Of the ‘legal deposit’ libraries in the UK and Ireland, I have visited the British Library, the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth and Trinity College Library in Dublin. Only the last named looks like a library to a visitor, with rooms, floor to high ceilings, lined with shelves packed with books. In the other two no books are visible. You fill in a form, sit at a table and wait, and the requested volume is brought to you. But safely stored somewhere in the inner recesses of these great buildings, what wonders there are. ‘Cotton Vitellius A.xv’ may not ring bells widely. Similarly, one might say, ‘Cotton Nero A.x’, and ‘Cotton Vitellius A.vi’. They do, however, linger in my memory. The codes identify manuscripts, the first Beowulf, the second Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – wonders of Anglo-Saxon and early English poetry – and the third is a twelfth-century manuscript of the De excidio et conquestu Britanniae by Gildas. They are in the British Library, where they continue to be classified in this way because the original owner, Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631), designed a system whereby his collection was placed on shelves surmounted by busts of Roman emperors: ‘Otho A.xii’ should be The Battle of Maldon, but in 1731 it was destroyed in a fire (fortunately, having been copied beforehand), along with a dozen or so others. Beowulf, though singed, survived.

The National Library of Wales, founded in 1909, is a relatively late addition to the world list. It is spectacularly housed in a classically proportioned white building high on Penglais Hill overlooking Aberystwyth and Cardigan Bay. While rummaging in a drawer recently for something quite other, I came across my reader’s ticket (No. 3402). It bears my name and Aberystwyth address, and the stern injunction, ‘This ticket must be carefully preserved by the reader’. I have obeyed – it was issued sixty-seven years ago and, if not exactly pristine, is in generally good shape.

Since student days I have visited Nat Lib from time to time on literary missions. I always feel a keen sense of anticipation walking, or more recently, driving there, up that steep hill out of town. It houses astonishing treasures, like the ‘Hengwrt Chaucer’, described by Christopher de Hamel in his Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (2016). Another, the ‘Black Book of Carmarthen’, came into the possession of Sir John Price of Brecon in the course of his (light-footed) participation in the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, and passed thence to Sir Robert Vaughan (1592–1647) of Hengwrt, near Dolgellau, Merioneth. Vaughan, an avid collector of manuscripts, subsequently acquired the library of John Jones of Gellilyfdy, Flintshire, and this combined trove remained at Hengwrt until a descendant, Sir Robert William Vaughan (1803–59), MP for Monmouth, bequeathed it to his friend, William Watkin Wynne of Peniarth, who further embellished it. What had thus become known as the Peniarth collection was bought by Sir John Williams (1840–1926). He was the son of a congregational minister and farmer, of Gwynfe, Carmarthenshire, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons, who progressed from local schools to the University of Glasgow and, via University College Hospital, London, and a brilliant medical career, became Court physician to Queen Victoria. Later he was the prime mover and most generous benefactor in the campaign to establish a National Library for Wales and, in due course, bequeathed his precious collection of manuscripts to it.

He was not the only man of humble origins to have a share in the foundation of the library. John Gwenogvryn Evans (the middle name adopted in adulthood), born near Llanybyther, Carmarthenshire, in 1852, was apprenticed to his uncle, a grocer in Lampeter, but as the result of an accident when he was eighteen returned to school at Llandysul. There he was taught by Gwilym Marles (the great-uncle who gave Dylan Thomas his middle name, Marlais), and went on via the Presbyterian College at Carmarthen to be ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1876. The lasting effects of childhood illness curtailed his career in the ministry and after some time travelling overseas he returned to reside in Oxford, where he attended lectures on the Mabinogion. Here, we must pause to consider another remarkable story. The lecturer, Sir John Rhys, was the son of a farm labourer, born in a tied cottage at Aberceiro, Cardiganshire. Educated at local British schools and the Normal College, Bangor, he became a schoolmaster at Rhos-y-boi, Anglesey. Having cultivated an interest in languages and antiquities, he was granted a scholarship and admission to Jesus College, Oxford, famously the Welsh college, where he gained a First in Greats, and was elected a Fellow of Merton College. Possessed by an interest in philology, he spent summer vacations studying in Europe, notably under the linguist and philologist Georg Curtius (1820–85). In 1877, he became the first professor of Celtic at Jesus College. It was, then, John Rhys the farm labourer’s son from the depths of the Cardiganshire countryside, who inspired John Evans from rural Carmarthenshire to set about reading and translating the ‘Red Book of Hergest’, a bulky vellum manuscript that includes the Mabinogion, then at Jesus College (and now the Bodleian). Soon afterwards he conceived of the idea of publishing diplomatic editions of Welsh manuscripts. I have one bought second-hand when I was a student. It is the cheapest version, black buckram bound with deckle-edged paper, dated 1907. Facing the gothic-lettered title page is a shield featuring a dragon, a harp and a leek enclosed by a strap bearing the proud motto ‘Series of Welsh Texts Reproduced and edited by J Gwenogvryn Evans’. He contemplated a series, turning them out, to subscribers only, ‘on the Private Press of the Editor’ in Pwllheli, a few miles from his home in Llanbedrog, on the Llŷn Peninsula. Perhaps, for all his ambition and personal endeavour, he did not receive an enthusiastic response from the Welsh book-buying public of the time, or bibliophiles elsewhere. Welsh representation in the developing private press movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century may well have been what he aspired to, but he does not rate a listing in the usual catalogue of private presses.

In his introductory remarks to the Black Book he tells us what a labour of love it has been. ‘I have been chained, like a dog, to manuscripts and texts for a quarter of a century… The present text has been reproduced diplomatically, page for page, line for line, character for character, space for space… Different sizes of types... for different sizes of handwriting of the manuscript. Most of the large initials are traced copies of the originals.’ And with the more expensive, certainly the four copies printed on vellum, perhaps also those (175) on hand-made paper, the latter were coloured red, green and chrome. I cannot be certain, because of the entire print run (604), I have seen only the copy I possess. In 2010, to mark the 350th anniversary of the death of Sir Robert Vaughan, the Black Book together with the rest of the Hengwrt-Peniarth collection was added to the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register.