Windiorix’s Curse - Brythonic Celtic Chant

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji. Like Call to Maponos, this is another highly speculative attempt at reconstructing the general soundscape of what Britain’s music may have been like in Antiquity. The idea here is not to infer that we have any confident understanding of their music, we do not. However, we do have access to their material culture and instruments, therefore the acoustic soundscape in terms of pure sound can at least be brought to life to some degree. Like Call to Maponos, this is again more about showing that “Celtic music“ as we think of it (Irish like sounds of fiddles and jigs and reels) is not altogether Celtic, only an Irish and Scottish sound of the past few centuries, and that we mustn’t imagine the music of the ancient Celts of Antiquity as sounding anything like our modern idea of Celtic music. Here is a link to a video I’ve made explaining that in more detail: The instruments used are recordings of brass horn instruments of Iron Age and Roman rule Britain, especially the carnyx, seen in the picture. These horned brass instruments were ubiquitous throughout the Continental and Insular Celtic cultures, and could provide a variety of different sounds and pitches. I also used frame drums, a flute, and a lyre. The melody consists of only the tonic, octave, and perfect fourths and fifths. This is because these are the most universally found intervals in human music, and this limited approach was the most statistically viable way to infer what kind of notes their melodies would have had. I personally believe it highly likely that the pentatonicism so profoundly linked to older traditions of the British Isles may be a remnant of pre-Roman rule, with which diatonicism and heptatonicism may have arrived, although this is only pure speculation on my part. That said, this melodic sparseness may certainly not be representative of Britain’s music at the time, and we should imagine that they had a rich, living musical tradition complete with different genres, no differently than today’s music of Britain. Unfortunately, we will never be able to know. The text sung is the only preserved text found in the Common Brittonic language, which was the dialect continuum spoken by the Insular Celts of Britain at this time, described by Roman writers as being effectively the same language as Gaulish. Probably an exaggeration by them, but we can imagine a high degree of mutual intelligibility not unlike that of Castilian and Catalan. The text was found in Aquae Sulis, a Roman-era resort dedicated to Roman bath. Many curses were found in archeological finds there, most of them in Latin, but one in the local Common Brittonic language. The exact translation is uncertain, so all different translations will be written down below. Brythonic Lyrics: Adixoui Deuina Deieda Andagin Uindiorix cuamenai or Adixoui Deiana Deieda Andagin Uindiorix cuamiun ai English translations: The affixed – Deuina, Deieda, Andagin, (and) Uindiorix – I have bound. or May I, Windiorix for/at Cuamena defeat (or summon to justice) the worthless woman, oh divine Deieda. or Divine Deiada, may I, Windiorix, bring to justice/defeat (in court) the woman at Cuamena. As seen here, the translations make it difficult to know the exact nature of the text, hence the very title of this song implying that this curse belongs to Windiorix casting it, rather than Windiorix being one of those cursed, is uncertain.