Authorities.—H. Jenner, “The Manx Language: its Grammar, Literature and Present State,”Transactions of the London Philological Society(1875), pp. 172 ff.;Publications of the Manx Society, vols. xvi., xx., xxi.; L.C. Stern,Die Kultur d. Gegenwart, i. xi. 1, pp. 110-11.
Authorities.—H. Jenner, “The Manx Language: its Grammar, Literature and Present State,”Transactions of the London Philological Society(1875), pp. 172 ff.;Publications of the Manx Society, vols. xvi., xx., xxi.; L.C. Stern,Die Kultur d. Gegenwart, i. xi. 1, pp. 110-11.
IV. Welsh Literature.—The oldest documents consist of glosses of the 9th and 10th centuries found in four MSS.—Oxoniensis prior and posterior, the Cambridge Juvencus and Martianus Capella. These glosses were publishedEarly MSS.by J. Loth in hisVocabulaire vieux-breton(1884), but their value is entirely philological. In addition, we possess two short verses, written in Irish characters, preserved in the Juvencus Manuscript in the University Library at Cambridge (printed in Skene’sFour Ancient Books of Wales). This manuscript is a versification of the Gospels dating from the 9th century. The value of these two verses is threefold: they give us, in the first place, a specimen of the Welsh language at a time when the modern laws of euphony were in a comparatively elementary stage; secondly, they are of the utmost importance to the historian tracing the development of Welsh versification, and, in future research, they must be taken into account by the historian of modern metres in other languages; and, thirdly, the similarity of their form and diction to other verses, attributed to Llywarch Hen, and preserved in a much later orthography, will be a serious consideration to the higher critic in Welsh literature.
All the prose and verse of the succeeding centuries, that is to say from the 10th to the beginning of the 14th, is preserved in four important manuscripts, written during the latter half of the period. The first of these manuscripts is“Black Book of Carmarthen.”theBlack Book of Carmarthen, a small quarto vellum manuscript of fifty leaves, written in Gothic letters by various hands during the reign of Henry II. (published in facsimile by Gwenogvryn Evans, Oxford, 1907). This book belonged originally to the priory of Black Canons at Carmarthen, from whom it passed to the church of St David; at the suppression of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. it was presented by the treasurer of that church to Sir John Price, one of the king’s commissioners, and from him it passed eventually into the hands of Sir Robert Vaughan, the owner of the famous“Book of Aneirin.”Hengwrt collection. It is now among the Peniarth Manuscripts, undoubtedly the most valuable collection of Welsh manuscripts in the United Kingdom. The second manuscript is theBook of Aneirin, a small quarto manuscript of nineteen leaves of vellum, written about 1250. It was at one time in the possession of Sir Thomas“Book of Taliessin.”Phillips of Middlehill, and now belongs to the free library of the city of Cardiff. The third is theBook of Taliessin, in the Hengwrt and subsequently in the Peniarth collection. It is a small quarto manuscript containing thirty-eight leaves, written in Gothic letters, about the early part of the 14th century. The fourth manuscript, and in some respects the most important, is theRed Book“Red Book of Hergest.”of Hergest, so called from Hergest Court, one of the seats of the Vaughans. It is a folio volume of 360 leaves written by different hands between the beginning of the 14th and the middle of the 15th century. This manuscript, which is the most extensive compilation of the medieval prose and verse of Wales, is now in the possession of Jesus College, Oxford, and is kept in the Bodleian Library of that university. The main body of the poems contained in these four MSS. was printed by W. F. Skene with a tentative English version in hisFour Ancient Books of Wales.
The other Welsh manuscripts, ranging down from the 15th to the 18th century, are far too numerous to notice, and it is outside the scope of this article to deal minutely with the original sources of the text of Welsh writings.
We will now only endeavour to sketch the history of Welsh literature from these early centuries down to our own times, and to show how the Celtic people of Wales have developed a literature true to their own genius, and how that literature stands to this day both a minister to the culture of the Welsh people and a sure indication of it.
1.Early Latin Writers.—The works now known as those of Gildas (q.v.) and Nennius (q.v.) are written in Latin; they throw considerable light on the origin of Welsh romantic literature and on the history of the earlier poems. Gildas was born at Ailclyd, the modern Dumbarton, that part of Britain which is called by Welsh writersY Gogledd, or the North. Several dates have been assigned for his birth and death, but he probably flourished between 500 and 580, and his book,De Excidio Britanniaeseems to have been written about 560. This work isGildasa sketch of British history under the Romans and in the period after their withdrawal from the country, and includes the period of the wars of the Britons with the Picts, Scots and Saxons. Mr Skene suggests very reasonably that the well-known letter of the Britons to Aetius, asking for Roman aid, is misplaced, and that if put in its own place some of the anachronisms of Gildas will disappear. This work, which contains some spirited attacks on the leaders of the Britons for their sins, is strangely full of contradictions. It seems to be the work of some person well versed in the facts of that part of British history, to which he had an easy access, but who supplemented them with traditional details and with dates which were mere guess-work. Mr Skene thinks that the work of Nennius was originally written in Welsh in the north and was afterwards translated into Latin. To this nucleus was added the genealogies of the Saxon kings down to 738. Afterwards some person, called Marc in the Vatican manuscript, appended probably about 823 the life of St Germanus and the legends of St Patrick, which were subsequently incorporated with the history. Some South Welshman added to the oldest manuscript of the history in these countries, about 977, a chronicle of events from 444 to 954, in which there are genealogies beginning with Owain, son of Hywel Dda, king of South Wales. This chronicle, which is not found in other manuscripts, has been made the basis of two later chronicles brought down to 1286 and 1288 respectively. It is consequently not the work of one author. A learned Irishman named Gilla Coemgin, who died in 1072, translated it into Irish and added many things concerning the Irish and the Picts. TheHistoria Britonumis more valuable for the legendary matter which it contains than for what may be accepted as history, for it gives us the British legends of the colonization of Great Britain and Ireland, the exploits of King Arthur and the prophecies of Merlin, which are not found elsewhere before the 12th century. The date of the book is of the greatest importance to the history of medieval romance, and there can be no doubt that it is earlier than the Norman Conquest and that the legends themselves are of British origin.
2.The Epic Period, 700-950.—The higher criticism of the early poetry of Wales contained in the four ancient manuscripts already mentioned has undergone a good many changes since their contents first excited the curiosity of English scholars. In turn Welshmen, with more zeal than discretion, have displayed an amazing charlatanism in the extraordinary theories which they put forth, and Englishmen have shown an utmost meanness in belittling what is undoubtedly a most valuable monument of the past. But now the labours of Zeuss and others who have made a study of Celtic philology furnish us with much safer canons of criticism than existed in 1849, when even a learned Welshman, the late Thomas Stephens, who did more than any one else to establish the claims of his country to a real literature, doubted the authenticity of a large number of the poems said to have been written by Taliessin, Aneirin, Myrddin and Llywarch Hen, who are supposed to have lived in the 5th century. A great service was done to Welsh literature by the publication of the texts of those poems from the four ancient manuscripts by W.F. Skene. In addition to the text, translations of the poems were furnished by Dr Silvan Evans and the Rev. Robert Williams, but the translation, though on the whole a very creditable work, is full of mistakes which few men, writing at that time, could have avoided. The publication of the text of the Black Book, with notes by Dr Gwenogvryn Evans, will be of great service towards clearing up the mist which envelops this older literature.
Most of the poems in these four manuscripts are attributed to four poets, Aneirin, Llywarch Hen, Taliessin and Myrddin, who are said to have lived and written in Cumbria or Y Gogledd, where the actors in the events referred to also lived. The greater part of this region enjoyed substantial independence down to the end of the 9th century, with the exception of theinterval from 655, when they were subjected to the kingdom of Northumbria by Oswy after the defeat of Cadwallawn and Penda, to the battle of Dunnichen in 686, when Ecfrid, king of Northumbria, was defeated. From the 7th to the 9th century Cumbria, including under that name all the British territory from the Ribble to the Clyde, was the principal theatre of British and Saxon conflict. The rise of the dynasty of Maelgwn Gwynedd, who, according to Welsh tradition, was a descendant of Cunedda Wledig, one of the Picts of the north, brought Wales into close connexion with the Cumbrian kingdom, and prepared both North and South Wales for the reception of the northern traditions and the rise of a true Welsh literature.
