Welsh Journals

To leave the personally conducted tour which is so irritating-this book is not only a reference for the expert but a treat for the happy ignorant. The prose is rougish and leaps into poetry and quotation. The past is its power. It is a dictionary of candle and shovel, kettle, chimney and hovel it is the majority of things gone, a corner cupboard history, a deliberate envocation., a summary of man's odd needs. To gather the full sense and smell of smoky Time and the careless grasp of the language which in spite of holes, lets fall nothing of beauty or interest, read the chapter on Fireside and Candlelight. There's gusto I and the squint of custom through the eye of knowledge-in short it gives us what The Welsh Border Country witholds-the wink and the bye-way. It is really good and strong. One could say it anywhere at the top of one's voice and in any company. As for the illustrations, there are pictures of bellows and windmills, water- wheels and peat fires which have been burning for a hundred years. Also a peculiar assortment of contraptions from clockwork roasting jacks to a fiendish baby-runner which leads one to suppose that we have become less brutal to joints and infants. The obvious conclusions is that Discovery is often tortuous where Perfection is simple. But there are dinner bundles and smocks which have attained the bland whirls of genius, while some of the implements might have been bom in the hand, and some created by that same thought which gave Man hunger and thirst and earth for home. A few things are not mentioned which is strange as they are common and lively and Miss Jekyll seems to revel in both qualities. Among these are the kiddle for baking bread, the methods of de-lousing heads and bedding, witch- craft, and the effect on household life of the dispersal of the monasteries. Monks were sly housekeepers. I cannot believe that they did not leave their peculiarly clever traces on the faces of the undergods. MARGIAD EVANS. WALKING THROUGH MERIONETH. Hope Hewett. Welsh Outlook Press, 5s. Many modern Borrows claim to have explored parts of this Wales of ours but many of them have an irresistible affection for the comfortable upholstery of their car or railway carriage. But Miss Hope Hewett has in the correct Borrow tradition rambled in the true sense of the word through the highways and byways of Merioneth using, as she says, Shank's pony." The result is that she has seen much which a more speed and comfort loving traveller would have missed. She relates history but often colours it with local legend to give it a touch of romance and an absorbing interest. And she does not forget to introduce us to her lovable doggie friend Jack who enlivens her journey. The book, which is beautifully illustrated, runs to some two hundred pages and has a fore- word by Sir H. Haydn Jones, M.P. Miss Hewett asks us to follow in her footsteps and I must say that Walking through Merioneth is an incentive to make even the most hardened fireside lover visit the wilds of that lovely and mystic country. CLEDWYN Bynner.