This Side of the Pond

We all know about the pilgrims arriving in the States on the Mayflower, the penal colonies of Australia, the territories of Canada and all the many other famous instances of humans spreading their influence across the globe.

But there’s one tale I’ve only just heard told – and I’m betting I’m not alone in having no idea that a tea clipper once carried 153 Welsh pioneers to the harsh but beautiful land of Patagonia.

Today, you’ll find an estimated 70,000 Welsh-Patagonians thriving in a settlement called Y Wladfa (“The Colony”). They speak a unique, Spanish-accented Welsh dialect, drink in Welsh tea houses and build windmills and chapels across the landscape.

It’s a long way from the rolling hills, green landscape and mild climes of Wales.

All of this, it seems, to protect a language.

Welsh, you see, is a glorious Celtic dialect spoken by fewer and fewer people every year – in the 2021 census, only one in four people living in Wales said they could speak any of it at all.

This is not surprising when you consider that Welsh is a tough language to get your tongue around. It’s beautiful and lilting, but certainly not easy for strangers, and vowels do often seem to be optional.

Try pronouncing this one, for instance, which is both the longest town name and longest word in Welsh:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

No, me neither.

It means – and just let me take a nice deep breath before I say this – “St. Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave”.

It was apparently named in 1869 as a publicity stunt, and it still attracts a lot of visitors to the area every year, but it does have its drawbacks – for example, it costs an arm and a leg every time they need to replace the signs.

Now, you might be wondering why a group of Welsh people would go to Argentina to protect their language. It’s a good question.

It all dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when many feared that Wales was slowly being absorbed into England due to the vital raw materials it was supplying to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Many decided to find a new start in the new world, but this came with a problem.

Though immigrants from Wales to the United States did attempt to set up Welsh-speaking colonies in an effort to retain their cultural identity, such as Scranton in Pennsylvania and Utica in New York, they ultimately found themselves assimilating into the American way of life, which meant learning the English language.

Enter Michael Daniel Jones, a Welsh Congregationalist minister who wanted to found a “little Wales beyond Wales” – a new promised land, where his country’s culture and language could thrive. He felt that this could only happen in a place where the English language did not hold sway.

And so, Jones began communicating with the government of Argentina, which had been encouraging emigration so as to populate its huge territory. Argentina was happy to grant Wales an area called Bahia Blanca, because this would help them control an area that was disputed at that time by Chile.

In 1862, an emigration committee published a handbook called Llawlyfr y Wladfa (“Colony Handbook”) to publicize the idea. Three years later, 153 people gathered in Liverpool, England to set sail on a tea clipper called the Mimosa, and eight weeks later they arrived in their new promised land.

As most settlers of that time quickly found out, it wasn’t going to be sunshine and roses getting things started. Though they had been told Patagonia was a lot like the lowlands they’d set sail from, they found it quite the opposite in reality – barren, inhospitable with little food, no water and few building materials.

The native Teheulche Indians tried to help them figure out how to survive, but things weren’t looking good. Only thanks to a number of mercy supply missions did they make it long enough to reach the site of the proposed colony.

Even once there, they fought against floods, bad harvests and difficulty in bringing in supplies. The turning point came via the observational skills of a lady called Rachel Jenkins, who figured out that the River Camwy that ran through the settlement occasionally burst its banks; thanks to her, a system of irrigation and water management was devised.

The colony kept growing, reaching 20,000 people by 1915. The Argentinian government eventually stepped in and imposed direct rule and the Spanish language, but Welsh remained the tongue people used at home and in church.

And so, today, at the bottom of South America, in a land of rainforests, glaciers and steppes, you can still find some 70,000 people who look and act a little different to their neighbors. And much to your surprise and delight, many of those people living 8000 miles from their motherland will warmly greet you in the “language of heaven”.

Probably best to avoid asking them to spell out what they’re saying for you though.