'Where cider ends, there ale begins to reign' : drink in medieval Welsh poetry

Drink — and food for that matter — has not really been on the agenda for medieval literary scholars in Wales in the way it has long been elsewhere. I shall not pander to another stereotype by suggesting we all still sign the Pledge or belong to the Band of Hope. Nevertheless it is still true that until fairly recently the majority of Welsh literary scholars were the product of the chapel and its culture of temperance, what Welsh sociologists used to call Lifestyle A — 'Buchedd A' — virtuous and self-denying, rather than Lifestyle B, prodigal, feckless, and down the pub. Lifestyle A scholars were not minded to claim any expertise or experience in the field, and may have been reluctant to sully the Welsh tradition by drawing attention to its considerable alcoholic content, being only too aware of the poets and gifted poet-scholars who had been destroyed by drink or drugs: Evan Evans (Ieuan Fardd), the clergyman who had first brought 'The Gododdin' to the wider public in 1764, Iolo Morganwg and his laudunum-inspired forgeries, and their equally gifted contemporary, Goronwy Owen, who, like Dylan Thomas in our own time, died far away in America, the one 46 years old, the other not yet 40.