Aduỽyn gaer yssyd: an early Welsh poem revisited

Abstract

The poem, Etmic Dinbych, preserved in the Book of Taliesin, is a much anthologized poem about which much has been written – about both the poem itself and its historical context. For a poem that has been so studied a number of issues remain, both textual and contextual. In particular, the extra stanza apparently appended to the end of the poem in the Book of Taliesin, a version of which also appears in the Black Book of Carmarthen, remains understudied. This paper provides a new discussion and edition of the poem with special emphasis on the problems presented by the extra stanza for which a new date and context are proposed.