The Journey of the Taf

[Ceri Shaw]

This afternoon we received the following communication from Mike Jenkins ( excerpted ) ".....dear friends, Here is a poem which I recently wrote , which you can use on your site if you wish......"

We are extremely pleased and proud to present "The Journey of the Taf". We resisted the temptation to add complementary graphics of Castell Coch, Pen y Fan etc because we wanted nothing to distract from, or dilute in any way the power of these words.

Journey of the Taf - Mike Jenkins

It begins in the centre of a mountain, waters breaking.
Nobody can say

exactly where

I come from :

parents Earth and Water

and the midwife Air.

Soon Fire, the sun

and everything

I feed upon.

This place of summits

called a watershed :

tears as light

stings my eyes.

I am just a stream

a nant, a toddler

finding my way

downslope, over the edge

of my mother

and with my father's constant

push of rain.

One like many others

till I start to cut teeth,

to haul stones

to erode the bed

and banks into a gorge.

I'm moving quicker

with steeper gradient,

my veins pulse

with the thrust of water

like a salmon at the point

of a journey across the world.

Soldiers with back-packs

and booted outward-bounders.

fight against my movement,

believing it's a challenge.

The children who paddle

squeal, splash and fling

their stones, sound like

an echo in my bones.

The Sun, my teacher,

comes and goes

promising destinations

and then, dips down low;

so any season

I could be bellyfull

or parched to a trickle.

Sheep sip clear water

heads bowed as in prayer

to a lost mother ;

or they're dead weight,

blood mingling with light,

soon a veil of flies.

Winding and wending around

scarp and spur

I reach a sudden drop,

a ledge of resistant rock:

the descents of childhood

then youth when greys

and blues and browns

become a frothing white ;

into the devil's punchbowl

and a whirling might.

Here secret swimmers come

to shed their many skins

and exuberant leapers

plunge into a scream

and come out laughing.

I am joined by others.

by brothers and I'm 'Fawr'

to their 'Fechan',

they emerge on the scene

demanding confluences,

driving deep into chasms

before we're all lost

in a man-made lake :

they term it 'llyn'

but it is reservoir,

a store of water

we are schooled into

( even in most vivid reflections

we wear our grey uniforms ).

I straighten, I widen,

my girth held by bridges

and above are viaducts

which span into another age.

Rocky islets - trees and bushes

growing from them - bring doubts

as I begin to be fixed,

my route determined by walls

and a weir which parodies

the earlier waterfalls.

Now salmon struggle upstream,

as I welcome the many heron

whose measured wing-beats

are like the peace I strive for

and the returning colours

of the kingfishers diving

like winged rainbows.

All this, as I am dumping-place

for trolleys, cans and bottles

like some cess-pit of the past,

some cholera-infested slum.

My parents seem so far away :

mountains aloof, quarried or conifered

and clouds that drop their load

then move on. They call me Taff

but I much prefer my Welsh name

(it’s what I call myself

and sounds like a stone’s edge).

Sometimes I seem to slumber along

all controlled by sluice and gate ;

sometimes I’m far too busy

to notice those who gaze

like seagulls on the bars,

or those who cavort in heat ;

too busy with the flow, the downward trek.

I have too many shadows :

rail and trail, the once canal,

higher up the road obeys the curve.

Each shadow more purposeful

to traffic and trade;

I begin to wonder

why I move in such haste

and whether I will be

beyond it all, lost.

There are so many white weeds

hanging in the trees,

fluttering like flags of surrender

sometimes falling and filling

into tumours on my surface.

Just as cormorants are fishing

so I begin to sense the sea.

Silt accumulates in my bed,

slows me down after years

of scraping and scouring;

I begin to meander,

to waver across the floor,

the buildings start to ignore

my presence and there are outpourings

secretive and poisonous

which seep into my limbs.

Becoming sluggish, my murky waters

of blurred vision in the suburbs.

