the United States of America. There these descendants of the ancient Kymrys have lost their manners and their language, and have forgotten, in the bosom of the most complete liberty that civilized man can enjoy, the vain dreams of British independence. Those who have remained in the land of their ancestors retain, amidst the poverty or mediocrity of fortune which has ever been their lot, a character of haughty pride, the offspring of great recollections and long hopes, always deceived, but never abandoned. They stand with erect front before the powerful and rich of England and of their own country, "and think themselves a better and nobler race," said a Welshman of the last century, "than this nobility of yesterday, the issue of bastards, of adventurers, and of assassins." Such is the national spirit of the most energetic among the present Cambrians, and they carry it, sometimes, to such a point, that the English designate them Red-hot Welshmen. Since the revolution of America and of France, this spirit is combined in them with all the grand ideas of natural and social liberty that those revolutions have everywhere aroused. But, whilst ardently desiring the progress of high modern civilization, the enlightened inhabitants of Wales have not lost their ancient passion for their national history, language, and literature. The wealthy among them have formed associations for the publication of their numerous collections of historical documents, and with the view of reanimating, if possible, the cultivation of the old poetic talent of the bards. These societies have established annual poetical and musical meetings, for the two arts ever go hand in hand in Wales; and out of, perhaps, a somewhat superstitious respect for ancient customs, the literary and philosophical assemblies of the new bards are held in the open air, on the hills. At the time when the French revolution still made the English government tremble, these meetings, always very numerous, were forbidden by authority, on account of the democratic principles which prevailed at them.2 Now they are perfectly free, and there is every year awarded by them the prize of poetical inspiration, a faculty which the Cambrian language expresses in one word, Awen. 1 Cambrian Register for 1796, p. 241, 242. 21b. 465, in notâ. * Ib. p. 438. The Awen is now found principally among the northern Welsh, the last who maintained their ancient social state against the invasion of the Anglo-Normans. It is also among them that the native language is spoken with the greatest purity, and over the largest extent of country. In the southern counties, earlier conquered, the Welsh dialect is mixed up with French and English idioms. There are, indeed, entire districts whence it has completely disappeared; and often a brook or bridle-path marks the separation of the two languages, of, on the one side, corrupt Cambrian, on the other, a barbarous English, spoken by the mixed posterity of the Flemish, Norman, and Saxon soldiers who conquered the country in the twelfth century. These men, although, for the most part, of the same condition with the conquered population, have retained a sort of hereditary disdain for it. They affect, for example, not to know the name of a single individual inhabiting the part of the hundred or parish in which Welsh is spoken. "I don't know the man," is the reply; “I believe there's some such person lives somewhere in Welshland."2 Such is the actual state of that population and that language, for which the bards of the sixth century daringly predicted eternity of duration: their prediction, however, will not, at all events, be falsified in our days. The Cambrian idiom is still spoken by a sufficiently extensive population to render its future extinction very difficult to foresee. It has survived all the other dialects of the ancient British language; for that of the natives of Cornwall came within the category of a dead language towards the close of the last century. It is true that since the tenth century, when it was driven by the Anglo-Saxons beyond the river Tamer,3 the population of Cornwall has never played any political part. At the time of the Norman conquest, it supported the English of the adjacent counties in their resistance to the foreigners, but, conquered with them, it participated in all the phases of their subsequent fate. As it gradually mingled more and more closely with the populations of English race, its original language lost ground from north to south, so that, an hundred years ago, there were only a few villages at the extremity of 1 Cambrian Register for 1796, p. 438. 2 Ib. 3 See Book II. the promontory, where the ancient idiom of the country was still spoken. In 1776, some travellers questioned, on this subject, an old fisherman in one of these villages, who answered: "I only know four or five persons who speak British, and they are old people like myself, from sixty to eighty years of age; the young people don't know a word of it."1 Thus the eighteenth century beheld the end of the language of Cornwall, which now exists only in a few books. It differs in a remarkable manner from the Welsh dialect, and had probably been spoken in the ancient times by all the British tribes of the south and east, by the men whom the old annals call Loëgrwys, who, before they joined the Kymrys in Britain, dwelt, for a longer or shorter period, in the southwest of Gaul.2 III. THE SCOTS. Prophecy of Merlin-Nine pretenders to the throne of Scotland-Invasion of Edward I.-William Wallace-Robert Bruce-Enfranchisement of Scotland-Character of the people of the border-Social condition of the Scots-Establishment of the Reformation-English puritansScottish covenanters-Alliance between the two nations-Civil war in England-Misunderstanding between the two nations-Charles II. proclaimed king in Scotland-Oliver Cromwell enters Scotland-Measures taken against the Scots-Restoration of Charles II.-Persecution of the Presbyterians-Their insurrection-Battle of Bothwell-bridge-Expulsion of the Stuarts-Sympathy of the Scots for the martyrs-National character and spirit of the Scots-Present condition of the Gaelic population. IN the year 1174, William, king of Scotland, invaded the north of England; but he was conquered and taken prisoner by the Anglo-Norman barons, and his defeat was regarded as a miraculous effect of the pilgrimage that king Henry II. had made to the tomb of Thomas Beket. Those who took him prisoner, shut him up in the castle of Richmont, now 1 Miscellaneous Tracts, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, v. 83. 3 See Book X. 2 See Book I. Richmond, in Yorkshire, built, in the time of the conquest, by the Breton, Alain Fergan. This circumstance, again, was regarded as a fulfilment of a prophecy of Merlin, conceived in these terms: "He shall be bridled with a bit, forged on the shores of the Armorican gulf." And what is still stranger, is that the same prophecy had, a few months before, been applied to Henry II. when closely pressed by the Breton auxiliaries of his sons." The king of Scotland, removed from Richmond to Falaise, only quitted his prison on renewing the oath of homage which his predecessors had sworn to the Norman kings, and then broken.3 This act of enforced submission gave the king of England very little influence over the affairs of Scotland, so long as there were no intestine divisions, that is to say, during the hundred and twenty years which elapsed, up to the death of Alexander the Third. Royalty among the Scots had never been purely elective, for their whole social order was founded on the principle of family; but, on the other hand, hereditary royalty had never any fixed rules and the brother was often preferred to the grandson, and even to the son of the late king. Alexander III. left neither son nor brother, but cousins in great number, most of them of Norman or French origin, by the father's side, and bearing French names, such as Jean Bailleul, Robert de Brus, Jean Comine, Jean d'Eaucy, Nicolas de Solles, &c. There were nine pretenders to the crown on various titles. Unable to agree among themselves, and feeling the necessity of terminating the dispute peaceably, they submitted it to Edward I., king of England, as to their suzerain lord.5 King Edward declared for him who had the best title, according to hereditary right by primogeniture: this was John Bailleul or Baliol, as the Scotch spelt it. He was crowned, but the king of England, taking advantage of the deference which the Scots had just exhibited to him, resolved to render practical that suzerainty over them which hitherto had been purely honorary. The king of Scotland, in order to secure support against 1 Matth. Paris, i. 130. 2 See Book X. the intrigues of his competitors, lent himself at first to the views of the king of England; he gave to Englishmen most of the offices and dignities of the kingdom, and repaired to the court of his suzerain, to do him homage and receive his orders. Encouraged by this condescension of the king his protégé, Edward went the length of demanding from him, as pledges of his fealty and allegiance, the fortresses of Berwick, Edinburgh, and Roxburgh, the strongest in all Scotland. But so decided a national opposition arose against this demand, that John Baliol was fain to reject it, and to refuse the English troops admission to his fortresses. Hereupon Edward summoned him to Westminster, to answer for the refusal; but, instead of obeying the summons, Baliol solemnly renounced his homage and faith as vassal. On hearing this, the king of England exclaimed, in his Norman-French: "Ah! le fol felon telle folie fait! s'il ne veint à nous, nous veindrons à ly!" Edward I. set out for Scotland with all his chivalry of England and Aquitaine; with English archers so skilful that they seldom threw away one of their twelve arrows, and were wont to say, jestingly, that they had twelve Scots in their pouch; and, lastly, with a body of light-armed Welsh, who more often fought with the English than with the enemy, pillaged them whenever any opportunity occurred, and most frequently remained neuter in action. Notwithstanding the courage and patriotic energy of the Scots, the progress of the war was unfavourable to them. Their king did not support them heartily, and was ever desirous of making the amend to Edward for the resistance he had undertaken, as he said, through ill and false counsel. Moreover, there were at this time, in Scotland, neither well-fortified towns, nor fortresses, such as those the Normans had built in England. The seigneural habitations were not donjons, surrounded by a triple wall, but small square towers, with a simple ditch, when not situated on the edge of some natural ravine. King Edward accordingly penetrated without difficulty into the lowlands of Scotland, took possession of all the towns, placed garrisons 1 Henric. Knyghton, De event Angl., lib. iii. cap. ii. ut sup. col. 2478. 2 "Ah! is the mad knave knave enough for this? If he will not come to us, we will go to him." (Joh. de Fordun, Scoti-chronicon, p. 969.) 3 Cum nous par nostre malvès counsaile et faus... (Knyghton, col. 2481.) |