New Welsh Review, in association with the University of South Wales and CADCentre, announced the winner of the New Welsh Writing Awards 2016: University of South Wales Prize for Travel Writing at a ceremony at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff on Thursday 7 July.

The Prize celebrates the best short form travel writing from emerging and established writers based in the UK and Ireland. The judges are New Welsh Review editor Gwen Davies and award winning travel writer Rory MacLean.

Mandy Sutter from Ilkley won the top prize for her re-telling of her mother’s story of growing up in mid 1960s white Nigeria through her own eyes, ‘Bush Meat: As My Mother Told Me’. She was given a cheque for £1,000 by judge Rory MacLean and her winning entry will be published by New Welsh Review on their New Welsh Rarebyte imprint this autumn and will also receive a positive critique by leading literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes at WME.

NWR editor and Prize judge Gwen Davies said ‘Travel writing creates bridges of understanding across physical and imaginative borders, between our own and 'other' cultures as well as between the past and the present. Mandy Sutter's Nigeria rises like a mirage from her story as a child there in the mid 1960s; her use of fiction techniques such as empathy and multiple viewpoints, especially her mother's adult experience as an ex-pat negotiating her own family's conforming views of race and class, create a complete arc of innovative concision.’

Co-judge Rory MacLean said ‘Mandy Sutter's 'Bush Meat' triumphs, in its lean prose and true dialogue, in its disarming humour, in its evocation of a family divided by sexism and racism in 1960s white Nigeria. In her story, Mandy stitches together the threads of memory to create a moving tapestry of lost life, building bridges of understanding across time and place, enhancing literature's ever-changing, ever-supple genre.’

Mandy Sutter grew up in Kent but now lives in Ilkley with her partner and a large black dog called Fable. She has co-written two books about the lives of Somali women, published in 2006 and 2007 and her first novel Stretching It was published in 2013. She has also published three poetry pamphlets with independent presses.

Second prize was awarded to Cardiff University PhD student Nathan Llewelyn Munday for his piece ‘Seven Days, A Pyrenean Trek’ that uses European creation myths to map the highs and lows of the grand narrative. A deceptively simple hike with his father becomes a timeless, scholarly, rich, human, engaging and heartfelt Odyssey. Nathan wins a weeklong residential course of his choice at Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre in Gwynedd, north Wales.

Third prize went to Welsh travel writer John Harrison for his piece ‘The Rains of Titikaka’ that tracks the rise and fall of the pre-Columbian city of Tiwanaku in Bolivia, highest city in the ancient world and the hub of a trading empire stretching from Chile to Peru. John wins a weekend stay at Gladstone’s Library in Flintshire, north Wales.

All three entries will be published in extract form in the autumn edition of New Welsh Reader (112) on 1 September and all three winners will also receive a one-year subscription to the magazine.

Watch the ‘Bush Meat: As My Mother Told Me’ animation video, produced by Emily Roberts in partnership with Aberystwyth University: Bush Meat: As My Mother Told Me (this will go live at 7.30pm on 7 July) and Shortlist Showcase with Interviews, Readings and Animation: Shortlist Showcase

New Welsh Review also announced the winner of their Best Travel Book Poll at the event, Losing Israel by Jasmine Donahaye (Seren), a moving and honest account of the author’s relationship with Israel, which spans travel writing, nature writing and memoir. Voted for by the public, Losing Israel was the overwhelming winner from a shortlist of three titles that comprised Wildwood: A Journey through Trees by Roger Deakin (Penguin) and A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor (John Murray). Losing Israel has also been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2016.

Winner of the New Welsh Writing Awards 2016: University of South Wales Prize for Travel Writing from New Welsh Review on Vimeo .

AmeriCymru Interview With Bernard Knight 4/17/12

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AmeriCymru: Hi, Bernard, and many thanks for agreeing to talk to AmeriCymru. In the course of a distinguished career as a forensic pathologist, medical doctor and barrister you have also found time to write more than 30 novels since 1963, in addition to radio and teleplays and non-fiction works. What was your main motivation when you began writing fiction? What inspired you?

Bernard: I suppose my literary career began when I was a medical student in Cardiff in 1949, which was after being first a farm worker in Gower and then a hospital lab tech. By default, I became editor of the student magazine, appropriately called ''The Leech'' - and as usual, being editor of any small publication meant you had to write most of it yourself. But novel writing started not from ''inspiration'', but boredom. When called up to the Royal Army Medical Corps for compulsory military service in 1956, I had not long been married and applied to stay in Britain – so with the usual military efficiency, they sent me to Malaya for three years! Here the bloody twelve-year ''Forgotten War'' against the communist terrorists was going on and I was posted to a small military hospital in North Malaya, a place a bit like MASH, complete with helicopters and a mad commanding officer!

My main recreation was reading books from the camp library – many were crime novels, but as the hospital pathologist, I found many of the forensic aspects so wildly inaccurate that I decided I could do better myself. I started writing one and when I came back to my first forensic job in London, I mentioned this to a court reporter, and was astonished to see my boast in the next day''s Daily Mirror!

The next day, I had a letter from a publisher asking to see my manuscript – I had only written a bit of it, so I dashed off the rest and he took it! It doesn''t happen like that these days!

After this first shot at crime fiction with ''The Lately Deceased'', I went on to write about half a dozen ''stand-alone'' novels, several based in South Wales. Following this, I also started writing scripts for radio plays for the BBC and then for television. I wrote the story-lines for a very popular BBC forensic series called The Expert, and did quite bit of TV work, even presenting some documentary stuff on forensic topics like skeletons. A few years ago, I was involved in two programmes where we examined the alleged bones of St David, kept in a chest behind the high altar at the cathedral in Pembrokeshire– unfortunately, we showed that they were six hundred years too recent to be our patron saint!

I did some Welsh Language programmes, too, though I''m not fluent, much to my sorrow. One was a series about spies at the missile range in West Wales and more recently I wrote the stories for Dim Clew, a forensic team game on S4C.

I even had a try at biography and came to New York to write the life story of Milton Helpern, the famous Chief Medical Examiner of NYC. The book, written as an autobiography, called Autopsy,was very successful, going into five editions and book clubs, though unfortunately my old friend Milton died just before publication.

As a full-time pathologist, working for the university and the Home Office, I had to do all my writing at night, sometimes until three in the morning – I once passed my resident mother-in-law, an early riser, on the stairs as I was going up and she was going down!

AmeriCymru: How do you choose your subjects and can you tell us a bit about your creative process?

Bernard: My abiding fascination with Welsh history tempted me to write my first historical novel Lion Rampant in 1972, the true tragic romance of Princess Nest and Owain ap Cadwgan. It''s still my favourite book, being so closely bound to real history. I followed this with another twelfth century yarn Madoc, Prince of America , about which more below. These two books really got me hooked on the twelfth century, which set the pattern for Crowner John.

The creative process is a bit of a myth in terms of ''inspiration'', in that once I get a general idea for a book, I first beaver away at the historical background, this research being the most interesting part of the job – in fact, I don''t really like the chore of writing, slogging away at a keyboard. It''s the research that grabs me, it took a year''s work to get the facts right for Lion Rampant.

The themes for the Crowner John books were very varied – the business of sanctuary, where criminals sought shelter in a church; tournaments ( the medieval equivalent of football, horse-racing and baseball); the harsh forest laws; witchcraft, piracy, tin-mining and of course, ever-present dominance of the Church.

I used to write a detailed synopsis of a book before I started, even if the finished product diverged considerably from it. I''ve got lazier now, but I still need to know where I''m going with a book, rather than the ''sit-down-and-hope-for-the-best'' approach that some writers seem to get away with.

I now start with a flow-diagram on a single sheet of paper, with characters called X,Y.Z, and build up a visual pattern with arrows for motives. Then I put names on the people and write a ''curriculum vita'' for each, so that I can establish continuity.

