Collect Rape Of The Fair Country Originated By Alexander Cordell Available In EPub
in the turbulent times of the Industrial Revolution inth century Wales, this famous novel begins the story of the Mortymer family and the ironmaking communities of Blaenavon and Nantyglo.
It is the book which launched Alexander Cordell inas a best selling author and was translated into numerous languages to sell millions of copies throughout the world.
It is an enthralling story which has now been turned into both play and musical and is regarded as the finest of this popular authors many novels, In terms of historical content and importance due to the learning one received concerning the people and history of Wales,stars, But, oh, so tedious! It took me a month to read because I just couldn't get through it, so the writing itself is a,stars. Averaging both, it's a solidstars, Will I be reading the next one in the trilogy Nope, "potboiler" it may be, dubious Welsh language tics aside, you don't get popular novels about Welsh Chartists these days, and you should, I don't think there's so much as a second line of dialogue from somebody who isn't working class in this book, which allows for full portrayal of their diversity: prounion, reluctantly chartist, monarchist and republican, Methodist and Anglican, and people who don't want to talk about it.
How often do you encounter that
The ridiculous description of women in the book, almost always titfirst, goes beyond the typical male author and verges on fetishistic, Then again it's one of a handful of novels that have women chartists organising alongside men! Id heard a lot about this book, becauseits a compassionate narrative of the injustices of industrial Wales from an author with an English background andit doesn't shy away from the brutality of industrial life in Wales.
There are some books that I want to dislike and end up thoroughly enjoying, and others that I want to enjoy and end up thoroughly disliking, Unfortunately this book falls into the second category,
The book centres around Iestyn Mortymer, growing up as a child labourer in the mines of the south Wales valleys fighting, drinking, seducing and struggling under the watchful eye of his strict Calvinistic father.
The attitude of “Dada” Hywel is played off against Iestyns older sister Morfydd, who clearly represents the reformist views which would come to prominence in industrial Wales, Those who accept their fates versus those who strive for more is always a compelling theme, The sights and sounds of his upbringing are well detailed as he tries to steer himself through this harsh life, Maybe it is because it is coming from the perspective of a young hotblooded Iestyn, but it seems like every introduction of a female character begins with a description of her breasts and what they are doing e.
g. quivering, bouncing which is always a bit weird if a woman isn't moving,
I also take umbrage with some of the historical liberties, In an early part of the book, Dafydd Phillips From Bangor is mocked by the Mortymer family for his poorly spoken English, Wales was overwhelmingly Welshspeaking in thes ands, In fact, Herefordshire and Shropshire were Welshspeaking in thes ands! Apart from a few fringes, Wales was overwhelmingly Welsh speaking until the earlyth century, especially the Valleys.
The whole book should have been written in Welsh with a Glamorgan dialect, for it to make more sense, On the point of language, the Valleys Wenglish feels affected and unnatural, A lot of the vocabulary is correct, but over the top, of the whole “look you boyo” caricature variety, The family sitting down to listen to the harp being played by the matriarch in the evening did every family have a harp felt like a very twee “How Green Was My Valley” variety of Welshness.
I had hoped this novel would be the antithetical gritty version of that tiresome book,
There are a lot of mentions of the ubiquitous Irish families in the towns and working in the mines, Its true, there was a lot of Irish immigration to south Wales, but this wasn't in full swing until a few decades later think Great Famine, In thes most of the “strangers” to industrial Glamorgan and Gwent were from rural Wales mostly Carmarthenshire, rural Glamorgan and borderers from England Herefordshire, Gloucestershire which as border folks tend to be, were already very intermixed with the Welsh.
There were elements I did enjoy in the latter half of the book, The book does well to capture the community control of the Scotch Cattle and the excitement surrounding the growing Chartist movement, Zephaniah Williams and John Frost were and are giants of the working class campaign for universal male suffrage, political transparency and fairness for all, Industrially it was volatile moment in Welsh history and radical politics and protest came to the fore against shameful exploitation and destruction, there were even whispers of a Welsh Republic.
The cover of the Pan edition which does not have an ISBN which I bought makes it look like a Mills and Boon romantic novel, which is a bit weird because the book has rape in the title and every other page is a iron foundry punch up.
Back to the charity shop with you! Diawl! I struggle with this a bit as it is written in old wenglish, I think this would make a good series or film more than a book but it is very well researched Not many books will provide a greater understanding of Wales and its people.
Although there are flaws in this book the place of the Welsh language in the narrative, and the inaccurate use of "Wenglish", the portrayal of women, and many of the historical details, this is nevertheless a powerful, powerful story.
It is about the rise of Chartism in the south est Wales valleys in the earlyth century, seen through the eyes of young steelworker, Iestyn Mortimer, The shift in the piece takes place through his father's changing attitudes at first, loyal to the owner's, but slowly seeing the inequalities perpetrated by the wealthy landowners, he shifts his perspective.
It is a small village tale which is a part of a huge, ultimately worldwide movement the birth of socialism, collective bargaining and universal suffrage,
But for me, as a very proud Welshman, it can be a little antiEnglish in its sentiments at times, The author isn't Welsh, though he settled here eventually, and had an obviously very strong affinity with the country, But in his constant anti English rantings
"'Plundered is my country, violated, raped'"
and
", I wish to God the English had stayed in England and ripped their own fields and burst their own mountains, ”
being just two of the more extreme examples, I get a little bit of a sense of "the lady protesteth, ". What happened was not the fault of the "English" at all at the same time as this was happening in south east Wales, similar things were happening all over industrial England, in the steel and coal and the copper and the cotton works in the midlands, the north , the south West and even further afield.
