M WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.' 



WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



I ,i 



production of the most interesting monument of Welsh prose Uio 

 '. itliur, whose iiaine was fur so many centuries a 

 . the- lips uf tlio English u well as tin- \\YUh. 



The u.iini! of Arthur U tint mentioned in the 1-atin chronicle of 

 Nenniiu, who al*> mentions the name of the earliest bards, Taliesiu, 

 Talbaiam, and others The oldest manuscript of Neunius, which u ill 

 the Vatican, u assigned by iU editor and translator, the Rev. Wil'.i.im 

 tlmni. t<> the loth century. But the Arthur of Nennius U very 

 from the Arthur of romance, who first appear* in the page* of 

 '! millionth. Ik-fore proceeding, however, to Geoffrey, who 

 in Latin, some mention should be made of the earliest ui 

 chroniclers, Carmine of Llancarvan. 



The history of the monk of Llancarvan contains the annals of Wales 

 from the death of Cadwallader, A. !>. 682 or C89, to the : 

 1'a.radoo hiuiielf, about the iniiliilu of the 1 2th century. It was con- 

 tinued, as was the custom with monkish chronicles, by other hands, 

 .im 1 a good dt-al more waa added in the English translation made about 

 1667 by the Welsh antiquary. Humphrey Llwyd, and published by Dr. 

 Powell in l.V-il. The original \\elsh ui manuscript till 



included in the second volume of the ' Myvyrian Archaiology.' A 

 different "recension" of it is known under the name of ' Unit y 

 Ty wysogion ' or ' Chronicle of the Princes,' and waa printed in Welsh 

 ami English in ISiii' in (lit; collection issued under the authority of the 

 Master of the Rolls The chronicle of Caradoc is one of the less 

 attractive kind of monkish histories, dry and jejune like the 

 ' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,' which goes over much of the same period, 

 but affording a useful skeleton and ground-work for less succinct 

 historians. It has never emerged into much notice. 



Far different was the character and the fate of the ' History of the 

 Britons,' by Geoffrey of Honmouth, archdeacon of Monmouth, and 

 bishop of St. Asapli, who was consecrated to his bishopric in 1152, and 

 died in l\!U. UculiVey closes his narrative by the death of Cadwal- 

 lader, at which Caradoc begins, and tells us that he left the story, there 

 on purpose for his friend Caradoc to continue. His ' History of the 

 Britons ' opens with the destruction of Troy , and the coming of Brutus, 

 the coloniser of England, from Troy to Britain ; and goes on, through 

 the stories of Locrine and Lear, and Cymbelino and (Jorboduc, to the 

 legends of King Arthur and his conquests, and the prophecies of the 

 enchanter Merlin. The work had a wonderful and a sudden success. As 

 it U dedicated to I louoester, the illegitimate son of Henry I., 



U mil i issued before 1147, the date of his death; and Alanus 



de Insults, n lire-ton writer, who died iu 1187, speaks of Arthur as 

 then universally known. " Whither," he exclaims, " has not the, 

 name of Arthur the Briton been carried by Fame ? What region of 

 Christendom has it not reached ? Arthur is almost better known to 

 the Oriental nations than to the Britons themselves, as our pilgrims 

 returning from the East declare." There was, doubtless, exaggeration 

 in this, but there was doubtless also some foundation in truth ; and 

 the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth is the main source of the fame of 

 Arthur. Translated and versified by Wace and Layamon, it i 

 popular in French and English. For many centuries the story of 

 Brutus, whose name is first mentioned by Nmmius, passed for authentic 

 history : in the pedigiee of Henry VII., drawn up for him by Welsh 

 heralds, the line of the Tudors is traced to Brutus as its founder ; and 

 even so far onward as in the time of Milton, the great poet gave way 

 to hi* inclination to insert, though withen apology, these poetic stories 

 in hi* history of England. With the poets, indeed, the success of the 

 story of Ueoffrey of Monmouth is still prolonged, and has burst out 

 into froth brilliancy in our own generation. The greatest work of 

 Khakspcre is founded on the legend of King Lear. Both Milton 

 and Drydan projected an epic on the story of King Arthur, and Pope 

 an epic on the story of Brutus. Walter Scott, who lamented that 

 the court of Charles had 



"The world defrauded of the high design " 



of Dryden, himself paid tribute to Arthurian fiction in his ' Bridal of 

 Triennain.' In our own days Bulwer Lytton has given us bis finest 

 poetry in his epic of ' King Arthur,' and Alfred Tennyson has achieved 

 one of his brightest triumphs in his ' Idylls of the King.' 



Geoffrey of Monmouth was attacked with singular vigour by a 

 contemporary antagonist the chronicler, William of Newburgh. 

 " In our days," says the critic, " a writer has emerged, who strings 

 together the most ridiculous figment* about the Britons, raising 

 them, with impudent vanity, above the Macedonians and Humana. 

 Geoffrey is the name of this man, who is now called 'Arthur's 

 Geoffrey ' (Galfridus hie dictus est, agnomen habens Arthur!), because 

 taking some fables of Arthur from the original figments of the 

 Britons, and adding others of his own, he has coloured them up in the 

 Latin language, and decked them with the name of a genuine history." 

 It will be noticed that the worthy chronicler, who adds more to the 

 same purpose, admit* in this passage that the object of his indignation 

 did not entirely invent his narrative, substance, details, and all, but 

 that some "ridiculous figments" about King Arthur were current 

 before he took pen in hand. There must therefore have been Wi Mi 

 traditions on the subject. 



