Taking place at Porth Melgan - the beach overlooked by St David's Head, Pembrokeshire - over 40 consecutive tides from the 10th to the 30th March 2017 The Words Come From The Land used repeating text from the story How Culhwch Won Olwen from the Welsh medieval collection of stories, The Mabinogion.
In the story the young hero Culhwch is set forty impossible tasks by the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr which he must overcome in order to marry the giant’s daughter, Olwen. Their exchange features a repeating phrase — a call and response — that becomes a rhythmic and poetic chant, the text of which was written out in the sand across the beach at low tide, every tide for forty tides, day and night:
‘It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it’s not easy.’
‘Though you may get that, there is something you will not get.’
In the story the young hero Culhwch is set forty impossible tasks by the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr which he must overcome in order to marry the giant’s daughter, Olwen. Their exchange features a repeating phrase — a call and response — that becomes a rhythmic and poetic chant, the text of which was written out in the sand across the beach at low tide, every tide for forty tides, day and night:
‘It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it’s not easy.’
‘Though you may get that, there is something you will not get.’
