English and Welsh

by Jonh Ronald Ruel Tolkien

  English and Welsh

  Jonh Ronald Ruel Tolkien

  Jonh Ronald Ruel Tolkien

  ENGLISH AND WELSH

  To be invited to give a lecture under the O'Donnell Trust, and especially to give the first lecture in Oxford of this series, is an honour; but it is one which I hardly deserve. In any case a less dilatory performance of the duty might have been expected. But the years 1953 to 1955 have for me been filled with a great many tasks, and their burden has not been decreased by the long-delayed appearance of a large 'work', if it can be called that, which contains, in the way of presentation that I find most natural, much of what I personally have received from the study of things Celtic.

  However, this lecture is only, was only by the Electors intended, I think, to be an Introduction, a curtain-raiser to what will, I hope, be a long series of lectures by eminent scholars. Each of these will, no doubt, enlighten or challenge even the experts. But one purpose the series will have, so far as the intentions of the munificent founder, the late Charles James O'Donnell, can be discerned: that is, to arouse or strengthen the interest of the English in various departments of Celtic studies, especially those that arc concerned with the origins and connexions of the peoples and languages of Britain and Ireland. It is in fact to a certain extent a missionary enterprise.

  In a missionary enterprise a converted heathen may be a good exhibit; and as such, I suppose, I was asked to appear. As such anyway I am here now: a philologist in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic field. Indeed a Saxon in Welsh terms, or in our own one of the English of Mercia. And yet one who has always felt the attraction of the ancient history and pre-history of these islands, and most particularly the attraction of the Welsh language in itself.

  I have tried to some extent to follow that attraction. I was advised to do so indeed by a Germanic philologist, a great encourager and adviser of the young, born 100 years ago this smth.: Joseph Wright. It was characteristic of him that this advice was given in the form: Go in for Celtic, lad; there's money in it.' That the last part of the admonition was hardly true matters little; for those who knew Wright well, as an elder friend rather than as an official, knew also that this motive was not really the dominant one in his heart.

  Alas! in spite of his advice I have remained a Saxon, knowing only enough to feel the strength of John Fraser's maxim – which he used to propound to me, with a gleam in his eye of special malice towards myself (as it seemed): 'A little Welsh is a dangerous thing.'

  Dangerous certainly, especially if you do not know it for what it is worth, mistaking it for the much that would be much better. Dangerous, and yet desirable. I would say, for most students of English, essential. Mr C. S. Lewis, addressing students of literature, has asserted that the man who does not know Old English literature 'remains all his life a child among real students of English'. I would say to the English philologists that those who have no first-hand acquaintance with Welsh and its philology lack an experience necessary to their business. As necessary, if not so obviously and immediately useful, as a knowledge of Norse or French.

  Preachers usually address the converted, and this value of Celtic (particularly Welsh) philology is perhaps more widely recognized now than when Joseph Wright gave me his advice. I know many scholars, here and elsewhere, whose official field is in English or Germanic, who have drunk much more than I from this particular well of knowledge. But they often remain, as it were, secret drinkers.

  If by that furtive or at least apologetic attitude they disclaim possession of more than the dangerous little, not presuming to enter the litigious lists of the accredited Celtic scholars, they are perhaps wise. Welsh at least is still a spoken language, and it may well be true that its intimate heart cannot be reached by those who come to it as aliens, however sympathetic. But a man should look over the fences of a neighbouring farm or garden -a piece of the country which he himself inhabits and tills – even if he does not presume to offer advice. There is much to learn short of the inner secrets.

  Anyway, I grant that I am myself a" Saxon', and that therefore my tongue is not long enough to compass the language of Heaven. There lies, it seems, a long silence before me, unless I reach a destination more in accordance with merit than with Mercy. Or unless that story is to be credited, which I first met in the pages of Andrew Boord, physician of Henry VIII, that tells how the language of Heaven was changed. St Peter, instructed to find a cure for the din and chatter which disturbed the celestial mansions, went outside the Gates and cried caws bobi and slammed the Gates to again before the Welshmen that had surged out discovered that this was a trap without cheese.

  But Welsh still survives on earth, and so possibly elsewhere also; and a prudent Englishman will use such opportunities for speech as remain to him. For this tale has little authority. It is related rather to the contemporary effort of the English Government to destroy Welsh on earth as well as in Heaven.

  As William Salesbury said in 1547, in a prefatory address to Henry the eyght: your excellent wysdome ... hath causede to be enactede and stablyshede by your moste cheffe & heghest counsayl of the parlyament that there shal herafter be no difference in lawes and language bytwyxte youre subiectes of youre principalyte of Wales and your other subiectes of your Royaime of Englande.

  This was made the occasion, or the pretext, for the publication of A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe. The first, and therefore, as Salesbury says, rude (as all thinges be at their furst byginnynge). Its avowed object was to teach the literate Welsh English, enabling them to learn it even without the help of an English-speaking master, and it contained advice that would certainly have aided the Royal Will, that the English language should ultimately drive out the Welsh from Wales. But though Salesbury may have had a sincere admiration for English, iaith gyflawn о ddawn a buddygoliaeth, he was (I suppose) in fact concerned that the literate Welsh should escape the disabilities of a monoglot Welshman under the tyranny of the law. For Henry VIII Act for certain Ordinances in the King's Majesty's Dominion and Principality of Wales laid it down that all ancient Welsh laws and customs at variance with English law should be held void in courts of justice, and that all legal proceedings must be conducted in English. This last and most oppressive rule was maintained until recent times (1830).

