Ieuan Deulwyn

Ieuan Deulwyn (fl. c. 1460) was a Welsh language poet or bard.

A collection of fifty of the poems of Ieuan Deulwyn were published in 1909 under the auspices of the Bangor Welsh Manuscripts Society, thanks to Ifor Williams.

Ieuan Deulwyn belonged to the school of Dafydd ap Gwilym, as did Bedo Brwynllys, Dafydd ab Edmwnd and others. Because they have similar styles, their work is constantly attributed to each other, which makes definitive identification of Ieuan’s poetry difficult. Williams used the evidence of multiple manuscripts as a determination of which poems to include in his collection, which may have resulted in some of Deulwyn’s poems being excluded, but we are fortunate indeed in the edition that was published, complete with explanatory footnotes, notes about many of the subjects, and indexes of both people and places.

Ieuan clings to one metre, the cywydd. There are several types of cywydd, each with strictly defined rules that were well established by Ieuan’s time. In the less rigid forms of poetry to which we are accustomed in English, strict rules might seem to result in a staid or dry poetry. But, as Glanmor Williams says, “Far from being fetters which intolerably shackle the poet’s ability to express himself freely, [the rules of cynghanedd and cywydd] become adornments which add to the power as well as the elegance of the verse”. No wonder it took at least nine years to become a master poet! Of course these rules developed around the Welsh language, complicating translation of the poetry into English. One poem that has been translated into English is an elegy for Dafydd Fychan ap Dafydd of Llyn-went, Llanbister, Radnorshire, and his friend Ieuan ap Gruffudd ap Hywel Llwyd of Cloch-faen, Llangurig, Montgomeryshire. The friends were slain in an ambush during the reign of Henry VI.

Ieuan’s best work is considered to be in his love poems, which comprise the majority of his collected works (22 of 50 poems). Williams says that he is “above all a poet of love.” And George Borrow opines that “Ieuan Deulwyn’s most beautiful production is his cywydd to a birch tree.” Borrow suggests this might have some relation to the “deulwyn” part of his name, but the word for birch, bedwen, can also mean a symbol of constancy in love. For Ieuan, this quality apparently superseded marriage, as one of his poems, “To a Cuckold,” implies. This poem is also described as a “poem to his love who had alienated him after marrying a wealthy churl.” The expectation that a married woman would remain faithful to her former lover might reveal something about the society in which he lived or perhaps the character of the poet. After all, his teacher was Dafydd ap Gwilym.

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