The ‘Epitaph Copied from a Tombstone in Wales’ illustrates the challenges posed by the concept of serial literature and radical song in Wales towards the end of the eighteenth century, but it also indicates the rewards which crossing borders may bring. It was not published in Wales itself but in England and the identity of ‘W. T. M.’ remains unknown. Yet the newspaper in which it appeared – the Chester Chronicle – was part of the Welsh public discourse, the poem referenced Welshmen in more than one way, and it reflected the anti-war sentiments which characterized Welsh and English language radical song from Wales in the 1790s.

The concept of Wales in the 1790s itself was complex. Incorporated by the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1543 and thus officially a part of England, the Principality of Wales, though retaining a separate cultural identity and language, lacked the characteristics of a political nation. Without a capital, major cities or a university it was also missing the requirements for the rise of a public sphere. The scarcity of sizeable towns restrained even the development of Terry Eagle-ton's ‘counter-public sphere’ of corresponding societies, political associations and Dissenting churches sustained by an artisan class.