“Men of Harlech in the hollow, Do ye hear the rushing billow,
Wave on wave that surging follow battle’s distant sound?
‘Tis the tramp of Saxon foemen, Saxon spearmen, Saxon bowmen,
Be they knights or hinds or yeomen, they shall bite the ground!
Loose the folds asunder, flag we conquer under!
The placid sky now bright on high, shall launch its bolts in thunder!
Onward! ‘Tis the country needs us, he is bravest, he who leads us,
Honor’s self now proudly heads us, freedom, God, and right!”
(Words by Mark Rutherford, from the film, Devil’s Brigade).
Back in the “ancient days” when I was attending university, I belonged to a social fraternity. In 1956 all of the university fraternities from local colleges and universities participated in a “singing contest”. Since I had a pretty fair baritone singing voice, I volunteered to be part of the singers, along with fourteen of my fraternity brothers. The two songs we had to learn by heart were “My Bonnie Lassie”, a great Scottish song set to the fabulous music of Scotland the Brave”(without bagpipes, of course); and also “Men of Harlech”, a Welch heroic folksong that appears to have been first published, without any words, way back in 1794, called March of the Men of Harlech”; but the music may have originated as a much earlier wordless folksong. The earliest printed version of this song with the lyrics of that day goes back to the year 1830. We practiced a lot and, lo and behold, we won first prize! The music to both of these songs burned a permanent place in my brain, and over the succeeding years I hummed the tunes frequently.
This song, Men of Harlech, has been republished multiple times in England and in Wales, and often with different lyrics to “fit” a particular occasion or event. One such “event” was its inclusion in the thrilling film, Zulu, from 1964, which depicted the Battle of Rorke’s Drift that took place in January, 1879, between elements of the British Army and the Zulu Nation, in what is now the Republic of South Africa, during the Anglo-Zulu War. This former mission station was temporarily manned by about 150 British officers and troopers, 30 of who were sick or wounded in the mission’s field hospital. They had been ordered to man the station and repair the bridge pontoons on a nearby river crossing. However, a day previously the main British force had been totally wiped out by the large Zulu warrior army, and the defenders of Rorke’s Drift soon discovered that a part of that Zulu army, about 4000 warriors, were headed their way to “finish the job” of driving the British invaders out of Zulu Land (where they should not have been in the first place).
Well, as history has recorded, this small British force, armed with .45 caliber Martini-Henry single shot, breech-loading rifles, and steeled by British tactics and discipline, was victorious over the numerically superior (but armed only with some muskets, some rifles taken from the defeated British force, and short spears) Zulu army. The British suffered 17 dead, but almost all of the survivors were wounded. Eleven of the British force were awarded the Victoria Cross in London by Queen Victoria herself. The gallant Zulus suffered perhaps 400 to 700 dead and many wounded, and the British defenders quickly dispatched those wounded Zulus who survived the battle after it was over.
Here are the lyrics to Men of Harlech in the “Zulu” film’s depiction:
“Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming, can’t you see their spear points
gleaming?
See their warrior pennants streaming, to this battlefield!
Men of Harlech stand ye steady, it can not be ever said ye
For the battle were not ready, Welshmen never yield!
From the hills rebounding, let this war cry sounding,
Summon all at Cambria’s (Wales’) call, the mighty force surrounding!
Men of Harlech on to glory, this will ever be your story,
Keep these burning words before ye, Welshmen will not yield.”
(Words by John Barry Prendergast, from the film, Zulu.)
Note: The song, Men of Harlech, was also used in that wonderful 1941 film, How Green Was My Valley, but I’m uncertain of the lyrics used.
So what originally inspired all of this wonderful and patriotic Welch singing? Basically it recalled historical events that occurred between the years 1461 and 1468, a seven year long siege of Harlech Castle, in Wales, during what is called The War of the Roses in England. The castle was held at that time by one of the factions, the Lancastrians, who were opposed by the Yorkists. Harlech Castle was commanded by a man named Dafydd ap Ieuan, whose title was Constable. His castle’s defenders supposedly endured the longest known siege in British history—seven years of battle and defense. There are also historical references to the song, Men of Harlech, having been associated with an even earlier, much shorter siege of Harlech Castle around 1408, during which the forces of the Welch under Owain Glyndver were pitted against another invading English king, Henry V. (English kings were very good at invading other nations and forcing the values and mores of England or Great Britain on other, mostly unwilling, people.)
This British “empire building” was the same thing that “our” American governments have been doing at least since The War For Southern Independence, i.e. barging into the affairs and cultures of other countries, pretending to be “freeing” them of bad government, or tyrants, pretending to make that nation, and as much of the world as possible, “safe for democracy”—one of the WORST forms of government--or using the excuses of U.N. “mandated” but totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL “police actions” to invade other nations, get lots of Americans and even more local people killed, and claiming that “we’re fighting for freedom”, or we’re bringing the “American way of life” to the people whose nations WE invaded! And all the while squandering our resources, our wealth, our military forces, our own freedom, and our once-vaunted cultural cohesion, so that the plans of ruthless globalists and megalomaniac, filthy rich industrialists, those “titans of conspiracy” who control the always sinister “Military/Industrial complex”, can impose their wills for a collectivist, controlled, and serf-like society on all the rest of us. (Are you listening, George Soros—are you listening, Klaus Schwab—are you listening, Bill Gates?)
So what does this history have to do with what is happening in our troubled and divided nation today? Recently I was digging through some really old articles and reference material I had stored away, when I came upon an article by Mike Scruggs, a writer well known and admired by readers of The Times Examiner (including me), titled Men of Harlech—And the Spirit of Southern Resistance to Tyranny. It was published in January, 2004 in a blog newsletter called The Patriotist. I assume Mike wrote this in 2003:
“You might ask, what does the Welsh defense of a castle in Northern Wales against an English king in the 15th century have to do with the South, the Confederacy, or the spirit of Southern resistance to tyranny?
“I rejoin everything, both in the past and in the present, and in the future as well. The parallels are strong to 1861 and to 2003. In 1861 the South fought for its independence, the right of its people to determine for themselves their political destiny, economy, and culture. They fought to defend their allegiance to a government of Constitutional Law won by the courage and sacrifices of their forefathers, who fought for their liberties, their honor, their blood-sacred land, their homes, the faith of their fathers and their families. We are still fighting, though by words. We are still fighting for our identity, our symbols, and our liberties. The Welsh are still fighting to maintain their identity, culture, and liberty within a United Kingdom. We both look back to heroic examples of resistance to tyranny. We are kindred people in culture and outlook. We are also kindred in blood. Much Welsh blood runs in Southern veins, still more of kindred Scots and Irish..”
Mike Scruggs wrote these true words twenty years ago in the context of honorably defending the heritage of millions of Americans who had ancestors who fought for their homes, their liberties, their culture, and their lives within the realm of their newly formed nation, the Confederate States of America. And millions more who remained in the original United States also did what they believed was morally or politically right, and battled the forces of the Confederacy. Interestingly, people from all races fought on both sides—Americans fighting Americans. How tragic! How wrong! How morally and spiritually bankrupt that was! How EVIL were the forces of Satan that operated surreptitiously, and sometimes openly, on BOTH sides of the “UNCIVIL WAR”, as Mike Scruggs calls it, to encourage hatred and suspicion and lies and violence among the people of the North AND the South!
But today we again have Americans fighting fellow Americans. We are now experiencing powerful and out-of-control federal agencies—the totally out-of-control F.B.I. in particular—beginning to politically harass totally innocent American citizens whom that Gestapo-like agency and its “man behind the curtain”—the Department of (In)Justice, deem “enemies of the state”, such as conservatives and supporters of former President Trump, as well as patriotic, pro-Constitution groups. Today we find ourselves facing increasing crime, out-of-control addiction to all sorts of drugs, violent criminal drug and human trafficking rings destroying our culture and degrading untold numbers of women and children, poisoning and killing many of our young people, wide open borders courtesy of a despicable far left wing Biden Administration, which is infested with America-hating Marxists/collectivists, many of them ultra-wealthy, who are doing their best, just as they did back in the 1850’s, to encourage hatred among the races of America, to encourage what would be a tragic and totally destructive new “civil war”, to “divide and conquer” our people by trying to convince them that all of what our ancestors built and sent down the corridors of time to us is EVIL! ALL OF IT! To my mind, these leftists are the determined enemies of freedom, and more especially are the historic enemies of God, and they are all full of “bovine excrement”, if you know what I mean.
And just as happened in the late 1850’s and early 1860’s, SOME of our people believe these DELIBERATE LIES! Some of our people look to “our” government to “solve” these problems when, incredible as it is to contemplate, it is that very government in the District of Criminals and Communists that is promoting everything BAD that is ripping our republic apart. Some of our misguided and deliberately deceitful politicians, and those big money interests who control them, are doing all they can to destroy the proven constitutional and political systems we’ve always trusted, to make our people distrust what has almost always worked, and replace them with “new” and sinister and untested political systems, whereby the power that the American people once held will be greatly reduced, or eliminated altogether. And all “for our own good”, of course.
And add to these calamities the destruction of our currency and our economic system and our fiat dollar pretend money, and the possibly soon-to-come forced introduction of ‘CBDC” or Central Bank Digital Currency into our economic system, and we can kiss real freedom goodbye, probably for longer than most of us will live, for we will all become fearful serfs of a powerful central government who will know everything we spend money on and who will have the power to deny our spending OUR money on those products, services, companies, or religious or patriotic organizations that WE wish to give our money to, but of which they (the authoritarian government) disapprove.
Mike Scruggs said it well in his article that I mentioned, above. In it, he went on to say:
“The politically correct forces now arrayed against the South, its heritage, its symbols, its dominant Christian orthodoxy, and its philosophies of limited, constitutional government and federalism are more formidable than in the past. Our detractors and their allies control most of our media, and our educational institutions, and the large corporations that influence our economy. More than ever we need to regain the spirit of Jackson and his Stonewall Brigade, standing like a stone wall against the invader. More than ever we need to recapture the spirit of Southern courage and resistance to tyranny. More than ever we NEED TO STAND LIKE THE MEN OF HARLECH!”
Now if we substitute the subjects of these attacks that Mike mentioned, into the present troubled state of our nation, then it is easy to see that what was once an attack upon the South or the Confederacy is now an attack on the ENTIRE U.S.A and all Americans. Isn’t it plainly obvious that we need a national RETURN TO GOD, that we need A NEW GREAT AWAKENING that could transform our nation back to the visions of our Founders, as Americans reject the slithery lies of those who have always despised the concept of self-government in a REPUBLIC? Isn’t it painfully apparent that far too many of our fellow citizens are blissfully unaware of the despotic forces of incipient repression wrapping their tentacles of treason all around us?
We all know the wise words that Ben Franklin replied to Mrs. Powell outside of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. She asked Dr. Franklin what type of government the delegates had given the people, to which he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Old Ben’s wisdom is more pertinent today than it has ever been, because an increasing number of our fellow citizens apparently are not all that much interested in “keeping” our republic!! Or so we have been told.
What about YOU, my fellow American? Do YOU want to keep our republic? Do you even care? I guess it’s for YOU to decide, but decide SOON!
Here are the “traditional” words to MEN OF HARLECH. I don’t know who wrote them, or when. But I think they apply to us. (And remember, when the lyrics use the word Cambria (Wales), just think AMERICA. Then you’ll understand!
“Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming. Can’t you see their spear points gleaming?
See their warrior pennants streaming to this battlefield.
Men of Harlech stand ye steady it cannot ever be said ye
For the battle were not ready, Cambria ne’er will yield.
Thou who noble Cambria wrongest know that freedom’s cause is strongest.
Freedom’s courage lasts the longest ending but with death.
Men of Harlech on to glory This will ever be your story.
Keep these burning words before ye, Cambria ne’er will yield!
Hark, I hear the foe advancing, barbed steeds are proudly prancing,
Helmets in the sunbeams glancing, glitter through the trees.
Upon their soil we never sought them, love of conquest hither brought them.
But this lesson, we have taught them, Cambria ne’er will yield!
Men of Harlech! Young or hoary, would ye win a name in story?
Strike for home, for life, for glory—freedom, God, and Right!
Men of Harlech, on to glory, see your banner famed in story,
Waves these burning words before ye, Cambria ne’er will yield.”
