Glyndwr's Independence 2

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Welsh in Penn.

"Cambria in Pensylvania"
Born on this day 1760 in Llanbradach, near Caerphilly - Morgan John Rhys - radical evangelical Baptist minister who preached the principles of the French Revolution, against slavery and in favour of the reform of parliament. In 1794 he grew tired of the repression in Britain and emigrated to America where he changed his surname to Rhees and established the Welsh colony of Cambria in Pensylvania.
...

Cambria, was the first real Welsh colony , in which the Welsh language, culture and religion was maintained in a community with a distinct Welsh identity. Here Rhys established his own religious denomination and a newspaper, The western sky.
The history of Welsh emigration to Pensylvania, had begun, when Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he instigated a wave of religious intolerance which threatened the rights of several groups including Quakers and Baptists, to worship in the way that they chose. Significant numbers of people - in some cases, whole communities - began to leave Wales. The Court of Great Sessions in Bala, North Wales, threatened to burn Quakers, prompting the Welsh Quakers to acquire land from William Penn, which was known as The Welsh Tract (approximately 40,000 acres) in and around what is now Pennsylvania. The project envisioned as a kind of "Holy Experiment," involved an oral understanding with William Penn and the Society of Friends (a pact made in England before the Welsh sailed to the New World). However this agreement was never put into writing and later became a source of bitter controversy between Penn and the Welsh Quakers.
Then in 1683, Baptists from mid and west Wales also made the journey to Philadelphia, where they settled and acquired 30,000 acres of land on the banks of the Delaware River. But it was Morgan Rhys's Cambria that is considered to be the first real Welsh colony in which the Welsh language, culture and religion was maintained in a community with a distinct Welsh identity.
Many towns in the area are named after places in Wales, such as North Wales, Lower Merion, Upper Merion, Bala Cynwyd, Radnor and Haverford Township, others such as Tredyffrin and Uwchlan, have independent Welsh names.

8th December

"Cambria in Pensylvania"

Born on this day 1760 in Llanbradach, near Caerphilly - Morgan John Rhys - radical evangelical Baptist minister who preached the principles of the French Revolution, against slavery and in favour of the reform of parliament. In 1794 he grew tired of the repression in Britain and emigrated to America where he changed his surname to Rhees and established the Welsh colony of Cambria in Pensylvania.

Cambria, was the first real Welsh colony , in which the Welsh language, culture and religion was maintained in a community with a distinct Welsh identity. Here Rhys established his own religious denomination and a newspaper, The western sky.

The history of Welsh emigration to Pensylvania, had begun, when Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he instigated a wave of religious intolerance which threatened the rights of several groups including Quakers and Baptists, to worship in the way that they chose. Significant numbers of people - in some cases, whole communities - began to leave Wales. The Court of Great Sessions in Bala, North Wales, threatened to burn Quakers, prompting the Welsh Quakers to acquire land from William Penn, which was known as The Welsh Tract (approximately 40,000 acres) in and around what is now Pennsylvania. The project envisioned as a kind of "Holy Experiment," involved an oral understanding with William Penn and the Society of Friends (a pact made in England before the Welsh sailed to the New World). However this agreement was never put into writing and later became a source of bitter controversy between Penn and the Welsh Quakers.

Then in 1683, Baptists from mid and west Wales also made the journey to Philadelphia, where they settled and acquired 30,000 acres of land on the banks of the Delaware River. But it was Morgan Rhys's Cambria that is considered to be the first real Welsh colony in which the Welsh language, culture and religion was maintained in a community with a distinct Welsh identity.

Many towns in the area are named after places in Wales, such as North Wales, Lower Merion, Upper Merion, Bala Cynwyd, Radnor and Haverford Township, others such as Tredyffrin and Uwchlan, have independent Welsh names.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving: Did you know that 20% of those who came on the Mayflower were of Welsh background?

Monday, October 27, 2014

Happy 100th Birthday to one our most beloved writers, Dylan Thomas.

South Wales Evening Post

"Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not. And death shall have no dominion".
Happy 100th Birthday to one our most beloved writers, Dylan Thomas.

27th October

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas.

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born on October 27 1914 at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in Swansea.

Dylan's father was an English Literature professor at the local grammar school and would often recite Shakespeare to Thomas before he could read. He loved the sounds of nursery rhymes, foreshadowing his love for the rhythmic ballads of Hopkins, Yeats, and Poe. Although both of his parents spoke fluent Welsh, Thomas and his older sister never learned the language, and Thomas wrote exclusively in English.

Thomas was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own. He read all of D. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by vivid descriptions of the natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading but neglected other subjects. He dropped out of school at sixteen to become a junior reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. By December of 1932, he left his job at the Post and decided to concentrate on his poetry full time. It was during this time, in his late teens, that Thomas wrote more than half of his collected poems.

In 1934, when Thomas was twenty, he moved to London, won the Poet's Corner book prize, and published his first book, 18 Poems, to great acclaim. The book drew from a collection of poetry notebooks that Thomas had written years earlier, as would many of his most popular books. During this period of success, Thomas also began a habit of alcohol abuse. Unlike his contemporaries, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, Thomas was not concerned with exhibiting themes of social and intellectual issues, and his writing, with its intense lyricism and highly charged emotion, has more in common with the Romantic tradition. Thomas describes his technique in a letter: "I make one image—though 'make' is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict."

Two years after the publication of 18 Poems, Thomas met the dancer Caitlin Macnamara at a pub in London. At the time, she was the mistress of painter Augustus John. Macnamara and Thomas engaged in an affair, and married in 1937. Despite the passionate love letters Thomas would write to her, the marriage was turbulent, with rumours of both having multiple affairs. In 1940, Thomas and his wife moved to London. He had served as an anti-aircraft gunner but was rejected for more active combat due to illness. To avoid the air raids, the couple left London in 1944. They eventually settled at Laugharne, in the Boat House where Thomas would write many of his later poems.

In January 1950, at the age of thirty-five, Thomas visited America for the first time. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as a new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling and a singing Welsh lilt. Thomas toured America four times, with his last public engagement taking place at the City College of New York. A few days later, he collapsed in the Chelsea Hotel after a long drinking bout at the White Horse Tavern. On November 9, 1953, he died at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City at the age of 39. He had become a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. He was buried in Laugharne, and almost 30 years later, a plaque to Dylan was unveiled in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Dafydd Gam and Owain Glyyndwr

25th October
On 25th October 1415, Dafydd Gam was Killed on the field of The Battle of Agincourt, reportedly saving the life of King Henry V
Sir Dafydd ap Llewelyn ap Hywel (c. 1380 – October 25, 1415), better known as Dafydd Gam or Davy Gam, (The name "Gam" is a Welsh word meaining "crooked" or "bent", as it is recorded that Gam had a characteristic squint), was a member of one of the most prominent Welsh families in Breconshire, from Pen-pont on the river Usk, where his fa...mily's power base had developed from their consistent support for the marcher Lords of Brecon of the de Bohun family. So when Henry Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV) married the de Bohun hieress Mary and became Lord of Brecon, Dafydd Gam's family's allegiance transferred to him. Dafydd himself was in Henry's service, being paid the substantial annuity of 40 marks by Henry’s estate in 1399,

Dafydd Gam is regarded as a traitor by many Welsh people as he was a prominent opponent of Owain Glyndwr. When the Glyndwr rebellion broke out in 1400, Gam played a leading role in its opposition in the area and his lands in and around Brecon became a target for Glyndŵr's attacks. In 1404, according to legend Gam tried to assassinate Glyndŵr at his parliament at Machynlleth, but was released soon after the Parliament. If true this generous gesture would come back to haunt Glyndwr, as in 1905, Dafydd is named as a leader in the crushing defeat of Glyndŵr's men at the Battle of Pwll Melyn, near Usk, at which 300 of Glyndŵr's men were executed . His loyalty being rewarded with the gift of some of Glyndŵr's supporters' confiscated estates in Cardiganshire. In 1412 Gam was captured by Glyndŵr’s men and his ransom was paid directly and speedily from the King’s estates in Wales, indicating the esteem in which Gam was held by Henry. Glyndŵr had made Gam swear an oath to never bear arms against him again or oppose him in any other way, but on his release Gam immediately reneged on this oath, which resulted in Glyndŵr having Gam's Brecon estates attacked and burned in retaliation.
When Henry IV died in 1413, Henry V became ruler and Gam again was a loyal servent to the new king. Gam went with Henry V on campaign to France in 1415 and met his death on the field of Agincourt. Many reports of the battle suggest that in the late stages of the battle, with the result in the balance, Henry V was engaged in hand to hand fighting with the Duke of Alençon, who supposedly cut an ornament from Henry’s crown with a sword blow. Gam is said to have personally intervened to save Henry's life, only to have been struck a fatal blow in doing so and that as he lay dying on the field, he was knighted by King Henry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Gam

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Festiniog Railway

23rd October
On 23rd October 1863, Festiniog Railway introduced steam locomotives into general service, the first time this has been done anywhere in the world ...on a public narrow gauge railway.

The line was constructed between 1833 and 1836 to transport slate from the quarries around the inland town of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog where it was loaded onto ships. The railway was graded so that loaded wagons could be run by gravity downhill all the way from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the port. The empty wagons were then hauled back up by horses.
During the late 1850s it became clear that the line was reaching its operational capacity, while the output of the Blaenau Ffestiniog slate quarries continued to rise. In 1860, the board of the company began to investigate the possibility of introducing steam locomotives to increase the carrying capacity of the railway. In 1862 the company advertised for manufacturers to tender to build the line's first locomotives. In February 1863, the bid of George England and Co. was accepted and production of the first locomotives was begun.
These steam locomotives allowed much longer slate trains to be run and this also enabled the official introduction of passenger trains in 1865: the Ffestiniog was the first narrow gauge railway in Britain to carry passengers.
Today, the Ffestiniog Railway is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park, travelling through both forested and mountainous scenery.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Goronwy ab Ednyfed (c. 1205 - 17 October 1268)

17th October
Goronwy ab Ednyfed (c. 1205 - 17 October 1268) was seneschal to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, between 1246 and 1256.
As seneschal, he was in charge of domestic arrangements and the administration of servants and held his lands in Wales free from all dues and services other than military service in time of war.
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Goronwy's father was Ednyfed Fychan, senechal to Llywelyn the Great and later his son Dafydd ap Llywelyn and his mother, Gwenllian, was daughter of Rhys ap Gruffydd (Lord Rhys). Goronwy's brother Tudur, a leading adviser of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, succeeded him as seneschal to Llywelyn until his death in 1278. He was a direct ancestor of Henry Tudor (King Henry VII of England) and his great grandson also Goronwy was an uncle by marriage of Owain Glyndwr.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Iolo Goch

Iolo Goch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Iolo Goch (c. 1320 – c. 1398), (meaning Iolo the Red in English), was a medieval Welsh poet or bard who composed poems addressed to Owain Glyndŵr, among others.

en.wikipedia.org