The Fall and Rise of the Welsh Bards, or, How the English Became British

Strabone, Jeff

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95255-0_3

Jeff Strabone⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print ((PERCP))

306 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explores the mutual influence of Evan Evans and Thomas Gray. The chapter begins with a history of Welsh letters, including its bardic and prophetic traditions as expressions of resistance against Saxon conquest and English empire. The early modern use of the pre-Saxon Church of the Britons, i.e. the Welsh, provides the comparative basis for identifying changes in eighteenth-century British thought regarding time and mediation. The chapter then turns to Evans’s Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards and his discovery of Y Gododdin, which provided the raw material for Gray’s Welsh imitations. Gray’s “The Bard” is treated as a poem of Welsh prophecy. His Norse and Welsh imitations are read closely with regard to their relationship to his literary-historical researches.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 69.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
On the Cadfan Stone, see Ifor Williams, “The Towyn Inscribed Stone”, in Williams , The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry, ed. Rachel Bromwich, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1980).
2.
On the Book of St. Chad and the Surexit Memorandum, see Dafydd Jenkins and Morfydd E. Owen, “The Welsh Marginalia in the Lichfield Gospels”, parts 1 and 2, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 5 (summer 1983): 37–66; 7 (summer 1984): 91–120. On the Juvencus englynion, see Ifor Williams, “The Juvencus Poems”, in The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry.
3.
Daniel Huws, “The Medieval Manuscript”, in A Nation and Its Books: A History of the Book in Wales, ed. Philip Henry Jones and Eiluned Rees (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1998), p. 25. Huws points out that the library of Llanthony Prima had been moved to Gloucestershire before the Dissolution.
4.
Huw Pryce, “The Origins and the Medieval Period”, in A Nation and Its Books, ed. Jones and Rees, p. 7.
5.
On the arrival of Norman law on Wales’s border as a motivation to commit Welsh law to writing, see Thomas Glyn Watkin, The Legal History of Wales, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), p. 86–87. On the growth of documentation in support of claims to land in Wales from c. 1100, see Pryce, “The Origins and the Medieval Period”, p. 10–12.
6.
Huws, p. 29.
7.
Pryce , “The Origins and the Medieval Period”, p. 9. Huws adds that “the earliest unquestionably autograph manuscripts of contemporary poets” appear in the second half of the century. Huws, p. 34.
8.
Dates taken from Meic Stephens, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986). The poems of the gogynfeirdd, active from the early twelfth to the later fourteenth centuries, are preserved chiefly in two manuscripts: the Hendregadredd Manuscript, written in the early fourteenth century, and the Red Book of Hergest, written between 1382 and 1410.
9.
On the uncertainty that “any given line” of Y Gododdin “belongs to the original nucleus of the poem”, see Stephens , p. 216.
10.
Ifor Williams, “The Earliest Poetry”, in The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry, p. 43–44; Nennius, Historia Brittonum, in British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and trans. John Morris (London and Chichester: Phillimore, 1980), Chapter 62.
11.
M. E. Haycock, “Cynfeirdd (act. 6th–11th cent.)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, hereinafter cited as ODNB.
12.
For a comparison of the main understandings of Offa’s Dyke, see T. M. Charles -Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), p. 420–423.
13.
The partible inheritance of land notwithstanding, Welsh dynastic succession, however contested in many cases, was chiefly unitary and not partible. J. Beverley Smith, “Dynastic Succession in Medieval Wales”, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 33 (1986): 199–232.
14.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Welsh”. See also Geraint H. Jenkins, A Concise History of Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 60–62.
15.
On the treaty, see J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), p. 177–186. For the text of the treaty, see Pryce , ed. The Acts of the Welsh Rulers 1120–1283 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), p. 536–542.
16.
Watkin, p. 103.
17.
Statuta Wallie (Statutes of Wales), 1284, 12 Edwardi I , cap. 1–14. Although included in The Statutes of the Realm, this was a royal decree from Edward himself and not a parliamentary statute per se. It applied not to all of Wales but to the lands held directly by the king, including newly-conquered Gwynedd. The Marcher lordships, of which there were about forty, remained under the king’s indirect control by non-statutory means. For more on the Statutes, see Ivor Bowen, ed., introduction to The Statutes of Wales (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), p. xxix–xl; Llinos Beverley Smith, “The Statute of Wales, 1284”, Welsh History Review 10, no. 2 (December 1980): 127–154; and Watkin , Chapter 6. I quote the English translation of the Latin original in Statutes of the Realm.
18.
On Henry’s use of the red dragon at the Battle of Bosworth Field, see J. S. P. Tatlock, “The Dragons of Wessex and Wales”, Speculum 8, no. 2 (April 1933): 223–235, p. 232. For the report of Henry’s commission which found him to be “Son in the twenty second Degree” to Cadwaladr and descended a full fifty degrees back to Beli Mawr, see the appendix to William Wynne, The History of Wales (London: M. Clark, 1697), especially p. 336. The twelfth-century Cartulaire de Quimperlé names Beli Mawr as the son of Anna, first cousin of Mary, mother of Jesus. Rachel Bromwich, notes to Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain, 4th ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), p. 320. More importantly for his legitimacy as an English king, Henry was the son of Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III.
19.
Ifor Williams, introduction to Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain, ed. Williams, trans. Bromwich (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1972), p. xx.
20.
Armes Prydein, p. 5.
21.
Ifor Williams, introduction to Armes Prydein, p. xxii.
22.
On the Brut y Brenhinedd, see Edmund Reiss, “The Welsh Versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia”, Welsh History Review 4, no. 2 (December 1968): 97–127.
23.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1966), book 7.3, p. 171. For the earliest version of the red dragon–white dragon prophecy, see Nennius, Chapters 42 and 43.
24.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, book 12.17, p. 283.
25.
On the Mab Darogan prophetic tradition before the Wars of the Roses, see Margaret Enid Griffiths, Early Vaticination in Welsh with English Parallels, ed. T. Gwynn Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1937), Chapter 4; Aled Llion Jones, Darogan: Prophecy, Lament and Absent Heroes in Medieval Welsh Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013); and Elizabeth Schoales, “Welsh Prophetic Poetry in the Age of the Princes”, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 24–25 (2004–2005): 127–139.
26.
Gruffydd Aled Williams, “The Bardic Road to Bosworth”, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1986: 7–31, p. 14. On the generic history and formal features of fifteenth-century bardic prophetic poetry, see W. Garmon Jones, “Welsh Nationalism and Henry Tudor”, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1917–1918: 1–59, especially p. 13–17.
27.
Gruffydd Aled Williams, p. 18. The poem is “I Ddau Fab Owain Tudor o Fôn”, in Dafydd Nanmor, The Poetical Works of Dafydd Nanmor, ed. Thomas Roberts and Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1923), p. 34–37.
28.
Gruffydd Aled Williams, p. 19. The poem, also by Nanmor, is “I Harri Tudur, Iarll Richmwnt”, in Poetical Works, p. 43–46.
29.
See Gruffydd Aled Williams, p. 23–26.
30.
