The Girls of Llanbadarn - Dafydd ap Gwilym

I bow before this passion;

a plague on the parish girls!

Because, o force of longing,

I've never had one of thern!

No sweet and hoped for maiden,

nor young girl, nor hag, nor wife.

What recoiling, what malice,

what lack makes them not want me?

What harm to a fine-browed girl

to have me in the thick dark wood?

It were no shame for her

to see me in a lair of leaves.

No one’s been so bewitched

save the men of Garwy's nature,

for no day do I fall in love

with fewer than one or two,

yet no nearer to having one

than if she were my foe.

Each Sunday at Llanbadarn

I’ve stood, let others witness,

with my face towards the fine girl

and my back to the pure God.

And after my long staring

over my plumed hat and over the people,

one girl says, piercingly clear,

to the other, who's quick to see it,

‘The pale fellow with the affected look

and his sister's hair on his head,

adulterously he glances,

this crooked locker versed in wickedness.’

‘Do you think he's pretending?’

says the other girl at her side.

‘He'll never get an answer;

let the fool get out to the Devil!’

The bright girl’s curse amazes me,

small payment for one dazed with love;

and it's made me abandon

These ways, these visions of terror.

I'd best become a hermit,

a villain’s occupation.

O strange lesson, through too much looking

over my shoulder, a picture of weakness

I became, this lover of powerful song,

wry headed and companionless.

---

Dafydd ap Gwilym  (c. 1315/1320 – c. 1350/1370) Wales

Translated by Gwyn Williams

Source: Welsh Poems Sixth Century to 1600, Gwyn Williams, University of California Press, 1974

Llanbadarn these days is a suburb of Aberystwyth , but the church is still there.