Tag: Gwilym Bowen Rhys

Y Bandana – “Dwi’m yn Fabi Ddim Mwy” (I’m Not a Baby Anymore).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Today I’d like to share with you a song by Y Bandana from their self-titled debut album. I’ve been able to write a translation for you and, surprisingly for me, it wasn’t  all that difficult. Although perhaps it shouldn’t feel so surprising as I already understood most of it from listening and there were only two phrases that were  new to me (for any fellow Welsh learners out there who might be curious, it was a novelty for me that “dim llawn llathan” (literally not a full yard) means that someone is not  all there/crazy, and also that spanking is “chwip din”). Still, it’s entirely possible that there are some errors, so if you speak Welsh and see something odd, please do enlighten me or something. 

   If you’re not familiar with Y Bandana, they were a Welsh-language pop rock group made up of two brothers, Siôn and Tomos Owens, their cousin Gwilym Bowen Rhys and his friend Robin Jones. They were very successful on the Welsh-language music scene. This song is quite funny in the way that Y Bandana’s songs often are, but I think it’s also just a tad bit disturbing. Unless it’s just me who overanalyses things as is my habit or I’ve misunderstood/mistranslated something here. 😀 But it sounds like the lyrical subject is being quite badly bullied by  a despotic older sibling, rather than – as I  thought before attempting this translation, just having heard this song many times over the years – slightly smothered by an overprotective parent. Not fun. Makes me feel relieved that I don’t have older siblings and didn’t have to go through something like this as a teenager. It’s natural for parents to be protective, sometimes overprotective, of their offspring, but when a year older sibling treats you like a baby, that’s kind of humiliating. 

      Every time I go to the club I get kicked out 

Although there are some who are older than me that are not quite all there  

Don’t you dare say that I’m not responsible enough 

‘Cause you’re only a year older 

I’ve had enough 

No, no, no, I’m not a baby anymore 

Wa, wa, wa, not a baby anymore 

No, no, no, I’m not a baby anymore 

Wa, wa, wa, not a baby 

You don’t have to hold my hand for me to be able to cross the street 

And just because you’re older than me I don’t get to say anything 

I don’t have to get a spanking if I break the rules 

Well, oops, I’ve broken one and it won’t be for the last time 

No, no, no, I’m not a baby anymore 

Wa, wa, wa, not a baby anymore 

No, no, no, I’m not a baby anymore 

Wa, wa, wa, not a baby 

No, no, no, I’m not a baby anymore 

Wa, wa, wa, not a baby anymore 

No, no, no, I’m not a baby anymore 

Wa, wa, wa, not a baby 

Song of the day (7th February) – Plu – “Tyrd yn ôl” (Come Back).

   Hi people! 🙂 

   For our overdue song of the day for Tuesday, I chose a song by the Welsh alt-folk trio Plu, who have been featured on this blog many times before. This particular song is from their 2013 self-titled album. 

Y Bandana – “Dant y Llew” (Dandelion).

   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. 

   Y Bandana – “Dant y Llew”

Bendith – “ANgel”.

   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 

Plu – “Gollwng Gafael” (Letting Go).

   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 

Y Bandana – “Heno yn yr Anglesey” (Tonight in the Anglesey).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   For the first song of the day this year, I thought I would share with you a song from Y Bandana, a Welsh-language pop-rock group that consisted of Gwilym Bowen Rhys (one of my faza peeps, if you’re still not aware of that for some reason 😀 ), his cousins Siôn and Tomos Owens, and his school friend Robin Llwyd Jones. They were very successful on the Welsh-language music scene and I’ve shared a few songs by them already, and they’re well-known for writing a bit cheeky lyrics, since they were teens when starting out. The group has disbanded in 2016 as  the members wanted to try doing some different things, Gwilym is now as successful (or even more so, perhaps), and I believe Robin is a producer for the Welsh-language record label Sain. 

   Heno yn yr Anglesey” is arguably their most popular and well-known song, next to “Can y Tan”. 

   I did a translation of it, and I’d like to ramble a bit about the process, because, well, I’m still very unexperienced when it comes to translating Welsh stuff, and find it a lot more challenging than translating from Swedish, I think not just because my Welsh skills are worse than my Swedish skills, but also due to other, more practical reasons. For example,  I currently don’t have a Welsh speech synthesiser so read Welsh-language stuff either with a Polish or an English one, which makes the whole process of reading anything in Welsh a lot slower. And finding information about any sort of Welsh words, structures, not to mention idioms is more difficult than in Swedish because it is a so much smaller language. There are more Swedish resources, whether ones for learners or more generally about Swedish language, and there’s even simply more Swedish in Google, so you can often just Google some weird thing you’re not understanding to find out if it occurs anywhere else and try to figure out if it’s a common thing, if it’s an idiom or whatever, while when you do that in Welsh you’re more likely not to get a lot of results even if a specific phrase is in wide-ish use. So I’m absolutely sure that this translation contains some mistakes, and I want to tell you which bits I think may be wrong, so that you know that Bibielz may not necessarily be right, and in case some Welsh or Welsh-speaking peep comes around here some day, perhaps they’ll be willing to enlighten me or something. And maybe it’ll be interesting for some language geeks. 

   I actually found one translation of it that already exists that was decent, but it still seems to have some odd bits so I wanted to try and write my own that would be a bit better. But I’ll let you decide which one actually is better, in any case at least now there is more than one translation out there in the web so there’s choice. 😀 I still used that translation above as a bit of a crutch to help me out. My other crutches were the Welsh-English dictionary that I use on my Mac, as it’s the fastest for me to use of all dictionaries that I know of, Google Translate, various online resources, and, when other things failed to support my faltering brain adequately, I used my most recently discovered language toy, ChatGPT, because yes, ChatGPT does understand Welsh, even though it has random times where it is adamant that it doesn’t, or does understand what you write to it in Welsh but persistently responds in English (kinda like Swedes when you try to talk to them in Swedish but they realise you’re not a Swede 😀 ), and of course it’s very fallible, a lot more so than in English. ChatGPT likes to make stuff up so you have to be very very careful when asking it anything, but really, tools like Google Translate can also be oddly deceptive and random with Welsh translations, sometimes I truly have no idea where they get their ideas from. 

   So, the first line that I’m not sure whether it’s right is the second one which in the original contains the word “tennar”. The translation that I linked above translates it to “tenner” which makes sense, because “e” often changes to “a” in North Welsh, and “tennar” could be a sort of Cymricisation (Welshification, if you like 😀 ) of “tenner”. But I’m not even sure what “breaking into the tenner” could mean (perhaps because I’m not a native English-speaker or something), and I couldn’t find any evidence of “tenner” actually being used like that. So not sure it’s correct. 

   In the second verse there’s a line that is oddly translated as “You’re never with me when I want” which I have no idea why it is the way it is because it doesn’t make much sense compared with the original. I translated it as: “You tell me that I don’t get” which imho is more accurate but perhaps still not perfect. 

   Then there’s a line where they are holding hands “hyd law y byd”, which is translated to “above the crowd” in the first translation. I had no idea what “hyd law y byd” could mean, but I didn’t believe it could mean that, and Google wasn’t a whole lot of help either. ChatGPT said that it means “forever”, and I found the phrase “hyd law y byd” somewhere else on the Internet, didn’t understand the whole long sophisticated sentence that it was part of but from what I did understand it seemed to me like it could well be a more eloquent way of saying “forever”, a sort of equivalent to “until the end of time/world without end” in English. I have no more sound evidence for it but I went with my intuition and decided to agree and listen to ChatGPT in this instance. 

   The last verse was the toughest for me. First, there’s the  intriguing word “hegar”. The other translation translates the whole line as: “And it’s been a peaceful evening”, wherein “hegar” is supposed to mean “peaceful”. Meanwhile, Google Translate translated this line as: “It’s not going to be a wild night”. I’m curious to know where it got the “It’s not going to be” part from, I mean it’s obviously not like “It’s been” and “It’s not going to be” mean the same thing, and “Mae ‘di bod” definitely means “It’s been”. And does “hegar” mean “peaceful” or “wild”, after all? My dictionary doesn’t know the word “hegar”, and I wasn’t easily able to find any definitions in Google, so I asked ChatGPT and it said “peaceful” too. I thought, well, “peace” is “hedd/heddwch”, so they both start with  H, maybe that’s enough to make them family. But I searched once again more thoroughly for some examples of this word in use and found “hegar law” meaning “fierce rain”. So I went with “wild”, because “a fierce night” sounded odd in English. But I’m curious what’s the deal with peaceful and why it showed up, maybe this word has two meanings or something, though it would be funny to have one word with two opposite meanings. Like: try and guess what I mean now. 😀 Also given how seemingly obscure “hegar” is, I wonder if perhaps it’s some archaism, and I like the idea of an archaism being thrown into a “normal” song like this. 😀 

