Ian Brinton reviews 'How Culhwch won Olwen' in Long Poem Magazine.

 

The imaginative absurdity of this early Arthurian romance is caught by Guilar with both humour and music and this is presented to the reader, or the listener, from the moment of Culhwch’s arrival at the king’s court and is greeted by the gatekeeper:

 

      The boy asked, ‘Is there a porter?’

 

      ‘There is and may your head not be your own for asking.

      I am Arthur’s porter on the 1st of January,

      for the rest of the year my deputies are Goodhearer,

      Littlemeatman, Slowstep, and Penpingpong,

      who goes upon his head to save his feet,

      neither earthwards nor heavenwards,

      but like a rolling stone on the floor of the court.’

 

As Guilar’s note to this tells us these names (Huandaw, Gogigwr, Llaeskemyn, Penpingyon in Welsh) are an abrupt indication that the hero accompanied by us as readers is about to enter ‘a different version of the world.’ 

You can read the whole review here:

https://longpoemmagazine.org.uk/reviews/how-culhwch-won-olwen-by-liam-guilar-shearsman-books-2026-and-in-the-shadow-of-the-yew-by-john-barnie-cinnamon-press-2026/

Review of How Culhwch won Olwen: a verse translation of the oldest Arthurian tale

 

The review concludes.

'Guilar’s reimagining of the story of Culhwch and Olwen blows away the cobwebs and allows us to read this classic work of medieval Welsh literature and foundation stone of the Arthurian cycle with fresh eyes. It’s a triumph.'

 

The full review is here. 

https://ellipticalmovements.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/celtic-matters/

 

Along with a review of Book of Inversions, Kit Fryatt & Harry Gilonis,  which sounds fascinating.

A new translation of Culhwch and Olwen, the Oldest Arthurian Tale

My verse translation of Culhwch ac Olwen. the Oldest Arthurian Tale, will be published by Shearsman in the UK in January 2026. 

Information about the book as well as samples can be found on their website.

https://www.shearsman.com/store/Liam-Guilar-trans-How-Culhwch-Won-Olwen-p767786031 

The original medieval Welsh story is not only the oldest surviving story involving Arthur, but one of the great literary performances. Information on this blog about the story, and links to sections that have been published online, can be found by clicking the Culhwch and Olwen label below or looking for the same on the left hand menu. 

Translating Culhwch and Olwen, final thoughts.

And as long as he lived, she was his only wife

 

I love this story, I have known it for decades. I wouldn’t like to live in it.   

Translating it, I have become very pro-giant and sympathetic to boars and witches. I doubt this was the storyteller’s intention, although he obviously admired a good horse and dog, and knew the boar was a worthy opponent. 

 

The material probably felt archaic when it was written down. Throughout the story there is an indifference to suffering, stripped of all pretence of ideological or theological justification. In a world of talking animals and men who have been punished by being turned into animals, the distinction between humans and other animals is slight. Twrch Trywth, the great boar, and his piglets are as brave and as admirable as the heroes who hunt them. Men kill without remorse or compassion. They throw their lives away with flamboyant indifference. To get two strangers into bed, the death toll is enormous and nobody questions this, at any point in the story. 

 

Those outside courtly society; giants and witches, or those in possession of desired objects, are there to be used, exploited, and killed. The powerful will take what they want or need. They might ask first, but ‘no’ is never a safe option. 

 

It's a story, nothing more or less. But perhaps the storyteller understood that stripped of pretence, this is the way the world has always worked. He doesn’t condone or condemn. He reports. Ysbadadden, shaved and about to die, speaks the truth. Culhwch has earned nothing; learnt nothing. Without Arthur, he didn’t have a chance. 

‘And that’ says our author, ‘is how Culhwch won Olwen.’ 

 

Translating Culhwch and Olwen.

 

The Lunt Roman fort at Bagington. 

Translating Culhwch and Olwen.

First time

 

There’s a first time for everything.

But I don’t know 

when I first read 

or heard this story. Or why,

of all the things that it contains

the porter and his words

were what remained. 

 

I read the Jones and Jones translation.

My yellowed copy still provides 

the necessary gloss when 

ny bo namyn iawn iawn 

turns to alphabet spaghetti in my head. 

 

Perhaps, the creaking wooden gatehouse

of the reconstructed Lunt at Bagington. 

Imperial Rome’s repressive architecture 

to keep the beaten Britkins in their place.

The structure shaking in the wind,

I stood upon the shifting platform,

and could imagine Great Grey Mighty Grasp

looking down on stroppy Culhwch

with his horse and dogs. 

