The Ploughman

Often compared with William Langland's Middle English Piers Plowman, it presents a sympathetic portrayal of the meek and godly ploughman; no other Welsh bardic poem takes an ordinary working man as its subject.

[2][3] It has been called the most notable of Iolo's poems,[4] comparable with the finest works of Dafydd ap Gwilym,[5] and its popularity in the Middle Ages can be judged from the fact that it survives in seventy-five manuscripts.

In these circumstances the ploughman became a symbol of the older Welsh society that was in the process of disappearing, while Hu Gadarn in the poem was perhaps intended as an image of the ideal lord of the old native kind.

[16] There are parallels between this poem and several Middle English works, notably William Langland's Piers Plowman and the description of the ploughman in the General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

[20] The passage from Iolo's poem in which the ploughman is defined by the faults he is not guilty of, with the implication that those in authority do, can be compared with the section of Dafydd ap Gwilym's cywydd "The Wind" in which a series of similar negative statements covertly accuses English law officers of oppressive practices.