#y gododdin

[gawrkin]

(Source: LINK)

So this makes Hen Ogledd/Lothian literally Hell itself then.

[quidam-sirenae]

Three hundred gold-braced

Warlike, and god-graced

Men that were proud-faced

Together, with arms raised

Three hundred steeds raced

Fierce, forward, with haste

Three dogs and men chased,

None returned, all razed.

-y gododdin English translation

[verecunda]

I reread Joseph Clancy's translation of Y Gododdin today, and I'm sorry, but I find this particular elegy kind of hilarious (and endearing):

Betorqued, to the fore wherever he'd charge, Shy of breath before a maid, he'd earn his mead. Rent the front of his shield, when he heard the war-cry, He'd spare none he pursued.

"Aw yeah, what a guy! Ferocious warrior, always at the front of the charge, merciless to his enemies, mowed down all before him like reeds before the scythe.

"(Absolutely no game tho.)"

This poor guy's shade is listening in like, "Aneirin. Aneirin please. Why did you have to put that in your immortal lament?" ;_____;

[maddyaddy]

A beloved friend was Ywain, It is wrong that he is beneath a cairn. It is a sad wonder to me in what land Marro's only son was slain.

[pitch-and-moan]

The Birth of Myth

A period piece about the composition of Y Gododdin by the Welsh bard Aneirin. While the film is almost entirely about the development of old and middle Welsh poetry, the end of the film teases the Arthurian legend as one stanza obliquely references King Arthur, setting up a series of other films about literary references to the character.

[cicelythereaper]

The amount of description Aneirin puts into describing the Gododdin warriors has completely wrecked me

ahhhh i'm like a year late responding to this (my apologies) but my response is still HARD SAME!! at no point has y gododdin stopped destroying me in that time!!

i could scream indefinitely about the way the individual warriors are described but instead i'm going to exploit this opportunity to yell about this one stanza that gets me every goddamn time:

Keredic caradwy e glot.

achubei gwarchatwei not.

lletvegin is tawel kyn dyuot

e dyd gowychyd y wybot.

ys deupo car kyrd kyvnot

y wlat nef adef atnabot.

which you can translate as:

Ceredig, lovable his reputation,

he used to rush forth, he used to guard his fame.

A fosterling, he was peaceable before the day

of his death came; his manners were excellent.

May the dear one of songs come at the appointed hour

to the land of heaven, the home of acknowledgement.

and like!! this whole stanza is a pun on the fact that his name sounds like caredig, "beloved", and you can see it in all the little nuances! caradwy e glot could mean that his fame was beloved by him, that he cared about his reputation and thus protected it by acting bravely, but it also sounds like he had a reputation for being lovable and well-loved! he was a lletvegin, a half-grown youth who was still being raised, he's a BABY! he was tawel, he was quiet, he had good manners! and car kyrd could mean the "friend of songs" (as in a friend to bards, someone who paid them well) but it also sounds like the "dear one of armies" (cyrdd can be the plural of either cerdd "song" or cordd "host")! EVERYONE LIKED HIM

so this one pun-stanza about this one dude manages to convey in six lines that he was a sweet kid, determined to prove his own fame by fighting but otherwise polite and not at all aggressive, the petted favourite of all the older warriors, and i just 😭😭😭

[idratherdreamofjune]

Conn said doubtfully, “I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”

Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shining Company [under-appreciated book 14/?]

[violetcancerian]

Lines from Y Gododdin's first stanza that have ruined me

He was a man in mind, in years a youth,

And gallant in the din of war;...

...It will not be my part

To speak of thee reproachfully,

A more choice act of mine will be

To celebrate thy praise in song;

Thou hast gone to a bloody bier,...

...Alas, Owain! my beloved friend;

It is not meet that he should be devoured by ravens! 

There is swelling sorrow in the plain,

Where fell in death the only son of Marro.