Gwerful Mechain
Gwerful Mechain (fl. 1462-1500), who lived in Mechain in Powys, is perhaps the most famous female Welsh-language poet. Little is known of her life.
Her work, composed in the traditional strict metres, including cywyddau and englynion, is often a celebration of religion and sex, sometimes within the same poem. Probably the most famous part of her work today is her erotic poetry, especially Cywydd y Cedor ("Ode to the Pubic Hair"), a poem praising the vulva. It is a work in which she upbraids male poets for celebrating so many parts of a woman's body, but not the genitals. "Let songs about the quim circulate," she adjures her readers. As to the pubic hair: "Lovely bush, God save it."
Her year of birth has also been said to have been 1460.[1]
[edit] References
Howells, Nerys Ann (ed.) Gwaith Gwerful Mechain ac Eraill, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2001, ISBN 0947531262
- ^ Olsen, Kirsten, Chronology of Women's History, p 55, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994, ISBN 0313288038, ISBN 9780313288036, retrieved via Google Books on May 26, 2009
[edit] External links
- A short biography
- Text of Cywydd y Cedor at Wikisource
- English translation; another English translation
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