Haven't You Heard the Welsh?

They really do excel!

Yesterday, I met with a event planner who is working on a shindig that my workplace will be hosting, and I noticed that she had a bumpersticker which read: "Thank God I'm Welsh". Funny, just this week mikey posted a comment on this thread which included this sentence:

Nope, might as well be written in the original Cymraeg.

Earlier this week, I was thinking about an alternative to "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and, after seekings and peekings on the t00bz, I hit on "Talk Like Gurgi Day". Now, Lloyd Alexander's masterpiece (which everyone should read) is loosely based on the Mabinogi.

Yes, the Cymry have been on my mind lately, so I decided that I would post a "video" for a song in their mother tongue. Perhaps you'll recognize the tune:





The English title of the song, Sold Me Down the River, refers to an idiom which most likely has its origins in the antebellum American slave trade- slaves sold down the Mississippi river would most likely end up in harsher working conditions. In keeping with the original meaning of the phrase, the Welsh version could very well apply to an individual sold down the Severn River, and ending up a slave among Goidelic pagans.

A couple of years back, the Alarm played three shows at the Knitting Factory in lower Manhattan in three weeks. I went to all three shows (as did my old friend J-Co), and got to meet Mike Peters, who is a genuinely nice guy. He knew his audience, as he'd turn over the mike to the crowd, which knew every word to every song- it was a ballsy move on his part, but he knew the crowd wouldn't sell him down the river.