Note 16 — Chapter III · Fairy Ways and Words (continued 2)

Here the writer seems to have been puzzled by the mh of Amheirchion, and to have argued back to a radical form Parch; but he was on the wrong tack—Amheirchion comes from Ap-Meirchion, where the p helped to make the m a surd, which, with the syllabic accent on the succeeding vowel, became fixed as mh, while the p disappeared by assimilation. We have, later on, a similar instance in Owen y Mhaxen for Owen Amhacsen = O. ap Macsen. Another instance will be found at the opening of the Mabinogi of Branwen, to wit, in the word prynhawngweith, ‘once on an afternoon,’ from prynhawn, ‘afternoon,’ for which our dictionaries substitute prydnawn, with the accent on the ultima, though D. ab Gwilym used pyrnhawn, as in poem xl. 30. But the ordinary pronunciation continues to be prynháwn or pyrnháwn, sometimes reduced in Gwyneđ to pnawn. Let me add an instance which has reached me since writing the above: In the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 325–6, we have the pedigree of the Ameridiths from the Visitation of Devonshire in 1620: in the course of it one finds that Iuan ap Merydeth has a son Thomas Amerideth, who, knowing probably no Welsh, took to writing his patronymic more nearly as it was pronounced. The line is brought down to Ames Amerideth, who was created baronet in 1639. Amerideth of course = Ap Meredyđ, and the present member of the family who writes to the Archæologia Cambrensis spells his patronymic more correctly, Ameridith; but if it had survived in Wales it might have been Amheredyđ. For an older instance than any of these see the Book of Taliessin, poem xlix (= Skene, ii. 204), where one reads of Beli Amhanogan, ‘B. ab Mynogan.’ ↑