M^lifl^f';'''j>v'i^
If'ìl.L
/
'&inccatitilc' î4f uttiOn rMnf ccrc^ti^uw dmitf áwácct' ẃunç)civ ám^u^frràtcçmírcfff^çtpçr
tcf?« . '" ;-l^?>f?.5yí •
unc du«^m'ifiittívxmiporc fbrcic*dfeiŵŵ^" ^4c coîicm^jmcraricrtóru-'Cutic culAa.iejrt! ■ xává^iKri myoctndcc cCíiruic- cH' n&tm' ot^^ U«rfm' ŵí»tticí>t>ar<í' ŵ cian cfut u^ca^Vuc^ ntcí> €çuauc».tímatutM>ccmf>orc^in}?<>cma^
c€VriccAnntC0 cCamcr'
àiicvtn\iftná^\<^^Ÿh^'tcconcfrc^ri iifAC' iâk tnrcc^ùnc^ucncdcn^ i^itta ^r^ cnuu\(lCtâr c\mcäa.(r" tiXfiinffutf' avLoru^^ numcr oc^ cracT' ucncracr yuf^cp^rCc^iì- iiifti%iíi]dr <îcrc^í>»^cröfucu>öcac?tnamt- <m<>cjditt ccnca ciuaárctmncii. fç^c 4nnxf ^nccofu^ rt-itntctin rcorn^rcc^' ccfcûcc^f cutti^cncifíîma^ <^^r ^^ywicrAht^frc- cto i^tít;»cetttito(uí rctíft fíinu \zcnx ^idUA' íjicandu'
dhricfiít*^dddâ.rítmydiztrciuat^^ ^nnif Dconcfìiridít reçnamc^ tcpo? anntf^ fnodoLŷiatd rcíçriautcrftei^
2r;/. Jl^//J. //^r/. M5. 3859, /o/.i88^, //.1-25.
^^.reeÊË!^
^^ Cpîîimrodor.
*u
THE MAGAZINE
OP THE HONOURABLE
SOCIETY OF CYMMRODORION.
VOL. XXVIII.
TALIESIN. ?,^f.I
BY
SlR JOHN MORRIS-JONES, M.A., Professor of Welsh in the Unîverstty Colle^e of A'orth Wales.
LONDON :
ISSUED BY THE SOCIETY,
NEW STONE BUILDINGS, 64, CHANCERY LANE.
1918.
Devizes : Printed bx George Simpson & Co., Devizes, Ltd.
EDITOEIAL NOTE.
" TaLIESIN " BY SlR JOHN MoRRIS-JoNES.
' The Council of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion feel great satisfaction in presenting to the members of the Society this important contribution to the study of Welsh Literature. Originally it was intended to be a compara- tively short review of one of Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans's valu- able reproductions of Early "Welsh Texts, but the Editor of the Society's publications was fortunate enough to induce the Author to give to the world (in addition to his criticism of Dr. Evans's theories) the result of many years' close study of. some of the earliest existing specimens of Welsh Poetry. It is not for us to praise the very great service thus rendered to Wales, to its language, and its history, by Sir John Morris-Jones We have only to express the deep sense of gratitude which will be felt by every lover of literature, and especially by every member of the Cymmrodorion Society, for the unselfish and unremunerated labour that has added an invaluable treasure to our store of knowledge. For the addition of a helpful Index to the Author's work we are much indebted to his daughter, Miss Rhiannon Morris-Jones of the University College, Bangor. The Editor desires to add that beyond securing the production of thework, in the manner indicated, his assistance has been merely nominal. On behalf of the Cuuncil, E. Vincent Eyans,
Hon. Secretary and Editor.
CONTENTS
ITAGE
Tbadition, 1. The tradition of tlie Cynfeirdd ... ... 2
Early Records: Old Welsh, 6. MSS. of old poems ... 6
Collected, 9. Re-discovered, 10. Printed ... 12 Criticism : Sharon Tiirner, 13. Stephens, 16. Xash, 18. Skene, 22. Rhys, 23. Anwyl, 24. Linguistic
theory, 27. Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans ... ... 37
Dr. Evans's method, 38. On the date, 40. On names, 50. On the geography, 55. The eponym theory, 84. Taliesin's "hiography", 101. The " amended " text, translation, and notes, 115. Palaeography, 125. Transcription fi'om Old Welsh exemplar, 130. Glos.ses, 139. General qiiestions relative to his work ... ... 145
Conclusions ... ... ... ... ... 151
EXAMINATI0X OF POEMS ... ... ... ... ... 152
Argoed Llwyfein, 154. Gweith Gwen Ystrad, 160. Uryen Yrechwydd, 171. Yng NgorfFowys, 175. Dadolwch Uryen, 181. ]\Iarwnat Owein, 187. Other Historical poems, 195. Marwnad Rhun. 202. Conclusions ... ... ... 223
Reconsideration of theories of Hi.storical poems ... 224
Other poems : Mythological poems, 235. Mystical poems, 240. Classical evidence, 247. Metem- psychosis, 250. Old hardism, 252. Later poems, 254. Future study of poems ... ... ... 257
Appendices : The oldest monuments of the Welsh language —
Appendix I: The stone of Cingen ... ... 26()
Appendix II: The Surexit Memorandum ... 265
Corrections and Additions ... ... ... ... 280
Index to Proper Names ... ... ... ... ... 283
(K^mmroìî0r.
VoL. XXVITI. " Cared doeth yr encilion." 1918.
^aCimn^
By J. MOERIS JONES, M.A.,
Professor of Welsh at the University College of North Wales.
Tradition is now generally aclmitted to be worthy of more respect than was paid to it in the nineteenth century. When it is not the obvious product of popular etymolog-y it usually contains some element of truth. And it may carry its message from a very remote age. At Mold there stood a cairn called Bryn yr Ellyllon. " It was believed to be haunted ; a spectre clad in golden armour had been seen to enter it. That this story was current before the mound was opened is a fact beyond dispute. In 1832 the cairn was explored. Three hundred cartloads of stones were removed, and beneath them was a skeleten ' laid at full length, wearing a corslet of beautifully-wrought gold, which had been placed on a lining of bronze.' '" The " corslet " is at the British Museum, but it is now stated to be " a peytrel or brunt for a pony ".'■' It is, however, "obvious that before a warrior would decorate his horse with the precious metal, he had doubtless satisfied his own personal needs in this direction ".' Here then we
1 E. Sidney Hartland, Ethnoyraphical Survey of the United Kiiì(j- dom. p. 6, citint; Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in fírifain, p. 431.
2 A Guide to the Antiguities of the Uronze Age (in the Brit. Mus.), p. 149.
» Ibid., p. 150.
2 Taliesin.
have " eyidence of a tradition which must have been handed down from the prehistoric iron age — that is, for more than two thousand years ".' This is a purely local example ; but more general traditions are not less likely to be based on fact. The tradition of the Irish that their
i
ancestors came to Ireland direct from the continent has been vindicated by Zimmer against the dominant theory of the last century that they came across Britain." This theory was first propounded by Edward Lhuyd ;' it was adopted by Theophilus Evans, who quoted in its support a vague tradition about the presence of the Irish in Britain." The existence of such a tradition in the seventeenth cen- tury is confirmed by a statement in Gibson's Camden, 1695, p. 670, "that 'tis a common tradition among-st" the inhabitants of the hilly districts of Carnarvonshire, Breck- nock and Radnorshire, "that the Irish were the ancient Pro- prietors of their Country ".' That is a fact ; but it does not in any way prove Lhuyd's theory, for those Irish had come over from Ireland.* Here, then, is a fairly wide-spread tradition that must have been handed down from about the sixth century, Tradition is thus one of our data, to be accounted for and interpreted. Where there is no other apparent reason for it, it may well be what it seems to be — a popular account of what once took place ; and where more reliable data are scarce it may be of value in directing inquiry and confirming conclusions.
Among the most persistent of the Welsh traditions is
1 Hartland, loc. cit.
2 Au/ welchem Wege kamen die Goidelen vom Rontinent nach Irland ? 1912, p. 31, etpassim; see H. Gaidoz in the Revue Internationale de l Enseignement, 1917, pp. 104-114.
3 Archceoloyia Britannica, 1707, At y Kymry, pp. [xvi-xviii].
4 Brych y Prif Oesoedd (1740), Reprint, 1902, pp. 11, 12. ^ Y Cymmrodor , ix, p. 131.
'' H. Zimmer, Nennius Yindicatus, 1893, pp. 89-91.
Taliesin. 3
that which tells us that a group of famous bards, of whom Taliesin was tlie chief, íiourished during the period of the strug-gle between Briton and Saxon in the sixth century. If it be objected that this is not a genuine but a spurious tradition based upon a memorandum in the Nennian additamenta, one may reply that the reverse is the case, and that the memorandum is based upon a form of the tradition. For the Welsh tradition is not a reproduction of the memorandum ; the memorandum records an early North British variant of it. The sixth century bards of Welsh tradition are Taliesin, Aneirin, Myrddin and Llyw- arch Hên ; those of the memorandum are Talhaern, Taliessin, Néirin, Bluchbard and Cian. The names Taliesin and Neirin are common to both ; the Welsh and Nennian variants overlap but do not coincide, which proves their mutual independence and points to both beinof ffenuine. The tradition as reflected in Welsh literature bears all the marks of genuineness. It is not advocated or explained like a new theory or discovery ; it is taken for granted as common knowledge. Thus in the oldest Welsh copy of the Laws (the Black Book of Chirk), when reference is made to an expedition led by Rhûn ap Maelgwn, it is simply stated that Taliesin com- posed an englyn on the occasion.' There is no mention of the date, or even of the century. It is not explained that Taliesin was a contemporary of Ehûn, it is only implied. The tradition is not superimposed on the subject matter of Welsh literature ; it is a substratum which underlies it. Moreover, the conditions for handing down such a tra- dition were favourable. The bards formed an import- ant body whose status was acknowledged ; their privi- leges and duties are defined in the Laws of Hywel : the
1 Ancient Laws and Institutes of Walfís, 1841, i, p. 104.
b2
4 Taliesin.
household bard is the eighth officer of the Court ;' the
chief bard is to sit next to the judge, and to lodge with the
Heir Apparent.' Bardism was one of the three profes-
sions (the other two beiiig scholarship and smithcraft) for
which no serf was to be trained without his lord's per-
mission ;^ it was obviously an ancient institution when the
Laws were compiled, and no break in its continuity is at
all probable between the sixth and the tenth century.
Part of a bard's training consisted in committing to
memory the works of the ancients. The recitation of this
traditional poetry formed an important feature of bardic
contests ; and for this purpose certain poems attributed to
the bards of the sixth century (and doubtless others) had
fìxed yalues attached to them. Of this there are
indications in the thirteenth century Book of Taliesin, in
which the titles of some of the poems are followed by
their values ; thus (pp. 30-40) :
Glaswawt Taliessin. xxiiii. a tal. Kadeir Rerrituen. ccc. Radeir Taliessin. xxiiii. Kanu y gwynt. ccc. a tal.
Kadeir Teyrnon. ccc. Kanu y med. xxiiii.
Kanu y cwrwf. xxiiii.
The expression "xxiiii. a tal" means literally '24 (is)
what it is worth ' ; similarly " ccc. a tal" ; in the other
cases the figure only is g-iven. The matter is made quite
clear in a note which follows the third of the gorchaneu
(epilog-ues ?) appended to the Gododdin in the Book of
Aneirin (p. 28) :
Eman e teryyna gwarchan kynvelyn. Canu un canuawc a dal pob awdyl or gododin herwyd breintyng kerd amrysson Tri chanu a thriugeint a thrychant a dal pob un or gwar- chaneu. Sef achaws yw am goffau ene gorchaneu rivedi e
1 Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, 1841, i, p. 32. ■'' Ibid., p. 74 ^ Ibid., p. 78.
Talíesín. 5
gwyr a aethant e gatraeth. Noc a dele gwr mynet y emlad heb arveu, ny dele bard mynet e amrysson heb e gerd honn. Eman weithyon e dechreii gwarchan maelderw. Talyessin ae cant ac a rodes breint idaw. kemeint ac e odleu e gododin oll ae dri gwarchan yng kerd amrysson.
That
is
Here ends the gorchan of Cynvelyn. Each stanza of the Gododdin is worth a song of one measure \i.e. of one unit] according to privilege in song-contest. Each of the (jor- chaneu is worth 363 songs \i.e. units], the reason being that the number of the men who went to Catraeth is commemo- rated in the gorchaneu. [More] than a man should go to battle without arms, no bard should go to a contest without this song [in his repertory]. Here now begins the gorchan of Maelderw. Talyessin composed it, and gave it privilege equal to [that given] to all the stanzas of the Gododdin and its three gorchaneu in song-contest.
The ancient poetry which thus formed part of the bard's stock-in-tracle was callecl hengerdd, as seen in the following triacl from the Red Book of Hergest, col. 1142.
Tripheth a beir y gerdawr vot yn amyl. kyfarwydyt ystoryaeu. a bardoniaeth. a hengerd.
' Three things that cause a minstrel to be abundant (well-equippecl) : lore of stories, and [the art of] poetry, and ancient verse.' In the above quotations we obtain a glimpse of the activities of the medieval bards. They formed an organized body, not only fitted to be the vehicle of tradition, but actually having this as one of its recognized functions. Tlieir hengerdd, or ancient verse, included poems attributed to Taliesin and Aneirin : " Hengerdd Talyessin, the ancient song of Taliesin," says Phylip Brydydd, "was new for nine times seven years" (Mìjv. Arch. ^259a) ; and Dafydcl Benfras prays for a muse " to sing' a panegyric like Aneirin of old on the day when he sang the Gododdin" (do. 217a). The traditioii, of which the bards were thus the special custodians, was generally
6 Taliesin.
accepted in the middle ages, and handed down to modern times.
The oldest examples of iwitteìi Welsh are found between the lines and in the margins of Latin manu- scripts. They consist of (1) glosses, namely, sing-le words and short phrases explanatory of the Latin, and generally inserted immediately above the words explained, and (2) short memoranda and fragments of prose and verse, written in margins and blank spaces. They date from the eighth or ninth to the eleventh century ; and their language is called Old Welsh. They are written in the so-called Hiberno-Saxon character, and their orthography differs widely, but regularly, from that of Medieval Welsh. Medieval scribes, copying Old Welsh, converted its orthography into that of their own day, except when they failed to understand it, in which case they tran- scribed it mechanically. Complete books in Old Welsh must have existed ; but not one has survived. The litera- ture recorded in them is to be found, if at all, only in later copies.
The oldest extant manuscript written entirely in Welsh is the Black Booh of Carmarthen, which dates from about the end of the twelfth century. It contains verse onlj^ ; two poems are by the twelfth century bard Cynddelw ; but most of the pieces and collections of stanzas and englynion are anonymous. The first poem is set out in the form of a dialogue between Myrddin and Taliesin. The rhymes prove it to be a late production.' There is
^See my Welsh Grammar, 1913, p. 73. The suggestion {Black Book, ed. J. G. Evans, p. 161) that two dialogues have been run into one by turning over two leaves of the copy is mistaken. The " change of metre at 47 " is a change from lines of 9 syllables to a cyhydedd hir of 19. But lines o/ 9 immediately folloìu, so that there is no abrupt total change as the above assumption implies. The two measures are often linked together, and in combination form a variety of the metre called (j%vaxvdodyn.
Taliesin. ■ 7
another dialogue in which Taliesin figures, his companion being a person of the name of Ug-nach vab Mydno. The collection of stanzas called Hoianeu and Afallenneu, com- monly attributed to Myrddin, deal mostly with events of the twelfth century, though some of them are concerned with Rhydderch Hael and Gwenddoleu, the northern kings with whom tradition associated Laloecen' or Myr- ddin Wyllt. These stanzas may be old, and, in any case, probably form the type after which the others, which belong to the large class of spurious prophecies, were modelled. The manuscript also contains a stanza, p. 46, found in the Book of Taliesin, p. 44, and several englynion usually attributed to Llywarch Hên.
The Book of Aneirin, a manuscript of about the middle of the thirteenth century," contains the Gododdin and its gorchaneu, referred to above. The Gododdin aj)pears as a string of stanzas, evidently recovered from oral tradition in which the sequence and relation of the parts had been lost. The last five pages of the manuscript contain a number of stanzas in Old Welsh orthography, only slightly modified here and there ; the scribe resorted to literal transcription owing to the difficulty and corrupt state of the text in his original. A few of these stanzas corres- pond to stanzas in later spelling in the body of the book ; but the divergences between them show that the originals must have differed, and suggest that the later readings are in some cases mere conjectures. It is, however, clear
^ Joceline's Life of St. Kentigern, xlv, in Historians of Scotland, vol. V, p. 241.
2 The date, " circa 1350", in the Report on MSS. in the Welsh Lang., ii, 91, is an error, corrected to " circa 1250" in a footnote to p. iv of the Introduction. Such an error in reporting the most im- portant fact in the volume ought at least to have been corrected in large type in a proniinent position, and not hidden away without even an apology, as if it were a matter of no account.
8 Taliesin.
that the Gododdin was written down in the Old Welsh period, and that the text was then uncertain, which im- plies that it had been handed down from a still earlier period. The gorchaneu seem to show that additions were made to the original poem; and in oral trans- mission interpolations from these were natural, and may explain the references in the poem in its present state to Aneirin's death and to Dyfnwal Frych who died in 642.' The evidence of the manuscript then, so far as it goes, is not inconsistent with the tradition as to the date of the orig-inal poem.
The Book of Taliesin is a manuscript of the late thirteenth century containing a collection of poems rightly or wrongly attributed to Taliesin.
The Red Booìc o/Hergest, in the Library of Jesus College, Oxford, is a manuscript of the late fourteenth century containing a large quantity of Welsh prose and verse. Most of the poetry is the work of medieval bards, written in the standard medieval metres, each poem being duly ascribed to its author. The rest consists of what passed at the time as ancient verse. The fìrst poem in the Book of Taliesin, which is there incomplete owing to the first leaf having been lost, is found complete in the Red Book. Another poem professing to be by Taliesin (Anrec Urien, Skene, F.A.B., ii, 291) is found in the detached portion of the White Book of Ehydderch' in Peniarth MS. 12, and it is possible that this, and one or two other poems found here may have been included in the lost portion of the Book of Taliesin. The Red Book also contains the Givas- gargerdd and Kyvoesi, englynion of prophecies (after the events) pretending to be by Myrddin, and a large collec- tion of the englyníon usually attributed to Llywarch Hên.
1 Skene, Four Ancient Boohs of Wales, ii, 360.
2 Rpport on Mamiscripts in the Welsh Language, i, 324.
Taliesin. 9
Most o£ the englynion, especially the last-meiitioned, are of the forms which are called in the Red Book Grammar (col. 1129) oW hen ganiad — of ancient composition, and are actually exemplified in Old Welsh writing- of the ninth century in the Cambridge Juvencus codex.
Some stray poems and stanzas attributed to the early bards are found in other medieval manuscripts : thus in Peniarth MS. 3, part ii, written about 1300,^ are found the Kyvoesi, Hoianeu and Afallenneu, attributed to Myr- ddin ; and the detached portion of the White Book (early fourteenth century) contains the Gwasgargerdd Yyrddin in addition to the Taliesin poem mentioned above.'''
There are, of course, many later copies of the poems ; the bards continued to read and study them, and seem to have become owners of some of the old copies : the Book of Aneirin belonged in the fifteenth century to Gwilym Tew and Dafydd Nanmor according to entries in the mar- gins of p. 20. In the seventeenth century, when bardism as a profession was rapidly declining-, the antiquary Robert Yaug'han of Hengwrt (1592-1666) brought together almost all the most valuable Welsh manuscripts then in existence, except the Red Book of Hergest ; he secured the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Black Book of Chirk, the Book of Aneirin, the Book of Taliesin, the White Book of Rhydderch, and many others ; in the whole history of collections and collectors it may be doubted whether such a clean sweep as this of all the choicest material was ever made by one man.' The Hengwrt Library with some
1 Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Languaye, i, 303.
2 Ihid., 325. The text of the detached portion of the "White Book was printed by Phillimore in Y Cymmrodor, vii, pp. 123-154.
^ It is not suggested tliat Robert Yaughan had no agents or helpers. Lewis Morris in a list of over forty inanuscript collections known to him says that the Hengwrt collection was " made by Rob : Vaughan and his friends John Jones of Gilli \ýic, read Gelli] Lyfdy and Wiiliam Morris of Cefn y Braich." — Report on MSS. in the Welsh Lany., ii, p. 838.
I o Taliesin.
additional voliimes became the Peniarth Library, which is now, by Sir John Williams's noble gift to the nation, accessible to students in the National Librarj of Wales. But the Book of Aneirin had disappeared at the end of the eighteenth centurj from the Hengwrt collection ;' it was bought "from a person at Aberdâr ", became the property of Carnhuanawc, and then of Sir Thomas Philipps, and is now safe in the Free Library at Cardiff." The term Gynfeirdd, by which the bards of the period from the sixth to the eleyenth century are now known, seems to be due to the happy inspiration of Pobert Yaughan, who transcribed their reputed works in a vokime which he called " Y Kynveirdh Kymreig ".^
In the eighteenth century Lewis Morris of Anglesey (1701-1765) and his brothers Richard (1703-1779) and William (1705-1763), who by unaided application had acquired considerable profìciency in most of the learning, literary and scientific, which was current in their day, had in the literature and antiquities of Wales the most absorbing of their many intellectual interests. They copied and collected manuscripts, they corresponded with each other and with Welsh and English literati, and they instructed and encouraged younger bards and scholars such as Goronwy Owen and Evan Evans. Pichard and Lewis " were the founders of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1751, and through the means of the Society, and by their own personal efforts they succeeded in interesting all classes of Welshmen in the history and
^ " Within the last 20 years," says Sharon Turner in his Yindica' tion, 1803, p. 29, adding, " I will presume that it has been only borrowed, and that it will be honourably returned to the coUection at Hengurt ".
2 Report on MSS. in the Welsh Lang., ii, p. 91.
3 Avch. Brit., 1707, p. 258.
Taliesin. 1 1
literature of their native land".' Evan Evans (1731- 1789), whom the Morrises called " leuan Brydydd Hir",' by which sobriquet he is generally known, and not by his own bardic name of leuan Fardd ac Offeiriad, corres- ponded with them regularly, as well as with Gray, Percy, and others. He explored the little-known field of Welsh manuscripts, and communicated his discoveries to thë Morrises. Lewis Morris, writing to Edward Richard of Ystrad Meurig on August 5th, 1758, tells him that he has at his elbow " no less a man than leuan Brydydd Hir, who hath discovered some old MS. lately, that nobody of this age ever as much as dreamed of ; and this discovery is to him and me as great as that of America by Columbus. We have found an Epic Poem in the British called Gododin ".^ Later, Lewis Morris acquainted himself with the poetry of the Cynf eirdd in the Hengwrt Library itself, and " had a design of printing many, or most of those ancient poems ".* Evans's Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards, including his De Bardis Dissertatio, was published by Dodsley in 1764. " It was first thought of, and encouraged," he says in his Preface, " some years before the name of Ossian was known in England." During the greater part of his life Evans spent much of his time in copying Welsh manuscripts ; he transcribed all the works of the old and medieval bards, together with the Bruts and other prose works, which he hoped, in vain, to see published. In great penury in his last days, he handed over his transcripts to Paul Panton of Plas Gwyn, Pentraeth, Anglesey, in return for an annuity of £20 a
1 J. II. Davies, Tke Letters of Lewis, Hichard, William and John Morris, vol. i, 1907, p. xx.
■^ leuan Brydydd Ilir is the name of a fifteenth century bard of Merioneth. ' 3 lieport on MSS. in the Welsh Lang., ii, p. 809.
* Myi\ Areh.,^ i, p. xiii.
1 2 Taliesiìi.
jear.' The scheme which he had projected was, however, carried out later by Owen Jones [Owain Myfyr), who edited in collaboration with William Owen [Pughe] and Edward Williams (lolo Morganiug), and published at his own expense, the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales in three large octavo volumes, the first two of which appeared in 1801, and the third in 1807. The editors had access to Lewis Morris's collection of manuscripts containing " chiefly ancient poetry ", and they dedicate the fìrst volume to Paul Panton, ^Z«, for "his liberality in lending his manuscripts " which they acknowledge (vol. i, pp. xiii, xiv) to consist mostly of transcripts by Evan Evans ; they describe Evans's labours at some length, mentioning his intention of " putting a part of what he had thus collected to the press ".' The fìrst volume of the Myvyrian contains poetry only, and includes all the reputed poems of the Cynfeirdd, and practically all the known work of the medieval bards. The reproduction, is, for the time, a very creditable perf ormance ; it evidently f ollows with care the copies used, and of most of our medieval poetry it remains to this day the only available printed text. The whole work was reprinted in one bulky volume by Gee of Denbigh in 1870.
1 Emvogion Cymru, 1870, pp. 544, 806 ; Myv. Arch.,^ i, p. xiv ; Rejìort on MSS. in the Welsh Lang., ii, part 3, page v.
^ It seeras due to them to mention these things in the face of the charge brought against them by Mr. 6wenogvryn Eyans in the lieport on MSS. in the Welsh Lang., ii, part 3, p. vi, that they were "wilhng to accept credit for the work of another ". The statement that '' it is a pity that the name of Evan Evans was omitted from the title page" is most unjust, suggesting, as it does, that their own names appear there, which is not the case. They printed okl poetrj', which must be from copies made by somebody, and they acknowledge tliat many of those used by them had been made by Evan Evans, just as Evans himself acknovvledges that most of his Specimens are taken from the manuscripts of WiUiam Morris. — Spec. Reprint, p. 90.
Taliesin. 1 3
The Myvyrian text of the Cynfeirdcl, which was printed from late copies, was superseded in 1868 by the aj)pear- ance of Skene's Four Ancient BooJcs of Wales, the second Yolume of which contains a tolerably accurate reproduc- tion of the text of the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Book of Aneirin, the Book of Taliesin, and of the okl poetry in the Red Book of Hergest. In recent years Dr. Gwenogyi'yn Evans has published the whole of the first three both in photographic facsimile and in printed reproductions which attain the highest degree of accuracy that seems humanly possible.'
The first substantial contribution to the discussion of the authenticity of these poems was A Vindication of the Genuineness of the Ancient British Poems of Aneurin, Tal- iesin, Llywarch Hen and Merdliin, loith Specimens of the Poems, by Sharon Turner, T.A.S., 1803. The author had cited the Welsh bards in his History of the Anglo-Saxons ; and the Yindication was called forth by an attack on that work in the Critical Reviev) of January 1800, and by the pronouncements of Pinkerton and Malcohn Laing against the genuineness of the poems. Sharon Turner effectively exposes his critics' ignorance of the -subject, but he is more interested in following up the inquiry which their strictures induced him to undertalce. His Yindication is a sane and temperate statement of the case. His argu- ments, disentangled, and summarised as briefly as possible, are as follows : —
1. — British bards existed in the sixth century. This is proved, among other things, by the invective of Gildas, who accuses the British kings of listening only to " their
^ I have discovere(1 only one actual error in these reproductions : ìoaeawau-r for waeiraìrr, B.A., 918. In the Black Rook. 51 9, two t's are printed as u with two accents above it, which represents the appearance of the original, but the correct reading is ii.
1 4 Taliesin.
own praises . . . from the mouths of scoundrel pro- claimers " pp. 105-6.
2. — The Nennian memorandum clearly names Taliesin among the bards of the sixth centurj ; and Turner, following Evans, correctlj takes the misreadiug Nueyin to mean Aneirin, and supposes Bluchbard to be Llywarch, pp. 116-7.
3. — He quotes from the bards of the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries numerous passages which show that they knew of Taliesin, Aneirin, Myrddin and Llywarch as bards of a past age, and were acquainted with their re- puted works, pp. 40-82. GeofPrey of Monmouth in a Latin poem makes Taliesin and Myrddin contemporaries of Gildas, p. 123.
4. — Giraldus says that the bards in the twelfth cen- tury had " ancient and authentic books written in Welsh", p. 142. The memory of Myrddin's prophecies had been retained among them, "verbally by many, in writing by very few ", p. 147. They had added to the genuine ones many of their own ; but Giraldus could distinguish be- tween the genuine and the spurious by the language and style, p. 147.
5. — Manuscripts of the twelf th and two succeeding cen- turies, containing the reputed works of these bards, have been preserved, pp. 25-30. The non-existence of earlier manuscripts is satisfactorily accounted for : " Time and accident consume MSS. as well as buildings and men. Old copies decay or are lost, and new ones succeed," p. 21. Wales was peculiarly exposed to the ravages of invaders, p. 24. The value and importance of old MSS. is a com- paratively late discovery ; MSS. were preferred for other considerations than age, p. 22. (He might have added that Old Welsh manuscripts were written in a difficult ortho- graphy and obsolete script.) " It is therefore a matter of
Taliesin. 15
pure chance that any ancient MS. of a book has descended to us," p. 22. Lack of ancient MS. authority is not peculiar to these poems : •" Of the numerous Greek and Latin works, which we possess, how few are there of which very ancient MSS. can be adduced !" p. 21. We admit their genuineness although, if we examined the evidence for it, " we should find, that far as antiquity of MSS. was con- cerned, it is very slight ", p. 22. Li this respect there- fore these Welsh poems stand on the same footing as most other ancient writings.
6. — Summing up the above evidence, Turner submits " that unless the internal evidence of these poems is very clearly and decisively hostile to their antiquity, no reason- able man can discredit their genuineness," p. 15L For our present purpose the internal evidence may be classified thus : the evidence of (a) the matter, (6) the versification, (c) the language.
(a) Under this head Turner maintains " That the sub- jects of this poetry coukl answer no purpose of interest in the twelfth century. That their subjects were the most unlikely of all others for a forger to have chosen. That Ai'thur is spoken of in a manner inconsistent with the supposition of forgery. That the subjects are such as, if genuine, might be expected from their real authors. . . . That their historical allusions are true," pp. 19-20,
151 fie.
(6) Rhyme is the most conspicuous feature of the versification. It liad been objected that rhyme was un- known in Europe before the eighth century; Turnershows that it was practised in the fourth, pp. 250-254.
(c) " On the language of these bards, it is very favour- able to the genuineness of these poems, that . . . they have not been found intelligible by many modern Welsh- men. Evans . . . mentions this several times," p. 197.
i6 Taliesin.
This is the only point made bj Turner under this head ; and it is, of course, a substantial one, since it establishes some presumption of antiquity. But with the progress of linguistic science philological considerations have formed the chief obstacle to the acceptance of the view which he shows to be probable on other grounds. In a later section of this paper I propose to discuss the question whether these considerations are of such weight as to turn the scale decisivelj against all other evidence.
Turner knew, of coui'se, as Giraldus knew in the twelfth centurj, that manj poems attributed to these bards are later productions. He therefore gives a list of the poems which he considers genuine ; those of Taliesin are : " The Poems to Urien, and on his battles. His dialogue with Merdhin. The Poems on Elphin. And his Historical Elegies," p. 33. He adds, " There are several others, however, especiallj of Taliesin, which maj be genuine," p. 34.
Thomas Stephens, in his Literature of the Kymry, 1849, finds himself in general agreement with Turner's conclu- sions : " I regret ", he writes, " being compelled to differ in opinion, respecting this \_Armes Prydein Vawr] and the poems of Merddin, from the eminent historian and critic, to whose learning, intelligence, and candour, the litera- ture of mj native land is so greatlj indebted ; but it is a source of sincere gratification to reflect, that in nearlj everj other essential point, mj own researches have tended to ratif j his conclusions, as to the genuineness of most of the poems attributed to the earlj bards, Aneurin, and Lljwarch, and manj of those of Taliesin," p. 288. With respect to the last mentioned poems, he sajs that, as manj of them "maj upon most substantial grounds be shown to be genuine, it becomes of importance to distin- guish between those which are, and those which maj not
Taliesin. 1 7
be of his production," p. 281. As the result of his own study of seventj-seven poems attributed to Taliesin, Stephens divides them into five classes, of which the first two are the following, p. 282 : —
HlSTORICAL, AND AS OLD AS THE SlXTH CeNTURY.
- Gwaith Gwenystrad -Yspail Taliesin Gwaith Argoed Llwyvain Canii i Urien Rheged
Gwaith Dyíìryn Gwarant Dadolwch Urien Rheged
■ I Urien I Wallawg
I Urien - Dadolwch i Urien
Canu i Urien - Marwnad Owain ap Urien
DOUBTFUL.
»Cerdd i Wallawg ap Lleenawg Gwarchan Kynvelyn Marwnad Cunedda Gwarchan Maelderw
Gwarchan Tutvwlch Kerdd Daronwy
Gwarchan Adebon - Trawsganu Cynan Garwyn
All the rest he relegates to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, dividing them into Romances, Predictive, and Theological Poems. The actual number of poems in his list is not 77, but 73 ; and many of these are not found in the Book of Taliesin, while only the fourth of tlie gorchaneu (Gorchan Maelderw) is attributed to Taliesin in the Book of Aneirin. In a series of articles which appeared subsequently in the Archaeologia Gambrensis, 1851-3, Stephens added to the class of genuine poems three previously classed as doubtful and two others.
In 1853 Stephens wrote for the Aberga^enn}' Eistedd- fod a valuable treatise on the Gododdin, with text and translation, which was edited by Professor Powel, and published by the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1888. In the historical illustrations and the Introductory Essay " he had on certain points," says the editor, " anticipated by a whole generation conclusions which have been subsequently drawn by other writers." Two poems of Taliesin are translated in the Essay, pp. 67, 73.
1 8 Taliesin.
In 1858, D. W. Nash publislied liis Taliesin ; or, the Bards and Druids of Britain. The greater part of the work is devoted to the refutation of the druidical inter- pretation of the Cjnfeirdd poems proposed by the Rev. Edward Davies, whose two volumes, Celtic Researches, 1804, and The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, 1809, Nash rightly characterises as " monuments of misapplied learning", p. 7. Davies had embraced the fantastic theory of Jacob Bryant that all ancient mythology was derived from a corruption of revealed religion which took place after the Flood. It occurred to him that this grand idea must supply tlie key to the obscurities of ancient Welsh literature ; he satisfied himself that druidism was a form of helio-arkite worship ; that the bards cherished its doctrines in secret down to the middle ages ; and that the works of the Cjaifeirdd are full of helio-dsemoiiic lore and arkite mysteries. Now, to approach these poems with a preconceived theory is fatal ; their language is so obscure and difficult that a person with a fixed idea, especially if his notions of Welsh inílexion and syntax are a little vague, is certain to discover in them exactly what he is looking f or. Edward Davies looked f or liis mysteries, and found them ; and his views gained such acceptance that it was perhaps necessary, even in the late fìfties, to refute them. This task Nash accomplishes vigorously and successfuUy. The apparent good sense of his trans- lations heighten by contrast the obvious nonsense of Davies's. The contrast is often more striking than it would be if that sense were the sense of the original ; but in many cases ISTash's renderings, when compared witli the text, are even more ludicrous than Davies's own. Thus Pawh i Adonai ar weryd Pwmpai, rendered by Davies "We all attend on Adonai on the area of Pwmpai ", which is literal except that "we" and "attend" are
Taliesiìi. 1 9
supplied, is rendered by Nasli " Every one of the idiots ban<^ing on the ground ", p. 257. Not being- restrained by any inconveniently exact knowled»e of Welsh inflex- ions and word-formations, Nash plays fast and loose with thera, and produces anything which seems to be sensible, and to fit the case. Thus Unynt tanc gan aethant gollu- ddioìi, which means " They joined (i.e., made) peace, for they liad become weary " is translated by liim " They were quiet whose entrails went (out of their wounds) ",' p. 98. But with all the freedom he allows himself he does not always succeed in evolving any possible sense, though he is not in the least put out by that, for he has that naîve type of mind which naturally assumes that what it does not understand is mere silliness. For example, four lines referring to a cow, which mean "At mid-day it will be lowing, at midnight it will be boiling ; it will be boiled on land, it will be eaten in ships ", are rendered by him " On a fine day lowing, on a fine night boiling ; in the land of the boiler the timid shall be in tranquility ", witli a footnote pointing out that " these lines, though unintelligible, are not more so than the prophecies of Merlin in Geoíîrey", etc, p. 258. He never suspects that there may be a meaning which he has failed to discover. His positive contribution to the interpretation of the poems has been over-estimated ; even Matthew Arnold was deceived by his plausibility. He renders, on tlie absurdest grounds, " Politeness is
* The H in go-lluddion "rather weary" (compare go-lbcng, etc.) ghould have obviated the possibility of its being even momen- tarily mistaken for coluddioyi " ontrails ". Nash could not, of course, be acquainted with the fact that the verb " to go " is used to mean "become" with all adjectives in Welsh as it is in English with some, e.g. " to go mad " ; he could not therefore have guessed " had become weary " ; and so he read loignt " joined " as if it were oeddynt " were ", and made the noun tanc "peaee" iuto an adjective " quiet".
c2
20 Taliesin.
natural, says the ape ", and Matthew Arnold " can hardly doubt that Mr. Nash is quite right".'
The refutation of Davies's theories formed only part of Nash's purpose, which was to cast doubt on the authen- ticity of all the old Welsh poetry. He held that it was forged in the twelfth century or later. He is as intent on proYÌng his theory as Davies was. Matthew Arnold is under no misapprehension with regard to this : " his de- termined scepticism about Welsh antiquity seems to me, however, to betray a preconceived hostility, a bias taken beforehand, as unmistakable as Mr. Davies's preposses- ions".^ His bias comes out most clearly when he is deal- ing with the historical poems, for here he seems half conscious that he cannot establish his contention. His treatment of the Gododdin is hesitating and uncertain ; he seems almost to admit that the poem may be ancient, then suggests a qualification, and when you think he is about to come to a decision he goes off to something else, and leaves the decision in the air. Even when he deals with the historica.l poems of Taliesin, we have the admis- sion that the corrupt state of one of them may arise " per- liaps from the antiquity of the original songs, fragments of which have thus been orally preserved," p. 90 ; but the idea is not followed up. Having given his own transla- tions of the poems he proceeds to show that they must be spurious by taking that which " bears the most apparently genuine character ", namely Gwaith Ârgoed Lhuyfain, and showing that it contains an anachronism which proves it late, pp. 119-120. This is done as follows : in the poem the Saxon chief appears and calls for hostages ; two speeches follow — a reply by Owein ap Urien, and a call to his men by Urien himself. Owein's reply is to the effect
' The Study of Celtic Literature, popular ed. 1891, p. 32, 2 Ibid., p. 28-9.
Taliesin. 2 1
that " they will not give hostages, and Ceneu ap Coel would have suffered torture before he gave hostages ". Nash puts only the fìrst part of this speech in inverted commas, and pretends that the rest represents a speech by Ceneu ap Coel, who had long been dead. He gives a genealogical table to show that Owein was a descendant of Ceneu ap Coel in the fifth degree. But the obvious meaning of the passage is that Owein declares that he will not be unworthy of his ancestor ; and in the translation in Sharon Turner's book iìie wìiole speech is included in inverted commas. It is therefore difficult to acquit Nash of the charge of disingenuousness brought against him by Skene {F.A.B., ì, 15). After this piece of special plead- ing, Nash goes on to say that " without venturing to decide that these Songs to Urien were not rewritten in the twelfth century from materials originally of the date of the sixth, and that there are no poetical remains in the Welsh language older than the twelfth century, we may nevertheless assert that the common assumption of such remains of the date of the sixth century has been made upon very unsatisfactory grounds", and to put the onus of proof on those who differ from him. He ends the chap- ter by stating that " the internal evidence, even of the so-called ' Historical Poems ' themselves, is, in some in- stances at least, opposed to their claims to an origin in the sixth century ", which Matthew Arnold calls " an un- satisfactory turn to gìve to tlie matter, and a lame and impotent conclusion to his chapter ".' His lameness here is no doubt caused by a feeling that in his examination of these particular poems he has not found much to support his theory : indeed, he has found some facts which seeni to run counter to it. But his " determined scepticism " was not to be shaken by a few facts, for it was too firmly 1 Tke Study of Celtic Literature, popular ed., 1891, p. 48.
2 2 Taliesin.
rooted in the a priori probabilities of the case. It was an attitude natural to him, and typical of the time. " It has been the mission of the nineteenth century," says Mr. Sainsbury, " to prove that everybody's work was written by somebody else, and it will not be the most useless task of the twentieth century to betake itself to niore profitable inquiries ".
The texts which appear in the second volume of The Four Aìicient BooJcs of Wales had been transcribed and printed some years bef ore the appearance of the work in 1868, and Skene had obtained translations of the printed texts from two Welsh scholars : the Book of Taliesin was translated by the Eev. Eobert Williams, and the other texts by the Eev. D. Silvan Evans. Most of the historical poems relate to the strug-gles between the Britons of the north and the men of Deira and Bernicia ; and Skene, with the aid of the translations, examined them in the light of such information concerning the Northern kingdoms in that obscure period as can be gleaned from other sources, and made out a strong case for their sub- stantial genuineness. He came to the conclusion that it was not till the seventh century that they " were brought into shape, and assumed a consistent form .... It is in the seventh century that I place these poems in their earliest consistent shape, and I do not attempt to take them further back ", i, p. 243. He was, of course, aware of the fact that in oral transmission the pronunciation of the words changed insensibly with the changethät went on in the spoken language, and that when written down they appeared in the orthography in use at the date of the manu- script, i, p. 216. Some of Skene's identifications of places in the North are more than doubtf ul ; and his philological chapters are of no value. But the work as a whole forms a most important contribution to the study of the poems.
Taliesin. 23
Since the publication of Skene's work it has been generally recognised that the Gododdin and other histori- cal poems are older than the twelfth century; but there has been little disposition to admit that any of them is what it claims to be. Sir John Rhŷs in his Lectures on Welsh Philology, 1879, p. 139, says that " they date, in some form or other, from the nintli century, if not earlier*'. In his Arthurian Legend, 1891, p. 241, he points out that parts of the Gododdin appear in the manuscript in an orthography which may be as old as the ninth cen- tury ; but he would not think of calling its author Aneirin — no, he is " the poet of the Gododin," p. 242. Similarly he treats the Book of Taliesin in his Hihhert Lectures, 1888, as a repository of traditional lore having its roots in Celtic heathendom ; but he suggests that Taliesin himself is a myth, and equates the second element of his name with the name of Ossin, better known as Ossian, " the great mythic poet of the Goidels ", p. 551. In 1892, he tacitly gave up this equation by explaining Ossîn or Oishi as Pictish (Proc. Ant. Scot., 329) ; but the name actually occurs as the Irish form of the Saxon name Oswin (Plummer's Bede, ii, p. 163). A cruder attempt to etymo- logize Taliesin into a myth was made by Mr. J. Rogers Rees in the Arch. Gamh., 1898, p. 331 : " Taliessin, Telessin or Telyessin is clearly Norse for bard or skald . . . tal {tali) =s'peech, language, a tale . . . á sý»i=appearance, shape." The futility of this sort of argument was wittily exposed by Henry Rogers in the Eclipse of Faith, 1852, wliere it is sliown how a future Dr. Dickkopf would prove the impossibility of the "papal aggression" of 1850. The names " tell their own tale, and almost, as it were, pro- claim of themselves that they are allegorical. Wiseman, Newman (two of them, be it observed). . . Thus the name ' Wiseman ' is evidently chosen to represent the proverbial
24 Taliesin.
craft which was attributed to the Church of Rome ; and Nicholas has also been chosen (as I apprehend) for the purpose of indicating the sources whence that craft was derived. . . . The word Newman again (and observe the significant fact that there were two of them) was in all probability, I may say, certainly, designed to embody two difîerent tendencies, both of which claimed . . . to intro- duce a new order of things ".^ It is, of course, true that legends gathered round the name of Taliesin in the middle ages, and that a so-called " Mabinogi Taliesin " was written at a late period; but this no more justifies the assumption that he is a myth than the fact that Yirgil became a weird necromancer in the medieval imagination proves the Roman poet to have been a heathen god.
Sir Edward Anwyl has discussed the poems of the Cynfeirdd in two papers contributed to the Transadions of the Honourable Society of Gymmrodorion : " Prolegomena to the Study of Old Welsh Poetry," which appears in the volume for 1903-4, and "The Book of Aneirin," with a translation, in the volume for 1909-10. In the first he refers, as Rhys had done, to the stanzas in Old Welsh spelling in the Book of Aneirin as " revealing a part of the poem in its pre-Norman dress, and even in a form which comes near to that of the glosses of the eighth and nintli centuries," p. 69 ; and as these are mere fragments
^ Take a more modern example, the present leader of the nation. Is it not evident that David Lloyd George is a mythical name, typifying the unity of Kelts and Angles in the war against Prussianism? " Saint David for Wales " you may read in the Houses of Parliament ; the smallest nationahty naturally represents the Kelts. St. George for England. Lloyd is not * grey' here, but ' holy ' as in Duw Iwyd, and indicates that the patron saints are meant ; coming between the two names it may go with either ; Dewi Sant — Saint George. Incidentally also it signifies that the war is a holy war, St. George v. the Dragon, etc.
Taliesin. 25
he concludes "that the original poems from which they are taken . . . were older stilL" He also quotes old spelHng-s from the Book of Taliesin, p. 62. He carefully guards himself against drawing hasty inferences about the lateness of the poems from certain isolated allusions ; thus, "the reference in 1. 885 of the Gododin to the death of Donald Brec, who died in 642, shows that the line, at any rate in the form there founcl, is subsequent to that date"; and a reference to Bede in the Book of Taliesin proves *' that the poem containing the reference was later than his time, that is, nnless the line or the reference loas interpolated," ibid. The words which I have italicised show that he did not wish to commit himself to the state- ment that the Gododdin was not older than 642, or that the Taliesin poem was not older than Bede. Yet he is even more careful not to suggest that the poems are by Aneirin or Taliesin. To show what reliance is to be phiced on such ascriptions he points out a discrepancy which, by his own error, he thinks he has found in the Book of Aneirin. The stanzas in old spelling follow Gorchan Maelderw ; but Anwyl erroneously took them to be part of it, and notes that Gorchan Maelderw is attri- buted to Taliesin, while some of the old stanzas appear in the Gododdin proper, which is attributed to Aneirin, p. 70. As the Gorchan does not include those stanzas there is no discrepancy.' Much of this poetry, he says, " reflects the period of lieroic struggle against the English," p. 68 ; in his second paper he devotes con- siderable space to the discussion of the events of the period, and the identification of men and places in the North. But it is taken for granted throughout that none of the poems can be in any sense contemporary with the events. Two questions then arise. (1) Whij were they 1 See Ifor Williams, Y Beirniad, 1911, p. 254.
20 Taliesin.
written ? (2) ìlow were tliey written ? (1) Anwyl's answer to the first question^ scattered through his papers, may be condensed into a phrase thus : For the g-lorifìca- tion of the Welsh families descended from the Northern heroes. But who were those families ? The answer is remarkable (Trans. 1909-10, p. 95): "Even in medieval times some of the ruling families of Wales styled them- selves Gwyr y Gogledd (the men of the North), as in Hengwrt MS. 536." The reference is clearly to "Bonhed Gwyr y Gogled", printed by Skene in F.A.B. ii, 454 (from Hen. 536 = Pen. 45), where Gwyr y Gogled are not medieval Welshmen at all, but Urien, Llywarch Hên, Rhydderch Hael, etc, North Britons of the sixth century ! He proceeds " It may therefore be fairly assumed", and goes on assuming for a whole page, thus : " There is no convincing proof", " It is not impossible ", " It is there- f ore conceivable ", " It is not impossible ", " Possibly ". But there is no answer to Sharon Turner's simple state- ment that Aneirin's heroes " form part of no genealogies" {Vincl. p. 152), or to his general case against this very theory of glorifìcation. It may therefore be said that the glorifìcation of imaginary families has not been shown to afford even a probable motive for the composition of the poems. (2) How were the poems written — how could Welsh bards in later centuries know of the persons and places in the North with which the poems deal ? Anwyl's reply is given in his fìrst paper, p. 64. There were annals such as the old memoranda appended to the work of Nennius ; and " it is highly probable that chronicles of similar type [to these] supplied tlie personal and local names whicli have been incorporated in the. poems of the Four Ancient Boohs.''' The systematic faking implied here seems to me, I confess, -improbable. In his second paper, p. 97, he suggests (in brackets) a modifìcation of
Taliesin. 27
this view, He is speaking of a tradition of Northern names in Wales : " It does not follow necessarily, how- ever, that the tradition should have been continuous on its poetic side (though it is possible that this may to some extent have been the case) ". Thus it is possible that some, old poetry was handed down. This admission of the possibility of a living tradition seems to render unneces- sary the assumption of the dry bones of annals being triched out into a semblance of life.
It is seen that the difficulties of explaining the histori- cal poems as late fabrications have not been surmounted. The possibility of a continuous poetic tradition is admitted " to some extent ". Why is it not admitted frankly and f ully as tlie simple and obvious explanation of the facts ? The reason is that linguistic theory stands in tlie way. The reason is not dwelt on, but it is mentioned once in Anwyl's " Prolegomena", page 63 : " it is obvious from the rhyme alone that all the old poems were composed after the old declensional and conjugational endings had been entirely lost." That is true : but unless we know at what period the loss took place it determines nothing. The period is not stated, probably because it was considered to be too well known. It was generally assumed that the inflexions were not lost in the sixth century ; the poems, therefore, must be later. * Tlie Ancient British language by the loss of those endings became the Welsh language ; the British name 3Iaglocunos became the Welsh name Mailcun, later Maelgwn. What the above statement implies, then, is this : No poems can have been written in the Welsli language in the sixth century, because iii the sixtli century the Welsh language itself did not exist.
It is clear that, if this hypothesis as to tlie antiquity of the language is well founded, it over-rules every other consideration ; and it is not to be wondered at that under
28 Taliesin.
its iuíluence little value has been attached to the tradition concerning the poems. But it must not be forgotten that it is no more than an hypothesis. It is based on the foUowing facts. Gildas uses the British forras of proper names ; he calls Maelgwn Maglocune, and Cjnlas Cvneglase, the fìnal e being in each case the ending of the Latin vocative (it would doubtless be the same in British). Tn the sixth and seventh century inscriptions the names have their inflected forms : Cadvan appears as Catamanus (Rhys, Welsh PhiL,' p. 364), Brochfael in the genitive as Brohomagli (ibid., p. 372). It was therefore naturally assumed that these were the ordinary forms of the names in the language of the period, and that the revolution which converted British into Welsh occurred between the sixth or seventh and the ninth century. Ehys in 1879 considered that there was no occasion to prove the " identity " of the language " in the first and sixth cen- tury, though that, it must be admitted, would, owing to the scantiness of our data, be only less difficult than to establish the negative " (ibid., p. 141). He was fully aware that it was an unproved assumption ; but he thought it probable, and was wiUing to " wait until the latter [the negative] has found an advocate."
Before attempting to state the case for the negative, that is, for sixth century Welsh, it will be well to examine a little more closely the case for sixth century British. It rests entirely upon tbe names in Gildas and in the in- scriptions. Because Gildas, writing in Latin, addressed a certain prince as Maglocune, therefore, it is assumed that that prince cannot have been called Mailcun in the vernacular. To put it in another way, if the prince was generally called Mailcun, Gildas would probably have written Mailcune. What the argument implies is that it is improbable that an old form was preserved in Latin
Taliesin. 29
side by sicle with a new form in the vernacular. But in reality it is not improbable, but probable. In a modern Latin document the name of a man called Henry is not written Heìirius but Henricus, because the latter is the traditional Latin form, a form preserved in Latin from the time when the guttural existed in the name. Latin was in use in Britain from the British period, and native names entered into it in their British forms. Personal names were mostly compounds of pairs of common elements, such as cuno-, maglo-, vindo-, catu-, etc. Latin being preserved in writing, and in the speech of the educated, these forms would naturally be preserved in it, so that when Magîo-, for example, had been reduced to Mail- in spoken British, it remained unchanged as the standard Latin form. The work of Gildas and all the inscriptions are written in Latin ; we may hold, then, that they prove nothing as to the forms of the spoken British of the period. Archaic forms were also preserved in the Irish Ogams: "the Ogam language," says Macbain', " seems to have been a pre- served literary language ; its inflexions were antique com- pared to the spoken language, and old Irish, so near it in time as almost to be contemporary, is vastly changed and decayed compared to it". The change was more com- plete, and therefore probably earlier, in British than in Goidelic.
To come to the evidence for Rhys's " negative," the inscriptions do not suggest that Old British was a living language. Most of the names are in the genitive, in -i for the masculine, and -e (=classical Latin -ae) for the feminine. The simplest inscriptions contain the name only, as if the implied noun were " stone ", thus " [the stone] of A son of B ". But the genitive is frequently retained when hicjacit follows, as if it were mistaken for 1 Utpn. Dic. ofthe Gaelic Language, 2 1911, p. v.
30 Taliesiii.
a nominatiye, though, of course, it may be that a difPerent noun is then implied, thus " [the body] of A son of B lies here". But the numerous false concords sug-gest very forcibly that the Latin was not written by persons who spoke a highly inflected language themselves, thus CuUdori jacit et Orwite mulier secundi, which Ehys takes to mean' mulieris (for uxoris) secundae (Welsh Phil., p. 363); so, Dervaci filius Justi ic jacit (ibid., p. 381), etc. Again the distinction of British declensions is lost ; the stem catu- has a genitive in -i as Dunocati (ibid., p. 381), which seems to be formed by adding the usual -i to Dunocat (the Dino- gat of the Book of Aneirin). In some cases uninflected forms are used, as Yictor for the genitive Yictoris (ibid., p. 172) ; these become commoner in the later inscriptions, as the tradition wanes.
Bede, writing in 731, in his fìfty-ninth year, uses the suffixless forms Car-legion, Ban-cor, Broc-mail (H.E., ii, 2) ; he probably found them in older English accounts of the battle of Chester (613 or 616 ?), to which they relate, and was unacquainted with earlier British forms. Welsh, then, goes back to the seventh centuiy, and there is no room for the period of two or three centuries requisite for the development of a new language.
But a clearer indication that the change in the language is earlier than has been assumed is afforded by the practical identity of Welsh and Breton in the ninth century. Zimmer observes that it required the acumen of a Bradshaw to discover the criteria by which we can distinguished them.^ If the Bretons had taken over with them to Armorica the Ancient British language, it is not likely that they would have evo]ved out of it
^ He subsequently attempted, not very successfuUy, to explain it as better Latin, Y Cymmrodor, xviii, p. 12. ^ Auf loelchem Wege, etc, p. 15.
Taliesin. 3 1
between the sixth and ninth century a new language identical with that evolved independently at the same time in Wales. For the developément of the new language did not consist merely in the mechanical loss of syllables which was bound to give the same result wberever it happened, but it involved considerable reconstruction in the building up of a new system of inflexion with the remains of the old. Thus the British catus ' battle ' would naturally give cai in both Old Welsh and Old Breton, and its pliiral catoues would as regularly give catou in botli (cadau in Modern Welsh) . Tlie ou which originally formed part of the stem, seemed now to be a plural ending. It belonged originally to it-stems only, which formed the equivalent of the Latin fourth declension. Other stem- endings, such as -ion, -i, -et, -er, etc, also survived as plural endings. But it happened that -ou came to be chosen as the ending to be added to most nouns which, by the loss of the old inflexions, had no distinctive plural forms ; and thus an element which belonged to a small class of words in British became the commonest plural termination in Breton and Welsh. Is it probable that such an accident occurred independently in Welsh and Breton in the seventh or eighth century ? It seems more reasonable to suppose that the reconstruction had taken place before the separation of Breton and Welsh ; and if so, the new language was already in existence in the first half of the sixth century.
On general grounds also this view is the more probable. In the first century the language was undoubtedly British, largely retaining its Aryan inflexions. But why should " its identity in the first and sixth century " be assumed as a sort of axiom requiring no proof ? Surely, tlie in- terval between the first and sixth century is that which naturally offers itself as the transition period ; it pre-
32 Taliesin.
sents the necessary conditions, and provides the reqinsite time. During the Ronian occupation the well-to-do classes among- the Britons adopted the speech of their rulers. British became the depised patois of the lower strata of the population, and ceased to be under the con- trol of the more important social influences which make for conservatism in speech — emulation and regard for precedent, pride and prejudice. That this is not mere fancy is shown by the fact that precisely the same thing happened later in Enghmd. After the Norman conquest the nobility and those who imitated them spoke French down to the fourteenth century, and the old Saxon speech, says Ranulph Higden about 1340, " with difficulty sur- vived among a few rustic folk ".^ It was during this period that the old lang-uage threw off its remaining inflex- ions : it entered the period as Anglo-Saxon and emerged as English. The parallel is still more complete : the new vocabulary in each case contained a large admixture of words from the speech of the conquerors; at the end of the period in each case the new language percolated from the lower strata to the higher, and became the national speech ; and, lastly, the new speech was employed in each case as the vehicle of song — by Talhaearn, Taliesin and Neirin on the one hand, and by Chaucer and Gower on the other. Talhaearn is styled tataguen " the father of the muse " ; Chaucer is " the father of English poetry " ;' obviously, it must be for the same reason : the one is the earliest Welsh poet, the other the earliest English. Other paral- lels inevitably suggest themselves : Ennius (summus poeta noster, says Cicero) mai'ks the definite formation of classi- cal Latin, Dante of modern Italian. That the Cynfeirdd, famed in later ages, composed their poems in an effete
' In paucis adhuc agrestibvis vix remansit. — Polychronicon, i. 59. 2 Dryden, Poetical Works, Globe ed., 1894, p. 499.
Taliesin. 33
tonofue whicli was soon to become obsolete seems to me to be not only contrary to analogy but unlilcely in itself ; their names would have perislied with the idiom which they used. It is more probable that they sang the birth- song of the new speech, and that their names and songs were handed down because the language lived.
One other point remains to be considered ; can the change in the language be as early as is here suggested, seeing that in some languages it tookplace so much later? Yes, because it is not merely a matter of time ; on the documentary evidence alone it must have happened ex- ceptionally early in British. "Parent Aryan," says Sweet,' "is an example of a naturally unstable language "; and the remark applies of course to tlie derived languages whicli still preserved its inflexions. But it is not to be supposed that the phonetic decay to which the old Aryan tongues were peculiarily liable must always proceed at a uniform rate ; conditions may arise at any time which will hasten and precipitate it. That such conditions obtained in Britain in the period in question cannot, I think, be doubted. Ziramer describes the state of things about A.D. 400 thus :' " In the vicinity of tlie towns, part of the pojaulation was bi-lingual ; those of less culture, lilce Patrick, spolce a Low Latin dialect as well as their native British, while Latin was the language of the educated. In this connection it is noteworthy that even in the first lialf of the sixth century Gildas still calls Latin (by which he doubtless means the literary as distinguished from the popular form) ' nostra lingua '." Popular Latin was sub- ject to the same conditions as British, and suffered simi- lar reduction: thus we learn that in the mouth of the
' 7'he Histonj of Lawjuaíje, 1900, p. 82.
2 The Celtic Church in Britain and Ircland, trans. A. Meyer, 1902, p. 57.
D
34 Taliesin.
illiterate Patriclc, gratias agimus had become gratzacJiam in the early fifth centurj.^ A period of about three and a half centuries, extending from the middle of the second to the end of the fìfth, would be sufficient under these conditions for the accomplishment of the change in British. The new language evolved from it, having dis- carded its perisliable features, was of a remarkablj stable character, comparable in this respect with Arabic,^ and very similar to it in structure ; it raade much use of vowel permutations, and had no useless endings to be lost. It underwent no material chanfîe between the sixth and ninth century — this is proved by the practical identity of Old Welsh and Old Breton ; and since the ninth it has chang'ed much less than the varying orthography of different periods would lead us to suppose. It has been modified in detail in many ways, butit retains its essential character ; as Rhys says, " we need not hesitate to assume the identity of the Welsh language of the nintli century with that of the ninteenth." ' In tliis sense its identity goes back to the sixth. The term heniaith, which is some- times applied to it, is not a mere rhetorical ílourish ; it has the additional merit of being true to fact.
If this is well founded, as I believe it to be, the poems attributed to the Cynfeirdd assume quite a new interest and importance. They have been under a cloud for more than a generation. It was believed that not a single line, not a single word, in any of them could represent anything written or spoken by the bards of the sixth century, because it was supposed that those bards (their existence was not generally denied) must have written in Ancient British. This theory is based upon the Latin forms of native names; it is the corollary of the improbable assump-
1 Ibiíl., p. 52; Stokes, Tripartite Lifn of Patrick, 1887, p. 291.
2 Sweet, loc, cit. ' Welsh Fhiloloyy, 1879, p. 141.
Taliesiii. 35
tion that these reflect literally the living forms. It serves no purpose of philology, and only hampers the interpreta- tion of the inscriptions tlieniselves. On tlie criticism o£ these poems its effect has been banefal. Anwyl in his two papers is eng-aged for the most part only in an unsuc- cessful struo-CTJe with the difficulties which it creates — divining "motives" and attempting to discover possible materials for the great forgery, a forgery for wliich we have to assume that even the models had to be conjured up. The idiosyncracies and mannerisms, and the forms of verse, which characterize and distinguish tlie songs of Taliesin, the stanzas of Aneirin, the englynion of
Llywarch all this is easily imitated, and has been
imitated ; but can it all have been invented, imagined, created out of nothing ?
Immediately the theory is dropped these difficulties vanish, and a more hopeful field of inquiry is opened up. I ain not pleading for tlie substitution of a rival theory, but only for an unprejudiced investigation of the facts. The relinquishment of this theory enables us to resunie tlie traditional and natural view that the language of the Cynfeirdd v^as the New British which we call Welsh, and therefore admits the possibility of some of their verses being handed down. Let this possibility be tested by a patient examination of the poems as we find them. Their vocabulary should be studied with minute care in order that tlieir obscurities may, if possible, be cleared up ; for it is not to be fororotten tliat botli tliose wlio defended and those wlio condemned them in the past understood them only imperfectly, and those who condemned loudest, like Nasli, understood them least.' The inquiry should be
^ Good worlí, mostly unpublished, has alreatly been done on the hmguage of the poems. My colleague, Mr. Ifor Williams, submitted a disseitation on the Book of Aneirin for his M.A. degree in the University of Wales in 19Ü7. The dissertation was read bv Professor
" d2
o
6 Taliesin.
taken up at the point wliere it was left by Stephens and Skene ; and the ordinarj canons of criticism should be applied. It should be admitted that a description, say, of a sixth century battle, especially if it gives the impression of nearness and vividness, is more likely, other considera- tions apart, to have been written at the time than at any subsequent time. It should be recognised that the age of a manuscrij)t imposes only one limit on the age of the matter — it cannot be later ; it is seldom contemporary — autograph copies and first copies are rare ; in the great majority of cases the manuscript is a copy of another, that again of another, and so on ; the age of the matter may be anything that other evidence indicates. Due weight should be accorded to tradition, which may suggest and corroborate if it cannot be accepted as proof. These are not theories but axioms which must guide all such inquiries ; all questions of the date and authorship of ancient works repose on internal evidence, the evidence of manuscripts often centuries later than the date of the work, and tradition. Many of Sliaron Turner's argu- ments (such, for example, as the extreme improbability of a disaster like the battle of Catraeth being chosen in later ages as the subject of a long poem) have never been answered ; and we may hold that there is a prima facie case for the survival, in some form, of sixth century verse. And, to quote Matthew Arnold once more, " since a con- tinuous stream of testimony shows the enduring existence .... from the sixth century to the twelfth, of an old national literature, it seems certain that much of this
Anwyl, wlio was also working oiì the subject, Anwyl's paper appeared in the Transactions for 1909-10, see above p. 24 ; his translation now requires revision. Mr. WilHams has since published some articles on the subject in Y Beirniad, 1911-12, and has carried further his researclies iuto the yocabulary. His work will, I trust, be ready for publication before long.
Taliesin. y]
must be traceable in the documents of the twelfth century, and the interestin^ thing is to trace it ".^
But there is still one theory that stands in the w'ay ; it is Dr. Gvvenogvryn Evans's Taliesin theory, expounded in the introduction and notes which unfortunately accom- pany his beautiful reproduction and facsimile of the text of the Book of Taliesin, and in the companion volume of " amended " text and translation.^ Dr. Evans is a belated disciple of the Nashian school of thoug-ht ; his theory rests ultimately on an unwillingness to believe that any- thing contained in the manuscript can be much older than the manuscript itself — it may be a little older, say a century, but to admit any real antiquity would be con- temptible credulity. This is the mid-nineteenth century scepticism, which is akin to that of the person who is too knowing to be taken in by the truth. So Mr. Evans, like Nash, denies that anything in the Book of Taliesin was written before the twelfth century. But a mere negation affords no resting place to the mind ; how is the composi- tion of these poems in the tvç^elfth centur^'to be accounted for? Dr. Evans's great contribution is his answer to this question : Taliesin himself, though nobody suspected it before, lived in the twelfth century. That is the theory. He examined the text, and naturally, like Edward Davies before him, found confirmation of the theory everywhere. He believes in it passionately ; his contempt for those who take the traditional view lie fails, after many brave attempts, adequately to express, and is " reduced to a melancholy, thoughtful silence ", p. xxv.
I yield to no one in my admiration for Dr. Gwenogvryn
1 Op. cit., p. 44.
2 Facsimile and Text of the Book of Taliesin, Llanbech-og, 1910; Poems from the Book of Taliesin, edited, amended and Trans/ated, 1915. Thougli thus (lated, the volunies weie not issued until 1916. References here are to the first volunie, unless marked II.
''S TaÌiesin.
ö
Evans's reproductions of old Welsh texts, or in my apjDre- ciation of their value to students of the Welsh hinguage and literature. I believe they surpass anything that has ever been achieved in the way of printed texts ; Dr. Evans has developed the art of printing in facsimile to a point never before reached. As a decipherer of WeJsh manu- scripts he has never been approached; 1 have seen him make out in a few seconds an obliterated initial which had not only baffled me, but had been misread by a previous copyist at least 200 years before. He possesses the end- less patience which absolute accuracy demands, a very exceptional power of sight, and a real faculty for finding out the original ink-marks in what aj)pears to be a hope- less blotch. The service he has rendered by his gift far exceeds in lasting value that of any theorist however briUiant, for he has provided the student with the funda- mental facts. Unhappily, for himself and for us, he is not satisfied with this. Why should he be a mei-e tran- scriber, a mere machine? Why should not he, too, have liis say on matters of textual criticism and literary history ? His friends, he says, have tried to" dissuade him. " Do you think that you are going to get at the bottom of stuff like tliat " ? he is aslced (II, p. vii). In spite of dis- couragements like these he has persuaded himself that he does understand Taliesin, and has discovered the bard's secret. He issues his revelation m the tone and mauner of a challenge to tlie world. A reply is due not so mucli for the sake of demolishing the theory, for that has little chance of acceptance, but because in the process some constructive work can perhaps be done.
It is strange that theaccurate palaeographer who most faithfully supplies us witli the absolute facts of the manuscripts has no idea how to use the facts himself, or of the value of any evidence. His reasoning, — the
Taliesin. 39
effective, whicli is not always the expressecl, part of it, — is all purely subjective. The conclusion he arrives at is that which he thinlcs ought to be, or wishes to be. When the evidence is ag-ainst it, he simply asserts it against the evidence. Thus Llywarch ap Llywelyn, a bard who flourished about ]200, is called Prijdydd y Moch. Mr. Evans calls him " Prydydd yMochnant ", and in English *'the Bard of Mochnant " ; but, as his if nieans the pre- 'position ym, the expression " Prydydd yMochnant" is indefinite and can only mean "a poet in Mochnant " — he really has only the vag-uest notions of Welsh syntax. There is no analogy whatever for such a formula.^ What evidence is there for it here? He confesses that there is none : " Always mistakenly written ' Prydydd y moch ' ", p. xii. Li other words, ''never written anywhere 'Prydydd yMochnant'". Stephens {Lit. Kym., 1849, p. 276) men- tions as one suggested expkination of Prydydd y Moch that the word Moch here means not " pigs " but " the men of Mochnant": and he rejectsthe expLanation on the ground that the Prydydd had nothing to do with Mochnant.' He isright; the wele (holding) of " Pridith Mogh " was at " Wyckewere " near St. Asaph, according to the Extent of Denbigh, 1335 (Seebohm, Trib. Sys., 1895, p. 31). Now observe the worlcing of Dr. Gweuogvryn Evans's mind. Prydydd y Moch is a poet who happens to possess his esteem ; he cannot entertain the idea that a person whom
1 There is no Eos yn Nyfed, Bardd ym Môn, etc, but only Eos Dyfed, Bardd Môn, etc.
- Steplious's own explanatioji of tlie name Prydydd y Mocli is tliat tho bard was tho author of the stanzas oalled Jloianeu, each of which begins with " Listen, httle pig", and which are attributed to Myrddin. As Skene {F.A.B. i, 222) shows, the supposition is not a Hkely one. Perhaps the explanation after all is that there Avas no sharp lino of doniarcation between bardic nanies and nicknaines; and even kings aiid princes had the latter.
4Ô Taliesin.
he rather approves of could or should have such a name
as "the poet of the pigs " ; in reading Stephens an idea
strikes him : " he muú he the Bard of Mochnant" ; tlien
he asserts, in defiance of all the evidence, that the bai'd ìs
" Prydjdd yMochnant ". The evidence of manuscripts is
nothing — it is the record of a mistate ; his inner light
tells him that the name is the solecism whicli he himself
has invented.
That is a characteristic sample of the method. Now
let us see how it is applied to the history of Taliesin : —
That Taliesin flourished in the middle of thetwelfth century there can be no manner of doubt ; and he was held in such high esteem that his manner, his style was imitated. ' But ', it has been objected, ' there niight have been another Taliesin who ]ived in the sixth century'. Where is the evidence for this ghost, this birth of fraud, this tattle of public platforms ? Might-have-been is not evidence, but the ofFspring of indolent belief, which shirks the effort to think. To say this is to fly in the face of Providence which provides for the simple, but the man who has seen a truth cannot be as if he had not seen it (p. iii).
It is no use quarrelling with the style ; the style is the man. But this tirade means only that there is no evidence for the Taliesin of tradition. The answer to it is that there is evidence ; that he himself quotes some of it, misquotes some more, and ignores the rest.
The oldest reference to Taliesin occurs in the well- known entry in the additamenta to Nennius in the British Museum HarL MS. 3859, foL 188b, printed below. A facsimile of part of the original page containing the words appears as the frontispiece to this volume.
(I)da ^Yuts e°bba tenuit regiones in sinistrali parte brittanniç, id est, umbri maris, & regnauit annis duodeci?;t, & uncxit din- guayrdi guurth berneich.
(T)unc dutigirn in illo tempore fortitr-?' dimicabat contra gente7/î angloru7?i. Tunc talhaeni tat aguen in poemate claruit, & neirin & taliessin ŵ bhichbard & cian qui vocatMr gueinth guaut simul uno tempore in poemate brittannico claruerwwí.
Taliesin. \\
' Ida the son of Eobba held the regions in the northern' part of Britain, that is of the Umbrian sea, and reigned twelve ycars, and joined Dingnayrdi [Dingnoaroy = Bamhorough''^] to Bernicia.^
' Then Dutigirn at that time bravely fought against the nation of the Angles. Then Talhaern, father of the muse, shone in poetry, and Neirin and Taliessin and Bluchbard and Cian who is called gueinth guaut[gwenith gwawd = wheatof song]together at the same time shone in British poetry '.
Dr. Evans begins liis Introduction by quoting these woi'ds in a translation, in which the errors occur only in the first part, and do not affect the argument. He notes that " Ida founded the kingdom of Northumbria in the year 547, and died in 559. Thus we have a precise state- ment that a man of the name of Taliesin, who wrote poetry in the Britannic tongue, lived in the middle of the sixth century ", p. vii. That is so ; it is evidence against him, and he has to rebut it if he can. Let us examine the attempt. In his report on the Welsh manuscripts in the British ]VIuseum* he had dated this manuscript " cii-ca 1100". He now says, p. viii, that it " was written after 1125", giving no reasons, and making no reference at all to his own official report of 1910. He then tacitly assumes that the memorandum is not older than the manuscript ; " thus over five centuries intervene between the bard and the record, a period long enough to wear away tlie sharp
1 Sinistralis is nndoubtedly British Latin, rendering the Welsh ffoffledd ' lef t, north ', and formed on the analogy of australis. See Stevenson, Assers Life of Riwj Aìfred, 1904, p. 234. " East of the Umbrian sea" is nonsense ; the district is iYo/'íÄumbria.
- Dr. Evans, for some reason only known to him, renders this Durham; in a later entry in the same tract Diiìffuoaroy is espressly stated to be Bebbanburch. In Uinffucyrdi the second d ìs a scribal error for o.
3 The writer either leaves ffunrth untranslated, or drops himself into his native Welsh. Whether unc.nt is read ?is,jim.rit, as in some later MSS , or as rin.rit, as by Zimmer, the preposition after it would be fftiurth in Welsh ; cf. caloìi icrth ffahm, etc.
* Report on MSS. in the Welsh Lanff., vol. ii, p. 9."3!).
