OWEN GLENDOWER'S CREST AND THE SCOTTISH CAMPAIGN OF 1384-1385
2004; Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature; Volume: 73; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/43630701
ISSN2398-1423
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies of British Isles
ResumoA striking glimpse of Owen Glendower occurs in the work of Ernest Jacob, who refers to the young warrior 'on the Scottish expedition of 1385, during the course of which Iolo Goch describes him while at Berwick wearing in his helmet the scarlet feather of a flamingo'.1 Of Glendower's service at Berwick we now know more. As early as 1 March 1384 'howeyn Glyndourde' is listed amongst men-at-arms of Sir Degory or Gregory Sais (mentioned in Iolo's poem).2 But the detail of his crest remains intriguing. One wonders why Glendower wore this feather and how it reached him from southern Europe or beyond (where flamingos live). The puzzlement increases on consulting OED, which shows flamingo unattested in English before 1565. The poetic source for this (by Owen's contemporary Iolo Goch) clearly needs another look.Jacob took the detail from Sir John Lloyd, who (paraphrasing Iolo's poem) describes 'the valour of the young warrior at Berwick, where he wore in his helmet the scarlet feather of a flamingo, unhorsed his opponent, fought with a mere fragment of his broken lance and drove the Scots like wild goats before him. The grass and the corn withered after the hot blast of his devastating onset.'3Lloyd is careful to give the line of poetry ('Adain rudd o edn yr Aifft') which he translates 'scarlet feather of a flamingo'. But the literal meaning here is 'Red wing of the bird of Egypt', or 'Red feather of the bird of Egypt' (like Latin penna, Welsh adain means both 'wing' and 'feather'). It is clear that Owen's crest did not represent the entire bird. Early editions of the poem make no reference to flamingos. Editors leave the line without comment.4 'Flamingo' must be Lloyd's own interpretation, where he was followed without hesitation by Gwyn A. Williams (famous for his Marxist interpretations of Welsh history).5 Yet others are more cautious. The great University of Wales dictionary translates 'edn yr Aifft' as '?flamingo'. Professor Johnston of Swansea, in his exemplary edition of Iolo's poems, merely notes this as a suggestion.6Flamingos live in most subtropical and tropical lands, including Spain, southern France, and Egypt. A drawing of a flamingo in an uncial manuscript (now in Barcelona) of St Gregory's Homiliae in Evangelia, which contains corrections by an eighth-century English scribe, shows these birds were known to the Anglo-Saxons.7Yet direct references to them in medieval English sources are rare. If, further, we seek 'Egyptian bird' in English dictionaries we find nothing. What we do find is 'Arabian bird'. This points to a solution. The Arabian bird was the phoenix, described in classical and medieval tradition as living in the Arabian Desert and sacrificing itself every 500 years in the temple at Heliopolis, near Cairo. The Arabian Desert is in Egypt, between the Nile and the Red Sea; Cairo is Egypt's capital; the 'bird of Egypt' is hence, surely, the phoenix. At Berwick in 1384-5 Owen Glendower would thus have worn on his helmet not a flamingo's feather, but the image of a phoenix. If critics ask why Iolo alludes here to Egypt and not Arabia, we may note that 'edn yr Aifft' rhymes usefully with 'nen iawnraifft' ('fine-plumed lord') in the previous line (it also alliterates, in the way characteristic of Welsh bardic verse, with the d, n, and r earlier in the line). This perhaps explains why 'edn yr AifFt' occurs in this one poem by Iolo and nowhere else. We may also note that (as a referee of this paper points out) the interpretation 'phoenix' suits Iolo's images of heat and fire at this point of his poem.If Iolo Goch's 'edn yr Aifft' ('bird of Egypt') was a phoenix, we can correct a minute error in the Oxford history of England. But we shall also have material from early Britain more significant than might at first appear. The history of the phoenix legend is more than an essay in antiquarianism, since the question as to why Glendower bore this emblem may tell us something of both his mentality and that of his age. …
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