Yə Hɐnoŋə / Y Hysbysiad / The Notice

(I'm classifying this as "art" on the blog because I don't have a subsection for passive-aggressive public-facing signs...)

I erected The Notice ("Yə Hɐnoŋə" in Landskerian) in December 2024 after having painted it about 3 years earlier in response to repeated instances of a bloke from Llangolman who is now dead (what? Nothing to do with me!) throwing bin-bags full of rubbish into the river that flows past our garden.

I was planning to paint the message in three languages, colour-coded; but never quite got around to it. So only the Landskerian text exists. In the interim, other people have (although not quite so frequently) also stopped, or at least slowed down, to enjoy the view over Pont Mynachlogddu (AKA Cwm Isaf bridge) and to throw their litter over the side – into the river, or into my garden. (They tend not to be fussy.)

At some point an unidentified official body also erected some monolingual English signs on the bridge; on the stone style that allows us (and Dŵr Cymru – so it was probably them) access to the northern half of the lemon-shaped bit of river-encircled land we call St Dogmael's Island. These signs tell people that there's a risk of them falling. Which is also true anywhere else that you are subject to the law of gravity. I seem to recall they were erected with alarming haste shortly after I erected "Mynediad Mawr"; an oversized rendering of the nationally accepted (but hardly ever used) "access land" sign that is intended to advertise to people their right to roam. (This land is indicated by a beige/peach border on modern ordnance survey maps; and it's usually densely populated by brambles, or zigzagged by barbed-wire. The little bit of our gharden that seems to be so designated is not much different.)

I decided in response to the appearance of these monolingual signs (which I'm pretty sure is illegal under Welsh law?) to erect my own monolingual Landskerian sign urging people not to throw litter into the river – as both an earnest attempt to reduce the amount of litter picking I have to do in my garden, but also as a savage parody of lacklustre adherence to bilingual communication by official bodies acting in our inland corner of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

And... it was promptly ignored. Just as it would have been if anybody actually understood it.

I post this explanatory text here now in the vain hope that any of the (occasional) bemused passers-by who stop and look at the sign might have some reasonable hope of discovering what it means, if Google bothers indexing any of this.

This is what Yə Hɐnoŋə means:

Cymraeg

Mae Afon Wern yn gartref i ddyfrgwn, eog, morwynion tywyll, crafanc-y-frân, a fwy. Nid bin yw hi. Peidiwch â thaflu sbwriel o'r bont.  

English

River Wern is home to otters, salmon, beautiful demoiselles, water crowfoot, and more. It's not a bin. Don't throw rubbish from this bridge.

Yours,

A Velky, March 2026