SOURCE: Loesch, Katharine T. “Welsh Bardic Poetry and Performance in the Middle Ages.” In Performance of Literature in Historical Perspectives, pp. 185-90. Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1983.

In the following excerpt, Loesch provides a rough background of Dafydd and illustrates some of his most famous verses.

Dafydd ap Gwilym still stands as the greatest poet that ever wrote in Welsh and as one of the greatest of medieval poets. He lived from about 1320 to about 1380 and is said to be buried under the great spreading yew that still grows among the ruins of Strata Florida, the Cistercian Abbey where many of the princes and nobles of the south of Wales are buried and where many manuscripts were copied. He belongs to a period in Welsh history and medieval history generally which is both exciting and elusive.

Dafydd ap Gwilym was entirely a strict meter poet; the innovations...