Do the Welsh have any Dances?

Subject: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dazbo
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 10:29 AM

I've just taken delivery of an Ebay purchase: European Folk Dance by Joan Lawson first published in 1953. I've not had a chance to sit down and get into it but have seen that Wales has only been given about a page and a half. Here are some of the things she has written.

"The Welsh are a nation of singers, whose tunes are echoed by Breton, Scot and Irishman. Yet few Welsh tunes have a dancing rhythm, for they are predominantly solemn and sad, and today there are in Wales few traces of the dances that were once shared with other Celtic peoples. This solemnity and lack of dance tradition is explained bye the religious influences that have always dominated the lives of the Welsh."

"The most important of these occurred in the eighteenth century when certain Welshmen promoted an educational and religious mission among the illiterate peasants, their aim being to teach them to read the Bible and thereby save their souls. These leaders had a particularly strong influence where dance is concerned, for they gave the Welsh such a puritanical outlook that many old people, whose memory of the dances might have helped research workers, firmly believed that, should they show any dance steps to the outside world, they would be condemned to eternal damnation. This attitude to the dance has so far prevented any attempts at a revival of Welsh Folk dance from being successful."

So was traditional dancing in Wales dealt a death blow by religious fundamentalism? Has any Welsh dance style survived (Joan Lawson mentions Llanover Reel and Rhif Wyth as being preserved by Lady Llanover)? Is there much attempt at reviving old Welsh dances?

Interested to hear your thoughts.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Scrump
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 10:34 AM

Yeah, I remember going to one in the Top Rank in Swansea once :-)

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: skipy
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 10:38 AM

www.welshfolkdance.org.uk/

cut & paste to google
Skipy

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 11:24 AM

Right, so she obviously did her research in the Wikipedia of the day. (God give me strength!)

Where to start?

Yes, there are Welsh dances. Yes there are Welsh dance tunes (I have a book here - based on a fiddler's lapbook - with 400 in it). I can give you pages and pages of references re: Welsh folk dance. For instance, here's one from the early 19th C:

"As the females were very handsome, it is most probably we should have accepted their offers, had there not been a powerful reason to prevent us - our complete inability to unravel the mazes of a Welsh dance. 'Tis true there is no great variety in the figures of them, but the few they perform are so complicated and long, that they would render an apprenticeship to them necessary in an Englishman. We therefore contented ourselves with looking on, and were really astonished at the agility and the skill which these rustics displayed."

I will agree that there are few *unbroken* traditions and most of the set dances have been recreated - sometimes from written documents or interviews, but in the case of the Nantgarw dances, some of the patterns were lifted from an old woman's embroidery.

The one *unbroken* tradition is Welsh clog dancing which was preserved by the Welsh gypsies. Most of our current cloggers can be linked with Owen Huw Roberts (who is still clogging and teaching), and he learned from the gypsy, Hywel Woods.

Yes, religion wasn't the best friend to the dance tradition, but I get completely fed up with outsiders who pontificate without even a nod in the direction of accuracy.

sian

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: treewind
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 11:37 AM

Welsh Folk Dance Society
Doesn't look like an empty page to me!

Google seems to have a few other links too...

Anahata

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 12:10 PM

Here are a few attempts to document the Welsh dancing tradition, both seem to agree that Welsh dancing was harmed though not killed by the aforementioned religious revivals . . .

Lois Blake, Welsh Folk Dance (Langlollen, North Wales: Gwynn Publishing Company, 1948)

Hugh Mellor, Welsh Folk Dance, Welsh Dance Tunes (Novello, 1935?)

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 01:54 PM

Both 'seminal works' of their day. More recently, "A Step in Time: Folk Dancing in Wales" by Emma Lile (National Museums and Galleries of Wales, 1999) isbn 0 7200 0474 8. And those are apart from the collections of both dances and tunes which are fairly readily available, most of them through the Society's website, above. The Society also publishes some great stuff for schools.

sian

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: GUEST,Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 02:45 PM

Of course we have hundreds of Welsh dances. I have been calling them with my band for 30 years!

