> Attend! We have heard how the Sartari
> In days gone by worked mighty deeds.
> King Tarkalor deprived his enemies,
> Man and beast, of their comforts.
> He was a terror to them all, won honour
> Until the folk of every nearby tribe
> Under Wintertop's shadow
> Were forced to give him tribute
> That was a good king!
Oh, thank you! Lovely! Though I think personally I'd leave the initial "Hwaet!" in the original: it's an exclamation, after all, and you get to keep the "feel" without losing any meaning.
That's the trouble I always have with using "period" sources. You have to translate, unless you have extremely well-educated players. And I've never yet seen a translation that kept anything like the feel of the originals. By the time it's been twisted into Glorantha as well, there's no hope, and your players get the idea that ancient poetry didn't rhyme, didn't scan, and was generally impossible to fit to a drum-beat, much less a tune. (Of course, Beowulf isn't meant to rhyme: but expecting a bunch of PCs to appreciate alliteration and stress-counting after three beers and two Extended Contests is perhaps a bit much).
Still, for Beowulf, we have the new Seamus Heaney translation. Anyone
know of a decent translation of the Goddodin? One that keeps the
rhyming pattern? Though even then...
"Gwyr a aeth gatraeth.." the internal rhyme is obvious even if you don't
know what it means. But as soon as you swap to a Gloranthan battle
name, you're in trouble. "Gwyr a aeth .." hmm, need two syllables, and a
battle the Sartarites lost. Dwarf Ford: pull out the dictionary. "Corrhyd"
? So we need a word with the same sort of meaning as "aeth", but
rhyming with "-rhyd": looking up the dictionary again, forwards and
backwards: I can get "ergyd", but that's a syllable too many. Or "gofid"
might fit the meaning better, but is still too long. I give up. Even in my
own language, this is too hard, and in early Welsh it's ridiculous. And I
have no idea how to translate that lot into English while keeping
anything like the same rhythm.
It's no good. Ancient poetry is what we need, but we're going to have to
make do with a compromise. A compromise we can sing along to, as
modern players won't like recitation to a drum beat. About all we can do
is pick a tune that's as early as our players tastes will accept, and
tweak the words a bit.
"Men of Sartar, march to glory
Victory is hov'ring o'er ye ...."
Jane Williams jane_at_...
http://www.williams.nildram.co.uk/gloranth/index.shtml
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