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Post by Heron on Dec 2, 2007 21:42:17 GMT -1
I've just put up a discussion on Land, Landscape and the Welsh poet Waldo Williams on my blog which anyone interested might want to view at: www.hills-chronicle.net
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Post by Francis on Dec 3, 2007 13:30:03 GMT -1
Hi Heron "Nid ydy'r graig yn siarad Saesneg" Probably an unintentionally specific bit of graffiti. A statement that the rock "doesn't" speak english, not that it can't - medru- just that it isn't, who knows why? Maybe it was worried another fervent but misguided Welsh Nationalist would deface it some more if it did? Reading your ideas shows up how narrow my education has been, most of the jargon you use is novel to me so there's a huge chance I might be talking complete nonsense back to you having misunderstood what you were saying! As you implicitly suggest this view is unapologetically / myopically ;)anthropocentric. And that's fair enough! But in any one place at any given time many overlapping cultures and subcultures coexist. Arguably English only speaking townies buying almost every farm that goes up for sale, using the in-bye for horses and doing whatever is this weeks most fashionable conservation management with the rest (or even if they rent it), has a greater effect on the land, landscape and culture of an area than the effect of their language? I won't quote huge bits back here but I get the feeling that your sympathies on this matter are most explicitly revealed with "...is to miss the point of what it is to inhabit a community of speakers."? An awful lot is hidden under the politically untouchable cloak of language in Wales. The "have-nots" can be easily incited and led to believe if it wasn't for english speakers they'd be millionaires, some of the "haves" get a ready audience for their "performance" and romantically inclined poets get an honourable muse to tear out their hair for, high on a desperate rain-soaked hill I like to visit the ancient yew at Llangernyw not far from where I live; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LlangernywAlready unimaginably ancient when Welsh began to be spoken in Wales, and even if it lives as long again I doubt it will see the passing of the welsh language. It will undoubtedly see welsh speaking people living lives based around technology we can't even imagine today, culturally a million miles away from some "golden" Cymraeg-only pre-Llewellyn age (and nothing like any contemporary stereotype of welsh culture today)- and Welsh will still be spoken. The loss of the language is neither my biggest fear, nor would it be my greatest regret. What it is more likely the Llangernyw yew will see pass, and I think more to be fought against, is the loss of peoples relationship with this land through whatever language.... This is already happening at great, and increasing speed, and those who think english speaking is the enemy feeding this monster are fighting the wrong dragon - what many really care for most is being taken by stealth from around them whilst they're busy swinging their sword at an emotionally seductive but ultimately irrational big red herring. Not that I have an axe I've ground or would think to swing it at anything myself you understand ;D
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Post by Heron on Dec 3, 2007 22:23:30 GMT -1
Thanks for the reply. I too often visit a yew at Llandre, this one a mere 2000 odd years old so not as old as Llangernyw, but similarly giving a resonant feel of great age (pic here): www.ancient-yew.org/fragmentedyew-5.shtmlApart from that I think I agree with about half of what you say :-) Yes, what lies behind language (any language) is more important than the recent insights that language gives us. But to talk to each other about our feelings for the land, language is all we've got. And my point (or one of them!) was that Welsh contains within it a record of a relationship with the land of Wales for those who live there and speak it. Lose that and we lose a lot. In spite of what you say about fighting the wrong dragon, there are people in, say, Dyffryn Nantlle for who the stories of Gwydion and lleu and Blodeuwedd are local knowledge and for whom the landscape is alive with these stories. Lose that and they lose a lot. Do we lose too who don't live there? I think so. Politics of one sort or another of course gets mixed up with all this. But then there's no avoiding that and we have to steer a course through that maze with whatever integrity we can muster.
