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The Welsh Society of Western New England (WSWNE)


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Ninnau
 THE North American Welsh newspaper (written in English)

lowers its annual subscription to only $20.00
Ninnau logo

NINNAU is THE North American Welsh Newspaper ®
(since its merger with Y Drych in 2003) providing
complete coverage of the North American Welsh community (in articles written in English).

NINNAU is dedicated to preserving and enhancing the vitality of the North American Welsh community by:
- informing the North American Welsh community of local and general news and events of interest
- publicizing individual contributions to community life
- providing a forum for discussion and individual expression
- describing Welsh traditions and places in Wales
- linking North American Welsh people and organizations with one another and with Wales

At no charge, NINNAU has publicized all WSWNE sponsored events in advance, published articles (including
photos) covering all of our events , and printed articles authored by individual WSWNE members.
Now NINNAU needs our help, in the form of our subscriptions.

Due to financial and staff limitations, their publishing schedule is being reduced to every other month. The
issues will be mailed towards the end of January, March, May, July, September, and November. Their hope is
"that publishing every two months will result in larger issues of a better publication. An added benefit is that the
yearly subscription will cost less" - only $20 per year vs. $25 previously.

In addition to the paper copy, subscribers can also read the paper online (usually well before the paper copy
arrives) and access their website, www.ninnau.com, for fast-breaking news, such as additions to their calendar
of events.

Please support the publication that supports the North American Welsh community.
Subscribe today at the Ninnau website http://www.ninnau.com/
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Greetings for St David’s Day 2009 from the British Consul General to New England, Dr. Phil Budden and from the First Minister for Wales,  Rt Hon Rhodri Morgan AM as read by WSWNE president Tom Bernard to those assembled at the St. David's Day Gathering on March 7, 2009


St David’s Day Message from the British Consul General to New England, Dr. Phil Budden
It is my distinct pleasure to wish the Welsh Society of Western New England a very happy St. David’s Day! I have also included a message from the First Minister for Wales, the Rt. Hon. Rhodri Morgan AM, below.  As the British Representative in this region, I am struck by the contemporary as well as historical links we share in this dynamic part of the United States.  For example, we had Tom Jones in Boston on 1 March, and then a major reception at the Consulate the next night.  St. David’s Day is an opportunity to reflect on Welsh contributions to the world and to this part of the United States so I am delighted to offer my very best to the Welsh Society on this occasion. 

St David’s Day Message from the First Minister for Wales, Rt Hon Rhodri Morgan AM
On behalf of the people in Wales, it is my pleasure to send greetings to you on St David’s Day. We are once again delighted to see Welsh celebrations taking place across the world. This year has marked a truly fantastic year for Welsh sport with outstanding achievements in the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing, boxing and international rugby. We have also seen the Welsh language spoken in the EU for the first time, global success for Welsh singer/songwriter Duffy, a Welsh scientist leading one of the biggest scientific experiments in Switzerland, over 800,000 people visiting the Lorient Interceltic Festival in Brittany where Wales was the featured nation, and Wales becoming the first fair trade country in the world. Another remarkable year and yet again we have truly a lot to be proud of in Wales on our national day.
Gwyl Ddewi hapus I chi gyd. A happy St David’s Day to you all.
Older News & Information Menu (click on each for further information or scroll down)

- The story of St Dwynwen's Day - Jan. 25

- WSWNE members Berwyn Jones & Martha Davies on the cover of the supplement to Cambrian News (Aberystwyth)

- Caroline Cannings introduces WSWNE to her father's book, "Every Day was Summer" (the tale of three young sisters who grew up in the small Welsh town of Harlech in the years before the First World War.

WSWNE member John Bollard has published a new translation of the Mabinogi, "The Mabinogi: Legend and Landscape of Wales".

- Share Your Photos of Wales Photos of Conwy, North Wales, supplied by Sue Davies Sit

- WSWNE President Tom Bernard has published a book titled The Twelve Days of Christmas : The Mystery and the Meaning

- WSWNE member Margaret Lloyd's book-length cycle of poems titled A Moment in the Field: Voices from Arthurian Legend

- Wales Display by Beth Roberts Brown in Southwick Library

- Welsh Genealogy Group

- Welsh Language Classes


The story of St Dwynwen's Day - Jan. 25 - in recognition of the Welsh patron saint of lovers, the Welsh equivalent of St Valentine.
Note: this is a retelling that Tom Bernard particularly liked and requested be shared with all:

St Dwynwen is the Welsh patron saint of lovers, the Welsh equivalent of St Valentine. She lived during the 5th century and was one of the prettiest of Brychan Brycheiniog's 24 daughters. Dwynwen fell in love with a prince called Maelon Dafodrill, but unfortunately her father had already arranged that she should marry someone else.

