Welsh in Nantmel Parish

The more one looks at the rapidity of language shift in Radnorshire, the more one is reminded of Ireland. Research there shows that it took around 50 years for Irish districts to move from a situation where 100% of children grew up as Irish speakers to one where the figure had fallen to zero, and perhaps a 100 years for the language to disappear altogether.

Something similar certainly seems to have happened in the large Radnorshire parish of Nantmel. Writing around 1818 Jonathan Willaims remarked that the inhabitants spoke both Welsh and English but that "the use of the aboriginal tongue is rapidly declining." Similarly a letter writer spoke, no doubt exaggeratedly, of a place between Llandrindod and Rhayader where there was no English at the start of a particular cleric's ministry but no Welsh by 1845. According to Ffransis Payne, Dolau Baptist chapel ceased it's Welsh services around 1840 and the denomination's historian John Jones writing in 1895 reported that the majority of chapel goers in Nantmel and Newbridge-on-Wye spoke Welsh in his youth but that now it was "not understood in these places except by a few aged people."

There is some census evidence for this rapid abandonment of the Nantmelians' native tongue. If we look at the languages spoken by folk born and still living in Nantmel parish at the time of the 1891 Census, we find 100% of those aged over 80 speaking both Welsh and English - the sample is very low however. For those in their 70s the figure declines to 21%, while for those in their 60s just 7% and less than 3% for those in their 50s. There is only one person under the age of 50 and born in the parish who can speak Welsh, Gertrude Price, the 16 year old daughter of the Breconshire born Baptist minister at Dolau chapel.

These figures suggest that the anecdotal evidence is correct, parents began speaking English to their children in the first decade or so of the nineteenth century and by the middle of the century the language had all but disappeared from the hearths of the parish. Something similar must surely have happened in parishes further east a little earlier and which subsequently remain untraceable in the 1891 census.

Why did this rapid shift happen? Let us turn to Ireland and the opinion of one John Moylan of Rathkeale who lived through the language shift in West Limerick. He cited a growing public feeling that Irish was a dying language, a mark of a degraded people who were not "decent."

A farmer, Stephen Evans, who died in 1914, might be considered the last Nantmel native to speak the traditional Radnorian Welsh learnt in Nantmel at his mother's knee, although, no doubt, one or two others who had moved away from the parish may have lived on later than this.

Jumbo in Bwgey Wonderland

It's 1848 and a bored elephant goes on the rampage in downtown Rhaeadr Gwy.

Sarah Chandler

Sarah Chandler was the most celebrated of the 65 Radnorians, including 9 women, transported to Australia between 1788 and 1852. In 1814 Chandler was found guilty of altering three Kington Bank one pound notes and sentenced to death, Judge George Hardinge being unmoved by the fact that the 37 year old forger was pregnant and had seven children under the age of ten - Hardinge of course had also sentenced poor Mary Morgan to the gallows.

Chandler's plight excited a good deal of sympathy in Radnorshire. She was described as "a very jolly good looking woman" and her husband Thomas Chandler of Dolley, Presteigne was said to have kept her short of money and to have treated her cruelly. The hangman was cheated however when Chandler's brothers managed to effect her escape from Presteigne jail in August 1814, she was not recaptured until she was discovered in Birmingham more than two years later. Petitions on Sarah's behalf were subsequently received from many leading citizens, including the High Sheriff and the owners of the Kington Bank. Hardinge's recommendation that she should nonetheless hang was overturned and in 1817 she sailed for New South Wales to commence a life sentence.

All this is well known, but an article in the Northern Star of 1845 provides some further interesting information on Sarah Chandler's background. It seems that Sarah was a member of a notorious family from Bugeildy called Bowen. A family whom the Star claimed lived mainly by plunder and were a terror to the neighbourhood. The article was prompted by the fact that five members of the clan languished at that time in Presteigne jail for various offences. The exact relationships are a little confused but seem to include Sarah's brothers Francis and William and William's son William Bowen Jones held for theft, Francis' son Francis jnr and his wife Ann were also being held for transportation for sheep stealing. A few months before Sarah's son Richard Chandler and her 16 year old nephew Morgan Bowen had been transported for shearing a flock of sheep and selling the fleeces in Newtown. Another of Sarah's sons, Peter, had already been transported in 1824.

Who were these Bowens? A Morgan Bowen of Bugeildy had been prosecuted for attempting to ravish a certain Anne Evans in 1775. Bowen was of gentry status, as was Sarah Chandler's mean-spirited husband. Perhaps they belonged to that class of people called the manwyr by sixteenth century bards in Radnorshire, families of the old bonheddig or noble class who had fallen on hard times after the Acts of Union and who were often a source of dissatisfaction and rebellion.

I don't know what happened to Sarah in Australia. Her brother Francis died in Melbourne in 1853, his wife surviving until 1876. Young Morgan the shearer lived on until 1902.

Billy Griffiths

Billy Griffiths from Llwynypia never rose above the rank of private in the International Brigade's British Battalion, yet he was a private who commanders deferred to and whose work during the Spanish Civil War was singled out for praise by the Comintern. Griffiths' status was not gained through any stirring military exploit. Although his physical courage could never be doubted, he rarely carried a weapon. No, Griffiths was a political commissar, his standing derived from his secret position within the Communist party and the shadowy presence of Stalin's NKVD.

The present-day left in Wales glorifies the International Brigaders, indeed they seem to think far more of the 150 or so Welshmen who fought for Stalin in Spain than for the tens of thousands of their fellow countrymen and women who fought for democracy against fascism. I doubt if our Cardiff Bay leftists have even heard of the Yezhovshchina but if history had turned out differently then Billy Griffiths possessed all the attributes to be a Welsh Beria or Yagoda.

A zealous and fanatical Leninist, Griffiths was quite prepared to mark the cards of his fellow countrymen with the dreaded accusation of Trotskyism - a certain death sentence. Around 50% of his comrades were branded as weak or bad, at a time when countless thousands were being shot in Russia for far less. As it happened shooting Brigaders was not seen as being a good move at the time and at most only five Welshmen received a bullet in the back of the skull from their comrades. One was Griffiths' butty Alec Cummings, who was probably suffering from shell-shock. Cummings had previously survived a court-martial where his old pal had pressed for the death sentence.

Unlike those AMs who worship at the altar of Thirties Spain, Griffiths was a serious revolutionary. He is one of the more interesting characters to have come out of twentieth century Wales. As things are he is largely forgotten and even his memoirs remain unpublished. His story deserves to be better known, but that would involve facing up to some uncomfortable truths, so don't hold your breath.

A Builth Writer

Never mind the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, Thomas Prichard, the first Welsh novelist was born in the lively Wyeside town of Builth around 1790. As the correction to the DWB points out, Prichard left Builth in 1839, presumably to return to life as a travelling actor. His wife Naomi and her five small children stayed on in the town where she found employment as a milliner. In 1848 Naomi died, and by the time of the 1851 census, his eldest daughter Tydvil is found living in Broad Street, supporting her sisters and brother by selling books. Edward Poole, a graduate of Cambridge University and the publisher of Prichard's most well known work The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shôn Catti is living next door, in 1841 he had been living with Prichard's wife. One wonders if he was related to Edwin Poole, the founder of the Brecon and Radnor Express.

