hood about the neck and shoulders, this effigy is evidently anterior to the reign of Richard II, and may fairly be ascribed to the reign of Edward III, or about the middle of the fourteenth century. As the church was then rebuilt, this appears to have been at the same time sculptured as commemorative of a prince supposed to be there buried, who it was believed flourished nine centuries before.

A rude woodcut of this effigy appears in Smith and Meyrick's Ancient Costume of the British Isles. A rude engraving of it is given in the second edition of Rowlands' Mona Antiqua, and if my memory fails not, a more correct delineation illustrates one of the volumes of the Journal of the Cambrian Archæological Association.1

This is not the only monumental effigy of a monarch executed centuries after his decease. The brass demieffigy of a king in Wimborne Minster commemorative of Ethelred, one of the Saxon kings, who died A.D. 871, is a work of the fifteenth century, the inscription, on a brass plate beneath, of the seventeenth century.

In Gloucester Cathedral is the commemorative effigy, on and under a canopied tomb, of Osric, King of Northumbria, who died A.D. 729, the details of whose dress evince it to have been executed in the reign of Henry VIII, or early in the sixteenth century.

The sculptor who designed and executed this monumental record at Llanbabo appears also to have sculptured that in Llaniestyn Church, near Beaumaris, commemorative of St. Iestyn, my notes on which I will forward for insertion.

Rugby.

MATTHEW HOLBECHE BLOXAM.

1 The engraving alluded to is reproduced to accompany this paper. -ED. Arch. Camb.

STUDIES IN CYMRIC PHILOLOGY.

BY PROFESSOR E. W. EVANS, M.A.,

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, NEW YORK.

NO. III.

IN preparing the series of philological notes of which this paper is a continuation, it is not my plan to arrange them methodically, or according to connection of subject, but rather to discuss each question as it occurs, or whenever sufficient data for its discussion have been found.

XXI. In the earliest examples of Welsh writing, there is a remarkable fluctuation, in many words, between o, e, and i. This I venture to explain by saying that in the early unsettled orthography, each of these letters, besides its usual sound as in Latin, was made to represent a sound for which the Latin alphabet had no distinctive character; I mean the neutral vowel either pure or in some of its modifications, in other words, something of the class known as obscure vowels. In support of this view I observe that from some time in the thirteenth century on we find y regularly replacing o, e, and i in these cases of fluctuation, and that it is in precisely these cases that y has its obscure sound in modern Welsh.

In the Oxford and Cambridge Glosses occurs most frequently in the places now occupied by the obscure y, though there are many examples of e and o. In the Luxemburg Glosses o is generally found in such places. In the Venedotian Laws e decidedly predominates. In the Black Book of Carmarthen i predominates in some pieces and y in others.

Examples: bodin in the glosses, bedin in the Laws (104), bitin in the Black Book (55), now byddin, army; do- and di- in the glosses, de-, rarely do-, in the Laws

4TH SER., VOL. V.

8

(2,124), di- and dy- in the Black Book (10), now dy, synonymous with Latin ad; con- and cen- in the glosses, ken in the Laws (36), cin- and cyn- in the Black Book (4), now cyn-, equivalent to Latin con; Ougen and Eugein in Chronicum Cambriae (x and 9), Owein in the Black Book (49), later Ywain, Owen; Broceniauc and Bricheniauc in Chron. Camb. (13, 16,), Brecheniauc in Annales Cambriae (32), now Brycheiniog, Brecknock; Cinan in Chron. Camb. (12), Kenan and Conanus in Ann. Camb. (12, 32), later Cynan, a personal name; Rodarcus in Vita Merlini, Retherc in the Laws (104,) Ryderch and Ritech (leg. Riterch) in the Black Book (19, 21), modern Rhydderch; etc. This fluctuation between o, e, and i (rarely a or u) can be illustrated at indefinite length, being in fact co-extensive with the prevalence of the obscure y in later orthography.

In modern Welsh y has two sounds. In final syllables, in most monosyllables, and in the dipthong wy, it has a slender sound like that of English i in him, not quite so slender as the Welsh i is sometimes heard. In other situations, with few exceptions, it has an obscure sound. This, as heard in most parts of Wales, is simply the neutral vowel; but in some districts it does not differ widely from the slender y, and yet may be said to approximate to the neutral vowel. Some have discarded the obscure sound of y, and held that it is of very recent origin; but this is an egregious error.

The distinguished Edward Lluyd carefully dotted the y in all those cases where it now has the obscure sound; and that it was the neutral vowel nearly two centuries ago appears from his statement that y when dotted was to be pronounced "as the English i in the words third, bird; o in honey, money; u in mud, must" (Arch. Brit. 2).

In middle Welsh y had two sounds as now. One was a slender sound, for as such it attenuated a preceding a; thus gelyn, enemy, from gal; gwledyd, i. e. gwledydd, countries, from gwlad; etc. The other was an obscure sound, which obtained even in final sylla