Clutching at Straws

With mainstream nationalism having effectively given-up on a Welsh state, the dwindling band of patriots are placing a lot of faith in the forthcoming Scottish referendum.  If Scotland votes for independence can Wales be far behind seems to be the hope.  Actually I can't see Scotland voting "yes" and in any case what exactly are the Scots voting for?  Having dumped the idea of the euro the SNP now wants to use sterling.  Clearly they haven't much faith in the enthusiasm of the Scottish voters for real independence, for how can a country be truly free if it has no control over its fiscal policy?

Look at the case of Ireland, their economy only started to prosper when they broke the link with sterling in 1979.  Of course they eventually fell in with the euro and now the Irish taxpayer has ended up bailing-out the German banks.  You may disagree, but it seems to me that this is what happens when you break away from one imperium and sign-up to another, equally centralist, even less democratic project.

One advantage the Scots have is that their population is relatively homogeneous.  According to the 2001 census results - the Scots have yet to publish the 2011 figures - less than 9% of their population was born in England - in Wales it's closer to 21%.  As far as I can see no-one has suggested that there should be a residency qualification on who is allowed to vote in the referendum and it will be interesting to see what would happen if the yes campaign failed by a few votes.  Could Scottish independence be lost due to the votes of the - ugly term - "white settlers?"

Of course we are all far too politically correct to suggest that the constitutional position of Scotland or Wales should actually be decided by the Scots and the Welsh.  Infact there isn't a country in the world that doesn't apply some form of residency test on those allowed to vote in elections.  The Irish Republic is the most relaxed country  in Europe when it comes to allowing non-citizens to vote, but even they draw the line at referendums, only Irish citizens being allowed a vote in such contests.  Having no citizenship of their own Scotland and Wales could at least demand that anyone voting on constitutional matters have, say, a five year residency of the country.  Should the destiny of a nation be decided by the here-today-gone-tomorrow sorts or should it be left to those with a stake in the country?

Musical Interlude - songs of the defeated

I can't say I know much about these happy Polish hippies but they're performing a popular Serb folk song from Kosovo: "A dense fog has fallen over the plain of Kosovo"

With politicians like Hague and Hollande eager to intervene in Syria it might be worth reading John Pilger on Hague prosecutor (won't happen) Carla del Ponte's The Hunt: Me and War Criminals.

Ms Del Ponte was in the news recently when she raised the possibility that the Syrian rebels were using sarin. She seems a little off-message, wasn't she copied into the emails?

British Identity in Radnorshire, 2011 Census

The 2011 Census allowed respondents to choose between any number of multiple ethnic identities although in reality very few opted to do so. In the Radnorshire communities the great majority chose a single identity and that meant choosing between a Welsh-only, an English-only, or a British-only ethnicity.

The British-only identity trailed in third. Only in New Radnor (31.8) and Whitton (31.9) did Britishness emerge as the most popular choice.  In a number of communities (see map below) the British-only option dropped below 20%, although mostly the score was a respectable figure in the twenties - 22% in Knighton, 26% in Presteigne, 24% in Llandrindod for example.  So who were these Radnorshire Britons?

Turning from ethnic identity to place of birth we find that only in 11* of Radnorshire's 27 communities did the Welsh-born outnumber those born in England.  This is partly explained by the use of Herefordshire maternity hospitals although it's clear that this has had only a negligible effect.  The real reason is, of course, in-migration.

When we compare the ethnicity chosen by the Welsh-born and English-born we find an interesting contrast.  Below is a table showing how the Welsh-born are far more likely to opt for a Welsh-only identity. 

Welsh-only/English-only identity shown as a % of the Welsh-born/English-born for the 27 Radnorshire Communities:

The English-only identity choice is lower than the figure you would expect from the number born in England because substantial numbers of in-comers opted to describe themselves as British-only.  The locally born were far less likely to do so.  Conclusion:  In the 2011 Census for Radnorshire at least Britishness is essentially Englishness dressed up in a more polite garb.

* Rhayader, Abbeycwmhir, Aberedw, Glascwm, Llanbadarnfynydd, Llanbister, Llanelwedd, Llanyre, Penybont, St Harmon and Glasbury.

Forgotten Radnorian - A Nantmel Abolitionist

It's plain enough from the Laws of Hywel that slavery existed in medieval Wales.  It would be strange if it hadn't since it was an institution that was found in nearly every human society, from the Maoris of New Zealand to the Aleuts of Alaska.

