Guto= r Glyn

Guto= r Glyn is a fifteenth-century Welsh poet who died about 1493. His poems are collected in Gwaith Guto= r Glyn, edited by John Llywelyn Williams and Ifor Williams (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1939; 1961. I cite passages from this edition by the initials of the title, GGG, followed by the number of poem and line.

The name Guto'r Glyn means "Guto of the Glen." "Guto" is a short form of the name "Griffith" (Gruffudd in Welsh), and the u is pronounced like the English i. Guto's glyn is not specified in his byname, 'r Glyn, "of the Glen." Scholars have taken it to be the glen or vale of the River Ceiriog, or of the nearby River Dee, in northeastern Wales (GWL 2: 219-20). The absence of explicit identification of Guto's family and place of upbringing suggests a humble origin. Enid Roberts argues that Guto's wearing the livery of the Duke of York implies that his family was at least of the lesser nobility, a numerous group in the hills of Wales (BNM 15).

He served the cause of the Yorkist Edward IV, but embraced the peace of the Lancastrian victory of 1485 that brought the Tudor dynasty to power. He was an itinerant poet rewarded with hospitality and gifts by his patrons, and his professional tours took him from house to house throughout Wales. He was granted the privileges of the borough of Oswestry in his native district of northeastern Wales and spent his last years as a lay guest at the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis, near Llangollen.

Guto characterizes the house of one of his patrons, Dafydd Llwyd of Newtown in the Severn Valley, as a gathering place for poets, like the royal palace of Sheen or great shrines such as St. David= s or Santiago. He calls it a town= s assembly, cymanfa tref (GGG 42.8). The generosity of Dafydd Llwyd of Newtown provides timber for building a poem, says Guto, paraphrasing the rebuttal of Dafydd ap Gwilym to his critic, Gruffudd Gryg, on the need for finding original timber to make a poem (GDG 148.43-8). However much poetic craft there is, says Guto, it= s hard to get timber for a poem of praise, that is, to find a man worthy of praise.  But Dafydd Llwyd is good timber. The woods went to poems about you, exclaims Guto. Aeth y gwí dd i= th gywyddau (GGG 42.41). A forest of good material presents itself.

Guto= s hyperbole is paralleled in a poem by a contemporary of his, Lewys Glyn Cothi, in praise of the same Dafydd Llwyd of Newtown (poem 201 in Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, edited by Dafydd Johnston, UWP 1995).

Dafydd Llwyd, says Lewys, is a tamer, a civilizer, one who teaches good manners. Two months spent with him aren't= t regretted, he tames two thousand. The poet will gladly spend the great feasts there, Easter, Whitsunday, Christmas. He echoes the praise of Dafydd ap Gwilym for his patron, Ifor Hael (GDG 7), by likening poetic praise for a generous friend to the easy abundance of nature. Song in praise of Dafydd Llwyd, declares Lewys Glyn Cothi, moves freely in summer, like mist and wind at the new moon, like dew, wheat, or moorland rushes, like rain passing through stems to the eaves, as visible as snow, like daylight (GLGC 201.57-62). Dafydd Llwyd=s renown will last as long as birds live, as long as there= s baptism, it= s sown throughout lands while the fortress of Rome stands, while religion endures, while there= s sun and warmth, a stag on the brow of a hill, a yew and an ash, as long as there are vineyards (GLGC 201.63-68).

In a poem praising a nobleman of southwestern Wales, Dafydd ap Tomas of Blaen Tren in Llanybyther, Carmarthenshire, Guto= r Glyn asks if he= s free to travel down the River Teifi to Dafydd= s mansion. He= s weary of the beer of his border region of the March and longs for the wine and mead of Blaen Tren. A I won= t forsake your mead, your wine is my rebirth,@ he says. A I= ll go to Blaen Tren on top of the world, a high sky that generates health.@ Dy fedd nis gadawaf i,/ Dy win yw fy nadeni./ Af i Flaen Tren uwch ben byd/ Wybr uchel a bair iechyd@ (GGG 12.19-22).

The world in which Guto= r Glyn fashioned his poems and friendships is one that can be tracked. Among the host of persons and places that figure in his poems are many who are prominent in Welsh tradition and history, and he practiced his craft in a world as remarkable for building as for destruction. Natural disasters, plagues, and wars could foster new construction. Many of those fifteenth-century buildings survive, as monumental ruins if not intact structures, and they include farm homes as well as castles and churches.

