You are here: Home 
Content Articles Sion Jobbins on the DAI-aspora i-Cambria 10th Anniversary Issue Sion Jobbins on the DAI-aspora
Content Articles Sion Jobbins on the DAI-aspora i-Cambria 10th Anniversary Issue Sion Jobbins on the DAI-aspora | Sion Jobbins on the DAI-aspora |
|
|
|
|
It’s probably because I suffer from Selective Ethnocentric Dyslexia that for years I would read and write ‘Diaspora’ as ‘Daiaspora’, blissfully smiling like a pig in dung at the good grace of the Greeks to create a word using the Welsh diminutive of Dafydd to describe a world-wide age-old phenomenon. I was incorrect of course, but at the same time possibly not wrong either. After all, isn’t every community’s Diaspora a special, unique and more wholesome Diaspora than the rest? One community’s economic immigrant, under-cutting costs and wages, is another community’s heroic, down-trodden worker, finding a better life for himself and family to send much-needed money home to mother and the motherland? Madog is the alpha of our diaspora as he left a Wales plagued by civil war and famine in 1170 to discover, luckily, America and where, by coincidence, he found many Welsh societies celebrating St David’s Day and sharing his name. The Cymmrodorion Society in London played an instrumental part in the founding of many of our national institutions. My guess is that the Welsh language was the largest ‘ethnic’ language in England until the recent advent of Hindi and Polish-speakers. Even today the Welsh Language Board believes there to be some 150,000 Welsh-speakers in England - a ‘Slough’-sized population - albeit dispersed and largely disinterested. The haemorrhaging of Welsh talent (and culture and language) is as acute in Wales as it is for East European countries- if not more. So as we crawl into a century when demography, diaspora and birth-rate will be the bed-rock of politics, maybe now is as good a time as ever to examine the whole idea of a diaspora. I guess many Welsh people have quite a low estimation of the Welsh diaspora – if they think of it all. Maybe it’s coloured by Jac Glan-y-Gors, the eighteenth century republican from Cerrig-y-drudion. This some-time tenant of the King’s Head pub in Ludgate St, London penned the famous ballad to the eponymous, treacherous Dic Siôn Dafydd the fictional Welshman who ‘forgot’ his mother tongue as soon as he settled in England. The Welsh idiom, ‘Gorau Cymro, Cymro oddi cartref’ (Best Welshman, Welshman from home) is said more often than not with a sarcastic and knowing smile than as a true compliment. Almost uniquely among the world’s diaspora, the Welsh one seems to be less radical and less nationalistic than the folks back home. Like my fellow Cambria columnist, Patrick Thomas, I have an interest in Armenia, whose people, along with the Jews, share the most envious of diasporas – and also for tragic reasons. In the early years of this decade, the Armenian diaspora, for instance, raised $25 million through its annual Thanksgiving Phoneathon to finance the building of a 100 mile road in the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – yes a fully-tarmaced, two lane, dead straight highway – you know, just like the one we don’t have linking north and south Wales. The Welsh diaspora is less impressive but now seems to be somewhat in fashion. Websites such as the www.glaniad.com (Patagonia) and the Wales-Ohio Project wish to archive, digitise and put online the Welsh global experience. There’s also been a series of interesting programmes in both Welsh and English about elements of the history of the Welsh diaspora from the American Civil War, our communities in Ohio and of course the Wladfa. As a part of the dotCYM bid I’ve witnessed the importance of the Welsh diaspora to the growing success of the bid and also for creating a world-wide network of societies which gives an international context to our identity. Sion Jobbins The full version of this article appears in the September-October issue of Cambria                |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Welsh Kitchen Book
Book by Dorothy Davies
Cambria Welsh Kitchen
£6.25 - BUY IT NOW
