Poem: "Glas"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This was prompted and sponsored by fuzzyred. It belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.


"Glas"
-- a cinquain


is his
favorite color --
blue-green-silver-gray-white --
beautiful and dangerous like
the sea.

* * *

Notes:

A cinquain is a poem of 5 lines.  Individual variations may or may not add additional parameters.

Glas is a quintessentially Celtic term that can mean blue, green, gray, or silver -- or any combination of those colors. It has mixed connotations of something beautiful but changeable and potentially perilous. This makes a lot more sense if you know that it actually means "sea-colored." Here's a discussion of the same word borrowed into Welsh. The closest English translation is "hazel."

Comments

[alexseanchai]

and now I know what word a Hellenic polytheist writing in a Celtic language should use for Athena's eyes!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Absolutely. It even suggests the 'flashing' quality, if you think of whitecaps on waves or sun on water, there in the color combination.

[acelightning]

My eyes are a very pale greenish grey - they were notably blue until I reached my teens. I'll have to ask a Welsh coal miner who knows me in person whether they could be described as glas. Athena's association with the useful arts resonates with me, but I'm not a big fan of virginity.

[erulisse]

Are you familiar with the idea of virginity being a woman who belongs to herself? (as opposed to one who necessarily abstains from sex)

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

There's another color, yellow-grey, that appears primarily in Celtic bloodlines as an eye color, and occasionally in artwork. Most people can't see it. It's related to how people can't see blue and yellow in the same place at the same time. I can. A few others can. Not many. So it gets described as other things.

[elinox]

My new favorite color! Who knew there was already the perfect word for blue/silvery like the sea! :D

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad I could introduce you to a new word. :D

[cmcmck]

Pant glas is just over the border from us here in Shropshire in the Welsh princely region of Gwynedd.

It means green (or blue or blue green) hollow.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

That is so cool.