Aneurin

By far the longest and the most famous poem of this series is attributed

to Aneurin. This spelling of his name is comparatively modern, and in

the old manuscripts it is given as Aneirin. The later form seems to have

been affected by the form _eurin_, "golden," and to owe the continuation

of the misspelling to a belief that the poet and Gildas, whose name is

supposed to be the Latin form of the Old English _gylden_, were one and

the same person. This poem, called the _Gododin_ (with notes by T.

Stephens and published by Prof. Powel for the Cymmrodorion Society,

London, 1888), is extremely obscure, both on account of its vocabulary

and its topography and allusions. It deals mainly with "the men who went

to Cattraeth," which is supposed to have been fought between the Britons

and the Scots under Aedan, king of Dalriada, and the pagan Saxons and

their British subjects in _Devyr_ (Deira) and _Bryneich_ (Bernicia), and

the half-pagan Picts of Guotodin, a district corresponding to the

northern half of the Lothians along the Firth of Forth. Critics have

attempted with partial success to cast some light on its obscurity by

supposing that the poem as a whole is made up of two parts dealing with

two distinct battles. This may or may not be, but there is no doubt that

many of the stanzas of the poem as found in the manuscript are not in

their proper places, and a critical readjustment of the different

stanzas and lines would do much towards solving its problem. It seems

probable, too, that the original nucleus of the poem was handed down

orally, and recited or sung by the bards and minstrels at the courts of

different noblemen. It thus became the common stock-in-trade of the

Welsh rhapsodist, and in time the bards, using it as a kind of

framework, added to it here and there pieces of their own composition

formed on the original model, especially when the heroes named happened

to be the traditional forefathers of their patrons, and occasionally

introduced the names of new heroes and new places as it suited their

purpose; and all this seems to have been done in early times. Older

fragments dealing too with the legendary heroes of the Welsh were

afterwards incorporated with the poem, and some of these fragments

undoubtedly preserve the orthographical and grammatical forms of the 9th

century. So that, on the whole, it seems as fruitless to look for a

definite record of historical events in this poem as it would be to do

so in the Homeric poems, but like them, though it cannot any longer be

regarded as a correct and definite account of a particular battle or

war, it still stands to this day the epic of the warriors of its own

nation. It matters not whether these heroes fought at far Cattraeth or

on some other forgotten field of disaster; this song still reflects, as

a true national epic, the sad defeats and the brave but desperate

rallies of the early Welsh. Like the music of the Welsh, its dominant

note is that of sadness, expressing the exultation of battle and the

very joy of life in minor notes. To a great extent Welsh poets are to

this day true and faithful disciples of this early master.

Taliessin.

Many of the poems attributed to Taliessin are undoubtedly late. Indeed,

both Taliessin and Myrddin,[2] the one as the mythological chief of all

Welsh bards and the other as a great magician, seem pre-eminently suited

to attract a great deal of later Welsh poetry under their aegis; but the

older poems attributed to them are worthy of any literature. Sometimes,

as in the verses attributed to Llywarch Hen beginning _Stafell

Cynddylan_, an early specimen of poetic grief over departed glory, we

find that gentle elegiac note which is so common in early English

poetry. In the Taliessinic poems, the _Battle of Argoed Llwyvain_ and

others, we have that boldness of portraiture which is found in the

_Gododin_, whilst in many a noble line we seem to hear again the ravens

screaming shrilly over their sword-feasts, and the strong strokes of the

advancing warriors.

Merlin.

It was but natural that all the pseudo-prophetic poems, written of

course after the events which they foretold, should be attributed to the

chief among seers, Myrddin, or, as his name is written in English,

Merlin; so that all the poems accredited to him, with the exception

perhaps of the _Avallenau_, were not written before the 12th century.

In most of the poems attributed to Llywarch Hen and in some of the

Myrddin poems, the verses begin with the same line, which, though it has

no direct reference to the subject of the poem itself, is used as a

refrain or catch-word, exactly like the refrains employed by Mr

Swinburne and others in their ballads. These lines generally refer to

some natural object or objects, as, for instance, "the snow of the

mountain" or "bright are the tops of the broom."

The first period, then, of Welsh literature lies between 700 and 950. It

is in most respects the epic period, the period in which poets wrote of

great men and their deeds, the legendary and the historic heroes of the

Cymry, men like Urien Rheged, and heroes like Hyveidd Hir. Even in the

next period the epic note had not quite died out.

The Gododin series.

