A Day in Scotland

A day in Dumfries was on our itinerary, and that was a little hard to arrange. It required connections with three different train companies. A little online searching revealed that it is w-a-y better, that is, w-a-y cheaper,  to book tickets in advance. But what is the best way to find out what's possible?  Let me put in a plug for one of my favorite new websites, www.rome2rio.com. Just enter the names of two cities or small towns, and within a moment-and-a-half you will find out your travel options. 

So, we travelled from Llandudno, Wales through England to Dumfries, Scotland.  One connection gave us 7 minutes to wait for the next train. We were 4 minutes late and had only 3 minutes for the transfer, but fortunately that was enough. The next connection was missed entirely. The train company was to provide us with another connection within 30 minutes or give us a refund. Instead we got a van ride to our final destination. Nice service!

Our visit to Dumfries was a pilgrimage. Slava wanted to visit the gravesite of Brother Aloysius, who taught him English at the international school he attended as a child in China.  Brother Aloysius not only taught English, he taught possibilities. He had a pivotal role in Slava's life, and had a lingering effect on Slava's thinking as he was growing up in the Soviet Union. Slava never got a chance to see him again, but he heard that Brother Aloysius was buried in Scotland. Where?  With persistent effort he tracked down the final resting place of Brother Aloysius:  the Marist Brothers Cemetery at St. Joseph College, Dumfries, Scotland. Would we be able to find the actual gravesite?  Yes, we did. 

We also visited the gravesite of the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns. I hadn't bothered to do any research on the town of Dumfries, because I had thought we were going for just one reason, that is, to visit the gravesite of Brother Aloysius. But we found out that Dumfries is delightful.  We visited the red sandstone home of Robert Burns and the Dumfries Museum with its amazing "camera obscura," which gave us the same 360 degree enlarged view of the city streets that visitors got 150 years ago.  We had a good dinner, and stayed at a nice B & B, Dumfries Villa. It was within a few hundred yards of the railway station, and I've learned that quiet trains in the U.K. are friendly to neighbors, making the area prosperous and desirable. 

I must provide a picture of Julius, the friendly guard dog who greeted us at Dumfries Villa. Julius looked intimidating, and we hesitated to open the garden gate when we arrived early and saw him on the other side. But I've never seen a ferocious guard dog with a tennis ball in his mouth, wagging his tail in hopes of a game of fetch. 

Leaving Wales Behind

The meaning of this heading is two-fold. I am "leaving Wales behind" with my next posting about Scotland. And here I'm writing about my ancestors who left Wales in the 1840's, never to see it again. 

Although the above photo was taken recently, it is likely to be a good illustration of what Wales looked like in the 1840s. That is when  my father's ancestors emigrated from the west coast of Wales. An emigration officer of the time, Captain Schamberg, said five years later, "A deep ship will very probably, under ordinary circumstances, be very wet and uncomfortable, and the people will live up to their knees in water."  A passenger said, "It wasn't very nice spending four weeks in a large smelly room. Lots of people felt sick  and it could be very dark."

My ancestors came from two Welsh families that emigrated in the 1840s and settled in the farming and coal mining areas of Jackson and Galliard Counties, Ohio. Who were they, and why did they undertake the arduous journey to an unknown land?  I will attempt to answer those questions with a bit of truthiness. Some of the facts will be made up. 

A young man from the coal-mining area of south Wales (or of the farming area of western Wales) married a young girl from the same area and started a family.  Times were hard, both for coal miners and for farmers. If the young man, a Mr. Jones, was a coal miner, he knew it was backbreaking and dangerous work to mine coal, but it was what he knew how to do. There was a Welsh community in the Appalachian region  of south eastern Ohio where miners were better off. It would have sounded good.  If Mr. Jones was instead a farmer in Wales he was working in poor soil and barely surviving. The Enclosure Acts were allocating to private ownership of the gentry land that had once been considered common. The chance to start life anew in the rich soils of Ohio would have sounded attractive. 

Mr. Jones might have married a young lass by the name of Miss Davis or Miss Morgan or Miss Evans or Miss Jones. There are a few other possibilities, but not many. There are not many different surnames in the small country of Wales. I say that to prepare you for the following two paragraphs.  Feel free to go through them quickly. The details are for the genealogical record. To put it more simply, one family from Cardinghamshire named Davis had a son who married into another family named Davis from Cardinghamshire. They produced my maternal ancestors on my father's side. 

John G. Davis (born John G. Davies in Aberyswyth 1805) took his wife and four daughters from Flymonceitho, Llangeitho Parish, across the Atlantic in 1840. After settling in Jackson County, Ohio, he had a son John J. who married a daughter of John K. Davis (born John K. Davies at Coecefnder, near Lanon 1802).  John K. had five daughters born in Wales, but one of them died on the cross-Atlantic voyage in 1842, and another died soon after. Two more daughters were born in the United States, one of whom, Margaret, became my great-great-great grandmother, or something of the sort, when she married John J. Davis.   That's all we know. 

