The Welsh Not was a token used by teachers at some schools in Wales, mainly in the 19th century, to discourage children from speaking Welsh, by marking out those who were heard speaking the language. It could be followed by an additional discipline, sometimes involving corporal punishment. There is evidence of the Welsh Not's use from the end of 18th to the start of the 20th century, but it was most common in the early- to mid-19th century.
There was a widespread belief in Wales in the 19th century that it was beneficial for children to learn English. The token known as the Welsh Not was not part of any government policy, but was seen by teachers as a way to encourage children to learn English. Over time, however, excluding Welsh began to be viewed as an ineffective way of teaching English. By the end of the 19th century schools were encouraged to use some Welsh in lessons though many schools in Welsh-speaking areas remained predominantly English-language, but some teachers continued to discourage the use of Welsh.
Accounts suggest that the form and use of the Welsh Not varied from place to place, but it was most commonly a piece of wood. It was sometimes hung on a string around the child's neck. Numerous names were used in contemporary sources; the Welsh Not became the most common name in the 20th century. The token remains prominent in Welsh collective memory.
Terminology
The Welsh Not came in several forms and was used in differing ways. It was also known by other names, including Welsh not, Welsh note, Welsh lump, Welsh stick, Welsh lead, cwstom, Welsh Mark, and Welsh Ticket. The name Welsh Note was more common in the 19th century than Welsh Not. Martin Johnes, an historian who has studied the subject, suggests that the latter term may have originated from Welsh speakers struggling to pronounce the English word "note", since many Welsh people at the time had little knowledge of that language; this may have contributed to the punishment being seen as an outside imposition. Welsh Not became the main term used in the 20th century.
Overview
During the 19th century, a primary function of day schools in Wales was the teaching of English. The teaching of English in Welsh schools was generally supported by the Welsh public and parents who saw it as the language of economic advancement. Some schools practised what is now commonly called total immersion English language teaching and banned the use of Welsh in the school and playground to force children to use and become proficient in English.
Some schools punished children caught speaking Welsh with the Welsh Not. This was a token typically made of wood often inscribed with the letters 'WN' or a similar phrase. It might be worn around the neck or carried. Typically, following the start of some prescribed period of time, a lesson, the school day or the school week, it was given to the first child heard speaking Welsh and would then be successively passed on to the next child heard speaking it. At the end of the period, the child with the token or all children who had held the token, might be punished. The nature of that punishment varies from one account to another; it might have been detention, the writing out of lines, or corporal punishment. An article published in 1900 in Perl y Plant (Children's Pearl), a Welsh language youth magazine, gave the following description of the Welsh Not's use at a school in Carmarthenshire during the 1860s:
Behind the door, hanging on a nail, was a small board, the breadth of a hand, and written on it was 'Welsh not' ... if a word of Welsh was spoken (which was done often) the Welsh not was thrown around the offender’s neck at once, and he would have to carry it to his great shame. But if he heard anyone else speaking Welsh he had the right to transfer it to the new offender. At the end of the day, the one with the Welsh not went to the teacher’s desk to receive his punishment before the whole school, and the punishment was the rod four times on the offender’s two hands.
Some teachers viewed the use of the device as a "mode of instruction", forcing children to practise English. It may be compared with the approach to language teaching in some other Western European countries, whereby children were discouraged from using minority languages. For example, children who spoke Irish, Scottish Gaelic and various minority languages in France at school were sometimes punished through public identification. A story published in 1832, in the youth edition of the annual Forget-Me-Not, discussed a French-language school for English girls at the start of the century. It described pupils being given "an oval piece of wood, with "ENGLISH", in large capitals, engraved on its front, suspended by a riband from the neck" as a punishment for speaking that language. The Welsh Not was also intended to force children to help with enforcing discipline by making them identify those who spoke Welsh. This was also a way of keeping solely Welsh-speaking children quiet; enforcing silence was considered important for managing a school.
The Welsh Not was not a government policy. Some of the local committees and School Boards that administered non-private schools instructed teachers to refrain from using Welsh but most did not. The Welsh Not was a practice introduced by individual teachers mostly on their own initiative. According to Johnes, parents were generally supportive of physical punishment in schools and appear to have been accepting of the Welsh Not.
History
"My attention [at a school in Llandyrnog, Denbighshire] 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."
— 1847 government report on Welsh education.
Johnes wrote that the practice of "shaming" students may have originated in early modern grammar schools which aimed to teach Latin. The first evidence of practices resembling the Welsh Not dates from around the 1790s; for instance, Reverend Richard Warner, in A Second Walk Through Wales (1800), wrote about schools in Flintshire: "to give the children a perfect knowledge of the English tongue ... [the teachers force] the children to converse in it ... if ... one of them be detected in speaking a Welsh word, he is immediately degraded with the Welsh lump" (a piece of lead tied around the child's neck with string). Accounts of the Welsh Not most frequently relate to the early- to mid-19th century. Robert Smith, citing local studies by other historians, argues that the Welsh Not was mostly used before 1870. There are records of it being used almost everywhere in Wales; but it was less common in Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, where English was more established. Accounts of children being beaten for speaking Welsh became less common after 1850; the penalty was increasingly likely to be non-physical where the Welsh Not was still used.
