plural termination) at Gwynfe in Carmarthenshire, and from it is derived a verb bangori.' Mr. Phillimore also states 'that there is no evidence known to us that Bangor was in genuine Welsh a generic term for a monastery of any sort. No use of the word in this sense can be found before the comparatively late class of documents of which so many are printed in the lolo MSS.' As a place-name Bangor ' occurs four times in Wales and sometimes, as on the Teifi and Rheidol, at places where no monasteries are known to have existed'.[1] The ecclesiastical signification attributed to the word is due in part to the two North Welsh Bangors (not to mention the Irish instance) being celebrated religious centres ; and also perhaps to the confusion of bangor with bangeibr (meaning primarily ' high rafters ' and so ' church'). The latter word appears in Peniarth MS. 28 in the following passage : ' Mabh eyllt maynorauc a vo bengebyr ar e tyr eiusdem precii est et mayr.' In Vespasian E XI the same passage reads ' Mabeilt mainorauc, id est, qui mainaur habuerit in qua eclesia sit, tantum est ejus galanas quantum prepositi.'[2]
Blegywryd, described in the present text as the most learned clerk in the convention at the White House on the Tav, who, with twelve laymen, was chosen to reform the laws of Cymru. It is a striking fact, however, that his name does not appear either in the North Welsh books or in the three early Latin texts published in the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, Vol. II. 749-907. Blegywryd is associated with that particular class of South Welsh law books written in Welsh, to which Aneurin Owen gave the name 'Dimetian Code' in order to distinguish them from that other class which he misnamed ' Gwentian Code '. These two classes would be more correctly distinguished by the names ' Book of Blegywryd ' and ' Book of Cyvnerth ' respectively. In the present text, however, which belongs to the latter class, and also in its fellow W, Blegywryd's name appears to have been substituted for that of Cyvnerth under the influence of the ' Book of Blegywryd ' more properly so called. We therefore appear to have no reference in extant MSS. either to Blegywryd or Cyvnerth before the last quarter of the thirteenth century. At first he is merely described as the most learned clerk who was called yr athro Vlegywryt, the master Blegywryd, chosen to act as a kind of secretary with the twelve most learned laymen ; and it is only in the two very late