3. _The Prose Romances and the Poet Princes, 1100-1290._--It will be

seen that there is a considerable gap between the first and second

period of Welsh literature. It must not be supposed, however, that

nothing was composed or written during these years. Indeed, it may well

be that some of the poetry attributed to the minor bards of the last

period was composed between 900 and 1100, and that some other poetry too

was written and lost. But there are abundant reasons for believing that

Welsh poetry was at a very low ebb during those years. The progress of

Wales as a political unit had suffered a check after the battle of

Chester in 613. The effects of this defeat were not immediate, as the

Welsh had still enough of their characteristic hopefulness to expect

ultimate victory; we therefore have reasons for believing that the

Gododin series of poems were still used--or perhaps used then for the

first time--to spur on "the hawks of war" to greater efforts. Gradually,

however, the Angles, hemming them in on all sides from the Clyde to the

Severn, began to press nearer and nearer; the Welsh at last seem to have

lost heart, and no one any longer "had the desire of song." Content with

their old epics and their older myths, which owe perhaps to these years

a darker and more sombre tinge, they allowed their song to be hushed.

The great lords had hardly chosen their final abodes; the smaller lords

had all been killed in war and their places taken now by one, now by

another, so that the warrior prince himself had not the leisure, and

hardly the inspiration necessary, for song, and the bards found but

scanty patronage among such a diminished and poverty-stricken nobility.

The only order that seemed to prosper was that of the monks, and we owe

them our gratitude for preserving the ancient writings and the ancient

traditions; but they were simply copyists, though they had undoubtedly

some hand in giving the _Gododin_ its final form and in setting in its

convenient framework the names of the forefathers of their aristocratic

abbots.

In the year 1044 Gruffydd ab Llewelyn conquered Hywel ab Edwin and

became king of Wales. By means of his diplomacy and his arms he

succeeded in stemming the tide of Saxon invasion that was threatening to

overflow even the little remnant of land that was left to the Welsh, and

his strong rule gave the Welsh muse another opportunity. Gruffydd,

however, died in 1063, and was eventually succeeded in 1073 by Trahaern

in North Wales, and Rhys ab Owen in South Wales. The rule of these two

princes was destined to be the last period of literary inertness in the

long interval following the confinement of Wales to her inaccessible

highlands.

During these years a man was hiding in Ireland, called Gruffydd ab

Cynan, a scion of the old branch of Welsh kings. In Brittany, too, Rhys

ab Tewdwr, a claimant to the throne of South Wales, had sought the

protection of his Breton kinsmen. In 1073 Rhys ab Tewdwr obtained the

throne of Rhys ab Owen, and, after many years of hard fighting, Gruffydd

ab Cynan, with the help of Rhys ab Tewdwr, defeated Trahaern at the

battle of Myrydd Carn in 1081. On the accession of these two powerful

princes the whole country broke forth into songs of praise and

jubilation, and the long night was at an end.

It is important to remember that both Gruffydd and Rhys had a direct

personal influence on the literary revival of their times. Gruffydd ab

Cynan while in exile had seen how the Irish _Oenach_ was held, and had

seen prizes given for poetry and song. We have it on the authority of

Welsh writers that he reorganized the bards and improved the music, and

in many other ways gave a great and beneficial impulse to Welsh

literature. He may have brought over some of the later Irish legends

which have had such a powerful effect on the literature of Wales.

Geoffrey of Montmouth.

Rhys ab Tewdwr, too, brought with him from Brittany an enthusiasm for

the old Celtic tales, and perhaps some of the tales themselves which had

been by that time forgotten in Wales, tales of the Round Table, and

Arthur "begirt with British and Armoric knights," of knightly deeds and

magical metamorphoses, which were destined to influence profoundly all

the literatures of the West. We find, therefore, in this period that

poetry flourished mostly in the North under Gruffydd ab Cynan, and prose

in the south under Rhys ab Tewdwr, where the new enthusiasm for the old

Welsh legends resulted in the _History of Britain_ of Geoffrey of

Monmouth, which is an expansion of the books attributed to Gildas and

Nennius. It was written in Latin sometime before 1147, and is dedicated

to Robert, earl of Gloucester, the grandson of Rhys ab Tewdwr. In the

introductory epistle, Geoffrey states that Walter, archdeacon of Oxford,

had given him a very ancient book in the British tongue, giving an

account of the kings of Britain from Brutus to Cadwaladr, and that he

had translated it into Latin at the archdeacon's request. The book,

however, is a compilation and not a translation, but the materials were

probably drawn from British sources. In this history Geoffrey asserts

that the deeds of Arthur "were commonly related in a pleasing manner."

He was perhaps originally but the hero of some popular ballad, or of a

forgotten stanza of the _Gododin_, and the importance of his name in the

literature of the world seems to be due to an accident. We cannot,

however, in this article consider the Arthurian Legend (q.v.) as a

whole; we must be content with dealing with the most important of the

romantic tales which are contained in the _Red Book of Hergest_. They

may be divided into four classes:--

(i.) The _Mabinogi_ proper, containing (1) _Pwyll_, prince of Dyvet; (2)

_Branwen_, daughter of Llyr; (3) _Manawyddan_, son of _Llyr_; (4)

_Math_, son of Mathonwy.

