| Book of Taliesin | |
|---|---|
| Aberystwyth, NLW, Peniarth MS 2 | |
 facsimile, folio 13 | |
| Also known as | Llyfr Taliesin |
| Date | First half of the 14th century |
| Language | Welsh |
| Size | 38 folios |
| Contents | Some 60 Welsh poems |
TheBook of Taliesin (Welsh:Llyfr Taliesin) is one of the most famous ofMiddle Welshmanuscripts, dating from the first half of the 14th century though many of the fifty-six poems it preserves are taken to originate in the 10th century or before.
The volume contains some of the oldestpoems in Welsh, possibly but not certainly dating back to the sixth century and to a real poet calledTaliesin.
The manuscript, known as Peniarth MS 2 and kept at theNational Library of Wales, is incomplete, having lost a number of its original leaves including the first. It was namedLlyfr Taliessin in the seventeenth century byEdward Lhuyd and hence is known in English as "The Book of Taliesin". The palaeographerJohn Gwenogvryn Evans dated theBook of Taliesin to around 1275, butDaniel Huws dated it to the first quarter of the fourteenth century, and the fourteenth-century dating is generally accepted.[1]: 164
The Book of Taliesin was one of the collection of manuscripts amassed at the mansion ofHengwrt, nearDolgellau,Gwynedd, by the WelshantiquaryRobert Vaughan (c. 1592–1667); the collection was eventually donated bySir John Williams in 1907 to the newly established National Library of Wales as thePeniarth or Hengwrt-Peniarth Manuscripts.[2]
It appears that some "marks", presumably awarded for poems, measuring their "value", are extant in the margin of theBook of Taliesin.
Titles adapted from Skene.
Many of the poems have been dated to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and are likely to be the work of poets adopting the Taliesin persona for the purposes of writing aboutawen (poetic inspiration), characterised by material such as:
A few are attributed internally to other poets. A full discussion of the provenance of each poem is included in the definitive editions of the book's contents poems by Marged Haycock.[3][page needed][4][page needed]
The scholar Amy Mulligan states that only twelve of the poems, called theCanu Taliesin (song of Taliesin), mainly in praise ofUrien, sixth century ruler ofRheged, "are accepted as canonical poems by a historical Taliesin".[5]Ifor Williams similarly describes theCanu Taliesin as credibly being the work of Taliesin, or at least 'to be contemporary withCynan Garwyn, Urien, his sonOwain, andGwallawg', possibly historical kings who respectively ruledPowys;Rheged, which was centred in the region of theSolway Firth on the borders of present-day England andScotland and stretched east to Catraeth (identified by most scholars as present-dayCatterick in North Yorkshire) and west toGalloway; andElmet.[6] These are (giving Skene's numbering used in the content list below in Roman numerals, the numbering of Evans's edition of the manuscript in Arabic, and the numbers and titles of Williams's edition in brackets):
| Numbering by | Williams's title (if any) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Skene | Evans | Williams | |
| XXIII | 45 | I | Trawsganu Kynan Garwyn Mab Brochfael |
| XXXI | 56 | II | |
| XXXII | 57 | III | |
| XXXIII | 58 | IV | |
| XXXIV | 59 | V | |
| XXXV | 60 | VI | Gweith Argoet Llwyfein |
| XXXVI | 61 | VII | |
| XXXVII | 62 | VIII | Yspeil Taliesin. Kanu Vryen |
| XXXIX | 65 | IX | Dadolwych Vryen |
| XLIV | 67 | X | Marwnat Owein |
| XI | 29 | XI | Gwallawc |
| XXXVIII | 63 | XII | Gwallawc |
Poems 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 (in Williams's numbering) close with the same words, suggesting common authorship, while 4 and 8 contain internal attributions to Taliesin. The closing tag runs
Ac yny vallwyf (i) ben
y-m dygyn agbeu agben
ny byδif y-m·dirwen
na molwyf Vryen.
Until I perish in old age,
in death's dire compulsion,
I shall not be joyous,
unless I praise Urien.[7]
The precise dating of these poems remains uncertain. Re-examining the linguistic evidence for their early date,Patrick Sims-Williams concluded in 2016 that
evaluating the supposed proofs that poems in the Books of Aneirin and Taliesin cannot go back to the sixth century, we have found them either to be incorrect or to apply to only a very few lines or stanzas that may be explained as additions. It seems impossible to prove, however, that any poem must go back to the sixth century linguistically and cannot be a century or more later.[1]: 217
Scholarly English translations of all these are available inPoems from the book of Taliesin (1912) and the modern anthologyThe Triumph Tree.[8]
Among probably less archaic but still early texts, the manuscript also preserves a few hymns, a small collection of elegies to famous men such asCunedda andDylan Eil Ton and also famous enigmatic poems such asThe Battle of Trees,The Spoils of Annwfn (in which the poet claims to have sailed to another world with Arthur and his warriors), and the tenth-century prophetic poemArmes Prydein Vawr. Several of these contain internal claims to be the work of Taliesin, but cannot be associated with the putative historical figure.
Many poems in the collection allude to Christian andLatin texts as well as native British tradition, and the book contains the earliest mention in any Western post-classical vernacular literature of the feats ofHercules andAlexander the Great.
The introduction toGwyneth Lewis andRowan Williams's translation ofThe Book of Taliesin suggests that later Welsh writers came to see Taliesin as a sort ofshamanic figure. The poetry ascribed to him in this collection shows how he can not only channel other entities himself (such as theAwen) in these poems, but that the authors of these poems can in turn channelTaliesin as they both create and perform the poems that they ascribe to Taliesin's persona. This creates a collectivist, rather than individualistic, sense of identity; no human is simply one human, humans are part of nature (rather than opposed to it), and all things in the cosmos can ultimately be seen to be connected through the creative spirit of the Awen.[9]
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