CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MYTHOLOGY AND THE ORAL
TRADITION
Wales
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Sioned Davies
C
lassical authors have left us with several references to the eloquence of the early
Celts (Chadwick 1970: 45-7). Traces of this eloquence have survived into
medieval Welsh literature which, although accessible only in written form, reflects
much of the oral tradition of the period. Many stylistic features of medieval Welsh
poetry and prose betray an oral background, while certain mythological themes
and characters in eleventh-and twelfth-century tales are recognizably Celtic in
origin, the material having been transmitted orally for centuries before reaching its
extant form.
Before the twelfth century, literacy in Wales was probably confined to the monastic
environment. Side by side with a church learning, however, there existed a tradition
of native learning, transmitted orally at first. This would have included history,
genealogies and origin narratives, topography, boundaries and geography, religious
myths, tribal and family lore, antiquities and legends, social and legal procedures,
and medicine (Roberts 1988: 62). This corpus of traditional lore was known as cyfar-
wyddyd, a term connected etymologically with 'guidance, direction, instruction,
knowledge', while the cyfarwydd was 'the guide, well-informed person, expert'
(Mac Cana 1980:139). Various classes of learned men would have been responsible for
the different aspects of cyfarwyddyd, including the lawyers, mediciners and bards.
Indeed, the bards (beirdd, singular bardd), like their Irish counterparts, seem to have
played a central role in native Welsh learning at this period. However, poetry does not
seem to have been the medium for narrative in medieval Wales. Rather, tales
were related in prose, and it is to this corpus that we must turn if we are to find any
substantial evidence of Celtic mythology in medieval Welsh literature.
Cyfarwyddyd was also a term for 'story' in medieval Welsh, and the storyteller
was known as the cyfarwydd (plural cyfarwyddiaid). As suggested by Mac Cana
(1980: 139), what may have happened is that the semantic range of the word
cyfarwydd used as a quasi-literary term became gradually narrowed until in the end
it was virtually confined to one, and that a lesser one, of its older connotations. We
know very little of the cyfarwydd and his functions in medieval Welsh society. In
medieval Ireland, there is evidence to suggest that the composition of both prose and
poetry was linked to that of the fili (poet), although storytelling was not one of his
main functions. In Wales there is no direct evidence regarding the relationship