 

And the sound of Stival’s harp,

borrowed from the record library, 

(I liked the cover) 

weather and wild landscape. 

blowing through the speakers.

 

In a storm of cliches. 

I heard grey tide on the gravel beach

saw sunshine off the cliffs, heard wind and rain

smacking the slate in the green hills

and watched the grey rock changing colour as it dried.

I saw men in cloaks, with swords, 

standing on a cliff edge

looking at a longship rocking out beyond the surf. 

Renassiance De La Harp Celtique. 

But as I read, the cliches were replaced. 

Now the porter’s scene’s in shadow,

it’s raining, and the sound of harp and drum

comes softly from the distant, well-lit hall.

 

Translating Culhwch and Olwen; The Great Boar Hunt and David Jones

The hunting of the great boar, Twrch Trwyth, in Culhwch and Olwen is a magnificent piece of writing. 

Jones' The Hunt is not so much a translation as a response, and it too is magnificent.

 

I have finished the first draft of my translation. Olwen and Culhwch are sleeping together, Ysbadadden's shaved and mutilated head is on a stick, possibly visible from their bedroom window, and no one could tally the men who have died to bring about this ending. 

 

Arthur gathered the hosts, 

of the three Islands of Britain,

and the three adjacent islands, 

and of Brittany, Normandy, 

and the Summer country

 

And let it be proclaimed,

the hunting of the hog,

has been sung by David Jones

and neither Taliesin nor Aneirin

nor Dafydd ap Gwilym himself

The Early Bards, 

the Not So Early bards, 

the Poets of the Princes, 

the Poets of the Well to Do

the keepers of old lore, or

the skilled translators of his vanished tongue,

(loving this story in elegant prose translations)

nor modern experts in the intricate cynghanedd 

nor any poet of that other language,

could sing it better. 

My recording of The Hunt by David Jones is here:

http://www.liamguilar.com/the-poetry-voice/2019/4/2/david-jones-the-hunt

 

There’s a recording of David Jones reading The Hunt with a short introduction here:

https://bebrowed.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/david-jones-reads-the-hunt/

 

The tasks in Culhwch and Olwen. When is repetition excessive in a poem?

The Anoethau in Culhwch and Olwen[i]

 

This is the second problem sequence I’m working through.  (See previous post for the first.)

 

In Culhwch ac Olwen, the Giant Ysbaddaden gives Culhwch forty impossible tasks which are referred to by the editors and within the text as Anoethau[ii]

 

After Ysbaddaden stipulates the first task, Culhwch replies:

 

Hawd yw gennyf gaffel hynny, yd tybyckych na bo hawd. 

It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it is not easy.

 

Ysbaddaden responds:

 

Kyt Kffych hynny, yssit ny cheffych.

Though you may get that, there is something you will not get. 

( translations here are Sioned Davies'. )

 

Each subsequent task is wrapped by these lines. So both phrases are repeated approximately forty times, which is repetition driven to excess. Would it be too much to ask of a modern reader? 

If anyone knows of a poem that repeats the same 2 lines forty times or more, I’d like to read it. 

I was tempted to cut the list of tasks down to only those which are actually performed in the story, roughly ten of them.

 

However. 

 

Perhaps anachronistically, we can see the dialogue that develops in dramatic terms. It is a clash between two characters who have irreconcilable objectives. As a result of this exchange, one of them must die.  

 

Culhwch knows he will never marry anyone except Olwen. He’s been told several times that most men who come on the quest to marry her have been killed. 

 

During their brief meeting, Olwen gave him some advice. Ask for my hand in marriage. Whatever he asks in return, promise you’ll get it. But if he has cause to doubt you, me you won’t get and you’ll be lucky to escape with your life. 

 

Both Culhwch and Ysbaddaden know the latter will die when his daughter gets married. He is understandably inhospitable to any suitor. For unstated reasons, he seems compelled to enter into a contract with the suitor and offer him the opportunity to complete an impossible task. If the suitor flinches or fails, the giant can kill him.

 

So there is obvious conflict. It’s a ‘high stakes’ confrontation. 

 

The dialogue begins with Ysbaddaden stating an obvious impossibility. He wants a field cleared, ploughed, sown and the resultant crop reaped all in one day. Instead of protesting, Culhwch, says: It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it is not easy. 

 

Perhaps wondering if the boy has understood, the giant then explains why it is impossible: you need this man to prepare the field, he won’t do it of his own free will, and you can’t make him. Culhwch repeats his phrase. You also need this man to fix the plough and he won’t come and you can’t make him. And Culhwch, like a naked man in a hailstorm, refusing to flinch, repeats: It is easy for me….