No doubt selling books proved unsuccessful and Tydvil and her siblings had moved to Cardiff by 1861, where she worked, like her mother, as a milliner. Meanwhile Prichard continued to write on Welsh topics, for example his Heroines of Welsh History, which you can read here. Interestly Prichard's daughters all had names found in the book: Tydvil Nest, Senena (the mother of Prince Llywelyn), Mevanwy (the earliest use of the name in Wales) and Ellen.

By 1861 Prichard had lost his nose in a duel and was living as a recluse in the Swansea slum of World's End. Tormented by gangs of youths, a public subscription by the town's Cambrian newspaper raised enough money to clean Prichard's house and provide him with food and coal. Within five weeks he had fallen into his new fire and burned to death. His daughter Tydvil died in 1869, while Senena Coles lived on in Clare Road, Cardiff, finally passing away at the age of 80 in 1917.

Tawny Reed, Part 2

What a You Tube treat! Cardiffian soul sister Tawny Reed pulls some energetic and frankly erotic moves infront of a roomful of libidinous teens, OK maybe not the guy in the Fair Island sweater. You could think that she was living dangerously but hey this was the Sixties those fellows were probably too shy to even ask her for a dance.

Listen to another track from the Adamsdown aretha here.

Flummery - A Recipe

Flummery was a mainstay of the Nineteenth Century Radnorians diet. It should not be confused with the arty-farty fruit puddings that masquerade under the name today. Here's a recipe provided by Alfred Wallace, the chap who came up with Darwin's theory of natural selection and who worked a good deal in Radnorshire:

"Another delicacy we first became acquainted with here was the true Welsh flummery, called here sucan blawd (steeped meal), in other places Llumruwd (sour sediment), whence our English word "flummery." It is formed of the husks of the oatmeal roughly sifted out, soaked in water till it becomes sour, then strained and boiled, when it forms a pale brown sub-gelatinous mass, usually eaten with abundance of new milk. It is a very delicious and very nourishing food, and frequently forms the supper in farmhouses. Most people get very fond of it, and there is no dish known to English cookery that is at all like it."

Miss Penn-Hughes

In the 50 years up to and including the First World War South Wales was the Persian Gulf of its day. Great fortunes were made in and around the coal, steel and tinplate industries of the valleys and it was hardly surprising when some of the heirs to this wealth decided to spend it on the racing tracks of 1930s Europe.

Welsh born toffs such as Charley Martin, Tim Rose-Richards, the Eccles brothers, Dudley Folland, Owen Saunders Davies, Clifford Penn-Hughes, as well as plausible rogues such as Donald Marendaz and Philip Turner were amongst the leading racers at Brooklands and beyond.

The pre-war period was also a time when women drivers often competed on equal terms with the men, Kay Petre and Gwenda Stewart for example were amongst the sixteen drivers who lapped Brooklands at more than 130mph. So surely there must have been plenty of Welsh born lasses amongst the fast ladies of the period. Well actually no ...... one I did find was 21 year old Elizabeth Penn-Hughes (don't worry that's her brother pictured) who co-drove Clifford's Frazer-Nash in the 1930 Double Twelve Hour race at Brooklands. A hairy moment later in the year at Shelsey Walsh seems to have ended her short-lived career behind the wheel.

Were there any more Welsh born girl racers on the pre-war tracks?

Welsh in Presteigne

How much Welsh was spoken in Presteigne in 1670, at the time of the Hearth Tax Return? Mr Howse thought that the language disappeared from the streets of the town soon after it became the administrative centre of the new county of Radnorshire in 1542. It is certainly the place in the county most likely to be anglicised. The town was close to historically English speaking parishes* and the 1670 return shows that more than half the population had English surnames. The English were particulary strong amongst the middle class:

Social Class based on Surnames and Hearths

Hearths	% of total	% Welsh	% English
+ 5 Hearths	5.5	57	43
4-5 Hearths	16.5	43	57
2-3 Hearths	19.7	32	68
1 Hearth Charged	13.4	41	59
1 Hearth Uncharged	44.9	59	41
Total population		49	51

Mr Howse offers no evidence for his view and admits that sixteenth century wills from the town are "full of Welsh names, with their aps to the second and third generation back." Likewise the town's other historian Mr Parker notes that even in 1620 some 18% of Presteigne landowners were still using the patronymic system rather than surnames.

Even as late as 1675 there is a record of forty of "the poorest Welsh children" of the town being put to school to learn English. This would be around a third of the school age population and interestingly around a third of the town's population in the Hearth tax were poor and with Welsh surnames.

By 1800 the Welsh language was certainly gone from Presteigne, this would suggest that it finally disappeared from the lips of townsfolk during the first half of the eighteenth century, maybe 200 years after the demise accorded it by Mr Howse.

* Elsewhere along the border many parishes in England continued to be Welsh speaking long after the border between Wales and England was drawn in 1536, in Herefordshire south of the Wye for example or in the Oswestry district. The parishes east of Presteigne were nearly all English speaking and so Presteigne was truly a border town.

Book of the Month

I'm currently re-reading Keith Parker's Radnorshire Civil War book. It was originally published in 2000, by the excellent Logaston Press, but is still on sale in local bookshops.

This is a proper history book, lucidly written with a masterful command of primary sources. It essentially covers the period 1640 to 1660 - the dawn of the modern age as far as Radnorshire is concerned, with the bard Sion Cain's elegy for James Phillips of Llanddewi in 1633 perhaps marking the final death knell of the traditional society of the medieval period.

There is a great deal of interest here, the fact that 22% of Radnorians of military age were pressed into the King's service for example, although doubtless a good many had the sense to desert at the earliest opportunity. Mr Parker concedes the likelihood that Charles Price of Pilleth, the local MP and the major figure in Radnorshire military and political life of the day, was not killed in a duel on the streets of Presteigne. as previously believed. More likely he was killed in the ethnically inspired massacre following the surrender of Priors Hill Fort in Bristol in 1645. The troops slaughtered there were long thought to be Irish, although more recent research indicates they were Welsh, maybe some of the 400 Radnorshire men pressed into service at Bristol that summer.

No doubt most folk interested in Radnorshire history will have already have bought this book and be well acquainted with characters such as that local Boadicea, Lady Brilliana Harley and the roundhead colonel Howell Jones of Nantmel. Would that other periods of Radnorian history were as well served as this one.

Musical Interlude

Wonder if Phil would have been better off employing a decent barber rather than those expensive lawyers

Nothing on the Telly

Much innocent fun to be had exploring Radnorian wills on the National Archives site.

