Hiraeth and Needle

The prompt is “longing“. It reminds me of two words: hiraeth and Needle.

 

According to Wikipedia, hiraeth is a Welsh word with no direct English translation. Oxford and Merriam Webster define hiraeth as: (noun) “a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that never was”. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past. 

 

Pamela Petro explained hiraeth in the post Dreaming in Welsh. She wrote, “In 1282, Wales became the first colony of the English empire. Because England eventually ruled half the globe, we all know its first colony by the name the colonizers gave it: Wales, which means ‘Place of the Others,’ or ‘Place of the Romanized Foreigners’.” She continued, “To Welsh speakers, Wales is Cymru (pronounced Kum-ree): home of the Cymry, or fellow countrymen.”

 

The Welsh feel hiraeth for the Wales of the past that they cannot return to. This reminds of a paragraph from “A Feast for Crows” by George. R. R. Martin, when Arya had to give up all her belongings. It meant that she also had to give up Needle, her sword.

 

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile. He used to mess my hair and call me “little sister,” she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. 

 

The word hiraeth and that one paragraph can always give me emotion which I can’t describe.

 

They make me smile. A sad smile.