To the Yew Tree Above Dafydd ap Gwilym's Grave

[2] The cywydd on the yew tree constitutes the main evidence for the widespread belief that Dafydd is buried at Strata Florida Abbey (also known as Ystrad Fflur) in Ceredigion.

It has been called "a superb poem, perhaps Gruffudd Gryg's best...a remarkably sensitive and perceptive act of poetic homage that acknowledges, far more than any more direct statement ever could, Dafydd's status as a true athro for his generation".

King David prophesied you, and Dafydd described you as his house of green leaves, a castle shielding the dead from the icy wind, "as good as the tree of rods of old".

[14][15] A third way was proposed by Sir Ifor Williams, who contended that the poem, though written after Dafydd's death, is not an elegy of any kind, the subject being the yew itself rather than the poet.

[16][17] The issue of whether this poem was written before or after Dafydd's death is an important one, because it is the only historical evidence corroborating the tradition, known to have existed since the 18th century, that he was buried at Strata Florida.

[18] In the 1530s John Leland wrote of Strata Florida that "The coemiteri wherin the cunteri about doth buri is veri large, and meanely waullid with stoone.

He decided that the one growing north-east of the church looked the more ancient, and therefore paid his homage to Dafydd ap Gwilym by reciting a poem beneath that yew.

[26] T. Gwynn Jones's Welsh-language lyric "Ystrad Fflur", written in 1920,[27] includes, in Edwin Stanley James's translation, a reference to Dafydd's tomb "where the sombre yew-trees wave".