Servatur fidæi patrieque semper amator
Hic Paulinus iacit cultor pientisimus æqui.
Whether we have one or two or three Paulini in these inscriptions I cannot say. Welsh writers, however, have made the name sometimes into Pawl Hên, ‘Paul the Aged,’ but, so far as I can see, without rhyme or reason. [↑]
[53] Since I chanced on this inscription my friend Professor Lindsay of St. Andrews has called my attention to Plautus’ Asinaria, 499 (II. iv. 92), where one reads, Periphanes Rhodo mercator dives, ‘Periphanes a wealthy merchant of Rhodes’; he finds also Æsculapius Epidauro (Arnobius, 278. 18), and elsewhere Nepos Philippis and Priscus Vienna. [↑]
[54] See Stokes’ Patrick, pp. 16, 412. [↑]
[55] This will give the reader some idea of the pre-Norman orthography of Welsh, with l for the sound of ỻ and b for that of v. [↑]
[56] The softening of Cafaỻ to Gafaỻ could not take place after the masculine corn, ‘a horn’; but it was just right after the feminine carn, ‘a cairn.’ So here corn is doubtless a colloquial corruption; and so is probably the t at the end, for as ỻt has frequently been reduced to ỻ, as in cyfaiỻ, ‘a friend,’ from the older cyfaiỻt, in Medieval Irish comalta, ‘a foster brother or sister,’ the language has sometimes reversed the process, as when one hears hoỻt for hoỻ, ‘all,’ or reads fferyỻt, ‘alchemist, chemist,’ for fferyỻ from Vergilius. The Nennian orthography does not much trouble itself to distinguish between l and ỻ, and even when Carn Cabal was written the pronunciation was probably Carn Gavaỻ, the mutation being ignored in the spelling, which frequently happens in the case even of Welsh people who never fail to mutate their consonants in speaking. Lastly, though it was a dog that was called Cafaỻ, it is remarkable that the word has exactly the form taken by caballus in Welsh: for cafaỻ, as meaning some sort of a horse, see Silvan Evans’ Geiriadur. [↑]
[57] An instance or two of Trwyd will be found in a note by Silvan Evans in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 393. [↑]
[58] For more about these names and kindred ones, see a note of mine in the Arch. Cambrensis, 1898, pp. 61–3. [↑]