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WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



853 



near Aberystwith which still goes by the name of Bedd Taliesiu 

 (Taliesin's grave). 



The chief incident in this life appears in an altered form in the 

 legend or romance which is printed in Welsh in the 'Myvyriau 

 Archaiology,' and in Welsh, with an English translation, in the fifth 

 volume of the ' Cambrian Quarterly Magazine," and in Lady Charlotte 

 Guest's ' Mabinogion.' According to this story, Gwion the Little, a boy 

 who was employed by Keridwen, a witch of Meirion, or Merioneth- 

 shire, to watch a magic cauldron in which she was preparing a con- 

 coction that was to bestow knowledge and genius on her son, incurred 

 the vengeance of his mistress by involuntarily drinking the three blessed 

 dropa which were to produce these wonderful effects. Of course 

 he became endowed with sudden wisdom, and fled from the wrath of 

 Keridwen, who at once pursued him. He fled in the form of a hare, she 

 pursued in that of a hound ; when nearly overtaken, he turned to a 

 fish, and she to an otter ; then he to a sparrow, and she to a hawk ; 

 and he was finally swallowed in the form of a grain of wheat by 

 Keridwen, in the form of a hen. After nine months she was delivered 

 of him again, and he was so handsome that, unwilling directly to 

 take his lite, she tied him up in a leathern bag and threw him 

 into the sea, from which he was rescued by Prince Elphin, the 

 son of Gwyddno, who, fishing for salmon at the weir of Aberdyvi, 

 caught a child instead. The prince looked disappointed in con- 

 sequence, and was addressed in consolation by the miraculous infant 

 in a strain of poetry, the merits of which are anything but miraculous. 

 This infant had such a splendid forehead that he received the name of 

 Taliesin, which bears that meaning in Welsh. The narrative proceeds 

 with a medley of incidents, interspersed with poems of little or no 

 merit put into the mouth of Talieain, and inextricably connected with 

 the circumstances of the tale. The whole story appears to be of the 

 same character with those which were told of Virgil in the middle 

 ages, a wildly fictitious narrative fastened on a distinguished name, 

 from the wish to give it an air of authenticity in the eyes of ignorance. 

 It may be taken therefore as a proof that, at the time of its invention, 

 the name of Taliesin was current in popular tradition as that of the 

 great poet of Wales ; while the fact that the poems ascribed to him in 

 it are as spurious as the adventures are impossible, is no stronger proof 

 against the existence of the real works of a real Taliesin, than the 

 stories about Virgil's feats of necromancy are proof of the spuriousness 

 of the Georgics and the -Kneid. Some of the incidents regarding the 

 magic cauldron are traced by Mr. Nash to Irish and Icelandic fiction, 

 and some, as the pursuit of Keridwen, bear a striking resemblance to 

 passages in the ' Arabian Nights.' The tale of Taliesin, and of course 

 the poetry inserted in it, are traced with tolerable certainty to one 

 Thomas ab Einiou, a priest who flourished in the 12th century. 



Many of the poems ascribed to Aneurin are shown to be spurious 

 by modern criticism, but that entitled ' The Gododin,' bears very 

 strong marks of authenticity. Aneurin was one of the northern 

 Britons of Strath Clyde, who have left to that part of the district they 

 inhabited the name of Cumberland, in token that it was once in 

 possession of a section of the Cymry. In this poem he laments the 

 defeat of his countrymen by the Saxons at the battle of Cattraeth, in 

 consequence of their having partaken too freely of the mead before 

 joining in combat. He commemorates many obscure chieftains who 

 full on the occasion in language which seems dictated by the freshness 

 of grief. A portion of this poem has been translated by Gray; a 

 version of the whole was inserted by the Rev. Edward Davies in his 

 ' Mythology of the Druids ;' and a translation of the whole works of 

 Aneurin, ' The Gododin ' and the ' Odes of the Months,' was published 

 in 1820 by Mr. Probert. A fresh translation of The Gododin ' was 

 published in 1858, by the Rev. John Williams ap Ithel, the editor of 

 the ' Cambrian Journal.' It may be taken as a proof of the authen- 

 ticity of the original that the translators have had an opportunity of 

 disputing, not only about the meaning of several of the passages, but 

 even of the whole poem. The Rev. Edward Davies maintains that it 

 relates not to the battle of Cattraeth, but to the massacre of the Welsh 

 chieftains by order of Hengist at a banquet at Stonehenge. 



' The Heroic Elegies and other Pieces of Llywarch Hen, Prince of 

 the Cumbrian Britons, with a literal translation by William Owen,' 

 were published in 1792. Llywarch Hen, like Aneurin, was one of the 

 warriors of Strath Clyde, and, like him, was driven to Wales by the 

 successes of the Saxons. His poems are by far the finest of those 

 ascribed to the primitive bards. Soutbey, who remarks that " their 

 authenticity has been proved by Mr. Turner ; and they are exceedingly 

 curious, and some of the oldest remains of Celtic poetry," observes, in 

 the notes to his ' Sir Thomas More,' that their " general strain is as 

 melancholy as it is rude." According to Welsh tradition Llywarch 

 Hen, or Llywarch the Old, lived to the age of a hundred and fifty. 

 His four-and-twenty song and three daughters all died before him, as 

 was natural in that case, but in his ' Elegy on Old Age and the Loss of 

 his Sons,' he enumerates many who had perished in war, and accuses 

 himself of having caused their destruction. The staple of his poetry 

 in bitter complaint of the woes of age. " Those that loved me once 

 now love me not," he exclaims. " Ah death, why will he not befriend 

 me 1 I am outrageous ! I am loathsome ! I am old." Some ' Lines 

 to the Cuckoo in the Vale of Cuawg ' which are now ascribed to a 

 certain Mabclaf ap Llywarch, who lived towards the close of the llth 

 century, are iu precisely the same impressive strain. 



