Darogan

Jones Aled

Description

Political prophecy was a common mode of literature in the British Isles and much of Europe from the Middle Ages to at least as late as the Renaissance. At times of political instability especially, the manuscript record bristles with prophetic works that promise knowledge of dynastic futures. In Welsh, the later development of this mode is best known through the figure of the mab darogan, the 'son of prophecy', who - variously named as Arthur, Owain or a number of other heroes - will return to re-establish sovereignty. Such a returning hero is also a potent figure in English, Scottish and wider European traditions. This book explores the large body of prophetic poetry and prose contained in the earliest Welsh-language manuscripts, exploring the complexity of an essentially multilingual, multi-ethnic and multinational literary tradition, and with reference to this wider tradition critical and theoretical questions are raised of genre, signification and significance.
Chapter 1 1a. Beginnings 1b. Terminology 1c. The mab darogan 1d. 'Armes Prydain Fawr' - 'The Great Prophecy of Britain' Chapter 2 2a. Furor poeticus: the silence of praise. 2b. The authority of death 2c. Zero-degree poetry: praise of absence 2d. Galarnad ('lament'): absence of praise 2e. Lament without beginning 2f. Englynion: fragments of silence Chapter 3 3a. Manuscript survey c.1250 - c.1540 3b. Manuscript context: copies 3c. Manuscript context: internal 3d. The multilingual manuscripts 3e. Peniarth MSS 50 and 26 3f. Mobile fragments Chapter 4 4a. History and fiction 4b. The poetic craft of Rhys Fardd: formal considerations 4c. The poetic craft of Rhys Fardd: temporality 4d. Facelessness and pseudonymity 4e. Peniarth 50 and internationalism Conclusion

Sujets

• Scottish
• Welsh
• European
• English
• Irish
• Idioma galés
• Literary Criticism

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708326770
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

DAROGANDarogan
Prophecy, lament and absent heroes
in medieval Welsh Literature
Aled Llion Jones
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS
CARDIFF
2013I Handel, fy nhad
ac er cof am Sheila, fy mam

© Aled Llion Jones, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
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other use of this publication) without the written permission of the
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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright
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should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus
Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7083-2675-6
e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2677-0
been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset in Wales by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire






CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Foreword xi
Chapter 1 Prophecy, apocalypse and return 1
Chapter 2 Praise, lament and silence 65
Chapter 3 Manuscripts, multilingualism and
fragmentation 117
Chapter 4 Rhys Fardd, ventriloquy and pseudonymity 151
Conclusion: History split and promises unmade 229
Appendix 1: Manuscripts containing darogan 239
Appendix 2: Tables of manuscripts and their contents 243
Appendix 3: Prophecies of Rhys Fardd in pre-c.1540
manuscripts 261
Appendix 4: Bilingual manuscripts containing prophetic
material 267
Bibliography 273
Index 309

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Am amryw gymwynas mewn amryw fan:
For help with readings and with writing: Catherine A. McKenna, Jerry
Hunter, Christopher D. Johnson.
For guidance and support: faculty and staff of the Department of
Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University: Patrick K.
Ford, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, Barbara Hillers, Margo Granfors.
For ideas, method and motivation within and beyond Celtic: Timothy
Bahti, Homi K. Bhabha, Sioned Davies, John T. Hamilton, Joseph F.
Nagy, Nicholas Watson.
For discussion, argument, disagreement and friendship over many
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Matthieu Boyd, Christina L. Chance, Samuel A. Jones, Patricia M.
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Chance, Emma Nic Chárthaigh, Rhiannon H. Williams.
For comments and other assistance: Annalee Rejhon, Morgan Kay,
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University of Wales Press who have assisted in the production of this
book, especially Siân Chapman, Dafydd Jones, Henry Maas, Eira Fenn,
Catrin Harries, Angharad Watkins, and the press’s anonymous reader.
At the School of Welsh, Bangor University, diolch: Jason Walford
Davies, Peredur I. Lynch, Angharad Price, Gerwyn Wiliams.
Very special thanks to Pia Maybury-Lewis, and Bob and Mary
Bransford, of Cambridge and Winchester, MA. Mange tak!
This book is dedicated to my parents, and especially to my mother,
who would have been proud to have seen its publication.

FOREWORD
Until the late Middle Ages the role of the professional Welsh poet
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by convention and by Law. Poetry and politics were one, and the
cultural genealogy of the poet proved the origin of his art in prophecy
1and divinity. That aside, full engagement with the mode of prophecy
is rarely seen in the surviving work of the court poets – or, at the very
least, it may be said that the manuscripts (with important exceptions)
rarely link the names of these poets with prophetic pieces: the pro phetic
‘origins’ are generally more implicit, more profound, and certainly more
intriguing.
It is estimated that between one and two thousand pieces of
Welsh2language prophecy have been preserved in the manuscripts. Many,
if not most, of the prophetic pieces – and certainly the ‘popular’ or
3‘sub-bardic’ – are of uncertain authorship, with uncertain dates of
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1 J. E. C. Williams, ‘Bardus Gallice Cantor Appelatur’ in Morfydd Owen
and Brynley F. Roberts (eds), Beirdd a Thywysogion (Aberystwyth: Llyfrgell
Genedlaethol Cymru a Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1996), pp. 1–13.
2 Peredur I. Lynch, Proffwydoliaeth a’r Syniad o Genedl (Bangor: Ysgol y
Gymraeg, 2007), p. 23.
3 The terms ‘popular’ and ‘sub-bardic’ are problematic, and are discussed
in some detail in the body of this study, especially chapters 1 and 4.

