The Lake of Bala—Estuary of the Mawddach—Barmouth—Cader Idris—The Torrent and Precipice Walks—“Welsh web”—Numerous lakes—Fishing in Wales—Treachery of David ab Llewelyn—Gruffydd’s attempt to escape—“The Spirit’s Blasted Tree”—John Thomas—Characteristics of the Welsh people—Intelligence great—None of the coarseness characterising the Anglo-Saxon bumpkin—Long-heads and short-heads—A Welsh courtship—Untruthfulness a product of servitude—Religiousness of the Welsh—The theatre discountenanced—Old Interludes—Richard Malvine—Twm o’r Nant—Poetry in Wales—Welsh Nonconformity—The squirearchy—The Seiet—The old Welsh preachers—Embellishments—The Hwyl—Reviving the spirit—How the Church was treated—The Methodist Revival—The Church in Wales.

ONLY as one reaches the head of the Bala Lake, coming from Ruabon, does the beauty of form of the Welsh mountains begin to impress one. Then ensues the rapid descent of the valley of the Wnion, down which the train gallops, and as Dolgelley is approached, Cader Idris breaks on the sight.

Beyond Dolgelley expands the estuary of the Mawddach, and when the tide is in it is hard to match it for loveliness in the British Isles, especially when the heather is in bloom. Then the flush is on the mountains above that mirror, and it is like the glow of glad surprise on the young girl’s cheek when she contemplates herself in a glass and for the first time realises how beautiful she is.

Dolgelley and Barmouth are two delightful places at which to halt and whence to explore the glorious surrounding scenery. To the former belongs Cader Idris, and to the latter Llawllech and Diphwys. To the first the vale of the Mawddach, and to the second that of the Arthog.

Cader Idris is the throne of the great father of Welsh song. Who Idris was we hardly know. He is veiled in mystery, as his throne is wrapped in mist. But some dim traditions of him have come down to us.

The Triads celebrate him as Idris Gawr, or the Giant, one of the three primitive bards of the Isle of Britain, the inventor of the harp, and withal great in the knowledge of the stars. It was said that whosoever should pass a night on Cader Idris would descend in the morning inspired with the spirit of poetry or a frenzied madman.

I said to my guide in Iceland one day, pointing to a glittering jÖkull, “Oh, Grimr! would you not like to stand on the top?” “I can see the top very well from down here”, was his reply.

A good many of us with old bones, and breath coming short, will be content to look on Cader Idris from below, or only to mount the glens to the lakes that lie around it, and leave the ultimate climb to the young bloods.

The Town Council of Dolgelley has done its best to make the place attractive to visitors who have not this climbing passion on them, by laying out walks such as those of the Torrent and the Precipice, to facilitate the easy reach of striking points of view.

Of the town itself not much can be said. “You see this decanter?” said an old gentleman after dinner. “That is the church”; and, taking a handful of nutshells and strewing them about the decanter, he added, “there are the houses.”

Dolgelley does a little business. It has long been noted for the manufacture of the “Welsh web,” and it is a famous resort of fishermen, though the well-whipped streams do not abound in finny denizens as they did at one time; moreover, the fish have grown uncommonly wary. The neighbourhood has within reach many lakes more or less deserving of the angler’s attention, and all meriting a visit by anyone who has an eye for the beautiful. To the fisherman comes the choice between stream and tarn, between following up the brawling torrent to its source, lingering by the pools in which the trout glide like shadows, and dreaming in a boat on one of the lakelets, whilst a gentle breeze ruffles its surface. Some clever lines were written by the late Major George Cecil Gooch, some years ago, contrasting the fishing in England with that in Scotland. They apply equally to the contrast between angling in England and in Wales.

“Oh! yon angler in Kennet and Itchen!

How he creeps and he crawls on his knees.

How he casteth a fly a deep ditch in,

Or on high hangs it up in the trees!

How he stalks a poor trout that is rising,

How he chucks a fly into its mouth!

Then vows that his skill is surprising,

For they manage things so in the South.

“Let him boast of his fine fishing tackle,

Of his lines and his casts and all that,

Of his quills and his cluns let him cackle,

Let him tie a cork band round his hat;

The reward of his toil, do you ask it?

