W J Gruffydd : Poet, Literary Critic, Mythographer

What it actually says on the gravestone of W J Gruffydd (1881-1954) is ‘Athro, Bardd, Llenor’ which indicates that he was a teacher, a poet and a man of letters. Why I have put it slightly differently in my heading will become apparent in what follows. He was initially a teacher, at first in a school and later in a university where he developed a career as a scholar. He published several volumes of poetry. His activities as a man of letters included his long-standing editorship of the Welsh literary journal Y Llenor and he was throughout his life an active player in the literary politics of Wales. But my characterisation of him as a mythographer is based on the perhaps surprising fact that, in his work on the texts of the medieval Welsh tales known as Mabonogi, he chose specifically not to write about them primarily as works of literature, but attempted to look behind the literary texts to reconstruct the mythology contained in the oral tales from which the literary texts were shaped. In his study of the First and Third Mabinogi tales, Rhiannon (1953) he states that his main concern is to reveal the “pure mythology … of the divine beings of the ancient world” rather than their “cultural significance” in the folklore and legend which embodied them and was in turn embodied in the work of literary creation by a single individual which became Y Mabinogi.

It was not only that he wanted to distance the literary text from its sources in oral tales and folklore, but that he also wanted to separate the elements of native lore and legend from the “Universal Myth” which he saw as the ultimate source: the story of the  Great Mother and her child who is taken to the Otherworld and is later released. The literary tale, by contrast, has many other aspects, not least the artifice of the single creator who shaped it. But if he attempted a separation of anthropological and literary features in his role as a mythographer, he was also capable of fusing mythic themes into his own literary creations. Here is my translation of his poem ‘Y Tlawd Hwn’ which provides a mythical background to the chief literary aim of presenting an individual whose poverty does not deny him the riches of his visionary gift:

One Poor Man

Because the wind was troubled for a time

And the sound of weeping in the beating of the rain

An insinuating echo of affliction in resounding rhyme

Ringing through his soul again and again,

The heave of the distant ocean on a quiet evening

Affirming intimations from generations before

And the babble of the rivers awakening

The anguish of all the suffering that he bore —

He went, struck dumb, into a silent reverie

As his companions withdrew one by one

Leaving him to dwell in a great mystery

To listen to strange voices all alone.

He perceived beauty while his brothers

Called God’s curse upon foulness of the world,

He refused their pathway to Heaven

For the echo of enchanted pipes, barely heard 

And the murmur of bees in the vineyards of Arawn

Heavy under honeyed dew on the valley bed

And hidden nectar of the dwellings that abound

In the golden ramparts of Caer Siddi overhead

Where he could feast in halls before his burial

And listen to the choir of Rhiannon’s birds sweetly

Singing through the entrances of pearl

Out to the oblivion of the eternal sea.

That was written in 1930 when he was nearly 50 years old. It’s form and structure is a development of his early inspiration by the romantic verse of the late nineteenth century. It also reflects his belief in the importance of the sensitive individual, from whatever class, who turns away from the commonplace concerns of the world to nurture an inner life. The same belief can be witnessed in a poem in the full romantic style written when he was a young man. The sonnet ‘Gwerful Fychan’ tells of a young woman in the 15th century whose poems had survived chiefly in the oral memory of North Wales rather than in the written record. Gruffydd’s imagined portrayal of her has as much to do with mythic reconstruction of local legend as it has to do with literary history. In the words of one critic it is based on  “common belief rather than facts”[*]. But whatever it tells us about its subject it reveals much about Gruffydd’s idealisation of the gifted individual and the fragile temporality of the riches which come from having such a gift. Here is my translation of the sonnet:

Gwerful Fychan

In the spring of her days she saw the freshness

Of the world dancing past; on every crest

There was a crown of roses, and careless tresses

Lay soft and easy on each blessed breast;

On the breezes the scents of musk and wine

And intoxicating perfumes were concealed;

A thousand kisses ripened on lips divine

And every heart the joys of life revealed.

