#saunders lewis

[spiderliliez]

Morfydd Clark (as Blodeuwedd) THE WOMAN MADE OF FLOWERS Saunders Lewis' play of the Welsh folktale BLODEUWEDD (2013)

[+] MORFYDD [GIF Collection] 🥀

[lilithsplace]

Saunders Lewis, 2010 - Roy Guy (b. 1944)

[flayedpeasant]

Saunders Lewis, he got mangled a bit in my endeavours to draw him

[petergwaelod]

Siwan

Local legend says that the tomb of Siwan, now in the porch of the parish church in Beaumaris, was once used as a horse trough.

Siwan was born in 1188, the illegitimate daughter of King John. She spent her childhood in France and was brought back in December 1203 for her marriage to Llywelyn ab lorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd. She was 15 and her husband was 30. Their home was at Garth Celyn on the north coast of Gwynedd, on the opposite side of the Menai Straits.

Llywelyn (also known as Llywelyn Fawr - the Great) was a powerful figure and the marriage brought a respite in the hostilities between the English and the Welsh. But when John was succeeded by Henry III in 1218, a period of hostilities began and Llywelyn was frequently away on military campaigns.

Perhaps Siwan felt neglected? Because William de Breos, 10th Baron of Abergavenny came into her life. He had been taken prisoner and decided it was probably better to ally himself to Llewelyn, his captor. But there are perhaps better ways of doing this, because at Easter 1230 he was found together with Siwan in her husband's bedchamber. Llywelyn wrote to William's wife to explain what happened, saying that he had no option but to hang him. Oh and by the way, he went on, is the marriage between your daughter Isabella and my son Dafydd still on? She said yes. And so William was hanged in a place forever known as Gwern y Grog, or the Hanging Marsh.

Siwan was placed under house arrest and she gave birth to a daughter, Elen, early in 1231. The child was sent to live with other members of the family in Scotland. Once the baby had gone, Siwan was forgiven and restored as wife and princess.

She died at Garth Celyn in 1237 and Llywelyn's grief was recorded by contemporary writers. Llywelyn had some sort of stroke after her death and was never the same man again. He died in 1240. But not before he made sure Siwan was buried according to the usual tradition for all royal persons at that time. She was buried at Llanfaes Friary, which was destroyed later during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. At this point her grave was lost.

It is the story of Siwan and de Breos which has captured the literary imagination: it forms the centre of Saunders Lewis’s play Siwan, Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters)’s novel The Green Branch and Sharon Kay Penman’s novel Here Be Dragons.

But is the carving at Beaumaris really Siwan? Some have suggested that the style of the head-dress, with the wimple drawn under the chin to give a pointed shape to the face, was one that only became fashionable in the late thirteenth century and that there are no datable examples of this before the 1270s. So it seems that the tradition that the coffin was Princess Siwan’s can’t be traced with any certainty beyond 1810. Possibly someone else’s coffin was being used as a horse trough before it was moved to Beaumaris.

[kaggsy59]

"...our rows of well-kept purgatories…" #SaundersLewis #ReadIndies #Dewithon22

“…our rows of well-kept purgatories…” #SaundersLewis #ReadIndies #Dewithon22

I’m a great believer in the fact that there is a right time for every book – which is probably why I have a gigantic TBR, because all those books are just waiting for me to find the appropriate space to get to them! A case in point is today’s book, which is the last one I’m going to be covering for our #ReadIndies event. The book is “Monica” by Saunders Lewis and it’s been sitting on the TBR for…

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[kaggsy59]

#Dewithon - sharing the contents of my Welsh bookshelves!

#Dewithon – sharing the contents of my Welsh bookshelves!

If, like me, you follow Paula’s lovely blog, BookJotter, you’ll be well aware that she’s hosting the Dewithon – a March-long Wales Readathon, celebrating Welsh culture and writing. Now, I’m Scottish by birth, but have spent dozens of holidays in Wales and I love the people and the landscape and the art. I always fail miserably to get involved with the Dewithon, and I suspect that might be the…

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[onthisdaywales-blog]

[ibringyou]

D. J., Saunders a Valentine Dyna i chi dân a gynheuwyd gan y rhain Tân yn y gogledd yn ymestin lawr i'r de Tân oedd yn gyffro drwy'r holl le