Unity in Diversity, Volume 2 : Cultural and Linguistic Markers of the Concept [1 ed.] 9781443865890, 9781443857000

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Unity in Diversity, Volume 2

Unity in Diversity, Volume 2: Cultural and Linguistic Markers of the Concept

Edited by

Sabine Asmus and Barbara Braid

Unity in Diversity, Volume 2: Cultural and Linguistic Markers of the Concept Edited by Sabine Asmus and Barbara Braid This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Sabine Asmus, Barbara Braid and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5700-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5700-0

CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................. vii Cultural and Linguistic Markers of the Concept of Unity in Diversity Sabine Asmus Part I: Cultural Markers Chapter One ................................................................................................ 3 Questions of Identity in Contemporary Ireland and Spain Cormac Anderson Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 27 Scottish Whisky Revisited Uwe Zagratzki Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 39 Welsh between Stability and Fragility: Consolidated Status, but Increasing Linguistic Insecurity a Threat to Diversity Leading to Dangerous Unity Sabine Asmus and Siôn Williams Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 59 Challenges to Language Diversity and Linguistic Identity in the European Union Katarzyna Jaworska-Biskup Part II: Linguistic Markers Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 77 Out on the Peripheries: A Critical Assessment of the Translation RI'RURWD0DVáRZVND¶V)LUVW1RYHOLQWR(QJOLVK Marta Crickmar Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 95 Translating Taboo Words in the Film: Are Vulgarisms ever Excluded? $&DVH6WXG\RI³)XFN´EDVHGRQ4XHQWLQ7DUDQWLQR¶VPulp Fiction 7RPDV]2ELDáD

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Contents

Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 117 In Search of Polish Sex Vocabulary: A Critical Analysis RIWKH3ROLVK7UDQVODWLRQRI6DUDK:DWHUV¶VTipping The Velvet Marlena Benita Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 131 A Discussion of Warlpiri and Polish Rhotics Edward Gillian and Sylwester Jaworski List of Contributors ................................................................................ 147

INTRODUCTION CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC MARKERS OF THE CONCEPT OF UNITY IN DIVERSITY SABINE ASMUS The proposed publication investigates various markers of identity of selected cultures, which, if ignored harm the development of a healthy identity in several cultural groups giving rise to a progressively unstable unity. This is made clear when looking at various areas of linguistics, in particular translation and socio-linguistics, but also when studying cultural and political developments. The book, therefore, constitutes a rich repository for linguists – in particular for those interested in the sociolinguistics of minority languages and in translational studies – and for scholars of cultural and political as well as literary studies.

Cultural markers The publication starts with concepts of nationalism in particular those evident in Spain and Ireland by Cormac Anderson. There is growing evidence that the two countries might have shared historical developments, though their authenticity and reliability are currently a matter of most intensive discussions in the academic discourse of Celtic Studies. For sure, however, actual nationalist movements in both countries have quite a high impact on European politics and indicate some general trends. Unity and diversity are closely linked to the economic fate of a culture, though a cultural aspect cannot be denied. The latter is more evident when the focus is on diversity. The contribution on Scottish Whisky by Uwe Zagratzki concentrates more on what links an inhomogeneous culture. The article shows how a drink has become a national symbol which strongly contributes to national identity and unity where other issues, amongst others the linguistic one,

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Introduction

tend to divide the country. However, being special and unique does not mean that it contradicts the idea of European unity. On the contrary, Scottish whisky is a very good example of contributing to unity by consistently offering a diversity marker, which nonetheless, has become a Europe-wide commodity.

Linguistic markers The article on the Welsh language by Siôn Rees Williams and Sabine Asmus shows the diluted unity of the language corpus of this Celtic tongue. Lacking institutionalisation and society-wide accepted standardisation, it is gradually falling apart linguistically making easy access to and the continuation of cultural heritage difficult. In consequence, the Welsh see one of their identity markers weakened, which in the long run, leads to social disturbances caused by feelings of resentment towards an imposed unity (with England). A focus on the linguistic maintenance and the institutionalisation of the language would support the idea of unity in diversity much stronger. The problem of a potential overload of diversity is addressed in the next article by Katarzyna Jaworska-Biskup who discusses linguistic diversity within the European Union and how to handle law texts of the various countries, well underpinned by statistics and the legal European framework. In the course of this contribution it is made clear that economic issues come into play as much as cultural ones and identity issues do. An interesting aspect is illuminated in the article by Marta Crickmar who exemplifies attempts to bring enriching diversity into English via the translation of a modern popular novel from Poland. Different approaches to translation are shown in how to maintain the source culture in the target culture and even within the huge market of English-language literature, thus creating unity. The much more frequent opposite cultural transfer is depicted in the DUWLFOHE\7RPDV]2ELDáDZKRGLVFXVVHVWKHWUDQVODWLRQRIWKH(QJOLVKZRUG ‘fuck¶ into Polish. Diversity problems within the Polish language caused by this rather unifying swear word are intelligently illuminated and rationalised. A very similar problem is addressed by Marlena Benita who shows the politically motivated loss of lexical diversity in one domain in Poland over the last decades and the problems it causes. This loss does indeed harm the chance of a unifying understanding of matters discussed in the novel and this to the extent that they become incomprehensible. Such deficient

Cultural and Linguistic Markers of the Concept of Unity in Diversity

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cultural transfers certainly undermine intercultural exchange, understanding and the intended depiction of existing diversity in society. Sylwester Jaworski and E. Gillian discuss rhotics in languages welldistanced from each other. This article is part of broader studies conducted on the developments of rhotics in various languages, preferably from different language families. The existing variety of rhotics promises potential diversity, which after all does not feature so broadly in this area and rather becomes a uniting and, therefore, stabilising factor. All in all, this book offers a nice variety on cultural and linguistic issues and features which can work in various ways, i.e. in creating a stable unity on the basis of healthy diversity, or in developing disturbing distortions in this equilibrium. It is hoped that issues explored here are further investigated and/or applied to foster a fruitful unity in diversity in Europe and beyond, from which everybody can benefit.

PART I CULTURAL MARKERS

CHAPTER ONE QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY IRELAND AND SPAIN CORMAC ANDERSON This paper seeks to explore questions of identity above, at and below the level of the nation in contemporary Europe. The focus is broadly historical, concentrating on popular perceptions of history and its role in the construction of cultural and political identity. The primary contemporary case studies are Ireland and Spain, with reference to other parts of Europe where appropriate. Special interest is given to the idea of Celticity as a supranational notion of identity politics that serves in different ways to aid in the construction of regional and national identities. The first part of the paper examines the historical links between Ireland and Iberia throughout history, focusing especially on academic and popular views of the Celtic heritage in both areas and paying special attention to how these links are reflected in Irish literature, particularly the medieval Lebor Gabála Érenn. Subsequent to reviewing these historical links attention shifts to the fraught question of Celts and Celticity. A brief overview follows of contemporary academic literature on nationalism and identity politics, with a view to establishing models for understanding the construction of political and cultural identity. This theoretical framework is then applied to questions of national and regional identity, first in contemporary Spain and then in Ireland. The paper concludes by attempting to put the findings of these explorations into questions of identity in Spain and Ireland in a broader geographical context.

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Chapter One

History and Theoretical Framework Historical connections between Ireland and Iberia Suggestions of connections between Ireland and Iberia, if not necessarily proven links, extend far back into prehistory.1 The Lusitanian distribution of flora in Ireland, whereby a small but significant group of flora has a disjunctive distribution, being present in the north of the Iberian peninsula and in Ireland but not in France or Britain, seems to suggest direct emigration from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland at some point in prehistory. This is supported by genetic studies of both humans (McEvoy et al. 2004) and animal species (Mascheretti et al. 2003). The geographical distribution of megalithic architecture along the Atlantic littoral is also suggestive of some manner of prehistoric connections, possibly linked to the development of social élites in each area (Cooney and Grogan 1984, 57; Bradley and Chapman 1984). The thesis of an Atlantic zone in prehistoric archaeology has been comprehensively developed by Cunliffe (2001), who posits the existence of stable networks of cultural and economic exchange along the Atlantic coast of Europe, leading to cultural and material convergence. These networks supposedly reached their apogee in the Bronze Age (c. 2500-500 BCE in Ireland) when substantial material convergence is to be observed. The latter half of this period also coincides with the establishment of promontory forts on the Atlantic coast of Ireland and the extension of Mediterranean trade links to the Islands through commerce in copper and tin. George Broderick (2010) has recently proposed Phoenician etymologies for the names of Ireland and Britain, which would date from this period. There is uncontroversial evidence for Celtic speakers in Iberia in the second half of the first millennium BCE. The Celtiberians seem to have inhabited an area in the north and centre of the peninsula, with non-IndoEuropean speakers to their north and east. Recently Koch (2009) has proposed that the sophisticated culture of Tartessos in the southwest of the Iberian peninsula was in fact Celtic speaking, which would place Celtic speakers at the Straits of Gibraltar already in the first half of the first 1

$ EULHI QRWH RQ WHUPLQRORJ\ LV QHFHVVDU\ KHUH 7KURXJKRXW WKLV SDSHU µ,UHODQG¶ refers to the entire island and ‘the IslanGV¶ UHIHUV WR WKH DUFKLSHODJR RI ZKLFK WKH islands of Ireland and Britain are the largest members. While the primary contemporary case studies of this paper are Ireland and Spain it seems more appropriate to speak of Iberia in the prehistorical period – history and archaeology are oblivious to contemporary frontiers at this time depth.

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millennium BCE. This theory is not uncontroversial, in spite of the presence of obviously Celtic proper names in the Tartessian corpus, and the issue will doubtlessly be decided in coming years as more material comes to light. Interestingly, all the clearly Celtic evidence from both Ireland and Iberia, whether Tartessian is included or not, is Q-Celtic, not having undergone the prehistoric sound change *kw > p. The first concrete evidence of a Celtic language in the Islands, outside of names in Classical sources, is from the ogham inscriptions, dating from the first half of the first millennium CE. However, the picture in Ireland is problematic, as material evidence of the La Tène type is scanty and restricted in its distribution. In Spain the situation is not much better, as the area inhabited by the Celtiberians has also furnished little evidence of La Tène archaeological material. There is thus the situation whereby in a significant part of what emerges as Celtic-speaking areas in the historical record there is a lack of what we conventionally understand as archaeologically Celtic material. This disjoint creates serious problems for the construction of a coherent picture and the marriage of archaeology and linguistics is fraught with difficulties. Recently Koch and Cunliffe (2010) have proposed that the spread of Celtic culture was actually from west to east. Again, this thesis is controversial and is returned to later in this paper under the discussion of Celts and Celticity. Developments are a lot easier to track once it is the historical period under consideration. The early Christian monks in Ireland were getting books ‘hot off the press from Spain¶ (Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, personal correspondence) in the seventh century. The influence of Isidor of Sevilla (5th century CE) in particular on early Irish scholarship has been oft remarked upon (e.g. Baumgarten 1983) and there is also suggestive archaeological evidence for connections, as described above. There appears to be a hiatus in communication between the two areas during the Muslim period in Iberia (from the early 8th century CE) and although it is theoretically tempting to extend Pirenne¶s (1939) thesis from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, any such attempt must fail due to a lack of evidence. In the aftermath of the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula (largely finished by the early 14th century, fully completed with the fall of Granada in 1492 CE) links seem to have been reestablished quite rapidly and subsequent to the Protestant Reformation (16th century CE) Ireland and Iberia shared a common allegiance to Rome. Stories of links with Spain in the Early Modern period are manifold in the west of Ireland, combining well-established historical fact, e.g. very important trading and cultural links between Spain and Galway; and popular myths completely

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Chapter One

unsupported by the historical record, e.g. widespread intermarriage between native people and the survivors of the Spanish Armada (1588). Spain came to be seen in this period as a key ally against the British, culminating in the 1602 Battle of Kinsale, where a Spanish expeditionary force within the town and an Irish force coming to support it from the north were both defeated by British forces. This event and the subsequent Flight of the Earls (1607) are generally seen as the definitive end of the Gaelic order in Ireland and the beginning of the period of British control over the island. Alluded to in the previous paragraph is a critical theme of this paper: the difference between historical fact and popular perceptions of history. As an historian one must deal with the data available but as one studying questions of identity one must look at people¶s perceptions of history, as shared historical memory, which, be they academically justifiable or not, are critical to the formation of group identity (Liu and Hilton 2005). In this regard, widely-accepted pseudo-history is more relevant than scholarly analyses that do not reach far outside the confines of academia. In the following section an influential and controversial medieval Irish text, the Lebor Gabála Érenn, is examined for a view through the literature of how history was perceived in the past.

