Ystorya de Carolo Magno
The catalogue entry for this text has not been published as yet. Until then, a selection of data is made available below.
Medieval Welsh compilation of texts about Charlemagne and his reign, based on the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle and three Old French texts. The Welsh texts based on the Old French texts, a version of the Chanson Roland, the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne and Otinel, are known separately as Cân Rolant, Pererindod Siarlymaen and Rhamant Otfel.
Manuscript witnesses
Sources
Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.
Regarding the genesis of the work and its purpose and methods, it is worth quoting the preface from G. Hartwell Jones (G. H. J.) in full:
“The publication of the translation from the middle of the eighth chapter of Purdan Padric onwards, for which alone I am responsible, has been delayed owing to the serious difficulties encountered in its execution.
The text being in many places incomplete or inaccurate, especially in the earlier part, it was found necessary to collate Canon Willams' transcript with the manuscripts, which I was enabled to do hurriedly by the courtesy of W. R. M. Wynne, Esq., of Peniarth, or with other versions at tlie Bodleian and elsewhere, some of which I saw after the sheets had been printed off. By consulting the originals, from which these were translated in the first instauce, most of them in Latin, I have succeeded in conjecturing the first readings or tracing the growth of the mischief. These documents, written in various languages, I have discovered in English libraries or abroad, while engaged in other kinds of research. Still, many passages remain doubtful. Pages 453-6 inclusive, which were left unfinished by the late Canon Williams, have been collated with and corrected against the original MSS. by Mr. Egerton Phillimore.
A few notes have been added, but they deal with a few points only, since I have in my work chiefly followed Canon Williams in consulting rather the interests of the general reader than those versed in Old-Welsh, who will easily see why I have adopted a particular version, or how I have supplied lacunae.
The short accounts that precede them, indicating sources of information simply, with no pretence to being bibliographics, may prove useful to anyone who cares to investigate the history and variation of the tracts or legends.
It remains for me to thank Canon Silvan Evans, Egerton Phillimore, Esq., and Prof. Powel, in particular, for the assistance they have kindly rendered.
G. H. J.”
