Welsh Not

Recreation of an old school classroom at the West Wales Museum of Childhood, Llangeler, with a Welsh Not, threaded on white string, on the right-hand side of the desk

The Welsh Not (also historically named Welsh knot, Welsh note, Welsh lump, Welsh stick or cwstom) was an item used by schools in Wales, in the 18th and 19th centuries, to force children to speak English, by stigmatising and punishing children those who were heard speaking Welsh.

Background

Under Henry VIII the Act of Union 1536 brought the whole of Wales under the authority of the English Crown and Welsh speakers were required to know and use English when holding public office.

The teaching of English in Welsh schools was demanded by the Welsh public and parents who saw it as the language of economic advancement.

The device

"The speaking of Welsh in school was strictly forbidden; any boy or girl guilty of the offence was given the Welsh Not, which he or she handed on to the next offender, the unfortunate one who held the Welsh Not at the end of the school session becoming the scapegoat who bore the punishment for the sins of all.

Mother, being a lively child, was in frequent possession of the Welsh Not, but was never allowed to pay the penalty; a chivalrous boy cousin always asked for it in Welsh and took the punishment himself."

Account of the writer's mothers experiences in The Welsh Outlook, May 1931.

The Welsh Not was also known as the "Welsh knot", "Welsh note", "Welsh lump", "Welsh stick", "Welsh lead" (if a lump of lead was used) or the "cwstom". Typically the Not was a piece of wood, slate, a ruler or a stick, often inscribed with the letters "WN", used in schools in Wales to attempt to promote the use of the English language. Its purpose was to 'force Welsh children to speak English at school'. This was given to the first pupil to be heard speaking Welsh. When another child was heard using Welsh, the Not was taken from its current holder and given to the latest offender. Whoever was in possession of the Not was encouraged to pass it on to any of their Welsh-speaking classmates by informing the teacher that they had caught someone else speaking Welsh. The pupil in possession at the end of the day was subjected to corporal punishment or other penalty (some reports suggest the punishment was administered at the end of the week, or at the end of each lesson).

Contemporary reports of use

"Among other injurious effects, this custom has been found to lead children to visit stealthily the houses of their school-fellows for the purpose of detecting those who speak Welsh to their parents, and transferring to them the punishment due to themselves."

Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, 1847.

1798: the antiquary Richard Warner heard of the use of a "Welsh lump" in Flintshire in 1798, well before the enactment of the Education Act 1870. There is strong evidence of pre-1870 use in Carmarthen, Ceredigion and Meirionnydd, but it was not government policy. Given that schooling was voluntary then, use of the Welsh Not had the indirect approval of parents.

1843: Anglican clergyman from Pembrokeshire Rev R. Bowen Jones giving evidence to the Inquiry for South Wales in 1843 “The school master in my parish, for instance, amongst the common Welsh people has a little toy on a little bit of wood, and on the wood is written “Welsh not” that is to say they must not speak Welsh; it is a mark, and they pass this mark one to another. The rule of the school is that there is no Welsh to be spoken in the school; if anybody speaks a word of Welsh he is to have the Welsh mark, which he is to carry about his neck, or to hold it in his hand. There is the greatest anxiety to catch one another speaking Welsh, and there is a cry out immediately, “Welsh not”.” November 1843. Inquiry for South Wales.

1847: Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, 1847. “My attention was attracted to a piece of wood, suspended by a string round a boy's neck, and on the wood were the words “Welsh stick”.This I was told was a stigma for speaking Welsh. But in fact his only alternative was to speak Welsh or to say nothing. He did not understand English, and there is no systematic exercise in interpretation. The Welsh stick, or Welsh, as it's sometimes called, is given too any pupil who is overheard speaking Welsh, and may be transferred by him to any schoolfellow whom he hears committing a similar offence. It is thus passed from one another until the close of the week, when the pupil in who's possession the Welsh is found is punished by flogging. Among other injurious effects, this custom has been found to lead children to visit stealthily the houses of their schoolfellows for the purposes of detecting those who speak Welsh to their parents, and transferring to them the punishment due to themselves”

1870: The Llansantffraid Board School log book, 8 February 1870, "Endeavoured to compel the children to converse in English by means of a piece of wood. Offenders to be shut in after school hours."

The use of the Welsh Not appears to have decreased with the introduction of compulsory education in the later decades of the 19th century. After the school boards were absorbed by the county councils following the Local Government Act 1888, instruction in Welsh became the norm in primary schools in Welsh-speaking areas. However, incidents of the Welsh Not were still reported.

Reactions and impact

Some Welsh people have described the use of the Welsh Not as a 'weapon to create cultural genocide' others welcomed the method in children learning English.

In November 2009, Adam Price, an MP in Westminster at the time, said, 'The Welsh Not was the model for the corporal punishment of indigenous culture throughout the (British) Empire'. Indirectly, the WN is an early example of the effects of teacher's performance related pay (payments by exam results), as Welsh didn't form part of the curriculum, the use of Welsh was actively discouraged by the teachers.

Welsh entrepreneur, writer, and former local government Conservative politician, John Winterson Richards wrote on the website of the Institute of Welsh Affairs: "... the ‘Welsh Not’ did not come from oppressors in London but from educators in Wales who, rightly or wrongly, believed honestly and sincerely that the children in their charge would fare better in life if they mastered English."

