The Poet and the Grey Friar
Woe is me that the celebrated
maiden, whose court is in the grove,
does not know about the conversation
4 with the mouse-coloured friar about her today.
I went to the Friar
to confess my sin.
I did admit to him, indeed,
8 that I was a sort of poet,
and that I had long loved
a white-faced black-browed girl,
and that for the life of me
12 I could get no favour or satisfaction from the lady,
but only loving her constantly
and pining greatly for her love,
and carrying her praise throughout Wales
16 and being without her for all that,
and longing to feel her
in my bed between me and the wall.
The Friar said to me,
20 'I will give you good council.
If you have loved the foam-hued one,
colour of paper, for a long time until now,
reduce the pain of the day to come,
24 it is good for your soul to stop,
and leave your cywyddau
and start saying your prayers.
God did not redeem man's soul
28 for the sake of a cywydd or an englyn.
Your songs, you minstrels,
are nothing but nonsense and vain voices,
and inciting men and women
32 to sin and falsehood.
Praise of the flesh which carries the soul
to the devil is no good thing'.
I did answer the Friar
36 for every word that he said.
'God is not as cruel
as old men say.
God will not let a gentle man's soul
40 be lost for loving a woman or a maiden.
Three things are loved throughout the world:
woman and fine weather and health.
A girl is the fairest flower
44 in heaven besides God himself.
Every man was born of woman
of all the peoples except three men.
And for that reason it is no wonder
48 that girls and women are loved.
All gaiety comes from heaven
and all sadness from hell.
Song gladdens the hearts
52 of old and young, sick and healthy.
It is just as fitting for me to sing poems
as it is for you to preach sermons,
and just as right for me to live by minstrelsy
56 as it is for you to live by begging.
What are the hymns and sequences
but englynion and odes,
and are not the psalms of the Prophet David
60 cywyddau to holy God?
God does not feed every man
with the same food and delicacies.
There is a time for food
64 and a time for prayer,
and a time for preaching
and a time for making merry.
Song is sung in every feast
68 to entertain young girls,
and a pater noster in church
to seek the land of Paradise.
It is true what Ystudfach said
72 when carousing with his poets,
'The joyful man will have a full house,
and misfortune will come to the sad man'.
Though some love holiness
76 others love merriment.
Very few know a sweet cywydd
and everyone knows his pater.
And therefore, you dogmatic Friar,
80 song is not the greatest sin.
When everyone is as glad
to hear a pater to harp accompaniment
as the young girls of Gwynedd are
84 to hear a merry cywydd
I will sing, by my hand,
the pater without end.
Until then shame on Dafydd
88 if he sings a pater rather than a cywydd.