Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Online reference sources suggest gosod y bwrdd - if/unless anyone can either confirm or improve on that…

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I think we might need a hashtag…:wink:

Yup, it’s ‘gosod y bwrdd’… :slight_smile:

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FunFact: gwirion (which now means stupid) comes from the word gwir - the truth. A person gwirion was one who was “too stupid” (you decide) to lie, and so always told the truth. I believe the English word idiot had a similar meaning.

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Summerhouse - ty haf?
Is this so blindingly obvious that I just need to trust my instinct a little more?

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Family history oriented question - how do I say great grandfather? Or great great great grandfather? I’ve got that far back - squeeeee!

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I’m not sure what a ‘summerhouse’ is in English - ‘tŷ haf’ is a holiday home… :slight_smile:

Great-grandfather is hen daid - great great grandfather is gorhendaid - everyone would understand if you went hen hen hen daid…

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(a glorified shed with a veranda really!)

Aha… mmmm… yup, ‘sied’ is probably what I’d have said… or you could go fancy and say ‘swyddfa ardd’… :slight_smile:

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This isn’t really a question, more an observation. I like that radio programmes start by welcoming us all together, rather than just welcoming the listener. (Croese cynnes aton ni)

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Hi, I have a summer house, so I have tried to search up on the Welsh word and see if I could find anything. Found a very ancient reference online, and also a picture of a project at St Fagans, which used the term Hafdŷ. It is much posher than mine though. https://amgueddfa.cymru/sainffagan/adeiladau/hafdy/

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I only knew of the term ‘Hafod’ for the rather rough and ready accommodation used by shepherds in the summer up the mountains. Met it in old literature, I think. It doesn’t seem to be used now, although, on TV ‘Hafod Haul’ is an upland farm!

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When I was doing Old Norse we came across a word for the same sort of thing in a saga, and the English word for it (apparently) was Shieling. I’m not sure that translating Old Norse into Scots really helped, because we still then needed to know what a shieling meant…

Which accounts for the number of houses I’ve seen dotted around with 'Hafod in their name?[quote=“Ar_Graig, post:2631, topic:3153”]
t St Fagans, which used the term Hafdŷ.
[/quote]

Yes, I’ve seen that one there, yes a bit posher than the one I had in mind!

I can’t quite remember where we mentioned this before. Hafod is a fairly common term in South, West and Mid Wales at least. It lives on as place names. Three I can think of are in/near to Swansea, Newbridge and Aberystwyth.

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in Scotland a bothy was a farm labourer’s 'rude dwelling ’ and is still a mountain refuge! i suspect a hafod was similar!

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i just tried a different dictionary and found, “hafod : upland farm, formerly occupied during summer months only” which fits with my historical recollection. Also “hafod unnos - cot built on a common in one night, squatter’s cot” which fits with the ‘rude dwelling’ idea! Having lived on Gower for years, I knew about instances of ‘Hafod’ in the Swansea area and presumed they were named for ancient hafodau!

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As I understand it, the “hafod unnos” (or “un nos”) was a way of claiming a piece of property. If you could build a cottage between sundown and sunup (thus in “one night”) and have it complete so there was “smoke rising from the chimney” (or something like that) in that time, you could claim a specific amount of the land around that cottage as yours.

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Yes indeed and called hafod because the original were pretty slapdash, thrown-up affairs, not for winter use!

I think this must be used all over Wales for upland summer dwellings as I know of 3 or 4 cottages with Hafod in the name - Hafodty, Hafod Cae Maen, Hafod Gwellian - all in Meirionydd! They’re all on hills…

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I know of an upland simple dwelling - I would compare it to a very basic crofters cottage, or a bothy, on the baby slopes of Cader Idris. @henddraig, when you described a Hafod I thought that’s exactly it - it is a basic stone built structure, used (as I was told) by shepherds grazing sheep up there. But has a huge fireplace and is divided into two rooms, so sounds much more substantial than the idea of anything thrown up in a hurry. Is it still a Hafod, or is there a name for a more permanent dwelling that still was only used seasonally?