Bad for Business?

Now I've always been told that mixing politics and business was a bad idea, you might alienate those customers who don't share one's point of view.  Clearly this wasn't the case with the Radnorshire non-conformists who eagerly refused to pay the education rate levied as a result of the 1902 Education Act.  The point at issue, why should chapel-goers subsidise Church schools.

More than a hundred Radnorians were subjected to the depredations of the bailiffs and in Llandrindod we find some of the leading hoteliers in the town being dragged through the courts for non-payment.  These included Jeffrey Jones - we've met him before - proprietor of the Brynawel (now the Glen Usk), Edward Thomas of the Gwalia, Thomas Owen at Baveno and William Lewis Harper at the Manor and his father Job Harper at Southend House.

Bad for business?  Well if you catered for a mainly non-conformist clientele, maybe not.

A Process not an Event

The election of December 1910 might have been the last time that the undiluted voice of  the Radnorian voter was heard on the parliamentary level, but the Sunday Closing votes of the 1960s also saw the old county treated as a single constituency.  At the time these votes were regarded as referendums on "welshness" or at least welshness as it was defined by the upholders of the non-conformist tradition.  In urban Wales that tradition took one hell of a beating, while the three thousand (42%) Radnorians who voted in 1961 to maintain the ban on Sunday drinking were not enough to hold back the brewers, whose Welsh campaign was headed by Mr Baird Murray of Llandrindod.  This and subsequent votes buried that particular version of Welshness and today sobriety is one of the last virtues one associates with Wales.  It went the way of patronyms and partible inheritance as a marker of Welsh identity.

The 1960s were also when the geographer E G Bowen came up with his two Wales model, the theory that the country could be divided into an Inner Wales - a Welsh speaking heartland if you like - and an Outer, less Welsh area encompassing the borderlands and the industrial districts.  These two cultural regions some believed had a distinct identity stretching back for centuries.  The gloriously cockney singer Adele put it more succinctly when she said she was Welsh but not "proper Welsh" like her Nefyn raised and welsh-speaking rival Duffy.

Now Bowen's theory, and modifications such as the Three Wales model, have had a real influence on opinion in Wales.  It is treated as if Inner Wales is a reality rather than the "product of day dreaming over a map."   Take that vote on booze.  Yes, there was a clear division between a dry Inner Wales and the boozy remainder back in the Sixties, but today Duffy can just as easily enjoy a Sunday snifter in the Nanhoran Arms as can Adele in Penarth's Railway Hotel.  The maps might show a coincidence between the Sunday closing vote of 1961, the Welsh speaking districts of that year's census and the medieval principality of Edward the First, but that is what they were - a coincidence.

A map records a moment in time, it's out of date even before it leaves the printers.  What the geographers identified as markers of an Inner Wales were processes, they were misled by their maps.

It's a reproach to Welsh historians that when Radnorians want to learn about their district in the medieval period, they might as well turn to the work of the UKIP parliamentary candidate for the Cheshire seat of Weaver Vale.

We may not accept Mr Remfry's promotion of the name Cynllibiwg to describe the Middle March - although Rhwng Gwy a Hafren sounds more like a geographical description than an actual placename - but he is right when he criticises the mainstream for ignoring Maelienydd and Elfael - the heart of the future county of Radnorshire.

Maelienydd and Elfael play havoc with the Inner/Outer Wales cultural model.  Right up to the death of Llywelyn and even afterwards these districts were an area of contention: between Gwynedd, Deheubarth, the Normans and the greatly underestimated (today) strength of the local rulers themselves.  This was far more Pura Wallia than Marchia Wallia, for although the Normans might, temporarily, occupy a castle or two, their real power like that of the British Army in Helmand Province was limited.  Yet neither of these two cantons proved to be lasting strongholds of the Welsh language as the Two Wales model should predict.

Move on a couple of centuries and the bards of the 15C did not seem to be aware of any great cultural divide between Inner and Outer Wales.  For example over 60 of the surviving poems of Lewis Glyn Cothi were composed for Radnorshire patrons, more than for patrons in any other of the future 13 counties of Wales.

Of course the Inner/Outer Wales model is correct when it says that the east of Wales is more open to new ideas spreading in from England than is the west. That is a geographical reality.  Where it goes astray is to look at moments in time and accord them some great significance, while failing to recognize that what is at work is a process which eventually overwhelms the west as much as the east - the adoption of surnames would be an example.  The Two Wales and the Three Wales models only serve to artificially divide a country with a common past and a common future, whatever that might be.

Radnorshire Welsh

A fascinating comment has been left on an old post from 2008.  Anyone interested in the story of the Welsh Language in Radnorshire should check it out, you can find it here.

The comment also draws my attention to Meic Stephens' recent autobiography Cofnodion, which I see discusses the author's Radnorshire roots -  his father was born in Walton.  What to make of this blurb on his publisher's site though: "an account of how the young boy from an English-speaking household grew up to be a Welshman."  As Stephens was born in Treforest I would have thought he was a Welshman from the moment he gulped in a lungful of Glamorgan air.

A Herefordshire Will

While wilfing around some Herefordshire sites, this one in particular, I saw a brief reference to the case of Lewis Powell of Craswall who in 1749 had left what property he had to his wife Mary.  The will was disputed by Lewis's brother William and this led to an enquiry into the circumstances under which the will was made.  It was written and witnessed by 42 year old Thomas Price and also witnessed by 49 year old Ann Griffiths.   Both witnesses told the same story. In Ann's statement we read: "... immediately after drawing the same, the said Thomas Price read over the said will to the said testor in English and immediately afterwards began to explain the contents and substance in Welsh to him .."

You can find the will and the various statements here, courtesy of the National Library and I think we can agree that Thomas Price was bilingual and that Lewis Powell, if he was not a monoglot Welsh speaker was at least far more familiar with that language than he was with English.  Ann Griffiths too must have had sufficient grasp of Welsh to know that Price was explaining the contents of the will to Powell. 

This ties in with other evidence for the survival of Herefordshire Welsh into the 18C.  According to those who have examined the relevant records, of nine defamation cases in and around Craswall/Clodock between 1712 and 1774, eight were in Welsh.  While in a 1757 court case a 19 year old  from Michaelchurch Escley, one Lewis Jenkins, was said to be "a strainger to the English tongue able to speak or understand but very few words."  The last Welsh-speaking native of Clodock is said to have died in 1883.

A Radnorian Family in Manitoba

In some ways the Patagonian migration reminds me of the Welsh contribution to the Spanish Civil War.  They were both minor chapters in a much bigger story and their importance has been exaggerated by interested parties for political and romantic reasons.  Just as the 150 or so, overwhelmingly Communist, Welsh volunteers to the International Brigade count for not very much when set beside the hundreds of thousands of Welsh folk who took part in the actual war against Nazism; so the 2000+ migrants to Patagonia were dwarfed in numbers by the tens of thousands who upped sticks for America, Canada, Australia etc.

These less celebrated migrants also have their stories and this one starts with my father, who told me that every Christmas his family would receive a box of apples from Canada.  That was all he knew, but an elderly aunt added that these relations lived in Selkirk, Manitoba and that once a girl called Ann Miller had visited Radnorshire from Canada.  Given the large families common in the late Victorian period, my grandfather was one of nine and his father one of eleven, there was plenty of choice as to who these migrants might have been.  Recently I tracked them down in the Canadian census, a Benjamin Davies who had married my great-great-aunt Anne in Diserth Church in 1836 and who had migrated to Canada in 1881.  And yes, they also had a grand-child - one of around thirty born in Manitoba and British Columbia - called Anne Miller.