   Then there are “old women” and “square boys”, at least literally. The word “merched” in the original actually means “girls” rather than women, but I think each language uses its equivalent word for a girl as a slangy word for a woman. But I’m not entirely sure if “merched hen” (literally old girls), is supposed to mean old women, or perhaps more like older girls, or simply adult women who, after all, kind of are “old girls” in a way, because they’re older than the actual literal girls but still girls. 😀 Sticking with “old women” felt safest though, so that’s what I did. And square boys? No idea what that might be. I have a feeling that the word “sgwâr” has some other, colloquial meaning that I’m not familiar with, or else it’s an English calque of something. Are they “square” as in boring/mainstream or oldfashioned maybe? 

   And lastly, the next line contains the word “sgwario” which literally means “to square”, and in that other translation it’s translated as “square to us”. I tried to find some other meanings of “to square” in English, thinking it’s a calque, but found nothing else that would make sense to me in the context. ChatGPT told me that apparently “sgwario`’ is a slangy way of saying “to roam”, but I found nothing that would make me believe it. So I left “squaring to us”, even though I’m not convinced that this is what the “old women and square boys” are seriously doing. The “sgwâr” thing sounds like it could be wordplay and not all wordplay is easily translatable, so perhaps that’s the case here. 

   But anyway, I still hope this translation is reasonably good, and in any case, the song is cool. 

   You’re standing with me at the bar

You don’t want to break into the tenner

You ask me for a spare copper

To save, to spend

Your mysteriously blue eyes

Cause my heart to run a race

 You’re leaning on the black pillar

Which stands at the front of the pub

You’re burning in my mind

And it’s not the beer talking

I want you more than anyone

And there’s no one I want more than you

 Tonight in the Anglesey

Tonight in the Anglesey 

You’re sitting with me on the wall 

But as the night begins to take hold 

You tell me that I don’t get 

To leave you, I won’t leave 

The giant shadow of a black castle 

We are holding hands forever 

Tonight in the Anglesey 

Tonight in the Anglesey 

Tonight in the Anglesey 

The bell is ringing at the bar 

And it’s been a wild night 

The old women and the square boys 

Squaring up to us, passing by 

It’s about time we moved on 

But I want to stay here with you 

Tonight in the Anglesey 

Tonight in the Anglesey 

Tonight in the Anglesey 

Christmas Wishes and Mishes (and a bonus, Christmassy song of the day).

   It’s Christmas Eve, so, as regular peeps on here will know, it’s the time for Christmas wishes here on My Inner Mishmash. Because in Poland, as in many other European countries, we actually start celebrating Christmas today already. In fact, this is in practice the most festive day of Christmas over here, at least when it comes to the external festivities. We eat a big, festive, meatless Christmas Eve supper, and then later on go to the Midnight Mass. Most people also open their presents on Christmas Eve, but since a couple years, we decided to change that in our household and we only do it after we come back from the Midnight Mass, so that’s practically Christmas Day already. 

   But, regardless of when exactly each of you, lovely people, starts your celebrations, I would like to wish you a very happy Christmas. Not necessarily merry, because, in my view, this word is a little superficial and not everyone can force themselves to be merry just because it’s Christmas time, for example if you have depression or something difficult is going on in your life at the moment, and Christmas isn’t exactly about being merry (though if you do feel merry, that’s amazing, I think I do too this year, for once 😀 ). Generally though, I wish you more of a joyous, innerly peaceful, thankful kind of happy Christmas. Or if even that is hard to achieve for you and where you’re at in life, a very hopeful one, at the very least. That’s a must, or else it’s hardly Christmas. I wish you to remember what Christmas is actually celebrated for and why it’s called Christmas and not Wintermas or Snowmas or Loads-of-Yummy-Food-mas. I talk about this every year on here, but I really do think it’s so sad that it’s Jesus’ birthday, and so many people want to celebrate it, yet a lot of them seem to totally ignore the birthday boy. 