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Post by Francis on Dec 4, 2007 11:11:50 GMT -1
Apart from that I think I agree with about half of what you say :-) Point well made! ;D ;D Politics of one sort or another of course gets mixed up with all this. But then there's no avoiding that and we have to steer a course through that maze with whatever integrity we can muster. Have I just been gently reprimanded? But yes I do appreciate this isn't necessarily relevant to the topic from our specific point of interest here. I mention it only because I find it's often very relevant to the, usually unspoken, true motivations behind many peoples strong advocacy of more romantic notions of language binding a people to a place. (I'm not suggesting you fall in to that category!) Yes, what lies behind language (any language) is more important than the recent insights that language gives us. But to talk to each other about our feelings for the land, language is all we've got. And my point (or one of them!) was that Welsh contains within it a record of a relationship with the land of Wales for those who live there and speak it. Lose that and we lose a lot. In spite of what you say about fighting the wrong dragon, there are people in, say, Dyffryn Nantlle for who the stories of Gwydion and lleu and Blodeuwedd are local knowledge and for whom the landscape is alive with these stories. Lose that and they lose a lot. Do we lose too who don't live there? I think so. I honestly feel you're conflating several different issues here. And my point (or one of them!) was that Welsh contains within it a record of a relationship with the land of Wales for those who live there and speak it. Lose that and we lose a lot. I agree absolutely and passionately with you on this point. Where I live there is a stream unnamed on maps and astonishingly no one roundabouts had a name for it, or even used a name for it - even though it is incredibly beautiful in places and several metres wide. A very quick bit of library research found the charter for Maenan Abbey, which gave the name for it as Nant Llechog (which for anyone reading without any welsh sort of translates as "stream of the place of Cuckoos"). And as you say that name contained "within it a record of a relationship with the land of Wales for those who live there and speak it. Lose that and we lose a lot". And that is so so true. Standing in that stream, with beautiful woodland to the south and the old sunken lane to the north of me, and saying that ancient name outloud - Living again that once forgotten old human relationship of the ancestors of my community with that place was very powerful. Perhaps all the more powerful / poignant as I've never heard cuckoos in that place. But isn't that about the power of names- of ancient resonances more than the language of communication? You talk of Dyffryn Nantlle and the old stories and connection with Lleu, and again you couldn't find a much more passionate advocate for the power and importance of these stories of place than me- even more so for the "little" stories, the stories not of huge myth but of field names and small features of the landscape, the stories that these days get lost every day in Wales with the death of some old farmer or villager somewhere. But tell me really really if a non-welsh speaker, sympathetic to a Brythonic inspired spirituality or feeling, hears these stories in translation - If they are told the names of the hills/streams/fields in welsh and then in translation - do they really only get to know this land and relate to it in a lesser way than if they had heard and understood the story in welsh? I agree that Cymro to Cymro living in Wales and talking to each other about how they relate to the land around them, then they would achieve more through Cymraeg than english. But Cymro or Sais on their own relating to the land in Wales around them knowing the local stories, knowing what the place names mean - then the language of any overtly voiced communication between person and place/spirit of place I don't think is relevant? Language is about community and belonging to a community of people. Being at home in the "Nature" of a place where languages have come and gone faster than the lives of some trees, bracken and fungi I believe has little to do with human contrived languages -which as a medium for communication are at best a double edged sword when used for these matters. How does it work for the English in England? What language best connects them to the land around them? How does it work for two Welsh folk living in England and speaking about there bond with the land around them. Talking to each other obviously Welsh could be best. But a Welsh person living in England relating directly to the land around them? My point then (hidden in my rambling!) is language is important only to human community, but just not relevant to relating to the land itself. Stories, myth and history do have a huge part to play in that relationship, but it is the knowing and feeling of them not the language of them that I believe is important.
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Post by Craig on Dec 4, 2007 11:35:28 GMT -1
Hi Heron, I have followed this conversation with interest and have thought long and deeply about some of what you propose. Some context - I am an english-speaking Welshman, my childhood education having been broken up by tours abroad with my father (RAF). I come from deepest Merionydd, on the banks of the Mawddach. That said let us proceed... And my point (or one of them!) was that Welsh contains within it a record of a relationship with the land of Wales for those who live there and speak it. Lose that and we lose a lot. You may lose something, but I'm afraid I have to tell you that my relationship with the Mawddach is not limited by my language. Nor my relationship with Cader Idris, Coed Bontddu, Diffwys or the Wnion. When working with the spirits of these places I perceive their voices in my mind in a language I understand - they do not seem restricted to welsh. After all they have been here a lot longer than the english, the welsh -ancient and modern, and whomever inhabited these places before us (neolithic britons?). In spite of what you say about fighting the wrong dragon, there are people in, say, Dyffryn Nantlle for who the stories of Gwydion and lleu and Blodeuwedd are local knowledge and for whom the landscape is alive with these stories. Lose that and they lose a lot. Do we lose too who don't live there? I think so. I also have considerable local knowledge and learnt stories from the Mabinogion and other sources at my local primary and secondary schools, as well as from the old men and women of my village around the hearth in my grandfather's cottage. I learnt them in English yet it did not seem to diminish them one jot or tittle. Politics of one sort or another of course gets mixed up with all this. But then there's no avoiding that and we have to steer a course through that maze with whatever integrity we can muster. Stuff politics! ;D
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Post by megli on Dec 4, 2007 11:49:02 GMT -1
Nant Llechog (which for anyone reading without any welsh sort of translates as "stream of the place of Cuckoos").
