--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com,
starner@... wrote:

> When browsing my library, I

discovered an old (1840) book in
Welsh; it apparently has some
discussion of runes and various
other writing systems.
Unfortunately, Welsh, unlike French
or German, is completly opaque to
the monolingual English reader.
There was an annotation
"(hieroglyphics)" early in the book,
and a page (apparently from
somewhere else) on the runes and
their pronunciation in English, and
a note about bardic runes elsewhere,
but that's all I could understand.

>
> Title: Traethawd ar hynafiaeth ac

awdurdodaeth Coelbren y Beirdd : yr
hwnn a Ennillodd Ariandlws a Gwobr
Eisteddfod y Fenni, 1838 / gann
Taliesin Williams (Ab Iolo).

> Publisher: Llanymddyfri [Wales] :

W. Rees, 1840.

>
> Being a volunteer for Project

Gutenberg, I instinctually checked
it out and scanned it into the
computer. So I can offer a copy to
anyone who wants one, and has an FTP
site to upload it to. I could
probably play with it, and reduce
the size a lot, but the scans I have
(in DJVU format) come to 20 MB, so
no emailing it. It should be public
domain everywhere, provided Taliesin
Williams wasn't a pseudonym for
Methuseala.

>
> Can someone tell me what I have a

copy of, and if it's of any interest
to anyone?

>

Very interesting. Coelbren was the
Welsh glyph alphabet carved on wood
in defiance of an English
suppression of both written Welsh
and the means of writing it (i.e.,
paper & ink).