Madoc

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. THE FACTS AND STATEMENTS USUALLY CITED TO PROVE THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY MADOC AP OWEN GWYNEDD. I Shall present these statements in the order of chronology, and cite them, each and all, with all the fulness that the subject demands, omitting nothing that is relevant to the inquiry; including...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. THE FACTS AND STATEMENTS USUALLY CITED TO PROVE THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY MADOC AP OWEN GWYNEDD. I Shall present these statements in the order of chronology, and cite them, each and all, with all the fulness that the subject demands, omitting nothing that is relevant to the inquiry; including nothing calculated to convey a false impression, and abstaining from any expression of opinion on my own part. Section I.?Bardic Poems. Of all the authorities usually named in this connection, the earliest in point of date are the Bardic Poems; and as several of the passages referred to were composed by bards who were the contemporaries of Madoc, their testimony, if clear and full, is entitled to the greatest consideration. These poems, especially the portions of them usually cited, have therefore been held in considerable esteem; but, singularly enough, this estimation has been shared by each of several contending parties, and all appeal to them with equal confidence; some to prove that Madoc found an unknown country in the West, some to show that he landed either in Armorica or Gallicia; and some to deny that Madoc ever left his own country. All these interpretations cannot possibly be correct; and it therefore becomes of importance to have the passages presented in their simple and original form, that the reader may be able to draw his own inferences therefrom. Thepassages in dispute occur in the poems of bards named Cynddelw, Llywarch ab Lly welyn?called ' Prydydd y Moch/ ?Gwalchmai, and Meredydd ab Rhys. We will cite the passages in the order of the above names. Cynddelw was one of the principal bards of the twelfth century; and as his poems extend over the latter half of the twelfth, into the first half of the thirteenth century, he must have lived to a...