The “standard” Welsh of the 1588 bible

Language Sciences, Volume 15, Number 2, pp. 141-153. Printed in Great Britain

1993

0388-OC@l/93 $6.00+.00 0 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd

THE “STANDARD” WELSH OF THE 1588 BIBLE ROBERT A. FOWKES Introductory and historical remarks The year 1988 saw many celebrations in Wales to mark the 400th anniversary of the first complete translation of the Bible into Welsh, traditionally attributed to William Morgan (ca. 1545-1604). The feat was, however, far from the achievement of one person, for Morgan relied upon the efforts of several learned contemporaries and, like them, also built on the work of predecessors (Parry 1944: 151-153, Stephens 1986: 37-38). Authorization for the project came from high places. In 1563, Elizabeth I promulgated, almost ritualistically, an act of Parliament commanding the four bishops of Wales (Bangor, St Asaph’s/Llanelwy, Llandaff, and St David’s, as well as Herefordat that time a county with numerous Welsh speakers) to prepare a Welsh translation of the Bible, together with the Book of Common Prayer. The date for the completion of the task was set by the Commons (where, untypically, the bill was introduced) as 1 March 1565. When the bill reached the Lords, the date was changed to 1567. The choice of St David’s Day was surely the doing of Welshmen, not of Elizabeth, despite her Welsh ancestry. And the period of time allotted, even with the extension granted by the House of Lords, was not realistic (Elton 1984: 119-121, Parry 1944: 151-154, J. H. Williams 1983). Elizabeth was not the initiator of the act, and her reasons for supporting it were hardly the same as those of the Welsh themselves. She heartily endorsed other legislation that was hostile to almost everything Welsh. Some of it dated from the reign of her father, Henry VIII, including the so-called Act of Union, which was really two acts-dated 1536 and 1543. The 1536 act referred to the Welsh language and Welsh customs as things to be extirpated. English was made the official language of law and administration in Wales, and no monoglot speakers of Welsh might hold public office at any level. That provision excluded about ninety-five per cent of the Welsh population. Elizabeth vigorously saw to it that the policies contained in these acts were pursued (D. Williams 1950: 33, 38; Stephens 1986: 151). The passage of the Act of 1563, calling for the translation of the Bible into Welsh, was the result of the lobbying of a few Welshmen, especially Richard Davies (Bishop of St Asaph’s and subsequently of St David’s), Humphrey Lhuyd (physician and

Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to Prof. R. A. Fowkes, 900 Palmer Road, 9-C Bronxville, NY 10708-3331, U.S.A. I41

