Talk:Druid's Prayer

Barddas versions

I'm not sure exactly the best way to lay them out, so any advice would be helpful ~Alosel~ | ^(Talk) 22:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Version Three

Version three was presented as it is given in the Barddas, word for word, so does not include any references to a Goddess, although OBOD, BDO, BCUB etc. so use it. ~Alosel~ | ^(Talk)

Which versions?

Which versions should better be used? - those in Barddas, or those from Iolo's "own" Iolo MSS (ed. Taliesin Williams, 1848)? Gwybedyn (talk) 19:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi; I currently have a copy of Barddas as edited by John Matthews, but also had access to a 1848 copy from Llanelli Library; they both have the same information so far as I can tell, bar maybe introductions/prefaces etc. ~Alosel~ | ^(Talk) 10:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The Meaning and Use of ' Gwynfyd '

I dropped by to cull a copy of one of the prayers and I note that the front page writer seems to be shy of translating ' gwynfyd ' in the prayers but then in the text offers the translation ' heaven ' which it is definitely not. There seems to have been some mystic or mystifying reason in Barddas for not translating the word but the halo around the sun in the symbol in Barddas is clearly labeled as ' Cylch y Gwynvyd ' and the sun can be taken as a symbol for god or heaven I think. In planning to write this I chose to look it up in the online Geriadur Prifysgol Cymru - http://www.wales.ac.uk/geiriadur/ - http://www.wales.ac.uk/geiriadur/pdf/GPC0018-06.pdf

gwynfyd eg. ll. -au

1. happiness, delight, joy, felicity, bliss, blessedness, pleasure ; prosperity ; desire, zeal ; ( pl.) the Beatitudes. [ 13th century ]

2. indignation, jealousy, emulation. [ 1567 ]

As a root word ' gwyn ' spawns many words and expressions, but two of its meanings produce those meanings of ' gwynfyd '

gwyn [1] - ( c ) holy, blessed, beatific, good, happy.

gwyn [2] - wish desire, satisfaction, delight, affection ; craving, lust.

It might pay to think of the English word ' candidly ' whose sense can be translated as ' wrth wyn ' and whose origins are in one of the Latin words for ' white.'

I would be inclined to translate ' gwynfyd ' in this context as ' blessedness ' and I suspect that that would be Iolo's intention, to allude to the inhabitants of ' The Isle of the Blessed,' and that would have been understood in a similar way to the way that people understood the words of his contemporary William Blake in something like ' Jerusalem ' - they were both users of coded radical political language.

( Just to return here again after a few minutes in order to explain this to the uninitiated - the use of Iolo's prayers by Neo-Druidic groups is really out of context : the Gorsedd and the Eisteddfod have to be understood in terms of them being originally created to be parts of a public cult which was intended to be able to transmit the values of Republicanism in Wales by embodying them in a civil religion as described in such texts as Rousseau's Social Contract - see Book 4 Chapter 8 : there is an online copy here - )

http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_04.htm#008 DaiSaw (talk) 22:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)