Without boring the reader further I'll just comment on a couple of aspects of their lives:  Firstly the pioneering spirit.  We hear a lot about this, but in the case of Benjamin Davies and family, and others like them, I wonder if it was true.  It's not as if they sailed to Patagonia in a 447 ton clipper or crossed the prairie in a covered wagon.  Infact Anne and her children sailed on one of the most modern liners of the day, the Parisian.  The voyage from Liverpool to Quebec taking just eight days and from there to Manitoba, well I guess they would have taken the train. 

Secondly there is the question of ethnicity.  The Canadian census included a question on this topic and it was directed at second and subsequent generation Canadians as much as at recent immigrants.  In the 1891 census Benjamin and his entire family are recorded as ethnicity - English, religion - Baptist, unforgivable!  A weak excuse: at the time of their migration they had infact been farming in Shropshire.  Benjamin and Anne had one son and five daughters, they all married spouses of Scottish descent, except for one who married an Irish Anglican from County Cavan.  In subsequent censuses some of the daughters recorded their ethnicity as Welsh, others as Scotch, perhaps their husbands filled in the forms.  The one son died young and his children also took their mother's ethnicity when it came to completing a census - they too were Scotch.

Cwm Irfon to Cwm Hyfryd

While Llandrindod celebrates its annual Victorian fantasy its worth recalling that there were those in Wales who were eager to get as far away as possible from the great Queen and her Empire.   Given the linguistic situation at the time Radnorians were hardly likely to play a part in the establishment of the Welsh-speaking colony in Patagonia.  There is mention of a colonist named Jemima Jones of Llandrindod, but I've not been able to find out anything about her; while in the 1911 census there's a 20 year old draper's assistant called Hughes, living and working at Llandrindod's Central Wales Emporium. He lists his birthplace as Patagonia.

To find a more substanial figure in the history of the Welsh settlement we need to cross the Wye into Builth and to a farm called Tymawr in the parish of Llanafanfechan, the childhood home of Thomas Dalar Evans - his middle name celebrating the chapel at Troedrhiwdalar on the Newbridge-Beulah road.

Here's one of a number of youtube videos featuring Mervyn Evans, great grandson of Thomas Dalar, who has recreated the original watermill built by his family at Nant Fach in the beautiful Andean foothills of Cwm Hyfryd:

I'm afraid Mervyn's Spanish is a little too fluent for me, but we know that Thomas Dalar went to Patagonia in 1875.  There he married a girl, Esther Williams, who had come from the little remembered Welsh colony in Brazil.  The couple had ten children with significant names such as Irfonwy, Buallt, Brychan, Briallen, Eurgain etc.  I'm told that some of Dalar Evans' descendants came back to Builth a few years ago and discovered that while they still spoke Welsh, their stay-at-home connections did not.  In this one case at least the aim of the heroic migration had been a success.

Better Late than Never

There's a cartoon in the current issue of Private Eye of a young lad writing a comment at the end of an article in his father's newspaper.  As Dad points out, the printed page isn't the internet, it doesn't do comments. Anyway a few days ago I purchased an old copy of Cronicl Powys, the Powys Family History Society's journal.  It contained an article called "The Mantles of the Ithon Valley" and since my grandmother was a Mantle from said valley - although she was soon removed to the mining village of Fochriw - it was something I wanted to read.

Having read the article I felt a bit like the boy in the Eye cartoon.  I wanted to leave a comment, one I'm sure would have been of interest to the author and to anyone else interested in the Mantles of Radnorshire.  The author, who notices that there are no Mantles in the 1670 Hearth Tax, believes that the family "probably arrived in the Ithon valley between 1670 and 1680."   I'm not so sure that there were no Mantles in the Hearth Tax, there were certainly Mansells and as a Bufton was wrongly transcribed as Buston, well who knows.  But in any case the Mantle family were certainly in Llanbister a good 80 years or more before the author's estimate of their arrival.

Proceedings in Chancery between 1596 and 1616 involved a Thomas Mantle of Llanbister, who was accused of defrauding Sir George Carew of various local rents and leases.  This Thomas Mantle made a will in 1617 which mentions his sons John, Richard and Griffith, daughters Mauld, Margaret and Johan and various properties belonging to the family in Llanbister and Llanddewi Ystradenni.  It also mentions a mill in Stottesdon in Salop, which may give a clue to where they came from before they entered Radnorshire.  Later on in the 17C we find wills or bonds for a William Mantle (1637), Griffith Mantle (1661), Gwenhwyfar Mantle (1661) - all of Llanbister - and William Mantle of Llanddewi (1695).

I wonder why local societies don't make more use of blogs and the opportunity they afford for timely comments and follow-ups.  Of course, as the editor of Cronicl points out, their magazine is archived at the NLW,  whereas a blog can easily disappear into the ether at the whim of its author or host.

A Forgotten Radnorian

It's something of a mystery, at least to me, but every one of the fifteen Treasurers of the United States appointed since 1949 has been a woman, indeed five of the last six have been Latinas.  It must be a quaint custom in a far off country of which we know less than we think.

To avoid any misunderstanding, the Treasurer is not responsible for the corruption and on-going destruction of western capitalism.  No, that would be the similarly named but quite separate Secretary of the Treasury.  But still it's an important role and was even more so in 1789 when George Washington appointed the son of an old friend to the post.  The son was Samuel Meredith and his father, Washington's friend, was one Reese Meredith, born in Llandegley in 1708.  You can read about Reese and his connections here.

To listen to some accounts you'd think Radnorshire was a remote backwater which the speaker had personally discovered.  The truth is that the county has been as much at the centre of things as anywhere else.  Examine the will of some humble fellow who died 300 years ago and one shouldn't be too surprised to find a reference like this:

Same Old Same Old

It's significant that the London media - and especially its more "liberal" wing, which has been wallowing in a faux unionjackery since the London Olympics - failed to carry even a mention of the death of Eileen Beasley, never mind an obituary.  Obviously such a significant figure in the history of modern Wales is of no interest to these outraged defenders of the human right to kick off in a Moscow Cathedral.  The newly discovered Britishness of the metropolitan elite clearly doesn't encompass anything as unfashionable as the recalcitrant Welsh, or the independently minded English working class for that matter.

UPDATE:  I see the Guardian did get around to publishing an obituary.

A Frontier Defended

The world is full of territorial disputes but at least this one, between the blameless Radnorians and an avaricious neighbour, seems to have been settled fairly.  More modern maps show the disputed ground to be within Radnorshire.

Olympic Legacy

By Jingo, the unionists and the agenda driven BBC think they've got Alex Salmond on the run.  I doubt it. Not much evidence, around here at least, of those flag-bedecked cars you see during the big rugby and soccer tournaments.  Does anyone really believe that political and national loyalties are influenced by how well TeamGB does in the Lightweight Double Sculls?

Your blogger did learn one useful thing during the two week, red white and blue extravaganza though, the natives of Flint are adamant we should say "off Flint" rather than "from Flint."  Why?

Meanwhile back in the real world ............

On a Radnorshire Roadside

Hurrah for the Daily Mail

A big thank-you to the Daily Mail and all those who've made the non-singing of  Duw gadwo'r Frenhines by Giggs and pals such a huge issue.  It's even been picked up in the foreign papers and, by highlighting our separate identities, has doubtless done something to diminish the threat posed by the Great Britain team to the continued existence of Welsh, Scottish and English international football.

We all know that Welsh soccer players rarely sing Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.  It's never caused a fuss in easy-going, moderate Wales.  But when this tight-lipped tradition transfers to the more rabidly nationalistic acres east of Offa's Dyke all hell breaks loose.

It's a puzzle of course why folk who are quite happy to see their laws made in Brussels, their armies deployed in support of American foreign policy, their best companies sold off and jobs transferred abroad and their respected head of state reduced to acting in a spoof advertisement for the James Bond franchise, get quite so up-tight about soccer players maintaining a respectful silence during the playing of the pre-match anthems.