(ii.) Old British tales referring to Roman times, viz. (1) _Lludd_ and

_Llevelys_; (2) The Dream of _Macsen Wledic_.

(iii.) British Arthurian tales, viz. (1) _Kilhwch_ and _Olwen_; (2) The

Dream of _Rhonabwy_.

(iv.) Later tales of chivalry, viz. (1) The Lady of the Fountain; (2)

_Peredur_, son of _Evrawc_; (3) _Geraint_, son of _Erbin_.

The Mabinogion.

The group of four romances in the first class forms a cycle of legends

and is called in the manuscript _Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi_--the Four

Branches of the Mabinogi; so it is only these four tales that can,

strictly speaking, be called _Mabinogion_. In these stories we have the

relics of the ancient Irish mythology of the _Tuatha De Danann_,

sometimes mixed with later myths. The _Caer Sidi_, where neither disease

nor old age affects any one, is the _Sid_ of Irish mythology, the

residence of the gods of the _Aes Side_. It is called in one of the old

poems the prison of _Gweir_, who no doubt represents _Gaiar_, son of

Manandan MacLir, the Atropos who cut the thread of life of Irish

mythology. _Llyr_ is the Irish sea-god Lir, and was called _Llyr

Llediaith_, or the half-tongued, implying that he spoke a language only

partially intelligible to the people of the country. _Bran_, the son of

Llyr, is the Irish Bran MacAllait, Allait being one of the names of Lir.

_Manawyddan_ is clearly the Manandan or Manannan MacLir of Irish

mythology. These tales contain other characters which may not have been

borrowed from Irish mythology but which are common to both mythologies;

for example, Rhiannon, the wife of Pwyll who possessed marvellous birds

which held warriors spell-bound for eighty years by their singing, comes

from _Annwn_, or the unseen world, and her son Pryderi gives her, on the

death of Pwyll, as a wife to Manawyddan.

Of the second class the first story relates to Lludd, son of Beli the

Great, son of Manogan, who became king after his father's death, while

his brother Llevelys becomes king of France and shows his brother how to

get rid of the three plagues which devastated Britain:--first, a strange

race, the Coranians, whose knowledge was so great that they heard

everything no matter how low soever it might be spoken; second, a shriek

which came into every house on May eve, caused by the fighting of two

dragons; and third, a great giant who carried off all the provisions of

the king's palace every day. The second tale relates how Maxen, emperor

of Rome, has a dream while hunting, in which he imagines that he visits

Britain, and in _Caer Seint_ or Carnarvon sees a beautiful damsel,

Helen, whom he ultimately finds and marries. Both tales are British in

origin and are founded on traditions referring to Roman times.

The most important of these tales are undoubtedly those contained in the

first class, and the story of _Kilhwch_ and _Olwen_. The form in which

they are found in the _Red Book of Hergest_ is, as we have already said,

comparatively speaking, modern. But it is apparent to any one reading

these tales that the writers or compilers, as Matthew Arnold has

suggested, are "pillaging an antiquity, the secret of which they do not

fully possess." The foundations of the tales are the old Celtic

traditions of the gods and the older heroes, and they clearly show

Goidelic influence both in the persons they introduce and in their

incidents. The tales would at first exist only in oral tradition, and

after the advent of Christianity the characters they contain lost their

title of divinity and became simply heroes--warriors and magicians. In

time the monks began to write these ancient traditions, embellishing

them and suppressing no doubt what they considered to be most

objectionable. These then are the tales which we now possess--the

traditional doings of the old heroes as set in order by Christian

writers.

The changes which these later copyists wrought in the substance of the

tales fall into two main divisions. In the first place, they attempted

to find some connexion between tales or cycles of tales which originally

had no connexion whatever, and were therefore forced to invent new

incidents or to introduce other incidents from the outside in order to

establish this connexion; and secondly, as in the case of the _Gododin_,

the tales were twisted and altered to support references to and

explanations of names known to the writer. So we find in the tale of

_Math vab Mathonwy_ the incident of the pigs is expanded to explain some

place-names which the writer knew. It is this also that gives a local

interest to the tales; for instance, _Dyvet_, the land of _Pwyll_, has

come to be regarded as the home of _Hud a Lledrith_, of magic and

enchantment. Some places in North Wales, especially in the vicinity of

Carnarvon, seem to be well known to the writers, and, therefore, to have

associated with them to all time the glamour of the Mabinogion.

