Cwcw Glamai, cosyn dimai
Cwcw’r ha, cosyn da

Translation: Mayday cuckoo, cheap cheese / Summer’s cuckoo, rich cheese


So sang men and women on the mountain pastures of north Wales in the mid-18th century as they turned the summer’s luxuriant growth into storable food.

“During summer, the men pass their time either in harvest work or in tending their herds, the women in milking or making butter and cheese. For their own uses, they milk both ewes and goats, and make cheese of the milk for their own consumption,” writes Thomas Pennant, an 18th-century Flintshire ...

 

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