The Wild Wine
From the Gaelic of MacIntyre.
The wild wine of nature,
Honey-like in its taste,
The genial, fair, thin element
Filtering through the sands,
Which is sweeter than cinnamon,
And is well-known to us hunters.
O, that eternal, healing draught,
Which comes from under the earth,
Which contains abundance of good
And costs no money!
Footnotes
17 “The Visions of the Sleeping Bard:” Being Ellis Wynne’s “Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsg,” Translated by Robert Gwyneddon Davies. Carnarvon (Welsh Publishing Co., Ltd.), 1909.
34 Emrys, King of Britain, lying sick at Canterbury, a Saxon of the name of Eppa disguised himself as a religious person, and pretending to be versed in medicine, obtained admission to the Monarch and administered to him a poisoned draught, of which he died.
39 Glyndwr signifies watery valley.
49a Written in the fifth century.
49b The British, like many other nations, whose early history is involved in obscurity, claim a Trojan descent.
54a Awen, or poetic genius, which he is said to have imbibed in his childhood, whilst employed in watching the cauldron of the Sorceress Cridwen.
54b I was but a child, but am now Taliesin,—Taliesin signifies: brow of brightness.
64 The harp.
74 Ale.
137 The “streams of generosity” were those of Dafydd ab Thomas Vychan. (See “Wild Wales,” chap. lxxxviii.)—Ed.
167 “What is hiraeth? Hiraeth is longing, the mourning, consuming feeling which one experiences for the loss of a beloved object.”—G.B.
187 The personage who figures in the splendid forgeries of MacPherson under the name of Fingal.
191 The Gaelic word for nobleman.
197 Ancient bards, to whose mansion, in the clouds, the speaker hopes that his spirit will be received.