Llyfr Taliesin
The Book of Taliesin
Peniarth MS 2
The Book of Taliesin is a small manuscript, missing its covers, and thus the beginning of the first poem; luckily, this poem is also contained in the Red Book of Hergest. It contains 56 mostly-complete poems, and a fifty-seventh poem, of which only remains the words: "Darogan Katwal"--thought to be "Darogan Katwaladr," The Prediction of Cadwalladr.
The manuscript was the work of a single scribe, probably living in Glamorgan; this same scribe is thought to have produced other manuscripts, and J. Gwenogvryn Evans believed he worked on parts of the White Book of Rhydderch. It's exact history is unknown; it passed through the hands of several collectors during the seventeenth century, until finally being bought by Robert Vaughan, who added it to his library in Hengwrt, and stayed there until it entered the hands of W.W.E. Wynne in Peniarth. It was then donated to the National Library of Wales.
The majority of the translations I am using here are from The Four Ancient Books of Wales, by W. F. Skene, 1868. Unfortunately, they are probably not the most accurate translations, but they are the only ones which, to my knowledge, are public domain. (Even at that I'm not sure, though the book is well out of print.) In constructing this digital manuscript, I have worked using not only Skene's collection, but also the three volume "Book of Taliesin" diplomatic texts edited by J. Gwenogvryn Evans in the early part of the 20th century, and have heavily consulted the images of the manuscript, currently housed on the NLW website. If you look at the manuscript, it tends to alternate between using red or green initial letters. I have attempted to imitate this as closely as possible, including repeating the inconsistancies of the original scribe.
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© Mary Jones 2015