| Sir Topham Hat and the fast
ferries... Is this man a spy? |
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wild place still. Most
of the people still speak Welsh. Now one day about 150 years ago,
Sir Topham Hat the railway baron was sitting in his big office in
London, looking at the map, and he noticed Anglesey was quite close to
Ireland.
And he had a bright idea. If he talked nicely to
Thomas the tank engine and his friends, and then laid a nice straight
train track from London to the tip of the island, all he would need
would be for someone to build a fast ferry, and people would be over to
Ireland in no time. Now Sir Topham Hat liked sitting at his big
desk thinking of bright ideas, but he didn’t like to get his black suit
and tall hat dirty. So he hired a big gang of men with shovels,
cranes, saws and paintbrushes. They built a beautiful new bridge
to the island,rather like a tunnel, with a space inside for the trains
to squeeze through, And they laid the track diagonally across the
island to a new ferry terminal which Sir Topham was building at
Holyhead. And at each little village along the track, he decided to build a railway station. Of course, the workmen Sir Topham hired were all English. They didn’t speak any Welsh, so they had to ask the local people what names they should paint on the stations. The painters were being paid a good union rate, so they were very pleased when they were told the name of one station. I have painted it on the board at the bottom of this page. What does it say? "Llanfair, the painter read out. What does it mean.” “The church of St. Mary”, he was told. “Ah, very nice” he said.
“But don't put your brush away. There is a bit more to paint, said the villager.” So he painted pwyllgwyngyll. “That means in a hollow of white hazel” said the friendly villager. “But don’t forget to paint the bit that says ‘near to the rapid whirlpool.’” It’s getting a bit long” said the painter. “Well”, said the villager, you still have to paint “and the church of Tysilio by the red cave.”
| Llanfair-pwll-gwyngyll-goger-y-chwyn-drobwll-llan-tysilio-gogo-goch |
It’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? If you look below, you can see a picture of the station and its long name. Who would like to read it for me? The Welsh people have no difficulty in saying it, but it is really difficult for us foreigners. None of the train drivers or porters could say it, so they ended up calling it Llanfair-P.G. Well, here is a picture of the station with its long name. And just look at the size of the tickets. It takes two porters to carry them!
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Sometimes, people use torture to make spies talk. But people can also learn a lot about us from the words we use, and how we pronounce them. If you go to the United States, and the immigration officer thinks you are a foreigner, he will ask you to say the last letter in the alphabet. And if you say Zed instead of Zee, he will know that you are not American.
In the Bible, we read that Jephthah used the Hebrew word Shibboleth to distinguish Ephraimite spies and prisoners from his own Gileadite soldiers (Judges xii. 4-6). The Ephraimites could n’t pronounce sh, so they said something like “Thiboleth” instead of “Shiboleth”. And Jephthah knew at once they were foreigners and spies.
And I think people know a lot about you and me from the words that we use and the way that we pronounce them. If we are always using bad words and speaking in an unkindly fashion, people will know we are not nice people. But if we always speak kindly and use good words, people will know without asking that we are followers of Jesus. So this week, why don’t you make a list of nice words that you could use regularly. Words like: Friendship, Love, Caring, Helping, Sympathising... and try using them regularly.