4 2 Taliesin.
edges of fact ". This assumption I deal with below. He then says that " the alleged evidence is, at hest, second hand, and purelj dogmatic. It is not supported by any detail. There is no hint that Nennius had seen a line ", etc. As the tract is a skeleton history containing no details, this argument is mere quibbling. Lastly, "we have a bald statement, which . . . requires to be closely scrutinized. This we shall now attempt to do by direct- ing attention to the earliest recorded use of words in our text", that is, by inquiring into something else. He looks the fact straight in the face, and passes by on the other side.
It is to be observed that the argument which ends in this pitiful evasion attempts only to discredit the memo- randum as evidence for the Taliesin of the sixth century ; the question how it is to be reconciled with a twelfth centurv Taliesin is not discussed at all. As the one and only Taliesin was the poet who " f rom 1146 to 1176" sang " the fortune of the house of Gwynedd ", p. xxxiii, no one else can possibly be alluded to in the meniorandum. This is touched upon once : Taliesin " shone early : to be chosen for special mention in the Nennian additamenta he must have attained a foremost place about 1130 ", p. xxxvi. It is seen that " after 1125 " becomes now " about 1130 ". Eesultino- from this, " Taliesin lived between 1105 and 1175, or thereabouts ", p. xxix. " To be chosen for special mention " is a very curious phrase for being the subject of a gross blunder. Mistakes in dating persons long dead are common enough, but it is noi usual to mistake dis- tinguished contemporaries for ancients ; such an error is so unlikely as to be almost inconceivable, and no trick of language which attempts to disguise its extreme improb- ability can be allowed to pass. Now let us put the whole case of the bearing of the niemorandum upon Dj-. Evans's
Taliesin. 43
theory. Taliesin, who satig " from 1146 to 1176 ", might have been born about 1105, and might have been dis- tinguished " about 1180 ", he might have been brilliant in youth, prolifîc iu age. The Harl. MS. might have been written " about 1130" (though previously dated " circa 1100 " by our palaeographer himself) ; the memorandum might have been a composition of that date (this assump- tion involves the " well-known error " of talíing " the date of the first attestation of a fact to be the date of the fact itself "'); and its author might have been muddle-headed enough to name a young poet of the day among the British bards of the sixth century. It might have been ; but I have to remind Dr. Evans that " might-have-been is not evidence ". Or rather, perhaps one ought to say that all this might-have-been, much of which is improbable in the highest degree, is very satis- factory evidence tliat the theory which calls for it is a delusion.
But this, of course, is ouly half the matter. We have now to consider the credentials of the document which Dr. Gvvenogvryn Evans impugns. The manuscript is written, according to the Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, in " an English hand of the early twelfth century" (F Cymmrodor, ix, p. 146). The " Historia Brittonum " proper is followed by a number of shorter ti'acts relating to British history. The memorandum in question occurs in a tract called " Saxon Genealogies ", which, according to Mr. PhiUimore, is " itself of earlier composition than the Historia", and "was embodied with it (approximately at theend of the ninth or begiiiuing of the tenth century) ", ibid., p. 14o. "The Genealogies, accord- ing to M. de hi Borderie, are the most authentic and, from an historical point of view, the most valuable portion of
^ Piufessor Hiigh WiUiams in Zeitschriftfür celt. Phil., iv, p.ôô7.
44 Talicsin.
the whole work " (F Gymmrodor vii, p. 157). Zimmer, in his Nennius Yindícatus, 1893, p. 78, analyses the tract, and fìnds that it contains genealogies coming- down to 685, with interpolations reaching down a century later, foUowed by "a history [beginning with our quotation, Ida jilius Eohha, etc.] of North and Mid Britain down to the death of Ecgfrid of Northumberland, who fell in 685, in a battle against the Picts. We have thus a history of the Britons and Angles from 547 to 685 in short memoranda before us ". He concludes that " the time of its composition can therefore only be the year 685 itself or 686 ", p. 78, though in its first form he thinks the tractmust have been written in 679, p. 96. The interpolations are not later than the date of the "Historia" proper, which he puts at 796, p. 82. As an authority the "Historia" proper is, he says, " abso- lutely worthless " ; but the tract on the other hand is,
" for the history of Welsh and Irish literature of
the very highest importance {von allerhochsler Bedeutuìig)'', p. 282. Mommsen, in the preface to his edition of the Historia Brittonum, 1894, p. 119, gives the date of the manuscript, Harl. 3859, as the endof the eleventh century according to Henry Bradshaw {CoUected Papers, p. 466) or the beginning of the twelfth in the opinion of Sir E. Maunde Thompson (Keej3er of Manuscripts, ah'eady quoted above). He accepts Zimmer's conclusion as to the date of the tract " Saxon Genealogies ", but believes that the " Historia" proper may have been written about the same time, and expanded during the eiglith centuiy, as was the case witli the tract itself, p. 117. There is thus, among diíîerences on other points, a most weighty and authorita- tive consensus of opinion as to the date and va]ue of our tract. To the question " where is the evidence " that Taliesin lived in tlie sixtli century, we can rej)ly, tlien, that it is to be found in a document pronounced by all the
Taliesin. 45
most comj^etent judges to have been written in the seventh centurj, and to be of the highest historical value. The date of the inanuscript which contains it is, in the judo^e- ment of the-most eminent pahieographical authorities, the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century ; and there is no need to waste words on the ineptitude of the sugg-estion that the Taliesin named in it is a person who was composing poetry in 1176.
The Welsli names in the tract are in archaic spelling. Talhaern for Talhaearnis an Old Welsh form lilíe gaem for gaeaf {WeUh Gram., 1913, p. 100). Neirin must be the old form of this name. Thoug-h written Aneirin it counts as a dissyllable in the Gododdin, Book of Aneirin, p. 12 : —
mi na vi (a)neirin 5 ys gwyr talyessin 5 ovec kywienhin 5
The a- is an inorganic sound which is sometimes intro- duced before inital n- as in anadred for nadredd ' snakes ', annifer for nifer 'number' {Welsh Gram., p. 25). The form with A- became the common written form of this name, and the correct form is known to us only through this memorandum. Zimmer, though he noted the "high antiquity and clearness " of the Welsh names in this tract {Nenn. Vind., p. 80), thought that Neirin was an error, p. 103. The author of 679, he suggests, wrote Aneirin, and Nennius in 796 mistoolc this for the Welsh '•' a Neiriu ", and wrote et Neirin, '• destroying the construc- tion and sense ", as it seems to the mechanical German mind : most of us would say that et Neirin is much the more likely reading. He then takes this as a proof that the Welshman in 796 did not know the sixth een- tury North Biitish bards (" even by their names ", p. 283) : the poems attributed to Aneurin [sic\, Taliessin, etc, are, at the earliest, products of the ninth and tenth centuries,
46 Taliesin.
called forth bv the Northern tractknown throiio-h Nennius. A rather larg-e deduction from his own bad guess. One would like to ask how it came about, in that case, that the Nennian form Neirin is not found in Welsh manuscripts ; where the Welsh g-ot the "correct" Aneirin from, seeing that their only knovvledge of him was derived from Nennius ; why Talhaearn, the father of the muse, was so shabbily treated by the forgers, who have not honoured hini with a single flashnote: Talhaearn — what a name it would have been to conjure with ! No, Nennius is rig-ht ; the correct reading- is Neirin. It need hardly be said that there is no authority for Aneurin, which is simpl}' due to the false notion that the name contains the adjective eurin ' g'olden '. The name of Talhayarn occurs twice (20"4, 21*16), and KiaM once (19-4) in a poem in the Book of Taliesin. Bluchhard is unknown elsewhere.'
The next piece of evidence occurs in f. 29a-b of the oldest Welsh copy of the Laws, the Black Book of Chirk, which Dr. Evans dates " about 1200".' It is the record of a tradition concerning the orig-in of certain privi]eges enjoyed by the men of Arvon. The text will be found in the Ancient Laws and lìistitutes of Wales., vol. i, p. 104. The orthography of this manuscript is peculiar; the foot- notes to the following translation give the MS. spelling of the names where it has been altered or corrected.
1 Evan Evans suggested (see above p. 14) that it is an error for Llywarch, which seems to be the name required. But one hesitates to accept this, though there are many mistakes iu the MS. due to one or more transcribers' ignorance of Welsh {Y Cipnmrodor, ix, 146). The oldest form of Llywarch is Loumarc, ib. 178, but lugmarc might be an earlier form, and an initial dl- is possible (cf. Loth, Voc. Vieux- Bret., 107). But the errors in the MS. scarcely justify the transfor- mation required, so that the suggestion is improbable. Bluchbard had better be classified with C'ian and Tulhaern as poetswhose works did not survive.
2 Report on MSS. in the Welsh Lang., voL i, p. 359.
Taliesin. 47
Elidir Mwynfawr,* a man of the North,'' was slain here, and after his death the nien of the North^ canie here to avenge him. The nien who came as their leaders were Ch'dno Eydin, aiid Nudd'^Hael son of Senillt, and Mordaf Hael son of Serwan,^and Rhydderch® Hael son of Tiidawal Tutclut' ; and they came to Arvon ; and because Elidir was slain at Aber Meuhedus in Arvon they burned Arvon as a further revenge. And then RhunS son of Maelcun, and the men of Gwynedd'' with him, rose up in arms, and came to the bank of Gweryd' in the North*^ , and there they were long disputing who áhould take the lead through the river Gweryd.' And then Rhun'' dispatched a messenger to Gwy- nedd' to ascertain who were entitled to lead. Some say that Maeldaf the ehler, the lord of Penart adjudged it to the men of Arvon ; Yoruert son of Madauc on the authority of tlie story, affirms that it was Idno Hên to the men of the black-headed shafts. And thereupon the men of Arvon went in the van, and were good there. And Telyessin sang —
Ivikleu oduref 1 eu Uaneneu kan run en rudhur^ bedineu gu^r aruon rudyon eu redyeu.^
I heard the clash of their blades With Rhun in the rush of armies — The men of Arvon of reddened spears.
«•muhenuaur. *> kocled. ° nud. '^feruari. ^ retherc. ' tudaual tutclit. ^rud. ''guinet. ' guerit. ''rudn. ' hid eghwynet.
This is at least a g-enuine bit of tradition. All the persons named in it (except the lawyer lorwerth ap Madawc who is contemj)orary with the record) lived in the sixth century. Rhùn''s father, Maelgwn, died in 547 according to the " Annales Canibriae " [Y Cymmrodor, ix, 155); and the incidents recorded took place presumably in Rhün's reign. Bhyddercìi Hael was king of Alclyde (Dum- barton) ; he is called " Riderch hen " in the " Saxon
1 The f is probably an error for f, and the preceding e is silent as in llaueneu pronounced llatnou (see my Gram. § 16, v, (1) ), so that the word in modern spelling is (f/)odwrf.
2 hur faint and ur blotched, but er (as in Anc. Laws) is incorrect.
3 Read reidyeu. The preceding eu should probably be omitted, as it makes the line long. The form in Modern Welsh would be — Gwŷr Arfon ruddion i'eiddiau.
48 Taliesin.
Genealogies ", ancl named as one of the British kings who
fought ag-ainst Hussa (5t)7-574). In Adamnan's Life of
Cohimba, written about 695, there is an anecdote " de rege
Roderco filio Tothail qui in Petra Cloithe regnavit ",
Eeeves' ed., p. 43. He is called Rederech by Jocelin,
and described as a Christian king-, and friend of Kentigern
{Historians of Scotland, v, pp. 213, 218, 241). He foug-ht
at Arfderjdd in 573. Chjdno Eidyn was his father's cousin
(Y Cymmrodor rx, 173); Mordaf Hael and possibly Nudd
Hael were his cousins (Skene, F.A.B. i, 169). Elidir
Mwynfawr, who had been slain in Arvon, w^as his father's
cousin (ibid.). Here, then, we have a tradition Avhich
seems to preserve pretty accurately' the memory of a
historical event ; and it represents Taliesin as the con-
temporary of Rhün ap Maeìg-wn and Rhydderch Hael. It
corroborates, on Welsh ground, the testimony of the
Northern memoi'andum in the " Saxon Genealogies ".
Even by itself, it is absohitely decisive against the theory
that Taliesin lived in the twelfth century.
How does Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans deal with this evi-
dence ? He does not mention it at all as bearing on the
question of Taliesin's date. He misquotes part of it to
prove that y Gogledd (the JSTorth) was the district around
Chester. Thus (p. xvii) : —
1 There seems to be an error in one detail. Afon Gweryd is the Forth, which is 7ìorth of Strathclyde, while the long dispute and the sending of a messenger to Gwynedd imply that Rhùn had friendly territory behind him, and was about to enter Cimibria. Camden says that an old wall at Lancaster was called W'eri/ Wall, which he takes to come from the British name of the town ; this, he says, was Caer Wei-id {Britannia, 1594, p. 587; Gibson's ed. 1695, 795). He does not state his authority ; perhaps it was local tradition. The name of Afon Gweryd survived in AYelsh tradition longer than that of Caer Weryd, which would account for the substitution of the one for the other. It would íit in better with the rest of the story if we supposed the sentence originally read, " came to Caer Weryd in the North and disputed long who should take the lead ".
Talicsin. 49
The Chirlí Codex of the Laws adds the further testinioiiy
that '•Rhuii raised an army and went with the men of
Gwyneò to tlie bank of the Gweryì) in Gogleh where they spent a considerable time in disputing who shouhl lead through the Gweryb '", i.e., the sacred stream, or Dee Now, in this border expedition Rhun, son of Owein Gwyneb, sicltened and died, hence the dispute as to who should lead ; and the " despatch of a messenger to Gwynef>" on the subject.
In his " quotation " he gives the name of Rhun, son of
Maelgwn, as " Rhun .... ", and then palms him off as
Rhun son of Owein Gwynedd. He represents the expedition
as having taken place in the twelfth century by omitting
every detail which proves it to have taten place in the
sixth. If there is anything at all that this paragraph in
the Chirk Codex proves, it is that the North meant
Cumbria or Strathclyde to the Welsh of the twelfth
century ; he inakes use of it to prove that the North
meant Cheshire by flagrant misrepresentation, and by
omitting the names of the Northern leaders, including the
famous Rhydderch Hael. Another thing that the para-
graph conckisively proves is the date of Taliesin in twelfth
century tradition ; of this he says nothing at all.
There is abundant evidence of this tradition. Sharon
Turner has collected a large number of references to
Taliesin and the other Cynfeirdd in the works of the bards
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the natural inter-
pretation being in each case that the bard referred to
lived in the remote past. Turner also quotes passages
from a Latin poem attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
in which Telgesinus and Merlinus appear as fellow-bards
and as contemporaries of " rex Cumbrorum, Rodarcus ",
Yind., pp. 120-3. The poem is not by Geoffrey, but it
bears witness to the twelfth century tradition.' Wace,
^ The poem, " Vita Medini ", was printed by San Marte in Die Sagen vun Merlin, Halle, 18ü8, pp. 273-316. It was written after Geoffrey's " Historia " had become famous, and was addressed to
K
50 Taliesin.
who wrote his " Roman de Brut" about 1155, spealís iii it of' Thelesin as a prophet who foretold the birth of Christ !' The tale of Kulhwch was written, according to Dr. Evans (W. B. Mab., p. xiv) before 1135; and in that Teliessin penn beirb figures as one of Arthur's men (ibid., col. 4G2). In the tale of Branwen Talyessin is one of the seven who escaped from Ireland in the time of Bendigeidvran (ibid., col. 56-7). These are tales, and prove nothing about Taliesin's real date, but they prove that he had become a legendary character in the twelfth century. Avaon ap Talyessin is named with Uryen and Aneirin in a triad in the detached portion of the White Book (Y Cymìnrodor, vii, p. 128). In the Black Book of Carmarthen, as we have seen, the íirst poem is in the form of a dialogue between Myrddin and Taliesin. That was written down in the twelfth century ; and in the twelfth century Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan (ed. Arthur Jones, p. 110) Myrddin is an ancient prophet who foretold this prince. In the Gododdin, Aneirin mentions "Talyessinof noble thought", see above, p. 45 ; the words may not be his, but they prove that it was helievecl that the two bards were con- temporaries. What does Dr. Gwenogwryn Evans say about all this ? Not one word. And he has the effronterv to ask "Where is the evidence for this ghost, this birth of fraud?" I will not bandy charges ; the facts speak for themselves.
We come now to the subject matter of the poems. Our editor, turning aside, as we have seen, from the
Robert, bp. of Lincoln, who miist be either Robert de Chesney, ]148, or Robert Grosteste, ]23ô. San Marte thinks the latter ; biit as Geoífrey's work was written about 1]36, the former is possible.
^ San Marte, op. cit., 150; R. II. Fletcher, The Arthurian Mctterial in the Chron. (vol. x of Studies and Notes in Lit. and Phil.), Boston, 1906, p. 91. Wace did not get l)is Thelesin from Geoffrey, but from vague Bretou tradition.
Taliesiìi. 5 1
inconyenient Nenniíin memorandum, proceeds to consider certain proper names in his text. He makes a great show of following a scientific method, and evinces his usual confusion of thouo-ht. He will deal with Welsh names and their use in times anierior to the surviving Welsh records as an English student would deal with steaìner, raihuay, aeropìane, etc, in contemporary records. The Latin Britannia meant ' Wales ' iu the twelfth century ; and " it is precisely at this stag-e that Prydein appears in our text as an expression for " Wales, p. ix. He imagines that by malcing that statement he has proved that the text was written in the twelfth century and that Prydein in it means Wales, whereas, of course, he has only assumed both. There is no evidence that Prydein is used for Wales. Where it is not an error for Prydyn ' Pict- land, Scotland ', it means the same as it does in Yìiyn Prydein. For example, tbe ninth century poem "Armes Prydein Vawr" contains a prophecy that the men of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales, Strathclyde will unite to drive the Saxons out of Prydein ; they will ask them " what is their title to the land they hold ", pp. 16, 17; see Ifor Williams in Y Beirniad, 1916, pp. 207-12.
The word Cymry ' the Welsh, Wales ' is of some importance. " It is sig-nificant ", sa}"^ Dr. Evans, " that the term Kymry takes the place of Prydein for the first time in Brut y Tywyssogion in the year 1135", p. x. The unsuspecting reader will gather from that that Prydein is regularly used for Wales in the Brut down to the year 1135, that is in pp. 257-308 of the Red Book Bruts, and that Kymry then takes its place. The unsuspecting reader will be deceived. I turn the name up in tlie index, and find that in those fìfty-two pages Prydein occurs once only, and then means Scotland, p. 278. But even if the statement were true, it would be significant of nothing but
5 2 Taliesin.
the fact tliat the editor supposes that tracing a word in a history book is the same as tracing- it in a fully recorded contemporary literature. The word Kyìnry is not only older than any record, but, as a common noun, is as old as the Welsh lang-uage itself . It is the plural of Gymro, and there is no foundation for the modern modification which treats it as Cyniru when it means 'Wales '. The feminine form Gymra-es and the feminine adjective Gymra-eg can hardly have been formed after the Old British period, since the change of o to a in the root seems to belong to British rather than to Welsh phonetics.' Gymro means ' a fellow-countryman ', and to a Briton, who alone used it, it naturally denoted a Briton. Skene says that the first appearance of the word as a national name occurs in Ethelwerd's Latin Chronicle, written between 975 and 1011, in whicli the Peohtas (Picts) and Straecled Wealas (Strathclyde Welsh) of the Saxon Chronicle are rendered Pidis Gumhrisque.'' But, surely, this can be no indication whatever of the first use of the word as a national name by the Welsh themselves ; the fact that it was used by the Welsh both of the North and of Wales seems to imply, as Rhys intimates in his Geltic Britain, 1884, p. 116, that it " acquired the force and charm of a national name " before they were separated as a result of the battle of Chester in 616. But Rhys is wrong in seeing in it an expression of the union of Northern and Southern Britons ; it was more probably at first a common noun representing the British equivalent of the Latin civis as opposed to hostis or -peregrinus. When Gildas wrote Ex eo tempore nunc cives, 7iunc hostes, vincebant, §26, 1, a phrase echoed
1 See my Welsh Gram., p. 85. The only othei- word in which the intcrchanye has snrvive(l is troed, phiral traed, from British ^troyet-, *tra(/et- respectively, as Cymro is from * Kom-bro(/-os and Cymrae.t from *Kom- bra(j-issa.
' Historians of Scotland, vol. v, p. 332,
Talicsin. 53
later by the author of the " Saxon Genealogies ", §63, his use of cẃes doubtless corresponded to the British use of cymrij, which did not mean ' fellow-countrymen ' in the abstract, but ' our fellow-countrymen ', and was on the way to become among the British a synonym of ' Britons '. In any case the word itself is older than any Welsh poem ; and the dates of the chaiiges in its meaning are to be determined, if at all, by Welsh, not by Latin, documents, if these can be otherwise dated. Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans draws from his absurd deduction from the Bruts the equal]y absurd inference that "Breint Teihiw" in Liber Landavensis (ed. J. G. Evans, p. 120) is not older than* 1135 because it contains Cymry for Wales ; this is putting the cart before the horse — the document proves that Cymry meant Wales in the'Old Welsli period. In the Book of Aneirin the Britons are called Brython ; Cymry can hardly be meant by ìiemre, 32*15, gymre 30*9, for the latter rhymes with gre and bre. I have ]ooked up the references in Dr. Evans's index, and find that in the Book of Taliesin Eymraec occurs once, Eymro once, and Kymry thirty times. Of these occurrences the single Kymro and fourteen Kymry are in one poem, " Armes Prydein Vawr ", which was written, as shown by Mr. Wiliiams, in the late ninth or eariy tenth century at latest'; in this poem Kymry means ' Weishmen ', the men of Strathclyde being called Cludwys.- Of the remaining
1 r Beiniiad, 1916, p. 212. About two-thiids of the poem is printed in the Camhrian llff/iater, ii, p. 5ö2ff. with a translation, and an introdiiction in which it is attributed to Golyddan, circa 630. This is the work of the Rev. E. Davies (Cainbrian Quart. Mai/.,'ú\, p. 416) whose suçfgestion as to the authorship is accepted as probable, and acknowledged, in the Myv. Areh., i, 1801, p. Iô6.
2 The nanie is not in Mr. Evan.s's index though rendered correctly by E. Davies and R. Williams. But the "theory" doos not iidiuit the existence of the Clydemen, and the index suffers.
54 Taíiesin.
sixteen examples of Cymì-y, only five appear in poems dealing with events of Taliesin's time : tlie first is anti- tlietical to aralhro 'stranger', 29" 15 ; tlie second and third come together and refer to the Cumbrians from Penren Wleth (in Glasgow) to Luch Eeon (Loch Eyan), 34-1-2 ; the fourth comes af'ter arallvro 38"15; the fifth hymry Jcaeruedawc, 41*23, is obscure ; in no case does such a phrase as " Kymry a Saesson ", for example, occur, as in the later "Armes", 14-17. How does Dr. Evansdeal with the matter ? He lumps together the earlier and later poems. He states that Brython and Prydein occur to- gether in eleven poems, both with Kymry in five, Kymry alone iu nine, and calls that " evidence conclusive of a transition period". The bards of 1150-1225 similarly use Prydein and Brython and Kymry ; he tells us how many times, and then —
Taliesin was certainly contemporaiy with Gwalchmei and Kynbel, for all three sing to Owein Gwyneò, who died in 1170. Taliesin, therefore, lived in the xiith century (p. xii).
There is, of course, no mention of Owein Gwynedd in the Book of Taliesin ; that seems to be all that it is necessary to say in answer to this non seguitur. In this connexion tliere is one other assertion to be noticed :
As the Welsh rendering of Scotti was Brithon, vel Britltion, confusion with Brython was inevitable. And to this day learned professors, writing on our history and literature, do not appear to have noticed the di.stinction (p. xi).
They do not. They are perverse people, these professors ; and I fear they will be unreasonable enough to demand some proof of the equation " Scotti=Brithon ", and wiU simply refuse to accept it on the mere dictum of the seer of Tremvan. Brithon is, of course, only an old spelling of Brython, whicli is the Welsh continuation of the British Brittones, as Frydein is of the British Pritannia.
Taliesin. 5 5
Aiiother class of names wliich are stiU more importaiit for the determination of the dates of the poems consists of names of towns, rivers and districts in Britain. The poems deal largely with the northern districts, which accords with an early, rather than a medieval, origin. Dr. Evans is therefore obliged by the exigencies of his theory to show that all northern names denote places in Wales or its borders. Let us examine his attempts.
Y Gogledd. — I have ah-eady quoted his flagrant misuse of the Chirk Codex to prove that " the North " is the " country bordering on the lower half of the Dee ". He opens his argument in his own genial manner, thus :
We have been taught to look for Gogleh in the land of mists, but as Owein Gwyneh never was in Scotlanci, it loüks as if our mentois had losttheir way in a fog of their own creation. The warrior-poet Gwalchmei, who was ever at Owein's side, knevv his geography better. '• Owein bears the palm within the f our corners of Wales : Homage is rendered to him from the fort on the Clud in Gogleò ; and he is a dragon in Dyved— in the far away South."
Dychlud glod Brydein bedrydaneu : Dywystlir iîìaw o (>in al-Clud Ogleb—
draig yw ynYved, draw yn'Eheu.'^ * ^f^ì/i'- 144.
Here Gogleb and Deheu are clearly antithetical, indicative of the extreme limits of Owein's dominance (p. xvii).
In order to represent Prydein ' Britain ' as Wales, and to
include in it North and South, lie foists the words yN-YvED
(in Dyved) into his quotation. Tn Myv. 144, to wliich
reference is made, the last two lines read :
Dygwystlir idaw o Din Alclud gogled Draig yw yn dyhed drawen yn deheu.
The word dyhed is dyheè ' war ' ; it rhymes with GogleS (as is usual, though not essential, in the metre), and answers in consonantism to Deheu. Thus he begins with a gross misquotation ; he substitutes one word for another, and says nothing about it. The next point is that in his text
5Ó Taliesin.
13"13 " gwyr GogleS are the men of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester ". It need hardly be said that there is no Hugh Lupus in the text, which is that of the ninth century " Armes ". We have here only another exaniple of tbe editor's habit of arguing in a circle — of proving a thing by assuming it in his premises. It is because Gogledd is Cheshire that Hugh Lupus is dragged in ; and because Gwyr Gogledd are Hugh's men, therefore Gogledd is Clieshire. We are referred next to the Red Book Bruts, j)p. 292-3, where it is stated that a host " o'r Gogleb a'r Alban " are led by Alexander mac Malcolm and a son of Hugli Lupus. Dr. Evans simply inverts the order, and says " Alban and Gogleb ", to give them '' tlieir respectẁe princes"; tlie result is " Scotland and Cheshire " — what a likely combination ! In " Brut y Saeson ", Myv. 672, only holl prydyn, i.e., " all Scotland " goes with them, so that y Gogledd a'r Alhan is merely another way of saying " all Scotland ". Next there is a statement about Mwrchath, with no reference — clearly because it wiU not bear examination ; and, lastly, there comes the enormity of the " further testimony " of the Chirlí Codex. And that is the proof ! It is as remarhable for what it omits as forwhat it contains. We have seen that all the details in the j)assage from the Chirk Codex which show what y Gogledd really meant are suppressed. So withthe Bruts. One passage, in which " the North and Scotland " can be twisted into " Scotland and Cheshire ", is quoted ; but the passages which show indubitably wliat y Gogledd meant are not mentioned. For example, here are three from accounts of partitions of tlie island : "And Albanactus took y Gogledd which is called after his name yr Alban (Scotland) ", p. 60. " And there came to Morgan beyond the Humber y Gogledd to its boundaries," p. 69. " Eng- land and Wales and Cornwall to Owein, and y Gogledd to
Taliesin. 57
Peredur," p. 81. Agaiii, " f rom Humber to the sea and Catyneis (Caitbness) in y Gogledd", p. 185. Lastly, Catwallawn niade for y Gogledd to attack Edwin, wbo, bearinf^ of it, set out and met bini at Hefynffylt (Heaven- field=St. Oswald's in ISrortbuniberland, Plummer's Bede. ii, 122), p. 248. Dr. Evans cannot bave been unaware of tbese passages ; tbey are all indexed in bis Bruis volume, so tbat I was able to find tbe five in as many minutes. He tbus manifestly bolds back tbe relevant evidence, wbile be insultingly aecuses otbers of inventing its plain implication, and calls tliis " a fog of their own creation ". It is almost incredible to wbat lenoftbs an illoçfical mind may be driven wben labouring under a "strong delusion". Penryn Blathaon. — Tbere is, bowever, one otber reference in Dr. Evans's Introduction to Gogledd in tlie Bruts ; it is as foUows : ^' Penryn Blataon yn y Gogledd, B. 292-25. Tbis is tbe beadland of Wirral between tbe Balas of the Dee and tbe Mersey. Blataon is clearly a scr(ibal) err(or) for Balaon/' p. xxiv. Unfortunately for bim bala is not tbe mouth of a river but its " efflux from a lake " ; tbe hala of tbe Dee is at Bala in Merionetb. Tbis disposes of Wirral. Now for tbe facts. In tbe Cbirk Codex, tbe lengtb of tbis Island from Penryn Blathaon in Prydeyn to Penryn PenioaeS in Eernyw is stated to be 900 miles, Anc. Laws, {, p. l^I'. Tbe latter point is in tbe extreme soutb- west of Cornwall, and is marked in modern maps "Tol- peden-penwitb " ; clearly, tberefore, Penryn Blathaon is in the extreme nortb, íiiìà Prydeyn bere is Prydyn ' Scotland'. Tbe same measurement is given in tbe White Book, "o Benryn Blat[h]aon ym Brydein byt ym Peni-yn Penwaeb yg Kerniw," Y Cymmrodor, vii, p. 124. In " Brut y Saeson " Myv. 672, we bave " from tbe extreme point of Cornwall wbicb is called Pengwayh to tbe extreme point of Prydyn wbicb is called Penhlathaon ". Tbis is clearly tbe Medieval
58 Talíesin.
Welsh equivalent of "from Laud's End to Jolui o'Groats". A yariant is found in the R. B. Mab., p. 109 : " o Gelli Wic yg Kernyw hyt yni Fenn Blathaon yni Prydein ". So nmch for the ridiculous " Balas " and the Cheshire Gogledd.
Gaer Liioelydd. — This is the Welsh name for Carlisle ; the Old Welsh form occurs in the Nennian Additamenta in HarL 3859 as Gair ligualid [Y Cymmrodor, ix, p. 183). The name occurs in the Book of Taliesin, 69-12. The editor, of course, will have nothing to do with Carlisle, because it is in the real North. In his notes he says that a chaer Hwelyê of the text is an error for " a cherir lyw elvyô ", p. 118, and adds :
The Kair liÿualid oî Harl. MS. 3859, fol. 195, is possibly a cpd. üf Lli -I- Gwelyò, ? the stream of the Laches. Prydyb yMochnant knew this to be Chester. Witness :
Lliwelyb lettawd dy yoliant, Llewelyn! P. 1 66-25. LliwelyS tvill spread wider thy fame, Llewelyn. M. 212a'47.
Here we have a pointed reference to the alliance of Ll'n with the earl of Chester.
There is no reference to anything of the kind. The bard, Llywarch, Prydydd y Moch, after speaking of Llywelyn's kindness to himself, proceeds thus (to give the sense of the couplet infull) : " to Lliwelydd thy praise will spread, Llywelyn, and Llywarch has sung it ". Llywarch is the bard himself. It is seen that the words oinitted by Dr. Evans put a different complexion on the matter. Lliwelydd is accusative of motion to, and the verb in both texts referred to has initial II-, nofc l-. We have the usual mis- quotation, mis-translation, and suppression of context. I need not labour tlie point, or notice the etymology "Lli-|-Gwelyh ", which belongs to the same class as " the Balas". I come to the facts. Camden (Brit., 1594, p. 602) says, " Romani & Britanni hanc Lvgv-vallvm, &
Taliesin. 59
LvGV-BALLivM, sive LvGVBALiAM, Saxones, teste Beda,
ILucll Nennius Caer Lualid . . . nos ©niiílc, &
Latini Garleolú, recentiori vocabulo dixêrunt". Tlie pass- age referred to in Bede is in Vita. S. Cuthberti, cap. xxvii : "virDomini Cuthbertus . . . venit ad Lugubaliam, quae a populis Angloruni corrupte Luel vocatur ". The form in the Antonine Itinerary is Luguvallium (see Iter V). Now it is well lcnown that British -ion (Latinised -ium), being pronounced -iion, under certain conditionsof accent gave Welsh -ydd ; this was discovered by Ehjs long ago.^ It is therefore clear that, as British Lugu-helinos gaveWelsh Llyìuelyn, so British Lugu-balion gave Welsh Llyioelydd' exactly. The spelling Lliuìelydd is due to the fact that the word had gone out of common use before i and y were distinguished in writing, in the thirteenth century. It is no exaggeration to say that nothing in British topography is more certain than tliat Gaer Liioelydd raeans Carlisle.
Gaer Llion. — In tlie Nennian Additamenta this name occurs in the ancient form Gair legion (Y Gymmrodor, ix, p. 183). The Medieval Welsh form is Gaer LAion or Gaer Lleon ; in the spoken language the second element is now lost, »nd the name is Gaer ' Chester '. Dr. Evans, having shifted Gaer Liwelydd to Chester, is obliged to seekanother location for Gaer Lliou. " Can it be that the Cair legion of the [Nennian] list means Holt, to which the name of 'Caer lleon ' has adhered ? " II, p. xiii. The name has not " adhered " to Holt. The medieval Welsh name of
1 C'est à Rhys qne ron doit la (1écouverte d'un fait de phonóticjue, aujoui-d'hui considéré conime banal : la transformation du J indo- européen [that is {] en la sifflante galloise représentée aujourd'hui par dd. En Allemagne, où l'on donne le nom de " loi" à hi phis potite découverte, cela s'appellerait la " Un de Rhys ".— Gaidoz, lìente Inteniationale de l'J'JnMÙ/nejnent, 1917, p. 19.
2 Llywelydd may represent Lugubalion or Lnffuralion, hut it impliea a sinsle /.
6o Taiiesin.
Holt appears to have been Castell Llion, whicli is found written ChasteUion in 1311 (Arch. Camb., 1907, p. 9); this was rendered into Latin as Villa Leonum (ib., p. 4), or Castrum Leonis (ib., p. 11), and into English as Castle of Lyons. The form Caerleon is found once only, in a license bj Edward II, dated 1319 (ib., p. 10). But Caer Lleon has adhered to Chester bj a tradition so universal and so insis- tent thatour editor himself cannot escapefrom its grip : he writes "Caer lleon on the Dee, orChester", p.ix,and renders larU Kaer Llion " earl of Chester ", p. 100. The attempt to make Gueith Cair Legion in the " Annales " s.a. 613 into " the Battle of Holt " instead of " the Battle of Chester " can be refuted easily by two quotations : Bede in his account of the battle, uses the words " ad civitatem Legionum, quae a gente Anglorum Legacaestir, a Brettoni- bus autem rectius Carìegion, appellatur ", H.E., ii, 2. William of Malmesbury, also spealíing of the battle, says " Legionum civitas, quae nunc simpliciter Cestra vocatur ", i, 47 (cited in Plummer's Bede, ii, p. 77). Thus Carlegion is the city of the legions, which in the early twelfth cen- tury was called simply " Chester ".
Alclud. — The Welsh nanie Alclud became in Euglish Alclyde, which was superseded by the Irish name Dûnhrettan "fortress of the Britons ", now Dumbarton. Bede calls the town " Alcluith, quod lingua eorum significat petram Cluith ; est enim juxta fluvium nominis illius ", H.E., i, 12 ; Adamnan, even earlier, calls it, as we have seen, Petra Cloithe; these si^ellings represent the Irish pronunciation of the name. The Welsh form is seen in the " Annales " s.a. 870 : " Arx alt clut a gentilibus f racta est," and in the R. B. Bruts: "870 oeb oet Criât pan . . . torret Kaer Alclut y gan y paganyeit," p. 259. No one has ever sug- gested before that Alclut in Welsh literature does not meaii Dumbarton ; Din Alclud is in Gogledd according to
Taliesin. 6 1
Gwalchmei, see cibove p. 55 ; Kae,r Alclut was opposite Yscotlont (i.e. Scotland nortli of tlie Clyde), R. B. Bruts, p. 63. But for Dr. Evaiis, Dunibarton will not do at all, and he has by hook or by crook to find an Alclud in his North. There is a Clutton in Chesliire ; the brook which flows by is therefore the Glud. " This brook name is old and authentic, for it appears in the Doinesday CLUT-tone", p. xix. Because the town-name is old, therefore Clud must be the brook ! Aldford is on this brook ; this sup- plies the Al-. .Therefore Alclud is Aldford. Our good editor invites us to accept a name made by himself, à la Lewis Carroll, from the Al of Aldford and the Clut of Clutton, in place of the Alclyde of history. But eveii this wiU not always do : " ryt alclut is pure gibberish here. ? Ryt y Gors ", p. 97 ; and Din Clut, which happens to be spelt dynclut in the text, 73- 7, is explained in the index as " O. ap Kadwgan ".
Caer Weir. — This occurs twice in the text. The first time, 13*7, the editor suggests that it is an error for " Weri, i.e. Gwery(ò), a name of part of tlie lower Dee ", see below ; the second time, 6912, it is an error for "K(aer) Feir, i.e. Bangor Cathedral, which is dedicated to Meir ". So is the church of Llan-fair PwU Gwyngyll, and I put in a claim for this, though, I confess, I have never heard either church called a caer. But, unhappily for both of us, Kaer Weir is in the North ; it is iiamed in the text with Kaer Liioelydd, and is probabl}', as has been suggested, Durham. The ancient name of the Wear was Vedra ; and as Latiii cat[h)edra gives Welsh cadeir, so tlie ancient Vedra gives Welsh Gweir exactly.
Gweryd. — This is the Welsli nanie of the Forth. Skene, F.A.B., i, p. 5G, quotes a description of Scotland written in 1165 and printed in his Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 136, which says that the river was " Scottice vocata
62 Taíiesin.
Froch, Britaniiice Werid ". Tlie Welsli Gwenjd is, as
Slcene dimly saw, tlie plionetic equivalent of the Irisli
Forth ; the Irish th implies that a vowel once separated it
from the r — it corresponds to Welsh d from original t.'
The name occurs in our text : o wawl hyt weryt, 18'5, 'from
the (southern) wall to the Forth '. But the editor will
have it that ruawl is "Doraesday's Waure, now Woore in
the parisli of MuckIestone (!)... This Wawi has noth-
ing to do with anj Eoman, or other Wall, or vallus ",
p. 86. To which assertion it is only necessary to oppose
the testimony of the "Historia Brittonum " (Harl. 3859)
that the wall was called " Brittannico sermone Guaul ",-
§ 23. The editor's next note begins, " werí/í=Gweryb,
i.e. Dee ". But final -t in this manusccript does not mean
-8, but -d : and it is simple misrepresentation to write the
name GweryS, as he persists in doing. But what is the
evidence for associating- the name with the Dee? Here
it is :
According to Descriptio Albcmie^ the river Forth dÌYÌded 'regna Anglornm et Scottorum ' at Stirling in 1165, and was ' Scottice vocata Froíh, Britannice Wend\ Similai'ly part of the lower Dee divided Saxon and Brython (p. 86).
Because the Dee is " similar " to the Forth in being on a border, therefore he considers that he is justified in assert- ing, without a scrap of evidence, that it had the same name.
Prydyn. — This is the Welsh phonetic equivalent of the
1 For the aífection of the o to e in Welsh cf. the verb giceryd 'saves' which appears in Old Welsh (Juv. cod.) as giiorit ; cf. al.so eegin from Latin coqmna, etc.
' Welsh gwawl is the equivalent of the Irish/i'f/ ' a hedge ', and is not derived from the Latin vallum\ cf. Fick-Stokes, p. 275 f.
2 This is another title of Dr. Evans's invention. He quotes at second hand from F.A.B., and gives no reference. If he had con- sulted the Chron. he wouJd have seen that the Latin title is De Sì'tu Albanie, p. 135.
Ta/icsin. 63
\vìú\ Cruithni ' Picts '. It ineans ' Picts ' and 'Pictland', as Cymry meftns 'Welshineii' and ' Wales', and as Ffrainc nieans ' Frenchmen ' and ' France '. Naturally, Frydyn is often used more loosely for Scotland; it occurs, as we have seen, as a synonym of y Gogledd, and is often niis-written Prydein. What is it in the new geog;rapliy ? It is "the modern counties of Flint and Denbigh " ! This is " proved " in the usual way. The words " Gwybyl iwerhon mon aphrydyn " in the text, 13'9, which mean ' The Goidels of Ireland, Mona (probably Man), and Scot- hìnd ', are quoted thus : " Gwybyl (rhyboethon) Von a Phrydyn ", and rendered " the Gwyhyl, who had come to Mon and Prydyn ", p. xx. Ag-ain, the line " Kyniry eigyl gwybyl prydyn ", 75" 19, that is, ' Welshmen, Angles, Goidels, Picts ',' is misquoted as " Gwybyl, Eingl, a gwyr Prydyn " and rendered " the Gwybyl, the Angles, and the men of Prydyii", ibid. Kymry is left out in order that it may appear that " gwyr Prydyn " are Welshmen; and thus we have the funn}^ collocation " Irishmen, English- ínen, and men of Flint-and-Denbigh ", whicli reminds one of " Cymru, Lloegr, a Lhmrwst ". Then we are told that a f)oet in the Black Boolc, 49-3, " prophecies that there wiU be war in Prydyn : (the Kymry) will defend their coast". The proof here rests on " the Kymry " which the editor himself has put in — it is not in the text. It is clear that he is quite unable to detect in his reason- ing the childish fallacy of petitio frincipii. He has satis- fìed himself that Prydyn is Denbighshire, and states that " It was the translators of the Bruts, towards 1200, who started the Scottish figments," p. xxi. A few moments aoro these same " öofments " were the " own creation" of " our mentors ", p. xvii ; now, they were started by the
1 Cf . Nennins § 7, " in ea habitant quattuor gentes, Scotti Picti Saxones atque Brittones". Scotti=Welsh Gwyddyl, 'Goidels'.
64 Taliesin.
translators of the Bruts, who by a sort of miracle antici- pated the discovery of niodern philology that Welsh Trydyn=lx\ú\. Cruithnì. I have only to say that no such miracle ever happened, ThevFord Prydyn with its signifi- cation was handed down by tradition like any other Welsh word which philologists equate with its Irish cognate ; it was used long before 1200 in the lines which the editor misquotes from the Book of Taliesin, and it clearly bears its traditional signification in these lines as they appear in the text.
Rheged. — Urien of Rheged, Y^^ho is mentioned in the " Saxon Genealogies " as having fought against Ida's sons Hussa and Deodric, is the subject of several of the Taliesin poems which have some claim to be considered authentic. The exact position of his kingdüm has not been ascertained with certainty. In the Welsh translation of Geoffrey's Brut, Rheged is identified with Geoffrey's Mureif, which, according to the context, was in the neighbourhood of Loch Lomond. Dr. Evans charges all modern scholars with blindly accepting this identification : —
And the learnedof all ages and eminence have trod thepath of faith, lost in ' wandering thoughts ' and notions vain, without once verifying their references (p. xiii).
This forcible-feeble rant bears the same relation to the truth as his " further testimony " of the Chii-k Codex. The facts are as foUows. Lewis Morris says that " Rheged is supposed to be Cumbria, now Cumberland" (Stephens, Lit. Kym., p. 267). Sir Francis Palgrave placed Rheged in the South of Scotland about Dumfries- shire, see the map opp. p. 30 in his History of England, i, 1831. The E.ev. T. Price (Carnhuanawc), in his Hanes Cymru, 1842, p. 278, identified it with the modern Cum- berland. Stephens, in his Literature of the Kymry, 1849, p. 53, objects that it was within a night's ride of
Taliesiìt. 65
Maelienydd (misunderstanding a poem of Hywel ab Owein Gwynedd, noticed below), and places it between tlie Tawy and the Towy (Gower, Kidwe]ly, etc.) on tlie authority of the lolo MSS., which of course is worthless.' In 1852 Stephens identified it with Lancashire (T//e Gododin, p. 371) and in 1853 extended it to the river Swale (ib., p. 238). Nash, in his Taliesin, 1858, p. 50, correcting Palgrave, puts Rheged in Cumberland. Skene, F.A.B., 1868, i, p. 59, accepts the identification of the Welsh ver^on of Geoffrey. Rhys, in his Arthurian Legend, 1891, p. 238, refers to this identification, but treats Rheged as mythical ; " the Welsh translator who identified Rheged with Mureif confounded it thereby with the province of Moray ", p. 240 ; and he thinks that "it may possibly be regarded as somewhat less mythical that Ui'ien should be styled Ruler of Catraeth ", ibid. Professor Oman,in his Engìand hefore the Norman Conquest, 1910, p. 239, dealing with the northern British kingdoms in the sixth century, speaks of the " main principality " as " comprising Clydesdale as its central nucleus, but with its caj)ital at Alclyde, north of
the Firth, on the rock of Dumbarton South of it
was another state, called Reged, which seems to represent the modern Cumberland with so much of Northumberland as had not yet been conquered by the Angles. Possibly the name Redesdale preserves a memory of this forgotten realm". These are the views that have been held, and it is hardly necessary to point out with what reckless irre- sponsibility our editor writes when he uses such language as that quoted above. His own view of Rheged is that
' Dr. G\venogvryn Evans quotes from it when it siiits his purpose, but is not candid enouíîh to give references. His "Caw . . . ' Lord of Cwm Cowlyd in Prydyn ' ", p. xxi, is taken from the lolo MSS., p. 116. It is rendered "Caw . . . lord of Cwm Cawlwyd, in North Britain", ib., p. 515, so that a reference would in this case have been doubly embarrassing.
F
66 Taliesin.
it is the country surrounding- Oswestry ; the name "uieans a Run or March, for it is obviously a metathesis of Ehedeg' ", p. xiii. " Obyiously " ! thoug-h neither rhedecj in Welsh nor run in English ever means a ' march ' or ^ border '.' He quotes a line f roni Cynddelw in which redeg has its usual meaning, gives the word a capital B, and because tervyn Caer lleon occurs four lines before, claims that Rheged is not far frora Chester. The only other proof offered is the following- : —
Again, Howel, soii of Owein Gwyneb, approaching it froin the soiith, mounts his Roan, travel]ing from Maelenyb to the land of Rheged in one night.
Esgyneis, ar Yelyn, o Vaelenyh hyd yn'hir Reged rhwng nos a àyh. (Myv., 198b.) Rlieged thus lies between the border of the earldom of Chester and a night's ride from Radnorshire (p. xiii).
Here he is borrowing without acknowledgment Stephens's mistake ; rhwng nos a dydd cannot in any case mean ' in one night ', nor does it mean the intei-val of twilight ; but rhwng has the meaning in which it is still used when we say rhwng y naill heth aW llall 'between one thing and another ', i.e., ' taking one thing with another '. The exact sense of the phrase in question is put beyond doubt by a passage in tbe R. B. Mab., p. 88, where it is stated that Maxen's messengers rode from Carnarvon to Rome yrwng dyô a nos, " and as their horses failed they bought fresh ones ". This shows that " a night's ride " is non- sense; Rheged is a long distance from Maelienydd. The context, which Dr. Evans as usual omits, not only con- firms this, but supplies a clue to its position :
1 " Run or March " shows that he believes that march ' a border ' is a verbal noun (like ritn) coming from the verb to mareh. If there is any relation between the words, which is very doubtful, it is the verb that comes from the noun ; march is a cognate of Latin margo, etc, and the meaning 'border ' goes back to Priraitive Aryan.
Taliesin. 67
Arglwyt^ nef a llawi* gwawr gwyndotlyt
Mor bell o geri gaer lliwelyt
Esgynneis ar velyn o vaelyenyt
Hyd ynhir reged rwg nos ymy'' a dyt. — Myi\ 198b.
''Final -t = -S througliout. "^ ymy makes the line too long. Omit.
' [By the] Lord of heaven and earth, the Lord of a Yenedotian, How far from Ceri [is] Carlisle ! I mounted a bay [and camej from Maelienydd To the land of Rheged [riding] night and day.'
Ceri is a commote of IMaelienydd (wliich is roughly Ead-
norshire), see R. B. Bruts, p. 409; and Hywel, having
ridden from IMaelienydd to Rheged, exchiinis " how far
from Ceri is Carlisle ! " As Ceri was in Maelienydd we may
infer that he regarded Carlisle as being in Eheged. This
evidence is older tlian that of the Welsh Brut, for Hywel
died in 1170. As Urien was the chief antagonist of the
Bernician lcings of Bamborough his kingdom may have
extended northwards as far as the Southern Wall or even
the Cheviot Hills.' But he is called " Prince of Catraeth "
(%w Catraeth, Book of Taliesin 62-22, cf. 56-14) ; and
Catraeth is probably Catterick' in Yorkshire, which
Bede calls Catarada (twice) and Catarado (once), Ptoleray
KaTovpaKT6vcov, Antonine Catarado, an important town
1 In the eighteenth century there were " some Vestiges of . . . . a street that goes from the Border, viz., from Hownam to Tweed, called the Roman Causey, comnionly called by the vulgar the rugged Causey ", Macfarlane's Geoyraphical Colloctions, iii, 1749 {Scot. Hist. Soc, vol. liii, 1908), p. 159. The descriptive ruyyed may be a sub- stituted homonym, see below, p. 69, fn. ; and this may have been the Rheyed Causeway, or road to Rheged. Watling Street runs north- wards about two miles west of Hounam, and can be traced as far as the Tweed.
2 This identification was made by Stephens, I' frWoŴn, pp. 30-L Rhys's objection {Arth. Leyend, p. 240) that Cataract- should give Welsh Cadraeth has been answered by Mr. Ifor Williams in V Bcirniad, 1911, pp. 76-7. As he notes, tr for dr is common in Medieval Welsh ; but the /•/• of Catarracta (K-aTa/)/jáKT)/s) would(if sounded) give Welsh rh, which would necessarily provect the d to t.
f2
68 Taliesin.
on the great Roinan road to the north, though in Camden's time, as now, " magnum nil nisi nomen habet", Brit., 1594, p. 565. Here, after Urien's day, was fought the battle of Catraeth commeniorated in the Gododdin. It seems probable, then, that Rheged extended southwards beyond Catterick, possibly to the northern border of the kingdom of Elved,the nanie of which survives in Barwick- in-Ehnet near Leeds. Communication between Catterick and Carlisle was aíîorded by a Roman i-oad, which branches from the main north road a little to the north of Catterick, see the map in Codrington's Roman Roads in Britain. Urien is also called in our text " Uryen yr Echwyb", 57-14, and " Uh yr Echwyò ", 58-2, 00-17 ; and in the elegy attributed to Llywarch " he was shepherd in (yr, read yn) Yrechwyh ", Red Book, coL 1039. Echwydd means a ' waterfall ',' as in
Wylhawt eil echwyh yn torroeh mynyí), 75']. ' WiJl weep like a cataract on the breasts of a rnountain.'
It seems therefore that yr Ecliwydd is the Welsh counter- part of the Latin Catarracta. Thus üdd yr Echwydd ' Lord
' There seem to be two quite distinct words similarly spelt, but diífering in sound: {]) echwt/dd 'flow', rhyming with dydd, mynydd, etc. ; redecauc duwyr echwit, B.B. 88, ' numing water ílow'; dwfyn dwfyr echwyS, B.T. 32, ' deep flowing water ' ; yìi dufyr echuyt, Myv. 227b, 'in flowing water' (' water of baptism ' is absurd, and Silvan Evans's reason for it more so). As a verb, we have Mor,cv threia cud echioit, B.B. 88, ' the sea, whither does it ebb, whence does it flow ?' Allt ac echwyS B.T. 69, doubtful : a'r hallt ar echuit B.B. 87, seems to suggest 'salt and fresh (i.e., running) water '. (2) echwydd rhymed with -ŵydd, as by H. ab O. G. in Myv. 199a, in B.T. 35 2, and apparently in the Llywarch Hén englyn F.A.B., ii, 285, though generally confused with the other word. This echŵydd corresponds in form and meaning to the Breton echoaz ' heures et lieux du repos du bétail à l'ombre pendant les grandes chaleurs', Troude, s.v. " More usual was a broken shield coming from battle than an ox to the noon-day rest, ych y echwy8'\ F.A.B., ii, 285. Awr echwydd and pryd echiuydd are given in the dictionaries as 'evening', and Silvan
Taliesin. 69
of jr Echwydd' is parallel to Ll^v) Catraeth 'Princeps CatarractíE '. The scribe of the Book of Taliesin evidentl y understands yr as the definite article ; but the article could hardJy occur in a name which is undoubtedly old. The element is more probably the prefix Er- (= Ar in Ar-von, with a reguhirly affected by the y of yddy^ tlie name is written ErechwyS four tinies in the Red Book, cols. 1040-1, F.A.B., ii, p. 271. It occurs once without the prefix : "when he returned to Ech wy 8 írom the land of the Clydemen ", 38*21, but this may be an error. The prefix denotes 'a district adjoining', as in Ar-von; and Erechwydd is not the town but the district, as seen in " gwenwlat yr echivy8 ", 40-2, 'the fair land of Erechwydd'.^ In the ninth century " Armes " it is extended to the king-
Evans quotes two examples from Llyfr yr Ancr, under this meaning, though both transhite the Latin /lora diei tertia. The meaning 'even- ing'hasbeen wrongly deduced from the ^.'yf, à.\ai\ect&\ god-echivydd or gwed-echwydd, 'afternoon', as if the prefìx meant nothing ; bnt the yod- or yiced- is yicedy ' after-' (^Old Welsh yuotuj, yuetiy), so that echicydd is ' noon '. There is uo foundation for ' evening ' or * west ".
' Ptolemy's Raroi)- (= Catu-) is certain, see MüUer's ed., Paris, 1883, pp. 96-7 ; and provesthat theoriginal British name had nothing to do with a cataract. It had two forms: (1) a shorter form Catu- ractö, genitive Caturacton-os, and (2) a derived form Caturacton-ion ; the former may have been the name of the camp at Thornbrough (the original site), the latter the name of the town. Caturacto, liabie to become later Cataracto (cf. Gaulish Catumandus, late Brit. Catamanus), was very naturally taken by the Romans for Catarracta. Popular etymology is apt to substitute for a name of unknown or forgotten meaning another similar in sound but made up of familiar Yocables, as sparroicgrass for asparagus. Place-names are peculiarly liable to be so treated ; EngHsh examples are The Hicals for Yr Eivl ; Barmouth for Abórmaw ; Money Farthiny llill (Heref.) for Mynydd Fferddun ; Bridgewater for Burgh de Walter ; Waterford for Widder Fjord, etc. As the examples show, the appositeness (if any) of the suì)stituted homonym is accidental and fanciful. Caiarracta is such a homonym, and it wovUd be a mere coincidence if there were falls at the spot ; Codrington's suggestion that '* the river may have been, for defence, held up by a weir ", op. cit., 19ü."j, p. 178, is therefore
JO Taliesin.
dom of Eheged: after "from the Wall to the Forth " quoted above, p. 62, comes the liiie —
Llettatawt eu pennaetli tros yr Echicy^, 18'6 ' Their sovereignty will extend (llettaÄawt) over Erechwydd '.
How Geoffrey came to give Mureif to "Uriaii" — whether he coufused him with the Pictish king Brude Urgant, or whether he thought Mureif had something to do with the wall, I cannot say ; but since Mureif was assigned in the original to Urien it was natural for the translator or copyist to gloss it as Eheged. The South Wales Eheged is also a pretty obvious fìction ; if there had been a Eheged " between the Tawy and the Towy " medieval Welsh literature would not have been wholly silent about it. It appears to be one of the numerous fabrications of the authors of the lolo M88. Urien had ah-eady been brought down to Gower and Kidwelly, seemingly to bolster up the claim of Gruffudd ap Mcolas to be descended from him. Tlie pedigree is given in Giuaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, 1837, p. 130, and. represents Gruffudd as a descendant of Urien in the fifteenth degree — fifteen generations in nine centuries ! In a life of his grandson, Sir Ehys ap Thomas, written in the early seventeenth century and printed in the Camhrian Register, 1795, Gruffudd's " descent" is said
unnecessary. Camden derived the name froni the falls "hard by " (loc. cit.), though he added later, " but nearer Richmond", ]600 ed.. p. 656. Ilorsely " did not perceive or hear of any fall of water nearer than Richmond, which is three miles from Cataract bridge . . . though Thornborougli stands higher up the water and a little rìe&ver the îaWs", Britannia liomana, 1732, p. 399. We niay assume that these falls were called Echicydd (or its Old British equivalent), and that the district Erechicydd took its name froni this. The fact that the town stood in this district must have seemed a very satis- factory explanation of tlie fortuitous name Caturracta, which apparently ous'ted the original forms in ordinary use. The Welsh Catraeth cannot come from Cataracìô or any case of it, but represents Catarracta (even to the double rr, see above, p. 67, fn. 2).
Taliesin. 7 1
to go " upward in a direct series and long concatenation of worthie progenitors up to Sir Urian Rlieged, king of Gower in Wales, prince of Murriff in Scotland, lord of Kidwellj, and knight of the round table to King Arthur ", p. 56. This is fabulous enough ; but Rheged is not yet identified in it with Gower and Kidwelly — that was the finishing touch of the lolo romancers.
Llwyfenydd. — Dr. Evans had already in his introduc- tion to the BlacJc Book, 1906, p. xxvi, identified a Coed Llwyfein, the scene of one of Owein Gwynedd's battles {Myv. 150a) with a defile in Flintshire ; he now refers to Edward Lhwyd's Parochialia {Arcli. Camh., SuppL, April, 1909, p. 85) where an " Afon Lwyven " is mentioned near riint. There is an Argoed in the parish of Mold (as in several other places) ; so this country is " demonstrably " Argoed Llwyfein. " It has been pointed out that a Foi'est 15 miles long by 4^ miles wide stretched along the Flintshire littoral (Prof. Lloyd, Trans. Cymmr., 1899-1900, p. 139) .... I identify this Forest . . . . as the Llwyvenyh of Kymric poetry ", p. xxii. This forest is the smiling land in the North described by Taliesin, p. 65, the land whose riches and amenities and luxuries it is his to enjoy ! There was, no doubt, a Llwyvein in Fiintshire, and there are plenty of Levens, which may possibly repre- sent the same name. Skene, accepting the Brut story of a Rheged north of the Clyde, found a Leven at hand, running froni Loch Lomond to the sea at Alclyde, and set Urien's LIwyvenydd down there, under the nose of Rhyddercli Hael. There is a Leven in Fifeshire, and a Leven in Cumberland, running from Windermere to the sea; but there is nothing to connect these with Urien. Llwy- venydd and Llwyvein represent diít'erent accentuations of ■ the same British stem ^Leimanio-. In Yorlcshire original m iu British names remains in Euglish, as in Elmet ; and
Talù
lesin.
the EíOman road running south froni Catterick, in a line so straight as to be noticeable on the map, is called Leeming Lane. This may well be the Eoad of Llwyvein, which in sixth century Welsli would be ^Lcmein, with slightly softened m and a palatal n liable to become 7ig in Welsh itself, as in Eingion for FJinion. Taliesin's Lloy- fenyh tireh, 65*13, are the home lands of Urien ; and this district with its Roman road and Roman town, and doubt- less many Roman villas then, answers well Taliesin's description of Llwyvenydd as a land of affluence and refinement.
GoSeu. — Oneof the most amusing things in Dr. Evans's Introduction is his explanation of this name. It is the plural of cod : " tliis bears the same meaning as the second element in the English word peas-cocZ ", p. xiv. Apparently he does not know that the Welsh cod is borrowed from the English. To explain the initial G he assumes that it is the softened form found in the compound Gwyh-godeu, the second element being " used poetically " for the whole ! Can any Welshman imagine a name such as Hen- goed, let us say, being treated "poetically " as Goed ? As if a g in that position were not, to every Welsh speaker's in- stinct, radically c, even now — to say nothing of the twelfth century ! ISTe^t we are told that gwyS (' wood ' or ' trees ') means brushwood, and '■' gioyh-godeu signìûes j^od-hearing scrub. What is /S/wop-shire but the schrohbes (pl.) country of which our Gwjò-godeu is a translation ", ib. But if giuyè-godeu is a compound as here assumed, it must mean ' tree-pods ', just as cannwyll-hrennau means 'candle-sticks '. It appears that foot-note 21 is due to a dim consciousness of this difficulty: " Bean-pods = coc^eMjrt ; hui ffa-godeu = bean-stalks tied in bundles ". But if ffa-godeu means ' bean-stalks ', why does not gwyh-godeu mean ' scrub- stalks ' ? It is unnecessary to dwell on this helpless
Taliesín. 73
ílounderiiìg, further thau to say \k\^\, ffa<jodeu has nothìng to do with ffa or codeu, but is siniply the Welsh plural of the English woráfaggot. The usual pronunciation of the nanie is not Godeu but GoBeu, and there is good evidence that this is right. As a common noun goBeu in the Book of Taliesin clearly means a forest' ; and the expression givn8 go8eu, 32-18, is not a compound, but two separate words, separately written in the MS., and meaning ' trees of a forest ' — a blaen gwyè go8eu ' and the tips of forest trees '. The other example referred to is not even gwy8 go8eu, but gtvy8 a go8eu, 25*24 {gwyd first written gwydeu, and eu deleted by underdots) ; the context is as follows : —
o yriallu a blodeu | bre, o vlawt gwyb a gobeu, o prib, o pribret, | pan ym digonet.
'Of primroses and the flowers of the hill, of the blossom of wood and foi'est, Of soil, of earth, have 1 been made.'
A poem entitled " Kat goòeu", pp. 23-7, ' the battle of the forest ', contains a fanciful account of the mustering of the trees (the second godeii in 24'8 is the unrelated abstract noun go8eu ' intention '). As a place-name Go8eu seems to mean the country between the two walls. Taliesin speaks of Urien, "Ae varch ydanaw yg gobeu gweith mynaw", 59-11 ; as " Goòeu gweith Mynaw " is a peculiar expression, we may perhaps assume that GoSeu is a gloss, and render, " with his horse under him at the battle of Mynaw (Goòeu) ". The battle of Mynaw or Manaw is probably the " Cath Manand " of Tighernach and the " Bellum Manonn " of the Annals of Ulster, which both
^ Rhys, Arth. Letj., p. 246, connects it with f/irŷoy and equates it with the Irish Fidach, the eponymus of an unltnown district in Scotland. B>it he does not exphiin how the Welsh o is deiived; yirŷò, from *rid-, is cognato witli Enghsh vood; and tlie Anglo-Saxon wudu wíis originally ìridti according to Skeat. A forni //«o- could come from *rid-, cf. gŵr from *vir-.
74 Taliesin.
date 582 or 583 {Chron. of Picts ancl Scots, pp, 67, 345]. In any case Manaw, generally identified with the country round Slamannan, south of the Forth, either is, or is in, Gobeu. In Brit. Mus. Vesp. A, xiv, f. lla (early thirteenth centurj) among the daughters of Brychan is named "Gurycon Godheu . . . uxor Cathraut calchuynid ", Y Cymmrodor xix, p. 26, i.e., Gwrygon Gobeu, wife of Cadrawd Calchfynyb. Skene has identified Calchfynydd with Kelso, formerly Calchow, where there is "acalcareous eminence .... stiU called the Chalk Heugh ", i^..I.i^. i, p. 173. Dr. Evans refers to the memorandum in a foot- note, p. xiv : " Gurycon (Vricon-ion) is not a pei'son but a place, i.e,, the Wi'ekin, which is in Godheu [dh = modern d, not 8] ". The statement in brackets is not true ; dh occurs only thrice elsewhere in the document : twice in Tudhistil, which appears in the Domitian version as Tuthistyl, the original form of the name beiug probably Tuduistil ; and once in Gugan Cledyhurdh, f. llb, which is clearly Gwgawn Glebyfrub, R. B. Mab., pp, 159, 304, 306, and proves that dJt means 8. But how did the Wrekin become a saint ? We are to read " [Meilien del Gurycon ". In support of this we are told that " Milburga established a convent at Much Weulock, which tradition asserts to have been called Llan Meilien ", — no reference, no proof of any kind that " Meilien " is meant, or was a daughter of Brychan, or the wife of Cadrawd. "Thus", continues the editor, "a Saxon lady becomes a Welsh saint, thougli the MS. judiciously omits her name." " Judiciously omits " — as when he, for example, writes " Rhun ..." for " Ehun vab Maelcun " — it saves so much explaining away. Whatever view be taken of tlie children of Brychan, we have in the memorandum quoted above a record of a tradition which connects Godheu with Calchfynydd ; and if Skene is right in his identification
Talìesin. 7 5
of the latter, it implies that Go8eu extencled down to the Scottish border. In the historical poems in the BQok of Taliesin " Gobeu a Reget" occurs twice (60*10, 62*7), and seems to stand for the British regions of the North, as Deira and Bernicia stood for the Anglian.
Aeron. — According to Dr. Evans this was "a district — extending, apparently, from Eulo to Chester ", p. xix, a distance of about six niiles as the crow ílies — it has been difficult to find room for this "district ". This identifica- tion is supported by three " quotations " ; in the first, Ylph is assumed to be Ranulf, son of Hugh Lupus, and JJrien is rendered " Owein ", and assumed to be Owein Gwynedd ; thus the proof is founded, as usual, on his own assumptions. The second is similar : " When Henry II disappeared from the Ceiriog valley in the rain, he went to ' sojourn and shelter in Aeron', 63-6". In the passage refei-red to there is no mention of Henry II, or of Ceiriog, or of " sojourn " or " shelter ". The third is as follows : " Owein Gwyne^ extended his rule f rom Anglesey to Tegeingl, to Aeron, to Chester ". Here w^e find the names beautifully arranged, so that Aeron takes its place nicely between Tegeingl (Flintshire) and Chester, as it should according to the theory. Turning to tlie reference Myv. 153, we find something quite difFerent. The words occur in Cynddelw's elegy on Owein Gwynedd ; here is a literal translation of as much of the context as is necessary to make the meaning clear — the first two and last four lines of the stanza : —
It is not a falsehood [to say tliat] he [was] the best hero From the German Ocean to the Irish Sea;
To Canterbnry, to maintain the privilege of the Britons, To Leicester and to Choster, To East Anglia, to Anglia, to Aeron, went forth His snpremacy from Penmon.
76 Taliesin.
The passage, tlieii, does not bear the coiistruction which Dr. Evans puts upon it ; and it contains no reference at all to Tegeingl. This name he has himself substituted for Ystrei(n)gl ' East Anglia ' (cf. Bede's Estrangli, H.E. iv, 17), and Eingl ' Anglia ', so that we have here, on a smaller scale, something ]ike the " further testimony " of the Chirk Codex. This is followed by the assertion that "Aeron was also the Welsh name of the ' Pulford ' brook ". It is not thought necessary to offer any proof of this astonishing statement, but a confirmation is suggested : " This identification is confirmed by the association of Aeron with Clud :
Priodawr clodva\vr Clud ac Aeron. (Myi\ 160.) "
The line occurs in Cynddelw's elegy on Cadwallawn mab Madawc ; it means " the renowned ruler of Clud and Aeron ", and refers to " Gwryal Gwron ", to whom the dead man is compared. (In passing, is not the "renowned ruler " of two little brooks a trifle absurd ?) The person meant is obviously the first named in the triad of the " kings who rose from serfs ", namely, " Gwryat vab Gwryon yn y Gogleò ", E. B. Mab., p. 308, Y Cymmrodor vii, p. 132. Aeron then is, like Clud, in the North ; which is nothing new, for it is clearly in the North in the Book of Taliesin and the Book of Aneirin, though in the former the Cardiganshire Aeron is also mentioned, 73*4. But where is this northern Aeron ? Skene identifies it with tlie river Avon which runs between Linlithgow and Stirlingshire ; this view rests on most precarious grounds, and must be rejected, as Mr. Williams has shown' ; so
' Y Beirniad, 1912, p. 118. Skene rearl dylleinic aeron in his own reproduction of B.A. 172, and saw anon {avon) in other copies ; he jumped to the conchi.sion that aeron =avon. Mr. Williams has not noticed that in the MS. the reading i.s auon, which someone has tried to correct into aeron (see Facsimile). Dr. Evans rightly piints auon.
Taliesin. jy
must liis own hesitating suggestion that Aeron maj have been south of Rheged. Dr. Evans is no doubt quite right in attaching importance to the association of Aeron with Clud in the line which he quotes — his error is the funda- mental one of mistaking the Clyde for a Cheshire stream- let ; the passage proves the existence of a tradition in the twelftli century that the kiiigdoms of Clud and Aeron were united under Gwryat. Clud is Strathclyde : wliat can Aeron be but Ayr, which lies between Strathclyde and the sea — the outer Firth of Clyde? The union of the kiiigdoms took phice after the period with which we are dealing; and it may be that Gwryat was the king w'hose death is recorded in the Annals of Ulster, s.a. 658: "Mors Gureit regis Alochiaithe ", Chron. of Pids and Scots, p. 349. It is not inconsistent with this identification that in one of Taliesin's poems Urien "came" to Aeron, 61-9, or that in another he is called a " defender in Aeron ", 63*5-6. He is the first of the four kings named in the " Saxon Genealogies " as having fought against the sons of Ida, the three othersbeing Rhydderch, Gwallawg and Morgant. The hist two, like Urien himself, were descended from Coel, whose kingdom was in Aeron, and whose name still clings to the district of Kyle ; and either or both may have ruled in that region. In any case Urien fighting in Aeron would be defending the territories of liis kinsnien. Eidyn. — Dr. Evans writes this name Ei8in. This is a late and incorrect form ; the -in is due to the assimilation of unaccented y in the ultima to i in the penult, as in the spolcen gwreiddin for giweiddyn, see my Welsh Gram. p. 111, iii ; but tlie o for d can only be explained as due to
Curiously enough, aeron seems from 38"2 to be the true reading, aucl dylleinw, as Mr. Williams lias seen, is an error for dyleith, so that there was no 'flood' and no 'river' in the stanza originally, and Skene's Avon is a ghost.
78 Taliesin.
misreading tlie written forui, owing to the fact that both à and 8 are written d in late medieval orthography. In the old poetry the name always rhymes with -yn ; thus in the Black Book, in which % and ij are not distinguished in the spelling, but are distinct in the rhymes, Eidyn rhymes with a chinhin {cynhymi, ' dog-heads ') and cuitin {cwySyn ' tliey fell '), 95 '8, and with tytin (tyèyn) in one englyn, and hrin (bryn) in another in 64-1 -4 ; in the Book of Taliesin it rhymes with hritìiwyn, 22*22, and kyverhyn, 30" 1 ; in the Book of Aneirin with arwynn, 5 '9, and gwehin {gwehyn), disgin {disgyn), 33"16; in eacli case the rhyme is -ynn, distinguished from -yn in early verse. In the Blaclc Book medial S is generally written t, but this name is consistently written witli d, as eidin 94*14, 95*7, idin 64'2*5 — contrast tytin, cuitin, above. In the Welsh Genealogies in Harl. 3859, it is written eitin {Y Cymm- rodor ix, p. 173), which is decisive, for in the Old Welsh spelling of this document medial t regularly stands for d, and medial d for è. The correct form of the name then, in modern and late medieval spelling, is Eidyn. In spite of the clear and conclusive evidence of the manu- scripts our editor not only writes the name EiSin, but actually cites this as the form in the Black Book. '■'Eièin", he says, " is in the border country " — the Welsh border. The pi'oof divides itself into two parts. The fìrst part is as follows : — "In Prydein in EiSin (Owein Gwyneb) is acknowledged chief: also at Gavran on the Brecon border, 30*20 ". History, he says, accords with this, " but there is not so much as an old wife's tale to vouch for his sway on the Forth ", p. xxiii. The editor himself indicates that the name " Owein Gwyneb " is not in the text by including it in brackets — it is his own assumption ; and on this assumption the proof entirely depends. The second part consists of identifìcations
Taliesin. 79
whicli depend eutirely upon tlie mistaken forni EiSin. Thus the Bhiclc Book is said to refer to '■'■ mynyh Eibin 95-7, which is synonymous with Bre Eibin, now Breiòin Hill ". Now in the first phice the reading in the Black Book is "minit eidin ", which, correctly transcribed, is mynyB Eidyn ; and medieval d cannot be equated with modern 8. In the second place the argument implies that BreiBin is a modern contraction of a name Avhich was Bre EiSin in the twelfth century ; but as the hill was called BreiSin in that century, the ar^ument falls to the ground. The name occurstwiceinGwalchmai's "Gorhoffedd"; fi.rst in Dygen FreiSin, rhyming with hin, trin, ffin, and many other words all ending in -in {Myv. 142b) ; secondly in hre Freidyn, which is hre Freièin, since it rhymes with trin (ib. 143a) ; in the original manuscript the symbol for 8 is used in both cases. Bre FreiSin finally disposes of the I?re í/iSm theory ; and the twelfth ceiìturj BreiSin cannot possibly have anything to do with the Eidyn of the Book of Taliesin. The other identifications repose upon the same error, so that it would be waste of time to discuss them. Eidyn is certairily in the JSTorth ; this is sufficiently evidenced by the narae of Clydno Eidyn, one of the four leaders of the men of the North whose names Dr. Evans " judiciously omits " in g"iving the "testimony" of the Chirk Codex. Ab Ithel identifies " Eiddin " with Edinburgh {Gododin, 1852, p. 99) ; Stephens, about the same time, writes it " Eidyn, or Eiddyn, or Eiddin ", and equates it with the Edin of " Edinhurgh," {Gododin, 1888, p. 178). Eeeves {Jita S. Columhce, 1857, p. 202) says that Etan (in "the siege of Etan ", Tig. 638, An. Ult. 637) " is not Edinburgh .... but Cair Eden, the Eiddyn of Aneurin . . . now Carriden, a parish on the Forth, in Linlithgowshire, the identification of which we learn from the interpolator of Gildas' History : ' Kair Eden, civitas
So Taliesin.
antiquissima, duorum ferme miUium spatio a moiiasterio Abercurnig, quod nunc vocatur Abercorn.' (Capit. 9, Monument. p. 5.) ". Skene adopts this view : " Etain was no doubt Eiddyn or Caereden " {F.A.B., i, p. 178, cf. p. 172). Eidyn ysgor occurs in the Book of Aneirin, 4*5; and esgor Eiclyn, 29*12 ; Skene's note on the former is "The fort of Eiddyn or Caredin " (ib., ii, p. 374) ; Eidyn gaer, 27'15, comes still nearer in form to Caredin. But Dûnedin is the old name of Edinburgh : Skene quotes from a life of Saint Monenna " Dunedene que Anglica lingua dicitur Edineburg' " (ib., i, p. 85), Dineidyn occurs in the Book of Aneirin, 33-5, and in the Book of Taliesin, 29*18; and few will disagree with Skene when he says that this " can hardly be anything but Dunedin " (ib., ii, p. 367). It is therefore futile to ask "where is thereanything to connect Eiòin with Edinburgh ? " Mynyh Eidyn in the Black Book is doubtless Edinburgh too. In the Book of Aneirin, Mynyòawc Mwynvawr is 'lord of Eidyn ', 111' Eidyn, 35*11, about the end of the sixth century ; a generation earlier Clydno Eidyn led the raid to Gwjaiedd to avenge Elidyr Mwynvawr, see above, p. 47. As Eidyn survived both in Carredin and in Dunedin, it has been assumed that it was the name of a district including both ^^ it would lie just to the east of Manaw. The supposition is likely in itself, and suggests that the unintelligible o herth Maw ac Eidin,
1 Edwineshwf/ (Skene, Celtic Scotland, i, p. 240) is not older than the twelfth century, and seems to be a theoretical form, which failed to supplant the actual name. In the tenth century Pictish Chronicle the town is called Opjndum Eden {Chron. P. cỳ S., p. 10). The name Edin must be older than Edwin, and there appears to be no old authority for his supposed connexion with the town. Bede, for example, says much about Edwin but is silent about Edinburgh.