Dwynwen was so upset that she could not marry Maelon that she begged God to make her forget him. After falling asleep, Dwynwen was visited by an angel, who appeared carrying a sweet potion designed to erase all memory of Maelon and turn him into a block of ice.

God then gave three wishes to Dwynwen. Her first wish was that Maelon be thawed; her second that God meet the hopes and dreams of true lovers; and third, that she should never marry. All three were fulfilled, and as a mark of her thanks, Dwynwen devoted herself to God's service for the rest of her life.

She founded a convent on Llanddwyn Island where a well named after her became a place of pilgrimage after her death in 465AD. Visitors to the well believed that the sacred fish or eels that lived in it could foretell whether or not their relationship would be happy and whether love and happiness would be theirs. Remains of Dwynwen's church can still be seen today





WSWNE members Berwyn Jones & Martha Davies on the cover of the Nov. 2006 supplement to Cambrian News (Aberystwyth) regarding their Great Plains Welsh Heritage & Cultural Center in Wymore, Nebraska - which they left our area to develop and direct several years ago.

Click here for cover photo.

Click here for article.

Click here for link to their Great Plains Welsh Heritage & Cultural Centre

Caroline Cannings introduces WSWNE to her father's book, "Every Day was Summer"
Caroline Cannings
At our March 3, 2007 St. David's Day Gathering, Caroline Cannings introduced those present to the book, "Every Day was Summer", written by her father, Oliver Wynne Hughes.

Oliver Wynne Hughes was born in Pwllheli and lived his boyhood years in Cricieth, Caernarfon and Ffestiniog. Educated in Liverpool and at London University, he also took an MSc in Strategic Studies at Aberystwyth. He has been a schoolmaster, was Bursar at Coleg Harlech and for 24 years was a regular army officer, serving in Hong Kong, Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus and West Germany as well as in the United Kingdom. He retired in 1983 and is now an Executive Recruiter. He has three adult children and lives with his wife Kim in North Wales.

"Every Day was Summer" is by and large the tale of three young sisters who grew up in the small Welsh town of Harlech in the years before the First World War. Their stories, some sad, some amusing, but all of them endearing, light up the pages of this book. The interweaving of their lives with those of their young friends and their relationships with English visitors, many of them members of the aristocracy, others from the world of entertainment, sport, literature and the arts who visited Harlech each summer, make a tapestry that is a social history of a small Welsh community during the early years of the 20th century.

"Every Day was Summer" is available from Amazon.com



Mabinogi Book coverWSWNE member John Bollard has published a new translation of the Mabinogi, "The Mabinogi: Legend and Landscape of Wales"


WSWNE member John Bollard has published a new translation of the Mabinogi, "The Mabinogi: Legend and Landscape of Wales". The Mabinogi is the jewel in the crown of Welsh literature and it is perhaps the one Welsh work, above all others, that anyone Welsh or interested in Wales should be familiar with.  To quote from the dust jacket, "Its Four Branches are tales of heroism and heartbreak, of love and disloyalty, that for all their magic and mystery, remain rooted in the emotional realities and moral complexities of everyday life. They are also rooted in the very soil of Wales, in a landscape relatively unchanged since these tales were first told in the early Middle Ages."  The sixty stunning photographs by Anthony Griffiths provide for the first time a striking view of the landscape of these tales throughout Wales. The book is available from Hiraeth Celtic Goods at www.hiraethcelticgoods.com or from Hiraeth Celtic Goods, 77 Cranberry Drive, Duxbury, Massachusetts 02332-4106
Check out The Mabinogi website http://themabinogi.googlepages.com/




Tom's Book coverWSWNE President Tom Bernard has published a book titled The Twelve Days of Christmas : The Mystery and the Meaning

Book Description - from Amazon.com website
The Twelve Days of Christmas is a popular Christmas song which people generally sing with great gusto - but with almost no understanding . The basic premise of Dr. Bernard's book is that there is a logic to the twelve sequences. His hypothesis is that the lyrics reveal a cartographic code of an esoteric route map by which pilgrims in the Middle Ages can make the long journey from England to Jerusalem.

About the Author - from Amazon.com website
Dr. Thomas L. Bernard was born and raised in Scotland , and received his education in Wales , and in the USA where he earned a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts and a postgraduate certificate from Harvard University . His professional career as an educator, professor, administrator and lecturer has spanned over 50 years with service on five continents . He has authored or co-authored over a hundred books or articles, and takes particular pride in The Twelve Days of Christmas : The Mystery and the Meaning, which he feels is the first significant attempt to explain by translation the underlying message of the twelve parts of this popular Christmas song.

