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This article looks briefly at the significance of the triskele and swastika as sun-symbols in general and their long association with Insular Celtic traditions, and with the Isle of Man in particular, as well as the association of the triskele and other traditions with Manannán mac Lir (Manannan Beg mac y Leirr in Man) and with Tynwald, the Manx parliament, in Manx tradition over time.

A hitherto undeciphered englyn in the early fourteenth-century Hendregadredd Manuscript is here edited and argued to contain a reference to an incident involving a wolf attacking sheep. The englyn is probably contemporary with the writing and provides rare evidence for the survival of the wolf in Wales in this period.

The Hendregadredd Manuscript (Aberystwyth, NLW MS 6680B) of medieval Welsh court poetry was first compiled around 1300 and supplemented through the first quarter of the fourteenth century. These two strata represent stages in the creation of the book which, as Daniel Huws argued, probably took place in the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion. Soon afterwards, the remaining blank spaces in the book were filled with miscellaneous poems in a number of often informal hands: this phase constitutes the 'third stratum' in Huws's analysis. As much of the material in this stratum relates to Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron, not far from Strata Florida, it is generally assumed that the book had now left the scriptorium where it was made and had become the property of Ieuan. At his home it was used to record poems of various kinds, most likely by poets who visited the house, over an extended period. This is suggested not merely by the variety of the poems themselves but by the fairly informal nature of the writing, which contrasts with the neat scriptorium work of the first and second strata, around which these pieces were fitted.

This article concerns one of these pieces added as part of the third stratum. On fol.95v, inserted between two poems from the earlier strata of writing, is a single englyn. The hand of the inserter is called 'k' by Daniel Huws and he did not identify it anywhere else in the book.

This article examines the internal historical evidence of the Third Branch of the Mabinogi. Through a close examination of the historical detail of Manawydan's sojourn as a craftsman in the cities of England, it becomes evident that the Third Branch reflects aristocratic social and economic anxieties in the decades following the Norman invasion of Wales. In light of an as-yet-unrecognized connection between the Third Branch and the twelfth-century royal biography Vita Griffini Filii Conani, this article suggests an early twelfth-century date for the former text.

Celtic inherited from Indo-European a system in which the first word of the sentence was invariably accented and was often followed by an unaccented word. In the evolution towards Gaelic and Brythonic, it became most common for that first word to be either a verb or a preverb. The beginning of the sentence thus became even more clearly defined because, also as an inheritance from Indo-European, verbs and preverbs were unaccented in other positions. Between Proto-Indo-European and the earliest attested Gaelic and Brythonic, the accent moved. As a result, the phonetic effects of the earlier accent became morphophonemic: phonologically stronger forms of verbs and preverbs occur in sentence-initial position in Old Irish and early Brythonic. Information about the shape and function of the clause, formerly conveyed by the accent, came to be conveyed by these morphophonemic contrasts. If the inherited primary/secondary system marking tense still survived then, this new absolute/conjunct opposition clashed with it and displaced it.

Jenkin Thomas Philipps (d. 1755) is not a particularly well-known Welshman. He is remembered as 'a highly accomplished linguist' and as a private tutor, by 1726, to the children of George II, including William Augustus, duke of Cumberland (1721–65) and Mary (1723–72). On 13 November 1732 he was appointed historiographer royal, a position he retained until his death in London on 22 February 1755. His date of birth is given as 1675 in a library catalogue in Basel, but the source for this information is unclear. In his will he left £60 a year towards the maintenance of a free school in his native parish Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, but he died without signing the will.

The post of historiographer royal was a sinecure given either to keep the candidate quiet or to supplement an otherwise insufficient stipend. The latter was likely the case when Philipps was appointed 'historiographer to his Majesty' four days after the death of his predecessor, Robert Stephens. It secured him an income of ?200 per annum. In addition to his teaching activities and this appointment, Philipps managed to author and edit a considerable number of works in various languages, but he is not known as an author in Welsh. So it is a surprise to find a poem by him in what must have been his first language. The search to give some context to this poem reveals a few hitherto unknown facts about his life and adds to the list of his known publications.