2 Transcribed mechanically from a twelfth century copy, in which
3 Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives of British Saints, ii, 1908, p. lôS: Y Beirniad, 1911, p. 255.
Taliesin. 8i
B.T. 29*26, sliould be o hartli Manaiu^ ac Eidyn. But originally the name may well have been the appellation of one of the two strongholds, more probaLly perhaps of the " civitas antiquissima " Kair Eden.^
1 have now dealt with the more important northern names occurring in the Book of Taliesin, and with Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans's attempt to prove that they denote places on the Welsh border. His argument is a tissue of false reasoning which betrays a mind that has never properly understood what " evidence " or " proof " means. He founds categorical statements on purely suppositional grounds. He has not realized that the basis of an argu- ment must be an undisputed fact ; he even builds on the very suppositions that are disputed. The greater part of his argument is one gigantic petitio priìicipii, or begging of the question. WJuit he has to prove is that Taliesin lived in the twelfth century, and sang to Owein Gwynedd ; in order to prove this, he has to show that northern names denote places on the Welsh border ; he shows that they are on the border and not in the North by insisting that "Owein Gwynedd never was in Scotland ", p. xvii, and that "there is not so mucli as an old wife's tale to vouch for his sway on the Fortli ", p. xxiii ; but this is only the minor premise, it has no force without the implied major premise that Owein Gwynedd is meant (thoughnot named) in the poems. It is quite clear that this is implied, and is the basis of the argument ; it is also tlie conclusion of the argument: and the whole is worthless, because there is nothing that you cannot prove if you start by assuming
^ Alaw by the commonest of scribal errors, the error of aiiticipa- tion, by which the scribe in writing the first a took it for the second.
2 Ptoleray's nrepwTÒi' crTpaTÓ-eSoi' was on tlie Moray Firth, and is identified by Skene with Burghead {Celtic Scotland, i, p. 74). Camden, wrongly identifying it with Edinburgh, explains the latter as 'Castrum Alatum ', cjnoting Welsh adain ' wing' as a cognate.
G
82 Taliesin.
it. Tlie argument frora the poems is wholly of this character; the middle term is iiot always Owein Gwynedd — it may be Hugh Lupus or Henry II ; but the conclusion is always implied in the premises. The misquotations from tlie text are dictated by the same fallacy ; it is hecause the poems were written in the twelfth centurj'^ that the text is altered in order to adapt it to the con- ditions of that time — there is absolutely no other reason for the nnmerous alterations of perfect lines ; and the text thus altered is quoted to prove that the geography is that of the twelfth century, and therefore that the poems rvere written in that century — where we began : it is alwa^'s the same vicious circle. The rest of the "proof ", apart from ridiculous etymologies such as Godeu from cod, consists of deductions from misquotations of passages from the medieval poets and from the Chirlc Codex. The context, and all details, which, if quoted, would reveal the true meaning of the passages, are suppressed ; a common noun dyheS, for example, is quietly changed into a proper name Dyved ; names are re-arranged to give an effect foreign to the original. Dr. Evans is, of course, quite unaware of practising any deception ; he hasunconsciously practised it all upon himself, and in his Introduction he is presenting in good faith the arguments by which he him- self has been convinced. Like many others who labour under delusions he believes that he alone is sane :
It will be more service;ible to the stiuìent to canvass the geograpliy of such names as Gogleh, Prydyn, Aeron, Clud, Argoed Llwyvein, Llwyveuyò, and Eihin, which have so hypno- tized my precursors as to paralyse their critical faculty (p. xix).
He has ari-ived at this conclusion by intuition, not by studying the works of his " precursors ", with which he shows little acquaintance. The literature of tlie subject is referred to only in the vaguest terms ; there is no hint
Taliesin. 8
j
of any divergence of views among its writers ; they are all
included under a common Lan ; tliey are "our mentors ",
"our high priests", "learned professors ", etc. Sharon
Turner's Yindication, the main points of wliich remain
unanswered, is not mentioned. There is no mention even
of Nash's Taliesin, in which a twelfth century origin of
the poems was maintained sixty years ago. There is no
reference to Stephens's classification of the poems, or to
Carnhuanawc's earlier discussion of thepersonsand places
named in them. Zimmer's Nennius Yindicatus is not
referred to ; there is a reference in a footnote to Mommsen's
edition of Nennius, which is stated to be " edited by Prof .
Zimmer", p. viii. Skene's Four Äncient Books Dr. Evans
has read, how carefuUy may be gathered from the fact
that he asks (II, p. v), " did he not understand and trans-
late the whole?" when Skene expressly states (vol. i,
p. 17) that the translation was prepared for him at his
request by the Reverend D. Silvan Evans and the Reverend
Robert Williams, " in order ", he says, "to avoid any
risk of its being coloured by my own views " — how unlike
Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans ! However, Dr. Evans has some
acquaintance with Skene, whose views he assumes to be
representative : Skene accepted the Brut Rheged, which
our editor then recklessly attributes to " tlie learned of
all ages and eminence ", in the same breath accusing them
of not " once verifying their references " ! At one time
the " Scottish figments " were started by the translators
of the Bruts, p. xxi ; at another they are tliö " creation "
of " our mentors ", p. xvii, chiefly Skene, of course. Rhys
in his Celtic Britain, is sneeringly stated to liave "followed
the Scot's lead ", II, p. v ; he followed the lead of all
his predecessors from Lewis Morris and Evan Evans to
Stephens and Skene.
The twelfth çentury geography of the poems, which
84 Taliesin,
lias been revealed only to Dr. Evans, is the coniplement of another revelátion, namely, that the sixth century per- sonal names are eponyms of twelfth century characters. To his mind tlie one proves the other. Urien is Owein Gwynedd because Urien prevailed " in Gogleb " ; and Gogleb is Cheshire because " Owein Gwyneb never was in Scotland ". That is exactly the reasoning at the bottom of p. xvi and the top of p. xvii. I have shown that the last statement is valueless for the argument without the assumption that Owein Gwynedd is Urien, that is, without assuming what has to be proved. The geo- graphical theory is based on the eponym theory, and on misrepresentations ; the proof of the eponym theory from the geographical theory must therefore be disallowed. Let us see if there is anj^ independent evidence of it :
Turn we then to Urien of whom we read that he fought Ida's successors, and was pre-eminent among his compeers as a military leader. So was Owein Gwyneh among Kymric princes : hence is nom de guerre of Urien. That this is not an assnmption witness the elegy by his contemporary, Kynòel, who describes Owein as " lord of Penmon . . . shepherd of Mon .... the war-lord of the confiict of Argoed Llwyvein .... dragon of Coeling .... terror of Bernicia . . . . ^ blessed dragon of the West". These lines might come from Taliesin's poems to Urien, so familiar do they soiind (p. xvi). ^ Myv. 152.
A detail which is omitted here, and which invalidates the comparison, is that in Cynddelw's elegy Owein Gwynedd is named :
Am Oìoein Gwyne^ yd gwynant. — Myv. 151b.
Owein Gwynedd's " lordship " doubtless " extends f rom Penmon ", and he is " shepherd of Môn ", but where is Urien called " lord of Penmon " or " shepherd of Môn " ? Owein Gwynedd is not " war-lord of Argoed Llwyvein ", but is compared to Owein ap Urien {yngiuryd Owein ' with the valour of Owein'), whose spirited reply to the foe is
Talíesin. 85
given in Taliesin's poem on Argoed Llwyvein, to which Cynddelw clearly alludes. Urien is not called a " dragon of Coeling" or a "blessed dragon of the West " : he is JJdà yr EcJmydd, and Echwydd is not "West", but " Cataract ". As to " the terror of Bernicia ", if taken literally, it would rather prove that the twelfth century poet wrote in tlie sixth ; but we know that Deifr and Bryneich were used by the bards down to the fourteenth century and even later, e.g., Lewis Glyn Cothi, p. 155. The fancied resemblances, then, amount to this : that Cynddelw calls Owein Gwynedd one thing,and Taliesin calls Ui'ien another thing, and that Cynddelw compares Owein Gwynedd to Taliesin's hero Owein ap Urien. That is the whole of the proof so far as it is not directly founded on the geographical theory. The next point is that " Owein was the generalissimo of all Wales, and Urien was ' lord of Prydein', 61*2o ". The argument here rests on the assumption that Prydein is Wales ; this assumption has been refuted above, and the argument disallowed. The next is similar :
Kynbel tells us that he was " the prime hero as far as Chester ; that his sovereignty spread as far as the March of the Angles — as far as Aeron."
This is the passage of which a different rendering is quoted above, p. 75. Here East Anglia and Anglia become " the March of the Angles " ; for another purpose, as quoted above, they were Tegeingl, between which and Chester Aeron was so neatly placed. Lastly :
TaHesin's Ui-ien prevailed at Rhuhlaii ; in the Aeron country ; in Gogleh ; at Arhunwen, i.e., in that towuship of Mold in which Montalt is situated ; and at y Rhodwy^).
On tìiis then depends the proof that Taliesin's Urien is Owein Gwynedd. We have ah-eady disposed of Gogledd and Aeron as begging the question. RhodwyS occurs in
86 ■ Taliesin.
the text as a common noun, 62'2, and the reference is not indexecl. There is no ArSunwen^ in the text, but Arddunyon occurs, 30'9, also not indexed ; there was a battle at Arddunyon, but who fought or who fell is not stated. There reraains the stateinent that " Taliesin's Urien pre- yailed at Rhuòlan ". This looks like a pure inyention, and one wonders how tlie editor came to make such a statement. I turn up litfMan in the index, and find the references " xvi, n. 35"7". The referenee " xvi " is to tliis verj statement ; the other is to this note : " 35' 7 teir caer = ? Conwy, Deganwy, and Rhublan". The ex- pression teir caer occurs in a cryptic poem, in whicb Arthur is mentioned but Urien is not. It is seen then that on the assumption, which the editor himself queries, that E.hublan may be one of "three forts " alluded to in an obscure poem which has nothing to do with Urien, he bases the categorical statement that " Taliesin's Urien prevailed at Rhublan ".
Such are the grounds on which the editor confidently asserts that Taliesin's Urien is Owein Gwynedd. But the equation lands him in many difficulties, of whicli he makes no mention in his Introduction. Glytv Reget ' prince of Rheged ', 57*7, is " corrected " to glyw rygas 'behated prince ', p. 109, II, p. 158; but this prince is Urien, so Urien here must be 0. ap Kadwgan, and " TJrien, 57*8, is used for Owein because of cynghaneb ". By cynghaneô here he means rhyme ; similarly in 42-7 Urien is " Owein (K.) to rhyme with Dygen ", p. 100; so if the easy demands of the rhyme require it, Urien, the special eponym of Owein Gwynedd, may be used for Owein ap Kadwgan or Owein K(yveiliog) at will ! Again Taliesin's
^ Pfofessor Lloyd says that the nanie is propei'ly Arddynicent, and that Montalt is not situated in this township though the township is in t\ie parish of Mold.
Taliesin. 87
TJrien is U^w Eatraeth, 'prince of Catraeth ', 62-22, which
is harclly appropriate to Owein Gwynedd ; this is " cor-
rected " to " lly w can draeth ", and explained as Henry II,
'along the shore ' ! p. 112, II, p. 114. Again, Taliesin's
Urien, and the Urien of history, had a son, the famous
Owein ap Urien, whose elegy appears in the text. Now
Owein Gwynedd cannot be the son of Urien if he is Urien,
for even Dr. Evans understands that a man cannot be his
own son ; and Owein Gwynedd had no son of the name of
Owein. Therefore the very name Owein ap Urien shatters
the theory — unless it can be got rid of. Let us see how
the editor attempts to explain it away. Tlie elegy opens
thus :
Eneit Oweiii ap Vryen
Gobwyllit y ren oe reit.
Each line contains seven syllables, and the last word in the first (üryen) rhymes with a word in the middle of the second (ren) ; all the couplets end in -eit. Dr. Evans's
notes are as follows :
67" 18 ap Urien does not occur elsewhere in Tal. The ap is unintelligible here. Urien might be a gloss on Owein. Cyng- haneb ancl metre make both impossible.
67'18 ren antcpn. of r^id. Read : ner=bp. of Bangor . . . . Ren, i.e. rëen is a dissyllable always.
The ap is perfectly intelligible, and is stated to be " un- intelligible " only because it is inconsistent with his theory. For tlie statement that " cynghanec) and metre make botli [Owein and Urien] impossible " there is no justification whatever. Ren is stated to be a scribal error in which the re of reid is anticipated, so the editor changes it to ner, destroying what cynghanedd there is in the line, (the alliteration of ren and reií), as in dozens of other cases in his absurd list of scribal errors. Turning to II, p. 124, we find that he gives the couplet thus :
Eneid Owein, rhywyssid,
Gobwyllid y ner o'i raid,
88 Taliesin.
and renders it —
The Soul of Owein has hcien siimmoned,
& his (spiritual) lord has come to his rescue.
Instead of af Uryen he puts in his own " rhywyssid " to rhjme with Gohwyllid; and pretends in his note that cjng'hanedd and metre demand this garbling, when nothing but his theory demands it. Now let us see what the metre does demand. He is right in saying that ren is a dissyllable reeìi ; therefore the second line is too long. But it is obvious tliat reen here denotes the Deity, and in that sense it is never preceded by the article y, and such a proclitic as y ' his ' is unusual. The only emendation required therefore is the omission of this y. The lines will then read —
that is —
Eneit Owein ap Uryen, Gobwyllit Reen oe reit,
The soul of Owein ap Uryen,
May the Lord have regard to its need.
This very simple, almost beautiful, couplet has to be mutihited and turned into bathos in the interests of a mad theory. But the theory alone does not aecount for the vandalism ; there is incompetence and blindness as well. Dr. Gwenogvr3'n Evans has the haziest ideas of tenses, of the uses of words. He renders gobivyllit as a perfect : the third singuhir active termination -it (or -id) can only be either present indicative, or present imperative ; the latter is a survival of the old optative, and is the part generally found before Dmv or Rìiên, as in gwrthlehit Duw lìoh drwc ' may God ward off all evil ', Llyfr yr Ancr, p. 26. Of the meaning- of reit, modern rhaid, ' need ', in this connexion he has not a glimmer, though it and angen are frequently tlius used, as in the Red Book, gwares Duw dy anghen ' may God relieve thy need ', F.A.B., ii, p. 220,
(
Talicsin. 89
and as late as the sixteeuth century Gras Duiv i'n rhaid ' the grace of God (provide) for our need ! ' Gorchestion, 1773, p. 296. For his mistranslation he has no excuse but his own blindness, for Robert Williams renders the line correctlj, except that he includes ij ' its ' before Ren : "MayitsLord consider its need". Another example of the same denseness isseen in our editor's rendering of the last line of this poem. The line is
Ny rannet rac y eneit.
The inital n is a Hiberno-Saxon r misread as n ; reading the positive ry instead of the negative ny, the line means 'it [his weallh] was given away for his soul'. The editor never sees any error of reading from the IIiberno-Saxon script, because it upsets his theory ; but he sees that the phrase is positive, and emends ny to in ' to us ', which is a jarring false note. He gives the rest of the line as " rhagor i Eneid " (w^iich makes it too long), and renders this " his soul goes marching on " ! As " rhagor i Eneid " is an idiom of his own invention, he can of course make it mean anything he likes. But why make any change at all? Clearly because he is ignorant of the common ex- pression rhag i enaid ' for his soul ', although it occurs, for example, in the Black Book 84-4-5, ha heth oreu rac eneid ' what is best for the soul ? ' and in the most farailiar of Dafydd ap Gwilym's " poems of the fancy " :
A'r gog rhag feyiaid a gân . . . Paderau ac oriau . . .
' And the cuckoo for my soid shall sing paternosters and hours,' 1789 ed., p. 60. Dr. Evans has often transcribed, but never grasped, the idiom, and so, wLile he flatters himself that he knows " the dainty tread of the Chief of Bards" p. xxix, he recognises it as the tramp of " John Brown's Body ". To returu to liis diflìculties, there is
90 Taliesin.
rather a formidable one in the eleventh line of this elegy,
which reads —
Pan laòawh Owein Fflambwyn.
It means, ' When Owein tilled the Flamebearer '. Now Owein Gwynedd did not kill Henrj II. How is the theory to be saved in the face of this ? By misti-anslating the line thus : " When Owein pressed the Flame-bearer hard " ! It will not do. Lladd does not mean ' to press hard'; in other combinations it may mean ' to cut', or ' to strike ' ; but Uadd dyn means ' to kill a man ', and no quibblino- can make it mean anything- else. No one has ever dreamt that Na ladd means ' thou shalt not press hard ', or imagined the ghost of an ambiguity in this very form lladdodd in the story of Cain and Abel, Gen. iv, 8 ; and what is true in this respect of the Welsh Bible is true of Welsh literature generally.
It is certainly a little unsatisfactory that Owein Gwynedd's eponym should be used of others ; to add to the confusion, Owein Gwynedd has other eponyms. The first of these is Cunedda. The editor has fouiid it rather difficult to discover reasons for the appropriateness of this eponym. He tell us that Cunedda " is said to have been the first to bestow land on a church", p. xxiv. By whom, or where, it " is said " we are not told. Baring-Gould and Fisher know nothing of it; they give " S. Cunedda" a place " among the Welsh Saints more as the ancestor of one of the three great lines of Saints than for any other claim he may have had ", Lives of British Saints, ii, p. 191. Dr. Evans goes on to say that Cunedda " became thus the eponymus of such as did likewise ". We have only his unsupported statement that Cunedda " is said " to have done it, and the proof that Owein Gwynedd " did like- wise " is the fact that he was buried at Bangor :
Tradition assigns to his [Cunedda's] alleged descendant,
Taliesin. 91
Maelgwn, the credit of being the first benefactor of Bangor Cathedral, which, after it was burnt down in 1102, stiU found friends in the house of Gwynec). Witness the honour of burial near the altar given to the remains of Griffyb ap Kynan, and to those of üwein Gwyneb.
As a proof of the theory that Cunedda means Owein Gwynedd, this reasoning may be allowed to speak for itself. It is followed by an aceount, summarised from Professor Lloyd's history, of Owein Gwynedd's ecclesias- tical troubles, which the editor shows to be referred to in 69-70 by quoting- his own translation of the text as " amended " by himself. In the emendations the theory is of course assumed, so that we have here only another example of the editor's persistent habit of proving a thing by assuming it in his premises. After this circular argu- ment there is a digression intended to throw discredit on the Welsh genealogies in Harl. 3859 :
But "Cuneòa" is an impossible derivative of Cuno-dag, * which would give Cynba in twelfth century Welsh. The very form " Cuneha "' shows that the compiler of the Harleian pedi- grees was combining material of various dates and origin.
^ I do not question Cuno-dag being an ancient form piched up somewhere. But its transf oi'mation into " Cunedda " proves that the compiler was a late, i.e., twelfth century fabricator.
The form in the Welsh genealogies is Cíineda, see r Cymmrodor ix, pp. 170, 172, 178 bis, 181, 182 ; and this is a quite possible form for the end of the tenth century, when these pedigrees were compiled. In the " Saxon Genealogies " we find the older fbrm Cu7iedag, see the frontispiece to this volume, 1. 14; this is the form that would be written at the time of tlie final redaction of the tract about the end of the eighth century, or even at the time when it was first written, a century earlier. " Cuno- dag " does not occur at all ! It is a hypothetical or imaginary form " picked up somewhere " by Dr. Evan8 himself . The statement that the fad (Ciineèa) is " im-
92 Taliesin.
possible " because it does not accord with the swpfosition
(Gtino-dag) is characteristic ; and the 'suggestion that
Cune- is twelfth century betrays the editor's ignorance of
the fact that the stein-vowel often appears as -e- in the
sixth centurj, as in Gildas' Ctine-glase.^
A third eponym of Owein Gwynedd is Maelgwn :
Maelgwn, likewise, is the eponym of Owein Gwjmeb, whose son Rhun is said, in the Chirk Codex, to be the son of Maelgwn , . . the first Gwledig of Gwyneò (pp. xxv-xxvi).
This is the " further testimony " of the Chirlc Codex over again. There is not a syllable of truth in the statement that Owein Gwynedd's " son Rhun is said, in the Chirk Codex, to be the son of Maelgwn". Rhun ab Owein Gwynedd is not mentioned at all in the manuscript ; nothing " is said " about him. Rhun vab Maelcun is mentioned, and the context and the whole purpose pf the memorandum, which is to account for ancient privileges, show that Rhun vab Maelgwn is meant. Dr. Evans is not, of course, consciously uttering a falsehood ; he is
1 The tiist element in Cime-dda is not the usual British Cuno- or Cune-, which gives Old Welsh Cin-, Medieval and Modern Cyn-, as in Cin-glas, ( Y Cymmrodor ix, p. 172), now Cyn-las, but the equivalent of cun ' lord ', which would be '^houno- in British (perhaps Caune is the fem., genitive). The British form then would be *kouno-dagos. The stem-vowel of the first element of a compound is usually lost, so that one would expect Cun-Sa ; but it may be retained, as shown by Dino-yat, which exists as well as Din-yat. The vowel in the inscriptions often appears as e or i, see my Gram., p. 190, possibly representing the obscure vowel e, written y in Welsh. But the obscure vowel tended to become e, so that we have, for example, re-medau{t) in Old AYelsh (Juvencus) for rhy-fcddaicd from original *{p)ro-med-. In Ogam the stem-vowel appears as a, which is the Irish modiíication ; it appears as a in Welsh in Dinacat , s.not\\fìv form of Dinyat. It is a regularly before u\ as in Tudawal, Dyfnawal, beside Tudiual, Dyfnual. The o of Dino-gat, the e of Cune-Sa, and the a of Dina-cat probably mean that the forms became stereo- typed at difterent times. The last element *dayos in the original f orm of Cune^a is the adjective which is now da ' good '.
Talíesin. 93
simply, as usual, mistalcinw his assumptious for facts. He
thinhs that Ehun vab Maelgwn in the Codex means Rhun
vab Owein Gwynedd, and proceeds to state this as a fact.
He probably intended to say that Ehun ab Owein is called
ìn the Codex the son of Maelgwn ; but "ts said, ìn the
Chirk Codex, to he the son of Maelgwn ", is more effective,
and gives the impression that the Codex itself says so.
Undoubtedly the editor deceives himself by these verbal
tricks, as much as he deceives his confiding readers. The
underlying assumption in this statement is that Maelgwn
in the memoranduni is an eponym of Owein Gwynedd ;
this explains, though it does not excuse, the "Rhun . . ."
of p. xvii, see above p. 49. It is only necessary to note
further the confusion of thought which, from assuming
the use of eponyms for special reasons by Taliesin, pro-
ceeds to extend the assumption to a prose record to which
no such reasons apply.
Brochfael Ysgythrog was Prince of Powys in the
middle of the sixth century, and was succeeded by his
son Cynan Garwyn. The poet says that he sang before
Brochvael Powys, 33' 7; and a poem to his son, Cynan
Garwyn, appears on p. 45. Dr. Evans notes these refer-
ences to Brochfael and Cynan, and comments thus :
If we credit the Chronicles, Brochvael died in 662 ; while his son, Cynan Garwyn, was living in 870, i.e., 208 years later."^ Add to this the account of Taliesin being "renowned'" around 550. History of this sort reduces one to a melancholy, thoughtful silence — not with regard to Taliesin, but in respect of his com- mentators (p. xxv). * Lloyd, 250.
One need waste no time in discussing the rhetoric of the last sentence ; but the libel on the writers of Welsli history which is insinuated in the whole quotation is not to be tolerated, and its misrepresentations must be exposed. In the Annales Cambrise, a certain " Brocmail " is said to have died in G62 ; so far from talcing this to refer to
94 Taliesin.
Brochvael Ysgythrog, Mr. Phillimore, in the stanclard
edition of the text, expressly says in a note that " Broch-
wel Ysgjthrog . . . cannot possibly be meant if the date
662 is right", Y Cymmrodor ix, p. 158. ISTe^t, Professor
Lloyd is accused of stating in his Hütory of Wales, p. 250,
that "Cynan Garwj^n was living in 870". Professor
Lloyd of course says nothing of the hind ; what he says
is that tlie dynasty of Meirionydd was "represented
about 870 by a certain Cynan ap Brochwel " ; and he
refers in a footnote to "Pedigree xviii in Harl. MS. 3859
[Gymmroclor ix, 178)", which shows that this Cynan was
the son of " Brochmail map lutnimet ", while Cynan
Garwyn was the son of " Brocmayl map Cincen ", pedigree
xxii. Further, on p. 180, Professor Lloyd, speaking of
the " Brocmail " who, according to Bede, was responsible
for the protection of the monks at the battle of Chester,
adds this footnote :
" Brocmail " can hardly be Brochwel Ysgythrog, ruler of Powys, for his grandson, Selyf ap Cynan, was slain in this very battle. Nor is it likely that he is the " Brocmail '" of the year 662 in Harl. MS. 3859 {Cymmrodor ix, 158). The name was, in fact, a very common one ; see Cymmrodor ix, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, and for the early form, " Brohomagli ", hìscr. Chr. No. 158, Lap. W. 202, W. PhÜ. (2) 372.
Even if our historians were guilty of the anachi-onisms which they are thus careful to avoid, what has that to do with Taliesin's commentators ? The argument apparently is this : thehistorians do not know the period of Brochfael Ysgythrog and Cynan Garwyn, who are assigned to the seventh or ninth centuries, and therefore could not be the contemporaries of a mid-sixth century Taliesin ; hence words fail the editor to express his contempt for the " commentators " wlio regard a sixth century Taliesin as singing to the real Brochfael and Cynan.
What then is the explanation of Brochvael and Kynan
/
Taliesin. 9 5
Garwj'n ? They are respectively the eponyms of Owein Keveilo^, prince of Powys, and of Kynan ap Owein Gwynef). lord of Meirionyb, which was once rnled by Kynan Garwyn.
A " Correction " on p. xlvii bids us "For Owein Keveliog
[sic] read Owein Gwyneh " ; so during the passage of the
book through the press Owein Gwyneò acquired a foiirth
eponym. The purpose of the alleged " History of this
sort" is now clear. If the personages of the poems lived
in the age when tradition says Taliesin 'flourished, a
twelfth century hypothesis is unnecessary and improbable.
But if the persons named lived at different times, the
eponym theory furnishes a possible " explanation ". Por
the editor's theory, then, this is a test case ; and there is
one simple fact which decides it against him. Selyf, the
son of Cynan Garwyn, fell in the battle of Chester, in 616
at the very latest ; his father Cynan and his grandfather
Brochfael must therefore, by normal computation, have
been contemporaries of the Taliesin of tradition.
" Besides the eponynious we also have an epithetic
class", p. xxvi. This class comprises Haearbur, Hyfeib,
Gwallawc and Mabon. The first name is changed by the
editor to " Haearneib " and explained as a "man of iron".
" Hyveib means the intrepid, courageaux — suggested, per-
haps, by Courcy " ! Someone seems to have pointed out
to him that courageaux is a rather unusual spelling, so he
inserts the correction, " Delete x in ' courageau-x ' ",
p. xlvii; he evidently misread his friend's a as x\
" Gwallawg means missing or lost (at sea) ", and therefore
denotes Henry íìtz Henry ! It is scarcely necessary to
remark that gwall- in personal names (e.g., Cad-wall-on)
has nothing to do with gwall ' want, defect " ; if it had,
^ It is generally agreed that the element val- is allied to Latin valére, etc, Fick-Stokes p. Í262 ; vaU- is probably from the same root, thongh Stokes derives it from the root vel- 'to wish ' on acconnt of the Gaulish vell- (in Cassi-vellaunos, etc), ib. p. 276 ; tlie " fuU-grade " Yowel is e in either case, and the assumption of two roots is unnecessary.
96 Taliesin.
gwaîlawg would be the adjective which means 'negligent'. There are, of course, gwall-gof arìà gwall syiinwijr, so that, if something- is to be supplied, ' wanting (in sense) ' is more likely than ' lost (at sea) ' ; and there are plenty of people to whom such an " epithet " would apply. " Mahon is the scion of a princely, or royal, line ", and there are two or tliree of him. The method is a very elastic one, especially in Dr. Evans's hands : he alters Haearddur to bring it within his comprehension ; he translates Hyveidd into French which he cannot spell ; he mis-translates a false etymology of Gwallawg, in order to get rid of Gwallawg vab Lleenawg, the contemporary and kinsman of Urien. Such is the proof of the theory of the " epithetic class ".
In what he calls " The Argument " in II, p. 1, Dr. Evans writes : "The bard, or bards, after the fashion of this time, sang of contemporaries under assumed names ". The suggestio falsi " after the fashion of this time " is inserted in oi'der to make the statement more convincing. Anyone who will run his eye over the Contents of tlie Myvyrian will see at once how false the suggestion is ; all tlie bards of the twelfth century sing of the princes under their own names. The nearest parallel that Dr. Evans has discovered to what he postulates of the Taliesin poems is Cynddelw's elegy on Owein Gwynedd ; but in that, as pointed out above, p. 84, Owein is called byhis own name, a fact whicli Dr. Evans omits to mention. It is, how- ever, a fact that is vital ; it constitutes a difference not in degree, but in character, between the things compared. A bard commonly enough styles his patron " Nudd " if he is generous, " Artliur " if he is valiant, " Cei Hir " if he is tall, and so on ; but it is always a passing compliment, predicated of an e^jjressed suhject. There are no poems "To Nudd," "To Arthur," " To Cei," in which, as in
Taliesin. 97
Milton's '^ Lycidas " for example, the pseudonyra is itself the suhject of the poeni, falcing the place of the real name. Yet Dr. Evans's assumption is that all Taliesin's poems are of this nature. Tlie puzzle to me is how anybody could have conceived so improbable an idea. He is, of course, honestly convinced of it. When he implies that the use of '*' assumed names " was " the fashion of this time ", he is not consciously equivocating; he is thinlíing of the use of pseudonyms as predicates, which was com- mon ; he confuses that with their use as suhjects, which was, to say the very least, unusual ; and he adduces the commonness of the íirst use in support of his assumption of the second. In sj^ite of this self-deception he is at other times conscious of tlie fact that the practice which he attributes to Taliesin is exceptional, for he gives special reasons for tlie poet's resorting to it :
When times are out of joint, nien aud places are not spoken of by their normal names. Mystifìcation becomes expedient in order to protect life and liherty .... Under sncli circumstances when the friendships of one day were the enmities of the next, a border bard like Taliesin couhl not, perhaps, sing with safety to himself aiid his patrons, except cryptically and pseudonym- ously (p. xv).
So he did it to save his skin. And the curious thing
is that he was never found out — until our editor divined
his secret! His being "a border bard " is rather a poor
excuse for the despicable cowardice which so signally
marks him off from his fellow bards. The works of the
twelfth century poets present many difficulties, but tliis
particular form of intentional " mystification " is not one
of them.
It will have been noticed that in the above quotation
from II, p. 1, Dr. Evans speaks of '' The bard, or hards ".
The reason is that he believes that the historical poems
" deal with events from the death of Rhun in 1147 tothat
H
98 Taliesin.
of John in 1216", p. xxviii. They cannot therefore all
be by a " Taliesin " who was horn about 1105, and so
" those referring to Eichard and John, as well as their
Kymric contemporaries, are, in my opinion, by some other
poet or poets ", p. xxix. Only two references to the text
are g-iyen in the Introduction in support of the view that
some of the poems deal with Richard and John. The
fìrst is as foUows :
We hHve an echo of the Crusades, aiid plaints about taxing the monasteries to release King Richard fiom the Hual Eurin, .or6 (p. xxviii).
The reference is to a poem on Alexander the Great, of which the beginning is lost. Pages 49-50 of the manu- script are missing. The catchword at the end of p. 48 is Jí.i/neihvat, which means 'poet; supporter'.' But to Dr. Evans it " suggests a ^alling together of men for the Crusades ", p. 105; he mistakes tlie -at for an abstract noun ending, and takes the stem to be galw ' call '. He finds in this misconception a chie to the drift of the lines at the top of p. 51, two pages further on. The poem on that page he therefore takes to be an
1 The termination -{i)ad, when it afl'ects a preceding vowel, ahyaj-s denotes the agent. It affects a as in ceiduad from cadw, or e as in neii'thiad, from nerth. The base here is cynnelw ' composition, song ', whence tlie verb hynnehcaf ' I compose, sing ' ; both generally followed by 0 ' of ' as kynelv o douit, B.B. 18, ' a song of the Lord ' ; hynnelw 0 Seiri (0 misprinted «) Myv. 194a ; Teithi cerSorion cynne/wi o haelon, ib. 123a, ' it is the privilege of minstrels to sing of the generous'; am ker^ a'm hynhelw ohonaìc, ITHa, 187a. The person is also introduced by gan, as Neud cennyd cerdd ylyd cynnelwaf, iyOa ' Of Thee I will compose a song of praise', cf. \&2&, 166a. Cf. also Prydesteu kymry, hymrodyal hynhelic, 188a, and hynnelicaf as a syiìonym. oi prydaf 'm 189a 54-5. Eynheilweit ' singers', 182b. The verb has the above meaning when it is intiansitive, or has cerS, etc, for its object; when íl lìerson is the direct object, the verb means ' to support', as by testimony m a court of law, Anc. Laws, i, p. 156"2. Rynheilwat ' supporter ', Myv. 183a, ŵ'jb,
Taliesin. 99
Elegy 011 Eichard T, except lines 10-21; " tliese lines,
which are raanifest interpolations, deal with the story of
Alexander ", p. 106. But Alexander occurs in 1. 6; the
editor suorsrests that it means there "PSaladin"! As
Mr. Ifor Williams has pointed out T Beirniad, 191G,
p. 137, Dr. Evans has not seen that the name of Darius
also occurs twice in the first nine lines (it is wilful blind-
ness, for Skene's translator gives the name in each case).
Thus :
Ef torres ar dnr teir gweith yg kat.
' He defeated Darius thrice ' rendered literally in Skene (i, p. 566) : " He broke upon Darius three times in battle ". In Irish, hrissim cath for ' I break battle on ' is a common idiom (Windisch, Ir. Texte, I, p. 404) : and Mr. Williams has pointed out to me that it occurs several times in the Irish story of Alexander printed in the Irische Texte, II, ii, as hris in caih sai for Dair, p. 25, literally, ' broke that battle on Darius '. But Dr. Evans changes ar dar into ardal, and renders the sentence " He burst our borders three times in war " ! II, 131. Further on, he changes the name dar into i dad " his father " ! But the whole poem is clearly about Alexander and Darius ; in line 6 Alexander overtakes him in his flight from the third battle (Arbela) ; thus :
gyrth y gobiwawò alexander ;
yn hual eurin gwae a garcharer,
ny phell garcharwyt ; angeu dybu
ac lle ef kafas ergyr o ki. * Swiftly Alexander overtook him ; in golden fetter woe to him who is imprisoned, he was not imprisoned long; death came, aud he where {ac eflle) he was wounded by (his own) host.'
It is an unmistakable allusion to tbe storytold by Orosius,
and repeated in the middle ages, that Darius was bound
in golden fetters by his own people (vinctum compedihus
liureiSf — in King Alfj'ed's English, (lehundcn . . . mid
n2
I oo Taliesin.
gyldenre racentan^), and that Alexander found him all alone dying of his wounds. And yet the hual eurin 'golden fetter' is, according' to Dr. Evans, King Eichard's piùson, though no authority for such an interpretation is even hinted at.' As for the " plaints about taxing the monasteries ", there is not so much as his own translation to vouch for their being dreamt of in the poem. The other reference is as follows :
We have also, hereand there, detailsnotfound in the Briits. For instance :
John disarmed the Promontory at the Gate of Godobin : And, at the great Ubbanford, the shank-plaided King ; I leave the Scot to his fears. 424. This refers to John's northern expedition in 1209 when he took Berwick Castle, built on a promontory, etc.
The italics are the editor's own, and denote that the words so printed are supplied by himself. There is no John in the text- — the verb is in the first person singular ' I disarmed ' ; and there is nothing about a " promon-
1 See both the Old English translation and the original in Kvìff Alfreds Orosius, E.E.T.S., no. 79, pp. 128, 129. In the Irish story, abovö referred to, the expression is i cüimrigib ordnige ' in honourable fetters ', where ordnige is an obvious error for ördigih ' golden '.
2 In dealing with the linés which he himself recognises as being concerned with Alexander, the editor shows little more understand- ing of the text. Mr. If or Williams notes the following three egregious blunders in lines 18-21 : — (1) bron loscedigion ' breast-burnt ' refers to the Amazons, who ai;e called cìchloiscthi ' breast-burnt ' in the Irish tale also, p. 50 ; cf . aTráo-aç S' €TrLKeKav(rôaL ròi' ôe^iciv jxa(Trov, Strabo, xi. 504. Dr. Evans changes the text to bron-loscent " whose breasts burnt (with constant humiliation)."— (2) Ogadeu afor, i.e. o gadeu â Phor ' of battles with Porus' is emended by Dr. Evans to a godei afar and rendered " which gave rise to fresh sorrow".— (3) miluyr magei- dawn 'the soldiers of Macedon' is turned into mihcyr ragent ^awn, and rendered "the soldiers received a boon"- How magu can mean ' to receive ' no note explains. Ale.rander magidawr ' Alexander of Macedon ' occurs on the next page, with the common mistake of r for n ; but this suggests nothing to the editor but " ? mygròawn "', p. 106,
Taliesin. i O i
tory " or " Ubbanford " or a "King", or about leaving anyone to his fears. In II, p. 193, the '' John" is "Fe", with " John " as antecedent rendering Ynyr in a previous line. Ynyr, then, is an "eponym " of John. These later poets, it seems, imitated " Taliesin " in the use of eponyms ; were they also " border poets " afraid to name even Eno-lish lcinofs ? There are severa] more of their eponyms in the notes. " The Teyrnon of 34-15 — 26 is, clearly, Richard I, who figures as Arthur in 54-1 5 to 56. Richard was a poet," etc, p. 94. Corroi m. Dayry, the Irish Cüröi mac Dairi of the Cüchulinn legend, is John, p. 115 ; and " Mab Dairi = mab íTarri, i.e., John," p. 1 16. I find from the Index that John also' " = Caw 72*11; = Ercw(lff) 65-26, 66-2-6; = Erov 65-24." Cocholyn, that is Cûchulinn, is Llywelyn ap lorwerth, p. 115. I do not propose to tax the reader's patience (or my own) with a detailed examination of these absurdities.
The reconstruction of Taliesin's biography is perhaps as remarkable as anything in the book. " I quit the question of authorship ", we read, p. xxix, " to summon the poet to tell his own story ". Tliis theatrical utter- ance represents the editor's attempt to express vividly, and thus to communicate to his readers, the illusion under wliich he himself labours, — the illusion, namely, that when he is quoting his own translation of his own sophis- ticated text, it is Taliesin that speaks.
The first item connects hiin with a border settlement.
I played at Llychwr — I slept at Pnlford, i'6-8.
Pnlford is situated five miles south of Chester on the road to Wrexham. To the North of Pulford js thetownship of Lache. The Enghsh Dialect Dictionary defines Lache as " a pond, a pool, a swamp," etc. This too is the meaning of the "Welsh Llychwr. Now every chihl's " sleeping place " is liis lionie, and his "playground" is usuaüy near, as Lache, or Llychwr, is to Pulford (p. xxx).
102 Taliesín.
In the " Corrections ", p. xlvii, this is to be amended
thus —
The rhyme suggests Llychfforb for Llychwr, and topography confirms it, for the English of the emendation is Lache Lane. Lache means "a pool, ditch, deep cart-rut'", etc. Now what playground can be imagined more delightful to a boy than a lane abounding in ruts fìlled with water "r The lane runs, etc.
There are boys and boys, no doubt; speaking for niyself, puddles awaken no joy£ul memories in me. But all this about Taliesin's being born at Pulford and delighting in puddles is derived from a hopeless misunderstanding' of the following short couplet :
Gwaryeis yn llychwr, I played in the daytime,
Kysceis ym porffor, 26-8. I slept in purple.
The name of Pulford is written Porford in Breuddwyd Rhonabwy, E. B. Mab., p. 144 ; and as the place is near Chester, it was perhaps inevitab]e that Dr. Evans should jump to the conclusion that porffor in the couplet was a mistake for Porforh. At first he was satisfied with Llychwr—the rhyme did not matter ; but then it occurred to him that if this were changed into Lhjchfforö it would correspond better to Lache Lane, and then the rhyme did matter. And now observe " the ' Art of Lubrication ', or, so to sp6ak, ' greasing ' the descent from the Premises to the Conclusion "•.' Taliesin slept at Pulford— that is absolutely all the text says on that point, even if we admit that 'porffor is Pulford ; it is quoted as if it meant that he slept there regularly ; thus we are led smoothly to the first conclusion, that Pulford was the bard's home (when young, for he played) ; this again is almost imper- ceptibly stretched so as to mean his original home, and "the Pulford origin of Tal." is spoken of as proved, p. 102. Thus by suffixing a mere -(/, and adding a Httle
' Edwin A. Abbot, Philomythus, 1891, p. 213.
Talicsin. 103
meaning at eacli step, the editor believes tliat from words which uiean ' I slept in purple ' he has legitimately drawn the eonclusion that Taliesin was a native of Pulford. It is not cunning, but niere inability to handle words with accuracy; a plain examp]e of this is seen in note 44'2, p. 102, wbich spealís of " Tal. being formerly a native of the district " : the italics are his own, and show that he wrote " native " without the least thought of what it means. Now let us exannne tlie couj)let and its context. The rhyme is -or, which is continued in tlie next couplet, as is often done in these poems. The -wr of llychwr is a lialf-rhyme, which is called proest by Welsh prosodists, and frequently takes the place of exact rhyme in the oldest poetry. There is therefore every reason to suppose that both llyclíwr and porffor are correct readings. The meaning of Uychwr may be gathered from its compound cyf-lychwr, which, like cyf-nos and cyf-ddycìd, means ' twilight ' ; llycJiwr tlien must mean either 'night' or ' day ', ' darlcness ' or ' light ', and as it may be derived from the fertile root which gives the Latin lux, we cannot be far wi'ong in inferring that it means 'daylight'.^ Again, gwaryeis does not necessarily refer to the period of youth at all, as is proved by tlie phrase pan aeth pawh allan y chware ' when everybody went out to play ', R. B. Mab., p. llfi, or rather ' to disport ', for it is not said of little children. The meaning of our couplet, then, is that the bard at the time spoken of led a royal life ; he amused himself during the day, and at night slejìt in purple. It occurs in " Cad Gobeu ", one ot' the so-called transforma- tion poems, which are the last in whicli most people wouhl
^ The prefix *kom- (cügiiate witli L:itin com-) is regularly cyf- before n- and /-, as in ct/f-nos and ci/f-/t/c/iirr: but ci/f-ddydil nuist lie due to false analogy (for *kom-il- beconies *kon-(ì-. and ultiniately cyn-n-), and is therefore necessarily a late furuiation. It seenis to be a forra that sprang iip to take the place of cyf-lychur.
104 Tahesin.
thinlc of looking for biographical details. The poem besrins " I have been in manv f orms ", and goes on to name them : " I have been a swoi'd ... I have been a tear in the air ... I have been a word . . . a book . . . a bridge . . . a coraele . . . a drop in a shower . . . a sword (again) . . . a shield . . . a harpstring ", etc. There follows the fanciful account of the trees fighting in the battle of Gobeu or the Forest ; then, a statement that he was not born of father and mother, but created out of fruits and ílowers (see above p. 73) ; he was called into existence by the spell of Math, by the spell of Gwydion. He is a fine poet. He has lived royally. That is the context. The next two couplets are :
neu bum yn yscor I have been in a fortress
gau dylan eil mor, With Dylan Eil Môr,
ywg kylchet ym perveb On a couch in the centre
rwwg deulin tej'rneb. 26 9 Between the knees of kings.
Dylan Eil Môr is Dylan Eilton of the Mabinogion, con- nected with the sorcerers Gwydion and Math, who are purely mythological personages, — degraded gods, in fact ; all three are related to Dôn, the Welsh equivalent of the Irish fZea Da^iM or Dorm, 'the goddess Danu' or ' Donu ', the mother of the Irish gods, the tùatha dë Danann. And out of this mj'stical-mythical stuff Dr. Evans derives the information that Taliesin was a native of Pulford ! To proceed, we are next told that
His second item shews him a bard.
Ceint, er yn vychan, I sang, though I was httle, in the
yng"hâd Godeu-vrig fight at the north end of Godeu,
rhag Prydein Wledig. 2320. against Prj'dein's ruler. ii, 29'25.
In 1121 Meredyò ap Bleòj'n sent young bowmen over the borders to Powys to intercept Henry I in a wihl woody height
Note that the bard is youthful ; that Pulford is not far
oíì'; and that he is affainst the Powysland ruler (pp. xxx-i).
This quotation comes from the same poem. The words
Taliesin. 105
are wrenched from their context, and a word, Äreẅií, is omitted without notice. The full passage is as follows :
nyt mi wyf ny gan, I am not one who sings not,
keint yr yn bychan ; I have snng since I was little ;
keint yng kat godeu biic I have sung in the battle of tree-tops
rac prydeiu wledic. Befure the Gwledig of Britain.
The first point to note is that two prepositions are wrongly
rendered by our editor. The use of er ì/íi for er/t/ moà yn
' though I was ' is modern journalistic Welsh, imitating
Eng-lish though ; in idiomatic Welsh er yn means ' since I
was '.' In a poem attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym in the
appendix of the 1789 ed., p. 498, the poet says (of
Morfudd), " I have set my affection on her er ynfah, since
I was a boy " ; in the Bardd Gwsc, p. 28, we read " agos
er yn hlant {;yn misprinted ein), ahnost since they were
children"; and Hugh Maurice, in Eos Ceiriog, i, p. 313,
uses the very words of our text :
Goreu 'i fuchedd er ynfychun, \
' Best conducted since he icas little,'
speaking of a man in years. As we have seen more than once, Dr. Evaiis lacks the instinct for these things : so undeveloped is his feeling for the genius of the laiiguage that he mistakes an old idiom for modern journalese. Next, rhag is rendered by him " agaiust " ; and the chief point of his application of the quotation rests on this mistranslation, which is not only given the emphasis of italics, but is further specially insisted on in a footnote. And yet the very words heint rac (33*6, 34*5), ' I sang before ', are rendered correctly by him on pp. xxv and XXXV. Why does keint rac, which meant ' I sang before,'
' The modern er yn iexianc 'thougli young' is, like the niodern pan yn ieiianc ' when yuung', a slavish rendering of the English ; but the literal equivalent of the idiomatic er yii ieuane, namely ' since young', is not English.
I o6 Taliesin.
on p. XXV, and means 'I have sung before ' again on p. XXXV, so emphatically mean ' I sang against ' on p. xxxi ? Simply because ''against" is what the theory requires here ; and the editor is free to follow its requirements because he is not bound by any precise conception of the usao-es of the word. The mistranslation of these two prepositions, with the omission of the first line and the second keint, falsifies the whole meaning of the passage, which, it is scarcely necessary to add, has nothiug to do with Henry I or the Powysland ruler.'
Again, when Taliesiu was
a slender twig, inexperienced in craft, 7*15, he went to a congress of the bards where he was tested :
I was sifted in every faculty by the Brython bards, 71 3. The use here of the adjective Brython suggests that he himself was not a Brython. If he was a native of Aeron, this would be true geographically, and might be ethnologically (p. xxxi).
The argument rests on the second quotation. Turn-
ino- to 7-13, I fìnd that the words have been evolved out
of the obscure opening lines of " Buarth Beirdd " ; the
text is —
Ed ympeilli & ympwyllat.
y veird brython prydest ofer.
ymryorsseu ymrj'orsed.
The first and third lines are miintenigible. The second, which seems to be a comment on the first, means ' To the bards of the Britons (it is) inane poetry ' ; apparently, therefore, the first is a quotation. It is certainly re- miniscent of a line in one of the additional stanzas of the
' Pryänn wìedic is probably the I)nx L'ritamuarum, if Rhys is right in supposing G;c/ediff to be the Welsh rendering of both Comes and Du.v{Celt. Brü.t 1884, p. 104). The title does not seem to have 8urvived into the sixth century— Maelgwn is not styled a gyledir/ (LUiyd, Uist. of Wales, 100, 128 fn.). The line is probably to be classed with Bmn . . . ffan Dylan, etc, and as mythical as the Battle of the Forest itself.
Taliesin. 107
Book of Aiieirin : eàili edili ui imilhjat 37*4. The third may be an expansion of ' inane poetry ' ; but emendation is too hazardous to be useful. To Dr, Evans, howeyer» the triplet is plain ; he amends it thus, II, p, 6 :
Ev y'm peillied ym'hob pwyllad, gan veirb Brython, a'r cawceiniad, Pryhest over ynfj'hyicrysse^ : A'm rhyor'seif a"m rhyor'seh
and gives the following translation, II, p, 7 :
I was siîted iii ei-eì-y faculty by the Brython bards, and the croicned minstrel. Poetising is futile in competition ; My competitor, however, chairs me.
The italics denote the editor's insertions ; in the text the}' are his own ; in the translation they are mine, because he has not been candid enough to own them. These italics furnish the only comment which it is necessary to pass on the version, But attention may be called to two points. First, the preposition hy in the editor's quotation, which gives it the meaning required for his purpose, is his own insertion, Secondly, the word Brython on which the argument is founded is, in all probability, a misreading. To show this I must quote the fourth line :
digawn gofal y gofan gorb,
that is, ' Sufficient care to the smith (is his) hammer', meaning, no doubt, ' Let the cobbler stick to his last '. The line is quite simple, and the editor understands it' ; but he cannot keep his fingers off a plain line like this.
^ Except that he inserts "young" before "smith'" because he thinlís that the -aìi of yofan is a dimiinitive suffix. Ile is clearly ignorant of the fact that yofan is the full form of the word, repre- senting the stem, which is seen in the plural yofcin, in the nanie Gofann-on, in the Irish genitive yobann, in tlie Gaulish (iobann-icnos, etc.
I o8 Taliesin.
To satisfy some perverse whim of his own he turns it inside out, thus (II, p. 6):
I'i' govan goval bigawn gorh.
He upsets the metrical balance of the verse because he has no notion that such a thing exists. The cynghanedd in the original is of the form technically called hraidd gyjfwrdd, which consists in two words with similar initial syllables being set in the middle of the line, so that the rhagivant, or caesura, comes after the first, and divides the line into two equal, or approximately equal, parts ; thus {Myv. 143a) :
Gwalchmai ym r/e/wir | gplyn y Saeson.
The verse under consideration is an obvious example :
digawn gof-A\ | y (/o/an gorò.
Dr. Evans's lop-sided caricature of the line betrays his complete igiiorance of its structure ; he had clearly no inkling- of it. Now line two is an imperfect example, which has very much the appearance of having been mutilated by a scribe wlio, like Dr. Evans, had no ear for cynghanedd. And, when one comes to think of it, heirS Brython is a somewhat odd expression' ; surely, the read- ing must be heirS Frydein as in 48-21. By making the substitution the line is suddenly transfig'ured :
y veirb Prt/dein \ prydest ofer.
It should be noted that 'prydest is the correct f orm of this word ; prySest, which Dr. Evans writes, is a modern mis-
1 The normal form wonld be òetrS o M-ython as in 64'2, as we say seiri 0 Saeson, not seiri Saeson ; bnt the o would niake the line too long. Phoyf Brython 72-23, 73-] 8, and pobl Brython, 77-13 'the nation of the Britons' are diíFerent, the genitive here being the genitive of apposi- tion, as in tref Lundein, etc. Brython is niit an " adjective" as stated by Dr. Evans.
Taliesin. 109
reading of the medieval spelling.' In all probability, tlien, the author of this line, whoever he may have been, never wrote the " adjeetive " Brython, on which Dr. Evans, by manipulating a preposition, founds his argument that Taliesin was not a Briton. The editor continues —
His parentage, like that of Myibin, is wrapt in mystery ; it might be nnlcnown even to himself. Hence the play of fancy as to his magical origin.
'Twas not of father and mother that I was born.
I was created, after a new fashion, from nine constituents :
From the essence of f ruits ; from primrose flowers ; . . 25-21 .
We are now back again in the transformation poem " Cad Gobeu " ; and this is the interpretation of its mysticism.
A passage like that suggests that Taliesin sought to escape, in imagination, from a cruel experience. His father might have been a bird of passage— say a Norman baron : his mother might have perished, or abandoned him before memory began ; thus leaving him utterly forlorn in the world, without kin or the knowledge of kin (pp. xxxi-ii).
So it is not the mystery of man's existence that the poet essays to express, but the mystery of his own parentage. Taliesin was a bastard ! His father might have heen a ílitting Norman baron ; his mother might have abandoned him. As deductions from the evidence, it will be agreed that these suggestions are preposterous. I prefer to say nothing further on this matter.
Taliesin chides the monks for their praise of poverty, according, 'of course, to the editor's translation of a passage which he does not understand. As for Taliesin himself —
i It seems to be a formation like ylodd-e^t, derived from the stem of pri/du, -to compose poetry '. In the Williams MS.. in whicii medial (and fìnal) b is regularly written t, this word appears as prydest, 4(Ja, 42a. In cynyhanedd we tind pryáest corresponding in consonantism io pryi.\er in Myv. 179a 28, Aná pry>\ein, lölb 7.
I lo Taliesin.
He was worse than poor. The fate of St. Patriclc overtqok him ; he was capturecl, and set to herd (?) swine :
I was a slave of Kynbyn ; I was a herd besides. 26-2]. Kyn);yn was the father of Blehyn, the founder of the historical house of Powys. "Kynvyn" here must be the eponymus of Meredyh ap Blehyn, who died in 1132.
Here again tlie quotation is from " Cad Gobeu ". It
occurs in one of the transformation passages ; I give it
with the two preceding lines, in order that it may he seen
in its setting :
bum neidyr vreith y mryn. I've been a specliled snake on a hill ;
bum gwiber yn llyn. rve been a viper in a lake ;
bum ser gan gynbyn. I've been a bi]lhook (cutting ?);
bum bwystuer hyn. I've been a pointed beast-spear.
Dr. Evans, of course, quotes his own translation of his own text (II, p. 38), in which spa- ' billhook ' has heen changed into an imaginary serio from tlie Latin sewus,^' and hwystuer, = hwyst-ver ' beast-spear ', a natural and likely compound to denote a hunting-spear, has been changed into hwyst-ner ' beast-lord ', an absurdly improb- able designation for a herdsman. He changes gynhyn into Gynvyn, though h and v were not easily confused in writing before the fourteenth century. The form cynhyn occurs in a chinhin in the Black Book 95*8 ; Arthur con- tends at Mynydd Eidyn against cynhyn ' dog-heads ', and " they fell by the hundred before Bedwyr " ; it seems to denote a race." It may of course be an error in our text ;
' Latin seriucs Mjould give serw in Welsh, so that this might have . been a word for 'slave' in Welsh. But " might-have-been is not evidence " ; and no evidence is adduced, not a single reference is siven, to show that such a word exists.
2 Apparently a vague recollection of the fabulous Cynocephali, Augustine, Civ. Dei, xvi, 8. The Irish equivalent is conchend. The race of Partholon were slain by Concheind 'Dogheads' {Proc. Royal Irish Aead., xxviii, sec. C, p. 125). Later iii the same MS , the race of P. were destroyed " by plague " ib. 126. In Irische Te.rte i, p. 217, conchend is used f or a spear (or battle-axe ?) : " he shakes the dog- head {conchend) of battle slaughter in f ront of his sword ",
Talíesiìi. 1 1 1
in that case the most probable emendation is &er gijnhyn 'cutting- billhook', as h and h were easily confused ; the form occurs as a plural noun, cynhynneu, in the Eed Book, col. 1151, 1. 35, and the sin<^ular of this became later cinnin *a snippet'.' Lastly, Dr. Evans changes hyn to ar hipi ' upon this ', which he renders "besides". The lines are of five and six syllables, and five seems to be the standard length. The fourth line is of five, hwum being a dissyllable, of which hum is a medieval contraction. As r + rh sounded like r + h, hwystver hyn is very probably for hívystver ryn ' pointed speár';- cf. gwaewaur rrinn, B.B. 46-3. In any case the leading words are all clear, and of the tenor of the passage there can be no possible doubt ; the bard has been a snake and a viper, a billhook and a hunting'-spear. We need not at the moment inquire into the meaning of this mysticism, but it is clearly all of a piece ; yet the editor supposes the second couplet to be autobiographical. He substitutes for the word for ' bill ' a supposititious word for ' slave ' ; and he replaces the word for a ' hunting-spear ' by an incredible compound ' beast-lord ', which he renders "herd". He quotes his version of the text thus garbled without giving- any indication of the changes made ; in fact, the reference he gives is 26*21, as if the version represented the original text and not the garbled text of II, 38. And this is what he calls summoning the poet to tell his own story.
^ Cynhynn may be from *kon-ten(I-, in which tend- is the Arj-an root meaning 'to cut ' seen in its o-grade in the Latin tondeo. The root occurs in Irish : ro-s-temd ; see WaUle s.v. tondeo. For cy- becoming ci-, cf. ilialectal cimint. The final -ym {irom-nd-) is require(l by the rliynie ; and cymyn is ruled out. as it has -n; cymynn ' to cut '.
- Prohably rhynn in f/waeu-a^tr rrinn is cognate with Iri-';h rind 'point' of a spear, etc, and tlie verb rindaim '1 stick, thrust ' ; also Welsh rhynnaf ' I thrust, push ' ? The expression appears in our text as Gwaywaicr ryn, 4410; the initial /- stands for rh-.
I 12
Taliesin.
Taliesin's bondag'e, thus demonstrated by citing as the
bard's own words a text iu which improbable " emenda-
tions " take the place of lucid readings and pervert the
plain purport of the passage, is of course treated by the
editor as an estahlished faet. Taliesin may have learnt
Welsh " in servitude, as the youthful Patrick learnt
Irish " !
Like him too he ran away, 27"6.
I wandered in the earth beforel touched Hterature(p. xxxii).
" I wandered in the earth " is proof positive ; it cannot
mean anything but " I ran away from bondage" !
Out of Powys he steps into Llwyyenyb, & sings:
Mine its wikl places ; mine its cultivated parts . . . 65'13.
The gwyleô and llareS of the oris^inal do not mean " wild
places " and " cultivated parts " ; but really one cannot
discuss all these mistranslations. Taliesin sings — com-
poses a finished poem in a language just picked up as a
" (swine)herd "; it is all so delightfully probable.
In Llwyvenyb he was not only beyond the power of Powys, but once tnore under his native lord, Ranulf, the earl of Chester, for whom he has a good word to say.
ScmuM did not molest his enemies
until Urien arrived one day in Aeron. 61'8.
The manuscript does not mention Banulî, and says the exact opposite about Ulph : " when Ulph came to oppress — yny doeth vlph yn treis ". The "good word" is the editor's own, who changed yny ' where, when ' into ny 'not'. Then Owein Gwynedd appears on the scene :
Taliesin felt, as all feel, towards an invading stranger and, it is clear, opposed the power of Gwyneb in song or action (cp. n. 66). But he soon changed his attitude, & wrote a poem to propitiate the new lord of Llwyvenyb. . . . He was received into favour, and never had prince a more loyal bard than Taliesin proved to the lord of the West (p. xxxiii). ThusTaliesin was a renegade Englishman, a Herr Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose Kaiser was Owein Gwynedd !
Taliesin. 1 1 3
I refrain from comment because it is clear tliat the imputation is as fatuous as it is odious.
" Such, in outline ", writes the editor, " is the life of the bard ". But some further details are added, which it would be waste of space to follow point by point. The way in which the poem which relates howTaliesin released • Elphin from Maelgwn's prison is treated, p. xxxv, reminds one of the " testimonj " of the Chirk Codex. Maelgwn is stated to be the son of Owein Gwynedd, and is identified with Elphin, the latter name being an eponym. " To contend with Maelgwn — amrysson d MaelgiV7t" is rendered " to take the part of Maelgwn " ; the name Elphin is suppressed to disguise the absurdity of the identification ; and the order of two passages is inyerted to suggest that the former is consequent on the latter. But one other point must be noticed because of the light it throws on the editor's mentality. Taliesin falls out with the bards. He wins the chair, and the bards are envious.
I won the chair, and am the bard of the Hall.
The bards are highly incensed — loud their anathemas.
The original of this couplet is :
wyf barò neuaîì, wyf kyw kadeir : digonaf y vehh Ihifar llesteir, 8'17,
which means, ' I am the bard of the hall, I am the
occupant {civis) of the chair : I cause the bards to keep
silence ', literally 'I cause the bards hindranceof speech'.'
Dr. Evans, not comprehending the meaning, sees in
llesteir ' hindrance ' an imaginary llysceir (II, 10), which
he understands as " anathemas ", and thoughts crowd
upon hiui :
As it was in the days of Taliesin so it is still : if a man excel in any direction, were it only in industry and single-niinded
^ The incident iu the Tale of Taliesin (Lady Guest's Mal/. iii, 837) of Maelgwn's bards being unable to utter anything but " blerwm " iii the presence of Taliesin^ seems to be derived from this verse.
I
114 ' Taliesin.
devotion to dnty, there is iio calnmny too foiil for envy to whisper by tliose who wander upon ev^ry high hill, and play nnder every green tree (p. xxxiv).
It is ininecessary to clwell on the confused phraseology (" for envy to whisper by those ") of this efPusion, nor am 1 concerned with its application, and the delicate way in which the slanderers are repaid in kind.^ I wish only to point out that it bears no relation to anything in the text, but arises f rom the editor's own ideas read by him into a verse which he did not understand. He proceeds thus :
Taliesin revenged himself by studying the books of the bards,
their round, and all that pertains to them.
They bring forth whut is in theni : Wliat is in theni, that is what they are. What they are on tonr, that is their true character. 20'22.
The origiual text is subjoined with a translation :
Ystyrywyt yn llyfreu It is recorded in books
pet wyiit pet ffreu, How many winds, how many streams,
pet fFreu pet wynt, How many streams, how many winds,
pet auon ar hynt, How many rivers in their courses,
pet auon yh ynt. How many rivers there are.
What happened is this : fet ' how many ', the British cognate (not derivative) of the Latin g-íioí, used to this day in Breton, with a singular noun as in our text — a word familiar to every Keltic scholar, was unknown to Dr. Evans ; this is seen from his note " 22-1 pet . . . pet . . . pet ? cler(ical) er(ror) íor poh ", p. 88. Here he took it for hetìi ; and pet avon, ' how many rivers ', he made into heth a vont, " what they are ", II, p. 18. The rest follows, but not without the most violent transmogTÌfica- tion of the text, including the interpolation of a whole line composed by the editor himself, and rendered by him " of the bards, their round, and all that pertains to them ", II, p. 17. The evidence which he adduces turns i See Jeremiah, ii, 20 ; iii, 6,
Taliesin. 1 1 5
on the words wliicli he has insertecl; he bring-s forth what is in him, not what is in the text. And what is iu him, that is what he is : Taliesin inyeig'liing against the bards is Dr. Gwenogyryn Evans denouncing '• the Eiste8vodic spirit " (Bruts, p. xvi), or unburdening his mind on the subjeet of " the Welsh Atomist ", who " cannot construe a do7,en lines of earlj Welsh poetry, nor write a modern dozen with decency " (II, p. xiv). As the amended text is for the most part the product of the editor's imagina- tion, it is natural that it should breathe his sentiments and gibbet his pet aversions. The Taliesin whom he sees in it and behind it is liis own shadow — a distorted shadow one is ghid to admit, for Dr. Evans is not, like liis Taliesin, a coward and a renegade.
Any detailed examination of the " amended " text and translation, and of the notes, is altogether out of the question here. Mr. Ifor Williams, in his review of Vol. II, started to note the errors in the emendation and rendition of the late and comparatively easy poem " Armes Prydein ", and after filling, in small type, more than six of the large pages of Y Beirniad (1916, pp. 207-214), had to desist half way through. I can only deal in a general way with Vol. II and the notes, citing a few characteristic mistalces. These have been chosen almost at random ; I have not looked for them, but have nierely marlced them in pencil in my working copy when I have had occasion to refer, for tlie purposes of the above paragraphs, to these portions of the work. Nothing could induce me to undergo the ordeal of systematically reading through the volume of " amended " text and " translation ".
In the first place, Dr. Evans is ignorant of the mean-
ing of a large number of old words which are familiar to
Welsh scholars, and most of which were made out long
ago. Many of his " emendations ", as we have seen, are
i2
1 1 6 Taliesin.
due to tliis ; anything not immediately intelligible to him- self he has at once altered, without attempting to under- stand it as it is. He re-writes a whole passage, dragging in the bards and "what they ai*e ", instead of trying to discover the meaning of fei, which he would have found in Pughe, or in Richards, who says, " Pet, aä. How many ? iu Taliesin. So in Arm(oric) . . . Vid. ex. in Dôs ", or in Dr. Davies : " *Pet, Qnot. apud Tal. vid. Ex. ẃ Dos ". The example is pet dos 22*1; so here is our editor's difficulty solved in the 17th century. Whenever an old~ word has the same form as a modern one, he always takes it for the latter ; llys ' plant, herb ', the old singular of llìjssev, ìs mistaken b\' him for Uys 'court'; so he changes plagatut lys to " Pryderi lys ", II, p. 62, and asserts, for no other reason than his own ignorance, that plagaiot is a " bogus form ", n. 70*7 ; plagawt lys appears to be the fungus from {y ar) which Gwydion formed his magic horses and trappings, W. B. Mab., col. 85. He mistalces hlawt ' blossom ', the old singular of hlodeu, for hlawt ' flour ', and renders it " pollen ", II, p. 37 ; the two words are not connected, see my Welsh Grammar, pp. 76, 77. He mistakes gwyS 'wild' (= Irish fîad, Fick-Stokes, 265) with gwýô 'trees' (= Irìshfid, ib. 280), a distinction both of sound and sense known to Pichards, and to Dr. Davies (1632); and consequently changes what he supposes to be gwyhviltt into hwystviled, II, p. 174, because " g%oyh-v(ú)Qà with coed is tautological ", n. 29'13. He confuses AJadws ' due time, (it is) time ' (known to Eichards and Davies), with mad ' good ', and renders it "It is well ", II, p. 9. He confuses canìiwr '100 men ' with the New Testament canioriad, and renders it "centurion", II, p. 39. He mistakes hylchet 'bedding' (from Latin culcita, as shown by Rhys, Welsh Phil., 1879, p. 115) for cylch ' circle ', and renders it " borders ", II,
Taliesin. 1 1 7
p. 39. Llad ' liquor ' (= Cornish Zaá) was not understood
by the old lexicographers, but has long been known to
modern scholars (e.g., Loth, Yúc. Vieux-Br€t., 1884, p. 171),
and is given by Walde as a derivative of Latin latex ; our
editor renders it " wafer " in II, p. 27, 1. 2, and " good "
at the bottom of the same page ; on p. 149 llestreu llad
' drinking vessels ' is rendered *' goodly vessels " ; this is
understood as " ships ", aud the text is " amended "
accordingly. Meinoeth or meinyoeth ' midnight ', from
Latin mediâ nocte, was not made out until recentlj ; but
the clue to its meaning is to be found in our text. The
reference is given in my Grammar, p. 93 ; but Dr. Evans,
instead of following it up, merely says "Prof. J. M. J.
falls mto a strange er(ror) here ", n. 68*13, his own idea
being that the word in this passage should be " meingoeth ".
The passage which determines the meaning occurs in the
poem on the "Plagues of Egypt ", and reads (45'6) :
T>ecvet^ veinyoeth mwyhaf gwynyeith ar plwyf kynrein,
that is, 'Tenth (plague), at niidnight the greatest venge-
ance on the ruling people', an obvious reference to "About
midnight wiU I go out into the midst of Egypt : and all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die ", Ex. xi, 4-5.
Dr. Evans, not knowing that veinyoeth makes a perfect
proest witli gwynyeith, and that proest is used instead of
rhyme in these poems, came to the conclusion that a great
lacuna existed here, and proceeded to fill it thus (n. 45*7) :
Degved meini coeth roed inni yan Egiptiein
Iha mabiceith, mwyhav gwynyeith ar blwyv Cynrein.
Thus meinyoeth ' midnight ' becomes ^'meini coeth " ! Meini
is as old as the Welsh Bible ; but is not used by the early
modern, not to speak of medieval, bards. The medieval
plural is mein. Meini coetìi ' refined stones ' is a good
' vet omitte<l in the MS., by the scribe's running on from the re of vet to the ve of veinyoeth in passing on to a new line.
Ii8 Taliesin.
exainple of the hopeless bungling of these "emendations" : coeili^ ' refined (by fire) ', f rom Latin coctus, is used of metals, not of stones (mein). Boed inni is slipshod niodern Welsh [roed for a roed) for what wouhJ be in the twelfth century an roSed. Eyiptiein is a form invented by the editor himself. Mahweith is the missing word, to rhyme with gwynieith, and to mean, somehow or other, 'slaughtei^ of sons ' ! Can anything more helplessly futile be imagined ?
The " amended " text bears witness on every page to ignoi'ance of the history of the language : medieval forms, spurious modern forms, dialect and even slang words, jostle each other in the most grotesque confusion. The traditional form hriallu 25'23 gives place to hriall II, p. 36, a bogus nineteenth century form. Eièot ti, II, p. 38, is not older than the late fifteenth century ; the medieval form is íew.' Y WeryS, II, p. 6, for " the Ocean " is modern newspaper Welsli. Hwé, II, p. 72, is the South Walian colloquial corruption of hyweS. Godrev, II, p. 22, is a spurious modern form coined by the editor himself ^ and is similar to the common mock-literary hŷv, which he also uses, n. 25*9; the words are godre aiid hy, the former from the root ^tregh- (as in Greek rpé^w), the latter from tlie Keltic *segos, the fìnal lenition of g disappearing in Medieval Welsh. The medieval arogléuaf, 79*16, stiU retained as ogléuaf in North Wales dialects, is replaced by the modern artiöcial arúglav in the " emendation " in n. 79'14. Broled, II, p. 92, substituted for molet, is formed by adding tlie medieval verbal ending -et to tlie
^ " Mebyant, val y niae meu, teu, eiSaic", says the Red Book Grammar, col. 1124. In the late fìfteenth and sixteenth centnry this series of possessive adjectiyes was re-formed as ei8"f, eioot, eiSo ; and Dr. Evans uses eì'^ot in an " emendation '' of a twelfth century text.
