[Bards] Some more evidence for Welsh prose performances

Katherine of Scarborough katofscarborough at yahoo.com
Thu May 3 22:36:29 PDT 2007


--- Ken Theriot <kentheriot at ravenboymusic.com> wrote:

> sounds like we're getting close Catrin.  Please let
> us know if you find that
> documentation.  That's what I'm looking for!
> 
> Kenneth

To those of you who have no interest in the excavation
Welsh bardic traditions, I sincerely apologize for my
verbosity and enthusiasm.

In that spirit (grin), I'd like to share with you a
few passages I've found tonight, beginning with a
paragraph from "A History Of Welsh Literature," by
Thomas Parry, translated from the Welsh by Idris Bell
(1955) - from the chapter entitled "Early Prose":

"Reference has already been made in an earlier chapter
to the story-tellers, the men who had a stock of tales
which they could rehearse with point and style in
order to interest their literature-loving
contemporaries.  They are not so often mentioned in
the older literature as are the bards, but it is known
that they existed, as witnessed in The Mabinogi: 

'As for Gwydion, he was the best story-teller in the
world.  And that night he entertained the court with
pleasant talk and the telling of tales, so that he was
dear to everyone that was in the court.'  

This quotation suggests, moreover, that the
story-tellers were a class of bards (for it was in the
disguise of bards that Gwydion and Gilfaethwy came to
court), and undoubtedly this was often the case.  Thus
the bard was master of two arts, two which differed
widely from each other--the art of writing eulogies in
archaic words and reminiscent phrases, and the art of
telling a tale in living words; and they never
confused the two."

...Furthermore, in the introduction to his "The
Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales" (1977)
Patrick K. Ford writes the following:

"In this introduction, I have used the words
"redactor" and "author" for lack of a better word.  We
do not know who "authored" these tales, though it is
quite certain that a single person was responsible for
the final shape of the four branches of the mabinogi,
and that he was not the same person who gave us the
final shape of the other tales translated here.  The
tales and the episodes that constitute them were part
of the repertory of a learned class of men who
transmitted their lore orally; there were differences
of detail in the performances of different reciters. 
We do not know whether the version copied down by our
nameless scribe was that taken down from a prominent
contemporary storyteller or was the scribe's own
version.  But in either cas, he or his patron or his
audience must have felt that it was an "authoritative"
version.  He might have added with justifiable pride
and in the spirit of the scribe who wrote down "The
Cattle Raid of Cooley" in the twelfth-century Book of
Leinster: "A blessing on every one who shall
faithfully memorize the Tain as it is written here and
shall not add any other form to it."

...And finally, I'll throw out this interesting tidbit
by Jerry Hunter regarding the "Ystoria Taliesin," a
prose tale found in the Cardiff 5 manuscript: "The
text is based on that of Elis Gruffydd, the
sixteenth-century 'soldier of Calais' who acknowledges
that in his day there existed many variant oral
versions of the tale."

Numerous sources suggest that these tales most
definitely *did* exist before anyone ever thought to
write them down, and that they were perpetuated orally
until that time--that they were, in fact, "the
repertory of a learned class of men."  

Many also seem to indicate that the lack of written
prose from the period (compared to verse) is a
reflection of the fact that "The poetry was worth
recording, but the prose was not. This might be said
to reflect an age-old Welsh bias favouring poetry (or
particular kinds of poetry) over narrative prose (or
certain kinds of narrative prose)..."  There is a
general sense that the prose tales "belonged to the
community," while poetry was seen as more of an
individual artistic work.

Simply put, the lack of documentation for prose
doesn't mean it didn't exist--it just means that it
was less likely to be preserved in manuscript form. 
Ford writes that "The most logical position is that
the Mabinogi was preserved because it was considered a
prose masterpiece."

I'll continue to look into this, if you like.  Crikey,
it's kinda fun.

-Catrin

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