My lovely friend Catrin due in tomorrow with Angharad, who played the whistle and sang backup vocals on this track too. Sung in Welsh EXPLANATION OF THE SONG IN ENGLISH: In 1865 a tea clipper named Mimosa set sail from Liverpool on a two month journey to South America with 159 people on board. The majority of the pioneers were from the Bala area and on 28 July, 1865, they landed on a bleak beach which later became known as Porth Madryn. There to meet them in Porth Madryn was Lewis Jones who had arrived from Buenos Aires, having signed an agreement for the land with Dr Rawson of the Argentine government. The idea of a Welsh colony was first mooted at a meeting in Bala, Gwynedd where Michael D Jones, a nonconformist minister and principal of Bala College, had been in discussions with the Argentine Government. When considering emigration, Jones noted that second-generation Welsh emigrants to North America were more likely to lose the Welsh language and culture, so he decided to locate his flock in Patagonia, which was thought to be fertile and known to be sparsely populated. The land was not the rich, fertile ground they had expected. Instead it was a dry desert-like wasteland, and for the first three years, the Welsh settlers had a hard time creating a successful colony. Life for the early settlers was particularly hard and even the birth of the first Welsh child in Patagonia, Mary Humphries, did little to dispel the belief of the settlers that they had made a mistake in coming to such a desolate, inhospitable location. The colony seemed as if it would be doomed to fail due to a lack of food. Lewis Jones travelled to Buenos Aires to try secure some livestock for the settlers and returned with a number of sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry and horses. The Welsh were totally unaccustomed to hunting, but cordial relations with the native Indians, the Teheulche, saw the Indians teach them how to catch the guanaco, rhea, and those other sources of food available on the prairie. The Teheulche would also exchange meat for bread, calling from house to house to ask for poco bara (a bit of bread). Today the population of Patagonia is around 150,000 with 20,000 descended from the Welsh settlers and around 5,000 able to speak Welsh.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:26:09 +0000
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