Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of the two races; and that these differences are so wide, and so deeply seated, that here, as elsewhere – wherever, indeed, the Celtic and Teutonic races have been brought into contact, – a struggle and an opposition, a repulsive tendency, more or less open and active, have ever existed, and have brought about the subjugation, the inferiority, and, to a certain degree, the degradation of the former. The Saxons produced few or no results of importance by their attacks on the Welsh; the hardy mountaineers generally gave them as much as they brought; and, had they been doomed to meet with no men of sterner stuff, they would still have held their own in unbroken integrity. But the energy of the Normans, their fire and gallantry, animating and directing the slower impulses of their Teutonic vassals, made the monarch of England at length the conquering sovereign of Wales; and, from that moment, with the transient exception of Owen Glyndwr's bright resistance, Wales not only became the conquered and suffering country, but showed all the symptoms of it, and brought forth all its fruits. The higher classes either became replaced by Anglo-Norman nobles, or imitated both their customs and their language; – many of the largest landed proprietors no longer resided in the principality; and those who did, held themselves far above their Celtic vassals in proud and domineering exclusiveness. The common people – the mass of the nation, including the petty free-holders and the remains of the conquered native nobles – formed a national party, ever opposed to their haughty masters; adhered to their national language with the greater devotion, as it was to them the only relic of their former independence; retained their ancient national customs and superstitions; and were content to turn their backs upon the progress of that nation whose power they could not throw off, though the desire to do so remained, and is not, even at the present day, extinguished. The Welsh still call themselves "the Cymry," and the English "the Saeson." They still look on the English as foreigners; and this fact alone speaks volumes as to the antagonism that still subsists between the two races. It is not our intention to go into any discussion upon the political bearings of this state of things: we will only observe, that the gentry and clergy of Wales having mainly carried on their studies in the English language, and having been anxious to do so as a mark of distinction from their humbler neighbours, not only has the Welsh language remained almost stationary since the time of the conquest, but the national mind, the intelligence of the common people, has never kept pace with that of England. Nearly all the literature and science, all the poetry, history, and belles-lettres of the English nation, have been to the Welsh totally unknown. They have never been translated; and, for that very reason, the middle classes of the country, and of course all the lower ones, are, it may be said, almost totally ignorant of them.

      Another circumstance tending to this comparative isolation, is the physical formation of the country, which, by keeping the people, down to the present time, fixed to their bleak hills and extensive moorlands, and by discouraging the growth of large towns, has retained the people in a state of primitive agricultural simplicity, which, while it may make them enjoy a certain amount of happiness not inferior to that of their trade-enslaved neighbours, retards them in what we suppose to be the summum bonum– the march of civilisation.

      The language, the feelings, the aspirations of the Welsh are different from those of the English – altogether different: and the million of inhabitants, who are of Celtic race – just like the two millions of Celts in France who retain the name of Britons; and the seven millions of the Erse in Ireland, who also differ altogether in sympathies, and to a great extent in language, from their conquerors – never will unite with the Saxon race so far as to keep pace with them in what is called "improvement" and "knowledge." This fundamental difference is alone sufficient to account for the different degrees of education in the two countries, even supposing that, after all, this difference should turn out to be less than it is actually supposed to be by her Majesty's inspectors; and it will also account for the immense preponderance of dissent in Wales, and for the pining state of the church. Ever since the time of Henry VIII., the English church has been the church of the conqueror. The conquered have been left to form their own religious creed; and, at the present moment, the Welsh adhere with all the warmth of national enthusiasm, and with all the devotion of a conquered people, to any form of worship but that which they see adopted by the upper classes – by their Anglo-Norman lords and masters. The limits of a review do not allow of our pursuing this portion of the subject to the extent we might wish; but we know that what we have here asserted is at the bottom of some of the main differences between the Welsh and the English characters; and we do not know of any means whereby these causes can be removed, except through the soothing and permuting influence of time. We appeal to the knowledge and experience of the more intelligent of the Welsh gentry for a confirmation of these views; we find ample evidence in support of them in the pages of these very reports. All through these volumes – in almost every page – there is the same complaint that the difference of language impedes the communication of knowledge; and, indeed, we very much doubt whether any English parent or schoolmaster, who wished to convey all ideas of religious and secular knowledge to his children through the medium of the Welsh language, – to be taught them by an Englishman, – from the age of eight years old and upwards, would not arrive at the same negative result as the Welshman who makes the same experiment by means of the English tongue.

      We may here quote the following important observations from the report of Mr Lingen – by far the most able, and the best digested of the three. And we take the opportunity of pointing out this gentleman's introductory remarks, as conveying the most valuable information which we have met with concerning the actual state of Wales, – as well as for the highly enlightened and philosophic spirit in which they are conceived.

      Mr Lingen observes: —

      "My district exhibits the phenomenon of a peculiar language isolating the mass from the upper portion of society; and, as a further phenomenon, it exhibits this mass engaged upon the most opposite occupations at points not very distant from each other; being, on the one side, rude and primitive agriculturists, living poorly, and thinly scattered; on the other, smelters and miners, wantoning in plenty, and congregated in the densest accumulations. An incessant tide of immigration sets in from the former extreme to the latter, and, by perpetuating a common character in each, admits of their being contemplated under a single point of view. Whether in the country, or among the furnaces, the Welsh element is never found at the top of the social scale, nor in its own body does it exhibit much variety of gradation. In the country, the farmers are very small holders, in intelligence and capital nowise distinguished from labourers. In the works, the Welsh workman never finds his way into the office. He never becomes either clerk or agent. He may become an overseer or sub-contractor, but this does not take him out of the labouring and put him into the administering class. Equally in his new, as in his old, home, his language keeps him under the hatches, being one in which he can neither acquire nor communicate the necessary information. It is a language of old-fashioned agriculture, of theology, and of simple rustic life, while all the world about him is English.

      "Thus his social sphere becomes one of complete isolation from all influences, save such as arise within his own order. He jealously shrinks from holding any communication with classes either superior to, or different from, himself. His superiors are content, for the most part, simply to ignore his existence in all its moral relations. He is left to live in an under world of his own, and the march of society goes so completely over his head that he is never heard of, excepting when the strange and abnormal features of a revival, or a Rebecca or Chartist outbreak, call attention to a phase of society which could produce any thing so contrary to all that we elsewhere experience.

      "Cut off from, or limited to a purely material agency in, the practical world, his mental faculties, so far as they are not engrossed by the hardships of rustic, or the intemperance of manufacturing, life, have hitherto been exerted almost exclusively upon theological ideas. In this direction too, from causes which it is out of my province to particularise, he has moved under the same isolating destiny, and his worship, like his life, has grown different from that of the classes over him. Nor has he failed of tangible results in his chosen province of independent exertion. He has raised the buildings, and maintains the ministry of his worship over the whole face of his country, to an extent adequate to his accommodation."

      "On СКАЧАТЬ