This poem, published for the first time on the web, is purportedly by the 14th century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, “generally regarded as the greatest Welsh poet of all time”. The poem is about a date he makes with a girl, and how on his way to see her an otherworldly mist descends and he gets waylaid. 20th century stylistic evidence attributes this poem to an imitator of Dafydd ap Gwilym, styled around his accepted authentic poem Y Niwl.
Translation from Mediæval Welsh:
A date with an adorable girl
I'd made and dared not break,
so to go I was betrothed,
away hence, on my fraught journey.
As I set out, quite prematurely,
a mist sprouted from the night.
Sky mantles shadowed
the way, as if I were in some lair.
Obscuring the firmament's tenuous traces,
a climbing mist shuts out the heavens.
Soon I tread wrong in my ramble,
not a sight of a spot of the country again,
no cliffside birches, no distant clime,
no hillbreast, mountain, nor sea.
Damn thee, great yellow mists,
flow thou not, not this hour!
A cloak of the air deep grey,
a winnowing sheet untidy beloved.
A blanket of the rain falls yonder,
black tapestry from afar enclosing the world.
Like an infernal hellfire vapour,
smog of the earth born so deep:
smog of Annwn's sprites,
a habit draped over the dark one.
An uprisen arachnid
whose torrent fills every place.
Thou art rich, father of the rain,
provider and mother to the hills.
An inclement harvest harsh,
a beach of seals twixt me and the sun.
The night is a day of smoke racks,
a nocturnal day, what sin so graceless?
Thick aery snowsnarts wrap the hill,
the region is hoarfrosted, engendering theives.
The snowy thresh of January,
bonfired into the air ever anon,
the frost smithy creeps on the ground,
along hillocks of brushwood and heather.
The flimsy enchanter flees,
long burdened by the Tylwyth Teg.
Clinging to the rock, air eddying round,
a cloud of crooked planets.
Spray of ocean waves,
the sea out of Annwn, so grand.
On its front the hill is the ugliest colour,
beneath the fat dark welkin.
My twisty traipse turns to clumsy labour,
like a hell, into a still bogmire,
where in every hollow there lurks
a hundred wrymouthed wisps.
Into a hellish swamp I get,
overspread with boughs obscuring escape.
I resolved to go, but won't be so bold again,
on a misty walk, and will grumble no more.
(Translation by Sean B. Palmer, March 2008.)
Original:
Oed â'm rhiain addfeindeg
a wnaethwn yn dalgrwn deg,
i fyned, wedi 'mgredu,
ymaith, ac oferdaith fu.
Myn'd yn gynnar i'w haros,
egino niwl gan y nos.
Tywyllawdd wybr fantellau
y ffordd, fal pettwn mewn ffau.
Cuddiaw golwybr yr wybren,
codi niwl cau hyd y nen.
Cyn cerdded cam o'm tramwy,
ni welid man o'r wlad mwy,
na gorallt fedw, na goror,
na bronnydd, mynydd, na mor.
Och it, niwlen felenfawr,
o'th roed di, na threiut awr!
Casul o'r awyr ddulwyd,
carthen anniben iawn wyd.
Gwrthban y glaw draw drymlyd,
gwe ddu o bell a gudd y byd.
Mai tarth uffernbarth ffwrnbell,
mwg y byd yn magu o bell:
mwg ellylldan o Annwn,
abid tew ar y byd hwn.
Ucheldop adargopwe
fal gweilgi 'n llenwi pob lle.
Tew wyd a glud, tad y glaw,
tyddyn a mam wyt iddaw.
Cnwd anhygar diaraul,
clwyd forlo rhyngo' a'r haul.
nos im fydd dydd diferglwyd,
dydd yn nos, pand diddawn wyd?
Tew eiry fry'n toi ar y fron,
tud llwydrew, tad y lladron.
Gwasarn eira llon lonawr,
goddaith o'r awyr faith fawr,
ymlusgwr bwriwr barug,
hyd moelydd grinwydd a grug.
