Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Well, my last post was in 2007 and my one before that 2006. I'm now living in Dublin, and I occasionally get across to Wales, but not as often as I would like. I'm very happy to be over here after ten years of California. I have been really remiss in not mentioning Will Parker's magnificent The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, which I hope to rectify soon.

Iain Sinclair on the Mari Llwyd

In Edge of the Orison, Sinclair compares some Morris dancers that he sees in middle England to the Mari Llwyd enactments of his youth in south Wales.

'Not like the revenant mob, the drunks and madmen of my Welsh youth; the Mari Llwyd rhymers who pranced, house to house, on New Year's Eve. Excavated horse's head, scarlet lipped, draped in a white sheet. Bells. Footsteps in the snow. The dead try to gain entrance. To fire, warmth, cakes and ale. Improvised poetry, verse for verse, is the only way of keeping them out.'
Edge of the Orison (Hamish Hamilton, 2005) , p.184

Some Thoughts on the English of South Wales

A nice article I came across.

Celts descended from Spanish fishermen, study finds

Don't tell the locals, but the hordes of British holidaymakers who visited Spain this summer were, in fact, returning to their ancestral home.

A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. DNA analysis reveals they have an almost identical genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between 4,000 and 5,000BC.

The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of Britishness.

People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish."

Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our genetic roots.

Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were originally descended from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.

The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic clan, which Professor Sykes has called "Oisin". After that, the next most widespread originally belonged to tribes of Danish and Norse Vikings. Small numbers of today's Britons are also descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman clans.

These DNA "fingerprints" have enabled Professor Sykes to create the first genetic maps of the British Isles, which are analysed in Blood of the Isles, a book published this week. The maps show that Celts are most dominant in areas of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But, contrary to popular myth, the Celtic clan is also strongly represented elsewhere in the British Isles.

Clicn on the link below for the rest of the article

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1621766.ece

Iolo Morganwg at Planet Magazine

From Planet 171

"In a Very Deranged State"

by Mary-Ann Constantine

In the first of two articles Mary-Ann Constantine explores the contradictions in the life and work of Iolo Morganwg as revealed in the huge archive of his papers at the National Library of Wales.

Intensive research on anything makes researchers obsessive; they develop exegetical tendencies, see precursors and parallels everywhere, and cannot resist making connections that lead, like so many spider-webs, back to the object of their research. It must be said that the huge archive of papers and letters produced by Iolo Morganwg, now held in the National Library of Wales, is dangerously conducive to this tendency. As endless calls for papers for Romantic-period conferences drop into the inbox, it is hard to resist the mildly intoxicating feeling that it would be possible to knock out twenty minutes on virtually anything. Science? There’s the medicinal visit in 1792 to one “Mr Long Opperator in Electricity in Compton Street, Soho, who electrified me, drawing sparks repeatedly from my hands, arms, breast, knees.” Geology? The cliffs of Glamorgan yielded “the head of a small horned animal petrified in a quarry of limerock, I suppose that it must have been a fish.” Urban versus pastoral? “Let those that abide in the filth of a town/Deride, if they please, the meek life of a clown.” The French revolution? The idea of Britishness? Tea-merchants, druids, lime-kilns, folksongs, marmalade? There will be a note or a poem on it somewhere, scribbled on the back of an advertisement, or developed in an essay-draft or in a letter to a friend or a literary journal. In a period fizzing with eclecticism Iolo Morganwg is more eclectic than most.

A research project at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, funded by the AHRB and University of Wales, is busy mining this archive, adding to fundamental work carried out half a century ago by Gruffydd John Williams, and more recently by Ceri Lewis, Prys Morgan, Gwyneth Lewis and others. The aim of the project, currently employing five researchers, is to make more of the unpublished material accessible, and, especially, to bring it to the attention of an English-language audience. Much of the archive is in fact in English, but has been very little used by those working on this period, particularly outside Wales. A series of books is planned: Iolo’s correspondence, over three thousand letters, will be published in three volumes, and books on bardism, romantic forgery, politics and Iolo’s legacy are also underway. A composite volume of essays on many different aspects of his life and work should be out by the end of this year.

He was born Edward Williams in the parish of Llancarfan, Glamorgan, in 1747. He had little formal education, being “so very unhealthy while a child (and I have continued so), that it was thought useless to put me to school”; but his mother encouraged him to read in Welsh and English, and he received an excellent training in Welsh poetry and letters from local scholars and poets. He learned his father’s trade, stonecutting, and claimed to be carving professionally “at the age of 8 or 9”; he was still working with his hands in his seventies. His mother’s death in 1770 affected him deeply, and he began a restless decade, travelling to north Wales to copy manuscripts and visiting the “Druidic monuments” in Anglesey. He also started to write as an English poet, composing many of the pastoral pieces that would appear in his published collection some twenty years later. At twenty-six he took laudanum for “a troublesome cough”, and he remained addicted to it in varying degrees throughout his life. He worked at his trade in London, seeing at the Welsh School there the papers of Lewis Morris, and manuscripts containing poems by the fourteenth-century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. They had a powerful effect on him: he became a disciple, a passionate imitator and finally a forger of Dafydd’s poetry. He also worked down in Kent, writing poems about his exile and enduring an exceptionally bad winter: “the snow was 40, or 50, feet deep here abouts, and they have been oblidged to dig ways under the snow, like ye ways under ground in coal mines, to go out to the country for necessaries.” Returning across Salisbury plain he visited Avebury and Stonehenge, and gave a short account of recent excavations at Silbury Hill.

In 1781, back in Glamorgan, he married Peggy Roberts. They had four children, over whom he fussed and worried all his life: the death of a four-year-old daughter in 1793 was a nightmare realised. During the 1780s the family lived in various places in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, and Iolo tried his hand unsuccessfully at many ways of making a living: “I am in this Country a piece of a marble and freestone mason, a piece of a builder, a piece of a Farmer, a lime burner for the use of the public, I have a small sloop trading in the Severn, in short I am a Jack of all trades, and, if the old proverb is true, I shall never be rich.” Sure enough, he spent a year in Cardiff prison for debt. By the late 1780s his antiquarian interest in the history of the Ancient British Druids and his local interest in Welsh poetic or bardic tradition converged: like many at this period he believed that the Druids were the ancestors of the medieval Welsh bards, and he set out to show that some areas (principally his beloved Glamorgan) had preserved the ancient traditions rather better than others. Many of the “proofs” are subtle forgeries involving texts copied from missing or vaguely identified manuscripts. In 1789, the London Welsh, sponsored by Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), brought out an edition of the poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym which included a dozen of Iolo’s own creations. In the same year he introduced himself to readers of the Gentleman’s Magazine as a self-taught “journeyman mason [...] never seen in liquor”, who, “about the age of twenty [...] was admitted a Bard in the ancient manner; a custom still retained in Glamorgan, but, I believe, in no other part of Wales.” He began to sign himself “Iolo Morganwg”.

