Notes
GDG 64
In this humorous poem of misadventure Dafydd adopts the familiar persona of the frustrated lover. In his discussion of the serenade and the image of the house in Dafydd's poetry, Johnston (1983) compares the poem with others which describe nocturnal visits to the girl's home: 'Parting' (139), 'Eiddig's Three Gatekeepers' (68), 'Under the Eaves' (98), 'The Ice' (54) and 'Courting in Winter' (55). He notes Dafydd's highly individual treatment of the European serenade convention, and his tendency to combine humour and seriousness within the same poem. Here Dafydd's frustration is aggravated by the fact that he is physically so close to the girl and yet so far from fulfilling his desire due to the barred window. It is through a window, albeit a glass window, that he sees the girl in the poem 'Parting' as he surveys the jealous husband's home, though despite the obstruction the poem is marked not by a sense of frustration but by the impression that love is able to overcome material and social difficulties. Here Dafydd is a wholly anti–heroic character, and the sense of frustration is enhanced by the contrast with the tale of Melwas's successful attempt to reach Gwenhwyfar through a window in the fort of Caerllion, and by the effective use of parenthetical remarks (sangiadau), especially in the long sentence which spans lines 27–34. The exaggerated curse which ends the poem is typical of Dafydd's so–called obstruction poems.
Though it is not necessary to search for external models, it is worth noting that the scenario of lovers kissing at a window is a literary commonplace. It appears, for instance, in the early–fourteenth–century English song 'De Clerico et Puella': In a wyndou þer we stod we custe vs fyfty syþe, The Harley Lyrics, ed. G.L. Brook (Manchester, 1956), 24.23; see further E.T. Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (New York, 1970), 25. Helen Fulton, DGEC 250n., observes that this poem is very reminiscent of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe who try to kiss through a chink in the wall in Ovid's Metamorphoses and in a twelfth–century French version. For a comparison with the Roman de la Rose see DGIA 165.
18. Caerlleon Caerleon in Monmouthshire. The location of Arthur's court betrays the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth and later medieval romance.
19. Melwas Legendary king of Somerset. The tale of his abduction of Arthur's queen, Gwenhwyfar, is told by Caradoc of Llancarfan in his Vita Gildae and in the story of Maleagant and Guenièvre in Chrétien de Troyes's romance, Le Chevalier de la Charette, see TYP 380–5. As noted by Johnston (1983, 8), this is the only reference to Melwas climbing through a window, but in Chrétien's version the same feat is attributed to Guenièvre's rescuer Lancelot. A version of the same tale, it appears, has been preserved in a Welsh dialogue poem, see TYP 838–4 and E.D. Jones, 'Melwas, Gwenhwyfar a Chai', B viii (1935–7), 203–8. A similar version to these lines in Dafydd's poem was known to the fifteenth–century poet Dafydd ab Edmwnd, see GDE IV.29–32. On the story of Melwas and Gwenhwyfar see further Kenneth Jackson, 'Arthur in Early Welsh Verse', in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R.S. Loomis (Oxford, 1959), 19–20.
22. merch Gogfran Gawr On Gwenhwyfar daughter of the Giant Gogfran see TYP2 380–5 and triad 56, ib. 154, where she is named as one of 'Arthur's Three Chief Queens'.
42. dyn loyw lwyd Translated as 'bright pious girl', 'pious' being one of the many meanings of the adjective llwyd. There may be a play on the name Morfudd Llwyd which occurs in 105.48, 108.44, 113.32 and 114.36.