History is funny isn't it? If we judged everyone on their pasts, well here's a few:
St Augustine would be an arrogant lawyer who freed a murderer.
St Francis would be a materialist party animal (probably a misogynist to boot).
Owain Glyndwr would be an English soldier defending the crown and killing for his king.
Winston Churchill would be a disgrace who ordered troops to fire on strikers and the mastermind of a battle that killed many and ended in total failure.
And of course there's Mary Magdalene who - although never called an ex-prostitute in the Gospels - was said to have had a 'colourful' past.
Our Welsh Shepherd (wearing an old Cardiff City scarf).
Many people call the Pope "our German Shepherd," but I have unearthed a conspiracy that would make Dan Brown's hair turn (albino?) white!
As Cardiff City fans have long known, the Pope is a Cardiff fan (they have long sung a song about Swansea fans going to the Vatican and being told, in no uncertain terms by His Holiness, that "Cardiff we'll support you evermore"), of course the Pope says "we" as he speaks for all the Popes on such vital matters of Faith and Morals.
But -- and hold on to your hat/Biretta here -- there is now ample proof that, as many have suspected, the Pope is in fact Welsh.
I will skip the obvious evidence, such as Welsh and Latin being the languages of heaven, and get down to the nitty gritty (as St Thomas Aquinas was wont to do).
A hobbit-like friend and fellow Cardiff City fan who shall remain nameless (let's just say he's the sort of best man who'd forget a ring), has pointed out that the Pope's Twitter id is @Pontifex. Of course Welsh is well known for its mutations, and to Latinise a Welsh word results in this kind of thing, but the evidence is clear.
The Pope is Pontyfex just as Pontypridd is the place where Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (I won't insult your intelligence by telling you that's the Welsh national anthem) was penned.
Furthermore Pontypridd sprung up around a bridge (the "Ponty" in question) built specifically to take pilgrims to the great pilgrimage site of Penrhys where today pilgrims still gather at the statue of Our Lady of Penrhys. So without the Catholic monks present there, and the place of pilgrimage, the bridge at Pontypridd would not have been built, the town of Pontypridd would not exist, and the Welsh national anthem may well not exist in its current form.
The Pope (Pontyfex) knows this and has chosen his Twitter name to reflect the importance of Catholicism to Welsh history, as well as to give a nod to his own Welsh heritage; also to acknowledge that the Papacy is the bridge which leads the Church militant to the promised land (a bit like Jacob's Ladder).
If you are still in doubt watch this week's Weatherman Walking (still on BBC iplayer) to see him visit two sites - the first, the well known Holywell in north east Wales, a place of Catholic pilgrimage for well over 1000 years. The second was the scant remains of a Chapel dedicated to St Michael the Archangel atop Holy Mountain in South East Wales. The guide (accompanying the 'weatherman' Derek) said this Chapel was in use throughout Medieval times and even after Catholicism was outlawed (by the English) it was still frequented by brave recusant souls.
So the Pope is Welsh, a Cardiff City fan and our country is, in every part, scattered with Holy places just as it was Catholic when the English were still living in Germany and its environs.
Case closed. Do you think Tom Hanks will want to make a film about it?
On BBC Wales News tonight (Wales Today) there was a story about a war memorial in Crumlin, north of Cardiff. The metal plaque on the memorial was stolen, but luckily an elderly gent in the town had written down all the names and so the plaques could be recreated.
On showing the new plaque there right near the top (1914-18) was a T. Hurley (see pic at right, T Hurley is second from top, middle column).
How very sad that some low life thinks so little of the dead, of our history and of the sacrifices men made - to nick metal war plaques just for a few quid.
And so we can remember T. Hurley from Crumlin who died so many years ago.
I like to think as my famous rugby-playing great grandad Henry Huzzey came from Pontypool, just five miles from Crumlin, that maybe the Hurleys from Crumlin and the Huzzeys from Pontypool may have bumped into each other in the street once or twice... who knows?
Feb 25th and 26th: A Welsh invasion is on the cards
Being a Cardiff fan I am so used to losing, it has surely been a source of time-off Purgatory for time-served?
Have times changed? Judging from yesterday they may well have. What can I say about last night's Carling Cup semi-final football? Very, very exciting.
