Translations into English Verse from the Poems of Davyth ap Gwilym/The Gloves
THE GLOVES.
The poet thanks Ivor for a present of a pair of gloves, containing a gift of money[1]. This poem was probably written on the same occasion as the preceding one, viz., the bard’s departure from North Wales.
All who Ivor’s palace leave,
Gold from Ivor’s hand receive.
On the day the poet went
From his halls—the baron sent
Gloves, replete with precious store,
(To the bard) of radiant ore;
On the better hand bestowed
Gold—the left with silver glowed:
From his grasp these gloves to gain,
Maidens oft have vied in vain;
For the bard, to fair or friend,
Ivor’s gift will never lend.
He extols these gloves made of “buck-skin,” as superior to gloves made of “sheep-skin,” and declares he will never trust them in the possession of others, but will keep them on his own fingers. He then proceeds to express his gratitude in a strain of considerable beauty.
May for this the glories all—
That, at Taliesin’s[2] call,
Urien Rheged’s palace bless’d—
On thy mansions ever rest;
On thy hearth-stone and thy board,
In thy halls—by bards ador’d—
With illustrious children graced,
Gallant youths and virgins chaste;
Where, ’mid feasts and banquets gay,
Nobles while their lives away;
Where with constant radiance shine
Ladies of distinguished line,
In magnificent array—
And where hawks, and steeds, and wine,
Words of courtesy divine,
And bright robes of gold combine,
Ivor’s splendour to display.
He concludes by extolling his “gloves” above those worn by the “surly Saxon,”—the epithet with which he generally honours the English nation—and by reiterating the praises of his benefactor.
- ↑ It was the custom of those times to make presents of money in gloves. “When Sir John More was chancellor, in the time of Henry VIII., a Mrs. Croker, for whom he had made a decree against Lord Arundel, came to him to request his acceptance of a pair of gloves, in which were contained forty pounds in angels; he told her, with a smile, that it would be ill manners to refuse a lady’s present, but though he should keep the gloves, he must return the gold, which he enforced her to receive.—Life of Sir John More, by Sir James Mackintosh, in Lardner’s Cyclopædia.
- ↑ Taliesin addressed many of his poems to Urien Rheged, a prince of Cumberland, to whom he was bard.—Cambro Briton.