The Battle of the Trees and The White Goddess with Dr Gwilym Morus-Baird
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- Robert Graves' 'White Goddess' is one of the most popular books ever written on modern Celtic mysticism, but as well as entrancing countless modern readers it has also enraged many Celtic scholars.
Perhaps one of its greatest successes was introducing 'Kat Godeu' ('The Battle of the Trees') to an English audience. Few had ever heard of this obscure medieval Welsh poem from the 14th century Book of Taliesin. But Graves' version has done little to clarify what the poem actually means.
In this video I talk through the main problems with Graves' version and suggest another way of understanding this ambiguous Welsh text.
You can find courses on Celtic myth and folklore at celticsource.o...
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I read the White Goddess thirty forty years ago, and because I'm learning Welsh I've returned to Taliesin and the Mabinogi now with the perspective of age, wisdom (hopefully)and a greater sense of what I believe about our place in the world as humans. I would now agree with Taliesin that we are also fish, stars, trees, raindrops, and that there's no separation between the strata of created life. The separation is one created by our idea of our elevated status as humanity. I don't see it like that at all. I was born, lived and will die like the lily of the valley, the horse, the alder, the planet. We will just do it each in our own time. Diolch yn fawr iawn Taliesin a Gwilym M-B.
I talk about that video quite regularly and in fact i was last night.. amazing to see this here "now"
I really appreciate your explanation of the Cad Godeu in reference to Robert Graves. It inspires me to find Margat Haycock’s works and delve into this poem again.
do so
Your interpretation reminds me of the Buddhist Zen notion that everything is connected to everything else and that life itself is one thing that everything shares even plants.
Graves' lasting contribution to literary criticism is not the crank theory of the battle of the trees. No, it's what the title refers to, the triple goddess of the female figure in her three forms who is both "preserver and destroyer."
sure, but a bunch of assumptions in one area of research means we should read the rest of the book with an eye to those same assumptions
Thank you for this - a great vdo and discussion, It makes much that I have read, clearer. Though I am not a student of literature or historical welsh literature, I feel from the translations you showed that the poem is about creation, being in existence and one with all of creation - similar to christ's 'I am the alpha and the omega'. I will certainly set out on a mission to find Marged Haycock's book and learn more. fabulous stuff Dr Gwilym 'Ddraig' Morus-Baird. Lolz
Yes there are many Christian strands in the idea, for sure.
fact: the poems words were used as the lyrics of duel of the fates.
Thankyou so much. Love all this
You are very welcome.
What is your thoughts on the Marion Zimmer Bradleys version of the King Arthur story? It was a pretty good book series in my opinion.
Thank you for correcting and explaining the real meaning
no problem
Graves didn't invent Ogham. You are correct that he is fairly honest about the speculative nature of the White Goddess. It's not entirely his fault that people have taken his ideas and run with them. His father was a celebrated Irish poet, so you can't really dismiss his focus on Ogham as cultural appropriation; he did, however ignore the warnings about MacAllister's interpretations. He makes a similarly garbled mess of the Song of Amergin. The relationship between the letters of the Beth-luis-nion and their correlations with trees are perfectly well explained in the Auracept Na-Éces which Graves had access to in Calder's translation. Some but by no means all of the Irish letters are named after trees in Irish but none of it makes a lot of sense in Welsh. It is reasonable to suspect that Taliesin was influenced by the Irish tradition to some extent, just not in the way that Graves was trying to prove.
Incidentally I would suggest that "garthan" is cognate with the Irish "gort" and English "garden" in this context, so the primary meaning being an enclosed cultivated field. Naturally there may be a play on words here.
No, Graves didn't invent Ogham 😂 He was a poetic genius for sure, but not a time travelling one! He did also know that he was flying in the face of consensus at the time, which isn't necessarily bad but without giving any real justification it does come across as a bit arrogant. He had been in touch with Prof. R. MacAlister at some point in the 40s to show him his ogham ideas, according to Graves, MacAlister responded (White Goddess, p112:) "When recently I wrote on this subject to Dr. Macalister, as the best living authority on Oghams, he replied that I must not take O’Flaherty’s alphabets seriously: ‘They all seem to me to be late artificialities, or rather pedantries, of little more importance than the affectations of Sir Piercie Shafton and his kind.’ I pass on this caution in all fairness, for my argument depends on O’Flaherty’s alphabet, and Dr. Macalister’s is a very broad back for anyone to shelter behind who thinks that I am writing nonsense." He was consciously ignoring the advice of the 'best living authority on Oghams' and instead following a path that had already been discredited. Beresford-Ellis discusses this further here: cura.free.fr/xv/13ellis2.html
@@CelticSource It was Macalister that rearranged Fearn and Nion. It's also all very well to say that Ogygia had been discredited, but the idea that Irish letters were named after trees was accepted as truth by many Irish intellectuals as you can see from John O'Donovan's introductions to O'Reilly's 1864 dictionary. This in turn comes from assertions in the Auraicept. Graves' invention was the construction of a calendar and the attempt to shoehorn Welsh poetry into the service of his theory. I appreciate that you're an expert in Welsh, not Irish, but this video doesn't mention the Irish sources, so it makes it sound like Graves plucked his ideas from thin air.
