A. . s ; ; ; ; f 4 : 95.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL
WOMAN; DEIANEIRA
THE exact date of the Trachiniae of Sophokles is unknown, and
we can say only approximately when he may be supposed to
have written it. Jebb?! puts it somewhere between 420 and
410 B.c., and few are likely to quarrel seriously with this, for
nothing in the style indicates either a very early or a very late
date for it. Taking Jebb’s estimate as about right, then, the
play is at least ten years younger than the Medea of Euripides
(431), eight years or more younger than the Hippolytus (428),
probably earlier than, or about contemporary with, the Hlectra
(412), and pretty certainly earlier than the Orestes (408). The
tragedy, therefore, was written in the middle of Euripides’ career,
and at a time when the Athenian public was familiar with his
female characters.
It need not now be argued that Euripides was no woman-
hater ; that ancient scandal has long been put out of court by
modern analyses of his plays.? But it is very clear that if there
was one female type which interested him more than another,
it was what each age in turn calls the “modern’ woman, and
generally regards with great concern as a sign of its own degener-
escence. The typical Euripidean heroine is an individualist,
who, while often tender and compassionate towards others,
strongly asserts her own rights, and is ready, on occasion, to
break through all restraints of convention in order to uphold
them. Medeia, wronged past bearing by Jason, turns on him,
on her rival, his new bride, and finally on her own children,
because, much though she herself loves them, their death will fall
yet harder on Jason, who is thus left heirless. Phaidra, in the
earlier version of the Hippolytus, seems to have been a reckless
lover, who set wifely fidelity and everything else at defiance to
1 Sophocles, Vol. V (The Trachiniae), Introd. p. xxiii.
2 The remarks of Laurand (Manuel des ét gr. et lat., 11, 228 B2) are hope-
lessly reactionary.
A.S.—VOL. VIII. 1
2 THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN
satisty her passion ; in the extant play, although it is her modesty
which brings about her death, she is still passionate enough in all
conscience, and appears to have shocked not a few of the more
conventional. Elektra is hate incarnate, and also has ten times
the intellect and force of character possessed by her brother,
in both the plays in which she appears. It is no wonder, then,
that Sophokles should be thought to have felt the influence of
Kuripides in more than one detail of his play,! and that he
obviously spent much time and care over the character of his
heroine.
‘A smaller poet,’ says Prof. Gilbert Norwood, ‘ would have made
her haughty or abject, revengeful or contemptible ; Sophocles has
portrayed a noble lady, who will bend, but not kneel. Her interview
with Iole and the later conversations in which first she excuses her
husband and then on reflection finds that she cannot share his home
with the new-comer—these scenes, painted with quiet mastery, are
the greatest work of Sophocles in the portraiture of women.’
This essay is in part little but an expansion of the above short
criticism ; it adds, however, a further point, and one which I
think important ; Deianeira is indeed a noble lady, but one of
conventional character, and it is her conventionality which
brings about the catastrophe. Euripides, somewhere about the
same time, had shown what ills can arise about a conventionally
good woman, when confronted with an unscrupulous rival, if she
is herself utterly devoid of tact. The date of the play in which
she appears, the Andromache, is 420. I am not disinclined to
believe that Sophokles had it in mind, and is quietly showing
his clever but inferior rival that conventional virtue in itself has
in it depths and possibilities of disaster greater than he had |
dreamed of.
The play starts some twenty years or more after the aetece
of Deianeira to Herakles ; a perfectly conventional, traditional
Herakles, with no doubts of hisdivine parentage, norationalisation
of his adventures, no smoothing away of the non-moral features |
of his character. He is the strong, lusty hero whom every man
admires and no woman can resist. Deianeira, although she has
been his wife so long, has seen comparatively lttle of him.
‘Children were born to us,’ she complains, ‘whom he has seen
only as the husbandman sees his distant field, which he visits at
1 Norwood, Greek Tragedy, p. 159; the following quotation is tone the
same page.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN 3
‘seedtime, and once again at harvest.’1 He is perpetually away
on one adventure or another, and now he is gone on that adventure
which will, as they both hope, be his last, as indeed it turns out
to be. He has slain Iphitos, and so must wander as an exile for
a space. Hyllos, their eldest son, is confident 2 that his father’s
luck will hold ; Deianeira herself is not so sure. The time during
which he is expected to be absent, fifteen months, is now passed,
and she hears that he is waging war in EKuboia, which renews her
anxieties, for he has left her an oracle to the effect that in Euboia
he should find either death or permanent happiness. She there-
fore sends Hyllos to enquire after his father.
_ During her son’s absence, which is probably meant to occupy
some two or three days,? Deianeira is once more a prey to the
most acute anxiety. As she explains to the Chorus, she knows
that this is the crisis of Herakles’ life, and that he himself plainly
realised the gravity of it when he left her. The bare thought
of the possibility of widowhood, and widowhood after a marriage
with so noble a husband, is more than she can bear, and the
imagination of it breaks her sleep.4 One would suppose, then,
that Herakles was a model husband; as a matter of fact, he is
no such thing. His infidelities to Deianeira have been whole-
sale, and she knows it,° and accepts them as a natural consequence
of her position. The idea of revenging herself, in any way, on
him or on her rivals, is abhorrent to her.* In this, she is simply
the conventional Greek wife of epic and Attic tradition. Penelope
is told as a matter of course about Odysseus’ adventures, amorous
and otherwise, with Kirke and Kalypso*; Andromache, in a
speech of insufferable conceit which drives the hotter-tempered
Hermione nearly mad, boasts that in her affection for Hektor she
often used to suckle his bastard children.’ In this play, Lichas,
on hearing that Deianeira intends no harm to her latest rival,
Tole, is much pleased and commends her reasonable and pious
conduct warmly (ézei oe parOdvw Orytijy yoovotoay byyta xovx
ayvauova),? and the Chorus falls into reflections on the mighty
power of the Love-Goddess, who has conquered the very gods
1Trach., 31 (Jebb’s translation).
2 Tbid., 88, viv 06 EvviOns mdtwos ote & mateds | uds mgotagPetv
ovoe dEmpaivery Eyar.
3 See Aberystwyth Studies, VI, p. 11. 4Trach., 175.
5 Trach., 459. 6 Trach., 461 fi., 582 ff.
? Odyssey, XXIII, 321 ft. 8 Hur., Andr., 222 ff.
*Trach., 472; the Chorus begins at 497.
4 THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN
and made Herakles do battle with Acheloos for the hand of
Deianeira herself ; the implication being that his latest amour is
simply another instance of the activities of Aphrodite, and to be
accepted as such. ;
But, however much the blame might be shifted on to the
shoulders of the gods (and that had been the stock excuse since
the days of Homer),1 there were conventions governing the matter.
The morality of Herakles is somewhat like that of Tom Jones
and his contemporaries, and a strong distinction was made
between being unfaithful to a wife, actual or future, and insulting
her. Once married to Sophia, Tom would certainly not have
introduced Molly into the house; nor would the average con-
ventional Greek. The irregularities of a married man, while they
might be condoned, were things to be kept decently concealed,
and especially to'be kept away from the home. Indeed, we have
the evidence of Comedy that the actual Greek wife was by no
means always so complaisant as Deianeira. But there were
limits even to the complaisancy of the ideally dutiful wife ; she
must retain the first place in her husband’s affections, and in her
own home she must be the sole mistress, with no hint or thought
of a rival near her. These claims are based on two most solid
foundations. Firstly, there is the deep-seated feeling of sexual
jealousy which all Europeans, of whatever race, seem to have,
although some Africans are apparently without it. It certainly
was universal in Greece, save for some partial exceptions in the
very abnormal arrangements at Sparta.2 Secondly, there is the
organisation of the family. -The more conventional a Greek
woman was, the more strongly and deeply she would be likely to
feel that as an individual she counted for next to nothing, but as
wife and mother, for much. Without her, the all-important con-
tinuation of the family and clan through legitimate heirs could not
take place; in Deianeira’s own metaphor, so familiar to all
Greeks that it actually appears in the formula of Attic marriages,®
she was the field which bore legitimate children. Sexual morality —
might be now stricter, now laxer; but a Greek husband could
have but one wife. Any attempt to upset this immemorial
1 Tliad, XIX, 86ff. (Agamemnon blames Zeus, Fate, Erinys, and
Ate); III, 389 ff. (Helen’s conduct due to Aphrodite.)
2 For the best and most thorough discussion of these, see Nilsson,
Grundlagen des spartanischen Lebens (Klio, XII), p. 325 ff.
3 See Menander, ITeouxergouévy, 362 (van Leeuwen), dxove’ tadtny yr[notor |
malowy & dodtw oor didmpyt.—Alaupdrve.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN 5
arrangement was bound to result in utter ruin and disaster ; only
aman as reckless as Kuripides’ Pyrrhos, or a woman as stupidly
insensible as his Andromache, could for a moment imagine that
it might be otherwise. |
Deianeira is face to face with a violation of this convention,
which is no mere convention, but the result alike of human nature
and ancient social organisation. Herakles is violently in love with
the captured princess [ole, indeed has fought against and taken
Oichalia in order to win her!; and he has now sent her, along
with his other captives, to his own and Deianeira’s house. It is
no secret among the hero’s own following that Tole is to all intents
and purposes his wife, and they speak of her as such, although not
before Deianeira.2 It is here that Sophokles perhaps rises to
his greatest heights of character-drawing in this play. Gentle,
tender-hearted, and absolutely devoted to Herakles, Deianeira
has been moved by the captive’s majestic beauty at first sight of
her, and cannot blame Herakles for loving her ; ‘ for Love rules
the gods as he will, and me; and why not another woman, such
aslam? So Iam mad indeed, if I blame my husband, because
that distemper hath seized him ; or this woman, his partner in a
thing which is no shame to them and no wrong to me.’ ? Con-
ventionally good to the core, she is true to her conventions,
although it may cost her dear to abide by them.
But a little reflection tells her that she is attempting todo more
than, by her standards or any other, she can be expected to do.
As she tells the chorus,
So now one coverlet shall hap us twain,
Held in one man’s embrace. Such is the price
That Herakles, my loving, faithful lord,—
_ Heaven save the mark,—pays for my weary watch.*
This is her one word of reproach against him, and even so she is
not, and will not be, angry, but reasons calmly on the intolerable
situation. She has no desire to harm anybody, but must secure
her rightful place in Herakles’ affections, which she is now in
danger of losing. Quietly and steadily she faces the facts ;
Tole is much younger than she, and not yet arrived at her prime ;
she will have the substance, and Deiancira the shadow ; ‘ This,
then, is my fear,—lest Herakles, in name my spouse, should be
1See Trach., 359 ff.
2 Lichas has been heard to call her dduaot’? “Hoaxiei, Trach., 428.
' 3Trach., 443 ff., Jebb’s translation. 4 Trach., 539 ft.
6 THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN
the younger’s mate.’! Therefore, it is lawful,—she asks the
opinion of the Chorus, who quite agree with her,—to try harmless
magic, and such she believes she has at her disposal. Years ago,
Herakles had shot a Centaur, Nessos, who was offering violence
to her. The Centaur, as he lay dying, told her that his blood
would make a powerful charm, if ever she needed to win back
Herakles’ affection. Incapable of treachery herself, she never
stops to consider whether a crafty desire for revenge may not
underlie this apparent kindness; and at first sight, the charm
appears really efficacious, for the life-blood of a lover might well
make a love-philtre, by all rules of sympathetic magic. To
doubt the efficacy of magic would be utterly out of keeping with
her character ; magic played a considerable part in the life of the
old-fashioned Greek woman, who had charms to keep evil spirits
at bay during certain seasons of the year, spells recited over her
at child-birth to ensure safe delivery and lessen her pain, and
doubtless knew many more charms to heal the numerous small
ailments and hurts of children.2 But she has made, in her
innocence, a fatal oversight. The blood of Nessos has flowed from
a wound made by Herakles’ arrow, poisoned with the deadly
venom of the Hydra. Sophokles was no scientist, but the Greeks
were by no means without a general knowledge of the effect of
some drugs; he imagines this venom to be a powerful corrosive
of some kind, inactive at low temperatures and in the dark, but
horribly potent when heated to about the ordinary temperature
of the body. There were plainly stories about of wizards using
such things; Euripides made use of this belief for his Medea.
But how should Deianeira know anything of nascent chemical
science or of the more elaborate forms of magic ? Moreover, the
Hydra’s venom has been used as arrow-poison, and it was pro-
verbial that a woman had nothing to do with war,—as little as
with the skilled trades, other than weaving and spinning.
‘ Begone to thy chamber,’ says Telemachos to his mother,® ° and
busy thee with thine own works, loom and spindle, and bid thy
maids ply their task; the bow is all men’s business, and mine
especially.’ lLysistrata’s husband + used to meet her enquiries
about the conduct of the war with the same saw, a little altered
1Trach., 550, Jebb’s trans.
2See the author’s Primitive Culture in Greece, Chap. VI.
3 Odyssey XXI, 350 ff.
* Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 520; Homer, Il. 492 (addeuoz 0 Grvdosoot
pedjoet).
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN 7
to fit the occasion ; Hektor had already used it to Andromache.
Klytaimnestra, playing for her own purposes the part of a very
Penelope, declares ! that she knows no more of ‘ pleasure or blame
from any other man (than Agamemnon) than of the tempering
of bronze.’
The fatal charm is therefore employed, and a new robe,
secretly smeared with the blood, sent to Herakles, with the
request that he wear it in the sacrifice of thanksgiving which he
is to offer for his latest victory. The heat of the altar fire soon
rouses the poison to activity, and he finds himself in horrible agony.
At once supposing that the harm done him is deliberate, he flings
the unlucky messenger Lichas into the sea, and has himself
carried home, intending to take vengeance on Deianeira. Hyllos
precedes him, filled with rage at the supposed treachery, and
ends his account of what has happened by cursing his mother ;
although, conventional as the rest of the family, he stops in the
middle of his curse to assure himself that he has a right to invoke
it, in the circumstances.2 Deianeira leaves the stage without a
word of protest or self-defence, and only her old nurse sees what
happens afterwards. Following her mistress, the old woman sees
her throw herself down before the family altars and hears her crv
aloud that she is all alone now 2; after which she rises, breaks
into fresh tears at the sight of everything and everyone in the
house, and finally enters her bedroom. There, after making
her marriage-bed for the last time and formally bidding it fare-
well, she stabs herself with a sword, presumably one of Herakles’
own weapons.
That she should be broken-hearted and Gespairing at the
horrible result of a scheme so innocently laid is too natural to
need explanation in any age or country; but there are many
1 Aesch., Agam. 612. 2 Trach., 807 ff.
3 Trach., 908-9, Bovydto pév Bwpotor nooonintove’ 6t yévoiw éonun.
Pearson shows his usual good taste in restoring this, the reading of the
MSS., in place of Nauck’s ill-judged conjecture yévowv’ égonuor. What
could she mean by saying that the altars were become desolate? If
‘altars’ is meant literally, why should she suppose that the house will
never be inhabited again, nor the ordinary family worship conducted in
it? If it is metaphorical and means ‘ cult,’ again it is inappropriate, for
the sons of Herakles survive, and will certainly keep up the ritual of their
family. But goyjun, ‘all alone,’ ‘ kinless,’ exactly expresses Deianeira’s
own position, and is used of a woman without family, e.g., by Euripides,
Herachid. 523. In line 911, xai tdc dnaidac & td Aoindy otciac, ovoiac
may be corrupt, but dada certainly is not.
8 THE TRAGEDY, OF THE CONVENTIONAL. WOMAN
details which add greatly to the pathos of the situation, throw
light on the character of the heroine, and are not at once obvious to
a modern, although they needed no gloss for Sophokles’ audience.
The key-words of herlamentation are go/ju7j and dsadac, both of
which the indiscreet zeal of editors has tried to emend away.
A few days before Deianeira was the proud wife of the noblest of
heroes, and the happy mother of his sons. Now her husband is
dying, slain by her unwitting hand, and for this she accepts the
full guilt. Hyllos indeed, when he learns all the circumstances,
can find excuses for her, and so can the sympathising Chorus ;
but Deianeira herself will have none of such condonations. Con-
ventional and old-fashioned in this as in other things, she follows
the old view which looks only to the deed, not to the motives.
She is therefore more than a widow ; she has undone her marriage.
Nor is she a mother any more ; for her eldest son, the natural
guardian and representative of his brothers, has cursed her and
cast her off. But, also, she is no longer her father’s daughter ;
for once married, she has left that relationship behind her for
ever.2. She is no Medeia, to make a new home for herself some-
where in a strange land. No one’s daughter any more, no one’s
wife, and no one’s mother, she has no place in the world, hardly
any existence at all ; she therefore has no course open to her save
to seek and find eh as quickly as may be.
Sophokles is said to have remarked that he described people as
they should be, while Euripides described them as they were.
This of course does not mean that his characters are all angels,
like those of some sentimental novelist, but, as Butcher well
puts it, that they are ‘raised above the trivial and accidental.’
They are human, as human as those of Euripides himself; but
the poet does not dissipate the interest by insisting on a number
1 Trach., 930 ff. (Hyllos’ remorse); cf. 727 ff. (Deianeira, too late,
becomes suspicious of the drug she has used) :
XO. GAV Gui toic opadeion un °§ éxovoias
Gov) mémEloa, Ths oe Tuyyavew moémEL.
AH. toatta 0 av AéEEltev ody 6 TOD xaxov
xowarves, GAN” @ pnoév Eov oixot Baov.
Ovid compresses her feelings in this matter into the refrain impia quid
dubitas Deianira mori ? (Heroides ix, 146, 152, 158, 164.)
2For rites of dissociation from home in a Greek marriage, see @.g.,
Plut., Quaest. Rom. 29. |
3 Arist., Poetics 1460b,34, ofov xal opoxdnc épn abvtos [év Oiovs O&t moLEtr,
Eboinidny 6é oiot ciciv. For comment see Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of
Poetry and Fine Art, p. 369.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN 9
of minute and petty details such as would, in actual life, distract
our attention from the essential features of the characters and
their actions. No better illustration of this can be found than
the Trachiniae. In Sophokles’ own day there was a domestic
drama at Athens, whose exact date is quite unknown, but in
which the orator Antiphon (born about 480 B.c., put to death
411), or someone who wrote a very similar style, took part.
A woman, feeling jealous of her husband, contrived that he should
drink some compound which proved to be poisonous. He died
alter an illness of about three weeks, and his son, the woman’s
stepson, brought her before the Areiopagos on a charge of murder.
Her defence was that she meant the drug for a love-philtre. Here
possibly we have the case which set Sophokles thinking of the
subject of his tragedy. Was a woman in such a position, suppos-
ing that her plea was true (we do not know how the jury decided,
nor what evidence she brought in her favour), a murderess, as
the accuser alleges throughout the speech, or the innocent
victim of circumstances ? He clears away all the sordid details
of the actual case, leaving only this central problem. Deianeira
decides against herself, in accordance with her own conventional
and old-fashioned but noble character. Everyone else, even, it
would appear, Herakles, votes the other way. And that,—one
can perhaps imagine Sophokles gently insinuating,—that is the
true way to bring real life into a tragedy, friend Euripides.
H. J. ROSE.
1 Antiphon, Orat. I, especially 9. The authenticity of this speech has
been doubted, see Blass-Thalheim’s edition, p. xxi.
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NATURAL |
HISTORY. |
2S RIA A OS SETS
TWO FRAGMENTS OF SAMIAN POTTERY, IN
THE MUSEUM OF THE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTH
A
THERE is nothing intrinsically remarkable about this fragment
of ‘Samian’ ware, but some circumstances connected with it
deserve notice. Such particulars as are given here are due almost
entirely to the research of Dr. Felix Oswald, who has most kindly
allowed his notes on the subject to be put together for publication.
It is a piece of a bowl of Dragendorf Form 37, the type in com-
monest use in the last quarter of the first century A.D. and through-
out the second. All the decorations on it are characteristic of the
potters of the Kast-Gaulish area who worked during the Antonine
period, from roughly a.p. 130 to about the end of the second
century. (Fig. 1.)
(a) The Ovolo border with every alternate tongue missing is
found on the work of the Rheinzabern potters BELSVS, CERIALIS,
SECVNDINAVI and in that of Avitt F and Campo of Eschweilerhof.
(6) The Hagle 1 with or without the medallion border is used
by Ceria.is, Lvpvs, PEREGRINVS, and occurs on a mould stamped
both ‘Smcvnpinavi’ and Comrratts F, all Rheinzabern potters,
and is also used by the Eschweilerhof group, being probably
derived from Sarto. |
(c) The two-handled urn was a common form of decoration
and is found in various shapes and sizes in the work of many
potters.? The actua! form which appears here in the field to the
right is found on the work of ‘ SECVNDINAVI’ and PERPETVS (?)
both of Rheinzabern, and of (?) BrLsvs 3 who migrated to Rhein-
1 Ludowici, W. Stempelbilder rém. Tépfer von Rheinzabern. 1905.
ee iype T. 130. ;
2 Cf. Déchelette, Les vases céramiques ornés de la Gaule romaine. Fig.
1073 i. Ludowici, op. cit. Types O. 86-90, 174.*
°3So. Knorr Die verzierten Terra Sigillata-Gefdsse von Rottenburg,
A.S.—VOL. VIII. 11 B
12 TWO FRAGMENTS OF SAMIAN POTTERY
zabern from Heiligenberg. It is possibly derived from a very
similar form used by the slightly earlier Heiligenberg potter
CIRIVNA.!
(d) The kettle winged cwpid holding an upraised torch, whose
head, wing and right arm appear at the bottom, is used by
CERIALIS, Iviivs, REGINVS and °SECVNDINAVI,’ again all of
Rheinzabern.?
(ec) The central figure represents a charvoteer driving a quadriga
to the left. The circus and the arena were very popular subjects
for the decoration of vessels, whether pottery, glass or lead, and
chariot races are often found treated in far more elaborate style
than here, e.g. on a glass cup from Colchester * now in the British
Museum. On ‘Samian’ vessels, particularly of the decadent
Kast-Gaulish potteries, the conventionalised group tends to be
the more usual, and the form in which it occurs on this fragment
is quite a recognised type, 4 and is found in the work of the Rhein-
zabern potters CERIALIS, IvLivs and ‘SECVNDINAVI.’ Better
designed types are also found and there are differences in detail,
e.g. the chariot may face indifferently the right or the left and it
may be a biga or a quadriga.°® :
The conventional “Samian’ decoration might reasonably be
supposed to be derived from the more realistic treatment of the
same subject in glass, and Mr. Reginald Smith puts the Colchester
Cup as early as the end of the first century,® but on the other
hand, towards the end of the second century glass vessels were
tending to supersede ‘ Samian,’ and often, especially in Form 30,
imitated both shape and style of decoration, so that it is possible |
that charioteer decoration on glass is derived from Samian and is
of the Antonine age,’ but preserves the realistic tradition of the
XVIII, 4, and Ibid., 1, where the name FoRTVNATVS is not that of a potter ;
ef. wnfra.
1 Knorr., Die verzierten Terra Sigillata-Gefdsse von Rotiweil, 1907. pl.
XXV, 5. |
* Ludowici, op. cit., Type M. 95, with left leg missing.
3 Reginald Smith, B.M. Guide to Antiquities of Roman Britain, p. 105,
Fig. 124; ef. similar vessels from Hartlip, Kent. (Roach Smith, Collect.
Ant., 1, p. 17) andin the London Museum (id., Mus. Lond. Ant., p. 48, 211.
A quadriga on lead, B.M.G., p. 100, Fig. 121.
4 Ludowici, op. cit., Type M. 37.
5 Ludowici, op. cit., Types M. 210,* 211,* 219,* 257.*
6 B.M.G., p. 105.
? Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum, pp. 230 ff., 730 ff.
TWO FRAGMENTS OF SAMIAN POTTERY 13
South-Gaulish artists ! better than did the contemporary potters
of Kast Gaul.?
Be that as it may, vessels decorated with scenes from the
circus evidently commanded a good sale, and their popularity was
doubtless increased by labelling the figures with the names of
prominent charioteers of the period. This is well seen on the
Colchester glass cup, where one of the four charioteers is saluted
as the victor: no doubt it was a popular win, for the identical
names have been found on other glass vessels.? Thus in the
Aberystwyth fragment we clearly have the name of the charioteer
FILINo written retrograde above his head. It is an integral part
of the moulded decoration of the bowl, not a stamp, nor a graffito.
This is quite in accord with the usual practice, though the name
is often found below the figure and sometimes with the addition of
the “colour’ or ‘faction’ which the man represented in the
circus. *
All the decorative details thus tend to show that this piece is a
product of the Rheinzabern pottery.
The points of interest in connection with this fragment are
two: (a) Inthe first place (so far as the writer is aware) the name
Fittno has not yet been published in this connection and is other-
wise unknown. If it is the name of the charioteer it should be in
the nominative or possibly the vocative. Philinus occurs as a
cognomen of citizens of Greek origin, or as the name of slaves,
but the form ending in O could only be dative or ablative, which
do not make sense in this connection. As a nominative it is an
unusual form, and may be a Gallicism, for the termination O for
VS is not at all infrequent in the names of Gaulish potters.
(6) Secondly, this fragment bears a very striking resemblance
to a piece found in excavating the Roman fort at Zugmantel on
the Rhine Limes, and published by Barthel in his report,® from
which the accompanying illustration (Fig. 2) is reproduced.
In the Zugmantel fragment we have the same ovolo border
1 South-Gaulish charioteer vessels. Déche lette, op.cut. Fig. 647; a biga
on Form 37,from la Graufesenque. Knorr, Rottweil, 1907, pl. XIV, 7,
Form 30, by PAvutvs, etc., etc.
2 But cf. the far more elaborate treatment in the medallions by the
appliqué work potters of the Rhone Valley in the third century. Dé-
chelette, op. cit. II, p. 300.
moe ie Vil. 1273, Kisa, op. ct., p. 730.
4 Ludowici, op. cit., iv, p. 99.
°O.R.L. Zugmantel pl. XXIV, Fig. 21.
14 TWO FRAGMENTS OF SAMIAN POTTERY
with every alternate tongue missing ; the same charioteer group,
facing left, with the name, (for)TVNATVS in the nominative case,
above it, written retrograde, the same winged cupid with upraised
torch below the horses ; the same two-handled urn in a similar
position in the field (though here it is in front of the charioteer
and not behind him); and the same medallion, though here the
figure in the medallion is not the eagle, but an athlete, a very
common type.1 The Zugmantel fragment also, fortunately,
bears the potters’ stamp [se]CVNDINAVI upside down below the
charioteer. A similar fragment of what must be a bow! from the
same mould exists in the Stuttgart Museum: it comes from
Rottenburg on the Neckar and is figured by Knorr. In this case
the potter’s stamp and the figure in the medallion are broken off,
but two more letters of the charioteer’s name survive and thus
enable that on the Zugmantel piece to be restored with certainty
aS For)tvnatvs. The similarity in shape of the Nin FORTVNATVS
and in Frurno on the Aberystwyth fragment is also remarkable.
These considerations make it appear probable that the
Aberystwyth fragment is also the work of the potter or potters
SECVNDINAVI 2 and is a piece of a bowl from the same mould as
the Zugmantel and Rottenburg fragments, but from the opposite
side of the vessel.
Probably four charioteers were depicted, separated by four
medallions, two containing athletes and two eagles, the athlete
medallions being flanked by the urns.
The origin of this piece is unfortunately not known with any
accuracy, certain records of objects in the College Museum having
perished in a firein 1885. But it appears to belong to a group of
potsherds, some Samian, some Belgic and some black, which came
from German sites. Most of the pieces of coarser ware in this
group have identification labels which state that they were
acquired in 1867 and came from Cologne, while the majority of
the Samian sherds bear the date May 1870 and their origin is
1 Ludowici, op. cit., Type M. 43, found on the work of Avitvs of
Eschweilerhof and of Comiraris, Ianvs, lovENtvs, LvTEvs, PRIMITIVVS,
REGINVS, ‘ SECVNDINAVI,’ and Statvtvs, all of Rheinzabern.
2 Rottenburg, pl. XVIII, 1, Cf. Barthel, op. cit., pp. 123, 14, and 154,
473, who points out that the name FORTVNATVS is not a Potter’s stamp, as
then supposed (and as is given in C.I.L. XIII, 3, 10011, 201), but the name
of the charioteer.
3 This stamp SECVNDINAVI is probably that of a partnership firm consist-
ing of the potters SECVNDINVS and AVvITVS.
TWO FRAGMENTS OF SAMIAN POTTERY 15
given as Altmiinster or Linsenberg. These two names indicate
sites within the city of Mainz,!so that one may reasonably assume
that the piece now under consideration came from that city also.
B
The second piece 1s perhaps of less interest, but it also bears an
inscription which, so far as the writer is aware, has not been pub-
lished.
It consists of the base and part of the side of a plain cup of
Dragendorf, Form 27, bearing the stamp of the potter SECVNDVS,
who worked in South Gaul at La Graufesenque in the middle of
the first century.
- On the underside of the base is the graffito Contrrsst. This
is the owner’s name and is scratched with a sharp instrument
through the glaze of the vessel; this was a common practice,
the name being, of course, in the genitive case.
CONTESSIVS is a known Gallic name? and the feminine
ConTESsSIA ?also occurs. The parallel Gallic spelling ConTEDDIVS
is also found. This fragment bears a label ‘20th May 1870.
Altmunster,’ and thus is also from Mainz.
P. K. BAILLIE REYNOLDS.
1T am indebted to Dr. E. Ritterling for kindly giving me this piece of
information. J had been unable to find either name on any German map.
2Ci W., XE, 1821, 2207, 2208.
erbid., 1805.
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE FAMILIAR
LETTERS OF JAMES HOWELL!
In the following notes the references have been made to Joseph
Jacobs’s edition (1890-1892), but I have added in brackets the
number of the page of the volume in which letter or poem first
appeared. It should be remembered that in some editions the
pages of the book or section are numbered separately.
The Vote was first printed in 1642, Book I. of the Letters in 1645,
Book Il. in 1647, Book III. in 1650, Book IV. in 1655.
(Letters numbered as in Jacobs, Text as in first editions.)
TESTIMONIA.
The following may be added to the passages prefixed to
Jacobs’s Introduction, pp. xv—xx.
‘The details of this sublimeexpedition in thecommon Dryasdust
are very unauthentic ; borrowed mostly from Howell’s Letters.?
James Howell, a quickwitted, loquacious, scribacious, self-con-
ceited Welshman of that time. He was presumably extant in
Spain during these months ;. his Letters were put together above
twenty years afterwards. Letters partly intended, I think, as a
kind of Complete Letter-writer ; containing bits of History too,
bits of wit and learning, philosophy and elegant style; an
elegant reader’s vade-mecum ; intended alas, above all, to pro-
cure a modicum of indispensable money for poor Howell. They
have gone through twelve editions or more: they are infinitely
more readable than most of the torpid rubbish, and fractions of
them, if you discriminate well, are still worth reading. These
are the foundations whereon our accounts of this sublime Expedi-
tion rest. Very unauthentic ; but in fine we care nothing for the
business itself.”’
THOMAS CARLYLE, Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and
Events in the Reigns of James I. and Charles I. (written 1843-4,
published posthumously 1898), pp. 152, 153.
- 1§ee Vols. III., IV., V., and VI. of Aberystwyth Studies.
2 << “ Howell is very questionable,’ says Carlyle in a marginal note on a
page of his copy of the Pictorial History of England”’ (Alexander Carlyle).
17
18 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
“ Howell’s Epistles. These inimitable letters will soon be
accessible in Mr. Arber’s reprint.”’
Joun E. B. Mayor, Note on p. 190 of his edition (1870) of the
Life of Ambrose Bonwicke by his Father.
[As late as 1880 the Hpistole Ho-Hliane appeared in a list of
classes of books to be represented in ‘ The Old Series ’ of Arber’s
‘English Scholar’s Library,’ but they were never published. ]
Joseph Jacobs’s Introduction, p. xxiv., ‘“‘ His mother is
declared by the same authority to have been the daughter of one
Chantor Huet, and was possibly sister-in-law to Sir Sackville
Trevor, whom Howell addresses as ‘ uncle.’ ”’
Jacobs’s positive and conjectural statements about the relationships of
Howell’s mother are both mistaken. According to “ the same authority ”’
—Theophilus Jones’s ‘ History of the County of Brecknock ’—Howell’s
father, Thomas, ‘‘ married a granddaughter of Chantor Huet of Llanfan-
fawr,”’ and, according to Sir J. K. Laughton in the ‘ D.N.B..,’ Sir Sackville
Trevor (fi. 1632) married Eleanor daughter of Sir John Savage of Clifton,
Cheshire, and widow of Sir Henry Bagnall.
As Jacobs speaks of “‘ one Chantor Huet ”’ it looks as though he may
have imagined Chantor to be a Christian name. For Thomas Huet or
Huett, precentor or chantor of St. David’s, see the * D.N.B.,’ Cooper’s
‘ Athenae Cantabrigienses ’ and other works of reference. Mr. Richard
Ellis has kindly referred me to Browne Willis’s ‘Survey of the Cathedral
Church of St. David’s’ (1717), where I find, p. 142, that “‘ the Person
enjoying this Dignity (the Precentorship), takes Place as the Dean does in
other Cathedrals,” the Bishop being properly Dean.
‘The Vote, or a Poeme Royall,’ ll. 19, 20, p. 6 (1642, p. 2),
No curious Land-skip, or some Marble peece
Digd wp in Delphos, or else-where in Greece.
9
‘““Some Marble peece,”’ etc., seems to have been suggested to Howell
by the famous collections of Thomas Howard (1585-1646), Karl of Arundel,
displayed in the galleries of Arundel House in the Strand. Selden’s
‘Marmora Arundeliana’ came out in 1628. |
‘The Vote, or a Poeme Royall,’ H. 135, 136, p. 9 (1642, p. 7),
Good may the Entrance, better the middle be,
And the Conclusion best of all the three.
A letter of Howell’s, I[V., xxxvii (1655, p. 91) shews that he was familiar
with the thought in its Italian form : i
‘““ These com to foretell, at leastwise to wish you, as the season invites
mee, a Good New yeer, and according to the Italian. complement, buon
principio, nughor mezzo, ed ottimo fine.”
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 19
On p. 24 of Aber. Studies, Vol. VI., I suggested that there might be a
Latin original and gave a conjectural hexameter. Certainly both in Greek
and Latin we find lines of a traditional type in which a beginning, middle,
and end are concisely described :
IIodo6e Aéwv, dnibev 6& dodxwr, wéoon O€ yimatoa.
Iliad vi., 181.
Prima leo, postrema draco, media ipsa, Chimaera.
Lucretius, V., 905.
When in chap. xii. of ‘ Romola’ George Eliot writes ‘“‘ But what says
the Greek ? ‘In the morning of life, work ; in the midday, give counsel ;
in the evening, pray ’,” she evidently has in mind the line,
“Eoya véwyv, Poviai 0& pwéowy, edvyal O€ yeoorvtwr.
See Harpocration’s Lexicon, s. “Eoya véwyv, and Hesiod, ed. A. Rzach,
Fragm. 220 (246).
- Compare,
Mane petas montes: medio nemus: vespere fontes.
Heinrich Bebel’s ‘ Proverbia Germanica,’ ed. Suringar, no. 595.
“The Vote, or a Poem Royall,’ ll. 221, 222 (1642, p. 11),
Vertue still guide his course, and if there be
A thing as Fortune Him accompanie.
Compare the conclusion of I. 2, xxv., So my dear Cosen, may Vertue
be your guide, and Fortune your companion.
The source of the expression is Cicero, ‘ Epp. ad Fam.’ x., iu. 2, “‘ Omnia
summa, consecutus es, virtute duce, comite fortuna.’ These last four
words were the motto of the printer Sebastian Gryphius (c. 1491-1556).
John Owen places them at the head of an epigram (II. xxii.) on Lord
Burleigh,
Fortunam Comitem regina creavit Elisa ;
Cur non Virtutem fecerat ergo Ducem ?
Page 13 (1645, sign. A3),
To the knowing
READER.
Of Familiar or Letters-missive.
Lines 1-2,
Love is the life of frendship, Letters are
| The life of Love.
Compare,
Book I., Sect. 1, xvii., p. 44 (1645, p. 29), Love is the marrow
of friendship, and Letters are the Elixir of Love.
There is a certain conventional or traditional arrangement of the
thought in such sentences with their comparisons and three principal
terms. We may take as an example the distich attributed to “ quidam
modernorum’”’ by John of Salisbury, ‘ Policraticus,’ ITI. 1.,
Vita animae Deus est, haec corporis; hac fugiente
Solvitur hoc, perit haec destituente Deo.
20 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
Book I., Sect. 1,i., p. 17 (1647, p.1. This letter was first printed
at the beginning of ed. 1 of Book II.), The Tongue in udo posita,
being in a moyst slippery place may fayle and eh in her sudden
extemporall expressions.
Compare I., xxi. of the ‘ Hieroglyphica Horapollinis,’ ed. David
Hoeschel, 1595, with J. Mercier’s Lat. translation, pp. 33, 34.
Lidoon 0&, Ott Ota martes év VyE@ tudeyovoay TavTHY, “al yevéTEloay
too eivat xahotot.
Linguae autem, quod cum haec perpetuo in humido esse gaudeat,
insuper et ipsam genitricem causamque rerum status appellant.
Book J., Sect. 1, 1., p. 18 (1647, p. 2), Some modern Authors
there are, who have expos’d their Letters to the world, but most of
them, | meane among your Latin Epistolizers, go fraighted with
meer Bartholomew ware, listed with pedantic shredds of School-boy
verses.
Jacobs in his Index glosses listed by “‘ stuffed.’’ This I take to be a
mere guess. Justed (see the N.E.D.) = bordered, edged, striped. Here
it appears to be equivalent to variegated, embellished.
Book I., Sect. 1, i., p. 20 (1645, p. 3), Amongst others,
Mistris T'urner, the first Inventresse of yellow-Starch, was executed
in a Cobweb-Lawn Ruff of that color at Tyburn, and with her I
believe that yellow-Starch, which so much disfigured our Nation,
and rendred them so ridiculous and fantastic, will receive its
Funerali.
Jacobs in his note refers to E. F. Rimbault’s Life of Sir T. Overbury
prefixed to his edition of Overbury’s ‘Miscellaneous Works,’ 1856, p. xxxvii.,
**'When Coke the Lord Chief Justice, sentenced her to death for her share
in the murder of Overbury, he added the strange order, that ‘as she was
the person who had brought yellow starched ruffs into vogue, she should be
hanged in that dress, that the same might end in shame and detestation.’
Even the hangman who executed this unfortunate woman was decorated
with yellow ruffs on the occasion.”
But see Andrew Amos, ‘The Great Oyer of Poisoning,’ 1846, p. 46,
“Michael Sparke, who under the affected latinized name of Scintilla,
published his “‘ Truth brought to ight by Time,” in the year 1651, relates,
with little probability of truth, that Mrs. Turner was actually sentenced
by Sir E. Coke to be hanged at Tyburn in a ruff stiffened with her own
yellow starch.”
Carlyle of course pounced on the picturesque incident of the yellow
ruff :
‘* Widow Turner being a person of respectability, though at Tyburn,
could not but appear in yellow ruffs duly got up ; whereupon all the world
indignantly scoured its ruff white again. O Widow Turner, Widow
‘Turner, the getting up of that yellow ruff, the night before Tyburn ! ”
‘Historical Sketches,’ part I, chap. xv., p. 122.
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 21.
Book I., Sect. 1, ii1., p. 22 (1645, p. 5), The small time I super-
vis’d the Glasse-house, I got amongst those Venetians some
smatterings of the Italian Tongue, which, besides the lttle I
have, you know, of School-languages, is all the Preparatives I
have made for travell.
Jacobs prints ** School-language,” the corrupt reading of the 1737
edition, and explains it as “ language of the ‘ Schools,’ Latin, in which
language alone the disputations could be held by which degrees could be
obtained,’ with a reference to C. Wordsworth’s ‘ Scholae Academicae.’
This is beside the mark. Howell wrote ‘“ School-languages,”’ i.e. Greek
and Latin. He uses the same term elsewhere.
Book I., Sect. 1, v., p. 25 (1645, p. 8), Having bin so rocked
and shaken at Sea; when I came a shore I began to incline to
Copernicus his opinion, which hath got such a sway lately in the
World, viz. That the Earth as well as the rest of her fellow EHle-
ments, 18s in perpetuall motion, for she seem’d so to me a good
while after I had landed: He that observes the site and position
of this Countrey, will never hereafter doubt the truth of that
Philosophicall Problem which keeps so great a noise in the
Schools, viz. That the Sea is higher then the Harth, because as I
sail’d along these Coasts, I visibly found it true ; for the Ground
here which is all twixt Marsh and Moorish, hes not onely levell,
but to the apparant sight of the ey far lower then the Sea.
The references given in Jacobs’s note in illustration of *‘ That Philoso-
phical Problem ”’ prove that he referred these words by mistake to what has
just been mentioned,—the question of the earth’s movement. But if what
follows is read with any attention it is clear that the reference is to “ That
the Sea is higher than the Earth.”’ For an example of the discussion of this
question in the seventeenth century see Bernhardus Varenius, * Geographia
generalis,’ lib. I., cap. xiii., Propositio 2, ‘Oceanus non est majoris alitt-
tudinis, quam terrae littora, atque ideo terra & aqua ejusdem jfere sunt alti-
tudims ubique, exceptis montibus excelsis, and Propositio 3, Cur mare con-
specium € littore videtur in majorem altitudinem & tuwmorem assurgere, quo
a@ littore remotius est.
‘Book L., Sect. 1, xiii., p. 38 (1645, p. 23), That in the List of
those frends I left behind me in England, you are one of the prime
rank, one whose name I have mark’d with the whitest Stone.
See Catullus Ixviii., 148:
Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat, and the similar passages col-
lected by A. Otto, ‘ Sprichwoérter der Rémer,’ s.v. calculus. With Howell
it is not the day but the name which is thus marked.
Book I., Sect. 1, xvii., p. 45 (1645, p. 30),. . . and as we had
exchang’d some blows, it pleas’d God, the Chevalier de Guet, an
22 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
Officer, who goes up and down the Streets all night a Horseback
to prevent disorders, pass’d by, and so rescued us.
The incorrect ‘“‘ Chevalier de Guet”’ in this passage was repeated in
several editions of the Letters. Howell has the correct form in I., 1, xliv..,.
‘Ther is an Officer call’d Le Chevalier du Guet (which is a kind of Night-
guard) here [= at Lyons] as well as in Paris.” Yet Jacobs, while giving
the correct form in both places, does not recognize the designation of the
Captain of the Watch, but evidently thinks he is dealing with a proper
name. His note on the earlier letter is “ Chevalier du Guet, mentioned
later on, p. 98, but in a passage derived from a work of fiction where the
names are expressly said to be fictitious.”
Book L., Sect. 1, xviil., p. 47 (1645, p. 32), When Henry the
fourth fell upon some great Martiall designe, the bottom wherof
is not known to this day ; and being rich (for he had heap’d up
in the Bastile a mount of Gold that was as high as a Lance) he
levied a huge Army of 40000 men,’ whence came the Song, The
King of France with fourty thousand men... .
The measurement of a pile of gold by the height of a lance reminds us of
the practice of ‘ acervation,’ See Mélusine, February—March, 1901, and the
story told in Carlyle’s ‘ Frederick,’ book II., chap. vili., where Markgraf
Otto IV of Brandenburg, who has been taken prisoner by the Archbishop
of Magdeburg (1278) frees himself by ransom :
** “We are clear, then, at this date ? ’ said Markeraf Otto from his horse,
just taking leave of the Magdeburg Canonry. ‘ Yes,’ answered they.
‘Pshaw, you don’t know the value of a Markgraf!’ said Otto. ‘ What is
it, then ?’ ‘ Rain gold ducats on his war-horse and him,’ said Otto, look-
ing up with a satirical grin, ‘ till horse and Markgraf are buried in them, and
you cannot see the point of his spear atop!’ That would be a cone of
gold coins equal to the article, thinks our Markeraf; and rides grinning
away.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxii., p. 56 (1645, p. 42), The Duke of Ossuna
pass’d by here lately. |
It should be noted that one of the characters in Robert Burton’s Latin.
comedy Philosophaster (written in 1606, acted in the Hall of Christ Church,
1617) is °‘ Desiderius, Osunae Dux.’’ The Duke of Osufia mentioned above
by Howell, Pedro Tellez Giron (1579-1626), had acquired a reputation for -
learning as a student at the University of Salamanca and was famous as a
young man for his daring wit at the royal court. Burton may have been.
thinking of him when he chose a title for the founder of the University of
Ossuna in his play.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxvii., p. 63 (1645, p. 50), from a Shipboard
before Venice. .. . shaken at Sea in divers Tempests neer upon
fourty dayes, I mean naturall dayes, which include the nights also,
and are compos’d of four and twenty hours, by which number the
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 23
ftalian computes his time, and tells his Clock, for at the writing
hereof, I heard one from Jfalamocca strike one and twenty hours :
The locus classicus of English literature for this method of time-keeping
is, perhaps, in stanza xxv of ‘ Bianca’s Dream’ by Thomas Hood :
A clock it was of the Venetian breed,
That cried the hour from one to twenty-four ;
The works moreover standing in some need
Of workmanship, it struck some dozens more.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxxi., p. 72 (1645, p. 60), I leave the further
disquisition of this point to your own contemplations, who are a
far riper philosopher then I, and have waded deeper into, and
drunk more of Aristotles Well ;
_ Jacobs offers no comment on the last words. Perhaps he understood
the well to be purely figurative. But see ‘Remarks and Collections of
Thomas Hearne,’ vol. vi., Oxford Historical Society, p. 186, under June 10,
1718, ‘* Aristotle’s Well is in the Midway between Oxford and Wolvercote.
Before we come to it is another way [?] call’d Walton-Well, from the old
Village of Walton, now destroy’d. I have mention’d both these Wells in
my Preface to John Rowse. Aristotle's Well was so call’d from the
Scholars, especially such as studied his Philosophy, going frequently to it
& refreshing themselves at it, there being an House for these Occasions
just by it. [Hearne adds in a note, “ They us’d to drink Water & Sugar
there.”] Frequenting Wells was a Thing much in vogue in former Times.
As for Aristotle’s Well, it was most of all frequented when Coursing
was in practise, a Custom put down by the Care & Management of Bp. Fell.
After Disputations on Ash-Wednesdays, the Scholars used to go out into
the Fields & box it. The Places chiefly used for boxing were on the North
side of the City, and such as came off Victors went away in Triumph, &
were sure not to let Aristotle’s Well be unsaluted upon those Occasions,
where Trophies of their Victories were scmetime left.”
Book I., Sect. 1, xxxiv., p. 75 (1645, p. 62), But ’tis not fitting,
that paper which is made of old Ragg’s (wherwith Letters are
swaddled) should have the same priviledg as Love, which is a
spirituall thing, and hath something of Divinity in it,
Compare John Owen’s ‘ Epigrammata,’ I., cli., 4,
Nam res est spiritualis amor.
Book I., Section 1, xxxiv., p. 75 (1645, p. 63), Since then,
Letters are denied such a velocity, I allow this of mine twenty
_dayes, which is the ordinary time allow’d twixt Venice and London,
to com unto you, and thank you a thousand times over for your
last of the tenth of June.
Jacobs’s*comment on “ the tenth of June ”’ is ‘“‘ If the post from Venice
to London took twenty days, it is hard to see how Howell could have
acknowledged on 29th June a letter dated 10th in London.”
24 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
b)
To this may be replied, firstly, that ‘“‘ twenty days” represents the
average time. Under special circumstances a post might arrive sooner,
just as now-a-days the date at which Australian letters are delivered in
London may vary according to the speed of the mail-steamer. Secondly,
although it was no doubt unreasonable for the royal Bengal tiger which
Peter Simple saw at the fair to measure sixteen feet from the snout to the
tail, and seventeen from the tail to the snout, yet the post from London to
Venice might conceivahly be quicker than that from Venice to London.
Thirdly, Jacobs’s argument is based on a misreading of the date of Howell’s
reply, which is not 29 June, but 29 July. Yet, when he reaches this at the
end of the letter, he is still dissatisfied and writes (having already forgotten
his previous note) “ 29 July, 1621. The date of the month is inconsistent
with H.’s statement of the time the post took from-Venice to London.”
Book 1. Sect. 1, xxxvi., 1p. 79 (1645) py Gs)
Sw’ Pelago Tibrim prefers, urbem aspice utrumque.
Such is the mangled form in which the 5th lhne of Sannazaro’s famous.
epigram on Venice appeared in the ‘ Epistolae Ho-Elianae’ in 1645. By
the time of Jacobs’s edition urbem had recovered its gender, and the
imperative was no longer disguised, but the first word of the line was
given as Sic. It should be Sv.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxxviil., p. 84 (1645, p. 73), They are toler-
ated for advantage of commerce, wherin the Jews are wonderfull
dextrous, though most of them be onely Brokers, and Lom-
bardeers ; and they are held to be here, as the Cinic held Women
to be malum necessarium.
Compare IV., vii., p. 567 (1655, p. 16), “ But a far wilder speech was.
that of the Dogg-Philosopher, who term’d Women Necessary Evils.”
Cp. Menander, 651,
To yawew édv tic thy adnOevay cxosn),
xaxov méev Eotw GA avayxatov xaxdor,
Book I., Sect. 1, xlii., p. 95 (1645, p. 85), They are generally
indulgent of themselves, and great embracers of pleasure, which
may proceed from the luscious rich Wines, and luxurious Food,
Fruits, and Roots, wherwith the Countrey abounds, Insomuch,
that in som places, Nature may be said to be Lena swi, A Baud to
her self.
The Latin expression is from Cicero, ‘De natura deorum,’ i., 27, 77,
‘““ Sed tu hoe, physice, non vides, quam blanda conciliatrix et quasi sui sit
lena natura ? ”
Book I., Sect. 1, xliii., p. 96 (1645, p. 86) . . . till I came to
this Town of Lions, where a Countrey man of ours, one Mr. Lewis,
whom I knew in Alicant lives Factour.
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 25
Jacobs observes, ‘“‘ There is a Lewis mentioned in Spedding, Life, vii.,
30, as patentee of berths from Wales, who may have been H.’s friend or
related to him.”’
‘“* Patentee of berths from Wales ’”’ is enigmatic. But on referring to
Spedding’s ‘ Life and Letters ’ of Bacon we find Buckingham writing to the
Lord Chancellor “‘ His Majesty was pleased at the suit of some who have
near relation to me to grant a licence for transportation of butter out of
Wales unto one Lewis and Williams.’ As these men “ utterly refuse to
perform ”’ the conditions of the contract, he begs Bacon to summon Lewis
and Williams before him, and to insist on their keeping the agreement or
being deprived of the benefit. of the patent. The letter is dated 14 May,
1619. According to the dates which Howell added in his 2nd edition to
I. 1, xxv and xxvi, he would appear to have left Alicante about the end of
March, 1621, after a stay of three months. Buckingham’s protegé might,
of course, by that time have deserted his native milk-walk, or butter-slide,
or whatever the business was, and transferred his commercial activities to
the Continent, but, in default of evidence, Jacobs’s guess is worth exactly
nothing.
Book I., Sect. 1, xliv., p. 98 (1645, p. 88), The next morning, the
two souldiers that had gon with Ineutenant Jaqvette were found dead
under the City Wall, amongst the Ordure and Eacrements,
b)
In the story in Francois de Rosset’s * Les histoires tragiques de nostre
temps, 2nd ed., 1615, and 3rd ed., 1623, ‘ Histoire vii.’ the name is la
Taquiere. Jacobs refers to a 1609 edition of the French book, which I have
not seen. The condition of the ground under the city wall will be under-
- stood if we remember, e.g., the latrines on the Aurelian walls at Rome and
the sanitary arrangements in our own castles; see Miss Bateson’s
“Mediaeval England,’ p. 31. It is illustrated by the Spanish proverb
which Howell quotes in I., 6, lx.
Book I., Sect. 3,i., p. 144 (1645, p. 49), The Marquis of Buck-
angham continueth still in fulnesse of grace and favor; the
Countesse his Mother swaies also much at Court, she brought
Sir Henry Montague from delivering law on the K. Bench, to look
to his bags in the Hachequer, for she made him Lord high Treasurer
of England.
Jacobs asserts in a note that Sir Henry Montagu was “ raised to the
Barony of Montagu of Boughton in 1621.” This is an error. The first
Lord Montagu of Boughton (cr. 1621) was Edward (c. 1562-1644) who
died a Royalist prisoner in the Tower. His brother Henry (c. 1563-
1642), Chief Justice of the K.B., Lord High Treasurer, author of ‘ Man-
chester al Mondo,’ and father of the Parliamentary General, was created
Baron Montagu of Kimbolton and Viscount Mandeville in 1620, and Earl
of Manchester in 1626.
_ Book L., Sect. 2, x1., pp. 110, 111 (1645, p. 13), But you came
off with losse of eight men onely, and Algier is anothergetts thing
now, then she was then, being I beleeve a hundred degrees
26 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
stronger by Land and Sea, and for the latter strength we may
thank our Countreyman Ward, and Dansker the butterbag
Hollander, which may be said to have bin two of the fatallest and
most infamous men that ever Christendome bred; for the one
taking all Hnghshmen, and the other all Dutchmen, and bringing
the Ships and Ordnance to Algier, they may be said to have bin
the chief Raysers of those Picaroons to be Pirats, which are now
come to that height of strength, that they daily endammage and
affront all Christendom.
Jacobs, having failed here to test the spelling of the 1737 edition by the
earliest, prints the Dutchman’s name as Danskey. In the Dutch
Biographical Dictionary of A. J. van der Aa, he is Simon de Danser. He
is, I suppose, the “‘ Simon Danz ”’ of Longfellow’s ‘ Dutch Picture ’ in ‘ Birds
of Passage,’ who
‘““Singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
And sold him in Algiers.
Bock I., Sect. 3, xxxiv., p. 205 (1645, p. 114), To Sir Robert
Napier Knight, at his house in Bishops-gate-street, from Madrid.
‘Aubrey ’’ writes Jacobs “‘has a long account of him, Misc.. 90,
159-61. A life of him in Anthony a Wood.”
This is all wrong. The “Sir Richard Napier, M.D., of London,” of
whom a very short story is told at page 90 of John Aubrey’s ‘ Miscellanies ’
(the paging is that of the reprint in J. Russell Smith’s * Library of Old
Authors ’) is Sir Richard Napier, Knight, a son of the Sir Robert men-
tioned above. Aubrey’s account at the second reference is of Sir Robert’s
brother, Richard Napier or Napper (1559-1634), the astrologer and pupil
of Simon Forman, who was rector of Great Linford, Bucks. 'There is no
life of Sir Robert Napier in Wood’s ‘ Athenae.’ _He is mentioned once
(vol. ii. ed. Bliss, p. 103), and then merely as the father of the astrologer,
in which same capacity he is mentioned again (ii. 47) in Wood’s ‘ Fasti
Oxonienses.’ There is another Robert Napier in the ‘Fasti,’ but he
eraduated as B.A. in 1562, and was afterwards Chief Baron of the
Exchequer in Ireland. On the other hand, the ‘ Athenae’ has an account
(ii., 103, 104) of Richard Napier the astrologer, towards the end of the life
of Simon Forman, and he is mentioned in the life of John Dee (iu1., 292)
and in a footnote to that of Kenelm Digby (i., 688). Other Napiers are
noticed by Wood, but enough has been said to justify our suspicion that |
Jacobs here, as elsewhere, did not pursue his researches beyond an index
and deliberately flung a pack of references in the face of his readers.
For the Sir Robert Napier (1560-1637) of this letter see the ‘ D.N.B.’
Book I, Sect. 4, x., p. 2238 (1645, p. 14), Ther be summcns out
for a Parliament, | pray God it may prove more prosperous then
the former.
di acobs’s note is ‘“‘ The summonses were issued by Williams on Dec. 16,
1625. Gard. V. 37, D’Ewes, Autob. i. 275 gives llth July as the date.”
ae
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 27
A more careful reading of D’Ewes would have shewn that his date is
that of a different event. ‘On Monday, the 11th day of July, the Parlia-
ment was adjourned to Oxford, to begin there on the Ist day of August.”
On p. 279 D’Ewes writes, “ For the present Parliament, which had been
adjourned or prorogued on July the 11th, at London, to begin again at
Oxford on August the Ist, was now suddenly and unexpectedly dissolved,
to the great grief of all good subjects that loved true religion, their King,
and the Commonwealth.”
Book I., Sect. 5, xvil., p. 268 (1645, p. 24), My Lord President
is still indispos’d at Dr. Nappiers.
Book L., Sect. 5, xix., p. 269 (1645, p. 24), My Lord continues
still in cours of Physic at Dr. Nappiers.
In notes on these two passages Jacobs refers to an earlier note, on [.
5, xv., where he identifies a “‘ Mr. Napier ’’ as Richard Napier (1607-1676)
afterwards Sir Richard, the eminent physician. But the letters in which
‘Dr. Nappier ’ is mentioned are dated 1629, when the future Sir Richard
Napier was a very young man. He received a licence to practise medicine
in 1633. There can be no doubt that the Dr. Nappier was Sir Richard’s
uncle, the astrologer Richard Napier or Napper (1559-1634), who was rector
of Great Linford, Bucks. He is here termed “ Dr.” as being a practitioner
of medicine. He received a licence in 1604. See Sir Sidney Lee’s life of
him in the ‘D.N.B.”’ “ His medical patients included Emmanuel Scrope,
eleventh Baron Scrope of Bolton and Earl of Sunderland, who resided at
Great Linford in 1627.’’ Sunderland is, of course, the Lord President of
- Howell’s letter.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxili., p. 273 (1645, pp. 27, 28),
Vpon black eyes, and becoming frownes,
A Sonet.
Stanza iv., lines 1-4,
O powrfull Negromantic eyes,
who in your circles strictly pryes,
Will find that Cupid with his dart
In you doth practise the black art,
Jacobs, by following the 1737 edition in spelling Necromantic, mercilessly
destroys the point of these lines. |
“ Necromancy, orig. divination by raising the dead, corrupted into
MedL. nigromantic, F. & E. nigromancie, and translated as black art.’’
Ernest Weekley, ‘ Etymological Dictionary of Modern English.’
Book I., Sect. 5, xxvii., p. 278 (1645, p. 33), But I beleeve the
King of Denmare far’d the better, because he is Granchild to
Charles the Emperours sister.
Charles V.’s sister Elisabeth married King Christian IT., “‘ a very rash,
unwise, explosive man ”’ (T. Carlyle). He was no ancestor of Christian IV.
but first cousin to his grandfather, Christian III.
A.S.—VOL, VIII. C
28 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
Book I., Sect. 5, xxxili., p. 284 (1645, pp. 39, 40), Ther is little
newes at our Court, but that ther fell an ill-favoured quarrell
‘twixt Sir Kenelm Digby, and Mr. Goring, Mr. Jermin, and others
at St. Lames lately about Mrs. Baker, the Mayd of honor, and
Duels were like to grow of it, but that the busines was taken up
by the Lord Treasurer, My Lo. of Dorset, and others appointed
by the King.
On the date of March Ist, 1630, which Howell added to this letter
Jacobs observes “ This conflicts with the account given by Sir K. Digby
of the same duel in which H. was wounded and, as Digby alleges, cured by
his ‘sympathetic powder.’ See Suppt. Doc. xxii. and notes, in which I
show that H.’s account is the more probable—for once.”? Document xxii.
of the Supplement is an extract from R. White’s English translation of Sir
K. Digby’s ‘ Late Discourse . . . touching the cure of Wounds by the
Powder of Sympathy ’ (the discourse appeared both in French and English,
says Jacobs, during Howell’s lifetime). In his notes on this document
Jacobs writes ‘‘ There can be little doubt that Digby is describing the same
duel mentioned by Howell, supra, p. 284.’ Now the duel of which Digby
speaks was one between two of Howell’s friends, in trying to separate
whom Howell himself was wounded. But on page 284 Howell only men-
tions “‘ an ill-favoured quarrell ’? which might have resulted in duels, only
it didn’t.
Book I., Sect. 5, xxxvill., p. 288 (1645, p. 44), The maine of the
Embassy is to condole the late death of the Lady Sophia Queen
Dowager of Denmarck our King’s Granmother : She was the Duke
of Mecklenburgs daughter, and her husband Christian the third
dying young, her portion which was forty thousand pound was
restor’d her, and living a Widdow forty four yeers after . . . she
was reputed the richest Queen of Christendome.
Though Howell had accepted the appointment of Secretary to this
Embassy, he had not yet mastered the relationships of the Danish Court.
Sophia, Charles I.’s grandmother, was the widow, not of Christian [II.,
but of his son, Frederick Il. “‘ Il [Frédéric I1.] finit par épouser la prin-
cesse meklenbourgoise Sophie, qui était douée d’éminentes facultés
intellectuelles et qui fut mére de Christian IV.” C.F. Allen, ‘ Histoire de
Danemark ’ (transl. E. Beauvois), 1878, u., 29.
Christian III.’s queen was Dorothea of Sachsen-Lauenburg.
Book I., Sect. 6., xvi., p. 318 (1645, p. 29), My Brain was ore
cast with a thick clow’d of melancholly, | was becom a lump I
know not of what, I could scarce find any palpitation within me
on the left side ;
See Juvenal, Sat. vii., 159-160,
. . . laevae parte mamillae
Nil salit Arcadico iuueni.
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 29
Howell is apparently recalling this and adopting the Roman view in
which the heart was the seat of intellect.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxii., p. 325 (1645, p. 37), One sent me lately
from Holland this Distic of Peter van Heyn, which savours of a
little profanes.
Roma sur sileat posthac miracula Petri,
Petrus apud Batavos plura stupenda facit.
Let Rome no more her Peier’s Wonders tell,
For Wonders, Hollands Peter bears the bell.
The author of the distich remembered his Martial, ‘ Epigrammaton
liber’ (‘ Liber spectaculorum ’) 1., I,
Barbara pyramidum sileat miracula Memphis.
| Book L., Sect. 6, xxvii., ll. 9, 10 of the Decastich, p. 329 (1645,
p. 42),
This Wine is still one-eard, and brisk, though put
Out of Italian Cask im English Butt.
For one-eared wine see Rabelais, I., chap. 5, “‘ O le gentil vin blanc! et,
par mon ame, ce n’est que vin de taffetas.—Hen, hen, il est & une aureille,
bien drappé et de bonne laine.”’
** * Of one ear’ refers to the jar, which, as holding the best wine, would
be smaller and have only one handle or ear,’ W. L. Smith.
We may compare Greek and Latin usage, the English “ Little pitchers
have long ears,”’ etc.
Littré offers an entirely different explanation.
“Vin d’une oreille, le bon vin; vin de deux oreilles, le mauvais ; on
-appelle ainsi le bon vin, parce que le bon vin fait pencher la téte de celui
qui le goute dun coté seulement ; et le mauvais vin, parce qu’on secoue la
téte et par conséquent les deux oreilles (c’est explication donnée par de
Brieux),” ‘ Dictionnaire de la Langue Frangaise,’ tome 11., p. 853, col. 1.
Under “ Ear,”’ substantive 1, I., 9, the ‘ N.E.D.’ quotes “ [the wine] is of
one eare, well wrought and of good wooll’’ from Urquhart’s Rabelais 1,
v., but only says “A French idiom of obscure origin.’ Elsewhere,
under “one-eared ” a.”, it suggests that ‘“one-ear’d”’ in this passage of
Howell is an error for “ one-yeared.’’ Jacobs, in whose text we get
un-ear'd, refrains from comment.
Book I., Sect. 6, xli., pp. 351-52 (1645, p. 67), The Archb. of
Canterbury was lately outrag’d in his House by a pack of common
people.
For the incident Jacobs refers to “Evelyn, Life of Laud, p. 425.
There is no such work. For ‘‘ Evelyn” read Heylyn.
Book 1, Sect. 6, lii., p. 361 (1645, p. 75),
To Mr. John Batty, Marchant.
SIR,
I receiv’d the Printed discours you pleas’d to send me, call’d
30 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
the Marchants Remonstrance, for which I return you due and
deserved thanks.
‘‘ This letter,”’ says Jacobs in a note, “ was prefixed to Batty’s book,”
and he adds that ‘‘ according to Bliss, Athenae, iii., col. 752, it [‘ the Mer-
chant’s Remonstrance’] was published in 1648, 7.e., three years after the
first book of H.’s letters—which is absurd.’’ Now, what are the facts ?
In the first place, this letter was not prefixed to Batty’s book, as can be
seen at once by anyone who takes the trouble to examine that work. On
what evidence does Jacobs hazard a statement, the falsity of which is so
evident ? He read the following, which is among Bliss’s additions at the
end of the list of Howell’s works in the Athenae (111. 752): ‘‘ James Howell
wrote a prose address to his much esteemed friend Mr. [John] Battie, pre-
fixed to that person’s Merchant's Remonstrance, 4°, 1648,” and lightly
leaped to the conclusion that this “ prose address ’’ was the same as I., 6,
li., of the ‘Epp. Ho-Elianae.’
*'The Merchants Remonstrance. ... By 1. B. of London Merchant ’
was published in February, 1644.
Howell has dated the letter in which he returned thanks for a presenta-
tion copy 4 May 1644. In a “ Revived and inlarged’”’ form the work
appeared in 1648, with the author’s name on the title-page. It was to this
edition, as Bliss says, that Howell’s “ prose address ”’ was prefixed, and
here it is:
To my much esteemed Friend Mr. Battie.
SIR, |
I perused with no lesse profit then pleasure your manuscript, wherein
you discourse with so much judgement of Trade ; discovering the causes of
the present impairment thereof, and how it may be improved hereafter :
Whereby I find that a publike soule, and the affections of a good Patriot
dwell in you; things, God-wot, which are rarely found now in England,
such is the hard fate of the times, wherein men scrue up their braines,
and stretch all their sinews to draw water to their own Mills only, though
to the prejudice of the Common-good: But they are much out of their
account, who think, that private fortunes can long subsist, if the publike
begin to languish ; unlesse a care be had of Ware River, Middletons pipes
will run but poorly, and every one will find it in his private Cisterns.
This Tract of yours may serve for a true prospective to the English
Merchant to see the visible calamities that are already upon him ; as also
for a Larum bell to awake his slumbring spirits to a timely prevention of
farre greater; And well fare your heart for it: So I rest
Your faithfull friend to dispose of
James Howell.
Book I., Sect. 6, lii., p. 364 (1645, p. 79), The Lord Aubeny
hath an Abbacy of one thousand five hundred Pistols a yeer
given him yeerly there, and is fair for a Cardinalls Hat.
He has the more recognisable spelling Aubsgny in Jacob’s text, but there
is no attempt at identification. See, however, G.E.C.’s ‘ Complete Peer-
age,’ new ed., vol. I., pp. 330-331. Ludovic Stuart, Seigneur d’Aubigny
(1619-1665) was a younger son of Esmé Stuart, Seigneur d’Aubigny (ce.
| |
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 31
-1579-1624), Earl of March 1619, who succeeded his elder brother as Duke
of Lennox in 1624. Ludovic took orders and was appointed Abbé of Haute
Fontaine and a Canon of Notre Dame at Paris. He did homage to Louis
XIV. for the Seigneurie of Aubigny in 1656. He was Chief Almoner to the
Queen Dowager of England, and died at Paris, Nov. 11, 1665, a few days
aiter he was nominated a Cardinal.
Book IT, 1x., p. 887 (1647, p. 23), And ’tis a thing of wonder-
ment how at her very first growth, she flew over the heads of so
many interjacent, vast Regions into this remote isle so soon, and
that her rayes should shine upon the crown of a British King
first of any, | mean King Lucius, the true Proto-Christian King
in the dayes of Hleutherius, at which time she receav’d her pro-
pagation ; but for her plantation she had had it long before by some
of the Apostles themselves.
99
Jacobs’s note on “ Apostles’ is “‘ A reference probably to Joseph of
Arimathea and his bringing the Holy Grail hither.’’ But Ussher in the
first chapter of his ‘ Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates’ (1639)
collects passages in which writers speak of visits to the British Isles by
James the son of Zebedee, Simon Zelotes, Simon Peter, and St. Paul.
Book II., xl., p. 433 (1647, p. 105), But sioréov xai édAmuotéov
I hope I shall not sink under the burden, but that we shall be both
reserved for better dayes, specially now that the King (with the
sun and the Spring) makes his aproach more and more towards us
from the North.
In the Ist edition of Book II., the Greek suffered as above. As may
be seen from Jacobs’s text, oiotéov has come into its own, but from 1650
onwards édjmiotéov shed its 2, and appears in this disguise in Jacobs’s
text and in that of the ‘ Temple Classics ’ edition. According to Jacobs,
the expression here and in xxxvii. about the King’s approach is “ probably
a reference to Charles I.’s being brought south after being sold at New-
castle, Jan. 1647.”’ The two letters are dated respectively the 3rd of
August, and the Ist of May, 1645. But, granting that Howell was occa-
sionally reckless in appending dates to these letters, there is a further
difficulty. His brother, to whom the present letter is addressed, died in
1646.
Book II., liti., p. 448 (1647, p. 129), . . . and in a sweet and
well devoted harmonious soul, cor is no other then Camera
Omnipotentis Regis tis one of Gods closets.
Whoever originated this interpretation of cor may merely have been
indulging his acrostical ingenuity, but it might well have ranked at one
time among serious etymologies, like that of cadaver from caro data
vermibus, taught by Alexander Neckam and accepted, it would seem, by
Sir Edward Coke, if not also by a judge in the nineteenth century. See
Notes and Queries, 9th Series, ix., 188, 490, and xi., 18.
32 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
Book II., Ixiv., p. 490 (1647, p. 214), Insomuch that you could
not make choice of a fitter ground for a Prisoner, as Iam, to passe
over, then of that purple Isle, that Isle of man you sent me, which
as the ingenious Authour hath made it, is a far more dainty soyle
then that scarlet Island which hes nere the Baltic Sea.
In a former note (Aber. Studies, vi., p. 40) I suggested that the Scarlet
Island was Heligoland with its red cliffs. I was utterly mistaken. The
island is undoubtedly Hven in the Sound, where Tycho Brahe at one time
had his observatory. I copy the following legend of its title.
‘* All Strangers call it the Scarlet Island, and so do all Sea-faring Men.
I never could meet with any thing in my Reading that gave the Reason of
this Name: The Account I had of it at Copenhagen, and which you will
take care to Forget, if it seems Impertinent to you, was this: It’s said
that Queen Elizabeth, supposing this Island would be of great Advantage
to her, upon the Account of the Trade of the Baltick, proposed to buy it of
Frederick II. and the Bargain was made, for as much Scarlet Cloth as
would cover the Island, (which was very absurd) or rather for such a
quantity of Scarlet ; but that notwithstanding this exorbitant Price, the
King coming to reflect upon what he had done, and willing to elude the
Bargain, his Fool found a way to do it, by saying, that he quitted all
Claim to the Island, for the quantity of Cloath that had been agreed on ;
but that the Hnglish must carry it away a long with them, for the King
could not suffer another Nation to come and settle so near his Capital City.
But besides that this Evasion did not at all become a King, the whole
seemed to me to be so Simple and Trifling, that I shall say no more of it.”
‘Travels through Denmark and some Parts of Germany: By way of
Journal in the Retinue of the Hnglish Envoy, in 1702... . Done into
English from the French Original.’ London, 1707, page 158.
The Envoy was James Vernon (d. 1756) son of the Secretary of State of
the same name. The French writer was M. de la Combe de Vrigny.
Carlyle provides a parallel in his account of the splendours of the first
King of Prussia’s coronation :
‘‘ Streets were hung with cloth, carpeted with cloth, no end of draperies
and cloth ; your oppressed imagination feels as if there was cloth enough,
of scarlet and other bright colours, to thatch the Arctic Zone.”
‘ Frederick the Great,’ book I., chap. v.
Book II., lxxi., p. 496 (1647, p. 224),
Captain Don Tomas,
Could I write my love unto you, with a ray of the Sunne, as
once Aurelius the Romane Kmperour wish’d to a friend of his, you
know this cleare horizon of Spain could afford me plenty, which
cannot be had so constantly all the seasons of the yeare in your
clowdy clyme of England.
The earliest example given by the ‘ N.E.D.’ of such a phrase as “to
write with a ray of the Sun ”’ is from a sermon of John Jortin’s (1698-1770),
‘*' The great duties of life are written with a Sun-beam,”’ which is quoted
under Sunbeam, le. But Tertullian ‘ De resurrectione carnis,’ cap. 47, |
|
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 33
has “ Age iam, quod ad Thessalonicenses ipsius solis radio putem scrip-
mum). . see Notes and ‘Queries, vol. 148, p. 301.
Book III., xxiii., p. 550 (1650, p. 39), Ther is a famous story of
such a paction which Fryer Louis made som half a hundred yeers
ago with the Devil! in Marseilles, who appear’d to him in shape
of a Goat... .
The story is told in Francois de Rosset’s ‘ Les Histoires tragiques de
nostre temps,’ Hist. II., pp. 38-81 (in ed. 3, Lyons, 1623) ‘ De Vhorrible et
espouuantable sorcelerie de Louys Goffredy Prestre de Marseiile.’ The
paction is described on p. 43, “‘ Cedule mutuelle s’en faict. Ce maudit
escrit de son sang la sienne, & Sathan l’autre de sa main.”’
- Book IV., v., p. 563 (1655, p. 11), The Naturalists observe,
that morning spittle kills Dragons, so Fasting helps to destroy the
Devil, provided it be accompanied with other acts of devotion.
To Jacobs’s references may be added the ‘ Symbola et Emblemata ’ of
Joachim Camerarius (II.), Centuria IV., Ixxxvi.,
Emoritur serpens hominis contacta saliva :
Hei mihi quam magnum sobrietatis opus !
Book IV., vii., p. 569 (1655, p. 20), Moreover, in coupling
women by way of Matrimony, it would be a good Law, and
consentaneous to reason, if out of all Dowries exceeding 100 1.
ther should be two out of every cent deducted and put into a
common Tresury for putting off hard-favor’d and poor Maids.
Howell may have taken a hint from Herodotus, i., 196.
Book IV., ix., p. 573 (1655, p. 24),
To Sir R. Wilkams Knight.
Jacobs has a note onthe name: ‘Can scarcely be the Sir Roger
Williams of Elizabeth’s time unless this is a very early letter.” It would
indeed be an example of epistolary precocity, seeing that the Elizabethan
Sir Roger died in 1595, while Howell was born at the earliest in 1593.
Book IV., x., p. 574 (1655, p. 26), Your Letters are like
Christmas, they com but once a yeer.
There was no occasion for Jacobs to argue from this that the proverb
“Christmas comes but once a year’ must have been current in Howell’s
day. Itis, presumably, much older. See, e.g. the mention in Henslowe’s
Diary (ed. W. W. Greg) of “‘a playe called cryssmas comes bute once
ayeare ’’ by Dekker, Chettle, Heywood, and Webster, (f. 118), and the
passage of Tusser given in W. Gurney Benham’s “ Book of Quotations.”
Book IV., xl., p. 627 (1655, p. 95), I heartily congratulat your
return to England, and that you so safely cross’d the Scythian
34 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL
Vaie, for so old Gildas calls the Irish Seas in regard they are so
boystrous and rough.
Jacobs, who misquotes Howell in his note, says “‘H. gets this from
Usher. Primordia, 442.” This is a wrong reference. On p. 442 of Ussher’s
‘ Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates ’ (‘ De ecclesiarum Britannicarum —
primordiis) (1639), the name Gildas is mentioned, but there is nothing
about the Irish Seas. It is on p. 606 that Ussher quotes from Gildas the
account of the invasion of Britain by the Picts and Scots. When the
Romans left the country, “‘ emergunt certatim de curucis quibus sunt trans
Scythicam vallem evecti (quasi in alto Titane incalescenteque caumate
de arctissimis foraminum caverniculis fusci vermiculorum cune!) tetri
Scotorum Pictorumque greges moribus ex parte dissidentes, & una
eademque sanguinis fundendi aviditate concordes,”’ etc., etc.
As will be seen by Joseph Stevenson’s edition of Gildas, there is a diffi-
culty about the reading of the adjective before vallem. Stevenson prints
Cichicam.
Book IV., |., p. 645 (1655, p. 120), By the expiration of such
Atomes the dogg finds the sent as he hunts, the Pestilence infects,
the Loadstone attracts iron, the Sympathetic powder or Zaphyrian
salt calcin’d by Apollinean heat, operating in July and August
till it com to a lunary complexion, I say, by the vertu and inter-
vention of such atomes, ’tis found that this said powder heales
at a distance without fopicall applications to the place affected.
On “ Zaphyrian salt” Jacobs remarks ‘‘ I have not met with this name
for it.” But my friend Mr. Bertram Lloyd has pointed out to me a passage
in Nath. Highmore’s ‘ The History of Generation’ ete. (1651), a book men-
tioned by Jacobs in a note on “ Dr. Highmore ”’ in this same letter : “* First,
the Medicine is made of a Zaphyrian Salt, calcined by a celestial fire,
operating in Leo and Cancer, into a Lunar complexion,’”’ pp. 124, 125.
I am further indebted to Mr. Lloyd for invoking the aid of an expert—
Mr. H. Stanley Redgrove, who has most kindly furnished the following note :
“I think it certain that by ‘ Zaphyrian’ Howell means ‘blue.’
Zaffer is and was the name given to a substance obtained by roasting certain
mineral ores in the air with sand or quartz, used for the manufacture of
smalt—a blue pigment. It is now known to be an impure basic arsenate
of cobalt and its peculiar property of colouring glass blue is due to the
presence in it of this metal, cobalt. Cobalt, however, was unknown in>
Howell’s day.
“There are several spellings of the word ‘ zaffer,’ one being ‘ zaphara.’
The word is of Arabic origin and is most probably derived from the same
root as ‘sapphire.’ |
“‘Zaphyrian salt should properly mean a salt obtained from zaffer.
But in Howell’s day the naming of chemical substances, even by those
devoted to the study of Alehemy, was exceedingly unsystematic. Chemical
substances were grouped together in accordance with their most obvious
and superficial properties—colour being a good case in point. Thus
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JAMES HOWELL 35
“Zaphyrian salt’ would mean simply ‘blue salt ’—the blue salt in
question being blue vitriol (copper sulphate pentahydrate, CuSO,.5H,O).
** As a matter of fact the Powder of Sympathy appears usually to have
been impure green vitriol (green vitriol is ferrous sulphate heptahydrate,
FeSO,.7H,O) or this substance desiccated by the sun’s rays (Howell’s
‘Apollinean heat ’)—whereby it is more or less transformed into basic
ferric sulphate—mixed with gum tragacanth.
““In Howell’s day, however, blue and green vitriols were frequently
confused one with the other; and the common green vitriol almost in-
variably contained blue vitriol as animpurity. The Powder of Sympathy
was a supposed cure for wounds. The wound was kept clean and cool,
whilst the powder was applied, either dry or dissolved in water, to any
article that might have blood from the wound upon it.”” See also Mr.
Redgrove’s “‘ Bygone Beliefs ’”’ (1820), pp. 47-56.
- Book IV., ad finem, p. 647 (1655, p. 123),
: Gloria Laus Deo Saeclorum in saecula sunio.
A Doxological Cronogram including this pre-
sent yeer, MDCLV. and hath numeral let-
. ters enough to extend to the yeer nineteen
hundred twenty seven, if it please
God this World shall last
so long.
As printed in 1655 this chronogram was not only unmetrical, but the
number which it gave was not 1927 but only 1922. The remedy for both
these defects was, obviously, to insert que after Laus. Butit was stupidly
treated by printers or editors, and appeared in 1737 as
Gloria Lausq ; Deo Saeculorum in saecula sunto.
This equally unmetrical form was reproduced by Jacobs except that q ;
was apparently not recognised as an abbreviation of que, the ; being treated
as a semicolon.
In ‘Ofjoohoyia. The Parly of Beasts; or, Morphandra Queen of the
Inchanted Iland’ (1660), p. 152, Howell has the following :
“ Gloria lausque Deo seCLorVM in secVla sunto.
A Chronogrammaticall Verse, which includes not onely this year 1660.
but hath Nuwmericall Letters enow to reach above a thousand years further,
untill the year 2867.”
There is an error here. The figures should be 1927.
EDWARD BENSLY.
Corrections.
Aber. Studies, vol. ii., p. 31, line 9 from bottom, I am sorry to have
quoted ‘Hudibras’ incorrectly. The couplet should, of course, be
Nature has made Mans breast no Windores,
To publish what he does within doors.
Aber. Studies, vol. vi., p. 29, line 9. It was not Swinburne, as I
wrote in my haste, who reproached Farrar with elongating the Gospels.
It was Sir George Radford in his Essay on Falstaff, contributed to the
first series of Mr. Birrell’s ‘Obiter Dicta.’
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
WHATEVER may be the truth with regard to the exact origin of
the material comprehended in the Arthurian legend, it is probable
that, even before the coming of its great vogue, it had absorbed a
variety of elements. Still, wherever it is found, there are included
in it certain peculiarities which seem to connect it with a Keltic-
speaking territory. If some of its constituents came originally
from the East, or from Teutonic territory, which may well have
happened, nevertheless it seems necessary to explain why so many
of the more significant names in it are either Keltic, or of such a
form that they can be shown to have been modified by Keltic
speakers. This fact, whereas it may not completely determine
the question of origins, shows that, at least, the legend had, as the
starting-point of its spread, a Keltic-speaking territory. This is
amply borne out by a cursory study of the names, both of persons
and places, involved. Rhys pointed out, for instance, that
Morgan le Fay is probably developed, with a change of sex into
the bargain, from Morgant Hud,’ while Loth cites Irish evidence
that the form Morgan Tvd could also have had the same mean-
ing.2 I believe it has already been suggested somewhere that
Ban of Benwick, in Malory and elsewhere, is simply the Welsh
banw, a sow, and its diminutive benwig, become a king and a
kingdom. The form Melcagaunce or Meliagraunceis equated by
Rhys with Melwas. The story of the character in Malory corre-
sponds to Welsh references to Melwas, and a Goidelo-Brythonic
doublet, written Mailguas, could easily have resulted in the
jumbled French equivalents. A Welsh form of Laxcelot is
Eliwlad, which may be, in modern pronunciation and spelling,
Elyflath, of which Lancelot is a kind of rendering, just as, in turn,
the later Welsh Paladrddellé is a version of the French form. Cp.
also Galath, which may include the same element—llath, and
which in fifteenth-century Welsh, as the metric shows, conserves
1 Arthurian Legend, Oxfd., 1891. 2 Mabinogion, etc.
37
98 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
the earlier accent Galdih. Thus an inquiry into the history of the
legend in Keltic would seem really to form the basis of the study,
and to involve more than the merely incidental consideration of
existing texts. [I am well aware that such an enquiry can hardly
claim to be complete at the present time, more especially with
regard to Irish material, because the amount of unexplored manu-
script literature in that language is so extensive. The question
of the dating of Welsh material involves another considerable
difficulty. I have for years, with little support, claimed that, in
Welsh, mere linguistic form, as the absolute test of the antiquity
of any material, will not stand, more especially with regard to.
metrical compositions. Before we can claim to have attained
anything like a degree of scientific certainty in this matter, we
must work out a test in which the effect of a widely-diffused and
strictly standardized metrical system, involving detailed rules of
alliteration, is subjected to control. It is certain that copying
from oral recitation was very common, and that scribes did not.
hesitate to complete and to modify what they took to be incom-
plete or faulty originals.
The material summarized in the following pages gives the
content of lectures on the subject delivered to students in the
Departments of Welsh and French at Aberystwyth. It neces-
sarily includes some points already discussed by others, but the
conclusions here drawn are, | think, supported by the examination
of material not hitherto considered, at least in detail.
The attempts hitherto made to prove the historicity of King
Arthur appear to me to be weak. ‘The earliest reference to his
name to be found in what are called ‘ historical’ documents.
occurs in a compilation known as ‘ Historia Brittonum,’ which
may have been begun, by someone, as early as the seventh
century, and to which additions are believed to have been made
by Nennius, towards the end of the eighth or in the early part of
the ninth century.!. Briefly, the so-called Nennian material
states that Arthur, after the death of Hengist, fought against his
son, Octha, and the Saxons, defeating them in twelve battles,
and especially at the twelfth, the battle of Mons Badonis. This
statement suggests that Arthur himself was not a king (‘ Tune
Arthur pugnabat contra illos in illis diebus cum regibus Brit-
1 In 822, according to A. de la Borderie, L’Historia Britonum, etc., Paris.
and London, 1883 ; 796 according to Zimmer, Nennius Vindicatus, Berlin,.
1893.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 39
tonum, sed ipse dux erat bellorum’). There have been some
ingenious comments upon this statement, by Rhys and others,
and the suggestion is made that Arthur was a Brythonic equiva-
lent of the former comes Britanniae, an officer who, in Roman
times, appears to have had supreme charge of the defences of the
country. In Welsh, Arthur is called ‘Yr Ymherawdyr Arthur ’
(= zmperator), and Rhys suggests that after the Roman occupa-
tion had ceased, the title may have been given to the military
officer in charge of the defence of the island. I think myself that
‘Ymherawdyr ’ is a later title, or, at any rate, that its occurrence
is not of much significance, in view of the habit of the Welsh bards
of bestowing such titles upon their patrons, at a later date.
What is said of Arthur at one other battle—the eighth, stated to
have been fought at the fortress of Guinnion—is of some signific-
ance :
* Octavum fuit bellum in castello Guinnion, in quo Arthur portavit
imaginem Sanctae Mariae perpetuae virginis super humeros suos, et
pagani versi sunt in fugam in illo die, et cedes magna fuit super illos
per virtutem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et per virtutem Sanctae
Mariae virginis genetricis ejus.’
The Annales Cambriae (oldest manuscript completed in 954 or
955) has *. . . Arthur portavit crucem Domini nostri... . in
humeros suos.’
It has been pointed out that “ super humeros suos ’ is probably
a mistranslation of Welsh words, stating that Arthur carried a
figure of the virgin, or of the cross, on his shield (zscwzt), as the
Welsh for ‘ shoulder ’ (ysgwydd) would also be written iscust or
wcuid in early orthography.! This at least shows the Welsh
origin of the Nennian tradition. William of Malmesbury, writing
in 1125, repeating this tradition, states that Arthur bore an
image of the Mother of God ‘ affixed to his armour.’2 The tradi-
tion herein recorded, at any rate, belongs to the Christian period,
and might count as slightly supporting the evidence for a historical
_ Arthur, perhaps ; but there is appended to the so-called Nennian
story a list of natural phenomena of Britain, called morabila.
One of these wonders is said to have been a stone in the region of
- Buellt, on which Cabal, the hound of Arthur, had left the print of
its foot when Arthur was hunting the Twrch Trwyd. If the stone
1 Rhys, Introduction to Le Morte D’ Arthur, Everyman’s Library,
London, 1912.
' 2Gesta Regum Anglorum. Ed. Giles, London, 1847.
40 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
were removed from the top of the cairn which Arthur had erected
beneath it, on the next day it would be found restored to its
place.1 Another wonder is said to have been the grave of Amir,?
a son of Arthur, near a well called Licat Amir, in the region of
Ercing. This tomb is said never to have measured twice the
same length. ‘Et ego solus probavi,’ adds the writer.
We thus see that, even here, there are magic elements con-
nected with the name of Arthur—he hunts an enchanted boar, has
a marvellous hound, builds a magic tomb, and slays 960 men with
his own hand at the battle of Badon Hill (‘ et nemo prostravit eos
nisi ipse solus’).
It is somewhat remarkable that Gildas, who is believed to have
written about the year 547, does not mention Arthur or his battles.
It has been suggested 3? that Gildas’ ‘ Roman’ tendencies would
account for his omission of the names of any leaders of the inde-
pendent Britons. I must say this appears to me to be a somewhat
weak suggestion, bearing in mind the character of the work of
Gildas. As far as we can reckon it at all, Gildas’ silence with
regard to Arthur must be allowed to be evidence against the
historicity of his fame. The passage in the Nennian material,
then, forms some kind of evidence of there having been a person
named Arthur, who led the Brythons in the fight against the
Saxons. This is weak, because written in the ninth century,
whereas Gildas, writing in the sixth, gives no evidence. Only
indirect testimony can be added to this.
William of Malmesbury * says that Ambrosius, a Roman
general, aided by Arthur, opposed the Saxons after the death of
Vortigern. He repeats the legend of the slaughter of nine
hundred men by Arthur alone at Mount Badon, but certainly
emphasizes his own belief in the historicity of Arthur :
1 Accounts of stones similarly resisting removal from their original
position are common in Welsh folklore. (See Peniarth MS. 163 (8b) for
instance.) Also of stones bearing the footprints of horses and dogs.
2 Rhys, op. cit., points out that the form Amhyr occurs as a man’s name
in ‘that manuscript,’ but it is not clear what MS. is meant. He also
states that Amyr occurs in the Lib. Land., and Amhar as the name of a
son of Arthur in Gereint ac Hnid. In the romance mentioned, Amhar is
one of the four servants who guard Arthur’s bed. I know of no other
instance of the name. The form is found as an adjective, meaning incom-
parable, in the Gogynfeirdd poems, evidently an + par.
3°W. Lewis Jones, King Arthur in History and Begene London, 1914.
Ope Cit.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 4}
‘It is of this Arthur that the Britons fondly tell so many fables,
even to the present day ; a man worthy to be celebrated, not by idle
fictions, but by authentic history. He long upheld the eiiking state,
and roused the broken spirit of his countrymen to war.’
About the time this was written, a Welsh official bard, Phylip
Brydydd, was bringing charges of inventing ‘idle fictions ’
against the Norman minstrels of the period and some of their
Welsh imitators. As I have shown elsewhere, his poem refers by
name to a certain Bleiddri,1 the only Welsh reference yet dis-
covered to the Bledericus mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis.
Phylip’s claim, most distinctly, is that the Welsh bards of his own
class, the Court Bards of the Welsh Princes, that is, only related
historical truth. And certainly, there is no romancing in the
poems of these official bards which would in any way warrant the
charge of William of Malmesbury. In their poems,? we frequently
find the name of Arthur, to whom they compare their own
patrons, in passages of the following type :—
‘Rampart of hosts, defender. of Wales was he,
Shield-shorn like Arthur, the mighty-voiced slayer of men.’
—Bieddyn Vardd, to Rhys ap Maredudd, 141. 2.
‘Steel-bearing, like unto Arthur, the wall and the key of hosts,
Now, where once he was found, is the wonder of wealth no more.’
—Casnodyn, to Madawe, 173. 2.
‘Red was his keen steel blade, ere that he was graved in oak,
A spear that gave Arthur’s thrust, he, the raging wolf of war.’
—Casnodyn, to Madawe, 172. 2.
‘ Like unto sovereign Arthur, whose temple shone with gold,
He, at Kelliwig, whose court was the noble cell of the muse.’
—Meuric ap I erwerth, to Hopcyn ap Tomas, 217. 2.
‘Minstrels, as, long ago, they went to the court of Kelliwig,
Te him who is glory of men, on great Martian steeds, they go ;
Steeds grey-speckled are they, coloured like unto the sewin,
Damp-nostrilled, bit-champing steeds, with foreheads harnessed in
Pe cold.
—Cynddelw, to Owain Gwynedd, 40. 2.
‘The best is he of all lords ever born
Since Arthur free-giver, the ruler of hosts ;
His gold he strews in the lap of bards
Like fully ripe fruit from trees.”
Llywarch ap Llywelyn, to Rhys Gryg, 96. I.
1 Bardism and Romance, Cymmrodorion Series, 1915.
2 Poetry of the Gogynfeirdd, Denbigh, 1909.
42 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
There are many other references, in which the name of Arthur
is simply bestowed as an epithet of praise upon the bards’ own
patrons. He is evidently regarded as having been a historical
person, of whom stories were well known to those who may be
supposed to have listened to the singing or declaiming of the
poems. 208. 2- Hrbin, 177.2. HKudaf, 186. 1. ~Evrawce, 179: 1.. Euros-
wydd, 185. 2. Fferyll [= Virgilius], 208.1. Fflur, 192.2. Garwy Hir,
feel LO. 2: 180.2: 209.2: 211. 2. Gereint, 91.2; 181.1; 186.1:
eee VOL 212: 1: 217. 1. Gleisyar, 56. 1. ‘Greid vab Eri, 53. 2.
Gwalchmai, 41.1; 165.2; 173.2; 210.1. Gwawr Hafddydd, 166. 2;
219.2. Gweir, 181.2; 189. 2; Gweir vab Gwestl, 187. 2. Gwenddydd,
Bit 1: 219. 2. Gwenhwyvar, 218. 2. Gwhyr, 210.1; 221.2. Gwrleis,
171.2; 185.2; 207.2. Gwyddneu, 186.1. Gwynn Gwarther, 182. 1.
Gwytheint, 91.2. MHiriell, 188.1. Llawfrodedd, 196.1. Llawrodded,
te622. Wlevelys, 135.2. Lleon, 217. 1.. Lhon, 186.2. Lludd a
levelys, 135. 2. Lilyr, 102.1; Ll. gedoedd, 181.1; Ll. veidyat, 181. 1;
Ll. gymrodedd, 181.2 ; cymrawt Ll. 187.1; Ll. bwyll, 190.1; Ll. osgordd-
ion, 185.1; Lil. Liedieith, 213.1. Llywarch, 208. 2.; 209. 2. Maelgwn,
188. 2. Matholwch, 54.1; 88.1. Melwas, 180.2; 208.2. Mordaf,
feo 187. 2:- 197. 1; ~208! 2. Morudd, 211.1. Nudd, 184..2.;
Pee 186, 2: -187..2;. 189.1; 190.1; .208. 1; 210.2... Olifer,
189.2; arf O., 182.1; gwayw O., 188.2. Osvran, 186.1. Obttiel,
ee heredur, 141.2: 181.2; 184.1; .188.,1. Pryderi, 47.2;
155. 2. Pyll, 213.1. Rhahawd eil Morgant, 164.1; Rhyawt, 197. 1.
Rheged, cun, 190.2. Rhiannon, 214.1. Rholant, 186.1; 187.2;
mole 212.1: 216.2. Rhuawn; 186.1... Rhuon,. 185. 2. Rhun,
moo); 186.1; 189.2; 220: 2. Rhydderch, 187.2; 189.1; 211.2;
Biel, Selyt, 211.2. Negau, 192..2; 218.2. Tryffin, 177. 2. Trystan,
ieee 179. 1: 180.2: 184.2): 189.2: 193.1; 210.2; 220. 2.
Twreh Trwyd, 76.1; 185.1. Thalamon, 209.2. Ulcesar, 186.1;
ieee Orven, 50: 1; 173. 0- 185. 1: 188. 2; 192.2. Uthr, 192.2;
ete 210). 2): -201..2.'- Yniwl, 188.1. Ywain, 183. 1.
46 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
THE LEGENDARY FIGURE
In the search for stages in the evolution of the legendary
figure, we can begin with Irish material, which conserves a mass
of what must have been early Keltic legends and traditions.
Much of the early Irish material is evidently related to some
of the contents of the Welsh tales and romances, referred to later,
but there seems to be no mention of Arthur in anything of un-
doubted antiquity in Irish. A manuscript list of Irish tales
mentions an ‘ Aigidecht Artuir,’ but of this Thurneysen says :
‘ Hs ist zweifelhaft, ob der Titel Aigidecht Artuir in der Sagenliste
A ein Versehen fiir A. Athzrnz ist oder eine verlorene Sage bezeichnet.’ !
‘Acalamh na Senorach,’ 2 early material known to us in
comparatively late MSS. (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries),
includes a tale called ‘ Eachradh na Féinne,’ in which a person
named Arthur figures. This tale, which is in the form of a conver-
sation between Padraig and Caoilte, and is made up of prose and
verse, relates how the Fiana obtained their steeds. There was
with Fionn at one time a warrior called Artiir mac Beinne
Briot, or Arttir mac Riogh Breatan. One day, this Arthur,
with his followers, watching a hunt on Benn Edair, now called
Howth, decided to take the three hounds, Bran, Sceolaing and
Adhnuall, away with them to Wales. This they did, landing at
Inbhear Mara Gaimiach, and then going to hunt on Sliabh
Lodain mhice Lir, names which do not seem to be identifiable.
Finding that the hounds were missing, Fionn places his thumb
under his * tooth of knowledge,’ and is immediately conscious of
what had happened. Nine of the Fiana are then sent in pursuit
of Arthur. They come to Sliabh Lodain mhic Lir, where they
kill the men of Arthur and make himself prisoner. Goll mac
Morna also takes a grey horse with a golden bridle, and a brown
mare, with a silver bridle and a golden bit. They then return.
Arthur is pardoned, but has to remain as a warrior of Fionn as
long as he lives. The steeds are given to Fionn, and the horses of
the Fiana are said to have been descended from them, ‘ for before
this time they did not employ horses.’
O’Rathile has published * a short poem relating how one day
1 Helden- und Kénigsage, Halle, 1921. pp. 515.
2 Windisch-Stokes, Irische Texte, [V., 1, p. 6. O’Grady, Silva Gadelica,
Vol. I. Also, modern Irish version by Térna, Oirchiste Fiannuiochta, |
Dublin [n.d.], pp. 3-9. 3 Gadelica, I., 4. |
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 47
a gruagach brought to the court of Arthur a swan, which refused
all nourishment save wine, which it drank only from the hands
of women whe had been faithful to their husbands. In this poem,
as in the story next referred to, Arthur iscalled ‘ Righ an Domh-
ain.’ O’Rathile states that this poem is paralleled in the ballad
of the “ Boy and the Mantle,’ which is also found in Irish, with
Arthur and his Knights hibernicized into Fionn and the Fiana.
There is also a Welsh parallel in the material known as ‘Tri
Thiws ar ddeg Ynys Brydain.’ 2
Vol. X. of the publications of the Irish Texts Society is made up
of two Irish Arthurian romances,’ taken from eighteenth century
MSS. There is, besides, another printed version of ‘ Eachtra
Mhacaoimh an Iolair,’ * a tale written by Brian O’Corcran, who
lived, according to the editors, in the fifteenth century. A note
prefixed to the earliest known copy (MS. 24P., RIA) states that.
the Irish redactor ‘ got the bones of the tale from a gentleman
who said that he had heard it narrated in French.®> O/’Corcran
has, however, thoroughly Gaelicised the tale, and added stanzas
of his own composition, and the work is interesting as a late
example of such manipulations.
1 Laoidh an Bhruit, studied by Stern, ZCP. i., 294 et seq.
2 A version of this material included in Pen. MS. 77 (213 et seq.) states
that the valuables ‘were all taken away along with Myrddin.’ The
thirteenth article is said to have been the Mantle of Tegeu Eurvron,
which would only fit wives who had been faithful to their husbands—
‘13. Mantell Tegeu Eurvron, ni wasanaethai ir neb a dorrai i ffriodas
nai morwyndod ; ac ir neb y byddai lan yw gwr y byddai hyd ir llawr ;
ac ir neb a dorrai i ffriodas, ni ddoe hyd 1 harffed. Ac am hynny ’r oedd
cenvigen wrth Degeu Evrvron.’ With this, compare the statement of a
test inflicted in certain circumstances, according to Welsh Law, upon a
maid given to a man and charged by him with having been deflowered :—
‘Os hitheu ni myn i diheuraw, llader i chrys yn gyvuch ae gwerdyr, a
_ roder dinawed blwyd yn i llaw, gwedi iraw i losewrn ; ac o geill hi cyndal
hwnnw, cymered, er ran or argyvreu; ac oni eill, bid heb dim.’
3 Hachtra an Mhadra Mhaoil. Eachtra Mhacaoimh-an-lolair. .. .
Two Irish Arthurian Romances. Ed. and Trans. by R. A. Stewart
Macalister. 1908.
4 Zachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair mhic Riogh na Sorcha .. . ‘\lorard
de Teiltiin agus Seosamh Laoide do chur i n-eagar ... (Dublin,
H912).
°*Biodh a fhis agad, a leughthoir .. . gurab amhlaidh do fuair
misi . . . enaémha an sgéil so ag duine tiasal a dubhairt gurab as Fraincis
do chualaidh sé féin d& innsin é, agus mur do ftair misi sbéis ann, do
dheachtaigh mur so é, agus do chuirsim na laoithe beaga-sa mur chumdéoin
air, agus ni raibhe an sgél féin a nGéoidheilg ariamh conuige sin.’
48 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
In a version of ‘ Eachtra an Mhadra Mhaoil,’ RIA.23D 22,1
King Arthur’s name takes the form of ‘Artur mhic Iobhair
mhic Ambros mhic Constaintin,’ whereas RIA.23M 26! gives
‘ Arthur mhac Ambrois mic Constantin mic Uighir Finndrea guin.’
The ITS. printed version omits ‘mic Uighir Finndreaguin,’
which, however, is included in the ITS. version of ‘ Kachtra
Mhacaoimh an folair,’ with a merely orthographical difference
(‘Ughdaire Finndreagain’). In the Teiltitn-Laoide text of
‘EKachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair,’ the form is ‘Cing Artur mac
Iubhair mhic Ambrois mhic Ughdair mhic Constantin Chinn
Dragtin.’ I note these forms because of their partial disagree-
ment with the Welsh tradition concerning the relation of Arthur
to Uthr Bendragon. The forms ‘ lobhair,’ ‘ Uighir,’ “ Ughdhair,’
and ‘ Ughdair’ evidently represent what would be Irish pro-
nunciation of the Welsh form ‘ Uthr.’ ‘ Finndreaguin’ may be
simply a mistake for “ Cinndreaguin,’ but cp. ‘ Wen Bendragon ’
in one of the Trioedd.
Of these two tales edited by him, Macalister says:
‘ These stories both belong to the “‘ wonder-voyage ”’ type of tale,
and further have in common their connexion with the Arthurian cycle
of mythological heroes. Arthur, however, plays a secondary part in
both romances, and the dreamland of gruagachs and monstrous night-
mare shapes is here as typically a creation of [Irish fancy as in any of
the stories of the Finn cycle.’
This substantially represents the facts. With regard to
incident, it appears to me that ‘ Kachtra Mhacaoimh an Jolair ’
is in the manner of the French romances, but the redactor has
completely Gaelicized the style of the narrative, introducing pro-
fusely the bravura elements of middle Irish romance, along with
some passages, however, bearing evidence of personal observation
of natural phenomena.
In this story Arthur is at Camelot, and a Sin: Bhalbhaidh ’
is mentioned as one of his followers. In the other tale, Arthur and
his Knights are hunting in the Dangerous Forest on the Plain of
Wonders. They are overcome by the Knight of the Lantern but
liberated by ‘Sir Bhalbhuaidh ’’2 and the ‘Crop-eared Dog,’
1 See Cat. of Irish MSS. in the Royal Irish Academy. Fasc. I. By
Thomas F. O’Rahilly, Dublin, 1926.
