The Bells of Rhymney: A Song Source Pilgrimage
22I found myself in England one Christmas and as is traditional, I went to Wales for Christmas. Along the journey I noticed I was passing not far from towns whose names I knew from a song. And I hatched a hair-brained scheme to come back sometime and sing that song in all of those towns. It might have come to nothing, but early in the next year, for two weekends in a row I could find no place to stay in Bristol. So I spent a week in Wales, bicycling, putting my bicycle on trains, riding trains, taking my bicycle back off those trains, trying to figure out which church I should hike to and film at. I stayed for one night each in a number of AirBnBs in or near those towns, some of which turned out to be valleys. I broke the hinge on my laptop, which eventually cracked the screen. Hopefully it was worth it. My wife still owns half of this laptop. I've only ever done something like this once before when my wife and I happened to be driving through Kentucky and saw on the map the word "Paradise" just a few miles from our route. She found out that this is a thing people do, not just us. We think it might be called a "Song Source Pilgrimage"' but we're not sure. It's a newish thing as far as we know. That video is on the channel, and now this one is, too.
The words are part of a poem written by Welsh Poet Idris Davies in his book Gwaila Deserta, or Desert of Wales, from the 1920s which lamented what coal mining had done to the valleys of southern Wales. This particular part was quoted by Dylan Thomas in a book read by Pete Seeger, who then put them to music in the 50s or 60s. And then the Byrds recorded it, which is probably where you are familiar with it from if at all. John Denver did too, back when his name was still officially H.J. Deutschendorf Jr. When not in Bristol for...reasons...I live in Minneapolis, where a man named Robert Zimmerman from a small town further North, renamed himself after Dylan Thomas. He also recorded this song.