   Whether you’ll be celebrating alone or with family or friends or whatever other company, I wish your Christmas not to be lonely, neither in a alone and lonely way, nor in a lonely in a crowd way. And I really hope it won’t be boring or overwhelming or under-/over-stimulating, or stressful, or all those other things that we know Christmases and other such holidays can very often be. 

   I also wish you a cosy Christmas, loads of yummy food, and that you can give and receive some cool presents. Who wouldn’t like that? 

   To all the non-Christian people who are also celebrating something, be it Christmas without the Christ- part, or having time off work, or some other religious holiday, I also want to wish you a happy, cosy, and memorable holidays. 

   And for all those who aren’t celebrating anything, I wish you hope and inner peace as well, and that you have a cool weekend. 

   Misha wants to wish all pets and peeps the best food in their lives, and hopes you can all catch up on sleep and keep warm, either inside your own fur, or some fluffy clothes, and that it’s not gonna be too noisy in your house and that you can spend a bit of time just with yourself. 

   And, yeah, traditionally, I’ve got to share some Christmas song! Last year I thought I’d ran out of all my favourite Christmas songs to share, but over the course of this year I remembered about a few that I’ve never shared on here and heard some new beautiful Christmas pieces. The one I’m sharing with you today belongs to the latter category. 

   This is a  Welsh Christmas carol called “Ar Gyfer Heddiw’r Bore” (On This Day in the Morning), written by David Hughes in 19th century. It seems to be very popular at what is called Plygain in Wales – a traditional Christmas service held either at night or early in the morning where people gather to sing carols, of course in harmony since that’s the only way Welsh people can sing. 😀 – This tradition has been apparently going through a bit of a renaissance lately and it sounds really cool. 

   However, the version of this song that I want to share with you is a little different. It is sung by Gwilym Bowen Rhys (yeah, one of my faza people and yeah, that renewed October peak is still going strong and I’m really glad that my faza life seems to have gone back to normal after like two years of weird chaos) as part of a project called Celtic Beethoven initiated by the Galician musician Carlos Núñez (I believe largely online-based), which involved a lot of musicians from Celtic countries and regions performing Celtic songs arranged by Ludwig van Beethoven. This carol is usually sung to a different tune, but in the recording below, Gwilym sings it to the tune of a Welsh song called The Vale of Clwyd, arranged by Beethoven. And I think this is absolutely stunning, and gives this carol more of a soul! Personally, the original melody makes me think of the Pentre Llanfihangel  song, which is the first thing that I ever heard sung to this tune (by Plethyn), and Gwilym’s version sounds so much more like what I think an old-ish, Christian piece like this should actually sound. 

   If you’d like to know what this carol is about and find out more about Plygain as such, or hear a version of this carol in its original melody, I recommend you visit this blog. 

Plu – “Storm Dros Pen Y Fâl” (Storm Over Sugar Loaf).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Today, I’d like to share with you another song from Plu’s most recent album called Tri, the fourth one on this blog. It is really beautiful and captivating, and seems to captivate me a little more every time I listen to it. It’s about a mountain, which is called Pen y Fâl in Welsh, or Sugar Loaf in English. It is one of the highest peaks in the Black Mountains in Abergavenny. I thought I’d share with you their live performance of this song. 

Plu – “Ben I Waered” (Upside Down).

   Hey dear people! 🙂 

   Yesterday I happened to have a migraine, and spent a lot of time in bed listening to Plu, whose music I always find very soothing, in a way that is also extremely soul-enriching, even though I’ve listened to them a lot before, because every time I listen to them I either explore something new in their music, or it makes me think of something different, or makes a different imagery pop into my brain. So it’s kind of like re-reading the same book. And their music is also great to fall asleep to. So I thought that today I’d share another song, the third one on here, from Plu’s most recent album called Tri, which came out last April and about which I’ve already raved before in this post where I also wrote in more detail about this album. Most of the songs on it are Plu’s original, and so is the case with this beautiful, dreamy and soaring piece. Despite my recent mini- yet very encouraging nonetheless successes with Welsh translations, I wasn’t able to translate this one for you unfortunately, because its lyrics don’t seem to be available anywhere online, and when I attempted doing it by ear, obviously I encountered a lot of words that I didn’t know and couldn’t quite figure out how they should be spelt to look them up in a dictionary or something. But very generally and shortly, from what I gather, the lyrical subject is in love with someone and talks about her feelings and sensations relating to this person, their presence etc. in a way that feels very subtle, I believe this person has actually left her or something and she longs for him, and she says something along the lines of that looking in the eyes and into the soul of this person makes her heart turn upside down. 