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historian, elected to Parliament in 1563), and William Salesbury, who had for years been calling attention to the need for a Welsh version of the scriptures and had urged the Welsh to petition for such a work. The Salesbury family had moved into Wales from England long before-soon after the Edwardian Conquest-and had developed into a powerful ‘Welsh clan.’ ultimately regarded as ‘more Welsh than the Welsh’ (Fisher 1931: xvi-xvii). Richard Davies undertook the task of guiding the project to completion. He immediately enlisted the aid of Salesbury and of Thomas Huet, cantor of St David’s. Davies himself translated I Timothy, Hebrews, James, and 1 and 2 Peter; Thomas Huet translated Revelation; and Salesbury did the remaining books of the New Testament as well as the Psalms and the Book of Common Prayer. The New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer were published in 1567. the date that had been set for the completion of the entire translation of the Bible in the proclamation of Elizabeth and Parliament. But even that much could hardly have been accomplished in three or four years; hence the work of translation must have been going on from a date considerably before 1563 (Parry 1944: 151, Stephens 1986: 17-18. Introduction to Y Beibl Cymrueg Newydd II- 13). William Salesbury Salesbury (nominally a lawyer, yet more of a scholar and litttrateur) had already published Welsh translations of the Gospels and the Epistles, as well as the Book of Common Prayer known by the title Kynniver lfith a bun (see Fisher 1931). He prepared the reader for numerous typological errors, for he mentioned that the London printer did not know a word of Welsh. The printer did not fail to live up to expectations. (Similar complaints were voiced by Gruffydd Robert, the author of the first printed grammar-see G. J. Williams 1939: lxvii, 13.) Salesbury’s translations of the Gospels, Epistles, and the Book of Common Prayer were not undeserving of praise. They gave evidence of sound and sensitive scholarship in language and literature. But Kynniver llith a ban, despite its many virtues, was accorded a lukewarm reception at best. Salesbury’s original views of orthography brought down condemnation upon his head, something that has endured practically to the present day. Knowing that many Welsh words were loans from Latin (and occasionally regarding native words as borrowings too), he thought it was his duty to make them look as much like Latin as possible. Hence he wrote Deo for Duw ‘God’, Ifeo for lle+v ‘lion’, eccleis for eglwvs ‘church’, Natalie for Nadolig ‘Christmas’, descyn for disgyn ‘descend’, comporth for cymorth ‘help’, etc. (Fisher 1931: xxxviii). Salesbury realized that there was widespread objection to his orthography. In the dedication of another book A Pluyne and a Familiar Introduction to Welsh, he made it clear that he never intended to have the words (particularly those with no indication of mutation) pronounced in the way his writing implied (Salesbury 1567). He wanted the ‘silent reader’ to be aware of the underlying form of the word, but expected him, when reading aloud, to provide the current spoken form, including the appropriate mutations. He also expressed the hope that his peculiar forms would somehow enable

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speakers in both North and South Wales to comprehend this Bible, being, accidentally or not, compromises between northern and southern words (Fisher 1931: xxxviii). He also evidently thought that he was imparting a special dignity to the Welsh language by making it look like Latin. As Fisher says, ‘he was really a victim of the classicism of his age, which seems to have obsessed him from his Oxford days’ (1931: xxxix). The practice of making words look more like Latin than they had any right to was also engaged in by English writers and scholars at the beginning of the sixteenth century, who cheerfully altered Middle English descrive to describe, perfet to peflecr, etc. The spelling was, at first, not intended to introduce a change in pronunciation; but later the pronunciation followed the new spelling. (This incidentally, contradicts the claim of those linguists who used to assert that the manner in which we write a language has no effect upon the language itself. I remember one American linguist, possibly Leonard Bloomfield, stating at an annual meeting in the 1940s that writing has no more effect on language than photographing the Rocky Mountains alters their contours .) Some words of native origin were written by Salesbury in ways that were hard to justify but nevertheless held their own-some until the present time, e.g. ei ‘his, her’ (presumably because of the similarity to Latin eius). Almost simultaneously, the form for ‘our’ was written ein and ‘your’ became eich (cf. R. J. Thomas, ed., 1965: 1186). Morgan lent such words respectability by adopting them, and they have proved convenient, for they have introduced clarity where homophony had threatened to cause obscurity. Yet ridicule of Salesbury, which began during the latter part of his life, persisted for centuries. There have been, nevertheless, people who have viewed his work objectively and have even praised it. T. C. Edwards, for example, in assessing Salesbury’s scholarship, called him ‘quite as good a Greek scholar as Bishop Morgan, perhaps superior to him’ (Edwards 1885186: 72). Edwards also provided a study of Salesbury’s methods, including his use of Greek and other sources. Whatever his idiosyncrasies, Salesbury was a man of vast learning, was Oxfordtrained, and had an excellent knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. He has been called Cymro mwyaf ei oes ‘the greatest Welshman of his age’. I have not been able to find out who it was that first made this extravagant claim, but Thomas Parry attributed it (with approval) to W. J. Gruffydd, while not saying where in the copious body of Gruffydd’s writings it occurs (Parry 1944: 152). Salesbury and Richard Davies Some time after 1561, Salesbury was invited by Bishop Richard Davies (by then, Bishop of St David’s) to reside at his bishop’s ‘palace’ in Abergwili, where they would collaborate in translating the scriptures and other writings into Welsh. The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament resulted from that collaboration, the latter mostly the work of Salesbury and published in 1567 (Fisher 1931: xix-xx; Stephens 1986: 530-531, 145-146). They then started to translate the Old Testament. A

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sudden break occurred around 1575 or 1576, connection with Davies, but gave up writing. meaning and etymology of one word (see Wynn, perhaps, rather an ever-widening gulf in their

and Salesbury not only severed his The dispute was allegedly over the cited in Fisher 193 1: xix-xx). It was, theological views that led to the rift.

William Morgan’s role in the Bible translation of 1588 When the work of translation by Richard Davies and William Salesbury came to an end (as well as that of Thomas Huet), William Morgan came into the picture. Later, when the Bible was finally printed in 1588, he acknowledged in the Latin dedication to Queen Elizabeth the help of several people, including Davies and Salesbury, but also Edmwnt Prys, Archdeacon of Meirioneth (he had been a fellow student of Morgan’s at Cambridge and was a gifted poet); Gabriel Goodman of Ruthin, Dean of Westminster; Richard Vaughan; and others. Morgan does not specify the nature or extent of the contributions of most of these. His praise of Salesbury, however, is most generous. William Morgan was a native of Penmachno, Caernarvonshire. After his education in local schools, he went to Cambridge in 1565, where he studied (among other things) Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1571 and a doctorate in divinity in 1583. When he began work on the translation of the Bible, he was Vicar of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Denbighshire. He was not yet a bishop at the time the translation was completed in 1588. By 1595, however, he was Bishop of Llandaff, and in 1601 he was Bishop of St Asaph’s (Uunelwy in Welsh), where he remained until his death in 1604. As has been said, he was not the initiator of the translation project. Making use of the work already done by Salesbury and others, he revised that work but did not retranslate it. He found some of the literary embellishments of Salesbury unbecoming to holy writ and resorted to pruning. Morgan said that his own aim was to clothe scripture in fine. but not overly lavish raiment. He thought he found the proper raiment in the language of the Welsh bards, especially those who employed the socalled ‘strict’ meters, since they had been cultivated with greater care than had Welsh prose throughout the ages (Parry 1944: 152). Paradoxically, he simultaneously attempted to write a contemporary brand of colloquial Welsh that, while ‘noble’ in a literary sense. was rather old-fashioned from the beginning. It did, to be sure, provide the basis of a sort of standard-something no doubt needed, for the dialects were proliferating and growing farther and farther apart. A centripetal force was necessary to counteract the effects of increasing divergence. The new ‘standard,’ while inevitably somewhat artificial (like all standard languages, perhaps) came at a time when it was still possible for it to be adopted and used. There were clergymen who were able to use it in sermons and services, as well as in writing, but hardly in everyday communication. The new Bible was soon used in classes in various parts of the country to teach people. young and old. to read. They thus learned to read a different kind of language

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from the one they spoke (D. Williams 1950: 143-148). At first, not many could afford to buy a copy of the Welsh Bible, for it would have cost several years’ pay for the average Welsh workman (37 years’ salary, according to one estimate-cf. J. H. Williams 1983: 8). The first ‘Morgan’ Bibles were impressive tomes intended to be acquired by churches, supposedly one for every church in Wales, although this aim was not achieved. A copy in the rare book collection at the New York Public Library is still in good condition after four centuries. By 1630 a cheap edition costing 5 shillings made the Bible available to most people, although not to all by any means (D. Williams 1950: 76, 87). By then there had been a revision of the 1588 Bible (though not a drastic one) allegedly by Bishop Richard Parry, Morgan’s successor at St Asaph’s. It is probable that Dr John Davies of Mallwyd, the leading philological scholar of the new century, had actually done most of the work (Peate 1931: 80-81, Parry 1944: 152; D. Williams 1950: 143-145). The revision of 1620 was motivated to some extent by the appearance of the authorized English version of 1611. What has been referred to throughout the centuries as the ‘Morgan Bible’ is really the 1620 revision, which was not radically altered from the 1588 form, but polished and ‘touched up’ in places. There have been numerous reprintings: 31 before 1800 and 370 between 1800 and 1900, including those printed in America. Each printing numbered several thousand copies (Parry 1944: 153). This 1588/1620 Bible diverged from the spoken and biblical Welsh might two. In later times, when virtually trilingual.