Shades of Anni Goch

The Radnorshire village of Norton may have a war memorial (in the form of a horse trough) with an inscription commemorating "its faithful sons who fought and died for England" but it also has a place in the history of Welsh literature.

There was a time when some might have claimed that Anni Goch, the subject of four (or is it five?) poems by the bard Ieuan Dyfi, wasn't a real person but a type, a stock figure.  The researches of academic Llinos Beverley Smith in the early 16C records of the Leominster Consistory Court have shown that Anni was real enough. She was the wife of John Lippard of Norton and her adulterous affairs, together with accusations of rape and attempted murder were enough to have her bardic paramour whipped around Presteigne church, while hubby John received similar exercise at Presteigne, Noron and Byton.

It's said that some 160 bardic poems addressed to Radnorshire patrons have survived, to which should be added nearly 30 more for patrons living just across the border in what is now Herefordshire.  Hopefully these will one day be brought to wider Radnorian attention by someone qualified to do so.  In the meantime here's a rough translation of one of the poems to Anni Goch.  As Ieuan Dyfi's work found it's way into the manuscripts Anni's connection with Norton was forgotten and copyists substituted another placename that met the requirements of cynghanedd - Overton in Flintshire.  One manuscript did get it right though - Nortyn:

Cynydd ydwyf yn canu I am a huntsman blowing the horn That musters the host. I'll hunt with my swift hounds, Finding the scent is not easy, It was a hind with a bright form, That escaped me from a nearby forest . Everywhere there are snares I've set for my girl. Ni wn ar hynt yn y rhwyd Yn nydd antur na ddeintiwyd.* She stirs like a hart stirs Retreating and leaving the covert. And I'm like a huntsman's pup Pursuing her like a rampant stag. From Norton, colour of hazy sunshine, Out there she was lost. I don't know what land or region She makes for from my pursuit. Maybe she heads down south to the two Gwents To escape her confinement. The symbol of the island and my chieftain, Sir Water, allow me the field; And if the doe comes from the south, Then, Sir Rhys, allow me to yoke; Not to a wild beast or a tame creature But one who flies with your birds. If to Builth between turf and wind, Sir Wiliam, allow me to hunt. If  Gwynedd's your intention, Sir Tomos, allow me a prison. If to Powys, I'd spy you After the chase and settling the hounds, Further thanks will be paid, To tall Mr. Richard Herbert. If to Hereford, perchance, the fair one Flees, for fear of being mocked, In that land there's a chief, Mr. Owain Pwl, allow me a pure fist, May Ovid not forsake me, This is my complaint, she's hiding. From following the banks of the Wye, Nor a step above Monmouth, If she escapes from this lawsuit, Then to the Vaughans I'll present my case. If to England she tries to flee, I know judgement will come there: the barons of my king, The men of the guard who love wine, Will find the slim, upright girl In one of the winehouses of London. Or failing that, there's a long task To find the girl who I'm seeking, If she's disappeared completely then Dyfi will seek the girl throughout the world. Before the time comes to sing I lose the scent in the hazels. I'm sorrowful like Uthur for Eigr It nurses a pain. Oh for the wizards of Merddin To give me high magic for her! Like Gwdion who they often kept Working endlessly for Huan. If she resists the sorcerers' enchantments Is there a magic word she doesn't know? Beware she doesn't come on a bier To Edmund from the mount to the sea. Was there in the tale of Taliesin A girl from Greece of such great sorcery? In daylight she rules In purgatory her face will be! * Maybe someone can come up with a translation of this couplet which makes sense.

Like It Was

I'm not sure who this is meant to annoy, fanboys of Jimmy Clark or Sebastian Vettel.

The thing is that qualifying just wasn't that important in the 1960s. Racing was important though and here we find 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.

And for those who argue that Jimmy was just getting quicker, well 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.

TeamGB

It seems that Gareth Bale - his uncle played for Rhayader Town - has been arrested for failing to turn out for the TeamGB soccer team, see picture here.

Of course that's really Bale lookalike and fellow Welshman Liam Stacey, who was recently imprisoned for 56 days for some ill-judged comments on Twitter.  I doubt if any of the current anti-Bale tweets, many of which involve the adjective Welsh teamed up with various parts of the human anatomy and/or the perceived failings of Welsh people in general will lead to a similar period of incarceration.

As one of the dwindling band of those who support free speech I've no argument with that, but there really should be a law against the use of this term Team GB.  According to my passport our little region of the EU has three names: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Teyrnas Gyfunol Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon and Rìoghachd Aonaichte Bhreatainn is Èireann a Tuath.  What or where Team GB is, heaven alone knows - perhaps it's a registered trademark.

Against the Odds

Just as  modern day censuses tend to exaggerate the strength of the Welsh language in Radnorshire, those of the late 19C and early 20C probably exaggerate its weakness, especially in the west of the county.  The rapid process of language shift - 19C observers describe the language retreating 20 miles in a lifetime - can surely be best explained by a deliberate rejection on the part of the local community.  The situation in Radnorshire may well have echoed that described by a witness who lived through a similar period of rapid language shift in Limerick in Ireland:  "the growing public feeling that Irish was a dying language, a mark of a degraded people who were not 'decent' - all this combined to produce a new people who from youth were pledged to speak no Irish. And so in West Limerick you had many who persisted in trying to speak a broken English and never again uttered a word in the old tongue they knew so well."

Given such attitudes it comes as a welcome surprise to come across a local Crossgates/Penybont family who actually seem to have passed on a knowledge of Welsh in the late 19C, when all around them were denying any connection with the native tongue.

Edward Stephens, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Elizabeth were born in Nantmel parish in the 1790s - a time and a place where you would expect them to have a knowledge of both languages.  By the time of the 1841 Census they were living at the Cummey, a place in Llanddewi Ystradenni parish, but nearer to the Gwystre Inn than the Walsh Arms.  By 1851 Edward has died and Elizabeth and her sons have moved to the Breconshire iron town of Beaufort, where in 1864 the youngest son, Hugh, marries a local girl called Ann Williams.  Perhaps it is Ann who is responsible for the subsequent linguistic history of the family.

Hugh and Ann have returned to Radnorshire by 1871 with their children Thomas and Sarah - both born in Beaufort.  Two more children, Elizabeth and Hugh jnr would be born in Llanddewi and Penybont respectively.  At first Hugh snr is as an agricultural labourer, later working as a plumber and glazier.

The first language information is provided by the 1891 census. The Stephens family were then living in the part of Llandegley parish which fell under the Kington Union and did not bother itself with such details.  In 1901 Thomas and Sarah have married but Hugh, his wife and two younger children are all recorded as being able to speak Welsh.

Ann Stephens died in 1903, her husband in 1905, but the 1911 Census identifies all of their children, living in and around the Penybont area.  Thomas and Hugh have married English speaking wives but are still recorded as being able to speak Welsh themselves.  Elizabeth and Sarah, both dressmakers, are living together - Elizabeth's English-speaking husband, a coachman, was away, lodging in Garth Road, Builth.  Both Elizabeth and Sarah are recorded as being able to speak Welsh, as is Elizabeth's five year old son - the child of a Llanddewi born mother who has never lived outside the county.

If we look at this through modern-day eyes this example of language survival within a family must seem commonplace.  But in early 20C Penybont?  Without the benefit of Welsh medium education or S4C and in the face of an animus against the language which had seen it abandoned on hearths across the county.  No, this family's persistence is surely quite remarkable.

Bwgy Town

The previous vid could have done with some local accents but that's not a problem here.

Radnor Pop

Frontier Post

Although the road from Walton to Presteigne flits to and fro across the border, it's easy enough to tell where you are; the Herefordshire sections being in such a worse state of repair than those of Radnorshire.  Arriving in Presteigne it's reassuring to see Owain Glyndwr's standard flying in the High Street. Some might argue that the reality was that Owain's forces sacked the town, but that would be to forget Edmund Mortimer's call for the Welshmen of Presteigne to give their allegiance to Glyndwr.  Clearly some still do.

