Academic co-operation between Aberystwyth and Brest

It was a day to ponder on The Middle Ages in Wales and Brittany (1), but it turned into a day that had us thinking of the future, and with much optimism. This was the second one-day forum since Professor Dafydd Johnston became Director of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (2) at Aberystwyth - a day that brought together members of the Welsh centre and the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique (3) at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale at Brest.

Evidently, there was a desire for more of this kind of exchange and collaboration between Aberystwyth and Brest. Hélène Tétrel, who spoke on Comparative Mediaeval Studies is currently on a sabbatical in Reykjavik, Iceland, where she is studying the Old Norse (or Icelandic) versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth's «Historia Regum Britanniae», the Arthurian romances, and «Tristrams saga ok Isöndar», the only complete narrative, albeit in prose, of Thomas of Brittany's «Tristran».

Madame Tétrel appealed for exchanges and joint programmes in mediaeval studies. «There are several MA students learning Middle Welsh in France today,» she said. «We need more people with a wider knowledge of languages – people, for example, who know Old Norse.»

She wondered whether more could be via the Internet, by chat-room exchanges of translations and discussions.

«Unlike France everyone knows of Aberystwyth,» she told me. I explained that a former Aberystwyth Professor of English, Gwyn Jones, had translated many Icelandic sagas into English and had been awarded Iceland's greatest honour, the Order of the Falcon.

She told me that «Iceland's former President, Mrs Vigdis Finnbogadóttir, the only Head of State I have met and now well into her 70s, is energetically promoting translations of Icelandic literature into other languages».

As well as Dr Ann Parry Owen's welcoming , we had two pioneering presentations from Wales. Professor Dafydd Johnston, with reference to the works of the great mediaeval Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, discussed methods of re-creating poems as they were originally written by comparing a variety of later manuscripts.

«Simply studying the earliest surviving manuscripts is not necessarily the best, or most satisfying, method,» he said. Examples of the work done by the University of Wales Swansea, where Dr Johnston was Professor of Welsh before coming to Aberystwyth can be seen on (voir le site)

Hundred Years War

Dr Barry Lewis considered the attitudes of Welsh poets towards the English during The Hundred Years War, mainly through the eyes of Guto'r Glyn, whose work is now the subject of detailed study at the Aberystwyth Centre (voir le site) . Guto's work offers a colourful and detailed picture of the lives of the Welsh nobility in the Middle Ages.

A professional praise poet, his patrons were Marcher lords and supporters of the English Crown. He was thus obliged to take a similar stance, but not necessarily of the English in general. His respect for the French as worthy adversaries was also noteworthy. Less well disposed towards the English, ironically, was his contemporary, Hywel Swrdwal, a Welsh poet of Anglo-Norman descent.

The architecture

Jean-François Simon, Director of the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique, in his paper on mediaeval houses in Brittany, spoke of the emerging interests in vernacular architecture and material traces of the lives of ordinary people in the Middle Ages.

Villages deserted between the beginning of the 12th and the middle of the 14th centuries, some buried under sand on the coast and others surrounded by poor quality land, made such archaeological activity possible, particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Patronymics

In a land populated by a paucity of names – Jones, Davies, Evans, Thomas &c - the richness of Breton patronyms is a constant source of delight and curiosity to the Welsh. Breton surnames based on place-names (Tremadec, Lannurien), the occupation of the person (Baraer, Le Goff), names prefixed by «ab» – son of – (Abalan, Abiven) and the descriptive (Le Bihan, Le Meur) would be familiar to most. I confess, though, that I had not realised that Le Quellec meant «big testicles».

Gary German's entertaining contribution on this subject was inevitably of interest. What was, to me, new, was another type of name. These names M. German believes have survived from the ancient Welsh Canu Hengerdd. «Ninety per cent of these names from the Hengerdd survive in large numbers in South Western Brittany reflecting a bardic tradition stemming from a time when Brittany and Wales enjoyed a common heritage,» he said. These include names like Bran, Bleid and Gael which Welsh speakers would instantly recognise.

The Lais

Fañch Postic talked of making connections between mediaeval texts and oral legends. Breton literature was admired across Europe in the Middle Ages – yet this survives only in the «Breton Lais» of Marie de France, and Chaucer's imitation of the same form. Yet there are few traces in the Breton language.

La Villemarqué, internationally the best-known collector of Breton folksongs and ballads, tried to make connections between the oral and any remnants of ancient manuscripts. He attended the Abergavenny Eisteddfod of 1839 and spent time at Lady Charlotte Guest's home in Dowlais, where he took advantage of her generosity in letting him read her translations of the «Mabinogion». Her diaries reveal her fury when she discovered the use he made of them, all the more because he neglected to acknowledge his debt to her!

Be that as it may, «there is a problem», as M. Postic explained, «in reproducing texts from oral sources. The likes of La Villemarqué amended texts in the name of taste and literary aesthetics while later collectors believed in absolute fidelity».

An even more complex issue than Professor Johnston's problems in trying to re-create an original phantom text from existing manuscripts!

It was a day that left us with much on which to hope and ponder. May the British Council continue its sponsorship.

Gwyn Griffiths

(1) « Le Moyen-Âge au Pays de Galles et en Bretagne »
« Golwg ar yr Oesoedd Canol : Cymru a LLydaw ».

(2) Abreystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies:
(voir le site)

(3) Brest: Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique:
(voir le site)