Notes
GDG 75
This is one of the more inventive poems which deal with the rivalry between the poet and the jealous husband. Eiddig, according to Dafydd, has just set off for France in a company of soldiers recruited by a man named Rhys, no doubt Sir Rhys ap Gruffudd, one of the most powerful noblemen in fourteenth–century Wales. Among his fellow soldiers were some of the poet's friends and relatives: the genealogies show that Rhys himself was a cousin of Dafydd's father. Eiddig is satirized as Dafydd recalls the times he had to flee from him and his family, and he wishes him dead before the adventure is over. If he reaches the ship alive then let him be pushed overboard and drowned. If he should reach France let him be hanged; failing that let the crossbowman strike him twice. If he arrives home then let him return a corpse, as his enemy would wish.
The poem is a dramatic variation on the satire of the jealous husband, based on events directly relevant to the poet's audience in Ceredigion. Dafydd's audience would have been familiar with poems depicting the kind of misadventures recalled in lines 17–20, such as 'Courting in Winter' (55), 'The Goose–shed' (67) and 'Eiddig's Three Gatekeepers' (68). D.J. Bowen (1973, 55–6) observes that the jealous husband was among the themes of courtly love poetry, but that here it is combined with coarse satire as entertainment for a more rugged audience of fighting men. Though the resemblance is no doubt coincidental, it is interesting to note a similar theme in a fifteenth–century chanson de malmariée from Gascony: Où que le roi fasse une armée, — que le vilain y soit mandé, — et ne puisse jamais revenir — jusque'à ce que je l'aille chercher (Chansons du XVe siècle, ed. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1875), 118). The butt of Dafydd's satire is probably Morfudd's husband, Y Bwa Bach. There are other references to Eiddig as a soldier, see for instance the discussion on 'The Goose–shed' (67). The following passage from the poem 'Reproached for Cowardice by a Girl' is particularly relevant: O chlyw fod, catorfod tyn, / Brwydr yng ngwlad Ffrainc neu Brydyn, / Antur gwrdd, hwnt ar gerdded / Yn ŵr rhif yno y rhed (72.29–32).
Based on this reference to fighting in France and Scotland, Ifor Williams (1913–14, 99–100; DGG xvi–ii) suggests that both poems were composed around 1346, the year of the battles of Crécy and Neville's Cross. Since Sir Rhys ap Gruffudd is known to have fought at Crécy along with more than three thousand Welsh archers, 1346 is a likely date for this poem. Thomas Parry, GDG xxxiii, adds that Dafydd might have witnessed the soldiers' departure in April or May of that year, but that 1351 and 1352 are also possible since Sir Rhys was charged with recruiting soldiers in those years as well. In fact, he led Welsh soldiers in France and Scotland over a period of thirty years; for instance, in 1342–3 he assembled more than eight hundred archers for a campaign in Brittany, and in April 1347 he was asked to raise another thousand men from South Wales for another campaign.
2. Rhys Sir Rhys ap Gruffudd ap Hywel of Llansadwrn (c. 1283–1356), a relative of Dafydd (cf. lines 4–5). He served three times as deputy justice for the Principality of South Wales, see R.A. Griffiths, The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: i. South Wales 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 1972), 99–102; R.R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford and Cardiff, 1987), 415. Ceredigion was his main power base. It was probably in his honour that Einion Offeiriad composed his bardic grammar during the 1320s, see GEO 3–6 and J. Beverley Smith, 'Einion Offeiriad', B xx (1962–4), 339–47. He died in Carmarthen on 10 May 1356 and was lamented by Iolo Goch, GIG poem VII. See Introduction: 'Y Bardd', 20.
yr hael 'The generous', i.e. the nobility, or possibly a reference to Edward III, or the Black Prince from whom Rhys ap Gruffudd received the gift of a horse whilst in Normandy in 1347. Grasus dy hynt i'r Gresi 'Gracious your journey to Crécy', says Iolo Goch of Edward III, GIG I.39, and as D.J. Bowen (1966–7, 62) has suggested, it may be that it was Sir Rhys who urged Iolo to sing the king's praise.
22. baw diawl 'Devil's dung', another name for the malodorous plant asafoetida.
45–6. It is suggested in 'The Wind' that Dafydd was barred from the commot of Uwch Aeron as a result of legal action by Y Bwa Bach, see 47.17–18, 49.