On 27th July 1854 George Borrow began a tour of North Wales which would last until 16th November 1854. The Borrows lodged at Dee Cottage, Llangollen, and from there Borrow started local excursions, followed by a long walk via Corwen, Capel Curig to Bangor and Holyhead (and lots of other places). Then in September he headed south via Caernarvon, Beth Gelert and Festiniog and back to Llangollen. October saw the start of a long walk to Bala, Machynlleth, Devil’s Bridge, Strata Florida, Lampeter, Llandovery, Swansea, Neath, Merthyr Tydvil, Caerphilly and Newport, finally ending up at Chepstow on 16th November 1854.
During this period Borrow filled notebooks with the people he met, the incidents and so forth. These notebooks, together with Welsh material that Borrow had already written, were written up during 1855 and 1856 to form Wild Wales, which was first announced as ready for the press in 1857.
After Borrow’s death the book gradually gained in popularity and is now seen as one of the classic books on Wales. Unlike Borrow’s other works, Wild Wales, has been in print for many decades.
So there's the basic facts ... here's a map of his route/routes ...
Another thing he talks about in that final chapter is about the sheer quantity of Welsh words ..as we will see.. I've missed out the boring bits by the way ...
" The Welsh language is one of the most copious languages of the world, as it contains at least eighty thousand words. The genders are three , the masculine, the feminine and the neuter. There are twelve plural terminations of nouns, of which the commonest is au.
Its copiousness, however, does not proceed, like that of the English, from borrowing from other languages to any great extent. No language has a better supply of simple words for the narration of events than the Welsh, and simple words are the proper garb of narration; and no language abounds more with terms calculated to express the abstrusest ideas of the metaphysician.
As to its sounds - I have to observe that at the will of a master it can be sublimely sonorous, terribly sharp, diabolically guttural and sibilant and sweet and harmonious to a remarkable degree.What more sublimely sonorous than certain hymns of Taliesin; more sharp and clashing that certain lines of Gwalchmai and Dafydd Benfras,describing battles; more diabolically grating than the Drunkard's Choke-pear by Rhys Goch, and more sweet than the lines of poor Gronwy Owen to the Muse? Ah, those lines of his to the Muse are sweeter even than the verses of Horace , of which they profess to be an imitation. What lines in Horace's Ode can vie with
Tydi roit â diwair wên
Lais eos i lysowen!
Well, what do you make of all that? What's all this stuff about neuter nouns? And the "12 endings" to nouns .... there are 12 common ones, but plenty of others. To cheer us all up a bit, you'll be chuffed to hear that he finds lots of Welsh speakers to be totally unintelligible.
I wonder if Borrow ever came across this young lady on his travels .... some of my long-time readers ( hello Gladys and Winifred Partridge of Henley-on-Thames) will have seen this before but it bears another go I think. Incidentally, which of Borrow's adjective would apply to her "tone" .....