^ The usual modern false spelling of ffodre is godrau.
Taliesin, 1 1 9
stein of tlie modern sliingy hrolio 'to brag', which doubt- less comes froni the English hrawl.^ Rhonc is a dialectal borrowing of English ranîc 'utter'; the explanation of "ronc wleS ^ ü ' swag ' feast ", n. 13-14, is that Pughe gives rhonc the meaning "a swag " to correspond with rhonca, and Dr. Evans mistook Pughe's " swag " for thieves' slang. Gtuarogaeth, II, p, 172, is a late corruption of gwr-ogaeth ' hom-age '. Gan nad pioy, II, p. 24, is a recent senseless corruption of the South Walian gynnag ■pwy for hynnag pivy, a curious late inversion of pivy hynnag ' whoever ', see Silvan Evans's Dictionary s.v. cynnag. The correct ceneu of tlie original is replaced in this text by the late cenaio (II, pp. 80, 116) fabricated out of the plural cenaivon (properly canawon) in ignorance of Welsh phonetic law, and in defiance of tlie spoten form, which everywhere represents the standard form ceîieu.' Athraw is a similar fabrication from the plural athraxvon ; the medieval singular is invariably athro, see references to twenty examples in my Grammar, p. 108. But Dr. Evans sees the bogus athraw in Athraw ydygen 42"6, which he changes to Athraw yn'Ygen, and renders "a preceptor in Dygen ", II, p. 192, thereby raising difficulties for himself, which need not detain us. Wliat then is the explanation of the Athraw of the original text? The answer is simple : in medieval manuscripts proclitics like a and y are generally joined to tlie words that follow them ; and the phrase in question, divided into its com- poneut words, is A thraw y Dygen. ' and beyond Dygen ', without the alteration of a single letter. Any competent
^ Tliere is a brolet in the text lower down, 4o'21 ; this is an adjective conipounded of hro aiid Ued, aiid doubtless nieaning ' of wide dominions '.
^ Final -eu becomes -e or -a in tlie dialecls; final -aw liecomes -o. The relation between the sg. and pl. in ceneu, canawon is the same as that in llcidr, lladron ; see my Gram , p. 212, Note.
ì 20 Taliesin.
Welsh scholar would read it so ; but lest there should remain the faintest shadow of a doubt, it may be stated that the same geographical expression is found in fuller and absolutely explicit form in the poetry of the Red Book : ac o^r hi draw y Dygen, Skene, F.A.B., ii, p. 277.
As with words, so with idi'oms. Old idioms are mis- understood — several examples of this have been dealt with above, see pp. 6Q, 88, 89 ; and new-fangled constructions are brought into tlie text. Thus, in Welsh, absolute clauses are introduced by a; as a mi yn vyw, W.B. Mab., col. 504; A mi . . . yn cVaros D. ap G., 1789, p. 512 ; or Paham, a mi yn disgivyl, Esai. v, 4; but in the last century a fashion arose, under the influence of English, to write' ira instead, producing- a construction which is neither Welsh nor English : tra mi yn aros,^ 'while I waiting' ! This muddle-headed neologism we, of course, find in our "amended" text : Tra mi 'm'Uêugre, II, p. 144. The preverbal relative y, which comes properly after adverbs, as in pryd y ' at the time when ', is often used by un- instructed writers after conjunctions ; and one of the first warnings given to learners of Welsh composition is not to insert it, f or example, after os ; yet in our " amended " text we find os y dygwyS, II, p. 116. The omission of the relatival a before a verb witli softened initial is unknown in Medieval Welsh, except after mi, ti, etc^ ; it probably does not occur in Dafydd ap Gwilym,^ and is rare in the
1 I say '• write " adviseclly, because in the spohcn language the old idiom with a is still exclusively nsed.
2 In the hynm-boolís of the present day this construction is íittri- buted to WiUianis, Pant-y-celyn, as Tra sercn yn y ne' . But WiUiams wrote Tr'o sercn yn y ne' , see 1811 ed., p. S67, where tr'o is a colloquial contraction of trafo. Similarlj' trwi, ib., p. 129, etc, for traficyf i.
3 And except before forms of the verb ' to be ' in constructious in which a never existed, and the leuition is analogical.
^ Contraction with a vowel occurs : Delici icnenthum, 1789 ed., p. 14, should be dehui^ a loneuthum, etc. (sandhi contraction).
Taliesin. 1 2 1
later cyîvyddau ; it is absent from the Welsli Bible, and is avoided by all Welsli prose writers of repute before tlie present generation ; it began to become common in the verse written in the free metres in the eighteenth century, Yet this elision occurs over and over again in our " amended " text, Indeed the editor himself refers to the dropping of the relative, assuming as a matter of course that it takes place in the original. and giving as an example Taliesin gan, II, p. xii, which he thus supposes to mean ' Taliesin sings '. But no Welsh scholar need be told that Taliesin gan, 59*2, means ' tlie song of Taliesin ', just as Reget iiS, 67'19, means ' the lord of Rheged '. Again, the syncopated forms 'm, Hh of the pronouns usually written fy, dy occur in Medieval Welsh onl}'^ after the monosyllables a, na, no, y, 0 ; the free use of 'm and 'th is an artificial innovation — artificial because it corre- sponds to nothing in the spoken language — resorted to by late writers of verse. We find this misuse of 'm in the text before us : a draetho'm tavawd, II, 36, ystyriawm, awen, 42. What these modernisms and solecisms show is not merely that the " emendations " which contain them are worthless, but that the emendiitor is unable to dis- tinguish not only between medieval and modern, but between good and bad Welsh.
Errors in the use and formation of verbal inflexions abound in his text and notes. The third sg. pres. sub- junctive él is taken out of the dependent clause in which it appropriately stands in 63*4, and is treated as if it were indicative, II, 114. The aorists cant and darogant are rendered as futures, " shall sing and prophesy ", II, p. 13; and the false rendering is quoted in the Introduction, p. xxvii. The verbal noun diŷ'ryd is misspelt diffrid, II, 58, and used for the third sg. pres.-fut. indicative, the proper form of which is differ. The old third sg. pres.
122 Taliesin.
subjunctiye giunech ' may do ' is altered to gicrech, rendered " he wrecks ", II, 4, and to gwnelher, II, 80 ; the former is corrected in n. 37'18,* where it is stated that gwrech " assumes a possible form gwrychu, to heap together " : how givrychu can mean " to heap together ", how that can mean "to wreck ", and how gwrech can possibly be a third sg. pres. of a " possible " gwrychu, we are not told. The old third sg. pres. subj. duwch is "amended " to duccwy, II, 46, a mis-spelling of dyccwy (cf. dycco, W.B. Mab., col. 465); but in n. 28-20 tlie form duwch is recognized, and explained as a " metath(esis) of duc-hw" ! ' A Cheneu, 60-15, is " amended " to A theirei, II, 90 ; the ending -ei ajffects no vowel or diphthong — the correct form is taerei, as every pass student knows. The old third sg. pres. indic. erlynyt is "amended" to erlid, II, 42, which in Medieval Welsh is the verbal noun only : it is not a stem of the verb — erlidiaf is a modern re-formation. In the old perfect cigleu ' 1 have heard ', ci- is the reduplication, and -gleu represents the root ^Meu- ; in our " amended " text an unheard-of passive form ciglwyd appears, II, 22, as if cigl- were the stem. Similarly it is suggested that deryê is a derivative of taro,^ 'to strike ', n, 69*9 ; the stem of iaro in Medieval Welsh is traw-, and the form meant would be trewyS. The stem of difa, 'to destroy ', is difa- itself; probably it is formed from di- íiuá ma{g), ' place ',
^ A Welsh Granunar, 1913, had appeared iii the nieantime ; Strachan in his Intr., 1909, had not discovered the form, see p. 69, Note 2. That Dr. Evans looked up the verb in the Gram. is proved by his note 26' 18.
2 For the true explanation, see Strachan, Litr., p. 69, and my Gram., pp. 339, and 113, x.
■' " Some conimitted the elementary mistake of and pave
' taraf ' as 'the pres. indic. of taro"". Ceutral Welsh Board, 6r>we/'a/ Report of E.iaminers, 1917, p. 67. Tery^ is the same school-boy eri-or as taraf.
Talíesin. 123
cf . di-le-af, ' í delete ' ; tlie a is of coursë kept throughout, or is affected to e before i, thus di-va-wys, di-va-awS, di-fa-ed, di-ve-ir, all quoted by Silvau Evans, s.v. ; but iu his n. 56-9, our editor suggests difir, " will be destroyed ", as if the steui were dif- l Following- this childish "howler" is the oracular statement that Sir John Rhys's translation of the poeni "may be assigned" "to the realm of twilight and darkness ".
To the ordinary reader phonological arguments are apt to be somewhat mysterious ; they cannot be more incomprehensible than Dr. Evans's phonological pro- nouncements are to the phonologist. For example, " It looks as if Mabin-ogion were a corrupt form of Mahon- ogion. If it were based on Mahan we should have Mehin- ogion", p. xxvii, fn. How i can come from either a or 0 ; how it would aíîect a preceding a in one case and would not in tlie other ; or rather how the editor conceives that such things can be, must remain a mystery. Again, what is known in Welsli philology as "vowel-affection" (Zeuss's "infectio") is a change in a vowel caused by a sound in the syllable that foUows it ; the only known " aftection caused by í5" is that which is caused by ö in a lost ending, as the affection of a in lleidr from the Latin latrö. But the " affection caused by ö" in Dr. Evans's index, p. 162, is as follows: '■'■Moryd is often spelt Morud, the y being affected b}' long ö ", n. 77"11. The 0 here is not long ; it is not in a lost ending ; and it precedes the vowel it is sup- posed to affect. The statement, so far as it reveals its author's understanding of the principles of the subject, is on a level with the schoolboy's " A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle ". It is the i)lain fact that Dr. Evans, when lie deals with phonetics, does not know the meaning of tlie terms he uses: ý' is an " explosive ", and so is //<, n. 6o-25. To speak of the
1 24 Taliesin.
"explosive_^" is like speaking of the '^planet Sirius" or the " metal sulphur ". He uses the sign > instead of < throughout^, and discovers, or is informed of, the diíîerence between them only just in time to paste in front of the pagfe of " Corrections ", a small slip of paper with the following legend : " For > read < wlierever it occurs ".
The ideas of Welsh metric brought to bear on the construction of the " araended " text are of the crudest. Mr. WiUiams has shown (Y Beirniad, 1916, p. 207) how 30 lines out of 58 in one poem have been altered in order to reduce the whole to a uniform length of nine syllables, although the actual lengths arrange themselves in obvious patterns. He has also pointed out (ib. pp. 203-5) that numerous rhyming words have been changed simply because the emendator was ignorant of the rules of rhyme in the oldest poetry. The rhymes which he failed to see are usual in Irish verse, and follow definite rules : the rhyming syllables end in different consonants, but they must be consonants of the same class, so that the rhyme is not a mere assonance ; thus -el rhymes with -er and -eS (voiced spirant finals), but not witli -ec (explosive final). Of these things Dr. Evans had not dreamt. We have seen above, pp. 103, 117, that Iie was also ignorant of the fact that proest (wliich Icelandic poets call " half- rhyme ") often takes the place of rhyme in tliese poems ; in loroest, the vowels of the answering syllables vary.^ Finally, his remarks on cynghanedd are on a par with his phonetic notes. He Iias never appreciated or understood this distinctive feature of Welsh poetry; he has noear for its eíîects, and therefore has never been able to grasp its principles ; the " secret of the bards", as it is sometimes called, is a closed book to him; see, e.g., p. 108 above.
1 For a detailed account, in Welsh, of 2>roesi see the Iransactions, 1908-9, pp. 24-31.
Taliesiìi. 125
Turn we tlien, as Dr. Evans would say, to palaeography, which is his subject, and in which no one will deny his proficiency. The Book of Taliesin on the whole gives little occasion for the exercise of his special skill; the manuscript, as he says, " is beautifully written, and one of the easiest to read ", p. i. Hence Skene's reproduction was a good working text; its few errors were mostly obvious, such as xí for n, or c for t. Dr. Evans's text is, of course, free from such errors ; and it contains the reading of the fragment at the end of the last page, which Skene says " is nearly illegible, only a few words beiiig distinct ", F.A.B., ii, 217. The reading, even where marked uncertain, seems correct ; and an examination of the photographic facsimile cannot but give the impression that the decipherment of the lines was a great feat. It was, of course, accomplished many years ago, tliough probably thirty years after Skene abandoned the attempt as hopeless.
Dr. Evans tells us that "the style of the writing is that of about 1275 — it certainly appears to be earlier than a MS. dated 1282. But if written by an elderly man, it might be 25 years later ", p. xliii, fn. And again, " Other manuscripts written apparently by the same hand are the ' Gwentian Code ' at the British Museum, and Geoíîrey's Brut at Mostyn Hall ", p. 81. The information con- tained in these excerpts is valuable as far as it goes ; and tlie opinions expressed will be received with deference. But by a peculiar perversity Dr. Evans hardly deigns to discuss matters on which he is entitled to speak : the first statement is huddled into a footnote at the end of the Introduction ; the second occurs in a note in small type at the end of the Text. The " MS. dated 1282 " is not even named ; the " manuscripts written apparently by the same hand " are named vaguely with no references, and
120 Taliesin.
one lias to huiit up tlie volumes of the Refort to kriow precisely what maiiuscripts are meaut (Harl. 4863 aiid Mostyn 117). In the Rejport (vol. i, p. 300) these are definitely said to be " in the sarae hand ", here they are " apparently by the same hand ". No facsimiles are given ; no grounds for tlie original opinion, or for the later modification, are stated : the matter is simply not dis- cussed. In the larger type of the Introduction we are told tliat " the Book of Taliesin belongs to the Margam school of writing-; its orthography is ' South-Walian ', while its ' hjnj' for ' yny ' staraps the scribe as a native of Glamorgan . . . Palaeogi-aphy thus teaches that our manuscript was written at Margam, by a native of the district ", p. xliii. Palaeography may or may not teach it, but the reason given is not palaeographical but linguistic, and is worthless. Dr. Evans raay have good palaeographical reasons, such as the style or certain characteristics of tlie hand, for supposing the writing to belong to "the Margam school " ; if he has, he has not disclosed them. íf the Brit. Mus. Gwentian Code is in the same hand — he seems less sure of this than formerly — it furnishes a presumption tliat the manuscript was written in Glamorgan, though not necessarily at Margam. But this is not the consideration urged ; the argument used is that " ' hjuj ' for ' yny ' staraps the scribe as a native of Glamorgan ", which proves nothing but the editor's ignorance of the fact that hyny is the old form of this word, found, for exaraple, in Llyfr yr Ancr and the W.B. Mab., Welsh Gram., p. 446. The arguraent tliat e for y points to a Powysian archetype betrays similar ignorance (see Gram., p. 16). The date is determined by a confused orthographical argument, noticed below, Avhich is based on an actually non-existent form irevbret, while palaeographical arguments are, as above stated, relegatecl
Taliesin. 127
to a footnote. Instead of a discussion of palaeogTapliical questions we have í^eneral reniarks on tlie " Scienee of Diplomatics ", and a liandsome tribute to its master — by the same.
The manuscript is one of the easiest to read. "Alas," says Dr. Evans, " it is also one of the most difficult to understand, because it is among the least faithful of transcripts," p. i. He makes the statement apparently without a thought of how it reflects on his theor}^ Taliesin, he thinks, died about 1176 ; our manuscript was written about 1275. Thus all the mutilations so elo- quently described by the editor, p. xxxvi, — " hundreds of lines .... marred in transcription ; syllables, words, chiuses, sentences, lines, . . . dropped," etc, etc, — must have taken place in the work of the " chief of bards " within a short century of his death, while the works of less famous poets, who indisputably lived in the twelfth century, such as Gwalchmai and Cynddelw, are in an ex- cellent state of preservation. The supposition has only to be stated to show how incompatible it is with common sense. " But alas ! what text has suffered like the Taliesin text at the hand of scribes," asks Dr. Evans, p. xxxvi. I answer at once, " the Aneirin text " ; and for the same reason. But what I wish to point out here is the editor's sublime unconsciousness of the fact that the question so innocently put by him knocks his theory on the head.
The detection of scribal errors depends upon meaning and construction ; errors are only suspected when the text as it stands is unintelligible or in some other way unsatisfactory. Even in such a case there need be no error ; the unintelligibility of the text may be due to our imperfect knowledge of its language, or only to the ignor- ance of tlie particular reader. Tliis never occurs to Dr.
128 Taliesin.
Evans ; what is viniiitelligible to ìiim is corrupt, and we have seen that a large number of his "scribal errors " have no other basis tlian his owii lack of acquaintance with the commonplaces of Welsh scholarship. A con- siderable proportion of the remainder of his " errors " are assumed because the text as it stands does not square with his theory : Owein ap Urien is " unintelligible ", see above, p. 87 ; Cian (the sixth century bard) is an " error " for ciawr, 11. 19'2 ; GodoSin is an " error " for gorSin, n. 61* 11 ; a Gheneu vab Coel is an " error " for a theirei i vah TJoel, II, 90 {teirei ! and Hoel, monosyllabic, for Howel iii the twelfth century!); elsewhere, Ceneu is an "error" for the recent and spurious cenaw, II, 116; a Chludwys ' Rnà the Clydemen ' is an " error " for achludyn, II, 160 ; Iwerèon is aii " error " for rhy-Soethon, ib. ; o Lydaw is an " error " for oludawg, II, 168; wyr Bryneich ' men of Bernicia ' is an " error " for i ArSunwent, II, 122 ; Jcech- myn Danet is an " error " for JSormanieid, II, 162 ; Argoet Llwyfein, " Locality and metre both wrong .... Read . . . cynrein'\ n. 60*7; etc, etc. Many passages of tlie text are, of course, unintelligible to others as well as to Dr. Evans ; the solutions lie offers of these difficulties are, to say the least, remarkable. Thus Sychediedi euroi, 74-21 : "s?/c(li)edi-edi, metatli. for yseáìc eẁi. eur oi sipeìt back- wards=ioruc, a Soutli Waliaii gloss on ei8i=ìvy ", p. 124. The form eièi seems to have been evolved in the editor's brain out of a confusion of the Welsh eièew and the English ivy ; ioruc (the S.W. dial. iortug for eièiorwg) " spelt backwards " by a niedieval glossator is a suggestion so desperately crazy that one knows not what to say; but many of the editor's other corrections, tliough perhaps less ludicrous, are inherently iiot less absurd. The " List of Scribal Errors," pp. 130-144, is a classification of tliese " emendations ", which are arranged in the alphabetical
Taliesin. 129
order of the letters supposed to be misreadings. The first in the list is aryher, 14'6, amended to 0 ryher rendered "from insubordination ", II, 163, which is obviously wide of the mark. The second is the " emendation " of the correct medieval mawr a eir 14*11 into the modern mawr 0 eir ; the editor in all his copying, has never noticed that the medieval preposition in such phrases is a (see E.. B. Mab, 7-4-28, etc. Gram., p. 401, 11. 4-6). The third is tlie "emendation" of eur ac aryant, 17'19, ' gold and silver ' into cur a gorian, which is not Welsh, gorian being a Pughean perversion of goriein, the standard form from gawr, with the same ending as llefein, wylofein, germein, etc. ; this change is suggested because the editor failed to understand a fairly easy sentence (see Beirnaid 1916, p. 214). And so on. There are, of course, numerous errors of one kind and another in the text ; and this list contains good corrections of some of them : about the middle of the fìrst column, for example, draganawl, 68"25, is obviously an error for dragonawl, which is given as the correction, though the error is more likely to be due to the anticipation of the following a tlian to mistaking 0 for a as the classification implies. But these form only a small proportion of the whole ; a large number of the " errors " are imaginary, and the bulk of the solutions chiraerical. Some knowledge of palaeography is no doubt essential for the emendation of such a text as this — knowledge, for example, of the fact that u and n are liable to be confused ; that m may be mistaken for in, ni, iu or ui', that c, t, r are frequently confounded — but the fundamental requisite is an accurate knowledge of the language, and this, as we have abundantly seen, Dr. Evans is very far from possessing. He uses the possible palaeographical permutations of letters to justify emenda- tions which can easily be proved, on grammatical and
1 30 Talíesin.
metrical grounds, to be absurd. But a large number of his emendations have not even this justification, and are therefore not included in the list; and one sometimes wonders why he thought all this juggling- with letters necessary when he can at one stroke " correct " Owein ap Vryen into Owein rhywyssid, or wyr Bryneich into i Arèun- went, and can even introduce into his text whole lines written in a blundering- travesty of Medieval Welsh, and representing nothing in the manuscript.
The most interesting, and perhaps the most important, palaeographical question connected with the Book of Taliesin is whether it contains any evidence of transcrip- tion, direct or indirect, from a copy in " Hiberno-Saxon ", or Insular, script. Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans's theory is based on the supposition that nothing in the book is older than the twelfth century, and Insular script gave place to Continental about the end of the eleventh [Y Cymmrodor, ix, 146) ; if, therefore, tlie manuscript bears witness to a prototype in the older character, the foundation of his theory is swept away. The possibility of such a thing does not seem to have suggested itself to him ; in his own domain of palaeography, as in other matters, he is blind to everything which tells against the theory. It becomes necessary, then, to examine the evidence in the text for transcription from Insular script.
The question is not an exclusive]y palaeographical one, for all the Welsh written in Insular script appears in Old Welsh orthography (see above, p. 6), which is found in the later Continental script only when the scribe is copy- ing literally or mechanically from an older document. The old hand and the old spelling go together; both belong to the earlier period, and the evidence of the one corroborates thatof the other. In Old Welsh orthography a mutated consonant is represented by its radical ; the
Taliesin. ' 131
mutation liad taken place, but tlie spelling survived from
the time when the mutated sound could still be regarded
as a soft or loose pronunciation of the radical. The sound
V (now written/) was written m or 6 according as it came
from the one or the other — this could be distinguished
by the sound being nasal in the former case ; thus the
modern nifer was spelt nimer, and tref was spelt treh. In
Medieva] Welsh the sound v was usuallv written u or v
medially (tliese were two forms of one letter), and /
finally ; thus the above words were written 7iiuer and tref.
But/appears not only at the end of a word, but at the
end of any element in a word ; thus trefred is not written
treuret but trefret, in our text, 51*25, 57'22, 58-26, and the
prefix cyf- appears as Jcyf- oftener than as hyu- ; / also
appears medially sometimes in certain other combina-
tions, such as after go-, as in gofyn, or before silent y
as in diofyn, etc. In the first half of the fourteenth
century this medial / had sometimes an added u to
show that it meant v, and not the hard / (English /),
as Jcyfuanneè, {g)ofuynny (Pen. 14, W.B. Mab., p. 286).
Now Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans argues, p. xliii, that a "form
like 'trei'&ret' is not a 'mistake' but evidence of our MS.
being written at the very beginning of a transition period.
After 1300 it was not an uncommon practice to flank
(6 and) / by a v or w when they had the sound of v ".
Why does he put " (h and) " in brackets ? Because the
statement is not true of h, wliich is not sounded v after
1300, and is not "flanked" by v to denote such sound.
Thus vh is taken to indicate the beginning of a period in
which no vh for v is ever used. Furtherniore, will it be
believed that the vh, on which the argument is founded,
actually does not exist in our MS. ? The form in the
MS. is tref- \ hret, p. 45-11-12, the tref- coming at the end
of 1. 11 and the bret at the beginning of 1. 12. It is,
K 2
132 Taliesin.
despite Dr. Evans's denial, a " raistake ". The explana- tion is as follows. A scribe was peculiarly liable to make a inistake in passing from one line to another ; this was known to Dr. Evans in 1887, for in his E.B. Mab. he marked the end of a line bj a stroke | where he found (under Rhys's guidance) " any peculiarity in the ortho- graphy ", p. xvii ; in this I followed his example in my Elucidarium, 1894, see p. xv. The Old Welsh spelling' of the word now under notice would be trehret. The scribe began to write his usual trefret, and wrote tref, vrhich brought him to the end of his line ; just before beginning the next line he instinctively looked at his copy again, and, seeing hret, transcribed it mechanically. It is more likely that the mistake is his own, comingas it does in the division of his lines, than that he was transcribing linefor lìne a copy in which it had been previously made. Thus, transcription from Old Welsh is practically certain, as there can be no other source of the h ; and its position makes it probable that the transcription was direct. Again, on p. 56-24-25 we find the following couplet :
ynamwyn gwen ystrat ygwelit gofur hag agwyr llawr lluòedic.
' Defending Gwen Ystrad there were seen A low rampart . . . and dejected, tired men.'
What is the hag which I have left untranslated ? Final g can only mean ng, and there is no hang in Welsh. I need not discuss at length Dr. Evans's attempts at emendation. In his note, p. 109, he confesses that II, 158'16 is a bad shot, and suggests " gofur hag : go*vuríhawr, feehle resistance'^ : a í is supplied, and the g is assumed to be an error for wr ! The true explanation is very simple and obvious. In Old Welsh a ' and ' was almost always written ha ; and a gwŷr ' and men ' would be spelt haguir. This is what the scribe had before him ;
Taliesin. 133
he started copying it mechanically, but when he had written Img he realised what it was, and began again, writing it this time correctly in the orthography which he used throughout — agwyr. He doubtless intended later to delete the liag by under-dotting the letters, but forgot all about it, as he often did, much to the bewilderment of Dr. Evans. That the hag is superfluous is also shown by the length of the line, which should be 8 syllables : in the other line, ystrai was a monosyllable, strat, in Old Welsh. Here then we have unmistakable evidence of transcription f rom a copy in Old Welsh spelling ; but as the scribe might be copying the mistake of a previous copyist there is no proof that the transcription here was direct.
The preposition wrth appears as gurt or giirth in Old Welsh, but in the scribe's ortliography it is, of course, wrth. In 61" 6 he began to write the Old Welsh g- of his copy, but left off before drawing the indispensable tag at the top right-hand corner, and put a dot of deletion under the unfinished letter. Dr. Evans in his diplomatic text represents the result in type thus : g(uth ; but in his notes he ignores this eloquent sUp of the pen. Did he fail to perceive its plain significance ? It shows the scribe in the act of checking himself in an error of transliteration which proves that he was transcribing the poem from a copy in Old Welsh orthography.
Sir Edward Anwyl's examples of Old Welsh spelling in the Book of Taliesin, referred to above, p. 25, are the three following, all f rom one poem, " Trawsganu Kynan Garwyn " : trefhret for trefret, which I have deaU with ; pympwnt for pymhtunt ' fifty ',' 45'14í ; and dymet for dyuet, i.e., Dyved, 45"20. There are at least four other examples in the same short poem, which takes up only twenty-one
* Dr. Evans does not know this nunieral ; he guesses it wrongly each tinie ; here it is " pytri j)iont, tìve spikes"! II, 92, 93.
5 5 2
1 34 Taliesm.
lines of the inaiiuscript : ebrifet, 45-17, for efrtfet, modern afrifed ' innumerable ' ; Myglcynnelw, 45*24 f or uyg Tiynnelw,^ in modern spelling fy ngliynnelw, — tbe Old Welsh form would be mi cinnelu, cf. mi coueidid, F.A.B., ii, p. 2, so the scribe seems to have discovered the meaning after writing the M ; Tegyrned, 45-26, for TeyrneS 'king-s' dy gynan, 46-4, for y gynan, niodern i Gynan ' to Cynan Anwyl remarlís that his three exaniples " suggest that the poem was copied from a manuscript in which the spelling was uniformly of an older type ". It will be agreed that the evidence, more fully stated, is not merely suggestive but conclusive.
To the medieval, as to the modern, reader the chief cause of stumbling in the old script lay in the similarity of the minuscule forms of r and n. The second limb of r, instead of being a mere tag attached to the top of the first was brought down to the line, or very nearly to the line, at fìrst with a curl outwards at the bottom, but this became an angle quite early, as seen in the following exampleof northern writingfrom the Book of Lindisfarne, written about 700, reproduced from the facsimile in Bihliographica, iii, p. 271 :
OftöJcIitB^mibit>enaruu
Ostendite mihi denarium
1 In his n. 4524 Dr. Evans takes Mi/ÿ to be the modern mì/g. He has copied tens of thousands of final -c for modern -y, but that has not availed to impress on his mind the fact that -e is the only possible medieval spelling. Medieval -ff means -n</ only. The fuU phrase liere is Mi/nff hynnelw o Gynan ; for the meaning, see above, p. 98 fn.
^ Other minor indications occur, such as / for II twice in A lafyn giüyarlet, 45'18 ; etc.
Taliesin. 135
A survival of an earlier form is seen in iudri, side by side with more usual forms in iudnerth and clericis in the following example taken from the names written about the middle of the ninth century in the margin of p. 218 of the Book of St. Chad, and reproduced fron) the full-sized photograph in Pi'ofessor W. M. Lindsay's Early Welsh Script, plate ii :
iudri. f. iudnerth. De clericis
There is a tendency to produce the first limb below the line ; this is niore pronounced in the r of pater in the following example from the englynion in a tenth century hand at the top of the first page of the Cambridg'e Juvencus manuscript, reproduced from a tracing of the words in tlie photograph which forms Professor Lindsay's plate vii :
dicones pater harimed presen
In later hands this is carried much further, and the fìrst stroke of r is brought down as far as thatof p or minuscule s, so that confusion of r and n is less likely in copying from a late than from an earlier type of Insular script. In some of the freer forms of the earlier writing, of wliich few samples have survived, r and n must often have been almost indistinguishable, as may be gathered from the following example of early ninth century Welsh (or, as Professor Lindsay thinks, Cornish') script, given in his plate iv :
^ The evidence is later and not conchisive ; tlie v form of u shows that it belongs in any case to the Welsh type of script.
136
Taliesin,
"YT" "r)T autem generatio sic erat Cum esset dis A I I ponsata mater eius mai'ia ioseph antequam
conuenirent inuenta est in utero habens de spiriíu sancío. ^ ioseph autcm uir eius cum esset homo iustus et nolet eam tradvcere uoluit occulte dimittere eam. Ha?c autem eo cogitante ecce angelus domini in sompnls apparuit ei dicens ioseph íìlii darid noli timere accipej-e mariam coiugem tuam quod enim in ea natum est de spirjíu sancío est pariet autem ülium eí uocabis nomen eius ies!(m ipse
Now, in the Continental hands used in the twelfth century and later, r and n differ just as much as do the r and n of ordinary modern print; see for example the frontispiece to this volume. Hence confusion of r and n, especially if it occurs repeatedlj, is a sure sign of tran- scription from a copy in Insular script. In the poem *' Trawsganu Cynan Garwyn ", in which we have found several traces of Old Welsh spelling, an example of this confusion occurs in the first line : am arllofeis ket, 45' 10, for am anllofes Jcet ' bestowed on me a gift ' ; the correct form of the word is seen in anllofet, 58-26. Another example is probably Nac, 4520, for rac. The error -eis (in arllofeis) for -es is also more likely to happen in copying from the old than from the new script. The d written for a and then deleted in hyfdarchet, 45*22, sug- gests an original with an occasional tall-backed a, like d, such as our fourth specimen above. There is thus palaeo- graphical as well as decisive orthographical evidence that
Taliesin. 137
this poem Avas transcribed from a manuscript of the Old Welsh period.
To come back to the confusion of r and n, reference has been made above, p. 89, to ì^y rannet, 68'i; for ry rannet, and to Dr. Evans's clumsy correction. We also find Ny cìiyrcìiafi gogleS, 65'10, for ry chyrchaf; and ny golychaf, 64*2, for ry golychaf; the former wî/ was corrected to neu by Dr. Evans, II, 94, a pahieographically violent emendation ; he subsequently changed his mind, and read ni, n. 64" 10, because his Cheshire Gogleb seemed a place to which his Taliesin would not wish to go. His list of scribal errors contains one good example of n for r: mawnut, 26*1, for mawrut, which, however, he takes for mawr u8 ; but u8 is hardly applicable to a sorcerer, and we have here to do with hut 'magic'. Possibly also Gnissynt, 6l-o,for gryssynt. But although he notes these two errors of n for r, and imagines others, his theory affords no explanation of them. They are mere shots, like liis emendation of magidawr, 52*20, to "mygrSawn", p. 106, which he suggests because he failed to see that Alexander magidawn was ' Alexander of Macedon '.
In 40*16 we come upon the scribe in the act of catch- ing himself tripping; the phrase is y gwin ar cwrwf ar meh ' the wine and the beer and the mead ' ; he wrote the second ar as an, but discovered his mistake x,^^%t^jnS before going on ; he put a dot under the fìrst stroke of the n to delete it, and added the tag to the second to make this into an r, as shown in the margin. The space between the n fìrst written and the m is much wider than the usual space between words ; that between the r and the m is normal ; thus the mistalce was dis- covered and corrected before the next word was written.
A phrase in which the scribe repeatedly goes wrong is ar wawd ' in song '. In Old Welsh spelling this would be
138 Taliesin.
arguaut, for iv was written u, and the initial consonantal w of wawd would appear in its radical form of gu ; and ar, not nieaning ' upon ', would be ar, not guar, cf. ar i hit, etc, in Llyfr Llan Daf, 159, etc. In the old script the phrase would appear somewhat as shown in the accom- , panying block. In our scribe's ortho-
«fí^Hninr gj-aphy it should be written ar wawt, the w being represented either by w or the equivalent symbol 0. In 19'25 he writes an góaót, copyiiig- the r as n, and not mutating the giv ; in 56'16 he writes an waót, mutating the gw this time, though his an shows that he did not understand the phrase ; in 64*2 he has an gnaót, where the first u as well as the r is mistaken f or n ; the error immediafely follows ny golychaf for ry golychaf mentioned above, the whole expression being- properly ry golychaf ar wawt ' I pi-aise in song '. But the most instructive case appears in 26*7, where the scribe writes harè harS huS an gnaót ar waót. Here one of two things happened : either the scribe discovered his error and wrote the correction ar waót intending later to delete the mistaken an gnaót, as he clearly intended to do with the hag noticed above, p. 133 ; or some previous reader of the old manuscript, beiiig at fìrst puzzled by arguaut, , aT"mMvẃr glossed it «r watvt, in the manner shown •-' m tne margm, and our scribe, as was his
wont, incorporated the gloss in his text. The first alter- native is perhaps less likely than the second, for if the scribe had discovered his error in 26-7, he would probably not have repeated it in 56*16 and 64*2. But in either case the error proves that each of the poems in which it occurs is ultimately derived from a copy in Insular script.
There is thus ample evidence, though Dr. Evans has been blind to it all, that many of the poems in the Book of Taliesin have been copied from manuscripts of the Old
Taliesin. 1 39
Welsh period. The evidence is cumulative and self- consistent; it is partly orthographical, partly palaeo- graphical, and the parts dovetail in such a manner as to admit of only one conclusion. This conclusion is further confirmed by the fact that a considerable number of glosses have been incorporated in the text. Dr. Evans recognises this as one of the sources of the manifest corruption of the textas wefind it, and imaginesnumerous o^losses where none exist. But he does not see how extremely improbable it is thatall the glossing and mixing up of glosses and text, which have undoubtedly taken place, can have come about in a work which was quite modern, its author being barely a century dead at the date of the manuscript.
When we examine Dr. Evans's list of Glosses, p. 144, we find that hardly any of them is in the least likely to be a gloss. He explains that his abbreviation ^ means " a gloss on or /or". By a " gloss f or " we are to understand that the word so described might have been a gloss on a word which is not in the manuscript, but might have heen in the scribe's copy ! Most of the " glosses " in the list are " glosses for " ; thus hetwyr 16-15 and milwyr 18"10 are glosses for " rheinyB " whicli does not exist in the manuscript, or anywhere else, as far as I know, outside Pughe's dictionary. Why is it suggested that milwyr and hetwyr are " glosses for " this bogus rheinyS ? Because the rhyme is -yS, and Dr. Evans did not know that -yr formed a good rhyme with -yB at the period when the poem was coraposed, see above, p. 124. Mynych 16*19 is a gloss " for " aml because the editor thinks that the line as it stands is too long, which is not the case. Many of the others are suggested for a similar reason : a oryw 66*13 is a gloss "for" wnaeth, in a poem of lines of irregular length ; apart from the fact tliat the a cannot
1 40 Taliesin,
be omitted, is it possible to imagine that wnaeth, one o£
the commonest words in the language, can have been
glossed (that is, explaÌ7ied) by oryw'? It may be true that
gaìvr 53' 10 should be hloeS, for the latter rhymes (so does,
or did, gwoeê, now gwaeS, a preferable emendation) ; but
even if it is, it is most unlikely that gawr was a gloss on
the comnion word hloe8, and that the gloss was written by
the copyist instead of the word in the text ; a much more
probable explanation in such a case would be that the
copyist attempted to improve the original by substituting
a more effective word. " Gloss for" is in every case an
extremely improbable hypothesis ; and thus the bulk of
Dr. Evans's list is worthless. In one or two cases where
the gloss is " on " a word in the text, as in Uiiv, 43-19,
gloss on ehoec, the suggestion is not unreasonable. But
he has seen none of the obvious cases. For example, there
are three in the first part of " Yspeil Taliessin ", p. 62.
The second line of the poem ends with the words a wellwyf
yn hertli (read welhwyf) ' what I see for certain ' ; this is
f ollowed by wir ' true ', which stands disconnectedly be-
tween the verse and the next ; it is quite clearly a gloss
on certh (from Latin certus) ; it is mutated because the yn
is implied before it — yn wir. As certh had lost the
primary meaning in which it is used in the poem, it is
just the word which we should expect to be glossed. Dr.
Evans does notunderstand it, and so changes it to gydnerth,
II, p. 112. The gloss wir he takes to be the modern
exclamation Gwir ! ' True ! ' whicli he puts at the begin-
ning of the next line. The second example occurs in tlie
line
Gwerth vy nat mawr vyb y radeu. 'ln recognition of my song great are his gifts.'
In the text y vu8 ' his bounty ' occurs immediately bef ore y radeu ' his gifts ', and is clearly a gloss on it, f or rhad
Taliesin. 1 4 1
had already come to mean ' grace ', and was used in its
primary meaning only in the stereotyped phrase yn rhad
' gratis '. Dr. Evans does not know the word nat [nâd)
' song ', although it still survives in marw-nad ' death-
song ' ; he " amends " Gwerth vy nat to " Gwyrth vy nu8 "
" A marvel is ni}'- lord ", although gwerth vy gwennwawt
'm virtue of my minstrelsy ' occurs in the most famous
stanza of the Godobin (B.A., 6'22) ; he drops the copula
vyh and renders the rest of the line " great to us the
benefit of his gifts ", admitting the gloss into the line.
The third example is in the next line
pen maon am de^ preib lydan. ' The chief of warriors awards (?) me a great herd.'
Following tlie obsolete maon is the explanatory mihoyr
' warriors ', a most obvious gloss. It would be waste of
space to discuss Dr. Evans's wild " emendations " ; of
course, he did not see the gloss. It is, however, only right
to say tliat he has suspected one gloss in p. 3 in a passage
where there are many. In his note on 3*14 he says
" Dhi=Domini has no app. place here ". In his list of
Glosses, p. 144, he gives dwvyn domini, 3*14, as a gloss.
The passage is as follows :
Ri rex gl'e am gogyfarch yn gelvyb. Aweleisti dns fortis. darogan dwfyn dni bubyant uflFern. hic nemo in por .pgenie. Ef di- Uygwys ythwryf dîis yirtutù. kaethnawt kyn- nullwys estis iste est.
Dr. Evans reads in the third line "inper .pgenio ". The page had served as outer cover for the manuscript for a long time before it was bound, and considering its state and the forms of the doubtful letters here, it is strange that Dr. Evans did not adopt the reading of the Red Book {F.A.B., ii, 304) whose scribe copied the lines five hundred years before him, when the page was clean, and ^ Cf. aììi dyro am de, 41 '20,
142 Taliesin.
the first leaf had not been torn off.^ Dr. Evans believes that dwfyn dni is a gloss ; dni (domini) certainly is, but dwfyn can only be an error for dofyò ' of the Lord ' on which domini is a self-evident gloss. In fact all the Latin words in the passage are glosses. The Welsh words arrange theinselves into four very regular lines of eight syllables, rhyming in couplets ; thus :
Ri am gogyfarch yn gelvyb
A weleist- darogan dofyS
Bubyant ufì'ern Ef dillywgwys
Y thwr(y)f3 kaethnawt ^kynnullwys.
' The King asketh me in skilful wise, Hast thou seen the prophecy of the Lord ? HelFs prey He hath set free, Its captive host He hath gathered together '.''
That is clearly the original text. A more obvious case of interpolating glosses it would be difficult to canceive. Analysis of the scribe's medley seems to show that in his copy the division of the lines and the relative positions of the giosses were approximately as follows (omitting marks of contraction) : —
rex gle
Ri am
' dns fortis
gogyfarch yn gelvyb aweleist darogan dofyb bubyant uffern din. pot.
dns Yirtutu pgeniets]
Ef dillygwys ythwryf kaethnawt
est is. iste est
(Ef) kynnullwys
^ The letters arenot marked doubtful in the reproduction,though they are obviously not certain ; and there is no note discussing the reading, and no reference to the reading of the Red Book. In the midst of the grammatical and historicai inanities of the notes we look in vain for the palaeographical notes we had a right to expect.
^ The affixed pronouns -i, -ti, etc, are generally scribal insertions, not counting in the metre.
^ The y in twryfìs non-syllabic, or silent.
* Cf . " Christus infernum despoliavit, et . . . raptos inde in paradiso collocavit",— JE'/MCtrfanwwt, 1894, p. 187.
Taliesin. 143
As ri ^ king ' here denotes the Deity, it was glossed rex gloriae ; as the glossator (unlike our editor) kne\v the twenty-fourth psahn' by heart in Latin, he added, below the line, dominus fortis, and similarly, havingf explained dofyè as domini, added dominus virtutum below the line ; est is, iste est, also an echo of the psalm, may be intended to denote that the subject of hynnullwys is also He. The gloss progenies explains the rare word nawt, which Mr. Ifor Williams has shown (without i-eference to this example) to mean ' race, nation ', etc, Y Beirniad, 1916, pp. 275-6. There was no room between the lines for a gloss on twryf, so it was inserted in abbreviated form in the margin; it was probably a reference to the biblical mention of this '•'turba magna " who had come out of the great tribula- tion (Rev. vii, 9, 14), and the reading may have been h{an)c{?]nemo din{umerare) pot{erat).'- Whatever the exact form of the original may have been, it was clearly an enigma to our scribe, who copied it mechanically and not quite correctly.' The restoration of the phrase is of less importance than the conclusion that it, like all the other Latin phrases in the passage, forms no part of the original text, and of this there can be no doubt. The sug-g'ested reconstruction of the scribe's copy seems to provide a
^ Quis est iste rex glorise ':' Dominus fortis et potens
Quis est iste rex glorise ? Dominus virtutum, ipse est rex gloriîB. — Ps. xxiv, 8, 10.
2 Post haec vidi turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat. . . . Hi sunt qui venerunt de tribulatione magna. — Rev. vii, 9, 14; Cf. " Vinctos vocat qui erant in poenis . . . quos omnes absolvit, et in gloriam duxit rex glorioe". — Elucid., p. 214.
^ His por for pot suggests that the glosses were in Continental script in which r and t are easily confused. The d of dìn. may have been blotched, like the inserted o of Eobba in our frontispiece, or otherwise made illegible. It is common in glosses to write only the first few letters of a word, whether the abbreviation is a recognised çontractiou or not,
144 Taliesin.
natural explanation of the curious positions in which we find the glosses in our text/ as the reader may see by com- paring the two; but the fact that they are glosses does not depend upon the reconstruction, for it is proved by the metre, and by the origin and application of the phrases themselves. I have dealt with the lines somewhat fully because they supply the clearest proof of the scribe's per- sistent habit of introducing glosses into the text. Dr. Evans has caught none of the allusions ; his treatment of the passage (II, 70, 71) is a truly pitiable performance which, to use his own words, "reduces one to a melancholy, thoughtful silence ".
To summarise the conclusions to be drawn from the orthographical and palaeographical evidence, we may state that it establishes the fact that many of the poems are derived from old copies probably of the ninth century. Some of the errors are explicable only under the sup- position that the scribe was transcribing directly from such an early copy ; even where the evidence is not decisive on this point, as in the case of hag agivyr 56*25, another error in the same poem, an wawt 56-15, indicates direct copying of that poem. There do not appear to be any traces of twelfth century spelling in these poems, and the probability is that the scribe copied them himself from manuscripts of the early period. He was well acquainted with the Welsh of his own day, and used a consistent conteraporary orthography into which he trans- literated what he copied. But much of wliat he copied was unintelligible to him, and he had no ear for metre or rhythm ; consequently, he transcribed mechanically and incorrectly at times, and, fancying that glosses were meant
^ Nash, who failed even to see that ffle was glorice, calls the poem a "remarkable farrago" {Tal, p. 71), which is much easier than analysing it, and making out the sense.
Taliesin. 145
to supply oraissions, he interlarded the original verses with disconnected words and bits of prose.
I have now dealt in sonie detail with the evidence, and with the use niade of it by Dr. Evans to bolster up his theory ; but sonie general questions relative to his work remain to be considered. He tells us (II, p. vi) that when he copied the Book of Taliesin he "found the ineaning- of a multitude of passages as clear as daylight" (fond delusion !) " To account for the obscurity of the other parts I conceived the theory that the 'sixth century ' work of Taliesin had been vamped in the twelfth " — /ie, Dr. Evans, conceẁed Matthew Arnohl's theory, express]y set forth and defended in his Celtic Literature.^ " I elaborated my theory on 609 folios of foolscap " — his theory ! I have to say that this is news to me ; but 609 is precise. "After a week or two I set to the work of testing my thesis at every point," — what had he been doine: when he wrote the 609 folios? What does " ehiborating " a theory mean if it does not include test- ing it at every point? — " and by degrees demolished my own superstructure to the last line ". This is very unlike anything we see him do in the present work; whenever he has to puU down, which is pretty often, he sets up something else in a frantic attempt to prop up the ram- shackle structure. " To my credit be it recorded the 609
1 " To the sixth century the universal "Welsh tiadition attaches the great gtoup of British poets, Taliesin and his fellows. In the twelfth century there began for Wales . . . another burst of poetry. . . . Mr. Nash wants to make it the real author of the whole poetry, of the sixth century as well as its own. No doubt one caunot pro- duce the texts of the poetry of the sixth century ; no doubt we have this only as the twelfth and succeeding centuries wrote it down ; no doubt they mixed and changed it a great deal in writing it down. But since a continuous stream", etc. See the rest of the quotation, and ref ., above, p. 36-7. The theory was foreshadowed by Nash ; see above, p. 21.
li
146 Taliesin.
folios of foolscap, with all their prettily turned passages, were consigned to the flames, leaving me sadder, but no whit wiser." No whit wiser, after so successfully dispos- ing of the tradition ! This is said (p. vii) to have taken place about the time when Professor Zimnier visited Tremvan, that is, about 1900. Yet in 1906, Dr. Evans in liis TMach Book speaks of Taliesin being associated with the court of Maelgwn,p. 161, and states that the sixteenth century Hanes Taliesin, which tells of " Taliesin contend- ing with the bards in the court of Maelgwn Gwyneb ", " is confirmed by our twelfth century manuscript", p. xvi. In those years he justly prided himself on having no theory. In 1909, he wrote in a footnote to p. xxiii of his White Booh : —
Nothing is more dangerous to inquiry than an attempt to bring discoveries into conformity with some system or theory. It leads to undue emphasis being laid on what supports, and undue neglect of what saps such theory or system.
It is to be regretted that he has not clung to this opinion. But one must have some sort of working hypothesis, and I do not wish to suggest that he may not have accepted Matthew Arnold's idea for such a purpose. But the romantic account of the holocaust of folios is intended to convey tbe impression that he liad examined the tradi- tional view " at every point ", and completely demolished it before conceiving his present theory. How thoroughly he had assimilated the known facts of sixth century history may be gathered from the fact that in the BlacJc Book, 1906, p. ix, he speaks of Maelgwn, who died in 547, as being present in 573 at tlie battle of Arderyò. But what we are concerned with now is that of the demolition of which he tells us there is no sign in the present work. The testimony of the Nennian memorandum is met by assertions, and the issue evaded ; the other evidence of
Taliesin. 147
Taliesin's date is wholly ignored ; see above, pp. 42, 48, 50.
The one attempt to prove an anachronism under the tradi-
tional view relates to Cynan Garwyn, and is based in part
on a statement made in Professor Lloyd's History, whieh
appeared in 1911 ; see above, p. 93. The new geography
would, of course, have amounted to demolition of the
tradition in the eyes of its discoverer; but this had not
yet been thought of — in the Blach Book, 1906, p. x,
Prydyn is stiU " North Scotland". Dr. Evans does not
deny that the historical TJrien lived in the sixth century ;
but where does he " demolish " the idea that he is the
Urien of the poems ? Urien, he says, "fought Ida's
successors, and was pre-eminent among his compeers as a
militar}'" leader. So was Owein Gwyneb among Kymric
princes: hence his nom de guerreoî Urien ", p, xv. Instead
of the overthrow of Urien we have the feeble plea that
Owein Gwyneb has a similar claim. What has become of
the line by line demolition of 1900 or thereabouts ? Again
Urien's opponent Vlph is held by Dr. Evans to be Ranulf,
Earl of Chester. If he could prove that the name did not
exist in the sixth centurj^ or that no person of the name
could possibly be an opponent of the real Urien, it would
be a case of demolition ; but Frithwald, son of Ida, is
also called Frithwulf (Oman, op. cit., 242), and no such
demolition is possible. The fact is, Dr. Evans's theory is
not the result of any detailed examination and demolition
of Matthew Arnold's theory, but represents his attempt
to find a solution of the problem presented by the
reluctance which he ktiew to be felt by scholars like Rhys
and Anwyl to accept a sixth century origin of auy of the
poems. He imbibed the scepticism that was in the air,
and it became an intuition, an instinctive conviction
within him. This is the foundation of his theory, and
the source of his confidence in it. He writes —
l2
1 48 Taliesin.
Even if it be proved that I have macle a mistake in every line the time of composition, the chief actors, and the geo- GRAPHY will remain nnaffected (II. p. xiii).
Can a structure stand if the foundatioiis be destroyed?
No ; but it would be a nnstake to suppose that Dr. Evans's
theory ìsfounded on his readings of the text. These may
be " proved " to be all wrong, but the theory " will reniain
unaíîected ". They support ít, no doubt ; but it is not
founded on them, or on any facts ; the actors and the
GEOGBAPHY rest securely on the time, and this has its
foundation in an inner conviction which nothing can
shake. It gives him such strength that he feels he could
wipe the floor with all his " precursors " : —
Unregenerate man might delight in making our high priests bite the dust. It would be easy writing, and entertaining reading (p. xvi).
Of which " easy writing" we have had an example in the passage about Cynan Garwyn and the " history of this sort ". It is not exactly " entertaining- " ; or, if it is, it is iiot at the expense of the " high priests ".
It may have occurred to the reader long- before this to ask whether, if Dr. Evans's work is as bad as I make it out to be, it was worth while devoting all this space to criticism of it. I answer in the aíîirmative for two reasons. The first is the reason I gave at the outset : " because in the process some constructive work can perhaps be done ", p. 38. It will be agreed that some- thing positive has been attained ; I put it forward as tentative ; I claim no fìnality for it — in the present state of our know]edge of the subject finality is far from being in sight. But criticism of false theories is necessary, and is a niethod of discussion that has its advantages ; it is an efîective way of presenting saner views, and it often helps the writer to form clearer ideas, because wrong- headed notions often suggest points of view which would
Taliesin. 149
not have occurred to him in a detached study of the subject. Dr. Evans knows this from experience : " I have never received an inspired answer to a ' wise ' question ; but the imprudent sort is apt to find a hot response ", p. vi*^. He fully accepts the position : "Better then a 'howler' that may herald tlie light than all the respect- ability of empty silence. I am content to become the whipping-boy of light & truth ", ib.
The other reason is that criticism of this book to be of real use had to be fairly full and systematic. It is often easy to pick out a large number of incidental errors and slips in a work which is sound on the whole ; my task was to show not how many mistakes the book contains — this is impossible, for their number is legion — but that the whole work (excepting the mechanical and diplomatic reproductions) is one huge mistake. Few would believe without conclusive proof that an editor of Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans's reputation can be so utterl}^ incompetent to deal with the questions which he sets himself to discuss in this book as he in fact proves himself to be. Dr. Evans is an honorary Doctor of Letters of two Universities ; but the distinction was conferred upon him for repit)ducing texts, not for interpreting them. He had done supremely well what had previously been done only imperfectly. He had for the first time supplied Welsh scholars with reliable texts to work upon. He had already published his repro- ductions of the Mabinogion and Bruts from the Eed Book of Hergest, his facsimile of the B]ack Book of Carmarthen, and his superb edition of the Book of Llan Daf. In the latter he wisely entrusted the philological work to Sir John Rhys; but the laborious and valuable topographical work is his own ; and his recovery of the original readingof the priceless Breint Teilaw, which a late medieval vandal has mutilated with knife and pen, is a service to Welsh learn-
1 50 Taliesin.
ing greater than many for which honorai'j degrees have
been conferred. Of late years he has manifested a grow-
ing disposition to pose as an authority on the language
and subject-matter of his texts. He is aware that his
knowledge is somewhat hazy, and that he may fall into
many errors ; and he is shrewd enough to attempt to
forestall criticism : —
A critic may dispute my rendering, but it does uot follow that he is right because he differs from me, or cannot in 7 minutes see what it has taken me 7 years to 'grip' (II, p. xiii).
It will be " the usual difference of opinion between experts ". This suggestion seems to me to render it necessary to state the truth, which is that Dr. Evans has not mastered some of the elements of Welsh grammar, and has less of the scholar's instinct than almost any of the Eisteòfodic bards whom he scoffs at in his footnotes. He has tried to persuade scholars to cooperate with him in the preparation of his critical editions. He proposed to " a Welsh scholar of repute " that they " should jointly attempt to amend and translate the text of Taliesin ". He was advised " to attempt no such thing — he certainly would not cooperate ; ' in short I funk it ' were liis parting words ", II, p. vii. The refusal is intelligible, though perhaps not to Dr. Evans. He has rejected the advice of his friends, and apparently interprets their good inten- tions as " envy ". This is the reason for the bitterness with which he speaks of his fel]ow-workers in the fîeld of Welsh studies.' They are jeered at, and accused of taking
1 For myself, I am special]y abused only once, in the screaming footnote on p. xlii. I pointed out in my Gram. p. 10, that his state- ment that the writing in Pen. 54, pp. 359 ff., is in " bardic" characters is wrong, and that the writing " is the hand of an iUiterate person ". A facsimile has now been published in Y Cymmrodoì- xxvi,pp. 92, 113 ; and Prebendary Clark-Maxwell came independently to precisely the same conclusion ('' probably by an illiterate carver") regarding the similar lettering of the Llanfair-Waterdine inscription, p. 90. Abuse is no answer to a definite conviction of error.
Taliesin. 1 5 1
'^ their ease in the Halls of learning ", p. i. The references to the late Sir John Rhys, in particular, are deplorable ; and I have no doubt Dr. Evans hiniself regrets them now. Finally, I wiU only say that his friends Avere wiser than himself, and it is a pity that he did not follow their advice. It offends niy sense of the fìtness of thing-s to see any purely ephemeral matter bound up with perfect repro- ductions which are for all time ; but that all this trash should be printed in the best ink on the finest paper — including 125 copies on Japanese vellum, and of the con- centrated nonsense of the smaller volume four copies on vellum itself — to share the permanence of the text and facsimile, is sad indeed. But posterity will Iook kindly on the editor's follies, and will honour his memory for the good work he has done.
Our investigation has, I believe, established the follow- ing conclusions : —
The existence in the sixth century of a bard of the name of Taliesin is a historical fact as well authenticated as most facts of British history in that century.
The Book of Taliesin is a collection of poems pur- porting to be his work. The date of the manuscript is the latter part of the thirteenth century ; but many of the pieces show unmistakable traces of having been copied from manuscripts of the ninth century.
Several of the poems are quite obviously of later date than the sixth century ; but there are others which, with- out obvious anachronisms, deal witli events of that century, and with persons with whom Taliesin is associated by tradition. The question is whether these can in any sense represent his worJc.
Nash, though he would not venture to decide that these poems " were not re-written in the twelfth century
152 Taliesin..
from materials originally of the date of the sixth ", see above, p. 21, iievertheless believed tliat they were forgeries of the twelfth century . Ziinmer, who was better acquainted with the evidence, believed them to be forgeries of the niiith or tenth century, see above p. 45. The Welsh, he thought, only learned of the namesoi Taliesin and Aneirin from Nennius ; but some clever fellows conceived the idea of composing soiigs such as these poets might have written, and succeeded, iii some cases at least, in projecting them- selves in imagination into the bard's period aiid point of view. The admitted f orgeries and imitations of the twelfth century give evidence of no such historic sense ; are we to suppose that it was highly developed in the ninth ? Or is it more likely that the substaiice of the poems in question was traiismitted through the seventh and eighth ? Poetry is more easily remembered than prose — rhymes, allitera- tion and metre aid the memory ; and if we are to suppose that the substance was transmitted, we must assume that its original form was substantially that in which we find it recorded.
The question can be settled only by a careful study of the poems. As a result of the philological work done in the last fìfty years we are in a much better position to get at the meaning of the poems than Eobert Williams and Silvan Evans were in the sixties, and Stephens in the fifties, to say nothing of Nash, who was not a good scholar even for his time. The solution of many of the probleins presented by the vocabulary justifies the expectation that many more will be solved in time ; but much work remains to be done, and we are perhaps more conscious of the limitations of our knovvledge thaii the scholars of the mid- nineteenth century can have been. I propose, however, to give an amended text and translation of such of the historical poems of the Book of Taliesin as I have been
Taliesin. 1 5
able in some measure to make out. I eonsider Dr. Evans's method of altering tlie text, often without notice, and always without giying- any indication of %i:ì\at has been altered, to be most misleading and unsatisfactorj ; it saves ìiim trouble at the expense of the reader, who has to be constantlj referring' to the diplomatic text to verify the emendations. The manuscript reading- should alwaj^s be given, either in footnotes, marg-inal notes, or in some other manner. In the text of the following poems every- thing that appears in the manuscript is printed in Roman Type ; letters or words that are not to be read are included in round brackets ( ) ; my own insertions are printed in Italics. By omitting the italics and ignoring the brackets the reader gets the manuscript text ; by omitting every- thing contained in brackets, and reading the rest, he has the amended text. But I have not thought it necessary to follow the division of lines in the manuscript, in which the poems are written as prose, or to adhere to its primitive punctuation. I have used capital letters at the beginning of lines and in proper names ; I have not distinguished between the two forms of w or r or s ; I have used v for u where it has the v sound, and vice versa, since v and u were then one letter with two sounds ; d is printed ò when it is so sounded; g, when it means ng, is printed ng; silent or excrescent y has been put in brackets, as gwyst(y)l, (y)strat, not because it is not a regular spelling in Medieval Welsh, but because it is not written in Old Welsh, and does not count in the metre ; y forming a word by itself , when it had the clear sound which has now become i (meaning ' to ', ' his ', ' her ', now misspelt ei in the latter senses), is dotted thus, ý, to distinguish it from the article and preverb y. The circumflex is used to mark long vowels in cases of possible ambiguity. Mere con- jectures are queried, thus (?).
1 54 Taliesin.
I take first " the Battle of Argoed Llwyfein ", p. 60. This is, according to Nash, "the poem, which of the whole series bears the most apparentlj genuine historical character " ; his attempt to prove an anachronism in ithas been dealt with above, pp. 20-1 ; it rests on 'ùi^ supposition that hyhei Tíymwyawc ' would be tortured ' means ' said he would be tortured '. It is some excuse for Nash that Stephens had fallen into the error, Lit. Kym., p. 267, following" Lewis Morris ; but Carnhuanawc, Hanes, p. 280, sees as clearlyas Sharon Turner (see above, p. 21) that the words form part of Owein's speech. There is no " said " in the text, nor anything else to suggest that the poet reg'arded Ceneu ap Coel as being- present. So far from prejudicing the authenticity of the poem, ithe words have exactly the opposite effect : Owein in^olcing- the example of his ancestor is a detail which a late f org-er would hardly have thought of . As to Fflamòwyn ' the flamebearer ', Lewis Morris says that he " is supposed to be Ida, líing of Northumberland ", Stephens, loc. cit. Turner makes the same statement, Vind., p. 247. Carnhuanawc, Hanes, p. 276, and Stephens, l.c, accept the identification ; but Skene identifies him with Deodric, son of Ida, on the ground that the " Saxon Genealogies " expressly states that Urien "with his sons " foug-ht against Deodric ; he even suggests that the chronicler might have had this poem in mind, F.A.B., i, 232, Stephens, after 1853, " had independently come to the same conclusion ", Y Gododin, 1888, p. 67, fn.
The following tag is added to the poem in the manu- script, as to six of the other poems to Uryen :
Ac yny vallwyf(y) hen, Ym (lyg(y)n awgheu a?ighen, Ny bybif ymb(y)zrwen Na molwyf Uryen. 60*L^ö.
Taliesin. 1 5 5
' And until I perish in old age In my death's sore need, I shall not be happy If I praise not Uryen '.
The other occurrences are -571], 58-10, 59-4, 60-5, 6214, 65-22.
The only variations in the text are in the scribe's own afBxed pronoun
after i'rt //«•?//■ (which he omits in 58, 59. and writes i in 605 and 65),
and in the spelHng aiid division of ym^iruen. A more defective copy
of the lines is seen tacked on to " Anrec Uryen " in the White Book
and Red Book ; the reading is identical in the two manuscripts : I
quote the lines from the White Book as printed in Y Cymmrodor
vii, p. 126:
Ny dalywyf yn hen
Ym dygyn anghen
ony molwyf .i. vrien : Amen.
The initial v of valbcyf represents the radical b in our scribe's copy, and the W.B. scribe's d must be an error for b (the two letters being somewhat similar in some old hands), for we can hardly sup- pose that our scribe repeated the same error seven times. The word seems to come from an obsolete verb ballu ' to perish', of which a compouud aballu (from *ad-ball-) has survived, e.g , yn aballu rac newyn R. B. Bruts 197 'perishing from huuger'; cf. Irish atbail ' perishes', atballat 'they perish'.
Although the W.B. scribe has yn hen, it is possible that at a very early period the adjective might stand in apposition to the subject of the verb witliout yn, as it may be the complement of a verb without it, as in gan aethayit (jolluhyon 571, ' since they had become weary', see above p. 19, and below p. 161.
ym^irwen. The scribe first copied this yn diricen 57"12 ; elsewhere ym^iricen, with the yjnclearly joiiied in 59'5 and 6215, and apparently separated eJsewhere; -hyr- only appears on this page, 60 626. On the whole 'in my happiness ' is less likely than 'happy'; and ymSirweyi is probablyan adjective, Iike yjnSifad, hut with the intensive dir instead of the negative di. This implies that tlie base yuên is adjectival ; the root niay be *ucìi- ' to Iike, to desire ', cf. the Sanskrit adjective vanú-s 'eager, Ioving'; this is not the root of yictm 'smile', which the Irish gen ' laugh' shows to be from *g"hen- or *ghuen-.
Na in the last line is a very questionabIe use of the word, and makes the line short. We can therefore confidentlj' supply the correct reading from the W^.B.: ony.
It is quite possible that this tag might bave beenappended to one or more of the songs to Urien ; but it probably has no place at the end of "Gweith Argoet Llwyfein".
156 Taliesin.
GWEITH ARGOET LLWYFEIN.
CANU URYEN.
1 (E) Bore duw Sadwrn kat vawr a vu O'r pan bwyre heul hyt pan gynnu. Dygrysswys Flambwyn yn petwar llu, Gobeu a Reget ÿ ymbullu. 5 Dyv(wy)2í o Argoet hyt Arvynyò : Ny cheíFynt eiryos hyt yr un dyb. Atorelwis Flambwyn vawr trebystawt, " A bobynt y?zg wgwystlon, a ynt parawt ? " Ys attebwys Owein, dwyrein flbssawt,
10 " Ny(t) bobynt, nyt ydynt, nyt ynt parawt ; A Cheneu vab Coel, bybei kymwyawc Lew, kyn as talei o wyst(y)I nebawt." Atorelwis Vryen, Ub Yrechwyb, " O byb ymgyf arvot am gerenhyb,
15 Dyrchafwn eidoeb obucli mynyb, Ac amporthwn wyneb obuch emyl, A dyrchafwn peleid(y)r obuch pen gwŷr, A chyrchwn Fflambwyn yn ÿ liiyb, A llabwn ac ef ae gyweithyb."
20 A rac (gweitli Arg) Coet Llwyf ein
Bu Ilawer celein, Rubei vrein rac (ryfel) gwaet gwj'r. A gwerin a grysswys, (g)cân ei(n)/iewyb
24 (Arinaf y) Amliaws (?) blwybyn nât wy kynnyb.
THE BATTLE OF ARGOET LLWYFEIN.
SONG OF URYEN.
1 In the morning of Saturday there was a great battle From when the sun rose till when it set. Fflambwyn marched in four hosts To wage war against Gobeu and Rheged.
5 He came from Argoed to Arfynyb :
They were not sufl'ered to remain for that one day. Fflambwyn of great bluster exclaimed, " Would they give hostages, are they ready ? " Hini answered Owein, eager for the fray, 10 " They would not give [hostages], they are not ready ; And Ceneu, son of Coel, would have suffered torture Stoutly, ere he would cede anyone as hostage."
Taliesin. 157
Uryen, Lord of Yrechwyb, esclaimed,
" If it must be an encounter for kith anrl kin, 15 Let us raise [our] lines above the mountain,
And let us hold up [our] faces above the edge,
And let us raise [our] spears above [his] men's heads,
And let us attack Fflambwyn in his hosts,
And let us kill both him and his company." 20 And before Llwyfein Wood
There was many a corpse ; Ravens were red with the blood of men.
And the men who charged — the minstrel shall sing 24 For many (?) a year the song of their victory.
NOTES ON " GWEITH ArGOET LlWYFEIN ".
Many translations of this poem have appeared. Lewis Morris*'s version, written in 1763, was printed in Myv., i, 54 (248). Turner gives a version in his Vind., p. 248; he acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. Owen [Piighe] for assistanne in his translations, p. 247 fn. Carnhuanawc gives a Welsh paraphrase in his Hanes, p. 280. Later versions are by Stephens, Lit., p. 266, F God., p. 67; Nash, Taliesin, p. 100; Robert Williams, F.A.B., i, 365.
Metre. — The metre is that which is called " cyhydedd naw ban ", (Dosp. Ed., p. xxxi) ; the normal length of the line is nine syllables ; but in old examples an extra syllable very often occurs; in this poem there are 13 lines of nine, and 8 of ten syllables, assuming the emen- dation in 11. 8 and 10 suggested below. At line 20 there is a change in the metre, marking the end of üryen's speech, and introducing the concluding verses. The metre is 5, 5, 6, the two fives rhyming, and the rhyme carried on in the third syllable of the six (i.e. wein). This unit of metre is the last part of " clogyrnach " (see prosody books, e.g. Dosp. Ed. ib.), and is of the same length as, and in fact is a mere variant of " toddaid byr", the couplet of 10, 6, which fornis the fìrst component part of an ordinary englyn. It is certainly one of the very earliest forms of verse in Welsh.
•The system of rhymes is obvious. Note that -aivc, 1. 11, rhymes with -awt; and -yl, I. 16, and yr, II. 17, 22, rhyme with -?/S. The last syllable of the "toddaid byr" rhymes with the ends of the verses that precede and follow it.
Title.—See note on 1. 20.
Liue 1. — E, tliat is, the article Y, should certainly be omitted, especially as Bore has a dependent genitive. The article does not occur iu the piece except in line 6, where it means 'that'. The systematic omission of the article is a good sign of antiquity. It is
158 Taliesin.
of coiirse absohitely wrong to mutate the B of Bore, as Dr. Evans does, II, 88; in Medieval Welsh no word is miitated at the head of a senteiice except prochtics, siich as^T/, dy (radical my, ty).
Line 2. — Both verbs are in the present tense ; the -u of gynnu is not an ending, but part of the stem. With cynnu ' sets ', cí. Pan dyyynnu nos 2riO ' when night falls ', hid{y)l meu yt gynnu, F.A.B., ii, 282, 'copiously my (flood of tears) falls '.
Line 5. — The scribe seems to have read the u of his copy as w, and added the y.
Line6. — If arhos ' to stay' is from *ari-soss- (see my Gram., 343), eiryos is a possible variant of it, since is or es before a vowel niight become consonantal i, which would affect the a to ei.
Line 8. — I take dodynt to be doSynt (cf. rho-8ynt) or dodynt from dodaf {Tpossihly for doSaf) '1 give' (as well as 'I pvit'), Gr. 332, rather than doSynt ' they have come ' (for doethynt), as I suppose this to be a comparatively late analogical formation, the old perfect being dy-vuant (cf. dyv\\ above). The phrase yg girystlon, would be in Old Welsh in guuistlon, which can also be transliterated yn wystlon ; but there is no absolute line of demarcation between the two construc- tions — we have ynihell and yn bell, etc. The literal meaning seems to be 'would they give [men] as hostages?' It is, however, more likely that the original phrase was simply a dodint gimistlon ' would they give hostages ? ' which gives a line of normal length.
Line 9. — dwyrein 'rising' may be an adjective as well as a noun, e.g., haul ddwyrain 'rising sun ', D.G. 16,65; cf. cyu-rain 'skilful'; the phrase seems to be a compound (like haeS-watcd ' deserving of praise ' D.G. 413, or erlid-lanw ' hunted by the flood ' D.G. 195) mean- ing 'rising for battle'. I have given a free rendering.
Line 10. — It is diíBcult to believe that this line was not originally the exact covinterpart of the challenge, viz. :
Ny bobynt (yng wg)wystlon, nyt ynt parawt.
It does not seem possible that nyt ydynt can be an old construction ; but it is not easy to account for its appearance here. The nyt may quite well be a mis-copy of the ing of inguuistlon, as t and g are liable to confusion in Insular script ; and the rest of the phrase may have been indistinct in the copy.
Line 12. — I take lew to be a mutation of gleiu not of lleìc.
Line 14. — amgerenhyh; qnery a gerenhyS 'O kinsmen', or inicer . . 'my kinsmen'.
Line 15. — There seems to be no fonndation for the supposition that eidoeS means 'banners'. It represents a British stem *ati-, which may well be from the root *j)etè-, like Welsh edeu ' thread ',
Taliesin. 159
English/ffíÄoî??, German i^ŵẁí? 'thread.string', Gothic/oMrt 'hedge'. The singular niight be eidyn, and Caer Eidyn at the end of the Northem Wall, see above p. 81, niay be ' the fort of the line, hedge, or wall '.
Line 20. — gweith Ar- seems to be a gloss or scribal insertion from the title. I have therefore read A rac Coet Lhiyfein 'and before Llwyfein Wood ', taking rac in its literal and original sense. The line might be a syllable long, so that we niight read A rac gioeith coet LL, ' and from the battle of Ll. wood', or A rac Argoet Llicyfein 'and before A. Ll.,' which might be regularized in metre by omitting the A ' and' ; but none of these possibilities is as lilîely as the natural and simple reading suggested, especially as rac Coet means the same as yn Argoet.
Line "22. — The line shoiild be six syllables, and an extra syllable is improbable in a line of six syllables divided into two threes. The long word seems to be ryvel: and the abstract 'war ' or 'warring' is obviously much less likely to have been used by the bard than the concrete 'blood'. We may therefore confidently assume that the oi'iginal word was either gicaet (old yoit or giioit) or creu (old croú) ; I choose giraet because of its alliteration with gwŷr. How either word could have been mistaken for ryrel is not quiteclear; but if gnoit were misread gueit{h), the scribe might substitute the un- ambiguous ryvel for it (gìceith ' battle ; work ' ; 7-yvel ' war ').
Line 23. — gwerin means the 'crew' of a ship, the 'rank and file' of an army ; here it is obviously the ìuen ("the men were splendid "). The translators have taken it in the distinctively modern sense of ' common people '.
The initial of gan as well as of cân would be c in Old Welsh, so that the ^y is in any case the scribe's own spelling; the sense seems to require eŵí. This implies that girerin a gryKSii-ys is noniinative absolute, followed by a new sentence beginning with the verb cân with its radical initial, which is exactly what happens in the Gododdin line Gicyr a gryssyassant, buant gytneit, B.A.. 9'3, cf. 1. 10. and 2"2l!
eineuyS for eilieuyS ' minstrel ' is a mistake made often by the scribe. It shows that / was short in his copy ; and makes it fairly certain that his copy for this poem was in the same hand as that from which he copied " Gweith Gwen Ystrad ", which was in Insular script, as seen below.
