TDIRS: Greenwitch
Mar. 16th, 2003 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBut first, in prep for The Grey King, can someone please tell me how to pronounce Cafall? I've been wondering now for eighteen and a half years.
I've already talked about Over Sea, Under Stone and The Dark Is Rising. Time for Book Three.
I've been saying for some time now that Greenwitch is the pivot on which TDIRS turns, and it is now time for me to put my money where my mouth is and prove it.
Greenwitch is the shortest of the five books, scarcely more than a novella. It is also, in contrast to TDIR (and to a lesser extent OSUS) very tightly plotted. There's nothing extraneous, and the structure itself is very tidal, with things ebbing and returning (the painter, Captain Toms, the Greenwitch itself; Simon and Barney go twice to the farm, Will's aunt and uncle are forever leaving and coming back). It's also a book which contrasts very sharply the world and power of men and the world and power of women, and that's where I want to focus.
My analysis of TDIR leaned heavily on the lack of important, active female figures, not because (as I said) I think Cooper is being anti-feminist, but because she's setting something up for Greenwitch which is so important and pervasive that she never bothers to spell it out.
The key moment, for my reading, is this one:
That moment of self-centeredness, that Hero's Solipsism (which, for example, Harry Potter also demonstrates), is slyly and cruelly undercut. No, the Greenwitch doesn't mean Will; it means Jane, an ordinary mortal girl. (For contrast, note that as of yet, Harry's Hero's Solipsism has NEVER been undercut. It is all about Harry.) The superhuman male characters in this book (Will, Merriman, Captain Toms, the painter from the Dark) go prancing about wielding their spells of Reck and Mana and Lir, but in the end they are completely irrelevant, as are Simon and Barney racing about all over the map (except that their encounter with the painter does lead to the recovery of the Grail). The ACTION of this book, as opposed to the red herrings Cooper flings gleefully about, is pristinely simple: Jane makes a wish; the Greenwitch responds.
Although the Greenwitch itself is explicitly non-feminine: "She [Jane] had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no she quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree" (Cooper 29), it is made by women, and its master/mother, Tethys, is distinctly female. Here at last is a ... well, not so much a character as a force ... a force of femaleness which is neither supportive nor seductive. Tethys is POWER; she is indifferent, capricious, proud. Greenwitch both shows men's ignorance of and lack of sensitivity to women's power ("sensitivity" meaning being able to sense it, not being all sympathetic and PC about it), and the reality of the power that the men cannot touch or use. For all their power, Merriman and Will would not have been able to attend the making of the Greenwitch; they simply could not have done what Jane does. And because they are powerful, it seems to me unlikely that even if they were there (Will in drag? Merriman in drag? the mind reels), they would think to make that particular wish. They are perhaps too much like the Greenwitch to understand it in the way that Jane does.
The other thematic strand in Greenwitch I want to look at is the idea of isolation, alienation, because it's going to come back in The Grey King. The note sounds loudest in Jane's contemplation of the Greenwitch:
Obviously, this resonates with what I was saying about Will in TDIR. Will's power isolates him from his family and other ordinary humans. The Greenwitch--even more powerful (as its temper tantrum demonstrates)--is isolated from EVERYTHING. Cooper does a beautiful job with the Greenwitch clinging to its secret because it has nothing else. But there are other kinds of isolation in the book: Fran Stanton's isolation as an American; the painter's self-inflicted isolation and fear ("He was a separate sort of man," Simon says (Cooper 117)); Jane's isolation, the only female in a group with four males. And I don't think it's an accident that the Light wins solely because two of these isolated characters reach out to each other and for a tiny moment become less isolated.
Greenwitch also uses the realism of its characters' interactions to good effect; the Drews' reaction to Will is perfectly observed: Simon bridling at a competitor for his alpha spot, Barney resenting having to share Merriman, Jane anxiously playing the peace-maker. Jane's close observation of Will offers confirmation of some of my points about TDIR: "Simon wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn't, she thought. You're like a grown-up, sometimes. Who are you, Will Stanton?" (Cooper 94). There's a very sharp contrast drawn between Simon, who's trying very hard to act "like a grown-up" (Will's first sight of him: "... a boy a little older than himself, wearing a school blazer and an air of self-conscious authority" (Cooper 12)) and Will, who has to remember not to and doesn't always succeed. (There's another quote, which has skittered shyly off to hide, where she remarks that Merriman and Will treat each other as colleagues. I cannot find it, and I'm driving myself mad with the looking.) Will's friendship with the Drews (mostly Jane in Greenwitch) is tentative and awkward and deeply contingent on their awareness of what he is. (I'll be coming back to this, obviously, with The Grey King.)
