A HISTORICAL POEM BY IOLO GOCH.

IN the year 1877, the publication of "The Works of Iolo Goch", with a sketch of his life, was commenced in the first volume of the Cymmrodor, by its first able and lamented editor, the Reverend Robert Jones, Vicar of All Saints, Rotherhithe, and was subsequently continued in the second volume, when the work was interrupted by the necessity for the introduction of more urgent matter after the completion of thirteen of the poems. It is greatly to be hoped that the undertaking, thus auspiciously begun, may not, for lack of means or opportunity, be eventually allowed to drop. In the brief outline of the poet's life, by the late Canon Robert Williams, in that most useful work, the Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen, it is said that more than fifty of his poems are still extant in manuscript, and obviously the publication of these in their entirety will be needed to enable the present generation to form an adequate judgment of the genius and capacity of the bard, and to appreciate to the full the value of the allusions they contain to the important historical events which were passing around him, and in some of which, in his capacity of a vates sacer, he would appear to have borne personally no insignificant a part. The compositions may be classified roughly under the headings of 1. Religious; 2. Historical; 3. Encomiastic. Of these, those comprised under the second must naturally attract the first attention; while the third class will be looked to by those who would view society in those troublous times in its more private and social relations; and the state of religious knowledge and practice can scarcely

fail to derive point and illustration from the quaint and often obscure language of the first. To the philologist, the frequent occurrence of terms and forms of speech, current in the poet's day, but scarcely intelligible now, cannot but prove highly instructive; a remark for the truth of which sufficient evidence has been furnished by the poems already in our hands. In the form as well as the matter of Cymric poetry, the works of Iolo may be said to bridge over the period between the ruder, if more majestic, metrical productions of his predecessors, and the more finished performances of those who came after him. During his acme, comprising the earlier half of the fourteenth century, the form of verse known as the "Cywydd" became more recognised as a legitimate expression of poetical feeling than heretofore, when, speaking generally, it had been for some time but sparsely introduced, or was working its way very gradually into use; while in Davydd ab Gwilym, who so prominently occupied the public attention in Wales during the last part of the century, it attained to an ease, a grace, and a perfection, never reached before, and certainly never since surpassed.

Iolo Goch, then, may be said to have occupied as a poet an intermediate position between the last of the “Gogynfeirdd", properly so called, and Dafydd ab Gwilym and the bards who adopted the more modern style, metre, and diction of the Cywydd and Awdl writers of the fifteenth and subsequent centuries, with little or no intermission, down to our own day. Nor was this all. He made his mark also as a man of letters, whose attainments in classical, historical, and general learning were at least equal to, and probably far superior to those of most of his lay contemporaries. To his knowledge of Latin, a Dialogue between the Soul and the Body, translated from that language, and extant among his works in MS., will testify. Possessed of independent means, and born of a good family, and maternally of English blood, his

mother, it is said, being Countess of Lincoln,1 he received an excellent education, and took the degree of Master of Arts at one of the Universities. As Lord of Llechryd, and residing at his own mansion of Coed Pantwn in Llannefydd, and, in later life, at Sycharth, that of his royal patron Owain Glyndower, he had ample opportunity for the cultivation of his favourite studies. Not only, therefore, in his official character as bard, but also from his own social position, he had ready access to intercourse with the highest in the land, and might have attained to any height of eminence and court favour, had his patriotism permitted him, for the sake of private advancement, to choose the winning side. Of this there is ample testimony in the poem perhaps best known of all his compositions to modern readers, through its publication in the collection entitled "Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru", of Cymric chef-d'œuvres, as they appeared to be in the judgment of their spirited editor, Rhys Jones, printed in 1773, and paraphrased in his book, called Wild Wales, by the late Mr. Borrow. That poem, with another from the same collection, has been reproduced in the present year, in the History of Powys Fadog, by J. Y. W. Lloyd, Esq. of Clochfaen, an esteemed member of our Cymmrodorion Society; but unaccompanied with any translation. This, in the case of the latter of the two poems, the following is an attempt to supply, so far as that may be possible, through the medium of a metrical interpretation, by adhering as closely as may be to the diction as well as spirit of the original. It is entitled "An Ode to Owain Glyndwr after his Disappearance", and is couched in a strain of lamentation for his absence, and of invitation to return with forces gathered from among the nations of Europe, and restore their sovereignty, together with their laws and liberty, to the Cymry. The immediate occasion of the poem is probably an episode in the story of 1 Query, a De Lacy?

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the Cymric hero, which has been involved in some obscurity, and on which it appears to throw no inconsiderable reflection of light.

The battle of Shrewsbury was fought on the 21st of June. 1403, in which the first division only of Glendower's army was defeated in his absence. Detained by the siege of Kidweli, he had marched no nearer to the scene of that famous conflict than Oswestry. He then confined his operations to devastating the English borders, and possessing himself of the enemy's castles, among them those of Caermarthen and Emlyn. In 1404, he entered into a treaty with the French King, Charles VI, then at war with Henry IV, and defeated an English army at Craig y Dorth, near Monmouth. This was his last success. The next year his partizans sustained two defeats in Monmouthshire and Brecknockshire. In the latter conflict his brother Tudor, Lord of Gwyddelwern, was slain. All Glamorgan submitted to the King, Owain's followers were dispersed, and himself obliged to hide in caves and other retreats.

The rest shall be told in the words of the historian of Powys Fadog. "A cavern near the seaside in the parish of Llangelynen in Merionethshire is still called 'Ogof Owain', in which he was supported by Ednyfed ab Aaron. King Henry again entered Wales with an army of 37,000 men, but, owing to the tempestuous weather, he was obliged to make a hasty retreat with considerable loss. Owain's affairs were again improved by the aid of his ally, the King of France, who sent a fleet to Milford Haven with an army of 12,000 men, whom Owain joined with 10,000 more at Tenby; and the combined armies marched into Worcestershire, where they encamped, and were opposed by the English King. For eight days they respectively presented themselves in order of battle, but, beyond skirmishes, in which many were slain, nothing more decisive occurred, and the

King having cut off the means of supply, the Welsh and French secretly (?) retreated to Wales, and the latter returned to France without making any further attempt."1

We doubt much whether many readers of English history have fully realised the fact that the French and Welsh invasion of England, in 1485, was preceded by another of exceedingly similar character eighty years before, in which the enemy penetrated, if not so far as Bosworth, at least into the very heart of the country, unopposed till they reached Worcester; an expedition which, had it succeeded in its object, would have probably been followed by a more serious consequence even than the transfer of the Crown from one dynasty to another-the dismemberment of the kingdom. By the treaty entered into a few years before by Mortimer, Percy, and Glendower, at the house of Davydd Daron, Dean of Bangor, it had been agreed that Mortimer was to possess all the land from Trent and Severn to the east and south of the island; Percy, all north of the Trent; and Glendower all west of the Severn. France also, in return for its valuable aid, would certainly have claimed a share, and that not improbably the share appropriated by the lion in the distribution of the conquered country.

Be that as it may, those momentous issues have happily long since passed out of the range of human speculation. It remains but to add that it is to this portentous time of concealment, when the landing of the French force was being anxiously looked for in the Principality, that the poem is in all probability to be referred. And the more so, because among the several countries specified by name as those whence Owain's return might be looked for, care seems studiously to have been taken to pass over entirely in silence the one country, namely France, from which the expected military aid afterwards actually came, from which a moun

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