Gwilym Bowen Rhys – “Taith y Cardi” (The Cardi’s Journey).

   Hi people! 🙂 

   Today I want to share with you something else by one of my faza peeps Gwilym Bowen Rhys. A  hilarious song from the first instalment in his Detholiad o Hen Faledi (A Selection of Welsh Ballads) series of albums. As someone who’s into weird linguistic stuff, I think it’s just as funny because of the Wenglish and the very peculiar grammar (often calqued on Welsh), as the actual story line. I know that Wenglish is still thriving at least in some parts of Wales, which is obviously quite natural for a strongly bilingual area I guess, but I’m curious if some people in Ceredigion actually still speak like this, or perhaps they never have because it was exaggerated for satirical or perhaps mocking purposes? 

   Cardi is the colloquial term for a person from Ceredigion, or Cardiganshire historically. Gwilym says that this was originally an American song, so Cardis got their own version based on that later on. It is set to the Irish traditional tune called Cill Liadain. The only tune of that name I’ve ever heard is one  by Bill Whelan and it does not have the same tune, but it has a very similar rhythmic pattern so probably there must be a few different tunes to which Cill Liadain is sung, or perhaps we’re talking about two totally different things that just happen to have the same title. I’m not sure what’s the situation regarding the author of these lyrics, because on his home page Gwilym writes that this song was written by Rhys Davies, also known as Llew Llywel, whereas on his Bandcamp he writes that it is most likely an anonymous song but possibly written by John David Lewis, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and about whom I’ve also read that he was also a book collector and founder of a Welsh printing press called Gwasg Gomer. 

   I decided that, to make things clear for people who are not familiar with Welsh and Wenglish at all, I’ll just include the whole lyrics in this post with all the Welsh/Wenglish words translated into regular English. 

   

I live in Llandysul in Cardiganshire,
A letter inform me my uncle was dead,
To ask me in a minute to go up to London
As hundreds of pounds was left me ‘twas said.
So I was determined to go on my journey
And book my ticket, first class I was fine.
But if I was go third class I was never encounter
The little pure widow I was see in the train.

The widow and me side by side sit together
In the carriage was no one but us and no more.
Silence was broken by my purty companion
Who ask me the time by the watch I was wore
‘Of course’ I was tell her and then conversation
Was speaking between us, indeed ‘till my brain
Was go on the head-spin, I almost went crazy
With the little pure widow I was see in the train.

She was so polite I venture to ask her
How old was the child she was have on her breast.
‘Ah sir’ she did say, and she did cry shockin
And the child she carry to her bosom she prest. ‘When you speak of my child I am quite broken hearted,
His father, my husband, oh my heart breaks in pain’
And what she then do, she lean her head on my waistcoat
Did the little pure widow I was see in the train.

By this time the train it was come in the station
A couple of miles from big big one in town
When the widow was say as she look through the window
‘Good gracious alive, why, there goes Mr Brown,
He’s my late husband’s brother, dear sir would you kindly
Take hold of my baby, I’ll be back again.’
‘Of course’ I was say, and out to the platform
Went the pure little widow I was see in the train.

Three minutes was go by, the guard whistle blowin’,
The train was a’ movin’ but no widow appear!
With a puff and a puff it was off! I was fear!
My watch…where was it? And where was my chain?,
My purse and my ticket, loose tickets was all gone!
Well damn that old widow I was see in the train. 

When I found out my loss indeed I was cryin’
The train did then stop and ‘tickets please!’ I heard.
So I tell the collector whilst shaking the baby
The loss I was lost, but he doubted my word
So he call a policeman and a lot come about me,
They take from me the baby…how shall I explain?
For indeed ‘twas no baby! ‘twas a wooden doll! A dummy!
That devil of a widow I was see in the train!