Greenwitch, for me (and I hasten to add that this is entirely personal and subjective) is also where Cooper begins to get the hang of depicting supernatural events. The stuff with the Dark in TDIR is flashy, but not deep-down disturbing in the way that the Greenwitch is, and the resurgence of the past into the present which it causes. That sequence has flashes of sublimity, in the strict Romantic definition of the word, and is just generally brilliant, more of a piece with the wonders she works in The Grey King and Silver on the Tree.
Greenwitch changes the tone and method of TDIRS. We move away now from the conventions of children's adventure (though Silver on the Tree will return there, and I'll be talking about that when we reach it) and into something else, something I don't personally have a word for except that it's what comes into my head when I think of Susan Cooper. It also begins to emphasize that the moral center of this world is NOT with the Old Ones, but with the mortals. It begins the argument that Will's superhuman powers do not in fact make him stronger, braver, or more important than the mortal characters. All of the crucial decisions and actions in the last three books of the series are made by mortal characters: Jane, Bran, John Rowlands. The Old Ones get an assist for every goal (and my mind has now spiralled off into the doggerel from Silver on the Tree: "I am the womb of every holt / I am the assist of every goal"), but the story isn't about them, and Greenwitch starts to show us why.
I didn't like Greenwitch as much as the other four books in TDIRS the first time I read it. It denies all our expectations; the action/adventure part of the story turns out to be unimportant, and the "happiness" of the ending is deeply qualified, almost overpowered by the sadness of the Greenwitch. (I hope very much that Jane's gift does reach the Greenwitch before the Greenwitch comes to Tethys. I hope. But I also doubt.) The real things going on are much quieter, much more about interpersonal relationships and empathy or lack thereof. (The painter fails, not merely because he's male and from the Dark, but because he cannot even for a second put himself in the Greenwitch's position to understand why commanding it will never work.) It's a quiet, quirky, dark book; the elegiac tone I mentioned with regard to TDIR here is predominant. The entire book is in a minor key.
---
WORKS CITED
Cooper, Susan. Greenwitch. The Dark Is Rising Sequence 3. 1974. New York: Collier Books, 1986
I've already talked about Over Sea, Under Stone and The Dark Is Rising. Time for Book Three.
I've been saying for some time now that Greenwitch is the pivot on which TDIRS turns, and it is now time for me to put my money where my mouth is and prove it.
Greenwitch is the shortest of the five books, scarcely more than a novella. It is also, in contrast to TDIR (and to a lesser extent OSUS) very tightly plotted. There's nothing extraneous, and the structure itself is very tidal, with things ebbing and returning (the painter, Captain Toms, the Greenwitch itself; Simon and Barney go twice to the farm, Will's aunt and uncle are forever leaving and coming back). It's also a book which contrasts very sharply the world and power of men and the world and power of women, and that's where I want to focus.
My analysis of TDIR leaned heavily on the lack of important, active female figures, not because (as I said) I think Cooper is being anti-feminist, but because she's setting something up for Greenwitch which is so important and pervasive that she never bothers to spell it out.
The key moment, for my reading, is this one:
"Has no-one showed care for you, Greenwitch? No-one?"
"No-one!" The huge voice rang through the village, around the hills, over the moors behind; like distant thunder it rumbled and re-echoed. "No creature! None! Not ... one. ..." The fierceness died, the thunder grew less. For a long moment they were listening only to the wash of the uneasy sea against the cliffs, out where the swells broke. Then the Greenwitch said in a whisper, "None except one. None except the child."
"The child?" Will said involuntarily. A thin note of raw incredulity tipped his voice; for a moment he thought the Greenwitch meant himself.
Merriman said softly, ignoring him, "The child who wished you well."
"She was up at the headland at the making," the Greenwitch said.
(Cooper 104)
That moment of self-centeredness, that Hero's Solipsism (which, for example, Harry Potter also demonstrates), is slyly and cruelly undercut. No, the Greenwitch doesn't mean Will; it means Jane, an ordinary mortal girl. (For contrast, note that as of yet, Harry's Hero's Solipsism has NEVER been undercut. It is all about Harry.) The superhuman male characters in this book (Will, Merriman, Captain Toms, the painter from the Dark) go prancing about wielding their spells of Reck and Mana and Lir, but in the end they are completely irrelevant, as are Simon and Barney racing about all over the map (except that their encounter with the painter does lead to the recovery of the Grail). The ACTION of this book, as opposed to the red herrings Cooper flings gleefully about, is pristinely simple: Jane makes a wish; the Greenwitch responds.