The Lebor Gabála Érenn The Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGÉ) is a medieval Irish text, which exists in several redactions from the twelfth century, although it was probably compiled in the eleventh century and most of the material is clearly much earlier (Macalistair 1938-56). Although the title translates as “the book of the taking of Ireland” the conventional English translation is known as the Book of Invasions and the text itself does describe multiple takings or invasions. Some of the material is clearly pre-Christian, as a good number of the central characters have names known from continental sources as Celtic deities, e.g. Lugh. Other elements seem to be biblically inspired, such as the famous scene where Lugh casts out Balor¶s eye with a slingshot (1 Samuel 17). Many parts are likely inspired by various other European medieval texts and some may indeed be pure invention. An important part of the narrative for the purposes of this paper is the section where the Gael come to Ireland, which can be summarised briefly in the following paragraph. After much travelling, from Scythia through Egypt, the Gael eventually arrived in the Northwest of Spain. There, king Breogán constructed a tower (the Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Galicia), from the

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7

top of which his son Íth glimpsed Ireland. Íth travelled to Ireland but was killed there and the sons of his uncle Míl Espáine went to avenge him. When they made landfall they met three women of the Túatha Dé Danann, who were in possession of the country at the time. These women made them promise that their names (Ériu, Fodla and Banba) would be the names by which Ireland should be known if they came into possession of the island. They preceded to Tara, where it was agreed that they could have Ireland if they left it, going beyond nine waves, and then came back to make landfall again. When they took their boats out to sea the Túatha Dé Danann conjured up a storm and many of the boats were destroyed. However, one of the sons of Míl Espáine, Amergin, sang a song to quell the waves and some of the boats made landfall. After this the Túatha Dé Danann retreated underground and the Gael took control of Ireland. The LGÉ has been contested both culturally and academically. For a long time it was accepted as an accurate historical account but twentieth century scholarship has been considerably more critical. Macalister (193856) dismissed its value as an historical document altogether and claimed that it was a pseudo-history of the Irish, modelled on a history of the Israelites then interpolated by unreliable accounts of other pre-historic invasions. O¶Rahilly (1946) was also sceptical, although he does seem to have made use of it in the development of his own historical model. Notwithstanding this, some scholars still seem to believe that it is of historical worth (e.g. Sainero 2009). Recently a number of alternative interpretations have been put forward. MacLeod (2011) argues convincingly that certain aspects of the LGÉ reflect medieval legal codes. A close examination of the story given above seems to closely parallel the mechanism for a legal takeover of land. This type of research is potentially very fruitful. Stories such as the one above were clearly of some importance in the medieval period – to regard them as history is to be overly credulous, but to regard them as meaningless fiction is to be overly dismissive of the society in question. The notion of an Iberian descent for the Gael has always been something of a minority report in assessments of Irish origins. In recent years it received an unexpected fillip from the discoveries of population genetics, which have indeed revealed that the closest genetic links to the Irish are to be found in Northern Spain (McEvoy et al. 2004, Oppenheimer 2010). However, genetics is not in a position to explain exactly why this is the case and it appears that the genetic commonality in question is likely to predate the introduction of Celtic languages to Ireland by several millennia.

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Chapter One

The words “Celt,” “Celtic” and “Celticity” have thus far been used without further definition, but the terms are themselves contested and have been used in numerous contexts, at many different times to denote divergent notions. The following section explores some of the terminological issues involved in discussions of the Celts and tentatively proffers some definitions.

The many uses of the term “Celtic” A particular difficulty in discussing the terms “Celt” and “Celtic” is the multiple uses that the terms have been put to in different disciplines, creating considerable terminological confusion. Classical references to SHRSOHEH\RQGWKH$OSVDVȀİȜIJȠȚRUGalli do not necessarily correspond to contemporary ethnic, cultural or linguistic divisions, not to mention archaeological cultures. However, Classical sources do provide us with a certain amount of onomastic evidence to study, which can at least serve as some evidence as to where Celtic languages were spoken, as well as giving worthwhile descriptions of the culture of some regions which were certainly Celtic-speaking around the beginning of the 1st millennium CE, such as Gaul. The use of the term “Celtic” to describe the modern Celtic languages of the Islands dates to the publication of Edward Lhuyd¶s Archaeologia Britannica (1707), where, over a century before Indo-European philology came into its own as a discipline, he demonstrated the relationship of the Brythonic languages (Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric) to the Goidelic ones (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx) and the relationship of both to the Continental Celtic languages spoken in Gaul and Iberia in Antiquity. This linguistic use of the term Celtic is not in dispute – the term is a useful one for a specific group of Indo-European languages, a brief description of which follows. Tartessian, a language written on funeral stelae found in the southwest of the Iberian peninsula, in the southwestern script, dating from the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, certainly contains some Celtic material. Its classification is still a matter for debate but there is certainly some clearly Celtic material in the corpus and some scholars argue that it is a Celtic language (Koch 2009). Lusitanian, spoken in the first millennium BCE in what is now Portugal may be Celtic but is probably not. Lepontic was spoken in Cisalpine Gaul from around 550 BCE with a number of attestations written in the Lugano alphabet. A minority of scholars (e.g. Eska 1998) view it as a dialect of Gaulish. The latter is attested throughout Roman Gaul and in neighbouring areas, in the Greek

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alphabet from the 3rd century BCE and later in the Latin alphabet. There are a number of Gaulish loanwords in Modern French and the language might have exerted a substratal influence on the development of the modern insular p-Celtic language Breton. Celtiberian was spoken in the north-east of the Iberian peninsula. Surviving records date from the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE in the Celtiberian script. Fragmentarily attested Celtic languages include Galatian, spoken in Asia Minor and Noric, spoken in the eastern Alpine zone. These languages are collectively known as the Continental Celtic languages. As regards the Celtic languages of Ireland and Britain, while all scholars agree in differentiating the Brythonic languages from the Goidelic languages, as Lhuyd did, some consider these two branches to be especially closely related, sharing a number of features, particularly in terms of word order (VSO), to the exclusion of the Continental Celtic languages. This is known as the Insular Celtic hypothesis and for these scholars Insular Celtic is a genetic as well as geographical term (e.g. McCone 1996). An alternative conceptualisation groups Brythonic and Gaulish to the exclusion of Goidelic and Celtiberian, mainly on the basis of the sound change *kw > p. This is known as the Gallo-Brythonic hypothesis (e.g. Schmidt 1986). Another language worthy of mention at this point is Pictish, spoken in north and central Scotland in the 1st millennium CE and attested in a small number of ogham inscriptions, as well as through toponomastic and onomastic evidence. Its classification as Celtic is contested. While the linguistic denotation of “Celtic” is not in question the term is also used in a number of other fields, for example for two archaeological cultural complexes originating in the Alpine region – Hallstatt and La Tène (roughly early 1st millennium BCE and late 1st millennium BCE respectively). However, very little linguistic evidence survives from this area at the time in question and the identification of archaeological remains with linguistic communities, in the absence of more substantial linguistic evidence, is problematic, although there is some evidence for Celtic place names in the Alpine region in the first millennium BCE (Falijev 2010). The heartland of these “Celtic” archaeological cultures is in no way contiguous with the areas where Celtic languages are well attested. As said before, there is a dearth of archaeological evidence of the La Tène type in the Celtiberian area and what little exists in Ireland is late and seems to be geographically confined to the north of the island. Whereas the apparent centres of diffusion of both Hallstatt and La Tène are in the alpine region

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Chapter One

of Central Europe the areas in which there is good linguistic evidence for the presence of Celtic speakers lie mostly further to the west. Connected to the denotation “Celtic” for these archaeological cultures is the use of the term “Celtic Art” to describe artwork displaying a range of techniques, forms and motifs associated with or inspired by either the La Tène style or the later Insular Celtic manuscript and metalwork traditions, or both. Needless to say, a single cover term for such a wide range of material, over such an extended period of time, to describe works in such a wide range of media and contexts, may be of some use to the art historian but is of little value for the linguist or anthropologist. The application of the term “Celtic” to religion is on somewhat firmer ground. The Irish god Lugh Lámhfhada (Lugh of the Long Arm) has clear cognates in the Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes (Lleu of the Skilful Hand) and the Gaulish Lugus, known from placenames such as Lugdunum, the fort of Lugh, modern Lyon in France (Birkhan 1997, 600). The Irish feast of Lughnasa, celebrated in early August, finds parallel in ancient celebrations held in Lyon at the same time of year. The Coligny calendar, a bronze lunisolar calendar found in eastern France and dating to the 2nd century CE, also has some material with parallels in the Irish tradition. Furthermore, the survival or Christian appropriation in Ireland of a number of clearly pre-Christian festivals and practices is suggestive, although it is clear that festivals such as Bealtaine (early May) are by no means limited to Celtic-speaking peoples. The celebration of quarter days, equidistant between solstices and equinoxes, is common throughout the Islands and predates even the earliest dates proposed for the beginnings of Celtic languages in the region. The megalithic architecture of Loughcrew, Co. Meath, Ireland, has a number of monuments orientated towards sunrise and sunset on the quarter days. They date to around 3000 BCE. This is a warning that while there clearly are a number of features of religious practice and names of deities that reoccur in different parts of the Celtic-speaking area, caution is required. The term ‘Celtic¶is also known in the study of literature. In a narrow sense it can refer to the literatures produced in the Celtic languages and in this sense may be useful as a cover term for various sujets and motifs. The example of Lugh/Lleu, who appears in both Irish and Welsh mythology, has already been discussed. Another character is the sea god known in the Irish tUDGLWLRQ DV /tU DQG LQ WKH :HOVK RQH DV /OǔU OLNHZLVH KLV VRQ Mannanan, associated with the Isle of Man. There are also a number of common literary motifs in both traditions such as the phenomena of a man in a tree (Heinz 2010, 111)

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The term “Celtic literature” is often used more broadly than this however – the story of St. Brendan the Navigator (Barron and Burgess 2002) or the Arthurian romances (Birkhan 2010, 100; 216) have been told in many different languages and were influential across medieval Europe and although they originate in a Celtic language context they spread from Latin recensions such as the Historia Brittonum (Dumville 1985; Heinz 2010, 99) in the case of Arthur. Further, the contemporary literature of the “Celtic” countries is also often designated with this term, regardless of the language actually used, often with the use of the hyphen, such as LatinCeltic or Anglo-Celtic literatures. In music, the term “Celtic” is used to denote the traditional music of the Celtic countries, most often Ireland, Scotland and Brittany. While there is a long musical tradition in these areas there is no substantive continuity with either the ancient or medieval Celtic traditions. In Ireland the vast majority of the ballads in the common repertoire date back no later than the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The application of “Celtic” in this context is interesting as it is typical of much modern usage, referring to any cultural product of people with links to areas where Celtic languages were traditionally spoken. This cultural use of the word “Celtic” is examined in the following section.

Celts and Celticity During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a conscious attempt on the part of rulers and administrators to foster a sense of “British” identity in the Islands. This stemmed from the necessity of integrating and controlling Wales, incorporated into England in 1536. The term “British” is itself appropriated from the Welsh (cf its use in the Historia Brittonum, Dumville 1985). The impetus for this new “Britishness” became more pressing when it became necessary also to integrate Scotland, particularly after the Union of crowns in 1707, coincidentally the same year as the publication of Lhuyds Archaeologia Brittanica. The growing awareness of the linguistic connexions between the Celtic-speaking peoples in the light of Lhuyd¶s work is contemporaneous with the development of this politically motivated “Britishness” and coincides further with the retreat of traditional culture and language in the Celtic-speaking areas. When an incipient Romanticism brought the term “Celtic” further into contemporary cultural discourse, people speaking Celtic languages became Celts, even in areas, such as Ireland, where there are no known references to the Celts in Antiquity.