Line 24. — Arinaf y is obviously a corrupt reading ; hut emendation can only be conjectural. The y is the scribe's own affixed pronoun, cf. above, p. 142, fn. 2, and p. 15511. 6-7. The suggested emendation assumes the reading of li as n, as in the preceding line, and the common error of taking m for /7". The error of reading us as m (transliterated/), is that which we meet with in 1. 21 of the next
1 6o Taliesin.
poem, where uis was read im, the down-stroke of the s being taken for the last stroke of the m. Cf. lliaics blynedd, Myv. 275 b 43, and Uiaws awr ib. 142 b. 3. I have not found an old example of the com- pound amliaws, but it is a very probable one, as shown by amnifer, and the frequency of lliaìüs in these poems. For amnifer see Myv. 151a, amniverioch 167 b 59, amnivereit B.T. 14. Am liaws as two words cannot be assumed, for this use of the preposition am does not seem to be old. But the meaning is made fairly certain by the rest of the line.
All the translators, from Lewis Morris to Dr. Evans, have gone hopelessly wrong over the last two lines because they failed to understand the last three words ; they took nat ' song ' to be the conjunction nat ' that not ', and understood kynny8 in its modern sense of 'increase, prosper(ity) '. Carnhuanawc alone is candid enough to admit that he does not understand this line. Dr. Evans renders it, " but I prophesy that, for a year, they will not prosper ", which is no better and no worse than the others. It is to Carn- huanawc's credit that he saw that the poem could not end in such bathos. Nät is 'song', see above p. 141 ; wy is a medieval form of yw, modern iiü, ' to their', see my Gram., pp. xxvii, 277; JcynnyS ' victory', cf. ar hinit (i.e., ar yynny^) B.B. 51-13, 'victorious, in the ascendant' ; ky7iy8îvys W. B. Mab., col. 37, ' he conquered, annexed'; hynySu, R. B. Bruts 254-5, ' to conquer'; kynySasant ib. 112-18, 'conquered'. Hence nât wy kynny8 'a (or the) song to their victory'.
The poem that naturally comes next for consideration is "the Battle o£ Gwen Ystrat ", pp. 56-7. Stephens takes Gwen Ystrad to be Winsterdale (iiear Windermere), which seems rather far west for the men of Catraeth to be fìghting Angles, whom he assumes to be the enemy in the poem. Skene identifies it with the valley of the Gala Water, F.A.B., ii, p. 412, because he sees in Garanwynion the name of the scene of Arthur's eighth battle {;in Gastello Guinnion), which he believes to have been fought in Wedale i, 55, and because Gala seems to be mentioned in Galystem. Stephens takes the latter to be a reference to a previous battle, Y Gododin, p. 73 ; and this seems to be rig-ht, for the desci-iption of this battle ends naturally with the surrender of the enemy, 1. 22. It seems safer to look for Gwen Strat nearer Catraeth, and
Taliesin. 1 6 1
I suggest that it is Wensleydale, formerly called "Weiitse- dale (Camden, 1594, p. 562). The poem describes an irruption of Picts (with allies, Scots and Angles?) who, coming probably from Galloway and entering the valley from the west, held it until they were routed by Urien.
GWEITH GWEN YSTRAT.
1 Arwyre gwŷr Catraeth gan byb
Am wledic gweithvubic gwarthegyb.
Uryen hwn a(n)?- wawt ei(n)/?e(u)2i'yb ;
Kyfeb(eily) teyrneb ae gofy(n)S; 5 Ryfelgar rwy(sc) enwir rwyf bedyb.
Gwŷr Pryd(ei)î/n a (dwythein) gyrchyn (?) yn llüyb
Gwen (Y)strad, (y)stad(y)«l kat kyvygyb.
Ny (n);"obes na maës na choedyb
(tut) Achles bý ormes pan byvyb. 10 Mal tonnawr tost eu gawr dros elvyb
Gweleis w}'r gwychyr yn llüyb ;
A gwedy boregat briwgic.
Gweleis (i) twr(w)f teii'íBn trawghedic,
Gwaeb gohoyw gofaran gochlyw(3al)t7 ; 15 Yn amwyn Gwen (Y)strat y gwelit
Gofur (hag) a gw^'r llawr Ilubedic.
Yn drws ryt gweleis(y) wj'r Iletrubyon,
Eir(y)f biUwMg (y) rac blawr go(f)redon ;
Unynt tanc gan aethant gollubyon, 20 Llaw }'«g croes (gryt) ywgro G(.a)ranwynyon ;
Kyfe(d)?avynt (y) gynrein kywy(md)*-í/on —
Gwanecawr gol(Iy)chynt rawn eu kaífon.
Gweleis (i) wŷr gospeithic gospylat, A gwyar a vaglei ar billat, 25 A dullyaw diaflym dwys wrth kat ;
Kat gwortho, (n);-y bu ffo pan pwyllat(t), Glyw Reget, revebaf (i) pan veibat.
Gweleis (i) ran reodic am Uryen, Pan amwyth ae alon yn Llech (w)F(?/en. (Galystem) t(oeb llafyn yn aessawr gwyr) 30 Y'^ wytheint fgoborthit wrth a;;ghen. Awyb kat a b(i)yffo e Ur(owyn)j;ew. Ac yny vallwyf, etc.
M
102 Taliesin,
THE BATTLE OF GWEN YSTRAT.
1 The men of Catraeth arise with the dawn
Aroiind their prince, victorious raider of cattle.
Uryen is he, in the minstrel's song ;
The banquet of princes is siibject to him ; 5 Warhlíe, he is named the lord of Christendom.
The men of Prydyn advanced (?) in hosts
To Gwen Ystrat, the territory (?) of the fìghter of battles.
Neither fìeld nor woods aflforded
Shelter to aggression when it came. 10 Like waves loud roaring over the land
I saw impetuous men in hosts ;
And after the morning battle, mangled flesh.
I saw the throng of three regions dead.
A rueful suUen cry was heard ; 15 Defending Gwen Ystrat were seen
A low rampart, and dejected tired men.
At the gate of the ford I saw bloodstained men
Laying down their arms before the hoary weirs.
They made peace, for they had become weary, 20 With hand on cross on the shingle of Granwynion.
The leaders named their hostages —
The waves washed the tails of their horses.
I saw men haggard (?), ragged (?), And the blood that stained [their] clothes, 25 And keen intense fighting in the battle ;
Battle-coverer, they took to flight when they knew : Prince of Rheged, I marvel that he was dared.
I saw a noble band (?) about Uryen, When he contended with his foes at Llech Velen.* 30 His spears^ were supplied at need.
May the desire of battle come to Uryen. And until I perish, etc.
* Gloss : Galystem. '^ Gloss : the blade would be in men's shields.
NOTBS ON " GWEITH GwEN YSTRAT ".
This and the preceding poem are the only two of which transla- tions appear in the Myryrian. The version of this is by Evan Evans, i, p. 52 (248). Carnhuanawc paraphrases II. 1, 2, 11-14, Hmies, p. 280. Stephens, The Gododin, p. 73, quotes a very loose metrical version frora Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical üelichs, 1794, p. 20. Nash's
Talicsin. 163
translation, Taliesin,^. 98, has been referred to above, p. 19. Robert Williams's version appears in F.A.B., i, p. 343 ; and Dr. Evans's in II, p. 159. All the versions are very inaccurate. Evan Evans omits what he can make nothing of, and Carnhuanawc attempts only a few lines. Dr. Evans hasnot asingle line right ; liis version bears almost no relation to the original.
Metre. — The metre is '•cyhydedd fer" (Z)oí!p. ^c?., pp. xxix-xxx) ; the length of the line is eight syllables ; but, as before, an extra syllable may be added. In the above amended text I have left nine lines of nine in the first 22 lines ; but as seen in the following notes this number ought probably to be considerably reduced. After line 22 tiie metre is " cyhydedd naw ban " : this confirms the suggestion already made that these lines do not belong to the poem. The change of metre which we saw in the first poem is quite different from this, for "toddaid" and "toddaid byr" have regularly been joined to other metres, — it is indeed their function: ''cyhydedd naw ban " -|- " toddaid " forms the metre " gwawdodyn " ; " cyhydedd fer " -|- " toddaid byr " forms " byr a thoddaid ", and " clogyrnach ", which is a variant of it. But a change from one length to another of equal lines, as from " cyhydedd fer " to " naw ban " is improbable.
Tìtle. — The poem has no title in the manuscript.
Line 3. — ar loawt, see above pp. 137-8 ; the error as well as the haff in 1. 16 shows that the poem is copied from an Old Welsh MS.
eineict/8 is the error we have already met with in the first poem I. 23, see note, p. 1>59 ; and see next note.
Line 4, — KyfeZeily. No doubt eilieuid {i.e.eiliewt/S) did look rather like eineuid in the old MS., so a reader inserted the correct reading eili in the margin, probably with some mark against the letters (which looked like ein) in the line. But our scribe copied them ein all the same, and inserted the marginal eili (in his own spelling eily) in the text where it happened to come ; evidently hyfe^ was the last word in the line. On the scribe's habit of introducing marginal and other glosses, see above pp. 140-4.
gofyn. I correct the n to S not because n and 5 cannot rhyme, but because the n of gofyn is double {gofynn), and cannot answer the single consonant. GofyS ' is under ' is the opposite of goifyS ' is over', i.e. 'conquers ', etc. Owing to the shortness of long strokes in his copy the scribe seems sometimes to have confused a straight backed d with n ; cf. 1. 21.
Line ò.—riry is the perfective particle ry (older ro) joined to the infixed accusative pronoun y 'him'; substituting the modern/<? for ro, the construction is fe'i henuir. The scribe failed to understand it, and took it for an incomplete word. On òedyS see note on line 1 of the next poem, p. 173 below.
m2
1 64 Taliesin.
Line 6. — Prydein is the usual error for Prydyn. Although I have marked the emendation of âwythein into gyrchyn conjectural, I think it probable. A verb is required here, and yyrchyn fits exact]y. It would be spelt circhint in Old Welsh ; in Insular script ir is often very like ui (as the second stroke of u was sometimes produced below the line like the first stroke of ;■), and c and t might be confused, as in later hands ; and we have only to assume that our scribe read circh as tidth. He would naturally make it rhyme with Pryâein.
Line 7. — Ystrat. monosyllable, generally written strat in Old Welsh. The word ystadyl seems to be stadal which occurs in the Book of Aneirin, 379, where spelling and metre prove it to be a dissyllable ; stadal vlei8iat ' defender of a border'? cf. blei8yat ryt, ib. 2o'10. In our text we have also ystadyl tir Penprys. 65"4.
kyvygy8 'fighter': cyvygu ' to ûght \ goi'-chyrygu ' to siírpass in fight ', i.e., ' to conquer ', now ^orcÄyy^M. Dr. Evans reads kyny gy8 ; I have only two facsimiles to go by, but I think the MS. i-eading is kyu-. In any case u is the correot reading. — Since theabove was put in type Mr. Gwynn Jones has been kind enough to verify the reading for me in the original MS. He writes, '' I believe the letter is u, though it is very easy to taTíe it f or n ".
Line 8. — Perhaps the first na should be omitted.
Line 9. — tut faint, as if obliterated early — but we look in vain for the desired palaeographical notes in Dr. Evans's book. It begins the line and seems to be a Iine-division error, consisting of an incorrect repetition of the tid, which formed the last syllable of choedy8 in the copy.
8ŷ, the Old Welsh di half transliterated ; so in 464, see above, p. 134. The medieval form \s y 'to'.
dyvy8, present. The present after joorn in a past sense survives in Medieval Welsh : a phan 8aw nit oe8 . . . 'and when he came there was not . . . ' W.B.M., c. 74.
Line 10. — Probably eu should be omitted.
Line 11. — givychyr (though spelt ^mcAr in the Ox. alphabet, if it is the same word), is a dissyllable guichir as a gloss on effrenus in the Juv. Cod. So in Medieval Welsh : Eryr gwychyr gwtith Yeigen (7 syll.), Myv. 205b.
Line 13. — tivr(iv)f is common in these poems for the modern torf 'throng, host', see above, p. 142, and below " Yng NgoríFowys", I. 17. On the present line (56'23) Dr. Evans has the sapient note, " Gweleis t?OTíi;f = Isaw thunder! Read : torov = torv ", mistaking, as usual, the old twrufîor the modern ticrw, 'noise, thunder'.
Line 14. — gohoyw, cf. 2015; govaran, ' wrathful', B.A. 815; gochlyioit should perhaps be clywit, reducing the line to 8 syll.
Taliesin. 165
Lines 15 and 16. — See pp. 132-3 above. The meaning of llaior as an acijective is elusive is some passages ; but it seems in some cases to denote 'cast down ' ; e.g., " There was no contention in which a host was not //«?«;?• to him," B.A. 11 ■8. Cf. portheis i laicrweS, ìi.T. 19'15, by the side oî porthi heint a hoed, B.B. SrS.
Line 18. — yofedon. The scribe seems to have read r as « and transcribed it/.
Line 19. — See above, p. 19.
Line 20. — Perhaps gryt represents the original word, ? an oblique case cric {cryy) of croc ' cross ', on which croes was a gloss.
G(a)ranivynyon. This seems to be the name of a ford or place on the river. Tliere is a reference tothis description of the enemy being brought to bay at Granwynion in the ninth century poem " Armes Prydein " : Blaen with vôn Granwynyon hyryng oe^yn, B.T. 14'23, ' Front against back [i.e , closely packed] at Granwynyon hard-pressed were they '. Granioyn also occurs in 432.
Line 21. — Kyfedwynt. See note on gofyn in line 4.
kywym don. I have no doubt this is an error for Jcywystlon, &s tl is (Uke cl) very frequently mistaken for a straight-backed d, and vice versa. The word Icywystlon would be written in Old Welsh ciguuistlon, the s being like the familiar continental r but with its stroke brought down a little below the line. The scribe copied cigu as Jcyw, as usual; the iiis, which had the form mp, he read as im (the tag of the s being merged in the top stroke of the following t), and wrote them ym ; he read tlon as don. He evidently had no idea what the line meant. (For cigu- cf. cigueren B.A. 38"1, ciyuercint 3821. It might have been cou-, cf. coueidid. F.A.B. ii, 2. But the vowel of the syllable was ui, not i, so that there were two us in any case.)
Line 22. — Gwanecawr, pl. of gwanec ' wave ' ; the pl. givenyc would give a line of right length.
goUychynt. The scribe seems to have hesitated between golchynt and gwlychynt, but yolchi is the verb used of waves. In Old Welsh we find (rarely) a silent i medially between spirants, as centhiliat for centhliat; and as / before ch may be voioeless, the original may have had guollichint for golchynt.
rairn 'horsehair', specifically " the hair of a horse's tail ", P\ighe.
kaffon * horses ' for ^cafon froni caboncs pl. of cabù (which occurs as a Latin gloss, see Walde s.v.cahallus)oì which caballos is adiminutive. The latter gives Welsh cafall. The change oî f io ff in caffon and the moderii cpffyl is obscure. Tyllei garn gaffon B.A. 2(v21.
As with the concluding lines of the previous poem, none of the translators has come anywhere near understanding tliese two lines.
i66 Taliesin.
Evan Evans and Carnhuanawc omit them. The renderings of the others are :
"They are a feast for the worms rising oiit of the earth. The pale birds of prey are wet with grasping the gore." — Nash.
" The tribes revel over the rising wave. The billows protect the hair of their captures."— R. Williams.
" (Owein's) chief tains know the triumphant note ; as it is poured forth, they hide the tumult in their hearts."
— Dr. Evans.
The average number of worHs correctly rendered is one. Nash has none, for even ' are wet ' is not right for 'made wet'. R. Wilhams has ' biUows' and ' hair ', and Dr. Evans has 'chieftains '.
Line 23. — I have already referred twice to the break here. The metre changes from 8/9 to 9/10. The initial G of this line is much larger in the manuscript than ordinary gothic initials in the middle of the line ; and Dr. Evans represents the diíFerence graphically in his diplomatic reproduction. I believe lines 23-27 and 28-31 are fragments of another poem or poems— snatches remembered by the minstrel who recited them to the Old Welsh writer. The large initial G and the gothic G of line 28 suggest that these lines formed two paragraphs in the original MS., marked ofif from the preceding lines and in a lesser degree from each other.
gospeithic {?) gospylat{?). The suggested renderings are mere esses.
Line 24. — vaglei ' stained ', from the Latin maculo 'to cover with spots, to stain '.
Line 28.— reodic 'noble'; i-eodic rec ' noble gift', Myv., 195a 39; pl. ryhodigyon, B.T , 33-21 : derivative of ryhaict, 631. I have rendered ran reodic 'noble band', but this is very doubtful. I am inclined to think that reodic here is a misreading for Deodric, a word which would niean nothing to the ninth century minstrel, and for which he would be like]y to substitute a known word. ' I saw the fate of Deodric at the hands of Uryen'(?) For am in this sense see note on 1. 20 of " Uryen Yrechwydd " below.
amìcyth. See my Gram., p. 371, iv (2). Dr. Evans's note " amwyth ae. Inadmissible construction" is one of his incomprehensible utterances on points of grammar. Amìcyn is always folloAved by a; see Gr. 371, 11. 4, ö, and his own Intr., p. xx, near bot.
Llech Wen. — The rhyme is -en (single n) and wen is in fuU irenn ; the rhyming of single with double consonants was the one thing that was not done. I take Wen to be an error for Yelen. Llech Velen is 'yellow stone', and it seems clear that Galystem is a gloss on
Taliesin. 1 67
it, representing a corruption of the later name — Old English geolu stán ' yellow stone '. Was the battle at Galston, when Urien was fighting in Aeron (Ayr) ?
Line 80. — nytheint, 'blades'? The line En llogborth y gueleise vitheint B.B. 72 begins an englyn which is followed by others in a series of the kind in which the beginning is repeated with slight variations : in the other englynion uytheint is replaced by ciminad 'felling' or 'cntting down', gottoev 'spear', aiuev 'arms'. In B.T. 20'18 19 guytheint seems to be echoed by llafnawr ' blades ', 1. 24. In 36'13 the a after it seems an error. The glossator seems to have understood it as 'blades'; the gloss explains why they had to be supplied. The line ends at llaf | and the oraission of the second yn seems to be a line-division error.
Line 31. — The curious error Urouyn (with the o under-dotted) is repeated in a slightly different form in the Urincyìi of 62'14. The Old Welsh spelling of the name is Urhgen, see î' Cymmrodor, ix, p. 173. The o in the scribe's first mistake is clearly a misreading of 6 in a flat-topped hand. The u in the second mistake is his usual transliteration of medial b as v. In the old script e was tall like the / of moderu writing ; before n it was sometimes (verj' rarely) turned back below the Iine(instead of forward on the line), thus, J^ ; see two examples in Professor Lindsay's Plate xiii, acccntis line 3, accidentis, line 9. There is a peculiar broken form of it in nomen in the last line of the specimen on p. 136 above. It seems that our scribe toük this rare and peculiar e for the contraction for ui (cf. Skene F.A.B., ii, p. 2, last line), which had the form iP made up of a y with the second stroke carried up and an i hanging from its end. He regularly transliterates gui as ivy. Of coiu'se where Urbgen was written in the ordinary way, he regularly transliterates it Uryen. (The spelling urbgen represents the pronunciation urryeìì, where y = English y ; but the v had vanished in the pronunciation before the twelfth century.) I am indebted to Professor Lindsay for the form of the contraction for ui. It is, as Skene calls it, an Iiisli contraction ; but " in abbreviation the Welsh and Irish systems are practically identi- cal ", Early Welsh Script, p. 40.
In the above translations, as "vvell as in those that follow, I have aimed at literalness rather than eíîect, in order thatthe reader niay the niore easilj and fully under- stand the original, in wiiich alone it is possible to study the wording and appreciatethe forni. The definite article is not used in either of the poems except once as a deuion-
i68 Taliesin.
strative ; I do not wish to lay too rnuch stress upon this, for it is a feature of the language of the oldest poetry that persisted, aud was imitated in the twelfth century. The yocabulary is purely British and Latin ; it does not contain one word borrowed from Irish or English, not to mention French. No doubt later forms have in some cases been substituted for earlier ones, but it bas not been done to the extent of seriously affecting the metre. The chief difficulty of the poems (apart from the unintelligence of copyists) lies in the number of old words which they contain — not in the style, wliich is perfectly simple, and quite unlike the involved and laboured diction cultivated by the twelfth century bards. It is not only simple but reticent in a higli degree. The effect is gained as much by what is left unsaid as by what is said. In " Gweith Argoet Llwyfein " we see the blustei'ing Fflamddwyn ; we hear his moching challenge ; Owein's defìance; Urien's speech to his men, unfolding the plan of attack ; of the battle itself, nothing ; we infer from the speech what took place, and are told only the result. The pause is marked by a change of metre ; we drop suddenly from the high- pitched flowingmovement of the speech tothe low staccato of the " toddaid byr " ; then for the final note of triumph the original rhythm is for a moment resumed. In "Gweith Gwen Ystrat " we have glimpses of the battle at different stages, so vivid that the mind instinctively fills in the details. The invaders come in hosts like waves rolling over the land ; in the morning battle they are cut up ; tlie remnant defend the valley ; weary, they lay down their arms — the hoary weirs behind them ; they make peace, hand on cross ; they name their hostages ; the waves wash the tails of their horses. That picture is drawn from nature ; it is the work of a man who painted what he had seen. It is drawn with clear eye and
Taliesin. 169
imerring hand ; it bears the impress of actuality. The
manuscript evidence takes it back to the ninth century.
Are we to stop there ? Is this the picture of a ninth
century battle drawn by an unknown artist who changed
the proper names and fathered his work on Taliesin ? It
seems to require a sturdier faith to believe this than to
accept the tradition.
Reference has been made above, p. 85, to Cynddelw's
allusion to " Gweith Argoet Llwyfein" in his elegy on
Owein Gwynedd. The passage is as follows : —
Ywgwrfoes yngorfaes kyf(y)rgein ; Y?îgorva\vr gwryawr goradein ; Ywgwryal ywgwryd Ywein Ywgorun aergun argyfrein' Yn aergad yn A(e)rgoed LIwyvein ; Ym penn dreic dremynt oet kelein.
— Wms. MS. 36a, Myv. 152a.
'ln manliness in the field [he was] superb; In a mighty onrush [he was] swift; In attack [he foughtj with the valour of Owein In the tumult of the war-lord's doom In the battle in Argoed Llwyfein; In the dragon's head the glance was death [lit. corpse].'
That is the twelfth century style, in Avhich resounding words are piled up with a minimum of connectives, and lucidity is the last thing thought of. If my rendering of the fourth line is correct Cynddelw believed that the ' war-lord ' was killed in the battle ; we havethe testimony of " Marwnad Owein ", given below, that Owein killed Fflambwyn, but neither of the Taliesin poems states that
^ In the MS. an e is inserted above the line in a later hand after a- in this word. It is, however, probable that argyfrein is the correct reading : it is a fairly common word, and is usually taken to niean 'obsequies'; but in .'iuch a line as Kyn n<>e. aryyvrein e uaet e laur B.A., 'l'ÌO, ' before his a. his blood was shed ' it is used, as I take it to be above, in a more general sense as 'death'. The Old Welsh arciòrenou (= argytreinou) is a gloss on " sepulti ".
1 70 Taliesin.
he was killed at Argoed Llwjfein ; it was, however, natural to assume that his defeat at Argoed in one poem and his death at the hands of Owein in the other referred to the same event, and there may have been a tradition to that efFect. Tliere can be no doubt that the " Ywein " of the above passage is Owein ap Urjen, or that "the battle in Argoed Llwyfein " is the battle commemorated in our poem. But when Cynddelw, in the earlier eulogy of Owein Gwynedd, spealcs of a battle which he himself had seen, " above the Caer, above the wood of Llwyfein " :
Gweleis aer uch caer uch coed Llwyfein, Myv. ]50a, and in which, he goes on to say, Owein Gwynedd and his men distinguished themselves, it is obvious that he cannot possibly be referring to our " battle of Argoed Llwyfein". As stated above, p. 71, there was, no doubt, a Llwyfein in Flintshire ; and Dr. Evans may be right in supposing, p. xxi, that Cynddelw is speaking here of the battle in which Owein Gwynedd defeated Henry II near Coleshill in 1157 (Lloyd, 497). His mistake consists in the not unnatural supposition that the two Llwyfeins are one and the same; this error of rolliug twoplaces into one became the starting point of the new geography and the eponym theory; it brought Taliesin into the twelfth ceritur}', and made Owein Gwynedd his hero. But Llwyfein, as we have seen, was a pretty common place-name ; and as the word means ' elms ' it must have denoted a ' wood ' wherever it is found ; there is therefore no conceivable reason why there should not be a coed Llwyfein in riintshire in the twelfth century and a coed Llwyfein in the North in the sixth. But Cynddelw has another reference to our poem of Argoed Llwyfein, which shows when and to Avhom he regarded Taliesin as having sung it. A notable feature of the poem is that it does honour not only to Uryen and liis son Owein but to their giverin or
Taliesin. i/i
army. The use of tliis very word by Cjnddelw shows that he has this poem in mind :
Ny bu warthlef kert Kynverching werin
O benn Talyessin bartrin beirtriwg.' — Myv. 169a.
' Not inglorioiis was the song of the army of the house of Cynfarch From the mouth of Taliesin of bardic lore, exemp]ar of bards.'
This comes from the eleg-y on Ehiryd Yleidd. According to Cjniddelw, then, Taliesin sang-, not to the men of Gwynedd, but to the men of Kynverching, or the house of Cynfarch, that is, to the army of the historical Urien and Owein, who were respectively the son and grandson of Cynfarch ; see the pedigree (from Harl. 3859) in Y Cym- mrodor, ix, 173. This twelfth century referenceto Taliesin is not mentioned by Dr. Evans, so true is his remarlc of 1909, quoted above, p. 146, about " undue neglect of what saps " a theory ; " undue neglect" is, however, much too mild a term to apply to his treatment of the evidence that tells against him.
I come now to the simpler songs in praise of Urien : "Uryen Yrechwydd ", 57-14 ; " Eng ngorffowys ", 58-13 ; and "Dadolwch Uryen ", 65*5.
URYEN YRECRWYDD.
1 Uryen Yrechwyb, haelaf dyn bedyò,
Lliaws a robyò ý òynyon elvyb ;
Mal y líynnuUyb vial yt wesceryb.
Llawen beirb bedyb tra vo dy vuchyb ; 5 Ys mwy Uewenyb gan clotvan clotryb :
Ys mwy gogonyant vot Uryen ae plant,
Ac ef (yn) arbennic, (yn) oruchel wledic,
(yn) Dinas pelleiinic, (yn) keimat kynteíc.
Lloegrwys ae gwybant pan ymadrobant:
^ Medial and finalí = 8. BarSrin is a recognised compound, 'bardic lore'; also used adjective]y as a "posf^ssive" compoinid ('possessing bardic lore ') : but heir^rmg is a word coined for the nonce; I take 'ittohe beir?>-^rÌ7iy, in sonie sucli sense as ' to whom the bards aspire '.
172 Taliesin.
10 Angheu a gawssant a mynych gobyant —
Llosci eu trefret a dwyn eu tubet
A(c eimwnc) mynych(?) collet a mawr anghyffret,
Heb gaffel gwaret rac Uryen Reget.
Reget òiffreidyat, clot iôr, awgor gwlat, 15 Vy mob yssyb arnat o pop erclywat.
Dwys dy peleidrat pan erclywat kat.
Kat pan ý kyrchy(nt)S, gwî/nyeith a wne(it)t/S,
Tân yn tei kyn dyb rac ub Yrechwyb,
Yrechwyb teccaf ae dynon haelhaf : 20 Gnawt Eingl heb waessaf am tëyrn glewhaf.
Glewhaf eissyllyb, t(yd)i goreu yssyb,
(o'r) A vu ac a vyb, — ny'th oes kystedlyb.
Pan dremher arnaw ys ehalaeth (y) braw.
(gnawt) Gwyleb amdanaw, am tëyrn gocnaw. 25 Amdanaw gwyleb, a (Uiaws) mawr maranheb,
Eurtëyrn Gogleb, arbenhic tëyrneb. Ac yny vallwyf, etc.
URYEN OF YRECH'WYDD.
1 Uryen of Yrechwydd, most generous man in Christendom,
Much dost thou give to the men of the world ;
As thou gatherest, so thou scatterest.
Happy the bards of Christeudom while thy life lasts ; 6 It is greater happiness to the hero's eulogist ;
It is greater glory that Uryen and his sons live,
Since he is the chief, the lord paramount,
Stronghold of the stranger, foremost íighter.
The Lloegrians know it wben they converse : 10 Death have they suffered and many vexations —
The burning of their homes and the taking of their attire,
And many (?) a loss and much tribulation,
Without fìnding deliverance from Uryen Rheged.
Rheged's defender, famous lord, anchor of [his] country, 15 My heart is [set] on thee of all [men of] renown.
Intense is thy spear-play when [the din of] battle is heard.
To battle when thou goest, vengeance thou wreakest,
Houses on fire before dawn in the van of the lord of Yrechwydd,
The fairest Yrechwydd and its most generous men : 20 The Angles arg without security on account of the bravest prince.
Of the bríivest stock, thou art the best that is,
That has been and wiU be, — thou hast no peer.
When men gaze on him widespread is the awe.
i
*>
Taliesin. 1 7
Courtesy around him — around the glorious prince. 25 Around him courtesy and great resources, Golden prince of the North, chief of princes. And iintil I perish, etc.
NoTEs ON "Uryen Yrechwydd".
Nash's text was corrupt, and his translation of that {Tal. 106) is very inaccurate. R. Williams's version appears in F.A.B., 'i, p. 344; also inaccurate. Dr. Evans, ii, 77, corrects some of the errors of his predecessors, and falls into other errors of his own : but he comes nearer the meaning of the original here than in most of his efforts.
Metre. — Half-lines of lìve syllables, rhyming in pairs, and forming lines of ten syllables. That ten syllables is the unit is shown by '• Dadolwch Uryen" below, in which, in some cases, the arrangement of the rhymes within the compass of the ten syilables is different. When the lines are divided into short periods, as here, we can hardly assume long or short lines.
Title. — The poem has no title in the MS. Line 1. — Bedydd is not ' baptism ', but an abstract or collective noun denoting the V)aptized as opposed to the heathen. Another form is bedysaict from ba{p)tizâti, which became a feni. sg. noun, as in O'r croc creulet y deuth guared i'r ledissyaud, B.B., 41, 'From the bloody cross came salvation to Christendom '. In late literature it is spelt bydysawd and used for 'universe' on the mistaken supposition that it is a derivative of byd.
Line 2. — roSyS ; the -y8 is the termination of the 2nd sg. pres. ind.. now -i; Modern Welsh rhoddi 'thou givest'. So in line 3.
Line 3. — The second half of this line is a syllable short. The missing syllable is perhaps mal before yt to answer inal y in the first part. In the later language theformsare val . . . veUy ' as . . . so ', but velly is a reduction of val hyn, and the demonstrative hyn need not have been used originally.
Line 5. — clotran ' highly praised ' from clod 'praise' and buìi 'high'; it is often used as a noun, as in Myv., 188 b 18, 194 b 37; hence we may render it 'hero'. clotrydd ' freely praising', cf. gwaiudrydd the epithet of Aneirin; hcre used as a noun 'eulogist'. The first noun dependsonthe other in the genitive,like lieget ?/8, etc.
Line 6. — The rhyme is taken up in line 9 and contiuued in line 10.
Line 7. — This and the next line are two syllables long; the redundant syllables are doubtless the repeated yn introducing a com- plement, which might be omitted in the early period ; see note on yn hen above, p. 15.5.
arbennic is a noun, as in line 26, not an adjective qualifying oruchel wledic.
174 Taliesin.
Line ^.—pellennic isusually anoun, 'stranger', in Medieyal Welsh, •çA. pellennigyon, R.B.M., p. 162: and dinas peìlennic wonld hardly be used for dinas jìe/l ' far city'. Words like stronghold, fort. wal], etc, are frequently used figuratively for ' defender ' in the old poetry.
Keimat is a 'fighter' (from ca??ip), not a ' companion ' froni cam 'step '. Dr. Evans renders correctly both halves of this line.
Line 'è.—Lloegrwys ' men of Lloegr '. In Geoffrey's Brut Lloegr is the central part of the Island (of Britain), R.B.B,, p. 60. I ani not aware that the name has been explained ; but it seems to denote the territory of the Angles. In line 20 the people are called Eingl ' Angles ', which, it need bardly be pointed out, is historically correct for the opponents of Urien. There are no Saeson for Dr. Evans to " demolish ".
Line 12. — Ac einunic. It seems as if the scribe of the copy had begun to write a word Ìike eò-im {eirif), and then gone on to write minic {mynych), which our scribe copied as mwnc. The word mynych occurs ih line 10, but its repetition is not improbable.
Line lA.—clot, from Aryan ^lcbdóm, ' that which is heard, fame', may also be the perf. part. pass. *khctós, and so may be an adjective.
Line 15. — The first half-line is long : the relatival form yssyS is used as in Medieval and Medern Welsh ; in Old Welsh the verb would be the siniple form ys or yw.
The scribe puts a stop after ai-nat and uses a capital O in O pop erclyicat, thus connecting it with the following lines, and therefore understanding it to mean something like ' By all report '. Sueh a break in the middle of the hne is not improbable ; but the sense it gives here can hardly be the right one. In any case erclyimt is a perf. part. pass. here, and in the next line a passive verb (the same form with the verb ' to be ' understood). It may be added that 0 bob . . . and o bawb are commonly used after verbs of choosing, appreciating, etc.
Line 17. — There can be no doubt that the ending of the verbs should be that of the 2nd sg. pres. ind., to rhyme with the next line.
Line 20. —am ' on account of ', ' at the hands of ' ; this proves the meaning assumed in the note on 1. 28 of the last poem, p. 166.
Line 23. — The article y makes the line too long, and must be omitted.
Line 24. — am ' around ', as in 1. 2 of " Gweith Argoet Llwyfein " ; the use of the word in this sense, even with personal suffixes, is put beyond doubt by llu nef ymdanaw, 11'9, 'the host of heaven around Him'.
gocnaw, perhaps ' triumphant '. Giryr a aeth OdoEin, chwerthin ognaw, B.A. 2"13, ' Men went to Gododdin with exultant laughter',
Tahesin. 175
probably: chwerthin wanar, ib., 1. 18, does not help. Cynddelw has wryd looíjnaio 'of trinmphant (?) valour (manliness)' Myi\ 168b ; and Prydydd y Moch has teyrn hedyrn caä opnaio whicli apparently means ' prince of mighty ones yictorious in battle ", ib. i^OSb. The word may possibly be a form related to goyoniant, but with difl'erent vowel gradation.
Line 25. — llîaios should probably be niawr, or some similar mono- syllable; maior is probable because it alliterates with maranhedd, cf. lines 4, 5, 8.
maranneS 'store, provision, supplies ', etc. ; see e.g. R.B.M. 12 18.
Line 26.— The second half-line is long: arbenhic may be a sub- stitution for a dissyllable such as rieu, or unben(Dv. Evans), suggested by such a phrase as arbenhic milwyr, W.B.M., col. 123.
FNG NGORFFOWYS.
1 Eng MgorS'owys can ry chedwys
Parch a chynnwys, (a) meb meuebwys ;
Meueòwys meb ÿ orvoleb,
A chein tireb im(i) yn ryfeb, 5 A ryfeb mawr (ac eur) ó cet ac awr,
Ac awr a chet achyfrivet,
Achyfrivyant, a robi chwant.
Chwant oe robi, yr vy llochi,
Yt lab, yt gryc, yt vac, yt vyc, 10 Yt vyc, yt vac, yt lab yn rac.
Racweb ro(thi)5yt j (veirb y) 8ynyon byt.
Byt yn geugant itt(i) yt webant
Wrth d(y) ewyllis. Duw ry'th peris
Rieu yng{ni)rys rac of(y)n dy br(i)ys. 15 Annogyat kat, difi'reidyat gwlat, *
Gwlat bift'reidyat, kat annogyat,
Gnawt amdanat twr(w)f pystylat,
Pystylat twr(w)f ac yfet cwr(w)f.
Kwr(w)f oe yfet a chein trefret 20 A chein tubet (imi) ry'm anllofet. '
Llwyfenyb vân a(c)'fÄ eirch achlân
Yn un trygan mawr a bychan.
Taliessin gân ti(di) ae diban.
Ys ti(di) goreu o'r a gigleu 25 ý wrblideu.
Molaf inheu dy weithredeu. Ac yny vallwyf, etc.
17Ó Taliesin.
AT HOME.
1 In [his] home since he has given [me]
Honour and welcome, with mead has he dowered me ;
He has dowered me with the mead of his glory,
And [has given] íine lands to me in abundance, 5 And great abundance of gifts and gold,
And gold and gifts unnumbered,
Innumerable, and has given [my] desire.
'Tis to give my desire in order to gratify me
That he kills, that he hangs, that he rears, that he feeds, 10 That he feeds, that he rears, that he kills again.
He gives ref ection to the men of the world.
The world indeed does homage to thee
At thy will. God has made thee
Master in assault for fear of thy onslaught. 15 Inspirer in battle, defender of country,
Country's defender, battle inspirer,
Usual around thee is a host's tramping,
The tramping of a host and the drinking of beer.
Beer to drink and a fine homestead 20 And fine raiment have been bestowed on me.
The people of Llwyfenydd greet thee all
In one chorus, great and small.
The song of Taliesin entertains thee.
Thou art the best of all I have heard of 25 as to thy merits.
And I wiU praise thy works.
And until I perish, etc.
NoTES ON "Yng Ngorffowys".
Nash's translation appears in his Tal. 113 ; R. Williams's in F.A.B. ì, p. 346 ; Dr. Evans's in II, 107. All are forthe most part hopelessly astray.
Metre. — The metre is " cyhydedd fer" (see above, p. 163). In this poem each line of eight syllables is divided into two rhyming half- lines of four. The rhyme is in some cases carried over two or three lines ; but in ten consecutive lines, 5-14, the half-line rhyme is limited to the line. An exti'a half-line is added to 1. 24 ; it would be unsafe to assume that a half-line is missing, as the three half-lines form the unit of the metre called " rhupunt ", which might have been used just before the end, like the " toddaid byr " in " Gweith Argoet Llwyfein " above.
The poem is full of what is technically called " cymeriad " (* taking
I
Taliesin. iyy
up '), which is regarded by the bards as a desirable, if not necessary, ornament of verse, the absence of which is called " tor cymeriad ". It consists in the repetition of words or soiinds of a line in the next line, and is obviously a convention designed to aid the memory. Where the meaning suggests what is to follow, the sequence is called " cymeriad synhwyrol ", and no other " cynieriad " is necessary. The examples of ''cymeriad" in this poem are as follows: — (1) "Cymeriad geiriol", — a word at the end of a line repeated at the beginning of the next; ryfe^ 11. 4-5, achyfrẁ- 6-7, rac 10-11, byt 11-12. This is an early form of *' cymeriad " which survives in later verse only in the connexion between the englynion in a " cadwyn " or " chain". A more elaborate form of it, which is very common in the Taliesin poems, consists in the repetition in reverse order of the words of a half-line, as me^ meueSwys 1. 2, meue^ioys nie8 1. 3 ; the other examples in this poem are 7-8, 9-10, 17-18, 18-19, and 15-16, in which the whole line is repeated in inverse order. We can quite confidently amend the corrupt second half of line 5 in conformity with this principle of "cymeriad".— (2) "Cymeriad cynganeddol", — consonants repeated : anlìoîet, 1. 20, hhuyîenyS, 1. 21 ; this is only recognised at the beginning of the two lines by the late prosodists. — (3) " Cymeriad Ilythrennol ", — the repetition of the initial consonant of the line ; this is the commonest form in later verse, but only one example occurs in this poem, II. 16-17. — (4) Most of the other sequences are examples of " cymeriad synhwyrol " ; and probably the carry- ing on of the line-rhyme into the next line was regarded as a "cymeriad ".
Dr. Evans, who knows nothing whatever about these things, violates half the " cymeriadau" in his "amended" text. Title. — The poem has no title in the manuscript. Line 1. — Eg gorffon^ys. The eg is the preposition yng, mutation of yn. The g is the usual symbol for ng. Dr. Evans thunders against the spelling yng ng- in almost every boolc he publishes; here his diatribe is in II, p. xii. Consonants are not to be doubled (even in separate words !) " except under the accent ", by which he means after an accented vowel. We must write ywEfyn instead of yn Nefyn (as if oiie iiisisted on in-Eirport for in Neirport in English). He implies that the twoconsonants are never written in fnll in MSS., which is untrue, for yn n-, ym m-, and yg g- are frequent. Further, the preposition yn followed by the nasal mutation is accented, see my Gram., pp. 173-5; but Dr. Evans is unalile to understand thi.s, and will probably continue to rave against doubling " e.icept under the accent". In tlie early seventeenth century it was a " merrye jest '' to pretend that yn Nyfed was yn yfed (Owen's Pm., i, 9, 310 fn.); Dr. Bvans writes yw Yved in all seriousness, p. xvii, see above p. 55, and
N
178 Taliesin.
is angry with others because they are not equally laclîing in a sense of humour.
yorffowys, literally 'rest'; here probably inthe sense of ' residence, mansion, manor ' ; cf . Powysfa Dewi in Llyfr Llan Daf 158, 260. Dr. Evans takes this to be yor Bowys, " The border of Powys " ; he imagines that in the compound yor-or it is the prefix yor- that means ' border ' ! Of course or ' border ' has no y-.
chedwys, 3rd sg. aorist of a denominative from ced 'gift'.
Line 2. — meue^wys, 3rd sg. aor. of a denominative of meueS ' pro- perty', literally 'mine', from meu ' my ' : hence meueSwys 'made mine '.
Line 3. — y orvole8. I have rendered this literally, withoutattempt- ing to decide whether it means ' for which he is famed ', or ' for his praise ', or ' in which he glories '.
Line 4. — ryfeS from *pro-med-, ' beyond thought or measure' where ^med- is the root ' judge, thinlî, measure' (Gr., 378), is used in a more primitive sense than in Medieval and Modern Welsh, in which it has come to mean ' strange '.
Line 5. — ac eur ac awr. The Old Welsh word for ' gold ' is aur (i.e., aicr) which is the regular derivative of the Latin auriivi. The form eur was originally the adjective, derived from aiireus {Gr. 106), and cannot make sense here. The " cymeriad " makes it practically certain that ac eur is an error for o cet (0 yed), or a chet ; the f ormer makes better sense. I suggest that the original text was written thus — hoc& hacaur ; that the scribe misread hoc as hac, and could make nothing of the &, for which he substituted eur, which may have existed as a gloss on aur.
achyfrẁet. For ach- as a variant of anyh-, cf. achen beside anyhen ' need' {Gr. 151). -et is a perf. part. pass. ending.
Line 6. — achyfrẁyant. -yant is the pres. part act. ending ; it adds only a shade of meaning to the adjective achyfrif^ anyhyfrif * numberless ' ; cf . dilys and dilysiant.
Line 8. — Chwant oe roSi, literally, ' Desire, [it is] to give it'; Chwant is nominative absolute ; oe\s wy, now i'w 'to . . it'; see next note.
Line 9. — Yt is the oblique relative ' that ', which is used because the antecedent is an adverbialphrase (preposition -\- nonn, tw roddi), exactly as y is stiU used ; thus i''w roddi y lladd ' [it is] to give it that he kills (his fat stock) '.
(/rí/c, obviously 3rd sg. pres. ind. of cro^fí/ ' I hang ' : ' lie liangs (the carcasses) '.
vac, 3rd sg. pres. ind. of mayaf ' I rear, bring up', etc.
vyc, 3rd sg. pres. ind. of an obsolete verb *myyaf from *muk- (not related to myy, edmyy, etc, from *smik-) ; the primitive perf. part. pass. or supine stem is represented by mwyth, moeth ' luxury ', micyth
Taliesin. 1 79
werin * well-niirtiirerl host', Myv. 206a; a secondary perf. part. pass. is myffet, as in emys yraicthwys graicnryged, ib. 208a, ' horses, fast- trotting, grain-fed'; Gicytuiled gyfred grat{y)cyged graicn, 169 al, '(horses) as fleet as wild beasts, for fleetness fed on grain '. The verb means 'to foster, to pamper', and is almost synonymous with magaf, and sometimes used with it, as here ; e.g., Ny mag . . . Ny mye, 204 b lines 1 and 2.
Line 10. — y7i rac. The preposition rhag comes from an adjectival form *prokos cognate with the second element in the Latin reci- procus : yn with adjectival rhag fornis an adverb * progressively '.
Line 11. — raciceS is 'provision' literally and etymologically ; as seen above, rac is an extension of original *pro, and weS is *uida, root *ueid^ 'see\ It seems generally to mean ' preparation ' ; but many words of this meaning are used for 'provision' of food.
ý veir5 y òyt. The deíìnite article y before byt is suspect ; there
can be no doubt that veir8 í/ is a (bardic) substitution for Sytiyoti, as
in " Uryen Yrechwydd " line 2, see above p. 171, where Synyon elvy8
(synonymous with Synyon byt) is used in making almost the same
statement. Thouo^h di/nion is not found in Cornish and Breton it
..... *
may well be old in Welsh ; if it is not, it may be a substitution in
these phrases for a collective noun like dynin (24*17) ; cf. gwerin, from
gicŷr.
Line 13. — The proclitic dy was probably á' before a vowel from the
earliest period. It may be, however, that the original reading here
was íth eiüyllis, see next note.
ewyllis. This word is generally spelt ewyllys ; but in the W.B.M. we find ith eiüyllus y8 ydym, c. 90, ' we are at thy wiU ', and in the next line ewyllwys, but lower down ewyllus again. It seems as if the u were a roundiug of i due to the influence of tlie w ; in that case -ys is a later modification of -us, and the original form is -is. The spelling eicyllis oceurs elsewere in our text, 1317.
Line 14. — ygnis .... dy bris. The exact' form of these words also is doubtful, though the meaning is clear. In Old Welsh both i and y were written /, and the distinction between them in our MS. depends entirely upon its scribe. Probably gnis should be grys {áespite g7iissynf oî 6\"2'3 a,n(\ gììissint, Ji.A. 37'lî)) froni *grd-t-, cog- nate with Irish grêss ' attack ' from *gre)idt- (Fic]v-Stükes, 118), allied to Sanskrit grdhyati ' strides out ', Lat. gradior, gressus. In 661 9, dy bris dy brys should probal)ly be dy breu dy brys, found in- verted in dy brys dy breti, I. 24, 'bursts, breaks ' ; tlie form is therefore probably brys cognate with Irish brissÌ7ti ' 1 break ', and allied to English burst, etc. (Fick-Stokes, 184). The b is thus the Old Welsh radical which the scribe should have mutated : dy vrys.
Line 17. — twr{iü)f. See note on "Gweith Gwen Ystrat ", I. 13,
îí2
1 8o Taliesin.
p. 164 above. The medieval tirr{ic)f ox tii-r{y)f (sÚQXit u- and y) inter- changed with ticrn: in which the last ic is nonsyllabic, being a modi- fication of the consonant/(=i)). Similarly cwr{îv]f, cicric. The final nonsyllabic lo has now become a syllable twr-w, cwr-w.
Line 20. — imi ry: read ry'm. This emendation has actually been made by Dr. Evans, II, p. 108.
Line 21. — van is certainly not rmm as taken by R. Williams and Dr. Evans, for it rhymes with aehlân, and the rhyme is carried on in the next two lines. It clearly means ' men ' or ' people ' ; it might be from Lat. maìius in the sense of ' a band or body of men '. But I see no reason to doubt that the Aryan *manu- (Sanskrit mánu-s ' man, mankind ') survived in Keltic, since it is found in Germanic. Troude records an old Breton 77ian ' homme ', which he compares with the German Maìin ; but it cannot be derived frora the Germanic since in Germanic the stem is maìin- (for manu-, see Kluge s.v. Mann) ; in Welsh the Old Eng. mann appears dialectaljy as mon, in ìacsmon, etc. That mân 'people' is not used in Medieval or Modern Welsh is no argument against its occurring in this poem, if it is genuine, for obsolete words like mán and caffon are to be expected, and are fewer in these poems than they would be but for substitu- tions. The word seems to have survived as an adjective mân 'plebeian', as wlien D. ap Gwilym says that he is not a yŵr mân (Pughe, s.v. mân), where mân can hardly be the adjective ' small ' used with pl. nouns, as cerrig mân, etc.
achlân. This word, like some other adverbs such as yrháwg, pre- served its old accentuation in Medieval and Early Modern Welsh, being used commonly bj' the bards down to the end of the sixteenth century ; it means ' wholly, altogether '. In Old Welsh the accent generally fell on the ultima, and the original rhythm and rhyme of such a poem as this may be seen by restoring the accentuation of the rhyming words in such lines as these; thus : —
Llwyfenyb vân | a'th eirch achlân, Yn un trygân | mawr a bychân. Taliessin gân 1 ti ae dibân.
ö^
Incidentally also the restoration shows why vann is absolutely im- possible, as well as Dr. Evans's trigan(n) for trigant, and generally why a double final cannot rhyme with a single.
Line 23. — ae. I leave this unchanged because the old form of the relative was ae (Old Welsh ai, hai) ; and I leave the initial of diBan unmutated because the accusative relative was followed by the radical, as in U heSeu ae gulich y glav, B.B. 63, 'the graves which the rain wets '. In ordinary Medieval or Modern Welsh the phrase under notice would be ti a ddiddan ' (it is) thou whom it entei'tains'.
Taliesin. 1 8 1
Line 25. — On this half-line see note on metre above. Probably wrhlideu is an error for ewllideu 'merits', though a compound gwr^ + llideu is not impossible. The second eleraent is also found compounded in delideu ' merits ', which Prydydd y Moch uses in the singular dlid, Myv. 204. In Breton, " Ce mot ne s'emploie qu'au pluriel dellidou, au sens de mérites, terme de dévotion ", Troude s.v.
DADOLWCH URYEN.
1 Ll(euu)ywyb echassaf, mi nyw dirmygaf ;
Uryen a gyrchaf, ibaw yt ganaf.
Pan òêl vy Jîgwaessaf, kynnvvys a gaffaf,
A'r parth goreuhaf y dan eilassaf. 5 Nyt mawr ym dawr by(th gweheleith a welaf)
Nyt af attabunt, ganthunt ny bybaf :
(n)i?y chyrchaf (i) Gogleò a(r)7zmeií teyrneh.
Kyn pei am lawer(eò) y gwnelwn (gyngh)wystleí),
Nyt reit ym hoffeb, Uryen nym gomeb. 10 Ll(o)?oyfenyb tireb, ys meu eu reufeb
Ys meu ỳ gwyled, ys meu ý llareb,
Ys meu ý (de)/hdeu ae gorefrasseu —
Meb o vualeu, a da dieisseu
Gan tëyrn goreu, haelaf rygigleu. 15 Tëyrneb pob ieith yt oll yb ynt geith.
Ragot yt gwynir, ys dir dy oleith.
Kytef mynasswn (gweyhehi henwn)
Ny(t oeb) well a g(e)arwn kyn ys gwybybwn.
Weithon y gwelaf y meint a gaffaf, 20 Nam«yn (y) Duw uchaf nys dioferaf.
Dy tëyrn veibon, haelaf dynebon,
(wy) Ka(n)Äan eu (hy)sc(yrr)/yyon yn tireb (eu) galon. Ac yny vallwyf, etc.
EULOGY OF URYEN.
1 Most valiant chief, I will not slight him ;
Uryen I will seek, to him I will sing.
When my warrant comes, welcome shall I receive
And the best place under the chieftain. 5 I care not much what [bidding I get]
I wiU not gü to them, I will not be with them :
I will repair to the North at the beck of princes.
Though it were for much that I gave a pledge,
I need not reckon it, Uryen will not refuse me.
1 8 2 Taliesin.
10 The lancls of Llwyfenydd, mine is tlieir wealth,
Mine is their courtesy, mine is their bounteousness, Mine are their feasts and their luxuries — Mead out of horns and good tliings without stint, Frora the best prince, the most generous I have heard of.
15 The princes of all nations are all thrall to thee :
In thy advance there is wailing, thou must be evaded. Though I had wished it [ ? ]
There was none I loved better before I knew him ; Now that I see how much I obtain,
20 I will no more forswear him than the most high God. Thy princely sons, most generous men, Get their booty in the lands of their foes. . And until I perish, etc.
NoTEs ON " Dadolwch Uryen ".
Translations : Nash in his Taliesin, p. 107; R. Williams in F.A.B., i, p. 352 : Dr. Evans in II, 95.
Metre. — Lines of ten syllables divided into rhyming half-lines of five, the raetre of " Uryen Yrechwydd ", see above p. 173. But in this poem three lines, ö, 6, 16, have internal rhyme instead of the half-line rhyme ; see note on line 5.
Title. — Golwch means 'praise'; and the prefix dad- may be in eü'ect merely intensive, as in dat-gan ' to declare '. In twelfth cen- tury titles dodolwch generally raeans 'reconciliation, propitiation ', and is applied to poeras addressed to patrons who have been oífended ; but there is no suggestioii of Uryen's displeasure in this poera. It implies that the bard was about to return to him after an absence in Gwynedd.
Line l.—Lleimi/S, i.e. Llt/wt/S. The spelling in the scribe's copy was probably Louid ; he misread Lou- as Lleu-, ou being the regular Old Welsh form of Medieval eti as well as of yw with obscure y (see Gram., p. 31) ; on seeing his mistake he wrote another u to make the u into double-M, i.e. lo ; though not generally used by him two u& might stand for iv, as in B.B. 2'1 ; conversely w might stand for uu {=vu) as in wtic for vu8ic B.B. 8311, wt for vu8 do. 86"3. As the scribe himself sometimes uses e ior y (see above p. 126), he left the e uncorrected. Dr. Evans (like Nash) guessed Llywy8 * chief ' ; but as he cannot postulate an Old Welsh original he has no expla- nation to offer of the curious spelling, which he finds it convenient to ignore.
echassaf. The prefix is probably ech- ; and echas seems to bear the same relation to dias, as ehofn {echofn) does to diofn ' fearless ' and
Talíesm. 183
apparently the root idea is similar in both pairs. Dias seems to be an adjective in^/e«' ŵs ŵwas e lu ovnam B.A. 10-8 ' bold, fearless, [he was] a stronghold to a timid host ' and a noun in dinas y 8ias do. 154 'a stronghold [was] his valour'; am-Òias and diasseS are adjec- tives, used with gwrhyd 'manliness' and greid 'courage' (Breton gret ' courage ', Troude, s.v.), as gicrhyt am^ias B.A. \"2, gwrhyt diasseô B.T. 598, greid am-Sias, Myv 145 a 3. Hence I talte the superlative echassafto mean ' most valiant '. It cannot well be from cas, for from c- only ach- is possible (and achas exists), which can become ech- only before i or //. The previous renderings of these opening words of the poem, based upon the mistaken derivation from cas, are —
Though the chief is angry. — Nash. Thelionwill be most implacable. — R. Williams. The Chief I do not dislike. — Dr. Evans.
Line 3. — hynnwys ' admission ' rendered correctly by R. Williams ; see Silvan Evans, s.v. But cynnu-ys is something more than mere 'admission'; it is still used dialectally in Gwynedd for 'welcome admission, encourageraent '.
Line 4. — eilassaf ' chieftain '. Cf. Hywel haelaf vaur eilassaw gorescynhwy B.B. 76.7 (fìnal -aw -= af); men yS ynt eilyassaf (e)lein B.A. 14 14 ' where the chieftain's blades are' ; dor angor beèin, òuÔ eilyassaf do. 155 'the door, the anchor of an army, victorious chief '; llu eilassafB.T. 64-22, context obscure, possibly 'chief of a host'.
Line 5. — As it stands the line means ' Not much do I care ever for the race that I see '. Byth ' ever ' comes in awkwardly, and seems to be the scribe's guess, to rhyme with his gwehelyth (which, however, he spells gioeheleith; cí. gwehelieith, F.A.B., ii, p. 225). The original word may have been either pi, Medieval py, hy 'w^hat', or jiet 'how many'. The next word I take to have been guahaud, which the scribe read .ç/?<a/í«/íV/, and understood as yw-eÄy/j/íÄ, which makes the line too long. The mistake of reading u as li is the converse of the error of reading li as n, which we have come across more than once; with ^Mor M he would be familiar; also with the vocaIism of the supposed guahalid, with which cf. Ligualid above, p. 58. I caimot explain w<?/«/except as the scribe's substitution for gaffaf ov gahaf which made no sense with his misreadings. I take the original line to have been —
Nyt mawr ym dawr by gwahawh a gaffaf,
to be rendered as above. The line has internal rhyme, and there- fore was not necessarily divided into two fìves ; dairr forms a good rhyme wìih. gwahawS: and the line is of the right length.
Byth is most readily explained as derived from Irish ; but ás it is
184 Taliesin.
found in Cornish and Breton also such derivation isdoubtful, though as British its formation is obscure ; see Thurneysen's Alt-Irischen Gram., p. 222. As, however, it is probably a late insertion here, the date of the poem is not aflfected.
Line 7. — armeiteyrned, so joined in the MS., as if the scribe had run on from the final t of -meit to the initial t of teyrne^. The most probable reading seems to be anmeit ' nod, beck ' ; Old Welsh plural emneituon, gloss on " per nutus ". In the later language metathesis took place, and the word is now amnaid. With anmeit teyrneS cf. deorum nutu, Cicero, Cat. iii, 9, 21.
Line 8. — laivereZ — Tlie -e8 was added by the scribe because he did not see that the -er of lawer formed a good rhyme with the -eh of wystle^.
Line 9. — hoffe^. The original meaning of hoffi seems to be ' to value, appreciate ', etc, from which the modern 'to ]ike' is natur- ally derived (cf . Eng. dear ' precious ; loved '). The prüverb Hanner y uiedd hoffedd yw means ' Half the feast is the appreciation of it ' (not " is fondness", as Pughe renders it). Tripheth a hoffa ker8, Red Book, col. 1141, ' three things that give value to a song '. Gor-hoffeò R. B. Bruts 215 'boasting' (cf. Eng. over-weeninff), whence sometimes hoffeS ' boast'. Here, however, the word is used in its primary sense of 'setting a value upon'.
Line 12. — delideu. There seems to be no foundation for Pughe's * hard substance ; metal ', except his silly derivation of the word from dèl which he renders " obdurate ". Here it makes the line too long, and seems to be a compound (cf. dilidcu ' feasts ', Myv. 144 a 27) substituted for the archaic uncompounded llideu 'feasts', pl. of llid, which survives in Breton as lid 'feast', pl. lidou; the exact phonetic equivalent appears in Old Irish as llth * feast '. The same substitu- tion as the above occurs in our text in 19'8 ; thus,
Gwneynt eu peiron a verwyntheb tân, Gwneynt eu (de)/lideu yn oes oesseu.
' They make their cauldrons which boil without fire, They make their feasts for ever.'
gorefrasseu, apparently ' superfluities, luxuries '. It is diflicult to fix the meaning of efras, but it seems to denote ' resource ' of power or wealth : ys evras ywrth (read r/wrS) 'he is mighty of resource', F.A.B., ii, 271 ; the efras of the white town by the wood is ever ' her blood on the face of her grass', do. 285; lleto lluch efras 'lion of im- petuous might', Gwalchmei, Myv. 144b ; yiür gwrb i evreis ' man of mighty resources ', do., ib. 143b ; evras cad ' fighting force ', Prydydd y Moch, ib. 21 2b; Pedyr per y etras 227a ; cf. 152 a, b, B.B. 868. In the ouly medieval example of goreoras known to me it seems to be
Taliesin. 185
newly compounded : Gwr gorevras, gwas gwenwyn, Cynddelw, Myv. 184a, '(he was) a man of great might, a youth of yirulence'.
Line 15. — ieith ' nation ' so iised as late as the fifteenth centnry ; see an example in a couplet by Gutun Owain in my Gram., p. 34.
Line 16. — goleith. All the lexicographers have gone wrong in taking this to be a compound of lleith ' death '. Mr. Williams has seen that it means 'toavoid, evade, elude'. Pughe's examples are Dywal dirfydd ei olaith, which he renders " The death of the fierce is certain ", though it obviously nieans ' The fierce must be avoided ', and iVt ellid ei olaith, which he renders " he could not be slain ", in- stead of 'there was no escape from him '. A good example is Ny oleith lleith yr llyfyrder ' he will not shirk death from cowardice', Cynddelw, Myv. 176a, Strachan, Intr. 233. Anoleith 'inevitable' (not " death- f ul " as given by Silvan Evans) ; lleith anoleith ' inevitable death ', B.T. 1513, Prydydd y Moch, Myv. 211 b 4.
Line 17. — gweyhelu henwìi. This half-line is obviously corrupt, and I am unable to suggest any satisfactory emendation.
Line 18. — Nyt oeS well; the oeS is superflous; the reading might be Nyt gioell or Ny well; cf. Na well, W.B.M. c. 84.
gerwn, scribal error for garwn.
kyn ys gwyby^wn : kyn ' before ', Gram. 446. The distinction between gwybod ' savoir ' and adnabod ' connaître ' goes back to British, for it is found in Breton as well as in Welsh ; but ad-nabod is literally 'to recognise, to be acquaiiited with'; and as ^?ry5 still means ' presence ' it is possible that *gwy8bod might be used in Early Welsh for ' meeting ' or ' mahing the acquaintance of ", which is the sense required here (as its Greek cognate eî8ov might be used for 'seeing' a person in the sense of 'meeting' him). The meaning of the sentence can hardly be doubtful, and the use of gwybySwn points to an antiquity well beyond the middle ages.
Line 19. — The article is hardly ever found before jceithon {=weith Äon) in Medieval Welsh ; and its regular omission {whiìe y prytwìi, y wershon, etc, are never without it) may be a survival from the period when the article was not essential before the demonstrative hw7i, hon.
Line 20. — The scribe inserted y, which makes the line too long, because namyn meant nothing to him but ' except ' ; he took the phrase to mean ' except ybr the most high God ', a reservation which weakens the declaration for no intelligible purpose. The meaning is clearly ' 1 will no more forswear Uryen than I will forswear the most high God '. NamiLy{n) is literally ' not more ' ; it was used, like its Irish cognate nammä in the sense of 'only ' to strengthen a word meaning 'but'; thus Irish acht . . . nammä ' but . . . only', üld Welsh ho7iit nammui ' but onl}' ' ; in Welsh the word for ' but ' came to be omitted, and namwyn itself was used for ' but ' (cf . the collo-
i86 * Taliesin.
quial use of only for ' but ' in Englisli). In the Shirburn Brut it occurs as ' only ' after nyt in the passage of Lludd corresponding to W.B.M., c. 192-21: 'nyt na mwy ' not only'(I. Williams, Lludd a Llerelys, p. 18 ; in the W.B. wrongly copied nyt mwy). In Medieval Welsh nanuryn has no other meaning ; in Old Welsh it occurs as an adverb qualifying ' but ', and as ' but ' itself, Book of Llan Daf , p. 120, and apparently 'only', do. p. xliii ; and its use here in its literal and etymological sense of ' not more ', with a dependent genitive of comparison Duw uchaf ' than the most high God ', which was unintelligible to the medieval scribe, takes the phrase back beyond the Old Welsh period.
dioferaf is the verb of which the verbal noun is diofryd, as the verbal noun of cymeraf is cymryd, of differaf is diffryd, of adferaf is edfryd, of gochelaf is gochlyd {Gram., p. 391). This well-known sur- vival of Aryan vowel-gradation in Welsh was unknown to Dr. Evans, who " amends " dioferaf 'mto " àiowYyd-AÌ ", II, 96.
Line 22. — Medieval ysclyvon would be written sclimon in Old Welsh (cf. Gr. 159, 11. 17-8) : and we have here another proof thatZ was short in the scribe's copy. He read the l as i, and the four strokes of im as rr.
It is probable that some lines are missing at the end of this song.
It has been seen in the notes that there is a consider- able amoünt of evidence that the above three songs to Urien have been cojîied from a manuscript in a flat-topped hand of the ninth centurj, and many grammatical and etymological indications of the matter being still older. It does not seem to me to be necessarj tö arg-ue that the Urien in whose honour thej were written is the Urien of history. They have all the appearance of ha^ing- been composed to be suno' in his presence. He is referred to promiscuously in the second and third person. The singer addresses him as " thou ", and, addressing the company, speaks of him as " he ". Is this also a piece of ninth century realism?
I subjoin the elegy on Owein son of Uryen 67*18, re- ferred to at some length above, pp. 87 ff.
Taliesin. 187
MARWNAT OWEIN.
1 Eneit Owein ap Uryen,
gobwyllit (y) Reen oe reit. Reget ub ae cnh tromlas —
nyt oeb vas ý gywydeit. 5 Iscelljsryí, kerh glyt clotvawr;
escyll gíí'awr, gwaywawr llifeit, Cany cheffir kj'stedlyb
ŷ uh llewenyh llatAreit. Medel galon, geveilat — 10 eisaylut y tat ae teit.
Pan labawò Owein Fflamhwyn,
nyt oeb vwy noc et kysceit. • Kyscit Lloeg(y)r llydan nifer,
a /leuver yn eu Uygeit ; 15 A rei ny fföynt hayach
a oeòynt hyac\\ no reit. Owein ae cospes yn brut,
mal cnut yn dylut deveit. Gẃr gwiw uch ý amliw seirch, 20 a robei veirch ý eircheit.
Ky?j(t) as cronyei mal calet,
(n)ry rannet rac ý eneit. Eneit Oicein ap Uryen, 24 gohwyllit Reen oe reit.
THE DEATHSONG OF OWEIN.
1 The soul of Owein ap Uryen,
may the Lord have regard to its need. Rheged's priiice, whom the heavy sward covers, not shallow was his judgement. 5 At supper time [he heard] the acclaiming song of praise,
with the wings of dawn [he hurled] the whetted spears, For no peer is to be found
to the prince of radiant cheer. Reaper of enemies, cai^tor — 10 heir of liis fatlier and forebears.
When Owein killed Fílambwyn,
it was no greater [featj than sleeping. The wide host of Lloegr sleep
with the light in their eyes ; 15 And those that fled not amain
were bolder than [they had] need [to be].
i88 Taliesin.
Owein punished them grievously
like a pack [of wolves] chasing sheep. A fine man [was he] above his many-coloured trappings, 20 who gave horses to [his] suitors.
Before he would lay up a hoard like a miser,
it was distributed for his soul, The soul of Owein ap Uryen, 24 may the Lord have regard to its need.
NOTES ON " MaRWNAT OWEIN ".
Translations : Nash, Taliesin, 108; R. Williams, F.A.B., i, 366 ; Dr. Evans, II, 125, on which see above, pp. 87-90.
Metre. The metre is '• awdl gywydd " {Dosp. Ed., p. lxvii). The
unit is a line of fourteen syllables divided into two half-lines of seven ;
the last syllable of the first half-line rhymes with any final syliable
from the second to the fifth of the second half-line ; in some cases it
rhymes with tico woi'ds in the latter, as clotvaior 1. 5, 'wìth gicuwr and
gwaewaicr in 1. 6, and drut 1. 17 with cnut and dylut 1. 18. The end of
the f uU line rhymes throughout ; in this poem the rhyme is -eit. The
line is now regarded as a couplet, and the half-lines as lines ; and I
have so nurabered them above. The metre was rarely üsed by the
cynghanedd poets, who preferred the ordinary cywydd : there is an
example by Dafydd ab Edmwnd in Peniarth MS. 77, p. 392, be-
ginning —
Llawenaf lle o Wynedd
Yw llys medd a Uysiau Môn.
But stanzas of three couplets of the metre becamé later one of the favourite forms of peniilion to sing to the harp ; a good example is Lewis Morris's " Caniad y Gog i Feirionydd '", of which one stanza may be quoted:
Annwyl yw gan adar hyd
Eu rhyddid \\yd y coedydd ; Annwyl yw gan faban \aeth
Ei {•Amaeth oá\aeth ddedwydd ; O ! ni ddwedwn yn fy myw
Mor annwyl yiv Meirionydd.
The oldest extant poem of Meilyr, the earliest historical medieral bard, is in this metre, Myv. 142a; it was composed at Mynydd Carn in 1081. Some of the oldest Irish poetry is written in stanzas of four half-lines of seven syllables each. Sanctan's hymn, Irische Texte, i, 49, which contains a comparatively large number of obscure passages, is in that metre ; it is attributed to the Briton Sanctän, whü is said to be the son of Samuil Pennissel {Lives of Brit. Saints,
Taliesin. 189
iv, 175), son of Pabo, third in descent from Ceneu ab Coel (ib., iv, 38) ; the author would therefore be a conteniporary and líinsman of Owein ap Uryen. The internal rhyme of the "awdl gywydd " occurs in the early Latin hymns. Kuno Meyer {Pnmer of Irish Metric^, p. 9) quotes as an example :
Conclamantes Deo Aigìmm hymnum sanctae Mariae. ut voxpulset omnem aurem per \audem YÌcariam.
There is thus no reason at all to doubt that the raetre is as old as the late sixth century ; both the rhyme-system and the length and division of lines are probably much older.
Line 1. — ap. In Medieval Welsh generally this is written vab, but the V had already disappeared in the twelfth century, e.g. Ouein ab Urien, B.B. 64-7. In the scribe's copy the form would doubtless be map.
Line 2, — gobicyllit : the o was begun as 6, i.e. w, by the scribe, which shows that this poem also was copied from a MS. in Old Welsh orthography, in which the prefìx go- is always written guo-. Dr. Evans notes the error, but has nothing to say about it.
On lines 1 and 2 see above pp. 87-8.
Line 3. — ae is the old form of the relative, which when accusative was followed by the radical initial of the verb ; see note on line 23 of "Yng Ngorffowys" above, p. 180.
tromlas ' heavy green ' occurs as an adjective in 5J:'20 qualif ying caduyn 'chain', the phrase denoting the prison of earth, the grave.
cywydeit, derivative in -eit (v.n. ending, cf. gorSyfneit, synnyeit) of cywyd ' mind', written hytid in B.B. 76-13, where íinal -d=d (not 8).
Line 5.— This line is a syllable short in the MS. The expression kerS glyt clotvawr (read glotmiur) is complete, and JcerSeu clyt is not a probable emendation. The missing Avord therefore probably came after Iscell; and the internal rhyme of line 3 suggests that it rhymed with clyt ; the word pryt fulfils this condition, and exactly fills the gap in the sense ; see below.
JsceW, according to Bichards, is 'broth, pottage, gruel, supping'; the English sup is hterally 'to imbil)e', and is allied to soiip; one might sup, or partake of iscell, at any hour, but as siipper in Eng. has come to denote the last meal, so the time ^ar í^o^'/i' for iscell was the evening; thus pryt 'time' is required to bring out the contrast with ' dawn ' in the next line.
ker8 glyt. This cìyt has nothing to do with clyd ' sholtered ' (which is from *Ä:Ẅ- originally *klt-, root *kel- 'cover'), but comes from the genitive *kiuti of the neuter noun whose nom.-acc. sg. was *klutóm, which has given Welsh clod ; the root is *kleu- ' hear '. Briefly, the old genitive of elod survived iu the expression cerdd glyd,
igo Taliesin.
which was still used in the twelfth century, e.g. by Cynddelw in Myv. 190a quoted above, p. 98 fn. It occurs in the late part of " Anrec Urien " : Ef a '^aw hyt ny hyS ker8 glyt, ny by^ kelvyS, F.A.B., ii, 292, Y Cym., vii, 125, ' A time wiil come when there will be no song of praise, when there will be nö accomplished (singer) '.
Line 6.— This line is liuked to the preceding by the " cymeriad cynganeddol " iscell / escyll, rendering the reading of the two words certain, and disproving the ignorant " emendation" of II, 124.
escyll yawr should undoubtedly be esyyll yiaawr, for the words occur in 4213 in the same connexion : glessynt escyll gwaior, escorynt {wy) wayioator ' the wings of dawn became grey, they brought forth spears'.
llifeit ' whetted ' ; a whetstone is still called maen llifo in North Wales.
Line ^.—Medel is usually a feminine noun {y fedel) meaning, like its Irish cognate methel, ' a corapany of reapers' ; but it seems also to have been a masculine noun in Welsh, meaning 'a reaper ', e.g. y medel B.B. 45-9 ; in this sense it has been replaced by medelwr. Cf. medel e alon, B.A. 26-15, ' reaper of his enemies '.
yefeilat is the derivative in -{i)ad of gafael ' to seize ' ; this ending, wheu it affects the stem-vowels, as here, denotes the agent ; see p. 98 fn. The word therefore means ' seizer, captor'.
Line 10.— On teit ' ancestors ' see my Gram. p. 219. The bard is thinking, not of Owein's "grandsire" (11, 125), but of his ancestors, Ceneu and Coel.