Although the Greenwitch itself is explicitly non-feminine: "She [Jane] had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no she quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree" (Cooper 29), it is made by women, and its master/mother, Tethys, is distinctly female. Here at last is a ... well, not so much a character as a force ... a force of femaleness which is neither supportive nor seductive. Tethys is POWER; she is indifferent, capricious, proud. Greenwitch both shows men's ignorance of and lack of sensitivity to women's power ("sensitivity" meaning being able to sense it, not being all sympathetic and PC about it), and the reality of the power that the men cannot touch or use. For all their power, Merriman and Will would not have been able to attend the making of the Greenwitch; they simply could not have done what Jane does. And because they are powerful, it seems to me unlikely that even if they were there (Will in drag? Merriman in drag? the mind reels), they would think to make that particular wish. They are perhaps too much like the Greenwitch to understand it in the way that Jane does.
The other thematic strand in Greenwitch I want to look at is the idea of isolation, alienation, because it's going to come back in The Grey King. The note sounds loudest in Jane's contemplation of the Greenwitch:
Jane stared at it, horrified, and from its sightless head the Greenwitch stared back. It would not move, or seem to come alive, she knew that. Her horror came not from fear, but from the awareness she suddenly felt from the image of an appalling, endless loneliness. Great power was held only in great isolation. Looking at the Greenwitch, she felt a terrible awe, and a kind of pity as well.
(Cooper 30)
Obviously, this resonates with what I was saying about Will in TDIR. Will's power isolates him from his family and other ordinary humans. The Greenwitch--even more powerful (as its temper tantrum demonstrates)--is isolated from EVERYTHING. Cooper does a beautiful job with the Greenwitch clinging to its secret because it has nothing else. But there are other kinds of isolation in the book: Fran Stanton's isolation as an American; the painter's self-inflicted isolation and fear ("He was a separate sort of man," Simon says (Cooper 117)); Jane's isolation, the only female in a group with four males. And I don't think it's an accident that the Light wins solely because two of these isolated characters reach out to each other and for a tiny moment become less isolated.
Greenwitch also uses the realism of its characters' interactions to good effect; the Drews' reaction to Will is perfectly observed: Simon bridling at a competitor for his alpha spot, Barney resenting having to share Merriman, Jane anxiously playing the peace-maker. Jane's close observation of Will offers confirmation of some of my points about TDIR: "Simon wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn't, she thought. You're like a grown-up, sometimes. Who are you, Will Stanton?" (Cooper 94). There's a very sharp contrast drawn between Simon, who's trying very hard to act "like a grown-up" (Will's first sight of him: "... a boy a little older than himself, wearing a school blazer and an air of self-conscious authority" (Cooper 12)) and Will, who has to remember not to and doesn't always succeed. (There's another quote, which has skittered shyly off to hide, where she remarks that Merriman and Will treat each other as colleagues. I cannot find it, and I'm driving myself mad with the looking.) Will's friendship with the Drews (mostly Jane in Greenwitch) is tentative and awkward and deeply contingent on their awareness of what he is. (I'll be coming back to this, obviously, with The Grey King.)
Greenwitch, for me (and I hasten to add that this is entirely personal and subjective) is also where Cooper begins to get the hang of depicting supernatural events. The stuff with the Dark in TDIR is flashy, but not deep-down disturbing in the way that the Greenwitch is, and the resurgence of the past into the present which it causes. That sequence has flashes of sublimity, in the strict Romantic definition of the word, and is just generally brilliant, more of a piece with the wonders she works in The Grey King and Silver on the Tree.
Greenwitch changes the tone and method of TDIRS. We move away now from the conventions of children's adventure (though Silver on the Tree will return there, and I'll be talking about that when we reach it) and into something else, something I don't personally have a word for except that it's what comes into my head when I think of Susan Cooper. It also begins to emphasize that the moral center of this world is NOT with the Old Ones, but with the mortals. It begins the argument that Will's superhuman powers do not in fact make him stronger, braver, or more important than the mortal characters. All of the crucial decisions and actions in the last three books of the series are made by mortal characters: Jane, Bran, John Rowlands. The Old Ones get an assist for every goal (and my mind has now spiralled off into the doggerel from Silver on the Tree: "I am the womb of every holt / I am the assist of every goal"), but the story isn't about them, and Greenwitch starts to show us why.
