I love the sweet musicians who so fondly dwell
In dear, plaintive murmurs, and the accents of woe;
I love the birds and their sweet voices
In the soothing lays of the wood.”
Owain Gwynedd was the hero-king of Gwalchmai’s day. His repulse of an attack made by Henry the Second’s fleet under the command of an unpatriotic Prince of Powys in Anglesey is the subject of the bard’s chief heroic poem:
The flashing death-strokes gleam afar,
Spear rings on spear, flight urges flight,
And drowning victims plunge to-night
Till Menai’s over-burthened tide,
Wide-blushing with the streaming gore,
And choked with carnage, ebbs no more;
While mail-clad warriors on her side
In anguish drag their deep-gash’d wounds along,
And ’fore the King’s Red chiefs are heap’d the mangled throng.”
Owain Cyfeiliog, a Prince of Powys in the end of the twelfth century, though a noted warrior, is a leading instance of a royal bard. His chief poem, The Hirlâs Horn (drinking-cup), is famous wherever Welsh is spoken:
Then fill the Hirlâs horn, my boy,
That shineth like the sea,
Whose azure handles tipped with gold
Invite the grasp of Britons bold,
The sons of liberty.”
This is one of the longest poems of the twelfth century. The scene is the night after a battle, and the Prince with his warriors gathered round him in the banqueting-hall sends the brimming cup to each of his chieftains successively and enumerates their respective deeds. A leading incident in the poem is when Owen, having eulogised the prowess of two favourite warriors in glowing terms, turns to their accustomed seats, and, finding them vacant, suddenly recalls the fact that they had fallen in the battle of the morning:
O Christ! how I mourn their catastrophe!
O lost Moreiddig—How greatly shall I need thee!”
A most suggestive poem by another Prince is a kind of summary of his progress through his dominions from the Ardudwy mountains,
Where storms eternal uproar keep,”
to the hills above Llangollen where he proposes “to taste the social joys of Yale.” This is Howel, the illegitimate son of Owain Gwynedd, who seized and held for two years his father’s kingdom. Though so strenuous a warrior, his poems are rather of love and social life. He sings with much feeling of the joys of Wales; her fair landscape, her bright waters and green vales, her beauteous women and skimming seagulls, her fields clothed with tender trefoil, her far-reaching wilds, and plenteousness of game. Himself a successful stormer of castles, there is something richly suggestive in the action of a man laying down the torch and bloody sword and taking up the pen to describe his havoc:
Then the author wholly changes his mood:
Of slender form, in mantle green;
Whose woman’s wit is ever staid,
Subdued by virtue’s graceful mien.
Give me the maid, whose heart with mine
Shall blend each thought, each hope combine;
Then, maiden fair as ocean’s spray,
Gifted with Kymric wit’s bright ray,
Say, am I thine?
Art thou then mine?
What! silent now?
Thy silence makes this bosom glow.
I choose thee, maiden, for thy gifts divine;
’Tis right to choose—then, fairest, choose me thine.”
There is much misunderstanding as to the fashion in which the bards were treated by Edward the First. During war the leading minstrels were naturally identified with the patrons whose banners they followed and whose praises they sang; but the statement that they were put to death as bards rests on wholly secondary authority and seems doubtful. Stringent laws were certainly made against the lower order of minstrels who wandered homeless through the country, but they seem to have been devised as much for the protection of the common people, who were called on to support them, as against the men themselves, who were regarded by the authorities as mendicants and idlers. The superior bards, who kept strictly to the houses of the great, were probably not often interfered with. These, though they had regular patrons and fixed places of abode, made extended tours from time to time in which there seems to have been no special distinction between North and South Wales. The hatred of the bards towards England was a marked feature of their time, and was so consistent that though many Welsh princes, in their jealousy, lent their swords, as we have seen, to the invader, no bards, so far as one knows, turned against their countrymen. For generations they prided themselves in being intellectually superior to the Saxon. They also saw, after the Norman conquest, the English race despised and held down by their conquerors, and a species of serfdom in use among the Saxons which had no prototype in their own country. The ordinary bards, however, had beyond all doubt sacrificed much of their old independence and become the creatures of their patrons and ready to sell their praises for patronage. Even the respectable Meilir confesses:
From frail princes for loving them.”
Llewelyn the Great, the second, that is to say, of the three Llewelyns, aroused the enthusiasm of Bardic literature and was the subject of much stirring eulogy:
Dafydd Benvras, the author of this stanza, left many poems, and later on Griffith ap Yr Ynad Goch wrote what is regarded as among the finest of Welsh odes, on the death of the last Llewelyn, laying the blame of that catastrophe on the wickedness of his countrymen:
In loudest symphony complain;
Hark how the consecrated oaks,
Unconscious of the woodman’s strokes,
With thundering crash proclaim he’s gone,
Fall in each other’s arms and groan.
Hark! how the sullen trumpets roar.
See! how the white waves lash the shore.
See how eclipsed the sun appears,
See! how the stars fall from their spheres,
Each awful Heaven-sent prodigy,
Ye sons of infidelity!
Believe and tremble, guilty land.
Lo! thy destruction is at hand.”
After the Edwardian conquest in 1284 the note of the bards sensibly softened and attuned itself much more generally to love and nature. The song-birds particularly were in great request as recipients of poetic addresses and confidences.
While the same singer, Rhys Goch, describes thus the light tread of his ladylove:
See her the earth elastic tread;
And where she walks, neath snow-white feet
Not e’en a trefoil bends its head.”
The latter part of the 14th century was extremely prolific in poetry which, with some notable exceptions, is regarded rather as showing a good general level than as producing any masterpieces. Dafydd ap Gwilym, the Welsh Ovid, is of course a striking exception. Over 250 of his poems are preserved, while Lewis Glyncothi, Gutyn Owain, Iolo Goch, Glyndwr’s bard, and two or three more have left behind them something like 300 others. Dafydd ap Gwilym, who was buried at Strata Florida, holds one of the highest places in Cymric literature. It is as a love poet that he is chiefly distinguished, but his love of nature and his own beautiful country finds sole expression in many of his productions. His ode to Fair Glamorgan, written from “the heart of wild, wild Gwynedd,” asking the summer to be his messenger, is regarded as one of his best. In translation it is interesting as a contemporary picture, though a poetic one, of the richest Welsh province.
And lakes of fish and mansions neat,
With halls of stone where kindness dwells,
And where each hospitable lord
Heaps for the stranger guest his board,
And where the generous wine-cup swells,
With trees that bear the luscious pear,
So thickly clustering everywhere.
Her lofty woods with warblers teem,
Her fields with flowers that love the stream,
Her valleys varied crops display,
Eight kinds of corn and three of hay;
Bright parlour with her trefoiled floor!
Sweet garden, spread on ocean shore.”
Quotations have already been made in the body of this book from Iolo Goch’s ode to Glyndwr, and throughout the Wars of the Roses Lewis Glyncothi, Gutyn Owain, and Tudor Aled continued to sing of contemporary events.
The leading charge against Cymric poetry is that it is too prone to elaborate the mere art of versification at the expense of fire and animation. Alliteration was of course the chief method of ornament, though the rhyming of the terminal syllable was by no means always ignored. But, speaking generally, skill in the arrangement of words according to certain time-honoured conventions occupied more than an equitable share in the making of Welsh verse. A tendency to put mere sound above feeling and emotion did much to cramp it, and often forced it into mannerisms and affectations that would rather destroy than enhance the intrinsic merits of a composition.
“Beyond all rhetorical ornaments,” says Giraldus Cambrensis, “they preferred the use of alliteration and that kind more especially which repeats the first letters or syllables of words. They made so much use of this ornament in every finished discourse that they thought nothing elegantly spoken without it.”
Mr. Stephens, by way of illustration, points out poems by the greater bards which from the first line to the last commence with the same letter. He also attributes the extraordinary elaboration in structure with which fashion was prone to cumber Welsh poetry to a desire for increasing the difficulties of composition and in consequence the exclusiveness of the bardic order. It is not surprising that in a country where war was the chief business of life it should be by far the favourite subject of the minstrel, particularly when one remembers that the celebration of his employer’s exploits or intended exploits was the chief source of the domestic poet’s livelihood. The wars of Glyndwr stirred again the old fighting note which after the Edwardian conquest had given way in a great measure to gentler themes. The old laws against the bards, enunciated by Edward I., now for long a dead letter, were renewed, but after this final submission of Wales it is doubtful if they continued to have much meaning, particularly amid the chaos of the ensuing Wars of the Roses, when the bards most certainly did their full share of singing.
