Welsh rain is of course very different to other kinds of rain because it is not only perpetual, but imbued with a certain melancholy.

I’ve experienced lots of different kinds of rain in my time, Cornish rain being a particular favourite. There’s a lot to be said for it, we are talking about the same type of rain but a different strand, a bit like how branches of the same tree are still part of the tree from which they sprang. There unique shape and personality is in no doubt, but they are family.

Irish rain has a similar quality to Welsh rain and is part of the same family, but is distinctly Irish (Goidelic rather than Brythonic). Other similar types of rain are Breton, Manx and Scottish, all have their own idiosyncrasies, but all derive from Brythonic, the ancient rain of these islands.

You can tell Welsh rain a mile off because it tastes of Poetry and hiraeth, it soaks you through to your very soul and makes you part of the land, like soil, like hedgerows, like tree’s and like people, like language. It tastes of the place itself, of song, industry, struggle, methodism, suffering, the Mabinogion,a Joey Jones reducer, chapel,choir and Ryan a Ronnie.

The Welsh word for rain is ‘Glaw’ , as a Welshman with very little Welsh, Welsh words are full of myth and otherness, full of mystery, but also something lost and therefore something distant like a place you know exists but have never been to. It almost exists purely in your imagination, until that is, you hear people speaking it and the feeling that experience evokes in a patriotic soul is akin to a fire that is dying being poked and prodded into life. The words stir the embers and the embers warm with a memory that isn’t known, but is larger than any memory you have, because somehow it is inside you. So, the word ‘Glaw’ to me sounded ominous but because of my English, i immediately compared it to ‘Glow’ and thought ‘Welsh rain is like a dark glow’.

And that’s exactly what it is and that’s what Welshness is to me, that dark glow, that breathes and bleeds beneath the surface. It’s not like the ‘glow’ of the sun that warms and wakes, but a deeper emotion, a stirring and just like ‘Glaw’ it soaks and seeps, it has sadness in its soul, but is fierce and strong, dark and biblical, while at the same time having the facility to baptise, to cover us and resurrect us in a belief in ourselves, in what we are, where we come from and where we are going.

We are Welsh and because of this we know what it is to be marginalised, this is why we are inclusive, this is why we welcome folk, why our nationalism is ‘civic’ and humanitarian. We are open to the World as our brethren, but we guard our language as a tool to protect others who know what it is to be dominated by an all encompassing neighbour.

Our Welsh rain is a shower on a lawn in the summer and a soaking from the heavens in the dark at a bus stop, it is a drenching at the Football, a sprinkling on your glasses and a torrential downpour reminding us that for all our technology, for all our engineering and for all our cleverness, we are joined to something greater than ourselves. This is the essence of language, that comes directly from the root of human experience and can not be denied, even when forgotten, or erased, its footprint is in your heart. Whether you speak it or not, the language is yours.

Welsh rain.