 

And so on. Things needed for the wedding feast; things needed to prepare and shave his beard; dogs, people, horses and things needed to hunt the Twrch Trwyth.

 

Ysbadadden keeps going, waiting for the boy to crack, and Culhwch stands his ground and repeats the same response. He’s hiding behind it because, of course, he can’t  achieve any of these things. He's just a pretty rich boy with bad manners and shiney tools.

 

As the boy refuses to crack, Ysbaddaden must see his own death coming towards him like a slow train on a very straight track over a very flat landscape 

 

He plays his final card. It’s obvious the boy can’t do any of these things on his own. 

You need Arthur and his men to hunt the great boar. And he won’t come, because he’s my man. (The phrase  is ‘he’s in my hand’). 

 

But Culhwch still refuses to flinch, still repeats his mantra. The giant, running out of ideas,  reaches for absurdity, a desperate explosion of nonsense. He’s been pounding away, and now he must realise that he’s been punching the side of a mountain. 

 

Though you get all that, there’s something you won’t get. 

The Twrch Trwyth will never be hunted unless you obtain 

Defective, Perfected and Completed, 

sons of Broken Sword, grandsons of Perfect Sword

Three shining whites their shields

Three stabbing piercers their spears

Three keen carvers their swords

Their three dogs: Silver, Salmon and Smoky

Their three horses: Sharp, Speedy and Steed

Their three wives: Late Bearer, Ill Bearer and Full bearer

Their three crones: Alas, Scream and Shriek

Their three serving girls: Bad, Worse and Worst of all.

These three men will sound their horns, 

And all the others will cry out,

so no one will care if the sky falls in. 

I can get that easily enough, although you seem to think I can’t.

 (My translation. As are what follows.)

Ysbaddaden makes one final attempt, saying what they both know:

 

Sleeplessness without rest you will get in seeking these things, 

and you won’t get them, and you won’t get my daughter.  

 

But Culhwch, who has already shown he’s not the most tactful or polite of young men, now sticks the boot in:

 

Horses and hounds I will get. 

And Arthur, 

my Lord and Kinsman, 

will get everything for me. 

And I will have your daughter, 

and you shall lose your life.

 

 

I’m becoming very pro-giant. 

I think the dialogue has a structural coherence and a dramatic context, but whether that underlying drama is strong enough to carry a modern reader through the repetition  remains to be seen. 

 

 

---

[i] (When I started working through the Tasks I read this  essay, which seems to suggest a similar approach. Dehghani, Fiona. “The Anoetheu Dialogue in Culhwch Ac Olwen.” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, vol. 26/27, 2006, pp. 291–305. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40732062.)

[ii] GPC offers: wonderful thing, wonder, jewel, treasure; something difficult to obtain or achieve, feat, exploit; wondrous, wonderful, strange, unusual, ?difficult. 

The Court List in Culhwch ac Olwen. What is relevance?

Translating the Court List.

 

(Quotations from the story are from Will Parker’s Translation: http://www.culhwch.info/index.html)

 

 

When I began translating Culhwch and Olwen into verse, I knew that my three biggest challenges would be the Court List, the List of Tasks, and the Great Boar Hunt. My problem is to find a way to overcome the challenges they will present to my ‘Model Reader’ who doesn’t read Medieval or Modern Welsh. 

 

My initial idea was to shorten the Tasks to only those which occur in the story, cut the Court List altogether and keep the hunt to a minimum.

I’m changing my mind about all three.

 

The Court List: 

 

Reasons to cut it.

 

The temptation to cut the list is strong. It’s essentially a list of names, with attributes attached to some of them. It runs for four pages or two hundred lines in the Bromwich and Evans edition I’m using. The editors count ‘about 260’ names. It begins like this:

 

he invoked his boon [in the name of] Cai and Bedwyr and Greidol Gallddofyd and Gwythyr son of Greidol and Graid son of Eri and Cynddylig Gyfarwydd and Tathal Twyll Golau and Maelwys son of Baeddan and Cnychwr son of Nes and Cubert son of Daere and Ffercos map Poch and Lluber Beuthach and Corfill Berfach.

 

If you can’t read Welsh, the obvious problem is pronunciation. 260+/- names that look as though someone spilt alphabet spaghetti on the page. But not only might the pronunciation of Sucgyn mab Sucnedut trip you up, unless you know it means Suck son of Sucker, the humour of the list is lost. 

 

Bromwich and Evans, discussing the list, suggest. ’But if the whole series of names between lines 175-373 is excised, the tale runs on with greater clarity and smoothness: line 174 being followed immediately by line 374.’ They are right,  of course:

 

"[The boon] I name is for you to get me Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden Bencawr, and I invoke it [in the name of] your warriors."

