Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography and Insular Script in the Jesus College 20 Genealogies

Abstract

This article investigates orthographical irregularities in the Jesus College 20 genealogies that can be argued to derive from misunderstandings of Old Welsh orthography and Insular script. The Jesus College 20 genealogies were copied into the surviving manuscript around 1400, but the text is a loose assemblage of genealogical tracts originally compiled between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. In some cases, Old Welsh versions of the same genealogical tracts also survive, which can indicate the nature of the Old Welsh spellings underlying the forms in Jesus College 20. Comparison of the spellings in the Jesus College 20 genealogies with their Old Welsh counterparts reveals that certain aspects of Old Welsh spelling were particularly vulnerable to misinterpretation by scribes of the Middle Welsh period: namely, spellings for voiceless fricatives, spellings for lenited consonants, and spellings for certain diphthongs. In addition, some misspellings in the Jesus College 20 genealogies can be best explained as misreadings of Insular script, the predominant type of script used in Wales before c. 1100. Overall, the range of orthographical and palaeographical misunderstandings visible in the transmission of the genealogical corpus between the Old Welsh and Middle Welsh periods forms an instructive parallel for considering the transmission of other types of vernacular texts.