Report by Mrs Gwyneddon Davies on an American tour

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

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text excerpt

I do not know that the truth of the old adage, Goreu Cymro, Cymro oddicartref, ever came home to me more forcibly than during the three months in which my husband and I were touring America. We were going to Canada to see relatives, and returning home through the States, and we took the opportunity of meeting our fellow-countrymen at different points on our journey, to tell them of the work of the W.F.S.S., and to let them hear some of our finds. Those meetings will always stand out in my memory as a touching proof of the deep and abiding love of the Welshman for his own country. They were usually opened by the singing of ‘My Country, ’tis of Thee,’ but they always ended with ‘Hen Wlad fy Nhadau,’ and their loyalty to the one was as unmistakeable as their hiraeth for the other. Perhaps it was because we carried them right back into the old days. They did not know that my singing of these old songs was going to revive memories of childhood, of loved parents and of localities endeared to them, and those memories moved them over and over again to tears.

    They listened with the greatest interest to what we had to say about the songs, and picked up the airs quickly, joining in the singing with a heartiness that added more than a little to the success and homeliness of the meetings. Such songs as ‘A ddoi di’r coed? meddai Dibyn wrth Dobyn,’ ‘Y Gog Lwydlas,’ ‘Doli,’ ‘Lisa Lan,’ ‘Ffarwel fo i Llanrhystyd,’ etc., were familiar to many, as one could easily see by the way their faces lit up and their heads moved to the lilt of the song; and after the meeting was over they would come to tell us where they had heard them. ‘I come from Llanrhystyd; my mother used to sing us to sleep with that song;’ or ‘My father sang Dibyn a Dobyn, but he used to say: ‘A ddoi di’r coed? meddai Richie pen Stryd,’ and not ‘A ddoi di’r coed? meddai cwbl i gyd.’

excerpt from 'Report by Mrs Gwyneddon Davies on an American tour' pp. 6 (380 words)

1518709331959:

1518709331959