Richard: “a bard of Ireland told me once / I should not live long after I saw Richmond”. William Shakespeare, King Richard III, ed. James Siemon (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2009), act 4, scene 2, l. 104–105.
31.
Gruffydd Aled Williams, p. 29–30.
32.
On Welsh migration to Tudor England, see Glanmor Williams, Religion, Language, and Nationality in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1979), Chapter 8.
33.
An Acte for Lawes & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like Fourme as it is in this Realme, 1536, 27 Henrici VIII, cap. 26; An Acte for certaine Ordinaunces in the Kinges Majesties Domynion and Principalitie of Wales, 1543, 34 & 35 Henrici VIII, cap. 26. For more on the Acts, see Watkin , Chapter 7.
34.
An Acte for Lawes & Justice, paragraph 17.
35.
His two elegists are recorded only as E. W. and J. G. William Ll . Davies, “Phylipiad Ardudwy—A Survey and a Summary”, Y Cymmrodor 42 (1931): 155–268, p. 206–207. The model of bardic instruction and apprenticeship endured longer, if not the profession: Davies notes that there is evidence that Owen Gruffydd (c. 1643–1730) “received money payment for some of his work” (p. 157). Gruffydd was elegized at his death by his pupil William Elias (1708–1787), who earned his living first as a shoemaker and later as a farmer and land agent, not as a bard. E. G. Millward, “Gruffydd, Owen (c. 1643–1730)”, ODNB; Garfield Hopkin Hughes, “Elias, William (1708–1787)”, Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Elias’s life overlaps in time with the careers of Romantic-era, print-based Welsh authors including Edward Jones and Iolo Morganwg.
36.
W. Ogwen Williams, “The Survival of the Welsh Language after the Union of England and Wales: The First Phase, 1536–1642”, Welsh History Review 2, no. 1 (1964): 67–93, p. 75.
37.
W. Ogwen Williams, p. 76.
38.
Information on Prise is drawn chiefly from Pryce, “Prise, Sir John [Syr Siôn ap Rhys] (1501/2–1555)”, ODNB; and Neil R. Ker, “Sir John Prise”, The Library, 5th ser., 10, no. 1 (March 1955): 1–24.
39.
William F. Skene, ed., The Four Ancient Books of Wales Containing the Cymric Poems Attributed to the Bards of the Sixth Century, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1868), vol. 1, p. 3; Ker, p. 1. For a list of manuscripts and printed books owned by Prise, see Ker, p. 12–24.
40.
John Prise, Yny lhyvyr hwnn y traethir (London: Edward Whitchurch, 1546). See R. Geraint Gruffydd, “Yny lhyvyr hwnn (1546): The Earliest Welsh Printed Book”, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 23, no. 2 (May 1969): 105–116; and Gruffydd , “The First Printed Books, 1546–1604”, in A Nation and Its Books, ed. Jones and Rees. In the latter, Gruffydd calls Yny a “reforming Catholic rather than Protestant” text (p. 57).
41.
Nia M. W. Powell, “The Welsh Context of Robert Recorde”, in Robert Recorde: The Life and Times of a Tudor Mathematician, ed. Gareth Roberts and Fenny Smith (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), p. 132–133.
42.
Alec Ryrie, “Whitchurch, Edward (d. 1562)”, ODNB. On the King’s Primer, see Charles C. Butterworth, The English Primers (1529–1545) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), Chapter 19.
43.
Ryrie , The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), p. 52.
44.
Information on Salesbury is drawn chiefly from R. Brinley Jones, “Salesbury [Salisbury], William (b. before 1520, d. c. 1580)”, ODNB.
45.
See, for example, W. Ogwen Williams, p. 91; or Gruffydd , “The First Printed Books, 1546–1604”, p. 58.
46.
William Salesbury, dedication to A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe moche necessary to all suche Welshemen as wil spedly learne the englyshe tongue (London: John Waley, 1547), n.p.
47.
Information on Hywel Dda is drawn chiefly from David E. Thornton, “Hywel Dda [Hywel Dda ap Cadell] (d. 949/50)”, ODNB; and D. P. Kirby, “Hywel Dda: Anglophil?” Welsh History Review 8, no. 1 (June 1976): 1–13.
48.
On problems raised by the absence of earlier manuscripts of Hywel Dda’s code, see Kirby , p. 10; and Watkin , p. 2. For a modern edition of Hywel Dda’s laws, see A. W. Wade-Evans, ed., Welsh Medieval Law. Being a Text of the Laws of Howel the Good (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1909). On the possible uses of Welsh lawbooks before the Edwardian conquest, see Pryce , “The Origins and the Medieval Period”, p. 9–10.
49.
Salesbury , Ban wedy i dynny air yngair allan o hen gyfreith Howel ða (London: Robert Crowley, 1550), sig. A.iii.r.
50.
Salesbury , Ban wedy, sig. A.iiii.r.
51.
For these provisions, see Wade-Evans , p. 147, 218.
52.
An Acte for the Unyformytie of Service and Admynistracion of the Sacramentes throughout the Realme, 1549, 2 & 3 Edwardi 6, cap. 1.
53.
Watkin , p. 134.
54.
An Acte for the translating of the Bible and the Dyvine Service into the Welshe Tongue, 1563, 5 Elizabethæ, cap. 28. On the law’s passage, see Gruffydd , p. 57–58; and Watkin, p. 134–135.
55.
Salesbury, trans., Lliver gweddi gyffredin (London: Henry Denham, 1567); Salesbury, trans., Testament Newydd ein Arglwydd Jesv Christ (London: Henry Denham, 1567); William Morgan, trans., Y Beibl Cyssegr-lan. Sef yr Hen Destament, a’r Newydd (London: Christopher Barker, 1588). On the technical and financial difficulties of producing the 1567 texts, see Glanmor Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), p. 239–244.
56.
On the post-Culloden production of the first Scottish Gaelic Bible, see Janet Sorensen, The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-Century British Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), Chapter 1. For a case study of Biblical translation in Kenya as “the mediating agency between colonization and Christian conversion”, see Johnson Kiriaku Kinyua, “A Postcolonial Analysis of Bible Translation and Its Effectiveness in Shaping and Enhancing the Discourse of Colonialism and the Discourse of Resistance: The Gĩkũyũ New Testament—A Case Study”, Black Theology 11, no. 1 (2013): 58–95, p. 71.
57.
Philip Schwyzer, Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), p. 35–36. Schwyzer credits the obscure Arthur Kelton (d. 1549/50) with being the first to give literary form to the melding of Reform, Tudor historiography, England’s annexation of Wales, and the bardic prophetic tradition. See p. 37–38.
58.
Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP: 2004 [1999]).
59.
Information on Davies is drawn chiefly from Glanmor Williams, “Davies, Richard (c. 1505–1581)”, ODNB.
60.
On Davies’s role in passing the statute, see Glanmor Williams, Wales and the Reformation, p. 238–239.
61.
