This is Elen Gethin, married to Thomas Vaughan. No question there. So far so good.
We have her here as Elen Gethin verch Cadwgan ap Dafydd,, because that is the genealogy given by Peter Bartrum, the Welsh genealogist who caused the contradictory evidence from the medieval manuscripts to make sense.
But if you find her in many references, you will see that she is called Elen Gethin verch Dafydd ap Cadwgan ap Dafydd, -- in other words, that Cadwgan is not her father but her grandfather.
So we bring this up to public discussion.
Here is my view:
Clearly the medieval MSS are contradicting each other. Bartrum was specifically causing the medieval contradictions to make sense; that was his entire project; so that he came to the conclusion that Cadwgan was Elen's father has high significance, to me.
Also, when I follow the references to Dafydd as her father on down, even though they are sometimes in highly valuable places -- the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, for instance, either there is no source, or the source goes back to an 1881 retelling of an description of her; here is the 1881 Montgomeryshire collection source: https://books.google.com/books?id=lpoxAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA378-IA16&am...
and here are the notes to a later, 1908, edition of the poem where the scholars who put that collection got their evidence: https://books.google.com/books?id=EwcQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&dq=...
and here is Owen Jones's work from 1875, a Welsh biography, for those of you who have now gotten entirely fascinated by the whole issue, and feel like running giant pieces of prose through the google translator:
https://books.google.com/books?id=fjHPGaWbRykC&pg=PA571&dq=...
And essentially, in 1875, Owen Jones is saying that Dafydd has some kind of connection to Elen. But the exact connection is not clear. Because even to a Welsh scholar, in 1875, it's enough to know that she's descended from Elystan Glodrydd. Her exact genealogy is beside the point.
Here is how I interpret all this:
Clearly there are contradictions in the original manuscripts. Bartrum comes down on one interpretation. Other scholars follow another.
Either genealogy takes her back to Elystan Glodrydd, which really, to any of the original Welsh scribes, would have been the point.
I myself think that we should keep her as the daughter of Cadwgan, because Bartrum's work represents the later scholarship, specifically working on the issue.
And the earlier scholarship is mostly about the legends about her. That has been, since the late 19th century, the thing that mattered to the scholars. (How much does this annoy me? Oh, let's all just guess.)
I do think that we need notes about all this, both in the overview and the curator's notes section.
Anybody else want to weigh in on this?
