English translation of Carneddi sleeve and track notes

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A Sunday afternoon, and signs of autumn are already awakening in the September leaves as a reporter and photographer struggle up the stony track to a farmhouse folded into the slopes of Moel y Dyniewyd. Carneddi stands in the hills above the village of Nantmor in Eifionydd, facing out across Porthmadog Bay; it is there on that day late in the summer of 1945 that Richard (Carneddog) and Catrin Griffith, both in their eighties, are preparing to depart for the final time from the rough land and the cluster of buildings they have known so long. They are in the raw throes of grief, after the shocking loss of their son, Hywel Wyn. Hywel was found drowned in Llyn Dinas, over the hill, at the beginning of August.

Geoff Charles takes more than one photograph of the couple on that day. He takes individual portraits that feel too close up, their faces emptied like all the life from the house behind them. In the image that will imprint itself on the collective memory, he catches them as they half-turn away from his camera, the rough landscape rising in the middle distance to the ridge of Yr Arddu, both as though leaning into one another for support. 

I.

BEDDGELERT

trad.

An unusual old tune i learnt from a recording by Cass Meurig and Niall Cain. Compared with the remoteness of Nantmor, Beddgelert was the centre of local comings and goings; all the news and the hordes of tourists. Through his interests in the antiquities and culture of the area, Carneddog came to hold a huge amount of information about the village and its inhabitants; so much so that he became an invaluable source of material for any researcher into local history.

YN Y MYNYDD (in the mountain)

Lyrics: Walter S. Jones (Gwallter Llyfni, 1883-1932); Tune: IT

The rural poet and musician Gwallter Llyfni was a regular visitor at Carneddi during the final years of his life. He was utterly charmed by the place, and Carneddog and Catrin looked forward to welcoming him. 'Ar y Mynydd' was written during one of those visits, and the poem was published in 'Manion o'r Mynydd', Carneddog's column for Yr Herald Cymraeg. The story of Carneddog and Gwallter's friendship, along with an edition of their witty, warm and frank correspondence, can be found in the volume Diflanedig Fyd by Bleddyn Owen Huws.

MARCHNAD PENMORFA | TAITH I BWLLHELI (Penmorfa market | a trip to Pwllheli)

Tune: trad. | Tune: IT

While his brother, Richard, moved to Hinckley in Lincolnshire to work as an engineer, Hywel Wyn stayed home to help his parents on the farm. Hywel was a wanderer, and on fair and market days he would head off to gather interesting stories and local news for his father to include in his newspaper column. It's very likely that he would have often attended fairs and markets in Penmorfa near Porthmadog, and on the Thursday before his disappearance, Hywel went to Pwllheli.

The first tune came from the collections of Meredydd Evans and Phyllis Kinney at the National Library of Wales, and is also known as 'Croeso'r Wenynen'.

YR ADLODD (the aftergrass)

Englyn: Richard Griffith (Carneddog, 1861-1947) | Tune: IT | Tune and tribannau: IT

Carneddog's englyn, published in Yr Herald Cymraeg in late July 1945, gives us his impression - unbeknownst to him - of his last summer at Carneddi, as he looks out from the front door of his house at the hay meadows. My own lyrics, in the triban form, imagine the fields at Carneddi on a quiet evening after the harvest; an evening in early August 1945, with all, seemingly, at peace.

II.

Y CYNTAF DDYDD O AWST | MOEL Y DYNIEWYD

Tune: trad. | tune: IT

This earlier version of the popular tune 'Y Dydd Cyntaf o Awst' was lifted from the John Thomas manuscript (1752, ed. Cass Meurig), where is appears as 'The First Day of August'. It's most familiar as the melody adopted by J. Glyn Davies for his shanty, 'Flat Huw Puw'.

Moel y Dyniewyd is the rocky peak that rises from behind the Carneddi farmhouse, and which forms part of the ridge that separates Nantmor, Cwm Bychan and Beddgelert. Moel y Dyniewyd would have to be crossed if going on foot from Carneddi to Llyn Dinas, and it seems that Hywel Wyn headed in that direction when he left the house sometime during the morning of Friday, 3 August.

CAINC Y MEDELWR | CYWYDD Y DWR (the reaper’s tune | cywydd to water)

Tune: trad. | Tune and lyrics: IT

It's likely that the last person to see Hywel Wyn alive was John Jones, a reaper visiting Carneddi for the harvest. After that chance meeting at the top of the farmhouse stairs around seven o'clock in the morning, no one could find Hywel for the rest of the day.

His body was discovered in Llyn Dinas later that night. Despite the coroner's verdict of death by suicide 'in a state of mental confusion', Bleddyn Owen Huws has raised some doubts about how exactly his body ended up in the water, and has suggested based on new evidence that Hywel may have been gay or bisexual. If true, at a time when homosexual relationships were illegal, he would have been very vulnerable to ridicule, persecution, and attack.

