Yr Hen Iaith, part fifty one: a mother’s counsel and a husband’s grief

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 fifty one.

Jerry Hunter

Despite the socio-economic pressures felt by bards who composed praise poetry in the strict metres, this age-old Welsh tradition continued into the seventeenth century.

As we’ve noted many times before, there is simply too much Welsh literature to discuss, and hard decisions must be made while selecting topics for the podcast and this companion series in Nation.Cymru. We are thus leaving out a great many poets from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, ones who maintained this aspect of Welsh literary culture, ensuring that an essentially medieval mode of composition survived in a new era (while sometimes adapting it inventively).

As we have talked about the professional bardic order and the praise tradition before, we focus on a very different use of strict-metre poetry, one more personal.

Tudors

Catrin Owen was from Penmynydd in Anglesey. Not only were her family uchelwyr, but they were also related to the Tudors. She married into another family of Anglesy uchelwyr, becoming the wife of Dafydd Llwyd of Henblas, Llangristiolus. Both Catrin and Dafydd were beirdd yn canu ar eu bwyd eu hunaini (‘poets singing on their own food’), members of the upper class who normally provided patronage for the bards but who also learned aspects of the bardic craft themselves.

In October 1599 their eighteen-year-old son, Siôn, began his course of study at Christ Church College, Oxford. Just like so many other parents through the ages, Catrin Owen sent her son off to college with her advice ringing in his ears.

This advice, however, was presented to Siôn in the form of a strict-metre poem consisting of a series of twelve verses cast in the englyn unodl union metre. The title given to the composition in the only manuscript which preserves it is At Siôn Lloyd: cynghorion y fam i’w hetifedd (‘To Siôn Lloyd: the mother’s counsels to her child’). The noun etifedd can mean ‘heir’, and it’s interesting that this status-laden word is used rather than mab, ‘son’.

Advice

In the first of the poem’s englynion, she establishes the frame for the pieces of advice which follow, striking a tone which is personal, serious and thoughtful:

Fy mab Siôn o Fôn, ‘rwyf i – diweniaith
Yn d’annerch mewn difri’;
Ac o’m gwir fodd yn rhoddi
At hyn, fy mendith i ti.

‘My son, Siôn from Anglesey, I am sincerely
Addressing you seriously;
And I gladly give
You my blessing as well.’

In the next englyn Catrin prays that God will watch over her son while he’s away: Arnad, Siôn, y danfano / Mal y gwlith ei fendith Fo (‘May He send his blessing(s) to you, Siôn, [as frequently as he sends] the dew’).

Catrin’s advice to her son includes ‘loving God and an upright person’ ([ch]âr Dduw a chywir ddyn) and watching out for the snares of ‘the world and the flesh’ (y byd a’r cnawd). Any parent knows that friends can have a shaping influence on children after they leave home, and this truism is crystalized in an englyn which is as powerful as it is endearing:

Dewis gyfeillion diwair – dysgedig,
Dysg wadu rhai drygair:
Nac ennill, Siôn, oganair,
Er mwyn Mab y Forwyn Fair.

‘Choose honest, learned friends,
Learn to renounce ones with a bad reputation:
Siôn, do not earn a reproachful word,
For the sake of the Son of the Virgin Mary.’

[G]oganair, translated here as ‘a reproachful word’, can also mean the same thing as dychan, ‘satire’. If Welsh patrons had enjoy the praise of bards for century, the other side of the bardic coin was the poetic satire which could take one’s good name away. This mother wants her son to ensure that his behaviour does do ‘earn’ that kind of verbal attack.

The advice offered in the concluding englyn also rings true in the 21st century. It is sometimes said today that universities should act in loco parentis, fulling the essential care of a parent for young people away from home for the first time. Catrin tells her son that he should consider Oxford to be his surrogate mother while he is there:

Dy famaeth helaeth pei holen’ – f’enaid,
Yw’r fwynaidd Rydychen;
Tyn Siôn draw, â’th ddwy bawen,
Burion hap ei bronnau hen.

‘Your generous foster-mother, should they [should anyone] ask, my dear,
Is amiable Oxford;
Siôn, take in, with your two paws,
The pure fortune of her old breasts.’

The image of a baby using its little hands or ‘paws’ as it draws life-sustaining milk from its (foster-)mother’s breasts makes this advice memorable: Siôn will gain good fortune if he works to take in learning and goodness from the ‘old’ (hen) university.

Catrin Owen died three years after seeing her son off to college. Her husband, Dafydd Llwyd, expressed his grief using the strict-metre cywydd form, describing an imagined dialogue between himself and his deceased wife.

While earlier Welsh marwnadau or elegies employ this technique, it is usually found in poems grieving the loss of a patron or in compositions used to mourn the death of a bardic teacher. This is an interesting example of an established mode of bardic composition being adapted and used in a different sphere.

Tears

Dafydd Llwyd gives himself the first, describing the tears which come with his grief in his opening couplet:

Mae alar am a welwyd
O’m iad i’r llawr mae dŵr llwyd.
‘There is lamentation for what was seen,
Pale water flows from my head down to the floor.’

His tears join that of others mourning his wife, causing a flood which runs ‘from the end of Anglesey through Penmynnydd (o ben Môn drwy Benmynnydd). He is in pain and his mind is striken:

Torrwyd, amharwyd fy mhen,
Try yn wayw am Gatrin Owen.

‘Broken, my head impaired,
It becomes an agony because of Catrin Owen.’

Calling to God in despair, Dafydd describes what he’s lost:

O Dduw mawr, yr oedd i mi
Hoff rediad ei phriodi.

‘O great God!
The dear path of marrying her.’

Married life was a [rh]ediad, ‘a running’, ‘a course’ or ‘a path’ which was hoff, ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’.

Dafydd Llwyd then provides a Welsh version of a theme found in literatures from around the world, claiming that he will go and lie on her grave, calling out and demaning that his departed wife answer him:

O fawr boen af ar ei bedd,
Af a galwaf am goledd:
Agor, fedd, ac erof fi,
Agor, arch, ac er erchi
Fy mhriod wyd, yn godech
Wyd dan y llawr dan y llech.

‘From great pain I will go upon her grave,
I will go and I will call out because of loss:
“Open, grave, and, for me,
Open, coffin!”
You are my spouse, hiding
beneath the ground beneath the stone.’

And in his poetic imagination, his Catrin answers him from beyond the grave, beginning Dafydd, ‘rwyf i yn d’ofyn (‘Dafydd, I am asking you’). She asks him to recall that he witnessed her suffering in her final illness, suggesting that he should be content that she is now with God. Dafydd then has his deceased wife asking him give her best to her friends and family. The son who was away studying at Oxford is then mentioned by name:

Dwg i’w plith fy mendithion
Gynnyrch sad, ac annerch Siôn.

‘Take to them my blessings,
A wise offering, and address Siôn.’

With this request that he ‘address’ (annerch) their son, bearing an ‘offering’ or ‘presentation’ ([c]ynnyrch) which was sad (‘solid’, ‘stable’ or wise’), Dafydd Llwyd reminds us of that poem which Catrin composed three years before her death offering Siôn her cynhgorion or ‘counsels’.

Further Reading

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