Peter Smith observes that in Wales the Black Death of the fourteenth century, the visitations of plague that brought death to a third of the population of Europe, put a premium on labor and turned the surviving workers into independent farm-owners. Churls and rustics, the bondsmen and serfs of an earlier age, now became landholders and built homesteads (HWC 37). This rural gentry, together with town-dwellers in boroughs assimilated into the Welsh community, joined the nobility as patrons of the poets.

Some of the poets, like Guto'r Glyn, were soldiers, and some of their patrons, like the Herberts of Raglan, were military leaders. The poets gave political counsel to them, brokered transactions of gift-giving, paid tribute to families for their noble hospitality, and noted the construction of new buildings where hosts and poets could share sophisticated fare. These itinerant poets were known in Welsh as clêr. They traveled from place to place in search of patrons to reward their composition and performance of poems, like modern touring musicians, popular and classical, who travel for audiences and income.

The bond between poet and patron could be an abiding friendship. This is particularly true of Guto'r Glyn, who calls himself, in a poem to Sir John Mechain, saer serch, "love's carpenter" (GGG 106.36), building friendships as well as poems.

The genealogy of Guto'r Glyn is not known. Nor are the date and place of his birth, or the identity of his bardic teacher. Yet he became well known, as is attested by references to him by other poets of his period, unlike his contemporary, the accomplished and prolific Lewis Glyn Cothi, who is not named by other poets in extant documents (see GLGC xxiv). Were Guto's family of note, one would expect that to be cited, given the attention to genealogy that was a leading concern and responsibility of the bards. Guto ap Siancyn ("Guto son of Jenkin"), to whom poems are ascribed that are included in Ifor Williams' edition of the works of Guto'r Glyn, may be the same person. But this ascription names only a father, no more.

Modest origin may be inferred from the absence of allusions to Guto's being of high status through birth or fosterage or any means other than the distinction of his poetry (which he never hesitates to highlight). He acknowledges he may be outranked in blood by rival poets (GGG 117; MWP 103), and he often associates himself with persons lacking status or social power, as one of the weak ones, gweiniaid, who depend on the care of secular and religious lords.

By way of contrast, his predecessor, the fourteenth-century master, Dafydd ap Gwilym, never discounts his aristocratic birth and culture, and for all his love of wild nature, speaks contemptuously of serfs and rustics, both literally and metaphorically, using these terms to insult crude and brutal persons, animals, or forces of nature. The family and friends of Dafydd ap Gwilym were of the nobility, including the uncle who was his bardic teacher and companions like Rhydderch ab Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron in Dafydd's native region of Ceredigion, or Ifor Hael of Basaleg near Caerleon. Dafydd's disdain for merchants is more than the Welshman's recoil from the denizens of boroughs of English foundation and suggests a nobleman's snub for members of a lower order whose taverns and shops he may patronize but whose middle-class pretensions he derides (see Helen Fulton, DGEC 186-88).

Unlike the courtly Dafydd, Guto= r Glyn says that he was in youth simply a blaeneuwr (GGG 69.1), a man from the hills or uplands, who later in life was glad to be admitted to the privileges of being a burgess in Oswestry (privileges that were not extended to his children, D.J. Bowen points out, YB 20:167).

It is not only in old age that Guto calls himself one of the weak, but in youth as well, when, for example, his gratitude for the patronage of Abbot Rhys of Strata Florida implies that he was a protégé of the abbot and, not for name or status, but for his poetic talent received money from him and an opportunity to shine at the abbey, which was renowned as a literary center.

Among the consequences of the Conquest of Wales by Edward I, one that affected ecclesiastical patrons of poets was the collection of royal taxes. The pope had awarded the king of England a tenth of all church revenues in the realm. Now part of the realm, the Welsh were subject to the tax, and Welsh Cistercian abbots were among those deputed to collect it. Collecting taxes for the English king was an unpopular burden for them, especially during the revolt against English rule led by Owain Glyndër at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Whatever support Cistercian abbots like Rhys gave to the Owain Glyndër rising would have made them a target for penalties imposed by the English government, and abbots who failed to collect the levied taxes were subject to penalties that could be severe. David H. Williams records this instance: "Inability to collect was the downfall of Abbot Rhys of Strata Florida (c. 1440) who, unable to raise all the money levied and certainly unable to pay up, was committed to Carmarthen Prison and there he died" (WC 63).

