My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

RESIDENCE IN SOUTH WALES 93Among the numerous Englishmen who visitWales for business or pleasure, few are aware towhat an extent this ancient British form of speechis still in use among the people, how many are stillunable to speak English, and what an amount ofpoetry and legend their language contains. Someaccount of this literature is to be found in that veryinteresting book, George Borrow's " Wild Wales," andhe claims for Dafydd ap Gwilym, a contemporary ofour Chaucer, the position of "the greatest poeticalgenius that has appeared in Europe since the revivalof literature." At the present day there are no lessthan twenty weekly newspapers and about the samenumber of monthly magazines published in theWelsh language, besides one quarterly and twobi-monthly reviews. Abstracts of the principal Actsof Parliament and Parliamentary papers are translatedinto Welsh, and one firm of booksellers, Messrs.Hughes and Son, of Wrexham, issue a list of morethan three hundred Welsh books mostly publishedby themselves. Another indication of the wide useof the Welsh language and of the general educationof the people, is the fact that the British and ForeignBible Society now sell annually about 18,000 Bibles,22,000 Testaments, and 10,000 special portions (asthe Psalms, the Gospels, etc.) ; while the total sale ofthe Welsh Scriptures during the last century has been3i millions. Considering that the total population ofWales is only about i^ millions, that two counties,Pembrokeshire and Radnorshire, do not speak Welsh,and that the great seaports and the mining districtscontain large numbers of English and foreign workmen,we have ample proof that the Welsh are still adistinct nation, with a peculiar language, literature,and history, and that the claim which they are now