Rooster Cogburn's Cat

Why do so many black Americans have Welsh surnames?  It's a question that is regularly asked on the internet and the answer, more often than not, is unsatisfactory.  The Welsh must have been great slave owners say some; no it's because Welsh preachers were so well respected say others, clutching at straws!

The truth seems to be that, despite all the 1960s talk of "slave names," most  former slaves did not take the surname of their owner.  Until the conclusion of the American Civil War most slaves didn't have an established surname and with emancipation they became free to adopt any name that took their fancy.  Many chose Welsh surnames because the Welsh element in the South was so strong.  Former slaves adopted surnames they were familiar with, and these were often names of Welsh origin.

We tend to think of the Welsh in America as having migrated in the 19C to places like Scranton and Wilkes Barre.  Radnorians will remember the far earlier migration of Quakers and Baptists to Pennsylvania in the 1680s.  For example Sarah Stephens, daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth Evans, formerly of Llanbister, was the first European child born in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania. That was as far back as May 1686.  Yet even those Radnorshire pioneers were late comers compared with the Welsh who poured into Virginia earlier in the 17C.  The result was that, by the time of the first American census in 1790, Welsh surnames were far more common among the free population of the Southern states than in the North - 14% in North Carolina, 12% in Virginia, 10% in South Carolina and Maryland.

Sterling Price, the soldier not Rooster Cogburn's cat, was just one of dozens of Confederate generals with Welsh surnames or acknowledged Welsh ancestry - a leading Confederate naval commander was even named Catesby ap Roger Jones!  Price's ancestors included Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire patrons of the bard Lewis Glyn Cothi and although they had washed up in America as early as 1611, contemporaries still described him as a "Welsh Celt."  Indeed proponents of the controversial "Celtic thesis" estimate that 50% of the population of the South were of Celtic - mainly Scotch-Irish and Welsh - descent and that this is central to understanding the divide between North and South.  It's an interesting topic encompassing literature and music as well as politics, although bedevilled by racism and its distant cousin - political correctness.

Getting back to Welsh surnames: Williams is the 3rd most popular surname in the United States, 49% claiming to be white and 47% black.  For Jones (5th) the division is 58% white, 38% black.  Davis (7th)  - this has long been the usual American spelling  - 65% white, 31% black.  Two surnames which are more typical of Radnorshire than most Welsh counties are Powell (91st) 70% - 26%  and Price (59th) 76% -20%.  Some other examples Evans (48th) 71% - 25%, Lewis (26th) 61% - 34%, Thomas (14th) 68% - 28%.

You would expect a  name like Griffiths (369th) to be higher placed than it is, perhaps it gave rise to surnames like Griffin.  Certainly Rees became Rice (169th) or Reese (405th)  and Lloyd (493rd) had to share the limelight with Floyd (469th).  The difference between Owen (496th) with a 93% - 2% division and Owens (126th) 68% - 28% is striking.  Perhaps Owens belongs mainly to the 17C migration and Owen to that of the 19C.

What we can say is that black Americans were more likely to adopt the very common Welsh surnames like Williams, Jones and Davis, rather than those that were less common but still numerous, for example Morgan (62nd) 78%-16%, Morris (56th) 76% - 19% or Phillips (47th) 79% -16%.  These names were adopted because they were familiar and were not necessarily connected with slavery or actual Welsh descent.  At the same time although American slavery had an African origin, slavery itself descended through the mother.  This soon resulted in some slaves having 50% or 75%  white ancestry.  Condoleeza Rice recently had her DNA tested on a PBS TV show, it was 51% black, 40% white and 9% Asiatic probably Native American, no doubt a not untypical result.   Even if Welsh surnames are no guide it would seem safe to assume that a fair proportion of the population of the South - white and black - have at least some Welsh ancestry.

A Small Victory for Radnorshire

The English, according to the American writer Paul Theroux, only take an Irishman seriously when he's holding a gun.  It follows that the Welsh, who have long foresworn the use of such extreme violence, are rarely taken seriously at all.  No doubt because of this laudable moderation, authority has often seen fit to ride roughshod over Welsh interests, most famously at Tryweryn.

In the late 1960s the Severn River Authority plotted to flood the Dulas Valley in Radnorshire.  A reservoir of some 18000 million gallons was proposed, necessitating the flooding of around 25 farms and the removal of 150 people from their homes.  A local Defence Committee was immediately set up and its chairman Mr Iorwerth Thomas declared "we may be Welsh peasants but we are the backbone of the country."  Now this may well have been true but which country? Certainly not that recognized by the Malvern based River Authority.

The Defence Committee installed an old air raid siren which on at least three occasions was used to summon scores of local people to eject River Authority officials from private land.  If officialdom wanted to survey Cwm Dulas they would at least have to go through the courts and enter legally.  In all their contacts with the press the Committee stressed that they wanted no part of the then current MAC bombing campaign.  Of course, merely by mentioning the matter they were giving the authorities pause for thought.  A public enquiry was held in Llanidloes in February 1970 and in December of that year the new Tory Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Thomas, announced that the flooding of the Dulas Valley would not be allowed to proceed.  Things had moved on a little.

A Liverpool bureaucrat mocked a Trywern family by claiming that the city didn't drink the water of Llyn Celyn but rather used it to flush their toilets.  In 1970, in the Dulas Valley at least, that arrogance was sent home to think again.

Musical Interlude .... songs of the defeated

Hands Off Wales - The Radnorshire Connection

The author of the new book Hands Off Wales, Wyn Thomas, is a Radnorian.  On his website Dr Thomas mentions that he left Llandrindod High School without qualifications, only returning to education later in life.  The author's English-speaking, non-academic background must surely have been a help in empathising with the Welsh nationalist militants of the 1960s,  who, in the main, were working-class, English-speaking and uncorrupted by either chapel or university.

In a way this weighty book - 424 pages - is a bit like one of those BBC4 documentaries on punk rock, very detailed, very informative ..... as long as we remember that most people were listening to the likes of Abba, David Soul and the Muppets.  For those of us interested in Welsh history it is a fascinating and well-written account of another minority pursuit - physical-force nationalism.  The book is mainly taken up with a thoroughly researched narrative about Tryweryn, the Free Wales Army and John Jenkins.  The right questions are asked, the protagonists allowed to speak for themselves, leaving us to draw our own conclusions.  A short final chapter offers opinions, but these are predictable enough and provide no surprising insights.

What about Radnorshire?  There is new detail about the only action ever carried out by the Free Wales Army - the botched sabotage of the Fron Aqueduct in 1967.  We also learn that a planned attack on the Birmingham pipeline in Knucklas was called off by Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru because of the possibility of damage to houses in the village.  The very successful attack on the pipeline in West Hagley is said to have been carried out by a cell from Newtown and Llandrindod. Really?  Later in the book the author casts doubt on the existence of any such a cell, although he does mention an English resident of Llanbister (for some background on this individual see here and here) later associated with the historical group Cofiwn, who seemingly had links with John Jenkins.  Finally, the young Anglesey county council employees imprisoned in 1969 were said to have been instructed in the art of bomb making at Graig Farm, Llandegley - leaving many suspicious of the involvement of an agent provocateur.