Besides the scholastic efforts of the monks, which in course of time so

greatly changed these old legends, there was another class of men who

had no little influence on the form and matter of Welsh, and

consequently of European, romance. These were the Welsh jongleurs--the

professional story-tellers, against whom the bards proper nursed a

deadly hatred because, presumably, their tales drew larger audiences and

won greater rewards than the _awdlau_ of the poets. There is little

doubt that this order existed in Wales at a very early period, being

quite a natural evolution of the older poet who sang in comparatively

free metres of the deeds of the great dead. It is these men who invented

the term _Mabinogi_, which is supposed to mean a "tale for young

people"; but whatever the word may mean, the fact that they were the

stock-in-trade of the professional story-teller will explain a good many

of their structural peculiarities.

Thus there existed two distinct classes of tales, though it is to be

supposed that the subject matter of both was more or less common; there

are, in the first place, the "four branches" and the tales of the second

class, and, secondly, tales like those of the third class. With the

exception of the Irish influence, which we have already referred to, and

some later additions from early continental romance in the third class,

we may take it that these three classes are of purely British origin.

The _pedair cainc_ are the old tales which were first committed to

writing at an early period before the influence of the Armoric Arthur

began to be felt, that is to say, about the beginning of the reign of

Rhys ab Tewdwr in 1073. The other tales, that is those we have put in

the third class, remained for a much longer time unwritten and were not

set in writing before the early Arthur of Armoric and British romance

had been evolved. This will account for the fact that Arthur is not

mentioned in the first class of tales, and that in the third class he is

simply a British Arthur. The third class is, therefore, in a sense later

than the first and second, but its materials are as old as the oldest of

the Mabinogion proper, and they show the influence of Irish mythology to

the same extent. In the first class Irish names like _Penardim_, which

have not been assimilated, show conclusively that the tale is a written

one, while the eloquence of the descriptions in _Kilhwch ac Olwen_ seem

to point to the fact that it was up to a late period a _spoken_ tale.

Other such tales there were once, but they have now been lost.

The romances of the fourth class do not claim much notice. They are

mostly imitations or translations of Norman French originals, and they

belong to the history of European chivalry rather than to the history of

Welsh literature.

As literature the Mabinogion may rank among the world's classics. We

cannot here point out their beauties, but it will be sufficient to

notice that the unknown writer who gave them their final form was a true

artist in every sense of the word. In _Branwen verch Lyr_, for instance,

the whole setting of the story is that of a great tragedy, a tragedy

neither Hellenic nor Shakespearean, but the strong and ruthless tragedy

of the Celts,--the tragedy of nature among unnatural surroundings, the

tragedy which in our times Mr Thomas Hardy has so successfully

developed. In this tale, Branwen is introduced as the sister of

Manawyddan, the king of all Britain, and as the "fairest maid in the

world." But as the tragedy deepens we read how this woman, dowered with

beauty and goodness and nobility of lineage, is simply used as a pawn in

a political game, and the full force of the tragedy falls on her own

undeserving head. She is subjected to all kinds of indignities in her

husband's court in Ireland, but throughout all her severe trials she

preserves the cold and detached haughtiness which characterizes the

full-bosomed heroines of the northern sagas; and, in the end, when her

brother has delivered her and punished the Irish, and when she has

safely reached the shores of her own Mon, she raises her eyes and

beholds the two islands, Britain and Ireland. "'Ah God!' said she, 'is

it well that two islands have been made desolate for my sake?' And she

gave a deep groan and died." So was her tragedy consummated, and the

writer, with a superb tragic touch, mentions the very shape of the grave

in which they left her on the bank of the Alaw in Mon.

One of the earliest poets of this period whose productions we can be

certain of is Meilir, bard of Trahaern, whom Gruffydd ab Cynan defeated

at the battle of Carn, and afterwards of the conqueror Gruffydd himself.

His best piece is the _Death-bed of the Bard_, a semi-religious poem

which is distinguished by the structure of the verse, poetic feeling and

religious thought. Meilir was the head of a family of bards; his son was

Gwalchmai, one of the best Welsh poets; the latter had two sons, Einion

and Meilir, some of whose poetry has reached us. In _Gorhoffedd

Gwalchmai_, Gwalchmai's Delight, there is an appreciation of the charms

of nature, medieval parallels to which are only to be found in Ireland.

His _Arwyrain i Owain_ is an ode of considerable beauty and full of

vigour in praise of Owain Gwynedd, king of North Wales, on account of

his victory of Tal y Moelvre, part of which has been translated by Gray

under the name of "The Triumphs of Owen." Kynddelw, who lived in the

second half of the 12th century, was a contemporary of Gwalchmai, and

wrote on a great number of subjects including religious ones; indeed

some of his eulogies have a kind of religious prelude. He had a command

of words and much skill in versification, but he is pleonastic and fond

of complicated metres and of ending his lines with the same syllable.

