music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings Welsh Songs 1992 baritone piano duration 13'  first performance: David Kravitz (1,2,4); Lynn Torgove (3,5) wand Kayo Iwama  The Cantata Singers Recital Series / Longy School of Music, Cambridge / January 30, 2000 SCORE Three Hinds of Denbighshire The Sick Man of Aber Cuawg Grief  Epithalamion  The Lover's Shirt TEXTS Three Hinds of Denbighshire My day, my news, my night, my mind, my forgiveness, you're near me and I am waiting meekly. Even if you'll be my enemy, come.  All joy, all empty jollity, all thought, every mannerly companion, everything indeed but longing has suddenly gone away from me.  There's a river, a hillside and fresh boughs of trees that hide three hinds, Today no hunter finds them, or tries their willing flesh.  The morning you'll be ready, concerned with deer hunting: not one prey are we proposing, but a notable group of three.  Not with dogs should you decide to hunt us— that wouldn't be luckiest; better for you, my love, to tryst under trees with your dogs tied.  anonymous  The Sick Man of Aber Cuawg To sit high on a hill is the wish of my heart, yet it does not rouse me: my journey's short, my little homestead's empty.  The breeze is sharp, cowherds are ragged: whilst trees put on the fair colour of summer, I am very sick today.  I'm not light-footed, I keep no retinue, I can't go visiting: whilst it pleases the cuckoo, let it sing.  At Aber Cuawg cuckoos sing on flowering branches: clamorous cuckoo, may it sing on.  At Aber Cuawg cuckoos sing on flowering branches: wretched sick man who hears them all the time!  At Aber Cuawg cuckoos sing: bitter it is to my mind that one who once heard them hears them no more.  High up above the splendid oak I heard the voice of birds: o loud cuckoo, we remember those we love!  anonymous  Grief My heart is just as heavy As the horse on yonder hill; When trying to be happy, I can't, try as I will. The little shoe it pinches, On a spot you would not guess; My heart with bitter grieving Is breaking 'neath the stress.  anonymous  Epithalamion Singing, today I married my white girl beautiful in a barley field. Green on thy finger a grass blade curled, so with this ring I thee wed, I thee wed, and send our love to the loveless world of all the living and all the dead.  Now, no more than vulnerable human, we, more than one, less than two, are nearly ourselves in a barley field— and only love is the rent that's due though the bailiffs of time return anew to all the living but not the dead.  Shipwrecked, the sun sinks down harbours of a sky, unloads its liquid cargoes of marigolds, and I and my white girl lie still in the barley–who else wishes to speak, what more can be said by all the living against all the dead?  Come then all you wedding guests: green ghost of trees, gold of barley, you blackbird priests in the field, you wind that shakes the pansy head fluttering on a stalk like a butterfly; come the living and come the dead.  Listen flowers, birds, winds, worlds, tell all today that I married more than a white girl in the barley— for today I took to my human bed flower and bird and wind and world, and all the living and all the dead.  Dannie Abse (b.1923)  The Lover's Shirt As I was washing under a span of the bridge of Cardigan and in my hand my lover's shirt with a golden beetle to drub the dirt, a man came to me on a steed, broad in shoulder, proud in speed, and he asked me if I'd sell the shirt of the lad I love so well.  But I said I wouldn't sell for a hundred pounds and packs as well, nor if the grass of two ridges were deep in wethers and the whitest sheep, nor if two hay meadows were choked with oxen which were ready yoked, nor if St. David's nave were filled with herbs all pressed but not distilled. Not even for all that would I sell the shirt of the lad I love so well. anonymous