Canu Cadwallon ('the Singing of Cadwallon', ) is the name given by R. Geraint Gruffydd and subsequent scholars to four Middle Welsh poems associated with Cadwallon ap Cadfan, king of Gwynedd (d. 634 AD). Their titles come from the now-lost book entitled 'The Earliest Welsh Poets' (Hengwrt MS 120), compiled by the seventeenth-century antiquarian Robert Vaughan of Hengwrt. Later catalogues derived from this manuscript preserve the titles of these poems. Three of the four poems concerning Cadwallon were copied in other texts. One surviving poem is called 'Moliant Cadwallon' by modern scholars or 'Cerdd y Cor a'r Gorres' in the catalogues of Vaughan's manuscript. Fifty-six lines of the poem survive. It appears to refer to events just before the Battle of Hatfield Chase (Old Welsh: ) in 633, as Cadwallon's final victory over Edwin of Northumbria is not mentioned in the poem. After narrating Cadwallon's expulsion of the English from Gwynedd, the poet exhorts the king to take the fight to Edwin, "set York ablaze" and "kindle fire in the land of Elfed".
There are two other poems concerning the king, with one known as 'Marwnad Cadwallon ap Cadfan' or 'Englynion Cadwallon', and the other as 'Gofara Braint'. The former poem lists Cadwallon's battles and ends with a reference to his death in the Battle of Heavenfield (Old Welsh: ) in 634, but is thought to be ninth- or tenth-century at the earliest, based on its similarities to other early Welsh 'saga' literature like Canu Heledd and Canu Llywarch Hen. 'Gofara Braint' survives only in five lines, and refers to Edwin's head being brought to the court of Aberffraw after the battle of Hatfield Chase. The last poem, titled 'I Gadwallon ap Cadfan, brenin Prydain' by Vaughan, is completely lost. Were this poem earlier than 'Englynion Cadwallon', it may have informed some of the content of that poem, perhaps together with the lost sections of 'Gofara Braint'.
There is no author given to any poem in the manuscripts, though the Welsh Triads give the name of Cadwallon's chief poet as . Excepting one copy of 'Englynion Cadwallon' which survives in the fourteenth-century Red Book of Hergest, the three surviving poems exist only in seventeenth-century manuscripts. Nevertheless, scholars of medieval Welsh literature generally regard 'Moliant Cadwallon' as a genuine seventh-century composition, which would make it one of the oldest works in Welsh literature alongside those attributed to Aneirin and Taliesin. While not edited as part of Canu Cadwallon, there is also a fragmentary verse in Peniarth MS 21 supposedly composed by Cadwallon ap Cadfan which narrates an episode of his exile in Ireland.
Historical background
Cadwallon ap Cadfan is a very well-attested monarch by the standards of the seventh century in Wales. According to the tenth-century Harleian genealogies, his father was Cadfan ab Iago and his great-great-great-grandfather was Maelgwn Gwynedd. In the fifteenth-century genealogical tract Bonedd yr Awyr, Cadwallon's mother is given as Tandreg Ddu, daughter of Cynan Garwyn and sister of Selyf ap Cynan, who was slain by Æthelfrith at the Battle of Chester in 615. Cadwallon came to power in Gwynedd 625 following his father's death, and commissioned a Latin tombstone for Cadfan which still survives. Besides this poetry, the main sources for Cadwallon's life are Adomnán's Vita Columbae ( 697–700) and Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ( 731), as well as some entries in the Welsh Annals. However, Adomnán only narrates events leading to the battle of Heavenfield concerning Oswald, who grew up in Adomnán's monastery of Iona. He reports that Columba appeared to Oswald in a dream on the night before the battle and encouraged the young king, promising that God would grant him victory over Cadwallon, killer of his uncle Edwin.
Bede's account of Cadwallon is problematic because Cadwallon opposed Edwin of Northumbria. Edwin is a main protagonist of Bede's narrative since on Easter 627 he accepted baptism, the first Northumbrian monarch to have done so. Bede reports that Edwin ruled over 'all the inhabitants of Britain, English and Britons alike, except for Kent... he even brought under English rule the Mevanian Islands (Anglesey and Man) which lie between Ireland and Britain and belong to the Britons.' The Welsh Annals record that Cadwallon was besieged on in 629. This must refer to a final stage in Edwin's conquest of Anglesey, but the date should be corrected to 631 or 632, given that the Welsh Annals record events three years too early, such as Edwin's death in 633. There are later Welsh traditions suggesting that Cadwallon was for a time an exile in Ireland, and so he may have gathered support there to recover his kingdom. This may be paralleled by the exile in the Northern Uí Néill- and Dál Riata-sponsored monastery of Iona of Oswald and Oswiu, sons of Æthelfrith and therefore also threats to Edwin's rule.
Under unclear circumstances, Cadwallon returned to Britain and, together with his junior ally Penda of Mercia, slew Edwin on 12 October 633 at the battle of , probably Hatfield Chase. Hatfield Chase would have been in the kingdom of Elfed until its conquest by Edwin in 620, and was situated between Deiria, Mercia, and Lindsey. The battle is also recorded in the Welsh Annals (as ), in the Annals of Tigernach, and in the Annals of Inisfallen. Bede refers to Cadwallon's rule over Northumbria as the "ill-omened" year, and calls him a "savage tyrant" of "outrageous tyranny", "even more cruel than the heathen (i.e. Penda)". He even suggests that Cadwallon was "meaning to wipe out the whole English nation from the land of Britain" and "spared neither women nor innocent children". Cadwallon slew Osric, Edwin's cousin and successor in Deira, as well as Edwin's nephew Eanfrith, son of Æthelfrith by Edwin's sister Acha. Eanfrith succeeded Edwin as the ruler of Bernicia, and was slain whilst entreating Cadwallon for peace.
