'Hireath' may be a Welsh word but obviously the Welsh don't have a monopoly on the feeling behind it. I'm sure any ethnic group or religious community which has survived persecution, pogroms or diaspora will understand the feeling. I am also not the only Welsh member on this list and maybe others will express their ideas on it. I would like to hear Wally's songs on the matter too. I'm very busy today but I'll be in touch on this soon. But here's a poem about Welsh history to put us in the mood
mike in bcn Welsh History We were a people taut for war; the hills Were no harder, the thin grass Clothed them more warmly than the coarse Shirts our small bones. We fought, and were always in retreat, Like snow thawing on the slopes Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger Never found our ultimate stand In the thick woods, declaiming verse To the sharp prompting of the harp. Our kings died, or they were slain By the old treachery at the ford. Our bards perished, driven from the halls Of nobles by the thorn and bramble. We were a people bred on legends, Warming our hands at the red past. The great were ashamed of our loose rags Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree Of blood and birth, our lean bodies And mud houses were a proof Of our ineptitude for life. We were a people wasting ourselves In fruitless battles for our masters, In lands to which we had no claim, With men for whom we felt no hatred. We were a people, and are so yet. When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs Under the table, or gnawing the bones Of a dead culture, we will arise, And greet each other in a new dawn. (*Armed, but not in the old way.) R.S. Thomas. 1913-2000 (Nobel Prize Literature candidate in 1996)
