Welsh Journals

the dissemination of democratic culture. I know that, in fact, this struggle between the inner and the outer still goes on in most of the old garrison towns, but it has varying features, and Denbigh is highly individual. Lose yourself in a Denbigh crowd, and you will gradually become aware of its distinctive personality. You will soon observe that any fairly pronounced personal peculiarity will gain a man a nick-name, not, as a rule, without humour, but generally untrans- latable. The time for a study of Denbigh nick-names known to me has not yet come- I need hardly explain why. But that very fact robs me of my best chance of making of this sketch a living one. Your dress, carriage, speech, manner, and morals are open to pithy epitomisation, involving at the same time a discriminating analysis. You may dress well, and even follow the fashion, with moderation and not too soon. If you become immediately and fully fashion- able, you will be classed with those Ruthin things, or be suspected of moving at a dangerous pace. Attention to personal neatness, if accompanied by a quite laudable carriage, from a physical point of view, may earn you a more tolerant sobriquet. On the other hand .carelessness in dress or gait will bring upon you the inevitable penalty. The implied censure is by no means offensive. It is really the collective protest against anything that is supposed to savour of conceit, which is popularly felt to be a foreign product. As the Town is, generally speaking, an old one, house-pride has not been evolved. There are no long rows of houses having, as their only distinction, the evident attempt of each front window to out-do the next. The houses in the main streets are singularly unequal in size and shape, so that the competition of sameness is unknown. If you have made your fortune, you may build a moderate house outside the town without offending the collective taste; but you may also live in any part of the town without loss of self-respect. There is no single street in which you may be sure of finding all those admirable people, who have have a shilling a week more than that despicable class in the next street. Of course, you may have a better house than that next door. but that is about all the credit you are entitled to. You may have a piano, and even anti- macassars, if you like, or a gong to inform you that your dinner, as you are well aware by the noise and odour, is ready in the very next room but you had better not make too much show of them. Unless you really had a very big house, your gong would be the subject of irreverent jokes. It might even be suggested that you were not on speaking terms with your own wife. You are certainly entitled to have all the good things of life, if you care and if you can, but you are expected to assume towards them, at least, an attitude which can be placed anywhere between quiet dis- regard and open contempt. You can only take legitimate pride in the horse or dog which has won you a prize at the show. Even your parental affection is open to suspicion if over-demonstrative. Religion is the only matter in which you are sometimes publicly exhorted to slacken your self-control, and if you take the advice and do so, you may find that you are not regarded with great seriousness after all. I am sorry thus so completely to demolish that beloved creation of the English novelists-the emotional Welshman, but I never met him in Denbigh, nor anywhere else in North Wales, for that matter. In fact, the main characteristics of the personality of Denbigh are moderation and reserve, which statement may seem partly to contradict my claim that it has pride. That pride, however, is actually the pride of moderation and reserve. Not that it lacks cordiality, but it cannot express itself in over- intimacy. I have met old school-fellows far from home, even in a foreign country, and we have shaken hands as coolly as if we had simply met in the Castle or on the Glas Meadows. I have intimately known families whose members are remarkable for their attachment to each other, but who always meet and part, whether in joy or sorrow, without even the conventional hand-shake. These characteristics are the inheritance of an old town with a history; but of actual historical pride of the aggressive sort,-so much displayed by the parvenu in places that within thirty years have grown from small villages to immense cities,-there is little or none. At school, we were not even taught the names of the many great men of Denbigh-never a reference to the Castle even, to illustrate the alleged history we were taught. Yet, we boys had our traditions. Some day I must write an account of our local history,our standards and values in commerce, our seasons and places for games and pastimes, our rules of warfare. Suffice it now to say that we knew something of Sion y Bodiau, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Salsbri'r Sanau Gleision and Oliver Cromwell, of the Ffynnon waed (bloody well) in the Castle, of the Goblin Tower, and of the composition of what we called morter poeth" (hot mortar). But never have I heard any of those wonderful legends from grown up persons. They lived amongst the boys, and I hope they still live. We did not honour our totem in my days, for cwn Dinbych (Denbigh dogs) from an outsider's lip, generally led to trouble. though in times of stress we could sing