Saint David’s Day, National Day of Wales
The only day in the year when you can wear a leek in your buttonhole, Saint David’s Day falls on 1st March and marks the death on 1st March 589 of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales.
Celebrating St. David’s Day
The
largest national parade in Wales is held in Cardiff and in the town of Colwyn Bay in north Wales, an annual procession takes place through the city centre with hundreds of citizens taking part; the City of Swansea hosts a St. David week-long festival, with a varied programme of sporting and cultural events whilst Welsh societies hold evenings of folk songs, Welsh dances and Welsh poems.At these festivities, a traditional meal of Cawl, or leek broth, is served; there may even be a competition to find the longest leek – where the winner may be challenged to eat his prize-winning crop!
The day was formerly a half-day holiday for schools, although this is no longer official, when children sometimes wore the customary Welsh costume complete with Welsh hat.
The famous tradition of men wearing a symbol of a leek and ladies a daffodil stems from the time when the Welsh were at the height of their struggle to repel the Saxons: on the eve of battle, Saint David instructed the combatants to wear leeks in their caps to make sure they decapitated a foe rather than a similarly attired friend.
In recent times daffodils have become the main emblem in North Wales, and one that is preferred by the government as a less nationalistic substitute that sounds similar in the Welsh language: Cenin means leek and Cenin Bedr is daffodil.
St. David in History
Documents recorded 500 years after Saint David’s death tell of many stories and legends about the life of the Celtic monk, who became archbishop of Wales and founder of a monastery responsible for spreading Christianity throughout Wales; today the former site of his monastic community is the location of St David’s Cathedral, set in the beautiful Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.
The son of royal lineage (his mother was Non, daughter of Cynyr of Caio, a local chieftain and his father was the son of a prince of Ceredigion, a region in South Wales), Saint David was born near Capel Non; he is also known as Dewi Sant or David the Water Drinker, because he drank nothing else and because he frequently practiced the penitential act of immersing himself in a freezing lake whilst reciting the scriptures.
He appears to have been a gentle giant who followed an ascetic lifestyle, eschewing worldly pleasures and living on bread and herbs. Educated at Henfynyw in Ceredigion, where his tutor was the monk Paulinus, Saint David embarked on missions to Cornwall and Brittany founding churches as he went: as news of his acts spread and he became famous,it was said that springs of water appeared in his wake, and that he performed many miracles including raising a boy from the dead – as well as managing to resist the temptation of seductresses.
On one occasion he addressed a multitude at a synod at Llanddewi Brefi in Ceredigion; when the assembled crowd called out that they could not see him, a hill formed under his feet to raise him up and a golden beaked dove alighted on his shoulder as a sign of his holiness.
Saint David’s foundation at Glyn Rhosin became one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the world, with roads and tracks leading to it from all parts of the country.
On his deathbed, at the reputed ripe old age of 147, the Saint’s last words were:
“Lords, brothers and sisters, be cheerful, keep the faith and do those little things which ye have seen me do and heard me say.”
The phrase “those little things,” has become part of Welsh lore today, and Saint David’s legend lives on in the form of Saint David’s Day.