That's a star: "seren". In Welsh, that is. It's a language that died out in my family with my grandmother Blodwen Jones's generation, and a language that I've tried a little to revive in my own life. I learned some at school and with the Urdd, which is a Welsh language youth group, but I left Wales in 1971 before I ever became fluent!
When I bought an old house - built in 1907, the year of my father's birth - in Burlington, Vermont, USA 25 years later, I walked out into the 300 foot long backyard on one of my first evenings of occupancy, and looked up, straight up, through the tall, tall black locust trees, to a dark, dark sky illuminated by a few bright stars.
I remembered then that the Welsh word for "star" is "seren" and I decided to name the house "Seren". It's a name I've never displayed, but carried in my heart ever since.
Many aspects of my life were changing then, in 1996, not least my computer-literacy. So when I opened my first email account, it, too, became "seren", as did my web page - now defunct, which celebrated Circle Dance.
More will follow . . . .
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