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30 printed books containing not only dialectal forms inconsistent with the forms implied by the rhymes of the bards, but also late inventions, such as ei, eich, etc. In these cases the spelling has been standardized in the quotations in this work. The spelling of the is here of no importance, as the cynghanedd, rhyme or metre is in every case relied on as showing the exact form used by the author.

All quotations are given with modern punctuation, including the insertion of the apostrophe, and the use of capital letters.

Syllabic Division.

In Welsh a single consonant between two vowels belongs normally to the second syllable; thus ca|nu ‘to sing’, gw̯e|le|dig ‘visible’; when there are two or more consonants the first belongs to the first syllable, as can|tor ‘singer’, can|i̯ad ‘song’, tan|w̯ɥdd ‘fire-wood’, can|tref ‘hundred (district)’. A double consonant belongs to both; thus in can|nu ‘to whiten’, the first syllable ends after the stoppage of the mouth-passage for the formation of the n, and the second begins before the opening of the passage which completes the formation of the consonant. Thus a double consonant implies not two independent consonants, but a consonant in which the closing of the passage takes place in one syllable and the opening in the next, and both count. This is seen most clearly in a word like drỿcin ‘storm’, where the c closes as a velar q and opens as a palatal k̑ (drỿ́q|k̑in), and yet is not two complete consonants. The consonants p, t, c, m, s, ng, ll, are double after accented vowels, though written single; thus ateb, canasant ≡ at|teb, ca|nas|sant. See § 54.

A consonant which is etymologically double is simplified after an unaccented syllable; as cy|né|fin 183 ‘familiar’ (cyn-nef-in < *kon-dom-īno‑: Lat. domus); whe|ný|chu  89 (from chwant) ‘to desire’; ym|gy|núll|aw, do. 49 (from cynnull) ‘to gather together’. But this phonetic rule is not regularly observed in writing, except in the final unaccented syllable, cắlonn ‘heart’ (pl. calónnau), Cálann (from vulg. Lat. Kaland‑) etc., being generally written calon, Calan, etc.

iii. In modern writing the division of syllables where required, as at the end of a line, is made to follow the etymology rather than the