Popular Entertainers 1n Medieval Wales

Abstract For the professional poets of medieval Wales the fourteenth century was a time of redefinition and innovation. The cywydd poetry of this period owes its remarkable richness to a happy fusion of creative genius and a variety of formative influences, not the least of which is likely to have been an indigenous undercurrent of popular verse. Before going on to evaluate the nature of the early Cywyddwyr’s debt to the sub-literary verse tradition of their time, it will be useful to establish what exactly we mean when we speak of the popular poets of medieval Wales. The present chapter will be concerned with the evidence relating to the existence of a class of entertainers of infe rior status who, unlike their bardic counterparts, have been doomed to an almost unbroken, but deceptive silence until the close of the Middle Ages.