Hello,

I've been puzzling over some of the notation in the Robert ap Huw manuscript.
In
particular, the notation marking the end of the diwedd (refrain), which is
represented by a
vertical bar with many humps, and is usually followed by instructions like "bis
fordd
diweddiad" (repeat the refrain in the same manner?). I've been looking at the
way these
are drawn in the ms. I think they are more than just a bar with a bunch of
humps, because
it appears that some care has been taken in drawing these. I think perhaps the
number of
humps has some meaning. There are often 12, but sometimes fewer, and sometimes
many more (23 or so). In some places the humps appear to get smaller towards
the
bottom end of the bar, as if an effort is being made to squeeze in the last few
to get the
right number. Some run below the horizontal line that marks the bottom of that
section of
notation (because he ran out of room?). Others are much shorter. A couple
don't extend
down into the bass (lower) half of the notation.

At first I thought the number of humps represented the number of "phrases" (I
won't use
"measures" to avoid confusion with the "24 measures") in the preceeding cainc
(section) +
diwedd (refrain), including all the repeats. This works in some places, and
would be a neat
shorthand for keeping track of how many phrases (with all the repeats, etc.)
should be
played in each cainc, but it doesn't appear to work everywhere, so I guess
that's not it.
Can anyone clue me in on this?

I think it's curious that this symbol is written just like the plethiad y
wanhynen (bee plait)
only longer, but that may just be coincidence. As an aside, I tried playing bee
plaits
simultaneously on the caomhluigh strings. If you place your bass hand on the
bass string,
treble hand on the treble string and play one bee plait with both hands at the
same time,
followed immediately by one with just the treble hand, it makes a very nice
sound. This
has nothing to do with the Ap Huw ms, but looking at that notation, with 8 humps
in the
treble over 4 in the bass made me think of this.

I have some other questions (like, what are those vertical bars topped by
spirals? and why
do some of them have dots inside the spiral?), but maybe in another post...

Best,

Karen