Tertullian wrote of Christianity among “they who dwell in […] the haunts of the Britons” which are “inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ”. The long sentence that these words belong to lists many nations, both near and far from Rome, the point being that all nations have heard the words of Jesus. Tertullian, “An Answer to the Jews”, in The Writings of Quintus Sept. Flor. Tertullianus, trans. S. Thelwall (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870), vol. 3, p. 218. One wonders whether Tertullian knew of actual Christian Britons or whether he included them because they inhabited the furthest extent of his geographical knowledge and, thus, the ambit of all nations.
62.
Martin Biddle, “Alban [St Alban, Albanus] (d. c. 303?)”, ODNB.
63.
Charles Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 197.
64.
On the Rough Wooing of Scotland in the 1540s as an extension of England’s “British” policy, see Schwyzer , p. 34–35.
65.
Richard Davies, “Address to the Welsh People”, trans. Albert Owen Evans, in A Memorandum of the Legality of the Welsh Bible and the Welsh Version of the Book of Common Prayer, ed. Evans (Cardiff: William Lewis, 1925), p. 83, 88.
66.
Davies, p. 89.
67.
Davies, p. 116–117.
68.
Davies, p. 122.
69.
Davies, p. 85.
70.
On the uses of Joseph of Arimathea across two millennia, see William John Lyons, Joseph of Arimathea: A Study in Reception History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014). On medieval French sources placing Joseph in Britain, see also Deborah K. E. Crawford, “St. Joseph and Britain: The Old French Origins”, Arthuriana 11, no. 3 (fall 2001): 1–20. On traditions of Joseph bringing young Jesus to Britain and such traditions enduring into the twentieth century, see Alan Smith, “‘And Did Those Feet…?’: The ‘Legend’ of Christ’s Visit to Britain”, Folklore 100, no. 1 (1989): 63–83.
71.
William of Malmesbury, The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, trans. John Scott (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1981), p. 45.
72.
On the later additions to William of Malmesbury’s text, see William Wells Newell, “William of Malmesbury on the Antiquity of Glastonbury”, PMLA 18, no. 4 (1903): 459–512; and J. Armitage Robinson, Somerset Historical Essays (London: British Academy, 1921), Chapter 1.
73.
On the monks’ motivations for adding to William’s work, see Antonia Gransden, “The Growth of the Glastonbury Traditions and Legends in the Twelfth Century”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27, no. 4 (October 1976): 337–358, p. 342, 347; Scott, introduction to The Early History of Glastonbury, p. 27, 36; and Lyons , p. 72–73.
74.
Gransden reports that the life of Gildas by Caradog of Llancarfan (d. after 1138) is the first written text that associates Arthur with Glastonbury (p. 353).
75.
Lyons, p. 75–81.
76.
Scott, p. 36; Lyons, p. 85–86; Gransden, p. 358.
77.
Felicity Heal, “What Can King Lucius Do for You? The Reformation and the Early British Church”, English Historical Review 120, no, 487 (June 2005): 593–614, especially p. 601–603.
78.
Davies, p. 86.
79.
Raymond Davis, trans., The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1989), p. 6.
80.
See Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991), book 1.4; Nennius, Chapter 22; Geoffrey of Monmouth, book 4.19 to 5.1; and William of Malmesbury, Chapter 2.
81.
Heal , p. 598–599.
82.
Adolf von Harnack, “Der Brief des britischen Königs Lucius an den Papst Eleutherus”, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1904: 909–916. See also Charles -Edwards, p. 322–323; and Alan Smith, “Lucius of Britain: Alleged King and Church Founder”, Folklore 90, no. 1 (1979): 29–36, p. 35–36. For the nineteenth-century scholars who debunked Lucius’s historicity, see Heal , p. 596.
83.
Alan Smith, “Lucius”, p. 30, 33–34.
84.
Glanmor Williams, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1962), p. 1–3; R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987), p. 188–189. On Tudor-era revisionism of Augustine’s mission, see also Kidd , Chapter 5, especially p. 101–104.
85.
Bede, p. 87, 89.
86.
Bede, p. 135, 137, 139.
87.
Bede, p. 141.
88.
Bede, p. 117.
89.
Patrick Wormald, “The Venerable Bede and the ‘Church of the English’”, in The English Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism, ed. Geoffrey Rowell (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), p. 18. See also Wormald, “Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origin of the Gens Anglorum”, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Wormald with Donald Bullough and Roger Collins (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); and “Engla Lond: The Making of an Allegiance”, Journal of Historical Sociology 7, no. 1 (March 1994): 1–24.
90.
Wormald, “Bede, the Bretwaldas”, p. 128.
91.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, book 11.12, p. 266.
92.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, book 11.13, p. 266–267.
93.
Davies, p. 91.
94.
Davies, p. 93.
95.
Davies, p. 123.
96.
Davies, p. 93–94.
97.
Davies, p. 98.
98.
Davies, p. 123.
99.
Davies also believed that there had to have been an earlier manuscript Welsh Bible in common use way back when and, remarkably, that he had seen the first five books of it when he was young. Davies, p. 103–104. For manuscripts which Davies may have seen in his youth and mistaken for a Welsh Bible, see Glanmor Williams, The Welsh Church, p. 88–89. There are also, as Williams points out, many manuscripts with fragments of Welsh biblical translation (p. 90–92). Salesbury also believed in the lost Welsh Bible. Glanmor Williams, Wales and the Reformation, p. 176. On the desire to find the (nonexistent) original Welsh Bible and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s purported original Welsh source as “constitutive of both Welsh and Anglo-British nationalism in the Tudor era”, see Schwyzer , Chapter 3, especially p. 80.
100.
Davies, letter to Matthew Parker, March 19, 1566, in Correspondence of Matthew Parker, D.D., ed. John Bruce and Thomas Thomason Perowne (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1853), p. 266. On Davies’s and Salesbury’s correspondence with Parker, see also W. W. Greg, “Books and Bookmen in the Correspondence of Archbishop Parker”, The Library, 4th ser., 16, no. 3 (December 1935): 243–279, p. 271–273; and Robin Flower, “William Salesbury, Richard Davies, and Matthew Parker”, National Library of Wales Journal 2 (1941): 7–16.
101.
Matthew Parker and John Joscelin, De Antiqvitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ & Priuilegiis Ecclesiæ Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70 (London: John Day, 1572). As Heal points out, John Foxe had little to say about the early Welsh Church in the 1563 first edition of Actes and Monuments but “gave much greater prominence to early British history” in the 1570 second edition. Heal , p. 607.
102.
Elizabeth I, letter to Nicholas Hethe et alia, December 6, 1559, in John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1824), vol. 1, part 1, p. 218.
103.
Schwyzer, p. 33. See also Alan Smith, “St Augustine of Canterbury in History and Tradition”, Folklore 89, no. 1 (1978): 23–28.
104.
Benedict Scott Robinson, “‘Dark speech’: Matthew Parker and the Reforming of History”, Sixteenth Century Journal 29, no. 4 (winter 1998): 1061–1083, p. 1063–1064.
105.
