Prophecies of the Bards

“This prophesy Merlin will make for I live before his time”.

So The Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear. Prophesy was an important medium of both magical and political rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Consider the case of Thomas of Erceldoune. He is mainly remembered today as Thomas the Rhymer who was carried off by the Queen of Faery and returned from her realm with "a tongue that could never lie". Robert Graves represented him as a true poet and his truth telling tongue as one which was gifted with the power of poetic utterance. But as the 14th century romance which appears to be the source of the later and much better known ballad about him makes clear, he also returns with power to transmit prophetic wisdom, in this case predicting the course of conflicts between England and Scotland.

If one role of the surviving druidic functions in Welsh society was that of the bard, or poet, another was that of prophet. Gerald of Wales has his awenyddion uttering divinations in their inspired poetic outpourings as they come out of a trance. The verses ascribed to Myrddin in The Black Book of Carmarthen and to Taliesin in The Book of Taliesin include prophecies, often of events supposedly predicted before they happened. It is thought that these were often the work of bards who are identified by their real names in their court poetry but who adopted personas of earlier legendary bardic figures to engage in prophecy or other inspired poetic activities. It is as if practising their craft as poets in their own names was one thing, but speaking while under the spell of the awen required their transformation into a magical alter ego.

These thoughts are occasioned by the publication of Marged Haycock's Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin. This sequel to the earlier Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin focuses not so much on the utterances of the personality of a super bard but more purely on the business of prophesying the fate of the Britons in the face of invading Saxons, as if the voice were that of an early Briton foretelling those things related in the history of Gildas. As the editor points out, this is a view of the future that has the social function of history. Many are poems which hope for deliverance from adversity, often expressing a wish that refuge from enemies will be found and portraying the social breakdown that is experienced as a disruption of the natural ordering of things. They remind us that prophesy was a medium of social and political debate as much as of magical practice. These bards spoke for and from within their communities.

3 comments:

WordsPoeticallyWorth said...

An interesting post that I enjoyed reading.

Thank you. Love love, Andrew. Bye.

Anonymous said...

'It is as if practising their craft as poets in their own names was one thing, but speaking while under the spell of the awen required their transformation into a magical alter ego.'

This is a very interesting point to meditate on, particularly the issue of where, and if it is possible to draw a line...

Lorna

Heron said...

Yes Lorna, and I think walking in such liminal spaces along the borders and edges of the world is the path the awenydd must take.