ABEL, SIÔN, an 18th century Montgomeryshire ballad-writer

Author of ‘Cerdd yn erbyn medd-dod, celwydd a chybydd-dra’ (Song against drunkenness, lies and miserliness), which was published by H. Lloyd, of Shrewsbury, in a booklet of three ballads, recorded as No. 154 in J. H. Davies's Bibliography of Welsh Ballads.

An English song of ten stanzas in the Welsh metre known as tri-thrawiad is to be found in N.L.W. MS. 14402, a manuscript book in the hand of Humphrey Jones of Castle Caereinion (born 1719), which contains, together with other matter, a number of songs by poets of the Meifod and Caereinion districts. The song already mentioned bears the title ‘A Christmas Carol, 1783, o waith fy hen feistr,’ and it is followed by the note: ‘Yr hen Siôn Abel a'i canodd’ (‘by old Siôn Abel’). It may be presumed that Siôn Abel, the master, did not dwell far from the home of his pupil, Humphrey Jones of Caereinion.

Author

• David Myrddin Lloyd, (1909 - 1981), Aberystwyth

Published date: 1959

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