Everything about The Red Book Of Hergest totally explained
The
Red Book of Hergest (
Welsh:
Llyfr Coch Hergest) is one of the most important
medieval Welsh language manuscripts.
Written Around 1382 - 1410
It includes both
prose and
poetry and was written around
1382-
1410. It is now kept at the
Bodleian Library on behalf of
Jesus College, Oxford (MS 111), a gift of the Rev. Thomas Wilkins in
1701.
Copyists
One of the several copyists responsible for the manuscript has been identified as Hywel Fychan fab Hywel Goch of Buellt. He is known to have worked for Hopcyn ap Tomas ab Einion (ca.1330 - after 1403) of
Ynysforgan,
Swansea, and it's possible that the manuscript was compiled for him.
Origin of the Name
The manuscript's name derives from the fact that it's bound in red leather and from its association with Hergest Court (Plas Hergest), sited below high
Hergest Ridge near
Kington in
Herefordshire in the
Welsh Marches, from about
1465 until the beginning of the
seventeenth century.
Content
The first part of the manuscript contains prose, including the
Mabinogion, for which this is one of the manuscript sources (the other principal source being the
White book of Rhydderch), other tales, historical texts (including a
Welsh translation of
Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Historia Regum Britanniae), and various other texts including a series of
Triads. The rest of the manuscript contains poetry, especially from the period of court poetry known as
Poetry of the Princes (Welsh:
Gogynfeirdd or
Beirdd y Tywysogion).
The manuscript also contains a collection of herbal remedies associated with Rhiwallon Feddyg, founder of a medical dynasty that lasted over 500 years - 'The Physicians of Myddfai' from the village of
Myddfai just outside
Llandovery.
J. R. R. Tolkien borrowed the title for the
Red Book of Westmarch, the imagined legendary source of Tolkien’s tales.
Sources
- 'Red book of Hergest'. In Meic Stephens (Ed.) (1998), The new companion to the literature of Wales. Cardiff : University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1383-3.
- Parry, Thomas (1955), A history of Welsh literature. Translated by H. Idris Bell. Oxford : Clarendon Press.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Red Book Of Hergest'.
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