541

COLONIAL HALL.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 4TH, 1889.

J. T. D. LLEWELYN, ESQ., in the Chair.

THE LINGUISTIC CONDITION OF WALES :-ITS BEARING ON CHURCH WORK AND EDUCATION, AND THE DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM IT.

PAPERS.

The Very Rev. JOHN OWEN, M.A., Dean of S. Asaph. As Canon Bevan-whose masterly pamphlets are standard works on Welsh statistics-is to read a paper before this Congress, embodying his latest views upon this subject, I cannot do better than leave entirely to him the examination of the present linguistic condition of Wales, confining myself to observations on its bearing on Church work and education and the difficulties arising from it, and founding my remarks upon Mr. Ravenstein's returns, as quoted by Canon Bevan, which show that a few years ago, in Wales proper, twenty-eight per cent. of the population spoke no Welsh, forty-eight per cent. spoke English as well as Welsh, while twenty-four per cent. spoke no English. Canon Bevan observes that "every year that has since then passed over our heads has witnessed an increase of English speakers, though not necessarily a diminution of Welsh speakers." In Monmouthshire Canon Bevan estimated that about twenty-two per cent. spoke Welsh. Of the fortyeight per cent. in Wales proper who were set down by Mr. Ravenstein as bi-lingual, the large majority would know more Welsh than English, and would strongly prefer Welsh in worship. The Bishop of S. Asaph the beginning of last year estimated that out of a population of one million five hundred and seventy thousand in Wales and Monmouthshire, six hundred thousand at the lowest computation, or over thirty-eight per cent., worshipped in English, leaving sixty-two per cent. to be worshippers in Welsh. Those who are most competent to form an opinion are on the whole agreed upon two points as to the immediate future-first, that English is spreading rapidly in Wales, but secondly, that side by side with this growing knowledge of English, Welsh continues to hold its own. Speculations as to what may happen beyond the immediate future must of necessity be uncertain. It has been predicted by a distinguished Nonconformist scholar that within. twenty years English will be spoken generally throughout Wales. the disappearance of the Welsh language belongs to a future altogether too visionary to call for practical consideration. Let me confine myself to the practical question what bearing the present linguistic condition of Wales thus sketched in broad outline, has first upon education, and next upon Church work in Wales.

But

Education is at present a matter of pressing interest in Wales, and

we have to decide, among other things, what place has to be assigned to the Welsh language in our system of Education. In Elementary Education the Government has recognised in the new Code proposed this year the force of the arguments adduced by an energetic Welsh Society for definitely utilizing Welsh for the acquirement of English by Welshspeaking children. I am glad that this has been done, not only because it will facilitate the teaching of English, but also because true educationaiming at fostering intelligence-ought not to neglect the training and utilizing of what forms a large part of the native mental equipment which a Welsh-speaking child carries into school, and still more, because I consider that it must have had a bewildering and bad effect upon Welsh children's character to ignore their mothers' tongue as educationally worthless. So long as school authorities did not recognise straightforwardly the patent linguistic facts of the Principality, they laboured at the disadvantage of setting a bad example when they tried to impress the importance of straightforwardness upon Welsh children. It would be most injurious to do anything in Welsh education which would in the least degree hinder the teaching of English. No Welsh patriot that I ever heard of is so perfervid and so unpractical as to propose this, and I am satisfied that the provisions of the new Code, in the hands of the intelligent body of elementary teachers we fortunately have in Wales, will more than compensate for any apparent loss of time by the increased intelligence and interest in lessons produced by them in Welsh-speaking children. I am also glad that Welsh is specified as one of the subjects of the curriculum of Intermediate Schools in Wales in the new Act which comes into operation next November. It is no use disguising the fact that Welsh boys and girls stand at a distinct educational disadvantage through having to learn English. But that is all the more reason why this disadvantage should, as far as possible, be diminished by an intelligent use of what compensating philological advantage a Welshman possesses through his familiarity with two sets of idioms, for learning other languages, especially modern languages, where the rich phonetic resources of Welsh are of great help. And in Intermediate Schools I will go further and say that Welsh-speaking boys and girls will not have received a proper Intermediate Education till they are taught to understand the main features of the beautiful structure of their native language. So long as Welsh survives let it-for the sake of its great philological worth and interesting history-retain its dignity as a language and not be degraded and mutilated into a miserable patois. It cannot take undue advantage of our courtesy to linger on beyond its natural limits, and the old age of a language, like that of an individual, demands respect. Lastly, I am proud to record that each of the four University Colleges of Wales has a Welsh professor or lecturer, that Welsh has an honourable place in the Degree course at Lampeter, and that it has been recognized by the University of London, which examines a large number of candidates from Wales. May I be allowed in passing to interpolate the hope that Wales may soon obtain a Welsh University, which is required on account of our linguistic condition and the special characteristics thereby produced. It would have been indeed a disgrace to Wales sufficient to make us akin with Vandals, if when Welsh is keenly studied by philologists in Germany, France, Oxford, Edinburgh, and elsewhere, the advanced study of Welsh had not

