Page:Morris-Jones Welsh Grammar 0009.png

 ORTHOGRAPHY AND PRONUNCIATION

i. Welsh, in all its periods, has been written in the Latin alphabet.

The ogam inscriptions are Irish. The letters of the ogam alphabet consist of scores and notches on the edge of the stone; one to five scores, cut at right angles to the edge on either side, or obliquely across it, form 15 consonants; one to five notches on the edge form 5 vowels.

The "alphabet of Nemnivus", contained in, dated 812, and reproduced by Ab Ithel in Dosp. Ed. 10, 11, is stated in the to have been formed by Nemnivus "ex machinatione mentis suae" in answer to a Saxon's taunt that the Britons had no letters. Most of the signs are forms of Latin characters made to imitate runes; two (ᚾ n and ᚢ u) are runes, while others seem to be arbitrary inventions. There is no evidence of the use of this alphabet. The "winged alphabet" given by Ab Ithel ibid. 12 consists of two classifications of Scandinavian tree-runes, the top line representing the two schemes of classification. The reason given for supposing the scribe to be a Welshman is too ridiculous to need refutation.

Among the "traditions" invented by the Glamorgan bards in support of their claim to be the successors of the druids was the "wooden book"; though all the accounts of it are in Iolo Morgannwg's handwriting, contemporary evidence of its existence in the early 17th cent. is afforded by Rhys Cain's satirical englyn (Ab Iolo, Coel. y B. 50); but it cannot be traced further back. The 'bardic alphabet' called coelbren y beirdd was a conventional simplification of ordinary characters adapted for cutting on wood; its letters are derived from the handwriting of the period, as b,  ∂,  (= e),  h,  n,  r, except where it was easier to adapt the Latin capitals, as  A,  G. With one or two exceptions, such as Ỻ, the "derived characters" denoting consonant mutations, so far from proving the coelbren's antiquity, are its very latest development, Pughe acknowledging himself to be the author of five of them ( 260 footnote). Iolo's memoranda (Coel. y B. 27) refer to an old form given by Gwilym Tew in his grammar; but this work is preserved in G.T.'s own hand in 51, which does not mention the coelbren. The famous transcriber of John Jones