grainne mhaol comes o'er the sea

One of these things is not like the others.

Lady Charlotte Guest was a wealthy noblewoman in Wales in the nineteenth century, as well as the wife of an industrialist. Upon her husband's death, she took over his work, and taught herself to read medieval Welsh. She's most famous for translating a collection of stories from the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest, four of which are called the branches of the Mabinogi. Lady Charlotte Guest titled her translation the Mabinogion, as "on" is an ending that can be used to make a word plural in Welsh. (It's not the only way though! Welsh has a lot of ways to pluralize words and you kind of just get a feel for which one is correct as you encounter them)

It turns out that this is not the correct pluralization of "Mabinogi", and we still aren't totally certain what the word means. Many say it can be approximated by "Boyhood Tales", as "mab" is the word for "son". A lot of people fault Guest for mis-pluralizing the word, but it was a very reasonable assumption based on the information she had, and "Mabinogion" is the title that endures to this day because her translation was the first.

BUT. But. That being said, perspective: She was working in the 19th century, without any of the resources that we have now, and the scope of her project was MASSIVE. To put it into perspective: As a Celticist who’s trained intensively for the last two years in Middle Welsh, with a fully prepared edition, glossary, and editor’s notes in front of me, I would do very well to get approximately 20 lines out of around..........600 or so of Pwyll done per week. Note: That is only the FIRST BRANCH of the Mabinogi. I had to do fifty lines of Brut y Brenhined this last week, relatively short because it was a two-column page, again, WITH a full edition, glossary, and notes, and that nearly killed me. I was working on overdrive for about three days to get it done, getting about 4-6 hours of sleep in 48 hours. Middle Welsh is actually quite meditative for me, most of the time, when my mind is in it, but it can be tedious, and parts of it don’t lend themselves well to English syntax. It’s the sort of thing I can do for about an hour or two and then have had enough for the week.

That’s not including other resources that are generally considered essential to studying Middle Welsh, like modern digitization of manuscripts, Simon Evans’ A Grammar of Middle Welsh, without any of our modern online dictionaries or glossaries that make dealing with the inconsistent orthography somewhat livable, without formally studying it. And she did that shit. For the ENTIRE MABINOGI, as well as a few other texts she lumped in. Honestly, a superhuman effort. I’m willing to say that I couldn’t do it. And, frankly, I’m not sure how many modern Celticists could, either. Not because we’re not good at our jobs, but because the landscape has changed SO MUCH since that time. 

I feel like there’s this Thing that happens in Celtic studies in particular where we get SO HYPED UP on reminding people that THESE SOURCES ARE VERY OLD, DON’T USE THEM, that we kind of....gloss over exactly how monumental they were at the time. And we pat ourselves on the shoulders because we’re Real Scholars, we have better sources than people who would rely on *Charlotte Guest.*  It’s EASY for us to talk shit, but could we have done the same in the exact same circumstances? And, you know what? How many people got into Welsh studies because of her translation? How many people went on to read the Mabinogi in the original Middle Welsh because she paved the way? I can say, on my end, that I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for people translating the Irish texts out, because that was what got me hooked. I wouldn’t recommend Lady Gregory to anyone really looking into seriously studying Old Irish for the same reasons I wouldn’t recommend Lady Guest, but I can acknowledge that, if I was to do half as much for the field as they did, I would be successful beyond my wildest dreams. (Also, ngl, a part of me, however small, does wonder how we would treat them if they were done by aristocratic men as opposed to aristocratic women -- I’m not saying that’s the ONLY factor, I’m not saying it’s a CONSCIOUS factor, but I am saying that the way they’re often talked about is Silly Aristocratic Women Dabbling In Things They Didn’t Know About.)

Lady Charlotte Guest was a wealthy noblewoman in Wales in the nineteenth century, as well as the wife of an industrialist. Upon her husband's death, she took over his work, and taught herself to read medieval Welsh. She's most famous for translating a collection of stories from the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest, four of which are called the branches of the Mabinogi. Lady Charlotte Guest titled her translation the Mabinogion, as "on" is an ending that can be used to make a word plural in Welsh. (It's not the only way though! Welsh has a lot of ways to pluralize words and you kind of just get a feel for which one is correct as you encounter them)

It turns out that this is not the correct pluralization of "Mabinogi", and we still aren't totally certain what the word means. Many say it can be approximated by "Boyhood Tales", as "mab" is the word for "son". A lot of people fault Guest for mis-pluralizing the word, but it was a very reasonable assumption based on the information she had, and "Mabinogion" is the title that endures to this day because her translation was the first.

