What's Occurrin'?

Name for village + clonc.

Townytown Clonc. (Again, the unfamiliar term would be easily swallowed in context as well as understood --and there are always subtitles for a definition if need be.)

"Conflap". Cool word!

Clonc is a great word and a grabber.

Cwm Dancing?

(Not entirely relevant, but I'm in for a pun.)

Yay!

Love the current title choice.

What a treat. Thanks, Kie.

I love the title and the tone of exasperation, Kie. I got the gist of your Welsh before I looked it up to be sure -- it works nicely to add atmosphere and character without dimming comprehension for those of us across the pond.

Kie, I've been having fun with each of the poems in this series (which I'm enjoying immensely, by the way) -- first, reading them to see if I can figure out the slang by context and tone, and only then trying to look up the slang words on the internet to see if I'm right. (Generally I'm pleased to say I've been close enough.)

For your entertainment, I'm going to post my rough interpretation of this one without looking anything up -- mostly because it had more slang than usual that got me puzzling over more than one possible meaning, so I might be way off. If nothing else, it will entertain you.

Overall, it sounded to me like someone baiting a man about his wife with a string of insults. It could be another man trying to pick a fight, a nasty female acquaintance, or perhaps the man's mother (if she really dislikes her daughter-in-law). The comments about laundry and holes in the clothes seemed (if I may be sexist) most likely to come from a woman -- so I plunked down for either a hostile mother, or a nosy, bad-tempered female acquaintance.

Much depends on whether the "son" is to be taken literally or not, and whether or not "tapped" is a sexual reference. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess "yes" and "no" on those questions, and plunk down for a mother who is annoyed at hearing her son complain, and thinks her daughter-in-law is worthless.

kborsden said:

Ych a fi! That girl of yours? Talk tidy, mun...
you're all jaw, you are, an' no balls.
You gob your bellyache an' blame it
on how you was rared, but I sees your missus,
a nutter if we're being reel, an' a notright
will need tapping, son...

There's no shape on 'er washing –
your boy's togs is full of holes, pooer dab,
do afto shift for 'imself! Now, see your rubbish?
So's I don't want it now, or again not –
go potch 'bout the ash, an' pit what
you haven't, all lovely like, 'till the trewth
comes calling where it rather won't be after.

Click to expand...

Cass's attempt at interpretation:

Pfft! That wife of yours? Talk sense, man.
You're all mouth and no courage,
complaining all the time and blaming it
on how you were raised, but I see your wife --
who's a lunatic, if I'm going to be honest with you -- and a crazy person
needs to be locked up, son. [ "need tapping" had me puzzling more than most of the rest put together. I thought it could mean "needs sexual intercourse", or alternatively "needs to be beaten", but context-wise, this seemed more like what the narrator would likely be saying about the woman. Especially if "son" is taken literally, and not to mean, e.g., "man" or "friend."]

She's terrible at doing the laundry.
Your son's clothes are full of holes, poor kid.
and he has to do things for himself. Now, see what bullshit you're talking?
So I don't want to hear you complaining again, now or ever.
Go whine about garbage, or brag about ["ash" was another one I puzzled over. This seemed to make sense to me]
what you don't have, until the truth
catches up with you and you're forced to face it.

That was pretty much exactly how I read it.

With much enjoyment.

If Kie won't mind the analogy, reading these, for me, reminds me of when I was first introduced to Shakespeare back in high school. I had fun reading the plays without referring to all the explanatory notes, just for the pleasure of seeing how close I came to the meaning. And I was usually pretty close, actually -- it was a rare word or phrase I couldn't come at least close to guessing by context -- and even when I missed the meaning of a word of phrase, it made for a more enjoyable reading process to just go through the play and engage with the plot and characters rather than stopping at every line for the footnote and the exact sense of each archaic word. I never had trouble understanding the plot, even if I missed a word now and then.

Similarly, here there are well over a dozen words that are not in my American English vocabulary, not to mention unfamiliar spellings and phrasings, yet I feel engaged with the poem and get a vivid feel from it (though whether the feel I get is what Kie intended might be another question).

At some point, if Kie doesn't stop in to translate, I'll do as I did with my Shakespeare -- try to look up the references I wasn't quite clear about, and see how close I came.

Come to think of it, I did this when I was a young reader, as well. I started snitching my parents' books as a kid, which were filled with words I didn't know. For the most part, it was more fun to try to figure it out by context.

So thank you, Kie -- this series brings back a pleasure I haven't experienced much since I was a kid!

I really do love this series, Kie. Once again I have no difficulty figuring out from context what the Welsh and dialect words meant (or close enough), and once again I have a vivid sense of your characters and can easily picture the scene.

Every time you post a new one, I want to visit Wales.