Annales Cambriae

The principal versions of Annales Cambriae appear in four manuscripts: Two of the texts, B and C, begin with a World Chronicle derived from Isidore of Seville's Origines (Book V, ch.

[2] B begins its annals with Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain "sixty years before the incarnation of the Lord."

D and E are found in a manuscript written at the Cistercian abbey of Whitland in south-west Wales in the later 13th century; the Cronica ante aduentum Domini (which takes its title from its opening words) extends from 1132 BC to 1285 AD, while the Cronica de Wallia extends from 1190 to 1266.

These entries have been presented in the past as proof of the existence of Arthur and Merlin,[4] although that view is no longer widely held because the Arthurian entries could have been added arbitrarily as late as 970, long after the development of the early Arthurian myth.

Both the B and C texts display the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae,[7] and this is reflected in the Arfderydd entry by the choice of the Latinized form Merlinus, first found in Geoffrey's Historia, as opposed to the expected Old Welsh form Merdin.