Happy St. David’s Day
Saint David’s Day is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March, the date of Saint David’s death in 589 AD.
He was born in Caerfai, southwest Wales into an aristocratic family. He helped found about 1200 monasteries.
His final words to the community of monks were: “Brothers be ye constant. The yoke which with single mind ye have taken, bear ye to the end; and whatsoever ye have seen with me and heard, keep and fulfil.”
He was recognized as a national patron saint in the 12th century at the peak of Welsh resistance to the Normans and canonised by Pope Callixtus II in 1120.
In the poem Armes Prydein (The Prophesy of Britain), composed in the early to mid-10th century, the anonymous author prophesies that the Cymry (the Welsh people) will unite and join an alliance of fellow-Celts to repel the Anglo-Saxons, under the banner of Saint David: A lluman glân Dewi a ddyrchafant (“And they will raise the pure banner of Dewi”).
Wales had a very short period of independence during the rising of Owain Glyndŵr, but Wales as a whole was never an independent kingdom for long.
Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond, who was born in Pembroke Castle as a patrilineal descendant of the Tudor Dynasty of North Wales, became King Henry VII of England after his victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, to end the Wars of the Roses.
Henry’s green and white banner with a red dragon became a rallying point for Welsh patriotism with the memory of Saint David on his Feast Day. Henry was the first monarch of the House of Tudor, and during the reign of that dynasty, the royal coat of arms included the Welsh Dragon, a reference to the monarch’s origin. The banner from Henry’s victory was not adopted as the official Flag of Wales until 1959.
