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Forgotten songs

Click to hear (.mp3)


Fragmented memories linger long in time
beyond imagining of those who wrote
immortal lines that still inhabit rhyme
which first were heard from long forgotten throats
of bards, and jesters, merry men and fools
who sang the chants of chieftains (often lies);
their fabled tales are now a poet's tools,
and yet, if even this our language dies,
as others died before, in other lands,
yet long and loud we'll hear through future years
the stories sung by early warrior bands
who first recounted victories and tears;
they sang of vibrant knights that righted wrongs -
lost fragments, scraps, and old Gododdin songs.

(Gododdin - a bygone people of north-eastern Britain, remembered in the 7th century Welsh poems "Y Gododdin", attributed to Aneirin.)


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