Psychnews Spring 2017 1 Saint David's

Spring 2017 PsychNews 1 Your Welsh Crib Sheet Saint David’s Day – A Welsh Tradition By Tracey Lloyd • The Welsh flag, as we Those of you studying in Wales for the first 4me this year may not realise know it, was officially that March 1st is St. David’s Day (or, in Welsh, Dydd Gwyl Dewi). St David is the Patron Saint of Wales and was famous for making the ground rise recognised in 1959. up underneath him so that he could be seen and heard by a crowd that • The Tudors (The English he was teaching. This is said to have happened in the now famous village of Llanddewi Brefi (yes, the very same village that is home to LiHle monarchs 1485-1603) Britain’s Dafydd Thomas – Dafydd also means David). Some say that were Welsh! David founded the church at Glastonbury. St David is believed to have lived somewhere between year 500 and 589 • There are about four and to have died on March 1st. As he died, it is believed that he urged 4mes as many sheep in people to live a good life and to: "Do ye the liHle things in life" ("Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd"). This is apparently a Wales as there are well known saying in Wales, though not one that I am familiar with. people. As a child growing up in North Wales, I remember St. David’s Day • The town name: celebraons well. The primary school I aended was bi-lingual, so we Llanfairpwllgwyngyll- were educated in both Welsh and English and kept Welsh tradi4ons. On March 1st each year there would be a Welsh concert, with singing and gogerychwyrndrob- Dawnsio Gwerin (tradi4onal Welsh folk dancing). We would all dress in wyllllantysiliogogogoch Welsh costume – large black hats and red woolen skirts with white aprons for the girls, and flat caps, checked shirts and waistcoats for the translates as “The church boys. Everyone got a daffodil (the flower of Wales) and a Welsh cake. of St. Mary in the hollow Sadly, I can’t find a photo of me as a child celebrang St. David’s Day to accompany this ar4cle… of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Why do we have a red dragon on our flag? By Caspar Wynne Tysilio’s of the red cave” Well, like so many things, the answer isn’t simple. The exact reason why • Apparently Wales has has long been lost to the annals of 4me. However, historians in their par4cular kind of way, have postulated a number of differing theories. My more castles per square favourite, involves Merlin, prophecies, and one rather annoyed castle mile than anywhere else builder. So a Welsh king wanted a new castle, but the first 4me they built the walls, in the world! Caspar Wynne the ground shook and they came tumbling down. Curious but unperturbed, the king ordered the walls to be erected again, but low and behold the ground shook and they fell down once more. Well, they were preHy angry by now. Why were the walls falling down? Just then Merlin happened to be wandering by, and he told the castle builder to dig down. Eventually they found a cave with two dragons in it, one white and one red. Merlin claimed that the white dragon represented the Saxons and the red dragon the Britons. He also said that although the white dragon was more dominant at the beginning of the fight, the red would eventually win overall, and that apparently is what happened. This story was recorded in the Historia Regum Britanniae wriHen by Geoffrey of Monmouth during the twelih century. However, though this is my favourite tale of the Welsh red dragon there are many others, some even date as far back to the Roman occupaon of Britain! Spring 2017 PsychNews 2 Dylan Thomas: Introduction to a poet By Ben Joseph Govier Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea on the 27th of October, 1914. His father, David John Thomas, known as D.J., and his mother, Florence Williams, had their family roots in Welsh speaking, working class, Carmarthenshire. D.J. studied English at Aberystwyth University, and took employment as a schoolmaster at Swansea Grammar School. Florence was a seamstress from the St. Thomas area of Swansea. They married in 1903. Florence was a somewhat simple – though not unintelligent - loving, do4ng and maternal mother to Dylan, some4mes excessively spoiling him. It has since been reasoned that this contributed to Dylan’s later inability to handle life as a responsible adult. In contrast to Florence, D.J. was more Dylan Thomas, Marina, Swansea complex. For much of his life, he harboured unfulfilled literary ambi4ons and felt frustrated, biHer and despondent in his job as a schoolmaster, occasionally turning to alcohol and becoming violent. He read Shakespeare “Do not go gently and the Bible to Dylan from a young age, and was an important and into that good night