Friday, December 12, 2008

December Stories and Songs, Part 12


Sometime in the middle of recording all these stories, I usually get a tired throat (sometimes even a cold, which is why I've learned to begin early in the fall). So each year I've included an audio file of an author reading his own work. The first year, it was Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Christmas in Wales. You can hear it too here. I can actually do a halfway decent job with this, and have done many times over the years, but there's no one like Thomas himself. As far as the book is concerned, there are several editions now, but the one I've always read from is the one pictured, a Christmas present from my friend The Boss in 1964.

The Welsh are known for their singing, and indeed there are songs mentioned in the story, which I could now purchase through digital downloads. But in 2006, I chose instead a Welsh lullaby often used as a Christmas song, Suo Gan. I had a version by an unidentified Welsh male voice choir on a CD called All the Best from Wales, but Chanticleer also sings it. I'm editing this post to include this video from King's College, Cambridge:

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