Ignore me, I'm Welsh: Sarah Bryan Miller -- March 1, St. David's Day, Wales/Cymru patron saint

March 1, 2006

Ignore me, I'm Welsh

That's not the slogan for St. David's Day, but it could be, for all the attention Wales' patron saint receives.

It's March, when we celebrate the feast of a notable early Celtic saint from the west coast of Great Britain who performed miracles, made converts and came up with the piece of greenery that today is a symbol of his country.

No, it's not St. Patrick with his shamrock. He gets plenty of publicity; he doesn't need our help. March 1 is dedicated to St. David, the patron saint of Wales. His symbol is the leek, a variety of onion, traditionally worn in the Welshperson's hat today. Termed "a pungent vegetable" by one Welsh Web site, it's not as cool as other national symbols of the British Isles, such as the thistle, the rose and the shamrock.

Then again, the Welsh, as a people, aren't that glamorous.

Don't feel bad if you didn't know about St. David and the leek. The Welsh aren't the pushy type. Although millions of Americans are of Welsh descent - people with names such as Williams, Evans, Jones, Jenkins and Richards - many of them aren't even aware of it. The Welsh in this country are the originals and still champions at the art of assimilation, meekly giving way to their better-known Celtic cousins, the Irish, as they noisily purvey shamrocks and green beer in the public recognition derby.

In fact, given that today is also Ash Wednesday, St. David - Dewi Sant in Welsh - has been knocked off the calendar completely.

Contrast that to St. Patrick's Day: It falls, this year, on a Friday in Lent. That makes it officially a church fast day, but no one doubts that it will be widely and robustly celebrated anyway.

Not that St. David would complain about his status on the ecclesiastical totem pole. The sixth-century bishop and abbot was a modest but tough man with modest but tough followers.

While the legend of St. Patrick is filled with tales of divine intervention - driving out snakes, using his cape as a raft, healing a blind man while simultaneously blinding a companion who laughed at the afflicted one - St. David's resume contains just one: While preaching to a multitude, the saint got grumbles - "I can't see you!," "I can't hear you!" - so he simply raised the ground into a hill, with him at the top. Problem solved.

It's fitting that the Welsh saint's biggest miracle should have to do with acoustics and sightlines, given the great Welsh tradition of choral singing: Wherever two or three are gathered together, there's sure to be well-tuned harmony. (The biggest problem with the classic movie "Zulu" is that it depicts Welsh soldiers singing "Men of Harlech" while fighting - in unison. The unison bit is patently absurd.)

In Wales, St. David's Day is traditionally observed with singing festivals. The best-known form of distinctively Welsh entertainment is the Gymanfa Ganu (pronounced gih-MAHN-vuh GAH-nee and translated as gathering for song), a kind of community hymn sing in which most of the participants scorn the melody line in favor of singing parts.

The English tried their best to stifle use of the Welsh language. That it has survived is proof of a certain national stubbornness of character. Welsh is musical but difficult to pronounce - the name of Wales itself, spelled Cymru, but pronounced "Cumree," gives you the idea in brief - and many Welsh place names would be at home in the News of the Weird column.

"Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwrndrobwyll-llantisiliogogogoch," the name of a now-defunct train station, is just an extreme example.

The Welsh are one of my four primary ethnic groups, thanks to my great-grandfather John Robert Deans, a mild-mannered Methodist minister, school principal and possessor of a notably beautiful bass voice who settled in Eskridge, Kan., well over a century ago. That's why I usually fly a Welsh flag - bearing a red dragon on a white and green field - on March 1. It's not surprising that nobody recognizes it; the shocking thing is that most people mistake it for an Iraqi flag. The Welsh just can't get any respect.

But the Welsh, who quietly swallow insults such as "welshing on a deal," don't worry too much about recognition. They don't worry about a popular culture that has mostly forgotten them. They certainly don't worry about the pronounced lack of shiny paper cutout leeks to hang in windows or the absence of leek-motif greeting cards to send to their friends and relations for St. David's Day.