Y Cynfeirdd: Early Poets and Poetry

Editions and Studies

• Ifor Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen (1935, 1990). An edition and discussion of the early three-line `englynion' (`englynion o'r hen ganiad') preserved in the Red Book of Hergest and in the Black Book of Carmarthen. These poems relate to lost stories concerning the figures of Llywarch Hen, Heledd and Urien Rheged. They have as their background the wars between the Cymry and the English in the sixth and seventh centuries, in Powys and on the Shropshire border; but they also include memories of warfare in the `Old North' (the `lost' territory which covered much of southern Scotland, north-west England and the Lake District). IW showed that, contrary to earlier assumption, Llywarch Hen is not the name of the anonymous poet who composed these dramatic poems, but rather that of a leading actor in them, an ancient warrior who is depicted as a senile figure, goading his sons to go out and fight in defence of their borderland, as he himself is no longer able to do. IW gave an outline of his theories in his British Academy Lecture of 1932 `The Poems of Llywarch Hen' which is reproduced as chapter viii of The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry. It was primarily on historical grounds that IW believed that the poems date from the ninth century. [For translations and subsequent discussion of all problems relating to these poems see Jenny Rowland, Early Welsh Saga Poetry (D.S. Brewer, Woodbridge, 1990).
• Ifor Williams, Canu Aneirin (1938, 1989). This is IW's magnum opus. Many years of work lay behind his interpretation of the obscure and archaic language of Aneirin's `Gododdin'. He recognized that the poem did not represent a new beginning, but that underlying its linguistic and metrical complexities was a long and largely obliterated poetic tradition. Traditionally, the `Gododdin' was believed to have been composed by the poet Aneirin at about the turn of the seventh century: the name is derived from that of the British tribe of the Gododdin (Ptolemy's `Votadini'), which had from the earliest times been settled in the district of Lothian in south-east Scotland, perhaps with their capital on the fortress-rock of Edinburgh. The poem is a series of elegies on the young warriors (each one of them is individually named) who set out from their homes to oppose a much larger Anglian force from the south, at a place which is called Catraeth. IW conjecturally identified Catraeth with Catterick in Yorkshire, though he admitted that no absolute certainty as to the site can be possible. Catterick was an important strategic position whose possession would have been equally desirable to both Angles and Britons, since it stood at the junction of Roman roads going to the south as well as to the north-east and to the north-west. Largely on the basis of converging historical evidence, IW proposed that the Battle of Catraeth took place about the year 600, and was a disastrous failed attempt by the Britons to regain possession of the site. But in the absence of any other contemporary reference to the battle outside the poem itself, all details as to time and place remain of necessity hypothetical. Both have subsequently been matters of much conjecture and discussion; more recently, there has been increasing speculation concerning the constituent elements of the text. [English translations have been published by K.H. Jackson, The Gododdin: the Oldest Scottish Poem (Edinburgh, 1969) and by A.O.H. Jarman, Aneirin: Y Gododdin, with modernized Welsh text, full notes and a glossary (Llandysul, 1988). See also Ifor Williams, The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry, chapters iv, v and vi.
• Ifor Williams, Canu Taliesin (1960, 1977, 1990). In the mixed contents of the Book of Taliesin a nucleus of very early praise-poems attributed to the sixth-century poet Taliesin had previously been identified by John Morris-Jones (Y Cymmrodor, 28 (1918)). IW conjectured that twelve of these were the authentic work of the poet. They are here edited with introduction and notes. The poems are addressed to the northern ruler Urien Rheged, to his contemporary Gwallawg (who may have ruled in the Yorkshire region of Elmet), to Urien's son Owain ab Urien, and one (of uncertain authorship, but perhaps the earliest surviving poem in Welsh) to Cynan Garwyn, a contemporary ruler of Powys. [English translation by J.E. Caerwyn Williams, The Poems of Taliesin (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968).
