Tag Archives: cymreictod

Dwynwen and ‘Dwynwen’: troubled love and patronage

Aside from its association with some Scots poet or other, 25th January is, as we all know Dydd Santes Dwynwen – the day of St Dwynwen, ‘patron saint of Welsh lovers’ or ‘Welsh patron saint of lovers’, depending how exclusive or expansive one is feeling.[i] It is a funny old business, this celebration of Dwynwen: a mix of medieval poetry – [see Dafydd ap Gwilym’s invocation of Dwynwen here in Welsh and here in translation] -, historical snippets, (not-so-old, somewhat inconsistent, and sometimes nasty) stories and the modern cultural politics of Cymreictod, (proud) Welshness. If Dwynwen is new to you, the place to start is Dylan Foster Evans’s piece here. To summarise, the now-standard story features a 5th C Welsh princess, a suitor pressing for sex, a divine intervention involving ice cubing, a prayer and a retreat to a convent. The Dwynwen-related story which I came across recently, and have decided to inflict upon all those stumbling over this page, is a bit different: neither as magical (no ice cubes, no wishes) nor as attempted-rapey as the St Dwynwen story itself, but I think it has some pondering points nonetheless.

The year is 1904 and the scene is the National Eisteddfod, this time taking place in (Y) Rhyl, a seaside town in North Wales.  As was customary, the in-crowd at these affairs, the Gorsedd of Bards, headed by the Archdruid, Hwfa Môn, were admitting various notables to their order. The first so admitted as an honorary ‘Ovate’ (ofyddes) was one of Queen Victoria’s many grandchildren, Princess (Marie) Louise of Schleswig Holstein.[ii]

Princess Louise did not obviously have any connection with Welsh culture. As a letter reveals, she had not known about the Gorsedd before the visit in question, and, in her response to an address by the town clerk of Rhyl, at the Eisteddfod, she had noted that this was her first time at such an event. There was no requirement of proficiency in Cymraeg at that time, for acceptance by the Gorseddd, nor, indeed, was such a requirement imposed until pretty recently, and, though she had some other languages, including, of course, German, she was not a speaker of Yr Hen Iaith. Her 1956 memoir, My Memories of Six Reigns,[iii] says nothing about the Eisteddfod, or Welsh culture. I have seen no evidence of a lasting interest, either. Nevertheless, she was apparently cheered, and made a good impression. She sent Hwfa Môn a signed photo of herself, and some pictures of the Gorsedd which she had snapped, receiving in response a short formal poem in Cymraeg, an englyn, ‘Englyn I “Dwynwen”’,[iv] which perhaps somebody translated for her. And when HM lay dying the following year, the Hon Mrs Mary Hughes of Kinmel, a royal lady in waiting, who had also been Gorsedded in 1904, was a keen enquirer after his health. That is all my quick research foray could unearth, as far as her post-Eisteddfod connection with the Gorsedd was concerned.

All slightly irksome from a political and cultural point of view, perhaps, this toadying to a woman because of her royal lineage, but what has the incident to do with Santes Dwynwen? Well, along with having a ribbon bound around one’s arm (a ribbon which may have been green or blue or red, depending which account is consulted!) one of the perks of being received into the Gorsedd circle was and is the bestowing of a by-name (ffugenw), and the princess (hardly short of names, already having been given this little list: Franziska Josepha Louise Augusta Marie Christiana Helena!) was given the name … Dwynwen. Little explanation was given for this choice, in the newspapers which picked up the story.[v] It did strike me as rather intriguing, though.

To the extent that newspapers commented on the name at all, they emphasised non-christian interpretations. For the Chester Courant, the name Dwynwen signified ‘the British goddess of love’, and elsewhere, she was ‘a goddess known to the mythology of Ynys Môn [Anglesey]’ or ‘the Celtic Venus’. Some of those present at the Eisteddfod would have known the tale of Santes Dwynwen, and her designation as nawdssantes cariadon – patron saint of lovers.[vi] ‘St Dwynwen’ was in hearts and minds in Wales, as can be seen from the fact that an imposing  cross with an inscription to ‘St Dwynwen’  had been erected on Dwynwen’s ‘island’, Llandwyn, as recently as 1897. Hwfa Môn, as both a ‘descendant’ of Iolo Morganwg and a native of Ynys Môn, cannot have been unaware of her story. So, why the choice of ffugenw for the princess?

Was the association between Dwynwen and Louise a nod to her sad marital history? Married to a German royal, one Prince Aribert of Ansbach, in  1891, her marriage did not go well. In her memoir, Louise refers to her love life in quite moving terms, calling her marriage ‘a sad and tragic chapter’ and something which she ‘thought was going to be so perfect’, but which ‘ended, alas, in disaster’ (p. 110). There are no juicy revelations, or nothing which would get modern readers excited, but it was probably quite something, in 1956, to have a princess saying that:

‘As time went on, I became increasingly aware that my husband and I were drifting father and farther apart. I had no share in his life; there was not that real companionship and understanding between us, which, after all, is the true foundation of a happy marriage. In fact, I was not wanted, my presence was irksome to him, and we were two complete strangers living under the same roof. We occasionally met at meals and when we had guests, otherwise days might pass without our ever seeing each other.’

And that she had moved from being an ‘enthusiastic girl’ to a ‘disillusioned woman’.

(Louise c. 1890, portrait by Josefine Swoboda)

Aribert and Louise’s nine-year marriage was annulled by her father in law, who apparently had the right to do this arbitrarily. I have to say that I am not on top of the detail of Ansbach family law (fascinating though I am sure it is) but the use of the terminology of annulment suggests that, as far as that law was concerned, it was as if the marriage had never taken place. Louise, however, took seriously the fact that she had been married before God, according to the rites of the Church of England, and did not, apparently, seek another husband, but accepted a single life. Aribert lived on until the 1930s. Was the choice of ‘Dwynwen’ an allusion to her lack of luck in love, or her need of the aid of the nawddsantes cariadon?

Whether or not it had that ‘spin’ to it, there is a bit of a parallel between Princess Louise and the Santes Dwynwen of the standard story. That Dwynwen, after the whole block of ice and praying business, went off happily to spend her life as a nun. There was no possibility for Louise of entry into a convent, but we might see as slightly nunnish the way that she did go on to spend a large proportion of her time on all sorts of charitable endeavours and good works, as well as taking an interest in arts and crafts. Dwynwen was a patron saint, Louise a patron of various well-meaning organisations. A princess of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, was bound to be treated as rather more trivial than her fifth-century namesake. Reporting on her attendance at a craft/industrial event just before the 1904 Eisteddfod, journalists were unable to stop themselves focusing on the fact that she was ‘gracefully attired in a pale pink dress with a pink chip hat trimmed with roses’.  We hear a lot less about Santes Dwynwen’s outfits.

GS

20/1/2023

 

 

[i] For some reason, she is also associated with patronage of sick animals – not sure what sort of a spin that puts on Welsh ideas about love. Let’s not go there.

[ii] For some biographical details, see the ODNB entry, if you have access: K. Rose, ‘Marie Louise, Princess (1872-1956).

Much Druidic and Pan Celtic costumed business followed and surrounded all of this. The papers also report the competitions, including, interestingly, a prize for ‘the best chart or map showing the changes effected around the Welsh coast by the encroachments and recessions of the sea since the year 1800 – winner, Mr E M Lewis, Rhydyclaidy, Pwllheli. There was some grumbling about aspects of the Eisteddfod, and about the institution itself, as ever.

[iii] (slightly less controversial than Spare …) Marie Louise. 1956. My Memories of Six Reigns. London: Evans Bros. My memories of six reigns : Marie Louise, Princess, granddaughter of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1872-1956 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[iv] (nicely crafted but not that exciting, to my inexpert mind – images of sunshine etc.).

[v] The event was picked up by newspapers in  Wales, See, e.g., this and this. And, in Cymraeg, this. and also made an appearance in the UK national press: see Times Weds Sep 7 1904 p. 8. Manc Guardian Weds Sep 7 1904 p. 6.

[vi] For nawddsantes cariadon, see, e.g. this 1895 report.

 

Postscript

Continuing the comments on St Dwynwen and the phenomenon her day (see main post), there was the occasional comment on this in the UK press, from the 1970s. Somebody quickly used up one obvious title, in the 1972 Guardian article, ‘Funny Valentine’[i] (6th December, 1972) to give a rather sneery – and yet still interesting – account of the movement to ‘make St Dwynwen’s Day happen’.

James Lewis reported on the campaign by a Welsh publishing house, Y Lolfa, to drum up interest in the new or revamped feast, marketing cards on the model of the Feb 14th version. They were producing two ‘nice’ cards and one ‘naughty’ card. Obviously we wanted to know about the ‘naughty’ card first. This had a picture of ‘a young lady’s legs’ with the word rhyw x 6. This was a less-than-subtle play on words, because rhyw means ‘some’, but also ‘sex’ (and actually a number of other things, but let’s not over-complicate). So there you go – rude! Do wonder how many of those they sold, and how they were received.  The ‘nice’ cards featured one (rather sickly, to my mind, but perhaps that’s just me being jaded) pun Pwy sy’ wedi dwyn fy nghalon i? (Who has stolen my heart? – playing with the Dwyn in Dwynwen and the verb ‘to steal’), and a rather old-fashioned sounding Cofion cariadus ar Wyl Dwynwen (Loving greetings on the feast of Dwynwen. Although some doubted the likelihood that the cards would be popular, Lewis noted that Y Lolfa had been successful in their sales of a Christmas card of Prince Charles with ‘a greeting in pidgin Welsh’. Mocking the pretentions of the man who is now (Not My) King Charles III, or affectionate, I wonder.

[i]  Now there’s a song … apart from the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald recording of it, there are some splendid rhymes – e.g. ‘laughable/unphotographable’.

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

Mining and undermining: a ‘lady lawyer’ at the Glamorgan Assizes of 1908

(Normal medieval service will be resumed soon, but here is a last one from Welsh Newspapers Online for the moment, found on one of my searches during the recent AALT disruption).

In the few years before Covid 19 came into our lives, there was a lot of activity in relation to the centenaries, first, of militant suffrage campaigns, then the gaining of the vote for (some) women, and then the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919. (I had a small role in some of that, especially looking at how suffrage campaigning interacted with/clashed with ideas of Cymreictod (‘Welshness’), and, even more specifically, at events in my native town, Abergavenny). I am sure we have all become familiar with certain stories and images over the course of all this activity – iconic shots of the Pankhursts and that one picture of Helena Normanton and Rose Heilbron as silks in particular. It is comforting, in an unjust world, to see a fight in which ‘the good guys’ (sort of) (eventually) won – a reasonably straightforward cause and a definite ‘victory’. Nevertheless, it always seems to me that it is important not only to remember the winners – however impressive they may be – but also those who didn’t manage to smash down walls or transcend the limits placed upon them, those who experienced ridicule without eventual recompense, and who often seem to be lost in shadowy ‘before’, as we focus on the struggles we know to be connected to the attainment of particular equality goals. The thing is, there was a lot of ‘before’, and most of us probably have less in common with the ‘winners’ in these stories than with the shadowy multitude, whatever we may like to think.

It is harder, of course, to tell these other stories. They are likely to be less well documented: it is a question of looking for hints and snippets, and trying to interpret them, often ‘against the grain’ of the particular source, its tone and assumptions. Here is just one, which I found quite telling, and useful in thinking about narratives around the removal of the bar on women working as lawyers.

An article in the Weekly Mail for 11th  April 1908 is headed ‘Young Lady Lawyer’.[i] It is not, obviously, about a woman officially employed as a legal professional – that would not be conceded as a possibility until after the passing of the 1919 Act –  but about a woman acting in a somewhat analogous fashion. The legal matter was a case at Glamorgan Assizes, between William Watkins and William Burchell Rees (the two men identified geographically, in classic Welsh style –  ‘William Watkins, Crofte, Brynamman’ and ‘William Burchell Rees, Godregraig, [=Godre’r Graig] Ystalyfera’) over mineral rights (i.e. coal – it’s South Wales, after all) in Camarthenshire. There were professional lawyers, including a KC, on the plaintiff’s side, but the defendant acted ‘in person’. The newspaper report, however, though it found much of the case ‘dry and uninteresting’, makes much of the assistance given to William Burchell Rees by ‘a young lady’.  It notes, but with less interest, the fact that the defendant himself had clearly become familiar with quite a lot of law in this area, preferring to concentrate on the fact that his daughter ‘a girl of about nineteen summers’ was ‘at his side, prompting him’ as he questioned witnesses ‘on the intricate legal and technical details involved’. What an interesting juxtaposition – daughterly duty, properly assisting rather than speaking, and yet (somewhat unnaturally?) conversant with legal and technical detail, to a greater extent than her father, and (shrewishly?) ‘prompting’ him. She also ‘took copious notes’ during the hearing.

The report notes that this was not the only occasion on which ‘Miss Rees’ (we get no more) had been involved in legal business. In another legal case from the same area, she had been said to have ‘extraordinary legal knowledge’, and a certain Mr Abel Thomas had said that he had had ‘great pleasure’ in cross examining her. Furthermore, apparently, one judge (Bray J) was said to have wanted to be in charge of the case, in order to see her, but it had been assigned to another judge. So it sounds as if Miss Rees was a curiosity, a strange prodigy, and perhaps a focus of creepy desire from male lawyers and judges.

Miss Rees was called as a witness, by her father (I warm to him somewhat – he clearly thought highly of her). The judge asked, charmingly, ‘What is she?’, and her father responded ‘I hope some day she will be called to the Bar.’ This was greeted by incredulity on the part of the judge, and laughter in court.

This, then, was the sort of reception given in 1908 to the idea of a ‘young lady’ aspiring to be a professional lawyer. In this environment, the change which would come in 1919 was far from inevitable, and I think that this low-level ridicule, and belittling, and those on whom it was focused, should be integrated into overall narratives of the beginnings of women’s entry into the legal profession. How wearing it must have been. Not only could she not act as a barrister, but even her informal help to her father was met with a fragile hostility and an undermining focus on her as an object of unseemly male fascination.

GS

26/2/2021

Update 4/3/2021

There is a portrait of this ‘interesting Welsh girl’ in another edition of the paper, in April 1908: AN INTERESTING WELSH GIRL.\|1908-04-11|Weekly Mail – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

Miss Burchell Rees seems to have been familiar with the inside of a court room, and with her father’s litigation: in a report from 1906, relating to Langer Anthracite Co. (Llandilo) v William Burchell Rees and Edgard Rees, her father is reported to have been accompanied to court by ‘a young girl’: A LLANDILO CHANCERY ACTION|1906-03-24|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales) (I am assuming that it is the same ‘young girl’). Possibly by way of explanation of her presence, her father is reported to have said that he was ‘a Welshman, and rather deaf’ and ‘could not afford counsel’. This seems to be evoking ideas of women as carers, rather than (entirely) presenting her as some sort of legal assistant. Earlier still, as a ‘schoolgirl’, her ‘remarkable knowledge of law’ was remarked, with regard to yet more family litigation, in 1904: STARTLING CHARGESI|1904-08-17|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales).

This last report has some very interesting material on gender and coal mining, and also gives us this: ‘An interesting witness was Florence Mary Rees, a girl of sixteen, who showed such a remarkable familiarity with legal formula [sic] and documents that the judge elicited from her that she studied law as a hobby, had a law library, attended police courts, because that was her delight, and hoped eventually to turn the knowledge she thus acquired to good account by becoming a lady lawyer’. I wonder if she might have been inspired by reports such as those relating to aspiring lawyer (and one who ‘made it’, Ivy Williams: LADY LAWYER AGAIN.I|1903-12-16|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)  It sounds as if Florence’s father was something of a self-taught lawyer himself. More details of the rather bullying questioning of Florence can be seen here: ^°0LGIKL’S KNOWLEDGE OF LAW.|1904-08-20|Weekly Mail – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

Certainly, William Burchell Rees was no stranger to litigation: his name appears in several other law-related reports, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, e.g. IA WOMAN’S LOANS.1|1904-08-16|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales) IERASURE IN THE DEED|1906-07-28|Weekly Mail – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales) . If this is also him, he was still at it in 1916: LOCAL COLLIERY ACTION.|1916-11-18|Llais Llafur – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales). He seems to have scandalised the community with his personal life: UNPLEASANT CASE.I – i|1904-08-18|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

(Inevitably, by the way, there was a racehorse called ‘Lady Lawyer’ in the 1920s, which has featured heavily in my searches!).

[i] https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3378810/3378816/136/Our%20Lawyer

‘Friends and enemies: ‘suffragette’ incidents in Abergavenny, 1913’

Gwen Seabourne, ‘Friends and enemies: ‘suffragette’ incidents in Abergavenny, 1913’

(abstract of a paper given at the University of Bristol Law School, June 2014)  

The National Eisteddfod of Wales was held in Abergavenny in August 2013, and, leading up to it, there seemed to be particular reasons to suspect trouble: the militant suffragettes’ arson campaign was at its height. Wales, Abergavenny and the Eisteddfod had been targeted in the recent past, and two suffragette hate-figures, Reginald McKenna, the Home Secretary (and north Monmouthshire MP) and Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, were expected. An anonymous Welshman threatened, in a letter to the press, to shoot any suffragette attempting to disrupt the Eisteddfod. Extra police were hired and other security precautions taken.

 

There was, in fact,  no direct attack on the Eisteddfod. Suffragettes were, however, reportedly present, leafleting. There was some apparently genuine destruction by ‘militant suffragettes’ in Abergavenny (the burning of a cricked pavilion and a hayrick), and also an case of a young man from Abergavenny creating a hoax ‘suffragette’ incident in nearby Llangattock shortly afterwards.

 

Until comparatively recently, there was an accepted narrative that suffrage campaigning, and particularly militant violence, was largely not acceptable to liberal, nonconformist Wales. It was not, however, entirely true, and it bears some reconsideration: see the painstaking work of Beddoe, Masson, Johns and Wallace,

 

The Abergavenny cases are good correctives to a too simple view of Wales as not interested or hostile to ‘the cause’ and the WSPU militants in particular as disruptive middle class English imperialists trampling all over cherished Welsh cultural institutions. It is worth considering why setting up this opposition was and has remained attractive.

 

‘Welshness’ is not and was not, in any case, an unproblematic thing, so that it is unrealistic to expect (or construct) a single ‘Welsh’ response to, or view of, suffragettes. And if Welshness in general is problematic, it is particularly so in Monmouthshire in general, and Abergavenny in particular: one only has to look at the Abergavenny Chronicle’s reports of wrangling over the holding and financing of the Eisteddfod there to see that that is true.

 

It is interesting to note, by way of postscript, that the version of Welshness of the Eisteddfod, with its emphasis on the language would have its own ‘militant’ phase, half a century and more later.

[I plan to publish a full – length paper on this topic in due course. For further reading, see, in particular, A.V. John, ‘Run like blazes: the suffragettes and Welshness’; and R Wallace, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Wales, 1866-1928 (Cardiff, 2009).]