“ Man as thou knowest, in his generation
Is a type of the world and of all the creation;
Difference there’s none in the manner of birth
’Twixt the lowliest hinds and the lords of the earth.
The world which the same thing as man we account
In one place is sea, in another is mount ”

“ The world to respect thee thou wilt gain,
To fear the fiend and all his train.
Of the best of portions thou choice didst make
When thou the high God to thyself didst take,
A portion which none from thy grasp can rend
Whilst the sun and the moon on their course shall wend.
p. 152When the sun grows dark and the moon turns red,
When the stars shall drop and millions dread,
When the earth shall vanish with its pomps in fire,
Thy portion still shall remain entire. ”

“ Iolo Goch, like the greater—indeed one may say the greatest Welsh poet, Dafydd ab Gwilym, used a form of verse in his odes which it is not easy to imitate or follow in English, keeping all its subtle graces and assonances. ”

“ And then, covering his face with his hands, he wept “like a child.” If one re-reads the ode in the light of this confession, one observes that there is a strong vein of personal feeling about its lines, and a certain pilgrim strain in its opening, which would lend themselves readily to Borrow’s mood and the idea, never far away from his thoughts, that in his wanderings he too was a bard doing “Clera.” ”

“ Higher, higher! is what everyone endeavours to be in the street of Pride. Give, give us a little more, says everyone in the street of Lucre. Sweet, sweet, pray give me some more of it, is the cry of everyone in the street of Pleasure.
“‘And as for tranquillity, where is it? and who obtains it? If you be a great man, flattery and envy are killing you. p. 21If you be poor, everyone is trampling upon and despising you. After having become an inventor, if you exalt your head and seek for praise, you will be called a boaster and a coxcomb. ”

“ If you go neat, you are proud; if not, a swine. If you are smooth speaking, then you are false, or a trifler without meaning. If you are rough, you are an arrogant, disagreeable devil. Behold the world that you magnify!’ said he; ‘pray take my share of it.’”
In the foregoing extract Borrow makes a few obvious errors. For instance, he turns the Welsh word “dyfeiswr” into “inventor,” whereas the sense here implies a schemer, or intriguer (the last is the rendering adopted by Mr. Gwyneddon Davies) , and the translation suffers a corresponding lapse in the same clause. ”

“ It is true that God gives unto each from his birth
Some task to perform whilst he wends upon earth,
But He gives correspondent wisdom and force
To the weight of the task, and the length of the course.
[Exit.
Poverty.
I hope there are some, who ’twixt me and the youth
Have heard this discourse, whose sole aim is the truth,
Will see and acknowledge, as homeward they plod,
Each thing is arrang’d by the wisdom of God.
p. 109THE PERISHING WORLD. [From “The Sleeping Bard,” by Elis Wynn.]
O MAN, upon this building gaze,
The mansion of the human race,
The world terrestrial see! ”

“ There were in that street myriads of such abandoned palaces, which might have been, had it not been for Pride, the resorts of the best, as of yore, places of refuge for the weak, schools of peace and of every kind of goodness; and blessings to thousands of small houses around.”
This comes from the first of the Three Dreams, that of the World; and a further quotation from the same dream-book touches what is Borrow’s high-water mark as a translator:—
“Thereupon we turned our faces from the great city of Perdition, and went up to the other little city. ”

“ In his letter, Cowell speaks of Borrow’s carelessness as a translator, and declares the very title—“Visions of the Sleeping Bard”—to be wrong; it should be, not the “Sleeping Bard,” but the “Bard Sleep.” However, in this case, Borrow’s instinct was truer than his critic’s. For “Cwsg” is used as a noun-adjective by Elis Wynn; and the latest translator of the book—Mr. Gwyneddon Davies [17] —adopts the same title precisely.
Borrow’s record as a Welsh translator would not be complete without a page or so of his version of the prose text of the same work. ”

“ If you lead a godly life and resort to the Church and the altar, you will be called a hypocrite. If you do not, then you are an infidel or a heretic. If you be merry, you will be called a buffoon. If you are silent, you will be called a morose wretch. If you follow honesty, you are nothing but a simple fool. ”

“ IOLO GOCH.
Fortune having turned against Glendower, he fought many unsuccessful battles, in which all his sons perished, bravely maintaining the cause of their father. His adherents being either slaughtered or dispirited, the Welsh Chieftain retired into concealment—but where, no mortal at the present day can assert with certainty, but it is believed that he died of grief and disappointment in the year 1415, at the house of his daughter, the wife of Sir John Scudamore, of Monington in Herefordshire. ”

“ Taliesin was a foundling, discovered in his infancy lying in a coracle, on a salmon-weir, in the domain of Elphin, a prince of North Wales, who became his patron. During his life he arrogated to himself a supernatural descent and understanding, and for at least a thousand years after his death he was regarded by the descendants of the ancient Britons in the character of a prophet or something more. The poems which he produced procured for him the title of “Bardic King;” they display much that is vigorous and original, but are disfigured by mysticism and extravagant metaphor ”

“ The account of “The Sleeping Bard” in the Bibliography, shows that the improvement in Borrow’s craftsmanship went on after 1860, in which year the book was printed at Yarmouth (a very limited edition, 250 copies at 5s. a copy) . For instance, in the poem, “Death the Great,” the seventh stanza ran originally:
“The song and dance afford, I ween,
Relief from spleen, and sorrow’s grave;
How very strange there is no dance
Nor tune of France, from Death can save.” ”

“ It remains to be said that, being Borrow, he was duly astonished at himself, and under the Sycharth poem wrote in Welsh a footnote which runs in effect: “The English translation is the work of George Borrow, an English lad of the City of Norwich, who has never been in Wales, and has never in all his life heard a word of Welsh from man or woman.”
p. 27GLENDOWER’S MANSION.
Iolo Goch was a celebrated Bard of North Wales, and flourished about the end of the fourteenth and commencement of the fifteenth century. ”

“ That neither turns lighter, nor clears a bit;
Black-grey chasuble of the air;
An endless woven clout, thou art!”
Borrow’s difficulty in attacking the Welsh of a poet so rapid and easy and light-footed, was that of a Zeppelin in pursuit of a Farman. He was over-weighted from the start. His early awkwardness in verse, his rhetoric learnt from the artificial style of the generation before him, were in his p. 15way. Iolo Goch was much nearer to him, with the admiring inventory of a chieftain’s house, than was the art of the poet of the leaves, the birch-grove and the love-tryst. ”

“ Notwithstanding the little regard paid to truth and probability in this piece, and notwithstanding its strange metaphors and obscure allusions, it displays marks of no ordinary poetic talent, and is a convincing proof that the fire and genius of the author had not deserted him at fourscore, to which advanced age he had attained when he wrote it.
Tall man, whom Harry loves but ill,
Thou’st had reverses, breath’st thou still? ”

“ The spleen away, and humour’s grave;
Why hast thou not devised, O France
Some tune and dance from Death to save?”
Here again, we see, he purges his poetic diction, and turns “I ween” into “they say.” ”

“ He knew how to get the golden epithet; his diction was bold and biblical, his vocabulary could be at times startling and Rabelaisean. Borrow’s p. 18efficiency in rendering him may be tested by a couple of passages. The first takes us to the City of Destruction and its streets:—
“‘What are those streets called,’ said I. ‘Each is called,’ he replied, ‘by the name of the princess who governs it: the first is the street of Pride, the middle one the street of Pleasure, and the nearest, the street of Lucre.’ ‘Pray, tell me,’ said I, ‘who are dwelling in these streets? ”

“ For what is there in the world so desirable, unless a man should desire deceit, and violence, and misery, and wretchedness, giddiness and distraction? Contentment and tranquillity,’ said he, ‘constitute the happiness of man ”

“ The present poem was composed some years previous to the insurrection of Glendower against Henry the Fourth, and describes with the utmost possible minuteness his place of residence at Sycharth, to which place Iolo, after receiving frequent invitations from its owner, repaired to reside in his old age.
A PROMISE has been made by me
Twice of a journey unto thee;
His promises let every man
Perform, as far as e’er he can.
Easy is done the thing that’s sweet,
And sweet this journey is and meet ”

“ Mingled with gold shall silver pour.
p. 141QUATRAINS AND STRAY STANZAS FROM “WILD WALES.” I. Chester ale, Chester ale! I could ne’er get it down,
’Tis made of ground-ivy, of dirt, and of bran,
’Tis as thick as a river below a huge town!
’Tis not lap for a dog, far less drink for a man.
II. Gone, gone are thy gates, Dinas Bran on the height!
Thy warders are blood-crows and ravens, I trow;
Now no one will wend from the field of the fight
To the fortress on high, save the raven and crow. ”

