[Ann Drysdale]

Wales, of course, is a minefeld of naughty names. If you go out of my back garden onto the mountain and keep a-going, up and up and down the other side, you'll arrive at a place called Cwm, the innocent phonetic pronounciation of which by the unwary is a source of much local mirth.

[Tim Murphy]

Ann, Welsh pronunciation scares the hell out of me, and I'm not easily scared. So I do the logical, I turn to David Anthony. Not many know that he is actually David Gwilym Anthony, named after no less than Dafydd ap Gwylym, who contests with Geoffrey Chaucer the bragging rights for best poet in Britain before Shakespeare. Of course for us Chaucer is mother's milk, and nobody born after Dylan Thomas and Burton can read Dafydd ap Gwylym. But break the suspense for me, damsel Ann. Surely Cwm rhymes with room, doom, and gloom. If not, I've been mispronouncing Hardy's The Oxen since boyhood!

[Charlotte Innes]

Thanks for posting this beautiful poem, Tim, and for the scoop on the REAL David And, yes, absolutely, thank you for writing it, David!
Duncan, sorry not to have seen your thread. I am pretty new at this, and haven't yet been able to catch up yet on everything on the Sphere. As for Welsh rhymes... I was first dragged up Snowdon at the age of six, as I recall, and have been back many times. I think cwm rhymes doom and all that, but leave it to the Welsh speakers/knowers to give the final pronouncement.

[Jayne Osborn]

Surely Cwm rhymes with room, doom, and gloom. If not, I've been mispronouncing Hardy's The Oxen since boyhood!

Charlotte & Tim,

My mum was Welsh and she used to live in a street called 'The Cwm', which means 'valley'. It's pronounced more like 'cum', or the double 'o' in 'book', but definitely not like the longer double 'o' in room, doom and gloom!

[Jerome Betts]

Tim, I don't think you have been mispronouncing Hardy's Oxen.
English 'coomb' or 'combe' (from OE cumb) is pronounced, as a word on its own, with the vowel sound of too according to the COD and my own experience. However, it has the sound of the modern Welsh 'cwm' when in combination, such as nearby Babbacombe, Hollicombe, Widecombe (of Fair fame) and so on. Ultimately from post-Roman proto-Welsh 'cwm', but I don't know how that was pronounced.