Whether the poets of the north really wrote any of the poems which in a modified form have come down to us or not, there can be no doubt that a number of lays attributed to them lived in popular tradition, and that under the sudden burst of glory which the deeds of Cadwallawn called forth and which ended in the disastrous defeat of 655, a British literature began to spring up, and was nourished by the hopes of a future resurrection under his son Cadwaladr, whose death was disbelieved in for such a long time. These floating lays and traditions gradually gathered into North Wales, brought thither by the nobility and the bards who fled before advancing hosts of the victorious Saxon kings of the north. The heroes of the north became now the heroes of Wales, and the sites of the battles they fought were identified with places of similar name in Wales and England.
By far the longest and the most famous poem of this series is attributed to Aneurin. This spelling of his name is comparatively modern, and in the old manuscripts it is given as Aneirin. The later form seems to have been affectedAneurinby the formeurin, “golden,” and to owe the continuation of the misspelling to a belief that the poet and Gildas, whose name is supposed to be the Latin form of the Old Englishgylden, were one and the same person. This poem, called theGododin(with notes by T. Stephens and published by Prof. Powel for the Cymmrodorion Society, London, 1888), is extremely obscure, both on account of its vocabulary and its topography and allusions. It deals mainly with “the men who went to Cattraeth,” which is supposed to have been fought between the Britons and the Scots under Aedan, king of Dalriada, and the pagan Saxons and their British subjects inDevyr(Deira) andBryneich(Bernicia), and the half-pagan Picts of Guotodin, a district corresponding to the northern half of the Lothians along the Firth of Forth. Critics have attempted with partial success to cast some light on its obscurity by supposing that the poem as a whole is made up of two parts dealing with two distinct battles. This may or may not be, but there is no doubt that many of the stanzas of the poem as found in the manuscript are not in their proper places, and a critical readjustment of the different stanzas and lines would do much towards solving its problem. It seems probable, too, that the original nucleus of the poem was handed down orally, and recited or sung by the bards and minstrels at the courts of different noblemen. It thus became the common stock-in-trade of the Welsh rhapsodist, and in time the bards, using it as a kind of framework, added to it here and there pieces of their own composition formed on the original model, especially when the heroes named happened to be the traditional forefathers of their patrons, and occasionally introduced the names of new heroes and new places as it suited their purpose; and all this seems to have been done in early times. Older fragments dealing too with the legendary heroes of the Welsh were afterwards incorporated with the poem, and some of these fragments undoubtedly preserve the orthographical and grammatical forms of the 9th century. So that, on the whole, it seems as fruitless to look for a definite record of historical events in this poem as it would be to do so in the Homeric poems, but like them, though it cannot any longer be regarded as a correct and definite account of a particular battle or war, it still stands to this day the epic of the warriors of its own nation. It matters not whether these heroes fought at far Cattraeth or on some other forgotten field of disaster; this song still reflects, as a true national epic, the sad defeats and the brave but desperate rallies of the early Welsh. Like the music of the Welsh, its dominant note is that of sadness, expressing the exultation of battle and the very joy of life in minor notes. To a great extent Welsh poets are to this day true and faithful disciples of this early master.
Many of the poems attributed to Taliessin are undoubtedly late. Indeed, both Taliessin and Myrddin,2the one as the mythological chief of all Welsh bards and the other as a great magician, seem pre-eminently suited to attract a greatTaliessin.deal of later Welsh poetry under their aegis; but the older poems attributed to them are worthy of any literature. Sometimes, as in the verses attributed to Llywarch Hen beginningStafell Cynddylan, an early specimen of poetic grief over departed glory, we find that gentle elegiac note which is so common in early English poetry. In the Taliessinic poems, theBattle of Argoed Llwyvainand others, we have that boldness of portraiture which is found in theGododin, whilst in many a noble line we seem to hear again the ravens screaming shrilly over their sword-feasts, and the strong strokes of the advancing warriors.
It was but natural that all the pseudo-prophetic poems, written of course after the events which they foretold, should be attributed to the chief among seers, Myrddin, or, asMerlin.his name is written in English, Merlin; so that all the poems accredited to him, with the exception perhaps of theAvallenau, were not written before the 12th century.
In most of the poems attributed to Llywarch Hen and in some of the Myrddin poems, the verses begin with the same line, which, though it has no direct reference to the subject of the poem itself, is used as a refrain or catch-word, exactly like the refrains employed by Mr Swinburne and others in their ballads. These lines generally refer to some natural object or objects, as, for instance, “the snow of the mountain” or “bright are the tops of the broom.”
The first period, then, of Welsh literature lies between 700 and 950. It is in most respects the epic period, the period in which poets wrote of great men and their deeds, the legendary and the historic heroes of the Cymry, men like Urien Rheged, and heroes like Hyveidd Hir. Even in the next period the epic note had not quite died out.
3.The Prose Romances and the Poet Princes, 1100-1290.—It will be seen that there is a considerable gap between the first and second period of Welsh literature. It must not be supposed, however, that nothing was composed or written during these years. Indeed, it may well be that some of the poetry attributed to the minor bards of the last period was composed between 900 and 1100, and that some other poetry too was written and lost. But there are abundant reasons for believing that Welsh poetry was at a very low ebb during those years. The progress of Wales as a political unit had suffered a check after the battle of Chester in 613. The effects of this defeat were not immediate, as the Welsh had still enough of their characteristic hopefulness to expect ultimate victory; we therefore have reasons for believingThe Gododin series.that the Gododin series of poems were still used—or perhaps used then for the first time—to spur on “the hawks of war” to greater efforts. Gradually, however, the Angles, hemming them in on all sides from the Clyde to the Severn, began to press nearer and nearer; the Welsh at last seem to have lost heart, and no one any longer “had the desire of song.” Content with their old epics and their older myths, which owe perhaps to these years a darker and more sombre tinge, they allowed their song to be hushed. The great lords had hardly chosen their final abodes; the smaller lords had all been killed in war and their places taken now by one, now by another, so that the warrior prince himself had not the leisure, and hardly the inspiration necessary, for song, and the bards found but scanty patronage among such a diminished and poverty-stricken nobility. The only order that seemed to prosper was that of the monks, and we owe them our gratitude forpreserving the ancient writings and the ancient traditions; but they were simply copyists, though they had undoubtedly some hand in giving theGododinits final form and in setting in its convenient framework the names of the forefathers of their aristocratic abbots.
In the year 1044 Gruffydd ab Llewelyn conquered Hywel ab Edwin and became king of Wales. By means of his diplomacy and his arms he succeeded in stemming the tide of Saxon invasion that was threatening to overflow even the little remnant of land that was left to the Welsh, and his strong rule gave the Welsh muse another opportunity. Gruffydd, however, died in 1063, and was eventually succeeded in 1073 by Trahaern in North Wales, and Rhys ab Owen in South Wales. The rule of these two princes was destined to be the last period of literary inertness in the long interval following the confinement of Wales to her inaccessible highlands.
During these years a man was hiding in Ireland, called Gruffydd ab Cynan, a scion of the old branch of Welsh kings. In Brittany, too, Rhys ab Tewdwr, a claimant to the throne of South Wales, had sought the protection of his Breton kinsmen. In 1073 Rhys ab Tewdwr obtained the throne of Rhys ab Owen, and, after many years of hard fighting, Gruffydd ab Cynan, with the help of Rhys ab Tewdwr, defeated Trahaern at the battle of Myrydd Carn in 1081. On the accession of these two powerful princes the whole country broke forth into songs of praise and jubilation, and the long night was at an end.
It is important to remember that both Gruffydd and Rhys had a direct personal influence on the literary revival of their times. Gruffydd ab Cynan while in exile had seen how the IrishOenachwas held, and had seen prizes given for poetry and song. We have it on the authority of Welsh writers that he reorganized the bards and improved the music, and in many other ways gave a great and beneficial impulse to Welsh literature. He may have brought over some of the later Irish legends which have had such a powerful effect on the literature of Wales.
