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STUDIA CELTICA, XLIII (2009), 95 –121
Claf Abercuawg and the Voice of Llywarch Hen*
RICHARD SHARPE University of Oxford
The remains of early Welsh poetry have survived by a very restricted manuscript trans - mission. It is impossible really to discover how widely known were the poems that we still read and enjoy. The Red Book of Hergest, made towards the end of the fourteenth century, is the most varied monument of the early literature, but its close relationship with the older White Book of Rhydderch, from the middle of the fourteenth century, suggests that even when it was copied the manuscript circulation of early texts was already restricted. The importance of these two manuscripts as a source of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century transcripts further reinforces the impression of limited manuscript circulation. 1 The Black Book of Carmarthen, now dated to the middle of the thirteenth century, stands apart though some of its contents present evident parallels. It is also evident that poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, poets whose names we know and whose environment we can infer, knew some of the poems that have reached us through the Red Book, just as they knew poems that have come down to us only in the Llyfr Aneurin of the late thirteenth century. 2 These poems were more widely known, it appears, in 1200 than in 1400. Singular manuscript transmission of works once more widely circulated poses a hard question: how far must we trust our only copy? Who can say how much hengerdd was known to the poets of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries? Yet thinking of the cynfeirdd as they were known to these gogynfeirdd may help to restore our perspective, enabling us to imagine the poems circulating in multiple copies before their transmission shrank to what is known today. It may also remind us that historicizing will mislead us in dating the poems. 3 The cynfeirdd sang about a very remote past, but in the englynion in particular there is a lively exchange of lines and even stanzas that suggests a poetic culture and community that need not be so remote. 4
* This paper was delivered as the 53rd University of tradition of the Red Book englynion ’, Studia Celtica Wales O’Donnell Lecture at Bangor on 18 April, at 18/19 (1983–4), 79–95. Lampeter on 23 April, and at Cardiff on 30 April 2 Morfydd E. Owen, ‘Y cynfeirdd yn gwaith y 2007. I am grateful to the Board of Celtic Studies of gogynfeirdd’, Ysgrifau Beirniadol 19 (1993), 13–28. the University of Wales for the invitation, and to those 3 Datings on the basis of suppositions about the people who made my visits to the three instititutions historical relevance of literary works must be treated so enjoyable. I offer my grateful thanks also to Oliver with great caution: Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘Historical Padel and Nicolas Jacobs for their generous advice on need and literary narrative: a caveat from ninth- drafts of the paper and for sharing their own work century Wales’, Welsh History Review 17 (1994–5), 1–39, ahead of publication. discusses the assumptions that underlie the dating of 1 Daniel Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts Canu Llywarch Hen and Canu Urien to mid-ninth- (Aberystwyth, 2000), draws together up-to-date infor - century Powys in the time of Merfyn Frych. mation on these manuscripts. Particular reference 4 Some examples will be found below, in the may be made to Jenny Rowland, ‘The manuscript comments on stanzas 2, 12, 17, 19, 23, and 41. The 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:48 Page 96
96 RICHARD SHARPE This lecture will concern itself with some of the englynion copied consecutively in columns 1026–49 the Red Book. The first part of these are largely gnomic in character, forming sequences often defined by opening formulae. The second part is made up of speech poems in the voice of characters from the legendary past, Llywarch Hen and his sons; the slayer of Urien Rheged; and Heledd, sister of Cynddylan. When the foundations for our understanding of these texts were laid by Sir Ifor Williams in the early 1930s, the voice of legendary figures exerted a strong pull. He advocated a theory that these speech poems were the residue of ancient stories, the poetry without the prose, a theory which came with – or perhaps came out of – a sense that these were antique compositions. He used the expression englynion chwedlonol in Welsh, but his choice of the English word ‘saga’ reveals the connotations he had in mind. 5 He gave little attention to the poems that preceded these, and he appears to have agreed with his student Kenneth Jackson that the latter should edit the gnomic poetry. As a consequence of the theory, and of the division by genre, it takes a considerable effort to read the poems as they have come down to us in the manuscript. 6 Although the monologues concerning Urien and Cynddylan were not materially altered by Williams’s interpretation, the stanzas in the voice of Llywarch Hen, and his dialogue with his son Gwên, were much rearranged; poems preserved in the Black Book were introduced alongside those of the Red Book; and the poems were laid in sequence to construct a story that cannot be shown ever to have been so conceived by the poets or their audiences. Now, Williams’s theory has long since lost its simple power to explain the poems, but they are still presented in an editorial sequence. The search for story has meant real violence to the manuscript text, reordering what it must be supposed the compilers and copyists of our manuscripts had jumbled, and leaving much uncer - tainty as to what constitutes a poem. 7 The separation of legendary material from the gnomic and other englynion brought together in the Red Book has made it harder to recognize their shared language, the phrases and stanzas that pass in one direction or the other between gnomic poems and speech poems. As a result, there is a not-so-creative tension between how we read them, that is their literary impact on our perceptions, and what we are taught to suppose they are in terms of literary history, a jumbled residue. And yet some of this poetry has proved highly approachable to modern readers in spite of its difficulties. This paper will argue that gnomic lines and the emotions of a speaking persona
contrary argument is made by N. J. A. Williams, ‘Canu contexts of Old English elegiac poetry’, Études celtiques Llywarch Hen and the Finn cycle’, in Astudiaethau ar yr 26 (1989), 95–142. I am more inclined to think that Hengerdd cyflwynedig i Syr Idris Foster (Caerdydd, 1978), the reciter of the poems might set the scene in his own 234–65 (at pp. 241–8), who explains recurrent lines words as appropriate to the occasion. and stanzas by looking beyond a written text to oral- 6 Patrick Ford made a partial attempt to rectify this formulaic composition. in The Poetry of Llywarch Hen (Berkeley, CA, 1974), 5 I. Williams, ‘The poetry of Llywarch Hen’, presenting the englynion of cols. 1034.1–1042.10 in a Proceedings of the British Academy 18 (1933–4), 269–302, single, unbroken sequence in modern orthography. introduced the word in company, ‘the verse elements For the collection of englynion as a whole, however, it is in a cycle of stories, tales, sagas told in pre-Norman still necessary to use the line-by-line edition of the times’ (p. 273), but subsequently used it alone, ‘the manuscript by J. Gwenogvryn Evans [1852–1930], The Llywarch saga’ (p. 279), and so on. The word ‘saga’ Poetry in the Red Book of Hergest (Llanbedrog, 1911). and the notion of elements surviving from sagas 7 Sir Ifor Williams, Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry appear in this context already in H. M. Chadwick and (Dublin, 1944), 23, spoke of ‘the englynion now N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature , 3 vols jumbled together in these two old manuscripts’. (Cambridge, 1932–40), i. 33–47. The possibility of Oliver Padel has provided a good introduction to the connecting prose is discussed by Jenny Rowland, ‘The issues, ‘Legendary poetry in englyn -metre’, in A New prose setting of the early Welsh englynion chwedlonol ’, Guide to Welsh Literature , edited by Nerys Ann Jones Ériu 36 (1985), 29–43, and with wider linguistic (Cardiff, 2008). comparisons by Nicolas Jacobs, ‘Celtic saga and the 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:48 Page 97
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 97 work together to create a poetic mood; the technique works as well in dialogue as in monologue; and the distinction between gnomic and legendary should play a smaller role in our approach to the early englynion .
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The poetic idiom of these englynion is often difficult because of its use of gnomic or senten - tious statements. In 1577, Henry Peacham in The Garden of Eloquence defined a gnome as ‘a saying pertaining to the maners and common practises of men, which declareth by an apte breuity, what in this our lyfe ought to be done, or not done ’. 8 In discussion of early medieval literature, the word is used rather to signify short statements both about the human condition and about the natural world. 9 The Welsh word gwirebol conveys the sense more clearly than the English gnomic. General statements, however, whether aphoristic or descriptive, become intermingled with particular descriptive phrases and particular human statements. While some poems are gnomic throughout, others mingle the gnomic with lines that demand a specific context. Compare, for example, the following two englynion . The first might address ‘my brothers’, though a comma is not necessary: 10 Eiry mynyd, coch blaen pyr, Mountain snow; red is the top of the pear tree, llidiawc lluossawc ongyr: fierce and serried are spears: och rac hiraeth vy mrodyr. alas for longing, my brothers. And the second addresses Gwrnerth: 11 Eiry mynyd, gwynt am ty: Mountain snow; wind about the house: kanys llefery uelly, since you say so, beth, Wrnerth, a wna hynny? what is it, Gwrnerth, that causes that? In both cases, the opening of the stanza bears no apparent relation to the close of the stanza. That is absolutely characteristic. Taken out of context, both of them might be thought to have come from dialogues. In the first, a man, or perhaps a monk, grieves to his brothers or, perhaps, for his brothers; in the second, we look for Gwrnerth’s reply. But in fact the first stanza comes from a poem in which the point of almost every stanza is a gnome. For example, the preceding stanza is:
8 [Henry Peacham, 1546–1634], The Garden of instruction and by its pervasive interest in the natural Eloquence (London, 1577), sig. U.iij r. world, which in the case of Welsh texts extends to the 9 Kenneth Jackson regarded ‘gnomic’ as ‘the term inclusion of much natural description which is not generally applied to this kind of poetry’ and offered a gnomic at all’. It can be easily distinguished from definition: ‘A gnome is a sententious statement about ‘preceptual poetry’, also popular in medieval Wales. universals, whether about the affairs of men (“human- 10 Red Book, col. 1028.44–1029.1 (J. Gwenogvryn gnome”) or about external nature (“nature-gnome”); Evans [1852–1930], The Poetry in the Red Book of Hergest it need not be, and usually is not, a current popular (Llanbedrog, 1911), 7); edited by K. H. Jackson, Early saying with an implied moral, as the proverb is, and it Welsh Gnomic Poems (Cardiff, 1935), 24 (3. 21), and need contain no advice or exhortation, like the translated by K. H. Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry precept’ (K. H. Jackson [1909–91], Early Welsh Gnomic (Cambridge, 1935), 60 (E. 21); ed. J. N. Jacobs, Early Poems (Cardiff, 1935), 1). Nicolas Jacobs, in the intro - Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry (Cardiff, forthcoming). duction to his Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry The last line might be interpreted as ‘Alas, how much (Cardiff, 2008), observes that ‘gnomic poetry’ ‘is a I miss my brothers’. conventional term for a compilation of sententious 11 Red Book, col. 1026. 14–15 (Evans, Poetry , 6); ed. verse concerning human life and the natural world’, K. H. Jackson, ‘The colloquy of Llywelyn and shrewdly adding that it is ‘distinguished by its Gwrnerth’, ZCP 21 (1938), 24–32. preference for sententious statement over moral 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:48 Page 98
98 RICHARD SHARPE Eiry mynyd, pysc yn llyn, Mountain snow, fish in the lake, balch hebawc, bacwyawc unbynn: proud is the hawk, curly-haired are chiefs: nyt ef a geiff pawb a uynn. not everyone gets what he wants. The gnomes in the last line are not overtly related to the nature gnomes in the rest of the stanza, nor is there any apparent link between the stanzas beyond the verbal connexion of the opening words, Eiry mynyd ‘Mountain snow’. The gnomes cover a considerable range of human experience, ‘good does not come from too much sleep ’, ‘a mischievous man is rarely without litigation ’, ‘grievous, my friend, is sin’. The poem from which the other stanza comes is actually a dialogue. The stanza that follows it is Gwrnerth’s reply to Llywelyn: Eiry mynyd, gwynt deheu: Mountain snow, wind from the south: kanys traethaf prif eiryeu, Since I utter a weighty saying, tebyckaf yw mae angheu. It is most likely that it is death. The same poetic idiom, then, can be used for dialogue or to provide a descriptive framework for a catalogue of aphorisms or indeed both at the same time, as we find in the Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle. 12 The Dialogue of Llywelyn and Gwrnerth has the unique distinction of having its first stanza quoted under the plica or fold at the bottom of a late thirteenth-century deed from Margam Abbey. Aspects of spelling and script led to the conjecture that it was copied there, rather than quoted from memory, and copied indeed in imitation of an exemplar written no later than the eleventh century. 13 This was never really credible, and Daniel Huws has shown that it was a learned hoax. 14 The poem provides a relatively accessible lesson in how one should read verses in this idiom. In the first section, Llywelyn leads and the dying Gwrnerth answers; in the second section, Gwrnerth’s ghost returns to talk with Llywelyn. Gwrnerth has the last word before the break and the first word after it; his pause and perhaps action in performance must have helped the hearer to understand. 15 All the stanzas until the last one before the break are linked by the recurrent formula Eiry mynyd ; the second section leads off in the same way, with Gwrnerth asking Llywelyn the same question as Llywelyn had asked him: 16 Eiry mynyd, gwynt am berth, Mountain snow, wind about the bush, kanys creawdyr nef a’m nerth, as the creator of heaven fortifies me, ae kysgu a wna Gwrnerth? Does Gwrneth sleep?
