Hey dear people! 🙂
Today I want to share with you a song from Declan Galbraith’s (currently also known as Child of Mind) third album, You and Me, released in 2007 when he was fifteen. Just like his previous two records, this one also includes a lot of covers of pop and rock classics, and as perhaps some of you may figure out from the title, so is the case with this one. Sister Golden Hair was a 70’s hit written by Gerry Beckley for his band, America.
Hey people! 🙂
Today, I want to share with you a traditional tune from the Conwy Valley, played on the Welsh triple harp by Llio Rhydderch. I know that there is a Machno Valley somewhere in Conwy, and a village called Penmachno and some other similar placenames in that area, so the tune’s name must have to do with one of them or the whole area.
Let’s have a coffee today, shall we? Or whatever else, if you’re unfortunate like me and can’t have coffee, or just don’t like coffee. We have a huge assortment of teas, and cocoa, both real and instant. Or if you’d prefer a cold drink, I can pour you a glass of refreshing kefir, or water, either sparkling or just regular tap water. Oh yeah, and my Mum has made broth. My Mum makes broth almost every day these days, because, well, if you’re a regular on here, you know my Mum is a health and lifestyle geek and right now she’s all about keto, and she says that broth is super healthy for the skin and such because it has collagen, and Sofi and I are supposed to get in more sodium for health reasons so this is a good way. Regardless of how healthy it is, it’s actually yummy, and I always have mine with parsley. Or you can have some noodles with it and get chicken soup. Sofi and I have got a huge box of candy for Christmas from Olek, and I’ll happily share some with y’all so you have some snack to go with your coffee/tea, and if you’d rather have the broth, you can also have some of my Mum’s keto salad with it, it has chicken, mushrooms, cheese and pineapple in it. Well, since it has pineapple I guess it would be more appropriate to call it low-carb, but who cares? Obviously you’re also more than welcome to bring your own drink and/or food, either just for yourself or to share if you want. As always, thanks to Natalie who hosts the Weekend Coffee Share linky. 🙂 So, if everyone has something to drink and/or eat and is sitting comfortably, let’s catch up.
If we were having coffee, I’d ask each of you how you’ve been doing since my last coffee share, and in particular this week…?
If we were having coffee, I would share with you that this has been quite a mentally messy week for me. Well, not just this week really, but the last few weeks, with a few-days-long breaks in between the messy times. Very emotional and moodswingy, low-key paranoid, filled with rumination, cringe fits, self-loathing and other fun things. I call that AVPD flare-ups for short (if you’re new and don’t know, AVPD stands for avoidant personality disorder which is a condition that I have), even though technically personality disorders don’t have flare-ups, but I call it an AVPD flare-up when my symptoms get a lot worse than my baseline. Usually it happens to me after a lot of peopling, but lately it seems like even very small things throw me totally off kilter for days, sometimes I don’t even need any external event really. It’s been very emotionally exhausting and is very difficult to even put into words properly or express in any other way to other people, so the experience feels quite isolating because you can’t really talk to anyone about this no matter how understanding they may be, and on one hand you want to do it and share it with someone, but on the other you absolutely do not. All the more that communication pin general is also more difficult when I feel like that. But the weekend has been a bit better. Or else I probably wouldn’t be writing about this haha. We’ll see how long it lasts.
