Welsh Journals

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Wales and America By JOHN COWPER POWYS WHY did I come to live in Wales ? Why did I thus isolate myself, so far from my brothers and sisters ? Not, I think, from my mania for solitude and independence, but as the fulfilment of an early and youthful longing-" hiraeth is the Welsh word for this obscure stirring of some secret destiny-to return to the land of my remote ancestors. Long ago must it have been when these same ancestors moved into Ludlow from over the border; but since Powys was the historic name for that turbulent portion of mid-Wales that adjoins the Norman- ized "Marches," there seems no reason why I should not accept the family tradition, supported by a certain amount of heraldic evidence, that claims for us a descent from the shifty chiefs of that troubled region. Of course I realize that not everyone called England comes from England, nor everyone called France comes from France; but there does seem a probability-when you find Powyses established in early times within a few miles of Powys — that such a tradition as ours is not unfounded. But be that as it may, and allowing for all the mixture of blood that exists in these isles, there is no doubt that temperamentally, in many of my most marked characteristics, I have a strong, psychological affinity with the Welsh people. I seem able to enter into their feelings, which are anything but on the surface, with an instinctive understanding such as is hard to consider purely accidental and I find myself, profoundly indulgent to their weaknesses. And, if I'm not greatly mistaken, this understanding and this indulgence are mutual. How far the small town of Corwen, where I have been led to settle, can be regarded as belonging to the isolated northerly fragment of Powys, called Powys Fadog I am not sure, but I know it is now in Merioneth and on the edge of Denbigh while to reach the- main portion of Powys-which is now the county of Montgomery-you would have as the crow flies, to cross the bleak uplands of the Berwyn Mountains. It was to the kind offices of my friend James Hanley, the well-known writer, that I owe my introduction to Corwen; but once here I feel as if it would need quite a drastic act of God to tear me away. Certainly