A Book of North Wales

He.“Can I see her now?”She. “Jenny is washing, washing, washing, Jan.Jenny is washing, Jan, you can’t see her now.”

Then all say: —

“Morning, ladies and gentlemen, too!Morning, ladies and gentlemen, too!Come to see Jenny, Jan? Jenny, Jan? Jenny, Jan?Come to see Jenny, and can’t see her now.”

Next the youth is informed that Jenny is married, then that she is dead, then that she is buried, and lastly that her grave is green. “Jenny’s grave is green with the tears that flow.” The principal performer has to simulate various emotions at the information given to him.

Now the first of these trifles is certainly derived from the old prose romance of Friar Rush, the earliest English printed copy of which is dated 1620, but which was taken from the German, and this was printed at Strasburg in 1515. The story, however, dates, in all probability, from a much earlier period.

The second is remarkable because the music is almost note for note as sung not very many years ago, with the air to the same words as given in Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book. That Jenny-Jan must have been common all over England seems to be implied by the fact of its existing in Devon as well as in Scotland, though to different melodies.

We can hardly doubt that these plays, in which three, at the most five, but usually three persons took part, were common in Wales in the Middle Ages, and, indeed, down to the Methodist Revival, when all such things were set aside as of the devil, devilish. Of all the Welsh composers of interludes, Twm o’r Nant, or Tom o’ the Dingle, was the most famous. He wrote an interlude on John Bunyan’s “Spiritual Courtship,” on Naaman’s Leprosy, and an allegorical piece on Hypocrisy. He was born in 1739, and was married in 1763. His biography is extant and is very entertaining. His other interludes were “Riches and Poverty,” “The Three Associates of Man – the World, Nature, Conscience,” and “The King, the Justice, the Bishop, and the Husbandman,” and he was wont to act in them himself.

These were all composed in verse, and were not without poetic fire, but the allegorical character of the pieces was against them.

One great cause of the refinement of mind, as well as of manner, in the Welshman of the lower classes, is the traditional passion for poetry. The Welsh have had their native poets from time immemorial. The earlier poets are hard to be read, often from a habit they had of introducing words, wholly regardless of sense, to pad out their lines, or to produce a pleasant effect on the ear. But all this drops away in the later poets, and Wales has never failed to produce a crop of these, and their productions are read, acquired by heart, and go to mould the taste.

Now look at the English bumpkin. What poetic faculty is there in him? Take the broadside ballads of England. Unless you stumble on an ancient ballad, all is the veriest balderdash.

“To hear the sweet birds whistleAnd the nightingales to sing,”

or again: —

“As I went forth one May morningTo scent the morning air,”

the final line of which is capable of a double interpretation – the bucolic mind rises to no poetic conception. It looks at Nature with dull, dazed eyes, and sees nothing in it. It does not distinguish one plant from another, its only idea of a sensation is a young woman dressing as a sailor or a soldier to run after her young man, and its only idea of humour is grossness.

But the moment you come in contact with Celtic blood a ripple of living fire runs through the veins, the eyes are open and they see, the ears are touched and they hear, the tongue is unloosed and it sings.

The sole conception that the vulgar English mind has of poetry is rhyme, and the rhyme often execrably bad. In my time I have come upon many a village poet – but never a poetic idea from their minds, never a spark of divine fire in their doggerel.

But to return to Welsh Nonconformity. That it was the revolt of the Conscience against the deadness of the Church, which had left out of view all its glorious Catholic heritage, and offered stones in place of bread, and put wolves in place of pastors over the sheep, does not admit of question. Nor can it be doubted that Nonconformity has done an amazing deal for the development – if one-sided, yet a development – of the Welsh mind. It has stunted some of its faculties, but it has expanded the mind in other directions. Nonconformity exercises a most controlling force upon the Welshman. He no more dares to think or worship or have an aspiration beyond his sect, than has a Mussulman outside his religion. So long as he is in Wales, by a thousand ties he is bound to his sect. He would wreck his social, his moral influence, his position, his worldly prospects if he left it.

The bicycle, however, is making a breach in the bonds that restrain the young people, much as in France it is emancipating the demoiselle from the severe tutelage in which the French girl is held. It is taking those who use the “wheel” beyond the little area over which their religious community exercises influence.

