The Long Life of Dic Siôn Dafydd and his ‘children’

In her post, Dr Marion Loeffler, Reader in Welsh History, connects ‘Yma o Hyd’ (Still Here) to a history of satrical ballads that championed the Welsh language.

In 2022, the Welsh Football Association adopted ‘Yma o Hyd’ (Still Here), sung by Welsh fans at local and international matches since the 1980s, as their official anthem for the Qatar World Cup. The song had been written by singer song writer Dafydd Iwan in 1983, a time when the failure of the 1979 independence referendum had quashed dreams of a free Wales and the south Wales miners were engaged in a bitter battle with the government that would almost destroy their communities. The song was to provide hope of survival and a future. Its lyrics reach back in time to mythical Roman Welsh leader Magnus Maximus and narrated how the small Welsh nation had survived the harsh ‘winds from the east’ across the centuries. Its chorus promises that:

Even in 2025, many people will likely still recognise the reference to Margaret Thatcher in ‘the old Maggie and her crew’, but who was Dic Siôn Dafydd and why did Dafydd Iwan feel that he would combine well with Thatcher’s crew?

To find out, we have to go back to 1795, when satirist, author of republican pamphlets and atheist John Jones, better known as ‘Jac-Glan-y-Gors’ wrote a ballad called ‘Hanes Dic Siôn Dafydd’ (The Story of Dic Siôn Dafydd). Glan-y-Gors, originally from rural north-east Wales, kept a pub in Southwark in the 1790s. Here, he would have experienced all aspects of late eighteenth-century metropolitan life, and mixed with fellow-expatriate Welshmen, some of whom may have provided the real-life model for Dic Siôn Dafydd.

The ballad describes Dic as an unruly child, never much bothered with getting an education. It recounts how he moved to London, finding work at a haberdashers (a dealer in small items used in sewing) because he was a ‘handsome man’, returning to visit his childhood home wearing a cheap fashionable ‘pantaloons’ and speaking bad English. When his mother Lowri asks in the ballad whether he was her ‘beloved son’ (‘A’i machgen annwyl i wyt ti?’), he retorts that he has ‘Tim Cymraeg’ (‘No Welsh’), chiding in English, ‘Hold your bother; Mother you can’t speak with me’. The local parson beats Dic until he admits that he can, indeed, speak Welsh, but Dic’s descent cannot be halted. He dies a gambler and alcoholic. The moral from Jones’ ballad is as clear as that of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress among others; it warns readers and listeners to beware of the metropolis. It corrupts, and the vices picked up in the big city – which for a Welshman include a rejection of the mother tongue – will be your undoing.

[Jac Glan-y-Gors], Dic Sion Dafydd. Can y Melinydd (Llanrwst, n.d.), Cardiff University and NLW http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1101937

The ballad, one of many penned by Glan-y-Gors, is the only one that has echoed into the twenty-first century. As some areas of Wales were industrialised, and the railways brought English to every part of the country, it remained relevant in the decades after Glan-y-Gors’s death in 1821. An English adaptation on this ‘swaggering fellow’, who ‘daily powdered his frizzy hair … and ap’d th airs of city Dons’ appeared in 1828, followed by a number of broadsheets on the ‘children’ of Dic Siôn Dafydd or the ‘Welsh-Englishmen’. They satirised those who pretended to be ‘English’ yet failed to speak the language when it came to it, bemoaned the inability to buy a pint in Welsh even in deepest Cardiganshire, and joked about the failure of railway staff to pronounce Welsh place names. We can see this in the ballad below:

The Children of Dic Sion Dafydd. A Funny Song on the Welsh English, National Library of Wales, http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1061577

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, as the Welsh language appeared more and more under threat from industrial in-migration and an all-English education system, the tone had changed. Instead of satirical ballads designed to elicit chuckles, poems and articles predicted the death of the language, and a drama, ‘Prawf Dic Siôn Dafydd’ (The Trial of Dic Siôn Dafydd) was performed from the mid-1890s until the Great War. Witnesses for the prosecution of Dic Siôn Dafydd were, among others, Mr Welsh, Mr Welsh Literature, his wife Mrs Welsh Religion, and their daughter Miss Welsh education, as well as Mr Civilisation and Dr History. In defence of the ‘prisoner’ Dic Siôn Dafydd appeared his son Mr Going-up-in-the-World and his daughter Miss Pride, as well as Mr Commerce and Dr Prejudice. Both, characters and content of the drama reflected social developments at work since the eighteenth century and highlighted by the census of 1891, which counted only just over 50% of the population as Welsh speaking. The downward trend for the Welsh language would only halted in the 1980s and at about 20% of the population.

