Uploaded February 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the late great luminary of folk music revival Pete Seeger reciting "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh miner poet Idris Davies
This poem is best known as a jingly jangly song by The Byrds. It has become a folk rock standard, recorded hundreds of times by everyone from Cher to The Alarm.
But if it wasn't for an American folk singer called Pete Seeger, the haunting lyrics to Bells of Rhymney would have remained as an obscure poem by a Welsh miner turned poet called Idris Davies.
He wrote it during a four-year stint on the dole. From the age of 14 he'd worked as a miner at the Mardy Rhymney Colliery. But at the age of 21, he was involved in a mining accident which resulted in him losing part of a finger. With his injury and the disruption caused by the 1926 General Strike; he found himself jobless.
He used this time for what he called "the long and lonely self-tuition game". He educated himself; spending his days in the library. He also started to write poetry, in both Welsh and English. He wrote about the bitterness and hurt of the 1920s and the devastation being felt by the mining communities around him.
Despite the vast wealth created by the country's coal, Welsh people found themselves living in one of the most depressed countries in the world with 42 percent unemployment by the start of the 1930s.
Davies was given encouragement to keep writing by the likes of Dylan Thomas and TS Eliot. It was Eliot who would publish his first collection of poems, Gwalia Deserta, in 1938. This included a poem 'XV'; it was only 123 words long but managed to create a complex tapestry of the ways South Wales had reacted to the decline of mining.
Davies didn't find too much success during his lifetime. He spent much of his time working as a teacher and only had two other published poetry works. He died from stomach cancer at the age of 48 while staying at his parents' home in Rhymney.
But in 1954, one year after his death, a series of Dylan Thomas essays was published in America called 'Quite Early One Morning' and it included a reprint of Gwalia Deserta XV.
This happened to be spotted by a young folk singer in California called Pete Seeger who decided to put it to music, first recording it in 1957 with blues musician Sonny Terry. And the rest is...
Seeger would later go on a pilgrimage to Rhymney to visit Idris's mother.
eter "Pete" Seeger (May 3, 1919 -- January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture and environmental causes.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jimm Clark 2014
Here's a virtual movie of the late great luminary of folk music revival Pete Seeger reciting "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh miner poet Idris Davies
This poem is best known as a jingly jangly song by The Byrds. It has become a folk rock standard, recorded hundreds of times by everyone from Cher to The Alarm.
But if it wasn't for an American folk singer called Pete Seeger, the haunting lyrics to Bells of Rhymney would have remained as an obscure poem by a Welsh miner turned poet called Idris Davies.
He wrote it during a four-year stint on the dole. From the age of 14 he'd worked as a miner at the Mardy Rhymney Colliery. But at the age of 21, he was involved in a mining accident which resulted in him losing part of a finger. With his injury and the disruption caused by the 1926 General Strike; he found himself jobless.
He used this time for what he called "the long and lonely self-tuition game". He educated himself; spending his days in the library. He also started to write poetry, in both Welsh and English. He wrote about the bitterness and hurt of the 1920s and the devastation being felt by the mining communities around him.
Despite the vast wealth created by the country's coal, Welsh people found themselves living in one of the most depressed countries in the world with 42 percent unemployment by the start of the 1930s.
Davies was given encouragement to keep writing by the likes of Dylan Thomas and TS Eliot. It was Eliot who would publish his first collection of poems, Gwalia Deserta, in 1938. This included a poem 'XV'; it was only 123 words long but managed to create a complex tapestry of the ways South Wales had reacted to the decline of mining.
Davies didn't find too much success during his lifetime. He spent much of his time working as a teacher and only had two other published poetry works. He died from stomach cancer at the age of 48 while staying at his parents' home in Rhymney.
But in 1954, one year after his death, a series of Dylan Thomas essays was published in America called 'Quite Early One Morning' and it included a reprint of Gwalia Deserta XV.
This happened to be spotted by a young folk singer in California called Pete Seeger who decided to put it to music, first recording it in 1957 with blues musician Sonny Terry. And the rest is...
Seeger would later go on a pilgrimage to Rhymney to visit Idris's mother.
eter "Pete" Seeger (May 3, 1919 -- January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture and environmental causes.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jimm Clark 2014
