After A Stay Of Some Time With Ifor, He Returned To His Native
County And Lived At Bro Gynnin.
Here he fell in love with a young
lady of birth called Dyddgu, who did not favour his addresses.
He
did not break his heart, however, on her account, but speedily
bestowed it on the fair Morfudd, whom he first saw at Rhosyr in
Anglesey, to which place both had gone on a religious account. The
lady after some demur consented to become his wife. Her parents
refusing to sanction the union, their hands were joined beneath the
greenwood tree by one Madawg Benfras, a bard, and a great friend of
Ab Gwilym. The joining of people's hands by bards, which was
probably a relic of Druidism, had long been practised in Wales, and
marriages of this kind were generally considered valid, and seldom
set aside. The ecclesiastical law, however, did not recognise
these poetical marriages, and the parents of Morfudd by appealing
to the law soon severed the union. After confining the lady for a
short time, they bestowed her hand in legal fashion upon a
chieftain of the neighbourhood, very rich but rather old, and with
a hump on his back, on account which he was nicknamed bow-back, or
little hump-back. Morfudd, however, who passed her time in rather
a dull manner with this person, which would not have been the case
had she done her duty by endeavouring to make the poor man
comfortable, and by visiting the sick and needy around her, was
soon induced by the bard to elope with him.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 660 of 856
Words from 181109 to 181375
of 235675