*The forms ‘Balbhuaidh’ and ‘Bhalbhaidh’ which Macalister
renders “ Galahad,”’ are no doubt derived from a form Walwey, of which
there is a variant Walwyn, manifestly French or English vulgarizations of |
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 49
the remainder of the narrative being occupied with the pursuit
and the final overthrow of the Knight of the Lantern by Sir
Bhalbhuaidh and the dog, the latter turning out to be a meta-
morphosed prince. Of the two stories, this is undoubtedly the
earliest—at any rate, it is made up of earlier elements. The
style is conventional, and stock epithets and phrases are as
numerous as their Greek equivalents in Homer.!' But the con-
tent is undoubtedly early, and frequently reminds one of the type
of the primitive material to be found in Kulhwch ac Olwen or the
Pedeir Keinc—compare, for instance, the metamorphosis of the
sons of the King of India into dogs, and the similar punishment
inflicted upon Gwydion and Gilvaethwy, in the tale of Math
vab Mathonwy.”
Hyde states that some romantic stories, related to the
Arthurian legend, were translated into Irish from the French,
Spanish, Latin and possibly English. He mentions MS H2.7,
Trinity College, for instance, as containing, amongst other things,
a story of Sir Guy of Warwick, one of the Quest of the Holy
Grail, one called ‘ Teglach an Bhuird Chruinn ’ (‘ The Household
of the Round Table ’), the Chanson de Geste of Fierabras, and the
History of King Arthur.*
These late versions from other languages, which I have not
seen, would, probably, not throw much light upon the earlier
forms of the legend, but a detailed study of the resemblances
between the stories of Fionn and the stories of Arthur would
Gwalchmer. It is also interesting to note that in the Madra Maol story,
Lancelot is converted into Lamsholas.
1 With regard to ‘the rolling streams of alliterative adjectives,’
Macalister justly remarks: ‘ They require to be heard, well declaimed, for
their raison d’étre to be fully understood.’ There can be no doubt, IL
think, that, read out, the effect of the Irish is quite different from that of the
English. Coming in front of the noun in English, the adjectives grow
wearisome. Coming after the noun in the Irish, they have a degree of
force, to preserve which they should in English be similarly placed, con-
nected with suitable particles. An analysis of some of the writings of
Joseph Conrad shows that he was aware of the effect of this difference in the
position of the adjective.
2° Mar sin ddinn n6é gur torchuigheadh na sagha sin do bhi againn
féin, agus gur rug gach sagh aca ceithre cuileéin deag; agus d’fhas
oirbhearta na geuilean sin go luath.’—‘ Canys ywch yn rwymedigaeth
mi awnaf ywch gerdet ygyt, ach bot yn gymaredic, ac yn un anyan ar
gwydvilot yd ywch yn eurith. Acyn yr amsery bo etiued udunt wy y
uot ywchwitheu, ete.’
3 Lit. Hist. of Ireland, Lond., 1899, p. 572.
50 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
undoubtedly show community of source, and indeed, many actual
borrowings. Arthur’s position as the head of a band of warriors
is paralleled by that of Fionn; the standing or function of the
Fiana, as represented in Irish tradition, corresponds closely to
that suggested by some of the titles bestowed upon Arthur (such,
for instance, as wnben) and by the words of the Nennian material
—‘ Arthur pugnabat . . . cum regibus Brittonum, sed ipse dux
erat bellorum.’ !
In Scottish Gaelic, material is not as early and ample as in
Irish Gaelic, although many of the Highland Folktales contain
material of undoubted antiquity, and a great many incidents
paralleled in Arthurian and other tales, found in Irish, Welsh and
Breton. Such material is also found in Scottish Gaelic Ballads,
which, in spite of much tumultuous criticism without Gaelic,
must include early material in a form modernized in the course of
centuries of oral transmission.?
Arthurian material may be found in Manx and Cornish folk-
tales, but the literature preserved in these languages will not
greatly help us.
The Breton literature preserved for us begins at a late period—
about the fourteenth century—and consists chiefly of miracle
plays and ballads, but Breton Folklore still conserves Arthurian
traditions. There may have been Breton lays which have
perished, of course, but I shall deal with this point later.
We have then to examine the earlier Welsh material. Tradi-
tionally, Welsh literature goes back to the sixth century. That
certainly was the bardic tradition in the twelfth century, when a —
great literary activity occurred. This tradition is borne out by
certain additamenta to the Nennian material, which mentions
Talhaearn, Neirin, Taliesin, Bluchbard and Cian as bards who
were famous in the time of Ida. Poetry attributed to Neirin (or
1° Finn has long since become to all ears a pan-Gaelic champion, just
as Arthur has become a Brythonic one.’’—Hyde, Lit. Hist., p. 383.
2 “Tt is impossible to read the text of the Mabinogion without seeing
the strong resemblance which these traditions bear to modern Gaelic
popular tales. The resemblance is not that of one entire story to another ;
were it so, it would be less striking ; but it is a pervading resemblance inter-
woven throughout, and which pervades in a less degree the whole system of
popular tales, so far as | am acquainted with it. The Welsh and Gaelic
stories are, in fact, often founded on, and consist of the same incidents
variously worked up, and differently told, to fit the various manners and
customs of different ranks of society.’-—Campbell, Popular Tales of the
Western Highlands, Ed. 1890, Paisley, Vol. IV., pp. 251-2.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 51
Aneirin) and Taliesin has been preserved, but we know nothing
of the others. During the last century, this tradition was
doubted, mainly because it was thought that, in the sixth cen-
tury, Welsh had not yet been evolved from British. A modified
view was advanced to the effect that these poems were really
productions of a later period, for some reason assigned to Aneirin
and Taliesin. Recently, Professor Sir John Morris-Jones has
upheld the former tradition, and shown that linguistic evidence
may be in favour of the supposition that Welsh was already spoken
when the Breton emigration occurred, about the fifth century.
It can, in any case, be shown that some of the poems in the Book
of Tahesin are likely to have been written from the eighth to the
tenth century, and cannot be shown, with anything like evidence,
that it contains material written after the eleventh.
Some of the early poetry, then, may go back in origin, if not
,in actual form, to the sixth century. The presence, in what may
. be termed the historical material, of two styles so widely different
one from the other cails for special study, but the argument
against the idea of modernization of early compositions is removed
if we can accept the conclusion that Welsh had been already
evolved in the sixth century.
In the Book of Aneirin, copied, as we know it, about the
thirteenth century, Arthur is referred to, but though the reference
may mean that he was an incomparable warrior, the name only is
mentioned. We can do no more than to suppose that the name
was well known to the writer of the stanza in which it occurs, and
to those for the amusement of whom the poem was written. The
poem sings the praise of those who fell in a battle fought at a place
called Catraeth, and this stanza does not state that Arthur was
one of them, but rather mentions his name as if he had long been
known for his valour. It should be added that probably the
poem, as found in the Book of Aneirin, is not complete.
In the Book of Taliesin, Arthur is mentioned in a poem which
seems to describe trees as having been metamorphosed into
warriors, and in which the author, said to have been Taliesin,
speaks of his own transformations ; but the name of Arthur occurs
at the end of the poem, where the crucifixion of Christ is referred
to, along with the prophecy of Virgil, material which suggests
that the poem, in spite of its legendary character, may not be a
very early production, or otherwise that lines have been added to
accommodate it to Christian belief, a practice known in Irish.
52 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
In another BT poem, which is full of obscure references to
ancient beliefs,—one of them concerning the origin of the muse—
Arthur is mentioned as having been blessed by wise men in songs.
Another BT reference is found in a poem entitled “The
Elegy of Uthr Ben[dragon?].1_ (Arthur is said to have been the
son of Uthr). There are transformation elements in the poem,
and the author seems to recount the wonderful things done
by himself, or by someone else, including the defence of
Arthur.
A fourth BT poem is called ‘The Song of the Steeds.’ It
seems to be a kind of rhymed catalogue of the names of famous
steeds, mixed up with transformation elements. The steed of
Arthur is mentioned.
Finally, there is a BT poem entitled ‘ Preideu Annwvyn ’
(‘The Spoils of Annwvn’), of which Arthur seems to be the
central figure.2. This poem mentions a Caer Sidi. The second
element in the name reminds us of the Irish sid, which was under- |
ground. In this Caer there was a prisoner named Gweir. Three
ship-loads of men are said to have gone there, of whom only seven
returned. Another fortress is mentioned, where a cauldron was
made to boil by the breath of nine virgins, the cauldron of the
chief of Annwvn, encircled with diamonds, which would not boil
food for a coward. In front of the portal of this place (it is here
called ‘ Uffern ’ in the text, but I am inclined to believe ‘ uffern ’
to be a later substitute for “annwvn.’), lamps were burning, and
of the warriors who went there with Arthur, only seven returned.
Other fortresses are named, into which men went with Arthur, in
1 It may be well to examine, if possible, the origin of the form Pen-
dragon. ‘The name does not occur in the poem itself, which, besides, is
nothing like an elegy. Urdawl Ben occurs in the tale of Branwen, and
Uthr Ben is a possible equivalent.
2 The location of Annwvn is a matter of some difficulty. In modern
Welsh, the word is used with the meaning of Hell. In the story of Pwyll
and that of Math (Four Branches), it seems to be the name of a kingdom
somewhere near Dyved, but it is clear that the story-tellers had no topo- |
graphical knowledge of it. The word itself may mean ‘the other-’
‘the outside-’, or ‘the under-world.’ Some place-names, and instances
of the use of the word in poetry of the early and middle period, seem to
suggest that it was considered to be underground. A sixteenth-century
bard, for instance, describing a hunt, says :—
*Ymddiddan tuag Annwn
Yn naear coed a wna’r cWn.’
Another, in a fanciful description of the revolutions of a mill-stone, says
that they caused the walls of Annwn to tremble.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 53
his ship ‘ Prydwen,’ presumably to seek certain spoils,—the
cauldron of the chief of Annwvn, the brindled ox with seven score
links in its chain, ete-——and where they fought with witches.
This poem also ends with a Christian supplication.
This composition must certainly refer to a number of stories
which have perished, for otherwise it could never have been
intelligible to any audience.
The fortresses named are:
. Kaer Sidi.
. Kaer Bedryvan.
Kaer Vedwit.
Kaer Rigor.
. Kaer Wydyr.
. Kaer Golud.
Kaer Vandwy.
. Kaer Ochren.
Probably there were tales recounting the expeditions of
Arthur to each of these fortresses, of the fighting and of the spoils
carried away from them, but we have no other trace of such tales.
Cynddelw, in an eulogy to Hywel vab Owein, may have a mere
allusion to the expedition to the eighth fortress, in one lne—
“Huan wrys hawl echrys Ochren.’ !
It will be well, then, to bear in mind this evidence of Arthurian
material which must once have existed in Welsh, of which, as far
as I am aware, there is no trace in any other language.
In the Black Book of Carmarthen (an anthology copied in the
twelfth century), Arthur is mentioned five times. One of these
references occurs in a twelfth-century poem, and is besides merely
a mention of the grandeur of the household of Arthur. The others
are found in material which may be early. There is a series of
stanzas called “Englynion y Bedeu’ (‘The Grave Stanzas ’).
Generally, the first line asks whose is the grave in such and such
a place, the second gives the answer, and the third adds a charac-
terization of the dead. The stanza-form is early, and this type
of material is found in Irish and Scandinavian.2, Amongst these
verses, the stanza which refers to Arthur is different from the
rest. The question ‘ Whose grave is this ?’ is not asked. Thus:
i A
1 Anwyl, Poetry of the Gogynfeirdd, 75. 1.
2See S. Bugge, Bidrag til den ecldste Skaldedigtnings Historie,
Christiana, 1894.
54 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
‘There is a grave for March, and a grave for Gwythur,
And a grave for Gwgawn of the red blade,
Unknown [or a mystery] is a grave for Arthur.’
There is another scrap, which seems to have formed part of an
elegy of a somewhat similar type, and which contains the name of
a son of Arthur, thus:
‘I have been where Llacheu was slain
(The son of Arthur, whose arts were marvellous)
When the ravens called loudly for blood.’
We have already seen that one of the Court Bards, in verse of a
later type, mentions ‘ Llechysgar ’ as the place where Llacheu was
killed. His name figures in the poem next dealt with, and also in
the tale of Kulhwch.
In the other two poems, Arthur is a more distinct figure.
One of them is in the form of a dialogue between Arthur, with
whom is Kei, and Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr. In the Kulhwch tale,
Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr appears as the door-keeper of Arthur’s
own court. The poem begins abruptly, and the end is missing.
Thus :
‘Who is the doorward ? ’
‘Glewlwyd of the mighty grasp.
Who is he who asks 2?’
‘It is Arthur, with worthy! Kei.’
‘Who go with thee 2 ’
‘The best men in the world.’
‘Into my house thou comest not
Unless thou discover them.’ 2
‘TI shall discover them,
And thou shalt behold them—
1 See Rhys’ note, op. cit., on Kei guin, where he equates the meaning of
guin with beau in the Fr. beaw pére. See also Lewis, Gloss. Med. Welsh
Law, under gwynwyr, where the form is said to correspond to the Ir.
Fian. The rhyme here (govyn : gwyn) is against the suggestion, for to be
the W. equivalent of the Ir. the form should be giyn. Besides, ep. the
Saints’ names Deinioel wyn, Cybi wyn, Ceinwen, Dwynwen, etc. The
Cornish surname Keigwin, Keegwin, seems to conserve the form, whatever
the meaning may have been.
2Onys guaredi. Rhys, Morte d’ Arthur, XVIII., renders this line:
‘Unless thou plead (?) for them,’ but the guess is inaccurate. See
Pwyll, ‘ arhos a oruc y uorwyn a gwaret y rann a dylyeivot am y hwyneb
Oo wise y phenn.’
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 55
Wythneint, Elei,
And Sivyon, the three of them ; 1
Mabon son of Modron,
The servant of Uthr Pendragon,
Kysceint 2? son of Banon,
And Gwyn Godyvrion,
My servants were... 8
In defence of their laws—
Manawydan son of Llyr,
Whose counsel was profound—
Manawyd, who verily brought
Broken spears from [the field of] Tryvrwyd ;
And Mabon son of Mellt,
Who caused the grass to be spotted with blood ;
And Anwas 4 Hdeinawe [winged]
With Lluch Llawynnawe ; °
They were defensive
Against the hewer of Eiddin.
As a lord who would reconcile them,
My nephew would have made amends (?)
Kei pleaded with them
Whilst he cut them down by threes ;
When the grove was lost,
Fury was experienced ;
Kei still pleaded with them
The while he hewed them down ;
Arthur, though he played [or, laughed],’
He made the blood flow,
As in the hall of Avarnach
He fought with a witch ;
He pierced the head of Palach
1 Rhys, op cit., renders this and the preceding line as follows :
‘Wythneint of Elei,
And the wise men three—’
Wythneint is probably the Gwytheint of the Court Bards. As Tre Seifion
occurs as a place-name, I take ‘ell tri’ to refer to Wythneint, Ele and
Sivyon. Rhys, of course, read assivyon as a sywyon.
2 Probably Kysteint, as suggested by Rhys.
3 Oet rinn vy gueisson, which Rhys renders ‘ Sturdy would be my men,’
but rinn in such context is obscure to me, unless one can understand it as
in penrhyn— My servants were a headland.’
4 Anwas, Anguas, is no doubt the Irish Aongus.
® Lluch Llawffer occurs in Llyfr Tal. as the name of a sword, but Liwch
Llawynnawe occurs in Kulhwch ac Olwen as the name of one of Arthur’s
followers.
6 Argluit ae llochei, of which Rhys makes ‘ His lord would shelter him.’
- "ced huarhei. Cp. Englynion y Bedeu: trath latei chuardei wrthit.
56 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
In the hiding-places [or, Among
the treasures] of Dissethach ; 1
At Mount Eiddin,
He fought with dog-headed ones,?
By hundreds they fell,
They fell by hundreds
Before Bedwyr of the four-pronged spear (4) ; 3
On the sands of Tryvrwyd,
Fighting against Garwlwyd,
H3 was a victor in his rage
With sword and with shield ;
A whole line was but vain
Before Kei in battle ;
It was a sword, in contest,
That was the pledge of his hand ;
He was an equable chief
Of a legion, for the country’s good.
Bedwyrws 24
Nine hundred, in hearkening,
Six hundred, in raising the shout,
Was the worth of his rush. |
There were (also) warriors of mine—
It were better were they still (with me).
Before the chiefs of Kmreis
I have seen Kei in haste,
Leader of raids,
A tall man was he among enemies ;
His vengeance would be heavy,
His thrusting would be grievous ;
When he drank out of a horn,
He would match four men,
When he would come to battle,
In hewing down he would be match for a hundred ;
Unless it were God that should cause it,
The death of Kei would be beyond reach.
lin atodeu dissethach. Rhys, ‘In the tasks (?) of D. The word
would seem to be the plural of addawd.
2amucachinbin. Cp. Ir. Conchinn (Brinna Fercherine) and Conchenn
(Fled Bricrenn, and Dinnsenchas, Druim n-Asail), Thurneysen, Die
wrische Helden- und Konigsage.
3 rac beduir bedrydant. Rhys leaves pedrydant untranslated.
4 Beduwir. A Bridlav. Rhys suggests Beduir ab Bridlaw, which appears
to me to be doubtful. The element —l/aw reminds one of the statement in
Kulhwch that Bedwyr, fighting single-handed against three men, would
draw blood first.
5 oed gur hir in ewnis. Rhys, ‘ Long would he be in his wrath.’ But
Kei was called ‘ Kei Hir,’ Kei the Tall.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 57
Noble Kei and-Llacheu,
They would make battles
Before the pang of keen blades ;
On the ridge of Stawngun !
Kei pierced nine witches ;
Noble Kei went to Mona
Mondestroy =. .°.2
His shield was .. .8
Against Cath Paluc—
Why do folk ask
‘Who slew Cath Paluc 2’
Nine score hoary-headed ones (?) 4
Used to fall in its feeding ;
Nine score leaders... .”
Most of the names found in this remarkable fragment also
occur in some of the prose tales, to which reference will be made
later, and Tryvrwyd, mentioned here, is stated in the Nennian
passage, already quoted, to have been the site of one of the twelve
battles of Arthur.
The fragment appears to be of a composite character, for
whereas Kei seems at first to be with Arthur, he is referred to.
later as having suffered ‘gloes glas vereu.’ Arthur also, in the
middle of the poem, speaks of himself in the third person. One is
thus led to conjecture that the piece is made up of fragments from
more than one source.
The second BB poem is entitled * Gereint fil[ius] Erbin,’ and
seems to have been intended to celebrate the praise of Gereint and
to bemoan his death—at the battle of ‘Llongborth.’ ‘ Brave
men from the border of Devon ’ are mentioned, so that it may be
permissible to assign this poem to the Cornish territory. Modern
gazetteers do not record a southern place-name which would
correspond to ‘ Llongborth,’ but it certainly reminds one of the
Irish longphort, which in middle and modern Irish has the mean-
ings: a camp, a fort, a fortress, a palace, a tent, a harbour, a
garrison. The Welsh meaning would exactly be ‘a harbour,’
literally ‘ ship-port.” The reference here to Arthur is brief, thus :
lystaw in gun. The form seems very doubtful. It may include the
A.S. element stan.
*(leuon, which Rhys renders lions.
34 iscuid oet mynud, which Rhys renders ‘ His shield was small.’
* nau ugein kinlluc. Rhys leaves kinlluc untranslated. The rhyme
suggests kinllwit. Or one might read kin lluc, before dawn.
58 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
‘It was at Llongborth that I saw Arthur
(Brave men there hewed down with steel)
The Emperor, the leader of battle.’
There is a Welsh prose romance called ‘Gereint vab Erbin,’
to which I shall refer later. The point of interest here is that, in
the early poetry, Arthur is associated with Gereint, one of the
Knights of the Round Table in later romance.
From this earlier verse material again, we may add to our list
of incidents which may have formed the subjects of Arthurian
narratives, otherwise unknown :—
1. The Death of Llacheu son of Arthur (at Llechysgar).
. The Colloquy of Arthur and Glewlwyd.
. The Battle of Tryvrwyd.
Kei at the Battle of the Grove (Kelli).
The Hall of Avarnach.
The Treasures of Dissethach.
. The Battle of Mount Eiddin.
. The Battle of Ystawngun.
. Kei’s Expedition to Mona.
10. The Story of Cath Paluc.
11. The Battle of Llongborth.
In the Myv. Arch., there is a poem with the following pro-
logue: “A Dialogue between King Arthur and his second wife,
Gwenhwyvar. She was the woman carried away by Melwas, a
Scottish prince.’ I subjoin a translation :
‘A. My steed is black and trusty beneath me,
And I fear not on account of water,
And I retreat not before any men.
G. My steed is green, of the colour of the leaves ;
High praise utterly despises reproach—
No one is a man who keeps not his word.
ora OR w be
Ne)
. in the front of battle,
There is no one like unto a man but Kei
the tall son of Sevin.?
A. J am he who rides and who stands,
And who heavily treads on the edge of the tide,
I am he who would catch Kei.
G. Tut! thou fellow, it is strange to hear thee ;
Unless thou be better than thy appearance,
Thou wouldst not take Kei with a hundred of thy like.
1Cp. Stvyon in the preceding poem.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 59
A. Gwenhwyvar of the bright looks,
Do not wrongly judge me though I be small,
I would myself take a hundred men.
G. Tut, thou fellow! dark and yellow,
Gazing awhile at thy countenance,
I fancied having seen thee before.
A. Gwenhwyvar of the surly aspect,
Tell me, if you know,
Where did you see me before ?
G. I saw a man of moderate size
At the table of Arthur in Devon,
Serving wine to his friends.
A. Gwenhwyvar of the pleasant speech,
An empty saying is customary from a woman’s mouth—
It was there that thou sawest me.”
We may gather that this poem is founded upon some lost
story. ‘The reference to the small stature of Arthur is singular,
and the statement of Gwenhwyvar that she had seen ‘a man of
moderate size at the table of Arthur, serving wine to his friends ’
suggests that the person concerned here may not have been Arthur
himself, but one of his followers, as the name of Arthur does not
occur in the text, except in this reference.
An interesting poem, entitled ‘Hnglynyon yr Eryr,’ which
appears in Jesus College MS. 3 = XX., and of which there are
sadly modernized versions in a number of other MSS., introduces
Arthur. Professor for Williams suggests ! that this poem belongs
to the second half of the twelfth century. The metrical form and
the non-alliterative character of the verse, in addition to the
subject matter, which is so different from that of the official bardic
compositions of the period, incline me to the view that it is a
monkish composition which may be still earlier. The stanza-
form is the tercet, called Englyn Milwr, not employed by the
Court Bards of the Princes, but in the composition itself, it is.
described as ‘traeithawt’ (st. 25), a term restricted in the
Metrical Codes to the metres of the unofficial minstrel class.
Briefly, the poem relates how Arthur, seeing an eagle looking at
him from the summit of an oak tree, hears a laugh and is
astonished. In reply to his questions, the eagle explains that he
himself was formerly Eliwlat son of Madawe son of Uthr, Arthur’s
own nephew. The dialogue then becomes a discussion of good
and evil. Arthur’s questions exhibit in some cases a suggestive
1 Bulletin, Board of Celtic Studies, Cardiff, II., 4.
A,S.—VOL, VIII. E
60 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
rhetorical repetition.1 The eagle informs him that it is sinful to
harbour evil and treacherous thoughts ; that this may be avoided
through prayer; that Christ’s blessing is obtained through the
love of God and of justice ; that Christ is the lord of all spirits ;
that heaven is merited through repentance and hope; that the
worst accompaniment of sin is despair, which brings the soul to
eternal torment ; that God is the sole might and that He reckons
not the might of man; that that which Christ will do for those
who believe in Him shall be manifest at the day of judgment,
when God Himself shall judge ; that the most effective means of
benefiting the soul are prayers; that idle pride is the cause of
suffering ; that what is not pure must be cleansed?; that he
who commits perjury to obtain land, and is guilty of treason
against his own lord, shall repent at the day of judgment.
Some of the stanzas exhibit the naiveté so amply found in
Irish material, and may be evidence of early origin, reflecting
traditional accounts of the Christianization of the Brythons. For
example, stanzas 29-34 :
‘Thou eagle . . . I ask thee, is there anything better than to hope ? ’
‘. . . Should he desire to possess a portion of land, let the weak trust
in God.’
‘IT ask thee, is not the owner of land mighty ? ’
‘Do thou not lose God for the sake of wealth—the only might is the
Highest.’ ;
‘I ask thee in words, am I not also mighty 2’
‘ Arthur, chief of the hosts of Kernyw, magnificent leader of armies,
the highest might is God.’ ?
Arthur also appears in a Trystan and Esyllt story preserved in
Pen. 96 and other MSS. The story (which the writer hopes soon
to edit) relates how Trystan and Hsyllt flee together to the forest
of Celyddon. LEsyllt is attended by her handmaiden, Golwg
Hafddydd, and Trystan by his squire, Y Bach Bychan. These
1° Beth yssyd drwe y wneuthur,”’ v.11; * Y wneuthur beth yssyd drwe,’
v. 13.
2° Ys dir nychyaw ny bo pur,’ v. 46. In the BBC, which contains
some of the stanzas, the reading is nithyaw, which the context justifies.
3 With this, cp. a characteristic stanza from Agallam Oisin agus Patraic :
‘Da mbeidheadh mo mhac Oscur agus Dia
lamh ar lamh ar Chnoc na bhfiann,
da bh-faicfinnse mo mhac ar lar,
déarfainn gur fear laidir Dia!’
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 61
servants carry their food, consisting of pies and wine. A pavilion
is made for them of branches and foliage, and a bed of leaves, so
that they are all content. Then King March son of Meirchion
goes to Arthur to complain against Trystan, beseeching him to
avenge the wrong. Arthur and his followers go to the forest in
quest of the fugitives. When they enter the forest, Esyllt
trembles in Trystan’s arms, and in reply to his inquiry, tells him
that she fears for his safety. ‘Trystan reassures her, and goes to
meet his pursuers. Faced by him, March tells Arthur that he
will not be killed himself for the sake of killing Trystan, then the
other warriors also decide not to risk their lives. Thus Trystan
passes unscathed through the three hosts. Kei Hir, who is in
love with Golwg Hafddydd, goes to the place where Esyllt is
waiting, and tells her that Trystan has escaped. KEsyllt tells
him that if the news be true, he will be rewarded with ‘a golden
mistress.’ Kei says that he only desires Golwg Hafddydd, who
is then promised him. March makes a second complaint to
Arthur, who advises him to send harpists to entertain Trystan
from a distance, and minstrels to sing his praise, so that he may be
pacified. This is done. Trystan is pleased with the harpists’
performance, and rewards them with handfuls of gold. Then,
Golden-tongued Gwalchmei, the son of Gwyar, who was in the.
habit of composing differences between persons, sings the praise of
Trystan, and invites him to be reconciled to Arthur. Ultimately,
for the love of Gwalchmei, Trystan agrees. ‘They go to Arthur,
and finally Trystan agrees to be reconciled. It is then agreed
that Arthur is to decide between the claims of March and Trystan
to Esyllt. Finding that neither of them is willing to forego his
claim, Arthur decides that Esyllt shall dwell with one of them
during the time there are leaves on the trees and with the other
whilst the trees are leafless, March, as the legal husband, to have
_ the first choice. March choses the period when the trees are leafless
for the reason that the night is then longest. When this is
announced to Hsyllt by Arthur, she is overjoyed, saying :
‘ Holly and yew and ivy
are in leaf until they die ;
Holly and ivy and yew
are in leaf as long as they live.’
‘Thus March, son of Meirchion, loses Esyllt for ever.
The parts spoken by the various characters in this most
interesting story are in tercets, of the type of those forming the
©
62 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
Colloquy of Arthur and the Eagle. A comparison of the various
versions extant proves that these stanzas, like those in the
Colloquy, have been modernized and manipulated. The earliest
form is found in a manuscript written mostly in the sixteenth
century, but the composition is certainly earlier. The mixture
of prose and verse reminds us of the French chantefable, but also,
and still more so, of Irish material of the type found in * Acalamh
na Senorach.’ It is to be noted that the composition has evident
affinities with the story of Diarmuid and Grainne. Diarmuid and
Trystan are said to have been men of great attraction for women.
The forest where the fugitives hide is surrounded in both cases,
and both Grainne and Hsyllt tremble for fear when they hear the
sound of the pursuers.2, A bed of leaves is prepared for both
pairs. Both Diarmuid and Trystan pass through their pursuers
without being wounded.4 The pursuit in the Irish tale lasts for
sixteen years, in the Welsh tale for three years, according to one
version, which sets out the fragment as the conclusion of the
quest, suggesting that there were earlier incidents.° In the end,
Grainne is adjudged to Diarmuid and Esylit to Trystan. The
Welsh story, of course, lacks the detail of the Irish tale, but the
prose part is evidently incomplete and modernized. Ultimately,
Diarmuid is killed by a boar, and in the Trioedd, Trystan appears
as the Swineherd.®
In the earlier metrical material in Welsh, then, we have
reference to a considerable number of incidents or battles with
1° An t-aon leandén ban agus inghion is fearr da bhfuil san domhan.’—
* Cyfaill rhianedd.’
2° Ar n-a chlos sin do Grainne, do-ghab uamhan agus imeagla i ’—
‘Ag yno i krynodd Esyllt ... rag ofn amdanaw ef.’
3°Do chéruig Maodhan leaba do bharr beithe fa Dhiarmait agus
Ghrainne.’—‘ Ac yno y gwnaethpwyd gwely o ddail iddynt, a phebyll o’r .
coed a’r dail.’
4 *Roiompuigh Diarmaid tar a ais gan fuiliughadh gan foirdheargadh
air. —‘ Ac felly yr aeth Trystan trwy y tair cad yn ddiargywedd.’
° * Llyma ’r Englynion a fu rhwng Trystan ap Tallwch a Gwalechmai
ap Gwyar, wedi bod Arthur yn 1 geisio dair blynedd.’
6 See also Loth, Contributions, ‘Fragment d’un poéme sur Tristan
dans le Livre Noire.’ The name of Arthur is not introduced in this frag-
ment, but the line ‘Menic it arwet duwir dalenneu,’ as Loth justly points
out, ‘ est une claire allusion au fameux épisode ot Tristan jette des branches
ou copeaux dans un ruisseau qui les emporte a travers la chambre d’Iseut
lavertissant ainsi de sa présence.’ It is also noteworthy that leaves play
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 63
which Arthur was connected, and accounts of which must have
formed separate tales, similar to the prose narrations we have
preserved. If we could accept the sixth century origin of some
of the Welsh poems, we might, as already stated, reasonably
expect to find in them some evidence of a historical Arthur. The
only possible instance of such a reference, in the material we have
examined, is the poem to Gereint, son of Erbin, in which Arthur
is said to have been leader of brave men from the border of Devon.
Although this poem involves no actual impossibility, it cannot be
said to have any historical value. In all the other material,
Arthur is certainly a legendary figure.
THE TRIADS
Arthur also figures in the Trioedd,! which, according to Rhys,
contain the earliest Arthurian material. Probably, Rhys is right,
but it is necessary to examine carefully the various versions, as the
later of them show evident additions and expansions. The
third series printed in the Myv. Arch., for instance, although it
includes the earlier material, exhibits evidence of manipulation
by a writer unacquainted with the meaning of some of the terms
used by him. His expansions show an efiort to employ what
was evidently meant to appear as an archaic style, the empty
verbosity of which, however, betrays its late origin.
Generally, Arthur appears in the earlier Triads as a legendary
figure. In one Triad, the Three Exalted Prisoners of the Isle of
Britain are named, and then it is added:
‘ And there was one who was more exalted than the three, namely
Arthur, who was for three nights in the Fortress of Oeth and Anoeth,
a part in the Welsh fragment dealt with here, as well as in some Welsh love
poems—Llywarch ap Llywelyn to Gwenlliant verch Hywel, for instance ;
‘Neur arwet dyuret yn eu dyuyrlle
Gwise gwyndeil gwyeil gwet: adarre
Neud adneu cogeu coed neud attre
Neur duc wyse cantwyse gan y godre
Dolyt caer llion deil lhaws bre.’
These things, together with the obscure references in the love poems to the
horse, seem to echo some lost model, in which the horse and the leaves
played a necessary part. But the branches and shavings referred to by
Loth certainly remind us of Diarmuid agus Grainne.
1 See Loth’s versions, Les Mabinogion, etc. Here, I only bring together
those triads in which the name of Arthur occurs or in which his Court is
mentioned.
64 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
and for three nights with Wen (?) Bendragon, and three nights in the
Hidden Prison under the Flagstone [yg carchar kudd d-an y llech a
chymmreint, I. ; ygkarchar hut y dan lech echymmeint, II.], and it
was the same squire who liberated him from each of the prisons, namely
Goreu, the son of Custennin, his cousin.’
This appears to refer to some tradition of which we know
nothing, and may provide us with additions to our list of incidents
which may have been the subject of stories, thus :
1. The Rescue of Arthur from the Prison of Oeth ac Anoeth.
2. The Rescue of Arthur from the Prison of Pendragon.
3. The Rescue of Arthur from the Hidden Prison under the
Flagstone.
“Llech Echymeint,’ as the two readings show, is doubtful, but
the mention of the flagstone recalls the bardic reference to
Llechysgar, where Llacheu is said to have been slain.
That rescues were the subject of tales in Welsh may be deduced
from references in Y Gododdin and in Hirlas Ywein, a poem bear-
ing traces of the influence of the earlier-composition.
Another Triad describes Arthur as one of the Three Chief
Swineherds of the Isle of Britain. The version seems inaccurate,
for in a later form, the three Swineherds are described as having
been (1) Pryderi vab Pwyll; (2) Trystan vab Tallwch; (3)
Coll vab Collvrewi, and Arthur is only incidentally brought in, in
connection with the second and third name. It is explained that,
while Trystan had gone on a message to Hsyllt, Arthur, with March
and Kei and Bedwyr, went to seek the swine (the loss of which is
not explained), but failed to obtain a single sow by any means.
In the reference to the third swineherd, it is stated that the drove
was kept in Cornwall and among that drove there was a sow called
‘ Henwen,’ concerning which there was a prophecy that evil would
befall the Isle of Britain through its litter. Because of this
prophecy, Arthur collected the host of Britain to hunt the sow.
The sow went into the sea at Penrhyn Awstin in Cornwall, fol-
lowed by the Swineherd. ‘Then, somewhere in Gwent, it dropped
a grain of wheat and a bee, hence the fame of Gwent ever since as
wheat-growing land. At Llovyon, in Pembroke, it dropped a
grain of barley and a grain of wheat, hence the fame of Llovyon
for barley. At Rhiw Gyverthwch in Arvon, it dropped a cat and
an eaglet. The eaglet was given to Breat, a northern prince, and
evil followed the gift. In Arvon again, under the Black Stone,
the sow dropped a cat, which the Swineherd threw into the sea.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 65
Then the Sons of Paluc in Anglesey rescued and nourished the cat
which was afterwards known as Cath Paluc (Paluc’s Cat), and
which became one of the three chief oppressions of Anglesey.
This Triad again evidently resumes the story of the hunting of
a monster which reminds us of the Hunting of the Twrch Trwyd,
even down to the topographical explanations. Here, we may
have all that remains of three stories:
1. The Hunting of Henwen.
2. The Story of Cath Paluc.
3. The Story of Breat and the Eagle.
Other statements concerning Arthur, which may belong to
earlier material in the Triads are—that he disinterred the head of
Bran, which, as stated in the tale of Branwen, had been buried
in London and which would have secured the island against the
attack of enemies. Arthur is said to have disinterred the head
because he was not satisfied that the island should be defended
except by his own might. Ina Triad which mentions the ‘ Three
Red-tracked Champions of the island,’ Arthur is said to have
been superior to them :
» “And there was one whose track was redder than that of any of
_them. His name was Arthur. For a whole year, neither grass nor
plant grew on the track of Arthur.’
In these Triads, two causes of the battle of Camlan seem to be
discernible. One of the ‘ Three Evil Strokes of the Isle of Britain ’
is described as having been a blow dealt by Gwenhwyvach to
Gwenhwyvar, and this blow, it is added, was ‘the cause of the
battle of Camlan afterwards.’ A variant form says that the blow
was dealt by Gwenhwyvar to Gwenhwyvach. In the Kulhwch
story, Gwenhwyvach is described as a sister of Gwenhwyvar.
In Irish, Findabair is the name of the daughter of Medb, queen of
Connacht, in the ‘ Tain Bo Chuailgne —a genuinely Keltic name
which, through its Brythonic form, passed into a variety of Con-
tinental forms. In Kulhwch we find the masculine form of the
name, ‘Gwynhyvar,’ who is described as the steward of Cornwall
and Devon, concerned in the battle of Camlan. In the same tale,
Morvran eil Tegid and Sandde Bryd Angel are said to have
escaped unhurt from Camlan, the first because of his ugliness,
wherefore no one dared to strike him, thinking he was a demon,
and the second owing to his beauty—none dared to strike him,
as they deemed him to be an angel. The third who escaped
66 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
from the battle is said to have been Saint Cynwyl, who was the
last to part from Arthur. These details probably belong to the
earlier account of Camlan.
In one Triad concerning the ‘Three Evil Blows,’ the blow is
said to have been dealt Medrawd by Arthur, and no cause is
assigned. ‘The Triad enumerating the ‘Three Grievous Slaugh-
ters of the Isle of Britain ’ seems to suggest yet another version,
perhaps the unvarnished original of the later romance forms.
I take the material part of the Triad from the first series in the
Myv. Arch., bracketing the variants as found in the second and
third :
‘The Three Grievous Slaughters of the Isle of Britain: One of
them was when Medrawd came to Kelliwig in Cornwall, and left in the
court neither food nor drink and when he dragged Gwenhwyvar from
her throne [and then struck her a blow, II. ; and committed adultery
with her, III.]. And the second was when Arthur went to the Court of
Medrawd, where he left neither food nor drink unconsumed, neither
man nor animal alive in the cantred.’
Another Triad says that Arthur had three wives, each named
Gwenhwyvar. In these variants we can probably trace an earlier
account of the Battle of Camlan, which afterwards came to be
attributed to the treachery of Medrawd. The character of
Medrawd, as reflected in the references of the official bards of the
Princes to him, may have been due to the prevalence among them
of an earlier, less developed account of the cause of the battle.
It may also be stated here that there is a Welsh character
called ‘ Melwas,’ who is said to have carried away Gwenhwyvar to
Scotland, having dressed himself in leaves for the purpose of
capturing her, so that the queen’s maids did not know him, taking
him for a supernatural being. A poem attributed to Dafydd ap
Gwilym ! refers to this tale, with greater detail than usual in the
bards : |
* Alas ! that with a lover’s sigh, I may not call for the art of Melwas, ~
the robber who, through magic and enchantment, took away a woman
to the extremity of the land ; he, the deceiver, went into the woods,
among the branched walls of the tree tops, and to-night, I should like
to climb up on high, as he did.’
Whether there was originally a separate story concerning
this rape, or whether Melwas is another name for Medrawd, it is
difficult to say. Of course, in Malory this episode is connected
1 Barddoniaeth, 1789, p. 106.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 67
with the name of Meliagraunce, but the story as found in the Morte
d’ Arthur has certain weaknesses, which suggest that it may be
out of place. In any case, we may here have evidence of the
possible existence at one time of three stories—
1. Gwenhwyvar and Gwenhwyvach.
2. The Battle of Camlan.
3. Melwas and Gwenhwyvar.
The later account of the cause of the Battle of Camlan,
between Arthur and Medrawd, is also given, and one of the
‘ Three evil counsels of the Isle of Britain ’ is described as having
been the action of Arthur in dividing his forces three times with
Medrawd, in the fight between them.!_ This would seem to corres-
pond rather with the attitude of Arthur towards Launcelot in the
; _ Morte d’ Arthur, where one traces such an evident intention to
exalt French chivalry and other qualities.
_., In the type of material comprehended in the remainder of the
Triads, we may probably trace the effect of the development of
_ Arthur as a romantic hero. He is described as a supreme ruler,
having courts at Caerllion, in Wales ; Kelliwig, in Cornwall, and
Penrhyn Rhionydd, in the North, with a chief bishop and a chief
elder at each of them. The names are also given of the principal
Knights of the Court, as follows :
Three supreme heads (unbeniaid): Goronwy vab Echel Vordd-
wytwll; Cadreith vab Porthvawr Gadw [fourth son of
Seidi, I1.], and Ffleidur Flam vab Godo.
Three Warrior Knights: Mened [Mael Hir, III.; Cadwr Iarll
Kernyw, IV.]; Lludd Llurugawe [Llyr Lluyddawe, III. ;
Lawnslot dy Lac, IV.]; Caradawe [Ywain ap Urien Rheged,
IV.]. This triad is in the form of a stanza attributed to
Arthur.
Three Golden-torqued Knights : Gwalchmei vab Gwyar, Drudwas
vab Tryffin, Eliwlad vab Madawe vab Uthr [the second and
third name have been run into one in III. by the omission of
Kliwlad]. “They were wise men, so fair and gentle, eloquent
and amiable in speech that it would be difficult for anyone to
refuse them that which they sought.’
1 One is tempted to see a reference to this in the poem entitled Marwnat
Uthyr Pen, in the BT:
‘Neu vi arannwys vy echlessur
nawuetran yg gwrhyt Arthur.’
68 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
Three Royal Knights: Nasiens, King of Denmark [Morgan
Mwynvawr, IV.]; Medrawd vab Llew vab Kynvarch ;
Hywel vab Emyr Llydaw. ‘They were men whose speech
was so gentle and amiable and fair that it would be difficult
for anyone to refuse them their request.’
Three Just Knights [Justly-minded, IV.]: Blas, son of the
Prince of Llychlyn; Cadawe vab Gwynlliw Vilwr, and
Pedrogl Paladrddellt [son of the King of India, IV.].
‘Their habit was to protect orphans, widows and virgins
against violence, injustice and oppression, Blas by secular
law, Cadawe by ecclesiastical law, and Pedrogl by the law of
arms.”
Three Knights who found [who kept, IV.] the Grail: Galath vab
Lawnslot dy Lac [Cadawe vab Gwynlliw, IIl.]; Peredur
vab Evrawe [Illtud Varchawe, III.]; and Bwrt son of King
Bwrt [son of Bwrt, King of Llychlyn, IV.; Peredur, IIT.].
‘The first and second were physically chaste, and the third
was chaste because he only once committed carnal sin, and
that was through temptation, when he begat . . . [name
missing | upon the daughter of Brangor, she who was Empress
of Constantinobl, from whom came the greatest family in the
world, and the three of them were descended from the family
of Joseph of Arimathea and from the family of the Prophet
David, as the story of the Holy Grail bears testimony.’
Three untorqued! Knights of the Court of Arthur: EHthen
1 Hual means fetter, but must also be translated torque, I think. The
following Triads (which do not mention the name of Arthur, and are not
therefore included in the analysis above, seem to demand the former mean-
ing :—
‘Tri Hualogion teulu Ynys Prydein : The Host of Cadwallawn Lawhir,
who placed the hualew of their steeds upon their feet by twos in fighting
with Serigi Wyddel at Cerrig y Gwyddyl in Anglesey, and the Host of
Rhiwallon vab Urien in fighting with the Saxons, and the Host of Belyn of
Lleyn in fighting with Edwin at Bryn Ceneu in Rhos.’ [LI., I1.]
‘Tri eur Hualogion Ynys Prydein: MRhiwallon Wallt Banhadlen,
Rhun vab Maelgwn, and Catwaladr Vendigeid. [I., I1.] And these men
were called hualogion because no steeds could be obtained suitable for
them because of their size, so that golden fetters were placed round the
small of their legs, over the hind-quarters of the horses behind them, with
two golden patellae under their knees.’ [I., I1.]
‘‘Tri Hualogion Teyrnedd Ynys Prydein: Morgan Mwynvawr of
Morgannwg ; Elystan Glodrydd, of [the region] between Wye and Severn
and Gwaithfoed, the King of Keredigion. They were so called because
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 69
[Eithew, IV.] vab Gwgawn ; Coleddawc vab Gwynn, and
Gereint Hir vab Gemeirnon [Cymmannon, IV.] Hen.
Three Trwyddedawe Anfodawe [Hanfodawe, IV.] !: Llywarch
Hen vab Elidir Lydanwyn ; Llemenig and Heledd [Llwm-
hunic ap Mauon a Heledd vab Gyndrwyn, I., variant ;
IiJ.}. Ill. adds ‘and they were bards.’
Three Amiable Knights of the Court of A.: Gwalchmei vab
Gwyar, Garwy vab Gereint vab Erbin, and Cadeir eil Seithin
Saidi [in IV. only].
Three Knights Magicians of the Court of A.: Menw vab
Teirgwaedd, Trystan vab Tallwch, and Kei Hir vab Kynyr
Varvawe. ‘For they would take whatever form they liked
when they were in difficulty, and for that reason no one could
overcome them, because of their strength, their bravery and
their magic.’ [IV. only.]
Three Noble Ladies of the Court of A.: Dyvyr Wallt Eureid,
Enid verch Yniwl I[arll, and Tegeu Eurvron.
Three Chief Queens of A.: Gwenhwyvar verch Gwythyr vab
Greidiawl, Gwenhwyvar verch Gawryd Keint [Gwent, II.],
and Gwenhwyvar verch Ogyrvan Gawr. [Ocruan, III.]
Three Mistresses of A.: Garwen verch Henyn [Heuinbren, IT. ;
Tegyrn Gwyr ac Ystrad Tywi (King of Gower and Ystrad
Tywi), III.], Gwyl verch Eudawd [Eudaf, II.; Eutaw y
(=o) Gaerworgorn, III.], and Indeg verch Arwy Hir
[Avarwy Hir o Vaelienydd, III.].
The name of A. also figures in other Triads as appended :
Three Oferfeirdd 2 of the Isle of Britain: Arthur, Catwallawn
vab Cadvan and Rhyawt Hil Morgant [Morgant Morgannwg,
III.].
Three Frivolous Battles of the Isle of Britain: The third was the
they wore hualeu (torques ?) in the manner of the Kings of Britain, and
not chaplets, or crowns.’
The meaning of the first of these Triads may be comprehended in the
second, but it is evident that in the third, the reference is to the wearing of
torques to denote nobility.
1 The meaning is not clear to me. Loth translates, ‘“‘ Trois hotes libres
et contre leur volonté.”’ The traditional lot of Llywarch Hen suggests
anffodawe as a possible reading.
_ 2 The exact meaning is not clear. Loth has “‘ trois bardes peu sérieux,”’
and he quotes a modern bardic explanation. As used by the bards,
oferfardd has a very uncertain meaning—a somewhat dissipated minstrel,
perhaps.
70 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
battle of Camlan [between A. and Medrawd, where A. was
slain and along with him a hundred thousand men, III.]
which was fought because of the contention of Gwenhwyvar
and Gwenhwyvach, and they were called frivolous battles
because they resulted from such trivial causes.
Three Dishonoured men of the Isle of Britain: (1) Avarwy vab
Lludd; (2) Gwrtheyrn Gwrtheneu; (3) Medrawd vab
Llew vab Kynvarch, when A. left the government of the
island in his charge . . . [and then the battle of Camlan
was fought between A. and Medrawd, and A. slew Medrawd,
and M. gave him a wound from which he died, and he was
buried in a place in the island of Avallach, II.; where A.
was killed, with all his men excepting three, II1.].
Three Faithless Hosts of the Isle: (1) the Host of Gronwy
Pevyr; (2) the Host of Gwrgi and Peredur; (3) the Host
of Alan Ffergant [ar lan Ffergan, II.; Alan Forgan, III.]
who forsook their lord clandestinely on the way to Camlan.
Each of these hosts numbered one thousand one hundred men.
Three Treacherous Meetings of the Isle: (3) the meeting of
Medrawd and Iddawe Corn Prydein ! and their followers at
Nanhwynein, where they plotted the death [gwnaethant frad]
of Arthur, thus giving the Saxons sway over the Isle of Britain
[II1.].
Three Secret Treacheries of the Isle: ‘2) the betrayal of A. by
Iddawe Corn Prydein, who disclosed his secret [IIT.].
Three brave overlords [uwnbeniaid] of the Isle : Kynvelyn Wledig ,
Caradawe vab Bran, and Arthur [IIT].
Three red-marked ones of the Isle: Arthur, Morgan Mwynvawr,
and Rhun vab Beli [III.].
1In Breuddwyt Rhonabwy, Iddawe Cordd Prydein explains how he
came to be so called :—‘I was one of the messengers at Cat Gamlan
between Arthur and Medrawt his nephew. And I was a spirited young
man then, and by reason of my great inclination to fight, | made things ~
mixed between them. And this is the trouble I caused—the Emperor
Arthur sent me to tell Medrawt that he was his foster-father and his uncle,
and that, in order to avoid the slaughter of the sons of the kings of the
isle of Britain, and its nobles, he desired peace ; and whereas Arthur spoke
to me in the most amiable manner, I repeated his words to Medrawt in the
most insulting manner. And so I was called [ddawe Cordd Brydein.
And it was thus that the battle of Camlan was fought, and three nights
before the end of the battle I parted from them, and went as far as the
Blue Flagstone in Scotland to do penance. And I was there for seven
years doing penance, and obtained mercy.’
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC al
Summarizing the results of this part of our inquiry, we can
state that of an historical Arthur, the evidence in Welsh is
practically non-existent. He appears in the earliest material
distinctly as a legendary figure, engaged in marvellous expeditions
to fortresses or citadels which may be supposed to have been
situated in the other-world. We have found reference to at least
28 incidents which may have formed the subject of narratives in
which Arthur was concerned, and of which there seems to be no
other mention. In the Triads, his name is introduced as that of
one who excelled the other characters. This is possibly a later
addition to the original Triads, made after the fame of Arthur
had become general. Another possible but less likely view is that
the traditional supremacy of Arthur accounts for the mention of
his name in the Triads as that of one with whom ordinary mortals
could not be compared. It seems fairly clear from this examina-
tion that the early fame of Arthur in Welsh territory was a matter
of folklore, which was only to a limited extent reflected in the
works of the official bards. The belief that he had not died but
would one day return to liberate his people seems to have pre-
vailed among Brythonic peoples before attention was drawn to his
legend by the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
In Welsh Folklore, Arthur and his warriors sleep in a mountain
cave, variously situated, waiting for the day when they shall awake
and return. Some of the places where this cave is said to be
located are the Elidir, Berwyn, Craig y Dinas in Glamorgan, and
another Craig y Dinas in Montgomeryshire. It may be interesting
to note in passing that the Berwyn and Hiraethog districts are
rich in place-names connected with the Four Branches of the
Mabinogi and Hanes Taliesin.1_ The story of the cave was known
1 Berwyn itself is probably Bre Wyn, from the name of Gwyn ap Nudd.
There are also in the region a Nant Gwyn, and Caer Drewyn near Corwen, and
there are stories connecting Gwyn with the mountain. Other names
found in the district are—Cadair Franwen, Nant Manawyd [now pro-
nounced Myniawyd], Caer Gai, Llyn Tegid, Castell Dinas Bran. Accord-
ing to Pen. 176 (39), there was, between Cadair Ddinmael and Betws, a
place known as Maen y Bardd, of which it is said—‘ ac yn y main hynny
y rrain sydd yn vedrod gron vechan i kad an ab y Ileian a mvrddun y
lleian y sydd is law yn ymyl ... y llyssdir.’ The connection of this
with the Myrddin legend seems beyond doubt. One is tempted to suspect
that anap y lleian, or anvab y Ileian, may be the basis of the An of the
Myrddin story ; that murddyn has something to do with Myrddin, and that
a reference to Medrod may lurk in the words, ‘ yn vedrod gron vechan.’
In-the Hiraethog district, where we find Llyn Brén and Gorsedd Fran,
72 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
in the Hiraethog district in my father’s boyhood, nearly eighty
years ago, in the form, also found elsewhere, which relates how a
man walking on London Bridge,with an ashen stick in his hand, was
met by an odd-looking person of great age, who told him finally
that the stick had grown over the entrance into a cave filled with
treasure guarded by sleeping warriors. Obeying the directions of
his informant, the man afterwards found the cave, but in going
out, having overloaded himself with treasure, he caused a bell
suspended in the entrance to ring. Thereat the warriors leapt
up, the leader asking, ‘Has the day come?’ Following his
instructions, the man replied * No, sleep on ! ’ whereat the warriors
sank back into slumber, and the man escaped, but all search for
the cave afterwards proved fruitless. In some places, this tale is
connected with the name of Owain Lawgoch, a claimant to the
Principality of Wales after the fall of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd
(1284). Owain was the grandson of a brother to Llywelyn, and is
known in French chronicles and even in Continental literature,
as Yvain de Galles and Yffo von Calis. He was assassinated in
France by the hirelings of the English, in the year 1378.1 The
basis of the legend seems to have passed into the vaticinatory
poems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the majority of
which the name of Owain supplants that of Arthur. Yet, occa-
sionally, Arthur seems to continue to represent the hero who was
some day to come over sea to restore the former glory of his race.
Before and during the Tudor struggle, great use was made of this
tradition, in order to win support for the Lancastrians. ‘There is
at least one attempt made, in English, to connect the prediction
with the name of Cromwell.2. During the last century, the
tradition was idealized and became a kind of motive among the
political nationalists of the period again.
THe RoMANCE MATERIAL
Our inquiry, so far, has been restricted. to the early metrical
material and the Triads. We may now briefly examine, on the —
same lines, the prose material known as the ‘ Mabinogion.’ For
the sake of clearness and accuracy, it may be well to point out that
the term ‘ Mabinogion ’ was used by Lady Guest to denote all the
Welsh tales and romances which she translated into English.
remarkable folk-etymologies are plentiful, and jumbled forms in place-
names still more so. 1 See Cymmrodor, 1899-91.
2Thomas Pugh, British and Outlandish Prophecies, 1658.
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 73
The Welsh title ‘ Pedeir Keine y Mabinogi ’ is properly restricted
to the branched tale of Pwyll-Branwen-Manawydan-Math, and
as “ Mabinogi’ is a singular form, an old plural, if there had been
such, would have been ‘ Mabinogion.’ Various attempts have
been made to explain the meaning of the term. Stephens
(Literature of the Kymry) believed that the term meant youth, and
that the tales were ‘ written to while away the time of the young
chieftains.’ There is no evidence whatever of this. Rhys
claimed that ‘ Mabinog ’ meant a literary apprentice, taught by a.
qualified bard, and that Mabinogi meant the subject matter he
had to learn. Ivor John (the Four Branches of the Mabinogi),
and others, repeat this explanation. There is, however, no evid-
ence for it in Welsh material. Rhys seems to have based it.
upon some particulars of Irish tradition. Another suggestion is
that the term is the equivalent of the French Hnfance. This is at
least supported by one compilation where the Welsh term is
employed with that meaning (Mabinogi Iesu Grist, of which there
is a variant Mabolyaeth Iesu Grist). Later suggestions are that it
is a form of the Irish Mac ind Oic, a name given to a legendary
character ; and that it is simply a compound of two Welsh words.
(mab = son, and mynogi = courtesy). The suggestion, which I
made some years ago, that it is derived from the Irish was after-
wards more fully supported by Professor Lloyd Jones.1. I am
still of the opinion that this is the most likely explanation, and
that the term means simply the Wonder-child, having an other-
world father, for Pryderi, the hero of the Four Branches, was such
a son.
The term ‘ Mabinogion ’ is therefore not employed here, but
an effort is made to group the tales according to character and
antiquity, showing what part is played in them by Arthur,
and endeavouring to show the distinction between the earlier,
Brythonic or Keltic Arthur, and the later figure of French-
coloured romance. :
The Welsh romances, written down in the form in which we
know them, about the twelfth century or the early part of the
thirteenth and later, include material in which Arthur does not
figure at all. Such are the Four Branches, which must have
been given a definite form some time from the tenth to the
eleventh century. ‘ Breuddwyd Macsen’ and ‘ Kyvranc Lludd a
Llevelys ’ are concerned with traditions of the Roman occupation.
ly Beirniad, Vol. IV., 2.
74 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
The other romances, in which Arthur figures, may be divided into
two classes, (a) Pre-Norman tales, ‘ Kulhwch ac Olwen,’ © Breu-
ddwyd Rhonabwy,’ ‘Hanes Taliesin,’ and perhaps, in some re-
spects, ‘The Birth of Arthur.’ ‘ Kulhwch ac Olwen’ is the story
of the quest of a wife, and the material of which it is made up is
undoubtedly primitive. It is not necessary here to go into detail,
but a brief outline of the essential features may assist us to realize
the difference between this tale and the Continental manipulations
of Arthurian material.
Kulhwch, son of Kilydd, son of King Kelyddon, is born in a
pigsty, his mother having been seized by a fit of madness. The
name Kulhwch was given the child because of this circumstance.1
In dying, the mother of Kulhwch makes the father promise that
he would not marry a second time until he should find a thorn
with two flowers growing on her grave. She then asks her con-
fessor to see that nothing be allowed to grow on the grave. The
confessor does so for seven years, then forgets. Seeing the thorn
at last, Kilydd decides to marry, and is advised by his servants to
carry away by force the wife of another king. This he does. As
Kulhweh is afterwards unwilling to marry the daughter of his step-
mother, she places upon him an injunction that he may never
marry unless he obtain for his bride Olwen, the daughter of a
giant named Yspaddaden Pen Cawr.? His father advises him to
go to the Court of Arthur, who is his uncle, to obtain assistance
for the quest. He goes, obtains assistance, ultimately finds
Olwen at her father’s court, and is charmed by her appearance,
The giant in turn imposes upon him a series of seemingly impossible
tasks, which must be performed for the winning of Olwen. They
include the finding of Mabon, son of Madron, lost in his infancy a
long time since, the hunting of the Twrch Trwyd, a boar which
1 The part played by the pig in Irish and Welsh legend may be mentioned.
The hunting of boars occurs in many Irish and Scottish Gaelic tales. In
Welsh, we have the bringing of pigs from Annwn, the hunting of Henwen,
Ysgithrwyn Ben Beidd, and Twrch Trwyd. Welsh names like Kulhwch,
Tallwch, Gwythwch, Unhwch, are also probably due to some simular ty of
origin. Pigs were probably used in ancient divination, and there are still
preserved many folk-beliefs concerning pigs. The modern saying, common
in Wales, that pigs can see the wind may be compared with the belief
among sailors on sailing-ships, that to slaughter a pig on board, with its
head towards the stern, would bring wind from the other direction. (See
Interaturo, Vol. II., No. 8.) See also later references in this article.
2 Hpinogre, Epinogris, seems to me to be an echo of this name. See
also Rhys, Arthurian Legend.
]
;
aes
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC 75
had been a prince, metamorphosed for his sins.1 Mabon is
ultimately found through inquiring of the oldest creatures in the
land—the Blackbird of Kilgwri, the Stag of Rhedynvre, the Owl
of Cwm Cawlwyd,? the Eagle of Gwernabwy, and the Salmon of
Llyn Lliw. Then commences the hunting of the Boar. The
names of the hunters are given at great length, and probably, in
this part of the narrative, we have the debris of many tales. The
narrator is manifestly bringing into the story short summaries of
other tales known to him: Amongst them may be mentioned :
(1) The Death of Gwydre son of Llwydeu, who was killed by his
uncle, Hueil, on which account there was hatred between
_ Arthur and Hueil.
(2) The Death of Kei, who was slain by Gwyddawe son of Menestr,
_ Arthur afterwards slaying him and his brothers to avenge
Kei. :
(3) The tale of Ol son of Olwydd. His father’s swine were stolen
seven years before his birth, but when he had grown up, Ol
tracked the swine and brought them home in seven droves.
(4) The rape of Kreiddylad by Gwyn vab Nudd, and the peace
made by Arthur between him and Gwythyr vab Greidyawl,
which reminds us of the scrap of the tale of Trystan and
| Hsyllt, already dealt with. |
(5) The tale of Osla’s knife, which was broad enough to make a
bridge for the hosts of Arthur to pass over a river.
These were evidently Arthurian tales, not otherwise known to
us. There are really two boar hunts in the tale—the hunting of
Ysgithrwyn Ben Beidd and the pursuit of Twrch Trwyd, but the
latter may have formed a tale by itself at one time, of course.
The Hunt commences in Ireland, then, on to Wales, and from
place to place in that country. This is the chief incident in the
tale, and it is full of marvellous elements, undoubtedly of great
antiquity. Arthur takes a prominent part in the hunt, and is
throughout a primitive figure.
Ultimately, all the tasks are pomoreed, the Giant himself is
barbarously killed, and Olwen becomes the wife of Kulhwch.
There is no chivalry in the essential contents of this tale.
1 Triath in Irish means prince. The form in Kulhwch is Trwyth, but in
the metrical material we have the form T'rwyd, which would be the regular
Welsh correspondence with the Irish form.
2 The writer heard the expression ‘cyn hyned 4’r dylluan’ (as old as
the owl) in the Hiraethog district some three or four years ago.
A.S,—VOL, VIII. F
76 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
The description of the beauty of Olwen may have been influenced
by later romance, and the tale includes a few words of French
origin, but that is all. Arthur is here nothing like the Arthur
of the continental romances, and the manners of his court are
primitive. The proceedings at the Court of the Giant are still
more primitive, and the men of Arthur exhibit no contrast.
Kei is, for instance, here said to have been the son of Kynyr
Keinvarvawec, who tells the mother of Kei that if the son she
bears be his, that son’s heart would be cold; there would be no
heat in his hands; he would be obstinate ; whenever he bore a
burden, neither his face nor his back would be visible ; no one
could face water or fire as he could ; and none could equal him as
a servant or officer. Elsewhere in the story, Kei is said to have
been passionate. He could hold his breath for nine days and nine
nights under water, and remain sleepless for nine days and nights.
A wound inflicted by his sword could not be cured. He could be
as tall as the highest tree whenever he wished. Contrary to the
prediction of Cynyr, his reputed father, it is here stated that his
hand was so warm that a weapon held in it in the rain would be
dry for a space above and below his hand, and that his comrades
could warm themselves in the heat of his body on a cold day.
This may have meant that Cynyr was not his father.
As Kei, for instance, takes part in the hunting of the Twrch
Trwyd, the mention of his death must have been introduced by
the story-teller from another tale known to him, a circumstance
which shows that the raconteur was consciously augmenting his
list of heroes who took part in the hunt. The fact that he makes
proper names out of legal terms and ordinary words is evidence of
the same process of story-telling.
Bedwyr is described as having been the handsomest man in
the island, with the exception of Arthur and Drych eil Kibdar.
Although he might fight with one hand against three armed men,
he would first draw blood. His spear thrust made one wound and
the withdrawal made nine.
Arthur himself appears in the tale as a King of Britain,
surrounded by an immense number of warriors. Only sons of
kings and craftsmen of skill (distinctively Gaelic terms) are
allowed into his court, but he grants boons to all comers. He
possesses magic belongings and marvellous attributes. His
followers can accomplish miraculous deeds—one can flatten out
the highest mountain in the world into a plain ; another can suck
SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC Ug
dry the sea; there is one who can spread his beard over the
forty-eight rafters of the hall; one who can see gnats against the
dawn at the Hebrides whilst he is himself in Cornwall, and another
who can walk on the tops of trees, crossing a forest in that way,
instead of going through it or around it.! There are many other
references to very primitive habits in the tale. The stepmother
and stepson motive connects it with many Irish stories; the
circumstance of the thorn on the grave is found in Arab folklore ;
there are Gaelic words and names, and possibly Scandinavian
names also, in the narrative, and the hunting of the Boar, com-
mencing in Ireland, reminds us of the tale of Diarmuid and
Grainne in Irish and Scottish Gaelic. In fact, the Gaelic character
of much of the material is undeniable, and its antiquity cannot be
doubted.
The imposition of difficult tasks for certain purposes is well
known everywhere—modern sports and university examinations
are really the same thing. Such tests preceded admission to the
circle of the Irish Fiana. The candidate for admission had to
overcome men armed with lances, whilst he himself stood up to
the waist in a hole in the ground, armed only with a club and a
shield ; he had to run through a forest, with plaited hair, followed
by adjudicators ; had to leap over a line placed at the level of his
forehead, to pass under another no higher than his knee, and to
pull a thorn out of hisfoot. If the hair became loose, if the runner
broke a dry twig with his foot, stopped, or was caught, his candi-
dature was refused. Buddha is said to have gained his wife by
competition. He had to shoot, ride horses and elephants, to
fence, write a poem, to dance, to explain the meaning of dreams,
to practise magic, and to foretell events. In fact, most ancient:
peoples seem to have got rid of their unfit through such tests—
and we still speak of post-mortem examinations.
The long list given of those who participated in the hunting of
the Twreh Trwyd is undoubtedly drawn from an immense mass of
legendary material, which was evidently partly unintelligible to
the raconteur. The whole composition, indeed, must be formed
out of the debris of a vast wealth of earlier tales. The incidents
are nothing like the adventures of the Continental stories, or of
Malory, with his wearying ‘jousts’ and endless clichés.
‘Two princes of the twelfth century are named in ‘ The Dream
' A possible echo of the time when men lived mostly in the trees, and
when they could traverse forests from branch to branch.
78 SOME ARTHURIAN MATERIAL IN KELTIC
of Rhonabwy,’ so that the version we know was probably written
down about the middle of that century, and the names of the
princes introduced by the raconteur. ‘The material is, however,
older. ,
These two princes, who are brothers, quarrel, one of them
devastating the territory of the other.
appears to show that Taranos, hke Thor, also waged war against
less substantial foes. When his people were suffering and dying
from an epidemic, Gallus, bishop of Clermont, prayed to heaven
that succour be sent them. An angel appeared to him saying
that his prayer was answered. And so it was; the plague was
1 Htudes, p. 96. 2 Celtic Heathendom, pp. 59, 60.
3 For account of Thor here given, see J. F. Cerquand in Rev. Celt., Vol.
X., pp. 368-9.
—DOUOh, oe AIO
> ibid., p. 276; Gregor. Tours, Hist. Eccl. Franc., IV., 5.
THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER On
stayed. But afterwards it was found that on the walls of the
houses had been inscribed a mysterious charm in the form of the
Greek letter T. While it need not be doubted that the Gauls had
learnt some Greek from Marseilles, it was a mere coincidence that
the Gallic charm had the form of the Greek letter. Thus at Nimes?
one altar has what is evidently a copy of the Greek letter, while
other altars of the same place as clearly have a hammer figured
om them. ‘The conclusion seems to be that while Gallus prayed
to heaven, the superstitious peasantry had more confidence in
the magical virtue of a charm in the shape of a hammer. And
this hammer was the attribute of the Keltic thunder-god, Taranos,
for on a stele now in the museum of Avignon we find figured
Taranos Silvanus with a short-hafted hammer.?
It would thus be a simple matter to see in Sucellus, the
hammer-god, only another name for Taranos, the god of the
thunderbolt. This explanation would cover all the facts hitherto
mentioned, except perhaps that the monuments do not seem to
suggest a wielder of the fiery bolt. Where the monument is
completely preserved we find a quiet-looking and benevolent
figure not brandishing a weapon, but peaceably holding a vase
in his right hand. It is the left hand that holds the hammer,
and invariably he is leaning on it. ‘Too much, of course, must not
be made of this characterization. But there is one other element
in the portrayal of the divinity, which is far from suggesting the
thunder-god. To return to the monuments already referred to.
Both on the Strasbourg and on the Salzbach altars the god has at
his feet a three-headed Cerberus, which is replaced on the Lyons
altar by a dog. The former is clearly chthonic, and should be
found only with a chthonic divinity. No less is the dog a chthonic
animal in early religion. For Greece and Rome Plutarch * gives
us succinctly the religious value of this animal. The Greeks
devoted it to Hekate, an undoubtedly chthonic goddess. ‘They
used whelps in ceremonies of purification, and these were after-
wards thrown out to Hekate at the cross-roads. In much the
same way the sacrifice of a dog at the Roman Lupercalia had a
purificatory intent.» In Rome also, besides the sacrifice of it
to the obscure Genita Mana and to Robigus, the spirit of mildew,
1 Cerquand, op. cit., pp. 279-280. 2 ibid.
3 Rev. Celt., XVII., pp. 56-57 ; Reinach, Bronzes figurés, pp. 177, 182.
4 Quaest. Roman, 52, 68, 111.
° Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 313-314.
98 THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER
we find this animal associated with the Lares Praestites, these
being represented in art with a dog at their feet.1 The Lares
probably were spirits of the earth,? symbolizing the productive-
ness of the land, whether of the family or of the state. In short,
the dog was not offered to any of the Olympian gods.* That the
animal had the same gloomy associations in Western Kurope may
be gathered from the fact that in the Middle Ages the devil was
sometimes supposed to appear in the shape of a dog.* Nearer to
us in time and place is the Highland superstition that it was
unlucky for a dog to pass between the bride and bridegroom as
they left the church.®
Outside of Gaul the Etruscan Charun seems to afford a very
close parallel to the Hammer-god. Charun’s fierceness of mien,
however, is in striking contrast to the benevolent aspect of his
Keltic counterpart. He appears in Etruscan art as a slayer of
men in battle, as escort of souls, and as guardian of the entrance
to the tomb.® He always holds in his hands a hammer with which
he despatches those consigned to death. The Romans perpetu-
ated in a strange custom this function of Charun. The person
whose task it was to remove the bodies of fallen gladiators was
dubbed by them Dis Pater, and he was armed with a hammer.’
So far attention has been given to only one of the material
attributes of the Hammer-god. It is now necessary to see what
significance can be attached to the vase which the god generally
holds in his right hand. For some this vase or similar vessel has
been the starting-point of their exposition of the nature of this
divinity. Allmer and Mowatt,® for example, have concluded
that the hammer is merely the implement of a woodman, and that
the vase is a wooden one, the woodman’s handiwork. This is
also the view of H. Hubert, who says,® ‘Le vase est le vase a
boire. .. . Le maillet, quand il n’est pas stylisé, est un maillet
de tonnelier. C’est un outil professionnel, comme le serpe ou
1 Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 101, 351-352.
2 ibid, cf. Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 78.
2 Plutarch, Q.i., V1.
4Grimm, Deutsche Myth., I., p. 248.
> Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, I., p. 89.
* Roscher, Lex. V., 7p. 880.
* Tertullian, adv. Nat., I., 10; for the Etruscan Charun see Martha,
Leart étrusque, pp. 178, 361, 365, 395-7, 487.
8 See Toutain, Les cultes paiens dans Vempire romain, p. 227.
9 Revue archéologique (1915), I., p. 32.
THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER g2
le pedum de Silvain.’ The Hammer-god is by this argument a
god of the woodland and the patron of workers in wood.
This leads to the ‘question whether the Hammer-god is the
Gallo-Roman Silvanus. Toutain ! concludes that he is, citing an
inscription ? which shows that the Italian Silvanus was known in
Gaul as a god of the woods and a protector of gardens. The
accompanying dog marks a pastoral divinity, while the fact that
the god sometimes wears the skin of a wolf 3 further brings out
his resemblance to Silvanus, exactor luporum.
At first sight this view seems to be supported by the monuments
and inscriptions. There is, for example, the short-hafted hammer
of Taranos Silvanus already mentioned. A bas-relief of Kaisers-
lautern * has the figure of a divinity holding what is apparently
_ a hammer, and underneath is the inscription D. Silvano. Finally,
Gallo-Roman altars dedicated to Silvanus often have the hammer
- figured on them.® In bronzes figurés ® 8. Reinach identified the
Hammer-god with Silvanus, but in Cultes, mythes et religions ” he
expresses himself thus, ‘ Maintenant, je suis le premier a convenir
que le dieu au maillet n’est pas plus Sérapis qu il n'est pas Silvain.’
The obstacle to such identification seems to be that the Gallic
Hammer-god is surrounded by attributes which are prepondera-
tingly chthonic. Toutain himself guardedly admits this.? ‘ Le
chien du dieu des bergers est devenu Cerbere, le gardien du monde
infernal. S’ilest vrai que deux images du dieu au maillet aient ré-
ellement porté un modius, ilfaut en conclure qu'il y a en des cas ou
ce dieu a été assimilé au principal dieu chtonien de la religion gréco-
romain, Pluto-Dispater-Serapis. Nous disons: dieu chtonien et
non pas dieu infernal, pareeque, s'il est vrai que la source de toute
vegetation soit la terre, il n’en résulte pas que les divinités qui
personnifient cette végétation soient forcément en relations avec
la mort et les enfers.’ While the last statement hardly gives a
correct view of primitive religious thought,® Toutain is right in
stressing the benevolent character of the Hammer-god, which is
shown not only by his general aspect but by his very name of
Sucellus.
But Silvanus was a chthonian neither in Italy nor in Gaul,
though attempts have been made to show that he underwent
fe Op. Cit. p.- 235. 2 Corpus Inscr. Lat., XII., 103.
~3See Reinach, Bronzes figurés, p. 162.
eeneo., Celt., XVII... p. 52. > ibid. Bom MlG2:
HORS. p..- 230. 8 op. Cit., p. 237. 9 See below, p. 101.
100 THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER
some sort of development into one.’ An ingenious suggestion,
which, if valid, would solve the difficulty, has been made by
MacCulloch.? In view of the name Selvanus appearing on one
inscription, it is not impossible that there was a native Gallic
god whose name is connected with the Irish sealbh, ‘ possession,’
‘cattle.’ This brings us back again to the veritable nature of
the Hammer-god; he was a dispenser of riches. As symbols
he therefore bears the vase and occasionally the torques,* while his
consort Nantosvelta generally carries the cornucopia.?
The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that the Hammer-
god was an earth-god, but the significance of the hammer remains
unexplained, its identity with the thunderbolt not being accepted.
Rather than agree with Hubert’s view Toutain ° prefers to say,
‘Le sens du maillet reste énigmatique,’ there being no ancient
legend or tradition which can give a clue to the problem. But
some glimmer of light is shed on this question by Irish mythology.
If it is correct to see in the Hammer-god a creator of wealth
in all the forms of it which are necessary for the life of man, a
mythological counterpart of his may be seen in Dagda, the king
of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who was dispossessed by Aengus or
the Mac Oc, ‘ Mythical objects associated with Dagda suggest
plenty and fertility, his cauldron which satisfied all comers, his
unfailing swine, one always living, the other ready for cooking, a
vessel of ale, and three trees always laden with fruit. In some
myths he appears with a huge club or fork, and M. D’Arbois®
suggests that he may thus be an equivalent of the Gaulish god
with the hammer.’ ’
The‘creative force of the hammer of an earth-god, the lord of
life, and perhaps of death, must have been exercised in a wider
sphere than in the making of wooden utensils, useful though
these may be. The method of the working of the hammer is
perhaps illustrated by certain Greek customs and beliefs. Fifth-
century Greek vases show us the anodos of Ge or Pandora. A
large female head is seen rising out of an artificial mound, while ~
round about are Satyrs with hammers in the act of striking.®
Another vase of the same period shows us the maidenly form of
1 Reinach, Bronzes figurés, p. 162; Flouest, Deux stéles de laraire, pr.
28 f. 2 The Religion of the Ancient Celts, p. 37.
3'Toutain, op. cit., p. 226. 2 1bid., p. 232.° 0D... p. )2a0:
6 Cours de littérature celtique, V., pp. 427, 448.
? MacCulloch, op. cit., pp. 78-79.
8 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III., p. 25.
THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER 101
Persephone being evoked by Hermes with his rod.t We have
here evidently a reminiscence of a ritual of striking the earth to
call forth the vegetation. Ge, Pandora, and Persephone are but
later personifications of what was originally conceived as the
formless earth-spirit that was responsible for the growth of
vegetation. Later, of course, the act of striking might be inter-
preted as done to make the spirits hear, as when Althaia makes
the Erinys hear by beating the ground with her hands.? The
original significance of the practice is well illustrated by a piece
of Arcadian ritual. At Pheneus in Arcadia 3 the priest of Demeter
Kidaria impersonated the goddess by putting on a mask. With
a rod he then struck on the ground. Here the priest in the guise
of the goddess is doing what he believes and wishes the goddess
to do, namely, to strike the earth to make it give forth its produce.
It is true his implement is a rod, as that of Hermes was, but the
Satyrs, as already seen, used hammers. And a strange survival
into Christian times of this ritual is preserved in an Armenian
MS.* There the legend is recorded that Christ descended from
heaven and with a golden hammer smote upon the earth and called
forth his church. Hermes, who evokes Persephone, though a
pastoral deity, has little to do with agriculture. But it is he who
leads the dead to their abode in Hades, and this is interesting
when we compare with it the duties of Charun. It shows us,
though evidence is lacking on Keltic ground, that the deity who
can use his rod to summon life out of the earth, has as his function
also that of conducting life when spent back to the earth, its
original home. In early thought no distinction is made between
animal and plant life in this respect, and as a result there was a
vague belief in a close connection between the vegetation that
grew out of the earth and the dead who were buried in it. Hence
the Athenian custom of expiating the ground after burial with
fruits.°> As Hippocrates expressed it, ‘From the dead come
nutrition, growth and seeds.’ ® |
The use of the hammer by a chthonic deity is thus clear.
With it he can summon life out from the earth. It is true we do
not see him actually doing this on the Gallic monuments. There
1 Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 278.
2 Homer, Iliad, IX., 500-1. 3 Pausanias, VIII., 15. 1.
4 Farnell, ibid., p. 26. > Cicero, de Legg, 2. 25. 63.
®On Dreams, II., 14, dad yao tév anobardytwy ai toopai xal adb&hoec
xO Oméouata.
102 THE KELTIC GOD WITH THE HAMMER
was another divine dispenser of the earth’s riches, namely, the
squatting god as seen on an altar at Rheims, and on another in
Paris, where he is named Cernunos. But this does not exclude
the possibility that the Hammer-god could perform the same
functions, perhaps on a less pastoral and a more agricultural basis
than Cernunos. The torques, the symbol of wealth, is an invariable
attribute of Cernunos, and, as has been seen, it is not unknown as
an attribute of the Hammer-god. There may well have been two
conceptions of the earth-god, for the squatting god is not found
in the same regions as the Hammer-god, and what we can discover
about Keltic religion does not lead us to expect any deity holding
sway beyond a rather limited extent.
But if the Hammer-god is not seen actually performing his
functions on the monuments, could he not still be doing so in
the imagination of the people? If so, then we can understand
why Caesar should attribute to the Gauls the belief that they were
descended from Dispater.! Dispater is Caesar’s name for the
chthonic god who, with his hammer, summoned out of the earth
not only the things pertaining to life, but human life itself.
J. J. JONES.
1 De Bello Gallico., IV., 18.
[For a discussion of the Hammer-god see also Rhys, Celtic Heathendom,
pp. 61 ff., who identifies the Hammer-god on the one hand with Esus, and,
on the other, with Silvanus. But Esus cannot be shown on the monu-
ments to be wielding a hammer, while the character of the Italian Silvanus
would hardly admit of his identification with a tender of trees, 1f such be the
real function of Esus. See Czarnowski, L’arbre d’Hsus in Rev. Celt., xlii. —
pp. 1-57.]
NTS OF PREVI ous nee
Vanes Vz.
ce Nicolas de Ovando in Espafiola (1501-1509), by Cecil
A, Arx Capitolina, by the late Professor G. A. T. Davies and
H J. Rose, James Howell again, by Professor E. Bensly. The
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eo aie Cross Se peevicn, by J. Hugiies M.A, Notes on the History
VoruME VI.
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C) Essex Conspiracy (Part I), by Lilian Winstanley, M.A. Croce’s
4 of Intuition compared with Bradley’s Doctrine of Feeling, by
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mals of Miaterscinie, by the late Assistant Professor W. J. Johnston.
2 tive use of Dactyls, by A. Woodward, M.A. Hamlet and the
racy (Part By by L. Lib apne 2 M.A. Sainte-Beuve and
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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS | VOLUMES.
~VoLuME L
The Anglo-Saxon Riddles, by G. A. Wood, M.A. An analvel of hb: Heiale
characters of Grillparzer’s Dramas contrasted with those of Goethe’s 4
and Schiller’s, by Miss Amy Burgess, M.A. Norman Earthworks near
Aberystwyth, by F. S. Wright. A List of Research Publications le ..
Members of the College Stafi for the Session 1910-1li.
- Po kiss ea be SE tel. al
CEE ga) Pe ET ee Se = Eee
Votume II.
The Anglo-Saxon Riddles (continued), by G. A. Wood, M. AC Some Ancient. i
Defensive Earthworks near Aberystwyth, by F. 8. ‘Wright. Whitman ve
Nase coca by P. M. Jones, B.A, ;
Vorvume iit.
The Greek Agones, by Professor H. J. Rose. A few Notes on the Haendliee
Letters of James Howell, by Professor E. Bensly. Fable Literature in.
Welsh, by Professor T. Gwynn Jones. Trajano Bocealini’ Ss Influence upon.
English Literature, by Richard Thomas, = A. ; ane
Vorume IV.
| Pash Ravivaban under the Roman Empire, by Sir William M. Ramsay .
F.B.A. The Bronze Age in Wales, by Harold Peake, F.8.A. Dionysiaca,
by Professor H. J. Rose. The Clausule of Aischines, by R. A. Pope, M. te ae
’ Edward Bensly. Further soies, on “the Owl and the Seeueeuls: a pc ‘a
Professor J. W. H. Atkins. The Arthurian Empire in the Elizabethan. ©
Poets, by Miss L. Winstanley, M.A. A Note on a passage in “ Beowulf, eee
by G. N. Garmonsway, B.A. Welsh Words from Pembrokeshire, by
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by Professor T. H. Parry-Williams. A “Court of Love” poem in Welsh
by Professor T. Gwynn Jones. The Evolution of the Welsh Home, by
Timothy Lewis, M.A. A Washer at the Ford, by Miss Gwenan Jones
M.A. An Outline History of our Neighbourhood, by Professor H. J.
Fleure. Some Notes on the Industrial Revolution in South Wales, by ~
J. Morgan Rees, M.A. Industrial Training in South Wales, by W. King,
M.A. Conduct and the Experience of Value, by L. A. Reid, M.A. Some
sources of the English Trial, by Professor T. A. Levi. A Renascence Pio
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Welsh Education Commission of 1846-7, by F. Smith, M.A. On Stokes’
Formula and the Maxwell-Lorentz Equations, by Professor W. H. Young
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G. A. Schott. The Addition of Hydrogen to Acetylenic Acids, by the lat
D. Emrys Williams, B.Se., and Professor T. C. James. The Actio :
Reducing Agents on some Polynitrodiphenylamines, by N. M.- Cullin
M.Sc. Some Reactions of Tetranitroaniline, by C. W. Davies,
The Origin of the Seed-Plants (Spermophyta), by D. H. Scott, L
Investigations into the Fauna of the Sea Floor of Cardigan Bay:
Professor R. Douglas Laurie. The Fauna of the Clarach Stream ((
ganshire) and its Tributaries, by Miss K. Carpenter, B.Sc. _Additio
the Marine Fauna of Aberystwyth and District, by Miss E. Horsmi
M.Sc. The Bryophyta of Arctic-Alpine Associations in oe Oy a
Marquand, M.A.
(ankivued on page 3 of Cocery
TH STUDIES
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ABERYSTWYTH
Vol. IX
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ee OE NOI EX
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ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
BY
MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
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PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES
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Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
CONTENTS
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES. By Professor
H. J. Rost, M.A., and Miss L. WINSTANLEY, M.A. .
MORE GLEANINGS IN JAMES HOWELL’S LETTERS. By
Professor KDWARD BENSLY, M.A. : ‘ :
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN. By Timotuy Lewis,
THE INFLUENCE OF VALENCIA AND ITS SURROUND-
INGS ON THE LATER LIFE OF LUIS VIVES AS A
PHILOSOPHER AND A TEACHER. By Professor
Foster Warson, M.A., D.Litt. ; F
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE. By Miss
VatmMat BurDWoop Evans, M.A. ;
THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING. By
GzorcEe H. Green, M.A., Ph.D., B.Sc., B.Litt. :
PAGE
1
17
35
47
105.
123
Puen
=)
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES >
It appears to be still a common idea, fostered by such
commentators as Conington, that the scenery of Vergil’s Eclogues
is purely conventional and, as such, inaccurate. Thus Conington
says, in his Introduction to the First Eclogue,
“The scenery, as in other Eclogues, is confused and conven-
tional, the beeches, caverns, mountains and rocks belonging to
Sicily, while the marshy river is from Mantua.’
So he remarks in his introduction to the Second Eclogue,
‘The beeches and mountains again point to Sicily, not to
Mantua, and Sicily is expressly mentioned in v. 21.’
So of the Third Eclogue,
‘The scenery is at least in part Sicilian.’
And of the Fifth,
“The scenery is again from Theokritos.’
Of the Seventh,
‘ Arcadian shepherds are made to sing in the neighbourhood
of the Mincius, while neither the ilex, the lime, the chestnut, nor
the flocks of goats, seem to belong to Mantua.’
And of the Ninth,
‘ As there are no hills and beeches in the Mantuan territory,
which, if any, must be referred to vv. 7 foll., the scenery seems to
be imaginary or confused, a conclusion confirmed by v. 57.’ }
To any one who has ever traversed North Italy and walked,
as one of the authors has, many scores and even hundreds of
miles of her mountain territory on foot, there is something richly
amusing in statements of this kind. That Conington should
Suppose there are no beech-trees or pines or caves nearer to
Vergil’s home-lands than those of Sicily is positively comic.
The notion that Vergil is everywhere and always imitating
Theokritos becomes a positive obsession to the worthy, but
deadly dull, Victorian. It is on a par with that untimely
Puritanism which enables him to find nothing in the immortal
1 Et nune omne tibi stratum silet aequor.
A.S.—VOL. IX. 1
2 THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
Second Eclogue, one of the most exquisite things ever penned by
man, save degradation. Since his day, however, there are com-
mentators who try to find what Vergil meant, HES RE of reading
their own ideas into him.
Prof. R. 8. Conway, in his article in Discovery (Vol. IV, p. 208
foll.), entitled, Where was Vergil Born ? shows good reason to
believe, mainly on the evidence of inscriptions adduced by Mr.
(now Prof.) G. E. K. Braunholtz, that Vergil’s actual birthplace,—
the village of Andes,—was probably among the foot-hills of the
Alps, at the modern Calvisano ; he describes it as ‘ the last out-
post of the Alps in the direction of Mantua.’ Prof. Conway also
distinguishes between the Eclogues ; the even numbers on the
whole deal with foreign scenery,! or, as he puts it,
‘In the Second Eclogue . . . the speaker expressly declares
that he has “a thousand sheep wandering on Sicilian mountains ”’ ;
therefore they are in Sicily ; therefore it seems hardly worth while
to complain that they are not in Mantua!... The scene of
the Eighth Eclogue is wholly Greek ; the Sixth and Tenth follow
Vergil’s friend Gallus over the wale poetical world. . And
finally we have the Fourth Eclogue, which sets out to orophesy a
new world and ascribes to it all the riches of every known land.’
Professor Conway thinks that Vergil has chosen five poems
with a local setting, in his odd numbers, and five in other scenes,
and arranged them alternately.
But we may surely go further than this in the parallel between
Vergil’s Eclogues and his native scenery. Even to-day it is the
custom in all parts of Italy, when the hot weather comes on, to
drive the flocks and herds up into mountain pastures ; the grass
in the plains is soon withered in the intense heat, that in the foot-
hills follows, and as the summer progresses, the pasture is found
at ever higher and higher levels. To the Mantuans of Vergil’s
time, the slopes of the Alps themselves furnished the obvious
summer pasture-ground. If it be objected that the Alps he out-
side Mantuan territory, not being even within the borders of
Cisalpine Gaul, the answer is not far to seek ; shepherds looking
for suitable pasture paid little attention to provincial or even
national boundaries. The Boiotian Kithairon was never, we
may be sure, part of Corinthian territory ; but it is there that the
herdsman of Laios of Thebes meets the herdsman of Polybos of
1 See note at end.
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES 3
Corinth, in Sophokles,! of whom we may reasonably suppose
that he knew how things were done within a few miles of his own
native place. Varro is not writing a poem, but a practical treatise
on ranching, when he makes his interlocutor say,
* Pastures are generally scattered far and wide in different places,
so that the winter grazing-grounds are often many miles from the
summer ones.’ To which he himself replies, ‘ Yes, I know; for my
herds used to winter in Apulia, when they summered in the mountains
about Reate.’ 2
if then the estate of Vergil’s father was situated at Calvisano,
almost among the foot-hills, it is all the more likely that his
flocks and herds would be driven up to the high ground in hot
weather.
Even to-day, on both sides of the Alpine chain, it is possible
to see whole villages in migration ; having one station for the
summer and another, much lower down, for the winter, they drive
their animals and convey a considerable part of their household
baggage up to the hills for summer, and bring the animals and the
baggage down again before winter commences.
If this possibility be taken into consideration and we assume,
a thing which is in itself exceedingly probable, that Vergil knew
a certain portion of the mountain region above his father’s home,
we can understand much better the scenery of the Eclogues. We
understand at once whence Vergil derived his ‘ beeches’ and
“pines ’’ and ‘caves,’ and where he saw his flocks of goats.
Indeed we may go further: Vergil is one of the most true and
accurate of nature-poets ; the Eclogues could have been composed
only by ‘a writer well acquainted with mountain scenery, and they
show, if they are interpreted as belonging to the Italian Alps, a
most remarkable fineness and truth of detail. The very points
which Conington quotes to illustrate their confusion are, on the
contrary, a proof of their accuracy.
Thus, the Italian Alps show four different zones of climate ;
it is possible to walk through all four zones in a single day (one
1 Oedipus Tyrannus, 1133 foll. For a good discussion of the practice,
with modern examples, see Roscher’s Lexikon, III, 1382; it survives in
Spain as well as in Italy.
* De re rustica, II, 2, 9: longe enim et late in diuersis locis pasci solent,
ut multa milia absint saepe hibernae pastiones ab aestiuis. ego uero scio,
inguam : nam mihi greges in Apulia hibernabant qui in Reatinis montibus
aestiuabant.
A THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
of the present authors has repeatedly done so), and there are
points where all the phenomena which Vergil places in connection
can be actually observed, and just as he describes them.
These four zones of climate are: :
(1) Corresponding to the Arctic Zone : a region of snow, pine,
grass and Alpine flora.
(2) Corresponding to the North Temperate Zone: a region of
beech and oak woods, apple, pear and plum orchards, roses, etc.
(3) Walnut and chestnut woods, often covering the foot-hills
to the very summits.
(4) Region of the vine; peach-trees, oleanders.
Of course all four regions interpenetrate more or less ; on the
southern slopes the vine can be grown several thousand feet high,
and on the southern slopes again, the beech woods climb up into a
region which is elsewhere a region of pine only. Thus there is
nothing whatever unusual in Vergil’s combinations of apples and
vines, of beech and pine ; and a marsh can be found in any place
where impervious strata occupy a hollow ; nothing is more com-
mon than to find such a marsh intervening among pine-woods,
and it is difficult to see why Conington should regularly interpret
every mention of swampy ground as referring to the immediate
neighbourhood of Mantua.
Vergil’s scenery is in all its details that of a mountain region
and implies mountains of a considerable height ; even in the
Eclogues with even numbers which are, as Prof. Conway believes,
deliberately foreign, the same type of scenery is still described,
as we should indeed expect to be the case if Vergil knew it well.
Thus, to illustrate by a modern example, we find in Shelley’s
Prometheus Unbound scenery which purports to be in the Indian
Caucasus ; but Shelley had never visited that region, and the
scenery which he is really describing is that of Switzerland, with
which he was familiar.
Especially typical of a mountain region are the sweet and cold
waters which retain their freshness and purity even in the most
torrid heats of summer. Nowhere on the Italian plain can such
cool waters be found ; the majority of the streams are almost dried
up in summer, what is left of them is tepid, accumulates in shallow
pools and tends to become foul. But in the mountain regions the
fountains and streams are more abundant in hot weather, and
also fresher and colder, for the hotter the sun the more the ice
melts above, and hence the more gushing, abundant and cool are
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES 5
the torrents. It is certainly such fresh, sweet, abundant water
that Vergil describes, and nowhere the hot, stagnant waters of the
Italian plain. Moreover, to make assurance doubly sure, these
fresh, sweet waters are described as among pine-trees, which is
possibly only on the higher mountain slopes. We may quote as
examples, I, 38-40,
ipsae te, Tityre, pinus,
ipsi te fontes, ipsa haec arbusta uocabant.
Also V, 25,
non ulli pastos illis egere diebus
frigida, Daphni, boues ad flumina.
Here the streams are called frigida, which certainly could not
apply to any rivers on the Italian plain in summer, and, under an
Italian sun, applies only to those streams whose waters emerge
from melting ice or snow, or from the living rock. It is equally
obvious that the waters are sweet, as in V, 45,
tale tuum carmen nobis, diuine poeta,
quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum
dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere riuo.
Here the poet finds in summer heat sweet water delicious to
drink ; but in the lowlands, the waters resemble those of a sewage
farm and are often positively poisonous to drink. Even the
marsh (I, 38-48) occurs in close neighbourhood to the pine, and
is therefore a mountain marsh.
And just as the sweet, cold waters are undeniably mountain
streams, so the fresh, soft grass which grows by them is certainly
mountain grass; on the plain, and even on the lower hills, it is
withered away long before the summer reaches its height, but on
the mountains it keeps, especially on the colder slopes and in the
shade, perpetually fresh and green. We may quote the famous
passage in VII, 45-7,
muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba
et quae vos rara uiridis tegit arbutus umbra,
solstitium pecori defendite.
Where excépt on mountains could Vergil have found mossy
Springs and grass ‘ softer than sleep,’ defying even the heat of the
solstice ?
Another beautiful appearance, typical of high altitudes, is
the suddenness with which the slopes grow green again after rain ;
in the hot sun the grass on the exposed hillsides has been burnt
brown; two or three days of rain intervene and everything is
6 THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
green again. Vergil had seen this phenomenon and rejoiced in it :
VII, 57-60, | 3
Aret ager; uitio moriens sitit aéris herba,
Liber pampineas inuidit collibus umbras ;
Phyllidis aduentu nostrae nemus omne uirebit,
Iuppiter et laeto descendet plurimus imbre.
Similar evidence is given by Vergil’s references to the cold
shadow of night and to the thick dew; on the Italian plain the
night is not cold, it remains hot and is sometimes even more
oppressive than the day ; but in the mountain regions the cold air
descends from the snows and makes the night deliciously cool and
refreshing. Compare VIII, 14,
Frigida uix caelo noctis decesserat umbra,
cum ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba.
Here the shade of the night is called frigida ; we must certainly
have a very evident degree of cold, and the same fact is suggested
by the rich, abundant dew.
The trees of the different regions are very plainly suggested.
Thus we have the pine-tree again in VII, 24,
| aut, si non possumus omnes,
hic arguta sacra pendebit fistula pinu.
The beech is introduced, as in I, 1,
tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,
and also in II, 3,
tantum inter densas, umbrosa cacumina, fagos,
adsidue ueniebat.
Even if the scene of this Eclogue is in Sicily (see note at end),
Vergil could certainly have seen the same kind of beech-forests.
covering the foot-hills of the Alps to their very summits. Oaks. |
occur, although in a somewhat fantastic context, VI, 27-8, :
tum uero in numerum Faunosque ferasque uideres
ludere, tum rigidas motare cacumina quercus,
or in LV, 30, :
et durae quercus sudabunt roscida mella.
The holm-oak (zlex), such as grew over the spring of Bandusia,*
is a tree of lower levels; we find it, for instance, in VII, 1, |
Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis.
To the same region as the beech there belong also abundant apple
orchards. There is a vivid picture of ‘golden’ apples, pre-
sumably those ripe in autumn, given in III, 71,
1 Horace, Odes, III, 13, 14.
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES i
Quod potui, puero siluestri ex arbore lecta
aurea mala decem misi.
Another reference to apples, or some tree fruit, occurs in I, 34,
Mirabar quid maesta deos, Amarylli, uocares,
cui pendere sua patereris in arbore poma ;
apples lie under the trees, in VII, 54,
strata iacent passim sua quaeque sub arbore poma,
and, most famous of all, there are the dewy apples of VIII, 38,
saepibus in nostris paruam te roscida mala,
dux ego uester eram, uidi cum matre legentem.
Pears belong to the same zone, and on particularly sunny hills the
grape is already appearing; IX, 48,
astrum quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo
duceret apricis in collibus uua colores.
insere, Daphni, piros.
So vines and pears are again mentioned in I, 72,
insere nunc, Meliboee, piros, pone ordine uitis.
Another fruit characteristic of the mountains is the wild straw-
berry ; this is found in such quantities in the woods that in many
places the ground is covered with them as with a red carpet.
They are gathered in abundance and, eaten with the cream from
the mountain milk, are one of the chief local dainties. Vergil had
seen children gather them; III, 92,
Qui legitis flores et humi nascentia fraga,
frigidus, o pueri fugite hinc, latet anguis in herba.
Bees, again, are very frequent in the mountains, and make a
particularly famous kind of honey; there are vast stretches of
wild thyme, and the Alpine flora is especially rich, varied and fine-
scented ; the honey made from such mountain-slopes is, in con-
Sequence, more fragrant and rarer in its flavour than that from
other regions. There is, for example, a special kind of honey,
_ called, from the place where it is made, mele di Monte Rosa, which
is renowned all over Italy. Vergil frequently mentions bees, and
the way in which he associates them with fountains and cold
shade shows that it is the mountain bees of which he is thinking,
I, 51-55,
fortunate senex, hic inter flumina nota
et fontis sacros frigus captabis opacum ;
hinc tibi, quae semper, uicino ab limite saepes,
Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti,
saepe leui somnum suadebit inire susurro.
g THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
- So again he mentions the bees on the wild thyme: V, 77,
dumque thymo pascuntur apes, dum rore cicadae.
The reference to the cicadae and the dew is also interesting.
Creatures of this grasshopper type occur, of course, all over Italy ;
but they are particularly abundant on high mountains, because
of the great quantity of grass and flowers, combined with the hot
sun and moisture; they can be seen in many colours and are
abroad particularly in the heavy dew of the early morning ; the
meadows are literally alive with them and their sound. So also
ine 113)
sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis.
In this latter case, however, the cicadae are in bushes, and there-
fore might belong to any part of Italy.
Vergil is fond of mountain flowers: there is the famous
picture of the white bull lying on hyacinthi (fritillaries ?) + and
ruminating pale grass: VI, 52-53, .
a, uirgo infelix, tu nunc in montibus erras ;
ille, latus niueum molli fultus hyacintho,
ilice sub nigra pallentes ruminat herbas.
The pallentes herbae might refer either to the grass which has
grown pale in the bull’s mouth or to the pale fresh green of the
mountain herbage; the deliberate contrast with the dark tree
under which the bull is lying might suggest the latter, did not
the antithesis tununc . . . ule make it plain that, while Pasiphae
is in the mountains, the bull is somewhere lower down.
Even in the ‘Sicilian’ eclogue it is mainly the mountain
flowers, as he might have seen them in the Alps, to which Vergil
refers: II, 18,
alba ligustra (privet ?) cadunt, uaccinia (Alpine viola ?) nigra
leguntur. |
The same may be said of the wild wiolae, which grow with poppies,
narcissis and hyacinthi ; if they refer to the wild yellow pansy,
they are a typical mountain flower: II, 46-50,
tibi candida Nais
pallentis uiolas et summa papauera carpens,
narcissum et florem iungit bene olentis anethi ;
tum casia atque aliis intexens suauibus herbis,
mollia luteola pingit uaccinia calta.
Vergil of course speaks very frequently of cowherds and goat-
herds. The method of pasturing he describes is still that in
1See Classical Review, XXXV (1921), p. 146.
|
.
i}
1]
\
i
|
i
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES 9
common use. ‘There are no fences to limit the herds from stray-
ing, or to mark off one pasture from another, so it is necessary
for the cowherd or goatherd to keep with his animals and to attend
them the whole day. Very naturally he plays upon his pipe,
or carves wood, or occupies himself with some similar pastime, to
while away the hours. Onecanstillsee two herds who happen to
meet playing upon their pipes in concert, not unlike Damon and
Alphesiboeus (VIII, 1). Moreover, the pipe is not infrequently
used to summon the animals themselves ; in some places the cow-
herd and the goatherd will walk through the village in the early
‘morning, the cowherd playing one distinctive tune upon his pipe
and the goatherd another, and the animals, recognising their own
tunes, will come out and follow the right herdsman to the pasture.
The muleteers do the same thing ; they also pipe to their mules on
long stretches of the road either up or down.t Now of course
these musical cowherds and goatherds are a marked feature of
Vergil’s poetry: I, 9-10,
ille meas errare boues, ut cernis, et ipsum
ludere quae uellem calamo permisit agresti.
Ht, 28 if.,
o tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura
atque humilis habitare casas et figere ceruos
haedorumque gregem uiridi compellere hibisco !
mecum una in siluis imitabere Pana canendo .. .
nec te paeniteat calamo triuisse labellum.
That the mountain herds are meant is clear from many passages,
as that already quoted from VII, 24, where one of them hangs his.
flute upon a pine.
Vergil knows admirably the habits of the different animals and
has perfect pictures in his mind’s eye. The white bull has
already been mentioned, and although he is supposed to be in
Crete, it is worthy of observation that to this day the cattle of
the Italian Alps are mainly light fawn or cream-colour or pure
white. Vergil knows well that they graze early in the day and
_ In the noonday heat lie down wherever they can find shade and
cold. Contrast with VIII, 14, already cited, II, 8-9,
nunc etiam pecudes umbras et frigora captant,
nunc uirides etiam occultant spineta lacertos.
1 These observations as to the pipe are actually taken from the Vall
| Seia, a region which, though not close to Vergil’s country, has preserved.
exceptionally well numerous old customs.
10 THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
The mere fact that the cattle can find frigora anywhere in the
torrid heat of noon shows that the author, as always, is thinking
of fairly high pastures.
The numerous flocks of goats, seen climbing on rocks and
cliffs, are another distinctive feature of a mountain region. We
may quote I, 12,
en ipse capellas
protinus aeger ago; hanc etiam uix, Tityre, duco.
hic inter densas corylos modo namque gemellos,
spem gregis, a, silice in nuda conixa reliquit.
