Researchers Reveal Medieval Drawings Erased Centuries Ago
7th June 2015
Dating from 1250, The Black Book of Carmarthen at the National Library of Wales is the earliest surviving medieval manuscript written solely in Welsh, and contains some of the earliest references to King Arthur and Merlin.
Despite its importance and decades of scholarly research, the work of a PhD student from the University of Cambridge has revealed tantalising new glimpses of verse, and some images, from the 750-year-old book.
Myriah Williams and her supervisor Professor Paul Russell from Cambridge’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, believe that a 16th century owner of the book, probably a man named Jaspar Gryffyth of Ruthin, summarily erased centuries’ worth of additional verse, doodles and marginalia which had been added to the manuscript as it changed hands throughout the years.
However, using a combination of ultraviolet light and photo editing software, the 16th century owner’s penchant for erasure has been partly reversed to reveal snatches of poetry which are previously unrecorded in the canon of Welsh verse. Currently, the texts are very fragmentary and in need of much more analysis, although they seem to be the continuation of a poem on the preceding page with a new poem added at the foot of the page.