Dr Jenny Day BA, MA, PhD

As a member of the project team of the AHRC-funded ‘Poetry of Merlin’ project, Jenny has been editing and studying the little-known later corpus of poems attributed to Merlin in manuscripts dating from the fifteenth century to c.1800.

Previously she worked on the ‘The Sacred Landscapes of Medieval Monasteries’ project (also AHRC-funded), editing poetry addressed by the poet and polymath Gutun Owain to two fifteenth-century abbots of Valle Crucis, and investigating what these and other poetic sources reveal about this important Cistercian abbey.

Jenny was part of the editorial team at Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru from 2013 i 2022, and has worked on several other research projects at the Centre. She edited and translated Lives of St Martin of Tours, St David and St Mary of Egypt for the ‘Cult of the Saints in Wales’ project (AHRC, 2015–17), and for the ‘Flood and Flow’ project (Leverhulme, 2017–18) she collected and analysed water-related place-names from the Book of Llandaf, using these and literary sources to explore the ways in which water resources were exploited and perceived in medieval Wales. For the ‘Poetry of Guto’r Glyn’ project (AHRC, 2008–2012) she helped develop both the gutorglyn.net website and ‘Guto’s Wales’. She has an ongoing research interest in medieval Welsh weapons and warfare, stemming from her doctoral studies at Aberystwyth University on weapons in Welsh poetry (‘Arfau yn yr Hengerdd a Cherddi Beirdd y Tywysogion’).

Jenny has an ongoing research interest in medieval Welsh poetry and in what it can reveal as a source for various aspects of life in the Middle Ages. She has published a variety of articles on the depiction of weapons and armour in poems ranging in date from the ‘Gododdin’ to the works of the late-medieval cywyddwyr, and has recently been working on the depiction of monastic life and the monastic estate in the poems of Gutun Owain and his contemporaries.

She has extensive experience of editing and translating medieval prose and poetry, and a particular interest in the way texts change during transmission though various processes of misinterpretation, reinterpretation and adaptation. For the ‘Cult of Saints in Wales’ project she studied the textual transmission of saints’ Lives and their adaptation for different audiences, and she is currently investigating the complex inter-relationships and highly changeable content of later prophetic poems for the ‘Poetry of Merlin’ project.

• ‘The Houses of the Old Cross”: Valle Crucis Abbey in the poems of Gutun Owain’, Cîteaux – Commentarii cistercienses, 73 (2022), ISSN 0009-7497, 255–76.
• ‘The later Lives of St David in NLW MSS Peniarth 27ii, Llanstephan 34 and Peniarth 225’, in David Parsons and Paul Russell (eds), Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Studies in the Saints of Wales (Aberystwyth, 2022), chapter 6.
• ‘The later Lives of Mary of Egypt in NLW MS Llanstephan 34 and Cardiff, Central Library MS 2.633’, in David Parsons and Paul Russell (eds), Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Studies in the Saints of Wales (Aberystwyth, 2022), chapter 9.
• ‘Buchedd Martin’ [a new edition and translation of the Welsh Life of St Martin], ‘The Cult of Saints in Wales’ website. (2020)
• ‘Ewin o ddur, onn a ddwg: y rhest gwaywffon a’r beirdd’, Dwned, 25 (2019), 11–45
• ‘Llachar fy nghleddau, lluch ydd ardwy—glew: rhai agweddau ar ddelweddaeth y cleddyf ym marddoniaeth yr Oesoedd Canol’, Dwned, 23 (2017), 41–77
• ‘Agweddau ar gwlt Martin o Tours mewn llenyddiaeth Gymraeg hyd c.1525’, Llên Cymru, 40 (2017), 3–39
• ‘Weapons and fighting in Y Gododdin’, Studia Celtica XLIX (2015), 121–47
• ‘Brigandines in two fifteenth-century request poems’, Studia Celtica XLVII (2013), 167–82
• ‘ “Arms of stone upon my grave”: weapons in the poetry of Guto’r Glyn’, in Dylan Foster Evans, Barry J. Lewis and Ann Parry Owen (eds.), ‘Gwalch Cywyddau Gwŷr’: Essays on Guto’r Glyn and Fifteenth-century Wales (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013), 233–81
• ‘Shields in Welsh poetry up to c.1300: decoration, shape and significance’, Studia Celtica XLV (2011), 27–52