12 Oxford, Jesus College, MS 20, fols. 1r–3v, and in joke’, Journal of Celtic Studies 4 (2004), 213–18, proves various antiquarian transcripts; ed. Algernon Herbert that it is not medieval at all and picks out Lhuyd’s [1792–1855], Britannia after the Romans (London, assistant Alban Thomas as the likely perpetrator. 1836–41), ii. 28–34 (text), 34–9 (comment); ed. Ifor 15 The alternation of stanzas is otherwise consistent Williams [1881–1965], ‘Ymddiddan Arthur a’r Eryr’, throughout the poem, except that in the first part the BBCS 2 (1925), 269–86; ed. Marged Haycock, two stanzas that end nyt oes nawd rac tynghetuen ‘there Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar ([Felindre, is no protection against fate’ and a gaffaf i gymun Abertawe], 1994), 297–312 (no. 30). ynghardawt? ‘shall I receive communion in charity?’ 13 F. G. Cowley and Nesta Lloyd, ‘An Old Welsh must both be in the voice of Gwrnerth. One may englyn in Harley Charter 75 C 38’, BBCS 25 (1972–4), wonder whether a stanza in Llywelyn’s voice has been 407–417. lost in transmission. 14 Marged Haycock, introducing the poem in 16 Red Book, col. 1026 (Evans, Poetry , 6); ed. and Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar , 339–40, trans. W. F. Skene [1809–1892], The Four Ancient Books picks up from Cowley and Lloyd the fact that Edward of Wales (Edinburgh, 1868), i. 590–94 (in English), ii. Lhuyd had already transcribed the Red Book in 1697 237–41 (in Welsh); ed. and trans. K. H. Jackson, ‘The when he had the loan of more than 200 Margam colloquy of Llywelyn and Gwrnerth’, ZCP 21 (1938), deeds in 1707: she suggested that he might have 24–32; ed. Haycock, Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu copied the stanza. Daniel Huws, ‘The Old Welsh Crefyddol Cynnar , 338–48 (no. 32). englyn of the Margam Abbey charter: a Lhuydian 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:48 Page 99
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 99 Eiry mynyd, Duw yn bennaf, Mountain snow, God is supreme, kanys attaw gwediaf, as I pray to him, nac ef, kysgu ny allaf. No, I cannot sleep. Eiry mynyd, gwynt am tu: Mountain snow; wind about the house: kanys llefery uelly, since you say so, beth, Wrnerth, a wna hynny? What is it, Gwrnerth, that causes that? Eiry mynyd, gwynt deheu, Mountain snow, wind from the south; kanys traethaf prif eiryeu, Since I utter a weighty saying, tebyckaf yw mae angheu. It is most likely that it is death. Eiry mynyd, gorwyn bro, Mountain snow, delightful the land, detwyd pawb wrth ae llocho, fortunate everyone in him who cherishes him, creawdyr nef a’th dangho. May the creator of heaven deliver you. Eiry mynyd, gorwyn prenn, Mountain snow, delightful the tree, kanys llafaraf amgen, since I shall speak otherwise, nyt oes nawd rac tynghetuen. There is no protection against fate. Eiry mynyd, pob deuawt, Mountain snow, every rite rac gormeil goual dyd brawt, against overflow of grief on judgement day, a gaffaf i gymun ynghardawt? Shall I receive communion in charity? Eiry mynyd, gwynt am tu, Mountain snow, wind about the house, kanys llefery uelly, since you speak so, och, vy mrawd, ae reit hynny? Alas, my brother, is that necessary? Awen drut, mi a’th garaf, Fired by the spirit, I love you, hyt ar Duw y gwediaf, even to God I pray, Llywelyn, rywyr y kaffaf. Llywelyn, too late I receive it. ** Eiry mynyd, gwynt am vrynn, Mountain snow, wind about the hill, kanys creawdyr nef a’m mynn since the creator of heaven wishes me, ae kysgu y mae Llywelyn? Does Llywelyn sleep? Eiry mynyd, gwynt deheu, Mountain snow, wind in the south, kanys traethaf prif eiryeu, since I utter a weighty saying, nac ef, kanu vy oreu. No, I sing my hours. Kenneth Jackson noted the recurrent use of Eiry mynyd , which he thought started out as a descriptive ‘nature-formula’, belonging in and relevant to a nature poem, but taken over irrelevantly into sententious or dialogue verses. He observed of the verse-form here, ‘other irrelevant phrases, particularly in the first and second lines of englynion , were frequently used apparently for the sake of filling up the verse, very often with strong parallelism in each of a pair of dialogue stanzas ’. 17 Jackson needed a second example of someone’s returning from the dead to help him grasp the dynamic of the poem across the
17 Jackon, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 184–6; quotation from id. ‘Colloquy of Llywelyn and Gwrnerth’, 26. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:48 Page 100
100 RICHARD SHARPE break. He found it in the Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle, though he still described the Dialogue of Llywelyn and Gwrnerth as two poems with a missing prose link. His sense of relevance is also a prosaic one. It is true that for much of this poem one can understand what is happening more quickly by ignoring the first two lines of each stanza and reading only the third line; conversation continues syntactically from third line to third line, but that does not make a poem. The gnomic idiom is central to the poetry. The idiom is widely used in the early englyn poetry. It has been discussed from time to time, for example, by Jackson as ‘problems of Welsh nature poetry’; Sarah Lynn Higley’s book devotes a chapter to ‘Grappling with the Gnomic ’. 18 The combination of gnomes and nature has been studied as part of a wider tradition that includes Old Irish and Old English poetry. 19 But the gnomic manner was almost excluded along with the gnomic matter in the discursive 1990 edition of what Jenny Rowland called Early Welsh Saga Poetry . In her brief comments on Ymattrec Llywelyn a Gwrnerth , she says that ‘the poem has an extensive overlay of gnomic and nature-description lines which can easily be seen as padding ’. 20 To my mind, the legacy of Ifor Williams’s saga theory has got in the way of seeing the poetic idiom across the range of its uses. Williams was also too ready to describe ‘filler lines ’ ( llinellau llanw ) as irrelevant, though he was not insensitive to their role in poetic effect. 21 This is surely the fundamental question, How do the gnomic lines contribute to the poem? At a very basic level, it could be said that they set a mood for the particulars of the poem. And the mood is usually elegiac, as we shall see. I want to emphasize two roles for this gnomic idiom. First, the generalized statement about man and nature may be closely attuned to the precise mood of the moment, paralleling or contrasting with the specific content of the stanzas. In this stanza the familiar figure of Llywarch Hen hints to his son that he suspects the young man will not keep his promise: 22 Medal migned, kalet riw, Marshes are soft, a slope hard; rac carn cann tall glan a vriw: the edge of the bank breaks under horse’s hoof: edewit ny wnelher nydiw. a promise not kept is nothing.