They let me go when they see I had no money
And I was walk home for many a day,
When I come in to Merthyr I saw Dai Llanybydder
And in his old cart I come home all the way.
Now boys of Llandysul now mind you, take warnin’!
Mind you those fair widows who do cry like rain,
For they sure to rob you of your purse and your pocket
Like the little pure widow I was see in the train.

Y Bandana – “Cyn i’r Ale ‘ma Gau” (Before This Place Closes).

   Hiya people! 🙂 

  For today, I thought I’d share with y’all a song by Y Bandana – the very popular but no longer existing Welsh-language pop rock group consisting of Gwilym Bowen Rhys (one of my faza peeps), his cousins Siôn and Tomos Owens and his friend Robin Llwyd Jones – from their last album called Fel Tôn Gron (which I believe would translate into English as something like Like a Complete Tune? Not perfectly sure). I suppose this song could be considered a sort of mild and heartening drinking/pub song. I like the very distinctly Welsh/Celtic vibe of it despite it isn’t folk. 

   Encouraged by my recent personal mini yet noticeable successes with Welsh learning and the recent, fairly successful I guess (though they were just nursery rhymes so you can’t really fail spectacularly there when you know a bit of the language and it’s nothing outstanding obviously to translate a nursery rhyme 😀 ), translation of Tŷ Bach Twt and Milgi Milgi by Mari Mathias, I decided to take the plunge and try to translate this song, despite I’d never translated Welsh-language songs on here before as this is the language in which I still feel most insecure out of all my languages. It was definitely more difficult and time-consuming than the nursery rhymes and I had to look up some words, but generally I also already understood a fair bit of it before attempting to do this, so in the end I managed. Though I’m sure there are some mistakes in it or bits that could have been translated better. Perhaps now that I’ve done it I’ll be able to translate Welsh songs that I share on here more regularly myself, just like it’s been the case with Swedish – at first I thought I could never be able to properly translate something between two languages of which none is my native tongue, but now I find doing most Swedish song translations to English pretty easy even if some little bits are confusing and even if I don’t do it fully well. 

   Come inside the house, sit down, come in from the wind and rain
This is a haven, to the word, to the song and the full cup
There is music [or poetry] in the ir and melody in the walls
And fire in our blood like our forefathers’
We’ll sing a song, before this place closes
Come into the house, where the truth flows like the wine
A feeling that is so old, and the smile, and the rare stones and the soil
It flows with ease through your veins
Let’s all come to the crossroad of souls
We’ll sing a song, before this place closes
If you are lost in the world, without a friend or faith
Peace of mind and all its magic is available at the top of the street
It flows with ease through your veins
Let’s all come to the crossroad of souls
We’ll sing a song, before this place closes
Come inside the house to us, come closer to the warmth of the bar
And we’ll raise our glasses up, to the sky. And say cheers together
There’s music in the air and melody in the walls
And fire in our blood like our forefathers’
We’ll sing a song, before this place closes
We’ll sing a song, before this place closes

Y Bandana – “Cyn i’r Lle ‘ma Gau” 

Plu – “Hiraeth” (Longing).

   Hi all you lovely people! 🙂 

   Today I’d really like to share with you all this incredibly beautiful song by Plu. It is a traditional one, and it’s very beautiful as such in itself and very much resonates with my brain, but it’s even more so and feels even deeper in Plu’s arrangement. I translated the title of this song as longing because that’s what the word hiraeth is usually translated as, but really as I’ve written several times before, this word doesn’t have a proper equivalent in English. I find hiraeth very interesting and I’ve tried explaining and defining what it means, for example in this post with another song about hiraeth. You can also find more about it in this post by Ceri Davies   from which also comes the English translation below. 

   Gold fades and silver fades


Velvet fades silk fades


Every sort of clothing fades


And yet hiraeth doesn’t fade


Great Hiraeth cruel hiraeth


Hiraeth tears at my heart


When I’m sleeping deeply at night


Hiraeth comes and wakes me


Hiraeth hiraeth away away


Don’t weigh so heavily on me


Go a little nearer to the edge


Let me have a little bit of sleep

Gwen Màiri – “Y Dydd Drwy’r Ffenest” (The Day Through the Window”.