We talk of the Irish peasantry as priest-ridden, but the Welsh are in almost as strict subjection to the opinion of their chapel body. The emancipation the bicycle produces has its good effects, but also those which are evil. The chapel opinion makes for godliness and a decent life.

The Sciet, or Society, comprises every member of the denomination, and is a miniature democracy, in which the affairs of the community are discussed, and its working is arranged, its religious tenets are shaped, and its code of morals is fixed. The greatest excitement allowed is the Diwygiad, or Revival, which may or may not leave good moral results. Sometimes it awakens the indifferent, sometimes deepens the religious life, but it also occasionally leads to lapses from virtue.

Revivalism is a two-edged weapon that may cut the hand that holds it.

The Church is supported principally by the squirearchy and the dependants on the squirearchy. And, as a rule, the squirearchy likes to have a religion that does not make great demands on its time, does not exact self-denial, does not require exalted spirituality. And it is ready enough to pay for a jog-trot religion, but will button up the pocket against a too exacting zeal.

Some of the old Welsh preachers at the outburst of the revolt against the deadness and worldliness of the Church were very remarkable men, and their eloquence was great. It would not pass muster at the present day in their own communities, but it served its purpose at the time.

There was one, for instance, reminiscences of whose sermons have survived – Stephen Jenkins, born 1815, died 1892.

On one occasion he was preaching upon prayer, and he suddenly broke forth into a graphic description of the animals entering the ark. After having seen the lion, the bear, the ape, and the snail enter, all whose progresses were graphically described, he went on to speak of the elephant, and he drew a lively picture of the monstrous beast ascending the plank that led to the entrance to the house-boat. “But how is this?” exclaimed the preacher. “The elephant is higher than the door. By no means can he walk in. Of no avail for Noah and his sons to prog him with goads. He cannot enter. The door is low, and his head is held too high. Then says Noah, ‘Go down on your knees, beast!’ and the elephant obeys. Then, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth thrusting behind, they managed to get the elephant into the ark. And you, if you will enter the kingdom of heaven, must go down on your knees. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way.”

The story is told differently in a little memoir of Stephen Jenkins that has been published recently (Tonypandy, 1902), but I give it as it reached me some years ago; probably the preacher used Noah’s ark more than once, and to enforce different maxims.

The following is, however, from the book: —

“When Peter went to Cæsarea to his publication [i. e. preaching to which invited], ha took Mrs. Peter with him. And ha was putting up at a farmhouse. And the farmer took Peter around the farm with him, to show his stock to ’n. On the way home the bull roared at ’n, but ha didn’t notice that. When ha cam’ to the farm-yard, the ould gander cam’ hissing after ’n, but he didn’t mind that either. But, all of a sudden, the ould cock cam’ up to ’n quite bould, and sang Cock-a-doodle-doo, and he turned quite pale, and begged the farmer to let ’n go into the house. And when ha went into the house, Mrs. Peter asked, ‘What is the matter, Peter bach?’ ‘Oh, that ould bird again!’ he said… Ah, my dear people, ould Conscience will remind you some way or other, of your past sins, even after you’re forgiven.”

This may be absurd, but it served its purpose. Whether a preacher is justified in drawing so freely on his imagination is a question I do not enter upon. The sermon recalls to me one heard in a little Cornish chapel a few years ago. I believe that I give the preacher’s words without exaggeration. The text was from Psalm lvii. 8: “Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp.” And this was the opening of the discourse: —

“My brethren! King David awoke early in the morning, just as the sun was rising. There had been wretched bad times, rain, rain, rain, all day and night, and the sheep were cawed [diseased], and the harvest was not got in, the shocks of corn were standing, the grain was sprouting in the ears. You know what sort of bread comes of that! David had been sore at heart, for he knew the farmers were in a bad way, and the labouring people were also not well off. So he got out of bed, and opened his window, and looked out, and smelt the beautiful fresh morning air. Then he saw the sun come a-peeping up over the eastern hills, like a spark of gold. So says David, ‘There he comes, and not a cloud in the sky, and there’s every promise of a good day. Wake up, my glory! wake up, my beautiful shining luminary, and give us a long fine day, for we want it sore before the corn is utterly spoiled and done for.’ And then, brethren, he made another remark, and that he addressed to his Possle-tree [psaltery]. Now, I don’t pretend to know exactly what sort of a tree a Possle-tree is, but travellers who have been in Palestine, and learned commentators, do assert that it is a plant that turns her face to the sun, whichever way the sun be. In short she is a sort of convolvulus. Now David saw this here possle-tree drooping, with her blossom heavy with rain, and says he, with a great shout, ‘Possle-tree!’ says he, ‘Possle-tree, my hearty, wake up! The glorious sun is up and shining, and it becomes you also to wake up, and look the glorious sun in the face, as is your nature and your duty too.’”