Or ?'Stream of flattish stones' (llech, 'slab, flat stone' + adjectival ending?) The aspiration of cog in a compound (except after tri etc) seems a bit odd to me.
Hmm. I'm more instinctively on Heron's 'side' (forgive me, you know what I mean) that on yours, Francis, personally. As a sais who's learned Welsh, it does make a massive difference to the way I experience the texture of the landscape, as you both say: but, respectfully, I don't agree that language is irrelevant to the land itself. Human language is as much a natural product as birdsong: they are species within a kind of psychic ecology, and the loss of a language is like a kind of desertification. I don't like the idea that there are two things here: language (human) and landscape (nature). Jay Griffiths coined the word langscape to describe their utterly interconnected being. I can't see them separately.
But tell me really really if a non-welsh speaker, sympathetic to a Brythonic inspired spirituality or feeling, hears these stories in translation - If they are told the names of the hills/streams/fields in welsh and then in translation - do they really only get to know this land and relate to it in a lesser way than if they had heard and understood the story in welsh?
To me, yes. I have been in both positions. Partly because there is no precise word for word correspondence between languages, its more hazy than that., the webs of semantic, dialectical and literary associations are more subtle. Henlys is not the same as Oldcourt. They taste different in the mind.
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Post by Francis on Dec 4, 2007 14:37:13 GMT -1
Hi Megli Nant Llechog (which for anyone reading without any welsh sort of translates as "stream of the place of Cuckoos").Or ?'Stream of flattish stones' (llech, 'slab, flat stone' + adjectival ending?) The aspiration of cog in a compound (except after tri etc) seems a bit odd to me. Yes you may be right, but in going with Cuckoo I was putting it in the context of the name of the mill above and the woodland on its southern bank, both referring to cuckoos. I like to imagine perhaps the name once, even more anciently, contained other elements long since lost - "place of something AND cuckoo" or even a long since lost story of three cuckoos?? ('cos I'm the King of wishful thinking! - as the dodgey song once went...) Llech as you say flat stone, often used for a slate- but the geology of this bit of land leaves the stream with a bed of rounded pebbles. I didn't go in to all that in my post 'cos I'm prone to ramble anyway and it wasn't that relevant, I was just trying to make a point agreeing with the emotion of some of what Greg said. But I don't pretend you don't know infinitely more about this than me!! Hmm. I'm more instinctively on Heron's 'side' (forgive me, you know what I mean) that on yours, Francis, personally. As a sais who's learned Welsh, it does make a massive difference to the way I experience the texture of the landscape, as you both say: but, respectfully, I don't agree that language is irrelevant to the land itself. Human language is as much a natural product as birdsong: they are species within a kind of psychic ecology, and the loss of a language is like a kind of desertification. I don't like the idea that there are two things here: language (human) and landscape (nature). Jay Griffiths coined the word langscape to describe their utterly interconnected being. I can't see them separately. I would perhaps have more sympathy with your view if languages evolved in one place slowly through time accumulating mutations, "adapting" in all ways to fit the shapes of the land it grew in. But whichever of the hypotheses we go with for precisely when a celtic language "arrived" in Wales- a couple of hundred years before the Romans, or much further back - it still arrived in a form analogous to some big ready made elsewhere square peg, which a few generations of men have rounded the edges off a bit to fit the the round hole of Wales. Arguably the same is true of the English language in Wales, subtly evolving to "fit" Wales since its arrival. Accent perhaps some would say dialect even. (Obviously this development's been arrested now - 5 year olds in Bethesda with American accents when they speak english, after too many Disney cartoons and american tv being their main exposure to english) But tell me really really if a non-welsh speaker, sympathetic to a Brythonic inspired spirituality or feeling, hears these stories in translation - If they are told the names of the hills/streams/fields in welsh and then in translation - do they really only get to know this land and relate to it in a lesser way than if they had heard and understood the story in welsh?To me, yes. I have been in both positions. Partly because there is no precise word for word correspondence between languages, its more hazy than that., the webs of semantic, dialectical and literary associations are more subtle. Henlys is not the same as Oldcourt. They taste different in the mind. Yes I agree with you - and I like the way you express it. But to talk of Henlys, and taste the idea of it in your mind specifically as such, you are surely feeling the power of connection to the ancestors of that place - What it was to them and how it takes you back, and connects you to, that community of people both then and now. This is the empathy of connection with the welsh people of old you are talking about. Human connections. Even if the example you chose was