* * * * *
What luxury doth this hall adorn,
Showing of cost a sovereign scorn!
His ale from Shrewsbury town he brings;
His usquebaugh is drink for kings.
Bragget he keeps, bread white of look,
And, bless the mark, a bustling cook.
His mansion is the minstrels’ home,
You’ll find them there whene’er you come.
Of all her sex his wife’s the best,
The household through her care is blest;
She’s scion of a knightly tree,
She’s dignified, she’s kind and free.
His bairns approach me, pair by pair,
O what a nest of chieftains fair!
Here difficult it is to catch
A sight of either bolt or latch;
The porter’s place here none will fill;
Here largess shall be lavish’d still,
And ne’er shall thirst or hunger rude
In Sycharth venture to intrude.’
Iolo composed this ode two years before the great Welsh insurrection, when he was more than a hundred years old. To his own great grief he survived his patron, and all hopes of Welsh independence. An englyn, which he composed a few days before his death, commemorates the year of the rising of Glendower, and also the year to which the chieftain lived:—
‘One thousand four hundred, no less and no more,
Was the date of the rising of Owen Glendower;
Till fifteen were added with courage ne’er cold
Liv’d Owen, though latterly Owen was old.’
Glendower died at the age of sixty-seven: Iolo, when he called him old, was one hundred and eighteen.
Gwilym ap Ieuan Hen flourished about 1450. He was bard to Griffith ap Nicholas, chieftain of Dinefor, in whose praise he wrote an ode, commencing with lines to the following effect:—
‘Griffith ap Nicholas! who like thee
For wealth and power and majesty?
Which most abound—I cannot say—
On either side of Towey gay,
From hence to where it meets the brine,
Trees or stately towers of thine?’
Griffith ap Nicholas was a powerful chieftain of South Wales, something of a poet and a great patron of bards. Seeing with regret that there was much dissension amongst the bardic order, and that the rules of bardism were nearly forgotten, he held a bardic congress at Carmarthen, with the view of reviving bardic enthusiasm and re-establishing bardic discipline. The result of this meeting—the only one of the kind which had been held in Wales since the days of the Welsh princes—to a certain extent corresponded with his wish. In the wars of the Roses he sided with York, chiefly out of hatred to Jasper Earl of Pembroke, half-brother of Henry VI. He was mortally wounded at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, which was gained for Edward IV. by a desperate charge made by Griffith and his Welshmen at Pembroke’s Banner, when the rest of the Yorkists were wavering. His last words were: ‘Welcome death! since honour and victorie makes for us!’
Dafydd ab Edmund was born at Pwll Gwepra, in the parish of Hanmer, in Flintshire. He was the most skilful versifier of his time. He attended the Eisteddfod, or congress, at Carmarthen, held under the auspices of Griffith ap Nicholas, and not only carried off the prize, but induced the congress to sanction certain alterations in the poetical canons of Gruffudd ab Cynan, which he had very much at heart. There is a tradition that Griffith ap Nicholas commenced the business of the congress by the following question: ‘What is the cause, nature, and end of an Eisteddfod?’ No one appearing ready with an answer, Griffith said: ‘Let the little man in the grey coat answer;’ whereupon Dafydd made the following reply: ‘To remember what has been—to think of what is—and to judge about what shall be.’