Benedict Scott Robinson, “John Foxe and the Anglo-Saxons”, in John Foxe and His World, ed. Christopher Highley and John N. King (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), p. 63, 64. Emphasis in the original. I part ways with Robinson on one important point. He has argued in a series of essays that there is a paradox between the sixteenth-century antiquarians’ belief in immediacy and the mediations yielded by their work: “The fact of print publication necessarily separates us from the manuscript archive even in the act of producing it.” Robinson , “Neither Acts Nor Monuments”, English Literary Renaissance 41, no. 1 (winter 2011): 3–30, p. 4. While this is no doubt true for us as moderns, I argue that either this paradox was not felt by sixteenth-century antiquarians or they suppressed their recognition of it. It is one of the arguments of this book that print mediation did not emerge as a substantial problem, theorized as such, until the eighteenth century.
106.
Simon’s book was published in France in 1678 and in English translation four years later by Dryden’s publisher: A Critical History of the Old Testament, trans. Henry Dickinson (London: Jacob Tonson, 1682).
107.
John Dryden, “Religio Laici or A Laymans Faith”, in The Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg Jr. et al., 20 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956–2002), vol. 2, p. 116, 118.
108.
Although beyond the scope of this study, Higher Criticism’s textual-historical approach to the books of the Bible was also emerging at this time. One of the earliest British figures to take up the historical approach was Alexander Geddes (1737–1802) of Scotland. On his radical approach to Biblical textual studies and translation, see Reginald C. Fuller, Alexander Geddes, 1737–1802. A Pioneer of Biblical Criticism (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1984); and Bernard Aspinwall, “The Last Laugh of a Human Faith: Alexander Geddes 1737–1801”, New Blackfriars 58, no. 686 (July 1977): 330–340. On the influence of German biblical hermeneutics via Geddes on William Blake, see Jerome McGann, “The Idea of an Indeterminate Text: Blake’s Bible of Hell and Dr. Alexander Geddes”, Studies in Romanticism 25, no. 3 (fall 1986): 303–324.
109.
We might call this knowingly impossible struggle against mediation agonistic if agon were not already associated in Romantic studies with Harold Bloom’s narrower sense where all literature is reduced to an agonistic struggle with one’s predecessors. For the first of Bloom’s several books on agon and anxiety, see The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford UP, 1973).
110.
Clifford Siskin and William Warner, “This Is Enlightenment: An Invitation in the Form of an Argument”, in This Is Enlightenment, ed. Siskin and Warner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
111.
As discussed in Chapter 1. See Celeste Langan and Maureen N. McLane, “The Medium of Romantic Poetry”, in The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry, ed. James Chandler and McLane (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008).
112.
Y Drych Cristianogawl (Rhotomagi: Iathroi Fauonis, 1585). For a review of the evidence of the secret printing at Rhiwledyn, see D. M. Rogers, “‘Popishe Thackwell’ and Early Catholic Printing in Wales”, Biographical Studies 2, no. 1 (1953): 37–54. Rogers also describes two other texts possibly printed in Wales shortly thereafter.
113.
William Griffith, letter to Archbishop Whitgift, April 19, 1587, in Rogers , p. 50–51.
114.
Rheinallt Llwyd, “Printing and Publishing in the Seventeenth Century”, in A Nation and Its Books, ed. Jones and Rees , p. 93. On the history of Welsh printing to 1820, including factors which delayed market development, see also Rees , “The Welsh Book-Trade before 1820”, in Libri Walliae: A Catalogue of Welsh Books and Books Printed in Wales 1546–1820, ed. Rees, 2 vols. (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1987), vol. 2.
115.
Rees , “Welsh Publishing before 1717”, in Essays in Honour of Victor Scholderer, ed. Dennis E. Rhodes (Mainz: Karl Pressler, 1970), p. 325.
116.
Llwyd , p. 100. The first Welsh edition was John Bunyan, Taith neu siwrnai y pererin, trans. Stephen Hughes et al. (London: J. Richardson, 1688).
117.
I counted books in Libri Walliae’s chronological index by decade and tried to apply common sense for approximate dates. If a book’s publication date was listed, for instance, as “c. 1620”, I counted it in the 1620s.
118.
Llwyd , p. 104.
119.
An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses, 1662, 14 Caroli II, cap. 33.
120.
Rees , “The Welsh Book-Trade before 1820”, p. V.
121.
Information on Jones is drawn chiefly from Geraint H. Jenkins, “Jones, Thomas [known as Thomas Jones yr Almanaciwr] (1648–1713)”, ODNB.
122.
Thomas Jones , Y Gymraeg yn ei Disgleirdeb, neu helaeth Eir-Lyfr Cymraeg a Saesnaeg. The British Language in its Lustre, or a Copious Dictionary of Welsh and English (London: Lawrence Baskerville and John Marsh, 1688), sig. A 3r.
123.
Information on Carter is drawn chiefly from Ifano Jones, A History of Printing and Printers in Wales to 1810, and of Successive and Related Printers to 1923 (Cardiff: William Lewis, 1925), Chapter 8; and Brynley F. Roberts, “Carter, Isaac (d. 1741)”, ODNB. Besides the pair of ballads, the only other recorded printing by Carter in Trefhedyn was three books between 1719 and 1724. Jones, p. 39.
124.
Alban Thomas, Cân o Senn iw hên Feistr Tobacco (Trefhedyn: Isaac Carter, 1718); Cân ar Fesur Triban ynghylch Cydwybod a’i Chynheddfau (Trefhedyn: Isaac Carter, 1718).
125.
Information on Lhuyd is drawn chiefly from Brynley F. Roberts, “Lhuyd [Lhwyd; formerly Lloyd], Edward (1659/60?–1709)”, ODNB. On Lhuyd’s combination of philology and natural history as evidence of “the predisciplinary methods of early antiquarianism”, see Janet Sorensen, “‘Genuine Remains’: The Celtic Linguistic Artifact in Eighteenth-Century Britain”, Modern Philology 113, no. 3 (February 2016): 373–397, p. 373.
126.
George Hickes, letter to Lhuyd, May 20, 1707, in A Chorus of Grammars: The Correspondence of George Hickes and His Collaborators on the Thesaurus linguarum septentrionalium, ed. Richard L. Harris (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992), p. 415.
127.
Edward Lhuyd, Parochial Queries in Order to a Geographical Dictionary, a Natural History, &c. of Wales (Oxford, 1697), p. 2.
128.
Lhuyd, Archæologia Britannica (Oxford, 1707); Aneirin Lewis, introduction to The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Evan Evans, ed. Lewis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1957), p. viii.
129.
Information on Williams is drawn chiefly from Brynley F. Roberts, “Williams, Moses (1685–1742)”, ODNB.
130.
Moses Williams, Cofrestr o’r holl lyfrau printjedig gan mwyaf a gyfansoddwyd yn y faith Gymraeg (London, 1717).
131.
Moses Williams, Proposals for Printing by Subscription a Collection of Writings in the Welsh Tongue, to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century ([London, 1719]), p. [1].
132.
Moses Williams, Reportorium Poeticum, sive Poematum Wallicorum (London: W. Roberts, 1726), p. 76, 71.
133.
Information on Wotton is drawn chiefly from David Stoker, “Wotton, William (1666–1727)”, ODNB. On Wotton’s role in the quarrel of the ancients and moderns, see Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), especially Chapters 1 and 2.
