Yr Hen Iaith part forty seven: Hard times for the Bardic Order

Hard times for the Bardic Order – the challenges Posed during the Sixteenth Century

We continue the history of Welsh literature to accompany the second series of podcasts in which Jerry Hunter guides fellow academic Richard Wyn Jones through the centuries. This is episode forty seven.

Gwae ni’r beirdd gan air y byd,

Gwae ail fodd y gelfyddyd,

Swydd y beirdd sydd heb urddas,

Oedd enwog gynt heb ddwyn cas.

These lines are from a poem in the strict-metre cywydd form composed by Siôn Tudur around the end of the sixteenth century.  The word gwae – ‘woe!’ – is used to describe the state of ni’r beirdd, ‘we the bards’, as well as y gelfyddyd, ‘the art’ which they practice.

He then says that swydd y beirdd, ‘the occupation of the bards’, which ‘was once illustrious without attracting hatred’ (oedd enwog gynt heb ddwyn cas) is now ‘without dignity’ (heb urddas).

Social standing

The bards had been central to the maintenance of Welsh literary culture for centuries. Indeed, given the fact that the strict-metre praise poetry sung to the leaders of Welsh society helped enforce the social standing of those high-class patrons, the bardic profession had also played a key role in the maintenance of traditional social structures.

The diminishing status and eventual near disappearance of the professional praise poets is one of the big changes we can trace through Welsh literary history. By the middle of the seventeenth century, John Jones of Gellilyfdy, an energetic manuscript copyist who preserved a great deal of older Welsh literature, would write this assessment in English: “And at this time all the great knowledge of the Bards, their credit and worth is altogether decayed and worn out, so that at this time they are extinguished amongst us.” What had happened?

We can simplify a complicated subject and say that three kinds of challenges were posed to the bards during the sixteenth century. First of all, and perhaps most significantly, their pool of patronage was drying up. When the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII they lost one key source of patronage almost overnight.

They then depended on the patronage of uchelwyr or gentry, and many of these families were becoming increasingly Anglicized during the sixteenth century. As sons and grandsons of uchelwyr who once welcomed bards no longer valued Welsh-language poetry – and perhaps no longer even spoke the Welsh language – this central source of income evaporated.

According to one anecdote, Meurig Dafydd, a praise poets in Glamorgan, visited the uchelwr William Bassett of Beaupré about 1585. After asking the bard if the piece of paper in his hand was the only existing copy of Meurig Dafydd’s poem to him, Bassett paid him for it and then through the paper into the fire, saying: “By my honesty I swear, if there be no copy of this extant, none shall there ever be!”  The picture was mixed; the Lewis family of Van, Caerffili, apparently valued Meurig Dafydd’s work, for they offered him patronage for some forty years, but William Bassett’s attitude suggests the way in which the tide was turning.

Challenge

Renaissance humanism brought a different kind of challenge to the bards. Maurice Kyffin, though perhaps not a university graduate himself, moved in highly educated circles in London and knew John Dee, the Cambridge-educated polymath who enjoyed a place at Elizabeth I’s court.

In his introduction to a 1595 religious book, Deffynniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr  (‘A Defense of the Faith of the Church of England’), Kyffin states that ‘the condition of the Welsh language’ ([c]yflwr yr iaith Gymraeg) was ‘feeble enough’ (digon llesg) before recent Protestant humanist developments, and he places the blame in part on traditional bardic practice:

 . . . pryd na cheid clywed fynychaf, ond y naill ai cerdd faswedd, ai ynte rhyw fath arall ar wawd ofer heb na dysg, na dawn, na deunydd ynddi.

‘ . . . when nothing was heard for the most part other than either a bawdy poem or some other kind of vain verse with neither learning, nor talent nor substance in it.’

Reputational damage

The arch-humanist Siôn Dafydd Rhys, educated at Oxford and Siena, wrote an open letter to the bards in 1597 aimed at helping them repair the damage done to their reputation by Kyffin’s attack. Calling them ein caredig feirdd a’n hanwylieid brydyddion, ‘our kind bards and our dear poets’, he asks them to ‘preserve’ (cadw) and ‘defend’ (ymddiffyn) the ‘purity’ (purdeb) of the Welsh language.

Siôn Dafydd Rhys charges the bards not to do many things which he obviously thought they were guilt of doing:

Na chennwch lesgedd, na chennwch faswedd, na chenwch oferedd, na chenwch ddiddawnedd, na chenwch gelwyddau, na chenwch bethau diddysg na diddefnydd, na chenwch annuwioldeb.   Na thraganmolwch ac na thraogenwch.

‘Do not sing feebleness, do not sing bawdiness, do not sing vanity, do not sing worthlessness, do not sing lies, do not sing unlearned things nor ones without substance, do not sing ungodliness. Do not praise too much and do not satire too much.’

This ambitious humanist wanted Welsh bards to provide poetic expression for all of the various branches of learning which he valued:

Cenwch chwithau dduwioldeb drwy gynorthwy theologyddion; cenwch foesau da . . . drwy gynnorthwy moesolion philosophyddion; cenwch historiau drwy gymmorth historyddion[.]

‘Sing godliness with the help of theolgians; sing good morals . . . with the help of moral philosophers; sing histories with the help of historians.’

He also urged them to seek the help of ‘mathematicians’ (mathmategyddion) and ‘astronomers’ (astronymyddion).

Technological challenge

A third and final challenge posed to the professional bards during this period was technological in nature. Having relied on oral transmission and written manuscripts for centuries, by the second half of the sixteenth century basic practitioners were operating in a world which included Welsh-language printed books.

One of Siôn Dafydd’s Rhys’s more interesting friends was William Midleton, an uchelwr who had an exciting career as a soldier and ship captain. Midleton was also an amateur poet, and in1593 he published Barddoniaeth neu Brydyddiaeth, y llyfr cyntaf, trwy fyfyrdawd Capten William Middleton (‘Bardic Learning or Poetry, the first book, by means of the meditation of Captain William Midleton’).

The bardic order had been strictly controlled; disciples were taught by recognized penceirddiaid or ‘master-poets’, graded at events such as eisteddfodau and regulated by a strict and complicated code. Bardic grammars were kept in manuscripts and passed down from teacher to disciple.  William Midleton’s 1593 publication can be seen as a salvo intended to blow the doors guarding bardic education wide open and disseminate the fundamentals of the craft beyond the bounds of the traditional structures in which it had existed.

Some bards would continue to compose praise for uchelwr families well into the eighteenth century and – as demonstrated resoundingly last week in Pontypridd at the National Eisteddfod – many of the wonderfully complicated strict-metre forms employed by the bards are still employed by poets today. However, the challenges posed during the sixteenth century could ultimately not be overcome and the professional bards maintaining an essentially medieval tradition would eventually die out.

Further Reading:

Brinley Jones, The Old British Tongue: The Vernacular in Wales 1540-1600 (1970)

Branwen Jarvis, ‘Llythyr Siôn Dafydd Rhys at y Beirdd’, Llên Cymru 12 and Llinynnau (1999).

Jerry Hunter, ‘Cyfrinachau ar Dafod Leferydd: Ideoleg Technoleg yn yr Unfed Ganrif ar Bymtheg’ in Angharad Price (ed.), Chwileniwm [:] Llenyddiaeth a Thechnoleg (2002).