“Gwarchan Cynvelyn ar Ododin.” [0d]
According to the tenor of the Cynvelyn statement, every stanza would bring before us a fresh hero. This principle we have not overlooked in the discrimination and arrangements of proper names, though owing to evident omissions and interpolations, an irregularity in this respect occasionally and of necessity occurs.
Aneurin, like a true poet of nature, abstains from all artful introduction or invocation, and launches at once into his subject. His eye follows the gorgeously and distinctively armed chiefs, as they move at the head of their respective companies, and perform deeds of valour on the bloody field. He delights to enhance by contrast their domestic and warlike habits, and frequently recurs to the pang of sorrow, which the absence of the warriors must have caused to their friends and relatives at home, and reflects with much genuine feeling upon the disastrous consequences, that the loss of the battle would entail upon these and their dear native land. And though he sets forth his subject in the ornamental language of poetry, yet he is careful not to transgress the bounds of truth. This is strikingly instanced in the manner in which he names no less than four witnesses as vouchers for the correctness of his description of Caradawg. Herein he produces one of the “three agreements that ought to be in a song,” viz. an agreement “between truth and the marvellous.” [0e]
He also gives “relish to his song,” [0f] by adopting “a diversity of structure in the metre;” for the lyric comes in occasionally to relieve the solemnity of the heroic, whilst at the same time the latter is frequently capable of being divided into a shorter verse, a plan which has been observed in one of the MSS. used on the present occasion; e. g. the twelfth stanza is thus arranged,—
Gwyr a aeth Gattraeth gan ddydd
Neus goreu } gywilydd
O gadeu }
Wy gwnaethant } gelorwydd
Yn geugant }
A llafn aur llawn anawdd ym bedydd
Goreu yw hyn cyn cystlwn carennydd
Ennaint creu } oe henydd
Ac angeu }
Rhag byddin } pan fu ddydd
Wawdodyn }
Neus goreu dan bwylliad neirthiad gwychydd.
But though Aneurin survived the battle of Cattraeth to celebrate the memory of his less fortunate countrymen in this noble composition, he also ultimately met with a violent death. The Triads relate that he was killed by the blow of an axe, inflicted upon his head by Eiddin son of Einigan, which event was in consequence branded as one of “the three accursed deeds of the Isle of Britain.” [0g]
His memory, however, lived in the Gododin, and the estimation in which the poem was held by his successors has earned for him the title of “medeyrn beirdd,” the king of Bards. Davydd Benvras 1190–1240, prays for that genius which would enable him
“To sing praises as Aneurin of yore,
The day he sang the Gododin.” [0h]
Risserdyn 1290–1340 in an Ode to Hywel ab Gruffydd speaks of
“A tongue with the eloquence of Aneurin of splendid song.” [0i]