Welsh Life

Articles about various aspects of Welsh Life. See the menu on the left.

The three great levelling causes--religion, industry, and education--have been at work in Wales in for many years. Education helps and is helped by equality. In town and country alike all Welsh children attend the same schools--elementary and secondary; and they proceed, those that do proceed, to the same University, and a university is essentially a levelling institution.

The dialects, as well as the literary language, are recognised; and no dialect has a stigma. In this respect Wales is more like Scotland than England. There is one other characteristic of modern Wales--a certain pride, not so much in what has been done, but in what is going to be done. Wales is small, though not much smaller than Palestine, or Holland, or Switzerland, and every part of it knows the other.

There is a healthy rivalry between its towns and between its colleges; each town can show that it has done something for Wales in the past--by means of its industries, or school, or press. In the strong feeling of unity there is ambition to surpass, and each part lives in the light of the action of the other parts. The day is a day of incessant activity--industrial, educational, literary, and political. What is true in the life of the individual is true in the life of a nation--a day of hard work is a happy day and a day of hope.