Rhyddiaith yr Oesoedd Canol (Medieval Prose)

Take any extract from the prescribed text and draft the four moves the two-part question requires, keeping each one distinct.

1. 01Content — what happens, in your own Welsh

   Three or four sentences at most, in Cymraeg safonol, saying what occurs in the extract. Not a translation and not a paraphrase of every clause: a summary that a reader who had not seen the extract could follow. This move is quick and it is the smaller half of part (i). If it takes you more than a short paragraph, you are transcribing rather than summarising.

2. 02Significance — what it does in the story

   Now the second half of part (i), and it requires the whole story. Where does this sit? What was possible before it that is not possible after? What does it complete, and what does it start? “Mae'r darn yn dod ar ôl…, ac o'r pwynt yma ymlaen does dim modd…” Two clauses. If you cannot write them, you know the extract but not the tale, and the modern version is where the repair lies.

3. 03Character or theme — what the extract SHOWS

   Part (ii) begins here and it is a different question. Not what happens, but what the writing of it reveals — how a character is made visible by what they say or do not say, or how a theme surfaces in the detail rather than in the narrative. Choose ONE character or ONE theme, because part (ii) says 'characters or themes' and a divided answer will be shallow on both.

4. 04Connection — the same thing elsewhere

   “Ac mae'r un peth i'w weld yn…” — one or two other places in the story where the same character trait or the same theme appears, named by episode rather than by page. The connection is what part (ii) explicitly asks for, and it is what makes the answer an argument about the tale rather than a commentary on a passage. Two locations are enough; three is showing off and costs time.

5. 05The check before you write

   Read your four moves back and ask whether each one would survive if the others were deleted. Content that already contains significance means part (i) has no shape; a character analysis that is really a summary means part (ii) is part (i) again. The two-part question is generous precisely because it tells you what the four moves are — the failure mode is not knowing what to write but writing the same thing twice.

Result: Four distinct moves: a short summary in your own Welsh; the significance stated as what the extract closes and opens; ONE character or theme shown rather than narrated; and two other locations where the same thing appears. Test them by deleting each in turn — if the others still stand, the parts are properly separate.

You need one sentence of background about the date of the Four Branches. Write it four ways and pick the one that belongs in an examination answer.

1. 01Too assertive

   “Ysgrifennwyd y Pedair Cainc yn yr unfed ganrif ar ddeg.” Stated as fact, and it is not one. A marker who knows the field will read this as a candidate repeating something without knowing that it is contested, and the sentence has spent its credibility for nothing.

2. 02Too hedged

   “Mae rhai'n meddwl bod y Pedair Cainc yn hen iawn, ond dydy neb yn siŵr.” Accurate and useless. It names no position, no scholar and no evidence, and it could have been written by somebody who had read nothing. Hedging is only worth its words when it is precise about WHAT is uncertain.

3. 03Precise and attributed

   “Mae dyddiad cyfansoddi'r Pedair Cainc yn destun dadl: dadleuodd Ifor Williams dros ddyddiad cynnar, tra bo ysgolheigion diweddarach — rhai ohonyn nhw ar sail tystiolaeth ieithyddol — wedi dadlau dros un llawer diweddarach.” This names the disagreement, names a position and its holder, and indicates what the later argument rests on. It is one sentence and it demonstrates that you know the field rather than a fact from it.

4. 04Precise, attributed and USED

   “…ac mae hynny'n bwysig i'r cwestiwn yma, achos os ydy'r chwedl yn perthyn i gyfnod diweddarach nag y tybiwyd, mae'r modd y mae'n trin brenhiniaeth yn edrych yn wahanol.” The background has now done work rather than sat in a paragraph of its own. This is the version to aim for: context deployed at the point where it changes a reading, never as a preamble.

5. 05The general rule

   Hedge exactly as far as the evidence requires and then use the hedge. A disputed date is not an inconvenience to be got past; it is a live question that affects how a text is read, and saying so is a contribution. What is never acceptable is inventing a certainty, in a field where the reader may well know the state of the argument better than the writer.

Result: Not assertion, not vague hedging, but a named disagreement with a named position and the basis of the counter-argument — and then, in the same sentence, the consequence the disagreement has for the reading you are offering. Context deployed at the point where it changes something, never as a preamble.

The printed extract contains a sentence you cannot immediately parse. Build the procedure for getting through it without stopping.

1. 01Find the verb first

   Welsh is verb-initial and medieval Welsh is emphatically so. Locate the main verb before doing anything else, and identify its person and tense from the ending rather than from the pronoun, because the pronoun may be infixed or absent. Once the verb is fixed, the rest of the clause has somewhere to attach, and most apparent difficulties turn out to be word order rather than vocabulary.

2. 02Assume the familiar word has moved

   If a word you know produces a sentence that is odd rather than wrong, suspect a shifted sense rather than a mistake in your reading. Medieval Welsh is full of words whose modern meanings are narrower or metaphorical descendants of older, wider ones. The context will usually settle it — and if it does not, say what the two possible senses are rather than choosing silently, which is honest and costs one clause.

3. 03Use the story you already know

   This is why the modern version is prescribed alongside the edition. You know what happens in this tale. If your construal of a sentence produces something that does not fit the narrative you know, your construal is probably wrong, and the narrative is the check. That is a legitimate reading strategy and not a shortcut: it is what every reader of a difficult text does.