I didn't like Greenwitch as much as the other four books in TDIRS the first time I read it. It denies all our expectations; the action/adventure part of the story turns out to be unimportant, and the "happiness" of the ending is deeply qualified, almost overpowered by the sadness of the Greenwitch. (I hope very much that Jane's gift does reach the Greenwitch before the Greenwitch comes to Tethys. I hope. But I also doubt.) The real things going on are much quieter, much more about interpersonal relationships and empathy or lack thereof. (The painter fails, not merely because he's male and from the Dark, but because he cannot even for a second put himself in the Greenwitch's position to understand why commanding it will never work.) It's a quiet, quirky, dark book; the elegiac tone I mentioned with regard to TDIR here is predominant. The entire book is in a minor key.
---
WORKS CITED
Cooper, Susan. Greenwitch. The Dark Is Rising Sequence 3. 1974. New York: Collier Books, 1986
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 11:12 am (UTC)The forces of darkness are laughing at me. I can feel it.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 11:53 am (UTC)Oh, and v and a single f are both a v sound to me, so I literally didn't notice your spelling. If I were to write about him, consciously thinking it out, I'd spell it Caval. I think Kay in Fionavar spells it Cavall.
Cherryh drives me mad with Cefwyn and Cevulirn, when I notice, she must mean that f for an ff, or it would have been a v, but I can't read it like that.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 07:08 pm (UTC)Um, so anyway, what are the Fortress books doing that I'm not seeing?
no subject
Date: 2003-03-17 09:57 am (UTC)I prefer her SF as well, but I don't think these are conventional.
I find them full of shades of grey. I agree with you about Cefwyn's real relationship being with Tristen and Ninevrisse being a distraction (she did a good romance in The Paladin the only Cherryh novel I think is filmable) but I like the balances, and where magic is and trust. Also, being Cherryh, she gets the logistics right.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-18 05:57 am (UTC)Mostly, reflecting upon it, I think my problem with those books is her style. She has a very definite and idiosyncratic style, and in those books I think it's descending into manneredness--all those viewpoint characters, and they all have exactly the same speech patterns. And for me it fights distractingly with her subject matter. Not that I want her to write "speaking forsoothly" as Ursula K. Le Guin calls it, but Cherryh's is a very jarring modern (almost post-modern) style, and I don't think it suits pre-industrial characters.
And possibly I spend too much of my time thinking about things like this.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-18 07:14 am (UTC)I think Cherryh is doing a very deliberate thing with language generally, which I find mesmerising when she gets it right, which is that she does different things with speech patterns and patterns of swearing and language emphasis, and the actual rhythm of words and phrases, and she does this not only in the dialogue but also in the exposition, which is often very very tight to POV, I adore how tight to POV she writes and I want to be just like her when I grow up. I think this is why some people cannot read her, and why so many people hate Downbelow Station where she hasn't quite mastered it. (Someone described it as "badly translated"...) But I think she does it step by step and word by word and it is at best as solid as a prose tradition with a million people speaking it, that would be Rimrunners onwards U/A books, the Atevi series, the Chanur series and, yes, I think the Fortress books. I don't think it's wrong for them at all.
Maybe you were expecting something else of the prose, and of the world? I can see mismatched expectations, and I'm not at all sure the series actually goes anywhere (I've only read it all once) but I don't think it can be the prose.
(I'd have preferred SF too, in fact I'd always prefer SF to fantasy, I'm far more picky about my fantasy.)
But I don't think she has "a" prose style, I think she has one that goes "She figured that would cool it down, whoever put him up to this would be disappointed. But the man was downright having trouble with that no-go, hell if he wasn't." and one that goes "The venture into hostile territory, as it were, would give a sane man pause, and he'd had more than a twinge of doubt in coming here, but it gave him, too, a strange, fatalistic sense of continuity, things getting back on track, reminding him vividly of Malguri, and now that he was here the butterflies had gone away and he was glad he'd accepted the invitation." (Isn't there a new one of those out? I could just do with a new one of those.) And a prose style that goes: 'So why us? Gods and thunders, what have we got either side wants but Tully? And Sikkukut gave him back. Jik could have laid claim to him. And Jik backed off. Why did Sikkukut want us in this? Kif in the washroom. Kif all about. Threatened lawsuits pouring in because a Hani merchant was easier to sue than a han deputy or a mahen hunter ship; and, gods knew, the kif." (Though not as much as I could do with another one of those, gods, am I up to taking that trip again?) And if she has another that goes: "A long time later he heard the sound of horses. He said as much, but nobody would listen. Later, after another rest and after they were on their way again -- it might have been hours -- they heard them, too, and he heard men curse and some invoke the gods. He heard metal hiss and knew the sound for the drawing of swords. He felt at his side, but he had no sword." you can't really say that's one idiosyncratic style, surely?
