In this episode we consider two aspects of Marged Dafydd’s literary career. From Y Coetgae-du, Trawsfynydd, she lived a long life and devoted a great amount of her time to preserving and studying Welsh poetry. She created a number of substantial manuscripts which display the workings of a scholarly mind, and it is thanks to her that some Welsh poems by women have survived.
She was also a poet in her in own right. As there is evidence that her mother and her aunt composed verse as well, one could say that she belonged to a lineage of female poets. Marged Dafydd also took part in wider networks of poets, and she was recognized as somewhat of an authority and as a bardic teacher. We discuss a range of her poems, included a lively englyn to a crowther and a serious religious poem which shows that she was a Christian of conviction and a realist when it came to crystalizing the essence of human nature.