134.
Wotton, ed., Cyfreithjeu Hywel Dda ac Eraill, seu Leges Wallicae Ecclesiasticae & Civiles Hoeli Boni et Aliorum Walliae Principum (London: William Bowyer, 1730).
135.
Information on the Morrises is drawn chiefly from Dafydd Wyn Wiliam’s essays on Lewis, Richard, and William in the ODNB. On the Morrises as part of the larger Welsh community in eighteenth-century London, see Glenda Carr, “The London-Welsh”, in A Nation and Its Books, ed. Jones and Rees.
136.
Aneirin Lewis, introduction, p. x.
137.
Dafydd ap Gwilym, Barddoniaeth Dafydd ab Gwilym, ed. Owen Jones and William Owen Pughe (London, 1789).
138.
The second Welsh periodical appeared thirty-five years later in 1770 and yielded fifteen issues. Huw Walters, “The Periodical Press to 1914”, in A Nation and Its Books, ed. Jones and Rees, p. 197.
139.
Lewis Morris, ed., Tlysau yr Hen Oesoedd (Holyhead, 1735), p. 2.
140.
On the Society of Ancient Britons, founded in London in 1714 as a charitable rather than an antiquarian organization, see Sarah Prescott, Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and Britons (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008), Chapter 1.
141.
Honourable Society of Cymmrodorian, Gosodedigaethau Anrhydeddus Gymdeithas y Cymmrodorian yn Llundain (London, 1755), p. 31.
142.
Michael J. Franklin, “Sir William Jones, the Celtic Revival and the Oriental Renaissance”, in English Romanticism and the Celtic World, ed. Gerard Carruthers and Alan Rawes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), p. 23.
143.
Honourable Society of Cymmrodorian, p. 13.
144.
On the Morrises’ role in supporting Owen and Evans, see also Edward D. Snyder, The Celtic Revival in English Literature 1760–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1923), Chapter 2.
145.
Lewis Morris, dedication to Diddanwch Teuluaidd; Y Llyfr Cyntaf, ed. Hugh Jones (London: William Roberts, 1763), p. ix.
146.
Information on Evans is drawn chiefly from Geraint H. Jenkins, “Evans, Evan [pseud. Ieuan Fardd; called Ieuan Brydydd Hir] (1731–1788)”, ODNB; and Aneirin Lewis, introduction.
147.
Flores Poetarum Britannicorum (Shrewsbury: Thomas Jones, 1710). My thanks to Ceri Davies for sharing his knowledge about this book.
148.
E. D. Jones, “The Department of Manuscripts and Records”, National Library of Wales Journal 5, no. 2 (winter 1947): 96–120, p. 100.
149.
In at least one case, he wrote two versions of the same poem using these two forms: “Ar Lys Ifor Hael, O Faesaleg, Yn Swydd Fynwy” / “On Seeing the Ruins of Ivor Hael’s Palace, Near Tredegar, in Monmouthshire”. Evan Evans, Gwaith y Parchedig Evans Evans (Ieuan Brydydd Hir), ed. D. Silvan Evans (Caernarfon: H. Humphreys, 1876), p. 51–52.
150.
Evans, The Love of Our Country, A Poem (Carmarthen: J. Ross, 1772), p. v.
151.
Evans, Love, p. 25.
152.
Evans, Love, p. 19.
153.
Evans, Love, p. 20.
154.
Evans, “A Paraphrase of Psalm CXXXVII. Alluding to the Captivity and Treatment of the Welsh Bards by King Edward I”, in Gwaith y Parchedig, p. 126–128.
155.
See, for instance, Katie Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997), p. 3–4, 8–10; and Prescott , p. 76–81.
156.
Information on Parry is drawn chiefly from Trevor Hebert, “Parry, John [Parry Ddall, Blind Parry] (1710?–1782)”, ODNB.
157.
Parry’s first, and apparently the first-ever, published book of Welsh songs was Antient British Music (London, 1742). Some Welsh airs had appeared earlier in a broader collection in 1726. Prys Morgan, “From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period”, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992 [1983]), p. 75.
158.
I discuss problems of dating the oldest Welsh poems earlier in this chapter.
159.
Stephens , p. 187.
160.
Lewis Morris, letter to Edward Richard, August 5, 1758, in Additional Letters of the Morrises of Anglesey (1735–1786), ed. Hugh Owen, 2 vols. (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1947–1949), vol. 1, p. 349.
161.
Evans, Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1764), p. iv.
162.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. i–ii.
163.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. iii.
164.
Quotations from Evans’s “Dissertatio” and the poems it excerpts are taken from Charlotte Johnston’s English translation. See Johnston, “Evan Evans: Dissertatio de Bardis”, National Library of Wales Journal 22, no. 1 (1981): 64–91, p. 89.
165.
Evans, “Dissertatio”, in Johnston, p. 86.
166.
On the possibility that the poem was instead by Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, see T. F. Tout, revised by Gruffydd Aled Williams, “Owain Cyfeiliog [Owain ap Gruffudd] (d. 1197)”, ODNB.
167.
Owain Cyfeiliog, “Hirlas”, in Evans, Some Specimens, p. 9. In his annotations Evans, like Geoffrey of Monmouth, blames the murder of the monks of Bangor on “the instigation of Austin”, that is, Augustine . He also, either by nationalist wishful thinking or imperfect information, appears to have conflated the Battle of Chester (c. 613–616), where the monks were murdered, with the Battle of Hatfield (633), a victory for Cadwallon ap Cadfan. See p. 9, notes b and c. The Saxons were not in fact defeated at Bangor.
168.
Evans, “Dissertatio”, in Johnston, p. 79.
169.
See Some Specimens, p. 12, 17.
170.
Information on Aneirin and the scribal problems raised by the text of Y Gododdin is drawn chiefly from Morfydd Owen, “Aneirin [Aneurin, Neirin] (fl. c. 575–c. 600)”, ODNB; Aneirin, Y Gododdin: Britain’s Oldest Heroic Poem, ed. A. O. H. Jarman (Llandysul: Gomer, 1988); and Charles -Edwards, “The Authenticity of the Gododdin: An Historian’s View”, in Astudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd. Studies in Old Welsh Poetry, ed. Rachel Bromwich and R. Brinley Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978).
171.
Evans, “Dissertatio”, in Johnston, p. 82.
172.
Dafydd Benfras, “An Ode of David Benvras to Llewelyn the Great, Prince of Wales, A. D. 1240”, in Evans, Some Specimens, p. 17.
173.
See Owain Cyfeiliog, “Hirlas”, in Evans, Some Specimens, p. 12.
174.
Evans, “Dissertatio”, in Johnston, p. 78.
175.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. 17.
176.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. 53.
177.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. ii.
178.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. 49.
179.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. 153.
180.
Evans, “Dissertatio”, in Johnston, p. 90.
181.
A. Cynfael Lake, “Jones, Rhys [Rice] (1713–1801)”, ODNB. See Rhys Jones, ed., Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru: Neu Flodau Godidowgrwydd Awen (Shrewsbury: Stafford Prys, 1773).