Foreword
4 contained in medieval Welsh manuscripts from no earlier than c.1250,
include mainly shorter poetic works that are often little more than
fragments, along with prose works and also a small number of longer
pieces, such as the monumental ‘Armes Prydain Fawr’ (‘The Great
5Prophecy of Britain’). This 200-line poem has recently been described
as ‘[t]he earliest datable prophetic poem [darogan]’, in which ‘the essential
6elements of the later prophecies [proffwydoliaethau] are clearly visible’.
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questions its status as darogan: its earliest manuscript witness bears the
rubric ‘ar(y)mes’. Both ‘darogan’ and ‘armes’, among other terms (e.g.,
‘brud’, ‘proffwydoliaeth’), are generally translated as ‘prophecy’, though
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be taken into account as the Welsh ‘prophetic’ is interrogated. This
interrogation is performed in later chapters in a series of engagements
with selected texts, and primarily with the ‘popular’ political prophecy
for which I reserve the term ‘darogan’.
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Wales is that given by Ifor Williams in his edition of ‘Armes Prydain
7Fawr’: ‘the poet’s concern is with the future, and not with past events’.
Dumville take us a step further, describing vaticinium ex eventu:
[Armes Prydain] takes its stance on well known truths of the present
and past, prophesying these as future events and circumstances, and
4 While there are Welsh-language glosses in earlier manuscripts, and some
other fragments, the earliest manuscript written entirely in Welsh (which
is also the earliest surviving manuscript to contain prophecy) is NLW
Peniarth MS 1, Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin (‘The Black Book of Carmarthen’),
generally believed to have been written c.1250 at Carmarthen priory.
5 Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain, ed. Ifor Williams, trans. R. Bromwich
(Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Study, 1972).
6 ‘Y gerdd ddarogan gynharaf y gellir ei dyddio . . . [Y] mae hanfodion
y proff wydoliaethau diweddarach i’w gweld yn ddigon clir [ynddi].’
Johnston, Llên yr Uchelwyr: Hanes Beirniadol Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg 1300–
1525 (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 2005), p. 346.
7 Williams, Armes Prydein, Introduction, p. xi.
xii



Foreword
uses its reliability in these matters as a means of gaining credit for the
8poet’s vision of . . . the future.
While the point of prophecy may be to present a vision of the future,
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the apocalyptic and prophetic modes in Hebrew literature, Emmerson
argues that prophecy is ‘not concerned primarily with the future, but
with the present, and it is certainly not predictive in nature’. He
continues:
Events in the future will resemble those of the past, for Yahweh
controls both. When the prophet does warn of future judgement, the
warning is conditional, intended to elicit change in the present, and the
9future is dependent upon the decision of the present.
Blanchot also reminds us that ‘[t]he term of prophet – borrowed
from the Greek to designate a condition foreign to Greek culture –
deceives us if it invites us to make of the nabi a person in whom the
10future speaks. The prophetic word is not only a word of the future.’
It remains to be considered how the etymologies, denotations and
connotations of darogan, dysgogan, gwawd, cathl, armes, derwydd, dryw, syw,
11sywyd, sywedydd, dewin, doethur, etc., might shed light on these issues:
it is likely that if it is incorrect to simply equate nabi, prophetes, vates, it
8 Graham Isaac, ‘Brittany and “Armes Prydein Vawr”’, Etudes celtiques, 20
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9 R. K. Emmerson, ‘The Prophetic, the Apocalyptic and the Study of
Medieval Literature’ in J. Wojcik and R. J. Fontain (eds), Poetic Prophecy
in Western Literature (London, etc.: Associated University Presses, 1984),
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10 Maurice Blanchot, ‘Prophetic Speech’ in The Book to Come (Stanford, CA:
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11 Listed by Marged Haycock as terms for ‘prophet’ and ‘prophecy’ found
in the poetry. Idem, ‘Literary Criticism in Welsh before c.1300’ in Alastair
Minnis and Ian Johnson (eds), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism,
vol. 2, The Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
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xiii

Foreword
may also be worth a moment’s pause before identifying the Welsh
12terms with any or all of these.
Equally, what may be said about Biblical prophecy is not necessarily
the case for the Welsh darogan*\!
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less strong on all aspects of medieval Welsh culture. In any case,
whatever details might not apply to the darogan, the temporal parallel
surely remains. The past and the (projected) future are employed in
order to be realised (of necessity) in the moment of poetic utterance.
Thi