Welsh Journals

From the Horse's Mouth II by PHOEBE SIMONS The Gower People. The NATIONALITY OF THE GOWER people is controversial. More especially as nowadays as a race they no longer exist. In the eighties and nineties they were still an enclave, a race apart, of exceptionally fine development, broad shouldered, heavily built, both men and women, tall and extremely handsome, like the Flemish portraits by the old Dutch masters, with a beautiful carriage-this possibly due to the fact they carried most burdens on their heads-and very strong. When the road at the top of Horton hill was widened for motor traffic, the stones in the old wall at the base were so huge they couldn't move them and had to break them and move them piece-meal, and recently a workman told me that in demolishing a cottage, high up in the chimney were stones too big to move without breaking them first. They were intensely individual, dour, with great personal pride and dignity, and the most intense contempt and real hatred of the Welsh. Very frugal and hard working, quite unlike any other country district I've known. At home and in the fields. Life was hard, but their intense personal pride helped them. An old woman said to me when Old Age pensions were intro- duced, "They tells me I can have a pinchin. Their old pinchins indeed. I has me pride, when I've a spent what I've a earned, 'tis the House for me. Pinchins indeed The cottagers had always their pig, and this they salted every autumn. Salt was so dear it cost 11/- to salt half a pig and they sold the other half to buy the salt. Killing your pig was arranged so that the meats not used for salting down were shared by so many, who, each in their turn, killed their pig and returned the gift. Each cottager had one or two ewes running with a farmer's flock the farmer had a lamb as rental the owner the fleeces. These were carded and spun at home, dyed in the pots by the fire, logwood, there's black for you, red and yaller They also bought fleece and spun it and then sent the yarn to the woollen mills to be woven into flannel. This the women all wore for dresses and aprons and used for the men's shirts. Everything made at home, under-clothing of unbleached calico at 2d. a yard for dirty work women wore a large apron of hessian called a towser. All the married women wore a white cotton cap com- pletely covering the hair, tied with strings under the chin. It had a frill of the cotton material all around that was goffered