Welsh Journals

Contest Singing MEREDYDD EVANS In a eulogy to Madog ap Maredudd written around the middle of the twelfth century, Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr refers to a gathering of people outside the doors of the court on New Year's Day: Yn drwchus o gwmpas llew glew iawn, rhannwr arian disglair, [Yn] gyffro am galennig y mae'r dorf [o'i gwmpas] ar adeg Calan, [Megis] cynnwrf ton fyrlymus ar draeth o gwmpas traed gwylan. [In a crowd around the very brave lion, brilliant dispenser of money,/ Clamouring for a New Year gift, the crowd assembles on New Year's day,/ Like the noise of a rushing wave on the shore around the gull's feet.] Then, to conclude his poem, he addresses the poets among them: Codwch, cenwch, fe ganaf [innau] â'm cerdd, A mi, feirdd, i mewn a chwi allan. [Arise, sing, and I too shall sing with my poem/ I myself, poets, within, and you without.] It may be that here the poet was drawing on the image of a ritual which was archaic even in his own day: the challenging of other poets to gain admittance to the court by beating him, Cynddelw, in a poetic contest. To use a later expression, Cynddelw was challenging them to 'ynnill y ty' ('gain the house'). If so, then this is the first Welsh reference to the ritual known to me. However, this kind of competition was an aspect of what can be termed contest singing: a kind of singing which had been part of the entertainment in Welsh households for many centuries. Indeed, some of the competitors were ready to claim the authority of antiquity for using it during their visits to some of the great houses in their area at