Update: Wyn Thomas talking about Eileen Beasley, see here.

Hands Off Wales

The first military action taken by modern day Welsh nationalists - and by this I mean those who didn't actually want to get caught - was the bomb attack on the Fron aqueduct, near Crossgates, on October 19th 1952.

I've always been aware of that event since it was covered in national newspapers which also happened to carry a photograph of your blogger, merrily waving a Union Jack outside Llandrindod railway station.  The occasion was the visit of the Queen to open the Claerwen reservoir and my excuse for such an uncharacteristic display of British enthusiasm?.... I was just three years old.

Given the early connection between Radnorshire and the subsequent 1960s militancy, which is the subject of this new book from Gwasg Gomer, it's somehow fitting that the author was born and brought up in Llandrindod.

I'm off to read it now.

The BBC - redacted version

It's not really fair is it, that the                 of          County Council, on a salary of £            per annum, pays the same              licence fee as a poor sod on the minimum wage.  Would all these folk who worship at the temple of the                               Corporation be so pleased if they had to pay the same proportion of their salary as Joe Soap, say £1500 a year.  I bet we'd hear less tosh about how it was such splendid value.

                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                  

If we must have a                             , and of course the                 are eager beaver to extend the charge to computers and mobile phones as they've just done in Sweden, then how about a bit of devolution.  Perhaps Welsh licence fee payers could see their hard earned cash going to support         and an English language television channel for Wales.  Maybe the two channels would end up with less cash to waste than the present arrangements but that might be a good thing.  Think about it, no more                   no more                and no more David               talking            about over-population and                       .  As Jimmy Leveson used to say                       .   

Cambrian Swains

I shouldn't watch BBC history programmes, they only leave me bellowing at the screen.  Janina Ramirez may have ditched her stilettos but she still managed to clump her way around France going on and on about the English, the English, the English.

Let's be fair, Nina did point-out that King Edward III and his commanders were, in truth, Frenchmen; but what about the archers and spearmen who actually slaughtered the continent's nobility at Crecy?   It's likely that the majority were Welsh, although that's a word that is unlikely to pass Janina's lips.  For example, Kent was the English shire asked to raise the most recruits for Edward's army - 280.  For most English counties the figure was less than 200, in many cases just 60.  Total up the recruits expected from the lordships - Maelienydd, Gwerthrynion, Radnor and Elfael - that would later go to make up insignificant little Radnorshire and you get a figure of  430.

Should we mind?  Well I think we should, deprive a country of its history and you eventually deprive it of its identity.  From the Daily Mail to all those politically-correct schoolboys who pass for comedians nowadays, there's a constant campaign to diminish and denigrate the Welsh.  Ieuan Brydydd Hir got it right some 240 years ago:

The false historians of a polished age
Show that the Saxon has not lost his rage,
Though tamed by arts his rancour still remains:
Beware of Saxons still, ye Cambrian swains.

Borderline

Clearly the 2011 Census figures appeals to my inner nerd; although it seems, from the deluge of comments such posts engender, this interest is not widely shared. Here's a last look at some snippets that caught my eye.  No more, I promise.

Tidenham

A few years ago the good folk of Tidenham in Gloucestershire held a vote aimed at swapping their  Newport postcode for a Gloucester version.  Some of the town's residents being incensed at the indignity of receiving bilingual utility bills and the like.  As it turned out not many bothered to vote and 40% of those who did opted to stay with Newport.  Here are the 2011 census figures:  English-only 46%, Welsh-only 15%, British-only 22%

Quite a Welsh flavour to this Gloucestershire town.

Bewick-upon-Tweed

Berwick Rangers may play in the Scottish Football League but how do the citizens of this Northumbrian town feel about their national identity?.  Here are the figures:  English-only 55%, Scottish-only 12%, British-only 19%. Cameron 1 Salmond 0 I'm afraid.

Maelor Saesneg

In the 1880s there were plans to hand over the detached portion of the old Flintshire to Shropshire, it never happened.  It's the one part of Wales where any demand to adjust the border in England's favour might have some historical justification. Even here though it's probable that the majority of the locally born population opted for a Welsh-only identity.

Hanmer:  English-only 38%, Welsh-only 24%, British-only 30%

Willington:  English-only 38%, Welsh-only 20%, British-only 32%

Bronington:  English-only 43%, Welsh-only 18%, British-only 27%

Maelor:  English-only 37%, Welsh-only 28%, British-only 22%

Overton:  English-only 25%, Welsh-only 35%, British-only 28%

Bangor:  English-only 26%, Welsh-only 38%, British-only 23%

Isycoed:  English-only 26%, Welsh-only 41%, British-only 22%

Along the Radnorshire Border with Salop

If the majority in South Herefordshire have opted for an English-only identity then the old Marcher Lordship of Clun is even more anglicised.  Only along the Radnorshire border are there many folk willing to admit to a Welsh identity.  Clearly playing in the Mid-Wales soccer leagues has failed to promote any feelings of camaraderie amongst the locals:

Betws y Crwyn:  English-only 64%, Welsh-only 8%, British-only 16%

Llanfair Waterdine:  English-only 54%, Welsh-only 9%, British-only 28%

Stowe:  English-only 55%, Welsh-only 16%, British-only 22%

Bucknell:  English-only 67%, Welsh-only 6%, British-only 16%

Along the Radnorshire Border with Herefordshire

It's no surprise to find not a single person in Kington, - birthplace of  Ffransis Payne - claiming Welsh as their main language.  It is a surprise to find that the Welsh-born element in the town is so small.

Brampton Bryan:  English-only 65%, Welsh-only 8%, British-only 20%

Stapleton:  English-only 58%, Welsh-only 7%, British-only 20%

Byton::  English-only 64%, Welsh-only 4%, British-only 16%

Titley:  English-only 53%, Welsh-only 9%, British-only 22%

Kington Town:  English-only 61%, Welsh-only 7%, British-only 17%

Kington Rural:  English-only 62%, Welsh-only 6%, British-only 17%

Brilley:  English-only 54%, Welsh-only 8%, British-only 19%
Clifford: see previous post

Gwalia Irredenta

As the recent programmes on S4C about Tryweryn made clear, the first direct action at the site was carried out by patriots from what commentators insist on calling anglicised Wales; in the case of Pritchard and Walters this being Monmouthshire.  I've already complained about the use of the term anglicisation to describe the process of language shift, see here.  If we want to see what anglicisation really means we have to look at somewhere like South Herefordshire and the national identity question in the recent census..

The last Welsh-speaking native of South Herefordshire is said to have died in the parish of Clodock in 1883.  Certainly there is documentary evidence to show that the language was spoken in places like Michaelchurch Escley and Craswall during the 18C and Welsh placenames and surnames are common throughout the area even today.  If more than 50000 natives of Cornwall could go to the trouble of writing-in a Cornish only identity in the 2011 Census, then surely there might be some evidence of a continuing Welsh identity in an area that spoke a Celtic language for just as long, if not longer, than Kernow?

In reality an English-only identity rules the roost throughout the old districts of Ewias and Erging.  Just as much of the population of eastern Germany is made up of thoroughly Germanised folk who happen to be of Slavonic and Baltic origin - Mrs Merkel for example - so South Herefordshire appears thoroughly anglicised, a people who no longer regard themselves as Welsh.

Is there any evidence of a continuing Welsh identity amongst even a small minority in the area?  There are a handful of parishes where the figure identifying as Welsh is greater than the figure born in Wales, but the numbers are small and there could be various explanations.  The most interesting anomaly are parishes where the number identifying as English-only is much lower than the Herefordshire average and the figure identifying as British-only is much greater.  Does this indicate some distinct ethnic awareness?  We also have to remember that, like rural Wales, Ewias and Erging are areas that attract incomers.  Anyway here are some figures for some of the parishes involved:

Herefordshire:  English-only 64% Welsh-only 4% British-only 16%

Clifford:  English-only 52% Welsh-only 8% British-only 28%

Cusop:  English-only 51% Welsh-only 15% British-only 19%

Dorstone:  English-only 54% Welsh-only 7% British-only 26%

Newton:  English-only 55% Welsh-only 9% British-only 27%

Abbeydore:  English-only 55% Welsh-only 5% British-only 23%

Longtown:  English-only 53% Welsh-only 11% British-only 21%

Llangarron:  English-only 56% Welsh-only 8% British-only 24%

Welsh Newton:  English-only 47% Welsh-only 8% British-only 30%

Ganarew:  English-only 50% Welsh-only 12% British-only 26%

Rowlestone:  English-only 50% Welsh-only 8% British-only 26% 

Little England No More

It came as something of a surprise when I found out that the term landsker - it describes the supposed frontier between north and south Pembrokeshire and turns up in nearly every article on the county you care to read - was actually coined as late as 1939.  The more I've read, the greater the realisation that Little England Beyond Wales is just a myth, an attempt to divide our country on purely linguistic grounds with no regard for history, family origin or national sentiment.

So what does the national identity question in the 2011 Census tell us about the folk of South Pembrokeshire, do they regard themselves as English or even Flemings?  Now Pembrokeshire is a long way from my Radnorshire beat but here are some brief stats for a few representative communities:

Haverfordwest:  54% identified as Welsh only, 69% of the community were Welsh born.

Tenby:  50% identified as Welsh only, 64% of the community were Welsh born.

Pembroke Dock:  55% identified as Welsh only, 70% of the community were Welsh born.

Dale:  50% identified as Welsh only, 62% of the community were Welsh born.

Stackpole:  40% identified as Welsh only, 57% of the community were Welsh born.

Marloes:  48% identified as Welsh only, 61% of the community were Welsh born.

Angle:  53% identified as Welsh only, 66% of the community were Welsh born.

Carew:  53% identified as Welsh only, 65% of the community were Welsh born.

So there you have it, the great majority of the locally born population identify as Welsh only.  Perhaps the rest of us can now stop insulting the folk of South Pembrokeshire with this Little England nonsense.

The Census Again

No Welsh Identity

The 'no Welsh identity' figures for Radnorshire make grim reading for those with a patriotic outlook.  Readers may well be reminded of J R Jones' comment about a particular bitter form of exile; that where, rather than leaving your own country, your country leaves you.  Here are the figures:

Abbeycwmhir 47%, Aberedw 49%, Beguildy 67%, Clyro 68%, Diserth 62%, Glasbury 52%, Gladestry 62%, Glascwm 47%,  Knighton 67%, Llanbadarn Fawr 49%, Llanbadarn Fynydd 44%, Llanbister 44%, Llanddewi Ystradenni 47%, Llandrindod 56%, Llanelwedd 40%, Llanfihangel Rhydithon 60%, Llangynllo 63%, Llanyre 51%, Nantmel 52%, New Radnor 71%, Old Radnor 71%, Painscastle 52%, Penybont 49%, Presteigne 76%, Rhayader 45%, St Harmon 49%, Whitton 71%.

Of course it's not all doom and gloom, the figures are inflated by cross border births and the non-Welsh element will be over-represented in the older age groups - people who, in the rather blunt words of Dafydd Iwan, have come to Wales to die.  I doubt if Radnorian folk have ever given a more ringing endorsement of their Welsh identity than they did in the census of 2011.  They may be a minority in much of their own land, but at least they see themselves as a Welsh minority.

Builth Hundred

Here are the figures for that little piece of Radnorshire that somehow ended up in Brecknockshire:

Builth Town:  Welsh only 52%, English only 15%, British only 20% - NWI 41%
Cilmeri:  Welsh only 45%, English only 21%, British only 25% - NWI 48%
Duhonw:  Welsh only 45%, English only 21%, British only 20% - NWI 49%
Llanafan:  Welsh only 51%, English only 14%, British only 21% - NWI 41%
Llangammarch:  Welsh only 42%, English only 18%, British only 29% - NWI 52%
Llanwrthwl:  Welsh only 35%, English only 19%, British only 29% - NWI 54%
Llanwrtyd:  Welsh only 34%, English only 25%, British only 27% - NWI 59%
Treflys:  Welsh only 46%, English only 21%, British only 21% - NWI 46%

NWI = % of population recording no Welsh identity.

Llanwrtyd

Part of the charm of border towns like Knighton and Presteigne has been their long-standing mixed ethnicity, but what about Llanwrtyd?   In the 1911 census it was 80% Welsh speaking with 1 in 6 of its inhabitants not even  able to use the English tongue.  Even in 1951 after two World Wars and the depression Welsh was still spoken by two thirds of the town's inhabitants.  By 1971 the Welsh speaking population had fallen to 48%, while today it stands at an optimistic 18%.  According to the latest Estyn report no children at the local school come from Welsh speaking homes, and now we find that 59% of the population of this little town at the heart of Wales won't even claim any kind of Welsh identity.  This is what happens to a country's economy and culture when it allows its laws to be dictated by foreigners.

Welsh in England

Some folk have long asked that the Census enumerate Welsh speakers in England as well as those in Wales.  The 2011 census didn't do that, but it did require that the main language of the household be noted where it was not English.  With a Welsh born population living in England of 500K you'd expect around 50K to be Welsh speaking, infact the number recorded was just 8248.  No doubt this is an underestimation of the total number able to speak Welsh but at least it is a realistic figure and not overly inflated by patriotic zeal.  1310 of such folk live in London, but what about the Oswestry area.

