Moses, Taliesin, and the Welsh Chosen People: Elis Gruffydd’s Construction of a Biblical, British Past for Reformation Wales

This article focuses on the sixteenth-century Welsh Cronicl o wech oesoedd (“Chronicle of the Six Ages [of the World]”) written by the exiled Welshman Elis Gruffydd, and in particular the section treating the poet-prophet Taliesin. A legendary figure who flourished in the sixth century, Taliesin is described in a powerful story that nonetheless saw wide circulation and reworking throughout the medieval and early modern periods. In this article, I argue that Elis Gruffydd associates Taliesin with the chosen prophet, divinely empowered emancipator, and routinely tested spiritual leader Moses, and I explore the effect of a sixteenth-century construction of the past that positions the Welsh, their ancestors, and their literary heritage in relationship to Moses and the Jews. This article first focuses on the sixteenth-century political and cultural context in which the massive, 2500-page Cronicl was composed by the Reformation Protestant Elis Gruffydd, largely in Calais. It then considers references, prose and poetic, to Moses in the Ystoria Taliesin section of the chronicle and the ways in which the native poet-prophet Taliesin is paralleled with Moses. Thirdly, to move closer to an understanding of the contextual import and force of the Mosaic references for Elis Grufydd and his readers, the essay briefly surveys the various roles played by the Jews and Israelites in medieval and early modern Wales and Britain, and, in particular, how the largely ideational Jews intersect with and inform a sense of Welshness. In conclusion, it is suggested that Elis, potentially reading himself as a sixteenth-century inheritor of the mantle worn by both Taliesin and Moses, deployed this Mosaic window on the past to frame a specific vision of the Welsh present and future, one which constituted a response to Tudor England’s alienation of Welsh language and culture through disempowering and disenfranchising policies.