After A Stay Of Some Time With Ifor, He Returned To His Native County And Lived At Bro Gynnin.

Here he fell in love with a young lady of birth called Dyddgu, who did not favour his addresses.

He did not break his heart, however, on her account, but speedily bestowed it on the fair Morfudd, whom he first saw at Rhosyr in Anglesey, to which place both had gone on a religious account. The lady after some demur consented to become his wife. Her parents refusing to sanction the union, their hands were joined beneath the greenwood tree by one Madawg Benfras, a bard, and a great friend of Ab Gwilym. The joining of people's hands by bards, which was probably a relic of Druidism, had long been practised in Wales, and marriages of this kind were generally considered valid, and seldom set aside. The ecclesiastical law, however, did not recognise these poetical marriages, and the parents of Morfudd by appealing to the law soon severed the union. After confining the lady for a short time, they bestowed her hand in legal fashion upon a chieftain of the neighbourhood, very rich but rather old, and with a hump on his back, on account which he was nicknamed bow-back, or little hump-back. Morfudd, however, who passed her time in rather a dull manner with this person, which would not have been the case had she done her duty by endeavouring to make the poor man comfortable, and by visiting the sick and needy around her, was soon induced by the bard to elope with him. The lovers fled to Glamorgan, where Ifor Hael, not much to his own credit, received them with open arms, probably forgetting how he had immured his OWN daughter in a convent, rather than bestow her on Ab Gwilym. Having a hunting-lodge in a forest on the banks of the lovely Taf, he allotted it to the fugitives as a residence. Ecclesiastical law, however, as strong in Wild Wales as in other parts of Europe, soon followed them into Glamorgan, and, very properly, separated them. The lady was restored to her husband, and Ab Gwilym fined to a very high amount. Not being able to pay the fine, he was cast into prison; but then the men of Glamorgan arose to a man, swearing that their head bard should not remain in prison. "Then pay his fine!" said the ecclesiastical law, or rather the ecclesiastical lawyer. "So we will!" said the men of Glamorgan, and so they did. Every man put his hand into his pocket; the amount was soon raised, the fine paid, and the bard set free.

Ab Gwilym did not forget this kindness of the men of Glamorgan, and, to requite it, wrote an address to the sun, in which he requests that luminary to visit Glamorgan, to bless it, and to keep it from harm. The piece concludes with some noble lines somewhat to this effect

"If every strand oppression strong Should arm against the son of song, The weary wight would find, I ween, A welcome in Glamorgan green."

Some time after his release he meditated a second elopement with Morfudd, and even induced her to consent to go off with him.

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