Edition and translation of this important genre of Old Welsh poetry. The 'Stanzas of the Graves' or 'Graves of the Warriors of the Island of Britain', attributed to the legendary poet Taliesin, describe ancient heroes' burial places. Like the 'Triads of the Island of Britain', they are an indispensable key to the narrative literature of medieval Wales. The heroes come from the whole of Britain, including Mercia and present-day Scotland, as well as many from Wales and a few from Ireland. Many characters known from the Mabinogion appear, often with additional information, as do some from romance and early Welsh saga, such as Arthur, Bedwyr, Gawain, Owain son of Urien, Merlin, and Vortigern. The seventh-century grave of Penda of Mercia, beneath the river Winwæd in Yorkshire, is the latest grave to be included. The poems testify to the interest aroused by megaliths, tumuli, and other apparently man-made monuments, some of which can be identified with known prehistoric remains. This volume offers a full edition and translation of the poems, mapped with reference to all the manuscripts, starting with the Black Book of Carmarthen, the oldest extant book of Welsh poetry. There is also a detailed commentary on their linguistic, literary, historical, and archaeological aspects.

In the Middle Ages Ireland's extensive and now famous literature was unknown outside the Gaelic-speaking world of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man - with Wales an important exception. Irish emigrants had settled in Wales from the fifth century onwards, Irish scholars worked in Wales in the ninth century, and throughout the Middle Ages there were ecclesiastical, mercantile, and military contacts across the Irish Sea. From this standpoint, it is not surprising that the names of Irish heroes such as Cu Roi, Cu Chulainn, Finn, and Deirdre became known to Welsh poets, and that Irish narratives influenced the authors of the Welsh Mabinogion. Yet the Welsh and Irish languages were not mutually comprehensible, the degree to which the two countries still shared a common Celtic inheritance is contested, and Latin provided a convenient lingua franca. Could some of the similarities between the Irish and Welsh literatures be due to independent influences or even to coincidence? Patrick Sims-Williams provides a new approach to these controversial questions, situating them in the context of the rest of medieval literature and international folklore. The result is the first comprehensive estimation of the extent to which Irish literature influenced medieval Welsh literature. This book will be of interest not only to medievalists but to all those concerned with the problem of how to recognize and evaluate literary influence.

Revisionist approach to the question of the authenticity - or not - of the documents in the Book of Llandaf. Awarded the Francis Jones Prize in Welsh History 2019 by Jesus College Oxford The early-twelfth-century Book of Llandaf is rightly notorious for its bogus documents - but it also provides valuable information on the earlymedieval history of south-east Wales and the adjacent parts of England. This study focuses on its 159 charters, which purport to date from the fifth century to the eleventh, arguing that most of them are genuine seventh-century and later documents that were adapted and "improved" to impress Rome and Canterbury in the context of Bishop Urban of Llandaf's struggles in 1119-34 against the bishops of St Davids and Hereford and the "invasion" of monks from English houses such as Gloucester and Tewkesbury. After assembling other evidence for the existence of pre-twelfth-century Welsh charters, the author defends the authenticity of most of the Llandaf charters' witness lists, elucidatestheir chronology, and analyses the processes of manipulation and expansion that led to the extant Book of Llandaf. This leads him to reassess the extent to which historians can exploit the rehabilitated charters as an indicator of social and economic change between the seventh and eleventh centuries and as a source for the secular and ecclesiastical history of south-east Wales and western England. PATRICK SIMS-WILLIAMS is a Fellow of the British Academy; he was formerly Reader in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge and Professor of Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University.

Even the Venerable Bede knew little about the two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms described in this book. In the sixth and seventh centuries the pagan peoples of the Hwicce and Magonsaetan occupied the frontier from Stratford-upon-Avon as far as the Welsh kingdoms west of Offa's Dyke. They retained their own kings, aristocracy and independent monasteries into the eighth century. Using archaeological, place-name and historical sources, Dr Sims-Williams describes the early conversion to Christianity of these people, the origins of the dioceses of Worcester and Hereford, and the precocious growth of Anglo-Saxon monasticism. Drawing on many neglected documents he reveals a wide range of Continental, Irish and Anglo-Saxon influences on the church and shows that the monasteries were as varied in character as the Northumbrian foundations described by Bede.