Oxen were used for ploughing in Wales - particularly Glamorganshire - for years after most other places in Britain had gone over to horsepower. The antiquarian, Cadrawd, wrote in the 1880s that "superstition credited him (the ox) with a kind of occult intelligence, something like that which is attributed to bees." Because of this, farmers believed that you HAD to keep the beasts amused while they worked, and they hired in lads to walk backwards in front of the oxen and to sing to them the whole time they were working. And you couldn't sing just any old rubbish: they had to be verses of wit, wisdom, love and/or riddles. Many of them were written on a poetic measure referred to as a 'triban' because they made three points; i.e.

Tri pheth sy'n hawdd i'w 'nabod:
Dyn, derwen, a'r diwrnod.
Y dydd yn troi, y pren yn gou,
A'r dyn yn ddauwynebog.

(Three things are easy to understand:
(Man, oak tree, and a day.
(The day turns, the wood is solid,
(And the man is two-faced.)

Because it was so important for the oxen to be happy, these boys - knowns as cathreiwyr (sing.: cathreiwr) - were actually auditioned at hiring fairs, and hired based on how many verses and tunes they knew and could perform.

Hundreds of these verses have been collected and a lot of trad songs popular today are actually from this 'body' of poetry and music.

sian