[For the next paragraph, tw for self-harm, not very graphic but at one point kind of Tmi and possibly a little gross and mentioning methods of self-harm]
******
On a similarly glum note, if we were having coffee, I’d tell you that Sofi has also been struggling lately, and we’ve only learned about it this month… Since a couple of months, Sofi has been telling us that her cousin is going to therapy, and how Sofi would really really really like to go to therapy too. Mum tried asking her why, but Sofi would never give any specific answer, so she just figured that Sofi simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about and doesn’t understand what therapy is all about so thinks that it’s something fun. I agreed, but at the same time it popped into my mind that perhaps this is Sofi’s way of asking for help or something, perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about something to Mum, whom, after all, she sees every single day, so sometimes it’s really awkward to talk to your family about some difficult things. And I suggested that to Mum and told her that perhaps she could get Sofi into some free therapy via the National Health Fund that we have here, at least for starters, and if she doesn’t have a problem, she’ll get bored with it after one or two sessions and the topic will be over, but at least we’ll know that there’s nothing serious going on. Well, but it turned out not to be so easy to get free therapy for a teenager who doesn’t really have any obvious issues and just really wants to go to therapy, plus, despite my having been in therapy for years as a child, my Mum didn’t really know how to best go about it. So it took some time before she found a therapist for Sofi, and in the end she’s paying for it herself. Already during her first session, Sofi’s therapist called Mum, telling her that Sofi has got some uncontrollable crying fit and doesn’t really say much, and that she has admitted to cutting herself, which shocked Mum because Sofi generally used to be a very happy child, and Mum had no idea why she could be doing this. Later at night Mum came into my room and just completely out of the blue asked me if I could tell her why I’ve been self-harming. I didn’t know about Sofi yet, so obviously I immediately got suspicious and defensive, but then she told me that Sofi is doing it too, and she just wants to understand why people do such things, and that she feels that maybe she is to blame. I was just as shocked as Mum was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sofi for the whole night. I didn’t really tell her why *I* have been self-harming (too complicated story, and I didn’t really feel up for that so suddenly) but just generally told her about various reasons why people, and especially kids, may do such things, and that it’s unlikely to have anything to do with her directly. I get why she has such feelings though, after all, it’s two of her three children that do this now, I’d probably also take it personally if I were a mother. The therapist advised for Sofi to be seen by a psychiatrist and continue therapy, but the soonest appointment my Mum could book with any child psychiatrist was in May. Since then, Mum would often talk to me about Sofi’s self-harm, which I wouldn’t have minded if not the fact that she sort of expected me to be like some sort of specialist on the matter, as if I were a therapist or something. Which would make sense if I were completely over it, but unfortunately, I’m probably not. I self-harm a lot less frequently now than I used to, but I still do. In fact, the shitty truth is that, about a week or so before Sofi’s disclosure, I got this paronychia thing (some sort of nail infection that you can get from zealous nail biting or picking, which I already had once a couple years ago) but this time round in my toe rather than a finger, which must have happened when I was picking at my nail at night while ruminating and picked almost my whole nail off. It wasn’t fully intentional and more like absent-minded or compulsive, but also not fully unintentional, but I let my Mum believe that it was just accidental. (It’s almost healed up now, in case anyone is worried or something) So I felt really weird with her asking me stuff like what she should do now. What could I know? 😀 Thankfully, after Sofi has shared some more, looking at it with cooler heads, we think that this could (hopefully) have been a one-off incident for Sofi. It seems that her former toxic friend has played some significant role in all this, probably multiplied by the general suckiness of puberty and the raging teenage hormones. Sofi has been rather grumpy and a little withdrawn from family life for a couple years now (though some degree of grumpiness and sulkiness is just part of her personality and has always been), but as far as I can tell as someone outside of her brain, she doesn’t seem very depressed, luckily. She hangs out with her friends a lot, spends long hours chatting to them and laughing on the phone, and seems to genuinely enjoy all the other things that she did previously and to have normal energy. She doesn’t really seem chronically sad or anything like that. I believe Sofi doesn’t know that I know about her cutting, or even if she does we don’t talk about it, but you regular people on here may know that we have this play with Sofi where we pretend that Misha can connect to either of us’ brain and speak through us, and I like to use that sometimes to get stuff out of Sofi because she is more inclined to talk about things that are difficult for some reason with Misha, rather than directly with me or with Mum, because with Misha it’s more fun and relaxed and Misha never draws any conclusions out loud. So one day, I, as Misha, tried to get an idea of what she generally thinks about life nowadays, is it good, is it bad, whatever, and that didn’t sound too depressing either, though of course I do realise that she could be hiding what she was actually thinking, but it doesn’t look like it’s the case, and Sofi was never good at hiding that sort of things as an extrovert. . I also had a gentle feel of her wrists when she was sleeping in my room one night and while they were pretty much covered in cuts which were quite heartbreaking to see on someone like Sofi, they seemed to be rather superficial at first glance. I think it’s also a really positive sign that Sofi was so open about it with the therapist and told her about it right during the first session. I feel extremely sad for Sofi and I wish I could help her in some meaningful way, but now that both Mum and I have cooled off a bit after the initial news, we are very hopeful that with further therapy, this won’t repeat again. Honestly though, I feel like chopping her “friend” up into pieces and grilling and sacrificing to Misha. Oh wait, that’s probably a really bad idea, he could get intoxicated too!
