Y Cantrefi Newydd part two
Education, Language and Bilingualism
If we are going to turn folk loose on the land in Cantrefi Newydd, it would make sense to provide them with a strategy, a set of skills and the knowledge which will hopefully allow them to overcome challenges as they arise and design their own individual and collective futures.
To any one familiar with the Permaculture Design Course Intensive, usually taught over two weeks, it is, as its name suggests, an intensive experience. With its emphasis on Peoplecare (one of the three ethics of permaculture design), group building, inclusiveness and collaborative, action learning, it is a remarkably effective method of creating a strong, bonded group. Relationships formed on such a course can last years, decades, as my collaboration with Steve Read of Misrule demonstrates- we first met on an Intensive Design Course way back in 1991.
above: the 1991 Intensive Permaculture Desing Course held in Neuadd Y Pentref Llanelltyd (Llanelltyd Village Hall) near Dolgellau. The first Full Desing Course held in Cymru. Steve Read standing second from left.
It is also probably still the best crash course in low impact living that is currently available and provides a common ethical foundation based around the Big Three of Environment, Community and the Individual. It would also be simple to stack in additional units (Advanced Design Courses) relating specifically to the establishment and operation of Cantrefi Newydd, such as low impact building techniques, cooperative actions, conflict resolution, alternative money systems (LETS for example) broad scale water management and village design, to give just a few examples.
The use of educational courses as a fundamental method of building cohesive groups has the added advantage of opening funding opportunities. I've taught on Permaculture Design Courses which were linked to Open College Network (OCN) units which are funded and provide participants with recognised qualifications and points which can be used towards higher education. As one of the teachers, I was paid by the OCN rather than the course participants.
Central to this educational slant would be the training up of trainers who, rather than being just new occupants of the first Cantref, would begin the process of training groups to set up others, as in a rolling programme, continually drawing in more folk and establishing the basic ground works of a new site but also training up people to repeat the process on other sites.
Remember, ideally, we want to be able to create lots of Cantrefi, not just as solutions to the housing crisis for young folk, or the need to make it easy for folk to live sustainable or, better, regenerative lifestyles but in order to generate variability and allow some form of natural selection to operate. Each group is of course formed from unique individuals and will occupy a unique environment and will therefore have to generate their own unique solutions on their ground and in their group. By ensuring the free flow of honest information within and between groups we will begin to be able to see what really works and allow for the sharing and exchange of best practice.
For Cantrefi Newydd in Cymru, I would consider the inclusion of a a Welsh Language Course (Cwrs yr Iaith Cymraeg) an absolute essential and indeed, if that came first or early, this could become the first language for the other courses, which would of necessity be bilingual.
There are strong reasons for this emphasis on language and bilingualism. By tradition, the English have always been rubbish at bothering to learn another language, when invading other countries or even just visiting, preferring to shout or expecting the locals to learn English. By way of contrast, in the so-call Northern Kingdoms of Britain, at the time of the incursions of the Danes in Britain along the east coast, the Cymbri (a British tribe who occupied part of the kingdom of Rheged and spoke Cymbraeg, a language that, like Cymraeg, derived from the Celtic) were able to form a confederacy that included Irish, Norwegians (Llynlychwyr1), Scots and Picts in an attempt to drive the Danes out of York. Its thought that all these peoples knew something of each others languages and were able to communicate directly. The Saxons, on the other hand, had to use interpreters...2
Recent studies show that the Earth's bio-diversity is closely coupled with the diversity of human languages and both require just as much good attention and support3. The studies reveal that individual languages contain words and information relevant to the sustainable management of particular landscapes and the loss of the language means the loss of the traditional knowledge to mange those landscapes. In regard to Cymraeg, I will give a couple of examples of this.
Firstly, a ffos dyfri, or watering ditch, pronounced something like foss duvry. A ffos dyfri was a simple ditch, running slightly off-contour, that took water from a stream, bog or pond and fed it, slowly, to a field or area which did not have a water supply. In the time before cheap, plastic pipes, it was the only method of moving water through a landscape, requiring only basic tools and labour and hence was an option available to subsistence, tenant farmers. I was first told about this by Falmai of Cadwgan, Abergeirw, an amazing, older woman, sadly no longer with us.4
above: a ffos dyfri I made using a rotavator in 1993 to irrigate a belt of trees in times of drought- the trees were planted in the second strip of loose earth, just below the actual ffos dyfri. This is taken from the low end, looking towards the higher end. Oddly, friends who came to have a nosey thought it was the other way round.
In a temperate climate now prone to extended periods of both drought and of intense, persistent rainfall, I do not believe that purely arid landscape water harvesting techniques such as swales (an on-contour, shallow ditch for the absorption of water), will be appropriate whereas from my experience, a close-to-contour ffos dyfri will do much the same as a swale while allowing for the movement of excess water in times of persistent rainfall when the ground is already saturated and thus lessen or avoid the risk of landslip. I will talk more about this technique when I look at actual village design.
above: taken in 2004, the lower fence line marks the position of the ffos dyfri. Don’t those trees grow! Me and Lyn with George Sobol between us, one of the key figures in the development of permaculture design in Britain and abroad.
