Summary
The hauntingly beautiful Welsh song Myfanwy 'is in the air in Wales' according to singer Cerys Matthews.
She along with others discuss what the melodic tale of unrequited love means to them.
They include a Welsh woman living in Sicily for whom the song represents 'hiraeth', a longing or homesickness for Wales and another who believes it expresses the 'wounded soul of the Welsh'.
A man remembers how his late brother and he used to sing it in pubs in North Wales and how the song symbolises the unrequited love he felt for him.
The Ynysowen choir was started after the Aberfan mining disaster as a way of dealing with the emotion. Choir members talk about the song's power, and an ex-soldier recalls digging for survivors with lines from it playing in his head:
"Give me your hand, my sweet Myfanwy".
Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.
Producer: Maggie Ayre
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2014.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others. |
| 0:05.1 | My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland. |
| 0:11.3 | It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here, |
| 0:16.2 | but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world. |
| 0:19.6 | And because the team has such a diverse |
| 0:21.1 | range of skills and strengths, we've trained journalists, people who love digging through |
| 0:25.9 | archives, we've got drama and even comedy experts, we really can do those stories justice. So if you |
| 0:31.9 | like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK. |
| 0:39.5 | My name is Dave and I live currently in West Yorkshire. |
| 0:44.2 | I was brought up in a small village in North Wales. |
| 0:48.0 | It was a happy childhood. |
| 0:49.5 | It was a very idyllic, rural area, loads of places to play as a child, and it was very happy. |
| 0:58.2 | My elder brother had TB, and he'd been in a sanatorium for three to four years. |
| 1:06.3 | And so when he came out of the hospital and joined the family again, |
| 1:18.0 | it must have been a big shock to him that he'd got a brother he'd never really come to terms with. |
| 1:23.3 | And so there may have been some kind of early established sibling rivalry, I think. |
| 1:32.2 | Probably our divisions were punctuated by him passing the 11 plus and me fail in the 11 plus he was in many ways my role model during late adolescence for me in early 20s we used to often be |
| 1:41.5 | companions going out socially to various pubs. |
| 1:45.6 | And we both had an interest in Celtic, Irish, Welsh music. |
| 1:52.0 | And so we'd select certain pubs around North Wales, |
| 1:56.0 | where we knew that live music would be going on on a Friday and Saturday. |
| 2:02.3 | One of the favourite tunes that was always on the single list |
... |
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