Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Fighting for Morfudd
Fighting for Morfudd
Achub Gwraig Eiddig
Girl who obscures her white throat
Pale and blenched – Eiddig’s threat
Hangs over you, a sick blight:
You it is he’ll beat tonight.
In rude health and humour ill,
No one can predict his will.
He scorns to play at love, girl,
All his life the vilest churl,
Hating hope, forsaking love –
May he spurn heaven above!
His own sister risks his ire
To speak with you. Hellish fire
Forbids the prude to permit
Discourse with a holy hermit
Lest it sully you. By night
He won’t let you out of sight,
Yet you elude the fool by day:
Contrive to have things your way.
I myself have risked my life
In dalliance with Eiddig’s wife:
Then he thrashed you. Catch your breath
And wish the ogre sudden death
Who dares to judge you. Hear now,
Gleaming one with golden brow:
Two things I would do – take note –
Were I in your petticoat.
Divorce the brute while you can;
Marry with a gentler man.
Death! Come lurk beside the bed
Where the bruiser lays his head!
I would not weep to see his corpse
Ride to earth the wooden horse
Shrouded like a wormy ghost.
Come to him who loves you most.
Source material: Attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. Three of the eleven manuscripts attribute it to Dafydd, and in the rest it is left anonymous, but Thomas Parry, the mid-twentieth century editor of his poems, thought it too ‘unrefined’ to be the work of the master. I have endeavoured to retain an air of coarseness through some metrical inconsistencies, but I suspect the poem is Dafydd’s work, and that the rough and ready tone is a symptom of genuine anger. Although Morfudd is not mentioned in the text, I have chosen the title in preference to ‘Rescuing Eiddig’s Wife’ because the name Eiddig is consistently used by Dafydd when referring to the husband of his golden girl. There is another poem, ‘Llychwino Pryd y Ferch’, which Parry does accept as Dafydd’s work, in which the poet laments the fact that Morfudd’s beauty has faded because of ill treatment at the hands of her husband. The phrase “Were I in your petticoat” is a more or less literal translation of an idiomatic phrase akin to the English “Were I in your shoes”. The wooden horse is, of course, a coffin, so the poem can be read as a magical satire against Eiddig, but there is also a possibility that the line contains an allusion to the old Welsh custom of Ceffyl Pren, in which an abusive marriage partner was publicly humiliated on a wooden horse. Since the participants in this ritual were often cross-dressed, it is possible that the reference to the "petticoat" in an earlier line is also a punning allusion to the practice (Huw Davies, pers. comm., 2009.)
Fighting for Morfudd
Fighting for Morfudd
Achub Gwraig Eiddig
Girl who obscures her white throat
Pale and blenched – Eiddig’s threat
Hangs over you, a sick blight:
You it is he’ll beat tonight.
In rude health and humour ill,
No one can predict his will.
He scorns to play at love, girl,
All his life the vilest churl,
Hating hope, forsaking love –
May he spurn heaven above!
His own sister risks his ire
To speak with you. Hellish fire
Forbids the prude to permit
Discourse with a holy hermit
Lest it sully you. By night
He won’t let you out of sight,
Yet you elude the fool by day:
Contrive to have things your way.
I myself have risked my life
In dalliance with Eiddig’s wife:
Then he thrashed you. Catch your breath
And wish the ogre sudden death
Who dares to judge you. Hear now,
Gleaming one with golden brow:
Two things I would do – take note –
Were I in your petticoat.
Divorce the brute while you can;
Marry with a gentler man.
Death! Come lurk beside the bed
Where the bruiser lays his head!
I would not weep to see his corpse
Ride to earth the wooden horse
Shrouded like a wormy ghost.
Come to him who loves you most.
Source material: Attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. Three of the eleven manuscripts attribute it to Dafydd, and in the rest it is left anonymous, but Thomas Parry, the mid-twentieth century editor of his poems, thought it too ‘unrefined’ to be the work of the master. I have endeavoured to retain an air of coarseness through some metrical inconsistencies, but I suspect the poem is Dafydd’s work, and that the rough and ready tone is a symptom of genuine anger. Although Morfudd is not mentioned in the text, I have chosen the title in preference to ‘Rescuing Eiddig’s Wife’ because the name Eiddig is consistently used by Dafydd when referring to the husband of his golden girl. There is another poem, ‘Llychwino Pryd y Ferch’, which Parry does accept as Dafydd’s work, in which the poet laments the fact that Morfudd’s beauty has faded because of ill treatment at the hands of her husband. The phrase “Were I in your petticoat” is a more or less literal translation of an idiomatic phrase akin to the English “Were I in your shoes”. The wooden horse is, of course, a coffin, so the poem can be read as a magical satire against Eiddig, but there is also a possibility that the line contains an allusion to the old Welsh custom of Ceffyl Pren, in which an abusive marriage partner was publicly humiliated on a wooden horse. Since the participants in this ritual were often cross-dressed, it is possible that the reference to the "petticoat" in an earlier line is also a punning allusion to the practice (Huw Davies, pers. comm., 2009.)