She took up her harp then to declaim

It all in song — her summer burgeoned,

Distilled the sun, the dew, the rain —

In immortal and audacious verse; then turned,

With a tear on her cheek, away from all delight

And walked bereft into the darkness of the night.

…

The Welsh texts translated from:

W. J. Gruffydd Detholiad o Gerddi. Golygwyd gan Bobi Jones (Caerdydd, 1991)

(*) “y gred cyffredin yn hytach na’r ffaith” ( Bobi Jones in the notes to the volume above).

Cyfieithu/Translate

Some time ago I wrote an article for the journal PLANET [~>] as part of an ongoing series entitled ‘Keywords’, inspired by the work by Raymond Williams of the same name where he analysed significant words and terms for the definition of cultural identity and their ideological resonances. The PLANET series engages with such key words in the Welsh Language and their significance in Wales. The word which formed the basis of my essay was ‘cyfieithu’ (‘translation’), and I am now putting it up as a separate page on this site [HERE ~>].

Although the essay focused on the significance of the word in relation to the bilingual situation in Wales, I am now prompted to consider how the arguments might apply in the context of Britain as a whole. There are now many communities across Britain who use languages other than English in some part of the social lives, although English is the default language for many of those people outside their close communities. At a time when many are turning inwards and there is a mood of closing down ties with other European nations, England and English seem increasingly to represent a core identity which communities across Britain are invited to embrace. In Scotland and in Wales there are alternative focuses on national identity which invite the citizens of those countries to consider an independent existence which involves sharing sovereignty with the European Union, which explains the strong ‘Remain’ stance of the ‘nationalist’ parties of those countries. 

Reviving the sense of the Welsh Language as the descendant of the language spoken across what is now England, Wales and Southern Scotland, and Gaelic as the language spoken further north and for a time in some other peripheral areas, might provide a scenario in which alternatives to an inward sense of Englishness as the core of Britishness can be imagined. Then ‘translation’ - in its Welsh sense of ‘cyfiethu’ implying a bringing together (‘cyf-‘), rather than its English sense of passing over (‘trans-‘) could provide the basis for a cultural identity which is inclusive and stands alongside other such identities without engendering conflict. But, as with the current belated concern about climate change, it may already be too late for that.

The ELEGY for Llywelyn

Following the discussion in the previous entry about David Jones’ inscription commemorating the death of Llywelyn in 1282, here is my translation of the Elegy for Llywelyn written by his court bard Gruffudd ap yr Ynad Coch . Some people in Wales still wear an ivy leaf to remember this occasion on 11th December each year. People also gather annually at the memorial stone (above) at Cilmeri near Llanfair ym Muallt (Builth Wells) where he was killed. There are good line-by-line translations of the Elegy, notably Gwyn Williams’ parallel text (Welsh facing English) in The Burning Tree (Faber 1956 - not currently in print) and Tony Conran in Welsh Verse- see here: http://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9781854110817


My free translation - revisted now from 20 years ago - does not follow the original line by line but does remain true to the narrative development in spite of contracting many lines from two or three to one and slightly altering the exact order of the lines in places. Although I worked closely from the original when I did the translation, looking at it now with the benefit of hindsight there are some things that I could have done differently. I tried to produce a readable and accessible version of the poem which conveys something of the power as well as the narrative of the original. So I concentrated on creating something that worked in English. The poem opens like this:

Oer gallon dan vron o vraw allwynin
(Cold heart under breast of fear sad)

am vrenin, derwin ddôr, Aberffraw
(For a king, oak door, Aberffraw)

Gwyn Williams renders the final “allwynin” as “pitiful”. Tony Conran uses “grieved” and maintains the use of the dash between ‘vraw’ and ‘allwynin’(a device used in some Welsh editions of the text to maintain the end-rhyme “-aw” which occurs throughout the poem). I abandoned the word together with the literal rendering of the king as the oak door for the idea of the heart of oak lying cold behind the door, though keeping the idea ‘strength is vanquished’. The “cold heart” reference also occurs later in the poem:

Oeruelawc callon dan vronn o vraw
(cold heart under a breast of fear)

rewydd val crinwyd yssyn crinaw
(lustiness like dried sticks which have shrivelled)

Pony welwch chwi hynt y gwynt a’r glaw?
(do you not see the course of the wind and the rain)

Pony welwch chwi’r deri yn ymdaraw?
(do you not see the oaks clashing?)

