The Welsh and Their Literature

‘One thousand four hundred, no less and no more,Was the date of the rising of Owen Glendower;Till fifteen were added with courage ne’er coldLiv’d Owen, though latterly Owen was old.’

Glendower died at the age of sixty-seven: Iolo, when he called him old, was one hundred and eighteen.

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 theeFor 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:’ —

‘Three things should a Cumro always bear in mind lest he dishonour them: his father, his country, and his name of Cumro.

‘There are three things for which a Cumro should be willing to die: his country, his good name, and the truth wherever it be.

‘Three things are highly disgraceful to a Cumro: to look with one eye, to listen with one ear, and to defend with one hand.

‘Three things it especially behoves a Cumro to choose from his own country: his king, his wife, and his friend.’

After the Triads, the following are the principal prose works of the Welsh: —

1. ‘The Chronicle of the Kings of the Isle of Britain;’ supposed to have been written by Tysilio, in the seventh century. This work, or rather a Latin paraphrase of it by Geoffrey of Monmouth, has supplied our early English historians with materials for those parts of their works which are devoted to the subject of ancient Britain. It brings down British history to the year 660.

2. A continuation of the same to the year 1152, by Caradawg of Llancarvan. It begins thus: “In the year of Christ 660, died Cadwallawn ab Cadfan, King of the Britons, and Cadwaladr his son became king in his place; and, after ten years of peace, the great sickness, which is called the Yellow Plague, came over the whole isle of Britain.”

3. The ‘Code of Howel Da;’ a book consisting of laws, partly framed, partly compiled, by Howel Da, or the Good, who began to reign in the year 940. It is divided into three parts, and contains laws relating to the government of the palace and the family of the prince, laws concerning private property, and laws which relate to private rights and privileges. It is a code which displays much acuteness, good sense, and not a little oddity. Many of Howel’s laws prevailed in Wales as far down as the time of Henry VII.

4. ‘The Life or Biography of Gruffydd ap Cynan.’ This Gruffydd, of whom we have had more than once occasion to speak already, was born in Dublin about the year 1075. He was the son of Cynan, an expatriated prince of Gwynedd, by Raguel, daughter of Anlaf or Olafr, Dano-Irish king of Dublin and the fifth part of Ireland. After a series of the strangest adventures he succeeded in regaining his father’s throne, on which he died after a glorious reign of fifty years. He was the father of Owen Gwynedd, one of the most warlike of the Welsh princes, and was grandsire of that Madoc who, there is considerable reason for supposing, was the first discoverer of the great land in the West. A truly remarkable book is the one above mentioned, which narrates his life. It does full justice to the subject, being written in a style not unworthy of Snorre Sturlesen, or the man who wrote the history of King Sverrer and the Birkebeiners, in the latter part of the Heimskringla. It is a composition of the fifteenth century, but the author is unknown.

5. The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Diversions, a collection of Cumric legends, in substance of unknown antiquity, but in the dress in which they have been handed down to us scarcely older than the fourteenth century. In interest they almost vie with the ‘Arabian Nights,’ with which, however, they have nothing else in common, notwithstanding that all other European tales – those of Russia not excepted – are evidently modifications of, or derived from the same source as the Arabian stories. Of these Cumric legends two translations exist: the first, which was never published, made towards the concluding part of the last century by William Owen, who eventually assumed the name of Owen Pugh, the writer of the immortal Welsh and English Dictionary, and the translator into Welsh of ‘Paradise Lost;’ the second by the fair and talented Lady Charlotte Guest, which first made these strange, glorious stories known to England and all the world.

The sixth and last grand prose work of the Welsh is the ‘Sleeping Bard,’ a moral allegory, written about the beginning of the last century by Elis Wyn, a High-Church Welsh clergyman, a translation of which, by George Borrow, is now before us: —

‘The following translation of the Sleeping Bard,’ says Mr. Borrow, in his preface, ‘has long existed in manuscript. It was made by the writer of these lines in the year 1830, at the request of a little Welsh bookseller of his acquaintance, who resided in the rather unfashionable neighbourhood of Smithfield, and who entertained an opinion that a translation of the work of Elis Wyn would enjoy a great sale, both in England and Wales. On the eve of committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian Briton felt his small heart give way within him: “Were I to print it,” said he, “I should be ruined. The terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have given yourself on my account – but myn Diawl! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.”

‘Yet there is no harm in the book. It is true that the author is anything but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope, however, that there is not so much as there was. Indeed, can we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in ‘60 willing to publish a harmless but plain-speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in ’80?’

The work is divided into three parts, devoted to three separate and distinct visions, which the Bard pretends to have seen at three different times in his sleep. In assuming the title of ‘Sleeping Bard’ Elis Wyn committed a kind of plagiarism, as it originated with a certain poet who flourished in the time of the Welsh princes, some nine hundred years before he himself was born, and to this plagiarism he humorously alludes in one of his visions. The visions are described in prose, but each is followed by a piece of poetry containing a short gloss or comment. The prose is graphic and vigorous, almost beyond conception; the poetry wild and singular, each piece composed in a particular measure. Of the measures, two are quite original, to be found nowhere else. The first vision is the Vision of the World. The object of the Bard is to describe the follies, vices, and crimes of the human race, more especially those of the natives of the British Isles. In his sleep he imagines that he is carried away by fairies, and is in danger of perishing owing to their malice, but is rescued by an angel, who informs him that he has been sent by the Almighty with orders to give him a distinct view of the world. The angel, after a little time, presents him with a telescope, through which he sees a city of a monstrous size, with thousands of cities and kingdoms within it; and the great ocean, like a moat, around it; and other seas, like rivers, intersecting it.

This city is, of course, the world. It is divided into three magnificent streets. These streets are called respectively the streets of Pride, Pleasure, and Lucre. In the distance is a cross street, little and mean in comparison with the others, but clean and neat, and on a higher foundation than the other streets, running upwards towards the east, whilst they all sink downwards towards the north. This street is the street of True Religion. The angel conducts him down the three principal streets, and procures him glances into the inside of various houses. The following scene in a cellar of what is called the street of Pleasure, goes far to show that the pen of Elis Wyn, at low description, was not inferior to the pencil of Hogarth: —

‘From thence we went to a place where we heard a terrible noise, a medley of striking, jabbering, crying and laughing, shooting and singing. “Here’s Bedlam, doubtless,” said I. By the time we entered the den the brawling had ceased. Of the company, one was on the ground insensible; another was in a yet more deplorable condition; another was nodding over a hearthful of battered pots, pieces of pipes, and oozings of ale. And what was all this, upon inquiry, but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours, – a goldsmith, a pilot, a smith, a miner, a chimney-sweeper, a poet, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to exhibit in himself what a disgusting thing drunkenness is! The origin of the last squabble was a dispute which had arisen among them about which of the seven loved a pipe and flagon best. The poet had carried the day over all the rest, with the exception of the parson, who, out of respect for his cloth, had the most votes, being placed at the head of the jolly companions, the poet singing: —

‘O where are there seven beneath the skyWho with these seven for thirst can vie?But the best for good ale these seven amongAre the jolly divine and the son of song.’

After showing the Bard what is going on in the interior of the houses of the various streets, and in the streets themselves, the angel conducts him to the various churches of the City of Perdition: to the temple of Paganism, to the mosque of the Turk, and to the synagogue of the Jews; showing and explaining to him what is going on within them. He then takes him to the church of the Papists, which the angel calls, very properly, ‘the church which deceiveth nations.’ Some frightful examples are given of the depravity and cruelty of monks and friars. The dialogue between the confessor and the portly female who had murdered her husband, who was a member of the Church of England, is horrible, but quite in keeping with the principles of Popery; also the discourse which the same confessor holds with the young girl who had killed her child, whose father was a member of the monastery to which the monk belonged. From the Church of Rome they go to the Church of England. It is lamentable to observe what an attached minister of the Church of England describes as going on within the walls of a Church of England temple a hundred and fifty years ago. Would that the description could be called wholly inapplicable at the present time!

“Whereupon he carried me to the gallery of one of the churches in Wales, the people being in the midst of the service, and lo! some were whispering, talking, and laughing, some were looking upon the pretty women, others were examining the dress of their neighbours from top to toe; some were pushing themselves forward and snarling at one another about rank, some were dozing, others were busily engaged in their devotions, but many of these were playing a hypocritical part.”

The angel finally conducts the Bard to the small cross street, that of True Religion, where, of course, everything is widely different from what is found in any of the other streets. In that street there was no fear but of incensing the King, who was ever more ready to forgive than be angry with his subjects, and no sound but that of psalms of praise to the Almighty.

The second section is a Vision of Death in his palace below. The author’s aim in this vision is less apparent than in the preceding one. Perhaps, however, he wished to impress upon people’s minds the awfulness of dying in an unrepentant state, from the certainty, in that event, of the human soul being forthwith cast headlong down the precipice of destruction. The Bard is carried away by sleep to chambers where some people are crying, others screaming, some talking deliriously, some uttering blasphemies in a feeble tone, others lying in great agony with all the signs of dying men, and some yielding up the ghost after uttering ‘a mighty shout.’ He is then conducted to a kind of limbo or Hades, where he meets with his prototype the Sleeping Bard of old and two other Welsh poets, one of whom is Taliesin, who is represented as watching the caldron of the witch Cridwen, even as he watched it in his boyhood. From thence he is hurried to the palace of Death, where he sees the King of Terrors swallowing flesh and blood, who, after a time, places himself on a terrific throne, and proceeds to pass judgment on various prisoners newly arrived. They are dealt with in an awful but very summary manner. It is to be remarked that all the souls introduced in this vision are those of bad people, with the exception of those of the poets which the Bard meets in limbo. A dark intimation, however, is given that there is another court or palace, where Death presides under a far different form, and where he pronounces judgment over the souls of the good. There is much in this vision which it is very difficult to understand. The gloss, or commentary, called ‘Death the Great,’ abounds with very fine poetry.