e, Dafydd ab Edmwnd,
who was a disciple of Meredydd ap Rhys. He bears somewhat the same
relation to his contemporaries as Dafydd ab Gwilym does to his, and to
strain an analogy, we might say that as Dryden was to Milton, so Dafydd
ab Edmwnd was to Dafydd ab Gwilym. He was regarded by his contemporaries
as the greatest poet that North Wales had ever produced, and some would
set him up as a rival even to Dafydd ab Gwilym himself. He would
probably have produced much greater poetry had he understood that the
cywydd and the other metres were strait and shackled enough without the
_cymeriadau_ and other devices which he introduced, or at least
sanctioned and made popular. He begins many of his cywyddau and odes
with the same letter; he is the chief among Welsh formalists, but in
spite of his self-imposed restrictions he is a great poet also. His most
famous poems are three _Cywyddau Merch_ or "Poems to a Lady," and his
_Cywydd i Wallt Merch_, "cywydd to a lady's hair." He is the author of
the lines already quoted: "thy brow," he sings, "is as the snow of
yesternight, and thy cheeks like a shower of roses." He died about 1480.
Dafydd ab Edmwnd's disciples were Gutyn Owain and Tudur Aled, who was
also his nephew. Gutyn Owain lived between 1420 and 1500, and was one of
the men appointed by the king's commissioners to trace, or perhaps to
manufacture, the Welsh pedigree of Henry VII. He belonged entirely to
the school inaugurated by Dafydd ab Edmwnd, and though he was by no
means wanting in imagination, the highest distinction of his verse is
its intricacy of form and very often the felicity of his couplets.

Just as the rise of Owen Glyndwr in the beginning of the century had
given a new impulse and a new interest to poetry, so in 1485, when Henry
VII.--the "little bull" as he is called by the poets--ascended the
throne of England, a particular kind of poetry called _brud_, half
history and half prophecy, became popular, and we have in the
manuscripts much writing of this description, a good deal of it
worthless as poetry. Occasionally, however, some of these "bruts" may
claim to be called poetry, especially the compositions of Robin Ddu o
Fon, who wrote poems in praise of the Tudors and hailed them as the
deliverers of the nation, even before Henry VII. had landed in England,
and Dafydd Llwyd ab Llywelyn, whose works deserve to be much better
known than they are at present. One of the best cywyddau among his works
is the "Addr