Followers of Yr Hen Iaith will be very familiar with the way Richard Wyn Jones opens each episode by saying that ‘a lad from Ohio’ is teaching ‘a lad from Anglesey’ about the literature of his own Language. Here’s an episode that was recorded in Ohio, in front of a live audience as part of this year’s NAAWCH conference.
Since we finished the previous episode by talking about Goronwy Owen in Virginia, we pick up that story again and discuss the only poem which the famous poet from Anglesey composed in America which has survived. But first we discuss the earliest Welsh-language texts written in America – beginning with poetry by sailors from Wales composed in the Caribbean. Here’s an opportunity to learn an astounding fact: a Welsh-language book was published in North America more than half a century before the birth of that new Country, the United States! We also note that the popular legend about Prince Madog is not true, acknowledging that this ‘myth-busting’ will be a disappointment to some people.
Presented by: Yr Athro Jerry Hunter a’r Athro Richard Wyn Jones
Proeduced by: Richard Martin i Cwmni Mimosa Cymru
Music: ‘Might Have Done’ gan The Molenes
Further Reading:
To learn about NAASWCH: https://www.naaswch.wales/saesneg-home
Ellis Pugh, Annerich i r Cymry (Philadelphia, 1721): https://www.library.wales/discover-le… .
Jerry Hunter, ‘The Welsh outside of Wales: A Glance at the Welsh Literature of the United States, 1838-65’, in Angharad Naylor, Llion Pryderi Roberts and Dylan Foster Evans (eds.), What is the Welsh? (Cardiff, 2023): https://www.uwp.co.uk/app/uploads/978… .
Gwyn Alf Williams, Madoc: The Making of a Myth (Oxford, 1987)
Chapter 4: ‘The Welsh Indians: The Friend from the Old Country and the Legend of the Madogwys’ in Jerry Hunter, Paths of Nations [:] Contextualizing the Welsh Mission to the Tsalagi (Cardiff, 2012).
Jerry Hunter, ‘Myth and Historiography: One Hundred and Sixty Years of Madog and the Madogwys’, in Kristin A. Cook and Robert Lawson-Peebels (eds.), Writing the Americas, 1480-1826 (special issue: Yearbook of English Studies, 2016).