Medieval poetry for the win!

You find the damnedest stuff on Twitter. (Excuse me, X.)

Today, for example, I found a pair of medieval Welsh poems. One is by a male poet, addressing his cock with some exasperation. Then a century later (or so) there's one from a female poet, complaining that men don't compliment women's cunts nearly as often as they should.

You'll find the details below the fold. 

The earlier poem is by Dafydd ap Gwilym. Wikipedia puts him in the mid-1300's, and says he is "regarded as one of the leading Welsh poets and amongst the great poets of Europe in the Middle Ages." Today's poem from him is called Cywydd y gal (A Poem in Praise of the Penis) and goes like this:

Sculpture of Dafydd ap Gwilym by
W Wheatley Wagstaff at City Hall, Cardiff

Dear God, penis. Clearly, I’ll have to keep
an eye on you, and a hand when I sleep.
Don’t look at me like that, you bone-brained stalk;
after last night, there’s too much at stake.
Quill to the cunt’s inkwell you may well be,
but you need muzzling, so that the acrimony
you’ve stoked in others is never repeated.
Do you hear, arch-distractor? I want you fettered.
You’re nothing but an ugly, uneven rolling pin
with a bagpipe attachment. Stop that careening,
you gift-wrapped shocker of decent women,
you groin-stuck nut-pole, you booby-trapped swing,
you gander in one year’s tufty plumage,
you wetted stump who gasps milk, you crude homage
to a shoot with her bud. Not one more twitch,
you cursed baton, you crooked clutch
who dreams to be the axle of a girl’s two halves,
you eel with a blowhole, you stick shorn of leaves.
So you want to be longer than a stout femur,
cat burgler and chiseller of nights clad in amor,
a wizard’s staff, a leather-helmeted tail-chaser?
A crowbar to enter the vaults, arch-seducer
and briefcase clasp to a girl’s unguarded arse?
You’ve a pipe in your head, you dumb bratwurst,
a whistle that peeps every day like clockwork.
Your narrow eye thinks all girls worth a jerk.
You silly pestle, you telescopic missile,
you long to light a fire in each little pink vessel,
swear you’re her lap’s errant thatching needle.
But you’re a bell-less bell clapper, bow to a fiddle
long confiscated, bulging pod with hangers-on,
a single-nostrilled nose forever unblown,
skin-sleeved and ball-ballasted, stupid with bliss.
Damn it if you’re not a trouserful of filthiness,
a potato-knobbly goose neck, half-maniacal,
an incorrigible trickster and sordid barnacle,
a divining rod to lead me into serious trouble.
What about last night? Quite unforgivable.
Hang your head, you cane for planting children.
You’re out of control. I’m drawing a cordon,
since despite my warnings, you blood-hot flute,
you’re still rotten from crown to untraceable root.

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

Then in reply—more or less—we have a poem by Gwerful Mechain. Wikipedia puts her in the second half of the 1400's, and says she is "the only female medieval Welsh poet from whom a substantial body of work is known to have survived." The occasion for her poem seems to have been her general dissatisfaction that male poets always write poems about a girl's eyes, or her lips, or her hair, but never about the most female part of her. And so she seems to have said (as Tom Lehrer did centuries later), "I have attempted to fill this need." Here is the result, titled Cywydd y Cedor ("Poem to the Vagina"):

There are no known likenesses of Gwerful Mechain,
so this is an imagined portrayal by Carl Chapple in 2017.

Every foolish drunken poet,
boorish vanity without ceasing,
(never may I warrant it,
I of great noble stock,)
has always declaimed fruitless praise
in song of the girls of the lands
all day long, certain gift,
most incompletely, by God the Father:
praising the hair, gown of fine love,
and every such living girl,
and lower down praising merrily
the brows above the eyes;
praising also, lovely shape,
the smoothness of the soft breasts,
and the beauty's arms, bright drape,
she deserved honour, and the girl's hands.
Then with his finest wizardry
before night he did sing,
he pays homage to God's greatness,
fruitless eulogy with his tongue:
leaving the middle without praise
and the place where children are conceived,
and the warm quim, clear excellence,
tender and fat, bright fervent broken circle,
where I loved, in perfect health,
the quim below the smock.
You are a body of boundless strength,
a faultless court of fat's plumage.
I declare, the quim is fair,
circle of broad-edged lips,
it is a valley longer than a spoon or a hand,
a ditch to hold a penis two hands long;
cunt there by the swelling arse,
song's table with its double in red.
And the bright saints, men of the church,
when they get the chance, perfect gift,
don't fail, highest blessing,
by Beuno, to give it a good feel.
For this reason, thorough rebuke,
all you proud poets,
let songs to the quim circulate
without fail to gain reward.
Sultan of an ode, it is silk,
little seam, curtain on a fine bright cunt,
flaps in a place of greeting,
the sour grove, it is full of love,
very proud forest, faultless gift,
tender frieze, fur of a fine pair of testicles,
a girl's thick grove, circle of precious greeting,
lovely bush, God save it.

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

God save it, indeed!