Throughout the second half of the
twelfth century, Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr served the most powerful Welsh princes
as a court bard. He was payed generously by these aristocrats in the hope that
his skilful praise poetry would portray them as legendary heroes, and not only
to their contemporaries. Even though it’s likely that political matters,
including the ever-present threat of attack, was the priority for these
warlords, it’s likely they kept one eye on the good name of their lineage. In
this respect, Cynddelw’s patrons relied upon him to commemorate them in such an
elegant and majestic way so as to ensure their names would survive the oblivion
of the centuries. Many of these awdlau,1 praises
and laments, have survived to the present day, which is testimony in itself
that Cynddelw succeeded in safeguarding the names of his patrons until
today.
But
this simple fact hides a compex reality. Without mentioning the effort, the
devotion and the unique talent that was responsible for such sublime verse,
there were many factors beyond the control of the court bards that were equally
responsible for the longevity of their poems. Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr did not
work in a vacuum: he was part of a tradition, and when employing him as a court
bard his patron was also calling upon the power of that tradition. In this
sense, Cynddelw was far more than an individual bard, he was a vessel and a
vehicle for the traditional idealism, mythology and ritual of his nation, as
well as being a master of the ancient art and craft of the bardic declamation.
By seeing him in this light, we can begin to reveal the wider context of the
period he lived in, eight hundred and fifty years ago.
Cynddelw
succeeded in drawing together the myriad threads of his tradition and weaving
them together into one wondrous tapestry – a kind of ritual gown fro his own
use. He mastered the complex network of mythological figures and their
respective tales, alongside the authoritative voices of the Hengerdd.2 Within him were located
centuries of cultural development, and he gave voice to all these wondrous and
ancient cultural artifacts through his public persona – the regal figure of the
court bard. When he declaimed his odes before the court, in his voice the
voices of Aneirin, Taliesin and Myrddin could be heard. Through him his
audience touched their heroic and strange past, reliving the great histories of their forefathers. What’s
more, he presented these mythical heroes as ideals by which to live, as mediums
for the ancient principles of the Welsh aristocracy. Regardless of how much of
this actually rubbed off on the military elite, in the ritual life of the court
he was the old druid giving council to the king, and implied in that was the
claim that just like Taliesin before him, he could save his patron from any
missfortune through his learning, his wisdom and his mystical abilities. In
this respect, it is easy to see how the court bard was the respectable
descendant of the old tribal bard. As the court poets of Cynddelw’s period,
that is the period of the Gogynfeirdd,3
portrayed themselves as descendants of the Cynfeirdd,4 it’s
natural to see the tribal bard in the form of Taliesin or Aneirin as an
integral part of the court bard’s public persona.
As
a result, this persona, that shines so brightly in the odes of Cynddelw,
Prydydd y Moch and many other bards of the tradition, can be considred a
dramatic expression of the old wise man archetype. There are many historic
examples of this figure – in Geofrey of Monmouth’s ‘Merlin’ or in the stories
of the old hermits of the early Church. Jung’s name for this particular
archetype is the senex,5 and the
concept was adopted by later scholars, for example Joseph Campbell:
. . . the Wise Old Man of the myths and fairy tales whose
words assist the hero through the trials and terrors of the weird adventure. He
is the one who appears and points to the magic shining sword that will kill the
dragon-terror, tells of the waiting bride and the castle of many treasures,
applies healing balm to the almost fatal wounds, and finally dismisses the
conqueror, back into the world of normal life, following the great adventure
into the enchanted night.6
Considering Cynddelw’s self-portrayal as the mythical wise old
druid, it is easy to locate his dramatic persona in the same archetypal
lineage. It would be fair to say that his effectiveness as a court bard would
have depended to some extent on his ability to portray himself as such. It is
not suprising that the same awareness of the power of myth is seen in the works
of the Gogynfeirdd as it is in the
works of modern psychologists. It’s likely that both appreciated the ability of
myth and ideal to serve various moral objectives, including the attempted
transformation of the individual and the community.7
Of
course, as has already been noted by Jung, only in the last two centuries did
Western intelectuals begin approaching myth as an area of scholarly research.
