LLWYD, HUW ('Huw Llwyd o Gynfal ', 1568? - 1630?), soldier and bard
Pseudonym: Huw Llwyd O Gynfal
Date of birth: 1568?
Date of death: 1630?
Parent: Dafydd Llwyd ap Howel ap Rhys
Gender: Male
Occupation: soldier and bard
Area of activity: Military; Poetry
Author: Robert (Bob) Owen
His home was Cynfal Fawr, in the parish of Maentwrog, Merioneth. His father was Dafydd Llwyd ap Howel ap Rhys. It is known that Huw Llwyd and his brother Owen bought much land in that neighbourhood. He fought in France and Holland in a Welsh regiment raised to fight the armies of Spain in the Low Countries. It is thought that he built the present Cynfal house; the poet Huw Machno has a cywydd c.1630, in which the interior and the exterior of the house are described. Huw Llwyd's wife was the daughter of the house of Hendre-mur (or Mur-castell), a house about two miles from Cynfal.
Huw Llwyd's poems are in the free and the strict metres. Some of his best-known poems relate to foxes and hounds; he is reputed to have been a famous sportsman (two of his poems to the fox are sometimes attributed to Edmund Prys). In one cywydd he asks Thomas Prys, of Plas Iolyn, Denbighshire, for a couple of hounds; see also a cywydd by Hugh Salesbury who asks Edward Lloyd, S. Asaph, to let Huw Llwyd have a greyhound cub this was on 6 October 1606. A medical treatise in the hand of Ellis Wynne ('Y Bardd Cwsc') in Peniarth MS 123 is taken from a MS. belonging to Huw Llwyd, who appears to have had some skill in medicine and who also, if local tradition be believed, had the reputation of being skilled in wizardry. It is not known when he died; it is, however, known that he lived at Cynfal in 1629 and that he outlived his neighbour, archdeacon Edmund Prys.
Author
- Robert (Bob) Owen, (1885 - 1962)
- J. H. Davies, Gweithiau Morgan Llwyd o Wynedd (Bangor 1899-1908), II, xvi-xx, 309-13
- Gwyneddon Manuscript 19 (in U.C.N.W.)
- NLW Archives: NLW MS 719B (40)
- NLW Archives: Llanstephan MS 124: Poetry (250-2)
- NLW Archives: Cwrtmawr MS 27E (178)
- NLW Archives: Mostyn MS 58 (87), NLW MS 3031B (145), NLW MS 3038B (85, 88, 93, 383), NLW MS 3048D (533, 542)
- NLW Archives: Peniarth MS 115: Barddoniaeth William Phyllip (22)
- NLW Archives: Peniarth MS 123: The Book of William Wynne of Lasynys
Sources
- Wikidata: Q13129200
Additional Links
Published date: 1959
Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/
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