Biography of Joseph Jenkins (1818-98). Tregaron tenant farmer Jenkins was innovative and successful with an award for the best farm in the county, and was an influential figure, involved in local politics and the building of the Manchester and Milford railway through the area. Despite this, aged 50, he left his wife and nine children without a word, and traveled to Australia. For the next two decades he lived there as a swagman: an itinerant farm laborer. Despite having little formal education, Jenkins had a keen intellect and a thirst for self-improvement through reading, and was a poet in both Welsh and English, winning 13 consecutive prizes at the Ballarat St David's Day Eisteddfod for his englyniau (a specific form of Welsh-language poetry) so he is remembered also as a man of letters. The book draws greatly on the journals he kept in both Wales and Australia.
Who was Saint Valentine, the saint who gave his name to the festival of lovers in Wales? Where do red hearts and roses fit in? Or do they? This volume addresses these questions, but focuses more specifically on the previously unpublished Welsh poetry written over the centuries on the feast day of Saint Valentine in mid-February, the one saint’s day in the Christian calendar of saints that does not depend on the Church for a celebration of the feast day – far from resembling anything else on offer in any other part of Britain, these Welsh songs are lyrical, expressive, and often in cynghanedd (the concept of sound-arrangement within a line). This volume analyses the first extant Welsh Saint Valentine’s Day poems, and advances a new understanding of societal propriety in settings where citizens paid great attention to tradition. In so doing, it offers new insights into the tradition of observing Saint Valentine’s Day in Wales and, indeed, argues that although it is the fifth-century Dwynwen who is today considered to be the patron saint of Welsh lovers, Saint Valentine also handed out aid and sympathy to lovers in Wales over many centuries. To read Rhiannon Ifans article on her volume, visit Parallel.Cymru website https://parallel.cymru/rhiannon-ifans-red-hearts-and-roses/
Cardiganshire is the most distinctive of Welsh counties--home of the historic kingdom of Ceredigion, several significant monastic sites, and the National Library of Wales. Covering much of Cardigan's contribution to Welsh culture, this volume discusses the landscape, people, customs, and significant centers of religions worship that help to define the county's rich and diverse history, as well as less-trodden aspects of Cardiganshire's past like emigration, geographical difference, superstition, and sports.
First published in 1975, this new edition has been abridged and annotated. This collection of diary entries tells of the author's experiences working on farms in the Ballarat and Castlemaine area and later as a street worker for the Maldon Council. The author was a prize-winning poet who composed in both Welsh and English.
Photographing Pembrokeshire: A Paradise for Pirates leads readers through Pembrokeshire locations frequented by pirates, smugglers, wreckers and others who have exploited the coastline from earliest times to the present day. Ieuan Morris' striking images and fascinating accompanying text in both Welsh and English throw new light on one of Britain's most stunning regions. People have been relocating to Pembrokeshire since the 12th century, not just from other parts of the UK but from all over the globe. Morris discusses notorious historic events and looks at the linguistic and cultural differences that exist across the north-south demarcation known as the 'Landsker Line'. As well as showcasing the county's natural beauty, Morris considers the impact of migration, tourism and industrial pollution. Can Pembrokeshire and its indigenous population survive as we know them today? This book documents this glorious county as it is now and raises questions about its future. Full-color, ilustrated throughout.
Bound Lives chronicles the lived experience of race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era. Rachel Sarah O'Toole examines how Andeans and Africans negotiated and employed casta, and in doing so, constructed these racial categories. Royal and viceregal authorities separated "Indians" from "blacks" by defining each to specific labor demands. Casta categories did the work of race, yet, not all casta categories did the same type of work since Andeans, Africans, and their descendants were bound by their locations within colonialism and slavery. The secular colonial legal system clearly favored indigenous populations. Andeans were afforded greater protections as "threatened" native vassals. Despite this, in the 1640s during the rise of sugar production, Andeans were driven from their assigned colonial towns and communal property by a land privatization program. Andeans did not disappear, however; they worked as artisans, muleteers, and laborers for hire. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Andeans employed their legal status as Indians to defend their prerogatives to political representation that included the policing of Africans. As rural slaves, Africans often found themselves outside the bounds of secular law and subject to the judgments of local slaveholding authorities. Africans therefore developed a rhetoric of valuation within the market and claimed new kinships to protect themselves in disputes with their captors and in slave-trading negotiations. Africans countered slaveholders' claims on their time, overt supervision of their labor, and control of their rest moments by invoking customary practices. Bound Lives offers an entirely new perspective on racial identities in colonial Peru. It highlights the tenuous interactions of colonial authorities, indigenous communities, and enslaved populations and shows how the interplay between colonial law and daily practice shaped the nature of colonialism and slavery.
