I'm afraid it's a case of not believing everything you read on an album cover. Sorry, but I've phoned around to people who, literally, wrote the book on the music side of this (Meredydd Evans and Phyllis Kinney) and the DANCE is Dawns Flodau Nantgarw and the TUNE is Nos Galan. I used to be a member of the Welsh Folk Dance Soc. as well - and I still reckon this is right.

Dicho, Phyl says that the first ever published words were in Edward Jones' (Bardd y Brenin - the King's Bard) collection, Musical And Poetic Relicks of the Welsh Bards, 1784, but had nothing to do with the Christmas/New Year Season. Mered (who's the text expert) thinks that EJ may have written them himself, the English being a pretty direct translation of the Welsh: O how soft my fair one's bosom... John Parry, Ruabon, also printed the TUNE only in his British Harmony, and possibly in an earlier "A Collection of Welsh, English and Scottish Airs" in 1761. There is also a reference to a tune "New Year's Day" in a manuscript by Richard Morris (b. 1701) which was a very hodge-podge list of tunes that he heard around and noted, diary-style, between the ages of 15 - 18.

Back to the album cover - Phyllis says she'd like to know JK's reference material ... she like's to keep track of other sets of words...

Oh, and Liland, the title is sort of right, but not by modern orthography. "V" is no longer considered to be a Welsh letter (used in the past to correct English pronunciation of the single "f") so it would be Rhyfelgyrch gwyr Harlech. There should also be a circumflex accent over the "y" in "gwyr" ... but that seems to be next to impossible in internet applications. ((sigh)). Actually, I thought it was Rhyfelgan (war song)... but I could very well be wrong on that ...

Hope this is useful!

sian