Translations of old or ancient works from original texts.
THE FOX
[‘Y Llwynog’ – Thomas Parry, Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym 22]
Yesterday I was, God knows my purpose,
Beneath the trees, woe to the man who sees her not,
Loitering under Ovid’s branches,
And waiting for a maid beneath the trees;
In her way she made me weep,
I saw, when I looked yonder,
An ape-like form I didn’t care for,
A red fox, he cares not for our hounds,
Sitting like a domestic pig
On his haunches beside his lair.
I aimed between my two hands
A yew-bow, costly it was, yonder,
With intent, as a skilful archer,
On the hill’s brow, passion’s rashness,
A weapon racing over open land,
To strike him with an arrow large and long.
I drew with eager purpose
Past the cheek, past completely!
Oh my anguish, disastrous mishap,
Into three pieces went my bow!
I was indignant, but not dismayed with this,
With the fox, vexatious bear!
He is a man that loves the hens,
And scornful fowl, and meat of birds.
A man who follows not the horn’s cry,
Rough his voice and his dance.
Ruddy he is against the gravelly land,
Ape-like amongst the fresh branches.
Two corners of a field he follows
A dog’s shape, desiring a goose.
A scare-crow near a hill’s brow,
Land-leaper, colour of an ember.
Ill-famed image of crows and magpies squabbling,
Just like the Dragon of the Prophecy
Summit of disturbance, gnawer of fat hens,
Proverb’s pelt, burning flesh.
Auger of the strong earth’s womb,
Lantern in closed casement’s corner.
Bow of copper of noiseless tread,
Pincer-like his blood-stained mouth.
Not easy for me to follow him,
With his house down in Annwn.
Red wanderer, too eagerly was he caught,
He would outrun a host of pursuers,
Fierce his onrush, leaper of gorse,
A leopard with an arrow in his rump.
Translated from Welsh by Kestrel
THE LAMENT FOR OWAIN
The soul of Owain, Urien’s son –
let the Lord look to its needs,
Chieftain of Rheged whom the heavy grey turf covers.
He was not shallow when it came to poems of praise.
In the chamber of the grave
is a warrior, renowned in song:
like wings of dawn, whetted spears,
since no equal will be found,
Llwyfenydd’s shining lord!
Reaper of enemies, raptor,
the stock of his father and forefathers.
When Owain killed Fflamddwyn,
It was no more than napping.
The broad host of England sleeps,
the light in their eyes.
Those who did not flee a little way
were braver than they needed –
Owain punished them fiercely
like a wolf-pack hunting sheep.
A fine man atop his many-hued horse-gear,
He gave horses to those who asked.
Though he stored them up like a rapacious prince,
they have been shared out for his soul’s sake,
the soul of Owain, Urien’s son.
Translated from Old Welsh by Mark Williams
[An elegy by Taliesin for Owain, the son of Urien of Rheged, d. c.600.
The dark-age British kingdom of Rheged was around the region where Leeds is now. They did indeed speak Welsh there, or a language essentially indistinguishable from Old Welsh: the time when the Britons were finally pushed back to Wales and Cornwall was yet to come, though not far off. The poems are attributed to a master-bard, Taliesin, who must not be confused with the legendary seer-poet and mystical time-traveller of later Welsh tradition. These historical poems are precious fragments of the culture of Britain in the dark ages. Owain was the son of Urien, the Lord of Rheged and Taliesin’s patron. It praises his succesful raids on the Saxons, and his killing of Fflamddwyn, ‘Flame-Bearer’, apparently a British nickname for some English warrior. No one is entirely certain where ‘Llwyfenydd’ was, possibly the Lake District.]
THE OLD MEN’S COLLOQUY
‘Well, my friend Cailte’, said Patrick, ‘what was the best hunting the Fian ever found, in Ireland or in Scotland?’
‘The hunting of Arran’, said Cailte.
‘And where does that land lie?’, asked Patrick.
