Idris Davies
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Idris Davies (January 6, 1905 - April 6, 1953), was a Welsh poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English. He was the only poet to cover significant events in the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys and the South Wales coalfield, and from a perspective literally at the coalface.
He is now best known for The Bells of Rhymney, a ballad on the failure of the 1926 UK General Strike and the Great Depression in the United Kingdom and their effects on the South Wales coal mining valleys [1], set to the pattern of the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons, which was set to music by Pete Seeger, and became a folk rock standard.
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[edit] Life
He qualified as a teacher through courses at Loughborough College and the University of Nottingham. He took teaching posts in London during the Second World War, and then Wales, returning to the Rhymney Valley [2] in 1947. His second collection of poems was taken by T. S. Eliot for Faber and Faber (1945).
Idris Davies died from abdominal cancer in 1953, aged 48.
[edit] Views
A diary entry of his reads: 'I am a socialist. That is why I want as much beauty as possible in our everyday lives, and so I am an enemy of pseudo-poetry and pseudo-art of all kinds. Too many "poets of the Left", as they call themselves,are badly in need of instruction as to the difference between poetry and propaganda....These people should read William Blake on Imagination until they show signs of understanding him. Then the air will be clear again, and the land be, if not full of, fit for song.'
[edit] Works
- Gwalia Deserta (1938)
- The Angry Summer: A Poem of 1926 (1943) Faber and Faber
- Tonypandy and other poems (1945) Faber and Faber
- Selected Poems (1953)
- Collected Poems (1972) Gomerian Press
- Complete Poems (1994) edited by Dafydd Johnston
- A Carol for the Coalfield (2002)
The Bells of Rhymney was covered by The Byrds; and later by many others, including Jimmy Page, Judy Collins, Dick Gaughan, Cher, Robyn Hitchcock, Oysterband and The Alarm. Also by Bob Dylan live, and Robin Williamson on an album of readings. John Denver covered this song while with the Mitchell Trio, and also performed it live by himself. At a solo concert in London in the early 2000s Byrds guitarist and singer Roger McGuinn confessed that he had been pronouncing 'Rhymney' incorrectly for over 40 years until his error was pointed out to him by a lady from South Wales. It should be pronounced Rhumney, whereas The Byrds had sung about the bells of 'Rhimney' following the lead of Pete Seeger.
