Book of Aneirin goes online

[aeolium]

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?

If no broadcaster will take up the challenge (and I'm not holding my breath) would it not be possible for some knowledgeable scholar with a good reading voice to make a youtube reading in which a parallel text was displayed scrolling up as the reading proceeded - or even highlighting the words as they were read?

[Gordon]

If no broadcaster will take up the challenge (and I'm not holding my breath) would it not be possible for some knowledgeable scholar with a good reading voice to make a youtube reading in which a parallel text was displayed scrolling up as the reading proceeded - or even highlighting the words as they were read?

Perhaps you are right the technology isn't the problem. It's not so much the broadcasters but the patriotic academics who should be taking the lead. Surely there is a media department at Aberystwyth or Bangor? Given the history of the Marches we should choose a Gwynedd person!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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?

Bearing in mind that my knowledge of this work goes back to sources mainly derived from a conference held in 1984 (!) - the way the poem is laid out in the source I gave doesn't match that seen in the Book of Aneirin itself: the line divisions there appear like this:

Gredyf gwr oed gwas / Gwrhyt am dias
Meirch mwth myngvras / A dan vordwyt megyrwas
Ysgwyt ysgauyn lledan / Ar bedrein mein vuan
Kledyuawr glas glan / Ethy eur aphan

.. etc, (without the "/"s: the Board won't allow gaps between words) reflecting the internal rhymes, linear rhythms and alliterations that are characteristic of Celtic poetry of this time. Or, at least, what is known of Celtic poetry from what is generally thought to be "of this time" - but what "this time" is is the cause of much debate, research and articles in academic journals.

What is known nowadays about the battle commemorated in Y Gododdin comes from the poem itself: it would be just another forgotten battle between indigenous Britons and invading Anglo-Saxon/Danes if not for the poem. The battle probably took place in the Sixth Century (scholars have dated it from anywhere between 520 - 620) and the poem is either a contemporaneous lament or a later commemoration. The Book of Aneirin dates from the Thirteenth Century, and is a splicing of two older texts (the earlier dating from the late Ninth, early Tenth Centuries; which might account for the "v"s Gordon noticed: they were used by Welsh scribes at this time) - Y Gododdin isn't the only poem in the Book, and much of the remaining texts are possibly/probably/definitely not by Aneirin (depending on whose research you read). Aneirin and Taliesin were almost certainly Oral poets and no written texts of their work exists before at least three hundred years after they died, so how much of this is precisely what the Sixth Century audiences heard is also fruitful copy for the academic journals.

So, to answer your question: I don't know. But rhythmic patterns, rhyme schemes and alliterative dialogue are useful devices to help a Bard recite a work held mainly in his (discuss!) memory - as is a Musical setting, so it's not impossible that these devices were used (nor impossible that they are later adaptations that reached the written sources).

I might add that the possibility of final (or, at least, more definitive) solutions to these questions was scuppered when at least one keen student was denied a Grant to undertake further research into them in the first of the Thatcher administration's cuts to Postgraduate Research Funding in 1981 (these things aren't "important", after all). So we shall have to wait for further developments - the online publication of the prime source may well encourage such developments.

But, as it stands, Y Gododdin is a magnificent work of Art: as skillfully wrought as a Celtic ornamental battle shield, word patterns and images emerge from the seemingly restrictive compositional techniques - mind and passion, Art and Craft seamlessly intertwined. This is the sort of stuff that really gets me excited in Art: it's there, too, in Beowulf, in Machaut, Dunstable, Bach's Art of Fugue, the Beethoven Quartets, Brahms, Schönberg, Webern, Ferneyhough - and in the poetry of the figure whom I regard as the most neglected of the great poet/artists of the Twentieth Century: David Jones, whose Anathemata draws directly on Y Gododdin.

[Gordon]

I've been researching Gododdin and found quote a lot using Google. One strand has been looking for books so now The Plot Thickens!! Look at this from a book review castigating an author for lack of academic conviction:

Mr. [Gwyn] Thomas has produced a good account of the Gododdin poem but as with all translations of this powerful heroic defeat much is lost of the poetic resonance of the original - its graphic imagery and its internal literary devices are inevitably diluted.