Dic Siôn Dafydd lived on into the twentieth century, making it into the first Welsh-language radio broadcasts in the late 1930s, where a mock folk play performed at the National Eisteddfod grouped him with characters, such as Siôn Llygad y Geiniog (John-with-an-Eye-for-the-Penny). Yet, it was also sign of the times that he was joined by Dafydd-Sion-Dic, described in The Welsh Outlook, as ‘few in number but of rich deserving … those who brought up in ignorance of their natural language, have learnt it from books with painful diligence.’ Adult learners of the Welsh language were few in the 1930s, but they indicated that the tide was turning. The movement expanded significantly from the 1960s, and by the 1980s, when Dafydd Iwan wrote ‘Yma o Hyd’, the Welsh language movement – one side of the radicalism which has characterised Welsh culture since the Merthyr Tydfil Rising of 1831 – had become a powerful driver of change in Welsh society. Together, Welsh-language campaigners and Welsh miners stood against Dic Siôn Dafydd and ‘old Maggie’, as the official Welsh Football Association video of 2022 demonstrates.

Selected Sources

[Jac Glan-y-Gors], Dic Sion Dafydd. Can y Melinydd (Llanrwst, n.d.), Cardiff University and National Library of Wales http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1101937

‘Dic Siôn Dafydd (from the Welsh of Glan-y-Gors)’, North Wales Chronicle and Advertiser, 17 July 1828

Plant Dic Siôn Dafydd. Cân Ddigrif ar y Cymry Seisnig (Welsh-Englishmen); several ballads and editions 1820s–1850s, ‘Welsh Ballads Online’, National Library of Wales https://www.library.wales/ballads

‘Dic Siôn Dafydd’, Y Drych, 30 August 1877

‘Dic Siôn Dafydd at New Tredegar’, Monmouth Guardian, 10 April 1914

‘Prawf Dic Siôn Dafydd’, Celt Llundain, 25 November 1902

‘Prawf Dic Siôn Dafydd’, Cymru’r Plant, 183 (March 1907), 87

144. O. Francis, ‘The Worthy Order of Dafydd-Siôn-Dics’, The Welsh Outlook, 7 (June 1920), 144.

‘Drama a Radio’, Heddiw, 5 (September 1930), 233

Welsh Football Association Official World Cup Video 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw5Fyj1GZlo&list=OLAK5uy_mq6pXAbw2jE4ew-Zws35NJLPT81MMWVkQ

Further reading
Dafydd Iwan, Still Singing ‘Yma o Hyd’. An Autobiography (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 2023)

Middleton Pennant Jones, ‘John Jones of Glan-y-Gors’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1911), pp. 60–94

Marion Löffler, ‘The Welsh-Language Movement in the First Half of the twentieth Century: An Exercise in Quiet Revolutions’, in Geraint H. Jenkins and Mari A. Williams (eds), ‘Let’s Do Our Best for the Ancient Tongue’ The Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 181–215

Bywyd Hir Dic Siôn Dafydd a’i ‘Blant’

Yn 2022, mabwysiadwyd ‘Yma o Hyd’, a ganwyd gan ddilynwyr clybiau pêl droed mewn gemau lleol yn ogystal a rhai rhyngwladol ers y 1980au yn gân swyddogol ar gyfer Cwpan y Byd Qatar gan Gymdeithas Pêl Droed Cymru. Cyfansoddwyd hi gan y canwr enwog Dafydd Iwan yn 1983, cyfnod pan fu methiant refferendwm 1979 wedi dinistrio breuddwydion am annibyniaeth i Gymru, a phan fu glowyr de Cymru mewn brwydr â’r lywodraeth a fyddai’n malio eu cymunedau, bron. Rhoi gobaith ar sail hanes oedd swyddogaeth y gân, ei geiriau yn ymestyn ymhell yn ôl i amser Macsen Wledig, yr arweinydd chwedlonol a unodd y genedl, ac yn adrodd sut oedd y Cymry wedi gwrthsefyll pob ‘gwynt o’r dwyrain’ dros y canrifoedd. Addewid y gytgan yw goroesiad y Cymry a’u hiaith fel a ganlyn:

Er gwaetha pob Dic Siôn Dafydd
Er gwaetha ’rhen Fagi a’i chriw
Byddwn yma hyd ddiwedd amser
Bydd yr iaith Gymraeg yn fyw.

Hyd yn oed yn 2025, bydd llawer yn dal yn adnabod y cyfeiriad at Margaret Thatcher yn y llinell ‘’rhen Fagi a’i chriw’, ond pwy oedd Dic Siôn Dafydd a pham y teimlai Dafydd Iwan y byddai Dic Siôn Dafydd yn asio’n dda gyda chriw Margaret Thatcher?