Last example of a traditional patronym being used in a Radnorshire will seems to be James ap John of Llandeilo Graban in 1749 ...... last female patronym in a will is also from the same parish Anne vch Thomas in 1677.

Berwyn Baxter - Welshman?

Berwyn Baxter (1920-2005) was a secondline sportscar driver of the 1950s who made the occasional foray into open-wheel racing. A number of motor sport sites list Baxter as a Welshman, presumably because of his Welsh sounding forename and his close association with Kieft cars - Cyril Kieft, who was indeed Welsh - having sold the Kieft Sports Car Company to Baxter in 1954.

The fact is that Baxter was born in Kings Norton and his parents and grandparents were all from the Staffordshire/Warwickshire/Worcestershire area. That forename seems to be Baxter's only connection with Wales and using the same flawed logic, perhaps we should be claiming Lewis Hamilton as our first Welsh world champion, well the first since Alan Jones anyway.

Welsh in Llandrindod

In 1827 the correspondent of the monthly magazine Y Gwyliedydd left us an interesting description of the position of the Welsh language in and around Llandrindod - this was of course before the present-day spa town was inflicted on the county. Here's a translation of what he wrote:

"If it would be suitable for the writer to venture an opinion on a controversial topic which so many learned literary critics have long argued over, namely the districts where the purest and most beautiful Welsh is spoken, then I would say that Radnorshire can rightly take pride in its native tongue, one of the most splendid of the Welsh dialects. It appears that in this venerable dialect the peculiar elegances of Powys and the South are both encountered. On hearing the Welsh sayings of the Radnorshire elders in the neighbourhood of Llandrindod, the patriotic Welshman feels both enormous pleasure and sorrow. Pleasure because he is always happy to encounter the venerable, sparkling old language with some trace of its youthful beauty. But with sorrow when he thinks that English alone is spoken by the youth of this district, and after another generation passes there will be none of the natives who will understand the splendid language of their ancestors."

In a footnote the author asks readers to speculate as to the reason for the recent retreat of the language - he says it has retreated 20 miles in living memory. His own speculation is a lack of poets and literary figures.

Never Mind Llandegley International

Talking of planes, here are a couple of Innes Ireland snippets from the days when he was flying in and out of Radnorshire. The Beech Bonanza is still flying.

That Dam Consarn!

Back in April 1912 two aviation pioneers Leslie Allen and Corbett Wilson decided to fly their machines from Hendon to Dublin. This, of course, involved crossing the Irish Sea, something which had never been successfully completed by plane.

The trip ended in tragedy for Allen. He was seen flying over Holyhead but was never heard from again. Wilson landed in Crewe, Almeley in Herefordshire before touching down in the Radnorshire parish of Colva. On enquiring of a local farmer where exactly he was, Wilson was reportedly told "thee bist in my fild, by my reckoning, so be pleased to take thyself and that dam consarn out of it!"

As it happened Wilson spent the night in Colva, taking off for Fishguard the next morning, by which time a crowd of 500 had gathered at Pentwyn to witness the event. From Fishguard Wilson's Bleriot succeeded in reaching Ireland, landing near Enniscorthy, County Wexford. The world was becoming a smaller place. You can read some more about Corbett Wilson in this book review.

Behind the Wire

Here's an atmospheric snap of Mid Wales motor cycle legends J A Bates (crouched) and J E Lewis (standing) chatting with a member of the American team - actor Steve McQueen - at the 1964 International Six Day Trial in Erfurt, East Germany.

Read some more about the event here.

Of course McQueen, a buddy of Radnorshire resident Innes Ireland, was also a fine performer on four wheels, taking second place with Peter Revson in the 1970 Sebring 12 Hour Race, a round of the World Sportscar Championship.

Radnorshire Surnames, Part Two

The map shows the distribution of the surname Bufton in 1881. You can check out other names here.

In our sample of surnames taken from Radnorshire marriages 1813-1822, around 24% do not derive from the traditional patronym system*. Not all these names are of English origin, some come from local placenames, Dyke and Hergest for example; while others are what were Welsh speaking families of French origin from Breconshire like Havard and Awbery.

This leaves some 728 individuals with names of English origin. In every parish Welsh names are in the majority , even in the traditionally ethnically mixed border towns of Presteigne and Knighton. At the same time in 25 parishes more than a quarter of the names are English. The most frequent names in our sample are 24 Hamers, 23 Buftons, 16 Bounds, 15 Worthings, 12 Wildings and Ingrams and 10 Sheens.

It would be wrong to think that this English element maintained any separate identity, at least away from the Presteigne area. Indeed we find examples of Buftons, Ingrams, Hamers, Bounds, Bywaters, Hopes etc among the last generations of traditionally Welsh-speaking Radnorshire folk detailed in the early 20C censuses. Over 300 of the 728 individuals have surnames that had been established in the county by the time of the 1670 Hearth tax or even a century before. They had long ago intermarried and integrated with the local population. The same is true of that group of surnames originating in the sixteenth century English plantations in Montgomeryshire.

Whilst the English families moving into Radnorshire integrated with the local Welsh-speaking population, they must surely have helped to increase the extent of bilingualism and bilingualism was the first necessary step in the process of language shift. Later arrivals - by which I mean arrivals in the second half of the eighteenth century and more especially those who looked towards Knighton and Presteigne as commercial centres - would not have needed to learn Welsh to converse with their neighbours.

* Of course the occasional Watson, Wilcox and Moore might have had a traditional patronymic origin just as the odd Jones or Williams might have arrived from England.

Filthy to Eat.

Has the curlew disappeared from the skies of Radnorshire or don't I get out and about as much as I should do? Time was the curlew's song was the herald of spring and you could hear it everywhere. I guess the doom-sayers will blame it's disappearance on global warming, but it was getting rarer when they were still worrying about the next ice age. Anyway here's a virtual curlew, if like me you miss the bird's song.

Oh and if any hungry Radnorians should come across a curlew they would do well to remember the wise words of motor-racing toff John Clotworthy Talbot Foster Whyte-Melville Skeffington, 13th Viscount Massereene and 6th Viscount Ferrard, Baron of Lough Neagh and Baron Oriel - I don't make this stuff up by the way - in one of his rare, but eagerly awaited speeches to the House of Lords - "curlews are" he advised his fellow peers "filthy to eat."

Radnorshire Surnames, Part One

Now and again I do some research on the development of surnames in Radnorshire: based on sixteenth century wills - when the traditional patronym system was still widespread; the 1670 Hearth Tax - when English style surnames exist side by side with patronyms and hidden patronyms*; and finally a sample of 3110 individuals who married in Radnorshire between 1813 and 1822 - when the modern surname system was more or less in place.

Looking at the 1813-1822 figures we find that the ten most popular surnames in the county are Jones (10.5%), Davies (7.2%), Price (6.6%), Evans (4.8%), Williams (4.7%), Lewis (3%), Griffiths (2.7%), Morgan(s) (2.5%), Powell (2.2%) and Lloyd (2%). Of course, all these names are derived from the old Welsh patronymic system and if we take the most obvious of these we find that that they account for 83% of the surnames in Rhayader Hundred, 80% in both Colwyn and Painscastle, 75% in Cefnllys Hundred, 70% in Knighton and 62% in Radnor.

