Having heard so much from Leisa Gwenllian about Te yn y Grug in the lead up to the Eisteddfod this year, I couldn’t resist buying a copy and having a go at reading it.
It’s been quite a challenge. It’s taken several months, lots of delving through the dictionary, lots of detective work to try to unravel the meaning of untranslatable idioms and sayings, lots of getting used to what I assume is a hen fashiwn, sir caernarfon way of saying/writing things. But I’ve done it! I’ve read all eight stories. And I have some comments / questions.
First of all, it helped enormously to have heard so much about it already from Leisa. That gave me a leg up to start to make sense of what was going on. And Winni Finni Hadog is indeed a wonderful character - if a bit scary at times!
But there were a couple of things that Leisa talked about in Beca a’i phobl about that I couldn’t match with anything in the stories. First was the link between the cat drowning and Becw’s mam being pregnant again. And the second was Mr Huws stealing from the missionary box. Did I miss something, or were those things that the creators of the stage version added for the show? (@beca-brown, perhaps you could ask Leisa for me?)
Secondly, it fascinated me that Kate Roberts was writing " 'r ydw i" " 'r oedd" or even “mi’r oedd” rather than “roedd” etc - suggesting that something was evolving from “mi yr oedd”… ? Is that a local / historical peculiarity? An individual peculiarity of Kate Roberts? @garethrking, any idea?
Finally, does anyone know what is happening about S4C showing the stage production? Have I missed it? If not, is there any news about when it might be on?
Hi Catriona, have been meaning to post about this - I received an email last week saying that Te yn y Grug the stage show is to be broadcast on the 3rd of January. The CD of songs from the show is on sale (sung by the composer, Al Lewis, with the show’s chorus as backing), and Cân Begw, the first single released a week or so ago got track of the week on Radio Cymru - I’ll go searching for a link now. I’ll also answer your post more fully later! Well done you for having a stab at Kate, so to speak!
I have certainly heard Mi roedd sometimes in speech instead of Mi oedd, so I expect it’s NOT just a peculiarity of Kate. But one also be careful with writing - I have to say that Rydw i sounds awfully unnatural to very many native speakers (regularly mocked in my hearing when I was in both the Land of Gog and in the Ceredigion sticks in the 80s and 90s), and Roedd, while fine, is less common on the ground than Oedd, despite what some grammars and courses (not mine!) claim to the contrary.
Not entirely, @garethrking. But I think that’s because I didn’t explain myself clearly.
I know you sometimes see “rydw i” or “roedd hi” in writing today - and that “rydw i” in particular is not now used in normal speech.
My point was that, the way Kate Roberts is writing her dialogue in particular suggests that these started off being said as separate words: “yr ydw i” becoming " 'r ydw i" and “yr oedd hi” becoming " 'r oedd hi". Then at some point (I was guessing) the grammarians tried to pin that down as “rydw i” and “roedd hi” - but in natural speech the redundant “yr” just got dropped altogether.
I just wondered if that was a possible evolution - given that I’d never seen it written that way before. I haven’t got any other writing contemporary to Kate Roberts’ to compare it to. So maybe it’s just an oddity of hers and I’m barking up the wrong tree.
The link between the drowning of the cat and the pregnancy is that the family couldn’t afford to feed both the cat and a new child. That was also the reason for the theft from the missionaries box. Both things are in the novel.
Oh I see what you mean now @Catriona - yes, I think that is exactly what happened here. The y/yr was a simple affirmative particle (much like fe and mi these days), and it gradually dropped, except in the present and imperfect of bod, so LitWelsh y mae and yr oedd. Later with Cymraeg Byw the grammarians decided to tidy things up and came up with rydw i and roeddwn i and suchlike, none of which are very much like real spontaneous speech these days, certainly in my experience - you’re far more likely to hear dw i (or even wi in the S) and o’n i for those.
Oh, dear. So I have missed the references completely, even though, as Leisa had talked about them, I was looking out for them.
In the first story, I can see Becw’s dad telling her not to make a fuss - because what if she had lost her mam? Which Becw is unimpressed by, because Sgiatan is always comforting and her mam only sometimes. And then her mam says to her dad, I told you to think twice before putting the cat in a bucket, which is how Becw knows it was her dad that did it. And of course it’s obvious they are poor and later in the book there are more, younger children. But I didn’t find anything more explicit than that.
And the only reference I found to Mistar Huws was in the second story when Robin talks about seeing him pacing back and forth on the banks of the lake, muttering to himself. When Winni makes her abortive attempt to escape to London, she talks a lot about the hypocrisy of the chapel folk, but again nothing I spotted about stealing from the missionary box.
One other thing I meant to ask you about, @beca-brown. In the last story, when they go up the mountain to take food to Nanw Sion, Rhys gets confused because his mam said that “Mae hi’n dop iawn arnoch chi” - meaning, I think (according to the Geriadur Pryfysgol) that she is very hard up. But Rhys thinks it means she has a spinning top. And that made me think back to your interviewee who lived in a place called Dop, meaning lottery. And I wondered if there could be a connection? A spinning top being like a spin of the wheel or a throw of the dice, meaning (in the sense in the story) that life was really precarious. But also standing for a game of hazard, like the lottery in Dop?
I am probably over-reaching here, but I am fascinated by connections like this.
I think that the connection between the pregnancy and the drowning of the cat is more subtle in the book than the show. I just asked Leisa about the missionary box and she says it’s Mrs Huws that steals in the show, but she thinks it might be more of a wanting to steal in the book. The message there is that Mr and Mrs Huws were seen as ‘posh’ because of their status in the community but were actually very poor. They were constantly collecting for the less fortunate and that’s where temptation would strike.
Re ‘Mae hi’n dop arnoch chi’, yes that means being hard up. The farm name you refer to is Dob, meaning land lottery, and I have no idea where that word comes from! It’s not impossible that there’s a connection…
Finally had a chance to watch the S4C broadcast of the show all the way through. I was absolutely wonderful. So many congratulations to the three young stars!
Just as listening to Leisa helped me to understand the book, having read the book certainly helped me to understand what was going on in the show. I recognised whole conversations that came straight from the book, and could pick up on other situations. (I am terrible at understanding the lyrics of songs even in English, so having that basic idea of what was going on really helped.)
And I could certainly see why Leisa called the mountain set ‘yn eitha perygl’. Leaping over those barriers in long skirts and clogs was quite a challenge.
Thank you to Leisa and to you, @beca-brown, for making me aware of this wonderful piece.
Hi there - so glad you enjoyed it and benefited from the series. I’m also very impressed that you tacked the original Kate!
I’m doing a final Sgwrs with Leisa on her take on how it came over on tv, and what she and Celyn and Glain are doing now. That will be up tomorrow, hopefully.
