THE CELTIC REVIEW
JANUARY 15, 1907
A GREAT CYMRIC BARD
Arthur Hughes, B.A.
Although a knowledge of Celtic literature is becoming more general among people of culture, we are still often startled when we come into contact with the vagueness of the ideas which exist. Even in regard to modern Welsh literature the notions of most people who are not conversant with the language are exceedingly hazy. By many the Celts themselves are blamed for this state of things—they should make their literature known to the world by translating it into the most widely spoken languages of modern civilisation; they should write in a foreign language in order that the foreigner may understand. But why, may I ask, should the Celt be an exception to the general rule that a people by whom a literature is produced hardly ever translate it themselves into a foreign tongue? It was not an Englishman who gave Germany her best translation of Shakespeare, nor an Italian who gave England her best translation of Dante. Our modern renderings of Vergil and Homer are not by Romans and Greeks; nor were the Hebrew writings put into so many different languages by Hebrews. It is, then, not right to blame the Celt for not doing that which no other nation has done. The fault is really the fault of the foreigner himself, of the Englishman, the German, the Frenchman. It is their apathy, their indifference, which keeps people from becoming acquainted with Celtic literature and learning to appreciate it.
