LILTE/1

Lewis/1924, 219: `The `Vendumagli' Inscribed Stone. -- This stone, I am informed by a man who has lived in the parish all his life, was, previous to the rebuilding of Llanillterne Church (subject to St. Fagan's), lying close to a barn near the so-called `Monastery' of Llanvair. He also remembered another stone there `with a lot of writing on it'. This is now lost. To the south of the brook, on the opposite side of the road, stood a rectangular building, from which the tenant took away a quantity of stones. In the field marked on the ordnance map as `Site of Monastery' is a rectangular earthwork. The name of the farm opposite is Llanvair, and a little dingle there is called Bailey Coch'.

Macalister/1949, 165: `In 1924 it is stated that a local resident remembered the stone lying close to a barn `near the so-called Monastery of Llanvair (sic)'. The same person remembered another inscribed stone associated with it, now lost, which had `a lot of writing on it''.

RCAHMW/1976, 38: `The stone (Plate 1) was formerly built into the external face of the E. wall of the church[1] but subsequently was re-set horizontally in the internal face of the N. wall of the nave.

`[1] Arch. Camb., 1871, p.260; 1901, p. 64. In view of Lhuyd's record in Stowe MS. 1023, fo. 86, the suggestion in Arch. Camb., LXXIX (1924), p. 219, that it was brought from a reputed monastic site can be dismissed'.

RCAHMW/1976, 38: `local rough schist'.

Nash-Williams/1950, 138: ` Roughly quadrangular pillar-stone. 37" h. x 10 1/2" w. x ?" t.'.

RCAHMW/1976, 38: `It is a probably naturally squared pillar-stone of local rough schist, 1.22 m long and 27 cm wide on the inscribed face (which is all that is visible)'.

RCAHMW/1976, 38: `When in its original vertical position the stone had the Latin inscription at its upper end, read vertically downwards in two lines'.

Macalister/1928, 289: `The genitive case is so stereotyped, that the writers cannot accomodate themselves to the nominative which the construction requires. Thus we get an inscription such as that at Llaniltern, Glamorgan, where we read VENDUMAGLI HIC IACIT. In fact, HIC IACIT can hardly be translated literally, `here lies', at all; rather should we render it, as on certain ancient Scottish tombstones, THIS IS THE LAIR of So-and-so'.

Macalister in Anon/1933, 362: `First, the parentage of the person commemorated is not recorded. Such an omission presumably indicates that he was in his time a person of such importance that his name alone was enough to establish the ownership of the monument. It is also possible that he was an ecclesiastic, who, so to speak, had renounced his earthly parentage and become a son of the Church. In the Irish Annals the omission of the parentage, in referring to ecclesiastics, though not invariable, is the rule; but it is unusual in referring to laymen...Thirdly, as so often, we are confronted by the grammatical anomaly of constructing the genitive Vendumagli with the verb hic iacit. We may construe `The stone of Vendumaglos, here he lies' or treating hic-iacit as a sort of substantive, `The `here-lieth' of Vendumaglos'. These expedients, however, are neither satisfactory nor necessary. The use of the genitive is mere tradition, coming down from the earliest days of monumental epigraphy in these islands. The stone was not `Vendumaglos': it was the stone `of-Vendumaglos,' and was specified as such. Before long, the external case-endings dropped out in pronounciation, and no difference was felt between the nominative and the genitive: compare modern Welsh, where the distinction is expressed by nothing more than the relative position of the substantives. Writers had a tradition that there ought to be an i at the end of the word, which was not pronounced; they expressed this by writing it horizontally. Most likely, at the comparatively late date when the engraver of this stone wrote `Vendumagli', with the horizontal i (probably not less than 300--400 years after the departure of the Romans), he did not realize that he was writing a genitive at all. VENDVMAGL{I} was simply the conventional way of writing the name, and it represented a word which served for the nominative as well as the genitive, as the discriminating case-endings had ceased to be pronounced'.

VeNdVmAgl{I} hic IACIt

...the letters are large and coarsely cut, varying from 3 to 4 inches in height, and exhibit a curious mixture of capital, uncial, minuscule, and even cursive writing; the V, N, A, I, and C being capitals, the E and M uncials; the D, L, and H minuscules; and the G and T cursives'.

Macalister/1928, 292--293: `The process of supersession of the capitals by the minuscular script can be traced in some inscriptions which give us a mixed form of writing. An excellent example is the Llaniltern inscription...This also illustrates the horizontal `I' of the genitive termination'.

Macalister in Anon/1933, 362: `Secondly, the inscription is palaeographically important. It stands on the border-line between the earlier inscriptions in Roman capitals and the later inscriptions in minuscules: the two forms of the alphabet are mixed up together to a degree hardly to be paralleled elsewhere is Wales'.

Macalister/1949, 165: `The inscription is... in rather broad lines, semicircular in section. It is in...mixed capitals and half-uncials'.

Nash-Williams/1950, 138: `Mixed Roman capitals (A, C, I, N, V), and half-uncials (D, E, G, L, M, T), deeply picked in good style, with horizontal final -I. Some of the letters have `clubbed' serifs in the manner of the manuscript hand. The A's have the angular cross-bar. The form of the M is unusual (but cf. Nos. 124, 253, 287)'.

RCAHMW/1976, 38: `The letters combine Roman capitals with half-uncials (the latter being E, D, M, G, L, H, T), and also a horizontal terminal I at the end of the first line. The A-s both have an angular cross-bar as in No. 848, and the abnormal form of M can be paralleled (probably but not decisively) on two other inscriptions of roughly the same period, viz. E.C.M. W. 124, 287 (cf also No. 984). Almost all the letters have expanded terminals'.

Macalister/1949, 165: `in good condition'.