EARLY CYMRIC

This strange fragment is of unknown antiquity, and may well be, as affirmed, of as remote a date as the 6th or even 5th century. It is from that remarkable depository of early Cymric lore, The Black Book of Caermarthen (1154-1189).

LLYWARC’H HEN.
[PAGE 68]

The “Gorwynion” of Llywarc’h Hên, “Prince of the Cambrian Britons” (if it is really the work of that poet), is one of the most famous productions of early Cymric literature. Llywarc’h Hên’s floreat is by some authorities placed in the middle of the 7th century, by others so early as the beginning of the 6th, and by others as really extending from early in the 6th till the middle of the 7th: the drift of evidence indicates the remoter date as the more probable. The translation here given was made about a hundred years ago by William Owen. It is not easy to find an English equivalent for “Gorwynion,” a plural word which signifies objects that have a very bright whiteness or glare. Perhaps the word glitterings might serve, though, as has been suggested, the nearest term would be Coruscants. The last line of these verses generally contains some moral maxim, unconnected with the preceding lines, except in the metre. It is said that the custom arose through the desire of the bards to assist the memory in the conveyance of instruction by oral means. In the translation the rhymed or assonantal unity of the tercets is lost, with the result that the third-line maxim generally comes in with almost ludicrous inappositeness. According to the Triads of the Isle of Britain, Llywarc’h Hên passed his younger days at the Court of Arthur. In one triad he is alluded to as one of the three free guests at the Arthurian Court; in another, as one of the three counselling warriors. According to tradition, the bones of this princely bard lie beneath the Church of Llanvor, where, as averred, he was interred at the patriarchal age of 150 years. He was not one of the Sacred Bards, because of his military profession as a prince and knight; for these might not carry arms, and in their presence a naked sword even might not be held. The Beirdd were not poets and sages only, but were accounted and accepted as missioners of peace.

LLYWARC’H HEN.
[PAGE 71]

This is another series of “Gorwynion,” attributed to Llywarc’h Hên by Mr Skene, who has translated it from The Red Book of Hergest (MS. compiled in 14th and 15th centuries). The English rendering of The Red Book was issued through Messrs Edmonston & Douglas of Edinburgh in 1868.

TALIESIN.
[PAGE 73]

“Song to the Wind” (Vide Introduction). “The Song about the Wind,” of which only a section is given here, will be found in full in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, Vol. I., page 535, and is the most famous poem by the most famous of Cymric bards. It was first translated, some forty-five years ago, by Lady Charlotte Guest, whose Englished renderings of the “Mabinogion” attracted the attention of scholars throughout the whole Western world. (Longmans, 1849 and later.) Emerson delighted in the “Song,” and declared it to be one of the finest pieces of its kind extant in any literature. See also the Myvyrian Archaiology.

ANEURIN.
[PAGE 75]

Aneurin was one of the famous warrior bards of ancient Wales. His birth is noted as Circa 500 A.D., and in any case he flourished during the first half of the 6th century. Aneurin—like Taliesin, called “the monarch of the bards”—was a Briton of Manau Gododin, a principality or province of Cymric Scotland, now Mid-Lothian and Linlithgowshire. Manau Gododin stretched from the Carron of to-day (the Carun of Ossian), some miles to the north-west of Falkirk to the river Esk, that now divides Mid-Lothian and East Lothian. Manau Gododin was then much more Celtic (Pictish) than Gododin. “Breatan Cymru” (i.e. the country of the Welsh Britons) then comprised the larger part of southern Scotland—that is, from the north end of Loch Lomond, and from the upper reaches of the Gwruid (the Forth), to the Mull of Galloway on the south-west; eastward to a line drawn from the western Lammermuirs, by Melrose, Kelso, and Jedburgh, and so down by the Cheviots to Hexham, and thence southwesterly by Cumberland. The exception was the Pictish or Celtic province of Galloway—bounded on the west by Carrawg (that part of Ayrshire known as Carrick); on the north by Coel (Kyle); on the east by a line drawn from Sanquhar through Nithsdale and by Dumfries to Locharmoss and the Solway; on the south-west, by Novant (Mull of Galloway); and on the south by the Solway Firth.

