This has been the subject of many discussions, and has recently found a place in the columns of "NOTES AND QUERIES." I do not propose to take any part in the present discussion, but it may be of some service to historical students for me to introduce to public notice a much older authority than any that has yet been cited. It is known to but few antiquaries out of the principality, that the ancient poetry of Wales throws more light on the immediate post-Roman history of Britain than any documents in existence. These poems vividly pourtray the social condition of the period, and contain almost the only records of the great contest between the natives and the Saxon invaders; they prove beyond a doubt that the Romans had left the province in an advanced stage of civilisation, and they supply us with the means of affirming decisively, that the vine was cultivated here to a very considerable extent. The antiquity of these poems admits of no reasonable doubt; on that point the _Vindication_ of Turner enables the antiquaries of Wales to make this assertion with confidence: and having recently translated most of our old poems, with a view to future publication, I feel myself warranted in assuming them to belong to the sixth and seventh centuries of our era. One of these bards, Aneurin by name, belonged to the British tribe, described by the Romans as Ottadini, and by themselves as the people of Gododin. This people were situated at the junction of England and Scotland, and the poems of this bard chiefly refer to that district; but as the bards were a rambling class, and as the bulk of the people from Chester to Dumbarton were the same race as the people of the principality, we are not surprised when we find this bard sometimes among "the banks and braes of bonny Doon," and sometimes in North and South Wales. In one of his verses he thus describes the kilt of a British chief:-- "Peis dinogat e vreith vreith O grwyn balaot ban ureith." These lines may be found in the _Myvyrian Archæology_, vol. i. p. 13. col. 1.; and a most unwarrantable translation of _dinogat_ may be found in Davies' _Mythology of the Druids_; but the literal rendering would be this: "Dinogad's kilt is stripy, stripy, Of the skins of front-streak'd wolf-cubs." _Peis_ or _pais_ is the word now used for the article of female attire known as a petti-coat, which in form bears a sufficiently close resemblance to the male kilt to justify me in using that word here. It also occurs in _pais-arfau_, a coat of arms, and _pais-ddur_, a coat of mail. The words _vreith vreith_ have been translated word for word; in the Kymric language it is a very common form of emphatic expression to repeat the word on which the emphasis falls, as _yn dda da_ for _very good_; but a more idiomatic translation would have been, _very stripy_. _Vraith_ with us also stands for plaid, and in the Welsh Bible Joseph's "coat of many colours" is named _siacced vraith_.