When Miller missed the first penalty for Cardiff my pessimistic thoughts were "oh no... here we go again." After hitting the woodwork three times in total... it looked bad.
Yet thanks to some superb penalty saves from City's keeper Heaton, Cardiff are through to the final.
The match was so exciting, I was glued all evening. It may even have finished some of the more elderly members of the extended Hurley family. We may have to do a head count of all my uncles.
This morning I made my way into the kitchen to put some bread in the toaster with a wide smile on my face and a spring in my step. On informing the youngest about the glory that is Cardiff City (last time I checked, to my horror, she supported Liverpool), I was told that they had seen the goals already on the morning news.
Then Mrs H chipped in with "see, why did you watch it last night? We've seen all the goals this morning."
I was gobsmacked. Whatever else? Celebrate Christmas on Boxing Day? Or Good Friday on Low Sunday? St David's Day in April? Watch the Six Nations in the Summer?
Needless to say I did some brisk tut tutting as I buttered my toast, and in polite, refined society (which I have shoehorned myself into despite the protests) that is quite a rebuttal let me tell you!
Could it be more exciting? Yes! Cardiff will be in Wembley on the 26th Feb. The day before (yes, that's the 25th, thank you professor) Wales play England at Twickenham. Ohhhh... can Y Cymry reclaim Llundain for the weekend? Two victories would be fantastic, and so much more cultured than the behaviour of Queen Boudicca of the Celtic Iceni tribe when she last visited London.
So come on Welsh rugby players and Cardiff football players! Let's go for the double whammy.
Some people think sports is boring or over-emphasised. I would certainly agree that too many sportsmen (especially footballers) are primadonnas, cheats and are well overpaid, but that aside (and I am not averse to returning sports to the grass roots in some way), as the old saying, attributed to Winston Churchill, goes:
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
Or in this case, kicking a ball is better than shooting a gun. And I would far rather, as a patriot, see Wales assert herself on the sports field than on the battlefield, win or lose.
So yes, sport is just sport, but for those of us who see our love of hometown and love of country played out on the pitches of Wales and England, what a great way to celebrate what we are and where we are from - which doesn't harm our neighbours or anyone else.
So in closing and before I forget, a Happy St Dwynwen's Day to one and all and especially Mrs H.
Love is in the air! After being a 'football widow' last night she has my undivided attention tonight... maybe there's a shelf she wants me to put up? ;-) I will make her a nice cup of Glengettie. Who said I know nothing about romance?
And here, for Old Ma Hurley, is friend-of-the-family Charlotte Church singing Men of Harlech just to get everyone in the mood for Wales and Cardiff winning:
And here, for Old Pa Hurley, is his old friend, a pint of Brains. Just to get him in a patriotic mood! I did tweet a Brains employee to ask if he could get some recognition for all the hard (and patriotic) work he's done over the years. She wrote back that a specially struck medal might be the order of the day... Well, you never know.
And for my in-laws north of the border, in the Norse Orcadian lands and their vicinity, a very happy Burns Night (even though I read somewhere he was a wee bit dodgy, a Freemason no less). Yes, we can all say "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie" in our best mock-jock accents tonight!
Ah memories! Watching Derek Brockway's Weatherman Walking on BBC1 tonight was full of memories as he made his way from Barry to Rhoose.
From Bank Holiday Mondays on Barry Island, to going to the fun fair as a teenager (where my friend Stephen Coles was sick after going on the waltzers, on my fifteenth birthday if I remember right).
I found out something new too, that Barry (like so much else in Wales) is named after a local Saint, the hermit St Barruc where his shrine was located and where there used to be a Holy well, before the water was diverted (boo).
There was Barry Docks and I can remember going there with my brother-in-law as he worked on the tugs. The pool at Cold Knap, where you had to have nerves of steel to jump in it (even in mid Summer). I think a wet suit would have been in order!
Then onto Porthkerry Park where we used to go in the Summer Holidays back in the 80s, all the Hurley family and some friends, to play football or cricket (there's a photo somewhere of a young Gareth Hurley with a big tear in the backside of his trousers as we played some game or other) and stay for the whole day eating and playing on the grass, at the beach and in the forest.