“ He was tempted to dilate on Iolo, or “Edward the Red,” because of that poet’s association with Owen Glendower, a hero in whose exploits he greatly delighted. The tribute to Owen in “Wild Wales” is, or should be, familiar enough to Borrovians. In p. 11Chapter XXIII. there is an account of the landmark which Borrow calls “Mont Glyndwr” (though I have never heard it so called in my Welsh wanderings) ; while in Chapter LXVI. a description of the other mount at Sycharth accompanies a translation of the Ode by Iolo, which in a slightly different earlier text is printed on page eight. ”

“ It need hardly be said that he was wrong in estimating Iolo’s age as “upwards of a hundred years,” when the ode was written. In other details of the poem he is more picturesque than literal; but the English copy of the Welsh sketch is in essentials near enough p. 12for all ordinary purposes; and the achievement in a boy of eighteen, living at Norwich, far from Wales, is an extraordinary one. The sort of error that he fell into was a very natural one to occur ”

“ It is remarkable that in translating these lines by Elis Wynn he is not content to get the end-rhymes only, but accepts to the full the difficulty of following the Welsh in the interned rhymes throughout—as shown by the words italicised.
In his interesting account of “George Borrow and his Circle,” Mr. Shorter quotes a letter from Professor Cowell to a Norwich correspondent, Mr. James Hooper, which betrays some disappointment over Borrow’s Welsh interest at the close of his life. Cowell had been inspired by “Wild Wales” to learn Welsh, and even nursed a wish to do so under Borrow himself. ”

“ This piece appears to have been written at the period when Glendower had nearly attained the summit of his greatness; the insurrection which he commenced in September, 1400, by sacking and burning the town of Ruthin, having hitherto sustained no check whatever. In the present poem his bard hails the appearance of the Comet as a divine prognostic of the eventual success of the Welsh Hero, and of his elevation to the throne of Britain.
’Bout the stars’ nature and their hue
Much has been said, both false and true;
They’re wondrous through their countenance—
Signs to us in the blue expanse. ”

“ He found his way to Oulton Hall one autumn day, and its master—now an old man close on eighty—opened the door in person. The ardent visitor talked to him of Ab Gwilym, but his interest was languid; and even the news that the Honourable Cymmrodorion p. 17were about to publish the poems of Iolo Goch did not rouse him. Cowell himself, it may be added, afterwards wrote an excellent appreciation of Ab Gwilym in the Transactions of the same society. ”

“ The packed lines of the cywydd, and the concreteness of the imagery, set the translator, however, a hard task. Borrow, in the “Wild Wales” version, omits the opening of the poem, whose last lines lead up to the apostrophe; but the MS. has enabled Mr. Wise to complete it in his Bibliography. More literally, the Welsh might be rendered thus:—
“Before I had gone a step of the way,
I no longer saw a place in the land:
Neither birchclad cliff, nor coast;
Neither hill’s-breast, mountain-side, nor sea.”
Then it is he turns in his humorous rage:
“Och! ”

“ And saints on high shall be.
p. 115DEATH THE GREAT. [From “The Sleeping Bard,” by Elis Wynn.]
Leave land and house we must some day,
For human sway not long doth bide;
Leave pleasures and festivities,
And pedigrees, our boast and pride. ”

“ The “streams of generosity” were those of Dafydd ab Thomas Vychan. (See “Wild Wales,” chap. lxxxviii.) —Ed.
[167] “What is hiraeth? Hiraeth is longing, the mourning, consuming feeling which one experiences for the loss of a beloved object.”—G.B.
[187] The personage who figures in the splendid forgeries of MacPherson under the name of Fingal.
[191] The Gaelic word for nobleman.
[197] Ancient bards, to whose mansion, in the clouds, the speaker hopes that his spirit will be received. ”

“ XVII. THE SATIRIST. From Gruffydd Hiraethog. He who satire loves to sing,
On himself will satire bring.
XVIII. ON GRUFFYDD HIRAETHOG. From William Lleyn. In Eden’s grove from Adam’s mouth
Upsprang a muse of noble growth;
So from thy grave, O poet wise,
Cross Consonancy’s boughs shall rise.
XIX. LLANGOLLEN ALE. (George Borrow) . Llangollen’s brown ale is with malt and hop rife ”