Robin Ddiog a.k.a Tŷ Bach Twt (Idle Robin a.k.a. Tidy Little House) – A Traditional Welsh Folk Song

I have a neat little scrap of a house,
A scrap of a house, a scrap of a house,
I have a neat little scrap of a house,
A windy door in the morning.
Hey di ho, di hey di hey di ho
A windy door in the morning.

A fraction open the door ajar,
The door ajar, the door ajar,
A fraction open the door ajar,
You’ll see the rolling ocean.
Hey di ho, di hey di hey di ho
You’ll see the rolling ocean.

I went last night to my father’s house,
My father’s house, my father’s house,
I went last night to my father’s house
To get for free my welcome.
Hey di ho, di hey di hey di ho
To get for free my welcome.

My mam she arose to give me some food.
Dear flesh and blood, to give me some food,
My mam she arose to give me some food,
Dear flesh and blood, my own one.
Hey di ho, di hey di hey di ho
Dear flesh and blood, my own one.

My father arose, he stood on the floor,
A stick he bore, he stood on the floor,
My father arose, he stood on the floor,
A great big stick he was holding.
Hey di ho, di hey di hey di ho
A great big stick he was holding.

When I’d been trounced in a scrap of a house,
A scrap of a house, a scrap of a house,
When I’d been trounced in a scrap of a house,
A windy door in the morning.
Hey di ho, do hey di hey di ho
A windy door in the morning.

Traditional Welsh folk song
Also often titled ‘Lazy Robin‘ or Tŷ Bach Twt (‘Tidy Little House’)
translated by Tony Conran

A version sung by Meredydd Evans – known colloquially as Merêd, was a collector, editor, historian and performer of folk music of Wales. A major figure in Welsh media for over half a century, Evans has been described as influencing “almost every sphere of Welsh cultural life, from folk music and philosophy to broadcasting and language politics”

Additonal information: Below, in Welsh, is a shorter version of the traditional folk song taught as a children’s nursery rhyme and performed at circle dances. As you can imagine there are numerous variations.

The version I learned, featured below, omits the stanzas involving the mother and father fighting and replaces them with a penultimate stanza which translates, roughly, as: “And here I’ll be happy my world / happy my world, happy my world, / And here I’ll be happy my world /With the wind blowing to the door each morning.”

Apparently, the version Tony Conran translated is from North Wales? If anyone wants to leave a comment or give the translation for the mother and father stanzas you are more than welcome as I only included the Welsh version I am familiar with.

Another variant of the folk song more in line with the version Tony Conran translated (but still different).

Robin Ddiog a.k.a. Tŷ bach twt

Mae gen i dipyn o dŷ bach twt
o dŷ bach twt, o dŷ bach twt
Mae gen i dipyn o dŷ bach twt
A’r gwynt i’r drws bob bore

Hey di ho di hey di hey di ho
A’r gwynt i’r drws bob bore

Agorwch dipyn o gil y drws
o gil y drws, o gil y drws
Agorwch dipyn o gil y drws
Cewch gweld y môr a’r tonnau.

Hey di ho di hey di hey di ho
Cewch gweld y môr a’r tonnau.

Ac yma byddaf yn llon fy myd
yn llon fy myd, yn llon fy myd
Ac yma byddaf yn llon fy myd
A’r gwynt i’r drws bob bore

Hey di ho di hey di hey di ho
A’r gwynt i’r drws bob bore

A male voice choir version of the song

A female voice choir perform the song on S4C (the UK’s Welsh language broadcast channel).

Editor’s note: I don’t usually do these (well…officially… though I’ve often made comments in the ‘additional information’ sections of course) but I just wanted to wish anyone reading this on 25 December 2022 a Happy Christmas or as we say in Welsh Nadolig Llawen!

The website’s annual New Year update post will be a day early so I can keep to the Sunday upload schedule.

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Рождественская звезда (Star of the Nativity) by Joseph Brodsky

In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than
to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain,
a child was born in a cave in order to save the world;
it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart.

To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the steam
out of the ox’s nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior – the team
of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar.
He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.

Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray
clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away –
from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end – the star
was looking into the cave. And that was the Father’s stare.

By Иосиф Александрович Бродский
(Joseph Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky a.k.a. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky)
(December 1987)
translated by the author, Brodsky, himself

Brodsky reciting his poem

Рождественская звезда

В холодную пору, в местности, привычной скорей к жаре,
чем к холоду, к плоской поверхности более, чем к горе,
младенец родился в пещере, чтоб мир спасти:
мело, как только в пустыне может зимой мести.

Ему все казалось огромным: грудь матери, желтый пар
из воловьих ноздрей, волхвы — Балтазар, Гаспар,
Мельхиор; их подарки, втащенные сюда.
Он был всего лишь точкой. И точкой была звезда.

Внимательно, не мигая, сквозь редкие облака,
на лежащего в яслях ребенка издалека,
из глубины Вселенной, с другого ее конца,
звезда смотрела в пещеру. И это был взгляд Отца.

The poem recited by the actor Anton Shagin

Carol by R. S. Thomas

What is Christmas without
snow? We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim

our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity’s
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.

by R. S. Thomas
from Later Poems
(1983)

‘The Nativity? No’ by R.S. Thomas

Text above the poem in the book

 The Nativity? No.
 Something has gone wrong.
 There is a hole in the stable
 acid rain drips through
 onto an absence. Beauty
 is hoisted upside down.
 The truth is Pilate not
 lingering for an answer.
 The angels are prostrate
 'beaten into the clay'
 as Yeats thundered. Only Satan beams down,
 poisoning with fertilisers
 the place where the child
 lay, harrowing the ground
 for the drumming of the machine-
 gun tears of the rich that are
 seed of the next war.
 
 
 By R. S. Thomas
 from Counterpoint (1990) 2. Incarnation 

Suicide on Pentwyn Bridge by Gillian Clarke

I didn't know him,
the man who jumped from the bridge.
But I saw the parabola
of long-drawn-out falling in the brown

eyes of his wife week after week
at the supermarket cash-out.
We would quietly ask "How is he?"
hear of the hospital's white

care, the corridors between her
and the broken man in the bed,
and the doctors who had no words,
no common supermarket women's talk.

Only after the funeral
I knew how he'd risen, wild
from his chair and told her
he was going out to die.

Very slowly from the first leap
he fell through winter, through the cold
of Christmas, wifely silences,
the blue scare of ambulance,

from his grave on the motorway
to the hospital, two bridges down.
A season later in a slow cortège
he has reached the ground.

by Gillian Clarke
from Letter from a Far Country (1982)

Pentwyn is a district, community and electoral ward in the east of Cardiff, Wales, located northeast of the city centre. Llanedeyrn is immediately to the south, Cyncoed to the west, Pontprennau to the north and the Rhymney River forms the eastern border.

This story of this poem is true albeit half heard from people talking about it and half learned from the local newspaper. The Pentwyn Bridge of the title carries a road over a dual carriageway in Cardiff. Asthe peom narrates a man told his terrified wife he was going out to kill himself. He jumped from the bridge and was severely injured then taken to hospital. Many months later, having never left hospital in the meantime, he finally died.