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Once More a Sense of Nationhood
 From time to time, the people of Wales needed to be reminded of their separate history and culture; many of them had to be told of the separate language, hanging on desperately in ever fewer areas. They were immensely helped by their men of literature, always ready to paper the gaps between reality and hope, ambition and realization. Between 1900 and World War I, these admirable men created a new beginning in Welsh literature.
Termed "remarkable" by Professor John Davies, the achievements of Welsh scholarship benefited in 1900 with the publication of two influential histories that reminded their readers of their Welshness: The Welsh People by John Rhys and Brynmor Jones; and one year later, Wales by Owen Edwards. These were followed by the monumental A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (1911) by J.E. Lloyd. Then, in 1913 appeared another publication of great importance, A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative, by John Morris-Jones.
Even allowing for the rapid anglicization of much of southeast Wales, there were still one million people in the country who spoke Welsh, the highest number in its history. It was Gwynedd, in the northwest that remained the bastion of the Welsh literary revival. It was here that the great majority of Welsh-language periodicals were published, and it was here that the majority of prominent Welsh writers of the early part of the century resided.
There was still an appreciative audience ready to receive works written in Welsh. But at the same time the country was being flooded with a mass of English publications and the majority of Welsh children were being educated through the medium of English and thus exposed to English literature (and, therefore, not to works in Welsh). It was this that caused great concern to one of Gwynedd's most influential scholars, Owen M. Edwards (1858-1920) of whom, almost forty years after his death, poet Bobi Jones wrote: "If it's true that Madog discovered America, it is much more true that O.M. Edwards discovered Wales." It is easy to see why.
While at Oxford University, Edwards, from Llanuwchllyn at the head of Llyn Tegid (Lake Bala), had taken part in the Cymdeithas Dafydd ap Gwilym, a society that had a great deal to do with the new interest in Welsh language scholarship and literature. He also helped edit Cymru Fydd (Welsh Faith) the journal of the tiny Welsh nationalist movement. Returning to Wales, Edwards devoted himself to the publishing of Welsh books and magazines to counteract the rapid spread of English publications, which he considered to be often of inferior content.
Anxious to promulgate the glories of the simple, hard-working folk, called in Welsh Y Werin, Edwards published four history books that gave them knowledge of their own country and fostered a new pride in their inheritance and culture. In 1890 he started the magazine Cymru (Wales ) and continued to edit it until his death thirty years later. From 189l-1920 he published Cymry'r Plant (The Children's Wales), a magazine that sold 12,000 copies a month, and this was followed by a series of children's books.
Edwards' collection of essays on the homes of important figures in Welsh history published in 1896 is regarded as his most important literary work. In the same year he founded a society especially for Welsh children called Urdd y Delyn (Order of the Harp) which was a forerunner of the hugely successful and influential Urdd Gobaith Cymru, the Welsh youth league begun by his son Ifan ab Owen Edwards in 1922.
Chapter 21 Continued
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