[End of the potentially triggering bit]
*****
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that, after barely over three months of usage, my Mum’s Apple Watch died! :O One day she went swimming in a swimming pool with it, which I personally thought was a risky business to begin with – I’m just generally ultra careful and would feel really weird putting any electronic device into water – but Mum said she had previously swum in a lake with it, and anyway Apple says you can swim with an Apple Watch, so why not. Her Apple Watch worked just fine when she went out of the pool, but by the time she got home, it was practically dead. She tried rinsing it, thinking some chlorine could have gotten into it, and then kept it in rice in case there was some water left in it, despite she obviously had the water lock on while swimming, but all those things didn’t help much. She managed to resurrect it for brief moments several times, but it was REALLY sluggish and its battery died within minutes of powering on when it was originally fully charged, and the Digital Crown apparently didn’t work properly as well. Mum was really pissed. Apple Watch is a luxury to begin with, hardly anyone who has it seriously needs it for anything, it’s just a whim, and same is for my Mum. So it’s all the more frustrating when such an unnecessary yet expensive whim object breaks after just a little bit of use, especially when Apple says that it’s okay to swim with it. So, as I needed to go to iSpot (Apple’s authorised service and reseller here in Poland) to get a new battery for my iPhone, we brought Mum’s poor, sick Apple Watch as well. My Mum was even more pissed when she learned out that Apple Watches are not fixable and that the warranty doesn’t cover water damage. The woman who was helping us with our devices was so kind that she didn’t write that Mum’s Apple Watch was actually swimming prior to its death when preparing it to be sent for servicing, so we had a very slight glimmer of hope that perhaps they won’t figure out that it had anything to do with water and will give her a new Apple Watch. Not that Mum needed one, or even seriously wanted at this point, but it would be fair. The whole week after that, my Mum was telling everyone who wanted to listen that Apple just sells lies or something like that. She got even more pissed when a couple people with Android watches were really surprised that this happened to her and told her that they can swim with theirs no problem. She thought an Apple Watch would be better than Android since she has an iPhone now and likes it, and if it’s so much more expensive than, say, a Garmin, it should be for a reason. But, well, surprise of surprises, a few days ago, Mum got a text saying that a brand new Apple Watch was waiting for her in iSpot. Some people are lucky, haha. I set it up for her all over again and now she’s happy and no longer curses Apple.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that birthday season is about to start in our family. Ughhhh! 😩 Tomorrow is Misha’s seventh birthday (so he’s going to be 44 in human years, HOW THE FLIP?!) Then on Wednesday it’s Bibiel’s birthday, which I should probably be happy about or something but I’m not sure what’s so cool about getting older, and I’m not really looking forward to peopling, which will probably be unavoidable because everyone will want to make me happy lol. And besides, I still haven’t figured out why it’s such an unbreakable tradition, but, oddly enough, my birthday usually messes up with my brain. Either I get period PRECISELY on that day and have disgusting PMS, or I get really overwhelmed with peopling and all the attention, or someone vomits and my emetophobia wakes up, or something awful happens, etc. etc. Then next week after that it’s my Dad’s name day, and he didn’t have any celebration for his birthday last year, so he’ll probably have a proper name day this year. And finally two weeks after Dad, Mum and Olek have their birthdays on the exact same day. This is going to be already during Lent, so there won’t be any major celebrations for sure, but the thing is, it’s my Mum’s 50th birthday. She always used to say that she’s not going to do a huge 50th birthday celebration like a lot of people in our family do, because it’s cringey and childish, but then at some point she started saying that she probably should, and more recently that maybe she’d even like, and started seriously looking into where she could organise it and talking a lot about it, how she’d like it to be a dancing party etc. except she won’t be doing it now, but on her name day in July. I’ll have to think about some super fancy cool and fun present for her in exchange for not having to be there. 😀
Oh, and lastly, if we were having coffee, I’d share about something that happened a little earlier than last week, but I thought it would be good to update you all on that. Well, so the big news is that I was fired from job! For the uninitiated, I used to work at my Dad’s, who works as a lorry/truck driver for a larger company and delivers fuel, but that larger company requires him to formally have his own business because it’s more lucrative for them this way. When I was eighteen, his accountant advised him to take advantage of it and hire me, because, since I am disabled, it wouldn’t cost him anything. Here in Poland it works (or rather used to work) so that when you employ a disabled person, the State Fund for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled pays you back the entire salary of such an employee and returns the cost of any adaptive equipment or other such things that make employing such person possible. So he wouldn’t suffer anything, and I would have some additional money alongside my regular disability benefits. I worked as an office worker, so basically helped him out with all the tech stuff that he needed to do as part of his job, which wasn’t much. Writing emails to his clients, printing stuff, tracking ships that he was supposed to tank etc. Except this year things have changed a bit and while my salary was still paid back to him, he also had to pay significant insurance premiums for me, so it didn’t really pay off. So he officially fired me earlier this month. Most people (especially such as myself who aren’t really employable) would probably be really upset over this, but I knew that this was only going to be temporary, though honestly I did hope that it would last for a bit longer than it did. Still, I’m grateful for it anyways, as even working for those seven years that I did has helped me to save a fair bit, so that now that I don’t work, my financial situation will probably still be stable for a while.