presented and maintained a type of literary language that form immensely. Speakers who knew both colloquial Welsh well be dubbed bilingual, so great was the gap between the most speakers of Welsh knew English too, they have been

Syntactic and idiomatic flaws in Morgan’s Bible In some respects, the Bible rendered a disservice to those seeking in it something like a reliable standard language, for it exalted a nontypical word order to the status of implied normality. Normal word order in a simple Welsh sentence has long been VSO (Verb, subject, object), although the object is not always overtly present and the subject may be inherent in the verb (Morris-Jones 1931: 180, Richards 1983: 29, J. J. Evans 1946: 250-251). Compare, for example, Gwelodd y dyn ufin (saw the man river) ‘The man saw a river’. Various particles may precede the verb, but they are usually not mandatory and, in a sense, do not count in the order, although they obviously occupy linear and temporal space. Some have no obvious lexical meaning, but they are not always etymologically opaque. Fe and mi are two such particles, originally applying to the third singular or first singular pronouns. As particles, however, they are used with any person or number. Fe is more characteristic of South Wales, mi of the north. Compare Fe welsom y tj, newydd (particle + saw-we the house new) ‘We saw the new house’. Other preverbal elements have more recognizable sense, e.g. nilnid ‘not’: Ni chlywuis i glychau ‘r egfwys (not heard I bells (of) the church) ‘I did not hear the church bells’.

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Adverbial expressions may seem to impair ‘normal’ order, but although their position is flexible, they essentially remain outside the VSO order: Trunnoeth gweluis ef(next-day saw-1 him) ‘The next day I saw him’. Here the adverb precedes the VSO, but it can also follow: Gwelais ef drunnoeth (here the adverb undergoes lenition-a separate matter). Possibly the most vital requirement is that the subject does not occupy the initial position. In addition to this basic feature of word order. there is a cardinal principle of number ‘agreement’ (more exactly amounting to disagreement). Whether the noun subject is singular or plural, the verb is in the form of the third person singular. Demonstratives take singular verbs also. (Cf. Morris-Jones 193 1: 190, Richards 1938: 29-30, J. J. Evans 1946: 260-261, Watkins 1961: 196, Vinay and Thomas 1947: 58, Rees 1951: 52). This is reminiscent of the phenomenon seen in Greek (but is not the same), where a neuter plural noun demands a singular verb e.g.: Ta d&a en aksia ‘The gifts was (= were) small’, or Ta ploi a mtkra en- ‘The boats was (= were) small’. The same sort of formation is seen in Avestan and, less frequently, in Vedic Sanskrit (Gray 1939: 176). Medieval Latin occasionally had the construction (there is some reason, not entirely compelling, to think that here there was imitation of Greek). The neuter plural may have been a collective to start with, and its resemblance to the nominative singular of certain feminines may have resulted in its being treated as a singular; but that takes us far beyond the scope of the present article. Outside of Indo-European, the Arabic broken plural (actually a feminine singular collective) takes its verb in the fem. sing., e.g.: ta’kulu ‘t-tayru (birddom was eating) ‘the birds were eating’ (cf. Gray 1939: 176). It was not always requisite for a plural noun subject to be accompanied by a verb in the singular. By Morgan’s time, however, it was save for archaisms in poetry. The translators of the Bible, however, reached back to an earlier tradition of prose and poetry and ‘violated’ what was by their time a rule of number agreement and a rule of word order. There have been some persistent retentions of old number agreement (plural noun with plural verb), usually in verse. The Welsh national anthem, Hen Wlud jj Nhaduu (1858) has in its first stanza a flagrant example of SVO with plural verb, and speakers of Welsh do not seem to be troubled by this. Also, in the best-known Welsh lullaby, Ar hyd y nos (“All Through the Night”) the same phenomenon is encountered. In early Welsh the subject could begin the sentence, and a plural verb could occur with a plural subject, e.g.: Gwyr aethant i’rfi-wydr ‘Men went to (the) battle’. Or it could assume the form in the singular: Gwr a aeth i’rfrwydr ‘A man went to battle’. Neither of these Middle Welsh sentences has special emphasis on the subject, despite its position at the beginning of the sentence. But then a contrast developed between aeth gwr i’r jiwydr ‘a man went to battle’ and gwr aeth i ‘r frwydr (with subject emphasized). The initial position of the subject is a dislocation and is therefore ‘marked. ’ In modern Welsh, g$r a aeth i’rfrwydr, with a particle a between subject and verb, indicates the same sort of emphasis on the subject. (The a may originally have been

