A new thing for me! This is a beautiful traditional Welsh carol tune. Here I've arranged it for 20 button C/G anglo concertina, with my own middle section and little contrasting dance, based on the tune, at the end

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- 2mins44 - the new middle section
- 3mins14 - a return to the original tune but with a hymn-like accompaniment
- 4mins32 - the little dance based on the tune.

I first came across this in a tune book by the band Alaw, who play traditional music of Wales.

The image used is of an old farm near Llanfihangel-y-pennant, south of Cadair Idris in north Wales © Mike Parker, licenced for reuse under Creative Commons, from geograph.org.uk/p/7150346
(Hen fferm, Nant-yr-Eira)


The Welsh lyrics commonly sung to this tune today are a carol that would often form part of a traditional Christmas morning 'plygain' service.

[ Ссылка ] for more details about plygain singing.

The name of the carol, ‘Gwêl yr adeilad’ (meaning "See the Building"), actually has nothing to do with the carol lyrics. It probably came from an early seventeenth-century ballad which came to Wales in the seventeenth century.

Here are the words of that original ballad:
See the building
Where whilst my mistris lived in
Was pleasures essence,
See how it droopeth
And how nakedly it looketh
Without her presence:
Every creature
That appertaines to nature
'bout this house living,
Doth resemble,
If not dissemble,
due praises giving.
Harke, how the hollow
Windes do blow
And seem to murmur
in every corner,
for her long absence:
The which doth plainly show
The causes why I do now
All this grief and sorrow show.

(recorded in Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: Loose and Humerous Songs 1867)

Once in Wales, the tune can be found in John Thomas’s 1752 manuscript "Y Caniedydd Cymreig/The Cambrian Minstrel" (1845, p. 100), although the tune looks quite different to what it is today. (This information is from the track description on Cass Meurig's album "Crwth") It seems that John Thomas recorded the tune from oral tradition and it reflected the rhythms of the Welsh language - so must have also changed from the original 17th century ballad. Also, his method of notation isn't as accurate - more an aide memoire - as it might be today (Cass Meurig (2006) "Fiddle tunes in eighteenth-century Wales" from "Play It Like It Is:
Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic"
Edited by Ian Russell and Mary Anne Alburger)

At some point new words were put to this tune - the words of the Welsh carol are very different in meaning!
Mae'r durtur bêr yn canu
A'r byd yn gorfoleddu
Mewn gwir fyw lwyddiant,
A choed y maes sydd eto
Oll fel yn curo dwylo
Mewn clod a moliant.

Hwy'n un enynnant,
Pob un a'i dant yn dyn
A'i danllyd anthem iddo,
Nes deffro bro a bryn.
Mewn pryd
Iachawdwr mawr y byd
Ddaeth ar ei orsedd
I roi trugaredd
I blant y llygredd
Fu ’mhwll eu camwedd cyd.
‘Teyrnasa dirion Iesu!’
Yw gwaedd ei deulu i gyd.

The sweet turtle dove is singing
And the world rejoicing
In true living felicity,
And the trees of the field are still
All as if clapping hands
In laud and worship.
Receive the white
And rosy praise of this,
And the host of heaven and its praise
And the ground sing together.
They kindle as one,
Each with his string stretched,
And their blazing anthem to him
Until it wakes vale and hill.
In good time
The world’s great saviour
Came to his throne
To grant mercy
To the children of corruption
Who were in the pit of their common transgression.
‘Have dominion, gentle Jesus!’
Is the shout of all his family.

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