Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

respect. We must become a nation of self- respecting individuals before we can become a respected nation. Hitherto we have neither had self-respect nor have we had sufficient self-abasement to complete the annexa- tion of our country by thorough self-Anglicisation, fulminating as we do from the pulpit on the dese- cration of Y Saboth by Y Saeson, but being as tactful as possible when Y Saeson comes into our shops on Monday, strongly impressing on our children with perverted pride that our language is too difficult for an Englishman to learn while omit- ting to teach that same language to those same children, compiling menus at London dinners where even the address of the hotel is twisted into Welsh while ensuring that all speeches shall be in English. What is to be made of this jumble? What is the reaction of the average Englishman to this incoherence? The Englishman, like the sensible fellow he is, though at first bewildered, tries his best to understand, fails and finishes by heartily disliking the unpalatable mixture in both individual and nation. It is not fair to attack the English for misjudging us about this. Chesterton has somewhere said that popular pre- judices are nearly always right for the wrong reasons and the popular English prejudice about us is that we are, inter alia, humbugs and prevari- cators. Truth to tell, the Welshman is extremely sincere, painfully so at times, and as for being a prevaricator, a little less regard for truth would make him a happier and more tranquil man- There is something wrong with us all the same- four things in particular and all of them to be found in the history of various other conquered races, present and past, that have failed to become absorbed into the ranks of their conquerors. 1. First, the Welshman may fairly be accused by his enemies of appearing to be servile. Not that there is any trace of that low, cunning, ser- vility that cloaks a patient waiting for future bene- fits, but a timidity before the self-confident Englishman. The Englishman never doubts him- self, into the quagmires of self-analysis he very wisely never puts his foot, the possibility of another point of view never disturbs him if he looks at a fact from another angle they are the same unsmiling eyes that look. The foreigner condemns this attitude as one of arrogance but quite unfairly, for it is the natural consequence of the amazing history of England. In the For- syte Saga." that illuminating novel, we see at close quarters the working of that possessory instinct which has made the Englishman great, but which can only attain its end by quiet. self- confident aggression. The Welshman, on the other hand, is by nature neither quiet, self-confident, nor aggressive; in the face of English calm he becomes even less quiet, self-confident and aggres- sive. Sub-consciously forced into a feeling of contrast, he is by turns demonstrative and timid, inspiring in the Anglo-Celtic (not Anglo-saxon) observer mixed feelings of amazement and con- tempt. Unfortunately everybody has his feelings and the disconcerted Welshman has his feelings, too. If only, like the Irishman, he would blow them off in the face of the English, he could not be more unpopular and he certainly would be more respected, instead of which he blows them off behind their backs,-a process certainly not conducive to self-respect. There are some Welshmen who are so impressed with the magnificent, steam-roller progress of the English resident or tourist in Wales, that they hasten to copy him. Fired with the grotesque ambition to wear habits of thought that were evolved for quite different mentalities, they only succeed in appearing like the unfortunate tailor in The Private Secretary." Bounder is the English word for that type. To an Englishman it would sound incredible, but it is true that there are Welshmen born and bred, who affect to despite their own people as though they were some strange, unnatural breed, while they themselves give a ludicrous turn to the whole personal tragedy by uttering their affectations in English with a Welsh accent. It is not new in history, but it is lamentable that our own race should publish to the world a new edition. Worse than this, these timid folk try also to put on that peculiar trait of the English which is so irritating to the outsider, snobbery. To an Englishman there is nothing irritating about snobbery and naturally so. It exudes from the soil of England, it is inhaled by the infant in its cradle, England would not be England without universal snobbery. It is not for us to condemn it or despise it, for it is the inevitable accompaniment of that great gift of England to the world, orderliness. Where each knows his place, where the words gentility," gentleman," gentry and gent each has a special signification for an Englishman, though they may possibly be meaningless to everyone else, where friendliness may be mistaken for con- descension or lack of breeding, a Welshman may feel stifled, but he has no right to laugh. On the other hand, an Englishman has every right to laugh at a Welshman attempting to put on an air of snobbery as though to the manner born, while he only succeeds in giving off poison gas. A Welshman, who is timid enough to play the snob, will always give the game away, for, while pre- tending to be an English gentleman," he will inevitably do something that no English gentle- man would do. For the descendants of the race that gave to England the ideal of King Arthur and his knights this mannequin parade of pinchbeck English gentry is a little degrading. 2. Together with this timidity of manner goes lack of pride in our language. Over and over again the preservation of the language has been acclaimed as one of the miracles of the world's history and so indeed it is. The survival of Welsh under the overwhelming shadow of England is truly an epic, fitted to rank with the survival of an independent Switzerland. Nor has