Manuscripts

Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111 Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest)

Welsh
s. xiv-xv
Welsh manuscripts
vellum

Identifiers

Location

England Oxford, Jesus College

Shelfmark

111

Title

Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest)

Provenance and related aspects

Language

Welsh

Date

s. xiv-xv

“written with few exceptions during the last quarter of the xivth, and the first quarter of the xvth centuries” (Evans).

Hands, scribes

Hands indexed:

Hand A Anonymous [scribe I of Llyfr Coch Hergest]Anonymous ... scribe I of Llyfr Coch Hergest

Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

See more Specimens (IIIF):

Hand B (Hywel Fychan) Hywel Fychan ap Hywel GochHywel Fychan ap Hywel Goch
(fl. 14th century)
Hywel Fychan ap Hywel Goch was a fourteenth century Welsh scribe. He was a man with clerical training who knew Latin and was able to edit and organize a book. He also wrote lawbooks. Hywel Fychan is most famous for being the chief scribe of the Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111). He is also connected to Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 11; Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Llanstephan MS 27 (Llyfr Coch Talgarth); and Philadelphia, Library Company, MS 8680.O. He furthermore made a contribution to the Culchwch ac Olwen-text of the White Book of Rhydderch (Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 4-5) on folio 83v.
See more Specimens (IIIF):

Hand C (X91) Scribe X91Scribe X91

Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

Copies or excerpts

Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Llanstephan MS 137 [s. xvii^2/4]
Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Llanstephan MS 148 [s. xvii^ex]

Codicological information

Material

vellum

Table of contents

Legend

Texts

Links to texts use a standardised title for the catalogue and so may or may not reflect what is in the manuscript itself, hence the square brackets. Their appearance comes in three basic varieties, which are signalled through colour coding and the use of icons, , and :

- If a catalogue entry is both available and accessible, a direct link will be made. Such links are blue-ish green and marked by a bookmark icon.
- When a catalogue entry does not exist yet, a desert brown link with a different icon will take you to a page on which relevant information is aggregated, such as relevant publications and other manuscript witnesses if available.
- When a text has been ‘captured’, that is, a catalogue entry exists but is still awaiting publication, the same behaviour applies and a crossed eye icon is added.

The above method of differentiating between links has not been applied yet to texts or citations from texts which are included in the context of other texts, commonly verses.

Locus

While it is not a reality yet, CODECS seeks consistency in formatting references to locations of texts and other items of interest in manuscripts. Our preferences may be best explained with some examples:

f. 23ra.34: meaning folio 23 recto, first column, line 34
f. 96vb.m: meaning folio 96, verso, second column, middle of the page (s = top, m = middle, i = bottom)
- Note that marg. = marginalia, while m = middle.
p. 67b.23: meaning page 67, second column, line 23

The list below has been collated from the table of contents, if available on this page,Progress in this area is being made piecemeal. Full and partial tables of contents are available for a small number of manuscripts. and incoming annotations for individual texts (again, if available).Whenever catalogue entries about texts are annotated with information about particular manuscript witnesses, these manuscripts can be queried for the texts that are linked to them.

Welsh manuscripts

Sources

Primary sources This section typically includes references to diplomatic editions, facsimiles and photographic reproductions, notably digital image archives, of at least a major portion of the manuscript. For editions of individual texts, see their separate entries.

[dig. img.] Oxford Digital Library, Early manuscripts at Oxford University, Online: University of Oxford, 2001–present. URL: <http://image.ox.ac.uk>.

Digital reproduction of the manuscript direct link

[dipl. ed.] Thomas, Peter Wynn [ed.], D. Mark Smith, and Diana Luft [transcribers and encoders], Welsh prose (Rhyddiaith Gymraeg) 1300–1425, Online: Cardiff University, 2007–present. URL: <http://www.rhyddiaithganoloesol.caerdydd.ac.uk>.

XML-encoded transcriptions of the prose texts. direct link

[dipl. ed.] Rhŷs, John, and J. Gwenogvryn Evans, The text of the Bruts from the Red Book of Hergest, Series of Old Welsh Texts, 2, Oxford: Evans, 1890.

Internet Archive: <link>

Diplomatic edition of the historical works.

[dipl. ed.] Evans, J. Gwenogvryn, The poetry in the Red Book of Hergest, Llanbedrog, 1911.

Internet Archive: <link>

Diplomatic editions of the poems.

Secondary sources (select)

Huws, Daniel, Medieval Welsh manuscripts, Cardiff and Aberystwyth: University of Wales Press, 2000.

Charles-Edwards, Gifford, “The scribes of the Red Book of Hergest”, National Library of Wales Journal 21:3 (Haf, 1980): 246–256.

Welsh Journals Online: <link>

Evans, J. Gwenogvryn, Report on manuscripts in the Welsh language, vol. 2: Jesus College, Oxford; Free Library, Cardiff; Havod; Wrexham; Llanwrin; Merthyr; Aberdâr, Historical Manuscripts Commission, London, 1902.

Internet Archive: <link>

1–29 [‘MS 1 = cxi’]