#verse from the third stanza of ‘hiraeth’ from hen benillion

[cruel-hiraeth]

hiraeth sydd yn torri ’nghalon; pan fwyf dryma’ ’r nos yn cysgu fe ddaw hiraeth ac a’m deffry.

twenty-something. she/her. adult and dark content writer. minors, blank blogs, & ageless blogs dni.

— rules — tags — masterlist

[cruel-hiraeth]

I could definitely Google this (but where is the fun in that and also I wouldn't get YOUR answer on what it means to YOU):

What does that stanza from "hiraeth" mean?

andy! ahhhh this is a wonderful question; thank you for asking <3 it’s unhinged blog lore time!

so (as you may already know) “hiraeth” is a welsh word that doesn’t have a direct translation in english. according to the oxford english dictionary, hiraeth means—originally and chiefly in the context of welsh culture:

deep longing for a person or thing which is absent or lost; yearning; nostalgia; spec. homesickness.

usually, hiraeth is simply translated as “longing” in english, although there are deep welsh cultural roots that surround the term and connect it to a specific time/place.

hiraeth appears in hen benillion, a collection of short form, welsh folk poetry, some of which dates back hundreds of years. one of the poems within the anthology is often referred to as “hiraeth” since there is neither a title, nor an attributed author. it’s four stanzas long, but the third stanza is the one that struck me the most, and is featured as part of my blog’s theme:

hiraeth mawr a hiraeth creulon, hiraeth sydd yn torri ’nghalon; pan fwyf dryma’r nos yn cysgu, fe ddaw hiraeth ac a’m deffry.

of course there are as many translations of verse as there are translators, but i primarily refer a translation by richard b. gillion, which goes:

great longing and cruel longing longing which is breaking my heart; when I most heavily by night do sleep then comes longing and awakens me.

as you can see, my url—cruel-hiraeth—is derived from this verse. of course, i’m stretching the concept of “hiraeth” in its usage here on my blog. but when it comes to fiction and self shipping (and imagined worlds in general), we often long for circumstances and people and places that don’t exist here on earth. and sometimes, it even feels like we belong elsewhere, in other universes—homelands we’ve never seen or experienced before. and that feeling can ache. it can hurt. cruel hiraeth.