Juvencus Manuscript

The Juvencus Manuscript (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 4.42) is one of the main surviving sources of Old Welsh. Unlike much Old Welsh, which is attested in manuscripts from later periods and in partially updated form, the Welsh material in the Juvencus Manuscript was written in the Old Welsh period itself; the manuscript provides the first attestation of many Welsh words.

Around the second half of the ninth century, someone copied two Old Welsh poems into the margins: a nine-stanza englyn poem on the wonder's of God's creation (generally known as the 'Juvencus nine'), and, on folios 25-26, a three-stanza poem which seems to represent a warrior lamenting his misfortunes (known as the 'Juvencus three'). These are the earliest surviving englynion. The parts of the manuscript containing the 'Juvencus three' were cut out of the manuscript and stolen in the early eighteenth century by the antiquary Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709), but were found after his death and returned to the manuscript.

The manuscript was originally produced somewhere in Wales as a text of the Latin poem Evangeliorum Libri by Juvencus. This text was produced by more than ten different scribes, working around 900. One had the Old Irish name Nuadu. Another included his name as a cryptogram in Greek letters: the Welsh name Cemelliauc (modern Welsh Cyfeilliog), who could have been the same person as the Bishop Cameleac whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes as being captured by Vikings in the see in Ergyng in 914. To this text the scribes added a large body of glosses in Latin and Old Welsh, along with a few in Old Irish, showing that the manuscript was produced in a milieu influenced by both Welsh and Irish scholarship.

As edited and translated by Jenny Rowland, the text reads:

niguorcosam nemheunaur henoid
mitelu nit gurmaur
mi am [franc] dam ancalaur

nicanamniguardam nicuasam henoid
cet iben med nouel
mi amfranc dam anpatel

namercit mi nep leguenid henoid
is discirr micoueidid
dou nam riceus unguetid

I will not speak ?...... tonight.
My warband is not overly big --
I and my freedman around our cauldron.

I will not laugh, I will not speak tonight,
although we drank matured mead,
I and my freedman around our bowl.

Let no one ask for merriment from me tonight --
my company is lowly.
Two lords may converse -- one speaks.

...
Wikipedia