St. David's Day is coming up on March 1, so as I've done with other Celtic national cultural days, I'm going to do a mostly Welsh music episode of Come By The Hills this week. St. David was a monastic of the sixth century who founded a community at Glin Rhossyn (the valley of roses) in what is now Pembrokeshire in Wales, and he has been taken as the country's patron saint in a similar manner to how St. Patric (himself probably also a Welshman) was adopted in Ireland.
While public celebrations of the day with parades and such were conducted as a way to protest conquest by the Normans, it was never made an official holiday until 2000, and even then, it has not been made a bank holiday, though a lot of Welsh people wanted it that way and were even willing to sacrifice another bank holiday to get it. Ah well. No matter. There are still parades and dinners, music and poetry competitions, and other cultural events including food festivals to mark the day.
We of course will be focusing on the music. We'll have songs about dragons, songs about love, a couple of Welsh hymns, and a repeat performance of our mystery lullaby from a couple of weeks ago. As most of the music is going to be sung in Welsh, I'll not be doing a formal "What's That About" feature this week, but we will have "Fiddlin' Around" and "Celtic Covers" with a Welsh flare. We'll also have some facts about Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant (St. David's Day) and its traditions.
So, pin on your leak buttons and hoist your David's Day flags and get ready to celebrate Cymru (Wales) in style! The show is on tonight (Sunday) at 8:00 PM Eastern and will be replayed on Friday morning at 4:00 AM Eastern, 9:00 AM in the UK and Ireland.