Saint David March 1st

Saint David (Welsh: Dewi Sant) was born in Caerfai, southwest Wales, into an aristocratic family. He is said to have been descended from the royal house of Ceredigion and to have founded a monastic community Celtic at Glyn Rhosyn (the Valley of Roses) on the western promontory of Pembrokeshire (Welsh: Sir Benfro) where St Davids Cathedral now stands.

David's fame as a teacher and his asceticism spread among Celtic Christians, and he helped found about 12 monasteries. His foundation at Glyn Rhosyn became an important Christian shrine and the most important centre in Wales. The date of St. David's death is believed to be 1 March 589. His last words to the community of monks were: "Brethren, be steadfast. The yoke which you have taken with one mind, bear to the end; and all that you have seen with me and heard, keep and accomplish."

For centuries, March 1 has been a national holiday. St. David was recognized as the national patron saint in the 12th century at a time of heightened Welsh resistance to the Normans. He was canonized by Pope Callixtus II in 1120. The 17th-century chronicler Samuel Pepys noted how Welsh celebrations in London for St. David's Day would spark wider counter-celebrations among their English neighbors: life-size effigies of Welshmen were symbolically lynched, and by the 18th century, the custom had arisen for confectioners to produce "taffies"—baked gingerbread figurines in the form of a Welshman riding a goat—on St. David's Day.

In the poem Armes Prydein (The Prophecy of Britain), composed in the early to mid-10th century, the anonymous author prophesies that the Cymry (the Welsh people) will unite and join an alliance of compatriots Celts to repel the Anglo-Saxons, under the banner of Saint David: A lluman glân Dewi a ddyrchafant (“And they will raise the pure banner of Dewi”). 

Although there were occasional Welsh uprisings in the Middle Ages, the country was briefly united by various Welsh princes before its conquest at different times, and it arguably had a very brief period of independence during the rise of Owain Glyndŵr, but Wales as a whole was never an independent kingdom for long. Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond, born at Pembroke Castle as a patrilineal descendant of the Tudor dynasty of North Wales, became King Henry VII of England after his victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, to end the Wars of the Roses.

Henry's green and white banner with a red dragon became a rallying point for Welsh patriotism along with the memory of Saint David on his feast day. Henry was the first monarch of the House of Tudor, and during the reign of that dynasty the royal coat of arms included the Welsh dragon, a reference to the monarch's origin. Henry's victory banner was not adopted as the official flag of Wales until 1959. The flag of Saint David, however, a gold cross on a black background, was not part of the symbolism of the House of Tudor.