Here the goat has dropped her young on very rocky ground
among bushes, and it is to such pasture, very frequently indeed,
that the goats are driven, when it would be refused by both
sheep and cattle, for the latter cannot make much of very rocky
ground or of the bushes which grow upon it. The goat, on the
contrary, frequently feeds on bushes, as Vergil knows well, and
is an excellent climber; the poet describes for us, as only an
eye-witness could have done, the goatherd lying in a green cave
and watching the animal as it were hanging from an abrupt
cliff: I, 74-8, |
ite meae, felix quondam pecus, ite capellae ;
non ego uos posthac uiridi proiectus in antro
dumosa pendere procul de rupe uidebo ;
carmina nulla canam; non me pascente, capellae,
florentem cytisum et salices carpetis amaras.
He is completely accurate, for he could never have seen a cow
hanging from the cliff in that manner, or a sheep either.
The chestnuts which the goatherd employs as his food (I,
81, castaneae molles) were from the chestnut woods which abound |
in the lower hills, and every detail in this scene gives the senti- ji
ment of the hills, the smoke arising from the scattered home- |
steads and the long shadows of the mountains at evening: |
tbid., 82-83, :
et iam summa procul uillarum culmina fumant,
maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.
Goats and sheep are both included in the Third Eclogue, |
as well as the cattle, and the poet refers to the careful counting [
which is necessary twice a day: III, 34, |
bisque die numerant ambo pecus, alter et haedos. — |
The goat is the most venturesome of all animals and roams /
much farther afield than the rest; indeed in some parts of the |
|
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES 11
country there is a tradition that a goat spends at least one hour
out of every twenty-four in hell, probably based on the fact
that he disappears completely from time to time. So in the
‘Seventh Eclogue it is the he-goat which is missing: VII, 7-9,
uir gregis ipse caper deerrauerat, atque ego Daphnim
adspicio. ille ubi me contra uidet, Ocius, inquit,
huc ades, 0 Meliboee ; caper tibi saluus et haedi,
et, si quid cessare potes, requiesce sub umbra.
In this Eclogue the four herds,—Daphnis, Meliboeus, Corydon,
Thyrsis,—drive their flocks into near neighbourhood, ibid., 1-3,
Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis
compulerantque greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum,
Thyrsis oues, Corydon distentas lacte capellas.
Such meetings are often seen to-day, when the herds drive their
animals together for a time, sometimes themselves talking
together in the shade or playing a kind of duet, and afterwards
dividing the animals and roving on to other pastures.
One of the present authors remembers to have seen a cow-
herd and a goatherd sheltering from the rain beneath a great
rock, high up on Monte Rosa, and playing together on their
rustic pipes while the animals pastured round them and an
enormous rainbow spanned alike rocks and pine-trees, cows and
goats, and the two pipe-playing herdsmen.
Vergil is so close an observer that he knows the sheep cannot
be permitted to go as far as the goats, and must not be allowed
too near the cliff or river-bank, as they are much less sure-footed :
Til, 94-5,
Parcite, oues, nimium procedere, non bene ripae
ereditur ; ipse aries etiam nunc uellera siccat.
So one of the present authors has repeatedly seen them; the
sheep spread out over moderately good pasture on a fairly gentle
slope and the goats climbing about on the cliffs themselves,
among the high rocks and at an altitude where no shepherd
would send the sheep, or else, as they appear to be in the Third
Kclogue,! down in the steep river-valley amongst the broken rocks.
References to mountain features of one kind and another
are continual in the Eclogues; there are the mountain echoes,
the cliffs reflecting back the sound of music, the mountains
wooded to the summits, as among the foot-hills of the Alps they
Oiten are: V, 62-3,
1 Toid., 96; Tityre, pascentes a flumine reice capellas.
A.S.—VOL. IX. Is
12 THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
ipsi laetitia uoces ad sidera iactant
intonsi montes, ipsae 1am carmina rupes,
ipsa sonant arbusta.
There is the long sibilant hiss of the south wind, the scirocco or
Foéhn, as it can still be heard, and there are the rivers rushing
down headlong among rocky valleys and literally smiting the
banks with their force and speed: V, 82-4,
nam neque me tantum uenientis sibilus Austri
nec percussa iuuant fluctu tam litora, nec quae
saxosas inter decurrunt flumina ualles.
There is the Bora, or North wind, which, coming down over the
fields of snow, is still the icy wind of those regions and makes
the fire as delightful to moderns as it did to Vergil: VII, 49-52,
Hic focus et taedae pingues, hic plurimus ignis
semper, et adsidua postes caligine nigri ;
hic tantum Boreae curamus frigora quantum
aut numerum lupus aut torrentia flumina ripas.
There are no wolves to-day, but in every other detail the picture
is true to our own time.
So it is also with the glades in the midst of the groves; they
open out among the trees and, as the cattle love the open spaces
for pasture, you can almost always find their tracks in rich grass ;
VI, 56-8,
nemorum iam claudite saltus,
si qua forte ferant oculis sese obuia nostris
errabunda bouis uestigia.
Then again there are the wayside shrines; an image of
Priapus is put to watch over a garden and offerings are laid
before him, VIII, 34-5,
sinum lactis et haec te liba, Priape, quotannis
exspectare sat est; custos es pauperis horti.
So we may still see images watching over villages or houses or
gardens; they are Catholic images to-day, wayside crosses or
shrines to various saints, but their function is no doubt the same,
and one can still see the offerings laid before them, though the
modern offerings are only flowers.
In the Georgics the evidences of mountain scenery are not
numerous, but do certainly occur: I, 48,
Vere nouo, gelidus canis cum montibus umor
liquitur et Zephyro putris se glaeba resoluit.
Here we have snow-covered mountains with the snow melting |
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES 13
in spring and a very fair degree of hard frost in the ground itself,
which implies high altitudes. The chilly and cold nights are
mentioned here also, I, 284-8,
multa adeo gelida melius se nocte dedere,
aut cum sole nouo terras inrorat EKous.
At times the snow lies deep and the rivers carry down ice; the
latter is most likely to be found where the rivers originate in
glaciers or near by ; when we remember how rare the appearance
of such water-borne ice is in English rivers, we can see that it
must be rare indeed in the latitude of Italy ! unless the rivers
bearing it themselves originate at a high level: I, 310,
cum nix alta iacet, glaciem cum flumina trudunt.
The rush and fury of the streams suggests the same thing, as in
the wonderful description of the damage done by heavy rains.
Flood-waters do damage everywhere ; but the river fills the more
rapidly and violently if its descent is steep: I, 325-6,
implentur fossae et caua flumina crescunt
cum sonitu, feruetque fretis spirantibus aequor.
Another passage which seems to allude to fairly high regions
is to be found in III, 315-7,
nec tibi tam prudens quisquam persuadeat auctor
tellurem Borea rigidam spirante mouete ;
rura gelu tum claudit hiemps.
Here the ground is made hard and rigid by the frost when the
Bora or North wind blows.
Again, the intense cold of winter ‘shaggy with frost’ is
mentioned as causing diseases in sheep: III, 441-3,
ubi frigidus imber
altius ad uiuum persedit et horrida cano
_ bruma gelu.
The last phrase, while it may mean that winter is ‘ shivering ’
or ‘ goose-fleshy ’ with cold, might also seem to suggest the rough
or shagey ice and frost with which the mountain rocks are covered
at that season. A little later the Noric Alps are definitely men-
tioned as the deserted dwellings of shepherds, deserted because
of the great cattle-plague: III, 474-7,
1 Contrast the mention of snow as a portentous thing, Homer, /1., X,
7 (paralleled with ‘ great rain unspeakable,’ hail, and war) ; Horace, Odes,
I, 2,1; cf. Julian, Misopogon, 341 C (blocks of ice floating down the Seine ;
he is at some trouble to make his Antiochene audience apprehend what
they looked like: aagépeoev 6 motapdcs doneo magudgov nAduac. iote dyjnov
tov Dodyrov Aifov tov Aevudy' todvtm éduer pwddiota tad xovotadla).
14 THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
tum sciat, aérias Alpes et Norica si quis
castella in tumulis et Iapydis arua Timaui
nune quoque post tanto uideat desertaque regna
pastorum et longe saltus lateque uacantis.
The Georgics, however, deal mainly with agriculture and are,
as we should expect, concerned chiefly with the plain.
It is not difficult to reconstruct from Vergil’s poems the life
of his youth. His father’s farm was in all probability at Cal-
visano, closely adjoining, almost among the foot-hills of the Alps.
The cattle would be driven up to the hills for pasture, progressing
higher and higher as the season advanced and the grass withered
away on the lower slopes. The poet himself may well have been,
at least now and then, one of his father’s herdboys, and followed
the animals into the higher pastures; he may have seen and
probably did see with his own eyes all the life he described in his
Kclogues. Much of it, the shepherds, cowherds and goatherds
leading out their flocks in the morning, counting them when they
change pasture at midday and counting them again when they
bring them home at night, the herdsmen themselves piping alone
or in concert, the animals following the sound of the pipe,—all
this can still be seen in the remoter Alpine valleys.
Vergil as a nature-poet is neither imitative nor confused ; on
the contrary he is remembering, with a strict accuracy, what he
himself had seen. His vines, his apple-orchards, his chestnuts,
his beech-woods and pines, could all have been seen in the course
of one day’s march, if that march had been somewhat long. The
peculiar union of vine and beech-wood and pine-grove is not an
inaccuracy ; it is only a combining of one zone with another, as
the herdsman does actually wander up and down. The poems
are full of details which are, in every respect, true to the mountain
region ; the long shadows of the hills at evening, the cold nights,
the abundance of early morning dew, the wild thyme, the crowds
of grasshoppers and bees, the ground covered with wild straw-
berries, the marshes between the pine-woods and the open glades
where the tracks of the cattle show plainly in the grass, the white
mountain bull reclining on the flowers, the goats feeding on —
bushes and hanging from the cliff or wandering down in the river- |
bed, the abundance of fresh, cold, beautiful water which keeps its |
icy chill even in the torrid heat of the day and is never stagnant
but always sweet, the caves in which the goatherd can shelter
from the blazing sun, the abrupt and broken cliffs, the moss by |
THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES 15
the fountains and the wonderful softness and freshness and
emerald green of the grass, springing again after every shower :
all these things are most truly, accurately and finely observed
and presented in a series of pictures of an immortal beauty.
It is not surprising that Vergil should have loved this land-
scape. The region is one of the most beautiful in Europe ;
associated with his home and his childhood, it must have been
doubly sweet to him ; we know the poet to have been delicate
in health and we can imagine how often, when suffering from the
torrid heat of the mid-Italian plain or of Naples, he must have
thought with longing of the cool fresh waters and ever-springing
verdure of his early home.
Notre.—The Second Hclogue. Professor Conway is so much nearer
right than the majority of commentators that it seems ungracious to pick
flaws in his remarks ; but we gravely doubt the assertion that all the even-
numbered Kclogues are fanciful or foreign in their setting (some of course
are, notably the Fourth and Tenth), and especially the interpretation of
the Second as having its scene laid in Sicily.
Corydon, says Vergil (II, 4), used to sing haec incondita, * these things-
not-neatly-put-together.’ Is that ‘these rude strains’? It may be so,
but we doubt it. Corydon isa skilful singer, renowned also for his piping
(see 23, and still more 34-38) ; and although the poem is early, its technique
is exquisite, and Vergil knew it, and was proud of his work (see V, 86, and
compare VII, where the victorious singer is named Corydon ; the difficult
last line
ex ulo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis
seems to mean that the very name was proverbial for a great musician).
It seems then equally good Latin and much better sense to take it as mean-
ing ‘this medley.’ For, like the serenader in Theokritos’ third Idyll,
Corydon does not sing one song, but many. The breaks are obvious
enough to anyone reading the poem with attention. 6-13 is the Lover
at Noonday, developed from Theokritos’ noonday walk (Idyll, VII, 21-25)
plus his Lover at Midnight (Id. II, 38-39). The scene may as well be the
Italian foot-hills above the Mantuan territory as any place in Sicily.
14-18 is an appeal to Alexis’ jealousy, an attempt to comfort himself by
reflecting that he has other loves, and a warning to beauty not to be cruel,
Vnkindly if true love bee vsed
Twill yeeld thee little grace.
28-35 is the praises of the country ; 36-44, Corydon’s gifts; 45-55,
those of Nature, and of Corydon also. Then come 56—59, the awakening
( rusticus es, Corydon ’), continued 66—73, after the last passionate appeal
of 60-65. What then of 19-27? Asall the rest refers plainly to Corydon,
so must this. But Corydon is not a giant, nor a rich freeman owning
cattle ; nor is he at the seaside, or in Sicily. How then can he have a
thousand ewe-lambs straying on the mountains of Sicily, and how can he
be so tall as to use the sea for a mirror ? The answer is simple. He is
identifying himself, in his love-lorn state, with the love-lorn Cyclops who
16 THE SCENERY OF VERGIL’S ECLOGUES
tried to soften the hard heart of Galatea. So many a modern lover has
identified himself with Romeo, though neither noble nor a Veronese, or
with Lovelace’s Cavalier, although he never had his leg across a horse
and has not the faintest intention of using a sword. In other words,
19-27 form the Cyclops-song, to which Vergil returns again and again.
Those who want a complete list of the passages in which Vergil imitates
the two Cyclops-Idylls of Theokritos (the Sixth and Eleventh) may consult
Hosius’ edition of the Eclogues (in Lietzmann’s Kleine Texte). We men-
tion only a few of the most striking.
Ec. II, 19-27 = Theokr. VI, 34-38 + XI, 34-38.
» », 40-42, suggested by Theokr. XI, 40-41.
9 » 45-52, iy si5 5 XI, 42 + 45-46.
» », 69-73 = Theokr. XI, 72-76.
Ec. VIII, 37-8, suggested by Theokr. XI, 19-21. By way of indicating
that his Corydon identifies himself with the amorous giant, Vergil writes,
not sz qua tur Cyclopis, but si qua tui Corydonis habet te cura, uenito. The
rest is pure Cyclops.
fic. VIII, 33-34, suggested by Theokr. XI, 30-33.
fic. VIII, 37-41 = Theokr. XI, 25-29.
fic. 1X, 39-45 = Theokr. XI, 42-49.
Why was Vergil so haunted by these passages ? We are inclined to
think that the ancient commentators on Eclogue II are half right, and that
he was Corydon, or Corydon-Cyclops, himself. Tall, dark, always shy
and awkward, with nothing personally attractive about him save his lovely
voice, and at the same time of an amorous temperament ! ; is it not likely
that he, who wrote with such power and feeling of despised love, had him-
self been a despised lover ? And is it not more than probable that, like
the Sicilian giant, he would turn for relief to song ?
ovtw tot IloAvqapos énoiwawev tov gowta
fovoiadwy, odov dé diay’ 7 Et yovoov eéwxer.
L. WINSTANLEY.
H. J. ROSE.
1Corpore et statura fuit grandi, aquilo colore, facie rusticana .. .
libidinis . . . pronioris . . . uulgatum est consuesse eum et cum Plotia
Hieria (Donatus, Vita Vergiliana, 7-8). Pronuntiabat autem cum
suauitate et lenociniis miris (tbid. 28).
——— SSeS Sal
MORE GLEANINGS IN JAMES HOWELL’S
LETTERS?
Gne Vote, ll, 231) 232, p. 12.(1642, p. 11),?
Late may his life, his Glory ne’re weare out,
Tull the great yeare of Plato wheele about.
In his reference to James Adam’s treatise on the Nuptial Number
of Plato, Jacobs misnames the author and gives a wrong title to
the work. The cycle which Adam arrives at is 36,000. Muddle the
carpenter, alias ‘“ Philosopher Chips,’ in Marryat’s ‘ Peter Simple,’
believed that every event repeated itself after a period of 27,692 years.
“TI could never make him explain,’ says Peter, “upon what data his
calculations were founded : he said, that if he explained it, I was too young
to comprehend it.’ 3
Book I., Sect. 1, x., p. 34 (1645, p. 18), Iam now newly com
to The Hague, the Court of the six (and almost seven) confederated
Provinces.
What Howell means by “ almost seven ”’ is seen by his ‘ Survey of the
Seventeen Provinces,’ in I., Sect. 2, xv., where he writes, “‘ I will now steer
my discours to the united Provinces as they term themselfs, which are
six in number, viz. Holland, Zeland, Frisland, Overyssell, Gronnighen and.
Virecht, three parts of Gilderland, and some Frontyre Towns and places of
contribution in Brabant and Flanders.”’
Book I., Sect. 1, xii., p. 38 (1645, p. 22), The tumults in
Bohemia grow hotter and hotter, they write how the great Councell
at Prague fell to such a hurliburly, that som of those Senators
who adherd to the Emperour, were thrown out at the Windows,
wher som were maim’d, som broak their Necks.
For the famous Fenstersturz of May 23, 1618, see Anton Gindely’s
* Geschichte des dreissigjahrigen Krieges,’ Part I., vol. i., chap. 5, section 3.
1See Vols. III., IV., V., VI., and VIII. of Aberystwyth Studies.
* The reference given before each extract is to Joseph Jacobs’s edition
of the Letters, 1890-2, followed in brackets by the paging of the volume
or section of the earliest edition in which the letter appeared. The text
and spelling are those of the earliest editions.
3 For the later and revised statement of Adam’s argument see his
edition of the ‘ Republic ’ (1902), vol. ii., pp. 264-318.
17
18 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
The three victims, Martinitz, Slawata, and the secretary Fabricius, had the
good fortune to escape with their lives, though Slawata was injured by
striking a projection in his fall. It is curious that Howell should have
published this highly incorrect account of the incident more than a
quarter of a century afterwards.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxiii., p. 58 (1645, p. 44), I might spie som
Trees laden with dead Carcases, a better Fruit far then Diogenes
Tree bore, wheron a Woman had hang’d her self, which the Cynic
eryed out to be the best bearing Tree that ever he saw.
We get this again in I., 6, lx., “‘ And a wilder speech it was of the Cynic,
when passing by a Tree where a Maid had made herself away, wish’d, That
all Trees might bear such fruit.” It comes from Diogenes Laertius, vi. 2, 52,
"Iddy mote yuvaixac dm’ éhatac dnnyyoviouévac, ei0e, pn, advta ta dévdoa
Towvtoy xaonov Fveyxev. Cicero, ‘De Oratore,’ ii., 69, 278, tells of a
Syracusan begging for a slip of the tree on which a neighbour’s wife
had hanged herself, and Quintilian, vi., 3, 88, has taken the story from
him.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxxi., p. 70 (1645, p. 58), She hath . . . with
her Gallies often preserv’d Saint Peters Bark from sinking ; for
which, by way of reward, one of his Successors espous’d her to the
Sea.
The successor was Alexander III. The origin and history of the
famous ceremony are traced in Horatio F. Brown’s ‘ Venice’ (1893). It
commemorated originally the conquest, 1000 a.p., by the doge Orseolo
(Pietro Orseolo II.) of the Dalmatian pirates: ‘“‘ The form this com-
memoration took was that of a solemn procession from Venice out into the
open sea. . .. The ceremony was one of supplication and placation ; the
formula in earliest use consisted in the prayer, ‘ Grant, O Lord, that for us,
and for all who sail thereon, the sea may be calm and quiet. .. .’ After
which the Doge and his suite were aspersed, and the rest of the water was
poured into the sea, while the priests chanted the words, ‘ Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean.’”’ (Op. cit., p. 69.)
Pope Alexander III. in 1177 as a reward for the help given by Venice
in resisting the Emperor Frederick I. gave the doge a ring and ordered him
to cast a similar ring into the sea each year on Ascension Day, and so wed
the sea (see the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ under Bucentaur). “A
sacramental complexion was given to the ancient ceremony of Ascension
Day. Instead of a placatory or expiatory function it became nuptial.
Henceforth the Doge every year dropped a consecrated ring into the sea,
and with the words Desponsamus te, mare, declared that Venice and the sea
were indissolubly one.’? (Brown, p. 110.)
There is a lack of harmony among modern literary descriptions of this
union.
In Butler, ‘ Hudibras,’ II., u., 743,
Like Dukes of Venice, who are sed-
The Adriatique Sea to wed,
And have a gentler Wife, than those
For whom the State decrees those Shows.
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MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS 19
In Byron, ‘ Childe Harold,’ IV., xzi.,
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord.
But Wordsworth makes Venice the bride :
And when she took unto herself a mate
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
‘Sonnet on the Extinction of the Venetian Republic.’
moole 1 Sect: 1, xxxvill., p. 82 (1645, pp. 70, 71), With
Trasteren, and the Suburbs of Saint Peter she hath yet in com-
passe about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast circuit
she had in Claudius his time ; for Vopiscus writes she was then
of fifty miles circumference.
See, in the Augustan History, the life of Aurelian attributed to Vopiscus,
39, 2, “ Muros urbis Romae sic ampliavit ut quinquaginta prope milia
murorum elus ambitus teneant.’’ Fifty miles about is so lavish an estimate
that it has been proposed to amend the text. That Claudius’s reign is
assigned as the date can be explained by the latter emperor (Claudius IT.)’s
Life immediately preceding that of Aurelian in the ‘ Historia Augusta.’
By Trasteren is meant the quarter of Trastevere.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxxviii., p. 84 (1645, p. 73), the Obelisk.
The mention of merely one obelisk among the antiquities of Rome is
curious. There were several standing at the time of Howell’s visit. That
in front of St. Peter’s, that in the Piazza Navona, and that by the Lateran
Church might all have been expected to attract his attention.
Book I., Sect. 1, xxxviii., p. 84 (1645, p. 73), For the genius
of the Roman hath bin alwayes much taken with Imagery,
Limming, and Sculptures, insomuch, that as in former times, so
now, | beleeve the Statues and Pictures in Rome, exceed the
number of living people.
Compare Gibbon, ‘ Decline and Fall,’ chap. xvii., ‘“‘ That inanimate
people, which, according to the extravagant computation of an old writer,
was scarcely inferior in number to the living inhabitants of Rome.”’
The “old writer ”’ is not identified in Bury’s notes. He is Cassiodorus,
who wrote, Variae, VII., xv., 3, ‘“‘ Has [statuas] primum Tusci in Italia
invenisse referuntur, quas amplexa posteritas paene parem populum urbi
dedit quam natura procreavit.”’ The context shews that it is bronze
Statues especially of which the writer is thinking.
Book I., Sect. 1, xlii., p. 93 (1645, p. 83), The Duke of Feria
is now Governour, and being brought to kisse his hands, he us’d
me with extraordinary respect, as he doth all of our Nation, being
by the maternall side a Dormer.
See “ Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica,’ New Series, vol. iv. (1884),
p. 99. According to the pedigree there given, Sir William Dormer, K.B.,
married Mary, daughter of Sir William Sydney, and their daughter Jane
(said in Burke’s Peerage to have been maid of honour to Queen Mary)
20 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
married Don Gomez Suarez, first Duke of Feria. Don Lorenzo, Duke of
Feria, was their son, and his son was Don Gomez, Duke of Feria.
See also the life of Jane Dormer in the D.N.B., and, for her husband,
Froude’s ‘ History of England,’ chapter XXXVI.
Book I., Sect. 1, xliv., p. 97 (1645, p. 87), To Mr. Tho. Bowyer,
from Lions.
There is no proof that this Thomas Bowyer is the same as the man
whose funeral sermon is incidentally mentioned in the passage of Wood’s
Athenae referred to by Jacobs, and he assuredly is not the Bowyer (“ Mr.’’,
not “‘ Dr.’’) of the ‘ Fairfax Correspondence,’ 11., 37, who “‘ for charging Laud
with Popish tendencies, was fined £3,000, branded on the forehead, and had
his ears nailed to the pillory.”’ He(Gardiner, ‘ Hist. of England,’ vii., 302)
was “‘ One Ludowick Bowyer, a young man of good family, who may have
been mad, and was certainly a thief and a swindler.”
Book I., Sect. 2, vii., p. 105 (1645, p. 8), Nor doe I heare of
any legacie she [Queen Anne] left at all to her daughter in Ger-
many, for that match some say lessened something of her affection
towards her ever since, so that she would often call her goody
Palsegrave.
The Lloyd who, as Jacobs notes, is stated in D’Ewes’s Autobiography,
i., 189, to have been censured for saying ‘‘ What has become of your
goodman Palsgrave ?”’ was Edward Floyd, Floud, or Lloyd, a Roman
Catholic barrister. See the D.N.B.
Book I., Sect. 2, viii., p. 107 (1645, p. 9), Here you have .. .
your Muscadell Grapes in such plentie that there are some bottles
of wine sent every year to the King; And one Mr. Daniel a
worthy Gentleman hard by, who hath bin long abroad, makes
good store in his Vintage.
Jacobs does not attempt to identify Mr. Daniel. But see Augustine
Page’s ‘Supplement to the Suffolk Traveller’ (1844), p. 914, and ‘ The
Manors of Suffolk. Notes on their History and Devolution,’ by W. A.
Copinger, vol. I., ‘The Hundreds of Babergh and Blackbourn,’ 1905,
under ‘ Acton.’ In this parish, a few miles distant from Long Me'ford,
the manors of Clerbeck and Rokewodes were at the date of Howell’s letter
in the possession of the Daniel family. On the death of John Daniel in
1596 both manors had devolved to his brother Francis, who married
Margaret, daughter of Roger Martyn of Long Melford, and left a son John
Daniel who inherited the property and died in 1638. The “ worthy
Gentleman ”’ of Howell’s letter, dated 20 March 1621 from Lord Savage’s
House in Long Melford, was either Francis or John Daniel. A closer
search might decide between them. Their residence was Acton Place,
which stood on the site of the old mansion of the Clerbecks. The Daniels’s
estate was ultimately bought by Robert Jennens, aide-de-camp to the
great Duke of Marlborough.
MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS 21
Book I., Sect. 2, xv., p. 115 (1645, p. 19), A survey of the
seventeen Provinces.
In a note on the long letter, or rather discourse, with the above title,
which Howell addresses to Lord Colchester, Jacobs asserts that ‘“‘ Evelyn
or Feltham’s satiric Character of the Low Countries, 1660 . . . has been
erroneously attributed to Howell.’ The work to which Jacobs refers was
not by Evelyn but by Owen Feltham, ‘A Brief Character of the Low
Countries under the States: being three weeks observation of the vices
and virtues of the inhabitants.’ Pirated editions appeared in 1648 and
1652. The authorised edition was published anonymously in 1652, and
under Feltham’s name in 1662, and in the 8th edition of his ‘ Resolves.’
Book L., Sect. 2, xvii., p. 130 (1645, p. 34), Here is news that
Mansfelt hath receiv’d a foyl lately in Germany, and that the
Duke of Brunswick, alias Bishop of Halverstadt hath lost one of
his arms.
Christian of Brunswick, Bishop of Halberstadt, lost his left arm by a
wound at the battle of Fleurus, 29 August (N.S8.), 1622, when Count
Mansfeld and he defeated the Spanish force under Gonsalvo de Cordova.
Christian replaced his missing arm with one of silver. The amputation
was performed in the sight of his army, to the sound of drums and trum-
pets.
Book I., Sect. 3, iv., p. 149 (1645, pp. 54, 55), The Jesuits
have put out a geering libell against it, and these two verses I
remember in’t,
Dordrectt Synodus ? nodus ; chorus integer ? ceger ;
Conventus ? ventus ; Sessio stramen, Amen.
But I wil confront this Distich with another I read in Fraice of
the Jesuits in the Town of Dole, towards Lorain; they had a
great house given them calld L’arc (arcum) and upon the river
of Loir, Henry the fourth gave them la fleche, sagittam in latin,
where they have two stately Convents, that is, Bow and Arrow ;
Whereupon one made these verses :
Arcum Dola dedit, dedit illis alma sagittam
Francia ; quis chordam, quam meruere, dabit ?
Faire France the Arrow, Dole gave them the Bow,
Who shall the String which they deserve bestow ?
Fuller produces a somewhat different version. As an illustration of the
amazing vicissitudes which overtake anecdotes and epigrams, it may be
mentioned that not long ago a contributor to Notes and Queries gave a
version of the Arcum Nola dedit distich, ending with dabo, and asserted
that the author was one of his father’s school-fellows at the Jesuit College,
who had the name of Dabo.
22 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
Book I., Sect. 3, xiii., p. 162 (1645, p. 68), Don Rodrigo
Calderon, a great man (who was lately beheaded here for poisning
the late Queen dowager).
Jacobs has no note on the great man. He was a son of Francisco.
Calderon by a German or Flemish woman at Antwerp of the name of
Maria Sandelin. Taken into the service of the Duke of Lerma he was
speedily advanced, becoming Secretary of State, Count of Oliva, Marquis
Siete Iglesias, and Captain of the King’s German bodyguard. He was
accused of having poisoned various people and of deceiving the King.
After Philip III.’s death he was beheaded in October, 1621.
Book L[., Sect. 3, xxvii., p. 187 (1645, p. 95); But when vve vvere
thus at the height of our hopes, a day or tvvo before there came
Mr. Killigree, Gresley, Wood and Davies, one upon the neck of
another with a new Comission to my Lord Bristoll immediatly
from his Majesty, countermanding him to deliver the Proxy
aforesaid, untill a full and absolut satisfaction were had for the
surrendry of the Palatinat. ...
For Walsingham Gresley, c. 1585-1633, 8th and youngest child of
Sir Thomas Gresley (1552-1610) by his 2nd wife, Katherine daughter of
Sir Thomas Walsingham of Beadhay, Kent, and Scadbury in Staffordshire,
see Mr. Falconer Madan’s ‘ The Gresleys of Drakelow’ (1898).
Book I., Sect. 4, vi., p. 216 (1645, p. 6),
To D.C.
The Bearer hereof hath no other arrand, but to know how you
do, and this Paper is his credentiall Letter ; therefore I pray
dispatch him back, and write to us accordingly
Your true Frend J. 4.
This slender note was expanded a little in the next edition (1650), the
words “‘in the Countrey ”’ being inserted after ‘‘ how you do,” while from
‘“* Therefore I pray’ the remainder reads thus: ‘“‘ hasten his dispatch,
and if you please send him back like the man in the Moon, with a basket of
your fruit on his back.”’ A date is added: ‘‘ London this Aug. 10, 1624.”
Book I., Sect. 4, ix., p. 220 (1645, p. 10), If you are bent to
wed, I wish you anothergetts Wife then Socrates had.
For ‘ anothergets,’’ the transitional form between ‘‘ anothergates ’”
and ‘‘ anotherguess,’’ no literary example is given by the N.E.D., but only
a reference to a glossary of North-country words.
Book I., Sect. 4, xvii., p. 231 (1645, p. 23), The sinking of the:
long Robin with 170 souls in her, in the Bay of Biscay, ere she had.
gon half the voyage was no good augury.
H
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See ‘ The Voyage to Cadiz in 1625. Being a Journal written by John
Glanville secretary to the Lord Admiral of the Fleet ’ (Camden Soc., 1883).
On p. 126 of this, in the list of the Vice-Admiral’s Squadron, is the
Robert, Capt. Gurling, 244 Tonnes, Seamen 37, Landmen 138.
On pp. 26, 27, is a notice of a “‘ Councell of Warr holden abord the Anne
Royall, Tuesday, 18 Octob. 1625.”” Among “ the deffectes and losses that
had happened in the late storme,”’ it was ordered to be recorded “that the
Long Robert, a Marchante’s shipp of the ffleete, of the burthen of 240
and odd tunnes, wherein were 37 Sea men, 138 land men, was drowned
in the storme neare to his Matie’s shipp the Convertive, whoe sent out her
long boate to have saved some of the Men belonging to the Robert. How-
ever the long boate not onlie fayled to save the other Men but perished
herselfe in the service.”
See also ‘ State Papers,’ Domestic Series, Nov. 2, 1625, Sir Thos. Love
to Nicholas, reporting that in the storm of the 12th Oct. they lost the
Long Robert, with 175 men, 1 ketch and all their long boats.
Also 8.P., Domestic Series, 1626 [August ?], Petition of owners and
| masters of ships belonging to Ipswich to the Council: ‘‘ 24 ships of
Ipswich were taken up for the expedition to Cadiz, on each of which their
owners expended from 80/. to 1001. of which they cannot yet receive any
part ; many servants of the petitioners, who were pressed into the service,
served for 13 months, and received only 9s. 4d. per month; the Long
Robert, one of the 24 ships, was lost with all hands, to the utter undoing
of many poor mariners’ wives and loss to the owners of 1,200l., for which
they have not received any recompense.”’
Book I., Sect. 6, 1., p. 293 (1645, p. 1), To P. W. Esq; at the
Signet Office, from the English House in Hamburgh.
If by P. W. is meant Philip, afterwards Sir Philip, Warwick, it should be
noted that he was not appointed a Clerk of the Signet until November 13,
1638, while the present letter is dated 1632.
Book L., Sect. 6, ii., p. 294 (1645, p. 2), He was brought thither
from Glukstad in indifferent good equippage, both for Coaches and
Waggons.
By blind adherence to the 1737 edition in printing “ different ’’ instead
of “indifferent ’’ Jacobs destroys the sense of this passage. The corrup-
tion is an obvious example of haplography, and might have been con-
fidently corrected by an alert editor without knowledge of the original
reading.
Book I., Sect. 6, iii., p. 297 (1645, p. 5), So that I do not find
they ever had any Protector, but the great Master of Prussia.
By the “ great Master of Prussia ’’ Howell appears to mean the Hoch-
meister of the Deutscher Orden (Teutonic Knights).
Book I., Sect. 6, v., p. 304 (1645, p. 14), Then we came to
Stode, wher Lesley was Governour, who carried his foot in a Scarf
24 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
for a wound he had receiv’d at Buckstoho, and he kept that place
for the King of Sweden.
Stode is the anglicized form of Stade. Lesley is Alexander Leslie, first
Earl of Leven (1580?-1661). By Buckstoho, printed in a later edition as.
Buckstobo, is meant Boxtelude.
Book I., Sect. 6, vii., p. 306 (1645, p. 16),
Permulsit initium, percussit finis.
I cannot indicate any source for this. The expression would certainly
gain in point if the second verb were perculsit. ‘There is authority in late
Latin for perculsi instead of the classical perculi, as the perfect of percellere,
and percellere is a more emphatic word than percutere.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxxi., p. 333 (1645, p. 46),
Sic vaticinatur Hoellus.
For the literary ‘‘artist’s signature’? compare ‘“‘ Sic singuitivit J. H.,”’
iv., xlix., and as a mediaeval example the “ Quop Hendyng ”’ at the end
of successive stanzas of Hendyng’s proverbs, pp. 285-300, ‘ Altenglische
Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253,’ edited by K. Béddeker, Berlin, 1878 ;
and, for a modern instance, ‘‘ Sic cogitabat yours ever E. F. G.’’, in a
letter to W. F. Pollock dated June 24, 1842, in ‘More Letters of Edward
FitzGerald.’
Boddeker compares the Hendyng proverbs with some in French where
at the end of each stanza is “ceo dist le vilain’’ or “ce dit le vilain.”
Gwilym Pue subscribes his ‘Opinio de Vaticiniis seu Predictionibus
Brittannicis’ with ‘sic arbitratur Gulielmus Pue,’ Autograph MS. of
his ‘ Opera et Miscellania (sic),’ 1676, p. 502, MS. 4710B. in the National
Library of Wales.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxxiii., p. 337 (1645, p. 51), The greatest
news we have hear is, that we have a new Lord Tresurer, and ’tis
news indeed in these times, though ‘twas no news you know in
the times of old to have a Bishop Lord Tresurer of England. 1
beleeve he was meerly passive in this busines ; the active instru-
ment that put the white Staff in his hands, was the Metropolitan
at Lambeth. :
For “new” in the first sentence “ Bishop” is substituted in later
editions.
Book I., Sect. 6, xxxvii., p. 342 (1645, p. 57), Your most
learned Work, De primordus Ecclesiarum Britannicarum you
pleas’d to send me, I have sent to England, and so it shall be sent
to Jesus-Colledg in Ozford, as a gift from your Grace.
In reply to my inquiries Mr. H. J. George, Fellow and Librarian of
Jesus College, has very kindly furnished the following information : ‘‘ The
MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS = 25
same gift of Archbishop Usher’s book is mentioned by Dr. Hardy in his
history of Jesus College. There is however no copy of ‘ De primordiis.
Eeclesiarum Britannicarum ’ in the college library though several other
of Usher’s books are in the library. There is some evidence that Usher
resided in Jesus College during one year. I have carefully been through
the college records and, though there isa fairly complete record of bene-
factors to the library, there is no record of any gift by James Howell.
The copies of James Howell’s books in the library bear no record of
having been given by the author.”’
Book I., Sect. 6, xlvili., p. 357 (1645, p. 70), And let the
English peeple flatter themselves as long as they will, that they
are free, yet are they in effect, but prisoners, as all other Islanders
are :
See Robert Burton, ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy,’ Partition 2, section
3, member 4, 5th edition, 1638, p. 334, ‘‘ What I have said of servitude, I
_ say againe of imprisonment, We are all prisoners. What is our life but a.
prison ? We are all imprisoned in an Iland.”’
Dr. Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale (Sept. 24, 1773) says “‘ I am still in
Skie. Do you remember the song ?
Ev’ry island is a prison,
Strongly guarded by the sea.”
G. Birkbeck Hill in his edition of ‘Johnson’s Letters,’ vol. i., no. 327,
mentions that the song is one by Coffey [Charles Coffey, died 1745, see
the D.N.B.] beginning
Welcome, welcome, brother debtor,
To this poor but merry place,
Where no bailiff, dun, nor setter,
Dares to show his frightful face !
Hill refers to this letter of Howell and suggests that Coffey may. have read
the passage in Burton. For the text of the song he refers to Ritson’s.
‘English Songs’ (1813), ii., 122.
The lines which Johnson remembered (not quite exactly) are in the
latter half of Stanza III.,
Every island’s but a prison,
Strongly guarded by the sea,
Kings and Princes for that reason,
Prisoners are as well as we.
Book I1., i., p. 376 (1647, p. 4), I never saw such a disparity
between two that were made one flesh; Hee, handsome out-
wardly, but of odd conditions; Shee excellently qualified, but
hard favourd; so that the one may be compar’d to a cloth of
_ tissue doublet, cut upon coorse canvas; the other to a buckram
Petticoat lin’d with Sattin.
“ A cloth of tissue doublet, cut upon coorse canvas ”’ is illustrated by a
_ passage in Butler’s ‘ Hudibras,’ I., i., 91-98,
His ordinary Rate of Speech
In loftiness of sound was rich,
26 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
A Babylonish dialect,
Which learned Pedants much affect.
It was a parti-colour’d dress
Of patch’d and pyball’d Languages :
"Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like Fustian heretofore on Sattin.
On the last line Zachary Grey observes “ A fashion, from the manner of
expression, probably not then in use, where the coarse fustian was pinked,
or cut into holes, that the fine satin might appear through it: See an
account of the slashing, pinking, and cutting of doublets, Dr. Bulwer’s
‘ Artificial Changeling,’ 1654, p. 537. The author of a book entitled “A
short Character of France,’ 1659, p. 34, compares their finest pieces of
architecture to satin pinked upon canvas.”
Book II., ui., p. 377 (1647, pp. 6 and 7), In my last I writ to
you that Ch. Mor. was dead, (I meant in a morall sense) . . . you
know Kit hath a Poetic fancy.
Jacobs has the following notes :
1. “C. Mor. Obviously from what follows a Christopher Mor, but
neither Lowndes nor Allibone know of such an English author.”
2. “ Kat, short for Christopher. Surely H. is not referring to Kit
Marlowe, died 1593.”
To 1.may be replied that from the full stop which Howell places after
** Mor ”’ it is obvious that we have not a complete name but an abbrevia-
tion concealing, say, Morgan or Morris. Whoever is meant, we need not
assume that he must have published verse to be called a poet. His songs,
or whatever he wrote, may well have been passed from hand to hand in MS.
2. Why should anyone dream that he refers to Marlowe ?
Book IL., iv., p. 379 (1647, p. 10), They must needs be strong
when one hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred paire of
oxen. 3
On ‘ one hair of a woman ”’ Jacobs has this note: “‘ Possibly the source,
certainly a parallel, of Pope’s ‘And woman draws us with a single hair.’
° Rape of Lock, ii. 28.” In the first place Pope did not write this. He
wrote ‘‘ And beauty draws us... .”’ In the second his line is far closer to
Dryden’s Persius, v. 247, given in Elwin’s note:
She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,
Can draw you to her with a single hair.
Book I1., xi., p. 398 (1647, p. 41), His Schollar Aristotle com-
mended himself at his death to the Being of beings.
In one version of the legend he invokes the Hns entium, in another the
Causa causarum. I have seen the ‘De Pomo’ referred to as a source,
but have not found this prayer in that work, a Latin translation from a
Hebrew version of an Arabic original which describes an imaginary con-
versation between Aristotle on his deathbed and his disciples. Aristotle
keeps himself alive by smelling an apple which he holds in his hand. But
in a 15th century edition (Brit. Mus. I.A. 49867) of the ‘ Liber de vita et
MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS 27
morte Arestotelis omnium philosophorum principis,’ a poem in rhyming
hexameters, the following occurs as part of the accompanying commentary :
“ Concludo ergo finaliter et cum veritate dico, quod Arestoteles per dei
misericordiam quam ex intimo cordis affectu implorauit dicens O ens
entium miserere mei sua sancta ac preciosa morte potitus, translatus est ad
eterne beatitudinis solium.”’
Book II., xiii., p. 403 (1647, p. 49), T. Ca. busd me in the eare,
that though Ben had barreld up a great deale of knowledge, yet
it seemes he had not read the Hthiques, which among other pre-
cepts of morality forbid self commendation, declaring it to be an
ill favoured solecism in good manners.
Was Robert Browning familiarly acquainted with this letter ? There
are what might possibly be reminiscences of it, in 1. 1 of ‘ Confessions ’ in
‘Dramatis Personae,’
What is he buzzing in my ears ?
and in the last words of ‘ At the Mermaid’ in ‘ Pacchiarotto,’ ete.,
‘““(Manners, Ben).”’
II., xvili., p. 410 (1647, p. 60), I do not see how she could
support a war long to any purpose if Castile were quiet, unles
souldiers would be contented to take cloves and pepper-corns, for
Patacoons and Pistolls.
For the history and etymology of Patacoon see the N.E.D., where it is
defined as a Portuguese and Spanish silver coin worth in the 17th century
about 4s. 8d. The Pistole was a Spanish gold coin worth at this time from
16s. 6d. to 18s. The Dict. observes that this latter coin was not known
by any corresponding name in Spain or Italy. Patacoons occur again
in IV., xlvii.
Book I1., xx., p. 412 (1647, p. 63), The cramp, as I take it,
is a sudden convulsion of the nerves.
This is curiously suggestive of Falstaff’s remark, ‘King Henry IV.,’
Second Part, Act I., scene 11. 126, ‘“‘ This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of
lethargy, an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a
whoreson tingling.”
Book II., xxi., p. 413 (1647, p. 65), I thanke you heartily for
your last letter, in regard I found it smeld of the lamp, I pray
let your next doe so, and the oyle and labour shall not be lost
which you expend upon,
Your assured loving Uncle,
J. H.
For the source of the proverbial “‘ smelling of the lamp,”’ see Plutarch’s
Life of Demosthenes, chap. 8, éAAvyviwy slew. This criticism of Demos-
thenes’ oratory is attributed by Plutarch to Pytheas. This was pointed
out by J. E. B. Mayor in Notes and Queries, First Series, i. 371.
Pes—VOL. IX. C
28 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
Book II., xxii., p. 414 (1647, p. 66),
Could I but catch those beamy rayes, &c.
9
These ‘“‘ numbers ” of Howell’s in which the first four stanzas begin
with “ Couid I... .’’ remind us, longo intervallo, of Carew’s “‘ Ask me no
more.’ For the final couplet, instead of
And ’cause ungirt unblessed we find,
One of the zones her waist should bind,
the 1647 edition has the preposterous couplet
And cause Ide have her small v the wast
The Zodiac there should gird her fast.
II., xxix., p. 421 (1647, p. 85), Hereupon my thoughts ran
upon Grunnius sophista’s last Testament, who having nothing
else to dispose of but his body, he bequeathed all the parts thereof
in Legacies, as his skin to the Tanners, his bones to the dice
makers, his guts to the musitians, his fingers to the scriveners,
his tongue to his fellow sophisters (which were the Lawyers of
those times) and so forth.
The Testamentum of Grunnius Sophista Corocotta is given on page
xvii of the ‘Spuria ac Supposititia ’ in Gruter’s ‘ Inscriptiones ’ (1616),
and in Barnabas Brissonius, ‘ De Formulis’ (1583), lib. vii., pp. 756, 757.
Book IT., xli., p. 433 (1647, p. 104), To my B. the L. B. of B. in
France.
According to the usually received account Thomas Howell after taking
refuge with the King at Oxford was consecrated Bishop of Bristol by
Usher in August 1644, was present in Bristol during the siege and suffered
ill-treatment after the surrender of the city on September 10, 1645. But
the present letter is dated by his brother 2 May, 1645. Are we to suppose
that James Howell was at this time ignorant of his brother’s movements,
or that the date was carelessly affixed before publication, or that the letter
itself is a mere concoction ? But, in any case, what evidence is there of
Bishop having taken refuge in France ?
Book IL., lix., p. 474 (1647, p. 178), The Provensall, the Gascon
or speech of Languedoc, which Scalhger would etymologize from
Languedo’uy [sic], whereas it comes rather from Langue de Got for
the Saracens & Goths who by their incursions and long stay
in Aquitain corrupted the language of that part of Gallia.
Passing over the wild derivation from ‘‘ Langue de Got’’ we may
notice that Howell is under a delusion when he asserts that Scaliger
““etymologized”’ Languedoc from Langued’ouy. The blunder was evi-
dently caused by a piece of careless printing or editing in J. J. Scaliger’s
‘ Diatriba de hodiernis Francorum linguis,’ as it appeared in his ‘ Opuscula
Varia antehac non edita,’ Paris, 1610, with a long preface by Casaubon
addressed to J. A. de Thou. On p. 123 of the book we find this:
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Romanensis igitur idiotismus Galliae in duo summa fastigia diducitur,
in Francicum, et Tectosagicum, siue Prouinciale. Francicus Idiotismus
vulgo dicitur Langue d@Owi aliter autem Langue-doc, hoe est, inguae quae
pro NAS, aut ITA dicunt OVI, aut OC.
And this is reproduced in the enlarged Frankfort edition of Scaliger’s
Opuscula, in 1612. Only a careless or very ignorant reader could fail to
see that the sense must be restored by placing a stop after Langue d’Ow and
striking out the 7 of aliter.
Evidently there was not much care bestowed here on the editing of
Sealiger’s ‘Opuscula.’ The * Diatriba de hodiernis Francorum linguis’
contains the information which Scaliger had supplied to Paul Merula for
his “ Cosmographia Generalis,’ which was published in 1605. This par-
ticular passage is in Pars II., lib. 11. cap. xv., “‘. . . Francicus /diotismus
wulgo dicitur Langue d’Oui; alter Langue d’Oc. .. .”
Book IL., lx., p. 475 (1647, p. 180), The mother tongues of
Hurope are thirteen, though Scaliger would have but eleven.
See J. J. Scaliger’s ‘ Diatriba de Europaeorum Linguis’ in his ‘ Opuscula.
varia antehac non edita,’ Paris, 1610, p. 119, ‘‘ Sunto igitur nobis Matrices
eae, quae per omnia inter se discrepant, cuiusmodi XI, non amplius hodie
supersunt in vniversa Europa.”’
II., Ixvi., p. 491 (1647, p. 216), Your Father tells me that he
finds you are so wedded to the Italian and French that you utterly
neglect the Latine tongue; That’s not well, though you have
learnt to play at Baggammon, you must not forget Irish, which is a
more serious and solid game.
Trish is defined in the N.E.D. (s.v. ‘Irish,’ B.3) as “ An old game re-
sembling backgammon ”’ and said to be fully described in Cotton’s ‘ Com-
pleat Gamester ’ (1680), 109.
Book II., Ixxiil., stanza 4, p. 501 (1647, p. 231),
One past makes up the prince and peasan,
Though one eat rootes, the other feasan,
They nothing differ in the stuff,
But both extinguish lke a snv ff.
The pheasant figures similarly in the contrast between the diet of rich
and poor in Burton’s ‘ Anatomy of Melancholy,’ Partition 2, section 3,
member 3, p. 326 in 6th edition, 1651-2, ‘‘ There is a difference (he grumbles)
between Laplolly and Pheasants, to tumble i’ th’ straw and lye in a down-
bed, betwixt wine and water, a cottage and a palace.” For.‘ past’ in
line 1 compare Matthew Arnold’s expression ‘‘ The German paste in our
composition.”
Book II., Ixxvi., p. 507 (1647, pp. 241-242), If the Cedar be so
weather beaten, we poore shrubs must not murmure to beare part
of the storm.
30 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
Compare ‘The Vote,’ li. 40—42,
Thou fond fool-hardy Muse, thou silly thing,
Which ’mongst the shrubs and reeds do’st use to sing,
Dar’st thou perk up, and the tall Cedar clime ?
The cedar of the simile is taken from the Old Testament. Compare the
contrast between cedar and thistle in King Joash’s parable, II. Kings
xiv. 9; II. Chron. xxv. 18, and Solomon who “spake of trees, from the
cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of
the wall.’’ In Joseph Hall’s ‘ Defiance to Enuy,’ stanza i., at the begin-
ning of his ‘ Virgidemiae,’ the “‘ prouder Pines of Ida” that fear “ the
sudden fires of heauen’”’ are opposed to the “safer shrubs below.”
Cf. St. Augustine, ‘ Confessiones,’ ix., 4, 7, “Magis . .. gymnasi-
orum cedros . . . quam salubres herbas ecclesiasticas.”’
Book IIT., 1., p. 514 (1650, p. 4 of vol. 3), For news, the world
is heer turn’d upside down, and it hath bin long a going so, you
know a good while since we have had leather Caps, and Bever
shoos, but now the Arms are com to be leggs, for Bishops Laun-
sleeves are worn for Boot-hose tops ; |
Jacobs reproduces the absurd “* Boot-house tops ”’ of the 1737 edition.
Book III., vi., p. 520 (1650, p. 10), May such benedictions
attend you both, as the Epithalamiums of Stella in Statvus, and
Julia in Catullus speak of.
A reader unacquainted with Statius or Martial might be tempted at
first to think that Stella was the bride’s name. Stella was the bridegroom,
the bride was Violantilla (Statius, ‘ Silvae,’ I., 1.). The pair in Catullus
lxi. are probably Manlius and Vinia, though the latter name has been given
as Julia or Junia, and Manlius or Mallius. It has been suggested before
now that Swift chose the name Stella for Esther Johnson to indicate their
ambiguous relations.
Book III., vii., p. 521 (1650, p. 11), I send you a parcell of
Indian perfume, which the Spaniard calls the Holy herb . . . but
we call it Tobacco; I will not say it grew under the King of
Spains window, but I am told it was gather’d neer his Gold mines
of Potosi.
b)
‘““Under the King of Spains window ”’ will puzzle those who do not
know the saying “‘ This Tobacco grew under the King of Spains window,
and the Queen upon it,” which is included by Howell among the
English Proverbs (p. 21, col. 2) in the Iagoipiodoyia (1659) appended to his
‘Lexicon Tetraglotton’ (1660).
IIT., ix., p. 531 (1647, pp. 191, 192), Among our moderne
Authors that would furbish this old opinion, and plant Countryes
in the Orb of the moone, and the rest of the celestiall bodies,
Gaspar Galileo Galilei is one, who by artificiall prospectives hath
es ee —
MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS © 31
brought us to a nearer comerce with Heaven, and drawn it sixt-
teen times nearer the earth then it was before in ocular appear-
ances by the advantage of the sayd optic instrument.
Why Gaspar is prefixed by Howell to Galileo Galilei I do not under-
stand. It may be noted that just now English Customs authorities have
been debating whether spectacles come under the head of ‘‘ Optical instru-
ments.”
Book IIT., xiii., p. 536 (1650, p. 25), Therfore I may say that
you have not spariam nactus which was but a petty Republic, sed
Tiaham & Gelliam [sic] nactus es has orna, you have got all Italy
and France adorn these.
See Fragm. 9 of Euripides’s ‘ Telephus,’
Lndotny ghayes nelvnv xdopel,
Tacs 0& Muxnvac nusic idia.
and Erasmus, ‘Adagiorum Chiliades,’ s. ‘ Spartam nactus es, hance exorna.”
If Agamemnon is here bidding Menelaus to rule his own Kingdom of
Sparta and leave him to manage Mycenae, the Greek is generally mistrans-
lated and misunderstood. See W. F. H. King’s ‘ Classical and Foreign
Quotations,’ 3rd ed., pp. 332, 333, and E. J. Payne’s note on Burke’s
* Reflections on the Revolution in France,’ there quoted.
Book III., xxi., p. 544 (1650, p. 33), To Sir Paul Neale Knight,
upon the same subject.
In the course of his note Jacobs refers to Hudibras II., i11., and remarks.
that Sir Paul is supposed to be the original of Sidrophel. The Sidrophel of
this Canto is surely William Lilly. See Zachary Grey’s Notes. On the
other hand the ‘ Heroical Epistle of Hudibras to Sidrophel,’ published later,
is said (see Grey’s commentary) ‘“‘ to have been occasioned by Sir Paul
Neal, a conceited virtuoso, and member of the Royal Society, who con-
stantly affirmed that Mr. Butler was not the author of Hudibras, which
occasioned this epistle; and by some he has been taken for the real
Sidrophel of the poem.”
Book III., xxii., p. 546 (1650, p. 35),
To Dr. W. Turner.
The letter is dated by Howell 9 Aug. 1648. Jacobs has the following
note: ‘“ Dr. W. Turner, mentioned in Wood, Athen. pass.; Forster,
Eliot, i. 478, 498-9 ; Nich. iii. 120; Evelyn (Chandos ed.), 495. Probably
related to Dr. S. Turner of p. 511 supra.”
Here again Jacobs appears to have merely skimmed indexes in quest
of examples of a surname. The Turner in Forster’s Eliot is Dr. Samuel
Turner, the eccentric M.P. Those mentioned by Evelyn are Francis
Turner, bishop of Ely, and his brother Thomas. From Wood’s Athene we
get a civilian who died in 1568, etc., etc. It is quite evident that Jacobs
set down these references at a venture.
32 MORE GLEANINGS IN HOWELL’S LETTERS
Book IV., xii., p. 580 (1655, p. 34), Add herunto, that neither
Hans, Jocky, or John Calvin, had taken such footing here as they
did get afterwards, whose humor is to pry and peep with a kind
of malice into the carriage of the Court and mysteries of State,
as also to malign Nobility, with the wealth and solemnities of the
Church.
On “ Hans, Jocky, or John Calvin” Jacobs comments ‘“ Lutherans,
Huguenots (?), or Calvinists or Puritans generally.”
‘‘ Hans ”’ is suggestive of the Dutch rather than the Germans; as in
II., Ixxvi., “‘ Don and Hans, I heare are absolutely accorded.” “ Jocky ”’
surely refers to the Scotch. Compare, e.g., the satirical ‘ Petition of Jock
for Bread,’ in the illustrated edition of J. R. Green’s ‘ Short Hist. of the
Eng. People.’ It looks as though Howell were referring to the influence
of foreign sectaries, or what he chooses to attribute to foreign sectaries in
the city of London, Dutch, Scotch and French. For Dutch Calvinism
compare Tribulation Wholesome, the preacher from Amsterdam in the
* Alchemist.’
Book IV., xliii., p. 629 (1655, p. 99), I was glad to apprehend
this opportunity to perform the promise you drew from me then
to vent somthing upon this subject for your Ladiships satisfac-
tion. :
When Howell wrote this he can hardly have remembered the warning
in ‘ Twelfth Night,’ IV., i., where in reply to Sebastian’s ‘‘ Vent thy folly
somewhere else,’ the Clown retorts, ‘“‘ Vent my folly ! he has heard the word
of some great man and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am
afraid this great lubber the world will prove a cockney. I prithee now,
ungird thy strangeness and tell me what I shall vent to my lady; shall I
vent to her that thou art coming ?”’ Compare also ‘ Tristram Shandy,’ —
vol. IV., chap. xix.
Book IV., xlii., p. 629 (1655, p. 99), In these peevish times,
which may be call’d the rust of the Zron Age, ther is a race of
cross-grain’d peeple which are malevolent to all Antiquity, If
they read an old Authour it is to quarrel with him, and find some
hole in his coat ; They slight the Fathers of the Primitive times,
and prefer John Calvin, or a Casaubon before them all.
The last sentence reads like a reminiscence of a passage in Bishop
Earle’s Micro-cosmographie, no. 31, ‘A Pretender to Learning’ :
Hee talkes much of Scaliger and Causabone, and the Jesuites, and
prefers some vnheard-of Dutch name before them all.
Book IV., xliv., p. 636 (1655, p. 108), I pray be pleas’d to
present the humblest of my service to the noble Karl your brother.
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‘The Harl is George Digby, second Earl of Bristol, who succeeded his
father on January 6, 1653. He was half-brother to Sir Lewis Dyve, to
whom this letter is addressed, the first Earl’s wife having been the widow of
Sir John Dyve, Sir Lewis’s father.
Book IV., xlvi., p. 638 (1655, p. 110), This makes the
Hollander to dash his colours, and vail his bonet so low unto her.
The reference is to a provision in the treaty between England and the
United Provinces signed by England on April 5, and ratified by the States
General on April 12, 1654. The Dutch acknowledged the salute owing to
the British flag ‘in the British seas.’ See 8. R. Gardiner, ‘ Hist. of the Com-
monwealth and Protectorate,’ chap. xxx1.
Book IV., xlviii., p. 640 (1655, p. 112), Beatissime Pater fac ut
hi lapides fiant panes.
An adaptation of St. Matthew iv. 3, Dic ut lapides isti panes fiant.
Book IV., xlix., p. 643 (1655, p. 116), lines 27, 28 of the Elegy,
He was so neer a Kin
To Norfolks Duke, and the great Marden Queen.
The relationship was this. The mother of Edward Sackville, 4th Earl
of Dorset and subject of the present elegy, was Lady Margaret Howard,
daughter of Thomas, 4th Duke of Norfolk, beheaded in 1572. The Duke
was Queen Elizabeth’s second cousin, his father, the poet Earl of Surrey,
having been Anne Boleyn’s first cousin, and his grandfather, Thomas
Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, brother to Elizabeth, Sir Thomas Boleyn’s
wife and Anne’s mother.
Book IV., 1., p. 645 (1655, p. 120), Now, it is more visible in
the Loadstone then any other body, for by help of artificial
glasses a kind of mist hath bin discern’d to expire out of it, as
Dr. Highmore doth acutely, and so much like a Philosopher
observe.
See Nathaniel Highmore, ‘The History of Generation. To which is
joyned a Discourse of the Cure of Wounds by Sympathy .. . especially
by that Powder, known chiefly by the name of Sir Gilbert Talbot’s Powder,’
London, 1651, p. 117 (in the Discourse), ‘‘ This expiration, some by the
help of Glasses, have seen in the form of a mist to flow from a Loadstone
and other bodies where aporrheas are more plentiful.”
EDWARD BENSLY.
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN
Tue other day, as I was sorting my notes to try and find out
something of the history of the Welsh word ‘celain’ (carcase,
corpse), | found that my earliest reference was to Sir J. Morris-
Jones’ Taliesin [Y Cymmrodor xxviii, 1918], Appendix I, on
‘The Stone of Cingen.’ There, it is said, celen [= Mod. W.
Celain] (corpse) is to be found on the so-called Cadfan’s Stone in
St. Cadvan’s Church, Towyn, Meirionydd. Sir John has since
treated the inscription on pages 171-4 of An Inventory of The
|
Ancient Monuments in Wales, etc., Vol. VI, Merioneth, 1921. He
declares on page 174 that the stone ‘ preserves a record of the
Welsh language, which is older than any other known to exist,’
and that it belongs to c. a.p. 660.
The supposition that a ‘tombstone’ with a Welsh poetical
inscription and containing the word ‘celen’ (corpse, carcase)
should be found belonging to the seventh century was startling,
and it was necessary to examine it further. It may help the
inexperienced student to have on record some things encountered
in examining the word ‘celen’ of this interesting document.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This Cadfan stone has been treated frequently from the time
of Ed. Lhuyd to the 1921 excursus of Sir J. Morris-Jones. It has
been read as Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Old Welsh. A. Hubner,
in Inscriptiones Brit. Christ. (1876), §126, p. 44, and I. O.
Westwood, Lapidarium Walliae (1876-9), pp. 158-60, give a
bibliography of printed articles and plates of the Inscriptions.
The following items, at least, should now be added. Haddan
and Stubbs, Councils, etc., I, 165; Dr. John Jones, History of
Wales (1824); Mr. Egerton Phillimore (?), Gossiping Guide to
| Wales; Prof. J. E. Lloyd, History of Wales, I, p. 222, note 135;
- Sir lakh Rhys, Arch. Cambr., 1897, pp. 142-6; T. Stephens,
| Arch. Cambr., 1851, p- 58 sqq.; Arch. Camb., 1919, p. 591, and
Sir J. Morris: Jones’ two articles; Morris, Cantref Meiionydd
| [1890], pp. 531-9; Rev. D. R. Pugh, M.A., in Welsh Outlook,
|
|
|
| 1921, pp. 116-7, 236-7, 1922, p. 96.
35
36 ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN
To avoid disappointment, however, the reference given by
Hubner and Westwood to Lhuyd’s description and figure in
Gibson’s Camden, p. 622, is incorrect. Merioneth is described
on col. 622 of 1695 edition, but not the Towyn Stone, and there
is no illustration of it in the copies I saw at the National Library
of Wales. Sir J. Morris-Jones says it is not in the Camden
1695, but in the 1722 edition. I have examined the copies of the
1695, 1722 and 1772 editions in the N.L.W., but I could not
find it at all. Westwood seems to imply that he was using
an edition after 1761, but Hubner (v. p. 29) was using the 1722
Camden, but neither has p. 622. ;
I have not seen Gough’s Camden 1789 edition, but the
1806 edition, Vol. III, p. 172, says (a) that the inscriptions of
the Cadvan Stone on Plate IX are engraved from Pennant’s
Tours, Vol. II, p. 97; and (b) that of Dr. Taylor’s, taken in 1761,
when he had caused the stone to be removed from its place as
a gate-post.
[v. Pennant’s Tours, edition 1784, Vol. II, 103, and Supple-
mental Plate V at the end. The reference in Sir J. Morris-Jones’
Taliesin gives (page) 1784 instead of (edition) 1784, as above.]
Pennant II, 103, and the ‘ Advertisement ’ at the beginning,
thanks ‘Sir John Sebright, Bart., for his liberal communication
of several of the late Mr. Edward Lhuyd’s MSS.,’ and says that
he found there ‘ the drawing of the sepulchral effigies of a church-
man, another of a warrior, and two rude pillars, one seven
feet high, and an inscription in old characters’ from 'Towyn.
The plate of this stone in Gough’s Camden 1806 edition is
re-engraved from the Pennant plate. Sir John says that Pen-
nant’s “Plate V . . . differs somewhat from the Gibson engraving
according to Westwood’s description’ (Taliesin, p. 260), but
there appears to be no plate in Gibson, and Westwood does not
describe them in pages 158-60, where he treats the inscription.
Gough’s and Pennant’s plates look slightly different because the
needle lines run across Gough’s and along Pennant’s engraving,
otherwise the first is a very true copy of the second. ‘There
is, however, a mark like a suprascribed ~ in Pennant’s over
the final N of TENGN, but not in Gough’s.
Hitherto I have failed to trace the Lhuyd original of this
Pennant plate from the Sebright library. That library was
dispersed long ago and portions perished by fires, but Mr. EH. J.
Gwynn, who was responsible for the excellent Catalogue of the
RS
es
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN 37
Trish MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin, 1921, kindly tells us that
the drawing is not in the Sebright-Lhuyd’s MSS. there. Many
of Lhuyd’s archeological drawings are reproduced in his Paro-
chiaha, published as a supplement to the Arch. Cambr., 1909-11,
from Pen. MS., 2518, etc., but it is not in either of these. Since
then, Mr. Ed. Owen has discovered a collection of Lhuyd’s draw-
ings which he has described in his invaluable MSS. relating to
Wales in the British Museum (1922), Vol. IV, p. 851, but Mr.
Owen kindly tells me the original is not there.
It would not have been so necessary to search for it, perhaps,
but for the fact that Sir J. Morris-Jones has reproduced an
alleged drawing of this stone from a Lhuyd MS., with Lhuyd’s
reading and interpretation, in the Merioneth volume of the
Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales.
Opposite page 174 of this official publication there is what
is called ‘a reproduction of Lhuyd MS.’ which gives :—
(a) a transliteration of the inscription ;
(6) two attempts at rendering this in intelligible Latin ;
(y) an English translation ;
(0) a Welsh translation.
There the inscription is read as Latin and the following
translation is there offered : “ Dead lheth Cadvan, by the bright-
ness of his mind, his speech dropped as honey. He is held mute
in the grave. But thou Cadvan expected thy reward hereafter
in heaven.’ The whole thing is so unlike Lhuyd’s work and
also so unlike the normal seventh-century epitaphs.
According to Sir John (Merioneth, p. 171), the facsimile of
Lhuyd’s is taken from ‘* Peniarth MS. Addit. 1118 in the National
Library of Wales.’ That MS., however, is a MS. in the hand
of John Jones, Gelli Lyvdy, the famous copyist. The plate is
Clearly taken from N.L.W., Add. MS., 1118, and not from any
MS. in the Peniarth Collection.
Lhuyd’s handwriting is quite well known. Mr. Richard
Ellis reproduced a full page of it in his Facsimile of Letiers of
Oxford Welshmen, also in Transactions of Cymmrodorion, 1906-7,
and there is also a prism-facsimile of it as frontispiece of Lhuyd’s
Parochialia. Moreover, the secretary of the Commission respon-
sible for the Merioneth Inventory had catalogued Lhuyd’s MSS.
at the British Museum, and the Chairman of the Monuments
‘Commission was the Editor of the Cymmrodor, which published
some facsimiles of Lhuyd’s.
38 ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN
Itis quiteclearfrom the plate opposite page 174 of the Inventory
that this is not the hand of Lhuyd (who died in 1709), but must
belong to a later time. [Let the student compare the facsimile
in the Merioneth Inventory and Lhuyd’s copy of the Eliseg
Stone in Cymmrodor, xxi, p. 40, and note the difference. |
The National Library Catalogue of Add. MSS., p. 110, describes
MS. 1118, whence the facsimile is taken, as “ Karly nineteenth
century MS. Two notebooks bound in one cover containing
miscellaneous notes by Edward Jones, Bardd y Brenin, also a
few loose leaves. Formerly Phillipps MS. 17740.’
The facsimile, therefore, is of Edward Jones’ hand and not
Edward Lhuyd’s.
But even if it were Lhuyd’s it is not clear why this has been
reproduced rather than Pennant’s plate from Lhuyd, for Sir
John says (Merioneth, p. 171), ‘ Pennant’s engraving of the
stone . . . differs considerably from the lettering in Lhuyd’s
MS., here reproduced, and must have been taken from a later
and more careful drawing of Lhuyd’s.’
The writer of N.L.W., Add. MS., 1118, was acquainted with
the Sebright Collection of Lhuyd’s MSS., for he refers to it on
pages 58-60. He says also that some of the contents are taken
from ‘ Plasgwyn MS. 56.’ This is in the Panton Collection, and
the MS. is now N.L.W., MS., 20238, which is a miscellaneous
MS. transcribed by Mr. Evan Evans (Ieuan Brydydd Hir).
In this MS. there is an inscription called ‘ Characters on the
bells of Towyn Meirionydd,’ which may be seen also in Gough’s
Camden III, Plate 1X, opposite page 172, but the Towyn Stone
is not there.
I have not found the source of the Edward Jones’ Inscription
which Sir John published as Edward Lhuyd’s. Like the ‘ char-
acters’ on the Towyn Bell, it may have come from a leuan
Brydydd Hir MS. (leuan was a curate at Towyn for some time),
but I have not seen it. However, it may have come from
another source. It was fashionable to copy inscriptions then,
and I have several copies of that time in my possession picked
up as loose sheets in old books. The student should therefore
note : 3
Lhuyd’s drawing was reproduced in Pennant’s ;
Pennant’s was re-engraved for Gough’s. Camden.
The facsimile in the Merioneth Inventory, published as
Lhuyd’s, is from Ed. Jones’ MS., and is of no epigraphical value,
#
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN 39
and I cannot trace it to a Lhuyd MS. anywhere. [Many of
Lhuyd’s MSS. perished by fire and this may have been among
them. | ;
Hf the bibliography and origin of the published copies are in
such a tangle, the interpretation of the inscription has fared
no better, and another attempt, whatever its value, cannot make
it worse.
THE INSCRIPTION
The stone is badly weathered, but enough remains to decide,
possibly, to what class of inscriptions it belongs. Hitherto,
the inscription has been treated as an epitaph on the ‘ tomb-
stone’ of Cadvan or Cyngen. [I take the readings given in
Hubner, § 126, and Merioneth Invent., p. 172.]
The first inscription is said to read
CINGEN CELEN TRICET NITANAM
and Sir John translates ‘Cynien’s body lies beneath’ (Merion.
Inv., p. 173).
It will be seen that this inscription thus arranged is taken
as if Huibner’s sides a and d were continuous, and that the
words MOLT... TUAR of d did not belong to it. On side
a, however, there are two so-called ‘semi-lunar’ marks which
should be examined in the photograph of the stone opposite
page 172 of Merion. Inv.
According to Sir John, these are ‘more likely to denote that
the inscription is to be continued than to mark the end’
(Tahesin, p. 261).
CINGEN CELEN. This ‘ would seem to mean the “ corpse
of Cyngen,”’ though one would have rather expected CELEN
CINGEN, but the placing of the genitive first is attested some-
times in Old Welsh poetry ’ (Rh¥s, Arch. Camb., 1897, p. 142).
Sir John says (Taliesin, p. 263): ‘The construction in CINGEN
CELEN is the same as that in “ Taliesin gan ” (Taliesin’s Song),’
so both of them were satisfied then, that CINGEN CELEN =
Cvs Corpse.
Since Rhys wrote that in 1897, he changed his mind, for
in his essay on the Englyn (Cymmrodor, 1905, Vol. xviii, p.
61), he says: ‘It must be confessed [one has] no explicit warrant
in any of our epitaphs for introducing the word corpus or any of
its equivalents into our inscriptions.’
His earlier theory of Latin epitaphs and the necessity of
‘Supplying corpus or sepulchrum’ is stated explicitly in his
40 ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN
Welsh Philology, edition 2, p. 360, so that he had held it for a
long time before a greater experience of early epigraphy com-
pelled him to abandon it in Cymmrodor, xviii, p. 61. But,
evidently, Sir John did not share Rhys’ new conviction.
‘Corff’ (corpse), like the English ‘ body,’ may be seen very
occasionally on tombstones in Wales, from Anglesey to Pembroke,
since the fashion of erecting tombstones was renewed in the
sixteenth century ; but it is put there and for a definite purpose
in violation of the traditional formule. But ‘celain’ I have
never seen, and in Modern Welsh it would be as offensive as
‘earcase > would be on an English, or ‘cadaver’ on a Roman
epitaph.
Hubner (Inscr. Brit. Christ., § 165) does give one Christian
epitaph from Hampshire with the word ‘corpus,’ but it is a
doubtful case ; but neither Hubner nor Westwood gives one for
Wales, I think. |
I have looked through the indexes of such volumes of the
Corp. Inscr. Lat. as appeared pertinent. The volume for Algeria
gives corpus in § 1202, but the word ‘corpus ’ is used to indicate
the relative position of the body buried and not a part of the
epitaph proper, and there is another like it in Rome; but I
can find no more. I have looked through the first 2,000 Inscrip-
tions in Diehl’s Inscriptiones Lat. Christ. Vet. (1925 sqq.). There
are three or four inscriptions with ‘corpus,’ but in the class
which he calls ‘Jura Sepulchr.’, where a penalty is imposed
for interfering with the body buried—the word is not a part
of the epitaph at all. (v. also Mommsen’s Strafrecht, IV, x.)
Whatever the result, CELEN (corpse, carcase) is very unlikely,
and so is this poetical construction in Welsh epigraphy. As
Sir John Sandys says in his Preface to Latin Hpigraphy—
Epigraphy is so conservative that it “leaves little play for...
that forward, delusive faculty—the imagination. In restoring
an incomplete inscription, epigraphy almost wholly depends
on the exact knowledge of a multitude of nearly invariable pre-
cedents and customary conventions.’
Further, epigraphy knows nothing, I think, of Sir J. Morris-
Jones’ ‘ continuation marks,’ as he calls the so-called ‘ semi-lunar ’
marks. The ivy leaf or the ‘hederae distinguentes,’ triangular
marks, the point above the line, etc., are well known as points
for separating words, but not coupling them, and the flourish or
fern, etc., for filling up an empty space, are found in abundance.
|
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN 41
Marucchi (Christ. Epigraphy, Plate XXX), gives one on an
eighth-century stone.
I suggest, however, that these marks on the Cadfan Stone
are neither flourishes nor points, but a horizontal 4 (I) and a
suprascribed N. Let the student first look at the final horizontal
e on the following inscriptions in Hiibner: §§ 12 (bzs), 13 (bis),
14, 17, 18, 25, 26, 50, 71, 88, 89, 91 (bis), 92, 95 (bis), 98, 109,
135. This I varies much in the angle it makes with edge of
the stone. Several stones are given also with the suprascribed
N,ie. —. If this is correct, then this part of the inscription is
CINGEN CELENIN.
Even now, the stone is within a few hundred yards of
Llangelynin Parish, and, according to Westwood, it looks as if it
had been at one time actually in what is now Llangelynin Parish.
Sir J. Morris-Jones (Merion. Invent., 173) suggests that possibly
the stone was the ‘Croes Egryn ’ of the neighbouring parish of
Llanegryn, which is still further away.
| Llangelynin is one of the oldest churches in the county and
is dedicated to St. Celynin. He is reputed to be one of the
_ twelve sons of Helig ab Glannog, and to have flourished in the
seventh century, and whose territory was inundated by the
| Irish sea. The stone is generally dated in the sixth or seventh
- century, so that appears to suit Celynin quite well.
This, however, may be only substituting one difficulty for
»another. Celynin is not known to me to have a son Cyngen
- or Cynien, or any other name, and the new reading would seem
_ to be, according to the usual formula: “Cyngen [son of] Celynin.’
Sir John has gone to much trouble in Taliesin, page 262, to
_ prove that this name would be ‘ Cynien’ in Modern Welsh, and
not ‘Cyngen,’ but he does not appear to provide a valid reason
for that, and it seems to be done in order to prove that Ab Ithel’s
theory about the identity was wrong. On page 243 of Taliesin,
he chastises Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans for not consulting Rhys’
Hibbert Lectures (1888), while he himself has overlooked Rh¥s’
detailed treatment of this Cyngen and Cinen in ‘ All Around the
Wrekin ’ (Cymmrodor, 1908), pp. 37-8. There Rhfs says, ‘We
might expect cinyen, which I have not met with, and in the other
Cinen, etc.,’ and he gives the references to the Book of Llan Dav
‘(which Sir John uses) as well as others. There is no doubt
that there is a proper noun of this form ‘cyngen,’ but the
occurrence of Engan, Einon, einion, eingion, engan, etc.,
|
}
{
|
i
42 ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN |
shows that the early confusion of n, ng, nt, in, makes it inadvis-
able to be dogmatic. |
Rhys and Sir John cite the Trallong inscription, CUNO-
CENNI FILIUS CUNOCENT in support, and Sir John says : ‘ It
might be worth while examining the Trallong stone again to
see whether . . . the last C has not a tag which makes it G,
as it is rare in these inscriptions to find father and son of the
same name ’ (Taliesin, 262).
Hiibner read C, but Westwood (1876-9), p. 62, says: *'There
- is an oblique impression on the stone at the bottom of the second
C which gives the appearance of G,’ and Rhys says [| ‘All Around
the Wrekin ’ (1908), p. 36], “On the strength of a photograph
given me by the late Mr. Romilly Allen, I now make it...
CVNOGENI.’ This is repeated in Arch. Camb., 1918, p. 184
[confirmed by Dr. Macalister, Arch. Camb., 1922, p. 202]. Mr.
Gelly, the learned Vicar of Trallong, has just re-examined it for
me, and he has no doubt it is G. Sir J. Morris-Jones’ note
might, therefore, lead the inexperienced student astray, who
had not seen Westwood and Rhys. The epigraphist would
probably interpret the reason given for re-examination differently.
Similar forms occur also on the Pillar of Eliseg, in the Annales
Cambrie, etc., so that they are well established.
But it should be noted that there is also a common noun
of like form and there are many cognates. They are so many
and enter into so many compounds that it will be necessary to
treat them apart, but it cannot be done here.
The Nott. Dignit. [Ed. Bocking II, 112] gives a British
place-name ‘concangios’ and con- enters into several British
place-names which might in this position give cyn-g. There is
also a ‘cen,’ which has caused great trouble. Glick (Die be
C. I. Caesar vork. keltischen Namen, p. 57 sqq., and Keltische
Etymologien ; Cod. Germ., 5166 Munich Staatsbibliothek, fol. 111)
dealt with this long ago, but without satisfying himself as to
the origin, and it is still unsettled after Holder, Rhfs and Stokes. |
have treated it. It is not clear whether cen- in Cenimagni is —
cén or cén, and it is therefore risky to cite it here.
Rh¥s was more imaginative than usual when he treated |
‘Cenimagni ’ in Celt. Brit., p. 287, and regarded it as a parallel in |
meaning to ‘Saxons.’ Holder has collected the cing- compounds | —
in his Alikelt. Spr., but follows De Jubainville in equating them | |
with the Irish cingim, J go, but this is vitiated by equating it with |
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN 43
Welsh rhygyngu, which is not Welsh at all but English. Stokes
(Celt. Decl., Trans. Phil. Soc., 1886, pp. 150, 158) treats the
inscriptions, CINGOS and ECKINGOREIX. But they are all
indefinite because they were working with unsifted material,
and it will be necessary to collect the yet living forms in Medizeval
Welsh which are cognate.
‘Kyngen kymangan’ occurs in B.Tal. 462. Sir J. Morris-
Jones (Taliesin, p. 201) writes it with a capital K, but though
that is necessary to his argument, it is not in the MS. He
translates it ‘of the same nature as his grandfather Cyngen
(Cincen in the Harleian pedigree).’ ‘The line occurs in Trawsganu
Kynan, but there appears to be no kind of reference to his grand-
father. It was necessary to treat kymangan as Old Welsh and
equivalent of modern kyfanian, but he had overlooked the fre-
quent occurrence of Medizval Welsh kyman, kymann, of which
that is a derivative. Now, Kynddelw has this same word in a
way that cannot be mistaken for a proper noun.
“Tyssilyaw teyrned nen brenn, teyrnas dinas diasgenn, teyrn
vard .. . teyrnwawt teyrnwyr kyngen, kynnydwys kynnif
kygorffenn ’ [Red Book Poetry, col. 11681, Ed. J. Gwenogvryn
Evans ].
Here we appear also to have a double negative of the root
-cenn in di-as-genn; asgen, like the similarly formed esgar,
occurs as opposed to kar kinsman (v. Red Book Poetry, 1241%8,
etc.) ; echen seems to be another derivative of it.
Kyngen appears in Red Book Poetry, col. 1333.2, in what
may be a suggestive way, ‘ brat kyngen ’ (treachery of the clan) ?
There is also a cen in Mediwval Welsh which seems at times to
be related, though at other times remote enough. It seems
clear to me that there is a kyngen in Old and Medieval Welsh for
‘a unit of society,’ which I cannot define at present [clan,
sept, tribe, etc., are too risky to use, and technical names
have not yet been coined to describe Celtic social divisions in
_ English].
| Walde (Lat. Htym. Wort.) equates cyn- with ‘ceneu,’ etc.,
_ whelp, offspring and, for want of a better term, I substitute the
| cog. derivative ‘cynydd’ (offspring), etc., here and translate.
_CINGEN CELENIN: Family, offspring of Celynin, or the land
_ of the offspring of C, something like civitas on Latin inscrip-
tions. If this is valid, then the stone is not a ‘tombstone,’
_as usually described, but one of the class ‘cippi termin-
| A.S.—VOL, Ix. D
|
|
44 ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN
ales —boundary marks, which are very well known every-
where.
It is possible, without much philological legerdemain, I
think, to read side d in conformity with the above hypothesis.
MOLT CIC PETUAR appeared to Rhys to mean ‘ mutton flesh
of four’; and to Sir John, ‘Tomb of Tegryn, cynien and others
four.’ The first word is doubtful: MOLT and MORT have
been read. The remainder may mean COC PET UAR (Points
were seldom used in early inscriptions), i.e. MC feet above.
[Normally one would expect PED for ‘ pedes,’ but as Grandgent
says in Vulgar Latin, § 282, ‘At the end of a word there was
hesitation between d and 7, e.g. apud, aput, etc. ]
UAR Mod. Welsh “ gor,” dial. ‘‘o war,” over, above, etc.
Sir John regards this bit as a little inscription apart, and it
must be a kind of postscript if the whole stone is ‘ Cynien’s
tombstone ’ ; but it seems to be necessary to the next part which
Sir John reads TRICETNITANAM, and translates (Cynien’s body)
lies beneath, though the grammar would normally imply ‘ let
it dwell beneath. If the ‘MC Pet’ is correct, then ‘ tricet ’
might mean TRI CET NITANAM, i.e. 300 below me, and so read
like a normal boundary mark. The suprascribed N might be
dropped often in copying on vellum, but it is different to postulate
this for an inscription, even an inscription of this rude lettering,
and I do it with diffidence. The suggested readings on sides
a and d would mean ‘CIVITAS CELYNIN: —1100 FEET
ABOVE, 300 BELOW ME.’
The two other sides, though rudely cut and badly weathered,
seem to contain some recognizable place-names, but I find it
impossible to suggest a connected reading.
Rhys read TENGRUIC (Arch. Camb., 1897, p. 142), but Sir
John, TENGRUIN. I do not know how early the Celtic ‘ din’
oppidum became ‘tin.’ One finds it in the Book of Lilandav
in Tinterna, Din Dirn [I am aware of Rhys’ theory that tyn =
tyddyn in place-names, but taken generally that is not valid].
Rhys’ reading might give Tyncrug; I cannot find it on the
map, but Bryncrug is close by. But the stone is in such a
condition that many conjectures are possible and few data here
to control them. It is unfortunate, then, that such a document
was used to uphold a theory of sixth-century Taliesin. It would
be equally vain to declare that it is the old stone which gave
the name to ‘ Croes Faen’ on Morfa Towyn close by, and set
ST. CADVAN’S STONE, TOWYN 45
up as a land-mark by Celynin or his people after the alleged
seventh-century inundation of his land when the land was
adjusted after the disaster, though this might appear much
more plausible.
Sir John regarded the inscription as Welsh and not British,
i.e. British had definitely lost its old case endings by A.D. 660.
This is used as one of the most tellings things in his argument
for a sixth cent. Taliesin. His reading and interpretation cannot
stand, [ think. ‘There is a still more serious argument against
the use made of the alleged loss of case endings. Let the student
read pages 286, 291 of Sandys’ Hpigraphy (2 Ed.). Abbreviated
or shortened forms are constantly used and Sir John’s own read-
ing contains several abbreviations. Where abbreviated forms
are the rule the dropping of the case endings may be due to the
stone-cutter rather than to linguistic change, and the argument
has, therefore, no force.
TIMOTHY LEWIS.
THE INFLUENCE OF VALENCIA AND ITS
SURROUNDINGS ON THE LATER LIFE OF
LUIS VIVES AS A PHILOSOPHER AND AS
A TEACHER
A Lecture delivered in the Paraninfo of the University of Valencia,
in Spain, on Monday, April 4, 1927, by Professor Foster
Watson. Now written out and at points expanded by Professor
foster Watson.
AN ENGLISH CONTEMPORARY POET
JOHN LELAND
TO
LUIS VIVES
Inclyta quem genuit tam fonte Valentia divo
Orator, toto clarus in orbe mane.
Tu quoque iam lumen simul immortale Latinis,
Gloriaque Hispanae gentis, et orbis honos.
From a poem: Ad Lud. Vivem graviter Hrasme
morte perturbatum consolatio. 1536.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND VIVES !
Vives was born at the critical period in the history of Europe,
of the transition from Mediaevalism to Modern Times. Fre-
quently, the importance of the Spanish Renascence has been
either ignored or minimised. We do not overlook Italy. Burck-
| 1 Before beginning his lecture on Valencia and Vives, Professor Foster
_ Watson said that, speaking in the University of Valencia on Vives, he
felt impelled to say a few words as to the loss sustained. by lovers of Vives,
by the death of Professor Bonilla y San Martin, once a professor in the
University of Valencia. He was ascholar of wide interests, full of industry
_ in research, ever desirous of establishing facts, to whom all interested in
t Vives owed so much. No personal trouble was too great to discover the
| truth even of slight details, to place everything together and to offer
_ all his best results of investigation to others. Professor Watson therefore
_ begged to offer, as an Englishman, to the memory of Sefior Bonilla, his
| high respect and his warm tribute, as one who had learned so much from
_ him and his work, especially with regard to Luis Vives.
47
.
_ 48 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
hardt and J. A. Symonds make us familiar with the Italian
Renascence. We do not overlook the Northern Renascence, for
it is associated with the name of Erasmus, and Erasmus is a
name of attraction to allstudents. We tend, however, to overlook
Spain. Yet there is a remarkable parallelism between the revival
of learning in Spain and that in England or in Flanders, and in
some cases, Spain had the priority. Thus, the Complutensian
Polyglot (compiled by the Spanish group of scholars at Alcala
de Henares) preceded the Novum Instrumentum of Erasmus in
its production, although not in its publication. Academically,
the splendid foundation of Jiménez at Alcala included a College
of the three languages (the ‘ holy’ languages of Hebrew, Greek,
Latin) and this appears to be the prototype, if not of Wolsey’s
foundation of Christchurch at Oxford, at any rate, of the famous
Collége des Trois Langues, founded by the will of Jerome Bus-
leiden, at Louvain, and placed under the direction at first of
Erasmus himself. Giles Busleiden, the brother of Jerome, had
visited Toledo and died there in 1502. So we can trace Spanish
connexions with Louvain. Let it be remembered that to one of the
lectureships established by Wolsey at Oxford, the Spaniard, Luis
Vives, was elected. Professor Riba y Garcia, a week or two ago,
here in Valencia, eloquently dwelt upon the life and work of Luis
Vives in England, at Oxford and in London 1523-8. Let me,
in some sort of return for his gracious exposition of the connexion
of Vives and England here and now, in Valencia, emphasise the
effect of the influence of Spain, and particularly of Valencia,
upon the later life of Luis Vives as a Philosopher and a Teacher.
In Spain the Renascence movement had not only a literary ~
but also an educational aspect. Alcala under Jiménez entered
into competition with Salamanca, called sometimes the eighth
wonder of the world. Jiménez also prevailed upon his friend
Juan Lopez de Medina Coeli to found the Academy of Siguenza.
Although, in some respects, Alcala was permeated with a new
sense and direction of scholarship, yet Salamanca was far from
being so reactionary as is sometimes supposed. Mr. Aubrey
1 In his most interesting book: Luis de Leon: A Study of the Spanish
Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1925), Mr. Aubrey F. G. Bell
describes the activity of Salamanca in propagating knowledge. ‘Every —
day,’ says Luis de Leon (1527-91), ‘we see men changing places, and it
often happens that men born in obscurity attain the highest dignity and
power. Fray Juan de Regla became confessor to Charles V and Philip I
. . . Soto was the son of a gardener of Segovia . . . Perez de Ayala,
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 49
Bell maintains that Salamanca, while retaining something of the
scientific tradition of the Middle Ages, handed down by Arabic
scholars of Cordoba and Toledo, had early welcomed the new
learning. An advancing wave of new and on the whole pro-
gressive education was breaking in on Spain, and this movement
was reflected, to some slight extent, in the old Universities, e.g. of
Salamanea, as well as in the new Universities, e.g. of Alcala.
But, over and above the Universities, there was great activity
in Spain, at the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, in the foundation of higher schools, often
developing into Universities. Thus there were established about
this period :
Toledo, by Francisco Alvar ;
Sevilla, by Roderigo de San Atlia ;
Granada, by Archbishop Talavera ;
Osnate, by Mercato, Bishop of Avila ;
Ossuna, by Giron, Count of Areka.
Tur HicgH SCHOOL OF VALENCIA
And, as Valencians know, Valencia received the Papal Bull
from Alexander VI sanctioning the Higher School of Studies in
A.D. 1500,? and it was to this newly established gymnasium or
University-school (perhaps we may call it) that Luis Vives went
as a boy. One of his teachers at this school was Daniel Siso.
In one of the early books written by Vives, Siso is represented as
giving a description, the only description, I believe, of the school
to which Vives went. ‘This is the passage :
‘ There is a place at the very entrance into the school, which easily
becomes muddy with the crowd of scholars who have walked through the
rainandthedust. Whenyouhave a little passed over this entrance you
who died as Archbishop of Valencia, had shivered before dawn, as a young
boy outside his village church waiting to be taught the rudiments of
Latin ; Fray Juan de Marquina, Prior of Guadalupe, had taught himself
to read amid the clamour of a smithy.’ Mr. Bell, it is true, is citing
examples a little later than Vives. But his conclusion needs consideration
as suggesting an earlier preparative educational progress: ‘A zeal for
learning penetrated into the furthest corners of Spain and starving boys
tramped many a weary league to reach Salamanca’ (p. 20).
1 No less than twenty Universities are said to have been founded in
Spain in the sixteenth century.
2No doubt this was a re-foundation, and the educational traditions
rightly trace back at any rate to 1245 in the reign of James I the Con-
quistador, of Aragon. |
50 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
come upon a high flight of stairs leading to class-rooms. The fore-
court is often somewhat dark, but the arcades are not unpleasant.
There is a great cerulean stone under the stair-case, on which very
often pack-men, if they have anything new, flock together, to sell their
books, as if they were sentenced to live on the stone. It was when
Daniel (that is, Siso himself) reclined on that stone, that Michael
Ariguus and Parthenius Tovar, the poet, came to him, for the latter
had only arrived a short time before from Murviedro (Saguntum).
I at that time only a youth used to follow Parthenius wherever he
went. You know, Christophorus, and you know, Luis Vives, what a
noble, serious and eloquent poet he was.’
Whilst Vives was still a boy at the Valencian School, the fame
of the well-known Renascence scholar, Antonius Nebrissensis
(i.e. Antonio Cala, Harana del Ojo) and his Institutsones Gram-
maticae, reached Valencia, and excited the opposition of the
mediaeval reactionaries. Amongst these opponents was another
of the teachers of Luis Vives, Jerome Amiguet. The story goes
that the boy Luis was required by Amiguet to take up in his
disputational discussion the subject of this new grammar of
Nebrissensis. Vives, in full sympathy with his conservative
teacher, strongly protested against the new grammar, and the
spirited Valencian schoolboy thus inveighed against the foremost
Spanish scholar of the age, who was earnestly endeavouring to
extirpate barbarism from the schools.!
1Two other legends may be mentioned as to Vives’ early days :
(I) That Luis Vives taught in the Valencian School. On this point
Dr. Christoval Coret y Peris, Professor of Eloquence in the Metropolitan
Church of Valencia and editor of Vives’ Colloquia in 1723, says: ‘The
Sophists would not allow Vives to teach in Valencia because they feared
that it would bring him to trouble.’ Coret then quotes, apparently in
justification, the words of Vincentius Blasius Garcia, who proclaims
(II) That Luis Vives had been expelled from the Valencian School,
-because he threatened that he would ‘ break ’ the boy who had removed
a book of his from the place in which he had put it. Gregory Mayans,
the editor of the splendid Valencian edition of Vives’ Opera Omnia, sug-
gests that Garcia may have had in mind some reminiscence of the passage
in the colloquy “Iter et Equus,’ in which Puer says: ‘ Alas he has
neither bit nor bridle ’ (referring to the equipment of Philip’s steed when
setting out on a journey), Philippus.— If I knew who had broken them,
I would break him.’
From these legends, we may, I think, safely infer that Vives played an
active part in school affairs. They confirm in spirit what Erasmus said
of Vives, in his letter to D. Herman, Count of Nova Aquila, in Vives’
Declamationes.. ‘ When Vives was exercising himself in those subtle but
infantile disciplines (of the scholastic exercises) no one disputed more
keenly ; no one played his part as a sophist better than he did.’
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 51
Luis Vives was born in 1492, and he entered the University
of Paris in 1509. If, then, he ever taught in the Valencian School
it must have been before the completion of his eighteenth year.
In fact, the influence which Luis Vives received from Valencia
must have been imbibed by that age. But so sensitive and
responsive does Luis Vives seem to have been, it appears to me
to be in accordance with the historical facts, and with direct
inference from them, to conclude that the Spanish and especially
the Valencian influence distinctively coloured his matured views as
a Philosopher and Teacher, all his life, although he was only in the
actual physical atmosphere of Valencia up to eighteen years of age.
THE ‘ScHoLA Domestica’ oF Luis VIVES
I will first speak of the strong bonds of affection and reverence
felt by Luis Vives to his family. For, from his father and his
mother, Luis Vives derived, clearly, so much of his disposition
and tone of character.
Certain passages from Vives deserve attention and justify
quotation at length. In his work on the education of girls
entitled de Institutione Feminae Christianae (1523) :
‘My mother Blanche when she had been married fifteen years unto
my father, I could never see her strive with my father. There were
two sayings that she had ever in her mouth as proverbs. When she
would say that she believed well anything, then she used to say, it
was even as though Luis Vives! had spoken it. When she would
say that she wished anything, she used to say it was even as though
Luis Vives wished it. I have heard my father say many times, but
especially once, when one told him of a saying of Scipio Africanus
the younger, or else of Pomponius Atticus, and I imagine that it was
the saying of them both, that they never made agreement with their
mothers, “‘ nor I with my wife,” said he, “‘ which is a greater thing.”
When others heard this saying they wondered upon it, and the concord
of Vives and Blanche was taken up and used in a manner for a proverb,
he was wont to answer like as Scipio was, who said he never made
agreement with his mother, because he never made debate with her.’
Vives proceeds to say that he intends to write a book telling of
her life and acts. At this time he was thirty-one years of age,
and had left Valencia fourteen years, and his mother Blanche had
1 Luis Vives was the name of the father of Vives also. The quotations
in this article from the de Institutione Feminae Christianae are from the
translation into English of Richard Hyrde (died 1528 a.p.), a tutor in the
‘School of Thomas More.’
~~ 82 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
died some years before he left that city, never to return! It
is clear that the Vives family were a splendid example of the
finest type of Spanish (or shall I not say of Valencian ?) household
life, and his home-surroundings were far more effective and
penetrating in the bringing up of the boy Luis than even his
school-life, which he never forgot, even in its details as well as
in its spirit. It was the Valencian schola domestica that especially
trained Vives. As nearly as one can summarise this type of
training, we may say it was a combination of the aims and
methods of the knightly households in the upbringing of the
men, together with the pious religious atmosphere of the convents
to which so many of the best families sent individual daughters,
and received in return the reaction of effect in simplicity and
devotion as well as in a certain austerity or strain of asceticism
in the characters of the women who entered into family life.
This can best be illustrated by another passage written by Luis
Vives, recording the affection he had for his mother. ‘No
mother,’ he says, ‘loved her child better than mine did me,
nor any child did ever less perceive himself loved of his mother
than I. She never lightly laughed upon me, she never indulged
me, and yet if I had been several days out of her house, no matter
where, she was almost sore sick; yet when I was come home,
I could not perceive that she had ever longed for me. Therefore
was there nobody that I did more flee, or was more loath to come
nigh than my mother when I was a child. But as I grew up
there was nobody whom I delighted more to have in sight ;
whose memory now I have in reverence, and as oft as she cometh
to my remembrance I embrace her within my mind and thought —
when I cannot with my body.’
This sense of the pieties of family life joined with the pietas
literata of the school, afterwards transfused with the irresistible
fascination of ‘ good letters’ get their beginnings from the
Valencian home, and penetrate Luis Vives through and through,
and wherever in after life he goes, the love and nobility and
culture of his family life are the basis of personal development
of standards of life, as well as of principles of educational
philosophy. The Valencian home was for him ‘the model for the
mighty world’ outside. :
As the years advance, the inner image of his mother grew
1 There is a tradition that he made a hasty visit on one occasion, but
this suggestion does not appear to be established.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 53
more intense. It has been said that Vives is the first modern
writer who speaks of his mother. Whether this is the case or not,
it may be added that his worshipful devotion to his mother was
such as surpassed the comprehension of people outside Spain.
Erasmus could not understand Vives’ insistence on the family
as the basis of the life of high culture in piety and training.
When Vives wrote that, in addition to the exalted women saints
of the Church, there are ‘ more recent ones, as Catharine, Queen
of England, his own mother-in-law, Clara Cervent,’ Erasmus
was shocked at this introduction of friends and relatives into print,
and into association with the saints recognised as such by religious
authorities. Vives, moreover, adds to his list of saints the name
of Blanca March. He is conscious that he will be reproved that
‘I commend my mother, giving myself up too much to love and
piety, to which I attach high place, but I attach still more place
to the simple truth.’ He continues: ‘There cannot lack in
every nation and city honest and devout matrons, by whose
examples women may be stirred; but yet the familiar examples,
as of the mother, the grandmother, the aunt, the sister, the
cousin, or of some other kinswoman or friend should be of more
force and value.’ Was ever a higher appreciation of the place
of family reverence as a means of culture put forth? ‘This,
then, is the primary element in Vives’ scheme of training—and
his whole scheme of education may be described as an infinitely
enlarged expansion of the schola domestica. He has obtained
the idea from his own beautiful home-life at Valencia. And
note: the passage just quoted is from the de Officio Marita,
written twenty years after Luis Vives had left Valencia.
These parents, Luis Vives and Blanca March, were true and
characteristic Valencians. They were aristocrats! in the best
sense of the term. On his father’s side the family was
distinguished in military life; on the mother’s in literature.
His grandfather on his mother’s side, Henry March, was a jurist
of repute and instructed the young Luis Vives in the subject of
law, a study which afterwards greatly attracted Vives in its
philosophical and practical aspects. The March family to which
Vives’ mother belonged had had its Ausias March, the dis-
tinguished poet, known regionally as ‘the Catalan Petrarcha.’
The significance of these facts of this family, with its pride in its
1A French author says that Vives’ family was ‘ plus noble que riche,’
which is likely enough.
. 54 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
coat of arms and its ancestry, lies in the recognition of the dictum
noblesse oblige. Luis Vives entered into his heritage of family
honour with a fullness which foreign experiences and length of
time could only increase, and not in any degree obliterate or
wither. Itisin the veneration which Vives feels for these primary
sanctities of personal and family life that he shows for his times
a quite unusual type of Renascence humanism. The affections
which clung around his married life at Bruges were a continuous
development of the old family lifein Valencia. His wife, Margaret
Valdaura, although resident in Bruges was of Valencian ancestry.
Nor is it quite irrelevant to note that they were married on
the day of Corpus Christi, the name by which Bishop Fox had
called the Oxford College with which Vives was associated, and
in which he was domiciled while lecturing in the University.
Bruges—belonging to Flanders, which Sr. Don Pin y Soler 4
describes as ‘an elongation of the Spanish peninsula ’—was to
Luis Vives ‘a second Valencia.’ In this aspect he differed from
so many of the Renascence scholars ; he never turned his back
on his own past, but he incorporated his old experiences, and
especially his earliest ones at Valencia, into the whole current of
his developing personality. Whilst strengthening his intellectual
abilities all through his life, he continuously absorbed all his
new experiences and ideas into ‘the study of imagination ’
which had stirred him in its first vigour in Valencia. When
Vives married Margaret Valdaura, the Valencian bond was only
the more strengthened.2. The wall-tablet (quoted in the note)
represents Luis Vives as Valencian, and his wife Margaret as
‘rarae pudicitiae’ and as ‘sexusque foeminei ornamento’ are —
1 On reaching Barcelona, after leaving Valencia, I was indeed sorry to.
hear that this ardent lover of and illuminative writer on Luis Vives had
died about a fortnight earlier. I had not had the pleasure of meeting him,
but his cordial letters to a fellow-student of Vives had been always a delight
and an encouragement to receive.
2 Emile Vanden Bussche, the eminent archiviste of Bruges, states in his.
J. L. Vives, Eclaircissements, 1871 (p. 36), that the body of Luis Vives
‘fut déposée dans un caveau construit devant l’autel de la chapelle de
St. Joseph 4 lEglise Saint-Donatien. ... On voyait encore dans la
méme église, contre le mur, sous la fenétre a coté de la porte latérale qui
donnait sur le Bourg, un tableau sur lequel se trouvaient représentés. -
Vives et sa femme. On y remarquait en outre leurs armes et cette inscrip-
tion :
Joanni Ludovico Vivi, Valentino, omnibus virtutum ornamentis,.
omnique disciplinarum genere ut ampliss. ipsius litterarum monumentis
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 55
said of Margaret, his wife, recalling the descriptions so affection-
ately written by himself of his mother Blanca Marca. Margaret
was like her Valencian husband ‘omnibusque animi dotibus
marito simillimae,’ and the two were ‘ ut animo et corpore semper
conjunctissimis.’ This perfect union of man and wife Vives had
witnessed between his parents at Valencia, and he experienced
it himself in his own marriage in ‘ the second Valencia,’ animo et
corpore semper conjunctissumis. Itis this old Valencian home-spirit
which is reflected in Vives’ de Institutione Foeminae Christianae
when he writes—to an astonished world—‘ If the wifeand husband
love each other, they shall will and nill (i.e. wish and not wish) } one
thing, which is the very and truelove. For there can never be dis-
cord nor debate between those in whom is one heart, not desiring
contrary things; and one mind, not of contrary opinion.’ Luis
Vives thus with his single-mindedness, thoroughly imbued with
his Valencian home-training, naively recommends all the married
world to have the married concord of his parents Luis Vives and
Blanca Marca. Critics gasp, and half-tolerantly whisper ‘ O
beata simplicitas!’ Yes, it was simplicitas, learnt in childhood
at Valencia, and it characterised him throughout his European
life. I have heard it suggested that Luis Vives was a Franciscan
Tertiary, but I do not know the evidence for the assertion.?
We can understand how this tradition, founded or unfounded,
testatum est clarissimo; et Margaretae Valdaurae, rarae pudicitiae,
omnibusque animi dotibus marito simillimae, sexus-que foeminei orna-
mento, utrisque ut animo et corpore semper conjunctissimis, ita hic
simul terrae traditis Nicolaus et Maria Valdaura, sorori, et ejus marito
B.M. moestissimi posuerunt. Vixit Joannes annis XLVIII mensibus II
mortuus Brugis pridie Nonas Mai MDXL. Margareta vixit annis
XLVII mensibus tribus, diebus IX obiit pridie Idus Octobris, anno
MDLITI.’
