Personal Experiences of Welsh Life
My Personal Experiences of Welsh Life which I hope will be of help to readers in their own lives.
Wales Unveiled: Where Sheep Outnumber Humans and Where Lovers Now Give Roses Instead of Love Spoons.
Let’s look at some of the aspects of Welsh culture that can be useful in improving our own lives.
Hiraeth, a concept or feeling so Welsh there’s no English word for it. It’s like that intense longing you feel when you are away from home and miss the cultural richness of the Welsh way of life. A stronger dose of hiraeth than a dragon has fire. I have also written several books on Thailand and it’s true that the Thais have a similar concept of being proud of their own country. Thais living abroad have this sense of hiraeth, regularly telephoning friends and relations.
St. David’s Day, our national shindig. Unlike our English neighbours who seem a bit fuzzy on St. George’s Day, we Welsh proudly declare the First of March as our day to shine. St. David, a 6th-century bishop with a lineage fit for a medieval soap opera is our guy. He is thought to have been the grandson of the king of Ceredigion when Wales was ruled by several kings. The saint is credited with establishing Christianity in Wales and is associated with learning and kindness to others. Legend has it, on this holy day, kids are supposed to emulate his kindness.
My childhood interpretation involved devouring Welsh cakes and belting out tunes. In the old days, children were told to copy St. David’s instructions to help their mothers. For example, to do the washing up. I must admit I NEVER experienced that!
All schools in Wales celebrate St David’s Day. My secondary school in Bridgend held singing competitions and recitals. There were no prizes for the best performers but we were all given a half-day holiday. As the morning progressed, the hall got hotter and hotter. The smell of leaks, which everyone wore, became quite overpowering. It was a relief to get out of the building.
There are two miracles associated with St David. It is claimed that, when he was preaching at Llandewi Brefi, a small hill rose on the spot where he was delivering a sermon to the people. The second miracle is that of “corpse candles” These regularly appear as glowing lights or balls of fire next to the home of someone about to die. I’ve never seen them but both my mother and I saw our respective fathers waving us goodbye the day after their deaths. They we not hallucination or the mind playing tricks.
Love spoons — no, not the kind you use for your morning cereal. These intricately carved wooden wonders, llwy caru, were once given by hopeful lovers during engagements. The spoons demonstrated the depth of the boy’s feelings to his beloved, and showed the girl’s family his ability to look after their daughter when married.
The earliest known love spoons, some from 1667, can be seen in the St Fagans National History Museum near Cardiff. My father worked as a guide in St Fagans after he retired as a postman. That was when I was given my first opportunity to learn about this aspect of Welsh culture.
Forget roses; back in the day, a well-carved spoon was the ultimate love gesture. Oh, how times have changed. They are now very sought-after expensive work of art.
Eisteddfods, our answer to the artsy Olympics, are festivals where we sing, dance, and read literature. Originating from the 12th century when Rhys ap Gruffydd, one of the Welsh kings, brought a number of artists together to perform publicly at his court in Deheubarth. There are both local and national eisteddfods. The most famous is the National Eisteddfod held every August, one year in North Wales and the next in the South of the principality.
Picture it: a bard, the big shot of the festival, asking, “A oes heddwch? (Is there peace?)”. Cue a resounding “yes” from the crowd. But let’s not forget the time a bardic chair was awarded, leaving everyone scratching their heads.
The winner did not stand up to receive the honour, as is the tradition. The question “A oes heddwch” is very relevant because, in 1917, the bardic chair was awarded to Ellis Humphrey Evans for his poem, Yr Arwr (the hero) and no one stood up.
It was several minutes before the organisers were informed that Evans had been killed in Belgium on the very first day of the Battle of Passchendale in the First World War.
