Pennod 25 – Caru yn y Coed: Dafydd ap Gwilym (rhan 2)

Love in the Woods: Dafydd ap Gwilym ( part 2)

We continue to discuss the amazing freshness of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poetry in this episode, emphasizing that the newness of his compositions is created out of traditional material to a certain extent. We consider some of Dafydd’s love poetry, beginning with ‘Morfudd like the sun’, before examining the way in which two themes, love and nature, are woved together in his work. We talk about the ‘tryst in the woods’ (oed yn y coed), with the poet meeting his lover in the world of nature far from the confines of society (and far from eiddig, ‘the jealous one’, when his lover happens to be a married woman!). Although we don’t answer this difficult question, we at least ask it: were the lovers so central to so many of Dafydd’s poems real women? You’ll also here about the llatai, the love messenger the poet commissions.