RADNORIAN
Sunday, April 03, 2022
The Radnor model
Saturday, April 02, 2022
Gagauzia
The Gagauz are a Turkic speaking but Orthodox Christian people mainly living near the Ukrainian border in Moldova. Enjoying a degree of autonomy within Moldova: their fear has been that Moldova would be subsumed within the Romanian state; their desire that they could find a home within the Russian Federation. The current events in Ukraine make this wish a possibility. If the Russians do absorb the Black Sea coast up to Moldova then the Gagauz and Bulgarian speaking borderlands could easily end up in Russia; with Moldova itself uniting with Romania.
Anyway, here is a popular Gagauz song.
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Donbass
Friday, January 07, 2022
The 1921 Census
At £3.50 for every household downloaded only the most well-heeled genealogist will be making much use of the recently released 1921 Census. Never mind in two or three years it will be free, if the government allows us to live that long.
Despite the cost it is possible to dig out some information for free, especially if you are dealing with unusual names and known locations, for example I dug out a great great uncle of 70 who had recently married a 28 year old, and no, his name wasn't Sion White.
More usefully the site has a search facility that allows you to bring up all manner of sociological information without the need to cough up for cash. For example you can search Welsh speakers by any number of criteria - age, sex, birthplace, occupation, current location etc. The search will give you the numbers and even the names.
Here are a few random results:
Wales had 1374 Welsh speakers born in Radnorshire, although only 141 of them were living in the county. At this point we should remember that the Radnorshire of the registration districts did not coincide with the historic county borders. Large chunks were included with Hay and Builth in neighbouring Breconshire, while other parishes were included with Kington in Herefordshire. The Knighton sub-district included many English parishes, all this the result of a deliberate Victorian policy to tame the wild Radnorians by including them with more civilized folk.
Cwmteuddwr was still 25% welsh speaking in 1921, with Rhayader at just under 10% and St Harmon at 7.6% still exhibiting some vestige of the old native tongue. Nearby Llangurig was still 67% welsh speaking at this time and of course Welsh still dominated in the western parishes of Builth hundred.
Most of the Radnorshire born Welsh speakers lived in the coalfield, 517 in Glamorgan, 52 in Monmouthshire - including my Gwystre born grandmother and 286 in Carmarthenshire. This last being a surprisingly high figure perhaps related to the opening of new pits?
Amongst the usual Joneses, Evanses, Davieses and the like, we find familiar local surnames such as Bywater, Bufton, Hamer etc. It's a reminder that the process of language shift in Radnorshire was part and parcel of a general shift occuring in those parts of rural Wales open to the border. Radnorshire wasn't different just further along the line.
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
An Irish Patriot in Radnorshire
The Irish War of Independence saw Cork born Sheila Browne commanding Liverpool's Cumman na mBan. As such she engaged in various revolutionary activities: an arms raid, obtaining paraffin for arson attacks and transporting money to Dublin. Finally arrested she spent three months in jail before she was released through lack of evidence.
This was enough to obtain her a small military pension from the Free State government, although it might have alarmed the good folk of Radnorshire, where she was evacuated along with a class of Liverpool schoolchildren in 1941. Billeted in the wilds of Rhiwlen, Miss Brown now encountered some difficulties with the Dublin bureaucrats. They wanted a person of sufficient stature to confirm her existence, but where, she complained, was she to find such a person when her only neighbours were mountains and her companions children? Eventually she moved closer to civilization in Hundred House.
Miss Browne was clearly able through education and connections to cope with the red tape. Sadly this was not true of Kate Evans, a miner's wife from the Irish community of Dowlais. We've met Mrs Evans before, she was the leading light of a group who were obtaining explosives from the mines and transporting it to Ireland. Eventually she was caught and jailed for 7 years. The bureaucrats were unimpressed and wondered about her maiden name, some of her comrades could not be traced, the evidence of others was ignored while they engaged in an ill-tempered correspondence with an official who had had enough of their enquiries in other cases. Mrs Evans, a widow in ill-health had her pension application rejected.
Mrs Evans wrote to De Valera complaining of being forgotten after suffering much for Ireland, her letter was passed back to the pensions office and ignored. It's ever thus for the working class. Here's a song about Cumann na mBan:
Friday, September 24, 2021
Nothing on the Telly
One of the depressing features of present day Wales is how anglocentric professed adherents of its national movement have become. Oh sure they generally claim to be Europeans, whatever that means, but anything outside the Atlanticist bubble doesn't get a look in, they are good little followers of the BBC and the Guardian.
Personally I dumped my TV more than 20 years ago, disgusted by the one-sided reporting on the Balkan wars, a few years later I stopped buying the London papers. I don't think I've missed very much.
There is plenty to see on YouTube, great Russian war films like 72 Hours, Come and See, and The Dawns Here Are Quiet ..... all with English subtitles; and popular shows like the superb Detective Anna - 98 episodes for anyone missing endless re-runs of Poirot and Miss Marple.
Monday, August 30, 2021
Wales Today
Friday, August 20, 2021
Saturday, November 07, 2020
The American Election
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
What's Happening
The one reliable statistic amidst a deluge of facts and nonsense are excess deaths, the weekly comparison with this year's totals and those of previous years provided every Tuesday by the ONS. These show that up until week 13 of 2020 things were proceeding much as usual, there was a big jump in week 14 - but that was only marginally worse than the figure for week 2 of 2015. For the last three weeks the figures have steamed ahead, peaking in week 16 (April 17) with a slight fall in week 17. I'd expect them to fall again next week.
Of course these figures are time delayed by a week or so and the excess deaths may also include victims of other diseases who avoided seeking prompt treatment for fear of contracting the virus. That said they do give an idea of the severity of the outbreak, serious but not overwhelmingly so, especially for the majority of the economically active.