Cara Wallia Derelicta

The death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282 was a tragic and seminal moment in Welsh history for David Jones. In his opinion, the murder of the last Prince of Wales by the English heralded the loss of Welsh political freedom and led to later challenges to the survival of the Welsh language, land and culture. The inscription acts both as a memorial to Llywelyn (and draws upon imagery of ancient tombstones and quotations from elegiac poetry) and a lament on the impact of Llywelyn’s death on the future of Wales. Created out of fragments from medieval Welsh chronicles and Latin lines from Virgil’s first century BCE Roman epic The Aeneid, Jones forms a new visual poem. With its use of ancient languages, and mixture of letter forms with added curls, crosses and flourishes, it might seem like a bewildering image to penetrate. Yet, exploring this artwork provides fascinating insights into Jones’s deep contemplation of Welsh history. It was intended as a front cover for Wales through the Ages (1959)*, a collection of historical essays edited by A.J. Roderick, in which Glyn Robert’s writes: ‘In the long story of Wales, the fall of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in 1282 is one of those historical turning points at which history really turned’ (p.129). Jones’s creative engagement with Llywellyn as a figure emerges again and again across his poetry, letters, essays and artworks, and so this inscription sits at the heart of much of Jones’s thinking around Welsh history and identity.