It is still legal to shoot a Welshman in the city of Chester.
At night. With a crossbow. Similar laws exist in Hereford and other
Welsh Marches cities. There seems to be
some kind of historical thing between the English and the Welsh that I have
been trying to get to the root of with mixed success.
Early in my stay here I was told, by an Englishman, that if
Wales plays, say, France England will cheer for Wales because it is part of the
UK but if England plays France the Welsh will cheer for France. Last year, during the six nation’s rugby, it
would have been to Wales’ advantage for England to beat Ireland and there were
lengthy discussions in the local papers here speculating on if the Welsh were
permitted to cheer for England. But one
must remember that the Westminster government put special lighting in the Welsh
countryside during WWII so that Wales would be bombed rather than England. What about the plans to dam a river in Wales
and flood a valley full of good farmland so an English city could have water? I think the city was Chester so what Welshman
would dare go there during crossbow season.
The Marches are an interesting thing. It divides, sort of, England and Wales and
was created not long after the battle of Hastings (you know 1066 and all
that). Wales was separate from England
long before that. When the Saxons moved
into Britain the brythnionic tribes either got absorbed or migrated to the
edges like Wales and Scotland. Offa’s
dyke was an early boundary between the two nations although Offa didn’t build
the whole thing and nobody really can tell us who Offa was.
Back to the Normans:
It took under half a dozen years for the Normans to subdue England, but
Wales did not capitulate so quickly and the Marcher lords were appointed with
powers almost as strong as the king. It
still took over a hundred years for Wales to be subjugated and even then it
never was complete. It was almost
complete in the 1970s, according to one historian, when Wales almost totally
lost its identity and voted against devolution (a kind of separation from
Westminster).
Last month an English friend asked me how many people
actually considered themselves Welsh.
You have to remember that, historically, the Welsh were considered
criminals and liars by genetics. One
story has it that “Welsh Rabbit” was so named because the Welsh were believed
capable of serving you bread with cheese and lying about it being Rabbit! The Royal Society (you know - scientists in
London) once decreed that Welsh heads were smaller than English ones so they
could never have the intelligence of the English.
Culturally the Welsh have traditional costumes and poetry
festivals called Eisteddfods with druidic ceremonies but these were all
invented in the late 18th century so they don’t tell us who the
Welsh are and why the animosity. I
visited an English friend last year and he was preparing his acreage for some
sheep that were coming and, after noticing the leeks and daffodils in the
garden I said “sheep, leeks, daffodils - are you a wanabe Welshman?” That almost cost our friendship!
I even took a welsh language course to gain some insight. Didn’t work very well. dw i ddim n gallu gwybod.
Last summer I found out that there was a week-long Celtic
Congress here in Cardiff so I went. I
learned a lot about Wales (and the other Celtic nations) and met many interesting people. On the first day I met a woman who kept
talking to me in Welsh and I kept answering in English (you can only say bore
da, arthro dw I, dwin dod o Ganada so many times). It turns out she is very Welsh and as we rode
the bus together every day, became good friends. At the end of the Congress we exchanged
e-mail address and agreed to get together with our spouses for tea in
September.
I have mentioned the Celtic Congress to a number of English
friends in Cardiff and the common reaction is to look at me with a combination
of bewilderment and disdain. I think the
confusion comes from wondering how you could have a week long congress
regarding a people that don’t actually exist.
As one English friend put it “sort of like father Christmas, one doesn’t
really believe there is such a thing as the Welsh.”
Over the last year I have read a lot of history books about
Cardiff and Wales and I am not any brighter for it. The best author is John Davies from
Aberystwyth University. He doesn’t seem
to appreciate all the good things the English have done for Wales. As the English statesman said “the Celtic
people are too stupid to govern themselves.
The very fact that they wish to govern themselves rather than be ruled
by London is evidence of the fact.”
One could go back to the Celtic roots to find a clue. Since the Celts didn’t leave a lot of written
records it is open season on defining what the Celts were like. Generally, people make up Celtic history to
suite their beliefs. “In Celtic
Christianity they did bla, bla, bla…”
Back to the Marcher lords.
They ceased to exist long ago but they still lord it over Wales. The only way to travel between north Wales
and south Wales by train is to travel to one of the English Marcher
cities: Hereford, Shrewsbury or Chester
and then travel back in. To get to
Aberystwyth (130 miles west of here) we had to take the train to Shrewsbury and
change trains there. We missed the train
and the rail company put us on a taxi for the last two and a half hours of the
trip.
This devolution thing went to a second vote and won. This has been good for Wales although the
English still cannot believe why they want to when they have Westminster. In past centuries Welsh MPs in the house were
asked to form committees to frame Welsh policies and, in fact, the most
important prime minister of Britain was the Welshman David Lloyd George (so say
the Welsh). Referring to the English
parliament as British was first done by a Welshman (why I am not sure). The current “welsh office” is held by a
staunch Englishman and not a Welshman.
The Welsh Parliament (Assembly) has way less decision making abilities
that any of the Canadian provinces so they do have a long way to go.
Welsh National Health Service (NHS) is separate from
England’s. An English newspaper reported
that huge numbers of Welsh are traveling across the border to use the English
NHS. The truth is that 5,000 more
English come this way than Welsh go that way.
Does this make it legal to shoot English news publishers in Cardiff? Only at night and with a cross-bow within
sight of the castle.
Here is an interesting titbit. A Welsh brewery in north Wales wanted to
label their glasses for a special cwrw fest using the Welsh “peint” rather than
the English pint. They had to apply to London
for permission and it took two years.
My questions are:
does the fact they want to spell it peint say something about the Welsh? Does the fact that it took two years say
something about the English attitude toward the Welsh?