one from the natural world, the common welsh name of a mountain or stream, the "taste", the connection and relationship ,the sympathy and resonance one feels for it when the welsh is voiced, holds you close to the community of people who named it or lived its story- who understood its mood in a certain way. Still human connections. I still think that you and Greg (and I know you both know far more myth and have far more skill in welsh than me) are avoiding my suggestion that although Cymraeg is the magical glue for communities (people) holding them together, to their past and attaching them to their landscape - it doesn't bind the land back to them. It's a powerful, blessed medium through which a portion of the welsh community perceives their relationship to this land, But it is not an exclusive route to that relationship. It is neither the only medium, nor necessarily the most powerful medium to relate to the land in Wales. A peoples "current" language does not impose upon, or obligate the land in anyway- at best I it think high hubris indeed to even suggest so implicitly! In geological terms language is as ephemeral as a skyscape, for all its beauty and power to move emotionally. But please don't think for a minute that I would deny that it's a wonderful and powerful medium of connection to this land. And I agree with you wholly that the " loss of a language is like a kind of desertification". But isn't this again an emotive conflating of two issues? There is only one potential threat to the welsh language these days (although this is only very recently the case), and whether that threat is realised or not lies solely in the hands of welsh speakers.
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Post by megli on Dec 4, 2007 15:49:21 GMT -1
Fair enough - I am partially persuaded by your eloquence and insight here. Thank you for it.
But on a different note, funnily enough, I think your image of a 'language evolved in one place slowly through time accumulating mutations, "adapting" in all ways to fit the shapes of the land it grew in' actually more or less IS true of Welsh (and many other languages). OK 2500+ years is not a very long time geologically, but I suggest that it's more analagous to say, a field being colonised by birch, then oak, etc, until over centuries a broad-leaved forest ecosystem develops. Shame for the meadow ecosystem that was there before, but something new has taken its place, with its own flora and fauna. I'm always trying to persuade my friend Angela that the history of welsh is like a big landscape, and you can walk through it mentally. A localised dialectical form like talws for talodd, 's/he paid' is like seeing an especially rare subspecies of reed-warbler. (For me.) Oh god - I'm a language twitcher!
Basically I see you're point: but I don't like the idea that humanity and the landscape have to be cut off from each other. I don't see how human language isn't part of nature too.
On a different note, can anyone imagine trying to have this discussion on the OBOd board?!
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Post by Francis on Dec 4, 2007 19:54:45 GMT -1
Perhaps we're all talking slightly at cross-purposes over some of this? I think were might be using words like nature, landscape and 'the land' in slightly different ways? But anyway... ... but I don't like the idea that humanity and the landscape have to be cut off from each other. I would argue that far from stating that "humanity and the landscape have to be cut off from one another" I'm suggesting the opposite. The flip side of a belief that the Welsh language powerfully links people in a 'special' relationship with the land of Wales is the rather more negative, and unavoidable inverse of it. That is that Non-Welsh speakers are less able to have a deep, "special" relationship with this land- that as the magic key of Cymraeg is not held by them, they are forever unable to realise the full potential depth of communion with this land. That in someway "[Non-Welsh speaking] humanity and the landscape have [been] cut off from each other."As I implied before I think Cymraeg is a powerful key and undoubtedly a leg up to the sort of relationship with the land that I seek- but it certainly isn't the only, or superior way. I strongly believe a non-welsh speaker can travel just as far down this road in this land. The relationship will not be the same, it might taste different along the way, but I don't believe this land would let the likes of Gerallt Lloyd Owen (sorry Greg ) contrive to put up barriers to the relationship of man and land. There are no ceilings glass or otherwise here I don't see how human language isn't part of nature too. Wow! This blows me away! I don't want to get all Dawkins Extended Phenotype over you. But this is a very interesting idea indeed, particularly as a model for thinking about these sorts of ideas. Intuitively my first reaction is that it doesn't quite feel "right" to me- but I'm not sure why - I think it might have something to do with not quite being sure how you're defining "nature"? I'll be thinking about this for a long while and hopefully get back to you before I'm very old! On a different note, can anyone imagine trying to have this discussion on the OBOd board?! Yes it really is what makes this place so good. Everyone here seems happy to disagree with ideas, discuss them and help develop them in a constructive way without it just becoming a personal scrap. And unlike TDN we're allowed to disagree!
