THE WELSH “NOTE,” OR “NOT”.
In order to enforce the use of the English language in Schools the Schoolmasters of those days made use of what was called the Welsh “Note,” which was a piece of stick about three or four inches long, with the letters “W.N.” marked on it, and in some places it had the following words in full: “Welsh Note, a slap for every time you speak Welsh.” This “Welsh Note” was in reality nothing but a devise to find out the children who spoke Welsh, as it was then thought that unless the mother tongue was banished from Schools, monoglot Welsh children could not learn English.
During the night-time, of course, the “Welsh Note” was in possession of the Schoolmaster, who, when School began in the morning, gave it secretly to one of the boys with directions to keep it until he caught some one speaking Welsh, to whom he was to hand it over, and this boy in his turn was to hand it over to another delinquent, and so forth. The “Welsh Note” might during the day perhaps pass through about twenty different hands; and at the close of the School in the evening the Schoolmaster would call for it and the boy in whose possession it was found got the first taste of the cane on his naked hand; then he returned it to the boy from whom he got it, and he in like manner was caned in his turn, and so on over the twenty, more or less, each in his turn getting a taste of the cane, until the first boy is reached, whose name is on the register. Then the “Welsh Note” returns to the Schoolmaster, ready for use for the next occasion.
There is no “Welsh Note” at the present day, and the Welsh language is taught in many if not in most of the Schools.
CHAPTER V.
THE FAIRIES (TYLWYTH TEG).
“In olde dayes of King Artour,
Of which the Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of Faerie;
The elf-quene with hire joly compagnie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede,
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo.”
—Chaucer.
A book dealing with Superstitions and popular beliefs would be incomplete without assigning a prominent place to the Fairies, or “Tylwyth Teg,” as they are called in Welsh. It is true that in Wales, as in other places, the Fairies have become things of the past; but even in the present day many old people, and perhaps others, still believe that such beings did once exist, and that the reason why they are not now to be seen is that they have been exorcised.
Many of the Welsh Fairy Tales date from remote antiquity and are, in common with like legends of other countries, relics of the ancient mythology, in which the natural and the supernatural are blended together.