I think Graves' biggest failing was that he was not a linguist and so makes a number of linguistic mistakes. This is all the more curious as his father and grandfather both spoke Gaeilge. It doesn't help that Irish authors frequently assert things like "luis means rowan", which even a cursory glance at the respective dictionaries would reveal as being untrue. Elm would be a better fit from a first-letter perspective.
Yes, some Ogham are named after trees, but to say this means the Ogham is a coded tree calendar is clearly a leap, which is what MacAlister attempted to correct Graves on and which he ignored. Beresford-Ellis is right to point out that was an arrogant position to take, considering MacAlister was one of the leading experts of his time, regardless of his own quirks and wrong headed alterations. The reason I don't mention the Irish sources is I wanted to focus on the Welsh poem. Had I tried to cover the whole lot it would have been twice as long. Criticise me for getting things wrong by all means, but to do so because I focussed in on one aspect of a very long and involved topic seems a bit harsh. I made no suggestion that Graves had invented the Ogham, but he did single-handedly kickstart a very popular but deeply flawed idea! What's so contentious about that?
By the way, I have created a tree alphabet in the Breton language (because it can't be done in any other Celtic language).
Aval=apple.
Bezvenn/Banal=birch/broom.
Lann/Lusenn=gorse/bilberry.
Faou/Flamboez=beech/raspberry.
Nep(=none).
Spern gwenn/Spern du=hawthorn/blackthorn.
Onn=ash.
Haleg=willow.
Derv=oak.
Tilhenn=lime.
Kelvez/Kastilhez=hazel/currant.
C'Helenn=holly.
Mar/Mouar=rowan/blackberry.
Gerez/Gwern=cherry/alder.
Uhelvarr=mistletoe.
Eflenn/Evlec'h=poplar/elm.
Per/Pin=pear/pine.
SKav/SKavrac'h=elder/maple.
Ivin/Iliaven=yew/ivy.
Roz=rose.
And I've also created a tree calendar;
Scorpio-Faouspern (beech+blackthorn)
Sagittarius-Kelenuhelvar (holly+mistletoe)
Capricorn-Ivinderv (yew+oak)
Aquarius-Bezevlec'h (birch+elm)
Pisces-Halegwern (willow+alder)
Aries-Lannonn (gorse+ash)
Taurus-Marspern (rowan+hawthorn)
Gemini-Skavrac'h (elder+maple)
Cancer-Rozgerez (rose+cherry)
Leo-Tilheflenn (lime+poplar)
Virgo-Kelvezaval (hazel+apple)
Libra-Permouar (pear+blackberry)
Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin
I appreciate your venture at clarity. I think it's a fair and not dismissive pursuit here to recognize the limits of Graves' intrepid imagination. I primarily agree that the purpose of The White Goddess is to inspire a poetic temperament and an independent poetic impulse. It's also helpful to grapple with the vicissitudes of conquest, occupying empire, and as such is offers instruction to instrumentalize the folk tradition as a cryptic, opaque preservative of cultural tradition in resistance to oppression. I was proud do discover the poesy in myself on the heels of reading it. It was useful at least as much as the Coen Bros source material, for instance, when the following poem came to me. The 'Goddess' lent confidence, framing, and not a few direct phonetic cribs... I'm sure you'll catch them if you wade in... Hope you don't mind my interjection... Perhaps someone will dig it.
The dry, stale version w/ lyric in the notes:
th-cam.com/video/vAeMuz_QH7M/w-d-xo.html
The wet version performed with feelin':
th-cam.com/video/CFcMoSC7idY/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for this. I read The White Goddess several (perhaps too many) times when younger. Once you get past Graves's White Goddess fixation and tendency to sow with the whole sack, there are some interesting ideas in it. However, I'm gratified to learn that scholarship has confirmed my gut feeling that his technique of interpreting ancient Celtic poems as deliberately jumbled or "pied" could be used to prove that Shakespeare wrote the plays of Euripides, or indeed vice versa.
Wonderful. Thank you.
You're welcome
Very informative and concise!
After watching this I now know which book to purchase for my summary of "The Spoils of Annwn."