Among the other poets of the second half of the 12th century may be

mentioned Owain Kyveiliog and Howel ab Owain Gwynedd. The first named

was prince of Powys, and was distinguished also as a soldier. The

_Hirlas_, or drinking-horn, is a long poem where the prince represents

himself as carousing in his hall after a fight; bidding his cup-bearer

fill his great drinking-horn, he orders him to present it in turn to

each of the assembled warriors. As the horn passes from hand to hand he

eulogizes each in a verse beginning _Diwallaw di venestr_, "Fill,

cup-bearer." Having thus praised the deeds of two warriors, Tudyr and

Moreiddig, he turns round to challenge them, but suddenly recollecting

that they had fallen in the fray, and listening, as it were, to their

dying groans, he bursts into a broken lamentation for their loss. The

second was also a prince; he was the eldest of the many sons of Owain

Gwynedd, and ruled for two years after his father until he fell in a

battle between himself and his step-brother Dafydd. He was a young man

of conspicuous merit, and one of the most charming poets of Wales, his

poems being especially free from the conceits, trivial commonplaces, and

complicated metres of the professional bards, while full of a gay

humour, a love of nature and a delicate appreciation of women. The Welsh

poets went on circuit like their Irish brethren, staying in each place

according as hospitality was extended to them. When departing, a bard

was expected to leave a sample of his versification behind him. In this

way many manuscripts came to be written, as we find them in different

hands. Llywarch ab Llywelyn has left us one of those departing eulogies

addressed to Rhys Gryg, prince of South Wales, which affords a

favourable specimen of his style.

13th century poets.

The following are a few of the poets of the 13th century whose poems are

still extant. Davydd Benvras was the author of a poem in praise of

Llywelyn ab Iorwerth; his works, though not so verbose or trite as

bardic poems of this class usually are, do not rise much above the

bardic level, and are full of alliteration. Elidir Sais was, as his name

implies, able to speak the English language, and wrote chiefly religious

poetry. Einiawn ab Gwgawn is the author of an extant address to Llywelyn

ab Iorwerth of considerable merit. Phylip Brydydd, or Philip the poet,

was household bard to Rhys Gryg (Rhys the hoarse), lord of South Wales.

One of his pieces, an apology to Rhys Gryg, is a striking example of the

fulsome epithets a household bard was expected to bestow upon his

patron, and of the privileged domesticity in which the bards lived,

which, as in Ireland, must have been fatal to genius. Prydydd Bychan,

the Little Poet, was a South Wales bard whose extant work consists of

short poems all addressed to his own princes. The chief feature of his

_Englynion_ is the use of a kind of assonance in which in some cases

the final vowels agreed alternately in each quatrain, and in others each

line ended in a different vowel, in both cases with alliteration and

consonance of final consonants or full rhyme. Llygad Gwr is known by an

ode in five parts to Llywelyn ab Gruffydd, written about the year 1270,

which is a good type of the conventional flattery of a family bard.

Howel Voel, who was of Irish extraction, possessed some poetical merit;

his remonstrance to Llywelyn against the imprisonment of his brother

Owain is a pleasing variety upon the conventional eulogy. It has many

lines beginning with the same word, e.g. _gwr_, man. The poems of

Bleddyn Vardd, or Bleddyn the Bard, which have come down to us are all

short eulogies and elegies. One of the latter on Llywelyn ab Gruffydd is

a good example of the elaborate and artificial nature of Welsh

versification.

The most illustrious name among the poets of this century is Gruffydd ab

yr Ynad Coch, "Gruffydd, son of the Red Justice," who wrote many

religious poems of great merit. His greatest work, however, is the elegy

to Llywelyn ab Gruffydd, the last prince of Wales. It is easily first

among all the elegies written in the Welsh language. We do not find in

it that artficial grief which is too evident in the _Marwnadau_ of the

Welsh poets; it re-echoes an intense personal grief, and throughout the

whole piece the poet feels that he stands at the end of all things,--the

end of his own ideals, the extinction of all Cymric hopes. So poignant

is his grief, and in so universal a manner does the catastrophe of

Llywelyn's death present itself to him, that he imagines that all the

natural features of the Welsh fatherland know that the last great

Welshman is dead; the winds howl over the mountains, the rain-clouds

gather thick, the waves rage with grief against the Welsh coasts, and

far away on the hills the giant oak-trees beat against each other in the

fury of their passion. Sadly, in this manner, closes the second period

of Welsh literature.