How completely Celtic both these addresses were! To the dull Saxon mind there would be unreality and trifling in such rich embroidery of sacred facts, and it would repel, not edify. But the Celtic taste is not squeamish; it allows a broad margin for imaginary decoration, and so long as the moral enforced is satisfactory, it does not regard the means whereby it is reached.

Of course this sort of address would be impossible now in Wales, but in Cornwall the level of culture is a century in arrear of Wales.

A Welshman is like an Irishman, naturally an orator, and his highest climax is reached in the hwyl, the Welsh howl. This consists in a rhythmic musical intonation, rising to a high pitch. It was at one time general in extempore preaching, but has fallen into disuse, as it showed a tendency to become a mechanical trick, a striving after effect, when the orator felt that his matter ceased to interest and arouse.

An amusing story was told me of a religious revival effected by an old woman and a mendicant.

Said Sheena to Shone, “How is it at Bethesda now?”

“Ah, Sheena, dead as ditchwater!”

“That is a pity,” said she. “Let us revive the spirit.”

So they went together to the chapel, and during an eminently prosy sermon began to rock on their seats, to moan and utter exclamations. The influence spread, and presently the whole congregation swayed and cried out, “Glory be to God!” at the preacher’s platitudes. Then, little by little, the agitation of spirits affected him – his voice rose to a cry, and sank and thrilled; he flamed, he flung about his arms; finally, he howled. Thenceforth all was animation and unction in Bethesda.

We may doubt whether the Catholic Church ever gained as firm a hold over the Welsh people as it did over the English. The best benefices were generally given to English or to foreign ecclesiastics who did not understand a word of the vernacular of the people, and the poor cures were cast to hedge-priests who were both ignorant and immoral; such livings as were in Welsh hands were very indifferently served, as the churches belonged to several people, in or out of Orders, as has been already shown.

The Reformation did not at all mend matters. During the Tudor period, it is true, the Church did hold the affection of the Welsh people, and was, for upwards of a century, ruled by bishops who were Welsh in name and tongue. But evil days followed. Bishoprics and livings were given to Englishmen who did not know Welsh, and who often were nonresident. The revenues of the Church were drained into the pockets of English pluralists and men who ostentatiously neglected their duties.

With the Methodist Revival the Welsh found themselves masters of their own religion; they could form communities for themselves, invent their own creeds, and accommodate the worship to their own idiosyncrasies.

Although the Welsh are an emotional people, they are a clear and hard-headed people as well. They have passed through the period of hysterical religion, and a preacher who is acceptable must be one who is worth listening to because he has something to say. He must be, not a man of frothy eloquence, but one who has read and thought. One of the drawbacks of the Church in Wales is that ministers who have proved themselves to be more or less failures in their sects have been too much in the habit of coming over to the Church and seeking ordination, in the hopes of being coddled and applauded as “‘verts,” and being put into benefices; and the bishops have shown too ready a disposition to receive them.

Such converts are often no gain to the Church and no loss to Dissent. In Don Giovanni Figaro struts up and down the stage unrolling a list of his conquests in the field of love, and it is not edifying or pleasing to see some of the more vigorous defenders of the “Establishment” parade in like manner the captures from Nonconformity. The Church in Wales, except at Cardiff, has been hardly touched as yet by the breath of the revival which has transformed the Church in England. If the Church is to regain her hold over the Welsh people, it will be by supplying them with what they cannot have in the sects. They can obtain Christianity attenuated into the most vaporous condition, thrown into the most varied nebular forms, in the several denominations. But if the Welshman joins the Church, it will not be, like Ixion, to embrace a cloud, but for a definite creed and apostolic order.

CHAPTER XIII

HARLECH

Situation – The castle – Bronwen – Bronwen’s tomb – Dafydd ab Ifan – “March of the Men of Harlech” – Prehistoric remains – Llanfair – Ellis Wynne —Visions of the Sleeping Bard– Sam Badrig – The drowned land – Ardudwy – Fight of the men – Roman Steps – Owen Pughe – Fires and destruction of Welsh MSS

THE situation of Harlech is fine – a rock rising almost vertically from the level tract of sandy flats that fringes the sea, surmounted by a castle, and with the little town clustering behind it and slipping down the sides.

The castle consists of a rude quadrangle, with round towers at each angle, and to the east a gateway flanked by two more. It is not a particularly picturesque ruin, and before it fell into ruin must have been positively ugly. It is not comparable to Conway in size or in beauty of outline, but Henry de Elreton, the architect, built for use, and looked to make it an impregnable stronghold, and did not consider the picturesque.

The castle occupies the site of Twr Bronwen.

Bran the Blessed was king of Britain, and he had a beautiful sister called Bronwen.

One day he was in his fortress at Harlech when, looking west, he saw a fleet approach. It was that of Matholwch, king of Ireland, who came to ask for Bronwen to be his wife. He was well received, and the wedding was appointed to be kept at Aberffraw, in Anglesey. So Bran and all his warriors went thither by land, and the Irish king by sea, and at Aberffraw a great marriage feast was held.

Now Bran and Bronwen had a half-brother named Evnyssien, who had not been consulted in the matter, and out of spite during the night he went to the horses brought over by the Irish king and “cut off their lips to the teeth, and their ears close to their heads, and their tails close to their backs, and their eyelids to the very bone.”

Matholwch was furious at the insult, and was with difficulty appeased by Bran giving him a silver rod as tall as himself and a plate of gold as wide as his face, and by assuring him that the outrage had been committed without his knowledge and against his wishes.

Then Matholwch sailed away with his bride. In the course of a year she bore him a son, whom she called Gwern. Now the story of the insult offered to their king circulated in Ireland, and this produced very bitter feeling against the queen, and Matholwch was himself so turned against her that he degraded her to be cook in his palace.

Bronwen reared a starling in the cover of the kneading trough, and wrote a letter telling her woes, and tied it to a feather of the bird’s wing, and let it fly. The bird departed and reached Caer Seiont, or Carnarvon, where King Bran then was, lighted on his shoulder and ruffled its plumes, and, discovering the letter, he detached and read it. Then, in great wrath, he collected a force and manned a fleet, and sailed to Ireland to revenge the wrongs offered to his sister.

Matholwch, unprepared to resist, invited him to a conference and a banquet, and in compensation for the wrongs offered to raise his own son Gwern to the throne, and to abdicate.

Now at the banquet the boy Gwern entered the hall, and for his beauty and courtesy was by all admired and fondled save by the malevolent Evnyssien, who, when the lad came before him, suddenly grasped him by head and feet and flung him into the fire that burned before them. When Bronwen saw her child in the flames she endeavoured to spring in after him, but was restrained by her brother Bran and another, between whom she was seated.

This shocking act of violence caused a general fight between the Welsh and the Irish. Evnyssien fell and many others on the side of Bran, who was obliged to retreat to his ships and escape over the sea to Britain, wounded in the foot in the fray by a poisoned dart.

On reaching Wales Bran felt that he was death-struck, and he commanded that his head should be cut off and taken to London, and buried on the White Mount, where is now the Tower, and that the face should be set towards France. Bronwen, who had escaped, soon after died of a broken heart. “Woe is me!” she said, “that ever I was born; for two islands have been destroyed because of me!”

She was buried in Anglesey, in a spot since called Ynys Bronwen. In 1813 the traditional grave was opened.

“A farmer, living on the banks of the Alaw, having occasion for stones to make some addition to his farm-buildings, and having observed a stone or two peeping through the turf of a circular elevation on a flat not far from the river, was induced to examine it, where, after paring off the turf, he came to a considerable heap of stones, or carnedd, covered with earth, which he removed with some degree of caution, and got to a cist formed of coarse flags canted and covered over. On removing the lid, he found it contained an urn placed with its mouth downwards, full of ashes and half-calcined fragments of bone.”