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a relative particle: ‘it was a man that went to battle’, or the like.) That, unfortunately, became a common type of sentence in the 1588/1620 Bible, with no implication of stress. Very old Welsh poetry had it too, along with other possible orders. In the Bible, people have accepted it as biblical style, and those who would not use the construction in everyday speech find it ‘natural’ when reading or quoting biblical verses, possibly only there or in old poetry. In English, we accept ‘Entreat me not to leave thee’ in the story of Ruth and Naomi, and ‘I know not’ was all right, perhaps, in the oratory, of Patrick Henry or subsequent emulators-cf. John F. Kennedy’s ‘Ask not,’ which is clearly very different, stylistically, from ‘Don’t ask.’ A Welshman repeating the 23rd Psalm has no compunction at saying Yr ArgwyoU ywfy muguil ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, although the order SV should imply emphasis on ‘The Lord (and nobody else)‘. Curiously, the latest Welsh Bible translation (1988) retains this verse in the same form as is found in the 1588 version. The force of tradition is apparently too strong to brook alteration, although the remaining five verses in the 23rd Psalm are all brought into harmony with the VS(0) order. The Bible of 1988 The year 1988 marked another milestone in Welsh Bible translation, for on 1 March of that year a new Welsh Bible appeared, 400 years to the day after the 1588 one. In 1961 the Council of Churches of Wales (Cyngor Eglwysi Cymru) had invited its member churches to participate in translating the entire Bible, including the Apocrypha, into Welsh. Five churches accepted, and the Roman Catholic Church also appointed representatives and consultants to participate in the project. Translation panels were formed-one for the Old Testament and one for the New. These were chaired by leading theological and linguistic/philological scholars of the country. There was also a literary panel, whose work partly overlapped that of the language panels. The British Bible Society agreed to publish the work, but the typesetting was done in Wales, at the Cambrian News (Aberystwyth). The translation was to be from the original languages of the Bible-Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek-and the ‘best’ texts of those languages were to be the basis of the new translation. It was to be in contemporary Welsh (an aim professed by Morgan four centuries earlier), and the ‘target date’ was 1 March 1988. Since the project took more than a quarter of a century to complete, the membership of the panels changed considerably in that time, and very few of the original participants lived to see the completion of the task. The panels consulted various versions in addition to the ‘original’ ones, took advantage of the latest scholarship in Semitic and Greek, and made use of knowledge derived from sources that were not available to the translators of the 1588 Bible-such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example. Although the two translations (1588 and 1988) can be compared from many angles, it is fruitful for our present purpose to look at the way in which they treat ‘normal’ word order and number agreement of subject and verb. Taking Exodus to represent

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the Old Testament

and Matthew

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the New, we obtain the following

statistics:

Exodus 16th c. Bible 20th c. Bible

VW) 464 (41%) 892 (95.2%)

W(O) 662 (59%) 45 (4.8%)

Matthew 16th c. Bible 20th c. Bible

357 (33.7%) 998 (95%)

702 (66.3 %) 52 (5%)

The SV order thus predominates in the ‘Morgan’ Bible, with 59% for Exodus and 66.3% for Matthew, whereas the 1988 Bible shows an overwhelming 95% for the VS order. The percentage is calculated for clauses or sentences in which subject and verb are both expressed. Examples in Matthew of this fundamental difference between the two Bibles include the following (with English glosses reflecting the Welsh word order) : 16th 20th 16th 20th 16th

c. c. c. c. c.

