Idris Davies

Idris Davies (born 6 January 1905 Rhymney, died 6 April 1953), was a Welsh poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English. He was the only poet to cover significant events in the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys and the South Wales coalfield, and from a perspective literally at the coalface.

He is now best known for the poem Bells of Rhymney, later set to music.

Life
He qualified as a teacher through courses at Loughborough College and the University of Nottingham. He took teaching posts in London during the Second World War, and then in Wales, returning to the Rhymney Valley in 1947. His second collection of poems was accepted by T.S. Eliot for Faber and Faber (1945).

Idris Davies died from abdominal cancer in 1953, aged 48.

Writing
A diary entry of his reads: 'I am a socialist. That is why I want as much beauty as possible in our everyday lives, and so I am an enemy of pseudo-poetry and pseudo-art of all kinds. Too many "poets of the Left", as they call themselves, are badly in need of instruction as to the difference between poetry and propaganda....These people should read William Blake on Imagination until they show signs of understanding him. Then the air will be clear again, and the land be, if not full of, fit for song.'

The Bells of Rhymney
Bells of Rhymney is a poem about the failure of the 1926 UK General Strike and the Great Depression in the United Kingdom and their effects on the South Wales coal mining valleys, set to the pattern of the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons".



The poem was set to music by folk singer Pete Seeger in the late 1950s and became a folk rock standard. The song, titled "The Bells of Rhymney", was covered by The Byrds in 1965 and later by many others, including Jimmy Page, Judy Collins, Dick Gaughan, Cher, Robyn Hitchcock, John Denver, the Oysterband, Robin Williamson and The Alarm. It has also been performed by Bob Dylan in live concerts. At a solo concert in London in the early 2000s, Byrds lead guitarist and singer Roger McGuinn confessed that he had been pronouncing the word "Rhymney" incorrectly for over 40 years until his error had been pointed out to him by a lady from South Wales. It should be pronounced 'Rhumney', whereas The Byrds had sung about the bells of 'Rhimney'.

Davies' poem When we walked to Merthyr Tydfil has also been set to music, and performed by Max Boyce.

Works

 * Gwalia Deserta (1938)
 * The Angry Summer: A Poem of 1926 (1943) Faber and Faber
 * Tonypandy and other poems (1945) Faber and Faber
 * Selected Poems (1953)
 * Collected Poems (1972) Gomerian Press
 * Complete Poems (1994) edited by Dafydd Johnston
 * A Carol for the Coalfield (2002)