Note 194 — LECTURE II THE SOURCES (continued)

The special use of the term ‘Saxonia’ occurs only in the biography; but then there was no great occasion to use it in the annals. Conversely, the seven instances in which Welsh equivalents for Saxon place-names are given occur wholly in the annals. But this also is quite natural. In the annals, as we shall see, the writer was translating; and he added explanations to make his text more intelligible to his Welsh readers. For the same reason, and also because of their greater length, the biographical sections give greater scope for the author’s idiosyncrasies both of diction and of style; and therefore they naturally contain a number of peculiarities which cannot be paralleled in the annals.