The account which Geoffrey himself gives of the origin of his history 

 is this : that Walter CaUnius, archdeacon of Oxford, finding a book in 

 Brittany, on the deeds of King Arthur, gave it to him to translate, 



uving a favourable opinion of his Latin style, and that his work is 

 neither more nor loss than a version of this original. It is so ei 

 :hat if he wished his production to pan for a history, it was adv 

 to say something of this kind, and it lias U-cii no custom*!) 

 of fiction to do e '.,iia down i 



Quixote, that this If jlit in itself. At first 



light U seems LMI i in 1111,1 l.y tin: i.--t tli.it tliure U a book in \V.-l,-h passing 

 by the name of the ' ('hroiiiclu uf Tyrilio,' win \actly 



v. iih (iuoffrey of Monmouih. Unluckily, however, it it evidently 

 translated from the Latin, and :it ,!.. . i. 1 of tint ni.um-rrii'i containing 

 it is this singular note : " 1. Walter, archdeacon turned this 



liouk from Welsh into Latin, ami in my old age I tunic 1 it again from 

 Latin into Welsh." The |>cr|>lexity is therefore only incrcaswl by a 

 statement which introduces the name of Walter, the archdeacon, not 

 merely as the patron of Geoffrey, but as himself the translator. There 

 is fresh material for controversy in the qu in-r the book said 



to have been found in ill iu.iny may not have been in Breton, instead 

 of Welsh, and both Mr. Thomas Wright, and Mr. Strphens, of Meithyr 

 Tydvil, have arguments in favour of tlic Armoriuau origin of tin . 

 of Arthur, but no such book i-t.> be found in the one language any 

 more than in the other. ills, the friend of Sir Walter 



in the introduction to liis ' Specimens of the early F.nglisli Romances,' 

 in which there is an admirable analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth, gives 

 reasons for believing that his history was really translated i 

 Welsh original. 



There are still extant in Welsh a series of chivalric legends n 

 to the time of King Arthur and the Hund Table, which may possibly 

 have existed in a rude shape before tin; time of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 

 and furnished him with some of hU matt-rials. In their present form 

 they are much more elegant and iini-!n d than in his history, and 

 embrace stories and particulars that he would hardly have passed over 

 had he known them. These narratives now go by the general name 

 of the ' Mabiuogion,' or Children's Tales, tin >-h may be 



appropriate to some being applied to all. Tin-y in i -untamed in a 

 splendid manuscript volume of more than 7'MJ pages, in double 

 columns, preserved in the library of Jesus College, at Oxford, and 

 known by the name of the ' lied Book of Hergest,' from 

 which it was originally discovered. The date of its transcript i 



-signed by antiquaries to about 1U70, or the close of tin' 14th 

 century ; but towards the end of the volume there are inserted, it is 

 supposed iu his own handwriting, many of the poems of Lewis Glyn 

 Cotlii, who flourished in the (6th, after the invention of printing. 

 Were the date of the coj of the tales no earlier than that 



of their transcription, they would not be original. The stories of 

 the ' Knight of the Lion,' the ' Knight of the Sword,' ' L i: 

 of the Lake,' and others which occur in Welsh prose in the ' Red 

 Book of Hergest,' were extant in French verse from the pen of 

 Chretien de Troyes before 1200, and as early a.s 1225 the Art! 

 tales had been translated from French verse into Icelandic prose, 

 instance of Kin:.; Hakon Hakonsson of Norway. It is to be observed 

 also that the manuscript volume contains other tales than those I 

 ing to the Arthurian cycle, ' Sir Bevis of Hampton,' the ' v 

 Masters of Rome,' and the ' History of Charlemagne.' This is pointed 

 out in the valuable preface and notes appended to the edition of tin- 

 'Mabiuogion' in Welsh and English, published in the years between 

 1838 and 1849, in three large volumes, by Lady Charlotte Guest, now 

 Lady Charlotte Schreiber. The ' Mabiuogion,' the most attractive 

 lady's book in the Welsh language, has appropriately been aditt-i ; 

 lady, and the volumes are in typography and embellishment by far tlic 

 handsomest that have ever issued from tlic Cambrian press. 



On the whole, though there are arguments against it into which our 

 limits will not permit us to enter, the preponderance of evidence seems 

 to be in favour of the Welsh origin of the romantic fictions connected 

 with the Round Table of King Arthur, and thus of the Welsh 

 origin of chivalric fiction in general. The reasons in support have 

 been ably summed up in an ' Essay on the influence of '- 

 Tradition upon European Literature,' by Mr. J. D. Harding, who 

 also refers to the high authority of a scholar whose view of tin- 

 subject was taken from a different point Mr. Panixzi, of the I 

 Museum. In the celebrated 'Essay on the Narrative Poetry of th,- 

 Italians,' prefixed to his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto. Mr. I 

 states, as the result of his researches, that " All the chivalrous fictions 

 since spread through Europe appear to have had their birth in 

 Wales." 



The narrative of Brutus and his expedition from Troy, given by 

 Geoffrey of Monmouth, was, as we have seen, adopted for some cent mi. .., 

 in spite of the energetic protest of William of Newburgh, as the basis 

 of popular English history. Yet it was totally inconsistent with 

 another history of the colonisation of Britain, which, if we are to 

 believe its supporters, was current long before Geoffrey of Monmouth, 

 in the so-called Triads.' These constitute the most peculiar feature 

 in the whole of Welsh literature. A ' Triad ' is the enumeration of 

 three persons, or events, or observations, stmng together in one short 

 sentence by some thread of connection. This form of composition has 

 been so popular among the Welsh that, brief as most of the Triads 

 are, the collection of them occupies more than 170 pages in double 

 column* in the ' Myvyrian Archaiology.' A few instances of Triads 

 of different kinds and different agen, taken from the preface to Owen 



