The Snow (poem)

"The Snow" was included in the 1789 collection of Dafydd's works, Barddoniaeth Dafydd ab Gwilym [cy],[9][6] and was attributed to Dafydd in a selection of cywyddau edited by Ifor Williams and Thomas Roberts in 1914,[10] but Thomas Parry excluded it from his 1952 edition, citing as objections the poem's simplicity of style and language and its very sparing use of cynghanedd sain, a complicated system of alliteration and internal rhyme, and of sangiad, the breaking up of syntax by interpolating a word or phrase into a line.

[11] Parry's rejection of the poem from the Dafydd ap Gwilym canon proved very controversial and provoked many protests from other scholars, notably in two papers by D. J.

[14] "The Snow" is only one of a number of poems attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym on elemental themes, such as the mist, the moon, and the stars.

They allow the poet to display his mastery of dyfalu, unstructured sequences of metaphorical epithets used to compare the subject of the poem to any number of other things.

[15] In particular, he compares these inanimate subjects to aspects of human activity – flour falling through the hole in a loft floor, feathers being plucked from a goose, and so on – thereby bringing them down to earth.

[19][20] It also makes a rare and valuable reference to medieval Welsh drama when it tells us that "feathers settle on the gown like an actor playing a dragon".

In English mummers' plays one actor would similarly wear a cloak of feathers in imitation of a dragon's scales.