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The Book of Taliesin ((ウェールズ語:Llyfr Taliesin)) is one of the most famous of Middle Welsh manuscripts, dating from the first half of the 14th century though many of the fifty-six poems it preserves are taken to originate in the 10th century or before. The manuscript, known as Peniarth MS 2 and kept at the National Library of Wales, is incomplete, having lost a number of its original leaves including the first. It was named ''Llyfr Taliessin'' in the 17th century by Edward Lhuyd and hence is known in English as "The Book of Taliesin". This was one of the collection of manuscripts amassed at the mansion of Hengwrt, near Dolgellau, Gwynedd, by Welsh antiquary Robert Vaughan (c. 1592 – 1667); the collection later passed to the newly established National Library of Wales as the Peniarth or Hengwrt-Peniarth Manuscripts. The volume contains a collection of some of the oldest poems in Welsh, though many of them, particularly those attributed to the Dark Age poet Taliesin who was active towards the end of the 6th century, would have been composed in the Cumbric dialect of the north. ==Oldest strata== Twelve of the poems in the manuscript were identified by Ifor Williams as credibly being the work of a historical Taliesin, or at least 'to be contemporary with Cynan Garwyn, Urien, his son Owain, and Gwallawg'.〔''The Poems of Taliesin'', ed. by Ifor Williams, trans. by J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Medieval and Modern Welsh Series, 3 (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), lxv.〕 These are (giving Skene's numbering used in the content list below in Roman numerals, the numbering of Evans's edition of the manuscript in Arabic, and the numbers and titles of Williams's edition in brackets): XXIII/45 (Williams: I, ''Trawsganu Kynan Garwyn Mab Brochfael''), XXXI/56 (Williams: II), XXXII/57 (Williams: III), XXXIII/58 (Williams: IV), XXXIV/59 (Williams: V), XXXV/60 (Williams: VI, ''Gweith Argoet Llwyfein''), XXXVI/61 (Williams: VII), XXXVII/62 (Williams: VIII, ''Yspeil Taliesin. Kanu Vryen''), XXXIX/65 (Williams: IX, ''Dadolwych Vryen''), XLIV/67 (Williams: X, ''Marwnat Owein''), XI/29 (Williams: XI, ''Gwallawc''), XXXVIII/63 (Williams: XII, ''Gwallawc''). Scholarly English translations of all these are available in the anthology ''The Triumph Tree''.〔Thomas Owen Clancy (ed.), ''The Triumph Tree; Scotland's Earliest Poetry, AD 550-1350'' (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1998), pp. 79-93.〕 Among probably less archaic but still early texts, the manuscript also preserves a few hymns, a small collection of elegies to famous men such as Cunedda and Dylan Eil Ton and also famous enigmatic poems such as ''The Battle of Trees'' and ''The Spoils of Annwfn'' (in which the poet claims to have sailed to another world with Arthur and his warriors). Several of these contain internal claims to be the work of Taliesin, but cannot be associated with the putative historical figure. Many poems in the collection allude to Christian and Latin texts as well as native British tradition, and the book contains the earliest mention in any Western post-classical vernacular literature of the feats of Hercules and Alexander the Great. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Book of Taliesin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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