Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau: Land of My Fathers

Yes, it is the Welsh national anthem, and it holds that position by custom rather than by law: no Act of Parliament and no resolution of any Welsh body has ever adopted it. It became the anthem because Welsh people began singing it as one, at eisteddfodau, at public meetings and eventually at international sporting fixtures, and no authority has ever needed to say so in writing.

The title translates as "the old land of my fathers", and the poem is addressed to Wales itself. It is not a summary of anything printed here: the text belongs to its authors and their publishers, and it is described on this page rather than reproduced.

Pontypridd, 1856

The usual account puts the tune first. James James, a harpist who played in a public house his family kept at Mill Street in Pontypridd, composed a melody and asked his father to write words for it. Evan James, a weaver and a poet who competed at eisteddfodau, supplied three verses and a chorus. The piece was originally called Glan Rhondda, meaning the banks of the Rhondda, after the river beside which the tune is said to have come to the son.

It was first performed in public early in 1856 at Capel Tabor in Maesteg, sung by Elizabeth John. It spread through the ordinary distribution channels of Welsh music in that decade: manuscript copies passed between chapels, performance and competition at eisteddfodau, and finally print. Its appearance in Owain Alaw's collection Gems of Welsh Melody in 1860 put it in front of a national readership, and it was well established as a patriotic song within a generation of being written.

What the words are about

The poem is a tribute to the country and to what it has produced. The first verse addresses Wales as the land of the writer's forebears and praises its poets and singers, its soldiers of the past and the country itself. The second turns to the landscape and to the sound of Welsh music in it. The third addresses the survival of the language directly, and asserts that neither conquest nor time has silenced it. The chorus, which follows every verse, declares that the country and the language will endure.

Two things about it are worth noticing. It is not a prayer for a monarch, as God Save the King is, and it is not a call to arms, as several European anthems are. It is a statement about cultural survival, and the language itself is its subject. That is unusual among national anthems and it explains why the anthem is sung in Welsh by people who speak no Welsh: singing it in the language is the point of it.

The tune, and why it works for a crowd

The melody is in 6/8, a lilting compound duple time with a swing to it, and it is strophic: verse and chorus, the same music each time. Its shape is the reason it survives being sung by 70,000 people who have not rehearsed. The verse sits in a comfortable middle range and rises gradually. The chorus opens higher, with a repeated figure that anyone can catch on a second hearing, and drives to a sustained high note near the end, which is the moment a stadium crowd leans into and holds. Then it falls to a firm close.

Choirs sing it in four parts, and a Welsh male choir will normally perform it unaccompanied with the melody in the first tenor. Massed unison singing with brass or organ is the other standard form. It is usually pitched to suit untrained voices, which means the top of the chorus is high enough to feel like an effort and low enough to be reachable, and that balance is a good part of its effect.

An anthem by use, not by statute

The distinction between a customary anthem and a statutory one is real and has consequences. A statutory anthem is named in law, which fixes its text, sometimes fixes its official arrangement, and creates a body with authority over it. The United States adopted The Star-Spangled Banner by Act of Congress in 1931. Canada adopted O Canada by the National Anthem Act of 1980, and amended the text of that Act by a later Act in 2018, which is only possible because there is an Act to amend.

Wales therefore has an anthem with no official version. In practice the convention is very strong: the first verse and the chorus, in Welsh, and nothing else. Very few people who sing it at a stadium know the second and third verses exist.

Where it is sung

The anthem is sung before rugby and football internationals in Cardiff, where the practice of the whole crowd singing it, frequently unaccompanied after the band drops out, is the best known instance of Welsh public singing. It closes the National Eisteddfod and countless local ones. It is sung at cymanfaoedd canu, the hymn-singing festivals, at civic occasions, at funerals and at Welsh society dinners abroad, from London to Patagonia. Male choirs place it last on a programme, standing, with the audience joining.

The same tune serves two other Celtic countries. Bro Gozh ma Zadou in Brittany and Bro Goth agan Tasow in Cornwall use James James's melody with their own words, which makes a Pontypridd harpist's 1856 tune the shared anthem of three peoples. Very little else written in a Welsh valley in that decade has travelled as far.

Also in this programme

• Welsh classical musicThe composers, the choirs and the institutions
• The eisteddfodWhat an eisteddfod is, and how the music competition works
• Karl JenkinsThe most performed living Welsh composer
• St David's HallThe national concert hall of Wales