English Money and Welsh Rocks: Divisions of Language and Divisions of Labor in Nineteenth-Century Welsh Slate Quarries

In 1893 a Welsh poet with the bardic name Glan Elsi uttered a remarkable vaticination that seemed to unite the fate of the Welsh language and the Welsh slate quarrier: Dearest old Welsh, if ever it dies, From the lips of a quarrier, I think, will come the final word.John Owen (Glan Elsi), “Y Chwarel...

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Published in:	Comparative studies in society and history 2002-07, Vol.44 (3), p.481-510
Main Author:	Manning, H. Paul
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	1800-1899 19th century Alliances Business Collective Bargaining Commodities Consciousness Contract negotiations Cultural Identity Culture Division of Labor English language English language (Modern) Ethnic Relations Ethnolinguistics History Ideologies Indoeuropean Languages Labour Language Language and culture Language history Language Social Class Relationship Languages and Ideologies Linguistic contact Linguistic minorities Linguistics Mining Mining Industry Money Nineteenth Century Oppression Pidgins Politics Quarries Quarrying Semiotics Slates Sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistics Sociology Stone Terminology United Kingdom Wales Welsh language
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Summary:	In 1893 a Welsh poet with the bardic name Glan Elsi uttered a remarkable vaticination that seemed to unite the fate of the Welsh language and the Welsh slate quarrier: Dearest old Welsh, if ever it dies, From the lips of a quarrier, I think, will come the final word.John Owen (Glan Elsi), “Y Chwarelwr” [The quarrier]. Cymru 5, 1893, p. 112. What is immediately remarkable is that such an identification of a modern proletariat (as opposed, for example, to a vanishing traditional peasantry, as would be so common elsewhere in Europe), as a linguistic kulturträger of the Welsh language was by this time so unremarkable. Even more extraordinary, perhaps, is that this was a by-product of the slate-quarriers' own self-mythologizing.
ISSN:	0010-4175 1475-2999