The Four Ancient Books of Wales Containing the Cymric Poems Attributed to the Bards of the Sixth Century Volume 1, PT. 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI . RECENT CRITICISM OF MYTHOLOGICAL POEMS EXAMINED. Such then being, so far as we can gather it from the scanty materials afforded to us, the real position of the Cymric population, and the leading features of their history prior to the twelfth century, as well as of their literature subsequent to that period, the question before us is this, What place does this very peculiar body of ancient poetry really occupy ? Arc we to regard them as ancient poems which have come down to us from an early period of Cymric literature, and possessing from their antiquity an historic value independently of their literary merit, if they have any ? or are we to set them aside as so beset with suspicion, and as evincing such evidence of fabrication in a later age, as to render them valueless for all historic purposes? That the bards to whom these poems are in the main attributed, are recorded as having lived in the sixth century, is certain. We have it on the authority of the Genealogia annexed to Nennius, written in the eighth century. That this record of their having lived in that age is true, we have every reason to believe, and we may hold that there were such bards as Taliessin, Aneurin, Llywarch Hen, and Myrddin, at that early period, who were believed to have written poems. That the poems which now bear their name do not show the verbal forms, and orthography of that age, and that the form of the language of these poems has not the aspect which the language of the sixth century ought to exhibit, is equally certain. But this implies no more than that we do not possess transcripts of these poems made at that period. With the exception of two fragments, the oldest transcript we now possess is that in the Black Book of Caermarthen, a MS. of...