Vanden Bussche points out that the place of burial of the remains of
Vives is exactly the part of the foundations of the Church ‘ qui a été
fouillé et bouleversé le plus dans ces derniers temps, par suite de planta-
tions, pose de tuyaux de conduite du gaz le placement de reverbéres.’
It should be noted, however, that St. Donatien church-entry gives the date
of the death of Luis Vives as that of 11 Mai, and that of Margaret his wife
as 11 Octobre.
1 These are the words of Richard Hyrde’s translation of the de Institu-
tione Feminae Christianae (1540).
2 Professor Riba y Garcia reminds me that Queen Catharine of Aragon
_ (the great friend and patron of Luis Vives) belonged to this order, and that
the connexion of Catharine and her friends with the Franciscan Convent
of Greenwich may have attracted Vives to become a Tertiarian.
56 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
should arise; for the semplicitas of St. Francis of Assisi was.
reflected in that of Luis Vives.
Luis VIves oN LAWS AND THE VERNACULAR
Let us now glance at the Spain (as well as the Valencia)
into which Vives was born. The year in which Luis Vives was.
born was that annus mirabilis for Spain 1492, which included
the Conquest of Granada, and the Discovery of America.
The interconnexion of the Moors and Valencia continued
after 1492 effectively at least till 1612, and their influence together
with native quickness and alertness vastly developed the readi-
ness to new ideas. Thus Vives was born into a really progressive
city. The Moors had supplied to the Valencians ‘ their hydraulic
science, by which they exercised a magic control over water,
wielding it at their bidding: they could do all but call down the
gentle rains from heaven, that best of all irrigations agua del
cielo, el mejor rego . . . The Aragonese, more commercial than
the Castilians, wisely after their conquest did not alter or persecute
as was done in Andalusia and Estremadura.’ So, too, the judicial
arrangements for dealing with proprietary and irrigation rights
were Moorish; and Valencian traditional customs, especially in
the country districts, were oriental and Moorish, combined with
native tradition. To quote again:
‘The regulating tribunal (so important in settling irrigation
disputes) de los acequieros or del riego, is said to have been instituted
by the Moor, Alhaken Almonstansir Billar, and was wisely retained
by Jaime I (the remarkable conqueror of the Moors at Valencia as
early as the 13th century). It is truly primitive and Oriental :
seven syndics or judges are chosen by each other out of the yeomen
and irrigators, the labradores y acequieros of the Huerta. They sit at
twelve every Thursday, in the open air, on benches, at La Puerta de
los Apostoles at “ the Apostles’ gate ’’ of the Cathedral ; all complaints
respecting irrigation are brought before these Solomons and decided in a
1 This acceptance of the Franciscan point of view of life in no way
would minimise the Valencian influence on Vives or be out of keeping with
it. Valencia has been and is still highly sympathetic with St. Francis.
A striking instance is the production last autumn (1926) of a particularly
beautiful book to celebrate the seventh centenary of St. Francis’s death.
The author is Valencian, the learned P. Antonio Torré; the illustrations
are by that distinguished Valencian painter, José Benlliure. It is printed
and bound in Valencia and published in Valencia. It is a great Valencian
book which in all its aepeets reflects the Valencian sympathy for St.
Francis to-day.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 57
summary way. There must be no law’s delay, for water here gives
daily bread .. . Time accordingly is saved by prohibiting the use of
pen, ink and paper.’ 4
With all this background of historical and traditional retro-
spect, we see the effect of Valencian surroundings on the later
jurisprudential mind of Luis Vives. I have mentioned that
Henry March, of the family of Vives’ mother, Blanca March,
had already trained the young Luis in law, and we can easily
discern signs of the Valencian legal impress. Vives says : 2
‘ The laws should not only take precautions to preserve the harmony
of the citizens amongst themselves, but of the whole race of mankind,
whose religious condition of regeneration should be regarded as sacredly
as the family concord within the threshold.’
What that meant to Luis Vives we have already seen, viz. the
reflection of the concord of Luis and Blanca, on an extended
scale, advancing into internationalism, a fore-gleam of the idea.
of the human principle at the basis of the League of Nations.
Laws, to be sound, must be known by all. They must be written
in few and appropriate words. They must be accommodated to
different men—i.e. they must allow for different psychological
types (this is as extraordinarily modern as it is open to fierce
criticism). But the explanation surely is that his Valencian
memories (though he had left the city twenty-two years before he
wrote the de Tradendis Disciplinis) made him anxious against
insisting on the legal exactions of uniformity ; reacting unequally on
such different physical, social and religious temperaments and dis-
positions of the varieties of people in a city like Valencia. Laws
should rest upon the prior consultation and acceptance by the
people. But Vives’ great and insistent condition of good laws is
that they should be in the vernacular and in intelligible and clear
language.? This emphasis on the use and study of the vernacular
is distinctly and pre-eminently the claim of Johannes Ludovicus
Vives Valentinus. It is not emphasised in the same way, for
instance, by Desiderius Erasmus, Roterodamus, who is far from
making such appeal to his countrymen, to make laws and let educa-
tion proceed naturally in the developing intimacy with the Dutch
language. In the spirit of the Valencian schola domestica Vives.
+R. Ford: Handbook for Travellers in Spain, Part I, p. 430.
2de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. V, cap. 4.
3 He further recognises the growth of language by requiring that as
language changes and old forms become obscure, the State should re-frame,,.
from time to time, the old phrases to the uses of later generations.
58 — SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
carries his advocacy of the vernacular on to the very threshold
of the church Latin tradition. ‘I would wish the maiden to
understand what she prays, or else speak in that language which
she understands. Whatsoever she prays in Latin let her get it
declared to her in her own tongue by somebody.’! For all
children (still following the Valencian schola domestica) Vives
advises that they speak in early education ‘in their own tongue,
which was born in them in their home, and if they make mistakes
let the master correct them.’ 2
VIVES AND VALENCIAN History
It is interesting to find that Vives supports his argument for
education in the vernacular by an emphatic and direct appeal to
Valencian history.
‘ After James the Conqueror (4.D. 1213-1276), King of Aragon, had
won my country, Valencia (1238 4.D.), out of the hands of the Saracens
and Moors which inhabited the city at that time, he drove out the
people and commanded men of Aragon and Lérida to go and live in it.
So the children that came of them both, with all their posterity, kept
their mother’s language, which we speak there unto this day.’ 3
I do not think it is going too far, by way of speculation, to
suppose that Luis Vives has in mind the Valencian schola domestica
of his own family (of the Vives’ and the Marchs) when he says,
‘O mothers, what an occasion for you unto your children to make
~ them which you will, good or bad,’ * by use of the vernacular.®
1Vives: de Institutione Feminae Christianae (edition in English by
Foster Watson, p. 89). Vives characteristically goes on to say: ‘ Let her
not think that prayer consists in the murmuring and wagging of the lips.’
2de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk III, cap. 3.
3 Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, edited by Foster
Watson, p. 124. At the time of writing, Vives was at Bruges, before he
came to England. But it was Valencia, not Flanders nor England, which
was for him, ‘my country.’
4Tbid., p. 125.
5 “Let mothers have ready at hand pleasant histories and honest tales
of the commendation of virtue and rebukings of vice. And let the child
hear the former first, and when it cannot yet tell what is good and what
is bad it shall begin to love virtue and to hate vice, and so grow up with
those opinions, and shall proceed to become like unto those whom he has
heard his mother commend, and unlike those whom she has dispraised.
The mother shall rehearse unto them the praises of virtue, and the dis-
praises of vice, and repeat often times, to drive them into the child’s
remembrance. I would wish she should have some holy sayings and pre-
cepts of life, which being heard divers times should at last find lodgment
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 59
THE VERNACULAR AND POETRY
Whilst Vives is well aware that native poets in the vernacular
languages may have bad influences with the ignorant and un-
learned, he has a good word for the possibilities of the vernacular
for the good poet.t Such appreciation of vernacular poets is
remarkable in the early sixteenth century Renascence, and yet it
is not altogether inappropriate in one who came from Valencia,
the City of the Cid.
VALENCIAN MOTHERS AND THE VERNACULAR
The conquest of Valencia from the Moors by James I of
Aragon took place in 1238 and Luis Vives wrote his de Institutione
Feminae Christianae in 1523, in which he urged mothers? to use
no rude and blunt speech lest that manner of speaking take root
in the tender minds of their children. Thus for nearly three
hundred years there had been a steady development of the mother-
tongue in Valencia, and self-defence against the influence of the
Moors made it a matter of patriotism to take pride in its use. The
presence of bilingualism, in the atmosphere of which Luis Vives
had spent his boyhood, no doubt impressed upon him the impor-
tance and difficulty of speaking the vernacular purely—and the
part mothers necessarily played in this desirable practice. From
in the children’s remembrance, though they gave no heed to them at the
moment. ... They inquire everything of her; whatsoever she answers
they believe and regard, and take it even for the Gospel. ... Then
should right and good opinions and the pure faith of Christ Jesus be
poured into their minds to despise riches, power, honour, pomp, nobility
and beauty, but to reckon as true and sure goods, justice, devotion, courage,
continence, wisdom, meekness, mercy and charity with mankind.’
1“ There is no human mind, however simple and removed from human
instruction, which has not received from nature certain germs of arts.
And if this happens to men who are foolish and dull, how much more to
those endowed with alertness and keenness of wit ? So we find with our
own poets, who compose poetry in the vernacular languages, and who,
although we know them to be unlearned men, yet they insert into their
poems such things as we who know them, marvel that they should be able
to include’ (de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. ILI, cap. 5).
2On occasion, Vives can be severe in rebuke of Valencian women.
Thus, he has no patience with women who paint their faces: * Juvenal
asks a fitting question, Is one who is smeared and starched with many
ointments to be said to have a face or a sore? I will rebuke my own
country, which is to me the most dear, that for shame it may give up the
practice. ... God hath given thee a face after the image of His Son,
nor hath He given thee it naked. For He hath breathed into it the spirit
of life... Why then dost thou over cover it with dirt and mire ?’
A.S.—VOL. IX. E
60 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
this same practice of bilingualism! in Valencia evidently Vives
derived the suggestion (startling as it must have been to his early
sixteenth-century Renascence contemporaries) of the possibility
of the scholarly historical study of the vernacular. Latin de-
rived, from the ordinary view, especially of the contemporary
scholars, so great an advantage by its supposed fixity (due to the
intensive, concentrated and isolated study) of the great models
such as Cicero and Terence.
SCHOOLMASTERS AND THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE
VERNACULAR
But Vives (evidently due to his experience of the dangers of
Valencian bilingualism) appealed to schoolmasters generally as he
appealed to the mothers: ‘ Let the teacher know the mother-
tongue of the boys with exactitude, so that by means of the
mother-tongue he may make his instruction more pleasant and
easier forthem. Unless he knowshowtoexpress aptly andexactly,
in the vernacular, what he wishes to speak about, he will easily
mislead the boys, and these mistakes will accompany them when
they are grown up.’ 2 ‘ But the teacher ought further to under-
stand the historical growth and development of the vernacular ;
the words which have come into the language, those which have
gone out of use, and those which have changed in meaning. In
short he should be a “ Prefect of the treasury of his language,
otherwise in the multitudinous changes of a language, books
written a century before in it will become unintelligible to pos-
terity.”’’® These words (so remarkable in a scholar who, himself,
wrote almost always in Latin, and to scholars imbued with the idea |
of a scholar’s dead language with a fixed standard) I think can
1 Vives wishes Latin to be learned as nearly as possible as a spoken
language as is the vernacular. As to grammar-teaching, he says: ‘Ina
language which is in the continual use of people, there is no necessity to
frame systematic rules. The language is learned better and more quickly,
from the people themselves. In the case of Latin, there are some points
noted by the more learned who have inferred what the Latin language was
when it was a vernacular and mother-tongue. Rules are throughout for the
guarding against mistakes and speaking inaccurately in dead languages.
> When Vives supports the teaching of Latin as a universal language,
it is not as a substitute for the vernacular. Essentially he is advocating
a bilingualism, to consist of the vernacular and the international language
(once itself a vernacular). For Vives’ views as to the teaching of Arabic,
see p. 69 infra.
2de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. III, cap. 2.
3 Foster Watson: Vives on Education, Introduction, p. exliv.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 61
only be explained by the Valencian origin and early experiences
of Vives.
THE GREAT AGE oF SPANISH DISCOVERIES
The great period of Ferdinand and Isabella made Spain the
most brilliant Court in Europe, and Vives entered into the sense
of the national glory. There was great intellectual and literary
activity as well as educational fervour. Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabella of Castile, in their union made a great bid for the intel-
lectual unity of Spain. This strain of Spanish patriotism passed
into the Valencian Vives. We catch glimpses of his appreciation
in such a passage as the following :
‘ Writers of histories make mention that, in old time, in Spain, great
wagers were laid, which women should spin or weave most, and great
honour and praise was given to them that laboured most diligently.
Yet to this day there is the same love of earnest work in many, and
among all good women it is a shame to be idle. Therefore, Queen
Isabella, King Ferdinand’s wife, taught her daughters to spin, sew and
paint ; of whom two were Queens of Portugal, the third of Spain, the
fourth the most holy and devout wife of K. Henry VIII... of England.’!
And again, says Vives:
“The four daughters of Queen Isabella were all well learned.
Dame Joan (wife of King Philip, mother to Charles) was wont to make
answer in Latin, and that without any study, to the orations customary
in towns to new princes. Likewise, Queen Catharine of England.
So the two sisters in Portugal, and of all these none others ever more
perfectly fulfilled all the points of a good woman.’ ?
In spite of his schoolboy tilt against his Renascence grammar,
Vives in later life held in respect and was clearly proud of Antonius
Nebrissensis (Antony of Lébrija) and his early dictionary and
srammar of Spanish and Latin. Peter Martyr of Milan ‘has
compiled monumental books in his records of the navigations of
the ocean and the Discovery of the New World, which took place
in his time.’ ? Then follow the prophetic words, ‘ But since then,
yet vaster events have taken place. These cannot but seem
fabulous to our posterity, though they are absolutely true.’
1 Foster Watson: Vives and the Renascence Hducation of Women, p. 46.
2 For the full expression of Vives’ loyal and affectionate devotion, to
these members of the Spanish Court, see Foster Watson: Vives and the
Renascence Education of Women, p. 53. But Vives’ main delight is that
three Spanish princesses were good women.
3de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. V, cap. 2.
62 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
THE SPANISH HUMANISTS
The chief early exponents of humanism in Spain were Antonio
de Lébrija, who lived from 1444 to 1522, and Arias Barbosa. The
torch of learning was carried on from them into Portugal by
Resende (1498-1573), and Jeronimo Osorio has been described as
the Cicero of Portugal, though Francis Bacon afterwards desig-
nated the classical level of this classical scholar as the * flowing
and watery vein’ of Osorius. The real level of Spanish learning
in the earlier part of the life of Luis Vives is to be found in the
enthusiasm of Fernan Nunez de Guzman (1471-1552) or El
Pinciano, in Francisco de Mendoza, and of course in Cardinal
Jiménez and his group (that cosmopolitan group of scholars at
Alcala). Amongst the Spaniards, Juan and Francisco Vergara
were outstanding. And Juan Vergara was one of the close friends
of Vives. Nor let it be forgotten that Vives was so far in touch
with this Spanish movement of scholarly advance at Alcala as
to be invited to fill the chair vacated in that University by
the death of Antony of Lébrija, without any competition. Juan
Vergara begged him to accept the invitation, but for some reason
or other Vives forewent this, the only opportunity as far as
we know that was offered him of a paid post, which would have
enabled him to return to his native Spain.
| The distinguished progressive scholars of the Spanish
Renascence came later in time than Vives.2. Men like Gaspar
Lax de Sarinefa, Fernando de Enzinas, the brothers Luis and
Antonio Coronel, Juan Dolz del Castellar and Jeronimo Pardo,
though scholarly, were mediaevalist in training and practice. El
Brocense and Ginés de Sepulveda developed later, and may
indeed be said to have owed something to Luis Vives rather
than vice-versa. Mendoza, Antonio Agustin, Paez de Castro,
Bishop Perez of Segorbe and many others were Spaniards Vives
would have delighted to know, enthusiasts for classical know-
ledge. The influence of the ideas, suggestions and scholarship
1 After recommending the study of Archimedes in mathematics, Vives
says: ‘My pupil (when Luis Vives was living at Louvain), Juan Vergara,
directed my attention to them. He read them in Spain with the greatest
care, and wrote them out in the night-watches from a secret manuscript.’
De Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. TV, cap. 5. : 3
2One cannot but lament that Menéndez Pelayo’s projected work,
Humanistas Hspanoles, was never completed. He began a bibliography
on the subject of Spanish works, but he only reached down to the letter C.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 63
of Vives on his successors, especially in Spain, is a work highly to
be desired, if some scholar would but undertake it.!
The fact is, nevertheless, that Vives in his classical knowledge
was not specifically dependent on the Spanish scholars, who were
so often reactionary, and deeply rooted in mediaevalism. Vives
had a cosmopolitan perspective, and as he gave his heart and
mind to the New Humanism, after he left Paris, and passed his
life in Flanders and England, the authors who had the greatest
influence upon him were the Scholars of European reputation,
chiefly Erasmus (and the members of that wonderful group
gathered round Hrasmus, first at Louvain and then at Basle).
But the inner essence of the Spanish Renascence was not so
much, after all, in learned commentators, but in the sense of
‘fresh fields and pastures new’ in action as well as thought,
in life much more even than in learning.
THE SPAIN OF LUIS VIVES
The ‘ Orbis Visibilis’ and the ‘ Orbis Intellectualis.’
The orbis intellectualis had ever been investigated with acute-
ness. But it was the glory of the Spanish outburst of human
enterprise to explore the vast orbis visibilis. The astounding
new start for human thought and action was that Columbus had
discovered a new world, and in the succeeding events.
‘Vasco da Gama had sailed to India, Cabral had discovered Brazil.
The seemingly inexhaustible riches of Mexico and Peru had been given
to Spain by Cortés and Pizarro. In 1520 Magalhaes set out from Seville
to sail round the earth, and in 1522 Kl Cano returned to the Guadal-
quivir, having accomplished the feat. Twenty-one years later,
Copernicus published at Nirnberg his De Orbiwm coelestuum revolu-
tionibus libri IV showing that the earth, thus circumnavigated, was
itself in motion. It would have been a marvel if Scholasticism
(to which the Spanish clung) had not enlarged its scope, and
Aristotelianism like a sunlit cloud became bathed, despite itself, in
the light of Platonism.’ 2
Remember, by the side of this passage, Luis Vives’ words
already quoted :
+The treatise of Garcia Matamoros, de Asserenda Hispanonum Hrudi-
tione (1553), is not to be overlooked.
2A. F. G. Bell, Luis de Leon, pp. 20, 21.
64 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
‘Since then (the Discovery of the New World) yet vaster events
have followed. These cannot but seem fabulous to our posterity,
though they are absolutely true.’
Earlier on I emphasised the Spanish, the Valencian schola
domestica. I now proceed to emphasise the fact that the second
great factor in the underlying springs of Luis Vives’ development
is precisely this recognition of the enlargement of the physical
world (the orbis visibilis, as Francis Bacon would say) and the
consequent effect on the orbis intellectualis. And Vives is dis-
tinguished as a Philosopher and as a Teacher particularly because
he has seized the significance of this revolution for thought. And
in this power of vision, Luis Vives is urged forward intensively
and extensively from the Spanish background, the Valencian
experiences of his youth.
A fact mentioned by 8S. D. José Pin y Soler brings out the
connexion of the Valencian Luis Vives with close knowledge of
the New Discoveries in a very typical way. Among the many
Spanish friends of Vives in Paris, says Senor Pin y Soler, was
Michael Sant-angel 1 (a Catalonian connexion of the Luis Sant-
angel who had travelled with Columbus). Valencia, as well as
Sevilla, was engrossed in the geographical triumphs of Spain,
and Vives associated with a member of the family of a companion
of Columbus. Again we can see what it meant for Vives to have
been Valencian-born. Let me illustrate this Spanish-sea influence
on the responsive Luis Vives.
Luis VIVES AND MopERN GEOGRAPHY
He is the first advocate of the teaching of modern geography.
There were plenty of advocates of the teaching of ancient geo-
graphy; one of the most eloquent was Erasmus. But like the
new race of adventurers and their followers, Vives saw that
geography had a wide and new significance. To him it implied
the study of animals, plants, herbs, the agricultural sciences.
It implied really useful acquaintance with all the wonders of the
new lands, and also a knowledge of the countries and districts
near at hand. As became a native of Valencia, for instance, he
laid considerable stress on the variety of fishes to be observed.
But ‘if a philosopher,’ says Vives, ‘ was to conduct a controversy
1See p. 73 infra, where is shown the friendly relation of Vives and
Santangel.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 65
on fish, the subject is so vast, we should need the provision of
beds, so as to sleep here the night.’ !
Vives gave expression to this need of the introduction of
modern geography into the educational curriculum. After
advocating, like all the Renascence educationists, the teaching of
ancient geography by reading Strabo, and the study of Ptolemy's
maps (if the student ‘can obtain a corrected? edition,’ adds Vives),
he, exceptionally amongst Renascence educationists, says, ‘ Let
him add the discoveries of our countrymen (i.e. of the Iberian
peninsula) on the borders of the East and the West.’? How
the Valencian Luis Vives really entered into the significance of
these new geographical discoveries may best be shown by a
quotation of his dedicatory address of the de Tradendis Disciplinis
to King John III ‘ the renowned King of Portugal and Algarve,
Lord of Guinea, etc.’ After his courageous manner, Luis Vives
warns John III that he will have to ‘ exercise the greatest watch-
fulness and care to maintain his heritage, a task expected from
him.’ But Vives declares it is his duty, further, ‘ to transmit the
achievements of thy predecessors on a larger and yet more
splendid scale to thy posterity. Thy progenitors dared to set
out from Portugal to explore new seas, new lands, new and un-
known climes. First, they overthrew the Arabs and took
possession of the Atlantic Ocean. They were carried away
beyond the paths of the Sun (i.e. the Equator) and having
traversed the Southern Sea, south of Ethiopia, they penetrated
to the territory opposite to us; hence to the Red Sea, and even
up to the entrance of the Persian Gulf, where they erected forti-
1 He speaks with the remembrance of the coast near Valencia, which
quickens what we may call his descriptive natural history and geo-
graphy. It is true he quotes ancient authors. ‘ Oppianus, a countryman
of Dioscorides, writes on the fishes of every country.’ But he goes on to
say: ‘In this part of nature-study we are extremely ignorant, for Nature
has been almost incredibly prodigal in the supply of fishes, and in the
naming of them there is a corresponding prodigality of differences. In
every region of the sea, on every coast, are found varieties differing in
shape and form. There is a difference in the local names given to fishes
by the various towns and cities which are quite near each other and whose
inhabitants speak the same language’ (de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. IV,
cap. 1).
2 Here we see the progressive proviso.
3 de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. IV, cap. 1. In his Colloquia in No. xii
Domus, the architect (Vitruvius by name) is represented as placing in the
hall of the house ‘a plan of the earth and sea. There you have the world
newly discovered by Spanish navigations.’
66 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
fications. Then they travelled north of the mouth of the Indus,
and established their authority over the fierce and blessed shores
of all India.
‘They have shown us the paths of the heaven and the sea,
before not even known by name. They have also discovered
peoples and nations who perform marvellous religious rites and
are in a state of barbarism, though possessing wealth on which
our people so keenly cast their affections. The whole globe 1s
opened wp to the human race, so that no one is so ignorant of
events as to think that the wanderings of the ancients, whose
fame reached to heaven, are to be compared with the journeys of
these travellers, either in the magnitude of their journeyings,
or in the difficulties met with in their routes, or in their accounts
of unheard-of conditions of life of the various nations who give
us a rude shock by their differences from us in appearance, habit
and custom.’
But Luis Vives’ appreciation of the wonderful discoveries in
the New World (far beyond the old seven Wonders of the World)
was not merely the insight into the revolution of geographical
science. The Orbis visibilis was enormously enlarged, but what
is not always realised is, that the new conception changed the
interpretations of the whole old world of space as hitherto known.
And if this is true of the world of space, it is equally true of
the world of time. Luis Vives transferred the idea of the geo-
graphical New World across the ocean, to an intellectual New
World, which should develop in a line of continuity to the best
and ripest thought of the Old World of antiquity, in time. His
de Disciplinis is divided into two parts. The first is called the
de Causis Corruptarum Artium, and is a serious investigation into:
the decadence which had fallen on the world since the Great Ages -
of Antiquity, and contains the soul-stirring appeal to go back to
the heights reached in the past and to proceed from the intellectual
results of the ancients into a yet nobler and more magnificent future,
not dreamt of even by them, urged onwards intellectually, as the
discoverers had been urged physically, by that desire to dare all
so as to add the unknown to the territory of the known, and raise
knowledge and truth to still higher levels. Luis Vives sees
glimpses of the law of evolution in physics, and of unity and con- -
tinuity in history. With an iconoclasticism startling in a man of
such gentleness, he ruthlessly destroys the idea of intellectual
stagnation, and lifts a prophet’s hand against contentment with
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 67
intellectual decadence, though it had lasted for hundreds of years.
We must recognise that even in the past Aristotle did not absorb
all the world of truth, any more than the old world of Europe and
the East absorbed all the wonders of the new West.
Vives, in short, is a new Columbus ready to turn westwards
in the things of the mind.!_ His reverence for Aristotle is pro-
found, like that of Ben Jonson for Shakespeare, but bounded in
its height and width, ‘on this side idolatry,’ safe within the
stronghold of reason.
Luis Vives’ Apologia, and at the same time Manifesto for
freedom of intellectual inquiry, claims the right of the intellectual
man to sail at his own risk and responsibility on the sea of
thought without fastening himself on the standardised dicta and
pronouncements of the ancients.
These views of Luis Vives need to be quoted at length. They
are not sufficiently known, and yet they mark more clearly than
perhaps any statements from the most distinguished of the other
Renascence scholars and writers, the transition from the mediaeval
to the modern point of view.
‘I have always held that we must render the ancients our warmest
thanks, for not withholding from us their successors the results of
their study and industry. If they have been mistaken in any matter
we must excuse it as error due to that frailty which is part of the
human lot. Moreover, it is far more profitable for learning to form a
critical judgment on the writings of the great authors than to merely
acquiesce in their authority and to receive everything on trust from
others, provided that in forming judgments we are all far removed
from those pests of criticism, envy, bitterness, overhaste, impudence
and scurrilous wit.’
THE New WoRLD AND ITS QUICKENING oF THOUGHT
We remember that Luis Vives, in the geography of the
physical, is prepared to recommend the consideration of the
maps of Ptolemy, but the student must get a corrected edition
‘and add the discoveries of our countrymen.’ So with the
1 Vives is modest in spite of all his determined firmness. He says, * I must
confess that I have often been ashamed at what I have ventured to under-
take, and I condemn my own self-confidence, in thinking that I should
dare to attack authors consecrated by their eminence through the centuries.
Especially is this so in connection with Aristotle, for whose mind, for whose
industry, carefulness, judgment in human acts, I have an admiration and
respect unique above all others.’ J. L. Vives: Preface to de Disciplinis.
_ 68 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
maps of the mind. Is it not the same spirit which calls for the
study of not merely standardised stagnant authorities, but also
for consultation of the old authorities as corrected by progressive
critical judgment ?
The penetration of the New-World consciousness in Luis
Vives might be traced in apparently indirect small details as well
as in broader outlines. Thus, it may seem a very small circum-
stance that he should use the word ‘ exploratio’ in the passage
(de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. IV, cap. 6) on the subject of
Dietetics: ‘sed indubie prima inventio divinae fuit opis, non
in homine minus quam in mutis animantibus ; perisset profecto
maxima humani generis pars, priusquam ad explorationem
pervenisset hujus observationis.’ This stress on exploratio}
and observatio and contrast with imventio brings to mind the
similar but later attitude of Francis Bacon. The merit of
Francis Bacon is described by Albert Schwegler to be that he
established the principle of a thinking exploration of nature.
The whole of these terms, discoveries, explorations, observations,
etc., received intensification in the writings of those who applied
themselves to geographical and navigational, and the consequential,
subject-matter.
To illustrate Vives’ direct allusions to the New World, he says
in an argument on the blessings of international peace : ?
‘Spanish sailors relate that there are islands in that New World 3
(in novo isto Orbe) which they have discovered, and that when these
aboriginal islanders have fallen into a state of war, the leader who
initiates peace is held in the highest honour, and he is regarded as
twice a criminal (and a common enemy) to all, who refuses peace when
sought.’ |
How Vives combines this Spanish readiness to contemplate
1 Compare in Vives’ Christi Jesu Triumphus (Vivis Opera omnia VII,
p. 111) ‘illtus ingenium pernoscere, ac animum totum intus, ut aiunt, et in
cute explorare.’
2In a letter to the Bishop of Lincoln, 8 July, 1524, written from
Bruges, 1524.
3 It is an interesting question to inquire : When did Vives acquire this
attitude of toleration towards and respect for West Indian islanders? Not-
withstanding his desire, strong as that of Ramon Lull, his Catalonian
predecessor, it seems reasonable to suggest that the truce-like relationship
of Christians and Moslems, side by side in his native Valencia, had made
such a rapprochement of sympathy towards the trans-Atlantic natives
more of human intuition of the inclusiveness of love of his fellow-men, in
spite of racial and circumstantial differences, than was the case with some
other ‘ humanists.’
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 69
the new discoveries with the spirit of the old Valencian schola
domestica is seen in his remarks on the above trans-Atlantic story.
‘What use is our literature?’ he asks, ‘our humanities ? our
numerous arts of life ? our advanced education ? the rule even (which
we accept) of the omnipotent God ? when, in the midst of these achieve-
ments, we incur the most reproachful judgments of the natural man.
These crude and barbarous peoples, without literary or other culture
or piety, have been taught true and sane opinions by a direct and pure
nature, whilst the evil (war) practices of our nations have been driven
into us by those inexhaustible vices unknown to these islanders,
Ambition and Avarice.’
Kast AND West: MuruaLt UNDERSTANDING
Luis Vives showed the brave spirit of his father and his noble
ancestors in the courage with which he thus addressed John
Longland, bishop of Lincoln, one of the leaders of the English
Court, under an absolute Tudor monarch, and condemns
war, in the light of a new-world island of savages. It is this
attitude which differentiates him from contemporary scholars.
Vives, as a good Valencian, wished to help the Moors of
his city and the Moors generally. His views on linguistic educa-
tion are, apparently, unique in the age of Erasmus. As we
shall see, he considers that the vernacular should be known by
all as thoroughly as possible. But Luis Vives, as a direct conse-
quence of Valencian early experience, urges nearly a quarter
of a century after leaving Valencia, ‘Would that the Agareni
(that is, the Moslems) and we, that is Christians, had some
language in common.! I believe that in a short time many of
them would cast in their lot with us (that is, become Christians).
. *Karnestly would I wish,’ adds Vives, ‘that in most
countries, schools for languages should be established not only for
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, but also of Arabic, and of those languages
which may be the vernaculars of Saracens and Moors, which men
of no easy-going kind should teach, not for the sake of the glory
thence to be snatched, and for applause, but men most ardent in
the zeal of piety, prepared to spend their lives for Christ that,
through their instruction, Christ should be proclaimed to those
nations who have learned very little, or almost nothing of Him.’ ?
1 Of course, Vives was not the first to advocate educational and cultural
rapprochement with the Moslems. Ramon Lull (1235-1315) had preceded
him with the conviction of a martyr for the Christian faith. Ramon Lull,
of course, also was a Catalan.
2de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. III, cap. 1.
HO SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
The above passage is characteristic of Luis Vives as it is not
characteristic of Erasmus and his other humanist contemporaries.
Luis Vives is deeply religious. Moreover, he was emphatically
a Catholic,! but as has been said aptly, though a Catholic he
is rather Johannine than Pauline. He loves his fellow-men,
whether they are Moslems or American aborigines. He is tolerant
to all vernaculars. This does not hinder him from advocating
the study of Latin. ‘I would wish the Latin language to be
known thoroughly, for this is a benefit to society and to the know-
ledge of all the sciences. It is wrong not to cultivate it and not
to be able to converse with others in it since, as 8. Augustine
Says, everyone would prefer to converse with his dog than with
a man of an unknown tongue.’ So Latin, for various reasons,
should rightly be a second language for all.?
VIVES AND MOSLEMS
In all these views we can find a background in Luis Vives’
Valencian training. The schola domestica supplied him with the
conviction of the value of the vernacular, his life amongst bilingual.
people gave him the impulse towards (whilst his religious prompt-
ings intensified) his good-will towards men differing in language
from himself, for he daily had seen and met Moslems in the streets.
and public places of Valencia and the variety of life-experience
and association with lawyers and physicians in his Valencian
home trained in him a certain open-mindedness and toleration.
(within limits, it might be) for others who differed from him.
VIVES AS A STUDENT AT PARIS
The Spanish Scholars at Paris.
When Luis Vives went to Paris in 1509 Paris was, and had
been for many years, a great centre for Spaniards to go for study,
1 He said (in the de Veritate Fidei Christianae): ‘I declare I submit
myself always to the judgment of the Church, even if it appears to me to be-
in opposition to the strongest grounds of reason. For I may be in error,
but the Church never is mistaken on matters of belief.’
2 The common prejudice, even of scholars of the period, against learning”
Hebrew is held by Vives in a modified form. He would allow the student
to learn Hebrew for the study of the Old Testament ‘if he can acquire it
without being corrupted. I hear that many things have been falsified in
Hebrew writings by Jews, partly through their hatred of Christ, partly
through inertia, since these people so often change their abodes and have-
not leisure to bestow due labour on literature. Certainly if you consult.
two Jews as to the same passage, rarely do they agree.’
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 71
to get into the current of the scholarship which prevailed in so
many parts of Europe, disseminated from the University of Paris
as a centre. At this time Paris had received, as Bonilla y San
Martin points out, a considerable number of Spanish scholars. At
the Collége de Ste Barbara was Juan de Celaya, a Valencian by
birth. The Coronels from Segovia were at the Collége de Montaigu
(Erasmus’s old College). Juan Dolz de Castella was at the
College de Lyons. And at the Collége de Beauvais was Fernando
de Enzinas, from Valladolid. We gather that Luis Vives was
soon in touch with the Spanish contingent, though it is not quite
clear to which college Luis himself belonged. Vanden Bussche,
the Bruges archivist, whose opinion we must always respect, is of
opinion that he was attached to the Collége de Beauvais. Bonilla
thinks he was a student of the Collége de Navarre—a favourite
College for Spaniards.
The candour of Luis Vives, coming to Paris with the freshness
of youth (seventeen years of age) and then with ten intervening
years of study and thought at Paris, led him in 1519 to declare his
judgment on his Spanish contemporaries in these terms :
“The majority of learned men threw the whole blame for the
Parisian obscurantism on the Spaniards who are in the University.
They, like unconquered men, bravely defend the fortress (unfor-
tunately in this case) of ignorance. Wherever their great brains are
bent they wax strong, and hand themselves over to even these absurdi-
ties (that is, of ceaseless disputations). They show themselves the
best in them, if indeed, in such a base and despicable matter, anyone
can be “ of the best.”’ So itis said of them they are the least deserving
in the University of Paris. . Those who write of the disreputable state
of academic teaching at Paris (1519) condense the description into a
proverb: Parisws docert juventutem nihil scire, atque adeo insane et
loquacissime deliriart.’
Some of the Paris studies, he says, are worthless, and even the
solid studies, or those which might be such, are treated in Paris
with the merest trifling. In his indignation Luis Vives pro-
nounces— :
* The Spaniards 1 and their followers either ought to be compelled
1In a letter to Erasmus (Bruges, 4 June, 1520) Vives modifies some-
what his adverse criticism of Spanish students at Paris: * There are
Spaniards who by their example bring a great impetus to the res meliores.’
He instances John Poblacio, Francisco Mallus, Gabriel Aquilinus, John
Enzinas, and Martinus Lusitanus ‘ propinquus sui Regis’ (Manoel I).
See P. 8S. Allen, Letters of Hrasmus, IV, pp. 271-2.
72 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
to give themselves up to other and better studies, or by public edict
they ought to be expelled as corrupters of morals and of erudition.’
Leniently, he concludes it is not the fault of the French, but of
‘you and me’ (he is addressing John Fortis), ‘if we do not
advise better subjects and ways of study.’ Luis Vives avers he
is sorry to have to admit that the charge of intellectual
obscurantism against his countrymen is true, but for that very
reason there is a certain fitness (of irony) that he, a Spaniard
himself, shouid protest against his fellow-countrymen, and against
his former self. Thus between 1509 and 1519 the great change
had come over Luis Vives. He had passed over from the Middle
Ages, and entered the New World of intellectual outlook as
effectively as Christopher Columbus previously had crossed the
Atlantic, with all the consequences of that crossing.
There are two aspects which disclose the change—the literary
‘conversion ’ of Luis Vives. Let us then catch a glimpse of him
as a student at a students’ supper-party—and, then, listen to his
torrent of eloquence when, in the Jn-Pseudo-dialecticos of 1519,
he comes out of what he himself calls the ‘ Cimmerian darkness ’
of the old disputacious futilities of threadbare Scholasticism.
We cannot but inquire: How did this intellectual revolution
come about ?
Luis Vives and a Spanish Festal Symposium ee
at Paris.
The Spaniards at Paris foregathered especially on festal days.?
‘ Everywhere,’ says Luis Vives, ‘ the festal day of the Resurrec-
tion is celebrated as completely as possible, because on that day,
Jesus rising from the dead, accomplished the work of redemption,
and made us all partakers of immortal life. Therefore, after
all of us students had first given our minds to sacred devotions,
John Fortis, my study-companion (contubernalis meus) and
1 This John Fortis (Furtes) was a Spanish student contemporary with
Vives at Paris. See p. 73 n.
2M. Quicherat, in a note on féfes among the University students at
Paris, says: ‘ Les fétes, quoique infiniment nombreuses, n’avaient pas sur
les études Veffets désastrueux qu’elles produisent aujourd’hui.’ The
greater part of them were passed in exercises of devotion and in legons
dagrément in subjects outside of the University programme, and the
others, which brought for a moment the complete emancipation of the
scholar, made him free but did not necessarily lead to any disgraceful waste
of energy.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 73:
Peter Iborra, exceedingly keen lovers of knowledge, agreed that
we would read and study in the same church for the afternoon,
over and above our sacred devotions... When we had carried
out all this arrangement we took a walk through the city and met
Gaspar Lax, of Sarifiena, our tutor, in the vestibule of the School,
a man of the most piercing intellect, combined with a very reten-
tive memory. After we had duly greeted him, and he had
returned our greeting (for he is most scrupulous in his con-
sideration for others), he asked us: “‘ Would we like to go and have
supper with him,” an invitation which we were delighted to accept.
At his encouragement, we then followed him. When we reached
his lodging, there also had arrived two of my fellow-Valencians,
viz. Miguel de San Angel (Santangel) and Francisco Cristobal.’
These men brought with them a Book of Hours (horariwm) to
show to Lax. This book was most beautifully illuminated with
miniature hand-paintings. Lax invited the Valencian students to.
stay for supper. They accepted the invitation and sat down also
to the meal. Whilst it was in progress, Vives from time to time
kept examining the Book of Hours, and the conversation turned
upon the subject of the miniatures. Luis Vives remarked: ‘ Here
is depicted the Triumph of the Dictator Caesar.’ Lax interposed :
‘How much more excellent it would have been if the subject
had been Christ, who is indeed our Optimus Maximus, instead of
Caius Caesar, who was by no means a good man.’ The company
wondered that Lax used the term ‘ Triumph ’ of Christ and Vives
asked him to explain this application of the term. ‘Stop
awhile,’ said he, ‘ your eating, and give all your minds to me ”
Then he began his explanation.
Thus Luis opens his Christi Jesu Triumphus, the first book he
wrote. The ‘ occasio’ of the dialogue is similar to the famous.
Symposia of the ancients, to those in Sir Thomas More’s garden at
Chelsea in England, to the gatherings in the villas below Fiesole of
Italian humanists, or those in the ducal courts of Urbino or Mantua.
The resemblance is sufficient to indicate that Luis Vives had
entered (perhaps it may be said, dimly) into the atmosphere of the
Italian Renascence, but the differences are more striking than the
superficial resemblance. Instead of the noble banquets of the
1 John Fortis (Fuertes or Furtes) of Aragon was a student in Paris,
under John Dolz of Aragon. Evidently Vives kept up a strong friendship
with him, dedicating an edition of Hyginus (March 31, 1514) to him and the:
In-Pseudo-dialecticos in 1519.
74 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
Medici we are taken into the humble ‘ cubiculum ’ of Gaspar Lax,
the Aragon tutor of the Valencian Luis Vives. Instead of princes
or nobles, we enter the presence of young Valencian students at
Paris, Miguel de Santangel, Francisco Cristobal and Vives,
these Valencians and a further Spaniard Pedro Iborra of Aragon
with the teacher, Gaspar Lax of Sarifiena, in Aragon, all of
Spanish origin. The gathering and its proceedings have their
special significance: instead of the glorification of the Pagan
background this little Parisian gathering of Spanish students
(as it were, in an ‘upper room’) is Christian, almost primitive
Christian in its essence, glorying in the Prince of Peace, in place
of the Emperor of War. The great thesis of Vives’ first book ?
is that, in the great Revival of Letters, all literary activity should
be placed at the service of Christ, not, as in the literary outbursts
elsewhere, in the service of the glorification of classical and pagan
heroes, and of men of self-seeking ambitions.
Vives gives the ‘ oration’ of Lax and of each of the guests.
Lax speaks on the victories of Christ; Santangel on Christ as
Pater Patriae; John Fuertes on the crowns due to Christ.
Francisco Cristobal turns to the subject of the Ovatio Virginis
Dei Parentis. He is followed by Pedro Iborra on the same
subject. ‘Siso ’—the speaker specially addressing Luis Vives—
“was formerly your teacher in grammar in the new school at
Valencia.’ Siso apparently had intervened in some boyish
discussion between Iborra and Parthenius Tovar, and we are
told the details. On one occasion, much was being said in praise
of Pollux and Castor, with great eloquence their feats were
extolled, confirmed by an appeal to the ancient writers Titus
Livius, Troges, Plutarch, etc. Daniel Siso, however, rather
quoted Dioscorides, ‘daemonum vprestigiae illae erant.’ Pro-
ceeding, Siso the schoolmaster told the boys that there was a
greater, nobler Hero,—‘ I think in sound truth that our real
Castor and our real Pollux are our Christ and His Mother who are
our greatest supporters in our perennial war, standing by us, lest
we should fall to pieces. For who would have strength to stand
up against Satan, unless the hands of these Protectors should be
stretched forward to our help?’
Thus we find the origin of Vives’ views on the symbolical
interpretation of classical legends into terms of Christian life,
in its strife and struggles, in its battles, fights, victory, crowns,
1 The title is Christi Jesu Triumphus. The date 1514.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 75
and triumphs—so characteristic of Vives, in endeavouring to
transmute the essence of classical story into symbolism of trans-
cendent Christian epic in protest against the Italian paganism of
the Renascence.
The idea of this method of treatment by Vives is thus definitely
to be traced to a Valencian source,! viz. the memory of sug-
gestions made in the school in Valencia, by the schoolmaster,
Daniel Siso. And the authority for this statement is Luis Vives
himself in his Christy Jesu Triumphus.
Luis Vives and the Spanish Primate-designate.
When Vives left Paris and his Spanish friends in residence
there he seems to have settled in Bruges in 1514. Bruges, we
remember, was to him a second Valencia. M. Emile Vanden
Bussche points out that there were numerous compatriots of
Vives, who carried on a brisk trade with Spain. At Bruges he
taught the little eight-year-old child of the Valdauras, whom in
1524 he married. The Valdaura family, as already mentioned,
originally came from Valencia.
In 1516 Vives was at Louvain—and there we know he associ-
ated with certain Spaniards: Honorato Juan, Pedro Maluenda,
Diego Gracian de Alderate, Antonio de Berges, Juan Vergara and
Jeronimo Ruffald. We must not omit to notice another connexion
of Vives with Spaniards whilst at Louvain. He became, probably
in 1516, the tutor of the young Guillaume de Croy, at that time
eighteen years of age, and already appointed Bishop of Cambrai.
This young nobleman was the nephew of the Duke of Chievres,
the well-known minister of Charles V._ By his uncle’s influence,
de Croy was, in 1517, in the time of Pope Leo X, nominated
Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain. There
is a picturesque account of the ceremony in which the Papal
Legate brought the young Cardinal his credentials and offered
him congratulations, delivering an address couched in eloquent
1 Gregory Mayans says of the Christi Triumphus : ‘ Haec Dialogi more
refert Vives, sive vera, sive ficta, sive partim vera, partim ficta; sub-
jungit que tres Orationes, sive Declamationes, quibus Christi Triumphum
depinxit, quarum unam composuit Vives nomine Gasparis Laxis, alteram
Michaelis Sancti Angeli, et tertiam Joannes Fortis, easque dedicavit
amplissimo Patri Bernardo Mensae, Antistiti Helnensi Parisiis, mense
Aprili MDXIV.” In any case we get in this first little work glimpses of
Valencians, and our only description of the Valencian school, and we see the
trend of Vives’ views, when he first turned away from the academic
programmes.
ESV Ole. Xe) F
76 _ SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
language! in the Cathedral of Middleburg. Appropriately the
Legate was the Spanish Cardinal Luis of Aragon, who was accom-
panied by the Bishop of Cordoba and Badajoz and ‘ many
seflors and gentlemen of Spain and Italy.’ The Emperor,
Charles V, was present.
In 1523 Luis Vives went to England,? partly spending his
time lecturing in the University of Oxford at Corpus Christi
College, and partly at the Royal Court at Richmond and at
Greenwich. It is noteworthy that Vives’ residence in England
was at the very time that the Spanish atmosphere and influence
in the English Court was more prominent than at any time,
before or since, owing to the presence of Catharine of Aragon,
the wife of Henry VIII, who never lost her love of Spain and
things Spanish. Vives, therefore, was in congenial surroundings
in the Court,? and there was nothing to hinder the. fullest dis-
closure and development of his Valencian characteristics and
colouring of personality and ideas.
Vives left England, never to return, in 1528. From that date
to 1540, in which he died, he lived chiefly in Flanders, and he con-
tinued to keep in contact with Spaniards. How deeply Spanish
life, customs and surroundings were settled in the background of
his mind is best illustrated by his remarkable Linguae Latinae
Exercitatio, a series of schoolboy Dialogues or Colloquia published
at Breda in 1538. This book, published nearly thirty years after
Luis Vives left Valencia, contains numerous references, direct and
indirect, to that city. One of the Dialogues‘ specially concerns
itself with Valencia. The Interlocutors Borgia, Scintilla, and
Cabanillius take a walk through the streets of Valencia. Quarters
and streets are named. In his intimate way he puts into the
mouth of Scintilla :
1D. José Pin y Soler suggests that the appropriate ideas, in good style,
of the Latin answer were probably inspired by Vives and that the tutor
would probably be present with his distinguished pupil.
2 de Croy died at Louvain at the age of twenty-three years. Vives’
letters are full of grief for the death of the young Cardinal, and together
with over-work at the Commentaries on S. Augustine's Civitas Dei he fell
into serious illness. It was at this time he was nursed ‘amongst my
Spanish countrymen.’ On recuperating, he received the invitations to
England; to Oxford and London.
3 See Foster Watson: Les Relacions de Joan Lluis Vives amb el Anglesos —
i amb l Angleterra (Barcelona, 1918), in which a full account is given of
the Spanish element in Queen Catharine’s household and Court.
4No. XXII.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES a,
‘Let us go into the Quarter of the Tabernae gallinaceae.1 For in
that Quarter I should like to see the house in which my Vives was
born. It is situated, as I have heard, to the left as we descend, quite
at the end of the Quarter. I will take the opportunity to call upon his.
sister.’
This Linguae Latinae Exercitatio abounds in references based
on the early Valencian memories of Vives, and in this respect
differentiates Vives from other Renascence humanists. Two
hundred years ago Dr. Coret called him el grande Valenciano,
and Dr. Gregory Mayans i Siscar was irresistibly drawn in his.
great edition to add to his name Valentinus. The genius loci,
with which Vives brings the European schoolboy (for the Colloquia
of Vives circulated in all Latin-learning countries) into a know-
ledge and recognition of Valencia, may be shown by such a passage:
as the following (from this same Dialogue XXII). Scintilla
leads his friends by the Plaza de los Penarroches, the Cerrajeros.
(el carrer de Mafians) by the Confiteros into the Plaza de la Fruta.
Borgia suggests: Por que antes bien no & la de las verzas ?
Scintilla :
‘Todo es uno: los que gustan mas de verzas lIlamle verceria ;
los que de la fruta, fruteria. What a spaciousness there is of the
market, what a multitude of sellers and of things exposed for sale !
What a scent of fruit! What variety, cleanliness, and brightness !
Gardens could hardly be thought to contain fruit equal to the supply
of what is in this market. What skill and diligence our Fiel mayor 2
and his ministers show so that no buyer shall be deceived by fraud.
Is not he who is riding on his mule Honorato Juan ? ’
One of the persons of Valencia mentioned by Vives in the
Exercitatio is la Marquesa Zenete, niece of the Spanish Cardinal
Mendoza. She was born in 1509, daughter of Don Rodrigo de
Mendoza, brother of Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Shemarried
Henry, Count of Nassau. Vives had spoken of her as a girl,® in the
de Institutione Feminae Christianae (1523).. It was in the house of
1 Calle de la Taberna del Gallo. The numerous places and association s
in Valencia (so well remembered by Luis Vives in his last years in Flanders
when writing these Colloquia) were identified and named in an edition of
the Colloquia by Dr. Christoval Coret, Professor of Eloquence en la Santa
Metropolitana de Valencia over two hundred years ago. Dr. Coret’s edition
contained a translation into Spanish and included a recommendation from
the enthusiastic editor of the sumptuous eight-volume Opera Omnia Vivis,
D. Gregory Mayans y Siscar.
*Llamate comunmente Almotacen (Coret’s note).
3 He says: ‘I see Mencia Mendoza growing up. I hope she will
become distinguished some day.’
78 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
Mencia de Mendoza, at Breda, in Brabant, after she had become
a widow, that Vives found a shelter during the years 1537-8.
Thus after leaving Valencia, in the University of Paris, he associ-
ated intimately with Spaniards. During his residence at Bruges,
he found his second Valencia. In England, at the Court, he found
around Catharine of Aragon a Spanish household. In Flanders his
wife Margaret Valdaura was of Valencian ancestors—and in two of
the latest years he was tutor to Mencia de Mendoza, a Valencian
by birth, The details can be filled in—but in broad outline Vives
was remarkable in his later life for his Spanish associates and in
his continuous friendship to his native citizens and Valencians.
This deep attachment to Spain and to Valencia was of import-
ance, we have seen, in determining his religious outlook on life—
and in imparting to his whole educational system the background of
the schola domestica, the love of a sound home-life, and of mankind
as one large family. The basal idea of the Academy in Vives is
the unity of all life as an education. He would have children,
youth, mature adults and old men ! all share in a unified spirit of
religion, pedagogic instruction, and of the practical experience of
life. All life is an education.
Vives comes out from the ‘Cimmerian darkness’ of
the Paris Schools.
Let us consider, first, how Vives enlarged the concept of
education, intensively. It cannot, of course, be said that Vives
was the first iconoclast in the shattering of the Parisian obsessions
of disputational hair-splitting and blind reliance on tradition, of
appeals to inferences from Aristotle, or of the attitude of direct
appeal to verba ipsissima of glossators, commentators, of the use of
unwarranted and false Latin as the medium of expressing thought,
and its utter irrelevance to fresh and determined search for truth. ?
1° This is a true academy, viz. an association and harmony of men
equally good and learned, met together to confer the same blessings on all
those who come there for the sake of learning. . . . Thus toaschool of the
right kind, not only boys should be brought, but even old men, driven
hither and thither in a great tempest of ignorance and vice, should betake
themselves to it as it were to a haven.’ This rapprochement of the idea of
life and education logically led Vives to the inclusion of girls and women
into the scope of education. But the inclusion of youth and the old,
and of girls and women, was an enlargement of the schola domestica to an
indefinitely intensive and extensive concept.
2“ Truth,’ says Luis Vives, ‘is open to all.’ But this is opposed to
mediaeval conceptions, governed by the idea of authority. He asks,
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 79
Erasmus, of course, in his Hncomium Moriae had, at a stroke,
developed satire into its bitterest sting against the established
mediaeval types of study. At Paris, Luis Vives was taught by
the Flemish John Dullard and by the Spanish Gaspar Lax.
Dullard plainly advised Luis that the new literary studies based
on a knowledge of grammar rather than logic were misleading :
Quanto eris melior grammaticus, tanto peior dialecticus et theolo-
gus.1_ Accordingly the young Valencian imbibed the orthodox
scholasticism and became proficient in all the Parisian conser-
vative studies.2 Erasmus said that ‘no man was _ better
fitted than Vives to utterly overwhelm the battalions of the
dialecticians,’ for he had been thoroughly trained in the discipline.
The schools and colleges had trained boys and young men in
wordy disputes. ‘When a boy,’ said Vives, ‘ has been brought
to the school at once he is required to dispute, immediately he
is taught to wrangle, though as yet unable to talk. The same
practice is pursued in Grammar, in the Poets, in History, as in
Dialectic and Rhetoric, and in every subject. Someone may
wonder how the most apparent, simple, rudimentary matters
can be susceptible of argument. ... But beginners are accus-
tomed never to be silent. . . . Nor does one disputation or two
a day suffice as with eating. At breakfast they wrangle. After
breakfast they wrangle. At supper they wrangle, after supper
they wrangle. ... At meals, at the bath, in the sweating-room,
in the temple, in the city, in the country, in public, in private,
in every place, at every time they wrangle.’
It was from Louvain, in 1519, Luis Vives dispatched his
In-Pseudo-dialecticos in the form of a letter to John Fortis whom
we remember as one of the little Symposium-group at the
cubiculum of Gaspar Lax when the Christi Jesu Triumphus was
so valiantly maintained as against the glorification of the Roman
Caesar. Fortis, also a Spaniard, we remember as a pupil of
in his Preface to the de T'radendis Disciplinis, pardon for errors to be
found in an undertaking ‘so new’ in its scope. The Preface isa valiant
appeal for ‘the open mind.’
1 de Causis Corruptarum Artium, Bk. II (Opera 1782-90), Vol. VI, p. 86.
2 The chief books studied at Paris were the Catholicon of Johannes de
Janua, the Vocabularium of Hugotio or of Papias, the Mammetractus of
Giovanni Marchesini, the Floretus or Cornutus of Johannes de Garlandia,
the Doctrinale of Alexander de Villa Dei, the Graecismus of Eberhard of
Bethune, the Legenda Aurea Sanctorum of Jacobus de Voragine, the
Specula of Vincent of Beauvais, the Swmmulae of Peter Hispanus and of
Paul Venetus.
80 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
John Dolz of Aragon. It was in this treatise Luis Vives describes
the “Cimmerian darkness’ of academic Parisian scholasticism
from which he had escaped.
Into the old mediaeval Aristotelian scholastic there had
been imported a considerable measure of the commentaries of
Avicenna, Averroes, and other Moslem writers. Against these
writers, already the Italian Laurentius Valla had written with
all the vigour of an impetuous pioneer, and Luis Vives, as a
Valencian Christian, followed up the attack with eager conviction
and with the zeal of one conversant with Moslem shortcomings.
The Arabic Aristotelianism was necessarily faulty. The
grammatical difficulties in the transmission of their treasures to
the Western World were enormous, and entirely altered the
freshness of view which could only come by the deepest critical
study of the writings of Aristotle in the original Greek. To make
confusion worse confounded, grammar was based on metaphysie,
and Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas were bent upon theology,
and not good letters. Later, Peter Hispanus and other scholastic
writers darkened counsels until ‘ragged notions and_ babble-
ments,’ as the English John Milton expressed it, left youth, after
years of study, only an ‘ asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles.’
Vives proposes, following up his sound diagnosis of an
educationist, the abandonment of dialectic from early training.
He points out that we cannot penetrate into ‘inner mysteries ’
except through first realising external things, and then language
study must bring thought and expression into unison. Like the
Delphic oracle, academic language obscures perception. The
syllogisms, oppositions, conjunctions, disjunctions, enunciations
and the rest are like the riddles which absorb schoolboys and old
women. Their so-called Latin is a jargon of which Cicero (if he
should rise from the dead) would understand nothing. Logic is
only an instrument for testing formal truth, not for finding
natural truth. What should we think of a painter who should
spend all his time in merely preparing his instruments, e.g. his
brushes and pigments, or the cobbler in preparing his needles,
awls and knives? But even if the logic were good logic, and if
intelligible and exact language were always employed, such an
expenditure of time devoted to its educational practice would be
intolerable. How utterly perverse, then, is it to tolerate the
confused babbling which has corrupted every branch of know-
ledge in the name of logic? With regard to the necessary
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 81
reformation in language teaching, Vives asks: What speech
is academic dialectic? Is it in French, in Spanish, in Gothic, or
in the language of the Vandals? Certainly it is not in Latin.
Ii scholastic verbal follies were capable of being stated in a
language intelligible to the crowd, the whole host of working
men would hoot with hisses and clamour these so-called scholars
and turn them out of the city as bereft of their wits or at least as
wanting in common sense. The language of discussion, in short,
instead of using corrupt Latin, must be ordinarily based upon the
vernacular. We have seen how Luis Vives based this view upon
the history and practice of Valencia. ‘ All arts or branches of
knowledge receive their speech from the people.’ How did Luis
Vives come to realise that point of view? He had watched the
people of Valencia. Ina letter! of Vives congratulating Everard
de la Marck, Bishop of Liége, on his promotion to the Arch-
bishopric of Valencia, Vives affectionately describes the Valen-
cians: ‘The multitude of that people is by nature joyous, alert,
facile.’ And as to the speech of the people, he says elsewhere,
we ought to welcome a good sentence expressed in French or
Spanish, whilst we should not countenance corrupt Latin.
It is noteworthy that Luis Vives does not rest content with
attacking mediaeval scholasticism and its attendant barbarous
Latinity. He is a knight-errant in fighting abuses, but he does
not settle himself into a merely destructive and negative attitude.
He is essentially constructive. His advocacy of the study of
the vernacular and of other contemporary languages, or as we
say, of modern languages, is, for his times, extraordinarily pro-
gressive. But interested as he is in adequate resources and
facility of expression, he sees that there is a prior question, viz.
the all-essential importance of acquiring the knowledge-material
on which language is applied. The vital question is: With the
acquisition of the power of expression, what are we going to
express ? It is here that Luis Vives is so specially constructive.
He is prepared to suggest a substitute for the old mediaeval
abstract, verbal subject-matter of studies. Knowledge must be
meaningful, concrete, the outcome of sense-perception.
What Luis Vives substituted for the old Parisian Scholasticism.
To Luis Vives the remedy was clear. It is not argumentation
which elucidates truth. Knowledge consists in the acquisition
1 Quoted by the Marquis de Lozoya in his article on Valencia and Vives
in Las Provincias of 3rd April, 1927.
82 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
of material truth. It is the subject-matter on which observation is
brought to bear,—the investigation, or, to use that word which both
Vives and afterwards Francis Bacon liked, the ‘ exploration ’—of
nature. The whole world of sense experience and concentrated
thought on it require the enterprise of intellectual voyagers en-
dowed with energy like that which Columbus and his companions
exerted in the exploration of the physical world. Luis Vives does
notexactly say this in so compacta manner, but thisis the tendency
of his pronouncements, taking together the [n-Pseudo-dialecticos,
1519, and the de Disciplinis of 1531. He does say definitely, how-
ever, like Bacon later, there must be close observation of outward
nature. ‘The senses open up the way to all knowledge.’ And in
another passage, ‘ The senses are our first teachers.’ 1 More there-
fore is necessary than the reform of language-teaching, whether of
the ancient Latin and Greek or of the modern French or Spanish.
Incisively, Luis Vives declares: ? ‘ It is of no more use to know
Latin and Greek than French or Spanish, if the value of the know-
ledge which can be obtained from the learned languages is left
out of the account.’ Interpreted into modern terms, we have in
Vives the educational teaching of the need for the development
of the vernaculars of the various European countries to meet
the need of expression of the new ideas and new development—
of the knowledge of nature—with all the new investigation and
record of scientific knowledge on one hand, and in the develop-
ment of national modern literatures on the other. It may be
said that in Vives it is only a foregleam of what was coming.
But it is worth noting that within a quarter of a century after
his death two of the greatest representatives of modern vernacular
literature had been born: Miguel de Cervantes in Spain (1547) —
and William Shakespeare in England (1564). Vives explicitly
laid down the psychological method of the acquisition of know-
ledge : ‘ Ad incognita,’ he says, ‘ itur per cognita.’ He explains :
1 Both these statements occur in the In-Pseudo-dialecticos.
* Vives regarded Latin as the universal language. But it must be
pure Latin. The barbarous grossness of the mediaeval Latin must be
radically changed. Vives, therefore, called for a reformation in Latin
teaching. So had done before him Laurentius Valla, and so too did
Erasmus, who had written his Anti-Barbari (not published till 1520,
though first drafted many years earlier). Valla had taken the practical —
step to supplying good and approved modes of exposition in Latin in
his Hlegantiae (1471), as later did Erasmus in his de Copia Verborum et
Rerum (1511). Vives speaks with appreciation of both these books in his de
Tradendis Disciplinis (Book III, chaps. vi and ix).
—
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 83
We can only attain the verdict of the mind’s judgment by first
employing the functions of the senses. Those dialecticians who
take the raw boy fresh from his grammar studies and at once
plunge him into the Praedicabila and the Praedicamenta and the
six Principia act just as the Germans did when they washed
newly born children in the rapid and frigid water, and bathed
them out of existence !
And so, nature-studies, which are so concrete, rightly come
earlier in education than the mediaeval abstract studies grounded
on logic and metaphysics. Children delight to learn about
nightingales, the wonderful sky (especially in May and in Southern
Europe)—the rich fruit, the scent of flowers. When Luis Vives
wrote his Colloquia for schoolboys at Breda in Brabant in 1531
we may trace in his words his burning recollections of Valencia
before he left it in 1509. Here is a picturesque nature passage
which Vives introduces into his Schoolboy Dialogues :
‘Let us go on the green walk, and not take our walk as if in a
rush, but slowly and gently... . [Then the season of spring
is described.| One of the interlocutors says:
‘ There is no sense which has not a lordly enjoyment! First,
the eyes! what varied colours, what clothing of the earth, and
trees ! what tapestry ! what paintings are comparable with this
view? ... Not without truth has the Spanish poet, Juan de
Mena, called May the painter of the earth. Then the ear. How
delightful to hear the singing of birds, and especially the night-
ingale. Listen to her as she sings in the thicket from whom,
as Pliny says, issues the modulated sound of the completed
science of music. ... Her little ones ponder and listen to the
notes, which they imitate. . . . Added to this, there is a sweet
scent breathing in from every side, from the meadows, from the
crops, and from the trees, even from the fallow land and the
neglected fields! Whatsoever you lift to your mouth has its
relish, as even from the very air itself, like the earliest and softest
honey.’ Vives thus reveals himself as an observer and lover of
Nature in a book designed as Latin exercises for schoolboys.
‘The mature man in Brabant returned to the memories of his
Valencian boyhood.’ 4
In the letter already mentioned, written to Everard de la
Marck,? Archbishop-designate of Valencia, Vives expresses with
1 Foster Watson: Vives on Education, p. lii.
2 In part translated into Spanish by El Marqués de Lozoya (see p. 81 n.).
84 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
enthusiasm the influence which Valencia exercises on him, long
after his departure from it. The district of Valencia, he says,
had been that described by Claudian :
Floribus et roseis formosus Thuria rupis.
‘So fertile is the country there is scarcely any race of men,
or any kind of fruit or vegetable or health-giving herbs which it
does not produce, and pour forth in richest measure. It is so
beautiful and delightful that there is no season of the year in
which both the meadows and abundant trees are not clothed with
foliage and painted with flowers, verdure and variety of colours.
The charms of Valencia are greater than can, or ought to,
be compressed into a letter. Ispeak of my country,’ he concludes,
‘with a certain restraint, lest my words should support the
suspicion that I am boasting.’ |
Thus Luis Vives is el gran Valenciano in his delight in the
natural resources and beauty of his native city. This joy in
nature is not characteristic of contemporary writers in the
Renascence, but it is as fitting as it is irresistible to Vives. It is
not a merely aesthetic pleasure either in actual presentation
before his sight, nor even in vivid visualisation in memory. In
the background of the philosophical equipment of Luis Vives, it
has passed into ‘something rich and strange,’ intellectually.
It was Luis Vives and not Francis Bacon who, first of the moderns,
emphasised the significance of nature-observation and the
necessity of sense-cultivation as a basis for intellectual develop-
ment, educationally.
The adumbrations of modern science by Luis Vives are crude, —
cruder even than in Francis Bacon,! for Vives does not concern
himself with the development of the differentiation of nature into
categories of analytical abstract separate sciences, but with the
synthetic outlook on nature, its realistic, concrete contents, the
whole orbis visibilis as the basis of the orbis intellectualis. It
was before the age of telescopes and microscopes. It was before
1 For a comparative account of the two, see Rudolf Giinther: ‘In wie
weit hat Ludwig Vives die Ideen Bacos von Verulam vorbereitet ?’ (Borna,
Leipzig, 1912.) Dr. Gtinther’s conclusion is: ‘ Hs ist als sicher anzunehmen, ~
dass Bacon Vives Schriften gekannt und gelesen hat. Er hat wesentliche
Gedanken und Anregungen aus den Werken des Spaniers geschépit, so
dass wir diesen mit Fug und Recht als eine wichtige Quelle des Englanders
ansehen durfen’ (p. 67).
fi
i
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 85
the age of the specialisation of scientists in the study of separate
highly differentiated sciences. Still, Vives had a point of view,
which has not altogether lost its importance. The following
passage will show his characteristic treatment of the place of
observation, in intellectual training :
‘We look for the student to be keen in his observation as well
as sedulous and diligent, but he must not be obstinate, arrogant,
contentious. What is wanted is a certain concentration of obser-
vation. So he will observe the nature of things in the heavens,
in cloudy and in clear weather, in the plains, on the mountains.
Hence he will seek out and get to know many things from those
who inhabit those spots. Let him have recourse, for instance, to
gardeners, husbandmen, shepherds and hunters, for this is what
Pliny and other great authors undoubtedly did. For no one
man can possibly make all observations without help in such a
multitude and variety of directions. But whether he observes
anything himself or hears anyone relating his experience, let him
keep not only his eyes and ears intent but his whole mind also,
for great and exact concentration is necessary in observing every
part of nature, in its seasons and in the essence and strength of
each object of Nature.’
This emphasis on observation is far-reaching. Vives not only
applies it to the external phenomena of nature. But he brings
observation into requisition as the method for use in psychology,
thus making psychology an @ posteriori rather than an @ priort
branch of knowledge. With his usual clear-headedness, and
with pioneer-instinct of discovery, after all the mediaeval lack of
progress in psychology Vives asserts: ‘ We cannot rightly declare
what the soul is in its essence, and as a bare thing place it, as it
were before the eyes, but we can set it forth, clothed and as if
painted in a picture, in its most apt colours, so that it is seen 1 as
own actions.’ The soul itself has not come into the perception
of our eyes, but its actions or manifestations in all their fulness
are open to the observation of ‘almost all the senses, internal
1Tn his letter to Everard de la Marck, Luis Vives, in his description of
‘Valencian weather, shows his readiness to use his suggestion of the employ-
ment of observation as to the weather: ‘The sky is clear, pure, calm.
‘The country is not stiffened by frost, nor is it misty with clouds, nor is
‘the air thinned and heated with hot vapour.’ In a letter from Oxford :
‘Here the sky is windy, thick, humid, and the kinds of food different
from what I am accustomed to.’
86 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
and external.’ 1 Thus in his de Anima, 1538, Vives consciously
employs the introspective, empirical method. His illustrations
appear to be the first instances of deliberate introspective inter-
rogation of consciousness in psychological investigation in modern.
times. At least two of Vives’ illustrations in this era-marking
book introduce Spain. ‘ Yesterday,’ he says, ‘in the market-
place, Peter of Toledo saluted me. I did not notice the fact
sufficiently, nor remember it accurately. If anyone asks me,
“Who saluted you yesterday in the market-place ?”’ and adds
nothing further, I shall answer more readily than if he were to
say: ‘“‘Was it Juan Manrique or Luis Abilense?”’ In the
latter case the labour becomes two-fold, first to reject what does
nor fit, secondly to replace it by what is right.’ But a second
Spanish illustration brings the de Anima into direct association
with Vives and Valencia, though it was written nearly thirty
years after Luis left his native city. ‘When I was a boy at
Valencia, I was ill of a fever. Whilst my taste was deranged, I
ate cherries. For many years afterwards, whenever I tasted fruit
I not only recalled the fever but also seemed to experience it
again.’ This Valencian experience illustrates Vives’ treatment
of the association of ideas (recordatio gemina). Sir William
Hamilton, perhaps the most erudite of British philosophers? in
the history of early psychology, in 1872, wrote the judgment :
“The, observations of Vives comprise in brief nearly all of
principal moment that has been said upon this subject (of mental
association) either before or since.’
But Luis Vives not only lays stress on the educational training
of observation, as important in nature study, and so significantly
claims its supremacy in the new direction which he urges of intro-_
spective and empirical psychology. He sees its necessity for the
refinement and culture of life for all stages and makes a special
appeal for the pleasure-value of observation in the pursuit of
nature-study as a settled habit, when a man reaches old age.
The out-of-door life of observation of nature is a great pleasure,
for it stimulates the desire of knowledge which is, says Vives, ‘ for:
1 It is as the pioneer of the adoption of this very attitude of observa-
tion on the actions of the soul (‘introspection ’ as it is called by psycho-
logists) that Luis Vives deserves the title: ‘El Padre de la Psicologia.
moderna.’ See Foster Watson, Introduccién a Vives: T'ratado del Alma,
Traduccion por José Ontafion, Madrid, 1916.
2In his Dissertations in The Works of Thomas Reid, 7th ed., Vol. I,.
p- 896, column I.
— <>.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 87
every human mind the keenest of all pleasures. Therefore whilst
attention is given to observation of nature, no other recreation
is necessary. It is a sauce to appetite. It is in itself a walking
exercise (de ambulatio ipsa). Itis at once school and schoolmaster,
for it instantly presents objects which one can look at with admira-
tion, and at the same time a man’s culture is advanced by the
observation.’
There is something large and inspiring even to-day in Vives’
account of nature-study and its culture value. For with him it
has a universal aspect. It is not the special hunting-ground of a
number of expert, professional science specialists—it is something
common to specialist scholars and to the world at large. And the
world would be all the richer if there were this general love of
nature inspired and developed as the birthright of all men and
women.
This knowledge and interest in external nature resultant from
the use of the senses, in observation, is the substitute which Vives
proposed in place of old mediaeval metaphysical abstractions,
bad Latin, and worse riddles of pseudo-thought. It is like coming
upon the rich, varied, wonderful gardens of Valencia after a
journey across the bleak, dry Sierras.
In this provision of a substitute for the old studies by con-
centrating observation in what is near at hand Vives exercised
a constructive plan of education, of an educational discipline,
and of a constructive life culture. Gathering together incidental,
illustrative threads we may now be prepared to find multitudinous
indications ! that in this task of constructing an educational
philosophy, Luis Vives was permeated with an extraordinarily
powerful permeating motor-force, viz. his Spanish, and _ par-
ticularly his Valencian origin. We suggest that his constructive
force and ability are largely based upon the remarkable assimilat-
ive characteristics of the Valencian experience, as for instance
in its readiness to adopt Moorish inventions and practices, and in
the readiness to learn from bilingual experience the value of a
vernacular alongside of the school study of Latin ; its progressive-
ness in land-culture and in garden structure, its alertness,
mental brightness and cheerfulness.
1 This has been worked out in some detail in Foster Watson’s The
Spanish Element in Luis Vives. This monograph has been published in
Catalan and in English by the Institut d’Estudis catalans of Barcelona,
and it is proposed to make it further accessible by a translation into
Spanish.
88 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
The inclination to progressiveness which marked Valencia
is seen in the early printing of a vernacular literature of which
Tirant lo Blanch is a standing instance. That Vives was associated
with this literary spontaneity is shown by the fact that on his
mother’s side he was connected with the original, independent,
spontaneous Ausias March, and he himself, we have seen, speaks
with delight of Juan de Mena. Let it also be remembered that
the first printing-press in Spain was set up at Valencia in 1471.
Valencia, historically, had gone through many vicissitudes—
‘Every time it was conquered it always assimilated char-
acteristics which amid its unity revealed diversity of traits.’ 1
Such a course of development meant constant comparisons, and
constant new combinations of experiences. In the domain of
professional experience, Valencia had notably profited by its
distinguished lawyers and physicians. And Vives had come
under the influence of his maternal grandfather, Henry March,
the jurisconsult, and of his friend the physician Juan Martinez
Poblacion.
With this background of history, tradition, physical achieve-
ment and intellectual achievement, in the practical arts of life,
we may realise that ‘ Valencia,’ similar in import etymologically
with Rome, was self-conscious of power, of spontaneity, and of
enterprise.
And, on the side of physical productiveness and natural
- advantages, that very side which Vives emphasised in his substitute
course for the old mediaeval subjects, it is doubtful if there was
or is any city and district to vie with Valencia. The Moors had
placed their paradise in the Huerta, or the garden of the river
Turia. ‘Over this,’ as Richard Ford ? says, ‘they imagined
Heaven to be suspended, and that a portion of it had fallen down
on earth—coelum hic recidisse putes.’
Luis Vives, therefore, had a permeating force behind him from
his native city of Valencia, in the direction of a delight in nature.
This made him, relatively to so many contemporary humanists,
educationally constructive, and to this may be traced much of his
intensive, realist directions of new suggestion, ‘ exploration ’ and
readiness of enterprise.
1Foster Watson: The Spanish Element in Luis Vives.
2In his remarkable Handbook to Spain, Vol. II, p. 429.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 89
THE HUMANITARIAN ELEMENT IN VIVES’
SCHEME OF EDUCATION FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE Poor
The educational theory of Luis Vives is chiefly contained in
the de Tradendis Disciplinis. This is, one cannot but think, the
most remarkable book on education in the early part of the six-
teenth century.1 And yet it is not that which would perhaps have
the strongest appeal to the twentieth century, for the simple
reason, that so many of the educational ideas advocated by Luis
Vives have become, in the four hundred years since this book was
written, part of the consciousness of thinkers on education as aims
and ideals which are now recognised, with but slight modifica-
tion, as of the essence of educational thought. The de Tradendis
Disciplinis is a great book of sources of so many ideas afterwards
thought to have been the discovery of later writers.
But the de Subventione Pauperum, 1526, of Luis Vives has
been less well known, and still is often neglected. Many educa-
tionists now know, in a general way, what Vives had to say as to
the intension of the concept of education, in the de Tradendis
Disciplinis. But to complete the estimate of Vives as an educa-
tionist, it is necessary to follow the outline of his vision as to the
extension of the educational concept. That can only be effectively
done by taking into account what he has to say on education
in the de Subventione Pawperum. His direct subject is Poor
Relief, but, indirectly, and in rough outline, he states his views on
the education of the poor. These views are astounding in the
modernness of their significance. In a sentence, Luis Vives was
desirous of offering the children of the very poorest classes the
uplifting influence of a refining education. He accepted the
etymological meaning of a ‘ liberal’ education (and it is nothing
less than this type of education he wishes the poorest to receive) as
that of a ‘freeing’ process emancipating from the slavery of
ignorance, and an ‘ enlightening’ process which should be open
to all—to bring men (and women) from the sloth and inertia of
Plato’s remarkable myth of The Cave, into the light of day,
ready and prepared for their gradual development and _ their
adoption into the recognised sonship (with Christ) to God.
Luis Vives’ suggestions in the de Subventione Pauwperum are
first devoted to the provision of a Hospital with foster mothers up
to six years of age. On attaining that age the child is to be
1 Foster Watson: Preface to Vives on Education, Cambridge, 1913.
90 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
passed on to the public school, also included in the institution.!
Vives then depicts the form of civil education, suitable in his
opinion for the very derelicts of the community.
‘ Over this school,’ he urges, ‘ let there be placed men, as far as
possible, educated in courtesy and true nobility,? who may trans-
fuse their words and manners into this rough school. For there
is no greater danger from anything to the children of the destitute
than from a cheap, poor and unmannerly education. In providing
masters of the kind I describe, do not let the authorities spare any
expense. ‘The sums of money laid out for this purpose will achieve
great things for the city over which they hold rule.’ These
injunctions of Luis Vives have been before the educational and
social leaders for almost four hundred years, but we cannot say
they have achieved fulfilment yet.
As for the children in pauper schools, Luis Vives proposes :
‘ Let the children learn to live frugally and purely. Let them learn
not only to read and write, but also in their earliest years let them
be trained in Christian piety and acquire right ideas of things (ef
rectas opiniones de rebus discant).’ What does Luis Vives mean by
rectas opiniones ? He does not mean conventionally standardised
views. As nearly as we may put it, perhaps, the term seems to
be equivalent to a sense of perspective, or the relative importance
in things, the recognition, with clearness and emphasis, of what is
great and what is little. I remember a distinguished London
medical professor saying: “The one thing which we may expect
a University student to gain from his residence in the University
is a sense of values in life.’ This seems to be exactly what Vives
means by rectas opiniones. But this training he asks for the
1 One cannot but be struck with the resemblance to Vives’s scheme of
the constitution of the great English Public School, begun as a school for
the very poor in London, which became classed amongst the greatest
Public Schools in England, viz.: Christ’s Hospital, founded in 1553.
2‘ urbané et ingenué educati.’
3 In a letter written by Luis Vives in 1528 (two years after the publica-
tion of de Subventione Pawperum) to King Henry VIII, Vives himself
explains this very term ‘ rectas opiniones’: ‘ Nothing,’ he says, ‘is more
vital than that due care should be taken in the formation of right and
sane opinions by the young. They should know the aim and advantage
of each element of welfare, its essential proportion, and how to estimate
it. Youth will then become like tried goldsmiths, with a Lydian stone,
which serves as an indication of values (positive and negative) of such
factors in life as money, possessions, friends, honours, nobility, dignity,
sovereignty, outward form, physique, pleasure, wit, erudition, morality,
religion. They will thus learn not to confuse small things with great. . . .
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 91
school of derelict children, a keen consciousness of the distinction
between right and wrong, of justice, of kindness, and of the vast
differences between greatness and littleness, magnanimity and
meanness in what Aristotle calls the art of life. And what of the
foundling girls? Long before the time of what the textbooks call
the earliest modern suggestions of girls’ schools, Luis Vives suggests
schools for girls as well as for the boys of the very poor. To quote
again from the de Subventione Pauperum: ‘I would pronounce
just the same kind of ideas for schools of the daughters of the
poor, in which should be taught the first rudiments of literature,
and af any girl is eager and fitted for learning, let her proceed
further. Only in questions of study let there be kept in mind the
cultivation of the right standards of life (mores). Let girls as
well as boys learn right ideas of things (once more, rectas opiniones)
and be trained in piety. Next, let them learn to spin, to sew,
to plait, to embroider with the needle, to be skilled in kitchen
work and in household affairs. Let them acquire propriety of
behaviour, frugality, gentleness, modesty. Fromthe boys most apt
in the study of literature, let the best be continued in their studies,
so as to be the future teachers of others, and let the school also
be a seminary for priests.’ Explain it as you will, Luis Vives, of a
noble Valencian family, of conservative, aristocratic Spain, is a
true lover of the people, filled with the desire of seeing the children
of the very lowliest parents find an open prepared path to the
highest service of the community. Sir Thomas More, the great
English friend of Luis Vives, speaks of the priests in Utopia
training the children in bonas opiniones } (almost the very term
used by Vives), ‘ profitable,’ adds More, ‘ for the conservation of the
common weal of Utopia.’ Probably More and Vives had discussed
these matters together either at Chelsea or in the Court of Queen
Catharine of Aragon, who was, of course, the compatriot of Vives.
Closely allied to this plea for the liberal education ? of all
No one is outside the scope of religion and the mass of the people (vulgus)
will be helped in literature partly by addresses, partly by books, written
in the mother tongue, advising them as to the subjects worthy of study,
by which their good hours may not be passed in reciting old women’s
fables nor in actions indifferent to good conduct.’
1 When Vives was lecturing at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he made
a report to Wolsey on his teaching of University Students—in which he
declared that in philosophy he had removed many ‘ pravas opiniones.’
2 As a question of source, it may well be that, once more, the schola
domestica of the home of Luis and Blanca Vives, at Valencia, is a starting-
point for Vives’ liberal views for the education of all children.
A.S.—VOL. IX. | e
92 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
normal, sound children, Vives expresses, in the de Subventione
Pauperum, his deep sympathy for not only the financially poor but
also for the children, weakest in health, and those suffering from
physical deformities and deprivations, as wellas for those of mental
deficiencies, particularly the blind, deaf, dumb and those lacking
in sensibility, and for those actually insane. He demands that the
defective children must not be put aside as useless, but that they
have a peculiar right to be specially and suitably educated. For
instance, the capable blind can be taught to play musical instru-
ments, or to undertake manual occupations (e.g. the making of
baskets and boxes. Blind women can sew and spin). In his de
Anima he recognises that the chief effective of our source of early
direct knowledge is the sense of sight. Accordingly, the educational
consequence of deprivation of eyesight is grievous. In all this he
is a true son of Valencia, for the dazzling summer sun of Valencia no
doubt accounts for its conspicuous instances which he had known in
youth, of distressingly bad eyesight and of blindness. So, too, the
hospitals of Valencia would suggest the difficulties of treatment by
the physicians, even with all the old traditions of Moorish practice
in dealing with diseases of the eye. All this personal observation
would have been quickened by what he learned from Spanish
physicians later, especially from Juan Martinez Poblacion,! whoalso
came from Valencia, a close friend of Vives, when both were living
in Bruges. Vives writes as to the mental experience of the deaf
and dumb and refers to the case of one who became a student of
literature. He was amazed, but makes the suggestion that so
strong is the love of learning in some men that even if a pupil
cannot hear a teacher he can take measures whereby he becomes
his own teacher, or to use his own term he is adtodidaxtoc.
As to the insane, ‘ every resource,’ he says, must be tried to
keep away all causes of mental irritation.’ On the other hand, all
occasions of praise must be eagerly seized to recognise in the
defective person, sensible acts and words and the encouragement
1 Vives says of Poblacién (Commentaries on S. Augustine’s Civitas Dei,
Healey’s translation into English, p. 845): ‘I will avouch his knowledge
of physique ‘“‘exact’’.’ Vives wrote very suggestively on the Training of the
physician (de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. IV, cap. VII). He advises
acquaintance with Arab writers. When Vives fell ill at Louvain he had
himself taken to Bruges to be treated ‘ after the manner of his own coun-
try. He found hospitality with his compatriot, Pedro de Aguirra. In
1522, at Bruges, Vives was present at the marriage of Juan de Matanca and |
Barbe Pardo (two Spaniards).
a Se ae
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 93
of effort. Every case must be treated individually. ‘ Imbeciles,’
says Luis Vives, “have a right to tranquillity.’ Thus he is the
first pioneer of the modern Itards and Séguins and of Dr. Montes-
sori. It is not surprising that Spain produced the first known
teacher of the deaf and dumb, Pedro Ponce de Leon (? 1520-84),
a Spanish monk of the order of St. Benedict. Spain was also the
country of the first systematic work on the education of the deaf,
by Juan Pablo Bonet (d. 1629).
The de Subventione Pauperum, in which the educational views
of Vives described above, appear, was published at Bruges, but
the source of the inspiration must be traced back, in considerable
measure, at least to the connexion of Vives with Valencia.1
- There is no achievement of Vives of which Valencia may be
more proud than this educational vision in the de Subventione
Pauperum—and for which he more merits the title of el gran
Valenciano.
THE EDUCATION OF THE NATIVES IN THE
NEWLY DISCOVERED ISLES OF THE West INDIES
The problem of the human relation of the conquistadors of the
Old World and the conquered races in the New World early
stirred the minds of the Spaniards. In 1502, the first school was
opened across the ocean, for Indian boys. In 1524, a more
organised effort was made to introduce some educational measures,
when twelve Franciscan friars were sent out to New Spain.
Theirs was the first attempt to start a school-system in the
New World.? The leader was Brother Martin de Boil. These
1 Luis Vives shows how his thoughts of Valencia are intermingled with
Bruges, in which city he is writing, in his Preface to de Subventione
Pauperum. ‘To think that anything connected with this city is alien to
me afflicts me as it would if I were in my own Valencia. For I do not call
this city otherwise than my own country, for I have lived here fourteen
years, off and on. Here, too, married my wife. As it is disgraceful to a
father of a family in his wealthy home to permit any member of it to suffer
hunger, or to suffer the disgrace of being without clothes or in rags, so it is
similarly unfitting that in a city (not absolutely without resources) the
magistrates should allow their citizens to be hard pressed by hunger and
distress.’ Again, we find a source of Vives’ idea in the schola domestica
environment of his old home at Valencia.
_ #The story of the reception of these educational missionaries is very
picturesquely narrated by the American historian, W. M. Prescott. ‘The
inhabitants of the towns through which they passed came out in a body to
welcome them. Processions were formed of the natives bearing wax
94 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
twelve brothers were known as ‘ the twelve Apostles of Mexico.’
Was Luis Vives, in any way, thinking of these men, when he
wrote in 1531:
‘Tt is not right to think too much about having a great num-
ber of scholars. How much better it is to have a little salt of good
sooner than a great deal of what is insipid. . . . When Our Lord
brought to the world the wisdom and the salvation of God, He
contented Himself with a company of twelve men. I do not
deny that in speaking a crowd is a stimulus to the mind, but
oratory is a different thing from teaching ! ’
At these first groups of schools, in the New Worid of de Boil,
the numbers ranged from six to eight children, who were fed,
clothed, taught, just like the poor children of Luis Vives’ pro-
posed school for derelicts. The subjects taught to the Indian
children were Christian doctrine, reading, writing, singing and
manual arts. Such were the schools for the native Mexican
children. Luis Vives called his systematic treatise on education
de Tradendis Disciplinis. It dealt with the transmission in
time of knowledge from the older to the younger generation.
This movement of de Boil may be interpreted as the transmission
in space, from Europe through Spain, of European school-subjects
and methods of instruction to the conquered New World. There
does not appear to be any known direct connexion between Vives
and de Boil, but there can be no doubt that Luis Vives was much
concerned with the new responsibilities of Europe, and primarily
of Spain, towards the natives of the New World. In one passage !
he states his views, in 1522, of the bearing of religion on the new
discoveries across the seas :
‘The newly discovered peoples in the faithless islands of the
Ocean, who have never heard of Christ may attain the glory of the
Christian by keeping the two abstracts of all the Law and the
tapers in their hands. Cortes, the general, with a brilliant cavalcade, met
them. He dismounted, and bending one knee to the ground kissed the
robes of Fray Martin of Valencia (that is Juan Martin de Boil, the principal
of the Fraternity). Professor Riba has pointed out to me that Fray Martin
de Boil was not a native of the Valencia of Luis Vives, but came from
Valencia de Don Juan in the Province of Leon. This fact, of course, does
not preclude the possibility that de Boil’s wonderful mission was known
to Luis Vives, but it makes a close personal connexion and interest less
probable. At any rate, there was the common element of a deep concern
and sympathy for ‘the newly discovered peoples’ of the New World.
1In his Commentaries to his edition of St. Augustine; Civitas Dei,
written at Louvain, 1522.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 95
Prophets, and of a man’s neighbour, so great a blessing is it to be
good. The nations that have no law but nature are a law to
themselves. The light of their living well is the gift of God com-
ing from His Son, of whom it is said: He is the light that lighteth
everyone that cometh into the World.’
Whether Vives and Fray de Boil were aware of each other’s
ideas or not, they must have had some common outlook on the
large vistas of the future of the heathen population of the New
World. As far as Luis Vives is concerned, we may safely infer that
the spirit which animates his sympathy for the poor ‘ faithless ’
natives of the islands of the West is precisely of the same mould
as that which he manifests towards the derelicts of the larger
industrial cities of Kurope, which had developed a ‘ slum’ popu-
lation. In both cases, and in all cases, Luis Vives was desirous of
offering the help of a sound education, if indeed he would not
insist on it, as providing the thorough remedy, especially if it
promoted the appreciation and acceptance of ‘ rectas opiniones.’
But there is evidence that Luis Vives was brought into con-
nexion with the New World through his books. Francisco
Cervantes Salazer in 1546 translated into Spanish, Vives’ Latin
text of the Introductio ad Sapientiam. Salazer went to Mexico
in 1553 and extended the influence of the European Renascence
to the Indian Aztecs of Mexico. He compiled school-dialogues
for teaching Latin on the plan of Luis Vives’ Linguae Latinae
Exercitatio. Salazer’s Dialogues, issued in Mexico, included three
of Vives’ dialogues, and in addition, imitations of Vives’ types of
dialogues, in Spanish, on such subjects as the Spanish Con-
querors, the Mexican Aztecs, on New Spain, on the streets, the
schools and instruction in the New Spain, and so on. Hence this.
book of colloquial schoolboy Latin and Spanish is extremely
interesting in itself, and establishes a sort of posthumous direct
connexion between Luis Vives and the New Spain, in which he
had, as we know, so keen a humanitarian interest. ;
Vives AS A Great LINK BETWEEN THE MEDIAEVAL AND
THE MopERN WoRLDS
wey asa It has been said that Erasmus was the bridge-
‘ Way- builder between these two worlds. With him on the
preaker’ educational and philosophical side must be joined
Luis Vives. Both Erasmus and Vives fought for the cause of
pure Latin, for the recovery and re-editing of the great authors
96 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
of the Romans and the Greeks. In this aspect Erasmus was the
Prince of Literary men, the Dictator of the Republic of Letters.
But the record of Luis Vives in the direction of the cultivation of
the vernacular, the significance of modern geography and modern
history, and their teaching, in the insistent advocacy of observa-
tion and experiment in nature-study, in his efforts towards the
statement of the inductive method, in his pioneer empirical
treatment of psychology, as the first advocate of poor-relief as a
duty of civic organisation, as the first to attempt a modern
history of philosophy,—cumulatively this astonishing list of
enterprising new directions of leadership towards the New
Modern World seems to me to be a dividing line, intellectually,
parallel in momentousness with the new discoveries in navigation,
which found the passage from the Old to the New World of
navigation. Lange described Luis Vives as a ‘ Way-breaker.’
The Spanish discoveries fascinated Luis Vives. ‘ Vaster events ’
had followed even the navigations recorded by Peter Martyr in
his ‘monumental books.’ The consciousness of the wonders of
the New World, and its surprising revelations of what had been
unknown, in which Spain had played such an absorbing part,
roused the Valencian-trained Luis Vives to new suggestions, new
combinations of ideas experientially grounded on that life he
had led in that ‘ garden’ of Spain as a child and youth, safely
entrenched in the highly humanising environment of the schola
domestica of his native Valencia. In the dedication of his Linguae
Latinae Exercitatio, 1538, apparently the last of his books pub-
lished in his lifetime, he says to the Boy-Prince Philip: ‘I shall
deserve well of my country,! that is Spain, if I should help in the
forming of sound morals in thy mind. For our country’s health is
centred in thy soundness and wisdom.’
THE OLD WoRLD oF AUTHORS AND THE NEw WorLD
oF LIFE
The Old and Spain had recognised the distinction of Old Spain
The New and New Spain, so Vives the Spaniard, el gran Valen-
ciano, drew the distinction between the Ancient World of the
1 In the Commentaries on S. Augustine’s Civitas Dei (Healey’s trans-
lation in English, p. 297), Vives says: ‘ There is an old memorial extant as
the ancient times (of Spain) written in Greek and Latin: “‘ I hope by it to
illustrate the original of my native country.”’’ Vives did not publish any
such writing, but the passage illustrates how his thoughts turned to Spain,
as his projected biography of his mother (though never written) shows how
his thoughts turned in after life to his family.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 97
Greeks and the Romans and the Modern World of progress and
enterprise. Luis Vives’ words and illustrations are so incisive and
complete in their statement, we can only quote them and leave
them to tell their own story, the story of the great revolution, at a
stroke, from the worship of antiquity and mediaevalism to modern
times. Speaking of the authors in the ages of antiquity, Vives
says: ‘ They were men as we are, and were liable to be deceived
and to err. They were the first discoverers of what were only
rough, and, if I may say so, shapeless blocks, which they passed on
to their posterity to be purified and put into shape. Seeing that
they had such fatherly goodwill and charity towards us, would
they themselves not be the first to require us not to abstain from
using our intellects in our attempts to surpass their gifts to us ?
The good men amongst them undoubtedly in the past, stretched
forth their hands in friendship to those whom they saw mounting
higher in knowledge than they themselves had reached. For
they judged it to be of the very essence of the human race that,
daily, it should progress in arts, disciplines, virtue and goodness.
We think ourselves men or even less, whilst we regard them as
more than men, as heroes, or perhaps demi-gods, not but what
they excelled in many great achievements. So we also might no
less excel, in the eyes of our posterity, if we were to strive suffici-
ently earnestly, or we might achieve still more, since we have the
advantage of what they discovered in knowledge as our basis and
can make the addition to it of what our judgment finds out.
Some writers adopt a false and fond similitude, though they think
it witty and suitable, viz. that we are, compared with the ancients,
as dwarfs wpon the shoulders of giants. It is not so. Neither
are we dwarfs, nor they giants, but we are all of one stature, save
that we are lifted up somewhat higher by their means, provided
that there be found in us an equal intention of mind, watchtul-
ness, and love of truth, as was in them. If these conditions be
lacking, then we are not dwarfs, nor set on the shoulders of giants,
but men of a competent stature grovelling on the earth.’ ?
We have seen that he describes Valencians as by nature
“joyous, alert, facile. This Valencian buoyancy and even
expectancy is characteristic of Vives even when he writes to
Henry VIII or to the Bishop of Lincoln. Luis Vives delighted
in describing himself as Valencian (‘ Valentinus ’).?
1 de Causis Corruptarum Artium Opera, VI, p. 39.
2 On the title-page of his first printed book, Declamationes (and other
98 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
The One of the characteristics of Francis Bacon is his
Optimism optimism. It was one of Bacon’s highest hopes that
ese from the growth of true knowledge would grow ‘ the
a or relief of man’s estate. This was the end which
animates all his desire after a fuller and surer method
of interpreting Nature. Similarly, Vives urges ‘ teachers to pity
the human race, blind and forsaken amidst so many dangers.’
Bacon has the desire to be a great benefactor. ‘The spirit of
sympathy and pity for mankind is very marked—pity for con-
fidence so greatly abused by the teachers of man, pity for ignor-
ance which might be dispelled, pity for pain and misery which
might be relieved.’ 1
Whilst we might reasonably claim that Luis Vives is equally
with (or even still more optimistic than) Bacon, and whilst we
could ascribe on the physical side of animal cheerfulness, the
influence of the climate ? and physical background of Valencia,
we realise that his optimism is grounded upon his profoundly
religious spirit, which we are drawn to think comes largely from
The the mother whom he reverenced, in the schola domestica.
poeoe In the letter to Everard de la Marck, Luis Vives says.
Luis Vives the Valencians manifest ‘an incredible devotion to
whatever concerns the Church’ (ecclesiasticam rem wneredibila
curat diligentia). Luis Vives himself, whether a Tertiary or not,
was deeply infused with a religious spirit. He associated science
with religion. ‘ All things the more exactly they are known, the
more they open the doors to the knowledge of the Deity as the supreme —
Cause through His works ; and this is the most fitting way for our ©
minds to reach to the knowledge of God.’ * Not only by the pursuit
of knowledge 4 but also by the exercise of reason do we rise to
small works), he describes himself: Johannis Ludovici Vivis Valentina,
and he so described himself invariably every year up. to and including
1526, the date of the de Subventione Pauperum, and indeed afterwards.
The reference to ° fatherly ’ goodwill once more recalls the atmosphere of
the * schola domestica,’ as does: ‘ We ought to care for posterity as we do
for our sons.’
1R. W. Church: Bacon (Men of Letters Series).
2 How grievously Vives feels dull, rainy, foggy, misty weather, and how
gloomy life becomes to him on that account, is seen in a letter from Oxford,
10 March, 1524: ‘Here the sky is windy, thick, humid, and the food
different from that to which I have been accustomed.’
3de Tradendis Disciplinis, Bk. I chap. 4.
4 Vives declares: ‘I for my part think that proud ignorance is more
inimical to piety than modest knowledge’ (de Tradendis Disciplinis,
Bk. I, chap. 4).
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES oF
our highest selves. Further, Vives says: ‘ By the possession of
reason, we become more like to, and most united with that
Divine Nature, which rules everything.’ ! Science, philosophy,
knowledge, reason, all are subordinate to love. ‘What can we
fix as the end of man except God Himself ?... We must return
to Him by the same way we came forth from Him. Love was the
cause of our being created. ... From that love we have been
separated, forsooth, by the love of ourselves. By that love we have
been recalled and raised up, that is to say, by the love of Christ.’
Vives’ great work on education, the de Tradendis Disciplinis,
has a profoundly religious atmosphere, as is evidenced by its
alternative title, Sew de Institutione Christiana. We saw in the
Christi Triumphus, that earliest Parisian booklet of Vives, the claim
for Christ as the spiritual conqueror of all the heathen con-
querors. So in his latest, his posthumous work, de Veritate
Fidei Christianae, his thoughts are roused to assert the Christian
ideal against the Jewish views and against many forms of heathen-
dom, once more we see that Vives is concerned for those natives
‘im insulis rstis novis ab Hispanis quotidie invenirr audis.’
He gives up a whole book to the considerations to be urged contra
_ sectam Mahometi. Thus at the beginning and at the end of his
life, we see the religious impulse and discipline permeate Vives,
and we see the strong desire of his life to bring the Mahometans
(with whose mental atmosphere he had been so familiarised at
Valencia) into the one fold, if reasoning could accomplish it.
Luis had a high idea of citizenship—and he tells
Vives’ sense the citizens of Bruges, as we have seen, that their city
of Citizen-
ship. is to him as if a second Valencia. This pride of citizen-
aed Eble ship takes the form, in Vives, of a devotion to the
‘public good.’ He does not accept the idea that even
scholarship is an ‘ end in itself.’ He would not accept the cry of
some modern artists: ‘ Art for Art’s sake.’ With regard to the
acquisition of knowledge and the achievement of scholarship,
Vives maintains: ‘ This then is the fruit of all studies ; this is the
goal. Having acquired our knowledge we must turn it to useful-
ness, and employ it for the common good.’ ? Scholarship is the
glorious means by which a man renders himself the most effective
human agent in promoting the real ends of piety and the search
1 Toid., Bk. V, chap. 3.
.2de Veritate Fidei Christianae, Bk. IV, chap. XIX.
3de Tradendis Disciplinis, Appendix, chap. 1.
100 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
for truth.1_ The good teacher must be a good citizen because then
‘love for his parents and country will burn very brightly in his
heart and he will wish to consult the interests of his country in
whatever is pleasant and dear to it, and whenever he has an oppor-
tunity he will do all the good he can for its progress.’ Perhaps
the most vivid expression of this view is in a letter to Hrasmus,
where Vives says :
‘[ set very great store by the public good. Most keenly
would I advance that good any way I could. Those are the
fortunate people, in my opinion, who are serviceable in this
direction.’
Vives tells Erasmus how and why he admires him in this.
respect. ‘I think it is a truer glory of yours to have made
others better from their reading of your monumental works
than to hear all those expressions of glory—‘‘ most eloquent,”
‘“most learned,” ‘“‘ first of all” !’
The Good Thus we know the inner aim of Vives, the pro-
ee ae motion of the public good. The good scholar, like
Citizen every one else, must be—the good citizen. It is in
this spirit of being a good citizen (like his father, and like his uncle
Henry March, of Valencia) of Bruges, to him a Valencia over again,
Vives the scholar performed his great tasks. The eventual social
ideal for Luis Vives would be the whole family of humanity filled
with this spirit of the household of his father, Luis Vives of
Valencia.
amas pias Coming at the transition stage between
of Vives mediaevalism and modern times, this attitude (so
rare in Renascence writers) of conscious care for the public
good as prior even to the mere absorption in scholarly aims and
interests, fascinated Luis Vives towards lines of development
which afterwards proved to be the way of cultural progress in
succeeding generations. In other words, Luis Vives met the
future of mental and social aspiration half way. Not only was he
the pioneer in the advocacy of observation and experiment in
the natural sciences and in his employment of the inductive
1 Vives’ ideal for teachers is very high. They must not be self-seekers.
Their aim should not be that of mere accumulation of enviable stores of
knowledge, but to be helpers of the community. ‘ He who helps a brother
who is labouring to get truth not only helps a man but also helps the
truth.’ Similarly, Vives looks on physicians as applying their art to the
service of the human race.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 101
method, but he was the writer of the first modern history of
philosophy. He is the father of the empirical treatment of
psychology. Heis the first writer to suggest in detail an organised
system of poor-relief as a civic and national duty. Along with
Erasmus he claims outstanding recognition as an apostle of
universal peace among nations. When we take into account
everything which Luis Vives wrote on education, particularly
in the de Causis Corruptarum Artium and in the de Tradendis
Disciplinis, we do not hesitate to regard el gran Valenciano (or
‘the second Quintilian,’ as he was called in his own times) as the
most critical and at the same time the most sympathetic educa-
tional leader of the first half of the sixteenth century, ‘in spite of
the fact that Erasmus, without inquiry, is often placed in that
position.’ 4
If we attempt to summarise the whole of the philosophical
tendencies of Luis Vives, in the great record of pioneership thus
enumerated, we may say that his line of development was towards
a living realism, viz. away from the abstractions of scholasticism to
the study of the concrete phenomena of nature; or, expressed in
the simplest of terms, from books to the observation of things direct
for oneself, from standardised scholarship to active, practical life.
The appeal to Nature-study, so bold, so novel, as Luis urged
it, is grounded, in the last resource, on his early course of life in
Valencia. In this great gift of direction of thought to nature and
to life,? it is that we recognise that Vives is el gran Valenciano.
In that great battle between the ancients and the moderns
(which in England was only at its fiercest in the eighteenth cen-
tury), who has put the whole matter more cogently than Luis
1¥Foster Watson: Vives on Education, Preface, p. vii.
