In Wales, there appear to be many more Gog jokes than there are Hwntw jokes. I've turned one into a meme.
One of the finest and most popular comedies in the Welsh language aired before the advent of S4C 'Fo a Fe' pitted the Father in Laws who had both come to live with their children, against each other. Ryan Davies played the Hwntw 'Twm Twm' and Guto Roberts played the Gog 'Ephraim'. The series was written by two of the finest writers that north Wales has ever produced, Gwenlyn Parry and Rhydderch Jones. I've spelt north with a small n there because I have spotted recently that this is the way that you are meant to write it. I get to write a post like this because as a hybrid hwntw I lived for a decade and some in the Gogledd. Not the happiest of times for me but that had nothing to do with north Wales but more to do with the prison camp of a school which I attended. As an adult hybrid hwntw, born in Bridgend, raised in north Wales and spending the last thirty years in Kairdiff I realise that most of my adult friends are Gogs! I don't know whether Gogs are offended by the word, not that we bandy it around a lot amongst ourselves. Gogs and Hwntws! Two peoples occupying the same land, sharing the same language but with different accents and words. People different in characteristics as well. As a sly southerner myself I can spot the differences. There appears to be a naivete and innocence about north Walians which when I meet a duplicitous and shifty one blows my generalisation out of the water. You listen to a broad west Walian in Welsh and it sounds as if they are trying to be your friend and pick your pocket at the same time whereas there is a booming friendliness and openness about the north Walian inflection.
"This will not get us closer to a united and independent Wales, if you keep highlighting the differences".
A beautiful country but one in which the geography frustrates the utopia of independence. The last true prince of Wales is buried under the A470. We know that 'Wastemonster' and the Cardiff Parliament don't want a better transport infrastructure in Wales because then the Gogs and Hwntws would get together and decide on a strategy for Independence and Self Determination so it really is better for them if we have to travel through Shrewsbury to get to Aberystwyth from Cardiff. A country divided but only united in comedy. As Twm Twm accurately pointed out all those years ago.
"Nefar in Ewrop Gwboi"
Picture BBC archive
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