Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards — Context and Discussion

Manuscripts and Patronage

The dedication and preface foreground the material conditions of Evans's work. He thanks Sir Roger Mostyn for lending “valuable books and manuscripts,” and notes that the Mostyn and Gloddaith libraries still hold the bards' works. This reliance on private collections shapes the volume's structure: the poems are presented as specimens drawn from a larger, inaccessible archive. The letters reinforce this, with Lewis Morris referencing specific manuscripts like Llyfr Coch (the Red Book) and debating readings of ancient texts. The reader is thus constantly reminded that these translations are fragments rescued from a precarious manuscript tradition.

The Correspondence as Paratext

Nearly a quarter of the volume consists of letters between Evans, Morris, and others. These are not mere appendages; they form a running commentary on the poems and on the scholarly community. Morris's letter of October 13, 1751, for instance, challenges Evans on a genealogical point, citing “our genealogies, and ancient inscriptions and coins.” A later letter proposes a division of poetic labor: “He shall have the north, and you the south.” The letters also reveal personal dynamics—Morris chides Evans for careless writing, offers corrections, and introduces him to Gronw Owen. This epistolary layer turns the book into a collaborative document, where translation is inseparable from friendship and rivalry.

Translation as Cultural Argument

Evans's preface makes a quiet case for Welsh poetry's place in European letters. He acknowledges the “dark cloud of bigotry and ignorance” of the bards' era, but insists that their poetry “shone forth with a light, that seems astonishing.” The comparison to Ossian is strategic: by linking his project to Macpherson's success, Evans claims a similar antiquity and sublimity for Welsh verse. Yet he is careful not to claim superiority, stating he does not “set the following poems in competition” with Ossian. The notes that accompany each poem—though not fully excerpted here—are described as “explanatory notes on the historical passages,” grounding the translations in specific places and persons.

Voice and Structure in the Letters

The letters themselves are a study in 18th-century epistolary style. Lewis Morris writes with a blend of familiarity and formality: “I hope you will pardon my presumption” gives way to “I give you my labour for nothing, and choose whether you follow my opinion or no.” His advice to the young Evans—“you will not be able to see how precious it is till most part of it is gone”—is both paternal and pointed. The letters also contain embedded poems, such as Gronw Owen's “Cowydd y Farn,” which Morris calls “the best thing I ever read in Welsh.” This layering of prose and verse, of instruction and praise, mirrors the volume's larger structure: a collection that is as much about the making of poetry as about the poems themselves.

Readers approaching this edition should attend to the interplay between the translated poems and the surrounding apparatus. The letters are not background noise but a key part of the work's argument about how Welsh poetry was preserved, valued, and contested. Evans's volume is less a finished anthology than a snapshot of a living scholarly conversation—one in which every manuscript, every emendation, and every patron mattered.

Twice now I’ve shelved them side by side—Evans’s old bards, their verses stitched from manuscript scraps, and those Base-ball Ballads — Background and Themes, gleaned from sporting pages. Both are folk voices caught in amber, earnest and a little wistful. They never speak, yet keep company well, these two, humming the same tune about games and glory fading.