WSWNE webmaster Ed Brown has said, "Tom Bernard's unraveling of the hidden meaning coded into a well known composition brings to mind both the allure of the popular fictional work, The Da Vinci Code, and the fascinating true story of how the lyrics of spirituals were used as code by slaves in the American south to guide their journey to freedom in the north".

Copies of
The Twelve Days of Christmas : The Mystery and the Meaning may be obtained:

- Locally from the Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College St., S. Hadley, MA 01075. 413-534-7307

- Online from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble



Book CoverWSWNE member Margaret Lloyd has published a book-length cycle of poems titled A Moment in the Field: Voices from Arthurian Legend

Margaret Lloyd writes:
The new book, A Moment in the Field: Voices from Arthurian Legend, released by Plinth Books on October 1st, 2006, is a book-length cycle of poems that remains faithful to early Arthurian sources while being contemporary in its style and concerns. While these poems primarily focus on female experiences which have
often remained hidden or gone unnoticed, they also evoke aspects of male experience not traditionally accessed in Arthurian narrative.
 
Each poem in A Moment in the Field is written in the voice of a character from Arthurian legend. My primary narrative source was Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur , although I have also drawn upon early Welsh Arthurian poetry and prose, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain , and the courtly romances of Chretien de Troyes.    While writing these poems, I strove to remain faithful to characters and events in this early literature as I explored emotional moments, situations, and psychological states suggested by the texts.
 
The following are some early endorsements of the book:
 
“The old stories and the old characters are not as old as they are deep. They need to be awakened regularly to tell us their secrets. They require an enchantress to bring them back and help us hear them.   Margaret Lloyd performs this priestess, Merlin, Cassandra, Mercury service here in splendid and powerful fashion, showing how our daily passions, strong and subtle, light and dark, give us our humanity. You need courage to take these poems in, given the hot blood and sharp edge that Margaret Lloyd brings to them.” —Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Dark Nights of the Soul
 
“The power of Arthurian legend, and of the hold romantic love has over human beings, is shown again here in this moving sequence which speaks almost entirely in the voices of the women of the stories. . . .Margaret Lloyd has gathered all this to her with haunting empathy for human life and the life of the natural world.” —Jean Valentine, author of Door in the Mountain , winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry
 
“Margaret Lloyd uses the names and stories of legendary women, and some men, to write a book of love poems in a fresh, contemporary voice. . . . [T]he old stories [are given] new life in this excellent collection.” —Gillian Clarke, author of The King of Britain’s Daughter and Making the Beds for the Dead
 
Here is some information about my background:   I was born in Liverpool , England of Welsh parents and grew up in a Welsh community in central New York State . I received a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds , England , and have published a book on William Carlos Williams’ poem Paterson (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).    Alice James Books published my first poetry book, This Particular Earthly Scene. I have received a number of awards and fellowships, including one to Hawthornden Castle , an International Retreat for Writers in Scotland , where I completed A Moment in the Field. Presently, I chair the Humanities Department at Springfield College , Massachusetts .
 
A Moment in the Field can be ordered directly from the press:
Plinth Books,
P.O. Box 271118 ,
West Hartford , CT 06127-1118
or through Small Press Distribution  
http://spdbooks.org/
 
       ISBN: 1-887628-08-8 paper   $12            
       ISBN: 1-887628-09-6 cloth     $24


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Wales Display - Beth Roberts Brown, on June 30, took down her three month cabinet display of items related to Wales at the Southwick, MA public library where she is a librarian. See top shelf photo below.

Display

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WSWNE Genealogy Group

The WSWNE Genealogy Group members share contact information, update each other on progress and to tap each other's research skills.

An "e-mail discussion group" has been created whereby members can e-mail the entire group or individually.

Anyone interested in joining, contact Beth Roberts Brown edbethui@comcast.net (please include the word Welsh in the subject line) or phone her at 413-562-3990

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WELSH LANGUAGE CLASSES

Beginning Welsh language classes continue to be held sporadically.

New students are always welcome. For further information:

Anyone interested in joining, contact Beth Roberts Brown edbethui@comcast.net (please include the word Welsh in the subject line) or phone her at 413-562-3990  
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SHARE YOUR PHOTOS OF WALES

SHARE YOUR PHOTOS OF WALES with WSWNE members by link from this website to your photo site on the internet. Just send the internet address (URL) where you have posted your photos to WSWNE webmaster, Ed Brown edbethui@comcast.net

Alternatively, simply notify the webmaster that you have photos that you would like to share and we will try to get them up on either our own server or on other server space.

Photos of Conwy, North Wales supplied by Sue Davies Sit click here


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