And Olaus Wormius gives the following specimen of it in Latin: "ChrISTus caput nOSTrum It will, I am pretty confident, be a difficult thing to find any instances of similar characteristics of verse in any Welsh poetry before the time of Gruffudd ap Cynan; or, if something of such a nature may be found, it will, I trust, appear always to be a thing of chance rather than of intention. The learned Bishop of Dromore, one of the most candid writers that ever existed, has, in his remarks on a passage in the Edda of Snorro, the following observation (pp. 197, 198, &c.) : "I am led to think that the later Welsh bards might possibly have been excited to cultivate the alliterative versification more strictly from the Scalds, and their imitators the Anglo-Saxon poets, because the more ancient British bards were nothing near so exact and strict in their alliterations as those in the middle and later ages; particularly after the Norman conquest of England, and even after Edward the First's conquest of Wales. Whereas some centuries before this the Icelandic metre had been brought to the highest pitch of alliterative exactness. This conjecture, however, that the Welsh bards borrowed anything from the poets of any other country, will hardly be allowed me by the British antiquaries, who, from a laudable partiality, are jealous of the honours of their countrymen; nor is it worth contending for; it is sufficient to observe that a spirited emulation between the BARDS and the SCALDS might excite each of them to improve their own native poetry, and to give it all that artificial polish which they saw admired in the other language." On this passage his lordship has the following note:-"A very learned and ingenious British antiquary thus informs me, -'Our prosody depends entirely on what you call alliteration, and which our grammarians term "Cynghanedd," i. e., Concentus, vel symphonia consonantica. This at first was not very strict, for the bards of the sixth century used it very sparingly, and were not circumscribed by any rules. The bards, from the Norman conquest to the death of Llewelyn, our last prince, were more strict; but from thence to Queen Elizabeth's time, the rules of alliteration were used with great nicety, so that a line not perfectly alliterative is condemned as much by our grammarians as a false quantity by the Greeks and Romans. I can by no means think that our bards have borrowed their alliteration from the scalds of the North, for there are traces of it in some very old pieces of the Druids, still extant, which I am CAMB. JOUR., 1860. D persuaded are older than the introduction of Christianity, and were composed long before we had any commerce or intercourse with the inhabitants of Scandinavia, or of any branch of the Gothic race whatever, and I believe before the Roman conquest." I wish for the honour of my country that there were a little more truth in what this Welsh correspondent of Dr. Percy says, for I feel a little of that partiality to my native land and language which his lordship politely honours with the epithet of laudable; but I have also some partiality for truth. "A Scotsman," says Dr. Johnson, "must be a sturdy moralist indeed, if he loves not Scotland better than truth." How justly might he have said the same thing of every Welsh antiquary that has hitherto appeared in the world. "The bards of the sixth century used it very sparingly," says Mr. Evans; for I think it was he, though his name is not given; all these assertions are in his mannner. But let me ask in what pieces of any bard of the sixth century was alliteration ever used otherwise than in a line of mere chance. There are traces of some very old pieces of the Druids, which are older than the introduction of Christianity-before the Roman conquest. I have seen, I believe, as much of the ancient Welsh poetry as any man living, and, I believe, much more than ever Mr. Evans saw, and I never met with anything that appeared older to me than the fifth century; but of whatever age they may be, they most certainly are not alliterative, otherwise than in a line by accident. But admitting that some of our oldest ethical triplets might be of a date anterior to Christianity, and even the Roman conquest, yet to assert them to be in any degree alliterative is so glaringly an untruth that any child that could, not indeed read, but only look at the Welsh triplets written on paper, must have seen the contrary. Those old things are in a very simple and very rude kind of verse, ending generally every line in polysyllabic words with single rhymes; and the language is also much more rude, or at least more simple, than anything in the poems of the sixth century, having no rhyming pauses, such as we find in the works of Aneurin, Taliesin, Merlin, &c. And it is those pauses, and not consonantal alliteration, that were the embellishments of verse in the sixth century, and down to the eleventh. How The learned bishop is perfectly correct when he says that the scaldic alliteration had arrived at its height of perfection long before anything of the kind appeared in the Welsh poetry. How unfortunately did he apply the epithets, "very learned and ingenious" to the man who could assert the contrary-on one who well knew that he was giving such information as was not true. many truly learned and ingenious literary gentlemen applied to Mr. Evans, and to his fib-monger, Lewis Morris, for information relating to Welsh literature and Welsh antiquities? and how many of the most glaring falsehoods have they