On a recent visit I took the opportunity to purchase Mr. Parker's excellent history of the town, it's a book I read when it first came out in 1997 but this was a fairly recently updated edition.

If I have a criticism of this deservedly much praised volume. it's that only about 10% of  the book concerns the medieval town.  Perhaps local historians could make more of Welsh sources.  The public chastisement of the bard Ieuan Dyfi, he was symbolically whipped eight times around Presteigne church in 1501 after admitting adultery with Anni Goch - the basis for the bardic dispute between Ieuan and the female poet Gwerful Mechain.  Then there are the poems by Lewis Glyn Cothi to the lord of Stapleton, Dafydd Goch.  He came from the Fron, near Crossgates.  Or what about Morgan Elfael, the bard from Diserth who lived in Presteigne for at least twenty years and whose burial is recorded in the parish register, now found in Hereford Record Office - As an aside I find it interesting that Morgan was known by his bardic name in the public records (here for example in the lay subsidy for Presteigne, nine lines from the top).  And of course Elen Gethin lived out her days in Nash.

Moving on to a more general point, historians seem to get a bit sniffy when they use Welsh genealogical and historical sources.  They'll qualify a source by mentioning their unreliability or the bard's proneness to exaggeration.  As far as I can see these Welsh sources are no less reliable than the English records.  Are English lawyers and landowners and churchmen always reliable?  I'd make a guess that they were just as much a parcel of rogues as our present day establishments.

A Sober Christian Gentleman

William Stephens, clerk of the peace for Radnorshire and a churchwarden at Presteigne, had obviously taken quite a dislike to the town's young Carmarthen born curate John Davies.  For in 1884 the reverend gentleman and Stephens' 34 year old daughter Agnes were forced to marry "surreptitiously" in London.

The 71 year old Mr Stephens, he was born in Kington of a Llananno family, was not prepared to take this lying down. He had complained to the Bishop of Hereford that Davies was a drunkard and a vulgarian and had brought great scandal upon the church.  In January 1885 the Bishop ordered an ecclesiastical inquiry, which was held, appropriately enough given the charges, in Presteigne's Radnorshire Arms.

Stephens' lawyer presented his case to the Chancellor of the Diocese and the five members of the Ecclesiastical Commission. Davies had fallen drunkenly into the street while alighting from a carriage - witnesses said the horse had lurched unexpectedly and the curate was sober. Davies had frequently been drunk in his lodgings - the proprietors of the lodging house said no such thing although they had been pressed by Stephens to say otherwise. Mr Booker, a former teacher and church organist, recalled an incident of profanity following the death of the vicar's wife. Davies had argued that a hymn was too lively a choice for her funeral service.  He'd even resorted to extemporising a verse to the tune "Brief life is here our portion, tee-tum, tee-tum, tee-tum, Mrs West, old girl is gone" - ah but the ex-schoolteacher had been helped financially by Mr Stephens and admitted under cross-examination that he couldn't swear that Davies was drunk.  All the points in favour of the curate being greeted with laughter and applause from the delighted audience.

With Stephens' case disintegrating amidst accusations that it was brought through malice, the remainder of the curate's 25 character witnesses were excused and Davies himself took the stand.  Under oath he denied all the charges against him and that was the end of the matter.  The happy couple being borne away in a carriage by their many supporters and an evening of "the greatest enthusiasm prevailed."

William Stephens died in 1890, who knows if he was ever reconciled to his daughter's new husband.  John and Agnes Davies, she died in 1932, are found in later censuses living in Northamptonshire and Dorset.  Sadly the 1901 census records that their only child had been "feeble-minded" since birth.

UPDATE:

There's a brief mention of this - names withheld - in Mr Parker's History of Presteigne, which also reminds us of an earlier incident involving the church organist who had played the Dead March when the happy couple returned from their London elopement.  This incensed the good folk of Presteigne who burnt an effigy of the organist to the accompaniment of the self same tune played by a band.

Inspector Maddox tells it best by relating the charges brought by the organist against nine men for: "unlawfully and maliciously making or having caused to be made, a certain effigy or figure intended to represent the complainant, with having carried or caused it to be carried through the street of Presteigne, and made or caused to be made a great noise or disturbance with a band of music, and having caused a large number of people to collect around the said effigy in a certain field in the township of Stapleton, and having burned same in the presence of about three hundred people, with having riotously and tumultuously caused certain music to be played and making a great noise and disturbance, thereby creating a breach of the peace."

The nine were bound over and the town's police sergeant, whose evidence was deemed too flippant by the powers that be, reduced to the rank of a second class constable.  The organist, perhaps wisely,  moved back to Oxfordshire.

A Forgotten Radnorian

"What about motor racing pioneer Rosemary Jones from Newbridge on Wye," the blog comment asked.  "She raced in the Monte Carlo in a Mini in the early 60s?"

The truth is I'd never heard of this Rosemary Jones and a check of some of the old entry lists for the Monte didn't help either.  But then people I spoke to agreed, "Rosemary Jones? Oh she was a daughter for Tom Jones from the garage in Newbridge.  Took part in the Monte Carlo rally. you know"

Well, I didn't know but then someone mentioned the fact that Rosemary was a dog-breeder and a possibility dawned, did she actually race as Elizabeth Jones (AKA Liz Jones) and did she drive a Mini-Cooper with the registration number LIZ 1?

Now this Liz Jones wasn't a run-of-the-mill club driver, along with her rivals Christabel Carlisle and Anita Taylor, she was one of the fastest saloon car racers in the country in the early Sixties, and I don't mean one of the fastest female racers either.

The you tube clip below is well worth watching for some elegant drifting from Jim Clark, but around the 40 second mark we get to see Liz burning up the track:

Mainly a track racer Liz certainly did enter the Monte Carlo rally.  In the 1964 event she took the rather unusual option of starting from behind the Iron Curtain in the Belorussian city of Minsk.

Elizabeth was one of the top half-dozen or so graduates from the Cooper Driving School entitled to an occasional outing in the school's FJ car during the 1960 season, she also competed in an Austin Healey 3000.  From 1962 through to 1964 Ms Jones - actually by this time she was Mrs Degerdon - drove Mini-Coopers, first for the Downton Engineering and then the Alexander Engineering teams.  Anyone who is interested can check out her record in the British Saloon Car Championship for those years here.  Ms Jones also competed in the RAC Rally; the 1963 Tour de France and the 1964 24 hour race at Spa.  A career highlight must have come in the 1963 Brands Hatch 6 Hour race where she finished 2nd in class, Her co-pilot was one Timo Mäkinen but Liz was actually the lead driver in that race.

So it seems that Rosemary Jones - Forgotten Radnorian - was also the Liz Jones who had quite a motor-racing career before dropping out of the sport in the mid-Sixties.  In later life as Mrs Degerdon she became a well-known but, if the forums are anything to go by, very controversial breeder of dogs - with talk of deportation from the United States amidst charges of animal cruelty.

Elizabeth Rosemary Degerdon, born 1930, died in 2010, she is buried in Newbridge churchyard.  Wyesiders who think they are related might wish to check out this site.

UPDATE:  For those who are interested in genealogical matters Ms Jones's father Thomas Irfon Jones was a son for Daniel Jones of Penrhiwmoch, Llanafan and his wife Flora Thomas - she was born in the gold mining town of Ballarat, Australia and in the 1891 census was working as a schoolteacher in Abergwesyn. Ms Jones's mother was Annie Alice Jones, daughter of George W. Jones, a Newbridge butcher and wool dealer and his wife Elizabeth Lloyd.

