Welsh Journals

and marshy land inhabited by busy and warlike men descended from the Trojan Brutus. The lack of adequate explanation is also apparent in the introduction. Although this is informative on Matthew's life and method of work, there is no discussion of his artistic achievements. Vaughan, as the leading Matthew Paris scholar, could easily have provided a brief analysis of the main features of his style, and pointed out that he was the first writer to produce an illustrated record of contemporary events in medieval England. It would have been helpful, too, in a book intended to provide 'a meaningful introduction to the Middle Ages', if he had explained that the Chronica Majora contains the earliest detailed maps of Britain in existence, and that they are orientated with the north at the top like modern maps, rather than east in line with normal medieval practice. Within these limits, Professor Vaughan is to be commended for making available once again his invaluable translation of the chronicle in this sumptuous edition. CLIVE H. KNOWLES Cardiff IOLO GOCH: POEMS. By Dafydd Johnston. Gomer Press, Llandysul, 1993. Pp. xxiii, 195. £ 14.95. In 1988 Dr. Dafydd Johnston published his Gwaith Iolo Goch, an edition of the fourteenth-century poet's work based on the collation of some 800 manuscript copies. This represented a major advance in terms of textual accuracy on earlier, more narrowly based editions, by Charles Ashton (1896) and Henry Lewis (1925; second edition 1937). The present volume, published in 'The Welsh Classics' series by the Gomer Press, supplies an English translation of Dr. Johnston's text of lolo's poems (very slightly amended) with the original Welsh text in parallel. In modern estimation lolo Goch has been somewhat eclipsed by his more dazzling contemporary, Dafydd ap Gwilym. (Dafydd's genius apart, the subject matter of his poems-predominantly the celebration of love and nature-guaranteed him a more eternal appeal than lolo's stock-in-trade, the eulogy of noble patrons.) Yet fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Welsh poets revered lolo as one of the great figures of bardism. This may have been primarily because they recognized him as the founding father of the late medieval praise tradition, his main contribution having been to harness the newly devised and popular cywydd metre in the service of eulogy. It may also have been because they recognized the intrinsic quality of much of his work. At his best lolo was a poet of majestic power and vivid realization: among his relatively small canon of thirty-nine poems there are some which the author of this volume (incidentally, not a Welshman) claims to be 'among the classics of medieval European literature'. Unlike Dafydd ap Gwilym's highly egotistic muse, lolo's poetry, by dint of its subject matter, presents a broad and richly textured panorama of fourteenth-century Welsh society. Among the poet's patrons were lay notables such as Sir Rhys ap Gruffudd, members of the Penmynydd family, Sir Hywel of the Axe, Roger Mortimer, earl of