To tell you from the start, I have lost him whose hand and eye are gentle; I shall go to seek him of the slender eyebrows, wherever the most generous and fairest of men may be.
I shall go to the midst of Gwent without delaying, to the south I shall go to search, and charge the sun and the moon to seek for him whose hand and eye are gentle.
I shall search through all the lands, in the valley and on the mountain, in the church and in the market, where is he whose hand and eye are gentle.
Mark you well, my friends, where you see a company of gentlemen, who is the finest and most loving of them; that is he whose hand and eye are gentle.
As I was walking under the vine the nightingale bade me rest, and it would get information for me where was he whose hand and eye are gentle.
The cuckoo said most kindly that she herself was quite well informed, and would send her servant to inquire without ceasing where was he whose hand and eye are gentle.
The blackbird told me she would travel to Cambridge and Oxford, and would not complete her nest till she found him whose hand and eye are gentle.
I know that he whose speech is pleasant can play the lute and play the organ; God gave the gift of every music to him whose hand and eye are gentle.
Hunting with hawks and hounds and horses, catching and calling and letting slip, none loves a slim dog or a hound like him whose hand and eye are gentle.
--from the Welsh; popular song; sixteenth century, in A Celtic Miscellany, Sel. and Trans. by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (London: Penguin, 1971), pp. 112-13.
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