Bibiel Hears Things: Gwilym Bowen Rhys – “Canu’n Iach i Arfon” (Bidding Farewell to Arfon)

Hey people! I woke up today with this song stuck in my brain, and thought it means I should share it, especially since I feel like I haven’t shared anything by Gwilym Bowen Rhys, who’s one of my faza peeps, in a while. It’s from Gwilym’s debut album, “O Groth y Ddaear” (From the Earth’s Womb). The words to this song were written by a man called Lewis Davies Jones, better known under his bardic name of Llew Tegid, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th century and was most famous as an eisteddfod conductor (an eisteddfod is a traditional festival of Welsh culture featuring competitions in music, poetry and other arts). He wrote a lot of other songs as well. The titular Arfon is the historic region around Caernarfon in north-west Wales, which also happens to be where Gwilym hails from. When you have some interest in folk music and know what the title of this song means but not its entire words, you might be inclined to think that this is one of the gazillion farewell songs in not…