4. _The Golden Age of the Cywydd, 1340-1440._--Just as, after the loss

of the North, the Welsh muse was hushed, so after the final subjugation

of Wales in 1282, hardly a note was heard for many a long year. The

ancient patrons of literature were dead, and the country had not yet

settled down to the steady rule of England. Indeed, the conquest of

Wales effectively put an end to the older Welsh poetry of that type

which we noticed in the last period. These older bards were without

exception subjects of the princes of North Wales, where the old heroic

poetry was still popular, and when the power of these princes came to an

end the old poetry too ceased. When the Welsh muse emerges again from

the darkness of this interval she is no longer of the North; the new

poets are drawn from the Welshmen of the South, a land which had

practically ceased to be a part of an independent Wales shortly after

the Norman conquest of England. We find, too, that the poetry which

poured forth from the Welsh bards of the south is of an altogether

different type, it is modern in all its essentials, in diction, in

language, and, comparatively speaking, in sentiment. Indeed, there is an

infinitely greater difference between Dafydd ab Gwilym and Gruffydd ab

yr Ynad Coch than there is between him and any poet writing in the

alliterative metres in the 19th century. So that we must suppose that at

the time when the poets of North Wales still sang of war and

mead-drinking in a style and diction that was an inheritance from the

times of the _Gododin_, the poets of the South, unharassed by wars, were

developing a new poetry of their own, a poetry that had relinquished for

ever the Old Welsh models and was at last in line with the great

poetical movements of Europe. And, judging from the fact that the

earliest of these poets whose works are accessible to us are in the full

zenith of their poetical development, we must believe that their work is

the consummation of a period, that is to say, that they must have had a

long line of predecessors whose works were lost during the period

intervening between the loss of Welsh independence and the rise of

Dafydd ab Gwilym. These men wrote, as we have already said, in South

Wales, a country which was then under the rule of the Norman lords, who,

with the lapse of years and the rise of new systems, were fast becoming

Welsh. It is no wonder, then, that the poets who wrote under their

patronage should show unmistakable traces of Norman influence. Most of

the barons still spoke French, and it was only natural that they should

be well versed in French poetry. The poets followed the lead of their

patrons, and their work was modelled to a very great extent on French

and Provencal poetry. Nor does this account altogether for the wonderful

similarity between Welsh _cywyddau_ and other poems of this period and

the French lays; we must remember that the Welsh poets lived under

conditions similar to those under which the troubadours and the

trouveres lived, and it was natural that the same environments should

produce the same kind of work. The Provencal _alba_ and the French

_aube_, the _serenade_ and other forms, became well known in South Wales

and were of course read by the Welsh poets. We find continual references

in the poets to "books of love" under the name of _llyfr Ofydd_, or the

"book of Ovid," and a reference in one of Dafydd ab Gwilym's poems shows

conclusively that one particular _llyfr Ofydd_ was a work of the French

poet Chrestien de Troyes. Indeed, one of the commonest names among the

poets of this period--the _llatai_,[3] or love-messenger--may be a

Romance word borrowed through the Norman-French from the Italian

_Galeotto_, originally the name of the book of the loves of Galahaad,

but afterwards the ordinary word for a go-between. This book of

Galeotto, by the way, was the book which taught Paolo and Francesca da

Rimini, in Dante's _Divina Commedia_, the tragic secret of love.

Another movement also was favourable to the rise of the new Welsh

poetry. The iron hand of the church, which had been the censor of poetry

for so many centuries, was slowly relaxing its grasp, and the men who a

few years before would have sung religious hymns to the Virgin, now laid

their tributes at the feet of divine womanhood as they saw it in the

Welsh maidens and matrons living among them. The pale queen of heaven no

longer held hearts captive; they had transferred their allegiance to the

"brow that was as the snow of yesternight," and "the cheeks that were

like the passion-flower." The Iolo MSS. assert that some time between

January 1327 and November 1330 there were held, under the patronage of

Ivor Hael, Dafydd ab Gwilym's patron, and others, the three

_Eisteddfodau Dadeni_, or the Eisteddfods of the Revival of the Muse, to

reorganize the bards, and to set in order all matters pertaining to

Welsh poetry. The most important bards who are reported as present at

some or all of these meetings were Dafydd ab Gwilym, Sion Cent, Rhys

Goch of Eryri, and Iolo Goch. It is now, however, generally agreed that

this account is a fabrication and that the date of all the poets is

later.

Dafydd ab Gwilym.

