man to come near, to the heart of the unlettered people as a ballad-writer. The only men who would succeed often in producing a good ballad must have been those who were themselves of the commonalty, spoke with them, thought with them, and gave the poetry of truth and earnestness to rapid narrative by exercise of their own simple gift of song. Golden age of Welsh literature. However that may be, it is the right spirit of liberty that gives life to the mind. Hardly less remarkable than the predominance of intellectual power in the northeast of England during Anglo-Saxon times is the vigour of mind in the west during the first two centuries of Norman rule, Geoffrey of Monmouth (who at the fit time first turned the current of historic record into a new channel of romance), Gerald de Barri, Walter Map-the three men of their time who were of highest mark in English literature— all, as I have remarked before, wrote themselves Welshmen; Orderic was from Shrewsbury, and Layamon lived on the Welsh side of the Severn. But nowhere in England during all this time was the spirit of independence stronger than amongst the Welsh. The Lord Marchers, appointed to restrain, if not subdue them, intermarried with them, and fought sometimes with, sometimes against, them. Henry I. himself took for his wife Nesta, the daughter of Rhys of Tudor; and one of the two sons of that Welshwoman was Robert Earl of Gloucester, whom we have recognised as the chief patron of letters in the reign of Stephen. M. Thierry, in his "History of the Norman Conquest," declared his opinion that the Cymry of the Middle Ages were the most intellectual people of their time in Europe. Undoubtedly they reached during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the most vigorous expression of their intellect; and this they did while, and because, they were cherishing an indomitable sense of independence, waging no unsuccessful war against servitude to the Norman, when they had empty pockets and not an ally to back them. They were drawn as friends to the court of Henry II., where the king numbered among his familiar companions not only Walter Map, but also the brilliant Prince of Powys who wrote the poem of "The Hirlas Horn." But after the patriot-king Llewelyn had perished in his struggle with Edward I. (in 1282), and the Welsh had accepted Edward's infant son, born at Carnarvon, as their prince, there was an end of the vigour of Welsh intellect as a great feature in the story of the English mind. The power of an active patriotism was no longer great over the characters of all men bred within its influence; and when the old patriotism, become passive, had shrunk into a small national vanity, it served only to withhold the Welshman from that life and thought in the wide open world, and from that free mixture of blood with other races, by which alone there is to be maintained the enduring progress of a people. Native poetry of In the years of their best intellectual achievement we may be sure that the brave patriots of Wales did Wales. not express all the native mind in French and Latin. There was abundant literature also in the native language of the Cymry. Meilyr. I The earliest Welsh poet of the later time was Meilyr, who among other pieces wrote, at the age of almost eighty, an elegy on the death, in 1137, of his second patron Gruffyd ab Kynann. Meilyr sang also in the vein of the first bards of his own approaching death. have received," he says, "heaps of gold and velvet from frail princes for loving them. But after the gifted muse I feel another impulse; faltering is my tongue, urging me to silence. I, Meilyr the poet, am a pilgrim to Peter." * * The translation is that of Mr. Thomas Stephens, from whose "Literature of the Kymry" (Llandovery, 1849, second edition, edited by the Rev. D. Silvan Evans, with a life of the author by B. T. Williams, Q.C., London, 1876) I derive the information given in the next few paragraphs. Gwalchmai, the son of Meilyr, has left fourteen pieces, of which some prove his love of nature, but of which the most famous is his ode on the battle of Tal y Moelvre, perhaps the defeat of the fleet entrusted in 1157 Gwalchmai. by Henry II. to Madoc ap Meredydd. It is from this ode that Gray translated his Triumphs of Owen "Owen's praise demands my song, Owen swift and Owen strong; Gwyneth's shield and Britain's gem," giving its own force to the bold image of Gwalchmai which Gray left out of his first version: "Checked by the torrent-tide of blood, Backward Menai rolls his flood." Owain, Prince of Powys. In Wales, as we have seen to be the case in Provence and elsewhere, rhyming had become in the latter half of the twelfth century an entertainment of their wit by princes and