The Spoils of Annwn: An Early Arthurian Poem

Abstract

In Breuddwyd Rhonabwy we read: “Behold, bards came and recited verses before Arthur, and no man understood those verses … save that they were in Arthur's praise.” These words fittingly describe a poem (No. xxx) in the thirteenth-century Book of Taliesin, entitled Preiddeu Annwn, which would seem to mean “The Spoils (i.e. plunder) of the Other World.” Sharon Turner, who was the first to offer a translation, frankly confessed that the Welsh scholars of his day did not profess to understand above one half of any of the Taliesin poems. He asserted—not without reason—that in the particular verses under discussion “all connection of thought seems to have been studiously avoided”; and in conclusion he exclaimed, “Could Lycophron or the Sybils, or any ancient oracle, be more elaborately incomprehensible?”

Radical cultural specificity in translation

“…In discussing his translation and the difficulties of this poem, Davis quoted the fifth line of the stanza, and added his own commentary: "'They do not know about the speckled ox with its thick neck-rings'… and neither do we." 1 Even the rigorous analysis of other literary materials (across Welsh, Old Irish, French, and Latin) and intertextual associations carried out by Loomis (1941) do not help with this; indeed, Loomis only translates and annotates the first four stanzas. Of the rest, he remarks that "in the present state of our knowledge it does not seem possible to offer any satisfactory translation of the last three of the seven stanzas, or to hazard any remarks as to their content 1 The line that Davis presents as his source text is as follows:…”