Farya Faraji | Y Gododdin - Welsh Celtic Song @faryafaraji | Uploaded August 2023 | Updated October 2024, 3 days ago.
Music & vocals by Farya Faraji, poem attributed to Aneirin. Please note that this isn't reconstructed period music, only modern music with an ancient theme. After covering Old Irish and Gaulish, I wanted to do a song in Old Welsh; Welsh being my favourite Celtic language of the bunch.
I decided to put to music some verses from the epic Y Gododdin, which may be the earliest known piece of preserved Welsh literature. The poem was written somewhere between the 7th and 11th centuries, and is traditionally attributed to a figure named Aneirin, who was a Brythonic poet of the 6th century A.D. It consists of elegies to Brythonic warriors who banded together somewhere in the 500's, in the Hen Ogledd region, or the "Old North," a region crystallised in medieval Celtic memory as one of the last strongholds of Celtic resistance against the invading Anglo-Saxons at the twilight of Antiquity.
Indeed, the poem's story details the heroic defeat of the Brythonic Celts at the hand of the Angles. Mynyddog Mwynfawr, ruler of the kingdom of Gododdin in the Hen Ogledd, banded together warriors with whom he feasted and drank for a year, before the attack against the Angles at a site called Catraeth, in which they all perished against insurmountable odds.
I based the pronunciation on Jimi McRae's reading of the poem which can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=KdyrW8xY8S0
The instrumentation consists of that which is typical in Celtic regions of Great-Britain today, with a simple frame drum, a Celtic harp, a fiddle, a flute, as well as an ancient lyre the likes of which were played in the region at the time in which the poem set. The melody is written in a fashion typical of music of the region, where pentatonic passages intermingle with heptatonic passages, creating an incredibly bittersweet sound with both happiness and sadness, something I believe captures the tone of the poem: a people, the Celts, who know that their twilight is upon them, but who will nevertheless fight even knowing they will be defeated, as the sun sets on their era, and as the era of the Anglo-Saxons arrives.
Lyrics in a mixture of Old and Middle-Welsh:
Gwyr a aeth gatraeth gan wawr
Trauodynt en hed eu hovnawr
Milcant a thrychant a emdaflawr
Gwyarllyt gwynnodynt waewawr
Ef gorsaf yng gwryaf eg gwryawr
Rac gosgord mynydawc mwynvawr
English translation:
Men went to Catraeth with the dawn.
Their fears left them,
A hundred thousand and three hundred clashed together.
They stained their spears, splashed with blood,
He was at the forefront, foremost in battle,
Before the retinue of Mynyddog Mwynfawr.
Music & vocals by Farya Faraji, poem attributed to Aneirin. Please note that this isn't reconstructed period music, only modern music with an ancient theme. After covering Old Irish and Gaulish, I wanted to do a song in Old Welsh; Welsh being my favourite Celtic language of the bunch.
I decided to put to music some verses from the epic Y Gododdin, which may be the earliest known piece of preserved Welsh literature. The poem was written somewhere between the 7th and 11th centuries, and is traditionally attributed to a figure named Aneirin, who was a Brythonic poet of the 6th century A.D. It consists of elegies to Brythonic warriors who banded together somewhere in the 500's, in the Hen Ogledd region, or the "Old North," a region crystallised in medieval Celtic memory as one of the last strongholds of Celtic resistance against the invading Anglo-Saxons at the twilight of Antiquity.
Indeed, the poem's story details the heroic defeat of the Brythonic Celts at the hand of the Angles. Mynyddog Mwynfawr, ruler of the kingdom of Gododdin in the Hen Ogledd, banded together warriors with whom he feasted and drank for a year, before the attack against the Angles at a site called Catraeth, in which they all perished against insurmountable odds.
I based the pronunciation on Jimi McRae's reading of the poem which can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=KdyrW8xY8S0
The instrumentation consists of that which is typical in Celtic regions of Great-Britain today, with a simple frame drum, a Celtic harp, a fiddle, a flute, as well as an ancient lyre the likes of which were played in the region at the time in which the poem set. The melody is written in a fashion typical of music of the region, where pentatonic passages intermingle with heptatonic passages, creating an incredibly bittersweet sound with both happiness and sadness, something I believe captures the tone of the poem: a people, the Celts, who know that their twilight is upon them, but who will nevertheless fight even knowing they will be defeated, as the sun sets on their era, and as the era of the Anglo-Saxons arrives.
Lyrics in a mixture of Old and Middle-Welsh:
Gwyr a aeth gatraeth gan wawr
Trauodynt en hed eu hovnawr
Milcant a thrychant a emdaflawr
Gwyarllyt gwynnodynt waewawr
Ef gorsaf yng gwryaf eg gwryawr
Rac gosgord mynydawc mwynvawr
English translation:
Men went to Catraeth with the dawn.
Their fears left them,
A hundred thousand and three hundred clashed together.
They stained their spears, splashed with blood,
He was at the forefront, foremost in battle,
Before the retinue of Mynyddog Mwynfawr.
