Red Book of Hergest

The Red Book of Hergest (Welsh: "Llyfr Coch Hergest") is one of the most important medieval Welsh language manuscripts.

Written Around 1382 - 1410

It includes both prose and poetry and was written around 1382-1410. It is now kept at the Bodleian Library on behalf of Jesus College, Oxford (MS 111), a gift of the Rev. Thomas Wilkins in 1701.

Copyists

One of the several copyists responsible for the manuscript has been identified as Hywel Fychan fab Hywel Goch of Buellt. He is known to have worked for Hopcyn ap Tomas ab Einion (ca.1330 - after 1403) of Ynysforgan, Swansea, and it is possible that the manuscript was compiled for him.

Origin of the Name

The manuscript's name derives from the fact that it is bound in red leather and from its association with Hergest Court (Plas Hergest), sited below high Hergest Ridge near Kington in Herefordshire in the Welsh Marches, from about 1465 until the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Content

The first part of the manuscript contains prose, including the Mabinogion, for which this is one of the manuscript sources (the other principal source being the White book of Rhydderch), other tales, historical texts (including a Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae"), and various other texts including a series of Triads. The rest of the manuscript contains poetry, especially from the period of court poetry known as Poetry of the Princes (Welsh:"Gogynfeirdd" or "Beirdd y Tywysogion").

The manuscript also contains a collection of herbal remedies associated with Rhiwallon Feddyg, founder of a medical dynasty that lasted over 500 years - 'The Physicians of Myddfai' from the village of Myddfai just outside Llandovery.

J. R. R. Tolkien borrowed the title for the "Red Book of Westmarch", the imagined legendary source of Tolkien’s tales.

ources

*'Red book of Hergest'. In Meic Stephens (Ed.) (1998), "The new companion to the literature of Wales". Cardiff : University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1383-3.
*Parry, Thomas (1955), "A history of Welsh literature". Translated by H. Idris Bell. Oxford : Clarendon Press.

ee also

* White Book of Rhydderch

External links

* [http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=jesus&manuscript=ms111 Red Book of Hergest] , or Jesus College MS 111, is part of the Early Manuscripts at Oxford University digitisation project; reprints relevant section of Historical Manuscripts Commission, "Report on manuscripts in the Welsh language", vol. II part I, (London, 1902), describing the manuscript and its contents; "Gives access to colour images of the entire manuscript".
* [http://www.maryjones.us/jce/hergest1.html Mary Jones, "Celtic Encyclopedia"] : Llyfr Coch Hergest (entry on manuscript)
* [http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/hindex.html Mary Jones, "Celtic Literature Collective"] : Llyfr Coch Hergest (contents & translations)
* [http://ovid.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/The+Physicians+of+Myddfai "British Medical Association - Wales & Medicine"]