| Summary: |
For many people in Wales, the Welsh language is the essence
of Welsh identity. Yet, for the majority of the people of Wales,
the language has only a marginal impact upon their lives. That
was my experience as a child. I was brought up on the borders
of Breconshire and Monmouthshire, a district where a considerable
number of the inhabitants had a knowledge of Welsh
a hundred years ago. By the 1950s, however, none of the native
inhabitants could put together a sentence in the language.
A few incomers were Welsh speakers, a fact that sometimes
impinged upon us. Our parish church was Llanelly, magnificently
sited above the Usk valley. Its vicar was Daniel Parry-
Jones, a native of Carmarthenshire, and the first Welsh I ever
heard came from his lips as he proffered the communion cup
to the distinguished Irishwoman, Dr Noëlle French. Welsh, I
came to the conclusion, was a liturgical language, rather like
Latin among Roman Catholics. There were Welsh lessons at
school, but it was difficult to imagine that anyone of my age
could weave together the words we learned and turn them
into intelligible and effortless speech. That some of my contemporaries
could do so was something I discovered when
pupils from Brynmawr met pupils from Ystradgynlais, at that
time in the same county. Thus I became dimly aware that
somewhere over the hills, in the upper Swansea valley, in
Carmarthenshire, and also, according to some, in Anglesey,there were people who not only spoke Welsh effortlessly, but
did so all the time. It seemed very odd indeed.
|