Disputatio:Annales Cambriae B

John Wms. ab Ithel's MS

John Williams ab Ithel's MS — both the original and the copy hosted at K. Fitzpatrick-Matthews — disagrees with this version in numerous places [at least up to Hastings]:

• The entries of the first section are divided differently.
• Spelling varies
• There are numerous differences in the number of years between entries
• Entry 900 is inverted
• Entries 971 and 972 are combined into a single year
• Entries 572, 709, 849, 897, 916 are omitted

I assume he wasn't working from a separate MS and all of these differences relate to his poor editing and not this version's? LlywelynII (disputatio) 22:19, 28 Ianuarii 2013 (UTC)

Hello LlywelynII. To understand the shortcomings of Williams ab Ithel's edition, please read Phillimore, Egerton (ed.), 1890/1 'The publication of the Welsh historical records' (link on main Annales Cambriae page). The Vicifons edition is a completely 'from scratch' reading of the chronicle as it stands in PRO MS 164/1. The number of annals between entries has been carefully collated with the MS. By 'entries' do you mean b900, b971 etc etc? These are separate annals in the MS (it's hopeless refering to AD years - i.e 'sub anno' - before the MS itself starts using them in 1089, hence the need for numerical tags, b1, b2 etc). 'Omitted entries' - nothing has been omitted that is in the MS; Williams ab Ithel (or rather someone else's transcription that he used for his edition apparently missed several items, including one whole annal).Henrywgc (disputatio) 20:53, 30 Ianuarii 2013 (UTC)

Dating

Even given those errors, the [presumably] correct dates noted on KFM's site are useful.

Wms. ab Ithel's edits made the entries line up generally 30 years before their actual occurance [Hastings occurs 1035 annuses after AD 1]. Our (presumably more faithful) version doesn't line up nearly so well (it bounces around more & Hastings ends up in AD 1029). I think that's probably on the scribe and Ithel's lines up better because of the differences (mistakes?) from the text.

But what did happen to those missing 30 years? Did the scribe really believe that Hastings had taken place in 1029? Weren't there other sources for how to compute the Dionysian era that would've given him the correct date for more recent events?

Or is there some notation somewhere where 30 years are placed as a single entry? LlywelynII (disputatio) 22:28, 28 Ianuarii 2013 (UTC)

Dates are useful but should really be given as footnotes, so that it doesn't give the impression that these were the years the scribe had in mind. Ideally, only dates confirmed by reliable external sources should be given (e.g. dates of early Anglo-Saxon kings from 'A Handbook of British Chronology' or similar). Dates should not be guessed for items that have no other source. It should be noted that even after B begins to supply AD dates, they don't always agree well with external dating. In particular, the chronicle's account of the twelfth century is in places quite chronologically erratic. But this is a very complex matter.

To understand the chronological disruption caused by the anachronistic fusion of the world chronicle with the annals, see Hughes (1974) and Dumville 1977/8, and for a thorough discussion Brett, Caroline, 1988 'The Prefaces of Two Late Thirteenth-century Welsh Latin Chronicles'. There are no missing pages. Henrywgc (disputatio) 21:06, 30 Ianuarii 2013 (UTC)