Plu – “Deio’r Glyn” & Gwyneth Glyn – “Pa Bryd y Deui Eto?” (When Will Thou Come Again?)

Hiya people! 🙂 

 

Today, I’d like to share with you another song by Plu – the Welsh alt-folk sibling trio – specifically from the album they released last year, which is Tri. While most of the songs on it, as is generally the case with Plu, are their original, there are a few exceptions, and Deio’r Glyn is one of the two traditional songs on this album. It is a love song, I guess more widely known under the title “Pa Bryd y Deui Eto?”, after its first line. 

 

I first heard a version by 9Bach, a Welsh folk group whom I discovered relatively early on in my journey with Welsh-language music, and their recording is amazing too, so if you haven’t heard it before and like the song, I highly recommend it, I might also share it on here as well at some point, I just thought it could be quite overwhelming if I posted three different versions of the same song in one post (though it’s not like it hadn’t happened before 😀 ).

I think Plu’s version is totally enthralling. It has quite a peculiar feel to me – dark and slightly sinister, while warm and soothing at the same time. – In a way, their rendition gave me a completely different perspective on this song. I don’t know about other people, but, as someone who generally over-analyses everything, when I listen to a song, I often catch myself almost subconsciously imagining the whole story behind it. And ever since I got to know what this song is about, when listening to either 9Bach’s or Gwyneth Glyn’s rendition, I just assumed without much thinking that this Deio’r Glyn guy must be some sort of traveller, maybe emigrated temporarily, or maybe he’s a sailor. But when I heard Plu’s version, a thought just popped into my brain that perhaps there’s something more going on than meets the eye. Perhaps he was killed, for whatever reason, and she’s just waiting ‘cause she doesn’t have much, if any, hope left, just is unable to do much of anything else out of despair than continue to almost catatonically keep watch by the window. Or maybe he cheated on her. Or went to the woods, in search of, idk, kindling, or mushrooms, or whatever and hasn’t come back and she doesn’t know what could have happened. 

 

Yet, as I said, simultaneously, I perceive Plu’s version to be very warm and soothing, partly because usually Plu’s music has that quality to me, but also because I feel that, unlike Lisa Jên from 9Bach or Gwyneth Glyn, who seem to put themselves directly in Gwenno’s – the lyrical subject of this song – shoes, Marged and Gwilym seem to sing it from more of an outside observer’s perspective. One who is empathetic, but naturally a bit distant, because they’re not her. Like third-person narration or something. I wonder if it’s just me or if any of you feel similarly. 

 

And I love Gwyneth Glyn’s rendition because she did it a capella, and that sort of automatically makes it feel more expressive. In the beginning of my Welsh-language music journey, I wasn’t so much into Gwyneth’s music for some reason that I don’t even understand now myself really, but over the years, it’s really grown on me and lately I listen to her quite a lot and appreciate her versatility greatly. But I’m also sharing it for a more practical reason – the video of it that I’m including with the post has an English translation of the lyrics (as well as the original lyrics) in the description, so I don’t have to do a translation for you guys myself. 😀 And by the way, for any Welsh learners or linguistic freaks or whoever else interested who might be reading, it’s this song that made me realise that people used to use mutations even with personal names (like Gwenno=dy Wenno here). Or maybe it’s still a thing in Welsh and I’m just clueless… 😀 For those who don’t know and are curious, mutations in Celtic languages is, very basically, a grammar thing where some letters in words, usually the first letter at the beginning of a word at least in Welsh, changes depending on the grammatical context – for example what word is in front of it. – 

 

Plu: 

 

 

Gwyneth Glyn: