Lament for Lleucu Llwyd


"Lament for Lleucu Llwyd" is a Middle Welsh poem by the 14th-century bard Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen in the form of a cywydd. It is his most famous work, and has been called one of the finest of all cywyddau and one of the greatest of all Welsh-language love-poems, comparable with the best poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym. The culmination of a series of poems addressed to his lover, a married woman, it differs from them in calling her forth from her grave as if he were a more conventional lover serenading her as she lies in bed. The effect is said to be "startling, original, but in no way grotesque". Idris Bell called it "one of the most moving poems of its kind not in Welsh only, but in any literature". It was included in both The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse and The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English.

Llywelyn's poems to Lleucu Llwyd

It is known that Llywelyn wrote several other poems to Lleucu on the evidence of references to them in others of his poems and in a poem by Llywelyn's contemporary Iolo Goch, but it is not certain that any of these is extant. Probable survivors from these poems are a cywydd in which he sends a bird as a love-messenger to "Dafydd's wife", and an anonymous englyn containing a mention of Lleucu Llwyd's name. The Lament itself is mentioned in another of Llywelyn's poems, his "Awdl Gyffes", as one of the crimes he was guilty of having committed.

Early reputation and later legend

Even in the 14th century "Lament for Lleucu Llwyd" was a famous poem, always the first to be asked for wherever young people gathered together according to Iolo Goch, who also praised it as a work that would appeal to that philandering poet King David in Heaven and ensure his advocacy for Llywelyn's salvation.
The Lament itself claims that Lleucu, a lady of Pennal in Merionethshire, had died while Llywelyn was away in south Wales. It was suggested by Thomas Parry that the poem was written during Lleucu's lifetime as a fictitious elegy, though Rachel Bromwich felt that its expression of passionate and apparently spontaneous grief made this unlikely. A fictional narrative in a 17th-century manuscript portrays Llywelyn as dying immediately after writing the poem. A legend grew up that Lleucu's father forbade her marriage to Llywelyn, and that while Llywelyn was away on business in south Wales the father told Lleucu that he had married another woman. She died of a broken heart, and Llywelyn returned in time to attend her funeral and write the poem.

Influence

"Lament for Lleucu Llwyd" began a new genre of Welsh poem, the woman's elegy in cywydd form, of which examples can be found in the work of Dafydd Nanmor and Bedo Brwynllys in the 15th century, and Wiliam Llŷn in the 16th. The Lament was also the inspiration for T. Gwynn Jones's "Y Breuddwyd", a poem which leads Llywelyn up to Heaven to meet Lleucu.

English translations and paraphrases

  • Bell, David, in
  • * Revised translation in
  • * Further revised in
  • Evan Evans, in Abridged paraphrase.
  • Johnston, Dafydd, in
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