Dafydd y Garreg Wen
traditional Welsh musical air and folk song
Dafydd y Garreg Wen is a traditional Welsh musical air and folk song.
There is a tradition that the tune was composed by David Owen (1712–1741), a harpist and composer who lived near Porthmadog in Caernarfonshire. He was known locally as Dafydd y Garreg Wen (English: David of the White Rock). Y Garreg Wen was the name of the farm where he lived near Morfa Bychan. There is a tradition that as Owen lay on his death bed, he called for his harp and composed the tune of the haunting song. He died at the age of 29 and was buried at St Cynhaearn's Church near Porthmadog.
The first printed appearance of the melody is in Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784)
The words were added more than a hundred years later by the poet John Ceiriog Hughes (1832–1887).
A more literal translation would be:-
'Carry', said David, 'my harp to me'
I would like, before dying, to give a tune on it (her)
Lift my hands to reach the strings
God bless you, my widow and children!
Last night I heard an angel's voice like this:
"David, come home and play through the glen!"
Harp of my youth, farewell to your strings!
God bless you, my widow and children!
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Dafydd y Garreg Wen” is traditional Welsh musical air and folk song. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Dafydd, Garreg and traditional, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3398838. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1712, 1741, 1784 and 1832.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dafydd y Garreg Wen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.