Red Book of Hergest

The Red Book of Hergest, columns 240 - 241.

The Red Book of Hergest (Welsh: Llyfr Coch Hergest) is one of the most important medieval Welsh language manuscripts.

History

The manuscript includes both prose and poetry and was written between about 1382 and 1410. One of the several copyists responsible for the manuscript has been identified as Hywel Fychan fab Hywel Goch of Buellt. He is known to have worked for Hopcyn ap Tomas ab Einion (ca.1330 - after 1403) of Ynysforgan, Swansea, and it is possible that the manuscript was compiled for him. Its name derives from the fact that it is bound in red leather and from its association with Hergest Court (Plas Hergest), sited below high Hergest Ridge near Kington in Herefordshire in the Welsh Marches, from about 1465 until the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is now kept at the Bodleian Library on behalf of Jesus College, Oxford (MS 111); it was previously in the ownership of Thomas Wilkins, a Welsh clergyman and antiquarian, before being given to the college after his death in 1699.

Content

Facsimile of Part of Column 579 from the Red Book of Hergest.

The first part of the manuscript contains prose, including the Mabinogion, for which this is one of the manuscript sources (the other principal source being the White book of Rhydderch), other tales, historical texts (including a Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae), and various other texts including a series of Triads. The rest of the manuscript contains poetry, especially from the period of court poetry known as Poetry of the Princes (Welsh:Gogynfeirdd or Beirdd y Tywysogion).

The manuscript also contains a collection of herbal remedies associated with Rhiwallon Feddyg, founder of a medical dynasty that lasted over 500 years - 'The Physicians of Myddfai' from the village of Myddfai just outside Llandovery.

J. R. R. Tolkien borrowed the title for the Red Book of Westmarch, the imagined legendary source of Tolkien’s tales.

Sources

• 'Red book of Hergest'. In Meic Stephens (Ed.) (1998), The new companion to the literature of Wales. Cardiff : University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1383-3.
• Parry, Thomas (1955), A history of Welsh literature. Translated by H. Idris Bell. Oxford : Clarendon Press.
• Thomas, Richard Biography of Thomas Wilkins, Welsh Biography Online (National Library of Wales)

See also

• White Book of Rhydderch

External links

• Red Book of Hergest, or Jesus College MS 111, is part of the Early Manuscripts at Oxford University digitisation project; reprints relevant section of Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on manuscripts in the Welsh language, vol. II part I, (London, 1902), describing the manuscript and its contents; Gives access to colour images of the entire manuscript.
• Mary Jones, Celtic Encyclopedia: Llyfr Coch Hergest (entry on manuscript)
• Mary Jones, Celtic Literature Collective: Llyfr Coch Hergest (contents & translations)
• British Medical Association - Wales & Medicine