This is vital for a series like Crowner John, with fifteen books to handle. I have a large file which I call ''My Bible'', which has separate sections for the personal details of each character, then bits about costume, diet, locations, maps, etc, so that I can keep a grip on things. Even so, one makes slips and my many readers around the world are swift to let me know – for example John''s cook-maid was blonde in one book and brunette in another!

Anachronisms are another problem - I had an Email from somewhere in the world to tell me that I had screwed a booby trap to the lavatory wall, which was impossible because screws weren''t invented until the 14th century!

Even in dialogue, anachronisms are hard to avoid – can you say in a 1195 book that someone was a ''sadist'' – or a man was ''mesmerised'', when those eponymous words were still centuries in the future?

The hardest part of a book is the ending, which causes many otherwise good books to fall flat. In crime books, the old standby, the ''denoument'' beloved of Hercule Poirot, with the suspects gathered together in the drawing-room, is quite unrealistic in real life, but there is only a limited range of outcomes – the culprit is either arrested, shot, commits suicide or conveniently has a fatal accident. It''s ''not cricket'' to let him get away with it!

AmeriCymru: You are perhaps best known as the author of the Crowner John Mysteries. Care to explain for our readers what a Crowner was and did?

Bernard: As a forensic pathologist, my instructions – and payment – for an autopsy came from the coroner, an official always either a lawyer or a doctor, responsible for investigating deaths which cannot be certified by a physician as natural causes. It was with the idea of becoming a coroner that I also studied to be a barrister, as an insurance against not getting a senior medical post.

The word ''coroner'' comes from the Latin ''Custos placitorum coronae'', meaning ''keeper of the pleas of the crown''. The office originated in 1194, partly as a means to attract fines from the population to help pay for the ransom of Richard the Lionheart, captured in Austria on his way home from the Third Crusade.

Anything 12th century was of interest to me and after a bit of academic delving, I had the idea to write a one-off book about a fictional first coroner. I would have liked to have set it in Wales, but that was impossible as in 1194, we were still independent and had our own laws of Hwyel Dda – so I had to go to England and I chose Devonshire.

Most of the characters I used were real and actually held the jobs I portrayed, like Sir Richard de Revelle, the sheriff . There was no record of the early coroners, so I invented Sir John de Wolfe, a returning Crusader who was looking for a job.

The title ''crowner'' is a bit of cheat for 1194, as it was not used until the 14th century as a slightly derogatory nickname – Shakespeare uses it in that sense in Hamlet.

The coroner''s job was to hold inquests on all deaths that did not occur in the bosom of the family, including murders, suicides, accidents etc – and where possible, bring any culprits to justice. He had to attend hangings to seize the property of felons, take confessions from sanctuary-seekers, attend ordeals, examine assaults, rapes, robberies, fires, wrecks, catches of the royal fish (whale and sturgeon) and many other legal tasks, most designed to gather money into the royal exchequer, rather than let the local lords continue to use their own courts. Essentially, his job was to record every legal event and present them to the king''s judges when they circulated around the county towns to administer justice.

It seemed a good basis for an investigative story, as at least it really was the coroner''s job – not like the many old ladies, writers, aristocrats and priests that abound in detective fiction! I thought this was to be a single book, but it was so popular that the fifteenth will be published this coming August.

AmeriCymru: From the Wikipedia we learn that:- "Apart from John, most of the main characters actually existed in history and every care is taken with research and the creation of atmosphere, to offer an authentic picture of twelfth-century England. Most the places described in the stories can be visited by readers today, even the gatehouse of Rougemont Castle in Exeter, where John had his office." How difficult is it to weave a fictional narrative around the lives of real characters? What proportion of your time is spent on research?

Bernard: Amongst historical novelists, there is a divergence of opinion about whether you should use real characters in the books. Some say it is perverting history and also risks possibly blackening the name of nice folk. I don''t think this is valid, especially after 900 years, as everyone knows the books are meant as entertainment, not teaching - though many ''fans'' have told me that they enjoyed such a painless way of learning some history, especially about common folk. I always try to tell life as it really was - the squalor, the dirt and the poverty, as well as how people ate and dressed all those centuries ago.

My information comes from all sorts of sources – history textbooks, monographs, direct questioning of very helpful experts – and of course the Internet, though one has to be careful in accepting everything in Wikipedia, as you never know if some historical essay was actually written by some spotty kid in Idaho!

I am almost obsessional about authenticity and cannot use anything I know or suspect to be wrong. Some of my writer friends are not so fussy, saying that it''s only entertainment, but I go to considerable lengths to try to get it right, even though I still slip up some times.

For instance in one of the earlier books, The Grim Reaper, I had the bright idea of having my serial killer, a priest, leave a relevant Biblical quotation at the scene of each murder, such as ''The Gospel of Mark, Chapter Ten, Verse Six.'' However, before I had finished the book, doubts began to gnaw at me and after consulting some theological colleagues, discovered that I could not do this, as the Bible in 1194 was continuous! Chapters were invented by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13th century and verses came in far later as a printing convenience.

Everywhere I write about, I have visited. It''s important, I think, to ''walk the territory'' which gives you a far more realistic impression of the scene than looking at photos or reading descriptions. I have even been up on Dartmoor in the snow to visit the place where the Devon tin miners used to hold their parliament.

I also find it very satisfying to tread the same stones as my characters did, all those centuries ago, like the gatehouse of Exeter Castle, built by William the Conqueror as early as 1068.

AmeriCymru: Crowner John could be called an "ancestor" of the modern pathologist, in writing about the beginnings of your own field in the 12th century, was it challenging to translate your much more vast knowledge of pathology to John''s limited resources, the information or education he would have had and the circumstances he would have had to work under?

Bernard: I went out of my way to avoid using my forensic pathology expertise in the Crowner John books, though of course, my more recent Dr Richard Pryor series based in South Wales in the 1950''s depends entirely upon it. But writing all those Crowner John stories was really a form of escapism for me, and it would have been a ''busman''s holiday'' if they contained any significant pathology – as well as being a total anachronism!

I confine the post-mortem examinations of John and Gwyn to crudely testing rigor mortis to guess how long someone had been dead – they probably did as well in 1194 as we do now, as it''s a pretty useless test! As for wounds, both John and Gwyn consider themselves experts after a lifetime on the battlefield, but they go little farther than sticking a finger into a stab wound to see how deep it was!

AmeriCymru: You have also written seven novels under the pseudonym "Bernard Picton". Can you tell us a bit more about those?

Bernard: In former years in Britain, it was unethical for doctors to professionally advertise themselves in any way - even the first TV doctor used to sit with his back to the camera! When I started writing in 1960, I could not flaunt my forensic knowledge in my novels and scripts, so had to take a pseudonym. At the time I was living in an old pub near Cowbridge, which had been ''The General Picton'', so I took that as a pen-name. Later, Margaret Thatcher forced the professions to open up and there was then no reason not to use my real name.

After my first novel in 1962, I went on to write another six ''stand-alone'' detective stories, all with a forensic flavour, one of them a ''link book'' to go with a major BBC forensic series called The Expert. I wrote the plots and acted as technical adviser for it, which I have done for several such programs – not that the producers took much notice of what I advised, if it didn''t suit their preconceptions!

These early books used forensic ''hooks'' on which to hang the plot and were sited in a variety of locations, from Cardiff to Newcastle, from Cardigan to Leningrad – the last one based on a trip I made to the Moscow State Forensic Institute in 1965.

AmeriCymru: Lion Rampant tells the story of a Welsh princess, Nest aka ''Helen of Wales'', and Lord Owain ap Cadwgan, Prince of Powys. Care to tell our readers a little about the book and how Nest came by that pseudonym?