courtiers. Owain Kyveiliog, a fighting prince of Powys, who says of himself in one of his lines that "Owain's court has ever been fed on prey," and whose father was in favour at Henry the Second's court, wrote "The Hirlas Horn," the longest of the Welsh poems of the twelfth century. He was the Welsh prince who would not receive or visit Archbishop Baldwin when in 1188 he went through Wales preaching the Crusade, with Gerald de Barri by his side; for which contumacy the archbishop excommunicated him. A few years later this prince of Powys (he died in 1197) was on friendly terms with Henry the Second, who enjoyed the noble Welshman's wit. In his poem of "The Hirlas Horn" (a drinking-hornlong, blue, and silver-rimmed), Owain, Prince of Powys, imagines warriors assembled in his hall at night after a battle in the morning, and as he sits at "The Hirlas Horn." Prince the head of the board, to each of his chiefs he dedicates a cup and a little song, beginning with the words, "Fill, cupbearer," in celebration of his praise. There is a fine touch where he bids the cup-bearer fill to the chieftains Tudyr and Moreiddig, and, when he has ended the chant of their glory, turns to greet them, sees their places vacant, and breaks into mourning as he recollects how they had fallen in the fight. Another noble poet of the Welsh fought in the battle of which Gwalchmai sang: he was Howel ab Owain, son of Owain Gwynedd, King of North Wales. His Howel. life also was one of feud and strife, and he fell in battle with his brother over right of possession to the kingdom. Prince Howel wrote delicate and gay love-poetry. If he sang as a patriot that he hated "England, a flat inactive land," and that he loved Gwynedd, with its sea-coast and its mountains, its wide wilds and its sports of the chase, still the praise of fair women ran through all the strain. He loved his own land, its white sea-mews and beautiful women. "I love," he says, "the marches of Merioneth, where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm;" and he ends the song of "Howel's Patriotism" with a celebration by name of the most beautiful women in Wales, "from the gates of Chester to Portskewelt." Howel's love is of the average quality of that of the troubadours, such as they might, however gentle their natures and however delicate their song, share with a turbulent Welsh prince or with the Emperor Henry VI., the hero of the Christmas massacres at Palermo, or with a thrush at pairing-time. Kynddelw. Of the poetry of Kynddelw there remain fifty pieces, among which are expressions of the contempt of monks that was at the same time becoming a feature of the literature of Saxon-Norman England. “I will not," says Kynddelw, "receive the sacrament from wicked monks, with their gowns on their knees: I will commune with God Himself." Llywarch ab Llywelyn has left fewer pieces than Kynddelw, but they are less intricate in structure, and said to be more poetical. In one of them there is thought Llywarch ab to be a reference to the sailing away 66 on the Llywelyn. bosom of the vast ocean, in trouble great and immeasurable," of Prince Madoc, the son of Owain Gwynedd. In another poem, addressed to the hot iron of the Ordeal, he seems himself to have been made accountable for Madoc's disappearance. He says :— "To the Hot Iron. "Consecrated truth, glowing hot! My song delights in thy blessedness. Reflect when thou judgest the number of my kindred. Hot wounding creature, who created thee? I will ask advice through Peter of Christ, who was appointed to bear the cross; and of the fair interceders, Thomas and Philip and Paul and Andrew, lest my hand be misplaced and I be slain by the bright sword, and my kinsmen pay the retribution fee for murder. Good iron! clear me from the charge of having slain Madoc, and show that he who slew the fair prince shall have no part of heaven nor its nine kingdoms; but that I shall obtain the society of God and escape His wrath." Other Welsh bards. Eineon ap Gwgan, Davydd Benvras, Elidir Sais, Gwynvardd Brycheniog, and Phylip the Poet are the names of other Welsh bards who lived in the days of Llewelyn the Great, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. To the same and to a later age belong most of the mythological poems of the “ Awdl Vraith" and the Avallenau," or mystical song of the Apple Orchard, Welsh Arthurian romances, and the other popular tales or Mabinogion. The Mytho The poems called mythological are, in addition to the twenty-five that form the Mabinogi of Taliesin, twenty-eight in number. Their language is formed, and differs little, from that of the present day. One contains a reference to Gerald de Barri's dispute with the king about the See of St. David's, one refers to Poems. |