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:18 PM

sian, west wales:Joan Lawson's remarks about there being few traces of traditonal dances left in Wales in 1953 are surely quite correct,aren't there? You seem to be disagreeing with her strongly, but your talk about hundreds of Welsh dance tunes, accounts of dances etc, refer to evidence from more than a century before, surely?

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:27 PM

Welsh language traditional music has had a bit of an expansionist phase in the last twenty years or so, which means we must look with suspicion at certain tune titles given in Welsh on CD covers, or in tune books. Because we all have an idea of the history of Wales in its culture, we naturally associate the Welsh language with greater antiquity than English than English can boast. However, a lot of the tunes have had the Welsh titles added quite recently, and not necessarily with any particular historical basis. An unnamed tune in an 18th century MS book, for example, may be given a Welsh name in 1990, and the unwary may assume on coming across the tune that it has born this name for some considerable time. It ain't necessarily so.
    The tunes are also being currently played in some very wierd styles, often of a sort of "pan-Celtic" type with no connection to any known tradition. Though, of course, as there is no record of the traditonal style, it is up to each of us to make our own way through the murk.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:35 PM

The title of this thread has probably made the Welsh hopping mad.
I can see them dancing with indignation.
Welsh dances dont seem to be very well known outside of Wales,unlike Scottish, Irish and English dances.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:55 PM

apart from in Patagonia,Argentinia.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 05:18 PM

RE: your first message greg, yes - I accept that I overreacted given the fact that she was writing in the 1950s, or even the 1940s if you accept that books take some time to come to press. Most of the current dances (most, not all) are a product of 'revival'. Having said that, some of the revival started earlier than the publication date so she should have taken that into account if she had actually researched it properly. Also, as I said, the clogging was an unbroken tradition and was quite strong in some areas in pre-WWII.

Also, my reading of the quote - which may well be incorrect and out of context - is that she is suggesting that there has never been a dance tradition. Not true, although it is true to say that the dominant musical expression in Wales is song.

Re:the second message, many of the songs, particularly the political protest songs of the 1970s into the 1980s indeed called on tunes from many places, including Ireland, Scotland and the USA. However, the 18th century tune book which I mentioned has a doctoral thesis backing it up and - yes - some tunes are of English origin (and elsewhere) but there are also tunes which might be considered English (or otherwise) but were, indeed, Welsh in origin. Also, without going deeply in the whole ethnomusicology thing, there are many many tunes which have the Welsh 'musical DNA'. (feminine line ends, tune compass, metres, etc)

Capt B, in actual fact the Patagonia Welsh are, unfortunately, the last community likely to have taken the dance traditions with them, as there was a heavy religious motivation in that initiative (and led by a minister). Having said that, I think dancing is enjoying a bit of a revival there are present, linked with revival of the language. As a matter of fact, I was at a fund-raiser for the Welsh school in Patagonia last night ...

sian

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dazbo
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 03:19 AM

I started this thread because I was astounded by the lack of dancing as portrayed in this book which in other traditions, at first sight, seems quite well researched.

Although I didn't quote it she does mention religious processional dances from about 800-900 years earlier and, without suppling the actual dates I inferred that the puritan and post-puritan era did for the traditional dances.

Sian's quote about the complexity of a dance witnessed by some English man fits in with here brief description of the Llanover Reel as being "fifteen figures of an intricate character". She also states that "There has been a vigorous movement to revive what is believed to have been Welsh clog dancing, which resembles Irish step dancing and is quite expressionless".

The next paragraph goes on:

"The Welsh are, however, largely a mountain people and this suggests that their movement would have the gaiety and vitality of the Scots and Irish if they would only let themselves go."

The final few paragraphs concerns a story, told by Mrs Hyllarie Johnstone, a great student of Welsh dance:

After explaining that every booklet on Welsh dance mentions the Wood family of Bala, she continues--

Now Jim Wood is a gipsy and a very good friend mine... perhaps the following conversation which I held with him at the local inn may be of interest.
"Where did you learn your dances, Jim?"
"Well they've been handed down like from my family - in the family for generations, like"
"Jim your dances are of Irish origin, aren't they?"
"Yes ma'am. They is more Irish than anything else."
"Then, you old bandit, why have you let these writers, etc., quote you as an example of old Welsh dance?"
"Well ma'am (with a very sheepish grin) none of them has had the education to see as they wasn't Welsh, and I never told them as they was - people just takes it for granted that because I lives in Bala, the dances must be Welsh, and why should I tell them as they are not?"

Typing this out though it does sound to me a bit like he could be trying compliment her wisdom by agreeing with her (there's a better way to explain this but the words haven't come yet).

I wonder if this Jim Wood (and his brother Llewellyn also danced) is/was known to Hywel Woods as mentioned by Sian.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:05 AM

Well, the (very) old gentleman I know who dances these dances was a friend of Hywel Wood and is both 'the milk of human kindness' and an educated man - in the best sense of the word. I am also distantly related to one of the 2 women who kept the triple harp alive, with all its associated dance tunes, and she was very close friends with the Woods family. The other woman was a gypsy herself and wife of a man who became a very respected academic. (And mother of a guy who became a Welsh pop star, and rastaman) I doubt if any gypsy held their Welsh friends in such low regard as to slag them off like that.

This particular Mr Wood associates his dances with Ireland but his family were well established as 'Welsh' gypsies over long generations. So why shouldn't the dances be considered Welsh at some point? The 24 meters of Welsh poetry are considered Welsh, although they were actually codified at a great convocation of bards of the British Isles which actually took place in Ireland.

Also, when I say that the gypsies were a key element in clogging being an unbroken tradition, I do not mean to say that they were the sole element. Clogging was a popular activity in farm workers' lodgings (llofft stabal) and in the quarrymen's cabans. There was a brief break in the tradition during and immediately after WWII but when interest was shown in it again (1950s?) there were still older men able and willing to dance. In fact, we know that one particularly tricky step is now lost to us because the last gentleman to dance it kept it 'for himself' till the day he died - and that, within living memory.

Your book has an opinion, and that takes a sometimes opposite view to, or puts another 'spin'on, most of the research and personal testimony that I've come across.

I think you are right, Dazbo, about Jim Woods' attempt to flatter her. I don't know all that much about the Woods family. If 'Jim' is 'Hywel' then the very fact that he has changed his name for her benefit says something. And it is not so much a 'lie' as 'camoflage' (how do you spell that?), which is/was a perfectly acceptable subterfuge when dealing with these collectors/afficianados who swept down from on high from time to time. "Very good friend of mine" indeed. Bet she never had him 'round to tea.

Sorry - but the whole tone of these passages is in keeping with a lot of other stuff I've read by English who have a low regard in general for the Welsh ... and I don't feel like elaborating on that, as it takes us into Treachery of the Blue Books territory and, believe it or not, I think it's time for us to 'get over it'. All of us.

But I will say that, without an Englishwomen - Lois Blake - we would not be dancing in Wales to any great extent today. So please don't think I am knocking all English (my gran was English!), just the ones determined to suggest that all things Welsh are either second rate or must have come originally from elsewhere.

If you want the history of dance in Wales, get Emma's book (above). If you want some dance tunes or dances themselves, contact the Society or PM me. Hey! I'll send you Ty Coch Caerdydd - that will knock on the head any idea that our dances lack "gaiety and vitality"!

Thanks for your interest, Dazbo. Dance isn't my 'main thing' but I still enjoy a good twmpath.

sian

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:05 AM

Since I almost live in Wales (judging by the TV reception, & bilingual bills), I thought I ought to call some Welsh dances as well as the English, American, Scottish and French, when we were playing over the border.
So I bought a book.
Full of dances.
In Welsh.
English translation at the back.
And now I could call dances like :
Cylchdawns, Rasus Blaydon, Cyfri Saith, Dawns croesi drosodd, La Russe Dawns OXO etc.
Or I could just stick with :
Circassian Circle, Blaydon Races, Lucky Seven, Thady you gander and La Russe.
There are some Welsh dances there too (I think, but it's hard to tell).

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:44 AM

I wasn't knocking the Welsh, just that I found that book both amusing, and annoying, and I couldn't read the bits that might have been interesting, the introduction and explanations.

I see from the Google ads that the Poles have dances anyway. And you can have Pole dancing lessons!

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Splott Man
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:44 AM

It seems to me that music and dance has no regard for political boundaries.

Talking of lively dances, how about Ceiliog y Rhedyn (The Grasshopper)?
Mind you, I wouldn't want to call it.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 07:05 AM

"The tunes are also being currently played in some very wierd styles, often of a sort of "pan-Celtic" type with no connection to any known tradition."

Welsh dance tunes are conventional Western music. They are in 6/8, 4/4, 3/4 etc, use familiar scales and were played on familiar instruments such as harp, flute, and violin.

How wierd can that get? How many "known traditions" could there have been?

I say if people want to bring the old melodies back to life, good for them. Many Welsh tunes are delightful and deserve our love.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 07:12 AM

Splotty, Ceiliog y Rhedyn makes me relieved to be a woman!

leeneia, I know what the pan-Celtic comment was eluding to, and I can't disagree. I find it depressing when groups go out of their way to sound Irish or Breton and change the Welsh tradition just to sound ... cooler? i.e. Welsh instrumentation isn't about ornamentation like the Irish is, the Welsh singing voice is different from the Breton. Live with it. Celebrate it.

Bringing it back to dance, I know that current cloggers tread a fine line ( !! ) in staying true to Welsh steps - which are, admittedly, primitive in comparison with other styles - while trying to evolve the tradition. (I use 'primitive' in the same way I would praise a 'primitive' style of, say, painting.) I've been here long enough to have seen people take coniption fits when girls started clogging! Thankfully, that's kinda got knocked on the head.

sian

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 12:44 PM

Leenia: my reference to weird and pan-Celtic styles was nothing to do with time signatures. I was referring to the habit of some Welsh(and other "Celtic") musicians to make their traditional local tunes sound more Celtic by including Enya- or Clannad-isms, larding the line-up with low D whisles, bodhrans etc etc. This may make for interesting music, but it confuses people who trying to get a handle on what traditonal Welsh music might sound(or have sounded) like.
This national stuff I actually find increasingly confusing and largely irrelevant(to traditional music, not to modern politics).
    For example, I have recently been making music and dance with the inhabitants of a couple of north Shropshire pubs. One of them, on Whixhall Moss, must have been all of 500 yards from Wales, and the other not that much further. Now, the gypsies in both those pubs have not necessarily spent all their lives in the country in which the pubs were situated(England). Is it meaningful to classify gypsy music as English on the south side of the moss, and Welsh on the north?
    Sian in an earlier post refers to Welsh music from an MS book with 400 tunes in it. Now, from her remarks I guess she is referring to the MS labelled "John Thomas his book 1752". Now, this is certainly a Welsh tune book kept by a Welshman. Probably from north-east Wales(the arguments about this would be too convoluted for this thread). The book has been magnificently edited by Cass Meurig, and is a must-have item for anyone interested in trad music of the British Isles. But obviously(though that is a word to be very careful of!) a big majority of the tunes in the book are of probable English, Irish or Scottish origin; that is not a derogatory remark about Welsh music, most fiddlers are very eclectic about tunes. This merely shows that tunes move about, and are no respecter of national boundaries. So, John Thomas is a Welsh musician, and held up as an example of Welsh culture. Fair enough, but he lived close to the English border(as do all Welsh people, Wales is a small country). I have here on my desk photocopies of two "English" MS books from a similar era, from Whitchurch or thereabouts. The fiddlers concerned were called Jones and Hughes. Whitchurch is about 2 miles into England. So, we have Mr Thomas, the great white hope of Welsh fiddle and dance, living maybe five miles from Messrs Hughes and Thomas, prime examples of English traditional fiddlers. Now, these things need thinking carefully about. One book may end up being pored over by Welsh speaking scholars in Aberystwyth, the others may end up in London in C Sharp House or somewhere forming part of the English cultural heritage.
    Please note what am I saying and what I am not saying. I am not saying that all Welsh culture came from England(or the reverse). Neither am I saying that Welsh and English culture are the same thing: it is bleeding obvious they are hugely different. What I am saying is that they are hugely intertwined, especially on the borders. And that tricking out a modern English tune with a modern Welsh language title does not necessarily therby convert the tune into a bardic song from one of Arthur's minstrels formerly performed with a low D whistle and harp.
To declare any personal interest necessary: I am part Cornish and part Welsh, with a dash of English as well.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 04:58 PM

very good point Greg,There is no such thing as an iron curtain,between the musical cultures of england, wales, scotland and ireland,its as daft as the man who   tried to define traditional music as everything before 1900 and everything after as not.
no man,or woman is an island to himself

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:11 PM

An Iron Curtain? No! But there is Hadrian's Wall and a distinctly separate culture north of it.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:00 PM

A completely distinctive culture? You wouldn't play jigs, reels, hornpipes etc then? The only really different tune I've heard of was the Strathspey, and I've a feeling that's from the Orkneys or somewhere anyway. Of course there are different cultures- (catch me eating deep fried mars bars for example), but they're seriously intertwined. You can't deny that. (And before someone says it, I know that the tunes mentioned above get played differently in different countries, but they're still the same sorts of tunes. Often even just the same tunes.)

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:46 PM

A distinctly separate culture!

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:48 PM

And I hate to see the Highland Dancing inflicted on anyone. The English and Welsh have much to thank the Romans for in this regard.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Janie
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 12:01 AM

Nothing to add. Just thinking this thread is one of the reasons I value Mudcat so highly.

Janie (from across the pond)

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: sapper82
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 12:44 AM

Back in the '80s, when BBC R3 would be taken over for schools broadcasts in the afternoon, I recall and excellent programme for schools called "Folk Dance Wales."
Would be nice of the Beeb could put the series, and others of that ilk, out either as podcasts or even CDs.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dazbo
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 03:50 AM

Sapper, it probably got wiped to store episodes of The Archers or Quote Unquote:-(

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 09:09 AM

H.Wall has nevEr stopped music and musicians from crossing borders,look at the scottish influence in Donegal and Ulster and northumbrian music,Then there were musicians like the Cliffords from Kerry,and fishermen/singer like Sam Larner who worked in Scotland.songs and tunes would be picked up and exchanged .

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dazbo
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 09:23 AM

Captain, whilst in general I concur with your thoughts that, for example, Hadrian's Wall never stopped music and musicians crossing over it I think we must note that in certain places in England (and, I presume other countries too) it is not unknown for accents and/or dialects to be distinct from each other even when they exist cheek by jowl. So I wouldn't be surprised if the same phenonomen existed with music.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: stevethesqueeze
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 10:29 AM

I teach welsh dancing here in Llantwit Major and play welsh dance music and have done for many years. My view is that although there are many dances that other parts of the UK also dance to there is an authentic welsh traditon. The trouble is is was smashed about by the religous revivals here, notably the 1906 revival that happend just as the rest of the Uk at the time was beginging to treasure its traditions. That has undoubtedly affected things. But I can see certain patterns in the tunes and I can hear a particulrly welsh phrasing in them. Like the way the fiddle affceted irish tunes I think the harp affected welsh tunes. Tunes travel. Look at Ty Coch Cardydd (the red house of cardiff), often put forwards as welsh tune. Youll find versions all over Britain, i think its probably a Playford tune originally. But Ty coch cardydd as played in wales is differnt to other versions, its got a welsh accent to me.   In the actual dancing theres acedemic evidence that a great deal of stepping was included in the way people danced here. Importantly for me i see threads that run between dancing and music from all over these islands that bind us together rather than seperates us.

best wishes

ps I do call Ceiliog y Rhedyn

stevethesqueeze

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: leeneia
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 11:25 AM

"weird styles"
"larding the line"
"tricking it out"

These sneering put-downs are just another form of the great movement of today to make the average person sit down, shut up, let the experts do it and give them the money.

I was on a trip down the Grand Canyon recently with a group of friends, many of them musical. We were singing, and our guide said, "That's beautiful." Then she sat thoughtfully for a while and said, "You know, people don't sing anymore."

How sad.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dazbo
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 11:41 AM

Don't whistle much either, someone once said it's because modern pop tunes don't actually have much of a tune that you can whistle to:-(

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 12:06 PM

While some of what I said was "Tongue in Cheek", I was wondering if some of the scholars amongst us would be aware of any Roman influence on Welsh dancing & tradition.
The Scots of course, would never have to worry about such things.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:23 PM

Leenia: I would never put down traditional music, whether Welsh or English. I worship it, love it, and have spent a lifetime studying it and playing it. It's what I do to make a living, and it's what I do for pleasure. It's wonderful music. And as honest as the day is long. It doesn't need deceitful additions, in fact they spoil it. It is for everybody, not a few with axes to grind.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 03:16 PM

Ah well...I`m off to rehearsals with my Welsh dance team tonight - who I have been dancing with for 34 years. We are taking the good ole Welsh dances to Bordeaux next month!

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 04:15 PM

Wasn't the dance "Red House of Cardiff" written 50 or less yrs ago by an Englishman?

Mind you, I suspect the Pat Shaw would have know more about what made a Welsh dance distinctive than most people, English or Welsh.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: bubblyrat
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 05:27 PM

If only the Welsh would get a life, stop endlessly whingeing about the English, and stop speaking deliberately only in Welsh when they hear an English accent in their local pub, then we might all get somewhere. I find this pointless nationalism to be absolutely---well , boring ,to be honest !! And that"s speaking as a Tudor !! If they could only become more "British", then perhaps we could ALL take an interest in, enjoy, and appreciate their history and culture, instead of being made to feel like their enemy !!! And yes, Patti, we know about your involvement with, and dedication to, Welsh music, culture, and dance, and it"s a pity that there are not more like you as ambassadors for your lovely ( but unfriendly ) country. "Land of my Fathers " ---?? No, I"m too ashamed.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: SussexCarole
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 06:32 PM

Hey Bubbyrat
I've been living here in Wales for 3 years and I've heard no Welsh speak yet! The roadsigns are bi-lingual 'mind' - Dim Parcio-Dim Stopio....really takes some lateral thinking to work those out!

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 07:07 PM

Ah Bubblyrat: Are you an accordionist by any chance?
I've never seen so many buttons pushed in such a short time.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Splott Man
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:57 AM

"If only the Welsh would get a life, stop endlessly whingeing about the English, and stop speaking deliberately only in Welsh when they hear an English accent in their local pub, then we might all get somewhere."

As a Welsh resident of 34 years standing, I'm sorry, but I'm incensed by these comments, they are old-fashioned, clichéd and prejudiced, and bear as much resemblance to Wales as Arran sweaters do to folk music.

If you can't contribute positively to a discussion, then keep out.



This is the first time I've had to vent my spleen on mudcat and I hope it's the last.

Splott Man

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: Dazbo
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:52 AM

And the last time I went into a pub in Snowdonia (not a tourist place - a normal village) I am convinced they switched from Welsh to English when talking amongst themselves whilst we were there.

Subject: RE: Do the Welsh have any Dances?
From: GUEST,Sparticus
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:59 AM

There's a lot of cunning linguists in Wales. Good luck with the noodle mining, it should bring a song, and maybe a dance, back to the valleys. A cup of tea, is it?