The figures highlight some interesting differences between the six Radnorshire Hundreds. These Hundreds, which continued to exist as District Councils until Heath's disastrous local government re-organisation of 1973, were based on the traditional cantrefs and commotes of independent Wales - an organic structure rather than one imposed by dim-witted bureaucrats. The name Watkins, for example is the 4th most common in Painscastle and is also common in Colwyn and Radnor, elsewhere it is found only infrequently. The name Edwards is an exact opposite, common in Rhayader, Knighton and Cefnllys but hardly found in the old Elfael (Colwyn and Painscastle). The name Powell is infrequent in the old Maelienydd (Cefnllys and Knighton) while Prosser is common in Painscastle but absent elsewhere. A final example, Williams is found everywhere, although infrequently in Cefnllys, but in Painscastle Hundred it is far and away the most popular surname of all.

I wonder if these naming traditions reflect an ancient cultural difference between the more South East Wales orientated hundreds of Colwyn, Painscastle and Radnor and the north of the county.

*By hidden patronyms I mean how what appears at first glance to be a settled surname actually changes in each generation, so John Davies might have a son called David Jones etc.

A Radnorshire Murder

Mary Ann Hathaway's mistake was not to go to chapel on the evening of 8th June 1884. Instead, she stayed on to help with the chores at the Nantmel farmhouse where she had commenced service just a few days before. Mary Ann's surname is not one you normally associate with Radnorshire, her father being an Oxfordshire born labourer, although her mother Mary Evans came from a local family. The girl, she was seventeen years old at the time, had lost her mother five years before, while her father had subsequently left the district for the South Wales coalfield.

Mary Ann's master and mistress had, perhaps, enjoyed an easier life than Mary Ann. Both came from a wealthier than average background and now, in their thirties, were farming a substantial 280 acre holding. There was a worm in the bud however, for the mistress, Margaret Jane, had been acting strangely and her husband, John, had taken to hiding his shotgun away from the house in an outbuilding.

At around 9pm Margaret called for Mary Ann to come upstairs and as she appeared on the landing, shot the young maid servant dead with her husband's shotgun, which she had seemingly found and smuggled into the house. Why did she kill Mary Ann, the police asked, had she done anything to upset her mistress? "Nothing whatsoever, I merely did it to be hanged."

Margaret wasn't hanged, she was sent to Broadmoor, while her husband moved away from Nantmel and took a farm in Herefordshire. By the turn of the century his wife had been released and joined him there, they lived on well into the twentieth century. Mary Ann Hathaway was buried in an unmarked grave at Dolau chapel. She might have lived long enough to see the first episodes of Coronation Street on the television, but that was not to be.

Motor Sport History

MotorSport magazine have finally got around to publishing a CD covering all the issues of the magazine from 1924 to 1949. At £39.99 that's got to be a bargain, since the original magazines would cost a small fortune to purchase second hand.

It's hardly surprising that much of motor sport history is concerned with rivet-counting, after all the cars are where the money is. Prove that a certain machine, or at least part of it, won Le Mans and you are on to a nice little earner. Given that, I was somewhat taken aback to read the opinion of one well-respected author that time could profitably be spent discovering "did he beat his wife?" or "was he a drunkard?. Now I don't disagree with this, as I think the human aspects of racing are too easily overlooked. Of course my anonymous expert was actually saying that this was more profitable than spending time finding out dates of birth and death etc. Here I disagree because these basic details provide the framework on which the story needs to be built.

Take Jarrott, the first British motor racing star. Everyone assumes that he was a toff, after all he married the wife of an earl. How much more interesting he becomes when you discover that he was born the son of a blacksmith's labourer. I've harped on too much of late about Miss Levitt, but the truth is that no-one knows where she appeared from or what became of her. She might just as well be a Martian. Motoring racing historians assume too much, that 50s car owner the Vicomtesse de Walckiers for instance, you'll find plenty of references to her on google but only on motor-sport sites. Who was she? I'm sure there's an interesting story to tell. No those boring dates of birth and death do matter.

Now I'm going to be first in line to pick up the 1924-1949 CD, but really a digital archive of the News of the World would probably be just as valuable in getting to grips with the lives of many of the motor racing crowd.

The London Monster

Scares are nothing new, you know the hue and cry whipped up by axe grinders, newspapers and latched on to by politicians, who rush out laws to meet problems that, a few years down the line prove to have been nothing very much at all.

Back at the start of the 1790s London was beset by a fine panic concerning a fellow who went about the city stabbing fashionable ladies in the buttocks . He was christened the London Monster.

Eventually the finger of suspicion fell upon an unfortunate Welshman called Rhynwick Williams. Despite having some perfectly sound alibis, Williams stood trial twice and was eventually sentenced to six years in jail. Interestingly in the first trial he was charged with damaging clothing, which in those property obsessed days carried a heavier sentence than wounding.

The published accounts stress that Rhynwick was a Welshman, although they seem to have missed the Rhynwick Williams who was christened in Westminster in 1767. Whatever, both Rhynwicks had a father called Thomas and what is certain is that the Monster's family did indeed come from Wales, from Bugeildy in Radnorshire to be exact. Yes, the notorious London Monster was a Radnorian.

Rhayader Man Wins Sweepstake

Another Radnorian actress was Mary Jones (1915-1990), details of her career can be found here. Mary was born in Rhayader, the daughter of Captain Alban Jones of Dolgerddon Hall and his wife, local chemist's daughter Anne Elizabeth Roberts.

Alban Jones hit headlines around the world in 1921 when he won £69000 on the Calcutta Derby Sweepstake - perhaps £3 million in today's devalued currency. The Captain disapproved of gambling and claimed that he had been pressurised into the purchase by colleagues. He promptly lost the ticket, finding it later clipped to some office papers. Among other achievements, including being High Sheriff of the county in 1927, Alban Jones was the author of that 1906 page turner, Courses (true and Magnetic) Distances and Maritime Positions Round the British Isles, Norwegian Fiords, Baltic, the Continent Mediterranean, and Black Sea

A Forgotten Radnorian - Curigwen Lewis

I'm sure that everyone in the country over a certain age will remember the actor Andrew Cruickshank, who played Dr Cameron in the long-running BBC television programme Dr Finlay's Casebook. But when he married in 1939 in the little Radnorshire church of Evancoyd, it was his bride Curigwen who was the better know of the two actors, a leading lady with the Royal Shakespeare Company no less.

Curigwen was born in Llandrindod in 1905 and her grand-daughter has provided some illuminating biographical detail about this talented lady and her family here.

Unfortunately the 1911 census for Wales is still not available, although at the time of the 1901 census her parents lived at the Glansevern Arms, Llangurig. One remarkable thing about Miss Lewis, she appeared as Elizabeth Bennett in a BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as early as 1938!

