Welsh language

“ No writer before or after him has used the Welsh language with such force and skill, and he will ever remain the stylist whom all Welsh writers will strive to imitate. The magic of his work has endowed the stately idiom of Gwynedd with such glamour that it has now become the standard idiom of Welsh prose. ”

“ Why, of course, when Welsh is the living spoken language of three-fourths of the whole district to be examined, and when English is essentially a foreign language, imperfectly understood in those portions,—in some parts, indeed, hardly at all known,—the very least of the qualifications that we should suppose a commissioner or school inspector ought to possess, would be a good knowledge of the Welsh language. ”

“ When, however, we come to consider that one of the leading causes of the peculiarities exhibited by the Welsh, is the isolation resulting from their language, few distinctive points remain in their social economy which admit of being copied with advantage by other communities. Influences which are rapidly changing the character of the English, and the better educated classes in these parts, exercise but a faint effect upon the primitive Welsh; because they are, by their language, shut out from the rest of the world. ”

“ We are not intending to devote any considerable space to a vindication of the Welsh language, but, when we speak of it with reference to the effects it produces as the vehicle of Oratory, it is necessary to remark that, so far from being,—as many have supposed who have only looked at it in its strange combination of letters on a page, perhaps unable to read it, and never having heard it spoken,—so far from being harsh and rugged, coarse or guttural, it probably yields to no language in delicious softness, in melting sweetness ”

“ The multiplication of small States is now, no doubt, an evil; but the same cannot be said with confidence about the Middle Ages. The {99} assertion of writers, unable themselves to read a line of Welsh, that the culture of England in the latter half of the thirteenth century was superior to that of Wales is certainly untrue. Indeed the direct contrary is the fact. Welsh literature, both prose and poetry, was far ahead of that of England; and the Welsh language had attained a decidedly higher stage of development. ”

“ In the first place, as long as the Welsh language cannot reckon, among its literary treasures, the principal portion of the good elementary books of instruction which have long been employed in England, and are still issuing from the English press, it is obviously impossible to place the education of the Welsh on the same level as that of their Saxon neighbours. Not only should the best English books be translated into Welsh—we mean for the instruction and amusement of the middle and lower classes,—but translations might be made most advantageously from other tongues ”

“ No one who knows much about the history of any language will think it probable that Welsh has remained unchanged for some eighteen hundred years. And when I assert that the changes have been as great as those which have transformed Latin into French, and that therefore the Welsh dictionary, in the hands of a person not specially trained to use it, is worthless as a key to the interpretation of British names of the first or second century, it will perhaps be acknowledged that the statement is not intrinsically incredible. ”

“ Endurance of the Welsh language. England has for ages spoken a single tongue, her own ancient speech, modified by the coming of the conquerors of eight hundred years ago. But in Wales the speech of her conquerors, the speech of England, is still only making its way, slowly and fitfully, against the abiding resistance of that stubborn British tongue which has survived three conquests. ”

“ It is not our intention to go into any discussion upon the political bearings of this state of things: we will only observe, that the gentry and clergy of Wales having mainly carried on their studies in the English language, and having been anxious to do so as a mark of distinction from their humbler neighbours, not only has the Welsh language remained almost stationary since the time of the conquest, but the national mind, the intelligence of the common people, has never kept pace with that of England. ”

“ Though their land has been many times invaded, the Welsh have never been conquered. Powerful tribes, like the Romans, Saxons and Normans, have tried to overwhelm them. Even when English and German kings attempted to crush their spirit and blot out their language and literature, the Welsh resisted and won victory.
Among the bullies that tried force, instead of justice, and played the slave-driver, rather than the Good Samaritan's way, were the Normans. These brutal fellows, when they thought that they had overrun Wales with their armies, began to build strong castles all over the country. ”

“ It would hardly be reasonable to expect from the Welsh exactly the same kind of success in life which we often find in English workmen; the aims and ideals of the two races are so distinct, and it must be frankly confessed the advantage is not always on the side of the Englishman. The Welsh peasants, living among their own romantic hills and valleys, speaking their own soft and exquisite language, treasuring their own plaintive and melodious poetry, have grown up with an intense love for beauty and the beautiful closely intwined into the very warp and woof of their inmost natures. ”

“ No people on earth combine so handsomely loyal freedom and the larger patriotism, or hold in purer loyalty to the union of hearts and hands in the British Empire, which the sovereign represents, as do the Welsh.
The Welsh are the oldest of the British peoples. They preserve the language of the Druids, bards, and chiefs, of primeval ages which go back and far beyond any royal line in Europe, while most of their fairy tales are pre-ancient and beyond the dating.
Why the Cymric dragon is red, is thus told, from times beyond human record. ”

“ The two languages are taught in the schools, and as living languages. It is clear, on the one hand, that every one should learn English, the language of the Empire and of commerce. It is also clear that, on account of its own beauty as well as that of the great literature it enshrines, Welsh should be taught in every school throughout Wales. ”

“ It is because Welsh cherish their traditions, harps, music, language and noble inheritances, with which they feed their souls, that they lead the four nations of the British Isles in the nobler virtues, that keep a nation alive, as well as in the sweet humanities of the Red Cross and in generous hospitality to the refugee Belgian. True to his motto, "I serve," the Prince of Wales who came to see us in 1919—as did his grandfather, whom the story-teller saw when he visited our Independence Hall in 1860—loved to be the servant of his people. ”

