title refers to Treweryn, a small village in North Wales which was evacuated and drowned in 1965 in order to supply water for the cities of Liverpool and birmingham. Eight hundred acres of land were drowned.title also refers to alcohol: many people start drinking in depressing and hopeless times. they literally drown themselves.as the story of treweryn can be seen as a metaphor for the decline of welsh culture and spirit in favour of england, this song may be inspired by welsh poet r.s. thomas' poem 'reservoirs', which deals with thomas' anger about this so-called welsh "cultural suicide". [many thanks to sarah morse for this suggestion].this poem is as follows:

There are places in Wales I don't go:
Reservoirs that are the subconcious
Of a people, troubled far down
With gravestones, chapels, villages even;
The serenity of their expression
Revolts me, it is a pose
For strangers, a watercolour's appeal
To the mass, instead of the poem's
Harsher conditions. There are the hills,
Too; gardens gone under the scum
Of the forests; and the smashed faces
Of the farms with the stone trickle
Of their tears down the hills' side.

Where can I go, then, from the smell
Of decay, from the putrefying of a dead
Nation? I have walked the shore
For an hour and seen the English
Scavenging among the remains
Of our culture, covering the sand
Like the tide and, with the roughness
Of the tide, elbowing our language
Into the grave that we have dug for it.

the lyrics of ready for drowning were also inspired by english poet stevie smith's 1957 poem 'Not Waving but Drowning'.this poem is as follows:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

smith's poem 'Not Waving But Drowning' is about unheard cries for help. The speaker feels that his attempts to call attention to his unhappiness are overlooked as mere "larking." All his life, he was "much farther out" than his friends thought, "And not waving but drowning." The speaker wanted help, but his efforts were disregarded as jokes. The speaker's statement that "it was too cold always" show that he feels chronic despair.