• Ifor Williams, Armes Prydein o Lyfr Taliesin. Gyda Rhagymadrodd a Nodiadau (1955, 1979). A tenth-century poem of political prophecy, which a later age erroneously attributed to Taliesin. IW concluded that `Armes Prydein' was composed by a south-Wales ecclesiastic who wished to unite the peoples of Wales with those of Cornwall, Ireland, Strathclyde, Brittany and the Danes of Dublin, in order that - under the banner of St David - they might oppose the rising and oppressive power of the English king Athelstan (who is not actually named, however), and drive the English from Britain, thus restoring the sovereignty of the island to its original inhabitants. IW argues that the poem could not have been composed after the year 937, in which a comparable coalition of Britons, Scots and Danes of Dublin met with a crushing defeat at the hands of Athelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh. [English translation of IW's text and notes, by R. Bromwich, Armes Prydein: the Prophecy of Britain (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1972).] The literary context of `Armes Prydein' - and of the cult of political prophecy in verse which developed from this time until resolved by the supposed triumph of the Britons at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) - was usefully outlined by M.E. Griffiths in Early Vaticination in Welsh with English Parallels (1937).
• Ifor Williams (ed. R. Bromwich), The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry: Studies by Sir Ifor Williams, D. Litt., LL.D., FBA (1972; 2nd edn 1980; pb. 1990). A reproduction of eight English articles and lectures by IW, including `The Earliest Poetry', `The Poems of Llywarch Hen', `Wales and the North', `The Towyn Inscribed Stone' and his editions of `Edmic Dinbych' and of the Anglesey poem to Aeddon. With an introduction and some added notes by the editor.
• K.H. Jackson (ed.), Early Welsh Gnomic Poems (1935, 1973). `Gnomes' are described as `sententious statements about universals', whether these relate to human or to natural phenomena, and they include proverbs. KHJ here edits sequences of `englynion' of the oldest type, mainly from the Red Book of Hergest, in which gnomic statements are combined with lines of frequently perceptive nature description. This is the earliest nature poetry to be found in Welsh. [Translations and full discussion in K. Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry (Cambridge, 1935).]
• A.O.H. Jarman, Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin. Gyda Rhagymadrodd, Nodiadau Testunol a Geirfa (1982). An edition and rearrangement of the entire contents of the Black Book of Carmarthen, with introduction, notes and glossary. The introductory section on `Y Llawysgrif' is contributed by E.D. Jones (former librarian of the National Library of Wales), and establishes that the manuscript was written at different dates from c.1250 onwards. `Y Cynnwys' by AOHJ then analyses the contents from both literary and historical viewpoints.
• A.O.H. Jarman (gol.), Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin (1951; new edn 1967). An edition and discussion of the obscure and allusive opening poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen, in which prophecies are expressed in the form of a dialogue between the two traditional poets Myrddin and Taliesin. Myrddin foretells events yet to come, some of which are alluded to elsewhere in the traditions about Myrddin (Merlin). On linguistic and metrical grounds the editor proposes a date in the latter half of the eleventh century. [Jarman's own translation of this and other `Myrddin' poems is to be found in an appendix to N. Tolstoy, The Quest for Merlin (London, 1983).
• A.O.H. Jarman, The Cynfeirdd: Early Welsh Poets and Poetry (`Writers of Wales', 1981). A succinct account of the earliest poetry, developed largely from the pioneer interpretations of John Morris-Jones and Ifor Williams, but with several original comments on the varieties of expression given in Welsh to the heroic ethos. AOHJ discerns a contrast between Taliesin's seminal portrayal of Urien Rheged as an idealized ruler and the passionate quest for personal glory which motivates the young warriors of the `Gododdin'. He describes the latter poem as `the only complete expression of the heroic ideal in Welsh literature'. In the Llywarch Hen poetry he finds the `anti- heroic' expression of this ideal.
• R. Bromwich and R. Brinley Jones (goln/eds), Astudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd: Studies in Old Welsh Poetry. Presented to Sir Idris Foster (1978). A collection of specialist studies (some in English and some in Welsh) by a number of contributors. Though concerned primarily with the `Gododdin' poem - its historicity (T.M. Charles-Edwards), language (D. Simon Evans) and metrics (D. Ellis Evans) - it includes also editions of the poems and fragments concerning Cadwallon (R.G. Gruffydd), the `Marwnad Cunedda' (J.E. Caerwyn Williams), the Llywarch Hen poetry (N.J.A. Williams and Gwyn Thomas) and the early dramatic and dialogue poems from the Black Book of Carmarthen (B.F. Roberts). (Two of these last poems are of primary interest for Arthurian studies.) An editorial introduction in English outlines the contents of the book.

Y Gogynfeirdd: The Poets of the Princes