Matheson Collection > Early Welsh gnomic poems

INTRODUCTION
gnomic and quasi-gnomic poetry, for example, crin caun,
crin calaw, cev ezvur, hir nos, Hum ros, cul hit, kirchid
carv crum tal cum did, briuhid tal glan gan gam carv
culgrum cam, bir dit, and so on; stanza 8 occurs in the
Red Book of Hergest, col. 1035, 11. 13-14, and stanza 22
belongs perhaps to a Kalan Gaeaf series like poem v,
or is at least influenced by it. Yet it does not read like
a mere medley, and is in any case the work of a very
competent poet. The last part of the poem in the Black
Book belongs to the cycle of Llywarch Hen, and is
omitted here because it seems to have no connection
with the nature-poetry; it is edited and discussed by
Ifor Williams, Canu Llywarch Hen.
All but two of our poems are found in early manu-
scripts. No. I is from the Black Book of Carmarthen,^
now in the National Library of Wales, which was written
at the end of the twelfth century. Nos. iii-vii are in
two manuscripts now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford —
the Red Book of Hergest,^ written at the end of the
fourteenth century, and Jesus College MS. 3,^ written
in the first half of the fifteenth century. These poems
in Jesus 3 are not copied from the Red Book, but the
two are closely related and must have a common not
distant manuscript original; perhaps both were copied
from the lost parts of the White Book of Rhydderch,*
which contained a number of the early Red Book poems.
No. II is from the Red Book only. No other independent
1 Abbreviated BBC. ^ Abbreviated RBH.
^ Abbreviated J. * See stemma, p. 11.
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