Yr Hen Iaith part fifty four: Expressing empathy and hiding the truth

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 accompanies episode 54.

Expressing Empathy and Hiding the Truth: Welsh writing from the civil wars

Jerry Hunter

Mae rhyfedd newidiad dros wyneb yr hollwlad,

Ple ceir dim gwir gariad mewn undyn.

Y byd a dywyllodd, y ddaear a grynodd,

A’r nefoedd a dduodd i’n herbyn.

‘There is a strange change over the face of the entire country,

Where no true love can be found in any person.

The world darkened, the earth shook,

And heavens blackened against us.’

These chilling lines describe the violent transformation of life brought by the first ‘civil war’ between King Charles I and Parliament. They were written by Morgan Llwyd (1619-1659), a puritan who, like most religious radicals of the time, supported Parliament during the wars.

The majority of Welsh people were conservative in their religion and their politics and thus sided with the king. Puritans were a very small minority in Wales, a minority that felt extremely threatened and exposed when war broke out.

Morgan Llwyd himself was in England when he wrote this; indeed, he would spend time travelling with the parliamentarian army during the wars,  preaching to the soldiers.

Empathy

This poem was a literary act of empathy, a show of support for like-minded friends and family who had remained in Wales.

The English title given to this Welsh-language text in the manuscript manifests this point: ‘The Desolation, Lamentation, and Resolution of the Welsh Saincts in the Late Wars. Sung in 1643.’  Morgan Llwyd ‘sings’ in the collective voice of those left behind, beginning:

Mae honom ychydig o blant cystuddedig

a adawyd yn unig yng Nghymru,

Yng nghanol ein cystudd, yn cwyno i’w gilydd,

a’n calon sydd beunydd yn pallu.

‘There is from amongst us a few afflicted children

who were left behind in Wales,

In the midst of our afflication, lamenting to each other,

And our heart is weakening each day.’

The emphasis is simultaneously on the community indexed by the first person plural pronoun (ein cystudd, ‘ouraffliction’; [ei]n calon, ‘our heart’) and on their collective unity, suggested by a single ‘heart’ (‘calon’).

Balance of power

If we can apply politico-military phrasing to literary history, we might say that the large body of Welsh-language literature related to the seventeenth-century wars is characterized by an interesting balance of power.

On the one hand, the greatest bulk of surviving texts were written by and for those on the side of king and conservative Anglicanism. On the other hand, while there is a much smaller body of texts marked ideologically as puritan and parliamentarian, this body of literature includes the many work of Morgan Llwyd, the most canonical writer of the period.

And he earned his canonical status for a reason; while I am all for questioning literary canons and elevating neglected writers, I honestly can’t name a seventeenth-century Welsh writer who was more talented and original than Morgan Llwyd. One side has the numbers and the other side has the greatest talent.

However, there are plenty of texts written by royalists which are extremely interesting in their own right, and some display striking literary innovation while maintaining a rigid political and religious conservatism. Some of these texts will be given attention in the next episode.

For now, let’s set Morgan Llwyd’s description of the ‘affliction’ visited upon Welsh puritans against the suffering endured by those on the other side. Some years before the wars, the uchelwr Siôn Fychan was enjoying life at his home, Caer-Gai, near Llanuwchllyn.

An amateur poet (or, to use the phrase from the period, bardd yn canu ar ei fwyd ei hun, ‘a poet singing on his own food’), he composed a cywydd which describes the welcome visitors received at Gaer-Gai. He boasts that, in addition to feasting on venison and drinking both beer and wine, they’ll have a variety of pastimes to entertain them:

Ac odlau a theg adlais

Bytheiaid, lawenblaid lais;

A hela gwalch, hylaw gamp

A hel pysg, hwyl hapusgamp,

A bowliaw garllaw i’r llyn

Llawen oll yn Llanuw’llyn.

Ac englyn gan delyn deg

Gwych einioes, ac ychwaneg.

‘And the rhymes and fair sound

of hunting dogs, voice of a merry band;

And hunting with a hawk, a skilful exploit,

And fishing, the fun of a cheerful exploit,

And bowling by the lake,

Thoroughly merry in Llanuwchllyn,

And an englyn [performed with] a fair harp,

A splendid life, and more.’

