TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

Hi Maart. Just on a personal note if i may. Ive noticed from your website that you now reside in Wales .Now i know its a beautiful place as i live there as well but its not exactly the hub of music so i was wondering what attractted you to our fine country.

Hi there

I came to Wales after my marriage broke up. I'm now very happy with my Jan and we live in paradise on the west coast of Gwynedd, not too far from Harlech.

Blwyddyn newydd dda

Maart

And a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to you and your family as well. Good to have you on board

Brilliant! I don't think we have traffic wardens round here. Once I was in Saleem's, my favourite Brum curry house in Ladypool Road (incidentally also a fave of Robert Plant, Alan Titchmarsh, Roy Wood, Fairport and Najma Akhtar among many famous clients; the only photo of it I've found on the net has my old Renault parked outside...) and the local traffic warden came in.
"Whose is that Renault parked outsoide?"
"Er, it's mine (munch munch)"
"Well don't you now you're suppowsed to park on the other soide of the street at this toime of dye?"
"Er, no. I'll go and move it then."
"No, you're all roight. Finish your dinner first!"
Don't you wish every city was like the Celestial Citoy (as Peggy used to call it)?

Maart

 Maart, bynciaist i mewn Cymraeg?

I recall a song we used to sing in school in South Wales when I was a lad, which started -

"Men of Harlech strong and mighty,
Don't put your hands up my wife's nightie.................etc"  ::)

Maart, With you living close to Harlech can you confirm/deny that there is a need to worry about the Men Of Harlech.  ;D

From what I've heard,you're generally ok unless you smell strongly of lanolin  ;)

Dw i ddim yn dallt "bynciaist"...

now thats not something you hear very often in miggy

You sung/sang
I was trying to ask if you've ever sung in Welsh? But my welsh is cr*p basicaly! I have to rely on my step sister when it comes to speaking- I understand a resonable amount. Comes from being brought up in mid wales where welsh isn't spoken and then moving to Llandecwyn once I had left school!!!! Anyway back to the question. Have you?

Try "Lullabye" the final track on "Serving Suggestion"

Jon

Men Of Harlech actually refers to the War Of The Roses:

"A period of comparative peace was brought to an end by the Wars of the Roses. In 1460 the castle was held by Lancastrian forces and endured a siege which is said to have lasted seven years. The constable, Dafydd ap Ieuan, and his garrison held out long after other Lancastrian commanders in England and Wales had surrendered to the Yorkist faction and Alan Reid (in The Castles of Wales, 1973, ISBN 0 85097 185 3) tells us the following story. "Dafydd ... widened his fame by replying to one summons to surrender with the boast that he had once held a castle in France so long against siege that all the old women of Wales talked of it; and now he would hold a castle in Wales until all the old women of France talked of it." 

Eventually famine forced surrender and Dafydd handed the castle to Lord Herbert and his brother Sir Richard Herbert on honourable terms. King Edward IV at first refused to honour the terms of the settlement but Sir Richard Herbert, out of respect for the bravery of the defenders, is said to have offered his own life in exchange for Dafydd's rather than see his promise broken. These defenders were the Men of Harlech commemorated in the song."

http://www.data-wales.co.uk/harlech.htm

So there.

Yes, I have sung in Welsh, a couple of lines as Jon rightly says, in the closing song from my 2004 album Serving Suggestion.

Maart

During a recent camping trip on Shell Island, Maart will know of the place, I pointed in the general direction of Harlech and told my 18 y o son "one of the Fairport mob lives up that way".  He was gob smacked and wanted to mount an expidition to find Maart!