“When the literary revival of this period reached Wales, its people,” says Mr. Stephens in the Literature of the Kymri, “were better prepared than their neighbours for intellectual effort.” “An order of bards existed, numerous and well disciplined; a language in all its fullness and richness was in use among all classes of people, and as a necessary consequence their literature was superior, more copious, and richer than that of any contemporaneous nation. The fabulous literature so prized by others was in no great repute, but gave way to the public preference for the more laboured and artistic productions of the bards.”
Several Welsh Princes of commanding character and unusual ability came to the front in the long struggle with the Norman power, and were no unworthy sources of bardic inspiration. Many of them aspired themselves to literary as well as martial fame, of whom Owain Cyfeiliog, Prince of Upper Powys, was the most notable. Poetry was in high repute. Eisteddfodau were held periodically with much ceremony and splendour, and were sometimes advertised a year in advance, not only throughout Wales but in Ireland and other portions of the British Islands. Not poetry alone but literature generally and music, of course, both vocal and instrumental, were subjects of competition, while Rhys ap Tudor, a long-lived and distinguished Prince of South Wales, revived, after a sojourn in Brittany, the system of the Round Table. To Englishmen the long list of bards who adorned the period between the Norman arrival and Glyndwr’s rising would be mere names, but even to those who may only read the works of the most notable in translations, they are of great interest if only as a reflection of life and thought at a time when England and English were still almost silent.
Gwalchmai, the son of a distinguished father, Meilir, already mentioned, was among the first of the revived school, whose work is regarded by Celtic scholars as of the first quality. His love of nature is prominent in many of the poems he has left:
“At the break of day, and at evening’s close,
I love the sweet musicians who so fondly dwell
In dear, plaintive murmurs, and the accents of woe;
I love the birds and their sweet voices
In the soothing lays of the wood.”
Owain Gwynedd was the hero-king of Gwalchmai’s day. His repulse of an attack made by Henry the Second’s fleet under the command of an unpatriotic Prince of Powys in Anglesey is the subject of the bard’s chief heroic poem:
“Now thickens still the frantic war,
The flashing death-strokes gleam afar,
Spear rings on spear, flight urges flight,
And drowning victims plunge to-night
Till Menai’s over-burthened tide,
Wide-blushing with the streaming gore,
And choked with carnage, ebbs no more;
While mail-clad warriors on her side
In anguish drag their deep-gash’d wounds along,
And ’fore the King’s Red chiefs are heap’d the mangled throng.”
Owain Cyfeiliog, a Prince of Powys in the end of the twelfth century, though a noted warrior, is a leading instance of a royal bard. His chief poem, The Hirlâs Horn (drinking-cup), is famous wherever Welsh is spoken:
“This horn we dedicate to joy;
Then fill the Hirlâs horn, my boy,
That shineth like the sea,
Whose azure handles tipped with gold
Invite the grasp of Britons bold,
The sons of liberty.”
This is one of the longest poems of the twelfth century. The scene is the night after a battle, and the Prince with his warriors gathered round him in the banqueting-hall sends the brimming cup to each of his chieftains successively and enumerates their respective deeds. A leading incident in the poem is when Owen, having eulogised the prowess of two favourite warriors in glowing terms, turns to their accustomed seats, and, finding them vacant, suddenly recalls the fact that they had fallen in the battle of the morning:
“Ha! the cry of death—And do I miss them!
O Christ! how I mourn their catastrophe!
O lost Moreiddig—How greatly shall I need thee!”