THE PHYSICIANS OF MYDDFAI – CURES AND REMEDIES OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD –

The new and unexpurgated translation of the medieval Middle Welsh manuscript

292pp Cambria Books/Llyfrau Cambria November 2012

YR ENFYS – JOURNAL OF WALES INTERNATIONAL [CYLCHGRWAN UNDEB CYMRU A’R BYD] Summer 2013

‘IECHYD DA – WELSH CURE-ALLS FROM THE PHYSICIANS OF MYDDFAI

The first new and unexpurgated translation of Meddygon Myddfai remedies for over 150 years has been published by Llyfrau Cambria. Compiled by author Terry Breverton the 1,000 remedies and suggestions for a healthy life included make fascinating reading – though one should be cautioned not to indulge without expert guidance. The book The Physicans of Myddfai – Cures and Remedies of the Mediaeval World also includes the full version of the Lady of the Lake legend referred to in the side panel on the left. The original mediaeval manuscripts that the book is based upon were written in Middle Welsh even at a time when the usual language for such documents was Latin. Here are a few of the remarkable cures from those manuscripts. [There follows two pages of excerpts from the book, which is later described as ‘excellent’.]

Gwales Description: This is the first new and unexpurgated translation of Meddygon Myddfai, The Physicians of Myddfai, for over 150 years. The evocative Legend of the Lady of the Lake (Llyn y Fan Fach) is included. This tale is the starting point for the line of practising Myddfai physicians from being court mediciners to Prince Rhys Gryg (d. 1234) until the present day.

HERBS Vol.38 No 2 2013 [The Journal of the Herb Society]

A facsimile of the Victorian translation of this early 13th/14th century Welsh medical manuscript has been the most widely available edition until now. This new book takes the facsimile as its template, complete with both later material and the myth.

The author has met all the right people in the field, and in the process points up to the lack of work done on this interesting subject. He expands, clarifies and corrects the text, and his enthusiasm for the subject brings in wide-ranging references. I like his defence of the later section of the 19th-century edition. However, as his own social history sector suggests, the 13th-century manuscript deserves a comprehensive and scholarly appraisal.

There is much information included in the social history, some of which will be already familiar to people already interested in this area. It is clear that each era has its own preoccupations with the Myddfai phenomenon; 19th-century cultural nationalism and the Celtic revival. One of the themes of our age is ethnobotany, so, at least a small index of plant names would have made the author’s considerable effort more accessible. He pre-empts criticism by citing publishing restrictions and costs. In 1815 Hugh Davies complained that two centuries had elapsed since someone attempted to grapple with old Welsh plant names ‘but we do not find any disciple of Aeculapius has chosen to undertake the task.’ Nearly two centuries on we are perhaps hardly in a better state, although as this book demonstrates, it needs not one disciple, or scholar, but a conclave of them. Another piece in the jigsaw, but we await the bigger picture in the public domain.’