Dafydd ab Gwilym is certainly the most distinguished of all the Welsh

poets, and were it not for the absolute impossibility of adequately

translating his _cywyddau_ he would rank amongst the greatest poets of

medieval times. By far the greater part of his poetry is written in the

metre called _cywydd_, with heptasyllabic lines rhyming in couplets. It

was he who imparted so much lustre to this metre that it became the

vehicle of all the most important poetry from his time to the 19th

century, and he is generally referred to by his contemporaries as the

special poet of the cywydd--_Dafydd gywydd gwin_, "Dafydd of the

wine-sweet cywydd." Most of his poems deal with love in the spirit of

the medieval writers of France and of Provence, but with this very

important difference, that the French writers must base their reputation

on their treatment of love as a theme, whereas Dafydd's claim to fame is

based on his treatment of nature and of out-door life. In many cases,

indeed, love is only a conventional peg whereon he may hang his

observations on nature, and Welsh literature may claim the distinction

of having had its Wordsworth in the 14th century. His treatment of

nature is not merely realistic and objective, it has a certain quaint

and elusive symbolism and a subjectiveness which come as a revelation to

those who are acquainted with the medieval poetry of other nations. Many

of the poems attributed to him are undoubtedly the work of later hands,

but even after making all possible deductions, there is still an

infinite variety among what remains, ranging as his poems do from a

sturdy denunciation of monkish fraudulence to the most delicate and

pathetic recollections of departed joys. He has, besides, considerable

importance as a teacher, as when, for instance, he invites the nun "to

leave her watercress and paternosters of Romish monks," and to come with

him "to the cathedral of the birch to listen to the cuckoo's sermons,"

for, "were it not an equally worthy deed to save his (Dafydd's) soul in

the birch-grove as to do so by following the ritual of Rome and St James

of Compostella"? Even in his old age, when he is beginning to repent of

his rash and merry youth, nature has not deserted him,--the very tree

under which in the old days he used to meet his sweetheart has become

bent and withered in sympathy with him. Though Dafydd yields not the

palm to any poet of his class throughout the world, and though his

influence is still a potent factor in the literature of Wales, we are

certain of hardly a single fact about his life. He flourished between

1340 and 1390. His works were published in London in 1789. This edition

was reprinted by Ffoulkes of Liverpool in 1870. See L.C. Stern,

_Zeitschr. f. celt. Phil._ vol. vii.

Sion Cent was chaplain to the Scudamores of Kentchurch in Herefordshire,

and though, therefore, in orders, was a most bitter opponent of the

pretentious and the evil life of the monks of his time. All his writings

show signs of the influence of the moralists of the middle ages, and

treat of religious or of moral subjects. His poetry is strong and

austere, interfused here and there with the most biting satire. He died

about 1400. Like many of his contemporaries, Dunbar, Villon, Menot and

Manrique, his dominant note is that of sadness and regret.

Rhys Goch Eryri had a sprightly muse which deals with fanciful subjects.

His themes are often similar to those of Dafydd ab Gwilym, but whereas

the subject of Dafydd's muse was nature and his treatment universal,

Rhys Goch's are simply natural objects which he treats in a vigorous but

narrow and cold manner.

Iolo Goch, that is, Iorwerth the Red, deserves a special mention as the

poet who voiced the aspirations of a new Wales when Owen Glyndwr began

to rise into power, and it is to one of his poems that we owe a most

minute description of Sycharth, Owen Glyndwr's home. His poetry is

slightly more archaic in diction than that of his contemporaries, as his

subject--war and the glory of Welsh heroes--belonged more properly to

the age before his own. In one very striking _cywydd_ composed after

Glyndwr's downfall, he calls upon this hero to come again and claim his

own, and addresses himself fancifully to all the countries of the world

where his hero may be in hiding. He died after 1405, and, if the dates

generally given for his birth be even approximately correct, he must

have lived to a prodigious age (cf. _Gweithiau Iolo Goch_, by Charles

Ashton, London, 1896).

Rhys Goch ap Rhiccert claims to be named with Dafydd ab Gwilym as a

writer of lyrics in praise of beautiful women. He has one advantage,

however, over his more famous contemporary in the variety of his metres.

The musical lilt and the delicate workmanship of his poems, with their

recurring refrain, give him a unique position among his medieval

contemporaries as the first purely lyrical poet. His _floreat_ is

probably a little later than that of Dafydd ab Gwilym, for we must not

be misled by the late orthography of his poems.

Dafydd Nanmor is chiefly famous for two exquisite cywyddau, _Cywydd

Marwnad Merch_, or Elegy of a Maiden, and _Cywydd i wallt Llio_, or

Cywydd to Llio's Hair. In both these poems he shows elegance rather than

depth, and a fancy as bold as that of his great master Dafydd. In the

first of these cywyddau his grief is so great that he wishes that he

were but the shroud around his dead sweetheart, and, in the second, Llio

Rhydderch's golden hair over her white brow is compared to the

refulgence of lightning over the fine snow. He is supposed to be a

younger contemporary of Rhys Goch Eryri, but there are many facts to

warrant a supposition that he lived much later, even as late as 1490.

Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen deserves to be mentioned as the author of

the famous _Marwnad Lleucu Llwyd_, an elegy which is far more convincing

in its sincerity than Dafydd Nanmor's _cywydd_. Few of his compositions

are extant, but the one already mentioned is sufficient to place him in

the first rank of the poets of the period. He lived approximately from

1330 to 1390.