For most of us slavery means the chattel slavery found in North America and the Caribbean - a somewhat Eurocentric outlook on such a universal and continuing phenomenon  - and as S4C have gone to some trouble to point out the Welsh played a part in all of this.  How else could John Henricus, for example, a runaway slave from New York in 1727, be described as speaking very good English and the Welsh dialect. Incidentally runaway bond servants were just as numerous as runaway slaves and pursued with equal vigour, they sometimes ran away together.

A rare exception to those who saw slavery as just a normal part of life was a Pennsylvania Quaker named Cadwalader Morgan, who, in 1696, after much pondering over the practicalities of owning a slave, decided that he had "no freedom to buy or take any of them upon any account."  He took his message to the Quaker's Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which, although it rejected the call to forbid slavery, did agree that Friends "be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more Negroes."

Cadwalader Morgan had emigrated to Pennsylvania from Merionethshire but, as Charles Browning's Welsh Settlement of Pennsylvania points out, his will of 1711 shows him to have been the son of James Morgan from the township of Faenor in Nantmel parish.  Cadwalader, who had married into a Merionethshire Quaker family, migrated to Pennsylvania in 1683.  His parents, three brothers and a sister sailed out to America in 1691; both father and mother died on the voyage.

It's interesting that Morgan based his opposition to slavery on practicalities rather than principle - he felt that owning a slave could have a negative moral impact on the owner and his household.  The abolitionists of 19C America also had to face practical concerns; how exactly could one emancipate what, in some states, amounted to 40% of the population without causing economic and social chaos.  In the end the matter was decided on the battlefield, with one soldier dying for every six slaves freed.

Radnorshire Redneckery

The previous post highlighted some of the less than complimentary statements about Radnorshire found in the Welsh language press of the Victorian era.   In reality, apart from the decades long, politically astute and well-organised activities of the Radnorshire Rebeccas, the county was noted for its lack of crime; for example, in its 90 year plus existence the Radnorshire Constabulary only had to investigate four murders.  Even in matters of religion the locality was not quite as pagan as the devout scribes of Pura Wallia would have it, see here. .  ........ But hang on, what if those Bible punchers were onto something, what if Radnorshire was indeed the pagan, immoral and ignorant place the press described.

In the past I've made the point that we should differentiate between language shift and anglicization.  Radnorians were certainly better able to pick up fluency in the English language than those living far away from the border.  It was mainly a matter of geography. With the Teme, the Lugg, the Arrow and the Wye all running eastward into England and much of the county lying within the orbit of English-speaking market towns, surely sparsely populated Radnorshire should be praised for holding back the tide of language shift for so long?

The language aside it seems that Radnorshire maintained many of the traditions of Hen Gymru Lawen and in these aspects, at least, it was less anglicised than it's respectable Welsh speaking neighbours. Take this report from 1861 concerning Aberedw published in Baner ac Amserau Cymru:

The other day I was in Aberedw, to see the ruins of the castle and Llywelyn’s cave. Aberedw is a place on the Radnorshire side (of the Wye). We went to sit for a while in a house that was known to one of our company. The niece of the man of the house happened be there on a visit.

“When are you going home?” someone asked.

“I’m not going home” replied the young girl, “ until after the feast.

“When is the feast?”

“Next Sunday”

“What feast is that” I asked.

“Aberedw Feast” said the girl.

“What sort of feast is that?”

But the young lady could not give an explanation, other than it was Aberedw feast, a little amazed that I should enquire about a subject of which everyone was aware.

"Gwlabsant” explained her uncle “that’s the feast.”

“Perhaps.” he said “you don’t know what gwlabsant is?”

I knew a little from history, but only from history. I had never before been in a district where the gwyl y mabsant, the feast of the patron saint was still alive.

Even the very mention of a saint’s feast has died out long ago in every other part of Wales. There’s barely one in a thousand who even knows the meaning of the word. The Sunday schools have extinguished virtually all of the old country customs except in Radnorshire. Here they have a refuge and a burial place.