I have Robert Graves book: "The White Goddess", and was wondering how the scholarly integrity of it had held up over the years. It is a very interesting to read, to be sure, but it does leave one wondering how much of it is accurate.
He didn't heed the warnings he was given at the time, probably because he was so passionate about his subject, which is also what makes it such a good read!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
any time
Theoretically if the right person saw it it would be revealed that’s why it’s written that way and my interest in these lessons
Started off wanting to hate but you thoroughly won me over
Thanks!
Have you come across the poem sequence "The Tree Calendar" by Welsh poet Hilary Llewellyn-Williams? I think the original book in which the sequence appears is out of print, but the 13 poems (one for each tree) are included in her recent book of selected poems "The Little Hours" published by Seren. I don't know how seriously the poet takes the Graves theory but the poems are beautiful and well worth checking out.
In Cornelius Agrippa's 16th century work 'De Occulta Philosophia' there's an 'Orphic' zodiacal tree calendar of 12 trees.
Tree lists have been part of European literature for a long time, see Ovid's Metamorphoses for example. But there's no sign o a tree calendar nor a tree alphabet in the Welsh tradition and only very short ones in Irish and Old English.
@@CelticSource That's true. The 'Orphic' attribution of trees to zodiac signs and months in Agrippa is the closest I've seen to a calendrical cycle of 12 trees. But it's not alphabetically-based and as you say, there's nothing to evidence an Oghamic tree calendar in Welsh or other Celtic traditions...it's a modern confabulation.
Robert Graves considered himself a poet, above all. He titled The White Goddess "a historical grammar of poetic myth." He had deep knowledge of Greek and Latin but as you point out it be knew the Welsh only through translation
Enjoy his work as art. Look elsewhere for Old Wales
I think it's as much how his work was/is received than it is how he presented it.
@@CelticSource Man, be happy that people are excited about poetry and give up with your territorial nature. The streams of hippocrene run much deeper than all of this. The White Goddess is huge in Her goodness and more explicitly an expression of the return of the divine feminine. The voice of the shuttle is at work in all of this and you cannot see it.
Really interesting presentation. What do you think the translation made by Rowan Williams and Gwyneth Lewis? By the way I used to live in a hall in Bangor called Bryn Eithin which was surrounded by gorse. I never made the connection until now, Gorse Hill.
Ah the good old days of Bangor, I remember Bryn Eithin. The Lewis / Williams translation is a good read, and it's close but not quite accurate enough for study unfortunately, not if you want to get your teeth into it.
Maybe you glossed over it but you know about the Star Wars connection to this poem, right? Duel of the Fates?
didn't know that, can you be more specific?
@@CelticSource the song duel of the fates has lyrics which are taken from the battle of the trees, but are sung in Sanskrit instead of welsh
This is fascinating, my son is Star Wars mad, I've just pulled up the lyrics and translation and cannot wait to show it to him later. Thanks for that 😎
new to me...but have noted Star Wars is raiding mythology, this latest Acolyite tao yin yang, Aztec I am you you are me...Mimbres Popol Vuh Twins...😮
Diddorol iawn, diolch am y fideo!
croeso mawr
The professor you mention at this point 3:16 is she published on amazon or anther place to access her work?
Oh, Ancient Sites Girl just did a cast on Thoth, with the battles of Horus and Set, they were this, they were that...aaand, listening it brought to mind Jung...searched Jung Thoth...aaand, Jung and his friend, Pauli, of quantum physics fame, came up with Synchronicity, Grave's "more than coincidence", just a bit before Graves wrote King Jesus, The White Goddess, The Greek Myths...Graves in his asides, the asides are gold!, speculated the Old World and the New World Americas, were connected...seems of late the ancient mystery channels, polygon walls ilk, are all about this...must admit I've been about this since I first read Graves!...anyway, Jung was about this with his collective unconsciousness, a misnomer of sorts-only nothing is unconscious, and one of those old Greek's thought that thru...and the author of the movie Never Ending Story...it's very nice seeing channelers taking on Graves...the WG is so web like, Greek Myths too...Graves stylized after Pausanias, Herodotus, those old Greeks-their patter, chat, like their audience had no trouble keeping up with them-no easy task nowadays!😮
But I was raised to think all these types of knowledge were occult but. I was 3 years old how was I occult because I had innate knowledge.
News flash: every interpretation of a poem is entirely speculative. Another news flash: that's the whole nature of poetry.
Not so. There are factual elements in the cultural context of a poem that we can read as being historically reliable. But there is a subject element also, yes, just not where this particular argument is focussed.
