Yr Ods – “Ceridwen”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

I guess I haven’t shared anything not folky in Welsh in a while, so thought I would today. Yr Ods (which simply translates to The Odds in English) are a psych pop band from Cardiff, and I discovered them quite early on on my Welsh-language music journey, thanks to BBC Radio Cymru if I believe correctly. I do have a lot to thank BBC Radio Cymru for, come to think of it. And I’ve liked them right away. I’ve been listening more to them recently though, as this year (and the last quarter of last year) I seem to be going through some sort of psychedelic phase and listen to a lot of more or less weird music with a more or less psychedelic feel to it. For some reason I feel particularly drawn to their 2019 concept album Iaith y Nefoedd (Language of Heaven), created alongside a novella by the same title written by Llwyd Owen and commissioned by the band. Ceridwen is a single from that album and I think my favourite song on it. 

 

The book is a dystopian thriller set in future Wales, in which the country goes bankrupt after Brexit and Welsh speakers are being persecuted. As a result of that, as well as a later apocalypse, the main character in the book becomes the leader of an underground cult that’s built around the Welsh language, kind of twisting the meaning of a popular Welsh saying that Welsh is the language of heaven. The album doesn’t follow the book very closely, but being part of the same project, they’re of course still very much related. I’ve never actually read the book, as I guess I’m still not a fluent enough Welsh speaker, plus generally thrillers and sci fi are totally not my thing, though the whole language as a means of salvation thing sounds very interesting as an idea for a book, and I’m curious who Ceridwen is, and if she has anything to do with the mythical Ceridwen, if only perhaps on a symbolical level or something, because the mythical Ceridwen is one of my favourite characters in any mythology. I think I wrote about that on here before though. So maybe some day I’ll feel brave enough to give this novella a go. The album though, musically, is very much my thing. 

 

Yr Ods is a four-piece band consisting of Griff Lynch, Gruff Pritchard, Osian Howells and Rhys Aneurin. Actually, I only found out today that they’re from Cardiff, which made me feel really bad about myself and my self-proclaimed ability to identify people’s accents, both in Welsh and in English. I may be just a learner who isn’t even British, let alone Welsh, and has never been to Wales, but I could have sworn that Griff Lynch (the group’s frontman, singer and guitarist) has quite a typical northwestern Welsh accent, both in Welsh and in English, from the little bits of English I’ve heard him sing. I couldn’t come to terms with my failure, so I kept frantically digging through Google to find evidence supporting my theory, and – phew, turns out there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, after all! – They did form the band in Cardiff, during college, but Griff actually grew up in Bangor (which, for those unacquainted with Welsh geography, is in the north west of Wales, specifically, it’s the largest city in county Gwynedd! Go Bibiel! I feel so much better now, this made my day, lol. 

 

The song is quite easy vocab-wise and its lyrics are available online, so Bibielz were also able to write a translation, which makes me feel even better, as it’s so rare that I’m successful at translating Welsh songs into English. I understood lots of little bits of this song even before trying to write this translation though, so that was very encouraging. I really do hope I didn’t screw up too much, but, as always, keep in mind that I’m not a native speaker of either language so there might be mistakes. 

 

You and I 

And our feet in soil 

Between longing and imperfect memory 

While you’re searching for the stars, I’ve nested in my place, 

Holding on to white lies for your sake 

Turn on your little light 

Pull the blanket over your head 

You’re never too young and you’re never too old 

TO hide in your reading list 

While you’re searching for the stars, I’ve nested in my place, 

Holding on to white lies for your sake 

Oh Ceridwen, you’re a star 

Go fill up your head, oh Ceridwen 

Don’t worry, in no time, you will have crossed  

The end must be celebrated 

Oh Ceridwen, you’re a star 

Go fill up your head, oh Ceridwen