Description The Enchantress
Hudoliaeth Merch
Garlands and gold in gleaming
Chains, praise-poems glowing
With love?s lustre: all good gifts
I leave beside your closed gates.
Insomnia and sickness ?
Despite your grace and sweetness ?
Are all my payment, and churls
Crowd me with questions. Such chills
Of awe I felt: your white hue
Like snow ? or parchment. How you
Spat your spite into my face,
Called me wretch and made a farce
Of my love! I gave you silks;
You fell into frosty sulks,
Flashed your white teeth in lovely
Snarls, sneered and left me lonely.
Love?s plagues and pangs are sweet
Goads: enough to scourge a saint.
Gorgeous girl, I, like Gwaeddan
Pursue elusive golden
Mirages, in hot pursuit
Of nothing, worn out, hard-pressed,
Like a cloak caught in the wind.
Your wry enchantment has wound
Coils around me. Dignity
Deserts me. Duplicity
And discourtesy do not
Taint your pert allure. I doubt
There is any sorcery,
Witch of Dyfed, or surly
Spell you have not cast. Menw?s
Magic, treachery, a man?s
Undoing: my strength is spent,
Victim of your dark intent.
I?m not alone: there were three
Knew enchantment prior to me:
Would that I had Menw here
So that I could disappear;
Would that Eiddlig, Irish dwarf
Was nearby when you are wroth;
Or I, by the sea of Môn,
Was with Math, King of Arfon!
At the feast, I offered verse
To you. You snorted, averse
To any assignation,
Spreading mist: Llwyd?s confusion.
Wise, snide, discreet, you deserve
A silver harp, you deceive
So tunefully. Each note stings
Me. Enchantress, your tight-strung
Harp twangs out untruths, lilting
Lies, siren songs alighting
On sad, unsuspecting fools.
The melody rises, falls:
Perfect and perilous scales
Echoing inside men?s skulls.
Carved of cavilling, music
Conjured by Virgil?s magic,
Its column is a bludgeon
Which strikes me dead with longing.
Its pegs are pure deception:
Newfangled, and disruption
Rings out as your fingers pluck,
Thin as filigree: a plague
Of plangent yearnings attends
A harsh tune that never ends.
If art, not wealth, rules the world ?
Girl-sorcerer, seagull-white
Traitor to thousands, snow-cold,
Pale candle of Camber?s land,
Blanched and fierce as any swan ?
Take my troth, or I?ll be gone.
Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2012. It seems likely that this is one of Dafydd?s Morfudd poems, but it also affords him an opportunity to enlist the heroes of Welsh mythology in support of his complaint. In the Third Branch of the Mabinogion, Lwyd fab Cilcoed is responsible for casting a spell on the seven cantrefi of Dyfed: a mist shrouds the kingdom, turning it into a waste-land in which no animal or plant can survive. By remarking that the girl comes from Dyfed, the land of the tales of enchantment in the Mabinogion, Dafydd is implying that it is perfectly natural that she should have magical powers of her own. In the story of Culhwch and Olwen, also recorded in the Mabinogion, Menw fab Teirgwaedd, one of King Arthur?s men, has powers of enchantment so great that should the knights ?come to a pagan land he could cast a spell on them so that no one could see them, but they could see everyone? (Sioned Davies, Ed., The Mabinogion, Oxford, 2007, p. 190). Math, son of Mathonwy, figures in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion. He is himself a powerful wizard, capable of conjuring a living woman out of flowers, but he is not immune to magic himself, and cannot live unless his feet are in the lap of a virgin. It is significant that Dafydd invokes Math, Menw and the more obscure Eiddlig in a triad; he is in fact echoing the style of the Welsh Triads themselves, which mention all three men in separate verses (see Rachel Bromwich, ?Dafydd ap Gwilym and the Bardic Grammar?, in Aspects of the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym, Cardiff, 1986, pp. 115-116). Virgil, too, was regarded as a magician in Dafydd?s time. These mythological elements are counterbalanced by the extended metaphor in which the girl?s irresistible beauty and dismissive attitude towards Dafydd are compared with a not-entirely-pleasing melody played upon a harp. Gwaeddan is now unknown, outside this poem. ?Camber?s land? is, of course, Wales itself.
