Welsh bard

“ 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. ”

“ We leave it with our fame to dwell
Upon our children's breath;
Our voice in theirs through time shall swell—
The bard hath gifts of prophecy from death.
He dies; but yet the mountains stand,
Yet sweeps the torrent's tide;
And this is yet Aneurin's2 [2] land—
Winds! bear the spoiler one more tone of pride!
↑ 1 At the time of the supposed massacre of the Welsh bards by Edward the First. ↑ 2 Aneurin , one of the noblest of the Welsh bards. ”

“ The expedition was one of those which show the gradual cession of greater Wales by the Welsh, and their retreat to the lesser Wales that is still theirs.
We may pause here to remark that the bardic order was early constituted among the Welsh, as among the Irish. In the Laws of Howel Dda (Howel the Good) , who flourished in the tenth century, we find very explicit provision made for the bard:—
"In case of fighting, the Bard shall play the 'Monarchy of Britain' before the battle! ”

“ Parkinson; “though if you mean by the Welsh bards the singing bards of the country, it is possible we may resemble one another; only I would scorn to imitate anybody, even a bard.”
“I was not speaking of birds, but bards—Welsh poets—and it is surprising how much the turn of your genius coincides with theirs. Why, the subjects of hundreds of their compositions are the very subjects which you appear to delight in, and are the most profitable to you—beeves, horses, hawks—which they described to their owners in colours the most glowing and natural, and then begged them as presents. ”

“ Nonsense! I saw at least fifty in that procession,--regular, legitimate bards,--each one having a bardic bald pate, a long white bardic beard, flowing bardic robes, bardic sandals, a bardic harp in his hand, and an ancient bardic name. There was Bard Alaw, Bard Llewellyn, Bard Ap-Tudor, Bard Llyyddmunnddggynn, (pronounce it, if you can, Reader,--I can't,) and I am afraid to say how many more, in face of the high poetical authority I have just cited and refuted. Talk of the age of poetry having passed away, when three-score and ten bards can be seen at one time in a little Welsh town! ”

“ 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) . ”

“ To another daughter of Glyndwr, probably an illegitimate one, Gwenllian, wife of Phillip ap Rhys of Cenarth, the famous bard, Lewis Glyncothi, wrote various poems, in one of which he says: “Your father was a potent prince, all Wales was in his council.”
No intelligent person of our day could regret the failure of Glyndwr’s heroic effort. That Welshmen of the times we have been treating of should have longed to shake off the yoke of the Anglo-Norman was but human, for he was not only a bad master, but a foreigner and wholly antipathetic to the Celtic [Pg 307] nature. ”

“ It is a great pity Taliesin is so obscure, for there are many particulars in his poems that would throw great light on the history, notions, and manners of the Ancient Britons, especially of the Druids, a great part of whose learning it is certain he had imbibed. This celebrated Bard was in great favour with all the great men of his time, particularly with Maelgwn Gwynedd, the warlike and victorious king of all Britain, with Elphin his patron, whom he redeemed with his songs from the castle of Tyganwy, where he was upon some account confined by his uncle Maelgwn. ”

“ Many and great poets flourished in the times of the Welsh princes: the three greatest were Meilyr, Gwalchmai, and Dafydd Benfras. Meilyr was bard of Gruffudd ap Cynan, prince of Gwynedd or North Wales, who died in 1137. He sang the praises of his master, who was a celebrated warrior and a bountiful patron of the muse, in whose time and under whose sanction those forms of composition, generally called the twenty four measures, were invented and promulgated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of the professedly Christian Welsh bards when speaking of the Deity have called Him Hu, and ascribed to the Creator the actions of the creature. Their doing so, however, can cause us but little surprise when we reflect that the bards down to a very late period cherished a great many druidical and heathen notions, and frequently comported themselves in a manner more becoming heathens than Christian men. ”

“ Without the aid, however, of the meagre allusions in Welsh poetry and prose, we should have been groping about in vain for the meaning of such a myth. Gwydion, as Gweir, let us say, goes to Caer Sidi beneath the waves of the sea, and Cairbre visits the court of the Fomorian king Bres, of submarine origin. The Welsh hero becomes a bard—originally the story made him probably the first bard of Welsh legend—as the result of the treatment dealt out to him there ”

“ Dafydd ap Gwilym was the son of Gwilym Gam, of Brogynin, in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr, Cardiganshire, and was born about the year 1340. The bard was of illustrious lineage, and of handsome person. His poetical talent and personal beauty procured him the favourable notice of the fair sex; which, however, occasioned him much misfortune. His attachments were numerous, and one to Morvydd, the daughter of Madog Lawgam, of Niwbwrch, in Anglesea, a Welsh chieftain, caused the bard to be imprisoned. This lady was the subject of a great portion of the bard’s poems. ”

