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222 :Bonedd Gwynedd a genais,
 * Blodau’r sir heb ledryw Sais.—T.A., 14966/27 7.

‘I have sung the nobility of Gwynedd, flowers of the shire with no Saxon alloy.’

aeron ‘fruits’; gwartheg ‘cattle’; creifion ‘parings’; gwreichion ‘sparks’; names of certain vegetables: bresych ‘cabbages’, chw̯yn(n) ‘weeds’, brïallu. 25, H.M. ii 162 ‘primroses’; in Mn. W. ymysgaroedd ‘bowels’, but Ml. sg. ymysgar 214.

Adjectives used as nouns: (1) persons: fforddolion ‘wayfarers’, tlodion ‘paupers’; (2) qualities: prydferthion ‘beauties’, § 145 iii.

¶ For the pl. of compound nouns, see § 157 iii.

The gender of a noun denoting an animate object agrees in general with the sex of the object; thus the nouns gŵr ‘man, husband’, ceffyl ‘horse’, brawd ‘brother’, gwas ‘servant, youth’ are m., and gwraig ‘woman, wife’, caseg ‘mare’, chwaer ‘sister’, morwyn ‘maid’ are f.

i. When the same noun is used for both sexes it is generally, that is, it has its own gender whichever sex it denotes.

The following are mas. epicenes: plentyn ‘child’, baban ‘babe’, barcut ‘kite’, eryr ‘eagle’.

The following are fem. epicenes: cennad ‘messenger’, cath ‘cat’, colomen ‘dove’, brân ‘crow’, ysgyfarnog ‘hare’. Thus we say y gennad (not *y cennad) even when we mean a man.

Kymer y gennat honn, a dwc ef ẏ dy Ernallt 33 ‘Take this messenger and bring him to the house of Ernault’. See also 68, Ỻ.A. 111 and 2 Sam. xi 19–25.

These nouns do not change their gender by the addition of gwryw ‘male’ or benyw ‘female’, as old-fashioned grammarians taught. In