Gruffudd Leiaf was a 15th-century

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

poet, known almost exclusively from his works. He was reputed to descend from the royal family of Gwynedd. Monument to Gruffudd ap Dafydd Goch in St Mary's Church, Betws-y-Coed

Monument to Gruffudd ap Dafydd Goch in St Mary's Church, Betws-y-Coed

Gruffudd Leiaf was born in Denbighshire, the son of Gruffudd Fychan, in turn son of Welsh knight Gruffudd ap Dafydd Goch, who served on a 1352 jury and died c. 1370, buried at the church of

Betws-y-Coed Betws-y-coed (; '' en, prayer house in the wood'') is a village and community in the Conwy valley in Conwy County Borough, Wales, located in the historic county of Caernarfonshire, right on the boundary with Denbighshire, in the Gwydir Forest. ...

where his burial monument survives.Smith, J. Beverley, ''Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales'' University of Wales Press, new edition, 2014, p. 579 The reputed father of this earliest Gruffudd, Dafydd Gogh of

Penmachno Penmachno is a village in the isolated upland Machno valley, south of Betws-y-Coed in the county of Conwy, North Wales. The B4406 road runs through part of the village. The village is at the confluence of the Glasgwm and Machno rivers. It has ...

, was claimed by later genealogies to have been an illegitimate son of

Dafydd ap Gruffydd Dafydd ap Gruffydd (11 July 1238 – 3 October 1283) was Prince of Wales from 11 December 1282 until his execution on 3 October 1283 on the orders of King Edward I of England. He was the last native Prince of Wales before the conquest of Wa ...

, who briefly reigned as the last native

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...

prior to his 1283 execution, though no contemporary evidence of such a son survives. Gruffudd Fychan had nine children by his wife Wladus ferch Gruffudd of Llifon, Anglesey, including sons Hywel Coetmor, Rhys Gethin, Robert and Gruffudd Leiaf, who with their father were accused in 1390 of preventing non-Welsh-speaking parson William Broun from taking up his parish at Llanrwst, and they were summoned before king

Richard II of England Richard II (6 January 1367 – ), also known as Richard of Bordeaux, was King of England from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. He was the son of Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales, and Joan, Countess of Kent. Richard's father die ...

and his council, so Gruffudd Leiaf and his brothers were presumably adults at the time. The sons would serve as executors of their father's will in March 1397. An ''

englyn (; plural ) is a traditional Welsh and Cornish short poem form. It uses quantitative metres, involving the counting of syllables, and rigid patterns of rhyme and half rhyme. Each line contains a repeating pattern of consonants and accent know ...

'' written by Gruffudd Leiaf survives in two copies, among the

Cwrtmawr manuscripts The Cwrtmawr Manuscripts are a collection of 1,549 volumes of medieval Welsh documents, mainly texts of Welsh literature, collected by John Humphreys Davies, who lived at Cwrtmawr near Llangeitho in Ceredigion and was principal of the University C ...

and in the

National Library of Wales The National Library of Wales ( cy, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru), Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales and is one of the Welsh Government sponsored bodies. It is the biggest library in Wales, holding over 6.5 million boo ...

. A second work, a

cywydd The cywydd (; plural ) is one of the most important metrical forms in traditional Welsh poetry (cerdd dafod). There are a variety of forms of the cywydd, but the word on its own is generally used to refer to the ("long-lined couplet") as it is b ...

to the owl, has also been attributed to him by some manuscripts, though others attribute this work to other poets, his kinsmen

Siôn Leiaf Sion is a name used in Wales and in other nations. Welsh name Siôn () or Sion is a Welsh form of the English given name John, pronounced in English similarly to the Irish name Seán. Notable people with the Welsh name include: People with the s ...

and Robert Leiaf, or the unrelated Daffydd ap Gwilym. Gruffudd was founder of a family of related Welsh poets. A large body of poetic work is attributed to his son, Ieuan ap Gruffudd Leiaf, while Ieuan's son "Syr" Siôn Leiaf and probable son Robert Leiaf, were also poets, and later poet Huw Machno (fl. 1585-1637) of Penmachno was also a reputed descendant of Daffydd Goch and hence akin to Gruffudd Leiaf.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gruffudd Leiaf 13th-century births 14th-century deaths 15th-century Welsh poets