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''Canu Heledd'' (modern Welsh /'kani 'hɛlɛð/, the songs of Heledd) are a collection of early Welsh ''englyn''-poems. They are rare among medieval Welsh poems for being set in the mouth of a female character. One prominent figure in the poems is Heledd's dead brother Cynddylan.


Summary

Dorothy Ann Bray summarised the cycle thus:
The entire cycle of the Heledd poems ... is a statement of mourning from which a background story has been deduced: Cynddylan, prince of Powys, and his brothers along with his heroic band are slain in battle, defending their country against the English in the mid-seventh century. Heledd, his sister, is one of the few survivors, who witnessed the battle and the destruction of Cynddylan's hall at Pengwern. She has lost not only all her brothers, but also her sisters and her home, and the poems suggest that she blames herself for the destruction of Cynddylan's court because of some ill-spoken words.
As with the other so-called 'saga ''englynion''’ (pre-eminently ''
Canu Llywarch Hen ''Canu Llywarch Hen'' (modern Welsh /'kani 'ɬəwarχ heːn/, the songs of Llywarch Hen) are a collection of early Welsh ''englyn''-poems. They comprise the most famous of the early Welsh cycles of ''englynion'' about heroes of post-Roman Nort ...
'' and '' Canu Urien''), there is considerable uncertainty and debate as to how the poems of ''Canu Heledd'' might originally have been performed. It is usually assumed that they must have been accompanied by some kind of prose narrative, to which they provided emotional depth; but this is not certain.


Contents

As edited by Jenny Rowland, the contents of ''Canu Heledd'' are as follows:


Manuscripts and dating

The poems are attested principally in the
Red Book of Hergest Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secon ...
, which was written between about 1382 and 1410. They were also included in the
White Book of Rhydderch The White Book of Rhydderch (Welsh: ''Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch'', National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 4-5) is one of the most notable and celebrated surviving manuscripts in Welsh language, Welsh. Mostly written in southwest Wales in the middle of ...
, but are now lost due to damage to the manuscript. However, they are attested in two later manuscripts descended from the White Book,
Peniarth Peniarth is a village in the community of Meifod, Powys, Wales. It is 87.1 miles (140.2 km) from Cardiff and 156.9 miles (252.5 km) from London. It is represented in the Senedd by Russell George (Conservative). It is part of the Montgo ...
111 (made by John Jones of Gellillyfdy in 1607), whose spelling is very close to the White Book's, and London, British Library, Add. MS 31055 (made by
Thomas Wiliems Thomas Wiliems (born in Ardda'r Mynaich in Arllechwedd, Wales possibly on 20 April 1545 or 1546; died in or before 13 August 1623) was a Welsh-language antiquarian.“Wiliems, Thomas (b. 1545/6?, d. in or before 1623?),” J. E. Caerwyn Williams i ...
in 1596), which is a less conservative copy. Some other late copies of lost medieval manuscripts of the ''englynion'' also exist:
National Library of Wales The National Library of Wales (, ) in Aberystwyth is the national legal deposit library of Wales and is one of the Welsh Government sponsored bodies. It is the biggest library in Wales, holding over 6.5 million books and periodicals, and the l ...
4973 contains two copies of the cycle, both copied by Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, one of Wales's leading antiquarians and scribes of his day, before 1631. The first copy, NLW 4973a, derives from a lost manuscript closer to the White Book than the Red. The second copy, NLW 4973b, is more complex and may represent a conflation of multiple medieval sources, but seems to have at least some independent value as a witness to the lost archetype of the poems. It is fairly clear that all these manuscripts descend from a lost common original, to which they are all fairly similar, making the creation of a critical edition of the poems relatively straightforward. Despite surviving first in manuscripts written between about 1382 and 1410 and in largely
Middle Welsh Middle Welsh (, ) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh (). Literature and history Middle Welsh is ...
orthography, ''Canu Heledd'' are thought mostly to have been composed in
Old Welsh Old Welsh () is the stage of the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh.Koch, p. 1757. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from Common Brittonic around 550, ha ...
and transmitted orally and/or in manuscript, due to their archaic style and occasionally archaic spelling: Jenny Rowland dates the cycle to c. 800–900.


Historicity

Although neither Cynddylan nor Heledd are attested in historical sources such as the
Harleian genealogies __NOTOC__ The Harleian genealogies are a collection of Old Welsh genealogies preserved in British Library, Harley MS 3859. Part of the Harleian Library, the manuscript, which also contains the '' Annales Cambriae'' (Recension A) and a version of ...
, Cynddylan is the subject of a lament in '' awdl''-metre, ''Marwnad Cynddylan'' (not to be confused with the ''englynion'' of the same title in ''Canu Heledd''), which is thought to date from the time of his death, and scholars have not doubted that Cynddylan and Heledd were historical figures in seventh-century Powys. However, while some scholars have thought of other details of ''Canu Heledd'' as also being good evidence for seventh-century events, other sources suggest that seventh-century relations between Mercia and Powys were more cordial, and that there was no catastrophic invasion of Powys by the English in this period. Such invasions did characterise the ninth century, however, when ''Canu Heledd'' was probably composed. Thus the poems are generally now thought more to reflect ninth-century imaginings of what the seventh century must have been like, telling us more about ninth-century realities than seventh-century ones. Some commentators even consider a tenth-century date for the origin of the text. Heledd has been supposed by some commentators to have 'taken over the mantle of the old Celtic goddess of sovereignty', but there is no substantial evidence for this.


Example

As edited and translated by Jenny Rowland, stanzas 57–65 of ''Canu Heledd'', entitled 'Ffreuer', run:


Appearances in popular culture

Heledd's reception in post-medieval texts has been surveyed by Marged Haycock. These include the novella '' Tywyll Heno'' by Kate Roberts.John T. Koch, 'Heledd Ferch Cyndrwyn', in ''The Celts: History, Life, and Culture'', ed. by John T. Koch and Antone Minard, 2 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2012), I p. 422


Editions and translations

* Ifor Williams, ''Canu Llywarch Hen'', 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1953) * Jenny Rowland, ''Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the 'Englynion’'' (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990) (includes editions pp. 404–18 and translations pp. 468–76) * Jenny Rowland, (ed.) ''A Selection of Early Welsh Saga Poems'' (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2014) (selected texts)


References

{{reflist Poems in Welsh