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Post by megli on Dec 4, 2007 20:18:25 GMT -1
Well, we evolved, infinitely slowly out of singled celled creatures, then vertebrates, then mammals, then primates etc, so our capacity to communicate is also an evolutionary adaptation. Surely? I'm invoking Stephen Pinker's idea (and behind it, Chomsky's) of 'the Language Instinct'.
Mark
PS enjoying this discussion lots!
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Post by Heron on Dec 4, 2007 22:13:49 GMT -1
Have I just been gently reprimanded? Not at all. I just wanted to make the point that we have to respond to people's deeply felt concerns as expressed in social attitudes. But to do this with as much integrity as possible. Yes it is possible to build a relationship like that with a particular place and find words to express feelings and address the spirit(s) of the place. And I know from m own experience that some of us can make that work for us as individuals, and I have also been involved in attempts to make it work for a group, though ultimately unsuccessfully. But for a community that has evolved over time in a particular place, stories rooted in the landscape can have a deeper resonance, still fragile and certainly easily lost if not renewed by each new generation, or at least some of them, but powerful because deep and part of a shared cultural resource and beyond the response of any one individual or group. If places names in these stories still correspond to known landscape features the stories themselves come alive in the landscape. I don't say that he language of these stories is sacrosanct and it might not be possible for the language to change. But not overnight or on a whim. Because new language brings new values and different ways of seeing, though the speakers of the new language might be blind to that. Partly,but communication and resonance can't be so easily separated. I agree, without these too the grand stories lack a common base from which to access them. it's possible for them to cultivate such a feeling, but often for a native Welsh speaker sympathetically inclined, it can just come naturally because the stories are just 'there' and don't need to be self-consciously acquired. I just don't accept the separation between different uses of language you are trying to establish here. one depends on the other. Yes, we try to reach beyond language to meaning that is not tied to language, and some of us are occasionally lucky enough to glimpse this, but language is all we've got to share our experiences. A poet might use language to attempt to point beyond it and a musician might create brief interludes of silence between the sounds he creates but the medium of sound or language is still required. Well yes, if we are talking about how each of us, alone, can build a relationship with the land or a particular place (and for many years I self-sufficiently did this) you have a point. But if we are talking of the circumstances in which we might build a religious community then we have to think beyond this to how, and on what basis, we might share those experiences, record them in stories which resonate when they are written. Yes it's possible to appropriate land in new stories - it's how the West was won! - but if you are a native indian you might still think you know better. A better way to do it if you have a sympathy for the existing stories is to find a way into to them which might have to be through translation but ideally would be by 'going native' as the language itself can provide that passport better than anything. Well I think so anyway.
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Post by Heron on Dec 4, 2007 22:39:33 GMT -1
You may lose something, but I'm afraid I have to tell you that my relationship with the Mawddach is not limited by my language. Nor my relationship with Cader Idris, Coed Bontddu, Diffwys or the Wnion. When working with the spirits of these places I perceive their voices in my mind in a language I understand - they do not seem restricted to welsh. After all they have been here a lot longer than the english, the welsh -ancient and modern, and whomever inhabited these places before us (neolithic britons?). [\quote]
I don't doubt it Craig. And I take what you say about relationships with the spirits.
But the stories about them are in Welsh, and though, as I said in reply to Francis, it may not be impossible to share these stories in another language, especially if like you someone is brought up, as it were, within its sphere of resonance, if we are to build a community of responsive people, going native might be the best bet. 'Brythonic' sympathisers in England may have their hearts and their aspirations in the right place, but it often seems to me that they don't quite 'get' it when referring to Welsh stuff. After all, how could they?
Which is what I meant above by being within the sphere of influence of Welsh. The problem might be, though, with more second language Welsh speskers across Wales, but fewer Welsh-speaking communities, the opposite is happening. That Welsh is continuously under the sphere of influence of English and becomes just a medium of translation of English thoughts into Welsh words. But that's getting close to politics....
