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gjrk 370 posts |
Aug 04, 2008, 11:49
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I have a Faber edition, I think. I know that poem is in it though and I'll have to have a look at it this evening. What got me most this time (in the Museum) was some bloody gruesome Mayan reliefs of kings and queens doing blood-letting rituals on themselves. Yikes. Also a wonderful flesh-hook, beside a cauldron, in the British/Irish prehistory section - decorated with perched ravens and swans. I'll keep an eye out for anything else suitable in Irish epic but its mostly brughs and fairy mounds I'm afraid.
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unbelievable 16 posts |
Aug 04, 2008, 17:01
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Littlestone, Is this the thread you created, What did you do it for, Is this how history has been written, by those who create the history. Is this all said of megaliths, Or has some history been re-written, What did you do it for, Is this how knowledge is forgotten. Are stones just stones, Why did they place them there, Is knowledge in the stones, Or have some been removed. Unbelievable
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Littlestone 5386 posts |
Edited Aug 05, 2008, 08:33
Aug 04, 2008, 20:22
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I have a Faber edition, I think. I know that poem is in it though and I'll have to have a look at it this evening. The Michael Alexander rendering of the poem into modern English is well worth reading g. A few more indications that the poet is describing Bath and not Stonehenge is the reference to 'red stone'. The way the minerals in the hot spring have coloured the conduits red is quite startling when you first see it. Also, the reference to mortar as in, ...rime on mortar. and, ...bound bravely the wallbase with iron, a wonder. Iron at Stonehenge? But iron at Bath certainly. What perhaps clinches it is the line, ...red arch twisteth tiles... I'm sure the Anglo-Saxons knew the difference between arches and lintels (their powers of description, for example, in the Battle of Maldon poem would put a modern war correspondent to shame) and this ...red arch twisteth tiles... is exactly what you an see at Bath today.
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gjrk 370 posts |
Aug 05, 2008, 12:28
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I had a read of that at home last night - it turned out to be someone called Richard Hamer as translator. It was strange experience, perhaps like looking at your reflection in a mirror with an unusual frame; the picture is there but you are also aware of what surrounds it. I know that its almost a cliché to say that every age will see the past through their own filter but this was certainly one of those examples - heroes and mead-halls and such - and fascinating; looking at a relic that's looking at a relic. Thanks LS. I'll have to re-tackle some of the rest of them now ;)
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Littlestone 5386 posts |
Edited Aug 05, 2008, 15:45
Aug 05, 2008, 15:18
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...looking at a relic that's looking at a relic. I like that - hadn't thought about it in that way before :-) Remember first coming across The Ruin some forty years ago (talk about relics ;-) while wandering round a bookshop in central Kyoto - a bookshop that had an excellent English literature section. Fortunately it was Michael Alexander's book that I picked up that day, and it sparked and interest in Anglo-Saxon culture that's stayed with me ever since; his renderings of this and other Anglo-Saxon poems still remain my favourite out of all the many 'translations' now available; in fact I'd go as far as to say that his Beowulf is even better than Seamus Heaney's - and that takes some beating! Michael Alexander has this to say about The Ruin - "The description of a deserted Roman city, written on two leaves badly scarred by fire, may well stand at the gate of a selection Anglo-Saxon poems. The Romans had held this province for four centuries before the Angles came; and they had been gone three centuries when this poem was written. It was to be another three hundred years before the Normans reintroduced the art of massive construction in stone to these islands. The Anglo-Saxons usually referred to Roman ruins as 'the work of giants'. "It is probable that the city of the poem is Aquae Sulis, the Roman Bath, and we may imagine the anonymous author walking about the overgrown streets... If we wish to tie in this unique poem to the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature, we may think of it as the first of many English meditations on old stones."* How true, and I hope this thread has gone a little way to illustrate what a wealth of poems we have in English on the theme of 'old stones'. The following (and thanks to moss for sending me this about a year ago) is an excellent website for viewing The Ruin, and other Anglo-Saxon poems, in their original Old English - http://www.aspp.ca/cgi-bin/transform.cgi?file=The-Ruin.xml There are a couple of renderings of the poem on that website into modern English but unfortunately not the one by Michael Alexander. The Ruin has also been mentioned on TMA at least once before under a separate thread but I'm damned if I can find it - eek! it might even be somewhere on this thread! * The Earliest English Poems by Michael Alexander. ISBN 0-14-044594-3. Page 1. PS This sub-thread is beginning to drift into the medieval, so unless it can be shown that there's a strong link between Stonehenge and the Anglo-Saxon poem The Ruin it might be best to draw a line under it here.
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unbelievable 16 posts |
Aug 05, 2008, 17:37
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Tall and silent is the henge of all, It's resident crows say" caw,caw,caw", Little moles dig so deep, amongst the flint, They say," my paws are sore,sore,sore", The sign say's shut at the henge of all, Pay your money or you can't enter, But I am poor, poor , poor say's he. But he can see, what they can't see, Around the henge of all, And if all could see what's at the henge of all, Then same as the crows, All would say, cor,cor, cor. Unbelievable
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unbelievable 16 posts |
Aug 05, 2008, 21:29
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1C7wtCNGHQ Silence is golden, people follow like sheep. Totally, unbelievable
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unbelievable 16 posts |
Aug 05, 2008, 21:38
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unbelievable wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1C7wtCNGHQ Silence is golden, people follow like sheep. Totally, unbelievable interesting, a mishap? If Ican't alter the above, WHO can? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMEw3ZQuYc unbelievable
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moss 2897 posts |
Edited Aug 10, 2008, 08:07
Aug 10, 2008, 08:04
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This impassioned poem/prose written by someone unknown, was written to encourage faltering spirits as the relentless construction of the motorway through the heartland of Tara continues apace........ Tara remains. Skryne remains. The Gabhra River remains. The spirit of that land remains. And so long as either of those remain, we FIGHT for it. Whether by word or by action. Whether you choose to do it by intellect, or by magick. By fact or by faith. We FIGHT for it. Because it is all worth FIGHTING for. Our ancestors didnae' fight for the freedom of this land and its people, only to have us lay down in the wake of another kind of tyrrany. It has been said by a woman to "Never doubt that a small, determined group of individuals can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever really has." I, for one, will not give up. And I am but a descendant of the Isle. I am still her child. One of millions. I refuse to give up. What say the rest of you? Anon
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Littlestone 5386 posts |
Aug 10, 2008, 20:42
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moss wrote: This impassioned poem/prose written by someone unknown, was written to encourage faltering spirits as the relentless construction of the motorway through the heartland of Tara continues apace........ Tara remains. Skryne remains. The Gabhra River remains. The spirit of that land remains. And so long as either of those remain, we FIGHT for it. Whether by word or by action. Whether you choose to do it by intellect, or by magick. By fact or by faith. We FIGHT for it. Because it is all worth FIGHTING for. Our ancestors didnae' fight for the freedom of this land and its people, only to have us lay down in the wake of another kind of tyrrany. It has been said by a woman to "Never doubt that a small, determined group of individuals can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever really has." I, for one, will not give up. And I am but a descendant of the Isle. I am still her child. One of millions. I refuse to give up. What say the rest of you? Anon Thank you for posting that moss. Something in a similar vein in day or two on Stonehenge...
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