Ye-e-e-es we sort of knew that:

But there is a greater problem. The Gododdin are supposed to be a tribal group migrated from an eponymous location somewhere in the current Strathclyde region of Scotland - certainly North of Hadrian's Wall. However, a place called 'Manau Gododdin' according to a Nennius manuscript is wholly unknown in the Scottish or Northern British annals. Moreover, Gododdin in the Brythonic means 'an interruption, a break (of continuity)' - imputing a meaning of an interregnum occupied by an alien group i.e. not of the indigenous lineage.The conventional context of this battle, which is a cavalry charge is also wholly unfeasible even allowing for poetic licence. Three hundred or so 'men of Gwynedd' had no business travelling to 'Edinburgh' (Din Eidin in the text) and then to Catterick (Catraeth or Galltraeth in the text) to combat a vastly superior force of Saxons who almost certainly at this time and in that locality were likely to be Danish pirates. This action took place at Dunoding in Gwynedd and the battle at Galltraeth on the Lleyn peninsula and there are plenty of other location references in the poem to support this contention.

Hmm!!! That puts a different complexion on things. I suppose the Brythonic tribes had invasions in the west at this time too, just as they did later with the Vikings or are these invaders early Vikings not Saxons or Angles? But here's the bit that is thought provoking:

It is indeed a very sad facet of the Welsh psyche that even at an academic level they do not feel worthy enough to recover their 'lost' or appropriated history and the Gododdin is but one of many similar examples. In summary, an intelligent version but one tainted by convention and lacking the courage of conviction.
Mike Field.

So is the cat among the pigeons? Who is this Mike Field and why hasn't he put the world right? He doesn't turn up in a Google search except through this review of his.

BTW when I first saw this thread title I did think it was about Aneurin Bevan, my Dad's hero!! There's lots on You Tube about him as well, Bevan I mean not my Dad

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, I saw the Mike Field review on the Amazon site - interesting thoughts: he goes out on a limb all of his own, but it wouldn't be the first time that (as David Dumville says of Saunders Lewis' ideas about the chronology of the Gododdin) "the limb proves sturdier than the tree" of majority opinion. I wish there was more to follow up on this idea - there may well be several precedents for alliances of distant kingdoms resulting in such army movements as Field suggests "had no business". But I'd like evidence for this.

[Gordon]

Yes, I saw the Mike Field review on the Amazon site - interesting thoughts: he goes out on a limb all of his own, but it wouldn't be the first time that (as David Dumville says of Saunders Lewis' ideas about the chronology of the Gododdin) "the limb proves sturdier than the tree" of majority opinion. I wish there was more to follow up on this idea - there may well be several precedents for alliances of distant kingdoms resulting in such army movements as Field suggests "had no business". But I'd like evidence for this.

Agreed. It sounds like Field isn't Welsh anyway! And it also seems that many of the researchers are not Welsh either - follow the money again? The Welsh economy does not stretch that far? Koch [see You Tube lecture on Gododdin] is American. What is an American Harvard graduate doing delving into early medieval/Brythonic Wales? Hasn't he got better things to do like Commaches or Algonquins or something?

Much of the "Welsh" [at this time "Wales" did not exist as such, people were known for their tribes like Silures etc] poetry of this period is concerned with lament for loss, a centuries long period of invasion and retreat. The Roman departure and the inter-tribal rivalries left the country in a state of fractions with petty Kingdoms whose "kings" were nothing more than warlords whose sword arm gave them influence and thrones. Were these warlords benign? Maybe some were the good guys at least for a while. The raids by invading Europeans challenged these Romano-Brythonic warlords as much as the people. Ordinary people slaved in fields to collect food, build shelter and did the chores whilst the warrior class "protected" them! Ha! Nothing new there of course. So the court bards glorified the warriors - the more blood and gore the better in the great hall after dinner entertainment - who by and large were not necessarily heroes but thugs.

It would be interesting to contrast the outlook of those warriors with "freedom fighters" elsewhere - why do they do it? What rewards did they think there were? Gododdin gave then a year's feasting as payment for giving ther lives later. Suicide Islamic "warriors" [ref today's report of the trial of killers of a soldier] have a system of esteem that has a certain resonance here even though we may deplore what they did.

So while these poems are skilled forms of art the subject matter should not deflect us from their origins, remote and hazy though they are. The artists were under the influence of the warrior's sword as much as the farmers and had to deliver but perhaps their art rose above the context. Shostakovich anyone?