2 Yet even in Nature-study, Luis Vives warns the reader against possible
abuses: * All our studies should be applied to meet the necessities of life, to
some bodily or mental gain, to the cultivation and increase of reverence.
The philosopher is one who knows the origin and nature of plants
and animals and the reasons why, as well as the way in which, natural
events happen. The unlearned, silly and godless tales of Arabians should
not be seriously studied.’ (Again, the reminiscence of his Moslem experi-
ence at Valencia.) After warning students against necessarily accepting
Aristotle, learned scholars and other authority, Vives concludes: ‘ In all
natural philosophy, the scholar should be told that what he hears is only
thought to be true, i.e., so far as the intellect, judgment, experience and
‘careful study of those who have investigated the matter can ascertain,
for it is very seldom we can affirm anything as absolutely true.’ How
modern such views of science and science-teaching, in relation to authority,
sound !
102 SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES
Vives, living directly after the age of the great Spanish naviga-
tions : |
Tae ‘ How greatly do the discoveries of earlier ages and.
Dynamics experiences spread over long stretches of time, open up:
oe the entrance to the comprehension of the different.
branches of knowledge ? It is therefore clear that if we only
apply our minds sufficiently we can judge better over the whole
round of life and nature than could Aristotle, Plato, or any of the
ancients. ... Further, what was the method of Aristotle
himself ? Did he not dare to pluck up by the root the received
opinions of his predecessors ? Is it, then, to be forbidden to us, at:
least to investigate, and to form our own opinions? Seneca
wisely declares: ‘‘ Those who have been active intellectually
before us, were not our masters but our leaders’’ (Non domini
Truth Lies nostri, sed duces fuere). ‘Truth lies open to all. It is
Open to All not as yet taken possession of. Much of truth has
been left for future generations to discover”? (Patet omnibus
veritas; nondum est occupata. Multum ex illa, etiam futuris
relictum est).’ 7
We cannot better finish this cursory exposition of the principle
underlying the contribution of Luis Vives to the history of
philosophy and culture, and the claim he has to the descriptive
epithet ‘ Valentinus,’ than by quoting his own words as to his own
views on life and truth:
‘ For my part, I would not desire that anyone should yield his.
opinion to mine. I do not wish to be the founder of a sect, or to
persuade anyone to swear by my conclusions. Jf you think,
friends, that I seem to offer right judgments, see well to it that
you give your adherence to them, because they are true, not
because they are mine. ... No knowledge is at one and the
same time discovered and perfected.’ |
But when we have considered the principles of thought and
life put forth by Luis Vives, we have still to bring to our minds
the idea of his personality, if we would have a full picture} of
1 The impression of Luis Vives, physically, to be derived from the well-
known engraving by Edmonde de Boulonais is described by M. Berthe
Vadier as follows: ‘Il porte la barrette de velours et la simarre garnie
de fourrure qui donne & tous ces portraits de la Renaissance un air de
famille. Les traits sont réguliers, le front beau sous les cheveux coupés.
carrément, l’arc des sourcils est finement dessiné, Voeil noir est grand,
bien ouvert, trés doux; c’est un oeil d’observateur, de contemplateur,.
de penseur ; le nez, légérement busqué, est un peu fort la bouche spirituelle,.
SPAIN, VALENCIA AND LUIS VIVES 103
Ludovicus Vives Valentinus. For, great writer as Vives was, the
man was greater than his writings.
The Per- Vanden Bussche, the Bruges archivist, has admir-
sonality of ably stated his personal characteristics as follows :
Luis Vives
Nous le voyons aux différents Ages de la vie, tour-a-tour, fils tendre
et plein de reconnaissance pour les auteurs de ses jours, dont il se plait
a célébrer les vertus dans ses livres.
Eléve plain d’attachement pour ses professeurs, s’éfforcant de leur
prouver en toute circonstance sa gratitude. Son gigantesque travail,
sur Saint Augustin, est un service qu'il voulut rendre 4 Erasme, son
maitre.
Ami sincére et toujours prét a servir ceux qui faisaient appel a lui,
il dut faire beaucoup dingrats; ce qui nous explique peut-étre le
déntment dans lequel il se trouva vers la fin de sa vie.
Bon époux et rempli de dévouement pour ses proches. Citoyen
honnéte et pacifique mais courageux a remplir ses devoirs; vivant
loin des honneurs et de Véclat quil eit pu obtenir; sil eut été plus
intéressé et moins modeste.
Zélé pour le bien de l’humanité et entendant a merveille les besoins
de ses contemporains, témoin ses lettres et ses démarches auprés des
grands pour amener l’union entres les princes chrétiens.
Tel fut Vives.
The erudite historian and critic of Spanish scholars and writers,
Professor Menéndez Pelayo, said that Luis Vives was ‘ the most
complete personality’ of the sixteenth-century Renascence.
This is a great pronouncement by a great scholar. It therefore
needs close and careful consideration. My own experience is that
the more concentrated study we give to Luis Vives, the more
remarkable he shines through as a man—from behind the records
of his life, and in the background of all his written works.
et bienveillante, le menton carré. En somme, c’est une physionomie
d’une grande distinction, et d’une grande douceur, en parfaite harmonie
avec la devise qu’il avait choisie: Sine querela.’ Luis Vives (Géneve,
1892), pp. 15-16. |
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
PART I
Ir is difficult to give a brief sketch of any philosophy ; so much
that helps to bring one mind to the comprehension of another
has to be omitted. Yet a sign-post may be enough to induce
some traveller to seek the town; and this short essay may
render a similar service.
The thought of Gentile is influenced by the idealist tradition
which descends from Berkeley to Hegel. Philosophy, it seems.
to him, should yield the concrete notion of the meaning of reality.
‘This philosophy,’ he says, ‘can equally well be described as.
an actual idealism (for it considers the absolute idea to be an
act) or as an absolute spiritualism (for it is only in an absolute
idealism which holds the idea to be act, that all is spirit [or
-mind]). It sets out from the identification of the Hegelian
Becoming with the act of thought, since this is the only concrete
logical category... .’}
It is characteristic of Gentile’s idealism to mean by the
thinking of the philosopher an activity which is reasonable, but
not a narrow intellectual activity. It should contain not merely
‘mind,’ but ‘ the good spiritual disposition, what we call heart,—
good will, charity, sympathy, open-mindedness, warmth of
affection.’ 2
Gentile is not passing from intellectualism to some form
of emotionalism or intuition as an immediate philosophic revela-
tion of reality, for his view is that emotion and intuition are not.
to be contrasted with the intellect as though either could exist
without the other. ‘The intellect cannot, without self-injury,
neglect this all-round character of human life. It has to be more
than mere intellect in order to be really the intellect. The
sympathy which emotion gives is not bias or prejudice in favour
of self ; it is better understanding of self and other selves. Such
‘1 La Riforma della Dialettica Hegeliana, Pref., p. v.
2 Theory of Mind as Pure Act, Ch. 1, p. 8. Trans. H. Wildon Carr.
105
106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
understanding is not usually thought to be necessary for scientific
work, so that the scientist when he begins to philosophise tends
to undervalue it. This sympathetic thinking is not, however,
really a defiance of scientific method. It supplements it where
owing to the need for a synoptic knowledge of reality supple-
mentation is necessary. Science itself makes its own supple-
mentation, for example, intuitions or sympathetic guesses are
used in the suggestion of hypotheses.
According to Gentile, the most concrete notion of the meaning
of reality which we can acquire is that of active self-conscious
thought, or, as he phrases it, Mind as pure act. In ‘the full
concept of the spiritual act’ consists ‘the living nucleus of
philosophy.’! The concept of Reality as an arrangement of
points or a whirl of electrons does not satisfy our minds. It is
not that we revolt from it with emotional distaste; we are
intellectually dissatisfied with it as an account of the whole of
Reality, however satisfied we may be with the theory as an account
of a certain finite part or aspect of Reality which we call Nature.
Because it has nothing to say about thought, we know that it
leaves out the meaning of Reality for us. Who are we? We
are at any rate not outside Reality as a whole. We are a critical
and appreciative side of the Universe, and this has to be con-
sidered in an attempt to gauge the ultimate meaning of Reality.
Criticism and appreciation, knowledge and value are perhaps the
prerequisites of any reality which is not itself critical or apprecia-
tive or knowing or valuable. For what is the existence of some-
thing which is not known to exist and does not know itself to
exist ? Gentile with other idealists asks this question. The whole
Reality in order to be a whole must somehow include all aware-
ness of that whole which experience may show. It must be,
when it is most real, most self-conscious and alive. From a
philosophical point of view, Reality must have meaning. ‘To
conceive a reality is to conceive, at the same time, and as one with
it, the mind in which that reality is represented ; and therefore
the concept of a material reality is absurd.’ 2 A reality without
meaning takes us straight to scepticism, for nothing can be known
about it. A reality with meaning such that philosophy may hope
to discover is such a real whole as we have suggested. It is a
whole that requires the presence of the judging appreciative mind,
and because it is the whole, it must include that mind. We
1 Op. cit., Pref., p. 26. 2 Op. Cit. po ebm
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE — 107
should not think of a meaningful real on one hand and mind on
the other, but philosophy does not imply this. It gives us a
concept of reality which is not merely of or about reality. The
reality of such a concept would be left outside the complete
reality we seek to comprehend, whichis absurd. ‘Thewhole.. .
cannot be constituted in abstraction from the thought in which it
is posited. And when we do not abstract from thought, thought
cannot appear as a mere co-efficient which need merely be added
externally in order to complete the sum of reality; because
having granted that thought is the complement of the real, the
latter becomes ideal as the function of thought, and therefore is
resolved into thought itself.’ 1 The concept when it is united to
the rest of the whole embraces reality. For without knowledge,
we have suggested, there is no existence—the whole lives by its
meaning. This meaning is its meaning for itself—in the end,
reality and concept, nature and the mind, are one as a living act.
Gentile’s identification of reality with the concept, or with
philosophy which is usually supposed to be merely thought about
reality, shows a change from the standpoint of Hegel. He quotes
the famous passage about the owl of Minerva without approval,
for according to him philosophy is not mere reflection upon the
past. It is the pure act of thinking, and as such is present, and
makes present the object of its activity which is only an aspect of
the process.2 The concept of reality is itself the most concrete
activity, which is self-conscious. For the reason of our identify-
ing reality with the concept is that the concept is more than any
reality apart from the concept—apart, that is, from knowledge.
This reality which is living act is aware of itself as living. ‘An
absolute idealism cannot conceive the idea except as thought in
act, as all but consciousness of the idea itself; if we keep for sdea
the objective meaning which it originally had in Plato, and which
it continues to have in common thought and in the presupposi-
tions of scientific knowing, that of being the term of thought or
intuition.’ 3
This identification of reality with thinking only seems to fail
to reach the goal of the concrete, if thinking is limited to pure
theory—a theory which is mere theory and therefore opposed to
practice. A concept of reality which excludes the practical
1 Logica, I, Cap. I, p. 13. Cf. Theory, Ch. I, pp. 3 and 4; Ch. XV,
p. 238. 2 Logica, I, Cap. III, p. 33.
° Theory, Ch. XVII, p. 253. Cf. Logica, Cap. I, p. 13.
A.S.—VOL. IX. Hi
108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
from reality cannot be considered complete. This concept of
reality as thinking is not, however, merely theoretical but is also
practical. ‘ But if we set aside the fantastic relations supposed
to exist between the will and external reality . . . what criterion
of distinction is there between knowledge and will? Every time
we contrapose the theoretical to the practical we find we have first
of all to presuppose the reality intellectualistically, just as
empiricism does and just as Greek philosophy continued to do
throughout its course, so precluding every way of identifying
mind with practical activity..1 ‘ The spiritual life, then, which
stands opposed to philosophy is indeed abstractly as its object a
different thing from philosophy, but it lives as philosophy.’ 2
Theory and practice are merely contrasted aspects of the same
reality. If we refrain from making an analysis of the act of
thinking (an analysis which may be perfectly legitimate in other
circumstances) and instead examine any act of thinking as it
occurs, we find that it is both a theoretical discourse and a practical
deed. We must not overlook the act for the thinking. On
occasion it is convenient to contrast the peculiar character of this
act, by which it is thinking, with some other act, but were such
pure theory in fact possible it would certainly not be one with the
whole reality. Experience however does not show it to be possible,
and since we live by experience, we must be willing to consider the
view that thinking is work, often hard work—that it is in fact by
nature both theoretical and practical.
Self-conscious activity, being real for itself, is the most complete
living. ‘So it is that we all feel our existence to consist in the
existence which we make for ourselves ; I say “ our existence ”’
in relation to that ‘“‘ we’ which affirms itself and says: ‘“ We”? ;
and is in short self-consciousness, the active and substantial
principle of mind.’ * It is therefore our notion of what reality
must be; it is the concept of reality. In other words, Gentile’s
doctrine is that reality is the concept or mind as pure act.
‘Pure’ act because ‘thought (or rather thinking) is free’; it
contains the aspects of subject and object. Its past and its
future are likewise real only so far as they are absorbed by it, that
is, present. Consequently, there is nothing outside it which can
be an obstacle for it, and so make it impossible to describe it as
pure act. Strictly speaking, ‘ pure’ is a superfluous word, for as
1 Theory, Ch. XV, p. 236. 2 Ibid., p. 240.
3 Logica, I, Pt. I, Cap. IV, p. 90.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE 109
Gentile shows, there is no freedom and therefore no activity which
is not absolutely free or ‘ pure.’ To be ‘ partly ’ constrained is to
be constrained.+
This freedom implies a changing, developing real, which
Gentile can find only in thinking. Reality is not static and com-
plete whether as material substance or as mind ; it is a dynamic
whole—not merely mind as thought (pensiero pensato), but
thinking itself (pensiero pensante), thinking in the act, which is
the life of the spirit. ‘Thought, in so far as act of thought, is,
as it has been said, in not being, and in being, 7s not. It is a
unity of being and not-being which is understood when we think
of becoming, whence the immediacy of being is denied, through
the assertion of being, but as identical with its opposite. .. .
Becoming is the category of universal reality, but only if this
reality in its universality is understood as thought.’ 2 This seems
a confused idea, Gentile says, except when it is realised that
“such a concept can be thought only as thought of thought, as
that self-consciousness which is obviously present even in the
ease of the adversary or the ironic commentator of the category
of becoming; so that nothing is more evident than that being
which is not, or than that not-being which is, in which this cate-
gory consists.’ 2 Reality is reality which becomes, and the unreal
has perpetually to be overcome.
This view of reality has the advantage of providing a har-
monious resolution of the dualism between mind and matter,
showing that they can be contrasted only as reality can be con-
- trasted with unreality—the latter is a ‘moment’ of the former.
The dualism, which left the relation between mind and matter a
‘brute fact ’ as Bradley would say, was simply a frozen example
of the dualism between thought and action or idea and reality.
Once it is made clear that thinking is activity, then mind and
matter are united, not in a concept of one to the exclusion of the
other, but in a concept which reconciles them, and so attains the
conception of a diversity within identity. Only thus can the
many be held together in a single concept, and only thus can
reality be understood. The monism of Gentile is perfect, yet
because it is complete it is free from the vices of some monistic
views ; it does not set up an abstraction in the place of experi-
1 Theory, Ch. III, p. 19.
* Logica, Pt. I,.Cap. IV, p. 91. 3 Tbid., p. 93.
*Ci. Theory, Ch. I, p. 1; Ch. III, pp. 30, 31; Ch. IV, pp. 49-53.
110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
enced reality. It offers us thinking as the concrete form of
reality, and shows that this form of reality alone can explain
both itself and the rest. Philosophy is not mere experienced
reality, nor mere reflection upon experienced reality, but a unity
of both, i.e. self-consciousness. The concept which reveals the
meaning of reality is the veritable reality.
We have identified philosophy with the meaning of reality,
that is, with its self-consciousness or awareness of itself as
existent, by identifying that meaning with the concept, which is
thinking. Philosophy is the mind as pure act, and the mind
as pure act is reality. It is true that my philosophy as dis-
tinguished from yours, and yours as distinguished from mine, is
not the pure act which is reality. But one philosophy as dis-
tinguished from another is limited, and its limitation is a sign that
it is not pure act. A limit shows that there is something trans-
cending the object limited ; the object is so far acted upon instead
of acting. A philosophy which is mine but not yours, and yours
but not mine, is finite, and by its finitude incompletely yields the
meaning of the real. It is thinking, but it is not infinite thinking.
Gentile is not claiming that his philosophy, as characteristically
his, is reality—but that in thinking it, whether the thinking be by
him or by some other, there is a realisation which is reality, and
this is, according to him, a necessary stage of thought. As such,
it is not merely finite‘. . . once we have mastered the concept of
thinking as transcendental thinking, the concept of mind as self-
consciousness, as original apperception, as the condition of all
experience. ... The transcendental point of view is that which
we attain when in the reality of thinking we see our thought not
as act done, but as act in the doing.’ ! Infinite thinking, philo-
sophy in this sense, is the only possible meaning for reality—a
thinking which is not of some finite substantial person nor about
some finite substantial thing, but a thinking which is absolute
self-consciousness. It can be distinguished from finite thinking,
but does not transcend it—it is real only in the thinking which is
finite, as the universal is real in the particulars. ‘ Let it not be
thought that the concept of this deeper personality, the Person
which has no plurality, in any way excludes and effectually
annuls the concept of the empirical ego. Idealism does not mean
mysticism. The particular individual is not lost in the being of —
the “I” which is absolute and truly real. For this absolute _
1 Theory, Ch. I, pp. 5, 6. Cf. Ch. VIII, p. 100.
THE PHILOSOPHY. OF. GIOVANNI GENTILE AT
“1” unifies but does not destroy. It is the one which unifies in
itself every particular and empirical ego. The reality of the
transcendental ego even implies the reality of the empirical ego.
It is only when it is cut off from its immanent relation with the
transcendental ego that the empirical ego is falsely conceived.’ 1
This unity of the thinking of empirical selves in the thinking
of the transcendental subject, and the identification of such
thinking with reality, implies that reality is an immanent uni-
versal, or the universal particularised, and vice versa. Concepts,
according to Gentile, are thoughts or individual systems which
must resolve into a single system, or single concept which is in
this sense merely the object of our thinking, related to the act of
the transcendental ego (pensiero pensante) as the closed system of
thought (the thought which has been already thought or pensiero
pensato) to the system as it is being developed. ‘It is, then, in
concrete thought that we must look for the positivity which
escapes abstract thought, be it of the universal or of the individual.
It is by the abstract universal that thought thinks, but the
abstract universal is not thought. The abstract individual is
only one of the terms of the thought which we want to intuit, to
feel, to grasp as it were in a moment, to take by surprise. Neither
universal nor individual is concrete thought, for taken in its
natural meaning the universal is not individualised as it must be
to be real; nor is the individual universalised as even it must be
to be ideal, that is, to be truly real. When Descartes wished to
assure himself of the truth of knowledge, he said: Cogito ergo
sum ; that is, he ceased to look at the cogitatum which is abstract
thought and looked at the cogitare itself, the act of the ego,
the centre from which all the rays of our world issue and to which.
they all return.’ This concrete thinking which is the universal
individualised is becoming, in the sense which Hegel suggested
by his conception of the dialectic, for it is the unity which includes
differences, as e.g. of mind and matter or of theory and practice.
‘The subject in this constructive process, the subject which
resolves the object into itself, at least in so far as the object is
‘Spiritual reality, is neither a being nor a state of being. Nothing
but the constructive process is . . . verum est factum quatenus
fit.” ‘For us true thought is not thought thought, which Plato
and the whole ancient philosophy regarded as self-subsistent, a
‘1 Theory, Ch. Il, p. 14. Cf. Ch. VIII, p. 107.
2 Ibid., Ch. VIII, p. 99. 2 Ibid., Ch. ILI, p. 19.
112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
presupposition of our thought which aspires to correspondence
with it. For us the thought thought supposes thought thinking ; its
life and its truth are in its act.’ }
PART II
The philosophy which is becoming therein shows change,
which, so far as differences are increasingly well understood,
implies development and may be called progress. Unlike the
reality of ancient philosophy, itis‘... a reality which is realised
through a process, which is not a vain distraction of activity but
a continual creation of reality, a continual increase of its own
being.’ ? This realisation or development may be traced in the
series of particular philosophical problems at which men have
worked. Various men have worked at the particular problems,
but Man as such has worked on the problem of philosophy as
such. Philosophy is therefore one, a unity containing differences.
This conception explains Gentile’s desire to show the necessity
of the analytic philosophy—the ‘ Aristotelian ’—in order that
synthetic philosophy—the ‘ Hegelian ’—may have its full mean-
ing and value. In the preface to the Logic he says, ‘ In fact, I
have conceived this system of logic in the hope of satisfying an
old need of mine to fill in the abyss which in the history of philo-
sophy of the nineteenth century had opened between the ancient
analytic conception of thought defined in the Aristotelian logic,
and the new dialectic of idealism begun by Kant and developed
by Hegel. A concept which collided violently with my mode of
understanding philosophy precisely as a unique and truly universal
process of development, philosophia quaedam perennis, under-
stood after the manner of Leibniz, or better of Hegel, in which
every system has its truth, which cannot be the truth of its own
time without being the truth of every time... . 3 If the
development of philosophy historically is the expression of the
necessary mode of existence of philosophy, then any historical
form of this development cannot simply be ignored, or dismissed
in the light of the fuller conception which we may have to-day.
The ancient conception is as necessary as the modern which must
somehow contain the ancient—the present explains the past.
This means more than that ‘the truth’ of the ancient must be
1 Theory, Ch. IV, p. 43. Cf. Ch. II, pp. 15-17.
2 Ibid., Ch. IV, p. 48. 3 Logica, I, Pref., pp. v and vi.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE 113
contained in the new, a view which is found in Bergson’s solution
of the relation of past to present in the problem of the freedom of
the will. There really is a nature which is independent of mind—
from a certain point of view; there really is a past which we
cannot change—if we think so. ‘ There is also in what is thought,
taken in itself, a double nature, and its intrinsic contradiction
is a form of the restless activity of thought. What is thought
cannot be what is not thinkable because it is what is thought, and
it is what is thought just because not thinkable. The thing
thought is thing, nature, matter, everything which can be con-
sidered as a limit of thought, and what limits thought is not itself
thinkable.’ 2 ‘But if we are now asked: Can we think that
this reality which confronts the mind, and which the mind has
to analyse, a reality therefore which is a presupposition of the
mind whose object it is, is spiritual reality ? We must answer
at once: No.’ 3 There is room for the abstract as well as the
concrete logic, and the only flaw in the abstract logic is its taking
itself to be concrete. A place in philosophy has to be found for
the ancient without loss of its old meaning, except to the extent
that it is no longer to be thought in itself a complete and sufficient
_ philosophy.
This conservation of the values of events brings a new import-
ance to history, on which point Gentile is in general agreement
with Croce. History and the condition of history—temporal
change—are no mere illusion, nor even the mere appearance of a
reality which is eternal. The changing world of history has its
value and so its reality, but according to Gentile it is better to say
that history is philosophy than vice versa. He does not identify
reality as a whole, or the complete meaning of reality, with history
rather than with philosophy, for he does not admit that the latter
lacks the concreteness of the former. ‘ History . . . is rationally
reconstructible history. . . . A choice of material is inevitable ;
and a choice requires a criterion. And the criterion in this case
can only be a notion of the philosophy.’ ‘... The history of
philosophy which we must keep in view if we are to see it as
identical with philosophy, is the history which is history of
philosophy for us in the act of philosophising.’ ®
Unlike Croce, Gentile does not identify reality as a whole, or
1 Bergson, Hssai sur les Donnés Immédiates de la Conscience, passim.
* Theory, Ch. XVII, p. 258. SIU, 100 PP
4 Ibid., Ch. XIII, p. 211. 5 Ibid., p. 213. Cf. 202.
114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
the complete meaning of reality, with history rather than with
philosophy, for he does not admit that philosophy lacks the
concreteness of history. ‘The identity of philosophy with its
history is the typical form and culminating point of the resolu-
tion of temporal into eternal history, or indeed of the facts of
mind into the concept or spiritual act. It is the culminating
point, because philosophy is the highest and at the same time
the concretest form of spiritual activity, the form which judges all
the others and can itself be judged by none.’! Croce asserts that
all history is contemporary history, that is to say, history, like
philosophy, is a process of which the reality is the present. But
there are differences within the fundamental identity of history
and philosophy. History, he says, deals with the individual,
philosophy with the mere universal—so that history is the more
concrete and therefore more adequate conception of the real.
To meet this contention, Gentile criticises Croce’s theory of the
nature of universals. According to him, the universal transcends
the particular, but is not real except in the individual which is
always history.2 On this ground, greater concreteness is assigned
to history by Croce. Gentile, however, holds that both universal
and particular are real only in the concrete ‘ individual’ which
he identifies with philosophy, and not with history. By this is
meant that philosophy is not a mere ‘ general’ concept, but an
individual of which past and present together form the reality.
History, on the other hand, shares what is (from the point of view
of concrete reality) the defect of the natural sciences ; that is, it
seems to deal with a reality opposed to mind or bare object. It
supposes the series of past events to exist independently of the
historical narrative which is ‘about’ them.? It can therefore,
as we shall see, be contrasted with art which appears to itself to
make its object. Philosophy has the merit of art—its stress on
subjective activity—and in addition the objectivity of history
which is not realised by art. In philosophy account has to be
taken of the object, but it is an object made by the subject.
In the Aristotelian philosophy the mind’s power of analysis
shows the object set up in opposition to the subject; in the
philosophy of Gentile it is acknowledged to be real but shown to
1 Theory, p. 215. Ci. note to Ch. XIII, pp. 217-9.
2 Croce, Logica, Pt. II, Cap. Il and IV ; and Teoria della Storia, Ed. 2,
Appendix III.
2Ci. Theory, Ch. XV; p. 230.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE § 115
remain within the concrete subject by the synthesis of subject
and object in the mind as pure act.
Brief mention may be made of Gentile’s treatment of art and
religion. It is natural to compare his view with that of Croce.
Gentile says that philosophy has to recognise the unity of par-
ticular and universal in the concrete individual. His concept of
reality, as we said above, is that of the immanent universal.
Art is a ‘moment’ of this concrete reality. Gentile agrees with
Croce in saying that it is intuition or expression ; it is the act of
the subject. ‘. . . Art is the form of subjectivity, or, as we also
say, of the mind’s immediate individuality.’1 It is therefore
to be distinguished from the concrete act which is living or
philosophising—that is, self-conscious act. Art is un-self-
conscious act. It is lyrical, the expression of the pure subject as
such, the subject which has not made itself an object to itself.
But Gentile dissents from Croce’s view that it is to be distinguished
as an image-forming or individual act from a universal or con-
ceptual act. So far as it is the act of the subject, it is both ; for
the universal does not transcend the individual, and the indi-
vidual is nothing but the realisation of the universal. Gentile’s
philosophy of art gains by avoiding the over-done contrast of
universal and individual which is apt to lead to criticism of the
whole expressionist view of aesthetic on the ground that indi-
vidual and universal are one reality. Gentile gives art its place
as a pure subjective activity, but does not suppose it to exist
independently of an object. By his analysis of the concrete act
of mind, which distinguishes within the whole moments or aspects,
we oppose the subjective aspect of mind to the objective aspect,
or mind as being conscious to the objects of its consciousness.
The one aspect may be called the moment of art, the other the
moment of religion. Art and religion are united in the concrete
reality which is philosophy. |
According to Gentile, religion is distinguished from art by
belief in the transcendence of the ideal as a perfect reality which
is not the reality of this world. Its characteristic tendency 1s
towards worship, the glorification of the object which is opposed
to the subject, strange to it, and in its infinity, essentially un-
known. ‘ Religion may be defined as the antithesis of art. Art
is the exaltation of the subject released from the chains of the real
in which the subject is posited positively ; and religion is the
1 Theory, Ch. XIV, p. 233.
116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
exaltation of the object, released from the chains of the mind,
in which the identity, knowability and rationality of the object
consists. ‘lhe object in its abstract opposition to knowing is the
real. By that opposition, knowing is excluded from reality,
and the object is therefore eo ipso unknowable, only affirmable
mystically as the immediate adhesion of the subject to the
object.’ 1 Both religion and art alike are abstractions when
regarded from the point of view of philosophy; this is proved
by the fact that, if we treat them as concrete, they escape from
us and turn into each other, as Hegel has shown that abstractions
must do. Art, the pure subject, does not know itself, and there-
fore is like nature, a mere object ; religion, the pure cbject, is so
alien from the subject that it is unknown to it, and leaves us
with the mere subject. The object only has reality for us if we
are prepared to recognise that it is not the bare other of the
subject. It is the subject itself in the moment of consciousness.
Therefore religion has a peculiar work of its own to fulfil, The
moment of consciousness, the recognition of an object which can
be known only by immediate intuition, is necessary in order that
self-consciousness, the mediate intuition, may be realised. It
provides the mediation of the self. ‘The reality which has been
realised is necessary therefore in so far as it is contingent, while
the reality in its act of realising itself is necessary as the relation
between the principle and that of which there is a principle during
the course of a development: an a priori relation, and, as such,
truly necessary in respect to the terms of which it is the synthesis. 2
The religious position follows logically from the scientific
opposition of object to subject. So long as science is purely
scientific (not philosophic) it assumes that its object exists
independently of the subject. It inconsistently holds that this
independent object can be known as it is in its independence.
Once the relativity of object to subject in knowing is recognised,
the ‘independent’ or ‘real’ object becomes a thing-in-itself,
and is left to metaphysical speculation or religious adoration.
Hence the possibility of Spencer’s reconciliation of science and
religion in their impotence before the ‘ Unknowable.’ Scientific
and religious thinking encounter a problem soluble only by
philosophical thinking. Yet the value of their analysis of reality
into subject and object which is correct as analysis must be
recognised by concrete thinking which is philosophy. Subject
1 Theory, pp. 26-7. 2 Logica, I, Pt. I, Cap. ITI, p. 80.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE 117
sand object are aspects of the real subject which is not a substance
but an act. [or concrete thinking must grasp all aspects of the
real, and the results of analysis make this possible. Religion
‘can never disappear (as Croce thought it could) in philosophy ;
because it is essential, it is eternal—perpetually present to be
perpetually overcome. The analytic philosophy is necessary to
the synthetic ; and both the aesthetic moment of pure subjectivity,
and the religious moment of abstraction from the subject, are
necessary to the concrete reality which is mind as pure act.
Gentile’s defence of the scientific and religious positions, his
recognition of their necessity to the concrete reality of thinking—
is perhaps an improvement upon Croce’s theory, according to
which science is a practical not a theoretical activity, and religion
is aesthetic and mythological. The apparent long-livedness of
religion makes it probable that some truth in it is keeping it
alive ; while progress in science at least appears to be a progress
in knowledge.
There are various problems of long standing in philosophy
with which any new philosophic system is expected to deal.
‘One of these is the problem of error, and perhaps even a sketch
_ of this kind should include an outline of Gentile’s opinion. It is
‘essential to his position that the object of mind is within mind ;
if it were outside, there could be no understanding of the possibility
-of truth. There could not be, at the best, more than ‘ mere
opinion.’ But does the introduction of the object within mind
‘mean that while truth is possible error is impossible, for this would
seem to be contrary to fact ? Gentile says: ‘When once the
concept of reality as self-concept is understood, we see clearly
that our mind’s real need is not that error and evil should dis-
-appear from the world but that they should be eternally present.
Without error there is no truth, without evil there is no good,
not because they are two terms bound to one another in the
way that Plato, following Heracleitus, said pleasure and pain are
bound together, but because error and evil are the non-being of
‘that reality, mind, the being of which is truth and goodness.’ 1
Error cannot well be accounted for on any idealist philosophy
according to which reality is already realised. Why should the
‘mind fail to know a reality which is ready for it to copy and within
‘the grasp of mind—a reality which is its own achieved purpose ?
But according to Gentile, reality is not already realised. It 1s
1 Theory, Ch. XVI, p. 246-7.
118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
not being, but becoming. Truth, like reality, is a process. No:
truth perishes utterly; not even the ‘truth’ that there is a
‘nature ’ outside mind is quite worn-out or false. On the level of
non-philosophic thought, mind and reality, subject and object,
can be regarded in abstraction from each other. The mind
which is thinking, on this level, is not infinite mind, or pensiero.
pensante ; it is contrasted with the object of thought, and does
not contain it. E.g. a tea-cup is not mind, nor is it mental.!
Error occurs when this abstract treatment of the object of mind
is thought to be concrete—it is the assertion that we know that
we know what we do not know, the taking of brute fact for
philosophy. It is an error to assert that the object which we
call a tea-cup exists independently of all mind, and in this
independence is a tea-cup still. On the concrete level of the
activity of mind, where the object certainly is included in think-.
ing or mind as pensiero pensante, error is present only as a mode
of truth—the moment of negativity which is essential to becoming.
Because reality is changing, whatever can be said of it is true,
but also ceasing to be true. If it remained true, reality would
be a static object, not a process. Any philosophic doctrine
remains true only so long as it can remain a living thought—in.
other words, itself a developing reality. By this Gentile means
that the reality which is becoming is only in so far as it is not, but
becomes, a statement which is more than a verbal paradox.
It can be understood by an appeal to experience of reality, an
exercise of that sympathy to which we have referred.
Gentile’s philosophy is a reconciliation of the old and the new
philosophy, or the Aristotelian and the Hegelian. It shows the
value of the old philosophy with its opposition between mind and
nature, and so finds a place for the theory of truth according to
which it has its standard beyond the mind, as well as for the
theory according to which the standard is within. Not all
idealist philosophers have thus been able to give a reason for the
sound sense there is in the old view of truth, and its perennial.
attraction. The sciences and history are not ‘ false ’ nor are they
merely practical. The sciences, and the common sense out of
which they have grown, are the truth about reality as an object
of mind. They do not recognise, and have no need to face,
philosophical problems, but they must not criticise philosophical
solutions, which appear (and merely appear) to clash with the
NCi: Lheory, p. 22:
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE 119
sciences and common sense. The Aristotelian conception of
truth has a work to perform in modern philosophy, because it
gives an analysis of the object of mind in abstraction from the
subject which a synthetic philosophy as such cannot perform,
but without which it would itself fail to be synthetic. Since it is
perhaps an over-refinement of thought to deny to the sciences
the name of knowledge, a view which has room for both scientific
and philosophic knowledge within its system is more likely to be
true than one which merely opposes them. The view of Gentile
here has an advantage over that of Bergson. The latter argues
that the thought which knows the real, which is a process, must
be itself a process. Finally we arrive at the identification of the
thought with the reality—all that is, in order to be known, must
become the subject. ‘©The thought which is true thought must
generate the being of what it is the thought, and this precisely is
the meaning of phe Cartesian Cogito. [—this reality, which is “ I’
. this “Il am” zs in so far as I think. I realise it in oe
Bath a thought which is myself thinking. The “I” . only
7s in so far as it is self-consciousness. ‘The “ I” is not a conscious-
ness which presupposes the self as its object, but a consciousness
which posits a self.’ 1 It is true that the view that becoming is
the nature of reality or that change is ultimate is certainly
bound up with the intuitive view which tries to pass beyond the
merely intellectual. But while Bergson does not try to support
the view of the real as a becoming by intellectual arguments, and
instead throws discredit on the intellect, Gentile tries to work
with a unity of intellect and intuition. This unity he finds in
concrete thinking, pensiero pensante, which is a medvate intuition
including within it the thought of the past or pensiero pensato ;
and it gives us concrete philosophical truth.
Concrete thinking is the same in all finite minds ; the trans-
cendental subject is one—thinking thinks in us. Such a think-
ing is no mere finite thinking taken in abstraction from other
finite thinking, and from the objects of the thinkers.2 The
thinking which is the real is the creator of such finite thinking,
and of the reality which is thought. Like Berkeley, Gentile says
that esse is percipi, while he does not say that to be is to be
thought by finite beings as such. But Berkeley’s error was to
make the thinking which thinks the real, and thinks in all finite
1 Tbid., Ch. VIII, pp. 100-1. Cf. Logica, I, Pt. I, Cap. I.
*Ci.. Theory, Ch. I.
120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE
thinking, transcend such reality and finite thought. The philo-
sophy of Gentile aims at showing the immanence of what Berkeley
called the Divine thinking, and of what Kant called the trans-
cendental ego, in finite thought and reality, as against the opposi-
tion the older idealist philosophers made between infinite and
finite. The proposition ‘ Reality must be thought by me’
teaches immanence. It is this proposition which experience
gives us. We cannot therefore retain the part ‘ Reality must be
thought’ and omit the datum ‘by me.’ Yet, as Berkeley saw,
reality is not thought by the empirical ego, the self which dis-
tinguishes itself from other selves. We think reality only when
other selves in principle agree with our thinking. This means that
reality is thought by the transcendental ego which is one in all
thinkers, whether human or divine, because it is reason. The
very conception of transcendental self is one which Gentile’s
philosophy supersedes because it 1s tainted with the implications
of a mysterious substance. All that is real is in the act—we do
not gain by referring the act to a self. That reality is not the
mere created object of an ego, nor yet a mere unknowable sub-
ject, but is to be identified with transcendental (not transcendent)
thinking, Gentile’s entire philosophy, with its union of thinking,
activity, and reality, is the attempted proof.
This view of Gentile that Reality is the concept or Mind as
Pure Act is known in Italy at least as the new idealism. It is
idealism because it takes its place in the line of those philosophies
which have taught that the real is mind ; it is new, because it is
the latest development of this theory. Gentile himself traces the
descent of his thought from that of Berkeley through that of
Vico and Hegel to its ultimate form as pure Actual Idealism.
The earlier thinkers, in spite of increasing stress on the immanence
of mind in reality, retained the notion of transcendence under the
impression that in some form it was necessary—as God the thinker
and creator of all ideas, or as Providence guiding the acts of man-
kind, or as infinite Mind, a goal beyond the reach of the finite.
Gentile develops the logical consequences of immanence. Mind
cannot transcend matter, for such a proposition is convertible,
yielding a disguised materialism. Immanent mind is to be identi-
fied with reality, it is neither above it nor below. Hence it can-
not be a contemplation of reality, a mere thinking about something
other than thought. It is self-conscious activity, than which
there is no other reality. Reality and value, theory and practice,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GIOVANNI GENTILE 121
are no longer severed in the new idealism which harmonises the
most difficult opposites in the concrete concept of Reality as
Pure Act.
REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS
Theory of Mind as Pure Act. GiovanniGentile. Translated by H. Wildon
Carr. Macmillan, 1922. Theory.
_ Teoria generale dello Spirito come Atto Puro. Gentile. 3 Ediz. Laterza,
Bari,, 1920.
sistema dt Togica. Gentile. Vol. I, 2 Ediz., 1922. Vol. Il, 2 Ediz.,
1923. Laterza, Bari. Logica.
Sommario di Pedagogia. Gentile. Vol. I, 3 Ediz., 1923. Vol. II, 2 Ediz.,
1922. lLaterza, Bari.
La Riforma della Dialettica Hegeliana. Gentile. Ediz. Principato. Mes-
sina, 1923.
THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL
MEANING
THE meaning of the word ‘meaning,’ as applied to symbols,
and more particularly to the symbols we term ‘ words,’ is that
the symbols in question stand for certain objects known to the
individuals who communicate with each other by means of the
symbols. The man who asks, in relation to a set of sounds, an
arrangement of lines, or a grouping of patches of colour on a
flat surface, ‘ What does this mean ?’ considers that he has been
answered when he is told for what objects these things stand.
He may complain of the way in which the symbols themselves
have been fashioned, he may regard them as inadequate, he may
ask why these representations rather than others have been
chosen, and he may question the competence of the person who
claims to interpret the symbols. But he will not object to the
general form in which the meaning is stated ; to the substitution
of the given symbols for word symbols, which refer him ultimately
to an object, or to a number of objects standing in certain relations
to each other.
The word ‘ object ’ is to be understood as applying, not merely
to physical objects, but to whatever may be an object of experience
or of thought. In this sense, hypotheses are objects equally
with the facts they subsume, and with the physical objects
observed for the purpose of obtaining these facts. Relations
between things, again, are as much objects as the things them-
selves. It is in this extended sense that we use the word ‘ object ’
' when we say that the meaning of a symbol is known when we
know the object it denotes.
At this point the problem of psychological meaning may be
said to begin: the problem, not of the meaning of symbols which
denote objects, but of the meaning of the objects themselves.
The real difficulty here is to indicate with clearness precisely what
is being sought, but some hint of the nature of the problem is
given by a fairly common use of the word ‘meaning.’ Often
1 See The Meaning of Meaning, Ogden and Richards. (London: Kegan
Paul.)
A.S.—VOL. IX. 123 I
124 PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING
enough, in deploring the loss or breakage of an object of little
intrinsic worth, people say: ‘I would not have lost it for any-
thing. It means so much to me.’ Obviously, the sense of the
word ‘ means ’ would appear to be different in character from that |
assigned to it in what we have already said.
. It is in this psychological sense that stamps mean a great deal
to individuals who spend money on them and take infinite pains |
to collect them ; games to people who neglect business and pro- |
fessional affairs to play them; drink and drugs to those who —
sacrifice careers in order to indulge in them. The pathological |
character of this last instance does not in the least affect the |
general character of the problem, since the pathological differs
here from the normal only in a certain excess, which may con- |
ceivably, by presenting to us on an exaggerated scale some of the |
factors involved, make easier our general quest for the discovery |
of the ‘meaning’ of the object of the appetite. |
It is obviously true that some objects possess widely different |
intensities of meaning for different people. The meaning of a |
relic or a cult object to a devotee is something that cannot possibly
be accounted for by any consideration of the substantial nature
of the object, and the man to whom it means no more than this
remains indifferent or shows irreverence. A historical document |
means a great deal more to a historian than to another: and this |
consideration raises the nice point whether it means more to him
because he is a historian or whether he is a historian because the |
document possesses an unusual amount of meaning for him.
Exactly similar problems to those raised by the devotee and the
historian are raised by the philosopher, the musician, the mathe- |
matician, the geographer, the chess enthusiast: by all those, in|
brief, who evince intense interest in objects which other men
regard lightly, with indifference or with contempt.
Our objective evidence of the existence of the varied meanings |
a single object possesses for different individuals is the behaviour)
of the individuals towards these objects. ‘The worshipper at
Stonehenge probably behaved very differently from the tourists}
who visit the ancient stones and from the members of the crowds
which assemble to see the sun rise above the altar stone. But
we should go too far if we were to assume, with the behaviourists, |
that behaviour 7s meaning. The evidence of something is not)
the thing itself. |
1 See John B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviourist. |
PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING — 125
Nevertheless, though we cannot go the whole way with the
behaviourists, we are compelled to recognise that behaviour stands
in close relation to psychological meaning. We recognise, too,
that if wide differences of meaning are indicated by widely differ-
ing behaviours, there are also slight differences to which attention
should be paid. In the case of two men, to one of whom an object
means more than to another, the behaviour of the former will be
marked by an intenser concentration than that of the other.
Attention will be more marked, and attention is merely the objec-
tive aspect of interest.
When we say that an object ‘means much’ to an individual,
we at least imply that it interests him a great deal. It may
be that interest and meaning are ultimately identical. This
we can hardly say at present, for ‘interest’ itself, after some
generations of mishandling by educationists, is sadly in
need of serious re-examination and of proper placing in modern
psychology. Be this as it may, it appears that interest, as
well as behaviour, stands in close relation to psychological
‘meaning.’
The psycho-analytical view of human behaviour compels us
to seek some part of our explanation of psychological meaning
in terms of the more general meaning spoken of at the beginning
of this essay. For the psycho-analyst looks upon all the objects
in which we feel interest and to which we respond by means of our
behaviour, as symbols; deriving at least some part of their
meaning for us from the fact that they stand for other objects,
with which they have become associated through experience.
Of this meaning we are unaware. Nor can we become aware of it
except through a particular type of experience, which at once
divests the symbolic object of its meaning. Merely to read or to
hear that such and such an object is a symbol of another affects
neither the meaning of the object or our behaviour towards it.
Ultimately we discover that the object in which we feel interest,
and towards which we react, stands as a symbol of some object of a
primary instinct.
Beyond this, it seems impossible to go at the moment. But,
if we are able to look upon ail the objects in which men are
interested as symbols of the objects which enter into primary
behaviour configurations, it would seem that we have not solved
our problem of psychological meaning, but have merely encoun-
tered it finally in the instincts themselves. Ultimately, our
126 PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING
problem becomes that of discovering the ‘ instinct meaning ’ ! of
the object of the instinct.
Our present conception of a psychological instinct invariably
includes the notion of an innate tendency to be interested in and
to attend to certain specific objects and to behave specifically
towards them. McDougall adds to this the tendency to experi-
ence specific elementary feelings or ‘ primary emotions ’ which are
specific to the instinct. _Drever emphasises the difference between
instincts which operate in the absence of the object and initiate
seeking behaviour (appetites) and those which operate only when
the object of the instinct is present. There are great differences
of opinion as to whether some forms of behaviour are to be
regarded as instinctive or as learned, and experimental evidence
is obviously difficult to obtain. These differences result in further
differences in the lists of instincts which psychologists give us,
in attempts to classify the instincts, and in opinions as to whether
the various instincts are to be regarded as primary or derived.
Probably our definition of an instinct as an ideally simply con-
figuration of behaviour towards an object, organised independently
of learning, is to be regarded as true; whilst we admit the
practical difficulty of deciding whether this or that individual piece
of behaviour conforms to the definition.
The term behaviour is limited, in ordinary language, to motor
behaviour. The psychologist would broaden it to include
visceral and endocrine behaviour: the whole series of bodily
changes which begin with attention to or search for the object
and end when the configuration is closed. Only when the instinct
is awakened does this occur, and only the following out of the
whole series of behaviour elements, in proper sequence, permits to
the organism a particular type of experience. If, therefore, we
derive all behaviour from simple instinctive types, specific in
character, we must derive all experience from specific types of
experience. Ultimately, therefore, the meaning of an object
will depend upon the instinct object for which it stands, and
the experience which results from the performance of instinct
behaviour in respect of the instinct object.
One of the most interesting attempts, and perhaps the most
brilliant of all, to explain the meaning of objects is that which
makes use of the conception referred to under the name of the
1This term is Drever’s. See Instinct in Man (Cambridge: The
University Press).
PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING 127
‘Oedipus complex.’1 The notion of an Oedipus complex
usefully subsumes the earliest configurations of behaviour of
children towards people, and more particularly towards parents.
Typically, it is a derived configuration, taking its origin from
simple fear, sex and hunger reactions. Its great importance lies
in the fact that many apparently complex types of adult behaviour
may be reduced to it by a series of substitutions, simple or com-
plex in character. Not merely behaviour in the ordinary sense,
but dreams, daydreams, myths, legends, popular novels and
stories, folk and fairy tales and some systems of philosophy, may
be reduced, by means of appropriate substitutions, to special
cases of the more general Oedipus formula.
The fact that this is possible is of far more importance than
the popular contention that the result of the substitution is an
absurdity. It may be pointed out that attempts to reduce
a? + 5b? and a? + 6b? + c? to factors of the first degree led to
results which seemed to mathematicians at the time, and still
seem to the non-mathematical of our own day, absurdities ;
though the further examination of these apparent foolishnesses
opened up new and fruitful fields of mathematical discovery.
_ ‘There is, then, a tendency at the moment to believe that the
varied objects of the world which interest men and women do so
because they are ‘ symbols’ of the objects of instinct situations.
The substitution of one object for another in this sense appears
to be a well attested fact, and it is asserted that some at least of
the substitutions which are made are constant in all men: the
confidence, however, is premature, since investigations so far are
practically limited to members of European races, or to people
brought up according to European traditions. Other substitu-
tions appear, on the other hand, to be personal and individual.
The discovery of a ‘ personal’ symbolism, however, does not
necessarily imply that a ‘universal’ symbolism is not also
present, since in connection with an object which is a symbol
different layers of meaning exist.
1 Professor Rose has pointed out to me that other names, more suited
to describe the behaviour in question than that of Oedipus, might have
been chosen. I am further aware that the word ‘ complex,’ in the mouths
of people who prate glibly of ‘ inferiority complexes ’ and the like, has lost
much of whatever useful meaning it possessed when it was first used.
Nevertheless, the term ‘ Oedipus complex ’ has a very definite meaning in
serious psycho-analytical literature, and it seems inadvisable to attempt to
change it.
128 PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING
An important consideration which has not as yet received
sufficient attention arises from the fact that the ‘ Oedipus
complex ’ is the primary configuration in which people are the
objects. We should be inclined to believe that all adult behaviour
towards people is strictly reducible, by means of appropriate
substitutions, to the Oedipus formula. We have in such a con-
sideration the basis of an evolutionary social psychology, some-
thing very different from the medley of psychology, social
anthropology and descriptive sociology which at present passes
under this name. We realise, however, that the ‘ Oedipus com-
plex,’ as we know it, arises within a family of a certain type, and
owes its special structure to the nature of that family. It is, if
we may use a mathematical analogy, a special form of an equation
of a certain degree. Other special forms may exist, denoting
configurations very different in character. Thus, in elementary
analytical geometry, the curve of the second degree may repre- —
sent, under special conditions, forms so various as the pair of
straight lines, the circle, the ellipse, the parabola and the hyper-
bola. And the family, which as we know it gives rise to the well-
known Oedipus situation, may, in special circumstances, give
rise to other situations, differing from it in many ways. Since
this argument was first advanced as a hypothetical speculation,
the work of Malinowski among the Trobriand islanders, with a
family organisation differing widely from our own, has shown the
probability that their primary social behaviour configuration is
strikingly different from that which is the rule with ourselves.?
This new work suggests very strongly that differences in the adult
behaviour of various racial groups can be studied fully only in the
light of the investigations into the family organisation and of the
situations in which the child’s primary reactions towards people
are organised. The adult reaction towards people is closely
related to the meaning of people, as objects, and at least some
part of this meaning, it would appear, is borrowed from the
earliest reaction towards the people for whom other people are,
in part, but symbols.
Not people only, but things also. Children are accustomed,
in play, to treat objects as if they were people. Adults, too, in a
variety of behaviour which ranges from games to acts of adoration,
extend to things responses appropriate only to people: and such
1 Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (Kegan Paul) ;
The Father in Primitive Psychology (Kegan Paul).
PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING — 129
reactions may, by substitution, be reduced to the Freudian
Oedipus formula. There may be apparent exceptions, such as
those which the late Dr. W. H. Rivers adduced on the basis of
what would appear to be inadequately analysed material.!
More and more, as McCurdy points out, psychotherapists dis-
cover that only the Freudian formula enables them to assign
meaning to the material they are compelled to examine in their
daily work.? But the acceptance and use of a formula are, how-
ever, very different from understanding it and realising fully
the nature of its implications, and thus a fuller investigation of
the Oedipus formula has come to be urgently demanded in modern
psychology as a necessary preliminary to the solution of the
problem of psychological meaning; more particularly of the
psychological meaning of those persons and objects which deter-
mines the social reactions of the individual and the group.
GEORGE H. GREEN.
1 Rivers, Conflict and Dream (Kegan Paul); Green, The Terror-Dream
(Kegan Paul).
2McCurdy, The Psychology of Emotion (Kegan Paul), pp. 92 ff.
aa
25)
i \
ase
a3
ry
1a
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MN
| 20 M/
VoLUME ve
ent of Nicolas de Ovando in Espafiola (1501-1609), by Cecil
- Professor H. J. Baas James Howell again, by Protiscoe E, ‘Benely: The
ae in Ritual and Myth, by J. J. Jones, M.A. Conduct and the
_- Experience of Value, Part II, by L. A. Reid, M.A. Sir Henry Jones
as and the Cross Commission, by J. Hughes, M.A. Notes on the aarcak *
of pelascchire Lead- -mines, by Miss K. Some M.Se.
tue
alas Votume VI.
Stores XPONOS : The “ Unity of Time” in ‘Anecnt Pisinw by Pretenne
H. J. Rose. James Howell once more, by Professor E, Bensly. Hamlet
and the Essex Conspiracy (Part I), by Lilian Winstanley, M.A. Croce’s
i ibceond of Intuition ae with Bradley's Doctrine ne Feeney BE
VOLUME VIIE-
! Blof: the Conventional Woman : Deianeira, by Professor H. J. Rose.
Fragments of Samian Pottery, i in the Museum of the University College
e Familiar Letters of Sasives ‘Golwcll, by Penlessor Edward Bensly.
Artharions. Material | in erage = Professor T. Girynn Jones, The
a Ix, price 3 {6 ‘cach may he ebenied flee the General ecko:
niversity College of Wales, Aberystwyth, or from cgsisee!
; ae aaa Ne Press Warehouse, London.
© ke sta aghas Te
i : ue
| CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS —
Vorcun I.
The Anglo-Saxon Riddles, by G. A. Wood, M.A. An Analysis of the gaa
characters of Grillparzer’s Dramas contrasted with those of Goethe's
and Schiller’s, by Miss Amy Burgess, M.A. Normen Earthworks near « —
Aberystwyth, by F. S. Wright. A List of Research Publications by
- Members of the pore Staff for the Session 1910-11. .
VoLume II.
The Anglo-Saxon Riddles (continued), by G. A. Wood, M.A. Some Ancient
Defensive Earthworks near Aberystwyth, by F. S. Wright. Whitman «.
Bhd ainmrulns by P. M. Jones, B.A. &
Vouume III.
The Greek Agones, by Professor H. J. Rose. A few Notes on the Familiar
Letters of James Howell, by Professor E. Bensly. Fable Literature in
Welsh, by Professor T. Gwynn Jones. Trajano Bocealini’s parneere upon
English Literature, ny Richard Thomas, M.A.
Votume IV.
Pagan Revivalism under the Roman Empire, by Sir Wiiliam M. Heenan
F.B.A. The Bronze Age in Wales, by Harold Peake, F.S.A. Dionysiaca,
_ by Professor H. J. Rose. The Clausule of ASschines, by R. A. Pope, M.A.
Further Notes on the Familiar Letters of James Howell, by Professor
Edward Bensly. Further Notes on ‘“‘the Owl and the Nightingale,” by
Professor J. W. H. Atkins, The Arthurian Empire in the Elizabethan
- Poets, by Miss L. Winstanley, M.A. A Note on a passage in “‘ Beowulf,”
by G. N. Garmonsway, B.A. Welsh Words from Pembrokeshire, bye
Professor T. Stanley Roberts. An English Flexional ending in Welsh,
_ by Professor T. H. Parry-Williams. A “Court of Love” poem in Welsh,
_ by Professor T. Gwynn Jones. The Evolution of the Weish Home, by
Timothy Lewis, M.A: A Washer at the Ford, by Miss Gwenen Jones,
M.A. An Outline History of our Neighbourhood, by Professor H. J.
Fleure. Some Notes on the Industrial Revolution in South Wales, by
-.. J. Morgan Rees, M.A. Industrial Training in South Wales, by W. King,
_. M.A. Conduct and the Experience of Value, by L. A. Reid, M:A. Some —
. sources of the English Trial, by Professor T. A. Levi. A Renascence Pioneer :
of Women’s Education, by Professor Foster Watson. Instruction in
Religion, by Professor OC. R. Chapple. A new document bearing on the —
Welsh Education Commission of 1846-7, by F. Smith, M.A. On Stokes’s
Formula and the Maxwell-Lorentz Equations, by Professor W. H. Young,
Recent Investigations of the scattering of X- and y-Rays, by Professor —
G. A. Schott. The Addition of Hydrogen to Acetylenic Acids, by the late —
D. Emrys Williams, B.Sc., and Professor T. ©. James. The Action of —
Reducing Agents on some Polynitrodiphenylamines, by N. M. Cullinane,
M.Sc. Some Reactions of Tetranitroaniline, by C. W.. Davies, B.Sc.
The Origin of the Seed-Plants (Spermophyta), by D. H. Scott, LL.D.
Investigations into the Fauna of the Sea Floor of Cardigan Bay, by
Professor R. Douglas Laurie. The Fauna of the Olarach Stream (Cardi-
ganshire) and its Tributaries, by Miss K. Carpenter, B.Sc. Additions to
the Marine Fauna of Aberystwyth and District, by Miss E. Horsman, —
M.Se. The Bryophyta of aaa Associations in Wales, be 0. Vv. B.
Marquand, M.A.
(Continued on page 3 of (ietr>
RYSTWYTH STUDIES
: BY .
MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF WALES
- Pe Vow X
THE HYWEL DDA MILLENARY
VOLUME
PRA
RESS
“NS,
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES
| ABERYSTWYTH
Vol. X
ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
VOL. X
THE HYWEL DDA MILLENARY
VOLUME
\
A PaGe FROM PENIARTH MS. 28, IN THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES.
The oldest known copy of the Laws of Hywel Dda. Latin, late XIIth century.
The illustrations represent the falconer and the judge.
A PAGE FROM PENIARTH MS. 29, ‘““ Y Liuyrr Du o’R WAUN,” IN THE
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES.
The oldest known Welsh copy of the Laws of Hywel Dda. Circa 1200.
8,
VU
Na
caTy mT
5 STN
ie JEN Ours we)
Ba TNS) Diy x
ats) sh
, ey .
Zee % iy
Says > bo
‘ SEB LON
AL HIS\oS
Rita NATE
My ng
:
—
ABERYSTWYTH STUDIES
MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY
| COLLEGE OF WALES
| BY
|
VOL. X
THE HYWEL DDA MILLENARY
VOLUME
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES
PRESS BOARD ON BEHALF OF THE COLLEGE
1928
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
CONTENTS
FACSIMILES OF MSS. . : 4 ‘ Frontispiece
HYWEL DDA: THE HISTORICAL SETTING. By Professor
J. E. Luoyvp, D.Litt., M.A. ; é -
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA IN THE LIGHT OF ROMAN
AND EARLY ENGLISH LAW. By Professor T. A. LEVI,
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW. By T. P. ELLis,
M.A., F.R.Hist.S. < : :
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS OF HYWEL
DDA. By Professor T. Gywnn Jonss, M.A. .
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA. By
Professor T. H. Parry-Witiiams, M.A. : :
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA. By
TimotHy Lewis, M.A. .
PAGE
103,
129
151
VLLLn
| ee / Cae Zz
Ye
SETTING
lies with some
of the Welsh
loubt, the case
S. of the thir-
y studied as a
their supposed
ce to the par-
storian cannot
himself what
t. He will be
istification for
mmemoration,
some of our
rid, in that he
' banished by
sian MS. 3859,
tenth-century
after 954 and
portant, there-
ey of ‘ Higuel
of “ Higuel rex
; show him as
Elen, daughter
line of Dyfed.
ter MS. of the
1e year should
~ log and Idwal
other MS. (D)
ig the princes
land-charters
mber, ranging
lTywel, as one
P
at aes
ited rand ak
a
HYWEL DDA: THE HISTORICAL SETTING
I wAveE been asked to preface this volume of studies with some
account of Hywel Dda, the traditional author of the Welsh
legal system, in his historical setting. It is, no doubt, the case
that the Welsh Laws, as preserved for us in MSS. of the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries, can be profitably studied as a
body of medieval usage, quite independently of their supposed
origin in the tenth century, and without reference to the par-
ticular ruler whose name they bear. But the historian cannot
avoid facing the historical problem and asking himself what
elements of truth underlie the traditional account. He will be
tempted to enquire whether there is any real justification for
associating studies in old Welsh Law with the commemoration,
in 1928, of the Millenary of Hywel Dda.
Hywel, at any rate, is more fortunate than some of our
national heroes, for example, Arthur and St. David, in that he
cannot, for want of contemporary evidence, be banished by
sceptical historians to the region of myth. Harleian MS. 3859,
though late as a text, is recognised as embodying tenth-century
material; in the chronicle, no event is recorded after 954 and
the genealogies are clearly of this period. It is important, there-
fore, to note that the chronicle records the journey of ‘ Higuel
rex ’ to Rome under the year 928 and the death of ‘ Higuel rex
brittonum ’ under 950. Further, the genealogies show him as
the son of Cadell ap Rhodri (Mawr) and his wife as Elen, daughter
of Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, the last prince of the old line of Dyfed.
Nor is external testimony wanting. The Winchester MS. of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions (under 922, but the year should
be 918) the submission of Hywel, his brother Clydog and Idwal
(Foel) of Gwynedd to Edward the Elder, and another MS. (D)
includes Hywel, ‘King of the West Welsh,’ among the princes
who in 926 submitted to Athelstan. Among the land-charters
granted by English kings in this century are a number, ranging
In date from 931 to 949, which are attested by Hywel, as one
1
2 HYWEL DDA
of the magnates present at the king’s court upon the occasion
of the grant; he is variously styled ‘ rex,’ ‘ regulus’ and ‘ sub-
regulus ’ and takes precedence of all other lay witnesses (some-
times even of bishops).
These notices, drawn from various sources, enable us without
difficulty to outline the career of Hywel as a scion of the house
of Rhodri Mawr, who by his marriage became lord of Dyfed and
united it to the rest of South-West Wales in the kingdom of
Deheubarth. His submission to the English, his frequent visits
to the English court, and the absence of any reference—even
in the critical year of Brunanburh (937)—to conflict with Eng-
land may fairly be taken as evidence that it was the deliberate
policy of Hywel to maintain friendly relations with the para-
mount power. War was not his vocation, but statesmanship.
The visit to Rome, undertaken when he cannot have been much
over thirty, suggests the vigorous intellect and the open mind ;
it was an adventure and an education, quite as much as an act
of pious obligation. There is full warrant in the contemporary
evidence for concluding that Hywel ap Cadell was a rather
remarkable man.
But it should be observed that we have no tenth-century
evidence for what is believed to have been the main achieve-
ment of Hywel, the work upon which must depend his right to
a place in the gallery of Welsh national heroes. It is in the
MSS. of the Laws, the oldest of which goes no further back than
the last quarter of the twelfth century, that he is stated to have
summoned to Y Ty Gwyn ar Daf an assembly representative of
all parts of Wales and, with its counsel and consent, to have
issued a code of laws which was thereafter recognised as authori-
tative throughout the country. Is there reason to accept this
account as substantially true, or must we treat it as legend,
with little foundation in fact ?
I have, for my part, little doubt that the tradition is sound,
and that historical criticism need not deprive our legislator of
the laurels bestowed upon him by the Welshmen of the Middle
Ages. There is, first, the evidence of the epithet ‘Good.’ It
does not depend upon the language of the legal texts, for it is
to be found in the chronicles known as ‘ Annales Cambrie ’ and.
‘Brut y Tywysogion ’ and—what is still more important—in the
oldest portion of the ‘ Liber Landavensis,’ written about 1150.4
1-Ed. Rhys and Evans, p. 241.
HYWEL DDA 3
In no country has the epithet been lavishly bestowed, and in
Wales there is no other example of its use. I conclude that, as
a benefactor to his people, Hywel stood out in solitary greatness ;
what he did for them no other attempted, still less achieved.
And the simplest explanation of his pre-eminence is to be found
in the story related in the prefaces to the legal texts.
It should, further, be observed that these texts, in Welsh
and in Latin, have clearly a long history behind them. They
differ greatly among themselves and the Welsh MSS. even admit
of being classified in three main divisions, representing three
quite distinct editions of the laws. Alterations in the law are
attributed to Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, who died in 1075. At the
same time, there is a core of matter which is common to all—
an original nucleus which it does not seem at all fanciful to refer
to the tenth century. When we have arrived at this point,
’ there seems to be no reason why we should deprive Hywel of
the honour of having initiated and directed the movement which
produced the first draft of these laws. It is to be borne in mind
that the attribution to Hywel is far from resting upon the autho-
rity of the prefaces: ‘ cyfraith Hywel’ is constantly referred to
in the texts and always as the old law, venerable and august,
but not incapable of amendment to meet the requirements of
a later age. If we except the shadowy Dyfnwal Moelmud (the
convenient stalking-horse of the theories of Iolo Morgannweg),
there is no suggestion in Welsh literature of any rival to Hywel
Dda as lawmaker and codifier, and no explanation of the tradi-
tion is plausible save that it actually embodies the truth.
The case for the Whitland assembly is, of course, not so strong,
for here we are solely dependent upon the prefaces, and the
narrative is of a kind to encourage the growth of legend. But,
in regard to the place of meeting and the character of the assembly
—matters as to which all the extant MSS. agree—I am disposed
to credit the traditional story. Y Ty Gwyn ar Daf was in the
heart of Hywel’s original realm of Dyfed, where it would be
natural for him to feel most at home; it is otherwise of little
account in the history of Wales,! so that romance had no special
motive for locating the incident here. The unique constitution
of the deliberative body, with its six representatives from each
1 The Cistercian abbey was, I believe, for a short time located at
Y Ty Gwyn, but during most of its history it was a mile away, in
the valley of the Gronw.
4 HYWEL DDA
cantref, rather tells in favour of the narrative, for there were
certainly no parallels to suggest it to an ingenious fabulist. It
should, of course, be clearly understood that we cannot import
into the proceedings the idea of popular election; the local
representatives were called together by the king himself.
It is not difficult to find legendary accretions in the story,
as told in some of the texts. The preface to the Dimetian code
is particularly rich in unsupported detail, and I am not prepared
to accept the tale of the Lenten fast of the king and the assembly,
of the three copies of the law kept at three royal courts, and of
the visit to Rome to obtain papal confirmation. Nothing is
better authenticated in Hywel’s history than his visit to the
Holy City, but in 928 he was in no position to impose a code of
law upon the whole of Wales. Idwal Foel was at that time
securely planted in Gwynedd, and possibly in Powys also. It
was not until the death of Idwal in 942 that the opportunity
arose for an extension of Hywel’s authority to North Wales,
and there are good grounds for thinking that he then took advan-
tage of the situation and was thus, in the last years of his life,
king of all Wales. If this view be correct, the great legislative
achievement attributed to him by tradition must be dated between
942 and 950, and can have no connexion with the pilgrimage
to Rome.
. History, therefore, does not preclude us from celebrating the
praise of Hywel Dda as the chief agent in laying the foundation
of the edifice of old Welsh Law. That he did more than make
a beginning we need not suppose; Welsh lawyers were trained ‘
specialists, competent masters of their craft, who were quite
equal to the building up of an elaborate system on the principles
which had been handed down to them. They were the men
who set forth such maxims as these—
The law will not undo what it has done.
With like circumstances, there should be like judgments.
Law and truth cannot always go hand in hand, yet often
they do so.
Right is not due to him who will not give it.
Of no part of our medieval inheritance have we better reason
to be proud than the legal, and without Hywel it does not seem
likely it would ever have come to full fruition.
J: E. LE@xan
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA IN THE LIGHT OF
ROMAN AND EARLY ENGLISH LAW
I. INTRODUCTION
THE Code of Hywel Dda stands somewhere between the great
Code of Justinian and the fragmentary Codes of the Anglo-
Saxons. The contrast appears from the prefaces or supple-
ments. In the constitution De Justinianeo Codice confirmando
appears the clause :
‘We forbid all pleaders and advocates to quote, under the penalty
of making themselves guilty of fraud, any other constitutions than
those which are inserted in our Code, or to quote otherwise than is
written there ; for these constitutions, together with the works of the
ancient interpreters of the law, must suffice to decide all suits.’
On the other hand, if we quote the best English Code which
possesses a preface,!
“I, King Alfred, have collected these laws and have given orders for
copies to be made of many of those which our predecessors observed,
and which I myself approve of... . For I have not dared to presume
_ to set down in writing many of my own, for I cannot tell what will meet
with the approval of our successors.’
The purpose of Hywel Dda, however, according to the Preface
to the Dimetian Code,? is ‘to form and systematize the laws and
usages for him and his kingdom perfectly, and the nearest possible
to truth and justice.’ The Preface proceeds °:
‘And then he fully promulgated the law among the people, and he
supported it with his authority ; and the malediction of God as well
as theirs, and that of all Cymru, was pronounced upon such as should
not thenceforth observe it in the manner then set forth ; unless altered
by the concurrence of the country and the lord.’
1“ Laws of Alfred,’ Ed. Attenborough, 63, in Laws of the Harliest English
Kings.
2 Dim., Preface, ‘ Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales.’
3 Dim., Preface. |
5
6 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
The Code of Hywel Dda was therefore in the nature of a
Consolidating Act; his object was ‘y wnenthur y gyfraith,’ to
formulate the law rather than to impose it; it was an act of
statesmanship rather than of sovereignty, the work of an adminis-
trator and not a jurist, and all through it bears this practical
character. It did not purport to be a fundamental law, com-
plete and authoritative like the Roman. On the other hand,
it was far more than a partial and temporary record like the
Early English Codes. Even the work of Canute, admittedly
the greatest legislator of the eleventh century, is not as complete
as the Code of Wales.! It is, however, not its completeness so
much as its flexibility that has preserved the name and fame of
the Code of Hywel, and through the changes of time, has made
it a living law for so many generations that it is still a convenient
starting-point for any consideration of the Laws of Wales.
It is true we do not possess the original Code ; we have only
variants of it, chiefly, though not exclusively, in the Venedotian,
Dimetian and Gwentian Codes. Even these, according to the
best judges, are two hundred and fifty years later in date.2 To
realize what this means one has only to imagine a Plantagenet
edition of an Anglo-Saxon Code, with the necessary additions
and alterations, if such a thing were possible. This does not
mean of course that the original Code is lost ; a great Code is
never lost ; like a foundation stone it remains part of the struc-
ture ; the core of the old Book of the White House runs through
the later editions. But it is dangerous to generalize about it,
as dangerous as it would be to generalize about English Law, for
example, in the year 1818, when the wager of battle might have
been found alongside the law of negotiable instruments. In one
way the later editions rather add to the value of the Code, for
they are obvious attempts to adapt it to changing conditions;
provided care is taken to overlook the ascription to Hywel for
patriotic reasons of what is necessarily later in date, as was the
custom of the jurists at Rome with the Twelve Tables.
The same consideration determines the value of the voluminous
collection of Welsh Laws termed ‘ Anomalous Laws from various
manuscripts.’ Here are fifteen books of the most diverse charac-
1See The Laws of Canute, Robertson’s edition, 138.
2 Professor Lloyd, History of Wales, Chapter X. Note B; Sir Biya
Jones, ‘Foreign Elements in Welsh Mediaeval Law,’ iene. Cymmr.
Society, 1916-17.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA i
ter. Parts of them have no more authority than the ‘ Mirror
of Justices.” One quotation alone will show how fictitious is
the claim of the Thirteenth Book to antiquity !:
‘Three primary obligations attached to the kingly office, to
splendidly support itself; to establish the knowledge of political
sciences, to be enabled to depend on constitutional right and law, and
upon country and sovereignty ; and to strengthen the protection of
those who are true and loyal of the kindred and the community, and
the protection due to adlts under the protection of the community.’
None of thése terms and distinctions would have been possible
at anearly period. But there are parts of these Anomalous Laws
which have the highest value, some of them precedents of pleading
natural to a matured system, or decisions in keeping with the
modern spirit ; and they explain much that is ambiguous even
in the authenticated Codes. In this tripartite system of Code,
revised or varied Editions, and Anomalous Laws, we have in con-
venient form what may rightly be called the native Common
Law of Wales.
It is not proposed to summarize that Welsh Common Law
here ; it is so formal, so exact, so full of careful distinctions,
“complexities of the law ’ as they are termed in the Tenth Book,?
‘difficult to remember and reduce to rule,’ that any summary
would run to inordinate length. Our aim is to describe the impres-
sion that would be produced by a first perusal of these laws, on the
mind of a person fairly well acquainted with the Roman and
English systems. Certain features would strike him at once ;
certain likenesses and many marked dissimilarities. In such a
description there will be the risk of modernizing the Code. We
shall be attributing to the judges and legislators of Wales much
that they never thought of, and at the same time miss a great deal
of their meaning and the circumstances of their life. Above all,
we shall be tempted to rely on the later laws in explanation of
the earlier, though they clearly belong to the fourteenth, fif-
teenth or sixteenth century. But our legal institutions must
have their root somewhere; our ideas of personal liberty,
equality before the law, property and contract, civil and criminal
responsibility, and even political organization, may be traced
back to these early codes. Much of modern jurisprudence is
anticipated, though hidden, in such striking sentences as these:
1 Book XIII, ii, 15. 2 Book X, vii, 27.
8 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
‘a contract breaks acustom’!; ‘there is no surety nor gorvodcg
unless the three hands shall meet ’ 2; ‘it is wrong for thee to own
what is mine’?; ‘neither justice nor law ought to be without
these four essentials, a common lord, a presiding judge, and two
parties present ’*4; ‘an unintentional blow is not saraad ’ °;
‘every injury that a person unwittingly commits, let him
wittingly redress ’’® ; ‘although a lord can be a plaintiff in his
own court, he is not, according to iaw, to be a defendant in his own
court’ 7; every one of these maxims embodies a principle of
vital concern in modern systems of law. Notwithstanding the
complexities, ‘ the sharing of galanas, the worth of buildings and
furniture, and causes of surety and debtor,’ and the almost
meticulous details of ‘the worth of things wild and tame,’ the
laws of Hywel and his successors throw considerable light on
subjects of importance to every modern student of law, the
matter, the form, the substance and the procedure of the Law.
The material of the Code properly consists of two elements,
Law and Custom. The Romans used the term Jus to describe
a more comprehensive body of jurisprudence than Lex or enacted
law. As there is in English no exact equivalent for Jus, the
phrase Law and Custom, ‘lex et consuetudo’ was utilised by
Bracton to represent the whole body of law.? The same idea seems
to have occurred to the framers of the Code of Hywel Dda. They
“examined the ancient laws ; some of which they suffered to continue
unaltered, some they amended, others they entirely abrogated, and
some new laws they enacted.’ ®
But it is clearly understood there may be proof of contrary
custom. Vis et conventio vincunt legem. ‘Three things which
nullify law : an agreement ; an equitable custom ; and death.’ 1°
A contract again annuls a custom,!! but this does not mean that
law and custom are opposed. |
‘Law and custom are the offspring of that king (i.e. Hywel), there-
fore they are not to be opposed to one another more than brothers, and
if there be a custom contrary to law it is not to be observed.’
1 Ven. II, viii, 10. 2 Ven. II, vii, 3.
3 Ven. ITI, 1, 31. 4 Dim. III, vi, 13. 5 Gwent. Il, vii, 15.
6 Book IV, i, 1. * Book X, xvii, 10.
8 Vinogradofi, Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe, 94.
9 Ven. Preface. 10 Dim. II, viii, 42. 11 Dim. III, vi, 7.
12 Book XIV, xv, 10.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 9
Thus, the rules of inheritance are not so rigid that they cannot
be varied by the sharers of tref tad.
*'Thus brothers are to share the land between them . . . and after
the brothers are dead, the first cousins are to equalise if they will it.
And if the second cousins should dislike the distribution which
took place between their parents, they also may co-equate in the same
manner as the first cousins ; and after that division no one is either to
distribute or to co-equate.’ t
In other words, the difference between rules of law and rules of
construction is clearly implied ; there is no distribution further
than second cousins, that is a rule of law and universally binding ;
but as to the shares among first and second cousins, that is a rule
_ of construction, liable to be varied, if they will it, according to the
intent of the parties. The Welsh Laws are thus particularly
valuable as showing the effects of growing custom in producing
law. It is still a much debated questioi among jurists whether
law creates custom, or custom creates law.2 For instance, if we
compare the former English law of inheritance with the Welsh
law of distribution mentioned above, it would seem to us that
primogeniture must be pure native custom. But primogeniture
did not exist as a general custom at the end of the twelfth century.
It was deliberately encouraged by the Courts, especially in con- |
nection with military tenures. By the thirteenth century it had
become the general rule of inheritance of land. In modern times,
however, a new rule of inheritance is substituted, this time by the
legislature, in restoration of much of the original custom. Early
codes of law are as a rule not at all disposed to accept mere custom
as a source of law. ‘The Irish Laws, for example, contain such
_ passages as this 3:
‘The Szencuus of the men of Erin, what has preserved it ? The
joint memory of the two seniors, the tradition from one year to another,
the composition of the poets, the addition from the law of the letter,
strength from the law of nature ; for these are the three rocks by which
the judgments of the world are supported.’
So we are told by Maine ‘ that ‘ custom is a conception posterior
to that of judgments.’ It may be said indeed that rules laid down
by judges have generated custom almost as often as custom has.
generated the rules. In the Welsh laws the point of view is
1 Ven. II, xii, 1-5. 2 Allen, Law in the Making, 83.
3,Brynmor Jones, ‘The Brehon Laws,’ Trans. Cymmr. Soc., 1905-6.
4 Ancient Law, ch. I, 4.
10 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
generally modern by comparison, it is obvious in perusing them
that a large residuum of non-litigious custom exists, while in other
cases, usages and the courts act and react on one another, till a
settled rule is evolved. For example, in the custom of paying a
maiden fee to the lord on the marriage of a woman, termed
amobyr or gobyr, the custom varies according to the will of the
parties. As the Gwentian Code puts it, “according to where her
home may be, her amobyr is paid.’! On the other hand, ‘let
no one give a woman to a man without taking surety for her gobyr
to the lord.’2 But if the woman dispose of herself or be taken
away clandestinely, or if a contract is entered into that the person
giving the woman away is not to pay the amobyr, then the custom
may be varied. But, again, when the case is concerned with a
contest between possessors and non-possessors of land, or between
so-called proprietors out of possession and non-proprietors in
possession, we see in the Venedotian Code an attempt to reconcile
different views, and to lay down a uniform rule when it is urgently
necessary for the purposes of procedure.
This attitude towards’ Custom, whether of approval, amend-
ment, rejection or even complete innovation, is however very far
from expressing accurately the conception or the ideal of Law
itself as manifested in the Welsh Code. The law was regarded as
something greater than either custom or legislative enactment.
Throughout the Code of Hywel Dda and its successors there is no
idea of an absolute sovereignty in the king himself; there was
prerogative but not sovereignty. The Fourteenth Book, much
later in date, tells us, ‘litigation with a lord is not facile, as a lord
upholds law.’* Further on in the same Book, it is said that ‘law
is noble, as Hywel the good, king of Cymru and the proprietors
formed it, from the wisdom of their own hearts and bodies, and
therefore law and custom are the offspring of that king’ +; it
_ would be divesting the king of his kingdom if the law were altered
without his consent. But in the Eleventh Book we are told, |
‘there are three natural roots to the one word Law, truth, conscience
and learning ; if these do not coincide law is not worth a name ; truth
is the root of judgment ; conscience is the root of distribution ; learn-
ing is the root of the conducting of a suit.’®
1 Gwent. II, xxix, 21. 2 Gwent. II, xxix, 33.
3 Book XV, xv, 7. 4 Ibid. 10.
> Book XI, ch. iv, 19.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 11
Again, ‘law is just, because it commands every one not to
wrong another ’!; ‘ lawis copious as there is no deficiency in it’ 2 ;
‘law is respectable and noble and just and eloquent, according to
nature and natural reason.’* These are passages from the later
Welsh Laws, but they are a development of that which is strongly
characteristic of the mediaeval codes in general, the idea that
there is a law superior to the custom of the country and to the
ordinances of princes. ‘Throughout the Welsh Code there is the
double conception of Law as expressing Order and as expressing
Authority. The ‘dictate of right reason ’ and ‘a rule of human
action ’ are both perfectly familiar to the Welsh commentators.
The Tenth Book describes Law as ‘a channel of equity ° between
_ the lord and the plaintiff and defendant. The lord is ‘a channel
/
i
to preserve honesty, the surety is “a channel to strengthen
equity, and a worthy judge between the parties is “a channel to
clear truth.’ This conception of a law superior to custom and
enactment is apparent at the outset in the earlier codes. The
second sentence of the Venedotian Code tells us that ‘ the clerks
were summoned lest the laics should ordain anything contrary
to the holy scripture.’ + The Dimetian Code appoints a number
to ‘form the law,’ and ‘to guard against doing anything in
opposition to the law of the church or the law of the emperor.’ ®
There is always this double allegiance, to the prince and to the
priest, to the state and to the church, to lex and jus, to custom
and reason. The Dimetian Code expresses the idea in crude
form :
‘Every denial by swearing fully is sufficient for the denier and a
raithman, peradventure it be true ; for justice and law cannot be con-
current in every case, although they may frequently concur.’ ®
The Gwentian Code, though more briefly, has the same dis-
tinction, ‘the three presentials of a country, a lord, a priest and
law, for they cannot be dispensed with, as formerly ’’; as if
law must be differentiated from State and Church. The Welsh
law and the Early English law are alike in this, that they reject
the Roman idea of jus naturale or natural law, and prefer
to speak of reason as the source of the law. The phrase ‘ natural
_ reason ’ is found in the Welsh Laws, ‘anyan a rheswm naturiavl,’
_ but there is no natural law except as right and reason. Even the
Book XIV, xv, 11. 2 Tbid., 12. 3 Ibid., 8.
4 Ven., Preface. 5 Dim., Preface.
6 Dim. III, i, 16. 7 Gwent. II, xxix, 22.
Aas.——VOL. X. B
12 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
word cyfraith is cyd-rhaith, or the joint doing of what is right.
The word rhaith itself is the commonest in all the Codes, related
to the English ‘ right,’ and meaning ‘ an enforcer of what is right,’
or the verdict of the country as to what is just. Welsh law
would have been as far removed as early English law from
dreaming of either the sovereignty of the king or the sovereignty
of a parliament. So we find in Bracton ‘the king is below no
man, but he is below God and the law.’ And later, Fortescue,
‘the king’s power is not absolute but limited by law.’ Even in
the time of Coke, ‘reason is the life of the law, nay the common
law itself is nothing but reason.’ It is Powell, a Welsh judge
on an English bench, who says, “let us consider the reason of the
ease, for nothing is law that is not reason.’
In all the laws the influence of the Church is constant. Side
by side with the pagan or semi-pagan Saxon and Danish king-
doms in England, had existed the Christian population of Wales.
The laws bear full testimony to the purity, integrity and inde-
pendent character of the Celtic Church. In its own sphere the
authority of the Church was unquestioned ; the Welsh Laws do
not fall into the error of identifying what belongs to God and
what belongs to Caesar. It is not the separation of the Church
from the State, if there was a State, that we find respected, but its
separation from the world. Hence the ecclesiastic was to be
sued in his own court; he could hear a case, but he could not
pronounce sentence ; there was no established worth for the limb,
the blood or the honour of a clerical person ; benefit of clergy
existed fully ; patronage cases were exclusively for the Church
itself: indeed the Church was an entity within the State by
permission of the king.
‘ All possessors of church land are to come to every new king who
succeeds, to declare to him their privilege and their obligation. .
and if the king see their privilege to be ee let the king continue to
them their sanctuary and their privilege.’
On the other hand, the submission of the clergy was complete.
Even Church land was held of the king.
‘If it be abbey land, he is to have, if they be laics, dirwy and
camlwrw and amobyr and ebediw and hosts and theft. If it be bishop
land, he is to have hosts and theft. If it be hospital land he is to have
theft and fighting. And therefore there is no land without him.’ ”
SS |
1 Ven. Il, x, 3. 2 Ven. II, xii, 8.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 13
The king in Wales, moreover, had a privilege unknown in
England ; for in England when a see became vacant, the Crown
had only the ‘custody of the temporalities during the vacancy’ ;
but in Wales, when a bishop died, his land belonged to the king.
No doubt, this would be as paramount administrator rather
than as owner. If a cleric should hold land by title under the
king for which service was to be performed to the king, he was
to answer in the king’s court; and although a cleric could sit
in judgment by privilege of his land, jointly with laics, he could
not pronounce the judgment,
‘ as the worth of his tongue is not set down in law, by which every judge
is punished, who shall give a wrong judgment, if he confirm it by
mutually pledging.’ 4
The very submission of the clergy, however, made their
influence not less but more powerful. The Venedotian Code, it is
true, refers to a notable conflict, -
‘the ecclesiastical law says again that no son is to have the patrimony,
but the eldest born to the father by the married wife; the law of
Howel, however, adjudges it to the youngest son as well as to the
oldest ; and decides that sin of the father, or his illegal act, is not to be
brought against the son, as to his patrimony.’ ?
But though such conflicts, when they occurred, ended in
the triumph of the king’s court, they were rare; the real
influence of the clergy was not in the conflict of common law
with canon law, but in the natural leadership of an educated
class through the possession of learning ; much as an English
clergyman ministering in a newly settled country would, when
he assisted his parishioners, naturally apply the English Law
with which he was acquainted as a citizen to every-day tran-
sactions; so the cleric introduced the Roman Law with which
he was familiar, when some rule of law or procedure was needed.
Vinogradoff * tells us it was the custom of the early Church
even to settle disputes privately, by arbitration among the
members themselves, in order to avoid contact with pagan courts ;
and thus the Roman Law was preserved. Certainly it was used
to fill up gaps, more particularly in procedure. The Dimetian
Code tells us that in case of a disputed opinion, ‘if both argu-
ments are found in written law, then the decision is to be re-
ferred to experienced Canonists.’ 4
“t Dim., Il, viii, 132. 2) Viens Tlie xvies, 2.
3 Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe. 4 Dim. II, viii, 118.
14 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
Thus the influence of Roman Law is apparent enough in these
codes. A specific reference to the Roman Law itself occurs in the
Dimetian Code,
‘in the law of Rome it prevails where the number of witnesses is not
specified, that two witnesses are sufficient ; the law says that the testi-
mony of one witness is not complete, unless he be one of the nine.’ !
That is unless he be one of those whose word, on account of
his occupying a position of authority or exclusive knowledge, is
not allowed to be contradicted.
This is the only actual reference to the law of Rome, though
there are other references to the Roman power or to a pilgrimage to
Rome. It is difficult, therefore, to believe there could have been
any great infiltration of law from Roman sources, without more
specific reference. Even Bracton found it impossible to avoid
using Roman terminology, though drawing his material from
English Common Law. But it was possible to derive a great
deal from Roman Law without once naming it ; Beaumanoir in
the Coutume de Beauvaisis shows that. The Romans had left
a settled organisation behind them, and the greatest of Roman
lawyers, Papinian and Ulpian, had accompanied the Emperor
Severus to Britain. Sir Brynmor Jones? thinks that in two
directions at least the Roman settlement had left its mark on
Wales. One was in the restriction of the right of private ven-
geance, upon which the claim for money compensation for
homicide was based, the Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis
being directed against the carrying of arms with intent to murder.
The other was in the modification of the law of distress, since the
Lex Julia de vi publica and Lex Julia de vi privata punished
forcible entry on another’s land accompanied by armed or un-
armed men respectively. These drastic laws may have had some
effect on the remedy by distress ; of which we have an example
in the Dimetian Code, ‘ whoever shall make a distress on account
of a debt without leave of the judicature, is subject to a camlwrw.’ 3
But the real influence of Roman Law on the Code of Hywel Dda
is, aS has been stated, through clerical influence. Roman Law
would be introduced where the local law or procedure was not yet
fully developed, as in the law of boundaries, bequest, possession
and the limitation of actions. The most obvious instance would
1 Dim. II, iv, 5.
* Brynmor Jones, ‘The Brehon Laws,’ Trans. Cymwr. Soc., 1905-6.
3 Dim. II, vi, 3.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 15
be a gift to the Church. That such gifts were common is shown
by the fact that the Welsh Laws more than once enact, that ‘a
proprietor cannot give his land to a saint nor to a church with-
out the permission of his lord,’tadding ‘and neither is it right,’
as if there had been some contention about the matter, which
would be natural enough. Seebohm,? in a number of records,
shows how these donations were made. As far as the donor
himself was concerned, the matter would be governed by Welsh
tribal custom. A chieftain could not give away the property of
the family without the consent of other members ; and, moreover,
as above stated, not without the consent of the lord. On the
part of the Church, on the other hand, its own formalities would
be provided, the written charter with its witnesses. Frequently,
the donor would receive this land back from the Church on the
terms of the Roman usufruct ; hence a new form of landhold-
ing was substituted, the parent of the modern lease. Other
transactions, with the same object of benefiting the Church, led
to a new method of conveyance, the conveyance by deed.
The influence on the Welsh Law of the early English Codes is
much more uncertain. The Anglo-Saxon Codes fall into two groups,
separated from one another by nearly two centuries. The earlier
group contains the laws of Ethelbert I, who was reigning when
Gregory the Great sent Augustine on a mission to England. His
code contains but ninety sentences, practically every line recording
the amount of a money consideration for injury. The remainder,
the laws of Hlothaere and Eadric, the laws of Wihtred, and the
Code of Ine of Wessex, all appear before the year a.p. 700.
The Code of Offa of Mercia being lost, there are no others till
Alfred the Great became king in a.p. 871. He acknowledges his
indebtedness to Ethelbert, to Ine of Wessex and to the lost code
of Offa. The date ascribed by Liebermann to the best manu-
script of Alfred’s laws is A.D. 925. Passing by the laws of Edward
the Elder, it appears that six series of laws were issued byAethel-
stan, relating to tithes and church dues, the administration of
justice, the privilege of boroughs, and an ordinance relating to
charities, enacting, for instance, ‘that it is my wish that you
shall always provide a destitute Englishman with food.’ The
greatest of these Codes is that of Canute, who, like Hywel Dda,
had been to Rome, where, in the year 1038, he had seen Conrad
II crowned as Emperor. We learn that Hywel was an admirer
meook Xi, ii. !9. ? The Tribal System in Wales, ch. VII.
16 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
of Alfred, and as Professor Lloyd tells us,1 on friendly rela-
tions with Aethelstan. In A.p. 926, it is recorded in the English
Chronicle (Monumenta Historica Britannica) that Hywel with
Constantine, king of the Scots, and Uwen, king of Gwent, and
Ealdred, son of Eadwulf of Banborough, met Aethelstan ata
place called Eamot and ‘confirmed the peace with pledges and
with oaths.’ Hywel appears to have attended some of the
witenagemots held by Aethelstan, and his attestation is found
to some of the charters in the style ‘ego, Howael, sub requlus
consenst et subscripsi.. But though the close relationship is
established, it is difficult to see what Wales could have learned
from these early Codes, unless it was the ‘fashion of legislating.’
There is some ground for saying the opposite, and that the
need of codifying some of the laws or customs of Wessex was
caused by the conflict with Welsh Law in Western England.
But it was not until a period long after the arrival of the Normans
that the English Law became a national law, ‘the law of the
country ’ like the Code of Hywel Dda.
When we consider the form of these laws of Wales, we find the
key to the whole system in the term ‘royal justice.’ The power
and prestige of the king were used to discover for his country a
uniform law and procedure. He had experts on his side, learning
and resources denied to anyone else. Like every mediaeval
king he must formerly have been a great traveller, though there is
no mention of such a royal journey in the Codes, and it is the
members of the Court who go on circuit. Like every uchelwr
or freeborn son of Wales, he had the freedom of his country, and
he availed himself of it. There was nothing alien to the people
in seeing the king’s officials by their circuits spreading the customs
of the royal court. The almost ubiquitous royal administrator
was the mediaeval equivalent of the modern uniformity of process.
Such expert justice was not to be had for nothing ; the beginnings
of taxation in Wales are found in the entertainment dues, gwesifa
and daw bwyd, for the sustenance of the king and his court. ‘The
problem that confronted the early courts was to procure the
attendance of those who claimed jurisdiction; not to get ideal
justice from them, but to get any justice at all. Sir Henry Maine?
reminds us of the vermilion stained rope which was dragged
1 Hist. of Wales, I, ch. X, 336.
2 Lloyd, History of Wales, I, ch. IX.
3 Harly Law and Custom, ch. V, 174.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 17
along the streets of Athens to force the citizens to the place of
assembly. Even to-day a summons to the jury is not popular.
The difficulties with which Hywel had to cope are illustrated in
the different treatment of the Courts of North and South Wales.
The royal authority was extended not in opposition to, but by
means of, the lords or arglwyddi. Owing to. the freedom of
Wales from the feudal system the lord did not and could not
exercise a rival jurisdiction in competition with the king ;
through the prudent policy of Hywel he fell into the national
system. The relationship between king and lord is difficult
to define; it was analogous to suzerainty; that is the lord was
practically chief within his own area, gradually increasing his
_ jurisdiction at the expense of the pencenedl or chief of kindred,
who by degrees assumed a semi-feudal relationtohim. But in
extra-territorial matters, power was reserved by the king, and
the lords were made use of in the promotion of a national system
of law. The Courts of the Cymwd were constituted on different
lines in North and South Wales. As the Dimetian Code relates ':
‘There are three kinds of judges in Cymru, according to the law of
Howell the Good, a judge of the Supreme Court by virtue of office,
continually with the kings of Dinevwr and Aberfraw ; and one judge
of a cymwd or cantrev, by virtue of office, in every court of pleas, in
Gwynedd and Powys ; and a judge, by privilege of land (0 vreint y tir)
in every court of a cymwd or cantrev, in South Wales ; that is to say,
every owner of land.’
These judges by privilege of land are the nearest approach
we find in the Welsh Codes to the ‘judicium parium.’ Hywel
had no prerogative writ to deal with them. It was provided ?
therefore that
“if judges by privilege of land requested time for judgment, whether
from doubt or from the absence of some of the men of the court, those
who are present are to have time, without swearing ; the king is to
_ compel those who are absent, by summons through suretyship, or by
the arrest of the whole of them, to appear at the second court,’
and at the second adjournment, in the third Court, the case is to
be decided without any kind of excuse; or the king shall again
arrest and keep them all in custody. For as the Code goes on to
say,? ‘there is no other penalty but compulsion, by law, for
1 Dim. 11, vi, 110. 2 Dim. II, viii, 12.
3 Dim. II, viii, 113.
18 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
deficient service or deficient duty or rent to the king.’ In a
subsequent clause we are told that of these judges, coequal by
privilege of land, one only is to judge ; the rest act as counsellors
to him in his decision, and should he incur the worth of his tongue
(the sum he is required to pay to redeem his tongue from the con-
sequences of having delivered a wrong judgment), the judge and
all of them together are to pay the worth of his tongue in common.
Here is a clear instance from Welsh Law of that right of the lord
(in a feudal sense) to hold his own court, which was one of the
reactionary features of Magna Carta, and the break-up of which
was the great triumph of the Plantagenets and the foundation of a
national system of law.
Royal codes are, however, not infallible, and the judge occupies
an outstanding place in the Welsh Laws. Nothing can possibly
afford a greater contrast than the treatment of judges and courts
in the Anglo-Saxon Codes and the Code of Hywel. It is not true
to say the courts are not mentioned at all in the Anglo-Saxon
Laws. According to Ethelred’s Code,! ‘A court shail be held in
every wapentake.’ The laws of Edgar provide for decisions in the
hundred and other courts, and from that time forward courts of
the hundred, the borough and the shire are regularly spoken of.
Recent research has tended more and more to show the existence
of ‘ pre-conquest’ village courts in England.2 Even in the
earliest laws the ‘ judges of Kent ’ are mentioned, and the laws of
Ine * provide that
‘if anyone demands justice in the presence of any shireman (that is,
the ealdorman) or of another judge and cannot obtain it, since the
accused will not give him security, he shall pay thirty shillings compen-
sation, and within seven days do him such justice as he is entitled to.’
Nevertheless, in the Anglo-Saxon Codes we are far from a
regular judicature, and even the courts there mentioned are rather
meetings of the folk where the dooms are pronounced. But in
Wales, a regular system of Courts must have existed for genera-
tions, if not for centuries, before Hywel Dda. ‘The whole system
is, in fact, engrafted on a regular judicature. The early judge, as
Maitland says,* was rather like an umpire in a game of cricket, he
1 Hthelred, Laws, ed. Robertson. III. 3 (1).
2 Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, Vol. IX, by David
C. Douglas.
3 Laws of Ine, ed. Attenborough, ch. 8.
4 Pollock and Maitland, II, 671.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 19
saw the game was played out between the parties ; he conducted
the dispute ; he did not decide it. But the Welsh judge rather
occupied an intermediate place between the praetor and the judex
of Roman Law. He intervened in the dispute, and he also gave
decisions on points of law that arose in course of the case, though
the final judgment might mean putting the parties to the proof.
The voluntary character of the whole procedure is shown by the
fact that the judge’s decision could be challenged, the judge and
the challenger placing the two pledges in the hand of the king,
a wrong judgment implying the penalty of ‘the worth of his
tongue.’ Here we have an early form of appeal, not unlike the
English Writ of Error. This system had been so developed that
in the Welsh Laws, relief was sometimes give for a wrong decision
without the necessity of a pledge !; forinstance, where judgment
was given by a person not qualified 2 ; or against whom some lawful!
objection could be brought 2; or a case where judgment was
given through ‘hatred on account of any feud ’?; or the receipt
of worth or reward by a judge by privilege of land,? or more than
his due by an official judge ® ; or a judgment procured by ‘ the love
of friends,’ or ‘ the fear of powerful men’ ® ; or where the canonists
are called in ‘to make an unbiassed and everlasting termination,’ *
in cases of doubt between two written laws ; and such hard cases.
_ The judge, however, might be fined, that is, lose a camlwrw, if he
gave a ‘contrary’ decision on similar facts, or if he strayed
from the point—Welsh judges were evidently prone to obiier
dicta—or if he gave no pledge with his judgment, except as above
provided. Notwithstanding this perilous liabilitv, the position
of the judge was one of high honour. The judge of the Court was
to have his land free, his horse in attendance, a place opposite to
the king, next to the priest, his lodging in the chamber in which the
king slept, and the cushion on which the king sat during the day
was to be under the judge’s head at night. He was given the
insignia of office,® a throw-board by the king, and a gold ring by
the queen, and another gold ring from the bard of the household,
the latter, no doubt, a much appreciated tribute. The throw-
board seems to have been a game played on a draught-board,
with a black king and eight black men against sixteen white men.
These treasures or trinkets he was neither to sell nor to give away
while he lived. He was to administer justice to the Court without
-1 Book X, xi, 15. 2 Ibid. 16. 3 Ibid. 17.
4 Ibid. 18. Veneer 4216, Cen) Ws xa 12:
20 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
fee.! Otherwise the judge’s reward was four legal pence for every
case decided by him, ‘if it be for so much as that in value’ ?;
and this was to be paid not by the loser, whose heart would not be
in the transaction, but by the successful litigant. His decision
was to be an authority for similar cases, for the plea of a suit was
expressly declared to be concluded or determined, either by default
in the judge, or by reference to a law book, or by the judge's
explanation, his ratio decidendi. He was to act
‘for the love and the fear of God and the contempt of life ; if thou art
alive to-day thou knowest not whether thou shalt be to-morrow ; and,
also,the law says,when the tongue shall be adjudging the soul trembles.’?
All the codes agree that where the priest, the steward and the
judge of the Court are together, there is the privilege of the court,
although the king be absent. The judge set the standard for
common transactions ; his thumb was the scale of measurement
of the inch ; hence vessels were to be of a containing capacity
measured in inches standardised by the judge’s thumb.
If the judge then posed as an authority, did the Welsh
Laws recognise that his decisions were binding on others, that
they had the force of judicial precedent? The Dimetian
Code ® says there are three maxims to complete the law; the
first is, in similarities, a similar judgment is to be given; the
second is, of two written laws, one contrary to the other, that
which is more reasonable is to be maintained ; the third is,
that every kind of written law is to be preserved, ‘ until the
sovereign and his country agree to abrogate it, and establish
another more perfect in its place.’ Moreover it is said ® no
judge is to be blameable for giving judgment from a written
authority, though it be not right, unless he confirm it by a
pledge ; but in that case the authority was to be condemned.
On the other hand,’ ‘if the judge pronounce a judgment without
a law book in the court, and do not confirm it in the court by a.
pledge,’ he is to pay a fine to the king. In other words, so long
as the judge rested on precedent, he was safe ; but if he decided
a point of law on his own authority, he must enter into a pledge
as to the correctness of his decision. The judge whose decisions
were frequently overruled would stand little chance in Wales.
Ven. i, xa, 13. 2 Dim. I, xiv, 19.
3 Book XI, iv, 7. 4 Ven. I, xliii, 14.
5 Dim. ITI, i, 13. 6 Dim. TI, viii, 120. * Ibid. 121.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 21
The standard of judging seems to have been high. According
to the Fourteenth Book,! in dramatic repetition it is said,
‘a judge is to learn acutely, one word or one syllable alters a meaning
inlaw; ask humbly .. . hear fully ... keepin memory, . . . sum
up patiently, that is, this was said by thee, this was said by thee,
judge mercifully, that is, to delay as long as he can, and seek to
reconcile them, and if he cannot, to judge justly.’
An important feature of the Welsh Laws, therefore, was the
Book of the Law. According to the Dimetian Code,’ the king
ordered three law books to be prepared, one for the use of the
daily court, to remain continually with himself, another for the
court of Dinevwr, the third for the court of Aberfraw. The
Code itself must indeed have been based on previous law books.
The popularity of a Code in early times was due to the publication
at large of what had been known only to the privileged few, in
mystical books of the law. This custom of using books of the
law was preserved, for in the Fourteenth Book, they are held to
be decisive in case of doubting of judgment. ‘For law books are
of public unquestioned authority, and it pertains to credit the
best book, and the book of the best judge.’ Though the book is
ealled the book of the judge, it was probably the compilation of
the canonist, who was the writer to the court, and who would
probably be both a recorder and commentator. The glossator
would therefore step in, with his glosses or notes, comments,
analysis or memorabilia of the case. One might almost say that
whereas Roman Law was developed by the Bar, and English
Law by the Bench, Welsh Law was developed by the Court. The
position of these canonists resembles that of the jurists at Rome
who gave opinions, ‘ the responsa prudentium.’ Frequently it is
said the Court is to have the assistance, for the decision of a
hard case, of specially summoned canonists. But apart
trom them the law book was a resort of the parties ; if a person
could produce from a law book a more correct judgment than the
one which the judge delivered,—‘ if he be able,’ the Dimetian Code
carefully adds,t—then he overcomes the judge. In any case
“whichever shall appear nearest to the truth is the most worthy
to be maintained in the law.’> The real service performed by these
writers and canonists was that of interpretation ; not only the
explanation of the law, but the discovery ef its intention, voluntas,
1 Book XIV, xlv, 13. 2 Din, Pret: 3 Book XIV, xlv, 9.
Onn. Ul, viii, 11S 5° Ibid. 118,
22 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
mens or sententia. Thus the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables
was developed, sometimes indeed narrowed by nimia subtilitas
or perhaps expanded by a benignior interpretatio. The very life
of a code depended on this process, and no doubt the original
Code of Hywel Dda owes a good deal of its fame to the patient
and unostentatious labour of Welsh jurists, who chivalrously
ascribed to the ‘old book of the White House ’ the credit of their
own constructive ability. By adapting it to changed times, they
made it a living law.