I think she carves the style for the book out of solid granite, yes they're all her, but the mode is very different.
I have learned an incredible lot from Cherryh, and knowing where the rhythm of language can be pushed is far from the least of it.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-18 08:00 am (UTC)I don't have the Fortress books any more (and I really don't feel like rereading them, even if I did), so I cannot defend this impression. It may be wrong. It may be idiosyncratic to me. I would believe that completely.
I am so not up for a prosodic analysis of Cherryh this morning, so just let me say that TO ME, those passages you quoted are similar. There's a similar jerkiness, a start-and-stop rhythm, which I find in everything of Cherryh's I read. I don't count it as a flaw; one of the things I love about Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider is the way in which that style exactly dovetails with the characters. But for me, it is an across-the-board characteristic of her writing.
btw, you're right. There is a new Bren book out. I've had to give up on the new series, because I want it to be doing something she's not interested in. That's my fault, not hers--although I do genuinely feel that the psychology has become much less interesting.
And it may be that I wanted Fortress in the Eye of Time and its successors to be doing something she didn't (well, hell, I said as much in my post upthread). But the thing I dislike about it is something else. Like Le Guin, Cherryh almost never does what I want her to in her novels, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy her novels or think that she's an idiot for not doing what I want. There's just something off, for me, in the Fortress books; I feel like I'm viewing the events through dirty glass. Or something. I don't know. I can't articulate it, and the headache isn't helping. It's something about the way, for me, that the prose style seems to be scraping the characters instead of penetrating. I don't know. It's a thing. And it's a personal reaction. I'm trying to explain myself, not convince you of my rightness. And I'm doing a lousy job, while I observe that my own prose style is becoming increasingly jerky and splintered. Time to shut up.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 11:03 am (UTC)Certainly not recently, and I don't own anything by him. I've been noticing enthusiasm for him among my Friends list and considering the possibility that I should rectify this omission. Suggestions, as always, welcome. *g*
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 11:47 am (UTC)I was asking because he does that deep connections stuff that The Grey King gets right, almost perfectly.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 12:44 pm (UTC)Clearly I need to look for Red Shift. "When found, make a note of."
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 03:26 pm (UTC)I love it, but it's quite wrenching.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-03-16 11:58 am (UTC)Observations
Date: 2003-03-16 11:55 am (UTC)BTW, I found myself wondering about Jane's almost immediate betraying of the Greenwitch's secret to Merriman, even though she thought it was only a dream, it just didn't seem to ring true somehow.
Oh yes, the thing about noticing Will's slip comes at the end of chapter 3 (I have a different edition so I can't give you the page number)
By the way, have you all read War for the Oaks by Emma Bull? For all they're completely different in setting and 'thrust' I found myself reminded of it as I reread Greenwitch. And your point about the humans as the moral centre of the books definitely rings bells.
Re: Observations
Date: 2003-03-16 12:42 pm (UTC)Jane telling Merriman about the dream doesn't bother me, possibly because I hate with a bright purple passion books in which the plot is driven by people keeping secrets when they shouldn't. But it seems to me that the important bit there is what Jane says as Merriman is leaving, "I really do feel sorry for the Greenwitch, still" (Cooper 46). That's the bit that matters, not the secret itself. And thinking about it, if I had a nightmare like that, I would tell the secret, just to keep the thing from getting some parasitical hold on my mind and driving me crazy. But maybe that's just me.
War for the Oaks is my least favorite of Emma Bull's books (and Falcon maddens me because the structure is linear when it's so obvious it's supposed to be interleaved). I love Emma Bull's dialogue, and the Phouka (is that how she spells him?) is one of my favorite characters, pound for pound, out of all of her books, but the book itself doesn't do much for me. I love Bone Dance, and Finder is brilliant. WftO entertains me, but not much more.
Would you like?