The Crawshays, who re portrayed as the main protagonists in this novel, were more Welsh than English, They just had money, which in turn bought them power over people,
And that is what raped this fair country, and huge swathes of other fair countries as well money, and abused power, It wasn't, and it still isn't, a purely Welsh problem it's a universal one, one felt as much in post industrial England today as it is in the Welsh valleys.
Although this book does get to that conclusion ultimately, it is still cloaked in a much too parochial antiEnglishness throughout most of the book for my liking,
But some hair splitting apart, this is still a very important, powerful and thoroughly absorbing tale, sitelink
sitelink historicuk. com/HistoryUK
This was a reread for me from my teenage years, Its been looking at me from its shelf for a long time, and it struck me it would be a good leadin to my Welsh course starting next week!, Alexander Cordell is a celebrated Welsh author, writing in English, as Welsh had largely gone from South Wales at the time, but this book has been described as a “potboiler”, by at least one renowned literary critic of my acquaintance! If you want to suck as if from your mothers breast the early industrial history of South Wales, then this is the book for you.
It deals with the conditions of iron workers in the first half of the nineteenth century, The famous “How Green Was My Valley” which makes me cry every time I read it deals with coal mining, at a later period, the second half of the nineteenth century.
Its gentler and more romanticised than the Alexander Cordell, which has a lot more fighting and general earthiness in it, Conditions for the poor were of course harder during the period in which “Rape of the Fair Country” was set, I was going to say, “indescribably harder” but, no, Alexander Cordell describes them in intense detail, The book tells largely of the progress of the protagonist, Iestyn Mortymer, from dutiful son of a respectable and lawabiding family in the village of Garndyrus to become a Unionist and then a Chartist, following Zephaniah Williams.
With my background as the daughter of a Union leader and granddaughter of a South Wales coal miner, this was right up my street,
Except that this time round, unusually for me after reading historical fiction, I tried to look up different accounts of the period, I knew, from having
grown up in Wales as a young child, and from the early death of my grandfather, that a lot of what Alexander Cordell wrote was absolutely authentic, but it was so uniformly terrible that I felt the need to check out, if possible, the degree to which it was a subjective and emotive account.
One of the villains of the book is the Ironmaster of Merthyr Tydfil by the River Taff, William Crawshay, Here is an excerpt from the book: an old man, an iron “puddler”, blind, is dying by the roadside,
“Have you seen the iron of Cyfarthfa, then” he asked, struggling up, “Have you even heard of Merthyr, that is dying under Crawshay Have you heard of Crawshay, even”
“Yes”, I said,
“Yes, indeed! You cheeky hobbledehoy! And Bacon the Pig before the Crawshays God alive, we thought him bad enough, What right have you to march for freedom, Garndyrus, if you have not worked the firebox under Bacon and Crawshay Tell me, have you seen Cyfarthfa by night even”
“From the belly of my mother,” I said, talking the old language to please him.
“She was born in Cyfarthfa long before Bacon puddled a furnace, ”
“Well!” said he.
“Can you walk” I asked him,
“I have walked from Merthyr hand in hand with St Tydfil,” he said, “I have been splashed eight times and blinded, but the saint led me across The Top to the great Zephaniah Williams, for I put no trust in our mad Dr.
Price. I put my trust in no man but Williams, whom I once saw spit at the feet of Robert Crawshay, who starved us, ”
The column was thinning, the marching song of the Chartists growing weaker,
“He will starve you no more,” I said, “Can you stand, old man”
But he was still, Quite still he lay in the fading light of the torches, and his hands were frozen to the musket he held,
So I looked up the Crawshays, and hit upon this little gem:
“When we refer to William Crawshay of Merthyr Tydfil we allude to a man who has done more for Glamorganshire, and perhaps for South Wales, than any other living individual.
He was one of the few remarkable men who can give a character to a country and a tone to an age, In the extent of his speculations and unbounded enterprise, we cannot name another Cambrian who has done so much and so well or the Principality of Wales, ”
This seems to have come from The Crawshays of Cyfarthfa Castle, by Margaret Stewart Taylor, The other source referred to is The History of the Iron, Steel, Tinplate and other Trades of Wales, by Charles Wilkins,
sitelink co. uk/wordpress/m
So is it just a question of perspective Of social attitudes to the poor Wikipedia includes this:
“The failure of the works inwas a devastating blow to the local community, as it had depended heavily on the works for its economic livelihood.
”
Cordell is at pains to point out through the mouths of his Chartist characters that the appalling conditions the workers endured were not confined to South Wales, He is not, however, interested in giving a social or economic overview, but simply in portraying the price paid by the people of Wales, This short passage, for me, was the most moving:
“What a land it is, this Wales! And of all its villages Llanelen is surely the best, The river is milk here, the country is honey, the mountains are crisp brown loaves hot from the bakers oven one moment and green or golden glory the next, Beauty lies here by the singing river where the otters bark and the salmon leap, and I wish to God the English had stayed in England and ripped their own fields and burst their own mountains.
”
Maybe it is a potboiler, But it doesnt have the ending you might expect from a potboiler I don't know if this book continues into the next part of the trilogy and the language of it is wonderful, full of the music of the Welsh.
I find I have been slipping into my childhood speech mannerisms after reading it! And its message of the need for collective bargaining in the face of capitalism is as relevant today as in the past.
Add to that now the physical destruction of South Wales, and this book has an eternal message, I grew up beside a brown, dead River Taff, and now, from what I see on television, it runs clear again, and can again be fished, The fictional characters of this book had their real counterparts, and what they contributed to our world should not be forgotten, Great story
Read this book many times now, Never fail to get movedby it, It is historically correct. I can see Monmouthshise so well as I spent time in Caerphillyyears ago, .