The Welsh and Their Literature

In Welsh poetry rhyme is found in a twofold shape: there is alliteration, that is rhyme produced by the same letters following each other at certain distances in the body of the line, then there is the common rhyme, produced by two or more lines terminating with the same letters. In the older Welsh poetry, by which we mean that composed before the termination of the first millennium, both rhyme and alliteration are employed, but in a less remarkable manner than in the bardic effusions of comparatively modern times. The extent to which the bards of the middle ages, and those of one or two subsequent centuries, carried rhyme and alliteration seems marvellous to the English versifier. We English think we have accomplished a great feat in rhyme when we have made three lines consonant in their terminations; but Dafydd Benfras, or David of the Thick Head, would make fifty lines rhyme together, and not think that he had accomplished anything remarkable in rhyming either. Our English alliterative triumph is the following line, composed by a young lady in the year 1800, on the occasion of a gentleman of the name of Lee planting a lane with lilacs: —

 
‘Let lovely lilacs line Lee’s lonely lane!’
 

in which not only every word, but every syllable commences with the same letter —l.

But what is this English alliterative triumph of the young lady compared with the Welsh alliterative triumph of Dafydd Nanmawr, who wrote a poem of twelve lines, every syllable of which commences with the letter g, with the exception of the last, which begins with n?

The earliest Cymric or British metre seems to have been a triban or triplet, in each line of which there were in general six syllables. The bards of the sixth, seventh, and several succeeding centuries used this metre, and likewise others, invented by themselves, in which the lines are of various length. There was no regular system of prosody till the year 1120, when one was established under the auspices of Grufydd ap Cynan, prince of Gwynedd. This Ap Cynan, who, though of Welsh origin, was born in Dublin, and educated at the Danish Irish court, was passionately fond of poetry, and was not only well acquainted with that of the British bards, but with the strains of the Icelandic skalds and Irish fileas. Shortly after his accession to the throne of Gwynedd, of which he was the rightful heir, he proclaimed an eisteddfod, or poetical sessions. At this eisteddfod, which was numerously attended by poets of various nations, a system of prosody was drawn up by competent persons, at his instigation, for the use of the Welsh, and established by his authority. This system, in which Cymric, Icelandic, and Irish forms of verse are blended and amalgamated, has with a few unimportant variations maintained its ground to the present time. It contains three primary measures, termed respectively, englyn, cywydd, and awdl. Of the englyn, there are five kinds; of the cywydd, four; and of the awdl, fifteen. Each particular species of englyn, cywydd, and awdl has its appropriate name, which it is needless to give here. These three primary metres, with their modifications, make together twenty-four measures, which embrace the whole system of Welsh versification, in which, as somebody has observed, each line, word, and letter, are so harmonized by consonancy, chained so accurately, woven so closely and correctly, that it is impossible to extract one word or even letter without causing a hideous gap. Whoever has ventured to compose out of these measures, since the time of their establishment, has been considered by the Welsh scholar as unworthy of the name of poet.

The earliest recorded poet of the Cymry, after the days of Gwyddon Ganhebon and the other personages mentioned with him in the triad, is Merddin, Beirdd Emrys Wledig, or Merddin, Bard of Prince Emrys. He flourished about the middle of the fifth century, the period when the Saxons arrived in Britain, under the command of Hengist and Horsa. Besides poetry he was skilled in mathematics, and is said by the Welsh to have been the architect of Stonehenge. He has been surnamed Ambrosius, which is the Latin modification of the name of his patron Emrys. He is the Merddin, or Merlin, who has had to father so many of the prophecies which since his death have been produced. None of his poems are extant.

During the period which elapsed between the first coming of the Saxons, and the expulsion of the British from the Southern and Eastern parts of the island, lived Aneurin, Taliesin, Llewarch Hen, and Merddin, surnamed Wyllt or the Wild, all celebrated poets, the latter of whom has generally been confounded with Merddin Ambrosius. Aneurin was a chief of the Ottadinian Britons, and his principal poem is the one styled Gododin, a word which probably means that which relates to the Ottadini. It is descriptive of the battle of Cattraeth, fought between the Britons and the Saxons, in which the former were so completely worsted that only three, amongst whom was Aneurin himself, escaped with their lives. The poem is composed in lines remarkably short, consisting in general of only six syllables. Aneurin was the Gildas of ecclesiastical history, and the name of Gildas is merely a Saxon translation of Aneurin, which signifies golden grove. Taliesin Ben Beirdd, or Taliesin Prince of Bards, was a North Welshman, but was educated at Llanreithin, in Glamorgan, under Catwg, celebrated for his aphorisms, who kept a school of philosophy there. He was called Prince of Bards because he excelled all his contemporaries in the poetic art. Many of his pieces are extant; amongst them is an awdl or ode, containing an abridgment of the history of the world, in which there is a stanza with regard to the destiny of the ancient Britons as sublime as it is true: —

 
‘Their Lord they shall praise,
Their language they shall keep,
Their land they shall lose
Except wild Wales.’
 

