Welsh Journals

organization was dominated by the distinctiveness provided by religion and the Welsh language, institutions which might both strengthen the ties of community and act as springboards for the expected upward mobility of the second generation. But the markers of Welsh identity, imported from the old country, were to operate in very different ways in the new society. Gradually, the focus of cultural identity shifted to occasional and totemic Welsh Days. The eisteddfod, literary and Welsh in language, gave way to the much more inclusive (to European ears at least) phenomenon of choral music. Welshness was being redefined as a fragment of an American identity, the most potent signifier of which was to be found not in the language of ethnicity, but in the discourse of race. The Welsh may not have been Anglo-Saxon, but they were white and they were Protestant. The second part widens the scope from the microcosm of Scranton to the United States as a whole. Again, this is done by focusing on key moments. The Eisteddfod at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, of which its disillusioned organizer, William Ap Madoc, was later caustically to observe that the 'dreamers had dreamed a dream too soon', and the travails of the American Gorsedd between 1913 and 1919 both demonstrate how tenuous the links had become by the turn of the century between the Welsh on the two continents. The final, and in many ways the most reflective and challenging, section develops this notion of Welsh-American cultural autonomy. For one thing, the Welsh elite began to lose its ideological grip over the community. Hyde Park, with its three pulpits and thirty taverns, symbolized a dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' Wales that could no longer be concealed. In these circumstances, the idea of Wales acquired ever greater salience. But it was an imagined Wales, mapped out around the twin divinities of David Lloyd George and William Abraham (Mabon) on the one hand, and, on the other, the demonized author of Capel Seion, Caradoc Evans. But as the old Wales itself became the destination of urban, industrial immigrants, the 'real Wales' became an increasingly contested place, and the 'real Welsh' a matter not of lineage but of attitude. One of the many achievements of the book is that the author has reconstructed this previously hidden history largely from a subtle reading of newspaper articles and letters. By so doing, he has enlarged the possibilities of these texts as historical sources. But my one criticism springs from his reluctance to project the images that he so skilfully teases out of the Welsh American press back in the other direction. Greater attention to the ways in which the idea of America was sold in Wales would have provided us with valuable insights into the migrants' own expectations of America. 'Scranton' was as much an imaginative construction in Wales, as 'Wales' was in Scranton. Mirrors were sited on both sides of the Atlantic, and, to extend Dr. Jones's own memorable metaphor, they were both cracked. But this is a minor comment on an otherwise splendidly produced book. Bill Jones set out on his hazardous journey from one idea of Wales to another in search not only of the Welsh Americans but also of his own Uncle Sammy. All those who have an interest in the history of Welsh, or who have been touched in any way by the wrenching experiences of migration, should be happy that he has found both. Constance Wall Holt's bibliography of studies of Welsh women in Wales and North