Old Welsh ( cy, Hen Gymraeg) is the stage of the

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic language family, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut P ...

from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into

Middle Welsh Middle Welsh ( cy, Cymraeg Canol, wlm, Kymraec) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh ( cy, Hen G ...

.Koch, p. 1757. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from

Common Brittonic Common Brittonic ( cy, Brythoneg; kw, Brythonek; br, Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany. It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a ...

around 550, has been called "Primitive"Koch, p. 1757. or "Archaic Welsh".

Texts

The oldest surviving text entirely in Old Welsh is understood to be that on a gravestone now in

Tywyn Tywyn (Welsh: ; in English often ), formerly spelled Towyn, is a town, community, and seaside resort on the Cardigan Bay coast of southern Gwynedd, Wales. It was previously in the historic county of Merionethshire. It is famous as the loc ...

– the

Cadfan Stone Inside St Cadfan's Church, Tywyn, Gwynedd is an inscribed stone cross called the Cadfan Stone (or the ''Tywyn Stone''). On it are the earliest known inscriptions in the Welsh language, specifically in Old Welsh. Recent scholarship dates the ins ...

– thought to date from the 7th century, although more recent scholarship dates it in the 9th century. A key body of Old Welsh text also survives in glosses and marginalia from around 900 in the

Juvencus Manuscript The Juvencus Manuscript (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 4.42; cy, Llawysgrif Juvencus) is one of the main surviving sources of Old Welsh. Unlike much Old Welsh, which is attested in manuscripts from later periods and in partially ...

and in . Some examples of medieval Welsh poems and prose additionally originate from this period, but are found in later manuscripts; ''

Y Gododdin ''Y Gododdin'' () is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a p ...

,'' for example, is preserved in

. A text in Latin and Old Welsh in the ''

Lichfield Gospels The Lichfield Gospels (recently more often referred to as the St Chad Gospels, but also known as the Book of Chad, the Gospels of St Chad, the St Teilo Gospels, the Llandeilo Gospels, and variations on these) is an 8th-century Insular Gospel ...

'' called the "Surrexit Memorandum" is thought to have been written in the early 8th century but may be a copy of a text from the 6th or 7th centuries.Medieval Vision: The Visual Culture of Wales. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2003, pg. 25.

Surrexit Memorandum

Text

Words in bold are

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, not Old Welsh.

Translation

Tudfwlch son of Llywyd and son-in-law of Tudri arose to claim the land of Telych, which was in the hand of Elgu son of Gelli and the tribe of Idwared. They disputed long about it; in the end they disjudge Tudri's son-in-law by law. The goodmen said to each other 'Let us make peace'. Elgu gave afterwards a horse, three cows, three cows newly calved, in order that there might not be hatred between them from the ruling afterwards till the Day of Judgement. Tudfwlch and his kin will not want it for ever and ever.

Features

*The text shows many of the early spelling conventions of Welsh, when the basic Latin alphabet was used to represent the phonology of Old Welsh. At this stage, the use of to represent the lateral fricative ( > ) and to represent ( > ) had not been developed. The Latin letter was used to represent the diverse sounds and , which became and respectively, by the medieval period. * Initial mutations, a major feature of all

Insular Celtic languages Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, ...

, as well as internal consonant changes, do not appear to have been represented orthographically at this point. *In some cases, the language used in the ''Memorandum'' has become obsolete, but other words are relatively unchanged in modern Welsh: Page 141 (on which the text is written) also appears to hold more text written in Old Welsh below Latin, and a mysterious section where text appears to have been erased. No translations or transcripts have yet been offered for the text. It is also unknown why the particular page was used for the glosses, as little or no text appears to have been added to any other of the

. It is possible that the page was chosen to conceal the later added information.

References

* *

External links

Old and Middle Welsh
by David Willis, University of Cambridge {{Authority control Languages attested from the 7th century Welsh, 1 History of the Welsh language Welsh language Extinct languages of Europe