["A plague on all the girls of the parish! A number of poets have experimented with using cynghanedd in English-language verse, for instance Gerard Manley Hopkins. Probably the most famous part of her work today is her erotic poetry, especially Cywydd y Cedor ("Poem to the Vagina"), a poem praising the vulva. Paradoxically, though, Mechain’s style was often intensely conventional and her poetry regularly religious. Nowadays, a quick Google of her name leads you to several titillating-titled translations of what’s easily her most notorious poem: “Cywydd y cedor.” Or, to non-Welsh speakers, “Poem to the vagina.” While “‘vulva’ would be a slightly more accurate translation… I rejected that because [it] for me at least, has a slightly clinical ring to it,” Gramich tells me. I Lywelyn ap Gutun / To Llywelyn ap Gutun; 6.
All consonants surrounding the main stressed vowel before the caesura must be repeated after it in the same order. Wit and Mirth Pills to Purge Melancholy (1714) - The Jack Horntip She married John ap Llywelyn Fychan and had at least one child, a daughter named Mawd.[3]. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), 11 Famous Writers on the Genius and Influence of Shirley Jackson. But while her poems, which Gramich believes “undoubtedly have a serious feminist undertone and purpose,” hold a not-insignificant amount of relevance today (which begs the only slightly facetious question: are women’s rights still on a par with the Middle Ages? Yes, please. The phrase “common-or-garden dick” in a medieval poem? Suppression of women’s voices? Exactly as in cynghanedd groes, except that there are consonants at the beginning of the second half of the line which are not present in the series of 'echoed' consonants. Some of Dylan Thomas's work is also influenced by cynghanedd. "Lovely bush, God save it. Nowadays, a quick Google of her name leads you to several titillating-titled translations of what’s easily her most notorious poem: “Cywydd y cedor.” Or, to non-Welsh speakers, “Poem to the vagina.” While “‘vulva’ would be a slightly more accurate translation… It will be noticed that the ⟨n⟩ at the end of the first half plays no part in the cynghanedd: the line-final word iâ instead ends in a vowel; if this word also ended in an ⟨n⟩, there would be generic rhyme between the two words, which is not permitted in cynghanedd.
I wragedd eiddigus / To jealous wives; 5. Rather, she “was very much part of the mainstream and adept at the (very complicated) demands of strict metre poetry.
Take “To jealous wives,” in which she talks about “the love of good, big cocks … All these Mr Bigs are after me, desperate for a lay”; or the erotic “A lad beside the bush,” a concise expression of sexual desire. ", She actively participated in the poetic culture of her day.
Learn how and when to remove this template message, A more thorough introduction to Welsh poetic forms, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cynghanedd&oldid=970356940, Articles lacking in-text citations from July 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, For an example of a poem in English using, This page was last edited on 30 July 2020, at 20:42. The 16 th and 17 th centuries Anonymous: Coed Glyn Cynon/The Woods of Cynon Richard Davies: Wit and Mirth Or, Pills to Purge Melancholy by lini, under 43. The vowels other than those under the main stresses may be of any kind. Roedd Gwerful yn sylwedydd craff ar gymdeithas ganoloesol. Or, perhaps it was because, according to Katie Gramich, the editor and translator of The Works of Gwerful Mechain, a recently released collection of her extant (and a handful of assumed) poems, “Her work has, I believe, been deliberately suppressed by male Welsh scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries because it contains erotic and indecent poetry.”. [1], Her father was Hywel Fychan of Mechain in Powys,[2] her mother was named Gwenhwyfar, and she had at least four siblings (three brothers and a sister). Rebecca Solnit on Black Swans, Slim Chances, and the 2020 Presidential Election, Andrew Solomon on Mental Health Amid the Pandemic, Tana French Talks Westerns, Folklore, and The Comfort of Crime Fiction, How to Gracefully Subject Your Detectives to the Vicissitudes of Time, Erskine Childers: Gentleman, Spy Novelist, and Gunrunner for the IRA. Little is known of her life, but it is generally accepted that she was a descendant of a noble family from Llanfechain. After all, in mainstream circles, medieval lit is rarely considered cool; rarely conceptualized as relevant; rarely something most readers would be even remotely interested in reading. To reach your breast bone: In frustration that will be familiar to so many people with vaginas, Mechain bemoans men for “ignoring the best bit, silly sod … The place I love, the place I bless / The hidden quim beneath the dress.” Quite.
Though of ancient origin, cynghanedd and variations of it are still used today by many Welsh-language poets. "], (Words beginning with ⟨h⟩ are treated as beginning with a vowel.).
Here the consonant sequence {Rh Ch Dd [stress]} is repeated with different stressed vowels (short ⟨e⟩ and long ⟨â⟩). Cywydd y Cedor ("Poem to the Vagina"): English translation (archived) by Dafydd Johnston I'w gŵr am ei churo ("To her husband for beating her"): English translation by A.M. Juster This article about a poet from the United Kingdom is a stub . Of course, much of this owes to Gramich’s excellent eye for a great free verse translation. In Welsh-language poetry, cynghanedd (Welsh pronunciation: [kəŋˈhaneð], literally "harmony") is the basic concept of sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme. 1460–1502), is the only female medieval Welsh poet from whom a substantial body of work is known to have survived.
Medieval literature is so dreary, right? In fact, her body of work not only eschews the idea of Wales being a country of male poets, it’s dominated by what Gramich calls “playfully erotic poems about the female body and sexual desire,” as well as sharp retorts to male contemporaries, such as Dafydd Llwyd (presumed by some to be her lover). Yes, please. Because if Mechain was anything, she was overtly talented, “confident in her own craft and opinions.” Not only was she entirely capable of mastering the poetic conventions of the day—as Gramich is careful to note in her introduction “when she wished to write conventionally and “correctly,” she was perfectly able to do so”—she “enthusiastically” undermined them too. Dyma gerdd sy’n ceryddu’i chymheiriaid gwryw am ganu clodydd corff menyw o’r corun i’r sawdl tra byddan nhw’n anwybyddu un nodwedd gêl. Liberty and Loyalty