Notes
This poem consists of a dialogue between the poet and a cuckoo. When the cuckoo returns with the coming of spring the poet asks where it has been so long. The bird answers that it has been captive in another world where it lost its voice. He reminds it that it had promised to fly to his beloved as a love–messenger, and when he spells out the girl's name in the form of a puzzle the cuckoo admits that it was forced to escape the winter cold before it could complete its errand. It claims that a woodcock had promised to bring the girl's love–token in its place, but the poet knows that the woodcock has been shot dead. He therefore sends the cuckoo once more, hoping to win the girl at the second attempt. Poem 52 contains some similarly humorous dialogue between Dafydd ap Gwilym and the woodcock, where the bird refuses to act as the poet's love–envoy because the girl has already been taken by another man. As in that poem, and in Dafydd's other poem to the woodcock (53), it is portrayed here as a foolish and despicable bird of winter. It was killed by a man with a bolt, which calls to mind Dafydd's warning in 'Conversing with the Woodcock' that the bird should seek to avoid a wanderer 'with a broad–headed arrow and a bow' (52.21).
The poem's subject–matter, then, is similar to Dafydd's bird–poems, and as noted by Thomas Parry, GDG1 clxxvi, the style is on the whole consistent with fourteenth–century poetry. But as Parry also remarked, the fact that the poem is unascribed in the earliest manuscript source, Pen 57 (where a line has been drawn through each page), casts doubt on its authenticity. In Pen 84, where the poem has been copied from Pen 57, the scribe adds that the author is unknown. Parry also noted that the percentage of cynghanedd sain is low. In fact, the figure of 25.5% is not exceptionally low, but it may be significant that there are no examples of certain types of cynghanedd sain which are fairly common in Dafydd's work. Of greater significance is the fact that the instances of cynghanedd lusg are more numerous than any other, a stylistic feature one would not expect to find in a genuine Dafydd ap Gwilym poem. Furthermore, if the reference in lines 3 and 57 is to the bell of a public mechanical clock of the type described in poem 64, then this raises further questions since such clocks were not to be found in Britain before c. 1370 (see 'The Clock', introductory note). Linguistically the poem is generally similar to fourteenth–century poetry, although the form neawdr (see 60n) again tends to suggest that it may have been composed somewhat later than Dafydd's time.
Parry was also dubious of the girl's name, Annes, and of the acrostic device, neither of which appear in any of the 'genuine' poems. These in themselves are not sufficient reasons to reject the poem. The names of Lleucu Llwyd and Angharad (probably wife of Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron, subject of poem 9 and perhaps poem 122) appear in acrostic form in two short cywydd poems which were added to the third stratum of the Hendregadredd manuscript during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, see GLlBH no. 15. Another example of the device forms part of a poem rejected by Thomas Parry, A 163, see ib. 156–7, GDG1 clxxxvi. On the use of acrostics see further Edwards, DGIA 149.
Helen Fulton's edition and translation, DGA 47, are based on H 26.
3. cloc Cf. line 57. It seems that the cuckoo's clear song is likened to the tone of a bell sounding the hours on a mechanical clock such as that which is described in poem 64. The earliest instance of English clock in that sense is dated 1370, see 'The Clock', introductory note. The latch (clicied) presumably forms part of the mechanism that strikes the bell.
8. byd arall 'Another world', probably Annwfn, the otherworld of Celtic mythology. This seems to refer to a lost tale; the precise meaning of bedeiroes 'four lifetimes' is unclear, see Edwards, DGIA 122–3. Cf. the words of the summer prince in 35.39–40 I ochel awel aeaf / I Annwfn o ddwfn ydd af 'to avoid the winter wind / I go from the world to Annwfn'.
21–2. The girl's name appears to be Annes spelled backwards. Helen Fulton, on the basis of H 26, suggests Seina, which seems to have been a common name in fifteenth–century Powys, see DGA p. 240.
42. Gŵyl y Grog Feast of the Cross. Either 3 May when the Invention or 'finding' of the Cross was celebrated, or 14 September, date of the Exaltation of the Cross which commemorates the day when the true Cross was displayed in Jerusalem in 629 after being recovered from the Persians, see Fulton, DGA p. 241. The latter seems more likely. Although woodcocks are to be found, nowadays at least, throughout the year, during the autumn they arrive from Russia and Finland to spend the winter in the British Isles, and the cuckoo is to be seen between early spring and the months of July and August.
51. cae Esyllt Esyllt's garland, a love–garland bearing the name of Trystan's lover, referred to frequently in fifteenth–century poetry. It is presumably similar to the love–tokens described in 'The Birch Hat' (113) and 'A Garland of Peacock Feathers' (134); see introductory notes.
57. ni'th werthir Unlike an expensive clock which would have been fairly unusual at that period (see poem 64, introductory note), the cuckoo's song is priceless.
60. neawdr A learned borrowing from Latin neutrum, 'neuter (in gram. gender); ... neuter, neither male nor female, neither the one nor the other', GPC 2570. All the other examples occur in a grammatical context, the earliest dating from c. 1455. The explanation may be that the male and female cuckoo are very similar. Alternatively, it may be suggested that the cuckoo, 'officer of the trees', will not be betrayed (sold) since it feigns ignorance and therefore appears impartial (neutral).