Poor Prydein

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Page from the book of Taliesin

Armes Prydein [ 'poor' prɘdein ] ("The Prophecy of Britain "), also Armes Prydein Vawr ("The Great Prophecy of Britain"), is a prophetic poem written in the Welsh language in the first half of the 10th century . Originally written in Old Welsh, the text has come down to us in a 14th century manuscript of the "Book of Taliesin" ( Llyfr Taliesin ), NLW Peniarth MS 2, in Middle Welsh. The poem consists of 199 in so-called awdl - meter written lines.

content

The Poor Prydein is a prophetic poem in which, at a time when the Celtic empires and their Scandinavian neighbors were trying to withstand the increasing dominance of the West Saxon kings, the expulsion of the Anglo-Saxons from Britain is looked forward to with joy . This was to be achieved by forging a coalition of all peoples hostile to the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh ( Kymry ), the British Celts from Cornwall ( Cornyw ), the Kingdom of Strathclyde ( Cludwys ), Brittany ( Llydaw ) and the " men of Nordens "( Gwyr Gogled ), with the British of Brittany, Strathclyde and Cornwall still seen as a unit and as the rightful owners of Britain who had been fraudulently betrayed of their possessions. Furthermore, the Vikings from Dublin ( gwyr Dulyn ), the Gael from Ireland and Anglesey and Piktland ( Gwydyl Iwerdon Mon a Phrydyn ) should be included in this alliance.

construction

The shape of the Prydein arm can be divided into four segments, characterized by nine different awdlau .

In the exposition , verses 1 to 23, the ambitions of the British to recapture Britain with the help of the allied peoples are set out and it is made clear that the stumbling block is the taxes of the High King, which were wrongly imposed on the Welsh, and their collection by his tax collector ( meiryon mechteyrn ) were. Line 24 appears to be a gloss or an insertion from another poem as this line breaks the rhyme scheme . The illegality of the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons, their low origin and dishonest approach is stated in verses 25 to 44. The Anglo-Saxons are portrayed as pagan pirates who were lucky in their conquests.

In the following part, in verses 45 to 63, the final flight of the Anglo-Saxons from the vengeful British is portrayed. Verses 69-86 give details of the taxes and activities of the tax collectors operating from Kaer Geri ( Cirencester ) and emphasize that any attempt to collect these taxes will be unsuccessful, including the name Cadwaladr , a Welsh king of the 7th century. Century, this resistance is underlined. Verses 87-106 invoke the other leader of the resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Cynan. Together they chase the Anglo-Saxons as far as Caer Wynt ( Winchester ), supported by Saint David and other Welsh saints. The horrors of war are vividly described in verses 107-126, the suffering of the Anglo-Saxons being portrayed with apparent joy. The enemy is not only described generally as Saxons ( Saesson ), but specifically referred to as Iwys . This refers to the West Saxons , whose original name was Gewissæ . The support of Saint David and Saint Garmon as well as the help of the Irish ( Gwydyl ) and the Gentiles of Dublin ( Gynhon Dulyn ) (meaning the Vikings of Dublin), who will unite under the banner of David ( lluman glan Dewi ), will Highlighted in verses 127 to 146. Interwoven here is a further elaboration of the subject of the illegality of Anglo-Saxon rule.

The climax of the poem is reached in verses 147 to 170, in which the various allies of the Welsh are described in detail, and in fact a curse is pronounced on the Anglo-Saxons, culminating in a hymn of praise to the two resistance heroes Cadwaladr and Cynan.

At the end of Armes Prydein , verses 170-199 celebrate the restoration of Welsh rule over all of Britain and the disorderly and desperate retreat of the Anglo-Saxons to where they came from. Finally, Saint David is invoked again to lead the insurrection.

Dating and origin

It is commonly assumed that the Armes Prydein was written in the first half of the 10th century. A more precise dating is usually attempted by analyzing the content of the text. It is pointed out that the poem could not have been written after 937, since in exactly this year an alliance of the British, Scots and the Vikings of Dublin named in the poem had suffered a crushing defeat by King Æthelstan in the battle of Brunanburh and the Poor Prydein must therefore have originated between 927 and 937. On the other hand, the poem is also believed to have originated in late summer or early autumn of 940 after the successful invasion of Olaf Guthfrithsson , but before it became known in Wales that he had come to an agreement with King Edmund . Alternatively, it was suggested that the text should be written for the year 942.

