The Englishman’s Neighbors

HERE is the longest name I know. It has fifty-eight letters. It is LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH.It looks as if a child had been playing on a typewriter and had pounded out the letters at random. But it is a real name, the name of a town in Wales—a little country on the same island with England. It means “Church ofSt. Mary, in a hollow of white hazel, near a rapid whirlpool, and near St. Tysilios Church, which is near a red cave.” People who live there or direct letters there usually call this place simply “Llanfairpwll,” forshort—and that’s long enough. I’d rather call it “Gogogoch”! Wales is now a part of England, but once upon a time it was not. The people in Wales spoke a different language—a difficult language with many long nameshard to pronounce, with many “l(fā)l’s” and “w’s” and “y’s” all mixed together.

An English king at last conquered Wales, and in order to make the people he had conquered satisfied and happy hetold them he would give them a ruler who was born in Wales and couldn’t even speak a word of English. The people in Wales were pleased at that, for they thought the king would give them one of their own countrymen to ruleover them. But the king’s own son was born in Wales—of course, he was a baby and he couldn’t speak a word of English, nor of any other language either. So the king made him the ruler of Wales and the king called himthe Prince of Wales. Ever since then the King of England’s first-born son, the one who will be king when his father dies, has been called the Prince of Wales. Nowadays few people of Wales can speak their own “mother-tongue,”for all the children learn English in the schools. Many people study other languages besides their own, but it isn’t necessary to know Welsh in order to travel in Wales, for every one speaks English even if he speaks Welshtoo.

The game of golf first started in Scotland, the country north of England, on the same island, and some of the finestgolf-courses are there. Scotland is the land of the Scots and it once had a separate king. The Scotch men used to wear—and some do to-day—shawls of bright-colored squares, and skirts instead of breeches, and stockingsrolled down, leaving their knees bare even in the coldest weather—and they have a great deal of cold weather in Scotland. The Scotch families are called Clans and each Clan has a special design called a plaid in which itsshawls and skirts are woven. A great many Scotch names and words are different from English, and yet similar. They call a baby a bairn, and boys and girls they call lads and lassies, and a pretty girl they call a bonnie lassie.