Furious Driving

Now I'm a fan of the new stretch of the A470 between Newbridge and Builth.  Some letter writers to the local press call it "the motorway to nowhere" but truthfully it is part of a project which will hopefully provide a decent link between North and South Wales.  Something that any self-respecting country would set as a priority.  Others predict that this fast, straight road will lead to accidents, although I would have thought that slow, winding roads were more of a hazard.

The old road certainly proved fatal for 69 year old James Bow as he led a horse he had purchased at Newbridge fair on the evening of 17th October 1873.  Unknown to Mr Bow two young farmers, Danzey Jones and David Pritchard had entered into a discussion as to which of their two mounts was the fastest.  The matter would be settled by a race from Newbridge to the Builth gate.  Pritchard led the way and Jones, in his efforts to catch up, collided with Mr Bow.  The incident being witnessed by Moore and Kelly, two other travellers from the fair.  Mr Bow did not die immediately, indeed he lingered on for a month before finally succumbing.

Both Jones and Pritchard were charged with manslaughter and brought to trial at the Breconshire Spring Assizes in 1874, where they were soon found guilty.  The jury recommended mercy and the two defendants - described by the judge as "hitherto well-conducted men and respectably connected" -  were sentenced to terms of two weeks and one week imprisonment.  The judge specifying that these sentences would not involve hard labour since this would involve the defendants mixing with "common felons."

After Cilmeri

After admitting below that I don't read much fiction, it's hardly surprising that I'd never heard of the after-Cilmeri novels of American author Sarah Woodbury.  Here we find her mooching around Aberedw Castle and almost revealing the location of the snap at the top of this blog.

A Radnorshire History Month?

Unlike a modern caravan, a gypsy vardo took up hardly any room on a grass verge and the numerous brick encased standpipes found, in those days, around every village, provided plenty of clean water.

I remember, towards the end of the 1950s, one such vardo encamped on the chapel turn in our Radnorshire hamlet, I got quite friendly with their children but for some reason ended up in a bout of fisticuffs with one lad in the disused blacksmith's shop we called the pentis. It must have been a good scrap as some of the loafers from the village pub came out to watch, including our respective fathers. Eventually I was well-trounced, rsf, I guess in today's less robust climate such parental behaviour would have seen me whisked off into care.

Now these reminiscences are brought to mind by the current GRT History Month and in particular this article in last Saturday's Western Mail.  Should these three groups be lumped together?  The complaints in the article against the Fat Gypsy Wedding television programmes surely stem from the cultural differences between Romanis and Irish travellers. While discrimination against Gypsies is real enough, as this quote, reportedly from the 1954 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, illustrates:

“The mental age of the average adult Gypsy is thought to be about that of a child of ten. Gypsies have never accomplished anything of great significance in writing, painting, musical composition, science or social organisation. Quarrelsome, quick to anger or laughter, they are unthinkingly but not deliberately cruel. Loving bright colours, they are ostentatious and boastful, but lack bravery."

I do wonder if the eugenicist mentality at the root of such opinions, and which should have been buried along with Hitler, has merely taken on new and often politically correct forms. To such people minority histories can become another stick with which to beat the supposedly bigoted working class.

Back in the real world Radnorshire's gypsies have clearly made a contribution to the life of the county and not just in the preservation of the triple harp.  Incidentally the 1911 census finds the harp-playing family of young Fred Melenydd Roberts - I blogged about him here - living in a house called Melenydd Villa in Llandrindod's Tremont Road.  One wonders how the Roberts family felt when in August 1906 the "German" gypsies (I believe they could more accurately be described as Lovari) were escorted through the county under police guard, before being handed over to the Breconshire constabulary on Builth bridge?  The handover was watched by a crowd numbering in the hundreds before the group were allowed to camp off the Hay Road before being pushed on into Herefordshire the next morning, Today there are local businesses run by folk of gypsy origin, sometimes recognizable by the distinctive decoration on their vehicles.  Llandrindod natives may be interested in this reference to one such local family.

It seems that everyone has a history month nowadays: LGBT, Black, GRT, Irish, UK Disability,  - and that's just on the first page of Google.  So should Radnorshire join in the fun?  Not having a TV I can't be certain but I suspect that Welsh television has engaged more with Romani history than it has with that of Radnorshire.  After all I'm not entirely sure that the attitudes articulated by the following and rather typical Victorian comment have completely disappeared:

 

 "And if learning is greatest amongst English speakers in Wales, then we should of necessity look for it in Radnorshire. Instead, as everyone who knows Wales is aware, in this county just as much as the English parts of Wales, you will find the most uneducated, ill-informed, empty headed, immoral, uncivilized, and uncultured population of any part of the principality!"  (Translation)



Now it's quite understandable how comments like this arose.  When the haters of all things Welsh blamed the language for the ills of the country it was natural for patriotic voices to point to largely English speaking Radnorshire, which in some aspects - illegitimacy for example - had a "worse" record than its neighbours.

Although it would be amusing to hear television producers claiming their programmes were "an important way of redressing the many prejudices that have always existed against Radnorians" or to see the delightful Shân Cothi wandering the lanes of the border country, I don't really wish to see such a history month. It would be good though if Welsh historians and programme makers finally paid a little more attention to the history of East Central Wales.

Musical Interlude

This is a fascinating Welsh folk song since it was seemingly handed down in a single family from Cei Newydd in Ceredigion, with the warning that it should not be sung in public.  It's doubtful if such Marian verses could have been composed in Wales during the non-conformist period and therefore it's believed that the words date back at least as far as the Reformation.

It came to wider notice from schoolteacher Myra Evans 1883-1972 (born Jane Elmira Rees) who got it from her mother, who in turn learnt it from her grandfather David Williams.  Elmira Rees's father was a mariner, like many of the men in New Quay - you'll not find him in some of the census records since, presumably, he spent so much time at sea.  I wonder if the absence of husbands from the household accounted for the longevity of such an "old-fashioned" and matriarchal song.

There's a recording by Elen Manahan Thomas on youtube but this version is from Siwsann George.

A Novel of Radnorshire Interest.

Now I'll be honest and admit that I don't read novels.  I might occasionally enjoy a page turner or read a book that gives an insight into a world I want to know more about, but that's it.  This novel, however, concerns two of the more interesting individuals who have lived in what later became Radnorshire, Gwenllian the daughter of Owain Glyndwr and her husband Philip ap Rhys of Cenarth in the parish of St Harmon. The novel, it says, was inspired by poems written by Lewis Glyn Cothi, Llawdden and Ieuan Gyfannedd.  Long-time readers of this blog will realise that this presses a lot of buttons for me, so it's a book that I had to buy.

After a couple of chapters I'm afraid I consigned it to the rather large box entitled books to be read later.  As I said I don't really like novels, I much prefer factual books.  Now obviously it is perfectly proper for an historical novel to make things up.  Not much is known about the lives of Gwenllian and Philip so the author is at liberty to imagine a great deal.  But why change the few facts that are known?  The book features a poet called Iolo, obviously Iolo Goch..  In reality it's doubtful if Iolo even lived to see Glyndwr take up arms.  The novel mentions Lewis Glyn Cothi's marvellous poem requesting a bed and sets it in 1402, Lewis was probably born in the 1420s. I found fact changes like this, and I could go on, annoying.  Obviously most readers wouldn't have the same problem.

I don't feel the book captures the spirit of the time and skimming through the unread chapters I found the plot a bit far-fetched. Gwenllian comes across as a worthy enough farmer's wife driving an ox-cart instead of a 4x4, rather than the aristocratic figure the bards describe.  She's a bit dim and, good heavens, wouldn't a married woman from St Harmon involved in secret assignations with a stranger in a Llanidloes tavern quickly find herself the talk of the town in 2012, never mind six hundred years earlier.

So is this book a good read and worth buying?  Judge for yourself, I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask.

