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We 'Cymro' - the people, have little to celebrate. We're a small nation overrun in mediaeval times by our larger and more powerful neighbour, but never quite subdued.
Okay, all that is now in the mists of time although there are living Welshmen and women who recall the continued subjugation by wealthy landowners or the Iron Masters, or even Winston Churchill's suppression of riots by armed troops.
Because we're a small nation about 3 million souls,we tend to get beaten by larger ones at sport, although there have been times when we have had good teams and times. And there have been notable singers and actors and other individuals who've made good in the world at large. However, we don't make a song and dance about our culture as much as say, our celtic cousins, the Irish do. You won't find Welsh themed pubs or New Yorkers celebrating St David's day with parades.
However, something which is very close to Welsh hearts is success on the rugby field, don't ask me why, but there are parallels in mining communities throughout Britain, in the midlands and Yorkshire, where the game is also strong.
Wales have quite a chequered history in rugby, being either brilliant or rubbish, sadly more the latter. However, today they were starting to show how brilliant they can be, with a third win in the Six Nations Competition, a competition played by the European rugby nations, ie, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy and of course Wales.
We are the only side with a hundred percent record and hopes are beginning to rise of a repeat of the 2005 Grand Slam. It would be wonderful if we made it, a thought I'm sure will be shared by my countrywomen writers on this site.
It might not be very feminine to support a violent contact sport, but it flows in our veins. It's part of being Welsh and I thought I would share it with you.
Cymru am byth.
Angharad.
Comments
Welsh And Kiwis
Two countries with lots of sheep (and sheep jokes), 3 million people and a religion of Rugby, and both drive their neighbours mad. Good luck in the Six Nations, but the real one is the World Cup and I hope we can thrash you and those pesky All Blacks when that next comes around,
Joanne
Welsh and Kiwis, a view from the cheap seats
Well,
somebody has to be them.
No, a army of zombie dormice is attacking me led by the ghost of Sir Edmund Hillary!
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Being Welsh /Being True
Angharad, I myself hope that your teams trounce the others. I for one say that being proud of your nation is super. Me, I am saddened when people say hurtful things about any one group no matter what that group is. It is only when everybody can be accepted for who and what they are that we will have finally achieved true World Peace because having a World Police to enforce the law is not Peace.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Rugby and Ballet
To watch Shane Williams, the smallest player on the pitch, weave his way through opponents to score again is almost like watching ballet with fast forward.
Sport is a distraction from reality and can reflect some reactionary ideas, but at least in Wales the international rugby games are a carnival, with mixed crowds happy to relate to each other unlike football (soccer) with its heavily policed and segregated stadia and history of violence.
The bilingual stadium announcements are pretty cool (trilingual when the French visit).
Some of the Welsh rugby players are pretty hunky too :-)
Hwyl
Alys
'what a player'
When Shane went over for his second the cameras picked up Wales' (English) hardbitten defence coach, and you didn't need to know a lot about lip reading to see he was saying 'what a player!'. Gerald Davies - the great winger of Wales' golden age - once described the sidestep as the small player's revenge, and Shane deals out retribution every time he takes to the field :)
Rugby has another side too, the raw, often brutal, physical game of the forwards. Wales who've often struggled to match the physicality of other sides have so far taken apart probably the three most forward dominated sides in the Six Nations, grinding them down and unleashing the backs. It's too early I think to talk of Grand Slams (tho Inverdale and the assorted twonks of last night's pundits have already pencilled in England for the championship), we've our two hardest games to play... yet Ireland showed a few chinks in their armour yesterday, and a victory in Croke Park isn't unthinkable.
I've spent too much time at the bottom of rucks with a twenty stone lock standing on my head to find rugby players attractive... though there's a quiet beauty in Ryan Jones's eyes that's quite entrancing...
Wales and The Doctor
Wales is also the current (production) home of Doctor Who. And anyone who's watched even one episode of Torchwood knows that there is a rift in the space-time continuum that runs right through Cardiff.
When you consider that, you realize that Wales has a corner on saving the world once or twice a week.
(And I didn't know that Italy played rugger -- I'll have to look into that.)
