of glazing or coating of any description, but having under the outer rims those peculiar ornamental marks, or notched lines, common to most if not all British urns. The urn of Bronwen, the daughter of Llyr (or Lear as he is Anglicised by Shakspeare) bears this mark, and it was handed to the British Museum by the late Dr. Owen Pughe, with a brief account of its discovery upon the banks of the Alaw, a river in Anglesey; which fact is recorded in the ancient tales of the Mabinogi. Bronwen was married to an Irish Prince, to whom Anglesey was ceded in right of this alliance; but he deserted her, and she is said to have died of a broken heart!

There are, perhaps, some worthy and learned members of our Association who consider Llyr and others of the kingly line of Welsh or Celtic rulers as mere myths. In this opinion I differ, else we must set aside most of our written, as well as traditional history; and this idea, if generally entertained, would open the door to such cavillings that there is no knowing where the disputes would terminate.

A curious fact has turned up by what I have just mentioned, which proves beyond a doubt that Llyr, or Lear, was no myth; we always thought that he had only three daughters, Gonerill, Rhegan, and Cordelia; but here is a fourth in Bronwen, whose history is recorded, and existence proved. We learn also that Llyr married his daughter Rhegan to Rhon wen, Duke of Cornwall, and her residence, faint traces of which yet remain, I have discovered in Bódregan, a name that had been wrongly interpreted, and twisted by Borlase and others into Bodruidion, which has no meaning, for Druidion was never used as a word in Celtic, Derwyddon being the plural of Derwydd-a Druid.

Connected with Celtic urn burial there is one thing that has puzzled me, and given rise to the supposition, from inference, that inhabitants of diminutive stature existed among the Celtic tribes at a prehistoric period. In some of the low barrows on the Downs of Wiltshire and elsewhere, rarely, very diminutive urns are found, and the bronze weapons and stone celts which often

accompany them are invariably of the same description, quite unfit to have been used as weapons by an ordinary sized adult; two of such urns I once saw in the possession of a carpenter then living at the intersection of two

Under Part of Urn found near Llandyssilio, Pembrokeshire.

mountain roads in Pembrokeshire, not far from Pant y Caws, i. e. the hollow of the causeway; this man found these little urns, and a small sword or dagger of mixed metal, in a low carnedd or stone heap among the furze, at a place upon the borders of Llandyssilio parish, called

Meinau'r Gwyr, where there stood formerly a circle of stones, and he was so determined in holding possession of these, to him valueless articles, that he refused all overtures for their purchase, nor would he permit me to make drawings of them. Some years then elapsed, and upon my next visit into that quarter I found one of the urns and the dagger were in the possession of the late Rev. E. Harris, of Bryndyssil, who had purchased them of the carpenter's widow. I then made drawings of the urn and dagger; but the second urn had been lost or destroyed, which I very much regretted, it being a representation of a miniature Stonehenge, and the only one of the kind that I ever heard of in Wales. In the Heytesbury Museum I recollect seeing one something similar, but rather larger. I have given a rough sketch from my memory of nearly its form and size, as also of

Urn found near Llandyssilio, Pembrokeshire.

the remaining urn. This little urn is of a very elegant shape, and curiously ornamented with lozenge-shaped apertures encircling the centre, and admitting light to the interior; this seems also unique in construction. These little urns were formed with great regularity, apparently in a lathe, and were well baked, but not glazed,-an addition that does not appear to have been known to the Britons and early Celts. Might not the pigmy race I have alluded to have been the origin of the old Welsh tales about the Tylwyth teg?

ARCH. CAMB., THIRD SERIES, VOL. VI.

JOHN FENTON.

F

THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF WALES.

THE following paper, by one of our members, is reprinted from the Archeologia, by permission of the Society of Antiquaries, with considerable additions by the author:-

The historical drama of a country is imperfect and hardly intelligible unless it represent the scenes on which, and the political conditions under which, its action takes place. Its narrative should be accompanied by a contemporary view of the political geography,—of the territorial limits and divisions of the country, so far as they affect or are affected by the course of political events. That part of our national history which concerns Wales in its relation to England especially requires such illustration.

The political geography of Wales belongs and is confined to the period of its separate political existence; which terminated, not, as is often assumed, with the union of the country to the English Crown, but with its subsequent union to the English Realm. The former union, however, marks an important era in that separate existence. By the latter Wales became politically merged in the united Realm of England and Wales. The name of the greater country alone has been and is frequently used, not only in popular but in official language, to denote the whole, and the Legislature has declared that in statutes it shall be so understood: 1 yet the name of the lesser survives-a legitimate consequence of, and a perpetual testimony to, distinction of race and language, and an honourable record of independence preserved long after the AngloSaxon states had been merged in the kingdom of England.