As we have noted before Shropshire, rather than Cornwall, was the last county in England with indigenous speakers of a Celtic language, parishes such as Selattyn having home-grown Welsh speakers well into the 20C.  For example in 1946 five of the pupils at the local school were fluent Welsh speakers from Welsh speaking homes (cf present-day Llanwrtyd).  In 2011 just 10% of the inhabitants of Selattyn admitted to a Welsh identity, in nearby West Rhyn it was 15%, with 14% in St Martins and around 8% in Oswestry and Whittington.  Just over 200 residents of Oswestry and vicinity listed Welsh as the main language of their household.  Whether they were Salopians or incomers who knows?

Radnorian Identity

The detailed 2011 census figures for parishes and wards were published this morning, you can search them here.

A popular fancy amongst the chattering classes is to talk of multiple identities - people who feel, for example, European and British and Welsh.  Well, there's not much sign of that in the results for the census question on national identity.  Although people could opt for numerous combinations, around 90% opted for a single identity and in Radnorshire that meant choosing between Welsh, English and British.

Here are the figures for Radnorshire communities

Abbeycwmhir:  Welsh only 46%, English only 20%, British only 25%

Aberedw:  Welsh only 44%, English only 20%, British only 27%

Beguildy:  Welsh only 27%, English only 36%, British only 25%

Clyro:  Welsh only 27%, English only 32%, British only 28%

Diserth:   Welsh only 33%, English only 34%, British only 23%

Glasbury:  Welsh only 42%, English only 21%, British only 25%

Gladestry:  Welsh only 34%, English only 30%, British only 23%

Glascwm:  Welsh only 47%, English only 19%, British only 25%

Knighton:  Welsh only 28%, English only 38%, British only 22%

Llanbadarn Fawr:  Welsh only 46%, English only 23%, British only 21%

Llanbadarn Fynydd:  Welsh only 44%, English only 20%, British only 18%

Llanbister:  Welsh only 49%, English only 23%, British only 18%

Llanddewi Ystradenni:  Welsh only 47%, English only 24%, British only 19%

Llandrindod:  Welsh only 37%, English only 26%, British only 24%

Llanelwedd  Welsh only 54%, English only 18%, British only 18%

Llanfihangel Rhydithon:  Welsh only 35%, English only 27%, British only 26%

Llangynllo:  Welsh only 31%, English only 34%, British only 22%

Llanyre:  Welsh only 41%, English only 24%, British only 21%

Nantmel:  Welsh only 41%, English only 20%, British only 27%

New Radnor:  Welsh only 24%, English only 31%, British only 32%

Old Radnor:  Welsh only 24%, English only 35%, British only 30%

Painscastle:  Welsh only 40%, English only 24%, British only 22%

Penybont:  Welsh only 43%, English only 22%, British only 20%

Presteigne:  Welsh only 21%, English only 41%, British only 26%

Rhayader:  Welsh only 50%, English only 22%, British only 17%

St Harmon:  Welsh only 43%, English only 27%, British only 20%

Whitton:  Welsh only 25%, English only 32%, British only 32%

I guess you could look at these figures and conclude that the Radnorshire population consisted of a substantial minority of English with a majority Welsh population, many of whom identified as British.  You'd be wrong.

Infact the Welsh born, and I know the figures are skewed by births in Hereford hospital, are a minority - Rhayader and Llanelwedd with 56% Welsh born being top of the list - in Knighton just a third are Welsh born, in Presteigne just a quarter - in 21 of the 27 Radnorshire communities the Welsh born are in the minority.

A fairer characterisation would be to say that the ethnically Welsh are now a minority in Radnorshire ...... that these Welsh overwhelmingly* identify as Welsh only.....given that fact, we can also say that the Welsh are marginally more likely to chose a mixed identity than the English .... and that the English are more likely to chose a 'British only' identity than the Welsh.

Finally people choosing no 'Welsh identity' at all comprise the majority in sixteen of the twenty seven Radnorshire communities.  I'm searching for a phrase to describe this phenomenon, ethnic cleansing springs to mind.

*  It's not failsave but if we compare the total Welsh only identifiers as a % of the Welsh born we get only two communities where the figure is less than 80%  - Whitton (75%) and Llangynllo (77%), in eleven communities it is more than 90%, in Gladestry it's 111%.

Not often you see this ....

......... a politician talking sense about the banksters - and, last time I checked, the President of Iceland was actually on a lower* annual salary than the Chief Executive of Powys County Council.

* Icelandic President £95K, Powys CE between 124K and 132K

Nature Notes

An ice tower in a Radnorian bird bath:

Spies of Llandrindod?

The BBC's latest espionage offering Spies of Warsaw, with David Tennant somewhat miscast as a tough French military attaché, is set in the late 1930s as Europe prepares for war.  Meanwhile in Llandrindod .....

Our story, a true one as it happens, starts in Vienna in 1934, with the assassination of the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a Nazi inspired coup. While Dollfuss bled to death on the floor of his own office, his pregnant wife Alwine was holidaying in Italy with her two young children Eva and Rudi.  They were staying as guests of Mussolini and his wife Rachele.  It was left to the Italian dictator to break the news of her husband's murder to Frau Dollfuss.  Angered and fearing a German invasion of Austria in the wake of the failed coup, Mussolini mobilised a force of some 50000 men and sent them to the Tyrolean border.  This gave Hitler pause for thought and it was not until 1938 that German troops finally entered the country.  Frau Dollfuss, by then a mother of three, fled Austria for Budapest before eventually finding sanctuary in Llandrindod Wells.

The family lived at Trevaldwyn, a white and green villa in Montpelier Park, the home of a South African widow, long resident in the town, Mrs Murray-Parker.  Frau Dollfuss, "a most lovable person" according to a maid at the house, was said to be writing a book and it was perhaps this, townsfolk reasoned, which led to the appearance of a carload of mysterious strangers in the Spa in April 1939.  The strangers, one was described by a garage mechanic as "a typical German with cropped hair and glasses," began asking for Frau Dollfuss at guest houses and hotels.  Eventually they called at Trevaldwyn, by which time the Dollfuss family, accompanied by Mrs Murray-Parker, had already fled the town.

Eventually Frau Dollfuss must have returned to Llandrindod since newspaper photographs from 1940 show the family preparing to leave for Canada.

Old Logic

The surname Burgoyne is a reminder that to the south and east of Radnorshire lay districts which once had a decidedly French character - the name means a native of Bourgogne or Burgendy.  In Radnorshire, at least, it was often spelt Burgwyn or, as in the case of young Thomas of the Gobe* farm christened at Gladestry parish church on 17th June 1827, Burgwynne.

By the time Thomas reached Australia in 1849 he had a young wife, a sound knowledge of all aspects of the building trade - a speciality of his family - and was spelling his name as Burgoyne.  You can read more about him in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here.  To this we can only add that once, when confronted by a party of aborigine warriors, he impressed upon them the superiority of European weaponry by shooting their dog.  Thomas led his Independent (Country) Party in the South Australian assembly for 30 years, attributing his eventual defeat at the age of 88 to the fact that many hundreds of itinerant workers, engaged in building a railway, were on the electoral register.

