Merthyr Tydfil in the mid-19th C. must have resembled a medieval vision of Hades- the sunlight was dulled by the smoke from dozens of colliery winding engines, winning the high-quality steam coal which was fuelling the industrial revolution, & the night sky was bloody with the glow from numerous 'iron-puddling' furnaces, punctuated periodically by tongues of flame roaring skywards from the massive stone towers of primitive blast furnaces . Hills which until recently had been disturbed only by the tinkling of sheep-bells and the mewing of buzzards & red kites, now echoed to rhythmic groaning of furnace-blowing engines & the panting of steam locomotives as they rattled their drams of coal & pig-iron down to the Marquise of Bute's new docks in Cardiff. Merthyr was the biggest iron producing area in the world at that time!
The cholera-stenched hovels housed the largest urban population in Wales; peasants fleeing famine and dispossession came from rural Wales, the English west-country, from Ireland & as far away as Italy & Poland. It was a hotbed of revolution - in 1831 the Red Flag was raised & 18 Chartist 'rioters' were shot dead; many were transported to 'New' South Wales & one Dic 'Penderyn' Lewis was hanged for wounding a Scots soldier with his own bayonet. Yet the radical socialist/pacifist Nonconformist religious movement also flourished, eventually influencing coal-owners & iron-masters as well as colliers & iron-puddlers.

It was here that Joseph Parry was born in 1841. Joseph was fortunate in being sent to a chapel school, but had to leave at 9 years old to work underground after his father emigrated to Philadelphia. There skilled Welsh iron-workers were being offered good prospects making the new steel which would soon replace iron as the major engineering material. ( There are still a few Welsh-speaking communities in Pennsylvania.) Joseph & his family followed in 1853.

Joseph's orphaned childhood sweetheart Myfanwy Llywellyn was adopted by a rich New York family; she became famous as an opera singer, stage name Lena van Ellen.

After a musical education in America & in London, in 1872 Joseph became the first Professor of Music in the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Wales had been promised its own university since the 15th century, but there had never been any real will by the English government or church to establish one. So contributions from workers organisations, church collections & donations from certain philanthropic industrialists were used to finance the new college.

The (apocryphal?) story of the song goes something like this:- One day when passing through a cemetery in Merthyr, Joseph met Myfanwy whom he had not seen for over 30 years; she knew that she was terminally ill, and was visiting her father' grave. She rejected him. This prompted him to write the tune. "Paham mae digter, O Myfanwy ----?"
"Why so angry, Myfanwy ----why are your cheeks so pale & bloodless now ?"

Professor Joseph Parry died in 1902.

Chris Davies 1999