ABSTRACT
This tale, narrated by Rhys Jones, one of the authors of this book, helps to illustrate a number of crucial themes relating to the ideas of place and nation. First, it demonstrates the close relationship that exists between place and nation. In this story, certain places can be seen to represent the Welsh nation more effectively than others: north rather than south Wales, Mold more so than Llanelli. It shows the way in which places help symbolise and anchor national identity. Second, the story shows us the subdivisions that exist within the allegedly homogeneous entities of nations. We usually think of nations as coherent ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) of people who follow the same customs and speak the same language. Indeed, this is one of the main ideological foundations of nationalism: to encourage us to believe
that it is possible to draw boundaries around homogeneous groupings of people. Rhys Jones’s experience in north Wales would seem to undermine this notion. Even though he and his friends were born in the same country, and spoke the same language, as the other group of men, they were still thought of as being somehow different in nature. In this example, these imagined boundaries between the two groups were constructed along place-based and linguistic lines. To be born in a different region or a different town, or to speak a different dialect, led to the construction of imaginary boundaries between the two groups of people. Finally, the tale illustrates the close link that often exists between language and national identity. The ability or inability to speak a language can often be used as a means of defining who acually belongs to, and who is excluded from, a nation. In this case, the ability to speak a language was not deemed to be enough of a badge of national identity, since the Welsh language had to be spoken in a particular way in order to gain membership of the Welsh nation.