Liue 11.— Nash renders this line " When Fflamddwyn slew Owain", with a footnote stating that "The ordinary construction would give ' When Owein slew Fflamdwyn'. But in an elegy on Owain the circumstances of his death are more naturally mentioned [why "more naturally" than the exploits of his life ?! ; and the reading renders the following liues more intelligible," Tal, p. 109. By the "foUowing lines" he means 1. ]2,whichhe completely misunderstood. How it is "more intelligible " that "following" his death Owein should punish his enemies, Nash does not say ; the poet is of course continuing his account of Owein's prowess. R. Williams adopts Nash's rendering, and we are assured in a note (ii, 418) that this "is the natural construction ". Professor Powel observes that "if by 'natural' is meant 'iu accordance with Welsh usage ', then the assertion cannot be accepted " ; it *s, in fact, the exact reverse of the truth. In a direct statement, a noun object may precede the noun subject, as BygystuS deuruS dagreu, F.A.B., ii, 282, ' tears afflict tlie cheeks ' ; but this is very rare, and in a dependent clause such an inversion is hardly to be found. The order is sub- ject object ; as Ac velly y kavas Kulhivch 0/ími, R.B.M. 143, 'And
Taliesin. . 191
[it was] so tliat Rulhwch won Olwen '. Carnhuanawc and Stephens understood the line in its natural sense, ' When Owein líilled Fílamddwyn ', see Professor Powel's note in The Gododin, p. 09. On Dr. Evans's mistranshition, see above, p. 90.
Line 12. — This line appears to be correct, for the "cymei-iad" kyscit \n the next line makes the reading hysceit practically certain. It means literally * it was no more than sleeping ', which means, I suppose, that it required no greater eífort on the part of Owein.
noc et is usually written noyet or nogyt in Medieval Welsh. The et is an extension also found in Breton eget ' than ', Cornish ages. The ìi- iu Welsh is the old ending of the comparative tacked on to the original oc Hhan': see my Gram. pp. 243, 447.
The early modern prosodists allowed an initial consonant to be brought forward to the end of a preceding word to form a rhyme, which was called odl yudd ' hidden rhyme ' ; thus, ivxj followed bj'- laicen could rhyme with hunjl (J. D. Rhvs, 1592, p. 284; in reproducing information suppHed to him J.D.R. completely misses the point, and thinks that the words wy' laioen actually are loyl awen, which would form an ordinary, not a " hidden " rhyme). Ffiam^wyn and incy n- form an "odl gudd'"; but it is unthinkable that the author of this poem dreamt of such a thing ; "odl gudd'' is a comparatively late device — I cannot recollect even a medieval example of it. To the author vioy here was clearly vwyn, and probably ' than ' was ocet. The Irish forms suggest that miry oomes from *ìnâiüs ; I have suggested a doublet *mäison, formed with the ordinary British comparative end- ing (=Gk. twi'), as the origin of mwyn {Gram. 98). Even if that be not so, mwyn niust have been formed at an early period on the analogy of other comparatives, for its existence is proved by namwyn by the side of namwy, of which the former alone survived, and became namyn ; in this the n cannot come from no, for 7io 'than' is not used after it; see note on 1. 20 of the last poem, p. 185. All this goes to prove that this couplet was written before the Old Welsh period when mwyn was already obsolete.
Line 15. — hayach with the negative usually means in Medieval Welsh ' not much ; hardly at all ' ; here it must mean ' actively ' or ' energetically', a more primitive sense from the root *segk-; cf. Skr. sáha-s ' mighty ', etc, sáhasä "(forcibly), suddenly, precipitately '.
Line 16. — The last word on p. 67 of the MS. is oeSynt ; a piece of the top corner of the leaf has been torn ofF, so that only ch remains of the first word on p. 68; there is a dot before it, which represents the bottom of the a ; the rhyme proves that the word ended in -ach. There is room for only three letters beforo ch ; I have measured hy in lines 20 and 21, and find tliat their width with that of « tìts the space exactly. It appears to me that hyach fits the sense esactly too.
192 . Taiiesin.
Line 21. — Kyt is a conjunction proper, followed immediately by the veri), as A-î/í ti/bychych, . . A-yt keffych W.B.M., c. 480 ; the as which separates it from the verb here could therefore only be the in- fixed objective pronoun of the 3rd sg. or pl. The only possible antecedent is meirch ' horses ' ; but cronni ' to hoard ' is hardly a word that would have been used of horses. (The singular infixed pron. after kyt is <?/ in " Dadohvch Üryen ", 1. 17, see above, p. 181.) But we have seen in " Gweith Argoet Llwyfein", 1. 12, p. 156 above, that kyn as was used with the imperfect for ' bef ore (he would)' in the sense of 'rather than ', where as cannot be an infixed pron., and seems to be a conjunction 'that'. I take the construction here to be the same. In an ordinary temporal clause, with the aor. or pres. subj , no conjunction follows cyn (Gr. 446). It occurs with inf. pron. ys in " Dadolwch Uryen ", 1. 18, p. 181 above.
calet ' hard ' ; as a noun it has two meanings : (1) ' hard fight', e.g. B.B. 65-13, B.A. 20-21.— (2) ' hard man', in the sense of Matt. XXV, 24. I have rendered it ' miser ' although a line in one of the "Englynion Eiry Mynydd", Myv. 358a, tells us that
Nid cybydd yw pob caled. * Every hard man is not a miser.'
Line 22. — ry, which the scribe stupidly copied as the negative ny is the perfective particle, which is positive and emphatic. The im- personal raìinet has no expressed object ; it means 'there was a dis- tributing '. On rac y eneit see above p. 89.
The last word of the poem repeats the first. This became a rule in Irish poetry : " The concluding word of every poem must repeat either the whole or part of the first word (or first stressed word) of the poem," Kuno Meyer, op. cit., p. 12. The object is to provide a catchword to lead back to the beginning, so as to end the poem with the couplet or stanza with which it begins. The word eneit at the end of our poem forms a " cymeriad " with the Eneit of the first line which is therefore to foUow it, as Kyseit of I. 13 follows kysceit of I. 12; see notes on "cymeriad" above, pp. 176-7. The scribe writes only the beginning of the couplet which is to be repeated ; see ex- amples of abbreviated first line, or merely tìrst words, repeated with " cymeriad '' in B.B. 3610, 7011. There are many examples in the oldest Irish poems ; e.g. Ultan's Hymn, which begins Briyit be bith- maith, ends ron soera Briyit, which is followed in the MS. by Briyit bé; see Ir. Te.rte, i, 25. As the form of "cymeriad" on which the repetition of tlie first word is based is a distinctive feature of Welsh verse, frequent]y occuring as a link between lines in the middle of a poem (e.g. in " Yng Ngorffowys " above), it seems probable tbat the device was borrowed by the Irish bards from the British. In Welsh
Taliesin. 1 93
we also have the repetition of openinp; lines without " cymeriacl", as in B.B. 248, 71 11, which shows that the 'f cymeriad "' was not the essential feature it became in Irish, but only a help to secure the repetition to the first lines.
Line 23. — Tlie abbreviated first line appears thus in the MS. : Eneit. O. ap vryen. Thiis the reading which Dr. Evans asserts to be " impossible " is repeated and confirmed, a fact which he passes over in silence.
The subject of tliis poem is not the Owein ap Uryen of the medieval imagination, Rnight of tlie Rouncl Table, hero of the tale of "the Lady of the Fountain ", the " Chevalier au Ljon " of Chrestien de Troyes, the Ywain of " Ywain and Gawain ", but the historical Owein ap Uryen wlio fought Avith his father against the sons of Ida iii the latter half of the sixth century. He is seen not in the glamour of romance, not even through the haze of a century or two, but as the jeal prince of Rheged by a man who lcnew him, and loved him. Such idealization as the poem contains consists in that heig-htening of the actual which is expected and taken for granted in an elegy. I believe that the impression which the reading of the poem wiU leave on most readers is that it breathes an intiraacv which could hardly be simulated in a production founded on hearsay or tradition.
It is interesting to note the comment on this poem which a fifteenth century bard has written on the top
margin of p. 68 :
goreu ynghymry o gerdd taliessin benn heirdd ' The best in Wales of the work of Taliessin, Chief of Bards.'
Tliis opinion is no doubt chiefly based on the form ; the poem is an exquisite example of a metre that was still in use ; the requirements of the rhyme are more than met, one " prif-odl " or •' chief-rhyme " binds tlie couplets together into a single whole, and tlie " cymeriad " at tlie end introduces the opening couplet which serves as a most eíîective conclusion. But apart from the forni, which is
1 94 Taliesin.
not more elaborate tlian, in its waj, that of " Yng Ngorffowjs ", the matter of this poem seems to indicate that it is tlie work of a man of maturer years. This accords with the view that the poems are «^enuine, for an elegy on Owein would naturally have been written a good many years later than songs to his father/
What has been said above of the Owein of the elegy is also true of the Urien of the songs. He is not a medieval Sir TJryance, or even a traditional hero, but the veritable li^inof Urien, Prince of Rheofed. That thesense of actual- ity which, despite all hyperbole, the songs undoubtedly convey, in the description of Urien as a present terror to the Angles and a personality that commands the respect of tliose around liim, in the expression of the bard's personal obligation to him, in the account of the good things of Llwyfenydd in which Ije himself participates, — that this can have been simulated in the ninth century does not appear to be altogether probable ; but Yoltaire has said that " it is ever to the improbable that the sceptic is ready to give ear ".
An old tradition connects Taliesin with Llyn Geir- ionnydd situated above the Conway valley about two miles west of Llanrwst. Medieval evidence of the tradition is found in one of the lines added at the end of " Anrec Uryen " ( Y Cynimrodor, vii, p. 126 ) :
miiieu dalyessin o (iawn) lann^ llyn geirionnyò * And I, Talyessin, from the bank of Llyn Geirionnydd.'
^We expect a palaeographer to take some notice of interesting marginalia; in this case, for example, he mù/ht be able to tell us in whose hand the note is written. But Dr. Evans simply ignores it. The reason is, of course, that it conveys nothing to him : he has no kno\vledge of metres, and the poem as mangled by him is' rather a poor thing.
^lt is very unlikely that {ciirn here is anything but lann misread as iaun, which was the spelling of iaim down to the end of the twelfth century.
é
Taliesin. 195
île would thus have been brought up in the purlieus of thé court of Maelgwn at Degannwy. This is quite in accord- ance with his position in the songs. At the court of Urieu he was a visitor. Doubtless his stay was prolonged, for he was provided with a fine home. But he leaves and conies again. " I will repair to the North ", he says in " Dadolwch Uryen ", a song which might well have been entitled "Urien Eevisited. "
There are several other historical poems in the Book of Taliesin, all more difficult than the above, but not therefore less likely to be genuine. The other poems to Urien are the following : (1) "Ar un blyneb ", p. 59, in which the reference to him '^ with his horse under him at the battle of Mynaw (Goòeu) ", see above, p. 73, comes in rather incoherently, and is followed by a number of mysterious lines, ending with a description of Urien's prowess. — (2) " Arbwyre Reget rysseò rieu ", p. 61, which contains the reference to Ulph, and to Urien coming to Aeron ; there are many other historical allusions in the poem, including a list of Urien's battles. — (3) " Yspeil Taliessin ", p. 62 ; some inserted glosses in the first part of this are noted above, pp. 140-1. It refers to Urien as a "defender in Aeron ", G3*5, and contains a more pic- turesquely figurative description of Urien that anything contained in the poems translated above ; but its diffi- culties are formidable.
" Anrec Uryen ", which has been referred to several
times in the above pages, does not appear in the Boolc of
Taliesin, but is found in the detached portion of the
White Book (Y Gymmrodor, vii, 125), and in the Red Book,
col. 1049 (F.A.B., ii, 291). Stephens saw that the poem
consists of three unrelated parts ; of these he considered
the fîrst and third genuine, the second làte (Arch. Camh.,
1851, pp. 204 ff.). Skene, who misrepresents Stephens by
o2
1 9Ó Taliesin.
ignoi'ing his clear-sighted analysis of the poem and speak- ing- of his view of tlie second part as if it applied to the whole, attenipts to prove that the whole is old {F.A.B., i, 211-4); but Stephens is undouhtedly right in his view as to the second part. This is of the sanie character as the medieval predictive poems ; and, as Stephens observes, no poem that can be attributed to Taliesin " assumes the predictive form " (op. cit., p. 210). The first and second parts are in the " rhupunt " metre, which consists of lines of twelve syllables divided into three fours, of which the first two usually rhyme together and the third carries the " chief-rhyme". In both of these parts the chief-rbyme is -y8 throughout, with the variant -yr once (at the end of the first part according to Stephens's division) ; this identity of rhyme provides a sufficient reason for their ha^ing- been run together, without the assumption that the second was deliberately composed as an addition to the first, to which it bears no relation. The first part deals with Urien, and with leuaf, Keueu and Seleu, whom Skene takes to be the sons of Llywarch Hen, p. 212. The third part, which has nothing to do with the others, consists of tag-s. The first of these is the well- known assertion of Urien's preeminence, which, with two emendations noted below, reads as follows in the W.B. :
Uryen o Reget, haehif yssyb,
Ac a vu yr Ahaf, ac a vyb^ ;
Lletaf ý gleby/,^ balch ý gynteb,
Or tri tliëyni ar bec or Gogleb.
Uryen of Rheged, most generous that is, That has been since Adani, and that will be ; Of broadest sword — proud in his hall — Of the thirteen princes of the North.'
^ ac a vi/8 comes after haelaf i/ssyS in the MS., an obvious displace- ment.
'ff/eS in the MS., which makes the line short (the metre is " cyhydedd naw ban "). The form cle8 is an artificial curtailment of
Taliesin. 197
This was followed by " whose nauie I know, Aneirin Gwawdrydd the poet, and I, Taliessin," etc, as above, p. 194, which seems to be a nonsensical couplet framed by a scribe out of a misunderstanding of a previous coj^yist's statement that he did not know the name of the poet, wliether it was Aneirin or Taliesin. Lastly coines the defective copy of the ymj vallw\jf i-à.^, quoted above, p. 155. There are refei-ences to Urien in other poems. " Teithi etmygant ", p. 41, contains the following line, 42*6 : A thraw y Dygen meu molawt Uryen. ' And beyond Dygen mine is the praise of Uryen.'
Perhaps Maelgwn's kingdom extended as far as Dygen on the present English border, and " beyond Dygen " meant beyond his boundaries. In "Golychafì gulwyb ", p. 33, the poet says that he sang before Brochvael of Powys and before Urien, 33-6 :
Keint rac ub clotleu yn doleu Hafren, Rae Brochvael Powys a garwys vy awen ; Keint yn aòvwyn rodle ymore rac Uryen.
' I sang before a faraous prince in the meadows of the Severn, Before Brochvael of Powys who loved my muse ; I sang on a fair lawn on a morning before Uryen.'
This poem is a curious medley of mythology and reminisc- ence. Preceding the above lines is the statement " I sang before the sons of Llyr at Aber' Henvelen, " 33*3. Lower
thtí word, adopted by medieval and iater bards, but never used in ordinary speech. The e of cleddyf is an a afìected by the y of -yf; without -?</"the word wüuld have been cla^. Thus cleB is as if one had deduced plent froni plentyn. ít canuot be much oldor than the MS., but the metre shows that the origiual word was c/fSyf
1 E//yr ìn the text seems to be an oblicjue case of a/)er rather than the pl. The reference appears to be to a version of the "Ysbyddawt Urddawl Ben " story which dift'ered somewhat from that preserved in " Brauwen ", in which the feast was not at Abor IIenvelen itself ; see W.B.M., c. ö7, where also it is stated that Taliesin was present, a detail evidently borrowed from this poem
içS Taliesin.
down, following some lines wliich appear to be later interpolations, eonies tlie famous passage about the re- lease of Elphin, 33-19:
Dübwyf Deganhwy ŷ amrysson A Maelgwn vwyhaf y achwysson ; Elly?igeis vy arglwyb j'wg ?igwyb cleon, Elphin pendefic ryhodigyon.
' I carae to Deganhwy to contend Witli Maelgwn of greatest prerogatives; I set free my lord in the presence of goodmen, Elphin, chief of nobles.'
This is followed immediately by the statement " I was in the battle of Goòeu with Lleu and Gwjdion ... I was with Brân in Ireland, " 33-23. The poem ends with the charming glimpse of the Kelticother-world of which E,hjs has given a substantiallj correct ' translation in his Celtic FolMore, p. 678. It is to be noted that all the historical personages named in the poem are the contemporaries of the historical Taliesin.
" Kjchwedyl am doòjw ", p. 38, treats of the cattle- raids and battles of Owein. " When he returned to Erechwjò^ f rom the land of the Cljdemen, not a cow lowed to her calf ", 38-21. The poem raises manj interesting questions. Who, for example, is the Mabon mentioned in it? In Roman times Deus Maponus was the Apollo of Rheged ; three inscriptions in liis honour have been dis- covered, at Ribchester, Ainstable and Hexham respect- ivel j (O.Z.L., vii, nos. 218, 332, 131o). One statement about Mabon in the poem is intelligible : " Unless thej were
' In spite of Dr. Evans's sneers, p. 94, which can harm no one but himself.
* The reading in the MS. is Pan ymchoeles echicy^,- I have siig- gested above, p. 69, that echuy8 here may be an error. We have seen above, p. 164, that the present was used in a past sense after pan ; hence, pan ymchoeles echiryè may well be an error for pan ymchoel erechwyS, as s and r might be confused in the old script.
Talicsin. 199
to fly with wings tliey could not escape f rom Mabon with- out slaughter", 39-3. Is Mabon a couiplimeiitary term appliecl to Owein ? Or had he a brother who had been called af ter the local god ? In the tales, Mabon is the son of Modron (e.g. E.B.M. 124) ; and accordingto Triad i, 52, Modron was the name of Owein's mother {lhjv. 392). But the problems of the text have to be solved before questions relating to the subject-matter can be answered.
" En enw Gwledic Nef gohidawc ", p. 29, and " En enw Gwledic Nef gorchoròyon ", p. 63, are songs to Gwallawc, who was, like Urien's father, third in descent from Ceneu ap Coel (Y Cymmrodor ix, 173). The first poem consists in great part of a list of his battles; both are very diíficult, owing largely, as in other cases, to a corrupt text, as ny golychaf an gnawt, 64-2, shows, see above, p. 138 ; it con- tains old forms such as tbe subjunctive gicnech, and was obviously only very imperfectly understood by the scribe.
''Trawsganu Kynan Garwyn ", p. 45, has been dealt with above, pp. 133-4, as a poem that contains a goodly number of words in Old Welsh spelling. I liave also shown, p. 95, that Cynan Garwyn and liis father Brochvael Powys must liave been contemporaries of Taliesin. They are descended from Cadell Ddyrnllug' ; see the pedigreein Y Cymmrodor ix, 179 ; and ''the line of Cadelling,' i.e. of the
^ This was made by lat.e copyists into Teyrnlliry ; in tlie pedigree it is spelt (lunlurc, biit elsewhere in the MS., in Nennius § 35, correctly durnhic; see Mr. Phillimore's notes in i' Cymmrodor, vii, 119, ix, 179. Late Welsh writers could not leave d-rn in any name without changing it to deyrn ; as in Edcyrn for Edern or Edyrn, and Edeyrnion for Edeirnion from JEterniän-a.
2 Eatelling ystret ; ystret appears to be cognate with Irisii sreth ' row. series ' ; see Pedersen, J'eryl. Grain., ii, 6i'7. But it is a dis- syllable liere, and therefore probabl}' estret from '^e.r-str-. Piighe's "Silurian" ystred 'village', quoted by Pedersen, is probably a dialectal forni of ystryd ' street '. Richards has " Ystrêt, .< a row, a rank, E. Lh. AI.so, a rate ; i.e. tlie paper containing tho names of the personsrated ".— "Last meaning prob. from estreat." — VroL Lloyd.
200 Taliesin.
liouse of Cadell ", the poet tells us, "has been unshakeii in battle " 45*16. Soiiie of their battles are iiamed : there was *' a battle on the Wye to which were brought spears innu- merable ; Gwentians were slain with bloody blade ", 45*16. There was a battle in Anglesey " famed and renowned ", 45*18. Also a battle in Cruc Dymet (i.e. Crug Dyved), and Aercol was ar gerSet (apparently ' put to ílight '), 45*20. Aergol Lawhir was Ring- of Dyved early in the sixth century ; Mailcun and Aircol Lauhir were among the regihus contemporaneis of Teilo according to the Book of Llaii Daf, p. 118. In the pedigree of the house of Dyved, Y Gymmrodor, ix, 171, Aircol is the father of Guortepir, who was reigning when Gildas wrote, and whom he add- resses as " boni regis nequam fili . . Demetarum tyranne Yortipori ", § 31; cf. Lloyd's Hist., 262. His tombstone was discovered near Llanfallteg in 1895, bearing the inscription in Roman Capitals memoeia yoteporigis protictoris, and in Ogam Yotecorigas, the Early Irish genitive, ^ Arch. Camh., 1895, pp. 303 íî, 1896, p. 107. Crug Dyved, says Mr. Phillimore, is " not identified " (Owen's Pemhroheshire, i,
' The forms on the stone prove that the first r in Guortepù- and Yoriepori is an intrncler, though an early one. Both Rhys and Stolíes attempt to explain the name as T'ofe-porms, for which it may be said that Poriits occurs (Hübner, Insc. Brit. Christ., no. 131). But it is strange that it occurred to neither of them that the stem *votepo- is implied in ^rotepäcos, which gives Godehauy, the epithet of Cocl. The Latin and Irish genitives on the stone prove that the nom. was J'otepo-ri.T ; this would give Guotepir in Old Welsh, as Maylo-rLv gives the Medieval Meilyr. It follows that Vortipori in the text of Gildas is not the voc. of Vo{r)tiporius but an error for Votepori.v. In fact, Mommsen's only authorities for Tortipori aie the printed editions of 1525 and 1568. The oldest MS. (C, llth cent.) has iiortipor* ; the next oldest (A, 12th ceut.), uortipore ; the latest (D, 14th cent.) uertepori. Dr. Lloyd rightly writes the name Vote- pori.T in his Ilist., 1911, p. 115; and Mr. Ifor Williams analysed it and showed its relation to Godebatry in Y Beirniad, 1915, pp. 275-6. The evidence of the stone determines the form beyond dispute.
I
Taliesin. 20 1
223). After naining' these battles ' the poet comes to Cynan himself " the son of Bi'ochvael of wide dominions", 45'21 ; his " songis of Cjnaii ", 45" 24, but he only mentions one of his battles, fought in the land of Brachan, 45"25. But Cynan is Ryngeìi Jcymangan, 46*2, that is, of the same nature as his grandfather Cyngen (Cincen in the Har- leian pedigree) who doubtless fought in the earlier battles ; hymangan is (excepting the hy-) a beautiful example of Old Welsh spelling, not quoted above because I liad not de- tected it : transliterated into modern spelling it is as clear as daylight — cyf-anian.' Finally all the world is " thrall to Cj'uan, " 46*4, a remark which, it will be remeuibered, the poet also made of Urien. The metre of the poem is rhym- ing half-lines of five syllables, which is that of " Uryen Yrechwydd" and""Llywydd echassaf " above ; and old rhymes occur : -eh and -ec ( = -eg ) rhyrae with -et ( = -ed). The poera ends with Rynan, with whicli it begins ; on this return to the beginning see note, p. 192 above ; trawsganu in the title seems to be an obsolete technical term denoting a poem containing this feature, as traius-gynghanedd is a
1 Mr. Phillimore in Owen's Peííi., part iii, p. '281, nnderstands all the battles to be Cynan's; but I do not think that is the natural in- terpretation. It is also difficult chronologically, though not ini- possible : Cynan's son died at Chester about Ú13; this niakes Cynan rather young to have fought Aircol, whose son had presumably been reigning some time before Gihlas wrote, which was before 547.
-The actual Old Welsh spelling would be chnanr/an. The modern cyf- would of couise be chn-; and the fact that the consonantal i of anian dues not afiect the preceding vovvel proves tliat it coines from (/, like the i of arian 'sih'er' from *ar(/ant-, or of Vrien wliich in Old Welsh spelling is urhyen as above noted. The Old Hritish form of anian would be *an(lo-(/an-, cognate (except for the do of the prefix) with the Latiii in-yenium; see Grani. p. 2(39. Dr. Evans reads '■ yynyhein yymanyan'\ which he renders " harmoiiizes tlie orchestra " ! lÌ, 94, 95.
202 Taliesin.
cynghanedd in which the answering consonants are at the
two ends of the line.^
" Mydwyf Taliesin deryò ", p. 69, has been understood
to be an eleg-y on Cunedda. In the ]\Lyvyrian, p. 60, it is
entitled " Marwnad Cunedda " ; but the sole source of the
Myvyrian text is the Book of Taliesin, in which the poem
has no title. Thus for " Marwnad Cunedda " there is no
manuscript authority. Cunedda Avas Maelgwn's great-
grandfather, accordiug to the Harleian pedigree {Y Cym-
mrodor, ix, 170) ; he came from Manaw Gododdin in the
North, and drove out the Irish from Gwynedd with great
slaughter 146 years before the reign of Maelgwn, as we
learn on the excellent authority of the " Saxon Genea-
logies " in a passage reproduced in our frontispiece.
Possibly the " cxxxxvi " whicli has been rendered in words
in our facsimile had an x or two too many ; but the great-
grandfather of Maelgwn, must belong to the early part of
the fifth century, and could hardly have been the subject
of au elegy by Taliesin. Stephens deals with this diffi-
culty in an article in the Arch. Camb., 1852, reprinted in
The Gododin, p. 356 ; he says :
This poem has been a great stumbling-bloclí in the way of all rational accovints of Taliesin and his poems. Is it an ancient or a modern poem ? If read withont any misgivings as to the chronology, the poem carries with it all the marks of antiqnity ; there is an ntter absence of any romantic or fictitious element ; it has all the appearance of an historical poem, and possesses all the attributes which belong to the other poems of Tahesin.
His proposed solution consists in an attempt to prove, despite the Nennian evidence, that Cunedda lived till about 550 ! It is a curious juggling with figures which Skene rightly dismisses as " very inconclusive ", F.A.B.,
^ It is of course absurd to suppose that this poem is a " satire " ; and there is no more reason for supposing that trawsffanu is a ' satirical song ' than there wouhl be f or tahing traws-yynr/haìiedd to mean a ' satirical cynghanedd '.
Taliesin. 20
ö
ii, 418. Nash sujçgests anotlier explanation {Taliesin, p.
85):
It is, howevGr, possible that this poein may originally have been a production of the sixth century. There wonld be a reason why one of the bards who ministered to the pleasures of the court of Maelgwn Gwynedd should have selected as a subject for his muse the praise of the renowned ancestor of that chief- tain.
This suggestion overlooks the fact that it must at any
time have seemed somewhat unreal to mourn the death
of a person who has been more than a centurj in his grave.
As Nash admits the possibility of the poem's genuineness
only to reject it, it seems strange that he did not fix upon
the apparent anachronism as proving his case : Taliesin
mourning Cunedda is just the sort of mistake that a
medieval fabricator would be likely to make — it is, in fact,
a mistake that the medieval copyist did make. Nash's
argument is, however, quite different : he takes canonhydd
to mean " according to the canons ", so that the line which
contains it must be late, and proceeds —
Like the rest of its chiss, the piece exhibits no marks of antiquity in its language or sentiments ; on the contrary, it is smoother and mnre polished than many other pieces in the same collection.
That a person who is so ignorant of Welsh as to render
i yilydd " the retreat ", and to miscopy ei ofn ai arswyd Miis
fear and dread' as ei ofn ai arfwyd, rendering it " fear of
his arms ", should take upon himself to lay down the law
as to marks of antiquity in the language is a piece of im-
pudence which is unfortunately not unparalleled in the
criticism of these poems. Every Welsli-speaking cliild
understands i yilydd 'each other ' ; yet it is a phrase tliat
goes back to Primitive Keltic, for it is found not only in
Breton (e yile), but also in Irish (a chêle). Thus the
phrase, though still repeated by us every day, was used by
our ancestors more than a thousand years before the time
204 Taliesin.
of Taliesin. But this poem does iiot contain many phrases that are easily understood ; so far from exhibiting " no marks of antiquity ", it exhibits more than most. The text is more corrupt than that of the majority of the songs to Uryen ; and the poem contains a relatively larp^er num- ber of rhymes of the early type. Professor Rice Rees, in his Essay on the Welsh Saints, p. 114 fn., regards it as " perhaps the earliest specimen of Welsh poetry extant " ; it was composed, he suggests, not by Taliesin, but by an earlier bard of tlie same name ! Its difficulty is such that it has entirely baffled the translators: Stephens's version is mostly wild guess-work ; Nash's I have already spoken of — it is characteristic of him to talk about the " sentiments " of a poem which is entirely beyond his comprehension ; Erobert Williams is content, as he usually is in cases of difficulty, with producing mere nonsense. Dr. Evans translates his own re-hash of the poem, which is not even in the metre of the original, and in which, as usual, half the " cymeriadau " are violated.
The poem laments the death of a representive of the house of Cunedda Avho has been lcilled in a fratricidal war with his kinsmen of the clan of Coel Godebawc. Cune- dda's father was Edern ; his mother is said to have been Gwawl, daughter of Coel ; in the poem the descendants of Cunedda are called Edyrn, and the descendants of Coel, Coeling or Coelyn. In the original forni of the poem the dead prince was referred to by name at least thrice and by lineage twice. Taking the latter fìrst, these fìve refer- ences are as follows : (1) In line 43 of the poem he is called mah Edern, 70" 11 ; this is literally true of Cunedda, and if it is the original reading it would convince the medieval glossator or copyist that this obscure poem which names Cunedda several times niust be an elegy on him. But in poetry, and even the prose of antiquity, "son" may
Taliesin. 205
denote a ' descendant ', in the singular as well as in the plural, as Mephibosheth is called the " son of Saul " his grandfather, 2 Sam. xix, 24, so tliat the expression is ambiguous. When the person meant is otherwise known he may be called the " son " of his ancestor, as everj man is a son of Adam. The next reference clears up the ambiguity. (2) In line 21 the dead prince is called yscyìiyal GuìieSaf, 69'21, which the scribe did not understand, for he wrote the ys separately ; the " cymeriad " with asciurn confirms the reading yscynyal. This is a participial form, e.g., wyhyr ysgynnyal B.A. 15*1 1 ' sky-ascending ' ; as a noun ' ascendant ' it was rephiced by esgynnyS. It may seem strange that this should be used for a tíescendant ; nevertheless it is a fact : the degrees of descent are usually given as niab, ûyr, gorwyr, goresgynnyh (e.g., Anc. Laws,ìì, p. 86) ; itis obvious that originally ítyr and gorwyr must have been followed by esgynnyB and goresgynnyS, and thus esgynnyh would be the orrecit-srreat-o'randson. I do not wish to suggest that yscynyal is used here in this strict technical sense, though it would be exactly right, for we do not know how old the narrowed sense can be, and it is more likely that by yscynyal CuneSa the poet meant simply ' descendant of Cunedda '. (3) Line 15 of the poem reads thus, 69'17 :
Marw Cunebaf a gwynaf a gwynit. The end-rhyme is -yS; the last words should therefore be a gwynaf, a gipynyS, or rather ae cwynaf, ae ciüynyh, see note ; this is made certain by the " cymeriad " and by a parallel passage. The line should be eight syllables long; as it stands it is ten ; it seems therefore that the name CuneSaf has been substituted for a name of one syllable. (4) The prince's death is referred toin line 29 as A8oet hun ' the death of huìi ' and (5) in line 50 as difa hun 0 Goeliwg ' that hun was slain by the Coeling ', 0 being the regular
2o6 Taliesin.
preposition used to introduce the agent afìer a verbal noun.^ In Old Welsh the deraonstrative pronoun liwn ' this one ' is written ìiunn ; final -nn is written quite regularly even in syllables that became unaccented later ; our scribe must have been quite familiar with hunn, which he writes Jmn (4o"24); the fact, therefore, that here he wrote hun, not once but twice, proves that the original word was not hunn. In an Insuhir hand in which the tall strokes are little longer than others h and r were liable to be confused ; and as hun makes no sense in either of these passaoces, it seems that it must be an error for run, and that the poem is an elegy on Rhf/n, the son of Maelgwn. This is in accordance with everything we know of RJiun', almost the ouly information that tradition has handed down to us about him is that he fought against the men of the North, and that Taliesin sang on one of his expeditions ; see above p. 47. Maelgwn is not mentioned ; but there is clearly a lacuna in the poem ; and the bard is mainly con- cerned with Rhun's descent from Cunedda and Coel.
In the printed editions of the poem (I am of course not referring to the diplomatic text) the metre is deranged, and internal rhymes are confused with end rhymes ; none of the editors has guessed what the metre is, or understands the nature and position of the rhymes. As these things must be determined before any verbal emendations are attempted, I insert notes on metre and rhyme before the text. It will be seen that the rhymes not only bear witness to the great aiitiquity of the poem, but throw further light on the early system of rhyming,
^ Difa is a yerbal noun: when the verb is transitive the agent of the verbal noun is put before it with i, or after it with o, as I pointed out in Y Genineìi, 1887, p. 181. The latter construction, though obsolete in the spoken ianguage, is familiar from its frequent use by the translators of the Bible, as cyn canu ó'r ceiliog, Matt. xxvi, 34 ; for other references see Pedr Hir's Key and Guide [1911], pp. 26, 27.
Taliesin. 207
The Metre and Rhymes of "Marwnad Rhun".
The inetre is " Byr a Thoddaid". This is made up of " cyhydedd fer " and " toddaid byr ", in other words, of lines of 8 syllables inter- spersed with couplets of 10, 6. The end of the " toddaid byr", o couplet of 10, 0, must rhyme with the group of hnes of 8 to which it is joined ; this " chief-rhyme " may also occur in the Hne of 10, two or three syllables froui the end, as in the first line of an ordinary englyn ; but this is optional. In the " toddaid byr " the short second line is connected with the íìrst either by a correspondence of con- sonants at the end of the first and heginning of the second, as 'm ginr and (jwrawl in lines 47-8 ; or by the end of the first rhyming with the third syllable of the second, as in tydiced and ici/neb 21-2 {-ed and -eb\& a good rhyme). It is improbable that any lines in this metre were orisinally lons or short ; lines of 9 would confuse the metre with that later called " gwawdodyn " which consists of lines of 9 mixed with "toddaid" couplets (10, 9). Extra syUables are in all cases doubtful in lines of 8, and probably the whole of " Gweith Gwen Ystrat", lines 1-22, above p. 161, should have been regularized, e.g., by sub- stituting iiZ for lüledic in Hne 2, omitting ricy in Hne 5, etc, as well as malíing the corrections suggested in the notes.
The chief-rhyme in the first fifteen lines is -^S, with variants -ijr, -ijl as foHows; hijferjyr, 1. 7 ; probably myr, 1. 8 ; yyfyl, 1. 12.
These Hnes are foUowed by three lines with the rhyme -vn, and two with the rhyme-«'??i or -wrn. I do not know that any minimum of rhyming Hnes was prescribed ; but I cannot help thinking that a iacuna exists here consisting of the last lines of the -im group and the first Hnes of the -wm group. It may be suggested that one of the rhyming words in the lost Hnes of the first group may have been the name of llhun.
Lines 21 to 28 have the rhyme -wyt; the irregularities are due to textual corruption and are dealt with in thenotes.
Lines 29 to 38 have the rhyme -cf, with variants -ay and -aw. It has been supposed that the fact that Cune^a rhymes here with-o/, and is even spelt CuneSaf, proves that the poem is quite late. Dr. Evans says that there is no CuneSaf, but there is a CuneSa, for which his authority is " B(ruts) 317"! But he says " the rhyme demands a final V here. Read ryji cu nav " ! The explanation of the spelling Cu7ie8af in our text is that the scribe, or a glossator whose " cor- rections" he copied, was as ignorant as Dr. Evans of the old system of rhyming, and beHeved that " the rhyme demands a final v here ". As already stated above, p. 91, the oldest spelling of this name is Cuneday which is seen in our frontispiece, line 14; this represents the pronunciation CuìieSay, in which y is the soft mutation of y.
2o8 Taliesin.
which was sounded as a very soft ch ; it bears the same relation to ck that V does to^, or that 8 does to th. By the universal loss of y iii Welsh the name became Cune^a. But before it was lost -aj formed a good rhyme with -au (written -af), and also with -aw.
The correspondence of y and w is also seen in the next group, lines 39 to 44. The rhyme is -ew : but two of the rhyming words, cyjleio and anaeleui, are so spelt because the scribe thought that " the rhyme demands a fìnal " iü. The words are cyjle and anaele, which must have been originally cyjiey and anaeley ; thus -ey rhymes with -ew.
An important result follows. We have seen in this and other poems that 8 frequently rhymes with r ov 1,\ but we have come across no example of S rhyming with / {v). Again in the above examples we find/rbyming with 7 and w, but not with 8. It seems therefore that the rhyming of soft spirants was not indiscriminate ; they were instinctively divided into two classes,the clear (dental) 8, /, /•, and the dull (labial and guttural)/, ic, y ; and clear were rhymed with clear, and duU with duU. Examples of the former rhymes are very numerous ; the latter are comparatively rare. We find, however, in the old poems in B.B. 18-27 the following rhymes, which confìrm the above classification : — (1) clear : reuve8, argel, p. 20 ; merweryS, even(/yl, 22; ylythwyr, dievyl, 26;— (2) dull : youchaf, day' {oî course spelt da) 24 ; tanySpf, anuyrey (spelt tayde, arrere) 25 : see tany^rf, B.A. 26-14, arwyre B.T. 56-14. The distinction does not apply to explo- sives, for b, d, g are rhymed with each other indiscriminately.
The last rhyme-group in the poem, lines 45 to 50 has the rhyme
-yny, with the variant -ynn in unbyn, 1. 48. The spelling -my in
dieSmg, 1. 45, and Coeling, 1. 50, represents the medieval and modern
modification of -yny. A double nasal can correspond to any com-
bination of consonant and nasal, because the nasal sound predomi-
nates ; thus lw)n (i.e. Iwmm, for m is always double) rhymes with
ascwrn in 11. 19-20. That is why the 3rd pl. of the verb so often
ends in -yn, -an, etc, in these poems ; it is not because it was
sounded -yn or -an when the poems were written, but because
-ynt and -ytiìi formed a good rhyme ; but late copyists, who
themselves dropped the -t, naturally imagined that the bard
dropped it. A good example of nasal rhymes occurs in 41 "S'^,
where all the foUowing are rhymed together : dybySynt, bnjnn,
ronynn, mechteyrn. In line 13 of our poem we find Etwyn and
Coelyn rhyming ; the ìvy must be ir misread as ui (one of the com-
monest errors, see above p. 164, II. 4-6), and the rhyme is Edyrn and
Coelyng (the name Edioin rhymes with breenhin B.B, 75"7). The -yng
of Coelyng is probably for *-yyn from -iknì, the plural of -ihnos, the
Keltic suíKx used to form patronymics, as in the Gaulish Toutissicnos
Taliesin. 209
'son of Tüutissos '; tho pl. occnrs in the North Itiilian Todi inscrip- tion : Tanotalihnoi 'sons of üannotalüs'. (The Ohl Eng. patrony- mic -ing is a different formation, coniing from original *-enkos, Brugniann IP i, 485.) It is evi(1ent that (jwin, 1. 49, with its single n and long i (from Lat. vhmm) cannot rhyme with the words of the gronp, and must tlierefore be a mis-reading.
The "cymeriadau" are shown by the mark t placed after the catchword.
- MARWNAD RHUN.
1 Mi'ydwyf Taliessin deryb ar gwawt; Ry godolaf vedyb, Bedyò rwyb r(i)yfebeu (ei)Do(l)/yb.
Kyfrwnc allt a(c) Aallt ac echwyb 5 Ergrynawr Cuneba(f) c(reiss)e?/ryb
Yng Kaer Weir a Chaer Liwelyb ; Ergrynawt kyfma(t)wt kyfergyr. t
Kyf(a)?<n ^wanec t(a)on tra mŷr ton llupaw Lhipawt glew ŷ gilyb, 10 Kan ^af/a^s^í (ywh);yí?el uch elv^b
Mal ucheneit gwynt wrth onwyb ; Kef(y)nder«' c(h)y(n)i'ygi(n)í ý gyfyl <^y'ach) — Et(w)y;-n a Choelyn^ kerenhyb. Gwiscant (?) veirb kywrein ka(n)//onyb : 15 Marw (Cunebaf) Run a gwynaf a gvvyn(it)yS. t
Cwynitor tewbor tewb(u)m, diarchar, Dychyfal, dychyfun ; D(yf)iynveis dyf(y)ngleis dychyfun.
Ymadrawb (cwded-)?wíÄ ^awb (?) caletlwm, 20 Caletach wrth (elyn) âl noc ascwrn. t
Yscynyal Cuneba(f) kyn k(y)wys (a) t(h)ytwet Y wyneb a gatw(e)yt ; Kanweith kyn bu lleith yn dorglwyt Dych(ludent);/)-c/iei wŷr Bryneich (ym) pymlwyt; 2ö (ef) Canet rac y of (y)n ae arswyt
Oergerb(et) kyn bu dayr dog(y)n ý (d)y/w(e)yt. Heit haval am wybwal gẃn e(b)re,^wy(t)s gw(ei)an(aw)^ Gwaeth llyfreb noc abwyt. t
Aboet (h)7t'un, (dimyaw) dymhun (?) a gwynaf 30 Am lys am ;tví'g(r)ys Cuneba(f)y.
2IO Taiiesin.
^Ani hyd(y)rver mór, ^am ry-aflaw ^, ^ in MS.
Hallt, am breib a (f)swrn aballaf. Gwawt veirb a o(g)íZon a o{g)ííaf, A(c)e (-reill)r2/a r(e)/fon a rifaf : f 35 R(y)2fedavvr yn ervlavvb anaw
Cant gorwyb (kyn) ky(m)/un Cunebay. Rymafei oe biw blith y(r)M haf , Rymafei ebystrawt (y) gaeaf, Rymafei win gloyw ac olew, 40 Rymafei tor(o)f keith rac un trew.
(ef ) Dy(f waS. ogressur o gyfle(w)')', Gw(e)o;ladur, pennadur pryt llew. t Lludwy v(e)j!/bei gywlat rac mab Ed(e)7/rn Kyn Edyrn anaele(w)7.
45 (ef) Dywal, diarchar, dieb(i)î/ng,
Ann-yf/reu a(g)?-cheu dychyfyng. (ef) Goborthi aes yman r(e)írgorawl gwir, Gwrawl oeb ý unbynw. Dymhun (a) c(h)yfatcun a (thal gwin) d'éyrn ; 50 Kamdí-a diva (h)fiun o Goel(i)yMg.
THE DEATHSONG OF RHUN.
1 I am Taliesin ardent in song ; I rejoice in Baptism, Baptism, the grace of the fulness of the Lord.
Between hill and sea and river 5 The strongholds of Cunedda are shaken
Tn Durham and Carlisle : The conflict of kinsfolk shakes them.
Like the surge over seas of wave [devouring] wave The brave devour each other, 10 For war has been waged in the land,
Like the sigh of the wind among ashtrees ; Cousin fights his fellow (^/oss, relative) — Edern's sons and the Coeling, their kinsmen. The bards adorn (?) [theirj ingenious conceits : 15 It is the death of Rhun that I mourn and shall mourn.
Mourned is [he who was our] bulwark [atid] stronghold — fearless Peerless, matchless ; In the depths(?) of [his ?] deep wound, matchless.
Taliesiii. 1 1 1
His answer to insult (?) was hard and short, L'O He was harder to an enemy than a bono.
Descendant of Cnnedda, till tlie cutting of the sod [of his grave] His honour was kept ; A hundred times before he was hiid on a hurdle, He joined battle with the men of Bernicia ; 25 There was sung from fear and dread of him
A song of woe ere his portion of earth was his covering. A horde like a pack of hounds around a cover beset him — Cowardice is worse than death !
By the death of Rhun I mourn the fall 30 Of the court and girdle of Cimedda.
For the tide of the sea, for the salnion
Of the brine, for herds and abundance I shall fail.
The song of the bards that they sing I wiU sing,
And the numbers that they number I will number ; 35 There are numbered as princely largess
A hundred steeds such as Cunedda [gave].
He gave me of his milch kine in summer,
He gave me horses in winter,
He gave me sparkHng wine and oil, 40 He gave me a guard of serfs against ill omen.
He was a doughty assailant in a rencounter —
Ruler, chieftain with the aspect of a lion. The land of the enemy would be ashes before the son of Edern Ere the overthrow of Edern's sons.
45 He was doughty, fearless, generons —
To manifohl requests openhanded. He bore his shield in the very van,
[Though] his captains were brave. It is the fall of a noble king ; 50 It is a tragedy that Rhun was slain by the Coeling.
NoTES ON " Marwnad Rhun ".
Translations : Stephens, reprinted in The Gododin, 362 ; Nash, 'raliesin, 82 ; Robert WilUams, F.A.B., i, 257 ; Dr. Evans, II, 121.
Line 1. — I take gicawt to be the phrase arguaut (ar ìoatot) which the scribe has repeatedly miscopied ; see above pp. 137-8.
Line 2. — Ry (/odulaf; cf. ry yolychaf i'iA-'l, p. 138 above. The con- sonantism y«Yí«'rt'|//oẁ/í implies a d, not 5. Godoli 'to rejoice in ' : Godolei yle^yf e yare8,yodolei lemein e ryvd B.A. 12*20, ' He rejoiced in
p2
2 1 2 Taliesin.
the sword of his vengence (?), he rejoiced in leaping into war ' ; O loin- weith a meSwieth dt/f/odoh/n ib. 15'9, godolei o heit meirch 37"20. Irish tol 'will, desire '. — Baptism=Christianity, see p. 173.
Line 3. — The line is a syllable long in the MS. Probably eidoly^ is an error for Dofyo ; this is suggested by the line Nis rydraeth ryreSeu {kyvoeth) rivy8eu Dovy8, B.B. 27 ' Not [all the] wealth of the Lord's works can relate it' [viz., what wiU be done on jndgement day], where kyvoeth is an obvioas gloss on ryveSeu, confirming the old meaning 'abundance', see note abovç, p. 178. Jiicy8 as a noun (oi'ig. ' course ') survives only as an abstract noun suffix, and in the phrase Duid'n rhicydd! ' God prosper [you]'. The corresponding form riadh in Sc. Gaehc means ' interest '. Perhaps ' produce ' would be near the meaning (cf. ricySheu, rwyS, B.A. 29"19'22), and as applied to the Diety 'bless- ing, grace'. Ryfeheu ' abundance, fulness' ; cf. "Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace ", John, i, 16. I am unable to exp]ain the error eidoly^ for dofyS, unless there was some confusion in the copy between ryfeSeu Dofyh and ryfeheu elfyS ' the fuhiess of the earth', which seems to have been a common phrase, cf remedaut elbid in the Juv. Cod. F.A.B., ii, p 1. Although eidoìyd appears to be a misreading here, it seems to be a real Avord, as it occurs again, spelt eidyolyd in 74'16, though Silvan Evans states that " the only known instance of its occurrence " is here (6910).
Line 4. — a hallt, see above p. 68 fn.
Line 5. — The line is a syllable long; creisse)'y8 is a ghost-word ; the translators take it to mean ' burner ' (from crasu 'to bake'!), except Dr. Evans, who makes it ' crosier-bearer ' ! It must be a dis- syllable, and it seems possible that it represents the scribe's bung- ling over ceirid (i.e. ceyry8). The medieval plurals of caer are caereu, ceyry8 <and caeroe8 ; and as they are all re-formations it is impossible to say that any one is older than any other.
Line 6. — See pp. 61 and 58-9 above.
Line 7. — kyfat-\wt. The error is partly due to the Iine-division. The word niust be a dissyllable ; and hyfnawt satisfies rhyme, metre and sense; on nawt cf. p. 143 above.
Lines 8, 9.— The couplet is two s^'llables short, and there is no catchword at the end of the first line ; a word with the consonants of llupawt would most ]ike]y be some form of this word itseif ; and the v.n. used participially is possible, and accouiíts for tlie omission, because to a scribe wlio understood little of metre or matter it might seem to be an error of repetition in tlie copy (as such metrical correíîpondences so often seem to Dr. Evai)s). Kyfan shouid, doubt- less, be hyfun, a form used severa! times in tiie poem. Llupaw, ?a denominative from Lat. lûpus, cf. Eng. to wolf.
Talíesin. 2 1 3
Line 10. — ywhel is the scribe's transliterution of iulwì, wliich is doubtless his misreading of ribel (i.e. ryveì), the first stroke of the /• being mistaken for i which was often producerl below the line.
Line Il'. — kefyn(ioych\yn y ydn (the i or u begun as 6). There seems to be a Iine-di\'ision error, and incorrect copying of what the scribe failed to understand. It is difficult to amend the line ; but when it is remembered that ch is geiierally a transHteration of c, the emendation suggested will not .seem improbable. Thoiigh not so near to tlie MS. reading, hyryyit ' fights ' is perhaps niore likely, owing to its echo in kyvyl,\k\2M kynnyyn 'opponent', which is also a .syllable short. That kyfach is a gloss on kyfyl seems evident.
Line 13. — Eticyn; ir misread as ui, see note on rhyme above. Edyrn seems to be used as an adjective ' heavy ' by the late medieval bards ; as haich edyrn o bechodeu, Myv. 313a 18 ; but this use does not seem to be early. Li B.A. 4'17 there seems to be a reference to the war between the Edyrn and the sons of Coel Godebawc : Edyrn diedyrn amygj'ní dir A meib(yon) Godebawc, gwerin enwir.
Tlie pl. verb amyyyn ' defended ' shows that Edyrn is pl. ; diedyrn is obviously diedyny (dieSyny) made to " rhyme " with Edyrn ; as a matter of fact, it rhymes well enough without the scribe's emenda- tion, and vve have here another example of nasal rhymes -yrn, -yny, -ynt. We can render the couplet then —
* The generous Edyrn defended [their] land Against the sons of Godebawg, faithless host.'
Line 14. — Perhaps ywiseant is an error for yicëant (Old Welsh ^yneyant) 'they weave'; canonhyS is probably the word transcribed ka/lovy8 in 41 '19: "A ŵyr kerb gelvyò, py gêl kallony8'', ' he who knows a cunning song, why does he conceal his wisdom ?' We have found that the scribe sometimes copies li as 71 ; here lie seems to have read // as ìi ; in that case the word is a derivative of call.
Line 15. — a ywynit \ the rhyme shows that the ending should be -y8; a yirynnf n ywyny8 has an exact parallel in the first line of "Anrec Uryen", Y Cymmrodor, vii, 125;
Gogyvercheis, gogyfarchaf, gogyferchyö, 'I have greeted, I greet, I shall greet.'
In my Gr., p. 333, vi, I have shown that -y8. which became the ending of the 2nd sg. pres.. would probably be common to all three persons originally in accented verbs, and referred to traces of it in the 3rd. These two examples seem to be clear cases of its use in tlie Ist person, in both cases fut., as opposed to the pres. in -nf. Anolher example, hitherto unexplained, of -i for old -y8, used in the Istas
2 14 Talíesm.
well as the 2ncl sg., also futiire, occurs in Mi ae guaredi, a thi ae gueli B.B. 94'ö 'I wiU deliver them, and thou shalt see them '. The relative a should probably be ae with the radical, see above p. 189.
Line 16. — tewSun should probably be teiü-^in 'thiclí fort ' ; it may be intended for a proest with -un of the other liues, as it is unlikely that the i was rouuded to u by the w in Early Welsh as it seems to have been later after u in Creu^un. But as noted above, a rhyme is not absülutely necessary in this position. Note the rhj'me diarchar, dychyfal, connectiug the two lines, see p. 207, 11. 11-13.
Line 17. — dy- with spirant, negative. We are wholly dependent oii the scribe here, as i and y are not distinguished in Old Welsh. The prefix is di-, and there is no reason to suppose that it might not be followed by ch (for the usual y) like dy-, ry- and go- ; e.g. gochlyt beside goglyt, etc. The initial foUowing these pretìxes was sometimes doubled in British ; the ch represents cc.
Line 18. — dyfynveis should be three syllables : it also occurs in dwiiyn dyvynveÌ8 B.A. 291 5, and in the sg. as diynvas (3 syll.) in " Anrec Uryen ", 1. 14 ( Y Cymmrodor, vii, 125). Possibly this spelling supplies a clue to the formation.
Line 19. — cwdedawd; the suggested emendation assumes gurtc misread as cudet.
Line 21. — There is no reason for yatwet where the rhyme requires gatwyt. The scribe misread i as e in several words in this poem, e.g. dwet 1. 26, ve^ei 1. 43.
Line 24. — Dychludent ; irc read as lut, and ei read as -et and tran- scribed -ent (the 3rd pl. ending is -ynt, not -ent, in the imperf.).
Liue 25. — <=/"is a scribal insertion which makes the iine too long; so in 11. 41, 4o, 47.
Line 26. — oeryer^ ; gerSet f or gerS is clearly a scribal error. The use of oer for ' sad, painful ', etc, survived in poetry down to the 16th cent. and later.
dwet : the scribe toolc cluit for duet ; the confusion of d and cl is common, see above p. 165 : e for i, see note on 1. 21.
Line 27. — ehncyt, apparently an error for erchwys * pack ', possibly written ehruis, and lead ehruit by the scribe.
gweinaw makes the line too long, aud is meaningless. A verb in the 3rd sg. aorist is required, which should be a monosyllable with the ÌDÌtial of gwaeth; gwant 'struck, attacked ', satisfies the con- ditions.
Line 28. — aSwyt seems to be an oblique case, after {n)oc, of aSoet cf. yn ŷ aSu-yt ' at his death ' 43' 13, rac a8wyt, F.A.B., ii, 235.
Line 29. — ASoet. The use of abstract and verbal nouns without prepositions in an oblique case of cause survived in poetry ; an exact parallel to the construction here is seen in the following couplet from
Taliesín. 215
the elegy on leuan ap Hywel Swrdwal by Hywel Dafydd about 1475 (Pen. MS. 100, f. 12Ö):
Marw leuan aeth fy mron i
Mor oer â thrum Eryri.
'•By the death of leuan my breast has gone As cold as the ridge of Eryri.'
dimyaio, which seems a late denominative ' to annihilate ' (from dim), is perhaps substituted for dymhim (rhyming with linn) which appears to mean ' overthrow ', see note ou 1. 49.
Line 30. — am grys. Rhys, Celt. Brit., 1884, p. 119, says that " the cognate Irish criss always meant a girdle ", and suggests that crys is a girdle here ; but there is no evidence that crys or its Breton equiv- alent had that meaning ; and as the metre requires a dissyllable there can hardly be any doubt that the correct reading is yuregys. Pedersen explains this as *gice-grys: Gven if this is right the Breton grouis shows that the metathesis is too old to allow us toassurae that grys is simply an error for we-grys. Auother explanation of gwregys is assumed by Walde s.v. rica. — The "girdle" was doubtless, as Rhys, l.c, suggests, the emblem of authority of the Gwledig, representing the gold belt which was the badge of oíBce of the Dux Britanniarum.
Lines 31, 32. — The scribe seems to have jumped from one «m to the other and written the second plu'ase first ; he then wrote the second, and, not perceiving the rhyme which had been thus misplaced, neglected to insert the usual marks f or ' transpose '. The word hydyrver ' tide ' hardly gives a satisfactory sense, and may be a mis- reading.
/wr7i ; it is clear that ' f urnace ' makes no good sense ; swrn is suggested by am swrn am gorn Ruhelyn, B.A. 26"13; sicrìi 'great qtiaiitity or number ', cf. L. 6. Cothi, 459, 1. 20 of poem.
Line 33. — a ogon a ogaf ior a icodon a ?ro^í«/'(«' is generally lost before o, as in the prefix gwo-); the scribal error consists in the commou misreading of t as c, the original form of the verbs being probably guotont, gìiotam, from a verbal noun guotim from guatit ' song ', like noddi from nawdd, etc.
Line 34. — The analogy of 1. 33 shows that refon cont:iius the error so often made in these lines of reading i as e ; tho scribe made the same mistake in rim which he ought to have transliterated as rif; but he read the î'as e, and the m as ill, an<l so took tlie word to be ereill. The original reading was probably hai rim, that is ae rif. Possibly r//'means ' rliyme ' and a play on the word was iutended.
Line 35. — Byfedaicr ; probably rifedor, -edor being the strictly correct medieval form of the passive ending usually written -etor {Gr. 334).
2 1 6 Taliesin.
ewlauB- The dictionaries' explanation of blaicdd as 'activity' and and as an udj. ' active ' is to be traced back to a bad guess of Wni. Lli'n's, see Dr. Davies, s.v. As the word may be the exact phonetic equivalent of the Sanskrit inürdh-án-, it occurred to me some years ago that it might be the same word, and meant 'head, leader, chief ', etc. Silvan Evans's examples, which completely belie the meaning he gives, seem to confirm this : Ef rlcac^ Jxi/frieu 'he is the chief of his fellow-princes ' ; Blaidd blaenf/ar, blairdd tri/dar trais, Avhere blairdd is obviously in apposition with blaidd blaengar ; taric triìi, ayi (? read ar) vì/8in blaicdd, 'leader of an army' immediately followed by arbenic llu 'chief of a host' (B.B. 97'13). Turning to the com- pounds, under aerjlaìcdd we find aercleiS, aerrlaicS tei/rneS ' battle- wolf, battle-leader of kings', and naicB aerJlaicÒ aerjleih\ under cadjìaicdd again, Cof cadjiaicè à'm caicS cCni carai ' the memory of a battle-chief who Ioved me grieves me ' ; what sense did Silvan Evans imagine " battle-tumult " made in that line ; or in his next example? Dos . . . ar (/atvlaic8 ' Go to the battle-chief ' — where the bard addresses a messenger whom he is sending to Llywelyn ap Madawc, Mi/v. 281a. In the B.T. we have u8 tra blatcS 634, where blatcS is an adj. Hence I have rendered e/-i'Zaíí:S 'princely'.
aìiaw. Mr. Ifor Williams has shown that this word means not ' muse, music ', etc, as the dictionaries say, but ' bounty, largess ', etc, Gemaur Goyynfeirdd, 1910, pp. 100-2.
Line 36. — The line is a syllable long, and Jcyn should be omitted ; hyniun is the Old Welsh ciniun partly transliterated ; it should be kyfun, a word used also in J. 8, and compounded in 11. 17, 18. The repetition of a word is a feature that is noticeable in some of these poems; that is why I think the emendation in p. 172, 1. 3 above, not improbable; see note, p. 174. The meaning of ìîyfun here is 'like, similar to ', as iu dy-chyfun • matchless ', 1. 17, cf. cimun idaic ' an equal to him', B.A. 38-14
Lines 37-40. — Bymafei. In B.B. 91 we have De-us, re-en, rymaicy awen ; this is a syllable long, and the facsimile seems to show that an attempt has been made to delete they, which would give rymaw awen ; thus rymaw seems to mean 'grant ' or • grant me', taking the in as the infixed pronoun 'me': ' grant me a muse '. In B.T. 3'12 we have rymaicyr dy ìceSi foUowed by rymyicares dy voli, which we may take to mean ' may [my] prayer to Thee be granted me ', and ' may praise of Thee save me'; the latter, which is certain, confirms the former. In 4"2 occurs ryìnawyr ym jKit[er'\ ym pechawt: the first ym is an unconscious repetition of the -m- and makes the line too long ; the meaning seems to be ' may [my] prayer be granted me in sin '. Lastly, Meen, rymawyr titheu herreifant om kare8eu, 3ö"22; here titheu seenis to be an error for inheu supplementing -??i- ; for ' may thei'e be
Talicsiìi. 2 1 7
given me ' cannot have a subject * thou ', as the subject is ' foi-give- " ness of niy sins '. We seem then to have two forms surviving in prayers only : ri/maw 'grant uie' ; rymaìci/r {—rymaic-uyr), pres. subj. passive (properly impersonal) 'may there be given me ' ; these arç the parts of the verb mostly iised in prayer ; cf . Dyro inni heddyw . . . Gimeler dy eioyllys. Though the evidence is confused by misreadings, owing to the phrase being obsolete, it seems to justify the assump- tion that rymafei stands for ry-m-aicei ' he gave me '•
Line 40. — un treic, literally ' one sneeze ' ; this was an iU omen ; cf. " I hear one sneeze. ... I wiU not believe an omen {cocl) ; for it is not true {certh, cf. p. 140 above) : the Lord wlio created me wiU fortify me." B.B. 82*4'6, on starting on a voyage. Superstitions connected with sneezing ai'e widespread. The custom of saying " God bless you" to one who sneezes is well known ; in ancient Greece the salutation was " Zeíì a-Q>(Tov" ; among the Romans, "Salve"; in India it is "Live", to which the sneezer replies " with you " ; similar salutations were and are used among the Hebrews and Mahometans ; T ylor, Priniitive Culture, 1891, i, 100-1. It was vari- ously regarded as a good or bad omen ; see Liddell and Scott, s.v. *T7ra.'ipM. In India " It is an iU omen, to which among others the Thugs paid great regard on starting on an expedition ", Tylor, op. cit. 101 ; so " in Keltic folk-lore in a group of stories turning on the superstition that anyone who sneezes is liable to be carried away by the fairies, unless their power be counteracted by an invocation, as 'God bless j'ou'", op. c, 103. There is probably significance in the "one" sneeze : " The rabbins . . . say that before Jacob men never sneezed but once and then immediately ŵd," hence the " salutary exclamation," I. D'Israeli, Curiosities of Lit., Routledge, 1S93, p. 48. See other references in Tylor, op. cit., 97-104.
Line 41. — oyressur. There seem to be two stems, cryss- (in yicŷr a yry.ssyassant B A. 9'3'10, etc.) which seems to be allied to cerdd-ed (vowel gradation er : ry) ; and yryss- connected with Lat. gradior, yressns. As the forni in the text may be a compound of the former with ywo-, yo-, there seems no reason to amend it. The e may be for y, original i, see note on 1. 21.
cyfle. Here again the literal meaning seenis to give the required sense ; the word now means ' opportiniitj', convenience ' ; formerly it meant also 'convenient place ' (see Sihan Evans, s.v.) ; the latter which is the more primitive meaning is clearly derived froin ' adjacent place', cyf-le\ hence probably o yyfie ' at close quarters '.
Line 43. — Llndwy. That this isthe Early Welsh snund is proved by the fact that it is the only jìossible oiiginal of the two modern forms: (1) North Walian and modern literary lludio, cf. Gromo for Gromoy,
2 1 8 Taliesin.
etc. ; (2) South Walian lludy (or lludu), cf. Moicddy îov Mauddicy : see Ŵ-., § 78, i (2), ii (1).
veèei\ e for y, original i ; see note on line 21. The forms of the verb ' to be ', bydd, byddei, bu, oedd, etc, were not preceded by the relative a when they came immediately after the complement, or (in other words) where they correspond to yiü in the present tense ; the relative is regularly used when it is itself the subject, thus a vy8ei corresponds to sydd in the present tense. Fn. 3, p. 120 above, refers to the former cases.
ryiclat 'adjoining country', chiefly used as a "possessive" (or bahiii-rìhi) compoiind, meaning a ' man of an adjoining country', ' an enemy'; here it appears to be used literally, as in B.A. STIS.
Edern, probably the old genitive Edyrn forming a perfect rhyme with Edyrn in the next line ; but of course a " proest " or half-rhyme is possible.
Line 44. — anaeleic. The word is an-aele ; cf . aele, Prydydd y M.och., Myv. 207 a, Elidir Sais 240b, Gwalchniai ]49b; aele, anaele, an. 355 b. Dr. Davies attributes anaeleu to D. Benfras, but that is a misreading for anadleu 220 b 35. Anaeleu B.T. 144 and Myv. ì'èlh should be aeleu ' sorrows ', probably p]. of aelaic: anaeleu 315 b is a compound of this. Aele may be from '^ad-ley- (as it is probable that d might be so treated before as well as after a front vowel) from the root *legh- ' to lie, lay '; cf. Irish do-lega ' qui destruit '.
Ar,.—di-e^-yny ; e^-yny, prefix a^- from *ad- intensive : same meaning as cyf-yny ; di- negative.
Line 46. — Amryfreu, ' manifold ' : Gicae yebydd ó'i yabl amryffrau (the V.]. //y/ryí^á is obvious]y a misreading) Myv. 271 a 'Woe to the miser because of liis manifold iniquities' ; with dissimilation, r . . . l for r ...?•: Ampryfieu donyeu dynya^on, Myv.. 201 b, ' Various are the gifts of men'; substantiva] : //■í«Yä a freu a fop ainriffre?/, BB. 88" 1 ' fiuits and berries (?) and every diversity '.
'agheu, i.e. angheu, would be spelt ancou in old Welsh (it occurs so spelt in Old Breton, Loth, Voc. 39) ; archeu would be spelt arcou ; by merely misreading r as n the latter would be converted into the former.
àychyfyng in me^mxìg=di-gyfyng {Myv. 155 a 26, 164 a 10) ; see note ün I. 17.
Line 47. — Goborthi : -i is tlie old ending of the 3rd. sg. impf., variant of -ei, niodern -ai.
yman-\regoraìcl. The most probable reading seems to be yman ragoraicl ' in the foremost place, in the van ', since rhagori is used in this Fense, as in Ragorei, tyllei tricy ry^inawr B.A. 9']9 ' he went in the van, he cut his way through armies'. Whetlier tlie following word is gioir or gicŷr would not be indicated in the Old Welsh
Taliesin. 219
spelling, in which both would appear as (juir. The scribe evi(lently took it for yioir, and he may be right ; for the meaning cf. Eng. very frora 01(1 Fr. vprai, Fr. vrai. The word connects in sound with yuraicl in the next line, but the metre requires a pause at the end of the long line so that yicŷr yicrawl is improbable — apart from the tautology ' manly men '.
Line ■19.—Dy7nhu7i seems to mean ' overthrow, fall '. Gwalchmai has lJy7ìiìiunis to7i icyrS tcrth Abei-ffraic 'A green wave broke near Abertì'raw ', repeated with variations in his " Gorhofledd ", Myv. 144a. The prefix is probably dym- as in dym-chicelyd 'overthrow ' ; and the steni probably stands for *ch{w)im perhaps cognate with Ml. Bret. choìieìi ' (lying) on one's back ', Ir. fôen (^sôen) allied to Lat. supttius (Fick-Stokes, 305) ; zi is the regular Welsh equiva]ent of üld Irish öe. The author's habit of repeating words makes it probable that this was the word used in I. 29 to rhyme with Rhìm.
chyfatciin ; the h may be taken to be the scribe's. It would be too risky to amend this to catciai ' war-lord ', as amatyun occurs, 2"410, though the meaning there is obscure. I take cyf-at-cim to be an adjectival compound of cun ' lord, prince', and therefoi-e to mean ' noble, princely '. The construction would also admit of a substan- tive in tliis position, as caicr in cawr o ddyn ; see next note.
thal ywÌ7i ; the h as before. It has been shown above, p. 209, that yinin cannot possibly be the rhyming word. As the scribe constantly misreads ir as ui, we can be fairly certain that his yicin represents yt'r»? in his copy ; it cannot be an error îorywipi ' white ', for that would be yuiim in the copy,and couhl not be mistaken for yicin. Now yÌ7-n can hardly be anything but the last syllable of the word tey7-n, which would be written teyÌ7'n or tiyirn in the copy ; he read it as tlyuin, and supplied the a to make it tâl yicin (which Nash alone of the translators accepts as the reading). The modern o introducing a noun dependent on an adjective, as in truan o ddy7i, was a in Medieval and Old Welsh, see above p. 129, II. 5-8, hence cyfatcun a dcyr7i ' a noble prince ' or ' king ', literally ' a noble [one] of a king '.
Line öO. — Kamda seems to be an error for ka77idra literally 'crooked turn ', hence ' ill turn, calamity '. But it may be that the original was cam hu (i.e. camfu) and that h was misread as d, and u as a. The meaning would be substantially the same.
diva o, see above p. 206 and fn.
Coeliny. " Whether Coeling is a proper name or not, is unknown", says Nash, Tal. 84. It was unknown to him, and apparently to every- body else at that tirae, and to Dr. Evans in our own days. Stephens and R. WiIIiams render it "believer", Nash "testimony", and Dr. Evans '" superstitious (dread)"! There is, of course, no foundation of any kin(l to any of these renderings : -y7iy is not a suílìx that forms
2 20 Taliesin.
names of the agent or abstract nouns. I have not troubled to look up Edward Davies's translation in his Claims of Ossian, but Nash says that he translates the last line " the race of a colonial city " ! None of the translators has understood the force of the o before Coeliny ; Stephens thought it introduced the object ! Davies renders it " of ", the others " from ". Each of them is attempting to trans- late with the aid of a dictionary from a language of which he does not know the grammar. Stephens takes dymhun to be dim hun ' no sleep ' ; Nasli understands it as dymunaf ' I desire '. Dr. Evans's Cysc, vad gun " sleep, dear lord " for cyfatcun shows that he is more ignorant of Welsh grammar than the quarryman poet, Glan Padarn, author of " Cwsy, fy anwylyd di-nam ". Nash renders the last two lines thus :
I respectfully request a share of the banquet, and a recompense
in wine. This has been with difficulty restored from testimony.
With this trivality, which must have seemed plausible enough to those who had no knowledge of the language, and absolutely con- YÌncing to Nash himself, contrast the incoherent raving of Robert WiUiams :
Sleepiness, and condolence, and pale frotit,
A good step, wiU destroy sJeep from a believer.
Did he think the poet was mad ? Stephens's translation is only a shade more sensible ; and Dr. Evans alone understands his. The rendering of these lines is typical of thewhole; obscurum per ohscurius. I refer to it only to show that no value is to be attached to judge- ments based on such an understanding of the poem as it reveals.
Many points of detail remain doubtful, as the notes show; most of these difficulties wiU no doubt be solved when the whole of the old poetry has been systematically studied. But I think it may be claimed that the general purport of the poem is clear throughout. In the opening triplet tlie bard declares that he is a supporter of the Christian cause, of which the house of Cunedda were the guardians, as the upholders of Roman traditions. Though Cunedda's own name is British, those of his immediate forebears were Latin : Edern (^ternus), Padarn (Pater- nus), Tegid (Tacitus) ; and Peisrudd 'of the red tunic ' the epithet of his grandfather Padarn probably had reference,
Taliesin. 221
as Rhys suggests,' to the purple of office. Cunedda's title of " Gwledig " was in full, no doubt, " Prydein Wledic ", 23-21, which is clearly Welsh for " Dux Britanniarum " ; and it is doubtless in virtue of his rule being " recog- nised as that of the Gwledig or perpetuator of the com- mand of the Dux Britanniarum "^ that he exercised his authority as overlord of the British kings. Later, " Prydein Wledic " was in turn rendered into Old English as Bì-yten- walda, Bretwalda, etc, and ^thelstán's "Brytenwalda ealles -Syses iglands " corresponds to " rector totius huius Britanniae insulae".' Although Maelgwn, Cunedda's great-grandson, is not, so far as we know, actually styled " Gwledig ", it is evident that he retained something like his ancestor's position. Gildas, who describes him as ex- celling the British kings not only in stature but in power, calls him Insularis Draco, "meaning probably thereby " as Rhys says, " the Dragon or Leader of the Island of Britain. " * It is remarkable that in the next paragraph Ehys, speaking of " Maelgwn's son and successor Ehûn " making war in the North, suggests that it was "probably
1 The Welsh People, 1900, p. 106.
2 Rhys, Celtic Britain, 1884, p. 121.
^ The Neìo Eni/lish Diotionary, s.v. Bratwalda, quoted in Welsh People, p. 108.
* The Welsh People, p. 106. Zimmer suggests that the insnla im- plied in insularis is Anglesey, Nenn. Vind. 101. For this vie\v the only thing to be said is that Maelgwn is called " Maelgwn Môn " in B.T. 407 and " Maelgwn o Vôn " 41-26, though he is usually "Maelgwn Gwynedd". On the other hand insidaris qualiíies draeo ; and since as Zimmer himself exp]ains (p. 286 fn.) draco to the Britons was "the symbol of the military power", insularis draco seems more likely to be 'the dragon of the Island' than 'the insular man who is a dragon '. In Welsh poetry yr l'nys and even Tnys (defìnite with- out the article ]ike a proper name) is used for Britain from tlie Ynt/s of " Armes Prydein ", B.T. 181.5, in the 9th century to the lluoedd Ynys of Deio ap leuan Du in the 15th (F Flodeuyerdd Neicydd, ed. W. J. Grufìydd,:i909, p. 77).
222 Taliesin.
in order to retain his father's power ", A tradition of his wielding this power is reflected in the medieval tale of " Ehonabwy's Dream". In the dream Arthur is seen receÌYÌng from the enemy a request for a six weeks' ti'uce ; he determines to take counsel, and goes with his advisers to the spot where a tall man with curly auburn hair sits apart. Rhonabwy asks the meaning of this, and is tokl that the tall man is Rhun vab Maelgwn Gwynedd, whose privilege it is that all shall come and take counsel of him.' " The privileged positîon held by Ehun in the story, " snys Dr. Lloyd, " may well be an echo of a real predominance held by him as gwledig in succession to his father." ^ But apparently the sons of Coel, or some of them, rebelled against him : a couplet in the Gododdin, as we have seen, speaks of the Edyrn defending their land against the faithless sons of Godebawc. Our poem tells us of a war between kinsmen, the sons of Edern and the sons of Coel, in which 22ün was slain by the Coeling- — i?un, who was as generous as the hostile Gildas admits his father to have been.^ By the death of -Run the bard laments the fall of the court and girdle of Cunedda, the Gwledig'.