Rhys ab Tewdwr, too, brought with him from Brittany an enthusiasm for the old Celtic tales, and perhaps some of the tales themselves which had been by that time forgotten in Wales, tales of the Round Table, and Arthur “begirt with British and Armoric knights,” of knightly deeds and magical metamorphoses, which were destined to influence profoundly all the literatures of the West. We find, therefore, in this period that poetry flourished mostly in the North under Gruffydd ab Cynan, and prose in the south under Rhys ab Tewdwr, where the new enthusiasm for the old Welsh legends resulted in theGeoffrey of Montmouth.History of Britainof Geoffrey of Monmouth, which is an expansion of the books attributed to Gildas and Nennius. It was written in Latin sometime before 1147, and is dedicated to Robert, earl of Gloucester, the grandson of Rhys ab Tewdwr. In the introductory epistle, Geoffrey states that Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, had given him a very ancient book in the British tongue, giving an account of the kings of Britain from Brutus to Cadwaladr, and that he had translated it into Latin at the archdeacon’s request. The book, however, is a compilation and not a translation, but the materials were probably drawn from British sources. In this history Geoffrey asserts that the deeds of Arthur “were commonly related in a pleasing manner.” He was perhaps originally but the hero of some popular ballad, or of a forgotten stanza of theGododin, and the importance of his name in the literature of the world seems to be due to an accident. We cannot, however, in this article consider the Arthurian Legend (q.v.) as a whole; we must be content with dealing with the most important of the romantic tales which are contained in theRed Book of Hergest. They may be divided into four classes:—
(i.) TheMabinogiproper, containing (1)Pwyll, prince of Dyvet; (2)Branwen, daughter of Llyr; (3)Manawyddan, son ofLlyr; (4)Math, son of Mathonwy.
(ii.) Old British tales referring to Roman times, viz. (1)LluddandLlevelys; (2) The Dream ofMacsen Wledic.
(iii.) British Arthurian tales, viz. (1)KilhwchandOlwen; (2) The Dream ofRhonabwy.
(iv.) Later tales of chivalry, viz. (1) The Lady of the Fountain; (2)Peredur, son ofEvrawc; (3)Geraint, son ofErbin.
The group of four romances in the first class forms a cycle of legends and is called in the manuscriptPedeir Keinc y Mabinogi—the Four Branches of the Mabinogi; so it is only these four tales that can, strictly speaking, be calledThe Mabinogion.Mabinogion. In these stories we have the relics of the ancient Irish mythology of theTuatha Dé Danann, sometimes mixed with later myths. TheCaer Sidi, where neither disease nor old age affects any one, is theSidof Irish mythology, the residence of the gods of theAes Side. It is called in one of the old poems the prison ofGweir, who no doubt representsGaiar, son of Manandán MacLir, the Atropos who cut the thread of life of Irish mythology.Llyris the Irish sea-god Lir, and was calledLlyr Llediaith, or the half-tongued, implying that he spoke a language only partially intelligible to the people of the country.Bran, the son of Llyr, is the Irish Bran MacAllait, Allait being one of the names of Lir.Manawyddanis clearly the Manandán or Manannán MacLir of Irish mythology. These tales contain other characters which may not have been borrowed from Irish mythology but which are common to both mythologies; for example, Rhiannon, the wife of Pwyll who possessed marvellous birds which held warriors spell-bound for eighty years by their singing, comes fromAnnwn, or the unseen world, and her son Pryderi gives her, on the death of Pwyll, as a wife to Manawyddan.
Of the second class the first story relates to Lludd, son of Beli the Great, son of Manogan, who became king after his father’s death, while his brother Llevelys becomes king of France and shows his brother how to get rid of the three plagues which devastated Britain:—first, a strange race, the Coranians, whose knowledge was so great that they heard everything no matter how low soever it might be spoken; second, a shriek which came into every house on May eve, caused by the fighting of two dragons; and third, a great giant who carried off all the provisions of the king’s palace every day. The second tale relates how Maxen, emperor of Rome, has a dream while hunting, in which he imagines that he visits Britain, and inCaer Seintor Carnarvon sees a beautiful damsel, Helen, whom he ultimately finds and marries. Both tales are British in origin and are founded on traditions referring to Roman times.
The most important of these tales are undoubtedly those contained in the first class, and the story ofKilhwchandOlwen. The form in which they are found in theRed Book of Hergestis, as we have already said, comparatively speaking, modern. But it is apparent to any one reading these tales that the writers or compilers, as Matthew Arnold has suggested, are “pillaging an antiquity, the secret of which they do not fully possess.” The foundations of the tales are the old Celtic traditions of the gods and the older heroes, and they clearly show Goidelic influence both in the persons they introduce and in their incidents. The tales would at first exist only in oral tradition, and after the advent of Christianity the characters they contain lost their title of divinity and became simply heroes—warriors and magicians. In time the monks began to write these ancient traditions, embellishing them and suppressing no doubt what they considered to be most objectionable. These then are the tales which we now possess—the traditional doings of the old heroes as set in order by Christian writers.
The changes which these later copyists wrought in the substance of the tales fall into two main divisions. In the first place, they attempted to find some connexion between tales or cycles of tales which originally had no connexion whatever, and were therefore forced to invent new incidents or to introduce other incidents from the outside in order to establish this connexion; and secondly, as in the case of theGododin, the tales were twisted and altered to support references to and explanations of names known to the writer. So we find in the tale ofMath vab Mathonwythe incident of the pigs is expanded to explain some place-names which the writer knew. It is this also that gives a local interest to the tales; for instance,Dyvet, the land ofPwyll, has come to be regarded as the home ofHud a Lledrith, of magic andenchantment. Some places in North Wales, especially in the vicinity of Carnarvon, seem to be well known to the writers, and, therefore, to have associated with them to all time the glamour of the Mabinogion.
Besides the scholastic efforts of the monks, which in course of time so greatly changed these old legends, there was another class of men who had no little influence on the form and matter of Welsh, and consequently of European, romance. These were the Welsh jongleurs—the professional story-tellers, against whom the bards proper nursed a deadly hatred because, presumably, their tales drew larger audiences and won greater rewards than theawdlauof the poets. There is little doubt that this order existed in Wales at a very early period, being quite a natural evolution of the older poet who sang in comparatively free metres of the deeds of the great dead. It is these men who invented the termMabinogi, which is supposed to mean a “tale for young people”; but whatever the word may mean, the fact that they were the stock-in-trade of the professional story-teller will explain a good many of their structural peculiarities.
Thus there existed two distinct classes of tales, though it is to be supposed that the subject matter of both was more or less common; there are, in the first place, the “four branches” and the tales of the second class, and, secondly, tales like those of the third class. With the exception of the Irish influence, which we have already referred to, and some later additions from early continental romance in the third class, we may take it that these three classes are of purely British origin. Thepedair caincare the old tales which were first committed to writing at an early period before the influence of the Armoric Arthur began to be felt, that is to say, about the beginning of the reign of Rhys ab Tewdwr in 1073. The other tales, that is those we have put in the third class, remained for a much longer time unwritten and were not set in writing before the early Arthur of Armoric and British romance had been evolved. This will account for the fact that Arthur is not mentioned in the first class of tales, and that in the third class he is simply a British Arthur. The third class is, therefore, in a sense later than the first and second, but its materials are as old as the oldest of the Mabinogion proper, and they show the influence of Irish mythology to the same extent. In the first class Irish names likePenardim, which have not been assimilated, show conclusively that the tale is a written one, while the eloquence of the descriptions inKilhwch ac Olwenseem to point to the fact that it was up to a late period aspokentale. Other such tales there were once, but they have now been lost.
The romances of the fourth class do not claim much notice. They are mostly imitations or translations of Norman French originals, and they belong to the history of European chivalry rather than to the history of Welsh literature.
