[1] The poem gradually reveals itself as a monologue by a person who is ill, probably with leprosy, as he laments his exile from society and the ruin of his homestead.
It is characterised by the use of the natural world as a frame and reference point for human emotion, by a shifting focus between the speaker's observations on his particular situation and gnomic observations on life in general, and by jumps from one subject to another producing tantalising juxtapositions.
[2] The poem is attested principally in the late fourteenth-century Red Book of Hergest (p. 514, column 1034 line 24–column 1035 end).
It was also included in the White Book of Rhydderch, but is now lost due to damage to the manuscript.
[4] Its relationship to the other manuscripts is complex and may represent a conflation of multiple medieval sources, but it seems to have at least some independent value as a witness to the lost archetype of the poem.
[6] Despite surviving first in fourteenth-century manuscripts and in largely Middle Welsh orthography, the poem is thought to have been composed in Old Welsh and transmitted orally and/or in manuscript, due to its archaic style and occasionally archaic spelling.
[7] The poem was translated into English by the poet Edward Thomas in his influential book Beautiful Wales (1905).
As edited by Ifor Williams and translated by Jenny Rowland, the poem runs: Kyfreu eichyawc yn dolyd Cuawc.
Eglur nwyure; ehalaeth Tonn; gwiw callon rac hiraeth.
Pan vrys ketwyr y gatle, Mi nyt af: anaf a'm de.
Bydaut dolur pan burer, Gwerthu bychot yr llawer.
Pan uarno Douyd, dyd hir, Tywyll vyd geu; goleu gwir.
When the Lord judges on the long day the false will be black, the true bright.
However, it is largely agreed, for stylistic reasons, that their order should be reversed, meaning that 31 ends the poem.
This is what has been done in the supplied translation; the English parallel to 31 therefore actually corresponds to the Welsh in 32 and vice versa.