There is still another factor to be considered if we are to account
for the form of the Welsh Laws. That is, the custom of announc-
ing or popularising the law. In early times the law-man was a
representative of the people, and was expected to make known
the custom to them.t No doubt his special knowledge made him
a member of a close association ; its secrets were jealously
guarded ; even the use of Latin was commended * to guard against
its being understood by everybody’ as the Fourteenth Book
ordains.2. For ‘law is only known by him who knows how to
understand it.’ But new members would require to be taught ;
so that books of instruction, law discourses and institutes were
necessary. Moreover, if justice were to be done, the law must
be made known more widely ; it was a duty to publish it. This
was the ground of the Praetor’s Edict at Rome, a more fruitful
source of Roman Law even than the Twelve Tables. The Edict,
it is true, was announced in advance ; but whether the knowledge
were conveyed before or after, it was a matter of vital interest to
the community. In the absence of writing, various devices had
to be adopted to make the law easily realized and remembered.
Methods must be adopted for appealing to the imagination and
memory. Parts of the human body might be used to emphasize
and memorize rules. The Ten Commandments are said to have
been so numbered from the fingers of the hands. In early
Egypt there was a tradition that the deceased in proceeding to
the judgment of Osiris was asked whether he could count his
fingers, that is, whether he had kept the whole law. Similarly,
architecture was brought in, the three columns of law, and the
three columns of advocacy. Commonest of all was the use of
figures, particularly if they could be supposed to bear a sacred
character. It does not follow, however, that the figures always
had that character of mysticism. They might be merely con-
1 Vinogradoff, Histor. Jurispr. I, 361. * Book XIV, xxi, 24.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 23
venient or matter of fact, as in Rome, ‘iria momenta status,’
the tripartite will, seven witnesses, seven signatures and seven
seals. They were always convenient, however, as aids to the
memory. It is quite impossible, in these days of writing and
printing, to realize the supreme importance in early times of any-
thing which would refresh the imagination and assist the memory ;
especially when concerning rules that must be obeyed. ‘ Ancient
law was preserved in rude verse or rhythmical prose.’! Various
suggestions have been made for the origin of the Triads, including
the doctrine of the Sacred Trinity. But might not the use of the
threefold classification be older still, on the ground that three is
the limit of uncultivated memory for general convenience?
_ Three, or even four are easily remembered ; five or six are a
erowd. Once ‘three ’ is adopted as a standard, its multiples are
almost as easy to be remembered. Hence we have the nine
accessories, the nine favodiogs (whose word must be accepted),
the nine packhorses, the nine words of pleading. Not that the
nine is a cast-iron classification. The nine tavodiogs of the
Venedotian Code are twelve in the Dimetian Code, though they
are still called the nine. The nine accessories of galanas, again,
are built out of three sets of three ; the one class is the informer,
the abettor and the consenting party ; the second class, the spy,
the associate and companion ; the third class, the assistant, the
holder of the victim, the person present, refusing aid. The
oaths of one hundred, two hundred and three hundred men are
severally annexed to these three classes, being an increase to the
number of compurgators required where the accused admits he
was an accessory, but denies the actual murder. One result of
this process is that it aids not only the memory but the process
of reflection. A cultivated mind can consider all sides or aspects
of a question without the aid of any mechanical device. But
thought is the most difficult of all processes to the uneducated,
and if figures aid the memory, memory aids reflection. This is
perhaps one reason for the close connection, in early times, of law
and poetry, or law and versification at any rate. It is not the only,
or even the chief reason ; for law in those early days was man’s
best protector against violence, forcible seizure, and primitive
barbarism ; it expressed for him the difference between right and
wrong ; it stood for harmony instead of discord, the straight path
instead of devious courses, a certain instead of an uncertain.
1 Maine, Harly Hist. of Institutions, 14.
24 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
It must be observed, however, that the earlier the code, the fewer
the number of triads. Indeed the greater the number of triads,
the less reliable is the statement of law. The Codes of Wales
do not depend in any way on this custom of versification for their
excellence. They exhibit all styles of prose, and excel in vivid,
terse narration, in all the arts of the advocate. They are more
like the Institutes of Gaius than of Justinian, and a complete
contrast to the language even of English Codes, not to speak of
the later English Statute Law. Perhaps this is due to the fact
that they had to be spoken and recited rather than read, for the
clerk of the court, who was a cleric, is said both to record and recite
the laws. As an example of vivid style the exposition of law
by means of question and answer at the end of the Dimetian
Code is characteristic. ‘Is there a single penny for which a
person’s life is forfeited ? There is; a penny wanting of gala-
nas.' This is only a more striking way of saying that the com-
pensation to buy off a blood feud must be paid to the last penny.
‘Is there any person whose hand is worth more than his life ?
There is; a bondman.’ For the worth of the hand is without
distinction of persons, but the sum to buy off vengeance by the
blood-feud depends on status. ‘Is there any galanas to which
there is no accessory ? There is; if an animal kill a person, that
is a Slayer to whom there is no accessory.’ This, and many others,
are the common devices of the advocate and the jurist, as distinct
from the mere lawyer and legislator. But it would be no more
reasonable to doubt the genuineness of the law solely on the
ground of these aids to memory and understanding, than it would
be to doubt the Codes themselves because their Editors, to whom
we owe so much, have divided them into sections and chapters.
Il. THe Law or THE CouRT.
There is an approach to some kind of arrangement of the law
at the opening of the Dimetian Code, where it is said that Hywel
began to write the laws ‘in three parts: the first, the daily law
of the palace ; the second, the law of the country ; the third,
the perfect administration of each ofthem.’ 2? The real classifica-
tion is into the law of the court and the law of the country. It
appears as if this preliminary treatment of the law of the court
were essential to the aim of Hywel’s Code. Sir Brynmor Jones *
E Dim. DLN, 11,3313, 20, 30: -2 Dim. Preface.
3 Foreign Elements in Welsh Mediaeval Law, II.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 25
considers the Cyfreithiau Liys to amount to a body of constitu-
tional law, since the Llys was the collective and chief organ of
government and the servants of the household discharged adminis-
trative political functions. The terms brenin and arglwydd are
used of a chief whose status might vary from being the king of
Gwynedd to the lord of a single cantref. Professor Lloyd con-
siders the terms were practically interchangeable,! and refers to
the Dimetian Code,? where the saraad or honour price of a king
possessing a principal seat, as Dinevwr under the king of South
Wales, and Aberfraw under the’ king of Gwynedd, is mentioned
with great particularity; while if he have not a principal seat,
he is only to have cattle, which reduces him to a chief of the
second rank. Whether he be a great or a petty chief does not
very much affect the view taken of his position in law, for it is
said in the Dimetian Code, ‘there are three kinds of persons: a
king, a breyr and a villein with their near relations.’? It is the
kingly status that matters. He may be regarded, if the term be
allowed of such an early time, as a constitutional king. He and
his court are under the law. He acts by the advice of his
magnates ; the sovereignty is co-operative ; it is found needful
to enact that there are ‘three private intercourses which the king
is to have without the presence of his judges; with his wife ;
with his priest’; and with his mediciner.’* His prerogatives
are defined and limited; he has not to contend with a feudal
nobility asin England ; but his relation to the local lord depends
on the standing of the king himself ; in any case they are not his -
rivals, and may be his subordinates. The lord’s position is not
set out like that of the king, but a person who is engaged in the
lord’s business is privileged so that he cannot be seized as a debtor.®
Vassalage or subordination is not to be implied from the payment
of dues or tribute money alone ; the payment of a tribute of £63.
a year to the English king does not make Hywel his dependent.
Such payments were common among friendly allies, and all the
activities of the king of Wales prove the contrary. A limit is set
to the king’s control of the army. He cannot lead forth his
host out of the country except once a year, and then the service
is not to continue more than six weeks ;® apparently that
1 History of Wales, I, ch.IX, note. The position of the Welsh king is.
in this chapter fully treated.
a Dim. 1, ii, -d. Sims Live, 8. 4 Dim. I, viii, 48.
Ven. Lf. -vi, 23. SVEN Mixx ei
26 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
means an expedition to a border country 1; in his own coun-
try he is free to have hosts when he will.2 Im fact, the teulu
itself is the king’s bodyguard ; a much larger conception than a
mere household. During the absence of the army on border ser-
vice the queen is to have a progress with the maids and youths
among the villeins of the king. The principle of universal ser-
vice seems to have been the rule in Wales as among the Anglo-
Saxons, but the conditions in England were more stringent ; as
Ine’s Code enacts, *
“if a nobleman who holds land neglects military service he shall pay
120 shillings and forfeit his land ; a nobleman who holds no land shall
pay 60 shillings ; a commoner shall pay a fine of 30 shillings for neglect-
ing military service.’
But the idea in both cases was the same, it was that of
national service, not conscription ; the obligation of a depen-
dent to accompany his lord on a journey or expedition. Thus
when the army was organised by Alfred he divided it into two
parts, one fighting while the other tilled. There is not much
mention of the sea or of service on sea in the laws of Wales ;
‘the Welsh did not busy themselves with shipping’ *; the
laws of Edward the Elder mention service by land and sea ’®;
the laws of Ethelred ‘the fitting out of ships as diligently as
possible,’ ? and the compensation for damage to a national
warship. But the Welsh Laws mention ‘three violences which
are not to be compensated : to wit, violence by an army ; injury
by fire ; and injury by the sea’ °; an anticipation of the rules
relating to the act of God and the restraint of princes. Moreover,
the king has certain ‘ packhorses’ as they are termed, things
which are his perquisites, or peculiarly belong to him in royal
right; and the list is interesting,!° the sea, the king’s waste, a
necessitous stranger wandering over the king’s land, a thief, a
house of death, a person who dies of a sudden death ; again, a child-
less person or even a criminal who owes a fine, or death whereby
an ebediw or death duty is payable, are added by the Venedotian
code.1! Thus we see the beginning of the State, and the con-
1 Dim. II, xi, 5. 2 Ven: Il, xix, 7. 3 Dim. I, i, 4.
4 Laws of the Earliest English Kings, Attenborough, 53.
° Lloyd, History of Wales, II, 606.
6 Attenborough’s edition, 119. 7? Robertson’s edition, 87.
8 Robertson’s edition, 101. 9 Book IX, xxxviii, 14.
LO Dim Ma, xs 25 aa 11’ Ven. I, xliii, 12.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 27
ception of the king as parens patriae and as supreme administrator.
Above all ‘no land is to be without a king.’1 ‘ The king is owner
of all the land of the kingdom.’? As regards movable property,
he was the universal heir in default of children.? But land comes
into his hands, in default of persons entitled to succeed, as chief
administrator, not because he is the lord of a fief. The local lords
are therefore not his rivals, but his adherents and auxiliaries ; the
king is but a lord writ large ; what is really important is not the
struggle between the king and his lords, but that between the
lord, as an administrative officer, and the pencenedl or tribal
chieftain. Much interest attaches to the twenty-four officials of
the palace ; but even more interest to the two who are outside it,
the maer and the canghellor, somewhat similar to the justiciar
and chancellor of early English Law. The maer was a royal
officer, appointed over a district, with special jurisdiction over
the unfree classes, who were under the king’s protection, much as
registered persons of foreign origin are under the king’s protection
to-day. He was responsible also for the king’s waste, that is,
generally, property without an ascertained owner.‘ The can-
ghellor was also a royal officer, whose duty was ‘to stand and
to be in the place of the king during his presence and during his
absence.’® Neither of them was to be a chief of kindred; the
relation between them and the pencenedl was much like that
between the sheriff and the ealdorman. It is obvious that in the
separation of the maer and canghellor from the officials of the house-
hold we have the germ of a ministry, and perhaps of some kind
of ministerial responsibility. Through these ministers the king
was brought into touch with his people and the country around
him. Some writers have professed to discover in the assembly
which met to authorise the Code of Hywel, six men from each
cymuwd, four laics and two clerks, a rudimentary form of a Welsh
parliament. But the object of that assembly was to formulate
the law once for all, whereas parliaments in those days did not
meet for the purpose of law-making in any real sense, still less for
law-codifying. Theassembly at the White House was more like a
meeting of plenipotentiaries, met to draft a treaty or convention ;
at the close of the sitting their work was done, and there was no
occasion for summoning them again. If there exists anything
1 Ven. II, xiii, 8. 2 Dim. II, viii, 131.
3 Lloyd, Hist. of Wales, I, ch. IX, 311.
aiden. U, xii, 17. > Gwent, I, xxxv, 15.
ee V OL. Xi: C
28 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
like the germ of a parliament in Wales at all, it is to be found in
the administrative co-operation of the king and his officers,
especially when paying visits to the local lordships. There is more
of a parliament in the visitations of the king, with his principal
court officials, the maer and the canghellor, the lord or his rhaglaw,
and the local uchelwyr than in the convocation at the White House.
Had it been possible for the king to summon representatives from
these lordships to attend him at the royal palace, the parallel
with early parliaments would have been complete. However that
may be, the penteulu and the judge inside the palace, and the
maer and canghellor outside, are the first indications of an execu-
tive, of a kind of curva regis. The ministry might even act in the
absence of the king, for, as stated elsewhere, if ‘the priest of the
household, the steward and the judge of the court are together,
there is the privilege of the court, although the king be absent.’!
Thus. government was co-operative, and the king even at that
early time a constitutional ruler.
Ill. THe Law oF THE CouUNTRY
Following the law of the court, the law of the country is, in
its title alone, significant. No other mediaeval code has precisely
this classification. The Welsh Law was the law of a race, not of
a territory, but it was one race and the Code of Hywel united
the country under a system of administrative justice ; and that
without interfering with freedom of contract or varieties of loca!
custom. This is in strong contrast to the personality of law,
which caused such conflict on the Continent that it was said a
traveller changed his law as often as he changed his horses;
Bishop Agobard, in A.D. 850, is said to have declared there might
be five people in a room, each following his own law. In the
result the Welsh Law became national rather than territorial,
and gave expression to the unity of the people. As Professor
Lloyd puts it,2 ‘the conception of one law valid for the whole
of Wales took its rise from the measures of Hywel.’ No
doubt care must be taken not to ascribe modern ideas to
mediaeval times. But there are passages in the Code which
show that Hywel and his successors safeguarded the principle
of the supremacy of the rule of law. One of the best known
characteristics of English Law is the absence of any admin-
1 Ven. I, xlii, 14. 2 Lloyd, Hist. of Wales I, ch. X, 343.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 29)
istrative law strictly so called, of a different law and procedure for
state officers from that of ordinary persons; a principle due to
the early recognition of a national common law and the instinctive
unwillingness of the untutored barons to ‘receive’ any foreign
system. One does not expect this universal supremacy of the
rule of law, which is even to-day the subject of much contention
in England, to have been properly realized in the Laws of Wales ;
where the State had scarcely established itself there could be little
official law. But there is a striking passage! in the Dimetian
Code :
* Whoever shall say that the king or anyone on his part . . . has
committed oppression, contrary to law, against him, he is to have a
verdict of country without delay concerning it... . And that is the
chief general institute between the lord and his subjects, as a protec-
tion against the power of a lord.’
This is in the Dimetian Code ; but in the Tenth Book of the
. Laws,?
‘although a lord can be a plaintiff in his own court against whomsoever
he will . . . he is not to be a defendant in his own court . . . since
it is not meet for him to stand before a judge of his own court, and it is
not meet also to sue him in his own court.’
The interpretation of this passage, however, seems to be that
proceedings against a lord must be brought in the king’s court, and
not in the lord’s own court. This view is confirmed by another
passage in the Tenth Book? which declares that in case of a dispute
as to land between several lordships, or where a grant of land from
the king himself, or from a lord, is the subject of contention, since
the right of a lord is not to be determined in the local court, * it is
incumbent upon the king, without delay, to repair the illegality,
for a deed illegally done is not to be upheld.’4 What is this but
_ saying that the king and the lord are to be subject to the law of the
land, and subject also to proceedings like any other free-born
Welshman in the king’s court? If there were disputes about
jurisdiction, at least there was no conflict of law, after Hywel had
taken the matter in hand.
The subject of the courts of Wales is, however, beset with
difficulties. The Laws themselves show a continuous develop-.
ment. The Dimetian Code mentions a royal supreme court at
Dinevwr and Aberfraw. The Tenth Book adds a third, the court
1 Dim. III, i, 17. 2 Book X, xvii, 10.
3 Book X, xv, lL. 4 Ibid.
30 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
of Mathraval. And every lord, of the lords of Gwynedd and the
South, is to answer in the nearest court to his own territory, of
the three high courts aforesaid, every claim and demand that may
be against him. These royal courts seem to have had both
originaland appellate jurisdiction. Mr. T. P. Ellis,inhis Welsh
Tribal Law and Custom, most clearly sums up the jurisdiction of
the royal court ; original, mainly, when the king was concerned,
or where the supremacy of the king was required to decide between
rival lordships, cmywds or cantrefs ; appellate when the decision
of a judge, after pledging, had been impugned. ‘The jurisdiction
in fact bears a close resemblance to the residuary jurisdiction of
the King’s Council in England. But the really original court of
justice of Wales was the Court of the Cymwd, probably taken over
by Hywel Dda from the previous judicial system of the country,
and reduced by him into an orderly system. The judicial
development of Wales was thus mature enough not to require the
itinerary system of England ; the lord or his representative pre-
sided, and the judges were either those officially appointed or those
entitled by privilege of land. In a late passage of doubtful
authority, itis said that Hywel (but it could not have been Hywel)
permitted every ecclesiastical lord, and every chief to whom there
might belong a cymwd, to hold pleas of the crown. If this is true
the reverse process must have happened in Wales from that in
England, where, by the use of the royal prerogative and the writ
system, by means of legal fictions, and other devices, all rival
jurisdictions were crushed out, and a national system of law and
procedure was evolved. The period of Hywel Dda and his
successors, the golden age of Welsh jurisprudence, knew no such
devolution of judicial authority.
As for the law itself, the same course seems to have heen
followed as in other systems ; where the Code and judicial inter-
pretation were not adequate, the law was extended by fictions,
by a reliance on equity or the sense of fairness, and even by a sort
of legislation.! Thus by means of a fiction, a stranger could
become a member of a clan to which he had rendered a service 2 ;
a lord might become the son of a dead man, if he chose, and
deny a suretyship on his behalf? ; or an alien after a lapse of
nine generations might become a new stock of descent.* Fictions
seem to have been most commonly employed to bring the alliud or
1 Maine, Ancient Law, ch. II. 2 Book X, 2.
3 Ven. II, vi, 28. 4Book XIII, ii, 66, 67.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 31
foreigner within the reach of justice. Thus the Dimetian Code
enacts, !
‘There is to be no rejection of the raith (or compurgation) of an
alltud, where a raith of the country does not pertain to him although
persons shall not swear along with him ; for let him give his own oath
repeatedly for so many persons, as ought to swear along with him, if
he were of a kindred.’
The same attempts to deal out justice to the foreigner fill the
pages of Roman Law, though it was accomplished at Rome by
a duplication of institutions, one form for the citizen, the other for
the alien, duplicate conveyances, suretyships, written contracts,
references of a case to judges. Naturally the same necessity
was not felt in English Law, where the system so soon became
territorial. Though fictions are thus common enough, there is
little trace of any conception of equity in the technical sense,
though there are references to aequitas or the decision of a case
by an appeal to the principle of good faith and fair play. There
is one late passage 2 which mentions as one of the three things
which overcome law ‘that which is done by the king, to pursue
truth and justice, and for the sake of conscience and mercy.’
The law is amended occasionally by something like legis-
lation. Thus Bleddyn, son of Cynvyn, altered the quantity
of land to be shared among brothers ?; and remodelled the
ordinance as to theft, instituting full satisfaction instead of
the fines levied in the time of Hywel.* But, as in early Rome,
the alterations are accepted with reluctance, there is a dis-
relish for change. The Welsh cling to the law of Hywel.
When Bleddyn makes an alteration in a suit for land so that
the reward due to the lord for deciding the suit should be
paid by the person who is to have the land, the alteration is
expressly called ‘a regulation,’ not a law, ‘for there is but one
law according to the Cymry, that of Hywel.’ > Even if a person
says there are two laws, the law of Hywel and the law of Bleddyn,
and call for one of them, and the judge decide according to the
other, he can give his pledge against the judge as judging wrong
since he named the law. There was therefore a choice of law,
apparently, in some of the innovations ; and in all cases it is
with difficulty that the new law replaces the old.
1 Dim. II, xvii, 46. 2 Book XIII, ii, 185.
2 Ven. LL; xii, 1. 4 Ven. III, ii, 45.
° Book VIII, ch. XI, 3. 6 Book VIII, ch. XI, 4.
32 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
Naturally therefore the Code of Hywel is imperfectly deve-
loped. Asin all the early Codes the remedy is considered rather
than the right. The conception of a legal right is indeed scarcely
adverted to atall. The primordial rights of modern law are never
defined, liberty, equality, property or security. Even in the
proprietory action so fully dramatized in the Venedotian Code the
claim of the plaintiff is “that he is entitled to come lawfully back
to the place from which he has been unlawfully ejected.’! In a
claim for loss by theft the defendant would prove title by alleging
warranty (arwaesav), possession before loss, or birth and rearing ;
and apart from that there might be a prosecution for theft. Thus
there was a real action for the recovery of goods like the appeal of
larceny, or the action ‘res adieratae ’ of English Law in early
times. The Welsh Laws, however, go far to disprove the state-
ment of Maine that penal law in ancient times was a law of torts.
The idea of crime is older than tort. Moreover, we have a clue
to the development of ‘intent,’ as an element in criminal liability,
in the attitude of Welsh Law towards secret crime. Theft, for
example, is the secret removal and appropriation of goods. If
done in the open, it was trais, not lladrad. Welsh Law resembled
Roman Law in distinguishing the thief discovered with the stolen
property in his possession or otherwise. It resembled early
English Law in attributing a peculiar heinousness to secret
offences. The same element is found in the English treatment of
homicide. The crime of murder came to mean secret killing,
especially that kind of secret killing for which a murder fine was
payable ; and this led, after the fine was abolished, to * killing
with malice aforethought.’ But the idea of intent as an element
in crime was not fully developed until the king or lord
had increased his jurisdiction, for since the lord would have the
prerogative of pardon he could take account of elements in
criminal liability which were impossible in the days of the blood-
feud ; he might consider for instance whether a suit were instituted
de odio et atid.2 It is with the offence of treason or brdéd that the
mental element in crime acquires great prominence. Meanwhile
the appeal to law is excessively formal ; the trial is matter of
form ; the judgment is merely to decide the form ; the chances
of victory depend on scrupulous adherence to form. ‘There is no
room for discretion in the law of procedure. The law being
unwritten it must be dramatized ; pageantry and ceremony make
1 Ven. LI, xi, 17... 2 Jenks, History of English Law, 43.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 33
the only possible appeal. Yet ‘formalism is the twin-born sister
of liberty.’1 And much of the procedure is extra-judicial.
The initiative lies with the complainant ; in grave cases he may
raise the hue and cry 2; later the presentment of criminals takes
the matter out of his hands. But usually the complainant has to
assert himself, and although the defendant is not called upon to
answer unless the complainant is supported in his claim, the fact
of his taking proceedings raises such a prima facie case against
the accused that the scales are heavily weighted against the
latter; it was not for centuries in England that counsel
could be permitted to persons charged with felony. To some
extent the execution of the judgment also remained with the
plaintiff. The Codes are rather significantly silent on this all-
important question. Hence the extreme importance of surety-
ship, and the process of distress by leave of the Court. For,
according to a passage already quoted, ‘ whoever shall make a
distress on account of a debt without leave of the judicature, is
subject to a camlwrw.2 The Welsh Laws further say,* ‘if a
defendant neglect three legal summonses the claim is confessed ;
no claim, however, is adjudged against a person until the expira-
tion of three summonses.’ So the laws of Canute,® ‘no one
shall make distraint of property until he has appealed for justice
three times in the hundred court.’ The Welsh Law® proceeds:
“Unless the defendant come on the day for decision appointed
by the judge, and the parties bound, the extent of the claim shall be
adjudged against him; for he is not to have law who does not
perform it.’
The remedies of the Court seem to be confined to a heavy
fine, dirwy, in the case of most substantive offences, and a light
fine, camlwrw, for accessory acts and contempt of court; there
might be camlwrw one-fold for default, two-fold for slander, and
three-fold as an accessory.? The grave punishments are death,
sale of a thief, and banishment, for example, of a faithless kins-
man; the law’s last resort is outlawry.
1Thering, Geist des rémischen Rechts, ii (2), § 45.
2 As late as 1839 there were in England upwards of five hundred
voluntary associations for promoting the arrest and prosecution of felons.
3 Dim. II, vi, 3. 4Book XIV, ch. IX, 1.
° Laws of Canute, 19, ed. Robertson. 6 Book XIV, ch. IX, 2.
MBook XIV, ch. XI, 1-6.
34 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
IV. THe Law oF Status
If the Laws of Wales are to be considered comparatively,
however briefly this is to be done, some classification must be
adopted for convenience, though it may have an entirely modern
appearance. The earliest branch of the law is that which deals
with Personal Status. The Roman Law laid stress on lberty,
citizenship and family, as the “tria momenta status.’ The early
English Law mentions chiefly the free and unfree. The Welsh
Law says httle about these considerations and substitutes the
test of birth. The three kinds of persons are the king, a breyr or
uchelwr, and a villeon, and they occupy those positions mainly
on the ground of birth. The boneddig is a person who is of entire
Welsh origin, both on the side of the father and mother. Society
in Wales was therefore an aristocracy ; within the ranks of the
free-born allthe Cymry were co-equal in privilege. Outside these
there was none of the equality so much cherished by Welshmen ;
the aillt or villein, the alltud or foreigner, and the caeth or slave
were without the pale. The Cymry proper, uchelwyr and boned-
digion, were entitled to be members of the rhaith gwlad, the right
or justice of the country, the privilege of proof by oath-helpers.
A foreign family would not become naturalized in any sense,
until the fourth generation of continued occupation, and even
then, they would not become free ‘Cymry.’ They would belong
to the unfree yet, and would be still tied to the land, though their
occupation of it would be as fully protected as the boneddig. It
is only by relying on the more doubtful passages of the Anoma-
lous Laws that we get any information as to the manner in
which foreigners might become Welshmen, apart from some very
exceptional cases. Such passages can only be accepted with
great hesitation. There is some ground for saying, though the
authority is doubtful,! that not until the ninth generation would
foreigners become entitled to the privilege and descent of innate
Cymry. That would be accomplished even at an earlier date,
according to the same authority, by marriage with an innate
Cymraes, ‘for it is the privilege of an innate Cymraes to
advance a degree for her aillé husband with whom she shall
intermarry.’ On attaining to the privilege of the ninth descent,
the aillt would become an innate Cymro, chief of kindred to his
progeny, no longer called the son of his father but his seisor.
He would now be a new stock of descent, like the purchaser in
a Book Nun Gi 66, 67)
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 35
English Law. The particularity with which these rules are
stated, even in the later Laws, seems to imply that in this way the
Cymry themselves originated. Certainly these rules about the
ninth degree are not found in Wales alone.
‘An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of
the Lord ; even to the tenth generation shall none belonging to them
enter into the assembly of the Lord for ever, because they met you not
with bread and with water in the days when you came forth out of
Egypt.’ 1
This suggests that certain services might more speedily enable
strangers to become relations. In fact, a list of nine such services
is given, the last of which is of special interest :
“if a person is condemned to lawful wager of battle . . . and he should
dread in his heart entering into personal combat; and a stranger
should arise and say to him, “ I will go in thy stead to combat,” and he
should escape thereby ; such stranger acquires the privilege of a brother
to him or nephew, the son of a sister, to receive galanas or to pay it for
him.’ ?
Wager of battle is not found as a legitimate mode of proof in
the Welsh Laws, the reason being that the Church from the
beginning set its face against it. But it is too much to suppose
it was never found in Wales ; and it is surmised that the germ or
origin of the legal advocate, the barrister, in particular, is to be
found in the champion who offered himself in the place of the
other. The privilege acquired is that of a brother to him or the son
of a sister. This is a reference to the rule of the patriarchal sys-
tem or patria potestas, that if a father had no surviving sons, or if
the head of a family had no sons at all to succeed him, he had
a claim to be succeeded by a sister’s son.*? ‘The stranger was
therefore in the above example actually advanced to the family
of the recipient of his service. But the advancement was to the
family relationship, and not to the individual status.
It was not the individual who counted but the group, the
kindred or cened/. It seems clear that patria potestas in the Roman
sense had no place in Wales. Even in Rome, the persistence of
patria potestas was only due to the fact that the area of occupa-
tion was smaller, and entailed intensive cultivation ; the more rest-
less spirits were drawn away by war ; the family was rendered more
efficient by adoption and emancipation, and the system was never
1 Deuteronomy xxiii, 3, 4. 2 Book X, iii, 9.
3 Vinogradoff, Histor. Jurispr. I. 232. ff.
36 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
applied to the public service. Yet the fact of agnatic relation-
ship which was strictly applied in Wales meant a limited patria
potestas, and it is expressly stated the boy was to be in his father’s
power till he was commended, first to the pencenedl and afterwards
to the lord. But for people of a nomadic type the group of the
kindred afforded better protection. ‘A chief of kindred is to be
the oldest efficient man in the kindred to the ninth degree.’ The
importance of the kindred appears at every point, in the occupa-
tion of land, in guardianship and maintenance, in the giving of a
woman in marriage, in the rules of inheritance. It is especially
important in the law of suretyship, particularly the suretyship
to abide law or to keep the peace. So long as the tie of kindred
remained active they were of themselves a sufficient guarantee for
their kinsman. But when, as in early English Law, the import-
ance of the megd broke down, an artificial system had to be
erected. Aethelstan thus provides,!
‘with regard to lordless men from whom no legal satisfaction can be
obtained, we have declared that their relatives shall be commanded to
settle them in a fixed residence where they will become amenable to
folc-right, and find them a lord in the fole-moot. If however the
relatives will not or cannot, he shall be henceforth an outlaw, and he
who encounters him may assume him to be a thief and kill him.’
In fact, a lordless man very much resembled what we should
describe as a rogue and a vagabond. The oath-helpers, again,
in the old method of legal proof represent the kindred. As in
actual combat a man would be backed by his kindred, so in an
accusation he would be cleared by them. Above all, the kinsmen
figure in the blood-feud. Every man has his price according to
the Welsh Laws, the price of his honour or saraad, and the price of
his life, or galanas. This price of his slaying, or galanas, fixes his
station in society. A murder or manslaughter gives rise to a
blood feud, which can only be composed by the payment of the
slain man’s worth or galanas. If the act of homicide is not paid
for within the appointed time, it is the signal for the outbreak of
war between kindred and kindred ; when the members of the
kindred, therefore, pay their shares of the galanas, they are
buying their own peace. The sharing of the galanas we are told
is one of the complexities of the law. Apart from the payment
to the kindred it was usual to make a preliminary payment to the
nearest relatives of the slain. A similar payment, the heals-fang,
1 Laws of Aethelstan, ed. Attenborough.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 37
is found in the Anglo-Saxon law. By slow degrees the blood-feud
was checked. The Venedotian Code notes ! that ‘no one is to be
killed on account of another, but a murderer . . . for if the
kindred disown the murderer there is no claim upon them.’ In
England, the abolition of the feud was undertaken by Edmund ? :
‘if anyone slay a man he shall himself alone bear the feud, unless with
the help of his friends, he pay composition for it within twelve months
to the full amount of the slain man’s wergild . . . if, however, his
kindred abandon him and will not pay compensation on his behalf, it is
my will that, if afterwards they give him neither food nor shelter, all
the kindred, except the delinquent, shall be free from the blood-feud.’
Again,
‘the authorities must put an end to blood-feuds. The slayer shall give
security to his advocate, and the advocate to the kinsmen of the slain
man, that he, the slayer, will make reparation to the kindred.’
Slowly the grip of the kindred relaxed, and the State began to
take its place and usurp its functions. By Hywel’s time the
cenedl had been to some extent disintegrated. The kindred had
failed, as the family had, to meet the test of efficiency. The
pencenedl, at one time the most powerful man in the country, was
in one way and another replaced by the lord. When a son was
received as of kin, said the Venedotian Code,?
“the father himself may receive him, after he is lawfully affiliated to
him by his mother ; if the father be not alive, the chief of the kindred,
with six, may receive him ; if there be no chief of the kindred, twenty-
one of the best men of the kindred, and the man who shall be in the place
of the lord, is to take the boy by his right hand, and then to place the
right hand of the child in the hand of the oldest of the other men, who
is also to give him a kiss; and so from hand to hand until the last |
ean”
This was the case in Gwynedd. But in Powys? ‘if there be
neither father nor chief of the kindred, fifty men are to receive
and deny achild.’ Thus the old law died hard. Butin the matter
of public services the transition was easier. At the end of four-
teen years the father was to bring his son to the lord and com-
mend him to his charge, and then the youth was to become his
man and to be on the privilege of his lord. If the son died after
fourteen years of age and left no heir, the lord was to possess all
his property and to be in the place of a son to him; a legacy
through the Church, no doubt, from the law of adoption and
1 Ven. III, i, 19. 2 Laws of Edmund, ed. Robertson.
® Ven. Il, xxxi, 25. 4 Tbid., 26.
38 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
arrogation in Rome. Probably the kindred held on in Wales
because of the racial conservatism of the Welsh people, and the
circumstances of their history; they would not accept the
position of a conquered people on the mere ground of loss of
territory, and claimed still, in theory, to be entitled to the whole
of Britain. But the English Law had rapidly become territorial.
Aethelstan had enacted that ‘every man shall stand surety
for his own men against every charge of crime.’ If he cannot |
control them he is to place them in charge of a reeve whom he |
can trust, and who will trust the men. It is only in the last
resort, if a man cannot be trusted, that twelve of his kindred are
to be found to go bail for him. At last, as Maitland says':
“we find the common law of England so utterly careless concerning
purity of blood that it holds every man an Englishman if born in the
English king’s dominions, an alien if born elsewhere.’
Under the influence of royal justice, the Welsh Law, too,
became territorial and as the group became national, the import- |
ance of the individual increased. The decline of status is seen in |
the difference between galanas and the accessories of galaxas.
Though there are degrees in the assistance rendered, there are no |
grades in the accessories themselves, the penalty in all cases is the |
same. And the kindred are to have nothing from the accessory, |
he only pays a fine to the lord ; the whole treatment betokens a
different atmosphere. But in matters of kindred the tie of kinship |
is hard to break ; as Seebohm puts it,? ‘ once a kinsman, always a
kinsman.’ Nothing can break the kinship except the forfeiting of |
a man’s life for treason or murder of his chief. ‘ Since the living |
kin is not killed for the sake of the dead kin, everybody will hate |
to see him.’ Nothing remains for him but banishment, and if |
we can trust the quaint language of the Thirteenth Book, every |
one of every sex and age within hearing of the horn is required to |
follow the exiled person, ‘ to the time of his putting to sea, until |
he shall have passed three-score hours out of sight.’* Thus the |
idea of kin solidarity always prevents the development of purely |
individual considerations. And this principle still survives, for |
status has given way to the modern state, and the claims of kinship |
are not more exacting than those of guilds and trade unions and
other ambitious and inflexible associations of our time.
1 Maitland, Collected Works, I, 208.
2 Tribal System in Wales, 58. 3 Book XIII, i, 26.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 39
V. THe Law oF PROPERTY
In striking contrast with the emphasis laid on birth and status
is the comparative unimportance of the idea of property in the
Welsh Laws. Wealth made no difference in a man’s status. The’
opposite is found in the Anglo-Saxon Codes. Both the Welsh and
English methods of computing status are found in the laws of
Ine, ‘ the wergild of a Welsh taxpayer (gafolgelda) is 120 shillings,
of his son 100 shillings’; and the principle that the head of a
_ household is valued at a greater amount than his son is attri-
- buted to Welsh custom. On the other hand, in the same code it is
stated that
_ ‘if a Welshman possesses a hide of land, his wergild shall be 120 shil-
| lings. If, however, he possesses half a bide, his wergild shall be 80
shillings; if he possesses no land, 60 shillings.’
But the relationship to material things, the contact with
material resources, has this influence in Wales that it helps to
narrow down the kindred. The common unit for holding land
is a man, his son, grandsons and great-grandsons, holding land
jointly under the name of ‘ gwely ’ or ‘lectum.’ The rights of the
household chief or penteulu to his tyddyn and lands in the occu-
/ pation of himself and other members of his household is; termed
his ‘bed’ or ‘couch.’ Vinogradoff! considers ‘gwely’ to be
equivalent to ‘ stock,’ using the word in its personal sense, while
_gavell is the holding of land itself, the right of the kindred from
‘its territorial aspect; though gavell is by others thought to
represent a smaller group than gwely. One may discover three
_ types of holding, corresponding to three stages of progress, the
' undivided land of the kindred as to which there was a right of
survivorship ; the land of the narrower group in which there
was partition and succession, and to which the term tref tdd is
applied ; and the land termed tir cynyf, acquired by purchase or
a Se CC
by gitt from the king. Gradually the tribal communities are
dissolved, or transformed into communities of neighbours, ‘ village
communities.’ Class distinctions develop, manorial lordships
_ are formed, economic pressure forces a new apportionment, and
_ the tribal system gives way to the open field system, till enclosures
_ put an end to the latter. The open field system was in operation
_ in England as early as Ine’s laws and was a progression towards
the true idea of property since neither the land nor the produce
| 1 Histor. Jurispr. I, 280.
40 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
was communally owned ; each ceorl would take the produce of
his own strips of land. Similarly, the idea of property was
developed in Wales, as in Rome, through the gradual differenti-
ation of what a man had acquired through his own efforts from
what he had received by way of inheritance.
The relation of the group or kindred to the land was at first
no more than bare occupation. In the words of Vinogradoff,!
‘ there is no reason for carving out private plots when the whole system
of husbandry is based on roaming about wide tracts of land.’
Probably the occupier would call it a right of property if he
thought about it at all, whether it was a case of the capture of
things wild and free, or the occupation of unappropriated land.
When the occupation was disturbed, the Welsh Laws gave full
protection to the occupier on the ground of his bare possession
alone, and apparently applied the doctrine of possession more
consistently than either Roman or English Law. Occupation
was a form of self-help, and possession was ‘ownership on the
defensive.’”2 The law is stated in the Dimetian Code,?
‘by three means land is to be sued for; through wrong possession ;
by dadenhudd (uncovering of the parental hearth), through the occu-
pation of father, or mother, until death; and by kin and descent ;.
though the suit for land may not succeed by the first means nor by the
second, it is not to be obtained the less effectually than before by the
third.’
The form of pleading in the action to recover land in Wales
shows how important the idea of possession was,‘
‘here is what it is right for the plaintiff to say . . . that he is appealing
to the law, that he is entitled to come lawfully back to the place from
which he has been unlawfully ejected.’
In the same way the importance of possession as the ground
of an action for the recovery of chattels is shown in the Venedotian
Code,®
‘ there are six ways in which a person may lose his property, and in three
of those cases he can swear to it, and in the other three he cannot. The
three cases wherein he cannot swear are, a deposit and loan, and hire,
and favour ; for it is not right to enquire where these are, or to enquire
to whom they are gone. The other three which it is right to swear to
1 Histor. Jurispr. I, 321.
2 Holmes, Common Law, 208, quoting Ihering.
3 Dim. II, viii, 105. 4 Ven. Il, xi, 17. 5 Ven. Ill, ii, 32.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 41
are, first, theft; the second, loss by negligence; and the third is,
surreption ; they are to be sworn to, because they were not received
by another hand from his hand.’
The real meaning of this passage seems to be that a person
sues for the recovery of his property on the allegation of the dis-
turbance of his possession ; but if the article in question is bailed
to another, it is for that other to sue, since the possession of the
owner is not disturbed ; the Welsh Laws do not trouble about
derivative possession. Throughout, whoever occupies land or
possesses an article possesses it for all purposes in Welsh Law ;
the laws of Wales therefore avoid the fine distinctions drawn in
Roman Law between custodia and possessio civilis, and in English
Law between possession and seisin. But the Dimetian Code! men-
tions three “ wrong possessions ’: possession in opposition to the
owner and against his will, and without a judgment ; possession
through the means of the owner in opposition to his heir ; and
possession through a guardian in opposition to the right owner,
for ‘an owner is one having a sure title.’ Here therefore we
find the symptoms of a development of the property idea, of the
superiority of a right to possess over the mere fact of possession.
But it is in the effect of time or long continuance on possession
that we find one of the most notable characteristics of Welsh Law,
the conception of the priodawr, a word which cannot be translated,
and which is only imperfectly rendered by the term ‘full
possessor ’ or ‘appropriator.’ The idea is not found in English
or Roman Law. In Roman Law, if a man possessed land for two
years, he became legal owner by usucapion, provided certain
conditions were complied with. Justinian extended the period
to ten. or even twenty years in favour of absentee owners ‘ne
domint maturius suis rebus defraudentur.’ In any case usucapion
implied a positive acquisition of ownership by length of time.
On the other hand, English Law took a different line and penalized
the person who neglected to assert his remedies, by a statute of
limitation. But according to Welsh Law no man held his land
in safety unless his father, grandfather and great-grandfather
held it before him ; and eventhen he was not quite safe, because
he might have to share with a claimant who had done this before
him, but had actually ceased to possess ; the right of a priodawr
not becoming quite extinct until he had become an alliud or
foreigner, that is until the ninth generation.”
1 Dim. II, viii, 106. _ 2 Ven. I, xiv. 2.
42 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
‘If the ninth man come to claim land his title is extinguished, and
that person is to raise an outcry, that from being a priodawr he is
becoming a non-priodawr (amprycdawr), and then the law listens to
that outcry and assigns to him a shelter, that is, as much as to one of the
number that were on the land, in opposition to him ; and that outcry
is called an outcry over the abyss; and though that outcry is to be
raised thereafter, it is never to be listened to. And others say that
the ninth man is not to raise that outcry, but to descend from being a
priodawr to being a non-priodawr.’
It is, however, a cardinal rule of all systems, that two men can-
not be owners of the same land (apart from joint ownership), nor
can two men be possessors of the same land. But in Roman Law
one man might have the bare physical possession, and another the
civil possession protected by an interdict. And in English Law
it became possible that one man might have the possession of land
while another had the seisin, as in the case of a term of years.
The Welsh Law avoids both these difficulties; but a contest
might arise between two priodorion, one who had occupied land
which had come to him as fourth man, and which he had departed
from, though not to the ninth generation ; and another who in
the meantime had acquired this secured possession as fourth
man. Ifa conflict arose between them it was to be solved by the
law of equality and distribution, ‘ because one priodawr was not
to be ousted by another.’ Priodawr cannot therefore have meant
a ‘possessor ’ nor an ‘owner, but a person with a presumptive
right of exclusive occupation. The conflict between them was
therefore a conflict of presumptions, a familiar problem in English
Law, and unless there was some reason for preferring one to the
other, they were to divide the land. Had they been really pro-
prietors they would have taken jointly, that is, each one would
have been entitled to the whole, with a right of survivorship
between them.
It is clear, therefore, that the Welsh Laws attribute more
importance to possession and less to ownership than either
Roman or English Law, a fact which is entirely in accord with
what we know of the nomadic tendencies of the population.
With the break up of the tribal system individual rights became —
more marked, but there is in the Welsh Laws practically no _
alienation of land, no will of lands, no conveyancing, no system of
transfer, and therefore naturally no conception of a trust, though
the Church must have been familiar with wills and fides commissa
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 43
in Roman Law. Under ecclesiastical influence a limited right of
bequest existed,+
‘the sick is not to bequeath aught, except a daered to the Church, and «
an ebediw to the lord and his debts ; and should he bequeath, the son
can break the bequest ; and such a one is called the uncourteous son.
Whoever therefore shall break a legal bequest, whether daered or debts,
shall be excommunicated as a publican or pagan.’ 2
The Roman Law doctrine of inofficcositas was thus extended in aid
of the Church. Again, land might be yielded as blood-land to
buy peace for the kindred by agreement between father, brothers,
cousins, second cousins and the lord ; this of course was not free-
dom of alienation ; it was almost the reverse. Alienation in
fact does not become common, till a superfluity of either chattels
or land is found in the hands of a few, and a deficiency on the
part of others, rendering an exchange imperatively necessary.
But although neither the positive acquisition of property by
usucapion nor the negative result of prescription was familiar in
the Welsh Laws, a rule of limitation, which has nothing to do
with the above doctrines, was adopted in the interests of an
efficient procedure, in the common form of ‘a year and a day.’
* Whoever shall commence a suit for land, the defendant being ready
_to answer and then be silent and neglect his claim unto the end of a
year and a day ; although he should begin to proceed in the claim, after
that he shall have nothing, for it is a claim beyond a year.’ 2
This last expression shows that the real period was ‘a year,’
the day being the first available Court day, so that if the Court
sat only once in six weeks, it might amount to ‘a year and six
weeks.’ So the time allowed for witnesses beyond the sea is a
year anda day. The prosecutor of a criminal loses his case if he
is silent for a year and a day. Even if a man allows ‘his land to
remain shared a year and a day, without disturbance, without
injury and be in the same country with him who is in possession
of it, the law says that that person is not to answer for that land
afterwards, but the suit is barred.” This bears a striking resem-
blance in phraseology to the rule of prescription nec vi nec clam
nec precario, long afterwards adopted in English Law. In the
Tenth Book? of the Anomalous Welsh Laws we find this procedural
1 Ven.-Il, i, 13. 2 Gwent, II, xxx, 14.
3 Maitland, Collected Works, II, 65.
2aVien.. Wi, xvi. 5.3. 5 Book X, xi, 15.
A.S.--VOL. X. D
44 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
rule fully developed. The time to doubt a wrong decision is not
lost by being passive, until a year and a day have elapsed from
the wrong decision ; and if the prosecution of a suit is interrupted
by the outbreak of war, the period is to run from the conclusion
of peace and the knowledge of the reigning lord. This is exactly
analogous to modern English Law, and in striking contrast to the
Anglo-Saxon Codes, where there is no mention of prescription or
limitation, nor of the rule of procedure within a year and a day.
In the Plantagenet period it became familiar ; at that time the
exact equivalent of the Welsh Law is found; after final judgment
in a writ of right, strangers had a year and a day from the execu-
tion of the writ of seisin, for asserting their claims ; if they took
no advantage of this, they were barred. But neither in the Welsh
nor in the English Law had this rule anything to do with the
substantive law of occupation, possession and ownership. When,
at last, individual right had triumphed, and the full conception
of property had been developed, a new term, perchen tir, is used
in the Welsh Laws, and it is said, “an owner of land, having no
heir of his body, can appropriate his land to whomsoever he may
walle
VI. THe Law oF OBLIGATION
As the idea of occupation or capture is at the root of property,
so the idea of liability is at the root of contract. But the Welsh
Laws show clearly that property and contract develop on inde-
pendent lines. It has long been thought? that contract arose
out of an uncompleted conveyance, but this is a totally inadequate
explanation of the binding tie, vwwnculum juris, which constitutes
obligation. A famousrule® inthe laws of Wales is stated in the
words, ‘every injury that a person unwittingly commits, let him
wittingly redress.’ The wrong committed unknowingly must be
righted knowingly. An event may leave behind it a desire for
redress, or a sense of something unsatisfied, something that
requires to be appeased or compensated. It has its source in the
primitive feelings of mankind, as when one kicks the stone that
trips him, or instinctively hits back when suddenly attacked by
another. A familiar example in the Welsh Laws is the following *:
‘if two persons be walking through a wood, and a branch, by the passing
of the foremost, should strike the eye of the hindmost, unwarned ; let
EBook Xa i, 30) 2 Maine, Ancient Law, viii, 334.
3 Books LWA a, le Book 1Vi is @23)
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 45
him be paid for his eye if he lose it ; but if the other warned him, he is
not to pay.’
In a law which is obviously much later in date, the idea is
developed thus, “there is one inadvertency and two advertencies.’!
The inadvertency is if a person cast a stone over a house and it
fall upon the head of another, his saraad is not to be paid because
it was not done advertently, and saraad is only paid for disgrace.
But his galanas is paid, because it is a loss, and there is no loss but
which is to be compensated. Here again the rule is respected,
“redress wittingly what thou dost unwittingly.2 The Welsh
Laws therefore recognize fully the distinction familiar in English
and Roman Law between injuria and damnum, but require an
independent remedy for both. On the other hand, two ‘ adverten-
cies ’ are spoken of, a person may do something for the benefit of
another, and harm result, or a person may try to save the life of
another, and yet by the very act cause his death. In either of
these cases there is to be no reparation, ‘ for with an intention of
good it was done, and not with an intention of harm.’ This isin
contrast to modern English Law, where motive in such cases is
disregarded, for the practical reason that it cannot be proved.
But it throws a light on the origin of liability, the test of which
is objective not subjective, and depends on the effect of the act
upon the victim. He is to receive by law what he would other-
wise attempt to take by self-help. The origin of obligation is
in the fact that there is something to be made up for, just as
to-day war is accompanied by a demand for reparation.
A distinct advance occurs when a person deliberately places
himself, by some transaction, in a position of such liability. It
has on this ground been supposed that contract originated in a
transaction where two parties were effecting an exchange, but in
which one party had not fulfilled his share. There was thus a dead-
lock, out of which there was no release but by performance. The
theory was that the same solemn ceremonial was used for convey-
ance and for contract. Even conveyance itself was only made
possible by a solemn proceeding in which one party claimed as his
own what belonged to the other, and the other made default.
Thus property was made to give way to alienation or transfer,
and an unfinished transfer to obligation. Early contracts were
therefore transactions, exchanges, deals, bargains, most familiarly
illustrated in sales, generally effected in the presence of others,
1 Book X, xvii, 13. 2 Ibid. 12.
46 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
or in open market. Such transactions would tend to be individual,
just as capture would be ; therefore we find that contract develops
in this sense at the expense of status ; all forms of status, family,
kindred, tribe and nation, are broken up by the demands of com-
merce ; the laws of economics play havoc with tribal and political
arrangements.
But the Welsh Laws show that contract is much older than
any such transactions. Probably the earliest form of voluntary
liability was religious, by the taking of an oath, or by the speaking
of solemn words as in the Roman stipulation. In early English
Law it was customary to enforce promises by seeking the religious
sanction of the spiritual courts. For example, in the laws of
Alfred, ‘ God-borg ’ is mentioned, ‘ A solemn pledge given under the
sanction of God,’ the appeal being to God instead of a human
surety, mennisc-borg; a transaction that would probably be
confined to persons of high standing and agreements of importance
like marriages and settlements. This contract is in the Welsh
Laws termed briduw, ‘if a person give his briduw to another, let
him either pay or deny it."1. The Welsh Law is, however, much
more exact in describing it. The difficulty was felt that such
a solemn vow would be liable to abuse. Therefore we find the
significant clause, ‘though it should be said to be a briduw, we
say it is not a briduw, unless the three hands meet ; and there is
no surety nor gorfodog unless the three hands shall meet.’? Three
parties must therefore take part, the two contracting parties
and a third to guarantee the performance,—an idea that goes to
the very root of all legal procedure. Consequently “the church
and the king are to enforce the briduw, for God has been taken
instead of a surety. Not every person could enter into such an
undertaking, but “from every person who has been baptised the
briduw is to be taken as well man as woman.?* The formality
in Welsh Law was therefore not so much the speaking of solemn
words, or the making of a formal deed or covenant, as the grasp-
ing of hands. The common formality of the hand-clasp is found
in all the Welsh forms of contract, briduw, amod, and mechniaeth
or suretyship, the oldest, perhaps, of them all. The parties meet,
and grasping hands, enter into their undertaking ; in a sale, the
property passed the moment the bargain was concluded by the
hand-grasp. Its origin perhaps is found in the customs relating
to marriage, or perhaps earlier still, in the fact that the hand is
1 Ven. evi, Ve 2 1bid. 3. 3 Ibid. 4.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 47
used in making a capture, or in holding fast that which has been
appropriated. In the earliest form of procedure before the
Praetor, both parties grasped the slave, animal or chattel by
their hands, and the proceedings were commenced by an order
to release the slave, pending the decision of the case. The
reference is perhaps to the use of weapons in war, in which case,
‘ mittite ambo hominem ’ would correspond to the order, ‘ lay down
your arms.’
The formality of contract by the taking or grasping of hands
is illustrated in marriage customs. Two forms cf marriage occur
prominently in early law. The older we may conveniently call by
the Roman term Coemptio, a sale of the woman to the man, prob-
ably descended from seizure by force, a custom of which there are
survivals in the wedding ring and other ceremonies of marriage.
In Cicero’s time this was the usual form of marriage in Rome,
and it was accompanied by manus, that is the wife passed from her
family into the power or ‘hand ’ of her husband. But there was
another form of marriage termed Usus, not so common or reput-
able in Rome because of the rigidity of patria potestas, but
common enough elsewhere. It was often termed ‘handfast ’
marriage, a survival of which is to be seen in the joining of hands,
and in the giving away of the bride by the representatives of her
kindred. In such a marriage the wife did not fall under the
manus of the husband, but acted rather as a free agent, and still
remained a member of her own kindred. There was a mutual
obligation of which the outward symbol was the clasping
of hands, as distinguished from seizure by force. Vinogradoff
points out + that in the York charters the term ‘wedded wife ’
alternates with ‘ handfast ’ wife, signifying “bound or tied by a
contractual pledge.’ It is fully described as observed in Wales
by Giraldus. No doubt in cases of abuse it would lead to irregular
marriages, for which indeed the Welsh Laws amply provide.
But it signifies the greater freedom of women in Wales as com-
pared with many other systems oflaw. ‘Every woman is to go the
way she willeth freely, for she is not to be home-returning ; and
nothing is due from her, except her amobyr, and only one amobyr.’?
Nor did the woman lose her freedom by marriage, ‘a woman ought
neither to buy nor sell without consent of the husband unless she
be married ; if she be married, however, she may buy and sell.’
This is in striking contrast to English Law, and is not in the least
1 Histor. Jurispr. 1, 247. 2 Ven. II, i, 55. 3 Ven. II, i, 60.
48 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
depreciated by the fact that it required the Statute of Rhuddlan
to give woman her dower. Freedom to contract was of the very
essence of this formal hand-contract. If the hand were laid
on the arm or shoulder instead of in the clasp of the other hand,
the act would constitute an insult or saraad ; it would have the
appearance of a manus injectio or seizure for debt, and would be a
denial of the other person’s honour. Similarly in the contract of
suretyship, the Dimetian Code provides !:
‘it is necessary in producing a person to become surety, that three
hands come together, the hand of the surety, the hand of the person
who shall give him as. surety, and the hand of the person who shall
accept him as surety, and thus mutually plighting of troth, from hand
to hand. If there be one hand wanting of these, in mutually plighting,
it is denominated a slip surety . . . the nature of a slip surety is that
one end is bound and the other loose.’ 3
It might happen, however, that further evidence of the genuine-
ness of the contract was required in the Welsh Laws. The con-
tract termed Amod deddfol, or simply Amod, was entered into by
the grasping of hands, and in the presence of witnesses, termed
Amodwyr. This was particularly requisite in mercantile con-
tracts, e.g. contracts of sale. The object of witnesses in such a
transaction was to prevent theft and to protect the purchaser of
stolen property. Sales were therefore conducted in ‘ port,’
-some secure place where the bargain could be completed openly.
It was the duty of the port-gerefa to witness such sales, exercising
the functions of the Curule Aedile. Therefore it is said in Ead-
weard’s Ordinances,?
‘T will that every man have his warrantor, and that no man buy out
of port, and if he buys out of port, then let him incur the king’s * ofer-
hiernes,” that is, the king’s penalty for insubordination.’
Hence the protection now awarded to sales in market overt.
Each of these witnesses took an oath,
‘that he never, neither for money nor for love nor for fear, will deny any
of those things of which he was a witness, nor declare any other thing
in witness save that alone which he saw or heard.’
If A, for example, were selling a horse to B, A would warrant.
the soundness of the horse, and B would afterwards take oath
before the same parties,
1 Dim. II, vi, 6, 7. 2 Ordinances, I, 1.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 49
“in the name of Almighty God thou didst engage to me sound and clean
that which thou soldest to me and full security after claim again, on the
witness of N and M who were then with us two.’
‘The witnesses were therefore an additional safeguard, for as it is
said,
‘if a person make a contract with another, without contract men being
present, only by mutually pledging of hands, and one of them be minded
to deny it, his own oath only is required to deny it.’
The real safeguard, however, was the provision of a surety—
indeed there are grounds for thinking that suretyship was itself
an independent contract and the earliest of all. The surety in
law took the place of the hostage in war, and the giving of hostages
was by no means confined to international dealings. In early
law there is the giving of security at every step. So the chief of
Welsh contracts is mechnz, in which the position of the surety was
entirely different from that of the witness in the amod deddfol.
For the witness was only a witness, but the surety was liable to
make good the deficiency of the debtor. Closely connected is the
custom of vouching to warranty or arddelw, the person vouching
or warrantor being sometimes termed arwaesaf, though sometimes
arwaesaf is the equivalent of guarantee. The Venedotian Code
contains the question, “Who will arddelw or arwaesaf this ?
which would mean, ‘Who will vouch for or guarantee this ? ’
The rules as to warranty might be very intricate. It is provided,
for instance? that
“a horse is to be warranted against three disorders: against the
staggers, for three dewfalls; against the black strangles, for three
moons ; and against the farcy, for one year; also as to restiveness,
until he shall be ridden three times, amidst a concourse of men and
horses.’
There can be no question that the laws of Wales reached a
very advanced stage on the subject of contract, not only contract
in general, but particular kinds of contract, such as cyfnewid
(sale or exchange), adnew (deposit), ll6g (leasing or hiring), benffyg
or echwyn (loan for use or loan for consumption). This may
have been due to the influence of growing commerce ; but it was
also due to the Church. No trace exists in Wales of the Roman
doctrine of causa; no difference is noted between nude pacta and
pacta vestita; if a contract can be proved it does not require
Ven. LL, win, 5: 2 Ven. III, ii, 37. 3-Ven. INL, iv, 13.
50 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
further to be clothed with actionability. Nor is there any trace of
the English doctrine of consideration ; the perusal of the Welsh
Laws indeed, suggests that the requirement of consideration may
not be quite so vital to the conception of contract, and may
represent but a transitional stage in English Law. In Wales, how-
ever, according to the words of the Dimetian Code,! ‘ Every cause
according to its contract ; it is not a contract without contract-
men, a contract is to be abjured like suretyship —that is, the
binding tie has to be released by a method equally binding. Again,
in the same Code,? ‘no one is to make a contract for another
without his permission ; since a contract only lasts during the
life of him who makes it.’ Here is the doctrine of privity of
contract, and the familiar actio personalis moritur cum persona.
So binding is the contractual tie, that ‘although a contract be
made in opposition to law, yet itis to be observed. ‘A con-
tract annuls a custom.* A contract is even ‘stronger than
justice.° A paragraph from the Dimetian Code® anticipates
several decisions in modern English Law, and goes far to prove
the maturity of Welsh Law in those mediaeval times:
‘“‘ Whoever shall break a contract and repent, and call for the contract
to be kept anew, he cannot by law ; for whoever discards a thing how-
ever binding, whether contract or other thing, has no claim to it after-
wards, for he broke the contract and discarded it; the person with
- whom the contract was broken may claim the contract, for he neither
broke the contract nor discarded it, and therefore he is to have the
contract back.’
The significance of this passage is that the Welsh Law had
progressed very far in the recognition of a contract as based on
consensus, a union of wills directed to a common purpose.
VII. THe Law or PROcEDURE
Of particular interest among the Welsh Laws are those which
deal with Procedure. No distinction is made between tort and
crime, between civil and criminal procedure, between a civil suit
and a criminal prosecution. Indeed compensation itself is re-
garded as penal, which it surely is, for no wrong can rightly be
the subject of compensation. In the Venedotian Code,’ there is
one passage which might lead one to think otherwise. .
1 Dim. III, vi, 4. a Dogo MUG, Wat, 55, 3 Ven, cel evan stale
4 Ven. II, viii, 10; Dim. III, vi, 7. 5 Dim. III, vi, 8.
6 Dim. III, vi, 10. “ Ven. III, ii, 42.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 51
‘ By the law of Howel, for theft to the value of fourpence, the thief is
saleable, and for a greater amount forfeits his life. Others say that for
every four-footed animal that is stolen, the thief forfeits his life, never-
theless it is safest to restrict it to fourpence. Seven pounds is the worth
of a thief whois to be sold. He who forfeits life is not to lose any of his
property, because both reparation and punishment are not to be
exacted, only payment of the property to the loser, and he is to pay the
loser because he ought not to leave a claim upon him unsatisfied. In
the law of Howel there was a payment for theft and a second payment ;
and then Bleddyn, son of Cynvyn, altered this rule, because it suffices
to pay a person for his loss according to his oath.’
‘Here are three elements, punishment by death, punishment by
compensation (to ward off vengeance), and mere reparation or
damages. ‘There is therefore a development in the law; in
English Law, both the punishment and reparation would apply,
the former at the hands of the State, the latter at the hands of the
victim, precedence in time being shown to the former. Recent
changes have tended to combine the remedies, a criminal may be
directed to make restoration of the property and his punishment
relaxed accordingly. The key to early procedure is the fact that
“every settlement of dispute in tribal surroundings was a treaty of
peace.’ The object was not the investigation of rights, but buy-
ing off vengeance. The conflict was not so much between indi-
viduals as between kindreds. A man’s ‘ people ’ were to be feared
as much as himself. The proceedings throughout were efforts
to check war, and the difficulties were those now felt in securing
international arbitration.
The earliest procedure of course is self-help. Even to-day it
forms the chief part of all our procedure, just as nine-tenths of the
law under which we live never comes to the notice of the courts
at all. One might almost say that resort to the courts is an
instance of the failure of the law, just as every infliction of punish-
ment is an instance of the failure of that punishment. Similarly
in international affairs, diplomacy is able to settle most disputes
without resort to war or to arbitration. There are traces of such
forms of self-help in the Welsh Laws. The most obvious is self-
defence. ‘If a person in the defence of himself or his property,
kill another or do saraad to him, he is not to make reparation if in
sincerity he can prove it to be true."! Anotheris the use of the
oath, called in the Welsh Laws llw gweilydd, literally the oath of
the sparer, by which a person spares another or lets him off.
1 Book XI, iu, 16.
52 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
It was offered in the presence of a cross and witnesses, and it is
specially provided that it is to be strictly extra-judicial. It is
not acharge, but in lieu of a charge. ‘Is a lawful charge proper
. for compelling the oath of an absolver? Itis not proper. If
there were a lawful charge there would be two oaths.’ And
they would be mutually contradictory. That such an oath is
not to be used as a form of stress is shown by the fact that it must
not be administered where the suspected person is at a dis-
advantage, for example, at the door of a church or a churchyard,
or on a bridge over a river made of only one tree.2,-_ Other forms of
self-help are the more familiar ones of pledge and suretyship to
abide law, and it is characteristic of Welsh Law that it relies more
on suretyship and less on material pledges than either the early
Roman or English Law. The very words ‘appeal,’ ‘ plaint,’
“hue and cry,’ ‘cry over the abyss,’ ‘ raith of country ’ belong to
procedure independent of the courts.
When an arbitrator is called in we have the beginning of a
trial ; though the word ‘trial’ is inappropriate to describe the
proceedings; the parties in fact try their own issue, they
“clear ’’ themselves or ‘acquit’ themselves or ‘absolve ’ them-
selves. The old word is not ‘trial’ but ‘ proof,’ purgatio or defensio.
With this * proof ’ the arbitrator has nothing to do ; he is there
merely to regulate the proceedings ; the proof is that required by
law, not by the court. The function of the judge at most is to
prepare the case for proof. The long-continued presence of judges
who, according to Gildas, had existed in Wales for centuries before
Hywel Dda, had regularized the procedure. That procedure, in
Welsh Law, was that the judge asked the lord to place the law
between the parties, as if it were a barrier to prevent fighting,
the case being thereafter conducted between them under the
guidance of the judge. In early Rome the procedure was then
the taking of an oath or sacramentum, a term which also came to be
applied to the oath-money or deposit made by the parties, which
was also a penalty to be paid by the loser in the suit. This sum
of money or wager was over and above the value of the thing in
dispute, and was intended to defray the cost of the proceedings
or to be a penalty from the litigant who was adjudged to be in the
wrong. ‘There was therefore a wager to abide the result of the
action. The function of the praetor would be to decide precisely
on what statement the sacramentum should be laid, and he would
1 Book XIV, xiii, 4. 2-Gwent, Il, xxxix, 34:
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 53
compel the parties to stake their cause upon that issue. In
Wales, however, surety in law is taken, which in cases of landed
property must be living persons. Silence in the field is called for,
the officers of the court take their places, each party is asked who
is his pleader and guider (cynghaws and canllaw), and whether
he will put to lose and to gain in their hands.! ‘ Then it is right
tor the judge to say to the plaintiff, “‘ State now thy cause,”’ and
then it is right for the plaintiff to begin pleading. The Laws
then proceed to outline the plaintiff's statement of claim,—the
defendant is not called upon till this has been done; the Welsh
apply the rule praesumitur pro negante.
It is at this stage that we should expect to find complaint wit-
nesses as distinguished from proof witnesses. There has been much
confusion between them, and perhaps early procedure was not very
clear on the point, notwithstanding its technicality. Complaint
witnesses would have nothing to do with the trial itself; they
belonged to the preliminary allegations, the pleadings, like the
profert of a deed on which an action was grounded.? It is clear
that the parties had to state with great exactness, and indeed at
their peril, how many witnesses they had, and who they were, or
that they had ‘enough to know.’ But was the complaint itself
required to be substantiated at the commencement by witnesses ?
Some indication of this is given in a passage from the Venedotian
‘Code 3:
‘If there be any who shall say it is necessary that guardians and
evidences be produced by the same party, we say that may be done
until the reply of the defendant shall be heard.’
This looks like a ruling on a point of controversy. It is the
nearest thing in the Welsh Law to the secta of early English Law,
in one of the meanings of that much-disputed term. It is said
to have been the office of the secia to support the plaintiff’s case
in advance of any answer from the defendant. The circumstances
might be so conclusive that trial would be refused. So the Welsh
Law provides that the defendant’s answer shall be nugatory till
he hear the claim. The exhibition of a wound, the production in
court of the mainour, or, later on, of a document, might require
no answer, being in itself ‘the best evidence.’ Perhaps the
same thing happened in Welsh as in English Law, and the
1 Ven.-1l, xi, 15. 2 Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence, 10.
3 Ven. Il, xi, 18.
54 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
complaint witness, if he ever existed, became a mere form ; the
witnesses not being further differentiated in this way after the
disappearance of the older modes of proof. In England the
secta, notwithstanding Magna Carta, soon became a formality
and degenerated into a fiction ; though for centuries the pleadings
still ran et inde produxit sectam.
The judgment in the case consisted in deciding which of the
parties was to have the benefit of proof, in other words which of
them was to be called upon to clear himself. As proof was one-
sided, this was a real privilege ; and though the proof might be a
perilous proceeding, as soon as it was decided who was to have it,
the case was really over. A party might clear himself in several
ways. ‘The earliest mode no doubt was by offering battle, once a
real battle, but later a proceeding whereby a person offered to
maintain the truth of what he had said by his body, claiming that
he could by the grace of God vanquish him who denied the state-
ment. If the latter refinement of a wager of battle did not exist
in Anglo-Saxon times, perhaps the reason was that much more
real and promiscuous fighting was common ; and no doubt that
was true at one time of Wales, for at least one passage in the Welsh
Laws shows it must have existed there.! If the king and his
officers were strong enough to persuade the combatants to aban-
don real fighting, they would be strong enough to substitute for it
something more satisfactory than a minor or simulated fight.
The second method, Ordeal, a direct appeal to Divine interposition
by the accused, to vindicate the truth of his own statement or
that of his witnesses, was common in England but not in Wales,
though there is one mention of three ordeals by the law of
Dyfnwal; it is mentioned, however, rather to be rejected than
approved.2 We may safely say that even in that dark age neither
battle nor ordeal was countenanced in Wales. The usual method
of proof in early times was by Oath, supplemented where neces-
sary by Oath-helpers. That these compurgators were not a jury is
sufficiently proved by the fact that the accused chose them himself,
and he might choose them from his own kinsmen ; he was indeed
supposed to do so, for the whole process was a survival of kindred
solidarity. Asin grave cases the oath-helpers were required to be
fifty or more, the area might be enlarged to include the remoter as
well as the nearer kin, and the accused was allowed to produce
them from both cymwds of the cantrev. So important for the
1 Book X, ii, 9. 2 Book XIV, xiii, 4.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 55
preservation of the peace was this feature of joint responsibility
that we find, in the Anglo-Saxon system, that if a man had no
kindred he must be given a group or association.
‘ The tithing was bound to produce the accused member, and if they
failed they paid ; they could make oath for him on his trial, and if they
failed herein they paid. ... Such assistance was not only socially
meritorious but economically correct.’ 1
Both in the Welsh and English Laws the rules are numerous
and complicated. They apply to the terms of the oath that must
be taken, which must be scrupulously observed, for ‘fail in a
syllable fail in your case’; rules apply also to the number of
compurgators, varying from three or four to six hundred ; to the
quality of the oath-helpers, for nod-men or men of mark, like
thegns, counted for more than ordinary men ; even to the form of
the denial, for, as the Welsh Law says,? there were three sorts of
denying ; a denial altogether in which the rath or compurgation
was fixed ; acknowledging part and denying the complete act,
when the fixed raith must be augmented, as in the case of acces-
sories to galanas; and denying part and acknowledging another
part without a criminal act ; for instance a surety would swear as
one of seven in denying a suretyship entirely, but he might swear
alone in denying a part. It is interesting to observe that the
word raith, which is similar to ‘right’ or ‘justice,’ has in the
Welsh Laws come to signify the method of proof by compurgation
itself, and the same thing is found in English Law. The medial
judgment, which directed the proof that must be given, was called
judicium or lex, and these terms came to be applied not only to the
judgment, but to the proof itself. As ordeal and battle gave way
to compurgation, when the defendant gave security to perform the
medial judgment, he was said to wage his law ; proof and law in
England, proof and rhaith in Wales, became synonymous.
There was, however, another and much more refined form of
one-sided proof which played a great part in the laws of Wales,
namely, proof by witnesses. There was nothing, of course, like the
modern law of evidence ; though advocacy was common, there was
no cross-examination; the statement on oath of the witnesses them-
selves decided the question ; the vital point was the fact that the
statement was made, not the fact that it was true ; it might be
challenged or attacked, but it was not sifted, its relevancy or
otherwise never came into question at all. Certain facts like the
1 Carter, Hist. of the English Courts, 4. 2 Dim. I, xxx, 4.
56 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
ownership of chattels, and certain transactions like sales of
goods, were particularly appropriate for this form of proof. Thus
resort to witnesses continually increased, and the more the law re-
quired witnesses for certain acts, the more they were relied on for
proof when necessary. The advanced character of the laws of
Wales is particularly marked in the reliance placed on this method
of proof—not trial—by witnesses, and in the exact differentiation
of the witnesses themselves. There was a class of witnesses whose
word was conclusive, not as being an irrebutable presumption, but
as not to be contradicted. For instance, a lord between his two
men, a father between his two sons, a judge as to his judgment, a
giver as to his gift, a contract-man as to the terms of a contract,
or even a thief at the gallows respecting his fellow-thieves. The
parties thus ‘ put themselves * on one man who knew the facts.
Under other names a similar type of witness is often found in
English Law. In the King’s Bench we find an early case ! where
the defendant asserted that the plaintiff assigned him to pay
money to the Earl of Oxford. The plaintiff denied this et se
de hoc ponit super ipsum comitem. ‘The defendant doing the same,
a writ was sent to the Earl who came and testified the assignment
was made, and this concluded the matter. There was a further
class of witnesses called guardians, ‘a guardian is one who main-
tains or guards the right of another person with his consent.?
They had limited functions, like an attesting witness, but they
were not to be contradicted by evidences or witnesses in the
ordinary sense. ‘These terms, ‘evidences’ and ‘witnesses,’ are
translations of ‘ gwybyddiad ’ and ‘ tyst.’ The word * evidences ’
is found in early English Law to describe charters, records and
writings exhibited to the jury ; but the same term might be used
of any means taken to ‘inform’ the jury. The term ‘ gwybyd-
diad ’ in fact corresponds much more closely than any other to the
modern ‘ witness,’ for he is the man who knows, who can testify
to a fact in issue because he has seen it, or has first-hand knowledge
of it. But the tyst, as distinguished from gwybyddiad, is literally
one who attests or supports the genuineness of another fact.
The gwybyddiad seems to be the original source of information,
while the tyst adds the necessary mark of genuineness to what is
already before the court. Therefore it is said ‘evidences are
stronger than witnesses ; for many “evidences ” may be brought
1 Carter, Hist. of the English Courts, 139.
2 Dim. II, viii, 106.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 57
as to one thing, whereas there can only be two witnesses.’! This,
in itself, is clear proof that this kind of witness is a testifier or
attestator or supporting witness, and not one speaking from
original knowledge of the facts in issue in the case. Moreover, a
person may be subjected to a fine or sold, through evidences, but
not through witnesses; while, again, evidences can prove in
opposition to a denial or defence, which is not true of a witness.’
The Welsh Laws seem to have proceeded very far in this reliance
on witnesses, in the larger sense of the term, in preference to mere
strings of oath-helpers. Is it possible to go farther and say that
these proof-witnesses mark the transition to the system of trial
by jury? It would not be difficult to imagine sucha transition.
It was a custom over a long period in England to summon wit-
nesses to deeds along with the jury proper, who were themselves
originally persons who spoke of their own knowledge. In fact
Brunner records that in some cases the old proof by witnesses
was transformed at the hands of the royal power into an
inquisition,’ the witnesses being selected by a public authority,
as they were on the ordinary jury. It is worth inquiring whether
the Welsh Laws have any contribution to make to the origin,
history or development of the jury. It has been confidently
stated that trial by jury existed in Wales long before it did in
England. The truth seems to be that the word ‘jury’ has
been used to describe very different processes. There was at
~ Rome under the formulary system a marked distinction between
proceedings in jure, to define the issue, and in judzcio, to settle the
question of right. Either a single judge or a number of judges
obtained from the praetor an oral summary of the pleadings, and
later the same procedure was as the result of treaty extended to
foreigners, under the name recuperatio ; the referees being three
or five recuperatores. Such a process was adopted in the interest
of foreigners in order to avoid the denial of justice to them,
‘which, incidentally, might give rise to diplomatic complications ’;
on this ground the right was sometimes stipulated for by treaty.
Thus trial by jurors was substituted for trial by one juror, and
the sentence was determined by a majority of votes. In the
centumvirt or decemviri ltibus judicandis or recuperatores, some
writers profess to discover the germ of the jury system. But
1 Dim. Ii, viii, 86. 2 Dim. II, viii, 87.
3 Thayer, Treatise on Evidence, 19.
4Strachan Davidson, Problems of the Roman Criminal Law, I, 213.
58 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
their function does not appear to have been a jury function con-
fined to a question of fact in the modern sense. On the other
hand, the jury in Normandy and in England is said to have been
merely an application of the Carlovingian system! termed
imquisitio, employed in the king’s interests or by a royal officer,
who would order that a group of men be sworn to declare what
lands or what rights he had or onght to have in their district.
He, the king or royal officer, assumed to himself the privilege of
ascertaining his own rights by means of an inquest. It was
therefore not a popular but a royal proceeding. Another view
is worthy of consideration,? that trial by jury originated in the
embarrassment experienced by the itinerant justices of England
in doing without the ordeals, which the Lateran Council had
prohibited. Twelve of the neighbours of the accused were
assembled to declare the truth about the matter, their verdict
being regarded as equivalent to the judgment of God.? Accord-
ing to this view, the ordeals and the jury were the equivalent of
each other, since ‘a presumption of oracular infallibility was
attached to the verdict, the grounds of which were not stated.
The verdict is a “‘constat ”’ of fact, not a judgment properly
speaking.’* But nothing corresponding to this can be discovered
among the Anglo-Saxons. The nearest analogy is a law of
Kthelred® that
‘a court shall be held in every wapentake, and the twelve leading thegns
along with the reeve shall go out and swear on the relics which are given
into their hands, that they will not accuse any innocent man or shield.
any guilty man.’
This is, however, a jury of accusation, not a jury of trial, rather
resembling the Scandinavian jury found in the oldest Norwegian
and Icelandic codes,® altogether different in character and func-
tions from the recognitors employed by the Frankish kings. Yet
even Maitland’ seems unwilling to admit there is no trace of this
particular royal proceeding in any of the British Laws or customs.
However, a passage existsin the Fourteenth Book 8 of the Welsh
1Esmein, Continental Criminal Procedure, II, ii, ch. I.
2 Hubert Lewis, Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales.
3 Tarde, Penal Philosophy, 437-9.
4Esmein, Continental Criminal Procedure, App. B.
° Ethelred’s Laws, III, 3, 1, ed. Robertson.
6 Repp, Trial by Jury in Scandinavia, 9.
* Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Eng. Law, I, 122.
8 Book XIV, xiii, 4.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 59
Laws, which containsa hint of the inquest by sworn recognitors,
of its adoption by a royal officer, and of its manifest superiority to
the older forms of proof.
‘There were three ordeals by the law of Dyvnwal, for theft or
galanas or treason to a lord ; the hot iron; second, the boiling water,
by putting the limb that did the deed therein ; the third was combat
to such as should demand it lawfully ; and there would be no punish-
ment for the one who might overcome in the combat, that was instead
of proof ; and so in amending the laws Howell the Good and his judges
observed that that was not just ; so they established proof by men, for
combat they did not commend, and proof of deed willed, where that
might be appropriate, and raiths for reputed acts, and conceded to
every body his denial, until it should fail him, and guardians, and
arddelw for thefts in hand ; nor when they might fail, that his defence
should fail to the person ; and in addition to that, the justice of the
country (gwir gwiat) enlightening others ; and as to claims of a lord
in particular ; since it is not pertinent for a lord either to swear on a
relic, in prosecuting, or to swear on a relic, in swearing to property,
or to swear in proving before evidences.’
We have in this passage some reference to (1) a proceeding
which was appropriate to the claim of a lord, (2) adopted as an
alternative and preferable to the method of proof by compurga-
tion, (3) which was considered specially appropriate in ‘ swearing
to property. When we consider the history of the jury in
England, we find ‘it spreads outwards from the king ; it is an
assize, an institution established by ordinance.’ It is entirely
in keeping with the spirit of Hywel’s administration, the gradual
encroachment of the lord’s court on the rights of the kindred and
the jurisdiction of the doomsmen. As the popular courts ‘found
the dooms,’ the jury are to ‘find the truth ’ veritatem dicere, about
certain matters. And it was in trying claims to land that the
jury of sworn recognitors was first used, especially the claims of
the Church in collision with the State, when it would be natural
for the Welsh Laws to safeguard the claims of the king. Both
under the Grand Assize and the Assize of Novel Disseisin the
recognitors were sworn to found their verdict upon their own
knowledge, ‘per proprium visum suum et auditum’ as Glanvil
says. Gradually jurors change from being witnesses into judges
of facts ; questions are being submitted to the twelve which they
cannot possibly answer if they may speak only of what they have
seen with their own eyes. It becomes their duty to inquire about
facts before coming to Court. The system of ‘ afforcement ’ aids
A.S.—VOL. X. E
60 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
in the change, until the jury are at last completely severed from
the witnesses. But their judgment is not of law, but of the truth
of the matter. So Bracton says, ‘de veritate discutiant (juratores)
et judicent.’ Moreover, the jury are subject in case of perjury and
mistake in general verdicts to the process of attaint, already
familiar to Welsh Law. The system was extended from fiscal
purposes to private disputes about land and then to the trial of
persons accused of crime. The latter were asked whether they
would put themselves on the country, that is, a second jury was
chosen from the neighbours present ; there was a marked distinc-
tion between the jury of presentment and the jury of deliverance,
and no member of the former could be put on the latter if the
accused objected. Whether these stages of development were
realized or not, the transition to some kind of jury to inquire
into the facts seems to have been known in Wales.
According to one statement,+ when Llywelyn ab lorwerth did
homage to King John it was agreed that if any complaint should
be made respecting any of Llywelyn’s possessions he should
first decide whether to try the cause by the law of England, or
the law of Wales.
‘If he determined to rely on Welsh Law, it was first to be settled
whether Llywelyn could have a court or not ; and if he could not, the
king promised to choose discreet men out of those he could trust, and
to send them into Llywelyn’s land, in whose presence the cause should
be tried by Welshmen selected for the purpose, from districts not
interested in the result, and their decision was to be received as law,’
a regulation which is stated by the commentator to be in
effect a trial by jury.
However that may be, it is much more relevant to our purpose
to rely on the fourteenth clause of the Statute of Rhuddlan :
‘Whereas the people of Wales have besought us that we would
grant unto them, that concerning their possessions immovable, as
lands and tenements, the truth may be tried by good and lawful men
of the neighbourhood, chosen by consent of parties.’
The wording of this clause exactly corresponds to the function
of the jury, veriiatem dicere. The difficulty is caused by the last
words, for a jury ought not to be the choice of the parties at all ;
the clause however only states that they are to be chosen with the
parties’ consent, as if they were asked to put themselves on the
1 Woodward, Hist. of Wales, 345.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 61
country ; no jury was forced upon the parties. The statement,
therefore, seems to imply that what the lord had found useful in
trying his own claims, was being adopted more generally in ques-
tions relating to ‘ possessions immovable, as lands and tenements.’
The clause goes on to say, as to things movable,
“they may use the Welsh Law, which was this, that if a man complain
of another upon contracts or things done in such a place that the
plaintiff’s case may be proved by those who saw and heard it . . . that
in other cases which cannot be proved by persons who saw and heard,
the defendant should be put to his purgation.’
The latter clause, perhaps, does not refer to the jury but to the
proof by witnesses, since compurgation would not have been
advisable as an alternative to a real trial by jury. At the end of
this clause, an exception is made of ‘ thefts, larcencies, burnings,
murders, manslaughters and manifest and notorious robberies,’
no doubt because these were being reserved for the king’s courts
in which it was essential there should be uniformity of procedure
throughout the country. That the transition to a jury trial
might have occurred naturally in Wales is further shown by the
fact that the word rhaith, originally used for the ancient mode
of proof, continued to be applied to the jury—still known as
rheithwyr.
VIII. CONCLUSION
There may be some ground, therefore, for saying, as many
writers have said, that the influence of Wales on English Law
is greater than has been generally acknowledged. ‘These laws
of Wales,’ says Professor Maitland,! ‘form a legal literature of
very great interest which is crying aloud for a competent
expositor.’ To any unprejudiced inquirer they will seem quite
modern by the side of the Brehon Law, the Sachsenspiegel and
other codes of law. Their clearness, terseness, practical efficiency
and freedom from legendary and irrelevant matter will commend
them at once. Their real merits have been obscured by the
character of the legislation relating to Wales since the Statute
of Rhuddlan. The Statute of the great Plantagenet seems
friendly in spirit. In its preamble the king gratefully records
that the relationship between himself and the land of Wales is
now personal rather than territorial. And, further, the law
enacts, ; 7
1 Maitland, Collected Works, II, 80, n. 1.
62 THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA
‘Whereas the custom is otherwise in Wales than in England con-
cerning succession to an inheritance . . . our Lord the King will not
have that custom abrogated, but willeth that inheritance shall remain
partible among like heirs as it was wont to be,’
though he goes on to provide that in certain events women may
have a share in the inheritance, ‘ although this be contrary to the
custom of Wales before used.’ But this notwithstanding, one
may search in vain through the 142 Acts of Parliament, so
conveniently gathered together, in The Statutes of Wales,1 for
any guide to the real value of the old Welsh Laws. Yet it is
within the knowledge of anyone who has given thought to the
matter, that some of the features of the Code of Hywel Dda and
his successors are now incorporated in the modern English Law.
Among them are the supremacy of the rule of law itself; the
high degree of personal freedom; the unimportance of dis-
tinctions based on wealth ; constitutional monarchy, of older
growth in Wales than Norman England; the breakdown of
the feudal system in favour of the right of the inhabitants to the
occupation and use of the land; the absence of distinction be-
tween realty and personalty; the change from a system of
primogeniture to an equal division of land; the absence of
conflict between the ecclesiastical and common law courts ; and
the early adoption of proof by witnesses and trial by jury
in place of the ordeal and wager of battle. No doubt if the
old Proof Books of Welsh Law could have been published
they would resemble and anticipate much that is in the noted
Year Books. And certainly no codification or consolidation
attempted in the United Kingdom has equalled in scope and
comprehensiveness the Code of Hywel Dda. No one, of course,
suggests that the Roman Corpus Juris, the Welsh Code and
the scattered Anglo-Saxon Codes can really and adequately be
compared ; it would be like comparing a world-capital city, a
mediaeval town, and a small, though picturesque, village. But
from the very contrast between them, something may be learned.
The reason for studying Roman Law, said Viscount Bryce,? is
not that it is like, but that it is unlike English Law.
For a country may survive through its law when its political
institutions have perished or been abandoned. Thus Roman
Law survived the fall of Rome and the Roman State; not only
1The Statutes of Wales, ed. by Judge Ivor Bowen.
2 Report of Commission on the University of London.
THE LAWS OF HYWEL DDA 63
survived, but witnessed a brilliant revival, and even retained its
vitality to the present day ; as Vinogradoff says,
‘Within the whole range of history there is no more momentous and
puzzling problem than that connected with the fate of Roman Law
after the downfall of the Roman State.’ 1
Similarly the English Common Law is the real bond that unites
all English-speaking people, whatever their political or national
differences, whatever may be the fate of their governments. Is
it too much to claim that the real merit of Hywel Dda is that he
gave expression to the law-abiding instinct of the Welsh people,
and their constructive skill in appealing to right instead of force @
Have not all these systems some common aim or purpose? By
the action and interaction of one system on another, the law itself
is rendered more exact, more serviceable. And since all law in
the last resort is but the demand of the higher upon the lower,
none of these systems can be final, but in the conflict between
them, the higher law has a better chance.
Mey, LoL
1 Roman Law in Mediaeval Hurope, 2.
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
(NotE.—This sketch contains little that is new or which has not been
dealt with, much more fully, in the writer’s book on Welsh Tribal Law
and Custom. The sole object of it is to give a summary bird’s eye view
of the main features of the impact of the clans and of the unfree popula-
tion upon the land in old Wales.)
§ 1. The material which is available in regard to the land
in the old Welsh legal system is, comparatively speaking, of a
recent period.
The laws of Hywel Dda (circa a.p. 940) proceed on the same
assumption that all laws proceed upon, namely that those for
whom the laws were passed were familiar with the social structure
under which they lived. Legislators, in legislating, have not in
view any intention of describing, for the benefit of future genera-
tions, the exact nature of their own contemporary social insti-
tutions. Consequently, we must not look in the ancient laws for
any cut and dried statement of a social polity. What the social
polity was can only be reconstructed by a process of synthesis
of such material as there is both in the laws and outside them.
The main source of our knowledge of any land organisation
in ancient days, or in any society whose economy rests upon
land, in the absence of enunciations in legal decisions or com-
mentaries, is the body of land-revenue records which may have
survived ; records, that is to say, which are concerned with the
dues on or duties from the occupiers of the land. It is there,
and there only, that it is possible to find the intimate details
from which the comity of a people in its association with the
land can be reconstructed.
Legislation, codes, statutes and the like only become intel-
ligible when we are saturated with the information that land
records are capable of affording.
In addition, to ascertain the full bearing of the land-revenue
records of any society, it is expedient to be acquainted with
similar social organisms, dead or living, in the same state of
comparative civilisation, for it is often only possible to tread
in safety by the application of the comparative method.
695
66 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
§ 2. England is extremely fortunate in possessing Domesday
Book, and such invaluable records as the manorial rolls. It is
fortunate also in possessing a series of legal commentaries dating
from early times, and also many references in contemporary
literature to the land. ‘These throw light on and explain legisla-
tion like the land legislation of Edward I, which, without their
aid, would often remain a closed book for us to-day.
The material available for a study of the land in early Wales
is of a peculiar nature. it is not as voluminous as the records
of Domesday and manorial rolls; but, nevertheless, it is of a
very high value, and, from one point of view, of higher value
than any other survivals.
Welsh contemporary literature, strange to say, contains little
reference to the land. The Mabinogion, for instance, are full of
minute information regarding the law on many subjects of
importance, but they contain no references to the land.
Writers like Gildas, Nennius, Giraldus Cambrensis and
Geoffrey of Monmouth give us little, if any, information. The
laws of Hywel Dda contain much ; but, if they stood alone, it
would be difficult to reconstruct from them the old comity.
Even the Statue of Rhuddlan is strangely silent.
But in the Norman-Welsh records of land survey we possess
in Wales a series of documents the like of which no other country
possesses. The principal documents already published are the
Survey of Denbigh, the Record of Caernarvon, the Black Book of
St. David's, the Extent of Merioneth, 1285 (°), and the First
Extent of Bromfield and Yale, 1315 (1).1 There are many docu-
ments still unpublished in the Record Office, notably the Extent
of the Lordship of Ruthin, and in the National Library of Wales,
notably the later extents of Bromfield in Peniarth MS. 12.
These can be supplemented by such documents as the Minis-
ters’ Accounts, etc. |
§ 3. In attempting to understand the Welsh land organisa-
tion, it is essential to bear in mind the geographical configuration
of the land ; for it is the geography of the land that caused the
Welsh land organisation to differ so largely from the English
one. Instead of a country like England of more or less uniform
flat and fat lands, Wales is essentially a land of rugged mountains,
with only occasional pockets of culturable land in valleys like
1 For references see pp. 90 ff.
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 67
the Vale of Clwyd or with isolated plots, scattered about, here
and there, among the mountains.
Glamorgan, between the northern hills and Severn swamps,
has a belt of land similar to English land in character, and there,
with the coming of the Normans, the land system was approxi-
mated to that of England.
But, speaking broadly, the Welsh country-side is far more
adapted to pastoral than to agricultural pursuits. Even to-day,
in the shire of Merioneth, for example, out of 422,372 acres only
some 14,000 are capable (2), at any time, of cultivation for
cereals, and, in olden days, the disparity was very much greater.
This factor had an important bearing on the land organisa-
tion; for pastoral pursuits, especially the breeding of sheep,
implies the continuance of a migratory habit, and explains, to
a large extent, that peculiar characteristic of Wales which I
have described elsewhere as the ‘ interlaced land occupation of
the clans.’ It also explains the permanence in ancient Wales
of the clan basis of society and the preponderance of the ‘ free ’
element over the ‘unfree’; for it is agriculture, not pastoral
pursuits, that have always made for serfdom.
§ 4. It is not intended here to depict the working of the clan
system, under which some 75 per cent. of the old Welsh popula-
tion lived, in any detail ; but, in order to understand the organi-
sation of the land, a rough idea of what the clan system was is
necessary.
All our early documents portray to us that society in Wales
(exclusive of the small ‘ unfree ’ section to which we shall come
later) consisted of a number of groups of ‘free’ men, variously
called ‘ cenhedloedd,’ ‘ gwelyau,’ ‘ progenies,’ ‘ wyrion’ (3), who
traced their descent, or. professed to trace their descent, from a
common ancestor, generally, if not invariably, agnatically.
Such groups, and not individuals, formed the units of society (4).
They were under the rule of a clan-chief, or ‘ pencenedl’; and
they were banded together, by means of a real or assumed tie
of kinship, for mutual protection, support and the like.
The land, which was in the occupation of such groups, was
looked upon as occupied by the clan-group as a whole.
_ Ordinarily speaking, we would expect to find that the clan
area of a particular clan formed a solid block of contiguous
territory ; but, as a matter of fact, we find that the contrary
is the general, though not exclusive, rule in Wales. For example,
68 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
we find that the members of one clan, i.e. Edred ap Marchudd,
in North Wales occupied a considerable area in Abergele, Llwyd-
coed (near Colwyn) and Bettws-y-coed and in several other
widely scattered ‘ villes’ (5); while the intervening areas were
occupied, in a similar scattered fashion, by a number of other
eroups. This is what is meant by the interlaced clan occupation
of land.’
One of the reasons for this appears to be the necessity of
having diversified pasture land for sheep and also diversified
areas for hunting and fishing. Anyone living in a mountain
pasture land knows how essential it is for sheep to be moved,
according to season, from one type of pasture land to another
of a totally different kind. Even to-day, it is common enough
to find that the sheep of the Cader Range are moved, at appro-
priate seasons, as far afield as the sea-border lands of Ardudwy
and even into the Lleyn peninsula.
A social unit, a clan, therefore, in Wales is found in occupa-
tion, in historic times, of areas widely separated the one from
the other. The totality of such land, wherever situated, was.
spoken of as the clan land, the ‘tir gwelyog’ (6), which, from
another point of view, is coincident with the term ‘ ancestral
land.’
In the whole of this scattered clan area each member of the
_ clan had equal rights, estimated, however, in historic times * per
stirpes ’ and not ‘ per capita’ (7). These rights, though nowhere
expressly defined, are quite easy to understand, if we divest
ourselves of modern ideas of ‘ property.’
There was no conception of ‘ ownership ’ in the modern sense
of the word. The fundamental conception was that land, of
which there was plenty for everyone, was, like air and water,
free for everyone to ‘ use ’—to ‘ use,’ not to ‘ own.’
But just as everybody was at liberty to appropriate certain.
volumes of the common water and air to his own use, so it was
recognised that everybody was at liberty to appropriate some:
portions of the clan area to his own use, at least temporarily.
As time advanced, and the habit—due to a multiplicity of causes.
—grew of confining migration to more restricted limits, the ques-
tion arose as to how it was possible to extend the temporary
appropriation of landfor the sole user of a unit into a permanent
appropriation. The question was solved by the common solu-
tion, which we find running through much of early law. Per-
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 69
manent appropriation, the right of exclusive user, was recognised
as valid if there were clear indications of an intention to appro-
priate to exclusive user. In the Welsh law of land, this found
expression in the rule of ‘ priodolder’ (8), which was in full
swing at the earliest stage of our historical knowledge.
The rule of ‘ priodolder ’’ was simply this. If an area of land
were occupied continuously by any unit for four successive
generations, that was conclusive evidence that such unit intended
to occupy that area permanently ; and the expression of the
intention in that way gave the occupiers a right to the exclusive
user of the area so occupied. This right to appropriate sections
of the clan area for exclusive use was always limited by the rule
that no one could appropriate to such an extent as to deprive
all co-sharers in the clan from being able to appropriate to them-
selves an area alike in size and in quality proportionate to their
own fractional interests (9).
Exclusive appropriation was in fact simply an effective asser-
tion of the mode in which a man or group proposed to exercise
the right he had.
It was not a right of ‘ownership,’ but simply a right to
exclusive user, which could be lost in much the same way as it
could be acquired. ‘To the mode of loss of such rights we shall
return in a short while.
This rule of priodolder applied not only to the demarcation
of areas of what we may call ‘spheres of influence’ as between
clan and clan, but also to areas and plots permanently occupied
by units within the clay as against other units therein.
§ 5. Here it becomes necessary to explain that a clan was
always liable to disruption into sub-clans, which tended to grow
in time into separate clans. For this there were many reasons,
but it is sufficient to mention one. The tie binding a clan
together was, as already stated, the sense of kinship. Now the
sense of kinship, involving duties between kinsmen, is always
liable to become weakened (a) whenever the number sharing the
tie grows to a large, and, therefore, unwieldy, number, and (6)
as the common ancestor becomes more and more remote as each
generation passes away. In such cases, there is an invariable
tendency for smaller groups within the major to grow up; and,
the sense of kinship being strong, such smaller groups are formed
with their bond of union in a less remote common ancestor than
the one who has hitherto been the common ancestor of all.
70 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
That is exactly what the historical evidence shows happened
in Wales. Groups within the larger group were formed, and
these groups, in course of time, earmarked, for their own exclusive
occupation, parts of the general clan-area by means of the opera-
tion of ‘ priodolder,’ such land becoming ‘tir gwelyog ’ quad the
smaller group as well as ‘ tir gwelyog’ quad the whole clan (10).
The process went further. If the geographical characteris-
tics of Wales are borne in mind, it is clear that there are few
areas where it is possible for a group of, say, 200 people to find
land for cultivation, even as a subsidiary occupation ; and it
will be found, on examination of our land-records that where,
in a ville, there was a good block of culturable land, that ville
was, aS a rule, a serf ville (11).
What happened? Smaller groups still, even individuals,
discovered scattered plots in the general clan-area, which could
be cultivated by them. They broke up the soil, continued to
cultivate it for four generations, and thereby acquired a per-
manent right to exclusive occupation (12). Such land became
again ‘ tir gwelyog ’ of the section of the clan which occupied it.
Throughout, however, the ultimate right in the land belonged
to the clan as a whole, except where, by partition, the clan interest
had been extinguished, in which case the ultimate right passed
to the King, as representative of the community ; and reversion
of any area, whether on abandonment or on the extinction of
a group which had acquired exclusive occupation rights therein,
was to the clan body as a whole, subject always to the right
of anyone within four degrees of relationship to the last on
to claim the right of occupancy (13).
§ 6. Here we may consider the rule as to loss of rights, once
acquired, by abandonment. The rule was that if a group left
land, over which occupation rights had been acquired, those
rights were not extinguished at once. The land vacated became
available immediately for anyone of the clan-group to occupy,
and if the new occupiers continued to occupy for four generations
without interruption, they, in their turn, acquired priodolder
rights therein. But the rights of the prior occupants, though
not exercised, continued to survive, until there was evidence
that their intention to abandon was a permanent intention ;
and the law said that that was established by a continued aban-
donment for four generations, or if absent from the ‘ patria,’
for nine generations, and not until then. In the meantime, it
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 71
was perfectly possible for anyone of the abandoning group to
return and claim the right to readmittance against anyone who
had taken possession (14). As has been pointed out in the
writer’s book on ‘ Welsh Tribal Law and Custom’ (15), it became
possible, under this law, for two groups or individuals, one in
possession and one out, to have exclusive rights of occupation
over the same plot of ground ; and how this apparent dilemma
was solved is explained in that work. The solution indicates
that remarkable capacity for equity which the old Welsh Law
possessed.
§ 7. What has been written above gives a general idea of the
legal conception of rights in ‘tir gwelyog.’ They were rights,
not of ownership, but of ‘ occupation and use,’ which could ripen,
through prescription, into rights of exclusive occupation and use.
But, even in the laws of Hywel Dda, we find a few traces of
the idea coming into existence that the ‘brenhin’ was the
‘owner’ of the land (16). Later on, with the development of
feudal ideas, this conception hardened, and gave rise, in the
revenue records, to what we find no trace of in the Codes, as
apart from the Anomalous Laws, the idea of escheat to the King
as the ‘fount of origin.’ To the position of the King, however,
in connection with the land we shall return later.
§ 8. We have seen, so far, the general outline of the land
organism of the free, that is to say the theory of the rights of
members of a clan in clan-areas.
But who formed the clan? This question need not be
answered here, except in relation to rights of occupation. It is
perfectly clear that, in the strict eyes of the law, no son had any
rights save what he could claim through the channel of his father.
Whatever rights he had were inchoate during his father’s life,
and for their materialisation he had to wait until the death of
his father (17). A son, in the lifetime of his father, could claim
no right to separate occupation of clan-lands ; but, in practice,
in the later Surveys, we find occasional, though rare, instances
of a son being shown as a member of a gwely along with his
father. This may indicate that a married son did occasionally
occupy otherwise unoccupied lands, but it was exceptional and
opposed to strict legal theory.
The clansmen’s right in ‘ tir gwelyog’ vested—in so far as
we may use the word ‘ vested’ at all—in the oldest generation
alive. But such person was in no sense ‘ absolute owner,’ capable
72 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
of disposing at will of the interests of himself and those who
were to come after. The generation possessing rights of occu-
pation exercised those rights only for life. They were, in fact,
trustees for their successors, and their power of alienation was
limited (18).
Permanent alienation by a person holding rights in land was
permissible only in the case of ‘ legal necessity,’ or with consent
of all relatives within four generations. ‘The Venedotian Code
limits ‘legal necessity ’ to the case where the full amount of
‘galanas,’ ‘ wergild,’ could not be raised other than by sale of
‘tir gwelyog,’ and expressly asserts that it was allowed in that
case only because a benefit, viz., the avoidance of a blood-fued,
was being bought for all (19). Later on, however, the sphere
of ‘legal necessity ’ seems to have been slightly widened (20).
Temporary alienation, in the way of mortgage, was almost as
restricted, and definite periods were placed on the duration of
leases (21). :
When a holder of ‘ tir gwelyog ’ died all his sons ‘ ascended ’
to his ‘ persona ’ and his rights, including rights in land, in equal
shares (22). There were in later times some limitations on the
right of an illegitimate son; but to discuss the status of an
illegitimate son would only confuse matters, and involve a con-
sideration of what, in fact, illegitimacy consisted in.
It has been commonly asserted by Seebohm (23), and his
followers that when a whole generation in a group died out, then
the whole land of that group was brought into hotchpot and
divided equally among all the members of the next generation.
For that proposition I can find no warrant, either in the Laws or
the land-surveys of the fourteenth century. The evidence to the
contrary is overwhelming and without exception.
We are entirely without evidence of any extensive partition
of clan-areas by metes and bounds; the whole evidence shows
that the so-called ‘ partition ’ of clan areas was expressed simply
in fractional shares (possibly for the convenience of revenue
collection as much as anything else) and those fractional shares
are invariably calculated ‘per stirpes’ and not ‘ per capita’ (24).
The Laws do contain certain rules as regards partition
proper, but those rules appear to be confined to what is called
‘tref tadawg,’ that is to say, only to such portions of the clan-
area as an individual died in exclusive occupation of, and not
his general rights in other portions of the clan-area. The rules
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 73
also are optional. Even here, though, the land, if divided at
ail, was divided equally among sons, grandsons and _ great-
erandsons had no right to participate equally. They succeeded
to their own fathers ‘ per capita’; but the right was reserved
to them, up to the fourth generation, of objecting that the par-
tition among the sons of the original holder of the ‘ tref tadawg ’
had not been equitable; and in that case, if their claim were
well founded, there was a redistribution by stock, designed
simply to readjust a previous inequitable distribution.
Such, at least, is how I read the provisions of the law, which
seem to me unintelligible on any other hypothesis (25).
Jt is true that there are instances of tribal communities in
which a custom prevails of periodical division of land according
to the number of ‘ mouths’ in the tribe; but such instances as
I have had an opportunity of observing portray a very different
structure to what prevailed in Wales in historic times. Such
societies frequently give, logically enough, a share to females ;
they are strictly endogamous as a rule; and cultivate, in the
main, on the strip system (26). These were not characteristics
of the historic Welsh clan, and they afford little help for the
interpretation of the rules found in the Welsh laws. In the
west the periodical division of land, according to * mouths ’ is,
I think, rare; and must not be confused with the system of
division such as existed among serf communities like, e.g. the
trefgefery aillts of Wales.