Llewarch Hen, or Llewarch the aged, was a prince of Cumberland. Driven from his domain by the Saxons, he sought a refuge at the place which is now called Shrewsbury, and subsequently on the shore of the lake of Bala, a beautiful sheet of water in Merionethshire, overlooked on the south by the great mountain Arran. There he died at the age of one hundred and fifty years. His poems consist chiefly of elegies on his sons, twenty-four in number, all of whom perished in battle, and on his slaughtered friends. They are composed in triplets, and abound with simplicity and pathos. Myrddin Wyllt, or Myrddin the Wild, was a Briton of the Scottish border. Having killed the son of his sister, he was so stung with remorse that he determined to renounce the society of men, and accordingly retired to a forest in Scotland, called Celydon, where he was frequently seized with howling madness. Owing to his sylvan life and his attacks of lunacy, he was called Merddyn Wyllt, or the Wild. He composed poetry in his lucid intervals. Six of his pieces have been preserved: they are chiefly on historical subjects. The most remarkable of them is an address to his pig, in which he tells the woes and disasters which are to happen to Britain: it consists of twenty-five stanzas or sections. In all of them a kind of alliteration is observable, and in each, with one or two exceptions, the first line rhymes with all the rest. Each commences with ‘Oian a phorchellan’ – listen, little porker! The commencement of one of these stanzas might be used in these lowering days by many a grey-headed yeoman to his best friend: —

 
‘Oian a phorchellan: mawr eryssi
A fydd ym Mhrydan, ac nim dorbi.
 
 
Listen, little porker! mighty wonders
Shall occur in Britain, which shall not con me.’
 

Many and great poets flourished in the times of the Welsh princes: the three greatest were Meilyr, Gwalchmai, and Dafydd Benfras. Meilyr was bard of Gruffudd ap Cynan, prince of Gwynedd or North Wales, who died in 1137. He sang the praises of his master, who was a celebrated warrior and a bountiful patron of the muse, in whose time and under whose sanction those forms of composition, generally called the twenty four measures, were invented and promulgated. Gwalchmai lived in the time of Owain, prince of Gwynedd, about whom he sang a piece which is to a certain extent known to the English public by a paraphrase made by Gray, which bears the title of ‘The Triumphs of Owain.’ Dafydd Benfras was domestic bard of Llywelyn ap Jorwerth, also prince of Gwynedd and titular king of Wales, who flourished during the first half of the thirteenth century. In one of his odes addressed to his patron, there is an animated description of a battle won by Llywelyn over King John:

 
‘Llywelyn of the potent hand oft wrought
Trouble upon the kings and consternation;
When he with the Lloegrain monarch fought,
Whose cry was “Devastation!”
Forward impetuously his squadrons ran;
Great was the tumult ere the shoot began;
Proud was the hero of his reeking glaive,
Proud of their numbers were his followers brave. ⁵
O then were heard resounding o’er the fields
The clash of faulchions and the crash of shields!
Many the wounds in yonder fight receiv’d!
Many the warriors of their lives bereaved!
The battle rages till our foes recoil
Behind the Dike which Offa built with toil.
Bloody their foreheads, gash’d with many a blow,
Blood streaming down their quaking knees below.
Llywelyn we as our high chief obey,
To fair Porth Ysgewin extends his sway;
For regal virtues and for princely line
He towers above imperial Constantine.’
 

Dafydd ab Gwilym was born at Bro Gynan, in Cardiganshire, in 1293, about forty years after the whole of Wales had been subjected to the sway of England. He was the Ovid of Wales, the poet of love and nature. In his early years he was very dissipated, but towards the latter part of his life became religious. He died at the age of sixty-three, and was buried within the precincts of the great monastery of Strata Florida. ⁶ Such was the power of his genius, that the generality of the poets who succeeded him for the next four hundred years were more or less his imitators. Iolo Goch, or Red Julius, whose real name was Llwyd, was the bard of Owen Glendower, and, amongst other pieces, composed a graphic ode on his patron’s mansion at Sycharth, and the manner of life there: —

 
‘Its likeness now I’ll limn you out:
’Tis water-girdled wide about;
It shows a wide and stately door,
Reach’d by a bridge the water o’er;
’Tis formed of buildings coupled fair —
Coupled is every couple there;
Within a quadrate structure tall
Muster the merry pleasures all;
Conjointly are the angles bound,
No flaw in all the place is found.
Structures in contact meet the eye
Upon the hillock’s top on high;
Into each other fasten’d they
The form of a hard knot display.
There dwells the chief we all extol
In timber house on lightsome knoll;
Upon four wooden columns proud
Mounteth his mansion to the cloud.
Each column’s thick and firmly bas’d,
And upon each a loft is plac’d;
In those four lofts, which coupled stand,
Repose at night the minstrel band.
Four lofts they were in pristine state,
But now partition’d form they eight.
Tiled is the roof.  On each house-top
Rise smoke-ejecting chimneys up.
All of one form there are nine halls,
Each with nine wardrobes in its walls,
With linen white as well supplied
As fairest shops of fam’d Cheapside.
 

* * * * *

 
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.