Welsh Journals

BOOKS RECEIVED SEQUENCE ON VIOLENCE. Harry Roskolenko. Signal Press, New York,$1. Lyrics and a verse-play by one of the most interesting young American Trot- skyist poets. ABDICATION OF THE SuN. By Count Potocki of Montalk. The Right Review, 12, Winchester Street, S.W.X. Contains an exact translation from the Polish of Mickiewicz' great drama, Forefr'bers. BOOK REVIEWS WELSH BORDER Country. P. Thoresby Jones. Batsford, Ltd. 7s. 6d. OLD ENGLISH HOUSEHOLD LIFE. G. Jekyll and S. R. Jones. r Batsford, Ltd. 7s. 6d. In his preface to the first of these books the author admits to a rigorous con- densation of his material, thus spoiling the critic's easiest opening. Yet it is not that so much has been left out but that so much has been pleated in. An amazing quantity of information disappears between the folds of precise prose. Whole towns are crinkled into a sentence and villages are crumpled almost to a word. There is space in the beautiful photographs, particularly in those of the Black Mountains; but it does seem a pity that there is not just an inch for the scraps of story belonging to the places they illustrate. The text beneath a plate of Ruardean, with its sun-whitened steeple does not stop to ask, Who killed the bear ?' Perhaps all the way from Merioneth to Monmouth nobody cares except our coalman: or perhaps it is after all only a part of the design concealed by the full fashion. Why grumble ? Turner with his spiritual water- colour of Llantony Abbey as reproduced in the frontispiece, has written the whole book as each individual border-lover of us would have it written-in light. It was a complete thought in the publishers to lead us to the thorough text through this flashing vision, and to intersperse the practical and close steps of the author's ways with the broad scope of his photographs. One rusty dig and the critic will let her nib dry in the author's flesh. In a book which shows a love of his country why must Mr. Jones try to demolish the might of Glyndwr ? Because walls fell ? But to us Glyndwr was a prince whose legend was and is worth the thousand balanced towers its building cost: Fa/It aucb so mancber nieder as soldiers have sung, though of men not stones. The second book on English Country Life is more imaginative. The text is by Miss Gertrude Jekyll, enlarged since its first appearance in 1925, and illus- trated with photographs and drawings by Sidney R. Jones. The Welsh Border Country kept mostly out of doors, this generally stays under the roof. To those who live in the country it is a journal of the Families. I have only to lift up my eyes to see one of the objects illustrated-a white earthenware horse who with us stands on the dresser and is dusted every alternate Friday. This one might say, puts one in the book without any further trouble.