We'll Keep A Welcome
also titled: We'll Keep A Welcome On The Hillsides

Music written by Mai Jones. Lyrics by Lyn Joshua and James Harper.

Released 1999 on the various artists album Land Of My Fathers together with The Black Mountain Male Chorus and the Buy As You View Cory Band.
Shirley Bassey had already performed the song publicly 1986 in the Des O'Connor's Christmas Show together with Des and Tom Jones. In connection to the album she has again performed it together with Bryn Terfel and Michael Ball during the Rugby World Cup 1999 closing ceremony (November 6th) before the final game. Unlike World In Union this song had been performed live in front of thousands in the stadion and on the TV screens.

The album has the following note about this song:

Wales is known world-wide as being "The Land Of Song", and this famous Welsh song (Jones, Joshua, Harper) epitomises Wales as a country which will always be singing and which will always be welcoming. The word hiraeth is used in the third verse - a word which is almost impossible to translate, but is frequently used in Welsh as a means of describing the longing that one would feel when away from Wales for any length of time.

The song had originally been published in Cardiff in 1943. It became famous after singer and actor Harry Secombe performed it on his TV programme Highway about 1949.

Lyrics:

Far away a voice is calling
Bells of memory chime
Come home again,come home again
They call through the oceans of time

We'll keep a welcome in the hillside
We'll keep a welcome in the Vales
This land you knew will still be singing
When you come home again to Wales

This land of song will keep a welcome
And with a love that never fails
We'll kiss away each hour of hiraeth
When you come home again to Wales

The choir alone:
We'll keep a welcome in the hillside
We'll keep a welcome in the Vales
This land you knew will still be singing
When you come home again to Wales

Shirley Bassey together with the choir:
This land of song will keep a welcome
And with a love that never fails
We'll kiss away each hour of hiraeth
When you come home again to Wales

We'll kiss away each hour of hiraeth
When you come home again to Wales
(transcribed by Patrick <PJD55@bigpond.com>)