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Forms Contents
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Gwawdodyn (gwow-DOED-in) is a Welsh form and one of the 24 official meters of Welsh poetry. It is categorized in the awdl class, which comprises half of the official Welsh meters. (Two other Welsh meters, the englyn unodl crwca and the englyn unodl union, were discussed in the Autumn 2002 issue of the DS.)
The first half of the 13th century saw Wales keeping Norman invaders well at bay, under the leadership of the Welsh prince Llywelyn (an oft-used name among Welsh princes, but this Llywelyn is the only one to earn the appellation “the Great”). The poetry of this time indicates that the poets formed an order where the master craftsman, the pencerdd, won his position in competition and taught one or more apprentices. Wales preserved its independence from Norman/English rule until around 1282-3, when the Welsh prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (Llywelyn II, grandson of Llywelyn the Great) was killed in battle. While the Welsh maintained their rebellion against Edward I for a few months following Llywelyn’s death, the unity of their resistence faltered and Wales became predominantly ruled by England. Edward I recognized the need to establish English blood into the Welsh royal line, and named his first-born son to be the Prince of Wales, a title since held by the first-born son of the English royal family. Once England established a firm hold on Wales, it began to exert its influence on the country, through new religious orders and its own poets. Attempts were made to impose order on Welsh poetry, and the poetic meters were codified by Einion Offeiriad and modified by Dafydd ab Edmwnd (c.1450). The century between 1435 and 1535 is a high point in Welsh poetry, not only in numbers of poets, but also in the high standard met by many of them. The poets held enough confidence to hold an eisteddfod - a bardic assembly to regulate the profession and issue licenses to those completing stages of apprenticeships - at Carmarthen in 1450, and others at Caerwys in 1523 and 1568. Later attempts (beginning in 1580) to relax the strict rules of Welsh poetry and adopt the “free” accentual meters for epic poetry met with little support, and, lacking incentive, poets gave up teaching or learning the art. The last of the “old”, or professional, Welsh poets died in 1666, leaving the art to be kept alive by amateurs in the clergy or gentry. Revived interest in the strict forms came in the 19th century, and the eisteddfod has become an annual event, drawing poets and other artists to the prestigious competition (further information on the eisteddfod maybe found in the Autumn 2002 DS).
The gwawdodyn is a quatrain, with lines of 9-9-10-9 syllables, respectively. There are two versions of the gwawdodyn quatrain, with the rhyme of the third and fourth lines paralleling either that of the toddaid (TOETH-eyed) or the cyhydedd hir (kuh-HAY-deth heer) stanza. Lines 1, 2, and 4 end-rhyme with each other. Line 3 contains either two cross-rhymes (a syllable at the end of one line rhymes with a syllable in the center of the preceding or following line) with line 4 - as in the toddaid - or a cross-rhyme and an internal rhyme (a syllable in the center of the line rhymes with a syllable at the end of that line), as in the cyhydedd hir. In the following representations, “x” indicates a syllable, “A” and “B” indicate rhyming syllables, and [bracketed letters] indicate possible positions of rhyming syllables:
Welsh and Irish poetic forms are difficult to reproduce accurately in English, so the focus should be on the rhyme scheme and syllabification. The following is an example I’ve written of a gwawdodyn in the toddaid version.
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