The Welsh survivals give no proof of such a custom among
the free. /
§ 9. From the outlines of succession and partition we may
turn, for a moment, to the recognised land-suits in Welsh law,
for they throw light upon the land organism.
The most important was the suit of ‘ priodolder,’ of which
there were two kinds, ‘ach ac _ edryf,’ and ‘ priodolder ’
proper.
In the first-mentioned, a person, refused participation in the
enjoyment of ‘tir gwelyog,’ sued persons related to himself on
the ground of descent from a common ancestor ; in the second,
a person, claiming priodolder rights over land, but out of posses-
sion, sued others, not related to him, in possession..
Both of these suits were applicable where the plaintiff or
his ancestors had abandoned rights of occupation for the time
being (27).
74 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
In the suit of “ymwrthyn’ the plaintiff sued to eject an
alleged trespasser on a portion of his holding (28).
In the remarkable case of ‘ dadanhudd ’ (of which there were
three varieties) the plaintiff, out of possession, sued for recovery
of possession on the sole ground that his father had been in
possession at the time of his death. No question of title was
ordinarily entered into. ‘The sole issue was whether the father
had or had not been in possession at the time of his death. If
so, the plaintiff was granted specific relief, by way of possession
to enable him ‘to uncover his father’s hearth,’ and the question
of title of the dead father was left for decision in a later instituted
suit (29).
The procedure in the suit of ‘rhan’ or partition corroborates
in detail what has been said above; and it appears to have
been limited to areas of ‘ tref tadawg,’ and was inapplicable to
clan-areas (30).
The suit of “mamwys’ illustrates the agnatic ascension to
land (31).
There are different opinions as to the philological origin of
the word ‘mamwys’; but the most elementary knowledge of
early law appears to prevent the acceptation of the theory that
it is connected with ‘adoption.’ Adoption, in its proper sense,
was entirely unknown, in historic times, among the Teutonic
and Celtic tribes. On the other hand the ‘ right through mater-
nity ’ is a well-known feature of early law. In Welsh Law, it
was confined to the case where a woman was given in marriage
by her kin to a person who was not a ‘clansman,’ and had,
therefore, no ‘tir gwelyog’ to which her issue could ascend.
In such cases the issue was entitled to claim, by virtue of his
maternity, a share in the ‘ tir gwelyog’ of his mother’s kinsmen,
who had failed in their duty towards her. The remarkable
feature, however, is that, in such cases, he participated, not as
a son of his mother, but as a son of his maternal grandfather.
The mother simply acted as a ‘ conduit’ to pass on a share in
the inheritance ; and this feature of the ‘female conduit’ exists
in many Aryan societies. The rule emphasises very strongly
the agnatic ascension to land (32).
The last suit was that for the ‘demarcation of boundaries,’
interesting mainly as a survival of pre-curial procedure ; and as
illustrative of the interlaced characteristic of holding (33).
§ 10. Hitherto we have touched upon ‘tir gwelyog,’ “ ances-
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 75
tral land.’ But over and above ‘tir gwelyog,’ there was, in
historic Wales, another type of land, called ‘tir cynyf’ or ‘ tir
prid,’ as it is sometimes called. Such land comprised all land
acquired by purchase or by any means other than ancestral
right. It is barely mentioned in the ancient laws; and the
instances of it in the Surveys are extremely scanty (34). It is
obviously an institution of comparatively recent growth, and
the very scantiness of references to it corroborates the practical
universal application of the ‘tir gwelyog’ organisation. Such
land could arise only as the tribal organisation was breaking
down, and as individual rights of ‘ownership’ began to come
into existence. It could do so in three ways, (a) by the grant
of lands by the Crown, where land had been forfeited or escheated
to the King, (6) by the purchase of bondlands by a free man
or free group (of which we have a few instances in the Record
of Caernarfon) (35), and (c) by the partial growth of the con-
ception that continued occupation of plots of ‘ tir gwelyog ’ gave
rise not merely to the right of exclusive enjoyment, but to the
right of alienation.
But even in regard to ‘tir cynyf’ the conception of the
ancestral nature of rights in land remained triumphant.
It appears that the actual acquirer could dispose of acquired
land himself; but, upon his death, such land became ‘tir gwel-
yog,’ ancestral land, gud his descendants, and, subject, in their
hands, to the same rules and restrictions as other ‘ tir gwelyog.’
‘Tir cynyf,’ therefore, was always falling back into the rank of ‘ tir
gwelyog. We find exactly the same feature in other ancient laws.
Again, where land, before the Edwardian conquest, escheated
to the Crown, the Crown did not become ‘ owner ’ of it, entitled
to dispose of it at will. There could never be escheat ‘ per
defectum heredum,’ so long as there was a collateral of the last
holder in the fourth degree, and, of course, there could be no
escheat where there had been no partition of clan-areas. But,
wherever there was escheat, then the King was bound by custom
to offer it to the nearest collateral of the last holder, however
distant such collateral might be (36).
It seems clear that, in indigenous law, escheat applied only
to lands which, for one cause or another, had been separated
off from the clan-area ; and even there the ultimate reversionary
interests of the clan were reserved to it through the right of
pre-emption.
A.S.—VOL. X. | 3
76 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
§ 11. The organisation of the bond-lands of early Wales pre-
sents a number of variations. There is one feature, however,
common to them all (and it is this which differentiates bond
lands from free lands) that the holders thereof were invariably
‘adscripti glebae.’
The two main divisions of bond lands are what are referred
to in the Record of Caernarfon as the lands of ‘ treweloghe ’ (tir
ewelyog) and trefgefery (tir cyfrif) aillts. It is a peculiarity that
strikes us at once that one division of the bond lands is known
by the same name as that applied to the bulk of free lands,
that is ‘tir gwelyog,’ ancestral land.
The reason is that a considerable section of the unfree were
organised socially in much the same way as the free men, that
is to say that they were associated together in groups of inter-
related persons. But an examination of the records, showing
‘owelyau’ of unfree persons in historic times, shows that the
numbers of individuals in unfree ‘gwelyau’ were never consider-
able (the ordinary figure is from two to six male adults) (37), and
further that, with one or two possible exceptions, the unfree
‘gwelyau’ did not hold land in more than one ville. What is
the reason of this? I think it is to be found partly in the fact
that the primary occupation of the unfree was agriculture and
not pasture, and the raison d’étre for the right to move at will
was absent in their case.
To account for the prevalence of the ‘ tir gwelyog ’ aillt popu-
lation of Wales (and it is almost peculiar to Wales) is a matter
which has to be approached from the historic and economic side
rather than from the legal ; and I doubt if we have yet sufficient
data wherefrom to reconstruct the story. One of the most
promising lines of investigation is that of the geographical dis-
tribution of the ‘ tir gwelyog ’ population, especially in connexion
with the like distribution of the ‘ tir cyfrif’ settlements. In so
far as I have hitherto been able to pursue enquiry on these lines,
there appears to be evidence (a) that the ‘tir gwelyog’ aillts
are found all over Wales, whereas the ‘ tir cyfrif’ are found far
more in the west than in the east of the land (38), (6) that, exclud-
ing the maerdrefs, the tir cyfrif settlements were on lands of
comparatively poor quality, and (c) that, in later times, there
was some tendency to assimilate the ‘ tir cyfrif’ settlements with
the ‘ tir gwelyog’ ones (39).
It is only a suggestion, but such facts tend to the conclusion
A]
THE LAND IN ANCIEN T WELSH LAW 717
that the ‘tir cyfrif’ settlements indicate an earlier stratum of
society, perhaps survivals of prehistoric settlers, perhaps sur-
vivals of Goidelic settlers. The comparison of names of holders
or of villes, the linguistic test generally, has thrown practically
no light upon the subject, but possibly those far better equipped
than I am for this line of enquiry may find some results. The
only result hitherto noticed is that nearly every ville with the
word ‘ Dol’ in it was an unfree ville (40).
That, however, is a digression.
§ 12. The principal point to note is that, in their social
organism, the ‘ tir gwelyog’ aillts approximated to the ordinary
free men, with the important limitation that they did not expand
into large groups, and were subject to a continuous dissolution
into small entities. They formed, as did the free, corpora-
tions of joint holders, and, in the matter of inheritance,
their rules were similar to those of the bulk of the popula-
tion.
The holders of ‘ tir cyfrif ’ were organised on totally different
lines. The whole land of a ‘ tir cyfrif’ settlement was regarded
as the possession of the King or lord of the territory, and its
management was under the administrative orders of an official,
known as the ‘land-maer.’ He determined what lands were to
be cultivated and what crops were to be sown.
Every male adult, save possibly the youngest son of another,
was liable to cultivate. Cultivation was in common, and when
the land had been ploughed and sown, the area under cultivation
was divided periodically into equal strips or blocks, and each
male adult was allotted a block or strip for his maintenance,
he apparently gathering in the harvest thereon, and applying
it to his own use. There is no evidence that the crops were
garnered in common and then divided. Each cultivator had
allotted to him a homestead or ‘tyddyn’ with a small court-
yard and, in certain parts, a croft attached. On the death of
a cultivator, this homestead and appendage went to his youngest
son. Saving the homesteads, which, however, were theoretically
subject to the same rule, all the land in the ville was common ;
so that if a cultivator died without male issue, the only result
was that there was one less to participate in the periodical divi-
sions (41). The compensatory advantage to the inhabitants of
a ‘tir cyfrif ’ settlement was that every one had an absolute right
to a proportionate share of the cultivated area, and he could
78 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
enforce his claim in the court of the ‘ tref’ by means of a claim
of ‘hawl cyhyd’ (42).
The essential difference, therefore, between ‘tir gwelyog ’
and ‘tir cyfrif’ holders was that, whereas both were organised
as corporate communities, the first mentioned were bound
together by a constantly changing kin-nexus, the latter by a
permanent community of lability (43).
§ 13. Very similar in organisation to the ‘tir cyfrif’ villes
were the maerdrefs. For the purpose of administration, Wales
was divided into a series of ‘ cymydau,’ and each ‘ cymwd ’ had
a ‘caput’ where renders from the whole cymwd were paid.
Occasionally we find cymydau with two, or even more, capita.
Generally speaking, the lord of the ‘cymwd’ had a ‘ neuadd ’
or hall at the ‘ caput,’ and invariably he had land (meadow land,
garden land and culturable land) at the caput. The ‘ caput’
of a cymwd was coincident with the Welsh ‘ maerdref ’ (44) ;
and it will be found, as a rule, that the maerdrefs occupy a fairly
central situation in the cymwds, and moreover are situated
where there are pockets of comparatively good land, suitable
for cultivation.
The ‘maerdref’ area consisted of two portions, the ‘ terra
dominicalis,’ the exclusive possession of the lord, and the area
allotted to the maerdref inhabitants. The latter area appears
to have been administered on the same lines as the land in ‘ tir
cytirif ’ villes, and it is often very difficult to differentiate between
them. The principal line of demarcation lay, however, in the
fact that the ‘ maerdref’ tenants, as part of their renders and
services, cultivated, along with hired labourers, the ‘terra
dominicalis ’ for the benefit of the ‘ arglwydd’ (45).
The tenants of the maerdref seem, in many cases, to have been
of foreign origin, captives of war, purchased slaves; and they
were, perhaps, recruited also from those, who, on account of debt
or crime, had suffered a ‘ diminutio capitis ’ (46).
§ 14. Similar to the maerdref organisation was the ‘tir
bwrdd.’ These were scattered plots of no considerable dimen-
sions, found in various parts of Wales. They belonged exclu-
sively to the lord, and were cultivated sometimes by hired labour,
and sometimes by tenants at will (47).
The origin of the ‘tir bwrdd’ is somewhat obscure; the
material available for a definite conclusion on the subject is
insufficient ; but it seems probable that they were plots which
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW — 79
had fallen in to the lord, through escheat or forfeiture, and left
undisposed of by him, possibly because of their convenience for
furnishing supplies for himself or his officers on tour.
The Record of Caernarfon mentions also holdings like ‘ gwyr
gwaith,’ ‘ gwyr mal,’ ‘gardenmen,’ and so on. These appear to
occur invariably in maerdrefs. No intimation is given any-
where as to their internal comity ; and it seems probable that
some of them were specialised forms of the ordinary serf
community, whose functions were to perform certain technical
services (48).
§ 15. The account so far given has been concerned solely with
the organism of the various communities on the land.
We have seen that in the case of ‘ tir cyfrif’ cultivation was
conducted under the orders of an official. That did not apply
to ‘tir gwelyog.’ On ‘tir gwelyog’ the evidence shows that
households occupied pockets of culturable land in the general
area of a clan or ville. The geography of the countryside being
such as to prevent anything like the open field system on a large
scale, we find these occupied pockets at considerable distances
from each other, a feature reproduced to-day in Wales by the
scattered farm-holdings (49). To cultivate these pockets, four
or eight oxen were needed, a number far in excess of what could
be economically maintained on the pocket. Further, plough
oxen are of very little use save for draught purposes outside the
ploughing season. Consequently we find that the maintenance
of a full plough yoke was outside the capacity of the ordinary
cultivator, whether free or bond.
The result of this was that ploughing was conducted by the
pooling of oxen and ploughs to cultivate the plots of each partici-
pator in the pool. The importance of this economic arrangement
was so great that the law regarded it as a customary contract,
and gave minute rules for the carrying out of the contract entered
into. These are the well-known rules in the Welsh laws of
‘ co-tillage ’ (50).
§ 16. In historic times we find both free and bond alike sub-
ject to a ‘superior.’ In the case of the free, they were all subject
to the ‘ brenhin’ or local ‘ arglwydd,’ who, in some instances,
was represented by an ecclesiastical foundation. In the case of
the unfree we find them also similarly subject ; but, in addition,
we have many instances of unfree communities being subject
either to an independent free man or free ‘ gwely.’ There is
80 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
even mention in the Laws of ‘aillts’ being subject to other
‘ aillts’ (51). |
To the ‘ superior,’ whether King, lord, ecclesiastical founda-
tion, or free gwely, the subject owed certain duties—renders or
services.
The original raison d’étre of these services was not to furnish
the superior with ‘rent’; but to furnish him with the where-
withal to carry on administration. ‘The renders were not ‘ rent,’
but “revenue. ’
The superior was in Welsh Law in no sense absolute owner of
the land, with the exception of a few scattered plots; he was
an administrator paid for the performance of and expense of his
functions out of land-revenue. ‘This appears to be brought out
in many of the grants to ecclesiastical foundations. What is
granted, almost invariably, is not the ‘ ownership ’ of the land ;
but the right to receive the ‘renders’ due from the land, occa-
sionally in late charters (here probably under the influence of
new ideas) along with certain exclusive privileges of the King,
such as the right to dig for minerals (52).
§ 17. The right of the superior to revenue is invariably based
on ‘ custom,’ that is to say, the recorded rights are fixed and are
not liable to enhancement. One of the grievances in Wales
against the last Llywelyn was that, faced with the increased
expense involved in the defence of the country, he was com-
pelled to demand a larger revenue than what custom laid down.
We see the same characteristic of fixity of revenue demand in
the various Norman-French surveys and in the Great Petition
to Edward III (4.p. 1360) (53). |
Unfortunately, we have practically no material, save that
which concerns the Levitish clan of Cynan ap Llywarch in Den-
bigh, to determine the relationship between the unfree holders
subject to a free gwely and their immediate ‘superior’; but
there is no reason to doubt that their position did not very
materially differ from that of holders of land directly subject
to the King.
§ 18. The ancient laws have much to say about the services
and renders due to the King, whether from the free or the unfree,
but the characteristic of the laws is that they appear to stan-
dardise the services due (54). That is to say, at first sight, they
appear to declare rules of universal applicability.
When we examine the Surveys, etc., we find, however, exactly
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 81
as we find in the English manorial rolls, an infinite variety of
abilities, varying not only from tref to tref, but also as regards
different holdings in the same ‘tref.’ The entries in the Laws
are not so much rules of universal applicability, as a recapitu-
lation of the general sources of the King’s revenue. The varia-
tions in actual practice show also, very clearly, that the object
ot the revenue was not to secure an income, but to arrange for
effectual administration (55).
The examination of the actual renders payable or services
due discloses the fact that certain renders and services were due
from the free only, others from the unfree only ; but there was
a very large number of such renders and services which were due
from both free and unfree.
§ 19. The first service to notice is that of military service.
Military service, with the growth of feudalism, became in England
the condition of ‘tenure’ of land from the King or lord. That
was not the case in early Wales. It was a duty and a privilege,
attached not to land, but to ‘ status.’
The early Laws confine the duty, the privilege, to the free (56) ;
allocating to the unfree the liability to perform transport and
cognate duties when called upon, but it is worthy of note that
the unfree were always paid for their work.
The duty of military service was twofold—that of defence
of the ‘patria’ or ‘gwlad’ (i.e. the lordship) in which those
liable dwelt, whenever threatened ; that of offence, outside the
‘patria,’ for forty days in the year only.
With the extension of Norman domination in Wales, we see
in the south, but not in the north, the creation of a few knights’-
fees, making military service a condition of land-tenure (57).
This is not so in the Northern Surveys. There the privilege of
service retained its characteristic of being a privilege to some
extent. This is very marked in the case of the ‘ Wyrion Eden,’
a corps d’élite, apparently originating in the days of Llywelyn
Fawr (58). But what is still more marked is that though we
know that military service was due from all free men in Wales,
and is so assumed in the Surveys, it is only expressly recorded
as due from very few individual occupiers of land (59). In most
of such cases there is a special reason for the record, viz., that
the holders of the land were exempt, in part or in whole, from
the ordinary revenue charges, or were liable to service outside
the ‘ patria’ in which they dwelt. It seems from the general
82 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
nature of the references to military service that it was recognised
under the Norman-Angevins for what it had been in Welsh Law,
not a feudal land due, but a personal one.
A peculiar extension of the liability is found in certain of
the Surveys ; for in some instances we find that the unfree have
also become liable. There are indications that this change had
begun under the Welsh princes, probably in view of the desperate
defence of the land against the Normans ; and it was extended
under the Angevin kings to procure more and more men for the
foreign wars in Scotland and France (60).
§ 20. Next in interest to military service are the rules in
regard to the ‘cylchau.’ Just as in British India to-day, so,
in ancient Wales, the administration of the land was conducted,
to a large extent, by means of personal official tours. But the
term ‘cylch’ covers a little more than that, for there were
cylchau of huntsmen, otter-hounds, etc., that is to say the term
also included the billeting of the Prince’s retinues.
There are two distinctions between the cylchau recorded in
the Laws, and the ‘pastus’ recorded in the Surveys. The
number of the former is slightly less, and whereas the Laws show
that the cylchau were regularly conducted (61), the Surveys
show that, by the fourteenth century, they had been commuted
in all instances to cash payments (62).
Liability for the “cylch’ of the King (pastus principis) was
limited to the free only ; liability for the cylch of the Queen,
the maer and canghellor (pastus ragloti), huntsmen (pastus
lucrarii), grooms (pastus stalionis and its local variety of pastus
dextrarii), the macwyaid (pastus pennackew et wasion bagehyn),
and the falconers (cylch hebbogothion) appear in the Laws as
confined to the unfree, but in the Surveys there are a few instances
of the cylch of the grooms, macwyaid and faleoners being levied:
on the free as well.
The cylch of the penteulu (commander of the household troops)
was in the Laws imposed on both free and unfree; but the
Surveys confine it, under the title ‘ pastus famuliae principis ’
to the unfree.
The Surveys add the pastus of the foresters, the cylch greorion
(king’s herds) and cylch dourgon (otter-hounds), which are
unknown to the laws, the first being confined to the unfree, the
last two being extended to both classes.
These ‘cylchau’ were by no means all imposed on every-
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 83
body. Some were imposed only on a few villes here and there ;
and many villes were liable only to one or two and none to all.
The geographical distribution of the varying liability for the
‘eylchau ’ furnishes material of value for determining points of
importance in the economic development of the land. For
example, the villes where there was a liability for the King’s
herds and horses probably indicate the prevalence of plentiful
erazing grounds, and an interesting chapter in the study of
medizval Wales is opened up if these areas are collated with the
‘ffrithoedd ’ and ‘ hafodydd’ of the Surveys (63).
§ 21. The most important render, according to the Laws, is
the ‘tunc’ or ‘gwestfa’; and a detailed consideration of this
render is more than sufficient for a monograph in itself.
The ‘ gwestfa’ consisted of a periodical supply by the free
only of certain provisions for the Prince’s court. The details
of the provisions are given in the Codes; but it is clear from
them that, even in the time of Hywel Dda, the stated supplies
had very largely been commuted into a cash payment, known
as the tunc-pound (64).
In the Survey of Denbigh, the tunc-pound appears as
payable practically throughout the Honour (65), but the other
Surveys mention it only occasionally (66). The reason for this
appears to be that in them renders in kind (generally commuted)
are differently assessed, and the tunc-pound or its fractions are
included in the ‘summa’ of renders in kind given.
Corresponding in part to the ‘gwestfa’ were the ‘ dawn-
bwyd’ payable by the unfree. These renders are detailed,
somewhat confusedly, in the Laws (67) ; but they do not appear,
ipso nomine, in the Surveys. Kind-renders from the unfree
are shown there in measures of corn, butter, etc., cash, and even
occasionally, but incorrectly, as *tunc’ (68).
The primary object of the * gwestfa’ and ‘dawnbwyd’ was
to furnish the Prince and his court with regular supplies; and
the very early tendency to commute illustrates how the Prince
relied more and more on the produce of his ‘ maerdrefs’ and
plots of ‘tir bwrdd.’
The details given both in the Codes and in the Surveys are
of very great economic importance showing the class of crops,
etc., grown in different localities. The details of the distribution
over ‘assessment circles,’ to which reference is made later, is
also of importance for a study of the social organism at work.
84 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
§ 22. An important factor in the social organism was the
liability to build and to repair certain buildings for the accom-
modation of the Prince. The buildings were nine in number,
situated at the ‘caput’ of the cymwd; and in all cases the
liability was confined to the unfree (69). In the Surveys a few
instances occur of the extension of the liability to free men ;
and, under the Norman-Angevins, the duty to erect the ordinary
wooden buildings of a ‘llys’ was converted into a lability to
work at the erection and maintenance of stone-castles. In some
cases, but by no means in all, this lability was commuted into
cash payments (70).
The Laws are silent as to any liability to repair mills ; this,
in itself, is strong evidence of the early age of the Laws; but,
by the time of the Surveys, such lability had become general,
in so far as the unfree were concerned. Coincident with the
growth of this new impost was the compulsion of practically all
unfree men, and most free men, who did not possess a mill of
their own, to grind their corn at the lord’s mill, paying a fixed
percentage of the corn ground as toll (71).
§ 23. It has already been mentioned that the ‘ maerdref ’
tenants were obliged to cultivate, as part of their duties, that
portion of the maerdref area which was ‘terra dominicalis.’
In the Laws, there is no mention of any labour duty save
in regard to the maerdref tenants (72) ; but, by the fourteenth
century, such duty had become general among the unfree in the
eastern part of Wales, and is found occasionally in the west.
In many cases this liability had been commuted (73). Similarly
the liability to porterage of goods, stone, etc., unknown in the
Laws, except as incidental to campaigning, had become wide-
spread among the unfree, but in many cases the labour was
paid for at a fixed daily rate, rather below the ordinary market
rate for labour (74).
§ 24. These were the principal renders and services in medieval
Wales; but there were a number of incidental dues levied on
special units, like ‘cymmorth,’ capon-rents, prisage of ale, fenc-
ing dues, nut-gathering, and, in later days, forest dues. Of
these, save a limited reference to ‘cymmorth’ the older Laws
contain no mention ; and it is probable that they grew up long
alter Hywel Dda’s time. They are, in many instances, quite
indistinguishable from ‘rents’; and, in fact, they help to illus-
trate that gradual conversion of the idea of the duty to maintain
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 85
the administration by means of payment of revenue into the
idea of tenure involving the payment of rent, which was the
feature of the development of land-occupation in Wales between
the tenth and fourteenth centuries.
An illuminating illustration of this process is to be found
also in the law of pannage. In ancient Wales mast in the woods
was free to swine; but damage caused to property by swine
had to be compensated for. As the Crown and the local lords
assumed “ownership ’ of the waste lands, including forests, the
liability to pay for damage was converted into the payment of
fixed fees for the privilege of pannage in the woods (75).
§ 25. This silent process—the growth of the conception of
tenure—which was going on the whole time, had its repercussion
upon the clan-organisation, and helped to bring about its gradual
decay. We can see, to some extent, in the changes in the units
liable to assessment, how this process affected the actual occupiers
of the land.
With the growth of ‘tenure’ we find the shifting of the
assessment unit from the clan to the land ; and that inevitably
meant that the occupier of separated piots of ‘tir gwelyog,’
inasmuch as he became liable for the renders, began to regard
himself as ‘ owner,’ rather than as permissive occupier.
The clan-unit being the social unit in ancient Wales, we
would expect to find it as the assessment unit also. In all
probability it was so in the earliest times ; but the disintegration
of the clan-unit as the assessment unit had, under the influence
of this conception of tenure, proceeded a long way by the time
the laws were redacted, and the process was carried still further
by the fourteenth century, so that, in the Surveys, we can only
get fragmentary pieces of evidence pointing to the original
identification of the assessment unit with the clan unit. Some
illustrations of this change—a very difficult problem to unravel
from the available material—may be of interest.
§ 26. If we turn to the ‘ gwestfa,’ we find that, in the Laws,
the principle is laid down definitely that the assessment-unit
for ‘ gwestfa’ or tunc-pound is already a territorial and not a
_ clan one (76). It is assessed primarily on a ‘ maenol,’ and dis-
tributed equally over every ‘erw’ or ‘acre’ in the maenol.
The mathematical precision of the rule laid down in the laws,
which assumes the equality of area in all maenols and also the
equality in productiveness of all ‘erws,’ is, of course, fanciful ;
86 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
but the broad principle that the tunc was leviable territorially
is quite evident. But there is another side to this rule; and
that is that it is equally evident that the lability for the tune,
which as a whole was levied on the maenol, was a joint liability
of all resident in the ‘ maenol,’ and, inasmuch as the Laws also
assume a homogeneity of the population, this is equivalent to
the joint liability of a clan or clan-unit occupying a territorial
unit (77).
The mathematical subdivision of tune over every ‘area’
is a rule of internal responsibility only, and not a rule doing
away with the collective responsibility of the whole ‘ communi-
tas’ occupying the gwestfa area. It seems clear that if there
were default in the case of a single erw, that default had to be
made good by the maenol as a whole. Nothing whatsoever is
said or implied indicating that there was any lessening of the
collective responsibility of the whole unit for the whole sum to
the Crown. That that was so is also indicated by the fact that,
in many parts of South Wales, the term ‘ gwestfa’ continued,
right into the fourteenth century at least, to indicate an area
which, as a whole, had been liable for the tunc-pound or its
equivalent in supplies (78).
In the Survey of Denbigh, which alone of the Surveys con-
tains details of the tunc-levy, there are some interesting facts
which point to a continuance of the old clan liability in part.
The most noteworthy is that of the clan Rand Vaghan ap Asser,
a clan which held land in some eight villes, most of them, but
not all, exclusively. They paid a tunc-unit of £1 as aclan. In
the clan, it was subdivided among the component sub-divisions
equally per stirpes, and there is no indication that it was dis-
tributed over territorial units (79).
The ville of Barrog, which was held in fractional shares by
six ‘gwelyau,’ possibly at one time members of a composite
clan, was assessed to a tunc-pound. The total was divided
among the six ‘gwelyau’ in sums of 3s. 4d. each, and though
the economy of the ville shows that there were several separated
holdings, the distribution of the tunc-pound was not made on
the land, but on the gwely (80).
it is a common feature in the Survey of Denbigh to find that,
though the assessment as a total is on a territorial ville or villes,
the actual distribution of its details is not upon acreage or any
other land-measure, but upon the ‘ gwelyau’ occupying the
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 87
ville, in proportion to their fractional hereditary share in the
total area. Instances of this character are the villes of Prees,
Abergele, Ereithlyn and Llwydcoed (81). These seem to furnish
proof that, at one time, the assessment had been on ‘ gwelyau ’
or clans, rather than upon acreage, as the laws would, at first
sight, appear to indicate was the legal rule.
The distribution over ‘ gwelyau,’ however, is far from being
universal in the Survey. The assessment upon area is common
enough. Throughout cymwd Caimeirch, wherever the tunc-
levy was still paid, the assessment was on holdings or acreage (82).
In part of Prees the levy was clearly on acreage, so too in part
of the Carwedfynydd group of villes, in Melai, Wigfair, Mochdre
and many other villes (83).
The ‘ gwely ’ was the basis for assessment, as a rule, where
the kin-bond was strong ; acreage or holding where it was weak
or non-existent.
A further interesting fact emerges from the Survey, and that
is that, in some villes, the joint responsibility of the whole ville
for the whole tunc assessed on it, is preserved. That communal
responsibility is apparent in Gwaenynog, Beidiog and Twlgarth ;
but it may be said that generally communal responsibility for
the whole tunc was ceasing to operate by the fourteenth cen-
tury (84). This is clear from the fact that whenever a share
was forfeited to the Crown there was a corresponding reduction
made in the tunc-levy on the ville in which the share had been
held. That could never have happened if there had been a full
survival of communal responsibility.
In Carnarvon, Anglesea and the other surveyed areas the
disintegration of communal responsibility had gone even further.
It is almost impossible to discover, outside of Denbigh,
any tunc-levy unit. The tunc had been so subdivided among
the plots separately held as to lose its character entirely as a
joint liability ; and had become merged into what was prac-
tically a rental payable by the occupants of several plots.
We are led irresistibly to the conclusion that, even if we could
assume that, at some stage or other, there had been a general
uniformity in assessing the tunc on a clan basis, that uniformity
had gone by the board early. It is impossible, however, to
reduce the incidence of tunc in practice to the formal system of
the Codes, for, 400 years after, we have survivals of an older
mode of assessment than that indicated in the Codes themselves.
ss THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
As regards the ‘dawnbwyd’ the Codes indicate that there:
was a communal responsibility of the tref-unit (85). In Dinor-
byn Fawr in Denbigh this communal responsibility was retained.
unimpaired until the ville was leased to the ‘ communitas’ on
a fixed rental. Much the same was the case with Cilcennus
(86).
But, elsewhere, the communal responsibility for ‘dawnbwyd ’
had largely disappeared by the fourteenth century. The word
‘dawnbwyd’ does not occur in the Surveys. It has been in
some villes confused with tunc ; and where it is designated by
that name it is the common rule that the assessment is on indi-
vidual holdings (vide e.g. cymwd Caimeirch, Lleweni, Beryn,
Pencledan and Gwerneigron) though exceptions are to be found
in the treweloghe villes of Eriviat, Galltfaenan and Bodiscawn,
where the assessment was on the ‘ gwelyau.’ |
Generally, however, the dawnbwyd had been replaced by
specific renders in kind (commuted into cash) ; and the liability
therefore was, in practically every instance, placed on the holders.
of separate plots.
§ 27. In regard to ‘ cylch,’ such indications as we have in the
Laws point to the conclusion that the liability was a communal
one, either on the clan or the ville as a whole (87).
In the Survey of Denbigh we find numerous instances of villes.
being assessed as a whole to pastus principis. As was the case
for tunc, there was a monetary basic unit for this pastus, the
mark of 13s. 4d. or 160 legal pence equal to the curt pound.
The mark was divided into two portions of 67 legal pence = 100
curt pence, and 93 legal pence = 50 plus 90 curt pence ; and the
pastus principis in part of Denbigh was levied on assessment
units in multiples or combinations of these two figures. In other
parts, the monetary basic unit was 10s. 6d., likewise levied (88).
Wherever this monetary basis exists, it will be found that
there was originally a communal responsibility to pay the whole
sum; but as the clans disintegrated into sub-clans, the assess-
ment was apportioned upon the sub-clans in shares correspond-
ing with their hereditary fractional interests in the ‘ tir gwelyog.’
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, showing that, in
certain areas, the dissolution of the old assessment units had
been carried so far as to lead to assessment being on holdings,
and, in some few cases, on acreage.
Strange to say the pastus principis has entirely disappeared
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 89
in the Record of Caernarfon, and the levy has there, like tunc,
been apparently merged in the ‘summa,’ of rentals.
The pastus famuliae we find in Caernarfon assessed on the
whole community of the unfree in the cymwd, joint responsi-
bility for the total being retained, Such too was the case in
Mochdre, Rhiw, Colwyn, Wigfair and Gwerneigron, but in other
villes in Denbigh it was assessed on holdings or individuals.
The ‘cylch ragloti’ shows similar features; in some villes
there was a joint liability, in others the liability was individual
or based on acreage. Such also is the case with the pastus
lucrarii, pastus dextrarii, cylch hebbogothion, cylch greorion and
cylch dourgon. The pastus stalionis was assessed on unfree
individuals only, and never on acreage. The pastus serjeantis,
which was a Norman introduction, was assessed entirely on
individuals ; and this fact corroborates the view that communal
lability was the original feature of assessments which gave way
to acreage or individual assessment under the stress of new
ideas (89).
§ 28. The lability to build and repair was in the Laws com-
munal (90). In the Survey of Denbigh, where the duty had been
commuted, it was converted in Isaled and Caimeirch into a poll-
tax ; but in Uwchaled it was a communal charge on the whole
eymwd. In Caernarfon and Anglesea it was also levied as a
poll-tax in some places, as a communal charge elsewhere (91).
The same variation occurs in regard to repairs to mills.
Porterage and harvest works were everywhere in the Surveys
an individual liability.
§ 29. The purpose of this partial analysis of renders and ser-
vices has been to show that in Wales, as elsewhere, there was,
in historic times, no universal or static rule. It is a mistake to
speak of the land organisation as a system, in the sense that
everything everywhere conformed to a common standard.
The indications are that, in very early times, there was among
the free a communal unity based on kinship, among the treweloghe
aillts a less-marked communal unity based on the household,
and among trefgefery aillts a communal unity based on the
ville. But with the increase in agricultural pursuits, the growth
of the conception of tenure, the absorption of waste and forest
land into Crown land, and the gradual limitation of the migratory
habit, the communal bond of the free weakened, giving rise to
the beginnings of an individual or acreage basis of society.
90 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
Among the unfree the dissolution of the communal tie was
hastened by the disappearance of the indigenous princes and
their ‘llysoedd ’ and the substitution therefor of absentee lords
and an absentee king, who looked upon Wales primarily as a
source of rents to be spent elsewhere.
In one sense it was well for Wales that the foreign lords were
absentees. Had they remained in Wales probably there would
have been a general servile organisation forced on Wales similar
to the feudal one of the English manors; but the Norman
Angevin lords found it easier and more remunerative to pursue
a policy of commutation into cash of all the oid dues and of
leasing on cash rents to all new tenants.
The change was not brought about by any single act; it
was wrought gradually and unevenly. Hence it is that the
Welsh Laws and surveys present us with a mosaic of old ideas
and new ideas, enabling us, as no other material quite enables
us to do, to follow the transition of society from a tribal to an
individualistic basis.
T. P. ELLIS.
REFERENCES
Note (1), p. 66.—The Survey of Denbigh. By P. Vinogradoff and
F. Morgan (British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History,
1914. London, H. Milford).
The Record of Carnarvon. Ed. Henry Ellis. Harleian MS. 696,
Record Commission, London, 1838.
The Black Book of St. David’s. Ed. J. Willis-Bund (Cymmrodorion
Society, Record Series, No. 5. London, 1902).
The Extent of the Commotes of Talybont, Ystumanner, Penllyn and
Ardudwy. P.R. Office Roll 789 (published in Arch. Camb. Original
Documents Series).
The First Extent of Bromfield and Yale, 1315. Kd. T. P. Ellis. Part
of Pen MS. XII. Cymmrodorion Society Record Series, No. 11. Lon-
don, 1924.
Note (2), p. 67.—A. Morris: ‘ Merionethshire,’ p. 165 (Cambridge
County Geographies).
Notes (3), p. 67.—The word ‘cenedl’ includes and is more extensive
in its application than ‘ gwelyau,’ ‘progenies’ and ‘wyrion.’ It is not
used in the Surveys, etc. For its connotation, see Welsh Tribal Law and
Custom, Part I, ec. VII.
Instances of the term ‘gwely’ or ‘gwelygordd’ as equal to the re-
stricted sense of ‘cenedl’ in the Laws occur in—
Dim. Code, Bk. II, ce. 1, § 33:
Tri dygyngoll kenedyl ynt ; un yw dechreu o welygord talu galanas
(y) dyn alather ac na thalwyt cwbyl ac am hynny Ilad un or welygord
honno....
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 91
Dim. Code, Bk. II, ec. 23, § 14:
Or byd tir rwng gwelygord heb rannu kynn bwynt marw oll namyn
un (dyn) yr un hwnnw a geiff y tir kyffredin oll.
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 18, § 48:
. ‘ar trydydd achaws pa beth bynnac rywnel hi yny welygord y
bu gynt yndi, na byd hawl nace arawl yny hol hitheu yny welygord arall
y doeth idi.’
Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 30, § 11:
‘Or diuernir gwelygord o tir... .
The Record of Carnarvon uses * gwely’’ almost exclusively ; the First
Exient of Merioneth likewise. The Survey of Denbigh uses the three words,
“gwely,’ ‘progenies,’ “wyrion’ interchangeably. The Hatent of Brom-
field uses no terminology to indicate clanship.
Nore (4), p. 67.—See, e.g., the Survey of Denbigh, and its major
‘owelyau’ of Edred ap Marchudd, Vuelleneu (Efelyw), Cynddelw ap
Cadwegan, etc.
Note (5), p. 68.—See Survey of Denbigh, sub. tit. Abergele (Aber-
gelleue), Bodelwyddan (Bodelennan), Massewig (Massegwyk), Llwydcoed
(Loydeoyd), Llysaled (Thlessalet), Mathebrud (Mathebrut), Heskyn,
Mostyn (Postu), Beidiog (Beydiok), Cilcein (Kylkeyn), Trofarth (Toro-
noth), Cefnllaethfaen (Lathenayn), Brynfanigl (Brenfanyk), Twynan
(Tuennan), Dinorben Fychan (Dynorbyn Vaghan), and Record of Car-
narvon, sub. tit. Penrhyn (Penruyn), Gloddaeth, Crewerion, Bettws-y-
coed (Bettws), Deganwy (Gannow), Nantfychan, Trefcastell, Penymynydd
(Pennyneth), Ddrainog (Edrinok), Trescawen (Trusclyn), Gwredog
(Gweredok), Penhenllys (Penwynlees), Bodunod and Twrgarw.
Also Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, p. 117
Note (6), p. 68.—‘* Tir gwelyog’ = ‘treweloghe’ of the Record of
Carnarvon.
Norte (7), p. 68.—See, e.g., estimation of shares ‘ per stirpes ’ in Survey
of Denbigh, in the progenies of Rand Vaghan ap Asser, Kdred ap Marchudd
(Marghhuyd), Cadwgan ap Ystrwth (Cadugan ap Ostroyd), Llywarch ap
Cadwgan (Lowarghe ap Cadugan), Efelyw (Vuelleneu), etc., Welsh Tribal
Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 234 et seq.
Norte (8), p. 69.—For detailed discussion of ‘ priodolder,’ vide Welsh
Tribal Law and Custom, I, pp. 215 et seq.
See also Ven. Code, Bk. II, ec. 14, § 1, and c. 11, § 32:
‘Ac ot ytyu ew yno yn petwarygur pryodaur yw canys yn petwarygur
yd a dyn yn pryodaur. ... O.. . bod priodawr eni holi (i.e. an ‘ am-
priodawr ’) a keitgueit idau ar y priodolder er ampriod awr a kecuin
racdau.’
Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 30, § 9:
Yny pedwarydyn yda dyn yn priodawr ydat ae hendat ae orhendat
ac ehun yn pedweryd. ... Ac nyt y uelly dysgyn dyn oe pryodolder
yny uo yn alldut... .’
Norte (9), p. 69.—This follows from the fact that in clan-areas (even
though there might be separately held plots) the interests of groups within
the clan were expressed in fractional shares, ascertained ‘ per stirpes.’
Note (10), p. 70.—An illuminating instance is that of the progenies
Rand Vaghan in Petrual (Survey of Denbigh, p. 182).
‘ Priodarii de progenie Rand Vagh ’ quorum nomina patent in Deunant
tenent hic tantem partem in iiij lectis quantum tenent superius in Deunant,
A.S.—VOL. X. ? G
9
92 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
tamen tenent hic quasi pro uno lecto quod vocatur Wele Wiryon Rand
terciam decimam partem illius ville.’
That is to say, the whole progenies held a share in Petrual as an un-
divided whole.
In Deunant, the larger ‘ progenies’ is divided into gwelyau Rauthlon
(Rhiwallon), Idenerth, Danyel (Deiniol), Keuret (Carwed), holding separ-
ately from each other (see Survey of Denbigh, pp. 157-60). So too in
Grugor (p. 162) ; Quilbreyn (Chwilbren), pp. 163-4 ; Pennaualet (Pennant
Aled), p. 165; Penclogor (Penglogor), p. 166; Hendrenennyth (Hen-
drenennig), pp. 167-8; Prestelegot (Prysllygod), pp. 169-71.
_ These gwelyau were again subdivided into lesser groups, holding
separately, in Deunant, Grugor, Chwilbren, Pennantaled, Hendrenennig,
but apparently not in Penglogor and Prysllygod.
Norte (11), p. 70.—See, e.g., S.W. Merioneth, where the purely unfree
villes are Llanycil (includes Bala), Llanfachreth, Dolgelley, Llanegryn,
Towyn, Caethle, Pennal, with a partial unfree popuation in Cystyllen
and Penararan, villes with an area of good culturable land. All the
upland ‘trefydd’ which have a limited culturable area, are free.
North of the Mawddach, where the villes are partly upland, partly
lowland with culturable portions, practically all the villes are mixed (see
Record of Carnarvon, Merioneth Extent).
See also Survey of Denbigh. Most villes in the Vale of Clwyd were
partially or entirely unfree ; villes in the uplands of the Hiraethog almost
entirely free.
Norte (12), p. 70.—A marked instance of this is in Merioneth, where
in the fifteenth century Survey in the Record of Carnarvon there were
nearly 200 gafaels or individual holdings.
Norte (13), p. 70.—Instances of rule :—
Clan of Rand Vaghan. On extinction of branch of Madoc, the whole
interest of Madoc’s line reverted to the lines of his brothers (Survey of
Denbigh, p. 158 et seq.).
Clan of Edred ap Marchudd. On extinction of branch Griffith ap
Ithon, his interest reverted to lines of Griffith’s brothers (Survey of Den-
bigh, p. 276).
Clan of Hwfa ap Cynddelw (Record of Carnarvon). Divided before
A.D. 1200 into five gwelyau. Nearly 200 years after the five gwelyau were
still holding jointly, showing thereby that reversion on extinction of a
branch was to gwely as a whole.
Rule as to escheat after partition :—
Gap. Code Bk ic. 315-8 3)-
Tir kyt hyny bo namyn un oe etiuedyon heb ‘diffoddi, ef adyly caffel
cubyl or tir; gwedy ranher hagen y brenhin auyd etiued yr neb adiffodo.
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 23, § 14 and 5:
Or byd tir rwg gwelygord heb rannu kynn bwynt marw oll namyn
yn dyn yr un hwnnw ageiff y tir kyffredin oll. ... Gwedy ran ho y
brodyr tref eu tat yrudynt or byd marw un ohonunt heb etifed idau oe
gorff neu y gyt etiued hyt geifuyn y brenhin bieiuyd ac avyd etiued or
tir hwnnw.
Note (14), p. 71.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 14, § 1:
Y gyureyth a dyweyt o deruyd y dyn (bot) y gwlat arall ... na
dyfyt y priodolder ew hyt y nauuetdyn pa amser bynnac ydel yw ouyn
ac ony byd ereyll ary tyr wedy eu hesgynnu yn bryodoryon ... dylyu
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 93
. . yn gubyl or aedewys, ac o byd ereyll (gwedy esgynnu) yn bryodoryon
yn eu herbyn dylyu kyureyth kyhydet yrygthunt ay gywran cany dyly
priodaur kychwyn rac y gylyd.
Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 15, § 6:
Gwell yw breynt pryodaur (ar) a gynwarchadu tir nog yt un newyd
dyuot.
Ven.-Code, Bk. II, c. 11, § 32:
O deruit iampriodaur bot kedueit kandeu ar y vod ef en guarkadu
tir a daear en eilguir neu en tredet gwr, abod priodawr eni holi akeitgueit
idau ar y priodolder er ampriodawr akecuin racdau.... Priodawr
a-kecuin tridetgur. ...
Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 30, § 10:
Gwedy yd del ef yn priodawr ny diffyd y priodolder hyt y nawuet
. achet galwo am diaspat uwch aduan or nawuet dyn allan ny weren-
dewir.
Wyn Code, bk. Ill, ¢..3, § 38:
O dervyd y ampriawdr disgin yn briawdwr ar dir, ar henbriawdyr
yn didiffodedic y priodolder ac yn kwynaw kwyn kamoresgyn rac daw
ynnteu am y tir; ynna ymae iawn ranny y tir yn deu hanner rygtynt
am disgyn yr ampriawdr ynn briawdr, ac am na diffodes priodolder y
priawdr; kyfreith yn dyallu na dychawn un o honynt gwrthlad y gilyd
oe priodolder.
An. Laws, Bk. IX, c. 27, § 18:
Pwybynnac a gynhelyo tir tayr oes gwyr yn un wlat ar priodoryon
heb wneuthur un o try thwrw kyfiraith nywrthebyr vyth vdunt am y
tyr hwnw kan rygaeod kyfiraith y rygthvnt ac ef.
Nore (15), p. 71.—Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, p. 218.
Nore (16), p. 71.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 12, § 8:
Ny dyly untyr bot yn dyurenhyn . . . (here follow details of renders
from Church lands). ... Ac wrth hynny nyt oes un tyr hepdau.
Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 16,§ 3:
Nyt dylys ydyn y dyuodyat ytyr namyn o uraut y gyureyth neu o
estyn argluyd.
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 8, § 131:
Y brenhin bieu tir y teyrnas oll ac onny (gwy eglwyssic) wrtheb or
tir yn vuyd y brenhin bieiuyd (y tir).
An. Laws, Bk. VI, c. 1, § 61.
O deruyd tebygu na allo arglwyd o gyfreith rodi tir treftadawe arall
yn herwyd na dylyei nep namyn y dylyet ehun; kyfreith adyueit y
digawn (yr arglwyd) yna wasgu y deu peth yn un (i.e. service and posses-
sion).
An. Laws, Bk. XI, c. 3, § 35:
Kyfreith a dweid y dychawn y brenhin roi tir y deyrnas yr neb a
wassanaetho drostaw.
Note (17), p. 71.—This follows from the fact that the son is always
spoken of as ‘etiued’ in the life of his father, and not as ‘ priodawr,’
and from the rule that four continuous generations of occupation created
the right of priodolder. Itisexpressed alsoin Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 28.89:
Ac or oet hwnnw (i.e. 14 years), allan y byd un braint a bonhedyc
canhuynaul canyt oes ureynt ydaw namyn y bonhed (implying he has no
status in respect of land-holding) ac nat esgyn ynteu y mreynt y tat y
ny uo maru y dat.
94 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
Nore (18), p. 72. Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 15, § 8:
Ny dyly y tat divwynaw na dewynydau dylyet y mab am tyr a dayar
namyn yny oes ehun . . . ny dyly y tat treyssyau y mab am tyr, a chet
as treyssyon ew adyguyd traygyuen eithyr un peth yny lle y bo dyundeb
. . am talu tyr yn waetyr.
Dim. Code, Bk. IIT, ec. 3, § 29:
O dervyd y dyn lad arall, a dygwydaw galanas arnaw ... y mae
iawn taly y tir yn waetir; . . . allynayr un lle y dychawn tad deinydyaw
dlyed y vab heb y genad.
An. Laws, Bk. BX; ¢. 258 1):
Nydylyir gwerthv tyr naydragwadoli heb genad a dvhvndeb.
Note (19) p. 72.—Vide sub. note 18.
Note (20), p. 72.—Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 23, § 20:
Ny dichaun neb o gyureith dilyssu tir yn erbyn y etiuedyonn y arall
onnyt ar eu kytles neu o duundeb, neu o aghen kyureithawl.
Dim. Code, Bk. III, c. 3, § 3, refers to the ‘tri agen kyfreith-
awl.’
An. Laws, Bk. XI, c. 1, § 3:
Perchen tir diettifed oy Ponti a dychawn priodoli y dir yr neb a myno.
Or byd ettifed hagen y berchen tir nys dychawn kany dychawn perchen
tir diettifedy y ettifed na defnydyaw y dir y neb heb genad y ettifed,
onny ynny kydles nid amgen yny amser ef y hynan neu drwy vod arnaw
un or aghenion gossodedic a rydha y dyn werthu y dir heb genad y ettifed,
nyd amgen nor agen amvoid neu diod neu da y daly y dylyed.
Note (21), p. 72.—E.g. Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 23, § 20:
Ny dichaun neb . . . rodi dim ohonaw ar yspeit heb teruyn gosso-
dedic ygallo y etiuedyonn y dilwg os dros da yrodir rac aghen ac na doter
arnaw namyn deuparth y werth, ac onny byd velly y etiued ae keiff pany
gouynno.
For temporary leases see inter alia Ven. Code, Bk. II, ec. 16 § 9-16,
18; Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 32, § 14-17; An. Laws, Bk. V, ce. 1,§ 9; Bk.
XxX c. 16, 8 6; Bk. Xd, ce. £ $20:
Note (22), p. 72.—Vide, inter alia, Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 16, § 2:
Y gyureyth eglwys a dyweyt eylweyth na dyly un mab trew tat namyn
y mab hynaw . . . kyureyth Hywel hagen ay barn yr mab yeuaw megys
yr hynaw.. ...
Note (23), p. 72.—The Tribal System in Wales, pp. 61 et seq.
Note (24), p. 72.—Vzide discussion of evidence in Welsh Tribal Law
and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 234-40.
Note (25), p. 73.—Vide Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp.
229-33 and 240-5.
Note (26), p. 73.—E.g. certain Pathan tribes in Ses relent Swat,
Pachad, Mee (N.W.F.P., India), governed by the ‘vesh’ system,
where a re-allotment takes mines at periodical intervals (Rattigan’s Digest
of Customary Law, VIIIth Edition, p. 330). The ‘vesh’ system is quite
unknown elsewhere in tribal Punjab.
Note (27) p. 73.—Ven. Code, Bk. I, c. 14, § 1-3; ¢. 11, $17 et seq.;
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 8, § 63, 105; c. 20,§ 1; Bk. Il], c. 1,§ 1; Gw.
Code, Bk. II, c. 30, § 23, 24; c. 31,§ 7; An. Laws, Bk. VII, c. 1, § 9, 10,
11, 21; Bk. IX, c. 27, § 1-21; c. 26,§ 1; Bk. X, c. 17, § 1-3; BkOXE
G.0; Sites Oe 105-1
NoTE (28), p. 74.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, ec. 14, § 3; Dim. Code, Bk. I,
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 95
c. 8, § 105-6; An. Laws, Bk. IX, c. 29, § 1-4; ec. 26,§ 3; Bk. XI, ce. 5,
pete Bk. VIL, c.-1,.§ 9, 22; 23.
Nore (29), p. 74.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 13, § 1-6; Dim. Code, Bk.
II, c. 8, § 105, 107; ec. 20, § 1-4; Gw. Code, Bk. II, ce. 29, § 1-8; An.
Laws, Bk. VI, c. 1, § 33; Bk. VII, c. 1, § 9, 26-9; Bk. IX, c. 28, § 1-13;
Peetoes bik, OX, c- 17, -§ 1,4; Bke XIV, c.-47, § 1-16.
Norte (30), p. 74.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 12, § 1-5; c. 11, § 56; Gw.
Code, Bk. II, c. 31, § 7; An. Laws, Bk. VII, ec. 1, § 48-51; Bk. IX,
eeaieasol- 2); c. 26, § 6-8; ec. 33, § 1-8.
Nore (31), p. 74.—An. Laws, Bk. VII, c. 1, § 9, 24, 25; Bk. IX,
eeou.9 I —l7,: cc: 26, § 4; Bk. XIV, c.-46, § 111.
Nore (32), p. 74.—Adoption in its strict sense is a religious or quasi-
religious ceremony, whereby a son of another is transferred to a sonless
person, the purpose being to continue the family which would otherwise
become extinct. This is the characteristic of adoption in both Roman
and Hindu law.
Societies practising ‘adoption’ vary as to who may be adopted;
there is generally a bias in favour of a near agnate and a bias against a
daughter’s son, though this has many exceptions, and it is common for
a complete stranger in blood to be adopted.
The common characteristic is that the adoptor should be sonless.
Certain Indian agricultural tribes, generally Mussulmans, whose
religious law does not recognise ‘adoption,’ practise, under custom, a
kind of ‘secular adoption,’ or as it is termed ‘ an appointment of an heir.’
This ‘secular adoption’ is subject to the same rules as to who can
be adopted, and as to the sonlessness of the adoptor, and there is a regular
customary ceremonial. On the whole question of ‘adoption’ among
Indian agriculturists, see Ellis’ Note on Punjab Custom, pp. 109-49.
The Welsh ‘mamwys’ was quite distinct. No religious significance
attached to it; no ceremonial is indicated ; the only person who could
claim ‘mamwys’ was the son of a daughter married to an ‘alltud’; the
claimant’s grandfather need not be sonless; and the person claiming
“mamwys’ took a share along with his maternal uncles.
For instances of a daughter acting as a conduit of succession to her
son (i.e. conferring a right of succession through maternity) see Notes
on Punjab Custom, sub. tit. ‘ Khanadamadi,’ pp. 90-101.
Norte (33), p. 74.—An. Laws, Bk. VII, c. 1, § 9, 41, 42 ; Bk. IX, c. 26,
§5; ce. 34,§ 1-8; Bk. XIV, ec. 48, § 1-7.
Note (34), p. 75.—For actual instances in Survey of Denbigh, see
Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. Il, p. 427.
Nore (35), p. 75.—E.g. ville Merghlyn (Castell) holding of Ithel
Voyl, ville Glyn and Wrauant ; ville Crukenny and Nythrym, wele map
Riotle and wele Ieuan ap Ph. Voel; ville Stunthlyn, wele Teg ap Roppt ;
ville Eryanneth, share in wele [or’ ap Ieuan
Nore (36), p. 75.—Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 23, § 5, vide Note 13; Gw.
Code, Bk. II, c. 31, § 3, vide Note 13.
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 23, § 19:
Pwybynnac hagen nybo etiued idaw oe gorff ygytetiuedyonn nessaf
© vywn y teir ach or kyfi avydant yn lle etiuedyonn idaw.
An. Laws, Bk. XI, c. 5, § 57:
Or byd marw perchen tir hyd ar geifyn heb ettifed oe gorff neu gid
ettifed ; y brenhin a vyd ettifed o dir hunnw.
+ 96 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
Survey of Denbigh, p. 47:
Et extra tercium gradum non habent accionem ad hereditatem peten-
dam, set est terra ad voluntatem domini tanquam escaeta.. Set si dominus
terram illam dimittere voluerit est citius dimittenda propinquiori de
sanguine pro vero valore quam alicui extraneo.
Cf. also Survey of Denbigh, p. 150, sub. tit. ‘de releviis’; Survey of
Denbigh, p. 209; Survey of Denbigh, p. 313, sub. tit. ‘ de relevio liberorum.’
Nove (37), p. 76.—The numbers of co-holders are not given in the
Record of Carnarvon. For figures of unfree holdings in Bromfield and
Yale, see Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. IU, pp. 423-4, and in Den-
bigh, Vol. Il, pp. 424-6.
Norte (38), p. 76.—The term ‘ trefgefery ’ is applied in Record of Caer-
narvon to 14 villes in Caernarvon, and 11 in Anglesea. In Survey of
Denbigh the only villes which partake of the ‘trefgefery ’ character are
Dinorbin and Cileennus. In Bromfield and Yale, excluding maerdrefs,
there is no ville of that nature.
\ NOTE (39), p. 76.—See Record of Caernarvon, where the villes Trefcoed
cum Nant, Hirdref and Bodean, though recorded as ‘ trefegefery,’ claimed
to be ‘ treweloghe.’ Also absence of distinction in nomenclature in Survey
of Denbigh, Extent of Merioneth, and Hatent of Bromfield and Yale.
Note (40), p. 77.—E.g. Dolpenmaen, Dolellog, Dolbadaran, Dol-
gelley, Dolwyddelan. Contra Dolgledr (a township of Dolgelley).
Note (41), p. 77.—Ven. Code, Bk. Il, c. 12, § 6:
Tyr kyllydus hagen ny dylyir y rannw herwyd brodyr namyn maer
achygellaur a dylyant rannu arody y baub en kystal ay gylyd yny trew
ac urth hynny y gelwyr ef yn tyr kyuryw ac ny byd erw dyfodyedye yn
y tir kyuryw namyn o byd yr ryw eru honno yndau y rannu or maer ar
kyghellaur yn gyfredyn y baup kystal ay gylyd. Acny dyly nep kychwyn
oy tydyn kyurethyaul o geyll cafael kyhydet amdanau o tyr arail.
See also Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 20, § 3, 5, 9; Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 19,
S527 1213058) a2”) Ny, dy hye neb o tayawctref aredic hyny gaffo pawb or
tref gyfar.
An nbaws. pk. Ni, ic. 2D § 29:
O derwyd marw dyn o tir kyfrif heb vab idaw . . . ny byd erw diffo-
dedic yny ryw dref honno.
An. Eaws, Bk. V, c. 2, 8 52:
Un mab nyt reit idaw arhos agheu y dat yr estynnu tref y dat idaw ;
mab gwr o dir kyfrif, kannyt mwy y rann ef o erw y dat nor gwr eithaf
yny dref. Y mab ieuhaf eissyoes a dyly y arhos; kanys yn lle y dat y
dyly ef eisted.
An. Daws; Bk: UX8. 6.732, $ 1,2):
Ny dyleir kyt o un Ile niet yn tref gyffrif ac yn ydref honno y yy
pawb gymynt ae gilid ac nyt kystal. Ac yny dref hono y dyly meibion
tir y mywyt ev tat eithyr y mab ieuaf a dyly aros marw y dat, kanys yn
lle y dat y dyly eiste.
Y neb a alwo am tir yn tref gyffry ef a dyly dewis y tyddyn yn y
lle gwac ymyno heb ty ynddaw ac wedy hyny kyhyt affawb.
See also Bk: XOlViene 71S: Gr ic. 1325 8a:
Note (42), p. 78.—An. Laws, Bk. XIV, c. 32, § 1, 2:
Mal hynn y may am hawl gyhydd. Dyfot ar arglwydd a manegi,
i hanfot ef or dref honn a honn, ar erchi yr Duw iddaw beri yawnder
iddaw oe dlyet ac yna y dyly ef y beri, a pheri a ddyfynnu y dref gyfrif
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 97
y dyweyd y dyweto fot yddlet ynddi a phan ddelir yr maes y dyly yr
hawlwr ymrwymaw yngcytreith, a chadeiryaw pleidieu; ac yna y dyly
ddywedyt messur y hawl ae hanfot or dref honno, ar or cyff hwnn a hwnn
ac y mae ynteu yn erchi y dirigaw yn y dref. Ny bydd hawl gyhyt eithyr
yn tref gyfrif, canys pob un a ddyly cyhydu ae gilydd mal pe brodyr
faent.
Nore (43), p. 78.—For permanency of liability see, e.g., Record of
Caernarvon, sub. tit. ‘ Bodellok.’
‘Talis natura quod licet fuit nisi unus tenens in ville quod ipse respon-
deret de toto redditu ville.’
Cf., enter alia, sub. tit. ‘ Gest, Aberffraw Maerdref, Hirdrenennik and
Dynan.’
See also Survey of Denbigh, sub, tit. ‘ Kylkennys’ (Cilcennus) :
‘Et dicunt quod licet fuisset nisi unus eorum, ille solus teneret totam
villam redd, ut supra pro butiro, sed non solvet pro messione bladorum
neque pro construccione domorum nisi unus tenens.’
Cf., also, sub. tit. ‘ Dynorbyn Vawr.’
Note (44), p. 78.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 17, § 12:
A deudeg maynaul a duydrew ym pob kymut... un onadunt a
dyly bot yn tyr maertrew.
See also, enter alia, Record of Caernarvon with the eymydau and maer-
drefi as follows :
Malltyth and Lywan, Aberffraw ; Talybolion, Cemmaes; Turcelyn,
Penrhos ; Dyndaytho, Lammas; Menai, Rhosfair. .
Note (45), p. 78.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 20, § 9:
Gwyr y uaertrew a dyly gwneuthur odyn ac yscubaur yr brenhyn. . . .
Wynt a dylyant dyrnu and chrassu a medy a llywnu a llad gweyr a cheys-
syau gwellt a chynnut en e fvmer en y gnyuer gweyth y del y brenhin
yr llys.
Typical maerdrefs are Dolgelley and Talybont (P.R.O. Roll 789), Llan-
enddwyn (Ex. Merioneth, Record of Caernarvon, described 200 years after
it had ceased to be caput of Ardudwy), Aberffraw, Cemmaes and Rhosfair
in Record of Caernarvon. |
Notr (46), p. 78—See, e.g., Dolgelley and Talybont, in P.R.O.
Roll 789.
Note (47), p. 78.—In Record of Caernarvon ‘tir bwrdd’ is found,
ipso nomine, in Llanfairpriscoil, Cemmaes, Penrhos and Miogen only.
In latter ville it is said, ‘Quaedam hamel est terra dominica Wall, voc
Tirbord.’
Plots, sub. nom. ‘terra dominicalis’ are more frequent.
Note (48), p. 79.—Vide sub. tit. Rhosfair, Penrhos, Cemmaes, Aber-
ffraw, Llanenddwyn and Trawsfynydd in Record of Caernarvon.
Note (49), p. 79.—A striking illustration of this comes from the
Extent of Merioneth, circa 1445, ville Rhydcriw, where the separately
held plots had become separately assessed under separate names—Teir
yr ynys, Penywern, Turkayll, Gwyon Gway Ivan, Gwadenerthe, y Garth-
Nloit, Cefngoch, Tir Aluegele, Coedbryn, Lletty Eden’, many of which
names still survive as farmhouses.
Some of these plots are shown as separately assessed as early as the
1285 Survey, viz. Terra Turkyl, Gwaddereith, Gariloc.
Nove (50), p. 79.—For full discussion of co-tillage, wide Welsh Tribal
Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 57 et seq.
98 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
Norte (51), p. 80.—E.g. in Record of Caernarvon :
Anglesea—Gwredog, Ddrainog, Pen Garnisiog, and twenty-two other
villes, Caernarvon—Clynnog, Meyllteyrn, Gest and eleven other villes.
In Survey of Denbigh under the Consuetudines Communes, pp. 46 e¢
seq., 148 et seq., 208 et seq., 313 et seq., where there are frequent references
to ‘liberi et nativi commoti seu eorum tenentes.’
See also Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 17, § 5, 7,9; Gw. Code, Bk. IT, ec. 5,
§ 21, 23, 28.
NOTE (52), p. 80.—See, e.g., the Charter to Cymmer Abbey in Record
of Caernarvon. See also in Survey of Denbigh, the renders paid to the
Abbots of the clan Cynan ap Llywarch were Albadeth, which excused
them from payment of renders to the lords.
Note (53), p. 80.—Contained in Record of Caernarvon.
Note (54), p. 80.—E.g., gwestfa or tune is standardised in Ven.
Code, Bk.. II, e€.:17, § 15% .c. 21,8 1; .¢.,26, § 15 25) Dim-Code, Bk: Ti.
ec. 19, § 1-6; Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 33, § 1; ce. 34, § 1-8.
Building liabilities are standardised in Ven. Code, Bk. I, ec. 43, § 16;
Bk. IT, c. 20, § 1, 9; Dim. Code, Bk. II, ce. 11, § 7; Gw.:Code, Bk. II,
Coy ORS Oe
The same apples to all liabilities.
Norte (55), p. 81.—This seems to come out clearly from the distri-
bution of ‘cylch,’ e.g., in Dindaethwy (Record of Caernarvon).
All eylechau were imposed on some holders in Dynyslewy Rees and
Llandefnan.
Cylch stalonis on some in Pentre, Bodenriw, Castellbolwyn, Llan-
defnan, Mathafarn, Castellior, Cremlyn.
Cylch dourgon on some in Pentre, Castellbolwyn, Llandefnan, Matha-
fran, Cremlyn.
Cylch ragloti on some in Bodenriw, Castellior and Cremlyn.
Several villes and many holdings in others were entirely free from
all cylchau.
Norte (56), p. 81.—This follows, by implication, from the differentia-
tion between the ‘hosts’ and the duties of the aillts, e.g. under Ven.
Gode, Bk. Ti, c¢...19,.§ 7, 11:
Ny dyly y brenhyn duyn Illuyd or wlad allan namyn un weyth pob
bluydyn ac ny dyly bot yn hwnnw namyn pytheunos a mys... yny
wlat ehun ryd yu ydau lluyd pan a uynho. ... Wynt (meibion ey
yon) a dylyant roy pynuerch yr brenhin yr Iluydeu.
Note (57), p. 81.—There are knights-fees in the Black Book of St.
David’s, also in Glamorgan and Brecon; but in none of the Northern
Surveys.
In An. Laws, Bk. XI, c. 2, § 2 (a MS. of the fifteenth century from
Cardigan) military service is said to be due from the land ; but this expres-
sion appears to stand alone.
Norte (58), p. 81.—For references to the military services of the Wyrion
‘Eden,’ see Record of Caernarvon, sub. tit. Penrhyn, Trusclyn, Trefcastell,
Penymynydd, Ddrainog, Gwredog, Penhenllys and Twrgarw ; in Survey
of Denbigh, sub. tit. Toronoth, Twynan, Brynfanigl, Dinorben Fychan
and Llysaled.
Note (59), p. 81.—In Record of Caernarvon (excluding the Wyrion
Eden’ and a few bovate and carucate holders) references are in Gloddaeth,
Trefwarth, Cwmllanerch, Clynnog, Botford, Heneglwys, Crewerion, Grugor
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 99
only. In Survey of Denbigh (excluding new impositions on foreigners
and the Wyrion Eden’) it is referred to as of general application on p. 89,
lines 1, 4, 5; p. 146, line 1; p. 209, line 21.
It is specifically attached to individuals in Gwaenynog, Taldrogh’,
Gwytheryn, Meifod.
Norte (60), p. 82.—Vide (a) the numerous instances of escheat in the
Survey of Denbigh of ‘tenencium morturorum contra pacem’ among the
unfree, e.g. Segrwyd, p. 7; Prion, p. 18; Brynbagl, p. 21; Llywessog,
p. 37; Cilcedig, p. 43; Lleweni, p. 59; Beryn, pp. 130-1; Taldrogh’,
p- 146; Wigfair, p. 214; Gwerneignon, p. 242; Mochdref, p. 309.
(6) Extent of Bangor (Record of Caernarvon). Unfree of Aberpwll,
Llanestyn, Edern, Llanbedrog, Penheskyn, and several other villes were
hable to military service. Also all unfree tenants of the Church in Twrce-
lyn.
(c) Extent of Bromfield and Yale.
Unifree of Llanarmon, Gwensannau, Erryres, Bodidris, Chweleirog,
Bryntangor, Dutton Diffaeth, Stansty. See for extension of service
abroad sub. tit. Abenbury (Item debunt ire cum domino in guerre Wallie
et Scocie cum corpore domini. . .)
This condition appears (generally with the addition of England) also
sub. tit. Trefydd Bychan, Eyton, Llanarmon, Gwensannau, Beiston,
Sontley, Eglwyseg, Hoseley, Burton, and is implied, by general terms,
in many other villes.
Cf. also Record of Caernarvon, sub. tit. Trusclyn where only service is
“as far as Salop,’ and Trefcastell ‘within the marches of Wales at own
cost and elsewhere at the lord’s cost.’
Norte (61), p. 82.—See, e.g., Ven. Code, Bk. I, c. 7, § 22:
Ef adele kyle ykan ebrenyn gwedy yd ym guahano ac ef e Nodolyc
ef ar teylu. A teyr ran adele y uod or teylu . . . apop eylguerth edele
uod ykyt ac huynt. ... A guedy darfo udunt ekyle hunn deuet ef ar
ebrenyn atriked ykyd ac ef.
Nove (62), p. 82.—See, e.g., Survey of Denbigh, p. 148:
Et sciendum quod tempore Principis solebat unus stalo et unus garcio
Principis pasci ad domum cuiuslibet liberi non habentis tenentem aut
eciam ad domum cuiuslibet tenentis liberorum et eciam ad domum cuius-
libet Nativi istius commoti per unum diem et unam noctem. ... Tamen
tune non reddiderunt pro illis pastubus nisi quilibet eorum per annum
je.
Norte (63), p. 83.—For full discussion of the cylchau and_ liability
thereto see, Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 304 et seq.
Note (64), p. 83.—For ‘tunc’ and ‘gwestfa’ of the King see in
Codes :—
VenaGode, Blk i, ec. 15, § ll; «Bk: I) e517; § 15; .c..20, § 95..c. 19,
momerc ot, § 1; c. 26, § 1,.2.
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 12, § 8; c. 19, § 1-6; c. 23, § 52.
Gw. Code, Bk. II, ce. 33, § 1; c. 34, § 1, 2.
Nore (65), p. 83.—For details of tune levy in Denbigh see Welsh
Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. Il, pp. 427-31.
Nore (66), p. 83.—In Bromfield and Yale referred to only sub. tit.
Sesswick, Pickhill, Beiston, Dutton Diffaeth, Dinhimlle, Cristionydd
Dinhinlle, Dutton y Brain and Burton.
In Extent of Merioneth (Record of Caernarvon) sub. tit. Llanelltyd,
100 THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW
Lianaber, Llanbedr, Llanfair, Llanfihangel, Llanddwywe, Llandecwyn,
Trawsfynydd, Maentwrog, Festioniog and Trawsfynydd only.
In Anglesea and Caernarvon (Record of Caernarvon) in Gest, Dinlle,
Morfa, Penllech, Penyfed, Trefeithio, Bodenerth and Glasfryn only.
Note 67), p. 83.—For references to ‘dawnbwyd’ in the Codes see
Ven. Code, Bk. IT, ce. 27, § 1-3; Dim. Code, Bk. IT, ce} 19; § 7-13 3 Gu.
Code, Bk. II, c. 34, § 9-11.
Note (68), p. 83.—For details of food renders in Surveys, see Welsh
Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 2938-304.
Note (69), p. 84—For liability to build and repair in Codes, see Ven.
Code; Bk. I, ce: 4358 16; BK. 1c: 20, 8.1, 9. Dims Coden Ue lik
S77 and. Gu: (Code, BKY TRGck3ay7S 16:
Note (70), p. 84.—In Survey of Denbigh, pp. 8, 45, 46, 50, 59, 62,
86, 109, 120, 131, 187, 141, 143, 145, 146, 149, 154, 209, 222, 269, 275,
308, 315, 317, 320.
For other localities, see Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 320,
325.
Norte (71), p. 84.—For habilities to repair and maintain mills, see
Welsh Tribal ie and Custom, pp. 319-25 (Vol. I), and for mill tolls,
ib., pp. 330-2.
-. Note (72), p. 84.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 20, § 9.
NOTE (73), p. 84.—Survey of Denbigh, pp. 50, 154, 270, 271, 315,- 318,
320.
In Record of Caernarvon sub. tit. Pen-y-barth.
Generally, Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 332-5.
Note (74), p. 84.—For details of porterage, see Welsh Tribal Law
and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 326-9.
Nore (75), p. 85.—For law of pannage in Codes, see Ven. Code,
Bk. III, c. 25, § 6, 7, 8, 22, 39; Dim. Code, Bk. Il, c. 23, § 43, 44, 45;
Bk, Tic. 3)'§ 36); Gwe Code, Bk IW, c:.28, §-6, 1.45.) oe nOe
In the Surveys, see especially Hatent of Brome and Yale, p. 35,
and other references in index thereto.
Note (76), p. 85.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 17, § 15; ¢. 26, § 1.
Norte (77), p. 86.—The phrasing shows the joint liability, e.g. Ven.
Coden ke ae ea i asa.
Ac or wyth (maenol) hynny y dyly y brenhyn gwestua pob bluydyn
sew yw hynny punt pob bluydyn o pob un onadunt.
EO Gs Us So,
Y uaynaul y taler tung . . . pedeyr arugeint o aryan o bop maynaul.
Ib., ec. 21, § 1. O pob maynaul ryd y brenhyn a dyly keruyn med.
Ib., c. 26, § 1. Messur gwestua y brenhyn yn amser gayaw o uaynaul
ryd.
Gw. Code, Bk. II, c. 33, § 1, Messur gwestua brenhyn yw o bob trei y
taler gwesta brenhin o honei. .. .
Norte (78), p. 86.—See Rees’ South Wales and the Marches, pp. 205,
223 et seq.
Nove (79), p. 86.—Survey of Denbigh, see discussion on pp. |x—Ixiii.
Nove (80), p. 86.—Survey of Denbigh, p. 175:
Villata ... consistit in vj lectis quorum unumquodque lectum
solebat reddere de Tung iijs uijd.
Norte (81), p. 87. —Survey of Denbigh, pp. 96 et seq., 245 et seg., 285
et seq., 299 et seq.
THE LAND IN ANCIENT WELSH LAW 101
NOTE (82), p. 87.—Survey of Denbigh, sub. tit. Segrwyd, p. 7; Prion,
p. 19; Postu, p. 26; Llewesog, p. 37; Brynlluarth, p. 40.
NOTE (83), p. 87.—Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. II, pp. 428-30.
Norte (84), p. 87.—E.g. Survey of Denbigh, p. 229.
Norte (85), p. 88.—Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 27, § 1:
Or maynolyd caeth y dylyr deu dawnbwyt.
Dim. Code, Bk. II, c. 19, § 7:
Deu dawnbwyt adyly y brenhin gaffel y gan y bilaeineit ... ac
velly ytelir ovileintref.
Norte (86), p. 88.—Survey of Denbigh, pp. 232, 275.
Nove (87), p. 88.—E.g. Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 18, § 5:
Ac wynt a dylyant dwyn kylch . . . ar ueybyon eyllyon y brenhyn.
Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 19, § 6:
Ny dylyir gossot ary maynoleu ryd ...nacyleh...namyn...
y kylch mawr yr teulu....
See also, inter alia, Ven. Code, Bk. II, c. 27, § 4; Dim. Code, Bk. I,
e121,
Nove (88), p. 88.—Vide Welsh Tribal Law and Custom, pp. 432-4.
Note (89), p. 89.—For summary, see ibid., Vol. I, pp. 305 et seq.
Note (90), p. 89.—Ven. Code, Bk. I, c. 43, § 16; Bk. II, c. 20, § 1;
Dim: Code, Bk. If, c. 11, § 7; Gw. Code, Bk. Il, c. 35, § 6.
Nore (91), p. 89.—Survey of Denbigh, pp. 8, 149, 209, and Welsh
Tribal Law and Custom, Vol. I, pp. 320 et seq.
He ep
ARS ae
ipso ae ee
i yas
be fue
eat ?
oie
extended
from each middle pillar to the side walls, thus dividing the hall
1 Anc. Laws, III, ce. XXI, p. 143.
2 Tbid., Vil, ce. XXE, p. 142!
3‘The fire being upon the hearth, a large and durable stone was
selected for that purpose, and a similar one for a back-stone, which gener-
ally would outlast the destruction of a fragile building, and being pointed
out, would be proof that a claimant’s ancestor had resided there.’ —
Myvyrian Archeology of Wales, 2nd edn., p. 1068.
4 Anc. Laws, note, p. 6. 5 The Welsh People, p. 200.
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 111
crosswise, yet the details given of the disposition of the seats
seem to indicate that the screens were not placed lengthwise.!
There is also a reference to a gable entrance, talddrws, leading
into the portion called is korf. If the kyntedd formed a side
entrance, a lengthwise division into two portions would appear
to have been necessitated, but this again seems to be rendered
impossible by the disposition of seats both in uch korf and is
korf. Davies gives cyntedd: atriwm,2 which is more or less the
modern meaning. In a Latin version we have: in anteriori
parte aule, id est, huc [| = uch] kyntet.2 Davies gives corf:
truncus corporis,4 and its general use in literary texts is such
that it cannot have been properly employed to designate a screen.
We are therefore led to conclude that whatever was the exact
meaning of korf, the term used in this material for screen is
kelvur. Wherever it may have been situated, kyntedd must have
meant either a porch or a kind of room from which one entered
the newadd, and the term cannot possibly be the equivalent of
korf or of kelvi. It appears to be highly probable that the terms
in the texts as we know them have been confused.
The Venedotian Code provides the following detailed state-
ment of the order of precedence in the King’s household :
‘There are fourteen persons who sit on chairs in the court, four
of them below the screen and ten above the screen. The first is the
King ; he is to sit next to the screen; next to him the Chancellor ;
then the Guest [this, of course, could mean a number of guests|;
then the Edling ; then the Chief Falconer; the Foot-holder on the
side opposite the King’s dish, and the Leech at the base of the pillar
opposite to him on the other side of the fire. Next to the other screen
the Household Priest, ready to bless the food and chaunt the Pater ;
the Silentiary, who is to strike the pillar above his head; next to
him the Court Judge ; next to him the Chaired Bard ; the Court Smith
on the end of the bench below the Priest. The Chief of the House-
hold is to sit in the lower end of the Hall with his left hand to the
front door,®> and those he may choose of the Household with him,
and the rest on the other side of the door. The Household Bard is
1 Anc. Laws, I, c. VI, p- 5.
2 John Davies, Antiquae Linguae Britannicae Dictionarium Duplex...
1632.
3 Anc. Laws, Leg. Waill., I, c. X, 774. 4 Dict. Duplex.
5 Talddrws is rendered. ‘front door’ by Aneurin Owen, in spite of the
statement in the note already quoted that the kyntedd was a side entrance.
It may be added that in several compounds tal has the meaning of chief,
principal.
112 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
to sit on one hand of the Chief of the Household ; the Chief Groom
next to the King, separated from him by the screen ; and the Chief
Huntsman next to the Priest of the Household, separated from him
by. the tsereen! =
This statement leaves us in some uncertainty as to the places
occupied by the Foot-holder and the Leech, but other references
show they were to sit at the foot of the middle columns, almost
in front of the King and the Household Priest.
It must be added that the Latin versions do not agree as to
the places of officers in the hall.?
It will be observed that in this order of precedence there is no
mention of the Queen and other ladies of the Court. Rhys and
Jones infer from this fact that the order has reference, not to the
ordinary life of the establishment, but to the formal occasion
of some ceremonial court, such as the three principal festivals,
or other similar assemblies. There is at least some evidence
which would seem to suggest the contrary. For instance, there
are occasional particulars given of the privilege of certain officers
of the Court which were in force only on state occasions. It is
also stated that at the request of the Queen, the Household Bard
might sing ‘ in a low voice, so that the Hall may not be disturbed
by him.’ The Latin texts explain that this entertainment of the
Queen took place in her own room,‘ of the situation of which we
are not informed. It is further stated that the Queen’s Priest
had to bless the food and drink brought into the Queen’s room ? ;
that the Queen’s Door-ward was to bring mead to the Queen
when there was mead-drinking in the Hall® ; and that the duties
of the Queen’s Page of the Chamber lay ‘ between the Hall and
the Chamber.” Anc. Laws, We. XOX) p. 25. 6 Jbid., I, e. XX VIM, peas
@ Toid 5, Cc XOGVAl pn 26. 8Toid., ¥; ce. XXVijagpee2er
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 113
seems to imply that upon those occasions the Queen might dine
with the King. The Queen also had her own Cook, who was to
taste all dishes prepared by him.!
The following customs observed at table are also mentioned :
The Candle-bearer was to hold a candle for the King whilst he
was dining, and to precede him with a light when he retired.
The Cook was to taste each course brought to the table, and at
the serving of the last course was to be presented with food and
drink by the King. Whilst the Household was dining and after-
wards drinking, the Apparitor was to stand between the two
middle pillars with a rod in his hand to guard against the danger
of the house being set on fire by accident. He was forbidden to
sit in the presence of the King. The Foot-holder’s duty was
to hold the King’s feet in his lap from the time he began to drink
until he went to bed, to attend to his bodily comfort and to guard
him against all mischance. After the repast was over, the Door-
ward was to clear the Hall of all persons not entitled to remain.
Some of the more notable directions with regard to procedure
on various occasions are as follow: It was the Door-ward’s duty
to make room for the King with a mace, and any person struck
with the mace so that he fell at an arm’s length had no legal
remedy. He was not to sit in the presence of the King, and was
to speak to him kneeling. He was to bring all messages from the
entrance, porth, to the King, and failure to recognise any Court
official entailed a fine.
The character of the entertainment of the Court is to some
extent suggested by the Laws. Story-telling is not mentioned,
but the singing of songs by the Penkerdd and the Household
Bard is specified. The term canu kerdd (to sing a song) is often
used with the meaning of composing, but the Latin expression
cantare would seem to indicate that songs were sung, probably,
as we may gather from other references, to some kind of harp
accompaniment. The position of the Penkerdd, Musicus Pri-
marius or Princeps Poetarum, at the Court is somewhat uncertain
in the texts.2 The Latin texts do not specify the method of
appointing or selecting the Penkerdd, but the Gwentian Code
states that a bard became a Penkerdd after he had won a chair.’
tAnc. Laws, I, ec. X XIX, p. 27.
?-'T. Gwynn Jones, Bardism and Romance, Cymmrodorion Publications,
1914, pp. 5-6.
3 Anc. Laws, Gwentian Code, I, ec. XXXVII, p. 331.
114 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
They also state that when a contention for a chair occurred it
was the privilege of the Judge of the Court to obtain a corn bual,
a ring and a cushion from the victor. What Aneurin Owen
called the Anomalous Laws seem to suggest that a lord could
confer the office of Penkerdd.? It is possible that these details
are later additions, but references to bardic contests in the Books.
of Taliesin and Aneirin, and in the poems of Kynddelw and
others suggest that there may have been some system of com-
petition for the honour. Like the Court officers, the Penkerdd
obtained his land free, and a harp from the King, which was one
of the lawful harps and was of equal value with that of the King.
He received the amobr of the daughters of the bards subject to
him.? He was also privileged to receive gifts on behalf of women
given in marriage.4 The solicitation of gifts was his sole privilege,
and out of the common profits of himself and companions he
was entitled to two shares. Other bards might solicit with his
permission, but a bard from a neighbouring country might
solicit without his permission. He was free from the operation
of royal prohibition of solicitation within the King’s domains. ?*
A disciple upon leaving the Penkerdd, was entitled to a harp from
him, ® but the Venedotian Code says that the Penkerdd was entitled
to a sum of money from his subordinate upon the completion of
his training.’
The duties of the Penkerdd are specified in the Latin and
Welsh texts. Whenever the King was pleased to hear a song in
the Hall, the Penkerdd sang first. Elsewhere, it is stated that he
was to sing two songs, one a song to God and the other a song
of Kings,* the Household Bard afterwards to sing a third, 2s korf.
The Household Bard, upon taking office, was entitled to a
harp from the King and a ring from the Queen. At the three
principal festivals, the harp was to be placed in his hands by the
Chief of the Household. In circuit with other bards, he was.
entitled to the portion of two men. If he went to petition the
1 Dim: Code, 1, e XIV; p. 179; Gwent. Code, I, ec. XIU p. 316,
“Ane: Laws, Vee: ile) on 39:
3 Penkerdd debet habere mercedes de filiabus poetarum sibi subdi-
as —Ance. Laws, Leg. Wall., c. XXIII, p. 779.
4 Anc. Laws, Leg: Wall., c. XXIII, p. 779.
5 Dim. Code, I, c. XXV, p. 188; Gwent. Code, I, c. XXXVII, p. 331.
6 Gwent. Code, I, ec. XXXVII, p. 331.
“ Ven. Code, \,. c. XGt.p: 35.
Seg. Widllis Uy (C2 Ocean
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 115
King for anything, he was required to sing one song, only ; if to
a nobleman, three songs ; if to a villein, he was to sing until he
became tired. It was his duty to provide the Chief of the
Household with a song whenever desired. If present at a raid
by the King’s followers, he was entitled to a good beast of burden:
from the spoil, in addition to his portion as a subject. In case
of war, he was to sing ‘ Unbeinaeth Prydein’ before the King’s
retinue. ? |
Poetry is said to have been one of the three arts which,
legally, the son of a villein could not acquire without the consent
of his lord. ‘The other two were letters and smithcraft.2 The
term kerddoryon is used with the meaning of bards in the sections
dealing with the rights of the Penkerdd. In the Latin texts the
term employed for kerddoryon is joculatores. Among the gift-
horses from the King, for which the Chief Groom was not entitled
to receive a perquisite, was the Jester’s horse. The reason why
the amount was not payable in this case is suggestive of the
Jester’s profession.4 The zoculator is also called croesan. ‘The
word is evidently related to the Irish crossdan, ‘ a lewd, ribaldrous
rhymer, a mimic, jester, buffoon.’ > The word is also used of the
cross-bearers in religious processions, ‘who combined with that
occupation the profession of singing satirical poems against those
who had incurred church censure, and were for any other case
obnoxious.’ ® Two Latin texts say that the AKerddawr, with the
King and Priest, should not be put to death, ‘ et ideo galanas eis
secundum leges non est constitutum.’’ Kerddoryon from other
lands were entitled to a progress among the King’s villeins whilst
expecting their gifts from the King.®
1 Si ad villanum, cantet donec deficiat.—Leg. Wall., I, c. XXII,
1.
‘i 2 Et si belli fuerit conflictus, cantare debet quod dicitur Ynbeynayth
Predein ante familiam. Leg. Wall., I, c. XXII, p. 779.—Ven. Code, I,
e. XIV, p. 16, has ‘ unbeynaet prydyn.’ The form Prydyn is interesting,
but the whole clause is most probably a late interpolation.
3 Literatura, fabrica ars et poesis.—Leg. Wall., II, c. VIII, p. 785.
4 Et de illo qui datur ioculatori, quia ioculator debet ligare capistra
equi circa testiculos, et sic portare debet extra portam.—Leg. Wall., I,
Ca Wag or aey Ore
5 Kuno Meyer, Contributions to Irish Lexicography, Archiv fur Celt,
Lex. III Band, 1 Heft.
6 Todd, Irish Nennius, Dublin, 1848, p. 182.
* Leg. Wall., II, c. VIII, p. 787.
Poipid., UE,c. XIV, p. 791;-c. Xi; p. 839; Dim. Code, Il, ce. XI,
p. 238.
116 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
Of other structures connected with the King’s house, there
are some details. Reference to the kitchen (cegin, bwyty) suggest
that it was a separate structure, also containing sleeping accom-
modation, as the Land Maer and the Baking-woman are said to
have been lodged therein. The Chief of the Household was
entitled to the largest and most central house in the tref, wherein
dwelt with him any whom he might wish of the Household.
The Chaplain’s house (ty ’r clochydd, clochydd, literally bell-
man, parish clerk in the modern language, but domus capellani
in a Latin version) was also a separate structure, wherein also
were lodged the King’s Priest, the Queen’s Priest and the Clerks
(ysgolheigion, literally ‘ scholars ’). The House Steward’s dwelling
was the house nearest to the barn, by reason of his duty of
distributing fodder for the horses of the household. The Kiln
(odyn, possibly bakery) is mentioned. It was evidently provided
with sleeping apartments, for the Chief Huntsman’s lodging was
there. kes
The tref seems to have been provided with a bath, for no
indemnity was to be paid for the burning of heath in March, for
the fire of a smithy and the fire of a bath in a hamlet, provided
the smithy and the bath were at a distance of from seven to eight
yards from the nearest house.
Other structures which it was the duty of the King’s villeins
to erect for him were the stable, treven vechan, cerner, and cynordy.
Treven vechan is rendered latrina in the Latin versions and
cerner is hundy, a dormitory, in one Welsh text. Cynordy is
rendered atriwm, domus in atrio posita, by Davies,” but in the Latin
we read domus canum, id est, kynordy.? Hafdy and gaeafdy are
also mentioned, probably synonyms of Hafod, summer residence,
and Hendref, winter residence. It seems that in the twelfth
century the set of buildings with more or less completeness was
duplicated for summer purposes on the higher grazing grounds.*
An ordinary house is described by Giraldus Cambrensis as having
been circular, with the fireplace in the centre, and beds of rushes
all round, on which the inmates slept with their feet to the fire.
The description reminds one of the hut of the boutaouer koat as
still found in Brittany, a structure which probably remains much
the same as it may have been in this country before the Breton
lAne, Laws.2l, ¢> Xan, 2 372
2 Dict. Duplex. 3 eg. Wall, Vs 2c. XCVili oe SilGs
4 Rhys and Jones, The Welsh People, p. 200.
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 117
emigration. It would appear, according to these texts, that the
houses of the King, the nobles and the ezlltyon were on the same
plan and had six columns. The penthouses of the house of an
allt are enumerated—chamber, cowhouse, barn, kiln, sheepcote,
pigsty—and he is stated to have possessed a summer and a winter
house. All houses were probably frail structures, easily destroyed
and particularly liable to damage by fire—hence the regulations,
some of them peculiar, with regard to fire. The legal value of
each piece of timber used in the construction of a house is given,
imcluding the columns, the ties supporting the roof, rafters, beams,
poles, rods, rails, weather poles and spars, binders, and springles,
doors, door frames and thresholds. Windows are not mentioned.
The outer walls and doors were probably of wattle, and the roof
of broom and similar shrubs and possibly turf.
It is probable that in the houses of the nobles, the uchelwyr
and the boneddigyon, entertainment was something like that
indicated in the references examined above. We have seen that
the bards were in the habit of visiting the homes of the uchelwyr
and even of the evzlltyon.
Although the position and rights of married women are
regulated in detail, unfortunately the Laws do not enable us to
gather much information concerning the more distinctively social
customs connected with marriage. The statement of the position
of daughters after the attainment of the age of twelve seems to
involve some uncertainties, possibly due to the fusion of earlier
and later practices. Paternal maintenance of a daughter was
obligatory up to the age of twelve years, when, it would seem,
it might cease, but the daughter’s right to movable property!
or to ‘ a share in the da of the household or of the larger group of
kindred to the fourth degree, of which she was a member,’? still
remained. The statement that after the twelfth birthday
‘every woman is to go the way she willeth freely, for she is not
to be home-returning,’ ? may perhaps be taken to signify that
from her twelfth birthday a girl was legally exempt from paternal
correction and restraint, and that she might leave home, but,
having left, that she was not entitled to return. Presumably,
this freedom to follow her own will meant that she could give
1 Ane. Laws, Il, c. XXX, p. 99.
2 Rhys and Jones, The Welsh People, p. 208.
°3 Anc. Laws, II, c. I, p. 46, ‘ Pob gureic adele menet y ford e menno
en ryd, cany dele bot en cardecguel.’ The exact meaning of the expres-
sion cardecguel is uncertain.
118 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
herself in marriage. The sections dealing with amobr include
a statement that a woman who disposed of herself was bound
herself to pay amobr.! Inspite of this freedom, it would seem that
normally the giving of a daughter in marriage involved paternal
consent, and that it might rest with the group of kindred to the
fourth degree,? a custom reflected in the tale of Kulhwch ac
Olwen and less definitely in the tale of Branwen.
The Laws contain no actual description of the marriage cere-
mony. Insome of the early tales the expression used for marriage
(‘oed i gysgu genthi’) seems to suggest a contract held to be
consummated by the act of sleeping together. This term is also
employed in the Laws in that sense, and from references in the
legal material we must infer a ceremony of some kind.? No
mention is made of the services of a priest, and the place where
the contract was made is not specified, in fact, the only reference
to ecclesiastical law in the matter of marriage is to the effect that
the Law of Hywel was contrary to it :—‘ The (ecclesiastical) law
says again that no son is to obtain the patrimony but the eldest
born to the father by the married wife; the Law of Hywel,
however, allows it to the youngest son as well as the eldest, and
decides that the sin of the father or his illegal act is not to be
brought against the son in the matter of patrimony.”?
After the delivery of the bride certain formalities were
_ observed and assurances made. The bride’s agweddi was prob-
ably handed over. Agweddi, or gwaddol, seems to have been a
portion delivered to the bridegroom on the morrow of the mar-
riage.> If the marriage contract was not broken before the end
of seven years, it ceased to be the wife’s own portion and became
joint property. Another term found in the legal texts is argy-
vreu, employed with a variety of significations, but which, in
this connection, seems to have meant special ornaments, para-
TAne: arvs, uiaenD.pri42:
2 Tbid., Wee. XOVSip. 85.
3 Jbid., II, c. I, p. 41, ‘Keuodi ar enethiauruir.’ Outside the
legal material, see also the tales of Kulhwch ac Olwen and Branwen.
4 Ibid., II, ec. XVI, p. 86. This is probably a reference to the
custom of concubinage, which continued to be common in Wales, as
elsewhere, down to the sixteenth century, the children, in some cases at
any rate, being brought up with those of the lawful wife, and the sons
inheriting property from their fathers, and their names appearing in the:
pedigrees.
2 lbtd.. Dim. Codex Were. Vallee. 223%
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 119
phernalia.t Another gift, called cowyll, was payable by the
husband to the wife on the morning after the consummation of
the marriage, the amount depending upon the status of the
wife’s father.2 Another text states that if a woman failed to
specify her cowyll before rising from bed in the morning, the
cowyll was to be thenceforward in common between them.?
This is seemingly contradicted by another statement giving the
fixed amount of the cowyll of the daughter of a king, a gwrda and
an aillt.4 Yet another definition of cowyll is that it was the price
of virginity.® Yet another payment involved was the amobr.
A general definition of these payments is as follows :—
‘ There are three occasions of shame for a maid: the first is when
her father tells her, ““ I have given thee to a man ”’ ; the second when
for the first time she goes to her husband’s bed ; the third when for
the first time, risen from bed, she finds herself among people. For
the first shame, her purchase price (amobr) is given to her father ;
for the second, her cowyll is given to herself ; for the third her agweddz
is given by her father to her husband.’®
As D’Arbois de Jubainville points out,’ the purchase price
(amobr) among the Welsh was paid, as elsewhere, to the father,
or to the other relative who might give the maid in matriage,
but the father, or relative, transferred the price to the King, or
to the lord who was placed between him and the King. This,
according to D’Arbois de Jubainville, means that the payment was
the ransom of the right called in Latin jus primae noctis, ‘ quoique
la loi ne la dise point.’ To all students of folk-custom, this
contention will appear to be well-founded, but, as the same
notable authority, equally competent as jurist and philologist,
points out, the remarkable difference between the Kymric custom
and primitive custom elsewhere is that the Kymric custom assimi-
lates the free women to the slaves, amobr being payable for
women of all classes. It is unnecessary here to follow the matter
further, but it may be stated that in some agreements signed by
1 Rhys and Jones, The Welsh People, p. 209; D’Arbois de Jubainville,
La Famille Celtique, p. 58.
wAnme. Lows, i, c. 1, p. 42.
ertoid.. 1h,.c.=1,° p47. JD MMI Os Aly jog et):
> Esef eu ecouuyll er hyn a kafey am y guerendaut.—Anc. Laws, II,
cobs p. 44.
~& Anc. Laws, Dim. Code, II, ce. VIII, p. 228.
* La Famille Celtique, p. 125 et seq.
120 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
tenant farmers in a part of Denbighshire, say forty years ago,
this ransom was mentioned. Whether it has since disappeared
the writer does not know. ‘The discrepancies noted above, with
others, seem to indicate a fusion of earlier and later usages.
Of the social festivities which, no doubt, accompanied a
marriage, the Laws tell us nothing. That neithiawrwyr came
together and were present wherever the newly married couple
may have first slept together is proved by certain statements in
the law.1 If the element car in the terms cargychwyn and car-
ddychwel can be taken to mean a vehicle, we might imagine a
ceremonial departure from the bride’s home, with the goods
handed over to the young couple for the setting up of the
new household.
It is fairly clear that the marriage bond was loose, as it was
also in Ireland.? Generally in the law the term gureic is used
of an unmarried as well as a married woman, but we have also
the terms gureic briaut and gureic bwys. ‘The exact term for a
married woman is still gwraig briod. In the law gureic bwys is
mentioned as having one right not possessed by other wives—
“no wife in the world is to have a share of the corn but an espoused
one.’ ? The difference between gureic bwys and any other wife
is not explained. ‘The expression pwys occurs in significant con-
text in a mid-fourteenth century literary text, rendering sponsus,
sponsa.* The form pwys cannot regularly be derived from the
Latin. One wonders whether its occurrence denotes a difference
that came to be recognised between an earlier, comparatively
loose union and a later, more formal contract with ecclesiastical
sanction. There are certainly in these laws indications of a
considerable diversity in custom. A regular marriage was that
TAne: Laws; isc. 1, p. 4.
2 De Jubainville, La Famille Celtique, p. 179.
3 So rendered, somewhat literally, by Aneurin Owen—‘ ni dyly gwraig
yn y byd cafael dim or yd onid gwraig pwys.’—Anc. Laws, I, c. I, p. 40.
4°Pa delw ygwnneir ygkylch yrei auo meirw ?—Megys ydaw guwr
pwys ac anneiryf luossogrwydd varchogyonn gantaw yn erbyn y wreic
pwys ae dwyn gantaw gan ganueu allewenyd, velle . . . ydaw yr angel
. keittwat a llawer o engylyon ygyt ac ef ydwyn eneit gwreic pwys Krist
o garchar y corff gann gywydolyaetheu acherdeu a diruawr oleuni ac
arogleu hynaws ylys nef.’—Hist. Lucidar, Lilyvyr Agkyr Llandewwrevr
(Oxford, 1894). In the Latin original we read: ‘.. . sicut sponsus
cum multitudine militum ad suscipiendam sponsam venit, etc.,’ «bid.,
p- 210. On p. 88 we also find ‘ yr eglwys gatholic lan, yr hon ysyd wreie
bwys briawt y vnmab duw dat.’
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 121
in which the bride was given by her father or some other member
of the family, possibly with the assent of kindred, but what the
law describes as “ clandestine ’ unions seem to have been numerous
and even recognised. Separation after sleeping together for
three nights is mentioned.t Marriage contracts for one year,
which could be broken or renewed, were known in Ireland.?
Provision for what looks like consummation or final separation
in the seventh year under the Kymric system seems to suggest
that a similar practice once existed in Wales.? The wife had a
greater degree of freedom than allowed by ecclesiastical law or
by modern common law. Separation was easy and might occur,
not only as the result of the misconduct of either party, but also
by agreement. The following curious enactment seems to
imply that after separation the relationship was finally broken
by the subsequent marriage of one of the parties to another
person :—
‘Tf the husband take another wife after he shall have parted from
the first, the first is free. Ifa man be parted from his wife, and if
she be of a mind to take another husband, and if it should happen
that the first husband repent having parted from her, and should he
overtake her with one foot in the bed and the other outside the bed,
then the prior husband is to have the woman.’ 4
The division of property in case of separation is minutely set
out, but depends upon the period of anterior cohabitation. Of
the children the division followed the principle that the father
got twice the number that went to the mother, the elder and
younger of the offspring going to the father and the intervening
child or children to the mother. In the case of there being only
one child, or a number not divisible according to the principle
stated above, male priority would probably operate in favour of
the father.
Rules with regard to the relations of the sexes are numerous, and
certain prescribed tests of impotence and of chastity,® apparently
meme, Laws, Al;'e. I, p. 42:
2 The social history of some Welsh communities down to modern
times shows instances of temporary cohabitation followed by marriage
or separation, with no subsequent detriment to the woman in case of
separation. Many curious customs connected with marriage of undoubted
antiquity are also attested.
3 Ac os duc ar ty ac anlloet ae bod ekyd ac ef hyt empen seyth blenet,
rannu a hi megis a gureye a rodyeyt ydhy.—Anc. Laws, I, c. I, p. 42.
4 Anc. Laws, Il, ec. I, p. 40. 5 Ibid., II, c. I, pp. 47-8.
122 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
to be made in case of demand immediately after the conclusion of
the marriage, and in the presence of the neithiawrwyr, guests,
undoubtedly go back to more primitive times, but even such
provisions do not necessarily indicate a depravity comparable to
that reflected in many modern novels and plays.
The case of women deceived or taken by force seems to have
been fairly provided for. Illegitimate children were affiliated by
legal process, described as occurring in church, and the father
was responsible for the nurture of the child till the age of twelve
or fourteen years. A woman taken without consent of kindred
could be carried away from the man by her lord and kindred,
unless she herself wished to remain. The prostitute, distinct
from the concubine, had no privilege, but her sarhaed and galanas
were to be paid according to the privilege of a brother.
The birth of a child seems to have been the occasion of certain
ceremonial practices. A male child was received as of kin by the
father, the mother, it would appear, making a formal declaration
of his paternity. In the case of the decease of the father, the
child could be received by the pen-kenedl, with seven good men
of the kindred. The pen-kenedl was to take the hands of the child
in his own and to kiss him, a kiss being a sign of kinship. He was
then to place the right hand of the child in the hand of the eldest
of the others, and so from hand to hand to the last man. In
default of a pen-kenedl, the ceremony could be observed by twenty-
- one good men of the kindred, one of them, being the lord, taking
the place of the pen-kenedl. The details given with regard to
the upbringing of the son of a bonheddig are curious, suggesting
as they do a division of responsibility and a standardisation of
expenditure as between father and mother. The child was to
be nursed by the mother for three months which, with the period
of pregnancy, was to be reckoned as one year for her. The father
was then to provide for him, giving a sheep with fleece and lamb,
a caul of tallow or in default one penny; an iron pan, or the
sum of four lawful pence ; wheat, barley, and oats ; a milch cow,
with its calf; white or parti-coloured cloth, and fuel. ‘If the
mother will,’ it is added, ‘ she shall have the whole ; if she do not
will, let it be given to another.’1 The meaning of the last sentence
seems to be that if the mother did not wish to continue to nurse
the child, he was to be entrusted to a foster-mother.
1 Anc. Laws, Dim. Code, II, c. XVIII, pp. 253-4. The text is evi-
dently corrupt, as it mentions wheat and fuel twice.
