English and Welsh

If I were pressed to give any example of a feature of this style, not only as an observable feature but as a source of pleasure to myself, I should mention the fondness for nasal consonants, especially the much-favoured n, and the frequency with which word-patterns are made with the soft and less sonorous w and the voiced spirants f and dd contrasted with the nasals: nant, meddiant, afon, llawenydd, cenfigen, gwanwyn, gwenyn, crafanc, to set down a few at random. A very characteristic word is gogoniant 'glory':

As I have said, these tastes and predilections which are revealed to us in contact with languages not learned in infancy – O felix peccatum Babel! – are certainly significant: an aspect in linguistic terms of our individual natures. And since these arc largely historical products, the predilections must be so too. My pleasure in the Welsh linguistic style, though it may have an individual colouring, would not, therefore, be expected to be peculiar to myself among the English. It is not. It is present in many of them. It lies dormant, I believe, in many more of those who today live in Lloegr and speak Saesneg. It may be shown only in uneasy jokes about Welsh spelling and place-names; it may be stirred by contacts no nearer than the names in Arthurian romance that echo faintly the Celtic patterns of their origin; or it may with more opportunity become vividly aware. [33]

Modern Welsh is not, of course, identical with the predilections of such people. It is not identical with mine. But it remains probably closer to them than any other living language. For many of us it rings a bell, or rather it stirs deep harp-strings in our linguistic nature. In other words: for satisfaction and therefore for delight – and not for imperial policy – we arc still 'British' at heart. It is the native language to which in unexplored desire we would still go home.

So, hoping that with such words I may appease the shade of Charles James O'Do

33

If I may once more refer to my work. The Lord of the Rings, in evidence: the names of persons and places in this story were mainly composed on patterns deliberately modelled on those of Welsh (closely similar but not identical). This clement in the tale has given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it.

34

Dyscwch nes oesswch Saesnec / Doeth yw e dysc da iaith dec.