Brut y Brenhinedd

Brut y Brenhinedd "Chronicle of the Kings" is a collection of variant Middle Welsh versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Regum Britanniae. About 60 versions survive, with the earliest dating to the mid-13th century. Adaptations of Geoffrey's Historia were extremely popular throughout Western Europe during the Middle Ages, but the Brut proved especially influential in medieval Wales, where it was largely regarded as an accurate account of the early history of the Celtic Britons.

Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae (completed by c. 1139) purports to narrate the history of the Kings of Britain from its eponymous founder Brutus of Troy to Cadwaladr, the last in the line. Geoffrey professed to have based his history on "a certain very ancient book" written in britannicus sermo (the "British tongue", i.e. Common Brittonic, Welsh, Cornish or Breton) which he had received from Walter of Oxford. It became one of the most popular works in the medieval West, but its impact was particularly profound and enduring in Wales, where the Historia was accepted as a largely authentic and authoritative account. The influence is most clearly evidenced by the existence of several translations into Welsh from the 13th century onwards, usually known as Brut y Brenhinedd. The manuscript history of these texts is a rich and long one attesting to the production of several translations and new redactions, most of which were copied many times over.

The Welsh renderings are not straightforward translations in the modern sense, but by contemporary standards, they are generally close to their Latin source text, with only some commentary or additional material from bardic traditional lore (cyfarwydd) appended to the text. Importantly, several manuscripts include a version of the tale known as Lludd and Llefelys inserted in the segment about Lludd Llaw Eraint; the presence or absence of this tale has been used to classify the early versions of the Brut. One notable area in which Welsh translators have corrected or adapted Geoffrey based on native traditions is that of personal names and sobriquets. Geoffrey's "Hely", for instance, was substituted for Beli Mawr, an ancestor figure who also appears in Branwen ferch Llŷr and elsewhere in Middle Welsh literature.

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