20th c. 16th c.

5.1 7.25 8.31

9.27

20th c. 16th c. 20th c. 16th c. 20th c.

13.7 21.32

ei ddisgyblion a ddaethant ato ‘his disciples came (PI.) to him’ SV daeth ei ddisgyblion ato ‘came (sg.) his disciples to him’ VS a’r llifeiriaint a ddaethant ‘and the floods came (PI.)’ SV a daeth y llifogydd ‘and came (sg.) the floods’ VS A ‘r cythrezdiaid a ddeisyfasant arno ‘and the devils implored (~1.) him’ SV Ymbiliodd y cythreuliaid at-no ‘implored (sg.) the devils him’ VS dau ddeillion a ‘i canlynasant ef ‘two blind men (~1.) followed (~1.) him’ SV dilynodd dau ddyn da11 ef ‘followed (sg.) two blind men (sg.) him’ VS a’r drain a godasant ‘and the thorns came up (PI.)’ SV a thyfodd y drain ‘and grew (sg.) the thorns’ VS ond ypublicanod a ‘rputeiniaid a ‘i credasant ef ‘but the publicans and the harlots believed (~1.) him’ S(particle)V ond fe gredodd y casglwyr trethi a ‘r puteiniaid ef ‘but believed (sg. with particle preceding) the tax collectors and the harlots him’ VS

Gaelic has the same order These are, of course, not the relevant here. (For example, constructions with the verbal earlier Welsh.)

for all these verses as does modern Welsh (VS or VSO). only sentence types in Welsh, but they are the ones most the twentieth-century version makes considerable use of noun instead of the finite verb-something very rare in

The Introduction to the 1988 translation informs the reader that no conscious effort was made to avoid ‘biblical language’ or to be as different as possible from previous

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translations (xvi). Compared to the New English Bible, the Beibl Cymraeg Newydd is less revolutionary in its ‘newness. ’ The suggestion is made that the Welsh language has changed less than English in the last four hundred years, which may apply to some categories more than others. Still, there are very few verses in this 1988 translation that do not differ from the corresponding ones in the Bible of 1588; four centuries do make a difference. Changes in grammar and syntax are sometimes thorough-going. What we have shown here in word order, for example, has been conspicuous alteration. We could add other areas in which extensive modification occurs. The use of periphrastic forms of the verb often brings the sentences into harmony with present-day colloquial language. The selection of contracted forms of words (mynd ‘go’ for myned, dweud ‘say’ for dywedyd, gwneud ‘do’ for gwneuthur, rhoi ‘give’ for rho&i, or-to show that not only verbs are involved -pam ‘why’ for pa ham or paham), and the rejection of other short forms which seem just as valid is not entirely clear and makes us wonder whether still another version may be forthcoming with closer resemblance to the spoken language. It must not be assumed, however, that the modern translation was achieved by modifying the old, although the latter was consulted every step of the way. The matter of initial consonantal mutations is admitted by those who worked on the panels to have caused some difficulties, although they are confined largely to the realm of names. The decision was made to omit mutation of most personal names, save for a few very familiar ones like Muir ‘Mary’ or Dafydd ‘David’. For place names, a similar policy was adopted, with mutations restricted to the best-known names, like Bethel, Bethlehem, and Carmel. But there is no lenition of names with initial g, for that consonant would vanish in lenition, and names like Alilea (for Galilea) or Omorra (for Gomorra) might well be confusing. Nasalization, however, is countenanced, cf. yng Ngalilea where the g is retained orthographically (but not phonetically). Curiously enough, the 1588 version has yn Nhyrus (Exodus 11.21) as opposed to yn Tyrus (possibly pronounced with English vocalism) in the newest translation. The problem of mutations in Welsh is not confined to Biblical names. Welsh newspaper and magazine articles on recent developments in Eastern Europe show a vacillation in names (personal and geographical). A headline may have ym Merlin ‘in Berlin’ or i Fwdapest ‘to Budapest’, while the body of the article has Berlin and Bwdapesr. It is possible that the writers of headlines are not the same persons as those writing the articles. But the act of excluding names from the process of initial mutation is tantamount to expelling those names from the Welsh lexicon and treating them as foreign words. A Welshman with the first name Tom told me, with feigned horror, of a letter he had received from America with the salution, Annwyl Dom ‘Dear Tom’, asserting that the name in that form meant ‘dung’. Now Tom alone could have that unsavory meaning, because of homophony and homography, but as a name it was not so interpreted until it was accommodated in the system of mutation (with variants Dom, Nhom, Z&horn; not that all would occur). The capitalization also marks the word as a name, of course, and a certain amount of patience-or pretence-is required in order to render such confusion likely.