Hudol gwan yn ehedeg,
hir barthlwyth y Tylwyth Teg.
Gŵn i'r graig, gnu awyr gron,
cwmwl planedau ceimion.
Ager o donnau eigiawn,
mor wyd o Annwn, mawr iawn.
O'm blaen ar riw hagrliw hyll,
obry'n dew wybren dywyll.
Fy nhroi i fan trwstanwaith,
fal uffern, i fignwern faith,
lle'r ydoedd ymhob gobant
ellyllon mingeimion gant.
Ni chawn mewn gwern uffernol
dwll heb wrysg dywyll heb rôl.
Ni wnaf oed, anhy ydwy',
ar niwl maith, a'm anrhaith mwy.
I'm not proficient in Mediæval Welsh, but the only other full English translation of this poem that I could find, in Fifty Poems (by H. Idris Bell and David Bell, 1942), seemed very different to the modern translations of Dafydd ap Gwilym's work that I've read. Their translation is stiff and though it has bits of poetic brilliance, it's just too verbose and formal. The problem is that they were trying to copy Gwilym's rhyming couplets and metre, but I think that this sacrifices the essence of the poem.
Even though I'm not proficient at translating, I think, using Bell's version as a guide, that I did pretty well. I did also find a partial translation, by Gwyn Williams in An Introduction to Welsh Poetry, and I think it's quite instructive to read my version against the Williams version:
| Palmer | Williams |
|---|---|
| A cloak of the air deep grey, | A cloak from the grey-black sky, |
| a winnowing sheet untidy beloved. | a very endless coverlet, |
| A blanket of the rain falls yonder, | a blanket of distant heavy rain, |
| black tapestry from afar enclosing the world. | black weaving from far, hides the world, |
| Like an infernal hellfire vapour, | an exhalation from the far oven of hell, |
| smog of the earth born so deep: | the smoke of the world from a far source, |
| smog of Annwn's sprites, | goblin-fire smoke from the underworld, |
| a habit draped over the dark one. | a thick habit for this world; |
| An uprisen arachnid | a lofty weaving of spiders |
| whose torrent fills every place. | filling each place like a sea. |
and against the Bell version:
| Palmer | Bell |
|---|---|
| A cloak of the air deep grey, | I will call you the cloak in the grey, dark air, |
| a winnowing sheet untidy beloved. | A sheet without hem or limit you are, |
| A blanket of the rain falls yonder, | A close weft woven everywhere, |
| black tapestry from afar enclosing the world. | A blanket of rain dropping afar. |
| Like an infernal hellfire vapour, | Is it rising you are from hell's deep fires, |
| smog of the earth born so deep: | The smoke risen on putrid airs? |
| smog of Annwn's sprites, | And is this habit, the whole world's gown, |
| a habit draped over the dark one. | From the fires of Annwn by devils blown? |
| An uprisen arachnid | Or is it a spider is working on high, |
| whose torrent fills every place. | With gossamer glutting great spaces of sky? |
The Bell version is misordered for the sake of rhyme, and is far too verbose: if you look at the Welsh, even if you don't understand a word, you can see that Gwilym paints with terse impressionistic words. The Williams version is very close to my own, which means we're presumably both quite close to a literal translation to have gotten that congruent independently. But there are still some nagging differences. The "endless coverlet" in Williams is more literal in mine but perhaps loses some of the magic. Whereas my retaining Annwn I think was better than just "underworld"; it'd be like translating Jupiter from Roman mythology as simply "a god". Also, smog is clearly a much better translation for mwg than smoke! I think that "the dark one" is a better translation of "y byd hwn" than "this world", too; it appears to be a euphemism. Bell has one of his wonderful turns of expression here, "gossamer glutting great", but the original version doesn't use alliteration here, and Bell is inventing bits of sense all the way through that takes you further away from what Gwilym wrote.
The poem appears in many manuscripts.