Awen

Awen is a Welsh, Cornish and Breton word for "(poetic) inspiration". In the Welsh tradition, awen is the inspiration of the poet bards; or, in its personification, Awen is the inspirational muse of creative artists in general: the inspired individual (often a poet or a ) is described as an awenydd. Emma Restall Orr, founder and former head of The Druid Network, defines awen as 'flowing spirit' and says that 'Spirit energy in flow is the essence of life'.

In current usage, awen is sometimes ascribed to musicians and poets. It is also occasionally used as a male and female given name.

It appears in the third stanza of Hen Wlad fy Nhadau, the national anthem of Wales.

Awen derives from the Indo-European root *-uel, meaning 'to blow', and has the same root as the Welsh word awel meaning 'breeze'.

The first recorded attestation of the word occurs in Nennius' Historia Brittonum, a Latin text of c. 796, based in part on earlier writings by the Welsh monk, Gildas. It occurs in the phrase 'Tunc talhaern tat aguen in poemate claret' (Talhaern the father of the muse was then renowned in poetry) where the Old Welsh word aguen (awen) occurs in the Latin text describing poets from the sixth century.

It is also recorded in its current form in Canu Llywarch Hen (9th or 10th century?) where Llywarch says 'I know by my awen' indicating it as a source of instinctive knowledge.

On connections between awen as poetic inspiration and as an infusion from the Divine, The Book of Taliesin often implies this. A particularly striking example is contained in the lines:

ban pan doeth peir
ogyrwen awen teir

-literally “the three elements of inspiration that came, splendid, out of the cauldron” but implicitly “that came from God” as ‘peir’ (cauldron) can also mean ‘sovereign’ often with the meaning ‘God’. It is the “three elements” that is cleverly worked in here as awen was sometimes characterised as consisting of three sub-divisions (‘ogyrwen’) so “the ogyrwen of triune inspiration”, perhaps suggesting the Trinity.

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