Random Thursday Blog: Hoywverch
(Originally, I'd been planning to save this to post when the story actually goes live. But I didn't have anything else lined up, and I spent the entire morning in a dentist's chair having two crowns done, so I'm not up to throwing something else together on my lunch hour. I know for certain that the story will be posted during February, so keep your eyes peeled at Podcastle. I'll be posting pointers back here when it's available.)
ETA: 2015/02/20 The story is now live!
* * *
Pwyll pendevig dyved a oed yn arglwyd ar seith cantref Dyved a threigylweith dyvod yn y vryd ac yn y vedwl vyned y hela. -- Pwyll,Prince of Dyfed was lord over the seven cantrefs of Dyfed. And one day it came into his mind and his throughts to go hunting…
So opens the first story or “branch” of the Mabinogi, the most iconic story-sequence in medieval Welsh literature. I reproduced the above from memory (and will not double-check it before posting) and have several more lines of the opening memorized as well. It seemed important to me to learn at least a small bit by memory because these tales were first and foremost oral tales--and that orality may have contributed to the relatively small number of them that pass on to us today. (The other contribution to their loss was most likely the dissolution of the monasteries under King Henry VIII, with the consequent breaking up of the great monastic libraries, along with more individual attrition over the years.)
Part of my PhD research on the semantics of medieval Welsh prepositions involved reading, translating, and coding the context of every single preposition occurring in medieval Welsh prose literature (for those texts that we can have confidence were composed in Welsh rather than being translated into it). I developed a very intimate relationship with that set of texts, and the rhythms and vocabulary settled into my bones.
One of the experiences of being a lesbian (even more than some other queer identities) and studying medieval history and literature is a hollow sense of absence from the text. Foucault notwithstanding, it is improbable that the entirety of pre-modern Wales contained no women who felt desire for other women--improbable that there were none who acted on that desire to some extent. And yet we are not there in the texts.
Historic emotional and intimate interactions do not map clearly or exactly to the ones we experience today. Even emotions such as fear, anger, and pity have a cultural framing that shapes how the experiencer understands and acts on them. How much more so love and desire? And yet the straight cis reader is never discouraged from identifying with the characters in medieval literature who share those characteristics, or from assuming a commonality of experience. The queer reader not only finds a dearth of closely identifiable characters, but is often instructed that their experiences have a more qualitative disjunction from their historic counterparts than a straight reader’s do.
As an amateur historian, my response to this situation has been to try to spread the word about the historic research that does identify lesbians and lesbian-like experiences in history and literature. For a complex intersection of reasons, they were less commonly noted, less commonly recorded, and today are less commonly studied, contributing to a conspiracy of silence by indifference. But in recent decades researchers have been digging deeper and bringing a great many more hints, clues, and outright facts to life. I’ve been following this field of research for my own interests for quite some time and started the Lesbian Historic Motif Project to help make others aware of what’s out there.
But as a writer of fiction, I have another option. As Monique Wittig says in Les Guérillères: “You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember ... You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.” I can help redeem the false absence of lesbians from historic literature with fictions of my own. Yes, they’re fictions, but so is the original Mabinogi. There was no underworld ruled by kings with red-eared hounds. There was no cauldron that could bring dead bodies back to mute life. There was no magic wand that could transform men into beasts of the forest. Lesbians are more plausible than all of those. And so, I invent.
“Hoywverch” is the child of my love for this literature and my desire to occupy it. I wove it out of the rhythms of the stories I’d learned near by heart--even to the point where it was a simple matter to “untranslate” the opening passage back into the language of the 14th century. The threads are motifs unraveled from the stories that have come down to us: the marvel that appears while hunting, the clever maiden, the disrupted wedding feast, trickery by the letter of a bargain, and more to come in the stories that will follow after. Otherworldly visitors, obligations, quests, the power of oaths and peculiar characteristics, the appearance and disappearance of mysterious babies, transformations, and the challenging of suitors with impossible tasks.
Elin verch Gwir Goch oed yn arglwydes ar Cantref Madruniawn wrth na bo i’w thad na meibion na brodyr. A threigylgweith dyvot yn y medwl vynet y hela.-- Elin, the daughter of Gwir Goch, ruled over the cantref of Madrunion, for her father had neither sons nor brothers. And one day it came into her mind to go hunting…
So opens the first branch of my “Merchinogi”. [1] I plan four stories in all, as in the original: one will be appearing shortly in audio format, one is in revisions, one is outlined in detail, the last is still feeling its way to structure. I actually wrote “Hoywverch” quite some time ago, sold it, and had the magazine fold before it appeared. It’s a rather odd duck of a story in terms of genre and I let it sit, uncertain where I might be able to place it. Last year I pulled it out, polished it up, added the translated opening, and was beginning to contemplate what I might do with it when I ran across the submissions call for Podcastle’s Artemis Rising series. The answer was obvious, because this is at its very heart an oral tale, meant to be spoken aloud and falling just barely this side of poetry. I sent it off and was stunned to have it accepted from among what I understand to be rather stiff competition.
The story will be available some time before the end of the month. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And keep your eyes (or ears) peeled for the next branch “Hyddwen”.
* * *
[1] The title of the original “Mabinogi” is from the root “mab” meaning “son, boy” and generally interpreted as meaning “stories about the begetting and youth of a [male] hero”. I have playfully called my collection the “Merchinogi”, from the corresponding female word. The title “Hoywverch” comes from a poetic compound word occurring in the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym (who was quite prone to coining poetic compounds), from “hoyw” (spritely, lively, gay) and “merch” (girl, daughter). The play on words is that in modern times the word “hoyw” has been adopted for the sexual orientation sense of “gay” (both genders).
