Hwntws or Gogs (part One)

If the Welsh dialect of St Harmon and Cwmteuddwr was similar to that of neighbouring Montgomeryshire and the lost dialects of places like Glasbury and Boughrood were similar to close at hand Breconshire parishes such as Talgarth, then somewhere within Radnorshire, south must have met with north.

As far as I know the dialectologists never managed to get hold of a speaker of Radnorian Welsh from the Rhayader area, even though some, doubtless as rare and unnoticed as pine martens, must have lived on well into the 20C. Fat chance of them interviewing folk who lived in parishes where Welsh had disappeared by the 19C then.

But hang on, riding to the rescue is Richard Suggett, the fellow who authored that splendid book on Radnorshire houses. Rotting away in the archives he discovered reports of slander cases where the words of long dead Radnorians come back to life. An example from Gladestry in 1726 "Di gyrn di dorrws y twlle sydd in di hatt di" - "Your horns tore the holes that are in your hat." Now the interesting thing here is the use of the verb ending ws rather than odd - dorrws not dorrodd - this is a feature of the dialects of South East Wales. The map shows the use of these two endings in Radnorshire slander cases from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries - info from here.

From the look of things Elfael - at least the hundred of Painscastle and maybe Colwyn as well - seems more influenced by Gwenhwyseg (Gwentian Welsh) than do Maelienydd and Gwerthrynion - the hundreds of Knighton, Cefnllys and Rhayader.