The Description of Wales
by Geraldus Cambrensis
Book I
Chapter XII
Of their quickness and sharpness of
understanding
These people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and
gifted with a rich and powerful understanding, excel in
whatever studies they pursue, and are more quick and cunning
than the other inhabitants of a western clime.
Their musical instruments charm and delight the ear with
their sweetness, are borne along by such celerity and
delicacy of modulation, producing such a consonance from the
rapidity of seemingly discordant touches, that I shall
briefly repeat what is set forth in our Irish Topography on
the subject of the musical instruments of the three nations.
It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of
the fingers, the musical proportions can be preserved, and
that throughout the difficult modulations on their various
instruments, the harmony is completed with such a sweet
velocity, so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord,
as if the chords sounded together fourths or fifths. They
always begin from B flat, and return to the same, that the
whole may be completed under the sweetness of a pleasing
sound. They enter into a movement, and conclude it in so
delicate a manner, and play the little notes so sportively
under the blunter sounds of the base strings, enlivening
with wanton levity, or communicating a deeper internal
sensation of pleasure, so that the perfection of their art
appears in the concealment of it:
"Si lateat, prosit;
- - ferat ars deprensa pudorem."
"Art profits when concealed,
Disgraces when revealed."
From this cause, those very strains which afford deep and
unspeakable mental delight to those who have skilfully
penetrated into the mysteries of the art, fatigue rather
than gratify the ears of others, who seeing, do not
perceive, and hearing, do not understand; and by whom the
finest music is esteemed no better than a confused and
disorderly noise, and will be heard with unwillingness and
disgust.
They make use of three instruments, the harp, the pipe,
and the crwth or crowd (CHORUS).
They omit no part of natural rhetoric in the management
of civil actions, in quickness of invention, disposition,
refutation, and confirmation. In their rhymed songs and set
speeches they are so subtle and ingenious, that they
produce, in their native tongue, ornaments of wonderful and
exquisite invention both in the words and sentences. Hence
arise those poets whom they call Bards, of whom you will
find many in this nation, endowed with the above faculty,
according to the poet's observation:
"Plurima concreti fuderunt carmina Bardi."
But they make use of alliteration (ANOMINATIONE) in
preference to all other ornaments of rhetoric, and that
particular kind which joins by consonancy the first letters
or syllables of words. So much do the English and Welsh
nations employ this ornament of words in all exquisite
composition, that no sentence is esteemed to be elegantly
spoken, no oration to be otherwise than uncouth and
unrefined, unless it be fully polished with the file of this
figure. Thus in the British tongue:
"Digawn Duw da i unic."
"Wrth bob crybwyll rhaid pwyll parawd."
And in English,
"God is together gammen and wisedom."
The same ornament of speech is also frequent in the Latin
language. Virgil says,
"Tales casus Cassandra canebat."
And again, in his address to Augustus,
"Dum dubitet natura marem, faceretve
puellam,
Natus es, o pulcher, pene puella, puer."
This ornament occurs not in any language we know so
frequently as in the two first; it is, indeed, surprising
that the French, in other respects so ornamented, should be
entirely ignorant of this verbal elegance so much adopted in
other languages. Nor can I believe that the English and
Welsh, so different and adverse to each other, could
designedly have agreed in the usage of this figure; but I
should rather suppose that it had grown habitual to both by
long custom, as it pleases the ear by a transition from
similar to similar sounds. Cicero, in his book "On
Elocution," observes of such who know the practice, not the
art, "Other persons when they read good orations or poems,
approve of the orators or poets, not understanding the
reason why, being affected, they approve; because they
cannot know in what place, of what nature, nor how that
effect is caused which so highly delights them."
The Description of Wales
Book I
by Geraldus Cambrensis
Chapter XI
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