Branwen : incidental comments

[Heron]

I'm glad you have got going again with this Megli.

I've started a new thread to make a comment that is not directly related to the translation or grammar, in fact a bit of quite unscholarly speculation!:

I've always been intrigued how much the sea has retreated from Harlech castle,. Here they stand on the rock "uch penn y weilgi" and watch the ships coming in . Now the sea is some way from the Castle across the sand dunes. But farther to the south the legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod suggests that the sea has come in and flooded the land, and there is actual evidence of this in the semi-fossilised remains of a forest on the beach at Borth by the Dyfi estuary.

Do we have different historical periods recorded here (the medieval setting but a memory of a time when the sea was further in)? Contrary to this it has been suggested that Bran wading across the sea to Ireland (I know, we haven't got there yet!) might retain a record of a time when there was only a wide sea river separating Wales and Ireland ( see F J North : Sunken Cities). But again there could be trace memories of different historical periods mixed up here. And if so this might tell us something about the way material has got into the medieval tales from earlier periods.

Just maybe!

[megli]

its possible!

[Lee]

if i recall correctly, the sunken trees date from about 6000 years ago.

sea levels do fluctuate a bit though i doubt there was a time where the irish sea was so narrow as to be a wide river. i would think it has been roughyl the same distance since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago.

[Heron]

More like 3500 yrs old I think (they are not completely fossilised and are in fact quite soft so bits can easily be broken off).

According to North (an historical geographer) there was a time when the channel was more like a wide river but too long ago for any literary record to be passed on. I can't remember when this was and don't have Sunken Cities available to refer to. How old, I wonder, could elements of an oral tradition be?

[Adam]

Oct 9, 2008 21:34:48 GMT -1 Heron said:

How old, I wonder, could elements of an oral tradition be?

I think, almost by definition, we can never know, but one can surmise that *if they need to be* they can be very old indeed... I'm talking about oral traditions for example that encode migratory routes for hunter gatherer nomad groups... I recall reading that post-initiatory songs/tales (not the ones that get told at open public gatherings, which are regarded as suitable for children) of the Australian Aboriginals have some very strong taboos against changing them in any way... it would be unsinging the way the world is and certainly in the past could merit death... Bruce Chatwin in Song Lines describes a recent incident where breaking such taboos has aroused murderous emotions in members of the community

I would suspect that when such a taboo was no longer really necessary, it would take a considerable length of time for it to disappear, remaining in tales and legend for many many generations, even if people didn't understand why it was considered so crucial anymore... humans are a conservative bunch :-)