Shield-shattered fighters slew and were slain
Not one of them came home again
In between Anthony Powell novels, I read Gillian Clarke’s The Gododdin, Lament for the Fallen.
The Gododdin, about which disputation swirls, is a collection of elegies to the dead of the Gododdin, likely dating to late C6, though not written down until much later. It survives in Old Welsh, but dates to a Brythonic past. The Gododdin, known to the Romans as the Votadini, had a major seat of power at what is now called Edinburgh. Their lands spread between the Forth and the Tyne. The elegised warriors appear to have died in at least three conflicts, though the major one is the battle of Catraeth that may (or may not) have been modern-day Catterick. Their opponents were Saxons.
I simplify.
Clarke set out to produce a poetic interpretation of the ancient verse rather than a word-for-word accurate translation, varying her metre and style to devastating cumulative effect. Most of the dead are named, preserved to history by the manner of their death, remembered 1500 years later in a world they could not possibly have imagined.
ERF
Grey horses whinnied in his care
He gave not an inch to the land of Pobdelw,
lost not an acre, battle-bull,
his way quick, his death cruel
In sensibility, it reminded me of Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2011), her elegy for the named dead of the Iliad. Oswald, too, departed from strict translation of the Greek to capture the ‘atmosphere’ of the memorials, stripping out 90% of the original text.
Lycaon naked in a river pleading for his life
Being answered by Achilles No.
As I drafted this, ‘Three lions on their shirt…’ came drifting through the backgardens from further up the street. The media, social and otherwise, has been full of references to warriors and battles at Wembley tonight. Metaphor, I know, but even Chiellini isn’t going to be slaughtering naked men in the river in a revenge-rage for the death of Patroclus. Not in normal time, anyway.
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