Literary revenge

It was in this luxurious and cultured atmosphere that Siôn Fychan’s son, Rowland, was raised. A gifted prose stylist who translated Anglican tracts from English into Welsh and a poet composing both free- and strict-metre verse, Rowland Fychan (or Vaughan) would serve as a captain in the king’s army during the wars.

And he would suffer greatly because of it: Caer-Gai, the stately home which e inherited from his father, was burnt by parliamentarian forces, Rowland was captured on the battlefield and imprisoned, and he was deprived of his lands.

As we’ll see in the next instalment, Rowland Fychan composed poetry reflecting a variety of war-time experiences, and when Oliver Cromwell died and the monarchy was returning, the former royalist  captain took up his pen to wreak a literary revenge on the religious radicals whom he held responsible for his afflictions.

But let’s end with a note of caution. While a great many texts testify to a variety of ways in which Welsh literary culture was employed to treat contemporary conflict, it’s important to stress that literature is not a simple mirror held up to reflect reality.

As one might expect given the longevity of the canu mawl (praise poetry) tradition, there are a considerable number of poems extolling the virtues of uchelwyr who fought in the wars. However, just as the praise poets often stretched the truth while flattering their patrons, they also tended to ignore embarrassing truths.

For example, let’s take one bardic patron who followed an interesting path through the period of strife. Siôn Bodfel was Member of Parliament for Anglesey from 1640 to 1644. He and wife Ann sided with the puritans and parliament during the tensions leading up to the first war, and he was given a military appointment y parliament when fighting started in 1642.

However, he switched sides within a year, and Charles I duly rewarded him by making him governor of Caernarfon Castle, Commissioner of Array (a military recruiting officer) for Caernarfonshire, and a colonel in the royalist army. The bard Watcyn Clywedog composed a cywydd praising Colonel Siôn Bodfel in 1645 which plays up his role in the king’s military:

Pwy sy i gynnal pwys Gwynedd?

Pur ydyw ei glod, parod gledd.

Purwych eurfeistr, parch Arfon,

Pa wladwyr mwy? Paladr Môn.

Pwy ond Siôn, pennod synnwyr,

Bodfel, llew ac angel y gwŷr?

‘Who is there to maintain Gwynedd’s force?

Pure is his praise, [and he is] ready of sword.

Purely brilliant golden master, Arfon’s honor,

What countrymen are greater? [He is] Anglesey’s spear.

Who but Siôn Bodfel, the height of sense,

[both] the men’s lion and angel?’

Tactfully avoiding the fact that his patron had once supported the opposing side, the poet praises him for his faithfulness to the king:

Uwch gwŷr, Siôn, farchog o’r sir,      

Ffyddlon i’r goron, geirwir;

Llw’r brenin, llwyr bur onest,

A geidw ei fron a gwaed ei frest.

‘Above men, Siôn, knight of the county,

Faithful to the crown, true of word;

His breast and the blood of his heart

Completely purely and honestly keep the king’s oath.’

Home wrecking

This eye-watering omission is not the only inconvenient truth left out by the poet. Watcyn Clywedog describes Y Gaerfryn, his patron’s new house in Llaneugrad Anglesey, stating ‘Siôn ac Ann sy’n ei gynnal’, ‘Siôn and Ann maintain it’. While praising the physical house in which they lived, the bard skips over the strife wrecking that home at that very time.

Ann had remained a zealous Puritan and she was dismayed by her husband’s change of heart. Indeed, when Watcyn Clywedog visited Y Gaerfryn, Ann was most likely already preparing a formal petition she would present to the Lords in 1646 asking that their children be removed formally from Siôn’s care because her estranged husband was morally unfit.

The bard’s poem of praise was surely music to Colonel Siôn Bodfel’s ears; its elaborate description of his virtues was a gilded façade hiding the cracks in his personal ediface.

Further Reading:

Thomas E. Ellis (ed.), Gweithiau Morgan Llwyd o Wynedd, vol. 1 (1899).

Nesta Lloyd (ed.), Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu’r Ail Ganrif ar Bymtheg (1993).

Jerry Hunter, ‘The Red Sword, the Sickle and the Author’s Revenge: Welsh Literature and Conflict in the Seventeenth Century, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 36 (2018).