Taliesin

When looking at Taliesin, the eye is first drawn to the inscription’s central medallion. Unlike Jones’s other overwhelmingly text-oriented painted inscriptions, this image – a figurative roundel – takes the centre stage. The medallion features what Jones calls ‘a sort of representative “princeps”’, or symbolic figurehead, of the era of early Welsh poetry, flanked by birds and arrows. The birds represent tri adar Rhiannon, the three birds of the goddess Rhiannon from Welsh mythology. The arrows are Saethan Philistiaed, the Phillistines’ four arrows. Taliesin, the 6th-century poet who serves as the namesake for the inscription, is honored alongside the other cynfeirdd (‘first-bards’), a group of the earliest Welsh-language poets. For Jones, these first-bards represent the foundation of Welsh-language poetry. The names of these five poets – Talhaearn Tad Awen, Aneirin, Taliesin, Bluchbard, and Guenith Guaut – encircle the inscription's central medallion. The phrase ‘beird byt barnant wyr o gallon’ (‘the bards of the world appraise the men of valour’) are from Aneirin's medieval elegiac poem Y Gododdin which appears as a recurring motif across Jones’s work. In a draft for his essay ‘Welsh Poetry,’ Jones explains this ‘key line’ from Aneirin: ‘The poetry of the “first-bards” was concerned with the recalling and appraisement of the heroes in lyric form. One could hardly put it more clearly than that.’ Taliesin is also unique in that it was designed expressly for print reproduction, having been commissioned as the cover for a new periodical of the same name. Taliesin was a long-running Welsh language literary magazine produced by Yr Academi Gymraeg (The Welsh Academy), a society of Welsh writers formed in 1959. Evidence of the print-focused design can be found in the penciled-in notes along the margins of the inscription. Can you make out Jones’s notes for the printers?