Asking for a cloak

[megli]

This is a very very loose version of a poem by Guto’r Glyn, in which the poet requests a scarlet cloak from Elen, wife of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn of Llanerch in Llyn. The poem is the payment.

* * *

The Red Cloak

Elen of Llŷn     pouring yellow mead
you breathe like a moon     behind golden gauzes
a white moon glowing     veiled   refulgent

You are rooted     in a fragrant vineyard
in the vintage blood     of a crested helm
in the gentle looks     of fathers and grandfathers
who girded themselves     in gilded stars

O lady     sweet and slender
how the wild bees     would prize your hair
  for yellow honeycomb
      would deem you brighter
  than pale Elen       Coel's daughter
  of the white wind-rinsed horses

fairer far     than black-browed Elen
  of Macsen's dreaming

fairer even     than Elen of the love-spot
  who stole away to Troy     her rings flashing
      above dark seas

O fair Elen of Llŷn     wife of Gruffudd
you are a field of silver     a vine of golden hair
grant me a gift     this cold New Year

that scarlet cloak     spun from golden fleece
unbelted and sleek     and red as coxcomb
fringed and tasselled     with saffron and rosehips

Gracious Elen    I will sing your praises
  your fiery seraph     in a crimson coverlet
my rainbow wings     aflame like peacocks
  cottongrass and carmine     or roses burning
      among tawny lionskins

red as rowanberries     red as dragon-hide
      red as your secret love-silks

[Heron]

Jul 24, 2008 8:43:00 GMT -1 megli said:

This is a very very loose version of a poem by Guto’r Glyn, in which the poet requests a scarlet cloak from Elen, wife of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn of Llanerch in Llyn. The poem is the payment.


....

[/i][/quote]

Oh how beautiful.

Guto, of course is good, and this English version reads superbly.

Who wouldn't give up a cloak for that!

[Tegernacus]

erm, hang about, the poet is bigging-up someone else's wife? Her secret love-silks? wow... it's a wonder he didn't have a run-in with old Gruffudd's sword.

(sorry, the poem is beautiful. But wow, it's a bit close to the bone)

[megli]

it's not a close translation at all! The last lines translated literally are more like this:

His heart and manner will be pure,
The fine-shirted lad in his rosehip garment:
Seven pounds in weight with the spread of eight peacocks,
An excellent cassock of cotton-grass.
The two eyebrows of my gift are rose-leaves,
The wattle-gate of the crop of the meadow;
Lion-skins from the tubs of colour,
A rowanberry load of beer of the same colour.

Full-blushingly, the host of Powys yonder
Sees me above the thicket-outcrops,
The colour of dragon-hide.

The colour under the broad flesh of a fleece,
A hand’s gift, her filling has prospered.
It prospers, though red gold were given,
The ship where a golden mantle is obtained.
There’s a cassock of the silk of love,
The mantle of the lady of Llanerch.


I took it as a starting point and Andrew Davies-ed it.

[littleraven]

Jul 24, 2008 13:42:47 GMT -1 Tegernacus said:

erm, hang about, the poet is bigging-up someone else's wife? Her secret love-silks? wow... it's a wonder he didn't have a run-in with old Gruffudd's sword.

(sorry, the poem is beautiful. But wow, it's a bit close to the bone)

Well no, if you consider the idea of a professional court poet bigging up his patron's wife. Which was his job after all, and actually a big compliment to his patron.

Or that's what he said, as he was running away.

[arth_frown]

Jul 24, 2008 14:35:15 GMT -1 megli said:

it's not a close translation at all! The last lines translated literally are more like this:

His heart and manner will be pure,
The fine-shirted lad in his rosehip garment:
Seven pounds in weight with the spread of eight peacocks,
An excellent cassock of cotton-grass.
The two eyebrows of my gift are rose-leaves,
The wattle-gate of the crop of the meadow;
Lion-skins from the tubs of colour,
A rowanberry load of beer of the same colour.

Full-blushingly, the host of Powys yonder
Sees me above the thicket-outcrops,
The colour of dragon-hide.

The colour under the broad flesh of a fleece,
A hand’s gift, her filling has prospered.
It prospers, though red gold were given,
The ship where a golden mantle is obtained.
There’s a cassock of the silk of love,
The mantle of the lady of Llanerch.


I took it as a starting point and Andrew Davies-ed it.

That sounds like a shopping list. ;D

[Heron]

Guto may have been having a satirical dig at himself as a younger man here as he had then been praised in a poem by the, then even younger, Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdal who describes him strutting about like a peacock in a golden cloak. He was regarded as the bees knees by younger poets : 'putting a lock on the awen of young versifiers' (Clo ar awen cler ieuainc) so this description was wholly complimentary. I think accommodating the tradition of praise poetry is the most difficult thing for people today in assessing Welsh poetry from this period even in translation. We just don't 'get' it.

[megli]

Totally. This is in a very old trad of poetry called rhiangerddi, 'poems praising maidens'. Among several other threads.