Here's another description of the gwyl y mabsant in the parish of Betws Diserth, it appeared in the  Radnorshire Standard in 1898 but was recalling events much earlier in the century:

"I remember well attending the Betws Feast ....... Early on Sunday morning the guests would be in high spirits, and eager to exhibit their prowess in wrestling, jumping, ball playing, fighting etc.  The parson would arrive at the usual hour to hold a sacred service at the church, but suddenly his prayer would be interrupted by roars of imbecile laughter from the maudlin brains outside.  Some hundreds used to attend this gathering from all parts of Radnorshire and the neighbouring counties.  Here could be met the champion wrestler as well as the champion fighter of the county.  On the following Monday the hounds would be brought, the disciples of Diana would forsake Bacchus for a few hours.  Here for a whole week drunkenness and debauchery might be witnessed."

Even in Radnorshire respectability eventually managed to outlaw the merry-making associated with the parish wakes - although if Builth during show week is anything to go by, that may well have been a good thing!  There were those who regretted the passing of the old world.  In 1893 a correspondent to a Swansea paper recalled conversations with an old footballer who had played for Breconshire against Radnorshire at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  This, of course, was football as a mass-participation sport ranging over the countryside.  The writer remembers a couple of technical footballing terms from the time, namwn and hanner namwn, although I don't think you'll find these in the University's Geiriadur.

Regretting the passing of country sports and dancing the writer turns his ire on what he sees as the downside of chapel life:

"The Welshman had all the manliness preached out of him.  He became afraid of his landlord, afraid of the agent, afraid of the Set Fawr and the preacher, till his life became a burden to him, and there naturally developed in him low cunning and deceitfulness and so it has come to pass that Wales has acquired an unpleasant notoriety for untruthfulness and want of straightforwardness."

Of course now we are back with the prejudices of the Anglo-Saxon head measurers who were saying much the same thing:

"To paint the character of the sly, insincere, deceptive and cunning Welshman i.e. those unfavourable features which may be considered to distinguish him from his fellow subject of England, would take up too much space."

A Rock and a Hard Place

So you're an inquisitive child in Victorian Radnorshire and, thanks to the gradual introduction of elementary school education, you're able to read.  Read a book like the liberal scholar E A Freeman's - he would soon be appointed Regius Professor of History at Oxford University -  Old English History for Children.  What would the young reader make of Freeman's celebration of the Anglo-Saxon takeover of lowland Britain, and, yes, he's honest enough to call the dispossessed natives Welsh, not Celts or Romano-Brits:

"it has turned out much better in the end that our forefathers did thus kill or drive out nearly all the people whom they found in the land ...... (otherwise)..I cannot think that we should ever have been so great and free a people as we have been for many ages."

Meanwhile the Liberal MP for Herefordshire considers the Welsh a "miserable race of Celtic savages" and various scientists are running around the countryside measuring heads and noting down hair colour - a kind of proto-DNA research. Radnorians had a "nigrescence" score of 57.3% and scored particularly highly for "Celtic-eye", a dead give away for all those Anglo-Saxon obsessives who wished to identify the lesser breeds within the kingdom.

Now everyone in Wales had to put up with this nonsense but the poor Radnorians also got it in the neck from their fellow countrymen.  The animus shown towards Radnorshire in the Welsh Language Press of the period is at least understandable and can surely be traced back to the Blue Books.  These accused the Welsh of ignorance and immorality and blamed her language for the country's woes.  What better riposte to point to, by then, largely English speaking Radnorshire, a county with, for example, the highest illegitimacy rate in Britain.

Here are a few examples:

it is one of the darkest and most backward parts of the whole kingdom in terms of morality and learning. It is as if the human mind has disappeared from view as regards the population in general. Only the animal aspect of humanity can be seen living there. - Baner Cymru 1858 

Everywhere which has lost or denied the Welsh language ... those districts are full of immorality, cursing, blasphemy and prisons.  If you want proof look at Radnorshire. - Aberystwyth Observer 1876

There's no more pagan county in Wales than Radnorshire - Y Celt 1896

Fie Radnorshire! But there again, what can be expected from a people with no regard for their country's language and customs.  It's said that on the whole the natives of Radnorshire are remarkably ignorant and unable to speak either Welsh or English with any great alacrity - Tarian y Gweithiwr 1910

Even when someone came to the county's defence, such as Painscastle's Baptist minister, it serves only to illustrate the widespread prejudice against the county.

I note that an ill-founded impression of Radnorshire has arisen that its people are ungodly, ignorant and without morals - Seren Cymru 1885

My favourite quote of all comes from Iorwerth Peate, writing in 1933 he described the inhabitants of Radnorshire as "a deracine people, a people fallen between two stools a community of half-things."  I wonder what his colleague Ffransis Payne made of such sentiments?

