LLANDDWYN 55 



themselves, and a younger generation would arise 

 proud to imitate the speech of the dominant race, 

 and ready to forget the tongue of their own people. 

 And now, by the "peaceful penetration" of Wales 

 by the English, the language of the Cymry, too, 

 is passing. In large portions of the country the 

 younger generation are quite unable to speak Welsh, 

 and many of those who can, will, in passing an 

 Englishman, ostentatiously display their knowledge 

 of his tongue, being in a measure ashamed of their 

 own. If I allow myself such criticism, it is because 

 I would have a Welshman Welsh to the bone. We 

 have pettinesses enough of which to divest ourselves, 

 but of all pettinesses the most miserable is that which 

 prompts a man to foul his own nest. 



When I come upon one of that small, aboriginal, 

 dark race, he exerts upon me a fascination which I 

 am conscious is almost ludicrous in its effects. The 

 mystery of eld hangs over him. I watch this relic 

 of a remote and unrecorded past as I might watch 

 some late survivor of an ancient and all but extinct 

 species. But when he speaks in his thin, piping, 

 sing-song voice a mongrel jargon that is neither good 

 Cymric nor plain Saxon, I pity him. I feel that he 

 has overstayed his time and missed his way. He 

 should have crept in long ago, ere Celt or Saxon 

 came, to sleep with his own people, whose portion 

 these many thousand years has been silence and 

 oblivion. 



If one should tarry long at Llanddwyn, the 

 passive spirit of the spot would drug the mind, lulling 

 all human hopes and fears into settled acquiescence. 

 With so much gone one would grow content to hear 



