poems are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly
attitude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry."[A]

I have endeavoured as far as possible to preserve in my translations
both the character of these poems and their metrical form. But the
latter attempt can be only a mere approximation owing to the strict
rules of early Irish verse both as regards alliteration and vowel
consonance. Still the use of the "inlaid rhyme" and other assonantal
devices have, it is to be hoped, brought my renderings nearer in vocal
effect to the originals than the use of more familiar English verse
methods would have done.

The same metrical difficulties have met me when translating the Welsh
sacred and spiritual poems which form the second division of this
volume. But they have been more easy to grapple with--in part because I
have had more assistance in dealing with the older Cymric poems from my
lamented friend Mr. Sidney Richard John and other Welsh scholars, than I
had in the case of the early Irish lyrics--in part because the later
Welsh poems which I have rendered into English verse are generally in
free, not "strict," metres, and therefore present no great difficulty to
the translator.

The poems in the Welsh section are, roughly speaking, arranged in
chronological order. The early Welsh poets Aneurin and Llywarch Hen are
represented by two singular pieces, Llywarch Hen's curious "Tercets" and
Aneurin's "Ode to the Months." In both of these, nature poetry and
proverbial philosophy are oddly intermingled in a manner reminiscent of
the Greek Gnomic Poets. Two examples are given of the serious verse of
Dafydd ab Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer, who though he did not, like
Wordsworth, read nature into human life with that spiritual insight for