Welsh Journals

for there the whole of nature as well has been turned upside down to achieve the result em- bodied in the latter name. Rhos-on-Sea is an offence not only against history and language, it is an offence against nature itself. It is rather like turning Fenny Compton, which, by the way, has also historic associations, into Bogland-sur- la-Mer. That would horrify our neighbours, but it is no more incongruous than Rhos-on-Sea. I could multiply these dreadful twistings of words indefinitely but, in addition to these weird transmutations, there is another class of names, where an old poetical name is done away with altogether, and an utterly inappropriate one is adopted in its place. An instance of this is the practical disappearance of the old time name 4 Friog,' and its replacement by the terrible word Fairbourne,' a word which could only have originated in Manchester or Birmingham, and in the mind of a barbarian ignorant of the meaning of the word bourne in Bournemouth and East- bourne, to which, it is obvious, he wanted to assimilate the name, and possibly the character- istics, of Friog. Then we have names like Bow Street and Pic- cadilly, applied to what, I believe, are respec- tively a harmless village, devoid of crime and police courts, and an equally harmless village where the bedizened denizen of Piccadilly would be a little bit at sea. We blame, and rightly blame, our unimagina- tive neighbours for sins like these but we suc- cumb and accept them. Therein we are as much at fault as our neighbours. They sin at any rate in darkness we sin against the light and as in the case of Holyhead,' we do so for the basest of all reasons, the cult of Mammon. Now, the continued existence of a nation is, to a large extent, wrapped up with the survival of words I don't mean with language only, but with place names and personal names, which each perpetuate a character. Can you imagine, for instance, what a revolution there would be in the outlook of the French people before they changed and acquiesced in the change of the name Paris into say Magdeburg,' or in the fiery patriotism of the Italian people, if Benito Mus- solini suddenly decreed that henceforth he should be spoken of as Umslopogas, and directed all his faithful Fascists to seek fresh cognomens for themselves in the inspiration of Zululand ? Yet, something of the same sort we are doing and have been doing for a long time past for our- selves, not altogether under pressure from across the border, but of our own free volition, defend- ing ourselves by an appeal to Mammon. We are denationalizing ourselves in so doing and if this tendency is not an actual cause of the alleged decay of the national spirit in Wales, it is at anv rate a symptom of it. This tendency, which we ourselves are follow- ing quite contentedly, is apparent in many ways. There are many old houses, for instance, in Wales with ancient Welsh names, beautiful and suggestive in themselves, which have either been translated into English or replaced by some other name. I am not going to quote instances, for I would not hold up otherwise perfectly inoffensive people to execration but what would we be in- clined to say if, for example, the owner of Wynn- stay were suddenly to take it into his head and re- name his home Chateau Neuf ? The name Wynnstay is not Sir Watkin's only it is a national heritage. Yet we ordinary people in Wales do much the same sort of thing. We build or we buy small houses, villas, bungalows, houses in a street row, abolish the old names, where they have had them, and take delight in heading our notepaper with titles like Claremont, Chatsworth, and other ludicrous imbecilities of the same sort. I admit I don't know for certain the derivation of either Claremont or Chats- worth,' but making a very wild and probably in- accurate guess at it, I would sooner live in Mynydd Eglur or even Gwerth y Cath than in Claremont or Chatsworth,' unless, by some unlikely chance, a fairy godmother would endow me with the originals in their proper settings. Take again our towns. Here in Dolgelley I happen to live near an olden town, which prides itself on being distinctly Welsh. It isn't so in origin, if you go back to origins, but that is by the way. But look what is done here. There are loop-holes which are called streets, down which it is possible, with care, to dart in such a way as to avoid colliding with walls on each side of you. They aren't streets, but that again is by the way. How are they named? They are dignified with names like Lombard Street, English Terrace, Bridge Street, Smithfield Road, and so on, and if you come across a triangular opening it is called Finsbury Square, Queen's Square, Eldon Square. In naming them so justifiable occasion is given to others to laugh. So, too, our worthy local Coun- cil advertises, by means of a notice board on the town refuse-heap, the distances to unrecognisable places like the Glen of Arran and the Pass of Oerddrws, to which is added the worst perpetra- ttion of all, the Pass of Talyllyn. So, too, they alter the gender of Rhaiadr, because Du looks easier to pronounce than Ddu. Now that is only one instance the same sort of inanity is committed everywhere, and it all be- tokens an entire lack of humour, an inappreciation of the fitness of things, a painful want of imagina- tion. It is supposed to attract it is a silly sub- servience which rightly ends in jeering. I have mentioned horrors like Fairbourne, which, except by the act of submission, we are not