I'd agree as far as party politics is concerned. But I meant politics as social concern expressed within communities. We can say 'stuff that' and cut ourselves off from the general populace and just do our thing. Or we can go out and be political, as happened in Tenbury Wells.
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Post by Francis on Dec 5, 2007 3:21:43 GMT -1
Hi Greg Well I’ve just typed out and then deleted a huge ‘essay’ for you! ('though I'm only up at stupid o'clock in the morning as I've been clearing some trees felled into the road by this storm) I think we both know we agree on far more of this than we disagree really. I realised though that there was nothing I could say that could hope to trump your view/faith that; "…Because new language brings new values and different ways of seeing, though the speakers of the new language might be blind to that." In the context within which you suggest that, it feels a little like a free and crushing license to allude to all kinds of mysterious and wonderful communion with the land of Wales forever unknowable to me… But I would be lying if I didn’t admit I often think similarly in terms of the cultures of town and farm people, and so it waters the seeds of my doubt a little… From mine, and I think Craig’s perspective, our ‘spiritual’ paths have been on the whole fairly solitary ones, and I find it hard to believe they have been limited by language - but I suppose it’s not inconceivable that as individual relationship / communion with the land is less language focused / centric than group work I may be being naive? Maybe you’re right when you point out that a different practice/way is needed if you’re attempting to build a spiritual community where shared experiences of relationship with the land are desired. So if you’re right and the most likely way to ‘success’ in such a venture is through the medium of welsh (and I’m sure it’s a widely held view, perhaps after Alexei Kondratiev ?), then is there anything positive /helpful you could suggest to non-welsh speakers or learners (that doesn’t initially require travel ?
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Post by Craig on Dec 5, 2007 7:00:24 GMT -1
Hi Heron, But the stories about them are in Welsh, and though, as I said in reply to Francis, it may not be impossible to share these stories in another language, especially if like you someone is brought up, as it were, within its sphere of resonance, if we are to build a community of responsive people, going native might be the best bet. 'Brythonic' sympathisers in England may have their hearts and their aspirations in the right place, but it often seems to me that they don't quite 'get' it when referring to Welsh stuff. After all, how could they? Language is just human paint. For each of those landscape-inspired stories how many layers of language have they been covered in? If we peel back the layers starting with Lady Charlotte Guest we find Welsh, beneath that Old Welsh, beneath that some primal Goidelic, and beneath that an ancient Brythonic tongue of which we have no extant record. In other words I believe that many of these stories pre-date even the sacred bull of Welsh. Of course the problem with paint is that is just gives a colour to what lies beneath, and it is what is beneath that people like Stephen and I relate to and work with on a daily basis. To us the language is irrelevant, and that is what makes many 'academic druids' (and here I am expressly not pointing at you guys, who I feel to have far more depth of experience than the Senior Common Room at OBOD Towers) so uncomfortable. Modern academic druidry is very much like the Anglican Church. They love the theology, and can talk about the sociology, history and psychology of faith until their hair falls out, but they really do not want to talk about actual divine experience. Any talk of actual communion with the divine has them leaving the room intoning 'la-la-la-la-la...'. Which is what I meant above by being within the sphere of influence of Welsh. The problem might be, though, with more second language Welsh speskers across Wales, but fewer Welsh-speaking communities, the opposite is happening. That Welsh is continuously under the sphere of influence of English and becomes just a medium of translation of English thoughts into Welsh words. But that's getting close to politics.... OK, let's do some politics... In my arrogant opinion it is about time that the Cymdaithas Iaith got over themselves. You cannot preserve a living language, it grows and with each passing generation it changes to meet the circumstances its people have to live with. If it refuses to grow, or a minority try to preserve it in aspic through law and education, it dies. In deepest Merionydd I hear new words wandering into my 'native' friends conversations daily, and mutations of old words to new meanings. I also hear children with Brummy accents competing beautifully at the Urdd Eisteddfod. Given this continual growth how can it continue to claim to have an exclusive right to paint the landscape around it. You scholars here know that the language used to record the tales we hold so dear in the 12th century would be almost unrecognisable to a child playing on the street of Dolgellau or Bethesda. Speaking of Bethesda here is another thing. You say that Welsh defines your relationship with the landscape, but I would then say that Christianity does as well. How many of our ancient landscape names have been not so subtly reinterpreted, like the Mabinogion itself, by fifteen hundred years of christian acculturation? How many places had different names before they became Llanfair-whathaveyou? Does this not mean that I have to use Christianity to relate to the landscape? If not then I also do not have to use Welsh. ;D
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Post by Francis on Dec 5, 2007 10:55:55 GMT -1
Hi Greg
You couldn't just clear up the quotes in your last post could you? You missed a "/" i.e. [/quote] from your "quote" above Craig's "stuff politics". I point it out 'cos I nearly missed some of your ideas in that post and they were big points.
