Abstract

Anachronistic rhymes can indicate that lines of Welsh poetry cannot go back to an early date. This note considers the elegy on the seventh-century Cynddylan. This has been held to be non-contemporary because the word braw 'terror', which never had a final fricative, rhymes with words that originally did have one. It is pointed out that the manuscript reading, ffraw, need not be connected with braw ; instead, it may be the adjective ffraw 'brisk, fervent, mighty', which originally had a nasal fricative (cf. the river name Ffraw, English Frome), or a cognate of Old Irish sráb 'torrent', or a form of Welsh ffrawdd 'passion, violence, annoyance'. A suggested emendation to ffaw 'fame, famous' < Latin fāma is also discussed. All these would have had final fricatives and would have rhymed acceptably.

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