Glyn
Believe it or not, last weekend I saw a dozen youngsters SWIMMING in a very
clear clean river. Cwmbran also has"fishing" pools.
When our pal fell in xxx years ago his wet black clothes were very very
heavy and the "sandy beach " near the bank was actually coal dust from the
washery and in some years people dug it out for fuel.I think they called it
"clommin".
Your note is very interesting
AL
----- Original Message -----
From: Glyn Hatherall <hatherall(a)btinternet.com>
To: <BlaenauGwent-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 11:42 AM
Subject: [BlaenauGwent] Flow gently, sweet Afton
> I have just learned that afton means river. I had commented on
one of
my
> favorite old songs, "Flow gently, Sweet Afton." I had
always been told
that
> it was a song from Scotland and understood that Afton was the
name of
the
> river. Will someone please tell me the origin of the song and
whether
it
> refers to rivers in general or to a particular one?
According to Adrian Room's Dictionary of Place Names, Afton may derive
from
the Gaelic abhainn donn, meaning brown river. If so, this would have
roughly
the same meaning as Afon Lwyd - a river in the eastern valley of what
used
to be Gwent/Monmouthshire and which runs down the middle of what is now
Torfaen.
How about 'Flow gently, sweet Afon Lwyd'? The Afon Lwyd flows un-gently,
at
least in its upper reaches in the Blaenavon area, and it was more
often
toxic than sweet when I was a lad. We called it the 'Black River' - not
because we didn't know much Welsh but because it was generally black with
coal-dust. Nowadays it's quite idyllic in places.
Flow gently, sweet Afton was written by Robert Burns. As for its origin,
this is what John Loesberg (Traditional Folksongs and Ballads of Scotland
Vol. 2) has to say: "This song, together with only a few others, breathes
very little of the earthy Scottishness of the main body of Burns' output.
The rather genteel language may be something to do with the fact that he
was
nearly embarrassed with gratefulness towards a Mrs Stewart of Afton,
in
Ayrshire, who was the first person of high station to recognize his
genius.
The song (1786) was dedicated to Mrs Stewart, but the 'Slumbering
Fair' of
the song is likely to have been his own beloved 'Highland Mary', whom he
courted in that year. Generally, this song has a lot in common with the
types of songs Thomas Moore (who was roughly a contemporary) fashioned out
of old Irish airs."
--
Glyn Hatherall
Ealing, London UK
hatherall(a)btinternet.com
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