Englynion y Beddau / The Stanzas of the Graves is a collection of verses, composed perhaps in the 9th or 10th century, enumerating the graves of traditional, mythological, and legendary heroes of early Wales: Pryderi, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, and Dylan ail Ton from The Mabinogi; Caw of Prydyn, Rhydderch Hael, and Elidyr Mwynfawr from the distant ‘Old North’; Gwalchmai, Bedwyr, Owain ab Urien, and Cynon ap Clydno from Arthurian legend, and many others. Here is even the grave of Arthur himself – or is it? But these verses are more than a list of names and places. Cumulatively they develop into a poetic meditation on the permanence of death, as understood by a poet (or poets) living in a world where death cannot be ignored, where the bravest of warriors all share a common fate – pedryael byd / dan weryd ‘a four-sided world / under the earth’. The places throughout Wales named in this poetry are strikingly evoked in Anthony Griffiths’ photographs of many cromlechs, standing stones, streams, mountains, and other features.