Gone West

Pennsylvanian townships such as East and West Nantmeal and Radnor are a reminder that Radnorians were early migrants to North America. The Quaker and Baptist migrations from Radnorshire, for example, occurred as early as the 1680s.

This early presence means that many millions of Americans can no doubt claim some Radnorian ancestry. Let us look at the name Price for instance, the 76th most popular American surname with over 270,000 examples in the US census. In their important little book The Surnames of Wales, John and Sheila Rowlands show how even the most ubiquitous of Welsh surnames are subject to regional variation. There are districts in Wales, for example, where 30% of the population were called Jones but others where the name was virtually absent. Price is one of a group of names that is overwhelmingly centered on Radnorshire and North Breconshire, so that a goodly proportion of those American Prices will have their origin here in Mid Wales. Of course there will be just as many Americans with a mother called Price, so that 270,000 will be more like 540,000. Throw in one Price grandparent and the figure is over a million and so on up the generations. Do the math as our North American cousins would say.

Yes, millions of Americans will have Radnorian ancestry, which sounds a better bet for targeting tourism than Twm Sion Cati, the Western Mail's latest wheeze.

Fine Radnorshire Names

I've already posted about the young gypsy harpist Fred Melenydd Roberts, and of course that name Melenydd derives from the old cantref of Maelienydd that covered what is now Northern Radnorshire.

Anyway young Fred is not the only infant to have been landed with a forename based on the geography of the county. There are a few individuals who've been christened Radnor, one example would be Radnor Morgan born in Hendon in 1913. I wonder if Ithon Jones born in Corwen in 1901 had any Radnorshire connections or did his parents just like rivers? While the opening of the Claerwen reservoir made that particular river name a fairly popular girl's monicker with Claerwen Gibson-Watt, born in 1952, giving a lead.

The best Radnorshire name of all turns up in County Durham in 1982, boy or girl I don't know, but Rhayader Blues is certainly a name that stands out from the crowd.

NOTE: this post was commisioned on behalf of regular reader Mr Maldwyn Beaks, who was getting fed up checking the blog and finding nothing new. Get well soon Maldwyn.

Working Class Hero

In the good old days when Llanelli was spelt Llanelly, the authorities were always ready to send for the troops when things threatened to get out of hand in South Wales.

The long hot summer of 1911 was one such occasion, when a national rail strike led to militants in Llanelli blocking the main line to Ireland. Four hundred troops ensured that the Fishguard trains got through, but renewed trouble led to two rioters being shot dead by the military. At around the same time a goods train carrying detonators was set on fire and four more townsfolk were killed in the subsequent explosion. The Llanelli rioters took their revenge on the property of local magistrates, finally being dispersed after repeated bayonet charges by the stout fellows of the Sussex regiment.

What has this fracas involving the hot-blooded southerners to do with Radnorshire? Well a Private Spiers of the Worcestershire Regiment was ordered to shoot a man whom his officer had identified as a leader of the rioters. Private Spiers refused, was placed under arrest but managed to escape. A week later he was apprehended in New Radnor, gaining that sleepy Radnorshire village a brief mention in the papers of the day. Surprisingly Spiers was treated leniently at his subsequent court martial, being sentenced to a mere fourteen days imprisonment. No doubt the authorities wished to draw a line under the whole bloody business.

Dash for Cash

Back in the mid-Sixties a brilliant young driver, new to Grand Prix racing, invited Innes Ireland out to dinner, he wanted some advice. Innes's pleasure at the apparent compliment soon turned to disappointment, when he found that the newbie wanted to discuss money matters rather than race tactics. Innes had to point out that when it came to sponsorship deals, advertising contracts and the like, he really was the last person to give out advice. After all, hadn't he been sacked from Lotus for lending his Esso backed car to the BP sponsored Stirling Moss, in an effort to win the 1961 World Championship away from Ferrari.

Fellow Scot Jackie Stewart typified the new, business-like world of Formula One. Now Sir Jackie, we find that his old talent hasn't deserted him, indeed he's named in today's Sunday Times as one of the Royal Bank of Scotland's "global ambassadors", on the public payroll - in total - to the tune of £200 million. Just a suggestion but why doesn't JYS set an example to his young Royal pals, like Zara Phillips, by walking away from that RBS contract and saving the taxpayer a couple of million quid?

UPDATE: Seems like Sir JYS took my advice on this one.

Before the Computers Crashed

Don't suppose anyone's going to print a broadside singing the praises of ShropDoc.

Welsh in Abbeycwmhir, 1901

Before the recent publication of the 1891 and 1901 census figures, opinions as to the fate of the Welsh language in Radnorshire were often based on prejudice rather than fact. Today we have a surer basis for understanding the process of language shift, at least for the west of the county, although even now eminent professors can still publish statements that are clearly at odds with the evidence.

Looking at the 1901 Census figures, we find a handful of locally born Welsh speakers, mostly in their 70s and 80s, living in Abbeycwmhir parish. On closer examination of earlier census data, a couple of these individuals are seen to have actually been born in the neighbouring parish of St Harmon and another in Llangurig. This still leaves three folk who were born in the parish, to locally born parents, and who never seem to have lived anywhere else. At the onset of the Twentieth Century they were the last traditional speakers of Radnorshire Welsh in the Clywedog valley, a tributary of the upper Ithon, and the last, as well, in the ancient cantref of Maelienydd.

A Forgotten Radnorian

With Wales opening its 2009 Six Nations campaign at Murrayfield today, let's spare a thought for one of the few Radnorians to make an impact on the rugby field. Arthur ( A. F. ) Harding may have had the misfortune to be born in Shropshire, the son of a Welsh doctor, but by the age of two he was living at "The Laurels" New Radnor, where his father continued to practice medicine for the next forty years or more.

Winning 20 caps and captaining the British tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1908, Harding achieved something that none of the current Grand Slammers have done, playing a key role in the famous Welsh victory over the All Blacks in 1905.

What's in a Name?

Still no sign of any Welsh counties being available from the 1911 Census, no doubt they will be the last to be done.

Never mind, there's a super new search facility on ancestry.com which lets you track down births 1837-2005 without any of the previous hastle. Hours of innocent enjoyment to be had searching out trivia, for example there were plenty of folk with the forename Elvis, even before the Tupelo hipster made it big. Worst name choice? Adolf Russell, born in the summer of 1939.

Musical Interlude

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, your blogger has been under the weather. Let's end the month with one of the best things on youtube.

Tŷ Unnos

Folk history is not something you come across very often today, education and the mass media have seen to that. An example you still sometimes hear in Radnorshire is a memory of the tai unnos - the houses built by landless families on commons. Build a house in a single night, throw an axe from the doorway and the building and the land as far as the axe fell was yours.

Radnorians believed that this right was enshrined in the Laws Of Hywel Dda, and by the early Nineteenth Century many hundreds of such homes existed on common land across the county. Of course incoming purchasers of these old manor lands, such as James Watt, had more faith in the laws of England, especially since at a local level they were in the hands of chaps just like himself. In 1827 Watt started destroying the homes of the squatters. Surprisingly their cause was taken up by a Presteigne solicitor, Cecil Parsons, and the Whig MP Walter Wilkins, and in 1835 they managed to have the squatters rights recognized and the evictions overturned.

The tai unnos were initially built of clods, later being replaced with more permanent rubble walls and thatch roofs. as at Great Maens, Llanbadarn Fynydd (see picture). Heaven help anyone who tried to build such a house today, alien planning authorities, far more draconian than Mr Watt, would soon put a stop to that. A planning system to meet local needs is as far away as ever.

The Duchess of Offa's Dyke

She may have been the Duchess of Offa's Dyke but the famous transsexual April Ashley was never a Grand Prix driver, despite what you occasionally read in the press. Here's an example from the Sunday Telegraph:

"ON APRIL Fool's Day, 1977, in a gesture intended as a snub at central authority, Richard Booth, bookseller of Hay-on-Wye, declared the town independent and had himself crowned King.

After a coronation at the foot of the castle steps, the King and his consort, the transsexual Grand Prix driver April Ashley (or "the Duchess of Offa's Dyke", as she likes to be called), went walkabout. After watching a fly-past by a biplane of the Hay air force and the launch of Hay-Ho, the first rowing-boat of the Hay navy, the coronation party adjourned to the pub where the King handed out Cabinet posts"

Heaven knows how this piece of misinformation started, possibly a confusion with another transsexual, Roberta Cowell, who certainly was a racing driver, if not a Grand Prix driver. By the way you can download Cowell's autobiography here.

Edward Rice

The bare outline of Edward Rice's life can be sketched from the public records. He was born in Llanwrthwl around 1808 and by the late 1830's he was farming at Dolyfallen in that parish. Rice must have been successful, in 1840 he married Ann Lloyd of Nantmel parish and in the 1841 census they had four servants living in at Dolyfallen.

By the time of the 1851 census Edward and Ann had two sons, Edward and John Lloyd and the family were farming 150 acres at Dolelfa in St Harmon parish. Later that year Ann Rice died and Edward eventually remarried. He died in 1882, aged 74, his two sons continuing to farm Dolelfa into the twentieth century.

Why should Radnorians remember Edward Rice? Well, according to a letter written to Boulogne in France and addressed to local squire Thomas Lewis Lloyd of Nantgwyllt, Edward Rice was the leader of the Rebecca movement in the Rhayader area during the anti-toll gate uprising of the 1840s.

Radnorshire and the 2001 Census

In one of those all too frequent displays of Metropolitan arrogance, the Office of National Statistics went out of its way to make sure that there was no tick box on the 2001 census to indicate Welsh identity. In the event, if Welsh people wanted to identify themselves as such, they had to write-in using the Other box, usually reserved for Azerbaijanis, Zambians and the like.

Of course most people were unaware that they could ignore the British tick box provided and use the write-in section, but the figures for those who did, give an interesting insight into comparative Welsh national feeling in the various Radnorshire communities. Here are the figures:

Abbeycwmhir 6.9%, Aberedw 12.8%, Bugeildy 3.3%, Clyro 7.1%, Diserth 9.6%, Gladestry 9.1%, Glasbury 7.9%, Glascwm 16.3%, Knighton 4.2%, Llanbadarn Fawr 13.5%, Llanbadarn Fynydd 3.8%, Llanbister 10.9%, Llanddewi Ystradenni 7%, Llandrindod 10%, Llanelwedd 10.8%, Llanfihangel Rhydieithon 8.6%, Llangynllo 4%, Llanyre 13.5%, Nantmel 13.7%, New Radnor 4.9%, Old Radnor 3.6%, Painscastle 8.3%, Penybont 10.7%, Presteigne 2.6%, Rhayader 14.7%, St Harmon 9.1%, Whitton 4.2%.

Given that only 19% took the trouble to self identify in a community as "Welsh" as Machynlleth, I think that these Radnorshire figures are quite encouraging for those of us of a patriotic outlook. After all we Radnorians have been in the frontline of the struggle against anglicisation for much more than a thousand years. So well done to Glascwm for topping the league.

Wye Valley Resort

I remember trying to buy a ticket to Llandrindod at Euston in the 1970s. They were adamant the station had closed! Back in the 1950s things were a little different, even if British Railways weren't too sure about the town's exact location.

We're All Going on a Summer Holiday

Time was when Llandrindod had a summer season, although I guess an artist would be fairly depressed when their agent booked them into the town's Grand Pavilion rather than Blackpool or Scarborough. Mind you the occasional big name could look back on a Radnorshire booking. In 1920 the Spa-rklers concert party, including Tommy Handley, Bobby Howes and Leslie Henson, played the Rock Park. Seemingly they were not to the town's genteel taste.

The summer bookings staggered on into the 1950s, the final season seeing organist Arthur Raymond engaged in 1958. It was hardly Rock and Roll. Pictured is "England's greatest female trumpeter", Evelyn Hardy, who appeared in the town during the War years.

Downhill All the Way

Any Radnorian prospects for the 2012 Olympic Games or even the 2010 Winter Games, which I assume isn't being held on some artificially constructed Alp in Essex?

Come to think of it has a Radnorian ever won a medal? Clifton Hugh Lancelot de Verdon Wrottesley's grandmother was a Gibson-Watt, and he came fourth in the skeleton in the 2002 Winter Games, sensibly representing the Irish Republic, anything better than that?

Wrottesley's father, the somewhat disappointingly monikered, Richard Francis Gerard Wrottesley, was an amateur racing driver who almost ended-up sharing an Elva with Innes Ireland in the 1965 Monza 1000km race. In the end Innes took up the better offer of one of Colonel Hoare's Ferraris and finished sixth. Wrottesley Snr was also a great sledger and it was maybe this connection which saw Innes taking his chances on the Cresta Run. Pictured is Ireland's St Moritz Tobogganing Club car badge, which turned up on ebay a few moons ago.

The Evan Meredith

Here's a jolly Radnorian tale from 1919 which may even be true. There was an Evan Meredith, but living at Penglaneinion rather than Penhoeleinion, and certainly near Nantgwyllt church.

The Man Who Cannot be Killed

The mention of Harcourt-Wood brings to mind a much more famous Bentley Boy with Builth connections. Winner of the 1930 Le Mans 24 hour race with Woolf Barnato, Glen Kidston was called, by the popular press of the day The Man Who Couldn't Be Killed. The Kidstons had made their fortune in Clyde shipbuilding industry, but young Glen's childhood home was at Glanwye just outside Builth. In the end the grim reaper got his man, and here is Time magazine's report, detailing just a few of Kidston's narrow squeaks - although it doesn't mention his affair with Barbara Cartland!

