Welsh Journals

VOLUME XVII WELSH OUTLOOK Where there is no vision the people perish NOTES OF THE MONTH WE see that one of the Cymmrodorion Section meetings held at Llanelly dur- ing the week of the National Eistedd- fod, was devoted to consideration of the com- pilation of competent Welsh County Histories, of the type and character of the English Victoria County Histories. The occasion of the discus- sion, we understand, was the recent decision of the London Carmarthenshire Society to make itself responsible for the production of a history of that county, and so remove a blot from its fair escutcheon. There are, as our readers are well aware, some very remarkable Welsh county histories already in existence, most of them monuments to the devotion, diligence, and scholarship of private individuals in more leisured days. Theophilus Jones's Breconshire, of course, stands pre-eminent among them, but even the efforts of persons like Henry Rowlands, John Williams, William Coxe, Richard Fenton, Samuel Rush Meyrick, and, still earlier, of George Owen of Henllys, must make our modern historians, possessed of a little local patriotism, blush with shame at their own in- activity and barrenness. It is little wonder, therefore, that, with the magnificent English models before them, they should become kindled with an enthusiasm to go and do like- wise. WE should be the last to attempt to cool their ardour, but, without doing this, we feel it not altogether out of place to draw attention in passing to the economics of the situation. In a recent essay, Mr. R. T. Jenkins declared that the time had not yet come NUMBER X THE OCTOBER 1930 for the production of an adequate and com- petent short history of Wales of the familiar type known to students in the Home University Library. The reason he gave for his declaration left to our mind no room for argument. The preliminary work of investigation and research, to his mind, is grotesquely incomplete, and it will take years of solid dry work of the char- acter at present carried out by men like Dr. Thomas Rees, Dr. T. Richards, Dr. E. A. Lewis, and others, before the time is ripe for it. We cannot help feeling that this argument ap- plies to the production of the sumptuous County Histories envisaged by the enthusiasts. It is whispered that rich Carmarthenshire men will have to find some three or four thousand pounds for their own particular dream, and they can afford the money and will undoubtedly produce it. This means a sum not far short of two hundred pounds a year in perpetuity, and the application of such a sum to general research work by each of three or four counties for a period, say, of ten years, would make a vast difference to the state of Welsh historical learn- ing and incidentally make the production of County Histories a far simpler matter. It is in no critical mood that we would suggest that for a time our County Societies might well concen- trate on general historical research, of course with an eye to its local interest and application. In the first vears of its existence before the war, the old London Glamorganshire Society produced two volumes of most valuable trans- actions, and showed to our mind how this work can and ought to be done.