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poetic talents, even in the courts of those princes whose territories were most invaded by their Danish countrymen. This he expressly affirms of the Anglo-Saxon and Irish kings; and it is to the full as likely to have been the case with the Welsh princes, who often concurred with the Danes in distressing the English. I am led to think that the latter Welsh Bards might possibly have been excited to cultivate the alliterative versification more strictly, from the example of the Icelandic Scalds, and their imitators the Anglo-Saxon Poets; because the more ancient British Bards were nothing near so exact and strict in their alliterations, as those of the middle and latter ages: particularly after the Norman conquest of England, and even after king Edward the Ist’s conquest of Wales[1]: whereas some centuries before this, the Icelandic metre had been brought
- ↑ A very learned and ingenious British Antiquary thus informs me, “Our prosody depends entirely on what you call Alliteration, and which our Grammarians term Cynghannedd, i. e. Concentus, vel Symphonia Consonantica. This at first was not very strict: for the Bards of the sixth century used it very sparingly, and were not circumscribed by any rules. The Bards from the [Norman] conquest to the death of Llewellyn our last prince, were more strict. But from thence to queen Elizabeth’s time, the rules of Alliteration were to be observed with great nicety; so
