Welsh Journals

REVIEWS CELTIC NATIONALISM. By Owen Dudley Edwards, Gwynfor Evans and loan Rhys, and Hugh MacDiarmid. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. Pp. 358. 45s. 'I have my suspicions that the area of agreement between the contributors to this volume is not going to be large.' Thus Mr. Owen Dudley Edwards in his opening sentence. Similar misgivings on the part of the reader are amply confirmed long before he reaches the end of the book. He is, however, exhorted by Mr. Edwards to take 'such points of agreement as he can find and be grateful' (p. 5). This is cold comfort, not to say cool cheek, and Mr. Edwards can hardly be surprised if many other readers besides this reviewer will not overwhelm him with gratitude. For this is less a book than an ill-assorted compen- dium, consisting of a 200-page history of Irish nationalism before 1921 by Mr. Edwards, an extended political pamphlet of 100 pages on behalf of Plaid Cymru by Messrs. Evans and Rhys, and an idiosyncratic 50-page essay on that unique blend of Marxism, Scottish nationalism and literary fervour which bubbles up from Mr. Hugh MacDiarmid's stream of inner consciousness. The contributors worked to no common brief or method; they obviously never read each other's manuscripts; and there is no indication of any serious consultation between them. This is a pity, because there is an obvious and pressing need for comparative studies of the historical growth and present condition of nationalisms (including English varieties) within the British Isles. What adds to one's sense of a lost opportunity is that Edwards in his opening pages gives evidence enough of his own intelligent sensitivity to the problems of definition and comparison. Had he been given-or had he taken-the job of planning the volume in detail and editing it in its final shape it could have been very much more illuminating, critical and coherent than it is. As the book now stands the section on Ireland is the only one likely to be of real interest to the historian. The Welsh and Scottish chapters are much more alike. In the former there is only a hasty scamper through the historical background, and the latter gives virtually no history at all. In the absence of any specific directive the authors can hardly be blamed for that. As adroit and experienced pamphleteers, they understandably concentrate their fire on the neglect of Scotland and Wales by government from Whitehall. Not all the judgements made in the survey of Welsh history are likely to command universal assent. For instance, most historians are going to be very surprised to learn that by the sixth century 'Christianity had had to go underground everywhere in Western Europe outside the Celtic countries' (p. 225). They will also be pardonably sceptical whether the Glyn Dwr rebellion can, without travesty, be described as a 'people's