A small insight into the Welsh national psychology
just in passing. The chorus of the Welsh national anthem contains the line:
"Tra môr yn fur i'r bur hoff bau"
which translates roughly as "For as long as the sea is a wall for the pure and beloved country..."
A more or less unobjectionable sentiment, as an example of the sort of guff that is found in nearly every national anthem (apart from the Spanish one[1]). However, it would probably do better as part of the national anthem of an island nation, for whom the sea did indeed stand as an impregnable wall round the pure and beloved homeland. For a country which has a long land frontier with a bigger and militarily stronger neighbour, which neighbour did in fact conquer it five hundred years ago and has ruled it ever since, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. It's rather as if Vichy France had a national anthem with a verse in praise of the Maginot Line.
[1] The situation with the Spanish national anthem is quite hilarious, in case anyone doesn't know. "La Marcha Real" didn't have any words in the days when countries didn't really need them. Then Franco commissioned a set of lyrics for it to drag Spain into the modern age. They scrapped those lyrics after he died, and presumably anticipated writing some new ones. However, ever since 1975 Spain has steadily been on its way to becoming one of the most federal countries in Europe, and these days it is more or less impossible to write a Spanish national anthem that doesn't end up pissing off the Catalans, Basques, Galicians, etc etc. So patriotic drunk Spanish people have the choice of humming, whistling or learning an instrument. Nobody seems to care very much except the Olympic committee.
Update! According to Wikipedia, there are two more verses I hadn't heard of! And the final one basically admits that we're not actually an independent country and tries to weasel out of this rather damning revelation by changing the subject quickly to the Welsh language. And thus was the basis of Plaid Cymru politics born.
Actually drunk Spanish patriots have (I believe) a range of songs to sing, none of which would have displeased the late dictator.
ReplyDeleteIs the Russian anthem still wordless?
Is it meant that the Wall is keeping invaders out, or is it keeping the Welsh in?
ReplyDelete"If it weren't for that damned sea, we'd have gotten away from those damned Englishmen."
Welsh must be a very compact language.
ReplyDeleteNot compact so much as rich in monosyllables (not that I'd ever noticed before). There are, after all, nine words in the phrase Tra mor yn fur i'r bur hoff bau, which is one more than "Die Welt is alles das der Fall ist", for example.
ReplyDeleteThe only real oddity there is 'yn', which is a kind of all-purpose "stick these two words together grammatically" particle. You can't translate "tra mor yn fur" into English without adding a verb - "while [there is] sea as [a] wall", roughly. (There's no indefinite article in Welsh, incidentally.) But the last five words go into English word for word - "to the pure beloved country", more or less.
(Confession: I learned Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau phonetically, getting on for 40 years ago, and have no idea what most of it is about. Thank God for online dictionaries.)
Yn is the copula in Welsh if I have my terminology right (Yw is the identity copula).
ReplyDeleteThinking about it, the anthem also has "Its splendid manly warriors were patriots who shed their blood for freedom", which also looks like it would require a footnote to the effect that they lost
Is the Russian anthem still wordless?
ReplyDeleteNope, they've gone back to the old Soviet tune, with new non-communist words. (ie God comes up a couple of times and the Party of Lenin - let alone Stalin - is no longer apparently leading us to the Triumph of Communism)
Perhaps the Spanish can borrow the Dutch national anthem, which ends with the words " I have always been a loyal subject of the king of Spain"
ReplyDelete