"Glen Kidston, rich, young and debonair, was sometimes called "the man who cannot be killed." A naval cadet at 15, he was aboard the training ship Hogue when it was torpedoed, was rescued hours later and transferred to the Aboukir which likewise was torpedoed. A grown man and sportsman, he flew with the late Belgian Banker Alfred Loewenstein and crashed. He was piloting a speed boat at 60 m.p.h. when it broke in two. In 1929 he was one of two survivors of the crash of a Lufthansa plane in England which killed six. Lately he bought a specially built Lockheed monoplane, flew it from London to Cape Town in 6 1/2 days for a record, despite a crackup in Africa. Last week Commander Kidston and his friend Capt. T. A. Gladstone were flying from Johannesburg to Natal in a Puss Moth biplane. They encountered a duststorm in the Drakensberg Mountains. A wing was wrenched off. Commander Kidston and friend crashed. Both died."

Beris Harcourt-Wood (1902-1968)

Harcourt-Wood was one of the lesser lights in that speed mad bunch of pre-war toffs known as the Bentley Boys.

Wood's best individual result was a fourth place driving a works Bentley in the 1929 Eireann Cup race in Phoenix Park. That year he also finised sixth in the 1929 Brooklands 12 Hour race, co-driving Brian Lewis's Riley. In 1930 Wood was all set to compete in the Le Mans 24hrs with Jack Dunfee in Dorothy Paget's Blower Bentley. Unfortunately the fuel over-heated and the car was unable to start.

So where did Harcourt-Wood pick up that unusual given name? Well, his father Captain Charles Harcourt-Wood owned the Caerberis estate in Builth Wells and the Bentley Boy must have been fond of the area as, although Caerberis had been sold long before, Harcourt-Wood returned to the district, where he died in 1968. Co-incidently the family of a much more successful racer, Tim Rose-Richards lived at Caerberis for a while after the First World War.

Musical Interlude

No Radnorian, Cymreig or Motor Sport connections as far as I know, I just really like this girl's Sixties voice. Louise Cordet was the daughter of French/Greek nightclub singer Hélène Cordet and Prince Philip was her godfather, or even her father if some of the gossip sheets are to be believed. Anyway after her music career faded away young Louise took a job with Marianne Faithfull, which doesn't sound like a particularly wise career move.

UPDATE: A sign of the close connection between Louise Cordet and the royals is the fact that she and her brother were invited to watch the Coronation with Prince Charles. I wonder where she is today?

Fine Old Radnorshire Names

Bump into someone called Lleucu or Tangwystl and chances are that your average Radnorian is going to categorise them as someone outlandish, probably North Walian and possibly involved in burning down holiday cottages. The truth is, of course, that names like these are just as much a part of Radnorshire's cultural history as anywhere else in Wales.

Such names were once popular, even in that supposedly anglicised part of East Radnorshire that falls within the diocese of Hereford; and since Welsh marriage law caused apoplexy amongst the English churchmen, they are recorded in the Fifteenth Century Consistory Court records. Here we find Lleucu the wife of Gruffudd ap Richard shacking up with Deio Impton of Norton, while in Cascob a certain Gwerful's husband had moved in with his mistress. In Ednol Hywel ap Ieuan Du had kicked out his wife Gwenhwyfar, while Tanglwst verch Hywel of Presteigne had married a distant cousin and Ieuan ap Gwilym of New Radnor had illegally married his mistress Dyddgu. Scandalous.

It has to be admitted that by the 1580's such traditional names were falling out of favour, not just in Radnorshire but all over Wales. I once did a study of women's names in Radnorshire wills of the period and found just three Angharads, two Dyddgus and one Tangwystl. Gwenllian was still a very popular name though, as was Goley from Goleubryd. It also has to be said that Radnorians favoured the Welsh spellings of the popular French names - Elin, Catrin, Mallt and Anest rather than Elinor, Catherine, Maud or Agnes.

Traditional names continued here and there into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while Gwenllian never disappeared completely from Radnorshire.

A Forgotten Radnorian

Born in Presteigne in 1865, the son of a stone mason, Thomas Griffiths emigrated to Australia, enlisted as a gunner in 1886 in the Victorian Artillery and rose through the ranks to become a Brigadier General in the Australian Imperial Force. His Australian Dictionary of Biography entry has him being educated in Wrexham, which may be true, although the 1881 census still shows him living at home in Presteigne and working as a carpenter.

Described as one of the great figures in the Australian Army, how far would Griffiths have progressed if he had enlisted in the British Army? I think we all know the answer to that!

Arriva Tazio

A pity this song wasn't soundtracking some film of the great Nuvolari at the wheel. Maybe the Pussycat Dolls will do a song about Lewis Hamilton. Who knows, perhaps they already have, wouldn't be the same though. Trio Lescano were three Jewish sisters from the Netherlands who made it big in Italy before the war. In the end the fascists took them off the radio but at least they survived.

Don't Panic!

Back in the Sixties the joke was that when the Free Wales Army talked about a round, they meant Double Diamond and certainly not ballistics. On one occasion, however, the brave lads in forage caps did step out of the tabloid spotlight for a night of genuine armed rebellion. John Humphries tells the tale in Freedom Fighters.

The serious bombmakers of MAC decided to use the FWA to launch an attack on the Elan Valley pipeline in Radnorshire. A bomb consisting of 40 sticks of gelignite attached to a car tyre was to be placed in the pipe itself and exploded. Everything went according to plan, the FWA found the aqueduct manhole cover, broke in and lowered the bomb into the waterway. However in their haste the FWA had forgotten to attach the detonator.

There the bomb remained until discovered by a local farmer Mr Powell of Cefn Penarth, Crossgates. The bomb disposal experts were called and the good citizens of Birmingham continued to enjoy the luxury of running water.

Book of the Month

Although published by the University of Wales Press, this book is not really a history of the post-war physical force element in Wales. In some ways it is autobiographical, tracing the story of the author from his anglicised, somewhat anti-Welsh background, to highly successful editor of the Western Mail, to Secretary of the nationalist Independent Wales Party.

The book starts in 1963, thus largely ignoring the activities of the Welsh Republican Party in the 1950s, even though many of the leading characters in that movement re-emerged as backers of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (MAC) in the 1960s. The book also suggests links between MAC and the holiday home fire-bombings of Meibion Glyndwr in the period 1979-1992. No real evidence is presented for this connection, which is hardly surprising given the fact that no-one was ever convicted for any of the 200 or so attacks during the period.

Despite these reservations this is a highly readable and well-researched account of the time. The author, an insider, places meat on the bones of the anti-Welsh attitudes of the Western Mail. The book is somewhat sympathetic to MAC activists such as Owen Williams and John Jenkins, while at the same time painting the Free Wales Army as the clowns they no doubt were. The Stasi-like attitudes of the Special Branch Shrewsbury Unit and, in particular, its successors are detailed, a reminder that the English human rights industry did precious little to protest against some of the disgraceful infringements of basic rights occurring in Wales. The book also has its fair share of controversial revelations . Did Owen Williams actually convince the IRA of the virtue of the "cell system" of insurgency and was John Summers really a police informer?