I try to remember stretching terraces

where the only vines were children

spreading tendrils of imagination.

The mud is gathering,

the flood-plain’s a resting-place

for birds on their journey south.

Anglers wade out to tempt

the fish with threaded flies.

I yawn into the city

past a parkland of lovers

and solitary office-workers,

I am broad and straight now

without the energy of gradient.

The grand stadium looms

as if it were a ship of state,

but finds no reflection.

I have almost forgotten

the distant mountains I came from,

the fact I am water at all.

‘Afon’ is a slow way of saying ,

it seems to suit me better

than the rip of ‘river’.

Already I can feel the saltiness

creep into my body

and seagulls’ mocking calls

hover then swoop all day.

At the Bay, I’m trained and tamed.

On calmer days feel stagnant;

when there’s a restless breeze

I begin to wave and voices

of my ancestors come back :

‘Once you were black, all thick

with dust like a collier’s throat.

Once this was flats of mud

where waders and dippers

would pick for worms.’

Now I am becalmed,

waiting for the gates to open,

where I will lose my name.

It is a different sun,

one that threatens to burn up,

to leave me dispersed

into the Channel and after.

A roof of slate, façade of glass,

the twirling pipes of a carousel

all bring back reminiscences

of pebbles carried, reflections borrowed,

stirrings under a waterfall.

It is night-time and the moon

is whole and crying out

like a barn-owl over moorland.

I must go and never know

what will become of me.



Mike Jenkins

[Ceri Shaw]

A link to the author's Red Poets page:-

The Red Poets

[Wedi Gadael y Rhwydwaith]

I remember there being some useful material on river names in Kenneth Jackson's Language and HIstory in Early Britain, and I daresay a scout around the library shelves might throw something else out. I'll get back to you, unless anybody else has any good ideas.

[Wedi Gadael y Rhwydwaith]

Depends, I guess, on what you mean by "Pre-Celtic". I.e. do you mean Indo-European (common to common ancestor languages of Celtic, Latin, Germanic, etc.) or that it was existent on the island in Pre-Celtic times (i.e. used in whatever language was spoken before the Celtic languages took over). The first would seem plausible (since the elements are common throughout Europe); the second might be more difficult to prove. But I'm no linguist.

[Ceri Shaw]

Sorry about that old chap....I thought it was a dupe. Been a hectic morning with computers freezing left right and center. Thanks for the info. Is there any suggestion anywhere that it is of pre-celtic origin?

[Wedi Gadael y Rhwydwaith]

My second post with the following information seems not to have made it through the moderation:

1) the gist of the first citation I posted is that the rivers Taf, Tawe, Teifi, Team, Tame and Thames all have elements considered to mean 'flow', 'current', etc., which is common to many European and Celtic river names.

2) the second suggests that 'taf' means 'spread (out), distributed, etc.' and gives comparative suggestions.

[Wedi Gadael y Rhwydwaith]

Concerning the etymology of 'taf', this is what's given on the BBC Cymru'r Byd website:

"Mae afon Taf yn perthyn i grŵp o enwau afonydd Celtaidd ac Ewropeaidd sy'n golygu rhywbeth tebyg i 'llif' er y credid unwaith mai 'tywyll' oedd ei ystyr. Yn y grŵp yna mae afonydd Tawe, Teifi, Team, Tame a Thames. Mae'n ddiddorol nodi bod Caerdydd, Abertawe a Llundain ar afonydd gyda'r un tarddiad ieithyddol."

And here's a citation from "Yr Haul" in 1881. The references to Puw indicate that we may need to reach for grains of salt here and there, but there's a lot here of interest, and the book is digitised by GoogleBooks if you want to look further.