Okay, I think that’s all from me. What would you tell me if we were having coffee? 🙂
Have you ever had a dream in which you started to cry, only to wake up crying in real life?
My answer:
Actually, oddly enough, this happens to me quite regularly. I generally have a lot of really emotional and intense dreams, which I wouldn’t call nightmares (although I do get a lot of nightmares too), but they’re just really emotional and the sheer intensity of them sometimes makes me wonder whether it isn’t my brain’s weird way at trying to deal with stuff that I have bottled up, some form of autotherapy or something, though I have no idea where it’s leading or what good it’s doing in the end because it keeps happening over and over again so it must be a rather fruitless effort. They usually have something to do with things I find difficult and emotional at the time except it’s all glaringly exaggerated, or other times it’s something from the past, or sometimes my brain just makes stuff up. Anyways, most often when I have those dreams, I only have a vague recollection of the actual plot line of the dream, just more or less what it was about but no details, yet on the other hand I remember all the emotions from it very vividly, and often when I still have one foot in the dream world and the other in the waking world, I am actually crying and only realise that when I wake up for good and have no idea what I’m even crying about in the first place. 😀 It’s really weird and quite confusing, but yeah, I think that’s a side effect of being overly emotionally inhibited in the waking world. On the other hand, there have been times when I’ve woken up laughing, because I’ve had such hilarious dreams. That’s probably even more weird, but it’s fun and I love it when it happens.
You? 🙂
Hey people! 🙂
Today I have a traditional Welsh polka tune for you, played by Delyth Jenkins. It comes from the collaborative album that she recorded together with poet Emily Hinshelwood, from which I’ve already shared a couple of other pieces in the past.
Hiya people! 🙂
Today, I’d like to share with you another song from the Welsh pop rock group Y Bandana, from their album Fel Tôn Gron, the last one they released before disbanding. This is one of their more popular songs in Wales as far as I’m aware. Unfortunately I was not able to find written lyrics for this one anywhere online, and while I think I understand a fair bit from it, it’s still definitely not everything, so I didn’t really have the courage to attempt doing a translation by ear for the purpose of this post. But basically, it is about girls, who are called Cadi and Mabli, and the lyrical subject of this song finds very attractive, and their hair is the colour of a dandelion.
We haven’t had a question for a couple of weeks again, so let’s have one today. A chill one.
How do you like to relax at the end of a stressful day?
My answer:
With Misha. As I often say, Misha is my charger. I can recharge in other ways too, but with Misha it goes faster. I also like to listen to some music, depending on my mood. Often when I’m stressed I find it quite difficult to eat, so when the stress subsides I’m often ravenously hungry, so having something yummy to eat also helps me relax. And sleep, of course. Sleep helps a lot.
You? 🙂
Hey guys! 🙂
For today I chose a hornpipe – a type of Welsh traditional dance – played by the great Nansi Richards on the Welsh triple harp.
