This audio clip is from a course on The Welsh Bardic Tradition, held at Aberystwyth University, alongside an excerpt from the course notes. It looks at the life and early work of the greatest of the Gogynfeirdd, Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr during the time of the fall of the Kingdom of Powys. The Welsh Bardic Tradition weekContinue reading “The ideal of bardic truth”
Author Archives: Gwilym Morus-Baird
Bardic meditation
This audio clip is from a course on The Welsh Bardic Tradition, held at Aberystwyth University, alongside an excerpt from the course notes. It summarises a discussion on a sequence of anonymous medieval gnomic stanzas from around 1100. Mountain Snow Excerpt text
To praise a noble bard
This audio clip is from a course on The Welsh Bardic Tradition, held at Aberystwyth University, alongside an excerpt from the course notes. It covers a medieval praise poem written around 1100 to Cuhelyn Fardd, a powerful nobleman and bard from West Wales. The poem itself reveals much about bardic culture and custom in medievalContinue reading “To praise a noble bard”
What do myths and symbols mean?
When trying to interpret myths and their symbols we usually find ourselves doing so at some distance from the culture that gave birth to them. Surviving texts have very often been long separated from their original social contexts, orphans of a long dead culture. With such a lack of contextual information, often our only guideContinue reading “What do myths and symbols mean?”
What is a Celtic bard?
Throughout the second half of the twelfth century, Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr served the most powerful Welsh princes as a court bard. He was paid generously by the nobility to praise them in poetry as legendary heroes. Even though they attended mainly to politics and the ever-present threat of attack, these warlords kept one eye onContinue reading “What is a Celtic bard?”