The other poets of this period who deserve some mention are Dafydd Ddu o

Hiraddug, who wrote poems on religious subjects, and who is supposed to

have translated part of the _Officium Beatae Mariae_ into Welsh;

Gruffydd Grug, between whom and Dafydd ab Gwilym a most fierce poetic

quarrel raged, but who is the author of a beautiful elegy on his

opponent; Gruffydd Llwyd ab Dafydd, who was the poet of Owen Glyndwr,

and whose cywydd in praise of his patron is one of the best of that

type; Hywel Swrdwal and Gwilym ab Ieuan Hen.

Eisteddfod of 1451.

5. _The Silver Age of the Cywydd, 1440-1550._--The insurrection of Owen

Glyndwr, though originally the result of a private quarrel, was the

general revolt of a nation against the conquerors whom it hated, and the

English king knew well enough that the discontent with his rule was

fanned by the older and more national Welsh institutions, and by none

more than by the system of wandering bards. The conditions which had

given rise to this system were fast dying out, but the noblemen, who

fortunately were still intensely Welsh, were loth to give up their

family bards, and the bards themselves, never a too industrious class,

were too glad of their freedom and easy life to turn to more profitable

work. We find, therefore, that a law was passed in 1403, the fourth year

of Henry IV.'s reign, prohibiting bards "and other vagrants" from

exercising their profession in Gwynedd or North Wales. This law,

however, like its predecessor in the reign of Edward I., failed utterly

in its purpose. By prohibiting the Welsh noblemen from giving their

patronage to the bards, and, therefore, from distinguishing between the

real bards and the mendicant rhymesters, this law took away the only

safeguard against the latter class, with the result that by about 1450

they had become a pest to the country. About that time there flourished

a poet called Llawdden, who, noticing the very unsatisfactory state of

poetry in Wales, induced his kinsman, Gruffydd ab Nicolas, a nobleman

living in Y Drenewydd (Newtown), to petition Henry VI. for permission to

hold an eisteddfod similar in purpose to the three _Eisteddfodau Dadeni_

of the last period. This famous eisteddfod was held at Caerfyrddin

(Carmarthen) in 1451, and shortly before the actual eisteddfod was held

a "statute" was drawn up under the direction of Llawdden, regulating the

different orders of bards and musicians and setting in order the

_cynghaneddion a mesurau_, the different kinds of alliterative verse to

be presented to the assembled bards at the meeting. Among those present

at that eisteddfod the most distinguished was Dafydd ab Edmwnd, who then

made famous the dictum that the purpose of an eisteddfod was "to bring

to mind the past, to consider the present, and to deliberate about the

future." He, therefore, proposed emendations in "the rules of Welsh

verse," making them more strict, so as to keep the unlearned rhymesters

from the privileged bardic class. This measure had a most important

effect on Welsh literature. It effectively put an end to the charming

spontaneity which distinguishes the poetry of Dafydd ab Gwilym and his

contemporaries, and by introducing an arbitrary set of rules gave an

artificial tone to almost all the poetry of the next two hundred years.

It had, indeed, exactly the same retarding effect on Welsh poetry as the

Unities had on the French drama. So that, whereas the poems of Dafydd ab

Gwilym, though written in the difficult alliterative metres, are nearly

all light and have a sweet lyrical re-echo, the poetry of Dafydd ab

Edmwnd and his successors is often heavy and nearly always artificial.

After making, however, all these deductions, it is a debatable point

whether the hard and fast rules which now regulated Welsh poetry did not

eventually justify their existence. They have helped, by inciting to

carefulness, to keep the idiom and the language pure and undefiled, and

to this day style in Welsh poetry is not necessarily a striving after

the uncommon as it too often is in English.

There are some poets included in this period who belong more properly to

the last, but even these show signs of the attempt at correctness and

distinction which was supplanting the old simplicity. Ieuan ap Rhydderch

ab Ieuan Llwyd, who is supposed to be a brother of the Llio Rhydderch of

Dafydd Nanmor's poem, is the author of some cywyddau and other poems

addressed to the Virgin, the structure of which shows great skill

accompanied by force and clearness. He flourished about 1425. Dafydd ab

Meredydd ap Tudur, who flourished about 1420, is the author of a cywydd

"to Our Saviour." About the same time lived Rhys Nanmor, Ieuan Gethin ab

Ieuan, and Ieuan Llwyd ab Gwilym. Among the earliest of the poets who

belong properly to this period is Meredydd ap Rhys, whose cywyddau are a

fair specimen of the generality of poems written in these years. Among

the most famous of his works is a cywydd "begging for a fishing-net,"

and another giving thanks for the same. We shall find that many of his

contemporaries were able to write long and interesting poems on such

seemingly dry and uninteresting subjects, but it is vain to look for

anything beyond good verse in such compositions. Of poetry, as generally

understood, there is none.