Lyr Req: One Day by the Sea (Idris Davies)

Subject: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 19 Jun 07 - 03:17 PM

Does anyone have the Lyrics to the Idris Davies poem beginning Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 20 Jun 07 - 03:45 AM

No, but is it about buying a second- hand steam locomotive?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: Cats
Date: 20 Jun 07 - 05:03 AM

You can ask someone at Barry Folk Club when you get there!!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 20 Jun 07 - 11:52 AM

How about that old steely dan song

I can see from what you carry
That you come from Barry town

ifor
my old college town...i can srill remember the walk down thompson street which all the tidy people warned against.i thought i was going to be murdered ...but it was an exaggeration!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 20 Jun 07 - 01:40 PM

Don't be daft Cats. Nobody from Barry folk club actually comes from there! Anyway seaside special leaving in 20mins.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 26 Jun 07 - 12:08 PM

I was able to piece together this much from multiple "snippets" at Google Book Search. I suppose it's incomplete, but I don't know how much is missing. The poem is from "The Angry Summer: A Poem of 1926" by Idris Davies, Published 1943, by Faber and Faber Ltd. It's also in "A Book of Wales: An Anthology" by Meic Stephens, published 1987 by J. M. Dent & Sons.

Let's go to Barry Island, Maggie fach,
And give all the kids one day by the sea,
And sherbet and buns and paper hats,
And a rattling ride on the Figure Eight;
We'll have tea on the sands and rides on the donkeys,
And sit in the evening with the folk of Cwm Rhondda,
Singing the sweet old hymns of Pantycelyn
When the sun goes down beyond the rocky islands.
Come on, Maggie fach, or the train will be gone
Then the kids will be howling at home all day,
Sticky with dirt and gooseberry jam.
Leave the washing alone for today, Maggie fach,
And put on your best and come out to the sun
And down to the holiday sea.
We'll carry the sandwiches in a big brown bag
And leave our troubles behind for a day
With the chickens and the big black tips
And the rival soup-kitchens, quarrelling like hell.

---

From below:

The poem ends

Come, Maggie fach, with a rose on your breast
And an old Welsh tune on your little red lips,
And we'll all sing together in the Cardiff train
Down to the holiday sea.

It's in an anthology called Love From Wales Edited by Tony Curtis and Sian James - in memory of Sian's husband 'Emrys James, Actor'.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 26 Jun 07 - 01:53 PM

Oh wonderful. That's a wonderful help. Ta so much

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: GUEST, Topsie
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 05:12 AM

I remember going on an outing to Barry Island in the 1950s on a train. (Weren't they all steam trains in those days?) I think it must have been a Sunday School outing because my parents didn't come with us but the vicar was there in his cassock.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's Go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: GUEST
Date: 24 May 11 - 09:56 AM

The poem ends

Come, Maggie fach, with a rose on your breast
And an old Welsh tune on your little red lips,
And we'll all sing together in the Cardiff train
Down to the holiday sea.

It's in an anthology called Love From Wales Edited by Tony Curtis and Sian James - in memory of Sian's husband 'Emrys James, Actor'.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Let's Go to Barry Island Maggie Fach
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 31 May 11 - 01:48 PM

Thanks, guest, for finishing what I could not finish.

By the way, I discovered that the title is ONE DAY BY THE SEA.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: One Day by the Sea (Idris Davies)
From: GUEST,marc
Date: 21 Jul 11 - 03:17 AM

I have a framed poster, very colourfull, Lets go to barry island Maggie Fach, lady sat in old steam train carriage, background barry I think, full poem bottom right, poster looks very much like 1920s the way she is dressed, lovely.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: One Day by the Sea (Idris Davies)
From: GUEST,Geoff Skellon
Date: 25 Feb 18 - 07:37 AM

I bought the poster from a music shop in Abergele, now closed, but I'm sure that they had a copy of the poster with the poem in Welsh. Does anybody know the Welsh version?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: One Day by the Sea (Idris Davies)
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 12:22 PM

The poster of Maggie Fach is widely available - even on WH Smith website and Amazon. I have hunted high and low for the text on the internet so thank you for this.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: One Day by the Sea (Idris Davies)
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 06 Feb 20 - 10:03 AM

GUEST,Geoff Skellon asked "Does anybody know the Welsh version?" I read somewhere that Davies wrote almost exclusively in English for much or most of his poetry, so it's possible the poem in Welsh you request may not be in Welsh unless someone else translated it. BUT, I could be wrong.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: One Day by the Sea (Idris Davies)
From: GUEST,Victory Chase
Date: 04 Jan 23 - 03:36 PM

I just read a reference to this poem (as being read at someone's funeral) in "Madly, Deeply - the Diaries of Alan Rickman" ed. by Alan Taylor (Henry Holt and Co, 2022). I am so very glad to find the entire text pieced together here. Thank you all! What a lovely and evocative poem it is...