been included in all the University Colleges of Wales. Thanks to a few Welshmen of European reputation, the students of the University Colleges will have for the future in their hands, not only a first-rate textbook of Welsh Philology, but also a scientific and complete Welsh Dictionary and an accurate reprint of medieval Welsh Classics. I trust they will also, before long, have a reprint of Welsh historical records and a worthy text-book of Welsh history to guide their studies. There need be no fear that the inclusion of Welsh in Elementary, Intermediate, and Higher Education in Wales, will make Welshmen clannish and narrow. If I am correct in thinking that for Welsh-speaking Welshmen its inclusion is educationally justified, it is bound to have the contrary effect and to make Welsh patriotism broad, practical, and constructive, and to disarm the tendency to over-sensitiveness, which cannot but be, more or less, a natural temptation to a small population, side by side with a large one, not always altogether sympathetic, if the language, around which centre the tender associations of the past, seems to be slighted or disliked. And after all, when you consider the education of a people, you must not wish them-any more than an individual-to break with the past, however humble it may comparatively be considered; for a people or an individual that retains not a link of affection with the past is at heart vulgar, and cannot be worthy of a future. It has been truly remarked that the recent revival of Welsh sentiment is first literary and only secondarily political.

In examining the bearing of the linguistic condition of Wales upon Church work and the difficulties arising from it, may I be allowed to say that I dislike the word difficulty, and wish to draw a distinction in regard to it. Though it is fair for us Welsh Churchmen when the Congress comes into Wales to remind our brethren from England that there are special linguistic circumstances connected with Church work in Wales, still I feel strongly that in calling them difficulties we ought not to be understood to be making lamentation over them, and still less to be dismayed by them. They simply form an element of the work which we are called upon to perform, and our clear duty is to accept them cheerfully as part of our work, and to study, with courage and with what wisdom we may, how we are to make the best of them. Wales is not the only country where Church work has special difficulties, but difficulties will always be found even to have value if they are properly faced and not helplessly allowed to slide or listlessly magnified and bemoaned. Let us look at the bearing of the linguistic condition of Wales on Church work, first and mainly from a practical point of view, and next briefly from the point of view of sentiment. Our practical duty, I take it, is to bring home the truths of the Church to all the inhabitants of Wales by every channel open to us both in Welsh and English, just as the people in each case prefer, and as they will be best disposed to receive our teaching. We have to be strictly impartial and scrupulously fair in regard to both languages, doing our utmost for the Church by means of both alike, leaning, if we must lean at all, towards the weaker side, which is Welsh. We ought not to make the Church an instrument either to curtail or to prolong the existence of Welsh by a single day. To teach Welshmen English is an excellent thing, but to teach them religion is still more excellent. School, and not Church, is the right place to teach English. On the other hand, let us watch with

the closest care the flow of the English tide into our parishes and promptly adjust Church services to each change of linguistic condition as it comes. And if I am reminded that the endowments of the Church in Wales-which some people strangely consider to be of an overwhelming extent-are really too small to admit of our hoping to cope with the rapidly growing demand for more churches and more clergy to meet the growth of bi-lingualism, I reply, that our small endowments were never meant to deaden, but to stimulate the exertions of each generation in Church work. The splendid liberality shown in recent years by Welsh Churchmen show that we are not in danger just now of idly reposing upon the generosity of our forefathers. But if we find two sets of churches, for the double sets of services required, too expensive, let us use mission-rooms, and if we cannot maintain a sufficient staff of clergy, why should we not organize lay help? Resourcefulness will discover many resources for doing full justice to Church work in both languages if our hearts be thoroughly resolved on this justice being done. But, whatever we do, let us, if we possibly can, avoid bi-lingual services which are an irritating patch-work and really good for neither Welsh nor English. Let me add, in regard to services, an emphatic caution against the blunder of fancying that anything will do for Welsh-speaking worshippers. The fact that they are as a rule in humble circumstances makes conscientious and thorough consideration for them all the more imperative a duty on that account. And it should be remembered that no people appreciate more highly painstaking sermons and brotherly visits or are more helped in devotion by reverent and bright services, good hearty singing, and impressive, well-kept, free and open churches than the Welsh-speaking inhabitants of Wales. We must never forget that the surest way to a Welshman's heart is through his sympathetic imagination.

It is certainly a disadvantage for the Church in Wales to be debarred, by our linguistic condition, from drawing freely upon English energy, English common-sense, and English scholarship for her supply of clergy. But we cannot help it, for the present or immediate future, and we must make the best of it. This being the case, we may as well remember that Welshmen have several other gifts besides fluency of speech, that they are something better than empty vessels, and that so long as we attend properly to the training of our clergy, including their Welsh, there is no reason why the Church in Wales should be ashamed of her Welsh workers. The policy of treating Welshmen like Sepoys, meek enough to obey and useful in their place, but not made of stuff fit to lead and to rule, has had its day and ceased to be, with results too notorious to call now for a reminder. The cry of Wales for the Welsh in the Church would be a mean, selfish, and suicidal insinuation of protection into sacred things and a form of simony. But to call for Welsh workers and leaders so long and so far only as they are required in order that Church work may be efficiently done in Wales is an altogether different matter, and this call when hotly made in the name of the Church and of Wales by a man of genius, whose voice, alas, is today hushed amongst us, received the unanimous respect of statesmen, and can never be forgotten.

The prevalence of Welsh, lastly, requires Welsh Church literature including periodicals, to be provided for our Welsh-reading people. We

cannot hope to fulfil our mission of bringing Church truths home to the Welsh people if we neglect to make full use of the powerful agency of the Press. I lay chief stress in this connexion on thorough grounding of our own people in Church principles, and next on trying to make those Welshmen who are outside the Church clearly understand what the doctrines of the Church are, more than on controversial campaigns in the Press, though I do not mean for a moment to say that we are to neglect necessary Church defence. But we must not stoop to imitate the tactics of a certain class of our opponents, who have done much, not only to prejudice their readers against the Church, but to vulgarize them by a tone frequently lacking in love of fair-play, sense of honour, care for accuracy, and regard for the two sides of every question. We have to cope, I am sorry to say, with a certain amount of prejudice and even of bitterness against the Church in Wales. Not only the right but the wisest way of coping with this feeling is to clearly state facts without exaggeration and without bitterness, and to let the facts speak for themselves. We must endeavour to state Church truths through our Welsh Press, frankly and firmly without compromise, but in a sympathetic spirit and in modes of expression and thought intelligible to Welsh people and consistent with their aspirations. I am thoroughly convinced that nine-tenths of the prejudice in Wales against the Church would disappear if we once secure fair hearing for a popular Welsh exposition of Church principles. Our difficulty in the past has been to get this fair hearing. Prejudice can be slowly overcome by patience and perseverance, for it cannot be to the real interests of the Welsh people, in the long run, not to understand the Church. Meantime we have ample scope for our energies in building up our own people, especially the young.

There is a subtle but most grave consequence of the linguistic condition of Wales which ought to be most carefully watched. Wales has been in the past very much like the tarns hidden far away amidst our Welsh hills serenely free-behind the barrier of the Welsh language -from the intellectual storms which have swept over England. But the full tide of English speech and literature which now rapidly sets towards Wales, breaks that barrier down for ever.

We must

in Wales for the future take our full share in modern thought for good and for evil. The Welsh people-down to the humblest classare fond of reading, with a distinct turn and no small capacity for metaphysics. With all their conservatism of practical habits they are wonderfully susceptible to the charm of new ideas. The worst of it is, that the tide of English will, I fear, carry first on its surface into Wales the poisonous froth of its cheap literature. The English public have been slowly trained to judge of crude speculations, served out to the masses in certain cheap books, by previous experience which Welshmen have not had, and Englishmen are also protected by a valuable solidity of temperament which cannot be said to be a Celtic characteristic. Welshmen will soon find themselves all of a sudden in the full stream of modern thought, like a boy at school hurried direct from the fourth form to the sixth, or like a verdant freshman losing himself in the fascinations of university life all at once from the simplicity of a country home. I do not believe that there is a man living in Wales far sighted