English and Welsh

Jonh Ronald Ruel Tolkien

ENGLISH AND WELSH

To be invited to give a lecture under the O'Do

However, this lecture is only, was only by the Electors intended, I think, to be an Introduction, a curtain-raiser to what will, I hope, be a long series of lectures by eminent scholars. Each of these will, no doubt, enlighten or challenge even the experts. But one purpose the series will have, so far as the intentions of the munificent founder, the late Charles James O'Do

In a missionary enterprise a converted heathen may be a good exhibit; and as such, I suppose, I was asked to appear. As such anyway I am here now: a philologist in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic field. Indeed a Saxon in Welsh terms, or in our own one of the English of Mercia. And yet one who has always felt the attraction of the ancient history and pre-history of these islands, and most particularly the attraction of the Welsh language in itself.

I have tried to some extent to follow that attraction. I was advised to do so indeed by a Germanic philologist, a great encourager and adviser of the young, born 100 years ago this smth.: Joseph Wright. It was characteristic of him that this advice was given in the form: Go in for Celtic, lad; there's money in it.' That the last part of the admonition was hardly true matters little; for those who knew Wright well, as an elder friend rather than as an official, knew also that this motive was not really the dominant one in his heart.

Alas! in spite of his advice I have remained a Saxon, knowing only enough to feel the strength of John Fraser's maxim – which he used to propound to me, with a gleam in his eye of special malice towards myself (as it seemed): 'A little Welsh is a dangerous thing.'

Dangerous certainly, especially if you do not know it for what it is worth, mistaking it for the much that would be much better. Dangerous, and yet desirable. I would say, for most students of English, essential. Mr C. S. Lewis, addressing students of literature, has asserted that the man who does not know Old English literature 'remains all his life a child among real students of English'. I would say to the English philologists that those who have no first-hand acquaintance with Welsh and its philology lack an experience necessary to their business. As necessary, if not so obviously and immediately useful, as a knowledge of Norse or French.

Preachers usually address the converted, and this value of Celtic (particularly Welsh) philology is perhaps more widely recognized now than when Joseph Wright gave me his advice. I know many scholars, here and elsewhere, whose official field is in English or Germanic, who have drunk much more than I from this particular well of knowledge. But they often remain, as it were, secret drinkers.

If by that furtive or at least apologetic attitude they disclaim possession of more than the dangerous little, not presuming to enter the litigious lists of the accredited Celtic scholars, they are perhaps wise. Welsh at least is still a spoken language, and it may well be true that its intimate heart ca

Anyway, I grant that I am myself a" Saxon', and that therefore my tongue is not long enough to compass the language of Heaven. There lies, it seems, a long silence before me, unless I reach a destination more in accordance with merit than with Mercy. Or unless that story is to be credited, which I first met in the pages of Andrew Boord, physician of Henry VIII, that tells how the language of Heaven was changed. St Peter, instructed to find a cure for the din and chatter which disturbed the celestial mansions, went outside the Gates and cried caws bobi and slammed the Gates to again before the Welshmen that had surged out discovered that this was a trap without cheese.

But Welsh still survives on earth, and so possibly elsewhere also; and a prudent Englishman will use such opportunities for speech as remain to him. For this tale has little authority. It is related rather to the contemporary effort of the English Government to destroy Welsh on earth as well as in Heaven.

As William Salesbury said in 1547, in a prefatory address to Henry the eyght: your excellent wysdome ... hath causede to be enactede and stablyshede by your moste cheffe & heghest counsayl of the parlyament that there shal herafter be no difference in lawes and language bytwyxte youre subiectes of youre principalyte of Wales and your other subiectes of your Royaime of Englande.

This was made the occasion, or the pretext, for the publication of A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe. The first, and therefore, as Salesbury says, rude (as all thinges be at their furst bygi