They omit no part of natural rhetoric in the management of civil actions, in quickness of invention, disposition, refutation, and confirmation. In their rhymed songs and set speeches they are so subtle and ingenious, that they produce, in their native tongue, ornaments of wonderful and exquisite invention both in the words and sentences. Hence arise those poets whom they call Bards, of whom you will find many in this nation, endowed with the above faculty, according to the poet’s observation:
“Plurima concreti fuderunt carmina Bardi.”
But they make use of alliteration (anominatione) in preference to all other ornaments of rhetoric, and that particular kind which joins by consonancy the first letters or syllables of words. So much do the English and Welsh nations employ this ornament of words in all exquisite composition, that no sentence is esteemed to be elegantly spoken, no oration to be otherwise than uncouth and unrefined, unless it be fully polished with the file of this figure. Thus in the British tongue:
“Digawn Duw da i unic.”
“Wrth bob crybwyll rhaïd pwyll parawd.” [173]
“God is together gammen and wisedom.”
The same ornament of speech is also frequent in the Latin language. Virgil says,
“Tales casus Cassandra canebat.”
And again, in his address to Augustus,
“Dum dubitet natura marem, faceretve puellam,
Natus es, o pulcher, pene puella, puer.”