- s. xv1
This is a new edition and translation of Chwedleu Seith Doethon Rufein, the Middle Welsh version of the popular medieval tales known as ‘The Seven Sages of Rome’. The text found in J MS 111 has already been published in modern Welsh, which limits its usefulness for those who are not fluent in that language. The only English translation available is an archaic, nineteenth century version which needs updating. This has been addressed here. Certain concepts are questioned, such as Lewis’s suggestion that the tales were the original work of a Welsh cleric and therefore constitute the first Welsh novel His opinion that J MS 20 is the oldest extant Welsh version of the tale is also investigated. The Welsh redaction itself is characterised by the usual medieval Welsh practice of abbreviation and concision. Here the translation of French Sept Sages is curtailed by the omission of direct speech and extraneous detail. Any deviation, such as borrowings from traditional Welsh tales, is therefore the more noteworthy. The pointed use of native literary tradition suggests that the author was an educated man, one not only fluent in French, as evidenced from his adaptation of the Sept Sages, but one well-versed in his own literary heritage. His exclusion of the scatological elements present in the French parent version may point to his religious calling but could also indicate that he was writing for a mixed audience: not only for men but also for women and children. The base text used here is the one found in Jesus MS 20, housed at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, though the two other manuscript witnesses, Jesus MS 111 (Llyfr Coch Hergest) and NLW Llanstephan MS 2, are also discussed. This present edition includes a brief history of the transmission of the tales from their Eastern origins to the West: to France and then on to Wales. This is followed by an overview of the cultural and historical background of the period, placing the tales in context. The conclusion drawn is that, though Chwedleu Seith Doethon Rufein, the Welsh redaction of the Sept Sages Romae, is but one small part of the international corpus of this literary tradition, it is a highly individual and therefore invaluable member of the genre.
Two folios (foliated 124 and 127) that were originally part of Rawlinson B 512, where they were two of the leaves to have stood between what is now ff. 6 and 7. The fragments contain a part of the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick.
- s. xv/xvi
Oxford almanac for 1703, to which Edward Lhuyd has added an Irish grammar, a prosody in Irish and Latin and a few minor items, probably during his tour through Ireland.
- 1703
- Edward Lhuyd
Two leaves, now in Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1436, which formerly belonged to the Book of the White Earl (see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 610, ff. 59–72 + 123–146). It contains a part of the Dinnshenchas Érenn, covering ten places in Ireland.
- 1453 x 1454
A paper manuscript containing copies of 33 saints’ Lives from the Codex Insulensis. It was written in 1627 by John Goolde, guardian of the Franciscan friary in Cashel, whose exemplar is thought to have been Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson 505 (itself a copy from Rawl. 485). The copy was intended for John Colgan and his Franciscan associates.
- 1627
- John Goolde [friar and scribe]
A purely hypothetical ‘very ancient book in the British language’ (quendam Brittanici sermonis librum uetustissimum) containing a history of the deeds of the kings of Britain, from Brutus to Cadwalladr, which Geoffrey of Monmouth alleges to have rendered into Latin when writing his Historia regum Britanniae, a work known for its audacious originality. Geoffrey mentions it in the preface to this work, where he claims to have received the book from Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. Whatever his source material may have been, or Walter’s role in supplying it, the claim that so much of this was written in the vernacular and contained in a single volume (implicitly, to which few would have access) is commonly regarded as a spurious appeal to authority.
13th-century English manuscript containing Latin Lives of St Martin (by Sulpicius Severus), St Nicholas of Myra (by John the Deacon), St Edmund of Canterbury and St Margaret, De inventione sanctae Crucis, and Lives St Agatha, St Brendan (Navigatio) and St Brigit (by Lawrence of Durham).
- s. xiii2
