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| A Glimpse of Caermarthen, Wales |
The men are fishermen; the things on
their backs are their boats, which they carry about on land like
that. But you needn’t feel sorry for them; because boats are not a
bit heavy. They are coracles; and if only you understood Welsh I
should put in here a poem about them, called Hen Gwrwg fy Ngwlad,
to show you how poetic those queer tortoise-looking things are when
you know them. They are really baskets, with a hide stretched over
the outside to keep out the water; they have been in use in Wales for
two thousand years at least, since (I think) Julius Caesar mentions
them; and probably they were in use there thousands of years before
that. They sit right on the surface of the shallow Welsh rivers,
drawing no depth at all, and skim about like water-flies: upstream
driven by the fisherman’s paddle, downstream with the swift
current; and the chances are that the first time you go in one, in
about one minute you are enjoying a beautiful swim; because one small
wrong motion, and over the coracle goes.
Now you might
think that people who still use a kind of boat their fathers were
using thousands of years ago, are ‘primitive savages,’ so to
speak; but nothing of the kind! Very likely one of these very men has
won a prize for a poem or essay in the Eisteddfod,—which means
‘session’: it is the session of the bards, at which people
compete for musical and literary prizes, and the one whose poem is
adjudged the best becomes a kind of national hero for the following
year. How ‘high-falutin’ the word bard sounds! But in
Welsh it is the common word for anyone who goes in for writing things
that aren’t sermons or scientific books or journalism; it doesn’t
even necessarily mean a poet at all. It is one of the very few
Welsh words that have come into English; and then it had to come
through Latin first.
As for the river,
it is the Tywi, or as the English spell it, Towy. It is one of
the largest rivers in Wales; and as it is quite near the sea at this
point—you may form your own conclusions as to the size of Welsh
rivers. In fact the Tywi is only thirty miles long: but you can crowd
heaps of poetry and legends and fairies and things like that into
thirty miles. And history too, for that matter.
The town behind is
Caermarthen. It looks ugly enough, because of that building at the
back: once there was a castle there, but now it is a prison. You
would never think that a town like that could have been the home of,
and named after, the most famous Enchanter of European legend; but it
is: for Caermarthen is a corruption of Caerfyrddin, which
means the City of Myrddin,—whose name the Normans couldn’t
pronounce, so they made it into Merlin. Now Merlin is supposed to
have lived in the time of Arthur; and Arthur is supposed to have
lived in the sixth century A. D. But the curious thing is that long
before that there was a Roman town at Caermarthen; and it, too,
went by the same name: it was called in Latin Maridunum, which
was merely the Latin corruption of the native Britonic or Welsh name.
So that looks as if Merlin really lived a long time before the Romans
conquered Britain.
A few miles from
the town is the cave in which he lies dreaming or enchanted; a Faery
Lady put spells on him, so that he might not die, but go to sleep for
ages, and never be lost to the world. So I suppose he will awake
sometime, and begin his grand enchantments again.
Countries are like
men: they must go to sleep sometimes, or they would get tired out and
die. When that happens, the people stop progressing; they can no
longer unite, or undertake new projects; they only want to be left
alone and have a quiet time, and make little wars among themselves,
and not be governed or anything. So generally they get conquered by
some neighboring people that happens to be awake. In such sleeping
countries you very often hear of ancient heroes and magicians
who are said to be dreaming under some mountain or in some cave,
waiting for the time when they must wake and lead their people to
great things again. In Wales there are at least four such enchanted
sleepers: Arthur, and Myrddin, and Owen Glyndwr, and another man
called Owen Redhand, who was a son of the last Prince of Wales, and
who became, after the conquest, a great captain in the French navy;
Froissart tells you about him. Perhaps it means really the Soul of
the Nation; which goes into the Hidden World when the nation falls
asleep; and then, after centuries, when the time comes, and the
people are ready, it comes forth again.
Kenneth Morris
The Raja-Yoga Messenger, July 1920
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