I agree the sort of politics you suggest is wholly appropriate for a discussion like this. I don't see how we could talk about this and avoid politics - If there's a bloody big elephant in the room it then we'd be reduced to barely relevant waffle if we weren't mentioning it! But even so I appreciate I'm going a bit off the specific topic.
I believe the current agenda of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, amongst others, are risking the gains they've made. Welsh has been disgracefully treated in the past, but the positive discrimination now current is leaving many welsh people feeling like second class citizens in their own country. The boundary of what it's reasonable to agree with as "welsh essential" for employment has been stretched to the point of foolishness, and the recently quiet, apologetic majority of Welsh people (not just english people living in Wales) is starting to resent what they increasingly refer to as the Taffia.
It does Wales no favours. We're often getting people promoted beyond their talents on the basis of them being welsh speakers. We're having to deal with having increasing numbers of people without the skills required for the positions or responsibility they hold, and Wales is suffering in terms of its economy, image and delivery of services (This is devastatingly true for staff delivering biodiversity services).
Things have changed. The educational aspirations of the welsh speaking community have changed (and arguably this in itself is playing a part in the break up of welsh communities as they once were, but nationalists choose not to mention it), and within a generation there is likely to be sufficient welsh speakers with the skills required.
The growth in welsh language speaking is amongst the young. Currently Cymdeithas still makes a play that welsh language use is declining or just growing very slowly. But this is just demographics. An older generation of welsh language speakers is dying, the middle age group following them is the group that had the lowest proportion of speakers ( so the actual positive direction of welsh language use is currently being masked when expressed as a percentage)- and in time as this currently middle-aged group passes on, the percentage of people speaking welsh will grow rapidly. All young people are taught welsh, and the language has a very positive image with them.
The only thing that could possibly halt all this positive progress (admittedly perhaps only in terms of number of welsh speakers, rather than the preservation of welsh communities, as they were for at most only a couple of brief generations "in aspic") is a backlash from the currently still supportive ,but starting to get restless nearly 80% of Welsh people who don't speak Welsh.
Cymdeithas has a fighting culture, and it used to have to, and fair play to them for that and all they achieved, but they need to learn that the fight is won, and that the fruit of that fight now needs patience to grow as the next generations come through taking for granted what Cymdeithas has justly, righteously and deservedly won. If it carries on just fighting and fighting a battle its won, and doesn't start working with its erstwhile opponent, then it might just find it has a real fight on its hands once again.
I really hope not but I wouldn't bet against it anymore....
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Post by coedwen on Dec 5, 2007 16:59:38 GMT -1
Hi everyone Well this is a very interesting discussion, but too many threads in one for me though I think what you've just said about the welsh language in Wales Stephen is very true. I hear people saying this more and more especially about the Taffia ;D and I hope your prediction doesn't come true. Using Welsh language in ritual then unlike Stephen and Craig I think it is more powerful for ritual in Wales. How can it not have more power than the newly arrived english. I love to hear Welsh used in ritual. Sometimes when I hear somone arsing on in English it can all sound a bit fluffy and superfcial, but when ceremony is spoken in Welsh you can just feel the ancestors and stones wake up and take interest. I even see that lots of pagans in England are learning Welsh just for ritual. If they feel it still has more power on land that was once welsh speaking but is now lost to the new language of English then surely it has even more power in Wales. I agree with Megli that welsh has adapted to fit britain in someway. I think Brythonic ritual just has to include at least some Welsh out of respect to the ancestors. Also Heron/Greg (more people with two names here!) is right when he says that speakers of only the new language might be blind to certain things. There are probably somethings and some relationships that only welsh speakers can know. Its a bit like the question of does a single sex girl circle have different energies and potentials to a single sex boy circle. We can all know by experience that a single sex circle is different to a mixed one. And we can guess that all boy and all girl circles are probably different. But we can never really know for real. I can never experience the energy of a single boy sex circle. And I would also like to agree with Megli about how real caer feddwyd is that we can talk about these sorts of emotionally charged subjects, with a feeling like were going somewhere with them and with respect for each other without it just being point scoring and arguing. By the way Stephen I thought you did speak Welsh?? I've seen you speaking to people in Welsh??? But reading what your saying it sounds as though your saying you don't. I'm sure your not meaning to but I thought I'd let you know for anyone reading it who deosn't know you!
