Bardic Freedom (was RE: Hail Poetry!

[Heather Rose Jones]

On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Mike Baker wrote:

<re: "The Veil of Isis ...">
> 
> Frankly, I cannot vouch completely for the accuracy of the work cited.  The 
> *passage* quoted was consistent with oral tradition as I understand it.  I 
> am not really satisfied with only being able to give the reprint pub. info. 
>  But, this was the source at hand when I reached that place in the paper. 
>  With your kind and indulgent assistance (the citation passed along 
> yesterday), this will be a passage revised prior to the next release of the 
> paper.
> 
> > Now, I could be completely wrong about the book in question.  But I don't
> > know of any extant sources of "ancient British laws" earlier than the
> > Hywel Dda tradition (unless "British" is being interpreted to include
> > Anglo-Saxon, for which there are earlier codes available).
> 
> Herein I will admit to ignorance of the underlying source while repeating a 
> lament: will we ever know just how much of the seminal material has been 
> lost forever by the passing years and intolerant ancestors of our own age? 

Well, that's another subject entirely, but in this case the author of the 
modern book must have had some particular, extant source in mind when 
s/he wrote the statment. Interestingly, in many cases, we _do_ know about 
lost manuscript materials that modern scholars would give their eye-teeth 
for. We have medieval library catalogs, we have medieval scholars 
writings citations of now-unknown writings, we have mentions of specific 
disasters that claimed specific books.  In general, the "passing years" 
have been far unkinder to written materials than "intolerant ancestors" 
-- although I will make certain exception for the vast treasures of 
Britain lost during the dissolution of the monasteries.

On the subject of knowing what sources and writings still _are_ available 
for a particular area, you might be interested in Cornell University's 
"Sources of History" series. The volume on Medieval Wales has been 
invaluable to me in discovering sources that might be useful (to say 
nothing of contributing to my shopping lists!).

Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn