Welsh Journals

THE PERSONALITY OF TOWNS. Dr. Johnson, possibly the greatest authority on the meanness, or otherwise, whether of Towns or Scots- men, was, I believe, impressed by the fact that Denbigh in his day was no mean town. I have not always found myself able to agree with the great Doctor, and my first impression of Denbigh, so far as I can remember, could not have been expressed quite adequately in his negative compliment. For me, at that time, Denbigh was practically the Castle. When he decided that Denbigh was not a mean town. Dr. Johnson was also probably thinking of the buildings, or rather of some of them, for there must have been parts of the town in his days, as in mine, which were certainly mean enough. Still, the dominant impress- ion seemed to exclude meanness, and if I were allowed positively to present Dr. Johnson's negative appre- ciation, I should say that Denbigh was and is-proud, the creation of the rock upon which it stands. Not far from Gwaenynog, a mansion outside the town, where Dr. Johnson used to stay, there is a monumental erection, inscribed to the effect that it was raised to commemorate the fact that its site was a favourite haunt of the Doctor. The erection is known in English as Johnson's Monument," and in Welsh as Bedd y Ci." I have never been able to discover whether the Welsh name is historical, or merely humorous. I simply allude to the matter as being indicative in two ways of the Denbigh pride of which I have spoken. Here is a town which was honoured by the presence of a great man, and which, through one language, would remind you of the fact, while, by means of the other, leaving you in doubt whether the fame of a certain nameless dog has not really been usurped or whether it was meant to be suggested that the memory of the nameless dog was potent against all comers. This uncertainty is, I submit, a characteristic of the Denbigh pride. There are in the Vale of Clwyd three ancient garrison towns, namely Denbigh, Rhuddlan and Ruthin. Rhuddlan is to-day a mere village, sur- rounding its ruined though picturesque castle, but its inhabitants will never speak to you of it as a village. They speak to you in urban, not to say urbane, terms, of their Town and if you happen to live a mile outside, they condole with you in view of the dangers of life in the Country." Thus, at Rhuddlan, you are yet in the thirteenth century where Rhuddlan was a privileged town, and when its inhabitants rarely returned from a country trip not undertaken in No. 1. DENBIGH. numbers. Ruthin, on the other hand, still possesses a gaol and an inhabited castle and the most aspiring of its female population address you in terms which, so far as language and dialect will allow, approach the latest aristocratic affectations, as casually heard in all their glory, or as recognised after having filtered through a necessarily uneven variety of attentive ears and mouths. But Denbigh, with its ruined castle, its orphan school where you do not find many orphans, and its modern printeries. is different. It speaks of the Town and Country, of course. As boys, we of the country were called country lumps," with the result that frequently those, who dared so to address us, carried home upon their heads what might accurately have been described by means of the same term. This urban consciousness it no doubt learnt in the old garrison days, for its terms are yet mostly English, and the Welsh were really not town dwellers. But Denbigh does not take its manners, as it were, from the aristocratic entourage, and it has no lingering terror of the open country, which still supports its market and formerly used to support its many tailors and shoemakers. Its pride has, no doubt, a historical basis, but between that basis and its emergence into light, there intervenes, so to speak, a number of rooms some of them empty and ruined, others stored with furniture of various origins and fashions. It is the garrison spirit, stranded by the growth outside the walls, or the outside development tainted by the garrison spirit, if you prefer that. Denbigh owes its corporate existence to the castle. and has a dim consciousness of that fact. It fought a long battle with that castle and its walls, originally hovering round them in the well-wooded country and cutting every stray throat from within. Then, it was gradually attracted to settle outside the walls, slowly overcoming them, invading the sacred enclosure itself, and forming the modern town. Its absorbed elements to-day include the names of many families of the feudal period. New ideas and movements came. swaying and moulding the mass, and completely covering up the older tradition. Denbigh played a leading part in the formation of our modern demo- cratic movement. Practically within the old walls, the language formerly shut out of that enclosure became, through the exertions of a descendant of a family known in North of England feudalism and in the beginnings of modern commerce, an instrument for