Bobi Jones
Celtic writer who, despite being a nationalist and republican, taught Welsh to the Prince of Wales
BOBI JONES, the poet and scholar who has died aged 88, was born into an Englishspeaking Welsh family, but became one of the most prolific writers in the Welsh language; it is claimed that by the end of his life he spoke English as a foreign language. Though a republican, a fervent Welsh nationalist and a fierce egalitarian, Jones taught Welsh to Prince Charles when the latter attended the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in the summer of 1969, in preparation for his investiture as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle on July 1.
The 1960s had seen a groundswell of Welsh nationalist activity, including a campaign of civil disobedience, in an attempt to secure public status for the Welsh language. Plaid Cymru had gained their first MP when Gwynfor Evans was elected for Carmarthen in 1966.
Though Plaid maintained a diplomatic silence, the investiture became the focus of protests about the legal status of Welsh, to which popular young Welsh-language poets such as Alan Llwyd and Gerallt Lloyd Owen contributed in an outpouring of anti-royalist verse. “You would weep, weep, Llywelyn/weep blood if you saw this,” ran the English translation of one of Lloyd Owen’s laments: “Our heart with a foreigner / Our crown with a conqueror / And a populace of favourseekers/with meek smiles, where once were men.”
As a non-native Welsh speaker, Jones believed that the key to restoring the language lay less in campaigning for the rights of the then dwindling population of Welsh-speakers, than in teaching the language and culture to native Englishspeakers among the Welsh population.
Inspired by the “Ulpan” schools established in the newly created state of Israel to help disparate immigrant communities learn the Hebrew language and assimilate, he was instrumental in the creation in 1984 of Cymdeithas y Dysgwyr (“The Learners’ Society”), which offered social opportunities to bring Welsh learners and speakers together so that learners could improve their skills and get a deeper understanding of Welsh culture. He remained honorary president of the organisation until his death.
Jones did not, therefore, make an exception for someone he regarded as an essentially English prince. However, his true views were apparent in a letter published in the Welsh weekly Y Faner defending having written Merthyron cyntaf y mudiad cenedlaethol (“The first martyrs of the national movement”), a poem dedicated to two young men killed at Abergele while preparing a bomb meant to derail the train bringing the royal family to Caernarfon.
“I am a nationalist of the pen, an armchair pacifist. I do not believe that violence is right. When it comes to ‘matters of principle’ and the like, I come to rest comfortably among the safe, domesticated, respectable majority that believes explosions to be dangerous; and I will cry ‘shame’ with the rest of the crowd.” But, Jones went on: “Everyone who has in the least assisted in the psychological and material subjection of Wales is responsible for [the men’s] deaths. Everyone who has been indifferent is responsible. Everyone who supported the great circus at Caernarfon is responsible … In the midst of our constitutional comforts let us not lose the humanity to see the immeasurable and terrible difference between ourselves and those who risk – and lose – their lives.”
He was born Robert Maynard Jones on May 20 1929 in Cardiff into a working-class family and educated at Cathays grammar school, where he learnt Welsh as a second language.
Inspired by the window it opened into Welsh culture, he went on to study Welsh at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and to teach the language at schools at Llanidloes and Llangefni.
Jones’s marriage in 1952 to Beti James, a native Welsh speaker, would prove crucial in his development as a poet and his growing involvement in Welsh nationalism. He joined Plaid Cymru and published poems in Y Fflam (“The Flame”), a magazine launched in 1946 to provide a new platform for younger Welsh nationalist writers.
In 1959 he co-founded, with the poet Waldo Williams, Yr Academi Gymreig (“The Welsh Academy”), which represents the interests of Welsh writers both in Wales and further afield, and which publishes the Welsh-language periodical Taliesin. At the time of his death he was President of the Academy (with Gillian Clarke).
Jones was appointed to a lectureship at Trinity College, Carmarthen, and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, joining the staff of the Welsh Department in 1966. From 1980 until his retirement in 1989 he was professor of Welsh language and literature at Aberystwyth.
Strongly Calvinist in his convictions, Jones attended a denominational chapel in Aberystwyth until a Welsh Evangelical Church was established in the town. He had a regular column in Y Cylchgrawn Efeng ylaidd, the magazine of the Evangelical Movement of Wales, and in 1994 he published Crist a Chenedlaetholdeb (“Christ and Nationalism”), in which he sought to define a Christian rationale for national cultures.
The author of some 40 books in Welsh, including three novels, and a number of works of literary criticism and translations in English, Jones was equally uncompromising in his works on literary theory, refusing to “dumb down” for the non-specialist reader.
He is survived by his wife Beti and by their son and daughter.
Bobi Jones, born May 20 1929, died November 22 2017