Bernard: After the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, England was rapidly conquered, but it took another 200 years for Wales to be completely subjugated, when Prince Llewelyn was killed in 1282 by Edward Ist – from whom, unfortunately, I am descended.

But in the flat lands of the south and west, the Normans swept in early and in 1093, Rhys ap Tewdwr, King of Deheubarth was slain by the conqueror of Brecon. His beautiful young daughter Princess Nest was taken prisoner and made a ward of King Henry 1st, who made her one of his many mistresses and by whom she had a child. Then he married her off to Gerald de Windsor, castellan of Pembroke Castle, by whom she had five children, starting a Fitzgerald dynasty that included a Bishop of St David''s and Maurice, a conqueror of Ireland, from whom John Fitzgerald Kennedy could trace his ancestry. Maurice took his father''s flag to Ireland, where it was called St Patrick''s Cross and is now part of the Union Jack.

One of Nest''s grandsons was the famous cleric and writer, Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald the Welshman) from whose pen we have such a great knowledge of Wales in medieval times – and her nephew was ''The Lord Rhys'', who held the first national eisteddfod in Cardigan Castle in 1176..

At Christmas 1109, Nest was abducted from Cilgerran Castle, high on a crag above the Teifi, which belonged to her husband. The hot-blooded rescuer was her second-cousin, Owain ap Cadwgan, Prince of Powys, who having heard of her beauty, broke into the castle with a small band of men and galloped away with Nest and her children, after setting fire to the keep. Gerald escaped ignominiously through the latrine shaft – and again Nest gave birth to a child, this time Owain''s.!

This started a full-scale war and for this, Nest was later known as the ''Helen of Wales'' after the classical lady of Troy whose beauty was supposed to launched a thousand ships. Years later, Gerald killed Owain in revenge and Nest went on to have more chilldren by another two Norman knights – quite a fertile lady!

I mentioned my other Welsh historical novel earlier, Madoc, Prince of America.This well-known legend of the prince of Gwynedd who was alleged to have reached Mobile, Alabama in 1170 and gave rise to the ''Welsh Indians'' always intrigued me. I wrote yet another novel about it, using all the available ''evidence''. It has now become a bit of an embarrassment to me, as some years ago I became President of the Madoc Research Association – actually a small group of folk who met monthly in a pub in Maesteg to drink beer and gossip about Welsh history.

Though the legend has been around since Tudor times, being originally plugged by them politically in order to contest the prior claims of the Spanish to parts of North America, it was brought to modern public attention by a book published in 1966 by Sunday Times editor Richard Deacon. He produced a great deal of convincing new evidence to support the story, but recent research has shown that he was a pathological liar who fabricated most of his supporting evidence.

I no longer believe in the story, other than accepting that there was a tradition in medieval Wales of a mariner who ventured out far into the Western Ocean - a far cry from a Welsh prince ( of whom there is no trace in any historical records) reaching the Gulf of Mexico and then fighting his way up to the Ohio River and then the Missouri to found the Mandan tribe.

As a legend, it''s fine, but so much nonsense has been added to the story that it now lies beyond any credibility. For a balanced view of the legend, read Professor Gwyn Alf William''s 1979 paperback called Madoc.

AmeriCymru: The third book in your Dr. Richard Pryor series, Grounds for Appeal came out last December.. The Dr. Richard Pryor novels are set in the Wye Valley in Wales and take place during the 1950s, how much of your own life and experiences went in to these stories?

Bernard: These books have had a long incubation period, as in the early ''nineties, I wrote a proposition for a television series about a Welsh forensic pathologist who went into private consultant practice. This was taken up by a Cardiff TV production company and we developed story-lines and sample scripts. However, when we hawked it up to London to the large network companies, they were not interested, a common phenomenon with anything Welsh taken to London!

As it was not financially viable without network contracts, it was abandoned, but a few years ago, wanting a change from the twelfth century, I altered the names and locations and turned it into a book, ''Where Death Delights''. (This is a translation of part of an ancient Latin aphorism that is displayed in the entry hall of the New York Medical Examiners Office)

I wanted to get away from the current beaurocracy of the British ''nanny state'', with all its stuffy restrictions about Health and Safety, Human Rights, Race Relations, Data Protection and write about the days when I started pathology in 1955, when detectives in long raincoats and trilby hats could stand gossiping in the autopsy room with a cigarette and a mug of tea!

It was sheer nostalgia, writing about those post-war days when life was still austere, but freer from endless controls and restrictions.

I invented Dr Richard Pryor, a former Army pathologist who after service in the Far East, had stayed on in Singapore until he got a golden handshake and came home to Wales. His old aunt had left him her house in the Wye Valley where together with a disillusioned government forensic scientist, he sets up a laboratory and takes on a variety of cases from South Wales and the West of England. In addition, I run a mild romance through it, as Dr Pryor not only has this glamorous scientist at his elbow, but also a demure secretary, a pretty laboratory technician and a visiting anthropologist who looks like Sophia Loren!

Like the first Crowner John, I meant it to be a ''one-off'', but it proved very popular and I was asked for another two, which have recently been published, called According to the Evidence and Grounds for Appeal. The cases are naturally fictional, but have strands of reality running through them taken from my forty-five years in the job and there is an element of both nostalgia and autobiography in them. I have to think hard to make the techniques consistent with half a century ago, but at least they are a bit more complex than Crowner John''s primitive methods.

AmeriCymru: A lifetime of experience in medicine generally and forensic pathology in particular would seem to give you a "head start" as a mystery writer, has that freed you in any way to concentrate more on plot and character than might a writer less knowledgeable? Has your real-life experience been plot-inspiring for you or have you found real life forensics experience useful in crafting fiction and have you based incidents in your fiction on real-life cases?

Bernard: As mentioned earlier, the Crowner John books were in no way related to my professional life, quite the reverse. But of course, the many other crime books, plays and a few documentaries depended heavily on my forensic knowledge, though I never lift real cases into my fiction writing. However, parts of old cases, made unidentifiable, certainly get grafted into the stories, especially in the Dr Pryor books, but in a fragmented way, picking bits from different cases so that overall, they are unrecognisable. For instance, in one Dr Pryor book, my murder was concealed by letting a tractor wheel fall on to the victim''s neck – this was an echo of a suicide method I saw many years ago.

One problem about being a forensic pathologist is that it makes it hard for me to enjoy other crime novels where the forensic aspects are so badly portrayed – and in the case of the endless ''forensic'' television programs, impossible for me to watch, as they raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels! The greatest offender is ''time of death'' where the ludicrously-accurate claims of the author''s pathologist are exasperating. I edit the only textbook devoted solely to estimating the time of death – it has 270 pages, costs up to £100 and basically says that it can''t be done except within a very wide margin of error!

AmeriCymru: You''re also a founding member of a group known as The Medieval Murderers which has, among other things, produced seven novels, can you tell us what that is and how it came about?

Bernard: Other than the ''big name'' authors, most crime-writers are in the ''mid-list'', meaning that though they are not Dan Brown or John Grisham, neither are they complete dumbos whose books soon end up in the charity shops. However, this usually means that the publishers will spend little or no money promoting our books, so about ten years ago, a few of us historical mystery writers decided to form a self-promotion group called The Medieval Murderers, to go around libraries, bookshops, clubs and literary events giving informal talks about our work, either in a full group or as ones and twos. The members were Michael Jecks, Susannah Gregory, Philip Gooden, Ian Morson and myself, later joined by C J Sansom and Karen Maitland. We even had T-shirts made with a bloody dagger on the front!

Then a year or so later, we decided to write a book between us, which was not just a collection of short stories, but a ''chain book'', where each member wrote a ''novella'' of about 20,000 words which carried forward a theme set out in a Prologue and then tied up in an Epilogue. Once again, this was intended to be a ''one-off'' but The Tainted Relic was so successful that we have done one a year since then, with the eighth out soon and two more in the pipeline.

The writing method was unusual, being organised entirely by Email, as we all live far apart – Ian Morson was in Cyprus for most of the time. In fact, he has made a collection of all the messages, which he claims is longer than one of the actual books!

We began by deciding on a theme – the first was about a chip of the True Cross cursed when it was stolen in Jerusalem during the First Crusade, which killed anyone taking it from its container. Then we each wrote a story about it, using the period and characters from our own series, the idea being to publicise these other books. As the oldest (historically and personally!) I wrote the first chapter, using Crowner John to deal with the relic arriving in Devon. Then I had to leave it somewhere at the end of my story where Ian Morson, next in line in the 13th century, could pick it up – and so on up the line, until the end where I brought the saga into modern times in an Epilogue.

None of us knew what the others were writing, all that mattered was that the object was handed on smoothly between us. Later books used a sword, an abbey, a book of Celtic prophesies and the alleged bones of King Arthur as themes for the stories.

AmeriCymru: Do you have a particularly favorite character of your own that you especially like or enjoyed writing? A particular book that you enjoyed writing or are most proud of having produced?

Bernard: I suppose Crowner John himself is my favourite, he was physically modelled on a well-known local barrister that I worked with, tall, dark and saturnine. I made him somewhat unimaginative and not endowed with a great sense of humour, but honest and faithful to his friends and his king. Every sleuth needs his Dr Watson, so I gave him Gwyn, a big, amiable Cornishman, together with a diametrically-opposite character in Thomas de Peyne, a little runt of a priest with a slight hunchback and a limp. Unfrocked for an alleged indecent assault, he is pitifully thin and poorly dressed and I have had literally scores of letters, Emails and personal comments from ladies who seem keen to mother him!

As I''ve said before, Lion Rampant is still my favourite book, perhaps because it was my ''first-born'' historical novel, but from sheer nostalgic pleasure, I think my Malayan novel Dead in the Dog, which comes out this March, is high on the list of my favourites.

I also like the post-apocalyptic book I wrote in 2003, called Brennan . I wanted a complete change from the Middle Ages and decided to write a parody of the historic Arthur story, by describing the leadership of a senior Army officer from a South Wales barracks, who is left to collect and protect the few survivors of a viral plague that kills almost all the world''s population.

It had good reviews, being compared with Stephen King''s The Stand.

AmeriCymru: Do you read fiction for pleasure and, if so, what writers are you reading?

Bernard: I am an obsessive reader, can''t sit down without a book, even in the toilet. I''ll read anything, even the phone book if I''m desperate. For many years I was a reviewer for the crime website Tangled Web, so regularly got boxes of books through the mail with no control over the titles. Then I was one of the Crime Writers Association judges for the Silver Dagger Awards for non-fiction crime - and the local public library sees me about twice a month for a re-load, so I''ve had a heavy literary diet for most of my life.

Hard to say who my favourite authors are, it depends on how I feel – Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, Michael Pearce, Leslie Thomas, Alan Firth, John Le Carre, Len Deighton, Somerset Maugham – the list is almost endless. I love spy books and some SF, as long as it''s not the current fad for gold-brassiered princesses from Planet Zog!

AmeriCymru: What''s next for Bernard Knight?

Bernard: I''m pushing eighty-one now and swore that the fourteenth Crowner John would be my last, but clamour from fans made me squeeze out another final one. I have another two Medieval Murderers projects ahead, but they are relatively short. I don''t fancy sitting down to hammer out books of well over a hundred -thousand words any more, but I''d like to do some short stories. Not much of a market for them these days, but maybe Kindle might be the way forward. A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story by invitation for a ''Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes'', called The Birdman of Tonypandy, about a pub landlord in the Rhondda who murders his wife. The editor put it last in the book, as he said that nothing could follow it!

I''ve also a yen to write something about the adventures of a Cardiff tramp steamer in the 1930''s, as I was born in Cardiff''s Grangetown and both my father and grandfather ''worked down the Docks''. I used to get rides during the war on ships between the lock gates and the berths which gave me a life-long affection for merchant ships.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Bernard: I know the US pretty well, having been there many times for medico-legal congresses, giving evidence in courts and visiting my many forensic friends, such as Dr Tom Noguchi, the colourful former coroner of LA . It''s a fantastic country, but I couldn''t live anywhere else but Wales, which is as much a part of me as my feet. To stand in the evening on a Pembrokeshire cliff or walk the lonely moors near the Teifi Pools is both peaceful and exhilarating. Everywhere you look, there is history, my history, your history. So all I can recommend is for readers to come back to Wales, for as long a time that you can manage.

Interview by Ceri Shaw ... Home ,,, Email

Works by Bernard Knight on Amazon

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This book surprised and delighted me in equal measure. At one point author Jon Gower observes that:-"The world of coincidence is uncharted mystery". This might be understood as the books theme as it charts coincidental occurrences in Buenos Aries, Oakland Bay and Cardiff bound together, albeit tentatively, by the onward progress of a paper boat. The boat, made of newspaper, is home to the mortal remains of Flavia, a former resident of Buenos Aries whose 'undead' body travels the globe inspiring scientific speculation and religious devotion in its wake.

In a recent interview with AmeriCymru Jon described the book in these terms:- "A friend said that it "mythologizes an Argentine woman's journey around the world" and that pretty much sums it up. The woman, Flavia, is in a sort of purgatory, neither alive nor dead. Her story becomes a myth which becomes a religion, a case of global Chinese whispers." Her condition is in some way a consequence of and a testament to the undying love between her and her former, still earthbound, husband Horacio with whom she used to dance the tango in the back streets of Buenos Aries.

In the course of her journey she touches a great many lives and creates a profound impression but it should not be thought that the book is without humour. In fact the final section, set in Cardiff is suffused with surreal humour and bizarre incident. If you'll forgive a rather long quote, here is Jon's description of the passing of 'Bloomers' , a famous incident in the history of Caroline Street:-

"Half way along Caroline there used to be a famous club called Bloomers but someone attacked it with a petrol bomb, burned it to the ground. In the Echo the day after the conflagration the stalwart cartoonist, Gren, had captured the moment in an exquisite image. Caroline Street with a gaping hole like a tooth extraction: above it, dwarfing all the buildings, is an atomic mushroom cloud and there are two men flying through the air above the caption 'Now that's what I call a curry.' There is much more in this vein as the seemier side of Cardiff's nightlife and it's culture of heavy drinking and toxic takeaways are mercilessly ( and humorously ) exposed.

If you were planning to give someone a book for Christmas and were looking for something 'different', then look no further. 'Uncharted' has everything:- pathos, humour and a pace that makes it 'unputdownable'. The book is , unfortunately, ineligible for a Wales Book of the Year Award in 2011 because Jon is on the judges panel. It surely would have been a strong contender for first place.

To mark the centenary of the battle of Mametz wood in the First World War, a North Wales author has published a new novel about the massacre.

Mametz is a powerful novel following the story of three Welsh soldiers – Huw, Cledwyn and Ephraim – and their path from Wales to the battle field in France.

Mametz by Alun Cob is Book of the Month with the Welsh Books Council and National Museum Wales for July 2016.

In July 1916 around four thousand soldiers from the 38th (Welsh) Division were killed or injured in the successful attempt to capture Mametz Wood from the German military. The Battle of Mametz Wood began on 7 July 1916. The wood was intended - by the generals, at least - to be taken in a matter of hours. In the event the battle lasted for five days as the Germans fiercely resisted the assaults of the Welsh Division. Mametz was part of the Somme massacre and was one of the First World War’s biggest battles.

Alun Cob says “This is a novel about the ordinary Welsh lads who went to the Great War and their lives leading up to the massacre at Mametz. The lads’ background and story are important – it’s not just a book about war.”

Mametz is the fifth Welsh-language novel by Alun Cob from Garndolbenmaen, Gwynedd, and is published by Gomer Press. “This is a timely, harrowing novel, full of humanity. It’s one hell of a story!” says the editor Elinor Wyn Reynolds from Gomer Press.

Mametz is now available from your local bookshop or directly from the publisher Gomer Press for £7.99.  To read a snippet from the novel log on to www.gomer.co.uk

Bibliographic details

Mametz by Alun Cob

Publisher: Gomer Press

paperback, 190 pages

ISBN 9781785620072

£7.99

Buy Tolkien And Welsh here

I like this book. It is challenging but accessible, clear and intellectually good fun.  At the outset, the author tells us that this is a “book by a linguist … making the topic accessible to a larger audience.” The truth of this is immediately found in his definition of the traditional Welsh poetic form the cywydd, which “ consists of a series of seven-syllable lines in rhyming couplets, with all lines written in cynghanedd, a concept of sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme.”

A list of relevant technical definitions that maybe be unfamiliar to the general reader are found upfront, where they are needed and chapter-end notes provide convenient references, additional material and relevant web links. Tolkien aficionados and linguists will be in their natural habitat although, being neither, I was thoroughly at home between the covers. Though not essential, as everything is translated, a familiarity with Welsh is useful, but the native Welsh, novice and monoglot American/English speaker will all find plenty to entertain/inform them, the chapters calling to mind short detective stories with often similarly surprising developments; the whole thing suitable for browsing or immersion.

As to J.R.R. and the Welsh Language, our author lets the Hobbit’s author speak:

 “I find the Welsh Language especially attractive.” At another time Tolkien adds that the Welsh components (of The Lord of the Rings) are what have “given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it.” And the quote Welsh people will find most endearing “… even though I first only saw it (Welsh) on coal trucks, I always wanted to know what it was about.”  Wales seems to appear and re-appear like Gandalf the magician, often when you least expect it. For example, even The Hobbit was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford where his close friend was C.S. Lewis! In his undergraduate days, again at Oxford, Sir John Rhys was his Professor of Celtic Languages. Rhys held some interesting views on his native Welsh, noting that Welsh literature abounds “in allusions to heroes who are usually described with the aid of the mother’s name” such as Gwydion son of Don and Arianrhod daughter of Don.   Apparently, in Wales ’into the nineteenth century, some wives did not change their names when they married, and sons could choose to use their father’s or mother’s name…’ I’ve always thought of Welsh women as founder members of the strong, silent type! Taking this a stage further, the mother of the hero of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, “was the fabulous Belladonna Took…” and there were rumors of a fairy wife in the family; the whole episode reminiscent of the old Welsh Tale Meddygon Myddfai/ The Physicians of Myddfai. The undergrowth thickens as we are reminded that Welsh myth and literature were “part of the ‘leaf mould’ of Tolkien’s mind…”

One of Tolkien’s place-name creations/borrowings Gwynfa is interesting. We learn that it is associated with a dragon as is a real Gwynfa in Wales, this idea being reinforced by reference to the story about Merlin, Vortigern and the white and red dragons fighting; another tale from Cymru. Gwynfa means a holy or white place and by extension paradise. Over the years and by foreign language invasion we are told that Gwynfa became Wenvoe became Whitland. Dinbych (Welsh for Small Fort/Din Bach) became Tenby; Tyndyrn (Welsh for King’s Fort) became Tintern - as in the Abbey - with the original meanings becoming all but lost. What is truly amazing is that Tolkien’s invented languages show the same type of detailed, linguistically logical progression. There are even those amongst us, in the real world of 2012, writing and speaking Elvish!

A little further along, Isaac Taylor is referenced as having said that “the names of important rivers, posse an almost indestructible vitality.” They are a ‘type of linguistic fossil …’ Most of the rivers in the UK carry often modified Celtic names. Take the River Avon for example which is a bilingual tautology: Avon (afon) is Welsh for river. The English apparently didn’t know this, thereby creating the name River River! The River Usk (Latin Isca, Welsh/Irish Wysg [as in whiskey/Water of life]) is again River River. Bree Hill in Tolkien is Hill Hill and even more hilarious to our linguistic brethren we are informed that a local landmark in Tolkien’s youth, Bredon Hill (Celtic/Old English/English), is indeed Hill Hill Hill! It starts you mentally scanning local, real place names to see if you can find Lake Lake or Town Town.  (I found Table Mesa in my area.)

Tolkien’s created personal and family names are no less invested. The likes of Maggot, Boffin of Yale and Took are explained along with real and created family histories going back to pre-Norman days. Castles, prominences and land marks, as in The Carrock, find real-life exemplars in Castell Carreg Cennen and the like; many replete with similar attendant legends. One is left startled by the shear detail and linguistic consistency of Tolkien’s literary creations. Whether tugged on the sleeve by place or personal names, or a compelling story set in a vivid and believable geography, we are more than willing - in fact eager - to fully enter the illusion of Middle Earth.

The Welsh have always been intensely interested in the history and origins of names, both personal and place. This book will have you looking under your verbal beds and up in dusty attics, hoping to find unexpected yet friendly ghosts of meaning in your own lettered heritage and Shire. I can only hope that one of these days the author writes a sequel: A comprehensive account of actual Welsh place and personal names.

Hwyl am y tro/Bye for now, John Good/Sioni Dda.

El Mirage, Arizona.

From the product description:- " Tolkien and Welsh provides an overview of J.R.R.Tolkien's use of Welsh in his Legendarium , ranging from the obvious ( Gwynfa —the Welsh word for Paradise ), to the apparent ( Took —a Welsh surname), to the veiled ( Gerontius —the Latinizaton of a royal Welsh name), to the hidden ( Goldberry —the English calque of a Welsh theonym). Though it is a book by a linguist, it was written for the non-linguist with the goal of making the topic accessible. The unavoidable jargon is explained in a glossary, and the narrative presents an overview of how Welsh influenced Tolkien's story line, as well as his synthetic languages Quenya and Sindarin."

Mark:   Thank you for inviting me. It’s my honor to do an interview for AmeriCymru.

AmeriCymru:  In your book Tolkien is quoted as saying re: The Lord of the Rings , that the Welsh elements of his tale are what has "given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it". How true do you think this is?

Mark:   Tolkien’s assertion that the Welsh elements in his tale have given more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it, might be an overstatement.

On the one extreme, there is Edward Crankshaw’s infamous critique of Tolkien’s work in which he said that he “disliked its eye-splitting Celtic names.” On the other hand, there are people like me, who write books about Tolkien’s use of Welsh. I think the truth lies somewhere in between.

Crankshaw continued that Tolkien’s work “has something of that mad, bright-eyed beauty that perplexes all Anglo-Saxons in face of Celtic art,” and I think that is where the problem lies. Very few people understand the true beauty of Celtic art, and even fewer understand the beauty of Celtic linguistics.

I, like Tolkien, am a linguist, and when I first read Tolkien’s statement about the Welsh elements in The Lord of the Rings , my immediate impulse was to rush off to learn Welsh. It took a while before I was able to turn that impulse into action, but finally, in 2000, I found a hole in my schedule for the Cwrs Cymraeg Y Mileniwm in Carmarthen. This course run by Cymdeithas Madog gave me the basis I needed to come to grips with Tolkien’s use of Welsh and Welsh folklore. The location of the course was great, because it meant that I could try and speak Welsh with native speakers when I went downtown after class to shop and explore the city. I was really pleased with the course.

You might, therefore, say that my book was twelve years in the making, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope it makes it possible for more people to appreciate how big a part of Tolkien’s work is based on Welsh, by showing them how to find the Welsh elements in his work.

