The Magpie's Advice

The poet portrays himself as an overage lover who bemoans his romantic woes as he wanders through the woods, and is rebuked by a magpie who bids him concern himself with matters more befitting his years.

He describes the birds he sees and hears, the nightingale, blackbird, thrush and lark, and, feeling joy in the midst of his distress, observes the trees in their new greenery.

[12] Rachel Bromwich and Huw M. Edwards postulated the existence of a tradition of popular poetry before Dafydd's time in which birds are asked for advice, though such poems are only actually evidenced from the 16th century and later.

More firmly established is the link between "The Magpie's Advice" and medieval French (including Occitan) poetry of courtly love.

His skill in presenting reported speech in a racy, colloquial style despite the exigencies of a very demanding metre, apparent in "The Magpie's Advice", is also demonstrated in, for example, "His Shadow" and "The Dawn".

[17] Dafydd composed many poems in the form of dialogues with non-human interlocutors: "In Praise of Summer", "Despondency", "His Shadow", "Longing's Genealogy", "The Woodcock (II)", and "The Ruin".

The magpie's criticism of Dafydd's way of life is reminiscent of that delivered in "The Poet and the Grey Friar",[20] and the suggestion that he become a hermit is also made in his "The Girls of Llanbadarn".

"you would learn every fine far-off language", line 59), and it was believed to be, according to the literary historian Dafydd Johnston, "a bird of ill-omen, with a drop of the Devil's blood in it".