Welsh language traced - to Russia

Welsh language traced - to Russia

Sep 16 2006

Tryst Williams, Western Mail

VODKA, furry hats, gymnastic dancing, the setting for one of the greatest Bond movies - Russia has given us a lot. But research has discovered that it also gave Wales the Welsh language - from Russia With Llove, as it were... Researchers documenting the history of Welsh have traced it back to the plains of Russia 6,000 years ago. And an equally intriguing claim that the Scottish borders represented "the cradle of Welsh" 1,500 years ago has been made. S4C's new series Taith yr Iaith starts next week with presenter Gwyneth Glyn's journey to a place described as "the crossroads between Asia and Europe".

Miss Glyn, the Welsh-language Children's Poet Laureate, said, "We were given the most incredible welcome in Kasmodar in south-west Russia where the series starts. Russian film crews came out to film us filming there. They had never heard of the Welsh language and were amazed that we had travelled so far to film. Most of them had never ventured further than their own square mile."

But while today's local population might not travel far, the language that flourished there in about 4,000BC between the Caspian and Black Seas certainly has.

It is there that linguistic historians believe the so-called "Indo-European" group of languages first developed among a tribe of nomadic farmers. This common language would eventually spread and give rise to such diverse tongues as Welsh, German and Sanskrit.

Similarities remain to this day, as shown in the case of "dant", the Welsh word for tooth, and "danta", its Sanskrit equivalent.

Welsh's epic journey across Europe is then traced across Germany (where the Rhone, Rhine and Danube all still bear Celtic names) and the English Channel to Scotland.

It is in the hinterland between Glasgow and Leeds that the language is believed to have first flowered in its own right in the 6th Century in such epic poems as the Gododdin, a Welsh-language poem that describes a battle between the early Scots and early English at Catterick.

It is only after spreading into Scotland, suggests Miss Glyn, that the language made its way to its final destination - Wales.

Despite being one of Europe's oldest tongues, the four-part series portrays Welsh as a living language that is still vibrant in the 21st Century.

Miss Glyn, 26, was brought up in Llanarmon, Eifionydd, a parish with one of the nation's highest percentages of Welsh speakers. She said, "The series left me feeling optimistic that the Welsh language will survive and made me realise how many factors it has had to face over the centuries.

"It's still alive despite some periods of oppression and deterioration; this shows its flexibility. I hope that the series will reaffirm people's pride in the language."

And even though she travelled throughout Europe for the show the talented singer-songwriter added that some of her most memorable experiences came while filming in Wales.

"The opportunity to actually touch a notorious 'Welsh Not', which was used to discourage children from speaking Welsh, was incredible," she said.

"Another unforgettable experience was to see the oldest example of written Welsh on St Cadfan's grave at St Cadfan's church, Tywyn."

Taith yr Iaith starts on Tuesday at 9pm on S4C

Traditional Music of Wales

BBC Radio Wales have a new series on the traditional music of Wales, with an accompanying website. There are several clips of well known Welsh traditional musicians to be downloaded. There are four programmes in the series and they should be archived on the Radio Wales site, but unfortunately the link connects to the wrong programme.

Historians claim to have found fabled lost city

Historians claim to have found fabled lost city

Aug 15 2006

Rin Simpson, Western Mail

WELSH historians believe they have uncovered the site of a 2,000-year-old city which they say is the most important location in ancient British history.

The Ancient British Historical Association (ABHA) claims that a field at Mynydd y Gaer near Pencoed is the fabled fortress city of King Caradoc I, or Caractacus, who fought the Romans between 42-51 AD.

The Roman leader at that time was the Emperor Claudius, immortalised by Derek Jacobi in the TV series and film I, Claudius, alongside Welsh actress Si n Phillips as his aunt Livia.

Historians Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett used old manuscripts to narrow their field of search and aerial photos obtained from Google Earth, which provides maps and satellite imagery, to find the exact spot.

Their findings have yet to be verified but the team are positive they have found the long lost site.

Mr Wilson said, "What we have is a clearly- defined walled city in exactly the place the records tell us it should be.

"The Welsh manuscripts and supporting records are always precise and allow us to make major progress in terms of identifying royal burial mounds, tombs, artefacts and more."

Tim Matthews, another member of the team, added, "We knew pretty much the area we were looking for and we knew that St Peter's Church nearby was an important meeting site and that it was at Caer Caradoc.

"So our area of search was limited to that area but because some land owners are less happy than others about people traipsing though their land access wasn't always easy.

"If you look at other ancient walled cities and what they may have been like you start to get an idea of the shape and the delineation and the patterning and you can see this is exactly what we're looking for."

Some experts have received the news with caution. A spokesperson at the Council for British Archaeology said, "Clearly it is very difficult to interpret early Welsh sources in relation to what is on the ground today.

"Although aerial photographs can be very revealing they can be very deceiving too. Without ground surveys and geophysical surveys to establish whether there were buried features, it would be difficult to say for certain whether it was an ancient site.

"That would be the next stage of investigation."

However the ABHA are sure of their findings.

Mr Matthews added, "With our research there's no theory and no speculation. You can read every manuscript, visit every site and touch every stone.

"You can go to places and see things - South Wales is littered with about 200 stones, dozens of grave mounds, tombs, all sorts of artefacts."

The group has gathered evidence from a number of ancient documents which they say refer to Caer Caradoc, including the Brut Tyssilio (684AD) and the later Gruffyd ap Arthur (1135AD).

Another reference is that of Teithfallt or Theodosius, who buried the 363 British noblemen murdered by treacherous Saxons at the notorious "Peace Conference" circa 456 AD at the Mynwent y Milwyr at Caer Caradoc.

According to the ABHA the Mynwent y Milwyr [monument to the soldiers] - is still to be found on the second highest point of Mynydd y Gaer above the possible site of the city of Caer Caradoc.

A third reference is that of the "Uthyr Pendragon", King Meurig or Maurice, who lies buried at the giant circle at Caer Caradoc.

There is, at this location, a gigantic ditch and mound shaped like a boat, next to St Peter's Church ruin not far from the site.

Mr Matthews believes that a historical discovery of this size could have important implications for the local economy.

"South Wales is packed with historical stuff and people just don't realise this.

"It's an area which is rich in ancient history you can actually touch.

"People love this kind of thing, they love it everywhere. People will come and see these things.

"It's regrettable that people in tourism agencies haven't done more."


Emperor poisoned by someone close to him

When King Caradoc I, son of Arch, fought against the Romans between 42-51AD he was taking on a pretty big task.

At the time Rome was ruled by Emperor Claudius, or Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus to give him his full name.

The first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy, Claudius nonetheless oversaw the expansion of his empire, including the conquest of Britain.

His life was immortalised by English writer Robert Graves in his novels I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935), which were adapted into the 1976 BBC TV series and film I, Claudius starring Derek Jacobi and Si n Phillips, pictured right.

However, as with many of the great Roman leaders, Claudius met his death at the hand of someone within his own household, poisoned either by his taster or his doctor. He died on October 13, 54AD.

Harp Poems

This site, the homepage of the duo Standing Stones, has a nice page giving several medieval Irish poems which are concerned with the harp. e.g.

O choice instrument of the smooth, gentle curve,
thou that criest under red fingers,
musician that hast enchanted us,
red harp, high-souled, perfect in melody.

They also have a few articles that are meant to constitute an encyclopedia of Celtic music. http://www.standingstones.com/musencyc.html

There are some interesting bits and pieces there, but it hardly adds up to an encyclopedia, especially since it has nothing on Welsh music!

Barzas-Breiz

Below is the Britannia entry for Barzas-Breiz. I hadn't come across this Breton collection before, but it has an interesting comparison with the inventions of Iolo Morganwg, James McPherson ("Ossian") and some of the Irish material. I've learned to be very postmodern about these things by now, and I consider these to be as much a continuation of the traditions as they are forgeries.

Barzas-Breiz; Chants Populaires de la Bretagne (“Breton Bardic Poems: Popular Songs of Brittany”) collection of folk songs and ballads purported to be survivals from ancient Breton folklore. The collection was made, supposedly from the oral literature of Breton peasants, by Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué and was published in 1839. In the 1870s it was demonstrated that Barzaz Breiz was not an anthology of Breton folk poetry but rather a mixture of old poems, chiefly love songs and ballads, that were rearranged by the editor or others; modern poems made to look medieval; and spurious poems about such romance figures as Merlin and Nominoë. Review of Villemarqué's papers in the 1980s, however, showed that some of the poems were authentic.

Barzaz Breiz was extremely influential: the historical poems exalting the Bretons' traditional struggle against oppression revived Breton pride in their language and heritage; it also led to the reawakening of Breton writers and stimulated further study of Breton folklore.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9013566

The Voyage of Bran

Kuno Meyer's translation of the Voyage of Bran is now online at Sacred Texts, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/vob/index.htm


We were thinking of reprinting a collection of these older translations, such as Meyer's, but they are difficult reading, the worst of the flowery Victorian idiom. They really need to be rewritten to tbe interesting to a modern audience.

Books on the Gospel of Judas

This post was intended for my Gospel of Philip/Thomas/Non-canonicals/Gnostic blog at http://www.bardic-press.com/philip/philipblog.htm
but it might be of interest here too.
I have a few small posts to publish on the Gospel of Judas. Here are the basic links again, and very brief comments on the new books on Judas.

I pre-ordered both books through Amazon, assuming that one was the scholarly edition, and
the other the popular edition. Not so.

The Lost Gospel: the Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot
This is the story of the discovery of the Gospel of Judas, and subsequent dubious provenance and academic politics. It should probably be read in conjunction with James Robinson's book, since the story as given here (and it is a fascinating one) is definitely weighted towards the individuals and organisations who published the material through National Geographic. Shamefully, it doesn't even contain a translation of the Gospel of Judas. Instead, the final chapter contains a paraphrase, along the lines of "In the Gospel of Judas, Judas says such-and-such, then Jesus replied, etc."

The Secrets of Judas
This is James T. Robinson's book. I haven't yet read this, but it is said to provide a counterbalance to the story given in Krosney's book, above. Robinson organised the translation and publication of the complete Nag Hammadi texts, which astonishingly entered the Amazon top 100 this weekend. The Secrets of Judas is unlikely to contain much in the way of direct commentary on the Gospel of Judas since Robinson hadn't seen the codex when this went to press.

The Gospel of Judas
This one actually contains the English text of the Gospel of Judas, along with four essays by way of commentary. The critical edition of the Coptic text has apparently been delayed due to the discovery of additional fragments of the papyrus. According to Marvin Meyer's introduction, "The entire text of Codex Tchacos is to be published in a critical edition, with facsimile photographs, Coptic text, English, French and german translations, textual notes, introductions, indices, and an essay on Coptic dialectical features."


National Geographic Site:-
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/

The Gospel of Judas in English PDF
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/CopticGospelOfJudas.pdf

Coptic text of the Gospel of Judas PDF
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/CopticGospelOfJudas.pdf

Roger Pearse's extensive collection of Gospel of Judas news and rumours
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas/

Leslie Norris

Leslie Norris, the Welsh poet and short story writer has died. I had an email correspondance with him a couple of years ago regarding a Dafydd ap Gwilym project. He very kindly sent me an unpublished translation of Y Dylluan, The Owl, which he actually rewrote for me because he had lost most of his original translation. I include it below. It's copyright (c) Leslie Norris 2006. I also include the Western Mail/icwales text.

The Owl (Y Dylluan)

A pity the pretty owl

Is chill and ill, won’t be still,

Won’t let me chant my prayer

As long as one star is there.

I cannot steal - this she’ll stop -

A single sliver of sleep.

Her bat-black back - like a house

Is hunched against rains and snows.

Each night (such is my unease)

In my ears (recalled with tears)

As I close (this I expect)

My eyes (they request respect)

This wakes me (I’ve not slept since);

Owl’s tuneless lamentations,

Her cracked carol, her cross cry,

Her travesty of poetry.

