St David’s Day

If you are one of the lucky people like me, who live in Wales, then on 1st March you will have the enormous pleasure of seeing lots of children dressed up in the Welsh costume. The girls wear a skirt with an apron and usually a shawl over the shoulders and the very iconic black hat with a frill of lace inside – and of course a daffodil on their chest! The boys are usually in waistcoats with a flat cap and a kerchief round their neck and a leek pinned on somewhere.

I remember when my children were small, rushing around finding all the kit because it was unthinkable for them to go to school without the correct costume for this very special day.

All of us adults wouldn’t go out with a daffodil on our lapel. It’s as important to us as the poppy on Remembrance Day.

And all over Wales there will be concerts and parades and celebrations to mark our National Day – St David’s Day. It’s another very good reason to come and visit Wales at this time of year. Enjoy B&B or a little self-catering cottage….and please don’t forget to visit St David’s, the tiny city where it all began and where you will find one of the most atmospheric cathedrals in the world.

St David’s Day is a very old tradition – 1st March is the day he died, believed to be 589AD and he is said to have lived for 100 years. One story about St David is that when he was speaking to a large crowd, some heckler in the crowd said “we can’t see you or hear you” and apparently the ground on which St David was standing rose up to form a small hill to accommodate this.

I’ve often wondered why the leek is so important to the Welsh. The vegetable grows well here but it grows well all over the UK I should imagine…. In face the Welsh archers one fought exceptionally bravely in a field of leeks and so they began to wear a leek in their caps as a reminder of their heroism on St David’s Day. It was Lloyd George who really pushed the wearing of the daffodil, wearing one himself to the investiture of the then Prince of Wales in 1911.

So what do we all do on St David’s Day, apart from donning the daffodil or leek? We usually eat wonderful Welsh lamb (although St David was a vegetarian).