As far as we know, it is only comparatively recently that there has been a
structured approach to the study of myths and the psychological meanings
expressed within them. Certainly there is no obvious evidence to suggest that
the Gogynfeirdd treated myth in such
an analytical way. But we can see that many modern psychologists and
anthropologists follow Jung in his fundamental view that there is a very
practical relationship bewteen myth, ritual and the psychological evolution of
humanity. For example, Joseph Campbell again:
It has always been the prime
function of mythology and rite to supply
the symbols that carry the
human spirit forward, in counteraction to
those other constant human fantasies
that tend to tie it back.8
Some decades later we see the
anthropologist Victor Turner taking on the same concept. For him, public
rituals, particularly rituals which mark periods of transition, such as the
pubic declamation of a praise poem in honour of a brave young man, may suggest
the fundamental values of communal life as expressed in symbolic terms:
. . . I wish to show that
where transition in space-time is ritualized, how it is
ritualized, . . . gives
us clues not only to the cherished values of the society
that
performs the rituals, but also to the nature of human sociality itself
transcending particular
cultural forms.9
Like
Campbell,10 Turner believed that public ritual can provide a kind of psychological
orientation for the benefit of those taking part by attempting to foster social
equilibrium where there is potential or actual conflict.11 In the context
of a brave young man returning from a horific battle, this may be to avoid
dangerous arrogance, and foster healthy pride. We can suppose, therefore, that
the role of the court bard was far more involved than simply composing poetry.
It’s likely that he was also at times a master of ceremonies, responsible for
bringing the community (the old tribe) together on special occasions, like
victory in battle or the death of a chief. It would be easy to identify him as
a public figure, and in light of that it would have been natural for him to
adopt dramatic techniques that supported his public performances. It is the
acknowledgement of this dramatic element in this medieval poetry which is the
first step in trying to better understand the ruitual context of Gogynfardd declaiming his song.
References
by Jung, Campbell and Turner to the medieval culture of Wales are rare. But the
global reach of their research has ensured their relevance to anyone wishing to
explore the basic tendencies of native cultures. There is a basic similarity in
the way most cultures make use of public performance as a way of getting to
grips with collective mental and spiritual health. In this sense, it could be
argued that one of the oldest archetypes is maybe that of the public performer
itself: the entertainer, the storeyteller, the musician or the bard, those who
provide a focus, who attempt to provide communal equilibrium through the medium
of their performance. It is clear
at least that it is through the figure of the performer all the other
archetypes are mediated as dramatic characters or spiritual embodiments. The
Welsh bard, in this case, can be considered as a member of a very wide family
of performers that developed independently in cultures large and small all over
the world.
* * *
1.
‘odes’. Long strict meter verses with chiming alliterations and rhymes; usually
with
long
passages, if not whole poems, on the same rhyme.
2. ‘ancient poetry’. The traditional term of the earliest Welsh poetry.
3.
Otherwise known as the Poets of the Priness. Their period roughly spanning from
the first half of the 11th century to the fall of the Llywelyn the Last Ruler
in 1282.
4.
The name given to the poets who preceded the Gogynfeirdd. Their period roughly spanning from 6th century to the
middle of the 11th.
5. C.G. Jung, The Collected Works cyf. XIII (Llundain, 1967), t. 220.
6. Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Fontana,
1993), t. 9-10.
7. Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, t. 10: “When we turn . . . to
consider the numerous strange rituals that have been reported from the
primitive tribes and great civilizations of the past, it becomes apparent that
the purpose and actual effect of these was to conduct people across those
difficult thresholds of transformation that demand a change in the patterns not
only of conscious but also of unconscious life.”
8. Ibid. t. 11.
9. Victor Turner,
‘Variations on a Theme of Liminality’, Secular Ritual, gol. S.F. Moore a
B.G. Myerhoff, (Iseldiroedd, 1977), t. 38.
10. Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, t. 29: “It is the business of
mythology . . . to reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark
interior way from tragedy to comedy. Hence the incidents are fantastic and
“unreal”: they represent psychological, not physical, triumphs. Even when the legend
is of an actual historical personage, the deeds are rendered, not in lifelike,
but in dreamlike figurations; for the point is not that such-and such was done
on earth; the point is that, before such-and-such could be done on earth, this
other, more important, primary thing had to be brought to pass within the
labyrinth that we all know and visit in our dreams. The passage of the
mythological hero may be overground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward –
into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten
powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the
world.”
11. Victor Turner, ‘Are there
universals of performance in myth, ritual and drama?’, By Means of
Performance, gol. R. Schechner, (Efrog Newydd, 1990), t.10.