The mystification which has caused the poem to be a " stumbling-bloclí " is tlie work of the thirteenth-century scribe, who understood the poem only a little better than
1 R. B. Mab., pp. 159-60.
2 History of Wales, pp. 167-8.
3 A reference to Rhun fighting in the North is seen in B.T. 29*17 : " the fortification {myyedorth) of Rhun frowns {a wc) between Kaer Rian and Kaer Riwc, between Din Eidyn and Din Eidwc " ; the second and fourth names I cannot identify, but Kaer Rian must have been near Loch Ryan, and Din Eidyn is Edinburgh ; between these lay the landof the Coeling. Inthe dictionaries wyyer/o?'íÄis givenas "funeral pile ", which is only the usual bad guess. The meaning is clear f rom B. A. 8"5 : " ashen [spears] were sowii from the fingers [lit. four divisions] of his hand from the myyedorth of stone "; and R.B.M. SOl'lO: "the myyedorth of the host of Gwenòoleu at Arderyb ".
Taliesin. 223
the nineteenth-century translators, and knew less of sixth- century liistory. He transcribed the dead king's nanie twice as " /lun", and in one place expanded it to " Ouneja ", thereby makinw that line two syllables too long. Now, is it likely that the monosyllable Imn represents Cunedda ? or that in the statement " By the death of a; I mourn the fall of the court and girdle of Cunedda ", x is Cunedda himself ? Is it not obvious that the meaningr is that by his deatli something greater than himself has fallen — a great tradition inherited frora an illustrious ancestor? And if there could be any doubt about the answer to this question, it is set at rest by the fact that a few lines earlier he is explicitly called the " Descendant of Cunedda ", Thus, when the poem is subjected to the criticism without which it cannot be understood at all, the " stumbling-block " is found to be a landmark. The poera commemorates a war wliich could hardly have been fous"ht either before or after the time of Taliesin, and laments the fall of the power of Cunedda in the person of his descend- ant Rhun ap Maelgwn, Taliesin's contemporary.
The upshot of our survey of the historical poems is that, excluding allusions to mythological characters such as Brân, they relate to persons and events of the middle and latter part of the sixth century. Like the poems of the bards of all ages they contain references to famous ancestors of the persons in whose honour they are sung : Ceneu ap Coel, the ancestor of Uryen ; Cyngen, the ancestor of Cynan Garwyn ; Cunedda, the ancestor of Rhün. The poet either addresses directly the princes to whora he sings, or speaks of them as contemporaries, living or recently deceased. He sings their praises in the manner which we know to have been tlien customary because it roused the ire of Gildas ; but his eulogy is not a mere repetition of conventional phrases — it has charac-
2 24 Taliesin.
ter and life. He mentions many battles, souie fought in earlier ^enerations; one or two he says lie has himself witnessed, and the vividness of his descriptions in these cases stamps his gweleis ' I saw ' as a true word and not a mere figure of speech. The poems are in a variety of metres, but there are phi'ases and turns of expression, and a certain delight in antithesis and repetition, which are characteristic of all, and indicate very clearly that theyare the work of one man. He calls himself Taliessin. I sub- mit that the reasonable conclusion is that the poems are the work of the bard of that name, who is stated in the " Saxon Genealogies " (our oldest and best authority) to have ílourished in the time of Ida of Northumberland, 547-559, and whom "the universal Welsh tradition " as Matthew Arnold sa^^s, see above p. 145 fn., " attaches to the sixth century".
Let us consider for a moment the only possible alter- native — a twelfth century origin is not a possible alterna- tive, for the evidence is decisive that the poems were copied from a ninth century manuscript. What does the assumption that they are fabrications of the ninth century imply ? It implies that there lived in Wales at that time a man (or let us say men, if a conspiracy is more likely), who had learnt a good deal about men and things in the sixth centuiy, not only in Wales but in the North ; who liad develüped in a remarkable degree the modern histori- cal sense of the unity of time, and avoided anachronisms, especially references to later events ; who was a great realist — mixed his pronouns to produce the effect of actu- ality, simulated emotions, drew vivid pictures of ancient battles ; who was a rare poet and a great master of the Welsh language ; and who applied his extraordinary gifts to forge poems to attribute to Taliesin.
Thomas Stephens, who was by far the greatest critic
Taliesin. 225
in the nineteenth centurj of old Welsh literature, and whose leaning is aclcnowledged to have been in the direc- tion of scepticism rather than credulity, believed these poems to be genuine, It is true that he did not under- stand them very well ; but he understood the proper names, and could divine the drift of many passages, and his instinct in these matters was sensitive and sure. Zeuss, the founder of Keltic philology, and his editor Ebel, have no difficulty in accepting the possibility of verses by Aneirin and Taliesin surviving and being trans- literated into medieval orthography, Gram. Celt., 1871, p. 965. But, as we have seen, the scholars of the last generation did not regard any such possibility as wortliy of serious consideration. When Rhys says, see above p. 23, that the poenis "" date in some form or other, from the 9th centur}^, if not earlier ", he is not attacking the tradition, but only qualifying a statement that their language is medieval. He does not trouble to deny a sixth century origin, but speaks of " the poetry commonly assigned to the sixtli century ", and leaves it there. His argument is as follows {Welsh. Phil., 1879, pp. 188-9):
As to the language of this poetry it is generally not much older, if at all, than the manuscript on which it is written. I say the ianguage, for the matter may be centuries older, if we may suppose each writer or rehearser to have adapted the form of the words, as far as concerns the reduction of the mutable consonants, to the habits of his own time, which one might well have done unintentionally, and so, perhaps without tainpering much with the matter. . . . The poenis ascribed to tlie Cynfeirdd or early bards belong, as far as concerns us now, to the Mediíeval period of Welsh, though the metre, tlie aJhisions, and the archaisms, which some of them contain, tend to show tliat they date in some forni or other, from the 9th century, if not earh'cr.
It behoves us to examine these words carefully. The words " the 9th century, if not earlier " inevitably convey the meaning, and are doubtless intended to mean, " the
Q
2 26 ' Taliesm.
9th century, or possibly the 8th ". The reasons for re- ferring- to that period poems which appear in a medieval garb are three : metre ; aHusions ; archaisms. It is not a logical order, for a reason of content is sandwiched between two reasons of form. Let us take them in the following order : (1) outer form, or metre; (2) inner form, or lang-uage — archaisms ; (3) content — allusions. (1) Some of the metres were obsolete in the twelfth century, and all are okI ; but what possible reason can there be for sup- posing that they are not older than the eighth century ? Had not Gildas' praecones metres ? What reason of history or tradition is there for the assumption that there was a prolific inrention of metres in the eighth century ? (2) Archaisms may prove that a composition is old ; but how can they determine a limit to its age? Do archaisms prove that it is not older than theperiod just before they became obsolete? (3) Allusions. Tlie allusions in the poems we have studied above are to men and things of the sixth century or earlier. How can allusions to men and things of the sixth and earlier centuries prove that the poems were composed in the eighth or ninth ? It is seen that the two reasons of form are not reasons against the tradi- tion — they tell more f or than against it ; and the reason of content is a reason decidedly for the tradition, and dead against Rhys's view. How could he draw such a conclusion f rom such premises ? What made him fìx on the ninth or possibly the eighth century? Had he any hnowledge of any gifted poet or poets busily engaged in faking early poems about that time ? None at all. He writes in his Hihhert Lectures, 1888, pp. 543-4 :
It is convenient to follow the long-established ciistom of spealcing of certain Welsh poems as Taliessin's, and of a manu- script of the 13th centiu'y in which they are contained as the Book of Taliessin. These poems represent a school of Welsh bardism, but we know in reality nothing about their authorship.
Taliesin. 227
He knew notliing — liad no sort of historical or traditional
evidence for his statement. He made it because he saw
that these poems are as old as anything in Welsh, and
believed that the Welsh language could not go back in its
uninflected form beyond the eighth century. This belief
followed necessarily from his assumption that thelanguage
of the sixth century was identical with the fully inflected
lang'uage of the first ; but it has no other foundation.
He himself admitted that that was an assumption which
he could not substantiate, see above p. 28. Thus when
Rhys flouted tradition and contemptuously set at naught
the considered view of Stephens, which was based on the
facts of the poems, his own view rested on nothing but an
unproved assumption. He made the assumption under
the influence of a gross error : lie thought he had dis-
covered the actual British speech of the sixth century in
the archaic Irish of the Ogams, Welsh PhiL, 1879, p. 14Ö.
In the Latin inscriptions, he says, the names " have their
terminations Latinised " ; but he believed that in the
Ogams he had the real British forms. This erroneous
view he stoutly maintained, op. cit., pp. 154 íî. ; and
though lie formally renounced it shortly afterwards, Celt.
Brit., 1884, p. 215, his statement about the poetry of the
Cynfeirdd was made when he held it, and is dictated by
it. This can be made clearer by taking a concrete ex-
ample typical of the argument : he thought that maqui
in the Ogams was the genitive of the sixth century forni
of the Welsh mah, see Welsh PhiL, pp. 155-6 ; he had also
read the genitive Brohomagli on a stone not much later
than the sixth century, do., p. 264 ; he concluded that
Taliesin could not have written mah Brochvael 45*21, even
in its oldest spelling map Brochmail, but must have written
maquos Brohomagli, which upsets the metre ! When he
discovered his error he did not abandon the conclusion,
cì2
2 28 Taliesm.
for he still believed that, though maqui is Irish, the con- temporary British form was mapi, which for the purjsoses of the arg-ument comes to the same thing. But of this there isno evidence at all, and it invo]ves the absurd supposition that a new lang-uage was suddenly developed in Wales about the end of the seventh century, and also that an identical new languagewas suddenly developed in Brittany about the same time. I believe he had considerably modi- fied his views on this point in recent years — no scholar was ever more ready to revise his theories in the liglit of new facts ; thus in 1893 he makes no comment on a state- ment of Dr. Evans in a work in wliich he collaborated (Llyf r Llan Daf , p. xlvi) that a document written in Welsh goes back to Teilo's time ; and when he read, in 1912, the proof of pages 190-1 of my Grammar, in which the prob- ability is urged that the loss of the inflexions had already taken place in the sixth century, he raised no objection.
Holding the view that the poems are spurious, it is not surprising that Rhys was never sufficiently interested in them to make them the subject of sustained and serious study. He has given renderings of some of tliem and of parts of others, but he never worked systematically at their prosody and vocabulary ; and thus, though he had the insight to perceive that metre, language and content bore witness to their antiquity, he never had any concep- tion of the true extent and force of the evidence to which he refers.
Zimmer had reasons of his own for asserting that the poems are still later fabrications. He analysed the tract " Saxon Genealogies ", and discovered most convincing proofs that it was written towards the end of the seventh century, was enlarged by interpolations, and was then copied b}' Nennius at the end of the eighth, see above, p. 44. But he was ignorant of the fact that a- may be
Talíesin. 229
inorganic or excrescent before initial n-, and therefore tliouí^ht that Aneirin was the original form of this name, and that Nennius mistoolc it for a Neirin and wrote et Neirin, in error, see p. 45. In maldng what he no doubt be]ieved to be a brilliant suggestion, Zimmer forgot that ' and ' was usually ha before a consonant in Old Welsh, and appears as ha in the very oldest piece of written Welsh (the Surexit memorandum noticed below). From the assumption of an error where there is no error Zimmer deduced the further assumption that the Welshman Nennius had never heard of "Aneirin"; from this par- ticular assumption he deduced the general assumption that Welshmen generally had never heard of any of the sixth century poets ; from this egregious fallacy of arguing from a special case to a universal rule he deduced the further assumption that the Welsh people only learnt of even the names of these poets in Nennius's compilation, forírettinof as:ain that the Nennian form Neirin is not found in Welsh.' From the last assumption it follows that Neirin and Taliesin were first heard of in Wales at the end of the eighth century, that they became famous only during the ninth, and consequent]y that the poems attributed to tliem were forged in tlie ninth or tentli cen- tury at the earliest. Zimmer's " emendation " is an il]- considered piece of tampering with a good text;' but even
' Since the Welsh, by Zimmer's snpposition, only learnt the name from Nennins, they mvist have got it in the fui m Xeiri7ì. It is found later among them as Aneirin ; this is theiefore a late form with exorescent «-, siiice the snpposition that they got it fi'om anotlier source is excludecl e.v hypotheni. And tliis form, which is denion- strably late on liis own hypothesis, is the form which Zimmer assumes to be the original form misunderstood by Nennius !
- 1 have always regarded it as a marc's nest, see my noto in Y h'eirniad, lí)l], p. öü ; and 1 l)eliuve no one would iiave acce[>ted it for a moment but for the exaggerated deference formerly paid to every suggestion made V)y a German. Anwyl derived Aneiriu from
230 Taliesin.
if it were sound, the superstructure raised upon it is about as extreine an example as ean well be found of a pyramid set on its apex.
The view thus conceived in error, and later supported by preposterous fallacies, has been accepted without ques- tion, and repeated by other writers. I have not accepted it myself, but, when I have had occasion to refer to the Cynfeirdd, I have expressed the opinion that some of the poems attributed to them, though naturally modernised by copyists, may be genuine.^ My study of the language has been the outcome of an interest in its poetry ; and, approaching the subject from that side, I have been naturally impressed with the evidence of the poems; the argument from the inscriptions was not conclusive ; it was a mere hypothesis, and might be fallacious. Rhys, who was the first Welshman to apply strict modern methods to the study of the language, was conscious of the importance of induction, or drawing inferences only from facts, a process which yielded such fruitful results in his hands as compared with the barren philosophizing
Honörinus ; but ö gives u in Welsh ; and even if it were shortened, 0...Ì gives e...i, not ei...i, as in ceffin from coquma. Tlie sequence eirin can only come from egrln- (or with a or 0 instead of e ; or with mj or (1 instead of g). As i...i tends to become e...i in Welsh (e.g. dewin from dimni(s) it had occurred to me, and (I learnt after the appearance of the above note) independently to Professor W. J. Gruffydd, that Neirin may come from Nigrinus.
1 As in Y Gwyddoniadur, new ed., art. " Cymraeg ", p. 68b, written in 1891 ; and in Chambers' Encyc, art. " Wales (Lang. and Lit.) ", pp. 528-9. In 1900 I wrote (in Welsh), " Although the Gododin of Aneirin in its present form Avas not written in the sixth century as was formerly supposed, it has not yet been proved that it cannot in substance be as ohl as that ", Trans. Lirerj^ool Nat. Soc, 1900-1, p. 31. Cf. also my Caniadau, 1907, p. 56 (written in 1892). Rhys's Hibh. Lfíct. had appeared in 1888; Zimmer's Nenn. Vind. ,wh.\ch. contains, pp. 103, 283, the precious argument dissected above, was published in 1893.
Taliesin. 2x1
of tlie old etymoloí^ists. But perliaps he was rather liable to regard as facts oiily those of the more palpable sort, and consequently to underrate the value of tradition. Tradition does not relate precise facts ; but he did not fully realise that tradition is itself a fact, not always to be disposed of by the hasty assumption that all men are liars. Nor could he be trusted in all cases to draw the rio-ht inference from his facts. Inscribed stones are no doubt hard facts ; but it does not follow that inílected forms used in Latin and primitive Irish represented con- temporary British speech. The rising and the setting of the sun are facts ; but it does not follow that the sun spins in a helix round the earth. Facts may be rightly observed and wrongly interpreted. In the case of our poems a wrong interpretation of certain facts, less justi- üable than the assumption of geocentric astronomy, has been allowed to override the united testimony of tradition and history, and the internal evidence of the poems them- selves.
There are few inscriptions in Early, or even Medieval, Welsh — in fact, very little Welsh was ever cut on stone bef ore the nineteenth century ; and the Welsh of a modern tombstone is not the local living dialect, but the language of the Bible, which was in some respects archaic in the sixteenth century, preserving, for example, the final -i of the third person plural of verbs, which the spelling of the BIack Book {dygan, deuthan, 2-5'8) shows to have been obsolescent in the twelfth. At wbat false conclusions might not a philologist of the í'ar future arrive as to the history of the language if he had only inscribed stones to go upon, and took no account of the fact that the written language may preserve ancient forms?
The earliest extant inscription in Welsh appears to be that on the so-called " stone of St. Cadvan ". Westwood
232 Taliesùi.
thought the lettering belonged to the seventh or eighth century, Arcìi. Caìiih., 1850, p. 95. Ehys examined the stone, and confirmed the substantial correctness of West- wood's reading ; to him it remained " a crux " ; Arch. Gamh., 1874, p. 243. See below, Appendix I.
The oldest piece of written Welsh is undoubtedly the 8urexit entry in mixed Welsh and Latin on p. 141 of the Book of St. Chad. It is the record of the settlement of a dispute concerning a piece of land, the fìrst witness being "Teliau". It certainly appears, on the face of it, to be what Dr. Evans, under the eye of Rhys, stated it to be, " a copy of a document of Teilo's time ", Booh of Llan Dav, p. xlvi. If that be so, and the probability is that it is, then Rhys's hypothesis of sixth century British goes finally by the board ; and the language of Teilo's time is the Welsh of the poems attributed to Taliesin. The matter is discussed below in Appendix II.
To argue from the absence of contemporary documen- tary evidence of Welsh in the sixth century to the non- existence of the language at that time is to commit the error of taking " the first attestation of a fact to be the date of the fact itself " (see p. 43). It is more — it proves too much ; for bv the same reasoning' neither British nor Welsh existed in the sixth century, which, of course, is absurd. There are no records of the early periods of languages ; and if philologists had been tied down to actual records there would have been no science of com- parative philology. In the absence of documentary evi- dence there are other data by which the date of the for- matioil of the language can be approximately ascertained, just as distances which cannot be directly measured can be calculated, with equal certainty if the calculation be correct. I have dealt with this evidence above, pp. 27-34 ; I will only add here one point which has a bearing on the
Taliesin. ^ ^ ^
~öö
tránsmission of our poems. The orthograpliy of the ninth century is not one that would have been inveuted at that time, but must have behind it a long literary tradition. As we have seen, pp. 130-1, a mutated consonant was re- presented by its radical. Nöw the change which resulted in the Welsh soft mutation had ah-eady set in in British itself ; this is capable of mathematical demonstration, for the change is caused by vowels' flanldng the consonant, and it takes place in Welsh in those positions where the consonant was vowel-flanked in British. Take for ex- ample the British Maglo-cunos, Old Welsh Mail-cun, Medieval and Modern Mael-gwn : the c is mutated to g in the last form because it stood between vowels in the first ; the mutation is conditioned by the British, not by the Old Welsh, form. Though in writing it appears after the Old Welsh period, it cannot have arisen after that period, since lc of the pre-mutation period becomes lcli, as in calch ' lime ' from the Latin calcem. The initial mutations per- haps afford a still better proof : ' one son ' is un mah, because in British it was ^oinos mapos, and the m- followed the -s of the masculine ^oinos ; but ' one mother ' is un fam, because in British it was ^oinä mammä, and the m- stood between vüwels, coming after the feminine *oind. There is no other possible way of explaining the difference ; and no possible conclusion but tliat the mutation goes back to British. The difference that thus arose in British and persists to day cannot have been obliterated at an intervening period ; and tlie fact that the mutation is not written in Old Welsh simply means that the orthography did not represent differences of sound that existed in the spoken language. It sliows that even the evidence of records may be quite misleading unless it is interpreted in
' I put it iu the simplest form íur the sake of clearuess, but /, r, or n comiug after the cousonant has the sanie eíì'ect as a vo\vel.
234 Taliesm.
the liglit of phonetic laws. Now the soft mutation of m was in Earlj Welsh an m pronounced loosely, on the way to V, but retainiug its nasal character ; it still sounded to the Eng-lish as a sort of m ; it became m on English lips, and remains as m in Wmei and Leemiìig, see pp. 71-2. But the mutated tenues (p, t, c) were heard as mediae (h, d, g) by the English and Irish ; thus trindod from Latin trinitätem, spelt trintaut in Old Welsh, was borrowed from Welsh and' appears in Old Irish as trindöít ;' so Cadvan from the British *Catu-mannos, spelt Catman{nJ in Old Welsh, borrowed in the seventh century, appears as Cmdmon in Engdish ; and the seventh-century Cad- wallon was called by the Eng-lish Ca;dimdla, though his name was spelt CatguoUauìi' much later in Old Welsh. As the difference between a mutated and an unmutated consonant arose in British, it must of course have existed in the sixth century ; but it would necessarily be less marked at that time than later. Thus Old Welsh ortho- g-raphy, which can be traced back to the seventh century in the "Saxon Genealog-ies ", is still more easily explicable as having- been formed in the sixth. It must have been pre- served almost unchanged down to the ninth century, and was used witli but little modifìcation for two centuries more. Two results follow : (1) It is not necessary to assume that sixth century poems were trausmitted orally, and written down f or the fìrst time in the ninth century ; the existence of a continuous literary tradition, which the orthog-raphy proves, makes it possible, and therefore prob- able, that they were transmitted in writing. (2) If our
1 The final -t in Irish was sounded d, and the ending is -öid in Modern Irish. It is only in the niodern forms that it can be deter- mined whether Old Irish written t was sounded i or d.
2 Y Cyììimrodor , ix, p. 170.
3 Ibid., p. 157.
Talíesin. 235
scribe's riinth centiiry copy had been preservecl, it would present us with the poems ahnost in the form in which they would have been written down in the sixth. The period that separated Taliesin from the ninth-century scribe would be about equal to that which separates Milton from us ; Welsh orthography had changed prob- ably less during' that period than Eng-lish orthography has since the seventeenth century ; in the spoken language consonants had been somewhat modified, as vowels have been in Eng-lish ; but in the one case as in the other, the language was practically the same at the end as at the beginning of the period. Unfortunately, we have only a copy of the ninth-century manuscript made about four and a half centuries later, when it had become difficult to read, and was probably imperfect ; it is, however, satis- factory to know that our oldest copy is only one step removed from one in which the poems were written, so far as the language is concerned, practically in their original form.
I have dealt above with the historical poems for the obvious reason that these alone contain direct evidence of their date, so that an examination of them must form the foundation of any discussion of the genuineness of the Taliesin poems. But there are others the claims of which will have to be considered if the claims of the historical poems are allowed. There is no absolute hard and fast line to be drawn between the historical and the mytholog- ical poems, for some of the latter contain references to Taliesin's contemporaries ; thus " Daronwy ", which speaks of the " magic wand of Mathonwy ", also mentions Cynan and Rhun, pp. 28-9 ;and " Golychafi gulwyh ", as we have seen above, p. 197, refers to the historical Brochvael, Urien, Maelgwn, Elphin, and to the mythological sons of Llŷr, and Lleu, Gwydion and Brân. There is thus evidence
23Ó Taliesin.
that the author of the historîcal poems was iii the habit of alluding' to mythological characters. The allusions take for g-ranted the reader's acquaintance with the mjtholog'y. Some of them are allusions to tales pre- served in the Mabinogion ; in " Cadeir Ceridwen", for example, the poet says that " Gwydion ap Dôn . . . con- jured a woman out of üowers, and brought swine from the South . . . and formed horses and . . . saddles out of fung'us ", p. 36. These allusions are followed by others to tales wliich have been lost. The genuineness of the poem is not disproved by the f act that a pious passage has been added at the end, which contains a reference to Bede and late rhymes. Some of the allusions in the poems are to more primitive forms of the tales than the medieval versions of the Mabinogion : Manawyt and Pryderi know of the fairy region of Caer Sibi ; the passage is as follows (34-8) :
(Ys) kyweir vyng kafleir yng Kaer Sibi ;
Nys plawb heint (a) heueint a vo yndi,
Ys^ gẃyr Manawyt a Phryderi ;
Teir oryan (y) iía(m t)r//an- a gân recbi,
Ac am ŷ banneu^ ffrydyeu gweilgi,
A(r) ffynhawn ffrwythlawn ys (syb)'* obuchti ;
Ys whe(ga)ch* no(r) gwin gwyn y'^ llyn yndi.
' My chair is prepared in Caer Sibi ; The disease of okl age afflicts none who is there, As Manawyt and Pryderi know ; Havgan's three organs play before it, And about its peaks are the streams of ocean, And above it is a frnitful fountain ; Sweeter than wliite wine is the liquor therein.'
^ ¥s, formed of a conjunction of indefinite meaning, followed by the inlixed pronoun -.s, here meaning 'if; in " Gweitli Arg. Ll. ", 1. 9, p. ir)6, it is 'him'. In the Aí/.s just above our I's here, the -s is also ' him ', the antecedent of the relative ' who ', wy.s is thus ' not him ' which I have rendered ' none '.
^ In the text y am tan tlu; y beiug ;>. later addition above the line.
Taliesin. 237
At tlie end of the poem, following- this delig-htful bit of pag-ànism, is a short prayer for reconciliation with the Most Hig'h, added no doubt by a reciter or copyist. Iii the Mabinogion, Manawyt has become Manawydan ; the fairy realm preserves its mythic character, and even retains a trace of the idea which placed it under the sea, when we meet with it first in the story of Pwyll as Annwfn^ or the Bottomless, for the sovereig-nty of which Arawn and Havgan contend ; but later, when Pryderi and Manawydan come to visit it, it has been rationalised and localised as the land of Dyved over which Llwyd vab Cilcoed has cast a spell. A direct reference to an early form of the tale occurs ih another poem in an alhision to Caer Sibi as " the prison of Gweir " (if that be the correct reading), " according to the Story [ehostol) of Pwyll and
and so probablj'^ not in the copy. The above emendation imph'es that the reading in the copy was hamcan (i.e., in Medieval spelHng llafijan) ; if c was misread as t, it would become am tan ' around a fire', the h being treated like that of ha ' and ', etc. Rhys (see ref . above, p. 198) rendered am tan, but confessed Iie did uot understand it. It is an obvious misreading. There is ju.st a question whether Haf(/a7i should not be Afyan, with H. due to popular etymology ; it might possibly in that case be a diminutive of * Avac, the monster of the lake (cf. Amighu), whose name was made into Avanc (the word for 'beaver').
^ Banneu has cloarly its ordinary meaning of ' mountain tops ' ; I am not aware of any authority for the sense of "corners" given by Rhys, which seems to be a piece of rationalising.
* The medieval yssyè takes the place of old ys ov iju'; see p. 174, note on 1. 15.
* Tiie old comparative of chwej was probably chweeh, see Gram., p. 249.
^ If whech is thc correct reading, the article must stand here ; this is possible, since it is a semi-demonstrative, 'tliat liquor (which is) in it '.
1 In our text, '20'%, Annwf{y)n is " under the earth " (/.•<• eh'i/S). There were various conceptions as to the location of the other-world : under the earth ; under the sea ; in distant islands.
238 Taliesin.
Pryderi ", 54' 19. The poem treats of an expedition, or expeditions, uiider Arthur to Caer Siòi, which seems also to be indicated by the other names, Caer Yedwit, Caer Rigor, etc. ; mention is made bf " the caldron of Pen Annwf(y)n, . . . which will not boil the food of a coward " — Pen Annwfn is the cognomen of Pwyll in the Mabinog'ion; and the title of the poem, in a later hand, but probably traditional, is PreiBeu Annwn 'the Spoils of Annwfn', which shows that Annwfn is only another name of Caer Sibi.^ Alfred Nutt, in The Voyage of Bran, ii, pp. 13-17, compares the Mabinogion stories of Manawydan and Pryderi with the corresponding Irish tales, and says, —
It will, I thiiik, be conceded that the Welsh and Irish stories owe their likeness to origin in a commonbody of mythic romance, the chief actors in which were the sea-god Manannan, and a supernatnrally begotten semi-mortal son of his.
He then g'ives an account of the yarious theories that have been advanced as to the origin of the Welsh tales : briefly (1) the}^ are derived from the common stock of Keltic mythology ; (2) they were borrowed from the Irish of Gwynedd ; (3) they were brought to Wales by Cunedda's men who had been in contact with the Irish of the North ; (4) they were borrowed from the Irish story-tellers of the seventh and later centuries. On any theory but the last the}»^ were current in Wales in the sixth century, for Cunedda had come from the North, and had driven the
1 Si8i is the Welsh equivalent of the Irish std ' fairy-land '. Its location under the sea in our poem (as in the Irish tale of Laegaire, where also are the music and the liquor, Nutt, Bran, i, 182-4) and the synonym Annwfn in Welsh suggest that the name is derived from *sèd-, the long é grade of the root *sed-, since ë becomes i in Keltic. The root means not only ' to sit ' but ' to sink ', etc. (e.g. sedìment, subszíZence) ; and its long ô grade occurs in AVelsh in saic?i 'subsidence, submergence ', so^i ' to sink ', in which also initial 5- remains unre- duced in Welsh. Si&i depends in the genitive on Caer, and would regularly represent a genitive *sidii of a derivative in -io- of *sêd-.
Taliesin. 239
Irish out of Gwynedd about the year 400. But why all this assumption of borrowing- ? It rests on the perf ectly g-ratuitous supposition that the British had no traditional lore of their own. If Keltic myth survived among the Irish, why did it not among the British ? The answer is that it did ; and the proof is in the tales themselves. The names of the charaeters provide a sufficent refutation of the borrowing- theories ; the name of Manawyd, for example, is quite a different formation from that of his Irish counterpart Manannan ; the root is the same, but the difference of suffixes cannot be explained on any sup- position of borrowing ; thus while the later Manawydan shows the influence of the Irish name in the added suffix, the Welsh must have known of him as Manawyd, or its British equivalent, from the twilight of the gods in Keltic times. Pwyll and Pryderi cannot be derived from Early Irish, which had no p. The name of Gwydion son of Dôn, is purely Welsh in form, and has no Irish equivalent ; his British godhood is reflected in Caer Gwydion, the Welsh name of the Milky Way. Lleu's name, converted into Llew in tlie Mabinogion, is the equivalent of the Irish Lug ; but it occurs also in Gaulish, the twin-sister of British ; the continental Lugu-dünon^ which survives in Lyons, Laon and Leyden, occurs, with its elements re- versed, not only in Din-lle(u) near Carnarvon, but in an old Din-lle üreconn,- or Wrelcin Dinlle, in a district where Irish influence cannot be assumed. Still less can Lugu-halion the old name of Carlisle, see p. 59, be assumed to be borrowed frora Irish. The Irisli had no monopoly in Lug ; indeed, their language has no cosrnates of the name,' while Welsh has Ueu ' light '
^ Aovyov8ovvov . . . vvv 8è Aovy8ovvov 'Lyons', Dio Caasius ; Aovyó8ovvov ' Leyden ', Ptolemy. 2 Red Book, col. 1047,
F.A.B., ii, ^88. 3 Rhys^ Hibbert Lectures, p. 408.
240 Taliesin.
B.A. 4*21, go-híi ' lig-ht ', lleu-fer ' luminary ', lleu-ad ' moon ', lleiv-ych ' illumination ', llychwr 'daylight' (above, p. 103). In the vocabularies o£ the two languages, where strict phonetic tests of origin can be applied, it is found that the borrowing is mainly on the side of Trish.' Borrowers of words are borrowers of ideas ; but it is not necessary for mj purpose to turn the tables and show that the theorists have confused creditors and debtors — it is sufficient to insist on the obvious tçuth that the two races inherited the fundamental conceptions of their re- spective mythologies from their common ancestor. Words generally persist only in association with ideas ; and it is inconceivable that British names of British gods could have survived except in traditions concerning them. In our medieval versions the old tales have been edited and rationalised. " The very first thing that strikes one, in reading the Mahiiìogion," says Matthew Arnold, " is how evidently the medÌ8eval story-teller is pillaging an anti- quity of which he does not fully possess the secret."^ It is also true, no doubt, that they contain elements which have been borrowed from Irish and other sources. But the allusions in our poems are not to the Mabinogion, but to more primitive versions of the stories with many details now lost.
Again, the mythological passages are not to be dis- sociated from the so-called " transformation " passages, or from the mystical passages which accompany both. Thus, " Kat Gobeu ", 23-9, opens with a transformation passage beginning " I have been in many forms " (for the forms see above, p. 101); this is followed by mystical
1 Man darf sagen, dass das Irische durch nnd dnrch mit britanni- schen Elementen versetzt ist. Es ist daher nicht zu erwarten, dass der irische Einíiuss im Britannischen von sehr grossem ümfang wäre. — Pedersen, Terffl. Gram., i, p. 24.
2 Celtic Literature, p. 51.
Taliesin. 241
passages consisting of the account of the battle of the trees, and the statement that the poet was not born of father and uiother, but created out of ílowers by the spell of Math, bj the spell of Gwydion ; thus mystical statements are directly connected with mythological alhisions ; these again are followed by another transfor- mation passage, " I have been a speckled snate on a hill ", etc, see above, p. 110. The poem "Angar Kyfyndawt ", 19-1, contains a good deal of mysticism, or semi-mysticism, in the form of a profession of knowledge of the secrets of nature, containing lists of tlie things that he and the bards know, or that are recorded in their books : " How many winds, how many streams ", etc, p. 1 14 above ; " how wide the earth is, or how thick, .... what is arranged between heaven and earth ", 20-23-5; " why a woman is affectionate, why milk is white, why holly is green, why a kid is bearded ", 21*2; "how many days there are in ayear, how man}' spears in a battle, how many drops in a shower, " 22"1. Towards the end couies a transformation passage : " I have been a blue salmon, I have been a hound, I have been a stag," etc, 22-19. The poem contains one allusion to Gwydion, 22-3. But there are references in it to Elphin and to contemporary bards, which thus link it with the historical poems : the bards are Kian, 19*4, and Talhaearn, 20*4, 21-16, both of whom are mentioned in the " Saxon Genealogies " as flourishing at the same time as Taliesin ;' see above p. 46, and frontispiece. The
1 Mr. WiUiams has suggested to me that Ef ae rin roSes, 20 ö, is a bungle in which the name of Aneirin is disguised, so tliat he also is named. The suggestion seems to me very probable. In Ohl Welsh ei is frequently written e, probably the oldest spelling of the diph- thong ; Neirin wouhl thus appear as nerin ; the scribe mistook the n for a, and himself inserted the ef, as in " Marwnad Rliun ", see note on 1. 25, p. 214. The correct reading on this supposition would be ífeirin a ro^es,
R
\
242 Taliesin.
repetition in inyerse order of the words of a half-line also occurs [fel wijnt peí ffreu, pet ýreu jìet wynt), as in tbe historical poem "Yng- Ngorffowys ", see above, p. 177. The íirst rhyme in the poem is ymae / a ganho ; the old form of canho (3rd sg. pres. subj.) is canhoe (Gram., p. 328) ; in ymae I had conjectured (ib., p. 349) that the orig-inal diphthong was oe, and, not having noticed this rhyme, had only the Cornish pl. ymons as confìrmation (p. 350). The poem also contains the first example in the manu- script of the scribe's bungling over ar guaut, which he writes an góaót instead of ar wawt, see above p. 138 ; this proves that the poem was copied from a ninth-century manuscript, probably the same as the exemp]ar of the historical poems, in which the error is repeated.
At other times the poet asks questions, as in " Mab- gyfreu Taliessin ", 27"13, " Why is a niglit mooniit, and another [so dark] that thou seest not thy shield out of doors ? . . . Why is a stone so heavy ? Why is a thorn so sharp ? Which is the better, the stem or its branches ? . . . Who is better off [in] his death, the young or the grey-haired ? Dost thou know what thou art when thou art sleeping, whether body or soul, or a bright angel ? Skilled minstrel, why dost thou not tell me ? Dost thou know where night awaits day ? . . . . What supports the structure of the earth in perpetuity? The soul . . . who has seen it, who knows it ? I marvel that in books they know it not indubitably. The soul , . . what is the shape of its limbs ? . . . Death is established in all
lands alike ; death over our head, wide is its veil
Man is old when he is born, and younger always ", 27*19- 28*17. The poem ends with the usual added prayer which in this case is not even in verse. The reference to monks (^myneich), 27*15, occurs in a corrupt line, and is probably a mis-reading, like beirS îor dynion in " Yng Ngorffowys",
Taliesin. 243
1. 11, see. p. 175 and iiote. There is one allusion to Dylan in the poem, 27*21 ; cf. p. 104 above. The expression ar ìvawt occurs in it, 28*9, correctly copiecl this time ; but there is another example of confusion of n and r in 27'26, where angel appears as aryel,^ which suggests that this poem also has been copied from a ninth century original. What is the meaning- of it all'? Dr. Evans believes that the mysticism " defìnitely marks the period of the composition of the poems " as the twelfth century. Why? Because "Under the year 1 200 Richard of Hoveden breaks his narrative to give a brief summary of the maxims of the philosopher Secundus " ! pp. xl-xli. The transformation passag-es, as we have seen, pp. 101-115, are treated by him as the cryptic autobiography of his twelf th-century Taliesin, of which he has spelt out enough to enable him to g-ive " in outline the life of the bard ", p. xxxiii. When that was all in print, he was " reminded " by Dr. Mary Williams^ of the well-known parallel to these passag-es in a poem ascribed to the ancient Irish bard Amorg-en. So he writes in his preface : " The transfor- mation passages, which are a feature of Taliesin, have not been discussed," p. iii ; and has the hardihood to declare, after learning- of the parallel, that " It is f atuous folly to
' arffel canhwyt is doubtless to be read angel canneit ; tlie -eit is proved by the rhyme. This emendation has been made by Dr. Evans. Most of his emendations and renderinj^s are, ho\vever, of tlie usual character. He did not know canhuyt 'thou seest' in the first quota- tion above ; and took yscwyt ' shield ' to be the Modern Welsh ysywyd ' to shake,' which is yscytweit or yxcytwair in Medieval Welsh.
- This is acknowledged in a footnote to p. v. It shows thathe had been writing for years ou Taliesin without once looking up what Rhys has to say about him iii his Ilihhert Lectures. Rhys's theories maybe erratic ; but his hnowledye was such that his books will long be indis- pensable to students of Keltic autiquity. Had Dr. Evans tuiiied up "Taliesin " in the index of the Hihh. Lect. he would not need to have been " reminded " of Amorgen's verses by Dr. Mary Williams.
244 Taliesin.
imagine that early Welsh literature is a thiiig- apart ", p. V. Amorgen's verse, he says, is " reputed to be the oldest in Irish ", p. iv ; instead of drawing the obvious conclusion that the same thing in Taliesin is probably old too, he merelj suggests that Taliesin might have heard an Irishman repeating Amorgen's lines! "Griffyb" ap Kynan " could not grow up amid the culture and tradi- tions of an Irish court without acquiring and spreading them ", p. V. I do not intend to discuss this afterthought as to the origin of the transf ormation passages ; I will only say that to my mind the idea that they belong to the twelfth century is too absurd for discussion, and that there is fair palaeographical evidence that they are at least as old as the ninth.
Amorgen's verses and the tradition concerning them are thus given by Nutt in the Yoyage of Bran, ii, p. 91 : —
When tlie soiis of Mil invaded Ireland, they were led by Mil's son, the poet Amairgen. Setting foot npon the land he was about to conquer, Amairgen burst into song : —
I am the wind which blows o'er the sea ;
I am the wave of the deep ;
I am the bull of seven battles ;
I am the eagle on the rock ;
I am a tear of the sun ;
I am the fairest of plants ;
I am a boar for courage ;
I am a salmon in the water ;
I am a lake in the plain ;
I am the word of knowledge ;
I am the head of the battle-dealing spear ;
I am the god who fashions fire in the head i^
Who spreads light in the gathering on the mountain ?^
Who foretells tlie ages of the moon ?°
Wlio teaches the spot where the sun rests ?^
Glosses : "•Fire = thought. " Of man " is understood. ''Who clears up each question but I ? "^Who tells you the ages of the moon but I ? '^Unless it be the poet.
Taliesin. 245
As to the date, Nutt writes as follows in a footnote to p. 92.
In regard to the date of the poems ascribed to Amairgen it must be noted that they occur in those MSS. of the Lebor Gabála, or Book of Invasions, which gives what may be called the second edition of that work, that which makes Cessair the first immigrant into Ireland. The poems are hüwever heavily glossed, and it is almost certain that they formed part of the original edition of the Lebor Gabáhi, which, known as it was to the early ninth centnry Nennins, must be a product of the eiglith centuryat the latest. It is quite possible that the poems are as old substantially as the first coming of the Goidelic Celts to Ireland.
Without going so far as to eiidorse the last statement ex- cept in the very general sense that the underlying ideas are as old as that, I believe there can be no doubt about the antiquity of the above poem. The resemblance be- tween it and the Taliesin poems from which I have quoted is closer than has been recog-nised ; it is not limited to the transformation lines, but extends to the claim to occult knowledg-e expressed in the form of questions. I am not aware that anyone but Dr. Evans has suggested that either the Welsh or the Irish bard has borrowed from the other ; the relation between them is that they have both inherited the same traditions, the existence of which in Britain is as certain as in Ireland, and, as we shall see, more direct- ly attested. But d'Ai'bois de Jubainville' has propounded the theory which Rh^-s' has adopted, that Amorgen's " I am " retains a more archaic form of the underlying con- ception than Taliesin's "I have been ". To adopt Nutt's concise summary, the argument is " that what is claimed for the poet is not so much the memory of past existences as the capacity to assume all shapes at will ; this is what puts him on a level with and enables him to overcome his
' Cycle mytholoyigue, pp. 244-6. ■^ Hibhert Lectures, p. .549.
24Ó Taliesin.
super-human adversaries ", loc. cit. It is seen that the jDroof rests on a mere speculation, not on facts ; it is a lame attempt to get rid of the idea of transmigration. Bhys " fails to see the point of the brag " in Taliesin's " I have been ", though one would have supposed that the claim to tnowledge of previous states, and to possession of their attributes, is plain enough ; but Amorgen's " I am " is clear to him, and he proceeds to speak as if " I am " obviously and naturally meant " I can, when I like, take the form of. " If "I am " means all that,^ how did it become "I have been" in Taliesin ? This is inexplic- able to Rhys ; and he leaves it at that, without perceiving that a theory which fails to account for the facts stands self-condemned. If, on the otherhand, we take Taliesin's "' I have been " to represent the literal meaning, Amorgen's " I am " presents less difficulty ; it is not perhaps the historic present, so mucli as the present that expresses the persistence of identity" — the emphasis is thrown on the possession of the attributes. Dr. Evans has oblig- ingly quoted, p. iv, a renderiiig of some verses of Empedocles, containing the words " I have been a youth, and a maiden, and a bush, and a bird, and a gleaming fish in the sea ", which show that the Pythagorean doctrine found expression a thousand years before Taliesin's time in a formula identical with his. That metempsychosis is the underlying conception in these passages is proved by the last quotation made above, p. 242, from " Mab-gyfreu Taliesin ". The text is—
Hyuaf vyh dyii pau aiiher, a ieu ien pop amser,
' " Wheii I make a word do a lot of \vork like that," said Humpty Duiiipty, "I always pay it extra." — Throv(/h the Loohincj Glass, ch. vi.
2 As we say of a man of -W " He is a Llaiidovery boy " or " an Oxford man"; or, as we may say in Welsh, French and German "I am a member since 1900", when in English we have to say "1 have been".
Tdliesin. 247
ineaiiing- ' man is oldest when he is born, and younger [and] younger always ', which shows that the medieval scribe took it for a mere senseless paradox. But the metre is half-lines of five syllables : in the tìrst half-line the copula vyh should be omitted, and hynaf, due to the copyist's misunderstanding, reduced to hên ' old ', which is more probable than hŷn ' older ' ; in the second, one ieu should be omitted ; the line then reads
Hên dyn pan anher, a ieu pob amser,
' Man is old when he is born, and younger always '. Whether \ve read hên or hŷn is a mere matter of lucidity ; the first statement can have no intelligible meaning except that man existed long- before he was born. The second, I take it, means that he never attains in this life to the age at which he had arrived in previous existences when he was born.
This doctrine is patent in the transformation poems. The determined refusal to see it, and the resort to any shift — the assumption, for example, that " I have been " is a meaningless perversion of " I am ", which in turn is assumed to be a cabalistic condensation of '• I can, at will, assuuie the shape of " — i-ather than admit the plain meaning- of plain words, spring from nothing- but a false linguistic theory which relegates the poems to a compar- atively late age. In that age they stand meaningless, isolated, irrelevant — an insoluble enigma to those who put them there.
Let us move them back to their traditional settin<i-, within measurable distance of druidic times, and see what happens then. Take first Caesar's account of the teaching of the druids, B.G., vi, 14; I quote Professor Oman's free rendering, England, etc, p. 28 :
The chief doctrine of the Druids is that the soul doi^s not perish, but at death passes from one body to another, and this
248 Taliesin.
belief they consider a great incentive to courage, since tlie fear of annihilation may be put asicle. They hold many discussions concerning tlie stars and their jnovements, about the size of the world and the universe, about nature, and about the power and attributes of the imraortal gods.
The quotation is trite enough ; but anj'one who will look
at it again and compare it with the above typical extracts
í'rom the mythico-mystical poems o£ Taliesin, must, I
think, be impressed with the light it throws upon them.
Caesar puts in the forefront, as the doctrine on which
stress is specially [in primis) laid, the immortality and
transmig'ration of souls ; and transformation passag-es
" are a feature of Taliesin ". The words "they hold
many discussions " are less vivid than the orig-inal multa
disputant ; in the poems we have echoes of bardic disputa-
tions coiicerning the measure of the earth and what sup-
ports it, and about natural problems (de rerum natura),
with many allusions to the ancient gods. Caesar, it should
be stated, is speaking of the druids of Gaul ; but in the
preceding section he states that it was generally believed
that the system was invented in Britain and brought over
to Gaul, and adds that in his own day those who wished
to master it thoroughly went to Britain to learn it. The
ideas associated with re-birth are, as Nutt has shown,
implicit in traditional Irish literature ; but here we have
direct historical evidence that metempsychosis was the
cardinal doctrine of the British predecessors of the Welsli
bards.
The classical evidence concerning the religion of the
Kelts has often been brought together ; it is given in a
convenient form by Nutt, op. cit., pp. 107-112. — (1) He
cites first a quotation made by Clement of Alexandria
from a lost work by Alexander Polyhistor, written be-
tween 82 and 60 b.c, to the eíîect that Pythagoras was a
disciple of the Galatians and the Brahmins. This has no
Taliesin. 249
value except as evidence of similarities of doetrine giving rise to the conjecture. (2) Then comes the testimony of Caesar quoted above. (3) Diodorus Siculus, about 40 b.c. (apparently .quoting from Posidonius of Apamea, who wrote between 100 and 80 b.c, see Mon. Hist. Celt., ì, 1911, p. 314), says—
Amono; them the doctrine of Pythagoras had force, namely, that the souls of men are undying, and that after achieving their term of existence they pass into another body. Accordingly at the burial of the dead, some cast letters, addressed to their departed rehvtives, upon the funeral pile, under the belief that the dead wiU read them in the next world.
The last sentence illustrates the vividness witli which the belief in a future life was held by the Kelts ; this is em- phasized later by the statements of Yalerius Maximus and Pomponius Mela that agreements were made for the repayment of loans and the settlement of accounts in the next world. (4) Ammianus Marcellinus quotes the Greek historian Timagenes, who wrote about 20 b.c, to the effect that the druids, following the precepts of Pj^tha- goras, were organised in close corporations, busied them- selves with questions of occult and other matters, and believed souls to be immortal. (ô) Strabo, about 19 a.d. mentions the studies of tlie druids in natural science aiid moral philosophy, and states that they taught the imnior- tality of souls. (6) Valerius Maximus, about 20 a.d., wrote of the druids,
They would fain have us believe that the souls of men are immortal. I should be tempted to call these breeches-wearing gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras.
(7) Pomponius Mela, about 44 a.d., saj's that they profess to know the size and form of the earth and the world, the movements of the heavens and the stars, and tlie will of tlie gods, and teach that souls are undyiiig, and tliat
2 co Taliesiii.
>j
there is another life in the shades {aà Manes). (8) Lucan's
famous passag-e about the druicls in the Pharsalia, written
about 60-70 a.d., is quoted from Matthew Arnold's ver-
sion, Gelt. Lit., p. 42 :
To you only is giyen the know]edge or ignorance, \vhichever it be, of the gods and the powers of heaven. From you we learn that the bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below ; in another world his spirit survives still ; death, if yonr lore be true, is but the passage to enduring Hfe.
As Nutt points out, this version by no means gives the full force of the Latin, Lucan says that the same spirit animates a body (regit artns) in another world ; and " passage to " should be " centre of ".
After malcing- every allowance for repetition and in- direct information, we can hardly avoid concluding- f rom the evidence that metempsychosis formed the central doctrine of the druidic system. It was not the mere un- reflecting belief in shape-shifting, with which the obser- vers would be familiar in the folk-tales of other races, but the conscious formulation of the principle of trans- migration, which reminded them of the teaching of Pytha- goras. It represented a fixed point in the system, around which gathered many speculations, more or less fluid, about nature and the gods.
Belief in shape-shifting, or transf ormation, is universal among primitive races. It is not a doctrine, but an ex- pression of the natural worlcing of the primitive mind. It has not spread, like a rumour, from race to race, but has sprung up spontaneously everywhere. Primitive man has a dim conception of something that constitutes a per- son's identity, the essence of his being, the thing that says " I ". But it is conceived of as purely material. When a man is turned into a dog, it is his human body that has assumed a dog's shape — that is why he is the same person.
Taliesin. 2 5 1
The notion survives in tales of re-birth where some portion of the person's bod}^ — his bloocl, his heart, his ashes, — is consumed by the woman who is to become his mother. The Welsh tales are full of shape-shifting. Lleu is wounded and flies awa}'^ as an eagle, but the eagle has the wound. Llwvd's wife and her maidens turn themselves into mice ; she is pregnant, so is the mouse which she becomes. This is transformation pure and simple. But the druids do seem to have talcen the next step, and to have abstracted the soul. Transformation of the body became transmigration of the soul. Physical continuity was no longer a necessary condition of the persistence of identity ; the principle of persistence resided in the soul, which was thus conceived to be immortal. But the soul must still be clothed in a body, and when one body is worn out or destroyed it acquires another. Hence previous existence in various bodies, animate and even inanimate. Hence also a future existence, perhaps in another body in this world, but ultimately in an ever-young body in a happier world. The conception of metempsychosis is, as Nutt has shown, too old and widespread among the Kelts to have been borrowed from Pythagoreanism through the Greeks of Marseilles. Greek metempsychosis is a parallel de- velopment. The same original ideas resulted in Thnice in Orphicism and the Dionysiac mysteries, participation in which enabled the initiate to free his soul from the trammels of the body, " to have a respite from woe ". Pythagoras did not invent his doctrine ; he systematized the Orphic beliefs. " The strong likelihood," says Nutt, op. cit. p. 134, "that the aflinity between the Greek and Celtic Elysium myths is due to prehistoric community rathíH' than to historic contact justifies a similar presump- tion in the case of the re-birth myths." Perhaps the classical writers, when they compared the druidic doctrine
252 Taliesin.
to that o£ Pythagoras, were wiser than they knew. The whole matter is cliscussed very fully by Nutt^ in the Yoyage of Bran, vol. ii.
The druicls had, no doubt, elaborated a crude systeui of philosophy ; but verse is not the proper vehicle f or ratiocination. The bards dealt with the same subjects poetically, that is, allusively and emotionally. In our poems \ve seem to have an echo of the old bardism. The poet refers to questions of natural philosophy not to solve them, but to brino- out the wonder and romance of know- ledge, and the power of its possessor, generally himself. He tells " the fairy tales of science ", as science was then understood. The old conception of the other-world liad a fascination f or him ; his chair was ready in Caer Sibi, where no one is afíiicted with the disease of old age. His treatment of pre-existence is fanciful, not philosophical : the lists of his metamorphoses are largely suggested by the rhyme. He deals with the old mythology for its poetical value, as Christian bards have ever done ; he mentions the gods chiefly in relation to his pre-existence : he was with Dylan in a fortress ; he was with Brân in Ireland ; he sanof before the sons of Llŷr at Aber Hen- velen. We are now able to understand such a passage as the following, 25"21 (see above, p. 109) :
It was not of father and mother that I was made {digonat). In the beginning {am creu, cf. dechreu) I was created out of nine elements ; of fruits, . . . . of primroses, of the flowers of the hill . . . of earth . . . of water was I made ... I was brought into existence by the spell of Math before I was on earth {kyn buin
^ The discussion is unnecessarily complicated, so far as the use made of the TaHesin poems is cüncerned, by the author's acceptance of the theory that the oldest of them " may go bacií to the ninth or eighth centuries," p. 86, and of Rhys's theory that Taliesin is a myth.
Taliesin. 253
diaeret; read dacret, 2 syll.), aud by the spell of Gwydiou the great enchanter of the Britons.'
He was iii existence loug before he was born ; he was created out of fruits and flowers, earth and water by Math and Gwydion, the great enchanters among the gods, who, according to a tale to which he refers elsewhere (p. 36 ; W.B.M., c. 100), fashioned a wife for Lleu out of the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet.
I have to content myself with discussing the mythical and mystical poems, and the very interesting questions arising- out of them, thus in mere outline. A full dis- cussion would unduly expand this vok;me and delay its appearance. But I think enough has been said to show that these poems, which were mist and mystery to those who looked at them through glasses focussed on the ninth century, become clear when we f ocus for distance ; and the mist, with most of the mystery, vanishes.
I must also forego for the present aiiy attempt to dis- cuss the Taliesin legend and its relation to the mystic poems. To E-hys, who even made myths of Urien and Owein ap Urien, Taliesin was of course a myth. I will only say that the si^teenth-centur}^ tale of Taliesin does not prove it. Similar stories were current of Pythagoras at an early age in Greece ; he had been Euphorbus in the Trojan war, and had passed through many metamorphoses. The tale of Hopkin ap Philip no more disposes of Taliesin than that of Heraclides of Pontus disposes of Pythagoras.
Before leaving the mystico-mythical poems I would point out that the very difference between them and the
' I have omitted only aniplifications and rirtiial repetitions. The only doiibtf nl expression is o hrythoìi ' of Britous/ which niay have boen sub.stituted for dyneSon 'of men' or some other phrase indicating more clearly the divine character of the enchanter.
2 54 Taliesin.
eulogies ancl eleg-ies points to the genuineness at least of
the latter. It is improbable that a medieval forger would
refrain from attempting- to colour his counterfeit eulogies
with what he conceived to be the " opinions " of Taliesin.
In reality, however, eulogy to be acceptable had to be
realistic and unambiguous, not alkisive and mystical. It
was a branch of bardism that had been practised from
time immemorial ; and its rules were well understood.
Praise of princes did not originate with the pì'aecones
whom Grildas describes, for Posidonius of Apamea bears
witness to it as ílourishing at the beginning of the first
century b.c. :
The Celts, even wheii making war, are accompanied by a class known as pai-asites, who dine with them. These men sing their praises before large assemblies, and also to any individual who cares to listen to thera. They have also a class known as Bards iBápSoi), who play the music. These, too, are poets and set out their virtues in odes. — Mon. Hist. C'elt., i., p. 331.
The poems dealt with above are those which seem to me to have a claim to be considered genuine. To prevent any possible misapprehension, I desire to emphasise the statement already made that I by no means regard all the poems in the Book of Taliesin as being likely to be in any sense as okl as the sixth ce^jiitury. Mr. Ifor Williams has shown that the long poem "Arines Prydein Vawr ", 13*2, belongs to tlie ninth or early tenth century, see above p. 53. AU references to Cadwaladr, and so probably the poems containing them, are late; I see from Dr. Evans's index that the name does not occur between pages 31 and 74, where most of the poems dealt with above are found ; it comes then in 76, 77, 78, and 80. These last poems, with their refereuces to Gwybyl Pfichti and Norbmyn Mandi, are obviously late, Poems dealing with Alexander and Irish myths, and the plagues of Egypt, as well as the religious poems, I should guess to be late. The Song of
Taliesin. 255
the Wintl, o6-21, wliich Dr. Evans believes to be the earliest composition of ìús Taliesin, is late ; it rhymes traet with gimet, and troet witli coet — in Early Welsh troei and traet were troyet and trayet, rhyming with -e/, Gr. 32 ; and it rhymes yma (ynmnn) with da (day). It has nothing in common with the mystical poems ; it is, in fact, an ordinary riddle. T quote the three opening lines and three others :
Dechymic p\\ y yw : creat cyn dilyw,
Creadur cadarn heb gic, heb ascwrn,
Heb wytheu, heb waet, heb pen a heb traet . . .
Ef ymaes. (ef) jng koet, heb law a heb troet ...
Ac ef yn gyflet ac wyneb tydwet . . .
Ef ar vòr, (ef) ar tir, ny w}'!, ny welir.
' Guess wliat it is : created before the flood, A mighty creatui-e, without flesh, without bone, Withoiit veins, without blood, without head, without feet . . . In fìeld, in forest, without hand, without foot . . . And it is as wide as the face of the earth . . . On sea, on land, it sees not, is not seen.'
With which we may compare the following riddle from the Flores^ of Bede :
Dic mihi quae est illa res quae caelum totanique terram replevit, sih'as et surculos confringit, omniaque fundamenta concutit, sed nec oculis videri aut manibus tangi potest. (Solu- tion : Ventus).
There are other " wind " riddles, such as Aldhelm's, be- ginning —
Cernere me nulli possunt, nec prendere palmis.- The " Song of the Wind " clearly belongs to this class of composition. But Dr. Evans, despite his predecessors'
1 Quoted by G. A. Wood, in a paper on "The Old English Riddles" in Aòert/sfni/t/ì Studies, i, Jüll', p. 42, who gives the refer- ence Migne, Fatroloi/ia Latina, xc, 539 fi".
'^ G. A. Wood, op. cit., p. 41. The reference given in the bibli- ography, p. 8, to Aldhelm's riddles is Migne, vol. lxxxix.
256 Talicsin.
correct rendering-s, chose to strilce the key-note of his vokime of " translation " by beg-inning- with a flagrant mistranslation of the fìrst half-line of this song-, which he renders " Whose idea was the wind ? " He has obviously
•
never heard an old Welsh folk-riddle. In Anglesey, old riddles are still repeated, beginning- with the words Dychymig dycJiymig,^ ' Guess the riddle ' ; thus :
Dychymig dychymig: mi gollais fy mhlant, Fesul chwech ugain a fesul chwe chant.
Guess the riddle : I have lost my children, By the six score and by the six hundred,'
the solution being " a tree tliat has shed its leaves ". In England the riddle became an important branch of literary composition in the seventh and eighth centuries, a large number of Latin riddles being written by Aldhelm, Eusebius (HwEetberht), Tatwine and Boniface. The Old English riddles formerly attributed to Cynewulf are now said to have been composed iu the early eighth century." The rhymes above quoted from the " Song of the Wind " make it impossible that this riddle can be anything like as old as that ; but the use of the old subjunctive gimiech and the proest instead of rhyme in the second line take it back to the Old Welsh period well before the twelfth century. It is, of course, not a Yolîísrätsel, or folk-riddle, but a Runsträtsel, which we may term a literary riddle, of the kind in which " attention is so centred upon grace and truth of description that the theme is . . . but thinly veiled, and identification comparatively easy " and " in which much of the mystery is lost in the joy of imagina-
1 The second dychymig is the noun ' riddle ', as in Barnwyr, xiv, 12 (Judges, xiv, 12). In the collections in Cymrur Plant, ì, 1892, one riddle from Llandecwyn, p. 17, and two from " Eryri ", p. 327, begin with Dychymi<j dychymiy, and one from Conway, p. 159, with Dychymiy fi ' Guess me '.
2 G. A. Wood, op. cit., p. 30.
Taliesin. 257
tive deliiieation.'" The Welsh medieval bards cultivated such delineatioii, whieh thej called dyfaln, and which culminates in the strings of similes in the cywyddau of Dafydd ap Gwilym.
Since the time of Sharon Turner it has been well known that some of the poems in the collection are later than others. I think I have shown above that the view that the earliest of them are not older than the eighth or ninth century was originally arrived at on grounds external to the poems themselves. It has not proceeded from any knowledge of Welsh metrics, or aiiy close critical study of the text, for which, perhaps, the time was not ripe. Iii receiit years much good work has been done on the vocabulary of the old poetry by Mr Ifor Williams in his study of Aneirin, see p. 35 fn., and by Professor Loth. It is niatter of common knowledge that the meanings and exî3lanations of old words given by Pughe in his dictionary are not to be relied upon ; but it is not so generally realised that he guessed wholesale. Sometimes he borrows his meanings from some of the old glossaries, which, however, are largely guesswork too. But he never mentions any authority, or gives any indi- cation whether he is recording a fact, a tradition, or his own guess ; there is no "perhaps" or " probably " in his colurans ; he is the perfect charlatan who is omniscient. By setting down his baseless conjectures with the same solemn assurance as the most ordinary facts, he has deceived even scholars in tlie past. The wliole of the old vocabulary must be thoroughly overhauled, and no mean- ings taken on trust. Silvan Evans has brouíîht toíethera good number of exainples of some words, but, as we have seen, he is too ready to accept the guesses of his prede-
' G. A. Wood, op. cit., p. lU.
258 Taliesin.
cessors instead of studying liis examples. Tlie twelfth century poets use a large nuuiber of words wliicli are obsolete in medieval jjrose ; in this they are clearly follow- ing a poetic tradition, so that their works are of great value for the study of the old vocabulary. For this reason the whole of the Myvyrian poetry should be carefully in- dexed ; this has been done partially by Mr. Williauis for the purjjose of his study of Aneirin ; I understand that Mr. Gwynn Jones proposes to do it systematically after collating the text with the original raanuscripts where possible. This is the kind of work that has to be carried out before we can malce the most effective use of the material available for the study of the ancient poems. As regards the study of Taliesin, I fully recognise tliat the work done in the above pages is only a beginning, even in tlie case of the poems dealt with in some detail. I have been largely occupied with the necessary prelimi- nary work of clearing the ground of rubbish. But I intend, if I am spared, to pursue the investigation, and possibly some years hence, with the kind permission of the Editor, to return to tlie subject in the pages of the Cymmrodor.
This paper has been written during such time as I could spare from other duties in the last sixteen months ; it was printed as it was written, the copy being sent to the Editor in driblets of ten or twelve pages at a time. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Sir Yincent Evans for the infinite trouble he has taken witli the volume ; for correc- tions in copy and proof ; and for much valuable and help- ful advice. The work owes its inception largely to his love of the great traditions of Wales : and its gradual developmeut, often in unforeseen directions, to liis kind encouragement. I am indebted to Mr. Ifor Williams, who read the first proofs of the whole volume, for many
Talicsín. 259
correctioiis and valuable sug-gestions ; the (liscussion of niany cletails with hitn has contributed to the soundness of the whole; and I have been saved raany hours of search by his kindness in supplying nie with references froni his index of the Mi/vyrian. My best thanks are also due to Dr. John Edward Lloyd, who read inost of the first proofs, for the correction of errors in historical details, and seyeral references and valuable hints. It is seen that care has been taken to ensure accuracy of statenient ; but I have soiuetimes made alterations in the second proofs, and have not always followed advice, so that no one is reponsible for the errors that remain but myself. Lastly I have to thank Mr, Shanlíland for the help he has always so readily rendered by placing at my disposal his wide and discerning lcnowledge of the resources of the library of the University CoUege of North Wales.
26th Septemher, 1918.
s2
!6o
Taliesin. APPENDIX I.
THE STONE OF CINGEN.
Tbis stone, which was in the churchyard at Towyn, Merioneth, early in the last century {Camhro-Briton, ii, 1821, p. 121), and is now in the church, has been called the " Stone of St. Cadfan ", doubt- less because the church is dedicated to Cadfan, and perhaps
because au older antiquary thought, like Ab Ithel, that (juad(jan on the stone was an old spelling of Cadfan ! It need hardly be said that the stone has nothing whatever to do with Cadfan. It was described by Westwood in Arch. Camb., 1850, pp. 90-5, and interpreted by the "phil- ological skiH" (ib., p. 95) of Ab Ithel, pp. 96-100. It had previously been fìgured by Edward Lhuyd in Gibson's Camden, p. 622, according to Westwood, Lap. Wall., p. 158; the edition is not named, but it raust be the second, 1722, whence it was copied into Gough's Camden ; I have not seen these engravings, as the Bangor Library contains only the fìrst edition of Gibson's Camden, and no copy of Gough's. Pennant gives an engraving of the stone in his Tour in Wales, ii, 1784, plate V, from a drawing in Lhuyd's but the drawing diífers somewhat from the Gibson engraving according to Westwood's description. West- wood's engraving in the Arch. Camb., 1850, opp. p. 90, was made by means of the eamera lucida from rubbings of the stone; and his lithograph in Lap. Wall. is a mere copy of it. Hübner's engraving, Inscr. Chrisí. Brit., 126, is, like the accompanying block, a reduced reproduction of a tracing of it.
papers, as he says, p 93
Taliesin. 261
Rhys wrote a short note 011 tbe stone in Arch. Camh., 1874, p. 243, as stated above, p. 282. In the voI. for 1897, pp. 142-6, he discusses it niore fully, and suggests that it is not gennine. I was under the impression that lie had written the second article, but was niisled by a footnote in Lices of Brit. Saints, ii, p. 7. which refers to the latter article as if it were the former. Hence I did not see the longer article until these notes were written and set up ; in sonie respects it contirms conchisions to which I had come ; in the followiiig para- graphs references to it, added in proof, are included in square braclcets. — In this second article Rhys gives drawings of the four sides of the stone, correcting Westwood's engraving as reproduced here. The fracture ou face 4 comes between the / and t of molt, through the steui of /), and between the « and r of tuar. Other points are noticed below. But in some respects Westwood's draw- ings are obvìous]y better ; the gu at the top of side 2 is given in Rhys's drawing as a slightly irregular n, but in his transliteration he reads it^;<, and makes no mention of the discrepancj' ! — Rhys could make nothing of the inscription ; side 3 he thinks " is a jumble cut by somebüdy who had a superficial acquaintance with Old Welsh", p. 14ö, rather a desperate conclusion. Sides 1 and 2 he thinks may be genuine, but "thoughthere is uniformity of lettering throughout", he thinks these " may have served as models for the lettering of therest"; and this suggestion is made only because he could not " divine its meaning ", p. 146. Why was the N not imitated ? But the idea that old lettering could thus be perfectly imitated, and used to inscrihe non.sense is too absurd to consider seriously.
There are clearly two inscriptions on the stone, beginning with the crosses. Westwood suggested several possibilities as to sides 3 and 4; Ab Ithel took 3 to be the continuation of 1, and 4 the con- tinuation of 2, reading in each case over the top of the stone. Why over the top ? It seems more natural to suppose that the adjacent sides belong together.
I.
Side 1, with its two uncial n"s appears to be the earliest inscrip- tion ; and it seems as if the two lines in large lettering on side 4, tlie next side to the left, were the continuation of it. Tho two marks after celen are more likely to denote that the inscription is to be continued, than to mark its end. The three lines in sniall letters at the top of 4 were probably addfd later. If this is so, the fìrst inscription is —
t ClNgeN celen That is : Cynien's body
tRlCet lies
llltaimui beneath
2Ó2 Taliesin.
Witli regard to the reading there is only one doubtful point. Westwood toülc the iN in Cinr/eìi to be a ligatured UN ; and in Pen- nant's figure the bottom of the i is actually joined to the N, which, if correct, would iinply the ligature. Cunf/en is a possible okl speUing of the uame. On the other hand Westwood's drawing shows no con- nexion, so that it seems safer to read Cin, as Hübner does. [Rhys also reads Cẁ.j
There seems to be no doubt about the (/. It was probably cf the same shape as the other //'s — an Insular (/ with the hook iiiverted. Westwood shows the continuation of the top stroke iu dotted lines as if it were faint or worn; [Rhys in his drawing gives the whole top stroke bohlly, as if tliere were no doubt about it, but curiously says that "it uiay possibly be a c".]
Ab Itliel, op. cit. p. 100, beHeved that this Cingen was Cyngen the father of Brochvael, and grandfather of our old friend Cynan Garwyn, see above p. 201 ; he calls him " the son of Cadell ", con- fusing him with the riinth-century Cyngen ; he means Cyngen ap Mawgan, who lived in the eariy part of the sixth century and was a contemporary of Cadfan. Hence the stüue was supposed to belong to the first half of tlie sixtli century, thougli the lettering clearly indicates a later date. The fact is, this Cincjen is not the same name as that of Cyngen ap Mawgan ; this has old medial y which would now be consonantal i, see p. 201, fn. 2; the -yen of this name is the same as that of Urbyen which is now TJricn ; while the name of Cyngen ap Mawgan has old medial c — it was spelt Cincen, see p. 201, or in full Cincenn as iu the Book of St. Chad, p. 141, 1. 4, see p. 269 below. The phonetic history of the two names may be summarised thus :
British (1) Cnno-yenos (2) Cuno-cennos.
OldWelsh {\) Ciìiyen (2) Cincenn.
Modern Welsh (1) Cynien (2) Cyn-yen.
Note that tlie ny of tlie second name in its modern form are sounded as in Ban-yor, or Iike the ny of the English_;î«//p/-. But the name on our stone is the first, and would now be Cynien. In Old Welsh records the names are sometimes spelt with o iii the first syllable uuder Irish influence ; and both names occur together repeatedly in Llyfr Llan Daf : Concen abbatem Catoci, . . Conyen abbatem Ilduti, p. 152,- Concen abbas Carbani vallis . . . Conyen abbas Ilduti, 154 and 155. It might be worth while examining the Trallong stone again to see whether in the inscription Cunocenni Jìlius Cunoceni the last c has iiot a tag whicli makes ìi y, as it is rare in these inscrip- tions to fiiid father and son of the same name. [Rhys does not know
Taliesin. 263
thü nanie with//, and writes as if the y on the stone could represent original c at this early period.]
celen is the medieval ceìein (iiiodern celaìn) ' dead body '. As noted above, p. 241 fn., and below p. 272, note 15, e is probably the oldest spelling of the diphthong ei, so that celen is qnite regular for celei'n. The construction in Cìnf/en celen is the same as that in Taliesin (/ân ' Taliesin's song', etc, see p. 121.
tricet is probably 3rd sg. pres. ind., being an old middle form with -et from *-eto. As -et is an iii)perative endiiig it became obsolete in the indic, only -it and -awt reinaining as long forms in that mood.
nitanani. The modern o dan ' under ' is for Old Welsh yuotan, in which the element denoting ' under" is guo- (cognate with Latin sutí); the tan is also found in am lìan, where am determines the meaning 'about'. The determining element here is *ni 'under', which sur- vives in English nether, be-neath. The form ni-tan was ousted by guo-tan in Welsh, but it seems to survive in the Breton in-dan, Medieval Bret. eniîan ' under ', probablv for n-dun from yíi-dan.
As for the suffix -am, this occurs in Old Welsh for the medieval -aw in racdam gloss on ' sibi ', and -aw is used abverbially in heibiaw froiu heb. But the -am is more probably the Ist sg. form, modern -af\ the first singular is used adverbially in isof 'below', uchof ' above ' (as well as the more usual 2nd sg. isod, uchod). In any case nitanam is clearly the adverb ' beneath '.
II.
The second iiiscription, on sides 2 and .'5, seeins to consist of proper names. Tliere can be no doubt about tlie íìrst six letters tmi/ru. Westwood reads the next letter as y; but it is so uulilíe the other y's on the stone that this is at least doubtful. In Pennanfs eiigraving it appears as i, and I am iiiclined to read it as i. [Rhys's druwing gives it as i. that is, ordiiiary z.] The next letter is read ci by Westwood, aiid it appears as ci in Pennant's drawing: but in Gibson's Camden it is given as n, and Westwood says " it Iooks like n'. Clearly it is n, and the small (jircle read as c must be acci- dontal. [The circle tlius guessed to be "accideutal ", i e., not part óf thu inscription, is according to Rliys "a hole made for a gate-hiiige", p. 144. Still Rhys thought the // was oi: hu thought the c ran through the hole, and did iiot see tlie tìrst stroke of the «.] The first eight letters tlien read teiioRU"|n.
The initial /- may be the honorific prefix, as iii T-eiln. etc. IeavÌ!ig enr/ruin for tho nanie. Where n;/ liad iiot disappeared in prehistoric times before r it tends to become ////, which gives Old Welsh c, modern // (see Grani., p. lôl): jind ni in the last syllalile maybecome y as in meheryn from Old ^Velsh maharuin, nanii/n from namuin, etc. Hence
264 Taliesin.
eyìgruin may be an old form of E()ryn (late Old Welsh Ecrin). Llan Egryn is close by ; and " there is iii the parish, to the north-east of the chnroh, a place kno\vii, as early as the time of Elizabeth and James I, as Croes Egryn, but there is no cross there now ", Lices of Brit. Saints, ii, p. 41/5. May not this be tlie missing cross ?
The next name seems to be iJialted, the d lost in the fracture being supplied from the drawings of Lhnyd, who saw the stone before it was broken. This wouhl be Malitedâ in Modern AVelsh ; the name that comes nearest is Malltey in Llan-falltey. If the missing letter was c the names would be identical ; and we have only Lhuyd's evidence for the d.
