Short History of Wales by Sir Owen Morgan Edwards
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page 8 of 104 (07%)
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its hills. It is still spoken in Wales, in Brittany, in Ireland, in
the Highlands of Scotland, and in the Isle of Man. It was also spoken in Cornwall till the eighteenth century; and Yorkshire dalesmen still count their sheep in Welsh. English is another Aryan tongue. The more mixed a nation is, the more rich its life and the greater its future. Purity of blood is not a thing to boast of, and no great and progressive nation comes from one breed of men. Some races have more imagination than others, or a finer feeling for beauty; others have more energy and practical wisdom. The best nations have both; and they have both, probably, because many races have been blended in their making. There is hardly a parish in Wales in which there are not different types of faces and different kinds of character. The wandering of nations has never really stopped. The Celt was followed by his cousins--the Angle and the Saxon. These, again, were followed by races still more closely related to them--the Normans and the Danes and the Flemings. They have all left their mark on Wales and on the Welsh character. The migration is still going on. Trace the history of an upland Welsh parish, and you will find that, in a surprisingly short time, the old families, high and low, have given place to newcomers. Look into the trains which carry emigrants from Hull or London to Liverpool on their way west--they have the blue eyes and yellow hair of those who came two thousand years ago. But this country is no longer their goal, the great continent of America has been discovered beyond. Fits of longing for wandering come over the Welsh periodically, as they came over the Danes--caused by scarcity of food |
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