Here we introduce the episodes which discuss two of Taliesin’s poems, and we do that by looking at the Book of Taliesin itself, one of the treasures kept in the National Library of Wales. This amazing manuscript was created during the first half of the fourteenth century, but it includes a collection of poems which are attributed to Taliesin, the bard who sang praise to the leaders of his society in the Old North in the sixth century.
It’s interesting to think about these poems travelling through time from that ancient period to the Middle Ages as they travelled from the Old North to Wales. And something else happened during that journey as well: because of his status as one of the earliest poets standing at the beginning of the Welsh bardic tradition, Taliesin became a legendary character. Thus, in addition to the historical praise poetry, the Book of Taliesin contains a number of poems connected to the legendary Taliesin, a character with supernatural powers who is an incarnation of Welsh poetry’s magic and might.