Graves' White Goddess

[Lee]

generally i got narked with this book. though chapters 2 and 3 got my attention.

it was his dealing with the Cad Goddeu, or more specifically the way he teased aprt the few mangled together poems in it and pulled out the battle of the Trees proper and the poem of Blodeuwedd.

it was also interesting to hear his account of how he thinks its a recollection of the Plentyn Don superceeding and taking over dominance from the Plentyn llyr (as it seems thorugh out the mabinogi and cad goddeu, the children of Don outwit and beat up the others. he says it represents a change in the makeup of the prehistoric society.

im hoping to look up a better translation of the cad Goddeu at some point (as his is apparently iffy) and try his disentangling myself to see if the extracted poems still work with another translation.

lee

[Blackbird]

I actually quite like the book - speaking from a purely poetic point of view. The only problem with it is that modern pagans have often taken it as literal fact.

I'd forgotten that he'd separated the Blodeuwedd bits out of Cad Goddeu - interesting, as I have done this too. I think I've posted it up previously in the Bardic section. If not, then I shall do forthwith

The best translation of Cad Goddeu that I know has not been published. It was done by the Brittonica mailing list, while I sat in silent admiration Perhaps if I ask nicely they might allow me to publish it here... or else, you could just join the mailing list and read through the posts. There was some excellent and involved linguistic discussion as the various members put forward their ideas.

But yes, Graves' Cad Goddeu is terrible from an accuracy point of view. Nice just as a poem though, I think.

[Brochfael]

Plentyn is a child (singular) the welsh for children is plant. So we should be referring to the "Plant Don" and "Plant Llyr".