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# Glas
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-2111jsp/
- Published: 2004-07-14T23:07:00.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:49:34.000Z
- Author: Menna Elfyn
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17

I could have chosen *hiraeth*, an [over-documented word](http://www.red-dragon-wales.com/AboutWales/Introduction.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) about longing that the Welsh like to “show off”, with just a hint of superiority. It can’t be translated, we shout (or should I say whisper); and yet every language has its own flavoured word for “longing” or “nostalgia”.

As a 1960s [language activist](http://www.mennaelfyn.co.uk/pages/thepoet.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) I saw it as being synonymous with our “fate” as a people, never getting rid of the shackles of servitude and inferiority. To be Welsh was to see things in “negative”. That’s why I’d much rather go for *glas*.

*Glas* is packed with resonances, and has the ability to create different worlds. As a literary word it is a powerful double-edged word that is brimming with meanings. To start with it can mean “blue”, but it can also mean “green”. It can mean raw, fresh as newly-formed buds in spring, or “blue” as in “skimmed milk”. (Anybody acquainted with the sight of a fresh pail of milk will attest to its “blue” appearance.) The sea too can be azure or pale. The frisson of sea is often thought of when thinking *glas*, blue.

But *glas* in Welsh can also mean “white”. Confused? You should be! It can mean to gleam, to dazzle and sparkle. We say *yng nglas y dydd* (in the blue of the day) to mean “early morning, just after dawn”. It is blue, is it not, or is it gleaming with the freshness of a new day and morning’s twilight?

In [early Welsh poetry](http://www.uwp.co.uk/book%5Fdesc/rb1.html?ref=opendemocracy.net), *glas* meant youth – *llanciau glas* – very much like the idea of “greenhorn”. But it could also signify “death”, and paleness would be used to describe those lost in [battle](http://members.aol.com/skyewrites/gododdin.html?ref=opendemocracy.net).

We also use *glas* for thoroughness. To do one’s very best would be *gorau glas* (blue best). Then there is that blue smile, *glas wen*, a smile full of insincerity and mocking.

The vein of light-coloured slate is also “blue” and its hue is never more acute than when the rain falls on the slates of north Wales, with its rainbow effect.

A dozen meanings, then, for just one small word. It’s also a word in “old” Irish and other Celtic languages. And writing in a language which is still endangered, it gives me [strength](http://www.rlf.org.uk/fellowshipscheme/profile.cfm?fellow=24&menu=2&ref=opendemocracy.net) to know of all the rough-diamond edges it presents. And yet, I keep away from using it to mean “death” and “mortality”. Far better to think of it always as a word that gleams and shines, just like the splendour of writing through it a “new dawn”.