I have said nothing of the music which both in early and mediæval Wales played such a prominent part in the national life. The harp was always the true national instrument, though the pipe or bagpipe was well known and in frequent use; but it was never really popular, as in Ireland and Scotland, and this was surely a valuable testimony to the superior culture of the Welsh musicians. Griffith ap Kynan, King of North Wales about 1100, already mentioned, introduced it into the Eisteddfod as the result of his Irish education. The pipes had hitherto been forbidden, and the result at the celebrated Eisteddfod at Caerwys was that Griffith’s prize of a silver pipe went to a Scotsman. The Welsh, in short, despised the instrument. Lewis Glyncothi has left an amusing satire on a piper. He finds himself in Flint at an English marriage, where the guests would have none of him or his harp, but “bawled for Will the Piper, low born wretch” who comes forward as best he may, “unlike a free enobled man.”
The bag did swell, and harshly squeak,
As does a goose from nightmare crying,
Or dog crushed by a chest when dying,
This whistling box’s changeless note
Is forced from turgid veins and throat;
Its sound is like a crane’s harsh moan,
Or like a gosling’s latest groan.”
Giraldus, half Welshman himself, writing after his extended tour through Wales, about 1200, with Archbishop Baldwin, says:
“The strangers who arrived in the morning were entertained until evening with the conversation of young women and with the music of the harp, for in this country almost every house is provided with both. Such an influence had the habit of music on the mind and its fascinating powers, that in every family or in every tribe, they esteemed skill in playing on the harp beyond any kind of learning. Again, by the sweetness of their musical instruments they soothe and delight the ear. They are rapid yet delicate in their modulation, and by the astonishing execution of their fingers and their swift transitions from discord to concord, produce the most pleasing harmony.”
The part-singing of the Welsh seems also to have greatly struck Giraldus in contrast to the unison in which he heard the musicians of other nations perform.
To draw the line between the bard and musician would be of course impossible. Many writers of verse could only declaim; some could sing to their own accompaniment. The mass of musicians, how ever, we may take it, belonged to the lower grade of wandering bards, who played first, as we have seen, upon the national instrument, the harp, as well as upon the pipe and “crwth” (a kind of rude violin).
The tone of morality was certainly not high among the mediæval Welsh bards. They had long lost all touch with the order of the priesthood, and indeed monks and poets had become almost as a matter of course inimical to one another. The latter, too, maintained a steady hatred of the Saxon that was almost creditable, seeing how often their masters, for the sake of interest or revenge, took up arms against their fellow-countrymen.
It is sufficiently difficult merely to touch, and that in the slightest manner, so vast a subject as this. In recognising the insufficiency of such an attempt, I am almost thankful that the period of Glyndwr and the succeeding turmoil of the Wars of the Roses puts a reasonable limit to my remarks. For it goes without saying that when Wales settled down under the Tudors to its happy and humdrum existence, the martial attitude of the bards as feudal appanages and national firebrands altogether ceased. Welsh poets hereafter were private individuals, their song ceased for the most part to be of war; nor was the Saxon or the Lloegrian any longer an object of invective. The glory of this new United Britain to which they belonged was not without its inspiration, but it has been by no means a leading note in Welsh verse, which, speaking generally, has since in this particular sung upon a minor key.
