Wild Wales: The People, Language, & SceneryBorrow, George
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Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Borrow, George
Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Travel -- Wales; Wales -- Description and travel
Two very remarkable men have at different periods conferred a kind of
lustre upon Bangor by residing in it, Taliesin in the old, and Edmund
Price in comparatively modern time. Both of them were poets. Taliesin
flourished about the end of the fifth century, and for the sublimity of
his verses was for many centuries called by his countrymen the Bardic
King. Amongst his pieces is one generally termed “The Prophecy of
Taliesin,” which announced long before it happened the entire subjugation
of Britain by the Saxons, and which is perhaps one of the most stirring
pieces of poetry ever produced. Edmund Price flourished during the time
of Elizabeth. He was archdeacon of Merionethshire, but occasionally
resided at Bangor for the benefit of his health. Besides being one of
the best Welsh poets of his age he was a man of extraordinary learning,
possessing a thorough knowledge of no less than eight languages.
The greater part of his compositions, however clever and elegant, are, it
must be confessed, such as do little credit to the pen of an
ecclesiastic, being bitter poignant satires, which were the cause of much
pain and misery to individuals; one of his works, however, is not only of
a kind quite consistent with his sacred calling, but has been a source of
considerable blessing. To him the Cambrian Church is indebted for the
version of the Psalms, which for the last two centuries it has been in
the habit of using. Previous to the version of the Archdeacon a
translation of the Psalms had been made into Welsh by William Middleton,
an officer in the naval service of Queen Elizabeth, in the
four-and-twenty alliterative measures of the ancient bards. It was
elegant and even faithful, but far beyond the comprehension of people in
general, and consequently by no means fitted for the use of churches,
though intended for that purpose by the author, a sincere Christian,
though a warrior. Avoiding the error into which his predecessor had
fallen, the Archdeacon made use of a measure intelligible to people of
every degree, in which alliteration is not observed, and which is called
by the Welsh y mesur cyffredin, or the common measure. His opinion of
the four-and-twenty measures the Archdeacon has given to the world in
four cowydd lines to the following effect:
“I’ve read the master-pieces great
Of languages no less than eight,
But ne’er have found a woof of song
So strict as that of Cambria’s tongue.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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