CM 



WELSH LAXOUAOE A5D LITERATURE. 



WELSH LANGUAGE AKD LITERATURE. 



WM bublUhed in 186?, may t-e recommended u th moat satisfactory. 

 Dictionaries are lv*t numerous. Dr. John Uavies, the author of the 

 irunm.ir, published in ! 



1 Autiqiuv I.inguie Brit., I'uplcx,' \\\i. 



in rvputo for a century anil a half, till auptiftcdrd liy tli.it <jf Dr. Owen 

 '1 hi* work, Mieiriadur CyniMet* a Faenoneg, a Welsh and 

 English 1'irtionary.' with a pram mar prefixed, pub- closely- 



'':i.us in 1, n !<.!!>, is still t! 



:iiul Is a work of 



gremt Ubunr and merit, but It Is open to serious objections. The mini 

 word* it coiitaius ls nearly I 1 .( many (if these a- 



U-i regular i : -<>rve to swell the 



ik, and many of tin 'in an- only WOfdt wlilch ought t<i exist in Welsh, 

 ':ng to the lexicographer 8 opinion, rather than words which 

 actually exist in it A third edition is now (1301) in course of publi- 

 cation, under the editorship of I!. .1. I'ryse, who promises that the 

 work shall contain " si- 



editions. As Ow> > Welsh and English only, not English 



and Welsh, the want of ';. implicil liy tli 



lent English-Welsh dictionary of the Her. John Walters, of which a 

 now and improved edition wag published about 1825. The ' English 

 ,111 1 V- ' two thick volumes 



till superior to that of V; 



..! a compendious grammar and dictionary by Mr. Spnrrell of 

 ! then, both of which will be found useful. Some inform 

 the Wcl-h dialect* is given in the 'Essay on the Ancient and I 

 State of the Welsh Language,' by Mr. John Hughes, published about 

 There are differences in pronunciation and idiom sufli i-u'ly 

 marked to render it difficult for persons from remote districts to con- 

 Terse with each othrr : and North Wales is more pure and correct in 

 nguage than South Wales. 



The system of spelling in Welsh corresponds with and represents 

 the pronunciation, and in that respect it has a marked superiority not 

 only over iU kindred Celtic languages, the Irish and Gaelic, but, as we 

 daily feel to our cost, over the Kn_'li-h. There are at the same time 

 some peculiarities in Welsh spelling, the motive of which is not very 

 plain, and the effect of which is often ludicrous. The sound which is 

 generally represented by the letter r is in \SYKh represented by /. 

 even in proper names, so that pronouncing Calvin and Viuil n..( 

 unlike ourselves, a Welshman writes " C'alfin " and " Kirgil." Tin- 

 sound represented in the English alphabet by/is represented in Welsh 

 by / ; and thus Fox and Franklin must be written Ffox and Ffrauklin, 

 as, if spelt in the ordinary manner, a Welsh reader might pronounce 

 them Vox and Vranklin. Sorne efforts have been made by Owen 

 Pughe and others to introduce the missing t Into the Welsh alphabet ; 

 and it is usual for English writers to follow his system in spelling 

 \Vel-h names to write Ijerthyr-Tydvil, for instance, instead of 

 Mertliyr-Tydfil. Cut the advantage of uniformity is so great, that 

 though the present system scarcely dates further back than the 16th 

 century, and though there arc several eccentricities like that with the r, 

 resistance to innovation has hitherto triumphed. 



It has been said, that in English the pi excellent and the 



dictionary is execrable. The grammar <if English is, in fact, distin- 

 guished by its great comparative freedom fr>m needless complexities, 

 while its lUt of words comprises thousands that a careful writer will 

 carefully avoid. In Welsh, almost the converse is the case. For use- 

 less intricacy its grammar has a bad pre-eminence. It is pervaded 

 from first to last by a certain law of " permutations," the nature of 

 which will best be understood by an instance. The word for " i 

 in \\YIth ii I'fl ; the word for " Iny " is/v .- but to say l'i/ tail for " Iny 

 father" would be an unpardonable solecism. After /y, every word 

 beginning with a / must change the t to nh, and the correct pi 

 therefore /</ nliatt. The Word for "thy" is (/.//: but after (his a 

 different change is require, d : " thy father " is tly il'itl. The word in 

 means " his " or " her," but according to the sense requires 

 different mutation to follow : " Ills father " is expressed by ti </', and 

 " her father " by ri lhad. Some of the letters, as t, have three Of these 

 mutations to undergo, some only two, Some only one, and emu- 

 at all. There is a multitude of intricate rules to determine in what 

 circumstances the different mutations are to be used, and at the game 

 tini" the existence "f letter* which undergo no mutations whatever, and 

 the words lieginning with Which are jiiht as elegant and forcible with- 

 out them. pro-.-- iiselessness of the whole. 



imilar system, but not 



The principle has I u generally Con- 



I to be peculiar to that family of languages id Euro,,. 



ie. iii his extensive researches among the 

 of mutation In Some of 



" : 'i ' I' 1 by an intricate 



systm of ' 

 pensation obtained in 

 nothing of the kind in nu.- 



debate. In some compound ri.ii to 



euphony had given ri>e t.) it. The op]>o.di.' t Knglish, 



in "imiKwsible" : both ';'!! from the Latin, and the "In" 



privative, on it is called, is altered to " iin " in this an.; 

 before the letter p, in avoid unpleasantness of sound. Thif AVclsh havn 

 also borrowed the word j. <;'./ from the Latin, and for "inig 



they sair anmhutM. The Welsh particle answering to our " vin 

 the collision of n and /> was also to be avoided ; but instead of altering 

 the hut letter of the nn, they altered the first ' 



lately been pointed out by Xeuss and his school, that m other cases 

 where /> is altered to mk, it was in the old forms of the langtta- 

 cede<l by an which no longer exists. Hence it m 

 the whole system of mutations W;L originally founded OTI the euphonic 

 principle. While the effect remains, however, the reason for it has 

 disappeared in the actual state of tin- language. The rule* for muta- 

 tions are at the present day mere ;\: 



is as unknown to those who | -lie leason 



"Wright" with w and gh is unknown to the schoolboy . 

 taught to spell. After all these sacrifices to harmony, tin- Wi 

 never been considered harmonious by those of whom it was not the 

 mother-tongue, though a writer in the 'Cumbrian Register' for 

 affirms that " strangers to both languages frequently mistake the* \\VMi 

 for Italian." 



The principal bcinty of Welsh as a Ian -t= in the facility 



which it possesses of forming derivatives and compounds, and the com- 

 pleteness with which that power has be < ' making full and 

 ingenious use of every root, and thus avoiding that useless borrowing 

 Of terms from othrr languages which I i ried to such an 



extent in Engli-h. .Many foreign Words hate indei 

 introduced into Welsh, but they have been so 

 native origin as often not to be easily detected. The !, 

 seems of a piece. But there is this advantage in a language in 

 the grammar is superior to the dictionary : that by a skilful ch 

 words, by limiting himself, like Metastasio, to a certain select vocabu- 

 lary, an author may exclude from his writings all but the bea i 

 the language; while in the opposite case, the defects as in \ 

 the rules for mutation are necessarily involved in every senten 

 intrude at every turn.. These rules alone make it much more difficult 

 for an Englishman to learn to speak Welsh than for a Welshman to 

 learn to spea\ English. 



The general character of the Welsh language in composition 

 of a ccrtaiu Btatcliness, and even grandiloquence', the reverse of what 

 would probably be expected by strangers who know for how long it has 



been the language of the peasantry alone and disc nten anced by the 



higher classes. In its effect, it reminds a reader more of the Spanish 

 than the German. It has been sometimes praised for its conciseness, 

 but in its present state it may be much more justly characterised a 

 diffuse. The words in the first paragraph of the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' 

 " I looked and saw him open the book and read therein, and as he 

 read he wept and trembled," are thus rendered in the Welsh Iran 

 by Thomas Jones, published at Shrewsbury in ]<i!i!>, " Edryd 

 gwelais ef yn egor y Llyfr ac yn darllain \nddo : a phan ddari; 

 ef wylodd a chrynnodd." In this there are exactly as many words 

 as in the original, namely, nineteen ; but in the translation put 

 at Caermarthen in 1771, and reprinted in 1854, the passage 

 " Mi a cdrychais ac a'i gwelais ef yn agor y llyfr ac yn darlleu ynddo, 

 ac fel yr oedd efe yn darllen fe wylodd ae a grynodd." and the 

 number of words is twenty-eight. The earn 

 prevail between the language of the two t 



The Welsh are strongly attached to their language. The Irish, So 

 vehemently opposed to the Saxon in religion and politics, are in the 

 matter of language far from obstinate. Daniel O'Counell, the patriotic 

 orator, and Moore, the patriotic poet, were ignorant and can 1 

 the Celtic tongue. It is said that the peasantry are so anxioin to 

 secure to their children that mastery of English of which II: 

 the want themselves, that they have a forfeit for speaking Irish, and 

 enforce it on the children in their cabins with as much sen i 

 a forfeit of a similar kind is enforced on the pupils in an I: 

 boarding-school. Under the influence of this feeling the Celtic l:,i 

 of Ireland appc'irs to be slowly but surely losing ground, wl, 

 English language is indebted to hcland for some of ii 



d, and most brilliant orators, with a long array of I 

 labourers of a less ambitious class. With Wales all this is different. 

 The Commissioners of Inquiry into the state of Kducation in 

 give it as their opinion in their official report, that "tlie Welshman 

 possesses ft mastery over his own language far beyond that which the 

 Englishman of the Mmo degree has over his;" and tlr 



priety of ex|iresiiii to all extent more than merely colloquial, 

 is a feature in the intellectual character of the Welsh." But the \ 

 are eloquent and poetical in their own language only. They have 

 c'lntiibuted no bard, no orator, no historian, i"- 



of the first, or the second, or even the third rank, to the litei af nrc of 

 nd. 



The use of two languages in the Mine cmintry cannot but 1 

 1 ;is an evil, for it id but of di 



The experience of the c ' the ca-e of (Jermaii and Hanih, 



and of German and Hun iVi that under certain circum.-i 



become a source of civil war. It is Mt admitted tv 

 :y and animosity Saxon still lurk among that | 



of the Welsh population to whom English is a language either . i 

 unknown, or known but imperfectly. There is a well-autlien: 

 st"ty tint in the time "f (fi Commonwealth, Sir Edwaid Sti. 

 of St. ( tie. flying from the victorious lionn-i 



a lost battle, came to the river TafF, and finding the bridge broken 



