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Show U(oiiic fo i'v&tival ales as special as the Welsh tongue Ijv I Sutton Swansea from London. THE FAST train makes the run from london to Swansea in about two and three-quarthours. Passengers are picked up on Fridays at the Swansea High Street Station and driven by limousine the parties are kept small and driven to the Osborne Hotel on a clifftop overlooking Langland Bay. There are afternoon visits to the village called Mumbles on a curve in Swansea Bay, and dinner at the Drangway Restaurant in Swansea. Welsh food can be as special as the Welsh tongue. A specialty is bacon and laver bread The bread is a foundation of seaweed which has been boiled and reduced to a paste, then formed into cakes and dipped into crushed oatmeal and fried in bacon fat. If that turns you off, there are the Welsh stews, especially mutton stew which is cooked with leeks, the unoffie cial national vegetable. might bring teisen berffro, cakes made of a thick batter and heavy with raisins and VISITORS who venture to the foreign called Wales ought to be forewarned: dont try to pronounce anything and dont try to spell anything land er the local tongue. I mean when handed a piece of traveler's propaganda which says Cywydd Croeso ir Brifwyl yn y Brifddinas, 1978 what is one to make of it? Well, obviously that there was a short circuit in the linotype machine, the printer was drunk or Dennis the Menace got his hands on daddys typewriter again. Ah, but no. .That is Welsh and it means Ode of Welcome to the Great Festival, to the capital city, 1978. The capita! city, to be sure, is Cardiff in The only who under- stand Welsh are the Breton sailors who sometimes encounter Welsh fishermen and have a natter on the in high seas. Both are speaking forms of Old British which had an infusion of Latin during the Roman occupation of mid-chann- Tea-tim- Wales. currants. The unpronouncable, unspellable tongue is one of the oldest European languages. It had a literary tradition before Chaucer was bom, before the arrival of the Saxons and the Normans. Welsh orators of the 5th or 6th centuries spoke just about the same way they do now. THE WELSH present an international musical festival at Llaangollen every year which they call an eisteddfod, or to give it its proper handle in its proper tongue is known as the Eisteddfod Gerddorol Gydwladol Lllangollen. It had been held every year since 1947 at Llangollen which is, roughly speaking, northwest of Shrewsbury and Birmingham and southeast of Chester and Liverpool. Everybody knows where we are? Aside from Richard Burton, the most famous of Welshmen may well be Dylan Thomas, the poet who died in New York in 1953 at the age of 39. He was bom in Swansea on October 27, 1914, and a plaque marks his address, 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. Those who go to visit will do best to ask for the Dylan Thomas house which is easier to pronounce than Cwmdonkin Drive. Much is made of the poet and his works for he was popularized on this side of the Atlantic, says the chairman of the Wales Tourist Board, Ednyfed Hudson Davies, If Dylan Thomas had if he spoken Welsh, which he didnt hod he would have written inWelsh he would have inherited the anonymity of a minority language and you wouldnt have heard of him at all. But he wrote in English producing poems, short stories, broadcasts and his famous play, Under Milk Wood. All this lore that Thomas left is dished up each summer in Wales. Dylan Thomas weekends are arranged for small parties who wish to come down L ON SATURDAY the tour rolls onward to Uplands where Thomas was born, to Laugham (pronounced "lam) where he described the sea wet church small as a snail." He lived first at Sea View and then with his wife Catlin at The He is buried in the Boat House cemetery. For weekends there is dinner Saturday at Norton House at Mumbles, and then a poetry recital of Thomas works. The weekenders return to Ion-doon Sunday night A show called The Man and The Myth is staged regularly in summer by David Pouting who bears an uncanny resemblance to Dylan Thomas. It is much in the manner ir. which Hal Holbrook appeared do successfully as Mark Twain. Ponting, who toured America with his show in 1976, presents "The Man and The Myth as an hour and a half show, some strri,ht narrative, some dramatic excerp,s, with added bits of poetry and prose. During July it will play at a variety of locations in Wales including Swansea, Llangollen, and that settlement fetchingly names Betwsy Coed Although Thomas wrote in English, his works are unmistakably Welsh. In the earnest opinion of Ednyfed Hudson Davies, Under Milk Wood could not refer to, say, a Cornish fishing village. The interplay of religion with life and the contrast between prudery and licentiousness, which Thomas magnified, are part of the Welsh flavor. THOSE who go will want to know that the old harborside at Lower Fishguard was used as the setting for the filming of Under Milk Wood. In the play the name of the town was Llareggyb Thats not exactly a Welsh name. It is "bugger all spelled backwards. Dylan Thomas everlasting little joke. n one-ma- a fiery Welsh poet who died in Neiv York The Wales of Dylan Thomas at 39, has left many memories in Wales of which he wrote. The town of iMwer Fishguard was used as background in film of Dylan 's famous work, Under Milk Wood n The Salt Lake July 16, 1978 |