As literature the Mabinogion may rank among the world’s classics. We cannot here point out their beauties, but it will be sufficient to notice that the unknown writer who gave them their final form was a true artist in every sense of the word. InBranwen verch Lyr, for instance, the whole setting of the story is that of a great tragedy, a tragedy neither Hellenic nor Shakespearean, but the strong and ruthless tragedy of the Celts,—the tragedy of nature among unnatural surroundings, the tragedy which in our times Mr Thomas Hardy has so successfully developed. In this tale, Branwen is introduced as the sister of Manawyddan, the king of all Britain, and as the “fairest maid in the world.” But as the tragedy deepens we read how this woman, dowered with beauty and goodness and nobility of lineage, is simply used as a pawn in a political game, and the full force of the tragedy falls on her own undeserving head. She is subjected to all kinds of indignities in her husband’s court in Ireland, but throughout all her severe trials she preserves the cold and detached haughtiness which characterizes the full-bosomed heroines of the northern sagas; and, in the end, when her brother has delivered her and punished the Irish, and when she has safely reached the shores of her own Môn, she raises her eyes and beholds the two islands, Britain and Ireland. “’Ah God!’ said she, ‘is it well that two islands have been made desolate for my sake?’ And she gave a deep groan and died.” So was her tragedy consummated, and the writer, with a superb tragic touch, mentions the very shape of the grave in which they left her on the bank of the Alaw in Môn.
One of the earliest poets of this period whose productions we can be certain of is Meilir, bard of Trahaern, whom Gruffydd ab Cynan defeated at the battle of Carn, and afterwards of the conqueror Gruffydd himself. His best piece is theDeath-bed of the Bard, a semi-religious poem which is distinguished by the structure of the verse, poetic feeling and religious thought. Meilir was the head of a family of bards; his son was Gwalchmai, one of the best Welsh poets; the latter had two sons, Einion and Meilir, some of whose poetry has reached us. InGorhoffedd Gwalchmai, Gwalchmai’s Delight, there is an appreciation of the charms of nature, medieval parallels to which are only to be found in Ireland. HisArwyrain i Owainis an ode of considerable beauty and full of vigour in praise of Owain Gwynedd, king of North Wales, on account of his victory of Tal y Moelvre, part of which has been translated by Gray under the name of “The Triumphs of Owen.” Kynddelw, who lived in the second half of the 12th century, was a contemporary of Gwalchmai, and wrote on a great number of subjects including religious ones; indeed some of his eulogies have a kind of religious prelude. He had a command of words and much skill in versification, but he is pleonastic and fond of complicated metres and of ending his lines with the same syllable.
Among the other poets of the second half of the 12th century may be mentioned Owain Kyveiliog and Howel ab Owain Gwynedd. The first named was prince of Powys, and was distinguished also as a soldier. TheHirlas, or drinking-horn, is a long poem where the prince represents himself as carousing in his hall after a fight; bidding his cup-bearer fill his great drinking-horn, he orders him to present it in turn to each of the assembled warriors. As the horn passes from hand to hand he eulogizes each in a verse beginningDiwallaw di venestr, “Fill, cup-bearer.” Having thus praised the deeds of two warriors, Tudyr and Moreiddig, he turns round to challenge them, but suddenly recollecting that they had fallen in the fray, and listening, as it were, to their dying groans, he bursts into a broken lamentation for their loss. The second was also a prince; he was the eldest of the many sons of Owain Gwynedd, and ruled for two years after his father until he fell in a battle between himself and his step-brother Dafydd. He was a young man of conspicuous merit, and one of the most charming poets of Wales, his poems being especially free from the conceits, trivial commonplaces, and complicated metres of the professional bards, while full of a gay humour, a love of nature and a delicate appreciation of women. The Welsh poets went on circuit like their Irish brethren, staying in each place according as hospitality was extended to them. When departing, a bard was expected to leave a sample of his versification behind him. In this way many manuscripts came to be written, as we find them in different hands. Llywarch ab Llywelyn has left us one of those departing eulogies addressed to Rhys Gryg, prince of South Wales, which affords a favourable specimen of his style.
The following are a few of the poets of the 13th century whose poems are still extant. Davydd Benvras was the author of a poem in praise of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth; his works, though not so verbose or trite as bardic poems13th century poets.of this class usually are, do not rise much above the bardic level, and are full of alliteration. Elidir Sais was, as his name implies, able to speak the English language, and wrote chiefly religious poetry. Einiawn ab Gwgawn is the author of an extant address to Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of considerable merit. Phylip Brydydd, or Philip the poet, was household bard to Rhys Gryg (Rhys the hoarse), lord of South Wales. One of his pieces, an apology to Rhys Gryg, is a striking example of the fulsome epithets a household bard was expected to bestow upon his patron, and of the privileged domesticity in which the bards lived, which, as in Ireland, must have been fatal to genius. Prydydd Bychan, the Little Poet, was a South Wales bard whose extant work consists of short poems all addressed to his own princes. The chief feature of hisEnglynionis the use of akind of assonance in which in some cases the final vowels agreed alternately in each quatrain, and in others each line ended in a different vowel, in both cases with alliteration and consonance of final consonants or full rhyme. Llygad Gŵr is known by an ode in five parts to Llywelyn ab Gruffydd, written about the year 1270, which is a good type of the conventional flattery of a family bard. Howel Voel, who was of Irish extraction, possessed some poetical merit; his remonstrance to Llywelyn against the imprisonment of his brother Owain is a pleasing variety upon the conventional eulogy. It has many lines beginning with the same word,e.g.gŵr, man. The poems of Bleddyn Vardd, or Bleddyn the Bard, which have come down to us are all short eulogies and elegies. One of the latter on Llywelyn ab Gruffydd is a good example of the elaborate and artificial nature of Welsh versification.
The most illustrious name among the poets of this century is Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch, “Gruffydd, son of the Red Justice,” who wrote many religious poems of great merit. His greatest work, however, is the elegy to Llywelyn ab Gruffydd, the last prince of Wales. It is easily first among all the elegies written in the Welsh language. We do not find in it that artficial grief which is too evident in theMarwnadauof the Welsh poets; it re-echoes an intense personal grief, and throughout the whole piece the poet feels that he stands at the end of all things,—the end of his own ideals, the extinction of all Cymric hopes. So poignant is his grief, and in so universal a manner does the catastrophe of Llywelyn’s death present itself to him, that he imagines that all the natural features of the Welsh fatherland know that the last great Welshman is dead; the winds howl over the mountains, the rain-clouds gather thick, the waves rage with grief against the Welsh coasts, and far away on the hills the giant oak-trees beat against each other in the fury of their passion. Sadly, in this manner, closes the second period of Welsh literature.
4.The Golden Age of the Cywydd, 1340-1440.—Just as, after the loss of the North, the Welsh muse was hushed, so after the final subjugation of Wales in 1282, hardly a note was heard for many a long year. The ancient patrons of literature were dead, and the country had not yet settled down to the steady rule of England. Indeed, the conquest of Wales effectively put an end to the older Welsh poetry of that type which we noticed in the last period. These older bards were without exception subjects of the princes of North Wales, where the old heroic poetry was still popular, and when the power of these princes came to an end the old poetry too ceased. When the Welsh muse emerges again from the darkness of this interval she is no longer of the North; the new poets are drawn from the Welshmen of the South, a land which had practically ceased to be a part of an independent Wales shortly after the Norman conquest of England. We find, too, that the poetry which poured forth from the Welsh bards of the south is of an altogether different type, it is modern in all its essentials, in diction, in language, and, comparatively speaking, in sentiment. Indeed, there is an infinitely greater difference between Dafydd ab Gwilym and Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch than there is between him and any poet writing in the alliterative metres in the 19th century. So that we must suppose that at the time when the poets of North Wales still sang of war and mead-drinking in a style and diction that was an inheritance from the times of theGododin, the poets of the South, unharassed by wars, were developing a new poetry of their own, a poetry that had relinquished for ever the Old Welsh models and was at last in line with the great poetical movements of Europe. And, judging from the fact that the earliest of these poets whose works are accessible to us are in the full zenith of their poetical development, we must believe that their work is the consummation of a period, that is to say, that they must have had a long line of predecessors whose works were lost during the period intervening between the loss of Welsh independence and the rise of Dafydd ab Gwilym. These men wrote, as we have already said, in South Wales, a country which was then under the rule of the Norman lords, who, with the lapse of years and the rise of new systems, were fast becoming Welsh. It is no wonder, then, that the poets who wrote under their patronage should show unmistakable traces of Norman influence. Most of the barons still spoke French, and it was only natural that they should be well versed in French poetry. The poets followed the lead of their patrons, and their work was modelled to a very great extent on French and Provençal poetry. Nor does this account altogether for the wonderful similarity between Welshcywyddauand other poems of this period and the French lays; we must remember that the Welsh poets lived under conditions similar to those under which the troubadours and the trouvères lived, and it was natural that the same environments should produce the same kind of work. The Provençalalbaand the Frenchaube, theserenadeand other forms, became well known in South Wales and were of course read by the Welsh poets. We find continual references in the poets to “books of love” under the name ofllyfr Ofydd, or the “book of Ovid,” and a reference in one of Dafydd ab Gwilym’s poems shows conclusively that one particularllyfr Ofyddwas a work of the French poet Chrestien de Troyes. Indeed, one of the commonest names among the poets of this period—thellatai,3or love-messenger—may be a Romance word borrowed through the Norman-French from the ItalianGaleotto, originally the name of the book of the loves of Galahaad, but afterwards the ordinary word for a go-between. This book of Galeotto, by the way, was the book which taught Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, in Dante’sDivina Commedia, the tragic secret of love.
Another movement also was favourable to the rise of the new Welsh poetry. The iron hand of the church, which had been the censor of poetry for so many centuries, was slowly relaxing its grasp, and the men who a few years before would have sung religious hymns to the Virgin, now laid their tributes at the feet of divine womanhood as they saw it in the Welsh maidens and matrons living among them. The pale queen of heaven no longer held hearts captive; they had transferred their allegiance to the “brow that was as the snow of yesternight,” and “the cheeks that were like the passion-flower.” The Iolo MSS. assert that some time between January 1327 and November 1330 there were held, under the patronage of Ivor Hael, Dafydd ab Gwilym’s patron, and others, the threeEisteddfodau Dadeni, or the Eisteddfods of the Revival of the Muse, to reorganize the bards, and to set in order all matters pertaining to Welsh poetry. The most important bards who are reported as present at some or all of these meetings were Dafydd ab Gwilym, Sion Cent, Rhys Goch of Eryri, and Iolo Goch. It is now, however, generally agreed that this account is a fabrication and that the date of all the poets is later.
Dafydd ab Gwilym is certainly the most distinguished of all the Welsh poets, and were it not for the absolute impossibility of adequately translating hiscywyddauhe would rank amongst the greatest poets of medieval times. ByDafydd ab Gwilym.far the greater part of his poetry is written in the metre calledcywydd, with heptasyllabic lines rhyming in couplets. It was he who imparted so much lustre to this metre that it became the vehicle of all the most important poetry from his time to the 19th century, and he is generally referred to by his contemporaries as the special poet of the cywydd—Dafydd gywydd gwin, “Dafydd of the wine-sweet cywydd.” Most of his poems deal with love in the spirit of the medieval writers of France and of Provence, but with this very important difference, that the French writers must base their reputation on their treatment of love as a theme, whereas Dafydd’s claim to fame is based on his treatment of nature and of out-door life. In many cases, indeed, love is only a conventional peg whereon he may hang his observations on nature, and Welsh literature may claim the distinction of having had its Wordsworth in the 14th century. His treatment of nature is not merely realistic and objective, it has a certain quaint and elusive symbolism and a subjectiveness which come as a revelation to those who are acquainted with the medieval poetry of other nations. Manyof the poems attributed to him are undoubtedly the work of later hands, but even after making all possible deductions, there is still an infinite variety among what remains, ranging as his poems do from a sturdy denunciation of monkish fraudulence to the most delicate and pathetic recollections of departed joys. He has, besides, considerable importance as a teacher, as when, for instance, he invites the nun “to leave her watercress and paternosters of Romish monks,” and to come with him “to the cathedral of the birch to listen to the cuckoo’s sermons,” for, “were it not an equally worthy deed to save his (Dafydd’s) soul in the birch-grove as to do so by following the ritual of Rome and St James of Compostella”? Even in his old age, when he is beginning to repent of his rash and merry youth, nature has not deserted him,—the very tree under which in the old days he used to meet his sweetheart has become bent and withered in sympathy with him. Though Dafydd yields not the palm to any poet of his class throughout the world, and though his influence is still a potent factor in the literature of Wales, we are certain of hardly a single fact about his life. He flourished between 1340 and 1390. His works were published in London in 1789. This edition was reprinted by Ffoulkes of Liverpool in 1870. See L.C. Stern,Zeitschr. f. celt. Phil.vol. vii.
Sion Cent was chaplain to the Scudamores of Kentchurch in Herefordshire, and though, therefore, in orders, was a most bitter opponent of the pretentious and the evil life of the monks of his time. All his writings show signs of the influence of the moralists of the middle ages, and treat of religious or of moral subjects. His poetry is strong and austere, interfused here and there with the most biting satire. He died about 1400. Like many of his contemporaries, Dunbar, Villon, Menot and Manrique, his dominant note is that of sadness and regret.
Rhys Goch Eryri had a sprightly muse which deals with fanciful subjects. His themes are often similar to those of Dafydd ab Gwilym, but whereas the subject of Dafydd’s muse was nature and his treatment universal, Rhys Goch’s are simply natural objects which he treats in a vigorous but narrow and cold manner.
Iolo Goch, that is, Iorwerth the Red, deserves a special mention as the poet who voiced the aspirations of a new Wales when Owen Glyndwr began to rise into power, and it is to one of his poems that we owe a most minute description of Sycharth, Owen Glyndwr’s home. His poetry is slightly more archaic in diction than that of his contemporaries, as his subject—war and the glory of Welsh heroes—belonged more properly to the age before his own. In one very strikingcywyddcomposed after Glyndwr’s downfall, he calls upon this hero to come again and claim his own, and addresses himself fancifully to all the countries of the world where his hero may be in hiding. He died after 1405, and, if the dates generally given for his birth be even approximately correct, he must have lived to a prodigious age (cf.Gweithiau Iolo Goch, by Charles Ashton, London, 1896).
Rhys Goch ap Rhiccert claims to be named with Dafydd ab Gwilym as a writer of lyrics in praise of beautiful women. He has one advantage, however, over his more famous contemporary in the variety of his metres. The musical lilt and the delicate workmanship of his poems, with their recurring refrain, give him a unique position among his medieval contemporaries as the first purely lyrical poet. Hisfloreatis probably a little later than that of Dafydd ab Gwilym, for we must not be misled by the late orthography of his poems.
Dafydd Nanmor is chiefly famous for two exquisite cywyddau,Cywydd Marwnad Merch, or Elegy of a Maiden, andCywydd i wallt Llio, or Cywydd to Llio’s Hair. In both these poems he shows elegance rather than depth, and a fancy as bold as that of his great master Dafydd. In the first of these cywyddau his grief is so great that he wishes that he were but the shroud around his dead sweetheart, and, in the second, Llio Rhydderch’s golden hair over her white brow is compared to the refulgence of lightning over the fine snow. He is supposed to be a younger contemporary of Rhys Goch Eryri, but there are many facts to warrant a supposition that he lived much later, even as late as 1490.
Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen deserves to be mentioned as the author of the famousMarwnad Lleucu Llwyd, an elegy which is far more convincing in its sincerity than Dafydd Nanmor’scywydd. Few of his compositions are extant, but the one already mentioned is sufficient to place him in the first rank of the poets of the period. He lived approximately from 1330 to 1390.
The other poets of this period who deserve some mention are Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug, who wrote poems on religious subjects, and who is supposed to have translated part of theOfficium Beatae Mariaeinto Welsh; Gruffydd Grug, between whom and Dafydd ab Gwilym a most fierce poetic quarrel raged, but who is the author of a beautiful elegy on his opponent; Gruffydd Llwyd ab Dafydd, who was the poet of Owen Glyndwr, and whose cywydd in praise of his patron is one of the best of that type; Hywel Swrdwal and Gwilym ab Ieuan Hen.