While he grovels all day on his face,

After all, when he reckons his basket,

He must count all his spoils by the brace.

“Leave the country of hedgerows and meadows,

Where the yellow marsh-marigold grows,

Where the oak and the elm cast their shadows,

Bid adieu to the Land of the Rose.

Come with me to the Land of the Thistle,

Where the waters run rugged and fleet,

To the hills where the wild curlews whistle,

Where a man may stand up on his feet.

“Come with me where the bright sunbeams flicker,

Through the larches above on the brae,

Where the streams by the boulder stones bicker,

And wavelets around are at play.

Throw your line straight across over yonder,

Down, down let it gradually swing,

By the swirl near the rock let it wander,

And you’ll hook a trout fit for a king.

“There he comes! now just hit him and hold him!

Let him rage up and down through the pool!

There are no wretched weeds to enfold him,

He’s yours if you only keep cool.

So you have him! Now try for his cousins,

For his uncles and aunts and so forth.

Never fear but you’ll get ’em by dozens,

That’s the way that we fish in the North.”

Aye! and in Wales also!

The Precipice Walk is that which will probably be first taken by the visitor to Dolgelley, carried round Moel Cynwch, which rises to the height of 1,068 feet, and has on its lower head a prehistoric camp. The way from Dolgelley leads past Cymmer Abbey, that was founded by Llewelyn ab Iorwerth the Great, who died in 1240.

His son Gruffydd, a man of noble stature and majestic beauty, won the hearts of the men of Gwynedd, and he was preferred by them to his brother David, whose mother was English; and from the moment that the breath was out of the body of Llewelyn a fierce and sanguinary war broke out between the half-brothers. At length, by the interposition of the Bishop of Bangor, a meeting was arranged to take place between the rival princes, but David treacherously waylaid his brother, and his eldest son Owen, on their way to the appointed place of conference, and shut them up in the castle of Criccieth.

The bishop, indignant with David for his treachery, hasted to King Henry and invoked his intervention. The King accordingly ordered David to release his prisoners, and when he refused to do so marched into North Wales. Senena, the wife of Gruffydd, met the King at Shrewsbury, and concluded a treaty with him, acting on behalf of her husband.

Henry now marched into Gwynedd and brought David to his knees. He surrendered Gruffydd and Owen, but the King, violating his promises, sent both to the Tower of London.

The Bishop of Bangor, distressed at the perfidy of the King, in vain pleaded for the liberation of the captives, as did also the unhappy Senena, who went to London to plead her cause in person, but all in vain.

As time passed, and Henry showed no inclination to release them, Gruffydd became desperate, and contrived a plan of escape along with his devoted wife, who had obtained a reluctantly granted permission to visit her husband and son in prison. He cut up the tapestry of his chamber, as also his sheets and table-cloths, into strips, which he twisted and plaited into a rope, and one night, by means of this frail cable, attempted to descend from his window, assisted from above by his son Owen, whilst Senena waited below. But the great weight of Gruffydd strained and ravelled out the cable; it broke, and he fell from so great a height that his head, striking the ground, was driven to the chin into his breast, and he was killed on the spot.

Owen was thenceforth kept in closer durance than before.

The lovely Llyn Cynwch is under the mountains, and reflects Cader Idris on its glassy surface. Nannau, the old residence of the Vaughan family, is near the Precipice Walk, and in the grounds, where now stands a sundial, was formerly the “Spirit’s Blasted Tree,” alluded to in Marmion. Nannau was the seat of Howel Sele, a cousin of Glyndwr; he had rendered himself obnoxious to his relative by the zeal with which he had espoused the cause of King Henry IV. The Abbot of Cymmer, desirous of effecting a reconciliation, contrived that the cousins should meet. Howel had the reputation of being an excellent archer, and as he and Glyndwr were walking in the grounds of Nannau the latter pointed out a deer for the purpose of trying his kinsman’s dexterity. Howel bent his bow, adjusted the arrow, but abruptly turned its point on Glyndwr and discharged it at his breast. Happily the latter wore a suit of chain mail under his kirtle, and the purpose of the assassin was foiled. Howel was instantly seized by the followers of his intended victim and thrown into the hollow trunk of an oak that stood by, and was there left to perish. His skeleton was not discovered till forty years later. Glyndwr burnt the house of Nannau, and committed other devastations on the domain of his treacherous relative.

The tree fell on the night of July 13th, 1813. Out of it has been fashioned a table now at Hengwrt.

Hengwrt is an interesting old house, and stands in woods that are famous among entomologists as the haunt of many rare moths; and the traces of these latter may be noted on the trees, where they have been smeared with ale and sugar; and the lanterns of these eager scientists wander about the shades of the oaks at night like wills-o’-the-wisp.

Dolgelley was the native place of John Thomas, Bishop of Salisbury. He was born in 1681, and was the son of a porter in the service of a brewer. His father’s employer, seeing that he was a bright, clever boy, paid the expenses of his education at school and college. He was ordained and went as chaplain to the English factory at Hamburg, and owing to the fluency with which he could speak German, acquired during his residence in the capacity of chaplain at that seaport, he attracted the notice of King George II., who took Thomas along with him whenever he visited his electorate of Hanover. Thomas married a Danish woman, and on her death married a niece of Bishop Sherlock of Salisbury. He was made rector of S. Vedast’s, Foster Lane, London, and then prebendary of Westminster and canon of S. Paul’s. In 1743 he was nominated to the bishopric of S. Asaph, but before he was consecrated he was offered and accepted the bishopric of Lincoln, and was consecrated in 1744. He was translated to Salisbury in 1761, and died there in 1766.

“He is,” says Cole, who wrote during his lifetime, “a very worthy and honest man, a most facetious and pleasant companion, and remarkably good-tempered. He has a peculiar cast in his eyes, and is not a little deaf. I thought it rather an odd jumble, when I dined with him in 1753; his lordship squinting the most I ever saw anyone; Mrs. Thomas, the bishop’s wife, squinting not a little; and a Dane, the brother of his first wife, being so short-sighted as hardly to be able to know whether he had anything on his plate or no. Mrs. Thomas was his fourth wife, granddaughter, as I take it, of Bishop Patrick, a very worthy man. It is generally said that the bishop put this poesy to the wedding ring when he married her: ‘If I survive, I will have five’; and she dying in 1757, he kept his word.”

It is not my intention to describe scenery, perhaps because as I have not slept on Cader Idris I lack the proper afflatus, but also because that of Cader Idris and of the Mawddach valley has exercised better pens than mine.

Instead of dilating on the scenery I will here give a few remarks on the characteristics of the Welsh people, for whom I entertain a great liking.

The Englishman accustomed to life in country districts cannot fail to be impressed with the intellectual superiority of the Welsh peasant to the English country bumpkin. The Welsh of the labourer and small farmer class are brighter, quicker, keener than those occupying the same position in Saxon land. The working man has an intellect higher developed than the little farmer in England. This, in a measure, is due to his being bilingual. The acquisition of a second tongue undoubtedly gives flexibility to his mind. No English labourer dreams of learning another language than his own, but the Welsh peasant must do this, and this fact gives to his mind aptitude for fresh acquisitions, and affords a spur to learning. He reads more, above all, thinks more. He leads an inner life of thought and feeling; he is more impulsive and more sensitive. He is more susceptible to culture, more appreciative of what is poetical and beautiful, and does not find in buffoonery the supreme delight of life.

The horse-play, the boisterous revelry that characterise the enjoyment of country Hodge and Polly, as well as town-bred ’Arry and ’Arriet, when taking a holiday, are never present on a similar occasion among the Welsh. The great gatherings of the latter are their Eisteddfods, and not races and football matches. They assemble in thousands to hear music and poetry, and such gatherings are entirely free from the vulgarities and riot of a collection of Anglo-Saxons out for a junketing.

A friend of mine, an incumbent for many years in a purely Welsh parish, who was transferred at length to one that was more than half English, remarked on the difference to me.

