David Rees Griffiths

David Rees Griffiths (November 6, 1882 – December 17, 1953), also known by his bardic name of Amanwy, was a Welsh poet, and an older brother of politician Jim Griffiths.

Griffiths was born in Betws, Carmarthenshire, where his father was a blacksmith. He was the fifth of ten children. He spent his working life as a coal miner, beginning work in 1894 at the age of eight, after a brief education at the local primary school.

His father's smithy remained a gathering point for local intellectuals and political activists. On January 28, 1908, David was badly injured in a colliery explosion, which killed one of his brothers.

In 1910, Griffiths won his first eisteddfod chair, going on to win a further fifty in local events. In the same year, his wife Margaret died of tuberculosis. Griffiths also had a career as a journalist, writing for the Amman Valley Chronicle and also for BBC Radio. In 1927, he travelled to South Africa along with his son Gwilym, who was suffering from the same disease (from which Gwilym eventually died in 1935). In 1928, Griffiths became caretaker at the local grammar school. In 1951 a film, David, was made, in which he played himself. The role of "Dafydd Rhys as a young man" was played by Ieuan Davies, who later married the youngest of his two daughters Marged Mallt Davies (née Griffiths). The elder daughter was named Menna Ruth Griffiths; she later worked at the same Grammar school and died in 2013.

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