Customer Reviews

The Black Book of Carmarthen

The Black Book has always been linked to Carmarthen & is said to have been written by a Welsh speaking monk of the Augustinian priory of St. John's in Carmarthen. The writer obviously knew the Welsh language but was a amateur scribe.The Black Book itself is a mess. However, it is an importantstorehouse of Welsh poetry & myth & some poems have survived only in the Black Book & nowhere else. Despite attempts to discover the origin of the Black Book it's still a mystery & there's little evidence to doubt the traditional claim that it was written in Carmarthen. The book deals heavily with Merlin, who has links to Carmarthen himself, thus supporting the link between the Black Book & the town. It is known as the Black Book because of it's simple black cover.

The Black Book is dated to about 1250 but much of the material it contains is much older. One gets the idea that the scribe put the most importance on the Merlin material, although the whole book is a mixture of Christian beliefs & older pagan myth & lore. The Christian material may have been added simply to make the book more acceptable within it's own place & time. Elements of older Celtic pagan ideas are found in the text, along with what Meirion Pennar calls the "core of the Merlin legend" which may date back as far as the 6th cent.