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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 largest collections of archives, portraits, maps, and photographic images in Wales. The Library is also home to the national collection of Welsh manuscripts, the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, and the most comprehensive collection of paintings and topographical prints in Wales. As the primary research library and archive in Wales and one of the largest research libraries in the United Kingdom, the National Library is a member of Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL).
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"The Poet's Burial for Love" or "The Poet's Burial" is a Welsh-language love poem in the form of a cywydd in which the poet foresees his own death from unrequited love. It was formerly attributed to the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, but in 1952 was rejected from the canon of his works by Dafydd's editor, Thomas Parry and is now widely considered to be a 15th-century poem of uncertain authorship. The poem has nevertheless remained very popular with translators and it continues to appear in anthologies, including Thomas Parry's own Oxford Book of Welsh Verse.
"The Ruin" is a cywydd by the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, widely seen as the greatest of the Welsh poets. In it the poet, considering a ruined house and remembering the love-affair he once conducted there, reflects on the transience of all worldly pleasures. "The Ruin" is commonly supposed to have been written in Dafydd's old age. It has been called one of his most poignant poems, and it was included in The Penguin Book of Welsh Verse, The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse, The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English and The Longman Anthology of British Literature.
"The Snow" is a 14th- or 15th-century Welsh-language poem in the form of a cywydd evoking a landscape which, to the poet's chagrin, is covered with snow. It has been described as an imaginative tour de force. Manuscripts of the poem mostly attribute it to Dafydd ap Gwilym, widely seen as the greatest of the Welsh poets, though some name Dafydd ab Edmwnd or Ieuan ap Rhys ap Llywelyn as the author. Modern literary historians have differed as to whether it is indeed by Dafydd ap Gwilym, but the two most recent editions of his poems have rejected it. The poem has nevertheless remained popular with translators and it continues to appear in anthologies, including Thomas Parry's own Oxford Book of Welsh Verse and Gwyn Jones's Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English.
"The Maypole" or "To a Birch Tree", known in Welsh as "I'r fedwen", "Y fedwen yn bawl haf", or "Y fedwen las anfadwallt", is a cywydd by the mid-14th century bard Gruffudd ab Adda; it is one of only three poems of his that have survived. It was formerly attributed to the pre-eminent Welsh-language poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym. The poem presents the unhappy fate of a woodland birch tree which has been chopped down and re-erected in the town of Llanidloes as a maypole, then with pathetic irony asks the tree to choose between its former existence and its present one. Dancing round a maypole was a popular recreation in medieval Welsh towns, and this poem is the first record of it. "The Maypole" has been praised by literary historians as one of the very finest of Welsh cywyddau, and was included in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse.
"The Magpie's Advice" or "The Magpie's Counsel" is a poem in the form of a cywydd by the pre-eminent Welsh-language poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym. The poet portrays himself as an overage lover who bemoans his romantic woes as he wanders through the woods, and is rebuked by a magpie who bids him concern himself with matters more befitting his years. It can be read either as a comic and self-mocking reversal of the traditional Welsh poetic trope of the non-human messenger, or llatai, being sent to the poet's lover, or as a meditation on the contrast between the yearly cycle of renewal in the natural world and the linear ageing of men, which falsifies any simplistic identification we may make with nature. It has always been one of Dafydd's more popular poems, surviving in 55 manuscripts and being widely translated in the 20th and 21st centuries. Sir Thomas Parry included it in his Oxford Book of Welsh Verse.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 “Wiliems, Thomas (b. 1545/6?, d. in or before 1623?),” J. E. Caerwyn Williams in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. David Cannadine, October 2005, http://0-www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29549 (accessed August 28, 2017).
- ↑ Rhyddiaith Gymraeg: Y gyfrol gyntaf, Detholion o Lawysgrifau 1488–1609, ed. T. H. Parry Williams (1954).
- ↑ Thomas Parry, Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg hyd 1900 (Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1944).
- ↑ Jenny Rowland, Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the "Englynion" (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), p. 393.