by welsh rover Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:40 pm
I hate to turn the subject back but while we're at it can people please remember/appreciate that there is a difference (I would say big difference) between the terms "British" and "English".
They seem to be interchangeable in many people's minds e.g. last week a girl from The Go! Team on Soccer AM (UK soccer programme) complaining how "thick" Americans are "they don't even know that England and the United Kingdom is the same place". If you go to France you'll see "Grande Bretagne" or "Royaume Uni" translated simply as "Angleterre", I could go on (an on, and on...!)
Anyway, I just thought it was a bit ironic that earlier in the thread people were saying how you shouldn't be ashamed of/vilified for things your country have done when they are nothing to do with you - I've often had stick for things that as far as I'm concerned are the product of another bloody country entirely different to mine! (And for that bloody "Prince"...)
Welsh History - RS Thomas
We were a people taut for war; the hills
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.
Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.
We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.
We were a people, and are so yet.
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise
And greet each other in a new dawn.
I hate to turn the subject back but while we're at it can people please remember/appreciate that there is a difference (I would say big difference) between the terms "British" and "English".
They seem to be interchangeable in many people's minds e.g. last week a girl from The Go! Team on Soccer AM (UK soccer programme) complaining how "thick" Americans are "they don't even know that England and the United Kingdom is the same place". If you go to France you'll see "Grande Bretagne" or "Royaume Uni" translated simply as "Angleterre", I could go on (an on, and on...!)
Anyway, I just thought it was a bit ironic that earlier in the thread people were saying how you shouldn't be ashamed of/vilified for things your country have done when they are nothing to do with you - I've often had stick for things that as far as I'm concerned are the product of another bloody country entirely different to mine! (And for that bloody "Prince"...)
[i]Welsh History - RS Thomas
We were a people taut for war; the hills
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.
Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.
We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.
We were a people, and are so yet.
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise
And greet each other in a new dawn. [/i]