Er mwyn canfod hyn, rhaid teithio yn ôl i 1795, pan ysgrifennodd y dychanwr ac awdur pamffledi gweriniaethol John Jones, neu ‘Jac-Glan-y-Gors’, y faled ‘Hanes Dic Siôn Dafydd’. Roedd Jac Glan-y-Gors o ogledd-ddwyrain yn wreiddiol, ond yn y 1790au, cadwai dafarn yn Southwark ar gyrion Llundain. Yno, byddai’n profi pob agwedd o fywyd y brif-ddinas ar ddiwedd y ddeunawfed ganrif, gan gymysgu gyda Chymry Llundain, y byddai rhai ohonynt wedi bod yn batrwm bywyd-go-iawn ar gyfer Dic Siôn Dafydd.

Disgrifia’r faled Dic megis plentyn afreolus, heb fod â diddordeb mawr mewn addysg. Adroddir sut y symudodd i Lundain, gan ddod o hyd i swydd mewn ‘Habardasher’ (siop gwerthu nwyddau bach a defnydd ar gyfer gwnïo) am ei fod yn ‘[d]dyn mor hardd ei ymddygiad’. Pan mae’n dychwelyd i’w hen gartref, bwthyn ei fam, yn gwisgo trywsus ffasiynol rhad ac yn siarad Saesneg gwael, mae’n gwrthod siarad ei famiaith. I gwestiwn ei fam Lowri, ‘A’i machgen annwyl i wyt ti?’, ymateba: ‘Tim Cymraeg. Hold your bother. Mother you can’t speak with me!’ Er bod y gweinidog lleol yn rhoi crasiad iddo nes i Dic gyfaddef ei fod yn medru Cymraeg wedi’r cyfan, does dim achubiaeth iddo. Fel eraill sydd wedi blasu bywyd y ddinas fawr yn ormodol, mae’n syrthio ymhellach ac yn marw yn gamblwr ac yn gaeth i alcohol. Moeswers y faled (fel darluniadau megis y Rake’s Progress gan Hogarth) yw i ddynion ifainc fod yn ofalus yn y ddinas fawr. Mae’n llygru ac yn arwain at gwymp. I Gymro, mae hyn yn cynnwys gwrthod y famiaith.

[Jac Glan-y-Gors], Dic Sion Dafydd. Can y Melinydd (Llanrwst, n.d.), Cardiff University and NLW http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1101937

Dim ond y faled hon sydd wedi goroesi i’r unfed ganrif ar hugain, er bod Jac Glan-y-Gors wedi llunio llawer o faledi a cherddi. Yn sgil diwydiannu rhai ardaloedd yng Nghymru a datblygu rhwydwaith o rheilffyrdd, cyrhaeddai’r Saesneg bob cwr o’r wlad, ac arhosodd y faled yn berthnasol yn y degawdau wedi marwolaeth Jac yn 1821. Cafwyd fersiwn Saesneg yn 1828 am y ‘swaggering fellow’ hwn, a fyddai’n rhoi powdr ar ei ‘his frizzy hair … and ap’d th airs of city Dons’ yn ddyddiol, a nifer o fân-gyhoeddiadau, cerddi digrif ar ‘plant’ Dic Siôn Dafydd neu’r ‘Welsh-Englishmen’. Dychanwyd y sawl oedd yn esgus eu bod yn Saesneg er nad oedd lawer grap ar yr iaith ganddynt, cwynwyd am beidio â gallu prynu peint yn Gymraeg hyd yn oedd yng nghefn gwlad Ceredigion, a gwnaethpwyd jôcs am swyddogion y rheilffyrdd oedd yn methu ynganu enwau gorsafoedd, fel yn y faled isod:

Roedd porter y railway yn uchel ei lef
Yn gwaeddi Tlanelthy nes crynid y dref
A finnau’n adnabod Llanelly’n led drue
|Meddyliais mai’n India yr oeddwn yn byw!

 The Children of Dic Sion Dafydd. A Funny Song on the Welsh English, National Library of Wales, http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1061577

