field of blood / sound of wave (from "The Graves" portfolio)

Ian Tyson

British printmaker Ian Tyson created this fifth image as an additional, bonus image, included in 20 portfolios of "four screen prints based on extracts from the Black Book of Carmarthen 'Stanzas of the Graves' translated by Thomas Jones."

About the screenprints Tyson comments: "These extracts derive from my interest in the relationships, within the Stanzas, of the graves to the landscape and surrounding physical conditions. Taking selected lines from the text I arranged them in an alternative form which I felt to be coherent typographically...."

"The Stanzas of the Graves" appear in Welsh manuscripts, the earliest and most important being the Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin (Black Book of Carmarthen). It contains seventy-three stanzas, copied during the thirteenth century. Five of these verses appear in the Llfyr Gwyn Rhydderch (White Book of Rhyderrch), the Llyfr Coch Hergest (Red Book of Hergest), from the fourteenth century. However, the original poem itself may date from the ninth to the eleventh century.