Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/52

 xliv PEEFACE. tincloubted, though he has been confounded with Walter de Mapes, a very diflferent person, who Hved somewhat later. In the Welsh Archaeology there have been printed from Welsh MSS. two ver- sions of this history in Welsh, one containing the substance of Geoffrey's history, but leaving out a good deal of matter, and said to be taken from the " Red Book of Hergest ;" another, to which the title of " Brut G. Ap Arthur" has been given, and which exactly corresponds with the Latin version of Geoffrey of Monmouth. It has been supposed that the first is the Welsh book which Geoffrey obtained from Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, and that it is an older work which has been conjectured to have been composed by Tyssilio, who Hved some centuries earlier. An examination of the MSS. does not bear out this theory. The Welsh version of the " Brut" in the " Red Book of Hergest " is not the same as the text of the " Brut Tyssilio," printed in the Welsh Archae- ology, but is in point of fact almost the same as the " Brut G. Ap Arthur," and corresponds with the Latin version of Geoffrey. The Editor has found another copy of this version in a MS. of the commencement of the fourteenth century, in the HengTVTt collection, and a third in the same collec- tion, which varies slightly from it. These are obvi- ously Welsh versions of the Latin text of Geoffrey of Monmouth. There is, however, in the Cottonian Library (Cleopatra, B. v.) a Welsh version, which approaches more nearly to what is termed the " Brut " TyssUio." The whole of the MSS. agree in the