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Post by Heron on Dec 5, 2007 21:33:10 GMT -1
Craig and Francis, you have both raised the question of Cymdeithas yr Iaith, and I'd rather not get into that sort of political debate. I was a member of Cymdeithas as a student but have since been on the receiving end of criticism from them for not doing things they thought I should.They were, of course being 'unreasonable' but that's what they are there for so I don't have a problem with that.
I hope you don't mind if I say that I don't think this is a useful debate to get embroiled in on this forum. But do push me if you think I'm avoiding a specific issue that I shouldn't be avoiding!
Greg
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Post by Heron on Dec 5, 2007 21:38:17 GMT -1
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. Yes Lowri I can see how that poem would have an effect like that. His poem 'Mewn Dau Gae' (In Two Fields) is even more powerful. Yes!
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Post by Craig on Dec 6, 2007 7:24:22 GMT -1
Hello Coedwen & Lowri, and welcome to the debate I think I'd liketo tackle the points that Coedwen brought up first... Hi everyone 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 have no problem with people using Welsh in their ritual, especially if they are native speakers. Although I never learnt Welsh as a first language my speech is peppered with welsh words and phrases which often confuddle my English friends. I disagree though about the 'ancestors and stones' waking up when Welsh is spoken. Form personal experience I have seen no difference when using English or Welsh, it is your own connection to the land, the ancestors and the gods that makes this happen. So Coedwen you are wiser and more connected than you think 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 do get a bit uncomfortable when I hear the language being mascerated by non-Welsh speaking English pagans who have just memorized a bit to make them feel special. I would rather that they learnt Welsh for the language's sake not because they think it might enhance their experience or bring them closer to the gods, because it won't. And who says the land was once 'welsh speaking'? I'm sure Megli can put me right here, but the latest research shows a much more varied pattern of language across the ancient British landscape than was once thought. Anyway we have no real idea if modern Welsh bears more than a passing resemblance to the tongue spoken by the tribes of Britian in the period just before the Roman invasions, or the spread of that tongue. 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. Are you also going learn Gallic, Gaelic, Kerno, Latin, Old Norse and Saecsen as well then? Some of these will almost certainly form part of your blood ancestry as well, so to leave them out would seem rude. English is a tongue that has grown of many sources, and besides as I have already said our language is irrelevant when addressing spirits of place, ancestors and the gods. They can understand you well enough without resort to another tongue. Indeed it could be seen as condescending, such as talking slowly and loudly to an old woman because you have assumed she can't understand you any other way. 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. I agree up to a point. There are subtleties in the older Welsh versions of our tales that are hard to translate into English effectively. The question is do we just not bother and insist on the exclusivist view that you should learn Welsh to be able to access these, or go that extra mile and try to include people by working harder at producing better English translations? Being exclusive is always attractive because it is both easier and makes you feel special. I wonder what the gods would prefer? 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. Indeed it is about the only place on the net that I have found such freedom to explore such themes amicably.
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Post by Craig on Dec 6, 2007 7:40:30 GMT -1
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. As Wales turned significantly Christian well before Saecsen England I would say dismissing Christianity "as a recent and temporary phase", is a bit daft honestly. Christianity dominated the landscape for the best part of 1,500 years and the naming of that landscape reflects that. We cannot be sure how long the ancestor tongue to Welsh predates that conversion (Dr.Megli - get in here now!). In the majority of cases we do not know the preceding names to the Welsh Christian ones for many places, and so they are the only names we have. So what do we do, create new ones? Methinks not. In reality Christianity, especially early 'Celtic' Christianity and latterly the nonconformist chapel movement, are all we know of what it is to be Welsh. We have a few scraps here and there of older tales, but these were recorded, and probably seriously amended, by Christian Monks at a time when to record the pagan may have lead to an early and gruesome death. We are not blessed with a well-recorded and preserved pre-Christian history like the Icelanders. What many people relate to as 'celtic' Welsh culture now was invented in the late nineteenth century by Christian Victorian gentry (many of them romantically-minded English women and men), right down to the Gorsedd of Bards and the stone circles that sit in every Welsh town's park. 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. Agreed. 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. It can't, but it must not become a barrier either. As I have said previously, exclusiveness is easy to achieve, but real change requires an inclusive approach.
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Post by redraven on Dec 6, 2007 7:51:21 GMT -1
As a non Welsh speaking individual, may I be permitted to ask a question using a theoretical situation which may have some relevance to this thread. In England, there are regional dialects, ( I presume also in Welsh). Now, as you know, I live in the county of Notts and also use local dialect in my speech. Near to where I live is a village with the name of Rainworth. Let us imagine that in this place is a well with the reputation of a deity dwelling within. Now, let us imagine that both myself and someone not local to the area wish to to communicate with this deity and so we both call on that deity to come forward to be in this place with both of us. So, my collegue says "I call upon the deity present here in Rainworth to visit this place", then it is my turn and as a local I say "I call upon the deity present here in Ren'oth to visit this place". I am using the local dialect and thus changing the statement. To whom would the deity respond?
