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WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



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enter, it was a frequent complaint that in poetry the sense was almost 

 constantly sacrificed to the sound ; but the legal restrictions on Welsh 

 freedom in poetry could apparently only be legally removed. The laws 

 of the Eiateddvod of Caermarthen, in 1451, were at last repealed by 

 an Eisteddvod of Caermarthen, in 1819, and Welsh poetry has 

 materially benefited by this Reform Act. 



Third Peritxl 1536-1760. The next period of Welsh literature 

 commences with the Reformation and with the incorporation of Wales 

 with England by the Act of Parliament of King Henry VIII., in 1536, 

 two events which changed both the religious and the political aspect 

 of the country. In Wales the Reformation, introduced by a Tudor 

 monarch, took from the first a much firmer root than in other Celtic 

 countries ; but there, as elsewhere, some of the learned adhered to 

 the ancient faith, and in the reigns of the early Protestant sovereigns 

 were compelled to carry their dissent abroad. 



The first book printed in the Welsh language, which was also the 

 first book printed in any Celtic language, was a species of Almanac, by 

 William Salesbury, with a translation of the Lord's Prayer, the Ten 

 Commandments, &c., issued at London in 1546, in a quarto volume. 

 Salesbury, who was an eminently learned man and the master of 

 nine languages, was a master also of his mother-tongue. He published 

 the first Dictionary of English and Welsh, in 1547. He wrote on 

 orthography and kindred subjects, and appears to have had it at heart 

 to make both the Welsh and English nations better acquainted with 

 each other. He was also a zealous Protestant, and wrote the greater part 

 of the first translation of the New Testament into Welsh a translation 

 so excellent that it forms the groundwork of that still in use. It was 

 first published at London, in 1567, in a quarto volume, a copy of which 

 is one of the choicest treasures in Welsh libraries. 



The history of the Welsh translation of the Bible is curious. In 

 the year 1562 or 1563 it was enacted by Parliament that " the Bible, 

 Testament, and Common Prayer should be translated into the British 

 or Welsh tongue; should be viewed, perused, and allowed by the 

 bishops of St. Asaph, Bangor, St. David's, Llandalf, and Hereford ; and 

 should be printed and used in the churches by the 1st of March in the 

 year 1566, under a penalty in case of failure of forty pounds on each of 

 the bishops." Salesbury was engaged by the bishops to carry out this 

 important commission ; his friend Dr. Richard Davies, bishop of St. 

 David's, assisted him by translating a portion; and in 1567, a 

 year after the term fixed by the Act of Parliament, the Testament 

 made its appearance. After this came a long pause. Salesbury was 

 residing, for the purpose of carrying on the translation, with the 

 Bishop of St. David's, when a dispute arose between them on the 

 meaning and etymology of one word, and ran to such a length that 

 the two friends parted for ever. The consequence of this not very 

 Christian outbreak was, that the Welsh were left without a Bible 

 fur more than twenty years. The penalty provided by the Act was 

 too small to enforce it ; for the bishops, who seem to have had to 

 defray the expense of the translation, would have had to pay more 

 than the forfeit to carry it out. In 1588 the difficulty was solved by 

 the appearance at London of a translation executed by Dr. William 

 Morgan, vicar of Llanrhaiadr, in Denbighshire, not in consequence of 

 the Act of Parliament, but because he felt the necessity of the work 

 for his countrymen. Morgan received a bishopric in recompense : he 

 was promoted in 1595 to the see of Llandaff, and " translated," says 

 Llewellyn, the historian of the Welsh Bible, "to St. Asaph in 1601, 

 and in 1604 to a better place." His successor at St. Asaph, Dr. Parry, 

 published in 1620 a revised edition of this Bible, with considerable 

 alterations ; and in the Scriptures of both editions, Salesbury *s transla- 

 tion of 1 567 affords the groundwork of the Testament. The Welsh have, 

 like the English, been remarkably fortunate in their translation of 

 the Bible. It ia with both nations the acknowledged standard of the 

 language, and equally a favourite with the'learned and the people. It 

 . in Wales the book of every household ; but this state of 

 atfairs has only been attained by degrees. In Prichard's ' Canwyll y 

 Cymry,' the date of which is that of the triumph of English Puritanism 

 in the time of the Commonwealth, are some lines thus translated by 

 Evans : 



" Women and men of low degree. 

 The very abject* of the land, 

 You always may in England sec 

 Each with the liible in his hauil. 



" With as, 'mongst those who most atmum), 



And sumptuously their tables spread, 

 Scarce can a prayer-book be found, 

 Or one who can his liible read. 



" 'Tis to the Welsh a foul disgrace 



They're in religion still so young, 

 That not a tithe of all the race 



The Scriptures read in their own tongue." 



In 1802 Owen Pughe stated that nineteen editions of the Bible, 

 amounting to upwards of 130,000 copies, had circulated in Wales; and 

 jet it was the demand for more copies at that very time which led the 

 \it;v. Thomas Charles, of Bala, to propone the establishment of a beuu- 

 volent religious society fur printing and distributing Bibles in \V:tli-,s 

 a notion which expanded and developed under the guidance of Welsh- 



ABTS AND SCI. WV. VOL. VIII. 



men till it led to the foundation of the great British and Foreign Bible 

 Society. One of the first publications which the Society took in hand 

 was naturally the issue of the Welsh Bible ; and a vivacious account is 

 given in the ' Christian Observer," by an eye-witness, of its reception 

 in Wales : " When the arrival of the cart was announced which 

 carried the first sacred load, the Welsh peasants went out in crowds 

 to meet it, welcomed it as the Israelites did the Ark of old, drew it 

 into the town, and eagerly bore off every copy as rapidly as they 

 could be distributed. Labourers carried it with them to the fields, 

 &c." The number of copies issued by the Bible Society in Wales 

 between 1806 and 1849 was, of Bibles, 329,131, and Testaments, 

 384,209, while of "Diglotts, Welsh and English, there were 1986." 