Guto'r Glyn enjoyed the patronage of this abbot who died imprisoned by the English. Crown officers may have regarded the abbot's generosity toward a Welsh poet as no virtue, but Abbot Rhys was more than a source of income for Guto. He presided over a house that welcomed touring poets and provided them an audience alert to the traditions of Wales. One of Guto= s poems honoring Abbot Rhys (GGG 10) illustrates the abbot= s role as a defender of Welsh culture and reveals the youthful Guto= s mastery of Welsh meters. The poem, an awdl, concludes:

I recognize the man in distilled mead,

and at his feast, and in his land=s men

and in a Pope= s smile, and a face of peace,

the man with our mead that a fine lord would love.

His praise is known, and he=s accepting it,

and his fame is summed up, an honest unveiling,

and the place is known and the court and the throng of earls,

and there=s Rhys, full of grace!

Adwen y mab yn denau medd

Ac ar ei wledd a gwír ei wlad,

A gwên Pab ac wyneb hedd,

Y gër a=n medd a gâr iôn mad.

Ei wawd a wís, aid ddwyn ydd ís,

A=i enw ar frys, ddienwir frad,

A=r lle a=r llys, a=r llu ieirll wís,

A llyna Rys yn llawn o rad.        (85-92)

Like his youthful tribute to Abbot Rhys of Strata Florida, Guto'r Glyn composed in old age an awdl of stately stanzas (GGG 113) in praise of another abbot, the Abbot of Valle Crucis, Dafydd ab Ieuan ab Iorwerth, who provided the poet a home during his last years. Abbot Dafydd was a member of the Trefor family long established in that region, their ancestral home being at the town of Trefor near Llangollen (DWB 96). He became abbot of Valle Crucis in 1480. In 1500 he was consecrated bishop of St. Asaph by Archbishop John Morton, and he died in 1503. Guto'r Glyn himself died about 1493, an estimate of J. L. Williams presented in Ifor Williams' introduction (GGG xviii). Guto had saluted Abbot Dafydd as worthy of being a bishop (GGG 120.53-8), perhaps knowing the abbot had obtained license of episcopal consecration in March of 1492, but the poet does not refer to his actually being a bishop, indicating that Guto had died before the abbot= s episcopal consecration in the year 1500.

"Llyn Egwestl" is the name of the pool near Valle Crucis Abbey that was managed as its fish pond. The abbey itself is also called Glyn Egwestl, meaning glen or vale of Egwestl. In Latin, the abbey is named Valle Crucis, A Vale of the Cross,@ for the ninth-century Pillar of Eliseg, originally surmounted by a cross, that was located a quarter of a mile north of the monastery. The pillar was erected by Cyngen, Prince of Powys, as a memorial to his great-grandfather. Guto hopes to receive his sacramental last anointing at Valle Crucis:

I'll retreat to heaven's God, to his house,

to the high secret slope,

to the wholesome land and the very high tower,

to a court of Rome and its dwelling places,

to a choir of religion of the mightiest man.

To my fitting earth at my last end,

in the end I'll come there.        (56-62)

At Duw Celi i= w dai ciliaf,

I= r fron uchel gyfrinachus,

I= r tir iachus a= r të r uchaf;

I gwrt Rhufain a= i gartrefydd,

I gôr crefydd y gë r cryfaf;

I= m gwiw ddaear o= m goddiwedd,

Yn y diwedd yno y deuaf.        (56-62)

Acknowledgments and Abbreviations

I am grateful to the Board of Celtic Studies and the University of Wales Press for permission to use the edition of the poems of Guto=r Glyn by J. L. Williams and Ifor Williams (Cardiff, 1939; 1961), as the basis of my translations and the source for lines quoted in Welsh.

The Rev. Gwyndaf M. Hughes, Rector of Beaumaris Parish Church in Anglesey, has kindly given permission to publish photographs by Mick Sharp of the oak carvings found in the choir stalls there. A recent book by Mick Sharp treats of the many shrines of Britain, The Way and the Light: An Illustrated Guide to the Saints and Holy Places of Britain, text and photographs by Mick Sharp (London: Aurum Press, 2000).

A portion of this material was presented as a conference paper at the meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Welsh Culture and History held at Rio Grande University, Ohio, in June, 1997. Dafydd Johnston has read a draft of the translations and offered corrections. Mine is the responsibility for errors that may remain. Readers will find more translations of Guto= r Glyn, with background commentary and maps, in Medieval Welsh Poems, which I co-edited with Dafydd Johnston, published by Pegasus Press (1992). For the publisher= s address, see the entry under MWP below.

The following are abbreviations for works cited:

       MC Saunders Lewis. Meistri'r Canrifoedd. Ed. R. Geraint       Gruffydd. Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1973.

Press, 1987.

(vol. 1); 1984 (vol. 2).

8 Copyright 2004 Richard Loomis