5.The Silver Age of the Cywydd, 1440-1550.—The insurrection of Owen Glyndwr, though originally the result of a private quarrel, was the general revolt of a nation against the conquerors whom it hated, and the English king knew well enough that the discontent with his rule was fanned by the older and more national Welsh institutions, and by none more than by the system of wandering bards. The conditions which had given rise to this system were fast dying out, but the noblemen, who fortunately were still intensely Welsh, were loth to give up their family bards, and the bards themselves, never a too industrious class, were too glad of their freedom and easy life to turn to more profitable work. We find, therefore, that a law was passed in 1403, the fourth year of Henry IV.’s reign, prohibiting bards “and other vagrants” from exercising their profession in Gwynedd or North Wales. This law, however, like its predecessor in the reign of Edward I., failed utterly in its purpose. By prohibiting the Welsh noblemen from giving their patronage to the bards, and, therefore, from distinguishing between the real bards and the mendicant rhymesters, this law took away the only safeguard against the latter class, with the result that by about 1450 they had become a pest to the country. About that time there flourished a poet called Llawdden, who, noticing the very unsatisfactory state of poetry in Wales, induced his kinsman, Gruffydd ab Nicolas, a nobleman living in Y Drenewydd (Newtown), to petition Henry VI. for permission to hold an eisteddfod similar in purpose to the threeEisteddfodau Dadeniof the last period. This famous eisteddfodEisteddfod of 1451.was held at Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen) in 1451, and shortly before the actual eisteddfod was held a “statute” was drawn up under the direction of Llawdden, regulating the different orders of bards and musicians and setting in order thecynghaneddion a mesurau, the different kinds of alliterative verse to be presented to the assembled bards at the meeting. Among those present at that eisteddfod the most distinguished was Dafydd ab Edmwnd, who then made famous the dictum that the purpose of an eisteddfod was “to bring to mind the past, to consider the present, and to deliberate about the future.” He, therefore, proposed emendations in “the rules of Welsh verse,” making them more strict, so as to keep the unlearned rhymesters from the privileged bardic class. This measure had a most important effect on Welsh literature. It effectively put an end to the charming spontaneity which distinguishes the poetry of Dafydd ab Gwilym and his contemporaries, and by introducing an arbitrary set of rules gave an artificial tone to almost all the poetry of the next two hundred years. It had, indeed, exactly the same retarding effect on Welsh poetry as the Unities had on the French drama. So that, whereas the poems of Dafydd ab Gwilym, though written in the difficult alliterative metres, are nearly all light and have a sweet lyrical re-echo, the poetry of Dafydd ab Edmwnd and his successors is often heavy and nearly always artificial. After making, however, all these deductions, it is a debatable point whether the hard and fast rules which now regulated Welsh poetry did not eventually justify their existence. They have helped, by inciting to carefulness, to keep the idiom and the language pure and undefiled, and to this day style in Welshpoetry is not necessarily a striving after the uncommon as it too often is in English.
There are some poets included in this period who belong more properly to the last, but even these show signs of the attempt at correctness and distinction which was supplanting the old simplicity. Ieuan ap Rhydderch ab Ieuan Llwyd, who is supposed to be a brother of the Llio Rhydderch of Dafydd Nanmor’s poem, is the author of some cywyddau and other poems addressed to the Virgin, the structure of which shows great skill accompanied by force and clearness. He flourished about 1425. Dafydd ab Meredydd ap Tudur, who flourished about 1420, is the author of a cywydd “to Our Saviour.” About the same time lived Rhys Nanmor, Ieuan Gethin ab Ieuan, and Ieuan Llwyd ab Gwilym. Among the earliest of the poets who belong properly to this period is Meredydd ap Rhys, whose cywyddau are a fair specimen of the generality of poems written in these years. Among the most famous of his works is a cywydd “begging for a fishing-net,” and another giving thanks for the same. We shall find that many of his contemporaries were able to write long and interesting poems on such seemingly dry and uninteresting subjects, but it is vain to look for anything beyond good verse in such compositions. Of poetry, as generally understood, there is none.
The commanding figure in this period is, of course, Dafydd ab Edmwnd, who was a disciple of Meredydd ap Rhys. He bears somewhat the same relation to his contemporaries as Dafydd ab Gwilym does to his, and to strain anDafydd ab Edmwndanalogy, we might say that as Dryden was to Milton, so Dafydd ab Edmwnd was to Dafydd ab Gwilym. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest poet that North Wales had ever produced, and some would set him up as a rival even to Dafydd ab Gwilym himself. He would probably have produced much greater poetry had he understood that the cywydd and the other metres were strait and shackled enough without thecymeriadauand other devices which he introduced, or at least sanctioned and made popular. He begins many of his cywyddau and odes with the same letter; he is the chief among Welsh formalists, but in spite of his self-imposed restrictions he is a great poet also. His most famous poems are threeCywyddau Merchor “Poems to a Lady,” and hisCywydd i Wallt Merch, “cywydd to a lady’s hair.” He is the author of the lines already quoted: “thy brow,” he sings, “is as the snow of yesternight, and thy cheeks like a shower of roses.” He died about 1480. Dafydd ab Edmwnd’s disciples were Gutyn Owain and Tudur Aled, who was also his nephew. Gutyn Owain lived between 1420 and 1500, and was one of the men appointed by the king’s commissioners to trace, or perhaps to manufacture, the Welsh pedigree of Henry VII. He belonged entirely to the school inaugurated by Dafydd ab Edmwnd, and though he was by no means wanting in imagination, the highest distinction of his verse is its intricacy of form and very often the felicity of his couplets.
Just as the rise of Owen Glyndwr in the beginning of the century had given a new impulse and a new interest to poetry, so in 1485, when Henry VII.—the “little bull” as he is called by the poets—ascended the throne of England, a particular kind of poetry calledbrud, half history and half prophecy, became popular, and we have in the manuscripts much writing of this description, a good deal of it worthless as poetry. Occasionally, however, some of these “bruts” may claim to be called poetry, especially the compositions of Robin Ddu o Fon, who wrote poems in praise of the Tudors and hailed them as the deliverers of the nation, even before Henry VII. had landed in England, and Dafydd Llwyd ab Llywelyn, whose works deserve to be much better known than they are at present. One of the best cywyddau among his works is the “Address to the Raven,” to whom he promises a right royal feast when the hero whom all Wales is expecting has met his royal enemy. Tudur Aled, too, was a zealous partisan of Henry VII. and wrote many cywyddau in praise of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, the great champion of Henry’s cause in South Wales. He is also famous as having supplemented and made a new recension of Dafydd ab Edmwnd’s rules of poetry in the eisteddfod held at Caerwys in 1524. Tudur Aled has always been more widely known in Wales than almost any other of the earlier poets except Dafydd ab Gwilym. This is perhaps due to the quotability and sententiousness of his couplets. There is a certain refreshing dryness about his poetry which partly makes up for his want of imagination. One of the most interesting poets of this century is Lewis Glyn Cothi, who lived between 1410 and 1490. During the Wars of the Roses he was a zealous Lancastrian, and his bitterest enemies were the men of Chester, who had treated him scurvily while he was there in hiding, and hisawdl, satirizing the men of that city, is one of the most vigorous compositions in the language. Indeed, among so manycywyddauof this period in conventional praise of different patrons, it is most refreshing to find such an outburst of sincere personal feeling, boldly and fiercely expressed. He wrote anawdlalso rejoicing in the victory of Henry VII. Most of his work, however, consists ofcywyddau mawl—praise of patrons—containing weary and unpoetical pedigrees. Gruffydd Hiraethog, who flourished about 1540, was a disciple of Tudur Aled. A fierce poetical dispute raged between him and Sion Brwynog of Anglesey, who was a contemporary of his. About this time there were many poets in Wales who were imitators of Dafydd ab Gwilym, and who did not follow implicitly the lead of Dafydd ab Edmwnd, like those whom we have mentioned. Much of their poetry is feeble, but Bedo Brwynllysg especially stands out from among the rest, and his poetry, though highly imitative and often over fanciful, is of a much higher order than the genealogical poems of Lewis Glyn Cothi and others. In the same way the only poem of any merit of Ieuan Denlwyn printed in theGorchestionis written in this imitative strain. Other poets of the middle of this period are Deio ap Ieuan Du, Iorwerth Fynglwyd, Lewys Morganwg, Ieuan Brydydd Hir, and Tudur Penllyn, who wrote a superbcywyddto Dafydd ab Siencyn, the outlaw.
