GWILYM TEW
(
fl.
c.
1460-1480
),
one of the bards of Glamorgan
.
The pedigree books describe him as the son of
Rhys Brydydd
, but some details which are available suggest that he was a brother to that
bard
. It is evident, therefore, that he was a member of the most renowned family of major
bards
that
Glamorgan
ever produced, descendants of
Rhys Fychan
of
Tir Iarll
, of the line of
Einion ap Collwyn
(q.v.)
. Although
Rhys Brydydd
lived in
Llanharan
it is probable that
Gwilym Tew
lived in
Llangynwyd
, the original centre of the tribe;
Dafydd Benwyn
(q.v.)
calls him
‘Gwilym tew brydydd o dir jarll.’
His
cywyddau
show that he flourished
c.
1460-1480
. He sings to the gentry of
upper Glamorgan
and to the descendants of the
Normans
and of the
English
in the
‘Vale’ of Glamorgan
, and ‘itinerated’, as a
bard
, to
Kidwelly
,
Ewyas
, and, perhaps to
Maelienydd
. He is not important as a
poet
. His
cywyddau
and
awdlau
are not notable and he cannot be classed with the major
bards
of
North Wales
of that period. But he is important as a
pencerdd
and as one who was steeped in the bardic traditions. There is no doubt that he, like his contemporaries,
Dafydd ab Edmwnd
and
Dafydd Nanmor
(qq.v.), was seeking to arrange and put in better order the rules and types of verse which were then practised; this explains why he wrote an
awdl enghreifftiol
(a ‘pattern’ or ‘exemplifying’
awdl
), wherein he uses measures that were not acknowledged by the old teachers, the ‘ofer fesurau’ (‘false measures’) as they were described. And that is the awdl which
John David
Rhys
includes in his
Grammar
(
1592
) as an exemplar of the odes of the ‘first age.’
It was not with bardic verse alone that
Gwilym Tew
concerned himself. He and
Dafydd Nanmor
wrote their names in ‘
Llyfr Aneirin
’ (the ‘
Book of Aneirin
’); he says that he owned the manuscript. He studied it, collected the strange words found in it, and attempted to explain them. Moreover, he is the first
Glamorgan
bard
who can be proved to have been a
copyist of manuscripts
.
Pen. MS. 51
is in his hand; in it is a collection of
Welsh
poems and tractates, including the ‘
Donatus
,’ i.e. the grammar that was studied in the bardic schools.
Gwilym Tew
is, therefore, a fairly important figure in the history of
Welsh
literature in the
15th cent.
His
cywyddau
and
awdlau
have been collected by
J. M.
Williams
,
Swansea
; this collection is now amongst the
University of Wales
theses in the
National Library
.
Bibliography:
-
Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies
, i, 216-25;
-
G. J. Williams
,
Traddodiad Llenyddol Morgannwg
, 1948
,
1948
, 43-8.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Griffith John Williams, M.A., (1892-1963),
Gwaelod-y-garth, Cardiff.