SOCIAL LIFE. AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 123
Until he attained the age of fourteen years, the son of a free-
man was maintained by his father. He was then taken by his
father and commended to his lord (at an earlier stage, probably
to the pen-kenedl), who granted him the privilege of an innate
tribesman, bonheddig. As the result of this ceremony the youth
became capable of possessing property and liable to answer
claims made upon him, and was thenceforth maintained by the
chief or lord. Cattle were probably given him, and a share of
the free land of the kindred, and he became liable to military
service. The son of an uchelwr only attained the status of an
uchelwr himself on the death of his father.
Fosterage was practised, but the information contained in
the law as to its conditions and working is meagre. The Codes
state that if a noble placed his son in fosterage with the avlit
ot a lord by the permission or sufferance of that lord for a year
and a day, then the noble’s son would become entitled to a son’s
share of the land of the allt, and ultimately of his property.1
Rhys and Jones suggest that the character of the marriage con-
tract and the division of the children on separation of husband
and wife afford some explanation of the custom.? Seebohm,
on the other hand, takes it to have been ‘ one of several means
used for the purpose of tying strangers as closely as possible to
the tribe.’* Giraldus Cambrensis’ statement that in his time
the sons of the nobles formed more sincere friendships with their
foster-brothers than among themselves 4 would, no doubt, be
true of earlier times. °®
Of the training of children, whether fostered or brought up
at home, the Laws do not speak. References in the poems of
later bards enable us to gather that there was definite training
of youths, not only in physical exercise and the use of arms, but
also in polite habits.
The life reflected in the Laws is that of a settled community
living by the cultivation of the land, the keeping of sheep, goats
and cattle, the hunting of wild swine and other animals, and
fishing. They seem to have grown barley, oats, wheat and rye.
1 Anc. Laws, II, c. XX, p. 95; Dim. and Gwent. Codes, pp. 266 and
374, 2 The Welsh People, p. 207.
3 The Tribal System in Wales, p. 128.
4 Descr. Cambr., II, cc. 4, 9.
5 The later history of fosterage in Wales, which continued down to
the eighteenth century, with a variety of new motives, deserves to be
studied.
A.S.—VOL. X. | I
124 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
The land was cultivated and the crops sown in the spring, the
wheat grown being most probably a spring-sown crop. Landed
property suits were heard from the ninth of November to the
ninth of February and from the ninth of May to the ninth of
August. In spring and autumn the Courts were closed because
of the cultivation of land and of harvest. A _ well-regulated
system of co-tillage existed, and there were other forms of
co-operation. It does not appear that fields were generally
enclosed, with the exception of gardens. Trespass by animals,
therefore, in spite of watching and guarding, must have been a
matter of common occurrence, and this is amply reflected in the
enactments with regard to compensation for damage to crops.
Disagreement with regard to pledges and warranties led to
occasional fighting, for we read that in case of fighting the surety
was to take the first blow with a stick. We may gather that
the services of the mediciner were most frequently required for
the dressing of wounds.
A statement of the duties of the Chief Huntsman gives many
interesting details. From Christmas until February he was to
be with the King whenever desired. In the second week of
February he was to take his dogs and horns and leashes, his horn
to be of the value of one pound, and to go to hunt the hinds.
From that day until midsummer, he was to be hunting the hinds,
and during that time he was not obliged to answer any claim
made against him unless it be by a fellow-officer. Some said that
he was to swear only by his horn and leashes. He was entitled
to the hide of an ox in winter to make leashes and a cow-hide in
summer to make footgear. On the day following midsummer
he was to start hunting stags, and if he were not caught before
quitting his bed and putting on his buskins, he was not obliged
to answer any claim made against him. From that day to the
kalends of winter the harts were in season, and there were twelve
lawful pieces in each animal. He was then to hunt the wild
swine until the first day of December. Having paid each of his
assistants, he could be called upon to answer claims against
himself. He then divided the skins between the King, the
huntsmen and himself, and afterwards showed his dogs, horns
and leashes to the King. A progress granted him among the
King’s villeins followed, extending until Christmas Day, when
he was to be back in his place at the Court.
1 Anc. Laws, I, ec. XVI, pp. 17-18.
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 125
From other sources, from traditions and from customs still
observed in some districts, we know that the important days of
the Kymric year were Calan Gaeaf, Calan Ionawr and Calan
Mai. These, of course, are mentioned in the Laws, but there are
no references to the proceedings connected with the observation
of those seasons—the undubitable evidence of ecclesiastical
influence in this material is that the only festivals named are
Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, which are called the ‘ three
principal festivals,’ together with the feast days of Saints Bridget,
Curig, John, and Michael.
Reference to anything resembling a public gathering, outside
purely judicial occasions, are rare in the texts. Progresses by
the King and his followers, by the Queen and her maids and
pages, and by the King’s officers, were common, but are not
described in any detail, with the exception of the progress
assigned to the Chief of the Household by the King after Christ-
mas. In this progress, which partly illustrates some of the
social aspects of Court life, the Chief of the Household was allowed
to take members of the Household with him, in three parties,
the elder, the middle and the younger party. He was to be with
each in turn, and each party had the choice of the house at which
to stay. During the progress the Chief of the Household was to
have servants with him, including a door-ward, a cook and table
attendants. The servants were to have the skins of the animals
slaughtered during the progress. These progresses seem to have
been of the nature of a holiday for the officers who were allowed
tomakethem. As we have seen, there is evidence that the bards
visited the houses of the boneddigyon and the eilltyon, and jesters,
croesanyeit, probably entertained the inmates. It is likely that
the noswaith lawen of later times was a traditional practice of
long standing, and that story-telling and contentions were
customary—it is, indeed, extremely probable that the early
elements forming the basis of tales like the Four Branches of the
Mabinogi and Kulhwch ac Olwen were preserved among the alli
class of Goidelic origin.
There were two chief meals, one in the morning, borevwyd,
the other probably in the evening, cwynos. The evening meal,
at least in the King’s Hall, included a variety of courses. ‘The
animals mentioned as being slaughtered for the use of the
kitchen are cattle, stags, hinds, sheep, swine and certain small
animals not specified. The number and value of lawful or
126 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
customary joints or pieces of meat was standardised—a stag in
season was divided into twelve pieces. Geese and hens are
mentioned, also the bittern, crane, heron, and of course the hawk,
but all of these were not for the table. Grayling and salmon
are the only fish named. ‘There is a reference to vegetables, but
no detail beyond the mention of the leek. Wheat, barley and rye
bread seems to have been made, as well as bread of mixed meal,
bara amyd (a term still employed in North Wales), and oatcake.
Of fruit-bearing trees there are references to the apple-tree, the
crab-tree, the hazel and the oak. Drinks mentioned are bragawd,
kwryf (beer), llyn glas (possibly newly made mead) and medd
(mead). It would appear that mead was the favourite drink,
for the mead-brewer was an officer of the Household, and the
strength of the mead seems to have been above that of the
others—‘ the lawful measure of liquor is the fill of the customary
vessels of ale, their half of bragot and their third of mead.’ Mead
does not seem to have been served at all feasts. The first draught
of liquor brought into the Hall is called ceinion.
The metals mentioned are gold, silver, brassandiron. Articles
of value in gold and silver are referred to, but gold was evidently
scarce, for it is stated that it was payable only to the King of
Aberffraw, but his sarhaed is said to have included ‘a rod of gold
equal in length to the King himself and as thick as his little
finger, and a plate of gold as broad as the King’s face and as
thick as the nail of a ploughman who has been a ploughman for
seven years.’1 Among the King’s treasures were rings and other
ornaments, bowls and horns, a harp and tuning key. The Queen’s
treasures are also referred to. Throw-boards or chess-boards are
mentioned, which might be made of askwrn morvil (a kind of ivory),
of the horn of a hart or an ox, or of wood. Other valuables
were breichrwy, armlet ; crib, comb ; drych, mirror. Gilt, silvered
and lacquered bridles, and spurs are named, blue-enamelled and —
gold-enamelled shields, gold-enamelled saddles (calchlassar,
eurgalch), cuirasses, llurygeu, and helmets, penffestin; swords
with white and dark-enamelled hafts, guynseit, gurmseit, bows
and arrows, battle-axes and lances.
Implements and utensils necessary for the pursuit of agri-
culture were numerous, made mostly of wood, but also of iron
and brass. The value of each implement and utensil was fixed
1 Ane. Laws, 11,c. 41, p: 35 Leg. Well., ec. 11. emu
SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS 127
by law, and the names of articles included in the text number
about 250. Pails, crucks and other vessels were made of yew
and willow, some of staves, some of single pieces ; ropes of horse-
hair or of the bark of the elm. The great importance of smith-
crait is certainly striking, when we consider that the art of the
carpenter must have been equally necessary for the labours of the
community.
Cloth and linen for the making of garments were given to
each officer by the King and Queen. Other materials are not
mentioned. The value of the following garments and articles
was fixed by law :—crys, a shift, shirt ; pais, coat, tunic ; llawdr,
trousers; hosaneu, hose; mantell, mantle; brychan, plaid,
blanket; a gold-embroidered robe, leather gauntlets, shoes,
buskins, and capaneu glaw, ‘cappa pluvie.’ Town-made caps
and mantles are mentioned, but it is certain that clothes were
mostly home-made, though the text affords no information of
the makers. Men evidently wore trousers, some kind of coats
and mantles, and the ezlltyon and taeogyon used rugs. Skins
probably were extensively used as coverings. Although foot-
gear of more than one type seem to have been worn, a statement
concerning ‘conspicuous scars’ for the causing of which fines
were fixed, suggests that most persons generally went bare-
footed—the scars are defined as being on the face, the foot and
the hand, other scars being referred to as ‘ unexposed scars.’
It is, of course, very probable that in such matters the texts
contain additions later than the time of Hywel, although Giraldus
Cambrensis mentions the habit of going barefooted as being
common in his time.
From a statement of the protection privilege of the Page of
the Chamber,! we gather that the King’s bed was made of fresh
straw, probably covered with a sheet, Jlenlliein, and then a
blanket, brychan. This reminds one of the description given by
Giraldus of the beds in his time.
It has been pointed out that the importance of the three
principal festivals in the texts is evidence of ecclesiastical influence.
On the other hand, the difference between the law of Hywel and
ecclesiastical law with regard to the rights of illegitimate sons is
certainly notable. The importance of the Household Priest
is indicated by the statement that a bishop could not present
1Y naud eu or pan hel un ykeysyau beye guelt adan ebrenyn, etc.—
Anc. Laws, I, c. XIII, p. 15.
128 SOCIAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE LAWS
anyone to the King’s chapels without his consent.1 On the
other hand, the bishop is said to have been the King’s confessor
(periglawr), to whom the King was to rise and after whom he was
to sit, also holding his sleeves whilst he washed himself. Under
certain circumstances, right of sanctuary by the Church was
denied,” but there were fines for trespasses against a metropolitan
church, any other church, an abbot and other clergy. The House-
hold Priest seems to have been the King’s scribe, and to have
received payment for records of grants of land and other matters
of import.* Oaths were sworn on relics in the presence of priests.
Information against a person whom the informant dared not
mention, either on account of his rank or property, was given on
oath to a priest, who reported the matter to the lord. In the
land courts, the priest prayed to God that he might show the
right way, and chanted the pater. Vestments and ornaments
of the Church did not go to the King on the death of a bishop. ®
The judgment of a rhaith was, in some cases at least, to be
delivered in church, and the time of delivery is said to have
been ‘between the Benedicamus and the distribution of the
sacramental bread.’ ® Oaths were sworn at the church door, in
the chancel and at the altar. Monks, hermits, a clerk or a
stranger could not become sureties.’ All owners of church
lands were to attend before a new King to declare their status
and duties, and if he found them satisfactory, he was to grant
them their right of sanctuary.®
The study of Law seems to have been organised, for we are
told that a student upon completing his course of study was to
be commended by his teacher to a judge of the Court, who was
to test his knowledge, and if he found him competent, to commend
him in turn to the lord, who invested him with authority to
undertake judicial functions. |
T. GWYNN JONES.
DP Ane. Wows ce. Vile p. 9: * Ibid., II, ec. X, pp. 66-7.
3 Ibid., II, c. VILL, p. 9. 4 Ibid., II, c. XI, p. 72.
2 bid 3, We. XU p82. C1btd.. Wl, ie. War ape oo:
? Ibid., II, c. VI, p. 62. 3 Jbid., ID e. Xap. 67m
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS OF
HYWEL DDA
[Abbreviations at end. |]
Ow1ne to the limits imposed, and in view of the mass of material
available, the scattered nature of sources of evidence and the
consequent difficulty of adequately co-ordinating various views
and theories, this paper cannot pretend to be a complete survey
of the field. It will have to be largely citatory and referential,
especially in the sections dealing generally with texts and dates,
and unavoidably scrappy and sketchy in dealing especially with
grammatical features.
A. GENERAL
A brief general account of the Latin and Welsh versions found
in MSS. will not be out of place.
There are extant several Latin and Welsh versions or texts
of the Laws of Howell.
(i) Latin versions: Three Latin versions, one of which is
incomplete, have been published in A.L. II, pp. 749-926, with
notes on the transcripts in I, pp. xx—xxi. Other Latin versions
are referred to in I, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv. According to Rep. W.
MSS., the three texts ! used by A. O. were,—Lat. 1 = Pen. MS.
28, ‘last quarter of the XIIth century’; Latin 2 = B.M. MS.
12 (Vesp. E xi), ‘cerca 1250’; Latin 3 = B.M. MS. 28, (Harl.
1796), ‘first half of XI1Ith century.’ Latin 1 of A.L., i.e. Pen.
MS. 28, is ‘the oldest known copy of Howel’s Laws either in
Latin or Welsh’ (Rep. W. MSS. I, ii, p. 359). As this was
‘written in Latin, with many Welsh terms, phrases and short
passages left untranslated ’ (W.M.L. p. vii), it is of special in-
terest because of the antiquity of the Welsh forms preserved
riety 1.
Pen. MS. 28, now in the National Library of Wales, is a small,
unbound, insignificant looking manuscript. It is bicolumnar,
1 See further, Lloyd, Hist., I, pp. 355-6 and W. People, p. 181.
129
130 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
with the headings of the various sections written in red ink, with
coloured capitals throughout and interesting contemporary
coloured drawings. ‘These drawings have been reproduced in
black and white in A.L. II, pp. 749-813. Uhuyd in his Arch.
Brit., p. 258, col. 2, is apparently describing this MS.: ‘Idem
Lat. Vaugh. Membr. Codex antig. in quo effigies omnium tum
personarum tum rerum de quibus latae sunt leges rudi stylo de-
lineantur.’
(ii) Welsh versions: Of these there is a large number. The
earliest edition of a Welsh version is to be found in Cyfrerthjeu
Hywel Dda ac Eraill seu Leges Wallicae . . . by Wotton (1666—
1726), with the collaboration of Moses Williams, published post-
humously in 1730. The text (called Cott. 3) selected as the basis
of this work appears to have been B.M. MS. 6, which, according
to Rep. W. MSS. II, iv, p. 946, was ‘ written circa 1282,’ and =
MS. B (Titus D II) of A.L. It is a ‘ later recension (‘‘ Venedo-
tian ’’) of the E and C’ of A. L. (Rep. W. MSS. zbid.), but this
manuscript C (= B.M. MS. 5) is also ‘ extensively quoted by
Wotton’ (A.L., I, p. xxvu). In the Notitia Codd. MSS. at the
beginning of Wotton’s edition, the MS. ‘ Cott. 3’ is described
thus (with the reason for selecting it): Codex Legg. Wallicus
Dabhine annis saltem, aut eo amplius, membrana exaratus, omnium
quos vidimus absolutissimus ; wdeoque prelo commisimus una cum
—variantibus Lectionibus & Additamentis omnibus quae in aliis
Codd. observatu digna existumavimus. Constat foliis 73, & imscri-
bitur Titus D. Lf. In this work there is a Latin translation
later with footnotes, and, at the end, pp. 553-586, a glossary—
‘Glossarvum vocum forensium quae in Legibus Hoelianis occurrunt,
ahiarumque quas Lexicographt Wallict aut male intellexerunt aut
pemtus omiserunt.’ Wotton’s translation and glossary ‘ were
valuable pioneer work,’ but ‘by selecting this text .. . and
representing all departures from it in the form of various read-
ings, he introduced a confusion upon which learning spent itself
in vain. ... However, ‘ Leges Wallicae preserves for us some
readings not elsewhere to be found in print, notably from the lost
Wynnstay MS. which Wotton styles Ll.’ (Lloyd, Hist., I, p. 354).
During the intervening period between the year of the pub-
lication of Wotton’s Leges Wallicae (1730) and A. Owen’s A.L.
(1841), portions of the Laws were published in the Cambrian
Register and the Myvyrian Archaiology (see W. People, footnote
p. 180, for reference). ‘A fruitful study of the Laws only be-
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 131
came possible on the appearance of this edition undertaken by
A. Owen (1792-1851) for the Record Commission,’ and it was
Owen that first discovered that the various versions could be
classified, as he recognised ‘ that the Welsh MSS. fall into three
distinct groups, representing three recensions of the original law
of Howel’ (Lloyd, AHist., I, 354). Owen called these three
recensions, I, the Venedotian (or North Wales) Code; II, the
Dimetian (or West Wales) Code; and III, the Gwentian Code.
In his edition he made use of all the available MS. versions of the
Laws.
Group I. The MS. which he used for his basic text of the
‘ Venedotian ’ code was Pen. MS. 29, the so-called ‘ Black Book -
of Chirk,’ which Owen dated ‘ early part of the twelfth century,’
but Rep. W. MSS, s. Pen. MS. 29, gives the date ‘ about 1200,’
and Lloyd, Hist. I, p. 354, gives reasons ‘ for thinking an earlier
date to be unlikely on other than palaeographical grounds,’ and
quotes from the transcript (EH. of A.L.) a reference to Geoftrey’s
Historia and another to the order of Knight Hospitallers, ‘ which
show that the compilation cannot have been made before the
middle of the twelfth century.’! This MS. is unfortunately
incomplete, but B.M. MS. 4 (Add. 14931), ‘ middle of XIIIth
century,’ is ‘a direct transcript, in Dimetian orthography, of it’
(Rep. W. MSS. s. B.M. MS. 4). Owen, in his A.L. I, pp. xxv—
XXvVi, has a long note on this Pen. MS. 29, in which he says :
‘ It is difficult to affix a certain date to this transcript, more par-
ticularly as the part which recites amendments to have been made
in the laws by Bleddyn ab Cynvyn, about 1080, is unfortunately lost.
There can be little doubt, however, that it was contained in it, as 1
{that is, B.M. MS. 4 = Add. MS. 14931], which has every appearance
of being a copy of this Manuscript, has the passage. It may probably
have been transcribed in the monastic establishment at Bangor, as
it contains laws peculiar to the district of Arvon, or Caernarvonshire,
in which Bangor was situated, and alleges the affirmation of them,
if impeached, to belong to the communities of Bangor and of Clynog.
These local privileges occur in no other Venedotian copies but in this
and in E. A is in the Hengwrt collection, and may be attributed to
the early part of the twelfth century. It is endorsed by Rt. Vaughan,
Llyvr du o Waen, the ‘ Black Book of Chirk,’ probably from its
1 He adds further, on p. 355, ‘It may well be the case that the code
was compiled at the bidding of Llywelyn, who desired to emphasise the
supremacy of Gwynedd by the issue of the laws in a distinctively Venedo-
tian form.’’ But see below for a further and more recent discussion of
the date.
132 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
being procured from thence ; it was transcribed by Wm. Morris, of
Llansilin, in 1680. Upon blank spaces in some of the folios of this
manuscript an elegy upon Llywelyn ab Jorwerth, the composition of
the poet Bleddyn, has been introduced. From the orthography and
the appearance of the manuscript it appears to have been inserted
contemporaneously with the occurrence, in 1241.’
On the outside of the MS., now in the National Library ot
Wales, on a slip of paper pasted on a sheet of vellum containing
English writing, is written ‘26 Llyfr Ddu (sic) 0 Waen’ (the
Black Book of Chirk) in a late hand (? W. W. E. Wynne’s), and
inside on a clean white sheet of vellum (quite different from the
dark brown vellum of the MS. itself) are inscribed the words—
y llyfr du or w—, with most of the last word torn off, but,
judging by the bases of the strokes left, it was probably wauwn.
Underneath and on top left-hand corner are the initials //J d w.
The other MSS. (B to H) used by Owen for the Venodotian
Code have been identified as follows in the volumes of the Rep.
W. MSS., from which the quoted remarks have been taken :—
B = BM. MS: 6; “written cyrca 1282. © — BOE Ms. on
“written, apparently, at two different times by two different
hands of the same type, about the middle of the XIIIth cen-
tury’; D = Pen. MS. 32, called ‘ Lib. Teg, vel Teg,’ the portion
of it containing the laws (pp. 1-224) dated ‘circa 1380’; EH, a
_ transcript of A, for which see above and also the notes in the
- Preface to Rep. W. MSS. Vol. I, Part IIT (Peniarth) and A.L. I,
p. xxvii; F — Pen. MS. 34,° ? XVith century 3G — Pen. Ms:
35, “last quarter of the XIIIth century’; H = Pen. MS. 278,
‘written by R. Vaughan of Hengwrt.’ |
Group II. Dimetian Code. The MSS. I to T of A.L. have
been identified as follows :—I = Pen. MS. 38, ‘ X Vth century ’ ;
J = Jesus Coll. MS. 4, ‘ circa 1400’; K = Pen. MS. 40, ‘ carca
1469’; L = BM. MS. 7, ‘ written in the second quarter of the
XIVth century ’; M = Pen. MS. 33, ‘ early X Vth century ’; N=
Pen. MS. 36 B, ‘late XIIIth century’; O = Pen. MS. 36 A,
‘after 1282, but not much later’ (see note on this version in
Lloyd, Hist. I, p. 355 ; it appears to be the oldest Dimetian Code,
and has special references to S.W. Wales) ; P = Pen. MS. 259 A,
‘last quarter of the XVth century’; Q = the lost Wynnstay
MS., which perished in a fire (see Rep. W. MSS., s. B.M. MS. 9;
see also Wotton’s long note on this MS., which he designates Ll
1 For a further description of this MS. and its contents, see below.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 133
in Leges Wallicae in the Codd. MSS. Notitia,—‘* Codex Wallicus,
perantiquus, membrana pulchre quidem scriptus, sed quo seculo non
ausim determinare,’ etc.); R = Pen. MS. 31, ‘first half of the
XIVth century’; S = B.M. MS. 9, ‘late XVth century,’ (cp.
Owen’s description of this with that of Llanstephan MS. 116 in
the Rep. W. MSS., and with the account given of Llan. MS. 116
in the Introduction to the printed text, p. viii, by T. Lewis, for
which see below); T = B.M. MS. 8.
Group III. Gwentian Code. The MSS. U to Z of A.L. have
been identified as follows:—U = Pen. MS. 37, ‘late XIIIth
century, edited, with translation, by A. W. Wade-Evans in
Cymmrodor XVII (1904), p. 129—, (Owen states that this ‘ has
been adopted as the text of the class of Gwentian forms, not from
any superiority, but as being the simplest’); V = B.M. MS. 10,
‘ ? written at Neath about 1285,’ ‘ the oldest and most important
MS. of the ‘“‘ Gwentian ”’ version of the Laws’; W = B.M. MS.
11, ‘first quarter of the XIVth Century,’ apparently a direct
transcript of B.M. MS. 10; X = B.M. MS. 15, ‘? not finished
before 1461’; Y —a lost MS., ‘ middle of the fourteenth cen-
tury ’ according to Owen in A.L., but see W. M. L. (Wade-Evans),
pp. xv-xvi; Z = Pen. MS. 259 B, ‘first half of the sixteenth
century ’ (see W.M.L., pp xvi-xvii).}
For what he calls the ‘ Anomalous Laws,’ Owen used, among
other MSS., Pen. MS. 36 C, ‘late XVth and XVIth centuries,’
and Pen. MS. 258, ‘ second half of X Vth century.’
Among the versions not seen or not used by Owen, according
to Rep. W. MSS., are Llan. MS. 116 (see on E above) ; Pen. MS.
30, ‘ XIIIth century’ (‘ apparently the scribe of this MS. used
MS. 29 [i.e., the Black Book of Chirk] and a Latin text, and
edited and arranged the contents afresh. The rubric initials,
cols. 147-304, of this MS. seem to be modelled on those of MS.
29’); Pen. MSS. 39, 270, 271, 314, as well as other later trans-
cripts in the Llanstephan collection.
On Owen’s method in A.L., the following note from a paper
on ‘ Foreign Elements in Welsh Medieval Law’ (D. Brynmor
Jones) published in Tr. Cym. 1916-17, pp. 4-5, may be of interest :
_* Aneurin Owen erred in not reproducing any MS. as written. Seem-
ingly with a view to convenience of reference he divided each of them
18ee W.M.L. also, p. 288, Appendix, for “‘ General Relation of Four
Earliest Texts’? (viz. V, W, X and U).
134 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
into books, chapters and sections. The reproduction in this manner
gives, especially to the Codes prefaced with a statement about Howel
Dda’s assembly and the promulgation of the book of law they pro-
duced, a false air of legislative authority and precision which tends to.
hide their really composite, fortuitously selective, and private character.”
The justifiability of the territorial designations (“ Venedo-
tian,’ “ Dimetian’ and ‘ Gwentian’) adopted by A. Owen has
been disputed, especially by Wade-Evans (in W.M.L., pp. xi, xii),
who suggests that it would be more appropriate ‘to style them
[the different codes] after the names of the ‘‘ jurists ’’ preferred in
their respective prefaces,’ and proposes tentatively the following
substitutes,—Book of Gwynedd for Venedotian Code, Book of
Cyvnerth for Gwentian Code, and Book of Blegywryd for Dime-
tian Code. But Lloyd (Mist., I, p. 355) sees no objection to the
terms ‘ Venedotian’ and ‘ Demetian,’ although he remarks, in
reference to the ‘ Gwentian ’ Code, that ‘ as to its local connec-
tions, there is nothing to connect it with Gwent.’
LATIN OR WELSH ORIGINAL.
It is generally agreed that no Latin or Welsh MS. has pre-
served the code of Hywel as originally compiled. ‘The Latin,
no less than the Welsh, MSS. speak of the time of the great
legislator as a bygone age. ... ‘The nearest approach to evi-
dence of what was contained in the first law-book is the consensus
of all codes and versions, and there is, in point of fact, so much in
common between them as to make this criterion not unservice-
able’ (Lloyd, Hist. I, p. 356). ‘ No copy of the original code of
Hywel has survived in any form, for not only are all extant MSS.
of the laws of later date than 1150, but they represent improved
and enlarged editions of the law book of Whitland, compiled from
time to time by distinguished lawyers for the use of particular
districts or communities’ (Hist. I, p. 341). A footnote in Rep.
W. MSS., s. Pen. MS. 30, refers to a paragraph in the version of
the laws contained in this MS. which seems to suggest ‘ that the
compiler of MS. 30 had seen a codex (? original) at Whitland.’
The question of the language of the original is dealt with at.
some length in W. People, Appendix D, where a reference is
made to the fifteenth report of the Royal Commission of Historical
MSS. (1899), which states that
‘an unedited thirteenth-century manuscript at Peniarth . . . declares.
that the Laws were drawn up in Latin, in order that the Church and.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 135
Pope might be able to judge of them, and that the common people
might hold them in greater respect from the inability to understand
them. Linguistic tests, too, tend to support this assertion of a Latin
original, and probability enforces it. We should in this way get inde-
pendent translations into Welsh, which would naturally give rise to
what came later to be regarded as different “ codes ”’.’
The authors of the W. People, however, for reasons set forth
in this Appendix D, draw an inference—‘ not a certain, but a
probable one—that the Latin text is a translation.’ Lloyd (Mist.
I, p. 356) appears to agree with this view, although he recognises
the difficulty of finally deciding the question, but adds that ‘ so
far as the extant Latin texts are concerned, they may safely be
regarded as adaptations from Welsh originals,’ for the ‘ versions
would appear to have been made for the benefit of ecclesiastical
landowners and judges who did not know Welsh.’
In a note in Rep. W. MSS., on Pen. MS. 50, a statement from
the version contained in this MS. is quoted—Odamheuyr bot pob
un or llessoet a ducpuyt uchot eu bot e kefreyth hewel edrecher
elleureu lladyn ac eno y keffyr (col. 141)—with the remark that
this ‘ confirms our hypothesis that the Welsh Laws were originally
written in Latin, but with the technical terms left mostly un-
translated.’ In the Introduction to GI.M.L., p. ix, the author
confesses to a ‘ growing conviction that the Latin Laws as we
have them are a patchwork, and in parts demonstrably trans-
lations from the Welsh.’ After discussing some instances
quoted in support of this, he adds (p. x), ‘ several others will be
found in the Glossary showing that the Latin Laws are in part,
at any rate, a translation and a mosaic.’
SomME WELSH TEXTS PUBLISHED SINCE A.L.
These are more convenient for the study of the language than
Owen’s amalgam, as they are faithful reproductions of the actual
MS. texts. |
(i) A ‘ Gwentian ’ code from Pen. MS. 37, ‘late XIIIth cen-
tury,’ denominated U in A.L., published by A. W. Wade-Evans
in Cym. XVII (1904), pp. 132-147, with an English translation
pp. 148-163.
(ii) Welsh Medieval Law (Wade-Evans: Oxford, 1909), with
an introduction, text and short glossary. The text chosen = V
of A.L., with missing folios supplied from W. Both these texts
(V and W) belong to the ‘Gwentian’ class or the ‘ Book of
-Cyvnerth’ type as the author prefers to call it, although he sug-
136 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
gests in this case that the two codices could be distinguished by
some such name as the ‘Composite Book of Cyvnerth and
Blegywryd.’
(iii) The Laws of Howel Dda, a facsimile reprint of Lla-
stephan MS. 116 (T. Lewis: 1912). This is a reproduction of MS.
written in the ‘ second half of the X Vth century,’ with an intro-
duction and a very useful classification of contents. This text
does not seem to have been used for A.L. (see footnote Tr. Cym.,
1916-17, p. 4, by Brynmor-Jones).
(iv) Welsh Laws. Facsimile of the Chirk Codex of the Welsh
Laws (J. Gwenogvryn Evans: Llanbedrog, 1909). This is A of
A.L. (for some account of which see above), Pen. MS. 29, now
in the National Library of Wales.
DESCRIPTION AND AccouNT oF PEN. MS. 29.
This MS8., Y Llyfr Du o'r Waun, is one of thegarliest and most
important Welsh MSS. It may be a transcript of an earlier one.
‘The Chirk Codex represents Welsh prose of any extent in its
most primitive form, and the MS. must be regarded as a tran-
script of an earlier one’ (W. People, p. 646, quoting from the
report of the Royal Commission on Historical MSS.) Rep. W.
MSS., s. Pen. 29, describes it thus :
‘104 pages, imperfect and deranged in the sewing !; pages 33-58
_[% 59] are in a smaller hand than the rest of the MS. which seems to
have been written about 1200. ... Forms like dressou, troith, din,
neildu, hur, ecchen, bucc, hycc, ryc, pet, pedh, peht, peth, pue, lloe, testify
that this MS. must be a copy of one considerably older, and that
Welsh can hardly have been the native tongue of the scribe,2 whose
notion of the value and use of the aspirate in particular is decidedly
original even among the few MSS. in the North-Walian dialects.’
According to Rep. W. MSS., B.M. MS. 4, “middle of XIIIth
century,’ is a ‘direct transcript in Dimetian orthography ’ of
Pen. MS. 29. In the published text (Welsh Laws . . . Evans)
we have Pen. MS. 29 up to page 57 (p. 58 is not given in fac., but
has been transcribed and printed at the beginning ; the first two
pages, not clear in fac., also transcribed). For p. 58 of Pen. MS.
29, the B.Mus. MS. 43 version is given, and the lacunae after
1 One leaf (pp. 59, 60) missing.
2 But ef. Tr. Cym., 1918-19, pp. 213, 214.
3 See footnote in Rep. W. MSS., I, ii, p. vii, where there is a reference
to this (their forthcoming) edition and to the source of ‘the missing
parts.’
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS S37
this are also filled from the same source. The text of Pen.
MS. 29 is resumed on p. 85 (the actual lacuna here ends on
p. 83, |. 7, so that both the B.M. and Pen. versions are given for
about a page), and continues as far as p. 128, the remainder being
supplied from B.M. MS. 4. Page 84 is an odd one from another
(bicolumnar) MS., but the text contained in it deals with naw
affeith tan etc., as do the neighbouring sections.
Although the transcript (B.M. MS. 4) is in the main in a later
orthography, we find at the very end (second half of p. 135 of the
published text) an interesting series of questions and answers in
an orthography that appears to be more like that of Pen MS. 29.
Owen, in A.L. I, p. xxviii, refers to this:
‘ The orthography of E [i.e. B.M. MS. 4] has been adapted to the
mode in use at the time; but at the conclusion there occurs what
appears to be a fac-simile and literatim extract from the manuscript
copied, which from the style appears to have been of considerable
antiquity.’ 1
This section has been transcribed in Rep. W. MSS. II, iv, pp.
944-945 (s. B.M. MS. 4), with a note stating that the * orthography
is more eccentric than in Pen. MS. 29.’
In addition to the legal matter, this Pen. MS. 29 contains,
at the bottom of p. 31, in small handwriting, a poem described.
in Rep. W. MSS. as ‘ an elegy to Llewelyn ap Griffith.’ In the
Rev. Celi., Vol. 32 (1911), pp. 203, Loth, in a paper entitled
‘L’élegie du Black Book of Chirk,’ showed that this is really a
poem by Dafydd Benfras on Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (0). 1240), and
that what is found at the bottom of p. 42, is really a fragment of
the same elegy, printed in Myv. Arch. (2nd ed.), pp. 219-220.
See also A.L., I, p. xxvi (referred to above) and more especially
pe @-5., TET. 1, p.: 7.
Another interesting tract found in Pen. MS. 27, pp. 41-42, is
‘Breinniau Arvon’ (‘ The Privileges of Arvon,’ as it is called by
Owen in A.L., pp. 104-107, see above in quotation from Owen’s
description of his MS. A), also found in the transcript (EK ? of
A.L.). Itis not ‘in the same hand as the text before and after ’
1 Owen in A.L., II, p. 37 (note) adds: ‘This is written in a rounder
hand, and more antient orthography, than the rest of the book, and
appears to be intended as a fac-simile of the part of the MS. from which
E was transcribed.’
2 Is this the MS. referred to as containing ‘ Breinie Guyr Avron’ in,
Lhuyd’s Arch. Brit., p. 258, col. 2 (bottom) ?
138). | THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
(Rep. W. MSS. I, ii, p. viii, footnote). (The two preceding lines,
written in reddish ink, do not seem to be in the same hand as
what comes before, although the handwriting is the same as that
of ‘Breinniau Arvon’). This tract commences with the words
Eman ellas. ... On this and the part which it plays in the
‘ Taliesin Controversy,’ see Cym. xxviii (Taliesin, by J. Morris-
Jones), pp. 46-49, where a translation is given and the statement
is made that ‘it is the record of a tradition concerning the origin
of certain privileges enjoyed by the men of Arvon’; see also
The Book of Tahesin, Facsimile and Teat (J. G. Evans, 1910), pp.
Xvii-xviii, and Cym. xxxix (1924), Taliesin, or the Critic Criticised,
pp. 76-80, where a transcription and a translation are given. In
the latter we find a further interesting discussion of the date of
Pen. MS. 29. The Rep. W. MSS. (1899), I, ii. p. 359, had the
remark ‘seems to have been written about 1200,’ in reference to
this MS. We have already seen (above) how Lloyd ‘ on other
than palaeographical grounds believes that an earlier date seems
unlikely.’ In view of this, the following words from the Appen-
dix (pp. 76-77) to Taliesin, or the Critic Criticised are worth citing
at some length:
‘TI assigned the date of \*‘ circa 1200” to the older, bolder hand
in the Chirk Codex ; the old plural “ dryssow ’’ seemed to argue for
twelfth century, while the writing was thirteenth century. So I took
refuge in Safety Castle, named “ Circa.”’ If Ll were to define “ circa ”
I would say that 1200 was the earliest possible date, and that probably
the writing was twenty years or more later. The smaller hand is still
later—how much later can only be gathered from internal evidence.
I do not remember another script with which to compare it. But the
most considered opinion based on the character of the writing must
always bow to internal evidence. A scribe may write for forty years,
and his formal hand remains practically the same all that time, so that
one requires something beside the style of writing to fix a date. The
use of ¢ for 6 in the Welsh part of Hariey MS. 3859 is a case in point.
Bradshaw assigned that MS. to the end of the eleventh century, Maunde
Thompson to the beginning of the twelfth century, and Warner when
discussing it with me gave it as his opinion “that 1120 would not
be far out.”” The occasional use of ¢ for 6 brings the additional matter
down to 1128-30. So that the following entry by Yorwerth ap Madog
ap Rahawt [i.e. Hman ellas, etc.] brings the date of the Strathclyde
references to 1230-48, when the Geoffrey Mythology had reached its
height.’
In this MS., the Black Book of Chirk, we have also other
matter that is not legal in character, namely a series of proverbs
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 139
(on page 32), which may have an indirect bearing on the question
of dating the MS. The matter has been dealt with by Prof. Ifor
Williams in B.B.C.8., III, i. p. 8 (Jan. 1926). These proverbs,
written in a different hand from the main part of the MS., appear
on the page aiter that on the bottom of which the elegy to Lly-
welyn (mentioned above) is written. Prof. Williams contends
that, if the elegy was inserted in 1240 or soon afterwards, in such
a small space at the bottom of p. 31, it is difficult to believe that
p. 32 was free of writing at the time. He assumes, then, that the
proverbs were there already, that this copy of them is to be dated
“before 1240,’ say the first quarter of the thirteenth century.
He also calls attention to the similarity of the orthography to
that of the rest of the MS.
[On the triadic material and significance of the fewness of
examples of this grouping in the earlier text, see W. People, p.
646 (‘the older the manuscript the fewer the triads it contains.
The two oldest do not contain a single triad between them.’ 4
—quoted from the fifteenth report of the Royal Commission on
Historical MSS., 1899) ; also T'r. Cym., 1916-17, pp. 24, 25 :—
‘In the next place a great obstacle to the acceptance of the view
that the enneads and triads of the Welsh Laws are of ancient origin
is created by their language. The Welsh in which the MSS. of the
Venedotian and other codes are written is according to the best philo-
logical authorities Medizeval Welsh, though Old Welsh forms are pre-
served therein. . . . If these triads were really composed at an early
date, it is reasonable to infer that they would be couched in Early
or Old Welsh. ... If the triads were a legacy from a far distant
past, not only would they have been in all probability transmitted
in an earlier kind of Welsh, but when written down would have been
treated. as a collective authority. . . . There is no reference in the
22) §)
Venedotian Code or the earliest Latin version to a ‘** Book of Triads ”’.
—D. Brynmor-Jones in his paper ‘ Foreign Elements in Welsh Medie-
val Laws.’
See further Lloyd, Hist., I, pp. 122, 318-319; W. People,
p. 184; and Welsh Tribal Law and Custom (T. P. Ellis), I, p. v, and
pp. 47, 49, etc.]
B. PARTICULAR
In the main, the general linguistic features of the earlier
Welsh versions of the Laws are similar to those which characterise
1 A fewin B.B.Ch. (in the part transcribed from B.M. MS. 4), pp. 134,
135 (= A.L., II, p. 36).
A.S.—VOL. X K
140 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
Middle Welsh prose. In compositions of this kind the syntax
tends to become rather monotonous, the style paragraphic and the
language full of stereotyped phrases and constructions. Since
the publication of complete, continuous texts from various
manuscripts (referred to above), it has become easier to examine
in detail the features of some of the different versions. In this
paper, we can only refer to a few interesting, and in some cases
rare, characteristics occurring in the published texts.
I. THe ORTHOGRAPHY OF THE BLACK Book oF CHIRK.
This orthography preserves some of the characteristics of the
orthography of the Old Welsh fragments, e.g. gu 1 medially for
some kind of consonantal w, bysgueyl 24.17, anguar 29.28, dina-
guet 36.8, diguethaf 38.17, enguy 40.26, neguyt 40.9, deguysso 12.15,
dyguedhaf 107.24, geylguat 107.13; the -ow plural suffix for the
later -ew, -au, dressou 3.27; the occasional absence of the pros-
thetic vowel,” speit 46.31 (cf. scolheic) escol 48.28. Some such
‘Old Welsh ’ orthographical features are discernible in the Welsh
forms preserved in the oldest Latin version (Pen. MS. 28 = A.L.
Il, pp. 769-814), which is said to be older than Pen. MS. 29
(B.B.Ch.), e.g. tygdyn A.L. II, p. 780, |. 35, gwas stauell, p. 749,
last line. Apart from these older features, the orthography is
‘eccentric,’ ‘ peculiar’ (Cym. xxviii, p. 46), ‘irregular’ (GI.M.L.
p. xv). Attention has been called to some of these ‘ irregularities ’
from time to time.* In W.M., p. xii, we read, ‘ Welsh ortho-
graphy for centuries moved steadily along well-defined lines,
every school and generation following recognised rules,’ but (in
footnote) ‘the orthography of the Black Book of Chirk is a
notable exception to the rules.’ | :
A most novel hypothesis regarding the peculiar orthograhpical
features of the Black Book of Chirk (and of the Black Book of
Carmarthen and other early Middle Welsh MSS.) was advanced
1 See W.G., p. 188, for this.
2 See W.G., p. 26, and cp. stlys, stryw in the fragment from Pen. MS. 7
published in W.M. (p. 280).
3 E.g. in the Appendix (by Anwyl) to Welshmen (Stephens. London
and Cardiff, 1901); Grammar of Early Welsh (Jos. Baudis. Oxford, 1924) ;
and W.G., pp. 7, 15, 16, 17, 22, 38, 39, 188, 189, etc., the note on pp. 38-39
being significant : ‘In Mn. lit. W.i generally appears after syllables having
ei, ... In these cases the i is omitted in S.W. dialects and most MI.
MSS., . . . but the oldest Ml. prose MSS. (the early MSS. of the laws)
and Mn. lit. W. follow the practice of the N.W. dialects and insert the i,
as keynyauc, A.L., 1, 24 MS. A.’
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 141
by Professor M. Watkin, in his paper on ! ‘ The French Linguistic
Influence in Medizval Wales’ published in T'r. Cym. 1918-19,
pp. 182-184, where the writer deals with the inorganic vowel in
early Middle Welsh (especially those examples of it occurring in
initial consonantal groups in B.B.Ch.), and concludes (p. 184)—
‘The fact that inorganic vowels appear in positions 2 in which
they are never attested in Old Welsh, coupled with the fact that their
occurrence in these positions is a salient feature of Anglo-Norman
spelling, makes it clear, I think, that we are once more face to face
with a phenomenon taken over from Anglo-Norman script.’
The details are discussed on pp. 194-210, and there follows a
long and interesting note on ‘ Provection and the Nationality of
the Scribe,’ pp. 211-216.
In the Book of Aneirin (ed. Evans, Pwllheli, 1908,—issued in
1925), pp. xliv—xlvi of the Introduction, there are comments on
the above theory and some criticism of it. The writer admits
that © Prof. M. Watkin has contributed stimulating suggestions
with some original application. But inaccuracy, discursiveness,
and chanticleering go far to mar the meritorious kernel of the
contributions ’ (footnote p. xlv, where Y Cymmrodor is to be
eorrected to T'r. Cym).
There is also a detailed and careful review and criticism of
Prot. Watkin’s paper by Prof. Loth in the Rev. Celt. 39 (1922),
pp. 227-240, and in reference to the section dealing with the
French influence on Welsh orthography the reviewer says, ‘ Toute
la partie concernant lVinfluence frangaise sur l’orthographie gal-
loise au xiie siecle a besoin d’étre soumise a un nouvel examen.’
Attention may be here called to some forms that are of
phonological interest, such as macht 43.22, yaunt 54.27, 55.2 (ct.
O. Bret. gloss. Eut. ewnt, and Loth Mab. II, p. 209), cornt 93.16,
guer (for guerth) 89.6, bluyn 93.11 (for which see GI.M.L.), guyll
(for guyllt) 88.14 et passim (for which see Prof. [for Williams’s
note in B.B.C.S8. I, iii, pp. 228-234), guall (for guallt) 106.17.
1 A further ‘ long article ’ on the subject of the French influence on the
Black Book of Chirk is promised on p. 195. This has appeared under
the title ‘ L’influence francaise sur Vorthographie du Livre Noir de Chirk
(c. 1200)’ in Mélanges bretons et celtiques offerts d M. J. Loth. Rennes—
Paris, 1927, pp. 408-417.
? He is referring to such forms as the following from B.B.Ch., balaut
91.24; keledren 99.9, koloren 89.3, kereir 72.6. Such forms occur occa-
sionally in the Welsh terms found in the Latin texts, e.g. deressaur, A.L.,
Il, p. 753. Cf. berenhin in Llan., 116, p. 19, 1. 23 (but brenhin 1. 25), o
peleid, p. 15, 1. 9, barabdle 73.34, talodi 62.1.
142 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
Il. THE VOCABULARY OF THE LAWS.
In addition to the strictly legal and technical terms 1 which
naturally abound in texts of this nature, we find in the laws a
large selection of names of animals, trees, implements and uten-
sils, arms and accoutrements, parts and members of the body,
measurements, family relationships, etc. Much has already been
done to elucidate the more difficult technical terms and to inter-
pret and explain some of the obscure words and forms. Besides
the explanations given in the earlier dictionaries, we have, of
course, the translations of the texts,.—Wotton’s into Latin, A.
Owen’s and Wade-Evans’s into English. These works have
glossaries also, the short one at the end of Wade-Evans’s W.M.L.
being very useful. Such works as The Ancient Laws of Wales
(H. Lewis ; ed. by J. E. Lloyd. London, 1889), Seebohm’s T'ribal
System in Wales (London, 1904), and T. P. Ellis’s Welsh Tribal
Law and Custom in the Middle Ages? (Oxford. 1926) contain
attempts to throw light on the meaning of some technical terms.
There is, however, one complete lexicographical work based on
the B.B.Ch., A Glossary of Medieval Welsh Law (T. Lewis. Man-
chester Univ. Press, 1913). For the portions of the original
missing in B.B.Ch., the author has used the transcript (BM. MS.
4). It contains also a very helpful index to the pages in A.L.
that correspond to the pages in B.B.Ch. This work, however, is
something more than a mere glossary of the B.B.Ch., and,
although that was the original intention, “it was decided to
extend the scope of [the work] very considerably and to treat the
text as a part of Medieval Welsh literature—seeking to explain
some of its many enigmas by means of other texts in prose and
poetry ’ (Introd. p. vii).2 The Glossary, therefore, includes a
large store of examples and quotations from other Welsh texts,
and valuable references. :
Isolated words have been discussed in journals from time to
time, by Loth in his Notes étymologiques et lexicographiques in the
Rev. Celt. (e.g. Vol. 41, pp. 223, 381, 394; Vol. 42, pp. 64, 76, 80,
1 ‘These various codes . . . disclose a fairly complete system of legal
terminology in the Cymric language.’—W. People, p. 186.
2 See review of this work, with remarks on some of the Welsh terms
dealt with by the author, in Y Llenor VI, i, pp. 24-25.
3The occurrence in the Laws and in the M1. W. prose tales of such
words as penffestin, pengu(w)ch, gwynseit, grwnseit, agweddi, amobr, eillt
and annwfn adds interest to the study of the vocabulary of the Laws.
THE LAN GUAGE OF THE LAWS 143
etc.), by others (esp. Ifor Williams) in the B.B.C.S. (e.g. I, ii,
pp. 116-118; I1,-i, pp. 1, 5, 14, 39, 44, 45; TI, wi, p. 134).
Note tachuuet (tachwedd) B.B.Ch. 43.17 as a common noun
(amser t, = ‘ prime season’ A. Owen), and see Davies’s Dic. and
Richards’ s.v.
In his paper on ‘“‘ The French Literary Influence in Medieval
Wales ” (7'r. Cym. 1919-20), p. 71, Professor M. Watkin states that
“The vocabulary of the Law codices is . . . interspersed with ©
borrowings from Old French,’ and on pp. 71, 72, traces the follow-
ing words to a French source,—eillt, estywos, crybdeyl, dymey,
ryghyll, breyr, adding that ‘there are, of course, very many
others, some of which are of much interest ; e.g. tyglys, dayret,
gelef, olre in olreat, estaluen, hoseoaus ; etc., ete.’
The following words, taken from B.B.Ch. only, are evidently
and admittedly of foreign (English certainly in some cases,
possibly or probably French directly or indirectly in others) :
kofres 4.2, 22.13, berua 102.2, burth 68.6, capan 25.10, costrel
102.4, cussan 74.16, cumpas 51.20, disteyn 9.9 (et passim), edlyg
3.21, ferem 23.4, firdlyc 94.11, (g)ehol 24.25, guychet 12.12, harneys
8.11, (h)urlys 30.13, hebauc 11.13, hermidur 48.27, hossaneu
26.23, panel 103.4, plas 134.22, puteyn 41.18, palfrey 88.12, punt
69.13, runcy 88.12, sapel 9.2, taryan 102.21, ymp 98.1. It is not
possible to refer here to the peculiar glossarial features of W.M.L.
and Llan. 116.
Another interesting feature of these texts of the laws is the
occurrence of a considerable number of proper names (place and
personal). Those that occur in B.B.Ch. are given in GI.M.L.
There is, e.g., a reference to penryn blathaon and penryn penwaed
in B.B.Ch. 64.26.27, with which compare the form penn pengwaed
in R.M. 104.1 and Loth’s note on it in his Mab. I, p. 253.
{It. Some GramMaticaL FEATURES OF THE VaRiouS TESTS.
On the general question we may quote the following state-
ment from W.M. Introd., p. xi:
* Unfortunately examples of the youth of Welsh prose are prac-
tically unknown. Except for the description of the boundaries in the
1 Some of the words discussed,—afrllad, sarhaed, casnar, cadw, daered,
cyfar(w)ys, drud, adlo, kenordy, amhinogeu, pennill, ete.
Some legal terms are explained in old glossaries like those published
in B.B.C.8., I, iv, pp. 315-353; II, uu, pp. 135-148.
144 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
charters in the Book of Llan Dav, and sundry other short paragraphs,
nothing has survived earlier than the Black Book of Chirk, where the
style is primitive in comparison with the above fragments ! of the
Mabinogion, though the age of their respective manuscripts is removed
by a generation only. But the date of a manuscript is no index to
the time of composition, except that no composition can be later
than the earliest manuscript in which it occurs. Internal evidence
is more helpful. Though we cannot compare narrative with the
technical parts of legislative prose, yet the Chirk codex contains
sufficient examples of ordinary prose to institute a comparison, and
it exhibits a syntax which is singularly pure: it is simple and direct
in expression, and illustrates an earlier stage in the growth of Welsh
prose than the fragments. Now if we examine the expanded versions
of the ‘‘ Venedotian ’’ Code we find that they exemplify a later stage
than these fragments of the Pedeir Kainc. Much, therefore, depends
on the scribes. As no manuscript has survived, of which it can be
said that the composition and the writing are a twin-birth, fixed data
to test our theories are wanting. In the case of the Welsh of the
aforesaid boundaries and Laws, the original compositions are reputed
to be centuries older than their respective manuscripts. Inasmuch
as scribes, in the act of copying, modernised, altered, edited their
originals,” we are left to build largely on deductions drawn from their
blunders.’
Further, in the Introd. (p. viii) to GI.M.L., we have the
author’s remark: ‘ If the scribe [of B.B.Ch.] was a foreigner, as
suggested, it is not clear to me how an alien could be such a
master of faultless syntax, but on the other hand, how a native
could be such a bungler in orthography is beyond my power to
explain... On this Prof. Watkin, in Tr. Cym. 1918-19, p. 216,
comments thus :
‘Mr. Lewis’s statement respecting the purity of the syntax [of
B.B.Ch.] is incontrovertible. Still the syntax exhibits here and there
traits that are anything but Welsh. I would in particular mention
the employment made of a redundant article with the genitive case.
Other cases of the same French turn of phrase are met with in other
texts. The construction I allude to is exemplified in the following
6
phrase taken from Ystorya Bown de Hamtwn: yny tarllaeth gion “in
i) 9)
Giwn earldom ”’’.
1 Printed in W.M., pp. 279-282, ‘dating, in point of writing, from
about 1235.’
2 Cf. Rep. W. MSS., I, ii, p. viii, ‘Even manuscript A [of A.L.] con-
fessedly departs from the original text, though its language and syntax
prove that it is much more of a mere copy than any of the other versions.’
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 145
A few of the rarer and more outstanding grammatical features
found in some of the texts are subjoined.
(a) The disjunctive construction: the use of na(c) . . . na(c)
for “whether ... or,either . . . or,’ with the verb in subjunctive.
From B.B.Ch. (with Owen’s trans. from A.L.) :
56.6 nac ef a uo ene lle ac [? nac] ef ny vo * whether he be present
or not.’
56.23 nac kaedic uo er amser nac ef nv vo “ whether it (the court)
be closed or not.’
128.6 nac alldud uo na treftadauc ‘ whether he be an alltud or
3 a proprietor.’
128.16.17 nac o erchy nac o kauarus neythaur ‘ either as a boon
or as a nuptial gift.’
129.26 nay grogy nay losgy a uynno * (at the option of the lord)
either by hanging or by burning.’
From W.M.L.:
117.8.9 mynho y coet6r na vynho “whether the woodsman be
willing or unwilling.’
From Llan. MS. 116:
2.19 mynho y coet6r na mynho.
3.25 nac vn auo na lhabs ybbynt.
53.21 na g6yr o grefzd voynt nac egl6yss6yr erell.
55.23.34 na dyn dyrgeledic .. . nac estrabn a herbyno.
80.14 na dr6c na da vai y tad.
121.24 ll6ydo na l6ydo.
With the above compare the following :
R.M. 49.3.4 tra geffit ganta6 ef nac esgit na hossan.
R.M. 52.14.15 a@ thra geffit y ganta6 nac eskit na hossan.
R.M. 55.6 ac neut oed seith mlyned kyn no hynny yr pan welser
ef na dyn na mil.
R.M. 109.19 Pan dycko beich na ma6br na bychan uo.
R.M. 194.20 a weleist di varchabc yn mynet heibab. na hediw
na doe (White Book text has ay . ay).
R.B.B. 132.29.30 kanys amser reat ym agiyour y doethabch na
du6 ach dycko na pheth arall (= San Marte, p. 82, quia in
congruo tempore vos necessitati meae sive Deus, sive alius
obtulit ; ‘for either God or some other hath brought ye
hither to succour me in mine hour of need.’—Sebastian
Evans’s trans. in Everyman Lib.).
L.A. 17 A allet ef dy6edut pann anet na cherdet (Lat. Potwit
ambulare vel loqui, mox ut natus est ?)
146 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
L1.A. 32 Ygann du6 ymae pob teilyngda6t. A phob meddyant.
na dr6c na da voent (Lat. Deo sunt utique omnes dignitates
et potestates malorum seu bonorum.)
Ll.A. 157 A ph6ybynnac a dadleuho yn dyd sul. nac @ vrattao.
nac abnel amryssonev neu pynckev anghyfuleus. .. .
Cf. LLA. 171... na 6elher or disg6ylua honno yn aml6c ac
eu hadnabot pby vont na pheth a 6nelhont.
The other disjunctive particle new is compared with the Old
Irish n6, no, nu ‘or’ by Thurneysen in his Handbuch des Alt-
arischen, p. 500, and he suggests that, like Irish nech, Welsh neb,
it is negative in origin, and that the change in the meaning arose
originally in negative sentences. W.G., p. 441, suggests another
origin. See also Strachan’s Introd. to Early W., p. 133, and
Elem. W. Gr. (J. Morris-Jones), p. 192.
(6) The indefinite construction with py- and - (in com-
pounds) followed by bynnag :
B.B.Ch. 96.23.24 pyeufo benac echun * to whomsoever the dogs
may belong.’
B.B.Ch. 104.4.5 corn canu pyeufo bénac ‘a blowing horn, who-
ever may be the owner.’ |
W.M.C. 49.6 Pydi6” y barnher’” bynhac datanhud ‘ whoever
shall have dadanhudd adjudged to him’ (? the tr. marks
”” not required).
Cf. R.B.B. 185.19 py di6 bynhac y bo haelder anyana6l, and,
more remotely, R.M. 104.7.8 Pa diaspettych di bynnac am
gyfreitheu Ilys arthur.
(c) The use of the preverbal particle ry (re), especially in
B.B.Ch. For the examples, see GI.M.L. s.v. ry. See also the
examples in Llan. 116, p. 93, ll. 20, 21, 27, ete. 3
(d) 'The use of keuoe¢t in B.B.Ch., usually kyt boet in M1. W.,
that is, the concessive conjunction attached to a form of the
verb ‘to be.’ Cf. the few cases of kevei (kyffer) mentioned in
W.G. p. 447. B.B.Ch. 86.4 has kewoet kan arall ellosko. See also
70.25, 89.14, 108.21, 124.11, and GI.M.L. s.v. ked. There is at
least one example in W.M.L. 64.16 kyffoet mar6 * although he
die.’
(¢) The use of the ‘ accusative of motion to’ without a pre-
position. B.B.Ch. 41.30 ac edoetant aruon.
(f) The use of the plural verb in a relative sentence (non-
negative) when the subject (the rel. pron.) is plural.
B.B.Ch. 86.21.22 guedhessew akemerhoent gueew ‘ weaving-
women who shall take webs.’ *
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 147
On this see Cym. xxviii (Taliesin), p. 5, and Cerdd Dafod (J.
Morris-Jones, Oxford, 1925), p. 91, and ZfcP, XVII (J. Lloyd-
Jones). |
(g) Archaic verbal forms like telitor W.M.L. 84.24, preserved
in an old formula ‘telitor g6edy halabc 16’ (= Llan. MS. 116,
p. 34, ll. 31, 32, ar gyfreith honno a el6ir telhitor g6edy hala6c 16.
On -2tor, see W.G. 334.
(h) Forms like pahar B.B.Ch. 30.32, paherwyt 134.14, pa dyu
31.4; see W.G. 63, 293, and GI.M.L. for other examples.
ITV. Posstsue DIALECTAL PECULIARITIES OR VARIATIONS
IN TEXTS.
We have already seen how B.B.Ch. appears to exhibit certain
orthographical (and ? phonological) features peculiar to North
Welsh dialects, as do ‘ the oldest M.L. prose MSS.’ (W.G. 39). It
is difficult, however, to indicate any special dialectal peculiarities
in the different texts, although several writers refer vaguely to
such characteristics. For example, Owen describes his MS. V
(= B.M. MS. 10, edited by Wade-Evans, W.M.L.) as one
‘written in the Dimetian dialect.’ In the Rep. W. MSS. II. iv,
p. 944, B.M. MS. 4 [the E of A.L.] is said to be ‘ a transcript, in
Dimetian orthography, of Pen. MS. 29 [i.e. B.B.Ch.]. In the
Introd. to Llan. MS. 116, p. ix, we are told that this version of
the laws ‘ preserves interesting dialectal peculiarities,’ and (on
p- Xili) ‘ we find on every page evidence of dialectal differences,’
‘our text [i.e. Lian. 116] gives us a variant in the dialect of
Cardigan.’ Similarly in Rep. W. MSS. II. ii, p. 568, this MS.
is said to ‘ furnish an interesting specimen of the Dialectal pecu-
liarities of South Cardiganshire.’ One would like to have a
complete list of these dialectal forms, and it is to be hoped that
some investigator will undertake the task of classifying these
features. ! |
Lian. 116 is certainly a most interesting MS. In addition to
the peculiarities quoted above, the following forms, etc., un-
classified and chosen at random, may be mentioned :
o vy6n 60.12, 0 veb6n 9.9, yme6n 9.21, gauaf 13.15, bileined
(plur.) 12.34, but bileineid 13.20, wheigeint 14.1, gida 15.5, bore
1Cf. W.G., p. 8: ‘ Dialectal forms, chiefly Demetian and Powysian
—e, begin to appear in MSS. of the 15th century; but the rhymes of
the bards of the 15th and 16th centuries, with the exception of some
poetasters, always imply the literary form.’
148 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
26.24, boreu 14.35, 15.6, tr6ed 16.35, doy 16.35, yr het 17.30,
boyd (voyd) 18.24, boell (voell) 19.31, dechroyer 26.37, -a6d (-od)
aor. 3rd sing. suffix on p. 59, but -6ys on p. 72 (as in B.M. MS.
4, to which this part corresponds), dadle 74.22, anifeiled 56.35.36,
dosparthe 57.14, verbal adjectives in -edic and -adwy from dywed-
used on pp. 42, 57, asin LI. A. 118, 62 34.23, taw 70.16 (= B.B.Ch.
48.11 emay), and many others.
The following rough and incomplete list of general corre-
spondences may be found useful :
1Llan. MS. 116, p. 1: A.L. I, pp. 446, 448
Wy. & 452, 454
10: 480
i 482, 484
P43 486
iho} 5 488
14: 492
16: 496
lety: 502
19: 508, 512
20: 514
Dor: 522
24: H24
29°: 526, 532
26: 534
Delis 538
28% 540
Oi 542
30 546
Sil 550, 552
oe 552, 554
33538 556 (W.M.L. 121)
34: 558
30): 562
36: 566
ahs 568
39: 576
Haw He
= ©
Ce er
CO =I
SCO
1 The text in Llan. 116, pp. 1-3A is from B.M. MS. 7.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS 149
Llan. MS. 116, p. 42: A.L. I, pp. 586, 588
43: Il, pp. 360, 362
44; 362
45: I, p. 588
47: 592
48: 614
49: 616
67: 118 (Ven.)
68 : 120 (Ven.)
69 : 124, 126
70: 128 (= B.B.Ch. 48)
fs ene 130
U2 182, 184 (= B.B.Ch. 64)
78: 170 (= B.B.Ch. 60)
86-88 : II, pp. 28-34 (= B.B.Ch. 132-
135)
89 : 30 (= B.B.Ch. 132)
Bil 3 53, 54
927; 56
93 : 58
L205 2 le I, pp. 172, 174 (= B.B.Ch. 60,
61)
ABBREVIATIONS.
ese Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales... . 2 vols. 1841.
A.O.: Aneurin Owen, the author of A.L.
Arch. ae : Archeologia Britannica. ... By E. Lhuyd. Oxford, 1707.
B.B.Ch.: The Chirk Codex of the Welsh Laws. J. Gwenogvryn Evans.
Llanbedrog, 1909.
B.B.C.S.: The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies.
B.M. MS.: British Museum MS.
‘Cams > Cn
GI.M.L.: A Glossary of Medieval Welsh Law. T. Lewis. Manchester,
HIS E
Lian. 116, and Llan. MS. 116: The Laws of Howel Dda from Llanstephan
MS. 116. Ed. T. Lewis. 1912.
LLA.: Llyfr yr Ancr. The Hlucidarium and Other Tracts in Welsh. Hd.
J. Morris Jones and J. Rhys. Oxford, 1894.
Pen. MSS.: Peniarth Manuscripts.
Lloyd Hist. : A History on Wales. ... 2 vols. J. E. Lloyd. London,
1912.
Rep.W. MSS. : Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language. J. Gweno-
gvryn Evans.
150 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAWS
R.B.B.: The Red Book Bruts. The Text of the Bruts from the Red Book
of Hergest. Ed. Rhys and Evans. Oxford, 1890.
Rev. Celt.: Revue Celtique.... Paris.
R.M.: The Red Book Mabinagion. The Text of the Mabinagion . .
from The Red Book oh Hergest. Ed. Rhys and Evans. Oxford, 1887.
Tr. Cym.; The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion.
London. :
W.G.: A Welsh Grammar. ... J. Morris Jones. Oxford, 1913.
W.M.: The White Book Mabinogion. Ed. J. G. Evans. Pwllheli, 1907.
W.M.L.: Welsh Medieval Law. ... A. W. Wade-Hvans. Oxford,
1909.
W. People: The Welsh People. ... Rhys and Brynmor-Jones. 4th ed.
London, 1906.
ZicP.: Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie.
T. H. PARRY-WILLIAMS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS OF
HYWEL DDA
INTRODUCTORY
THE modern study of the Laws of Hywel Dda begins with a
remarkable article in the sixth number of the Bibliotheca Literaria
—a shilling periodical of which ten numbers were published in
London 1722-24. The Bibliotheca began bravely with an
article on Syrian Inscriptions by Mandrell, but collapsed under
the ‘Emperor Justinian’ of no. x. In no. vi (pp. 15-28) there
appeared an article called ‘An Account of a Book lately pub-
lished by Roger Gale, Esq., Entituled Registrum Honoris de
Richmond ; and also of the Record of Carnarvon, a MS. in the
Harleyan Library by William Wotton, D.D.’
In this article Dr. Wotton treats of such technical terms as
Tref gyfrif, Maerdref, etc., and bases his remarks on the Laws
of Hywel Dda. Wotton’s edition of Hywel’s Laws was published
by his son-in-law in 1730, but according to the Babliotheca (p. 19)
they were already in the press in 1723.
The number and variety of Law MSS. embarrassed Wotton.
The Celt had long been interested in Law, and it is possibly not
an accident that the libraries of the old Celtic foundations on
the Continent contain titles of so many legal tracts as is shown
by Becker’s Catalog: Bibl. Antiqui.
Edward Lhuyd had interested himself in Welsh Law MSS.
according to p. 258 of his 1707 Archaeologia, and we are told that
the * accurat and ingenious Mr. Wanley ’ of Lhuyd’s Archaeologia
had ferreted out many MSS. of Welsh Laws for Wotton. Scholars
like D’Ewes and Robert Vaughan had collected materials and
had discussed publishing the Laws, and Anthony a Wood says
that William Salesbury wrote a book on Welsh Laws, though his
dictionary contains very few law words, but Wotton’s article in
the Bibliotheca Literaria must be regarded as the herald.
This English clerical polymath lisped in Hebrew and later
: 151
152 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
preached in Welsh to the British Society, St. David’s Day, 1722,
on the very appropriate text—‘Canys pa bethau bynnag a
ysgrifennwyd or blaen, er addysg i ni yr ysgrifennwyd hwynt’
(Rom. xv. 4).
Adversity drove him to Gwynedd for shelter, the great
Bentley handled him severely and Swift in the Battle of the
Books metaphorically ‘slew ’ him for championing the moderns ;
but the lessons he had learnt in St. Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge,
never left him, and St. Catherine’s Hall was then as later a
powerful nursery of Celtic scholars.
Wotton died in 1727 and his son-in-law, William Clarke, saw
Wotton’s work through the press in 1730. It was a great pioneer
work based upon some 25 MSS., mostly of the British Museum.
Wotton himself realised that it was impossible to make one
satisfactory text out of such material, but he has been con-
demned for it as if he was not aware of it. Yet his work is well
worth reading after two centuries, and the 68 folio columns of
glossary by his scholarly assistant Moses Williams is quite
indispensable to-day.
Next comes the Cambrian Register, edited by W. Owain Pughe
with a Welsh text, and an English translation, reprinted a few
years later in the Myvyrian Archeology. Much has been said of
the orthography of Pughe’s text in the first edit. of the Myvyrian
Arch. (1808, III, 361-437), but much of that is based on the
misleading note on p. xix of the second edition of the Myvyrian.
That note says that its text was written by Pughe in an ortho-
graphy of his own device. Pughe, like Lhuyd and others, de-
vised an orthography for the first edition with a large number
of diacritical marks—all these marks were dropped in the second
edition and the letters left unmodified ! Most students use the
second edition of the Myvyrian, accept the note as true, and use
it to provide Pughe with a testimonial and the readers with a
homily on human frailty or vanity.
William Probert is the next of note in the legal succession
with his Ancient Laws of Cambria in 1823. This was a transla-
tion of the Legal Triads and the Laws from the Myv. Arch. text.
Probert was a Breconshire Wesleyan who turned Unitarian and
did remarkable work as a minister of the Gospel in Bolton for
over 40 years. His book was much used by Jacob Grimm in
his Deutsche Rechtsaltertiimer, and the older English and Con-
tinental writers, when they refer to the Laws of Hywel Dda,
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 153
usually mean those found in Probert, though Ferdinand Walter
protested vigorously against this.
In 1841 the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, edited by
Aneurin Owen, were issued by the Commissioners of Public
Records. In 1818-19 several meetings were held in Spencer
House, for considering the publication of a National Collection
of materials for the History of Britain, and on Dec. 19,
1822, the House of Commons authorised the carrying out of
the plan, which included the publication of the Laws of Wales.
Much happened between 1822 and 1841, but though workers
failed, and a common plan for English and Welsh Laws nearly
ruined a great project, nevertheless the utilisation for the first
time of the fine collections of Hengwrt and Wynnstay Law MSS.
handled by a very conscientious scholar achieved a fine piece of
work. Very few can realise how fine a piece of work it is without
working at the difficult task Aneurin Owen was called upon to.
undertake. Theauthors of Welsh People often reject his help, but
there can be little doubt that they were not well advised in
doing so.
Interest in Hywel’s Laws was not confined to Britain. Long
notices of Probert’s had been published abroad, and Du Chatelier
published an interesting book of 107 pp. in Paris, 1840, upon
Hywel’s Laws based upon Wotton’s and giving a précis of the
laws.
In 1859 Prof. F. Walter of Bonn published an important study
called Das alte Wales, described as a contribution to the history
of Wales, its people, laws. and church. Much of this is based
upon the Laws of Hywel and is still well worth reading. Walter
was better equipped than any of the others to deal with the com-
parative value of the Welsh Laws. He had come under the spell
of Niebuhr in 1823, and began to work at Roman Law, and, as
he says, by sheer accident he became interested in Welsh Law the
same year. In 1837 he made some aspects of Welsh Law known
in his University Program for that year, and worked seriously at
the subject till 1859, when his book was published.
After Walter a great deal of attention has been given to the
Laws of Hywel, but comparatively little headway has been made.
Foremost are Mr. Hubert Lewis and Sir D. Brynmor-Jones, who
were barristers and trained men of law. Sir David wrote in
1911 that, as he knew little Welsh and no Irish, what he had
written on the Welsh Laws could have very little value, for
154 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
a thorough knowledge of both was essential before a student
could hope to attack the subject with any success. Of Hubert
Lewis’s book Prof. T. F. Tout speaks with great restraint when
he described it as ‘a disappointing book.’
Seebohm and Vinogradoff made much and very effective use
of the Welsh Law texts and realised their first-class value, but
Prof. F. W. Maitland [Collected Papers III, p. 3] put his finger on
the weak spot of all these writings when he said : ‘ Until the day
comes (whether it ever will, or ever can come I do not know)
when those who are skilled in Celtic Philology will have sorted
that miscellaneous mass which we know as the Ancient Laws
of Wales, the materials which will be at the service of investi-
gators will be of an extremely dangerous and unsatisfactory
kind.’
The same was true of Irish Law. Sir H. 8. Maine made much
use of the Irish Brehon Laws in his great work on Harly Institu-
tions. He depended for his Celtic upon his distinguished fellow-
official, Whitley Stokes, to whom he dedicated his Karly History
of Institutions in 1874. Stokes was one of the most gifted men
who ever studied Celtic, but he was dependent upon unsifted texts
and his incisive opinion of the Roll’s Edition of the Brehon Laws
is on record in a series of letters written to the Academy, Sept. 26,
1855 (pp. 204-5), July 24, November 13, 1886, pp. 58-9, 328-9.
_ His opinion may be biassed against Atkinson (one of the Editors),
but there are now very few who use those Irish Laws with any confi-
dence. Mr. A. W. Wade-Evans and Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans have
published two of the most important Welsh texts separately,
and a glossary to Dr. Evans’ text was published, and a full index
to Mr. Wade-Evans’ text. A complete Index-Verborum was
compiled to Llanstephan MS. 116, but the cost of printing was
prohibitive and it remains unpublished.
A new start has been made in Ireland also. Prof. J. Mac-
Neill has published a translation of that very important Law of
Status. Prof. R. Thurneysen has published the ‘Coic Conara ’
text and German translation, besides some texts in the Zeit. f.
celt. Philologie; and the late Dr. C. Plummer published some
invaluable studies on Ir. Law texts in Eriu. These show very
clearly that the older essays on Welsh Law are now of merely
historical interest and are of no value for Welsh history—literary
or social.
The lineage of the Manuscripts of the Laws of Hywel Dda is
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 155
difficult to trace, yet the lineage of the Laws themselves is much
more difficult, but as interesting as it is complicated ; the lineage
of what publicists often call “Welsh Laws’ passes all under-
standing insomuch as it includes even late recensions of Hywel’s
Laws as well as the legal triads and the Triads of Dyfnwal
Moelmud. 3
The oldest known manuscript of the Laws is Peniarth MS.
28—a Latin MS. of the xij century. This MS. is furnished with
a series of rude but interesting drawings. On p. 2 Hywel Dda
himself—or at least a king—is shown in sepia and sea-green. It
looks. as if the artist had one of the ‘ bearded ’ series of Charle-
magne as model for it. On p. 7 there is a Judge, also in sea-
green, and if this drawing had been consulted some very recent
and dubious discoveries might not have seen light at all. On
p. 11 there is a smith with a sea-green blouse and trousers, wear-
ing a Phrygian cap in black, piped with red and his red-hot iron
on his miniature anvil, but the artist could draw a black pig much
better than a smith or a king.
The oldest Welsh MS. is Pen. MS. 29 and is only a couple of
decades younger than the Latin 28. It has been discussed
whether the Clerk Blegywryd wrote down the Laws at the mem-
orable convocation called by Hywel Dda to Whitland in Latin or
Welsh, but our ignorance of Welsh Law is abysmal enough to
encourage speculation but to make dogmatism useless. If the
oldest Latin MS. suggests foreign influence, the oldest Welsh MS.
is declared to point definitely to Norman-French influence.
Both these MSS.—Peniarth 28 and 29—are separated by over
two and a half centuries from the original code of the Whitland
Convention—what happened in the meantime ?
When Aneurin Owen came to examine the Law MSS. for his
edition of 1841, he saw that they fell naturally into three groups,
which he called Venedotian, Gwentian and Dimetian from the
territorial divisions of Wales. These vary sometimes as much as
positive statement can from its corresponding negative. We
find references to Cyfnerth son of Morgeneu, Gwair son of Rhu-
fawn, Goronwy son of Moryddig, Gruffudd ap Cynan and others
modifying the laws from time to time, but the general assumption
about the meaning of the three groups of Law Codices appears to
be well put in Haddan and Stubbs (I, 211), ‘In course of time the
(seemingly) at first single Code (of Hywel) became distinguished
into three varying with the three great divisions of Wales, L.e.
A.S.—VOL. X. L
156 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
Gwynedd, Dyfed and Gwent.’ (For the inappropriateness of
these names see A. W. Wade-Evans, Med. Law, Introduction.)
This discovery of Aneurin Owen is said to have brought order
out of chaos, and it may well be so; nevertheless, some of its
results have been most unfortunate. The discovery led students
to assume that, when an institution was known in different
codes by different names, this was due to dialectal differences.
It led great students like Seebohm and Vinogradoff to much
unnecessary trouble and in some cases to serious error over such
dual expressions as gwely and gafael. It led Rh¥s astray over
the equation tyddyn and syddyn, etc. The discovery obscured
difficulties and discouraged curiosity, but did not solve any
problems.
How many of these differences were due to dialects, how many
to Cyfnerth, Gwair and the other innovators, and how many to
old native Law Schools, is past saying now. ‘There are sugges-
tions in the Codes that there were Schools of Law, though we
know next to nothing of them yet—schools not like those of
Pavia or Bologna, but rather like the early Irish Law School of
Tuam Drecain or those later schools described so well in the
Introduction to the Memoirs of the Marquis of Clanricarde or in
Corkery’s Hidden Ireland—where the native rather than the
Latin tradition prevailed. These differences of the three Codes
_ face every beginner, but there are other differences more subtle
and of greater interest and possibly of greater historical im-
portance. A very limited acquaintance with Welsh and Irish
Law Texts soon convinces the student that even the oldest
written code shows very definite stratification.
I. There is a Welsh basis where one finds old technical and
semi-technical terms clearly akin to Irish terms and reaching
back to very primitive and elementary society. They are so
elementary and non-technical in appearance that they greatly
misled Rh¥s and Sir J. Morris Jones in his Welsh Grammar.
If ach ac edryd, amgyffred, cyffredin, cynydd, gweilydd, gwynwyr,
mabinogi, tadcu and such legal terms are explained according to
the rules laid down or assumed by Rhys and his school, a student
will find himself in a land where no self-respecting Celt of any age
would feel at home among its institutions—where his own mother
would be married to an ‘ abstract’ father who in turn would be
his own great-grandfather. Or he might be induced to regard
a law-word with such a long ancestry as mabinogi as a late
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 157
creation of some unscrupulous forger and so let historic, social
and literary institutions become the playthings of a wayward
philology.
IJ. Side by side with these there are Roman borrowings—
but so assimilated to Welsh that they are invariably treated as
native. Words like e:ddig, gobaith (and paith), gweryd, gyr,
pwyll, ystum, etc., are only a few of many such which are of
Roman origin though they have all been furnished with Celtic
pedigrees.
Jil. There are Latin borrowings of another stratum, and
most of these are easily recognisable. It is not clear whether
cyfraith (law) itself is one of these borrowings. Rhys (Col. Cal.
p. 0-6) equated it with Cobrexiio of the Coligny calendar (the ref.
given in W.G. 148 is wrong), but as the history of the latter is
unknown and that of the former obscure, the equation is less than
convincing. What appears to be an older and native word for
law is used in the Liber Landavensis, etc.; I mean gwir. It may
be the same word as gwur (true) but is used definitely there and
elsewhere as a technical term, just as the Iv. fir flatha is used for
ordeal (lit. = W. gwir gwlad, i.e. truth of kingdom). Who can say
whether it was pressed to service to translate the Lat. verdict
(vere dictum) or whether it is akin to those old Irish law words
urradus, uraicecht * Dyled and deddf are also used for law but
seldom in this sense.
IV. Four centuries of contact between Briton and Roman,
and four more of Latin Christianity, make many of these borrow-
ings inevitable. But there is a new difficulty. Some of the
most fundamental and oldest law words of Hywel’s Laws are of
Teutonic origin.
‘ Sarhaed’ (Ir. sarugud) (wergild), one of the most character-
istic law words on both sides of the Irish Sea, is probably of
Teutonic origin. Arddel appears to be another. The abstract
arddeliad as frequently used in Mod. Welsh, i.e. ‘ God’s favourable
judgement upon or approval of ’ corresponds so nearly to the old
technical meaning of Ger. Urtheil and Eng. Ordeal (not the
process but the result) that it is impossible to dissociate them.
Whether the series is Celtic or Teutonic the problem is no whit
easier to solve.
Words like boneddig, diadlam, dofod (dyfod), tu a thal, mab
maeth, etc., etc., belong to this stratum. They have been treated
philologically and stamped as Celtic one and all—but no heed
- 158 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
was taken of their history. When the oldest Welsh Code dubs
legal help like the English * barrister’ a ‘ bannister’ (canllaw)
who can say what is their mutual relation and whether English
dictionaries tell all there is to tell of ‘ barrister’? Dr. Leo
published the German Malberg glosses in 1842-5 as Celtic, and
a MS. of the Salic Law was treated as Celtic Law, and Wotton
treated a series of Welsh terms like brawdwr, etc., as English, but
how many old Teutonic terms there are in Welsh Law and what
they are or when introduced nobody can say yet.
Probert pleaded for the publication of the Codes in 1823.
Maitland said seventy years later that until this was done scien-
tifically, all comparison with Teutonic and Roman Law would be
‘extremely dangerous.’ Some Law Manuscripts are known to
have perished, but from the meagre details given in the old lists
it is very difficult to identify them, but still nearly 80 remain.
Wotton used a copy of a ‘Cod. Leid,’ but this is not given in
1912 Cat. of Lat. MSS. at Leiden, and Dr. Buchner, Keeper of the
MSS., tells me that not only the MS. is no longer known there,
but that it is not mentioned in the older catalogues and nothing
is known of its fate.
Edward Lhuyd reports a Law MS. in the collection of Hum-
phrey, Bishop of Hereford. The Cathedral Library at Hereford
possesses a very valuable collection of MSS., but the Sub-Lib-
rarian informs me that there is no MS. of the Laws of Hywel
Dda there and nothing appears to be known of the library of
Lhuyd’s episcopal friend.
On the other hand, some of these MSS. may be still in exist-
ence unknown to students. It is a pleasure to report one at
Bishop Marsh’s library in Dublin, and I am indebted to Dr.
White the librarian for bringing it to my notice. True, it is a
late MS., but that does not of necessity make it uninteresting,
for a late MS. like Lianstephan 116 may contain sections in-
valuable for the study of Welsh social history and not found
elsewhere. 3
The bibliography is meant for the student rather than the
bibliographer. A considerable number of articles on Hywel
Dda in biographical dictionaries and periodicals have been left
out, as they were obviously only copies without any claim to-
originality.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 159
CATALOGUE OF THE MSS. OF THE LAWS
OF HYWEL DDA
(1) CoLtections oF MSS:
bo
(2)
(3)
(4)
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
ABERYSTWYTH: Llanstephan, Mostyn, M.L.W. Add. MSS.
Panton, Peniarth.
CAMBRIDGE: Corpus Christi College, Trinity College.
CARDIFF: Free Library.
Dustin: Archbishop Marsh’s Library.
Lonpon: British Musrum. Additional MSS., Cotton MSS.
| (Caligula, Cleopatra, Titus, Vespasian), Harleian MSS.
OxFoRD: Bodleian (Rawlinson), Corpus Christi, Jesus College,
Merton College.
PUBLISHED TEXTS.
INDEX TO CATALOGUES ETC. REFERRED TO.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BooKS, ETC. RELATING TO Hywet DDa.
(1) COLLECTIONS OF MSS.
ABERYSTWYTH NATIONAL LIBRARY
LLANSTEPHAN COLLECTION
26. Latin; paper; 94 x62 in., 17 ff., xvij cent. transcript
of the Corp. Christi Coll. (Cambr.) MS. Q xj. 2; v. Rep. I,
455 ; Cambridge Corp. Chr. Coll. onfra.
29. Welsh; paper; 846 in.; 138 pp., defective, inter-
leaved ; circa 1500; half bound. The Dimetian text of
Anc. Laws I, pp. 408-590, corresponds pretty closely to this
text; vu. Rep. Il, 465.
67. Latin; paper; 8x64 in.; 47 pp.; half bound;
apparently a transcript of Peniarth MS. 28 by Moses Williams,
A.D. 1722; v. Rep. II, 557, and Pen. MS. 28 infra.
68. Latin; paper; 7354 in.; 148 pp.; circa a.D. 1613;
half bound, pp. 1-107 are a transcript of Bodl. Rawl. MS.
C.821 (q.v. infra). It contains also some excerpts from an
old Welsh Law Codex and an exposition of some legal terms ;
v. Rep. I, 557.
69. Welsh; paper; 74 x54 in.; 175 pp.; calf. Copy of
Cott. Titus MS. D.IX (q.v.), supposed to have been lost in
the fire of a.p. 1731; v. Rep. II, 557.
70. Welsh ; paper ; 74 x54 in. ; 361 pp. ; copied by P. W.,
A.D. 1663; leather bound; v. Rep. UI, 557.
- 160
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
71. Composite MS. Welsh and Latin; paper; 392 pp.
Excerpts from various Law MSS. transcribed by Moses
Williams.
1. Transcript of a MS. communicated by Wm. Baxter 1714
(pp. 1-60) ; v. Wotton, Pref. p. xxx, MS. H.3 (Welsh).
2. Transcript from B. Mus. Harl. 63 B. 20 (pp. 69-199) ;
v. Wotton, Pref. p. xxx (Welsh).
6. Transcript from B. Mus. Cott. Cleop. A. XIV (q.v.) (pp.
269-349) (Welsh).
7. Transcript from B. Mus. Cott. Calig. A.uj (q¢.v.) (pp.
356-392); v. Rep. Il, 558 (Welsh).
72. Welsh; paper; 745% in.; pp. 128; half bound;
xviij cent. This claims to be a copy of Owain Meurig of
Bodorgan’s Law MS. That MS. is described by Wotton.
Pref. p. 31 MS. M; v. Rep. II, 558. 7
74. Welsh; paper; 84x6i in.; pp. 44; half bound ;
xviij cent. This claims to be variant readings and addita-
menta from “‘ MSS. Gul. Williams Baronetti”?; v. Rep.
II, 558. For the Williams MSS., v. Wotton, Pref. p. xxx].
MS. LI. (Llanforda MSS.). Many of the Law MSS. were
from Wm. Maurice’s Collection (v. Cambr. Jour. II, 122).
They later passed into the Wynne Collection (v. Anc. Law,
i, Xxxyv):
75. Welsh; paper; 735g in.; pp. 186; xviij cent. ;
half bound. This claims to be a copy of Wm. Philip of Aber-
hodni’s Law MS. v. Rep. II, 558. For Philips MSS. v. Lhuyd
Arch. Preface and p. 258 col. b, also Wotton, Pref. xxx],
codex P.
77. Welsh and Latin ; paper; 735% in.; 180 pp.; half
bound. Legal Additamenta by Moses Williams, v. Rep. II,
558.
79. Welsh; paper; 8x6 in.; half bound. ‘Transcript
partly in the hand of Dr. J. Dafydd Rhys; v. Rep. II, 559.
v. further Pen. MS. 118; Wrexham MS. I, p. 461 (Rep. II,
359). ! ,
116. Welsh; vellum; 1238 in.; 124 pp.; sec. half of
xv cent. ; half bound ; v. Rep. II, 567. The text of MS. 116
was published for the Guild of Graduates of the University
of Wales by Henry Sotheran 1912; v. Lewis, T. in Biblio-
graphy infra. For collation with Anc. Laws, v. Vendryes,
Rev. Celt. 1913, pp. 330-3.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 161
121. Welsh; paper; 112x773} in.;: pp. 552; leather
bound. Welsh Laws and Elucidations written by John
Jones, Gelli Lyvdy before Sept. 25, 1619; v. Rep. II, 609.
130. Short extract from the beginning of the Laws, v. Rep.
Il, 664, § 77.
Eon Latin; paper; 138 im; 136 pp. ; - xvHyj cent. ;
half-bound. Given by Wotton to Moses Williams, 4.D. 1724.
151. Welsh; paper; 12374 in., half-bound. Copy of
B. Mus. Cott. Cleop. B.V. 2 (qg.v. infra) ; v. Rep. II, 727.
152. Welsh; paper; 123 x74 in. ; half-bound ; a.p. 1721.
Copy of B. Mus. Cott. Titus D. ii (q.v. infra) ; v. Rep. II, 727.
153. Latin; paper; 114 74in.; half-bound. Copy from
B. Mus. Cott. Vesp. E. XI (q¢.v. infra). Collated by Moses
Williams, v. Rep. II, 728.
174. Welsh; paper; 8x6 in.; 174 pp.; first half of xvq
cent., vellum bound. Copied from B. Mus. Cott. Titus D. ii
(g.v. wnfra), v. Rep. II, 767.
197. Latin; paper; 124x745 in.; 89 pp. unfinished ;
leather bound. ‘Transcript of Pen.. MS. 28 by William
Maurice, Tynybraich. A.D. 1662; v. Rep. II, 781 and Index
mfra. :
MOSTYN COLLECTION
211. Fragment of Welsh Laws of Hywel. Pp. 319-28
of a composite MS. written czrca 1685 and formerly in the
Gloddaeth Library ; v. Rep. I, 278-9.
NATIONAL LIBRARY ADDITIONAL MSS.
146, pp. 123-5, contains a transl. of the poem about Elidyr
Mwynvawr found in law MSS. but no Law Text.
345, pp. 103-5. Some extracts by Dafydd Ddu Eryri con-
cerning Bardd Teulu and Pencerdd.
PANTON COLLECTION
17. Welsh Excerpts from ‘Llyfr Gwyn o Hergest’ ;
v. Rep. II, 824-5. For the history of the White Bk. of
Hergest from the Lhuyd-Sebright Library, said to have been
destroyed by fire in a Covent Garden bindery; v. Trans.
Cymmrod., 1822, p. 175; Cambro Brit., II, 203; Cambr.
Register, III, 286; Cambr. Journal, III, 127; Rep. I, 1049
[Pen. MS. 225]; II, 558 [LI.M.S. 74]; Rep. II, 1058 [B. Mus.
Welsh MS. 32; Anc. Laws, I, p. xxxij. MS. D.
162
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
PENIARTH COLLECTION
28. Latin; Vellum; 72x6 in.; 52 pp., last. qr. of xij
cent.; oak boards. This is the oldest known copy of the
Laws of Hywel. It is the first MS. of Aneurin Owen’s Leges
Wallicae [v. Anc. Laws, I, p. xxxij] and the text is printed
in Anc. Laws, II, pp. 749-814; v. Rep. I, 359. Transcripts
by Moses Williams, Llanst. MS. 67 ; by Wm. Maurice, Llanst.
MS. 197; v. also Lhuyd Arch., p. 258b; Rep. I, 359. For
Lat. Prologue with transl., v. Wade-Evans, Med. Law,
pp. Lh. Photographed by Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans for
inclusion in his Old Welsh Texts. :
29. Welsh; vellum; 745 in.; 104 pp.; imperfect ;
circa 1200; known as Y Llyvyr Du or Weun or The Black
Book of Chirk. This is MS. A of Anc. Laws [for Collation,
v. Lewis, Glossary, p. xxij] qg.v. I. xxij-iij, xxv—vj. For Pro-
logue and Collation, v. Rep. I, 359, Wade-Evans, Med. Law,
lni—ii. B. Mus. Add. MS. 14931 is a transcript made when
it was complete v. Rep. II, 944; Anc. Laws, 1, p. xxviij.
Collotype Facs. of Pen. MS. 29 published as vol. vj of Dr.
J. G. Evans’ Old Welsh Texts. For Glossary, v. Lewis,
Glossary of Med. W. Law. For orthography, v. Watkin,
Trans. Cymmrodor,1918-19, pp. 194-216 ; Annales de Bretagne,
1927, pp. 408-17; and Loth, Rev. Celtique, XX XIX (1922),
pp. 226—40.
30. Welsh; vellum; 735% in.; 82 ff.; bi-columnar ;
incomplete ; xiij cent. ; leather bound. For collation with
Anc. Laws and possible relation to MS. F and Pen. MS. 29,
v. Rep. I, 361. This MS. contains a ref. to Lleuyr y Ty Guyn
(The Whitland Book). |
31. Welsh; vellum; 745 in.; 64 pp.; end wanting ;
first half of xiv cent. ; coloured sectional initials and a few
floriated ; illegible in parts; vellum bound. For Collation
with text of Anc. Laws and Prologue, v. Rep. I, 362. It is
MS. R. of Anc. Laws, Dimetian Code, v. p. xxx.
32. [Composite volume.| Welsh; vellum; 8x53 in.;
Law Text occupies pp. 1-224; circa 1380; vellum bound ;
in same hand as Mabinogion of Red Book of Hergest. For
Prologue, Collation with MS. D and relation to MSS. B.C.G.
of Anc. Laws and to Peniarth MS. 30; v. Rep. I, 363; Ane.
Laws, I, xxvij. Formerly in Wm. Maurice’s Deddfgrawn
(v. Lhwyd Angh. Index infra).
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 163
33. Welsh; vellum; 63 32in.; 186 pp.; early xv cent. ;
coloured sectional initials; gall-stained; vellum bound.
For Prologue, Collation with MS. M of Anc. Laws, v. Rep.
i660). (Ane. Laws, T, xxx.
34. Welsh; vellum; 7X53 in.; 132 pp. incomplete ;
gall-stained ; xvj. cent., in hand of Roger Morys (?) (v. Pen.
MS. 224); vellum bound. Formerly in Wm. Maurice’s
‘Deddfgrawn.’ For Prologue, Collation with MS. F. of
Ane. Laws, v. Rep. I, 367; Anc. Laws, I, xxviij.
35 [Laws and Pleadings]. Welsh; vellum; 52 x4 in.;
119 ff. ; last qr. of xiij cent., in two hands ; sectional initials
in black and red; incomplete; leather bound. Called
‘Llyfyr Cynawe’ in Wm. Maurice’s ‘ Deddfgrawn.’ For
Collation with MS. B of Anc. Laws, and relation to B. Mus.
Cott. Titus, D. ii (g.v.), v. Rep. I, 368; Anc. Laws, I, xxviij.
364. Welsh; vellum; 6x4? in.; pp. ix+158 (many
blanks) ; written after 1282; vellum bound. For Prologue
and Collation with MS. O of Anc. Laws v. Rep. I, 369.
Anc. Laws, I, xxx. Oldest MS. of Dimetian Code.
36B. Welsh; vellum; 5x3 in.; 80 pp.; late xiij. cent. ;
red initials ; incomplete ; bound with 36 c. in white vellum.
For Prologue and Collation with MS. N of Anc. Laws, v. Rep.
Peso: Anc. Laws, |. xxx.
36c [Fragments]. Welsh; vellum and paper; 54 x41 in. ;
88 pp.; late xv and xvj cents., bound with 36B. For colla-
tion wth MS. C) of Anc. Laws, v. Rep. I, 370. For relation
to MS. A, v. Anc. Laws, I, xxxij.
37. Welsh; vellum; 53x43; 156 pp.; late xiij cent. ;
sectional initials and rubrics ; gall-stained ; pigskin bound.
For Prologue and Collation with MS. U of Anc. Laws, v. Rep.
I, 371. It is the Gwentian Code of Anc. Laws, v. I, xxxi.
The text of ff. 614-768 with Engl. trans. was published by
A. W. Wade-Evans in Y Cymmrodor xvii (1904), pp. 129-
163, v. Wade-Evans, Welsh Med. Law, p. xvij.
38. Welsh ; vellum ; 52 x43in.; pp. iv.+138 ; incomplete ;
xv cent. (?); vellum bound. For Prologue and Collation
with MS. I of Anc. Laws and MS. 364 above, v. Rep. I, 372.
39. Welsh; vellum; 42x38 in.; ff. iv.+78; circa 1500 ;
formerly in Wm. Maurice’s ‘ Deddfgrawn.’ For relation
- to B. Mus. Cott. Titus D. ii, to Pen. MSS. 32, 35 and colla-
tion with Anc. Laws, v. Rep. I, 378.
164
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
40 (Composite MS.). Welsh; vellum; 6}x4? in.; circa
1469 ; gall stained ; initials and titles in red ; leather bound.
The Laws occupy pp. 21-234. For Prologue, Collation with
MS. K of Anc. Laws and relation to B. Mus. Cott. Caligula
A iii (q.v. infra) and Pen. MS. 32, v. Rep. I, 373; Anc. Laws,
I, xxx, MS. K:
118. Short excerpts from the Welsh Laws in hand of Dr.
J. Dafydd Rhys, v. Rep. 1, p. 725, s.p. 909, and some illustra-
tive material for a Glossary of the Laws, p. 721.
163. Welsh fragments ; xvj cent., v. Rep. I, 954-6.
164. Welsh (glosses); vellum; 625 in.; pp. 162; in-
complete ; early xv cent.
‘This MS. is H of Anc. Laws and the text is professedly
printed in vol. II, 568-742, which is in reality taken from a
copy in Pen. MS. 278,’ v. Rep. I, 956-7; Anc. Laws, I, xxix.
165 (Composite MS). Welsh; paper; 735% in. ;- ff. 187;
written between 1586-1622. The Law text occupies ff.
7-96. Transcript of B. Mus. Harl. 4353 (q¢.v.) and Cleop.
B.V. (g.v.); v. Rep. I, 957. |
166 [Extracts and Pleadings]. Welsh; paper; 825% in. ;
pp. 3-114; xvj cent.; half-bound; imperfect. For relat.
to Anc. Laws, II, 306, etc., v. Rep. I, 959.
167. Latin; paper; 726 in.; ff. 11-61; in hand of R.
Vaughan. ‘Transcript of Bodl. Rawl. MS. C. 821; v. Rep.
I, 959-60.
175 [Laws and Pleadings]. Welsh; vellum; 625 in. ;
88 pp.; gall-stained ; late xv cent.; leather bound. For-
merly owned by Sir T. Wiliems and Bishop Morgan. For
Collation with MS. A of Anc. Laws, v. Rep. I, 970; Anc.
Laws, 1, xxxij.
224 [Composite MS.] Welsh; paper; 7352 in.; in hand
of John Jones, Gelli Lyvdy, a.p. 1604—6; leather boards.
Laws occupy pp. 1-751. For Prologue, Collation with MS.
B of Anc. Laws and relat. to B. Mus. Cott. Titus D. ii (q¢.v.) ;
to Caligula A, iii, and Pen. MS. 163, v. Rep. I, 1046-7.
225. Latin; Extracts, etc. in the hand of Sir T. Wiliems
(1594-1610), v. Rep. I, 1049.
252. Welsh ; Fragments in the hand of Dr. J. Dafydd Rhys, -
v. Rep. I, 1070.
256. Latin; paper; 12183 in.; 65ff.; imperfect;
sec. half of xvi cent.; sewn. Used by W. Salesbury and
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 165
Wm. Maurice. For relat. to B. Mus. Cott. Vesp. E. xi
(gv.), v0. Rep. 1, 1072.
MS. 258. Welsh; paper; 103 x84in.; pp. 282; end wanting ;
2nd half xv cent.; leather bound. For collation with Anc.
Laws MS. € and relation to Wotton’s MS. 8.3, v. Rep. I,
1073.
MS. 2594. Welsh; vellum; 117% in.; ff. 46; bicolumnar ;
end wanting; last qr. xv cent.; bound with MS. 2598;
leather bound. For Prologue, relation to MS. P. of Ane.
Laws and to Pen. MS. 258, v. Rep. I, 1074. Formerly in
Wm. Maurice’s ‘ Deddfgrawn.’
MS. 2598. Welsh; paper; 118 in.; ff. 108; imperfect ;
| bicolumnar ; in two hands; first half of xvj cent. ; bound
with MS. 259a, leather bound. This is MS. Z of Anc. Laws
(v. I, xxxij). For Prologue, relation to B. Mus. Harl. 4353
(g.v.) v. Rep. I, 1074-5, Wade-Evans, Welsh Med. Law,
p- xvi. Once in possession of Constable of Pontefract, v.
note, Rep. I, 1075.
MS. 270. Extracts from Welsh Laws in hand of Dr. J. Dafydd
Rhys, v. Rep. I, 1094, § 309.
MS. 271. Fragment of Gwentian Code, in hand of R. Vaughan,
v. Rep. I, 1095-6.
MS. 278. Transcript by R. Vaughan of Pen. MSS. 29 and 164.
For Prologue and relat. to MS. H. of Anc. Laws, v. Rep. I,
1098. For relat. to Llanst. MS. 121, v. Rep. II, 609.
CAMBRIDGE
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
(usually referred to St. BENED or ST. BENEDICT in Welsh writings).
MS. 454=Q. xj. 2. Latin and Welsh; vellum and paper;
6°; 7 in.; fol. 66; xv cent.; paper wrapper; formerly
in Archbp. M. Parker’s Library. MS. CCCC of Wotton
(Preface p. xxix). Llanst. MS. 26is a xvij cent. transcript of
this, v. Rep. 1], 455; I, 733 (Pen. MS. 120, § 442); James,
Corpus Christi MSS., II, 376-7.
TRINITY COLLEGE
MS. 1303. Latin; paper; 144.9} in.; ff. 31; 42 ll. toa page ;
' Xvij cent. transcript of an Hengwrt MS. v. James, Western
MSS. in Trin. Coll., III, p. 324.
166
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS
1329. Welsh; vellum; 6344 in.; ff. 68; 24 ll. toa
page. Early xiv cent.; front page discoloured ; rude pen
drawings of peacock, dragon, etc., v. James, Western MSS.
in Trin. Coll., ITI, 345.
CARDIFF
FREE LIBRARY
2. Welsh; vellum; 72x52 in.; ff. 2-73: (?) early xvj
cent. ; rubricated initials; leather boards. Direct tran-
script of B. Mus. Cott. Titus D. ix, cannot be earlier than
circa 1475. Rep. I, 92, but v. Powel et Ballinger, p. 24,
where it is attributed to the xiij cent. Formerly in Philips’
Collection. ,
26. Composite vol. of 3 versions, 2 Welsh and 1 Latin ;
paper; 8x64 in.; cerca 1714; pp. 214.
(a) Transcript of Harl. 4353, formerly owned by W. Bax-
ter and Moses Williams, pp. 214 sqq. (qg.v. wmfra).
(6) Transcript of Harl. 958, pp. 277 sqq. (q¢.v. mfra).
(c) Transcript of Harl. 1796, pp. 377 sqq. (q.v. mfra).
DUBLIN
ARCHBISHOP MARSH’S LIBRARY
Leges Howelli . . . Principis totius Cambriae ... a.D. 922;
MS.
paper; 21-5x15-8. ‘‘ The owner’s note shows it is not later
than 1616.” Press Mk. Z4.4.12. Loftus MSS. White
Catal., p. 84. |
LONDON: BRITISH MUSEUM —
ADDITIONAL MSS.
14931 [=B. Mus. Welsh MS. 4]. Welsh; vellum; 725}
in.; ff. 104; mid. xiij cent. ; rubricated sectional initials ;
leather boards. This is MS. E of Anc. Laws (v. I, xxvij,
for description) formerly belonging to the Welsh School.
Modified transcript of Pen. MS. 29, but contains parts —
missing in original (v. Rep. I, pt. i, pp. vij—viij; I1., pt. iv,
p. iv) used by Dr. J. G. Evans to fill up lacunae in the
Faces. Ed. of Black Book of Chirk. For Prologue and Colla-
MS.
MS.
MS.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LAWS 167
tion v. Rep. II, 944; v. also Trans. Cymmrod, 1822, p. 178;
Myv. Arch. 753, col. b.
22.356[—=B. Mus. Welsh MS. 9]. Welsh; vellum; 92 x 62in. ;
ff. 149; late xv cent.; leather boards. This is MS. S2 of
Wotton (v. pref. p. xxxj); MS. S. of Anc. Laws (v. I, xxxi).
For Collation with Anc. Laws MS. S., v. Rep. II, 948-9.
COTTON MSS.
CALIGULA A. iii [=B. Mus. Welsh MS. 5]. Welsh; vellum ;
83 x62 in.; ff. 149-198 b. ; imperfect ; bi-columnar ; circa
mid. xiij cent.; rubricated sectional initials. Transcript
of Pen. MS. 29. For relation to MS. C. of, and collation with
text of Anc. Laws and variation from Pen. MS. 29, v. Rep.
Il, 945; II, pt.iv, p.4. This is Cott. 2 of Wotton, who used
it extensively ; v. Leg. Wall. (pref. p. xxix). Llans. MS. 71
is a transc. by Moses Williams.