Sunday 29 May 2022

The Demetian Dialect and Martha's private diary




This is a very interesting and quite detailed article in the Journal of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society.  It's written by Gwenllian Awbery, who has worked a lot in the past on the strength and distribution of the Welsh language in Wales.  I'm not entirely sure when this was published.........

 https://www.pembrokeshirehistoricalsociety.co.uk/glossary-demetian-dialect-william-meredith-morris-cwm-gwaun-part-i/

Note that sometimes we see the spelling "Dimetian" and sometimes "Demetian" -- but you will see from the article that the dialect was quite widely used, and it is not at all beyond the bounds of the possible that a lady such as Martha might have used it as her "private language"..........

Monday 9 May 2022

Rebecca Riots, Ceffyl Pren and the age of innocence

 



I have just been reading about the Carmarthen celebration (on May 1st) of the Rebecca Riots, in a somewhat strange artistic event in which three men dressed up as "female" rioters -- without a blackened face in sight.

This was in contrast to the 2014 celebrations in Efailwen:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-27375757

Eight years ago, the BBC website covered the event, and published photos of men dressed in female garb, and with blackened faces and white linen bonnets.  That was fine, and was a pretty good representation of what went on in the Rebecca Riots and the Ceffyl Pren tradition that pre-dated the riots and continued for some time afterwards. It needs to be emphasised that the blackened faces had absolutely nothing to do with racism or racial stereotyping, and everything to do with hiding identities.  All of the rioters must have been familiar with the idea that (like chimney sweeps) black-faced men emerging from the west Wales coal mines at the end of their shifts were none too easy to recognize -- and so the tradition of blackening faces went along with the costumes and the straw hair, the bonnets and the aprons to ensure that bystanders could not put names to faces.  And it worked -- very few rioters were ever brought to justice.  

I can fully understand why the word "nigger" has effectively been banned from the English language, and why people on radio and TV nowadays refer obliquely to "the n-word" instead.  There is great sensitivity out there, and political correctness is everything -- while at the same time there is greater and greater tolerance of verbal obscenities, with swearing now so commonplace that it has become more than a little sickening........

Strange old world.