Erin Kavanagh
- An 'Amodern' Antiquarian -
Borth's Lost Legends...
On July 22nd 2017, Layers in the Landscape (LitL) sprang an offshoot via an exhibition at Borth Station Museum. The King of the Sea Trees (KST) stepped out of his film to take pride of place there for the summer, along with his story and various items from the project.
Many, many people were involved in this endeavour for even a small deep mapping exhibition is a large adventure, bringing together amateurs and professionals, locals and visitors along with art, science, poetry, literature, music and film. My thanks extends to them all.
This poem tells some of the story of a spririt of place, called The King of the Sea Trees - Brenin Y Coed Mor. He is a creature who was born with the land and has seen everything that has ever happened here. From the roaming hippos to the glaciers, from The Battle of the Trees to the truth behind Cantre'r Gwaelod; he knows all of Cardigan Bay's oldest secrets.
The poem myth itself is a Macalla, an After Echo, which reflects many of the poets the KST has met across the centuries. Including (in no particular order): John Milton, Rudyard Kipling, Dafydd ap Gwilym, R.S.Thomas, Dylan Thomas, W.B.Yeats, Percy Byshe Shelley, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Walter de la Mare, William Shakespeare, Gwerful Mechain, Llywarch.Hen, Seamus Heaney, R.Williams Parry, Dewi Emrys, Saunders Lewis, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Taliesin.
Dafydd of Three Legg'd Mare was commissioned to become the King's voice. He took the poem, studied the texts from which it catches echoes (he's a Medievalist at the National Museum of Wales) and then applied a dozen different traditional melodies to the task, tying in shanties and his own bilingual interpretations and lines of poetry.
If you went to the exhibition you would have heard the entire piece on a recording in the fantastic acoustics of the heritage space - 13 minutes of deep mapped sea shanty. It will also play in the link above. Together we performed it for the 72 VIPS who came to the exhibition opening.
Some of our 72 VIPs, crowding in for the speeches and shanty. With 100 visitors during the day on top of this, KST certainly began his new reign in style.
When you went into the museum you might have met George, who (if you're very lucky) might be persauded to tell you about the night he and the KST first met, outside The Friendship one dark night...Jo might even have shown you some newspaper cuttings of the miraculous event.
We also had a Little Green Book, where we asked visitors to write, draw, comment or link to a website etc with their responses, adding their own branch to the deep map.
Dr. Ros Coard conserved the antlers (on the left), assisted with the exhibition's constuction and is keeping an eye on their welfare throughout the display period.
By the Little Green Book was a translation of the praise poem 'Seithenhin' from the Black Book of Carmarthen, circa 1250 AD, by Dr. Diarmuid Johnson @LitL 2016.
Harvey was one of the station volunteers, he (along with Geraint Coles), made the King's throne. He also found a basalt core or scraper of possible Neolithic date, just by the beach. This is the oldest artefact we had
from Borth.
For further information regarding the making of Litl, please go to the project page.
Also in the exhibition were flyers about the submerged forest, postcards to purchase, a Thin Deep Map which attempts to acknowledge the layers covered by the short film - and the short film itself, which played on a loop.
In the first fortnight we had over 1,000 visitors to this tiny space, that's twice the usual footfall the museum is accustomed to experiencing in the same period during both previous years and since. It was a substantial mix of very local locals, locals, the regular tourists and new tourists who have come to the town specifically to see the display. You could also buy postcards to help contribute to the upkeep of the museum and this historic station, which is not for profit, a true community creation.
As mentioned above, part of the exhibition included a little green book in which people could join in with the deep mapping. It was more than just a place for comments, it was a gallery of responses, interpretations, new stories and inspiration. Jo even left a smaller book by its side, for people who prefer to be less formal (she thought of everything!).
Here is a selection of some of my favourites, from dogs to ghost trains, rainbows to visual perspectives on the display - it rapidly became a work of art in it's own right. My thanks to all who contributed.
July
August
September
Thanks to Kev in the (now long gone) college print room for his unwavering patience in the face of our Windows/Apple design challenges (postcards, posters, banners). Ditto to UWTSD and the ISRF for funding the film; Ashley and Sarah at Y Stwdio Brint, Lampeter, for the wrap around art work; Harvey and Geraint for the antler mount; Dafydd for the shanty; George, Jo and their team for letting us invade their summer space and the team members of LitL 2016 who produced their share of the project for display
- may the sea always be your friend.