Welsh Not

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Welsh Not: Elementary Education and the Anglicisation of Wales

This book is freely available on a Creative Commons licence thanks to the kind sponsorship of the libraries participating in the Jisc Open Access Community Framework OpenUP initiative.

The Welsh Not was a wooden token given to children caught speakingWelsh in nineteenth-century schools. It was often accompanied bycorporal punishment, and is widely thought to have been responsiblefor the decline of the Welsh language. Despite having an iconic statusin popular understandings of Wales's history, there has never beforebeen a study of where, when and why the Welsh Not was used. Thisbook is an account of the different ways children were punished forspeaking Welsh in nineteenth-century schools and the consequences ofthis for children, communities and the linguistic future of Wales. Itshows how the exclusion of Welsh was not only traumatic for pupilsbut also hindered them in learning English the very opposite of whatit was meant to achieve. Gradually, Welsh came to be used increasingly in Victorian schools, making them more humane places but also moreeffective mechanisms in the anglicisation of Wales.