Description I would prefer the reading to have been performed at a real haycock in a traditional hay meadow, instead of these mechanically-bundled straw bales, which may look appropriately pastoral to us, but which are really just another sign of the mechanisation of the landscape. Unfortunately, countryside traditions are not often observed locally (unless they involve blood sports). There is some self-ironic comedy in this, but not as much as in 'The Sigh', and there are some very archetypal folk motifs beneath the surface.
THE HAYCOCK
Y Mwdwl Gwair
Loitering by my lover?s lair
Lying sleepless in her allure;
It?s hard to balance loss and gain
Lovelorn and sluiced with rain.
Had she left an open door
For me, alas I would not dare
To enter, fearing her reproof ?
Haycock, be my walls and roof.
Haven haycock, tousled stack,
Green of head, pale and stark:
Praise the rake that worked to gather
Every severed stalk together.
I am a bard in green raiment
Wearing hay: a graceful garment.
I dug a hole here. Like dove
In columbarium, sick with love.
Meadow grass cut limp and long
Here I languish, lost in song.
Like a barrow you were built
And each skein of grass was bent
As if to chamber some great lord,
And like a lord you suffer. Sword-
Sharp iron left you slain
But you bleed without a stain.
Tomorrow, ere the light has failed
They?ll have dragged you from the field.
Mair have mercy! They?ll hang you high
Above dry stubble, there to die.
I pray you find your rest, and lie
In the hayloft. Watch me fly
An angel over close-mown land
When the Judgement is at hand:
?Haycock, now the time is right
For stalk and soul to reunite.?
- Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. One of Dafydd?s strangest poems, this appeals to the animist in me. It bears comparison with ?The Ruin? since both the haycock and the ruin are structures whose transience is lamented by the poet, and both of them are seen to have personalities of their own. Modern folkies may notice affinities with 'John Barleycorn'.
