LITTLE ENGLAND BEYOND WALES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
Ste,—The article under the above heading in the Spectator of the 1st inst. gives, on the whole, a remarkably truthful picture. It might have been mentioned, however, that a large pirt of the Peinbrokeshire " Englishmen" are Irishmen —by descent. The form of this statement calls to mind a gentleman who bore a good Pembrokeshire name,—namely, Sir Boyle Roche. On the Irish element of the population; George Owen, the Elizabethan historian of Pembrokeshire, and other writers may be consulted. There are beyond doubt a good many Flemings also among these people ; but after all, the basis of their ancestry must have been purely English. Many old English customs, numbers of Anglo• Saxon words, &c., which have died out in England itself, still survive " deawn belaw," as neighbouring Welsh mimics of the Flemish speech express it. At present, if such things have not died out very recently, the people in certain remote villages religiously carry out the ceremony of sprinkling with
New Year's water," the hunting of the wren on St. Stephen's Day, the crowning of the May Queen, and several other venerable customs, all this being a matter of immemorial usage among the peasantry, and by no means a " revival " on the part of educated people of antiquarian tastes. Up to a few years ago a sort of annual pleasure fair, chiefly for farm servants, was held at three different villages, beginning in the evening and lasting till early morning. These gather- ings were called " Greens," and must have been a survival of the old English sports on the village green. Many of the place-names—i.e., Cold Blow, Stepaside, Plaindealings, Starknaked, &c.,—are peculiar, but all are English in form, if not such by derivation. The dividing line between what used to be called the Englyshrie and the Welehrie is still very, very definite. It is no exaggeration to say that it cuts a few villages in half. In such places a couple of families may have moved fifty or a hundred yards across the boundary into what must be to them foreign territory, as far at least as language is concerned; and three or four Welsh farmers, who can speak English freely, have taken holdings in the heart of the " Flemish '' country. At heart these English-speaking people of South Pembrokeshire are not yet as tolerant of Welsh speech and Welsh ways as one would expect, say, a Yorkshireman to be ; and the Welsh fully reciprocate this remnant of an antagonistic feeling, which was formerly very bitter. Outwardly all com- munication is perfectly friendly, but neither courts too much intimacy with the other. Six or seven years ago the Narberth Board of Guardians (the Welsh vote prevailing over the English) sent down a Welshman. as relieving officer to a village in the English district. Not a soul in that village bad a spare room which could be let as a sleeping apartment for love or money. At last the village policeman showed his cosmopolitan sympathies by taking the stranger in. Next day the relieving officer tried high and low to buy hay for his pony. He was civilly treated, but the scarcity of hay was such that no man had any to sell, and the pony had to travel six or seven miles to Narberth for a feed. In a few weeks the majority on the Board capitulated, and the relieving officer
was transferred.—I am, Sir, &c., H. C. TIERNEY.
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