[Delete 200 lines of text]

‘Arthur said "O Chieftain, I have never heard about the maiden of whom you speak, nor her parents. I will send out messengers to search for her gladly." 

Reasons to Include the List:

 Plot isn’t everything. Deciding on what is relevant to a story is not a straight forward process regardless of what your editor claims. Relevant to your reading or mine or to a possible reading neither of us have made? James Joyce and Umberto Eco would have loved it. So what might it add to the story?

 

The court list demonstrates the extent of Arthur’s power. It contain men from France, Ireland, Brittany and the Uplands of Hell, as well as bishops, kings and the sons of kings. It contains historical figures, euhemerised characters from earlier myth,  and figures from other story cycles. 

 

Arthur’s court might be impressive, but we know it falls and the list forcibly reminds us of this by referring to the battle of Camlan. We meet one of the nine men who planned the battle,  and the three men who escaped and Arthur isn’t one of them. Even the mention of Gwyhenever and her sister alludes to the fact that, according to the Triad, Camlan was the result of her sister hitting the queen. There is also the man who will kill Kei, who Arthur will kill in revenge.

 

The absurd qualities of some of the heroes are exaggerated exaggerations: the kind I‘d heard growing up: he could eat you out of house and home; he drinks so much his legs must be hollow; he can talk the hind legs off a donkey. So they don’t feel as alien as they might and I enjoy them. But the fact that so many of these names have special skills or qualities, even when the skills and qualities are absurd, emphasises the fact that Culhwch has nothing going for him other than his fine horse, his shiny weapons, and his bad manners. He is out of his depth even before Ysbaddaden stipulates 40 Impossible Tasks. 

 

The list also reinforces the fact that neither Culhwch nor reader, nor the original audience, are in familiar territory anymore. Once Culhwch has been greeted by the porter we’ve entered a very strange version of the world. There will be giants and witches and talking animals, as well as people who God transformed into animals for their sins. By the time you get to the end of the court list, the relative sanity of the opening of the story with its folk tale style familiarity is easily forgotten. The list acts as a portal that normalises the rest of the story. Once we've passed through it, nothing that follows seems strange. 

 

You can also feel the story teller working the audience. As he launches into the list, the audience would tense. How long will this go on for? But they will never know what comes next, if it’s serious or ludicrous, and the variation carries them through the surging rhythms of the list. It’s an essential part of the performance that is this story. 

 

The ‘silly names’ in the list also remind of us of two things. Firstly, there was a time when names did mean something. In this context, making up names has a currency. Secondly, real people had names that to us sound strange. To just take a random example from a book on Medieval Hunting (by John Cummings):  Jehan Corneprise’ (John blow the death), Jehan Ievre (John Hallo-the-hare) and Huelguillot le Mastiner (Guillot the mastiff man.) (the translations are Cumming's).

 

A similar list of names in Apollonius of Tyre’s poem on the Argonauts is a dull catalogue. The list in Culhwch is varied, entertaining and if not laugh out loud funny often amusingly demented

 

Given it does so much according to my reading of the text, it seems worth the risk that it might alienate my non Welsh speaking Model Reader. The Court List stays. Whether in slightly abbreviated form or in full remains to be seen. 

 

Is this how Genre works? The tale of the oldest animals in Culhwch and Olwen.

 (Ongoing notes from an attempt to translate Culhwch ac Olwen from medieval Welsh to modern English and from prose to verse. See previous post for an example. )

In 'Culhwch and Olwen' there's the 'Tale of the Oldest Animals' which I've just finished drafting. You have to accept animals can talk and people will understand them. But....the story itself...

Arthur and his men need to find Mabon mab Modron. To do this, they have been told that first they have to find his cousin, Eiddoel mab Eri. They find Eiddoel easily enough, he's being kept prisoner in a place called Gliui by someone with the same name.

Gliui is identified by the editors as Gloucester. Fair enough. Later, after a trek from one 'Oldest animal' to an 'Even older animal' our heroes discover Mabon is being held prisoner in Kaer Loyw, which the editors also identify as Gloucester. 

So they free Eiddoel from the same place they free Mabon, though they go round the Wrekin to achieve this. 

Does genre work by setting up a tacit bargain with the reader: Some questions are inappropriate? If for general example, you're reading the Grimm's version of Snow White you should not stop and ask what the prince is going to do with the dead girl in the glass coffin when he gets it home. Nor should you try and imagine his arrival at the palace and his parents' reaction. It will kill the story.

Inappropriate, unanswerable questions here?

