Yr Adar Gwylltion is a medieval Welsh poem with an unknown author; at least, I am taking Ffynnon at their word for its origin, as I cannot find a mention of the poem before theirs.
I first heard it from Roehind's version of Ffynnon's instrumentation, and I prefer their version.
The poem itself is stunning, an illumination of a medieval mind; I love seeing lightening flashes of enlightenment in the pre-modern mind. They feel so rare, burst of light in the dark ages, though, in reality, that's just because so little of it was preserved. Verses like this let you see how expansive the human mind has always been, imagining itself far beyond human ability in all ages and all places.
Translating it into Quenya was a spontaneous choice while bored at work one day; it was stuck in my head, I started translating the first line, then realized a good translation would be overall easy to do with Quenya's vocabulary. A really poetic translation may be beyond me; perhaps someday.
The original text in Middle Welsh.
Gwyn eu byd, yr adar gwylltion
Hwy gânt fynd y ffordd a ffynnon
Rhai tua’r mor a rhai tua’r mynydd
A d'ad adref yn ddigerydd
Gwyn fy myd, na fedrwn hedeg
Bryn a phant a goriwaered
Mynnwn wybod, er ei gwaethaf
P’le mae’r gog yn cysgu’r gaeaf
Yn y coed y mae hi’n cysgu
Ac yn yr eithin mae hi’n nythu
Yn y llwyn, tan ddail y bedw
Dyna’r fan y bydd hi’n farw
Gwyn fy myd, na fedrwn hedeg
Bryn a phant a goriwaered
Weithiau i’r môr a weithiau’r mynydd
A d’ad adref yn ddigerydd
The text in modern English. This is Ffynnon's translation; I will talk about some alternate translations of some of the words in my notes below.
Perfect their world, the wild birds
That fly by the roadway and the fountain
Sometimes to the sea, sometimes to the mountain
And come blameless home
Perfect my world, though I cannot fly
Hill and dale and fellside
I want to know, however bad
Where the cuckoo sleeps in the winter
In the wood she sleeps
And in the gorse she nests
In the bush, under birch leaves
That is the place where she will die
Perfect my world, though I cannot fly
Hill and dale and fellside
Sometimes to the sea, sometimes to the mountain
And come blameless home
My Quenya translation.
Aistana(1) ardanta i hráve aiwi
I vilir or vinge(2) ar olbar
Lillume(3) oronenna lillume váyanenna
Ar tulir mannaquente(4) már
Aistana ardanya ómu serin cemenesse(5)
Imbe ambo ar tumba ar imba(6)
Meruvan ista cé urra ná(7)
Yasse i arpaiwe(8) lore hrivesse lumba
I tauresse tanome i loris
Ar i salquesse sanomeo seris
I tussasse nu hwindeo lassi
Nu tildi telepti telumeo firis(9)
Aistana ardanya ómu serin cemenesse
Imbe ambor ar tumbar ar imbar
Lillume oronesse lillume váyanesse
Tensi tulin mannaquenta már.
A literal Engish translation of my Quenya translation.
Blessed their world, the wild birds
Who fly over sea-foam, over branches
Sometimes to a mountain, sometimes to the ocean
And come by grace home
Blessed my world, although I tarry on earth
Among hill and valley and ravine
I want to know, though it may be bad
Where the cuckoo sleeps in gloomy winter
In the woods is the place she sleeps
And in the grass of that place she rests
In the bush, under birch leaves
Under sharp silver points of heaven she dies
Blessed is my world, although I tarry on earth
Among hills and valleys and ravines
Sometimes by a mountain, sometimes by the ocean
Still I come by grace home.
1: Gwyn/aistana: Ffynnon translates 'Gwyn' into 'perfect' in modern English; I don't disagree, but I chose another path. 'Gwyn' can have a lot of meanings; one is 'white/shining'. Another is 'blessed/holy'. I feel like 'blessed' is more archaic but more accurate, and it was good for my purposes, because Quenya has a lot of adjectives that mean 'holy' or 'blessed'. I chose 'aistana' because it aliterates with 'aiwi', 'birds', and for its holy/pure connotations—its only uses in Quenya are in Tolkien's prayers to Mother Mary, and that 'free of sin' connotation applied well tot he free, blameless birds.
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2: 'Vinge' means sea-foam, sea-spray; it is not a good translation of 'ffynnon', which is translated 'fountain' above and can mean 'source, well, spring.' There are lots of Quenya words for those things, but the choices in "fynd y ffordd a ffynnon" were clearly made for poetic assonance. Quenya only has one decent verb for 'fly', 'vile', so I chose a 'v' word for the watery substance the birds are flying over.
'Olbar' meaning 'branches' was chosen to assonate with 'oronenna' (to a mountain) below; fortunately, it is also a slant-rhyme with 'már', home, which I knew would finish out the verse. Using leass-common 'váya' for 'ocean' instead of more-common 'ear' was also an alliterative choice since I was working with 'v' already.
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3: I'm not fully happy with clunky 'lillume' meaning 'sometimes' here; it adds too many syllables and its neo-quenya anyway. I may find a better way to phrase this line.
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4: "Ddigerydd" can be translated as blameless, spotless, pure, innocent; or as unharmed/unscathed. There isn't a good Quenya word meaning 'blameless' nor even 'blame', nor 'harmless' nor 'unharmed' (even 'hyanda', harm, is on shaky ground), one clunkly older word for 'innocent' (naustavilte), and I didn't like my options for pure or clean (poica?). I went instead with another word associated with Tolkien's Ave Maria translations, 'mannaquenta', meaning 'full of grace'. It has some of the 'pure' and 'blameless' connotations and, since in context it refers to Mary being full of the holy spirit, seperates the innocent birds from human concerns in an appealing way. More imporantly, it aliterates with 'már' and none of my other options did.
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5: Negation is infamously clunky in Quenya. I can translate 'I cannot fly' in a few possible ways; uin pole vilir, lán pole vile, lápolin vile, perhaps. Where you like lá or úi negation, none of them sound at all poetic. 'although I tarry on earth', ómu serin cemenesse, conveys the same message in a way more natural to Quenya.
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6: I know damn well that this is not a perfect translation of "Bryn a phant a goriwaered". That would be probably be 'ambo ar nando ar aique', with 'aique', cliff, being my best translation of 'goriwaered', 'downhill slope'. But LOOK at this line. Look at it. Imbe ambo ar tumba ar imba. Fuck off.
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7: 'Cé urra ná' is terrible. I'll figure out a better way of phrasing this line. It does literally mean 'maybe it is bad', but it's just... I'll find a better way eventually. "Gwaethaf", by the way, can mean harm, damage, worsen, deteriorate... but none of those have good Quenya equivalents anyway. I might find a version of 'cé harnas/nahtas ni' (though it may hurt me/slay me) I like.
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8: There is no Quenya for 'cuckoo', though some birds do have unique Quenya names. 'Arpaiwe' is thief 'arpo' and bird 'aiwe' together.
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9: The accurate Quenya translations for verse three were so compact I actually had to fill in a little space here. My initial translation was "I tauresse loris/ar i salquesse seris/I tussasse, nu hwindeo lassi/Tanome firuvas" (In the forest she sleeps/and in the grass she rests/in the bush, under the leaves of the birch/she will die). Making the sentences more complicated rather than less is not usually considered poetic in Quenya, which thrives on using a few compact words to say a lot, so I messed with tanome/sanome for added aliteration but the rest of the additions were description. The only change I didn't like was turning future tense 'firuvas' (she will die) into aorist tense 'firis' (she dies) but I did it for the rhyme.