of
Glamorganshire. This person received him within his house, made him his
steward and tutor to his daughter. With this young lady Ab Gwilym
speedily fell in love, and the damsel returned his passion. Ifor,
however, not approving of the connection, sent his daughter to Anglesey,
and eventually caused her to take the veil in a nunnery of that island.
Dafydd pursued her, but not being able to obtain an interview, he
returned to his patron, who gave him a kind reception. Under Ifor's roof
he cultivated poetry with great assiduity and wonderful success. Whilst
very young, being taunted with the circumstances of his birth by a
brother bard called Rhys Meigan, he retorted in an ode so venomously
bitter that his adversary, after hearing it, fell down and expired.
Shortly after this event he was made head bard of Glamorgan by universal
acclamation.

After a stay of some time with Ifor, he returned to his native county and
lived at Bro Gynnin. Here he fell in love with a young lady of birth
called Dyddgu, who did not favour his addresses. He did not break his
heart, however, on her account, but speedily bestowed it on the fair
Morfudd, whom he first saw at Rhosyr in Anglesey, to which place both had
gone on a religious account. The lady after some demur consented to
become his wife. Her parents refusing to sanction the union, their hands
were joined beneath the greenwood tree by one Madawg Benfras, a bard, and
a great friend of Ab Gwilym. The joining of people's hands by bards,
which was probably a relic of Druidism, had long been practised in Wales,
and marriages of this kind were generally considered valid, and seldom
set aside. The ecclesiastical law, however, did not recognise these
poetical marriages, and the parents of Morfudd by appealing to the law
soon severed the union. After confining the lady for a short time, they
bestowed her hand in legal fashion upon a chieftain of the neighbourhood,
very rich but rather old, and with a hump on his back, on account which
he was nicknamed bow-back, or little hump-back. Morfudd, however, who
passed her time in rather a dull manner with this person, which would not
have been the case had she done her duty by endeavouring to make the poor
man comfortable, and by visiting the sick and needy around her, was soon
induced by the bard to elope with him. The lovers fled to Glamorgan,
where Ifor Hael, not much to his own credit, received them with open
arms, probably forgetti