The use of the Welsh Not created a stigma in using the Welsh Language. However work from groups such as the Welsh Language Society after the passing of the Education Act 1870 tried to fight for the right to speak Welsh and learn through the medium of Welsh in schools, and to advocate bilingualism in classrooms. Although their campaigning resulted in the encouragement of teaching Welsh History and Geography within schools, the Education system continued to become further dominated by the English system.

"The teacher had told me silently not to speak a word of Welsh ... When I did speak, in my strong Welsh , everyone laughed, and I was given a cord, and a heavy chunk of wood. I didn't know what on earth it was, I had seen a similar ticket around a dog's neck to stop it chasing sheep. That wooden token went for my neck hundreds of times after that...

It went as follows, – when a child was heard saying a word in Welsh, I was to report it to the teacher, then the piece of wood was put around the neck of the speaker; and would stay around their neck until the child heard someone else speak Welsh, when it was transferred to that poor child..."

Ysgol y Llan: Rhan I ("Llan School: Part I") by O. M. Edwards (later the first Chief Inspector of Schools for Wales); copy on Welsh Wikisource

Liz Lee Reynolds argues in an article in the Morning Star that "There is some evidence of corporal punishment for Welsh-speakers with the 'Welsh Not' being enforced in schools at least in parts of the country".

In his book For Wales, See England: Language, Nationhood, and Identity, Ford discusses the paucity of evidence that the 'Not' existed, and concludes that "the ‘Welsh Not’ has served as a useful means of propaganda for a mixed bag of anti-imperialists, left-wing historians, and misguided nationalists".

Welsh historian John Davies says in his book A History of Wales (1993) that "it is unlikely that the use of the 'Welsh Note' is was as widespread as the mythology of the twentieth century maintains".

The 1847 'Blue Book' reports

The Welsh Not was already in use in 1847, before the Treachery of the Blue Books.

[Question] "as far as your experience goes, there is a general desire for education, and the parents are desirous that their children should learn the English language?" [Reply] "Beyond anything."

Anglican clergyman from Pembrokeshire giving evidence to the Inquiry for South Wales in 1843

Of the 1,656 schools in Wales surveyed in the Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales 1847, the language of instruction for 1,321 was English only, for 325 it was English and Welsh, for 2 it was Welsh only and for 8 unknown. There is some doubt that one of the two Welsh only schools was in fact a Welsh only school.

So virtually all of the schools surveyed taught English and 80% of them did not just teach English but also used English for all of their lessons. Some schools banned the use of Welsh in the classroom and playground in an attempt to force children to use and become proficient in English.

"Cannot get the children from the habit of talking in Welsh; the school as a whole is backward in English."

British School, Aberaeron, Log book. 5 November, 1880.

The teaching of Welsh was left to Sunday schools.

The inquiry found that the quality of schools in Wales was poor. (In common with England.) Inadequate buildings, untrained teachers and an almost complete lack of suitable books. Many children did not go to school at all and those that did were often absent for long periods. The inquiry found that many schools were attempting to teach English without translating from Welsh and as a result the children did not know the meaning of the words they were learning. They also came across one school using a Welsh Not. The inquiry condemned its use as educational nonsense and something that would teach children to be dishonest.

The inquiry's report was controversial because of the comments it made about Welsh society and the Welsh language and became known as the "Treachery of the Blue Books". However its support for the teaching of English in Wales was met with general agreement by the Welsh public and parents.

Reference to the WN at Westminster

Susan Elan Jones, Member of Parliament for Clwyd South, said in her maiden speech in 2010 that, even after the use of the Not had ceased, punishment for speaking Welsh persisted in some schools in her constituency until "as recently as the 1930s and 1940s".

On 26 May 1993 Mr. Michael Fabricant, Conservative MP for Mid-Staffordshire, said, during the Welsh Language Bill at the Lords, 'Even during the last century, speaking Welsh in schools was an offence for which a pupil could be beaten.'

Parallels in other locations and cultures

• Basque Country – "Those caught speaking Basque were handed over a stick. He in turn had to pass it over to any other who spoke Basque, and the one who happened to be in its possession at the end of the week went through punishment."an interview with a Basque speaker

• Brittany – corporal punishment in schools: 'Teachers used ridicule and humiliation and corporal punishment to convince little children that they should not use Breton at school or anywhere near the schoolyard.'

• Canada – children were beaten with the maide-crochaidh ("hanging stick") if caught speaking Canadian Gaelic.

• Ireland – a 'tally stick' was notched with a 'tick' for each word of Irish that a child uttered during the school day, and they received a corresponding punishment at the end of the day for same."

• Japan – the Dialect card Hōgenfuda (方言札, "dialect card"), used to suppress the Ryukyuan languages and dialects of the Tōhoku region in Japan.

• Kenya – a system similar to that used in Ireland was used, with the device being a button rather than a stick.

• Scotland – maide-crochaidh ("hanging stick") placed round the child's neck, if heard speaking Gaelic. In the 1850's at Camaghouran, "any boy or girl caught speaking Gaelic during school hours was punished by having a human skull suspended round the head for the rest of the day.” Children speaking Gaelic were often "belted and faced further corporal punishment if they did not give up the names of classmates they had been talking to.”

• Vergonha – French suppression of regional languages, and specifically le symbole in French schools.

See also

• Language policy

External links

• Photographs of actual Welsh Not arteffacts at the National Museum of Wales
• Owen Morgan Edwards describes his experience of the Welsh Not in school in Llanuwchllyn in his book Clych Atgof.