According to Marged Haycock, the Book of Taliesin poem ‘Angar Kyfundawt’ could very well have been written by Llywarch ap Llywelyn (for a full explanation see her introduction to her edition of The Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin). The similarites between Llywarch’s more formal court poetry and a number of poems in the Book at least place him closer to the text than any other bard of his period. Although Marged Haycock largely makes the association based on similarities in vocabulary and word combinations, there is also the suggestion of a conceptual similarity, not only with Llywarch, but also with his old master, Cynddelw. This conceptual similarity is of course with regards to the use of dwfn and its counterpart Annwfn as signifying a mythical dimension implied within mundane reality.
As with the majority of the other legendary poems, ‘Angar Kyfundawt’ is a dramatic piece that was likely to have been performed in the voice and persona of the mythical Taliesin; before uttering a word, this in itself would signal that the performer was evoking the mythical depths. The explicit references to ‘the deep’ largely corroborate what’s already been covered in previous posts, such as . . .
Awen a ganaf,
o dwfyn ys dygaf.
I sing awen,
I bring it forth from the depth.
(LPBT 4.179-80)
Another section describes in detail what is only suggested in other poems:
Ef a’e rin rodes
awen anghymes:
seith vgein ogyruen
yssyd yn awen;
wyth vgein o pop vgein
euyd yn vn.
Yn Annwyfn y diwyth,
yn Annwfyn y gorwyth,
yn Annwfyn is eluyd,
yn awyr uch eluyd.
He [God] with his miracle
bestowed immeasurable awen;
seven score ogyrfen
there is in awen,
and eight score of every score
in each one.
In Annwfn he ranged them,
in Annwfn he made them,
in Annwfn below the earth,
in the air above the earth.
(LPBT 4.75-84)
Here the legendary Taliesin describes how God created the immeasurable aspects or divisions (ogyrfen) of awen and set them out in Annwfn. The poet unambiguously names Annwfn as the place where awen is created, set out in all its varieties, and more importantly where it is found, the depth from which it rises. This makes sense if we again define Annwfn as the mythical realm, that is the place from which all symbolic, mythic and idealised forms arise. In the Four Branches, Annwfn is the realm that is somehow within Dyfed, and is the place where Pwyll experiences ideal or perfected forms of behaviour.
This also suggests a possible interpretation for the difficult last line in the above excerpt, ‘in the air above the earth’. There are two possible interpretations: first of all that the poem here refers back to awen, and that awen is also found in the air above the earth as well as being arranged by God in the depths; a possible interpretation considering the etymological link between awen and breath / air.
The second interpretation is that the whole sequence is talking about Annwfn and therefore Annwfn is here described as not only being in the earth bellow but also in the air above. It would be reasonable to assume that this is a metaphorical way of saying ‘in all places, above and bellow’ just as Llywarch uses dwfn a bais in the previous post. This interpretation suggests Annwfn is in all things, latent in the whole of God’s creation, not just bellow the earth. In this regard, the meaning of the name Annwfn shouldn’t be taken literally but symbolically; describing it as being bellow ground is simply a storybook metaphor for the more nuanced concept of ‘the world within the world’.
But these are not the only references to ‘the deep’ that we find in ‘Angar Kyfundawt’. If anything, the whole poem is laced with references to this concept, usually implied in double meaning, or ‘meanings within meanings’ which as a feature itself seems to symbolise ‘the world within the world’. In the next few posts I’ll take a more detailed look at these other examples.
