An Englyn on the Wolf from the Hendregadredd Manuscript

Abstract

A hitherto undeciphered englyn in the early fourteenth-century Hendregadredd Manuscript is here edited and argued to contain a reference to an incident involving a wolf attacking sheep. The englyn is probably contemporary with the writing and provides rare evidence for the survival of the wolf in Wales in this period.<br/> The Hendregadredd Manuscript (Aberystwyth, NLW MS 6680B) of medieval Welsh court poetry was first compiled around 1300 and supplemented through the first quarter of the fourteenth century. These two strata represent stages in the creation of the book which, as Daniel Huws argued, probably took place in the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion. Soon afterwards, the remaining blank spaces in the book were filled with miscellaneous poems in a number of often informal hands: this phase constitutes the 'third stratum' in Huws's analysis. As much of the material in this stratum relates to Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron, not far from Strata Florida, it is generally assumed that the book had now left the scriptorium where it was made and had become the property of Ieuan. At his home it was used to record poems of various kinds, most likely by poets who visited the house, over an extended period. This is suggested not merely by the variety of the poems themselves but by the fairly informal nature of the writing, which contrasts with the neat scriptorium work of the first and second strata, around which these pieces were fitted.<br/> This article concerns one of these pieces added as part of the third stratum. On fol.95v, inserted between two poems from the earlier strata of writing, is a single englyn. The hand of the inserter is called 'k' by Daniel Huws and he did not identify it anywhere else in the book. 3 The text was transcribed in the notes to the diplomatic edition of the manuscript, where it is given as follows:<br/> Gwladeid oed yr lleidrvleid llwyt gwlangach cadyr vwbach coet da[ ]feit m[ ]rnddel demyl waet dena vu gwr yneveit.<br/> The poem was noted as an 'englyn proest anghyflawn' in the edition of poems from the third stratum of the Hendregadredd Manuscript by Ann Parry Owen and Dylan Foster Evans, and it was not edited there or discussed any further, presumably because the text was too incomplete to be interpreted.<br/> Now that there is a digital facsimile of the manuscript available online, it is possible to make another attempt to read the whole englyn. The writing is fairly legible on the whole but faded in places, and as there is so little of it, it is difficult to find comparanda for all the letter-shapes. Nevertheless, the previous transcript secured the first half of the stanza and some of the second and proved a great help to me in finishing the job. Below I provide a new transcript and edition.