182.
William Owen Pughe, ed., The Heroic Elegies and Other Pieces of Llywarç Hen, Prince of the Cumbrian Britons (London: J. Owen, 1792).
183.
See William Owen Pughe, Iolo Morganwg, and Owen Jones, eds., The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, 3 vols. (London: S. Rousseau, 1801–1807), vol. 1, p. 1–14.
184.
Skene , vol. 1, p. 5.
185.
See Chapter 4.
186.
See Anne Penny, Poems, with a Dramatic Entertainment (London, 1771), p. 1–18; Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Wales. MDCCLXX (London: Henry Hughes, 1778), p. 281–284; Pennant , The Journey to Snowdon (London: Henry Hughes, 1781), p. 148–150, 288–294; and John Walters, Translated Specimens of Welsh Poetry in English Verse (London: J. Dodsley et al., 1782), p. 14–24. The translations in Pennant’s books were by Richard Williams and Anne Penny. Walters also translated one of the Llywarch Hen poems. See William Warrington, The History of Wales, in Nine Books (London: J. Johnson, 1786), p. 535–536.
187.
Robert F. Gleckner, Gray Agonistes: Thomas Gray and Masculine Friendship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997), p. 88.
188.
Gleckner, p. 98.
189.
Gleckner, p. 169.
190.
Frank Edgar Farley, Scandinavian Influences in the English Romantic Movement (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1903), p. 38.
191.
Snyder, p. 39.
192.
William Powell Jones, Thomas Gray, Scholar (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1937), p. 87–88, 89–90.
193.
Arthur Johnston , “Gray’s ‘The Triumphs of Owen’”, Review of English Studies, n.s., 11, no. 43 (August 1960): 275–285, p. 280. See also, by Johnston, “Gray’s Use of the Gorchest y Beirdd in ‘The Bard’”, Modern Language Review 59, no. 3 (July 1964): 335–338; and Thomas Gray and The Bard (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966).
194.
Suvir Kaul, Thomas Gray and Literary Authority: A Study in Ideology and Poetics (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992), p. 239.
195.
James Mulholland, Sounding Imperial: Poetic Voice and the Politics of Empire, 1730–1820 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2013), p. 48.
196.
Gray’s Commonplace Book (Pembroke College Library, University of Cambridge, 3 vols.) has never been published in its entirety. For a list of where various fragments have appeared in print, beginning in 1814, see Joshua Swidzinski, “Uncouth Rhymes: Thomas Gray, Prosody, and Literary History”, Studies in Philology 112, no. 4 (fall 2015): 837–861, p. 846, note 38.
197.
William Mason, “Memoirs”, in The Poems of Mr. Gray. To which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W. Mason, M.A., ed. Mason, (York, 1775), p. 338. Despite the critical commonplace that Gray gave way to Warton, it is worth noting that Gray was neither eager nor forthcoming in sharing material with him. Richard Hurd had agreed in May 1769 to ask Gray to share his plan with Warton. See Warton, letter to Jonathan Toup, May 27, 1769, and letter to Richard Hurd, July 26, 1769, in The Correspondence of Thomas Warton, ed. David Fairer (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), p. 244–245, 250–251. Gray, who knew of Warton’s project by at least 1768, did send him a sketch of his plan—nothing more—and apologized for seeming “rude or negligent” and “hesitating for so many months”. Gray, letter to Thomas Warton, April 15, 1770, in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1935), vol. 3, p. 1123.
198.
Swidzinski, p. 844.
199.
Swidzinski, p. 839.
200.
William Warburton, letter to Richard Hurd, July 18, 1752, in Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate to One of His Friends, 2nd ed. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1809), p. 122.
201.
Transcribed in Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 707.
202.
Warton had already received a copy of Pope’s plan in 1763. See Hurd, letter to Warton, December 10, 1763, and Warton, letter to Hurd , December 25, 1763, in The Correspondence of Thomas Warton, p. 165–167.
203.
Warton explicitly disavowed both schemes in his preface: “in giving the history of English poetry, I have rejected the ideas of men who are its most distinguished ornaments”, that is, Pope and Gray. Warton, The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, 3 vols. (London: J. Dodsley, 1774–1781), vol. 1, p. iv–v.
204.
Transcribed in Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 707.
205.
On pre-Warton forms of literary history, see Fairer, “The Formation of Warton’s History”, in Warton, Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry, ed. Fairer, 4 vols. (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1998), vol. 1, p. 5–6.
206.
Warton, History, vol. 1, p. vi. For more on this point, see Chapter 5.
207.
Gray, letter to Warton, April 15, 1770, in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. 3, p. 1123.
208.
See Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. John Urry (London: Bernard Lintot, 1721).
209.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 757.
210.
William Somner, Dictionarivm Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum Voces, Phrasesque Præcipuas Anglo-Saxonicas (Oxford: William Hall, 1659).
211.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 757.
212.
William Powell Jones makes much the same point, that is, that most critics besides Gray “had not understood Chaucer’s principles of versification”. Jones, p. 87. See also p. 105: Gray was “an unacknowledged pioneer in Chaucerian scholarship, the original instigator of the Celtic and Scandinavian interests which became important in the Romantic movement, and a student of early English poetry far ahead of his time”.
213.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 771. The table is on page 773.
214.
Gray initially found it more likely that the Saxons had brought rhyme from Germany. As his research continued, he became more convinced of the probability that it was borrowed from the Welsh. William Powell Jones drew the same conclusion about Gray’s thought process: “This possibility became more and more plausible to him as he began to learn more about Welsh poetry, until he was finally convinced in his own mind that the Celtic origin of rhyme was not only possible but almost certain.” Jones , p. 90. Although Anglo-Saxon poetry is not known for rhyming, the English at the time, with few examples to consult, believed it did, as we saw in the case of Samuel Daniel in Chapter 1.
215.
For a longer list of texts on Celtic and Welsh history that Gray consulted, see Snyder , p. 35–37.
216.
Siôn Dafydd Rhys, Cambrobrytannicæ Cymraecæve lingvae institutiones et rvdimenta accuratè (London: Thomas Orwin, 1592), p. 182–183. It is the tenth of Evans’s specimens.
217.
Gray wrote that, thanks to Rhys’s examples, “(tho’ entirely unacquainted with the Language) one may perceive something of the Measure, Alliteration, & Order of Rhymes, of w^ch their Verse consists”. Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 799. See also George Lyman Kittredge, “Gray’s Knowledge of Old Norse”, in Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray, ed. William Lyon Phelps (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1894), p. xli–l.
218.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 799.
219.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 800.
220.
Samuel Johnson, “The History of the English Language”, in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 18, Johnson on the English Language, ed. Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr. (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005), p. 125.
221.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 803.
222.
George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (London: Richard Field, 1589), p. 62. Gray transcribed this passage in Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 757.
223.
Puttenham, p. 61.
224.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 759.
225.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 759.
226.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 761.
227.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 770.
228.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 761.
229.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 769.
230.
Gray, Odes (Strawberry-Hill: R. and J. Dodsley, 1757).
231.