INDEX
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y
Aberffraw, 25
Abergavenny, 143
Abergavenny, Lord of, 227
À Court, Sir Francis, 262, 286
Adam of Usk, 130, 133, 150, 156, 159, 163
Albans, St., 193
Anarawd, 20
Anglesey, 70, 71, 75, 127, 135, 217, 218, 279
Anne, Queen, 323
Arundel, Earl of, 99, 177, 298
Arvon, cantref of, 295
Asaph, St., 66
Avignon Pope, the, 234, 269-271, 299
Baldwin, Archbishop, 48
Bangor Iscoed, 6
Bards, the, 123, 134, 143, 163
Bardsey, Isle of, 53
Barmouth, 118
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, 195, 229, 290
Beaufort, Earl, 128
Beaumaris, 279
Berkeley, James, Lord, 290
Berkrolles, Sir A., 231
Berkrolles, Sir Laurence, 281-283
Bifort, Llewelyn, 234, 251, 252, 279, 299
Bleddyn ap Cynvyn, 85
Bramham Moor, battle of, 268
Brân the Blessed, 232
Brecon, 36, 142, 193, 194, 221, 317
Breiddon Hills, 17
Bristol, 212;
sailors of, 220, 287, 288
Brith, David, 134
Bromfield, Lordship of, 106
Browe, Sir Hugh, 141
Bryn Owen, battle of, 245
Brynsaithmarchog, 157
Builth, 152
Cader Idris, 141
Cadvan, King, 16
Cadwallader, 231
Cadwgan of the battle-axe, 260
Canterbury, Archbishop of, 73, 79
Cardigan, 5, 71, 79, 142, 149, 152
Carew, Thos., Earl, 191, 192, 202
Carmarthen, 28, 71, 79, 142, 152, 191, 192, 197, 198, 212-217, 256, 287
Carnarvon, 78, 86, 128, 139, 148, 190, 247
Carnarvon, Record of, 240, 287, 301
Carte, 303
Charles, King of France, 224, 225
Charltons, the, 146, 217, 229, 230, 297
Cheshire, 315
Chester, 1, 28, 32, 43, 44, 135, 140, 143, 144, 177, 203, 210, 302, 318
Clares, the, 316
Clear’s, St., 191
Clwyd, Vale of, 18-20, 77, 135, 312
Coed Eulo, 43
Coity Castle, 37, 231, 259, 260, 275
Colwyn, 98
Colwyn ap Tangno, 232
Conway, 52, 61, 64-66, 75-78, 97, 98, 138-140, 218, 219, 323
Cornwall, conquest of, 16
Cornwall, Sir John, 217
Courtenay, Richard, 291
Courtenays, the, 214
Craig-y-dorth, battle of, 229
Creton, M., 121
Criccieth Castle, 62, 190, 219
Croesau Common, 111
Crofts, 104
Cunedda, 5
Cymmer Abbey, 166
Cynddylan, 7
Cynllaeth, 88
Cyrnwigen, 223
Dafydd ap Griffith, 71, 72, 74, 76
Dafydd ap Llewelyn, 61-65
Dafydd ap Owen Gwynedd, 47
Dafydd ap Sinion, 232
Danbury church, 164
Daron, David, Dean of Bangor, 251, 252, 264, 279
David, St., 5
David’s, St., 12, 28, 33, 48, 80
Dean, Forest of, 287
Deheubarth, description of, 14
Denbigh, 72, 118, 135, 141, 323
Denbigh County, 78
Deorham, 6
Dolbadarn Castle, 66, 157, 301
Doncaster, 125
Douglas, Lord, 181, 182, 203-206, 264
Durham, 125
Dysanni River, 280
Eadgar, King, 26
Edeyrnion, Vale of, 102, 123, 240
Edinburgh, 126
Edward I., 67, 69-71, 75, 78, 79, 213
Edward II., 80
Edward III., 285
Edward IV., 313
Eleanor, Queen, 80
Elen, Glyndwr’s mother, 88
Elfreton, Henry de, 138
Elizabeth, Queen, 321
Elizabeth Scudamore, 105
Ellis, Sir Henry, 189
Eltham, palace of, 242
Emma, wife of Dafydd ap Owen Gwynedd, 47
Emma, wife of Lord Audley, 86
Ethelfred, King, 10
Faireford, John, 193
Flemings, the, 40, 41, 144, 145
Flint, 43, 45, 78, 98, 99, 330
France, Charles, King of, 224, 225, 299
Franciscans, their plot, 169
Gascoine, Judge, 252
Giraldus Cambrensis, 11, 47-52, 215
Glamorgan, 33-35, 175, 214, 245, 246, 251, 252, 259, 277, 278, 303, 316-330
Gloucester, Earl of, 75, 291, 318
Glyncothi, Lewis, 306
Glyndwr, his birth, and legends connected with it, 82, 83;
as a popular hero, 84;
descent, 87, 88;
place of birth, 89;
first recorded appearance, 90;
his designation, 91;
his youth, 92, 93;
esquire to Bolingbroke, 94;
supposed adherence to Richard II., 95, 99;
home life, 100-103;
wife and family, 104, 105;
estate and hospitality, 106, 107;
quarrel with Grey of Ruthin, 112;
refused a hearing, 113;
further persecution by Grey, 114, 115;
attacked by Earls Grey and Talbot and escapes, 120;
heads the Welsh forces, 122;
supported by the bards, 123;
declared Prince of Wales, 124;
eludes King Henry’s forces, 127;
excluded from pardon, 128;
winters at Glyndyfrdwy, 131, 132;
attitude towards Hotspur and Prince Henry, 135, 136;
turns his army southwards, 138;
occupies Plinlimmon, 142, 143;
gains a victory at Mynydd Hyddgant, 144;
ravages South and Mid-Wales, 145, 146;
creates panic in England, 147;
frustrates Henry’s second invasion, 149, 150;
all-powerful in Wales, 151;
goes to Carnarvon, 152;
meeting with Hotspur, 153, 154;
winters again at Glyndyfrdwy, 155;
attempts the capture of Harlech, 156;
captures Grey and ransoms him, 156-158;
sends letters to Scotland and Ireland, 159, 160;
destroys St. Asaph, 164;
adventure with Howel Sele, 165-168;
leaves North Wales, 170;
battle of Pilleth and capture of Edmund Mortimer, 171, 172;
devastates Glamorgan, 175;
his doings in Carnarvonshire, 176;
attacks west coast castles, 177;
established reputation as a magician, 178;
baffles Henry’s third attempt to crush him, 180;
marries his daughter to Mortimer, 183;
his affairs prospering, 185;
invests west coast castles, 188;
his houses at Sycherth and Glyndyfrdwy destroyed by Prince Henry, 186-188;
activity in South Wales, 190;
captures Carmarthen, 191;
checked by Carew, 192;
creates alarm in England, 193;
consults a soothsayer, 197;
meditates invasion of England, 198;
collision with the Percys, 201;
causes of his absence from battle of Shrewsbury, 202;
visits North Wales, 209;
invades Herefordshire, 211;
baffles Henry again, 211-214;
takes border castles, 215;
receives aid from the French, 217;
his Anglesey troops, 218;
attacks Carnarvon, 218;
captures Harlech, 220;
holds a parliament at Machynlleth, 221;
arrests Davy Gam, 222;
holds a council at Dolgelly, 223;
sends envoys to the King of France, 224;
letter to Henry Don, 225;
active on the Marches, 226;
defeat at Mynydd-cwm-du and victory at Craig-y-dorth, 229;
holds court at Llanbadarn and Harlech, 231-234;
situation in 1405, 237-242;
attempt to carry off the young Earl of March, 242;
victory at Pant-y-wenol, 245;
defeat at Grosmont, 247;
defeat at Pwll-Melyn and death of his brother, 249;
sends envoys to the North, 250;
his supposed wanderings, 252, 253;
summons a parliament to Harlech, 254;
meets his French allies at Tenby, 255;
marches to Worcester, 256-258;
retreats to Wales, 259;
his magic art again, 260;
dissatisfied with the French, 261;
secures exemption money from Pembroke, 262;
signs the tripartite indenture at Aberdaron, 264-268;
his famous letter to the King of France, 269-273;
his fortunes sensibly waning, 276;
traditions of his wanderings, 280-283;
movements uncertain, 284;
relieves Aberystwith, 291;
still active but no longer the same terror to England, 294;
loses Harlech and Aberystwith, 295;
his family captured, 296;
his fortunes sink, 300;
relapses gradually into a mere outlaw, 302;
legends concerning his wanderings, 303;
offered pardon by Henry V., 303;
claims of Monnington and Kentchurch as scene of his death, 307;
estimate by Welshmen of his position, 308