Publications

Series : Poets of the Nobility

24: Gwaith Gruffudd ap Maredudd: I – Canu i deulu Penmynydd 

Aptly described by Saunders Lewis as ‘one of the greats’, Gruffudd ap Maredudd was a native of Anglesey. He is the most important of the fourteenth-century figures who continued and elaborated upon the tradition of the Poets of the Princes. His poetry, comprising c .2400 lines of eulogy and elegy, religious verse, love poetry and satire, is preserved in the Red Book of Hergest. Seven of the eight poems edited in this volume are praise poems and elegies to members of the powerful family of Penmynydd, Anglesey, who were patrons to many important poets of the period, including Iolo Goch and Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen. The final poem in the volume addresses an unknown patron, who was also probably a member of the same family.