This poem is in the form of a complaint about the misbehaviour of the poet's unruly penis, referring to the danger of legal action (cf. the reference in 47.17 to legal action against Dafydd by Morfudd's husband). The series of images describing the penis (a technique known as 'dyfalu') has a negative intent, but nevertheless the images convey an impression of an enormous and energetic creature, and thus the complaint becomes a subtle way of boasting about the poet's sexual potency.

Thomas Parry did not include this poem in GDG, but although he discussed it in his list of apocrypha (GDG¹ clxxxiii) he did not offer any arguments against DG's authorship, and it must therefore be assumed that he regarded it as too indecent for publication. A text based on the manuscripts which attribute the poem to Gwerful Mechain is included in Leslie Harries's unpublished M.A. thesis, 'Barddoniaeth Huw Cae Llwyd, Ieuan ap Huw Cae Llwyd, Ieuan Dyfi, a Gwerful Mechain' (UW, Swansea, 1933). In the 1970s a text was published in the form of a pamphlet by y Lolfa Press (Talybont, undated). The incomplete text in Pen 49 was also published by James Doan, 'An Unedited Welsh Poem from Peniarth 49: Cywydd y Gal', in Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1976), 15–26. The first full edition of the poem is that by David Johnston, 'Cywydd y Gal by Dafydd ap Gwilym', CMCS 9 (1985), 71–89. That text, with English translation, is poem 1 in CMOC.

Althought the poem is attributed to the late fifteenth-century female poem Gwerful Mechain in seven manuscripts, there can be no doubt about its authorship. All seven copies apparently derive from the same source, and they also include Gwerful's genuine poem addressing her own vagina, 'Cywydd y Gont' (GGM 9). On the other hand, Ll 14 (which also derives from the same source) attributes both poems to Dafydd ap Gwilym. The only manuscript which distinguishes between the authorship of the two poems is Tanybwlch, which attributes this one to Dafydd and 'Cywydd y Gont' to Gwerful. It is understandable that the two poems should have been thought o have been the work of the same poet, since they form a natural pair in terms of subject matter. But the two are in fact quite different in style and cynghanedd. The visual comparisons in this poem are a distinctive feature of DG's work, and they are much less prominent in 'Cywydd y Gont', Although the proportion of cynghanedd sain is high in both poems, the fluctuation seen in this poem between very complex lines (e.g. 15, 18 and 36) and ones with partial or no cynghanedd (43, 45, 46) is typical of DG's work. And there is strong evidence for DG's authorship in three other manuscripts versions, the Vetustus tradition, M 147 and LlGC 21582.