The Poet’s Grave
Thursday, April 1, 2010, 16:18
Pethe spent the weekend in a graveyard, not the way everyone would choose to spend Saturday, admittedly. But as a bard once wrote, ‘not everyone goes mad in the same way’ (It sounds better in Welsh.ed).
Pethe was in search of the grave of Y Bardd Cocos (The Cockles Bard) a purveyor of doggerel verse par excellence. He is buried on the lovely Church Island (Ynys Tysilio) in the Menai Straights.
One of his most enduringly famous compositions is this paean to the stone lions flanking the Britannia Bridge:
Pedwar llew tew
Heb dim blew.
Dau ‘rocher yma
A dau ‘rocher drew.
Which translates as:
Four fat lions/Without any hair/Two over here/And two over there.
Quite. The lions are still there by the way. But they take a bit of finding nowadays despite being huge.
Have a look at what the academi has to say about the bardd Cocos.
