Notes

GDG 126

As in many of his narrative poems Dafydd portrays himself here as a ridiculously anti–heroic figure. After his frustrated exchange with his lover is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the jealous husband, the noble poet is unceremoniously humiliated by a great grey–feathered mother goose. If the husband is concerned for his wife's safety, the goose fears for the safety of its own kin, and following Dafydd's close escape from Eiddig's clutches the goose completes its owner's work on his behalf. The bird is then cursed with ironic exaggeration, a typical ending in the poems of misadventure. There is a humorous contrast between the fierce, aggressive husband and the passive, cowardly poet, and the comparison implicit in the husband's words (17–20) between poet and soldier recalls the theme of the poem 'Reproached for Cowardice by a Girl' (72). It is worth remembering that the object of Dafydd's satire in the poem 'To Wish the Jealous Husband Killed' (116) is about to set off for France as one of the soldiers recruited by Sir Rhys ap Gruffudd.

As noted by Rachel Bromwich, APDG 44, the poem bears similarities to the international fabliau tradition:

This poem comes closer even than Trafferth mewn Tafarn to the stock pattern of the medieval fabliaux, belonging as they do to the timeless literature of jest and anecdote, which typically present the triangle situation of old husband (Yr Eiddig or Le Jaloux), young wife and clerk–lover.

The lover who hides from the jealous husband in an unusual place is one of the fabliau's stock scenarios. Another Welsh example is found in a later, apocryphal poem in the simpler traethodl metre, 'The Man Under the Tub' (CMOC no. 19) — for similar situations in continental fabliaux see Chotzen, Recherches, 245. Dafydd flees from the girl's husband in 'Courting in Winter' (55), and the same scenario is described in 92.23–30. The girl in question there is Morfudd, and it seems likely that it is she and her husband who are referred to in 'The Goose–shed'. In terms of language, style and cynghanedd the poem is relatively uncomplicated, in keeping with its light–hearted subject–matter.

1.   The opening formula Fal yr oeddwn ...'As I ...' occurs in four other poems, 62, 79, 139 and 143. For examples in later free–metre verse see Brinley Rees, Dulliau'r Canu Rhydd (Cardiff, 1952), 56–7.

39–40.   The precise meaning of the couplet is unclear. Caer probably refers to Carmarthen (Caerfyrddin), the administrative centre of South Wales, and not Chester (Caerlleon) as Rachel Bromwich believed based on Thomas Parry's suggestion; see DGSP 159 and cf. Gwyn Thomas, 'the lordship of the men of Chester' (DGHP 247). It is now accepted that the rood described in poem 1 was located in Carmarthen, see note, and Dafydd's kersey stockings — hosanau / Cersi o Gaer — were probably from the same town, see 59.38n.