DUGAN Y CRYTHOR DU (the chant of y crythor du)

Tune: trad. arr. IT

Y Crythor Du is a character from folk legend, about whom several stories have survived including one where he is able to keep a pack of wolves at bay by playing the crwth at them. Historian Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709) records that the Crythor Du and his servant were buried on the banks of Llyn Dinas when they both died of the cold one winter as they travelled to entertain in Beddgelert. One of Carneddog's own poems refers to the story: 'Cathl y Crythor Du' was published in his volume Ceinion y Cwm in 1891, and again in the Cerddi Eryri anthology. This is a new, mournful interpretation of an old melody found in the manuscript of Morris Edward, an Anglesey fiddler (1778).

With Hywel dead, there was no hope for Carneddog a Catrin to continue farming Carneddi. Persuaded by their surviving son, Richard, the farm was put on the market, the books and furniture dispersed, as the couple prepared to move to live with Dic and his family in Hinckley. Although it had been hoped that harpist Nansi Richards would buy the farm, a family of Londoners offered a better price. Ruth Janette Ruck wrote three popular books about her family's experiences farming at Carneddi, including Place of Stones (1961). 

III.

MAE YMA LE RHYFEDD HEBDDO (it is so strange here without him)

Poem: IT

‘Mae’r brofedigaeth fawr, sydyn a difrifol o golli Hywel Wyn wedi effeithio’n ddwys iawn arnom fel na wn sut i ysgrifennu dim. Mae yma le rhyfedd hebddo. Roedd yn garedig iawn wrthym.’ (Yr Herald Cymraeg, 13 Medi 1945)

(The great, sudden and serious loss of Hywel Wyn has affected us deeply, so that I know not how I should write anything. It is so strange here without him. He was very kind to us.’)

Carneddog wrote this concise note as he retired from the editorship of his column, 'Manion o'r Mynydd', and tried, somehow, to face starting a new life in his old age in Hinckley. The father never saw his son's body, and Carneddog and Catrin were not present at Hywel's funeral in Beddgelert. I tried to imagine how Carneddog might have greeted his son in the rawness of his grief; the far-too-familiar grief of losing a child.

RWY’N EDRYCH DROS Y BRYNIAU PELL (i’m looking across the distant hills)

Lyrics: William Williams (Pantycelyn, 1717-1791); Tune: anon., coll. Edmwnd Prys (c.1542-1623), arr. Iestyn Tyne

By using the opening line of Williams Pantycelyn's hymn as the heading above the photograph on the front page of Y Cymro for 14 September 1945, John Roberts Williams was appealing to the religion, culture and existential anxieties of Welsh-speaking Wales. He knew that the image represented far more than the heartbreaking story of its characters, and the wistful words of the hymn work on both a human and divine level, as Carneddog and Catrin face the death of their son, and their own old age and mortality.

The melody is a variation on one of the tunes published in Edmwnd Prys' Salmau Cân (1621), most commonly known as 'St. Mary's', but also collected under several other names. 

GALARGAN CATRIN (Catrin’s lament)

Lyrics: IT / Tune: ‘Mae’r ddaear yn glasu’, trad.

‘Dydd Nadolig y llynedd mi fedrais grio am y tro cyntaf ar ol colli Hywel a charedigrwydd y Nadolig a dorodd yr argae. Roedd 2 flynedd o ryfel oer ai golli yntau fel y darfu i ni wneud wedi cloi fy nagrau a theimlwn fel dynes mewn breuddwyd.’ (Catrin Griffith mewn llythyr at J. W. Jones, 1949)

(‘On Christmas Day last year I was able to weep for the first time since losing Hywel, and it was the kindness of Christmas that broke the dam. 2 years of cold war and losing him as we did had locked up my tears and I felt like a woman in a dream.’ (Catrin Griffith, writing to J. W. Jones in 1949))

One by one, Catrin lost her children. Mary Ceridwen (October 1889-March 1890), Morris Powell (April 1891-January 1892) and Catherine Mary Gwerful (September 1907-March 1908) all died in infancy; and the second son, Cadwaladr Owen, or Wallie (August 1893-April 1909) passed away in his teens. Hywel Wyn and Richard Morris where the only two to survive into adulthood. These blows affected her heavily, as did the loss of Hywel in 1945.

Catrin's words in her letter, where she speaks in 1949 of finally being able to weep for Hywel, are some of the most heartbreaking I've ever read, and trying to take in the breadth of what she must have been feeling is impossible. I tried in some way to expand the image around what she wrote, pairing the tri-thrawiadau with a familiar melody: that of the summer carol, 'Mae'r Ddaear yn Glasu'. 

FY NYMUNIADAU (my wishes)

Lyrics: Walter S. Jones (Gwallter Llyfni, 1883-1932); Tune 1: IT | Tune 2: ‘Cysur’, Thomas Price (1809-1892), arr. Iestyn Tyne

Carneddog died in 1947. He was buried back in Beddgelert, and it was there that Catrin was placed to rest, too, some years later; both in the same grave as the children who went before them.

'Fy Nymuniadau' was Gwallter Llyfni's final poem, composed on his deathbed in 1932 and first published by Carneddog in 'Manion o'r Mynydd' on 23 May that year. I felt that the hymn tune 'Cysur', one of the first tunes i ever learnt to play on the fiddle, answered Gwallter's request for a simple, happy hymn perfectly. There's a lovely lightness to Gwallter's verses, and I'd like to think that some of his wishes could have been applied to the old couple as they returned to their own land for the final time.