Hey dear people! 🙂
Today I have a funny little Scandinavian lullaby for you. I only know Norwegian versions, but apparently it’s also known in Sweden. The first version I want to share with you comes from Hirundo Maris, the early music and folk group founded by Arianna Savall and Petter Udland Johansen. I’ve already featured two of their songs, including Tarantela from the same album. THe other version is by one of my favourite Norwegian folk singers, Helene Bøksle, who hails from Mandal in the south of the country. I have also featured some of her other songs before. Here’s Bibiel’s translation of this song:
When troll mother has put to bed her eleven little trolls
And wrapped them up tightly in her tail
Then she sings for her eleven little trolls
The most beautiful words she knows
Hirundo Maris:
Helene Bøksle:
Hey people! 🙂
Today I really want to share with you an original song by Jack Vreeswijk, from his album Underbart (Wonderful). It has a bit of an emo vibe, which you can find out for yourselves, as Bibielz were able to translate it. Bibielz couldn’t, however, find the complete lyrics anywhere, so had to just do it by ear. As you might or might not recall, it wasn’t the first time I’ve translated Jack by ear, and it wasn’t particularly difficult this time either. . The only fragment I found a little unclear was the line that I translated as “you are marked by grief”, although I’m not sure that’s what he’s actually singing, because what I hear is actually “You are marked over grief”, which, as far as I know, doesn’t really sound natural in Swedish and I haven’t found any other examples of the word “over” being used in this way in Swedish, so either I’m completely misunderstanding it, or just this one word, or it’s some phrase or construction I’m unfamiliar with. I’m sharing Jack’s live performance of this song rather than the album version.
Nobody can handle you
Nobody wants to understand
That your grief is endless
Though life is steaming ahead
Who said that she was yours?
Not her and not you
Who believes in eternal love?
Who believes in it now?
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
Let them see you like this
Who cares about it?
In three hundred years
No one will know anymore
Let them babble behind your back
That you are marked [by?] grief
The grief is embracing you
The grief is your last castle
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
She will never come home again
Hey people! 🙂
We’ve had a lot of Welsh music on here. But as much as in the beginnings of this blog it was mostly pop/rock, lately there’s been a lot more of Welsh folk on here, which happens to reflect a slight shift in my own listening habits where Welsh music specifically is concerned, so today I thought it would be a good idea to go back to pop for a bit. The Lovely Wars is a five-piece band from Cardiff, formed by Ani Saunders and her former school friends – Alice and Ceri. – The other two members – Bill and Dan – joined a little later. The band’s name was inspired by a 1965 satirical musical by Joan Littlewood called Oh, It’s a Lovely War. It tackled serious, difficult issues in a witty and humourous way, and Ani says she wanted to do the same with her band. Together with her sister Gwenno (whose music I love and shared two songs from her album Tir Ha Mor (Land and Sea) in the VERY early days of this blog) Ani was also a member of an English indie pop girl group called the Pipettes. At the moment she’s doing quite well on the Welsh-language music scene as a solo artist under the name Ani Glass. Her father is the Cornish poet and linguist Tim Saunders, who writes in several Celtic languages but mostly Cornish, and he is also a fluent Cornish speaker, so both Ani and Gwenno speak Cornish in addition to Welsh and English. Ani is actually an illustrator by trade and has worked on album artwork for various musicians.
Hey people! 🙂
Today, I’d like to share with you another traditional tune from the Welsh harpist Nansi Richards. This song was composed by a Welsh harper from Carmarthen called Thomas Evans, who died in 1819. He fell in love with a maid who lived in Sker, a farm house in Glamorgan which took its name from a headland nearby called Sker Point. And this song is about her.
Hey people! 🙂
Today I thought I’d share with you this soothing piece by Bendith. For anyone unfamiliar with Bendith, it was a collaborative project between the alt-folk sibling trio Plu (who are very frequently featured on here since one of its members, Gwilym Bowen Rhys, is one of my faza people) and Carwyn Ellis from the indie band Colorama. I was even able to translate this song for you guys, though it probably does have some mistakes or things that perhaps could have been phrased more aptly or something. There are some phrases in it that were completely new to me, like “sana i’n”, which is a colloquial phrase used in southwest Wales and means “I don’t”, but I was totally unfamiliar with it and it took me quite a while to figure out what it actually was.
And if something worries me
She is the one who comes to my mind
Nothing can stop her
From coming to my side
She is my angel
If it all got too much for me
So she waits, she comes straight away
Just say the word and that’s all
She’ll do it, by my side
She is my angel
Beside me, that’s where she will be
Any time of the day or night
If anything comes to bother me
She is by my side
She is my angel
And if I’ll need a hand to help me
I don’t worry, she’s still here
To share the burdens between us
Here by my side
She is my angel
Hi guys! 🙂
Today I have another instrumental piece for you, but it’s quite different than yesterday’s. This one is performed by an English group called Penguin Cafe, founded by the composer Arthur Jeffes as a way to continue his father – Simon Jeffes’ – legacy and the music of his band Penguin Cafe Orchestra. However, Penguin Cafe is its own entity with a different line-up and they also play music composed by Arthur Jeffes himself (like this one) as well as other composers, but their primary focus is on the work of PCO. Their music can be described as a blend of chamber jazz, folk and classical genres.