The caravan park at Porthkerry... more holiday memories, then there's Rhoose airport, the site of many holiday departures over the years.
A fantastic episode of Weatherman Walking. Fab'lus!
Nice tea tonight. Lasagne. Mmmm. The Romans gave us so much! Great food. Roads. Catholicism. Central heating. Rugby. OK I made the last one up, but those jolly Romans gave us so much.
Even Wales. Yes, Wales.
You see the Celtic Britons in modern day Wales were so fierce the Romans let them have their own armed forces. Therefore when the Saxons came, first as mercenaries, they weren't needed here. Then when the Saxons invaded they only got as far as... Well you know the rest.
Some say the Red Dragon (Y Ddraig Goch) of Wales was the symbol of the Celtic (Welsh) Roman Legion based in Wales.
Also the word Welsh comes from the Germanic word for foreigner or Roman and was used against the Welsh, Belgians (Walloons), Romanians/Dacians (Wallachia) and even the Italians themselves - all considered frontiers of the Roman Empire to the Germanic tribes.
So did the Romans give us our flag, our name (in English), our current national borders, and our historic Faith?
This is the "old laundry" in Roath, Cardiff along Marlborough Road. There is a campaign to stop this beautiful building being torn down for new housing, and to turn it instead into a community resource, saving the building and giving a valuable centre for everyone in Roath and Penylan.
If you want more info contact the people who put the leaflet out - details on their poster pictured below.
You'll be surprised to hear I wasn't around in 1898 when the "Roath Sanitary Steam Laundry" was opened, despite some rumours to the contrary.
No, you see as a cute, adorable and cherubic child in the halcyon days of the 1970s, despite strikes, the four minute warning, the three-day week etc. etc., I had not a care in the world beyond what was for tea, collecting Panini football stickers, playing with toy soldiers at home and what we would play at dinner time in school.
The walk to school was a short one, and there en route was the old laundry, better known to us at the time as Marlborough Carpets - for it was they who occupied it at the time (they later decamped to Penarth Road).
The front of the old laundry had two gates, allowing vehicular callers to pull in via one and drive out through the second, if they were dropping off or picking up via the front doors. All very 'Downton Abbey' so far.
They also took to parking their fork lift truck outside the front of the shop, and what else could guarantee the attention of boys walking home from school than a fork lift truck? It speaks of adventure, of dreams-fulfilled, of industrial hijinks. Think Biggles - but scuttling around a fore-court, rather than over the skies of Flanders.
Thus it was, as a dare if I recall right, certain little legs scuttled over to the fork-lift truck. Then a school chum took to pressing the up/down button, and the fork lift kicked into life and whizzed and whirred loudly. As you can imagine this shocked everyone, and little legs scurried away as fast as they could.
Still, we weren't discovered and the fork lift remained in situ in the days ahead, and so it became a dare to get over to the fork lift as quietly as possible, push the button for a split second, and then get out of there immediately before being discovered.
Oh the naughtiness of it all. It all stopped ingloriously when Old Ma Hurley asked who had been doing such naughty things. Oh oh. It seems Betty the Crossing Lady had, from the side of the old laundry, through the railings, witnessed the little people up to their split-second adventures and naughtiness.
Old Ma Hurley's spies throughout the community had struck once again!
So if not for me as a naughty herbert pottering home from school, if not for Old Ma Hurley, if not for the fork lift truck, then vote to save the Old Roath Steam Laundry building for the memory of Betty the Crossing Lady (RIP).
Sterling news! Some of the Hurley Clan have marched north to reclaim the Celtic Kingdom of Rheged from the Saxons and Danes who took it via intermarriage and stealth, even after it passed to the Welsh Kingdom of Strathclyde (from whence William Wallace - Wallace meaning "Welsh" - came to deliver freedom to the Welsh, Scots and Picts of Scotland).
They followed two pathfinders (codename Uncle Pat and Auntie Mary) who were brave enough to travel north into the icy wastes of what, incredibly, is today part of England!
Yes! The Welsh are marching to free the Cymry 'Men of the North' and I have reports back from an elderly man (codename Old Pa Hurley) that he has indeed discovered evidence of ancient Welsh culture "up North."
A pub serving Brains Beer* no less, has been confirmed back to base by two elderly men (let's call them Agent Joe and Agent Pat), reported to be "grinning widely" and with a strange gait in their movement.
At this stage, further reports of them painting half their faces blue and shouting "FREEEEEDOM!" whilst kicking a rugby ball up the high street, have yet to be confirmed.
I read somewhere that many Catholic bloggers are meant to love cats. I would happily count myself in that number, notwithstanding our new pet, Patch the crossbreed Jack Russell and Lakeland Terrier.
So, in order that the Catholic bloggers who do look in from time to time, here's something to keep you happy, even though it is a bit cheeky - Welsh being one of the oldest European languages etc. etc.
If Latin is the official language of Heaven, then surely the angels must converse in Welsh on their dress-down Fridays.
Oggy oggy oggy: an old Welsh poem written by the bards - originally "moggy, moggy, moggy" - about Llywellyn Ap Gruffydd's three pet cats.
Congratulations to Huw and Caroline on the fantastic news that little Gruffydd James has been born into the world.
OK they didn't choose Gareth, despite my extensive and expensive lobbying campaign (I suppose I'll have to release Uncle Peter now, he made for an "interesting" hostage...) but hey, it starts with G and that's more than I usually get!
So a big congrats to the Vale of Glamorgan branch of the family --yes, they really are that posh AND they still talk to us! ;-) Perhaps we'll get another visit to St Joseph's RC Church, if we can make it. It really is a beautiful, beautiful building and had a famous parishioner in Dr John Saunders Lewis the founder-leader of Plaid Cymru who converted to Catholicism (hurrah!). I recently spoke to a retired cleric whom Saunders Lewis helped teach to speak Welsh and was, for many years, the parish priest of St Joseph's and had nothing but the nicest things to say and the fondest memories of his old Penarth parish.
So hooray and hurrah for Huw and Caroline, my favourite cousin -- I know I say that to each of them, but don't tell them that ;-) And of course little Gruffydd James who is either sleeping soundly, gurgling a smile or trying out his new lungs with gusto as I type. Let's hope that Saint James, Santiago so beloved of the Spanish over many centuries, looks after his little namesake.
Anyway I must rush, I have to start my next lobbying campaign for a baby Gareth. Perhaps I should consider a mild form of bribery?
I was doing a search the other week, I forget what for, and I came across this image which I instantly saved.
I'm not one for 'role playing' games, though my children did go through a few years of collecting and painting the Lord of the Rings ones (being a fan of Tolkien I was quietly pleased, though shocked at the prices!). The "new age" type especially can be a bit worrying.
I was pleasantly surprised to see this image though, as it clearly shows King Arthur (or one of his knights - maybe Gareth?) with a shield bearing the Chi Rho: the Roman Papal symbol.
As a Welshman, a Romano-Briton, Arthur would have been a Catholic defending his people from the Germanic Pagan onslaught during the time historians dubbed the Dark Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire.
All too often films, popular imagery etc. airbrushes out Arthur's Welshness and his Roman Catholicism.
Was Arthur, the Welshman, the Romano-Celt Chieftain, a Defender of the Faith? I certainly like to think so.
500 AD and Glastonbury is still held by "Welsh" tribes
After a minor kerfuffle from my last post, it seems that at least one MP agrees with me, that God Save the Queen is indeed the anthem of the UK and not of England.
In April 2008 Greg Mulholland called for the England national rugby league team to replace "God Save the Queen" with an English national anthem at the Rugby League World Cup (RL World Cup) to be held in Australia in autumn 2008[5] and on 28 April he put forward another EDM in the House of Commons, noting that Scotland and Wales who are also taking part in the RL World Cup, will all have their own national anthems, and therefore calling on England to use an English national anthem rather than the British national anthem, with the proposal that English rugby league fans should be given the chance to choose an English anthem.[6] However, God Save the Queen was used.
If the English wish to have Jerusalem as their anthem who am I (Welsh, part-Irish and so devoid of any rights on such matters apparently) to say otherwise. It is certainly very stirring (moreso than God Save the Queen may I dare to opine?)
Of course, if Our Lord Jesus Christ did indeed come to the West Country, brought by Joseph of Arimathea so folk-tales say, then of course it was still part of Welsh Britain, where the native tribes would have spoke ancient Welsh, perhaps intermixed with some Latin).
The arrival of the English was some 400+ years away, apart from some mercenaries fighting for the Romans as the Empire crumbled, to protect the East Coast of what became England from raiders. Some historians say these mercenaries became the settlers that the "invading" Germanic tribes came to join - I believe it's a moot point. The West Country itself remained "Welsh" for much longer of course (eventually only Wales and Cornwall as we recognise them today were left separate of Anglo-Saxon tribal kingdoms and their vessel fiefdoms)
Still it's nice to think that Jesus Christ may have come to these islands and met the natives later called Welsh (or "foreigner" in old Anglo-Saxon English, they gave similar names to peoples in what would become Belgium and Italy). If only because the Welsh kept the Roman and Christian Faith, and via the Welshman St Patrick exported it to Ireland where monasticism really took off and thrived as Europe as a whole entered what has been called the 'Dark Ages.'
P.S. I don't know if Greg Mulholland is English or not. Does that negate his argument for asking for an English anthem as opposed to the British one?
...the Irish newcomers quickly made Newtown their own. "Little Ireland", as it became known, had a school and its own church, St Paul's. The church in particular was central to the devout Catholic community. Musical and sporting talents like boxing legend Jimmy Driscoll were also nurtured. It was, as resident Mary Sullivan - whose Irish grandmother emigrated there - recalls, "a town within a city."
Above Right: World famous boxer Jim Driscoll, outside his pub in Newtown with the famous 'Cork Pipers'.
Call me an old romantic ("old?" I ask pleadingly, "romantic?" Mrs Hurley asks cynically) but I like to think that just as the Welshman, St Patrick, took Catholicism to the people of Ireland, so the new Irish settlers of the 19th Century brought the Catholic Faith back to a Wales that had it ripped from them in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Just as St Patrick took the heathen Irish and created a land of monasticism and devout Faith, so the Irish settlers would bring at least some of the Welsh, amongst whom they settled, mixed and married, back to the Faith of Our Lady of Cardigan, Our Lady of Bala, and Our Lady of Penrhys. In that noble aim, born initially out of economic necessity (even survival!), the small enclave of Newtown, Cardiff, played its part.
(1536-40). The loss of the monasteries and the sustenance that helped the Welsh poor to survive; the giving of food and medicinal herbs to keep the body whole, as well as the sustenance of the spiritual soul was devastating, not only to the economic well-being of the populace, but to the very heart of the Welsh nationalistic veracity. These calamities forced the Welsh to rethink their attitudes toward the monarchs of the era
Newtown was an area of Cardiff between Splott and the Docks, known as 'Little Ireland.'
My dad has often spoken of his childhood in Newtown and when travelling on the "new" flyover that goes from Cardiff jail to the new revamped Docks with the Welsh Assembly building etc. one can see the area where Newtown used to be.
The area was demolished (I got the impression of slum clearances, but perhaps that is unfair) the year I was born, 1970.
Did my Irish grandfather end up living in Newtown with his Welsh wife because the Irish tended to gravitate there? Or were the rents cheaper? Or was it a work-related move?
Furthermore, it's interesting to read that Newtown was established by the Marquis of Bute, specifically for Irish workers. In the superb essay When the Heart Stopped Beating, published in the South Wales Echo, Dan O'Neil marks the irony of the Marquis of Bute who built Newtown for the Irish workers escaping the Irish famine all but begging forgiveness for bringing in "Papists" -- when his own son would convert to the One, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church.
Certainly reading a booklet on the Catholic history of Cardiff some years back, there was an editorial from the (19th Century) South Wales Echo which tried to paint the growth of the Irish population in Cardiff in general, and the establishment of a Catholic Church in particular, as if the Spanish Armada were en route again, as if the gunpowder plot were happening again: it was full of hysteria and hyperbole akin to an Al Qaeda cell being discovered in the city.
Altar boys in Newtown
The following site (see link at end) gives an excellent overview of Newtown, a community torn down 40 years ago.
Here's a piece from the When the Heart Stopped Beating article:
The last Mass was celebrated in Saint Paul’s Church, Newtown, on Sunday, October 22, 1967.And that, more than anything else, more than the sight of old houses falling, familiar pubs reduced to dust, men, women and children moving from the homes where they were born - that, more than anything else spelled out that this was truly . . . .The End. For Saint Paul’s was the beating heart of Little Ireland. When it was built it signalled that the men and women from the Ould Sod had come to stay. They had come fresh from the terrible famine, that calamity imprinted on the world’s mind as the Great Hunger, and they had built the vast docks which were to make Cardiff the coal capital of the world; and they brought their customs, and their religion with them.
Just a quick post this one (yes, OK, you needn't relish in the fact!).
I found this simply sumptuous post on the blog "Reluctant Sinner" and it ties in well with what I wrote previously about the Kingdom of Strathclyde being Welsh.
It further highlights the Welsh heritage of Cumbria, Lancashire etc. and how the Welsh kept Christianity flourishing after the Romans left in the 5th Century.
It is ironic that as the Pope was sending St Augustine to Kent, so Christianity was in turn taken to Ireland by the Welsh (most significantly St Patrick) and Ireland's Monasticism in turn spread to Scotland, the Picts and the Northern English.
Anyway, enjoy this article, it is sublime. Look out for all the Welsh names connected to St Pabo, both in Wales itself and his own lands in what is now England.
Researching sites and looking for images of my great grandfather, famous rugby player Viv Huzzey, I came across this site: rugbyrelics
The page in question deals with the All Blacks tour of 1905.
Interestingly the scrum back then could involve any number of players:
“A Scrummage, which can only take place in the field of play, is formed by one or more players from each side closing round the ball when it is on the ground, or by their closing up in readiness to allow the ball to be put on the ground between them”.
The All Blacks beat all comers, until they played the Welsh!
Again the site says:
The critics suggested the ‘colonial’ team would struggle against the West countrymen but the All Blacks thumped Devon by 55 points to 4, Cornwall were next, then Bristol, Northampton & Leicester, in their first five matches the All Blacks scored 197 points with just 4 against. News soon spread of this fantastic team, the qualities of the All Black scrum, the fitness of the players and the role of the forwards, who unprecedented at the time even joined in passing movements with the backs. They blazed a trail through England, Scotland & Ireland, defeating clubs, counties and countries alike !
I had heard before that this game was the first at which the Welsh national anthem was sung, and what a fixture of Welsh matches it has been ever since then. The report at the time said:
The 16th December arrived, special trains had been laid on for spectators from afar, queues formed at the gates and once opened around 11.00 am the ground quickly filled, at 1.30 pm the gates were closed. Those inside sang and joked while the unfortunate locked out looked for trees to climb and other vantage points. At 2.20 pm the All Blacks took to the field followed a little later by the Welsh team, the crowd roar was almost deafening as Nicholls led his men onto the Park. The All Blacks performed their customary haka then unusually the Welsh team started to sing the national anthem, this was soon picked up by the crowd and soon the whole stadium reverberated to the sounds of ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’.
The more attentive of you will have picked out the name Nicholls in that report. Nicholls was the Welsh captain who had partnered my great grandfather Viv Huzzey on the wing. Huzzey was the vice-captain who quit to play rugby league when he was passed over for the captaincy.
If history had gone differently it could have been Viv Huzzey leading the Welshmen out to their famous victory against the All Blacks... History is such a fickle mistress!
The Times newspaper of the day (pictured above) had a report on the match:
THE REVOLUTION IN RUGBY UNION
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT)
Wales is the only portion of the United Kingdom in which Rugby Union football is the national game (as it is in New Zealand), and it would be a kind of poetic justice if the victorious progress of the New Zealand team were checked at Cardiff to-day. But, to judge by the indifferent exhibition of the Welsh three-quarters on the Rectory Field last week, the defeat of the visitors is an unthinkable contingency.
Isn't it interesting how little times (or The Times!) have changed? After all, rugby is still the national game of Wales, and the media can still call games wrong... I would say the Welsh can still stop the All Blacks in their tracks, but that may just be wishful thinking.
I can't help but think though that when Wales stood and faced the All Blacks and refused to turn and/or walk away whilst and after they performed their Haka, they were repeating the national pride and determination which saw the Welshmen first burst into a rousing rendition of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.
This is a translation of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau for all my English, American and other relatives, friends and visitors:
The old land of my fathers is dear to me,
Land of poets and singers, famous men of renown;
Her brave warriors, very splendid patriots,
For freedom shed their blood.
Nation, Nation, I am faithful to my Nation.
While the sea [is] a wall to the pure, most loved land,
O may the old language [sc. Cymraeg] endure.
Old mountainous Wales, paradise of the bard,
Every valley, every cliff, to me is beautiful.
Through patriotic feeling, so charming is the murmur
Of her brooks, rivers, to me.
If the enemy oppresses my land under his foot,
The old language of the Welsh is as alive as ever.
The muse is not hindered by the hideous hand of treason,
Nor [is] the melodious harp of my country.
And here is that anthem (be prepared to brush back a manly tear - especially the ladies!). The Welsh national anthem really is the best in the world:
One interesting aspect of the match is the number of All Blacks players with Scottish and Irish names. They also had - unbeknown to most if not all - a secret Welshman on their team, one Billy Wallace.
As I discovered recently, the name Wallace means 'Welshman' in Scots, following the fall of the Welsh Kingdom of Strathclyde, overrun by the Scots who themselves originated in Irish-Ulster, the Royal Family of Strathclyde (and their entourage etc.) moved to Wales, but many Welshmen must have stayed and in the mix that was original Pictish in the Highlands and Islands, Norse settlers of Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, the Irish-Scots of the South West and now the Central Belt - in what became the land we now know as Scotland.
Was Billy Wallace, a Welshman from Strathclyde many generations removed merely following his genetic code?
Was he, like Arsenal's Welsh goalkeeper Dan Lewis, who let in an arguably "soft" goal to let Cardiff City win the FA Cup in 1927, a Welsh fifth columnist in the midst of the enemy camp! ;-)
Henry Vivian Huzzey was born on 24 Jul 1876. He married Edith Mary Evans. Henry was employed as Rugby Footballer. Edith Mary Evans [Parents] was born in 1878. She died on 29 Jan 1952. She married Henry Vivian Huzzey.
They had the following children:
Vivian Huzzey (Child one) is my maternal grandfather, born in 1900, making Henry Vivian Huzzey and Edith Mary Evans my maternal great-grand parents.
Wikipedia gives my great grandfather's full name as Henry Vivian Pugh Huzzey, but he is best known as Viv Huzzey and being one of Welsh rugby's best wingers.
What's clear is that Viv Huzzey was one of the few people to play both international rugby and baseball, as well as being one of the earliest players to 'cross codes' to move from Cardiff rugby union to Oldham rugby league.
It seems that this was down to 'internal politics' and Viv Huzzey (surely the Shane Williams of his day) being deliberately overlooked for the job of Welsh captain, when everyone assumed the job was going to be his.
In fact, although he only gained 5 caps for Wales, limited because he changed codes, he remains in the Top 100 try-scorers of Welsh Rugby, as listed at the WRU Top 100 Try Scorers page having scored 4 tries in those 5 games.
Interestingly, on 02/04/1898 playing against England he scored one try (worth 3 points) and one drop goal (worth 4 points). How times - and the value of tries and drop goals! - have changed.
He is also listed as playing in position "2" while he was a winger.
Interestingly the match against England in the 1899 Four Nations championship, at which Viv Huzzey scored two tries, was played at Swansea. A full breakdown of that season's Four Nations is on this Wikipedia page.
In the end, the final place was filled by Scottish international Alf Bucher, after failed approaches were made to recruit fellow Scot James Couper and Welsh wing Viv Huzzey.
Perhaps as they weren't professional players they had to miss out on months of work and could it have been that Viv Huzzey simply could not afford that?
The same site says that only 9 of the 21 tour team of 1899 had played international rugby, so it seems likely that Viv Huzzey wasn't the only one who could spare the time (months!) or cope financially in regard to the tour.
His wing partner at Cardiff and Wales E. G. Nicholls (Gwyn Nicholls) did go on the tour.
Viv Huzzey was a hero of Welsh rugby, and he was my great grandfather.
Now I may be wrong, my memory is world-renowned for being like a sieve, but I recall being told some years ago that my great grandfather owned pubs in Cardiff. If that is true I will try and dig out more info.
P.S. On Welsh Rugby and Baseball. I found a Cognitive Edge blog entry with this which sums up the situation well:
OK, a trivia question for you: how many people have been capped by Wales at both Rugby and Baseball? Just to help you out the first was Henry Vivian Pugh Huzzey born in 1876 and the most recent Mark Ring, first baseball cap in 1984. For those who don't know Cardiff and Newport in Wales along with Liverpool in England are the main centres for baseball in the UK. There are differences however, a point being scored for every base making a a British home run four and teams (like cricket) are eleven in number and there are two innings. As you would expect the main international match of the year is between England and Wales and was won in 2008 by Wales (the last English win was 1995).
As someone who played both baseball and rugby for school teams I can concur that Cardiff is certainly one of the centres for baseball in the UK. I wonder if there is some kind of "Irish" connection, as it seems strange that Cardiff/Newport and Liverpool are baseball hotspots, areas with quite a lot of Irish influence - or am I clutching at straws?
This picture of the Merville Battery site today shows one of the bunkers on site.
This is the site that 9 Para, including Private D.R. Hurley assaulted before dawn on D-Day, whilst other battalions of the 6th Airborne Division took Pegasus Bridge and other targets.
These bunkers were built to be camouflaged from the air.
Indeed on seeing this picture of a bunker at Merville, our youngest immediately said 'it looks like Pembrey Country Park.'
At the Country Park - the site of RAF Pembrey until 1957 and a Royal Ordnance Factory during WW2 and the Korea War - there are many bunkers almost identical in layout to the Merville bunker pictured here.
The Kidwelly History site says of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Pembrey:
It was Britain's largest producer of TNT with 700 tons and produced 1,000 tons of Ammonium Nitrate and 40 tons of Tetryl at it's peak in 1942 and employed 2,000 people.
Therefore it would seem that the bunkers in the country park, such as that pictured here, were used for storing ordnance. It is probably the case that the bunker at Merville above was for the same usage.
One can almost imagine the concrete entrance to the bunkers painted in camouflage paint, draped with camouflage netting and similar to disguise them from the air and reconnaissance efforts by the RAF and the Luftwaffe accordingly.
There is less earth on top of the French bunker, but given the severe aerial bombardment of the Merville Battery, there's little wonder that the actual bunker had less natural coverage.
The picture below shows the Merville Battery with the gun bunkers circled. It shows the extent of Allied bombing on the site which, if nothing else, must have unnerved and demoralised the defenders.
According the official Merville Museum site (see link in right hand panel), the Merville Battery received:
The most intensive bombing (in excess of 1,000 bombs dropped by 109 Lancasters) of the night of 5th/6th June.
Funnily enough, the Welsh bunker pictured above with its occupant, a London-style red double decker bus (I think it's a Routemaster - it certainly looks like one), is said to be haunted and featured on the TV show 'Most Haunted' which focused on Pembrey Woods (see embedded You Tube link below).
As usual the programme is more than a little cheesy and open to all manner of interpretation, but it also gives a good overview and intro to the Country Park and its former occupants and usage. You can see the bunker with the double decker bus in it on part one of the show.
I have long told anyone who will listen of the Welshness of St Patrick.
You see, the Briton (i.e. Welshman) Patrick was captured and taken to Ireland as a slave, where he (to cut a long story short) later returned as a Priest to convert the Irish.
Well, now I can add another national hero to my long list of Welsh heroes: William Wallace!
The name Wallace means 'Welshman' and as the link below shows, the Kingdom of Strathclyde and the Cumbrians spoke a dialect of, or a language akin to Welsh.
When Strathclyde was 'absorbed' into Scotland many of the ruling class moved down to Wales and were known as the 'Men of the North' and even today many Cumbrians share genes with the Welsh.
I knew that the Irish name Walsh meant 'Welsh' but had no idea of the name Wallace meaning the same in Scotland.
So there we have it: the Welsh gave Christianity and the Catholic heritage to Ireland, and the Welsh gave freedom and nationhood to Scotland!
