Merry Blog Christmas

Recipes, banquets, Christmas past ... and a lucky goose. These are some of the issues written about on the National Library’s growing blog. The posts are written by the Library’s staff and offer a quirky, insight into the Library’s vast and interesting collections.

For those who aren’t sure how to prepare and cook the perfect Christmas plum pudding, then why not follow two 18th century recipes taken from a book by Jane Griffith of the Garn Estate in Denbighshire. And after indulging in a little too much pudding and festive wine, Jane also offers a remedy against drunkenness ‘Take before you drink 12 spoonfuls of betony water & after that drink as much as you please.  Try’d.  But make no practis of this sin.’

We’re sure Jane Griffith’s stern warning would have been handy at Tredegar House near Newport ... though, we’re not sure if the hosts and guests would have taken much notice! A letter from Lady Mary Kemeys in London to her husband, dated 7 January 1688 (the day after Twelfth Day), chides him for not writing, but doesn’t want to give him a hard time, “not knowing wheather ye sober or ye ffair company at Tredegar have ended there Christmas yett”. Tongue in cheek perhaps?

All kind of game and fowl were cooked for Christmas, but a heart-warming photo from 1959 from the small village of Pencaenewydd near Pwllheli on the Llŷn peninsula shows a goose that got away! Surely a lucky goose!

The young boy holding the goose seems as happy that Christmas as Eirlys Evans in the 1930s on receiving a china doll ... only for it to break as she ran to show it to the postman.

You can hear Eirlys’s memories of that Christmas and the war in a special 4-minute digital story made by the pupils of Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Bryn Tawe in Welsh with English transcription.

Other blogs in Welsh include a posting on a more effective and lean-thinking way of writing your Christmas cards and beautiful examples of early Welsh-language Christmas cards  If you’re viewing this website with googlechrome you can translate these articles onscreen.

Merry Christmas!


NLW Blog (English)
NLW Blog (Welsh)



For further information:
Siôn Jobbins, NLW Press Office: 01970 632 902  post@llgc.org.uk