“ It remains to be said that, being Borrow, he was duly astonished at himself, and under the Sycharth poem wrote in Welsh a footnote which runs in effect: “The English translation is the work of George Borrow, an English lad of the City of Norwich, who has never been in Wales, and has never in all his life heard a word of Welsh from man or woman.”
p. 27GLENDOWER’S MANSION.
Iolo Goch was a celebrated Bard of North Wales, and flourished about the end of the fourteenth and commencement of the fifteenth century. ”

“ As there is a natural curiosity in most people to be brought acquainted with the works of men, whose names have been conveyed down to us with applause from very early antiquity, I have been induced to think, that a translation of some of the Welsh Bards would be no unacceptable present to the public. It is true they lived in times when all Europe was enveloped with the dark cloud of bigotry and ignorance; yet, even under these disadvantageous circumstances, a late instance may convince us, that poetry shone forth with a light, that seems astonishing to many readers. ”

“ II.—The Sleeping Bard; or Visions of the World, Death, and Hell. By Elis Wyn. Translated from the Cambrian British by George Borrow. London, 1860.
The Welsh style themselves Cymry or Cumry, a word which, in their language, means a number of people associated together. [20] They were the second mass of population which moved from Asia into Europe. They followed and pushed forward the Gael or Gauls ”

“ There are in existence many unquestionably prehistoric tales and ideas which have been handed down verbally, and committed to writing for the first time only within the past few years: many more are living viva voce, and are not yet registered. The Welsh bards, like the bards of other races, were a recognised class, graduates in a particular Art, and were strictly and definitely trained in the traditional lore of their profession. ”

“ The Welsh bards tell us that the souls of men transmigrate into the bodies of those animals whose habits and characters they most resemble, till after a circuit of such penitential miseries, they are purified for the celestial presence; for man may be converted into a pig or a wolf, till at length he assumes the inoffensiveness of the dove. ”

“ The compositions attributed to the oldest Welsh bards have come down to us in MSS which date from the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century; the best known of them are four in number, and these were edited long ago, with translations, by the late Dr W. F. Skene under the title of The Four Ancient Books of Wales. [47] It is unnecessary here to touch upon controversial questions affecting the antiquity and the genuineness of the poems contained in these MSS. Many of them are, plainly enough, not much older than the date of the compilation of the particular MS in which they are found. ”

“ It is true that these traditions come to us in ballads attributed to Welsh bards of the 13th and 14th centuries A.D.; but, as the Rev. Mr Davies said, “that such a superstition should have been fabricated by the bards in the middle ages of Christianity, is a supposition utterly irreconcileable with probability.” And I think the improbability will be widely extended if the readers will take the trouble, after perusal, to make the references as above.
[2] I have appended a short biographical notice of Colonel G. Macdonell, which I venture to think may contain matter of public interest. ”

“ When Prince Griffith ap Kynan returned from Ireland to Wales and the poet Meilir arose to sing his triumphs and good qualities, a new era in bardic history may be said to have commenced. The intellectual and religious revival that distinguished the [Pg 338] twelfth century in Western Europe was conspicuous in Wales. The bards were no longer singing merely of battles, but of nature and kindred subjects, with a delicacy that showed them to be men of taste and culture. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, in spite of war and conquest, the age was a golden one in Welsh song. ”

“ This is Dinas Brân, the most proudly perched mediæval fortress in Wales, perhaps in all Britain. Here in this eagle’s nest, swung betwixt earth and heaven, lived the Princes of Powys Fadog; and no more fitting refuge could be imagined for men who, like them, had sometimes to look eastward for their foes and sometimes to the west. It was in 1270, close to the final conquest, that Madoc’s son Griffith died, after dividing his life between friendship with the English King and repentant alliances with his own race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was a foundling, discovered in his infancy lying in a coracle on a salmon weir, in the domain of Elphin, a prince of North Wales, who became his patron. During his life he arrogated to himself a supernatural descent and understanding, and for at least a thousand years after his death he was regarded by the descendants of the ancient Britons as a prophet or something more. The poems which he produced procured for him the title of “Bardic King.” They display much that is vigorous and original, but are disfigured by mysticism and extravagant metaphor. ”

“ By this time, however, and indeed before it, every man who was not a professed subject of the descendant of Llewelyn and of Madoc ap Griffith, had fled Wales, except those who were swelling the population of the ill-victualled and closely beleaguered castles. Glyndwr had before him many a doughty Anglo-Norman warrior, under walls well-nigh impervious to anything but starvation, whose crumbling shells on many a Welsh headland and hilltop still wake memories of the past and stir our fancy. ”

“ The Druidical verses then probably constituted the most ancient poetry of Britain. These verses were communicated orally, and were never written down whilst bardism or druidism lasted, though the bards and druids at a very early period were acquainted with the use of letters. Whether any genuine bardic poetry has been preserved, it is impossible to say; it is the opinion, however, of Cymric scholars of reputation, that certain ancient strains which the Welsh possess, which are composed in a measure called Englyn milwr, are either druidical strains or imitations of such. ”