Have such attitudes completely disappeared?  I doubt it.  

Squeezing the Orange

Back in the 1890s Alexander Richardson Binnie, the chief engineer at London County Council, had big plans for Radnorshire and Breconshire.  He intended to construct a series of reservoirs which would pipe water to the thirsty multitudes of the Great Wen.  In addition to drowning communities such as Llangammarch, Garth, Cregrina, Llanbister and Abbeycwmhir, the plan also envisaged the clearance of the population from the surrounding water catchment areas - these would be left to the sheep.

Some 18% of the acreage of Radnorshire would be commandeered by London and an incredible 58% of Breconshire - some 488 square miles in total.  With Birmingham and Liverpool also vying for Welsh water it was little wonder that the country was described by Swansea's Liberal MP Sir Henry Vivian as "a carcass which is to be divided between them according to their own needs and wishes."

Binnie's proposals, he had first noted the suitability of the valleys while building railways in the 1860s, was strongly supported by Sidney Webb and the Fabian backed Progressives who controlled London County Council.  By the end of the decade a less ambitious plan, supported by Welsh MPs from DLG to Mabon, would have seen the damming of just the Upper Wye and the Irfon.  This, too, fell by the wayside due to the opposition of the Tories, no doubt mindful of the interests of London's existing private water supply companies.

Although Binnie died in 1917 it's interesting to learn that the company that he founded designed Llyn Brianne in the 1970s ( see note below). Could his plans be dusted down again at some future date?  Surely no supporter of the one nation agenda could object to sacrificing our countryside to the greater good of the United Kingdom's most important city.  Indeed a British patriot should be flushed with pride at the very thought.

Note:  According to this page Brianne is not a local placename.  It is a near anagram of A R Binnie though.

Forgotten Radnorian

Live long enough and perhaps you'll achieve a whit of fame.  This is what happened to Evan Edwards of Torquay, described in the Edwardian press as the oldest Baptist minister in the world.  Born in Nantmel in February 1815, Edwards died just a few weeks before his 100th birthday in January 1914.  At the time of his death he had been a Baptist minister in Somerset and Devon for more than 80 years and was one of  the last witnesses to the preaching of such men as John Elias and Christmas Evans.

I'm more interested in his brief comment about the Nantmel of his youth and Dolau Baptist chapel:

"Cymraeg oedd iaith addoliad yn y capel ac yr aelwyd foreu a hwyr, ond ymledai y Saesneg i Faesyfed a mwy cyfarwydd oedd y plant yn y Saesneg"

"Welsh was the language of worship in the chapel and at home morn and night, but English had spread to Radnorshire and the children were more familiar with English."

Now this confirms that Ffransis Payne had the right idea when he wrote that Dolau Chapel turned to English around 1840.  It also shows how unreliable - in Radnorshire at least - it is to rely on the language of Anglican church services to estimate the date of language shift.  Nantmel parish church turned to English in 1755* and this very large parish (8 miles by 5) is consequently shown as thoroughly English on the published maps that illustrate language shift in Wales. Before the 1891 census such maps are mostly based on Anglican services.  I tend to think the dropping of Welsh services in the churches marked the disappearance of the last generation of monoglots rather than the demise of all local Welsh speakers as the maps assume.

Evan Edwards' family lived on the eastern side of the parish and it's a pity that no-one thought to ask him in greater detail about the linguistic ins-and-outs of his youth. The 19C Welsh language press was too busy trumpeting what a thoroughly pagan, immoral and stupid lot the Radnorians were to bother over-much about reporting on their recent history.  Even the Western Mail joined in the fun saying that the county's inhabitants lived in an "intellectual twilight, so inactive that a game of football would be a godsend to them."

* Nantmel is said to have had a monthly Welsh language service until 1807 but this has escaped the attention of the mappers.

Welsh Newspapers Online

Readers of the last couple of posts will guess that Radnorian has discovered the National Library's brilliant new resource, see here.

Nothing in the Papers

It was a summer evening in 1895 when a Cockney tramp, one Charles Rogers, stepped out of a Rhayader hostelry wondering where he would spend the night.  The town's police officers - James Niblett and Thomas Lloyd had recently joined the Radnorshire force from the Shropshire Constabulary, while Arthur Thomas had only been a policeman for a few weeks - were sure that Rogers should not be allowed to disturb the peace of the town.

