Calan Gaeaf poem by Dyfed Lloyd Evans
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Calan Gaeaf
Come, child, awake, the dawn has come
Your terrors laid to rest
The fiends have gone, and you're at home
Safe, within the nest.
For in the night, while sleeping fast
You missed the ghastly sounds
Of Gwyn's wild hunt a-riding past
Trailing his ghostly hounds
Those dogs of white and ears red
Were yapping in the night
And through your room with careful tread
There stole the barrow wight
Up from their graves the creatures rose
To frighten mortal men
For in the dark the spirit glows
A-rising from the glen
Within Gwyn's host they all amass
Riding midnight steeds
Their shattered limbs and sharp cuirass
Recounting deathly deeds
Goblins, imps, beat on the roof
Extinguishing the hearth
Whilst on the floor the sparking hoof
Calls daemons to the garth.
The bansídh wails upon her mound
Awaking spirits, dead
Which, lawless, wander free, unbound
Creating mighty dread.
For where the daemonspawn ride out,
Claiming their one day
The ways of mortal man they flout
For now 'tis they hold sway
But on the eve, you slept secure
Protected in the gloom
For in the gleam of daylight, sure
They flee unto the tomb
Your terrors laid to rest
The fiends have gone, and you're at home
Safe, within the nest.
For in the night, while sleeping fast
You missed the ghastly sounds
Of Gwyn's wild hunt a-riding past
Trailing his ghostly hounds
Those dogs of white and ears red
Were yapping in the night
And through your room with careful tread
There stole the barrow wight
Up from their graves the creatures rose
To frighten mortal men
For in the dark the spirit glows
A-rising from the glen
Within Gwyn's host they all amass
Riding midnight steeds
Their shattered limbs and sharp cuirass
Recounting deathly deeds
Goblins, imps, beat on the roof
Extinguishing the hearth
Whilst on the floor the sparking hoof
Calls daemons to the garth.
The bansídh wails upon her mound
Awaking spirits, dead
Which, lawless, wander free, unbound
Creating mighty dread.
For where the daemonspawn ride out,
Claiming their one day
The ways of mortal man they flout
For now 'tis they hold sway
But on the eve, you slept secure
Protected in the gloom
For in the gleam of daylight, sure
They flee unto the tomb
When I lived in Cardiff during the middle of the 1990s my house was opposite a graveyard. This poem can to me after a Calan Gaeaf (Hallowe'en) party when I wlaked home past the crypts and gravestones). All the legends and tales of the ancient 'Wild Hunt' and the thinning of the veil between the realms of mortal man and the nether-realms came back to me and this poem was the result.
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