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Early Welsh Manuscripts, Part I

© Sarah Stevenson

Nearly everyone is familiar with some version or another of the legend of King Arthur-his brave knights, his lovely queen Guinevere. But the literary sources of his tale-as well as other Arthurian legends-are far more interesting and surprising. The Welsh versions of the tale are only part of a larger tradition of Welsh bardic poetry that dates back as early as the 6th and 7th centuries AD (though not written down until the 13th-14th centuries). The poems which survive reflect a society still touched by ancient beliefs and longstanding legends, and a people struggling to defend their traditions against Germanic invaders. They also demonstrate amazing complexities of rhythm and rhyme that later influenced the development of the strict metrical poetry form called cynghanedd.

Four manuscripts in particular were deemed by William Forbes Skene (1809-92) to be the "Four Ancient Books of Wales," because they contained all the Welsh bardic poetry known to still be in existence: the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Red Book of Hergest, the Book of Taliesin, and the Book of Aneurin. (Another, earlier text, the White Book of Rhydderch-in the collection of the National Library of Wales-contains some of what is found in the Red Book of Hergest, but the manuscript is fragmented.) The cycle of Welsh legends known as the Mabinogion; the stories of the fabled-but probably invented-Myrddin (a.k.a. Merlin); romantic tales of King Arthur and his knights; all have been handed down to us thanks to these surviving texts.

The Black Book of Carmarthen
Source: National Library of Wales

The Black Book of Carmarthen. According to the National Library of Wales, this is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts written in Welsh, containing the earliest surviving examples of the work of the Welsh court poets known as the Gogynfeirdd. It is thought to be the work of a scribe living in the 13th century, and written before and around 1250. It was given its name due to the color of its binding, and due to its reputed origin, Carmarthen Priory. Its penultimate owner was William Watkin Edward Wynne (1801-80) of Peniarth near Tywyn, Merionethshire; hence, when it was catalogued along with many other manuscripts in Wynne's collection, it was designated Peniarth MS 1. It now resides in the National Library of Wales.

Besides religious poems, odes, and elegies, this manuscript of early poetry is particularly notable for its tales of British heroes from the Dark Ages, and for stories relating to the legend of Myrddin. There are tales of Arthur and his knights which show Arthur as a folk-hero rather than the powerful king we're used to hearing about. There are verses about the graves of dead Welsh heroes and a poem about the drowning of Cantref Gwaelod. And there are the alleged prophecies of Myrddin, which foretold the outcome of later battles between the Welsh and the Normans. The NLW notes that "[t]he lines containing these prophecies were obviously composed after the events they purport to foretell." They were later embellishments to a core legend from the 9th or 10th century,

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