America Discovered by the Welsh in 1170 A.D Part 2

This emigration of Prince Madoc seems to have been commemorated by Bards who lived very near the time in which it took place. According to various old doc.u.ments, his enterprise of exploring the ocean westward resulted in the discovery of a new world, from which he returned to make known his good fortune and to gather other emigrants to accompany him thither. He accordingly fitted out a second expedition, and, taking his brother Riryd, Lord of Clocran in Ireland, with him, they prevailed upon a number to accompany them, sufficient to fill ten ships. They set sail from a small port, five miles from Holyhead, in the island of Anglesea.

There is a large book of pedigrees still extant, written by Jeuan Brecva, who flourished in the age preceding the time of Columbus, where the above event is thus noticed in treating of the genealogy of Owain Gwynedd: "Madoc and Riryd found land far in the sea of the west, and there they settled."

The Bards were the historians of those times. By a perusal of the compositions of those who were contemporary with Madoc, it is found that his name is mentioned three or four times by Cynddelw, Llywarch, and Gwalchmai. These are held to be among the most celebrated of the Welsh Bards. Their works, which are mostly extant in ma.n.u.script, would each of them make a respectable volume.

Llywarch, who was the son of Llewelyn, wrote a poem while undergoing the ordeal of the hot iron to prove his innocence respecting Madoc's death.

He invoked the aid of the Saviour "lest he should injure his hand with the shining sword and his kinsmen should have to pay the _galanas_." It is addressed

"TO THE HOT IRON.

"Good Iron! free me from the charge Of slaying. Show that he Who smote the prince with murderous hand Heaven's kingdoms nine shall never see, Whilst I the dwelling-place of G.o.d Shall share, safe from all enmity."

The same poet, in a panegyric, addressed to Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd, of Hywell and Madoc, his brothers, says,--

"Two princes were there, who in wrath dealt woe, Yet by the people of the earth were loved: One who in Arvon quench'd ambition's flame, Leading on land his bravely toiling men; And one of temper mild, in trouble great, Far o'er the bosom of the mighty sea Sought a possession he could safely keep, From all estranged for a country's sake."

In a poem addressed to Prince Llywelyn ab Iorweth by the same bard, there appear the following lines:

"Needless it is to ask all anxiously, Who from invaders will our waters guard?

Llywelyn, he will guard the boundary wave; The lion i' the breach, ruler of Gwynedd.

The land is his to Powys' distant bounds, He met the Saxons by Llanwynwy lake, Across the wave is he victorious, Nephew of Madoc, whom we more and more Lament that he is gone."

Gwalchmai addressed an ode to Davydd ab Owain Gwynedd, lamenting his being deprived of that prince's brothers:

"Silent I cannot be without mentioning who they were, Who so well of me merited praise: Owain the fierce, above the muse's song, The manly hero of the conflict; Cadwallon, ere he was lost, It was not with smooth words he praised me; Cadwaladyr, lover of the harmony of exhilarating songs, He was wont to honor me; Madoc, distributing his goods, More he did to please than displease me."

In an elegy on the family of Owain Gwynedd, by Cynddelw, Madoc is twice mentioned, one pa.s.sage particularly seeming worthy of attention:

"And is not Madoc by the whelming wave Slain? How I sorrow for the helpful friend!

Even in battle was he free from hate, Yet not in vain grasp'd he the warrior's spear."

There is a Welsh triad ent.i.tled "The Three Losses by Disappearance."

The first loss was that of Gavran, the son of Aeddan Vradog, a chieftain of distinguished celebrity of the latter part of the fifth century. He went on an expedition to discover some islands which are known by the name of Gwerddonan Llion, or the Green Islands of the Ocean. He was never heard of afterwards, and the situation of these islands became lost to the Welsh.

The second loss was that of Merddin, who was the Bard of Emrys Wledig, or the Ambrosius of Saxon history, by whose command Stonehenge was erected.

Merddin is held as one of the three Christian Bards of Wales,--Merddin Wyllt and Taliesin being the other two.

This Merddin, with twelve Bards, went to sea, and they were heard of no more.

The third loss of this remarkable triad was Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd, who, with three hundred men, went to sea in ten ships, and it is not known whither they went.

About 1440 A.D., Meredydd ab Rhys, having obtained the loan of a fishing-net by a poem, sent a second poem with it when he returned it, and wrote thus:

"Let Ivan, of a generous stock, Hunt, like his father, on the land; In good time, on the waters, I, By liberal aid, will hunter be.

Madoc the brave, of aspect fair, Owain of Gwynedd's offspring true, Would have no land,--man of my soul!-- Nor any wealth, except the seas.

Madoc am I, who, through my life, By sea will seek my wonted prey."

Madoc was a navigator, and made the sea his home. No doubt can be entertained on that point. In the above quotation the poet likens himself to Madoc as the true type of a sailor.

It has been said that the Welsh Bards were historians. They were retained in families of importance to record the actions of their ancestors and those of the Bards themselves in odes and songs. While they may have employed a poetic license in their construction, the facts themselves were not lost out of sight. So far as can be known, it appears that these odes were written prior to any definite notion of a Western world, known subsequently as the American Continent. Madoc's voyages might not have been very familiar to many except the Welsh, and they were ignorant whither he went. One thing, however, is absolutely certain, that this tradition having existed for centuries could not have been invented, as some have suspected, to support the English against the Spanish claims of prior discovery. A period of three hundred and twenty-two years intervened between that of Madoc and that of Columbus.

CHAPTER IV.

SUPPORTED BY WELSH AND OTHER HISTORIANS.

Many valuable historical doc.u.ments in prose and in poetry relating to the Welsh nation were destroyed by the order of Edward the First of England about the time that he so inhumanly ma.s.sacred the Welsh Bards.

He feared that their recitations of patriotic poetry among the people might serve to awaken and preserve the spirit of liberty and independence among them, and lead eventually to their casting off the yoke he was so cruelly imposing upon them.

Sir John Wynne, who was born in 1553 and died in 1626, wrote the history of the Gwedir family, which remained in ma.n.u.script until published by Hon. Daines Barrington in 1773. It contains an enumeration of the various branches of the descendants of Owen Gwynedd, especially those who were claimed to be the more immediate ancestors of Sir John's family. He mentions Madoc as the son of Owen Gwynedd, but makes no reference to his voyages. He touches upon the subject of the ma.s.sacre of the Bards by Edward the First, "who," he says, "caused them all to be hanged by martial law as stirrers-up of the people to sedition." Some of the records of Welsh history were removed from their usually secure retreats in abbeys to London, as testified to by Sir John and others, particularly William Salesbury, who declared that they were burned, "and that there escaped not one that was not incurably maimed, and irrecuperably torn and mangled."

This happened in the Tower, where, previous to their destruction, many of the political prisoners from Wales obtained leave to read "such books of their tongue as they most delighted in."

In view of these facts, and considering that the history of the events contemporaneous with the period at which Madoc is alleged to have left his native land is unusually scanty on this subject, it is more than probable that some of these lost ma.n.u.scripts contained particular accounts of Madoc's departure. Fortunately, however, enough has escaped the spoiler's hand to furnish such proof to every rational mind that the question must be regarded as settled.

Caradoc, of Llancarvan, Glamorganshire, wrote, in his native language, a history of Wales. He lived at the time Owen Gwynedd was in the height of his power and fame, and was familiar with all the more important events in connection with his country. His history was translated into English by Humphrey Lloyd, and published by Dr. David Powel in the year 1584, and has been reprinted several times since. In it is contained the following narrative, which bears all the semblance of historical truth that any narration of facts can. Its plainness, naturalness, and simplicity are at once evident:

"On the death of Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, about the year 1169, several of his children contended for his dominions; and Madoc, one of his sons, perceiving his native land engaged, or on the eve of being engaged, in a civil war, thought it best to try his fortune in some foreign clime. Leaving North Wales in a very unsettled state, he sailed, with a few ships which he had fitted up and manned for that purpose, to the westward, leaving Ireland to the north. He came at length to an unknown country, where most things appeared to him new and uncustomary, and the manners of the natives far different from what he had seen in Europe. Madoc, having viewed the fertility and pleasantness of the country, left the most part of those he had taken with him behind (Sir Thomas Herbert says that the number he left behind was one hundred and twenty), and returned to North Wales. Upon his arrival he described to his friends what a fair and extensive land he had met with, void of any inhabitants, whilst they employed themselves and all their skill to supplant one another for only a ragged portion of rocks and mountains.

Accordingly, having prevailed with considerable numbers to accompany him to that country, he sailed back with ten ships, and bid adieu to his native land." There is an apparent contradiction between "the manners of the natives" and "void of inhabitants." The historian meant to convey the idea by the latter phrase that the portion Madoc discovered was thinly peopled, and might be occupied without much difficulty.

But it is conjectured that Caradoc's writings do not reach any lower than the year 1157,--which would be thirteen years earlier than the time of Madoc's departure, or 1170. Some suppose that Caradoc must have died in 1157, because the _Brut_ or Annales from which Humphrey Lloyd chiefly compiled his history of Cambria, and which bore Caradoc's name, did not extend beyond that year. There is no sound reason for this belief: many of the various _Bruts_ bore his name, and it is altogether likely that he was living when Madoc set sail and returned, prior to his final leave. It would not be wise, however, to dispute Humphrey Lloyd, Caradoc's translator into English, who says that that part of the history beyond 1157, and, of course, that including Madoc's voyages, was compiled from collections made from time to time, and kept in the abbeys of Conway in Carnarvonshire, North Wales, and Strata Florida, Cardiganshire, South Wales. These and other abbeys were the repositories of literature and history for many centuries, whose registers were carefully compared together every third year, when the Beirdd or Bards belonging to these houses went on their customary visitations, which were called _clera_. This practice continued until the death of Prince Llewelyn, or a little prior, about the year 1270. If Caradoc did not continue his history beyond 1157, and that because of his death in that year, even then there is no reason to question the veracity of those monks of Conway and Strata Florida who continued the same history in their registers. Guttun Owen, a Bard in the reign of Edward the Fourth of England, about the year 1480 obtained one of the most perfect copies of these registers. He doubtless had special facilities, since he was personally commissioned by Henry the Seventh to search the pedigree of Owen Tudor, that king's grandfather, among the Welsh annals. Another Bard about the same time with Guttun Owen mentioned this event. His name was Cynfrig ab Gronow. Thus, step by step, for the s.p.a.ce of three hundred years, can be traced through Bards and historians this recital respecting Madoc, and all prior to the discovery of America by Columbus; so that it cannot possibly be said that the claims afterwards advanced in favor of Madoc were an after-thought.

Rev. Josiah Rees, the editor of a Welsh magazine published in Wales in 1770, told the Welsh scholar Edward Williams that he had in his possession at that time two or three fair ma.n.u.scripts of Caradoc of Llancarvan, with the continuation by the monks of Strata Florida, Guttun Owen, and others. He furthermore said that he had compared these originals with Dr. Powel's translation, or, more strictly speaking, with Humphrey Lloyd's translation, which Dr. Powel published in 1584. Mr.

Rees said that it was the most faithful he ever met with in any language. Lord Lyttleton, in the last century, then, was very much mistaken, and withal quite ignorant, when he said that Dr. Powel "dressed up some tradition concerning Madoc in order to convey an idea that his countrymen had the honor of first discovering America." Dr.

Powel himself did not entirely depend on Lloyd's translation in the preparation of the work for the press, for he says that he compared that translation with the original records, and therefore was able to correct his copy. All this proves that Caradoc's history, with the continuation from the registers of Conway and Strata Florida, the writings of Guttun Owen, Cynfrig ab Gronow, Sir Meredyth ab Rhys, and others, were extant in the days of Lloyd and Powel, and consequently these two latter historians would have been detected if they had been in any degree guilty of misrepresentation or forgery.

In Hakluyt's "Collection of Voyages," a large and costly edition published in 1589, there is found, in connection with other important statements, the following:

"After the death of Owen Gwynedd, his sons fell at debate who should inherit after him; for the eldest son born in matrimony, Iorweth, or Edward (Drwyndwn), was counted unmeet to govern, because of the maim upon his face, and Howel, that took upon him the rule, was a base son, begotten upon an Irishwoman. Therefore David, another son, gathered all the power he could, and came against Howel, and, fighting with him, slew him, and afterwards enjoyed quietly the whole land of North Wales until his brother Edward's son [Llewelyn] came to age.

"Madoc, another of Owen Gwynedd's sons, left the land in contentions betwixt his brethren, and prepared certain ships with men and munition, and sought adventures by seas, sailing west, and leaving the coast of Ireland so far north that he came to a land unknown, where he saw many strange things. This land must needs be some part of the country of which the Spaniards affirm themselves to be the first finders since Hanno's time (the Carthaginian admiral, supposed to have flourished about four hundred and fifty years before Christ); whereupon it is manifest that that country was by Britons discovered long before Columbus led any Spaniards thither.

"Of the voyage and return of this Madoc there be many fables framed, as the common people do use, in distance of place and length of time, rather to augment than to diminish; _but sure it is, there he was_. And after he had returned home and declared the pleasant and fruitful countries that he had seen, and, upon the contrary, for what barren and wild ground his brethren and nephews did murder one another, he prepared a number of ships, and got with him such men and women as were desirous to live in quietness, and, taking leave of his friends, took his journey thitherwards again.