he cause, nature, and end of an
Eisteddfod?' No one appearing ready with an answer, Griffith said: 'Let
the little man in the grey coat answer;' whereupon Dafydd made the
following reply: 'To remember what has been--to think of what is--and to
judge about what shall be.'

Lewis Glyn Cothi lived during the wars of the Roses. He was bard to
Jasper Earl of Pembroke, son of Owen Tudor and Catharine of France, and
brother uterine of Henry VI. He followed his patron to the fatal battle
of Mortimer's Cross as a captain of foot. His pieces are mostly on the
events of his time, and are full of curious historical information.

Ieuan Deulwyn was bard and friend of Ryce ap Thomas, to whom he addressed
a remarkable ode in stanzas of four lines on the principle of
counter-change, by which any line in the quatrain may begin it. His
friend and patron Ryce ap Thomas was the grandson of that Griffith ap
Nicholas who perished at the battle of Mortimer's Cross, fighting against
Lancaster. Ryce, however, when Richmond, the last hope of Lancaster,
landed at Milford Haven, joined him at the head of 'all the Ryces,' and
was the main cause of his eventually winning the crown. He was loaded
with riches and honours by Henry VII., and was an especial favourite with
Henry VIII., who used to call him Father Preecc, my trusty Welshman. He
was a great warrior, a consummate courtier, and a very wise man; for
whatever harm he might do to people, he never spoke ill of anybody. His
tomb, bearing the sculptured figures of himself and wife, may be seen in
the church of St. Peter, at Carmarthen.

Sion Tudor was born about the middle of the sixteenth century. He had
much wit and humour, but was very satirical. He wrote a bitter epigram
on London, in which city, by the bye, he had been most unmercifully
fleeced. William Middleton was one of the sea captains of Queen
Elizabeth; he translated the Psalms into several of the four-and-twenty
measures whilst commanding a ship of war in the West Indian seas. Twm
Sion Cati lived in the days of James I.: he was a sweet poet, but--start
not, gentle reader! a ferocious robber. His cave amidst the wild hills
between Tregaron and Brecknock is still pointed out by the neighbouring
rustics. In the middle of the seventeenth century was produced a
singular little piece, author unknown: it is an englyn or epigram of four
lines on a spider, all in vowels:--

'O'i wiw wy i weu e a,--o'i au,
O'i wyau y weu