by two or more lines terminating with the same letters.
In the older Welsh poetry, by which we mean that composed before the
termination of the first millennium, both rhyme and alliteration are
employed, but in a less remarkable manner than in the bardic effusions of
comparatively modern times. The extent to which the bards of the middle
ages, and those of one or two subsequent centuries, carried rhyme and
alliteration seems marvellous to the English versifier. We English think
we have accomplished a great feat in rhyme when we have made three lines
consonant in their terminations; but Dafydd Benfras, or David of the
Thick Head, would make fifty lines rhyme together, and not think that he
had accomplished anything remarkable in rhyming either. Our English
alliterative triumph is the following line, composed by a young lady in
the year 1800, on the occasion of a gentleman of the name of Lee planting
a lane with lilacs:--

'Let lovely lilacs line Lee's lonely lane!'

in which not only every word, but every syllable commences with the same
letter--_l_.

But what is this English alliterative triumph of the young lady compared
with the Welsh alliterative triumph of Dafydd Nanmawr, who wrote a poem
of twelve lines, every syllable of which commences with the letter g,
with the exception of the last, which begins with n?

The earliest Cymric or British metre seems to have been a triban or
triplet, in each line of which there were in general six syllables. The
bards of the sixth, seventh, and several succeeding centuries used this
metre, and likewise others, invented by themselves, in which the lines
are of various length. There was no regular system of prosody till the
year 1120, when one was established under the auspices of Grufydd ap
Cynan, prince of Gwynedd. This Ap Cynan, who, though of Welsh origin,
was born in Dublin, and educated at the Danish Irish court, was
passionately fond of poetry, and was not only well acquainted with that
of the British bards, but with the strains of the Icelandic skalds and
Irish fileas. Shortly after his accession to the throne of Gwynedd, of
which he was the rightful heir, he proclaimed an eisteddfod, or poetical
sessions. At this eisteddfod, which was numerously attended by poets of
various nations, a system of prosody was drawn up by competent persons,
at his instigation, for the use of the Welsh, and established by his
authority. This system, in which Cymric, Icelandic, and