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“ book”, as V. Henry says of his Breton Lexique, “has the mis&shy;fortune to have a history.” It would be tedious, even if it were possible, to relate it in detail; but the long delay in the appear&shy;ance of the work calls for a brief account of the facts by way of expla&shy;nation and apology.

In the early nineties I contributed to the new edition of the Welsh encyclo&shy;paedia Y Gwyddo&shy;niadur an article on the Welsh language, which contained a sketch of Welsh grammar. This sketch was expanded in a course of lectures delivered to the Junior and Inter&shy;mediate classes at Bangor after the founda&shy;tion of the Univer&shy;sity of Wales. The idea occurred to me of preparing the substance of the lectures for publi&shy;cation as a textbook of Welsh grammar; but I was unable at the time to carry out the investi&shy;gation which seemed to me necessary before such a book could be properly written.

The work was intended to be a descriptive grammar of Modern Welsh with special reference to the earlier period. Late Modern Welsh is more arti&shy;ficial, and in some respects further removed from the spoken language, than Early Modern Welsh, owing largely to the influence of false etymo&shy;logical theories; and the object which I had in view was the practical one of determin&shy;ing the tradi&shy;tional forms of the literary language. Even scholars have been deceived by the ficti&shy;tious forms found in diction&shy;aries; thus “dagr” given by Silvan Evans, after Pughe, as the sg. of dagrau, is quoted as a genuine form even by Strachan, Intr. 33; see below p. 212 Note. I had however chiefly in mind the ordinary writer of the language, to whom a clear idea of the literary tradition is at least equally important. The first draft of the