this small, small world we live in

[jmtorres]

I just pm'd dduane, author of a number of books that had a formative effect during my childhood, because hey, she commented on my journal once, it's not unreasonable to think she might answer a question for me.

Sometimes I feel like the internet draws the constellations in closer around us, the better to reach up and touch.

ETA: I appear to have just lost an hour researching medieval Welsh literature, because I wanted to see the full context of the quote "I have been a word in a book" from the beginning of So You Want To Be A Wizard, which is cited as being from the Song of Taliesin in The Black Book of Caermarthen. I, I eventually found the full piece, the lovely poem The Battle of the Trees, which is quite portentous title given the *flaaaaail* history of everything in the Wizards 'verse, but also not in the Black Book of Carmarthen, it's in the Book of Taliesin, which as far as I can tell is a separate book entirely and currently dated to about two centuries later. But it's also in part a preservation copy of earlier work? But I can't find the poem at all in the 1906 translation of the Black Book of Carmarthen, although I understand that's incomplete. Does anyone know more about this than me? Because right now it looks to me like So You Want To Be A Wizard misattributed and I.

Well, the plot of that book hinges on a misprint, that all books have them, even the book in which everything in the universe is written down, so, I'm guessing if it is a misattribution and not me failing at internet researching Welsh literature in my free time, that it's intentional, but I just. Flail. I don't even know. *hands*

Comments

[ashkitty]

Here because you asked. :) I think it says something about how long it's been since I sat down and read SYWTBW that I didn't even notice this! Ah well. Anyway, you're not wrong, it's a mistake.

The Canu Taliesin is not in the Black Book, I'm afraid. It's only in the Book of Taliesin. The actual line isn't quite actually 'I have been a word in a book', either, but Bum geir yn llythyr--'I have been a word in a letter.' The next line begins with 'I have been a book,' so it wouldn't be too hard to mix them up.

Incidentally, the Llyfr Taliesin is digitised (so is the Black Book, on the same site) and you can look at it on the National Library of Wales' site. It's of limited use if you don't read middle Welsh, but it's pretty cool to look at all the same. :)

Have to run to class, but if I didn't answer something, poke at me and I'll get back to it tonight. :)

[jmtorres]

Thank you! Thank you so much! Translation query: word in a letter--letter like of the alphabet or like correspondence?

[ashkitty]

Letter as in correspondence, but I honestly don't remember how different Middle Welsh is in that case--letter of the alphabet is llythyren, so it is quite close. (Skene's 19th century translation, which is the one Mary Jones has up, says 'I have been a word amongst letters,' but that's not quite right and his translations tend to be more poetic than accurate.)