Note 297 — Chapter IV · THE MINSTREL REPERTORY

On Welsh bardism see H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Intr. à l’Étude de la Litt. celtique, 63; Stephens, Literature of the Kymry, 84, 93, 97, 102; Ernest David, Études historiques sur la Poésie et la Musique dans la Cambrie, 13, 62-103, 147-64. In Wales, an isolated corner of Europe, little touched by Latin influences, the bards long retained the social and national position which it is probable they once had held in all the Aryan peoples. Their status is defined in the laws of Howel Dha (†920) and in those of Gruffyd ab Cynan (1100). The latter code distinguishes three orders of bards proper, the Pryddyd or Chair bards, the Teuluwr or Palace bards, and the Arwyddfardd or heralds, also called Storiawr, the cantores historici of Giraldus Cambrensis. The Pryddyd and Teuluwr differ precisely as poets and executants, trouvères and jougleurs. Below all these come the Clerwr, against whom official bardism from the sixth to the thirteenth century showed an inveterate animosity. These are an unattached wandering folk, players on flutes, tambourines, and other instruments meaner than the telyn or harp, and the crwth or viol which alone the bards proper deigned to use. Many of them had also picked up the mime-tricks of the foreigners. It was probably with these Clerwr that the English and French neighbours of the Kelts came mainly into contact. Padelford, 5, puts this contact as early as the Anglo-Saxon period.