Welsh

“ Practically every characteristic possessed by the Welsh makes for love of home. Their very shyness drives them through the house door to the fireside, before all that is best can be revealed. Sensitive, full of feeling, gay and melancholy by turns, they are like their own hills, now sombre and now bright. It is temperament that makes the music of the Welsh cottage, its picturesqueness, its romance. Without the Cymric temperament there could have been no Welsh revivals, no invincible Lloyd George, no Eisteddfodau. The delicacy of the woman, who is always the home-maker, inheres in the Celt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the beautiful present, the cry of the sheep upon the mountain-sides, the church bells ringing from their little bell-cots and sounding sweetly in valleys and on highland meadows, the very flowers of the roadsides,—foxglove, bluebell, heather,—that keep one lingering in Wales or draw one back to that land again. There are little churches of twelfth-century foundation, gray or washed white,—their golden glowing saffron wash of long ago unrenewed by the Welsh of to-day. ”

“ As for the talk, the bridge over the Dee is the place to hear Welsh. That favourite lounging-place becomes on market-days as noisy as a parrot-house with the excited talk of Welshmen black-haired and Welshmen red. Who can shout like a Welshman, and who but a Taffy or Frenchman works himself up into such gesticulating rages on such trivial occasions? Feather-headed pride, conceit, insincerity, treachery, fickle enthusiasms, religiosity, falsehood, and superstition, have always characterised the Welsh in the pages of history ”

“ We pass then, very gradually, from the history of a privileged class, speaking literary Welsh, with a literature famous for the wealth of its imagination and the artistic beauty of its form—we pass on to the history of a peasantry, rude and ignorant at first, retaining the servile traits of centuries of subjection, but gradually becoming self-reliant, prosperous, and thoughtful.
The real history of a nation is shown by its literature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Welsh are truly a people, in spite of their ancient subjugation, and deserve to be treated as such, all the more for their loyalty to the British Crown, and for the remarkable partiality which they seem to entertain towards the Prince of Wales, whose dignity I discovered to be something more, after all, than a mere fiction of heraldry. ”

“ The music is almost invariably good, and the effect of the soft strains of melodiously-warbled Welsh coming dreamily to one’s ears through the darkness and distance on a winter morning is sweet and soothing to most ears. Sometimes small boys will pipe their carols through the key-holes. ”

“ Cease to do evil, learn to do good, was the upshot of its exhortations to the Welsh; by evil, the Times understanding all things Celtic, and by good, all things English. ‘The Welsh language is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English have excluded, and even now exclude the Welsh people from the civilisation of their English neighbours. An Eisteddfod is one of the most mischievous and selfish pieces of sentimentalism which could possibly be perpetrated. It is simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of civilisation and prosperity. ”

“ I wonder what has stirred up the Welsh now, knowing as they do that, although they may gain successes at first, it always ends in the harrying of their lands, and the burning of their castles and villages. They have been quiet for some years. But they are always like a swarm of bees. ”

“ Fits of longing for wandering come over the Welsh periodically, as they came over the Danes—caused by scarcity of food and density of population, or by a sense of oppression and a yearning for freedom. An empty stomach sometimes, and sometimes a fiery imagination, sent a crowd of adventurers to new lands. And it is thus that every living nation is ever renewing its youth. ”

“ The Welsh, too, share, it seems to me, with their Saxon invaders, an inaptitude for show and spectacle. Show and spectacle are better managed by the Latin race and those whom it has moulded; the Welsh, like us, are a little awkward and resourceless in the organisation of a festival. The presiding genius of the mystic circle, in our hideous nineteenth-century costume, relieved only by a green scarf, the wind drowning his voice and the dust powdering his whiskers, looked thoroughly wretched ”

“ The Welsh were greatly exasperated at the news, laying the death of their favourite most naturally at Henry’s door, and as the Marcher barons had been encouraged of late in their aggressions and tyrannies by the decline of Welsh strength, the time seemed ripe for another general rising. Dafydd now came out as a warrior and a patriot leader, and Wales rallied to his standard. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Any Englishman's life was safe anywhere, and Wales became one of the most easily governed countries in all the wonderful British Empire.
And in the great world-war, that even children, who read these stories, can remember, Wales, the Land of the Free, the Home of Deathless Democracy, led all the British Isles, colonies, islands, or coaling stations around the wide world, in loyalty, valor and sacrifice. And the handsome son of the King, George, the Prince of Wales, led the descendants of Welsh archers, now called the Fusileers. ”

“ There is much mire in the street; immense swine lie in the mire, who turn up their snouts at you as you pass. Women in Welsh hats stand in the mire, along with men without any hats at all, but with short pipes in their mouths. They are talking together; as you pass, however, they hold their tongues, the women leering contemptuously at you, the men glaring sullenly at you, and causing tobacco-smoke to curl in your face. On your taking off your hat, however, and inquiring the way to the Monachlog, everybody is civil enough, and twenty voices tell you the way to the monastery. ”

