Yr Hen Iaith fifty five: Conservative politics, literary innovation

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 55.

Conservative Politics, Poetic Innovation: Royalist Poetry from ‘the Civil Wars’

Jerry Hunter

One of the interesting things about Welsh poetry written during ‘the civil wars’ of the seventeenth is the way in which political and religious conservatism drove literary innovation.

A number of poets who supported – and, in some cases, even fought for – the king adapted old methods and themes in order to treat the current developments which were shaking their world, and some of these adaptations were extremely original.

As noted in the last instalment, the poet and translator Rowland Fychan was an uchelwr from Llanuwchllyn who served as a captain in Charles I’s army. One of his friends, Colonel William Owen, was the constable of Harlech castle, a royalist stronghold from 1642 until its capture in 1647.

Sometime during the stronghold’s long siege, Rowland Fychan composed a poem for his friend William Owen. Adopting the llatai convention (originally employed by poets who imagined sending a ‘love messenger’ to a woman and later used to addressed friends and family as well),  Rowland Fychan imagines sending a cat on a mission across Merionethshire with a message to his friend in Harlech castle.

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Endearing

Given that this poem addresses the circumstances of war, it is a disarmingly endearing composition.

It begins in a safe and comfortable domestic sphere, with the poet addressing the cat in the first line as fy nitw fwynaidd anian, ‘my tender-natured puss’.

He tells us that he has raised it since it was small (a fegais er yn fechan), and that it has led a lazy life up to now, ‘never doing anything . . . other than going from the hearth to the little room’ (a wnai ddim  . . ./ ond mynd o’r barth i’r gellan).

Following the pattern established in medieval llatai poems, the poet then praises the soon-to-be messenger, drawing attentions to its special characteristics:

Mae yn llymion iawn dy gribau,

Mae yn ystwyth dy gymale,

Ystwyth yw dy droed ar dir,

A’th farfan hir flewynnau.

‘Your claws are very sharp,

 Your joints are nimble,

 Nimble are your feet on land,

With your long-whiskered goatee.’

The cat has been praised and primed, and so the poet now gives it its mission, telling it to ‘go as a messenger to a distant place / to the constable of Harlech Castle’ (Fynd yn genad i le pell / At raglaw Castell Harlech).

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Conflict

Rowland Fychan details the cat’s journey across Merionethshire, naming several specific places and noting which ones are inhabited by enemies and which ones by friends.

The ‘long-whiskered’ and ‘tender-natured’ pet is sent out of the safe domestic sphere into a landscape redrawn by conflict, given a verbal map marking locations as the haunts of royalists or parliamentarians.

The poet notes that his cat is ideally suited for this mission, being able to feed itself along the way if necessary: his titw or ‘puss’ can ‘catch birds’ (adara) and enjoy ‘a fresh fish’ (pysgodyn ir), caught skilfully from the bank without even wetting its paws.

Another place will be good for ‘catching mice along the rocks’ (llygota ar hyd y creigie).

The instructions given to the feline messenger are engaging in their detail and endearing in the care expressed for the animal’s safety:

Ag yno dan ymwrando

O’th flaen o’th ôl ysbio

O gweli ddyn cais waelod ffos

Nes bod y nos i’th guddio.

‘And there while listening carefully,

Looking before you and behind you,

If you see a man seek out the bottom of a ditch

until the night comes to hide you.’

The little cat is assured that it’ll move easily past the enemy soldiers when it finally arrives at Harlech, a concise description helping us to see ‘the rocky slope’ on which the castle is perched:

Ti âi rhwng y milwyr arfog

Ar draws y fron garegog;

Ni waeth iti’r nos na’r dydd –

Am hynny na fydd ofnog.

‘You’ll go between the armed soldiers

Across the rocky slope;

It is no matter to you whether it’s night or day –

For that reason do not be frightened.’

That it is told that, once it slips inside the castle, to search for his friend:

Pan ddelych, ditw burwen

Ymhlith y teulu llawen

Chwilia ymlaen o gam i gam

At wely William Owen.

‘When you, pure white puss,

happen to come amongst the merry retinue,

Search onwards, step by step,

[until you] come to William Owen’s bed.’

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We are left with an image of William Owen cuddling the cat in his bed, a wonderfully warm domestic vignette set against the violent backdrop of war.

Turbulent times

John Griffith of Llanddyfnan, Anglesey, wrote several poems about the turbulent times. One of them uses a dramatic dialogue to complain about the new religious and political order being forced upon royalists by Parliament’s military might. It is presented as a conversation between the poet and his uncle, ‘Mr. Bwlclai’, and set in the year 1647:

J.G.

A ddaw’r Brenin i’w gyfiawnder?

A ddaw’r Eglwys i’w hen arfer?

A ddaw’r Deyrnas yn heddychlon?

A ddaw byth y byd a welson?

B.

Ni ddaw heddwch i’r teyrnasau

Ni ddaw’r Eglwys i’w hiawn ddeddfau

Ni ddaw’r Brenin yn ben llywydd

Nes cael cymod Duw o newydd.