A relic of the separate political existence of Wales long survived in the separate judicature which was retained throughout the greater part of it.

Thus the subject divides itself into three periods; the first, during which Wales was gradually overspread by the rule of the English Kings and of their Barons, the second, when, the English conquest being complete, a part of the country stood united in possession to the Crown, while the remainder still merely owned feudal subjection thereto,-the third, when union and feudal subjection to the English Crown had been merged in an union to the English Realm, but a separate Welch judicature still remained; the first period being closed by the Statutes of Rhyddlan 12 Ed. I.,-the second by the Act 27 Hen. VIII. c. 26,-the third by the Act 11 Geo. IV. and 1 W. IV. c. 70.

The political boundary of Wales originally coincided with its physical or geological boundary as laid down by modern science,—namely, the line of the rivers Severn and Dee. But this was soon over-stepped by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, who gradually forced the Welch further to the westward, and established a new boundary, at first indeterminate, but at length defined by Offa's Dyke. The frontier territory traversed by the Dyke was then and long after known as the Marches of Mercia (or England) and Wales.

The precise relation of the Dyke to the Marches, and the peculiar political and legal character of the latter, are derivable from the nature of the AngloSaxon Mark, or March; which is thus described by the most accurate authority on the subject:

"The word Mark as applied to territory has a twofold meaning; it is, properly speaking, employed to denote, not only the whole district occupied by one small community, but more especially those forests and wastes by which the arable is enclosed, and which separate the possessions of one tribe from

120 Geo. II. c. 42, s. 3.

those of another. The Mark or boundary pasture land, and the cultivated space which it surrounds, and which is portioned out to the several members of the community, are inseparable; however different the nature of the property which can be had in them, they are in fact one whole; taken together they make up the whole territorial possession of the original cognatio, or tribe. The ploughed lands and meadows are guarded by the Mark.

"The most general characteristic of the Mark in its restricted and proper sense is, that it should not be distributed in arable, but remain in heath, forest, fen, and pasture. In it the Markmen had commonable rights; but there could be no private estate. Even if under peculiar circumstances any Markman obtained a right to essart or clear a portion of the forest, the portion so subjected to the immediate law of property ceased to be Mark."2

"It is certain that some solemn religious ceremonies at first accompanied and consecrated the limitation of the Mark. What these may have consisted in among the heathen Anglo-Saxons we cannot now discover; but, however its limit was originally drawn or driven, it was, as its name denotes, distinguished by marks or signs.'

"No matter how small or how large the community, it may be only a village, even a single household, or a whole state, it will still have a Mark, a space or boundary by which its own rights of jurisdiction are limited, and the encroachments of others kept off. The more extensive the community which is interested in the Mark, the more solemn and sacred the formalities by which it is consecrated and defended. Nor is the general rule abrogated by changes in the original compass of the communities; as smaller districts coalesce and become, as it were, compressed into one body, the smaller and original Marks may become obliterated and converted merely into commons, but the public Mark will have been increased upon the new and extended frontier. Villages may cease to be separated, but the larger divisions which have grown up by their union will still have a boundary of their own; these again may be lost in the extending circuit of Wessex or of Mercia, till a yet greater obliteration of the Marks having been produced through increasing population, internal conquest, or the ravages of foreign invaders, the great kingdom of England at length arises, having wood and desolate moorland and mountain as its Mark against Scots, Cumbrians, and Britons, and the eternal sea itself as a bulwark against Frankish and Frisian pirates."

From this view of the Mark may be derived a clear distinction between Mark and limit, as describing the territories of this island in early AngloSaxon times; both express the idea of boundary, but the former is boundary land, the latter a boundary line. The common boundary of adjoining communities, fully understood, is the common limit of their adjoining Marks.

The limits of the Marks of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms towards each other were doubtless early ascertained with sufficient accuracy, and recognised in their mutual public transactions. The kingdom of Mercia, emphatically the Mark country, chiefly formed out of the original Mark against the Britons, and always, and at length exclusively, bordering upon them, falls under peculiar considerations. Down to the reign of Offa its western limit seems to have been left undefined, and in fact was perpetually advancing as the Britons receded; while, on the other hand, the Britons were ever withdrawing their settlements to some distance within their line of defence, leaving the intervening space as a protection against their encroaching enemies. And thus the Mark of Mercia toward the Britons ever adjoined a district corresponding in its main features, namely, the Mark of the Britons toward Mercia.

2 Kemble's Saxons in England, i.
p. 42.

3 Ib. p. 52.

4 Ib. p. 44.