Towards the end of the period we begin to breathe a literary atmosphere that is gradually but surely changing,—it is the change from the misty Wales of Roman Catholic times to the modern Wales after the Reformation. The poetical incoherencies of the old metres and the tricks of fancy of the old stylists occasionally form a somewhat incongruous dress for the thoughts of later poets. The old spirit and the glamour were gradually wearing away, only to be momentarily revived in the poetry of Goronwy Owen, nearly two centuries later. Two or three figures, indeed, stand out prominently during these years, among whom are some of the bards ordainedpenceirddiaid(master-poets) in the second Caerwys Eisteddfod held in 1568, viz. William Llýn, William Cynwal, Sion Tudur, and Sion Phylip. William Llýn (1530?-1580) was a pupil of Gruffydd Hiraethog. His complicatedawdlauare marvels of ingenuity, but many of them are on that very account almost unintelligible. He was, however, a complete master of thecywydd, in which he sometimes displays a sense of style and a sweetness of imagery allied to a melodiousness of language unequalled by the other poets of the period. His best-known work is the famousmarwnadto his master, Gruffydd Hiraethog. Sion Tudur (d. 1602), also a disciple of G. Hiraethog, was connected in some capacity or other with the cathedral at St Asaph. He is a realist, and delights in giving vivid word pictures in a less fanciful strain than his predecessors. Sion Phylip (1543-1620) wrote a famousmarwnadto his father and acywydd“to a sea-gull,” which is a superb piece of nature-painting in the style of Dafydd ab Gwilym. While dealing with this second Eisteddfod at Caerwys, we may note that Simwnt Fychan’s “Laws of Poetry” were accepted at this festival.
Two poets of this period, whom an English writer describesas“the two filthy Welshmen who first smoked publicly in the streets,” were captains in Queen Elizabeth’s navy, viz. Thomas Prys (d. 1634) of Plas Iolyn, and William Myddleton (1556-1621), called in Welsh Gwilym Canoldref. The former wrote, among other things, humorouscywyddaudescriptive of life in London and in the English navy of those days, in a style which was afterwards attempted by Lewys Morys. The work ofMyddleton, by which he is best known, is his translation of the Psalms (1603) into Welshcywyddmetre, a difficult and profitless experiment.
With Edmwnd Prys (1541-1624), the famous archdeacon of Merioneth, we come to distinctly modern times. He is hardly a great poet, if we judge him by the canons which are now popular. His gift was a gift of terse and biting statement, and hiscywyddauon the whole have more of literary than of poetical merit. He was a man of vast learning, and his works are full of scholastic and often difficult allusions. His most famouscywyddauare those written in the literary quarrel between him and Wiliam Cynwal. “Wiliam Cynwal,” says Goronwy Owen, “though the greater poet, was like a man fighting with bare fists against complete armour,” and it may be freely granted that in this, the most famous quarrel in Welsh literature, the palm of victory rested with the contentious old ecclesiastic. We shall deal with the rest of Edmwnd Prys’s literary work in the section on the rise of popular poetry.
Here the age of thecywyddand theawdl, as the chief forms of verse, ends. They appear again in the succeeding centuries, but as aliens among a nation that no longer paid them homage. The distinctly Welsh fashion in song was dying out.
6.Prose, 1550-1750.—One of the most striking features of Welsh literature is the almost entire absence of prose between 1300 and 1550. The genius of the people has always been an eminently poetical and imaginative one, and the history of Wales, politically and socially, has always been a fitter subject for poetry than for prose. During this period, Wales enjoyed a rest from propagandists and revolutionaries which has seldom been the happy lot of any other nation—they lay content with their own old traditions, acquiescing proudly in their separation from the other nations of Europe, and in their aloofness from all the movements which shook England and the continent during those years. Dynasties came and went, one religion ousted another religion, a new learning exposed the absurdities of the old, but the Welsh, among their hills, knew nothing of it; and when new ideas began to brood over the consciousness of the nation, they never got beyond the stage of providing new subjects forcywyddau. The Peasant Revolt, for instance, had but little effect on Welsh history, its most important contribution to the heritage of the nation being Iolo Goch’s superb “Cywyddto the Labourer.” Even the Reformation, which helped to change the whole fabric of English literature, had little effect on that of Wales, and the age of thecywydddragged out wearily its last years without experiencing the slightest quickening from the great movement which was remaking Europe. Hardly a prophet or reactionary raised his voice in defence or condemnation, and the Welsh went on serenely making and reading poetry. The two political movements in which Wales was really interested, the revolt of Glyndŵr and the accession of Henry VII., paid their tribute to its poetry alone, and both enterprises had sufficient of romance in them to repel the historian and to capture the poet. Naturally, therefore, we have no prose in this period, because there was no cause strong enough to produce it. What prose the nation required they found in the tales of romance, in the legends of Arthur and Charlemagne and the Grail, and, as for pedigrees and history, were they not written in thecywyddauof the poets?
The little prose that was produced during this period (1300-1550) was of an extraordinary kind. It was simply an exercise in long sentences and in curiously built compounds, and therefore more nearly allied to poetry. It generally took the form ofdewisbethau, a list of the “choice things” of such and such a person, or of the later triads (trioedd), which, starting from an ancient nucleus, gradually grew till, at the present day, Wales has a gnomic literature out of all proportion to the rest of its prose. Modern Welsh prose, however, is only very indirectly connected with these compositions. It is almost altogether a product of the Biblical literature which began to appear after the Reformation, and we shall proceed to give here the main facts and dates in its development. The first Welsh book was printed in 1546. It consisted of extracts in Welsh from the Bible and the Prayer Book, and a calendar. The author was Sir John Prys (1502-1555). The most important name in the early part of this period is William Salesbury (1520?-1600?). His chief books were,A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe(printed in 1547, and published in facsimile reprint by the Cymmrodorion Society),Kynniver Llith a Ban(1551), the Prayer Book in Welsh (1567), and the most important of all his works, the translation of the New Testament (1567). It is difficult to form any estimate, at this distance of time, of the impetus which William Salesbury gave to Welsh prose, but it must be regretfully admitted that his great work was marred by many defects. He had a theory that Welsh ought to be written as much like Latin as possible, and the result is that his language is very poor Welsh, both in spelling and idiom; it is an artificial dialect. It is a striking testimony, however, to his influence that many of the constructions and words which he manufactured are found to this day in correct literary Welsh.
In 1567 was published aWelsh Grammarby Dr Gruffydd Roberts, a Roman Catholic priest living at Milan (reprinted in facsimile, Paris, 1883), and in 1583, under the direction of Dr Rhosier Smyth, hisDrych Cristionogawlwas published at Rouen. Many other important Welsh books were produced during these years, but the work which may be regarded as having the greatest influence on the subsequent literature of Wales was the translation of theWelsh Bible(1588) by Dr William Morgan (1547?-1604), bishop of Llandaff, and afterwards of St Asaph. The Authorized Version (1620) now in use is a revision of this work by Dr Richard Parry, bishop of St Asaph (1560-1623). In 1592 theWelsh Grammarof Sion Dafydd Rhŷs (1534-1609) was published—a most valuable treatise on the language and on the rules of Welsh poetry. It was followed in 1621 by theWelsh Grammar, and in 1632 by theWelsh Dictionaryof Dr John Davies o Fallwyd (1570?-1644).
There are two prose compositions which stand entirely by themselves in this period of Bibles and grammars—theHistoryof Ellis Gruffydd, and Morris Kyffin’sDeffyniad y Ffydd. The former was a soldier in the English army during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a long history of England from the earliest times to his own day. This document, which has never been published, and which lies hidden away among the Mostyn MSS., is a most important and valuable original contribution to the history of the author’s contemporaries, and it sheds considerable light on the inner life of the court and the army. It is written in a delightfully easy style, contrasting favourably with the stiff diction of this period of translations. The work of Morris Kyffin (1555?-1598?) which we have mentioned is a translation of Bishop Jewel’sApologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae(1562) and was published in 1595. This work is the first piece of modern Welsh prose within reach of the ordinary reader, written in the rich idiom of the spoken Welsh. It is a precursor of many other books of its kind, a long series culminating in the immortalBardd Cwsc. In this sense Morris Kyffin may with perfect justice be hailed as the father of modern Welsh prose.
