When Llywelyn ap lorwerth came to power in Gwynedd (1194-1210), the conditions that had allowed Pura Wallia to assert a precarious native identity in the face of Norman domination had vanished. On the one hand, the end of English civil war between Stephen and Matilda meant that Henry II was anxious to re-establish Norman authority; on the other, the princes whose extended rule had ensured some measure of security and continuity in the three principalities had all died. Although the court poets continued to affirm the glories of the native Welsh warrior nobility, the disjunction between propaganda and reality was growing ever greater. Llywelyn’s rise to power within this vacuum was, as one poet put it, ‘the swirl of a great windstorm in a surly February’.20 And once he obtained power, he systematically sought to centralize and extend it. The forty years of his reign saw a decline in the status and rights of the free warrior aristocracy, a centralizing of native law, Gwynedd’s assertion of sovereignty over the other Welsh principalities, and an increased use of alliances, treaties and judicious marriages in dealing with Norman rulership and marcher aristocracy.
Llywelyn’s reign was, in many ways, a paradise for the court poets; here was a man to sing of, a man who had restored the past glories of Wales and who promised a strong and united Wales. Indeed, eight different poets, the most well known of whom are Llywarch ab Llywelyn, ‘Pyddyd y Moch’ (fl. 1173-1220), Einion ap Gwalchmai (fl. 1203-23) and Dafydd Benfras (fl. 1230-60), composed twenty surviving poems in his honour. In general, these poems follow the standard conventions of gogynfeirdd poetry, establishing the prince as the rightful lord, extolling his valour and victory in battle, and praising his generosity. However, since the bardic tradition was by definition conservative and jealous of the rights of the free warrior aristocracy, it is hardly surprising that Llywelyn’s policies, many of them directed against traditions and those rights, should have caused some consternation among the poets. Elidr Sais (c.1195-1246) expresses reservations about Llywelyn’s centralizing and expansionist agenda as he laments the death of Rhodri and the exile of Dafydd at Llywelyn’s hands, comparing the latter to the rape of Christ’s tomb by Saladin.21 After Llywelyn’s death, he composed a poem which uses his rise to power as an exem-plum of worldly vanity, ‘the jarring of the lords - / with a flick of the wrist, it has all gone by’.22 Other poets, however, use the call to the past unity and sovereignty of Wales to justify Llywelyn’s policies. Llywelyn Prydydd y Moch emphasizes a unified Wales, led by Llywelyn, as England’s bane, dwelling on the ‘concord in the land he rules’ and the arrogance of any man ‘not bound to my lord’ who provides a ‘thousand bards’ favoured haven’.23
While the poets from the time of Gruffudd ap Cynan on had used Wales’s mythological past to form an ideological notion of Wales, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth instituted a programme which used appeals to that same past to create Wales as an institutional reality. In addition to the court poetry discussed above, prose texts from this time, especially the law texts attributed to Hywel Dda and the Welsh versions of Chretien’s Arthurian romances Gereint and Enid and Owein (1175-1225), explicitly and implicitly further Llywelyn’s programme.24 The Cyfraith HywePs support of a centralized government goes beyond merely codifying the law; the prologues relate the tale of Hywel Dda, the king of all Wales, who caused the laws to be collected and disseminated, a tale that clearly advocates a Wales united by a single king who gives and upholds the law.25 Furthermore, the lorwerth redaction emphasized the paramount status of the king of Gwynedd, stating that the prince of Gwynedd’s ‘word shall be a command to all kings of Wales, but no other king’s word shall be a command to him’.26 The Arthurian romances Gereint and (Owein also posit Llywelyn’s policies as a return to an ideal Wales, as represented by the centrality of Arthur’s court to the survival of the independent ‘otherworldly’ kingdoms portrayed in the romances.
Llywelyn’s invention of the past, combined with his military talents and political shrewdness, allowed him to accomplish much of his political programme. By the end of his reign he had centralized government and law and asserted control over his country’s resources and a newly ‘serviental’ aristocracy. In addition, his centralization of government and resources began to transform Wales’s traditionally plunder-based economy into an exploitation-based economy, which allowed Llywelyn to introduce a major architectural development in Wales: Norman-style castles, built with defence, not aesthetics, in mind.
Llywelyn’s return to an ‘ideal’ Welsh past had in reality changed the very fabric of the Welsh social order, curtailing the rights of the traditional free warrior aristocracy, bringing Wales into closer alignment with continental feudal practices and introducing the machinery of government, including an increase in literacy and reliance on written documentation. While assuring the identity of Wales as an independent principality for another two generations and, with it, audience and subject matter for the native literary tradition, Llywelyn had also sown the seeds for change within that audience. As the Welsh aristocracy’s marriage and educational opportunities increased in England and the marches, they became more Norman in their cultural outlook. Literacy rates continued to grow, as did interest in non-native literary traditions; while the twelfth century is arguably the golden age of native Welsh prose tales, the prose compositions of the thirteenth century are mostly translations of English, French and Latin originals.
Beginning with Gruffudd ap Cynan, the native princes of Wales and their court poets had sought to forge a native Welsh identity; essential to this identity was the might and leadership of the rightful prince and the bonds between him and his warband. The defeat of 1282 saw the loss of these essentials, a loss that is echoed in the apocalyptic tone of the elegies for Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Bleddyn Fardd’s elegy laments the passing of Wales’s saviour, ‘a man slain for us’; the explicit comparison here is between Llywelyn and Christ, a comparison that suggests the failure of the Welsh heroic tradition, as the poet turns from native mythology and history to Christian themes. Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch picks up this theme in his elegy, which moans not only the loss of Llywelyn but the loss of an entire way of life:
See you not that the world is ending?
Ah, God, that the sea would cover land! What is left for us that we should linger? No place to flee from terror’s prison,
No place to live; wretched is living!
No counsel, no clasp, no path left open. All counties, all towns are now troubled, All households, all clans are collapsing. . . All children now cry in their cradles.27
World History
