The other aspect of the tradition was the professionalism of the poets and their reliance on patronage from kings, princes and nobles for their living, similar to the way Irish bards and Norse skalds were patronized for the production of complex, often highly alliterative forms of verse.
The fall of the Kingdom of Gwynedd and the loss of Welsh independence in any form in 1282 proved a crisis in the tradition, but one that was eventually overcome.
The professionalism of the poetic tradition was sustained by a Guild of Poets, or Order of Bards, with its own "rule book" emphasising the making of poetry as a craft.
This manuscript contains a large body of later mystical poetry attributed to the poet, but scholars have recognised twelve poems that belong to the 6th century.
[6] These poems, in the form of monologues, express the sorrow and affliction felt at the loss of the eastern portion of the Kingdom of Powys (present day Shropshire) to the English, but they are also works where nature is an important element in the background, reflecting the main action and feelings of the poetry itself.
[7] Though the Anglo-Saxon invaders seem to break Welsh hearts in most of the early poetry, there are some poems of encouragement and the hope of an eventual and decisive defeat that would drive them back into the sea.
One such poem is the 10th-century Armes Prydein from the Book of Taliesin which sees a coalition of Irish, British, and Scandinavian forces defeating the English and restoring Britain to the Welsh.
[citation needed] This period also produced religious poetry, such as the englynion in praise of the Trinity found in the 9th-century Juvencus Manuscript (Cambridge MS Ff.
In the Book of Taliesin we find a 9th-century poem Edmyg Dinbych (In Praise of Tenby, a town in Pembrokeshire), probably produced by a court poet in Dyfed to celebrate the New Year (Welsh: Calan).
They were members of a Guild of poets whose rights and responsibilities were enshrined in native Welsh law; and as such, they worked within a developed literary culture and with inflexible traditions.
The bardd teulu (household poet) was one of the 24 officers of the court and he was responsible for singing for the military retinue before going into battle, and for the queen in the privacy of her chamber.
Until 1282, Wales consisted of a number of 'kingdoms', each with its own independent ruler; this ensured that there was no shortage of courts available to the travelling professional poet or "bard".
After 1282 the poetic tradition survived by turning to the land-owning nobility to act as patrons, and these included some Norman lords who had successfully integrated themselves with the Welsh.
Guto was also a soldier who fought on the Yorkist side during the War of the Roses, but spent his last years as a lay guest at the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis, near Llangollen (a short distance from Glyn Ceiriog).
He was renowned as a praise poet of both secular and religious noblemen, and also reflects the changes at the beginning of the 16th century which were threatening the future of the bardic system.
Though he was a member of the medieval guild of poets and a notable upholder of that tradition, he was also closely associated with William Salesbury, Wales' leading Renaissance scholar.
In fact one of the first Welsh literature to be published in print was Gruffudd's collection of proverbs in 1547, Oll synnwyr pen Kembero ygyd (Modern Welsh spelling: Holl synnwyr pen Cymro i gyd; English:"All the wisdom of a Welshman's head (collected) together").
But we do know that some women did master the Welsh poetic craft and wrote poetry at this time, but only the work of one woman has survived in significant numbers, that of Gwerful Mechain.
Satire poetry (Welsh: canu dychan) was part of the 'official' poets' repertoire and sparingly used within the praise tradition to chastise a miserly patron.
The marginal note, known from its opening (Latin) word as The Surexit memorandum, dates from the ninth century, or even earlier, and is a record of a legal case over land.
Since the earliest manuscripts containing these legal texts date from about two hundred and fifty years after the event they are probably not a record of what was codified there, if such a conference was even convened.
The use of Welsh for legal texts shows that it had the words and the technical terms with definite and exact meanings needed in such circumstances.
The vast majority of Welsh religious texts from the Middle Ages are translations and mostly the works of unknown monks and priests.
Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes) consists of variant Welsh translations of Latin original annales telling the history of Wales from the seventh century to the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282.
Brut y Brenhinedd (Chronicle of the Kings) is the name given to a number of texts that ultimately trace their origins back to translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (1136).
As such they were key works in shaping how the Welsh thought of themselves and others, tracing their origins back to Brutus of Troy, the mythical founder of Britain.