Glosses

I am in the library now, and I’ll be staying here till morn. There is no point in going home-only 6 hours before the next class, and I have seven more pages to the Macedonian paper (well, maybe five). It is advancing very well despite the hour and the yawns. I have been finding weird examples in the text - and that is always good

When I was in London about 1.5 years ago, I was in this small bookstore on Charing Cross Road- cannot quite recall the name, I must have sampled tens of bookstores there - stretching my hand randomly, I pulled a small and well-worn book out of a lower shelf . It was entitled “Useful and Instructive Poetry”, by Lewis Carroll. Yes, Lewis Carroll-but if you go looking in the full collections of his works, you won’t find this bunch of nonsense poems which he wrote as a child - it seems to be forgotten. In my best tradition I purchased it and gave it as a gift to my friend Efrat (the tradition is to give away the book I want very badly to a friend who also wants it). But Efrat made a photocopy of the volume for me, and now I have the poems, if not the book.

Brother and Sister

“Sister, sister, go to bed,
Go and rest your weary head”,
thus the prudent brother said.

“Do you want a battered hide
Or scratches to your face applied?”
Thus the sister calm replied.

“Sister! do not rouse my wrath,
I’d make you ino mutton broth
as easily as kill a moth.”

The sister raised her beaming eye,
And looked on him indignantly,
And sternly answered: “Only try!”

Off to the cook he quickly ran,
“Dear cook, pray lend a frying pan
to me, as quickly as you can”.

“And wherefore should I give it you?”
“The reason, cook, is plain to view,
I wish to make an Irish stew”.

“What meat is in that stew to go?”
“my sister’ll be the contents.” “Oh!”
“Will you lend the pan, cook?” “NO!”

Moral: Never stew your sister.

Samuel Johnsson, Dictionary of the English Language, 1765. : from Introduction

“It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would be without applause, and diligence without reward.

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear the obstacles from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very few.”

Sick today. Stumbled here upon a quotation from Thomas Moore’s “The Minstrel Boy”.

The Minstrel-Boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you will find him
His father’s sword he hath girded on
And his wild harp slung behind him.
“Land of Song!” said the warrior-bard
“Though all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, they rights shall guard
One faithful harp shall praise thee!

The phrase “warrior bard” and the boy’s subsequent death made me reflect on the mother tongue of “bard” - Welsh, and the story of Aneirin, a “warrior bard” from late 6th or early 7th century.

I remember, as a little girl, reading about Aneirin in some adapted Russian edition of Celtic stories. It said that bards were forbidden to carry weapons or fight, and the slaying of a bard was considered a great atrocity. Only one bard, Aneirin, took up the sword during the battle of Gododdin; by breaking the taboo on fighting he brought this doom upon himself and was later slain by an enemy sword.

Of course, this is just the type of skewed report one finds in “adaptation” books. It was druids who were forbidden to carry weapons or fight; whether this taboo involved bards as well is unclear. It is known that bards usually accompanied the troops into battle, later to describe the fighting in song:

Gwyr a aeth Ododdin, chwerthin wanar,
Disgyniaid ym myddin, trin ddiachar,
Wy lleddynt a llafnawr heb fawr drydar.
Colofn glyw, Rheithfyw rhoddi arwar.
Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth, oedd ffraeth eu llu,
Glasfedd eu hancwyn a gwenwyn fu,
Trychant trwy beirant yn catau,
A gwedi elwch tawelwch fu.
Cyd elwynt lannau i benydu,
Dadl ddiau angau i eu treiddu.

“Warriors went to Gododdin, with eager laughter,/ Attackers in a host, savage in battle,/ They slew with blades without much noise./ Rheithfyw, pillar of battle, delighted in giving./ Warriors went to Catraeth, their host was swift,/ Fresh mead was their feast and it was bitter,/ Three hundred fighting under command/ And after the cry of jubilation there was silence./Though they went to churches to do penance,/ The certain meeting with death came to them. ”

(The beginning of the text and translation can be found here. It is apparently adopted from AOH Jamann’s Y Gododdin. Gomer Press, 1990)

Further, the death of Aneirin by sword is, of course, a misconception. In triads we hear about “Teir Anvat Gytlavan Enys Prydein” (the three unfortunate asassinations of the Isle of Britain):

Heidyn mab Enygan a ladavd Aneiryn Gwavtryd Mech deyrn Beird
“Heidyn son of Enygan killed Aneirin of the Flowing Verse, prince of bards” (Bromwich, p.70 (33))

but another triad speaks about Aneirin’s death in “Teir Anvat Vwyallaut” (three unfortunate hatchet-blows); a different manuscript elaborates the story of “Three Asassinations” by adding that Aneirin was hit on the head by a hatchet.

Which sounds, for the modern reader, certainly less “poetic” than death by sword. *exasperated*