web hosting short URLs photo sharing

The Inspiration of the Bards

'Awen' - inspiration or power was said to descend on the Bards and to give them the gift of poetry and prophecy. Many of the greatest men and women of Albion have been poets and prophets, such as William Blake, with his Visions and T.S. Eliot in his Quartets. Sometimes their messages have been too uncomfortable for their own eras and we can only now appreciate them. (Do, when you read Alice Meynell's poem 'Christ in the Universe', think of what the world was like when she was a young woman!) Others are currently unfashionable as they have become associated in peoples' minds with political and social concepts now outmoded and outgrown. Such a one is Rudyard Kipling, who wrote at the height of the British Empire. But his passionate love for England and its history, particularly his own county of Sussex comes through in his poetry.

Scotland's poetry has often been inaccessible to English speaking people, as the best of it has been written in the two Scottish languages of Gaelic and Scots. I hope to put up some of this poetry with footnotes to help the less Scots-literate, but meanwhile, Gaelic versions of charms, spells and prayers can be found in the Carmina Gadelica section.

In due course, (and space permitting!) some welsh poetry will appear too.
Here are gathered together all the poetry pages on this site, as well as links to some modern Bards in the Druid tradition: