Welsh Journals

The Patriot as Politician The Centenary of the birth of Tom Ellis DAVID OWEN THE history 0 wales is notoriously chaotic, but through it threads the connecting strand of a struggle for the maintenance of nationhood. There was in 1284 an English conquest of Wales, and in 1485 a Welsh conquest of England, but these military feats are no more relevant than any other episode in the story. It is inevitable that, where two peoples are juxtaposed, the numerically stronger will tend to overlay and smother the weaker. The struggle for preservation has thus continued most earnestly beyond the crude clash of arms. By the middle of the last century the Welsh had reached the nadir of their fortunes, and were of little account politically. Maintained in sub- jection by Tory landlords, and inadequately represented in Parliament, there was no one to speak for them as a nation. But in 1859, the year of the great religious revival, there was born in Merioneth one who was destined to be the herald of a new era. Cynlas Farm in Llandderfel was the birthplace of Tom Ellis, by the brief light of whose flaming spirit Wales was to find her true path. When Tom Ellis was eight years old there occurred an incident which not only illustrates the conditions of servitude under which Welsh tenant farmers lived, but also enables us to understand how the character of the sensitive young farm lad was forged to its later strength of purpose. One day, while his father was away on a visit to the Vale of Clwyd, one of the two sheep dogs chased, but did not catch, a hare. This was observed by one of the English gamekeepers, and the follow- ing day farmer Ellis received an order from the landlord to surrender both his dogs for destruction. Later a notice to quit was issued. There followed months of worry and anxious negotiation. Ultimately the notice was reluctantly withdrawn, but the tenancy was preserved only at the cost of a substantially increased rental and the loss of two valuable dogs. The poignancy of the moment when the two beloved dogs were taken away to be shot, the haunted faces of his parents during