Ultimately, Cadwallon was in turn killed in autumn 634 by Oswald, Edwin's nephew and Eanfrith's brother. Oswald returned from his own exile at the head of an army "small in numbers", but still triumphed. This was at (Latin: ), recorded as in the Welsh Annals and the Historia Brittonum, where Oswald is called Oswald "O. Bright-blade".
The manuscripts It appears that Robert Vaughan (d. 16 May 1667) sought to assemble all poetry sung to or about Cadwallon. Vaughan was a descendant of Cadwgan, son of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, and a native of Dolgellau. His maternal uncle Robert Owen mortgaged the manor home of Hengwrt to Vaughan's father, Hywel. Vaughan's pursuit of Welsh antiquities continued unperturbed by the tumults of the seventeenth century. He was close to other antiquarians of the period such as John Davies, William Maurice, and John Jones of Gellilyfdy. When John Jones died in 1658, Robert Vaughan came into possession of all his manuscripts, and curated a great library at Hengwrt, "the finest collection of Welsh manuscripts ever assembled by an individual". This extensive collection provided Vaughan with ample material from which to compile poetry concerning Cadwallon, and thus all the surviving poems except 'Englynion Cadwallon' are found in his manuscripts.
One manuscript (Hengwrt MS 120) was written in order to collect the earliest specimens of Welsh poetry, and was titled Y Kynfeirdh Kymreig 'The Earliest Welsh Poets'. Unfortunately, it has since been lost, but William Maurice and Robert Vaughan himself wrote catalogues of the manuscripts in the Hengwrt library which preserve the titles of the poems therein. Vaughan gave the poems concerning Cadwallon the following titles: Only two folios of Hengwrt MS 120 survive, bound in a manuscript of Lewis Morris (BL Add. MS 14907). However, these two pages preserve much of the material of 'Cerdd y Cor a'r Gorres', known as 'Moliant Cadwallon' by modern scholarship. NLW MS 9094A, a compilation of Vaughan's notebooks on British history, contains four and a half lines of this poem which appear in BL Add. MS 14907, six which are absent in BL Add. MS 14907, and five lines of 'Gofara Braint'. These lines were copied into NLW MS 9094A because he interpreted the poems as referencing 'Cymru' as a place-name, though the word might instead stand for 'the Welsh', since the two words were identical in Middle Welsh. Two folios of this manuscript have dates of 1652 and 1658, and the latter part of the manuscript was probably written while Vaughan was working on a chronology of British history for Archbishop Ussher.
The third poem in this list, 'I Gadwallon ap Cadfan, brenin Prydain' is completely lost. The fourth poem, 'Marwnad Cadwallon ap Cadfan', called 'Englynion Cadwallon' by Jenny Rowland and subsequent scholars, is the only poem to survive in a complete form, in the fourteenth-century Jesus College MS 111 and in BL Add. MS 31055, written by Thomas Wiliems.
The poems 'Moliant Cadwallon'
The most important of the poems edited as part of Canu Cadwallon by R. Geraint Gruffudd is known as 'Moliant Cadwallon'. This is in contrast to Robert Vaughan, who entitled it 'Cerdd y Cor a'r Gorres' ('Song of the Dwarf and the Dwarfess') in Hengwrt MS 120. This title is difficult to understand as there are no reference to dwarves in the poem. R. Geraint Gruffydd suggested that a copyist at some point in the transmission of the poem may have mistook the occurrence of "Efrawg" in the poem as referring to the father of Peredur, in whose eponymous story there exists a pair of dwarfs who prophesy the young knight's future. Sir Ifor Williams therefore retitled the poem 'Moliant Cadwallon' (Praise of Cadwallon). There are fifty lines of in BL Add. MS 14907, while six further lines are copied in NLW MS 9094A. Because it survives only in fragments, R. Geraint Gruffydd suggested the original may originally have had at least eighty lines, though it perhaps had even more.
Interpretation
The poem begins with a narration of Cadwallon's resistance to Edwin's conquest of Anglesey (ll. 1–27), where it is recalled that "if there is a high place in Anglesey, he has pitched tents on it". Edwin's oppressive rule over Gwynedd is alluded to, where "men [are] killed in lethal combat of fighters who would not submit". However, this is contrasted with the 'hospitality of Cadwallon of the summit of Caergaradog" — which appears to be going on at the time of the singing of the poem. The Caergaradog here is not the present Caer Caradoc in Shropshire, which is first named in the eighteenth century under antiquarian influence, but is probably Caradog in Herefordshire, recorded in 1292 as . This hill is three miles north-west of Ross-on-Wye, and so would have been a strategic location for Cadwallon. In the 630s, this hill would have lain in the Welsh kingdom of Ergyng, perhaps then a subkingdom of Gwent. Cadwallon's attack on Edwin does not appear to have been preceded by a recovery of Gwynedd. Instead, he may have gathered his forces near the region of Mercia controlled by Penda. The seemingly spontaneous fighting in Gwynedd would have acted as a diversion, allowing Cadwallon and Penda to strike deep into Northumbria while Edwin was preoccupied in Gwynedd. The poet's urging of Cadwallon to "set York ablaze" and "kindle fire in the land of Elfed" seems to prefigure this campaign which would end with Edwin's death at Hatfield.