This is a love-messenger poem (cywydd llatai), but the messnger appears to be a human one, which is probably why it is not described in any detail, unlike the love-messengers in poems 44–47. The messenger is sent to Llanllugan, a Cistercian nunnery in Montgomeryshire which was founded sometime before 1236. Saunders Lewis (1953, 205–6) suggested that this poem was recited for the first time in the monastery of Strata Marcella, since the monks would have remembered well the unfortunate love affair between the Abbot Enoc and a nun from the nunnery of Llansanffraid-yn Elfael in the 1170au (see Lloyd, History of Wales, 599).

This is the earliest of a number of Welsh love poems to nuns Five of them (all attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym in the manuscripts) are discussed by Helen Fulton, 'Medieval Welsh Poems to Nuns', CMCS 21 (summer 1991), 87–112. Fulton argues that the abbess of the nunnery was the main target of Dafydd's desire in this poem, the implication being that she was experienced in love (cf. 'un a'i medr' in line 33, although that phrase is interpreted differently here). However, it may be that the true point of the poem lies in the passing reference to Morfudd in line 22. The suggestion is possibly that attempting to win Morfudd's love is as vain as sending a love-messenger to a nunnery – perhaps because her husband guards her as closely as the nuns are guarded by the 'sieler mawr' (line 12).