In the Mabinogion the grave is thus described: —

“A square grave was made for Bonwen, the daughter of Llyr, on the banks of the Alaw, and there she was buried.”

The urn that contained the ashes and bones was of the well-known Bronze Age type.

According to the traditional pedigrees of the Welsh, Bronwen was the aunt of the celebrated Caractacus who so gallantly resisted the Romans, and who was taken prisoner and conveyed to Rome. But these very early pedigrees are untrustworthy.

The Bronwen Tower of Harlech Castle is that on the left of the sea-front as we enter the courtyard.

In 1404 Owen Glyndwr got possession of the castle and held a parliament in it.

During the Wars of the Roses, the Earl of Pembroke and his brother, Sir Richard Herbert, laid siege to the fortress. It was defended by the governor, Davydd ab Ifan, who there offered an honourable asylum to Margaret of Anjou, queen of Henry VI., and the Prince of Wales, after the battle of Northampton. When summoned to surrender, he replied that he had held a fortress in France till all the old women in Wales had heard of it, and he now purposed holding out in Harlech till all the old women in France heard of it.

According to a contemporary bard, there was great slaughter; he says that six thousand men fell, but this shows him to have been able to draw the long-bow as well as to finger the lyre. Eventually, after a blockade, Harlech was forced to capitulate, and the whole district was then subjected to Edward IV. The famous air, “The March of the Men of Harlech,” is said to have been composed during this siege, more probably long after, in commemoration of it.

Harlech is not a good watering-place, as the sea is at some distance from the town, separated from it by tedious sand-flats. But it commands a magnificent view of the promontory of Lleyn, with Yr Eifl – in English the Rivals – rising from it, then Moel Siabod, Snowdon, and the Glyders; and many pleasant excursions may be made from it. The view is blocked before the principal hotel by the huge bulk of the castle.

The railroad to Barmouth runs under what were sea-cliffs, but the sea has retreated, and at the mouth of the Nant Col and Artro, and between that of the mouth of the brook Afon Ysgethin, is an exclusive stretch of Morfa, or sand-dune. So also between Harlech and the estuary of the Afon Glaslyn.

Near Harlech are several of the Cytiau’r Gwyddelod, circular stone habitations dating back from the Irish occupation of the country, if not more ancient still. But a more interesting monument of prehistoric antiquity is the Caer on Moel Goedog, standing 1,210 feet above the sea, where is a stone fort, and there also are stone circles. Other relics of a remote antiquity lie to the south, about Llyn Irddyn, to be reached by ascending the valley of the Ysgethin. Here are camps, remains of a prehistoric village, and cairns.

At Llanfair, in the church, is a stained-glass window to the memory of Ellis Wynne, and his birthplace, Glasynys, is about a mile and a half from Harlech. Ellis Wynne was born there in 1671. Some twenty-five years before he saw the light Harlech Castle had been the scene of many a fray between Roundheads and Cavaliers, and of the last stand made by the Welsh for King Charles. The remembrance of these events must have been fresh as he grew up.

In 1703 he published The Visions of the Sleeping Bard, which has ever since been regarded as a classic work in Welsh prose. It was not original in its inception. In 1668 Sir Robert l’Estrange had published his translations of Gomez de Quevedo’s Dreams, and this must have fallen into the hands of Ellis Wynne. Quevedo had his visions of the World, of Death, and Hell, and Wynne followed in having the same.

The same characters are represented in both, the same classes are satirised, and the same punishments are meted out.

Wynne had also composed a Vision of Heaven, but when it was detected that he was a plagiarist, he was so annoyed that he threw his manuscript into the fire.

Nevertheless, The Visions of the Sleeping Bard remains, and ever will remain, a Welsh classic.

“No better model exists of the pure idiomatic Welsh of the last century, before writers became influenced by English style and method. Vigorous, fluent, crisp, and clear, it shows how well our language is adapted to description and narration. It is written for the people, and in the picturesque and poetic strain which is always certain to fascinate the Celtic mind.”5