Manuscripts

The only medieval copy of this poem to have survived was copied into the Hendregadredd Manuscript, NLW 6680B, by alpha, the main hand and designer of the manuscript who probably worked at the scriptorium of Strata Florida, c.1300 (see RepWM). Canu i Gadfan is located in the manuscript’s third quire (which was originally the twelfth quire before the foliation was rearranged in the seventeenth century); this quire contains a variety of poems, mostly by poets of Gwynedd (Jones 2003: 119). The first folio of the quire is missing, and the four lines of religious poetry at the top of folio 19r, preceding Canu i Gadfan, probably represent the ending of a now lost religious poem also by Llywelyn Fardd.

In 1617 John Davies of Mallwyd made a faithful copy of the text of NLW 6680B into his ‘Liber A’, namely BL 14869, which is the source for the later copies of the poem in Llst 31, Pen 119, BL 14877 and NLW 1981B (stemma). This edition, therefore, is based solely on the testimony of NLW 6680B.

Title
NLW 6680B cānu y gaduan llywelyn uart ae cant.

List of manuscripts
NLW 6680B, 19r‒21r (hand alpha, c.1300)
BL 14869, 204r–208r (John Davies, Mallwyd, 1617)
Llst 31, 413–21 (William Maurice, 1662)
Pen 119, 463–7 (Wiliam Jones, c.1700)
BL 14877, 86r–89r (William Morris, 1756–7)
NLW 1981B, 271–80 (Evan Evans, 1757)