Video Find of the Day
Here's a great song that apparently has been taken seriously as a unofficial Welsh national anthem, in spite of a line deprecating Margaret (Maggie) Thatcher. The singer wrote it; it came out in 1981. Now Dafydd Iwan is president of Plaid Cymru, the "Party of Wales", which seeks an independent national status for Wales within the European Union, and revival of the language, among other things. The title Yma O Hyd means Still Here. It's from the chorus which in English goes We're still here / We're still here / In spite of everything / In spite of everything / We're still here. The full words in Welsh and an English translation of the version in the video can be found here.
YMA O HYD - DAFYDD IWAN + IMAGES OF WALES
The song that is usually regarded as the unofficial national anthem, at least for the purposes of opening football games, is not nearly so good, I think, and like ours, too hard to sing. It's Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Land Of My Fathers. I had a time finding a video of it to compare it fairly with Yma O Hyd. The best I could do was this one with a phonetic guide, which you have to go to YouTube to see: LEARN "LAND OF MY FATHERS" THE EASY WAY
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3 comments:
'Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' is the National Anthem of Wales, it's not just for sports events, although previous to it's acceptance, the stirring Gwyr Harlech (Men of Harlech) was generally held to be the Anthem. A bit,I suppose as we used to think of 'Scotland the Brave' as theirs.
I was going by the Wikipedia entry
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau which says there is no official national anthem. I assumed that meant none has been decreed so in law. So it must be a matter of popular acceptance.
When I looked at videos I could find where it was performed, I found many. But very few were performed outside of sporting events, so I couldn't tell if it was popular outside of that context.
Thanks for the info, especially about Gwyr Harlech. I'll look that one up.
The Red Dragon flag of Wales has been flown in Wales since Roman times but it is not the official version, the official version,with an insignia over the head, recognised by the Queen only in 1959 is never flown in Wales.
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