IN a collection of unedited odds and ends from Borrow's papers bearing
upon Wales, and dating from various periods of his career, there is one
insignificant-looking sheet on whose back some lines are pencilled,
beginning "The mountain snow." They are reproduced in the text, but
deserve notice here because of the evidence they bring of Borrow's
long-continued Welsh obsession and his long practice as a Welsh
translator. Apparently they date from the time when he was writing
"Lavengro," since the other side of the leaf contains a draft in ink of
the preface to that book. Other sheets of blue foolscap in the same
bundle--folded small for the pocket--are devoted to unnumbered chapters
of "Wild Wales." Yet another scrap, from a much earlier period, is so
closely packed in a microscopic hand that it reminds one at a first
glance of the painfully minute script of the Bronte sisters in their
earliest attempts. Its matter is only a footnote on the Celts, Gaels and
Cymry, and its substance often reappears in later pages; but other items
both in the early script of a fine minuscule, and in the later bold,
untidy scrawl, serve to carry on the Welsh account, with references to
Pwll Cheres and Goronwy Owen; and the upshot of them all goes to show
that Borrow, whether he was at Norwich or in London, was not only a stout
Celtophile, but much inclined, early and late, to be a Welsh idolater.
And since the days when the monks of the Priory at Carmarthen wrote the
"Black Book" in a noble script, I suppose no copyist ever took more pains
than Borrow did in his early years in transcribing the lines of the Welsh
poets, as the _facsimile_ page given in this volume can tell.
Of the bards and rhymers that he attempted in English, he gave most care
to translating Iolo Goch, four of whose odes open the present collection.
He was tempted to dilate on Iolo, or "Edward the Red," because of that
poet's association with Owen Glendower, a hero in whose exploits he
greatly delighted. The tribute to Owen in "Wild Wales" is, or should be,
familiar enough to Borrovians. In Chapter XXIII. there is an account of
the landmark which Borrow calls "Mont Glyndwr" (though I have never heard
it so called in my Welsh wanderings); while in Chapter LXVI. a
description of the other mount at Sycharth accompanies a translation of
the Ode by Iolo, which in a slightly different earlier text is printed on
page eight. It was after repeating these lines, Borrow tells us, that he
exclaimed, "How much more happy, innocent and holy" he was in the days of
his boyhood, when he translated the ode, than "at the present time." And
then, covering his face with his hands, he wept "like a child." If one
re-reads the ode in the light of this confession, one observes that there
is a strong vein of personal feeling about its lines, and a certain
pilgrim strain in its opening, which would lend themselves readily to
Borrow's mood and the idea, never far away from his thoughts, that in his
wanderings he too was a bard doing "Clera." It need hardly be said that
he was wrong in estimating Iolo's age as "upwards of a hundred years,"
when the ode was written. In other details of the poem he is more
picturesque than literal; but the English copy of the Welsh sketch is in
essentials near enough for all ordinary purposes; and the achievement in
a boy of eighteen, living at Norwich, far from Wales, is an extraordinary
one. The sort of error that he fell into was a very natural one to
occur; for instance, misled by his mere dictionary knowledge, he omits
the reference to St. Patrick's clock-tower and the cloisters of
Westminster. The words "Kloystr Wesmestr," only lead in one text to the
line, "A cloister of festivities," and in the other to the yet freer
rendering--"muster the merry pleasures all." Again, the original has no
mention of "Usquebaugh," though the Shrewsbury ale is in order. In
medieval Wales, I may add, the bragget mentioned in these lines was made
by mixing ale with mead, and spicing the mixture--a decidedly heady
liquor, one gathers, when it was kept awhile.
Iolo Goch, like the greater--indeed one may say the greatest Welsh poet,
Dafydd ab Gwilym, used a form of verse in his odes which it is not easy
to imitate or follow in English, keeping all its subtle graces and
assonances. It is termed the "Cywydd," which may be taken to signify a
verse in which the words are well knit and finely co-ordinated; or, as
Sir John Rhys puts it, "elegantly, artistically put together." The
verse, it should be said, is written in couplets, and the lines are
required also to follow a definite symphonic pattern. Try for example
Dafydd's lines, which Borrow has translated (see page 59), upon the mist.
In Welsh they run:
"Och! it 'niwlen felen-fawr
_Na throet_ ti, _na therit_ awr:
Casul _yr_ aw_yr_ ddu-lwyd,
Carth_en_ annib_en_ ia_wn_ wyd,
Mwg ellylldan o annwn,
_Abid_ teg ar _y byd_ hwn.
Fal _tarth_ uffern-_barth_ ffwrn-bell;
_Mwg_ y _byd_ yn _magu_ o _bell_."
The second and last of these verses well show the use of what is called
the "cynghanedd" or consonancy of echoing syllables required in the
cywydd metre. Borrow, in getting his own rhyme, rather loses the force
of the original. For instance, he omits the "awyr ddu-lwyd" in verse
three--the air black-grey--and he spoils in expanding the idea of the
verse--"carthen anniben," etc. Here the Welsh poet suggests that the
mist is an endless cloth, woven perpetually in space. The packed lines
of the cywydd, and the concreteness of the imagery, set the translator,
however, a hard task. Borrow, in the "Wild Wales" version, omits the
opening of the poem, whose last lines lead up to the apostrophe; but the
MS. has enabled Mr. Wise to complete it in his Bibliography. More
literally, the Welsh might be rendered thus:--
"Before I had gone a step of the way,
I no longer saw a place in the land:
Neither birchclad cliff, nor coast;
Neither hill's-breast, mountain-side, nor sea."
Then it is he turns in his humorous rage:
"Och! confound thee, great yellow thing,
That neither turns lighter, nor clears a bit;
Black-grey chasuble of the air;
An endless woven clout, thou art!"
Borrow's difficulty in attacking the Welsh of a poet so rapid and easy
and light-footed, was that of a Zeppelin in pursuit of a Farman. He was
over-weighted from the start. His early awkwardness in verse, his
rhetoric learnt from the artificial style of the generation before him,
were in his way. Iolo Goch was much nearer to him, with the admiring
inventory of a chieftain's house, than was the art of the poet of the
leaves, the birch-grove and the love-tryst.
But as time went on Borrow returned on his old steps, and he took up some
of his former handiwork, and smoothed away some of its crudities. Mr.
Wise, indeed, maintains that the Borrow of 1826 was a much less finished
verseman than the Borrow of 1854-60; and his Bibliography illustrates
some of the changes made for the better in Borrow's verse. Thus, in one
Norse ballad, he changes "gore" into "blood," and we remark in many lines
an attempt to get at a more natural style in verse. The account of "The
Sleeping Bard" in the Bibliography, shows that the improvement in
Borrow's craftsmanship went on after 1860, in which year the book was
printed at Yarmouth (a very limited edition, 250 copies at 5_s._ a copy).
For instance, in the poem, "Death the Great," the seventh stanza ran
originally:
"The song and dance afford, I _ween_,
Relief from _spleen_, and sorrow's grave;
How very strange there is no _dance_
Nor tune of _France_, from Death can save."