The yu at the end of the line seems to be connected with the adyan in the next line, giving yuadyan. This would be Gicaddian in Modern Welsh. As ywa- and yo- interchange, the name may be the same as that of St. Gothian (found also as GuoidioMe and Guidiane), now called Gwithian in Cornwall, Live& of Brit. Saiìits, iii, pp. 249-51. [Rhys is again astraj^ in his phonetics when he supposes that adyan may be the equivalent of a later Adyan or AtyMn.^
The small letters at the end are given by Lhuyd as ■! , The last letter however in our drawing from the rubbing ig more like R then a ; and the first in that line is proLably a (not c). Westwood, after giving the above reading of Lhuyd, ignores the e af ter the m, giving no reason at all for omittiug it in his reading; it occurred, of course, like the r underneath it, and part of the t, in the part of the stone chipped oíì'. [Rhys's drawing shows the beginning of the c after the m, and he says that in the last line " before the a there would seem to have been a í ". I should guess the c after the m to have been an a ; oan the supposed t have been ^j, making map ? But the.se two short lines are too imperfect to be interpreted; and in any case probably represent a later addition, like the short in- scription at the top of side 4.]
On side 3 the imperfect second letter looks like the beginning of an /• ; but Lhuyd, who saw it whole, read it n. [Rhys also believes it to be n.'] Rhys thought he found traces of an n at the end, com- pleting the name Marciaun. [Westwood could not find the n, and Rhys in 1897 •'loo^ed for it in vain ". Can it be an unfinished name, or was there a contraction mark for n originallj' above tlie w?] The reading then is —
anteRunc clubnt maKCiau(n)
It is not easy to explain anterunc ; but for a reason that wiU appear later I guess it to be not a name hut a preposition or adverb. Original inter is ithr in Old Welsh, ì)ut when compounded it is athr, as in cyf-athr-ach, and in uthrynyn from Latin intcrren- ; the form
Taliesin. 265
athr implies British anter, which may have survived in Early Welsh. The second element unc may be the second element of rh-wng (from *per-ong- or *j)er-onk- ; the k is implied in the th instead of â in rhgugthair, etc). The hteral meanincf wonld be that of rhicng 'between"; and it might denote 'inchiding' or ' together with ', cf. p. 66 above.
Dubut is either an abbreviation of Dubutuc, or a short form without the sufBx -uc. The name Duhutuc occnrs in the Latin genitive as Dohituci and in Ogam as Doi-atuceas ; in Modern Welsh it is Dyfodwg, and in Irish Dubthoch or Dubthach (now Duffy), Lives of Brit. Saints, iv, p. 291.
Rhys identifìed Marciau{n) with the name which is in Old Welsh Merciaun, in Medieval Welsh Meirchawn, and now Meirchiüu. The language of the inscription is pre-Old, or Early Welsh.
III.
Lastly there comes the little inscription at the topof side 4. The fìrst line is clear, molt. The second character in the second line was read / by Westwood, which seems to me most improbable. It Iooks more Hke the contraction for et ' and '. [In Rhys's drawing as in Pennant's there is no curve at the bottom, bnt the down stroke is struight; it is thus still more like 7, the symbol for 'et', which might be right-angled, as in Hiibner, op. cit., 110. 175. Rhys places it nearer the second c, so that the two i-esemble 70, that is ' etc', all the more. He however reads the symbol as i.] Though Westwood ackní)wledged the third letter was e (i.e. not a complete circle), he insisted on reading it as 0 ; and the clear p after it (given so by Lhuyd) he would have to be d, because, of course, he did not know tho Welsh word petuar 'four', which is as plain there as if it had been written yesterday. I read this inscription then —
molt
c-icpe
tuaR
The word ìuoI is probably the Medieval Welsh ìno/l ' tomb ', as seen in B.B. l'08; in Old Welsh // was written /, cf. p. 134, fn. 2. The six letters at the end are pettiar ' f our ' as already noted. In Old Welsh this word is i^\íe\t pefguar ; buty was nevt'r pronounced in the word ; in Old Welsh orthography gu was the conventional symbol for consonantal ir, treated as the mutation of gw. Tliough gu is old, the unconvontional petuar here is another indication that the iu- scription is earlier than the Old Welsh period.
If the fiist word is mol 'toiidj" and the last petuar ' f our '. wliat are thu letters that conie betwecn them ;■' My guess is as follows :
206 Taliesin.
mol t c S' c petuar, that is, 'the tomb of T(egryn), C(ynien) et c(eteri) four (aud four others) ". The four others woiild be Malted, Guadgan, Dubut and Marciaun, leaving anterunc as a connective.
[Rhys reads " ìuolt cic petuar, which nieans tither 'the mutton flesh of f our ' or 'a wether (is) flesh of or for f our ' ", p. 145. His usual sense of humour deserted him liere. I niay say that at fìrst moltcic petuar ' miitton for four' haunted me, not as a possibihty, but as a sort of mockingparody of the unknovvn sohition. Itseemed too incongruous to be considered seriously as a possible readingof an inscription on a tombstone. Whatever the sohition is, it surely can- not be this.]
IV.
There is of course much that is doubtful in the above attempt at explaining the stone — it is not to be expected tliat what has baffled all previous attempts should yield its secret all at once. But the first inscription is, I think, clear ; and it is enough for my present purpose, because it is an example of Welsh, not British, carved in the seventh century.
If my conjectnre as to Eyryn is correct, the stone can perhaps be approximately dated. Egryn is said to be the son of Eneilian daughter of Cadfan ab lago (the prince, not the saint). This Cadfan died early in the seventh century ; his son the great Cadwallon {Cadiualla) died, according to the Annales Cambriae, in G31 ; we should therefore probably not be far wrong in supposing that Egryn, Cadfan's grandson and Cadwallon's nephew, died about 660.
There was no tradition of Welsh being carved in Roman capitals: it had only been written in half-uncial script. Script forms were already in use in Latin inscriptions. The Llanillteyrn stone (Hübner, no. 64) attributed by Rhys probably to the sixth century, has in Vendumaf/li the uncial e of this stonë, and d like that of duljut side 3 ; but its g is a good Insular form. The Catamanus inscriptiou at Llan- gadwaladr, in memory of Cadfan ab lago, probably carved soon after his death — there seems to be no ground whatever for the supposition that it was set up by his grandson Cadwaladr— has luicial e with the cross stroke not touching the back [as Rhys diaws two of the e's on this stone] ; it has the r with the curved second part horizontal ; it has the square-bottomed u ; and tlie last m of omuium is minuscule m as here ; Hübner's plate is a poor drawing of this inscription (no. 149). The us on the Llangaffo stone (Hübner. no. 148) are still more like our u"s ; one e is minuscule, the others micial like our í-'s ; but the Llangafto stone has not been dated.
[I do not think Rliys realised the importance of this inscription. He recognised in 1897 that it was Welsh ; but refrained from sug-
Taliesin. 267
gesting an approxiniate date. His treatment of it is rather perfnnc- tory ; he does not explain how his drawing was made, or refer to the clifferences between it and Westwood's, or even between it ahd his own readings. Tlie stone shonld be carefully examined again, and new drawings made. It could not be done for tliis paper with- out causing nuich delay.]
I append a note on the lettering by Professor Lindsay.
NOTE.
The writing on this stone is half-uncial, of much the same type as the writing of the Book of St. Chad (wliich in my Early Welsh Scn'pf, p. :^, ^p- 4, I have absnrdly called " uncial "). The persistent use of uncial e (e) niay be due to the difficulty of cutting the " bow " of half-uncial e (e) on stone. The two uncial w's in Cinf/en in con- trast to the half-nncial ìì of celen, etc, may be a dehberate discrimi- nation of the name from the rest of the sentence, the eqnivalent in fact of our
CINGEN lies here.
That an inscription with two nncial n's and the remaining n half- uncial must be older than an inscription with all the w"s half-uncial is not impossil)le, but by no means certain. Fur scribes found half- uncial n anawk\vard letter sometimes. In particular the combination in was so liki' ?/í that some Insular scribes preferred ÌN (with uncial n) while others wrote In (with tall i). And half-nncial n so resembled half-uncial r that Continental scribes used nncial n in their half- uncial script, while Insular scribes often substituted "cursive" r (with the shaft projected below the line). In short, if an nncial letter is to show its face in half-uncial script, one may expect the letter to be n.
W. M. LlNDSAY.
208 Taliesin.
APPENDIX II.
THE SUREXIT MEMORANDÜM.
The oldest known piece of written Welsh is the second entry on p. 141 of the Book of St. Chad. A reduced facsimile of the paçfe appears herewith : the original measnres about 12 inches by 9, but the small plate will enable the reader to follow the argument. The block was made from an untouched photograph of the page kindly sent me for the purpose by the Dean of Lichíìeld. Large collotj'pe facsimiles of the page are given in Evans and Ehys's Book of Lían Dáv, p. xliii, and in Lind.say"s Early Welsh Script, p. 46.
I.
The manuscript contains the Gospels in Latin, written in a large half-uncial hand. Palaeographers are not agreed as to its date. The Palaeographical Society editors date it " about 700." E. Hein- rich Zimmermann, in his Yorharolinyi&che Miniaturen, Berlin, 1916 (4 vols. plates folio. 1 vol. text 8vo, of which there is a copy at the Bodleian) dates it " second quarter of the 8th century." But Dr. H. M. Bannister, of the Bodleian, to whom I am indebted for this information, finds himself " very f requently at variance " with the datings of Zimrnermann, who goes by miniatures, " which often slavishly imitate the exemplar before the copyist." Professor Lindsay agrees that Zimmermann's datings are unreliable. In his Early Welsh í^cript, p. 3, he inclines to an early date : and, though he clearly regards it as improbable, he does not absolutely exclude the possibility of the MS. being referred " to Teilo's time " — Teilo died about 580. The fact is, the Insular scribes, when they had definitely arrived at their beautiful half-uncial hand, preserved it with great conservatism for a long period; and it is acknowledged that the study of these early Insular MSS. is only in its initial stage, so that no one can dügmatize aboiit them. There is satisfactory historical evidence that the Book of Lindisfarne was written about 700 : but the Book of St. Chad, though the hand is similar, seems to belong to an earlier generation. I have examined facsimiles of its pages in the Book of Llan Dái', in Dr. Scrivener's Codex S. Ceaddae Latinufi, and the Dean of Lìchfield's Story of St. Chad's Gospfls, and I have found no example of the ??-]ike ;• whicli is common in the Book of Lindisfarne, and is shown in the facsimile on p. 134 above. The r of the Book of St. Chad is the uncial R, or, rarely, the sprawling form T^ , as in petuar and tricet in the above inscription, side 4, p. 260; this form is found on the early 7th century stone of Catamanus
Taliesin. 269
(Cadfan ap lago, see p. 266), and is common in sixth century MSS. The clubbed tops of strokes ai-e perfectly flat in the Book of St. Chad, but in the Book of Lindisfarne they tend to incline iipwards, sonie- timos presenting a sa\v-like appearance like the top serifs of old- face type, see Facsimiles of Bihlical MSS. in the Brit. Mus., plate xi. Clearly the Book of St. Chad is earlier than the Book of Lindisfarne, but how much it does not seem possible yet to determine.
II.
The Welsh entries were written in the MS. when it was at Llan- dafl". It has been in the possession of the Church of Lichfield since the episcopate of Wynsige, 974-992 ; and his signature, " t Wynsige presul," on page 1, " most probably," as the Dean suggests, " mar^s the reception of the book," op. cit., p. 11.
Page 141 contains the last words of Sfc. Matthew's Gospel, set by the original scribe in tlie middle of the page, with a border, as seeu in our plate. The first entry on the page records the gift of the book to Llandafi". It reads thus :
Ostenditur híc quod emit + gelhi + filius • arihtiud • hoc
euange lium • de cingal • et dedit • iMi pro illo equm optimum • et dedit
p?-o anima sua istum euangelium " dío et sancti teliaui • super
altare + gelhi + filius • Arihtiud ..,.., et + cíncénn + filius •
gripiud . . ,
' It is shown here that Gelhi son of Arihtiud bought this Gospel from Cingal, and gave him for it a " best horse ", and gave for his soul's sake this Gospel to God and St. Teliau^ upon the altar.
(Witnesses :) Gelhi son of Arihtiud . . . and Cincenn son of Gripiud. . . '
The hand in which this deed of gift is written is similar to that of the Bodleian Liber Commonei, dated 817, and was therefore assigned by Bradshaw, doubtless correctly, to about the same date. The Surcwit entry, which follows, was assumed by him to be later, though the hand has all the appearance of being much older. The ÍJ at the end of the agreement nieans, according to Professor Lindsay, op. cit. p. 46, ' deest ', and refers to the obelus mark before the continuation
^ Taking the genitive to be an error for tlie dativc, as otherwise the et connects dissimilar terms, and the order of words is improb- able in Latin of this late date.
270 ' Taliesin.
consisting of the names of the witnesses near the bottom of the page, for wliich there was no rooni above the text. The Anglo-Saxon nanies whicli crowd the bottoni of the page around tliis part of our memorandiim belong of course to the Lichfiehl period. The niemor- andum reads as foUows :
Surexit tutbulc 'à\ms Huit hagener tutri dierchim ■ tir telih • liaioid ilau
elcu filiw*- gelhig haUiidt iuguret amguca"t pel amtanndi ho diued
diprotant gener tutrí o gnir imguodant ir degion guragun tagc
rodesit elcu guetig eqMS tres uache, tres uache nouidhgi na?« ir
ni be câs igridu dimedichat guetig hit did braut grefiat gue
tig nis minn tutbulc hai cenetl '\n ois oisou ö
t teliau t' gurgint t" cinhilinn t' sps t", tota familia teliaui, delaicis
numin m' aidan, t' signou m' iacou t' berthutis t' cinda t' qMÌcwm- (\ue custo
dierit benedictM.s er?Y, qMÌcií???qî<ft frangerit maladictíís er/í 3 » ' —
Which may be rendered thus (the numbers in brackets refer to the notes) :
Tutbulc/í son of Liuit and son-in-Iaw of Tutri arose to claim the land of Telich, which was (1) in the hand (2) of EIcu son of Gelhig and the tribe of luiiguoret. They contended (3) long (-J) about it (ô). At last they dispossess (6) the son-in-Iaw of Tutri of [his] right (7). The goodmen (8) besought (9) one another, '• Let us make (10) peace ". Elcu afterwards gave (11) a horse, three cows (12), three newly-calved (13) cows, only (14) that there niight be (15) no hatred (16) between them (17) from [his] possession (18) afterwards till (19) the day of doom. TutbulcÄ and his people will require afterwards 110 title for ever (20).
t Teliau witness, Giirgint witness, Cinhilinn witness, Spiritus witness, etc.
NOTES.
(1) haioid, see my Graìn., p. 287; also above pp. 180, 189 ; medi- eval a oe8 ' which was'.
(2) ilau ; the i is not the modern i ' to ", which is di in Old Welsh ; if { is not for i (i.e. in) as in line 6, it may be that ilau is for il-lau, with assimilation of n to /, as to m in pni/irn {m^mm), see Gram, p. 416; / for II, see note 4. The form lan shows that final v had disappeared in the earliest period after ic, though it is still preserved medially where 0 takes the place of aw, as in Uof-rudd ' red-handed '.
(3) amgucant is doubtless the medieval amugant ' they con- tended '; the g represents inorganic y, as in petffuar, see above p. 265,
-^^»UTì'vv-ciVbTU*-S^^^
^
-?<?);,
' jrfwi ccun ìCiit^ T»T.^ -ouíí nnTiioóruiT tf.<Se?loti "Wl^w-tu sc
■ ÎJcierir r.'cw-çt-eT»- eqjTu^i4«ck T(<erucic>te«í>«'ö"^J "«'íH ■ f.ée cẃ' i"«,^cìvi<5irr\eaic»icrc yiieri'^ "oiTòiá òHPtiT 'ÇTtei-itiTWf
d^iT sn doaoiTnes ros obscR,
! (â'^i' Tica^c oiimia: mioce cuin qu^ m
Tnaudani^obisClíJrce-esptio. |^|X
bié euin sutn oÌTìiiibiischcò ^^d
TisqTiaajCÌCOTìSiJininauoTìem |p|i
'
1
fw»/ 't uwT
• ■' . . .- ■■ - ■ ■.- - _ _ ■ ■ ■- ■).,
j -w . r ■ ■V
r_r.*.T.,»
•TTjf 'fiöo/^^ o/ .V/. ^//í/í/, />. 141
To face p. 2yo.]
[ K Cy/Hfn/0(/or, xx-viü.
Taliesin. 271
which inight conie even beforo yocmHc u (of either soiind) as in Catíjuc Book of Llan Daf. 161. Rhys's explan;ition of the verb as amyuocan-t, Srd sg. aorist of am-o-ynn {(joijan), Book of Llan Daf, p. xliv, is not only improbable in nieaning {yogan is ' satire, slander ', etc), but involves the improbabilty that -ant here is not the same as in the next line.
(4) pel, medieval and modern peU'i&r', used of time, as still in hellach 'henceforth ', as pointed out by Rhys ; cf. Breton joe// a zo 'il y a longtenips"; / is regularly used for // iu Old Welsh, cf. above p. 134, fn. -2.
(5) amtanndi; Rhys notes that tir, now mas. raight have been fem. also, since it was originally neut. The d is not used in the medieval and modern inflexion of tan, Imt there is no reason why it should not have been used once with all prepositions. The nn is written because the syllable is closed by the two consonants wá. (As noted above, p. 2tí."5, nitanam is probably the form of the Jlrüt persou, in which d—8 is uot used at all).
(6) diprotant. Rhys has no note on tlüs word. It might be for dipriotant írom priairt, from Latiu y>r/í'M/M,s ; but the omission of the i makes this doubtful. It is more probably a compouud of firatrd 'judgement', wliich has given difrodi 'to despoil' ; we have seen that the initial might have been doubled after di-, see p. 214, note on 1. 17, aud doubie h would become p, now h, as in aber, etc, Gram., p. VÒ2.
(7) (prir as a noun was used in the sense of * right, justice ', e.g. kedwis (/wir ij dir ae deyrnyed, Mi/i\ 248 b 3."j, ' he kept his right to his land and his ti'ibute ', cf. 238 a 27, B.B. 681; dyvot brennhin Mor- cannhuc .... dy gunethur yuir ha cyfreith B. L. D. 120 ' the king of Morgannwg shall come to do justice and right'. lu Breton yioir noun means " droit, prétention fondée ", Troiule, s.v.
(8) deyion 'goodmen', pl. of da, originally day ' good '. This pl. is written deon in B.T. 33 21, see above p. 198. The ir is the defìnite article.
(9) imyuodnnt. Rhys "with nuich hesitation " counected this with dy-wed-af ' I say '. It is certain that the d cauuot staud for modern d, but must mean moderu ^. The stem of ywe&-i 'prayer' is *ywoS- (cognate with Gk. Troöéoj, (ìram. p. 130), and seems to fit here, cf. Eng. pray, prithee. The prefix im- is reflexive.
(10) yurayun ' let us make.' The old form of the stem yirna- of yirnâf^l make, do ' \b> ywray. (coguatewith Eng. wor/c, Gk. epyoi'): the /• remained in Cornish and Breton, but it became fi early in Welsh, and we appear to liave here the oíily trace of r except perhaps in the old perfect yuoreu aud possibly iu Early Welsh forms ywrith, ywrcith
272 Taliesin.
copied by scribes who did not understaud them : see Gram., pp. 152, 367.
(11) rodesit, old extended form of the 3rd sg. aorist active ; else- where it occurs oidy as a poetical archaism, Gram., p. 326, ii (ô).
(12) uache; ch here=ec, and e=ae. The word is the Latin vaccae.
(13) nouidliyi. The AYelsh llo ' calf ' is for *Uoe {Gram. § 78 i (1) ), which represents original *logir-, although the Irish löey implies '^loig-. The forrn *newyUo would be an adjective Iike the modern cyjto ' with calf ', and its pl. *«eíi^5/y (to agree with caccae) is rejjresented regu- larly by nouidliyi. The final -i cannot be the verbal noun ending, which was *-iv, written -im, as in erchim, line 1.
(14) nam, witìi the vertical contraction for m, is doubtless itself a conventional suspension of nammuin, as in nam seith, B.T. 5424, for namyn seith 55"7'12, etc. Though used literally in one of our poems, see p. 186, Irish shows that the word meant ' only' from the earliest times. The meaning here seems to be that he 'only' did it for peace' sake.
(15) irnibe; ir ìs the preposition yr, now er, used with ni as a conjuuction ' so that not " ; lic is for /jei, 3rd sg. imperf. subjunctive, since e seems to be the oldest speJling uf the diphthong ei, see p. 169, last line, p. 263, note on ce/eyi, and cf. F.A.B. ii, 2 7"8, per, couer for 'peir, coueir rh^'ming with meir. Cf. also Teìiau for Teiliau, now Teilo.
(16) crt.s ; the small circumflex is in the original ink ; perhaps it is meant for the ordinary accent ' ; in any case it seems to show that a vowel was lengthened before s in a mono.syllable at this early period.
(17) iyridu ' between them'; see Gram., p. 405.
(18) di medichat ; the di hev& \s ' from ' representing original *dë; in tiie old spelling it cannot be distinguished from di ' to ', from original *do. Rhys has gone seriously wrong in analysing medichat as ìueSic 'medicus' + hat whieh he confesses should be -hayat at this period ; ' reconciliation ' from medicus is rather far-fçtched as well. The root appears to be *med- ' to enjoj% possess ' ; whence a 'verb-stem me^ych- (cf. heSychu from he8) ; whence the abstract noun meSychad, spelt medichat 'possession' (Modern Welsh meddu ' to possess ', meddiant ' possession ').
(19) hit. The shaft is that of h, not b ; whether the completion of the circle was intentional (to make bet, which is synonymous) or not, the scribe seems to have decided for hit. The Dean (in a letter) writes, " In the same heavier ink " [which appears when he dips his pen] " he (I suppose it is the original scribe) has touched up thesides of the first letter of hit, but not the cross fiUing stroke at the bottom, as though he desired to emphasise that the letter was intended for an h. iiot a è."
Talìtsin. 2/3
(í'O) in ois oisoH. ít is inturestiiii; to iiute tliat tlie Bihlical t/n oes oesoedd is so ancient a transiation of in saecula saeculorum. Tlie old pl. of oes was oisou, which appears us oesseu in the Book of Tahesin : oes oesseu 15' 15, yn oes oesseu 19-9, quoted above, p. 184. The latter is the exact expression used here ; and if it occurred only in the poem, it niight have been taken to be comparatively late.
í'= testis ; ?«'= map ' son '. I have used the apostrophe to denote the contraction mark above the letter.
Proper names. — It is to be noted tìrst that the name Gelhig occurs both in the deed of gift and in the Sure.iit entry, and has the ohler form with final </, in the latter. Rhys is strangely puzzled by this name, but its composition seems quite clear. As / stands for //, the first element seems to be Gell-, which is seen as the second element in Anda-gelli (on the GelH Dywyll stone, Rhys, W, Ph., p. 388), mean- ing unknown ; and the second is hig, Modern Welsh hy ' bold ' from *seyos (cognate witli Gk. è'^nj, Skr. sáhah 'might", etc), which occurs as the first element in the Gauhsh 2eyo-/xttpo'î, 8e<jo-vellauni, etc.
While y, written y, appears finally after short i (modern y) in Early Welsh, there is no trace of it anywhere after long l (modern i) asin rhi 'kiiig' frora rhj- (cognate with Lat. rêy-), because the quality of the long / was ditferent, being more close, and the y did not become y, but consonantal i, which was merged in the i before it. Hènce we have Tut-ri here from Teuto-riy-.
El-cu is an Irish name, which appears also as El-con, and later in a Welsh form El-ci, see the index of B. L. D. The second element is cû ' hound ', stem con, Welsh ci.
. Guryint is in Modern Welsh Gicrin. The name occurs as Guuryint Barmhtruch in the Welsh genealogies, r Cymìnrodor, ix, p. 178. There is a Tref-wrin or Wrimton near Cardiö", and a St. Gwrin is the patron of Llanwrin, Montgomerysliire, Lires of Brit. Saints, iii, 208.
Cinhilinn is the Irish name Cüchuiinn, with the stem Con- instead of the nominative Cü- of the first element. The name usually occiirs in Welsh as Cuhelyn {Cuhelin B.B. 9"9). In B. L. D., p. 76, is a docu- ment witnessed by Diibricins " cum clericis suis Vbeluiuo, Merch- guino, Cuelino "; of these three the second, if not the first, became a cleric at Llandaflf under Teilo, with others, of whom Cuelinus maj' be our Cinhilinn.
Numin ? modern Nefyn. Aidan is the Irish name. Siynou lias the common element -ynoii, also appearing as -gnoe, and in Modern Welsh -no, as in Tud-no, Mach-no, etc. Cinda Iooks Iike an Irish name ; a document of the time of Teilo's successor Oudoceus is wit- nessed by a layman Condaf, in which the -/, which cannot iii any case be old, seenis to be the addition of the compiler, B. L. D.. j). 1 40.
T
2/4 Taliesin.
Names in the deed of gift : Arihtiud; it is diílicult to explain the first i oxcept as the silent i between spirants, see p. 165, note on 1. 22 (/ollychynt ; if so ht is the spirant th (written dt in luidt in the Sure.rít entry, 1. 2), and the first element is Arth-; the second.is iud, modern ii8, as in Gripiud now GruffuS ; thus the name would now be ArthuS. — Cinyal may be an error for Cinyual, modern Cyniral. — Cincenn, see above, p. 262. As both Cincenn and Gripiud are quite common names, it is absurd to assume that this Cincenn ap Gripiud is related to the Griphiud ap Cincm who died, according to the Annales, in 814. and especially to imagine that in that case they would be likely to be contemporaries.
III.
As the Welsh entries'were presumably written after the presenta- tion of the MS. to the Church of Llandaíf, it was natural to assume that the deed of gift is older than the Sure.rit memorandum which follows it on the page. Bradshaw, dated the former earlj' ninth, and the latter tenth century, Collected Papers, p. 460. Dr. Evans sug- gested that the memorandum is a eopy of a document of Teilo's time, B.L.D , 1893, p. xliv. Seebolim, in his Trihal System in Wales, 1895, p. 182, suggests that Gelhi of the deed of gift may be the same person as Gelhig of the Sure.rit entry, whose son held the land claimed by Tutbulch. In that case, of course, the document is cen- turies later than Teilo ; and the witness " Teliau " is " the saiut long at rest,'' just as " Deus omnipotens " is a witness to other deeds in the MS., Trib. Syst., p. 179. Bradshaw's " tenth century " is rather late even in this case, and Seebohm can only suggest that " the second record may have been written after the transaction," p. 182, where "after" must mean anything from 60 to 100 years after!
Professor Lindsay, in his Early Welsh Script, 1912, pp. 2, 3, ventured to differ from the authorities, and to suggest that the Sure.fit entry is older than the deed of gift, " and that on three grounds : (1) the appearance of the ink, (2) the script, (3) its position on the page." The first grouud is inconchisive, for later insertions in MSS. often appear older than the original writing, simply because the ink is of a poorer quality. On the second Professor Lindsay says : " The validity of the second wiU, I fancy, be admitted at once; for these rude majuscule letters have a far older appearance than the minuscules of the deed of gift." Ile adds, p. 3, " Certainly the script is, to my mind, exactly the kind of script that would be likely to be used at a quite early time." This seems to me incontestable. The r in the Sure.rit entry is the majuscule R throughout ; there is no trace of the ?í-like r, either short or with produced stroke as in the Ostenditur of the deed of gift ; the s is the tall f , as in the Book
Taliesín. 275
of Lindisfiuiio, see facsimile above, p. 134, aiul rarely iu the Book of St. Cluul, — not tlie ninth and tenth century ;> forin ; aiul the ,/" is distinctly antique. The difhculty is to understand why Bradshaw dated this haiul tenth century.
As to the argument from the position of the entry on the page, Professor Lindsaj' invites his readers " to imagine for themselves the appearance presented by the page before any entries were made on it, and consider what particular part the writer of the earliest entry would probably choose. He wouhl not be hampered by want of space ; the whoie page, with the exceptiou of the middle portion lay blanlí before him. . . . Would he not then plant it exactly where the Sure.tit tiitlmlc, etc, has been planted, with the record itself above, aud the witnesses' signatures below the already occupied middle portion ì " This is not in itself convincing ; but it becomes niore so when we ask the supplementary question, Would the scribe, with all the space availal)le within the border, be likely to crowd his entry at the very top, as the deed of gift is crowded ?
On the supposition of the priority of the Sure.rit entry there remains the difhcaltj' as to how it can have been written before the book was presented to the Church. Professor Lindsay sugge.sts that " dedit " is used for " restituit " — the deed records its restoration to theChurch; and he refers to other examples of "gift" being used instead of "restoration" in such entries in MSS. Still, this is at least a little improbable. A much raore likely explanation seems to me to be that the deed of gift is not the original deed but a coj)y of it. This supposition solves the diíficulties in the simplest possible way : it is consistent with the oriyinal deed of gift being older thaii the Sure.iit entry, however old that may be ; and it accounts for the deed as we have it being in a much later hand than that eutiy.
I had arrived at this point in my attempt to solve the riddle of these entries whenl wroteto the Dean of Lichfield, the Very Reverend H. E. Savage, D.D., who has been at work on the MS., briefly stating the problem as it presented itself to me ; he very kindly sent me with his reply a copy of his valuable paper, T/ie Story of St. Chad'a Gospels, 17 pp. large quarto, with six plates, contributed to the Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeoloyical Society in February 1915. In this paper he contests Professor Lindsay's theory; he holds, rightly. that the appearance of the ink is " quite inconclusive "; as to the position on the page, he says that "opinions may difìer rather widely on a probability of this kind " ; and with regard to the script, Bradshaw's " verdict carries too much weight to be lightly set aside ", especially as Professor Lindsay adduces no evidence in support of liis view. Evideuce as to the antiqueness of the sciipt is, however, not lacking; and the ontry contains not only the older spelling Gelhiíf of this
■t2
2/6 Taliesin.
name, but archaic forms which vve can hardly admit to have been even copied in the tenth century, líuowing as we do the modernising habits of Welsh scribes. I communicated to the Dean the conchi- sions to which I had come with regard to the script and language ; and pointed out that Professor Lindsay had not used the strongest argument in respect of position on the page. If the deed of gift had already been on the page, filling tlie whole ápace between the left and right borders, the writer of the Surexit entry underneath it would almost certainly have followed his lead, and commenced his lines in the very margin ; and the fact that he begins just about the same distance from the margin as the half-uncial text must mean that there was nothing but that text on thepage when he wrote his entry. It seemed to me that the scribe of this entry had used the vertical stihis rule made by the scribe of the text to mark the beginning of his hnes, but that the scribe of the entry began his lines just outside the rule, and the original scribe just inside it. The Dean examined the MS. and found that the rule extends down as far as the s of saeculi in the last line of the text, and no further. This explains why teliau below the text, is a little nearer the mai-gin than the upper part of the entry — the scribe had nothing to guide him there. The Dean examined the MS. again under favourable conditions ; and found that the stilus line " extended upwards to the first line of the Sure.fit entry, but not above that apparently. The top of it is trace- able between the S and the %i of Sure.iit running parallel with the down stroke of the S." He confirmed this later in words which I take the liberty of quoting : " I feel quite sure that this is so ; for I had the verification of other eyes besides my own ; and amongst them the keen sight of a Rossall boy who was present when I ex- amined the MS. He could see clearly without a magnifying glass what I (and others) could only make certain of with that aid. And he was positive that there was no trace of the rule to be seen above that point. Now that seems to me to accomit for the position on the page adopted by the scribe for the commencement of his entry. He began at the top of the stilus mark, although it did not leave room before the lines of the Gospel text for the whole of his record." I think it wiU be agreed that this is quite conclusive. It shows exactly why the Sure.rit scribe began where he did ; he did not begin there because another entry had already been crowded in at the top, but that entry was ci"owded in at the top because he had begun there.
It is now clear why the scribe of tlie deed of gift spread his entry across the whole space between the borders : there was no stilus rule to mark oft' the margin, and his space was limited. It had occurred to me, as above noted, that he was merely copyiny the
Taàcsin. 277
original deed The Doan agrees ; it occurred to liiin too, apart from ray suggestion, which iie liad forgotten at the time. He writes : "It has the appearaiice of being an abbreviated extract. The dots after Anhthcd and after Gripiud in the last line suggest this. And the full account of the gift, with the names of all the witnesses, may well have been written at the end of the book, as a líind of colophon, in what was afterwards, at any rate, bound as a second volume thatwas still extant when the Sacrist's roll at Lich- fìeld was drawn up in 1345. The end of St. Matthew's Gospel does not seem to be an appropriate position for such a record of the coming of the Codex into the possession of the Church of Llandaíf. Aud the statement has every appearance of referring to the original gift, rather than to the restoring of a lost MS." It seems strange that the significance of the dots and commas after the names of the only two witnesses mentioned suggested itself to no one before ; it is one of those illuminating discoveries which are obvious when made and decisive in their implications.
I think, therefore, that it may be said that the priority of the Sure.rit entr^- has been proved beyond a doubt. Tlie question of the date of the entrj' remains. Tlie script is clearly removed by a whole period from the early ninth-century minuscules above it; I am unable to guess what late symptoms Bradsliaw imagined in it; it seems old-fashioned even for the eighth century, for while majuscule forms continued in use in foiTnal writing, the entire absence of minuscule r, for example, in the careless ordinary hand of this entry is hardly conceivable at that time. In the present state of our knowledge of early Insular script it does not seem possible to say more than that the entry is probably, as suggested in Early Welsh Sc)-{pt, p. .3, a very early copy. On the question whether it is the original document or a copy, Professor Lindsay sends me the foUowing note : "A faint indication that the Teilo entry is a copy of the original is the abbreviation eî- ' erit '. This unusual symbol would naturally be used only if the scribe were pressed for space. Now there is space and to spare on the page of the St. Chad book. (This I mention in my Notae Latinae, p. 340.)" To this one may perhaps add that the vertical zigzag contraction of m was normally used only at the end of a line where there was no room for the wide ordinary m ; but in our entry it occurs in nam in lino 4 before the end of the line, where there was plenty of rooia for the m. Takon together, these peculiarities of abbreviation furnish strong presumptive evi- dence that the entry is a copy.
The assumption that the witness Teliau is •' tlie saint long at rest" is only rendered nocessary by tlie supposition tiiat tlie entry is the original document. Tho manuscript itself is probably
:/-8
Talii
esin.
later than Teilo's time, belonging perhaps to the middle of the following century; and if the entry is a conteraporary record of the agreement, Telian could not be a witness to it in the fiesh. If, on the other hand, the entry is a copy, it may just as well be a copy of a document of Teilo's time as a copy of a later docu- ment. The assumption that the wituess is "the saint long at rest" is not inherently probable ; tliere is no analogy to it, for " Deus omnipotens testis" cannot seriously be held to be an exact analogy. In fact " Spiritus testis" occurs in this very list, where " Spiritus " is doubtless the Holy Spirit. Not a single example has been adduced of the naine of a dead saint being iuvoked as wátness to a deed, as the name of the Deity is invoked. On the other hand deeds or copies of deeds existed at Llandaíf in the twelfth century in which the living Teliau's name heads the list of witnesses ; it appears as " Telians archieps " B. L. D., 121, 122, or " scs Teliaus", p. 126, or "archieps Teliaus", p. 127, the "archieps" and " scs " having ob- viously been added V)y the compiler. Now that of which examples can be cited must be admitted to be more probable than that for which it can only be said that " it might have been"; and in this case I think it may be affirmed that but for supposed difficulties of date no one would have thouglit of suggesting that Teliau in the list of witnesses is not what it seems to be. The copy is a more faithful one than those in the B. L. D.: the name is Teliau simply — not " s,anctuÿ. Teliaus " ; there is no suggestion that it is an invocation of the sainted patron — it is surely more like a copj' of the signature of the living man.
If the MS. was written in the seventh century the Gelhi who presented it to Llandaff cannot, of course, be the same person as the Gelhig who is the father of Elcu, one of the parties to the dis- pute in Teilo's time. But he may have been a descendant of Elcu, the name Gelhig running in tbe family; and the original deed may have been in his possession ; it would be his title to the land. In that case it is conceivable that he may have had the deed copied into the book even before he gave it to the Church. Indeed, there appears to be no particular reason why the Church authorities should inscribe it there ; it concerns no property of theirs, and they had plenty of documents nnder Teilo's hand of more interest to theni. But it is easy to understand why an abl)reviated copy of the deed of gift should be entered abore it later : this shows that the book was the gift of Gelhi, and so explains the appearance on the page of a copy of a title-deed belonging to him. Seebohm points out that there is a Teüch in Gower, B. L. D. 239 ; but as there was at least one other Telich, ib. 125, 255, it is not certain that this is the one meant. The claimant, Tutbulch son of Liuit,
Taliesin. 279
seems to liave lived in Monnioiithshire; as Seebohm points oiit, in a record probably of between 961 and 967, Morgan Hen is said to restore to LlandafF territories belonging to it in the tinie of Dubricius, Teilo and Oudoceus. Amongst these is " Machumur, i.e., Lann Liuit ", its boundary reaching " across to Is Guaessaf of Liguulhnni, son of Tutbulch ", ib. 241. Here we have the names of Tutbulch and Liuit ; and Lann Liuit belonged to Llandaô' in tho sixth century. It adjoined land belonging to a son of Tut'uulch. Lann Liuit was, of course, the ecclesiastical name ; such names usually date from the foundation or dedication (in this case probably nnder Dubricius, from the position near Llanvaenor), so that we may conclude that the place was called after a sixth century Liuit. I am not aware of the occurrence of the name Liuit except in this ancient place-name and in our entrj'. The founder of Lann Liuit seems to be the only Liuit lcnown; it is therefore reasonable to sup- pose that the claimant Tutbulch ap Linit was his son, and hence a contemporary of Teilo. Liguallaun ap Tutbulch owned land border- ing on Lann Liuit ; his name had become traditioival when the boundary was drawn out at the restoration in 961-7 ; he cannot therefore be Riuguallaun ap Tutbulch, ib. 264, who was living in the reign of Rhydderch ap lestyn, 1023-83. It need not be assumed that Liguallaun is an error — / and r are not easily confused ; the fìrst element of his name is the same as that of Liuit's ; this would be natural if he were his grandson. Lastly we have seen that two of the witnesses, one cleric and one layman, may possibly be identi- fied with a clerical and a lay witness of other deeds of the same period ; but I do not think that any one of tlie nanies can with the least lilcelihood be identified with any naine in the later records of Llandaft'.
The probability, then, is that this entry is a copy of a docnment of Teilo's time. There would be a reason for its being in Welsh : the parties to the agreement would probably not understand Latin. If this is so the view maintained above as to the vernacular of the period needs no other prouf ; the language of the sixth ceiitiu-y was identical with that uf the Taliesin poems.
2 8o Taliesin.
COERECTIONS AND ADDITIONS.
Page ], liiie 11 of text ; for skeleten read skeleton Page 6, fn. Tliis footnote is perfectly correct as far as it goes : but a closer examination of tlie poem clearly reveals the metrical scheme. The first twenty lines are of 9 syllables each, forming " cyhydedd naw ban ", in stanzas of 4, 2, 5, 5, 4 lines respectively ; see F.A.B.,\\,^^. 3,4. These are followed by a stanza of "gwaw- dodyn byr" consisting of two lines of 9 and a " cyhydedd hir " unit of 19. It is in tlie middle of this stanza that the supposed "change of metre at 4'7" occurs. But the stanza is immediately followed by a sirailar one of two 9*s and 19. This is followed by five units of "cyhydedd hir". Thus the poem begins in the metre "cyhydedd naw ban" and ends in " cyhydedd hir", the transition from the one to the other being smoothly made V)y two stanzas of " gwawdodyn byr" which is a standard metre consisting of a farniliar combina- tion of the two.
Page 22, line 4 ; for Sainsbury read Saintsbury
Page 30, line 1 ; thoug-ll, etc. The second a]ternative is far less hlîely than the first. The false concords quoted on this page are much more naturally explained by the supposition that the inscribers had no conscionsness of the diíFerence in form between tlie nomina- tive and genitive. In later inscriptions -i is added even toconsonant stems in tlie nominative as in cru.i- Salvatoris quue prepararit Samsúni Apati . . . pro anima luthahelo Iie.v (see Arch. Camb. 1899, p. 148), by whicli is meant quam preparavit Samson Ahhas . . . pro aìuma luthaheli lief/is. It is admitted that tliis is merely bad Latin : I maintain that that is the only sensible ex[ilanation of similar phenomena in earlier inscriptions. And it shows not merely that the inscribers confused Latin declensions, but that they had lost the sense of distinctions of case.
Page 32, line 3 ; for depised read despised
Page 32, line 25 ; for tataguen read tat aguen When this sheet was printed oÛ' I had not seen tlie pliotograph from wliich our frontispiece was made ; and I naturally assumed tliat Mommsen's Tataguen, p. 205, was correct. The frontispiece shows tliat the MS. has clearly two words tat affuen, which is of course i-ight, for the expression is not a compound but a noun with a depen- dent genitiye. Zimmer is not to be trusted in small matters of ihis Idnd. There ought to be a diplomatic reproduction of tlie whole text; this is work that Dr. Evans .should do instead of wa.sting his
Talicsin. 281
time on work for which he is uiifìtted. I am indebted to Mr. Idris Bell for having the page photographed for me for the purpose of the reproduction.
Page Ç>=ì, line 14; delete one C in mailUSCCrÌpt
Page 70, line lö ; Urien liad, etc. The reason for associating him with Gower was no doubt the fact that in th« French and English romances he is called Uryens or Uryence of Gorre or Gore. The inutilation of Welsh names in the romances does not foUow regular phonetic hiws ; and as t is lost before r in Breton (e.g. /;;w<r 'brother '), as iu French (e.g. //ẁ-e), the reduction of Catraeth to Gorre or Gore is not a more vioIent change than, for example, tlie softening of Gwalchmei into Gaicain. It was natural, and per- haps inevitable, that löth-century manufacturers of pedigrees should take the Gvre of the romances to be Gower.
Page 75, line 3 ; Gobeu a Reg'et. Mr. Phillimore, in Owen's Pem., part iii, p. 1^84, writes, "As a man's or woman's name Rheged admits of being derived from a low-Latin form of Ileceptus, Recejìta {ci. bedydd ivom haptisma)'\ This statement emboldens me to sug- gest an explanation of the name Rheyed wliich I hesitated to insert at the end of this paragraph before it was printed off. I had not seen the above note,inwhich my idea of tbe derivation is anticipated and therefore to that extent confirmed. — There was \\ç> jìt in British ; original pt had become kt in Keltic; thus ^'septm became *seJctm, giving Irish secht, Welsh seith ' seven '. Latin pt becomes fft in J^iýt ' Egypt', but generally it was treated as tt, a Low Latin form, and tt regularly becomes th, as in >/sf/r>/thj/r from scriptura, and preyeth from precepta. But in Low Latin this tt might be simplified, thus setimns occurs in the third century for septimus (Loth, Mots Lat., p. 124): honce bedyh from *haptidio, and ^os&Wúy cynyyd 'thought' from conceptio ; thus Rheyed may be f rom receptus, recepta, as sug- gested by Mr. Pbillimore. Now this is the adjective commonly used to describe tbat part of the Island wliich lies to the south of the Southern Wall ; thus Orosius (quoted by Camden, Brit., 1Ó94, p. 607) writes: " Receptam partem insulae a ceteris indomitis gentibus vallo distiuguendam putavit (Severus) ". Other writers use receptae prorinciae, see ib., and cf. later editions. Nennius u.ses the latter expression: '■ Severus . . . . ut receptas provin- cias ab incursione barbarica faceret tutiores, murum et aggerem a mari usqiie ad mare . . . deduxit," § 2."i. The adJHctive tluus used to distinguish tlie territory defended by the Wall from that beyond it would iiaturaliy apply more especially to the distiict noarcst tlie Wall ; it is here that the distinction was chiefly felt ; and it niay be that Goò^u 'tlu' forest', or perhap.«» ' the wild', denoting the unre-
282 Taliesiii.
claiinec? land beyoud the Wall, represented the British antithesis of the terra recejìta or tir liheged.
Page 77, line 5 from bottom of text ; Ei8in. This is a late aild incorrect form. The earliest example I have found of the mis-pronunciation EiSin occurs in a poem by tlie fourteenth-century bard Rhisserdyn, Mi/v. 290 b, last line, where he seems to refer to Clydno Eidyn, cf. 291 a. As shown by the spelling Lliweli/8 for Llywelydd, see above p. 59, the sounds of Northern nanies had become uncertain before that period, and old spellings were often misread.
Page 92, footnote, line 10; for the obscure vowel e, written y in Welsh. read tlie obscure vowel a, written y in Welsh. This was quite correct in the last proof that left my hands. But the eagle eyo of the press corrector saw the inverted e and promptly righted it. (Of course, a is the conventional phonetic symbol for the obscure voweI.) I am, however, indebted to him for many small corrections of this kind, all of which, with this exceptjon, were necessary and right.
Page 207, line 4. At the end of this line an r has dropped out during the passage of the sheet through the press ; read " toddaid byr" or
Page 210, line 41 of poem, second word. The second bracket enclosing the f has dropped out ; read Dy(f)«-al -Page 212, line 2 ; for me^wieth read ì>ie8weith
Page 221, fn. 4. Dr. Hugh Williams, Gildas, p. 77, sides with Zimmer against Rhys on the ground that insularis is probably "intended to wound ". But Gildas is not subtle ; and however violently-he inveighs against Maeígwn, he clearly does not attempt to belittle his power. The meaning of insularis must be decided by that of iììsula. Not only is Ynys used traditionally in Welsh for Britain, but insula was so used in Latin long before Gildas' time, as the quotatiou from Orosius in the a})Ove note on Goheu a Reget shows. Giidas uses it in no other sense : in fact, Dr. Williams him- self affirms that insula "in Gildas has no meaning except Britain ", p. 48. If Gildus' ẁsí</« always means ' Britain ', I submit that his insularis must mean 'British'. Clearly insularis draco is only Gildas' bombastic way of saying du.v Britanniarum ; and Rhys sliows an insi^ht which Zimmer and Dr. Williams Iack when he says that " It was more congenial to " Gildas' "style to describe him in that way than to call him simply Du.v Jíritanniae", Weish People, p. 107.
Talicsin.
283
1NDEX
OF PROl'ER NAMES.
Abhüt, Edwiii A., 1U2.
Aborconi, 8U.
Aber Henvelen, 197, 252.
Aber Meuhedus, 47.
Ab Ithol, 79, 2GU-2.
Adanman, 48.
Aergol Lawhir, 2UU-1.
Aeron, ;ô-77, 82, 85, 112, 167,
195. .ŵhelstán, 221. Ainstable, 198. Aircol, see Aergol. Alban, 56. Alclud, hô, 60, 61 ; Alclyde, 65,
71. Aldíord, 61. Aldhelm, 255-6. Alexander the Great, 98-lUU,
137, 254. Alexander macMalcohn, 56. Alexander Polyliistor, 248. Alfred, King, 99, lUÛ. Amairgen, see Amorgen. Ammianus Marcellinus, 249. Amorgen, 243-246. Aneirin, 3, 5, 8, 14, 16, 25, 26,
35, 45, 46, 5U, 152, 197, 225,
229 241. Angles,'65. Ì60, 161, 174. Anglesey, 11, 75, 2U0, 221, 256. Anglia, 75, 76, 85. Annwfn, 237-8. Anwyl, Sir Edward, 24-7, 35, 36,
Ì33, 134, 147, 229. Arawn, 237. Arbcla, 99. Arddunvon, 86. Arddvnwent. 86, 128, 13U. Arfdèrvdd, 48, 146, 222. ArgoecÌ, 71, 154-160, 169. 170. Arihtiud, 269, 274. Arnold, Matthew, 19-21, 3G,
145-7. 224, 240, 250. Arthur, King, 15. 50, 71, 96,
101. 222, 238. Arvon, 47. Arvynydd, 156. Augustine, 110. Avaon ap Talyessin, 5U. Avon, 76.
Bala, 57.
liaml)orüugli, 41, 67.
tíancor, 3U.
Bangor, 61, 87, 9U, 91.
Bannister, Ur. H. M., 268.
Baring-Üould, Kev. S., 8U, 90.
Barwick-in-Elmet, 68.
Bebbanburch, 41.
Bede, 23, 25, 59, 6U, 8U, 94, 236,
255 Bedwvr,' IIU. Bell, ìdris, 281. Bendigeidvraii, äSÒ \ see Brân. Berneich, 4U. Bernicia, 22, 41, 75, 84, 85, 128;
see Bryneich. Berthutis, 27U. Berwick Castle, lUU. Bluchbard, 3, 14, 4U, 46. Boniface, 256. Borderie, M. de la, 43. Bovd üawkiiis, Professor, 1. Bràdshaw, Henrv, 30, 44, 269,
274-5, 277. Brahmins, 248. Brân, 198, 235. Brecon, 78. Breiddin, 79. Britain, 221, 248, 282. Britannia, 51. Brochfael (Ysgvthrog), 28, 93-5,
198-9, 201, 227, 235, 262. Brochmaií map lutnimct, 94. Brocmail, 30, 94. Broliomagli, 28, 94, 227. Brugmann, 209. Bryant, Jacob, 18. ]îrvchan, 74. Br'vneich, 85, 130, 209. BiVtlion, 53-4, 106-8. Burghead, 81.
Cadell l)dvrullug, 19i).
Cadfan (ap lago), 28, 234, 266,
268-9. Cadfan, (St.), 231, 260. Cadi-awd Calchfvnvdd. 74. Cadwaladr, 254. 266. Cadwallawn inab Madawc, 76.
284
Taliesin.
Cachrallon. 95, 234, 266.
Ctcdmon, 234.
Ccethvalla, 234, 266.
Caer Liwelydd, 58, 61, 67, 200.
Caer Lleon, 66.
Caer Llion, 59, 60.
Caer Rigor, 238.
Caer Siddi, 236-8, 252.
Caer Yedwit, 238.
Caer AYeir, 61, 209.
Caesar, 247-9.
Cair Eden, 79, 81.
Cair Legion, 59, 60.
Cair Ligualid, 58.
Caithness, 57.
CalchfTnydd, 74.
Camden,'2, 48, 58, 68, 70, 81,
281. Canterbiiry, 75. Cardiganshire, 76. Carlegion, 30.
Carlisle, 58, 59, 67, 68, 210, 239. Carnarvon, 66. Carnhuanawc, 10, 64, 83, 154,
157, 160, 162, 166, 191. Carriden, 79-81. Carroll, Lewis, 61, (246). Castell Llion, Castle of Lyons,
Castrum Leonis, 60. Catamanus, 28, 69 ; see Cadfan
ap lago. Catarracta, 67, 69. Raroî'pa.'CTÓi'toi', 67, 69. Catraeth, 5, 65, 67-70, 87, 160-2. Catterick, 67-70. Catyneis, 57. Caw, 65, 101. Cei Hir, 96. Ceiriog, 75. Ceneu ap Coel, 21, 128, 154, 156,
189, 190, 199, 223. Ceneu (f. Llywarch), 196. Ceri, 67 Cernrw, 57.
Chamherlain, H. S., 112. Chaucer, 32.
Cheshire, 49, 58, 61, 77, 137. Chester, 58-60, 66, 75, 85, 95,
102, 201. Chester, Earl of, 58, 60. Cheviot Hills, 67. Cian, 3, 40, 46, 128, 241. Cicero, 32, 184. Kidwellv, 65, 70, 71. Cincenn f. Gripiud, 269, 274. Cinda. 270, 273. Cinhilinn, 270, 273. Clark-Maxwell, Prehendaiy, 150. Clement of Alexandria, 248.
Clud, 61, 76, 77, 82.
Cludwys, 128.
Clutton, 61.
Clyde, 71, 77; see Clud.
Clydemen, 69, 128, 198.
Clydesdale, 65.
Clydno Eidyn, 47, 48, 79, 282.
Cocholyn, 101.
Codrington, 68, 69.
Coel (Godehawc), 77, 190, 204,
206 213 222 Coeling' 84-0, 204", 205, 208, 211,
219, 222 Coleshill, 170. Columl)us, 11. Conway, 256; Conwy, 86. Corroi M. Dayry, lol. Courcy, 95. Crug bwed, 200. Cruithni, 63, 64. CüchnliiJii. 101, 273. Cuhelyn, 273. Cumberland, 64, 65, 71. Cuml)ria, 49, 64. Cunedda, 90-92, 202-211, 221-
223, 238. Cuneglase, 28. Cwm Cowlvd, 65. Cvmro, 52. Cymry, 51-4, 63. Cynan ap Owein Gwynedd, 95. Cynan Garwvn, 93-95, 133, 134,
136, 147, 148, 199, 201, 223,
235, 262. Cysddelw, 6, 54, 66, 75, 76. 84,
85, 96, 127, 169, 170, 171,
175, 185, 190. Cynewulf, 256. Cvnfarch, 171. Cynfpirdd, 10-13, 18, 24, 32. 34,
49, 225, 230. Cynvelyn, 4, 5. Cvnverching, 171. Cyngen, 201, 223, 262. Cvnien, 261-2, 266. Cynlas, 28. Cynocephali, 110.
Dafvdd ab Edniwnd, 188. Dafvdd ap Gwihm, 89, 105, 120,
257. Dafydd Benfras, 5, 218. Dafydd Nanmor, 9. Danet, 128. Dante, 32. Danu, 104.
D'Arbois de Jubaiiiville, 245. Darius, 99.
Taliesín.
28:;
Davies, Rev. Edward, 18, 20, 37,
53, 220. Davies, Dr. J., 11(J, 216, 218. Davie.s, J. H., 11. Dee, 57, 60, 62. Degannwy, cS6, lUô, 198. Delieu, 55. Deiír, 80. • J)eio ap leuan Du, 221. Deira, 22, 75. Denbigh, 12, 39, 63. J)enbiglishire, 63. Deodric, ü-i, 154, lü6. J)inguavrdi, l)inguoai()v, 40, 41. Dinlleu, 239. J)inJle Ureconn, 239. J)inogat, 80, 92. Diodoru.s Siculus, 249. D'Israeli, I., 217. J)ôn, 104. Donald Erec, 25. J3ubricius, 273, 279. J)ubut, 265, 266. Dumbarton, 60, 61, 65. J)unifries-shire, 64. DfmliiettMn. 60. Dunedin, 80. Dunocati, 30. Durhani, 41, 61, 210. DvfnwaJ Frvch, 8. Dvfod\vg, 265. jy^gen, 119, 120, 197. DVlan, 104, 106, 243, 252. jywed, hb, 82, 237.
East Anglia, 75, 76, 85.
Ebel, 225.
Ecgfrid, 44.
Echwydd, 68, 85 ; see Erech-
wvdd. Edern', 204, 218, 220, 222. Edin})urgh, 79-81, 222. Edwin, 57, 80. Edvrn, 204, 208-211, 213, 218.
222. Egrvn, 264, 266. Egvpt, 117, 254. Eidvn, 77-81, 82. 110, 159. 222,
'281. EingJ, 76.
EJcu, 270. 273. 278. EJidir Mwvnfawr, 47, 48. Elidir Sais, 218. Elmet, 68, 71, 234. Elphin, 113, 198. 235. Elved, 68; .see Elmet. Elysium. 251. Empedocles, 246.
Ennius, 32.
Eobba, 40, 41, 143.
Ercw(lff), 101.
Erechwvdd, 68-70, 198; see Yr-.
Erov, 101.
Eryri, 215, 256.
Etan, Etain, 79, 80.
Etiielwerd, 52.
Eulo, 75.
Euphorbus, 253.
Eusebius (Hwaîtberht), 256.
Evans, Rev. D. Sihan, 22, 68, 83, 119, 123, 152, 183, 185, 212, 216, 257.
Evaus, R3v. Evan, 10-12, 14, 15, 83, 162, 163, 166.
Evans, Dr. J. G., 6, 12, 13, 37- 151, 153, 158, 160, 163-4, 166, 170-1, ""73-8, 180, 182, 183, 186, 188, 191, 193-4, 198, 201, 204, 207, 211, 212, 219, 220, 228, 232, 243, 246, 254-5, 274, 280.
Evans, Theophilus, 2.
Evans, Sir Yincent, 258.
Fllamddwvn. 90, 154, 156, 157,
168, 169, 187, 190, 191. Ffrainc, 63. Fifeshire, 71. Fisher, Rev. J., 81, 90. Fletcher, R. H., 50. Flint, 63.
Flintshire, 71, 75, 170. Forth, 48, 61, 62, 74, 78. Frithwald, Frithwulf, 147.
Gaidoz, H., 2, 59.
Galatians, 248.
Gala Water, 160.
Galston, 167.
Galystem, 160-2.
Garanwvnion, see Grainwnion.
Gaul, 248.
Gavran, 78.
Gee, 12.
Gellii, 269, 270, 273-4, 278.
Gelli Wic, 58.
Geofîrey of Monmouth, 14, 19,
49,' 50, 64, 65^ 70, 174. (Jerman Gcean, 75. Gildas, 13, 14. 28-9, 33, 52, 79,
92. 200, 201, 221 -3, 226, 254,
282 Giraldus, J4, 16. GJamorgan, 126. Glan l>adarn. 220. Goddeu. 72-75, 85, 104, 156, li)5,
198, 281.
286
Taliesin.
Gododdin, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 20, 23,
25, 5ü, 68, lOü, 141, 159,
162, 174, 222. Gogledd, 26, 48, 49, 55-58, 60,
63, 76, 82, 84, 85, 137, 172,
181, 196. Gothian, (St.), 264. Gower, 32, 65, 70, 71. Granwynion, 160-162, 165. Grav, Thomas, 11. Grnífudd ap Cynan, 50, 91, 244. Griiíí'udd ap Nicolas, 70. Gruffydd, Prof. W. J., 221, 230. Guadgan, 260, 264, 266. Guaul, 61 ; see Wall (Southeru). Guest, Lady C, 113. Guortepir, 200. Gurgint, 270, 273. Gurycon Godheu, 74. Gwalchmai, 54, 61, 108, 127, 184,
218, 219. Gwallawg (vab Lleenawg), 77,
95, 96, 199. Gwawl d. of Coel, 204. Gweir, 237. Gwenddoleu, 7, 222. Gwentians, 200. Gwen Ystrad, 132, 159-162. Gweryd, 47-49, 61-2. Gwgawn Gleddvfrudd, 74. Gwilym Tew, 9. Gwrvat vab Gwrvon, 76, 77. Gwvddvl Ffichti,' 254. GwVdio"n (ap Dôn), 104, 198, 235,
■ 236, 239, 241, 253. Gwvnedd, 47, 91, 112, 171, 238,
'239. Gwvnedd, House of, 42. Gwynn Jones, T., 164, 258.
Haearddur, 95. Hafgan, 236-7. Hafren, 197.
Hartland, E. Sidney, 1, 2. Heavenfield, 57. Hengwrt, 9-11. Henry I. 104, 106. Henrỳ H, 75, 82, 87. 170. Henry fitz Henry, 95. Heraclides of Pontus, 253. Hexham, 198 Higden, Ranulph, 32. Holt, 59-60. Hopkin ao Philip, 253. Hor.sley, 70. Hounam, 67.
Hübner, A., 200, 260, 265-6. Huírb Lumis, Earl of Chester, 56, 82 ; see Chester, Earl of .
Humber, 57.
Hussa, 48, 64.
Hyfeidd, 95.
Hywel ap Owein Gwynedd, 65-
68. Hywel Dafydd, 215.
Ida, 40, 41, 64, 77, 84, 147, 154,
224. Idno Hên, 47. leuaf, 196.
leuan ap Hywel Swrdwal, 21i. leuan Brydydd Hir, 11. leuan Fardd ac Offeiriad, 11 ;
see Evans, Rev. Evan. lorwerth son of Madawc, 47. • Ireland, 50^ 63, 198, 244. Irish Sea, 75. ludguoret, 270. íwerddon, 128.
Joceline, 7, 48.
John, King, 98, 100, 101.
John o'Groats, 58.
Jones, Edward, 162.
Jones, John, of Gelli Lyfdy, 9.
Jones, Owen, (Owain Myfyr), 12.
K-, see under C-.
Rentigern, 48. Kluge, 180. Kyle, 77.
Lache, 101, 102; Laches, 58.
Laing, Malcolm, 13.
Laloecen, 7.
Lancashire, 65.
Lancaster, 48.
Land's End, 58.
Lann Liuit, 279.
Laon, 239.
Laws of Hywel, 3.
Leeds, 68.
Leeming, 234.
Leeming Lane, 72.
Legacaestir, 60.
Leicester, 75.
Leven, 71.
Lewis Glvn Cothi, 85, 215.
Levden, 239.
Lhuyd, Edward, 2, 71, 260,
264-5. Lichfield, 269, 277. Lichfield. Dean of, 268-9, 272,
275-7. Ligualid, 183. Liguallaun, 279. Lindsav, Professor W. M., 135,
167, 267-9, 274-7.
Taliesin.
287
Liulithgow, 76.
Linlitligowshire, 79.
Liuit, 278-9.
Llaucialí, 2(39, 273-4, 278-9.
Llundec'wyu, 256.
Lhiutair P\\ 11 Gwyugyll, 61.
Llaufair-Waterdine, 150.
Llanfallteg, 200, 264.
Llaugaít'ü, 266.
Llauillteyru, 266.
Llanrw.st, 63, 194.
Llech Yeleu, 161, 162, 166.
Llech Weu, 166.
Lleu, 198, 235, 239, 251, 253.
Llew, 239.
Lliweljtld, see Caer Liwelvdd.
Lloegr, 63, 174.
Lloegrwys, 171, 172, 174.
LloYíl, Dr. Johu Edward, 71, 91,
93, 94, 147, 170, 199, 200,
222, 259. Lloyd George, David, 24. Ll\vvd (vah Cilcoed), 237, 251. LlwVfeiu, 71, 72, 82, 84, 85, 128,
"154-157, 159, 170. Llwvfenvdd, 71, 72, 82, 112, 175,
'176," 181, 182, 194. Llyn Geirionuydd, 194. Lh'n, William,' 21(1 Lívr, 197, 2:á5. 252. Ll\-^varch ap Llvwelvn, Prydydd
y Moch, 39; 58." Llvwarch Hêu, 3, 7, 8, 14, 16.
26, 35, 46, 68, 196. Llywelyn ap lorwerth, 58, 101. Llywelyn ap Madawc. 216. Loch Lomoud, 64. 71. Loch Rvan, 54, 222. Loth. Professor J., 46, 117, 218,
257, 281. Lucan, 250. Luch Reon, 54. Luell, 59. Lug, 239. Lugu-halion. 59, 239; -hallium,
59 ; -vallum, 58. Lugu-dûnoii, 239. Lyou.s, 239.
Mabon, 95, 198, 199.
Arachaiu, Dr. A.. 29.
Macedon, 100, 137.
Macfarlane, 67.
Machumur. 279.
Maeldaf, 47.
Maelderw, 5.
Maelgwn. 27, 28. 91-93, 113, 146,
195. 197, 198, 202. 203, 206,
221, 233, 235. 282.
Maelienydd, 65-67.
Maglocuuos, 27, 28, 233.
Mailcuu, 27, 28, 200, 233.
Malted, 264, 266,
Mau, 63.
Mauauuan, 238-9.
Mauaw, 73, 74, 80. 81.
Manaw Gododdin, 202.
Mauawyd, 236, 237, 239.
Mauawydan, 237, 239.
Mapouus, 198.
Marciau(n), 264, 266.
Margam, 126.
MarseiUes, 251.
Math, 104, 241, 252, 253.
Mathouwy, 235.
Maurice, Hugh, 105.
Maxen, 66.
Meilien, 74.
^[eilyr, 188.
Meirchion, 265.
Meiriouvdd, 94, 95.
Merliu, 19j Merlinus, 49.
Mersev, 57.
Mever, Kuuo, 189, 192.
Mií, 244.
Milhurga, 74.
:\lilton, 97, 235.
Mochnant, 39.
Modrou, 199.
Mold, 1, 71, 85.
Mommseu, 44, 200, 280.
Mon, 63.
Moray, 65.
Moray Firth, 81.
Morgau Hêu, 279.
Morgant. 77.
Mordaf Hael, 47, 48.
Morris. Lewis. 9-12, 64, 83, 154,
157, 160, 188. Morris, Richard, 10. Morris, William, 10, 12. Morris. William, of Cefn-y-
hraich. 9. Much Weulock. 74. Mureif. 64-5. 70-71. Mwrchath. 56. Mvnaw. 73 ; see Manaw. Mvnvdd Carn, 188. Mvrddiu nVvllt), 3, 7, 8. 9, 14,
50, 109."
Nash. D. W., 18, 20-1. 37, 65, 83, 144-5, 151-2, 154. 157, 162. 166, 173. 176. 182-3, 188. 190. 20.3-4. 211. 219.
Neirin, 3. 32. 40-1, 45-6, 241; see Aneirin.
288
Talicsin.
Nemiius, 26, 40, 42, 46, 152,
228-9, 281. Norddmyii Mandi, 254. North, 47, 49, 55-58, 71, 76, 81,
170, 206, 222, 224, 238, see
Gogledd. Northumberland, 44, 65, 154. Nudd (Hael), 47, 48, 96. Numin, 270, 273. Nutt, Alfred, 238, 244-5, 248,
250-2.
Oisîn, see Ossian.
Oman, Professor, 65, 147, 247.
Orosius, 99, 100, 281-2.
Ossian, 11, 23.
Oswestry, 66.
Oswin, 23.
Oudoceus, 273, 279.
0\vein ap Kadwgan, 61, 86.
Owein ap Urien, 20-1, 84-5, 87- 90, 128, 130, 154, 156, 168, 170-1, 186-194. 198, 199, 253.
Owein Cyfeiliog, 86, 95. ^
Owein Gwynedd, 54-5, 71, 75, 78, 81-2, '84, 86-7, 90-3, 95-6, 112-3. 147, 169, 170.
Owen, Goronwy, 10.
Pabo, 189.
Padarn, 220.
Palgrare, Sir Francis, 64-5.
Panton, Paul, 11.
Panton, Paul, fìls, 12.
Partholon, 110.
Patrick, 33-4, 112.
Peder.sen, Prof. H., 199, 215.
Pedr Hir, 206.
Pen Annwfn, 238.
Penart, 47.
Penmon, 75, 84.
Pennant. T., 260, 262-3.
Pennissel, Samuil, 188.
Penprys, 164.
Penren Wleth, 54.
Penryn Blathaon. 57, 58.
Penryn Penwaedd, 57.
Pentì-aeth. 11.
Peohtas, 52.
PercY, Bishop, 11.
Philipps, Sir Thomas, 10.
Phillimore, Egerton, 9, 43, 94,
199. 200, 201. 281. Phylip Brydydd. 5. Picts, 52, "63. 161. Pinkerton, 13.
Plnmmer, Rev. C. 23, 57, 60. Pomponius Mela, 249. Porford, 102.
Porus, 100.
Posidonius of Apamea, 249, 254. Powel, Professor T., 17, 190, 191. Powys, 93, 95, 112, 104, 106. Price, ilev.T.,see Carnhuanawc. Prvdein, 51, 57-58, 63, 78, 85,
104-108. Pryderi, 236-239. Prỳdydd y Moch, 58, 175, 181,
184-5, 218, see Llywarch ap
Llvwelvn. Prydyiì, 62-65, 82, 147, 161, 162,
164. Pughe, Dr. W. Owen, 12, 25,
116, 119, 139, 157, 165, 180,
184-5, 199, 257. Pulford, 76, 101-104. Pwvll, 237-239. Pvthagoras, 248-253.
Radnorshire, 66.
Ranulf, Earl of Chester, 75, 112,
147. Redesdale, 65. Rees, J. Rogers, 23. Rees, Professor Rice, 204.
Rheged', 64-71, 75, 77, 83, 156,
161, 162, 172, 281. Rhiryd Yleidd. 171. Rhisserdvn, 282. Rhodwycìd, 85. Rhonabwv, 222. Rhuddlan, 85, 86. Rlnìn ap MHelowTi. 2. 47-49, 92,
93, 206-223, 235. Rhun an Owein Gwynedd, 49,
92 93 97 Rhvcldèrch Hael, 7, 26, 47-49,
' 71, 77. Rhvdclerch ap Ie.stvn, 279. Rhys. Sir John. 23-4. 28-30. 34. ■ 52, 59, 65, 83, 106, 116, 123,
147, 149. 151, 200, 215. 221,
225-8, 230, 232. 245-6, 252-3.
261-7, 271-2. 282. Rhvs, J. D., 191. Ribchester, 198. Richard I. 98, 99, 101. Richard, Edward. 11. Richard of Hoveden, 243. Richards. 116, 199. Richmond, 70. Riuguallaun, 279. Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, 50. Rogers, Henry, 23. Rome, 66. Ryt-y-gors, 61,
Tali
esin.
289
Saint Monenna, 80.
Saint.slniry, G., 22, 280.
Saladin, 99.
Sanctan, 188.
San Marte, 49, ôü.
Savage, The Yery Re\-. H. E., see Lichfìelcl, Dean of.
Scothind, 51, 56, 63, 81, 84, 147.
Scots, 171.
Scrivener, Dr., 268.
Secundus, 243.
Seel)olm, 39, 274, 278-9.
Seleu, 196.
Selyf ap Cvnan, 94, 95.
Senillt, 47.
Serwan, 47.
Severn, 197.
Shanldand, Rev. T., 259.
Shropshire, 72.
Signou, 270, 273.
Skeat, 73.
Sliene, W. F., 13, 22, 26, 36, 39, 61-2, 65, 71, 76-7, 81, 83, 99, 120, 125, 154, 160, 167, 195-6, 202. SU\mannan, 74. South Wales, 70. St. Asaph, 39.
Stephens, Thomas, 16, 17, 36,
39, 40, 64-6. 79, 83, 152, 154,
157, 160, 162, 191, 195-6,
202, 204, 211, 219, 224, 227.
Stevenson, 41.
Stokes, 34, 62, 95, 179, 200, 219. St. Oswald's, 57. Straho, 249.
Strachan, Prof., 122, 185. Straecled Wealas, 52. Strathclyde, 48, 49, 77. Swale, 65. Sweet, 33-4.
Talhaearn, 3, 32. 40, 45-6, 241.
Tatwine. 256.
Tawy, 65, 70.
Tegeingl, 75-6, 85.
Tegid,'220.
Teilo, 228, 232, 268-279.
Teliau, see Teilo.
Telich, 270, 278.
Tengruin, 263.
Teyrnon, 101.
Thonias, Sir Rhvs ap, 70.
Thoinpson, Sir E. Maunde. 44.
Tliornhrough, 69, 70.
Thrace, 251.
Thurneysen. 184.
Timagenes, 249.
Towy, 65, 70.
Towyn (.Merioneth), 260.
Trallong, 262.
Tremvan, 146.
Troude, 68, 181, 183, 271.
Tuatha de Danann, 104.
Tuduistil, 74.
Tudwal Tutchit, 47.
Turner, Sharon, 10, 13-16, 21,
26, 36, 49, 83, 154, 157, 257. Tuthulch f. Liuit, 270, 274,
278-9. Tutri, 270, 273. Tweed, 67. Tylor, E. B., 217.
übbanford, 100, 101.
Ugnach vab Mvdno, 7.
Ulph, 75, 112,' 147, 195.
Urien, 20, 21, 26, 50, 64-5, 67-8, 70-3, 75, 77, 84-7, 112, 147, 154-7, 167-8, 181-2, 186, 194-7, 201, 223, 235, 253, 262, 281.
Yalerius Maxinius, 249.
Yauglian, Robert, 9, 10.
Yedra, 61.
Yictor, 30.
YiHa Leonuni, 60.
Yirgil, 24.
Voteporix, 200.
Wace, 49, 50.
Walde. A., 111, 117, 165. 215. Wall, The Northern, 159. Wall, Tlie Southern, 62, 67, 70,
281. Watling Street, 67. Wear, 61. Wedale, 160. Wenslevdale, 161. Westwood, J. O.. 231. 260-7. Williams. Edward (lolo Mor-
ganwg), 12. A^'illiams, Dr. H.. 43. 282. AYilliams. Ifor. 25. 35-6, 51, 53,
67. 76-7, 99. 115, 124. 143,
185, 200, 216, 254. 257-8. Williams, Sir John, 10. Williams, Dr. Marv, 243. Williams, Rev. Robert, 22, 53,
83, 89, 152, 157, 163, 166.
173, 176, 180. 182-3, 190,
204, 211. 219, 220. Williams. W., J'ant-y-celyn, 120. ^N indermere, 71. 160. Winsterdale, 160. Wirral, 57.
U
2ÇO Taliesin.
Wood, O. A., 255-7. Yiechwydd, 157, 171-2; see Er-.
Woore, 62. Ystrei(n)gl, /6.
Wreldii, 74, 239.
Wyckewere, 39. ^euss, 123, 22o
Wvp 200 Zimmer, Prot. H., 2, 30, 3á, 41,
Wynsige, 269. 44-5, 83, 146, 152, 221, 228-
Y»yr 101. Zimmermann, E. H., 268.
DA 700 C9 V. 18
y Cymmrodor
PLEASE DO NOT REMOYE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
•■ ■■!.':■■•■,■,■;;' ,';Ì,:l?-'';'*'N:fjU5tj!<íjl|!^;J';^