Book Taliesina

The fate of the book is unknown until the 17th century , when the manuscript was discovered in Radnorshire under the ownership of Hugh Miles, and then his cousin John Lewis of Llenven. From 1631 to 1634, renowned antiquarian John Davis from Malluid removes a copy of the "Taliesin Book", and the book itself, no later than 1655, appears in the Robert Vaughan collection in Hengurt , Merionetshire , where it remains until 1859 , when the bequest goes to another famous antiquary William Watkin Wynn of Penyarth . In 1904, Hengurt-Penyarth Library becomes the property of Sir John Williams , who donates a collection of books to the collection of the newly established National Library for Wales.

The title “Book of Taliesin” appears to have been used for the first time in 1707 in the work of Edward Lluid’s Archaeologia Britannica , but the very name of the great poet Taliesin is repeatedly mentioned in the manuscript (not only for attribution of authorship), as well as characters and episodes traditionally associated with his by name.

The literary material of the manuscript is a collection of medieval Welsh poetry , while traditionally it is believed that the works themselves were created many years before the recording of the manuscript, the possibility that the collection itself existed in this form before the creation of the Taliesin Book was not denied. Poetic works, a total of 57 poems stored in the manuscript, can be divided into the following groups:

• The poems of the “legendary Taliesin” (15 works in total) - including the famous Cad Goddau (“Battle of the Trees”), as well as Cadair Ceridwen (“The Keridwen Chair”), Canu y Medd (“Song of the Honey”), Canu y Cwrw (“ The song of ale ") and others;
• Religious and spiritual poems (total - 7);
• Poems dedicated to Gwallauga (total - 2);
• Prophecies (total - 10) - components of the cycle of prophecies Armes Prydein ;
• Praise poems (total - 14) - eight of them are dedicated to Urien , the patron of Taliesin, two to Alexander the Great , one each to King Arthur and Hercules ;
• Elegies ( valllad. Marwnad or “song of death”, total - 7);
• The poems of Canu y Byd Mawr ("Song of the Macrocosm ") and Canu y Byd Bychan ("Song of the Microcosm ").

• In honor of "The Book of Taliesin", the rock band " Deep Purple " named their album of 1968 - " The Book of Taliesyn " .
• The Russian rock group " Aquarium " has a song "Kad Goddo" (included in the album " Children of December " , 1986). The text of this song directly echoes Taliesin's poem ^{[1] [2]} .
• In Brest there is a folk group Cad Goddeu, performing medieval music. ^[3] .
• John Williams used a rough Sanskrit translation in his Duel of the Fates theme for the first Star Wars episode.

• Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin ' , edited and translated by Marged Haycock (CMCS, Aberystwyth, 2007) ISBN 978-0-9527478-9-5
• Book of Taliesin . In Meic Stephens (Ed.) (1998), The New companion to the literature of Wales . Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1383-3 .
• Haycock, Marged (1988), Llyfr Taliesin . In National Library of Wales Journal, 25, 357-86.
• Parry, Thomas (1955), A History of Welsh literature . Translated by H. Idris Bell. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

• The Taliesin Book at the National Library of Wales . (eng.)
• The Taliesin Book , by W. F. Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales , 1868. (eng.)