Annkersary Address. 171 



and see whether he will speak for himself in any intelligible 

 way, if we question him in the best Cambro-British we can 

 muster. Let us take as our guide, Owen Pugh, the learned 

 author of a very copious Welsh lexicon and thesaurus ; con- 

 sulting also Zeuge, the eminent German elucidator of the 

 Celtic tongues, in his great work the " Grammatica Celtica." 

 Yet before any one can make use of even the best philological 

 works for a purpose of this kind, his ear must have seme 

 familiarity with the language, and he should have some prac: 

 tical notion of its character drawn from his own experience. 

 All I can say is that, having at an early period of life taken 

 . considerable pains to understand the principles of the Welsh 

 language, and to be able to pronounce it with tolerable accu- 

 racy, I was in a short time so much captivated by the won- 

 derful beauty of its structure and the inherent poetry of its 

 composite expression descriptive of natural objects, that during 

 a tour in North Wales, the nomenclature of the natural fea- 

 tures of the country gave me, if possible, more delight than 

 its charming mountain scenery. 



With these moderate means of forming a correct judgement, 

 let me come to close quarters with Cheviot. 



In the first place, then, is there any element in Cambrian 

 nomenclature which can throw light upon the name ? For it 

 was undoubtedly imposed upon our border mountain by a 

 Cymro-British race of men, speaking a language not essen- 

 tially differing from that now heard in the principality, as 

 exhibited in its older written forms. 



Even as we enter within that most interesting territory by 

 way of the vale of LangoUen, there rises before us a grand 

 mountain range called Chefn Uchaf. Now Chefn signifies 

 a ridge, and Uchaf lofty. If we turn to Owen Pugh in his 

 admirable thesaurus of the language, we find " Chefn, subst. 

 masc, plural Chefnau ; the back, the upper side, a ridge : 

 as Cefn a dir, a ridge of land ; a long extended mountain." 



In South Wales again, with a slight dialectic difference of 

 spelling, we find that the remains of Llewellyn lie in the 

 earth at Cefn y hedd, the " ridge of the grave ;" his body 

 having been carried to higher ground from Cuum Llewellyn, 



