Cywydd y Cedor: “Ode to the Vulva”
The full poem features Gwerful reading male bards to filth for not describing the vulva when they’re so happy to describe every other part of women’s bodies.
She was great! She was about in the late 1300s/early 1400s. It was the style of the time for bards to write Ymrysonau, debates held by writing poems in response to each other’s work, which would often become highly entertaining chains of “So’s your mam” “So’s your FACE” but written in beautiful cynghanedd. Gwerful did this a lot, and in particular with Dafydd Llwyd (lovely lad, Welsh Nash) and Ieuan Dyfi (an appalling misogynist who was in jail multiple times for adultery).
As well as Cywydd y Cedor, her famous stuff includes an Ymryson with Ieuan Dyfi. He wrote a poem called Anni Goch which was, in fact, a 3 page ‘welcome to my twisted mind’ hate-filled screed about how women have been false bitches and whores throughout all of history, starting with Mary Magdalena (not Eve, interestingly). FUN FACT: when he was convicted of adultery it was with a woman called Anni. WONDER IF HE WAS DICK-HURT ABOUT SOMETHING.
And Gwerful was having NONE of it, and wrote “I Ateb Ieuan Dyfi am gywydd Anni Goch”. It’s straight up a feminist treatise. It tells us she was very well educated for a woman of the time, too, because her references are very classical. She lists all the good women that men like Ieuan erase, except there’s something interesting about all of them and the way they each wield power over men - the Sibylline Oracle, for example. But, she doesn’t include Mary. We think it’s because he didn’t include Eve, so she was making a point that she was going an eye for an eye.
Anyway, her other famous surviving piece is an incredibly raw piece about domestic violence. No idea if it was also about Ieuan Dyfi or not.
Anyway, Gwerful Mechain is my girl and I adore her.