Red Tide
Rugby, while being a brutal sport, produces the best crowds. The English supporters during the World Cup before last, were known as The Red Tide in Australia, and they were the best-behaved mob you could ever hope to see, a real credit to the game and their country. In Brisbane, where they won one of the warm-up matches against Australia (that bloody Jonny Wilkinson again) the nearby pubs ran out of beer and had to ferry in supplies from all over town and there was not one arrest for bad behaviour. The games organisers allocated different "lesser" teams to different Australian locations, so that Japan "belonged" to Townsville and 30,000 North Queenslanders sang "We're Turning Japanese" before every game and cheered on "their" team, and Tasmania had Georgia, and so on. We ALMOST didn't mind losing to the Poms on Bloody Wilkinson's kick in extra time. Magic,
Joanne
The Six Nations.
I am a Lancastrian so also would claim a Rugby culture, both League and Union. I too enjoyed Saturday's games enormously. A real feast. And good games all.
And for Angharad and Ceri it must have been particularly pleasant. The Welsh really sparkled in the second half with some delightful rugby. I watch the Six Nation matches with a small group of friends, including a stray Welshman, and it was a joy to watch. Particularly as Italy is so much better these days. (You really will have to keep up date Kaleigh Way - the Five Nations have been Six for .... 10 years? or so now.)
I too still bear the stud marks from 'shoeings' received in those far off days .... All right so I shouldn't have been lying there but sometimes ... and I was trapped ref!.... but you can't really call it a brutal game. It is certainly rough but, at least at the level I played it, the violence was quite without malice, well usually so :), and much beer was drunk with the opposition afterwards. One of my fondest memories was a chap apologising in the most gentlemanly way for having removed a couple front teeth
Joanne Barbarella may be right in thinking the World Cup is the 'real one' but for me the Six Nations has that extra something. It just gets under the skin whilst the World Cup is, for me, rather impersonal. Not so immediate. And it gives so much pleasure to the others when they beat us. And as they seem to do that fairly regularly at the moment we can always comfort ourselves with the consolation of spreading sweetness and light amongst the less favoured of our neighbours.
Hugs,
Fleurie
P.S. I don't think you need worry too much Ceri. England is too far behind on points difference to win . Wales should do it although whether or not it will be a Grand Slam I would not like to say. Still we did beat the French in Paris which is always nice and in about 40 minutes i shall be meeting friends in the local for an in depth examination of that. :)
the Boxing Day massacre
I shouldn't overplay the physical side of rugby (when the French backline gets moving it has to be the closest thing to poetry in any sport IMHO), but my village used to play an annual fixture with the next but one village every Boxing Day.
These matches were of unrivalled brutality, with old bruisers coming back to both teams to settle old scores. I played in a couple of them when I was in the youth team as first team players would develop mystery injuries around Christmas and be unavailable to play. The matches always degenerated into brawls, that would often exhaust our club's supply of stretches... luckily the groundsman kept a screwdriver handy to take a door, or two, off the pavilion to carry the next victim off.
I managed to escape injury in both matches I played, largely I think cos I was a six foot tall 'string of p***' and considered not worth hitting, but also at 18 I was just a bit too quick for the veterans. I was once however tripped up by a woman supporting the other village as I was running along the touchline.
The fixtures stopped around fifteen years ago when the police interceded beforehand and threatened to charge the players with assault if fighting broke out. As villages we were shamefully proud of this distinction, until we were trumped by Pontarddulais who had their carnival broken up one year, and the riot act read!
South West Wales, there's nowhere quite like it :)
I played for a Cardiff team (second XV).
play might be too fine a description, as tackling wasn't my forte. I was 5'8" and about 130 lbs wringing wet. However, I was faster than most the opponents we played, and I did tackle if I got angry. I remember being dead-legged by an opposing full back twice my size. I limped around the pitch waiting until he got the ball again!
Played a few games up the valleys - I think half their teams were let out of prison for the game, certainly learned a few tricks -all of them dirty!
In the old days, Cardiff v Newport games were bloodbaths, I recall seeing Gareth Edwards take out a Newport centre who'd hurt Gerald Davies. He went off on a stretcher.
Angharad
Angharad
Blood, gore and Rugby
And yet eso many claim American football is a brutal sport.
I've seec a little amature rugby years ago on the Milwaukee lakefront -- college kids, mixed sexes -- and it's pretty wild. A combination of a brawl and an orgy.
Those NFL guys are wimps in comparison, not that I would say that to Brett Farve's face.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Mixed Sexes ....?
Jesus wept!!!!
But what did they hang onto in the scrum?
Hugs,
Fleurie
Proper Recognition of Welsh Holidays
Just a thought as BCTS is carried to new heights by a bunch of great Welsh writers -- does Edeyn have a full list of the Welsh holidays? We should celebrate them all, but I haven't seen one pop up yet on Edeyn's daily report. hugs, Daphne
Daphne
This Saturday
There aren't that many specifically Welsh holidays but it's Dydd Gwyl Ddewi (Saint David's Day) on Saturday. When I was a kid we used to have a cymanfa ganu (concert) in school in the morning, and the afternoon off (which was often spent in town buying sandals for the summer, though we weren't allowed to wear them until Whitsun). These days I usually slip (sometimes squeeze) into my Welsh flag frock and head off to London to spend the day with Welsh friends).
Years back I went to a black tie St David's Day dinner with the London-Welsh society, which was far from genteel... we made page two of the 'Evening Standard' when someone photographed twenty or so of us, all in dinner suits, looking utterly disreputable - drunk and singing hymns as usual - outside Leicester Square tube station. The caption was 'Wales' brightest and best'... it wasn't one I'd show to my mother :)
Whither Whitsun?
Do you still have Whitsun in Wales Ceri? We had it here in England once and then it suddenly disappeared. Perhaps it was stolen, or found to be politically incorrect, or fell foul of some aspect of the Health and Safety legislation, or was axed in some Governmental cut down on Public Expenditure.
I don't think I could have been in the country at the time or I would have protested - tied myself to the railings outside No.10 or thrown my self in front of the Queen's horse at the Derby etc. I must have been away in furrin parts as I was wont to be in my salad days as a result of some fool telling me the world was my oyster.
It may have been some time after that I noticed. It was not a sudden coup de foudre ( I use the phrase for Nick's benefit ) but rather a slow realisation over several years that something was missing. By the time I had worked out what it was it was too late. The moment had long passed for any decisive action.
It is a great loss. As I recall it was always sunny at Whitsun. The one holiday that was. Everything changed at Whitsun. I, like Ceri, was allowed to wear sandals, even plimsolls one year, and a less scratchy vest. And short sleeved shirts. Not to mention being able to eat ice cream.
Maybe that was it. A paternalistic Government worried about the incidence of sun stroke amongst the young and vulnerable? Or perhaps the recognition, with the decay of any form of religious observance in the UK that could not be harnessed to promote the sale of consumer goods, that it was only a source of time wasting speculation as to when it actually was.
But if Whitsun still survives in Wales, then I must up sticks and move there. I am already quite excited by the prospect. I cannot sing so would forever be condemned to exist only on the fringe of society, but am fond of leeks and daffodils and rugby and mountains and sheep so I might find a niche somewhere. Best in a part that still speaks English though, otherwise I would always have this problem of not daring to use the public toilets.
So do let me know.
Hugs,
Fleurie
Whitsun -- Defined
I just had to look up Whitsun, being Atlantic Westshorian myself and never having heard the term. As a public service, and to relieve the load on google.com and wikipedia.com, I forthwith present my findings:
I know what Whitsun is
but what is an Atlantic Westshorian, is it like Jeddai?
Angharad 8)
Angharad
Waving...
...from t' other side of the Big Pond (tm), sometimes known as the Atlantic Ocean.
You're on the East Shore, more or less. I'm on the West Shore, not exactly on the damp sand, but not much more than a few miles inland. According to the insurance companies' new definitions, I now apparently own a coastal property. Coast, shore, western side of the body of water, hence, Westshorian.
You may now tune out while I have a brief and fruitless rant against said insurance companies:
Following some recent large hurricane payouts, despite posting record profits the insurance companies decided they had a great excuse to raise profits even more. Mine has jacked up their rates over 30% since last year and I can't change companies because no one is writing new policies for any homes in counties bordering the ocean. Which is idiotic when you live in a totally urbanized county, inland of one of the world's most protected natural harbors, and 40 feet above high tide. Personally, I think it's all collusion, monopoly, and restraint of trade.