Wales 1400–1660

Gwerful ferch (daughter of ) Hywel Fychan is the earliest woman poet for whom a signifcant body of her work survives and one of only a handful of women poets before 1800 who adopted a bardic name.Tat name, Gwerful Mechain, locates her in Llanfechain, Montgomeryshire.Te daughter of Hywel Fychan of Llanfechain, she married John ap Llywelyn Fychan and they had at least one daughter, named Mawd (Maud).Her status as a member of the minor gentry meant that the strict-metre poetry of Wales' professional bardic tradition formed part of her polite culture and, indeed, her connections with the professional bardic guild were numerous.She was part of the network of the cultured Llwyd and Fychan families of Llwydiarth, and was related by marriage to the professional poet Llywelyn ap Moel y Pantri (d.1440).Crucially, in terms of bardic training, production, and performance, Gwerful Mechain belonged to an active amateur bardic circle led by Dafydd Llwyd of Mathafarn (f.c. 1400-90), which included other poets such as Llywelyn ap Gutun (f.1480) and Ieuan Dyf (c.1461-1500).Her network also included some of the most prominent professional poets of her time: Guto'r Glyn (c.1435-c.1493), Dafydd ab Edmwnd (f.1450-97), and Tudur Aled (c.1465-c.1525).Dafydd Llwyd was her bardic teacher or mentor, and the erotically charged satiric poems that they exchanged gave rise to the later oral tradition that they were lovers.Beyond their texts, no other material corroborates this tradition.About forty poems are attributed to Gwerful in manuscript, including Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Cywydd y Gal' (Cywydd to the Penis), but Nerys A. Howells has shown that around ffteen poems are authentic (Howells 2001, 26-31).Gwerful mostly composed cywyddau and englynion, the primary poetic metres of her age; the former, constructed in rhyming couplets, was used for extended poems, and the latter, a four-line stanza with the same 134 use, available at https://www.