On this page the following entries were made in the “Gorsedd Arberth” category.
Archive for “Gorsedd Arberth”
LLEU
‘Llech Ronw’ (Gronw’s Stone)
Bryn Saeth, near Afon Cynfael
When you were an eagle
And hung in a tree,
flesh falling to field,
slipping between the worlds
invisibly
came a pig, transforming
flesh back to flesh
* * *
O little pig
so long I have endured pain
I am worn and weary
O little pig
I am neither alive nor dead
Rhiannon’s birds call over the waters
O little pig
the wild one teaches me
like Myrddin I long to be free
O little pig
I am full of fear,
carry my news to Gwydion
* * *
Then you were a man
with a long spear
to pierce stone;
like an eagle’s beak
it tore flesh from bone.
{This conflates verses ascribed to…
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Tŷ Ddewi
Pentre Ifan
Tŷ Ddewi (St Davids), as cathedral cities go, is more like a large village than anything you’d expect of such a place. It sits on a headland at the end of the northern peninsula of St Bride’s Bay (with the village of St Brides at the end of the southern peninsula). So Bride, or Brigid, is equally celebrated in the naming of places in this land- and sea-scape. Co-incidentally, further north up the coast in Ceredigion, there is a village called Llannon, suggesting that it contains a church dedicated to Non (who was David’s mother). But the name of… Read more »
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The Dream of Rhonabwy
Arthur and Owein in Rhonabwy’s Dream
There’s an interesting article by Catherine McKenna in the current issue of Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies. She has in the past written suggestively about Rhiannon and Manawydan, so I read this piece on The Dream of Rhonabwy eagerly. The tale is not one that would normally attract the seeker of remnant myths. Its view backwards to the Arthurian world of Culhwch and Olwen, if to be taken seriously at all, is best represented by the words of Arthur himself who expresses his sadness on learning the nature of the men who keep the Island of Britain…
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Imbolc
Snowdrops break the seal of Spring
As light laps at the gloaming
Ffraid – or Bride – your blessings come
Bright candles bid you welcome.
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Of Saints, Angels and Wolves
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February, month of the quickening,
month of Brigid the Threefold,
muse healer, goddess of fire.
Ruth Bidgood
As Imbolc approaches I’m revisiting a collection of poems by Ruth Bidgood (*) which includes a ‘radio ode’ commissioned by the BBC. I published the ode some time after it was broadcast in a magazine I was editing at the time but it did not appear in book form until much later. The ode is called ‘Hymn to Sant Ffraid’ and is written for three voices. How could the Welsh Ffraid be cognate with the Irish Brigid if the latter was an actual person living in Kildare?…
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Vexilla Regis / Sir Bedivere’s Horse
Vexilla Regis (pencil & watercolour)
by David Jones
While on the subject of Arthurian deposits … One thing leads to another and so here is a delightfully eccentric way of ‘interpreting’ the painting above.The poet Jean Earle wrote this poem in her eighties with all the willed mischievousness of a young tyro.
Sir Bedivere’s Horse
David Jones, dreaming ‘Vexilla Regis’.
Painted the souls of trees
On lumpish hills, such as spiral
My birthplace. Beyond the foremost,
Tallest and roughest Tree,
Run the wild horses.
Painted the souls of trees
On lumpish hills, such as spiral
My birthplace. Beyond the foremost,
Tallest and roughest Tree,
Run the wild horses.
Dreamer myself,
I know one is Sir Bedivere’s horse.
I was once Sir Bedivere’s squire.
How we sagged, after we lost Arthur!
Wandering purposeless –
The forest stiff in a winter
Like…
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The Defence of Guenevere
Guenevere by William Morris
I was browsing through some poetry by William Morris recently. I re-read some of his poems, like ‘The Haystack in the Floods’ (which appears in many anthologies) quite regularly. But it’s a while since I’ve dipped more extensively into the delights of his recreated medieval world. Here’s an extract from ‘The Defence of Guenevere’. Accused by Gawain and others of having an affair with Lancelot, she addresses her accusers in a long speech while awaiting the rescue which finally arrives when Lancelot rides in. It is only a temporary rescue as she has to return and the…
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The Mari Lwyd and New Year
Mari Lwyd , Horse of the Frost, Star-horse and White Horse of the Sea, is carried to us.
[…..]
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
A knock of the sands on the glass of the grave,
A knock on the sands of the shore,
A knock of the horse’s head of the wave,
A beggar’s knock on the door.
A knock of a moth and the pane of light,
In the beat of the blood a knock.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
The sands in the glass, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock, hands.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.…
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Mabinog’s Liturgy
Nativity with Beasts and Shepherds
(Dum Medium Silentium Tenerent Omnia)
drypoint, 1928, on wove paper
drypoint, 1928, on wove paper
by David Jones
*
In the middle silences of this night’s course the blackthorn blows white on Orcop Hill.
They do say that on this night
in the warm byres
shippons, hoggots and out-barns of Britain
in the closes and the pannage-runs and on the sweet lawns of Britain
the breathing animals-all
do kneel.
Some may say as on this night
the narrow grey-rib wolves
from the dark virgin wolds and indigenous thickets of Britain,
though very hungry and already over the fosse, kneel content on the shelving berm.
If these are but grannies’ tales
maybe that on…
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