IOLO GOCH'S “J OBain GlyndBr_ar_ddifancoll.” By W. J. GRUFFYDD, M.A. AMONG the cywyddau dealing with contemporary events on which the fame of Iolo Goch rests, not the least interesting are the famous lines written to "Owain Glyndwr in hiding" ("I Owain Glyndwr ar ddifancoll"). Hitherto, no proper criticism of Iolo Goch's poetry has been attempted. The late Charles Ashton's edition is so uncritical, that many pieces are attributed to Iolo Goch which cannot possibly, from internal evidence, have been written as early as 1400. The most conspicuous among these is the cywydd under notice. We will proceed to state our reasons for thinking that this cywydd was not written to Owen Glyndwr, but to another Welsh hero who lived eighty years after him, and that, therefore, it could not have been composed by Iolo Goch. After the first outburst of love poetry, which we find exemplified in the works of Dafydd ab Gwilym, some of the Welsh poets began to turn their attention to more serious matters, to the hopes and the sufferings, the virtues and the follies, of the Welsh nation. The first among these poets were Iolo Goch and Sion Cent, and they were followed by a long succession of minor bards such as Dafydd Llwyd o Fathafarn and Rhys Goch Eryri. The favourite medium for expressing their thoughts on these subjects was the Cywydd Brud-the cywydd of prophecyoften, it is to be feared, written wisely after the event. As these cywyddau were written in the pseudo-mystical manner of the darogan, the later scribes, who were at a loss to know to which of the Welsh heroes it applied, often ascribed them to the wrong authors. As a general rule, these compositions were ascribed to Dafydd Llwyd, and occasionally, cywyddau brud, which were undoubtedly written by Dafydd Llwyd, were ascribed to others, including Iolo Goch. One has only to read some of the incoherent verse in Ashton's edition of Iolo Goch to realize this. The cywydd to Owen Glyndwr, which we have under notice, is undoubtedly of this number. Even at first sight, it is evident that, with the exception of the first line, there is in it no reference whatever to Owen Glyndwr. It is supposed to have been written when Owen was in hiding, after his power had waned—but, surely, the cywydd is addressed to a young hero, who, as yet, had not tasted victory, who looked to the future for all his glory. If it was written to Glyndwr, where are the references to his past victories? Where are those pæans of victories gained, and of work accomplished which we are to expect in such poems? There is not a single reference which the most ingenious can possibly twist to bear such a meaning. This cywydd is full of hope for the future, written to an idol of the Welsh nation, not yet proved in battle, who remained in hiding, biding his time, and there is only one such hero whom the description will fit, and he is by far the commonest subject of the cywyddau brud, a man to whom all the Welsh poets of the period turned—and that man is Henry Tudor, afterwards Henry VII of England. The oldest manuscript which Ashton, in his collection, has consulted is the Glanyrafon MS. K., and in this manuscript the cywydd is not ascribed to Iolo Goch. No author is mentioned, and Ashton has to admit in his introduction (q.v.) that it must have been the last cywydd which Iolo wrote. We see, then, that the manuscript authority for ascribing it to Iolo is not as strong as it might be. Besides, the cywydd is by no means in Iolo's style. Here we have a plain straightforward composition written in simple language, very unlike the epic and archaic style of Iolo Goch. It has none of the inversions, and none of the words borrowed from the vocabulary of the gogynfeirdd which distinguish the compositions of Iolo. But literary criticism of this kind is notoriously unsafe, and we have to turn to internal evidence of a different sort to establish our case. The first line, "Y gŵr hir ni'th gâr Harri”, does certainly seem to point to Owen Glyndwr; but here also, if we turn to the Glanyrafon MS., we find the reading "Y gŵr hir a gar Harri", and it is perfectly incredible that the dullest of scribes would have made such a mistake in the very first line if he knew that the cywydd was addressed to Glyndwr. The probability is, that the first line, as we should expect, contains the name of the hero, that is, Harri, and that the line should read "Y gŵr hir, hygar Harri", or something similar. When, however, we leave the first line, there is no necessity for conjecture of any kind. The poet asks, "Art thou alive?" and adds, "if thou art show thy shield, and from the land of Rome bring arms. Come from the east, thou mighty bull, and cast down the towers", etc. The poet does not know where his hero may be in hiding, but encourages him to come at last "and show his shield"-which would be much more applicable to a young untried hero than to a veteran like Glyndwr. The time of the poem is undoubtedly between 1471 and 1485, that is after the time when Edward IV regained his throne, when Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had to take his nephew from England to Brittany for protection. Further on in the poem, the author calls him "ŵr a draeturiwyd", "thou who hast been betrayed". This reference, again, will not fit Owen Glyndwr, but can be easily connected with two incidents in the life of Henry Tudor-either when he was taken prisoner by the Yorkists in Harlech Castle in 1468, or when Edward IV applied to the Duke of Brittany to hand over to him his protégé. The Duke had actually delivered Henry, who was then a dangerous rival to Edward IV, being the head of the House of Lancaster, to the embassy sent by the English King, but the order was revoked at the last moment. The reference is probably to this event. After the twelfth line of the cywydd, Ashton's copy reads: "Eryr glwys, dos, iôr o'r Glyn, Iarll awchlaif i dir Llychlyn." "Go, lord, thou beloved eagle, go from the Glyn, thou Earl of the keen sword, to the land of Norway." Now, these lines are inexplicable, if we suppose that they are written to Owen in hiding, because in the rest of the poem he calls on him to come from the distant places of the earth to his country to deliver it. These lines, if genuine, would be the strongest argument against the old belief as to the authorship of the piece, but as a matter of fact they are evident interpolations, as they are not found at all in the Glanyrafon MS. Two other lines "Dwg feddiant Pedr Sant dan sêl which seem to refer to a papal sanction, are not found in this MS. In the tenth line, the author calls his hero "Darw mawr". Now y tarw, "the bull", was the name always given to Henry VII by the Welsh poets, e.g., Dafydd Llwyd in his cywydd brud beginning "Y gigfran a gân fel gwydd", refers to him as "Y tarw aergryf o'r teirgradd Ynghroen llew egyr yn lladd." When we come to the description of the arms in lines 15-16, we are on absolutely certain ground : "Y gŵr a ddug arwydd iach Yn ei darian bedeirach, Y tri llew glas fel asur, Trwy wyllt dan a'r tair rhwyll dur." "The man who bore a sturdy device on his shield for four generations (or representing four families), the three lions azure, amid wild fire, and the three iron rhwyll.” Now rhwyll in the Laws of Hywel means a "cresset" ; otherwise, it may mean "fretwork", that is, in heraldic language, a portcullis. Now the arms of Owen Glyndwr were, a shield charged with, quarterly, four lions rampant,' with no reference to the portcullis, that is to say, they were the ordinary arms of the Princes of Gwynedd. We have been unable to find the arms which Henry bore when Earl of Richmond, but we believe that the portcullis figured in the arms of the Earl of Pembroke, and the arms of Prince Arthur, the eldest son of Henry, were three lions. But the following passage from Dafydd Nanmor, a contemporary of Henry, may throw some light on the subject. The poet says that the arms of Cynan, prince of Gwynedd, ought to be placed on Henry's banner : "Llun y tri llew o wyn Llewod ieirll o Owain-" 1 This and the following quotations are taken from the MS. called Llyfr Elis Gruffydd in the Cardiff collection, and are given in Elis Gruffydd's orthography. 2 History of Powis Fadog, vol. ii, p. 110. 3 Archæologia Cambrensis, vol. iv, Second Series (1853), p. 193. |