The Welsh American Community Today

It's likely that most people of Welsh descent think of themselves as of British background, which is accurate (British, but not English). There are about 2 million Americans with Welsh ancestry -- and only 3 million people left in Wales itself. Even more interesting, there are nearly 6 million Americans with Welsh surnames -- and many of them are black. It is thought that when slavery ended many freed blacks took the surnames of Welsh Quaker abolitionists, Jones being a particularly common name.  

Jackson County, Ohio calls itself "the little Wales of Ohio,"  and more specifically is known as Little Cardinghamshire. Welsh was spoken there until the 1950's. The central town of Wellstone, Ohio has an annual Coal Mining Festival every year. They don't mine coal any more, but they do something to celebrate it.  

Bring a few Welsh people together and you have a "gymanfa ganu" or an "Eisteddfod." Both are events related to singing. There are over a thousand "gymanfa ganu" held in Wales each year; in the United States, not so many. These are joyous gatherings for hymn singing in four-part harmony, a tradition important to Dissenters or Noncomformists, as Protestant denominations other than the Anglican Church were known in the early days.    And although there were restrictions in public life on Noncomformists for more than two centuries, since the 1850's Noncomformists have been in the majority in Wales. 

One of the most distinctive features of the Welsh is that singing is a community event. The "Eisteddfod" is an assertive singing competition that is almost like a sport. "Our town has a better community chorus than yours." "Oh, yeah?!  Sez who?  Show up next Sunday and we'll see who has the better singing group!"

After listening to a couple of groups in Llandudno I can vouch for the fact that the Welsh aren't necessarily blessed with better voices than other people. What the Welsh do have is greater enthusiasm for participating in singing. 

Let me end by noting that seven American presidents are known to have Welsh ancestry, starting with Thomas Jefferson. So did John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Add to this list James Garfield, Calvin Coolidge, and Richard Nixon. The Welsh also claim a smidge of Barack Obama. 

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Welsh Food

Frankly speaking, the food in Wales can be like food anywhere. Italian food is popular, and there is Chinese takeout. Other dishes are British, common to England and Scotland. A full Welsh breakfast is essentially like what is on the table elsewhere on the island. 

If you order a full Welsh breakfast, Count on getting both bacon and sausage, with the bacon being like the fine fare we call Canadian bacon. The photo above shows what I think are tiny cockles. Delicious. Sometimes there will be baked beans. Of course there will be eggs, and in addition to an egg or two you'll get a broiled tomato, field mushrooms, potatoes and/or toast, and perhaps a bit of black pudding. What's black pudding?  Something that may make you decide to opt for plain porridge. 

Welsh cakes are delightfully different, and they are something like a cookie, and something like a scone.

Not pictured here is an important ingredient in Welsh cooking: the leek. This variant of the onion family is actually taken as a symbol of Wales. On some occasions the leek is even pinned to one's jacket as a show of national pride. Some people more sensibly pin on another symbol -- the daffodil. 

The most famous Welsh dish is Welsh rarebit. The creamy cheddar cheese sauce, poured over toast or used as a hot dip, is seasoned with mustard and Worcestershire sauce, and either a splash of Guinness or simply a bit of  milk. 

There are several theories as to how it got called rarebit. One of them is a put-down to the Welsh, indicating that poor Welsh people couldn't afford rabbit or other meat, and "Welsh rabbit" is cheese.  Oh well.  The Welsh are proud of their cheddar cheese. 

Welsh Castle at Caernarfon

We visited the castle where Prince Charles became Prince of Wales. It's wrong to call it a Welsh castle, however, because it's actually an English castle, one that English invaders established to control the unruly Welsh. Pause for a moment to consider the word "unruly."  We usually think of it as undisciplined, out of order. I now see the origin as ungovernable.  The Welsh caused trouble even when they were subjugated. For instance there was a time when Welsh insurrectionists came into the castle close disguised as market goers. Once inside they threw off their capes and started attacking. I don't remember exactly what happened next, but I don't think it was pretty. And the English kept command.

Then there is the tale of the first English prince of Wales. King Charles I told his restive Welsh subjects that his heir would be born in the Caernafon castle in Wales, and that his son wouldn't speak English. The apocryphal tale goes on to say that the king did indeed install his queen at Caernarfon when she was about to give birth. And the day after his son was born, the king presented the newborn to his people and said, "See, he doesn't speak English!"

Rail Discoveries

Never did I think I would write about railroads. It is appropriate for me to at least try, however, having gone on a Rail Discoveries tour of northern Wales. There were 40 of us in the group. Two were from New South Wales, Australia. Two were from southern Wales but identified as English. There were two people from the United States. The rest were English.

Slava is pictured here with a Welshman by the name of Charlie.  Charlie operated one of the steam trains we took.   The remarkable thing is that there were few paid staff running the trains. The bulk of the work was done by volunteers who want to revitalize classic train systems. 

We travelled on three narrow gauge trains with old fashioned steam engines and saw Welsh seaside, sheep farms, and steeply rising hills. On one train we had as a companion a master electrician who had been a volunteer for the railroad for 20 years, driving 3 hours each way on weekends from his home when his services were needed. On another train we were served refreshments by an employee who worked for the railroad in the summer tourist season, and volunteered his services as a professional tree trimmer in the off season, as he had time. All together there were over 400 volunteers on one of the lines, with about 1500 dues paying members of the railroad society. I wasn't surprised to hear one of the guys say that he had three model trains set up at his house. For him and others, it must be a great joy to play with a really big train set.

Alice in Llandudno

When we arrived in the resort town of Llandudno on the north coast of Wales we were surprised to be greeted at the train station by a statue of Alice in Wonderland.  We learned that Alice Lidell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's book, vacationed in Llandudno with her family for many years. Lewis Carroll also vacationed in Llandudno, and local lore has it that part of "Alice in Wonderland" was written here. For the 150th anniversary of the book, in 2014, Llamdudno commissioned a number of statues to be put around town. It's fun to see them pop up in unexpected places, such as on the ocean promenade.

The name Llandudno is a little hard to say. As best as I can tell, you start of with a tight smile and clear your throat while saying the letter L. The letter U is pronounced like an I. Phonetically it would sound like " hrkfgh-lan-DID-no."

"Llan" is a Welsh word that means something like "a community around a church."  That sounds like a village to me, but I think it's something even  smaller. Many towns have grown up from such origins and so have names that start with Llan. (By the way, the English words "land" and "lawn" come from "Llan.")  The second part of the name refers to a particular patron saint. St. Tudno is a rather obscure saint who lived in the 6th century. He was one of seven sons of a Welsh king whose drunken incompetence caused his kingdom to be lost.  This son lived a life of penance and established a church in this area.

I will let the Queen of Hearts have the last word. "Off with her head!"

Portmeirion Botanic Garden

Portmeirion Botanic Garden is a familiar pattern of pottery in the United States. I knew it had to have some connection to the village of Portmeirion in Wales, but I didn't know what. Here's the story.

The eccentric architect who built Portmeirion had a daughter, Susan Williams-Ellis, who worked as a book illustrator for a while and did other design work. Susan and her husband moved to Portmeirion to help her father by running the souvenir shop, which was operating at a loss. They turned it around, and then took over management of the village. Susan still wanted to do design work. There was a broken down pottery near by, and Susan conceived the idea of making a line casual dinnerware with multiple designs that could mix and match.  Nobody had ever done that, and department store buyers were skeptical that the product would sell.   It did sell well at its launch in 1972, and is selling strongly today, about $42,000,000 in sales annually. That's a lot of plates and cups and bowls! At a time when the idea of "working woman" was an anathema, Susan Williams-Ellis was a successful entrepreneur, a wife, a mother, and a designer whose work has endured beyond her lifetime.

Let's take another look at Portmeirion.

One of the idiosyncratic houses in Portmeirion looks ordinary at first glance. Sir Clough Williams worried, however, about passers by looking in the windows and disturbing the privacy of the residents. So he put windows on the back and dummy windows on the front, even painting on lace curtains. The ones on the left are real; the ones on the right are dummies. Truly unique!

Portmeirion Village

Portmeirion is a village that demonstrates what dreaming can do. Take a very steep hill in a remote area of Wales and imagine building an Italianate cluster of houses and shops. That's what Welsh architect Clough Williams-Evans did over a span of 50 years, from 1925 to 1975. Over that period he constructed inventively attractive and whimsical structures that were deemed historic structures, and to Sir Williams-Evans surprise, in the later years even he couldn't make changes to them without permission.

The gardens are an integral part of the village plan. There are also many pieces of sculpture scattered throughout the grounds. Due to space constraints I must leave out the thousands of photos I took in this beautiful, dreamy village. 

West Coast of Wales

We visited the town of Aberyswyth and stayed in the Richmond Hotel, right on the promenade by the beach.  The proprietor, a nice guy by the name of Richard Griffiths, was generous with his time, and told us about how the old merchant homes along the beach had fallen into hard times, and then gradually changed into boutique hotels. Renovation is expensive, he said. In the early days guests didn't have free use of electricity. To turn the overhead light on in your room, or use the single wall outlet, you had to put a coin into a box.  The Richmond Hotel is now set up for guests to use all manner of electric devices. But couples who come from the U.S. and bring only one converter with them (ahem) have to juggle their use of electric appliances.

I told Richard that I have a couple of school groups coming to D.C. In October, and I want to greet them properly. He told me that the Welsh word for welcome is "croeso."  OK... And I can add, "Yr wyf yen Hanner Cymraes.  Mae Fy nmeulu yn dod o Aberyswyth. "  If I can pronounce it properly I will be telling them, "I am half Welsh. My family is from Aberyswyth."

Actually my ancestors on my father's side are from Aberyswynth and small villages in the area. So the trip to Aberyswyth was by motor coach in order to see the countryside.

What you see from the window of a bus traveling through West Wales is green pasture. And sheep. Lots of sheep. As a matter of fact it is said that at this time of year sheep outnumber people in Wales 4:1. The ratio is about to go down drastically, because the lambs have been separated from the ewes for about a month. I hate to think about what will be happening to the lambs. Actually, from reading the dinner menu, I know.

Let me end with a bit of silliness from the Cotswolds. Apparently there they do something like what we Americans call the Hokey Pokey. Here's what I saw in a shop window: