Welsh Journals

Welshness in Wales JAMES MORRIS FOR CENTURIES it has been the sad but noble duty of the Welsh to protect their national identity under alien rule. Sometimes they have de- fended their heritage by force of arms; generally by the resilience of their culture; always by the exertion of peculiar racial characteristics and the cherishing of their old patriotism. Today, as recent nationalist stirrings have shown, Welsh separatism is again an intrusive issue: so it is a good moment to see how history and emotion is shaping the relationship between the Welsh and their sometimes aloof neighbours, the English. There is a substantial slice of Wales, notably in the industrial regions of the south, where Welshism is scarcely predominant. Generations of English influence and immigration have tempered the peculiarities of those parts. Welsh is hardly spoken. Welsh nationalism is distinctly sus- pect, the mumbo-jumbo of the eisteddfodau and the bardic lays is comic rather than inspirational. A foreigner could spend a week in Car- diff or Penarth and think himself still in England. Elsewhere in Wales too, much has changed during the past half-century; there have been times when the triumph of English ways seemed imminently fmal: one in every 10 inhabitants has a television set. Many Englishmen, and not a few Welshmen, are accustomed to think of 'Cymru' merely as a district or region, a National Coal Board area, or an Assistance Board subdivision. Mist of Calvinism To thousands of other Welshmen, though, the fact that their country forms a distinct national entity is not only a matter of faith, it is a truism. Even to the Anglo-Welsh it sometimes comes as a shock to find how much of this western promontory is still vividly and resolutely Welsh, and how many Welshmen at home still strike the attitudes, honour the prejudices that tradition demands of them. It is queerly impressive how the basic character of Wales (often shifty and secretive, often charged with maudlin sentiment) survives the varied onslaughts of modernity and defies the challenge of Anglo-Americanism. Take the chapels, those puritanical centres of dissent which have so