From then (and think of me)

Till dawn, with dark energy,

She calls, she cries out, she hoots

A rowdy range of rough notes,

I swear by St. Anne’s grandson

She rouses the hounds of Annwn.

She’s filthy, has two foul hoots,

Big-headed, a wealth of shouts,

Broad-browed and berry-bellied,

Her owl’s eyes have the mice marked.

Busy, base and old-fashioned,

Her call a croak, her plumes stained,

Ten woods can’t hold her yelling,

Her song - a roebuck’s belling,.

Her face, of a fine woman,

Her form - a flying phantom.

All birds attack her, the outcast,

How much longer can she last?

She’s much louder on the hill

Than the woodland nightingale.

By day she’ll not draw, it’s said,

From a hollow tree her head.

How she once howled! It’s the truth

She belongs to Gwyn ap Nudd..

Babbling bird, sings to felons,

Curses on her tongue and tones!

But I can scare her away

With this song that I ‘ll play -

“While waiting for frost to sting,

I’ll burn the ivy she hides in!”

Dafydd ap Gwilym

(Translated by Leslie Norris)

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=16931506%26method=full%26siteid=50082%26headline=%2dkey%2dfigure%2d%2dfor%2da%2dgeneration%2dof%2dwelsh%2dpoets%2ddies%2dat%2d84-name_page.html

The death of poet Leslie Norris last week marks the end of an era for literature in Wales, reports Rhodri Clark

LESLIE NORRIS lived most of his life in England and the US, but his early experiences in Merthyr Tydfil during the 1920s and 30s influenced much of his work as a poet and short-story writer.

He was also profoundly moved by the Aberfan disaster 40 years ago, an event near Merthyr which inspired one of his most powerful poems.

Although he had been writing poetry in the 1940s and 50s, it was not until the 1960s that he came to wider attention, initially through his contributions to Poetry Wales magazine.

He died on Thursday in Utah. He had lived there for more than 20 years, having held professorships at the Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, until 2000.

Gwyneth Lewis, national poet of Wales, said yesterday, 'He was a key figure in the development of so-called Anglo-Welsh literature, although that term isn't really used now.

'It's a terrible loss. It's the passing of an era, with his death.

'He's been a key figure for a whole generation of Welsh poets. What was inspiring was the combination of Welshness and international standards.'

Prof Tony Curtis, professor of poetry at the University of Glamorgan, said Mr Norris had lived most of his working life as a lecturer in England.

'However, his writing - poems and short stories - was focused for much of his career on his home town and the Valleys,' he said.

'I included him in my video interview series on fiction writers from Wales at the beginning of the 1990s, and he visited the University of Glamorgan to record that and to give a reading to students.

'He was one of the most memorable performers of his own work and his reading of the short story, A Flight of Geese, about growing up in Merthyr, was one of the most remarkable literary occasions I have experienced.

'Leslie Norris was a significant poet of Wales, especially its landscape and society, and of nature, especially birds, in America.

'His poem about his childhood friend David Beynon is one of the most moving pieces about the Aberfan disaster - Beynon was a teacher killed on that day with his pupils.

'Leslie had been a professor at Provo in Utah for two decades and had established a reputation as a writer in America.

'He constantly talked of returning with his wife Kitty to end their days in Wales. That was not to be.'

Mr Norris was born in Merthyr in 1921. By the time he attended Cyfarthfa Grammar School he was already an avid reader and had a better understanding of English than some of his teachers.

After World War II, in which he enlisted with the RAF, he grew disillusioned with the changing nature of his hometown as old industries and ways of life were replaced by new.

He moved to England in 1948, the year in which he married a local woman called Kitty Morgan.

However, he kept looking back at Wales, and the sense of loss and exile is a strand in much of his writing.

His contributions to Poetry Wales helped to raise his profile, but soon he also found publishers and outlets in England and the US, including The New Yorker magazine.

His connections with American universities began in 1973, when he accepted a post in Seattle.

For many years Mr Norris owned a Carmarthenshire holiday home near Llandysul. His visits there, for angling and relaxation, informed and inspired some of his poetry about nature.

Elegy

Seabirds adoring the hill
Move with a bickering grace
As each descending bird
Settles into its place.

Smoothly the plain day ends.

Nothing can make amends.

- From 'At the grave of Dylan Thomas', by Leslie Norris. Selected by Prof Tony Curtis.

200 Year Old Welsh Love Letter

From the Western Mail,

A STARTLING sheet of ornate love poetry written by a Welsh emigrant more than 200 years ago has been uncovered at an American museum.

The parchment, covered in fine calligraphic script and detailing Hugh Pugh's doomed love for Mary Fisher, hung on a family's wall for generations.

Pugh's document is now at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, a laboratory in Philadelphia, where it is being cleaned, repaired and restored.

It offers a unique insight into the rites of courtship in the American colonies where thousands of young Welsh workers headed in the 18th and 19th centuries - in this case St Clair, a tiny village in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.

It also tells a moving story about a young schoolteacher's love and the 20-year-old woman who ultimately spurned him.

And while academics today bemoan the damaging effect that email and text messaging is having on teenagers' communication skills, it seems that there were similar trends back in 1801. Instead of writing out some words in full, Pugh has replaced them with abbreviations like "CU" in a startling precursor to today's teen text-speak.

"It's quite unique," said Ingrid Bogel, the centre's executive director. "It's different from anything I've seen."

According to the museum, this work belongs to a subset of folk art called True Lover's Knots, whose hallmarks include minute handwriting, fancy scrollwork, and messages of love arrayed around a labyrinth. A reader can begin anywhere and, turning the piece, experience a continuous flow of tender thoughts.

After completing his love note Pugh folded it up, sealed it with a dab of wax, and most likely delivered it personally to Mary's home.

But it was more than a love letter - Pugh was asking her to marry him as he wrote, "My ravished Soul doth ever long to see, The Marriage Knot so firmly ty'd between thee and me."

Meg Schultz is the proud owner. Mary was her great-great-great-grandmother, and the letter was passed down through the maternal side of Ms Schultz's family. At one point, it was almost discarded and burned.

"It was hanging in a bedroom hallway in the house where I grew up," said Ms Schultz, 47, an art director. "I used to stare at it for hours. I was fascinated by it."

