Welsh Journals

It is now generally held that the languages now called Keltic have Aryan and non-Aryan elements. Among the latter Hamitic is the most important. But modem philological investigation has, I think, demon- strated the fact that Hamitic and Semitic are closely allied. Assuming this, it follows that for the thorough-going study of Keltic a knowledge of Semitic is required. To be able to track the Aryan constitu- ents of Keltic an acquaintance with some of the principal Aryan or Indo-European languages (Sanscrit, Latin, etc.), will become indispensable. It will be seen that the would-be master of Welsh has a great task before him. In my opinion Welsh scholars have occupied themselves too much in proportion with texts and too little with Philology, except in a very narrow sense. Welsh Folk-Lore and Folk-Song.- The Bulletin is wholly silent about the above lines of work. Does the Keltic Board intend to ignore them? It is beyond question that Folk-Lore has been overlooked in Wales more than in any other part of the British Isles. Some years before his death the late Sir John Rhys, in my opinion the greatest Welshman of modem times, and charming and kind as well as great, expressed to me his profound regret that my countrymen did so little to preserve the flotsam and jetsam of Welsh Folk-Lore, which is being annually more and more lost. This seems to me of more immediate importance than the editing and translating of texts, for these texts will remain for other workers, but the stray customs, sayings, and songs are being lost from year to year- irrevocably lost in many cases. We have no Welsh Folk-Lore Society, though a Welsh Folk-Sons Society does exist. thanks to the initiation of Professor Lloyd Williams, Sir Harry Reichel, Dr. Mary Davies, Mrs. Herbert Lewis, and others. But even if there were a Welsh Folk-Lore Society, its work, and that of the Welsh Folk-Song Society, ought to be directed and the results co-ordinated by a body of highly educated men. Members of the Keltic Board ought, it seems to me, to find out such men or women THE TRAINING OF THE ADOLESCENT. By Stanley H. Watkfns, M.A. IT is one of the unfailing weaknesses of all educa- tional measures that, whilst they legislate for the future much more than for the present, the hostages they give to fortune often prove most uncomplimentary and inconsiderate guests. For men change as do their clothes, and the training they give their young assumes the chameleon hues of each succeeding generation. Thus the compulsory education of 1870, with its generous regard for the three R's and its horror of ignorance, is now more than doubted, it is damned. New gods have arisen scorning the old ways, and men dance to stranger measures. It is some such change which underlies the circular issued by the Board of Education, intimating that the local educa- tion authorities have now to decide before June 30th from among themselves or outside their number. Sir A. T. Davies has initiated a movement, the object of which is to induce teachers and scholars in the schools of Wales (including Monmouthshire, my native county) to collect local lore of every kind. I do not know what the result has been, but let it be ever so satisfactory there is still a place for some superior body to control the methods and tabulate, as well as esti- mate, the material brought together. Personally I have little faith, as I have from the outset told him, in the success of his most laudable scheme, for I have found school teachers as indifferent to the subject as University professors. The year I was President of the Bangor Varsity Cymric Society, and on other occa- sions, I did all I could to induce our Bangor students to bring back from their many homes the folk customs, sayings, and songs of Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and other festivals, but without success. The idea of collecting such valuable material does not seem to have entered the Welsh mind. and nothing is done by our leaders to mend matters. Here is a field in which the Keltic Board may render invaluable aid. But are there any members en that Board who care a rush for anything except the conventional Welsh subjects? If that is so, let persons be added with wider sym- pathies and a readiness to help along lines so far avoided by our academic institutions. I may add that I have for manv years been a collector of English and esrjecially Welsh folk-lore, and I have given parti- cular attention to that in two or three of the Welsh counties. There have been other workers in the same field, no doubt. It should surely be one of the aims of the Keltic Board to bring such material together. and to assess its value. Besides, there is a science of Comparative Folk-Lore. Many of the tales in the Mcfiinogia mav be matched by tales in the Indian Jat?kar and with folk tales of other people, Oriental and Occidental. Here, acain. there awaits the am- bitious student of things Welsh a vast field, and in exploring it he has a right to ask the guidance and material assistance of the Keltic Board and of other educational bodies in the Principality. whether they will take over control of the organisation of juvenile employment or transfer the work to the Ministry of Labour. In accordance with our national character, no well thought out scheme for the education of the adolescent has ever been prepared. For many years he was regarded-and often still is-as the individual prey of the employer, eager for cheap labour. Then, as labour became more and more organised, a Labour Exchange Act was passed, in 1909, to aid in the transfer of labour from job to job and from district to district. But this could not, nor was it meant to, pre- vent the blind alley occupations, the sweating of the boy and girl of 14-18 years of age, the economic waste of their short-lived, intermittent, odd jobs, the