Date: 2003-03-16 12:17 pm (UTC)To do the "ll" thing put the tip of your tongue right behind your top front teeth and blow around it so the air goes into the pockets of your cheeks before going out your mouth. Cafall would be Cavall with the sploshy ll. I think the emphasis is on the last syllable. . .I think. That's harder to tell about.
Re: Would you like?
Date: 2003-03-16 12:43 pm (UTC)Re: Would you like?
Date: 2003-03-17 06:53 am (UTC)If you want credentials, I am Welsh, it's the second language of my family of origin, my grandmother was a well known Welsh scholar and translator, I studied it in school from five to sixteen, I have a ten year old's fluency on grammar and vocab but no problem whatsoever with pronunciation, I also have a dictionary, and I did a ton of research into the mythology and medieval forms of the language when I was writing GURPS Celtic Myth. (It may be a RPG book but it's being used as a text book for a Celtic studies course in Austria. This still weirds me out.) Further, as I said at the beginning, I am Welsh.
Also, "ll" isn't an L of any kind, and if anyone wants to say it and can't I'd recommend trying CL as in "close", that'll get you close enough for comprehensibility. But that is absolutely not the sound at the end of Cafall.
I'm trying not to sound grouchy, and probably failing, but this is my culture and my ancestral language and you wouldn't believe how many irritating fantasy novels there are that abuse a little knowledge of it. And Irish is worse. I think Truepenny's very sensible to stick to leave it alone.
This isn't to say that people shouldn't write about other cultures, just that people in those other cultures are equally allowed to grit their teeth.
Caval, like Cavalcade, and if you need a cite, Coe and Young Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend (which was buried under a drift of name books, a hairbrush, and some envelopes) bears me out. Tangentially, Cafall, the dog of the soldier Arthur, is first mentioned in "Nennius", which makes him as old and as authentic as anything else with a connection to Arthur's name.
How interesting
Date: 2003-03-17 07:56 am (UTC)I don't want to learn it to use it in writing or anything. I just want to learn it because it's a beautiful language. Same reason I want to learn Gaelic (Irish and Scots), Swahili, Russian. . .the list goes on and on. And I'd like to learn Gaelic because most of my ancestors are from Ireland and Scotland. A few were French, but they stopped in Scotland for a few decades before continuing their journey to America.
Thanks for straightening me out on that. It's marvelous that you got to study it so intensively. So much gets lost these days and so many people don't care. It's nice to see someone who does. :D
Nice to meet you, by the way.
Re: How interesting
Date: 2003-03-17 08:58 am (UTC)I'm very impressed with the languages you're learning or wanting to learn, I'm hopeless at languages. I'd imagine Welsh would be impossible to learn without lots and lots of help! I do happen to know that the University College of Wales, Lampeter, do an intensive Welsh language summer course, for beginners and intermediate and advanced, and if you wanted immersion in a part of Wales that is still largely Cymro Cymraeg, it's what I'd recommend.
As for the pronunciation of Cafall, "ll" can become "l" in some situations, like after "y", and general wearing down, and I think Cafall would be Cafal if it were written down now the "ll" has been lost, but the spelling has fossilised at an earlier point.
Checking this with actual research, "Nennius", in the Latin original, (which is C.9) has "Cabal", sic, no ending in any case. (The dog called horse...)
The spelling as he have it almost certainly comes from Culhwch and Olwen, which is C.11, but not written down until c.1350, but I only have the bits C&Y deign to quote in Welsh, which doesn't include that bit, and the rest only in English, nor can I find the relevant bit of it online. Jones & Jones spell it Cafall in their English Culhwch.
To my disgust but not surprise, Berresford Ellis's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology doesn't have an entry on Cafall, and neither does the usually more reliable Encyclopaedia of Arthurian Legend, which surprises me. I need to go and ask about this on Arthurnet, which means I need to resubscribe to Arthurnet.
OK. Onward. This is giving me a fine illusion of achievement!
I remember those
Date: 2003-03-18 07:24 pm (UTC)I pick up languages very quickly, especially if I'm immersed. Drives my parents nuts. :D (They've lived in Mexico for seven years or so now and are still working on their Spanish. I go visit for a week and pick up enough to make my way around easily the first day I'm there.) I'd love to do the summer class in Wales, but I doubt I'll make it anytime soon. Babies at home, you know. Being mommy comes first. I'll get there someday maybe.
At least Welsh sticks to its phonetics which is more than I can say for English!! :D