18 Jackon, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 176–92; S. L. poetry, and Proverbial poetry, come to be employed so Higley, Between Languages: The Uncooperative Text in freely in Welsh saga? A simple explanation is usually Early Welsh and Old English Nature Poetry (University best, and I am tempted to offer a very simple one. In Park, PA, 1993), 97–118. these dramatic tales, dialogue was regularly put into 19 For example, H. Pilch, ‘The elegiac genre in Old verse form, and their authors found considerable English and early Welsh poetry’, ZCP 29 (1964), 209– difficulty in fitting question and answer, the thrust and 24; P. L. Henry, The Early English and Celtic Lyric parry of lively talk, into a metric frame. Brevity is the (London, 1966), 67–90 (‘The Welsh background: soul of wit. Even a three-line stanza is too long for a penitential and sententious poetry’), with Welsh neat reply; one line is ample in most cases. So they examples also in the next chapter, 91–132 (‘The framed their dialogues in nature poetry and proverbs, gnomic manner and matter’); J. N. Jacobs, ‘Celtic saga which provided them with just the material to fill up and the contexts of Old English elegiac poetry’, Études what was left of the line or englyn or poem. There was celtiques 26 (1989), 95–142. no chance of their listeners’ mistaking the frame for 20 J. Rowland, ‘A Study of the Saga englynion with the picture, for this padding had no relevance an edition of the major texts’, PhD diss. (University of whatever to the dialogue. It was like the scroll work Wales, Aberystwyth, 1982), ii. 608; published as Early decorating initial letters in manuscripts’. Welsh Saga Poetry. A study and edition of the Englynion 22 Red Book, col. 1037. 15–16 (Evans, Poetry , 11); (Cambridge, 199), 284. Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 2 (I. 8). The middle line 21 Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , xliii–xliv; id. here attracts comparison with Llym awel , st. 21b (as Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry , 21–2.Williams, followed noted by Williams, 63), briuhid tal glan gan carn carv by Jackson, treated nature poetry and gnomic poetry culgrwm cam ‘the edge of the bank crumbles with the as antecedent to ‘Welsh saga’, a source of filler lines: stag’s hoof, lean-stooping, bent’. ‘How did these kindred forms of poetry, Nature 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:48 Page 101
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 101 Whereas Jackson cited this as an example of irrelevance, Gwyn Thomas has rightly used it to make the opposite point. 23 The first two lines stand in apposition as a foil to the personal comment in the last line: Llywarch is asking his son Gwên whether his promise will give way under pressure or hold firm, though even this is couched as a gnome. Contrast is no less effective in making a point. Take, for example: 24 Yn Aber Cuawc yt ganant gogeu In Aber Cuawg sing the cuckoos ar gangheu blodeuawc: on blossoming branches: gwae glaf a’e clyw yn vodawc. Woe to the sick man who hears them constantly . The constant singing of the cuckoos in maytime – bodawg will be a constant word in the poem – and the blossom on the branches are set against the sadness in the sick man’s heart. And when the mood is so often elegiac, the contrast accentuates it. The second role of the gnomic idiom cannot be illustrated with single stanzas. It provides structural links from stanza to stanza, often by verbal cyrch gymeriad , binding together sections of the poem as expressing a particular point. In the poem which I propose to look at in detail, the nature element establishes the architecture as well as providing an impressionistic background against which the human content is set. A poem such as Eiry mynyd has little or no apparent structure, but what we shall see as architectural elements in other poems here still provide variations on a theme: 25 Eiry mynyd, hyd hellawt; Mountain snow, the stag is hunted; gochwiban gwynt ywch bargawt twr; the wind whistles over the eaves of the tower; trwm, a wr, yw pechawt. grievous, o man, is sin. Eiry mynyd, hyd ar neit; Mountain snow, the stag is leaping; gochwiban gwynt ywch gwenbleit uchel; the wind whistles over the high white wall; gnawt tawl yn deleit. it is usual for the calm to be comely. Eiry mynyd, hyd ym bro; Mountain snow, the stag is in the vale; gochwiban gwynt ywch blaen to; the wind whistles over the top of the roof; nyt ymgel drwc yn lle y bo. evil does not conceal itself, wherever it may be. While the opening phrase, Eiry mynyd , is often followed by mention of the stag, only in these three stanzas does the second line also repeat on a single theme, the wind’s whistling. When the particular is added, variation may bring a twist in the tale. The greater part of this talk will be taken up with a very well-known piece from the Red Book of Hergest, Goreiste ar vrynn , and the stanzas that follow it in the manuscript, Kynn bum keinvaglawc . Here gnomic phrases about the natural world are used to shape the structure of the poem and to give verbal colour to its specific human context; read in this way, I shall try to argue that a single poem emerges across an incorrect initial in the Red Book, which has caused the stanzas to be read hitherto as two poems. If there were time, I should have liked also to read an equally popular piece from the Black Book of Carmarthen, Llym awel, llwm bryn , in which the mixture of gnomes and narrative is hard
23 Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 184; 25 Red Book, col. 1028. 22–7 (Evans, Poetry, 7); G. Thomas, Y Traddodiad Barddol (Caerdydd, 1976), Jackson, Early Welsh Gnomic Poems , 23 (3. 10–12); 93–4. Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 59 (E. 10–12). 24 Red Book, col. 1034. 35–36 (Evans, Poetry , 10); Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 23 (VI. 5). 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 102
102 RICHARD SHARPE to unravel, so much so, indeed, that when it was first edited with commentary Ifor Williams omitted eleven stanzas and shortened others in Canu Llywarch Hen , while Kenneth Jackson in Early Welsh Gnomic Poems omitted eleven of the stanzas printed by Williams. This treatment has added to the difficulties presented by the poem itself and given credence to the notion that the Black Book has preserved a composite. 26 It might appear as an unfortunate accident that both editions, and Jackson’s separate discussion, were all published in 1935, as if in isolation from one another. It was not so. Williams’s edition was largely ready at the time of his Rhys Lecture on Llywarch Hen to the British Academy on 1 February 1933; the young Kenneth Jackson read the gnomic poems under his guidance in Bangor in 1933–4, and then in 1935 Williams read a proof of Jackson’s Early Celtic Nature Poetry .27 They both defined genre in terms of subject, and Williams conceded to Jackson a partition of the poem between them: I prefer to place greater weight on treatment and to seek unity rather than division.
*
First, then, Goreiste ar vrynn a eruyn vym bryd ‘My heart longs to sit on a hill’. From its large initial G, this poem fills the lower half of col. 1034 and the whole of col. 1035 in the Red Book. At the top of col. 1036 a large initial K marks off as a separate poem, Kynn bum kein vaglawc ‘Before I was bent-backed’, which fills the column. No new initial marks the beginning of Llywarch Hen’s conversation with his son Gwên, Na wisc wedy kwyn ‘Do not take arms after a feast’, and there is no new initial until the beginning of Canu Urien in col. 1039. Neither Ifor Williams nor Jenny Rowland read Canu Llywarch Hen in the order of the manuscript: both conjectured a break without a major initial before Na wisc wedi kwyn , and both moved the preceding stanzas to a position later in their different orders. The twenty-one stanzas of Kynn bum kein vaglawc were treated as a separate poem under the title Can yr henwr . In so doing, they either accept the omission of an initial or they feel free to reorder the manuscript sequence of stanzas in Llywarch’s voice. There is a serious question here as to the definition of a poem in this context, but I hold that over until later. To remove an initial as incorrect is admittedly more intrusive than to insert an omitted
26 Rowland, ‘Study’, ii. 511–31, Saga Poetry , 229–40; acknowledges his ‘help in reading a proof’. Neither of P. Sims-Williams, ‘The provenance of the Llywarch them explains the partition of Llym awel . Jackson also Hen poems: a case for Llan-gors, Brycheiniog’, drew attention to Williams’s work in a review-article, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 26 (Winter 1993), 27– ‘The poems of Llywarch the aged’, Antiquity 9 (1935), 63 (at p. 36). The word ‘composite’ presumably 323–7: ‘Williams has brought order into this chaos by assumes medieval editing. Rowland judges the poem a theory which is perhaps the most brilliant aspect of to be ‘undoubtedly the most interesting and the most the whole book. As the poems appear in the Red Book artistically successful’ of the miscellaneous poems of Hergest, the earliest manuscript, they cover about (‘Study’, ii. 511, Saga Poetry , 229), but in the next 12½ columns (1034–1042, 1044–1049), divided by breath she says, ‘it also appears to be composite, and large capitals into five poems. Williams shows – and this many of the stanzas may be intrusive’; at the end of is indeed obvious, though no one appears to have her discussion the poem ‘appears to be more noticed it before – that there are really considerably composite and more corrupt than most of the more than five, but that with these exceptions they englynion poems’ (‘Study’, ii. 531, Saga Poetry , 240). Is have all been run together without any indication the reader to regard its artistic success as accidental? where one poem ends and the next begins’ (pp. 323 –4), 27 The prefaces are dated in January, May, and July ‘Professor Williams shows that the poems belong to two 1935; prefaces were written after the proofs were independent cycles: the story of Llywarch Hen and the corrected. Williams’s preface is first in the sequence quite unconnected traditions about Cynddylan and and makes no forward-looking mention of Jackson’s other descendants of Cyndrwyn’ (p. 324), ‘The poem books; in both Early Welsh Gnomic Poems and Early Celtic about the cuckoos of Aber Cuawg has nothing to do Nature Poetry Jackson pays warm thanks to Williams with Llywarch and belongs to some different story for reading the poems with him, and in the latter now unknown’ (p. 325). 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 103
