The Peat-pit
Woe to the poet (though he might be blamed)
who's lost and full of care.
Dark is the night on a cold moor,
4 dark, oh, that I had a torch!
It's dark over there, no good will befall me,
it's dark (and I'm losing my senses) over here.
Dark is the land down below (I've been duped),
8 dark is the waxing moon.
Woe is me that the shapely girl, of such radiant nature,
does not know how dark it is,
and that I (all praise to her is mine)
12 am out in thickest darkness.
There are no paths in these parts,
I well know that even by day
I'd be unable to make my way
16 to a homestead either here or there,
let alone (a colder comfort,
it is night) without light or stars.
It's not wise for a poet from another land,
20 and it's not pleasant (for fear of treachery or deceit)
to be found in the same land as my foe
and caught, I and my grey-black horse.
It was no wiser (it was even wilder yonder)
24 for us to find ourselves, as we fled,
drowned, after noble reverence,
in a peat-pit, my horse and I.
Such peril on a moor that's an ocean almost,
28 who can do any more in a peat-pit?
It's a fish-pond belonging to Gwyn ap Nudd,
alas that we should suffer it!
A pit between heath and ravine,
32 the place of phantoms and their brood.
I'd not willingly drink that water,
it's their privilege and bathing-place.
A lake of acrid wine, a tide of reddish brown,
36 a haven where pigs washed themselves.
I ruined entirely my kersey stockings
from Carmarthen in a hollow bog.
A swell (where there's no glut of gifts for a net)
40 of stagnant water, I received no honour there.
I know not why (except to be disrespected)
I'd enter that peat-pit with my horse.
A curse upon the idiot who dug it
44 (he did not triumph) - that was in blazing heat.
There's little chance I'll leave (if I reach dry land)
my blessing in the peatbog.