* Does anyone know the origin of this placename?

A Radnorian and the Ku Klux Klan

John Evans, originally of Esgair Rhiw, Nantmel (1867-1958) and later a Saskatchewan politician and member of the Canadian House of Commons between 1921 and 1930, was a radical, anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist voice who eventually left the Progressive Party to join the socialist CCF.

Why given this background was Evans accused of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and why does his comment in the Canadian Commons that the Klan's members were "not in any way what one might call hot-headed and they are absolutely against any violent or unconstitutional way of doings things" get quoted in various histories of racism in Canada?

It comes as a surprise to learn that the Klan was estimated to have 25,000 members in Saskatchewan in the late 1920s, this in a province with less than a million inhabitants.  The prairie Klan had only the most tenuous links with its American progenitor, although it adopted the same regalia and cross-burning antics.  It exploited fears about East European immigration and the influence of the Roman Catholic church in some of the province's public schools.  If John Evans sought to ride the Klan tiger - and he would have known of another popular, secretive, oath-bound society from his native parish, the Rebeccaites of Radnorshire - his political enemies rode it better; Evans' defeat in the 1930 General Election being put down to Klan backing for his Conservative opponent.
 

Musical Interlude

Synchronised Slurring

The BBC's Christmas drama offering Restless has been widely mocked for errors such as the sight of this lovely 1947 Truimph roadster trundling through wartime New Mexico ........ on the wrong side of the road.

Of more interest was the factual background against which the play was set, the Vanlo incident and, especially, British Security Coordination, Churchill's information/disinformation outfit operating in the United States.

It's doubtful if the practitioners of black and grey propaganda ever really went away, but surely they'd not waste their talents on anything as trivial as Wales and its ailing tongue?

Well, there have been some interesting newspaper articles concerning the Welsh language in the English press of late.  These usually hit on some minor incident or invention, which is suddenly thought important enough to raise blood pressure throughout Middle England ..... an obscure tweet complaining about school toilets in Ceredigion perhaps, or an arch-druid involved in a spat in a Pwllheli shop.  In the latest example an author moans about the Welsh Books Council and it makes the pages of, well, the usual offenders, the Telegraph and the Mail.

Are we to expect more of this synchronised slurring in the run-up to the Scottish Independence vote?  At least the most recent furore led me to this commaful "tribute" page.

End of the world as we know it

I thought I should take a break from making my Christmas plate of beans on toast to note the somewhat pleasing fact that "Nadolig Llawen" has been trending worldwide on twitter this morning.  Perhaps the Mayans were on to something after all.

I would have thought "saturated" would have made the top ten as it seems to be a word that dominates our news broadcasts nowadays.  I know English is really a Norman-Saxon pidgin but what's wrong with waterlogged?  I'm told that "surrender" was the only French word in Churchill's "fight them on the beaches" speech, couldn't our broadcasters follow his lead and dump "saturated" into the nearest standing water?

Anyway  back to the microwave and Nadolig Llawen i bawb o'm darllenwyr.

Not a Posh Boy, Knew the Price of Milk

This is Clem Edwards, the Knighton born trade unionist, journalist, barrister and politician, pictured at the age of 25 in 1894. By which time he had already:

Assisted Ben Tillett in founding the Tea Operatives and General Labourers Union.

As Assistant Secretary of the Dockers Union played a leading role in the London Dock Strike of 1889.

As General Secretary of the newly formed Federation of Carrying Trades built up a union with 130,000 members.

Organised the great Hyde Park rally of female laundry workers in 1891.

Masterminded the Progressive Party's clean sweep of the East End in the London County Council elections of 1892.

As Labour Editor of the Sun newspaper organised the fund which raised £67000 (around £3 million in modern terms) for the striking miners of Wales and the English Midlands in 1893.

Of course in later years Edwards, always a conciliator, opposed the Leninists and those who sought to use the trade union movement for their own more revolutionary ends.  Sylvia Pankhurst called him "the notorious anti-socialist."  Perhaps this is the reason his contribution to the New Unionism has been largely ignored.  Personally I would knock down the monument in New Radnor to "Radnorshire's... most distinguished son" and replace it with a statue of Clem Edwards.  Not much chance of that though, he didn't even get a mention in the recently published history of his home town.

A Christmas Tale

Long before Father Christmas took to clambering down chimneys in the middle of the night, a Montgomeryshire sweep called Richard Thomas figured that the aperture would prove an excellent means of  gaining admittance to the Kinnerton home of Mrs Lloyd.  So it happened that on the night of 16th December 1793 the terrified widow awoke to find the sweep in her bed chamber, where he demanded that she hand over her money or be murdered.

Mrs Lloyd gave the rogue what cash she had, it amounted to three shillings, and he made his escape.  To no avail, since he was soon caught and tried at the Radnor Assizes.  Found guilty, according to the Newgate Calendar if not here, Thomas was executed the following summer.

Anglicisation, that's not the name of the game

Anglicisation, now there's a word whose use needs to be severely curtailed in Wales.  It's a word that suggests that there's a shrinking heartland, a proper Wales if you like, and then a watered-down version where most of us live and which is well on the way to becoming England.

I just did a google search using the term "anglicisation of Wales" and got 309,000 hits. By contrast searching for "anglicisation of Ireland" came up with less than 20,000. Most of those Welsh hits refer to just one topic - language shift, and perhaps that would be a better term to use.  There are very few people in Wales who never speak English and in that sense they are anglicised, as are people who read English newspapers, watch English television, shop at Tesco or whose ancestors adopted an English style surname.  Indeed the Welsh have been adopting English ways since before the good folk of Chester complained that it was hard for them to spot a Welshman because they had started wearing trousers!  We are all anglicised to an extent and to pretend that there is some Pura Walia is daft.

Now I tend to accept that the British state, either deliberately or by default, has always sought to extirp Wales's separate identity.  If that is their intention then they're not making a very good job of things.  A hundred years ago the Valleys were full of English migrants, today the census figures show that these are the areas of Wales where the highest % of the total population identify themselves as mere Welsh.  Even Newport with 55.5% of the population choosing an exclusively Welsh identity, outstripped Ynys Mon (54.7%) and the Monmouth council area at 44% only just failed to outscore Ceredigion (46.6%).  Not much evidence of the two Wales model there.

Of course those low figures in North and West Wales are the result of recent in-migration, especially of the old and economically inactive. What the census does tell us is that most Welsh born people feel Welsh and nothing else.  Using my rough and ready calculation (see earlier post) the figure for those born in Wales and identifying as solely Welsh (not British and Welsh) are: Ynys Mon 82%, Gwynedd 88%, Conwy 76%, Denbigh 76%, Flint 72%, Wrexham 75%, Powys 87%, Ceredigion 84%, Pembroke 80%, Carmarthen 85%, Swansea 78%, Neath 83%, Bridgend 81%, Vale of Glamorgan 75%, Cardiff 73%, Rhondda 83%, Merthyr 83%, Caerffili 80%, Blaenau Gwent 80%, Torfaen 78%, Monmouth 73%, Newport 71%.  What these figures* show is that there is one Wales, a Wales that, whatever its first language, feels Welsh.  Like Ireland it is an identity that could well be strong enough to survive the further marginalisation of the language.

Incidentally I believe the language stats are not as bad as some believe.  The figures for school age children are more believable than in 2001 and old people attracted to the Costa Geriactica surely cannot pose the threat to the future of the language their numbers might suggest.  A greater problem is the new class of here-today-gone-tomorrow managers in local government, you must have heard them blundering through the bilingual declarations on election night.  Bring back democracy!

* By the way a large majority of the half million Welsh born folk living in England also tracked down and ticked the Welsh only identity box.

The Census

Look back at government statistics for Radnorshire in the 19C and even some quite emminent historians have been led up the garden path.  This is because they fail to differentiate between the historic county of Radnorshire and the registration county of the same name.  Most of southern Radnorshire, the hundreds of Colwyn and Painscastle, were included in the Breconshire statistics, while much of the east of the county eventually ended up being listed under Herefordshire.  Meanwhile the Knighton district, which was indeed counted as being in Radnorshire, also covered parishes in Herefordshire and Shropshire.

Look at yesterday's census release for Powys and a similar anomaly needs to be borne in mind.  Powys is the only authority in Wales where those identifying themselves as Welsh actually exceeds the number born in Wales.  This is because so many locals were born in hospitals in Hereford and Shrewsbury, it's a factor to remember when the more detailed community level figures for Radnorshire are published in the new year.

We can all remember the huge propaganda effort made during the summer Olympics to convince us that we were all British.  The Census figures tell a quite different story.  Less than 17% of the population of Wales opted for an exclusively British nationality.  In every authority in Wales from Newport to Ynys Mon the % of the locally born population opting for an exclusively Welsh identity was in the 70% to 90% range*.  Around a fifth of Wales's population were actually born in England and some 50% to 60% of these opted for an exclusively English identity.  In England itself 70% or so of the population opted for an English identity.  Only in London, with around 30% plus, and Northern Ireland, 40%, did Britishness have any purchase whatsoever.  I wonder what our rulers will make of all this?  More propaganda I expect.

* I've arrived at these figures by showing the exclusively Welsh respondents as a % of the locally born.  In Pembrokeshire for example that would be 80%.  Of course there will be those born in England or elsewhere who quite rightly ticked the Welsh box, but they would only have skewed the overall figure by a couple of percentage points at most.

Christmas Shopping

I see 1960s Newbridge-on-Wye racing driver Liz Jones's Mini is currently for sale at £25K.  The snap shows Liz, or Rosemary as she was known locally, at the Paris start of the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally, accompanied by co-driver Daphne Freeman..

As far as I can tell Liz competed in the Monte Carlo rally on three occasions, in 1963 as above in car 92, in 1964 starting from Minsk with Shelagh Aldersmith in car 27, and again from Minsk in 1965 in car 89 with Tish Ozanne.  On each occasion in an Austin Mini and all non-finishing.

They came, they saw, they took photographs

Hippie Nostalgia from Llanbister, Pont-ar-Elan, Rhayader and Clyro Court.  See here

Bonkers

Billionairess J K Rowling wants me to sign a petition, so do Emma Watson and Tom Watson, Dorset squire Billy Bragg, lovable Stephen Fry and a host of other cultural icons and rich people.  Sorry guys, no can do, not even for Alastair Campbell.

We all know that Cameron was panicked  into setting up the Leveson inquiry by the Digger's snooping into such modern-day saints as the Rev Chris, Blessed Charlotte of Cardiff and Max Mosley.  Dave said he would implement its recommendations as long as they weren't bonkers.

Now that the great tome has been published perhaps Cameron should just be honest enough to admit that this lawyers' beanfeast is indeed bonkers.  How else to describe a proposed coercive system of "self-regulation" that would make a non-compliant paper liable for its own legal costs, even in libel cases it had won, or which envisages a kitemark for state-approved journalism.

A new book from Builth

Perhaps like the black American soldiers from the Pencerrig camp this blog should stick to its own side of the Wye bridge,* but here we have a book (or maybe booklet - it only has 96 pages) full of interesting snippets about life in Builth during the Second World War.

Of course a locally produced book like this - it's published by the Builth Wells and District Heritage Society - isn't going to delve too deeply into the more controversial aspects of wartime life: profiteering, the black market, sexual shenanigans, the Epynt clearances etc.  What we do get are individual memories of varying quality and interest, the first chapter is particularly fine while one or two others would have benefited from a little discreet editing.

Some thoughts: the young Builth nurse who was badly wounded in the Coventry blitz and subsequently died.  More than 60000 civilians were killed during the war on the Home Front, shouldn't their names also be recorded on our war memorials?  The Bootle mothers who returned home after a few weeks because "they would prefer to face the bombs ,,,,, than stay in Builth."  One would like to know more.  The young Home Guarder much mocked for running off when confronted by a German parachutist, surely the sensible course of action?

All in all a volume that should fascinate younger readers and stir memories for the older  generation.

* It seems that the bridge was guarded to ensure that locally stationed white American troops stayed in Builth, while their black compatriots could go no further south than the Llanelwedd Arms. 

Forgotten Radnorians

While the Anglicans continue to agonize over female bishops, Quaker women like Mary Pennell were leading congregations and preaching on both sides of the Atlantic some 300 years ago.  Born Mary Morgan in the parish of Nantmel in 1678, she migrated to Pennsylvania at the age of sixteen, presumably with her brothers John and Hugh Morgan.  In 1703 Mary married and in 1722, by which time she had had six children, "became a Quaker Minister and traveled through the eastern states, England, Ireland and on the Continent."

Mary Pennell left a sister Amy (1689-1762) back home in Radnorshire who had married a farmer from a non-Quaker background called John Griffith.  In 1726 a visitor from Pennsylvania inspired Amy's fourteen year old son John to travel out to the colony accompanied, at his father's insistence, by an older brother Thomas and their eight year old sister Martha.  In time they would be joined by two other sisters Mary and Sarah.

 The Quaker congregation at Talcoed, Nantmel provided the following certificate to accompany the young adventurers:

"To the Monthly Meeting or Quarterly Meetings of Friends and Brethren in the Province of Pensilvania in America but more particularly to the Monthly Meeting of Friends at Abington in the Sd. Province --- whereas three children Thomas Griffith about 18 years of age and John Griffith his brother about 14 years of age and Martha Griffith their sister about 8 years of age, all born in the Parish of Nantmeal and County of Radnor in South Wales, Being the Sons and Daughter of John Griffith and Amy his wife, inhabitants and Land holders in the Parish and County aforesaid, are by the order and free consent of their sd parents intending in a few days to go aboard a Ship Belonging to the Port of Bristol, Whereof Edward Foy is Captain, In order to Sail in Sd Ship (if God permit) to the City of Philadelphia in the Sd. Province. There to be delivered to their uncles, John Morgan, Hugh Morgan or either of them or to Mary the wife of John Pennell who is their Mother's sister, who all of them if living are settled inhabitants in this Sd. Province to the intent that they the Sd. John Morgan, Hugh Morgan and Mary their sister may take care of them and dispose of them as they shall think best and in case their relations doe perform what is desired and hoped for by the Sd. parents. --We then the persons hereunder named who are members of the Meeting which the Sd. parents belong by order of our Monthly Meeting held at Talcoed the 10th instant doe desire that the Sd. three children or either of them may be disposed of according as Friends of the Sd. Meeting of Abington shall think most expedient, and as to their Sd. children's descent we give you to understand that their Parents are Honest Friends having each of them a Public Testimony for the Truth wherewith Friends have Unity; and we further Desire (as well on the behalf of the Sd. Children who are hopeful as also for their parents and their aged Grandmother's sake who is an Honest Woman, namely Sarah Rees) that you will as need shall require, advise or assist the Sd. children in Order that they may be settled to Honest Friends,further and we, according to our power shall be willing to answer what you or any of our Brethrenvshall in Love desire of us who are your Loving Friends. Signed at and by Order of our MonthlyMeeting at Talcoed the 10th of the 4th month 1726"

This younger John Griffith (1713-1776) also became a Quaker minister eventually settling in Chelmsford, Essex.  His journal published in both England and Philadelphia is available here.

It's clear from reading about these Radnorshire Quakers that they were at home with the English language and that marriage to fellow Friends was more important to them than any national or regional loyalty.  They were also better educated than others of their class, the small farmers, weavers etc.  Take a look at the signature of John Griffith's sister-in-law Alice Pugh, a farmer's wife from Llandegley.  At a time when many would have made a mark or signed with a scrawl it has the look of a hand well used to using a pen:

What's in a Name

As the mail-shot industry is well aware forenames can tell a good deal about gender, age, ethnicity, religion and social class.  After all a Ken or a Margaret is far more likely to be a grumpy sixtysomething rather than a fresh-faced teen and you're unlikely to find many Liams on the Shankhill Road.

If this is true today then it must surely have been true in the past and the lay subsidy assessment of 1544 and the Hearth Tax of 1670, both published in the Radnorshire Society transactions, provide us with the great majority of names of heads of household in the county for those years.  What else can they tell us?

The Act of Union divided Radnorshire into six hundreds which more or less coincided with the traditional Welsh administrative divisions in this part of East Central Wales - Rhayader was basically Gwerthrynion, Colwyn was Elfael Uwch Mynydd, Painscastle was Elfael Is Mynydd, the hundreds of Knighton and Cefnllys covered the old cantref of Maelienydd and Radnor hundred a handful of minor lordships in the east of the county.  Luckily both the 1544 and the 1670 records are based on these hundreds and the parishes that they contained, they allow us to identify differences in naming practices in the various parts of the county..

Firstly it should be said that in 1544 the great majority of the newly designated Radnorians still used the traditional patronymical system, only in and around Presteigne were settled surnames after the English fashion at all common.  Already some of the older Welsh forenames had fallen out of fashion, there were only a handful of Cadwgans, Madocs, Meurigs and Cadwaladrs.  Still we find more than half of the county's men, some 55%, had forenames that were either Welsh in origin or, in the case of Dafydd and Ieuan, understood as Welsh by ancient usage.

Turning to the differences between the six hundreds. In the town of Presteigne just five names accounted for 61% of the male population.  These were John, Thomas, William, Richard and Hugh and their distribution was perhaps typical of the less traditional areas of the county.  In Radnor Hundred as a whole these five names accounted for 44% of the population, in Painscastle 33%, in Knighton 16%, in Colwyn 15%, in Cefnllys 10% and in Rhayader just 6%.  Meanwhile the five most common Welsh forenames, Dafydd, Ieuan, Rhys, Hywel and Gruffudd, made up 56% of the population in Rhayader, 58% in Cefnllys, 54% in Knighton, 48% in Colwyn, 38% in Painscastle and just 23% in Radnor.

Move on to 1670 and we find that the five Welsh names, by then Ieuan had been usually modified to Evan, were far less popular: Rhayader 33%, Colwyn 28%, Cefnllys 25%, Knighton 20%, Painscastle 18% and Radnor 13%.  The fashion for the five new names had seen them spread throughout the county: Rhayader 35%, Cefnllys 40%, Colwyn and Knighton both 43%, Radnor 55% and Painscastle 56%.

Now no doubt this is all fairly predictable and mirrors the decline of patronyms and the language shift that would occur in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Something of a puzzle though are female names - female heads of households do appear quite frequently in both the 1544 and 1670 recods - In the earlier list a majority of Radnorian women had traditional Welsh names like Gwenllian, Dyddgu, Gwenhwyfar, Lleucu and Tangwystl but by 1670 there were just a handful called Gwenllian or Goleu.  Why would male Welsh names survive in substantial numbers whereas their female equivalents largely disappeared?

Talk of the Town

The 2011 Census figures may well show an increase in the numbers of Welsh speakers, but this will only mask the continuing decline of Welsh as a community language or even - to use a useful term from the past - a hearth language.  Although Wales may have the appearance of being a bilingual country, in essence this is not the case - for example, while every public servant in Wales must be able to speak English, a knowledge of Welsh is not a necessity, even in those areas considered to be Welsh-speaking heartlands; while many local and central government policies, far from assisting the language, might just as well have been designed to hasten its demise.

It is with this surface appearance of bilingualism in mind that we should consider Llandrindod council's recent deliberations in respect of placenames in the town.   First up a request that Temple Drive should have a street sign, with the council agreeing that any sign also read  - Rhodfa'r Teml.  To me this is the worst kind of faux bilingualism.  It only serves to provide ammunition to the enemies of the language who could quite justly demand that Lon Cwm also read Valley Lane.  If councils really want fair play for the language then they should ensure that every new street have a name with some historical basis in the locality, which in most cases will mean a Welsh name.

Next the naming of the new court and police building in Llandrindod.  The town council preferring  Parc Neuadd Park but having to accept Powys Council's Parc Noyadd Park.  There are two issues here, firstly the demands of faux bilingualism which require both Parc and Park. Surely no-one would object to the use of Parc alone?  Secondly the use of Noyadd instead of Neuadd.  Now as it happens I'm all in favour of idiosyncratic spellings such as Noyadd, which reflect a traditional pronunciation and/or long historical usage.  It's why I'm quite happy to use Rhayader or Llandegley on this blog.  Mind you the town council did have a point, as this will from 1832 shows.