Hey dear people! 🙂
Today I’d like to share with you yet another piece from the great Welsh harpist from Anglesey, Llio Rhydderch, who plays the Welsh triple harp. Her music has been featured on here quite a few times, and this particular tune comes from her album titled Sir Fôn Bach (Little Anglesey). This is a traditional Welsh farewell tune, but sadly I don’t really know anything beyond that about it. Still, I think it is beautiful.
Hey people! 🙂
Today I’d like to share with you a traditional Welsh song performed by Welsh harpist and singer Gwenan Gibbard. It comes from her album Sidan Glas (Blue Silk). I don’t understand the entire lyrics, but from what I do gather it is about someone who was travelling (sailing, I’m pretty sure) through the world and had to say goodbye to his native country – Wales – and a lot of places in North Wales are mentioned by name that have been dear to the lyrical subject as well as things he enjoyed doing there.
Hey people! 🙂
Today I have a traditional English murder ballad for you. I am familiar with many different versions of it, but this one is the first that I have ever heard. Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy are mother and daughter from Yorkshire who are both very prominent English folk singers. This song comes from their first collaborative album called Gift.
Norma started her career in a group called The Watersons that she formed together with her siblings. Later, she married folk singer and guitarist Martin Carthy who also became part of the band’s line-up. Over time, the Waterson-Carthy family have become such influential musicians that they earned themselves the title of the English folk dynasty, with Norma (who passed away last year) considered its matriarch. Their daughter Eliza is also a great singer and a very skilled fiddle player.
I was introduced to the music of both women through this collaborative album, and I think this is my favourite track from it. Like this song alone, the whole album is also rather dark and sombre overall and the topic of death is quite prevalent throughout it. This ballad is also better known as the Cruel Brother.
Hi guys! 🙂
Today, I’d like to share with you a tune from a group about whom I was sure that I must have shared something from them in the past already, because I like them and have been familiar with their music since very early on in my English folk music exploration journey, but it looks like I’ve never talked about them on here so I figured I’d do so today. Lady Maisery are a vocal harmony trio from the north of England, consisting of Hannah James (who is also a clog dancer and plays piano accordion, and used to be part of another group called Kerfuffle), Hazel Askew (who plays melodeon, concertina, harp and bells, she also performs with various early music groups playing on medieval harp) and Rowan Rheingans (who plays fiddle, banjo and bansitar, she is also a part of The Rheingans Sisters). They sing both traditional as well as contemporary folk music, including their original songs. The name of the group comes from a ballad titled Lady Maisry.
This particular song comes from an album that they have recorded in collaboration with the English folk duo Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith, titled Awake Arise: A Winter Album. It is originally an American Christian hymn which has over time also been embraced as a folk song. It is a comforting tune about death, reminding Christians that it is not something to only weep about, but that we should rejoice together with those we knew who have passed, because they are now in heaven. The song was collected from Almeda Riddle from Arkansas.
Hey dear people! 🙂
Today I’d like to share with you this lovely song by the Welsh alt-folk trio Plu, whose music is fairly frequently featured on here. It comes from their album Tir a Golau (Lad and Lights). Quite surprisingly for myself, I was even able to translate it. You guys know that I’m still pretty bad at translating Welsh music solely by ear, and when you’re into some small languages, it’s not always as comfy as googling “Artist Song lyrics” and finding said lyrics right away, because often it might require a bit more perseverance to find what you’re looking for at the bottom of the Internet, or it might not be available online at all. Plu’s lyrics usually don’t seem to be, but what I always try to do in such cases is fish out a part of lyrics that I can completely understand and that at the same time is not too generic and distinct enough that it’s not likely to pop up in too many other contexts except what I’m looking for, and then I google it in quotes. And this time round, I happened to be lucky, because I found an S4C (Welsh-language television channel) transscript of a programme where Plu were singing this song. And the lyrics are pretty easy linguistically so I was able to translate it with no particular issues, though again, it’s not like I’m an experienced Welsh-English translator or a native speaker of either of these languages so it’s definitely possible that it has some mistakes or that it just could be better, but as always it’s just to give you more or less of an idea of what it is about. I am sharing with you a live version of this song which they sang at a Celtic music festival called Cwlwm Celtaidd. They precede the song with two verses of a traditional Welsh lullaby called Mil Harddach (A Thousand Times More Beautiful), for which the below translation comes from Mama Lisa’s website.