Picture this

Last weekend's Sunday Times imagined what the Union Flag might be should Scotland vote for independence in the forthcoming referendum. Something like this:

A bit of a mess but actually a fair representation of a post-Scotland United Kingdom.  A flag and a state dominated by England with Northern Ireland gradually fading out of the picture and Wales tagged on as an out of place afterthought.

Radnorian wonders if this historic flag might be a better bet.

UPDATE:  And then there are the Olympic Games.  An event that interests me not a jot, except that the proposed opening ceremony promises to be a gloriously naff affair.  Following a "green and pleasant" theme it will feature ducks, geese, cricket, grazing sheep, artificial clouds, the Glastonbury festival and the Last Night of the Proms, oh and that ancient thorn tree that someone took a chainsaw to a few months ago.

Now I've no complaint that Wales is represented by a giant daffodil atop a maypole, but the ceremony seems a little light on "the dark satanic mills."  Of course it's the one thing that unites both the old and new British elites, their dislike of industry and, especially, the English working class.  For those of us who actually admire England's industrial genius, watching the arty crowd making an ass of themselves should be fun.

Latest Score

Back at the end of July in 1936 Scotland beat Wales 7-3 in an international sporting fixture held in Llandrindod.

Anyone care to guess which sport?  Not Bowls or even Hedging.

Water Polo

World's Most Expensive Car

So the ex-Innes Ireland Ferrari 250 GTO has sold for $35 million, which may well be more than the total true asset value of the Spanish banking sector.

This is the car, owned by the British Racing Partnership, in which Innes won the 1962 Tourist Trophy race at Goodwood. Throughout the summer of that year he used it as his road car in Radnorshire, indeed his wife of the time, Norma, would drive it into Kington to do her shopping.

In the current financial climate I'd say it was a pretty sound investment and heaven knows how much it would be worth if it was actually red rather than duck-pond green.

UPDATE:  I'm amazed at the number of journals and websites who believe this car's competition record was restricted to the 1962 Le Mans race.  It just goes to show how many "experts" just copy each other's articles.  It would have been easy enough for them to check out the facts, here for example.

Reading Matters

I hadn't come across this blog before, but it has plenty of Radnorshire content.  Well worth delving into on a rainy day.

Symbols

Who knew that when the 15C bard Lewis Glyn Cothi thanked the men of Elfael for the gift of a horse by invoking the blessings of the cross of Tyfaelog, now in Llowes parish church, he was infact praising a symbol of white power?  This at least was the implication of last night's Panorama programme about soccer hooliganism in the Ukraine and Poland.

The Panorama programme did give the impression that Poland and Ukraine are hotbeds of neo-Nazism. While this doesn't appear to have had much impact in recent parliamentary elections, it certainly seems as if the two countries do have a problem with street graffiti and public order at soccer matches.  It is also true that these hooligans have adopted the Celtic cross as a symbol of their violent and xenophobic ideology, indeed the political use of the Keltenkreuz is banned in Germany. Hopefully even the assiduous centralists of the Brussels bureaucracy will not seek to extend the ban into Radnorshire.

A Great British Story?

I think we can all agree that the Welsh, the Irish and the Picts inhabited the British Isles before the coming of the Romans.  DNA throws up new discoveries every week but even so there seems to be a consensus that the greater part of the English population can also trace its roots in these islands to pre-Roman times.  Given these facts why on earth would the new BBC television series The Great British Story presented by historian Michael Wood ignore all this and start a series about British* history with the Romans?

Now I usually enjoy Wood's TV work but the first episode of his new series was a mess.  It seemed to me that Wood's common sense had collided with the usual BBC agenda - patricianism, big-Europeanism and the virtues of multiculturalism: well cheap domestic labour, exotic restaurants and villas in Tuscany anyway.  No wonder they think British history began with Rome.

*Of course I mean British in the geographical sense, since as a political reality you'd have to wait until the 18C before Britishness was invented.

UPDATE:  The second part of this show was .....well another fine mess.  Basque is not a Celtic language as someone in a Llangrannog pub suggested and the Scots (AKA Irish) weren't from Strathclyde as Michael Wood said at one point.  Never mind, no-one noticed, not even on twitter, and the programme does fulfil its primary purpose - to push an agenda of the aptly named BBC.

Pause for thought

It was a Friday afternoon in June 1889 in Llandrindod's Bridge Hotel* as Mr Osborne, a Neath grocer, packed his bags in preparation for catching the evening train to South Wales. There was no mention of Mr Osborne's wife Ellen in the subsequent newspaper reports so the sudden appearance of a female through the open window of Mr Osborne's room might have set tongues wagging. Unfortunately the female in question was a full grown African lioness escaped from Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie, which was encamped on a nearby piece of waste ground.

Of course we need to take tales of big cats, both then and now, with a pinch of salt.  After all the escaped tiger myth of the 1890s was a Radnorshire joke at the expense of the big city journalists.  In this case, however, the story seems true enough.  The 50 year old defended himself stoutly with a chair and was soon rescued by the staff of the menagerie who eventually bundled the lioness back into captivity.

Lions aside, what I find interesting about Victorian Llandrindod is the number of local families with an entrepreneurial streak who built up the town.  The Wildings at the Bridge hotel or the Thomas family of Penybont who established the Central Wales Emporium for example. We could do with some of that get-up-and-go today ....... the expansive car park that is the modern-day county council, not so much.

 *Years later of course the Bridge Hotel would be renamed the Metropole, for the sensible reason that the then owner, Mrs Miles, had purchased some second-hand china resplendent with the letter M.  In 1889 the hotel was still owned by the local Wilding family who had named their business after the bridge over the nearby Arlais brook. It had originally been called Coleman's hotel after its first owner Mr Coleman, a Howey based grocer and draper.

The Radnorshire Example

It's often said that the Irish hunger strikes of the 1980s were an unforeseen consequence of Gwynfor Evans' successful threat to starve himself to death if the Thatcher government failed to live up to its manifesto commitment to establish a Welsh language TV channel.  Perhaps another Welsh example, indeed in part a Radnorshire example, led to an earlier event which set Irish history on an equally tragic path.

I've argued before that Radnorshire Rebeccaism in the 19C is faintly reminiscent of events in rural Ireland.  Perhaps I was wrong, but not in the way one might think. Rather than Radnorshire echoing Ireland,  it was the rebellious Welsh peasantry who provided an example to their more timid Irish counterparts.

Writing in March 1846 in the Freeman's Journal - Ireland's leading newspaper of the day - T. M. Ray, the secretary of O'Connell's Repeal Association, highlighted the successes of the Welsh Rebeccaites, including those of Radnorshire.  In a long essay he mentions the destruction of the Newbridge gate and details the way in which 200 armed marchers advanced to the Lion Inn in Rhayader, in open challenge to a cowed authority.

The Welsh, Ray wrote, "did not spend years upon years supplicating the legislature; they made no appeal to popular opinion, but took the brief method of physical force. At once - they annihilated nuisances, wrecked dwellings, burned farmhouses, put the landlords to flight, organised arms, beat the police, beat the constables, met the military sword to sword and put them to flight."  And what was their reward for these open acts of rebellion?  Well "the public authorities entered into negotiations with the "rebels" for the reestablishment of peace.  Such occurrence will hardly be credited in Ireland.  The lieutenants and magistrates suing with the "delegates" of the Ribbonmen and Molly Maguires for the cessation of hostilities."

This was at the height of the famine years and Ray contrasted the position of small farmers in rebellious Wales, forced to live on barley bread and buttermilk, flummery and potatoes,  with those in the more law abiding Irish countryside.  "Alas! Alas! how happy would be the small farmers of Ireland if they had only the certainty of fare which the Welsh mountaineers despise."