Some of the remaining poems in the 'Myvyrian Archaiology,' are 

 ascribed to two Merddyns, who have been amalgamated and made into 

 the Merlin of romance. The same work contains a considerable 

 number of anonymous pieces ascribed to the earliest bards ; but the 

 language is sufficient to show that their genuineness is more than 

 doubtful. 



Strange to say, the only collection that has yet been published of 

 the primitive bards of Britain, with a translation and explanatory and' 

 critical notes, is that by a Frenchman, the Count Hersart de la 

 Villemarque, ' Poemes des Bardes Bretons du Vl'* jue siecle, traduits 

 pour la premiere fois avec le texte en regard,' Paris, 1850. The 

 ingenious critic, himself a Breton, and the first collector of the 

 ballads of Brittany, has unfortunately adopted the singular idea of 

 printing his Welsh text neither according to the ancient nor the modern 

 Welsh spelling, but according to the system proposed for the Breton by 

 Legonidec, and the result is that it requires a separate study to decipher 

 a line of his text. His prefaces and notes are written in a strain of 

 hyperbolic enthusiasm, but have a foundation of good sense. He omits 

 almost all of the poems of Taliesin as spurious, and he quotes the 

 names of the French critics Fauriel, Ampere, and Magnin as concurring 

 in the opinion that those which he gives are authentic. 



The earliest monument of Welsh prose would, if it were genuine, be 

 the " Wisdom of Cadog the Wise," a collection of proverbs ascribed 

 to St. Cadog, who is said to have lived in the Cth century, and to 

 have been the friend and instructor of Taliesin, and one of the 

 ornaments of the court of King Arthur. They are printed in the 

 ' Myvyrian Archaiology/ and in the lolo MSS. there is a collection 

 of fables and tales ascribed to the same St. Cadog. One of the 

 tales is the story of the man who hastily slew his faithful dog from 

 the erroneous supposition that it had killed his child, whom it had in 

 reality defended from a serpent. This story, which is told by St. 

 Cadog, without name of person or place, is now the most popular 

 legend of Wales, and sheds an additional charm over the scenery of 

 Bedd Gelert, but the Gelert of the modern tradition, and of Spencer's 

 ballad, is 'The gift of royal John' to Llewelyn ab Jorwerth,.who 

 married a daughter of King John of England. There can be no doubt 

 that the language of the narrative in the lolo MSS. is nearer to the 

 time of Llewelyn ab Jorwerth than to that of St. Cadog, but unfor- 

 tunately the original of the story is to be found in Sanskrit. 



The earliest Welsh prose of which the authenticity is unquestioned, 

 is the collection of the laws of King Hywel Dda, or Howel the Good, 

 who died in 748, after a reign of forty years, during the last seven 

 of which he was monarch of all Wales. This code is divided into the 

 laws of the court and the laws of the country, and under both heads 

 it comprises a quantity of matter curiously illustrative of the manners 

 of the tunes; it is assumed, for instance, that there is one cat in each 

 village, and it is estimated as of precisely the same value as a sheep. 

 The bards are endowed with many privileges, extending to receiving 

 dues on marriages, to exemption from bearing arms, and to various 

 other sources of emolument and honour. The leading feature of the 

 legislation is that every crime is punishable by a fine, even that of the 

 murder of the king himself, which is to be atoned for, among other 

 things, by " three golden cups, with covers each as broad as the 

 offender's face," and as " thick as the thumb of a ploughman who has been 

 nine years in that employment, three silver rods of the same height as 

 the king, and as thick as his thumb," &c. &c. These laws were first 

 published in a somewhat uncritical fashion in 1730, in Wotton's ' Leges 

 Wallicie ; ' the last edition, in Welsh and English, is comprised in the 

 ' Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales,' issued in 1841 by the Record 

 Commission, and edited by Aneurin Owen, the son of Owen Pughe, a 

 much severer and more acute critic thau his father. The earliest 

 manuscript is of the 12th century ; and Owen cautiously describes his 

 text as the " Laws, uppoied to be enacted by Howel the Good, modified 

 by subsequent regulations under the native princes prior to the con- 

 quest by Edward I." " References are made," he adds, " to laws 

 ordained by Dyvnwal Moelmud, an ancient Regulus in the west, and 

 some triads are ascribed to him ; but these, although they contain ordi- 

 nances likely to obtain in a primitive state of society, have no warrant 

 of authenticity. We find mention of laws by Marsia, of an equally 

 apocryphal origin." The laws of Dyvnwal are supposed by some Welsh 

 writers to have been prevalent in Britain 400 years before Christ. The 

 triads here mentioned belong to the historical triads, of which a portion 

 is admitted on all hands to be of at least as late a date as the reign of 

 King Edward I., and they will therefore be treated of in our notice 

 of the second era of Welsh literature, commencing from the date of 

 the Norman Conquest. 



Second Period 1066-1536. The epoch of the Norman Conquest 

 of England is one strongly marked in tho literature as well as the 

 history of Wales. Harold, the last of the Saxons, had overrun tho 

 country, and reduced it under princes] subordinate to himself, iu 1063, 

 only three years prior to his own overthrow at Hastings. Two of the 

 native princes, who were re-established on their thrones before the 

 close of the llth century, Gruffydd ab Cynan, prince of North Wales, 

 and Rhys ab Tewdwr, prince of South Wales, came from abroad, the 

 one from Ireland, and the other from Brittany, where two kindred 

 Celtic nations were at that time in close intercourse with the Danes and 

 the Normans. Gruflydd ab Cynan gave birth to a new era in Welsh 

 poetry, and Rhys ab Tewdwr may have had some influence in the 



