becomes, therefore, important to examine the sources from which the story has been derived and the story itself. It is perfectly obvious that even if it is substantially true, many of the details must have no surer foundation than the imagination of writers. How, for instance, was it possible to know the length of time occupied by the second voyage, if with it all intercourse between the new colony and Wales had ceased? But though one historian has gone so far as to give the exact strength, viz., eighteen vessels, and three thousand men, of the force which sailed on the second expedition,[1] and the exact date, 1164, with the further details that Madoc took possession of the Mexican throne, and that the family traditions of the Aztecs, when Cortes arrived, clearly showed their connection with Wales; and though another has recorded the discovery of Madoc's epitaph in the West Indies,[2] such things add discredit but do not wholly disprove. It is the nature of a tradition to acquire detail in transmission.
First, then, as to the sources of the tradition. There is no allusion to Madoc in the 'Brut y Tywysogion,' or 'The Chronicle of the Princes of Wales,' which appears to have been composed in the twelfth century, about Madoc's date, and which makes frequent mention of Owain Gwynedd, his father.[3] Madoc is first mentioned by a twelfth-century poet[4] as having been slain, apparently in battle. As the poem, in which this reference occurs, opens with an appeal to Owain, and laments the death of several of his children, it is only fair to conclude that here is the Madoc who was supposed to have sailed to America. Another poem, by its reference to "an assassin slaying Madoc,"[5] strengthens this belief. It is not till the middle or close of the fifteenth century that there is any trace of the tradition as we now have it, when Meredydd ap Rhys sings,
- ↑ Morgan, 'British Kymry,' 166.
- ↑ Howell, quoted in Madoc, 37.
- ↑ Mon. Brit., 94, 95. Vide also text in the same volume. The date of the MS. of the Brut is fourteenth century. It is ascribed to one Caradoc. The absence of all mention of Madoc is not absolutely conclusive, as the book may have been composed before he became prominent.
- ↑ Cynddelw, Madoc, 8.
- ↑ Llywarch, Madoc, 12. The oft-quoted passage from Llywarch, "Ker aber Congwy," etc., seems to have nothing whatever to do with Madoc. Madoc, 203, notes.
given in R. B. Anderson's 'America not Discovered by Columbus' (Chicago, 1883), pp. 142-149. To this should be added the article "Madog" in the 'Dict. National Biography,' vol. 35, which is distinctly unfavourable. Other references are given in J. Winsor's 'History of America' (London, 1889), vol. i. 111, note 8.
