In the assessment of Jenny Rowland, 'the narrator-persona displays very human foibles, including the attempt to deny them.
This naturalism makes it tempting to view the poem as a personal lyric, but it is undoubtedly misleading.
The slightly bumbling, overly sincere narrator of "Kintaw geir" has a shrewd observer of human nature behind him.
The incredible impression of spontaneity also conceals art and very tight organization.
However, his preparations are disturbed by a sneeze, which seems clearly to have been viewed as a bad omen.
The poem closes in 11-13 with the narrator successfully focusing his thoughts on the religious purpose of his journey, with an appropriate escalation in the elaborateness of the verse, closing with a prayer of intercession.
[2] As edited and translated by Jenny Rowland, the poem reads:
ny credaw coel canyd kerth y gur am creuys e am nerth.
The first speech I will utter in the morning when I arise: may the cross of Christ be as armour about me.
Saddle the chestnut with the white bridle, eager to run, with a rough coat.
Saddle the chestnut with the long leap, free-moving in hard going, desiring to amble.
Weighty is the company of the world; thick the leaves of the briars; bitter is the drinking horn of sweet mead.
Offspring of the Ruler, victorious Redeemer, and Peter head of every nation, Saint Bridget, bless my journey.
Sun of intercession, Lord of petition, Christ in Heaven, pillar of boon, may I atone for my sin by my deed.
[3] Jenny Rowland judges that Kyntaw geir dates from around the eleventh or maybe the twelfth century.
[4] Unlike many early englynion, Kyntaw geir is attested already in the thirteenth-century Black Book of Carmarthen.
Although it now lost from the White Book due to damage, it attested in two later manuscripts descended from the White Book, Peniarth 111 (made by John Jones of Gellillyfdy in 1607), whose spelling is very close to the White Book's, and London, British Library, Add.
[6] 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.
It is fairly clear that all these manuscripts descend from a lost common original, to which they are all fairly similar, making the creation of a critical edition of the poems relatively straightforward.