Cadelling ffraw and the Date of Marwnad Cynddylan

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.