Let's Get the Pluck Out of Here
My thanks to Anonymous for his welcome "professorial" comments regarding the Welsh crwth, pictured here. (Anonymous, by the way, is arguably the author of more quotes and aphorisms than anyone else in the world. It was he, for instance, who gave us, "experience is the best teacher, too bad the learning process takes so long.") I'd only correct one thing, the tuning he refers to harkens back to before the advent of standardized notation, when it was every man for himself. It still is, to an extent. Nowadays, as one can find out in my book Crwthing For Dummies (known to some as Crwthing For a Bruithing), there are as many tunings as crwth players (or crythors in Welsh), seven at last count, three of them on the run. Wikipedia also has this wrong, as well as their assertion that the crwth was not, as I said, a favorite instrument of medieval bards. I have documentation to prove it was. Incidentally, I deeply resent the old Welsh joke, "Er iddo ymledu i sawl yug ngogledd-prllewin ewrop roedd y crwth yn offeryn nodweddiadol a ddyfeiswyd," which translates as "What's the difference between a crwth and a trampoline? You take your shoes off to jump on the trampoline."
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:20 AM
13 Comments:
Mr. Croother, this is Welsh Anonymous responding. I cannot be responsible for all the other anony-mice who choose to leave their tracks in these cyber halls --perhaps we should take numbers as they do in New York delicatessens-- but as for the statement that the tuning of the crwth goes “back to before the advent of standardized notation, when it was every man for himself,” I can only add that here in Aberdaugleddyf it has always been every man and woman for them-self. It was General DeGualle (of France) who once said “how can you govern a nation that has over 200 cheeses?” Had he been Welsh he might have asked “and how can you live in a country where you have seven different crwth tunings?” But we do, we do, which reminds me of yet another old Welsh saying “ac ynghylch y kleddyf yddoed gwersev yn ysgrivenedic o lythyr eurait nit amgen” which loosely translated would be “a cat has nine lives, but seven crwths with seven different tunings sounds like all of them in heat on a summer night.” Hey anony nony, Hey anony nony, Hey anony no!
(((hahahahaha))) Hilarious commentary you two! Just love it. Anon... one thing... you aren't by any chance related to Il Prof are you? ;-D
As with Jean, wondering who anon is? Also very weird Welsh spelling? Not real familar with it but thought it was somewhat similar to Gaelic, could be wrong of course.
I love the "Crwthing For a Bruithing"... so funny!
Oooh, I'm glad you picked up on that, Jean. I liked it too. Lee and Jean, I hesitate to press Anonymouse for further details about his identity. I suspect there are folks in Aberdaugleddy who see him everyday buying brie at the local grocery who know nothing about him. By the way, Lee, regarding the Welsh spellings, nobody here is ever wrong, only thoroughly confused. It's part of our mission statement.
As Mr. Croother so rightly pointed out, there are at least seven different ways to tune a crwth, and I might add even more ways to spell our language. Here in Aberdaugleddyf during the annual Crwth Festival (July 27th-Agust 3rd), crowthers and poets from all over the nation gather to honor our ancient music and poetry. As Welsh began, as do all great means of communication, as a spoken language it was only after many centuries that someone thought to write it down. Unfortunately, that inspiration occurred about the time of the typewriter. Because Wales has always been a poor country, very few of our poets could afford vowels, therefore we have always had an irregularity of spelling, even to this day. My father who was a great bard in the ancient tradition, used to say “judge a man by his consonants and let the i, e, o, u’s take care of themselves.”
” and let the i, e, o, u’s take care of themselves.”
P.S. The reason my father did not say “let the a, e, i, o, u’s take care of themselves” is that we were so poor that no one in our village had ever heard of an “a”. When I was old enough to leave home I saved my pennies for a year and finally bought one. I have it under lock and key in my possession to this day
First of all, I'm curious, are you the same Anonymous who rote, "love and passing gas can't be hid?" Just wondering.
It must be a momentary lapse, Anon, due to the Celtic twilight, I presume, but you've forgotten those ubiquitous Welsh vowels, w and y. I remember back in grade school we were taught the vowels were "a, e, i, o, and u, and sometimes y and w." At the time I thought the teachers were crazy, until I found out I had one of these Welsh vowels in my name.
“First of all, I'm curious, are you the same Anonymous who rote, "love and passing gas can't be hid?" Just wondering.”<
Mr. Croother, as I’ve tried to explain in a previous post I can not be held responsible for all remarks posted here by anonymice. No, I did not say that , "love and passing gas can't be hid." As a Welshman, I find comparing the love between man and woman to flatulence to be deeply offensive not only to my taste but to my smell.
Oh, come on now, Anon, love between a man and a woman isn't all that bad.
O-kaaaay... moving right along and changing the topic from bowels back to vowels... ;-/ (((chuckles)))
Anon... one of the reasons you didn't have an "a" when you were growing up might have been that the errant "a" was inadvertently sent to Australia on the first or second fleet (not sure which one) and now resides happily in our language as "aaaa?" with a rising inflection in the voice. But these days it's spelled "eh?" for short.
As for the rest of them... the vowels I mean... they have not faired well either I'm afraid... having been completely flattened and wiped out over the past two centuries of occupation on this wide brown land.
And you might like to know... your consonants are over here too... they were dropped off with the first dispatch of convicts... ancestors of whom have continued to drop them each and every day since then! I can post them back if you like... air mail this time?
Jean, the history of your great country is well known to me. Although it is an accepted fact that Australia was first populated by convicts transported to the penal institutions of New South Wales, few historians have ever acknowledged how much the Welsh --who manned these places-- influenced the unique way you pronounce English. If you listen carefully to your vowels and consonants, as you obviously do, can you not hear the painful dronings of our crwth?
“but you've forgotten those ubiquitous Welsh vowels, w and y. I remember back in grade school we were taught the vowels were "a, e, i, o, and u, and sometimes y and w."
Yes, it’s true that some deluded phonologists consider “w” and “y” to be vowels, but as these sounds can also be used as consonants we Welsh say the hell with them. Here in our verdant countryside we like our consonants to be distinctly masculine and vowels deeply feminine. We have very little use for transvestites, those cross-dressers of sound that have so polluted the music of other languages. May I remind you, Mr. Croother, that the moment you attempt to form a “w” or “y” you are forced to put you lips together, as in kissing --an indecent gesture no decent Welshmen would dare perform before being married.
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