No lover in any language, and certainly no poet, has confessed to missing the mark more often than Dafydd ap Gwilym. Uncooperative husbands, quick-triggered alarms, crones and walls, strong locks, floods and fogs and bogs and dogs are for ever interposing themselves between him and golden-haired Morfudd, black-browed Dyddgu, or Gwen the infinitely fair. But a great trier, even in church.

Nythod ddwyn, cyd nithud ddail, Ni'th dditia neb, ni'th etail, Na llu rhugl, na llaw rhaglaw, Na llafn glas na llif na glaw.

Yet Dafydd's humour does not obscure, any more than Chaucer's does, the underlying seriousness of his poetry. Behind his poems of requited and unrequited love,…

Yr wybrwynt helynt hylaw Agwrdd drwst a gerdda draw, Gwr eres wyd garw ei sain, Drud byd heb droed heb adain.

It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

To win a woman in the first place one must please her, then undress her, and then somehow get her clothes back on her. Finally, so she will allow you to leave …

Lor', but women's rum cattle to deal with, the first man found that to his cost, And I reckon it's just through a woman the last man on earth'll be lost.