This is a worthwhile book, casting light on an important aspect of Welsh history that is too often ignored by historians. It is also interesting that so many of the characters in the physical force movement were English speakers. Mainstream nationalism's inability, understandable as it may be, to fully engage with the English speaking Welsh majority, is surely the great failure of the independence movement to date.

Crimewatch

It seems Enzo Ferrari presented Innes Ireland with a watch which has now been stolen. See here.


Update: An amateur sleuth asks "how come" I have a photo of the missing watch. Well Sherlock, I found it here.

Oh and now the BBC are on the case.

Musical Interlude

A regular reader complains that I'm stuck in the Fifteenth Century! While I ponder this point here's a musical interlude. It's 1964, it's Paris and the pride of Pontlottyn, Miss Petula Clark is flirting with the traffic. Fantastique!

Radnorshire and the Far Right

Just two BNP members in dear old Radnorshire then, according to the recently leaked membership list published on the web.

Radnorshire Bardic Poems, 46

This is a translation of the bard Llawdden's elergy to Elen Gethin, presumably he composed it for one of her daughters. The tomb which Elen had made for her and her husband can still be seen in Kington parish church. At the end of the poem Llawdden compares Elen to, amongst others, the Helena - mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine - who recovered the true cross from Jerusalem; the Seven Wise Sages of Rome, and the biblical Susanna.

Llawdden's Elergy for Elen Gethin

Since Monday, for me,
The planet is without light.
Monday the fair one was dark,
A day of weeping, Elen’s demise.
Snatched, like a saint’s ascension,
She was of no great age.
A blessed wife, faith’s vision,
Sought the temple of Tomas’s bed.
The fair one who brought his body home
From the pain of the battlefield of Banbury.
And now he, in Kington church,
Cannot sleep because of his Lady.
She was loved, she and her chieftain,
Let them find heaven from the bed she made.
A great white wall, made of marble,
Like the cloak of Mwrog and Mariaith.
The image of a man and his lover in the church,
In the clay before the Son of God.
A stone curtain, a white mantle
Closed for eternity.

A psalm for Elen Gethin, she shared wine,
I bring for her daughter.
The moon is faint to hold court
After Elen and her two courts.
Teams ploughed her lands,
A fair estate, she wasn’t poor.
Her hall never lacked wines for
The world, anymore than Bath.
There was no wall without light
With candlesticks about her corpse.
Gold and coral on her fingers,
Fair lass, to count the saints.
Pointless in her day to
Rebuke her kinsfolk,
She allowed no perjury
Or poverty amongst her people.

A good woman, with Susanna’s sense,
And wine and candles in her court.
A sister to that woman who fetched the Cross,
Until the end of her life,
Lear’s daughter before the goodmen,
Coel’s daughter, great hearted;
Fair Marsia, many mention
Her law and works of old.
Every word from her was strong,
Elen’s learning was expected.
Seven were next to her in speech,
The eighth, her learned tongue.
She was a Sybil, her language was good,
A second Solomon to her breast.
If David had two sons,
From her two sons will spring goodmen:
Master Watcyn, a pure and pleasant lad,
Is there any more powerful? Master Rhosier!
If holy Mary calls Tomas and Elen
To heaven on high,
We expect, God, without doubt,
A golden halo above their heads.

Mike Hawthorn

I can't say I'm a great fan of Mike Hawthorn, doubtless unfairly, he seems to typify, for me, some of the worst aspects of the Fifties. Of course Mike never had the opportunity of moving on from that decade, dying as he did in 1959. Anyway a lot of people do admire Britain's first World Champion and some of them have created this rather wonderful website. There are details there of a splendid book about Hawthorn which has just come out, today infact.

Some film here of Innes Ireland's widow Jean unveiling a plaque commemorating Hawthorn in his birthplace, Mexborough in Yorkshire.

Skating on Thin Ice

Carmarthen's town guide - who appears to be a human being rather than a pamphlet - has written to the Western Mail pointing out a few inaccuracies in a recent article in the paper about Knucklas Castle. Read it here. Well I'm all for historical accuracy, but then the guide spoils it somewhat by bragging up Carmarthen's Arthurian connections at the expense of, well, Knucklas.

The Welsh name for Carmarthen is Caerfyrddin - Myrddin's fortress - or Merlin the Magician as our English friends like to call him. It's also well known that this is etymological nonsense. The name actually derives from the Roman civitas Moridunum (meaning sea fort) - good heavens, there's a wikipedia article explaining the whole process. Well good luck to Carmathen and it's town guide.

Meanwhile that Carmarthenshire bard Lewis Glyn Cothi - and the bard's really are the experts when it comes to this Arthurian business - was quite certain that one of the most note worthy facts about Maelienydd (the district that later made up North East Radnorshire) was that "Yndi'r oedd, hyn adroddir, neithior yr hen Arthur hir." - Herein was, this is reported, the wedding feast of tall Arthur of old.

At the end of the sixteenth century Morgan Meredith of Bryndraenog provided board and lodging to the scholar Sion Dafydd Rhys, who recorded some interesting folk tales linking Arthur and Knucklas Castle. Some giants had captured Gwenhwyfar's brothers and were holding them, north of the River Teme (Tyfediad in Welsh) at Bron Wrgan in the parish of Llanfair Waterdine. Arthur killed the giants and brought the brothers back to Knucklas. In order to cross the Teme he used a giant's skull as a stepping stone, declaring "tyfed yr iad yn yr afon yn lle maen" - meaning that the skull had taken the place of a stepping-stone. Henceforth the river was known as Tyfediad. Complete nonsense of course, just like Carmarthen meaning Merlin's town!

A Welshman in New York

Fingers crossed that Joe Calzaghe's career closing fight at the Garden this Saturday will prove more successful than Jimmy Wilde's defeat by Pancho Villa at the Polo Grounds some 85 years ago. Wilde had come out of a nearly three year retirement to take on the Filipino boxer and was a shadow of his former self. Nat Fleischer, who was, of course, at ringside, wrote "Never ... did a champion pass more gloriously than did Wilde that night." By common consent the greatest flyweight of all time, Ring magazine ranked the tiny Welshman pound for pound the third best puncher in boxing history, behind Joe Louis and Sam Langford.

Now it's a fact that most Welsh families with the surname Wilde have their roots in Radnorshire and a little investigation found Wilde's family in the 1901 census, where they were all recorded as speaking no English. An exaggeration no doubt, but interesting light on the strength of the Welsh language in East Glamorgan before the First World War. Unfortunately I could trace the Wilde family no further back than the 1891 census where Jimmy's father was a guest at Treharris police station. In the cells! So the search for a Radnorian connection will have to wait for another day.

UPDATE: Duffy was a no show but Joe Calzaghe got off the canvas in the first round to win the next eleven and the contest. Career ending? Maybe not. Oh and why did the hopeless Western Mail choose to lead its Saturday front page with a no-account Rugby match?