Dear Gareth Fascinating - thanks for the link - not only the counting methods, but your other inputs as well. Paper from a 1999 Archeaology Journal http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba46/ba46int.html This says mentions the work of "...David Thomas OBE, a former school inspector in Wales. Thomas had collected detailed systems from Yorkshire, Durham, Roxburgh and Essex. He too had been fascinated by these ancient counting systems as evidence of the survival of a brythonic population probably subjugated, but used as a labour force, by the Saxon overlords." He published his research in his book Animal Call Words (Spurrell) in 1939. ALSO the work appeared as Volume XIV of the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society Transactions. I found it hard to track down, so had to wait for a visit to the Nat Lib which has copies. Thomas demonstrates the possibility of both the numbering system mentioned in the Radnor journal AND animal call words being much older than I had suspected. (In some instances very likely to possibly be 4000 years). Thomas suggests that the numbering and callwords probably were part of the Goidelic tradition, taken over by the Brythonic invaders later. Worth a peep if one is interested. He has some great theories about callwords (puss puss, geeup, wo etc etc) and the welsh numbering system - can all be traced back thousands of years - and his theories are based on archaeology findings. Certain items found coincide with certain patterns of call names. AND these patterns of counting etc are not confined to Wales. NB David Thomas was a HMI for the Cardiganshire area, and researched local knowledge from school pupils extensively (around 1926) including local tales and information from my great grandmother which explains a lot ! Jen Davies, D Stedman Rev. Welsh method of counting Radnorshire Society Transactions vol. 15 1945 Welsh Journals Online http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/browse/listarticles/llgc-id:1191402/llgc-id:1192569 Something I'd always wondered about.......... Gareth