Most of the works which were afterwards written in the strong idiomatic Welsh of Morris Kyffin were on religious subjects, and many of them were translated from the English. The first wasYmarfer o Dduwioldeb(1630) by Rowland Vychan o Gaergai (a translation of Bailey’sPractice of Piety), which was followed in 1632 by Dr John Davies’sLlyfr y Resolution, and in 1666 byHanes y Ffydd Ddiffuant(A History of the True Faith) by Charles Edwards. All these authors and many of their successors were strong adherents of the Established Church, which was then intensely Welsh in sentiment. But in the midst of these churchmen, a flame-bearer of dissent appeared—Morgan Llwyd o Wynedd, who published in 1653 “a mystery to be understood of some, and scorned of others”—Llyfr y Tri Aderyn(The Book of the Three Birds). It is in the form of a discussion between the eagle (Cromwell), the dove (Dissent) and the raven (the Established Church). This book is certainly the most important original composition published during the 17th century, and to this day remains one of the widely-read classics of the Welshtongue. Morgan Llwyd wrote many other books in Welsh and English, all more or less in the vein of the first book.
During the remaining years of this period, the prose output of the Welsh press consisted mainly of devotional books, written or translated for or at the instigation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The Established Church, with the help of this society, made a gallant attempt to lighten the darkness of Wales by publishing books of this description, and it is mainly due to its exertions that the lamp of Welsh prose was kept burning during these years. Among the clergy who produced books of this description were Edward Samuel (1674-1748), who published among other worksHoll Ddyledswydd Dyn, a translation ofThe Whole Duty of Man(1718); Moses Williams (1684-1742), a most diligent searcher into Welsh MSS. and translator; Griffith Jones of Llanddowror (1683-1761), the father of Welsh popular education; Iago ab Dewi (1644?-1722) and Theophilus Evans (1694-1769), the famous author ofDrych y Prif Oesoedd(1716 and 1740). This book, likeLlyfr y Tri AderynandY Bardd Cwsc, has an established position for all time in the annals of Welsh literature.
We come now to the greatest of all Welsh prose writers, Ellis Wyn o Lasynys (1671-1734). His first work was a translation of Jeremy Taylor’sHoly Living, under the title ofRheol Buchedd Sanctaidd(1701). His next work was the immortalGweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsc(1703). The foundation of this work was L’Estrange’s translation of theSuenosof the Spaniard Quevedo. Ellis Wyn has certainly followed his original closely, even as Shakespeare followed his, but by his inimitable magic he has transmuted the characters and the scenery of the Spaniard into Welsh characters and scenery of the 17th century. No writer before or after him has used the Welsh language with such force and skill, and he will ever remain the stylist whom all Welsh writers will strive to imitate. The magic of his work has endowed the stately idiom of Gwynedd with such glamour that it has now become the standard idiom of Welsh prose. See Stern,Z. f. celt. Phil.iii. 165 ff.
7.The Rise of Popular Poetry, 1600-1750.—When Henry VII. ascended the throne, the old hostility of the Welsh towards the English disappeared. They had realized their wildest hope, that of seeing a Welshman wearing “the crown of London.” Naturally enough, therefore, the descendants of the old Welsh gentry began to look towards England for recognition and preferment, and their interest in their own little country necessarily began to wane. The result was that the traditional patrons of the Welsh muse could no longer understand the language of the poets, and the poets were forced to seek some more profitable employment. Besides, the old conditions were changing; the medieval traditions were indeed dying hard, but it gradually and imperceptibly came about that the poets of the older school had no audience. The only poets who still followed the old traditions were the rich farmers who “sang on their own land,” as the Welsh phrase goes. A new school, however, was rising. The nation at large had a vast store of folk-poetry, full of all the poetical characteristics of the Celt, and it was this very poetry, despised as it was, that became ultimately the groundwork of the new literature.
The first landmark in this new development was the publication in 1621 of Edmwnd Prys’s metrical version of the Psalms (followed by later editions in 1628, 1630, 1638 and 1648), and of the first poem of theWelshmen’s Candle(Cannwyll y Cymry) of Rhys Pritchard, vicar of Llandovery (1569-1644). This was published in 1646. These works were not written in the old metres peculiar to Wales, but in the free metres, like those of English poetry. The former work is of the utmost importance, as these Psalms were about the first metrical hymns in use. They are often rugged and uncouth, but many of the verses—such as the 23rd Psalm—have a haunting melody of their own, which grips the mind once and for ever. The second work, the first complete edition of which was published in 1672, consisted of moral verses in the metres of the old folk-songs (Penillion Telyn), and for nearly two centuries was the “guide, philosopher and friend” of the common people. Many other poets of the early part of this period wrote in these metres, such as Edward Dafydd o Fargam (fl. 1640), Rowland Fychan, Morgan Llwyd o Wynedd and William Phylip (d. 1669). Poetry in the free metres, however, was generally very crude, until it was given a new dignity by the greatest poet of the period, Huw Morus o Bont y Meibion (1622-1709). Most of his earlier compositions, which are among his best, and which were influenced to a great extent by the cavalier poetry of England, are love poems, perfect marvels of felicitous ingenuity and sweetness. He fixed the poetic canons of the free metres, and made what was before homely and uncouth, courtly and dignified. He wrote acywydd marwnadto his contemporary, Edward Morus o’r Perthi Llwydion (d. 1689), who was also a poet of considerable merit. Most of his work is composed of “moral pieces” and carols. Other poets of the period were Sion Dafydd Las (1650-1691), who was among the last of the family bards, and Dafydd Jones o Drefriw (fl. 1750). Towards the end of the period comes Lewys Morys (1700-1765). His poetry alone does not seem to warrant his fame, but he was the creator of a new period, the inspirer and the patron of Goronwy Owen. According to the lights of the 18th century, he was, like his brothers Richard and William, a scholar. His poetry, except a few well-known pieces, will never be popular, because it does not conform to modern canons of taste. His greatest merit is that he wrote the popular poetry then in vogue with a scholar’s elegance.
8.The Revival, 1750-1830.—The two leading figures in this period are Goronwy Owen (1722-1769) and William Williams, Pantycelyn (1717-1791). Goronwy Owen wrote all his poetry in thecynghanedd, and his work gave the old metres a new life. He raised them from the neglect into which they had fallen, and caused them to be, till this day, the vehicle of half the poetical thought of Wales. But he was in no way a representative of his age; he, like Milton, sang among a crowd of inferior poets themes quite detached from the life of his time, so that he also, like his English brother, lacks “human interest.” After Dafydd ab Gwilym, he is the greatest poet who sang in the old metres, and the influence of his correct and fastidious muse remains to this day. William Williams, however, wrote in the free metres in a way that was astoundingly fresh. It is not enough to say of him that he was a hymnologist; he is much more, he is the national poet of Wales. He had certainly the loftiest imagination of all the poets of five centuries, and his influence on the Welsh people can be gauged by the fact that a good deal of his idiom and dialect has fixed itself indelibly on modern literary Welsh. Besides the hymns, he wrote a religious epic,Theomemphus, which is to this day the national epic of evangelical Wales. Even as Goronwy Owen is the father of modern Welsh poetry in the old metres, so William Williams is the great fountain-head of the free metres, because he set aflame the imagination of every poet that succeeded him. With two such pioneers, it is natural that the rest of this period should contain many great names. Thomas Edwards (Twm o’r Nant) (1739-1810) has been called by an unwarrantably bold hyperbole, “the Welsh Shakespeare.” Most of his works are interludes and ballads, and he used to be very popular with the common people; he is, to this day, probably the oftenest quoted of all the Welsh poets. William Wynn, rector of Llangynhafal (1704-1760), is the author of a “Cywyddof the Great Judgment,” which bears comparison with Goronwy Owen’s masterpiece. Evan Evans (Ieuan Brydydd Hir) (1731-1789) was famous both as a poet and as a scholar and antiquarian. Edward Rhisiart (1714-1777), the schoolmaster of Ystradmeurig, was a scholar and a writer of pastorals in the manner of Theocritus. Most of the other poets who flourished towards the end of this period—Dafydd Ddu Eryri (1760-1822), Gwallter Mechain (1761-1849), Robert ab Gwilym Ddu (1767-1850), Dafydd Ionawr (1751-1827), Dewi Wyn o Eifion (1784-1841)—were brought into prominence by the Eisteddfod, which began to increase in influence during this period until it has become to-day the national festival. They all wrote for the most part incynghanedd, and the work of nearly all of them is marked by correctness rather than by poetical inspiration.