not unnaturally, made Guttolion or Guitolion into Guitolin, except the two which I have specified: for them the temptation to reduce the name in ion into Guitolin probably did not exist, as their texts do not appear to contain sec. 66. Now the former name occurs on a bilingual tombstone at Nevern, which reads in Ogam simply Vitaliani, meaning 'the monument or place of Vitalianus or Guttolion', and in Latin letters of the most ancient type perhaps to be found in our non-Roman inscriptions:

VITALIANI

EMERETO

This is so condensed that it is difficult to be sure of the exact meaning, but it seems to suggest that the deceased was regarded as holding some rank in the Roman army, and the case may be compared with the later Dyfed bilingual from Castell Dwyran,' where the deceased has the Roman title given him of 'protector'. Such cases help to answer the question how it was that during the later years of the Roman occupation the troops of whom we read were all in the north and east of the Province; for it would seem that the west was to be looked after by the chiefs of the Déssi. The latter, on the other hand, appear to have pursued a more or less romanizing policy, as may be gathered from the Latin names to be found in Goidelic inscriptions both in Wales and Ireland, such, in the former, as Pompeius and Turpilius, Severus and Severinus, and, in the latter, such as the Vitalinus already mentioned. For besides the Déssi who came over to Dyfed, there were others who coasted westwards and landed in Kerry. It is to them, probably, one has to refer an Ogam inscription including the name Vitalin, found at Ballinvoher, in the

1

See Archæologia Cambrensis, 1895, pp. 307-13, and the Cymmrodor, vol. xviii, "The Englyn', pp. 72-4.

E

barony of Corkaguiny in that county. At a well near Stradbally, in co. Waterford, the land, to this day, of the Déssi, I have seen an inscription involving the genitive Agracolin-i, which I take to be a derivative from Agricola. The motive here was doubtless admiration for the fame of the great Roman general of that name. In the case of a group like Vitalis, Vitalianus, and Vitalinus, the motive was different but not far to seek: the names were chosen as involving vita 'life', probably by a family whose Goidelic names began with an early form of the vocable béo, in Welsh byw 'alive, quick', such as Béoán, Béóc, Béo-aed, Beo-gna, which was borrowed into Welsh early, and modified eventually into Beu-gno, Beuno. Time would fail me to do justice to all the conclusions to be drawn from the facts to which I have called attention. There is one, however, on which I wish to lay stress, and it is this: the Vitalianus stone at Nevern probably marked the grave of the grandfather of Gwrtheyrn, son-in-law of the Emperor Maximus.

VI.

To return to the Pillar of Elisseg, it has always struck me that it is a column obtained from some Roman building of respectable dimensions; but where? The inscription upon it must, when perfect, have formed a historical document, with which we have absolutely nothing of the same importance to compare. There remains one thing to be done to lessen our loss from the treatment to which the stone had been submitted before Ed. Llwyd's examination of it, and that is to have a thorough search made for the missing fragments. Regardless of expense the little mound, on which has been set up what remains of the original pillar, should be carefully sifted, and the hedges near should be ransacked until the broken pieces have

been found. In any case they cannot be far away, and they have probably escaped the weathering which has reduced almost to illegibility the exposed portions of the pillar. Let us hope that some generous Cymmrodor will come forward to help us in the search which I have suggested. It is also highly desirable that good casts should be made of the pillar as it is and before it has become completely illegible.

The fact that Concenn, king of Powys about the beginning of the ninth century, bore an Irish name, has, as far as I know, never been detected, and still less, if possible, that his great-grandfather Eliseg's name was also Irish. So I have to dwell a little on the latter: Edward Llwyd has copied it as Eliseg the five times which it occurs in the inscription; but in the Genealogies it is usually Elized, as also in the Annales Cambriæ, a.d. 814, 943, 946. On the other hand the Liber Landavensis regularly spells it Elised, and so with the Latin genitive Elised-i in the Book of St. Chad; but a form Elisse also occurs, as, for instance, in Brut y Tywysogion, a.d. 815, 944, while under 1202, in the same, we have it twice as Elisy.' These, without the final d, practically prove the consonant to have been sounded as the soft spirant a or dd, a sound which was sometimes represented in Old Welsh by t. Hence the final t of Elitet in Pedigree xxvij (p. 181): the other t of that spelling was probably a result of the scribe misreading z or a reversed s as t. Thus the older spellings in Welsh practically reduce themselves to three, Eliseg, Elised, and Elized. The Irish name occurs in a 1 Possibly Elisei, which occurs once as the name of a witness in the Liber Landavensis, p. 216, is to be regarded as an instance of this

name.

2 How this can have happened may be seen from the way in which Crizdi or Crisdi in a Margam Abbey inscription used to be read Critdi: see the Archæologia Cambrensis, 1899, p. 142.