esteemed influence throughout his life. but rage, rage Academically, Dylan was a failure. Oien playing truant or simply refusing to apply himself in his studies, the only subject he excelled in was English. against the dying of Dylan would later say that his real educaon consisted in his being allowed to ‘read indiscriminately and all the 4me, with my eyes hanging out’. Upon the light” leaving school aged 16, Dylan took a job as a reporter at the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post. He did not last long in this Dylan Thomas, 1947 posi4on, largely due to his frequent daydreaming and evasion of work. Allegedly, on one occasion, he ran a report on a sports event that had been cancelled. He would later mock this period in his play ‘Return Journey’: it is recalled that young Thomas was sent to cover a local football match at the Vetch, and worked out the scores in rugby tries. In his early years, Dylan was surrounded by various friends in Swansea who would have a las4ng influence on him. Amongst them, Bert Trick, a local grocer with lei-wing tendencies, Vernon Watkins, another, lesser known, Swansea poet, the composer Dan Jones, and the painter Alfred Janes. The 4me spent in long discussions and performances with these friends prepared him for his later readings and broadcasts in front of large audiences. He began wri4ng poetry at the age of 8 or 9. He wrote around 250 poems between the ages of 16 and 20, including the majority of the Portrait of Dylan Thomas by Gianpiero poems in his first two books. ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ was his Acs first published poem, in 1933. In 1934, at only twenty years of age, his first book of poetry, ‘18 Poems’, was published. His second book, ‘Twenty-Five Poems’, followed in 1936, and the ‘The Map of Love’, in 1939. Spring 2017 PsychNews 3 Dylan Thomas: Introduction to a poet By Ben Joseph Govier For much of his life, Dylan moved between Wales and London, never seHling in any par4cular place for long. It was in a pub in London, in 1936, that Dylan met Caitlin Macnamara, a striking dancer from Ireland. They married on the 11th of July 1937. Dysfunc4onal, destruc4ve, and alcoholic, their relaonship was a tempestuous affair, with figh4ng, and accusaons of infidelity. Their marriage produced two sons and a daughter. Despite literary success, the The Boathouse, Laugharne. family lived in poverty, oien in debt owing to their financial recklessness. Laugharne provided inspiraon for Dylan would write, lyrically, to acquaintances, begging for money. Friends, the fic4onal Welsh town featured in Under Milk Wood, ‘Llareggub’. (Try such as Vernon Watkins, who viewed Dylan’s poe4c mission as sacrosanct, spelling it out backwards.) oien obliged. His only period of stable employment was during the Second World War. He had no inten4on of becoming a soldier. To him, war was farcical. Though he did want to contribute in some way. According to Caitlin, on the eve of his assessment for conscrip4on, Dylan purposefully got himself s4nking drunk. In the morning, the doctor assessing was confronted with a trembling man, coughing violently. Dylan’s plan was successful. Eventually, he gained employment working for a company producing material for the Ministry of Informaon. Further publicaons included the autobiographical collec4on of stories ‘A Portrait of the Ar4st as a Young Dog’ - the 4tle a play on James Joyce’s novel - in 1940, and, in 1946, his most popular and accessible collec4on, ‘Death and Entrances’. In 1949, the family took residence in the Boathouse in Laugharne. During this period, Dylan had a fixed rou4ne of visi4ng Brown’s Hotel in the morning, where he would drink beer, work through the Times Dylan Thomas’ Wri4ng Shed crossword with D.J., and listen to the local gossip. In the aernoon, he would re4re to his wri4ng shed. In the shed, overlooking the Taf estuary, Dylan wrote the comic, pathos-filled play for voices - largely inspired by Laugharne and its inhabitants - Under Milk Wood. Here, he also craed some of his – and the English language’s – finest poems, including ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’, ‘Over Sir John’s Hill’ and ‘Poem on his Birthday’. In 1950, Dylan Thomas embarked on a tour of America, arranged by the poet John Malcolm Brinnin. Dylan dazzled audiences with his wit, charm, warmth and, of course, his poetry. A further three tours followed. These trips were lucrave, but Dylan wasted the money he earned. He was also unfaithful to Caitlin, and she reciprocated. By the 4me of his final tour, his health was increasingly deteriorang due to his smoking, poor diet, alcohol consump4on and lack of sleep.

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