The Day the Music Died

A couple of tales from the Evan Jones book. Firstly concerning the famous Llandrindod minister, Kilsby , something of a celebrity in his day. Annoyed that his congregation turned to look back as the stragglers came into church, the preacher decided to announce each late arrival,
"Here's Mr Jones, Dolberthog" and so on.
Finally a lady visitor to the town appeared,
"Well I've no idea who on earth this is, everyone turn around and look at her."

Secondly the sad tale of Tomos Prys, a fiddler from Llangamarch who maintained the old tradition of circulating around the gentry houses and farms of the district until the end of the 18th Century. At a time of religious revival when folk eagerly turned their backs on fun for the pleasures of the pulpit, Tomos happened to come across a noted local preacher,
"Hang on you can have my fiddle,"
"Why are you giving me your fiddle?"
"Well you've already taken my audience."

And in such ways passed away Hen Gymru Llawen (Merrie Old Wales).

Book Review

This is a selection taken from the papers of "the doyen of peasant historians" Evan Jones (1850-1928) of Ty'n y Pant, Llanwrtyd. As the editor points out in his foreword, some aspects of the author's interests have had to be largely omitted from this edition - archaeology and music for example. What remains are 300 pages covering the folk culture of the Builth Hundred, its farming, local history, social life, sports, religion, customs, poetry, superstitions and traditional proverbs.

It is a book that will be well received by anyone with an interest in Mid Wales, agricultural history or folklore in general. By its nature it is the type of book that can be dipped into at leisure, divided as it is into numerous short paragraphs on a myriad of topics which had caught the attention of Evan Jones during a lifetime of collecting.

Checking out the occasional item of Radnorshire interest, I was quite excited to see examples of the work of, what the author described as a Radnorshire born country rhymer in the Welsh language, Shams Clee. Unlike Evan Jones, we now have access to the 19C Census Returns which show that Clee was infact born in Llanfihangel Bryn Pabuan.

How I came to acquire this book provides a sad comment on the history of Builth Hundred. I had meant to buy a copy before Christmas, but had never got around to placing an order. Visiting some relatives I was told that one of them had just purchased the book after reading a review in the local paper and, since Evan Jones' sons Emrys and Afan had been regular visitors to her parents during her youth, she had hurried out to place an order. Unfortunately the book was of little use as she had failed to notice that it was written in Welsh. I purchased the book (at a small discount!) and reflected on the sad truth that many of the families whose ancestors and farms are mentioned within its pages would be in a similar position - unable to read about their own history.

The book is published in an attractive hardback edition by Gwasg Gomer at £16.99.

Talgarth

Browsing the 1891 Census I was surprised to discover that a majority of the Talgarth born population of the town aged over 30 were able to speak Welsh. Look at the wider parish and there must have been bilingual natives of the district who spoke the language - presumably the historic dialects of the place - well into the Twentieth Century. I suppose most people will shrug their shoulders at this, but it left me a little bit amazed. Of course big Victorian families being raised as monoglot English speakers put paid to any chance of bilingualism persisting.

Looking at wikipedia I see that "Talgarth is also becoming a place for artists and writers." Oh well.

Just Popping Down the Shops

Here's the cover of Autosport picturing Innes Ireland's 1962 Tourist Trophy winning Ferrari 250GTO chassis number 3505GT. Now there's a quote in the Lis book that confirms that Innes drove this car on the roads of Radnorshire:

"I used to take 3505 home quite often and drive it to the races I was taking part in. I remember driving it down to Brands Hatch on the road, when I arrived the mechanics put a hot set of plugs in it and changed the wheels and I drove it in the race, then drove it home again. My wife used to use it to go shopping, it was a very docile animal."

Wonder if anyone remembers this car piloted by Innes on the Radnorshire roads or even his wife taking it out shopping!

Freno Bene Si!

Innes Ireland, works Ferrari driver, it's something you read occasionally, usually when someone has a car or piece of memorabilia to sell. Yes, Innes did once race a Formula One Ferrari 156, nominally for the British Racing Partnership but in reality for the works, and yes, he did drive the legendary 250GTO to victory in the Tourist Trophy. Yet works driver is stretching a point. Perhaps if the fuel contracts could have been sorted out in 1962 he would have joined the Maranello team, but it is as a Lotus driver and, given his long association with the company as Consultant Engineer, as an Aston Martin man that Innes is more properly remembered.

Of course Innes was a student of motor racing history and also a romantic, so it is little wonder that he could declare that "the ambition of any racing driver worth his salt was to drive for Scuderia Ferrari". And although he never really achieved that lofty aim, his relationship with the Modenese stable is certainly worth recalling.

1962 was the year that Enzo Ferrari was so desperate to secure Stirling Moss's services that he agreed to enter a car for the Rob Walker team in the Formula One World Championship. A car, by the way, which was to race in Scottish racing blue rather than Italian red. As part of the deal Stirling would also drive Ferrari sports cars for the UDT-Laystall team and in this Innes Ireland was to be his co-pilot. Innes, for whom Stirling was always a hero, looked forward to the partnership with relish.

A February outing in the UDT-Laystall 250SWB (2735GT) in the Daytona Three Hour race, had seen Innes retiring after 59 laps with brake problems. Then came the first drive with Moss, the Sebring 12 Hour race, where they shared a 250 Testa Rossa (TR/61) entered by local Ferrari dealer Chinetti's North American Racing Team. Stirling has described the NART pit work at this meeting as chaotic and the car was disqualified for refuelling too early. The long delayed disqualification robbed Innes and Moss of victory, they were leading by two laps when they were eventually black-flagged. That was to be Stirling's last endurance sports car race, for he would soon suffer his career ending Goodwood crash. It was to this fateful Sussex meeting that Innes had driven up from Modena, in the new pale green UDT 250GTO (3505GT). The car in which he and Moss were due to attack the coming season. A journey that Innes has described as the most memorable drive of his life.

The Goodwood crash put paid to Moss's Ferrari plans and also the promising partnership with Ireland. A Sharknose 156 did turn-up at the Silverstone International Trophy meeting complete with Scuderia mechanics and technicians for Innes to drive, a tribute to Moss it was said at the time. Innes found a car with a superb gearbox, a V6 engine that no longer matched the power of the V8 Climax and poor handling that the Scot put down to the flexing of the spoked Borrani wheels. Fourth place was a good result for a machine that could no longer compete with the green cars.

Innes carried on without Moss in car 3505, retiring after fifteen hours at Le Mans while in seventh place and ending the European season with a memorable victory in the Tourist Trophy, a race that was won with a chassis still bent from a practice crash.

That winter Innes drove another 250GTO, the Texan Rosebud team's 3589GT in the Nassau races, a third place in the Nassau TT being soon overshadowed by his victory in the Governor's Trophy race in Rosebud's Lotus19. Innes continued to drive the Rosebud Ferrari in 1963, an early crash at Daytona being followed by a sixth place (third in Class) at Sebring with Ritchie Ginther as co-pilot. An experiment with a Ferrari engine in Rosebud's Lotus 19 nearly put paid to Innes that Fall. The Scot crashing into a marshall's car which had been foolishly parked in an escape road during practice for the NW Pacific GP in Seattle.

A long and no doubt painful recovery saw Innes back for the 1964 season, where he drove Ferraris for Colonel Ronnie Hoare's Maranello Concessionaires team. Let Innes describe that first outing at the Nurburgring for the Colonel's equipe:

"I tore out of the pits in a crescendo of noise and spinning wheels, glancing briefly over my shoulder. Up through the gears and away, for the first time at the 'Ring I felt free and confident as I chased after the leaders.

