Hafod - one of the sites in The Three Landscapes Project

Notes on the Picturesque - Eight - Looking Backwards

In researching materials emerging from the Welsh intellectuals around in both Wales and London at the time, I came across a book, in English, by John Walters written in 1770 entitled ‘A Dissertation on the Welsh Language'. In this book, Walters makes a number of claims for the language - its richness, its age, its extensive vocabulary, its elegant structure and its relationship with other tongues - most notably, Hebrew (which places the Welsh language closer to God, and to heaven).

At the time of reading this, my models of understanding came from all that I have come to know about the growing politicisation of the language during this century. It is difficult for me to read a text like Williams' in any other way than to regard it as an overt and politicised bid for support of the language and a commitment to notions of Wales as identifiably discrete, and as a dignified nation in its own right - separate from England or Britain.

However, my suspicion is that this is not what Williams was up to.

I believe that he was seeking to contribute to a growing notion of Britishness - not to a claim for Wales as independent at all - and that the book was addressed to educated London gentlemen so as to offer to them enrichment for their centralised ideas about ‘Britain'.

I find it difficult to imagine such a project, and even more difficult to imagine many Welsh people I know taking part in it! And it is from this anecdote that another idea emerges - the notion that our ability to 'bridge the gap across history' is severely limited - defined, indeed, by the templates and models that we carry around with us in this place at this time. Any 'interest' in Hafod is created in response to an agenda of our needs in the 'here and now' - not by any inherent importance in the supposed essence of the events of the time.

Now, this notion of looking at past events through templates created in our time is an interesting one - which templates do we use to bring Thomas Johnes into focus? What can we safely think, after feminism, about Mariamne Johnes as a girl child? What 'obsessive pioneer with project gone mad' models do we employ to think of Johnes - Frankenstein? Citizen Kane? And finally, which cultural products (novels, films, television dramas) inform our understanding of ‘Hafod-ness'? Are they avoidable? Can we find a 'clean' reading? Or can we imagine another model where these cultural 'templates' are integral and overt within the work?

Cliff McLucas