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Post by Francis on Apr 8, 2010 21:29:31 GMT -1
I would guess one of the less read parts of the Book of Aneirin in modern neo-pagan circles (and obviously only in translation) is an ancient nursery rhyme known as Pais Dinogad. It's basically a story sung to a child telling of his father's hunting prowess. It lists eight of his quarry including the mysterious "llewyn". In translations into modern welsh this is usually rendered as "cath goed" or woodland cat / wood cat. This is usually thought of as referring to what is now known in Britain as the Scottish Wildcat - although once it was found throughout Britain and in Wales until about 1880. Possibly the name "cath goed" is very modern just a welsh translation of the Latin binomial felis sylvestris. It is possible though that "llewyn" might refer to the lynx - finds of lynx bones in Britain during the 1990s were carbon dated to about 500 A.D. - not a million years older than the Book of Aneirin. A quick google prompted by a recent newspaper article shows I'm reinventing the wheel and am not the first to speculate on this! So Megli, Deiniol and Heron (if you have any spare time or interest  ) any thoughts on this in terms of formal linguistics and the phylogeny of words, their mutations and relations (do you describe that as phylogeny in your field?) Llewyn to the clueless seems to have Llew, as in lion, with the suffix yn (diminutive masculine) - is there anymore to it than that? Do you know of any other old texts that mention Llewyn or cath goed? "or sawl yt gyrhaedei dy dat ty ae gicwein o wythwch a llewyn a llwyuein. nyt anghei oll ny uei oradein." or "Beth bynnag a gyrhaeddai dy dad â'i bicell - Boed yn dwrch, yn gath goed, yn lwynog - Ni ddihangai'r un oni bai'n nerthol ei adenydd" and in english At whatever your father aimed his spear - Be it boar, wildcat, or fox None could escape but those having mighty wings Apologies for being too lazy to use italics! |
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Post by megli on Apr 8, 2010 22:20:32 GMT -1
I've always assumed it was a lynx, and you're right, it just means 'mini-lion', 'lionlet'! You were absolutely spot on. I'm not sure we can tell really---cd be either. Actually 500AD is quite a long time before Llyfr Aneirin, which is late 13th century, but the poem itself can't be much later than the 600s, because it's referring to this place, 'Rhaeadr Derwenydd', 'The waterfall of Derwenydd', which has to be in the Old North somewhere. Perhaps Lodore Cascade on Watendlath Beck Cmb, above Derwentwater, as R Geraint Gruffydd has suggested? There was another cascade now submerged under Derwent reservoir. This may then be where Dinogad's daddy went a-Hunting.... images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1320/1040707394_8c329b1cf2_o.jpg&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/16946739%40N00/1040707394&usg=__l_GdSicTkP-ell6JpUUeu_c8KXk=&h=799&w=600&sz=133&hl=en&start=2&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=0W5kGH5Iao6goM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlodore%2Bcascade%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GGLJ%26tbs%3Disch:1So, it boils down to what you think a 'lionlet' might be in the context of what's now northern England in the 7th century! There's no internal, 'linguistic' answer. PS '(g)wythwch' is old Welsh orthography for 'gwydd hwch', 'wild-pig'! PPS The poem---and what a lovely thing it is---has an odd feature. By the 600s, Proto-Welsh/Common neo-Brittonic/Whatever had lost its unstressed middle syllables. But there, in 'Din/O/gad', large as life, is a syllable which should have vanished. The normal welsh version is Dingad. (It's a saint's name.) It's interesting because it shows that this poem was written down from a quite early stage, not circulating orally, because a sound which was no longer pronounced in the name in speech made it into the written form and so was copied. In other words, we know this poem had existed in writing for a very long time, perhaps since it was composed, by the time it was copied into Llyfr Aneirin in the late 1200s. |
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Post by Francis on Apr 9, 2010 18:54:34 GMT -1
Thanks Megli - much appreciated as always.
If ever you come across any other medieval mentions of Llewyn, or perhaps more informative would be any early mentions of cath goed, please bear me in mind and drop me a note. I hope to eventually have an opportunity to repay you for the current one-sided stream of favours!
P.S. Unfortunately I couldn't get that link to work?
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Post by Tegernacus on Apr 9, 2010 19:23:57 GMT -1
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Post by megli on Apr 9, 2010 19:46:48 GMT -1
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lodore_Falls.jpgWho slew Palug's Cat? Lots of big-cat stories in Welsh literature, and since the big cat isn't native, I'm assuming they may have been imported for hunting/court mascots/whatever? Just a magic 'big animal' of the usual type, isn't it, like the the Salmon that takes Arthur's men on its back to Gloucester. medieval welsh storytellers don't need to have seen real giant cats in order to be able to imagine them, especially not when they know perfectly well what a lion is etc. (there were welsh medieval bestiaries). I had fun setting the triad about Palug's Cat in an exam, actually, making up the detail that it was as big as a bull and devoured thirteen men daily for its food! |
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Post by Heron on Apr 9, 2010 20:37:02 GMT -1
I can't resist copying out Tony Conran's lovely translation of the poem:
Dinogad's smock is pied, pied
Made it out of marten hide
Whit, whit, whistle along,
Eight slaves with you sing the song.
When your dad went to hunt,
Spear on his shoulder, cudgel in hand,
He called his quick dogs, 'Giff, you wretch,
Gaff, catch her, catch her, fetch, fetch!"
From a coracle he'd spear
Fish as a lion strikes a deer.
When your dad went to the crag
He brought down roebuck, boar and stag,
Speckled grouse from the mountain tall,
Fish from Derwent waterfall.
Whatever your dad found with his spear,
Boar or wild cat, fox or deer,
Unless it flew, would never get clear.
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Post by Francis on Apr 9, 2010 22:33:27 GMT -1
Lots of big-cat stories in Welsh literature, and since the big cat isn't native, I'm assuming they may have been imported for hunting/court mascots/whatever? Hi Teg The thing is we genuinely don't know when the Lynx became extinct in Great Britain. Until relatively recently it had been thought that this was much earlier than historical times. Now that evidence is accumulating that they were still around up to at least the 6th century, it becomes interesting to look at the literature with the new perspective of not assuming big cats were extinct in Britain perhaps well into the so called Dark Ages. Unfortunately the Dark Ages are rather dark and there isn't a great deal of literature around from that period... ! I think what you suggest about imports as mascots or for hunting etc. was certainly true of bears, and may be true of the lynx - my guess would be that there's less status associated with the lynx and so it's less likely to have been worth the very considerable effort - the lynx is a very small Big Cat after all! It's a creature that has relatively little interaction with humans - less even than the fox, despite it being slightly larger, in terms of preying on stock - it's much less adaptable and far more human shy. I like to suggest this as the reason why I've not had much success looking for its presence in place names i.e. it was such a secretive beast that maybe it wasn't really something humans of that period thought about much? (this would probably also be true of the wildcat which is similarly conspicuous by its absence in place names, even though we know it was very widespread in Britain into the 1700s) Although I might be forced to go with the null hypothesis that I'm just wrong again! |
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Post by megli on Apr 10, 2010 9:48:28 GMT -1
Irish texts of the 8/9thth century go on about the lynx, the 'lug'. It was also a kenning word for a hero (the welsh tended to use words like 'bull' and 'wolf' in this sense.) I don't know how long lynxes survived in Ireland.
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Post by Brochfael on Sept 20, 2010 15:22:01 GMT -1
Personal friends have seen sheep carcasses which appear to be victims of big cats. A carcass, probably the same one, was analysed by Dr Ros Coard (here at Lampeter) who specialises in animal remains and taphonomy. Anthropologist Samantha Hurn (also a Lampeter academic) has done research into big cat sightings locally. Their findings have been published in Anthropology Today ( onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2009.00640.x/abstract for those with an Athens account) |
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) any thoughts on this in terms of formal linguistics and the phylogeny of words, their mutations and relations (do you describe that as phylogeny in your field?) 