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Post by Francis on Dec 6, 2007 9:46:26 GMT -1
I hope you don't mind if I say that I don't think this is a useful debate to get embroiled in on this forum. But do push me if you think I'm avoiding a specific issue that I shouldn't be avoiding! Hi Greg Fair enough - I wasn't really putting this forward with the wish to debate it. I was more offering it as a bit of context of what the position of the language really is in Wales - for those not living here (perhaps I should be more specific and say the North West of Wales?). Every book mentioning welsh I pick up tells of a still poor oppressed language fighting a romantic but doomed heroic rear guard action. That's just not what I see. My point then is that Welsh is actually very strong in Wales - against overwhelming odds, and perhaps when this is thought about it informs the debate we're having about the connection between language and land? (Although I'd probably still argue it's more about language and people/communities.) If I were a grey, grey man in a white coat I'd go visit Patagonia and see what the motivation and appeal of Welsh is to the otherwise Spanish speaking folk there? How do they relate to their landscape- and does that land hold them at arms length 'cos they don't speak one of a secession of human languages that have been spoken there? Not sure what sort of welcome I'd get if they knew theywere the control group for my experiment! ######### Added later; (not sure if this stuff or just cymdeithas was what you'd prefer not to discuss Greg - so please just totally ignore this if it is!!) I do get your point though about the difference between the survival of the language and the survival of welsh communities. I'm probably wrong but I get the impression that by welsh communities you have in mind the sort of quarry/minning/chapel welsh speaking communities. And again I'd say these are only one sort of many different welsh communities- and as Craig mentions they arose not long ago, and I wonder if its just nostalgia to try and preserve them in a "certain" way. Is their passing any different than the passing of the cotton mill communities in Lancashire or even the mining communities of Northumberland or ship building communities of Glasgow? All deeply special communities of people helping each other live very hard lives? Wonderful community spirit that lived on after what brought them together passed but still inevitably fading? Is the welsh language being used as a surrogate for what has really passed? The mine or quarry and the community that it bred? And gradually alongside the passing of the industry come the english speakers. Casues and effects being confused? So that welsh speaking becomes a rallying call for the nostalgia of the losing of something else, it becomes a badge or a token of identity, even though it wasn't of itself central to that identity during the perceived golden past? The rural welsh communities of hill farmers speak welsh and for all their pride in it, it doesn't define their communty, they don't build their identity mainly around language (as I feel is does in the old quarry towns). Their culture is defined more by the life they lead, and incommers from hill farming culture and moving to live that life here are more readily accepted, whether english only speaking or not. Of course there is stuff they're not privy to, but all of us are part of overlapping communities at some scale or other- fully part of some sub-sections of a community, in through varrying degree to others and scorned by still others. Society is just a set of varriously overlappong circles and I don't believe any one group is made up of a set of individuals whose circles only overlap each others and no one elses. (I learned how to express my ideas from Donald Rumsfeld whose eloquence I model my own on )
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Post by Francis on Dec 6, 2007 9:51:28 GMT -1
I can never experience the energy of a single boy sex circle. Tell me that was a deliberate typo!? ;D I'm sure you of all people could experience the energy of such a single boy circle anytime you wanted!
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Post by Francis on Dec 6, 2007 11:04:59 GMT -1
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. Please don't think I know exactly what you mean!! The english in me just squirms with embarrassment at the "blind" behaviour of most of the english incomers where I am (8 out of 11) At its worst we even have a couple moved into the Plas ****** who act like they think everyone should treat them as lord and lady of some norman manor (in fact they've made it crystal clear that they really do think everyone should- they are truly astonishing!) But I think this is only analogous to what you suggest about the potential limits to relationship with the land through language rather than homologous? I really don't think we can invoke the same reasons/mechansims for a potential for "blindness" in a cultural or community context that we could for "blindness" in relationship to the land?