On the Pindaric ode in English, introduced by Abraham Cowley in 1656, see Margaret Anne Doody, The Daring Muse (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985), p. 249–255.
232.
See, for instance, Prescott , Chapter 3, or Mulholland , Chapter 1.
233.
Kaul , p. 238.
234.
Howard D. Weinbrot, Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), p. 397.
235.
On the history of the progress poem as a genre, see Reginald Harvey Griffith, “The Progress Pieces of the Eighteenth Century”, Texas Review 5, no. 3 (April 1920): 218–233; and Mattie Swayne, “The Progress Piece in the Seventeenth Century”, Studies in English 16 (July 1936): 84–92.
236.
Gray, “The Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode.”, in Poems, new ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1768), p. 45.
237.
Shakespeare and Milton appear in the original 1757 publication of the ode not by name but by biographical allusion. The 1768 footnotes name them explicitly.
238.
On readers not understanding the odes, see Roger Lonsdale, ed., The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith (London: Longmans, 1969), p. 158.
239.
Gray, note to “The Progress of Poesy”, in Poems, p. 43. The brackets are Gray’s.
240.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “progress”.
241.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 803. According to Aneirin Lewis, Gray was likely the first person to doubt the bardicide legend. The first Welsh doubts did not appear in print until 1819. Lewis, p. 15.
242.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 2, p. 811.
243.
Arthur Johnston , Thomas Gray and The Bard, p. 22.
244.
Gray, letter to Mason , May [24 or 31], 1757, in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. 2, p. 501–502.
245.
Thomas Carte, A General History of England, 4 vols. (London, 1747–1755), vol. 2, p. 190.
246.
Carte, vol. 2, p. 191.
247.
Carte, vol. 2, p. 196.
248.
Information on Wynn is drawn chiefly from J. Gwynfor Jones, “Wynn, Sir John, first baronet (1553–1627)” ODNB; Daines Barrington, introduction to John Wynn, The History of the Gwedir Family, ed. Barrington (London: B. White, 1770); and Emyr Gwynne Jones, “Sir John Wynn of Gwydir”, Welsh Review 5, no. 3 (autumn 1946): 187–191.
249.
Evans transcribed the relevant passage in a letter to Percy , who replied that he had shown it to Gray, who had made a copy for himself. See Evans, letter to Percy, August 8, 1761, and Percy, letter to Evans, October 15, 1761, in The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Evan Evans, p. 11–12, 14–15. When the manuscript was published in 1770, Gray acquired a copy. William Powell Jones, p. 96.
250.
Barrington, introduction, p. vi.
251.
Wynn, p. 61–62.
252.
J. Gwynfor Jones and A. D. Carr have drawn the same conclusion regarding Wynn’s motive. See Jones, ed., notes to Wynn, The History of the Gwydir Family and Memoirs (Llandysul, UK: Gomer Press, 1990), p. 121; and Carr , Medieval Wales (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), p. 10.
253.
Gray, “The Bard. A Pindaric Ode.”, in Poems, p. 53.
254.
Although Gray encountered many Welsh poetic forms in Rhys , he does not appear to have precisely mimicked any of them in English. Arthur Johnston has argued, for instance, that Gray’s use of a double cadence in “The Bard” “does no more than ‘bear some affinity’ with the Gorchest y Beirdd”. “Gray’s Use of the Gorchest y Beirdd in ‘The Bard’”, p. 336.
255.
On illustrations of the poem by painters, see Chapter 4.
256.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan : or, A Vision in a Dream”, in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 16, Poetical Works, ed. J. C. C. Mays (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001), book I, part 1, p. 514.
257.
Gray, note to “The Bard”, in Poems, p. 67. In an undated manuscript, these lines are followed by a pair of cancelled lines that allude to Henry Tudor as “another Arthur”:Verse
Verse From Cambria’s thousand hills a thousand strains Triumphant tell aloud, another Arthur reigns[.]
Gray, “Text of ‘The Bard’, ll. 57–144”, no date, in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. 1, p. 436.
258.
The punctuation of line 110—“‘All-hail, ye genuine Kings, Britannia’s Issue, hail!’”—makes possible a reading where the Kings, rather than being Britannia’s Issue themselves, are being commanded to hail someone else as Britannia’s Issue. That someone else would be the English poets.
259.
Gray, note to “The Bard”, in Poems, p. 70.
260.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “issue”.
261.
Mulholland , p. 157.
262.
Prescott , p. 75. On a similar note, Trumpener , who questions the legitimacy of English bardic appropriations as we saw in Chapter 1, seems to grant Gray an exception: his portrayal of the Bard “seems more satisfactory than Macpherson’s Ossian”. Trumpener, p. 8.
263.
William Owen Pughe, trans., Palestine, a Poem by Heber; and The Bard, an Ode, by Gray; Translated into Welsh (London: E. Williams, 1822). On Welsh translations of “The Bard”, see Mulholland, p. 73–75. On positive Welsh responses to the poem, see Prescott, p. 75–77.
264.
Gerard Carruthers and Alan Rawes, “Introduction: Romancing the Celt”, in English Romanticism and the Celtic World, ed. Carruthers and Rawes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) p. 18.
265.
John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987), p. 9.
266.
Gray, “Advertisement”, in Poems, p. 75.
267.
Gray’s fourteen poems published in his lifetime take up fifty-one pages in the 1966 edition of his poems edited by Starr and Hendrickson . The two history odes and three imitations take up twenty-five of those fifty-one pages. See The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray. English, Latin and Greek, ed. H. W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson (London: Oxford UP, 1966).
268.
Gray, letter to Horace Walpole, July 11, 1757, in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. 2, p. 508. See also his letter to Mason of September 7, 1757, vol. 2, p. 522: “I would not have put another note to save the souls of all the Owls in London.”
269.
Gray, Advertisement to “The Progress of Poesy”, in Poems, p. 36.
270.
Months before their publication, Macpherson sent two of his fragments to David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, who sent them to Horace Walpole, who sent them to Gray. Gray relayed his questions about them to Macpherson via the same chain of communication without writing to him directly. Macpherson then wrote two letters to Gray, one of which included a third fragment. See Gray, Letters 310, 313, 315, 317, and 319* and Appendix L in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. 2, p. 664–665, 677–682, 684–686, 689–691, 694–696 and vol. 3, p. 1223–1229.
271.
See James Macpherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry (Edinburgh: G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1760); Fingal, An Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books (London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1762); and Temora, An Ancient Epic Poem, in Eight Books (London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1763).
272.
On annotation in the Augustan age, see Jack Lynch, “Preventing Play: Annotating the Battle of the Books”, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 40, no. 3 (fall 1998): 370–388.
273.
On “the role annotation plays in actively constructing rather than merely supporting a specific narrative of antiquity”, see also Thomas Van der Goten, “Topographical Annotation in Thomas Percy’s The Hermit of Warkworth and John Pinkerton’s The Bruce”, in Annotation in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Michael Edson. Bethlehem (Penn.: Lehigh UP, 2017), p. 67.
274.
See Percy, trans., Five Pieces of Runic Poetry Translated from the Islandic Language (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1763).
