Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

The Celt from the beginning noticed the solemnity of the Anglo-Saxon nature, and proceeding on the assumption that a low ideal attained is better than a high ideal ignored, he out of pure mischief made this inability to laugh an Anglo-Saxon standard of moral goodness A good child, a good child, As I suppose you be, Never laughed nor smiled At the tickling of your knee. Obviously the bare-legged Anglo-Saxon could not laugh even when his knee was tickled. Very well," said the Celt, let that be accounted unto him for righteousness." The Englishman continues to take his pleasures sadly and he cannot help feeling that the laughing Celt is deficient in that fundamental virtue-the solemn face what time the knee is tickled. But the mischief of the Celtic nature is at its best in the following triplet Rain, Rain, go away. Come again another day. Little Charlie wants to play. Mark the irony I The forces of nature are sup- posed to obey the whims of Charlie. It is the Charlie- centric philosophy so dear to the Anglo-Saxon heart all along the ages. Everything must turn round Charlie. The Englishman visits the Continent and is sincerely surprised to find those foreigners not speaking English. It is the Charlie-centric philo- sophy taught him by the ironical Celt in the morning of his history. The sadness of it all lies in the fact that the solemn Englishman has taken these Nursery Rhymes so seriously, when as a matter of fact their Celtic authors' aim was simply to poke fun at their ponderous proteges. The fun begins when the Englishman comes across a stanza that seems to him illogical and irrational. One may be quite certain in such cases that he has lighted upon an instance of those flashes of inconsequence and incoherence that illumine the genius of the Celt. Did not someone call John Stuart Mill the typical Englishman of all time ? Now Mill's weakness lay in this-he could not jump from A to any letter but B. The Celt usually jumps from A to C and sometimes he takes a flying leap from A to Z without grazing the top of any intervening letter. The rest may reason and welcome, but it is the Celt that gets home at one bound. Take, for instance, the stanza As John and Jane walked through the lane One very pleasant Sunday, Said John to Jane Unless it rain, Tomorrow will be Monday." Let John's delicate use of the Conditional Mood pass without comment. Stuart Mill would have dropped dead, had he heard John's remark to Jane. By the great law of uniformity, John's an idiot," he would have said if he could have spoken at all. If it's Sunday to-day, whether it rains or no, it must be Monday tomorrow." No," says John Jones, Time for the sensitive Celt isn't something on a dial or a calendar. A fall of rain to-day (Sunday) makes all the difference in the world to my feelings. The law of Uniformity be hanged Rain to-day can make it Friday or Saturday tomorrow, if I so choose." Of course John is right; the Celtic temperament is above clock and calendar time. Unfortunately the clock and the calendar-those twin Anglo-Saxon gods-sometimes wreak their vengeance on the Celt for living sub specie eternitatis. It would take me too long to trace the weird, mysteri- ous touches that haunt some of these Rhymes. We meet, for instance, time after time with the mystical figure three," so dear to the Celt-" Three blind mice," King Cole's fiddlers three," &c. Why is it that the Celt is so profoundly attached to that number ? The Welshman has his three colleges; every Welshman has three chances in life-three shies, as it were, at the cocoanut of life every great Welshman from David Lloyd George down has three names. The Highlander loves the symbol of the three stars." The Irishman has his three-leaved shamrock. In a thesis rejected some years ago by the Welsh University I traced the origin of the three gilt balls hanging up before the modem pawnshop, and found that there were in the courts of the Druid Temples buildings, where the Druids, bards and other Welsh artists left portions of their attire and furniture from Monday to Saturday in exchange for the wherewithal to buy victuals for the Celtic temperament, that had to do all the singing and the writing and the preaching of Wales for nothing. I ask once more, who but the Celt could have painted the sunset pageantry of the verse There were comfits in the cabin, And apples in the hold The sails were made of satin, And the masts were made of gold. It is the ship of dreams that carries the good Irish- man to America, the good Welshman to the stars and the good Scotsman to all the rich green pastures of the two hemispheres. R.G.B.