Although the 330P was more of a handful, more skitterish, more sensitive and more unforgiving than the 250GTO, it was also faster, more urgent in its voice, more challenging and even more exciting. But still it gave a wonderful feeling of security, that it wouldn't suddenly do anything nasty.

We fairly flew through the twists and turns, a touch of the brakes here and there, a flick of the steering wheel to point her at the apex of the next corner, then lots of throttle and a touch of opposite as we screeched past the earth bankings and trees as one, clipping them as if they didn't exist. Oh, the total joy and exhilaration of such moments, for they happen but seldom. The Foxhole held none of the usual terrors as we hurtled steeply downhill through its curves, foot hard down, flat out in fifth. The Flugplatz was an exciting anticipation of the moment of landing when a flick of the wheel took her round the following right-hander on full song without going anywhere near the brake pedal, Control and rhythm seemed to be absolute as we swallowed up the gap on those in front, that wonderful V12 engine willingly and happily revving its heart out on the long straight, the exhaust note bliss in my ears. Still we closed passing first one, then the leader and we were out in front. And still the rhythm flowed; we pulled away and left them behind and it was almost as if they weren't there at all. There was only that magical Ferrari and me living out a dream just for our own enjoyment. We sang in the wind and nothing could touch us."

Like his career, Innes's occasional Ferrari drives finally petered out, a sixth place at Le Mans in 1964, a sixth place in the 1965 Monza 1000KM race, and finally, an outing at Daytona in 1966 in the Drummond Racing Organisation's 250LM.

Who knows how Innes's career might have turned out if the petrol contracts had allowed him to join the Scuderia in 1962 as some had hoped. Enzo Ferrari would surely have approved of Innes's tigerish driving, but would Innes have found fulfillment in Modena's political arena. In any case it wasn't to be. Oh and the title of this piece? The words spoken by Enzo Ferrari after he jumped on the brakes at 125 MPH on the occasion in 1962 when he took an ashen-faced Innes out for a spin in a little baby prototype, the distant forefather of the Dino 246.

Lucy O'Reilly

Nazi Germany's sporting reversals have become the stuff of legend, Jesse Owens' slap in the face for Aryan supremacy at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and Joe Louis' first round stoppage of Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in 1938.

In the field of motor sport such reverses were few and far between, as Mercedes and Auto Union took Grand Prix racing to a new level. Of course there was Nuvolari's 1935 victory in an Alfa Romeo at the German Grand Prix, of all places - but that could be seen as a victory for Adolf's pal Mussolini. No, the victory of a privately entered Delahaye over Caracciola's works Mercedes in the Pau Grand Prix of 1938 must have been a singular blow to Nazi pride, especially given the fact that the French car was piloted by a Jew called Dreyfus.

The Delahaye was run by the Ecurie Bleue, a racing team set up by French-American heiress Lucy O'Reilly. In one of those examples where misinformation gets repeated, you are likely to read that Lucy was the Dublin born daughter of an American millionaire, who, having met her husband Laury Schell while on the grand tour, moved to France where she became an amateur rallyist and racing driver of some note. Infact Lucy was born at Brunoy, near Paris on 26th October 1896, the daughter of a French mother and, yes, an American millionaire father. The truth is that when Lucy first visited the United States during the Great War, she spoke very little English.

Frustrated in her attempts to get French backing for her Delahaye project, Lucy moved her team to Monte Carlo and purchased Maseratis. In 1940 Lucy sent Ecurie Bleue on a daring voyage from war torn Europe to compete in the Indianapolis 500, sailing from Genoa on the ocean liner Conte di Savoia. Despite blowing up one of their cars in practice, drivers Dreyfus and Le Begue shared a creditable tenth place in the race, hampered at every turn by a complete failure to understand the American racing rulebook.

Accompanying Ecurie Bleue on this American adventure was Lucy's son Harry Schell, who continued to race for the team after the war, later becoming one of the leading Grand Prix drivers until his death at Silverstone in 1960. Lucy herself died in 1952.

Merry Christmas

As far as I can see this is the one and only Tony ac Aloma video on Youtube. How can that be? Now if these kids had come from Alabama instead of Anglesey ....... You have to doubt the vitality of the Welsh language culture when no-one bothers to put the laid back genius of Tony ac Aloma on the video sharing websites.

Whatever, Merry Christmas to readers near and far.

Llanhir or Llanllyr?

The Radnorshire Society want the authorities to use Llanhir instead of Llanllŷr yn Rhos, as the official Welsh language version of Llanyre.

I've always accepted the explanation given in various books that the name was originally Llanllyr and that the internal LL was dropped quite naturally, in the same way that Cardiganshire's Llanllwchaearn became Llanychaearn. Attempts to popularise Llanhir version I've seen as a misguided attempt to correct a supposed anglicism in the speech of Radnorians.

The Radnorshire Society, however, make a good case for doubting the authenticity of Llanllyr, resting as it does on a single reference in a document of 1566. I've also come across a confused 18C references in Cary's map of 1794 (see illustration) which is probably built on the sand of William Owen Pughe's map of 1788.

But what about Llanhir. The Society see this originating from Llwynhir, as in the farm name Dol Llwyn Hir - which Radnorians, even in Welsh speaking times, would probably have called Dolwner - the change from Llwyn to Llan being quite a common occurrence in farm names. However the archaeologists tell us that there is a llan (early medieval church enclosure) in Llanyre, so why the need to find a Llwyn when you have a Llan on the ground?

What the Radnorshire Society and your blogger both agree on is that the local pronunciation is old and Welsh. I missed the fact that Ffransis Payne used the form Llanhir but the two examples of bardic poetry he quotes in Crwydro Sir Faesyfed use the form Llan-ur, rhyming with dolur and eglur. The Society place a good deal of faith in the occasional use of Llanhir and its variants in various 19C Censuses, but it is a usage that the 16C bards seem to have missed.

All in all I accept the fragility of the case for Llanllyr but remain unconvinced by Llanhir. What is plain is that the local pronunciation is the most historically attested form of the name, no matter how you spell it.

Innes and Chunky

An engineer himself, Radnorshire based F1 driver Innes Ireland had a high opinion of Lotus boss Colin Chapman's engineering ability: "If he was not a genius then he was bloody close to being one."

At the same time he can have had few illusions about the safety of the Lotus Formula One cars. Indeed Mike Taylor successfully sued Lotus for negligence when the steering column of his 18 broke in the ill-fated 1960 Belgian Grand Prix.

One of the Lotus mechanics of the time recalled those early days:

"Surely Innes Ireland must rate as the most unfairly treated driver of all time. History often can only relate to what the hacks and anoraks see or read for themselves; yet behind the scenes, the breakages that occurred in those days defied belief. Chassis breakages apart, no end of "minor disasters such as automatically disengaging gear ratios, total brake failure etc. were encountered by our drivers, who within a day or two were out in the same car 'hoping' that things would improve!"

"Once the Lotus 18 arrived things changed dramatically as we all see from the records, so I think it is unfair to dismiss the likes of 'MacGregor' when the torrid times that he, Cliff, Graham and Alan went through in the preceding 3 years were never experienced by the then up and coming drivers who enjoyed the benefits of Chapman's greatest reversal, rear-engined cars!"