My examination of Tolkien’s work through a Welsh lens produces a “myopic” vision of it, but that is intentional, because as Jane Chance said in an interview, “the northern European influence seems more important than the Celtic, from what I have been able to tell. Perhaps that is because so much of the work done on Tolkien’s medievalism thus far has focused on the northern European influence.” Tolkien and Welsh is intended to remedy this imbalance.

AmeriCymru:  Can you tell us a little more about Tolkien’s definition of 'Welsh'?

Mark:  The “Welsh” that Tolkien knew best was not exactly what people think of when they say “Welsh” today. Tolkien’s academic specialty was historical linguistics, so the “Welsh” that he was most familiar with was the Celtic language known as “Welsh,” before it split into Cornish, Breton, and Modern Welsh. J.S. Ryan, who heard Tolkien deliver the lecture “English and Welsh,” remarks that “Tolkien’s use of the word Welsh would seem to be that found in Old English texts,” where it meant “foreign, or non Germanic.”

Max Förster, an eminent German linguist with whose work Tolkien was familiar, observes that between the fifth and the seventh centuries, the language of the Celtic peoples of Wales and Cornwall would have been little different than the Brittonic from which it stemmed. Even in the period of the ninth and eleventh centuries, remarks Förster, the phonetic differences between Breton, Cornish and Welsh would have been so slight as to be “barely noticeable” for the purposes of his study.

Tolkien’s awareness of this undifferentiated use of Welsh to name the language of modern Wales and present-day Cornwall is perhaps best demonstrated in Tolkien’s tale of Ælfwine (English: Elf Friend ), in which Tolkien wrote “the Welsh language is not strange to him [Ælfwine] … His wife was of Cornwall.”

My wife is “of Holland,” which is why I speak Dutch. The logical conclusion is that the Englishman Ælfwine understood Welsh , because that is what his wife spoke, and she came from Cornwall.

Tolkien’s knowledge of Breton can scarcely be in doubt. He has a note on Breton morphological change in “English and Welsh” that only a linguist well-versed in Breton could make. His knowledge of Breton is further attested by the poem he wrote, entitled The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun . The “names” of the protagonists in the poem— Aotrou and Itroun —are in fact the Breton words for Lord and Lady .

In his Cambriae descriptio ( Description of Wales ), the twelfth century chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) comments that Welsh, Cornish and Breton are mutually intelligible in almost all instances. The “Welsh,” therefore, of Tolkien’s primary academic interest was more, or less, a “catch-all name” for the ancestor of Cornish, Breton, and Modern Welsh.

Tolkien’s poems “Earendil Was a Mariner” and “Errantry” demonstrate a considerable resemblance to the Welsh medieval poetic technique known as cynghanedd, which is regarded as one of, if not the most sophisticated poetic system of sound-patterning used anywhere in the world. Tolkien certainly knew Welsh well, if he was able to replicate that pattern.

That is not to say that Tolkien did not know Modern Welsh. There are reports of conversations he had in Welsh with various people, and apparently he spoke it quite well.

AmeriCymru:  Tolkien is on record as saying that the names and places in The Lord of the Rings were developed on patterns deliberately modeled on Welsh sources, but not identical with them. How evident is this from the text? Care to quote a few examples?

Mark:  Unless your Welsh is very good and has a historical tint to it, it is hard to spot some of Tolkien’s “Welsh” names, because he deliberately changed elements in the name to make it harder to see them as such. Some are easy to spot, like Gwynfa ( Paradise ) from Tolkien’s children’s story Roverandom . All you have to do is open a Welsh dictionary to see this one.

Tolkien glossed the woman’s name Rhian  as crown-gift , while in Welsh Rhian means queen . All he has done is change the meaning just a little bit, while the name remains easily recognizable as Welsh, because the letter combination ‘Rh’ is so typically Welsh.

The Took Crest

Goldberry wife of Tom Bombadil

The name Took is harder to see, because Tolkien used the English spelling. You can only really see that Tolkien intended the Welsh name, when Tolkien spells it Tūca , using a bared ‘Ū’ instead of the Welsh ‘W’ for the vowel. The name was originally Twca (type of sword).

Similarly, Tolkien’s place name Henneth Annûn  looks a lot more Welsh, if it is spelled using Welsh orthography as Hennedd Annwn (the old abode in the Otherworld).

Tolkien glosses the place name Amon Lhaw  as Hill of the Ear , but if lhaw is converted to modern Welsh orthography, it would be read as Amon Llaw ( Amon of the Hand ).

This is not in the book—as I have only just seen it myself: Tolkien’s Elvish names for the months December and January are based on the Welsh rhew ( ice , frost ). January is Cathriw ( After the Frost ) and December is Ephriw ( Before the Frost ), modeled on the old Anglo-Saxon month names Ærra Jéola ( Before Yule ) | Æftera Jéola ( After Yule ).

It is hard to see, not only because Tolkien changed the vowel in rhew , and because mutation changes rhew to rew , but also because the prefixes before and after are Greek.

The hardest names to spot are the ones that are translated piece by piece into English. The enigmatic name Goldberry becomes much clearer when it is translated back into Welsh, where it becomes Rhos Maelan , the place to which Maelan, the youngest daughter of the Welsh Goddess Dôn, escaped when Caer Arianrhod was flooded.

AmeriCymru:  How do the linguistic boundaries in Tolkien’s work reflect those existing between the Germanic and Celtic languages in the British Isles?

Mark:  The map of the U.K. is like a patchwork quilt of names, where Celtic, Germanic, Latin and Norman-French elements dot the linguistic countryside, reflecting the history of the comings and goings of the peoples who spoke these languages. Stratford — ford (O.E.) on the stratum (L) or ‘Roman road’—is on the banks of the River Avon , a tautology (a bilingual place name that repeats its meaning in both of its languages), as avon   means river in Welsh . Bewdley —a hypercorrection of the Norman-French beau lieu —means beautiful spot . It is located on the banks of the River Severn (Celtic: Ys Hafren , Latin: Sabrina ). Pembridge (Herefordshire) is the End (W: pen ) of the Bridge (E). It is located just south of the River Arrow, which is Celtic in origin: Ar + gwy L> wy = Arwy  ( By the Water .)

Tolkien replicates this patchwork quilt in the names of Breeland. Bree was the principal town of Breeland, which consisted of the villages of Archet, Combe, and Staddle. It was built on Bree Hill.

The name Bree Hill is one of Tolkien’s philological jests, a joke only a linguist could love. It is another tautology. It is composed of the elements Bree (Celtic) + hill (English).

The same type of construction is seen in Tolkien’s name for the wood near Bree: Chetwood . In Old Celtic, chet means wood . On the real-world map, this tautological construction shows up in the names Chetwode (south-west of Buckingham) and the Chute Forest in Wiltshire.

The element chet also shows up in the name Archet . The prefix Ar - in the name Archet can be found in a number of Welsh place names, where it means nearby . Tolkien’s name, therefore, means near the woods , which is exactly where he placed Archet in his description of Bree-Land: “on the edge of the Chetwood.” (F.205) Compare: the Welsh place name Argoed  (literally: by a wood ).

The name Combe  is the Anglicization of the Old Celtic kumb , meaning valley (compare the modern Welsh: cwm , which means hollow ). It was used so extensively that it was adopted into Old English as cumb and has yielded numerous place names based on this root, such as Combe (Oxfordshire, and West Berkshire), Coomb (Cornwall, and Devon).

Linguistically, Staddle  is the odd-man-out in BreeLand. Archet , Bree  and Combe  share a certain Celtic ancestry, while Staddle has a Germanic origin. Tolkien’s names do exactly what place names on the real-world map do.

