Book of Aneirin goes online

[french frank]

Well, I'm excited, anyway! The Book of Aneirin is one of the Four Ancient Books of Wales and contains the ancient Welsh elegaic poem Y Gododdin (the Celtic tribe of the Votadini). It is said to tell how a band of young men set out to do battle against the Anglo-Saxons and were overwhelmed at Catraeth (Catterick) by larger forces and all were killed but one.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, I'm excited, anyway!

Oh, me, too! Y Gododdin is the earliest surviving epic poem from these islands and tells of events in what is now England (and, if memory serves, parts of Scotland): we may call the language of the poem "Welsh", but this was what most of us in "Southern Britain" spoke before the English invaded. Closer to the language that the Romans heard spoken here, in other words (regional accents allowing).

[antongould]

Well, I'm excited, anyway! The Book of Aneirin is one of the Four Ancient Books of Wales and contains the ancient Welsh elegaic poem Y Gododdin (the Celtic tribe of the Votadini). It is said to tell how a band of young men set out to do battle against the Anglo-Saxons and were overwhelmed at Catraeth (Catterick) by larger forces and all were killed but one.

Very few people get past Catterick and live to tell the tale........

[french frank]

Very few people get past Catterick and live to tell the tale........

Ferzackerly, ferney. I must look up some more details.

[french frank]

By the way, aeolium will pop up and say how nice it would be to hear some of it read out on Radio 3. So I'm going to get my agreement in first: it can be read to sound much like modern Welsh.

[amateur51]

By the way, aeolium will pop up and say how nice it would be to hear some of it read out on Radio 3. So I'm going to get my agreement in first: it can be read to sound much like modern Welsh.

Any truth in the rumour that Lord Lloyd Webber is at this very moment ... praps not

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

By the way, aeolium will pop up and say how nice it would be to hear some of it read out on Radio 3. So I'm going to get my agreement in first: it can be read to sound much like modern Welsh.

There's an entire documentary on youTube, but the readings are "sicklied o'er" with reverb effects and "dramatic Music" (and modern English commentary on the text we can't hear!). There's also a transcription of an album from the '80s where the text is broken up and adorned with effects and Music - and a couple of chaps dressed in their best bardrobes, accompanying their recitings (some of them have worse pronunciation than my own!) to stringed instruments (some looking like they've been made in their sheds). Better than nothing, but a good reading made specially for a new programme would be very welcome. Good call, aeolie

[french frank]

Just looking at a couple of translations and the original text. It seems quite impossible to capture all the internal rhymes which are so characteristic of Old Welsh poetry (sorry - cannot put a circumflex on a y)

Gw^yr a aeth Gatraeth oedd ffraeth eu llu;
Glasfedd eu hancwyn, a gwenwyn fu.
Trichant trwy beiriant yn catäu -
A gwedi elwch tawelwch fu.
Cyd elwynt i lannau i benydu,
Dadl diau angau i eu treiddu.

Mr amateur will translate ..... :-)

[amateur51]

Just looking at a couple of translations and the original text. It seems quite impossible to capture all the internal rhymes which are so characteristic of Old Welsh poetry (sorry - cannot put a circumflex on a y)

Gw^yr a aeth Gatraeth oedd ffraeth eu llu;
Glasfedd eu hancwyn, a gwenwyn fu.
Trichant trwy beiriant yn catäu -
A gwedi elwch tawelwch fu.
Cyd elwynt i lannau i benydu,
Dadl diau angau i eu treiddu.

Mr amateur will translate ..... :-)

My 1964 edition of Collins Spurrell seems to be too modern :winkeye;

[aeolium]

Better than nothing, but a good reading made specially for a new programme would be very welcome. Good call, aeolie

Ferney, you're creating a new kind of forum - a Discworld one perhaps? - in which you respond to a post before it has been made

The sound of the middle Welsh would be a wonderful thing to hear, but sound without meaning (as it would be to those unfortunate souls here without a complete grounding in the language) would perhaps be disappointing. It would be great if as well as providing the sound of the spoken poem in the original, a text could be made available with the original and a translation on adjoining columns so that the listener could follow it as it was being broadcast. If it's not asking too much, that is

[french frank]

It would be great if as well as providing the sound of the spoken poem in the original, a text could be made available with the original and a translation on adjoining columns so that the listener could follow it as it was being broadcast. If it's not asking too much, that is

They did something like that for the Pliny, didn't they? Or was it just the Latin text of the extracts they used?

Anyway, first we'd need to persuade them to broadcast the poem!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can't find a parallel text version, but here is the original poem in full:

http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/a01w.html

... and a modernish rendition from the same source:

http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/a01b.html

[amateur51]

Ferney, you're creating a new kind of forum - a Discworld one perhaps? - in which you respond to a post before it has been made

The sound of the middle Welsh would be a wonderful thing to hear, but sound without meaning (as it would be to those unfortunate souls here without a complete grounding in the language) would perhaps be disappointing. It would be great if as well as providing the sound of the spoken poem in the original, a text could be made available with the original and a translation on adjoining columns so that the listener could follow it as it was being broadcast. If it's not asking too much, that is

Good points all. aeolium - what's BBC Radio Cymru for, after all - get to it, folks

[aeolium]

I can't find a parallel text version, but here is the original poem in full:

http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/a01w.html

... and a modernish rendition from the same source:

http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/a01b.html

Thanks for those texts, ferney. It's interesting to see that many of the stanzas appear to have the same sound ending on every line, i.e. the same rhyming pattern runs right through the stanza. Isn't that unusual among older epic poems?

[Gordon]

Thanks all for posting this. I agee that of all channels BBC Wales/Cymru should do something about this. If the English can celebrate Beowulf [transalted by an Irishman] then why not the Welsh these books?

By chance I have just been on a course about the Welsh Marches and reading about the period of Llewelyn Fawr. The course spent a little time on these books and the tutor read out from a version of this one - I didn't think to ask him about which translation version or how he came to choose a Welsh pronunciation. As FF says above, quite difficult if not impossible to get the poetry transferred and anyway such a translation can't get the sound which is vital in any language.

Looking at the link that fhg gave us to the poem in original Welsh [I assume it is a straight transfer from the MS - but there's no v in Welsh] a modern Welsh speaker will find many familiar words but others not so and a modern dictionary of a certain age [I've got that schooldays Spurrell's too! - now use Y Geiriadur Mawr from Gwasg Gomer] doesn't help at all. Best get on and look at it more closely.

Pob hwyl pawb sydd ffraeth ei iaith.