As we’ve given attention to North America’s Welsh-language literature in a couple of earlier episodes, here’s an opportunity to widen the discussion and consider the way in which the Welsh ‘diaspora’ widened as Y Wladfa – or Y Wladychfa – in Patagonia was created.
But we begin by emphasizing the connection between Welsh experiences in North America and the early history of Y Wladfa by examining the period Michael D. Jones spent in the United States. (And there’s a friendly but fairly heated disagreement between the two of us, as Richard Wyn Jones tries to take credit for an ‘inflammatory lecture’ which Jerry Hunter delivered in a conference in Cardiff in 2001, namely ‘Cincinnati: the Cradle of Welsh Nationalism?’)
But most of the episode focusses on the first decades of the Welsh-language press of Y Wladfa, as we are amazed by an attempt to create a periodical without a printing press before moving on to consider an interesting selection from the contents of Y Dravod.