Ray's article may have had little effect on the breakaway, a few months later, from O'Connells Association,  which would lead in 1848 to the Young Ireland rebellion.  A minor affair but with long term consequences and perhaps inspired in a small way by the example of the Rebeccaites assembled at Rhayader's Lion Hotel.

Jubilee

My maternal grandmother was born in 1880 at the Clywedog Arms in Llanddewi Ystradenni.  Within a few months the family had moved to Fochriw in the industrial South.  Her subsequent movements were fairly typical of the Welsh working class - various mining villages, a return to Radnorshire in the 1930s, then on to Harrow and Watford during the wartime years.  Unlike the majority of her grandchildren she never made it to Australia, dying in Weston Super Mare in 1960.

You'd have a difficult job finding the Clywedog Arms in Llanddewi today, and not just because it lost its licence in 1910. It was actually located in a tiny, detached part of that parish, located where the Gravel Road meets the A44, between Crossgates and Gwystre.  Sixty years ago the good citizens of Llanbadarn Fawr were certainly aware that these few acres were not in their parish, they suggested Nantmel.  The burghers of Nantmel were equally convinced that it was part of Llanbadarn.  The end result was that your blogger was one of the few infants in Radnorshire publicly denied a Coronation mug.  An event which no doubt contributed to my agreeing with Ronnie Reagan's opinion that the most beautiful word in the English language is the word Republic.

Nothing in the Papers

Back in the 1950s Highland Moors on the outskirts of Llandrindod - you can just about make it out in this snap - was a residential school for pupils suffering with TB.  The B&R reports that at a recent reunion a former pupil, Welsh rugby legend Clive Griffiths, made a speech.  I think they meant Clive Rowlands.

If the B&R hasn't been the same since they took the advertisements off the front page then what about the Mid-Wales Journal?  They report that author Catrin Daffyd recently spoke to pupils at Builth High School.  Catrin Daffyd?  Ignorance or a joke?  Either way they should stop pretending to be a Welsh paper and go back to being called the Wellington Journal.

Meanwhile the Evening Standard manages a sly dig at Wales and the Eisteddfod in its review of the Indonesian martial arts epic The Raid*.  Now I'm no great fan of the Gorsedd but what about the Hay Festival.  The sight of the London glitterati being pursued by a bunch of Javanese kickboxers would be entertaining and socially useful.

* The film concerns a police team trapped in a tower block inhabited by homicidal criminals. Director Gareth Huw Evans is originally from Hirwaun.  Hirwaun, tower block?  That figures.

Radnorshire Bardic Poems 48

This is a translation of another bardic poem  - an awdl rather than a cywydd - addressed to Dafydd ap Maredudd Fychan of Garddfaelog, Llanbister thanking him for the gift of a stallion. This time by Lewis Glyn Cothi.  Usual health warnings - translated years ago without the benefit of GPC and, no, I'm not at all up to speed with some of the irregular verb endings.

No 175, Thanks for a stallion Day and night, you are the Meirchion of the vale of Ithon, A rib of Maelienydd; I cannot leave home for a single day, Without asking after Dafydd. To you Dafydd, vine of the land of Cynan, blessings, Son of Maredudd Fychan; Grant to all from the three quarters, As a justice, the custom of Elystan. To the world you are Elystan, Monarch of Philip Dorddu; May you live as long as a rock crystal, And then an age with Jesus. Mead fed prince, Jesus allows you Garth Gynfyn, Gardd Faelog; The magistrate of Hywel ap Madog, To your cheek, my blessings for an age. There is an age, grown son, to give food and wine, From the high line of Meurig Llwyd; The land insists on honouring Your presence, you are brave. You are not moody, Or rough, by the hand of Curig, Nor fierce, nor angry, seed of Cadwgan. Nor feebly ignored, Nor mean to your lands, Nor a miser Dafydd, the face of talent. To me you are twice as good As any, near or far, And with gifts even better, the race of Cadwallon. Where you dwell, your word Noble Dafydd, is equal To that of Meurig in the land of Meirion. You gave silk a hundred nights, You gave unstintingly in the day, Night and morning and every hour of the afternoon. You gave me a three year old stallion, Light and sure footed, Your office is to give a steed to your simple bard. His nature is to take hold Of the bit in his nostril, A passionate sort, one coloured, perfect, Listening for the clarion Or the tune of the gun stone, At a thump jumping about, as far as Caereinion, Baiting the sleeve Of the bear despite his dung, Bruising his bearess, throwing some. Like a mountain hart, This serpent is like a moorland stag Across a flat field,   With the coat of a roebuck, Like a boar, like a fat apple, Like a clean, strong, wild beast, a well-fed lion. On Sunday, Dafydd I'll come with a cywydd To give daily thanks for my horse-haired stag. I'm your bard on your stallion Come to greet you, Your swan will win us respect from the host By my cross, I'm your man, Generous one of Gardd Faelog, Who serves a knight like Meirchion.

Radnorshire Bardic Poems 47

Below is my poor translation of a 15C poem by the bard Llawdden, a man who once lived, by his own account, in the parish of Cefnllys. It is a request for a sallet - a type of helmet - made on behalf of Dafydd ap Maredudd Fychan of Garddfaelog, Llanbister (Caerfaelog on the OS map) to an uncle named Madog.

According to the modern day edition of Llawdden's work this Madog was one Madog ap Hywel ap Madog Fychan who according to Bartrum's genealogies was Dafydd's maternal grandfather rather than his uncle, see here.  It can also be seen that this Madog was not related by blood to Cadwgan ap Hywel Fychan of Elfael Uwch Mynydd, as line 13 suggests.

I would like to put forward another name, one Madog ap Maredudd ap Rhys whose pedigree can be found here (Elystan Glodrydd 10).  Like Dafydd, Madog was descended in the maternal line from Cadwgan.  His father Maredudd ap Rhys was also a first cousin of Glyndwr's lieutenant Rhys Gethin and therefore Madog was a second cousin of Sir Richard Gethin, a famous soldier in the 15C French Wars who, somehow or other, is ignored by the Dictionary of Welsh Biography.  While Dafydd was Cadwgan's great grandson, Madog was Cadwgan's grandson and a cousin to Dafydd of Garddfaelog's mother - what the old Radnorshire folk would have called a Welsh uncle.

The editor of Gwaith Llawdden makes a good case for the Llanfair of line 6 being Llanfair Trellwydion, a lost chapelry within Llanbister parish and fairly close to Garddfaelog.  If Madog ap Maredudd was the donor of the helmet then this Llanfair could instead be Builth, the descent group Elystan Glodrydd(10) holding land there and also in Diserth parish. This is just a suggestion but it would also solve the problem, identified by the editor, of the request poem starting, unusually, with a reference to the recipient of the gift rather than the donor.

Mae seiri yn mesuraw Yonder the craftsmen Measure out a mile of gold; From fair houses it was worked Heavenly colour on the river bank; A place of good men beside the surge The Land of Llanfair, behold a fair vale! One of the goodmen of our island Is the image of Maredudd ap Rhys Who made the governance of the two lands An advancement for Madog. He's like a hawk or a falcon He's a bird over Elfael. Two kinsmen from the same Cadwgan, Have made an exchange For me there's  but a journey, Rare purpose, between uncle and nephew. This one has it, for me with his gift A sallet like a swan's breast. From the town a covering for the pate, All blue like a young salmon's back. A louver like the seven planets, A lamp, lighting for my head. A casket to be worn against a blow, A bell that comes as far as the cheeks. Round like a conqueror's crown, A white bolster about a man's ears I come with my poem and accompanying harp Beaten steel through the crystal, A sallet like St Silin's relic, Shops of Sheen tassells, Silver bordered burnished bar, With a pennant like a fine banner. The colour of ice on the sides, Polished gold beside the jewel, A moon fitted for the skull Smoother than plate metal. Sun or fire, it is thin, A turned bowl set with a hat. Its visor works as my shield Like a box or a grey blue beast. A place for the hair within a white cauldron, A place to peep from an enemy's hand; A visit seen, a man brought it, Through two Ls sight penetrates. A good gentle head like Dewi Mynyw, Meugan's head, of silver. Plate for the head against an ash spear, A head-dress like an anchorite's white cap. I'm a poet who dreams, And a dream comes swiftly, A ship for me or a white skillet, Or Owain ab Urien's cauldron. A cock's comb like a stone above the gro, Or a scallop shell from Santiago. It's bottom like a Maelor goblet, With jaws like a great gun. If it's to be had above my dark blue eyes A steel head like St George's bonnet, A hat of steel as broad as a plate, A helmet in Madog's possession: I name this for Dafydd A helmet will be worn in Garddfaelog!