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 103 one; a copyist may have omitted it inadvertently, but for a manuscript to have it in the wrong place may suggest scribal interpretation. The result for the stanzas that I discuss is that the lamentations that begin in the voice of someone conventionally referred to as Claf Abercuawg segue smoothly into the lamentations of the old man. 28 The old man identifies himself as Llywarch; to read the sick man as Llywarch, therefore, supposes only one mistake in the textual transmission, an unnecessary major initial K. Ifor Williams was sure that the sick man and the old man could not both be Llywarch Hen, first because in the two witnesses to Risiart Langfford’s lost transcript of the lost poetic section of the White Book of Rhydderch Goreiste ar vrynn was headed as ‘Englynion mab claf’ and ‘Ynglynion map claf ap Llowarch’; second, because he interpreted mab claf as ‘gwr gwahanglwyfus’, a leper. 29 If the sick man was a leper, he could not have been Llywarch or in any way connected to Canu Llywarch Hen . On this point Williams was emphatic: ‘Ni chredaf am funud fod yr ungan hon yn perthyn i Gylch Llywarch o gwbl … Ond perthyn y gân i’r un ysgol’. Rowland rather emphasizes that ‘the narrator’s situation’ confirms that claf or mabclaf here means ‘leper’, as if exile and loneliness were confined to lepers. 30 As well as meaning ‘leper’, however, claf has a far more general meaning, ‘sick’, nor is any reason offered why in combination with mab it should be restricted to the narrow sense. 31 A year or two after Rowland’s book was published, Nicolas Jacobs made this point. 32 Before Williams, the sick man was Llywarch, and the
28 The two parts of the poem have been edited or Penguin Book of Welsh Verse (Harmondsworth, 1967), translated several times: 87–9 (in English); Clancy, Earliest Welsh Poetry , 76–8 (in Goreiste ar vrynn (32 stanzas), by William Owen English); Bedwyr Lewis Jones in Gwyn Thomas and Pughe [1759–1835], The Heroic Elegies and other pieces of others, Yr Aelwyd Hon. Diweddariadau o hen farddoniaeth Llywarç hen (London, 1792), 58–67 (with facing Gymraeg (Llandybïe, 1970), 81–3 (modern para- English); Owen Jones [1741–1814], Edward Williams phrase); I. Williams, The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry , ed. [1747–1826], and William Owen Pughe [1759–1835], R. S. Bromwich (Cardiff, 1972), 133–5 (part, in The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (London, 1801), i. English); Ford, Llywarch Hen , 74–83 (in modernized 126–8, (Denbigh, 1870), i. 100–101; Skene, Four Welsh and English); G. Thomas, Y Traddodiad barddol Ancient Books of Wales , i. 580–84 (in English), ii. 255–9 (Caerdydd, 1976), 85–8 (in modernized Welsh with (in Welsh); Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 23–7 (VI); paraphrase), and in Astudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 53–6 (in English); (Caerdydd, 1978), 266–8; Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 19–23, J. P. Clancy, The Earliest Welsh Poetry (London, 1970), 87–9 (in English); E. Rolant, Llywarch Hen a’i Feibion 91 –5 (in English); P. K. Ford, The Poetry of Llywarch Hen (Aberystwyth, 1984), 88–95 (with Modern Welsh (Berkeley, CA, 1974), 66–75 (in modernized Welsh paraphrase); Rowland, Saga Poetry , 415–18, 474–6 (in and English); Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 57–63, 105–107 (in English); Higley, Between Languages , 268–71 (with English), Saga Poetry , 448–52, 497–9 (in English); S. L. facing English); Ford, The Celtic Poets , 182–4 (in Higley, Between Languages: The uncooperative text in early English, again revised; omits st. 46 (19); Clancy, Welsh and Old English nature poetry (University Park, PA, Medieval Welsh Poems , 87–9. 1993), 263–8 (with facing English); P. K. Ford, The 29 Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , lvi–lvii, 173–4. The Celtic Poets (Belmont, MA, 1999), 179–82 (in English, word is found again – an echo of this poem – in one of not a reprint of his 1974 translation; omits st. 18); J. P. the two poems of Llywelyn Ddu ap y Pastard from the Clancy, Medieval Welsh Poems (Dublin, 2003), 101–104 mid-fourteenth century, Dychan i Fadog ap Hywel a’i (in English). osgordd , line 57, ed. D. Foster Evans in A. Parry Owen Kyn bum kein vaglawc (21 stanzas), by Pughe, Heroic and D. Foster Evans, Gwaith Llywelyn Brydydd Elegies , 118–25 (with facing English); Myvyrian Hoddnant, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Hillyn ac eraill , Cyfres Archaiology (London, 1801), i. 114–15, (Denbigh, Beirdd yr Uchelwyr (Aberystwyth, 1996), 179; Foster 1870), i. 92–3; Skene, Four Ancient Books , i. 326–9 (in Evans translates as ‘un gwahanglwyfus’ (p. 184) but English), ii. 259–61 (in Welsh) (both continuing notes from Canu Llywarch Hen the possibility of a without break into Na wisc wedi kwyn ); I. Williams, personal name (p. 201). ‘The poetry of Llywarch Hen’, Proceedings of the British 30 Rowland, ‘Study’, ii. 446, Saga Poetry , 192. Academy 18 (1933–4), 280–82 (part, in English); 31 William Owen Pughe proposes to take it as a Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 8–11 (II); K. H. Jackson, name, Mab Claf ‘Son of Sickness’, or as a compound A Celtic Miscellany (London, 1951; Harmondsworth, epithet, mabglaf , ‘sick for a son’ ( Heroick Elegies , 67). 1971), 257–8 (no. 210) (in English); A. Conran, 32 J. N. Jacobs, ‘Clefyd Abercuog’, BBCS 39 (1992), 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 104
104 RICHARD SHARPE lament of the sick man of Aber Cuawg was read as evidence that Llywarch in his wanderings took himself to Aber Cuawg. I am conscious that R. S. Thomas, in a memorable eisteddfod lecture, invested that place-name with symbolic meaning, uncon - cerned as to whether the place itself existed. 33 Edward Lhuyd, on the other hand, connected the name with Plas Dolguog, near Machynlleth, where the Dulas flows into the Dyfi. 34 Now let us proceed to a reading of the text in the hope that literary reasons will persuade you that we may have one poem rather than two. 1. Goreiste ar vrynn a eruyn uym bryt, To sit on a hill longs my heart a heuyt ny’m kychwyn: but still it does not stir me: byrr vyn teith diffeith vyn tydyn. short is my journey, desolate my homestead. 2. Llem awel llwm
56–70. And earlier in his paper, ‘Celtic saga and the in Y Cymmrodor 1 (1892–1936), pt 4, 681–2, contexts of Old English elegiac poetry’, 136n, ‘the describes the identification as ‘popular’ in his notes on translation claf “leper”, though not impossible, is the remains of the Description of Wales by George tendentious and should not be allowed the status of Owen [1552–1613]. If correct, Cuawg can hardly have received doctrine’. been a river-name, for Dulas is an ancient river-name, 33 R. S. Thomas [1913–2000], Abercuawg , Y ddarlith not a relatively recent superimposition; Sims-Williams lenyddol flynyddol, Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru, suggests perhaps a personal name (‘The provenance Aberteifi (Llandysul, 1976). of the Llywarch Hen poems’, 40). Antiquarian 34 Edward Lhuyd [1659/60–1709], Archaeologia tradition, based on the poems, followed Llywarch Britannica (Oxford, 1707), 259a, in his description of beyond here, though, to Llanfor: for example, the Red Book, says that the first poem of Llywarch is William Owen Pughe says of Llywarch, ‘He outlived ‘de cuculis iuxta Aber Cîog’; he also notes, 259b, that all his sons, friends, and protectors, and being Dolguog was near Machynlleth and that there was reduced to exteme misery, he retired to a solitary another river of the same name in the north (i.e. in hut at Aber Cuawg in Montgomeryshire, but that it the old north, Cumbria or Strathclyde). Richard seems was not his last retreat. In the parish of Llanvor, Williams, of Newtown, ‘Materials for a Topographicon near Bala, there is a secluded place called Pabell of Montgomeryshire’ (in instalments), Montgomeryshire Llywarç Hen , or the Cot of Old Llywarch’ ( Heroick Collections 3 (1870), 216–17, also registers the identifi - Elegies , p. xv). cation with Plas Dolgiog, and it was probably by then 35 Black Book of Carmarthen, fols. xlv r–xlvii r = already popularly known; Henry Owen [1844–1919], pp. 89–93 (A. O. H. Jarman, Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 105
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 105 imagine a chilly day in early May, when the cuckoo sings and the trees come into leaf; or perhaps the chill is only in the emotions. The speaker’s desire to sit on a hill has never been explained. Patrick Henry’s comparison of Irish poems in which hills are praised does not help with this context. I have rather wondered whether the unusual compound gor + eistedd was meant to suggest gorsedd , the burial mound or fairy mound – think of Gorsedd Gorwynion in Canu Heledd .36 Though perhaps far-fetched, this might suggest that the speaker longs for death. The journey of life is nearing its end, and the speaker has nothing left to live for. But I may be reading into the opening too much of the last section of the poem, so for the time being we know only that he would like to go, but he cannot. When he says, byr fy nheith ‘short is my journey’, he may mean no more than that he goes only a few yards from his door, and that only when he has to. He is too ill to go anywhere. The introduction of the cuckoo, however, leads into the next and longest section of the poem: 4. Coc lauar a gan gan dyd The talkative cuckoo sings with the day kyfreu eichyawc yn dolyd Cuawc a loud song in the meadows of Cuawg: gwell corrawc no chebyd. Better be generous than a miser. 5. Yn Aber Cuawc yt ganant gogeu In Aber Cuawg sing the cuckoos ar gangheu blodeuawc: on blossoming branches: coc lauar canet yrawc. talkative cuckoo, let her sing awhile. 6. Yn Aber Cuawc yt ganant gogeu In Aber Cuawg sing the cuckoos ar gangheu blodeuawc: on blossoming branches: gwae glaf a’e clyw yn vodawc. woe to the sick man who hears them constantly. 7. Yn Aber Cuawc cogeu a ganant In Aber Cuawg cuckoos are singing: ys atvant gan vym bryt it grieves my heart a’e kigleu nas clyw heuyt. that one who heard them will not hear them again. 8. Neus endeweis i goc ar eidorwc I listened to a cuckoo on an ivied tree; brenn neu’r laesswys vyg kylchwy: my garment has become slack: etlit a gereis neut mwy. the sense of loss for what I loved is greater.
