Habituated to regard the martial spirit of their countrymen as the only bulwark against foreign oppression, they naturally selected the single virtue of military prowess as the great subject of their eulogy and their songs. Hence it was, that with the destruction of their country’s freedom, they appear to have lost the only object of their art and the sole source of their inspiration; and nearly a century elapsed before we find any symptoms of its reviving influence. To this result other causes must have powerfully contributed: the jealous policy of the English authorities, by whom the bards were justly viewed as the great promoters of a spirit of independence among the people; the fanaticism of the mendicant friars, who appear to have denounced many of the refinements and amusements of life as at variance with Christianity; and, above all, that general feeling of fear and despondency, which always pervades a recently subjugated nation, and destroys all sympathy with the joyous songs of the minstrel.
About the middle of the fourteenth century the poetical genius of the Welsh began to break forth anew, but with its characteristics essentially changed; both in sentiment and style, the ‘Awen[1]’ of the bards had undergone a complete revolution. We no longer meet in their works with those warlike scenes, and those songs in praise of the heroes of their country, which occur so often in the poems of their predecessors. The Welsh minstrel was now
- ↑ ‘Awen,’ the term applied to the poetical inspiration of the bards.