4. 04Do not stop moving

   Under examination conditions the cost of a sentence you cannot construe is not the sentence — it is the minutes. Mark it, take the sense from the surrounding narrative, and go on. Part (i) asks you to explain the content of the extract, and content can be explained accurately even if one clause remains uncertain. An answer that stalls on a phrase is worth less than one that summarises the extract correctly and admits a small uncertainty.

5. 05Then turn the difficulty into a point, if it is one

   Occasionally the phrase you struggled with is difficult because it is doing something — a formula being varied, a compression that is deliberate, an ambiguity the tale exploits. If you can say that, the difficulty becomes evidence: “Mae'r ymadrodd yn anodd ei ddal, ac efallai mai dyna'r pwynt — dydy'r chwedl ddim yn dweud yn union beth a wnaeth.” That is a real observation and it turns lost time into a mark.

Result: Verb first, then attach the clause; suspect a shifted sense before an error; use the story you know from the modern version as a check on your construal; and keep moving — content can be explained accurately with one clause left uncertain. If the difficulty is deliberate, say so, and it becomes evidence.

An extract is printed on the paper. Plan the whole answer — both parts — on the question paper before writing a sentence of prose.

1. 01Two minutes: read the extract twice and place it

   First reading for sense, second for the place. Where does this sit in the tale? What immediately precedes and follows? Write those two things in the margin in three words each. If you cannot place the extract, the answer to part (i)'s significance clause will not exist, so this is the two minutes that decides the mark.

2. 02Part (i), planned in two lines

   Line one: content, as a short summary — the events, in order, in your own Welsh. Line two: significance, as what closes and what opens. “Yn cau: y posibilrwydd o…; yn agor: yr angen am…” Two nouns and two verbs is enough for a plan. When you write it up, the summary should be a short paragraph and the significance a longer one, because that is where the marks are.

3. 03Part (ii), planned in three lines

   Line one: the choice — character or theme — and which one, written as a phrase. Line two: the extract's evidence, as a location within the extract rather than a quotation you will decide later. Line three: two other places in the story, each with the RELATION named — 'eto, ond yn waeth' for escalation, 'i'r gwrthwyneb' for inversion, 'yn cyflawni'r hyn a addawyd' for fulfilment.

4. 04The link sentence between the parts

   Plan one sentence to move from part (i) to part (ii), because the two parts of the answer should read as one essay. “Ac os mai dyna arwyddocâd y darn yn y stori, yr hyn sy'n ei wneud yn bosib ydy'r ffordd y mae'r chwedl yn trin…” That sentence takes the significance you established and turns it into the entry point for the character or theme, which is a more sophisticated structure than answering two questions in sequence.

5. 05The last check: is anything said twice?

   Read the five planned lines and look for repetition. If the significance line and the theme line say the same thing, one of them is wrong — usually the theme, which has been allowed to become a restatement of the plot. Fix it at the planning stage, where it costs thirty seconds, rather than discovering it in the third paragraph, where it costs the answer.

Result: Five planned lines and one link sentence: content; significance as what closes and what opens; the choice of character or theme as a phrase; the extract's evidence by location; two other places with the relation named. Then check that the significance line and the theme line are not saying the same thing — if they are, the theme has become a restatement of plot.

Show how the same question produces three structurally different answers depending on what the extract does in the story, and how to say which is which.

1. 01An extract whose significance is CONSEQUENCE

   Something is done that cannot be undone. “Arwyddocâd y darn ydy ei fod yn cau'r unig lwybr oedd ar ôl: o'r pwynt hwn ymlaen, does dim modd i'r naill ochr na'r llall dynnu'n ôl heb golli popeth.” The structure is: before this, X was possible; after this, it is not. Name the thing that has closed, in the tale's own terms, not in the abstract.

2. 02An extract whose significance is COMPLETION

   Something set up earlier is paid. “Arwyddocâd y darn ydy ei fod yn talu'r ddyled a osodwyd yn gynharach yn y chwedl — mae'r hyn a addawyd bryd hynny'n cael ei gyflawni yma, ac yn union fel yr addawyd.” The structure is: this answers that. It requires you to name the earlier moment, which is where whole-tale knowledge shows.

3. 03An extract whose significance is REVELATION

   Something is disclosed that changes what came before. “Arwyddocâd y darn ydy ei fod yn datgelu rhywbeth y bu'r chwedl yn ei gadw'n ôl, ac ar ôl ei ddarllen mae'r penodau cynt yn darllen yn wahanol.” The structure is: this makes earlier material mean something else. The strongest version names what earlier material, and how it changes.

4. 04When an extract does two of the three

   Say so and rank them. “Mae'r darn yn gwneud dau beth: mae'n cwblhau'r hyn a osodwyd yn gynharach, ond yn bwysicach na hynny mae'n cau'r posibilrwydd o…” Ranking demonstrates judgement, which a list does not, and 'yn bwysicach na hynny' is the two-word move that does it.

5. 05The sentence that must never appear

   “Mae'r darn yn bwysig iawn yn y stori.” This says that significance exists without saying what it is, and it is the sentence a candidate writes when they have not read the whole tale. Every significance sentence should name a specific thing that closes, is paid, or is disclosed. If it does not, it is not a significance sentence — it is an assertion that one could have been written.

Result: Consequence: name what was possible before and is not after. Completion: name the earlier moment this pays. Revelation: name what earlier material now reads differently. If the extract does two, rank them with 'yn bwysicach na hynny'. And never write that a passage is important without naming the specific thing it closes, pays or discloses.