Efforts by teachers to prohibit the speaking of Welsh in schools gradually became less common in the late 19th century. The punishments used where prohibitions were in force were increasingly likely to be non-physical and less embarrassing for the children (e.g additional schoolwork). However, some corporal punishment for speaking Welsh at school did continue. Prohibitions on Welsh were most common in rural, heavily Welsh-speaking areas where teaching English was difficult. Some use of the Welsh Not continued throughout the late-19th century. In the late 19th century, the use and teaching of Welsh in schools began to receive moderate government support. A few people, who grew up at the beginning of the 20th century, recalled in interviews that they saw or knew of the Welsh Not being used when they were children. However, there is no written evidence of the practice being used after 1900.
Background
Laws in Wales Acts
Under Henry VIII the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 simplified the administration and the law in Wales. English law and norms of administration were to be used, replacing the complex mixture of regional Welsh laws and administration. Public officials had to be able to speak English and English was to be used in the law courts. These two language provisions probably made little difference since English had already replaced French as the language of administration and law in Wales in the late 14th century. In practice this meant that courts had to employ translators between Welsh and English. The courts were 'very popular' with the working class possibly because they knew the jury would understand Welsh and the translation was only for the benefit of the lawyers and judges. The use of English in the law courts inevitably resulted in significant inconvenience to those who could not speak English. Johnes argues that this may have contributed to a belief developing among the Welsh public that it was beneficial to speak English in a Kingdom dominated by England.
Johnes writes that as the Act granted the Welsh equality with the English in law, that the result was "the language actually regained ground in Welsh towns and rural anglicised areas such as the lowlands of Gwent and Glamorgan" and that thus "Welsh remained the language of the land and the people". Furthermore, Johnes writes that the religious turmoil at the time persuaded the state to support, rather than try to extinguish, the Welsh language. In 1546, Brecon man John Prys had published the first Welsh-language book (Welsh: Yny lhyvyr hwnn, "In This Book"), a book containing prayers, which, as the Pope disapproved of it, endeared it to the Crown. The result of the 1567 order by the Crown that a Welsh translation of the New Testament be used in every parish church in Wales (to ensure uniformity of worship in the Kingdom of England) was that Welsh would remain the language of religion. John Davies says that as the (Tudor) government were to promote Welsh for worship, they had more sympathy for Welsh, than for Irish in Ireland, French in Calais, and than the government of Scotland had for Gaelic of the Highlands. The Tudors themselves were of partly Welsh origin.
19th century and early 20th century
[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
The only areas of Wales where English was widely spoken in the first half of the 19th century were places close to the Anglo-Welsh border, the Gower Peninsula and southern Pembrokeshire. Immigration, mainly from England, into the industrialising areas, caused the language to become more widespread in those areas. Many Welsh speakers were keen for their children to learn English; knowing the language was felt to be a route to social mobility, made life more convenient and was a status symbol. Contemporaries often said that parents wanted schools to be conducted in English. For instance, the Rev Bowen Jones of Narberth told an inquiry following the Rebecca Riots that a school conducted in Welsh in his area was unsuccessful, while, in schools where the schoolmaster was expected to teach and speak only English, there was not enough space to accommodate all the children who wanted to attend. The upper- and middle-classes in Wales, who generally spoke English, were also eager for the masses to learn the language. They believed it would contribute to Wales's economic development and that tenants or employees who could speak English would be easier to manage.
In the 1830s and 1840s the Welsh language became increasingly associated in the eyes of the government with the social unrest taking place in Wales. The government announced "an inquiry into the state of education, especially into the means afforded the labouring classes of acquiring a knowledge of the English language" in the early 1840s. The three commissioners were English and could not speak Welsh. The Welsh-speaking assistants they employed and the witnesses the enquiry spoke to were largely Anglicans. The report, released in 1847, caused great offence in Wales because of its negative depiction of the Welsh language and the moral character of the Welsh people. The report described Welsh people as alcoholics, unintelligent and, in the case of women, sexually immoral. It complimented aspects of the Welsh national character, such as a desire for education. It was nicknamed Brad y Llyfrau Gleision (The Treason of the Blue Books). Nonconformists generally interpreted the report as an English and Anglican attack on the Welsh, and some Anglican churchmen criticised its harsh tone. The report argued that there was widespread support in Wales for learning English and that bilingualism in schools would be the most effective way of teaching English. The report was critical of schools that tried to exclude Welsh, seeing it as an ineffective way of teaching English, and described the Welsh Not negatively.