Due to topographical details and an explicit reference to Saint David , who is considered the patron saint of Wales and who is said in the poem to lead the rebellion against the Anglo-Saxons, the place of the writing of the poor Prydein in South Wales' - probably in Dyfed  - assumed, whereby a clerical scribe is assumed as the author.

function

Unlike other contemporary heroic poems, such as the poem The Battle of Maldon , written in Old English , Armes Prydein not only describes a glorious past, commemorates the fallen or depicts a battle, but looks optimistically into the future to the time when the united British power would have driven out the Anglo-Saxon conquerors, especially the West Saxons and their tax collectors. At the same time, however, the present is analyzed with reference to characters and heroes from the legendary British past such as Merlin , Cadwaladr and Cynan, who is either Cynan Garwyn or the Bretons Conan Meriadoc , and a glorious future is predicted in which Britain is liberated from Anglo-Saxons if, given the historical realities of the 10th century, this hope must have seemed unrealistic.

See also

literature

  • Andrew Breeze: Armes Prydein, Hywel Dda, and the Reign of Edmund of Wessex . Études celtiques 33 (1997), p. 209-222
  • John Williams (Ed.): Annales Cambriae . London 1860
  • Rachel Bromwich (Ed.): Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain , 2nd ed., University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1978, ISBN 0-7083-0690-X .
  • David Dumville: Brittany and 'Armes prydein vawr' , Études celtiques 20 (1983), p. 145-159
  • Thomas Charles-Edwards: Language and Society among the Insular Celts. AD 400-1000 . In: Miranda J. Green (Ed.): The Celtic World , Routledge, London 1995, p. 703-736, ISBN 0-4150-5764-7 .
  • Thomas Charles-Edwards: The Making of Nations in Britain and Ireland in the Early Middle Ages . In: Ralph Evans (Ed.): Lordship and Learning: Studies in Memory of Trevor Aston , Bodyell Press, Woodbridge 2004, p. 11-38, ISBN 1-8438-3079-5 .
  • Helen Fulton, Tenth-Century Wales and 'Armes Prydein' . In: Transaction of the Honorable Cymmrodorion (new series) 7 (2001), p. 5-18
  • Toby D. Griffin: The Mesotomic Syllable in Old Welsh Poetry , Celtic Studies Association of North America, Seattle 1993
  • Marged Haycock: Problems of the Early Medieval Cymric Metric . In: Hildegard LC Tristram (Ed.): Metrik und Medienwechsel , Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-8233-4244-4 .
  • Nicholas J. Higham: King Arthur: Myth-making and History . Routledge, London 2002, ISBN 0-4152-1305-3 .
  • Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People . B. Colgrave & RAB Mynors (Eds.), Clarendon, Oxford 1969, ISBN 0-1982-2202-5 .
  • Graham R. Isaac, Armes Rydain Fawr and St David . In: J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (Eds.), St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation , Boydell & Brewer , Woodbridge 2007, ISBN 978-1-8438-3322-2 .
  • John T. Koch: Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-1-8510-9440-0 .
  • Ifor Williams (Ed.): Poor Prydein. The Prophecy of Britain, from the Book of Taliesin . Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin 1972.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Toby D. Griffin, The Mesotomic Syllable in Old Welsh Poetry , p. 1
  2. ↑ Marged Haycock, "Problems of the early medieval Welsh metric", p. 156
  3. ↑ Ifor Williams, Armes Prydein , p. v-vi
  4. ↑ Thomas Charles-Edwards, "Language and Society among the Insular Celts. AD 400-1000," p. 712
  5. ^ Thomas Charles-Edwards, "The Making of Nations in Britain and Ireland in the Early Middle Ages," p. 28
  6. ^ Graham R. Isaac, "Armes Rydain Fawr and St David," p. 163f
  7. ↑ Beda, HE , 3.7; Annales Cambriae , p. a. 900
  8. ↑ Ifor Williams, Armes Prydein , p. xxvi
  9. ↑ Andrew Breeze, "Armes Prydein, Hywel Dda, and the Reign of Edmund of Wessex," p. 215
  10. ↑ David Dumville, "Brittany and 'Armes prydein vawr'", p. 151
  11. ^ Graham R. Isaac, "Armes Rydain Fawr and St David," p. 168
  12. ↑ Nicholas J. Higham, King Arthur: Myth-making and History , p. 191
  13. ^ Thomas M. Charles-Edwards, "The Making of Nations in Britain and Ireland in the Early Middle Age," p. 27
  14. ^ Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain , p. 321
  15. ^ Helen Fulton, "Tenth-Century Wales and Armes Prydein, " p. 16