A People's Poetry

Hen benillion (literally meaning old stanzas) are a unique form of folk poetry in Britain. Dating to the sixteenth century (and in some cases earlier) these short verses, or chains of verses, were composed to be spoken or sung to a harp accompaniment. They have been performed at social gatherings in Wales for centuries, enriching the collective public memory with their mix of proverbs, catchphrases, and commentary on local events and characters. They are, quite literally, a people's poetry, and regular reciters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would have repertoires of hundreds of poems. Written in free, as opposed to traditional fixed meters, penillion were doomed for extinction until an eighteenth century Celtic antiquarian movement preserved those which survive today.