John Surtees was one of those up and coming drivers and he recalled the incident that caused him to quit Lotus:

"Colin said to me, "John - you're my Number One and you can have your choice of team-mate, Innes or Jim."
"I don't know," I said. "I've had so many mechanical failures that I'm getting a bit suspicious of your green cars."
"Then we'll paint 'em black!" said Colin, and he prepared a contract giving me choice of second driver and saying that the cars would be painted black."

"I told him that I would like Jim Clark as my number two, as I got on well with him, but then a few days later Innes Ireland called me from Paris. He told me that he had a contract for 1960 and '61 which stated that he had choice of team-mate! "What the hell is going on?" he wanted to know."

I went to see Colin."It's not true." he said, "I've got no arrangement at all with Innes. We're fixing him up with the British Racing Partnership."

"Innes still insisted that he had everything in writing, so I fixed another meeting with Chapman, taking Innes with me. He brought his contract, which said exactly what he claimed, but Colin just shrugged the whole thing off, so I said "I'm sorry, but that's it" and I walked out."

Given the unenviable safety record of Chapman's cars perhaps Colin was hedging his bets. The chances of both Innes and Surtees surviving the 1960 season were not that good. Enzo Ferrari is often condemned for playing on the rivalries of his drivers, but at least his cars were safe!

Innes was still the Number One driver at Lotus at the time of his sacking in 1961, and this despite his serious crash in the Monaco Grand Prix, a fact recognized by Jabby Crombac in his semi-official biography of Chapman. "There was no doubt that sacking Ireland was rather a controversial decision because, at the time Innes was still a little faster than his less experienced team mate Jim Clark."

It was not a decision that Chapman could bring himself to convey to Innes face to face. Cedric Selzer, another Team Lotus mechanic confirmed, "The big problem was that everyone, except Innes, knew that he wasn't going to be retained."

Why was Innes sacked? Some like Trevor Taylor believe it was purely a matter of cash, for Innes was on 50% of starting money, while Taylor, his replacement, was only on 25%. Most likely Innes had upset Esso's Geoff Murdoch by giving up his car to BP driver Stirling Moss for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, when Stirling still had a chance of winning the 1961 World Championship for Rob Walker's team.

Maybe Innes was sacked because of the commonly held belief, repeated by Mike Lawrence in his eagerly awaited but disappointing biography of Chapman, that Innes sometimes turned up on the grid worse the wear for drink. Innes, who is never anything but painfully honest in his writings denied that he ever arrived on raceday with a hangover. Certainly if Innes was outdriving Clark while over the breathalyser limit then he must have been quite a driver when sober! The suggestion is clearly nonsense.

Finally we have to recognize the potential of Clark and Chapman's recognition of what was still an unfulfilled promise in 1961. Perhaps there was no single reason why Chapman sacked Ireland, it was a combination of things - the money, the grievances of the sponsors, Innes's feisty personality and Clark's more malleable nature. It was a poor reward for all that Innes had done to set the marque on the road to success.

Crwydro Sir Faesyfed

Radnorian has been informed that the Radnorshire Society intend publishing an English translation of Ffransis G Payne's classic volume Crwydro Sir Faesyfed in its annual Transactions. To those who don't know I guess you could compare Payne's book to one of those Trevor Fishlock television travelogues, a journey through the Radnorshire countryside of the 1960s, but jammed pack with historical interest, especially concerning the county's Welsh heritage.

I wonder if this translation will gain a wider circulation amongst Radnorshire folk, beyond that usual for the Society's Transactions, either by being placed on more general sale or perhaps made available on-line.

Innes at Daytona

Bill France had been trying to get Innes to drive the Daytona 500 for years, ever since he had won the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in 1961. In 1962, the Radnorshire based Scotsman had even turned up at the Florida track, where he caused a certain amount of mirth amongst the regulars by trying to open the welded door of a stocker. By 1967 Innes's road race drives were drying-up, he'd gotten a somewhat unfair reputation as a crasher, someone who took partying more seriously than racing, and this in a sport that was getting more serious by the minute.

The offer to drive the 1967 race must have been a godsend to Innes, who, contrary to popular misconception, was not a well-heeled toff. The starting money offered by France was going to be very welcome to a Scot whose domestic arrangements at that time were somewhat complicated to say the least. This was not some fly in and fly out arrangement, Innes was to spend a couple of weeks at Daytona in the lead up to the race, generally learning the ropes of the oval game. France had fixed a deal with the middle of the grid Ray Fox team for Innes to drive one of their Dodges. Not a new Dodge mind, but an old 65 Dodge Coronet - team mate Buddy Baker was allocated the 67 Charger.

Ireland was disconcerted by the understeering stocker and caused some consternation in practice by setting up the car to allow him to corner with a touch of oversteer. A few friendly words from Mario Andretti, in which the American pointed out the consequences to the tyres of coming through the bends with the front wheels in lane two and the rears almost in lane three, saw Innes hastily abandon his effort to teach the locals their own game. Over the years this episode has sometimes been used as evidence of road racer naivety, but what is usually forgotten is that Innes was the source of the tale. Unlike so many others in the ego driven racing world, Ireland was always big enough to tell a story against himself.

Innes got the feeling that the Fox team crew were not too impressed with the 175 mph laps he was reeling off in the 600 bhp Dodge, so he asked Baker to try out the older car and as his team leader's best time was just 0.04 mph faster, it was agreed that the rookie wasn't doing so bad. The second of the one hundred mile qualifying races saw Innes come in a very respectable 10th place which put him at 20th position on the grid of 50 starters for the 500 mile main event on 26th February.

Even as the high speed 500 progressed, Ireland was still learning the techniques of oval racing as he drafted Cale Yarborough's Ford to record laps of 178mph, his fastest yet. Innes had moved up steadily through the field to 10th place when his engine disintegrated on lap 126. The experts agreed that given his increasing pace the newcomer would have finished in the top five if the car had lasted the race. Stock Car Racing magazine was most impressed with the road racer's first outing on the high banks, commenting that he had compressed in a few days what many NASCAR drivers took years to acquiire. He had been gaining ground they said on some of the most formidable names in the sport, including eventual winner Andretti, and the likes of Petty, Yarborough and Pearson.

Despite the respect and welcome Innes received from the stock racing fraternity, he was not eager to take up the offers to race again during the rest of the season. He disliked the seriousness of it all, the 9 to 5 routine at the circuit followed by long hours back at the hotel, without the fun and good food of the European scene. He also did not have the same rapport with the mechanics as he had back home. Racing was becoming a business and Innes, as he often stated, was no business man.

Later in the year Bill France invited two other great Scots, Jimmy Clark and Jackie Stewart to participate in the American 500 at Rockingham. The terms were not right for JYS, who in many ways typified the new hard-nosed business attitudes that Innes abhorred. Jimmy, by contrast, was a racer who just couldn't turn down the opportunity to try something new. He drove a 67 Ford in the late October race for the frontline Holman-Moody team. Well off the pace set by his teammates in practice, the eventual race winner Allison and second placed Pearson, Clark was still learning the ropes and moving up through the mid field when his engine gave up the ghost on lap 144. Clark fans like to point to this foray as yet another example of their heroes versatility and greatness. No-one pays much mind to Innes's very similar outing earlier in the same season of course, but then what has fairness got to do with anything.

Forgotten Radnorians - Anni Goch

Perhaps the border village of Norton might not strike the casual observer as being the most "welsh" place in Wales, yet it was the home of that formidable femme fatale and figure in Welsh literature Anni Goch.

Anni first appears in the public record in 1501/02 when she and the bard Ieuan Dyfi were brought before a church court accused of adultery. Ieuan confessed and was sentenced to be symbolically whipped eight times around Presteigne church. Anni denied the charge and later turned up in court with four compurgators who swore that she had been raped.

It was probably this incident that caused Ieuan to compose his often copied diatribe against Anni Goch in particular and womankind in general. A poem that caused the proto-feminist bard Gwerful Mechain to reply with her famous defence of the female gender.

Further light is thrown on the relationship between Anni and Ieuan by another church case brought in 1517. On this occasion John Lippard of Norton, Anni's husband was accused of bigamy, having contracted a marriage while still being wed to Anni. Lippard confessed and was sentenced to be whipped around the churches of Presteigne, Norton and Byton. His defence being that he had left Anni because she had plotted to kill him. Anni was brought to the court where she gave evidence that her marriage to Lippard had lasted only six months, that she had committed adultery with Ieuan Dyfi and two others and that her husband had sold her to the bard. The judge was so impressed with Anni's testimony that he demanded that poor Lippard restore full conjugal rights to his spurned wife within three days, on pain of excommunication.

Perhaps Ieuan had a point after all?

Tragedy on the Ithon

This tragic incident occured in November 1900 and at the time it must have seemed quite extraordinary, outside the coalfield perhaps, for three brothers from one family to die like this. Who was to know that within a few years a great many other families would suffer similar losses. Indeed my grandmother's three brothers were all killed in the Great War, the youngest, aged eighteen, just a few days before the Armistice.

Tempus Fugit

You're a journalist, you've got to come up with some copy, so you produce a list. You know, the 3 most intelligent drummers or the 101 greatest outside halves born in Cefneithin, that sort of thing. Television stations also get in on the act fairly regularly and now historian John Davies enters the fray with a new book, or I guess an English translation Wales: The 100 Places To See Before You Die.

Davies lists just three Radnorian places worthy of a visit before you snuff it, Llananno Church, The Pales and Presteigne. Um, that should take care of an afternoon, with plenty of time to plan a visit to such nearby attractions as Talgarth and Newtown. Indeed although Mr D's book will no doubt be fairly readable, his list does seem a tad non-specific: the outskirts of Newport, the Rhondda townscape, the Lower Swansea valley, Kenfig and the surrounding area.

Anyway it's not a volume I'll be over eager to find in my Christmas stocking, unlike this, but what about some of the Radnorshire attractions Mr Davies missed:

The Elan Valley and especially the pipeline. How many people realise that the water runs the 73 miles to Brum by the force of gravity alone. There's green for you. What about the Showground in Llanelwedd or the increasingly less genteel decay of Victorian Llandrindod Wells. I'd include the tomb of Tomas ap Rhosier and Elen Gethin in Kington parish church. OK I know that's Herefordshire, but why take any notice of a border drawn up by some ill-informed bureaucrat 470 odd years ago.

Any more suggestions for Radnorian places for inclusion on the list?

No-Man's Land

Back in the early 1970s the University of Wales Press came out with a sizeable volume called the Linguistic Geography of Wales, an attempt to map the various Welsh dialects. The methodology was to seek out elderly folk from long established local backgrounds and analyse their use or non-use of various words.

The map shows the location of the individuals providing the data and it is clear that a great deal of care has gone into finding subjects, even in areas where the traditional dialects had virtually disappeared, in Shropshire for example, or on the Usk below Brecon.

But what is this large white hole in Builth hundred, an area of great interest as a place where the Northern, Western and Southern dialects might have overlapped? Surely the researchers could have found subjects in Abergwesyn, Llanafan or Llangammarch. It's an omission that has puzzled me ever since.

A Radnorshire Ripper

Thomas Edwards' confession was plain enough, he wanted to kill prostitutes "I intended going to Newport and killing one or two there, I should have gone, only I had no money." As it was he managed to pick up a local girl, Mary Connolly, who took him into a garden off Abergavenny's Hatherleigh Road where he cut her throat with a razor. When her body was found she was still clutching Edwards' shilling in her hand.

Edwards, the press reports said he was 30, although the census returns suggest he was nearer 40, calmly walked into the police station a couple of days after the murder to confess. Both newspapers and census returns agreed that the killer was a Radnorian, he came originally from Llanbister said the Western Mail. Edwards was a former soldier in the Shropshire Regiment who had not taken to civilian life; he had been sent away from the Blaenavon works, a workmate claimed, because of his peculiarities and occasionally found himself in the local spike. Edwards was quick to point out that his Bleddfa born mother had spent many years in the Abergavenny asylum, clearly his defence would be based on insanity.

Mary Connolly was a 23 year old daughter of the Irish Diaspora, living with her Cork born father in Pant Street, "a little disreputable lane." Mary had herself only been released from prison on the morning of the killing. The census lists her as a charwoman, although this was clearly not her sole source of income. Indeed Edwards claimed that she had stolen £2 from his person some months before.

Justice was dealt out quickly in Victorian Wales. Three medical experts declared him sane and there being no doubt about his guilt Edwards was sentenced to death. On December 22nd 1892, just three months after the slaying, the hangman Billington carried out the court's sentence in Usk jail.

Language Apartheid?

I've always found John Redwood's former side-kick Hywel Williams an abrasive but welcome addition to the world of Welsh politics. We need such contrarian voices and his attacks on the public-purse dependency of so much of the Welsh middle class are well-aimed. At the same time his recent article on Welsh history in the Guardian is something of a damp squip. Yes, Welsh history could well do with some more revisionists, it's one of the reasons I find Robert Stradling such an interesting writer. But who exactly are these dull and introspective historians Williams castigates? He doesn't tell us and I think we should be told.

One reader who was impressed with Williams' article was Llandrindod blogger and former Liberal Democrat councillor David Peter. Indeed Mr Peter widens the debate somewhat. Devolution has led to Welsh people becoming "more introverted and self-absorbed, self-obsessed even" all at "the expense of a broader and more balanced international perspective." Now I would have thought that the Assembly concentrates on domestic matters because that is its remit. Although where it can, in education policy for example, it has looked beyond England to European models.

Turning to language issues Mr Peter identifies "a language apartheid that has been steadily constructed over the past thirty years." This is a puzzle? Is Mr Peter referring to the establishment of a Welsh TV channel perhaps, or Welsh medium education? Maybe it is the rights extended to Welsh speakers to use their language in the courts and to a limited extent in public life that provokes such an odious comparison? I had thought that the Lib Dems were in favour of devolution and language equality, or have they now been reduced to going after the Little Englander UKIP vote?

A Forgotten Radnorian - Selina Price

Anyone wanting to purchase some cheap artwork with a Radnorian connection for Christmas could do worse than picking up an engraving by the Bloomsbury based Sidney Hall.

Hall died in 1831 and his business was kept going, "quietly and anonymously" for the next 20 or so years by his Radnorshire born widow Selina Price (1777-1853).

Sidney's work is signed Sidy Hall but anything bearing the signature S Hall is actually the work of Selina, as in this splendid map of Ireland.

Language Shift in Builth Hundred

At the start of the 20th Century there were still a fair numbers of folk who spoke only Welsh in the old cantref of Buallt. In the Builth Rural District Council area these monoglots totalled around 500, over 10% of the population. Yet although Welsh speakers were still a majority in the council area, some 41% spoke only English.

It's as well to remember that language shift is a process. In the over 65 age group 82% of the population of Builth RDC were able to speak Welsh, compared with 43% aged between 3 and 14. Clearly Welsh was far from dead in the district, but in reality the war had already been lost and the future belonged to English. The map shows the percentage of monoglots in each parish for example in Tirabad (Llandulas) Welsh monglots totalled 69% whereas English monoglots totalled 2% - the bilingual population was therefore 29%. In parishes west of the blue line Welsh speakers were in the majority, in Llanwrthwl parish figures are distorted by the large numbers of migrant workers engaged on building the Elan Valley dams.

There's an interesting chapter on the dialect of the area starting at page 97 of this book.

Iron Mike

Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter of the Times newspaper, has come in for some well-deserved criticism, after describing Merthyr as "not the most obvious of destinations" for a Mike Tyson visit during his current tour of the UK. Or England as Slot has it . Of course there are few towns in the world with such a rich boxing heritage as Merthyr Tydfil, and certainly none with three public statues celebrating pugilistic heroes of the recent past. Mike Tyson, for all his faults, is a knowledgeable follower of ring history, so his visit to the town is not as surprising as Slot suggests.

So is Merthyr the nonpareil of Welsh boxing towns? With statues to Howard Winstone, Johnny Owen and Eddie Thomas it certainly makes such a claim plain to even the most casual visitor. As a youngster I can recall some of the old timers boasting of having sparred with the sparring partner of an earlier Merthyr fighter, Cuthbert Taylor, who had somehow made his way to our Radnorian village.

However, just 12 miles down the valley, Pontypridd can make an equal claim to boxing fame. The deeds of Freddie Welsh surely eclipse anything achieved by a Merthyr fighter, the likes of Nat Fleischer of Ring magazine would not rate you his fourth greatest lightweight of all time for nothing. Ponty was also the home of Frank Moody, another Welsh fighter who found fame in the US.

Even Pontypridd must bow to the nearby Rhondda Valley, home of tremendous battlers such as Tommy Farr, Percy Jones and above all the Tylorstown Terror Jimmy Wilde. Universally acclaimed as the best flyweight boxer of all time, Ring magazine voted Wilde its third greatest pound for pound puncher, behind Joe Louis and Sam Langford, as recently as 2003. Sadly no-one has yet seen fit to erect a statue to this legendary Welshman.

No, when it comes to fighters, the mining valleys of South Wales are a pretty obvious place to go. Throw in Cardiff boxers like the No 2 rated featherweight of all time Peerless Jim Driscoll and nowhere outside the big cities of the United States has anything like a comparable boxing heritage.

Musical Interlude Update

Well someone claimed copyright so you tube took down the Tom Jones Gallic caper. Never mind, it gives me a chance to highlight some 60s gals with a gimmick, The Cake. Why don't they bring back 2 minute tracks?

BTW if you liked Eleanor Barooshian in that, you might not like this.

Morgan Elfael

While Radnorshire could compare with any Welsh county in its readiness to provide patronage to the bardic order, it must be admitted that the county - or those cantons which went to make up the modern county - produced few literary figures itself. Indeed the correspondent of Y Gwyliedydd writing in 1827, at a time when the Welsh language had retreated 20 miles in a generation, blamed this process of anglicization on the lack of local poets and literary figures.

It would be pleasant if evidence came to light showing that bards such as Bedo Brwynllys for example, actually derived their names from Radnorshire placenames, in his case Brwynllys in Llanddewi Ystradenni parish, rather than the generally accepted Breconshire Bronllys; but as it is, even a poet as associated with the county as Hywel ap Syr Mathew actually came from Llanfair Waterdine in Shropshire.

One bard that Radnorshire can certainly claim is Morgan Elfael, who in all probability came from Diserth and whose death is recorded in the Presteigne parish register in 1563. Many years ago I actually looked up the entry in the register at the Hereford Record Office, a tangible link - like the tomb of Elen Gethin and Tomas ap Rhosier in Kington church - with a past that in many ways seems almost mythical. Anyway Morgan was a fairly prolific bard with some 60 surviving poems hidden away in manuscript.

Ffrancis Payne published a long extract from one poem in Crwydro Sir Faesyfed but I've seen nothing else in print. The poem relates the adventures of a group of friends travelling to Arwystl, on the way they encounter a troll like creature. Here's my attempt at translating a few lines:

Philip fell in a heap,
Arse over head beneath the table,
Once more he got up, like a stupid dog
To grab hold a second time.
Dear God and his candles!
What a racket this angry wrestling match made!
Four hours they were fighting there,
Clumsily, arse over tip.
I've seen many, but he was the ugliest,
The dirty creature beneath Bedo.
There in plain view they saw
Bedo castrate the thing;
And throw him, a fat package,
Into the blazing fire on his bare backside.

It's interesting that Morgan uses South Wales dialect in this extract, cwnnu instead of codi and tawlu instead of taflu.
.

They Haven't Gone Away You Know.

This blog is supposed to be about Radnorian history, spiced up with a bit of old time motor sport. Trouble is I always have to guard against an urge to rant about some political issue or other. The other day I thought about posting something about Glanville Williams, one of the more influential Welshmen of the last century. Trouble is I could find no Radnorshire connection and he surely wasn't a Brooklands devotee. Of course as the President of the Abortion Law Reform Association and the legal brain behind the 1967 Act, I guess you could accuse him of the non-appearance of around 2000 potential Radnorians, but it's not much of a link I have to admit.

Glanville Williams was also a leading member of the Eugenics Society, a body that concerned itself with such issues as opposing racially mixed marriages, sterilising unemployed people and other "unhealthy seed". Although all that "good seed" baloney smacks of the 1930s, the Eugenics Society never went away, it merely changed its name. This popular broadcaster even ended up as President, I except you know him. Anyway I decided that this was not a suitable topic for a Radnorian blog and deleted the post. However ........

This morning the BBC News site is making much of the fact that the BNP are pals with American racist David Duke. Hardly surprising of course but maybe this is, the foreword to David Duke's book My Awakening by American geneticist Professor Glayde Whitney. That's the same Glayde Whitney who our present day eugenicists invited over to the UK to lecture, David Aaronovitch wrote about it in the Guardian.

So there you have it, the obviously racist BNP, the less-obvious haters of the SWP posing as "anti-fascists" outside the BBC and those highly respectable scientists seeking to rehabilitate eugenics. Wonder which are the greatest danger? Wonder also how long it will be before someone suggests sterilising the less talented "seed" in order to save the planet from global warming?

Treason

Has the world come to this, Stirling bigging up a red car!

Fascist Advance Turned Back in Radnor

The latest BNP membership list is a bit of a mess but from what I can make out they've picked up one new member in Llandrindod, while losing their two previous Radnorian sign ups.

The pleasant Wyeside town of Llanfair-ym-Muallt also gained, if that's the right word, a member, although my guess is that this one thought BNP stood for Builth National Party.

Go Figure

Top picture is the A483 at Howey, 7 busy junctions, 2 residential caravan sites, 4 housing estates, a narrow pavement used daily by dozens of folk, a couple of accident blackspots and a village.

Below is the A44 at Llanfihangel Nant Melan, a pub and a couple of farms and that's about it.

Now guess which one has a 40 MPH speed limit and which has the 50 MPH limit.

Yes, that's right .......

Here Today

Just a reminder that my Innes Ireland website will disappear into cyberspace later this month. Yahoo are taking down all their free sites and I don't feel like paying to keep it going. I guess in some ways the internet is like the manuscript age before the printing press and the permanency of books. Some things will last, some will be copied and survive in part, but most will just disappear.

Simmering Discontent or Hyperbole?

As one of those Radnorians who still think of Llandrindod as something of a Johnny-come-lately on the local scene, I can't say that I am at all well-informed about the storms that occasionally boil over in that particular tea-cup. Wilfing around the internet I was surprised to discover that back in the summer the Spa town was simmering with discontent. As things turned out this "groundswell" amounted to no more than a couple of dozen votes, as Mr Gary Price romped home to an easy victory.

Anyway it now seems that Mr Price has joined the "ultra-right" Montgomeryshire Independent group on Powys County Council. Wow! I knew that Nick Griffin lived in the Welshpool area but I hadn't realised that some Montgomeryshire version of the Iron Guard had been elected to the County Council.

Of course it could be that this is just hyperbole and that the Montgomeryshire Independent Group are merely a bunch of well-meaning souls who happen to disagree with the Liberal Democrats.

Secure in Valour's Station?

No part of Wales welcomed continued membership of the European Community more than Radnorshire in the 1975 Referendum. With Powys voting 74% YES, a figure doubtless depressed by NO votes in the old Breconshire coalfield, the more rural parts of the county would surely have outstripped the most pro areas of England in enthusiasm for Europe.

Your correspondent was one of that small minority of Radnorians to vote NO in 1975, so it was with a degree of sadness that I noted the YES vote in Ireland over the weekend, the good voters of Donegal excepted. The main reason voters gave for giving up their country's hard-won independence seemed to be money. Unlike the Scottish Parliament in 1707, the Irish voters were admitting to have been bought for European rather than English gold.

Now I realise that the chances of a referendum in the UK are fairly remote, but if by some mishap it should happen, how should Radnorian vote? As a supporter of Welsh Independence it seems somewhat eccentric to vote to give away that independence before it has even been won. At the same time a victory for the NO side would be a massive fillip to the old myopic English Nationalism that defines itself by what it doesn't like, the Welsh and Scots in particular, rather than what it does.

A Walk in the Park

Can't think what came over me posting modern stuff like Jemma Griffiths, apologies. Now here's some Sixties pop genius from Coventry schoolgirls The Orchids. Oh and if you want to complete your collection of Adamsdown Soul, here's Tawney Reed and My Heart Cries, the B-side of her second and final single.

Daydreaming Over a Map

So many books touching on the Welsh language reproduce the maps of W T R Pryce, which use returns from Anglican churches to map the state of the language across Wales at a particular date. The illustration shows Radnorshire circa 1850, with monoglot Welsh and English areas divided by a bilingual zone, the darker shading.

Now I think that these maps, especially those for earlier years, are misleading as far as Radnorshire is concerned. It seems to me that Anglican churches in Radnorshire dropped Welsh services as quickly as possible, as soon as the last generation of monoglot Welsh speakers had died, if not long before. For example Nantmel is shown as part of the English monoglot zone in the mid-Eighteenth century map, at least a hundred years before that was infact the case.

Where the 1850's map gets somewhat ridiculous is in linking up Cwmteuddwr and Abergwesyn - where by the way there was precious little English fifty years later - into a bilingual area based on the language of Anglican church services. The only language heard over most of this peopleless "zone" would have been the song of the skylark and the occasional bleating sheep.

Bilingualism and Radnorshire Farmers in 1901

Some evidence of how the Welsh language persisted in North West Radnorshire, long after the academics had it buried, is provided by the numbers of bilingual farmers found in the 1901 census.

The figures shown on the map are for the parishes of Cwmteuddwr, St Harmon, Abbeycwmhir and Nantmel; and range from 88% in Dyffryn Elan to 5% in Coedglasson. Of course the figures include farmers who have moved into the county from elsewhere (although most are locally born) and disguises the fact that children were being brought up as English speaking monoglots

What's in a Name

I'm not sure how much of a connection there is between Colin Chapman's outfit and the new Team Lotus which will be returning to the F1 grid in 2010. Perhaps as much as that between Stan Chapman's pub on the Tottenham Lane and it's current incarnation as the Funky Brownz Shisha Lounge. Of course what is important is the name and history which the new team will no doubt seek to capitalize on, no matter how tenuous the link.

An old Lotus mechanic once informed me that it was the likes of Innes Ireland, Cliff Allison and Graham Hill who took the development risks from which later drivers like Clark benefited. Those were the days when Chapman's cars usually fell apart during the race, and the mechanics could be found still welding a chassis on the grid.

Anyway, I wonder if anyone will remember that it was Innes who scored Lotus's first ever F1 victory and who also gave the team their first World Championship win? Of course even in the Eighties all that counted for little. Lotus sponsor Camel held a big post-race party to which all the F1 journalists were invited, with the sole exception of the correspondent of the American magazine Road and Track, who was somehow overlooked ..... one Innes Ireland.

Lost in Translation

Welsh has been added to Google Translate. Now there are some fairly dire Welsh language translations out there already, but just wait until our public bodies latch on to this.

Book Review

I'm almost resigned to the fact that any new book about Radnorshire is going to quote that old chestnut about Richard Fowler of Abbeycwmhir and his five hundred a year. Conradi's At the Bright Hem of God, Radnorshire Pastoral doesn't fail in this respect, although, justifiably, he is quoting his friend Iris Murdoch. He also makes a good point by saying that the doggerel reflects the preponderance in the county of small independent farmers rather than big landlords.

Conradi makes no bones about the fact that this is an outsiders book, the natives providing a romantic backdrop for those who retreat to the county in search of "inwardness". The book deals almost exclusively with writers and Conradi's Radnorshire is drawn rather large - George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne are the subjects of one chapter for example. Indeed Marcher Pastoral might have been a more accurate subtitle for the book.

We should be grateful to Conradi for bringing Ffransis Payne to the attention of a wider audience and the book does not ignore some of the great Welsh language poetry composed for patrons living in the county. I do wish the translation of Elen Gethin as Elen the Terrible could somehow be abolished, it means olive or swarthy skinned. Does anyone really think that bards like Lewis Glyn Cothi and Llawdden would have called Elen terrible to her and her family's face? One thing the book does make apparent is the paucity of Radnorshire born writers, even Hilda Vaughan was born in Builth.

Did I learn anything new about Radnorshire? Yes, quite a lot, perhaps if I had paid more attention to the Mid-Wales Journal I would have known of R S Thomas's Presteigne connections for example. All in all there are enough "ideas" in the book to keep your blogger in topics for quite a while. Conradi shares Kilvert's ability to paint a picture in a few words and at just £9.99 this Seren publication should certainly find a place on any Radnorian's bookshelf.

Who Knew?

I must admit that I couldn't stand Simon Dee in the days when he was the BBC's "golden boy." On reflection and comparing him with the likes of Graham Norton and Russell Brand, well, actually he was just as bad.

Anyway perhaps my opinion of Simon might have been different if I had known he was a namesake of that proud Radnorian, the Elizabethan polymath Simon Dee ...... at least that's what this Independent book review calls someone the rest of us know as plain John. OK we've all made similar mistakes, but it did make me smile.

Anyway expect a favourable review of the Conradi book before too long. I haven't read it but any author who claims that Radnorshire "has been the central repository of the true spirit of Welshness since the 12th century" gets my vote!

What's the Welsh for Wilfing?

OK, I guessed that Welsh language blogs dealing with Radnorshire topics would be thin on the ground but there are a couple. Y Dysgwr Araf seemingly lives in Llandrindod and you certainly have to agree with his comments in this post. No translation necessary surely!

The author of O'r Parsel Canol lives in Aberystwyth but her posts seem to indicate a Radnorshire connection. There's mention of an old primary schoolmistress of mine on the blog who I seem to remember teaching us about the likes of eighteenth century Republican Jac Glan y Gors - pretty heady stuff for Radnorshire in 1960. I like this blogger's use of colour, as in this photo of some tiles at Old Radnor church. It makes me want to dust off my cameras and start snapping.

Mynyddoedd y Cambrian?

The only time i buy a copy of the Western Mail nowadays is on a Saturday for the TV and radio magazine, after all there are only so many letters from the likes of Gwilym Levell that you would want to inflict on yourself in one lifetime. Two columnists in the magazine who I usually read are Tryst Williams, who I find annoyingly sanctimonious, and Lefi Gruffudd, whose mildly anti-establishment viewpoint makes a refreshing change from the usual politically-correct consensus in Wales.

This week Lefi criticises the mountain bike community for inflicting names on the countryside like "Windy Alley" and "Italian Job", completely ignoring the Welsh names for such places. You get something similar in the world of rallying with monstrosities such as "Sweet Lamb". So far so good, but then Lefi spoils it all somewhat by asking for the establishment of a national park to cover the Cambrian mountains. Why anyone would want to hand over control of any part of Wales to an unelected body is beyond me. I well remember an article in one of the English magazines back in the Sixties, New Society perhaps, which advocated putting up a fence around the area, expelling the locals and populating the hills with bear, wolves, beaver and reindeer. I'm sure such ideas are still knocking around in the back of the minds of the environmentalists, with the addition of a few wind-farms of course.

Anyway Lefi spoils his article somewhat by referring to the area as mynyddoedd y Cambrian - surely the district has a perfectly good Welsh name already ...... Elenydd.

Happy Holiday Folks

The Engineer pulled the throttle, Conductor rang the bell,
The Brakeman hollered "ALL ABOARD" and the banks all went to hell.

The Maestro Speaks

Some candid quotes from Stirling Moss in this month's Motor Sport. Of course he's too much of a gentleman to be other than, well, gentlemanly:

"Fangio, to my mind, was the best F1 driver in World" ..... ok if you say so Stirl', although I'm sticking with that guy Moss.

Graham Hill "a driver who attained more success with less ability than most." ...... and really that's quite a compliment.

Phil Hill "he was good in as much as he could drive most cars fairly well" ..... mmmh I can feel some Americans reaching for their word processor.

Hawthorn "he was fast, but one has to say what he did at Le Mans was rather foolhardy." ...... C'mon Stirling don't you know that the default Britisher position is that it was all Levegh's fault, stop being fair.

and so it goes on .........

Oh and Sirling's opinion of Radnorshire based racer Innes Ireland:

"One of the most underrated drivers, he was very fast. If Colin Chapman had been able to control him the way he did Jimmy Clark, I think he would have been up there with him. I don't think Innes got as much assistance from Chapman as he could have had."

Plantation

Looking at a sample of over a thousand Radnorshire wills from the 17C we find that a majority of folk from across the county are using traditional Welsh patronyms, Rees ap David of Gladestry (1660) for example, or Gwenllian vch Hugh of Aberedw (1671).

The new fangled surnames are certainly making headway, although a subtantial number of these are infact hidden patronyms. For instance it's highly unlikely that John David Bedo Mayn of Llanyre (1640) was actually a Mr Mayn!

Surnames that denote an English ethnic origin are absent from most parishes but in Llanddewi Ystradenni, Llangynllo and Llanbadarn Fynydd they make up between 20% and 25% of the population. Familiar names from in and around these parishes include Mason, Clark, Bufton, Payne, Hamer, Harding, Wilde, Ingram, Worthen and Mantle. These families soon inter-married with the local population and Buftons, Hamers and Ingrams etc are found in the last generation of native speakers of Radnorshire Welsh. At the same time they no doubt introduced a degree of bilingualism into North Radnorshire which would have been sustained by contact with the border towns of Knighton and Presteigne. It is this bilingualism that is the key to the later anglicisation of the county and it is the upper Ithon valley and the hill country of Maelienydd that is the conduit not the Wye valley as supposed by many.

My old chemistry teacher, Ll. Hooson Owen, in his thesis on the Welsh language in Radnorshire seemingly believed that it was a planted Cromwellian soldiery that introduced this English element into the county, but the names cited above are found before the Civil War. Perhaps they were settled on lands confiscated from the monks of Abbey Cwmhir, does anyone know?

Re-Writing History

It's always been a pleasure to point out to the more bumptious Anglo-Saxon that, from the Welsh point of view, the English are themselves fairly recent immigrants to this sceptred isle. Now along comes Stephen Oppenheimer with the claim that the English have been inhabitants of Britain for much longer than previously thought. Indeed his more extreme followers even go as far as to say that parts of Ireland have also been English for 2000 years.

Oppenheimer bases his theory on the belief (dismissed by specialists) that the Belgae of Southern England were a Germanic speaking tribe and, well that's about it, except for the fact that how else to explain that England is, you know, English rather than Welsh.

Of course Oppenheimer's book is manner from heaven for those English folk whose confidence has been shaken by the loss of Empire, immigration, bolshie Scots and rule from Brussels, but is it true?

Firstly the Belgae only occupied a small area of Southern England so, even if they were Germanic speakers, it doesn't explain what happened to all the other Celtic tribes of what became England, the Iceni for example. Secondly how is it possible that so few Latin loan words ended up in Anglo-Saxon, far fewer than in Welsh. After all according to Oppenheimer the "English" lived in the most Romanised part of Britain, Southern England, yet the Romans seem to have had precious little influence on their language, culture or religion.

How then can those of us who find little of value in Oppenheimer's work explain the comparative absence of Welsh placenames and loan-words in England? Well how about the extreme weather events of the 530s and the great plague of the 540s. This all fits in with Gildas and would explain how the Anglo-Saxons were so easily able to move into an under-populated landscape.

Big Cat Myth

It fooled the gentlemen of the Victorian press, it even fooled the perspicacious author of the Radnorian blog, but it seems that the tale of the escaped tiger of Aberedw was a hoax.

Next they'll be saying that the Llandrindod town councillor who once suggested purchasing a breeding pair of gondolas for the town's famous lake never existed either.

Thought for the Day

Following on from my Raglan Castle post, I see that Clive Betts - the doyen of Welsh political journalism - has also been exercised by the Anglocentric viewpoints of the Assembly's historical monuments branch. I certainly agree with Betts' comment that "much of Wales's history has been characterised by militant – even military – opposition to England. It’s about time someone reminded Cadw of this."

In the same way Radnorians cannot escape the fact that our area's history is part and parcel of this opposition. It should be a matter of pride that at a time when Norman rule stretched from Limerick to Jerusalem, it failed to progress much beyond Knighton. The princes of what later became Radnorshire stood shoulder to shoulder with Llywelyn and his brother Dafydd until the bitter end, and Glyndwr owed his greatest victory to the actions of the archers of Maelienydd at Bryn Glas. Likewise two of the great works of world literature - the Book of Taliesin, and the Red Book of Hergest - were preserved here and the many scores of surviving bardic poems from the area are testament to its nourishment of traditional culture. Llandrindod's Victorian festival may well ignore the reality of 19C Radnorshire but the issues that dominated the politics of the county - militant opposition to the imposition of fishery laws, the enclosure acts, the disestablishment of the Anglican church and, yes, Home Rule were particularist and Welsh.

Cadw's anglocentricity reflects a larger problem within the Assembly, where paid officials often seem more loyal to the London based civil service, of which they remain a part, rather than to the democratically elected institution which employs them. A good start in combating this colonial mentality would be to end the linkage between Welsh civil servants and London.

"A dice ... perhaps the greatest of all time."

Probably Innes Ireland's greatest victory was in the 1961 Solitude Grand Prix. Here is an extract from Jenkinson's report in Motor Sport.

"On lap 20 Brabham's engine coughed once or twice, and immediately Bonnier and Gurney were past, and then it spluttered again, as if getting low on fuel, or suffering from fuel feed trouble, and McLaren was by. This let the two Porsches attack Ireland and on lap 21 the order was Ireland, Gurney and Bonnier, all in a tight bunch and one felt that the Lotus could not cope with a concerted attack by the two silver cars, especially as Brabham and McLaren had dropped back out of the slip-stream, and could not help anymore.

It seemed impossible that a Lotus could beat the Porsche team on their own doorstep, and the crowd were obviously very partisan and urging on the two silver cars. Fortunately for Ireland the two Porsche drivers were too engrossed in their own personal battle to think of ganging-up on the Lotus, so Ireland still led on lap 22, and again on lap 23, but on the penultimate lap Bonnier got by, and one thought "that's it, Ireland's had it now" for the three cars disappeared up the hill with the green Lotus in the middle of a Porsche sandwich to start their last lap.

Down through the fast swerves Ireland could do nothing to get by and down the long straight he tried to pull out of the slipstream and get by but it was no good, and as they approached the hairpin at the end of the straight the forceful Ireland thought "now or never," but somehow Bonnier's Porsche was using all the road and there just wasn't room for the Lotus to try and get by. A lesser driver would have settled for an honourable second place, played the gentleman and satisfied the crowd by letting the Porsche win, but not Ireland, for his fighting spirit was really up, and gritting his teeth and hoping Chapman wouldn't mind if he crashed, he took to the grass, went by Bonnier on the braking, and then standing on everything scrabbled back round the corner in the lead. From this point back to the finish was all corners and curves, and it did not need much imagination to keep the two Porsches at bay, but there was still the short straight from the last left hand curve over the finishing line. There was a cry of dismay from the crowd as the Lotus appeared in the lead, but a shout of joy from the Lotus pit, and Ireland crossed the line a matter of three feet in front of Bonnier, with Gurney an equal amount behind. Had the chequered flag been at the other end of the of the pits Ireland would never have made it. It was a glorious victory for Team Lotus, and Ireland had surpassed himself. McLaren and Brabham finished fourth and fifth, and nobody had a lap of honour, they were all much too puffed. It had been one of the best motor races for many years."

Book Review

It's a long time since I bought a guidebook to a Welsh historic building, probably back in the time when they were published by the Ministry of Works with blue covers, impenetrable prose, and the occasional fuzzy monochrome snap.

Anyway the Welsh Assembly are to be congratulated on the quality of their present day guidebooks. The Raglan book for example contains 56 pages of excellent colour photography and striking diagrams, and at £3.50 it is a bargain.

Of course I have a quibble and not a minor one either. Nowhere in the guidebook would a visitor learn that Raglan was one of the major centres of bardic patronage, for poets like Guto'r Glyn, Llywelyn ab Y Moel, Lewis Glyn Cothi etc. - the equals of any English language poet. Would a guidebook about Tintern fail to mention that it was the subject of a poem by Wordsworth?

Even worse the guide is quite disparaging of the bards in a couple of asides. It mentions a reference to the Great Tower in the work of Guto'r Glyn but adds "one has to be wary of bardic panegyrics." Why? Now English poetry may well be a solitary onanistic business, but Welsh poetry was composed to be declaimed in the public arena. Guto'r Glyn knew and fought in France alongside William ap Thomas of Raglan, his praise poem would have been sung in the presence of the subject and other great men of the country. There was little place for mere empty flattery in such works and if you actually read Welsh praise poetry of the 15C you'll see how false this widely held belief is.

A couple of paragraphs further on the guide comments on Lewis Glyn Cothi's elergy for William ap Thomas's widow Gwladus vz Dafydd Gam. Glyn Cothi mentions that 3000 people attended her funeral but the guidebook adds "perhaps with some pardonable poetic exaggeration." Why? Gwladus was the mother of five sons, the Herberts of Raglan and Colbrook, and the Vaughans of Tretower, Bredwardine and Hergest. I would have thought that 3000 was a conservative number of mourners for the mother of sons and grandsons who ruled most of South East Wales.

Now all this betrays a wider mentality where only English records can be relied on, while Welsh records are dismissed as exaggerations. Wales needs to put such attitudes behind it and the Assembly's guidebooks to our historic monuments might be a good place to start.

Don't Upset the Sponsors!

"Innes Ireland was fairly hard to control and therefore the people who were sponsoring him would say that ‘this isn’t good for our product.'"

It's a quote from a recent interview with Stirling Moss and a reminder that even in the good old days commercial interests ruled the roost.

Maybe Moss is referring to the Italian Grand Prix of 1961. Of course that was the year of the sharknose Ferrari and by the time Monza came around only Stirling had any chance of upsetting the Maranello bandwagon. Moss's Rob Walker Lotus 18/21 had no chance of matching the red cars on the super-fast Italian track, so Innes Ireland came up with the bright idea of Moss taking over his slightly more competitive works Lotus 21. Chapman was asked and gave his agreement.

In the event Moss retired the works Lotus, suitably painted in Walker's Scottish colours, while Innes saw the older car's chassis fall apart on the bumpy Monza banking. Unfortunately that was not the end of the matter. Moss was a BP driver, while Lotus was sponsored by Esso. Let Innes take over the story:

"I hadn't heard the last of the affair. And really, this is, I think, a sad commentary on the state of motor racing. There was a protest from the Esso petrol company, criticising me for lending my car to a BP driver. It made me most angry. How unnecessary! If Stirling had won the race, they might have had a bit of a niggle, but in the circumstances, I strongly resented being rapped over the knuckles like that. They could easily have forgotten about it, but I presume it was one of the early indications that motor racing was becoming less and less a sport and more a business of high finance."

What Innes didn't mention was that Chapman, who had agreed the swap, now shifted all the blame on to Innes and a few weeks later the team sacked Ireland despite his victory in the United States Grand Prix. The decision according to Cedric Selzer, quoted in Mike Lawrence's Chapman biography, was a joint decision between Colin and Esso's Geoff Murdoch. Indeed Murdoch broke the news to Innes, Chapman lacking the necessary bottle to do so.

Of course the revisionists insist that Ireland was sacked because Jimmy Clark, the team number two, was the superior driver. Probably true, although it would be useful if they could explain the fact that Innes and Jimmy raced together 23 times for Team Lotus in Formula One with Innes winning 4 races with 3 seconds and a third, while Jimmy managed a second place and two thirds. Oh and far from improving with time, in their last seven races together, after Innes returned from his Monaco tunnel crash, Ireland took 3 wins against a best finish of fourth for Clark - this without any team orders.