While the Protestant Salesbury had the honour of publishing the 

 first Welsh book in England, a zealous Catholic, Dr. Griffith Roberts, 

 issued the first that was printed abroad, both of them anticipating by 

 more than a century and a half the first Welsh book printed in Wales. 

 In the celebrated letter addressed by Dr. Johnson to the King's 

 Librarian on the purchase of books during a foreign tour, he made tho 

 remark : " In every place things often occur where they are least 

 expected. I was shown a Welsh grammar, written in Welsh and 

 printed at Milan, I believe, before any grammar of that language had 

 been printed here." The book which had attracted Dr. Johnson's 

 observation was only the first part of a treatise on grammar, ' Dosparth 

 byrr ar y rhan gyntaf i Ramodeg ' a treatise on orthography embodying 

 suggestions of some value for the improvement of the Welsh alphabet, 

 illustrated with peculiar types. The volume bears the date of 1567, 

 but no indication of its place of imprint ; and the authority for the 

 usual assertion on that score was that David Rhys, in the Latin preface 

 to his ' Cambro-Britannicae Lingua! Institutiones,' said that the book of 

 his predecessor was printed at " Mediolanum." A few years ago the 

 old tradition on the subject was combated by the ingenious argument 

 that as there is more than one place in Wales itself the name of 

 which is Latinised into Mediolanum, the book might have been 

 printed at, for instance, Llanvylliu. Unluckily for the new view,a decisive 

 confirmation of the old one has since been discovered in another book, 

 by Griffith Roberts, a religious treatise entitled the ' Drych,' or ' Mirror,' 

 containing a fervent exhortation to his countrymen in behalf of the 

 Roman Catholic faith. In this book, which was printed at Rouen about 

 1585, the exhortation is signed " G. R.," and dated "0 Fulan" (" From 

 Milan ") ; while in a preface by Dr. Roger Smith the author is styled 

 "the great teacher of the city of Milan, in the laud of Italy" ("yr 

 Athro mawr o Dhinas Fulan yngwlad yr Idal "), where it is moreover 

 added that some of his books have been printed. Griffith Roberts 

 also left behind him some imperfect books on grammar, which he 

 had commenced to print, but never completed, and of which it is said 

 that only three copies are at present known : that presented by the 

 Welsh School, formerly of Gray's Inn Lane, to the British Museum ; 

 that in the library of Wynnstay, which fortunately escaped the con- 

 flagration of 1858 ; and that in the library of Mr. Wynne of Peniarth. 

 The works of Roberts are well deserving of republication. 



Another Welsh scholar who spent some time in Italy, but who 

 returned to die in a cottage in Brecoushire, was Dr. John David Rhys, 

 already mentioned. He left the University of Oxford in 1555 without 

 taking a degree, and resided for some time at Sienna and Padua, 

 where he practised as a doctor of physic, and published a book in 

 Italian on the study of Latin, and a book in Latin on the pronun- 

 ciation of Italian. His principal work is his grammar of Welsh, ' Catn- 

 brobrytanniciC Cymnecieve Lingua} Institutiones et Rudirnenta,' in 

 which he enters at great length and with much learning on the subject 

 of Cambrian prosody, on which he is still consulted. The book was 

 published in London in 1592, at the expense of Sir Edward Stradling, 

 of St. Donat's Castle, a munificent patron of Welsh literature, and a 

 cousin of that Sir Edward who was so near losing his life on suspicion 

 of being a Saxon. Rhys, who was born in 1534 in Anglesey, died iu 

 1609 in Brecon, and is said by Anthony a Wood to have died as he 

 had lived, a Roman Catholic ; but in the title page to his ' Institu- 

 tiones ' he lays especial claim to the merit of facilitating the study of 

 the Holy Scriptures, " lately so elegantly and chastely translated into 

 Welsh," a circumstance which, with some others, favours the supposi- 

 tion of his having become a Protestant. 



One of Rhys's friends, to whom he refers in his works as an excellent 

 genealogist and antiquary, was Thomas Jones, of Tregaron, or Twin 

 Sion Catti, whose remarkable career has already been noticed in con- 

 nection with his transcript of the ' Triads.' Jones was a poet as well 

 as an antiquary, but while his reputation as a robber and magician 

 still survives, that as a poet has passed into oblivion. He died about 

 1620. 



A metrical version of the Psalms, which was written about this 

 period, is still in high esteem. It was produced by a captain in Queen 

 Elizabeth's fleet William Myddelton, the elder brother of Sir Hugh 

 Myddelton, the projector of the New River, and himself remarked for 

 having been one of the first three who smoked tobacco in England, 

 when crowds gathered round to witness the phenomenon. He did 

 warlike service in America and the Azores, and records in a Latin uoto 

 to his last Welsh Psalm that ho finished it on the 24th of January, 

 1595, at "Scutum," one of the West Indian Islands. The Psalms, 

 which appeared iu 1603, were a posthumous publicatiqn, but Captain 

 Myddelton had issued in hia lifetime, in 1593, the first part of a 



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