There had been an entertainment in a neighbouring place, and the English performers had given music-hall songs of a vulgar type, not without double entendres, which were rapturously applauded by those of the audience who were of English blood, whereas the Welsh sat mute and disgusted. And my friend said to me, “Such an entertainment would have been impossible in a purely Welsh village. The Welshman has a sense of decorum and a higher standard of taste, which would make him shrink from such an exhibition. But possibly it may be this coarseness and animality that have made the Englishman so masterful and so successful. It is the outward token of the tremendous vital force within, that makes him carry everything before him, undeterred by shyness, unhampered by sensitiveness, the qualities which hold back the Celt from the rough-and-tumble struggle of life.”

It is the old story of the round-heads and the long-heads, as revealed to us by the barrows on our wolds and moors. The most ancient inhabitants of Britain had well-developed skulls, with plenty of brains in them; had delicate chins and finely formed jaws, every token that the race was one of a gentle, highly strung quality. But it was trampled under foot by an invasion of round-heads, bullet-shaped skulls, with beetling brows, and jaws that speak of brute force.

That the Welsh are more moral than the English cannot be maintained. The Celtic idea of marriage was not that of the German, and woman in Celtic lands did not stand so high in dignity and in popular esteem as Tacitus shows us was the case among the Teutons. The Welsh laws allowed a man to divorce his wife and marry another if she were unfruitful, and for other reasons that seem to us frivolous.

A Welsh courtship is not conducted in the same manner as in England. There is not, or rather was not till recently, any walking-out of couples together; that was denounced from the chapel pulpits as indecorous. But with the consent or connivance of the parents of a young woman the suitor would come at night to the window of the damsel he affected, and scratch at it with a stick or throw at it a little gravel. Then she would descend, open the door, and the pair would spend the greater part of the night together on the sofa in the parlour, with, as a young man who had gone through the experience informed me, a bottle of whisky, a Bible, and a currant cake on the table before them. Some deny the whisky, some the Bible, but all allow that refreshment is necessary when the session is carried on to the small hours of the morning.

The Welsh are given the character of being untruthful, but with injustice. They are not more so than the Anglo-Saxon of the lower class. Untruthfulness is a product of oppression and injustice, and doubtless the long martyrdom undergone by the Welsh people forced them to equivocate and seek all manner of subterfuges, but this has passed away—both the occasion and the consequence. The consequence does not always become extinguished when the cause has been removed—not at once—but it tends rapidly to disappear.

Mistresses complain in England that their domestics are untruthful. Of course they are, if the authority over them is unjust. Plautus shows us Davus as a liar through every fibre of his soul, but Davus was a slave. If mistresses will treat their servants as part of their family, and trust them, they, in turn, will be true.

Unfortunately, athletic sports are discountenanced by the preachers in the chapels as well as the walking-out of sweethearts; consequently the discipline of the cricket field and the struggle of the football are not for the Welsh, except in a mining district. Football, however, was formerly a favourite pastime among the Welsh, but as it was principally played on Sundays it was put down with stern severity by the Nonconformist preachers.

Religion is an integral part of the life of the Welshman. There is hardly any of that indifference to it which everywhere prevails in England. With us, in a country place, one quarter of the population goes to church, another quarter to chapel, and a half goes nowhere. That half may live, and does live, a respectable, but it is a godless life. That is not the case in Wales. There two-thirds of its population go to the chapels, one-third to church, and an infinitesimal proportion holds aloof from either. Religion enfolds the Welsh man and woman from infancy. It does much to develop in him the faculty of self-government; it moulds his opinions from the earliest age. But the form of religion he has adopted has its disadvantages. It narrows his view, it cuts him off from much that is wholesome and harmless, and limits his world to his sect. The theatre is taboo. I was in a little town of some 1,200 inhabitants, to which came a strolling company of players, with a programme of perfectly wholesome and, indeed, edifying pieces. It expected to reap a harvest of sixpences and shillings, and announced performances for four consecutive evenings. But no sooner were the placards up than in all the seven chapels the ministers denounced “the play” as a snare of the devil, and warned their congregations to eschew it as a step to damnation. One told an anecdote. A young man with whom he was acquainted went to the theatre, resolved to see a play; but, raising his eyes, he saw written up, “This way to the pit.” Then, conscience-stricken, he withdrew. “But,” said the preacher, “every way—gallery, and stall, and box—lead alike to the bottomless pit.”