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Post by Francis on Dec 6, 2007 11:47:48 GMT -1
So, my collegue says "I call upon the deity present here in Rainworth to visit this place", then it is my turn and as a local I say "I call upon the deity present here in Ren'oth to visit this place". I am using the local dialect and thus changing the statement. To whom would the deity respond? Err... Well my first thought would be unless that "deity" was somehow tragically enthralled in a way I can't yet imagine, then to neither of you Or rather to neither of you in a way that I could perceive it at least. In a nutshell my personal belief is that language/dialect/accent is not-central to an individuals relationship with the land. (It is only relevant to knowing your people's relationship with the land, and that is a different thing- and I believe the one isn't the sum of the parts of the other - as counter-intuitive as that sounds!) I believe a Sami tribesman, speaking only his indigenous language, but who knew what relationship with the land was, and already knew how that communion comes about from his experience in his own land, would be able to have deeper relationship with the land in the Conwy Valley than many a welsh speaker plucked from Llanrwst. It wouldn't be the relationship you find the typical poets describing of man and land in Wales. There'd be no thought of hafod, hendre or song - it would be something that lay beneath, something ancient. Not the paint that man has spread on top, and it would be relationship with something that isn't concerned with our human fights over what colour that paint should be... The spirit of "Cymru" her nature and language as it is today, and in the recent past, is a Lowri says a wonderful thing to have relationship with, but it isn't the only or major spirit here.
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Post by megli on Dec 6, 2007 12:08:06 GMT -1
We cannot be sure how long the ancestor tongue to Welsh predates that conversion (Dr.Megli - get in here now!).
Tricky one this. Somewhere between 800 and 1200 years is a good guess, so from, say, 900 BC? that wd be my estimate. We're hampered by lack of sources. But British was definitely here by c. 200BC. Around 500BC is probably a decent guess.
Some people have suggested that the shared lingusitic oddnesses of Goidelic and Brythonic (the 'Insular' celtic languages) relfect something of the structure of the lost ?non-Indo-European language beneath them. BUT equally good arguments have been advanced against this view, and in the absence of much evidence we can never know. Also the arguments rapidly become extremely technical.
As for lands that were once welsh speaking: well, it's a complicated picture.
c. 100 BC: all mainland britain British speaking (probably), ?except for Pictland. Pictish might be a funny dialect of British anyway, but we don't have enough to tell.
c. 350 AD Lowland zone Latin-British bilingual, with Latin edging out british: high social classes possibly monolingual in Latin. Highland zone British monolingual.
c 450 Reversal of the above: Lowalnd zone British-Latin bilingual, with Latin being edged out by British. Highland zone stiull British monolingual. English (or a medley of Germanic tongues) begins to gain ground on the eastern seaboard, esp. Kent.
c. 450-550 Vast linguistic changes occur which shift British into proto-Welsh, Cornish, Breton. Emigration to brittany from SW Britain. English kingdoms of Northumbria and Berncia up. Loss of eastern seaboard to the English.
c. 600 Old Welsh and its very close relative Cumbric - spoken throughout southern scotland, NW Britain, around Leeds etc, throughout the kingdoms of Ystrad Clud, Elmet and Rheged. Powys much bigger than now - almost out as far as Birmingham. The Kingdom of the Gododdin falls c. 630.
600-900 Welsh pushed back to around the borders of Wales now. But all Cornwall Cornish-speaking, except for the little triangle in the North west between the Tamar and that other one I can't remember.
And with that, we enter the high Middle Ages and the rest is known.
* * *
The language issue is a nettle that needs to be grapsed, I feel. Personally, Language, landscape and history are all interwined for me, and for all my fusty academicness about it, my 'Paganism' and my daily work both spring from this same root.
M
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Post by Heron on Dec 6, 2007 12:31:38 GMT -1
Point taken! (goes into corner wearing dunce's cap) I was thinking of the Methodist revivals and the junking of a lot of foklore and other 'profane' traditions that followed that. But my general point that christianity can't be ignored is reinforced by the recognition of the long history or that religion in our land. If we take the conversion to have happened during the latter part of the Roman occupation of Britain it may be contemporary with the emergence of Welsh from Brythonic. But how widespread among the general population - as opposed to the cultural elite - christianty was is difficult to know. John Davies in his History of Wales say that the rapid phase of language change occured between 450 and 550 and quotes Nora Chadwick (I think) that Vortigern (c.430) would not have understood Aneirin (c 595) but that Gildas (c. 540) would have understood both. Whatver the value of this statement, it seems likely that the new language and the new religion were roughly simultaenous developments. True. Even for the Icelandic stuff this is a problem (Snorri, after all was a christian, though the elder Edda survived). But was the division between christian and pagan as absolute as that? There are examples of burials with both christian and pagan grave goods and the famous ship burial in Engand with alternative altars at each end. During the early period of 'conversion' people may have accepted christianity as one allegiance among many.
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Post by Craig on Dec 6, 2007 12:32:31 GMT -1
So Dr.Megli,
1. Am I right to state that as 'proto-Welsh' did not really appear until Wales was turning Christian, then the conflation of the two as key aspects of what it is to be Welsh is not entirely incorrect?
And...
