YR YSBRYD ATHRYLITHGAR SYDD YN AWR YN CYNHYRFU HILIOGAETH Y CYMRY

This article examines the readership of Theophilus Evans’s Drych
y Prif Oesoedd (1716) through the long nineteenth century. The
article takes as a starting point the literary pilgrimage of Richard
Gwylfa Roberts in July 1906 when he went looking for the grave of
Theophilus Evans in the parish of Llangamarch, a pedestrian project
perhaps made fashionable by the success of O. M. Edwards’s account
of his walking tour of Welsh houses in Cartrefi Cymru (1901).
The Drych was an account of the early history of Wales, woven
together by Theophilus Evans from a mixture of literature and fable,
first published in 1716 and expanded in a second edition of 1740.
The article argues that the main function of the Drych in the late
nineteenth century was that it provided a narrative and intellectual
framework for the discussion of Welsh literature which was by then
being formed into a canon which recorded the history and expressed
the maturing aspirations of the Welsh nation.

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