had in return from those fellows, who never turned their thoughts to anything relating to the ancient Welsh manuscripts, but to that fruitless endeavour of vindicating Geoffrey of Monmouth's romance? This was the labour of their whole lives; of the more ancient principles of our versification they appear to have known nothing at all, otherwise they would never have referred ethical triplets, that were beyond a doubt written in the fourteenth, to a period anterior to Christianity, or the Roman conquest; for this, with Mr. Edward Llwyd, who also knew nothing of the Welsh versification, they did. Evans and Morris had some, but indeed very slender knowledge of the versification of later ages, even not enough to enable them thence to judge of the authenticity of a poem only two hundred years old. This may be deemed bold in me; it is so; it is high time for somebody to be so; and on the assertions that I here make I risk my character as a man of veracity in opposition to all the puny brood of Welsh critics, who, for their own credit, I hope, know something more of their Greek and Latin than they do of anything that is Welsh. Mr. Evans adds, speaking of our old triplets, "they mention the oak, high mountains, and snow, with honour. Those are certainly remains of the pagan creed." My observation must be that there is not a word of truth in all this. The snowy mountains it is true are mentioned, not with any view to honour them, not with any reference to a religious creed, but on a very different idea, on which I have offered my conjectures elsewhere. But where is the oak mentioned otherwise that as the largest, most useful of our forest trees, the noblest object in our woods and fields, just as English poets mention it? The field of Welsh antiquities has been, by those who in a more proper sense hognosed it up than cultivated it, sown, thickly sown, and planted with the rankest and most pernicious weeds. To eradicate these I find will be a hard labour; but I must endeavour to ring their noses, and if possible, to check their depredations. I am ready prepared for the obloquy that awaits me. Lewis Morris, in his Celtic Remains (under Achlach, p. 78), gives the following account :-- "ACHLACH.-Glynn Achlach, in Ireland, where in 1096, under Mwrchan and Gruffudd ap Cynan, the Irish and Welsh musicians met, and settled the rules of composition." In this short account we have no mention of bards or poets being there; and in the old MS. tracts on instrumental music, all of them without a single exception that I have hitherto met with represent the meeting in Glynn Achlach as one of musicians only; and in all the copies that I have yet seen of the statute of Gruffudd ap Cynan (excepting the very modern and interpolated copy of Llandegai), there is no intimation given of its having originated in Glynn Achlach. There is no mention of such a place in it, or of any other place in Ireland. After all, the copies of this statute, now in existence, are obviously of a much later period; the language, idiom, and words of English etymology clearly evince this. What ancient copies may be hitherto undiscovered in ancient unexplored libraries I know not. In many South walian copies it is asserted that this little system (and it is a very good one) was drawn up by Llawdden, at the desire of Gruffudd ap Nicholas, for the use of his bardic establishment at Caermarthen, in 1452. The lan guage is obviously of that age; it is peculiarly adapted to the manners and political circumstances of that period, to the state of the Welsh poetry and its principles of versification in that age; and notwithstanding the minute and long continued inquiries that I have made, I have never heard of a single copy that appears to have been written before that period. That Llawdden might have some broken fragments of either written documents, or oral traditions, may be very possible, is indeed highly probable, and those attributed to Gruffudd ap Cynan; but if he had ever instituted any regulation for the bards, it must appear very strange to all that neither the historians of that age, or either of the numerous Northwalian bards of the court of Gruffudd ap Cynan, allude in the least to any such thing; but the instrumental musicians have always uniformly mentioned the musical meeting in Glynn Achlach, and of the regulations therein made; but this is always exclusively of everything relating to bards or poets. That these regulations originated in Ireland is evident from the technology of the system there adopted and established; almost every term is purely Irish, and not understood etymologically by Welshmen; but nothing of such a cast appears in the bardic regulations; the professed and copious biographer of Gruffudd ap Cynan is absolutely silent on this point. We admit that Gruffudd ap Cynan appointed good regulations for musicians. Bleddyn ap Cynfyn before him made laws for the regulations of genealogies; genealogy was a part of the bardic profession. A MS. tract, attributed to Caradoc ap Lancarvan (not his more generally known history), says that Rhys ap Tewdwr made laws for regulating the bards, and that they were inscribed on stone tablets in front of his palace. I admit the authority of this MS. is doubtful, but it is certainly more admissible in history than the absolute silence of all writers, whether in prose or verse, respecting Gruffudd ap Cynan. A junction possibly of what those three princes did might have been the materials with which Llawdden formed his little neat code of bardic laws. |