Two uniformed figures were seen following Rogers as he wandered off in the direction of Builth and a few minutes later shouts and the sound of a beating could be heard.  The next morning Hugh Mason, a postman, discovered the tramp, lying in a pool of blood by the roadside.  Rogers was carried to the nearby workhouse where his condition was described as critical, his back covered in welts, much bruising and suspicions of severe internal injuries.

All very depressing but ........  a few days later the three officers were up before the magistrates.  Lloyd had witnesses who put him in Cwm Elan at the time of the attack but Niblett and Thomas were bailed to the next assizes in Presteigne.  Half a dozen townsfolk had no hesitation in standing up to give evidence against the pair, the jury returned guilty verdicts and Niblett and Thomas received nine months hard labour for the beating administered to the, by then, recovered tramp.

You won't find any mention of this event in Inspector Maddox's History of the Radnorshire Constabulary but then the popular inspector also failed to cover the forced resignation* of the Chief Constable Elystan Lloyd a couple of years later, surely the most momentous event in the history of the county force. Organisations like to keep their dirty washing firmly out of sight, even if, in the Inspector's case, it was some 60 years or more after the event!  How pleased such institutions and their servants must be with the Leveson proposals and how puzzled the commoners of the 1890s would have been with the pathetic clamour to muzzle the press.

* The Home Office refused to hand over the county's £800 policing grant  until the Chief Constable was replaced.

An Anti-Irish Riot in Radnorshire

We're aware of the sometimes violent antagonism between Irish and Welsh workers in 19C  South Wales and even Pennsylvania; but in early May 1863, during the construction of the Mid-Wales railway line, Radnorshire, too, had its very own anti-Irish riot.

The trouble seems to have started at Marteg Bridge with rumours of workers being laid off in favour of the Irish.  A demand was put to the contractors, Watson & Co, insisting that all Irishmen be gone within 24 hours.   This led to fighting between the two groups and the out-numbered Hibernians were soon fleeing in all directions.  Some reached safety in Llanidloes while others were caught and savagely beaten in St Harmon, where one man lost an eye.

The workers marched, some 200 or 300 strong, down the track into Rhayader where they proceeded to drive the Irish from their lodgings. Soon a crowd - the press claimed it was a thousand strong - had assembled in the town.  A Scotsman, mistaken for an Irishman, received a beating, as did a native of Somerset who had refused to answer the mob's queries as to his nationality.  A handful of locals did try to protect the Irish from the depredations of the crowd.  A Mrs Lloyd, who reporters waggishly dubbed the heroine of Cwmteuddwr, set about the rioters with a poker as they sought to eject a lodger from her dwelling. 

The three days of rioting - the local police had decided that intervention was impossible -  culminated with the mob driving the Irish before them into Newbridge where the village was searched.  The rioters finally ending their pursuit at Pontarithon on the Builth road. 

A local clergyman said that the riot had began inside a beer barrel, although the Irish practise of working at below the usual rate for the job seems to have been at the root of the unpleasantness.

Musical Interlude - songs of the defeated

Anyone who has read Bruce Chatwin's book will know about the Boers of Patagonia.  There's something about the ends of the earth which must appeal to defeated peoples, although the Confederates only made it as far as Brazil.

Time was when the Boers were seen as rather heroic by those who opposed British imperialism. The 1900 General Election in Radnorshire saw the Unionist's seeking to exploit the pro-Boer sympathies of  the Liberal candidate Frank Edwards.  It didn't do him any harm as he won back the seat, provoking a near riot in Llandrindod's Middleton Street with the Union Jack being burnt by Edwards' supporters after he was attacked by the Unionists.  Perhaps the town's Victorian Festival could stage a re-enactment?

The Unionist Radnorshire Standard put Edwards' victory down to pro-Boer sentiment and suggested that the local Radicals invite Paul Kruger over to celebrate.  Back in Parliament Frank Edwards campaigned  for an inquiry into the British concentration camps in which 26000 Boer women and children had died during the war.

Of course Welsh sympathy for the Boers disappeared during the apartheid era, although it's now 21 years since the Afrikaners voted to end that racist system and chose to become just another minority ethnic group in a state they had created.  I doubt if there's much sympathy for the on-going Boer travails amongst the London chatterati and their Welsh followers.  After all, these stubborn, rural dwelling Calvinists with their obscure language are just the sort of folk that stand in the way of the cultural hegemony the elite crave.