How can they both be prisoners in the same place? Who is keeping Mabon prisoner? Presumably it’s not Gliui because he's offered Arthur his help and support? Was he lying? Is Arthur at fault for not asking if Gliui knows where Mabon is? Why do they assume that 'No one knows where Mabon is' means 'Don't ask anyone except an animal'? Why does no-one on the river hear Mabon lamenting?  Why have they been told they needed Eiddoel to find Mabon when he is sent on the search but contributes nothing to it? 

Why is the episode so satisfying and enjoyable until you start asking these questions? And this is true of so much of Culhwch ac Olwen. 

Are we back with a specific version of Culler's 'Literary Competence'. The idea that you have to learn to read a literary text as a literary text on its own terms? And with this story, that means not trying to read with a modern set of assumptions based on a learnt 'Literary competence' for dealing with modern short stories or novels? 

Translating 'Culhwch and Olwen'. Giants, ants and perplexing verbs.

 These poems were first published in The Brazen Head

https://brazen-head.org/2024/08/19/three-translations-from-culhwch-ac-owen/

(I.m Michael Alexander)

 

 

Translating Culhwch ac Olwen.

 

In popular films the sexy treasure hunter/archaeologist

(they conflate the two, much to my trowel wielding friends’ dismay)

who’s fluent in every lost forgotten ancient language,

confronting the inscription on the recently uncovered wall,

or gazing at the long lost rediscovered legendary text,

looks, then translates, without a pause, the symbols 

into fluent, idiomatic, contemporary American.

 

The reality goes more like this:

 

Kilyd son of Kledon Wledic

Wanted a wife as noble as himself.

Here is the woman he wanted.

Goleudyt daughter of Anlawd Wledic.

 

So far so good. 

 

After they stayed together What? Gwest Ah, see note.

They spent the night together. Is that too direct?

The verb’s related to the one for copulation. 

They came together. After they were married

….bland. After they slept together,

no, the story teller could have used kysgu gan.

The cruder options? No. Not here. What follows? 

 

The country went to pray they ?might have? offspring

And they got a child/boy through the prayers of the country.

And from the hour she captured, caught? 

The next word’s definitely ‘pregnant’. Another note. 

‘Became pregnant’ though literally ‘caught pregnancy’.

As though it were an illness, perhaps better than ‘fell pregnant’

which evokes abrupt decline, or woman, falling?

Then she went wild/feral. Another note.

‘She went mad’. Mad or wild is somewhere you go to

in this case beyond the civilised boundaries.

She’s gone mad and won’t come near a building.

Wouldn’t enter a building? 

 

And from the time that she was pregnant, 

She went wild and wouldn’t enter any building.

And when her time came, she came to her good sense.

You go mad but come to your senses. The payoff’s here,  

the sudden twist estranging your own language.

You go out of your mind as though it were a car, 

and you could leave it in the car park to return to 

when finished being mad and needed it again. Anyway, 

what’s next? Pigs!? What? We’re up to line 7, only 

one thousand two hundred and thirty eight to go.

 

 

 

May I marry your daughter?

 

(The giant Ysbaddaden Pencawr knows he will die when Olwen, his beautiful daughter, marries. Understandably, he doesn’t welcome her suitors. But Culhwch has been told that if he doesn’t marry Olwen, he will never marry anyone. He and his six companions set out to ask the giant for her hand in marriage.What isn’t stated but becomes obvious is that the giant can’t be killed until his daughter is married. )

 

 

They killed the nine gatekeepers, 

and not a man cried out.

They killed their nine huge mastiffs;

not one so much as squealed.

And so they came into the hall.

 

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr! Greetings

in the name of God and man!’

 

‘You, where are you going?’

 

‘We seek your daughter, Olwen,

for Culhwch son of Kilyd.’

 

‘Where are those rascal servants?

Where are those ruffians of mine?

Raise up the forks under my eyelids

so I can see my future son in law.’

 

This they did. ‘Come back tomorrow 

I’ll have an answer for you then.’

 

He had three stone spears beside him,

each tipped with poison.

As they turned to go he seized one 

and flung it after them.

Bedwyr caught it and hurled it back,

piercing the giant through his knee cap.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law! 

It will be worse for me when I go downhill.

Like the sting of a gadfly, 

the poisoned iron has hurt me.

Cursed be the smith who made it 

and the anvil on which it was forged.‘                  

 

They stayed that night at Custennin’s house.

And on the second day, they set out to the hall, 

in majesty, with fine combs in their hair.

 

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr, 

give us your daughter.

In return for her dowry and marriage fee 

to you and her two kinswomen.

And if we don’t get her from you;

you’ll get your death from us.’

 

‘Her four great-grandmothers 

and her four great-grandfathers 

are still alive. I must consult them.’ 

 

‘You do that. We’ll go eat.’

 

He took the second spear 

and hurled it after them.

Menw mab Teirgwaedd 

caught it and threw it back. 

It pierced the centre of his chest 

and sprung out the small of his back.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law.

The pain of this hard iron

is like the sting of a horse-leech. 

Cursed be the forge wherein it was heated.

Now, when I go uphill, 

there will be a tightness in my chest,

stomach aches and frequent nausea.’  

 

They went to their food.

 

On the third day they came to the court.

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr, 

stop throwing spears at us.

Do not wish hurt and harm 

and death upon yourself.’

 

‘My eyelids have fallen over my eyeballs-

Where are my servants, raise up the forks

so I may look on my future son in law.’

 

They arose, and as they rose,

he took the third spear

and hurled it at them. This time, 

Culhwch caught it and threw it back,

and as he wished, it pierced the eyeball 

went through and out the back of his neck.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law.

As long as I live the sight in one eye 

will be worse than the other.

Whenever I walk in the wind it will water.

I’ll have headaches and giddiness 

at the start of each moon.

Cursed be the forge that heated it. 

Worse than the bite of a mad dog 

is the sting of its poisoned iron.’

 

Next day they came to the court.

‘Don’t attack us anymore.

You’ll bring hurt and harm 

and martyrdom to yourself.

Give us your daughter.’

 

‘Which one of you was told to seek her?’

‘Me, Culhwch, son of Kilyd.’

‘Come here so I can see you.’ 

A chair was placed under him, 

so they could be face to face.

 

‘Is it you who seeks my daughter?’

‘I do.’ ‘Give me your word 

that you’ll be just?’ ‘I give it.’

‘When you give me what I name, 

then you will have my daughter.’ 

‘Name what you want.’

 

-------------- 

 

(Ysbaddaden gives Culhwch forty impossible tasks. This next poem tells how one of them is achieved. Gwythyr is one of Culhwch’s companions.)

 

The Lame Ant

 

As Gwythyr mab Greidawl 

was crossing a mountain, 

he heard lamentations:

a most bitter wailing.

 

Dreadful this noise.

He rushed towards it

drawing his sword, 

cutting the anthill 

off at the ground

saving the ants from

the blistering flames.

 

‘God’s blessing and ours upon you,’

they said to him.

‘And that which no man can recover

we will recover for thee.’

 

These were the ants 

who collected the flax,

all the nine hestors

Ysbaddaden demanded.

 

But one seed was missing.

Until just before sunset.

it was finally brought in

by the last, limping ant. 

 

 

 

Translating Culhwch and Olwen. (publication)

I've been translating the story of Culhwch and Olwen, a medieval Welsh tale. It's usually flagged as 'the oldest surviving story of King Arthur.' My aim  is to translate medieval Welsh prose into a modern English verse sequence.  You can read the first published attempts by clicking on the link below which will take you to David Cooke's The High Window where you'll find many other excellent things.  

 Seven extracts from Culhwch and Olwen

Culhwch and Olwen.

 

I have loved this story since I first read the Jones and Jones translation many decades ago. Now I'm working my way slowly through this magnificent edition, which has the text in Middle Welsh but the introduction, notes and glossary in English. (The same two scholars produced an all Welsh edition but despite the ongoing effort I still can't read Modern Welsh.)

The story begins as a folk tale which wouldn't be out of place in the Grimm's world, and then the hero gets on his horse to ride to Arthur's court.  You can almost sense the anonymous genius who put this together realising here was an opportunity to show off, and the prose shift gears. (Marked for me by the sudden increase in the number of words I have to look up).

I particularly like this description of Culhwch's dogs, gambolling around him:

And before him, two white breasted brindled greyhounds

each with a gold collar from shoulder to ear

And the one that was on the right would be on the left

And the one on the left would be on the right

Like two sea swallows frolicking about him.

After this, the porter scene which is another favourite. 

Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Love's affliction'. (Cystudd Cariad)

Continuing the Poetry Voice Podcast's aim to build an audio anthology of poems. This one by Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the great poets of the Middle ages. And this is my candidate for a brilliant bit of creative translation.

www.liamguilar.com/the-poetry-voice/2022/1/5/dafydd-ap-gwilyms-loves-affliction-cystudd-cariad

The Gododdin by Gillian Clarke (Faber 2021) A Review of sorts

The Gododdin. Lament for the Fallen. A Version by Gillian Clarke. (Faber 2021)

(Book includes an introduction by the poet, and the Welsh and English texts on facing pages.)

 

Soldiers stormed, fired up by mead,

Mynyddawg’s men, as one they died.

Famous in the war, they paid

For all night feasting with their lives.

 

Caradog. Madog, Pwyll and Ieuan,

Gwgon, Gwiawn, Gwyn and Cynfan,

Steel-armed Peredur,

Aeddan and Gwawrddur.

Shield-Shattered fighters slew and were slain.

Not one of them came home again.

(p.59)

 

Y Gododdin may be the ‘oldest surviving British poem’. You can split hairs and call it ‘The earliest Scottish’ or ‘The earliest Welsh’ but those terms would be anachronistic. Although only surviving in a manuscript from the 13th century, it purports to be the work of Aneirin, who may have lived sometime around the end of the 6th, the same time as Taliesin. It is a collection of individual poems ‘Gorchenau’ celebrating the deaths of men in a battle that may have been fought on an unknown date in a place that is often identified as modern Catterick.

 

Historically there’s a lot of ifs buts and maybes. 

 

There is no narrative, but the ‘background story’ can be pieced together. Mynyddawg the Generous, the Luxurious, the Magnificent, gathered an army by feasting it for a year. At the end of the year 300 or three hundred and thirty three rode south from modern Edinburg and were slaughtered. Only one man, the poet, survived the disaster. Or perhaps three men. And the poet. Or three men including the poet. You could be cynical and say this is the foundation text for the great British habit of celebrating its military disasters.

 

Establishing a text has taxed the skills of some of the most prominent students of early Welsh. Anyone interested in the difficulties should try Kenneth Jackson’s The Gododdin (Edinburgh University Press, 1969), in which he scrupulously provided a literal reading of the poems, acknowledging where he could not provide either a reading of the text or a translation of what he’d read.

 

The original manuscript is difficult to decipher, once deciphered the language itself is hard to read, archaic in places. What, if any, of the text can be reliably dated back to Aneirin is a matter for scholarly debate. This may seem academic but what Clarke calls the ‘earliest known reference to Arthur’ is only ‘the earliest reference’ if that particular line can be dated with confidence. 

 

While we should be grateful for all this scholarly attention, without it there would be little chance of reading the poem, it tends to reduce the poems to a potential, but highly problematic, historical source which might date to a period where there is an astonishing scarcity of insular texts.

 

If you’re not interested in the history, why bother? The first answer is obvious if you ever have  the chance to hear Y Gododdin read by a native welsh speaker. If poetry is words organised to pattern sound, or patterned sound organising words, Y Gododdin is a marvel.  

 

The experience of reading the poem takes the reader out of modern assumptions about poetry, poet and poem. The Gododdin is a public poem, designed to be recited to an audience. The Bard’s role here is to celebrate the dead, to record for posterity that these men earned their mead. 

 

In her introduction, Gillian Clarke shows she is aware of all the scholarly debates but sets them to one side, and approaches the poem as poem. This presents its own problems, of which she is also very aware. The languages and poetics are so different that any attempt to copy Welsh poetics into English tends to be unimpressive. It’s as though the high stepping, graceful Welsh pony has suddenly become an arthritic elephant with indigestion. Clark successfully avoids this. The book is very carefully titled ‘A version’, perhaps to ward off the attention of the small group of experts who could challenge the literal rendering of her work, and in her introduction she claims her aim was to produce a version which works in English. I think she has succeeded. 

 

Compare Jackson’s consciously literal version of these lines:

 

And unless one had been well-nourished it was not possible to withstand Cadfannan’s blow. (Jackson)

 

With Clarke’s and then with Clancy’s.

 

Armour and shield could not save them.

None but the nourished fight Cadfannan (Clarke p.9)

 

None could, on mead he was nourished,

Ward of the stroke of Cadfannan. (Clancy p 34)

 

So if you want an English translation of the Gododdin, this is it. It’s not literal, but it sings in English. If you’re curious what a poem written over a thousand years ago might look like, or you want to read a version of a poem that was important to David Jones and Basil Bunting, Clark’s version is the one to read. (There are others, but they are becoming impossible to obtain. And while we’re at it, Bunting’s ‘I heard Aneirin Number the dead’ passage in Briggflats is probably the neatest introduction to the poem you’ll find.)

 

2

 

Reading from beginning to end is a strange experience. The names blur, the verses blur, this is not the rhetorical device of repetition with variation, this reflects the fact that the options the poet’s culture had for praise were limited. X was brave, X was generous, X fought like an animal, X died.

 

The world evoked is also strange. The highest praise this culture could offer a man was to say he was eager for battle, a ferocious, exuberant, merciless killer, and he died slaughtering his enemies. And while my admiration for the translation should now be obvious, I’m not so impressed with the packaging. 

 

I may be in a diminishing minority, but I prefer the past plain. (or as plain as it can be). I don’t want it softened or censored. 

 

The book is subtitled ‘A Lament for the Fallen’ and the blurb tells us that ‘Clarke animates this historical epic with a modern musicality, making it live in the language of today and underscoring, that, in a world still beset by the misery of war, Aneirin’s lamentation is not done.’

 

From one of the UK’s leading poetry publishers the sloppy description of the poems as an epic is surprising. But what do the words ‘Lament’ and  ‘The Fallen’ evoke for you? A minute’s silence on Armistice day, the bugler playing the last post, the solemn laying of wreaths at the cenotaph and those seemingly endless rows of crosses in France? If you’re Australian or a New Zealander, the dawn service on Anzac day?  

 

To present The Gododdin as a lament is to misrepresent the poem. There are occasionally verse that express sadness, but there are very few and they are swamped by the rest of the poems. The majority of verses are celebrations of the violent deaths of exuberant killers. 

 

To present this as ‘a lament’ is to soften it, to use a loaded phrase like ‘the fallen’ is to associate these dark age killers with the volunteers and conscripts of the first world war or the professional soldiers of the twentieth and twenty first century. It seems like an attempt to make Y Gododdin more acceptable, more ‘relevant’ to a modern reader who obviously lacks the imagination or curiosity or willingness to encounter the past in all its confronting strangeness. 

 

Medieval Welsh could do laments. In the poems of the Llwyarch Hen cycle, or the poems in Canu Heledd, the personal cost of warfare is made obvious. Heledd laments the death of her bothers:

 

The hall of Cyndyllan is dark tonight

Without a fire, without a bed

I will weep and be silent. 

 

But is this a lament?

 

Flaunting a brooch, he rode ahead,

Warrior, princely leader,

Killed five times fifty with his sword.

Two thousand men of Deifr and Brynaich’s men

Died in an hour in mire and mud and blood.

 

Sooner meat for the wolf than to his wedding.

Sooner carrion for the crow than priest-blessing.

Before his burial, the field lay bleeding.

In the hall where mead flowed free

the poet will praise Hyfaidd Hir.

 

The Gododdin is the lie one generation told the next. Be a ferocious warrior, disdain the soft things in life, be eager for battle, be happy to die knowing your name will live on forever in the poets’ words. (Ironically of three hundred, not all are remembered with their own verse.)

 

In the context of its time it was a necessary lie. These men are not fighting for creed, country or ideology. They are fighting for stuff; to protect their Lord’s boundaries, cattle, and wealth or to steal another Lord’s land, cattle, and wealth. 

 

At a time when the elite were armed and combat of one sort or another was a part of life, you want your young men to believe the lie. Because if your young men say, well, actually, no, we’d rather not fight, there are better to things to do, then you’re going to be raided, enslaved, or killed. And you’re not going to inspire the next generation if you tell them the reality of being stabbed and hacked and bleeding out on a battle field, or losing consciousness as the ravens start on your eyeballs. 

 

The poet wants his audience to believe that the heroes of the previous generation sought death in battle in the hope that their dying was worth a song. In reality, they risked death or injury in battle because that’s what men of their class did to earn stuff to improve their lifestyle. Their goal was to die of old age, surrounded by friends and family in relative prosperity. 

 

If they had all known they were all going to die at Catraeth, they might have preferred to stay at home.

 

Attempting to domesticate the past so it can be packaged to a modern audience might make sense to the marketing agency, but it is a trendy mistake. It’s the flip side of cancel culture. Neither wants to deal with the past as it was. 

 

The Gododdin is a relic from a very different world.

 

Sooner meat for the wolf than to his wedding.

Sooner carrion for the crow than priest-blessing.

 

Imagine saying this of a young man today? We criminalise or professionalise our killers. If this was true of Hyfaidd Hir, then he would be a disturbed, disturbing personality in our society. Pretending he is one of the ‘fallen’ like the volunteers on the Somme, who left their daily lives to become ‘soldiers for the duration’ is to misrepresent him and his culture and the soldiers on the Somme. 

 

The past, especially the early medieval past, should knock us back on our heels. Reading The Gododdin should not be a comfortable experience. And on the recoil, we should be thinking  that if the Aneirin’s of the world are ‘still singing’ their lie, then it’s about time they shut up. 

 

Gillian Clarke’s excellent translation deserved better packaging. 

 

 (And one minor quibble. It’s a bonus to have an easily available Welsh text of the poem, but there needed to be a note explaining how the editors arrived at this particular version of text.)