Welsh And Their Literature — Section 4 - to bard Dafydd Benfras

During the period which elapsed between the first coming of the Saxons, and the expulsion of the British from the Southern and Eastern parts of the island, lived Aneurin, Taliesin, Llewarch Hen, and Merddin, surnamed Wyllt or the Wild, all celebrated poets, the latter of whom has generally been confounded with Merddin Ambrosius.

Aneurin was a chief of the Ottadinian Britons, and his principal poem is the one styled Gododin, a word which probably means that which relates to the Ottadini.

It is descriptive of the battle of Cattraeth, fought between the Britons and the Saxons, in which the former were so completely worsted that only three, amongst whom was Aneurin himself, escaped with their lives.

The poem is composed in lines remarkably short, consisting in general of only six syllables.

Aneurin was the Gildas of ecclesiastical history, and the name of Gildas is merely a Saxon translation of Aneurin, which signifies golden grove.

Taliesin Ben Beirdd, or Taliesin Prince of Bards, was a North Welshman, but was educated at Llanreithin, in Glamorgan, under Catwg, celebrated for his aphorisms, who kept a school of philosophy there.

He was called Prince of Bards because he excelled all his contemporaries in the poetic art.

Many of his pieces are extant; amongst them is an awdl or ode, containing an abridgment of the history of the world, in which there is a stanza with regard to the destiny of the ancient Britons as sublime as it is true:-- 'Their Lord they shall praise, Their language they shall keep, Their land they shall lose Except wild Wales.'

Llewarch Hen, or Llewarch the aged, was a prince of Cumberland.

Driven from his domain by the Saxons, he sought a refuge at the place which is now called Shrewsbury, and subsequently on the shore of the lake of Bala, a beautiful sheet of water in Merionethshire, overlooked on the south by the great mountain Arran.

There he died at the age of one hundred and fifty years.

His poems consist chiefly of elegies on his sons, twenty-four in number, all of whom perished in battle, and on his slaughtered friends.

They are composed in triplets, and abound with simplicity and pathos.

Myrddin Wyllt, or Myrddin the Wild, was a Briton of the Scottish border.

Having killed the son of his sister, he was so stung with remorse that he determined to renounce the society of men, and accordingly retired to a forest in Scotland, called Celydon, where he was frequently seized with howling madness.

Owing to his sylvan life and his attacks of lunacy, he was called Merddyn Wyllt, or the Wild.

He composed poetry in his lucid intervals.

Six of his pieces have been preserved: they are chiefly on historical subjects.

The most remarkable of them is an address to his pig, in which he tells the woes and disasters which are to happen to Britain: it consists of twenty-five stanzas or sections.

In all of them a kind of alliteration is observable, and in each, with one or two exceptions, the first line rhymes with all the rest.

Each commences with 'Oian a phorchellan'--listen, little porker!

The commencement of one of these stanzas might be used in these lowering days by many a grey-headed yeoman to his best friend:-- 'Oian a phorchellan: mawr eryssi A fydd ym Mhrydan, ac nim dorbi.

Listen, little porker!

mighty wonders Shall occur in Britain, which shall not con me.'

Many and great poets flourished in the times of the Welsh princes: the three greatest were Meilyr, Gwalchmai, and Dafydd Benfras.

Meilyr was bard of Gruffudd ap Cynan, prince of Gwynedd or North Wales, who died in 1137. He sang the praises of his master, who was a celebrated warrior and a bountiful patron of the muse, in whose time and under whose sanction those forms of composition, generally called the twenty four measures, were invented and promulgated.

Gwalchmai lived in the time of Owain, prince of Gwynedd, about whom he sang a piece which is to a certain extent known to the English public by a paraphrase made by Gray, which bears the title of 'The Triumphs of Owain.'

Dafydd Benfras was domestic bard of Llywelyn ap Jorwerth, also prince of Gwynedd and titular king of Wales, who flourished during the first half of the thirteenth century.

In one of his odes addressed to his patron, there is an animated description of a battle won by Llywelyn over King John: 'Llywelyn of the potent hand oft wrought Trouble upon the kings and consternation;

When he with the Lloegrain monarch fought, Whose cry was "Devastation!"

Forward impetuously his squadrons ran;

Great was the tumult ere the shoot began;

Proud was the hero of his reeking glaive, Proud of their numbers were his followers brave.

{25a} O then were heard resounding o'er the fields The clash of faulchions and the crash of shields!

Many the wounds in yonder fight receiv'd!

Many the warriors of their lives bereaved!

The battle rages till our foes recoil Behind the Dike which Offa built with toil.

Bloody their foreheads, gash'd with many a blow, Blood streaming down their quaking knees below.

Llywelyn we as our high chief obey, To fair Porth Ysgewin extends his sway;

For regal virtues and for princely line He towers above imperial Constantine.'