The second example from Cymraeg is ffridd, which I have written about before both here and on my web site5. I have described this form of land-use as a traditional British agro-forestry but this does not go far enough. The traditional ffridd found specifically in western Meirionydd, is unique in Wales for its location in the environment, lying as it does between the fields and the mountain pasture. Ffridd, with its rich mix of pasture, forbes, shrub and tree species, grazed in the past not just by sheep but by a variety of large herbivores including cattle and horses (and no doubt wild deer) closely resembles the landscapes created by what is now called re-wilding. Indeed it is thought by some that the traditional ffridd was in fact the remnant of the original landscape of Britain, a more open savannah as described by F. W. M. Vera in his seminal work Grazing Ecology and Forest History (CABI publishing 2000 and incidentally, the foundation text for the Rewilding movement).
above: ffridd remnant above Cross Foxes, Dolgellau. The lack of grazing by heavier animals like cattle means there is more bracken than previously (the brown tinge to the left) hence less useful grazing. Similarly, lack of management has led to more trees- in the centre it has become more or less woodland, rather than the more open, savannah like landscape of the past. Still, a rich diversity of species compared to the field centre right, and the meadow in the foreground.
I have just scratched the surface here and have no doubt that Cymraeg contains other gems, not just in terms of landscapes and land practice but also community integration and low carbon living, all of which will be of considerable value to the Cantrefi Newydd of the future.
To continue with language more generally, a language provides a way to think and talk about the world but at the same time, each one is limited and restricts our experience of the world to a particular vocabulary and grammar. Different languages provide different perspectives of reality and hence different ways of seeing and thinking about the world.
To give just one example, in Cymraeg, the word dysgu (pronounced something like dusgy in English) means both to teach and to learn, depending upon context. Hence in Cymraeg, Welsh, it is much easier to see that every shared experience is both a teaching and a learning opportunity, at the same time.
Being bilingual brings tremendous advantages and opportunities which are well proven and documented6
To list just a few of the many examples, bilinguals
perform better in tasks
are better at multi tasking
have increased empathy
are more popular and are better conversationalists than monoglots
are able to see things differently
have improved executive functions
learn other languages more easily
can have a rich experience of the culture, history and the identity of the second language
are more creative and mentally agile
are better able to organise information and solve problems
have a slightly higher IQ.
have better recovery options following a stroke
develop dementia symptoms an average of five years later
Here in Cymru, you are also likely to earn more as a bilingual and make your country richer.
Finally, and personally, I believe that to be English and live in Wales and not bother to learn Cymraeg because "they all speak English anyway", is an imperialist attitude and has no place in a future, regenerative society, hence the imperative that here in Cymru the Cantrefi Newydd of the future will be bilingual, first language Cymraeg.
Next time I will look at some of the ways that past communities have managed to survive for considerable periods with no money or very little and show how the use of money has served to weaken or break many of the bonds that once held communities together.
Thanks for reading. Please leave comments as they are invaluable to me in terms of feedback and guiding this work. Till next time. Hwyl!
The Cymbri, who gave their name to Cumberland, now Cumbria, got on so well with the Llynlychwyr (Norwegians) that they gave them a parcel of land to form a small colony and traded with them, particularly for their iron which was of a superior quality. This does make you think about all those stories of raiding norse causing havoc. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as some would like to think…
For an introduction to the fascinating history of the northern Celtic Kingdoms, Glen George’s book, Golwg Newydd ar yr Hen Ogledd (pub. Gwasg Carreg Gwalch 2018) is also available in English, titled A New Look at the Old North. He’s very good at pointing out the errors that creep into history because it is written by the victors. So for example, in English history books, the invading Saxons tend to be given a positive slant and a high culture while the Britons are presented as more lowly natives. In reality of course, the Britons were civilised Christians with a literate aristocracy whereas the Saxons were violent, illiterate pagans…
For a report on the most recent study of the relationship between language diversity and bio-diversity, see here.
I made a ffos dyfri to irrigate a strip of fodder trees back in the 1990s, with a fall of 1:50. When I first let water into the higher end, it took two days to make it’s way to the lower end as the water soaked into the soil on its stately journey. Rainfall sat in it, soaking into the soil but if persistent, the ffos dyfri would gradually start to slowly flow, moving excess water into a drainage ditch at the lower end. An elegantly simple way of managing water reminiscent of Yeomans' Keylines that Steve Read mentioned in his last piece.
Nesta (yr athrawes Cymraeg wellaf erioed, the best Welsh teacher ever, probably) invited Falmai to one of our classes to talk to us. Among other things, Falmai told us about the first time a car ever came up the valley to Abergeirw, before the roads, when you had to travel from farm to farm by way of the tracks. Falmai and others were working in the fields and everyone stopped and ran over to see the car and talk with the driver; it was a hugely exciting event. After a few more years, as the number of cars increased, they just couldn't afford to keep stopping work every time one appeared and eventually, they didn't even look up when one passed.