(Caerdydd, 1982), 62–5 (30. 1); ed. Williams, Canu Heledd for a grave-mound ( Canu Llywarch Hen , 43 (XI. Llywarch Hen , 27–29 (VII. 1); ed. Jackson, Early Welsh 80), and note, p. 229); Jenny Rowland suggested as an Gnomic Poems , 18–20 (1. 1); transl. Jackson, Early Celtic alternative reading there that it was a look-out mound Nature Poetry , 50–3 (B. 1); Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 65–8, (‘Study’, iii. 299, Saga Poetry , 603). 109–11, Saga Poetry , 454–7, 501–3. 36 Ifor Williams took the Gorsedd Gorwynion in Canu 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 106
106 RICHARD SHARPE 9. Yn y vann odywch llon dar In the top above a strong oak tree yd e
37 J. E. Caerwyn Williams [1912–1999] and P. I. handid muy vy llavuridet . . . Lynch, Gwaith Meilyr Brydydd a’i Ddisgynyddion , Cyfres kan ethint uy kereint in attwet. Beirdd y Tywysogion 1 (Aberystwyth, 1994), 200; When cuckoos sing atop fine trees English translations by Ford, Celtic Poets , 212–17, and my sadness is greater . . . Clancy, Medieval Welsh Poems , 124–7. Williams, 218, for my kinsmen have passed away. notes comparison with st. 35 (8c), ‘Llywarch lleueryd Black Book of Carmarthen, fol. xvii r–v = pp. 33–4; uodawc’, but not this closer parallel. ed. Jarman, Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin , 15–16 (8. 5–8); 38 In the Book of Taliesin, for example, coc py gwyn Williams, Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry , 11–12; R. G. py gan ‘(I know) why the cuckoo sings and why she Gruffydd, ‘ Cyntefin ceinaf amser o Lyfr Du laments’ (Book of Taliesin, p. 21.13 (ed. J. Gwenogvryn Gaerfyrddin’, Ysgrifau Beirniadol 4 (1968), 12–26. See Evans (Llanbedrog, 1910)); Pilch, ‘The elegiac genre’, also Jacobs, ‘Celtic saga and the contexts of Old 217). Or from the Black Book of Carmarthen: English elegiac poetry’, 122; Rowland, ‘Study’, ii. 466, Ban ganhont cogeu ar blaen guit guiw Saga Poetry , 203. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 107
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 107 At this early stage, however, the contrasts are simpler. It is maytime, but the speaker is both ill (2c, 6c) and sad (7b, 8c). The blossoming branches and the new leaves of the woods, spring and renewal, contrast with the feeling in his heart. The cuckoo loves to call in maytime, and the feelings she awakens are read into her call, hiraethawg ei llef (10a). The section is skilfully built up. Picking up from the last line of the previous section, Tra fo da gan gog, canet (where the preposition gan anticipates by internal rhyme the verb canet ), the play on words is carried into the first line of this section, Cog lafar a gan gan ddydd . In 4a and 5c cog lafar provides a verbal frame, picked up with variation in cog fan (9c), cog freuer (10c). The variation in the opening lines of stanzas 5, 6, and 7 uses the flexi - bility of the language to effect, Yn Aber Cuawg yd ganant cogau (5a, 6a), Yn Aber Cuawg cogau a ganant (7a). Such verbal continuity and unity of thought bind these stanzas together, and the generalizing apostrophe of the last stanza brings together all the key words, fodawg , hiraethawg , cog , yn Aber Cuawg . Their use in rhyming positions reinforces their importance. Without narrative these stanzas have none the less advanced the poem a good deal, using images from nature to develop a central, personal theme, with only one line (4c) that is opaquely gnomic. Now the description gives way to a more gnomic expression, but the personal element in each stanza grows, by contrast, more direct. The pathetic figure of the speaker emerges more clearly: 11. Gordyar adar, gwlyb neint, Noisy are birds, streams wet, llewychyt lloer, oer deweint: the moon shines, cold is midnight: crei vym bryt rac gofit heint. sore is my heart from painful sickness. 12. Gwyn gwarthaf neint, deweint hir; White is the top of valleys, midnight long, keinmygir pob kywreint: every skilful person is honoured: dylywn pwyth hun y heneint. I have a right to the gift of sleep for old age. 13. Gordyar adar, gwlyb gro, Noisy are birds, shingle wet, deil cwydit, divrit divro: leaves fall: sad at heart is the exile. ny wadaf, wyf claf heno. I do not deny it, I am sick tonight. 14. Gordyar adar, gwlyb traeth, Noisy are birds, the strand wet, eglur nwyure, ehalaeth bright is the sky, wide tonn: gwiw callon rac hiraeth. the wave: heart is withered with longing. 15. Gordyar adar, gwlyb traeth, Noisy are birds, the strand wet, eglur tonn, tuth ehalaeth: bright is the wave, wide its sweep: a gret y mabolaeth what was loved in youth carwn bei kaffwn etwaeth. I should love to have it again. 16. Gordyar adar ar Edrywy ard, Noisy are birds on the height of Edrywy, bann llef cwn yn diffeith, loud the cry of dogs in the wasteland, gordyar adar eilweith. noisy are birds again. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 108
108 RICHARD SHARPE These stanzas add an important point to what we know about the speaker: he is old as well as sick (12c, 15cd). The gnomic content would be called irrelevant by Jackson, though it includes a line (12b) that was noted by Pughe as a common proverb, ‘introduced here without connection, probably with a view to show disarrangement of thoughts arising from delirium ’. 39 We can try the same trick as we used with Llywelyn and Gwrnerth and go to the third lines: ‘sore is my heart from painful sickness ’, ‘I have a right to the gift of sleep for old age ’, ‘I do not deny it, I am sick tonight ’, ‘the heart is withered with longing ’, ‘what was loved in youth I should love to have it again’. The sequence is defined struc - turally by the phrase Gordyar adar ‘Noisy are birds’, the cymeriad that opens five of the six stanzas and ends the sixth. This is very much in the manner of the purely gnomic poems. Why is it missing from stanza 12 in this sequence? The metre of the stanza is uncertain. The reading of the manuscripts could be taken for englyn milwr (moving hir into line b), but, noting the parallel with stanza 19, Ifor Williams took it for englyn penfyr and added two syllables to read Gwyn gwarthaf
a brongwala hiraeth y heint R bronn waly hiraeth i heneint J Gorwyn blaen neint; deweint hir, Delightful are the tops of the valleys, midnight keinmygir pob kywreint; long, dyly
a dyly bun RJ, misreading dyly6n Here, I suggest, we see our stanza transposed to a different context; it indicates that there is no need to emend our stanza 12a; neint here may be taken as ‘valleys’ rather than ‘streams’; the temptation to insert gwlyb to parallel the surrounding verses should be resisted. The Gorwyn blaen sequence has presumably borrowed the stanza from our more personal poem, in which the gnomic idiom was already deployed; I feel a need, therefore, to restore the text. Both poems are surely meant to have pairs of stanzas rhyming on - eint and contrasting heint and heneint . Returning to our stanza 12, which interrupts the
39 Pughe, Heroic Elegies , 61 n. gnome. I think it more likely that ‘dyly bun’ is an error 40 Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 24, but his notes on from reading the old 6-shaped w as b in this line and 12a and 19a offer no justification; Rowland, ‘Study’, then conjecturing a vowel, and that we should read, as iii. 59, 327–8, Saga Poetry , 449, 620–1, does not accept in our st. 12c, dyly6n . The parallel between st. 12 and the conjecture. Gorwyn blaen was noted by N. J. A. Williams, ‘Canu 41 Red Book, col. 1033. 1–4; ed. Jackson, Early Llywarch Hen and the Finn cycle’, 242, and by Welsh Gnomic Poems , 29 (6. 1–2); trans. Jackson, Early Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 327, Welsh Saga Poetry , 620–21; Celtic Nature Poetry , 65 (H. 1–2). The reading of the both divide the lines Gorwyn blaen neint, deweint / hir as Red Book in the second stanza can be improved by englyn milwr . Rowland’s notes offer a suggestion that the comparison, as I have shown here; Jackson st. 12 originally read Gordyar adar, gwlyb neint , and that retained the readings of the Red Book, ‘dyly bun it was later altered to Gwyn gwarthaf under influence pwyth hun y heint’, translating the line as ‘a maiden from the recurrent formulae of the gnomic poems. owes the grant of repose to sickness’, an implausible This is a dangerous road. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 109
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 109 sequence of Gordyar adar stanzas, I suggest that we regard 11 and 12 as a double stanza, united by rhyme and by repetition of neint , deweint in the internal rhyme, and making the contrast between heint and heneint . Sickness and old age are the two dominant themes of our poem, ever going together. The old are always poetically unwell, and our feeble old man is no exception, Ny wadaf, wyf claf heno ‘I do not deny it, I am sick tonight’. But in the preceding line, the gnome, divryt divro , could also be personal: do we understand that all exiles are dispirited, a universal gnome, or that this wanderer is sad at heart? And in stanza 14 another theme returns, hiraeth ‘longing’. Stanzas 14 and 15 show clever verbal play, using the same rhymes, traeth , ehalaeth , rearranging eglur , tonn , but contrasting in their final lines hiraeth and mabolaeth ‘longing’ and ‘youth’. Yet the wish expressed – ‘what was loved in youth I should love to have it again ’ – is unmistakeably hiraeth , longing for what is lost. This sequence of stanzas is rounded off with one that echoes the start, but the song of the birds is as bitter to the old man as the cry of dogs in the wasteland. His mind has gone back to his own youth: 17. Kynnteuin, kein pob amat. Maytime, fair is every growth. pan vryssyant ketwyr y gat, When warriors hasten to battle, mi nyt af: anaf ny’m gat. I do not go: a wound does not let me. 18. Kynnteuin, kein ar ystre. Maytime, it is fair on the border. pan vrys ketwyr y gatle, When warriors hasten to the battlefield, mi nyt af: anaf a’m de. I do not go: a wound burns me. Again, the hearer will recall a stanza from the Black Book poem, Llym awel, llwm bryn :42 Ottid eiry, tohid ystrad; Snow falls, covers the valley; diuryssint keduir y cad; warriors hasten to battle; mi nid aw: anaw ni’m gad. I do not go: a wound does not let me We hear the voice of a fighter at the start of the campaigning season, kept back from the fight by his anaf , some permanent injury, whether real or not. In Llym awel , it is perhaps spoken by one of two interlocutors, Cynddylig, who was accused of cowardliness. Our speaker’s stance is not heroic: he wants to imagine himself as a fighter, still in the spring of his life, eager to go, but kept back by that anaf , which he would perhaps wish us to think of as a war-wound heroicly acquired. The relationship between these two poems continues to tantalize us: ours has a pair of stanzas here, linked as much by their third lines as their first lines, but that need not prove priority. Reference to this injury takes the narrative a step further than the sickness that would afflict him from time to time: ‘I am very sick today’ (2c), ‘I am sick tonight’ (13c). The