‘J.G.

Will the King receive justice?

Will the Church return to its old customs?

Will the Realm become peaceful?

Will the world we once knew ever return?’

‘B.

Peace will not come to the realms,

the Church will not return to its old rites,

the King will not become head ruler

Until atonement with God is had anew.’

Status quo

The poem expresses a longing for peace, with John Griffith asking ‘will there come an end to the war?’ (A ddaw diwedd ar y rhyfel?) and ‘will rust come to shinning weapons?’ (A ddaw rhwd ar arfau gwynion?).

Along with peace, the poet desires a reinstatement of the status quo, voicing a common complaint of conservatives that the parliamentarian army promoted people above their appointed station in life:

A ddaw’r capten yn grydd eilwaith?

A ddaw parch i bendefigion?

‘Will the captain become a cobbler again?

Will respect for lords be restored?’

The same answer is given to every series of questions: peace must be made with God before the world can be returned to its rightful place.

The rightful order has been destroyed in a way which is an affront to the Creator, and thus no peace we be had until proper atonement is achieved.

This dialogue poem is a free-metre composition. John Griffith also composed strict-metre verse, including this englyn complaining about the way Anglesey suffered in 1650 while Cromwell’s forces were quartered there, waiting to sail to Ireland:

Awel fain dwyrain dirion – a ddelo

            I Ddulyn i’w danfon,

   Cynifer o’r cenafon

   Ac yn eu plith, melldith Môn.

‘May there come a sharp wind from the fair east

to send them to Dublin,

So many of the rascals

And in the midst Anglesey’s curse.’

Familiar strains of love poetry were also adapted to treat the circumstances of war. One free-metre piece by an anonymous poet addresses us with the voice of a woman whose lover is away fighting in the King’s army:

Tan ben y fron fregus mae trwblus glwy caeth;

Hiraethu, gofalu  fy `nwylyd a’i gwnaeth.

Nid oes gen i o gysur i’m lester i’r llawr,

Ond cofio am fy `nwylyd bob munud yn `r awr.

‘Benaeth the fragile breast there is a troublesome pressing wound;

Longing, caring for my dear one is what caused it.

I have nothing for comfort to keep me from collapsing

Other than remembering my dear one every minute of the hour.’

Employing that common derogatory name used for Parliamentarian soldiers, she prays that God will help her ‘dear one’ avoid the ‘roundheads’ (pengrynion), described as ‘the companions of the devil’ (cymdeithion y fall).

And, using the term commonly applied to royalist soldiers by their supporters,  she says that ‘the tender cavaliers’ (y cafelîrs mwynion) are ‘faithful and pure’ (ffyddlon a phur). The roundheads, on the other hand, are ‘traitors who broke their word’ (traetyried a dorodd eu gair).

Longing and worry turn to abject hatred for the enemy, as she heaps pejorative terms upon the Parliamentarians: the they ‘cuckolds’ (cwcwaldied), ‘bastards’ (bastardied) and ‘the enemies of [Jesus, or] Mary’s Son’ (gelynied Mab Mair).

Love poem

One kind of love poem popular in the early modern period involved a dialogue between a man who tries to seduce a woman who insists that she’ll stay faithful to her absent lover.

Sometimes, an extra dynamic is added by making the would-be seducer a high-born man who attempts to bribe the woman with a promise of riches.

A poet known only as ‘Mr. Price’ adapted this tradition and turned it into a vehicle for presenting royalist sentiments.  The would-be seducer is a rowndyn or ‘round-head’ who asks the woman if she can overcome her political attachments and fall in love with him:

Adolwg, f’anwylyd, a ddweydyd di’r gwir,

A geri di sawdwr o Barlamentîr?

‘Tell me, my dear, will you tell the truth,

Can you love a soldier of a Parliamentarian?’

Her answer is a resounding ‘no’, and we imagine a woman who is steadfast in her faithfulness to the cause, making ideology the axel along which love is aligned:

Na chara’, na fynna’, er coweth y shir,  

Mae’n well gan i o lawer y glân Gablîr.

‘I will not love, I will not desire [a Parliamentarian], for the wealth of the county,

I much prefer a pure Cavalier.’ In sending off this one suitor she also wishes the entire Parliamentarian army away:

Ffarwel i chwi Rowndieid, dêl arnoch chwi drai,

Pe dwedwn i Rebels ni byddai arna’i fai;

Dymunwn na bytho yn troedio mo’r tir

Un Rowndyn y ‘Nghymru na Pharlamantîr.

‘Farewell to you Roundheads, may you recede,

If I were to say [that you are] Rebels, I would not be at fault;

I wish that the land in Wales is never trodden

by a Roundhead or a Parliamentarian.’

Darllen Pellach / Further Reading:

Hen Gerddi Gwleidyddol 1558-1660 (1901). [anonymous editor, on behalf of Cymdeithas Llên Cymru].

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).