  Salesbury was in any case a Welsh scholar, if a pedantic one, and the author of a translation into Welsh of the New Testament (1567), and joint author of a translation of the Prayer Book (1567, 1586). The Welsh New Testament played a considerable part in preserving to recent times, as a literary norm above the colloquial and the divergent dialects, the language of an earlier age. But fortunately in the Bible of 1588, by Dr William Morgan, most of Salesbury's pedantries were abandoned. Among these was Salesbury's habit of spelling words of Latin origin (real or supposed) as if they had not changed: as, for example, eccles for eglwys from ecclēsia.

  But in one point of spelling Salesbury's influence was important. He gave up the use of the letter k (in the New Testament), which had in medieval Welsh been used more frequently than c. Thus was established one of the visible characteristics of modern Welsh in contrast with English: the absence of K, even before e, i, and y. Students of English, familiar with the similar orthographic usage of Anglo-Saxon scribes derived from Ireland, often assume that there is a connexion between Welsh and ancient English spelling in this point. But there is in fact no direct connexion; and Salesbury, in answer to his critics (for the loss of k was not liked), replied: С for K, because the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth. It was thus the English printers who were really responsible for spelling Kymry with a C.

  It is curious that this legal oppression of the Welsh language should have occurred under the Tudors, proud of their Welsh ancestry
, and in times when the authority and favour of the politically powerful were given to what we might call 'The Brut and all that', and Arthurian 'history' was official. It was hardly safe to express in public doubt of its veracity.

  The eldest son of Henry VII was called Arthur. His survival, whether he had fulfilled any Arthurian prophecies or not, might (it may be surmised) have much changed the course of history. His brother Henry might have been remembered chiefly in the realms of music and poetry, and as the patron of such ingenious Welshmen as that numerologist and musician, John Lloyd of Caerteon, whom Mr Thurston Dart has studied and is studying. [1] Music indeed might well be considered by O'Donnell lecturers as one of the points of closest contact between Wales and England; but I am quite incompetent to deal with it.

  However, as things turned out, music and verse were only the toys of a powerful monarch. No Arthurian romance would avail to protect Welsh custom and Welsh law, if it came to a choice between them and effective power. They would weigh no more in the balance than the head of Thomas More against a single castle in France.

  Governments – or far-seeing civil servants from Thomas Cromwell onwards – understand the matter of language well enough, for their purposes. Uniformity is naturally neater; it is also very much more manageable. A hundred-per-cent Englishman is easier for an English government to handle. It does not matter what he was, or what his fathers were. Such an Englishman' is any man who speaks English natively, and has lost any effective tradition of a different and more independent past. For though cultural and other traditions may accompany a difference of language, they are chiefly maintained and preserved by language. Language is the prime differentiator of peoples -not of races', whatever that much-misused word may mean in the long-blended history of western Europe.

  Málin eru höfuðeinkenni þjóðanna – 'Languages are the chief distinguishing marks of peoples. No people in fact comes into being until it speaks a language of its own; let the languages perish and the peoples perish too, or become different peoples.But that never happens except as the result of oppression and distress.'

  These are the words of a little-known Icelander of the early nineteenth century, Sjéra Tomas Saemundsson, He had, of course, primarily in mind the part played by the cultivated Icelandic language, in spite of poverty, lack of power, and insignificant numbers, in keeping the Icelanders in being in desperate times. But the words might as well apply to the Welsh of Wales, who have also loved and cultivated their language for its own sake (not as an aspirant for the ruinous honour of becoming the lingua franca of the world), and who by it and with it maintain their identity.

  As a mere introducer or curtain-raiser, not as an expert, I will speak now a little further about these two languages, English and Welsh, in their contact and contrast, as coinhabitants of Britain. My glance will be directed to the past. Today English and Welsh arc still in close contact (in Wales), little for the good of Welsh one might say who loves the idiom and the beautiful word-form of uncontaminated Cymraeg. But though these pathological developments are of great interest to philologists, as are diseases to doctors, they require for their treatment a native speaker of the modern tongue. I speak only as an amateur, and address the Saeson and not the Cymry; my view is that of a Sayceand not a Waugh.

  I use these surnames – both well known (the first especially in the annals of philology) – since Sayce is probably a name of Welsh origin (Sais) but means an Englishman, while Waugh is certainly of English origin (Walh) but means a Welshman; it is in fact the singular of Wales. These two surnames may serve both to remind students of the great interest of the surnames current in England, to which Welsh is often the key, and to symbolize the age-long interpenetration of the peoples speaking English and Welsh.

  Of peoples, not races. We are dealing with events that are primarily a struggle between languages. Here I will put in an aside, not unconnected with my main theme. If one keeps one's eye on language as such, then one must regard certain kinds of research with caution, or at least not misapply their results.