A Radnorshire Scandal

After years of mainly Independent candidates, often elected unopposed, party politics is back with a bang in this Thursday's election of the Radnorshire members to Powys County Council.  Of course this is nothing new, since in the late Victorian period even the humblest parish contest would have witnessed Tories and Liberals battling for supremacy.

It was perhaps this bitter party rivalry which saw Abel Thomas QC, the Liberal MP for East Carmarthenshire, representing a Radnorshire farmer in a paternity dispute before the Merthyr Tydfil magistrates in 1895.  After all the farmer, let's call him Mr D, was a Liberal member of Radnorshire County Council, a Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the local Board of Guardians. No doubt party honour needed to be upheld.

Mary Ann, a farmer's daughter in her early 20s, had accused the councillor of fathering her illegitimate daughter.  The case had already been thrown out in Builth but perhaps the Merthyr court would take the opportunity of avoiding any financial charge to their ratepayers, the girl and her child now living in that town.

The councillor, a married man aged 35, was accused of familiarities - witnesses confirmed that he had once lifted the girl on to the cratch and kissed her during a sheep washing - though some declared that Mary Ann had removed his pipe to facilitate this intrusion.  On another occasion there had been a similar incident witnessed in Minton's shop. There were no witnesses, it was true, to the "familiarities" which had left her "enceinte."  Mr D insisted that he was blameless and that his waggoner was the father of the child.  Yes, he admitted, another paternity suit had recently been brought against him, it was opportunistic, and in the 25 years he had lived on his father's farm only two servants had left "in the family way."  After six hours of such testimony it was the lack of any corroborative evidence which led the court to dismiss the case.

So was this a Victorian melodrama featuring a poor unfortunate and a rouge?  Well perhaps, although within two years Mary Ann had indeed married Mr D's waggoner.  They would go on to have 12 children together..

Incidentally Abel Thomas QC was involved in another case of shenanigans involving a prominent Radnorshire politician, see here.

New Book

It seems a new book of local interest from Logaston Press will be on sale soon, 230 pages, £10

Forgotten Radnorian - Rev. John Bufton

The novel Gwen Penri - A Welsh Idyll published in London in 1899 - a tale of a Denbighshire banker's daughter attending college in Aberystwyth -  can't have been a great success, indeed a  reviewer in the Welsh newspaper Y Goluead complained that the author, who had migrated to Australia due to ill-health, must have forgotten everything he ever knew about Wales - if he knew anything in the first place!

So who was this Congregationalist minister and novelist with the Radnorian name of John Bufton?  According to this site Bufton was born in Llandrindod and died in Hobart, Tasmania in 1911, but it is the pseudonym Brynithon which gives a clue to his actual identity.  John was the son of James Bufton and his wife Mary Bowen, who at the time of the novelist's birth were farming Bryneithin in Llanbister parish.

Today Bufton is remembered for his 1905 opus Tasmanians in the Transvaal War, good copies of which sell for over £500.  A book of  interest, no doubt,  to Tasmanians and those interested in Australian participation in the Second Boer War, the background to the film Breaker Morant.

Some Radnorians from the 1911 Census, No 1

"All is safely gathered in, except the rakings at Ty Gwyn"

Well that, according to the old people, was what the less respectful farm boys would sing at harvest festivals in Howey's Providence Baptist chapel.  Nowadays Ty Gwyn, which is found on the backroad between Howey and Llandrindod, takes paying guests and has a website, but in 1841 it was home to a young lad called John Lewis, the five year old son of an elderly farmer and his much younger wife.

I first noticed John, a carpenter, in the 1901 census when he was lodging at 1 Springfield Cottage ... the return said he had been born at Ty Gwyn and that, unusually, he spoke both Welsh and English. He was a lodger at the home of his nephew James Lloyd, as he had been in 1891. Indeed John Lewis seems to have been something of a sitting lodger since he was still there in 1911, although by then his nephew's family had moved on. In all three census returns John's bilingualism was recorded.

The 1841 Census showed that both his parents were locals - from Llandrindod and Diserth - and in subsequent returns Builth, in 1861, was the furthest he'd strayed away from Radnorshire. In 1851 he'd been a farm servant at Brynhir, the neighbouring farm to Ty Gwyn, his father having died the previous year. In 1871 and 1881 he was living at Cwmhowey with his step-father, he never seems to have married.

I suppose John Lewis could have learnt Welsh when his mother and step-father opened a grocer's shop in Llanfihangel Fechan in Breconshire - they were there in 1861  - but I like to think that it was the language he spoke to his father (born in Llandrindod c1776) as a child at Ty Gwyn and that he was just too old-fashioned and guileless to pretend he couldn't. Llandrindod's very own Ned Maddrell* perhaps?

* Of course in John Lewis's day Llandrindod would have had other locally born people who could speak Welsh but they would have been returnees from the industrial south or the children of incomers.

Radnorshire and the Titanic

Two subjects which seem to fascinate amateur historians are Jack the Ripper and the sinking of the Titanic. There are websites and forums examining those events in mind-boggling detail. Now, with the centenary of the sinking of the White Star flagship, the mainstream media has also gone overboard with numerous television programmes and books about the ill-fated liner.

The Western Mail's Lefi Gruffudd quite rightly complains about Welsh television's rather pathetic desire to join in this festival of remembrance while ignoring historical events of far more significance to Wales. Will Senghenydd, he asks, be remembered in 2013? Well perhaps not, but then Kate Winslet hasn't starred in a film about the Glamorgan mining tragedy.

If some of the Welsh connections to the Titanic story are ridiculous - according to the Western Mail the first class passengers ate off silverware made in Wales - at least Radnorshire can claim a more substantial link with the aftermath.

I wonder if the legal representative of the Dockers' Union and stout defender of the working class Clement Edwards took a particular pleasure in cross-examining Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his wife Lady Lucile at the Board of Trade Inquiry into the sinking of the doomed vessel. Through their links to the Lewis family - their father was a first cousin of George Cornewall Lewis - Cosmo's brother Henry had recently taken possession of Harpton Court near New Radnor, a locality that Edwards, the son of a Knighton draper,* knew well.

According to the popular press the lifeboat in which Duff-Gordon and his wife had escaped the Titanic was know as "the money boat." It was suggested that the crew had been bribed to get away from the sinking vessel rather than pick up survivors, even though there were just 12 occupants in the 40 seater craft. Despite some obvious inconsistencies in their evidence highlighted by Edwards, the Board of Inquiry found the couple quite blameless. They would suffer from the gossip of less generous sections of the public for the rest of their days.

Within a year Clement Edwards - he was the MP for the East Glamorgan constituency which contained the village of Senghenydd - would be representing the bereaved families at the inquest into the Universal pit explosion.

* Clem Edwards' Llangynllo born mother Sarah bore the fine old Radnorshire surname of Tudge - it dates back in the county until at least the 1690s. At the time of the 1911 Census and by then a widow, Mrs Edwards was keeping a boarding house, Penithon, in Llandrindod.