"Aberteifi
"Y mae rhai yn traethu mai gwreiddyn cyntaf yr enw hwn yw taf (ymdaenawl) a bod y gair ystafell yn perthyn iddo, sef y man a byddai ein hynafiaid yn taenu pethau at fywoliaeth a chysuron. Y mae tafod tafell &c yn cael eu cyfrif yn perthyn i’r teulu hwn o eiriau; dyna farn Dr Puw. Y mae ereill yn barnu mai taw yw y gwreiddyn, sef yr hyn sydd yn gyfystyr a Tawe, Tawy &c fel yr ym wedi sylwi yn barod. Y mae yn wir fod w yn troi yn f ас у gall taw a gwy fod yn wreiddiau yr enwau Taf a Teifi. Y mae y Dr Puw уn rhoddi taen yn un ystyr i taw sef the state of being spread or extended ас felly gellir cyfuno y ddau ystyr hwn. Afon weddol araf ac ymdaenawl yw у Teifi о ran ei rhediad ac felly mae yr ystyr yn eithaf priodol iddi.

"Y mae genym amryw afonydd o r enw Taf, y rhai yn ôl pob tebygolrwydd sydd yr un ystyr a Teifi. Y mае yn dra thebyg mai taen yw ystyr yr afon Tyne yn Lloegr."

[Wayne]

The river in Carmathen is the Afon Taf, or River Taf not River Afon Taf
http://streetmap.co.uk/place/River_Taf_Afon_Taf_in_Carmarthenshire_Sir_Gaerfyrddin_343611_310611.htm
I think you are being confused by the common 'trying to save sign space' that goes on in Wales when putting both English and Welsh on signs - ie rather than put "Jones Park - Parc Jones" they put "Parc Jones Park" which seems a bit wierd until you work out what they are trying to achieve.

Also, Taf seems to mean "Still and Deep Flowing"
http://www.fforestfawrgeopark.org.uk/understanding/river-names

[Ceri Shaw]

You did Smetana for 'o' level music!!??!! All we did was sing hymns. All this talk of Ma Vlast etc has reminded me that I dont have any Smetana in my music collection thus occasioning an emergency visit to Music Millennium where I shall enquire...."Got any Smetana mate?" and see what happens.

On a side note I recall somewhere reading that Taf was a pre-celtic word meaning water. Does anyone know if this is true or have I been misled? There is somewhere in West Wales a river called the River Afon Taf. It has always been a source of amusement to me to tell people about the wonderfully descriptive place names we have in Wales ( how many Mynydd Ddu's? ) and quote that one translating it as the River River Water.

[Wayne]

Perhaps those wondering why Taf is spelt thus should consider that 'River Taff' is the ENGLISH version of the river name...... The correct WELSH name is Afon Taf .....where Afon = river and Taf is just a name that has been around since at least the sixth century:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/cardiff/pages/name_dericjohn.shtml
"Caerdyf, a form which dates to the early 6th century at least, contains two place-name elements. The first is Welsh caer, 'fort, stronghold, enclosure' which is often seen in Welsh place names. This is followed by Taf, a river-name in its genitive form Tyf, mutated to Dyf - 'fort (of the river) Taf'.
The form Cardiff recorded in 1477 represents an anglicised pronunciation of Caerdyf, while Caerdydd demonstrates the interplay between the f and dd consonants in the Welsh language."

I hadn't noticed, but the author actually says in the poem:
"They call me Taff
but I much prefer my Welsh name
(it’s what I call myself
and sounds like a stone’s edge)"

hth

[Dom Stocqueler]

Yes, having read the whole poem now I see what you mean

"A roof of slate, façade of glass, the twirling pipes of a carousel" have to be Cardiff bay

and,

"I yawn into the city past a parkland of lovers and solitary office-workers, I am broad and straight now without the energy of gradient.The grand stadium looms, as if it were a ship of state" can only be Cardiff

for Welsh Rivers see http://www.welshicons.org.uk/html/welsh_rivers.php

I (probably) jumped the gun as so many people confise the Taf and the Taff. I know what you mean about Smetana - had to do Ma Vlast (I think that's how it is spelt) for my music O'level and it has stuck with me ever since