‘Between Scotland and the land of the Picts’, replied Cailte. ‘And we, the three battle-bands of the Fianna, used to go there on the first day of the month of Trogain which is called Lughnasadh, and we used to take our full share of hunting there, until the cuckoo called out from the treetops of Ireland. Sweeter than any human music was listening to the lovely voices of the bird-host rising from the waves and from the island’s shores. There were three fifties of bird-flocks thereabouts, with flashing feathers of every colour – blue-grey, and green, and blue-green, and yellow.’
And Cailte recited this poem:
Arran with its running deer,
and sea swelling to its shoulder,
island where hosts were fed,
ridges in which blue spears were bloodied.
Skittish deer on its mountaintops,
tender bog-berries amid its leaves,
cold water in its streams,
mast upon its brown oaks.
Greyhounds were there, and hunting dogs,
blackberries and sloes from the blackthorn,
trees close to the water’s edge,
deer wandering amidst its oaks.
There was purple ling gleaming on its rocks,
and unblemished grass upon its hillsides,
above its crags (fine ornament) you’d see
the play of speckled fawns a-leaping.
Smooth were its meadows, fat its wild-pigs,
happy its clearings, a tale most to be believed.
Nuts clustered on the branches of its wood-hazel,
the sails of longships travelled past it.
Paradise it was to us from fair weather’s advent,
with trout beneath the banks of its rivers
and gulls disputing about its white cliffs.
Arran! – lovely at every season.
‘May victory and blessing come to you, my dear Cailte!’, said Patrick. ‘Your tales and you yourself are welcome with us always!’
Translated from Middle Irish by Mark Williams
[This piece comes from a 12th century Irish text called ‘The Old Men’s Colloquy’. In a strange, luminous moment, the pagan hero Cailte has mysteriously survived from Ireland’s ancient past to converse with St. Patrick. Patrick is delighted by this huge, wild envoy from Ireland’s antiquity, and they wander together about Ireland. In the course of their journey, Cailte tells Patrick many tales of what life was like in the days of his lord, Finn mac Cool, who led the band of noble warriors, the Fianna. It’s as though an medieval Greek were to have written a prose epic in which Achilles lived on to meet St Paul, and used that as frame tale for a series of subtales as complicated and subtle as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. ‘Cailte’ is pronounced ‘KWEEL-cher’. The ‘Trogain’ month appears to be our August.]
SELECTIONS FROM THE GODODDIN
A man’s might, a youth’s years,
courage in battle.
Swift long-maned horses
beneath the thigh of a handsome lad.
A broad light shield
on the crupper of a slender steed.
Bright grey-blue blades,
intricate golden tassels.
This is what will never be:
emnity between you and me.
Better will I do for you,
by praising you in song.
Sooner to a bloodbath
than to a wedding-feast!
Sooner to be ravens’ food
than properly buried!
A dear friend was Ywain,
a horror that he is under stones.
A sad wonder it is to me,
in what country was slain
Marro’s only son.
Warriors went to Gododdin, enjoying merriment;
bitter in battle, with spears arrayed.
A short year in peace – then they fell silent.
Bodgad’s son, his hand’s deed wrought vengeance.
Though they might go to churches to do penance,
old and young, strong and feeble,
the certain tryst with death came to them.
Warriors went to Gododdin, swift was their host;
their feast was pale mead and it was poison.
three hundred under orders battling,
and after the war-whoop, silence fell.
Though they might go to churches to do penance,
the certain tryst with death came to them.
Wearing a brooch, in the front rank, wherever he went,
breathless before a girl, he earned his mead;
hacked to pieces was his shield when the battle cry was heard,
he gave no quarter to as many as he pursued.
He did not retreat from the field of battle till the blood ran down.
Like rushes he chopped men down, he did not flee.
Indeed the Gododdin relate it on the floor of the court,
that before Madog’s tent when he returned
only one out of a hundred would come back.
Translated from Old Welsh by Mark Williams
[These are selections from ‘The Gododdin’, the poem commemorating the British warriors of the kingdom of Gododdin in south-western Scotland, who fell attempting to re-take Catterick (‘Catraeth’ in Welsh) from the English around the turn of the 7th century.]