Aneurin was a contemporary of the princely poet, Llywarc’h Hên. He was called Aneurin y Coed Awr ap Caw o Gwm Cawlwyd—or, again, Aneurin Gwadrydd—both designations indicative of his greatness. It has been maintained that Aneurin is identical with the celebrated Gildas, “the author of the Latin epistle which Bede so blindly copied,” both Aneurin and Gildas having been sons of Caw. He is supposed to be alluded to as the seventh bard, in a curious fragment preserved in the Myvyrian Archaiology (Vol. III.), which I excerpt here.

“The seven questions put by Catwg the Wise, to the Seven Wise Men of the College of Llanvuthan, and the answers of these men:

1. “What is the greatest wisdom of man?” “To be able to do evil and not to do it,” answered St Tedio.

2. “What is the highest goodness of man?” “Justice,” answered Tahaiarn.

3. “What is the worst principle of man?” “Falsehood,” answered Taliesin, chief of Bards.

4. “What is the noblest action of man?” “Correctness,” answered Cynan, son of Clydno Eddin.

5. “What is the greatest folly of man?” “To desire a common evil, which he cannot do,” answered Ystyvan, the Bard of Teilo.

6. “Who is the poorest man?” “He who is not contented with his own property,” answered Arawn, son of Cynvarch.

7. “Who is the richest man?” “He who does not covet anything belonging to others,” answered Gildas of Coed Awr.

“The Ode to the Months” is given in the translation of William Probert (1820), according to whom the Ode contains moral maxims and observations which were known and repeated long before Aneurin lived, and were put into verse by him as an aid to the memory: “valuable, because they show the modes of thinking and expression which the primitive inhabitants of Britain used nearly 2000 years ago.”

DAFYDD AP GWILYM.
[PAGE 78]

(Fl. 14th century.) In his love of Nature, and in the richness of his poetic imagination (as well, so say those who can read Welsh fluently, as in his poetry), Dafydd ap Gwilym is the Keats of Wales. The romance of his life and wild-wood experiences has yet to be written: and we still await an adequate translator—though, to judge from some recent renderings by Mr Ernest Rhys, in an interesting short study of Dafydd, recently published in The Chap Book (Stone & Kimball, Chicago) we may not have to wait much longer. He was a love-child: of noble parentage, though born under a hedge at Llandaff. His mother wedded after his birth; but he remained the “wilding” throughout his life. He became the favourite of Ivor Hael of Emlyn, with whose daughter Morvydd he fell in love. He wooed and won her “under the greenwood tree,” but only to lose her shortly afterward, when she was forcibly married to a man called Bwa Bach. Dafydd stole her from her legitimate husband, but was captured and imprisoned. His ultimate release was due to the payment of the imposed fine, the sum having been got together by the men of Glamorgan. His most ardent love-poetry is addressed to this fair Morvydd.

RHYS GOCH OF ERYRI.
[PAGE 82]

There are two famous poets of the name of Rhys Goch; probably both belong to the 14th century (and Wilkins certainly disputes the claim of Rhys Goch ap Rhiccart to be of the 12th century). This Ode is an illustration of the sound answering the sense. Rhys was in love with the fair Gwen of Dol, and sent a peacock to her. His rival, also a bard, composed a poem to the Fox, beseeching it to kill his rival’s present, and, singularly enough, the bird was destroyed by a fox, and the rival bard was happy. Stung by this misadventure, Rhys composed the above, which, in the original, so teems with gutturals that Sion Tudor called it the “Shibboleth of Sobriety, because no man, when drunk, could possibly pronounce it.”

RHYS GOCH AP RHICCART.
[PAGE 83]

See foregoing Note.