Pony welwch chwi’r môr yn merwinaw yr tir?
(do you not sea the sea irritating the land?)

Here the translation of the word ‘merwinaw’ was an issue. The dictionary gives this is meaning ‘grate (on)’, ‘cause pain to’ or ‘itch’. “Stinging” is chosen by both Tony Conran and Gwyn Williams while I preferred “scouring”. But it is the series of lines that begin with the phrase “Pony welwch chwi …” and other sections of the poem where repetition of a phrase is employed for several consecutive lines, that now seems significantly absent in my version. I chose instead to force it onto to a culminating “Do you not see?” in order to use English rhymes to emphasise the main verbs and used some repetition elsewhere to convey the effect. While a direct translation would have to replicate this, the attempt to create a new version has to make its own decisions about what works in the new language. Any translation is a matter of balance but the balance here is more towards what I felt worked in English than providing an exact but possibly awkward version of the Welsh. There is, for example, another section where the word ‘arglwydd’ (lord) is the first word for several lines, sometime followed by an adjective which would have to come first in English. I also departed from the first person singular of Gruffudd’s original after the first stanza to convey the wider social gloom which overtook the Welsh followers of Llywelyn at this time. The event signalled the end of Wales as an independent nation and preceded a period of intense castle building by Edward I who had his son invested as Prince of Wales in the newly built castle at Caernarfon.


*

The heart of oak is cold
behind the gates of Aberffraw.
The hand that gave gold
is still now – I cannot wear it,
the apparel he put about me.
This grief for my lord is a cloud on my soul
This grief for the fate that his wounds brought us
confounds the red spear of Cadwalader’s keeping.

For us now the darkness,
the hatred of Saxons
A time of lamenting
in the life left to us
A time now to praise him
to think of his glory
to reproach even God
who has left us without him;
For him life eternal.

What now for us left
with a full load of weeping?
The dark hand that felled him
haunts his kingdom; his hall now the grave.
A long vista of fear stretches before us.

Lord Christ deliver him
for the sake of our sorrow,
Heavy the sword blows that struck him to earth
Heir of brave princes, his flame
burned brightly: strong Lion of Gwynedd
Great was the need of the strength of his throne
All Britain was struck down with Nantcoel’s defender.

Tears running on maiden’s cheeks
Blood flowing from warriors gashes
and trodden into the mire of our land.
Widows keening with hearts broken
and sons without fathers, their homes
-charred ruins – fired and looted.
Not since Camlann has there been such weeping
Gone is our mainstay, his golden hair
stained with a death blow O Llywelyn!
My mind cannot grasp it.

Hearts chilled by a pall of fear
Our life-will withers like weeds in Winter
as the wind dashes the rains upon us
and the oaks clash
and the sea’s crash scours the land:
Do you not see?
The Sun falls and the stars are shrinking!
Can you not believe our world is ending?
O God, why does the sea not rush over the shore?
Why should this life trouble us more?
Wretched we are and clasped in fear
with no-where to turn and terror’s grip tightening
and only life’s shackles to loosen our burden.

All his followers now cast down,
his lords and his servants,
the weak and the strong, all of us suffer
Why should we value a head on our shoulders
when he is without one?

His head has fallen and with it our pride
Fear and surrender are all we have left
His head has fallen – a dragon’s head
Noble it was , fierce to our foes
His head is stuck with an iron pole
The searing pain of it runs through my soul,
This land is empty – our spirit cut down.
His head had honour in nine hundred lands
Proud king, swift hawk, fierce wolf
True Lord of Aberffraw
His only refuge

the Kingdom of Heaven.

First published in AGENDA (Vol 26, No. 3) and reprinted together with the original and the translations of Gwyn Williams and Tony Conran in Materion Dwyieithog/Bilingual Matters (1989).