2. Thus it is not correct to state that Welsh somehow gives you a leg up when defining the Welsh landscape or relating to the spirits and deities therein? We actually need to consider the 'original' brythonic tongue?
By the way do we have any examples of that tongue?
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Post by Heron on Dec 6, 2007 12:46:58 GMT -1
Yes this is certainly the case in Gwynedd. Elsewhere I suspect that more people can speak it, but less as their first or preferred language. I don't doubt that there are elements of this sort of nostalgia and concern for passing ways of life. But the emphasis on promoting Welsh nowadays is more forward looking. And this, in turn, for better or for worse, is changing the nature of the language.
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Post by Heron on Dec 6, 2007 12:53:58 GMT -1
So, my collegue says "I call upon the deity present here in Rainworth to visit this place", then it is my turn and as a local I say "I call upon the deity present here in Ren'oth to visit this place". I am using the local dialect and thus changing the statement. To whom would the deity respond? I'd like to say that 'Ren'oth' would be more harmonious to the god's ears but that (s)he would answer to either. But who am I to presume to know what your local deity thinks.
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Post by Heron on Dec 6, 2007 13:02:46 GMT -1
Forgive me Craig but that bit of reductionism does not become you. It may be convenient to regard Brythonic and Welsh as different languages but one developed into the other. (Maglocunus becomes Maelgwn etc.) The surviving stories from the Brythonic time are preserved, however imperfectly, in Welsh. Just as there is no absolute divide between paganism and christianity in terms of the historical development of one from the other, nor is there one between the languages. I think that looking at these different elements as if they were in separate boxes is mistaken. As Megli says about land, language and culture: all are intertwined. Greg
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Post by Francis on Dec 6, 2007 13:35:24 GMT -1
To whom would the deity respond? I'd like to say that 'Ren'oth' would be more harmonious to the god's ears but that (s)he would answer to either. But who am I to presume to know what your local deity thinks. Point taken Greg! Sorry RedRaven - I really was meaning, as I sort of said, from my limited perception and perspective. I was failing at attempting to jokingly celebrate the breadth of "pagan" positions held here.
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Post by Craig on Dec 6, 2007 13:37:40 GMT -1
Ahh Greg, but how many other languages and dialects also helped brythonic become welsh...? Methinks you need reread Dr.Megli's contibution and consider the impact of it
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Post by Francis on Dec 6, 2007 14:15:50 GMT -1
The language issue is a nettle that needs to be grapsed, I feel. Personally, Language, landscape and history are all interwined for me, Yes I agree- I think its like a wonderful old rope. There are threads twisted around one another into strings, the individual strings intertwined to make cords, and the separate cords intertwined to make the rope. From my point of view Language isn't one of the threads that makes the specific "cord" of the "land" - but it is part of the final rope. I wonder if perhaps you (Heron/Megli?) see the rope as being made by all the threads being twisted around each other in one go? Perhaps my spiritual path over-emphasises the cord of the land? and for all my fusty academicness about it, my 'Paganism' and my daily work both spring from this same root. For me too, but from my life as Tyddynnwr (translates as smallholder, but that just isn't really right- a good example of one of the limits of translation you mentioned Heron?, Woodsman (this time coedwigwr won't really do) and fusty (any offers in welsh?) academic ecologist.
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Post by megli on Dec 6, 2007 14:19:25 GMT -1
Hi Craig - I may have mislead you: British and Welsh are part of a seamless continuum. The former just became the latter, in the same way as Late Latin in Italy became Italian. Though British had absorbed a lot of Latin words which are now part of Welsh (e.g. piscis > pysg). But there is an unbroken flow between the language of 100BC and the language of today, but you have to be quite into historical linguistics to see it. Put it another way - 'welsh' is an anglo-saxon term. we cd also call welsh (and cornish, and breton) Neo-Brittonic.
The original Brythonic tongue is simply Welsh's older phase. We have plenty of it: large chunks of it are reconstructable, and all those Roman-British god names (and personal names) are basically in British. It was clearly very close to Gaulish (so much so that a 'gallo-brittonic' form of Celtic is sometimes posited) and we have plenty of that. There's a nice potsherd from Gaul somewhere that lists the ordinal numbers (First, second, third etc) and it's nice to see that 'first' is cintamos, the direct ancestor of W. cyntaf.
As for other languages helping British become Welsh, I think (forgive me) that's not the point. There's a number of Latin vocabulary borrowings, and a few grammatical calques (e.g. old welsh seems to have developed a pluperfect tense on the model of Latin; we know Common Celtic didn't have one). There's also a tiny number of Irish borrowings, and some French ones. But basically, overwhelmingly, Welsh is neo-British, in vocabulary and grammar. These things just - as Tolkien put it - changed with the changefulness of mortal lands.
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