275.
Margaret Clunies Ross, The Norse Muse in Britain 1750–1820 (Trieste: Edizioni Parnaso, 1998), p. 106. The first English (prose) translation of an Icelandic poem to appear in print was “The Waking of Angantyr” from the thirteenth-century Hervarar saga in Hickes’s Thesaurus. Heather O’Donoghue, English Poetry and Old Norse Myth: A History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014), p. 2014. See Hickes, Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archæologicus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1703–1705), vol. 1, p. 193–195.
276.
On the history of print editions of Old Norse poetry and their influence and translation in English, see Farley , Chapter 1; Margaret Omberg, Scandinavian Themes in English Poetry, 1760–1800 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1976), Chapter 1; Judy Quinn and Margaret Clunies Ross, “The Image of Norse Poetry and Myth in Seventeenth-Century England”, in Northern Antiquity: The Post-Medieval Reception of Edda and Saga, ed. Andrew Wawn (Middlesex, UK: Hisarlik Press, 1994); Clunies Ross, The Norse Muse, Chapter 1; and O’Donoghue, English Poetry and Old Norse Myth, Chapter 1.
277.
The first word of the title is “runes” written in runes. For the poems, see Ole Worm, [Runer] seu Danica Literatura Antiqvissima, Vulgò Gothica Dicta, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen, 1651), p. 182–207. On Worm and the printing of runes, see Robert W. Rix, “Runes and Roman: Germanic Literacy and the Significance of Runic Writing”, Textual Cultures 6, no. 1 (spring 2011): 114–144.
278.
On the sources of Worm’s erroneous theory, see Tarrin Wills, “The Third Grammatical Treatise and Ole Worm’s Literatura Runica”, Scandinavian Studies 76, no. 4 (winter 2004): 439–458.
279.
O’Donoghue , Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 109.
280.
According to Omberg , the first English translations produced directly from Icelandic originals were those of William Herbert in 1804. See Herbert , Select Icelandic Poetry, Translated from the Originals; with Notes, 2 vols. (London, 1804–1806).
281.
Percy, letter to Evans, October 15, 1761, in The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Evan Evans, p. 16.
282.
Omberg , p. 22.
283.
Scholars of Icelandic literature have repeatedly made this point. Omberg finds that Gray exaggerated the original’s grisly horror in ways we might call Gothic (p. 43–45). Clunies Ross follows Omberg’s reading (The Northern Muse, p. 107–108). Alison Finlay, arguing the same, provides valuable historical context on the Battle of Clontarf in “Thomas Gray’s Translations of Old Norse Poetry”, in Old Norse Made New, ed. David Clark and Carl Phelpstead (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2007). O’Donoghue attributes Gray’s intensification of the originals in part to his use of alliteration and monosyllabic imperative verbs. O’Donoghue, English Poetry and Old Norse Myth, p. 72.
284.
The earliest known reference to Evans’s translations of the three specimens appears in a letter between the Morris brothers in 1758. See William Morris, letter to Richard Morris, September 6, 1758, The Letters of Lewis, Richard, William and John Morris, of Anglesey, (Morrisiaid Mon) 1728–1765, ed. John H. Davies, 2 vols. (Aberystwyth: 1907–1909), vol. 2, p. 86.
285.
While writing the imitations, Gray saw only Evans’s Latin verse translation of the poem by Gwalchmai, not the English prose translation he produced later for Some Specimens. For Evans’s Latin translation of the poem, see the copy in Percy’s possession in The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Evan Evans, p. 191–192.
286.
Evans, letter to Richard Morris, April 23, 1760, in Additional Letters of the Morrises, vol. 2, p. 453.
287.
Gray, letter to Thomas Wharton, [c. June 20, 1760], in Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. 2, p. 680.
288.
On Barrington’s efforts to get Evans’s Some Specimens into print, see Charlotte Johnston, p. 66.
289.
Percy , letter to Evans, October 15, 1761, in The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Evan Evans, p. 15.
290.
Huw Pryce, “Owain Gwynedd [Owain ap Gruffudd] (d. 1170)”, ODNB.
291.
Arthur Johnston , “Gray’s ‘The Triumphs of Owen’”, p. 276.
292.
Arthur Johnston, “Gray’s ‘The Triumphs of Owen’”, p. 280.
293.
Arthur Johnston , “Gray’s ‘The Triumphs of Owen’”, p. 280.
294.
See Evans’s third and fifth excerpts of Y Gododdin in Some Specimens, p. 71, 72–73.
295.
Hoel Da was a common spelling of Hywel Dda, as in Salesbury’s Ban wedy (1550), which we saw earlier. Hoel is also the name of a bard in Mason’s Caractacus. See William Mason, Caractacus, a Dramatic Poem (London: J. Knapton and R. and J. Dodsley, 1759), p. 27.
296.
Gray, “The Death of Hoel”, in Complete Poems, p. 69.
297.
Gray, “Conan”, in Complete Poems, p. 70.
298.
Evans, Some Specimens, p. 75.
299.
Gray, “The Descent of Odin. An Ode.”, in Poems, p. 88.
300.
Alexander Pope, “ΠΕΡΙ ΒΑΘΟΥΣ: or, Martin Scriberlus His Treatise of the Art of Sinking in Poetry”, in Pope and Jonathan Swift, Miscellanies. The Last Volume (London: B. Motte, 1727), p. 55. In The Dunciad, Pope annotates “Namby Pamby” Philips as an author eminent “in the Infantine stile” without identifying it as heptasyllabic. Pope , The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, vol. 5, The Dunciad, ed. James Sutherland, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen; New Haven: Yale UP, 1963), p. 188. I owe the point about Pope’s ridicule of heptasyllabic metre to Arthur Johnston , “Gray’s ‘The Triumphs of Owen’”, p. 280, and Swidzinski , p. 854.
301.
Some scholars have resorted to an interstitial “pre-Romantic” period for poets like Gray and William Collins. See, most famously, Marshall Brown, Preromanticism (Stanford: Stanford, UP, 1991).
302.
John Beer, “Fragmentations and Ironies”, in Questioning Romanticism, ed. Beer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995), p. 239.
303.
Marjorie Levinson, The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. 56–57.
304.
Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Modalities of Fragmentation (Princeton: Princeton, UP, 1981).
305.
Anne Janowitz, England’s Ruins: Poetic Purpose and the National Landscape (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 54.
306.
Sandro Jung, The Fragmentary Poetic: Eighteenth-Century Uses of an Experimental Mode (Bethlehem, Penn.: Lehigh UP, 2009), p. 24. For Jung’s reading of “The Triumphs of Owen” in light of the Pindaric ode, see p. 40–41.
307.
Gray, Commonplace Book, vol. 3, p. 1070.
308.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”, in The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat, and Nora Crook, 3 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000–2012), vol. 3, p. 326.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA
Jeff Strabone

Authors

Jeff Strabone
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Strabone, J. (2018). The Fall and Rise of the Welsh Bards, or, How the English Became British. In: Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95255-0_3

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95255-0_3
Published: 27 October 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95254-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95255-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics