PREFACE.

It has been so generally represented that the remains of the old British Bards are so obscure, and clothed in so obsolete and almost unintelligible a language, that a translation of these poems by an Englishman, acquainted with the Welsh only as a dead language, may very reasonably induce some hesitation in admitting the correctness of the following translations.

This feeling has induced me to add to the size of this work by the publication of the originals as they are found in the Myvyrian Archæology, so that the correctness of the translation may in every instance be tested by comparison with the original poem.

It is to be expected that many errors will be discovered, and that the construction given to many passages may be disputed; but I believe that, so far as regards the tenor and contents of these compositions, the translations given will meet with the approbation of the majority of Welsh scholars. In truth, the translation of these poems is a work of much less difficulty than would at first sight be supposed.

Some years since, the writer of the following pages, while endeavouring to obtain some insight into the early history of Britain, found that a great store of information on that subject was supposed to be contained in the works of the old

British poets of the sixth and following centuries, contemporaries, or nearly so, of Vortigern, Hengist, and Arthur, and of the great events of their era.

The translations of the Rev. Edward Davies and Dr. Owen Pughe revealing but little of what appeared to be history, it became necessary to examine the documents themselves. The difficulties presented by the language of the majority of these poems, appeared to demand more time and labour than the writer had at his disposal. The task was therefore thrown aside as hopeless. M. De la Villemarqué's translation of the Gododin in 1850, showed, however, that a sensible version of these poems could be obtained, and that they probably did not contain the mythological jargon extracted from them by Mr. Davies.

The admirable Essay of Mr. Stephens on the Literature of the Kymry, and Mr. Williams ab Ithel's critical translation of the Gododin, offered invaluable assistance, while the publication of the Grammatica Cellica by Zeuss, in 1853, rendered it apparent that the difference between the form of the language of these poems and that of the glosses ascribed by Zeuss to the eighth or ninth century, was so great, that they could not possibly have been written in their present form in the sixth or even in the tenth century, and that there could be no great difficulty in their translation to any one who could read the Welsh version of the Bible. The Mabinogion, so admirably translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, supplied the key to a considerable number of the allusions to persons and events; and it soon appeared that the greater part of the obscurity which prevails in these poems arises from the

extremely corrupt state of the MSS. in which they have been preserved, owing, no doubt, to the circumstance that they were first written down from the dictation of the minstrels, by whom they had for some time been preserved by oral tradition only. The difference between the condition of the songs of the "History of Taliesin" in the Mabinogion, which were, if we may use the expression, "edited" by Thomas ab Einion in the thirteenth century, the songs on the Battles of Argoed Llwyfain, and Gwen Ystrad, and some others, which have also been carefully rewritten, and that of such as the "Prif Gyvarch," which have not received that attention, supplies the explanation of the extremely corrupt state of some of these compositions.

However strange it may at first appear, the compositions to which so remote a date has been attributed are far less difficult to read than many of those of the known bards of the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries. The explanation of this fact is, not only that many of the Taliesin ballads are later in date than the twelfth century, but that they were the compositions of comparatively unlettered and unskilled persons, and therefore comparatively simple and inartificial in structure, while the higher class of Bards whose works have been preserved, prided themselves upon a difficult and complex system of metrical composition, in which a process of alliteration is carried to a wonderful extent. This, and their "cynghanedd" or peculiar system of rhythm, have been made of such importance that they have rendered their works in many instances very obscure, by a forced adherence to their very artificial and most ingenious elegancies of composition.

The necessities of alliteration cause them at times to string together epithets without number, to the omission of the connecting links of their sentences, and without regard to the obscurity in which their meaning might be involved. The beauty, extent, and flexibility of the Welsh language, and the great skill of the writers in making it subservient to their purposes, are undoubtedly made manifest; but the labour employed is somewhat too visible-they had not acquired the "ars celare artem."

In the preparation of the following pages I have endeavoured to make myself acquainted with all that has been written on the subject of the old Welsh poems. My views may differ from those of more accomplished Welsh scholars than myself; but on such a subject there can but be a common desire to ascertain the truth, and, according to the motto of the Bardic Chair of Taliesin himself,

CHELTENHAM,

October, 1857.

"MYN Y GWIR EI LE."