Erbyn diwedd y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg, serch hynny, roedd yr iaith Gymraeg yn fwyfwy dan fygythiad o du mewnlifiad gweithwyr Saesneg eu hiaith i ardaloedd diwydiannol y de, a system addysg gyfan gwbl Saesneg y wladwriaeth. Yn lle y baledi digrif, a luniwyd er mwyn i’r gynulleidfa gilchwerthin, cyhoeddwyd cerddi ac erthyglau a fyddai’n darogan marwolaeth y Gymraeg, a’r ddrama ‘Prawf Dic Siôn Dafydd’ a berfformiwyd o ganol y 1890au tan y Rhyfel Mawr. Yn dystio dros yr erlyniaeth yn yr achos llys oedd Mr Cymraeg, Mr Llên Cymru, ei wraig Mrs Crefydd Cymraeg a’u merch Miss Addysg Gymraeg, yn ogystal â Mr Gwareiddiad a Dr Hanes. Yn amddiffyn ‘y carcharor’ Dic Siôn Dafydd oedd ei fab a’i ferch Mr Codi-yn-y-Byd a Miss Balchder, yn ogystal â Mr Masnach a Dr Rhagfarn. Mae cymeriadau a chynnwys y ddrama yn adlewyrchu datblygiadau oedd wedi bod ar y gweill ers y ddeunawfed ganrif, ond a amlygwyd gan gyfrifiad 1891, a ddangosai mai dim ond jest dros 50% o boblogaeth Cymru oedd yn medru’r iaith erbyn hyn. Byddai dirywiad yn niferoedd y siaradwyr Cymraeg ond yn dod i ben yn 1980au’r ugeinfed ganrif, ag ond o gwmpas 20% y boblogaeth yn medru’r iaith.

Goroesi wnaeth Dic Siôn Dafydd i’r ugeinfed ganrif, gan wneud ei ffordd i’r darllediadau radio cyntaf yn y Gymraeg ar ddiwedd y 1930au, rhai megis anterliwt dychanol newydd, ble ymddangosodd ochr yn ochr â chymeriad o’r enw Siôn Llygad y Geiniog. Eto i gyd, roedd y rhod yn troi, ac dechreuwyd sôn am ‘Dafydd-Siôn-Dic’, sef dysgwyr Cymraeg a ddisgrifiwyd yn The Welsh Outlook megis ‘few in number but of rich deserving … those who brought up in ignorance of their natural language, have learnt it from books with painful diligence.’ Nid oedd llawer o Gymry yn dysgu Cymraeg fel oedolion yn y 1930au, ond roedd bodolaeth y cysyniad o’r ‘dysgwr’ yn arwydd fod y rhod yn troi. Ehangu yn syfrdanol oedd hanes mudiad yr iaith erbyn y 1960au, ac erbyn 1980au, pan luniwyd ‘Yma o Hyd’ gan Dafydd Iwan, roedd mudiad yr iaith Gymraeg – un ochr y diwylliant protest radical sydd wedi bod yn rhan o hanes Cymru ers Gwrthryfel Merthyr Tudful 1831 – wedi tyfu yn yrrwr pwerus datblygiadau cymdeithasol yng Nghymru. Roedd ymgyrchwyr dros yr iaith Gymraeg a glowyr de Cymru yn sefyll gyda’i gilydd yn erbyn Dic Siôn Dafydd a’r ‘hen Fagi’, fel y dengys fideo swyddogol Cymdeithas Pêl Droed Cymru o 2022.

Detholiad o Ffynonellau
[Jac Glan-y-Gors], Dic Siôn Dafydd. Can y Melinydd (Llanrwst, dim dyddiad), Prifysgol Caerdydd a Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1101937

‘Dic Siôn Dafydd (from the Welsh of Glan-y-Gors)’, North Wales Chronicle and Advertiser, 17 Gorffennaf 1828

Plant Dic Siôn Dafydd. Cân Ddigrif ar y Cymry Seisnig (Welsh-Englishmen); sawl faled ac argraffiadau 1820au–1850au, ‘Baledi Cymraeg Ar-lein’, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru https://www.library.wales/ballads

‘Dic Sion Dafydd’, Y Drych, 30 Awst 1877

‘Dic Sion Dafydd at New Tredegar’, Monmouth Guardian, 10 Ebrill 1914

‘Prawf Dic Sion Dafydd’, Celt Llundain, 25 Tachwedd 1902

‘Prawf Dic Sion Dafydd’, Cymru’r Plant, 183 (Mawrth 1907), 87

O. Francis, ‘The Worthy Order of Dafydd-Siôn-Dics’, The Welsh Outlook, 7 (Mehefin 1920), 144

‘Drama a Radio’, Heddiw, 5 (Medi 1930), 233

Cymdeithas Pêl Droed Cymru, Fideo Swyddogol Cwpan y Byd 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw5Fyj1GZlo&list=OLAK5uy_mq6pXAbw2jE4ew-Zws35NJLPT81MMWVkQ

Darllen Bellach
Dafydd Iwan, Rhywle Fel Hyn (Llanrwst: Gwasg garreg Gwalch, 2023)

Middleton Pennant Jones, ‘John Jones of Glan-y-Gors’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1911), 60–94

Marion Löffler, ‘Mudiad yr iaith Gymraeg yn hanner cyntaf yr Ugeinfed ganrif: cyfraniad y chwildroadau tawel’, yn Geraint H. Jenkins & Mari A. Williams (goln), ‘Eu Hiaith a Gadwant: Y Gymraeg yn yr Ugeinfed Ganrif, (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 2000), tt. 173–205