Cylchgronau Cymru

IOLO MORGANWG. By W. Llewelyn Williams. THE controversy about theauthorshipof "Cywyddau'r Ychwanegiad," i.e., the 16 odes which appear in the Appendix to the 1789 edition of the Poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym, and of the Odes No. 70 and 80 in the body of the book, has been revived by the events of the Carnarvon Eisteddfod. A prize was offered by the National Eisteddfod Association for an essay dealing with this moot subject. Only one competitor appeared-Mr. G. J. Williams, of Aberystwyth,- and the adjudicators, the three Welsh Professors at the University Colleges, awarded to him the prize. One of them, Sir John Morris Jones, has publicly stated that Mr. Williams has proved beyond dispute that Old lolo was a forger and a fraud. When I ventured to state that I was not convinced by the available evidence," the learned Professor scorn- fully asked what evidence I had seen at all? He forgets that Mr. G. J. Williams published the result of his investigations in the Be^rniad three years ago, and that his articles sufficed to convince Sir J. Morris Jones, already prejudiced against lolo, that the charges of fraud and forgery were true. I doubt if Mr. Wil- liams has been able to add substantially to his proofs in his prize essay. I went into the matter carefully three years ago. I have now re-read his articles. Though I make no claim to be a Welsh scholar of the academical type, I do claim to know more than the ordi- nary man of rules of evidence and criminal psychology. After jealously weighing the evidence adduced by Mr. G. J. Williams, who must be congratulated on the absolute fairness with which he gives all the facts, however much one may differ from his conclusions, I have no hesitation whatever in asking my countrymen to acquit Old Iolo of the grave charges brought against him. When a man is charged with a crime, one ot the first questions that is asked is, What is his record? Nemo repente turpissimus fit, no one becomes a scoundrel all at once. What sort of man was Iolo in the ordinary affairs of life ? Let counsel for the prose- cution be heard. He was as free," says Mr. G. J. Williams (Beimiad, June, 1919), from deceit and fraud as a babe one day old. Did he not refuse his brother's money and did he not prefer to live poor and without comfort in his old age rather than take money that was made by slave-labour? Yet this man of child-like innocence and guilelessness is accused of having perpetrated the most successful literary fraud ever known, unless, indeed, we believe that Bacon wrote Shakspeare. But what was his motive? Mr. G. J. Williams says that it was an age of literary frauds, and he cites the cases of Macpherson's Ossian and Chatter- ton's Thomas Rowley's Poems." But the cases are not parallel. Macpherson was a poor man, and he was given £ 2,000 by patriotic Scotsmen for col- lecting and translating relics of Gaelic poetry. His patron, Lord Bute, was the first Scottish Prime Minis- ter, and he paid the cost of publishing one of his Ossianic volumes. He provided him with a snug berth in the consular service, and enabled him to live in luxury and die rich. It may well be that Mac- pherson began quite innocently to touch up Gaelic poetry in order to interpret it to English readers. But there is no doubt that he was corrupted by lust of gain, and carried his imposture to criminal lengths. Of Chatterton it is enough to say that he was not a normal person. He took his own life when only 18 years of age; Horace Walpole states that he saw two MSS. of his written at the same time, one of which defended and the other attacked the Government of the day; and he himself in a letter to his sister says that he was a poor writer who could not write on both sides of a subject. Though he made little money by his for- geries," there is no doubt that he expected to win fame and fortune. It was when his fond hopes were not realised that he ended his life by poison. Both Macpherson and Chatterton refused to disclose the originals: Iolo gave full details at a time when the owners of the MSS. were alive. 1010 stood to gain nothing by his imposture. As far as is known he received not a brass farthing from Dr. Owain Pughe or Owain Myfyr for his Odes." Indeed, the only acknowledgment he received was in a footnote in small print on p. 10 of the "Introduction." Amongst the Bards of our own time, there is one known under the appellation of Iorwerth [not Iolo Morganwg, whose real name is lorwerth Gwilym-from the source of whose intimate acquaintance with the poetry of his country the editors have derived the poems which are inserted in the Appendix. Mr. G. J. Williams states that the Odes 70 and 80 were also contributed by Iolo, though the editors make no acknowledgment of that fact anywhere. It is clear, therefore, that 1010 did not perpetrate the fraud for gain or for fame. But even though he despised riches, was he desirous of literary fame? All the evidences show that he was. In early life he published a book of poems, which show clearly that he was a student and imitator of Dafydd ap Gwilym. He wrote hymns which he published over his own name. In 1794, five years after the edition of Dafydd ap Gwilym, he published a book of English poems containing trans- lations from Dafydd, but only one from the Appendix. None of his works reached a second edition. So little was his fame that the 794 book had to be published by subscription. Not a single line that he ever wrote lives in popular memory. None has been quoted by subsequent poets. Not a stanza or a cywydd is to be found in any anthology. And yet we are asked to believe that this dull, commonplace imitator of Dafyddl when he did succeed in writing 14 immortal poems, the like of which no Welsh poet had ever produced, was content, for no reason at all, to deny the laurel wreath for himself and to place it on the head of a poet who had died four centuries before I