There’s a word in Welsh that cannot be easily translated into English — “hiraeth,” a longing for Wales.
“Some people call it when you feel the dragon’s talons tugging on your heart,” said John Lyle, who grew up in southwest Wales.
Wales is known for producing poets like Dylan Thomas, and for its support of the arts. Like many people working to pursue a career in entertainment, large numbers of Welsh moved to the U.S., and they now add a dimension of diversity to many American industries — not just the arts community. Though the Welsh have been moving to the U.S. since the colonial era, many northeastern communities date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“Wales at the time was just considered kind of like we think of the backwoods of Kentucky or West Virginia in a way, just a bunch of hillbillies living out in the hills of Wales,” said Margo Bruton, whose mother moved with her family from Wales to Pennsylvania around 1920. “They’re speaking a funny language, and they’re not really important, and they’re not really English.”
In an attempt to escape this prejudice, many Welsh coal-mining families like Bruton’s moved to areas in Pennsylvania and Ohio where those skills were transferable. The 2008 census indicated that nearly two million Americans have Welsh descent, and there are currently over 500 members in the New York Welsh Facebook group. According to its executive members, continues to find more and more people of Welsh descent in the city. Though the Welsh have been emigrating to New York for over a century, it took until just a few years ago for the organization to become established and recognized.
“From the minute I got to New York, the first thing I did was find out if there was a Welsh society in the area,” said Ty Francis, who first arrived in New York City about 15 years ago. “It wasn’t active, really. Nothing like the Irish had, or the Scots or the Australians, which is a bit sad.”
Francis, who moved to the city from London after meeting his future wife while on a business trip in the U.S., set about creating a more durable Welsh presence in the area. Working with a few other people, including his friend Marc Walby, he built New York Welsh. On one occasion, he was able to use his position working at the New York Stock Exchange to get Welsh flags hung, and had the first minister of Wales ring the opening bell.
“We wanted to put something in place so that, if you’re moving from Wales and you came here, you had a network of people to support you,” Walby said.
By the time Chloé Wilson, an actress working on Broadway, arrived in Manhattan three years ago, when she was 18, there was a Welsh community here to greet her.
“It’s so nice to just hear a Welsh accent or speak Welsh to someone in the middle of New York,” Wilson said, adding that Wales’ commitment to fostering the arts in public schools laid the groundwork for her career. “It’s just awesome to have that little family here.”
Now that it’s more established, New York Welsh aims to show the rest of the world all that Wales is contributing, whether in life sciences, technology or the arts, instead of only highlighting its historical aspects.
“I wanted to present Wales as a very dynamic, forward-looking country where young people should love to live and set up home,” Walby said.
Walby and Francis, who both began careers in finance in the U.S. many years ago, are devoted to Wales and feel a desire to promote it, but their lives are firmly established in New York because their kids were born in the U.S.
Their goal now is to promote Welsh successes and charities in many realms, and not just create a group that gets together for a rugby match — although they certainly make time for that as well. Until it closed in 2018, their favored place to watch rugby on TV was Sunken Hundred, a Welsh bar in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Illtyd Barrett, who owned the bar, got the ingredients flown in from Wales, according to Francis.
“They made these fries, basically seaweed fries, and they were just the most addictive thing,” Francis said. “Growing up I hated seaweed, but I went to this restaurant and I was addicted. On my way home from work, I’d phone him up and say, ‘Can I pop in and grab some?’”
Sunken Hundred also held events for St. David’s Day, an annual celebration of the patron saint of Wales. In the restaurant’s last year, when it was booked to capacity for the holiday, John Lyle worked tirelessly to book a table for his girlfriend and him after deciding at long last to reconnect with his Welsh roots since moving to New York.
“So Illtyd says, ‘I’m going to make room for you,’” Lyle said. “I got to see my girlfriend fall in love with Wales on St. David’s Day. She got to hear the language and sing the songs. It’s funny, we weren’t actually officially girlfriend-boyfriend at that moment, but that was like a turning point. It was like I just opened up my heart, and there’s Wales for you.”
After that day, Lyle became a more active member of the New York Welsh community and, though he’s glad he initially sought to chart his own path in the city, he’s thankful for the taste of his old home in his new one.
He is not the only one.
“I found that I did have ‘hiraeth,’ but you don’t need to go back [to Wales] to have it,” Francis said. “I found it through New York Welsh, like Marc and all the people who are involved in the organization. You feel like, OK, it’s like a tiny spoonful of Welsh.”
Photo courtesy of Pixabay, licensed for reuse.
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