Poets V Rebels

 A forestall route through Tintern, South Wales.


"Owen … marched with a great host right across Wales as far as the Severn sea" writes Adam Usk.
    But the rebels were not the only travellers on Welsh roads during the revolt years. The "cywydd" bards moved between towns with their trade, composing nature-inspired lyrics en route to the homes of noblemen.  Physical signs of ‘scorched earth’ often marked the locations that the rebels had visited:

Neither grass nor dock grew
Nor corn where he [Glyndŵr] had been,
From English-built Berwick
To Maesbury, huge was the booty.

But all the bards had to show for their presence were words.

There were established routes between fifteenth century Welsh towns, and ‘travellers a-plenty on the roads,’ from merchants to soldiers to pilgrims. ‘Even the broadest forests were laced with cart-tracks, footpaths and trails’,although as medieval wayfarers such as Gerald of Wales believed, certain roads, like those through ‘the wildest and most terrifying’ wilderness beyond Caernarfon, were best avoided if one was not an expert traveller.
    Of course, the bards were arguably the most expert travellers of all. R.R. Davies considers the bards to be travellers foremost, and consequently goes so far as to chart Goch’s path from the locations mentioned in his verse.  Davies believes that the bards toured the wilderness in a unique way, because they practiced an age-old tradition with an expert itinerary that far surpassed that of most settled townspeople who only occasionally travelled and adhered to ‘official’ tracks.In his poetry, Iolo Goch certainly sounds familiarised with roaming Wales. In ‘Praise of Tudur Fychan’s Sons’, he tells of his frequent travels to entertain a noble family: ‘backwards and forwards to the border/I will go’.
These itinerant writers were much more welcome. Or does Glyndwr's personal poet, Iolo Goch, enjoy fame off the back of his patron? For Goch stops off in various towns from Maelienydd to Buellt, Mid Wales, and has only fond things to say of his trip to ‘The Court of Ieuan, Bishop of St Asaph’. Goch recalls the fact that the townsfolk reacted positively towards his arrival at their town:

and the man for me, not a hindering word,
out of respect who opened the gate;
I was a dear companion in good form
celebrating a festival with them…
unrestricted, I come and go as I please.