It so intrigued her that she became a genealogical sleuth and family historian - and through her, the fate of Hugh Pugh and Mary Fisher became known.

"Mary spurned Hugh's proposal," said Ms Schultz. "Four years later, the day before Valentine's Day 1805, she married Benjamin Bowen, another Welsh-American.

"In the space of 17 years, she bore him 10 children, the seventh of whom she also named Mary, and who was my great-great-grandmother."

Bowen was a farmer whose family originally hailed from Pentoc, Carmarthenshire, and this factor may have influenced Mary's decision. "Back then it was all about land and cows," said Ms Schultz.

Pugh may well have expected rejection as he wrote of Mary's "double heart" in the poetry. But those who hoped for a happy ending can take heart from the fact that Mary did at least save the poetry.

"I always assumed Mary rejected Hugh because she didn't 'dig' him," Ms Schultz said.

"But why would she save Hugh's proposal and give it to her granddaughter? You don't save love letters from someone you don't care about."

Two years ago a similar item created in the same year was auctioned by Freeman's for more than $363,000 (around £200,000).

But Ms Schultz is more interested in the history ingrained in the piece. "I'm lucky enough to be able to rescue it from obscurity."

A Rattleskull Genius

I hadn't noticed this collection of scholarly essays on Iolo Morgannwg, A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg until I came across this publicity piece on icwales.com, the Wetsern Mail site. (see link above)
"The Iolo which emerges from this engaging collection is an intensely hard-working, obsessive genius whose boundless self-confidence would recognise no limits to subjects he would try to master. He knew how his restless creativity would appear to others. The adjective "Rattleskull" in the title of the new book is Iolo's own description for the storm of ideas which jostled around his tireless brain."

Ceri Rhys Matthews Blog

Ceri Rhys Matthews is the instrumental force behind the wonderful Welsh traditional group Fernhill. His instruments include guitar, Welsh bagpipes and various reed instruments, and flute. He now has a blog at http://yscolan.blogspot.com/

Back Again

Just an update since I haven't posted to this blog for two months or so. Bardic Press still haven't published any of the Celtic material. Will Parker's book was put on hold because of some problems, not with the book, but our ability to market it to academic libraries, as we originally planned. Patrick Brown's translations of the Ulster Cycle are still on the cards, as our a few reprints. There are also some books about Irish music, the harp and the pipes that I would like to reissue at some point. Meanwhile, I'm still listening to tons of music. I haven't done anything with my harp for a while, but I practise my uilleann pipes most days. I've been playing slow, wobbly reels and waltz-like jigs, but trying to learn a few more airs, which was my original aim with learning the pipes.

Mari Lwyd

I first encountered the Mari Lwyd in Susan Cooper’s children’s fantasy series, The Dark Is Rising. The Mari Lwyd is a ribbon-covered horse’s skull with the jaw attached to a stick so that the jaw can be snapped open and closed. It takes part in a ceremony at the end of the year where the Mari Lwyd party go from house to house (or pub to pub) demanding entry. The inhabitants of the houses deny the Mari Lwyd entry and a rhyming contest then takes place, until the Mari Lwyd is finally admitted and the party members are given food and drink. It seems to back to some pagan custom. Vernon Watkins, the poet from Swansea, wrote a long poem, The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, full of dark imagery, concerned with the living keeping the dead and the outer darkness at bay. Watkins wrote in a note to the Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, first published in 1941, “The carriers were usually a a party of singers, wits and impromptu poets, who, on the pretext of blessing, boasted of the sanctity of what they carried, tried to gain entrance to a house for the sake of obtaining food and drink. The method they used was to challenge those within to a rhyming contest. The inmates could keep them out so long as they were not in want of a rhyme, but when they failed to reply to the challenger the right of entry was gained. The signers would then being their horse’s head in, lay it on the table, and eat and drink with the losers of the contest.

This ancient custom, traceable perhaps to the White Horse of Asia, is still prevalent in many parts of Wales. The singers came every year to my father’s house; and listening to them at midnight, I found myself imagining a skull, a horse’s skull decked with ribbons, followed and surrounded by all sorts of drunken claims and holy deceptions.”

I have never seen a genuine new year Mari Lwyd ceremony myself, but I do remember one being enacted at the National Eisteddfod in Builth Wells a decade or so ago.

Here are two soundclips from the Alan Lomax recordings, one a brief reenactment of a Mari Lwyd ritual, the other a description. Be warned, they're about a megabyte each:-

Excerpt from a Mari Lwyd ceremony with David thomas

Margaretta Thomas describing the Mari Lwyd ceremony and singing some verses

The ritual is still celebrated in parts of south Wales, in some cases with a seemingly unbroken continuity, while in others it has been revived. The sinister aspects of the Mari Lwyd are usually represented in literature, but I’m sure that it was mostly a lot of fun for the participants.

Links:-

A good description of the ritual:-

http://fp.millennas.f9.co.uk/wmarilwy.htm

The Llantrisant Mari Lwyd

http://www.folkwales.org.uk/mari.html

General Description

http://artinwales.250x.com/MariLwyd.htm

Mari Lwyd in Google Images

http://images.google.com/images?q=mari%20lwyd&hl=en

Halloween is Over

Scéla, the Digital Medievalist, has a nice overview of Halloween and its origins in the festival of Samain. It's taken from her dissertation, though it apparently won't appear in the final draft. Lots of accurate and interesting information. It would have been nice to have material on parallel traditions in the other Celtic countries, but perhaps that was beyond the scope of her dissertation.

http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/news/index.html

More on Joe Heaney

There's a great article here by Steve Coleman, who was a student of Joe Heaney
http://www.nuim.ie/academic/anthropology/AAI/IJA/vol1/coleman.html
It originally appeared in the Irish Journal of Anthropology.

