Welsh Journals

when the experience of Welsh dramatists will have produced a stage speech in which it will be possible to retain adequate local colour, without narrowing the appeal to a locality." Mr. George Moore in his article on Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge' in the February number of the English Review throws some very interesting light on this problem. As he points out, Synge created what amounted practically to a small language understandable by everybody who knows English but sufficiently far removed from ordinary speech to give his plays an air that none others have-" that air of aloofness, of art. which we all deem necessary, though we differ as to how it may be obtained. Everyone acquainted with Synge's work will agree that he did fashion for himself an instrument of marvellous beauty and power for his dramatic thought, and it is significant that in his case, it was obtained through intimate contact with the life of the tinkers and peasants which afforded him his dramatic material. He played the listener laboriously for years. In his preface to the Play-Boy of the Western World he states that with one or two exceptions, every word in the play he had heard from the lips of his simple people. Moore describes him on one of his tramps in these words He told me how he kept on walking ahead thinking out the dialogue of his plays, modifying it at every stile after a gossip with some herdsman or pig jobber whomever he might meet, returning through the cold evening when the stars shone brightly through the naked trees, licking his lips, appreciating the fine flavour of some drunkard's oath or blasphemy." Synge felt that he was justified in making long stays in ugly towns and dirty villages if by doing so, he could collect three or four distinctive forms of speech. It was a careful and laborious method, like all real artistic processes, but the finished product was worth it all. Something of this kind may be done in Wales, specially in so far as the stage language of purely Welsh drama is concerned. We know that the English dialects of Wales are, generally speaking, ugly both in sound and in the written form, but it is not at all certain that this was not true in general of the English of the Irish pedlars and tinkers. It was by careful selection that beauty was secured in Ireland, and with patience and perseverance it may be done in Wales. One WELSH NEWSPAPER.-On Sat- Hundred urday, the 1st day of January, 1814, Years Ago. was published, the first number of a Newspaper, in the ancient British language, entitled SEREN GOMER, and continued weekly, price 6d. halfpenny. SEREN GOMER will contain a variety of intelligence, both foreign and domestic, political and religious it will give the ancient Briton, in his own language, an impartial account of the general conduct of the war, and of every battle in particular together with a faithful summary of the proceedings in Parliament, and the substance of every Act after it has regularly passed into a law. The transactions of the Missionary Societies at home and abroad and also, an account of the exertions and success of Christian Missionaries, will always receive the readiest insertions. The Welsh Bards are particularly solicited to send their contributions to SEREN GOMER, whose columns will be at all times open to any article, either in verse or prose, which may tend to illustrate, purify, and enlarge the Welsh language a language at one time the only one spoke in Great Britain, and a large portion of the territories of Europe. Com- munications, orders, and advertisements, addressed, post paid, to David Jenkin, printer, Castle-street, Swansea, will be thankfully received. Advertise- ments also received in London, at Mr. J. White's country newspaper office. 33, Fleet Street. From the Times, Jan, 24th, 1814. Thanks. Difficulties of space and of selection forbid our producing the many congratulatory letters and notices which have reached us. We may be allowed specially to thank journals outside Wales-like the Manchester Guardian, the Liverpool Daily Post, Public Opinion, and the British Medical Journal-for their benediction. Sir Henry Jones too must not mind our singling him out for public thanks in this fashion. We shall modestly quote but one sentence from his encouraging letter You want, if I interpret your purpose correctly, to make Welsh ideals more concrete, and get them to make their existence plain, not in what is said about them, but in the way they leaven actual life. It strikes one sometimes that Welsh people are not so real as some less ideal folk." Some correspondents have written to ask the name of the Editor. We assure our curious friends that he is a person of no importance. He simply relies on the young men and women of Wales to write for him, and on his readers to support him in the happy task of making their writings known. We thank the booksellers who, unknown to us, have helped splendidly with the first number. We must have many good friends in Carnarvon and Carmarthen, in Swansea and Aber- ystwyth judging by the repeated demands for copies. Their reward will come in the shape of an early article in our series on The Personality of Towns.