“ The Welsh pride themselves on hanging on. They are a nation that has never been whipped. Every people has its characteristics. “You can't beat the Irish” is one slogan, “You can't kill a Swede” is another, and “You can't crowd out a Welshman” is a motto among the mill people.
I didn't want to leave Wales when my parents were emigrating. Though I was not quite eight years old I decided I would let them go without me. The last act of my mother was to reach under the bed, take hold of my heels and drag me out of the house feet first. ”

“ The lion of England, the harp of Ireland, the thistle of Scotland, and the Red Dragon of Wales represent the four peoples in the British Isles, each with its own speech, traditions, and emblems; yet all in unity and in loyalty, none excelling the Welsh, whose symbol is the Red Dragon. In classic phrase, we talk of Albion, Scotia, Cymry, and Hibernia. ”

“ But geography irrevocably settled the destiny of Wales, as it eventually did that of Scotland. If the conditions under which Wales came into partnership were different and the date earlier, that, again, was partly due to its propinquity to the heart of England. Yet with all these centuries of close affinity to England, the Welsh in many respects—I had almost said in most—have preserved their nationality more successfully than the Celts of either Ireland or the North, and in so doing have lost nothing of such benefits as modern civilisation brings. ”

“ The sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instrument of the practical, political, social life of Wales, the better; the better for England, the better for Wales itself. Traders and tourists do excellent service by pushing the English wedge farther and farther into the heart of the principality; Ministers of Education, by hammering it harder and harder into the elementary schools. Nor, perhaps, can one have much sympathy with the literary cultivation of Welsh as an instrument of living literature ”

“ II THE MIGHTY MONSTER AFANG
After the Cymric folk, that is, the people we call Welsh, had come up from Cornwall into their new land, they began to cut down the trees, to build towns, and to have fields and gardens. Soon they made the landscape smile with pleasant homes, rich farms and playing children.
They trained vines and made flowers grow. The young folks made pets of the wild animals' cubs, which their fathers and big brothers brought home from hunting. Old men took rushes and reeds and wove them into cages for song birds to live in. ”

“ Dee, Usk, and Wye, with their boisterous tributaries that crossed the English line of march, roared bank-high, and buried all trace of the fords beneath volumes of brown tumbling water, while bridges, homesteads, and such flocks as the Welsh had not driven westward for safety were carried downwards to the sea. In these days of rapid travel it seems incredible that so overwhelming and, for the times, well-found a host, could be beaten in less than a fortnight without striking a blow. It is an object-lesson in medieval warfare worth taking to heart and remembering. ”

“ 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. ”

“ XII GIANT TOM AND GIANT BLUBB
Everyone who has read anything of Welsh history—though not of the sort that is written by English folks—knows also that Cornwall is, in soul, a part of Wales. Before the Romans, first, and the Saxons, next, invaded Britain, the Cymric people lived all over the island, south of Scotland.
They were the British people, and nobody ever heard the German name, "Wales," which means a foreign land; or the word "Welsh," which refers to foreigners, until men who were themselves outsiders came into Britain. ”

“ For the Welsh, who are neither worn out by laborious burdens, nor molested by the exactions of their lords, are ever prompt to avenge an injury. Hence arise their distinguished bravery in the defence of their country; hence their readiness to take up arms and to rebel. Nothing so much excites, encourages, and invites the hearts of men to probity as the cheerfulness of liberty ”

“ After the departure of the Romans, the Welsh tribes, less enervated probably than their more Romanised fellow-countrymen to the east, found in the Scots of Ireland rather than the Picts of the North their deadliest foes. It was against these western rovers that the indigenous natives of what for brevity’s sake we are calling Wales, relearnt in the fifth century the art of war, and the traces of their conflicts are strewn thick along the regions that face the Irish Sea. ”

“ The Welsh have a proverb: "Better is cookery than kingship"; and she being skilled with the oven, baked him the bread.
The next morning he was again at the lake. The cold ripples turned to gold and then to silver, and the cloud left the mountain; and he saw the wind making grey O's and V's on the water, until it was almost evening, and behind him the oak trees in the Sawdde valley gleamed where his homeward way would be, when he saw several cows walking on the water, and then the girl moving towards him. ”

“ Aside from their scientific interest, there is a charm about many of the quaint customs of the Welsh, which speaks eloquently to most hearts. They are the offspring of ignorance, true, but they touch the ‘good old times’ of the poet and the romancer, when the conditions of life were less harsh than now. So we love to think. As a matter of scientific truth, this idea is itself, alas! but a superstition. This world has probably never been so fair a place to live in, life never so free from harsh conditions, as now; and as time goes on, there can be no doubt the improving process will continue. ”