Siwsann George

Welsh singer Siwann George died on Friday May 6. Her album Traditional Songs of Wales, Traditional Songs of Wales
contains a great variety of familiar and less familiar material with a diverse selection of other musicians. The arrangements are always exciting and skillful yet traditional. Robin Huw Bowen and Ceri Rhys Matthews are among the musicians.
" Welsh singer Siwsann George died on Friday May 6th following a long battle with cancer. Siwsann, who was 49 and raised in the Rhondda Valley, was known as an ambassador for Welsh music. A founder member of Welsh groups Mabsant and Bedwen Haf, she also formed the Siwsann George Welsh Road Show (SGWRS) and played harp, guitar and concertina. She toured the world, often on behalf of The British Council, and her research, teaching, folksong publications and radio travel reports won her much acclaim. In 1992 she was adjudicator for the BBC's Song of Wales contest and for the Irish Celtavision in 1992 and 1993, and her voice can often be heard as theme music on film and television. Her 1994 solo CD Traditional Songs of Wales was a landmark in her own career and in the history of Welsh music. A small funeral will take place on Friday May 13th and a celebration of Welsh music will be held as a tribute to Siwsann later this year." http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/news/
Another obituary appears here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/4527179.stm

Frank Hennessy's BBC Radio Wales programme Celtic Heartbeat has a program devoted to her that should be available on the Internet until May 21 or so. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/celticheartbeat/playlists/20050514.shtml

A thread on Siwsann George here: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40397
A moving obituary thread here: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=80961

Kennedy Millennium Center

The Kennedy Millennium Center has a selection of streaming videos of artists who have played there. I may have already mentioned the video of Crasdant, the Welsh group featuring triple harpist Robin Huw Bowen, but I've also been looking at the recordings of uilleann piper Peter Browne, who also has some educational comments on the pipes, and Paddy Keenan and Sean Tyrrell.

You have to go into their explorer app, which is in Flash or somesuch to find the videos.
http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/millennium/millennium.html

Dublin Trad Archive

More links: the Dublin Trad Archive
has quite a number of MP3s recorded at traditional music sessions in Dublin pubs. There's some great music there, including the uilleann piper Tommy Martin. The quality often isn't great, with chatting and clinking glasses too much in the foreground, but everything on it deserves at least one listen.

More Uilleann Pipes

Keeping up the uilleann pipes links I found the website of the South Western Association of Uilleann Pipers. This is the South-west of England, not Cork or San Diego.
http://www.swaup.org/

The site has a selection of MP3s by one of their players, plus PDFs of a reed-making guide, a Handbook for Uilleann Pipers, which is not a tutorial but contains lots of bits of useful information on the pipes. They also have Patsy Touhey's advice for amateur pipes. Touhey was a piper who played in America at the turn of the twentieth century and became quite well known. There's a bio page here http://www.irishheritagetrail.com/ptouhey.htm

Ross's music page has some MP3s of Touhey at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/music/index.html

The SWAUP club also has PDFs of a few tunes.

Interpreting Irish Airs

During the discussion of slow airs at the Chiff and Fipple, someone posted the following link.
http://www.irishflutes.net/mef/interpre.htm

It has a nice amount of disparate information on ornamented sean-nos singing (where did that accent go?) and the adaptation of this style to an instrument such as, in this case, the flute.

Séamus Ennis (don't expect these accents every time!)

While I remember, I've just found an interesting article on the renowned piper Séamus Ennis. http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/ennis.htm

"Having a prodigious memory and possessing a complete mastery of his instrument there were few limitations to his acquisition of tunes. He knew hundreds and hundreds and these he rendered in excellent musical taste. Even common-place tunes took a deft turn displaying his total mastery. Exploiting piping ornamentation to the full he never descended into gimmickry. The antics on the chanter indulged in by some younger players did not appeal to him and, more in sorrow than in anger, he would dismiss them with a nod of the head saying "My father would not have done that"."

Joe Heaney Again

An intriguing little excerpt from the interview:

EM: Now, this style of singing that you have with massive decoration that you put into it - you decorate pretty much all the time, don't you?

JH: Well I try to.

EM: You decorate in some songs more than in others, I've noticed. Some songs you leave fairly plain and some songs you do a great deal of decoration, like a song like The Bonny Bunch of Roses for example, you know, where you decorate continuously along the line. What tells you which songs to decorate and which to leave alone?

JH: Well, it all depends on the scope left for me in the lines of the song. If there's enough scope left for me in the line of a song to decorate, I do it. But if there isn't - you see, I probably can only decorate one line or two lines, maybe the second or the last. What I'm trying to say, if the words of the line don't allow me to decorate, I've got to sing the line. And this is the way I feel it, you see, if I think a line has a lot of words, well that won't let me do any decorations on the words of the line. Because I couldn't break up the sentence too much. But if it's a short line with not many words, that will always lead me to decorate a lot of the words. That's the way I feel it anyway.

Joe Heaney

The Chiff and Fipple site has an excellent forum for uilleann pipes discussion: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewforum.php?f=6
I started a thread about slow airs. Here I might quote from Uilliam (sic) who defines a slow air as "Foinn Mhalla is........................................
A piece of music with no set metre in the accepted sense (ie.outwith of a song)with definite phrasing to ensure balance and expressive of the performers perceived view of the piece, which can then be conveyed to the listener with clarity, and, importantly,without mistakes in technique, which would distract entirely from the flow and the mood which is being created.
Most Foinn Mhalla have developed from historical events or poignant moments in the history of Ireland and convey in the Bardic Tradition through sean-nós singing and cheoil that same history.
It is an extremely potent and important means of communication and continuity of the tradition and should not be diluted with flippancy and tunes/songs better suited to the music halls .
That is not to say that the popular tunes are not pleasant.
But they are not and never where intended to be Foinn Mhalla....."

The brilliant modern piper Liam O'Flynn once commented that when he learns a slow air for the pipes he has a traditional sean-nós singer sing it for him first. Sean-nós singing isn't terribly available, but there are a good few CDs out there. One of the greatest was Joe Heaney. The following site has an extensive interview with Joe Heaney conducted by Ewan MacColl, the English/Scottish folk singer. The site also has embedded RealAudio clips of the songs.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/heaney.htm

Music

I should have quite a bit to post on Celtic music. I've been listening to a lot of Irish music, particularly uilleann pipes. The only two instruments I've ever really wanted to play are the harp and the uilleann pipes. I'm already learning to play harp and I have a Stoney End double harp, a harp with two rows of strings that is basically an adaptation of the Welsh triple harp minus the chromatic middle row. I have my heart set on a practice set of uilleann pipes, which is a set with bag, bellows and chanter--no drones or regulators. Once I'd got over the lack of aesthetic appeal of Dave Daye's synthetic chanter, I decided to purchase one of his practice sets. his "penny chanter" sounds great, plays easily and is (relatively) inexpensive. http://www.daye1.com/pennychanter.html

I have plenty of links to share. The following page contains some very old recordings of uilleann pipers: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/music/index.html

Some of the older pipers were virtuosos but are a little difficult to listen to after the elegant modern piping of someone like Liam O'Flynn. The aphorism, ‘seven years learning, seven years practising, seven years playing’ is often quoted with regard to learning the pipes. Once the noisiness of some of these players is got past, there is a lot to listen to and learn from.