BUT. But. That being said, perspective: She was working in the 19th century, without any of the resources that we have now, and the scope of her project was MASSIVE. To put it into perspective: As a Celticist who’s trained intensively for the last two years in Middle Welsh, with a fully prepared edition, glossary, and editor’s notes in front of me, I would do very well to get approximately 20 lines out of around..........600 or so of Pwyll done per week. Note: That is only the FIRST BRANCH of the Mabinogi. I had to do fifty lines of Brut y Brenhined this last week, relatively short because it was a two-column page, again, WITH a full edition, glossary, and notes, and that nearly killed me. I was working on overdrive for about three days to get it done, getting about 4-6 hours of sleep in 48 hours. Middle Welsh is actually quite meditative for me, most of the time, when my mind is in it, but it can be tedious, and parts of it don’t lend themselves well to English syntax. It’s the sort of thing I can do for about an hour or two and then have had enough for the week.

That’s not including other resources that are generally considered essential to studying Middle Welsh, like modern digitization of manuscripts, Simon Evans’ A Grammar of Middle Welsh, without any of our modern online dictionaries or glossaries that make dealing with the inconsistent orthography somewhat livable, without formally studying it. And she did that shit. For the ENTIRE MABINOGI, as well as a few other texts she lumped in. Honestly, a superhuman effort. I’m willing to say that I couldn’t do it. And, frankly, I’m not sure how many modern Celticists could, either. Not because we’re not good at our jobs, but because the landscape has changed SO MUCH since that time. 

I feel like there’s this Thing that happens in Celtic studies in particular where we get SO HYPED UP on reminding people that THESE SOURCES ARE VERY OLD, DON’T USE THEM, that we kind of....gloss over exactly how monumental they were at the time. And we pat ourselves on the shoulders because we’re Real Scholars, we have better sources than people who would rely on *Charlotte Guest.*  It’s EASY for us to talk shit, but could we have done the same in the exact same circumstances? And, you know what? How many people got into Welsh studies because of her translation? How many people went on to read the Mabinogi in the original Middle Welsh because she paved the way? I can say, on my end, that I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for people translating the Irish texts out, because that was what got me hooked. I wouldn’t recommend Lady Gregory to anyone really looking into seriously studying Old Irish for the same reasons I wouldn’t recommend Lady Guest, but I can acknowledge that, if I was to do half as much for the field as they did, I would be successful beyond my wildest dreams. (Also, ngl, a part of me, however small, does wonder how we would treat them if they were done by aristocratic men as opposed to aristocratic women -- I’m not saying that’s the ONLY factor, I’m not saying it’s a CONSCIOUS factor, but I am saying that the way they’re often talked about is Silly Aristocratic Women Dabbling In Things They Didn’t Know About.)

Lady Charlotte Guest was a wealthy noblewoman in Wales in the nineteenth century, as well as the wife of an industrialist. Upon her husband's death, she took over his work, and taught herself to read medieval Welsh. She's most famous for translating a collection of stories from the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest, four of which are called the branches of the Mabinogi. Lady Charlotte Guest titled her translation the Mabinogion, as "on" is an ending that can be used to make a word plural in Welsh. (It's not the only way though! Welsh has a lot of ways to pluralize words and you kind of just get a feel for which one is correct as you encounter them)

It turns out that this is not the correct pluralization of "Mabinogi", and we still aren't totally certain what the word means. Many say it can be approximated by "Boyhood Tales", as "mab" is the word for "son". A lot of people fault Guest for mis-pluralizing the word, but it was a very reasonable assumption based on the information she had, and "Mabinogion" is the title that endures to this day because her translation was the first.

i recently set my computer to be in welsh, although welsh isn't supported everywhere on the system :( here's some things i've picked up on!!

torri - to cut

copïo - to copy

gludo - to paste

ailenwi - to rename

ailgychwyn - to restart

cau - to shut down (close)

cychwyn - start, to start, to initiate

gwthio allan - to eject

gosodiadau - settings

dogfennau - documents

lluniau - pictures

wedi eu llwytho i lawr - downloads

sgrinluniau - screenshots

arbedwr batri - battery saver