Folk-Lore of West and Mid-WalesDavies, Jonathan Ceredig
History
Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales
Davies, Jonathan Ceredig
Folklore -- Wales; Wales -- Social life and customs
In order to enforce the use of the English language in Schools the
Schoolmasters of those days made use of what was called the Welsh
"Note," which was a piece of stick about three or four inches long,
with the letters "W.N." marked on it, and in some places it had the
following words in full: "Welsh Note, a slap for every time you speak
Welsh." This "Welsh Note" was in reality nothing but a devise to find
out the children who spoke Welsh, as it was then thought that unless
the mother tongue was banished from Schools, monoglot Welsh children
could not learn English.
During the night-time, of course, the "Welsh Note" was in possession
of the Schoolmaster, who, when School began in the morning, gave
it secretly to one of the boys with directions to keep it until
he caught some one speaking Welsh, to whom he was to hand it over,
and this boy in his turn was to hand it over to another delinquent,
and so forth. The "Welsh Note" might during the day perhaps pass
through about twenty different hands; and at the close of the School
in the evening the Schoolmaster would call for it and the boy in whose
possession it was found got the first taste of the cane on his naked
hand; then he returned it to the boy from whom he got it, and he in
like manner was caned in his turn, and so on over the twenty, more or
less, each in his turn getting a taste of the cane, until the first
boy is reached, whose name is on the register. Then the "Welsh Note"
returns to the Schoolmaster, ready for use for the next occasion.
There is no "Welsh Note" at the present day, and the Welsh language
is taught in many if not in most of the Schools.
CHAPTER V.
THE FAIRIES (TYLWYTH TEG).
"In olde dayes of King Artour,
Of which the Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of Faerie;
The elf-quene with hire joly compagnie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede,
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo."
--Chaucer.
A book dealing with Superstitions and popular beliefs would be
incomplete without assigning a prominent place to the Fairies, or
"Tylwyth Teg," as they are called in Welsh. It is true that in Wales,
as in other places, the Fairies have become things of the past;
but even in the present day many old people, and perhaps others,
still believe that such beings did once exist, and that the reason
why they are not now to be seen is that they have been exorcised.
Many of the Welsh Fairy Tales date from remote antiquity and are, in
common with like legends of other countries, relics of the ancient
mythology, in which the natural and the supernatural are blended
together.
ORIGIN OF FAIRIES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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