42 Black Book of Carmarthen, fol. xlv r–xlvii r = Black Book, fol. liv r–v = pp. 107–8; ed. Williams, Canu pp. 89–93; ed. Jarman, Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin , 62–5 (30. Llywarch Hen , 30–1 (VIII. 10); ed. Jarman, Llyfr Du 22–4); ed. Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 27–9 (VII. 5); Caerfyrddin , 82–3 (40. 29–31); ed. Rowland, ‘Study’, ed. Jackson, Early Welsh Gnomic Poems , 18–20 (1. 8); iii.15–16, 85–6, Saga Poetry , 413–14, 472; st. 7, 8, and trans. Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 50–3 (B. 8); 11 of this poem are also linked with Llym awel , st. 20, Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 65–8, 109–11, 352–9, Saga Poetry , 22, and 19. (The reference to st. 9 in ‘Study’, iii. 167, 454–7, 501–3, and 632–6. This stanza is also Saga Poetry , 537, is a typographical error for st. 19.) redeployed in another poem on Llywarch’s sons in the 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 110
110 RICHARD SHARPE adverbs of time, ‘today ’, ‘tonight’, are found often enough as conventional line-fillers, but the line must still make sense. He could not say, I am a leper tonight. So where the speaker earlier wanted to think he would be better tomorrow, his mood has moved on from a transient feeling of illness to an inhibiting injury. He is really not well at all: 19. Llwyt gwarthaf mynyd, breu blaen onn. Grey is the top of the mountain, fragile the tip o ebyr dyhepkyr tonn of the ash, peuyr: pell chwerthin o’m kallon. from the river mouths ebbs the shining wave, laughter is far from my heart. 20. Issymy hediw penn y mis Today for me is the end of the month yn y westua yd edewis. in the dwelling he has left: crei vym bryt, cryt a’m delwis. sore is my heart; fever makes me pale. 21. Amlwc golwc gwylyadur, Clear is the sight of the watchman; gwnelit syberwyt segur. idleness makes for arrogance: crei vym bryt, cleuyt a’m cur. sore is my heart, illness wastes me. 22 (27). Kigleu don drom y tholo, I have heard the wave, heavy its noise vann y rwng gr
43 Red Book, col. 1033. 17–20 (Evans, Poetry , 9); ed. Jackson, Early Welsh Gnomic Poems , 30 (6. 9–10); transl. Jackson, Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 65–6 (H. 9–10). 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 111
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 111 Gorwyn blaen derw, chwerw bric onn, Delightful is the top of oak trees, bitter the rac hwyeit gwesgerit tonn: twigs of ash trees, pybyr pwyll, pell oual y’m kallon. before the ducks the wave breaks: thought is valiant, care has been long in my heart. Gorwyn blaen derw, chwerw bric onn, Delightful is the top of oak trees, bitter the chwec euwr, chwerthinat tonn: twigs of ash trees, ny chel grud kystud kallon. cow-parsley is sweet, laughing the wave: the cheek cannot conceal the heart’s distress The second stanza of this pair is once again a near-exact repetition of a stanza from our poem. The only changes are in the first words, assimilating the line into its sequence with Gorwyn blaen , and in the phrase chwerw bric onn , replacing the alliterative and more easily understood phrase chwerw chweith onn . Once again, therefore, the gnomic poet has anticipated a near-quotation with a verse of close similarity: perhaps the aim was to make the hearer think at the first stanza, ‘That sounds familiar; what is he imitating?’, and then to answer the hearer’s question by quoting the well-known lines from the earlier poem. This sequence of five stanzas is tightly knitted into the poem as a whole. Stanza 19 takes us back to stanza 12, Gwyn gwarthaf neint, deweint hir , and also to stanza 14, ehalaeth / tonn: gwiw callon rac hiraeth , with its internal rhyme on tonn , callon , picked up as end-rhyme here and resumed again in stanza 23. From ‘heart is withered with longing’ we have come to ‘laughter is far from my heart’. Stanzas 20, 21, and 22 (27) expand on this note of sadness, the heart torn with longing and with disease. The conclusion is melancholy. Still the mood would be transient, if there were real force in the adverbs of time, hediw (20a), heno (22c). But we know that it is not. Time, however, is emphasized in 20, Issymy hediw penn y mis ‘Today for me is the end of the month’. The sick man has realized that this is a turning- point. Mis we may understand as month or season, and we think of the contrast already established between the speaker’s condition and the late spring day. The man is not in the cyntefin of his life, and the turning-point is his acceptance of that fact. The imagery of the wave on the shore recurs – it reminds us of the wet shingle, the wet strand, gwlyb gro (13a), gwlyb traeth (14a, 15a) – and in 22 (27) we hear the heavy sound of the waves on the beach. English speakers will recall Matthew Arnold: Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. That ‘melancholy long withdrawing roar’ spoke of sadness to Sophocles and to Arnold, and also to our poet, Kigleu don, drom y tholo ‘I have heard the wave, heavy its noise’. The wave, like the cuckoo, evokes pain, but like the cuckoo it does not feel it: the wave ebbs, the heart hurts, calon echoing tonn . I find here a stage in the development of the poem: the speaker’s misery comes through less as hiraeth and more as real pain. I have admitted to leaving out five stanzas from the text of the Red Book which interrupt this sequence. Framed by the opening Alaf yn eil ‘Cattle in shed’ and the closing Alaf yn eiliat ‘cattle in sheds’, they clearly form a verse-section on their own, but their 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 112
112 RICHARD SHARPE theme is treachery and its punishment, a constant danger when the warriors are idle at home in the winter: 22. Alaf yn eil, meil am ved: Cattle in shed, mead in the cup, nyt eidun detwyd dyhed; the wise man does not desire discord; amaerwy adnabot amyned. the bond of understanding is patience. 23. Alaf yn eil, meil am lat: Cattle in shed, ale in the cup, llithredawr llyry, llonn cawat; slippery are paths, fierce the rain a dwfyn ryt, berwyt bryt brat. and deep the ford: heart brews treachery. 24. Berwit brat anuat ober; Treachery brews an ill deed; bydaut dolur pan burer; there will be pain when it is paid for: gwerthu bychot yr llawer. in exchanging a little for a lot. 25. †Pre ator pre ennwir; † pan uarno Douyd, dyd hir: when the Lord judges on the long day: tywyll uyd geu, goleu gwir. false will be dark, true bright. 26. Kerygyl yn dirch mat; kyrchynyat kewic; Goblets are raised, the fighter is skilful, llawen gwyr odywch llat; men are merry over ale: crin calaf, alaf yn eiliat. dry the stalks, cattle in shed. It contributes nothing to our poem but breaks into what I read as a closely wrought sequence of central importance to the poem. The writer of this poem, surely, could not have intended such a distracting change of direction? I cannot go along with Patrick Henry’s suggestion that treachery may have been the speaker’s downfall. 44 It appears to me far more likely that five stanzas have crept into the manuscript transmission from some other context, though we may allow that it ‘belongs to the same school’. Such accidental contamination need not mislead the careful reader when poems are as well structured as this one is – we have the means to detect it – but it raises questions about the manuscript transmission. 45 Reading on then, the sick man looks back with longing to his days in a king’s court; no longer does he say he is ill tonight, however. His sighs are frequent, and his life one of constant melancholy: 24 (29). Ymwng ucheneit a dyneit arnaf Many a sigh befalls me yn ol vyg gordyfneit: according to my habit: ny at Duw da y diryeit. God allows no good to the wretched.
44 Henry, Early English and Celtic Lyric , 83. ically incorporated by a copyist, no doubt at an earlier 45 The likely explanation is that the Alaf yn eil stage than the writing of the Red Book. The Red Book stanzas were copied in close proximity to our poem at scribe, however, was apparently not reading with a some point in the transmission and were then uncrit - critical understanding as he copied. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 113
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 113 25 (30). Da y dirieit ny atter, Good to the wretched will not be allowed, namyn tristit a phryder: but rather sorrow and care: nyt atwna Duw ar a wnel. God does not undo what he does. 26 (31). Oed mackwy mab claf, oed goewin gynran The sick fellow was a squire, a bold warrior yn llys vre
a Or MS for Yr ? These four stanzas have a common theme, there is no escape from wretchedness. One can only pray for mercy. The appearance of God in these four stanzas leads Jenny Rowland to join Patrick Henry and classify the poem as penitential, though I am not persuaded. The mood is more clearly fatalist. In the belief that this marks the end of the poem, Patrick Henry and Jenny Rowland both chose to reverse the last two stanzas, putting the crucial signature of his status as leper in a kind of colophon and ending on a note of prayer and hope. 46 There is strong reason for doing so. Apart from the metrical preference, not consistent, for englyn penfyr to close a run of milwr , there is obvious verbal linkage from stanza to stanza: da y diryeit ends 24 and begins 25, ar a wnel ends 25 and or a wneler begins 27. Stanza 26 interrupts this linkage. Henry thought it was ‘an explanatory addition to the poem, which would come to a natural conclusion without it’, but it is not obviously an interpolation. 47 There is also strong reason against the inversion. It does violence to the sense: three stanzas accept the inevitabilities of old age with some element of prayerful resignation, but the fourth rejects prayer and gives way to despair. This feels like an ending, and to move this fatalism into third position in the sequence goes against the progressive revelation of the speaker’s emotional state. I hesitate. But if you are bold enough to read on with me, past the large initial K, we find a resigned comparison of past and present. Three stanzas begin Kynn bum keinvaglawc ‘Before I was bent-backed’; then a sequence of stanzas is addressed to his walking stick, Baglan brenn ‘little wooden staff’; and finally, the speaker cries out for the pleasures he misses and the miseries he endures in old age. This part of the poem was given a close reading by Gwyn Thomas at the Hengerdd group. 48 Read on: 28 (1). Kynn bum keinvaglawc, bum kyffes eiryawc: Before I was bent-backed, I was skilful, keinmygir uy eres; eloquent, gwyr Argoed eiryoet a’m porthes. my deeds are honoured; the men of Argoed always supported me.
46 Henry, Early English and Celtic Lyric , 78; Rowland, 48 Gwyn Thomas, ‘Cân yr henwr’, Astudiaethau ar yr ‘Study’, iii. 63, Saga Poetry , 452. Hengerdd Cyflwynedig i Syr Idris Foster (Caerdydd, 47 Henry, Early English and Celtic Lyric , 78. 1978), 266–80. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 114
114 RICHARD SHARPE 29 (2). Kynn bum keinvaglawc, bum hy, Before I was bent-backed, I was bold; am kynnwyssit yg kyuyrdy I was welcomed in the drinking-house Powys, paradwys Gymry. of Powys, paradise of Welshmen. 30 (3). Kynn bum keinvaglawc, bum eiryan; Before I was bent-backed, I was brilliant; oed kynwaew vym par, oed kyn
a e gwyn Williams ] ewyn MS; see N. Jacobs, CMCS 40 (2000), 27–33 34 (7). Baglan brenn, neut kynteuin, Little wooden staff, it is maytime, neut rud rych, neut crych egin: red is the furrow, new shoots are curled: etlit ym drych y’th yluin. it is sad for me to look at your beak. 35 (8). Baglan brenn, ganghen nodawc a, Little wooden staff, supporting branch, kynhellych hen hiraethawc, may you uphold an old man longing Llywarch lleueryd uodawc. Llywarch, constant talker.