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Chapter One

The adoption of Celtic identity by the nationalist movements of the nineteenth century was an explicit appeal to the antiquity of the cultures in question, as well as a means of differentiating them from the hegemonic culture of the Islands: a Celtic periphery defined in opposition to AngloSaxon England. This process is seen clearly in an Irish context, for example in Douglas Hyde¶s The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland (1892) where Gaelic culture and English culture are presented as antithetical. The appropriation of characters and themes from Old Irish literature to serve this or that political agenda has never ceased – there is a famous statue of Cú Chulainn in the General Post Office in Dublin, the central site of the 1916 Rising. In this context he is a representation of Ireland and the struggle against British control of the country. However, Cú Chulainn also appears in loyalist murals in Northern Ireland as the defender of the northern province of Ulster against an army from the south. In the first context he is representative of the Irish struggle against British rule, in the second he is representative of the loyalist defence of the United Kingdom against Irish nationalism. Birkhan (2008, 21) deals with the use and misuse of Celticity in nationalist discourse. Partly in response to such atavism and partly from genuine methodological concerns in their given fields a number of scholars have challenged the identification of the Modern and Ancient Celts. Collis (1996) explicitly renounces the identification of the La Tène and Hallstatt archaeological cultures as “Celtic” on the one hand and the identification of Ancient and Modern Celts on the other, stating that such shorthand is based on out-of-date and discredited archaeological methodology. He does admit that the grouping of Continental and Modern Celtic languages is a necessary classification, but states that the term “Celtic” for this grouping is arbitrary. Given the terminological and methodological issues involved it is really only the linguistic definition of Celticity that can be considered theoretically sound. On this restrictive definition “Celtic” is an adjective referring to a group of related Indo-European languages, extensively attested in various parts of Western Europe and beyond at various points over the last three millennia and by place names elsewhere in Europe and Asia Minor. The extension of the term “Celt” to a speaker of one of these languages is already problematic, as it requires an ethnic rather than linguistic definition. In some respects it would be safer to eschew the term “Celt” altogether and use “Celtic-speaker” or better “speaker of a Celtic language” with a purely linguistic definition. While keeping these caveats in mind, this paper, as already mentioned, is less concerned with the reality of the “Celts” than with the construction

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of cultural and political identities in Western Europe (in particular in Ireland and Spain) over the last two centuries and the use of a discourse of Celticity within the construction of these identities. “Celtic” is here thus a subjective rather than objective term – the reality of any “Celticity” is less relevant than people¶s identification with it in the construction of their regional and national identities. The study of the formation of these identities requires a firm theoretical framework and with that in mind a brief overview of the academic discourse on nationalism now follows.

Theoretical discourses of nationalism A long-standing terminological distinction separates ethnic from civic nationalism, the former often being associated with Germany, the latter with France (Brubacker 1996). This finds some parallel in citizenship laws: whereas the states of Atlantic Europe traditionally based citizenship primarily on place of birth, the jus soli, Germany and states to its south and east based citizenship primarily on descent, the jus sanguinis. Although there is still a great difference between the length of time it takes to be naturalised as a citizen in France, Ireland or the UK for example, to the length of time it takes in Italy or Austria. and consequently for the character of the nationalisms in question, in reality all modern nationalisms are an admixture of the two types. The academic debate on the topic of nationalism received a great stimulus with the publication of Ernst Gellner¶s (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Gellner came to epitomise the modernist position in the study of nationalism. Put simply, he saw nationalism as a necessity of a certain stage of late capitalism, a homogenising ideology that itself created the nation. This modernist position was countered by the primordialists, who at their most extreme, believed the nation to be innate, essential, bordering on an anthropological fact. The most read of the primordialists was Smith (1986), who stressed the continuity of the medieval “nations.” Also of note from this period is Benedict Anderson¶s (1983) imaginative and influential Imagined Communities, which overlaps to a degree with the modernist approach but situates the idea of the nation in broader cultural terms than Gellner¶s functionalism. The modernist-primordialist conflict has to a large degree abated in more recent work on the subject. Scholars seem to accept across the board that the nation is a construct but by and large they seem to have retreated IURP WKH H[FHVVHV RI *HOOQHU¶V IXQFWLRQDOLVP 7KH GHEDWH LQ PDQ\ ZD\V has shifted from the “why?” of the reasons for the development of nationalism to the “how?” of the specific ways in which nations are

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Chapter One

constructed. The dominant paradigm seems to be that of “ethnosymbolism,” introduced by Smith (1998), which looks at the symbolic content of nationalist discourse. It is worth noting at this point that scholars generally failed to predict the resurgence of nationalism in the late twentieth century, perhaps because they were working on “the misleading assumption that political, economic, cultural, and intellectual centres coincided” (Lecours 2007, 158). It is notable that it was only subsequent to this resurgence that the study of nationalism really took off as a field of academic research. The theoretical insights of the study of nationalism are broadly applicable to other questions of cultural and political identity which rely on a territorial basis. Having looked very briefly at some of the most influential approaches to studying nationalism the following sections examine questions of regional identity first in Spain and then in Ireland.

Questions of identity in contemporary Spain Spain is one of the most interesting case studies in identity politics and nationalism in contemporary Europe. No more than a brief overview of the topic is possible here. The existence of overlapping local, regional and national identities is a feature of all modern European states but the Spanish state has been particularly unsuccessful in assimilating its regions into the dominant national or Castilian cultural complex. This contrasts markedly with Italy and Germany, which, although unified much later, were far more successful in suppressing secessionist tendencies in their regions.2 Although regionalist political formations exist throughout the Spanish state only four cases are examined here – Catalunya, Euskadi, Galicia and Andalusia.

Catalunya Much of the nationalist struggle in Catalunya has been focused on the restitution of political autonomy in the face of the centralising tendencies of the Spanish state in the twentieth century. The discourse of Catalunyan nationalism rests primarily on linguistic grounds, pointing to the particularity of its language and literature. However, there is also an historical argument, emphasising the separate history of the region, successfully mercantile in the Middle Ages and industrial long before 2

Exceptions are the Lega Nord in Italy, which is a quite recent phenomenon, and secessionist tendencies in Sicily and Sardinia.

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15

Madrid, the current political centre of Spain. This transfers easily into the economic arguments in favour of Catalunyan autonomy – the region is the richest in the country and contributes a disporportionately high quantity of Spain¶s total tax revenue. The main political embodiment of Catalan nationalism is Convergencia i Union, on the centre-right, although smaller nationalist parties also exist on the left (e.g. Esquerra Republicana).

Euskadi3 The situation in Euskadi bears some similarity to the case of Catalunya. There too language is an important part of the identity and the particularity of Euskera as a non-Indo-European language isolate predating Indo-European lends an especially strong force to claims of distinctiveness. However, one can auto-define oneself as Basque without necessarily speaking the language to a far greater extent than would be possible in Catalunya. Basque nationalism thus comprises an ethnic component that is altogether absent in Catalunya. The historical arguments for an independent Euskadi are not too dissimilar to the Catalan ones, although much older. Euskadi also has a number of very strong indigenous cultural traditions (e.g. pelota basca, tug-of-war etc.) that set it apart from the rest of Spain. The economic argument is present here too and as in Catalunya the main political party advocating Basque nationalism, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco, is conservative and centre-right, with smaller more radical formations on the left. The issue of political violence by ETA has loomed large in popular and academic discussions of Basque nationalism, although Lecours (2007) considers the actual content of Basque nationalism to be unremarkable, fundamentally no different to similar movements in Catalunya, Scotland or Quebec.

Galicia The case of Galicia is somewhat different from that of Catalunya or Euskadi. There is a distinct Galician language, closely related to Portuguese, which is a major component of the distinctiveness of the region. There is also something of an ethnic component, with an assertion that Galicia is a Celtic culture. This does not stand up linguistically, as Galician is a Romance language, albeit with a few interesting features that bear passing resemblance to the Celtic situation, e.g. lack of a perfect based on habere “to have” or essere “to be”; verb used in response to 3

I use this term in preference to the more cRPPRQµ%DVTXHFRXQWU\¶

16

Chapter One

questions. However, there is a high proportion of Celtic placenames in the area and it seems certain that the region (like much of Spain) was Celtic speaking into the first half of the first millennium CE. There is also evidence of colonisation from south-west Britain around the seventh century (Young 2001), at the same time as the colonisation of Brittany. Claims to Celtic identity here rest more on popular tradition, music, popular interpretations of history4 and perceptions of the landscape and climate. There is a historical argument here too, as Galicia was an independent kingdom in the medieval period. Economic concerns are different in the Galician case, as traditionally the region was one of the poorer ones in Spain. Perhaps related to this political movements advocating Galician nationalism have historically been considerably weaker than their Catalan and Basque counterparts. What movements do exist tend to be on the left.

Andalusia In the last case under consideration, that of Andalusia, it is doubtful whether one can speak of nationalism at all. While the dialects of Andalusia are objectively quite distinct from Castilian Spanish, especially in terms of phonology, they do not yet have distinct literatures and are viewed by their speakers, often with embarrassment, as nothing more than corrupt forms of Castilian Spanish. This has curtailed the development of an Andalusian nationalism in the strict sense. However, there are strong arguments for historical and cultural distinctiveness within Andalusia, and a sense of Andalusian regional identity that does not (yet) call for independence. The political formations that attempt to harness this identity are of small to medium size and are generally on the centre-left. Two reasons may be advanced for the failure of a bona fide nationalist movement to develop in Andalusia. Firstly, Andalusia is one of the poorest regions in Spain and relies on the central government to assist it with takings from the national tax revenue (gleaned no doubt largely from unwilling Catalans). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Spanish nation integrated much of the particularities of Andalusia into the discourse of Spanish national identity. Many of the stereotypical tokens of “Spanishness”, such as flamenco and the correo, are either exclusively or 4

The current author has, in various passing conversations, heard both Irish people claim Spanish ancestry but also Galicians claiming Irish ancestry. Outside of the LGÉ, which is of questionable value as a historical document to say the least (see above) there is little evidence of extensive links. However, this does not stop people feeling that they are related or believing that they share a common history.

Questions of Identity in Contemporary Ireland and Spain

17

largely Andalusian phenomena. A dominant nationalist identity will often assimilate the internal Other by asserting that its qualities somehow exemplify the nation. This happens in Ireland too to an extent, where the rugged West coast, with its Irish speakers and music sessions, is considered to be quintessentially Irish, despite the fact that it is far removed the daily life of urban Dubliners for example. Something similar also happens in the case of Sicily vis à vis Italy or in evocations of village pubs in an idyll of England¶s green and pleasant land. This process of assimilating the Other appears to be common to all nationalisms and serves to harness the periphery to the core, suppressing separatist voices in these areas. Questions of core and periphery are important in the following sections too, where questions of Irish and Celtic identity are explored.

Questions of identity in contemporary Ireland Discourses of Irish nationalism There are in effect two major nationalisms at work in contemporary Ireland – the Irish and the British. Throughout much of the twentieth century these were perceived to be broadly coterminous with the religious division between Catholics and Protestants, the former associating themselves to varying degrees with Irish nationalism and the latter with British nationalism. This was not always the case however. Whereas there is evidence for sectarian strife in seventeenth century Ireland, in the wake of the introduction of Anglican and Presbyterian settlers during the fifteenth and sixteenth century Plantations, the rebellion of 1798 saw participation from the three major religious denominations: Catholic, Protestant (Anglican) and Dissenter (Presbyterian). This is not to underplay the existence of sectarian conflict in this period, be it in Ulster or in Wexford, but the reality is that the leadership of the Society of United Irishmen behind the 1798 Rebellion included people of all three denominations. Indeed the nationalist discourse of 1798 was explicitly anti-sectarian in many instances, drawing on a civic conception of Irish nationhood built on cultural tradition, economic self-interest and to an extent also on linguistic distinctiveness. This is a broad and pluralistic conception of national identity grounded firmly in the republican ideology stemming from the French Revolution of 1789 and the American one of 1778. In the nineteenth century this pluralistic and republican civic nationalism broke down in the face of O¶Connell¶s campaigning for Catholic Emancipation, which although necessary, was based clearly on

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sectional interests. As the century wore on accelerating language shift and widespread emigration during and after the Great Hunger of 1845-49 dismantled many of the cultural and linguistic underpinnings of the earlier civic nationalism. Furthermore, the incipient industrialisation of the largely Protestant north-east ruptured the identity of Catholic and Presbyterian economic self-interest. By the late nineteenth century the Protestant population, both Anglican and Presbyterian, had practically in its entirety come to identify with British rather than Irish nationalism. A parallel reinterpretation of Irishness was underway, with discourses of religious and ethnic distinctiveness seriously undermining the earlier civic national consciousness so evident in 1798. Central to this ethnic redefinition of Irish nationalism were perceptions of a Celtic and more specifically Gaelic past. This process runs parallel to similar movements across Europe at the time, where academic discourses of biology and language and a late Romantic interest in folklore on the part of a new class of rural school teachers coincide with urbanisation and industrialisation on the one hand and loss of linguistic diversity and traditional cultural practice on the other. In the Irish case this co-occurs with the rediscovery and exploration of the old Celtic languages by mainly German scholars (e.g. Zeuss 1871). The Celt was opposed to the AngloSaxon, both racially and linguistically, and was seen as the inheritor of a proud ancient heritage. In Ireland the Celt was a Gael and the Gael was almost by definition a Catholic, as Protestantism was after all an AngloSaxon (or at best Scottish) import. However, there has always been a minority opinion on Irish identity which grounds it not in myths of the Celt but more broadly within the Atlantic zone. This idea goes back to the LGÉ (see 1.2) but also to the ideas of Charles Vallency (1786) and others, who explore a more cosmopolitan or exotic ethnogenesis for the Irish people. Most recently this idea of a non-Celtic origin of the Irish people has been taken up by the controversial and iconoclastic writer, broadcaster and film-maker Bob Quinn (2005) who argues that Ireland has essentially been an island trading post for thousands of years, being a mix of peoples and cultures in many ways close to Mediterranean cultures such as those of the Iberian peninsula and North Africa. Quinn rejects the idea of the Celt entirely and focuses on the north-south axis rather than the east-west one. The emphasis of the north-south axis over the east-west one has always been a minority opinion in linguistics too – Morris-Jones (1900), Pokorny (1927, 1928, 1930), Wagner (1959) and more recently Gensler (1993), Jongeling (2000) and Vennemann (2003) have all argued for a relationship, be it areal or genetic, between the Celtic languages and the Semitic

Questions of Identity in Contemporary Ireland and Spain

19

languages of North Africa. Recent studies in archaeology, genetics and linguistics (Koch and Cunliffe 2010) have further undermined the idea of the Iron Age spread of Celtic languages from central Europe and a synthesis of archaeology, genetics and linguistics in the question of the introduction of these languages to the Islands, while still elusive, no longer seems entirely impossible. Notwithstanding these views to the contrary the ethnic discourse of the Gael in Irish nationalism was the dominant one in twentieth century Ireland. The old civic nationalism never died away entirely, however, and it continued to exert an influence in the history of the Irish Free State and its successor state, the twenty-six county Republic. Basic republican principles continued to inform political discourse, the flag and the citizenship laws were based on the French model, hereditary titles were entirely abolished, proportional representation was introduced and in 1973 the Fifth Amendment removed reference to the special position of the Catholic church from the 1937 Constitution. However, in practice the southern state remained conservative and deeply Catholic, with the church having great influence over education and social policy.5 In Northern Ireland, the other state formed after partition in 1921, national affinities largely follow confessional differences. British nationalism was always largely civic rather than ethnic by its very nature, given that it was in many ways created to accommodate Scotland and Wales under the British crown. In this regard it had no parallel to the discourse of the Gael in Irish nationalism but it contrasted dramatically with the latter insofar as it was both monarchist and imperialist. British nationalism in the southern state is no more than residual, even among Protestants. A particular brand of Irish nationalism, wholly compatible with British nationalism, also exists in residual form among northern Protestants. Once it was perhaps more widespread but the Troubles (19681998) saw a retrenchment of identities and an increasing reduction to either/or affiliation. A Northern Irish nationalism is not entirely absent either although it has tended to be dwarfed by Irish and British identities.

Regional discourses in contemporary Ireland More than Northern Irish nationalism perhaps there is a Northern or Ulster identity in Ireland. The north-south divide in Ireland is of long standing – the seventeenth century Contention of the Bards was a dispute between poets from the two halves of the island, each claiming cultural 5 Suffice to mention here the pressure exerted by the Catholic hierarchy over the aborted Mother and Child scheme in 1950-51.

20

Chapter One

superiority (McKenna 1918-  2¶5DKLOO\¶V   ZRUN RQ ,ULVK dialectology emphasises northern and southern version of the language, with the Connacht and Leinster dialects influenced to varying degrees by each at different periods. This rough classification also holds to an extent for Irish-English dialects (e.g. Hickey 2007). The division of the country into five, then four, distinct provinces is also old but the regional identities of Ulster in the north and Munster in the south are stronger than those of Connacht in the west and Leinster in the east. The Ulster identity crosses both the political divide between the Republic and the North and also the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland: British and Irish are, with some caveats, mutually exclusive terms, whereas identification with Ulster is compatible with either. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA, founded in 1884) and the governing body of rugby in Ireland are both organised provincially and have helped to encourage a degree of identification with the province. Although the GAA does organise at a provincial level, as stated above, the most important level of regional organisation for the Association is the county. The southern state also organises local government at the county level. While the county is largely an artificial construct of British administration there is little doubt that it is the most important locus of regional identity in contemporary southern Ireland. As well as the north-south divide mentioned above, which has tended to strengthen Ulster and, to a lesser extent, Munster identities, there is also an east-west divide in Modern Ireland. This divide is both economic and cultural: the west is poorer, industrialised less and held on to the Irish language for longer, even into the present day in some areas. There is thus a somewhat amorphous “West,” largely coextensive with the counties of the western seaboard but also including the rest of Connacht west of the Shannon. The “West” is traditionally economically peripheral but, much like Andalusia (see 2.4), in many ways is considered to embody much of what is particular to the whole nation in terms of culture. It is also the last refuge of Irish as a community language. It is interesting, however, that subjective perception of ethnogenesis in “the West” is much more strongly orientated towards the north-south or Spanish option than in the east of the country. This was clear on RTɶs television program Blood of the Irish, where when doing vox pops asking people about their genetic origins on the streets of Dublin the respondents always talked about the Celts. When the same question of origins was asked of people in the town of Clifden on the west coast, all replied that they were descended from the Spanish. Like Andalusia this sense of “authenticity” conferred on “the West” in the national discourse has perhaps stifled the development of overt

Questions of Identity in Contemporary Ireland and Spain

21

political corollaries to this vague cultural and economic identification. The one political formation that came closest was the agrarian party Clann na Talmhan in the 1940s and 1950s but it was “Western” only insofar as its social base of small farmers was concentrated in “the West,” not because it ever advocated any serious separatist rhetoric or even any sense of regional consciousness. Furthermore, it is likely that the unresolved national question eliminated the likelihood of any regionalist politics emerging in twentieth century Ireland, regardless of economic grievances or perceived cultural differences.

Conclusion This paper has tried to tease out some of the questions of cultural identity in contemporary Ireland within explicit reference to the situation in Spain and narratives of Celticity across Europe. The comparative approach is valuable for two reasons: firstly, Spain hosts some of the strongest and most varied regionalist movements in Europe, and secondly, in Ireland and in some parts of the Iberian peninsula there is a perception (and to a certain extent also a reality) of historical connection or even ethnic relatedness between the peoples of the two areas. It is clear, as exemplified in the medieval Lebor Gabála Érenn, that popular perception of cultural or ethnic relatedness is more important than any proven historical connections. The entire modern discourse of ‘Celtic¶ ethnicity confirms this – a linguistic label became an ethnic one, supported by historians, archaeologists, artists and literary theorists working within a nineteenth century framework that reified the nation as a natural cultural and political unit. Nationalism as an ideology, in contrast to the academic study of nationalism or history or archaeology, has been and continues to be a spectacular success story in its ability to appeal to the popular imagination, shape perceptions and harness the masses into political action. The late capitalism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the associated process of globalisation which this entails, has witnessed a new lease of life for nationalism as an ideology and has seen the emergence of new nationalist and regionalist movements throughout the world. In Western Europe there seems to be an interesting correlation between the economic situation of a given region vis à vis the state in which it finds itself and the political character of the regionalist or nationalist movement that develops there. National movements in Scotland, Wales, Galicia and Andalusia tend to lean to the political left and these areas form part of the economic periphery of the UK and Spain respectively. The hard right

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Chapter One

politics of Lega Nord in the North of Italy reflect the fact that this area is very much part of the economic core both in an Italian context but and in a European one. A similar pattern can be observed in Flanders. Resurgent nationalisms of already existing states tend strongly to the right too, especially so when these states are already core economic zones. This is true of England certainly but also of emerging movements in the Netherlands, Scandanavia etc. In areas where the region in question is part of the economic core, such as Euskadi, Catalunya and the North of Italy, the nationalist movements have tended to lean largely to the right. In Euskadi and Catalunya there are also significant leftist currents in the national movements, reflective perhaps of the fact that while these areas might be economically core in a Spanish context they are less so when viewed from a broader European perspective. In all it appears that the development or otherwise of regionalist movements and nationalisms is difficult to reduce to either purely economic or purely cultural factors. Neither economic grievances, be they from the core or the periphery, nor a sense of cultural difference alone is enough for a regional identity to find political translation. The success or failure of nationalist movements to develop is grounded firmly in local factors, finds expression on both the economic and cultural plane and depends heavily on symbolically constructed perceptions of historical particularity.

References Primary sources Barron, W. R. J. and Glyn S. Burgess. 2002. The Voyage of Saint Brendan. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Dumville, David N., ed. 1985. The Historia Brittonum: The Vatican Recension. Cambridge: Brewer. Hyde, Douglas. 1892. “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland.” Accessed Oct 30, 2011. http://www.gaeiLGÉ.org/deanglicising.html. Lhuyd, Edward. 1707. Archaeologia Brittanica. Macalister, R. A. Steward. 1938-56. Lebor Gabála Érenn in Irish Texts Society, Vols. 34, 35, 39, 41, 44. London. McKenna, Lambert, ed. 1918-20. The Contention of the Bards. Dublin: Irish Texts Society. Zeuss, Johann Kaspar. 1871. Grammatica Celtica. Berlin.

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Secondary sources Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Baumgarten, Rolf. 1983. “A Hiberno-Isidorian etymology.” Peritia 2: 2258. Birkhan, Helmut. 1997. Kelten: Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur. Bad Vöslau: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. —. 2010. Nachantike Keltenrezeption. Wien: Praesens. Bradley, Richard and Richard Chapman. 1984. “Passage Graves in the European Neolithic: a theory of converging evolution.” In The archaeology of Carrowmore: environmental archaeology and the megalithic tradition at Carrowmore, Co. Sligo, Ireland, edited by Göran Burenhult, 348-56. Theses and Papers in North-European Archaeology 14, Institute of Archaeology, University of Stockholm, Sweden. Broderick, George. 2010. “Indo-European and non-Indo-European aspects to the languages and place-names of Britain and Ireland.” In Festschrift for Jan Erik Rekdal. Oslo. Brubacker, Rogers. 1996. “Civic and Ethnic nations in France and Germany.” In Ethnicity, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith, 168-173. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Collis, J. 1996. “The Origins and Spread of the Celts.” Studia Celtica 30: 17-34. Cooney, Gabriel and Eoin Grogan. 1994. Irish Prehistory: a social perspective. Dublin: Wordwell. Cunliffe, Barry. 2001. Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples, 8000 BC to AD 1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cunliffe, Barry and John T. Koch. 2010. Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature. Oxford: Oxbrow Books. Eska, Joseph F. 1998. “The linguistic position of Lepontic.” In Proceedings of the twenty-fourth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, edited by B. K. Bergin et al., 2-11. Vol. 2, Special session on Indo-European subgrouping and internal relations. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. Falileyev, Alexander. Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names: A Celtic Companion to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gensler, Orin. 1993. A typological evaluation of Celtic/Hamito-Semitic syntactic parallels. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.

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Heinz, Sabine. 2010, “A British Tristan Tradition.” In Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, edited by Kassandra Conley, Edyta Lehmann-Shriver and Sarah Zeiser, Sarah, 89-127. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hickey, Raymond. 2007. Irish English: History and present day forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jongeling, Karel. 2000. Comparing Welsh and Hebrew. Leiden: CNWS Publications, Universiteit Leiden. Koch, John T. 2009. Tartessian: Celtic in the South-West at the Dawn of History. Oxford: Celtic Studies Publications. Lecours, Andre. 2007. Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Liu, James H. and Denis J. Hilton. 2005. “How the past weighs on the present: Social representations of history and their role in identity politics.” British Journal of Social Psychology 44: 537-556. McCone, Kim. 1996. Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change. Maynooth: Maynooth University Press. McEvoy, Brian et al. 2004. “The longue durée of genetic ancestry: multiple genetic marker systems and Celtic origins on the Atlantic facade of Europe.” American Journal of Human Genetics 75: 693-702. MacLeod, Neil. 2011. “Irish law and the wars of the Túatha Dé Danann.” Plenary lecture presented at the International Congress of Celtic Studies, Maynooth, 10 March 2011. Mascheretti, Silvia et al. 2003. “How did pygmy shrews colonize Ireland? Clues from a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences.” The Proceedings of the Royal Society 270: 1593-1599. Morris-Jones, John. 1923. “Pre-Aryan syntax in Insular Celtic.” The Welsh People, edited by John Rhys and David Brynmore-Jones, Annex B. London: T. Fischer Unwin. Oppenheimer, Stephen. 2010. “A Reanalysis of Multiple Prehistoric Immigrations to Britain and Ireland Aimed at Identifying the Celtic Contributions.” Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature, by Cunliffe, Barry and John T. Koch, 121-151. Oxford: Oxbrow Books. O¶Rahilly, Thomas F. 1932. Irish dialects past and present. Dublin: Browne and Nolan. —. 1946. Early Irish history and mythology. Dublin. Pirenne, Henri. 1939. Mohammed and Charlemagne. New York: WW Norton.

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Pokorny, Julius. 1927. “Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im Irischen.“ Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 16: 95-144, 231-266, 363-394. —. 1928. “Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im Irischen.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 17: 373-388. —. 1930. “Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im Irischen.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 18: 231-248. Quinn, Bob. 2005. The Atlantean Irish: Ireland’s oriental and maritime heritage. Dublin: The Lilliput Press. Sainero, Ramon. 2009. Los Orígenes Celtas del Reino de Brigantia: La Génesis de España. Madrid: Abada Editores. Schmidt, Karl Horst. 1986. “Zur Rekonstruktion des Keltischen: Festlandkeltisches und Inselkeltisches Verbum.“ Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 49: 159-179. Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. —. 1998. Nationalism and Modernism. London: Taylor and Francis. Vallency, Charles. 1786 (repr. 1972). An Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language, being a Collation of the Irish with the Punic Languages. Dublin, S. Powell. Vennemann, Theo. 2003. Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wagner, Heinrich. 1959. Das Verbum in den Sprachen der Britischen Inseln. Tübingen. Young, Simon. “Note on Britons in Thirteenth-century Galicia.” Studia Celtica 35: 361–2.

CHAPTER TWO SCOTTISH WHISKY REVISITED UWE ZAGRATZKI Scottish whisky has become one of the most fashionable drinks across the world. Whiskies, malt or blended, have promoted the reputation of their country of origin to such an extent that both, country and product, seem to merge into one. From this follows that whisky achieved an iconographic significance beyond its material existence in foreign perceptions. However, the process of perceiving Scotland via whisky invites stereotypes which on the one hand facilitate the recognition of the country, but on the other entail a distortion of a fully-fledged culture as in heterostereotypes like “Scots are excessive drunkards.” Hence the country is equated with its product: Scotland is whisky, which points to a repetitive pattern in similar circumstances, like “wodka” is Poland or Russia. A completely different focus is addressed when the view from inside Scotland is taken into account and we probe into Scottish minds about whisky. Within Scottish cultures whisky would have to be placed – apart from the national economy – in the context of everyday cultures and political and national discourses, where it is said to be a national drink. Similar to external perceptions of Scotland, whisky outgrows its material existence in Scottish self-perceptions. It appears here to carry a greaterthan-life dimension and has a metaphoric significance assigned to it, which put the drink on par with other Scottish icons. In short, the notion of unity we seem to possess when reflecting upon whisky at a closer examination blurs in favour of signs of diversity, which are re-produced by multiple perspectives resulting from different (sub-)cultures. Literature and myths from Scotland may be supportive sources to fathom out the underlying notions.

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Chapter Two

A Brief History of Whisky in the Highlands Not much is known about the origin of the art of distilling; some sources attribute the invention of it to the Arabs, others to the Chinese or the Egyptians. First mention of alcoholic spirits in learned writing appears in the thirteenth century. France soon attaineG D UHSXWDWLRQ RI (XURSH¶V major distiller for its wine-distilled Brandy. As to the Northern hemisphere, it is said by Alfred Barnard that Ireland pioneered the distilling industry, allegedly based on knowledge traded from Spain and Italy, where acqua vitae had been distilled for a long time. Instead of wine, spirits were distilled from malt at the end of the 16th century (Barnard 1887, 3). Robin Laing points to the “first recorded reference to whisky in Scotland [in] 1494, when the exchequer rolls tell us that friar John Cor was making acquavitae” (2002, 3). Whoever takes the glory of the first, both Celtic people were involved in the manufacture of uisce or fuisce (Irish for “water”),1 from which, it is claimed, the term “whisky” etymologically originates, though the Irish version relates to spirits in general (Barnard 1887, 3-4). The distilling of whisky belonged to an everyday Highland culture in the early Middle Ages, since the ingredients and techniques required were LQFRUSRUDWHGLQWRWKHSHDVDQWV¶GDLOy production of sustenance. Taxation by the Scottish kings in the 17th century and the British state in the 18th century forced whisky distillers underground, who had also distilled for private consumption. Apart from its primary use, whisky was drunk for medical reasons with sugar, butter, honey and milk. As a toddy (whisky, sugar, hot water) it became a common drink in 18thcentury Scotland. Budging the English malt tax (1713), illegal products distilled in “illicit stills” were of superior quality, as they contained more pure malt than whiskies distilled legally with a high proportion of raw grain instead. “Underground” whisky folk culture became the storage of stories, legends and anecdotes about smuggling and skirmishes with excise officers. One of them – an irony of history – was Robert Burns (1759-1796), the whisky connoisseur. A report of 1798 states: The distillery is in a thousand hands. It is not confined to great towns or to regular manufacturers, but spreads itself over the whole face of the country, and in every island from the Orkneys to Jura. There are many who practice this art who are ignorant of every other, and there are distillers who boast that they make the best possible Whiskey [sic!] who cannot read or write, and who carry on this manufacture in parts of the country where the use of 1

I am indebted to my colleague Cormac Anderson for this piece of information.

Scottish Whisky Revisited

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the plough is unknown, and where the face of an Exciseman was never seen. Under such circumstances, it is impossible to take account of its operations… (Skipworth 1992, 15).

In 1823 the British Parliament passed new tax laws which helped to legalise the distillation of whisky and by abolishing the “rectifiers,” who had refined the taste of the spirits by adding drugs and flavours to the distillate (as with Gin and Brandy), also helped to improve the quality of the pure spirits. That year 14.000 illicit whisky stills had been detected in the Highlands, fifty years later this number was down to six. As one amongst many, George Smith, a farmer and illicit distiller from Speyside, turned legal and his Glenlivet Distillery became the eminent sign of the changing times. The increase of British revenues from duties on Spirits is the other shining side of the same coin. Refined technology, that is the invention of the Coffey or patent still, enabled the production of Grain Whisky from malted and unmalted barley, now existing side by side with Malt Whisky from malted barley. Blended Whisky, combined from Highland Malt and Lowland Grain and Malt, hit the market – protected by the monopolistic Distillers Company Ltd – and ranked high in popular taste. The term “whisky” replaced “Scotch” around World War I. Whereas Single Malt was reclaimed as an integral part of a romantic discourse in 19th century Scotland (“Balmoralism”), Blended Whisky was stereotypically characterised as D ZRUNHU¶V GULQN +HQFH ERWK ZKLVNLHV furthered either stereotypes about the Highlands, Music Hall subcultures or auto-stereotypical self-contempt.

The cultural iconography of the whisky as exemplified in Scottish literature Deep down at the heart of Scottish Highland culture, we are told by romantic discourses, lies the symbolic kinship between whisky and freedom. From the blurred beginnings of history, poor freedom-loving Celts are seen to take to whisky as their natural drink. “It was a noble spirit, a symbol of independence, to be approached with reverence, and, in spite of the changes wrought by blending, the Celts have communicated something of this reverence to the whole Scottish nation” (Lockhart 1981, 152). At the other end of the Scottish culture and antagonistic to the assumed Celtic hedonism lies the Calvinist rejection of pleasure. Here whisky transmutes into a business spirit and is praised for its money-earning

30

Chapter Two

power. The Calvinist business man revels in the distilled product which sells, not in the vision-enhancing side-effects of the distillate. Metaphoric qualities or money maker – ambivalent characterisations of whisky are significant indicators of alternative or opposing Scottish cultures as is compellingly demonstrated by the double-edged working-class drinking habit celebrating the hard-man image of Glaswegian local heroes standing their drinks, which only holds its ground when resultant social and financial disasters are not given further notice. Masculinity there derives directly from the amount of booze the individual stomach and liver can take. Hence it is little wonder that whisky has a name of its own in Scotland: Scots “cratur,” or creature in English, refers to the anthropomorphic TXDOLWLHV DVVLJQHG WR 6FRWODQG¶V QDWLRQDO GULQN :Lth a separate entry in national dictionaries, it is not surprising that references to whisky abound LQ 6FRWWLVK OLWHUDWXUH 5RELQ /DLQJ¶V FROOHFWLRQ RI 6FRWWLVK SRHPV DQG songs The Whisky Muse (2002) is a case in point. Eight chapters focus on the ever-changing “cratur” pointing to its invigorating powers (“curative power”) or devastating impact and the life-situations where it is encountered (cultural archive, history, gender relations, social occasions). ,Q VXP /DLQJ¶V FROOHFWLRQ SURYHV D IRONORULVWLF UHsponse to whisky as EHLQJ DQ LQWHJUDO DQG HPLQHQW VXEMHFW RI 6FRWODQG¶V FRPPRQ FXOWXUH throughout the times. In fact, apart from folklore, the Scottish literary culture has treated the subject to an extent, where it differs from external reductive views of Scotland, only to become a metaphor of the versatility of Scottish cultural perceptions of life and God, evil and pleasure. If we comb through literature, the multiple auto-stereotypical meanings of ZKLVN\DUHXQIROGHG/HWXVVWDUWZLWK6FRWODQG¶VQDWLRQal poet. Robert Burns 6FRWODQG¶V ILUVW DQG IRUHPRVW EDUG FHOHEUDWHG WKH “Scotch Drink” in a poem/song with the same name published in 1785-86: Oh thou, my muse! guid auld Scotch drink! Whether thro´ wimplin worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp an´ wink, To sing thy name! …. Food fills the wame, an´ keeps us leevin; Tho´ life´s a gift no worth receivin, When heavy-dragg´d wi´ pine an´ grievin; But, oil´d by thee, The wheels o´ life gae down-hill, scrievin, Wi´ rattlin glee….

Scottish Whisky Revisited

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Aft, clad in massy siller weed, Wi´ gentles thou erects thy head; Yet, humbly kind in time o´ need, The poor man´s wine; His wee drap parritch, or his bread, Thou kitchens fine…. O whisky! soul o´ plays and pranks! Accept a bardie´s gratefu´ thanks! When wanting thee, what tuneless cranks Are my poor verses! Thou comes – they rattle in their ranks, At ither´s arses!…. Thae curst horse-leeches o´ th´ Excise, Wha mak the whisky stells their prize! Haud up thy han´, Deil! ance, twice, thrice! There, seize the blinkers! An´ bake them up in brunstane pies For poor damn´d drinkers (Burns 1943, 84-87).

This work unites the quintessential ingredients of a national Scottish poem in the 18th century: Scots, the “Standard Habbie,” “the commonest stanzaic form in Scots, before the work of Burns, with its six-line structure (four rhyming tetrameters in lines 1,2,3 and 5, and two rhyming dimeters in lines 4 and 6)” (Gifford, Dunningan and Macgillivray 2002, 121) and, of course, whisky. For Burns, whisky is a poetical inspiration, democratically available for everybody at any time, a national duty, a compensation of the absent Scottish national state, an icon of Scottish art DQG SRHWU\ D UHSUHVHQWDWLYH RI WKH FRPPRQ PDQ¶V ORW LQ 6FRWODQG DQG many more attributes are allocated by each stanza. Though an excise RIILFHU KLPVHOI DW OHDVW IRU D VSHOO RI WLPH %XUQV¶ RGH WR WKH ZKLVN\ occupies an eminent position in the Scottish hagiography of the “cratur.” More than one hundred years later Robert Louis Stevenson (18501894) in his “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (1886) treats whisky metonymically as the potion of transformation (from good to evil), since what is described in the following lines resembles the distillation process and the uplifting swings of mood caused by alcoholic spirits: I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might by the least scruple of an overdose […] utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change […] I had long since prepared my tincture; […] and, late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke

32

Chapter Two together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. The most racking pangs succeeded […] Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul (Stevenson 1979, 83).

