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Welsh musical traditions predate the medieval period, as evidenced not only by the poems and songs left to us by bards throughout the ages, but by the Welsh language itself. In fact, the English word bard is derived from the Welsh word bardd. And thus, the title of this book.
The tradition of a bardic class can be traced to Celtic times when no distinct line was drawn between a druid and a bard. With the conversion to Christianity, the role of the bard became more court poet and less seer. Bards were required to be literate and thus became the secular equivalent to monks.
A medieval document called The Triads of Britain details the three primary tasks of a bard:
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One is to learn and collect sciences.
The second is to teach.
The third is to make peace
And to put an end to all injury;
For to do contrary to these things
Is not usual or becoming to a bard.
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Within native Welsh society, the bard’s role was to act as the repository of tradition, including history, poetry, and music. The bard was an educator of the people, and his duty, culturally speaking, was sacred. The laws of Hywel Dda, codified in the tenth century, delineate the bard as a member of the king’s household, part of whose duty was to sing of the sovereignty of Britain.
Wales had a particularly well-developed written tradition, even in what has been known colloquially as the dark ages. Literacy in Wales dates back to the Britons’ conversion to Christianity during the Roman era. In fact, throughout the medieval period, Wales had "a self-confident literary culture" with "a highly developed form of prose writing."[1] Wales’s legal system was not conducted in Latin, but in Welsh, and Wales’s vernacular literature as a whole was unusually sophisticated for the period. Historian Huw Pryce writes further that in Wales,
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... both the legal and the poetic strands of native culture were closely connected and thereby reflect the status of law as part of a wider body of traditional learning, known in Welsh as cyfarwyddyd, which also included poetry, narrative tales, history, and genealogy.
As champions of that history, bards were members of a class unto themselves, such that, even as late as 1596, Edmund Spenser wrote that “bards were held in so high regard and estimation ... that none may displease them, for feare to runne into reproach through their offense, and be made infamous in the mouths of all men.”[2]
In 1284, after his conquest of Wales, King Edward recognized that power ...
