Introduction

St Nicholas’s cult was very widespread in the Middle Ages, and he was the patron of mariners, children, unmarried women and merchants amongst others. His life is found in the Legenda Aurea, and in Welsh in Llst 34, but this poem seems to have drawn on other sources as well, possibly oral ones. The forms Nicolas (with stress on second syllable) and Niclas both occur in the poem.

Date

This poem cannot be dated any more precisely than the period of Lewys Glyn Cothi’s activity, that is c.1447 × c.1489.

Previous edition

GLGC poem 6.

Metre and cynghanedd

Cywydd, 60 lines (one incomplete). Cynghanedd: croes 51% (30 l.), traws 27% (16 l.), sain 12% (7 l.), llusg 10% (6 l.).