I'm a little late with this one, as St David's Day was March 1st.  It's generally a fun day to be in Wales, where the religion is largely played down in favour of being a celebration of all things Welsh.

This year, I had great plans of going to Wrexham.  I'd heard that there were events going on throughout the city.  In addition I have a friend who lives nearby. We could have caught up for the first time since New Year.

Unfortunately, the day dawned in a dreary fashion.  I checked the weather reports and they promised rain, rain and more rain.  Being British, that isn't usually too much of a problem.  We're used to it.  But the programme of events didn't look as great as advertised either. 

There was going to be a parade, but the route was just half an hour long and ended with the national anthem.  That was it.  It was hardly the huge public party that I'd been led to believe.  Coupled with the rain, it just didn't seem worth the journey there to participate.

It was all a far cry from last year, when I rose early to go south instead.  St David's Day in Cardiff should not be missed.  I strongly considered going there instead.  But ultimately the miserable looking day won out.  I huddled inside instead and wrote my 401th article for Wizzley.  That was worth it.  I got an Editor's Choice Award for my efforts!

Nevertheless, I would like to wish you all a (belated) Hapus Dydd Dewi Sant, or Happy St David's Day in Welsh.

The evening was closing in, as I drove down the lane into Horningsham.  Sunlight played through the tall trees lining the road, back-lighting their leaves and casting such beautiful shadows upon the way ahead.

It felt almost mystical, like some scene taken from a fairy tale and given form.  The long shadows at the end of day will do that. 

Giving weight to that quest-like feeling was the reason that I was there.  I'd been close by and seen the village on the map, then took a detour to visit it.  There was history between my family and this place.  I wanted to see for myself what they had seen nearly two centuries ago.

On June 18th 1815, a baby named Frederick Harrington was baptized in St John the Baptist Church.  His father was William Harrington, a coachman, and his mother was named Ann.  She was a local girl - born and bred in Horningsham, Wiltshire.  Presumably this was the church where her family worshipped.

As for William, I don't know where he came from.  He died before any census could tell us.

Before Frederick was ten years old, the family up and left for the industrial north.  They ended up in the wool town of Wolverhampton, where William and Ann Harrington took possession of the Red Cow pub in Dudley Street.  Their daughter Sarah was born there in 1823, and died a month later.  Another daughter, Caroline, was born in 1825 and she survived.  She married a Black Country man named William Beech and had many children.

As for Frederick, his marriage to another incomer to Wolverhampton - Mary Pragnall - eventually resulted in me.  He is my gt-gt-gt grandfather.

So now I stood in the churchyard where my ancestors had most definitely stood nearly two hundred years before.  I looked out over the lands of Longleat House, the estate meeting the horizon in a panoramic view.  The sunlight still leaving long shadows from gravestones and buildings.  You could see for miles up there.  All green, fresh and clean, the sort of scenery that you could dream upon for hours. 

They left this for Wolverhampton, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  They swapped those rolling hills and idyllic country for a region which was grimy, noisy and crammed with people.  "Black by day, red by night," is how the Black Country was described back then.  Slums and tenements were thrown up overnight, the population erupted with the factories, foundries and pits.

I couldn't imagine it.  I couldn't grasp why a young married couple would take their baby into that, leaving an area so pristine as this.  Horningsham blew my mind, because I couldn't fathom the rationale.  Until later, that is, when I looked into the history and found famine here back then. 

They Christened their baby at St John the Baptist Church, then moved north into the grime to ensure that he lived.  It was a plan that worked, because I was there to return to the beginning; the gt-gt-gt-gt grandchild of those who took that decision to thrive.

I'll raise a toast to that!

In Parliament House in Machynlleth, there sits a chair. The legend engraved across its back reads Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd.  In English that translates as The Truth Against the World.  But what does it all mean?

It's all about speaking out the truth, even when that's unpopular with the crowds.  People tell all kinds of lies, or say nothing at all, in order to save their own necks.  Some just do it to fit in or 'not to bring everyone down', justifying it as something good and noble.  No matter which innocent party gets placed in harm's way.

The scale doesn't matter.   Joining in or ignoring the bullying in the playground is just as bad as perjury in the courtroom.  Silence means approval.  Bleating the same lines as everyone else just makes you sheeplike.

Nobody said that The Truth Against the World was easy.  Being the lone voice turns the spotlight onto you, but that also makes you the sole light in the darkness.  It's a dangerous place, if the crowd turns into a mob.  Or you could be the one to turn the crowd.  Sometimes it only takes one person to articulate the fact that the Emperor wears no clothes.  They were all thinking it anyway.

When you speak up, you give others permission to speak up too; or at least you set a precedent of freedom of speech.

When I first encountered Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd, I was told that it was the battle-cry of everyone from Boudicca through King Arthur to Owain Glyndŵr himself. It wasn't.  It's uniquely Celtic, and as Welsh as bards and song, but it's not that old.   It was probably first spoken by Iolo Morganwg in 1792.  But then he WAS a bard and who better to say the words.

It's become the motto of the Gorsedd.  The Bardic Chair pictured was from a meeting of the Eisteddfod in Colwyn Bay.  Iolo Morganwg set his own precedent at the first Gorsedd in 1792, when he laid out his vision for peace.  As the people met, he took out his sword and laid it on the Logan Stone.  Then he ritually and visibly sheathed it again.  

"Y gwir yn erbyn y byd?"  He asked, then added a further question, "a oes heddwch?"  And is there peace?

Speak your mind, there will be peace.  There will be no violence here, if everyone just told it as truly as they found it; and heroes were found whenever and wherever the bullies attacked the weak.  Are words really that powerful?  Remember these were Welsh bards, so they certainly thought so.  The pen is always mightier than the sword.   History is written by the winners, and that is the story that is remembered.  The songs sung cement the reputation.