AmeriCymru:  Tolkiens work is rich in philological jests. In your book you point out that there are many place names which will amuse an etymologist both in the book and in modern day Britain. Care to expand on this theme a little?

Mark:  Tolkien was a man who liked a good linguistic jest, another of the traits that he shared with the Welsh as described by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), the twelfth century chronicler who authored the Cambriae descriptio ( Description of Wales ). Welsh courtiers, and even plain family men have “the reputation of being great wits,” says Giraldus. They are fond of “sarcastic remarks and libelous allusions, plays on words, sly references, ambiguities and equivocal statements.” The description fits Tolkien handily. Most of Tolkien’s puns, however, are the kind that only another linguist can laugh at without being told what the joke is. I try to explain some of them in Tolkien and Welsh .

Many of Tolkien’s jokes are what linguists call “Folk Etymologies,” that is an explanation of a name that makes the name comprehensible to a non-linguist. The Hobbits, for example, changed the Elvish name for the River Baranduin into the name Brandywine . This kind of thing happens all the time in the real world. A real-world example is Golden Valley in Herefordshire, which is the work of French monks who thought that the Welsh dwr ( water ) was the French d’or ( of gold ).

Tolkien says that some members of the Boffin family thought that the name Boffin might mean “one who laughs out loud.” The connection is obviously to the word boff , a bit of slang from the entertainment industry that means “a hearty or unrestrained laugh.” Boffin is in fact a Welsh name that was originally spelled Baughan .

The name Maggot is another linguistic joke of Tolkien’s. While English speakers are trying to figure out why Tolkien would name anyone Maggot , Welsh speakers of Tolkien’s ilk—and remember that means Welsh with a historical tint—know that King Magoth is one of the ancestors of King Arthur, and that the name changed to Baggot in Brittany, and came back to the U.K. in that form with William in 1066. This makes it just another in Tolkien’s nest of names that contain the element ‘bag,’ like Baggins of Bag End.

Orthanc is another of Tolkien’s puns. It has meaning in both Rohirric (Anglo-Saxon) and in Sindarin: In Rohirric, it means cunning mind , while in Sindarin, it means Mount Fang . Mordor yields both a Sindarin ( black land ) and an Old English ( murder < morðor ) gloss.

The pun in the Elvish name Cathriw hinges on the double meaning in the prefix. If you read the prefix as if it were Celtic instead of Greek, the prefix suggests the Irish cath ( battle ), the Welsh cad , the Old Welsh cat , and the Brittonic *kattā. Compare Taliesin’s Cad Goddeu ( The Battle of the Trees ), Cath Maige Tuired ( The Battle of the Plain of the Towers ) from the Irish mythology, and the Welsh name Cadwallawer ( Battle Ruler ) < cad - ( battle ) + gwaladr ( ruler ) L > waladr . A Celtic reading of Cathriw makes it mean Battle of the Frost , which has a certain resonance with Ragnarok, the battle between the Norse Gods and the Frost Giants (hrímþursar) at the end of the world.

AmeriCymru: Tolkien owed a great deal to his former tutor Sir John Rhys. Can you tell us a little more about him and the precise nature of the debt?

Mark:  Sir John Rhys (1840–1915) was a famous Welsh scholar, fellow of the British Academy, Celtic Specialist, and the first Professor of Celtic at Oxford University. Tolkien was one of his students. As any diligent student should know, when you take a course from someone who has written a book on the topic of the course, the book will be a part of the course, even if it is not on the required reading list, and Professor Rhys was a well-published author. Lectures on Welsh Philology (1877)

You can tell that Tolkien read Rhys’ books, because the only place that I’ve yet found the name Rhos Maelan attested is in Rhys’ book Celtic Folk-lore .

As I read Rhys’ works, I kept finding things that I recognized from Tolkien’s work. For example: Tolkien has a footnote to the song that Frodo sings at the Prancing Pony, in which Frodo calls the Sun “She.” The footnote says “Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She.” (F.218) Rhys has a very interesting paper in which he explains that the Celts worshipped a Sun Goddess, not a Sun God as is the case in Western tradition.

Books by Sir John Rhys

AmeriCymru:  In The Two Towers , the Welsh folk belief in "corpse candles" is alluded to. Are there other instances of Welsh folk beliefs cropping up in Tolkien’s work?

Mark:  In his book on Welsh folklore, Sikes remarks that although Keightley took Shakespeare to task in his Fairy Mythology for the inaccuracy of his use of “English fairy superstitions,” no such thing could be said of the Bard’s use of Welsh folklore. Shakespeare’s knowledge and use of Welsh fairy motifs and lore, notes Sikes, were “extensive and peculiarly faithful.” The same can be said of Tolkien.

Tolkien has a place named Long Lake that is the translation of the reasonably common Welsh name Llyn Hir . One of these “Long Lakes” is in Llanfair Caerneinion parish in Montgomeryshire. It is located on Mynydd y Drum in Powys. There is a legend about this mountain that has lots of elements in common with Tolkien’s tale of treasure in a mountain found in The Hobbit .

The legend is one from Rhys’ Celtic Folk-lore . It is a tale about a wizard (cwmshurwr) who lived in Ystradgynlais, near the mountain. The wizard had heard that there was a great treasure hidden in Mynydd y Drum, but he could not go get it alone. He needed the help of a “plucky fellow“ (dyn ysprydol).

These are the first resonances with Tolkien’s tale. Gandalf stops by Bag-End to recruit someone to go recover a treasure in a mountain, and convinces Bilbo to join in the expedition. Bilbo “plucks up his courage“ three times in The Hobbit : once in the face of the trolls (H.47), once when confronted by the spiders (H.158), and a third time when he talks to Smaug (H.214).

The wizard of Ystradgynlais found just such a man in the person of John Gethin (The Swarthy). John and the wizard climbed the mountain together, and when they got to the top, the wizard drew the symbol for infinity (∞) on the ground. The wizard stepped into one of the circles, and instructed John to enter the other. Under no circumstances, the wizard told him, was he to leave the circle. While the wizard was busy with his books, a monstrous bull appeared, bellowing threateningly, but the plucky John stood his ground, and the bull vanished.

The next stage of the story carries two more resonances with Tolkien’s tale. John is threatened by a “fly-wheel of fire“ that heads straight for him. This proves too much for John, and he steps out of the circle to avoid being hit by it. The wheel immediately turns into the devil, who grabs John to take him away. The wizard was only able to save John by trickery. He convinced the devil to let him keep John for as long as the piece of candle he had with him lasted. As soon as the devil agreed to his request, the wizard blew out the candle. This understandably made the devil quite cross, but he had given his word.

Without much imagination—a trait that Tolkien had in abundance—a “fly-wheel of fire” could be turned into a flying fire-breathing dragon. This is after all the man whose first name for Smaug was the simple Welsh compound Pryftan (literally: Worm of Fire ). The role of the devil seems to have been given to the Goblins who detain Thorin and Co. They are indeed quite cross when Gandalf rescues Bilbo and the Dwarves from their clutches.

John kept the candle stowed away in a cool place, never lighting it. Nevertheless, the candle wasted away. John was so frightened by this that he took to his bed. He and the candle wasted away together, and they both came to an end simultaneously. John simply vanished. For appearances’ sake, they put a lump of clay into the coffin they buried under John’s headstone.

John’s vanishing act recalls Gandalf’s explanation of what the Ring does to its owner. A mortal ringbearer, says Gandalf, “does not die, … he fades .” In the end, he becomes invisible forever, and is condemned to walk in the twilight, under the watchful eye of the Dark Lord who rules the Rings of power. (F.76, Tolkien’s emphasis )

You think that you know all the players in the sub-field of Welsh Tolkienistics, because there are not a lot of us, but when Tolkien and Welsh was published, I got an eMail from Wales from Steve Ponty who is working on a book entitled The Hobbit: Professor J.R.R. Tolkien's Magic Mirror Maps of Wales . In his book, he points out—much to my embarrassment, because I wish I had seen it—that when Gandalf introduces Thorin and Company to Beorn, he announces that they are on their way to the “land of their fathers.” (H.122) Ponty explains that if Thorin had introduced himself , he would have said that they were going to the *‘land of my fathers,’ which, as any specialist in things Welsh should know, is the common English translation of the title of the Welsh National Anthem: Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau .

What makes this idea so attractive is that before the reader can get to the next paragraph where Ponty makes it explicit, the suggestion of Welsh Dwarves triggers the thought that both the Dwarves and the Welsh are famous for their considerable ability as miners.

AmeriCymru:  In what way does the theme of matrilineal descent demonstrate a further Celtic influence in Tolkien’s work?

Mark:  Matrilineal descent is one of the key characteristics of the Welsh pantheon. Rhys discusses this aspect of Welsh culture at length in Chapter 1 (“The Ethnology of Ancient Wales”) of his book The Welsh People .

Matrilineal descent means that the family tree of the Welsh gods and goddesses is presented with reference to their mothers, rather than to their fathers. So, when Tolkien describes Goldberry as “the River Woman’s daughter,” he is giving her a matrilineal description. This means that Goldberry fits seamlessly in the type of hierarchy that is used for the children of the goddess Dôn, who form the great dynasty of Welsh mythology.
The majority of Tolkien’s characters are described in terms of patrilineal descent. There are, however, characters, whose descent is described in matrilineal terms. The descriptions of the lineage of the three Hobbit Ring Bearers all accent details of who their (grand)mothers were. This makes them stand out among all the patrilineal characters.

In The Hobbit , Tolkien’s narrator begins his introduction of Bilbo with “the mother of our particular hobbit … was the fabulous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took.” (H.16) This is the only time that Tolkien uses the word mother in The Hobbit .

Frodo’s relationship to the Old Took is reckoned via one of Old Took’s daughters. Frodo is the son of the daughter of the youngest of the Old Took’s daughters (F.45), a description that is the essence of matrilineal descent. Bilbo’s selection of his mother’s sister’s daughter’s son as his heir and successor is equally in step with matrilineal descent.

Sméagol (Gollum) came from “a family of high repute” that “was ruled by a grandmother of the folk,” a matriarch. (F.84, F.89) She was a “great person” (F.89) who had the power to turn Sméagol out of the family and her hole. (F.85) She is the only ancestor of Sméagol’s who is mentioned, which is clearly another a matrilineal description of familial relationships.

AmeriCymru:  How do the landscapes in Tolkien resemble actual geographical areas in Wales? Care to give us an example or two?

Mark:  There are so many Welsh (Celtic) place names in Tolkien’s work, that it is hard to make a choice of two to give as examples, but I will give it a try.

In his notes, Tolkien said that Buckland is to The Shire as Wales is to England, so it was, therefore, “not wholly inappropriate” to use names of “a Celtic or specifically Welsh character” as the translations of “its many very peculiar names.”

Normally, Tolkien scholars say that the name Buckland came from Bookland , that is land owned by right of an entry in a book. They are generally unaware that there is a Buckland in Brecknockshire, in Wales that has a meaning that exactly matches the gloss that Tolkien gave for Buckland . He said that the names containing the element buck meant “the word ‘buck’ (animal): either Old English bucc ‘male deer’ (fallow or roe), or bucca ‘he-goat’.” The Brecknockshire Buckland was originally from the Welsh bwch ( buck ).

In The Hobbit , Bilbo and the Dwarves pass The Carrock . The word carrock  is strange enough that Bilbo has to ask what it means. Gandalf explains to Bilbo that carrock is the word that Beorn uses for what appears to be a common topographical feature, but Beorn considers this particular one The Carrock “because it is the only one near his home and he knows it well” (H.117).

The Welsh word carreg  ( stone, rock, escarpment ) matches Tolkien’s gloss for carrock , and his description sounds very much like Castell Carreg Cennen, located among the foothills of the Carmarthenshire Black Mountains, near Llandeilo. A reviewer of Tolkien and Welsh on Amazon said that he was “hoping to see mention of Carrickfergus ( Carraig Fhearghais )—the rock of Fergus (Fergus being Fergus Mór mac Eirc), but this is purely because [he] lived there for a time.” I’ve never been to Carrickfergus , but I have been to Castell Carreg Cennen, and it has a lot of things about it that fit Tolkien’s description of The Carrock .

In the Breton edition of The Hobbit , the translation of The Carrock is Ar Garreg (ar [the ] + karreg [ rock ]  garreg ), which demonstrates how clearly the Breton translator perceived the Celtic underpinnings of Carrock , despite Tolkien’s orthographic camouflage.

AmeriCymru:  Where can one go to purchase Tolkien And Welsh?

Mark:  “Tolkien and Welsh” is available from Amazon.com, from Amazon.co.uk, and from Amazon.de. Those who would like to support AmeriCymru, should, of course, click on the link in the AmeriCymru Bookstore, because Amazon pays AmeriCymru a “finder’s fee” for such sales. Signed copies will be available at the AmeriCymru stand at the Wordstock literary festival 3—6 October 2013 in Portland.

Buy from Amazon.com ( via AmeriCymru ) HERE

Buy from Amazon.co.uk HERE

Buy from Amazon.de HERE

I think the request is entirely reasonable. As things stand Wales was conquered in 1282 and has never voluntarily acquiesced in its membership of the UK. Lets suppose we have a referendum and a majority vote no to independence (regretfully a likely outcome imho). At least we will have had our say and for the first time we would be true members of the 'union'. It would also set a precedent for future votes which might be decided differently. Either way we will no longer be a colony. With the current moves toward independence in Scotland and Northern Ireland it is only fitting that we too should have our moment (regardless of which way we voted in the Brexit referendum).

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“popular, transient, expendable, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business” Richard Hamilton once said of Pop Art back in 1956.  ‘Y Ddawns’ (The Dance) the new Welsh single by Ani Glass is both pop and art combined.

Produced by W H Dyfodol (aka Haydon Hughes & Y Pencadlys) the song is a rallying call for those seeking inspiration in language and art – the dance is the imagination and the music the language. The ‘futility’ mentioned  in the lyrics refers to the pressures of everyday life, a straight-jacket between narrow walls – a life going too fast to live pop and art  - but too young to give up hope.

Dance, dance, dance to the radio ….. dance to the revolution……. this is pop music on message!

Biog

Ani Glass is the persona of Cardiff-based electronic pop musician, producer, artist and photographer,  Ani Saunders. Fiercely proud of her heritage, Glass sings in her native languages Welsh and Cornish and last year released her fist solo material with lead single Ffôl being chosen as single of the week on BBC Radio Cymru and gaining plays on BBC 6 music.

Ani is also known for her work with The Pipettes, joining in 2008 to record the Martin Rushent-produced Earth Vs. The Pipettes album. Prior to her stint with the polka-dotted pop band, Glass was in Genie Queen, managed by OMD’s Andy McCluskey. Most recently she has fronted The Lovely Wars, releasing the Young Love EP - the title track being Quietus writer Aug Stone’s Song of 2013 and the Brân i Frân single, much praised by Everett True “SO F*****G WONDERFUL!”.

Ani collaborated with international Welsh artist Ivor Davies in February and is currently working on an EP inspired by his exhibition Silent Explosion/Ffrwydrad Tawel.

Ani Glass upcoming shows.

5th June - Gwdihw (su[porting Vogue Dots, Cotton Wolf, Alphabetic)

17th June - Sherman Foyer Sessions (support from Parcs) + Ani Saunders exhibition

2nd July - Cardiff Castle (Tafwyl)

23rd October - Swn Festival