Irish and Other Dictionaries

Not to ignore our Q-Celtic cousins, the following site http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/ contains links to a number of Gaelic dictionaries--Irish, Manx and Scottish. Incidentally, most Irish people call their language Irish, not Gaelic.

For our P-Celt brothers and sisters, I have been able to find the following:

Gildas Perrot's Breton Dictionary
Breton-French-English online dictionary. Entries available for search and download. Interface in three languages.

Alternative Breton Dictionary
Collection of Breton profanity and slang words.

For Cornish:-
http://www.cornish-language.org/english/Dictionary.asp
which is a basic word list

and a link to a published Cornish dictionary, with some online material:-
http://www.egt.ie/gram/ecd.html

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (University of Wales Dictionary)

The University of Wales Dictionary was begun in 1921 and finally completed in 2002. The site has a good deal of information on it.

"A reading program was established in 1921 at the National Library of Wales with a small team of salaried staff and the Rev. J. Bodvan Anwyl as Secretary, who organized a host of voluntary readers. Editorial work commenced during the 1948/9 session under the editorship of R. J. Thomas, and the Dictionary was published in 64-page parts. By 1967 Parts 1–21 had been published and these were bound as Volume I (a–ffysur). Between 1968 and 1987 Parts 22–36 (g–llyys) were published and were bound in 1987 as Volume II, under the editorship of Gareth A. Bevan. Between 1987 and 1998 Parts 37–50 (m–rhywyr) were published and were bound in 1998 as Volume III, under the joint editorship of Gareth A. Bevan and Patrick J. Donovan. On 6 December 2001 the final draft entry for the Dictionary was written after 80 years' labour, and over half a century of drafting entries. The last word in the Dictionary is Zwinglïaidd, 'Zwinglian (adj.)'. The final volume was published in December 2002 and launched at the Welsh Assembly by the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, A.M. "
http://www.aber.ac.uk/geiriadur/gpc_gwes.htm

I remember seeing some of the individual parts for sale at a library sale in London for about 50p each. Unfortunately, I didn't buy them.But now the entire dictionary, minus citations, is available for download as a PDF. There is also talk of a CD-ROM version. The dictionary is already being revised and "Since Welsh is very much a living language, the Dictionary will need constant revision by adding new words and meanings and all contributions will be greatly appreciated."

Gospel of Philip Blog

I also have a blog on the Gospel of Philip at http://gospelofphilip.blogspot.com/

I'm finishing work on The Gospel of Philip Annotated & Explained for Skylight Paths, and then going on holiday to San Francisco with my family. (Though I think 'vacation' is an accurate and useful word, I still prefer to use 'holiday' which is less accurate.) In April I hope to revamp the website and add a lot of material to it. Until then,

Pob Hwyl

The Chieftains Live

Just to be even-handed, and to show that I love the losing Irish, one of whom is my wife, Tessa, I wanted to point out the recently released CD, The Chieftains: Live from Dublin: A Tribute to Derek Bell. Derek Bell is the Chieftain's late harpist. There's quite a variety of material on the live album, with quite a number of guest stars, and on one or two tracks they are joined by my wife's cousin, Frankie Lane, on guitar. Frankie played at our family party in Dublin last year.

Grand Slam

A truly Celtic occasion as Wales beat Ireland to win the Grand Slam yesterday. All those years of shattered hopes finally swept away, and I haven't actually seen a single minute of the this year's 6 nations. I did manage to listen to it on Radio Wales via the Internet though.

This is rugby if no one has realised yet.

Canu Pwnc

Even though I grew up in Wales (albeit in Anglicised Penarth) and as an adult became very interested in traditional Welsh culture, I had never come across canu'r pwnc until my wife bought me a copy of The Rough Guide to Wales CD. The CD is a compilation of a wide variety of Welsh folk music, though not of Welsh music in a broader sense since it lacks any cerdd dant or male voice choirs. Canu'r pwnc is "a very ancient form of choral singing that... occurs in Pembrokeshire and western Carmarthenshire. 'Canu'r pwnc' is the chanting of scriptural text and usually takes place around Whitsuntide. The rhythmic structure and harmonisation sounds startling to modern ears, and yet this form of declamatory singing is very common and well-known throughout the region. The singing can last continually for an entire weekend, with people from different villages taking up the baton after a period to keep up the momentum."

The selection on the Rough guide CD was recorded in Maenclochog in Preseli in 1967. They seem to be singing the genealogy from the beginning of Matthew or Luke. The singing sounds like the most pagan thing you ever heard. Canu'r Pwnc literally means 'singing (bible) study.' The people from Capel Rhywilym are prbably Welsh Baptists. But surely they were picking up on a style of singing that goes back at least to medieval times.

There's an piece of Canu Pwnc on the BBC website, as part of a 1967 BBC Wales broadcast on Carmarthenshire. You might want to close your eyes when you listen to it for the first time, since the mysterious chant contrasts badly with the angelic schoolchildren in shirts and ties who are singing it on this clip ({if I remember rightly.) The link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/walesonair/database/pembrokeshire.shtml

There's an interesting article on voice by Mike Pearson here: http://www.theatre-wales.co.uk/critical/critical_detail.asp?criticalID=98

He mentions Canu Pwnc: "Lampeter-based archaeologist Michael Shanks has written, 'Archaeology is about some very basic and mundane things: grubbing around in decayed garbage, recovering traces of things and processes which go largely unnoticed today - what happens to broken bits of pot, to things that get lost, abandoned buildings, rotted fences, microbial action. A creeping, mouldering under-side of things'.(2) Archaeology leads equally to thoughts of ruin, decay, putrefaction and of aging, erosion, wearing...Which is perhaps why I found as much in the struggles of the canu pwnc group from Rhydwilym chanting John 1:1 - 'Why do you move from a minor third to major third in your chant?', asked the Vietnamese musicologist. 'Because we can't sing in tune', replied the aged choir--as in the practised harmonies of the equally aged Bulgarian 'Grannies' of Bistritsa'."

Many of the traditional forms of singing give an impressions of great age simply because the singers are of great age! This is often true of Irish sean-nos singing too. Still, this is a comic moment, a Vietnamese musicologist over in Wales being fascinated by an unusual musical transition that turns out to simply be singing out of tune.

The Celts by Frank Delaney

Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching the 1987 BBC series The Celts by Frank Delaney. I remember seeing a couple of episodes of it when I was at university in Swansea when it originally came out. Parts of it look very dated and silly (such as an '80s goth disco and the Enya videos), but in general it's a generous survey of Celtic culture and history. The material ranges from the archeological discoveries at Hallstadt and La Tene to the culture of the modern Celtic countries. Wales gets a good look in, probably second only to Ireland. The late Gwyn A. Williams lets loose of some fiery opinions, but I probably found Barry Cunliffe to be the most appearing of the scholars on show. I particularly enjoyed seeing some Cerdd Dant, or penillion singing, which is a Welsh form of singing a poem in the strict metres as a counterpoint to a folk melody. At its best, Cerdd Dant is a complex and lilting form of song, and is a mainstay of eisteddfodau. The late Derek Bell, the Chieftain's harpist, played a little example of a counterpoint to Llwyn Onn (Ashgrove) on his harp in introduction to the example of penillion singing, and described it as perhaps the most developed example of singing to the harp. But then Frank Delaney went on to say that penillion singing in Wales "survives, but only as an artform." What does it mean if you say that an artform only survives as an artform?

I would recommend the series to anyone interested in the Celts, as long as you have the stomach to sit through some of the truly dreadful 1980s music videos. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000WN10E/thegospeoftho-20

A while ago I posted some information on English language translations of some of Saunders Lewis' plays. Sion Eirian, who translated both Siwan and Blodeuwedd, contacted me with the following information and corrections concerning the radio adaptation of Siwan:
"It was titled "The Royal Bed" and it actually starred Susan Fleetwood as Siwan and Hywel Bennett as Llewelyn. Oddly enough Susan Fleetwood and Sian Phillips have a similar quality, certainly on radio. Susan, who was an excellent actress herself, with a fine pedigree in RSC and National Theatre productions, died some years back, while still relatively young. She was too (a tangential claim to fame) the sister of Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, and had been over a long period the partner of the director Sebastian Graham Jones who sadly died last year."

Sion writes in both Welsh and English, and he won the Crown at the National Eisteddfod many years ago. (The Crown is the prize for the best poem not in the strict metres.) I met him in Aberystwyth many years ago, after the ATC performance of Woman of Flowers directed by Ceri Sherlock.

March 1, 2005, St. David's Day

You can send a St. David's Day e-card from here: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/ecards/stdavids/
I believe Dewi used to send them himself in the sixth century. He preferred the one with Tom Jones and a daffodil.

I'm wearing a daffodil. Eating leeks tonight. In California.

We're busy with many things at Bardic Press, but in terms of new books, the main editorial and production work at the moment is Will Parker's Four Branches of the Mabinogi. Proofreading a work of 700 pages or so takes a considerable amount of time.

Patrick Brown's Tales From the Ulster Cycle is undergoing revision and not yet scheduled for publication. Patrick has the web's best site on the Ulster Cycle, http://www.geocities.com/patrickbrown40/
The book to be published by Bardic Press will contain entirely new translations from Middle Irish. Patrick's translations are direct, strong and very readable. I'd say that his translatations are challenged only by Thomas Kinsella's superb translation of the Tain. The stories of Cú Chulainn and the rest of the characters in the Ulster Cycle are really part of the Western inheritance, and should be as well known as, for instance, the story of Tristan and Iseult.

Will Parker's monumental The Four Branches of the Mabinogi: Celtic Myth and Medieval Reality is now slated for May. We're just about to begin proofing, then typesetting. Galleys should go out by the beginning of March. Anyone who can prove that are likely to review the book for a reputable Celtic of Medieval studies journal, or for some other influential publication, can request a copy of the galley proofs by writing to andrew@bardic-press.com .

Tuesday is St. Dwynwen's Day. This was the Welsh equivalent of St. Valentine's Day, and there seems to be some effort to revive it. icwales has a page from which you can send a St. dwynwen's day card to your beloved: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/ecards/

St. Dwynwen turned her lover, Marlon Gwynedd, to ice!

A question has come in from Lesley-Anne Stone, " I am currently studying the play Siwan in A-level welsh and was wondering if there are any english versions of the play. Either in the form of books,
audio or film."

Yes, I know of three translations of Siwan: Joseph Clancy's translation in The Plays of Saunders Lewis, Vol. 1(Christopher Davies, 1985), retitled "The King of England's Daughter," Emyr Humphreys' translation in Presenting Saunders Lewis (University of Wales Press, 1983), and Sion Eirian's translation. Sion's version is, as far as I know, unpublished, but it was used (and probably commissioned) for a BBC radio play that was broadcast ten or so years ago. Sian Phillips played Siwan, and the play may have been renamed.

I've just done a quick Google search on Siwan, and Sian Phillips also played Siwan in "1960 Starred opposite Peter O'Toole in "Siwan", a BBC production about the arranged marriage between the title character, the daughter of King John and a Welsh prince." http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/detail/celeb/186966

Hope this helps.

How Like a Winter Hath My Absence Been

While I had the nagging feeling that I haven't posted for a while, I was startled to see that I have only posted once since July! I shall probably post a few times in the next week or so, but perhaps once a month is a more realistic objective. Part of the difficulty is that we have been working on non-Celtic materials. Bardic Press has just published The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, a brilliant scholarly work by Stevan Davies.
See http://www.bardic-press.com/thomas/thomindex.htm

Fritz Peters;' trilogy about Gurdjieff, Boyhood with Gurdjieff/Gurdjieff Remembered/Balanced Man is just coming out in hardcover with a preface by Henry Miller. See http://www.bardic-press.com

Still to appear is our edition of Omar Khayyam, and our Hafiz book, New Nightingale, New Rose, is still selling steadily. We have Hafiz pages at http://www.bardic-press.com/hafiz/hafizindex.htm

We also have a new Hafiz book planned.