The briefest history of Welsh Poetry!

In presenting a basis for comparison from a Welsh perspective, Ifor ap Glyn and Karen Owen developed an entertaining and informative bilingual session focussing on Welsh poetry in Welsh, as it is one of oldest continuous literary traditions in Europe.

The earliest Welsh poetry dates back 1500 years and was written in what is now modern Scotland.  Ifor explained that Welsh Praise Poetry shows early predilection for lost causes, but pointed out despite these predictions, Wales and Welsh poetry survived and evolved over the centuries. This early Welsh poetry describes a warrior society.

“Y Gododdin” is the earliest surviving Welsh poem. While the manuscript in which it is preserved, commonly called the “Book of Aneirin”, dates to the 13th century, it is generally agreed that it preserves a much older text. It is a series of elegies for the men of the Gododdin, who died at a battle in Catraeth — now thought to be Catterick in Yorkshire — around the year 600. The poem is an account of the fighting which occurred between Saxons and Britons at the time of the Saxon invasions.

The “Y Gododdin” poem was presented in Welsh with an English translation 

Check poem in Welsh and English at:

http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sechard/492godo.htm

In taking poetry in Wales forward 600 -700 years, Ifor explained that by 1282 Wales had evolved into courtly society with own legal system, however this was ended by English conquest and Karen Own read the “Lament for Llywelyn” that marks the end of that world and is suitably apocalyptic in tone.

This is a short extract of the poem, with an extended use of sympathetic background, that poet Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch wrote after 1298 as an elegy on Llywelyn:

Do you not see the path of the wind and the rain?
Do you not see the oak trees in turmoil?
Cold my heart in a fearful breast
For the king, the oaken door of Aberffraw

Ifor ap Glyn and Karen Owen discussed the fact that praise poetry to living and dead has remained important within Welsh tradition up to present day, making Welsh poetry more socially engaged.

Other strands of poetry at that time in Wales include poems to ask favours and to give thanks afterwards. The late mediaeval period saw arrival of love poetry, which was a popular device called “llatai” or “go between”, sent between two lovers.

Karen Owen read “Yr Wylan”,  or "The Seagull", which is a love poem in 30 lines by the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym in which he addresses and praises a seagull flying over the waves, comparing it to, among other things, a gauntlet, a ship at anchor, a sea-lily, and a nun. He asks it to find a girl whom he compares to Eigr and who can be found on the ramparts of a castle, to intercede with her, and to tell her that the poet cannot live without her. He loves her for her beauty more than Myrddin or Taliesin ever loved, and unless he wins kind words from her he will die.

Karen Owen explained that Welsh poetry has tended to be male dominated and the early female pioneers neglected. She gave a portrait of Angharad James, an important late seventeenth-century North Wales poet, a forceful character who was well educated, a harpist and a prolific poet. Her most powerful poem is a lament on the death of her son. Interestingly, one of the ways that poetry was a shared and circulated at this time was by singing them on preferred existing tunes, a similarity with Jamaica Dub Poetry.

Ifor ap Glyn explained that in the centuries that followed progress proceeded a pace with the democratisation in writing poetry, with the pithy wisdom of “penillion telyn”, and hymns both aimed to address and engage the ordinary man and woman. Karen presented an example of “pennill telyn”.

Bringing the audience up to date, Ifor explained that hymns have become the new folk song, for example, the recent adoption of Calon Lân by football supporters.

The session closed with rousing singing of Calon Lân with the audience.