This article reconstructs where, when and how Celtic speakers adopted beekeeping on the basis of the Celtic apicultural vocabulary. Following a short introduction giving the archaeological and historical background of beekeeping, it is argued that Celtic inherited a lexicon for bee produce from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but not for bees or beehives. The various external sources and internal derivations for the remaining words in the apicultural lexicon are then employed to reconstruct in what periods and from what sources Celtic speakers adopted beekeeping. This reconstruction demonstrates that bee domestication by IE speakers post-dates PIE. A European lexicon can be reconstructed for bees, drones and hollow beehives, implying that sylvestrian beekeeping was adopted by IE speakers soon after their migration into Europe. A Proto-Celtic (PC) layer relating to swarming suggests that PC speakers achieved more intimate knowledge of beekeeping, while words for beehives are of even later date, suggesting continued innovation in hive-building techniques after the break-up of Celtic.

The decade between 1267 and 1277 was crucial in Gwynedd's struggle to establish a native Welsh polity. It required a small territory with slender resources to mount diplomacy promoting Llywelyn's status as 'princeps Wallie' not merely with the English crown but with the papal curia. Llywelyn's diplomatic letters have hitherto been scrutinised for the light they shed on the course of events. This article examines instead their style and effectiveness as a mode of diplomatic communication. It compares them with diplomatic letters of Alexander III of Scotland and sheds light on how native Wales was interacting with Anglo-French culture. The analysis draws on a number of previouslyunpublished original documents, transcribed here for the first time, including Pope Gregory X's letter to Edward I in August 1274, inspired by Llywelyn, and preparatory drafts of Edward's letter to Llywelyn in May 1275.

This article discusses Edward Lhwyd's visit to Cornwall in 1700, drawing on his correspondence to demonstrate the support he received from Cornish scholars and antiquarians, his itinerary and fieldwork methodology, his treatment of the Cornish language, and the manuscript materials available to him.

This article advances the argument that the fourteenth-century Welsh medical manuscript British Library Additional 14912 is based on materials which ultimately stem from Llanthony Prima Priory in Monmouthshire, although it may itself have been produced for a patron in the vicinity of Caerleon. The argument is based primarily on the saints' feasts which appear in a calendar which precedes the medical material in the manuscript. The feast which stands out is that of St. Finnian of Clonard, which is noted on December 12, and which is also used to calculate that month's Ember Days. The article traces the close relationship between Llanthony and Finnian's native Westmeath, and argues that Llanthony's status as an Augustinian priory may account for that foundation's apparent interest in Welsh medical material. This interest may also be seen in the closely-related fourteenth-century Welsh medical manuscript Cardiff 3.242, which may also be a product of Llanthony.

Moni Iudeorum is recorded in Annales Cambriae as St David's place of death. The first element of this place-name may be identified with Middle Welsh Mynyw, modern St David's. Its second is obscure but has traditionally been interpreted as referring to the early Irish population group the Déisi, attesting early Irish settlement in south-west Wales. However, this interpretation rests only on a scribal emendation when others are equally, if not more, plausible. This paper reassesses the evidence, proposes a new, more minor, emendation, Moniu Deorum '*Moniu of the Gods', and examines this within a wider early Christian context.

Problems with Hamp's derivation of Mabinogi are noted, and the name is proposed instead to be an adaptation of the Old Irish Mac ind Óc.

In his Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture of 1969 Robert L. Thomson provided a detailed analysis of initial consonant replacement in the Classical Manx of the eighteenth century, in which he was able to set out the use or non-use of such replacement by various authors of that century. However, Thomson's presentation of the material is not easy to digest today, and in order to facilitate an easier understanding of the importance of these developments, the material has here been repackaged and presented anew.

Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of Geraint the son of Erbin, published as part of a threevolume edition in 1849, was illustrated by the wood-engraver Samuel Williams. Drawing on theoretical paradigms from illustration studies, the relationship between word and image is explored, highlighting how illustrations create a complex dialogic relation between image and text. Questions are then raised as to why, in Guest's second edition of the tale, in 1877, changes and adjustments were made, specifically to those elements related to the ruins of Cardiff Castle. The wider implications of choices relating to the placement of images and the producing of captions, existing as they do in a liminal zone, located between the image and the text, are demonstrated.

The fragmentary text of the Triads on the first two folios of the fifteenth-century Welsh law manuscript Llanstephan 116 is transcribed and collated with similar legal texts.

The purpose of this article is to provide transcriptions and translations of the twenty-seven miracles recorded in Oxford, Exeter College, MS 158 and Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Cod. Lat. 4015 relating to Wales. The miracles occurred through the invocation of St Thomas de Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford (1275–82), and were recorded by the custodians at the shrine in the north transept of Hereford Cathedral between 1287 and 1312. This article examines both the Oxford and Vatican manuscripts and their significance. The collection is useful for study of the context and aftermath of King Edward I's conquest of Wales in 1283 and the subsequent Anglo-Welsh conflicts and rebellions.

Four Insular documents from the seventh and eighth centuries show that a major controversy took place amongst the Insular churches regarding the shape of the tonsure worn by clerics. Those who followed the customs of the Roman church wore a coronal tonsures, oval or circular in plan, while those belonging to some earlier Irish and British churches wore a delta tonsure, triangular in plan. This paper critically examines six figures in the Book of Kells proposed to have been illustrated with tonsures. Three of these at ff. 32v, 34r and 273r all show Jesus with the delta tonsure. The haloed figure above the second Canon table at f. 2v is likewise shown with the delta tonsure. On the other hand, the mounted figure at f. 255v is shown with a coronal tonsure and is explicitly coupled to the words ‘unum’ and ‘peccauerat’ of Luke 17:1 and 17:3 respectively. In Luke 17:1-3 Jesus censures all those who give cause for temptation to sin, saying it would be better that they were cast into the sea with a mill-stone about their neck. Consequently, by this graphic presentation of the coronal tonsure the compilers of Kells expressed their strong disapproval of it. A sixth figure at f. 182r proposed by James McIlwain in 2008 to be illustrated with the coronal tonsure is shown in fact to represent Pontius Pilate wearing an oval cap. Thus the five illustrations of tonsure in the Book of Kells represent a graphic polemic, exalting those who wore the delta tonsure, but directed against those who wore the Roman coronal tonsure.

 A small hilltop enclosure at Carrog, Llanbadrig, Anglesey, that had been identified from a crop mark on an aerial photograph was investigated by geophysical survey and subsequently evaluated by excavation. The enclosure was interpreted on typological grounds as a possible Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age defended site. The enclosure ditch was substantial, but there was no trace remaining of any accompanying bank. Within the enclosure were numerous post-holes and pits. Some of the latter proved to be hearths of Early Neolithic date and these have produced radiocarbon dates in the fourth millennium cal BC. The post-holes appeared to belong to structures from occupation of the enclosure, and dates from these and from the ditch showed that it was probably constructed about 800 cal BC and occupied until about 400 cal BC confirming the original interpretation. Late in its existence the ditch had been partially backfilled and a small building constructed within it, radiocarbon-dated to the eighth–ninth century cal AD.

An interpretation of indigenous populations asserts that 'non-state societies typically have fluid territorial and political boundaries, only weakly developed political hierarchies and a less formalized sense of identity as a group.' This characterisation illustrates well a decentralised society in which groups live in part independently, yet are connected to other nearby populations through a shared culture, perpetuated by similar social, material and settlement structures. It is likely that the Silures occupying south Wales in the Iron Age lived in such a society. Focusing predominantly on defended enclosures, but also exploring other aspects of the material record, this paper suggests a decentralised socio-political structure indicating that the inhabitants of south Wales maintained independent, local groups, yet shared many common social, material and settlement practices that united these communities under a single culture. This shared culture then became unifying when the entire region came under threat by the Roman invasion.