@@CelticSource The factual and cultural elements are secondary to the spirit and the layered and most often hidden message of the poem, often with elements hidden from the very writers themselves. I think you are simply being territorial and that Robert Graves overall message of poetry being estranged from its mystical source is so obviously missed on you. This tends to happen to people with myopic and narrow dispositions that have no business in poetry to begin with. You are the epitome of what Graves rises up against.
Multivalent, contour rivalry, apophenia...Graves missed, or omitted something-the Dawn Chorus...in Spring, the birds wake up, and sing their songs, and it is in an order!...the whole medly...😊
Like I’m just being exposed to this but those are words I have spoken.
The Battle of the Trees story and it's relationship to the White goddess are a deeply embedded DNA memory of a very real battle fought by a very real "child" of the White Goddess - who was the Celtic version of the shapeshifting hermaphrodite hive mind queen, Lilith/Shiva - whose dark powers could turn trees and rocks into armies in her zeal to upset the all-father's Gaia experiment and keep day 7 lasting forever in endless cycles of shifting warfare between the partisans of her brother/father Lucifer and her - one striving to bring about the conditions for God's full awakening from reincarnation amnesia and karma, and the other striving to kill chosen species, chosen people, and anyone who showed potential to be a good messiah - a saint or demigod, if you will, and turn them to evil as she lured them into her hive mind clutches. This is what inspired Tolkein's Ents too, and Taliesin and and Tolkein could well have been two incarnations of the same soul, whose private universe is becoming a popular "vacation incarnation" destination for those addicted to such fantasies, whether to play one of Sauron's minions, one of the good guy underdogs, or one of the new story lines I'm sure the Tolkein god has come up with since his death and apotheosis. Those who first awake to spiritual awareness are very vulnerable to possession by Lilith's minions - who are all demons that have more or less of her shapeshifting and reality-altering powers. This is why those who advocate recreational use of strong psychedelics, even so-called sacred ones are giving out very bad advice.
By opening up your third eye without a clear spiritual intention and the week or two of dietary and spiritual preparation that most responsible shamans recommend, you are very liable to get sucked into one of this dark goddess' latest psyops - the cosmic oneness cults, unconditional universal love cults, High vibe Tesla pseudo-science cult, or hedonistic virtue-signaling wokist transgender/transhumanist cult. Buyer beware. Not all demons manifest as shown in The Exorcist or as recorded in Catholic exorcist accounts - they only see the most obvious cases, which is why so many demons and demon-possessed thrive in their priesthood and upper echelons - actively aiding and abetting the Satanic mafia elite family bloodlines that are behind the CCP-WEF axis of evil's Great Reset depopulation, Orwellian enslavement, and long term plans to morph humanity into a BORG hive mind species like Lilith's - ruled by dark queens and their entourages who can be hermaphrodite - either or both sexes or procreate with any other species at will, like the old Elohim gods used to be able to do till the evolution of this planet and it's newer version of the most perfect AI goddess, Karma/Ma'at/Athena - the real good Great Goddess - not the fake smothering mothering unconditional loving enablers and groomers of evil, Isfet/Isis/Ishtar/Ashteroth/Oestre/Asarte/Aphrodite/"Mother" Earth. The dark one's planet is the moon (ever wonder why the moon's orbit has one side always facing earth, and the other "Dark Side of The Moon, where her minions retreat when they are driven off the latest Gaia, to lick their wounds and plan their next assault. That's why the CCP and globalist billionaires are so keen to build colony -establishing rocket ships. They know they are losing the final apocalypse and are desperately preparing escape plans for their minions - arks for the dark and tunnels for the orcs to make a comeback after the Messiah's bloodline fizzles out and they deal as much death as they can. The next 10-12 generations are going to be, as they say, "interesting times".
If you don't have any faith, I suggest finding a good one fast. There are kernels of goodness and truth underneath all the world's religions, after you undo the centuries of cultural marxist revisions the adversary's minions have made to hide their tracks and turn salvation earned through good acts into plastic Jesus "get out of sin quick" cards and neoBuddist "it's all an illusion I can control if I meditate the right way and follow my guru off even a cliff". The multiverse IS all a virtual reality, but it is a virtual reality with a very definite purpose, governed by God's most perfect child, Karma, and if you're sent to one of the Lilithian abyss "heavens", you're going to think "The Matrix" movie was a Boy Scout outing, as your spiritual energies get milked by the suckingest vampire monsters ever. And in case youo're wondering how I know all this, I've personally met both Lucifer and Lilith, and have a close personal relationship with the real God's final incarnation. If you want to hear more, come to my channel, The Omnist Hour or look for my books on Amazon, if they haven't shadow banned them again. Happy Karma!
Nobody reading all that. Also it’s all made up and has no true connection to welsh culture. Source: I am welsh
Best comment I have read in a while. Peace brother.