a nodawc Williams ] uodawc MS 36 (9). Baglan brenn, ganghen galet, Little wooden staff, solid branch, am kynnwysy Duw diffret:
49 Red Book, col. 1029. 19 (Evans, Poetry , 7); Welsh Nature Poetry , 61 (E. 30); Jacobs, Early Welsh Jackson, Early Welsh Gnomic Poems , 25 (3. 30c); Early Gnomic and Nature Poetry , II 30c. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 115
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 115 37 (10). Baglan brenn, byd ystywell Little wooden staff, be helpful; am kynhelych a uo gwell: support me the better: neut wyf Lywarch lauar pell. I am Llywarch, long talker. In the first four of the stanzas addressed to the stick itself, the old man goes through the seasons in order, ending as our whole poem began in the present season of cyntefin . In each of the four the first line states the imagined season, the second is gnomic, and in the third the speaker comments on his loneliness, for he is an outcast. The cuckoos’ call and Llywarch’s lleueryd uodawc , Llywarch llafar pell , remind us of the first part of the poem, with bodawg again rhymed with hiraethawg . Three more stanzas continue the cymeriad , speaking to the stick, but their content is more personal as the old man asks the stick for support. It is here in stanzas 35c (8c) and 37c (10c) that the old man is first named – it is Llywarch the old who will talk to anyone, even his stick – and he will be named again at the end. In the next section, however, the emotional temperature intensifies; longing and melancholy give way to despair, old age mocks at Llywarch: 38 (11). Kymwed y mae heneint a Old age is mocking me a mi o’m gwallt y’m deint from my hair to my teeth a’r cloyn a gerynt yr ieueinc. and the shaft that the young loved.
a Williams ] y mae heneint yn kymwed MS 39 (12). Y mae heneint yn kymwed Old age is mocking me a mi o’m gwallt y’m danned from my hair to my teeth a’r cloyn a gerynt y gwraged. and the shaft that the women loved. From his white hair to his worn-out teeth the signs of age are mentioned. As for his cloyn , he misses the female company of his youth. As the poem moves to its last phase, the gnomic idiom is left behind after one last stanza: 40 (13). Dirgwen gwynt, gwynn gne godre gwyd; Swirling the wind, white colour of edge of woods, dewr hyd, diwlyd bre: brave is the stag, hard the hill: eidil hen, hwyr y dyre. feeble the old man, slowly he rises. 41 (14). Y deilen honn, neus kenniret gwynt, This leaf, the wind drives it to and fro, gwae hi o’e thynghet: alas for its fate, Hi hen, eleni y ganet. old, this year it was born. 42 (15). A gereis yr yn was yssy gas gennyf, What I loved as a lad is hateful to me, merch, estrawn, a march glas: a girl, a stranger, a fresh horse, neut nat mi eu kyuadas. it is not for me that they are fitting. 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 116
116 RICHARD SHARPE 43 (16). Vym pedwar prif gas eirmoet The four things I have always hated most Ymgyueru
This is the most tightly knit section in the latter half of the poem, with the second stanza picking up the last words of the first, the third so linked to the second, and the fourth to
50 Red Book, col. 1031. 24–5 (Evans, Poetry , 8); Jackson, Early Welsh Gnomic Poems , 27 (4. 10); Early Celtic Nature Poetry , 63 (F. 10). 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 117
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 117 the third. At the end of the fourth stanza, the simple phrase, Wyf hen ‘I am old’, completes the circle with the first in the section. The final stanza is not tied in: its role is to sum up the whole. Now, its exact twin appears in another sequence of poems about Llywarch, absent from the Red Book and known from a post-medieval transcript by Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, datable to 1631 –4. 51 This sequence begins obscurely Meurygawc marchawg , perhaps ‘horseman like Meurig’ or ‘horseman of Meurig’s troop’, and Ifor Williams gave it the title Gwahodd Llywarch i Lanfawr ‘the invitation of Llywarch to Llanfawr’. It follows straight on from the old man’s song, and it ends with our final stanza, followed by another final-final stanza, Teneu fy ysgwyd ar asswy fy nhu ‘Thin is my shield on my left side’. This last stanza was also added by Dr Davies in the margin at the head of the sequence of stanzas in which Llywarch is in dialogue with his son Gwên; Eurys Rolant and Jenny Rowland received it into their texts, but Ifor Williams did not, though he quoted it; the stanza is first in print at the head of the Gwên sequence in translations which do not specify where they derived their Welsh text. 52 If this stanza belongs there, and the case is a good one, it would have fitted in the Red Book at the foot of col. 1036 or the top of col. 1037, and it would have begun with the large initial that is now missing from the start of the main Llywarch sequence there. It is not impossible that this omission led a conscientious copyist to work out afresh where he thought the Llywarch poem began and so to introduce the misleading capital K. I do not pretend to a firm opinion about the Meurygawc stanzas, but their mood is very different. Here someone offers comfort to Llywarch: Llywarch hen, na fydd diwyl, Llywarch hen, be not sad, trwydded a geffi di anwyl: hospitality you will get, my friend: tarn dy lygad, taw, nag wyl. dry your eye, hush, do not weep. Patrick Ford considered that these stanzas might have been a post-medieval forgery, but I am with Patrick Sims-Williams against that. 53 The poem stands as proof that all three- line englynion concerning Llywarch Hen do not derive from a unitary ‘cycle’ or ‘saga’
51 NLW MS 4973, fol. 128v, 179v (marg.); on the this stanza that he did not know whether it belonged manuscript see G. Morgan, ‘Testun barddoniaeth y after the death of Gwên or before his arrival (p. lvi). In Tywysogion yn Llsgr. NLW 4973’, BBCS 20 (1962–4), his famous Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry , 38, almost ten 95–103, 21 (1964–6), 149–50; Rowland, Saga Poetry , years later, he has made up his mind and quotes it: ‘a 397–400. On Dr John Davies ( c.1570–1644) and his stray englyn can be introduced here: it gives the manuscripts in general, see D. Huws, ‘John Davies and position just before Gwên arrived’. There is no his manuscripts’, in Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, Welsh reference to the manuscripts and no direct suggestion Renaissance Scholar , ed. C. Davies (Cardiff, 2004), 88– that he thought it should be introduced, as Dr Davies 120; N. A. Jones and M. E. Owen, ‘John Davies and had done, at the start of the Gwên sequence. Has this the poets of the princes’, ib. 171–207. important alteration to the received text been 52 Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 1 (I. 1a), 18 (V. 11); Rolant, preserved from Williams’s classes in Bangor? Conran’s Llywarch Hen a’i Feibion , 94–5 (st. 22), and comment, textual adviser was Caerwyn Williams, then in Bangor, 108–11; Rowland, Saga Poetry , 404, 415; also Rowland, where Jones and Thomas continued the tradition. ‘Study’, i. 96–7, Saga Poetry , 11–12, and on its possible 53 P. K. Ford, ‘Llywarch, ancestor of Welsh princes’, source, ‘Study’, iii. 118, Saga Poetry , 512. These Speculum 45 (1970), 442–50 (at p. 449 n. 33), and editions are anticipated by Conran, Penguin Book of Poetry of Llywarch Hen , 23, suggested that it was ‘an Welsh Verse , 83, and by Clancy, Earliest Welsh Poetry , 73; antiquarian forgery’. Rowland, ‘Study’, i. 193–4, Saga also by the modern paraphrase by Bedwyr Lewis Poetry , 41, regards it as ‘an early poem ... incorpo - Jones, Yr Aelwyd Hon , 77. In each case, one would rated into the cycle of poems about Llywarch at an suppose that they follow Canu Llywarch Hen , but early date’, and elsewhere she dates it to the ninth Williams did not use NLW MS 4973 in his edition; his century ( Saga Poetry , 389); Sims-Williams also rejects text of Gwahodd Llywarch i Lanfawr (Canu Llywarch Hen , the idea of antiquarian pastiche, ‘The provenance of 21–2, V. 1–10) was based on two eighteenth-century the Llywarch Hen poems’, 51, but allows only that transcripts from Dr Davies’s copy; he comments on Gwahodd was ‘at least medieval in date’ (p. 35). 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 118
118 RICHARD SHARPE sequence. Even allowing for the more modern orthography of the manuscript, the language of this poem may not be as old as that of the main Llywarch poem in the Red Book, and it appears to have been composed as a sequel to the final agony; it is, I suspect, a superimposed happy ending. Even so, the verses that follow it in the manuscript make a connexion with both Cân yr henwr and the main Llywarch poem. They are Truan a dynghet , the last stanza of the old man’s poem, and Teneu fy ysgwyd , the possible missing first stanza of Canu Llywarch Hen . My purpose in citing this repetition of Truan a dynghet now is merely to infer that its proper place is at the end of the old man’s poem, even though it falls after the closure indicated by the verbal repetition Wyf hen . In despair Llywarch affirms to himself all his miseries since the killing of Llawr and Gwên. Their loss brought grief upon him as he grew old, and since then infirmity and pain have increased with age. With whatever bitterness and resignation, he accepts his fate, not the fate of the leaf that quickly perishes but a continuing pain. And in the middle of this verse-section, three stanzas from the end, the speaker repeats what was said exactly three stanzas from the start of our poem: Ny allaf darymret ‘I cannot get about’. Is it accident that two poems should have this line so placed among runs in englyn penfyr metre? I should like to say, No, it supports my case that we have been reading one poem with a sustained progression of feeling. The development of the poem as a whole is clear. Llywarch is outside his miserable dwelling, feeling his bones creak and wishing he might walk. The cuckoos bring on a longing for what is lost – his dead sons, and others too, and his own lost youth. The contrast runs through the poem of his age with the maytime setting, cyntefin . Longing turns into gloom and depression, but longing itself is cured: no use longing for what one may not have. He cannot escape his fate. Or as Gwrnerth said, Nyt oes nawd rac tynghetuen ‘There is no protection against fate’. In our final stanza, however, Llywarch’s acceptance of his tynghet may yet be in character: if it was his fate since the night he was born, he was not responsible. 54 Whether he was unaware of his own ‘tragic flaw’ or chose not to acknowledge it, the story in the background to the poem did recognize it. It was not, I think, treachery, as Patrick Henry supposed. Nor was it just pride, for in 21b it was merely proverbial to say, Gwnelit syberwyt segur ‘Idleness makes for arrogance’. It was in part his tongue that caused his undoing, for he is a talker as well as a fighter, and he keeps coming back to his tendency to talk. In the poem about Llywarch and his sons it was his pride and boasting that was punished by the deaths of all his sons: drwy fy nhafawd lleddesaint ‘through my tongue they have been killed ’. 55 The poem ends with the thought of continuing misery. Llywarch, like the Ancient Mariner, cannot escape his misery in death. He cries, with Milton’s Adam: Why comes not Death, Said hee, with one thrice acceptable stroke To end me? (Paradise Lost , X 854–6)
54 Patrick Sims-Williams makes the comment, in Llywarch Hen , 5 (I. 28); Rowland, ‘Study’, iii. 7, 83, reviewing Rowland’s Early Welsh Saga Poetry , ‘Surely Saga Poetry , 408, 470. The first three words were we need to distinguish between the poet’s point of omitted from the Red Book, col. 1038. 11–12, and are view and the character’s? Certainly Llywarch does not preserved only in the antiquary transcripts from the show self-knowledge when he claims that since his birth White Book. Williams notes the interesting parallel his fate had been fated to him’ ( CMCS 27 (Summer with Canu Heledd , ‘Vyn tauawt a’e gwnaeth’ (‘My 1994), 88–91 (at p. 90). tongue caused it’) ( Canu Llywarch Hen , 39, XI. 46; 55 ‘Drwy vyn tauawt lledesseint’: Williams, Canu Rowland, ‘Study’, 44, 99, Saga Poetry , 435, 487). 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 119
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 119 Three stanzas from the end, Wi a agheu, nam dygret ‘Alas, death, that he does not come to me’. His punishment is to live and suffer: he cannot even die. The overall unity of the poem is established by key words and ideas: he cannot walk (3b, 46b), he is old and sick (11–12, 43), lonely throughout the monologue, but he outgrows the longing for the warband he led, the women he loved, the sons he reared. The backward look of hiraeth is overtaken by a forward-looking despair. The real turning- point is perhaps in stanza 20, Issymy hediw penn y mis / yn y westua yd edewis ‘Today is for me the end of the month / in the dwelling he has left’. But what is the gwestfa ? And who left it? Williams conjecture yn y westua y’m edewis ‘in the lodging in which he left me’; Rowland appears certain that this refers to the abandonment of lepers, though she allows for a vaguer underlining of the speaker’s loneliness. 56 Has the spring season left the house? Or are we to read this closely with the line before (19c), pell chwerthin o’m kallon ‘laughter is far from my heart’? Surely both. For spring and laughter go together like old age and misery. The turning-point applies to the season, the man, and the poem. Perhaps also it is the end of an era. Youth is lost, the heroes whom we loved are gone, and longing will not bring them back. The old man has survived beyond his time. Would it be going too far to think that the age of heroic warriors has passed too, and that he has lived into a new and unheroic age? 57 Is the hearer to respond to him as the survivors at the end of King Lear? we that are young Shall never see so much nor live so long. To sum up, my case is that we have a poem in forty-eight stanzas rather than two poems in thirty-two and twenty-one stanzas. The next poem in the Red Book has forty-eight stanzas in Williams’s edition – though if Rowland is right to receive a fresh first stanza from Davies’s transcript, this would give forty-nine. The unity of the poem depends in part on a certain symmetry in construction, such as the preference for penfyr in the opening and closing sequences, the parallels between talkative cuckoos and Llywarch’s long talking, and in particular the repetition between lines 3b and 46b, and in part on its coherent emotional evolution from loneliness and hiraeth to an intense despair. Against there is a large initial K in the immediate parent of our limited manuscript evidence.