  Among the things envisaged by Mr O'Donnell, one of the lines of inquiry that seems indeed to have specially attracted him, was nomenclature, particularly personal and family names. Now English surnames have received some attention, though not much of it has been well informed or conducted scientifically. But even such an essay as that of Max Förster in 1921 (Keltisches Wortgut im Englischen) shows that many 'English' surnames, ranging from the rarest to the most familiar, are linguistically derived from Welsh (or British), from place-names, patronymics, personal names, or nick-names; or arc in part so derived, even when that origin is no longer obvious. Names such as Gough, Dewey, Yarnal, Merrick, Onions, or Vowles, to mention only a few.

  This kind of inquiry is, of course, significant for the purpose of discovering the etymological origin of elements current in English speech, and characteristic of modern Englishry, of which names and surnames are a very important feature even though they do not appear in ordinary dictionaries. But for other purposes its significance is less certain.

  One must naturally first set aside the names derived from places long anglicized in language. For example, even if Harley in Shropshire could be shown to be beyond doubt of the same origin as Harlech (Harddlech) in Wales, nothing instructive concerning the relations of the English and Welsh peoples arises from the occurrence of Harley (derived from the Shropshire place) as a family name in England. The etymology of Harley remains an item in place-names research, and such evidence as it affords for the relations of Welsh (or British) and English refers to the distant past, for which the later surname has no significance. Similarly with the surname Eccles, even when that place-name or place-name element is not under suspicion of having nothing to do with ecclesia.

  The case may be different when a name is derived from a place actually in Wales; but even such names could migrate far and early. A probable example is Gower: best known to English students as the name of a fourteenth-century poet whose language was strongly tinctured with the dialect of Kent, the whole breadth of Ynys Prydain from the region of Gwyr. But with regard to such names, and indeed to others not derived from place-names, the Welsh origin of which is more certain or more obvious – such as Griffiths, Lloyd, Meredith, or Cadwallader – one should reflect that the patrilinear descent of names makes them misleading.

  English or Anglo-Norman names were no doubt adopted in Wales far more freely and extensively than were Welsh names at any period on the other side; but it is, I suppose, hazardous to assume that everyone who bore a Welsh name in the past, from which eventually a surname might be derived – Howell or Maddock or Meredith or the like – was necessarily of Welsh origin or a Welsh-speaker. It is in the early modern period that names of this sort first become frequent in English records, but caution is, no doubt, necessary even in dealing with ancient times and the beginning of the contact between the two languages.

  The enormous popularity, to which place-names and other records bear witness, of the Cad/Chad group of names or name elements in early England must be held to indicate the adoption of a name as such. The anglicization of its form (from which the Chad variety proceeds) further supports this view. The West-Saxon royal genealogy begins with the 'Celtic' name Cerdic, and contains both Cadda/Ceadda and Ceadwalla. Leaving aside the problems which this genealogy presents to historians, a point to note in the present context is not so much the appearance of late British names in a supposedly 'Teutonic' royal house, as their appearance in a markedly anglicized form that must be due to their being borrowed as names, and to their accommodation like ordinary loan-words to English speech-habits. One deduction at least can be safely made: the users of these names had changed their language and spoke English, not any kind of British. [2] In themselves these names prove only that foreign names like foreign words were easily and early adopted by the English. There is, of course, no doubt that the view of the process which established the English language in Britain as a simple case of 'Teutons' driving out and disposs
essing 'Celts' is altogether too simple. There was fusion and confusion. But from names alone without other evidence deductions concerning 'race' or indeed language are insecure.

  So it was again when new invaders came to Britain. In later times it cannot be assumed that a man who bore a 'Danish' name was (in whole or part) of Scandinavian 'blood' or language, or even of Danish sympathies. Ulfcytel is as Norse a name as Ceadwalla is British, yet it was borne by a most valiant opponent of the Danes, the alderman of East Anglia, of whom it is recorded that the Danes themselves said that no man on Angelcynne had ever done them more damage in fighting. [3] Not every Brián and Niál in Iceland had Irish blood in his veins.

  Mixture of peoples is, of course, one of the ways in which the borrowing of names takes place. Mothers have, no doubt, always played an important part in this process. Yet one should reflect that even when the adoption of a name was due in the first instance to, say, intermarriage, this may have been an event of small general importance. And once a name has been adopted it may spread quite independently. When we come to patrilinear surnames it is obvious that these may multiply without any addition to the 'blood' to which their etymology would seem to testify, indeed rather with the extinction of it as an effective ingredient in the make-up, physical or mental, of the bearers of the name.

  I am not a German, though my surname is German (anglicized like Cerdic) – my other names are Hebrew, Norse, Greek, and French. I have inherited with my surname nothing that originally belonged to it in language or culture, and after 200 years the 'blood' of Saxony and Poland is probably a negligible physical ingredient.

  I do not know what Mr O'Donnell would have said to this. I suspect that to him anyone who spoke a Celtic language was a Celt, even if his name was not Celtic, but anyone who had a Celtic name was a Celt whatever he spoke; and so the Celts won on both the swings and the roundabouts.