280 WILD FLOWERS. 



This rare manuscript, copies of which are to be 

 found in the library of the Welsh school in Gray's- 

 Inn-Lane, in the Llyfyr cock o Hengest, and, I 

 believe, in one or two other collections, and to which 

 is attributed, from the style of its orthography, a 

 date of about the commencement of the fourteenth 

 century was as we are informed by its compilers 

 written to set forth the best and the principal things 

 in the art of healing with respect to the human body 

 [y dangoset y medeginaethau gorau ae yn benaf or 

 yssyd wrth gorf dyn], and of it, moreover, we are 

 told, that those things were commanded to be writ- 

 ten, lest there should be none possessed of so much 

 knowledge as they* were found to have [Sef achafs 

 y peris ef eu hys-criuenu rac na bei afypei gystcil 

 ac a fydgn ivy.] In common with many of the 

 earlier medical treatises this manuscript, or rather 

 the prototype on which it must evidently have been 

 founded, -f- has a fabulous origin attached to it, the 

 legend of which runs thus : 



" Once upon a time there lived a farmer in a 

 house called Esgair Llaethdy (which was situated 

 in the parish of Myddvai, in the Black Mountains 

 of Caermarthenshire), who went one day to feed .his 

 lambs near the margin of the dark Llyn Fan Facti. 

 Presently he was surprised to see three beautiful 

 females issue from the depths of the lake, and dis- 



rendered by Mr. Lewis Morris, in the " Cambrian Eegister " 

 for 1796, but I question whether it may not rather be referred 

 to a pound weight of silver. 



* The surgeons of Myddvai. 



t The original is stated to have been written A.D. 1230. 