*
If I am correct, this is a long monologue poem in the voice of Llywarch Hen, who is therefore the sick man of Abercuawg, just as everyone had thought until Ifor Williams said otherwise. It travels with another long poem, in which Llywarch Hen is in dialogue with his son Gwên, then mourns Gwên’s death and those of his other sons, and finally laments Pyll’s death; the sequences of stanzas within this poem, if read in their manuscript order, do not strictly make sense, Pyll’s death preceded Gwên’s; the episodes are rather to be heard in reverse order. 58 Separated from these by the long – but arguably related? – poem, Canu Urien , Llywarch a Maen appears to be another poem. And the invitation of
56 Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen , 168; Rowland, Indogermanistik und Keltologie , ed. W. Meid (Innsbruck, ‘Study’, iii. 332, Saga Poetry , 623. 1967), 193–212. 57 A. O. H. Jarman, ‘Y delfryd arwrol yn yr hen 58 Canu Llywarch Hen , 1–7 (I. 1–39); Rowland, ganu’, Llên Cymru 8 (1964–5), 125–49, and in English ‘Study’, iii. 1–10, 81–4, Saga Poetry , 404–10, 468–71. ‘The heroic ideal in early Welsh poetry’, Beiträge zur 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 120
120 RICHARD SHARPE Llywarch to Llanfawr, which is not in the Red Book at all, is a fourth poem, a dialogue between Llywarch and someone, named Llallawg or Llallogan in the text, anonymized as pendefig by Williams. Given the very different mood of this last, we should be very chary of constructing these into remnants from a single ‘saga’. I am not really persuaded that any of this poetry can be considered ‘saga poetry’ at all: we have only dramatized scenes, always spoken as monologue or dialogue, whose mise-en-scène was a known story. The question of performance has rightly been discussed. 59 If I am not correct, Kynn bum keinvaglawc is unaffected: it is still one of several poems in Llywarch’s name; its setting is at the end of his life if one believes that the unwritten story ends in grief, but Gwahodd Llywarch i Lanfawr would follow it, if one wanted to end on a happier note. In that case, what of Goreiste ar vrynn ? It is a speech poem in the same vein, ‘of the same school’, wrote Ifor Williams. But if the unnamed speaker is not a recognizable figure of the past, such as Llywarch, should it have been included in his Canu Llywarch Hen at all? For how can it be claimed as a saga poem? Jenny Rowland thought it ‘a strikingly different poem-in-character ’, ‘probably an offshoot of the true saga poems ’. 60 Its placing in the Red Book might associate it more with the predominantly gnomic poems that precede it rather than with the legendary speech poems that follow. The known manuscript tradition is too narrow for much to be made of the arrangement within the Red Book and the White Book. The gnomic idiom is stronger here than in Kynn bum keinvaglawc , which I have read in terms of a progression, in which the particular gradually asserts itself over the gnomic. If I had to treat them as separate poems, I should want to say that Goreiste ar vrynn is the better poem, more carefully constructed, more subtle in its developing mood, and – dare I say it? – improved by its gnomic lines, particularly those drawn from nature. In 1870, Richard Williams of Newtown picked it out, ‘One of the most touching of Llywarch Hen’s poems is an address in thirty-two stanzas, To the Cuckoo in Aber Cuawg. ’61 And if the available evidence is representative and has been sufficiently quarried, it was rather more popular with later poets than was Canu Llywarch Hen itself. I have already mentioned the telling phrase, kathyl uodawc , quoted by Gwalchmai ap Meilyr. This is not among the four quotations from or allusions to Goreiste ar vrynn that have been noted in poems of the gogynfeirdd .62 These are found in poems by Cynddelw Brydydd
Other stanzas follow without a major initial, which P. I. Lynch, Gwaith Dafydd Benfras ac eraill , Cyfres Williams prints in sequence but Rowland separates. Beirdd y Tywysogion 6 (1995), 50); 59 Rowland, ‘Study’, ii. 567–92, Saga Poetry , 260–75. (iii) ny chel grud kystud callon (23c = 28c), a proverbial 60 Rowland, ‘The prose setting of the englynion line, echoed in ‘Ny chel uyg kert uy kwynuan, Ny chut chwedlonol ’, 42–3. ‘It is complete in itself’, she writes of uy grut uy grituan’, in Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr’s Claf Abercuawg , ‘not part of a saga cycle, and longer Marwnad Iorwerth Goch ap Maredudd, lines 51–2 than the poems in the cycles’. (Llawysgrif Hendregadredd , 157; ed. N. A. Jones and 61 See above, n. 34. A. Parry Owen, Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr 1, 62 Rowland, ‘Study’, ii. 732–3, Saga Poetry , 362–3, Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion 3 (1991), 147); notes four parallels between Goreiste ar vrynn and (iv) nyt atwna duw ar a wnel (25c = 30c), quoted in poems of the gogynfeirdd : Llywarch Brydydd y Moch’s Marwnad Hywel ap (i) divryt diuro (13b), imitated in the line ‘Bart diuro Gruffudd, line 22 ( Llawysgrif Hendregadredd , 303; ed. dyuryd heb arglwyt’, in Cynddelw’s Marwnad Owain E. M. Jones and N. A. Jones, Gwaith Llywarch ap Gwynedd, line 76 (R. Morris-Jones, Llawysgrif Llywelyn ‘Prydydd Moch ’, Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion 5 Hendregadredd (Caerdydd, 1933), 91; ed. N. A. Jones (1991), 132). and A. Parry Owen, Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr 2, She also notes two quotations from Llym awel : Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion 4 (1995), 49); (i) kadir yscuid ar yscuit glev (st. 7c), echoed in the (ii) gwiw callon rac hiraeth (14c), quoted as ‘Gwiw line ‘Aduwyn uyt ysgwyd ar deur ysgwyt’, in Einion ap callon can hiraeth’ in Einion Wann’s Marwnad Madog Gwalchmai’s poem Addef Nef Neirthiad , line 31 ab Gruffudd, line 22 (Red Book, col. 1406.16–17; ed. (Llawysgrif Hendregadredd , 39; ed. J. E. Caerwyn 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 121
CLAF ABERCUAWG AND THE VOICE OF LLYWARCH HEN 121 Mawr from the late twelfth century, and by Einion ap Gwalchmai, Einion Wann, and Llywarch Brydydd y Moch in the thirteenth century. I have not attempted a tally of the parallels to our poem – which might be quotations from it – among the gnomic poems in the Red Book; several examples have come up today. The gogynfeirdd quote from Canu Urien less than this, though it is a much longer poem, and from Canu Heledd still less. Canu Llywarch appears not to have found favour at all. The other poem that does feed lines and half-lines into the work of the gogynfeirdd is Llym awel, llwm bryn , which has survived only in the Black Book. Does this divergent reception indicate that Goreiste ar vrynn should be considered not to belong with Llywarch Hen ? I cannot say. It does share characteristics with Llym awel , a thoroughly gnomic dialogue, with which we have seen that it interacts, though their known manuscript transmission is quite separate. The testimony of later quotations and imitations has not been used to enhance our reading of the hengerdd : if it does not improve our texts, it should at least remind us that knowledge of the poems was not always limited by the exiguous surviving manuscript tradition. The evidence of reception may prove no more than that twelfth-century poets admired and remembered this poem more than they did Llywarch’s lament for Gwên or any of the other sequences in his voice. They recognized its poetic quality.
Williams and P. I. Lynch, Gwaith Meilyr Brydydd a’i Marwnad gosgordd Owain Gwynedd, line 12 Ddisgynyddion , Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion 1 (Llawysgrif Hendregadredd , 172; ed. N. A. Jones and (Aberystwyth, 1994), 488); A. Parry Owen, Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr 2, (ii) nyt oed uagaud meirch Mechit (st. 31c), adapted Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion 4 (1995), 96). as ‘ny bu uagaud meirch Morgant’, in Cynddelw’s 06 Sharpe:Studia Celtica 42 27/11/09 10:49 Page 122