   Hiya people! 🙂 

   Today I want to share with you a beautiful piece from Gwen Màiri’s album Mentro (Venture), an amazing album from which I’ve already shared several tracks in the past. In case you don’t know, Gwen Màiri Yorke is a harpist and folk singer of both Scottish and Welsh heritage, who is both a Scottish Gaelic as well as Welsh native speaker. On this album, she is accompanied by Jordan Price Williams on cello, as well as Gwilym Bowen Rhys on several instruments, but in this particular piece we can hear him playing the mandolin. As far as I’m aware, this tune is Gwen’s original composition. 

Gwilym Bowen Rhys – “Y Ddeilen Dobaco” (The Tobacco Leaf).

   Hey people! 🙂 

    I thought I’d really like to share with you something from Gwilym’s latest  album, the second one in the Detholiad o Hen Faledi (Selection of Old Ballads) series, because so far I guess I’ve only shared one song from it on here, and it’s a really good album as I’ve already said so deserves some more attention on here. So I chose for today an interesting song from 19th century, in which the lyrical subject ponders on the transience and fragility of our earthly lives while smoking a pipe. It was written by poet Ebenezer Thomas, known under his bardic name of Eben Fardd (Bard Eben), and set to a traditional tune. The translation below comes from Gwilym’s website. 

  The tobacco leaf comes from afar,
be it good or ill to those who take it,
in the morning it is full of colour,
but in the afternoon it withers
and this shows us all
that we are not going to last here very long,
that we’re only people in clay pipes,
that’s what I think whilst smoking it

The white clay pipe, the colour of pure fine snow
that shines so bright as I see it.
when this falls, it quickly breaks,
and is cast away without a second thought,
and that’s how we are, though so bright at our dawn,
and all the good intentions we might have -
only a small strike will leave us broken on the floor,
I think all the while whilst smoking it.

The pipe, when used, obtains a bad colour,
the ash and the smoke blackens it.
to get it clean again,
one must put it in the fire to re-purify it.
and so are we with our black, cruel sins,
full of uncleanliness, inside and out,
until we are re-purified through spirit and grace,
I rightly think as I smoke it.

The sparks ascend to the heavens
to seek the element that’s there
and likewise the smoke rises,
we can clearly see it climbing.
and this clearly shows us all the while
that were are all but travellers, the wisest in the world -
let’s not place our desires in material things,
I always think whilst smoking it.

The ash and dottle stay on behind,
in a way that is to be remembered -
from the soil we came, loud is our noise,
to the soil we shall return again.
the earth to the earth, we’ll return on our way,
the ash to the ash, and the body like it was before.
our life disappears like smoke in the wind
I carry on thinking whilst smoking it.


Y Bandana – “Cân y Tân” (The Fire’s Song).

    For today, I have  quite a cheerful song for you,  by Y Bandana, a rock group from North Wales of which one of the members Is one of my faza peeps – Gwilym Bowen Rhys. – The group no longer exists, but it was really popular on the Welsh-language scene, and this song was one of their most popular, if not the most recognisable one. The video below contains both the Welsh lyrics as well as the translation so you can have a look. 

Plu – “Porth Samddai”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Well, time to share some more music from that new album by Plu – Tri – that I gushed about when it came out. You can read more extensively about it in the post above. It’s been over three months since I first heard it and I’m still listening to it as a whole. I normally don’t do that a lot with albums that I would listen to them as a whole lots of times, usually it’s just once, or 2-3 times if I think it’s really good and then I just listen to individual songs whenever I feel like it, but it’s different with my faza people’s music as well as anything that is just insanely good in my opinion or has a lasting impression on my brain for some reason. 

   This song, unlike the one I shared in the post above, is Plu’s original to my knowledge. Generally though, i haven’t been able to find out much about it, which is quite a pity. There seems to be some sort of a location called Porth Samddai somewhere near/within Caernarfon in Wales but that’s about everything I know. I find the little bits of lyrics that I’ve been able to understand over time very interesting and am looking forward to when I’ll be able to understand more of it, but so far I am definitely not able to translate it or anything. I said in my previous post about this album that it feels closer to the alt- side of the alt-folk spectrum, unlike the previous ones which drew closer to the -folk side, and this is one of these pieces that I think show this gentle shift very well. 

Plu – “Sgwennaf Lythyr” (I Will Write a Letter).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Today let’s listen to a song by Plu, the alt-folk trio from North Wales consisting of siblings Elan, Marged and Gwilym Rhys. This song comes from their self-titled album and here’s a live version of it.