The original impulse to make Welsh visible as a public language was all well and good, but bilingualism will not be a reality until, for example, any police officer stopping a speeding motorist anywhere in Wales is able to converse  with the miscreant in either of the country's two languages.  Anything less is mere show.

The Story Of Knighton - New Book

Knighton. For the very occasional visitor such as myself it's as exotic as any distant holiday destination, with it's eccentric architecture, unexpected shops and the only multi-story car park in Mid Wales.  I actually drove across the county and back about twenty years to pick up a copy of the book in the town itself.  It was pleasing to see the precipitous main street decorated with the flags of St David and Owain Glyndwr.  Clearly the great patriot has been forgiven for laying the place to waste some six hundred years ago.

My major quibble with the new purchase was answered in the first sentence of the foreword, the book "is mainly concerned with the period from the 1770s to the 1970s."  The first 40 or so of its 200 pages do concern earlier times but medieval Kighton is done and dusted in the first 15 pages.  In any case I doubt if the author is as comfortable with the traditional Welsh society of the middle ages as with later periods.  Calling Glyndwr's lieutenant Rhys ap Gethin is revealing - a bit like saying Ethelred the son of Unready.  The book could certainly have done with better proof-reading, a few errors have made it through to the final version, especially in regard to dates, for example the Knighton jockey Garnet Evans is said to have been born in 1887 and killed at Epsom in 1805.   I was also surprised that Mr Parker could not find a few lines to mention a man who should surely be, if not the town's favourite son, at least better remembered, Clem Edwards.

Yet carping aside it's a fascinating book that should be on every Radnorian bookshelf.  A fact-filled volume which left me wanting to know more, to give just one example, about the company of 60 or more Knightonians who enlisted with the Duke of York's Inverness-shire Highlanders in 1795.  A body of men, who I learn elsewhere, were "more partial to the plaid" than some of their Highland comrades.  At a mere £10 with over 50 photographs this is another welcome addition to Logaston's growing list of books of Radnorshire interest.

Dorothy Levitt - Update

If the Radnorian blog has done nothing else, at least it has rescued the pioneer sporting motorist Dorothy Levitt from being characterised as some Downtonabbeyesque Edwardian toff.  Her real identity being far more interesting.

A recent blog comment rounds off the story by detailing Dorothy's death certificate:  Died 17th May 1922 at 50 Upper Baker Street, London aged 38 years  - She was nearer 40 - occupation spinster, independent means, daughter of Jacob Levi.  The cause of death as supplied by the London coroner after an inquest held on 20th May: found dead in bed, morphine poisoning while suffering from heart disease and an attack of measles. Misadventure.

So does this suggest that Dorothy was some 1920s Amy Winehouse?  She wouldn't be the only racer of that period to have problems with morphine, for example the aviator and Brooklands racer Gerald Le Champion was convicted in 1925 for possession of the drug.  Like others from that period Le Champion had become addicted as a result of medical intervention, in his case treatment for wounds sustained in the war.

Forgotten Radnorian

This North Korean stamp commemorates the destruction of the General Sherman, a heavily armed American merchant ship, in 1866.  Among those executed after escaping from the burning vessel was a Protestant missionary, Robert Jermain Thomas, who had been engaged as an interpreter.

Mr Thomas, he was born in Rhayader in 1839, is still remembered by Korea's nine million Protestants and many come to Wales to visit sites associated with his life.  This blog has more information.

Who was Rhys Gethin?

On not much evidence Rhys Gethin is said to have been Owain Glyndwr's leading general, and historians from Sir John Lloyd to Sir Rees Davies have identified him as being Rhys Gethin of Nantconwy.

Cledwyn Fychan makes an entirely convincing case that the Rhys Gethin of the contemporary historical record wasn't Rhys Gethin of Nantconwy at all, he comes up with a far more likely candidate.

The handful of reviews I've read agree that if you want to know who Rhys Gethin is, then you should read this little book.  The advice seems to defeat the object of the essay, which was to make the real Rhys Gethin better known.  It's not the easiest work to get hold of and you may end up, like me, getting a version with a perfect cover and binding but with contents consisting of a different essay altogether.  One of the drawbacks, I guess, of getting a Welsh language book printed in Italy.

Anyway the Rhys Gethin of the historical record was Rhys Gethin of Llwyngwychwyr, Llanwrtyd, of that there can be little doubt.  There are only two mentions of Rhys Gethin in connection with Owain Glyndwr in contemporary records - there was the Rhys Gethin who captured Carmarthen in the company of others, including kinsmen of Rhys of Llwyngwychwyr; and there was the Rhys Gethin who Prince Hal mentions, in a letter to his father King Henry IV, as having raised an army in Buallt with the intention of invading Herefordshire.  English nationalists should note that this letter was written in French.

As early as 1401 Rhys Gethin's father, unnamed sons and various kinsmen were "deprived" of their lands in Buallt because they had risen in insurrection with Owen Glyndourdy.  As for the family's military prowess, that leading military commander in the 15C French wars Sir Richard Gethin of Builth was the son of Rhys of Llwyngwychwyr.

Some points of Radnorshire interests: Was Rhys Gethin the Rees a Gytch who an English chronicler says was involved in the Battle of Pilleth?  It's impossible to say.  There were certainly kinship links between Rhys Gethin's family and Philip ap Rhys of St Harmon, Glyndwr's son-in-law.  As so often, the contribution of East Central Wales - in this case to Glyndwr's war - is underestimated.  This elegant little book goes some way to illuminating one aspect of that contribution.  If only it were better known.

A Radnorshire Mormon from Nantmel

The parishes east of Presteigne seem to provide fertile ground for the more radical religious movements of the day.  After all the Lollard John Oldcastle was from Almeley and Ffransis Payne has some interesting things to say about the Quakers of the area, who "in comparison to whom the driest and least joyful members of our most narrow puritan sects would appear like cheerful pagans."

It was to this district that a young fellow from the Ysfa, Llewellyn Mantle of Crugnant, made his way in the 1820s.  Here he found work as a waggoner and in 1835 married a local girl, Kitty Watkins, in Byton parish church.  In 1842 the couple were converted by the latest missionaries to invade the district and quickly determined to join their prophet Joseph Smith and his Latter-Day Saints in Nauvoo Illinois.  You can read about Llewellyn's subsequent adventures here.  The Mantles were in Nauvoo when Smith was murdered, they migrated west, crossing the frozen Mississippi into Iowa. Having lost his sight in 1848 Llewellyn walked the thousand miles to Salt Lake City, arriving there in the autumn of 1851.  He died in Utah in 1901, aged 83.

Its easy to forget just how radical a group the Mormons were, with their polygamy - Llewellyn took a second wife in 1870, a Swiss woman called Margaret Egg - and violent confrontations with their neighbours such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.  Indeed the Mantles' daughter Sarah married the son of the legendary gunfighter Porter Rockwell, Mormondom's "destroying angel."