“ The supposition that the Welsh language is made up of consonants is more especially singular from the fact that it possesses, says a writer in the Quarterly Review, what perhaps no other nation has,—a poem of eight lines in which there is not a single consonant. These verses are very old, dating from the seventeenth century;—of course the reader will remember that the Welsh language has seven vowels, both w and y being considered and sounded as such. ”

“ But they should wait till the dawn breaks, at any rate, that they may not be in danger, through any mistake, of shooting at their friends.”
The Welsh language is, as we suppose our readers well know, especially rich in compact, proverbial, axiomatic expressions. The Welsh triads are an illustration of this. The same power often appears in the pulpit. The latter, and more recent, languages are unfavourable to the expression of proverbs. Williams we should suppose to have been one of the most favourable exemplifications of this power. ”

“ But if the Welsh language, with "its variety, copiousness, and even harmony, to be equalled by few, perhaps excelled by none," has no instance of six consonants in succession, it has one of six vowels in succession, Gwaewawr, every one of which requires, according to the peculiarity of its pronunciation, a separate inflection of the voice. ”

“ The most striking characteristic of the Wales of to-day is its unity—self-conscious and self-reliant. The presence of this unity is felt by all, though it may be explained in different ways. It cannot be explained by race; for the population of the west midlands and the north of England, possibly of the whole of it, have been made up of the same elements. It cannot be explained by language—nearly one half of the Welsh people speak no Welsh. ”

“ There was strong probability, as a Welsh traveller in 1682 expressed it, of Welsh being “English’d out of Wales, as Latin was barbarously Goth’d out of Italy.” From the time of the Great Rebellion, however, the condition of the Welsh language began to improve, and it is possible greatly to overrate the difficulties with which Johnson met in coming to know the life of the people. Impatiently he had exclaimed, “Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my subject of enquiry ”

“ A romantic literature, which was destined to leaven the fancy of western Europe, had grown up among this wild people and found an admirable means of utterance in its tongue. The Welsh language was as real a developement of the old Celtic language heard by Cæsar as the Romance tongues are developements of Cæsar's Latin, but at a far earlier date than any other language of modern Europe it had attained to definite structure and to settled literary form. No other mediæval literature shows at its outset the same elaborate and completed organization as that of the Welsh. ”

“ Never has Welsh so flourished as a literary language as at present. At least nineteen weekly Welsh papers are published in Wales, eighteen monthlies, and six quarterlies; in addition to which Liverpool has its own Welsh weekly, the United States one, and Patagonia one. The output of Welsh books is not very large, but it cannot be computed at much less than a hundred in the course of every year. And Welsh is not only widely read, it is also widely spoken. In North Wales, and in at least two counties in the South it is still the language of the home, of the playground, and of public worship. ”

“ Of course the language had a great deal to do with this preaching power, we do not mean generally, but particularly; on all hands the Welsh is acknowledged to be a wonderful language. A Welshman will tell you that there is no language like it on the face of the earth, but that is a testimony borne by many scholars who are not Welshmen; perhaps there is no other language which so instantly conveys a meaning and at the same time touches emotion to the quick. ”

“ The Welsh language is a member of the Keltic branch of the Aryan (also called the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic) family of languages.
The languages of this great family are classified as follows, names of branches and groups being printed in spaced type:
(1) Indian, comprising (a) Sanskrit; (b) Prākrit dialects, from which are descended numerous modern languages in India.
(2) Iranian: (a) Avestic (East Iranian, also called Zend or Old Bactrian) ; (b) Old Persian (West Iranian) , later Pehlevi; (c) Modern Persian. ”

“ When the Welsh muse emerges again from the darkness of this interval she is no longer of the North; the new poets are drawn from the Welshmen of the South, a land which had practically ceased to be a part of an independent Wales shortly after the Norman conquest of England. We find, too, that the poetry which poured forth from the Welsh bards of the south is of an altogether different type, it is modern in all its essentials, in diction, in language, and, comparatively speaking, in sentiment. ”

“ It is a speaking and living language, a language without any shallows, a language which seems to compel the necessity of thought before using it. Our language is fast becoming serviceable for all that large part of the human family who speak without thinking. To this state the Welsh can never come. That unaccommodating tongue only moves with a soul behind it.
Thus, it is not the first reason, but it is not unimportant to remember, that, until very recently, the pulpit in Wales has been the only means of popular excitement, instruction, or even of entertainment ”

“ One of the main difficulties in the way of education in Wales, if not the principal difficulty of all, results from the circumstance that the language of the principality is not that of the rest of the kingdom. To understand this difficulty fully, it must be remembered that the Welsh belong to a race of men essentially and altogether distinct from those that inhabit the lands eastward of Offa's dyke ”

“ He also took care to require a knowledge of the Welsh language from the clergy whom he instituted, though he was always of opinion that the want of Welsh services had been greatly exaggerated. All the business of life, he said, was conducted in English, and the natural inference was that the vast majority of the Welsh people had no difficulty in understanding an English service. ”

“ I believe the extirpation of Welsh, as a spoken language, would pioneer the way to knowledge, civilization, and religion here, of which last blessing there is a grievous lack, judging from the morals of the people. ”

“ Welsh is the only language spoken, for the bi-lingual Welshman is left behind when crossing the Menai. Anglesey is the great 320stronghold of the Welsh language, and in many of its villages it is impossible to find a single person who understands a word of English. ”