Awen is a Welsh, Cornish and Breton word for "inspiration" (and typically poetic inspiration).
In Welsh mythology, awen is the inspiration of the poets, or bards; or, in its personification, Awen is the inspirational muse of creative artists in general. The inspired individual (often a poet or a soothsayer) is described as an awenydd. Neo-Druids define awen as "flowing energy," or "a force that flows with the essence of life."
In current usage, awen is sometimes ascribed to musicians and poets. It is also used as female given name.
It appears in the third stanza of Hen Wlad fy Nhadau, the national anthem of Wales.
Etymology
Awen derives from the Indo-European root *-uel, meaning 'to blow', and has the same root as the word awel meaning 'breeze' in Welsh and 'wind' or 'gale' in Cornish.
Historical attestation
The first recorded attestation of the word occurs in Nennius' Historia Brittonum, a Latin text of c. 796, based in part on earlier writings by the Welsh monk, Gildas. It occurs in the phrase 'Tunc talhaern tat aguen in poemate claret' (Talhaern the father of the muse was then renowned in poetry) where the Old Welsh word aguen (awen) occurs in the Latin text describing poets from the sixth century.
It is also recorded in its current form in Canu Llywarch Hen (9th or 10th century?) where Llywarch says 'I know by my awen' indicating it as a source of instinctive knowledge.
On connections between awen as poetic inspiration and as an infusion from the divine, The Book of Taliesin often implies this. A particularly striking example is contained in the lines:
ban pan doeth peir
ogyrwen awen teir
-literally “the three elements of inspiration that came, splendid, out of the cauldron” but implicitly “that came from God” as ‘peir’ (cauldron) can also mean ‘sovereign’ often with the meaning ‘God’. It is the “three elements” that is cleverly worked in here as awen was sometimes characterised as consisting of three sub-divisions (‘ogyrwen’) so “the ogyrwen of triune inspiration”, perhaps suggesting the Trinity.
There are fifteen occurrences of the word awen in The Book of Taliesin as well as several equivalent words or phrases, such as ogyrven which is used both as a division of the awen (‘Seven score ogyrven which are in awen, shaped in Annwfn’) as well as an alternative word for awen itself. The poem Armes Prydain (The Prophecies of Britain) begins with the phrase ‘Awen foretells …’, and it is repeated later in the poem. The link between poetic inspiration and divination is implicit in the description of the Awenyddion given by Gerald of Wales in the 12th century and the link between bardic expression and prophecy is a common feature of much early verse in Wales and elsewhere
A poem in The Black Book of Carmarthen by an unidentified bard, but addressed to Cuhelyn Fardd (1100-1130) asks God to allow the awen to flow so that ‘inspired song from Ceridwen will shape diverse and well-crafted verse’. This anticipates much poetry from identified bards of the Welsh princes between circa 1100-1300 which juggles the competing claims of the Celtic Church with the source of the awen in the Cauldron of Ceridwen.
So Llywarch ap Llywelyn (1173-1220) – also known as ‘Prydydd y Moch’ – can address his patron Llywelyn ap Iorwerth like this:
'I greet my lord, bring awen’s great greeting
Words from Ceridwen I compose
Just like Taliesin when he freed Elffin'.
The same poet also penned the lines
'The Lord God grant me sweet awen
As from the Cauldron of Ceridwen'
Elidr Sais (c. 1195-1246), ‘singing to Christ’, wrote
'Brilliant my poetry after Myrddin
Shining forth from the cauldron of awen'
Dafydd Benfras (1220-1258) included both Myrddin (Merlin) and Aneirin in his backward glance:
'Full of awen as Myrddin desired
Singing praise as Aneirin before me
when he sang of ‘Gododdin’.'
Later in the Middle Ages the identification of the source of the Awen begins to shift from Ceridwen to more orthodox christian sources such as the Virgin Mary, the saints, or directly from God. A full discussion can be found in Awen y Cynfeirdd a’r Gogynfeirdd by Y Chwaer Bosco. The Bardic Grammars of the later Middle Ages identify ‘The Holy Spirit’ as the proper source of the awen. The 15th century bard Sion Cent argued that God is the only source and dismissed the “lying awen” of bards who thought otherwise as in his dismissive lines