The Welsh and Their Literature

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.’

Lewis Glyn Cothi lived during the wars of the Roses. He was bard to Jasper Earl of Pembroke, son of Owen Tudor and Catharine of France, and brother uterine of Henry VI. He followed his patron to the fatal battle of Mortimer’s Cross as a captain of foot. His pieces are mostly on the events of his time, and are full of curious historical information.

Ieuan Deulwyn was bard and friend of Ryce ap Thomas, to whom he addressed a remarkable ode in stanzas of four lines on the principle of counter-change, by which any line in the quatrain may begin it. His friend and patron Ryce ap Thomas was the grandson of that Griffith ap Nicholas who perished at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, fighting against Lancaster. Ryce, however, when Richmond, the last hope of Lancaster, landed at Milford Haven, joined him at the head of ‘all the Ryces,’ and was the main cause of his eventually winning the crown. He was loaded with riches and honours by Henry VII., and was an especial favourite with Henry VIII., who used to call him Father Preecc, my trusty Welshman. He was a great warrior, a consummate courtier, and a very wise man; for whatever harm he might do to people, he never spoke ill of anybody. His tomb, bearing the sculptured figures of himself and wife, may be seen in the church of St. Peter, at Carmarthen.

Sion Tudor was born about the middle of the sixteenth century. He had much wit and humour, but was very satirical. He wrote a bitter epigram on London, in which city, by the bye, he had been most unmercifully fleeced. William Middleton was one of the sea captains of Queen Elizabeth; he translated the Psalms into several of the four-and-twenty measures whilst commanding a ship of war in the West Indian seas. Twm Sion Cati lived in the days of James I.: he was a sweet poet, but – start not, gentle reader! a ferocious robber. His cave amidst the wild hills between Tregaron and Brecknock is still pointed out by the neighbouring rustics. In the middle of the seventeenth century was produced a singular little piece, author unknown: it is an englyn or epigram of four lines on a spider, all in vowels: —

 
‘O’i wiw wy i weu e â, – o’i au,
O’i wyau y weua;
E wywa ei we’ aua,’
A’i weuai yw ieuau ia.’
 

A proest, or kind of counterchange, was eventually added to it by one Gronwy Owen, so that the Welsh now can say, what perhaps no other nation can, that they have a poem of eight lines in their language, in which there is not a single consonant. It is however necessary to state, that in the Welsh language there are seven vowels, both w and y being considered and sounded as such. The two parts may be thus rendered into English:

 
‘From out its womb it weaves with care
   Its web beneath the roof;
Its wintry web it spreadeth there —
   Wires of ice its woof.
 
 
And doth it weave against the wall
   Thin ropes of ice on high?
And must its little liver all
   The wondrous stuff supply?’
 

Huw Morris was born in the year 1622, and died in 1709, having lived in six reigns. The place of his birth was Pont y Meibion, in the valley of Ceiriog, in Denbighshire. He was a writer of songs, carols, and elegies, and was generally termed Eos Ceiriog, or the Nightingale of Ceiriog, a title which he occasionally well deserved, for some of his pieces, especially his elegies, are of great beauty and sweetness. Not unfrequently, however, the title of Dylluan Ceiriog, or the Owl of Ceiriog, would be far more applicable, for whenever he thought fit he could screech and hoot most fearfully. He was a loyalist, and some of his strains against the Roundheads are fraught with the bitterest satire. His dirge on Oliver and his men, composed shortly after Monk had declared for Charles II., is a piece quite unique in its way. He lies buried in the graveyard of the beautiful church of Llan Silien, in Denbigshire. The stone which covers his remains is yet to be seen just outside the southern wall, near the porch. The last great poet of Wales was a little swarthy curate; – but this child of immortality, for such he is, must not be disposed of in half a dozen lines. The following account of him is extracted from an unpublished work, called ‘Wild Wales,’ by the author of ‘The Bible in Spain’: —

