Yr Hen Iaith part 61: Taliesin in the Land of Death: The Sleeping Bard (2)

We continue the history of Welsh literature as Jerry Hunter guides fellow academic Richard Wyn Jones through the centuries in a series of lively podcasts.

As was noted in the last instalment, Ellis Wynne borrowed the name of his protagonist in Gweledigaethau’r Bardd Cwsg (‘The Visions of the Sleeping Bard’) from medieval Welsh tradition.

He did not do this to honour that tradition, but rather to lampoon it. His ‘Sleepling Bard’ is a comically hapless character who experiences his visions reluctantly, and some of what he sees also reflects very badly on the bardic profession to which he belongs.

The first of the book’s three visions takes him to an allegorical city in which he witnesses a great variety of sinners committing a great variety of sins. There, on ‘the Street of Pride’ (Stryd Balchder) he find a ‘treasury’ (trysordy) containing various things connected with that particular sin, including llyfrau achau, ‘books of genealogy’ of the kind which professional bards made in the past for their patrons, and cywyddau, poems in the strict-metre form used to sing praises to patrons from the early fourteenth through to the end of the seventeenth century.

Welsh love poetry

Ond ‘the Street of Pleasure’ (Stryd Pleser) we find a ‘Gentleman’ (Pendefig) who ‘has fetched a Bard from the Street of Pride to make a Poem of praise to his angel and a cywydd of praise to himself’ (wedi cyrchu Bardd o Strŷd Balchder, i wned Cerdd fawl i’w angyles, a chywydd moliant iddo’i hun). The form of the noun translated here as ‘angel’, angyles’, tells us that it is a female, and in order to seduce her this gentleman is drawing upon the tradition of Welsh love poetry. And, in order to impress her, he is also resorting to traditional Welsh praise poetry. Our Sleeping Bard oversees this sycophant of a bard describe the nature of his work to his employer:

             Mi fedraf, ebr ef, ei chyffelybu hi i bob côch a gwyn tan yr Haul, a’i gwâllt hi i             gan peth melynach na’r aur, ac am eich Cywydd chwitheu, medraf ddwyn eich             Acheu trwy berfedd llawer o Farchogion, a Thywysogion, a thrwy’r dw’r             Diluw, a’r cwbl yn glîr hyd at Adda.

‘I can’, he said, ‘compare her to every red and white under the Sun, and her hair to something one hundred times more yellow than gold, and as for your own Cywydd, I can trace your Lineage through the bowels of many Knights and Princes, and through the waters of the Deluge and all the way back to Adam.’

Our protagonist-narrator provides us with a humorous aside at this point which underscores the satire: ‘Wel dyma Fardd,’ ebr fi, ‘sy well olrheiniwr na mi’ (‘Well here is a Bard’, I said, ‘who is a better tracer than me’).

A nightmare realm

In the second vision our Sleeping Bard visits ‘Death in his Lowest Court’ (Angau yn ei frenhinlys Isaf). In order to reach that ghastly court, he must first travel through a nightmare realm reminiscent of the underworld landscapes depicted by Virgil and Dante. While traversing the Land of Death, he is accosted by one of many skeletal figures residing there who asks him his name.

When he replies and says that he is called Bardd Cwsg, Sleeping Bard, he unwittingly provokes a hostile reaction. Suddenly, ‘a little crook-necked old man’ ([c]nap o henddyn gwargam) jumps up and throws ‘a big skull’ (penglog fawr) at him which just misses his head, ‘thanks to the gravestone’ (diolch i’r garreg fedd) providing him with cover.

Our hapless narrator tries to calm his assailant, protesting that he is a visitor and does not deserve to be treated so harshly, but then the old man explains why he is so angry: ‘Syre,’ ebr ynte, ‘gwybyddwch mai fi, ac nid chwi, yw’r Bardd Cwsg; ac a ges llonydd yma ers naw cant o flynyddoedd gan bawb ond chwychi (‘Sirrah,’ said he, ‘know that it is I, and not you, who is the Sleeping Bard, and I’ve  had peace here for nine hundred years from everybody except you’). This encounter can be seen as a surreal textual implosion which occurs when we learn that this bone-slinging lunatic is actually the debased remains of the medieval poet for whom our Sleeping Bard is named.

We soon learn that the original Sleeping Bard is not the only ancient poet lurking here in the Land of Death.  Myrddin (‘Merlin’) is here too, and suggests that the crazed old man should be thankful to the visitor for keeping his name alive on earth.

The original Bardd Cwsg answers spitefully, saying that having a fool like this named after him is no honour. The surreal encounter between the two Sleeping Bards intensifies dizzingly, as the old man quizzes his namesake and asks him if he has mastered various kinds of bardic learning. Like the deranged old Sleeping Bard, the learning once prized by professional Welsh bards is relegated by Ellis Wynne to this literary graveyard.

Comic attack

And in order to intensify this grotesquely comic attack on the bardic tradition, Ellis Wynne places the debased shade of another famous poet here. This is nonother than Taliesin, a figure often equated with the very essence of Welsh poetry. ‘Hai, gadewch i mineu  ofyn iddo gwestiwn,’ (‘Hey, let me ask him a question’), he says. He then quotes four lines of poetry, asking the visitor if he knows ‘what this means’ (beth yw meddwl hyn?).  The verse is cryptic indeed:

Mi fyddaf hyd Ddyddbrawd,

            Ar wyneb daeabrawd,

            Ac ni wyddis betrh yw nghnawd,

            Ai cig ai Pyscawd.

‘I will be until Judgement Day

On the face of the earth,

And it is not known what my flesh is,

Whether meat or fish.’

These lines of poetry are in fact attributed to Taliesin in many manuscripts. They are part of the Tale of Taliesin, a narrative revealing his supernatural origins and unparalleled bardic powers.

The version recorded by Elis Gruffydd in the sixteenth century (and discussed in episode thirty-seven in this series), this narrative follows the Tale of Gwion Bach, and taken together the two parts of the Taliesin saga present him as the undying essence of Welsh poetic power, born again anew in each age.

Sinful

In addition to portraying the Welsh bardic tradition as sinful, Ellis Wynne sought to associate it with an irrelevant past.

His Taliesin is confined to the Land of Death, never to be reborn again. However, one can’t help wondering if it wasn’t his own sins that most troubled Ellis Wynne. After all, the extent to which he satirizes bardic practice proves that he was very familiar with that practice.

And by the same token, the way in which he quotes from poetry attributed to Taliesin proves that he had studied manuscripts containing that material.

We might venture to suggest that Ellis Wynne was attracted by the very aspects of his own cultural heritage which sought to disparage.

Further Reading:

Gwyn Thomas, Ellis Wynne (1984).

Patrick J. Donovan a Gwyn Thomas (goln.) Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsg: y rhan Gyntaf (1998).

Gwyn Thomas, Y Bardd Cwsg a’i gefndir (1971).

Part thirty-seven in this series (‘Welsh Folktales and Tudor Propaganda – Elis Gruffydd’): https://nation.cymru/culture/yr-hen-iaith-part-thirty-seven-welsh-folktales-and-tudor-propaganda-elis-gruffydd/