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Post by lowri on Dec 5, 2007 20:29:19 GMT -1
Lots been happening since I last looked in - don't know where to start. Here I think with Waldo Williams. I remember studying his poem 'Cofio' at school and really falling for it as a piece of writing that took over my feelings as well as liking the message. Can't remember much specific (ages ago) but there was lots of stuff about lost languages and him wanting to get them all back again but also that was set on a beach with a sunset and all this came to him in a magical vision. And that has stayed with me. I didn't continue with literature and have become an environmental scientist so I'm not able to talk about all the Mabinogion stuff except to say that I've known these stories since primary school though in modern Welsh versions for young people and they do feel like part of my heritage. What people are saying about nature is what I feel - that this experience is direct and is part of the reason I do what I do. But the language is important to me too although my parents didn't have much of it my Grandmother did, and my family before her, and I was sent to a Welsh school and it was all very political when we were told how important it was. But I can see the need for that, so the arguments about one or the other don't seem real to me. Nature is there and the Language is there and it's all 'Cymru' to me.
Lowri x
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Post by Heron on Dec 5, 2007 21:10:47 GMT -1
I realised though that there was nothing I could say that could hope to trump your view/faith that; "…Because new language brings new values and different ways of seeing, though the speakers of the new language might be blind to that." In the context within which you suggest that, it feels a little like a free and crushing license to allude to all kinds of mysterious and wonderful communion with the land of Wales forever unknowable to me… But I would be lying if I didn’t admit I often think similarly in terms of the cultures of town and farm people, and so it waters the seeds of my doubt a little… Perhaps I can give a neutral example here. I lived in Paris for a while in the 1970's and there were a lot of American Vietnam draft dodgers there who thought of themselves as radical and freethinking but it struck me that they simply could not see, in their attitude to the French, that they were arrogant Americans confident of their own superiority but not conscious of this. Well I've noticed the English being a bit like that towards the Welsh in some rural villages (and I speak as one born and raised in England until my teens) and I don't think they realise this or, in some ways, that they CAN realise this. To be a member of a dominant culture gives you an attitude that you are not even conscious of. Much of mine too - I was an active pagan through my twenties, but then a solitary, and completley out of the public pagan arena, until fairly recently. In my experience to live within Welsh communities in the Welsh language gives an insight to the 'secret life' of those communities that many living alongside them do not see. It is largely unconscious and instinctive but there is a shared life that is subtle but definite. To immerse yourself in the Brythonic sources alongside this if you have a spiritual affinity for them, and 'live' the land all combine to enrich my spiritual life. But that is me. I wouldn't presume to tell others how to follow a spiritual path. Speak to the gods and ask for guidance. Manawydan is 'wise in counsel' in the tradition and personally for me. Maybe for others? Greg
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Post by Heron on Dec 5, 2007 21:27:11 GMT -1
Speaking of Bethesda here is another thing. You say that Welsh defines your relationship with the landscape, but I would then say that Christianity does as well. How many of our ancient landscape names have been not so subtly reinterpreted, like the Mabinogion itself, by fifteen hundred years of christian acculturation? How many places had different names before they became Llanfair-whathaveyou? Does this not mean that I have to use Christianity to relate to the landscape? If not then I also do not have to use Welsh. ;D That's a good question Craig. Christian names of places throughout Wales can be dismissed as a recent and temporary phase, but they are undeniably there and cannot be discounted as part of the experience of what it is, or has been, to be Welsh. Iolo Morganwg might have ressurected druidry but he was also an Unitarian. These things are complex and I wouldn't dream of denying the spiritual experince of christians alongside those of others has valid markers of the human landscape. The gods may not care what language we speak. But the gods as they have become know to us in our shared culturallife which itself energises the landscape, do care because we care. The division between the human and the non-human world is, after all, not anything like as absolute as some would have us believe. If we are talking just Nature then language may be discounted. If we are talking Brythonic tradition, The Mabinogi etc, then i can't see how language can be left out of consideration. Greg
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