Spot the Difference - Wales and Tibet

I was reading a blog post about North Korea from the Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens.  All very interesting but what struck me was this snippet:

"That dead end, at present, leads only to Chinese domination, a fate which might well suit the rest of the world, but which North Koreans themselves greatly dread. As the Tibetans and the Uighurs know (in Tibet and Chinese Turkestan), Chinese domination means the end of national culture, probably the population of the national territory with Han Chinese until the Koreans become a minority in their own country. This is the form which modern Chinese imperialism takes, and I am always amazed that people who get hoity-toity about the wicked past of British imperialism are so uninterested in this development."

Now that comment is factually correct but isn't it also applicable to Wales?  Out of 27 Radnorshire communities, 16 have a majority which, according to the 2011 census, does not identify itself as Welsh.  This isn't because the locals don't see themselves as Welsh, far from it,  it is obvious that the vast majority chose a Welsh-only identity,  Like Tibet it is because of a government supported in-migration.  In Powys as a whole 49.8% of the population refused to acknowledge any Welsh identity, even though they live in Wales. The position isn't much better further west with 47% of the population of Ceredigion and 35% in Gwynedd also rejecting any Welsh identity, even though the census allowed multiple identity choices.

It seems to me that there are only three reactions to these figures.  Firstly you can deny that the Welsh have a separate identity; secondly you can say that it's progress and that the disappearance of small nations like the Welsh or the Tibetans is a jolly good thing; or lastly you can demand that Wales should control its own borders, which in reality means independence from both London and Brussels.

Of course there is a fourth choice, which no doubt most of us will take ¯\(°_°)/¯

A Radnorshire Casualty of the Falklands War

Hansard 14th June 1982:

Mr Eric Ogden, Liverpool,  West Darby:   Is the Minister aware that the Falkland Islanders who have been so tragically killed or injured are personally known to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) and myself and that we are proud to call them our friends? Mrs. Doreen Bonner was a fine and courageous lady. She was a third generation kelper, who was much respected and will be missed by everyone who knew her. Mrs. Susan Whitley was a lovely and lively lady of good Welsh parentage, newly married to an excellent young husband. She was a teacher who was dedicated to the children and other people of the islands.

Susan Whitley was killed by a missile, probably fired by HMS Avenger, during the final assault on Port Stanley.  Like her husband - the islands' vet who had spent the occupation cutting Argentinian communication wires with his gelding tool and was subsequently awarded the MBE - Susan seems to have taken a defiant stance towards the invasion, reportedly refusing to dive for cover during the shelling.

Older Radnorians will remember Susan by her maiden surname of Giles and that she was born in Llandrindod and educated at the town's Grammar school.  Hardly forgotten, either in Llandrindod or the Falklands where she was a home economics teacher at the islands' Senior School,  charitable trust was set up in her name and an annual arts and crafts exhibition for Falklands schoolchildren continues to be held in her memory.

Susan Whitely is buried on Sea Lion Island, the most southerly inhabited island in the Falklands.

Seen in Llandrindod

I hope Y Dysgwr Araf won't mind me pinching this snap, cheered me up on a cold day::

I was recently sent some pictures of  trade union activists - is that the right word? - outside the town's Colonial Office on Budget Day:

Accent on Knighton

There was an interesting piece on the BBC breakfast show this morning featuring the Knighton rugby club or Tref y clawdd to give the team its proper name.  The point of the segment was to highlight the Wales/England rivalry at a club whose pitch straddles the border.  Pleased to say that most of the players support Wales - I've noticed that a few grumpy Welsh bloggers have been unfairly pooh-poohing what they call 80-minute-patriots recently.  My own view is far better that than a no-minute-patriot.

One of the young players said that although they didn't have a Welsh accent his father had always told him that the border folk were the first line of defence for Wales.  In part that's very true - after all the Saxon advance was pretty much stopped at Knighton and the Normans didn't fair much better.  Indeed the tide of language-shift took nearly a thousand years to travel from Knighton to Rhayader.  One thing the lad did get wrong was the accent bit - there isn't one Welsh accent there are many, and an East Radnorshire accent is just as much an authentic Welsh accent as anything heard from the mouth of Robin McBryde or Neil Jenkins.

In the meantime here's a youtube channel with some fabulous pictures of 20C Knighton.

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.