George Douglas Brown (1869-1902) in his portrayal of a Scottish IDPLO\¶V IDOO The House with the Green Shutters (1901), like his famous contemporary Stevenson, identifies the short-term advantages of drinking spirits, but leaves no doubts about the curse of unrestricted consumption of whisky on a reputed family: But drink appealed to him [Young Gourlay, the family´s failing son, U.Z.] in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker….He found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave a free flow to his ideas […]. If he tried to talk freely when sober, he always grew confused. But drink deadened the outer rim of his perception and left it the clearer in the middle for its concentration […]. He was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swagger, as a dullard requiring stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him “smeddum”. (Douglas 1983, 164-165).

The destructive climax is reached, when Young Gourlay murders his father and finally poisons himself under the influence of whisky. More WKDQ D FHQWXU\ DIWHU %XUQV¶ FHOHEUDWRU\ SUDLVH RI WKH QDWLRQDO GULQN 6FRWODQG¶VOLWHUDU\FXOWXUHSDURGLHVWKHLGHDOL]DWLRQRIKHUPDMRUVRXUFHRI spirituality. Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), the mastermind and doyen of the post-World-War I Scottish literary revival, seems to continue where Douglas Brown left off, yet strikes a different note in his massive “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” (1925-26): ,DPQDIRX¶VDHPXFNOHDVWLUHG– deid dune. ,W¶VJH\DQGKDUGZDUNFRXSLQ¶JOHVs for gless :L¶&UXLYLHDQG*LOVDQTXKDUDQGWKHOLNH $QG,¶PQR¶MXLVWDVEDXOGDVDLQFH,ZHV0DF'LDUPLG

Scottish Whisky Revisited

33

With the first stanza the stage is set for, first, lamenting the demise of the malt in particular2, the loss of things Scottish in general (MacDiarmid 1993, 83-84) and, finally, for an erudite investigation of the state of affairs in Scotland and the world. Whisky, unlike with Douglas Brown, is the lubricant of contemplation3 as much as a distinctive symbol of Scottishness in past and present: ,KD¶HGDUNVHFUHWV¶WXUQVDQGWZLVWV $VXQLVJL¶HQWRPHWRKDXG The whisky in my bluid insists, And spiers my benmaist history, lad. (MacDiarmid 1993, 89)

Compton Mackenzie`s (1883-1974) farce Whisky Galore (1947), where residents of a small Scottish island salvage thousands of whisky bottles from a wrecked cargo vessel off Little Todday in World War II, toys with the icons of popular Scottishness. Its stereotypical set up verges on condescending clichés about the Scots, as it “answers perfectly those who would associate whisky and its mystical liturgy with some innate truth about the Scottish psyche” (Craig 1989, 255). It has been argued that Mackenzie, the English-born convert to the ideals of the post-World-War I Scottish literary renaissance, employed standard Scottish iconography for the sake of his personal identity change from English intellectual to Scottish cultural nationalist. And it is at this point that whisky – myth or not – iVFRQGXFLYHWR0DFNHQ]LH¶VHQGV7KHSRSXODULW\RIKLVHQWHUWaining post-Kailyard prose granted the continuation of the stereotyping process inside and outside Scotland: That 4000-ton steamship on the rocks off Little Todday provided more practical romance in three and a half hours than the Tobermory [Spanish, U.Z.] galleon has provided in three and a half centuries. Doubloons, 2

)RUE\HWKHVWXIILH¶VQR¶WKHUHDO0DFND\ 7KHVXQ¶VVHODLQFHDVVXQHDV\HEHJDQLW Riz in your vera soul: but what keeks in 1RRLVLQWUXWKWKHYLOHVWµVD[SHQQ\SODQHW¶MacDiarmid 1993, 83) 3 «@)UDQNLHORRNHGURXQGWKHEDUDQG made a decision. He would buy a drink for someone. He pulled his wad of money from his pocket. In the flourish of the gesture he became a successful criminal […]. Buying […] a drink was as good as a photograph in the paper […]. The whole thing became a mini-epic, a Cecil B. De Mille production called “The Drink” […]. Stepping into the street, he felt the gulped whisky sting his stomach. It was a twinge that matched the bad feeling the pub had given him (McIlvanney 1989, 378-379).

2Q WKH RWKHU VLGH RI WKH PDOH VSHFWUXP 0F,OYDQQH\¶V H[LVWHQWLDOLVW police detective Jack Laidlaw takes whisky for what it is. These are the 4

Collection of short stories together with Agnes Owen and Alasdair Gray: Lean Tales (London: Abacus, 1987). 5 In the short story collection Walking Wounded (1989).

36

Chapter Two

opening lines of the novel Strange Loyalties (1991): “I woke up with a KHDGOLNHDURGHR,VQ¶WLWSDLQIXOKDYLQJIXQ"0LQG\RXODVWQLJKWKDGQ¶W been about enjoyment, just whisky as anaesthetic. Now it was wearing off, the pain was worse. It always is” (McIlvanney 1989, 3). A hard drinking philosophising police man, Laidlaw celebrates the mind-enhancing effects of drinking whisky: “Memory was held in a glass. Why do I drink? To remember” (McIlvanney 1989,   /HDUQLQJ DERXW KLV GHDG EURWKHU¶V guilt, the questing protagonist shares the secret with a close and valuable friend, hence renewing the metaphorical and spiritual features of whisky, we often found in Scottish literature of the past: I had finished my whisky. I rose and filled out the last of the Antiquary. I put the empty bottle in the cupboard in the living-URRP,W¶VZKHUH,NHHS some objects that matter to me as memory hinges. They are all quite worthless, to be thrown out with my body. But they serve to remind me of some of the things I believe are important….I wished I had more whisky (McIlvanney 1989, 280-281).

Conclusion Auto-stereotyping is subject to cultural and political concepts at historically specific points of time of the auto-stereotyping culture: it is always loaded with different diachronic and synchronic meanings. Bearers of these often conflicting processes are organic intellectuals (often literati from a sub-cultural perspective) and the dominant culture (chiefly via media). In particular Malt Whisky is an integral issue of the Scottish iconography. At times it has been assigned the cultural power of a true Scottish identity bearer, comparable to those prominent figures of the highest renown, William Wallace (1270-1305) and Robert the Bruce (1274-1329). Even the appalling side of over-consumption has been attached to the very particular circumstances of Scottish history: Calvinism, iron materialism, sheer poverty, cultural ambivalence. Seeing it from this internal perspective, whisky has never been merely a natural essence, but the protean icon of alternating Scottish identities. At the core of the Scottish auto-stereotyping of whisky we find a cultural viability and ORQJHYLW\ ZKLFK SURYHV WKH LFRQ¶V PXOWL-dimensional meaning as against hetero-stereotypical readings. At its worst they are propagandistic as )ULHGULFK 6HHNHO¶V 1D]L SDPSKOHW RI  Weltmacht Whisky (1941), shows, where the author attempts to account for English (!) cultural backwardness and degeneration on the one hand and social and political

Scottish Whisky Revisited

37

destabilisation of the indigenous societies of her colonies on the other by the powerful impact of whisky. Whisky – an imperial weapon or a generous cultural metaphor? Unity here comes, if anything, only by diversity. The enormous variety of connotations may daze the common ignorant tippler as much as the essence itself. Slàinte!

References Primary Sources Burns, Robert. 1943. Poems. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Douglas, George. 1983. The House with the Green Shutters. Edinburgh: James Thin The Mercat Press. Gunn, Neil. 1935. Whisky and Scotland. London: Souvenir Press. Kelman, James, Alasdair Gray and Agnes Owen. 1987. Lean Tales. London: Abacus. MacDiarmid, Hugh. 1993. Complete Poems. Vol.1. Edited by Michael Grieve and W. R. Aitken. Manchester: Carcanet Press. Mackenzie, Compton. 1951. Whisky Galore. London: Repr. Society of London. Stevenson, Robert Louis. 1979. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories. Harmondsworth: The Penguin English Library.

Secondary Sources Barnard, Alfred. 1887. The Whisky Distilleries. London: Proprietors of “Harper´s Weekly Gazette”. Craig, Cairns, ed. 1989. The History of Scottish Literature. Vol.4. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Gifford, Douglas, Sarah Dunnigan and Alan Macgillivray, eds. 2002. Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Laing, Robin. 2002. The Whisky Muse. Scotch Whisky in Poem and Song. Edinburgh: Luath Press. Lockhart, Robert Bruce. 1981. Scotch: the Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story. London: Putnam. Seekel, Friedrich. 1941. Weltmacht Whisky. Englands Alkohol in seiner politischen und soziologischen Bedeutung. Berlin: Reichsgesundheitsverlag. Skipworth, Mark. 1992. The Scotch Whisky Book. London: Lomond Books.

CHAPTER THREE WELSH BETWEEN STABILITY AND FRAGILITY: CONSOLIDATED STATUS, BUT INCREASING LINGUISTIC INSECURITY A THREAT TO DIVERSITY LEADING TO DANGEROUS UNITY SABINE ASMUS AND SIÔN WILLIAMS Introduction In the context of healthy cultural diversity the stabilisation of Welsh with the aim of its normalisation (cf. Heinz 2003, 9f.) becomes essential. Only as a fully recognised and self-confident nation can the Welsh properly contribute to European integration by making their cultural heritage and experiences available to all people with the aim of profiting IURP HDFK RWKHU¶V VSHFLILF WURXEOHVKRRWLQJ +RZHYHU WKH VLWXDWLRQ RI Welsh culture is still problematic as will be exemplified by referring to one of its major features, i.e. the language. This paper therefore looks at the fate of the Welsh language from the first major threat to it, exerted by the incorporation of Wales into England in 1536 (cf. Heinz 1998, 30), to the present day. Welsh not only survived this early oppression, but is also by now the most vibrant Celtic language with 21% or 582 368 speakers.1 It looks like a success story and by now, i.e. 9 February 2011, Welsh enjoys official legal language status in Wales. However, it is both structurally weakened and not naturally used by the majority of the Welsh population, so that many who do use it exhibit a high level of linguistic insecurity. 1

See also http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/commentaries/wales.as p#welsh, 15.1.2011. This figure may change within the next months when the results of the 2011 census are announced.

40

Chapter Three

In the following, first, the social history of the language is briefly outlined before turning to its current sociolinguistic and structural problems.

The status of Welsh in the 16-18th centuries When Wales became part of England in 1536, the first of the Laws in Wales Act (normally referred to as the Act of Union) made English necessary for advancement in society and made this language official in Wales. Further blows to the Welsh language were the dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1539, the Act of Uniformity in 1549, and the prohibition of the printing press until 1718. In addition, in 1731 English was properly made obligatory in the law courts of England (and Scotland) under an Act of Parliament, with further legislation in 1733 confirming that Act applied also to Wales, thus strengthening the status of English in the whole of Great Britain. By an Act of 1746, the term England was also applied to Wales and this remained the case until 1967. Indeed, Wales (as opposed to England) was only defined statutorily and in limited fashion in 1978. As a consequence of these oppressions, the percentage of Welsh speakers had declined to 2/3 of the population by the end of the 18th century.

The 19th century: A century of the oppression of Welsh As late as 1827, the first university college in Wales was opened in Llanbedr Pont Steffan. Its mission, however, was not to teach Welsh, but was aimed at studying English culture. In 1847, the Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales2 were published, stating that schools in Wales were inadequate, often with teachers speaking only English and using English textbooks in areas where the children spoke exclusively Welsh. In addition, the Welsh were called ignorant, lazy and immoral, and among the causes of this were the use of the Welsh language and Nonconformity. Indeed, the Welsh had to rely on the Nonconformist Sunday Schools to acquire literacy in their own language; a development disapproved of by the Anglican English officials. As a consequence, several Acts were passed between 1870 and 1902 creating an state education system and making school attendance and the English language compulsory, in particular in areas intensively industrialised, such as Wales, with the Welsh language not allowed in 2

http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=thebluebooks, 15.01.2011.

Welsh between Stability and Fragility

41

school until 1889. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century, 32 Welshlanguage magazines and 25 newspapers were current and 54.4% of the population in Wales still spoke Welsh in 1891.

No language, no status: The first half of the 20th century However, with the turn of the century, the long-term oppression of Welsh showed disastrous effects, in particular under the newly developing societal conditions. Industrialisation brought massive English-language in-migration in the second half of the 19th century until the 1920s, with most individuals working in the coal mines and the iron and steel industries in the south of the country. In addition, compulsory military service was introduced, aimed deliberately at conscripting minorities during the First World War (WWI). Another case in point was the introduction of new media, which first of all came in English. Furthermore, a crisis developed in agriculture in the 1920s, which spread into industry and led to a massive emigration of Welsh speakers. In the 1940s, the iron and steel industries were re-established to aid the Second World War (WWII) effort, which brought a new wave of Englishlanguage in-migration to Wales. At the same time, Welsh women were forced to work in English factories, in particular those supporting the war. Welsh-language broadcasting was reduced from 1940 onwards until radio was discovered as a means of war propaganda (Heinz 2003a, 47). In addition, English-speaking evacuees and refugees were sent to Wales, as well as prisoners of war (cf. Jones 1989, 79-93), so that Welsh completely disappeared from the southern valleys. Another fact which further weakened the language is that 10% of the territory of Wales remained reserved for military purposes (Davies 1990, 581).

The second half of the 20th century After WWII, basic changes in society again negatively affected the survival conditions of Welsh. They were characterised by an increase in English-language mass media, such as newspapers, radio, and television. The traditional heavy industries, in particular the mining industry, fell into crisis by the end of the 1950s, causing a high percentage of unemployment and subsequent emigration. At the same time, new kinds of transportation, work, i.e. white collar-jobs for women, and leisure activities outside the chapel/church led to individualisation and a higher mobility of people breaking away traditional family structures and communities.

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Chapter Three

In 1962/3 Welsh-speaking areas were flooded in order to create a water reservoir for Liverpool. Mechanisation and concentration in agriculture produced free estates and houses from the late 1940s onwards and in particular in the 1970s and 1980s. This invited essentially well off English-speaking retirees from the 1960s onwards to find cheap land and summer dwellings in Wales. This development led consequently to another wave of in-migration of English people, whilst the young Welsh labour force kept emigrating.

Dawn for the Welsh language in the 21st century? Economically, the 21st century started as awfully as the previous one had ended. BSE and foot and mouth disease in 2001 caused the cancellation of culturally vital events in Welsh social life and disadvantageous ecological long-term pollution. Wales thus featured as an area where disadvantageous demographical and economical factors coincided. These included disproportionally much unfertile farm land, many assisted areas, a high number of second homes, and a high average age of the population (Heinz 2003b, 250ff.). The global economic crises, caused eventually by the bankruptcy of the US bank Lehmann Brothers in September 2008, hit Wales as part of the UK badly and led to the cessation of the launch of the potential daily newspaper, called Y Byd “The World” in February 2008. Wales has so far not recovered from this economic blow and faces further negative developments. As such, the year 2008 witnessed another wave of emigration of young Welsh labour. In addition, for commercial reasons, an increase in English-language programmes on the Welsh television channel S4C was strongly demanded by officials and called up language campaigners to resist this new threat to the language. At the same time, a plea for English in the Eisteddfod was made, an institution, first recorded to be held in 1176 and revived in 1789 and since 1861 (Stephens 1997, 227) conducted as a national and annual cultural competitive event in order to promote Welsh language, culture and commerce. For the same reasons, the year 2009 featured ongoing closures of small schools, i.e. Welsh-medium schools in rural areas and of public institutions like post offices. A climax in the dissolution of Welsh-language institutions was reached in 2010 when the Welsh Department in the first university college of Wales, Llanbedr Pont Steffan, was closed down.3 Furthermore, 3

The official version is, of course, that the Welsh Department was merged with Trinity College Caerfyrddin. However, looking at what is taught by whom it becomes clear that this is a distortion of reality as most members of the Llanbedr-

Welsh between Stability and Fragility

43

after demands to increase the number of English-language programmes on the Welsh channel S4C, the broadcasting station was further threatened by envisaged budget cuts of 40% in 2010 and possible merger with the BBC from 2013. In addition, despite its “equality of treatment status” with English in public affairs since 1993, translations of English official speeches and documents into Welsh at the National Assembly for Wales were only available three to five working days after their English original were available. Furthermore, bilingual juries were still blocked by the UK government in 2010 and people could and did lose their jobs when caught speaking Welsh in private companies.

Resistance to reduced language use, decline of the language and its status Having failed in the last big uprising against the English led by Owain *O\QGǒU LQ -1410, the Welsh seemed to have based most of their resistance against English dominance on the language battle (Heinz 2010, 25-42) and focused rather on cultural combat since, with the exception of minor rebellions and economic fights in the 19th and 20th centuries (see below). Indeed, fighting for the survival of the language may impose measures influencing social structures. In the 20th century, actions aiming at maintaining Welsh partly requested the breaching of common market rules. Unable to overcome powerful England in armed combat, the Welsh started their language and culture-based resistance early and, as a first result, the English Parliament was prevailed upon to pass an Act ordering that the Bible and Prayer Book be traQVODWHGLQWR:HOVKE\6DLQW'DYLG¶V Day 1567. Indeed, in 1567, the New Testament and in 1588 the Bible were translated, making Wales the only Celtic culture to achieve these languagesecuring tools during Renaissance times. In addition, under Elizabeth I, Acts were partly published bilingually between 1575 and 1580. In accordance with the concept of culture-based resistance, Sunday schools were organised and conducted in Welsh from 1789. In addition, as aforementioned, the Eisteddfod was revived in the 19th century leading to an intensive Welsh-language book production during the Romantic Age. As in other countries, Wales saw an increase in social activities in order to define itself as a separate culture in the 19th century. As such, organisations like Cymru Fydd “Young Wales” (literally “the Wales to Pont-Steffan staff lost their jobs and the teaching now focuses on bilingual education and not on Welsh and the Celtic languages and cultures anymore.

44

Chapter Three

be”),4 the Home Rule movement for Wales, was founded in 1886, followed by many others, as well as active working-class uprisings, i.e. the Rebecca and Merthyr risings. However, in particular the latter largely excluded the language and only individuals posed the national question or praised armed combat in general.5 The language issue was mostly maintained by the cultural movements and educationalists.

The 1960s: Increasing social pressure to safeguard the language Despite the disadvantageous developments mentioned above, the 1960s formed the foundations for a rather successful language battle in the 20th century. It was a period which witnessed an economic recovery with more industries, e.g. cars, chemical industry, flourishing (mechanised) agriculture and house building, Welsh businesses, like bookshops, cultural enterprises, rock groups (from 1964), a record label, a festival boom in the arts, e.g. music, literature (novels, prose, plays, Anglo-Welsh), new leisure activities and pub-life, theatre, and sports. One outcome was the foundation of many, at least partly, Welsh-supporting institutions, e.g. Uwch-Bwyllgor Cymreig “Welsh Grand Committee” in 1960, Cyngor Llyfrau Cymraeg “The Welsh Book Council” in 1961, Cymdeithas yr Iaith “The Language Society” in 1962, the Swyddfa Gymreig ”The Welsh Office” in 1964 with a Ysgrifennydd Gwladol “Secretary of State” in 1966, who was a full member of the Cabinet in the British Government, and the Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru “The Welsh Arts Council” in 1967. First successes for the re-establishment of Welsh were the Elections (Welsh Forms) Act, passed in 1964 and allowing for Welsh versions of official election forms, and the Welsh Language Act 1967 which permitted Welsh in some lower law courts in Wales, governed the form of certain documents in English and Welsh (the principle of “equal validity”) and brought Wales back onto the political map as the name England was no longer to include this region anymore. In addition, the Gittins Report of 1968 recommended every child in primary schools in Wales should have the opportunity to learn Welsh. 4

The translation as “Young Wales” emphasises the international character of this movement since various and diverse movements in the whole Europe aiming at the then universal goal of self-government in their respective countries within a stable Europe called themselves in a similar way, e.g. Young Ireland, Young Poland (though the latter was also a literary movement, Heinz/Rosiak 2010) etc. 5 Cf. the poem “To Poland” by Thomas Jenkins (H. Williams 1839, 42ff.).

Welsh between Stability and Fragility

45

Further institutional stabilisation of Welsh in the 1970s and 1980s In 1970 Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin “The Welsh nursery schools movement” was founded and the Bowen Report from 1970 recommended bilingual road signs, a policy approved of by the UK government in 1972. Further institutions founded to strengthen Welsh, at least partly, and develop a Welsh consciousness were Cyngor Chwaraeon “The Sports Council” (1972), the Welsh Language Council to advise the government in language matters (1973), Cyngor Defnyddwyr ³7KH&RQVXPHUV¶&RXQFLO´ (1975), and BBC Radio Cymru in 1977. The Cyngor Rhanbarthol Cymreig of the “Labour Party” became Plaid Lafur Cymru in 1975 and in 1978, the Scotland Act and Wales Act were passed, offering a National Assembly for Scotland with law making powers, but only a pure administrational assembly for Wales. The subsequent referendum in 1979 coincided with the beginning of a new economic and political crisis in Wales and turned out to be disastrous for Wales as 79.7% voted against a Welsh assembly. Nevertheless, in 1982 the Welsh TV channel S4C was inaugurated which has also been broadcasting digitally since 1998. The Education Reform Act 1988 made Welsh a core subject in Welsh-medium schools, i.e. a compulsory subject for pupils aged 5-16 and a foundation subject in other schools. In 1988, Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg µWKH :HOVK /DQJXDJH %RDUG¶ started its advisory role in language planning for state institutions. After all these activities, the Welsh indeed saw a success for all their efforts by having the first increase in the absolute number of speakers in 1991 since the beginning of the decline of the language at the end of the 19th century, but in particular the beginning of the 20th century.

Limited (official) status for Welsh In 1993, a new Welsh Language Act was passed stating that “[…] Welsh and English are to be given equal status in the conduct of public business and administration of justice in Wales so far as it is reasonably practical”, i.e. this Act gave Welsh an official status of sorts in public affairs. However, it suffered from major drawbacks and, therefore, met resistance by language campaigners as soon as it was promulgated. Indeed, the Act meant the subordination of the Welsh language to English in any domain in which it dominated at that time, e.g. in Welsh-medium schools, which should then have had to be turned into fully bilingual schools. In private institutions, the use of Welsh could even lead to job losses. In addition, the phrase “so far as is reasonably practical” allowed for limits

Chapter Three

46

on using Welsh whenever finances were short, and this also in the conduct of official affairs. Nevertheless, Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg “The Welsh Language Board” since receiving statutory status in 1993 worked on language schemes for institutions and other public bodies, offered grants, promoted translations and translators as well as developed computer aided language processing until it was dissolved in 2011 following new legislation (cf. below). The overall improvement in the status of Welsh and its accompanying growing prestige played a major role in the new referendum for a Welsh Assembly in 1997, which was just about successful with 50.3% voting in favour of its creation (cf. Heinz 2003, 245ff.). The subsequent Government of Wales Act 1998 allowed the National Assembly for Wales to pass secondary and bilingual legislation in the form of Statutory Instruments, taking over much of the roles of the Secretary of State for Wales.

Continuing fight for the language at the turn of the century As pointed out above, further fights for the language have proved necessary at the beginning of the 21st century. Although, as mentioned above, 2001 saw the first increase in the percentage of Welsh speakers when 21% of the population in Wales, were enumerated as speaking Welsh, the language became more fragile featuring increasingly code switching with English, reduced morphology etc. (see below). As a consequence, in compliance with the concepts of language-orientated resistance and cultural nationalism, further pressure groups like Cylch yr Iaith “The Language Circle” (2001) were founded. The latter focused on the protest against anglicisation in Welsh media. In 2001 Cymuned “Community” was started, demanding property for Welsh speaking communities, thus insisting on interference with common market rules of the government (cf. Ireland and its state funded Irish-language publishing, Uí Laighléis 2007, 199-215). In 2003, the National Assembly for Wales launched the policy document Iaith Pawb “The Language of Everybody.” This policy had five principle aims and delineated how the Welsh (Assembly) Government (WAG, latterly WG) intended to increase bilingualism and to strengthen the Welsh language. These goals can be listed as follows: -

by 2011 to increase the proportion of Welsh speakers by 5% from the 2011 Census baseline, i.e. to ca. 25%;

Welsh between Stability and Fragility

-

47

to slow down the decline of Welsh in traditional Welsh-speaking communities, especially those where 70% of the population or more speak it; to increase the proportion of children in Welsh-medium pre-school education; to increase the proportion of families where the natural language of communication is Welsh; to increase mainstream Welsh-medium services, e.g. service provided in the National Health Service.6

Iaith Pawb also proposed the establishment of a national database of standardised terms, which is as much required as would be the development and dissemination of a standard Welsh and the provision of teaching material for all kinds of education. Indeed, education was considered by some to be a weak point in Iaith Pawb (cf. Williams 2004, 26). However, the appointment of the Welsh Language Consortia, situated within the Welsh universities, seem to be the places where the hope for growth in Welsh language speakers derives from. Taking all these facts together, Iaith Pawb, despite its manifold weakness was a starting off point for an all-society-encompassing language policy, which is to allow – and this is implicitly expressed in its name – for “access to a more universalist, inclusive society and culture […] potentially available to all” (Williams 2004, 26), thus most clearly following the idea of unity in diversity. In 2009, the Welsh Language Legislative Competence Order transferred legislative competence in Welsh language matters from Westminster to the Assembly in Cardiff. As a result, legislation in the form of an Assembly Measure was formulated and approved unanimously by the WAG at the end of 2010, which gave Welsh the status of a de jure official language in Wales in 2011. In addition, under this Measure a Welsh Language Commissioner (or Ombudsman) was to be appointed, along with members of staff whose roles will replace that of the Welsh Language Board (cf. above), the principal aim of whom is to promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language, i.e. he/she is able to work towards ensuring that the Welsh language is treated no less favourably than English. The Commissioner DOVR KDV WKH SRZHU WR LQYHVWLJDWH DOOHJHG LQWHUIHUHQFHV ZLWK LQGLYLGXDOV¶ freedom to use Welsh with one another in certain circumstances. The Commissioner is supported by an Advisory Panel and a Welsh Language Tribunal (Sections 2-4 of the Measure). Moreover, Sections 11f provide 6

For further comments on this, see Mac Giolla Chríost (2005, 64-72).

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for further powers that the Commissioner and his/her staff can make use of that he/she deems appropriate in carrying out his/her official functions. Many of the subsequent Sections then list the complaints procedure available to Welsh language users who feel they have been disadvantaged when using (or not being allowed to use their language) and how they should approach the Commissioner and his/her staff with a complaint. The former Chair of the Welsh Language Board, Meri Huws, was appointed the first Welsh Language Commissioner by the First Minister, Carwyn Jones, on 6 October 2011.7 This Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 now also allows the use of this tongue in private premises, ideally without fearing penalty. However, Welsh speakers can still not insist on using their language everywhere in Wales, and may still be sacked when using it in private companies (Hickey 2011). Parallel to legal discussions to further develop the status of the Welsh language, a new strategy to promote Welsh as a vibrant every day language was drafted by the Assembly Minister responsible, Alun Ffred Jones, in 2010 called Iaith Fyw, Iaith Byw “A Living Language: A Language for Living.”8 It aims at building on the achievements of Iaith Pawb to increase the numbers of Welsh speakers throughout Wales and at VXSSRUWLQJWKH*RYHUQPHQW¶VYLVLRQRIDWUXO\ELOLQJXDO:DOHV Among the key recommendations of the strategy are: -

to create Language Development Areas across Wales in partnership with local authorities, mentrau iaith,9 and other organizations; to develop a Bilingual Towns and Cities project to promote the use of the language in urban settings; to develop a Welsh Language Delivery Plan for the 0-5 age group.

It is hoped that such measures will lead to the creation of a wide range of opportunities for the use of the language to become a day-to-day activity again. This is indeed important as the chance to use Welsh outside the classroom is still limited, unless one is employed in Welsh mediumeducation or culture, works as a translator or in the public sector. It is good 7

http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/welshlanguage/2011/111005commissioner/?lang=en.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/wales/newsid_9607000/9607771.stm. 8 http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/welshlanguage/2010/101213IaithFyw/?lang=en. 9 /LWHUDOO\ µODQJXDJH YHQWXUHV¶ 7KHVH DUH ODQJXDJH ERGLes funded by the former Language Board (see above), specifically developed for the promotion of Welsh in certain institutions and companies.

Welsh between Stability and Fragility

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to see that officials recognised that speakers of Welsh must be inspired to use Welsh, must develop confidence in using it and should see its actual use not only as a commonplace, but rather a matter of pride.10 This would be a step forward in approaching the normalisation of the language. Such goals may be achieved by developments like the new Welsh Language University (Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol), which opened in October 2011.11 It is to qualify students studying through the medium of Welsh in a wide variety of subjects and has already recruited a large amount of staff, with a total of 100 appointees expected within three years. Critics maintained that the inauspicious start of the University was something to be critical of, yet it is possible to consider this another small step in helping maintaining the prestige and status of the Welsh language – and indeed normalising it in the field of higher education. Taking all these factors into consideration, and studying the status of the Welsh language in the second decade of the 21st century, it looks as if it – eventually enjoying official status and also prestige among the population after centuries of oppressions – looks safe. The language partly serves as a means of communication in domains hitherto the sole preserve of English. However, when evaluating its actual vitality, questions as to its chances of survival remain. This is the reason why ideas of forming the one or the other Bro Gymraeg (Y Fro Gymraeg “the Welsh-language district,” cf. the model of the Irish Gaeltachtaí in Ireland) have recently been re-formulated in order to allow and guarantee the use of the language with its historically adequate features and forms.12 This problem area is addressed in the following.

Development of linguistic insecurity Apart from putting a language on a firm legal footing, it is also essential to develop its historically grown forms in order to enable it to serve its identity and cultural functions (Heinz 2003b, 267-288). However, in the 1960s a functional approach was generally adopted in the UK in teaching, i.e. the teaching of grammar was eliminated from the classroom,

10

http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/welshlanguage/2010/101213IaithFyw/?lang=en. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-15169324, with its home page at http:/ /www.colegcymraeg.ac.uk/en/thecoleg/. 12 This idea was first developed by the pressure group Adfer µ5HVWRUH¶ FD,W was concerned with establishing a purely Welsh speaking area in the north and west of the country. The group is considered to be moribund from the mid-1980s onwards. 11

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with inherent disadvantages for morphological languages, which – additionally – cannot be heard and practised everywhere. In 1964, Cymraeg Byw “Living Welsh” (1965 Undeb y Gymraeg Byw “The Union of Living Welsh”) was introduced, i.e. a simplified language which was originally aimed at second-language learners. It was to regulate Welsh by avoiding any difficulties. Such intentions do immediately lower the prestige of a language. In addition, although intended for learners it was soon thought possible to implement it in the whole of Wales as an oral standard. Its subsequent description in grammar books and manuals developed prescriptive force once it was printed on paper and sold widely. An immediate linguistic result was the enforced use of periphrastic sentence constructions, the simplification of inflected verb forms (oversimplification according to Jones 1998, 356), the reduction of morphology of the regular verb, e.g. the substitution of the past plural forms by subjunctive forms as in canom instead of canasom; canoch for canasoch, canont for canasant; the subsequent weakening of the subjunctive and an enforced change of the number system, e.g. confusion in the use of mutations, a weakening of the vigesimal system. There is also a great confusion in the registers of the language, which comprise at least the following ones: -

Standard Oral Welsh Written Oral Welsh (Jones 1991) Living Welsh (Davies 1988, 200-212, cf. also Heinz 2003, simplified) Literary Welsh (Jones 1988, 125-204) Official Welsh (Jones 1988, 205-181) Broadcast Welsh (Ball, Griffiths and Jones 1988, 182-1999) Colloquial Welsh by Gareth King (cf. Heinz 1995, 284f., simplified) dialectal Welsh (Thomas and Thomas 1989) Written Welsh (Hughes 1998) Cymraeg Clir (Williams 1999, simplified Welsh for office use) Wlpan-Welsh (North and South, various authors and editions)

What is worse than this variety itself is that some of the registers presented only describe parts of the essential language properties. As such Written Welsh excludes the use of the verb completely. A noun focus of the VSO-language Welsh is certainly well known, but one would not really exclude verbs entirely. Moreover, most of them seem to focus on a simplification of the language, e.g. Living Welsh, Colloquial Welsh, Cymraeg Clir. The question arises why modern man, celebrating itself as

Welsh between Stability and Fragility

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the most clever and advanced ever, has to rely on simplified versions of a language in order to master it where all the previous and allegedly less educated people mastered the language without simplification. In addition, there is no one code for one concept. Having changed and adjusted one code, the others for similar concepts have further developed in the meantime, which – if we followed the logic of simplification – would ask for the next adjustment; eventually forming a language with completely new sets of features. For people using such a constantly artificially changed language this means a loss of identity markers. However, some descriptions in the latest descriptions of the language are simply wrong either way, e.g. when Cen Williams lists the following forms as registers (1999, 23): Yr wyf wedi dod Rwyf fi wedi dod Rwyf wedi dod Rydw i µGLGǒDG 5\GZLZHGLGǒDG Wi di dod Ddes i Deuthum

Whereas all forms including any variation of ‘wedi¶DUHSUHVHQWSHUIHFW forms, the two synthetic forms given are simple past, i.e. we are dealing here with different tempora and not with different registers. Only within the ‘wedi¶SDUDGLJPGRZHVHHDFKDQJHLQUHJLVWHUQDPHO\ZKHQµGǒDG¶ a northern dialectal form of ‘dod¶ LV XVHG 7KLV RQH H[DPSOH DOUHDG\ shows that uncertainty about the language is widespread even among those who produce official descriptions of the language and have themselves a very good grasp on it. There is a feeling that whenever an excellent, but linguistically untrained person is asked to describe its language, he/she is immediately put off as soon as English categories applied do not seem to suffice to describe Welsh (cf. Hughes 1998 on numerals). It is not understood that this is a good and healthy sign of a language, which – belonging to a different language family and featuring various non-IndoEuropean properties (Heinz 2008, Isaac 2011) – has a completely different set of grammatical categories. Instead of being proud of them and further developing them as the Welsh do with their highly intricate poetic metres linguistic inferiority is shown and a claim for simplification and non-use of Welsh made (Hughes 1998, 7.): a home-PDGH µ:(/6+ 127¶ FI http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/themes/society/language_educati on.shtml). This is certainly, though not only, also a result of the current

52

Chapter Three

economic situation, where teaching, researching and describing the Welsh language in the higher education sector is greatly limited (see above). This as well as the fact that historically correct forms are termed “traditional,” e.g. the vigesimal system in Welsh, severely harm the prestige of the language. If in an age where the mainstream media are obsessed with youth and fun and where we witness a growing number of neo-speakers (cf. also in Breton, Cornish and Scottish Gaelic, Hornsby 2009), descriptions like “traditional” and “difficult” are used for natural Welsh properties, then it is clear that a drive is developed where these forms are deliberately avoided in order not to be stigmatised as old-fashioned, backward (cf. http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=295) etc., which are common labels for minorities anyway. In addition, linguistic and socio-linguistic confusions are likely to aggravate if there are no manuals for second-language learners in the classroom, which has been the case since the Education Reform Act 1988. It is not surprising therefore that it was reported in 2010 that the quality of teaching Welsh was decreasing. These developments are also well reflected in the following quote: >0@DHJHQKHGODHWKJ\IDQREODQWZHGLP\QGWUZ\¶QK\VJROLRQEHOODFKKHE rithyn o glem am ramadeg, gan fod y drefn addysgu yn gwgu ar J\IOZ\QR¶U IDWK EHWK 0DH¶U *\PUDHJ KHGGLZ \Q GLRGGHI \Q HQE\G R¶U KHUZ\GG DF \Q VLFU QL DOO OOHLDIULI LHLWK\GGRO PHJLV DJ ǔP QL IIRUGGLR GLEULVLR¶U LDLWK VDIRQRO