aidens and matrons living among them. The pale queen of heaven no
longer held hearts captive; they had transferred their allegiance to the
"brow that was as the snow of yesternight," and "the cheeks that were
like the passion-flower." The Iolo MSS. assert that some time between
January 1327 and November 1330 there were held, under the patronage of
Ivor Hael, Dafydd ab Gwilym's patron, and others, the three
_Eisteddfodau Dadeni_, or the Eisteddfods of the Revival of the Muse, to
reorganize the bards, and to set in order all matters pertaining to
Welsh poetry. The most important bards who are reported as present at
some or all of these meetings were Dafydd ab Gwilym, Sion Cent, Rhys
Goch of Eryri, and Iolo Goch. It is now, however, generally agreed that
this account is a fabrication and that the date of all the poets is
later.

Dafydd ab Gwilym.

Dafydd ab Gwilym is certainly the most distinguished of all the Welsh
poets, and were it not for the absolute impossibility of adequately
translating his _cywyddau_ he would rank amongst the greatest poets of
medieval times. By far the greater part of his poetry is written in the
metre called _cywydd_, with heptasyllabic lines rhyming in couplets. It
was he who imparted so much lustre to this metre that it became the
vehicle of all the most important poetry from his time to the 19th
century, and he is generally referred to by his contemporaries as the
special poet of the cywydd--_Dafydd gywydd gwin_, "Dafydd of the
wine-sweet cywydd." Most of his poems deal with love in the spirit of
the medieval writers of France and of Provence, but with this very
important difference, that the French writers must base their reputation
on their treatment of love as a theme, whereas Dafydd's claim to fame is
based on his treatment of nature and of out-door life. In many cases,
indeed, love is only a conventional peg whereon he may hang his
observations on nature, and Welsh literature may claim the distinction
of having had its Wordsworth in the 14th century. His treatment of
nature is not merely realistic and objective, it has a certain quaint
and elusive symbolism and a subjectiveness which come as a revelation to
those who are acquainted with the medieval poetry of other nations. Many
of the poems attributed to him are undoubtedly the work of later hands,
but even after making all possible deductions, there is still an
infinite variety among what remains, ranging as his poems do from a
s