The result was that no Dissenters went, no Churchmen either, lest they should offend their “weaker brethren” of the chapel, and the poor players departed not having pocketed enough to pay their expenses for a single night.

The Welsh are, however, a people with the dramatic instinct in them, as is the case with all high-strung, sensitive races. In former times they had their “Interludes,” just as the Cornish had their Miracle and secular plays. In Cornwall there exist still the “Rounds”—great amphitheatres of artificial construction, in which plays were wont to be performed in the open air to crowds of spectators. The Wesleyan Revival killed these plays, and the Rounds are now only employed for great preaching bouts.

The Welsh Interludes were poetic compositions, calling forth the abilities of the village composers. A great many of these still exist, not perhaps excellent in dramatic situations, but some of them of no mean poetic value. The Interlude was the direct offspring of the old Morality, and it was allegorical rather than directly dramatic. We have in English, among our peasantry, still a few of these, such as the “Dialogue between the Serving-man and the Gardener,” and a score of altercations in verse, very generally sung, in Cornwall, between a youth and a damsel, who begin by quarrelling, or with the maiden flouting the young man, and end in reconciliation and a trot off hand-in-hand to be married. There is another, once popular in Cornwall, in which the ghost of a maiden appears to her lover and sets him hard riddles, which he answers. Unless he could answer them she would have drawn him to the grave. Another, again, is that of “Richard Malvine,” where the plot consists in an intrigue carried on between a parson and the miller’s wife. The wife pretends to be ill, and sends for her husband.

“O Richard Malvine, O Richard Malvine!

Good husband, I’m like to die,

And medicine alone can me restore

As here on my bed I lie.

I would drink of the Well of Absalom,

Its water I fain would try,

And oh! for a bottle of ale!”

The husband departs in quest of the Well of Absalom, and the wife complacently says:—

“Pray God send him a hard journey,

And never to come home.”

No sooner is Richard Malvine gone than the wife sends for the parson, and to him she says:—

“Pray feast with me;

I have good ale, bread fresh and bread stale,

And withal a venison pasty.

And merry we’ll drink and eat and dance,

Right merry I trow we’ll be.”

Now Richard Malvine had a man who was trusty. And so soon as the miller went forth, the man pursued him, caught him up, and said:—

“O master, good Richard Malvine,

Thou art not gone far from here.

The priest and thy wife are right merrie,

Are having good sport and cheer.

Get into the sack, that I bear on my back,

And what they shall say, thou’lt hear.

“O Richard Malvine, O Richard Malvine!

Thy wife is false to thee.

I’ll stand the sack in the chimney-back,

Where thou canst hear and see.

And thou shalt find, when thou hast a mind

To call, I am near to thee.”

The parson arrives, and the table is spread—all this was acted in farm-houses. The wife says:—

“My husband, Richard Malvine, is forth,

A journey afar doth roam,

A bottle to fetch of the water fresh

Of the Well of Absalom.”

Then the parson sits down and eats with the wife, and there is much fun, somewhat broad—when out of the sack in the chimney-back jumps Richard Malvine, and he shouts:—

“‘Now into the sack, as I’m Richard Malvine,

Or thy blood, Sir Priest, I will take!

O good my lady and gentleman,

I heard what you both did say,

The parson I’ll dip in the mill-pond quick

Before that I let him away,

And my wife with a rope about her neck

I’ll sell next market-day.’”

The waggoner then hoists the sack with the parson in it on his back, and carries him forth to be ducked in the mill-pond.

Another such an Interlude was one, not more edifying, in which occur snatches of a song:—

“Oh the wind and the rain,
They have sent him back again,

So you cannot have a lodging here!”

and:—

“Oh, the wind is in the west,
And the cuckoo’s in his nest,

So you cannot have a lodging here!”

and finally:—

“Oh, the devil is in the man,
That he cannot understan’

That he cannot have a lodging here!”

The half play half game of “Jenny-Jan” is common in the West of England and in Scotland, alike.

A young man enters the room, when a woman acting the mother asks:—

“Come to see Jenny, Jan? Jenny, Jan? Jenny Jan?
Come to see Jenny?”

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 whistle

And the nightingales to sing,”

or again:—

“As I went forth one May morning

To 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.