'Y marchog crwydrad',

An imperfect early seventeenth century manuscript containing one of the five known sixteenth or seventeenth century copies of the Welsh prose text entitled 'Y Marchog Crwydrad' or 'Treigl y Marchog Crwydrad', the other four being found in Llanstephan MS 178, NLW MS 15533B (previously Llanwrin MS 2), Cwrt Mawr MS 30 (fragment), and NLW MS 15541A (previously in Belmont Abbey, co. Hereford), all in the National Library of Wales. Apart from the exceptions noted in the foliation description the present text is in one hand which, it has been suggested, is the same hand as that of the unidentified scribe of the text to be found in NLW MS. 15533B. The present text is incomplete wanting the following - Section I, the whole of chapter 1, the beginning of chapter 2, the end of chapter 4, and the greater part of chapter 5, Section III, part of chapter 2, part of chapter 3, the end of chapter 7, the whole of chapter 8, the beginning of chapter 9, the greater part of chapter 10, and the whole of chapters 11 and 12, and, as already indicated under description of foliation above, in two instances lacunae in the text have been filled in a different hand. The version of the Welsh text which appears in NLW MS 15533B was published by D. Silvan Evans in Y Brython, cyf. V, 1862-3, tt. 1- 17, 138-53, 257-67, 361-74, and subsequently republished as a separate pamphlet or booklet with the title Y Marchog Crwydrad. Hen Ffuglith Gymreig in 1864.

Title based on contents.

Formerly known as Llanover E. 1.

Preferred citation: NLW MS 13163B.

The description is also available in the Handlist of Manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, Volume IV (Aberystwyth, 1971).

Text

The names Mansfield Bassett (23 recto), Morgan John ? Cooke (41 verso, 77 verso), ? Hopkins (49 recto), . . . Thomas (57 recto), and Jenkin (69 recto) appear as marginalia.

See also NLW Llanstephan MS 178, NLW MS 15533B (previously Llanwrin MS 2), NLW Cwrt Mawr MS 30 (fragment), and NLW MS 15541A. For a modern reprint of the first edition (1581) of William Goodyear's English translation from which the Welsh versions are believed to be derived, with a general introduction and notes, see Dorothy Atkinson Evans (ed.): The Wandering Knight. Reprinted . . ., Seattle, 1951.

For identification of the scribe, see E. D. Jones: 'Le Voyage du Chevalier Errant', The National Library of Wales Journal, vol. VIII, No. 4, pp. 369- 86). For the view that the first four of the above mentioned texts (that of the Belmont Abbey MS was not known at the time) represent variations of a translation made by a Glamorgan prose writer and translator in the 1580s from a published English version of this tale, viz. William Goodyear: The Voyage of the Wandering Knight . . ., London, 1581, which was itself in turn a translation from the French original of Jean de Cartigny (de Cartheny), Le Voyage du Chevalier Errant, first published in Antwerp in 1557, see TLLM, tt. 176-7. For a further opinion that the discovery of the Belmont manuscript does not invalidate this suggestion and that 'the five manuscripts derive ultimately from a single translation from English . . .' see E. D. Jones, op. cit.

Published