ETA: 2015/02/20 The story is now live!
* * *
Pwyll pendevig dyved a oed yn arglwyd ar seith cantref Dyved a threigylweith dyvod yn y vryd ac yn y vedwl vyned y hela. -- Pwyll,Prince of Dyfed was lord over the seven cantrefs of Dyfed. And one day it came into his mind and his throughts to go hunting…
So opens the first story or “branch” of the Mabinogi, the most iconic story-sequence in medieval Welsh literature. I reproduced the above from memory (and will not double-check it before posting) and have several more lines of the opening memorized as well. It seemed important to me to learn at least a small bit by memory because these tales were first and foremost oral tales--and that orality may have contributed to the relatively small number of them that pass on to us today. (The other contribution to their loss was most likely the dissolution of the monasteries under King Henry VIII, with the consequent breaking up of the great monastic libraries, along with more individual attrition over the years.)
Part of my PhD research on the semantics of medieval Welsh prepositions involved reading, translating, and coding the context of every single preposition occurring in medieval Welsh prose literature (for those texts that we can have confidence were composed in Welsh rather than being translated into it). I developed a very intimate relationship with that set of texts, and the rhythms and vocabulary settled into my bones.
One of the experiences of being a lesbian (even more than some other queer identities) and studying medieval history and literature is a hollow sense of absence from the text. Foucault notwithstanding, it is improbable that the entirety of pre-modern Wales contained no women who felt desire for other women--improbable that there were none who acted on that desire to some extent. And yet we are not there in the texts.
Historic emotional and intimate interactions do not map clearly or exactly to the ones we experience today. Even emotions such as fear, anger, and pity have a cultural framing that shapes how the experiencer understands and acts on them. How much more so love and desire? And yet the straight cis reader is never discouraged from identifying with the characters in medieval literature who share those characteristics, or from assuming a commonality of experience. The queer reader not only finds a dearth of closely identifiable characters, but is often instructed that their experiences have a more qualitative disjunction from their historic counterparts than a straight reader’s do.
As an amateur historian, my response to this situation has been to try to spread the word about the historic research that does identify lesbians and lesbian-like experiences in history and literature. For a complex intersection of reasons, they were less commonly noted, less commonly recorded, and today are less commonly studied, contributing to a conspiracy of silence by indifference. But in recent decades researchers have been digging deeper and bringing a great many more hints, clues, and outright facts to life. I’ve been following this field of research for my own interests for quite some time and started the Lesbian Historic Motif Project to help make others aware of what’s out there.
But as a writer of fiction, I have another option. As Monique Wittig says in Les Guérillères: “You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember ... You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.” I can help redeem the false absence of lesbians from historic literature with fictions of my own. Yes, they’re fictions, but so is the original Mabinogi. There was no underworld ruled by kings with red-eared hounds. There was no cauldron that could bring dead bodies back to mute life. There was no magic wand that could transform men into beasts of the forest. Lesbians are more plausible than all of those. And so, I invent.
“Hoywverch” is the child of my love for this literature and my desire to occupy it. I wove it out of the rhythms of the stories I’d learned near by heart--even to the point where it was a simple matter to “untranslate” the opening passage back into the language of the 14th century. The threads are motifs unraveled from the stories that have come down to us: the marvel that appears while hunting, the clever maiden, the disrupted wedding feast, trickery by the letter of a bargain, and more to come in the stories that will follow after. Otherworldly visitors, obligations, quests, the power of oaths and peculiar characteristics, the appearance and disappearance of mysterious babies, transformations, and the challenging of suitors with impossible tasks.
Elin verch Gwir Goch oed yn arglwydes ar Cantref Madruniawn wrth na bo i’w thad na meibion na brodyr. A threigylgweith dyvot yn y medwl vynet y hela.-- Elin, the daughter of Gwir Goch, ruled over the cantref of Madrunion, for her father had neither sons nor brothers. And one day it came into her mind to go hunting…
So opens the first branch of my “Merchinogi”. [1] I plan four stories in all, as in the original: one will be appearing shortly in audio format, one is in revisions, one is outlined in detail, the last is still feeling its way to structure. I actually wrote “Hoywverch” quite some time ago, sold it, and had the magazine fold before it appeared. It’s a rather odd duck of a story in terms of genre and I let it sit, uncertain where I might be able to place it. Last year I pulled it out, polished it up, added the translated opening, and was beginning to contemplate what I might do with it when I ran across the submissions call for Podcastle’s Artemis Rising series. The answer was obvious, because this is at its very heart an oral tale, meant to be spoken aloud and falling just barely this side of poetry. I sent it off and was stunned to have it accepted from among what I understand to be rather stiff competition.
The story will be available some time before the end of the month. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And keep your eyes (or ears) peeled for the next branch “Hyddwen”.
* * *
[1] The title of the original “Mabinogi” is from the root “mab” meaning “son, boy” and generally interpreted as meaning “stories about the begetting and youth of a [male] hero”. I have playfully called my collection the “Merchinogi”, from the corresponding female word. The title “Hoywverch” comes from a poetic compound word occurring in the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym (who was quite prone to coining poetic compounds), from “hoyw” (spritely, lively, gay) and “merch” (girl, daughter). The play on words is that in modern times the word “hoyw” has been adopted for the sexual orientation sense of “gay” (both genders).