Dafydd ap Edmwnd (fl. c. 1450–97) was one of the most prominent
Welsh language
Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut Province, Argentina). Historically, it has ...
poets of the
Later Middle Ages.
Life
Dafydd was born into a family of Norman ancestry in
Hanmer, in
Flintshire
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(now
Wrexham County Borough), north-east
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
. As a freeman and landowner within Welsh society he was not, like most of his contemporaries, dependent upon patronage.
Dafydd was the bardic disciple of
Maredudd ap Rhys and was in turn, the bardic tutor of
Tudur Aled and
Gutun Owain.
Poetry
The main themes of Dafydd’s poetry were love and nature in the tradition of
Dafydd ap Gwilym. His best-known poems include the following
cywyddau:
:*''
Cywydd Merch'' ("To a girl")
:*''
I Wallt Merch'' ("A lady’s hair")
:*''
Enwi’r Ferch'' ("Naming the girl")
Unlike many of his contemporaries, such as
Guto'r Glyn or
Lewys Glyn Cothi, Dafydd eschewed the
Wars of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These wars were fought be ...
and politics. However, Dafydd was moved to compose an elegy for his friend, the harpist Siôn Eos, who was hanged for killing a man in a tavern brawl. In this, arguably his finest poem, Dafydd expresses his own
anti-English sentiment, and regrets that Siôn Eos could not have been sentenced under the more humane
Welsh Laws of
Hywel Dda, resulting in
compensation being paid to the victim’s family rather than being sentenced to the
death penalty under ''cyfraith Lundain'' ("London’s law").
:*''
Marwnad Siôn Eos'' ("The Death of Sion Eos")
1450 eisteddfod and its legacy
In 1450 Dafydd won the silver chair at an
eisteddfod
In Welsh culture, an ''eisteddfod'' is an institution and festival with several ranked competitions, including in poetry and music.
The term ''eisteddfod'', which is formed from the Welsh morphemes: , meaning 'sit', and , meaning 'be', means, a ...
held at
Carmarthen. This was achieved with a
cywydd in praise of the
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the ...
, which exemplified the 24 metres of Welsh bardic poetry reformed by Dafydd, previously codified by
Einion Offeiriad and
Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug. He deleted two metres and replaced them with the more complicated ''Gorchest y Beirdd'' and the ''Cadwynfyr''.
The 24 metres presented by Dafydd at the eisteddfod became widely adopted throughout Wales. While the training of poets had always been kept within bardic circles, with the craft handed down from tutor to pupil, Dafydd’s reforms of the metres subsequently increased the segregation between the “professional elite” and the amateur poets. However the consequence of this, and of Dafydd in particular, was that greater emphasis was placed upon the bardic craft with its adherence to the stricter metres rather than on the content and theme of the poems. The passion and intensity of
Dafydd ap Gwilym and
Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen
Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen (fl. c. 1350–1390) was a Welsh language court poet from Merionethshire, in the north west of Wales.
Llywelyn is credited, along with Iolo Goch, with introducing and popularizing the cywydd metre in the north of Wales. ...
tended to be lost.
Bibliography
*''Gwaith Dafydd ab Edmwnd'' (ed. by Thomas Roberts, Bangor, 1914).
''Welsh Literature - Chapter 7: Poets of the Gentry''*Meic Stephens, ''The New Companion to the Literature of Wales'' (University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1998)
*Gwyn Williams, ''The Burning Tree: Poems from the First Thousand Years of Welsh Verse'' (Faber and Faber, 1956). Includes a complete translation of the poems.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dafydd Ab Edmwnd
Welsh-language poets
People from Flintshire
15th-century Welsh poets