‘Goronwy, or Gronwy, Owen was born in the year 1722, at a place called Llanfair Mathafrn Eithaf, in Anglesea. He was the eldest of three children. His parents were peasants and so exceedingly poor that they were unable to send him to school. Even, however, when an unlettered child he gave indications that he was visited by the awen or muse. At length the celebrated Lewis Morris chancing to be at Llanfair, became acquainted with the boy, and, struck with its natural talents, determined that he should have all the benefit which education could bestow. He accordingly, at his own expense, sent him to school at Beaumaris, where he displayed a remarkable aptitude for the acquisition of learning. He subsequently sent him to Jesus College, Oxford, and supported him there whilst studying for the Church. At Jesus, Gronwy distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar, and gave proofs of such poetical talent in his native language that he was looked upon by his countrymen of that Welsh college as the rising bard of the age. After completing his collegiate course, he returned to Wales, where he was ordained a minster of the Church in the year 1745. The next seven years of his life were a series of cruel disappointments and pecuniary embarrassments. The grand wish of his heart was to obtain a curacy, and to settle down in Wales. Certainly a very reasonable wish, for, to say nothing of his being a great genius, he was eloquent, highly learned, modest, meek, and of irreproachable morals; yet Gronwy Owen could obtain no Welsh curacy, nor could his friend Lewis Morris, though he exerted himself to the utmost, procure one for him. It was true that he was told that he might go to Llanfair, his native place, and officiate there at a time when the curacy happened to be vacant, and thither he went, glad at heart to get back amongst his old friends, who enthusiastically welcomed him; yet scarcely had he been there three weeks when he received notice from the chaplain of the Bishop of Bangor that he must vacate Llanfair in order to make room for a Mr. John Ellis, a young clergyman of large independent fortune, who was wishing for a curacy under the Bishop of Bangor, Doctor Hutton. So poor Gronwy, the eloquent, the learned, the meek, was obliged to vacate the pulpit of his native place to make room for the rich young clergyman, who wished to be within dining distance of the palace of Bangor. Truly in this world the full shall be crammed, and those who have little shall have the little which they have taken away from them. Unable to obtain employment in Wales, Gronwy sought for it in England, and after some time procured the curacy of Oswestry, in Shropshire, where he married a respectable young woman, who eventually brought him two sons and a daughter. From Oswestry he went to Donnington, near Shrewsbury, where, under a certain Scotchman named Douglas, who was an absentee, and who died Bishop of Salisbury, he officiated as curate and master of a grammar school for a stipend – always grudgingly and contumeliously paid – of three-and-twenty pounds a year. From Donnington he removed to Walton in Cheshire, where he lost his daughter, who was carried off by a fever. His next removal was to Northolt, a pleasant village in the neighbourhood of London. He held none of his curacies long, either losing them from the caprice of his principals, or being compelled to resign them from the parsimony which they practised towards him. In the year 1756 he was living in a garret in London, vainly soliciting employment in his sacred calling, and undergoing with his family the greatest privations. At length his friend Lewis Morris, who had always assisted him to the utmost of his ability, procured him the mastership of a Government school at New Brunswick, in North America, with a salary of three hundred pounds a year. Thither he went with his wife and family, and there he died some time about the year 1780.

 

‘He was the last of the great poets of Cambria, and with the exception of Ab Gwilym, the greatest which she has produced. His poems, which for a long time had circulated through Wales in manuscript, were first printed in the year 1819. They are composed in the ancient bardic measures, and were, with one exception, namely, an elegy on the death of his benefactor, Lewis Morris, which was transmitted from the New World, written before he had attained the age of thirty-five. All his pieces are excellent, but his master-work is decidedly the Cywydd y Farn, or Day of Judgment. This poem, which is generally considered by the Welsh as the brightest ornament of their ancient language, was composed at Donnington, a small hamlet in Shropshire, on the north-west spur of the Wrekin, at which place, as has been already said, Gronwy toiled as schoolmaster and curate under Douglas the Scot, for a stipend of three-and-twenty pounds a year.’ ⁷

The prose literature of Wales is by no means so extensive as the poetical; it, however, comprises much that is valuable and curious on historical, biographical, romantic and moral subjects. The most ancient Welsh prose may probably be found in certain brief compositions, called Triads, which are said to be of Druidic origin. The Triad was used for the commemoration of historical facts or the inculcation of moral duties. It has its name because in it three events are commemorated, or three persons mentioned, if it be historical; three things or three actions recommended or denounced, if it be moral. To give the reader at once a tolerable conception of what the Triad is, we subjoin two or three specimens of this kind of composition. We commence with the historical Triad: —

‘These are the three pillars of the race of the isle of Britain: First, Hu the Mighty, who conducted the nation of the Cumry from the summer country to the island of Britain (bringing them from the continent) across the hazy sea (German Ocean). Second, Prydain, son of Aedd Mawr, the founder of government and rule in the isle of Britain, before whose time there was no such thing as justice except what was obtained by courtesy, nor any law save that of the strongest. Third, Dyfnwal Moelmud, who first reduced to a system the laws, customs, and privileges of his country and nation.

‘The three intruding tribes into the island of Britain are the following: First, the Corranians, who came from the country of Pwyl. Second, the Gwyddelian (silvan, Irish) Fichti (Picts), who came to Alban across the sea of Lochlin (Northern Ocean), and who still exist in Alban by the shore of the sea of Lochlin (from Inverness to Thursoe). Third, the Saxons.. ’

So much for the historical Triad: now for the moral. The following are selected from a curious collection of admonitory sayings, called the ‘Triads of the Cumro, or Welshman:’ —