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Since Irish, Gaelic, and Manx show the VSO order as dominant, some have assumed that it was the characteristic word order of Celtic. But the testimony of Gaulish, though meagre, points to last place as the ‘favorite’ position. And Celtiberian seems to bear this out too (cf. Schmidt 1972, showing final position of the verb as ‘normal’). Since some scholars have claimed to find a resemblance between Celtic and various non-Indo-European languages, they have cited the initial position of the verb as part of their proof. But the evidence of the oldest attested word order in Celtic seems to deprive them of their ammunition. If it seems arbitrary to assign so much importance to one or two features (VSO plus the use of singular verb with plural subject), one may call attention to the practice of labelling certain languages ‘VSO languages. ’ That type is accompanied by a number of other features, and word order alone is not used as the sole criterion for classifying them. Pokorny (1949) and others have sought an explanation for these resemblances between Celtic and other groups on the basis of the substratum theory, which does not seem convincing.

Conclusion: the Bible and Standard Welsh This article has addressed the question of standard language and has attempted to show that the Bible of 1588 is not the source or the manifestation of a standard literary Welsh. There seems to be such a standard, but it cannot be shown as exemplified in or stipulated by any one work. It probably exists in the writings of the best-and even second best-writers of the last two or three centuries. Contributions toward the development of a standard language have been made (not consciously for the most part) by preachers and orators in a tradition of Welsh eloquence, by professors and teachers (although the university did not come into being until the end of the nineteenth century, except for St David’s College, Lampeter, founded in 1822 and for thirteen years offering only the degree of Bachelor of Divinity to clergy and prospective clergy of the Anglican Church; subsequently the B.A. was added). In later years, radio and television (with a Welsh-language channel) have promoted a standard Welsh also. The influence of the drama in helping to further a standard was not significant until recent times, for there was a long tradition of ecclesiastical and other opposition to the ‘immorality’ of the stage. The emergence of a standard has come about gradually (films in Welsh, not numerous yet, may perhaps be added to manifestations of that standard). But it cannot be said with much justification that the language of the 1588 Bible was the origin or the basis of that later ‘standard.’ One reason is that the language of the 16th-century Bible was, from the beginning, very remote from spoken Welsh. The work of translating was a desk-job, not a peripatetic activity. The procedure was essentially visual, not oral or aural. In this there was a contrast with Luther’s method, which involved putting the Bible into real German as spoken (at least in Saxony, and specifically in Meissen) by people in their everyday activities. Luther verified the authenticity of his expressions by