You’re a thousand times more beautiful than the white rose Or the red rose on the hillside, Or the proud swan swimming in the lake, My little baby. A thousand times better than all the gold in the world Is to see your smiles in your crib, You are my fortune and my blessing, My little baby.
And here’s Bibielz translation of Gollwng Gafael.
You love the land more than the earth
And the wave more than the water
You love “was” more than “will”
And what is the world without its story?
Without sky, there are no horizons
Without tomorrow, there is no yesterday
Open your eyes
To experience letting go
For you, the inspiration is in a song
And the bleak books in front of you
The inspiration is everyday
Uncovering the truth
By pulling off every layer
Without sky, there are no horizons
Without tomorrow, there is no yesterday
Open your eyes
To experience letting go
You love the land more than the earth
More than the truth
Hey people! 🙂
Today, I’d like to share a really beautiful Welsh tune with you that I have first heard on Radio Cymru some two years ago and it resonated with me right away. The tune is from Cynefin, a project by Owen Shiers from the Clettwr Valley, which focuses on preserving the traditional songs and heritage of Ceredigion in the west of Wales, many of which had never been recorded before or have become nearly lost over time. One could have thought that nowadays, when even musicians from non-Anglophone countries whose official languages are doing very well and are not as threatened by English as Welsh is; oftentimes sing their music in English and make it sound very universal and global, it’s enough of an obscure niche when you focus on folk music of Wales in general, let alone just a small piece of Wales. But I really like it and am happy about it that there are people like Owen Shiers who are strongly connected to and proud of not only just their country, but also their local area and its heritage.
If you look up “cynefin” inn a dictionary or a translator or something like that, it is most commonly translated as “habitat”. But in fact, this is one of those deep, untranslatable (at least to English) words, with a meaning that is oddly specific, yet also quite broad at the same time. Much like hiraeth about which I’ve already written on here several times, and which, by the way, also happens to occupy the central place in this song I’m sharing with you all today. Cynefin has originated as a farming term for paths and trails frequently used by animals, but over time it’s meaning has become broader and a bit more abstract and deeper, as it is used to mean a place that one is very familiar with and rooted in, and feels a sense of belonging to it. I believe it is also used to describe the relationship one has with such a place.
The tune I am sharing with you today is a so-called llatai (love messenger) song. Usually, in this type of songs, or poems, the lyrical subject directly addresses the love messenger, who is usually some animal or creature, often a bird, and sends it to their beloved with a message, because they’re far apart from each other. One example of such tune could be “Ei Di’r Deryn Du?” (Will You Go, Blackbird?) which I shared not long ago. However, this particular llatai song is quite different, because there is no human lover. Instead, the young boy who is the lyrical subject here is feeling a longing (hiraeth) for his home country – Wales – while he is away in England. His longing is emphasised by the singing of a blackbird, which reminds him all the more of the home he left behind. I really like the idea of writing/singing a love song about your home country kind of as if it was a person.
According to Cynefin’s Bandcamp page, this song was collected from Mrs. J Emlyn Jones near Llandysul and recorded in the Cymdeithas Alawon Gwerin Cymru (Welsh Folk Song Society) magazine. However because some words were changed by the collector, the words in Cynefin’s song were written by Llew Tegid. The translation below also comes from Cynefin’s Bandcamp.
Oh, yellow beaked black bird,
Enchant the heart with your early song.
Sweet notes of a merry heart
Wakes the choir of little birds.
Come and listen to the complaint of a boy
Who is in heartache night and day:
A cruel longing pursues him,
Longing breaks his sad heart.
Leaving the elegant vales of Wales,
Leaving the enchantment of the land of song,
O so difficult is separating
A pure Welshman from fair Wales.
Your notes evoke the hearts longing
As you tarry in the Englishman’s land,
In memories of Coed-fron
Where once your voice was so dear.
My Inner MishMash 