Marwnat Programme Note  
 
“Marwnat” is based upon the melody to “The Lament of the Border Widow” by Malcolm Lawson which was published in “Songs of The North” in 1895.  An old ballad provides the words.
 
Why “Marwnat”?
 
Marwnat is the Middle Welsh word for Lament, Elegy or Death Song.
 
By 350 e.v. the mainland of Britain was inhabited by the Keltic race of Britons from the Channel up to Antonine's Wall and a little beyond.  A reasonable boundary may be noted by drawing a line from the Isle of Arran, which lies off the West coast of Scotland, through Dumbarton, Perth and Forfar to Stonehaven in the East.  To the North of this line lay Pictland.
 
At this point in British history, apart from the wealthy and such as had scaled the then local government ladder by consorting with the occupying power and system imposed on the country by Imperial Rome (and who lived in the Roman style, speaking Latin and subjecting their children to the Empire's standards in culture and education), the bulk of the population spoke 'Parent' British - a language now known as Primitive Welsh.
 
Indeed the bard Aneurin wrote his epic tale “The Gododdin” in 600 e.v. (in the region of the Forth where dwelt his kinsmen – the tribe of The Gododdin) - a poem composed in Primitive Welsh and found in The Book of Aneurin.  This was called the earliest known "Scottish" poem when published by Edinburgh University press c. 1971/2.
 
And so I have justly reintroduced a word from Scotland’s forgotten Welsh origins and heritage.
 
 

Mel Young

  INTRODUCTION