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listening to people speak-at home, in the market place, in playgrounds, etc. He not only listened to them speak, he watched them-their facial expressions, the movements of mouth and lips-and believed that the visual aspect of speech was a key to idiomatic language. He was not always able to practice this observation, for he was hidden away for many months in the ‘Wartburg,’ forcibly detained by the Saxon Elector to keep him away from potential murderers. It was during that period of imprisonment that Luther began the translation of the Bible, but the greater part was completed when he was unconfined. His New Testament appeared in 1522, the entire Bible in 1534. It thus antedated the Welsh Bible by half a century. Luther’s Bible gave the German-speaking world a literary standard to take the place of the numerous dialects that had in the age preceding been used for literary purposes. It has been customary, and perhaps too facile, to draw comparisons between William Morgan and Martin Luther. Attention is called to the obvious connections with the Reformation, to the fact that both the Welsh and the German translations are based on Greek and Hebrew (plus Aramaic) with more than a nod to other versions, including the Vulgate. Luther and Morgan are given credit for providing-almost inventing-a standard literary language, and even for preserving a language (cf. Watkins 1961: 243). Enthusiasm for the Reformation has, even in modern Wales, made many admirers of Morgan er al. forget the accomplishments of Welsh Catholics who, usually in exile in Italy and elsewhere, wrote a form of literary Welsh that can hardly be said to be inferior to that of the Bible of 1588 (cf. Robert 1567). Granted, they did not achieve a Bible translation. Even those who worked on the latest translation and who, by virtue of their careful scholarship and praiseworthy style, constitute eloquent refutation to the claim of Morgan’s achievement seem overwhelmed by pi& and unable to take the revered Bishop to task for his short-comings. Sir Thomas Parry, for twenty-three years chairman of the language panel of the newest translation (a group that performed marvels of idiomatic, syntactic, and literary accuracy) said, in keeping with the tradition of extravagant praise for the 1588 Bible, that perhaps the greatest favor bestowed upon Welsh literature by that work was providing the Welsh nation (!) with a standard language towering far above the dialects (Parry 1944: 153). He viewed that standard as a refuge to which those seeking a valid model might turn for an example of a pure form of discourse free of whim, caprice, or arbitrariness. In the foreword (Rhagair) to the New Testament in the latest translation (1988: iv) the aim of the joint council and the translators is stated in somewhat astonishing terms. We read that there was no intent to replace ‘William Morgan’s Bible’ with this newest version. Rather, it was hoped that both versions would be seen side-by-side in church and chapel, in school and Sunday school, in college and university, in pastoral and scholarly study, etc. It reads like a marketing plea. The present translation is said to be intended as a means of elucidating the old one and of enabling present-day Welshmen, and others who read Welsh, to comprehend the Bible of the sixteenth

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century. That professed ancillary purpose seems to belittle the present translation and to underestimate the achievements, scholarly and literary, of this latest masterpiece. Whether there is much validity to regarding a work of translation as ‘providing’ a standard language seems a less debatable question. And, if there is need for a standard language, why must the secular plane be overlooked? The group of phenomena subsumed under the designation yr iuith Gymrueg ‘the Welsh language’ includes a neverending list, including spoken and written Welsh, each at various levels, Welsh of the pulpit and lecture platform, profane and sacred Welsh, saints’ language and thieves’ language, the language of propaganda, of radio and television, of technology, trade, and politics, etc. Where do we find a standard to embrace all of these? Should the attempt even be made to achieve it? Much that has been written about the ‘Morgan Bible’ confuses the Bible with the Welsh language, just as references to ‘Luther’s German’ have confused Luther’s Bible with standard German. The latest translation (1988) provides the Welsh with a ‘corrective’ of the Bible of 1588, while not pretending to do so. It does not run counter to the ‘genius’ of the Welsh language, unlike its predecessor of four centuries ago. But Bible reading, like church attendance in Wales, is closer to its nadir than its zenith, notwithstanding reports that printings of Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd have been purchased with amazing alacrity. We can only guess to what extent the purchasers are reading them. We are faced with a dim surmise, too, as to whether the new Bible will become the basis of a standard literary language.

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