"Calon wrth galon," came the response to Iolo's question.  Heart to heart; and surely on Valentine's Day, as it is at the time of writing, I need not explain that.  The person sitting on the Bardic Chair asks again, "A oes heddwch?"  And is there peace?

Heddwch needs an extra note.  It's not just peace in an abstract sense.  The 'wch' ending makes it a verb, something to do.  More properly rendered then, it's The Truth Against the World, and will YOU bring peace?  Your heart with their heart, all that love, and will YOU bring peace?

There's one final exchange at the Gorsedd.  "Gwaedd uwch Adwaedd, a oes heddwch?"  Shout above the shouting, and is there peace?  Even if the whole world seeks to drown out your voice, will you go on talking?  Can you be silenced, when peace is on the line?  What will it take to make you bow your head, touch your forelock and repeat the words that you're given to repeat? 

Or like the Welsh bards, will YOU bring peace?  For me, there's no question.  Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd.

It's fair to say that I scared myself.  But some things you don't even think about until you're there, in the surroundings, imagining it all on a deep soul level.

Way back in my distant past, I used to be a tour guide at Old Moseley Hall, near Wolverhampton.  As with anyone in that position, I had to be ready to answer any question put to me from a member of the public.  While this was usually about the property, the English Civil War, King Charles II or the 17th century in general, there was another constant.

"Are there any ghosts at Old Moseley Hall?" 

Unlike many National Trust properties, there wasn't much in the way of paranormal activity at Old Moseley Hall.  Which isn't to say that there weren't stories. 

First you need the background.  After the Battle of Worcester, in 1651, King Charles II had to flee for his life.  The Parliamentarians had won and they were after adding his head beside that of his executed father.  During the celebrated pursuit which followed, Charles hid at the hall for a short while.  From its windows, he could see his wounded soldiers limping back to Scotland along what used to be the main road through Wolverhampton to the north.  It ran right outside.

Story number one is that some people, driving late at night down that lane, have sensed those civil war soldiers still passing by.  But that's a rare tale and only ever heard from a friend of a friend of a friend.  It may have even been inspired by the more famous, and much more attested, similar ghostly occurrences from the battlefields of Culloden or Marston Moor.

The second Old Moseley Hall ghost story has much more going for it.  That involves the top floor attic area; and it's the place where I really gave myself the chills.

Back in the 17th century being Catholic was quite dangerous.  The Whitgreave family of Old Moseley Hall were Catholic.  This was always the most interesting part of my tour, as I revealed the hidden chapel and told what happened to the pewter candlesticks and vessels for the altar.  (Pewter melts in fire. There was always a fire blazing in an antechamber hearth during a service, just in case.)  A priest hole was concealed in the floorboards on a lower level.  The Whitgreave family knew the risks to life and limb, yet they smuggled in priests and took the sacrament anyway.

It's in this area where the presence has been so widely felt.  Various visitors shiver there, or feel slightly unwell, and there are those who have seen the Lady herself.  A fellow tour guide in period costume?  No.  There should have been no-one there at all.  But nevertheless she's occasionally seen, just standing before the altar, or moving towards the antechamber; always on the top floor.

On this particular day, I was living the historian's dream.  For the first (and last) time ever on my watch, no tourists had turned up at all.  I'd done an earlier tour, and I did one later, but for this slot I was free to just wander around the property completely on my own.   There was no-one else there at all.  Even the store and cafe were in different buildings.

You're waiting for me to say that I saw her, aren't you?   I went there.  I stood alone in the Catholic Chapel and soaked in the atmosphere.  I remembered the Lady and asked aloud if she wanted to chat.  No response.  I reached out in spirit, seeing if I could somehow sense her.  She was not there; or if she was, then she didn't want to speak with the likes of me.

After a while, I left my pew and wandered out.  But my mind was full of her and her times.  I wondered who she was (nobody knows) and what terrible times she must have lived through (if indeed she was as 17th century as reports on her outfit would have it).  And my memory threw up the nursery rhyme.

So many nursery rhymes are mnemonics.  They recall a moment in history or a useful tip, to be passed on in a way even toddlers could remember.  Goosey, Goosey, Gander is no exception; and it was very relevant to Old Moseley Hall, with its hidden chapel and recusant worshippers.

The geese were the Roundheads.  Parliamentarians, often of the same Puritanical bent as Oliver Cromwell, or just hired thugs enjoying the impunity of committing religious persecution.  They raided homes which were known, or suspected, to belong to Catholic families.  Their searches took them all over, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber being only part of it.  They were looking for the same pewter accoutrements, priests or chapels which Old Moseley Hall so readily kept.

As for anyone admitting to being Catholic, or merely getting in the way, then think long and hard on that last line:  'took him by his left leg and threw him down the stairs'.

I knew the nursery rhyme and I knew the history.  But until I stepped out of that chapel and stood at the top of the staircase at Old Moseley Hall, I didn't know a thing.  Suddenly the mental imagery had a real world setting upon which to hook itself.  I could see quite clearly the actual terror and the horrific violence that such a sweet and familiar nursery rhyme evoked.

So I spoke it.  Slowly, half in a whisper, I told the nursery rhyme to the air, as I descended that 17th century staircase.  I felt it, heard it, saw it, in my mind's eye, how it could have happened.  And by the time I reached the ground floor, the goosebumps were raised on my arms and my hair was standing on end.

Had I finally drawn an unseen audience in the Lady ghost?  Or simply scared myself?   I suspect the latter, but it all seemed so very real.