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 |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | eng |
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Online Access: | Get full text |
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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. |
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ISSN: | 0010-4175 1475-2999 |